Shred [Sasha]

Because of the scream she had heard echoing through the area a mere moment ago, Sasha had been prepared to find something rather disturbing when turning around the corner of the street, but two bodies instead of one was a heavy blow to the young Quincy. It caught her off guard, and if she hadn’t felt anxious before then she certainly did now.

Dark fur moved through the alley, hovering over the bloodied remnants of a couple before snapping its head to the side. Ruby red eyes stared into emerald green ones; the young woman felt her heartbeat speeding up as the two future opponents studied each other. Tensing, she prepared for the fight, knowing that she would have to remain calm in order to deal with the beast.

Distract it.. yes, then.. use the advantage I already have.. make sure it doesn’t maim my legs.

There was a small list of actions she had tried to memorize as not to end up like a piece of coal once again – Berlin had been an awful, but valuable lesson. Even if it had caused her to hate fire, it had given her a new perspective on things, added a small amount of experience that she so sorely lacked in this ‘new’ world.

“Hey there!”

The thing moved somewhat and came into the orange light cast by a nearby lantern. Only now did she notice its odd tail that resembled a snake; the creature obviously had something in common with the mythological being which was made up from multiple animals. At least this one didn’t have the head of a goat attached to its back; the idea of people like her seeing beasts like the one in front of her during the ancient times and brand them as demons or pets of gods suddenly made quite some sense.

Forming the bow around her ring she pulled back the arrow and aimed at the lion-like beast’s chest, though didn’t let the arrow slip, not yet. She wanted to make sure that the bright blue energy would slam into its target once it was let go off – there was no room for any mistakes.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!” You monster!

With green eyes flashing dangerously, Sasha let the energy flow into the arrow generously before letting it fly toward its target. Another one was already being spun from her free hand while she impatiently waited to see what would happen with the first one.


-- 415

Alert. Someone had approached before the meal was complete. It seemed that the chimera was destined to never have an easy meal. Turning his lion-like head to observe the newcomer, the beast found itself staring at a young human woman. This seemed to be becoming a pattern. What was it with these human women disturbing his meals? Every time he felt the fluctuations of spiritual energy flaring in response to his hunting, it had always been a woman who turned up. The hollow wasn't sure what this meant, or if it was pure coincidence. He was certain that the human world was a bit more troublesome to hunt in compared to that endless desert.

The stranger spoke words of greeting as the chimera stepped forward. However, the hollow knew this pattern all too well. There was no way this was a friendly meeting. A low growl escaped the feline maw of the beast in response to her words. A simple and obvious warning not to interfere. Drazaq just wanted to eat. A predator getting interrupted by empowered prey every time it ate was an insult. To make matters worse from the sense of danger he got from this woman, she wasn't quite as strong as the last one. Still the chimera proceeded with caution, especially when a familiar energy flared up and turned into a weapon in the woman's hands. In response the snake-like tail of the beast coiled up and began storing energy. He had seen someone like her before, which meant this woman was trouble too.

An arrow flew from the woman's weapon. The snake-like tail of the chimera lunge forward and shot a bala to intercept it. The energies collided and an extremely smug hissing voice full of ridicule rang out. "Little girl it would take three of you to be our ssssize. Sssso insssstead sssshall we eat you too? Or perhapsss you would like to sssshare thisss meat, sssso you can grow bigger."

By now she obviously had its attention. If it hadn’t been for her yelling then her arrow would have still gotten the thing to turn around. The only conclusion she was able to make right after its turn was that the chimera wasn’t deaf. Whether it was able to speak or not, or at least understand speech, wasn’t proven by its reaction. Animals turned to face noise out of instinct.

Unfortunately, the beast was able of countering her attack. With the familiar red blast, though quicker and not as threatening as the last one she had faced, the Hollow quickly disposed of Sasha’s arrow. Not that it put a stop on the Quincy’s determination to get rid of the monster whose maw was still bloody with its prey’s remnants.

With another arrow ready to be fired, Sasha kept her gaze on the furry creature. Once the dust caused by the blast was settled, she felt herself tense again. The sphere of energy had come from its tail which soon appeared to be capable of speech. .. or? Was it the maw which spoke or the snake? The feline .. hissed? Wary and somewhat curious she kept quiet. In response to the words she slowly tilted her head slightly to the side while carefully listening to what else the monster had to share.

“I don’t eat people.” Unable to hide the disgust, Sasha heard herself mimicking the hissing.

It wasn’t only that, she didn’t kill humans in order to satisfy whatever needs she had. There was no need for her to feed of her fellow citizens. While one could question people eating animals and being eaten in return, she didn’t see Hollow-breeds as anything that should exist. They were failed souls, failed beasts which had to be eradicated for the safety of mankind.

“You do.. and that’s why you have to go.” Together with the ending of her sentence the arrow burst forward, aimed at the Hollow-breed’s head. She was pretty certain that somehow the creature would either dodge it or fire one of those crimson orbs again, but that only meant that she had to fire off more arrows than the beast could take. One of them would penetrate it, and hopefully the ones thereafter would bring an ending to its existence.

“You don’t belong here, your kind doesn’t belong here. All of you crawl around the dark alleys in hopes to get a taste of life while you should simply accept being dead.”

Another arrow followed, Sasha felt how she was steadily growing excited about the upcoming fight. As long as she would stay out of the fire’s grasp, everything would land on its feet.


--446/ 861

Disdain. The lion-like head of the main body of the chimera shook its head as though it was disappointed and unconcerned with this strange woman. It continued to chew the flesh in it's mouth and pulled the two souls of the mangled humans before him deep within his stomach. Now that nourishment had been dealt with for now, the snake-like tail of the beast let out a hissing noise as close to laughter as was possible for a snake. All the humans it met seemed to say the same things. They got made in the same way. Didn't they grow tired of always behaving like this? Such thoughts made the beast feel slight anger for an unknown reason, still the hollow didn't concern itself with such things for now. This woman seemed intent on fighting.

Feeling reconciled with this woman's words and actions. The sheer arrogance the hollow felt seeping off from this human woman that made it seem that she believed she was better than him, made the hollow's anger slowly grow. Drazaq was just doing his best to survive according to his instincts just like anyone else would. Why did that make this little girl think she was so much better than him? Was humanity something so great? If that was the case why did the common human posses no power to fight back against hollows like him? The chimera didn't remember that he was also once human, his fragmented mind wasn't capable of such things. This only made all of the questions it now had coupled with the arrogant words of the woman before him make the beast feel uneasy. It hated these feelings of helplessness, these things it couldn't control. These were things that had driven him made as a human, and were now the core of its power. A mad roar was unleashed from the lion-like body's maw coupled with the beasts unique aura spreading out its madness inducing powers. At the same time the snake-like tail turned its gaze to the young woman eyes cold and full of disdain.

"You humansss eat animalsss. Humansss are alssso animalsss. Ssso why can't I eat them? Thingsss like eating 'people'. What are people? What makesss them ssso ssspecial they can't be eaten and are allowed to do as they pleassse." hissed the snake-like tail of the beast, once again expressing its voice full of ridicule. These humans always spoke of these so called values and treated him like a monster, but they were fundamentally different. Of course they wouldn't understand why he had to eat and hunt like he did. Even though they did similar things to other creatures, for some reason the fact that it was happening to them made it impossible for humans to endure. "After all you humanssss kill each other jussst as much if not more than I, or onesss like me eat. For far lesssss trivial reasssonsss than sssurvival."

The beasts body swiftly moved as an arrow was fired at him from the girl. It was this pattern again, but this girl wasn't as strong as the last one. Though the beast felt some pressure, it wasn't on the same level. Perhaps he could even turn this girl into his next meal? She yelled some more meaningless words at him to which the chimera ignore, his true focus was on the second arrow the girl had launched. This time instead of dodging way completely the beast decided to attack. Letting the arrow graze his back, the hollow rushed forwards mostly ducking under this second attack of hers. Ignoring whatever small wound that would be caused as it would heal quickly with his abilities, the beast that was still unleashing its mad aura closed the distance and lashed out with its sharp claws towards the young woman.

Instinctively tensing when the beast roared, she gritted her teeth. This was a dangerous situation she had so carelessly gotten herself into, but at the same time it was better if she tried to handle the problem before it grew. At least she had a chance of surviving unlike many others. She hoped. Otherwise things would turn rather ugly. That wasn’t a scenario she wanted to think of. The last thing she needed was to be paralysed with fear.

“I’ve never said that war is fine.” she growled. It was easier to stay brave when you were angry. The heat that would come from inside could easily scorch the doubts and fears until the pain would hit. Even when hurt, anger might help out and then she would be able to keep going.

“And don’t try to twist it,” she violently jerked her chin to the side, eyes on the enemy. The bright blue arrow took its shape, burned brightly, and was directed at the creature’s hind leg. Perhaps if she kept talking while letting the arrow fly the being wouldn’t react in time? Who knew?

“you’ve had a choice to be something less ugly. Should have lived a better life, been a better person while you had the chance.”

Because that’s what turned them this way, right? The lack of humanity, right?

“Now you’re just trying to make yourself feel better by pretending that everyone of us is like you, but we’re not monsters.” There, she had said it.

The words had come out all angry and accusing, but she couldn’t help but to wonder if she had gotten it right. Too many details had been dropped on her in a short span of time and some hadn’t been quite clear. The whole process of dying and not being gone still baffled her. And it would probably take a long, long time before she would understand it a bit better. Perhaps she never would, but that certainly wouldn’t be stopping her from throwing everything she had at the creatures who hurt for pleasure and killed to satisfy their needs.

That’s why she let the arrow fly. A line of bright blue, hundreds of little particles which reminded her of petals followed. A second one was already being prepared. She deeply inhaled and let her eyes narrow further while trying to make sure to not lose the Chimera out of sight.


401

Confusion. For some reason the beast found itself suddenly confused by the flow of the conversation. It recalled it's words as being true, Drazaq was merely eating for survival, nothing more nothing less. It also knew that Humans could be far more cruel to each other than he could simply by eating a few of them, however that didn't change his confusion. Should have lived a better life? The chimeric hollow couldn't ever recall having such a choice to be something different, to live a different way. It had to eat like this to live, if it didn't eat people it would die. That was something Drazaq knew from the very core of his damaged soul. However, a certain discomfort still rose from those words. What about before he became this beast?

The snake like tail hissed at the woman, while the lion-like main body stayed silent intently watching that glowing weapon in her hands. "Feel better? We do not undersssstand? We never had a chance... we...remember...can't...want...pain...wenrgul..." the serpentine voice trailed off into nonsensical words as the both the lion and snake heads winced as though in pain. As the discomfort grew and they thought back to things along their soul's journey, some sort of barrier repelled the chimera's intentions causing mental anguish. Sadness, rage, helplessness, all these feelings assaulted the disturbed beast at once. The aura of madness it had started to unleash earlier when it roared, began to strengthen a bit as the memories of of life before becoming hollowfied refused to return. And in that instant the first arrow flew and tore into it's flank, injuring one of it's hind legs. It would heal, but adding that pain to it's instability only caused more problems. Growling in a new found pain and mental chaos both heads reared around to stare at the Quincy before them again and focused everything at her. She had caused this, so she could take everything away, right?

"Dam Human, jussst becaussse you...." The snake head was cut off before it could finish.

"ENOUGH!" The lion head roared and ignoring the slowly healing injuring to it's bodies leg, started gathering it's power into it's mouth. Red light began to flash as it continued to build power. Drazaq was no longer in the right state of mind to talk and ponder. Only pure emotion and instinct remained. This woman seemed to deem him as a beast that needed to be exterminated, and because of a coincidental set of events that was just what he had became. A raging chimera, who only understood that this was kill or be killed.

At some point she wasn’t even certain about the things she was saying. Everything was getting heavier, more confusing. Odd.

When the arrow hit its target she winced in reaction to the beast’s pain. If she would have had the ability to kill the creature in one go, she definitely would have. Making it suffer wouldn’t do good to anyone. The beast was what it was, and – perhaps it was its fault, perhaps it’s always been out of its hands – hurting something that was (in some way) ‘alive’ wasn’t what she enjoyed doing. But right now she had to. It was them, the Quincy, against the others, the dead.

Alright, there were a couple of nuances she wasn’t remembering now, but- Sasha shook her head.

Once again there was a pressure tugging at her senses, squeezing her in an unfathomable way. It wasn’t the suffocating type of strength, of pressure, but it was enough to throw her entirely off balance. Slowly the strange sensation seeped into her mind and forced her thoughts to endlessly rearrange. She felt her hand shake a bit as the next arrow formed. The headache was coming, and this was a bad moment to get distracted by anything.

“Whatever,” she growled to nobody in particular.

It looked like both she and the Hollow were having their own problems. The snake and lion argued, while her own body and mind were suddenly at war as well. She shook her head, narrowed her eyes, and started to gather more energy into the arrow. Now that the chimera was angrily doing the same thing, just with an orb, she hoped that the heat its attack would emit wouldn’t leave her in a scorched pile of bones. Wouldn’t that be a sight?

The thought had been a bitter one. Her rational side wanted for her to leave the alley. Even if the power coming from the Hollow wasn’t overwhelming it was still dangerous. She was being dumb, again. She would die here, now. When the fi-

“Stop it!” Sweat ran down her neck. The arrow was let go when the orb of energy slipped from the lion’s maw. Blue met crimson in a purple explosion which burned the rubbish on the ground and left little cracks in the walls of the buildings that surrounded them. There was smoke, dust, and a stinging sensation on her forearms which she had used to cover up her face.

Finding the pavement uncomfortably digging into her side, she rolled onto her knees and managed to get up a second later. The Hollow was still out there so there was no time for relaxing. Coughing a bit because of the thick smoke. Carefully she rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand while ignoring the reddened skin together with the little streams of blood ornamenting her fore arms and large parts of her fingers.

“Stupid creature!” She hissed.

The pain came in waves and she wanted to punch her opponent and make it pay for hurting her. There was no doubt in her mind that all of this was the chimera’s fault. If that piece of dirty fur hadn’t come here then this wouldn’t have happened. “Come here!” she felt angrier than she’s ever been. Something inside of her happily ignored the pain to make space of the desire to hurt. Never before had she wanted to squeeze the life out of something – tear it apart. God, she wanted to strangle the lion with its snake-like tail so badly.


585

Pain. The was the first and foremost feeling that Drazaq had. Everything was hurting. His hind leg was pierced, it's already damaged mind felt like it was on the verge of splintering further. Instinct had taken over, and now the chimera was only looking to make the source of its pain go away. This girl who had mocked him and attacked him from the moment they met. However, in this state none of that mattered. Power was building in its mouth and just as it released it an arrow was loosed from the other party causing the two spiritual energies to collide. A small scale spiritual explosion and the pain intensified.

As the dust cleared, the damage to the beast was revealed. As the two's power was colliding instinctively the chimera moved its body in order to evade the resulting explosion. As a result of its injured hind leg however, the beast only managed to turn its lion-like body and back up some receiving some light wounds to its right side. growling in pain it looked towards the woman who was screaming words of anger. She wasn't too well off either. She seemed to be hurt and in her rage actually demanded that Drazaq come to her. It was certainly an odd turn of events.

The snake-like tail made its appearance once more. It had hidden from the explosion by putting itself on the other side of the lion-like main body. Immediately after it appeared the snake's throat seemed to swell for a moment before it spat a bala towards the girl. As the energy hurtled through the air, the other part of the chimera began to stir. Roaring in rage the lion head glared hatefully at her as its body got into action and moved towards her. Black leg injured it couldn't utilize its full speed, but it moved as quickly as it could towards the Quincy girl. After a few steps it jumped as though to pounce on her, sharp claws and teeth bared in rage.

Rational thinking appeared to have left her. Instead of running away and take care of her injuries somewhere far away from this madness, Sasha was staring at the beast. The anger was burning brightly in her eyes. With her arms hurting she could remember the Witch who had left her dying on the ground in an alley not unlike this one. The memory really pissed her off, and instead of doing the logical she dashed forward embracing her desire to cause the lion pain even if it hurt her as well.

There was no time for forming a proper bow, then an arrow, and certainly not for aiming afterwards. Her opponent was already making its way toward her and the distance was shrinking with every passing moment. With gritted teeth she pumped as much energy into her blood as she could manage, ran faster, and simultaneously let an arrow form in the palm of her right hand. Hopefully the damage she would take wouldn’t be too bad. She had to survive this somehow. Had to hurt the beast to make it pay.

With blue lit veins the young Quincy used her already injured arm to protect her face from whatever was coming while bringing up the other one with the arrow gripped tightly. The pointy end went first. Pushing off the ground for speed, she jumped. One of the claws got her left shoulder but at least she was close to her enemy now. The collision was coming. It was inevitable. With everything she had she tried to stab the arrow into the beast’s chest when a fang bore itself into her forearm.

A second later she was falling toward the ground. Again the stones dug into her soft flesh. It felt as if her arm was broken, and even if it wasn’t, it was certainly heavy bruised and torn into a bloody mess.

Fucking Hollow.

She gritted her teeth, the hate she had felt, the all consuming anger from before, it was still there but now the pain bore itself through the fog that’s been shrouding her mind. The headache was real. It was messing with her. She felt sick, angry, confused. All of this was beyond annoying. Another arrow was burning in her hand when she finally got up onto her feet. Unsure if she would be able to get up from another collision like that, she held her free arm close to her chest – cuddling it while supporting her bruised ribs. Blood soaked her sleeve. A part of her sweater was sticking to her back. She knew that her shoulder was damaged, too.

“If you don’t get out of my head,” she growled, feeling as if this creature was somehow toying with the pressure inside of her skull. “I’ll do everything to destroy every bit of you!” Spitting out the words, she narrowed her eyes a bit. This was partly bluff; while she would definitely try to kill it, she had no idea if she would be capable of doing that. Still, there was no other choice. From here on she would have to push it.

“I’m a Quincy. Do you know why my kind is different from all the others you face?” Heavily breathing through screeching teeth she pulled back her bloody lips and angrily announced with a vicious whisper. “We destroy souls.”


557

Suffering. The chimera couldn't stand all of this pain, all of this confusion. It had left itself to baser instincts and thus had left an opening. A glowing arrow of spiritual power stabbed into his chest was the reward he got for rushing in. Drazaq growled in pain as the lion-like head stared at the downed woman, red eyes glowing with red and hatred. She was screaming in rage, threatening him with the destruction of his very soul. Apparently whatever this special human was, was capable of such things. However, none of that mattered as a small change of events altered the course of this encounter.

A clattering noise caused the Chimera to turn away from the downed Quincy, as he noticed another presence nearby. A waitress had stumbled out of the restaurant the two were fighting behind. Noticing the mangled corpses that the chimera had left earlier, she let out a small scream and started to panic. Then she noticed the injured Quincy woman lying there and ran over to check on her. However, what the woman didn't notice was the beast she passed by on the way to her. She looked over the Quincy obviously worried about her, as she noticed she was still alive yet heavily wounded. This teenage waitress likely working her first job ever had no idea that a predator stood behind her.

Suddenly the lion head lost the flames of rage, and instead something else replace that emotion. It had suffered, and so it should share its suffer. As though it had realized something it approached the waitress from behind. The Quincy woman was injured. Drazaq was injured. There was no way this battle could continue, and something told the beast that if he attacked the Quincy he would receive a considerable counterattack. Like a cornered rat, he was sensing danger from her and her wails even now. Thus the beasts fractured mind sought another solution.

"Your kind destroys souls. Yes. Yes." spoke the lion head of the Chimera as the snake head on its tail approached the waitress."My kind eats souls. Yes. Yes." It spoke nonsense as, but suddenly as though it had a sudden stroke of clarity and awareness of its own bizarre aura it made some sense. "We also break minds. Yes. Yes. So, let us play a game with our respective abilities. Yes. Yes." asked the lion head as it finished speaking. The snake like tail suddenly lashed out and bit a chunk out of the waitress' neck. The unrelated woman then fell next to the Quincy woman bleeding profusely from her wounds. The hollow didn't stay to devour the woman's soul, or to attack the Quincy any further. Instead the beast turned around and began to slowly walk off into the darkness to leave this battle.

The chimera was giving the woman a choice, save this woman, focus on saving herself, pursue the unnatural emotions caused by his aura and continue to fight, or perhaps she would end the girl's suffering and destroy her soul herself. The beast was sure the agony of this new information would drive the girl to despair. The snake-like tail showed something close to a twisted smile towards the Quincy as it swayed back and forth into the night. Regardless of what she did now, or how she justified the choice later it would likely have an effect on her. The twisted revenge of the made Chimera for being made to suffer had now begun. Then a final voice full of mockery, "Enjoy your ssssufering little girl. We look forward to playing again."