He wheezed as he forced his body to move forward, aching muscles in his limbs protesting. Everything hurt yet everything also felt so very powerful. How did that work, he wondered. Over the past few hours it had become so much harder for the young Faunus boy to pick through his thoughts, to organise his memory as he stumbled throughout the town. He wondered where his Papa was only to be suddenly assaulted by smells that splintered into dozens of smaller scents the moment they went up his nose. Attempting to think about the smells was interupted by sounds as loud as a gunshot. Sounds that impossibly came from a broom being knocked over.
There were others walking the streets now too, even with dawn coming so close. Something about them felt odd to him, their limbs long and gangly, hair sprouting like fur from beneath their sleeves. Some small part of his muddled brain told him there was something wrong with him too, standing almost to the shoulders of some of the townsfolk despite his crouched position. He was sure his Mama was still able to pick him up in her arms, just like the lady from before...
The back of his neck bristled angrily at the thought. The lady, the mess around town! It was her fault, the fault of all the outsiders that had come to their town. Especially him! The Human with the funny clothes, the sharp cane. They had brought the monsters behind them, let one inside their walls to attack them. They had to find them, to make them go away. He quickened his stumbling through the streets as he inhaled, searching for their scents amongst the thousands of others.
The air caught in his throat, a choked cough coming from his mouth as a deep bray. The collar of his shirt has grown far too tight around his throat as the night went on and it now halted his breath altogether. He raised his left hand to it in an attempt to pull it loose, almost falling over as the third prop for his weight was removed. Numb digits attempted to wrestle at the loop of fabric with no results. The child peered down at the limb with bleary eyes. The two middle digits had bloated and hardened some time ago into something that resembled an imitation of a cloven hoof, skin that had not changed quick enough to keep up torn with thick hair starting to sprout from the bloody cracks whilst the fingernails were swallowed deeply into the now bony appendages. The remaining fingers twitched uselessly, too short in comparison to do anything despite the talons upon them.
He grunted in frustration as he allowed the enlarged limb to pound heavily back into the ground, returning to the gorilla like stance he had occupied before. His head shifted to look at his other arm. It was familiarly childish, dwarfed in comparison to the rest of his body, but thankfully it still had enough reach to stretch up and tear the fabric from round his throat. He coughed and brayed again, spittle drenching his lips. He whimpered as small tremors of pain rose up his odd limbs, from the legs that for some reason he could not turn his head far enough to see. Has that Beowolf given him something when it has attacked him? When it has scratched across his belly?
That had to be it, when the strangers let it in he reminded himself, there was no way it got in on its own. It was their fault, theirs! His Papa would know what to do, he always knew something about illnesses, about medicine that could help him. He wondered where his Papa was now, somewhere still near the walls perhaps? He inhaled again, trying to find the familiar odour amongst so many strange ones. If it was there the little boy did not find it, lost amongst the scents of blood and smoke and filthy animals.
He awkwardly shambled forwards again, first his feet then his arm, before repeating the odd set of motions again. As the grown ups around him continued forwards he would occasionally stop to glance into the darkened windows nearby, just in case anyone was hiding inside to attempt to avoid the search.
The sun rose.
The new dawn held him mystified as its reflection beamed from the glass. Had it always been so many reds and oranges? Had it always been so bright and so very beautiful? For a moment, however short, his thoughts and eyes were cleared. And his reflection stared starkly back at him. All sounds were drowned out by a distant roaring as he leaned closer in a terrified curiosity.
Gone was the face he knew from the mirror every night when he brushed his teeth to go to bed, with the short horns that peeked out from his hair, with the cheeks his aunt still pulled on sometimes when she greeted him playfully. In its place was a face that quite clearly resembled at its core the cattle he had once seen brought back from a market.
The nose in the centre of the face was flattened, mucus running from the wide nostrils each time they snorted. Below it was a mouth so heavy it could probably have easily crushed the most crunchy apples to pulp even without the teeth that now filled it. Said teeth were simpy wrong, large flat molars with fang like edges pushing out from his gums, displacing his normal teeth that already been present. His brown hair had fallen away to leave the scalp all but bald. What little scalp was left anyways.
His once small horns had erupted at some point from his head, splitting the blistered skin as they went, arching over the back of his head before curving forwards again. Above his left eye had grown what could easily have been a cyst if not for the sharp tip of a new horn sprouting outwards, fluids running from the wound. That could not really be him, could it? He was his Mama's precious little boy, not...not some...
Some monster.
He wept. There was nothing else he felt he could do really besides perhaps curl up somewhere. Tears ran freely from the one part of his face that had largely remained unchanged, the eyes still small in their sockets and clear besides an orange tint to their whites. Mercy from his painful feelings of terror came in the form of shouts from several streets away. His large head swung in response to listen, his new horns shattering the glass with ease in clumsiness.
A part of his tormented mind was grateful as the clouds of beastly thoughts once again obscured snorted the air as several voices were silenced rapidly before the echo of a gunshot split the new silence. The young boys ears perked up in response. It was him! It was him! Him!
He took off running as best he could manage, shouldering past several grown ups as he did so. His Mama and Papa would probably be angry with him later but he had no doubt they would be happy with him once they learned that he had helped make their town safe once again. He slowed himself as he reached the end of an alleyway, peering around the corner. The stranger was there, pressing his foot onto the shoulder of a dead man to pull free his odd slender sword. The blade came free with a schlick only to be swiped clean with a rapid, practived movement.
He wasted no time at all with attempting to attack brazenly. A shout of anger left his throat as the bellow of a bull, alerting the stranger even as he swung his heavier arm up with the inent to crush the human beneath it. The human was far faster than he however, and the tough limb missed its mark to instead slam into the cobblestones below with all the force of a crashing jet. The hoof like portions of the limb barely felt anything as it ploughed straight through the stonework into the soil beneath. The portions that had remained mostly unchanged however snapped brutally under the effort, leading the youngster to screech forth a gurgle of agony.
Working hard to ignore his hurt hand the youngster regarded the human that stood in front of him. He stood prepared with his sword in his right hand and pistol in the left. This one man had caused so much pain, so much trouble to come over their homes in just one night. He had to pay, to hurt for how much hurt he had caused. Even the smells that came off him were odd. He smelled wrong, he smelled dangerous.
He smelled like the moon.
The guttural sound that came from within the boys throat were decidedly beastly to the Hunter before him. Little more than growls and moans. But the voice when he spoke was disturbingly and unmistakably that of a childs far to small for the body that created them.
"It's your faut!" he accused "You did this!" he continued as he wrenched his deformed arm from the ground below and staggered forwards, intent on attacking again. He snarled through his tears.
"It's all your fault!" He screeched as he did his best to launch his powerful body forwards. The human responded so very quickly to him. Had it been any other time then he probably would have watched with awe at the speed, and as it was he only barely saw the steps that followed. The old pistol in his hand faded into a billow of smoke whilst the blade was returned to the sheath at his side. And then, at the last second, the blade was drawn free again alongside a spray of blood from inside the sheath.
An odd heat passed beneath his chin as blade passed by, causing all his muscles to fail him. He hit the ground so hard he rolled across the street, only coming to stop against a wall some distance away. He growled angrily as his gaze caught sight of the human again, stood above somebody's twitching form as he stared down at it. It took the young faunus a moment to fearfully notice that it was his own body that he was looking at, dark blood weeping freely from the severed stump of its neck.
His eyes strained to look downwards hoping to find his body beneath, begging that what he saw was a lie. To his terror there was nothing there but a rapidly growing puddle of brownish red. The sound of footsteps brought his attention to the human now stood above him. His thoughts and actions rapidly went to fury. The muscles in his throat strained to suck in more air to fuel his words.
"It's all your fault, yours, yours!" His blood smothered lips croaked as loudly as they could. He did not stop his verbal assault even as the human retrieved his pistol from its smoky confines, levelling it at his head.
"Papa will get you! He will, he will, he..." a sharp bang of exploding gunpowder was the last thing he knew of the waking world.
Sibyll lowered his pistol again. Though his face betrayed no open emotion his inner thoughts were in turmoil. He had never once himself killed a child, or at least not one that could be called human anymore. He was not even sure if the Celestial Children counted being as distanced from humanity as the offspring of Great Ones were. But the voice of this bull like beast had been unmistakably that of a young child. And how his young voice had been so full of hate for him. In a brief moment of weakness, Sibyll sighed.
Behind him were now more than a dozen of the afflicted, their misshapen bodies stained red. How many more lay ahead of him inside Addersfield's boundraries?
How many more children?
A/N: This right here was a fairly spur of the moment thing that I did a while back, but left to rot in my hard drive. This little work is based on the wonderful story The Longest Hunt by NaughtFiction. Specifically, Blake at one point saves a young faunus boy who is starting to suffer the effects of the beast plague, and I was left to wonder what happened to him. This is my thoughts. Enjoy everyone.