A monster inside, p.23
A Monster Inside, page 23
part #1 of Undying Prince Series
Soft juicy flesh-things.
He spun in a circle. Eight dire wolves raced toward him from every direction. They were large blurry shapes even in the sunlight. Light shifted around them, making them seem like lit candles flickering in the breeze.
A flash of emotion crossed over from Patrick. Fear. Erik, don’t do this! It’s not natural.
Erik’s arms seemed to burst open, swelling to double their size. His skin burned, and he moaned behind teeth that were clenched so tight his jaw ached. His flesh crawled like a sluggish river, morphing into black and gold dragon scales until he looked like a repulsive mélange of human and beast.
He howled, guttural and sharp. Naked but for his scales, he still looked human, but with a strange reptilian tilt. He glared at everything with barely concealed hate. His stomach raged at him, and he salivated at the idea of blood on his teeth.
RIP! CLAW! TEAR! DEVOUR—
Breath left Erik in a jumbled rush, and he echoed the monster’s words. “Rip! Claw!” Time slowed to a crawl, and the dire wolves became visible. TEAR! DEVOUR! The ember grew into a fiery inferno.
Yellow eyes glowing, a dire wolf almost as tall as a man’s chest, all gray and black, reached for Erik, its mouth agape. Although it seemed to only be moving at a walk, he knew it was running faster than most humans would be able to perceive.
The hate inside Erik rung with reverberations that grew in intensity with each passing millisecond. With the hate came power, flooding into his mind and muscles. Strength filled him until he could just keep up with the dire wolf’s pace. He sensed resistance from the air on his limbs and bones, which would have already broken under normal circumstances but now only gave him a twinge of pain. His heart ached, tearing and healing repeatedly. It was as if it might explode at any moment.
Despite his transformation, Erik understood he could not sustain these speeds for long. He only had a dozen seconds to finish the fight, at best, and he prayed it would be enough. Let it be enough.
Like a viper, devious and savage, he struck out with a clawed hand. Wolf flesh ripped, sluggishly leaving deep grooves in the beast’s face as Erik battered it away. A golden eye ruptured, popped like a bubble, and vile fluid spewed into the air.
One, he thought in savage glee. Now there were only seven dire wolves left and twelve seconds in which to kill them all. A part of him recognized his lack of fear as dangerous, but necessity suppressed his concern. All that mattered was survival. The gray and black dire wolf drifted away before him, its ruined face now leaking crimson ribbons.
Erik spun, blood-covered claw flashing toward the pure white dire wolf that had crept behind him. The animal tried to dodge, howling as Erik’s claw scored its side with all the speed of a falling lotus petal. He took a step forward and flung out the same hand. He caught the wolf by its back leg and pulled. Bones broke in his grip as he twisted, using momentum to launch the white wolf toward two of its lunging pack members. It floated through the air with surprise etched on its lupine visage.
Behind you, Patrick roared.
Erik turned, but much too. . . . Massive teeth sank into his thigh, and he fell, flashing back into normal speed along with the black wolf that had taken hold of him. He rolled across the knee-high grass, trying to dislodge the creature from his thigh. The stench of broken blades of grass and unwashed fur filled his nostrils.
Fuck, Patrick said.
Another pair of jaws bit down on his shoulder with a crunch, pulling him in the opposite direction. Razor sharp teeth broke against his scales, and bones in his thigh and shoulder cracked to the point of breaking. More teeth clamped onto him, great maws gnawing at both sides of his waist. Pain labored his breath and narrowed his vision. He groaned, dimly aware that he was being ripped in four different directions. Darkness crept into his eyesight, and, somehow, he kept it at bay. He threw himself into another roll, using his elbows.
Long blades of grass brushed against Erik’s face as he rotated in the air. His eyes adjusted to make it appear the world had once again slowed. His heart galloped, pounding in his ears, furiously trying to supply his body with the blood it required to move at this speed. The pain in his chest dwarfed the sensation of the wolf jaws ripping at his reptilian flesh, adding an odd counterpoint to his agony. The black scales on his arms shifted like the surface of a pond pummeled by droplets of water.
The Celestial Dragon raged at the back of Erik’s skull and attempted to advance his transformation by a stage, trying to make him accept his true heritage.
Puny flesh-things! Eat!
The words came with a flash of images. Mountains of erotic flesh, giving birth to rivers of gore. Human bodies piled like so much meat, twitching in the morning breeze. A feast of death fit for a god.
Erik allowed the visions to overwhelm him, finding beauty in their macabre glory. The back of his arms burned, and he sensed a wetness at the back of his throat. His heart protested, and he pushed himself to lift his arms, fighting against the air that now seemed mud.
Devourer of Worlds.
That was what a long-dead race had called its kin. It—They—Erik did not need weapons. His whole body was the tool of ultimate destruction. He was a Celestial Dragon, and any Celestial Dragon could tear apart the earth with a single blow.
Yes, Erik thought, I’m the Devourer of Worlds! With a mental roar, he drove his arms toward the two dire wolves at his waist. From the elbow down, his arms unspooled, morphing into a dozen long, snake-like tendrils the color of fresh blood. The tendrils squirmed in the air, seeming to take forever to inch their way into the two dire wolves’ nostrils and ears. Their eyes widened, and their jaws released him, but much too slowly to make any difference. The two dire wolves convulsed, limbs jerking wide, eyes losing their shine.
Patrick cowered within Erik. Don’t do—! He had begun before the Celestial Dragon surged forth, depriving him of breath. FEED, the beast said, its eagerness shuddering through Erik.
Time crawled forward, and Erik’s body twisted, leaving the blades of grass behind to once again gaze back up at the sky. Pleasure seeped up his elbows from the tendrils devouring the dire wolves from within. His stomach groaned. It felt like a gaping hole ready to swallow the world. Mother. It was all he could do not to allow the Celestial Dragon to seize full control. I’m—
Erik crashed in a jumble of limbs and wolf flesh, sliding back across the ground, propelled by the force of his landing. Distorted howls sped up until they sounded normal, and he grunted behind clenched teeth. Red waves rolled in over the vast array of black scales that covered him, and the scales vanished. The red waves sent tendrils and petals oozing down the throats of the wolves at his shoulder and thigh. He unfolded like a blood-colored fog to swallow the four dire wolves whole.
Memories flashed through his mind, one after the other. He roamed the Northern Reaches on four legs, basking in the scent of fear emanating off of the herd of four-tusked mammoths he stalked with his family. He gave birth to his first litter of pups, and enjoyed the comforting warmth of being surrounded by his pack.
I am Morning Mist, mother of the Night Echo Pack “No!” I am known as Whisper, offspring of Morning Mist and Terror. “I am Erik Ito!” Unlike his mergings with Patrick and the Celestial Dragon, Erik separated himself with ease from the images that now flooded his thoughts. He crushed the voices, and four lifetimes of memories became his. He was Erik Ito, but he had also lived life as Jumper, Silent, Whisper, and Morning Mist.
More, the Celestial Dragon said, driven half-mad from the Hunger. MORE!
Erik raised a hand and winced when some tendrils joined to form a wolf paw. His chest hurt. Two hearts pounded in his chest; each beat a hammer slamming on the inside of his ribs, brought on by his assimilation of the dire wolves.
No, Erik thought, watching the forming wolf paw. As if heeding Erik’s mental command the tendrils stopped, first separating, and then merging to create a human hand, Erik’s hand. He rolled to his feet, his frame still oozing with strange red flesh. Bit by bit, he forced it to stillness and looked around him.
Bright with daylight, the grass parted in front of him. The big, grizzled dire wolf, he now knew as Terror, dashed toward him, moving at a snail’s pace. Once fierce and terrifying wolfish features seemed serene and majestic. In another life, Erik had copulated and hunted with Terror. The massive beast was his friend, lover, and father.
Erik gave himself a mental shake and struck out with a fist. He was death, swifter on two legs than Terror was on four. He guessed it had something to do with the two hearts that even now pumped in his chest. Before, moving at such speeds was like trying to walk upstream, but now the air melted before him.
A human fist met a dire wolf skull and won. Powerfully-built bones that two men would have trouble breaking with swords gave way beneath Erik’s hand. Terror tumbled back, brain leaking out of the gaping hole in his face.
H-how? Patrick’s surprise crashed over Erik in waves. Now you’re even quicker than the dire wolves? His voice came in a whisper, stating the obvious.
Gray matter and skull fragments sped through the air then slowed as Erik pushed himself even faster, testing his new limits by jerking back his injured hand. The blow had left it a ruined mess of reassembling flesh and bones. Small bursts of agony flowed up from the wound.
The three remaining dire wolves watched him without expression. He wondered if they could perceive anything more than a blur. His green eyes took them all in, examining the blood dripping down Snow’s pure, white fur, weighing every drop of crimson that spilled from Fang’s ruptured eye, measuring the steps it would take to reach April Rain. Ten.
An idea took hold of him that rocked him to his core. It had been ages since he last used the Aspects of the Abyss to shape reality. The way he chose to fight thus far was more like a beast than a man. I’m a Cultivator. It’s time I acted like it.
Now you come to this conclusion? Patrick said, his voice sounding forced.
Erik took a step forward and reached for his power. A sense of falling inwards took hold of him, a feeling of compressing down into a single point. His perception shifted, and he became aware of the scant prana flashing through the surrounding environment; it almost looked like a nest of fiery bees bombarding the earth, flickering through the sky. This close to the Dark One’s prison there was a surprising lack of prana.
Fearing a repeat of last time, he reached out only in one direction, away from the twisted forest. He ensnared the fiery lights with his expanding consciousness, entrapping more and more prana until he struck the limit of his range and what felt like molten rock seared his brain.
Erik drew his awareness inwards, dragging along all he had captured. Heat and fire surged into him. An eruption like an explosion from a dormant volcano coalesced into his Ethereal Body at the center of his inner void. A golden pool of liquid-prana swirled around him, reaching past his head, kept in place by the barrier that surrounded him.
He called to the Abyss. It came, first as a whisper, then as a chorus of a million wailing souls that transformed into a massive vortex of gold, green, blue, and red, churning below him. As vast as the horizon, the Abyss had come.
Erik strode forward, twisting the fingers of his right hand, performing an Esoteric Hand Technique called Winter Unfolds. April Rain’s lips came back from her fangs, forming a snarl as she tried to dodge. Too slow, Erik thought, and he exchanged some of the prana that swirled around his Ethereal Body to wrestle the Aspect of Water from the Abyss. He wavered on the brink of being scoured into nothing by the thing he sought to command. But, like a beaten dog, the Aspect surrendered.
The space around April Rain warped. Fighting against a world that rebelled against him, Erik twisted reality to complete his Esoteric Hand Technique. A localized blizzard descended on April Rain, and surreal ice crystals grew from her like vines around an abandoned villa. With infinite slowness the crystals firmed, freezing the dire wolf to her plot of earth. A blanket of ice lay on everything thirty meters around the beast.
Exhaustion turned Erik’s knees to water, and he collapsed mere inches from April Rain. His hearts thundered in his chest, intent on escaping through his flesh. He raised a hand to touch April Rain, and cold seeped into his fingers, burning his flesh. He squeezed at her snout, and the dire wolf broke apart into slivers of ice.
Erik looked up from the chunks of frozen wolf meat to stare at Snow and Fang. He forced himself to smile. The two predators turned, running away on four paws. He could smell their fear. It was delicious.
Chapter 28
Another wave of weakness washed through Erik, and, with a start, he dropped his gaze from the fleeing dire wolves. The coolness beneath his knees pulled at his eyelids, making them droop as if they weighed a thousand pounds. All he wanted to do was sleep.
Winter Unfolds? Patrick mumbled. I’ve never seen a Cultivator use it in battle until today. I thought it was useless, only fit to cool cellars.
Vapor rose from the frozen ground around Erik, whipped by gusts of wind into an ice-cold mist. With the gusts came scents clogging his nostrils, from kilometers away, from long valleys and forested areas teeming with life. The smell of dire wolves predominated, and of grasses and wildflowers. Not far from where he knelt, a family of rabbits had made a den. He could smell them and almost tasted them on the tip of his tongue.
“It is,” Erik said, shutting off the bombardment of odors.
Then how did you do that? Patrick asked.
Erik took a deep breath; the air that entered his lungs burned with coldness. The weakness receded, leaving him with little of his former strength. He stood, struggling to his feet with great effort, unperturbed by the wind that tried to flare his blue robe.
“Esoteric Techniques depend on the Cultivator's comprehension of the underlying concept,” Erik said. “On their understanding of hot and cold. That’s the—”
I’m not a child, Patrick said. I know this. Get to your point.
Erik snorted. “The reason Winter Unfolds isn’t used in combat is because you can stand in the affected area for minutes without taking any serious harm. Most Cultivators’ understanding of coldness comes from their experience with winter. How many winters have you lived through that could freeze you to death the second you step out of your door?”
Then how? Patrick asked.
“I cheated.” Erik walked away from April Rain’s frozen corpse. The ground beneath his sandals cracked like glass until he stepped out of the affected area. “I used the Celestial Dragon’s knowledge of traveling out there, beyond the reach of our sun.” He pointed at the sky. “Where light and heat were nothing but a distant memory. And it worked.”
I see, Patrick whispered.
Arms spread wide, Erik allowed the sunlight to soak into him, heating the half-frozen blood being pumped by his two hearts. “You’re afraid. I can sense it flowing off of you in waves.”
Of course, I’m afraid, Patrick snarled. The question is, why aren’t you?
Erik dropped his arms, letting them fall to his side. “I don’t know. I should be. But I’m not.” He closed his hand into a fist. “I feel powerful. A moment ago, I single-handedly fought a pack of dire wolves and won. How many can say the same? No, I’m not afraid, I’m excited.”
Patrick’s fear spiked, tickling the back of his mind. He ignored it and moved further from the corpse. He assumed the Lightbender thought he was being corrupted by his other companion, but he disagreed. He had always been this way. Power had long held a special place in his heart.
Now, what? The Lightbender sounded resentful.
“The same as before,” Erik said. “Hjörtur, then home. If you’re right about the amount of time I spent in that place, then the Grand Assessment is only in a few weeks. I need to leave for Vetur today if I mean to make it back there in time.” He expected an intake of breath following that statement, but it never came.
Well, I hope you don’t get lost and ruin all your plans, Patrick said.
Erik glanced at the scattered trees that grew out in front of him, taking special note of the twisted branches clawing at the sky. “I’ve spent four lifetimes hunting this area,” he said. “I could find my way home with both eyes closed.”
What do you mean? Patrick asked.
Almost stumbling, Erik came to an abrupt stop. “Do the names Jumper, Silent, Whisper, and Morning Mist mean anything to you?”
Patrick sighed. No? Are you all right?
“They were the dire. . . .” Interesting. Patrick was not aware of the memories he had received from consuming the four dire wolves. This meant not everything he experienced was shared. He was not sure how, but one day this information could prove useful.
Interesting? What’s interesting? The Lightbender’s voice rumbled with irritation.
Erik dashed forward, pushing himself to his top speed. Two hearts pounded in his chest, and the wind burned slightly as it flowed across his flesh.
Brightly within him, oscillating like a golden ocean in a storm, was the liquid-prana sloshing around the neck of his Ethereal Body. Without a Tár-Guðs-made weapon, Esoteric Techniques devoured much more prana than they should, but Erik was unconcerned. Once again, he reached into the churning Abyss, grasping the Aspect of Air to perform Grasshopper of the Stars.
Air exploded from beneath Erik’s sandals, furious jets that flung him a kilometer into the sky; velocity and resistance smashed his shoulders flat, breaking bones. He gagged as the wind became choking, clogging his mouth and nostrils. Every inch of his body weighed a hundred pounds, then all weight vanished, leaving him spinning in midair.
What the fuck? Patrick screamed, almost drowning out the howling of the wind.
Erik squinted and opened his arms wide, receiving twangs of pain from the bones healing in his shoulders. Exhilaration surged through him. Without knowing how, he expanded his robe, using the garment to help glide across the sky, laughing all the while.
You’re insane! the Lightbender said, only increasing Erik’s amusement.
