by Ryn » Tue Aug 01, 2023 7:38 pm
Ryn is barely out of Katarina's room and she runs. She doesn't care to slow herself down for the benefit of fragile humans. A scream is tearing at her throat and she bursts onto the roof, barely remembering flying up the stairs. Her glasses clatter to the ground and her mouth opens to reveal inhumanly sharp teeth but what is released into the night is just the simple wail of a young woman, tinted with rage for lack of understanding of her own sorrow. What insanity that she ever thought she could walk among humans and have one of them like her. And tonight Katarina saw what Ryn had thought she could somehow deny. There's only one thing she does.
Breathing hard she looks out over the city. Somewhere out there is her true calling. A festering sore needing to be excised from the world. She runs and leaps off the edge of the roof. The next one is five stories down but she doesn't care. Flames bellow in her chest at the rushing wind and her pain feeds the flames. She's no agent, no friend, no creature that rolls along the beach in the sun. She is death and she has deceived herself for long enough. The roof below awaits her impact but instead of crushing pain a searing heat tears through her back and the six symmetrical 'scars' on her back open and spill forth a cloud of razor-thin fibers that billow like a cloud of shadow. She stretches them like long dormant limbs and lets the fibers, her kanaf, her 'wings', break her fall. The descent still slams her down onto the concrete with enough force to crack it's surface. She's a monster. A demon from nightmares and too long has she fooled herself.
She flies across rooftops, the ephemeral fibers of her shadowy cloak wrapped around her, woven into the soft embrace of mimicked cloth. She's on the hunt. Somewhere in the city lurks an asura and she will find it. Her path spirals outwards until the highrises of the inner city give way to lower buildings and she finally finds a trail to follow. Out towards the water's edge where large ships unload containers that create a maze of corridors between squat buildings. She leaps from a harbor warehouse roof onto the foot of a crane, climbing it's zig-zagging rungs like a ladder. The smell of the ocean and the clinging oil of the large metal ships cover the trail and she lets her eyes sweep across the expanse of containers and warehouses. Few lights flicker in the night and only one section is lit brightly where containers are still dangling from steel cables and being moved between ship and shore.
Safe for one spot. It's only visible from high up where she's perched even past where the crane's cabin sits. Light spilling out from boarded up windows in an abandoned section. She grabs the steel cable hanging from the crane and slides down until the reaches the hook dangling in mid air. Her blood is still hammering in her ears, the run across rooftops having done little to calm her down. She dangles from the crane's hook for a moment, then flips through the air as she falls, landing on a stack of containers and leaping to a nearby roof. She should be more careful. This asura hid itself well before and this should stand out as sloppy but she ignores her better instincts. The quarry that slipped her grasp before, has taunted her with it's presence is nearby, she knows it.
Silent footsteps sprint across the roof and jump across to the one with the boarded up windows. A skylight is painted over from the inside but it's old and warped and is cracked open just a little. She smells rot and slides into a crouch next to the window. Part of her noticed the obvious trap but she doesn't care. The roof caves in beneath her in too wide a radius to not be intentional. Part of her kanaf snaps out to wrap around support beams, biting into the wood as the fibers cinch tight around it but it too is falling, sawed off in preparation. She hits the ground hard in a cloud of dust and debris and the air is knocked from her lungs. She moves to rise but from the darkness of the warehouse something reaches out and slams down on her. A hand, swollen and distended to almost ten times the size it should be pins her to the ground and she feels her ribs snap.
"Got you." the asura snarls victoriously as it shambles into the moonlight shining through the caved in roof. The spirits bend the flesh they ride but this one is too young, too fresh to have done this. It's arms are much too large, the skin of it's expanding torso must have burst multiple times judging by the rough stitches ranging from fresh to crusted over that zig-zag al over it. Dead skin has peeled off of it in sheets and hardened into whorls of armor and cragged spikes alike. It's legs are small in comparison, giving it a top-heavy gait like a gorilla and it's head all but disappears between it's shoulders. Beady eyes embedded above a maw that splits wide enough the rows of spiked teeth extend into it's torso. It's tongue hangs out of the side and drips of rank saliva hits the concrete floor with a sizzle. "Little thing." the monstrosity laughs with a gurgle.
Ryn's arm squeezes out between the thick fingers and she drives her fingers into the soft meat where the digits meet and bucks herself against the resulting give. Less than an inch but enough for the steel-wire strands of her cloak to unwind and lash around two of the swollen fingers. Dozens of filaments bite into skin until it splits and two of the abomination's fingers separate into neatly cleaved segments. Ryn slips from the loosened grasp under a spray of fetid blood and draws air in rapid shallow gasps, her hands curled into claws.
She charges, ducking around the other arm lashing and sliding on the ground as the meaty appendage swipes the air above her. Still moving she places her foot sideways to catch the ground and lets the momentum pivot her back to her feet. Her arm pulls back and snaps back out at the thing's ribcage, producing the wet crunch of an oversized sternum shattering. The asura roars but Ryn doesn't move, instead driving her palm into the same spot again and again until a massive fist rears back and slams into her from the side. Blurry darkness creeps into her vision for a moment until she feels her shoulder hit the side of a shipping container. The metal dents and the deva crumples to the ground, left arm hanging limply from it's socket and pulling down on the collarbone hanging askew. She spits out a mouthful of blood and winds her kanaf around the ruined arm, binding it against her side with the forearm across her stomach.
With only a low growl in her throat she throws herself at the distorted creature again, stopping short of a thunderous blow slamming into the ground where she would have been. Her own claws grab onto it's cragged skin and pulls her onto it's forearm. She can feel the ragged, hardened scales rip into her shoes as she runs up it's arm and after three steps they're in tatters and yet she takes two more steps to get her to the creature's shoulder, leaving behind bloody footprints on it's arm. The monster's maw opens, threatening to topple Ryn from her spot on it's shoulder right into it's waiting teeth but Ryn produces her dagger and plunges it into neck muscle, throwing herself away from the maw and swinging around the abomination's back. She bites down on the dagger's handle to free up her hand and reaches for it's beady eyes. The thing stumbles backwards, slamming through wooden support beams and crates that break against Ryn's back and drive sharp stabs of pain through her chest but she refuses to let go. Her hand grasps until she finds an eye and her sharp fingernails dig deep until her hand closes around the eyeball and she rips it free.
The monster bucks forward and the knife slips free, sending Ryn tumbling through the air until she hits the ground and rolls multiple yards before coming to a stop. Something in her knee doesn't feel right, sliding in a way things shouldn't. Her ribs hurt with every breath and her useless arm is throbbing in it's sling. Blood drips from a gash on her head and still the fire in her eyes burns electric-blue as she drags herself to her feet. Across from her the creature slumps, blood pouring from it's empty eye-socket and the severed fingers on it's right hand. It's chest heaves and sags unnaturally with each breath and the pallid skin is an almost blackish purple from neck to stomach. "I know you're watching over something in that fortress of yours. What is it?"
Ryn charges, slower but no less determined to throw herself against this monster until the blood in her eyes and the pain in her flesh drown out that of the sobs in her chest. A blow from the lumbering beast meets her head-on and she slides to a stop. She's spent, she knows it. She fought too hard and too reckless, but this Thing will not end her here. Time moves like molasses as her hands close around an industrial steel bracket that came down along with the roof. She flips it upright in the same motion as she spits the handle of her dagger into her hand and wedges it into the end of the bracket in the same movement that slams the other end into the ground. Just in time for the braced point of the magical dagger to meet the flesh between the knuckles of the hand slamming down on her and though steel groans it doesn't budge and splits hand and arm down to the elbow, bisected muscle and bone slamming down on either side of Ryn.
The asura howls in pain and reels backwards, almost toppling it's bulk as it flees, throwing itself through the thin metal wall of the warehouse and after a couple of agonizing moments Ryn hears the sound of a massive body hitting the harbor's water. The deva lets out one last sob and collapses.