Page 122 of Remnants: Disruption
“Oh,” Beowulf howls with laughter. Or maybe just howls since he’s a werewolf. “That was rich. Sobbing over some human.”
Rage spikes quick and hot, flooding my veins with numb adrenaline.
“Lights, please,” I hiss and the entire room falls into darkness.
As expected, several of the Remnants and supernaturals pull out various forms of light. Still, I feel my body take on the smoky texture and feel the way my arms elongate.
“Shit,” someone nearby screams out, but I don’t pay much attention.
I launch myself at Beowulf, but the wolf breaks into a full sprint around his group.
They take the hint and charge at me. Several of them look to be were-creatures but others are magical entities I don’t know the names of.
The spirits take over and they loose from within me like a shattered dam.
Screams of panic interlace with the screams of the damned as semi-corporeal entities rush from the shadows.
Like a conductor of the dead, I wave them towards the various groups and one-by-one they begin to fall.
“Bitch!” Loki screeches and dives at me.
To my surprise, he isn’t a coward. At least not exactly. There’s a dagger in his hand, but it’s in my back before I can really see where he reappears. Evidently, he has some manner of teleportation.
“Fuck,” I hiss, scrabbling at my back to pull out the knife, but either Loki takes it with him, or it’s now somewhere in the shadows. I don’t exactly know how he managed to pierce skin that isn’t there, but it’s a problem for later me.
Whispers break out in the colosseum. I can tell they’re insanely loud if the confused, manic behavior from my assailants is anything to go by. But, to me, it almost sounds like white noise.
The odd sensation of taking lives is even worse when I see their spirits, too. But they don’t seem too excited to piss me off even further and sort of evaporate as each Remnant and supernatural beast falls.
A dragon-kin rushes me and their dagger-like claws actually tear into part of my abdomen. The pain is intensely sickening, like it’s an immediate emetic. And I’d probably puke if I had a gastrointestinal tract in this form.
Alright, Icanget hurt in this form–noted.
He gets skewered by several spiked tendrils that launch him somewhere off into the darkness of the colosseum.
The ghosts seem to sense the end of the battle and suffuse into the shadows. Their strength is much less than it had been before, but I don’t feel any anger from them. Just a sense of satisfaction.
Turning, I find the ringleaders.
Beowulf stands beside Loki, both looking worse for wear as they manage to put down several of my remaining ghostly entities.
I dive at them, not yet willing to let them return to banter or monologuing. The last thing I need is for them to manage to get away.
Beowulf sees my movement and dashes forward on all fours. His figure seems to lengthen and grow as he gets nearer. Larger. Almost like an extreme dire wolf almost three times his normal size.
I toss out dark spikes, but Beowulf tanks them like they’re nothing. He reaches me, but instead of colliding with a hard object, he phases through my body’s shadowy form.
The sensation is weird, but the desired effect makes feeling violated worth it.
Loki starts forward, but his face pales when he sees the way Beowulf’s remaining limbs slide off at odd angles. What might have been an intestine drips out of a severed torso that was once only one piece—but now is at least four.
“I would like to hear you apologize to Alice,” I say, voice reverberating with distortion.
Instead, though, Loki dives forward and, this time, I do feel his power.
I’m not even sure what it is, but it hits me like a freight train. I fall to the sand, my fleshy human body most definitely taking the brunt of the damage. And whatever they’d had on their weapons feels like the manufactured siphoning tech that some Remnants can create. It burns in a way that means I need medical attention.
Now.
