With a rending cry, she doubled over as every thew in her body contorted. The rodent rose up, threatening to consume her rational thoughts beneath bestial instinct. As her will steeled itself to fight for control, an image slipped into her mind.
Water.
Flowing into a vessel.
With ease.
Drawing a deep breath, she pushed away the agony as her bones shattered and shifted. Instead, she embraced the beast that began to rampage through her mind…or did it? The instincts were powerful, but not hostile. Not toward her at least.
She exhaled, distancing herself from the pain and examining the beast within her - not fighting it, yet not giving in. The rodent paused: it had fought her for control in every transformation of her life - but now, she did not strike at it. Instead, she felt her conscious drift to the side as though making room for the beast.
Blood rushed in her ears like the roaring of a river.
Her mind was a vessel, and both woman and rat were malleable.
They could fill it together.
Something slid into place within the psychic depths of her ego. It was as though a key had turned in one of the trove guardian’s locks, bringing all of its magnificent inner apparatuses to life.
With it came a bursting euphoria.
With it came an awareness she had never known.
“Aaaaaagh!” she screamed.
With it came the most profound agony of her life.
In all her transformations, her struggles with her bestial instinct occupied her. She thought she had experienced the worst agony of her life, but now realized it had been dulled all this time. Now, she felt everything.
Every boiling muscle.
Every warping bone.
Every twisting and changing blood vessel.
Her ears exploded to the roar of a typhoon before collapsing into silence so profound that she feared she had gone deaf. The world bubbled as her eyes contorted into a new shape.
Her body tore asunder in one breath only to be pieced back together in the next: the torment nearly shattered her mind. Yet she endured. Oh, how she endured. By measure of will and sheer stubbornness, she endured. Until…
At last, the roaring ceased. Her breath passed between rodent incisors. Alien sensations bubbled through her mind - at once her thoughts and yet not. She examined her transformed body with beady eyes, truly comprehending it for the first time. Her broken hand remained shattered, but was now covered in the fur of the rat.
Never had she been so aware while clad in her other form. Either the beast had control, or her thoughts thrashed through an animalistic haze. Now, she knew better. Human thoughts and animal instincts assimilated and danced together: the former belonging to Wurhi and the latter belonging to The Rat.
Yet both belonged to Wurhi the Rat. Damn his hide, Milos had been right.
No matter what form she wore, she was she.
Silence pervaded the arena as she brought up her giant, rodent-like head. The other pit fighters were screaming and scrambling away from her. From above, the crowd simply stared in silence.
Milos - again, damn his hide - simply watched with a knowing, satisfied look.
She snorted, flexing her limbs and feeling their bestial power. He would not be satisfied for long. Her attention turned to the beast-man. It stood, with jaw slack and head cocked to one side. Its flaring nostrils confirmed that her scent was mostly unaltered, but it had never witnessed any transformation aside from those of the lycanthropes.
Her display had been enough to give its primitive mind pause.
And she took advantage.
She shot across the sand, charging the beast-man as though she were the one more than twice its height and ten times its bulk.
But Milos had trained his pet well.
It bellowed, pounded its shield against the earth before dropping low to meet her charge.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
The battering ram-like club cut the air as it spun above his head, gathering speed and a monstrous momentum. Wurhi’s instincts and thoughts both screamed at her to run, but she bit down on both and held on, driven by Kyembe’s word:
Close.
WHOOM.
The club swung out to the side.
WHOOSH.
It surged toward her head in a blur of bronze, red and silver.
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Wurhi let out a bestial scream and dove.
Whish!
It soared over her leaping form. She lunged through the gap between the beast-man’s trunk-like legs, coming down on her good hand and both feet. Her tail whipped out to catch her balance as she whirled around and leapt for its back.
The ape’s club was already rushing her.
Whoom!
She ducked beneath its arm to catch one of its legs - the claws of her good hand digging into the riveted chain as though it were a cliff-face - and began to climb its body.
The beast-man went berserk.
Bellowing, it thrashed to drive her off, but her bestial strength came to bear; her limbs and tail tightened about its armoured thigh. The reek of musk and metal burned her nostrils while she shot up its flailing form, with eyes fixed upon the jewelled hilt of her sword.
It glittered invitingly as she closed in.
It was in reach!
Her arm shot out.
She froze.
Though loosened by the change, the bandages still wrapped her useless hand: she could not grasp the hilt with those shattered fingers. Were she to use her other hand - now clinging to the creature’s titanic form - she would plummet and be easy prey for stomping feet. Her mind pulled in two directions - instincts screamed for her to climb and bite its face, but rational thoughts told her to scurry forward and grasp the blade with her teeth.
As she tried to sort through them, her body stilled.
And that cost her.
Thmp.
The beast-man dropped its club. Its hand shot toward her like a serpent - the very same hand that had crushed her bones - and seized her by the back of her tunic.
‘No!’ her mind screamed.
Her body tried to scurry away but, even transformed, she had no hope of matching the beast-man’s iron power. It pulled her free from its torso, leaving her to flail helplessly in the air.
“Oh piss!” Merrick cried.
Panic surged through her. She reached for her sword, but the beast-man pulled her away - its lips boiling back from shining teeth - and gave her the same look as the moment it had crushed her hand.
She recalled the sickening crunch of her own bones.
“Well done, my pet.” Milos rose from his seat once more. A hint of disappointment touched his cold eyes, but it was tempered by a calm resignation. He was about to lose an interesting subject of study, but perhaps he could yet learn something of value.
Through her dissection.
"What say you, acolytes?” his voice boomed. “Did-”
He never finished those words.
Both rat and woman came to singular purpose in Wurhi’s mind:
Survival.
Vengeance.
Her human form was capable of incredible flexibility, but when combined with a rat’s supple bones and liquid tendons… She bent her head at an impossible angle and-
Schnk.
-sunk her teeth into the beast-man’s hand.
It roared in agony.
Its grip loosened.
She did not scramble away but instead whirled about and caught its arm in her own grip. Her legs and tail wrapped about its thrashing limb and her free hand pulled up its chainmail sleeve to expose its wrist.
Wurhi bared her blood-stained fangs.
Chnk.
She bit down with all her might.
“Raaaaaaaaaaaargh!” the beast-man’s animal cry was thunder in her ears, but she cared not a whit. Powerful jaws drove teeth to chew through its ruddy flesh.
“No!” Milos cried, leaping from his seat and charging down the steps toward the arena. “Stop her! Pack-brothers! Acolytes! Crixus! Do something!”
Red sprayed over her snout and filled her mouth to pour past her jaws.
Her incisors ground muscle, severed tendon and chiseled through bone. In heartbeats, she had tunnelled through its wrist and…
The beast-man shrieked in agony.
Thmp.
Its hand dropped to the sand.
She chittered in triumph.
Crash!
The broad shield drove into her body.
Breath blasted from her lungs and she flew through the air to crash to the earth.
Thoom.
She skidded along the sand.
“Wurhi!” Merrick cried, rushing over with Saxa and Gannicus close behind. Agron followed, and even Crixus left his place. The big Garumnan’s panicked eyes shot between Wurhi and the beast.
The ape capered and shrieked while crimson fountained from its ragged stump, spraying over the sand. Milos dropped to the arena floor and ran for the wounded beast. “Someone, bring fire!” he roared. “I must sear his wound!”
Acolytes and pack members shifted aside gates to enter the arena.
The pit fighters came to a skidding halt around Wurhi’s dazed form. Crixus took a quick look at her before starting for the ape and Milos, words of apology already brimming on his lips.
“Bloody piss, look at what you did!” Merrick laughed. “A hand for a hand, I sup-”
“Raaaaaargh!”
Bestial shrieks turned into a bellow of rage. The ape snarled, its jaws clenching with a fury so consuming that its teeth drew blood from its gums. Blood-shot eyes fixed on the transformed Zabyallan, burning with animal fury. It beat its chest with its shield and charged her.
“Stop!” Milos barked. “Stop, my pet!”
Yet the beast defied its master, barreling for the Zabyallan with all-consuming hate. So swift was its rush, that even Crixus - for all his veteran skill and warrior’s grace - could not leap out of its path.
The beast was far too roused to care a whit.
“No!” the cult leader cried.
Whoosh! Crack!
A bloody shield smashed into Crixus’ shoulder and head.
Crnch!
Bone splintered and his bare skull burst.
“No!” Milos’ eyes flashed. He surged forth with impossible speed. “You defiant creature!”
A powerful leap carried him onto the ape’s back, where he coiled his potent limbs about its neck. His thews swelled with impossible power and fangs lengthened in his maw as he sealed both air and blood in the ape’s throat.
The beast panicked and thrashed, but the cult leader shifted his legs and threw his full weight behind his pet’s momentum, throwing off its balance and sending it crashing to the earth in an avalanche of flesh and metal. Milos was on his feet in a breath, his dark eyes now melting into golden, lupine orbs.
Rage drained from the beast as its eyes widened in terror and its bellows withered to a simian whimper.
“You dare defy your master?” Milos snarled - his voice underpinned with the growl of a wolf. “You dare!? After all I have given you! All my training, you dare defy my word?!”
“N-no!” the beast-man whimpered, curling itself into a ball.
Yet, Milos did not strike it, for there was no need. “You remain still before you bleed to death.” His lip curled in disappointment at its bloody stump. “Cauterize his wound…” he said to the pack. “I shall decide his fate later.”
He turned and threw a quick glance to the recumbent form of Crixus. He snorted at the slurry of gore and brain matter pouring from the remains of his skull. “Look what you did, rodent. You ruined my pet and your actions have slain Crixus: he would have made a wondrous pack-brother. He had true potential: a warrior, a commander and an honourable man. Perhaps a Sacred Alpha in time.” His jaw tightened. “But now…”
He sighed, glancing up to the acolytes. “Bind her.”
Still dazed from the blow, Wurhi could do little to resist as the pack-members bent coils of bronze around her wrists and ankles. They cinched so tightly that she yelped from their bite.
They dragged her limp form from the arena, following the cult leader into another passage through the mountain.
Hssssss!
“Raaaaaargh!”
In the distance, the crowd’s shocked murmuring and the frightful screams of the beast-man echoed in her ears.
Thoom.
Until the door closed behind her.