Ch 1.45: Instinct

“Starhounds?” Elaina asked. She knew it was a stupid question. Nothing from their world could ever make a sound like that.

“Correct. They are on school grounds. And they are not alone; numerous members of the Red Order are with them.”

Elaina locked eyes with Carline, both of them realizing just how monumentally they had fucked up by waiting. “We have to tell someone,” Carline said, “Calivahn, Ranlit, anyone!”

“Right,” Elaina said, putting on her boots and lacing them up before grabbing a shoulder bag to carry the crystal in. “I’ll take the System and find someone.”

“Very well,” the System said. “I will do my best to mask the presence of my main core, however—”

The crash of breaking glass. Elaina turned, seeing a grotesque, pale white face hanging right where their window used to be, a gnarled hand with red, crystal nails reaching in. She watched, almost in slow motion as the creature grabbed the System, the System started screaming, and then both creature and crystal fell out of the window, falling backward into the grounds.

The next thing Elaina felt was pain, pain mixed with the arousal her skills provided, both [Pain Response] and [Fear Response] as she was flying out of the window, shards of broken glass cutting into her arms and legs. She was falling to the ground before she realized she had even jumped, eyes wide as the grass below was racing up towards her. She reached for [Restraint], creating a rope in between her hands as she fell and attaching it to the frame of the window with a simple knot. She gripped the rope hard, hands burning from the friction as she slowed down.

She still hit the ground, hard, legs buckling as she landed. Bells were ringing now. Is it lunchtime? Her entire head was dizziness now, pain, fear, and that damned horniness addling her brain in tandem. The arousal took away some of the sting, some of the dread, but the burning in her loins was still distracting in its own right. The rain was lighter now, still going, but not quite the downpour as before.

Elaina pushed herself up, seeing the creature holding the System darting off towards the forest, towards the System’s main core. The orb itself wasn’t glowing blue anymore, but instead that haunting red that the Red Order crystals glowed. “No you don’t,” she said, conjuring a shackle around the thing’s leg and attaching it to a spike she created in the ground. It lurched forward as it reached the end of the slack, falling on its face as Elaina ran towards it.

She got a better look as she got closer. It was vaguely human shaped, more masculine this time, but also far more grotesque with misshapen muscles and unevenly sized limbs. It was naked, and the only crystals it had on it were the claw ones on its fingers. Myriala had had a sense of unnatural beauty around her, elegant features and the myriad of crystal adornments, but this thing was pure monstrosity. It writhed on the ground as she approached, wriggling and trying to crawl towards the forest once more.

She needed to end it. She could, and she’d ended a monster before, but this was… No, it wasn’t different, couldn’t be different, even if this one looked as much human as it did beast. At a safe distance, she conjured another rope, wrapping it twice around the creature’s neck and holding it, pressing into the thing’s windpipe, snuffing out its life.

Elaina flew through the air, knocked aside by an unseen force and losing her grip on [Restraint]. The manifestations held, but the force she was using on the rope weakened as she hit the ground for a second time, seeing another pale figure running past her towards the first. This one was another naked, monstrous creature, feminine this time, though nowhere near as graceful as Myriala. It bounded towards the fallen one on all four limbs, opening up a horrifically sized jaw and revealing a long row of red crystal teeth before chomping down to grab the System. The first one screamed out in agony, a disturbingly human-like sound, as the second’s teeth crunched through its, taking both hand and orb in its mouth before running off again, leaving its companion screaming on the ground.

“Gods, fuck you too!” Elaina shouted, running after the creature. She tried shackling this one’s leg too, but its movements were too fast, too unnatural for her to follow, so she had to settle for wrapping chains around the creature’s torso instead. She latched them to two more spikes in the ground, using that to leverage some of the force required to hold the thing back, but she needed to hold the chains together up top, draining her mana. She had plenty of that now though. It wasn’t quite double what she’d had before, but more than half as much, at least.

The creature turned, eyes trained on Elaina, and charged at her. And she had been too sloppy with the amount of chain she’d made, too sloppy with her approach as well. She had made it too long, gotten too close, and the thing crashed into her once more, pinning her to the ground.

Blue blood dripped from the severed hand inside the monster’s mouth as it growled around the orb in its jaw. Up close it was even more horrific, the way it had contorted it’s face to hold the system in those red teeth, the gray eyes bulging out of their sockets, and the flattened nose with flared nostrils. It was also entirely naked, though this time the only crystals were those damned teeth baring down on her.

Elaina pushed the creature up with her arms and pulled the chains around it back with her aspect, launching the monstrosity into the air as she crawled out of range of it. Distance was what she needed right now, and then she could worry about taking the System back. The thing didn’t seem interested in giving it up though, jaw still clenched around the crystal as it landed a few feet away. Elaina counted herself lucky that this one’s only obvious weapons were occupied, but she could still hear the whine’s of pain from the System as it pulsed red, the same cries it had made when Myriala was trying to remove it from the dungeon, that same red lightning coursing through the orb.

Elaina cried out in pain herself as something raked across her back. [Pain Response] was maxed out now, so she felt the full force of the first creature’s only remaining hand as it gouged at her skin, sending her falling to the mud once more. Bells were still ringing, faster, pounding aggressively in Elaina’s mind, as her back screamed out in its suffering, as the sound of rain pattered around her and surrounded her agony.

The first creature was limping at her as she crawled away, having torn off its own foot that had been shackled, bleeding from both leg and arm stubs as it hobbled towards her. Hah, its limbs are even lengths now, she thought. Why am I noticing that at a time like this? That bleeding monster wasn’t even the most immediate danger though, as in her pain Elaina had let go of the chains binding the second one, and it was bounding for her as well, wanting to finish off the person that was disrupting them from their mission, no doubt..

At least I tried…

A boot flew over her head and collided with the creature’s face, sending the System flying out out of its crushed jaw. “Up, Elaina!”

Elaina turned her head, seeing a tall girl, human, in an Endrin uniform, fists held up high. “Flora?”

“Righto, now get inside!”

“I can’t,” Elaina said. She stumbled over to the fallen orb on her hands and knees, the System covered in blood as its soft blue glow lit up the ground. It wasn’t silent with its dull moaning, but it wasn’t screaming at least as Elaina scooped it into the shoulder bag she’d grabbed. “There’s someone else in the forest.”

“Yeah, more of these things!” Flora’s fist smacked into the first creature’s chest, toppling it over. “We have to go, now.”

Elaina looked down at the System. “Can you hear me?” she whispered.

“Yes.” The reply was hoarse, faint through the moans it somehow put out simultaneously.

“Can you teleport me to the forest?”

“No, corruption spreading, drained.”

“Elaina, move!” Flora shouted.

“No, I have to—”

The second creature was up again, mangled jaw hanging open as it ran at her, and Elaina’s world went dark as its foot crashed into her head.