“Strike, Javier,” Alain commanded. Our fearless leader nodded, his tongue lashing out, battering through the head of a spindly spike feeder at the outer perimeter. The body crashed into one behind it, spikes puncturing the second beast in an act of collateral damage. The wounded spike feeder screamed, a cry echoing throughout the room as monster after monster roared in outrage. The chorus of the beasts was punctuated by a turn towards our direction, the various enemies coming to meet our bodies in combat.

To help herd the masses I Electromuted any stray spike feeders that detoured out of our intended path, throwing a Direct Current at them to try and ensure their arrival at our direction. Vera took a similar stratagem, flinging her condensed storms at the sprinting bodies, the rotational forces shredding through the pallid skin before displacing it in chunks throughout the area.

Thus began our gauntlet reminiscent of Culling Night, albeit with higher stakes. While the average ranking of the spike feeders was lower, they were mentally present this time, reacting to our attacks. They paled in comparison to my team, but sheer numbers was an effective maneuver to whittle down defenses before a decisive blow was struck.

Alain weaved through pockets of shadow, emerging briefly enough to amputate stray legs before moving on to the next body, weaving a path of destruction. He would periodically peek out from behind us to recover from the chills of the shadows; even his stamina was nothing compared to the bone-chilling light cast deep within the heart of the shadows.

His hobbling efforts greatly reduced the speed of the spike feeders moving towards us, the injured monsters incensed to rage. Their anger was enough to ignore their crippling wounds, fury overwhelming any self-preservation instinct that may have lingered. Every one taken down was a concerted effort to ensure that no damage was taken; an injury would erode at our own strength. We didn’t have the luxury for glancing wounds in this instance. We were being fed body after body, dispatching them as neatly as they came, piles of corpses channeling the spike feeders to such an extent that our prior herding efforts were no longer needed.

The ones that got by Vera and I filtered through to Mia and Javier. Mia showed off her excellent knife-work, all of her practice with Alain shown in the quantity of blood covering her blades. She danced around with an active usage of Two Heartbeats, effortlessly dodging any attack aimed at her. She was poetry in motion, a whirlwind of steel and death.

For those with hardier forms that her blades would bounce off of, Javier employed his tongue as the final arbiter, bludgeoning the monsters with one brutal flick. Some of the hardier ones would find themselves wrapped by the lilac flesh before being squeezed to bits, the tiered attribute returned to the aether. I could understand the desire to avoiding imbibing spike feeder blood all too easily.

The two worked in tandem flawlessly, ensuring that we had created an extended wall of spike feeder corpses and yet we weren’t anywhere near close to done, the horde unstopping and failing to decrease in number. One body continued after the prior one, undeterred by the destruction in front of it, incensed to act by our mere presence.

“Caution is key,” Javier said. “Don’t take unnecessary risks. Rest back here as long as you need, Alain. Take all the time you need. Don’t go out until you’re ready.”

He wrenched at a fallen slab of stone and chucked it into the throng of bodies, only deterring the frenzied beasts for but a second before they shuffled around the impediment and continued towards us once again.

“Something is terribly wrong,” Vera cried, her voice wobbling, each word trembling as it left her lips. I turned in her direction, seeing her intact form. If that wasn’t the issue then what was it?

I tried to follow her gaze, throwing up my Swollen Fur to ensure no stray attacks would find purchase on my body. I trailed past the trail of bodies she had left strewn around her, limbs dispersed through the area, some skewered onto other spike feeder’s spikes.

I followed her gaze, confused, as that couldn’t be it. She would be desensitized to such atrocities by now. Such was the privilege of being part of the city guard. You learned how to look past the horrors that others would turn from, revulsion unable to be present when life was always at stake. That meant this had to be something far worse.

“Well shit,” Alain grunted with a heavy sigh, concerning me perhaps even more so than Vera’s statement. Whatever that disturbed Vera must have been awful to make Alain react, my sullen companion used to restraint when it came to emotions. The last time he had cursed in front of me was when Vera failed to treat a threat with the proper respect, and that was blunted by merit of the situation being enforced to be non-lethal. So whatever it was had to be a threat, right?

I looked for the intersection of the pair’s gaze, seeing just a misshapen spike feeder heading towards us. It didn’t look any more intimidating than any of the others. If anything, it looked more feeble, more prone to falling over if a strong gust went by it. It was the most humanoid looking spike feeder I had ever seen, its form barely covered in the misshapen keratin spires. The more I stared at the beast, the more I had a growing sense of dread and familiarity. Something about it was all too familiar, and terribly terribly wrong.

As it turned its head in my direction, its form no longer in profile, I felt my dread consume me, the horror that the others had spotted present before my eyes. Gunter’s mangled and mottled gray face atop the monstrous form.

There was no spark of sentience in his dull gray eyes. None of the joy that his cheeks had expressed when talking about his research. Whatever life that was still in that body was gone, this twisted reflection that walked before us animated by only malice and hate. Whatever had happened in this ruins, wherever he was in that time after he departed our safety, this is what had become of him.

In a way, he had become his research, but likely not in a way he would ever have wanted to become. His transformation was host to a bevy of suppositions, little of them able to be verified. This was the culmination of research gone awry, an experiment into things we weren’t meant to know.

How were we supposed to handle this situation? This was someone we once knew, mottled body notwithstanding. It would be a disgrace to pretend he wasn’t once a human, someone who had worked towards the bettering of Titan City. Whatever he had wanted had driven him towards this ruin, his desire to learn and help the city trapped him in the guise of a spike feeder.

Was it better to put him down? To make sure his body would never walk again, frame battered to pieces? All so that he couldn’t commit the evils of the being he’d become, the monster he surely had never wished to join.

Or was there another way? Could we keep him off to the side for Brunhilde to study? A prisoner to understand what happened? Was there room for such an opportunity? Either way it wouldn’t be my choice to make. That was for our leader to decide. When it came to these serious matters, he had to make the call.

“Javier, what do you want us to do with Gunter?” Alain demanded, hamstringing another group of spike feeders. He slid effortlessly amongst the gangly legs, cutting with precision and ease.

Late to the realization, Javier stopped, staring where our eyes intersected. His shock was evident, an audible gasp. But there was no room for hesitation. “Do whatever you can,” he commanded. “Do what you must. We don’t have the time to waver on this. The spike feeders won’t stop while we come to an emotional breakthrough.”

Our agreement was silent and shared. From an opportune shadow Alain’s claws lashed out, severing Gunter’s legs. The shambling spike feeder lurched in front of Vera, no look of recognition on Gunter’s face. His beady gray eyes displayed nothing other than Vera’s reflection, her form trapped in his face. Awareness could not be found.

She punted his body into a broken building, unwilling or unable to decide further, confident enough that the lasting damage would delay the issue for the moment. The horde still had to be dealt with. She had delayed the choice, stalling for time, with hopes that could still go unfulfilled. It was a risk she was willing to take, to keep true to her own faith, and in a way, I admired her for it. The ability to keep her convictions under the duress of battle spoke to a fortitude that I lacked, even after all this time.

I couldn’t afford to get lost in thought though. A claw slid by my face, too much of my attention wasted on Gunter. I took a half-step back, dodging the follow-up thrust from the chitinous form. Its beady eyes lingered from thin stalks detached from its head. It was certainly a unique spike feeder, but its unique form wouldn’t save it from my Direct Current. The electricity thrummed through its body, the scent of cooking meat sizzling. It was a foul scent, a mixture of rotten meat and fish bones. I punched the corpse out of the way, hoping to dispel the scent with sufficient distance, but there wasn’t enough room for the body to travel, leaving the scent to linger.

It would be a bigger burden for the others with smell sensory benefits, those of which I didn’t have. “We might need to reposition. This one reeks,” I demanded.

“Reposition where? We’re already building up a corpse wall,” Mia said, slicing the neck of another spike feeder, her knives sliding through the scaly long neck.

“Forward then,” Javier said. “We’ll build our wall forward. The numbers do look a little smaller than before. Let’s let loose a little. Mow them down. If we don’t pick up the pace they’ll pick us off in this war of attrition.”

“You know what you’re saying, right?” Alain said.

“Keep the property damage to a minimum. We’re not trying to collapse Titan City, remember? You’ve already shown restraint. Cut loose a little more, but not enough to destroy everything, alright?”

“Fine,” Alain replied. His claws lashed out, cutting a path through the amassed beasts in front of him, the bodies cleaved in twain. They neatly fell into two halves, with no other structural damage present on the rotting buildings.

“Let’s keep it moving then,” Vera replied, barreling forward with her outstretched horns. Her charge slammed the spike feeders aside, bodies impaled on other errant spikes, collateral damage unavoidable for the beasts. A thin coat of her gathered gales swirled around her body, diverting any unwanted contact from the monsters with a forceful redirection.

We tightened our formation behind her, Alain diving back into our midst from our shadows, heading towards the fountain at the center of the open area. It was a dry thing, the only hint that it was a fountain present in its structure. Its open basin hadn’t seen water in years, whatever structure that fed into it long neglected. It was also bereft of spike feeders, the beasts seemingly unwilling to enter the structure. It would be the perfect place to make a stand. A circle to keep our backs to. The center of the conflict.

From within this chaos we could create order, a zone where no spike feeder would be allowed to live. Our will enforced by our very teeth and claws. The beasts only understood violence. We couldn’t afford to hold back any longer.

“Get into the fountain,” Vera demanded, in sync with our unstated observations. She barreled forward, the bodies crumpling out of the way. The more sturdy ones were trampled under her feet, her unrelenting force unable to be ignored.

“Let me get a sense of how we’re doing,” I said, focusing on my electroreception. I didn’t like what I saw.