Acid popped and sizzled against the monster's face, but it was Felix's coiled Strength that ripped it clean off. The bug collapsed, more of that thick blood pouring out onto the road.
"Haah...haahaah...haah."
There was a screaming bug ahead of him, but Felix couldn't quite manage to care. People, Humans, Dwarves, and otherwise were shouting...something in the distance. The sound was underscored by a persistent burr that rattled his bones and...
Dammit, my teeth itch!
Green ichor pumped from the Wretches' wounds, their bodies jelly beneath their hardened chiton. The smell was gruesome, nauseating, delicious. He licked the fluid from his face, savoring the flavor and feeling his core spark and spit and burn. His hand, the one to take off the bug's head, was covered in effluvea and lumpy gore.
Take what's yours. Take it all. The wind blew hard in the night, pushing those screams and shrieks far away. Claim it.
Felix plunged in, taking huge ravenous bites of the putrid organs he pulled from the puddles around him.
YESSSS...
His teeth itch more furiously than ever, but each bite soothed that itch, until he felt a strange weakness in his jaw. Quite suddenly, the sound of a mess load of dice rattled against the cobbles. Felix absently looked down, and saw almost three dozen white shapes sitting in the ooze.
His teeth.
Tentatively, Felix felt at his face under the cowl, pushing a taloned finger to his mouth.
Fangs...
A wave of horror climbed up his throat, bile and terror intermingled. He vomited out onto the street.
Then the last Wretch hissed at him and charged, swinging its mantis claws as it thundered through the remnants of its brethren. It smashed its jagged pincers into him, throwing Felix into and through another Wretch corpse. The body exploded into gore and greasy black smokey in equal measure, and Felix rolled twice before finding his feet.
The Wretch was already on top of him by then.
Felix screamed, the constant waves of rage and horror overwhelming him. A tempest exploded to life in his core, an inferno crowned by a sea of lightning. He caught the next blow, and bashed the follow up, pulling himself into and onto the insect's massive body. The tall neck of the bastard reared back, pulling away from his sharp talons, but Felix dug in.
SCREEEAKKK!
He slashed and gouged, blow after blow rending the tough chitin. The Wretch threw itself against a building, scraping Felix against the stone and wood, but his tenacious fury was boundless. He screamed and tore further. His eyes burned like twin stars, distant storms turned deadly, and he brought his mouth down onto the Prismatic Wretch's neck. He tore it apart.
You have defeated a Prismatic Wretch!
You have gained XP!
Ravenous Tithe!
The dead Wretch, the last of the three, turned to oily smoke instantly. The smoke roiled and congealed, pulled toward Felix's throat as if diving toward him, a pillar of oiled essence. Like liquid darkness. Great swaths of discordant noise blared through his Mind, his Body, rattling his very soul.
Felix felt overwhelmed, stuffed completely with the Wretch's Mana. The strident strains of creaking disharmony pulled at his core and chest, his skin feeling close to splitting while a cackling madness shuddered across his mind.
CHIRR-CHIRRUP!
Suddenly and perfectly, a bright chirp cut through the noise.
A sharp, persistent call that echoed across the tender firmament of his Spirit. The buzzing flared in volume, but the lyrical call was unfazed and unstoppable. It drowned out the burr of discord, silencing the rage-fueled screaming that Felix hadn't even been aware of, that nonetheless ripped across his Bastion of Will like a hurricane.
Quiet.
The eye of the storm.
A feathery head nudged his leg, hard, and a great wing wrapped around his shoulders.
Pit...Pit...
Here, he chirruped. Here.
And the light returned.
Eldrunna peered into the night, toward the chaos that had just gone silent at the end of the street. She was among her neighbors, citizens of the Dust that had fled from the night's terrors. She gripped her sword tightly, drawn and held defensively against another onslaught of those giant insects.
The Dwarven woman was not a master of her arms and armor, but she was a trueborn daughter of the Undercity and she would not falter.
"Rafny, did you see it?"
"Yeah," Rafny grunted from nearby. Eldrunna couldn't see her through the press of bodies, but she knew her wife would be close. Any chance to wield her weapons. "I saw it. Damn near impossible not to."
"Well?"
Rafny appeared next to her, emerging through the fear-stricken crowd almost like a ghost. Eldrunna envied her Agility. Rafny hefted her flanged mace and scowled.
"The beasts were marked."
Eldrunna cursed, for once entirely unhappy to be right. If the monsters were marked, then something big was on the horizon. Something that would spell trouble for the Dust, or worse. "What about the fighter? You still see him?"
Rafny scoffed. "Can't you?"
"You know your eyes see farther than mine ever will," Eldrunna smiled and pecked Raf's cheek. "All I see is smoke and corpses."
Rafny grumbled and her eyes flared a bright yellow-green as Night Eye took effect. "He's still there. Still standing too, now with some sort of creature next to 'em..." She suddenly groaned. "Blood and ash."
"What?"
"The Guilders have arrived."
"Easy people, easy," Aric murmured. "It's all corpses."
They stepped carefully through the slick cobbles as they followed a trail of gruesome death. The trail had led them through much of the Dust Quarter, but seemed to end here. The four Guilders that accompanied Aric were all freshly minted Tin Ranks, his new team for the next Wall shift. This breach had meant they were getting a crash course in urban combat, though they had only encountered a single monster and that one was nearly half dead. It had been covered in some sort of acid.
One of the Tin Ranks stepped on a thick piece of entrails and nearly slipped, but they caught themselves on their staff. Aric couldn't remember her name, only that she was handy with magic. Deeba? Darla?
"Something tore through these things," she gasped, righting herself. "Who could do this?"
"Silver Rank?" One of the others suggested, the burly one with the neckbeard. Kevin or something. One of the others scoffed.
"Why would there be a Silver Ranker in the Dust, Kelvin?" Another boy, though far more slender. A Dexterity specialist, Aric recalled. "Don't know why we're here either."
"Focus," said Aric in his best 'I'm the leader so shut up' voice. "We still don't know if there are more of these Prismatic Wretches around--"
A sharp growling sound came from just ahead, a sound Aric hadn't heard in months. But if the Wretches had somehow breached the wall, then why not a Chimera?
"Hold steady!" Aric hissed. "Enemy ahead."
The four Tin Ranks lifted their weapons and leveled them in the general direction Aric indicated, but just about froze still. None of them discharged a Skill blindly, so Aric counted that as a win. He rolled his eyes and made to gesture to them, but then the growl was accompanied by a sudden, terrifying laughter.
It pierced the night like a stiletto to the heart, and Aric's eyes caught something that made his blood run cold.
Through the greasy smoke of vanquished monsters, a figure in a tattered cloak and deep cowl hunched over something else hidden in its shadow. Two great wings spread outward behind it, six feet wide if they were an span, colored crimson and black. Eyes like cold stars flared in its darkness, and the laughter only grew more wild...
Then the laughter was gone, and so was the creature.
The smoke cleared, and the street before them was empty. Aric felt himself breathe again, though he hadn't realized he'd been holding it.
"Blood and ashes, what was that!?" cried the thin boy. "My Analyze got nothing but question marks."
"Those eyes, they were terrible," gasped the girl, clenching her staff close. "Captain? Captain what was that?"
Aric didn't reply. He couldn't. He hadn't been able to Analyze it either, and a cold feeling in his gut whispered why, mad though it was.
"...Spread out, find out where it went," He pointed to the left and right. "We need to clean up any more of these monsters."
His team did as they were told, though the slender one gave him some annoyed looks. Aric didn't even mind, his thoughts still caught up in the moment.
The Elders need to know.