“Fuck fuck fuck FUCK fuck fuck fuck FUCK” Thomas kept up a running mantra as he moved, running down the stream, further away from town. The horrible dog things were snorting and snarling and making other horrible noises behind him; the irrational anger that had overcome him had lasted until he'd crushed the protrusion where a head should be on the first, and then had faded into a far more rational terror. There were a good half dozen chasing behind him now, and his legs felt like they were windmilling more than running, doing little more than hammering his feet into the ground with every stride – his feet certainly didn't stay there.

His cursing mantra continued as he ran up a small bank, terrified of tripping, and back down again. His fist hadn't crushed down into bone. As far as his fist went, there hadn't been any bones in the things, just stiff … not-flesh. It had splattered a little bit under his blow. There hadn't been blood, either. His mind was replaying the scene for him over and over again as he ran, his fist hammering into the space a head should be, the flesh … giving, but not like flesh. A ripping sensation, like quickly pulling a newtonian fluid toy apart; the protrusion had ripped off under his fist, and fragmented on the ground, somewhere between shattering glass and splattering liquid. Then it had just gone gooey.

And then the dog thing he had just knocked the head off of had bitten him with a mouth protruding from where a hip should have been, and the pain had lanced through his body like an electrical current. The teeth had been sharp enough, real enough. A chunk of his arm was bleeding like crazy; he'd knocked the jaw off of the thing with frantic punches to get free of it, else he'd probably have lost a chunk of his tricep, and bled out besides.

“Your money or your life!” A shout from ahead. Thomas slowed, and as he saw the bandit, time seemed to freeze.

Well. Balier hadn't been lying. They were not human. That shade of pink-yellow skin, the color of the hair. The proportions that were just slightly off; the bandit's eyes weren't quite in the right position. The nose slightly too far to the left, the mouth hanging a little askew. The bandit looked like somebody had made a perfect clay version of a human being, painted it nearly perfectly, and then dropped it on the way to the oven; it was a slightly … runny, slightly … melted version of a human being.

It was a better representation of a person than the things chasing Thomas were of dogs – but staring at the bandit in front of him, Thomas got a sinking feeling that they weren't dogs, but just … underdeveloped … these things.

There were more bandits ahead of him; they were clothed in black and white striped shirts and brown pants, and carried ridiculous-looking swords, like a mash-up of a caricature of a scimitar and a cutlass; an enormous cage for the hand that looked like it could accommodate somebody wearing a catcher's mitt inside it on one end, and then the blade expanded from that, until it grew as wide as Thomas' chest towards the tip. The swords were absurd.

And the “bandits” held them aloft like they were normal; they had to be heavy enough to bludgeon one to death, regardless of how ridiculous they were. Thomas attention shifted back behind him, to the … bandit dogs, coming up from behind. He was surrounded, and he'd need to fight. Memories of the silver fawn flashed through his mind, and Thomas grimaced, briefly considering diving into the river instead, but, what had it been called, a great alligator? He didn't want anything to do with alligators in a world where deer had done that to him. He moved to put his back to the river instead, gaze swinging between the dogs coming from his left, and the bandits starting to move forward on his right.

One of the dogs flashed in. Pain coursed through his leg; he brought his elbow down, not-flesh parting with a wet ripping noise. Another flipped sideways, the mouth where a spine should be flashing towards Thomas lowered face. His arm came up automatically, his own blood splashed across his face. Thomas ripped his arm free, feeling a chunk of skin come loose, and immediately jammed it back into the dog's face, crushing its jaw in.

Weight landed on his back; pain exploded from his shoulder. Thomas straightened up, reaching back, and grabbing a handful of skin and hair, pulled it – a ripping sensation from the shoulder, and warmth immediately started flowing down his back. And then the first bandit was here, ridiculous scimitar swinging through the air; Thomas hurled the dog in his hands at the bandit; pink flesh spun end over end, and Thomas was briefly aware that the dog had some very human, and very male, genitalia where its chin should have been, before bandit and dog went down in a sprawling heap.

The bandit's neck split beneath Thomas boot, the head ripping off entirely with another awful noise; the dog was getting back up, and Thomas tried to punch at it, but another jaw latched onto his rear leg, and he was forced to kick awkwardly backward with his lead leg to dislodge it.

Thomas backed up quickly, as another pair of bandits approached; a scimitar swept through the space he had occupied even as Thomas tripped over the dog that had been behind him and went sprawling. The damn thing bit his ass as he fell, and he couldn't get at it to get it off; he thrashed around, then another scimitar swing forced him to roll aside, another wave of nauseating pain rolling over him as the flesh the dog had bitten into ripped free. He could feel his own flesh pulling apart, feel the teeth stripping it. Red flashed in front of his eyes. Thomas was aware of grabbing the dog and pulling.

He blinked the red away, and was startled to realize he'd unconsciously shifted into his larger form; he dropped the two halves of bandits out of his hands, now more like a horrible flesh-puppy he'd ripped in half. His fist met a bandit's chest; limbs popped apart. A scimitar embedded itself in his arm; blood spurted. A backhand took the head off of the responsible bandit. He was suddenly naked, his clothing shredded on the ground around him, and feeling exposed; doubly so when a bandit dog went for him.

Thomas snarled, and grabbed the dog that had lunged for his balls, crushing it against the ground. Another bandit swung, the scimitar lifting a flap of flesh from his arm; a flap of flesh now attached on one side, blood spurting out the other. It didn't hurt yet; it would. It took three rapid punches to take that bandit down, and while he stomped the bandit's chest in, another started swinging at the backs of his legs, opening more wounds.

Thomas lay on the ground, blinking up at the sky. Every heartbeat brought fresh agony coursing through his body, but right now he just felt sick; he'd spent a few minutes tying up the bits that were gushing, and then couldn't remain upright anymore. Everything hurt, but that didn't have his full attention. His shoulder had a wad of cloth tied over a hole bitten out of it, and that was probably the worst of it. He had gashes chopped into his forearms, a thumb-sized chunk of his upper arm missing, a dozen deep cuts across the backs of his legs, three different chunks of skin were tied in place, and none of those were the reason he was now laying down.

No, that had been a bite he'd thought had missed his balls. It had missed the balls. He looked again, and then laid his head back down. It'd be alright, he thought slowly and deliberately, it just needed a bandage. Maybe stitches, if he was back home, but … well, a bandage would have to do.

He got himself bandaged up, and looked at his statistics screen.

Thomas Bluebrim

Brawler

Legend of Wind

Level 6

0 Misfortunes / 0 Fortunes

0 Curses / 0 Blessings

42/165 Health

0/0 Mana

4/4 Stamina

0 Distinctions Available

29 Skill Points Available

5 Customization Points Available

Strength

Constitution****

Intelligence

1 Melee Damage Bonus

2

0

3 Maximum Worn Armor

140 Maximum Health

22 Additional Skill Points

0 Deflection *

4 Damage Reduction

1 Maximum Stamina Points

1 Melee Damage Bonus

12 Base Armor

0 Spell Piercing *

Wisdom

Agility

Perception

6

0

0

6 Lores

0 Bonus Targeting

0 Reaction Time

6 Arcane Resistance

0 Evasion

1 Stamina Regeneration

0 Mana *

20 Movement *

0 Missile Range Bonus *

He let out a slow breath, and looked around at the dead bodies around him. He'd lived. He'd lived, and … he looked at one of the “dogs”. They didn't actually have muzzles, as he'd originally thought. Their mouths were in fact human, they just … protruded, wherever they were. The teeth weren't quite right, but … Thomas stopped, and took in what he was looking at. He fell to the side, and started throwing up into the dirt.

When he had finished, he sat up, looked around again, and discovered that he hadn't quite finished. Thomas stopped searching the bandits when a pat-down discovered anatomy through the clothing, in places it shouldn't have been. He didn't search them for gear, or food. He didn't take their clothing. Thomas started walking back upriver. He'd destroyed the clothing that he had set out to repay the cost of, he'd gotten himself ripped apart and would need the services of a healer, and he'd seen things he was already trying to forget.

He'd gotten nothing for his trouble except pain and misery and memories he didn't want. He felt unsteady as he walked, his knees vibrating underneath him; it felt a little like the aftereffects of adrenaline, but also like more straightforward weakness. He'd gotten new scars, and hopefully new permanent damage from his wounds. The quarter-sized chunk of his dick that had been savaged by a bite while he had been in his large form still made him woozy to think about.

The things weren't human. They were, if anything, worse. He thought he could have dealt with killing humans far more easily than the sick feeling he got thinking about the malformed bodies, and the decapitated head that had started demanding his money until he crushed it with a rock – he had ruined his boots, and the thought of crushing it under his bare feet made him feel ill. He could feel blood trickling down from some of his wounds, but they had mostly stopped; for all that he had had to rip a chunk of metal out of his arm, he felt better than he thought he should, and that made him feel all the worse.

He knew he should feel much, much worse about what he had just gone through. Hell, he had been fucking raped, right? He could admit that to himself. He knew Lust had fucked with him, made him feel like a damned teenager again. What the fuck had “The Buddha” and “Stoic” done to his mind? Lust had been a violation all its own, and it had been him acutely aware of how fucked up puberty really was, how it had erased everything he had cared about previously and replaced those things with a new set of biological imperatives; having that experience refreshed as an adult, more conscious and aware of the experience, was very uncomfortable. But it was a familiar kind of violation; he knew what that had done to his brain, and he was feeling much more intensely uncomfortable about what exactly the other two things had done to him.

He would just, what, be okay with being ripped apart now? That wasn't him. This wasn't him. He felt sick, and everything hurt, and he was most definitely not okay with how okay that felt to him, because he knew he should be reacting more strongly to this experience. Fuck, he shouldn't have had this experience, the experience with the damned deer should have left him hiding in towns digging latrines for the rest of his life; that was who he was. Whoever this was, with his memories, wasn't him, and he felt sick and violated and disgusted.

When one of the strangely twisted trees started spasming, Thomas looked at it. Something like a snake descended, and it took him a moment to process that it was a … vine, from the tree itself? Only enormous. And … he started walking again. A dog-shaped mass was jerking and twisting, moving down the vine, which had a mouthlike opening in the end.

Thomas didn't care. Messages started appearing as he walked.

Moderate objective complete: Defeated a small band of bandits. You've earned three customization points. You've reached class level 7! Five skill points earned. New class distinction.

Class Distinction: Improved Shrug Off

Damage less than 7 is reduced to 0

Thomas Bluebrim

Brawler

Legend of Wind

Level 7

0 Misfortunes / 0 Fortunes

0 Curses / 0 Blessings

41/175 Health

0/0 Mana

2/4 Stamina

0 Distinctions Available

36 Skill Points Available

8 Customization Points Available

Strength

Constitution****

Intelligence

1 Melee Damage Bonus

2

0

3 Maximum Worn Armor

150 Maximum Health

24 Additional Skill Points

0 Deflection *

4 Damage Reduction

1 Maximum Stamina Points

1 Melee Damage Bonus

12 Base Armor

0 Spell Piercing *

Wisdom

Agility

Perception

6

0

0

6 Lores

0 Bonus Targeting

0 Reaction Time

6 Arcane Resistance

0 Evasion

1 Stamina Regeneration

0 Mana *

20 Movement *

0 Missile Range Bonus *