Vilterbrin dust is a hallucinogenic drug harvested deep under the earth in the Vilterbrin mines, hence the name. The students at Varenthell Academy shortened it to simply V-dust. I tried some of it in my 3rd year at the Academy, and spent the entire evening attempting to pull the strings of my body like a drunken puppet master. It took an embarrassing amount of time for me to walk towards a familiar room.
“Veeeera?” I knocked on the door to her room with the dexterity of a cat trying to crochet. I waited and waited before her familiar blue eyes peeked out from a crack in the door. She closed the door, shuffling things around in her room in a destructive manner based on the racket she made before she opened the door fully to see me standing outside. Well, standing wasn’t the right word. I was wobbling from one anchor to another, finding something to hold on to in order to stay upright.
“Oh my god, are you okay? What happened?” She grabbed my hand and pulled me inside of her room. The sudden motion made me feel sick, like I was watching a distorted artistic rendering of the dorm room I had adjusted to so much over our friendship.
“I was draraagged to a part-party and had Vilt-Viltras-Vilte-”
“Vilterbrin?”
“Yesh”
“Oh my Gods okay. It looks like you had way too high of a dose. Uhh, let’s see.”
Vyra had moved me onto her bed and talked me through the night. I remember talking together for hours, but I never remembered what we discussed. Something which nagged at me endlessly when she acted strange the next morning. She had ensured I slept in her bed that night, and harshly reprimanded me whenever I would lay on my back, emphasizing that I needed to stay lying on my side. In retrospect, that night became a joke between the two of us, and I hadn’t experimented with any other offered drugs in the Academy.
I suppose all of this is to say, I wish I had done more drugs in the Academy.
Maybe then I would be more equipped to handle the powerful sedative that was in my system. Markus seemed to know what he was talking about, at least loosely, the amount that had knocked out Cecelia and Phern was affecting me very differently. It felt like I had combined my previous experience with V-dust with a form of tranquilizer. My thoughts felt like a grainy pile of mush that I could prod at with a stick, and my body reacted to my movements in a delay that was beyond disorientating. The perfect way to feel when a crossbow is being pointed at you five feet away.
I desperately wanted to try to reason with Markus, say anything that would delay my fate, but so much of my mouth felt numb that the words were unintelligible to even myself.
“Now doesn’t she just look like a rabid dog? Guess your true nature was bound to show itself sooner or later.” Markus spoke to the rest of the people in the room like he was making some grand statement. Call it bias, but there was nothing heroic about framing your murder as a kind of euthanasia. The crossbow unlatched, and the bolt flew towards me before I had a chance to react.
I felt the metal tip of the bolt rip into the skin close to my neck, swirling in violent determination to embed itself deep under my skin. The bolt shattered my clavicle, entering just below my neck and slightly left of center. My guttural scream only served to push the idea that I was a wild animal, wild screams and growls drawing from my lips as I made my move. There were 5 guards standing in the room, with Markus at the head of the table. I had no way of knowing if Sebil was a threat to me currently, so I didn’t categorize him as friend or foe just yet. This wouldn’t even be a fight if I stayed, I needed to escape and come back for Cecelia and Phern when I wasn’t quite so… incapacitated.
My first move was to scramble out of my chair and over the table. The pain shooting through my left shoulder when I moved my arm was so intense it threatened to make me black out. They say that pain is a great motivator, and the Deathless would have to agree. My arms and legs wreathed in shadow as I clambered across to the other side and made a dash for the hallway. I had yet to see myself when transforming, but I could certainly hear bones shifting and cracking into place as I crawled on all fours. Whatever I looked like, it struck fear in one of the guards in front of me, the fear fully paralyzing him in place. I was not so lucky with the other guard standing near the hallway.
The guard had unsheathed his sword fast enough to sweep it down at me as I leaped past him. The momentum of his slash was so great it slammed me down into the ground, my body rattling from the concussive impact of hitting the stone floor. I could feel the guard's sword wedged across my back as I desperately pushed myself back on all fours to run out of the room. The guard had managed to wrench his blade back out of my back like an under qualified butcher hacking away at meat with a rusty implement. I was bleeding badly, but I had scampered into the hallway, breaking line of sight with my enemies. Running on the padded feet and claws was surprisingly natural for spending my entire life on two legs. I’d be much more impressed at the feat if I wasn’t pouring my available mana into restitching the gaping wound on my back closed.
I had no plan, I was running on pure instinct. The hallway in front of me looked like it was twisting counterclockwise, and my inebriated mind had created blurry lines across my vision like I was constantly watching a desert mirage.
‘Hummman? Can youu hear mfe?’
Lilith? Are you okay?
‘Its… haze’
It sounded like I wasn’t the only one in this head dealing with the intense backlash of a poisoned meal.
When I rounded the next corner, I knew I needed to stop. I balanced myself on the wall to my right and slumped down the surface until I was laying on the ground and shivering in pain. I could see a blurry red trail along the floor behind me. It wouldn’t take long for them to find me, but even that thought couldn’t motivate me to move much. I was a wild animal let loose in the manor, and there was nothing to do but be hunted until I was theirs.
I hated the helplessness I felt lying on the cold floor of the manor. They viewed me like a monster, not just viewed, they hunted me like a monster. I’d lived a relatively peaceful life until recently, but none of that seemed to matter anymore. I was marked as a beast by a tattoo. Maybe I was one. From what I could see of my body, I had vicious claws and oddly leathery black legs. I remembered the way I sunk my teeth into the clergyman, savoring the way his skin peeled off of the muscle. I thought I still had my sanity and good nature, but how can I know my new nature isn’t corrupting my thoughts? If I would lose myself to this curse, then maybe Markus was doing a good thing by ridding the world of a violent beast.
‘Shhutt up. We are not momsters.’
Lilith’s rage came through despite her slurred speech. There was a sadness in the way she spoke, like those were words that she had repeated to either herself or someone else countless times. How often had Lilith felt like this? A caged animal attempting to escape alive?
My thoughts were interrupted when clanking footsteps came into earshot of my prone form. I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t going to die.
I let fury build in my heart, the anger and determination to stay alive would need to be my fuel to push past the pain. With a wild hunger brewing in my eyes, I pulled myself into a low position intent on leaping onto the first of the two sets of footsteps I heard when they turned the corner. My strategy paid off. I tackled one guard so forcefully that I heard an awful scraping sound of his armor skidding along the ground with me on top of him. Metal armor was frustrating to deal with as my claws were much more suited to rending flesh. With the advantage of position, I was able to sink my claws between the gaps in his armor around his neck. They sunk into the skin with a satisfying squelch, offering no resistance until my claws met the metal of the helmet on the other side of his head.
The other guard was a much less simple affair. Dodging his maul was deceptively tricky, the hallucinogenic effect making it almost impossible to see which way he was pulling back his weapon. Due to my difficulties, I was receiving blow after blow of the heavy spiked metal, each one landing with a painful crunch. His final swing had connected against my arm as I attacked, forcing the bone of my elbow in the opposite direction it was intended to bend.
I screamed in echoing anguish, deciding if I couldn’t move well on my feet under the influence, I would have to take movement out of the equation like the other guard. I leapt towards the guard, this time aiming for his legs, sweeping him onto the ground with a thud. Once he was immobile, I clumsily clambered on top of him and ripped his helmet off his head to sink my teeth into the meat on the nape of his neck.
My stomach begged me to continue to feast, but with another set of approaching footsteps, I was once again denied a meal after a successful hunt. I began to prowl down the hallway towards the approaching person, if they were smart, this would be the sign to run. It would also spare me having to brute force my way through another fight without the capability to properly puppet my unresponsive limbs. As the person closed the gap, I started to recognize the face through the melting and twisting colors of my vision. It was that man, Sebil. I suppose this answers my question of friend or foe. I started to pick up my pace as I ran towards him, making sure not to trip over my own stumbling legs. The man was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t make out any words through my heartbeat thumping in my ears.
I stood on two legs and brought both hands down towards him to sink my claws into his shoulders. I must not have been as fast as I usually was as the man raised his hands to grasp on to my wrists. We were caught in a strained stalemate, and I was already baffled by his strength, how was he holding me off?! I strained my muscles more to push his hands far enough down that my claws slowly started to sink into his shoulders. As soon as I did so, something completely unexpected began to happen. A fluttering electricity hummed to life within his hands. In a short few seconds, the hum had exploded into a brilliant blue light and I was sent flying through a door behind me into an empty guest room. I was launched all the way to the far wall, tears welling in my eyes as my body slammed into yet another stone surface and I fell limp to the ground. My whole body convulsed with a searing electricity for a few moments upon dropping to the ground. I’d only been electrocuted by beginner spells in the Academy, and none of it was close to the voltage that had just danced inside of my body.
“Hello? Can you hear me now, love? I’m not here to fight!” Sebil had to raise his voice to reach me inside of the room.
I slowly raised my head, the scent of burning flesh catching my nose and enticing me before I realized it was my own wrists providing the smell. The man walked towards me, and I instinctively crawled backward. I was thankful I did not have to witness what I looked like. It must have been horrifying to witness a scorched beast dripping blood from its mouth with misshapen, broken bones, and furious, fearful eyes.
“Hey, calm down, love. Can you hear me in there? Nod for yes, shake fo- or I suppose don’t do anything if you can’t hear me.” He approached with caution, an arm raised like he was approaching a wild animal in the woods. I would have taken offense, but the action helped to comfort me. Perhaps I was more of an animal than I thought.
I nodded my head to answer his question. My earlier attempts at speech didn’t go so well, so I would stick with what I could manage with a numb mouth.
“Yes? Yes! Okay, that’s a start. I’d like to apologize for the prior electrocution, yeah? It didn’t seem like you were hearing any of what I was saying and… well I wanted to keep my shoulders intact, love.”
I simply glared at him. It hurt. His logic made sense, but my whole body still tingled from the sensation.
“I’m here to help, I know that might seem weird from where you’re standing, but I assure you if I wanted to kill you like Markus I could have done it by now.”
Was that a threat? No, stop, it made sense. Animal instinct and scholarly logic were a terrible combo as it turns out. I had to stop myself from acting out of fear. I was thankful for the quiet mental link at this moment. A third voice in the mix during this conversation would surely turn my brain to mush.
“W-w-w..whhyyy” I managed to slur out one word. Progress.
“Long story. But I guess the short version is I came here to find a Deathless, you obviously, and keep you alive. I can get into more later, but first we need to get that crossbow bolt out of you.” He moved towards me and I let out an involuntary growl before relaxing myself and letting him approach once more. I was shaking as he reached out to touch the bolt with a gentle hand.
“Okay. On three. One, two-” Sebil yanked the bolt out, shredding through muscle and skin as it was freed from my body. The jolt of pain and unexpected timing caused me to swipe at him in retaliation, drawing blood in two distinct lines across his cheek.
“Ah, fuck! Okay, okay I deserved that. I thought it would hurt less if you weren’t tense when I pulled it.”
I pulled away from him, and it looked like he recognized the guilt that swam across my face.
“I’m fine! Really! Don’t worry about me, love. I’ve been scratched plenty before.” The smile he flashed my way felt unreasonably authentic and genuine. Sebil seemed to have a natural talent for soothing charisma.
“We don’t have much time, do you have the mana to regenerate?”
I nodded. He knows how a Deathless heals themselves. Interesting.
“Good. Ester, was it?”
I nodded. It was easier to stick to that than explain the situation, I thought.
“Markus doesn’t know I’m helping you yet, so we have an opportunity to capitalize on that. It is easily our best way out of this. I know you’ve got a lot of substances running through your veins right now, but can you assume a human form for me, Ester?”
I shook my head.
“No? Do you not know how to change?”
Once again, Sebil watched the shadow-coated monster shake its head in shame.
“Ah. Not to worry, we can make this form work.” He reached out a hand towards me to pull me up onto my two feet. I took his hand and stood up shakily, taking note of the strange sensation of his hand. Underneath the glove, it felt hard. Not at all like flesh.
“How much can you tolerate electrocution, Ester?”
“Ah! Mr. Partillo! I had a feeling you would contain the beast without much trouble. Tell me, did it beg for mercy in the end, or did it fight to the very last?” Markus spoke from the far end of the ballroom that Sebil had escorted me to. I wore a thick metal collar around my shadow-slicked neck, the thick chain leash attached to it being held by Sebil. Despite Sebil’s assurances in his plan, the idea that this was all an elaborate lie to deliver me to Markus still floated around in my mind. It was too late to back out now, though. I glared at Markus with piercing red eyes as he described me as ‘it’, and ‘the beast’.
“Fought to the very last, sir.”
“Ah, to be expected. They are unrelenting and brutal. At the end of the day, these mindless beasts cannot compare to the ingenuity of humans.”
I couldn’t help but to growl at the slimy man, even take a step towards him before I was stopped by a sharp jolt of electricity coursing through the collar.
“Hah! Ingenious as the stories claim, Sebil.”
“Thank you, sir”
“Need I remind you beast, I’m the only one with leverage here.” Markus snapped his fingers, and two of the guards in the room left through the double doors only to come with two squirming, familiar individuals. Cecelia and Phern. They were bound and gagged by rope, positioned on their knees on either side of Markus. He had settled in the center of the ballroom, with Sebil and I a tantalizing 10ft away from them. In the time it took for Sebil to fasten the collar around me and take me to the ballroom, most of my wounds from the previous encounters had healed up. Unfortunately, whatever had been inside the steak was still alive and well in my system.
“You are an odd one, aren’t you? You disguise yourself as a woman, lie to my very face, and travel with two Life Hunters.” As she spoke he drifted a finger alongside Cecelia’s cheek, and I growled once more.
“Do you… care for them? That is rich! Looks like these two taught their dog a few tricks. Sebil, the leash.”
“Sir?”
“Give me. The leash.”
Sebil handed the end of the leash to Markus, who’s boisterous veneer had been stripped away into a cold, hard, malicious hate.
“You don’t seem to understand, beast, so let me make it clear. You are a pestilence, a mindless monster that spreads death and decay wherever it travels. You feign connection with others, but I know better than most that your kind is incapable of love and care.” He gripped the end of the leash, pressing the button. Electricity once more raced through the collar and through my bones. I grit my teeth in pain and refused to fall to the floor. I was beyond thankful that Sebil had lowered the voltage of the collar before we entered the room as a precaution. It still hurt, a lot, but it could have been so much worse.
‘Let me kill him. Let me rend his flesh’
Lilith, you’re back.
‘Yes, and I will have my revenge against this bloated blood reservoir.’
“Your kind makes for good weapons, nothing more.”
He sent more electricity flickering down the leash as he began to walk towards me.
“I’ll let you watch as I deal with your ‘masters’. Then I’ll sever every extremity of yours, wait for them to grow back, and do it again.”
Markus had stopped walking as he reached me. I spread my mouth wide, displaying twin rows of sinister teeth, biologically sharpened into lethal weapons.
Click
A palpable silence fell over the room as the collar clicked open and clattered uselessly to the ground. I was still physically disoriented, but with the man stood directly in front of me, it no longer mattered. I quickly swiped a claw across his face, feeling a tug, a pop, and a tear as Markus fell to the floor. I looked to my claw to see the end of my middle claw had speared an eyeball. I looked to the screaming, pathetic man on the floor.
“Lose sommth-thing?” I grinned and plucked the eye off of my claw and swallowed it.
The room erupted into a cacophony of noise, with a number of different things happening nearly simultaneously. All 6 of the guards positioned in the room drew their weapons, from swords to crossbows, and lunged to attack. At the same time, Sebil pushed back his coat to pull out what looked to be an incredibly over-designed hand crossbow. He fired a bolt into the nearest guard, a flash of electricity erupting from the bolt’s destination.
I scrambled to Cecelia and Phern, slashing my claws across the ropes that bound their arms. The action was incredibly sloppy, like I was only able to control half of my body at one time to accomplish my goals.
Wait.
Lilith. Did your parents ever teach you to share?
‘I despise them for it, yes.’
Can you control half of our body? The sedatives are making it hard to maneuver.
‘Beg.’
Are you serious? We might die here!
‘Fine, but I get our arms and head.’
Sure. I focused myself on controlling our lower half while relinquishing control over our upper half. This was an even more disturbing sensation than before, with only half of my body responding to my actions. But more importantly, it looked to be working. We still had no way of verbally communicating, but the look that Cecelia gave me reassured me that she knew what she was doing.
‘Human, the crossbow guard, take us to him.’
So demanding. Nonetheless, I started to charge towards the guard, stopping when we got close enough to feel the strange sensation of Lilith swinging our arms with shocking speed, slitting the throat of the guard before I even realized we had attacked. She was… terrifying.
‘What are you waiting for, fledgling, move!’
Right. I leapt into motion towards the next closest guard. Our motions during our fights with the next two guards were incredibly sloppy. Certainly better than I would have fared alone, but we lacked any sort of cohesion or cooperation while executing maneuvers. Had they not been relatively pathetic guards, we would have come out with far more injuries.
After dispatching a total of 3 guards, I turned to face the rest of the people in the group. Cecelia and Phern both took care of their guards with ease, Cecelia making use of the weapons that had fallen on the ground. How many weapons was she trained in?! Phern had produced 3 spiked globs of magic that looked more of a nuisance than anything else, but as I soon found out, were anything but. Once the three spike were stuck in the guard, they exploded, showering the room in viscera, something which I could tell Lilith enjoyed from her licking out lips.
Sebil had not only eliminated the first guard he electrocuted, but he dealt with two more guards that rushed into the room soon after. We might not have had much teamwork yet, but individually, we were plenty capable.
“Everyone safe?” Phern asked once the room had fallen silent.
“Who the fuck are you?” Cecelia furrowed her brow and glared at Sebil, who was returning to the center of the room.
“A prospective friend, love.”
I felt a wave of exhaustion overtake me. Two minds operating one body must have taken its toll, I could feel my mental connection with Lilith go quiet, and I feared I was soon to follow in losing consciousness. I just needed one thing before I passed out. I needed the head of that greasy abomination. I scanned the room frantically without seeing his body anywhere amongst the dead. Where was he? I could feel my vision fading. “No, no, not yet! Where is he?!”
A trail of blood painted a line towards an open door. Markus had escaped. Anger pulsed through my veins as I collapsed onto the blood-spattered floor.