She had used her beastly powers too much, and now, she knew, she would need to pay the ultimate price. Each time she used some of her werewolf bloodline, she got closer to a fate worse than death.
Full-body depilation.
Typically, she just had to deal with her hair growing a bit longer from the rapid metabolism, however, as she overused it, her body started to go feral.
Some werewolf bloodlines had proper body changes and proper furs, but hers? It was straight up short fuzzy human hair growing everywhere, from the borders of her toenails to her temple, all while she kept a mostly human look, only her hands became a bit weird and her muscles more defined.
Of her seven siblings, most had the same genetic power as her, and out of those, only two had really allowed themselves to be fully covered. They didn't look bad with proper care and some proper outfits, but it just wasn’t how she wanted to look at all. Furthermore, she hated the feeling of body hair poking against the clothing or getting wet with sweat, and again, because of how lame her bloodline was, going naked like some other werewolves was completely out of the picture, one of her older siblings had tried that and it just looked like the most improper sasquatch to ever grace the Vespertine Republic.
“There ya go,” Maze said as she pulled up Alana and then Qull. They were once again in the area of some ruined-building-thingy, this time, overlooking a massive underground lake. Some of the stone structures outright poked out of the water, as if this had been a flooded city.
It was at least a small break from the monotony of caves but she found herself struggling to care even for the unusual aspects of the adventure. Meanwhile, Qull was having fun looking at the ruins, and Alana had the whole elemental-charged fauna to play with.
In the end, she was always back to this exact same point, her own fault too. Singled out, and not a core part of the group. It had been the same in her old group, but also worse, because she disliked everyone except the princess.
And that was merely a vestige of the really good times. Back in the alleys of the capital, when it was Maze, Prim and...
The werewolf spat on the ground at the very thought of calling the third one her friend.
This grabbed the attention of the other two who looked quite puzzled.
“Oh, sorry. A bug entered my mouth.” Maze waved it off.
Qull immediately covered her mouth with her poncho looking sick. Cute, Maze thought at first, then became puzzled as the merc started to slow down.
“These ruins are peculiar,” Qull whispered, matching Maze’s walking pace so she was by her side.
“Looks like there was an entire city around here,” Maze said.
“Indeed. But nothing in the records. Some locations are starting to look up palaeolithic even, before humans arrived on the island.” Qull agreed. “But since I am no archaeologist, I am probably wrong.”
“Or you are right and this all is some Imp or Dwarf city.” Maze hummed.
“Dwarves are just a myth. As for imps, I am not too versed with the underground conspiracies, I thought they would just steal your children at night?”
“Nope, that is changelings.”
“The radical political movement?” Qull raised an eyebrow.
“The older meaning! Spirits that steal shape. And again, none of that has anything to do with imps."
Qull was, to Maze, a more enjoyable companion than the scientist boy from her old group. They were both hopeless nerds, but Qull... was a nice girl, to put it simply.
It would have been easy to also be mad at her, she clearly didn’t trust them at all, like in the fact she hadn’t even considered they could charge her rifles with magic for her, but that came from her being a bit silly. She lacked that terrible habit of seeing herself as superior to all others, the light in the darkness.
“The reservoir is pretty, no?” Alana smiled, stopping by one of the walls with a carved hole on it. They were overlooking the massive lake – actually, looking at it closer, it felt more like a massive whirlpool, the water was not still at all, circling with raging strength.
“Yeah, it's nice, but that fog will be trouble.” Maze pointed to the rising clouds of white that hung around the path upstream. She didn’t want to say it again, but she was still concerned because of that mysterious creature that had devoured a man whole.
Alana grabbed her hands and showed her tongue playfully. “I will keep you safe then! Maybe I can princess carry you as you did to me? hehehe~”
Maze chortled. “You will need to drink a lot of milk before you can try that one.”
Only as they continued walking a bit more did Maze notice what had just happened. Those two had noticed she was feeling down and had made sure to talk to her. There was no way in hell Qullqi didn’t know what a changeling was, she was just playing herself down so she could be corrected.
It was annoying.
But also, a bit nice of them. She really liked them, come to think of it. Yet, a friend was someone she'd take a bullet for, which Prim had been before it all went so wrong. She couldn't see herself doing it for these two, it felt bad to think that, but it was the truth to her, Cerberus was too fickle of a link, and Mazeline had only become more rotten with the years.
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Further ahead, they almost entered the service tunnels, stopping a few steps away from walking straight into the artificial lights and clean floors. Quickly they repositioned, but curiosity also made them want to at least peek at what they were missing.
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What they saw was a proper, well-kept corridor, with drinking fountains and snack machines. It was tempting to just bring down the metal grill that separated them from that and enjoy civilization once again.
Then came the rushed steps of a Tengu goon running, fully equipped and better prepared than the ones they had seen before.
“No sign of them up ahead, ma’am” he spoke up to another figure.
“Let’s get back to the caves and circle around this,” Maze whispered and the other two nodded, starting to crawl back into the damp darkness of the lesser-known paths.
After a few more minutes, they reached another large open area, a natural chamber within the cave. It was muddy, but not flooded like the other areas. The fog was thick, so they had to be careful. It was tense to just dive into the unknown like this, it didn’t help that now they knew there were at least two Tengu agents just a little walk away.
There were rock outcrops and growing... things, that looked like a mixture of lichen and coral. A slimy environment. Maze wondered if she should use her ability to see past the mist, but that would mean more hair creeping up her body, and so far, simply following the sound of rushing water was working out well enough.
Then out of nowhere a Tengu agent ran right at them, the trio barely had the time to jump back and take a defensive position until the agent... completely ignored them, in fact, she shoved Alana to the side, making the witch fall on her butt.
“What WAS that!?” Qullqi questioned.
“She looked so worried,” Alana said.
And naturally, both started to keep their ears out to see if they heard anything, Qullqi didn’t show that too much with her droopy chimera ears, but Alana’s dog ears had tips that fell halfway unless she was alert, then they’d be pointing upward.
Fighting, there was fighting ahead, it was hard to hear it because it was almost as if there were only blades swinging and bows being fired at nothing, no clank of anything hitting a target.
Curiosity got the best of Maze, and her eyes shone yellow, her senses sharpening further and combining to draw a full picture from the smells and sounds.
“Three Tengu goons to our side of the cave, then a ravine, ahead, that corridor we saw opens as a bridge over the ravine. On the bridge, there is one tengu, that shield boy and... A slime. A big one, lots of tendrils, and a core, it's absolutely dominating those two.”
“Oh no.” Alana gasped as she heard it, trying to rush towards the same direction the Tengu soldier had done it. Qullqi had done the same, but Maze rushed ahead and stopped them.
“Are you insane? That is not our fight at all.”
“That creature is dangerous Maze, people will die,” Qull answered with a firm tone.
“And? If you go there, we will be captured by the Tengu’s goons, after all we did today; Of this forsaken trip into these damp foul-smelling caves to avoid just that.”
“But they won’t kill us, right?” Alana pouted.
“They won’t." Qull agreed. "So that is why letting someone potentially die there doesn’t sit right with me.”
The two didn’t even bother listening to Maze any further before continuing their path ahead until the borders of the cave, side by side with the Tengu agents who looked so startled to see them that it was possible to see their wide eyes even with the crow masks they wore.
“What is happening?” Qull asked, “How can we help?”
“We are trying to lower that catwalk!” one of the agents told, “So we can rush there and help. Until then, try to blast the creature with all you got. We almost hit that core object; another barrage should do.”
The corporate-speak was completely gone from their voice; they must have been truly terrified. Maze could see why.
The slime was the size of an automobile, it had uncanny control over its tendrils, being able to even coagulate its gelatinous body to create different types of limbs, such as a spear that could pierce or a hammerhead of hard slime to use for blunt force. The shield user was using all his abilities, multiple barriers around him and a raised shield creating some sort of orb around him, not unlike what Alana had used to keep them safe from the rain. The agent on the bridge was using a lance to try to fend off the creature, it may have looked like she was attempting to save the shield user, but on closer inspection, she was fighting to live. There was a lot of pressure on herm no doubt those tendrils could easily capture her or even digest her.
“Go!” The leader of the Tengu’s group declared, everyone, including Qull and Alana, shot what they had. The barrage of arrows, bullets and Alana’s ice spike was formidable... But the slime reacted to it with precise timing, hiding behind the shield boy and letting his barriers take the damage.
The thing was not just a monster, it was a true anomaly, a creature that did many things it should not have been able to do. An omen, Maze guessed, a creature with uncharacteristic intelligence and a core where there should be none didn't just appear out of nowhere.
The boy's shield barrier started to falter, and the creature aimed to engulf the whole of him, putting immense pressure on his last defences. Meanwhile, the tendrils spread out and managed to wrap around the female agent fighting it, quickly cocooning around her.
It was seconds away from turning extremely messy.
Everyone but Maze shrieked in horror. Qull gritted her teeth with impotent rage, for once no spark of intelligence in her expression, just dull wide-eyed horror. Alana, who typically seemed so detached in her own world of whimsy, was almost tearing up, her framework exploding with magical energy but nothing managing to materialize in a panicked state.
What a terrible thing to see. They were not Maze's friends, but she liked to see Qullqi with a little pout as she put her little head to work, she liked to see Alana being the little wild witch who seemed so wise and clueless at the same time.
“Saints. I hate everything so much.” Maze gritted her teeth and charged ahead. Like in her battle against Rumi, she jumped high and hit the railing above the tunnel and the ravine, causing the catwalk to start to fall, with that footing she dove, claws shining with a metallic gleam.
She landed on the bridge, severing the tendrils that had grabbed the agent, then rushed right at the beast, sliding beneath the closing slime dome, and kicking the shield boy out of there, sending him to the other side of the bridge.
No boy meant no barrier holding the slime, the creature flowing downward, engulfing Mazeline.
Despite all the adrenaline, she could feel the prickling burn of the creature's digestive powers. A small price to pay for the sake of being exactly where she wanted. As the creature had fallen, the core had lowered too, almost within her claw. She launched up with a smirk on her face, her nails just about to damage that core
Then all slime around it turned solid, wrapping around her wrist and making it so whenever she moved her hand, the core moved with it. In other words, she couldn’t reach it or brute force her way forward, her other hand was bound to her hip as the coagulated slime wrapped around her.
Her body went on overdrive trying to keep her from being hurt too fast by the slime’s acidity, but it would be outpaced. She had rushed ahead, she had been a fool, letting her emotions coerce her into trying to play the hero. Old Mazeline would have enjoyed a death like this, a fitting, heroic end to a little idiot.
But current, almost-melting Mazeline, did not want to give up just yet. Not while Qullqi and Alana still thought Maze was a worthwhile friend, she had to prove them wrong. With all her strength, she fought against the suffocating, burning slime, and put all her hope in one thing. That the three heads of Cerberus could reach the same conclusion.
With the core still stuck against her hand, teasingly out of reach, she lunged upward, not breaking out of the slime, but forcing that hand with the core as close to the creature’s edge as she could, extending her body to the limits of all her muscles, trying so hard to walk she could feel the nails of her feet grinding against the metal, which gave her that little bit of footing to press that core even more to the edge, the slime trying its best to suppress her for once and for all.
When she was at the limit of her limit, just before she would lose footing and be entirely taken by the slime... An ice spike hit that bulging bit of slime, freezing it in place, then that and the entirety of the core exploded, the etched bullet nailing the redish orb.
Maze couldn't help but to smile with some satisfaction, just before exhaustion drew dark curtains over her senses.