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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 45
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 16:00:18 +0000 UTC********************************************************************************************************************************************************************
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cMyjEFi7o-eDagJMT-n_WxpG36nPwjckReTvTXTwetc/edit?usp=sharing
*****
The forest grew silent the closer they got, and with Carmilla’s bloodhound-like nose guiding them, Mia knew they were in the right place too. It was ominous, in a way not all too different from the werewolf’s forest though to a much lesser extent.
Mia eyed the mauled corpse of some larger variant of deer left rotting next to a tree. It wasn’t the first mangled carcass they’d found on the way, nor did Mia think it would be the last.
The bear, or whatever it was, killed for the thrill of it by the looks of things and not for survival or for food.
The silence in the forest wasn’t the eerie kind, insects still buzzed about and the occasional bird still chirped in the trees, but everything else was gone. The last animal that tried ambushing them had come half an hour ago, while before one would pounce on them every five minutes.
“We’re close,” Carmilla said, perhaps unnecessarily. Every tree had its bark torn off around here, instead sporting large claw wounds on their naked bodies.
The dirt was upturned, some broken trees dotting it here and there along with further carcasses in varying stages of decay. Every bush or sign of undergrowth was gone, trampled into the ground by the large footprints covering almost every square metre of the forest floor.
Up ahead was the likely den of their target, a cliff face overgrown with moss and roots. It split at about four metres up, widening into a four metre wide triangular entrance by the time it reached the ground.
Mia didn’t need to have a vampire’s supernatural sense of smell to make out the overpowering bestial muskmuso of the beast covering this part of the forest.
“How smart are bears supposed to be?” Fred asked from the back, sounding skittish as he did.
“Keep out or die,” Mia read the warning drawn up on the cliff wall in fresh blood. Next to it was a paw print, the same one on the dirt below and under the writing was the remains of a … beastkin.
Mia’s gut twisted into a knot as she stared at the corpse. It had been opened up from neck to crotch and had everything organ spilling out of the brutal wound.
By the looks of it, the ‘bear’ used that corpse as its ‘ink pot’ to write up the message. The silver lining was that the head was crushed into a pulp, Mia didn’t even dare imagine what kind of a horror stricken, agonised expression the corpse would have worn on its face, but she was sure it would have haunted her dreams until the day she died.
“Shouldn’t we get back up, Sir?” Gwen asked in a whisper. “Or report this back to the Colonel, we’d been sent to hunt down an animal, not … whatever this is.”
“And we will do just that,” the Sergeant’s voice was grim, resolute. “We will hunt down and kill an animal, a beast. Weapons up, take up shooting positions around here. Spread out and aim at the cavern … the thing’s inside, isn’t it?”
He turned to Carmilla, but it was Mia who answered first. “Yes, I can hear it snoring.”
Mia tore her gaze away from the corpse, her lips trembling at the ghastly sight. Her fingers clenched into a fist, tightening around the spectral longsword’s hilt until her knuckles went white.
Why would anyone do that?
Wasn’t humanity suffering enough as it was under the Rifts and the monsters swarming out of them? Why would anyone turn on their fellow men now? Why?
“Mia,” Carmilla whispered, her hand gently squeezing her shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this? We came to find a monster, that’s not-“
“It is,” Mia said, biting her lips. It might not be a monster in the sense of the word the System used, but anyone who could do that to a human was a monster to her. “We will kill it. You saw what it did, how it hunts for the joy of killing. What if it thinks hunting and killing people in the city is the next step?”
Carmilla held Mia’s teary eyed gaze for a long moment, searching, then gave a nod. “Alright.”
“Familiar,” Mia said, making the cat jump in front of her and still in alertness, ready for her orders. “I want you to go into that cave, and if you can claw out the eyes of the thing in there. If not, just draw it out here. Understood?”
The cat gave an acknowledging surge of emotion through the bond, then turned to bolt off. Mia held up a hand, making it halt in place.
“You’re ready Sergeant?” She asked, looking at the five soldiers fanning out and hiding behind thick trees with their rifles aimed at the cavern.
“A moment,” the man said, he took out a grenade from his back pocket and handed it over to Mia. “Can that creature of yours pull the pin out of that after delivering it inside?”
“It should be able to,” Mia said, glancing down at the cat which nodded after a few seconds of gazing curiously at the grenade.
“Good, then we’re ready,” the man said, settling down into a firing position of his own after hefting his rifle up to his shoulder. “Ready when you are. We’ll fire the moment it comes out.”
“Go,” Mia said, and the Familiar shot off, a tendril of arcane mana holding the grenade to its back like a backpack.
“Stay behind me,” Carmilla said, stepping forward a few metres and putting herself firmly between Mia and the cave opening.
Mia nodded, then readied the Arcane Blast spell circle too. Just in case the other stuff didn’t work well enough. Thankfully, Spectral Blade didn’t require any focus to maintain now that it was in place so she could use magic while having it summoned.
Her ears peeled for any sound and adrenaline already coursing through her veins, only the tiny sounds coming from the cave existed to Mia.
The deep rumbling snores of the beast, the little pitter patter of her Familiar’s footsteps, the pin coming undone, the grenade rolling on the floor and finally the tearing of flesh followed by a roar that sent Mia reeling.
“GRAAAAAAAARH!” The beast bellowed, pain, anger and fury mixing all together as it was snapped awake. The familiar came shooting out of the cave and a moment later the grenade went off, its thunderous crack deafening out the beast’s roar for a short moment.
The roar that came back once Mia’s hearing recovered from the grenade’s sound was one twice as furious. Soon, the rumbling footsteps of a colossal monster resounded through the woods.
Mia stiffened up, only the calming closeness of both her familiar and Carmilla keeping her knees from going weak.
When something large enough to make the ground shake beneath her came charging right at her, a deep primal fear threatened to consume Mia’s mind. It would have been natural to run, to scream, to cry and beg for help.
Mia forced those urges down, instead glaring hatefully at the gigantic beast as it burst out into the open. That thing killed a man, used his blood as ink and was now going to do the same to Mia or worse if she didn’t kill it first.
The rifles spoke, five bursts of bullets impacting the beast and making’s roar reach a higher pitch as blood spurted from its thick neck.
Mia faintly noted that it did actually look like a bear, just twice the size of one and with vaguely humanoid proportions. It even had opposable thumbs on its front limbs.
An Arcane Blast shot forth, taking the beast in the shoulder and taking a chunk out of it in an explosion of pink energy. The right forelimb under it went limp, making the charging monster crash face first into the ground mid-charge and roll forwards a few metres.
It stumbled back to its feet not a second later, the ravaged eyes on its head already back to how they were before, bullets falling on the ground in waves as bullet holes fountaining blood closed up. The missing chunk of its shoulder was the only one taking some time to heal, either because of the severity of the wound or Arcane mana’s natural disruptive qualities.
Mia gulped, her hands trembling at the sight. The beast’s eyes locked onto her familiar standing next to Mia, then jumped up at her face and a furious grimace over took the creature’s bestial head. It growled and continued its stride, now dragging an arm behind it like dead weight, but not stopping.
Carmilla raised a hand at the creature and a rosy crimson spell circle glowed in her grasp. The redhead hissed, either in pain or anger and then the spell shot activated, sending a lacing crimson light racing forth and piercing through the beast and the cliff wall behind it.
The beast nearly instantly froze up, its roar dying in a blink and giving way to a long agonised whine while as its whole body convulsed. Mia didn’t know what the hell Carmilla’s spell did, but she could see the opportunity this presented.
Another Blast shot off, aimed at the beast’s head to preferably end its life once and for all. Unfortunately, with its writhing and rolling about in agony, Mia missed and struck it in its meaty side.
Bullets, as with the Juggernaut, did little. Even the ones impacting its head barely made a wound and Mia suspected all of them failed to pierce its skull.
Another spell circle glowed before Carmilla, this time only maybe a fifth as large and shot out a crimson bullet, or rather, Bolt. It struck the beast right in the chest and it seized, all its muscles locking up like it’d been struck by a taser.
Mia took a few steps to the side, making sure to not put herself in the line of fire for the soldiers and she pointed her Spectral Blade at the momentarily paralysed beast.
If Blasts didn’t do the job, she would throw the bastard into the shredder and see how it regenerated from that. Self-righteous fury blazed in her eyes as she remembered the mutilated, defiled corpse of the beastkin man.
“Wait,” Carmilla whispered, holding out a hand before Mia. Mia did as she was asked, lowering her sword in confusion as she looked askance at the redhead. “Could you … use that binding spell? Please?”
“You want me to just tie that thing up instead of killing it?” Mia asked incredulously, though she didn’t raise her sword to attack, only staring warily at the bear-like creature as its muscles went slack and it collapsed.
It squirmed again, weakly twitching and trying to stand with little success. It looked as if all that tremendous strength it had that kept its large body moving had left it, leaving it unable to even flip over to its stomach.
“Yes,” Carmilla said. When she glanced at Mia her brows were held together in a frown, her lips bit so hard they bled. “Please. Just … just do it.”
Mia’s mouth opened silently, no words coming out at seeing that worried look on Carmilla. She wordlessly assembled the spell circle for Arcane Shackles in her runic-model then after carefully reviewing it, she cast the spell.
Six sleek pink chains shot forward from a spell circle the size of a basketball, snaking through the air like a pack of serpents. They were on their target in a second, snaking up around the beast’s body and growing in both size and length as they did.
Ankles pulled together, knees then arms wrapped around the body and finally one chain tightening around the snout of the beast to keep its jaws locked. By the end of it, the creature looked like one of those duck tape wrapped corpses in cop shows, just thrice as large and far more furry.
“Done,” Mia said, eying the beast as it tried to tear through its bindings. She fed more mana to the spell, a single chain still connected to her spell circle to allow her just that. The chains tightened again, growing even tougher. “I … think I should be able to hold it if it doesn’t get its strength back.”
“How long?” Carmilla asked, staring at the beast with the same frown on her face.
“Until my mana runs dry,” Mia said. “At this rate, at most fifteen minutes. Ten if it struggles more.”
“Okay,” Carmilla said, almost in a whisper. She raised her voice into a shout a moment later. “STOP SHOOTING!”
“WHY?” The Sergeant bellowed, nonetheless holding up a hand to halt his troopers. Mia hazarded a guess that the rifles’ overall impotence against the bear-thing was the only thing that made him willing to listen to Carmilla.
And the two girl’s rather contrastingly effective magic of course.
“I want to talk to him,” Carmilla said, turning back to the bound beast. Him? “Mia, could you remove the … gag? Please.”
Mia tugged a finger, mentally pulling on the spell and the chain around the beast’s snout instead wrapped around its neck. If it tried anything funny, Mia was going to choke it till some semblance of sense returned to it. Or to him? Carmilla thinks this thing’s a man? … it’s intelligent enough to write, sure but that might just be System shenanigans.
“I have another five Blood Lances in me, so you’d do well to answer any questions I have,” Carmilla said, walking up to the bound beast that stopped struggling at her approach and went to crouch next to its head. “First of all, why did you murder that-“
“I won’t tell you shit!” The beast growled, his voice deep and primal, the words coming out in grunts through his snout. “That shitstain sent you! I know it! Fuck you, bitch! I won’t tell you anything, go back to sucking the furry cock of that bastard and get this shit over with! Kill me, finish what your spineless curr of an Alpha didn’t dare! Do it! KILL ME!”
The last few words were closer to roars, the beastly man’s form tightening again and straining against Mia’s chains. Still, the … eloquence — if it can be called that — of the beast surprised her.
She’d expected something along the lines of ‘Kill, hate, blood tasty, murder good.’ Though she didn’t hold out much hope for it to even be capable of speech. How do you even form words with a bear’s snout? Must be magic.
“Why did you kill that man?” Carmilla asked again, crimson claws appearing on her hand like a gauntlet. She grabbed his wounded shoulder and sank her fingers in deeply. “And I don’t know who you think we are, but we came from the city to hunt down a man-eating ‘brown bear’ living around hereher. We are not sent by whoever this ‘Alpha’ is.”
“LIES! LIES! They always lie, he alway does, that’s what he does!” The beast squirmed and Mia grimaced at the deranged ramblings he kept shouting. “I gave him shelter, saved him and this is how he thanks me! Murderers, assassins, poison and banishment! ROT IN HELL YOU BASTARD AND ALL YOU WRETCHED WHORES TOO! I’LL RIP YOU TO SHREDS!”
Mia tightened the shackles, but she needn’t have done that as Carmilla did something faster. Mia couldn’t tell what, but the beast’s body locked up again, furious, raging eyes flying wide again in agony.
“What are you doing to him?” Mia asked in a whisper, gulping at the sheer pain she saw in those eyes.
“I said my Blood spells burn the lifeforce of my targets,” Carmilla said, giving a guilty glance back at Mia. “That’s … not a feeling most people enjoy. It should hurt him more than being burnt alive.”
“You are torturing him,” Mia stated, her tone almost accusatory. Almost. “Why?”
“Something isn’t right,” the girl said, frowning at the wheezing beastly man. “I think … that he is a werebear. One that probably got banished from whatever pack he was part of-“
“I made that pack!” The man groaned, his voice still feral, but now weaker. “He stole it from me! He poisoned me, that cheating cur! When I get my hands on him … “
Mia glanced at the soldiers curiously, wondering why they were keeping so silent. They were pale, trembling and frozen in place like they’d just witnessed something so terrifying that it chased their souls right out of their bodies.
“Carmilla?” Mia whispered, a hint of alarm entering her voice as she grabbed the redhead’s arm. Whether it was to catch her attention or to clutch onto the girl in fear, she did so naturally. “Something’s wrong with them.”
“Oh,” the vampire blinked, her glistening ruby eyes showing recognition as she took in the five soldiers frozen in primal terror. “So he was telling the truth … ? Hey, shift back into your human form!”
The bear-like beast glowered up at the vampire, the two locking gazes for a few lengthy seconds. The beast let out a rumbling growl, lips peeling back to reveal bloodied teeth.
Carmilla did her hissing cat impression again, her crimson hair fuzzing up like an invisible breeze blown into it, her face morphing into a visage of primal ferocity and her eyes glowed with a malicious light.
The beast’s eyes quivered, then he averted his gaze and let out what might have been a whimper.
The beast that had jaws wide and large enough to chew on Mia’s skull like it was a bubblegum, the beast that was so large it could have won wrestling matches against Gorillas, submitted to the pretty and gentle vampiress.
Its body shifted, thinning and growing smaller. The snout pulled back inside its skull, fur thinned and disappeared and finally the colossal size of its body was reduced to at most half its size.
What- Mia stared at the naked, dirty, homeless looking man sitting on his bum, staring at Carmilla’s feet without daring to look her in the eye. -the fuck just happened?
He was still a sizable specimen, with a thick barrel chest and arms thicker than Mia’s thighs. But he was human, believably so at least, even if he’d be at least one-ninety centimetres if he stood upright.
“Now, I’ll ask again,” Carmilla said, her voice cold and ruthless in a way Mia hadn’t heard before. “Why did you murder that man?”
Comments
ZephanyZephZeph
Of course the heir to a vampire progenitor knows how to deal with beastkin lords and politics. We have found ourselves a werebear Hamlet. Carmilla being a badass let's gooooo. If this story ever goes the kingdom building path then Carmilla is gonna be queen, archimage and consort Mia, and assorted roles for the rest.
