I don’t want to, I don’t want to!
“You have to.”
Zaiah tightened his grip on the handle of the blade - his blade, now. It hadn’t been his mere moments ago. The still-warm blood dripping from the grip was a very present reminder of that.
He pressed his back against the rough wooden planks that made up the wall of the little house he’d taken shelter in. That move, too, he hadn’t made alone. But alone… well, that’s exactly what he was, now. His gaze stayed locked on his own hands, refusing to travel down to the ground, and the body that lay on it.
“You have to.” He repeated to himself. “You have to, goddamit, you have to.”
The same blood that slicked his hands was not far from his feet. The blood of an ally - though he assumed there was no lack of beast’s blood intermingled with it. He still refused to look to make sure. Perhaps both bodies, even though they lay several feet away from each other, had leaked enough deep-red liquid that the two puddles had broken their surface tension on the dusty floor. Perhaps they had converged, streaming together as what had once provided life to both their hosts now acted as any other liquid would act, following the force of gravity to the lowest point of the room.
His stomach turned. “Get out there, Zaiah.” He tried to convince himself. “Get out there, you miserable sack of shit. Staying in here ain’t gonna help anyone.”
I don’t want to
He felt like a child. A tall child, holding an immense single-sided blade like an elongated butcher’s knife. He felt his knees shaking and tears welling up in his eyes. He felt his heart pounding and his stomach churning, and he felt all this at once. As much as he wasn’t a child, not really, he also wasn’t made for this. He was a soft soul - always had been. Never been fit for anything more. Never been fit for killing.
But it didn’t matter what he was fit for. It only mattered what he chose to do.
And he chose to step out that door.
Every nerve in his body seemed to flare as he rebelled against his mind and stepped into the cold moonlight that was pouring through the doorway. He heard growling - not nearby, not immediately threatening, but that didn’t give him any relief.
How many more of them were there? Last he had seen, there were two, but that wouldn’t be the last of them. There wouldn’t ever be the last of them. In the lack of immediate danger, exhaustion nipped at Zaiah’s heels. He wasn’t fit for this.
Nobody is.
If this was never-ending, what good was it to continue on? If there was no hope, what was he still pushing for? It had been one thing to be dragged along behind the man who was now no more than a body in an abandoned shack. It was another thing completely to step out into a street creeping with these things, entirely of his own volition.
Was he the only one left? What did it mean if he was? What did it mean if he wasn’t?
He was wasting time.
If he didn’t fight, he’d die. If he fought, he’d die anyway.
Better to go out fighting, right?
That seemed to be the general consensus amongst his new peers. His life - a life that consisted of the scent of ink, stimulating intellectual debates, and high-society dinners - was already over. No chance of recovering it, not as long as these things ran rampant.
So he either stopped them, or he died.
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I want to die.
“No you don’t, you whiny motherfucker.” Zaiah hissed at himself as he glanced down either direction of the road he was about to step into. Then he glanced back - not enough to actually take in the scene, just enough to think whether or not he had forgotten anything. And then, as he stepped out, he turned back towards the house fully one final time and checked one more, crucial direction - up.
A beast, silent, stared down at him.
He could see this one was fresh, and his stomach dropped at the sight. The host’s skull hadn’t yet been fully reabsorbed into the flesh of the new creature, leaving it’s jaws pried open like that of a snake’s - only, rather than consuming, this painful dislocation was in service of expelling. Zaiah had seen the initial transformation, how it looked like the host was vomiting up their own entrails, but in the mess of bubbling blood a new face would emerge from the throat of the old. This new, canine-like face never quite dried out, always seeming just slightly moist and bloody, no matter how long ago the transformation had taken place.
Eventually, the skull of the host would be completely joined with the flesh of the beast, and the form that it had originally held would be nothing more than a memory - if even that.
One of the eye-sockets of the host’s half-formed skull still held an eye, though it was glazed over and Zaiah was very doubtful that it could send any sort of optical information to the beast.
As the initial disgust and horror finally began to wane, Zaiah realized that the two had just been… staring at each other… for a very long while, at this point. Well, it had only been about 10 seconds. But that was at least 7 seconds that Zaiah shouldn't have have lived through.
The creature was breathing heavily. Where the hosts’ body receded like an ill-fitting skin suit, absorbing into the body of the beast the same way the skull eventually would, patches of fur had sprouted through. This fur, pale white, was soaked in blood.
The thing was wounded.
Zaiah’s eyes snapped back to the beast’s own. They were bulging and bloodshot, and narrowed in what Zaiah imagined to be a lot of pain. It gave a soft, hideous moan - a mixture of rumbling purrs and the voice of the host. By the color of the skin and the fur, the host had been a drow, like Zaiah. The voice was feminine. Zaiah shuddered.
The first thing you learned was not to think about what these things used to be. Don’t forget that now.
Zaiah shifted, readying his blade. The beast noticed the shift, but didn’t move.
The two of them must have had the same debate, Zaiah realized. To die or to fight. And it seemed they had landed on opposite sides.
It was still too far above him. He would have to get up to it - perhaps, by the time he made it close enough to strike, the beast would have changed its mind on the whole ‘living’ thing. He couldn’t risk that, he’d be in a very vulnerable position and would almost certainly lose. But to use a spell - that would risk causing enough of a disturbance that he’d call every other beast in the area to his location.
It was bleeding pretty heavily. There was a chance, then, that to walk away would be the best option.
But what if it wasn’t bleeding out? What if it lived? Even if it only survived long enough to infect one more person, that was…
Just do it.
He had to get over this part of him that debated. He had to get past this inner voice that wanted to travel down each hypothetical path. There was only one outcome that was acceptable - one of the two of them had to die.
He held out his hand, palm facing the creature as it perched on the edge of the misshapen shingled roof. With a deep breath, he fired the only spell he knew, the only one his mentor had managed to teach Zaiah before his recent and untimely death.
A small ball of flame built up at the heel of his palm, rolling and churning as it built up energy and then shot out in a streak of searing white light. The bolt flew directly at the creature’s forehead, piercing it between the eyes. For a moment, the entry wound seemed to have cauterized shut behind itself, and the damage was almost indistinguishable. Then, in a wave of flames that began inwards and spread out in a ripple, the beast erupted into a ball of fire.
It screamed.
The roars of the beast’s voice intermingled with the ever-present tones of the host, creating a hideous harmony of fear and utter agony. Her voice - whoever she had been - was piercing. Zaiah had never heard anything like it. He hoped he never would again.
It was impossible to think of these things as animals when they sounded like that.
He backed away, slowly at first, then broke into a run. The noise and the sight was enough to bring any remaining beasts down upon him, though hopefully any of his allies that were still living would follow.
As he dodged into a side-street and took just a second to breathe, he couldn’t help but hear the hoarseness of his own panting and wonder - what would his voice sound like, when it mingled with a beast’s? And how many more days would he last until then?