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Chapter 2; Animal

The heartbeat was constant, quick, thundering. His vision sharpened and waned along with it like a pulse, everything becoming stark and startlingly visible with every thump.

At that moment the when of this, that elusive moment in time where his senses split, was lost. He didn't even understand really why he hadn't always felt this way. This slick thrill through every vein every nerve. Running up and down his back and through every limb and tendon like liquid fire.

His senses lit up the darkness and within them he was god.

The figure advanced slowly. Wide black eyes darting left and right, squinting, glaring, staring, flame aloft.

The smell was intoxicating. Exactly like the others… but something, something small and seemingly insignificant at the moment, twitched and writhed and fought at the back of his mind.

There was more than smell in this place, nothing this potent could be simply and easily classified or experienced by only one part of the whole. It was as if every inch of him had turned into one big amalgamation of sensory input. A giant, pulsing taste bud or something. The air was alive with scent. So thick and overwhelming it had become a taste he could capture through his skin, through his eyes, through the ends of his hair. It clung there like mist, or dew on grass blades. Something visible and physical he could have touched and devoured.

The figured glowed.

All living things glowed. Shone with that powerful, unforgivably potent force that sustained him.

And slowly, as he hovered just out of the figure's range of sight, he began to find familiarity in his thoughts. A little niggling voice eating away at his concentration, or lack there of, like a maggot boring through a hunk of rotten meat. Familiarity to the numbness that stole over him during the act, when he—

He remembered watching the light flow over his fingers in the blackness, eerie how it hovered in and around it like a halo, as if the world around it became infused with its power. Fingers warm and cold and wet, painting his face with it, rubbing it over his arms and chest and just sitting there under the stars feeling his skin tingle… licking it from his fingers and lips, the skin splitting back toward his ears like wet paper… as his muscles just seemed to push and push and push his jaws apart, past the possibilities of his flesh and into something agonizing and unholy. The hunger bursting within him like a molten chunk of the sun had fallen and taken residence in his body—

He'd gone mad with it, and in that moment ceased to exist. Taken over by something that was not of his world, nor any of the others—

That flicker of lifeght, the smell of heat and sweat… eyes open and wide, mouth screaming and soundless, thudding fists on his chest and face and back.

—confusionneedHUNGER—

The satisfying pop of flesh as teeth sank home, the gush—the tang against his tongue. The heat and force within it that made his own flesh glow, that pumped life into him that stole the unbearable chill from his bones and the emptiness from his mind.

Prey.

Salvation.

Here, he was god—

The flicker stole his attention.

Sound bouncing off the walls and stones. So faint he could barely see it. So faint the Figure never would have noticed.

A horse—bitterslimydespaironmytongue—bearing a stranger in gray clothes…

Two waves of scent…

Hotfreshyoungalivewarm… so warm.

And a slick tightening of his muscles, memory, just flashes, images, emotions, sensation and garbled sound and tastes and pulsing colors.

The repetitive thud of sharp silvery pain in his back and side, turning to see that stranger standing there, screeching at him and the glint of a knife arching toward him… The hot streak of pain as he'd caught it midair, squeezing it in his fist and the wide eyes the slow fade of colors from the one who'd thrown it…

The uncomfortable writhing in the back of his mind stilled as the focus slipped to the stranger, to the prey… The figure with the torch forgotten, he moved.

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Malik felt his heart hammering behind his ribs, against his lungs as if it intended to rob him of his breath as well as his wits.

It wasn't that he could hear the thing moving, whatever it was with the reflective eyes. It was that he felt its presence. That unnatural pressure in his chest was choking him, and he could feel the center of it like a great lidless eye focused on him. When he moved, it followed. When he held up his torch, it wasn't afraid, just stayed back in the darkness to hide its presence. But Malik had a feeling that even if this thing had been fully visible he'd have been defenseless against it. Whatever had taken up residence in this cave was the reason Altair was missing. And if his fears were correct, it had also been the root of his village's problems.

He had an image in his head, some half wolf, half man creature like described in the books he'd found. He could almost see it out there in the blackness staring… waiting. Growing closer and more powerful by the second.

It was dangerous… It had to be stopped. Even if it killed him too, Malik knew that this-this whatever it was, had to be sto—

And he felt that lidless eye of crushing sensation pass somewhere off to his left. Felt it growing closer…

It's trying to get behind me. Trying to cut off my means of escape, force me deeper into this damned cave!

He brandished his torch at where he could feel the beast was, as if it were some strange sixth sense that led him, maybe even highlighting a dot in the gloom where the pupil of the 'eye' was.

"Show yourself." The words came out in a distressed growl and he bared his teeth as the sound echoed back in the abyss, and out of anger and fear contorted his face and shouted it at the walls; "Show yourself!"

A rock tumbled somewhere behind him and he heard a sound, a startled, unsteady grunt. And when Malik whirled on it, teeth bared as if he himself had become part monster, he saw a dim, lighter shape between himself and mouth of the cave, so small now, lost in the twists and turns of the passageways, it appeared only a dim glow.

He recognized a cowl and tunic, a hand up pushing back the peak of a hood and a stance that was uncomfortable and wary. For a moment he thought it was Altair and relief burst in his chest because that meant whatever was in the cave was definitely not—

But the figure had moved into the light now and disappointment left a bitter taste in the back of Malik's throat. Those were novice grays… Familiar novice greys.

"Damn you, Asa!" he snarled it, stomping toward the boy and aiming a kick at him in his displeasure. "You shouldn't have come! You little FOOL! You have no idea what trouble you've caused me—"

The boy bowed his head but his stance and expression were defensive.

Malik kept shouting at him; "You have no business here! I can't watch you like an infant and destroy this thing. GO, Go back to the village and STAY there—"

"It killed my cousin! You can not deny me the right—"

"You are a novice!" He spat the word, nose wrinkled up; "This thing has killed someone much larger and stronger than you. It would take you in one swipe!" He didn't know, in that moment, if he'd meant Hammad and his lamb, or if…

"But—"

"GO!" The word echoed back and back and back into the dark and seemed to be swallowed abruptly by that something Malik could feel watching—hunting them. "Go and count yourself lucky that I didn't beat you to death right here for your insolence! I am Master here and you will do as I say!"

The boy looked on the verge of tears, knuckles white where they gripped the hilt of his sword. Malik could almost hear his thoughts, hear the curses the boy wanted to throw at him. The insults and vengeful rage that had been denied him.

You're just a cripple, what makes you think you'll be able to kill it if men with both arms at their disposal could not?

But the boy held his tongue, and the fact he did look somewhat cowed drummed up some of Malik's courage he thought left nearer to the cave's entrance, along with the frayed remains of his nerves.

And when Malik turned his chest bumped flat against another chest, his nose into a cold, wet… bloody chin.

It was so abrupt, so without warning Malik's mouth dropped open and he inhaled sharply in shock.

The smell clung to the back of his throat and the insides of his lungs like disease. Cloying and permeating like rain through clothes.

It was a dark scent, deep and all encompassing, and it smelled worse than anything he'd ever had the misfortune to have within sniffing distance.

He was reminded of his novice days, and finding a cat picked to death by vultures lying in the path. It had been there days already, and a thick blanket of writhing white and yellow maggots covered it, squirming about in worm like ecstasy, flies and bugs crawling in and out of its mouth, eyes just empty black pus riddled holes in its skull. Skin perforated, body bloated smelly-stinky-rotting-DEATH!

He saw teeth, right before his eyes. Out of focus, tall, long… sharp like knives—rows of them visible in an ugly caricature of a grin that spread from ear to ear, skin torn and rotted away in blackened, dripping, dangling, gory bits. A few tendons were still connected, frayed looking like old rope, pale and bloodless, ashy grey and greenish, stained and falsely colored by blood.

It was an ugly nightmarish vision… And worse yet, when he stumbled back half a step, a cold inhumanly strong hand tangling in the front of his robe, his eyes wide and blank with terror, Malik recognized the face below the massacre. Recognized it, had watched it smile, frown, laugh, cry out in ecstasy and relax in peaceful slumber—had once loved it.

It happened in half a breath, half a second. That hand tangled in his clothes, and he felt pulled, yanked—THROWN through the air as if he were as small and ineffectual as a ruined bit of cloth.

He sailed high through the air, nauseous as the world arched and spun and came loose from its axis. Tumbling down toward the rocks, his torch still clenched tightly in his fist—

He hit so hard that for a second everything went black and only focused again when he forced himself to inhale. A gasping, wheezing noise as air was sucked back into his empty chest—

He couldn't move. A rock had tumbled from its perch when he'd struck the wall and bounced off like so much balled string, and landed across his right leg. As his senses swam back he heard the screaming. Not something mindless and filled with fear, as he'd heard young boys do when faced with something from their nightmares… This sound had no soul. It was a scream because there was nothing left to do. A scream so utterly hopeless and damned it almost froze Malik's blood.

He lifted himself, head swimming and turned toward the noise, groping for his torch—

There was something wet within the screaming, like a drowning man fighting for breath amid his watery flailing… A hungry almost—almost gobbling noise like an angry starved dog or an amassment of ravenous wolves fighting over a morsel of food. An ugly animalistic noise that cut right through Malik's head and drove him a little mad.

He didn't know what was worse, actually seeing it, or the fact that his torch cast oversized, graphic, black shadows against the smooth carved wall.

He couldn't understand what he was seeing, this—this MONSTER pinning the boy to the floor, one hand around his throat, squeezing off his wails, face pressed into the ruined front of the novice's chest, teeth and free hand ripping and pulling, jaws moving, chewing, crushing bone and flesh and organs without discrimination… DEVOURING everything, and all the while Asa's face was twisted into an expression that had become something ugly and almost bliss like as he bled out onto the floor and into this THING feeding on him.

His voice was nothing but wet gasping now, red spilling from his nose and the corners of his mouth in thick bright ribbons, his short, torn sash splayed out to either side of him in the gore, robes shredded.

Malik didn't know how long it lasted, too hellishly long, in his head he was wishing, praying that the boy would just die because he could no longer imagine what kind of pain—

And those reflective coin eyes appeared out of the blackness behind a saturated hood. Visible only as that gaping, bloody maw of sharp… he guessed they would still be considered teeth.

There was nothing human about it. Even though it wore a familiar face, walked with a familiar gait, there was nothing human about it.

It slunk forward like a fog, seeming to just slither and BE closer without movement, sliding over him like a lover.

Had he been able to do anything other than stare with his eyes wide and his teeth ground together like a fence in his mouth, too shocked and frightened to scream, he would have possibly felt somehow violated that what he was seeing, what he was experiencing was so much different than everything he'd ever been taught or thought he'd known.

The torchlight, where it guttered and flicked on the wet earth, just out of his grip cast grotesque fluttering shadows across the monster's familiar face. Light played on and through the bloody rent flesh on each cheek, glinting and shining on bloody tongue and red pointed teeth, mountains of them set back all the way to the throat in that gaping, unnatural… hideous cave of a mouth.

The breath that came out at slow, creeping intervals was cold, fetid and smelled like the air released by dead horses left to rot in the sun.

Though it moved, crept and slithered along with unnatural speed and slowness. Though it moved and breathed and blinked and—and ate, the chill the creature exuded was ungodly. It sunk into Malik where they touched and bored its way to the bone like infection. It ate away at him, even as he lie there, trapped, unable to move, that—that THING practically lying on top of him. Eyes keen and deadly and inhuman.

He wanted to shut his eyes. Wanted to unsee this beast parading about in Altair's skin… he wanted to snuff it out like a child's sketch in the dirt rubbed away by the sole of his boot. He wanted to make this thing not exist. Wanted it simply gone… He wanted to look in those eyes and see Altair, not something hungry. Not something that had just killed and devoured a boy before his very eyes.

Everything was still but that breathing and the thunder of Malik's heart in his ears. It was almost as if the thing could hear it as well as its eyes slipped from Malik's face to the front of his robes. Bloody sticky, ruined hands pawing there with unnatural ease and tearing the fabric clean in two all the way to his waist.

It leaned close and Malik knew, with unerring certainty in that moment, that he was about to die. And it was not for the fear of death that he broke his vow of silence and whimpered, it was the knowledge that when Altair returned to himself, Malik was sure that he would eventually he was too stubborn to be snuffed out so easily, he would see what had happened… would know.

He feared leaving the order without a leader. Feared the chaos that would follow.

That head bent, lowered and Malik could feel the tip of its nose run the length of his torso, from his crotch all the way up and bury itself behind his right ear.

He felt violated simply by that light touch. Felt sick to his stomach and in some way tainted by it. He could see, so clearly in his mind that gaping wound of a mouth opening and taking the whole of his throat in at once, biting down… He imagined the pop of teeth sinking in. The fire of pain and the tightening of muscles in his body as he tried—futilely—to fight it off. He imagined what death would feel like and prayed only that it was swift because watching himself be eaten bit by bit would drive his soul mad, and he feared meeting his maker in such a state.

The cold, icy nose behind his ear pressed in harder, breath slow and deep like an approaching storm. Seeming to go in and in and in and in unendingly. He could feel the impossibly sharp points of all those teeth on his skin, that cold breath and wetness of the dead boy's blood and drippy ropes of drool.

Fear seemed like too pale a word compared to what he felt at that moment. In that instant he ceased to exist. Everything that made him who he was had been replaced by blind and all consuming terror.

This was the end…

That chilled weight was settled atop him with such ugly familiarity, breath going in and in and in and in and in and silence. Teeth poised, scraping gently, threateningly…

Malik just stared at the flame of his torch and waited…

But—

Nothing moved.

Was the creature hesitating? Was it playing with him? Or was it just trying to savor its next meal…

Malik moved, oh so slowly, knowing that the odds were not stacked in his favor, but refusing to go down without a fight. He slid his dagger from the sheathe on his right thigh, heart hammering, breath caught in the cage of his chest… and pressed the sharp tip to the side of the monster's throat.

That endless in and in and in and in and in breath halted and the silence was oppressive, gold eyes shone like new coins in the very corner of Malik's vision, even as he fought with all his strength to not tremble. Sweat beading on his face and brow, nausea and faintness churning the acid in his stomach, determination baring his teeth and curling his brows.

It was a slight thing, a shift… And some small corner of the beast's eye darkened, the pupil bouncing back and forth large and small large and small large and small like the ripples in a bottomless well.

He felt the words breathed into his neck, felt teeth, so eager and hungry pressing into the flesh of his throat—but hesitating.

"Do it…"

His hand gave a single shake, only one, then his grip steadied.

"Do it."

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