This chapter is heavy in some places. Speaking of heavy, though, despite being the tallest, Tio's probably about half the weight of the next heaviest party member.
Having a lower body shaped like a human's makes a big difference.
Beta: Zaru
"Not something I'd eaten, but... someone?"
The words hung heavy in the air between her and Centorea.
For a moment, Rachnera almost imagined she'd taken her threads and ensnared those words, forcing them to hang in the air between them forever.
It was a strange feeling.
Bittersweet, but freeing.
Rachnera had no idea that those words had been weighing her down so much.
So even if she'd ruined everything by speaking them out loud, in a bizarre sort of way, she felt better for it.
No, it wasn't all that strange, really.
They'd been kind to her when no one else had even seen her as a person, and she just didn't want to keep secrets from people like that, that was all.
Not from-
"I see. Forgive me, Rachnera, I am uncertain what sort of response you are expecting." Centorea began calmly. "But the only one I can offer is that I don't care."
They were being played with.
He and Tio were being treated like a game, like they were just toys for these apes.
Hemmed in by a half circle of massive Red Apes, a half circle of Red Apes centered around an ape Haruhiro was pretty sure was twice Tio's size at the minimum, and they were being approached by… two of them?
Aside from what he'd dubbed the Great Ape lounging on the fallen tree, the other Red Apes had slowly dispersed, spreading out, getting comfortable.
But watching, always watching.
Instead, the apes looking to challenge himself and Tio were a pair, one a brawny, bulky thing easily as tall as Tio, the other smaller, thin and lean, barely disturbing the water as the two beasts circled them.
It was painfully obvious what was happening; they'd been paired up with suitable opponents, like fighters in a prize fighting ring.
… Well, it didn't matter, Haruhiro decided after a moment, relaxing his shoulders with a huff of breath.
Two less Red Apes to deal with later.
Two less Red Apes between them and getting out of these damn woods alive.
Two less Red Apes with a chance to hurt any of the others.
… Huh, this actually wasn't so bad, was it?
Tio, meanwhile, had figured out more or less the same things as Haru, but the one thing she didn't get was…
Why was he smiling?
He was just so… calm.
This wasn't the first time that Tio thought that Haru's height was some godly mistake.
… Because sometimes, standing beside Haru made her feel so small.
And it was a pretty good feeling.
"... What did you just say?" Rachnera began, the words slow, weighed down by her own disbelief.
"Ah, I beg your pardon, I did not intend to sound so callous-" Centorea backtracked, a hint of fluster in her tone.
"Callous!? What the hell do you mean 'callous'!?" Rachnera burst out angrily. "I just told you that I ate a person, no, a human, and you're worried about sounding cold!?"
Centorea didn't seem angry, or even taken aback, at the further clarification.
The one from the dangerous predator that was currently yelling at her, and flailing razor sharp claws around.
"It is just as I've told you, Rachnera." Centorea replied, even-toned. "I do not understand what is right or wrong, when it comes to consuming the flesh of other living things. I am aware that the idea of you eating another sentient creature seems unpleasant, but answer me this; given other options, would you do so again?"
"Of course not!" Rachnera snapped back. "Do you think I wanted-!?"
… Centorea was smiling.
Centorea was smiling.
Why was Centorea smiling?
Why?
Why?
Whywhywhywhy!?
"R-Rachnera?" Centorea, of all things, began to slowly, carefully close the distance between them- "-please-" instead of running away like she should be-"-deep breath-"not again!- "hyper-ventilating."
Dimly, Rachnera was aware that Centorea was trying to speak, but the only sound she could make sense of was the blood thundering in her ears.
Closer, closer, a hand reached out in her direction, that lovely, noble and not monstrous in the least face of Centorea's radiating concern of all things!
The distance had all but vanished when Rachnera recoiled in a blind panic.
"Don't touch me!" Rachnera screamed out, sweeping out an arm to ward away that damning smile as she turned violently away.
Crimson filled the air, and a sharp, strangled gasp of pain shattered the silence to pieces, along with her heart.
… She'd always known what kind of monster she really was.
This just proved it.
Centorea stood there in silence, gazing in stricken confusion at the blood dripping down her outstretched arm and down onto the soil.
Rachnera's limbs clattered awkwardly together as she backed away, lavender hair whipping to and fro as she shook her head.
"I-I-I didn't mean to!" She stammered out, words tangling together in a panicked jumble. "I-It w-was an a-a-accident!"
Centorea slowly lowered her sluggishly bleeding arm to her side, face an impassive, stony mask.
When both hands had returned to her side, her fists clenched, her eyes narrowed and her teeth grit.
A front hoof stomped forward into the dirt with enough force that Rachnera could almost feel it.
"C-Centorea! W-wait, please, I didn't mean-!"
The Centaur was upon her before the desperate excuse had even finished traveling it's way past her lips.
"I don't understand." She whispered tremulously. "Why is it… why must it be so different?"
"There is no way to know for certain, Yukio." Iormu returned, voice calm and soothing, the wrap of her coils gentle and comforting. "But the odds are high, I'm afraid. Winter may come and go, but there is ice in this world that never truly melts."
"So I'll outlive… all of them?" Yukio murmured hopelessly.
Haru, Cerea, and Rachnera were extremely unlikely to make it to a single century of life.
Even if violence or misfortune did not claim them, passing away before half that time had passed would not be all that strange.
Apparently it was not all that strange for a Giant-kin such as Tio to live a century or two, but...
If what Iormu had said would prove true for her, Yukio would barely even age in that amount of time. Such was the way for those born of the elements, or those descendents of union between Elemental and mortal where the blood of the planet bred true, such as the Yuki-Onna.
… She should not have asked, but how was she to know that her attempt to comfort Iormu would lead to this?
Iormu had been dozing, and her dreams had shifted into a nightmare from which she awoke gasping and pale.
Yukio had gently urged the distraught Jormungand to confide in her, and had learned that this was far from the first time she'd let members of the younger races out of her sight for what seemed only a moment, only to find they'd passed her by in seemingly less time than it took to blink.
It had struck a chord with her, and the Yuki-Onna had found herself wrapping her arms around the quiet serpent as the sorrowful question rang through her mind; of what would become of Iormu once the decades had passed, and she and the rest of their precious companions had passed on?
It was like lightning from the sky, the revelation that struck her then.
… She had never considered it, but her dear grandmother was perhaps the only person she'd met who could rival Iormu in age.
Did that not mean that she too, would outlive…
Yukio could still feel the way Iormu had cringed against her, as she realized that she had accidentally given that awful question voice.
She had not wished to know that she would lose all of them, no matter how desperately she struggled on their behalf.
Perhaps that was why Yuki-Onna struggled to feel. To protect their hearts from losing loved ones whose lives would pass them by as swiftly as the wind.
With both slim, womanly arms and winding, scaled coils, Iormu gave a reassuring, gentle squeeze to the pale beauty whose head rested against her bosom.
"I am aware it is perhaps little consolation, but there is at least one among us you will not outlive." Iormu whispered.
"Huh…? What do you mean? Who are you-?" In her distress, Yukio had momentarily forgotten the train of thought that had led her into the dark and cold place her thoughts inhabited.
"Myself, of course." Iormu smiled softly. "My kind do not age in the usual sense, any more than we are birthed in the usual way."
She herself had been 'born' as a young woman after all, perhaps not as 'developed' as she was now, but she'd been fully capable of safely bearing children from the moment her awareness began.
Luckily, without having to worry about the monthly internal bleeding that other adult women had to worry about-
"It has been difficult, hasn't it?" Yukio's breathy voice cut through her musings. "There there."
"... Eh?" At some point, a soft and pleasantly cool hand had made its way up to the top of her head, and was currently gently stroking her hair.
Wine red eyes blinked in slow confusion to find that a tenderly smiling Yukio was patting her head.
"... Forgive me, Yukio, but might I ask what you're doing?" Was what Iormu settled on eventually.
The Yuki-Onna blinked her deep blue eyes a few times, pursing her lips with a hum as she did and staring up towards her own outstretched hand with a look of innocent curiosity.
"Your smile seemed... lonely." Yukio concluded after a moment, meeting her eyes with a decisive nod. "I do not like loneliness very much."
Iormu stared at her in quiet surprise for several long seconds, before her expression warmed and several muffled giggles spilled past the fingers she pressed over her lips.
"No, I can't say I'm fond of the feeling either." The Jormungand chuckled.
"We will remain... won't we?" Yukio began slowly, her expression turning wistful for just a moment.
"We will." Iormu dropped her hand, draping that arm around the slender ice maiden's shoulders once more.
"Then... no more lonely smiles." Yukio firmly declared.
"I'll hold you to that, if you do the same."
"... Agreed."
The submerged nature of the dead grove made footing a little treacherous, deep in some places and barely more than a thin film of water over the grass in others, changing without warning.
Luckily, forests remained the terrain he was most comfortable fighting in, so putting aside the water it was business as usual.
For him, anyways; Haruhiro suspected that his erstwhile foe had little experience being gutted like a fish, and watched impassively as the ape darkened the waters with its blood, flopping and splashing away the last moments of its life.
Meanwhile, the big ape that had challenged Tio was swaying like a drunk about to topple.
The dizziness plaguing it probably stemmed from the moment it tried to slip under her shield, and the steel rim of said shield had formed a crease down the center of its head, almost deep enough to reach between its eyes.
Tio kicked it over with a noisy splash, and the twitching corpse floated there, bobbing up and down.
She'd done a good job of sticking to the plan, and they'd gained a bit of distance from the clearing where the Great Ape lounged, watching with some beastly caricature of a smirk as they fought for its amusement.
It was just like Death Spots; something about these abnormally sized monsters seemed to make them smarter than their smaller counterparts.
Maybe that was part of the reason that big bastards like that were often called 'boss monsters' by the other reservists.
Well, they might as well make the most of the time it spent lazing around like that.
After all, that casual, bassy grunt it just gave had sent the other apes meandering down from the trees.
Circling, swinging, making excitable, almost playful hoots and shrieks.
… If they were just going to play around with Tio and himself, they'd just have to learn the hard way what kind of stakes this game had.
In unrelated news, (probably) being a teenager wasn't doing him any favors, because Tio had quietly backed against him, and because of the height difference and the curvy nature of the Ogress, the only thing pressed lightly against his back was Tio's rather abundant rear.
Perhaps mistaking the nature of his weary sigh, Tio murmured back; "Don't worry Haru, we got this!"
… She didn't even do a bad job of sounding like she believed it.
All six eyes screwed tightly shut to ward off the sight of the incoming blow, Rachnera couldn't have evaded Centorea's sudden rush even if she'd tried.
When her vision did return, it was little wonder that it had just as much trouble comprehending the current situation as the rest of her senses had.
Rather than pain, her cheek was currently being quite comfortably pressed against a warm and indescribably soft expanse of white.
Smooth-skinned limbs of supple but undeniable sturdiness were gently encircling her, one of which assumedly was attached to the hand that had woven itself gently into her hair, and was pressing her cheek firmly but gently against the whiteness.
She was being hugged, she concluded after a moment.
She, Rachnera Arachnera, had just confessed her dark little secret, and once again drawn blood with her uselessly sharp claws- despite the pains she'd gone through to be careful around her softer companions- and had just found herself hugged for it.
"... What are you doing?" Was the first thing she managed to ask as her eyes began to feel wet, even in spite of that.
"Hugging you." Came the simple reply.
"Well stop it… please stop."
"No, I don't believe I shall." Centorea bluntly refuted, her lower hand instead gently rubbing Rachnera's lightly quivering back. "You will run away if I do that."
Her silence was probably answer enough, because Centorea's next words were "I thought as much."
"... Why?" If Centorea's tits weren't a whole cupsize bigger and at least several degrees warmer, she'd barely be able to tell their boobs apart; that dumb lovely Centaur was holding her way too tightly.
Why else would she have a lump in her throat that forced her to croak out her words?
"Someone I owe a great deal to appears to be greatly distressed by something." Centorea replied softly from above her. "As if I'll allow that."
"Owe me? You don't owe me anything-"
Centorea cut her off in an instant.
"Haru would be dead, if not for you."
"... I could have just eaten him, you know."
"And I fail to see why that is a mark against you, rather than in your favor."
"... Huh?"
"You could have killed Haru. You could have eaten Haru." Centorea declared flatly. "In fact, you could have just left him, and in all likelihood, we would have been none the wiser. Perhaps it slipped mention in all the excitement, but until we met face-to-face, none of us had the slightest clue you were there."
Rachnera flinched, as much as she was permitted to while pressed tightly against Centorea's bosom, anyways, as the mental image struck her with more force than when Centorea trampled her.
They would have kept searching, she knew.
Not just Cerea, but Yukio and Tio as well.
They wouldn't have given up on Haru, and odds were, they would have searched, and searched, and died somewhere down in the dark with his name upon their lips.
"It's not like I really saved him." Rachnera denied, and it sounded weak, even to her. "I probably wouldn't have made it in time without Iormu healing him."
"And while I am, of course, immensely grateful to Iormu, that does not change the fact that you brought him to her. Haru would never have made it that far. Not just Haru, but myself, and Yukio, and Tio, and even Iormu. We would have never been brought together had it not been for your actions."
There were dozens and dozens of words all tangled together on the tip of her tongue, put the ones that tumbled free were;
"... You really do need to let me go." Rachnera whispered, and predictably, Centorea's grip tightened rather than loosened. "No seriously, you're still bleeding on me, you silly girl."
"O-oh!" That made Centorea release her rather quickly, face flush with embarrassment. "F-forgive-"
Rachnera cut her off with a finger across Centorea's lips.
"Nuh uh. You don't get to apologize for bleeding when I'm the one that made you bleed." As she said that, Rachnera gripped Centorea's wrist and turned it so that the long lacerations her claws had left behind were facing upwards.
Working her jaw about gently, a thin sheen of purple was glistening across her tongue when it slipped out from between Rachnera's lips.
Gently she lapped at the wounds, numbing them with her venom and cleaning the worst of the mess away at the same time.
Centorea shivered, and Rachnera felt her heart lurch in her chest, but the glance sent upwards revealed that it was nothing more than the chill of wet skin causing the slight shiver, and Rachnera sighed internally with relief.
Rather, Cerea's smooth cheeks seemed to be flushing with color, and she was watching the motion of Rachnera's tongue very, very closely.
In spite of the situation, Rachnera couldn't help but feel a tiny spark of playful sadism return, and watched the Centaur's fascinated gaze follow the slow, seductive swirl that the tip of her tongue drew across torn flesh.
Cheeks flushed and breath held, Centorea didn't have the faintest idea that the way she was lightly biting her lower lip served only to egg the seductive spider on.
'Well well... for all the love and devotion our noble knight has for Haru… seems she can't always keep those pretty blue eyes on target~'
… It was immensely flattering to Rachnera to know that not only Haru saw her as a woman.
But, the show- task- was soon over, and Rachnera slowly withdrew her tongue back behind her plush, pale lips with a faint but audible slurp.
That broke the spell- for both of them- and Centorea averted her reddened features as Rachnera ducked her head in embarrassment, taking refuge beneath her bangs as she hastily produced silk and began to deftly bandage the wounds.
"I really am sorry." Rachnera murmured, the sultry mischief bleeding out of her tone all at once.
"I know."
"I didn't mean to." She continued, or maybe tried again, she didn't know herself.
"I'm aware."
"I can't take it back, though."
"True." Centorea agreed.
"... I don't know what to do." At last she admitted the question that had plagued her all that time.
A hand gently lifted her chin, and Rachnera quite abruptly found herself lost in clear, honest blue eyes.
Like the open, endless sky.
"I cannot answer that for you, Rachnera." Centorea suggested calmly, gently. "But if you are asking me nonetheless, then I can at least suggest that if you have done wrong, atone for it by doing good."
"... You make it sound so easy." Rachnera smiled helplessly back, dropping her hands now that her work was done.
"Well personally, I believe saving Haru was a very good start." Centorea softly smiled. "But I must confess that I may possess something of a bias towards the topic." She continued, with a low, pleasant chuckle.
"... That's what you meant, wasn't it?" Rachnera said suddenly. "When you said you didn't care…?"
Centorea nodded her head immediately.
"Indeed. Nothing you could do would outweigh that simple truth, in my mind."
This time, when Centorea's arms wrapped around her and drew her in, Rachnera didn't try to escape.
"No matter how often I say it, I doubt I'll ever feel I've said it enough." This time, the lump was in Cerea's throat. "Thank you, Rachnera, thank you so, so much."
Several long seconds passed in hushed silence before a pair of dark limbs, sheathed in silk and tipped in claws, rose up to return the Centaur's embrace.
[Swat] to nudge the ape's fist of course.
Slice the seam along the ribs.
Duck to let Tio [Bash] it away.
Circle around her to meet the next charge.
Kick the knee, slip beneath flailing arms, jump on its back, and don't give it the slightest chance to get back up.
Take advantage of the lull to check on the Great Ape.
Still lazing around, enjoying the show.
Keep fighting, keep killing, don't let them get Tio, don't stop moving-
'Huh?'
It was as if it had been just waiting for him to look away, just waiting for the distance between Tio and him to grow just enough.
There was a great rush of air, and then the Great Ape was just gone.
Then water was spraying everywhere, and he was swept off his feet by the brackish tidal wave that followed the Great Ape dropping down from the sky and scattered the battlefield in one titanic impact.
Haruhiro wasn't the only one flung away; the nearby apes were swept up and sent tumbling just as surely.
The only one who barely managed to remain standing was Tio; stumbling and nearly dropping her mace, but catching herself at the last moment.
It was in no way a good thing.
Tio straightened and twisted to face the new threat, just in time for a meaty fist bigger than Haruhiro's entire torso to slam into her side.
A confused look crossed her face as her body folded around the blow, and then she was gone; a twisted tangle of limbs and ruined steel slowly bouncing its way across the water in a series of slow, gruesomely languid fashion.
The first thing to arrest her path was a tall tree stump; Tio crashed right through it and left behind a large, curved section of metal that Haruhiro dimly noted was her breastplate.
A great plume of brackish water filled the air as Tio slammed to the ground and skidded for what must have been a dozen feet; parting the waves and scarring the ground like a star fallen to the earth.
The waters soon returned though, lapping greedily at the still form that lay face down upon the ruined earth.
Numb with shock, Haruhiro felt his vision blur and haze at the edges as Tio dug one armored hand into the earth and tried in vain to struggle back to her feet.
Ruby red eyes dim and unfocussed, nearly indistinguishable from the blood pouring down her face.
Someone screamed her name from a place far, far away as a bestial, almost human voice filled the air with gruesome, hooting laughter, but Haruhiro didn't have any attention to spare; he had to get to her now, now before-
A single red eye snapped back into focus, and Tio flashed him a kind, but apologetic smile.
Haruhiro was still screaming her name and desperately running towards her when the trees around the battered Crusader emptied themselves, and Tio was swarmed under by a mass of shrieking, clawing, biting red.
It hurts
They were so proud of us, never doubting us, even once
I'm scared
Just stick together, they said, and there will be nothing to fear
It hurts
But every direction we could see there was someone who needed our help right now
Help me
The farms were burning, the people were dying, the - were roaring
I'm sorry
Where had Nish gone?
I'm so scared
Why had it torn off Rohe's skirt, what was it-
I'm-
Oh, this is where the dream turns red
This is the part where nothing makes sense until they ask;
"Why are you the only one still alive?"
A raw, ragged roar more befitting a berserker than a Thief tearing from his lips, Haruhiro went right through whatever thing had barred his way, slashing and slashing until he left nothing but blood and meat floating in his wake.
Ripping, tearing, no color but red in his vision as Haruhiro desperately, savagely fought his way to the thrashing pile of bodies where Tio had vanished.
His vision throbbed and splintered as a spike of pain shot from his eyes and to his brain, but the warm feeling trickling down his eyes didn't even register as Haruhiro staggered and splashed, caught himself and kept swinging.
The thing hurtling towards him didn't register either; not until it had struck him in the chest and knocked him on ass, anyways; shattering his focus the way only a sudden, total loss of air could do.
Gasping, Haruhiro reached down to fling aside the thing that had fallen into his lap; only to stop entirely with nerveless fingers wrapped around it as his mind made sense of what 'it' was.
The object that had smashed what little breath remained from his burning lungs was an arm; an arm with no body attached to it, the flesh where a shoulder should be instead torn and stretched thin; like a cloth pulled until it snapped.
The arm was covered in rusty red fur and tipped in bloody, twitching claws.
The relief he felt at a familiar voice filling the air was quickly smothered by how wrong that voice sounded.
A wild, ghastly sound, high in pitch to the point where it made his own throat ache in sympathy; it was like the sound was trying to claw and tear its way up the throat and out the lips.
The sound was laughter.
The source of the ghoulish, strangely erotic laughter was unmistakenly Tio.
The heaving, thrashing press of bodies where she disappeared scattered in every direction; almost like the surging tide of beasts that had swarmed her under had reversed itself.
Rising to her full, commanding height, clad more in water and gore than cloth and steel, Tio threw back her head and laughed and laughed as the horrid sound shook and jiggled her frame.
Smile stretched wide and teeth bared, white and sharp, ruby eyes opened to their fullest and gleaming with a fiendish, ecstatic light.
Almost as if it was unrelated, on all fours before her was a shrieking, wildly struggling Red Ape; almost as large as she was and near mindless with fear.
The source of its fear was likely the grip she had on it; of her armor, only Tio's gauntlets remained, and the gauntlet clutching the beast by the back of the head was clenching tighter, and tighter.
The fingers of her other hand were gripping it by the scruff of the neck, like some unruly child, and they too, were clenching tighter and tighter.
Tio blinked once, and the laughter stopped as she became aware of the futilely struggling beast in her grasp.
Eyes heavy-lidded and accompanied by a languid, sultry smirk, Tio hoisted the ape into the air above her head.
The laughter started again, tearing the silence to pieces as surely as she tore the ape's head from its shoulders, blood splattering wildly across her face.
With callous disregard, the corpse was dropped into the gory swamp as Tio's blissful grin swept across the stunned and silenced forms of the prey huddling all around her.
Sluggish crimson trails oozed down Tio's naked, heaving breasts, as if she were some primeval berserker anointed with blood; both her own and that of her enemies.
Blessed by ancient spirits of carnage and slaughter; charged with the sacred task of scarring the land itself with countless atrocities.
Haruhiro could never quite remember when it started; fear shook free the limbs of one of the many, many things gripped in hushed silence by the gruesome and lovely spectacle that was Tio.
Something moved, panicked, tried to escape.
Tio's eyes brightened in elation, and the screams and tearing of flesh were drowned out by the sound of laughter.
Even the Great Ape could only watch in mute shock as the carnage engulfed everything.
Haruhiro was no different.
This wasn't the first time he'd felt something like this, he was vaguely aware.
A furious outpouring of emotion and then… nothing.
Haruhiro thought that maybe his emotions were a finite sort of thing, and if he felt too much at once then he'd kind of just run out for a while.
Or, maybe the disconnect he was feeling was because the laughing Ogress, the one that was currently breaking all her toys, was ignoring him.
No, not ignoring.
It was like Tio literally didn't know he was there.
She'd nearly trampled him to get at one of the Red Apes he'd been fighting, and she hadn't even so much as glanced his way when he'd dove out of hers.
Which was still a lot better than the worst case scenario where Tio targeted him as well.
… She would have never forgiven herself if she hurt him.
But, he'd noticed something strange.
… The Red Apes weren't even trying to flee.
And once again, the Great Ape was just…
Watching patiently, as if waiting for something to happen.
Haruhiro never did get the chance to learn whether it was a beginning or an end it waited for.
One of the apes had tried to climb a tree, when Tio first began tearing its brethren limb from limb.
Whether it was trying to flee, or gain a higher vantage point was never discovered.
It had made it halfway up when Tio had slammed both fists into the base of the dead tree.
The tree had shook from branches to roots, and the ape had fallen.
Tio had been there to catch it, and when she caught it, she broke it over her knee, before leaving the helpless brute to drown in the muck.
The rest of the apes hadn't tried to gain distance; perhaps they understood on some instinctive level that the delightedly cackling Ogress would chase them no matter how far they went.
And so they fought.
Biting, scratching, battering and grappling.
They fought with all the violence and desperation of cornered animals, and it amounted to nothing.
They fought, and Tio killed them.
Long claws gouged at the deceptively slender limb that had just forced its way down the ape's maw, and then that supple limb wrenched itself free, leaving the ape to choke and gurgle away the last of its life as the Ogress flung aside the lump of meat her fist had taken with it.
The ape that lunged at her from behind was the largest left alive, save for the alpha.
It seemed much shorter after Tio kicked its knee in with such force that she nearly tore its leg in half.
It was almost graceful, the way she lifted her heel all the way above her head.
It was significantly less graceful the way its skull popped like a rotten fruit beneath that heel as she brought it back down.
Tio caught an ape in midair and hugged it strongly around the waist. It beat its fists against her smoothly muscled back in desperation, and she hugged it even stronger until its spine snapped like kindling.
The skulls of two apes became one in a series of sickening wet impacts as the gleeful giankin smashed their heads together over and over until no one could have told the two apart.
The apes never had a chance to reorganize; any attempts to do so resulted in throats quietly slit or tendons callously severed; a bloody-eyed shadow whispered and danced through the carnage.
Rarely did it actually kill, but killing wasn't necessary when crippled prey would quickly draw the brutal interest of the violence with laughing pink lips and smiling red eyes.
Just as the Red Apes had massacred every inhabitant of the forest they could get their claws on, the giggling atrocity broke and shattered and tore until there was nothing left of the apes but broken bodies and bloody meat.
Only when the last ape perished with slim tanned arms wrapped around its broken neck did the Great Ape move, as if it had been waiting for that moment all along.
His head hurt.
He'd been using the power of his eyes for too long, when Haruhiro tried to focus on the Great Ape's lines, his entire vision would turn red and pulse, and a sound not unlike that of a heartbeat would pound through his skull.
He could probably pull it off once more before the headache grew too much for him to focus- since losing focus would get him killed, Haruhiro had to conclude that he wasn't going to be all that much use in the fight.
Well, maybe if he could give Tio one good shot, that could be enough and why was the Great Ape hiding a goddamn war club behind its seat!?
No seriously, he could understand if it had a big old tree branch or something but this thing was carved, polished and had a leather wrapped handle and chord at the bottom just like Tio's mace!
… Tio's… mace?
When he looked at it again, the club did look big enough for someone of Tio's stature to swing around in two hands…
Well, the why wasn't important, so much as the fact that the monster with arms as long as Tio's entire body now had a weapon as long as his entire body.
If Tio went charging in there as wildly as she had been doing, the big bastard was probably gonna take her head off.
It was just waiting for them, three limbs on the ground and the other resting its weapon across one boulder-sized shoulder.
"Tio!" Haruhiro called out, not really expecting her to listen.
So he was surprised that her head immediately whipped his way, confusion tugging at the edges of the grin that seemed almost etched onto her face.
He was even more surprised when her gaze focussed fixedly above his head, and her eyes seemed to clear for the briefest of moments as her gaze slowly lowered to meet his.
"You're okay now that we're here." She whispered softly, gently, her usual warm smile in place as if it had never left.
Then the madness came back with a vengeance, and she whirled back towards the Great Ape with teeth bared.
… Who was she talking to?
He didn't have time to wonder, because that's when Tio lowered her head and charged.
Predictably, the swing of the ape's club met her before she'd even crossed half the distance, and Haruhiro let out an explosive sigh of relief as she actually moved to defend herself.
Dropping to all fours in a beastlike crouch, Tio sank beneath the howling gale that the ape's backhanded swing left in its wake- only to get swatted away as its free hand smacked her.
Luckily, Tio hit a deep patch of water and, despite how hard she slapped down, was up on her feet before the massive spray had even fallen back to the water's surface.
Unluckily for Haruhiro, the Great Ape made its next swing at the nearer target, which was him.
Haruhiro sidestepped sharply to avoid being hammered into the ground like some kind of squishy nail- his back hit a tree and he swung himself around it, putting the trunk in between himself and the follow-up that sent bark and splinters everywhere.
… First time he'd appreciated how big the trees were.
That was about where his luck ran out- the water on the other side of the tree was much deeper, and Haruhiro's momentum suddenly lost itself to the waist deep water.
The Great Ape didn't have the luxury of capitalizing on his vulnerability, though, its attention seized rather decisively by the flailing arm that slapped it across the cheek as the improvised missile- most of a Red Ape's torso- went sailing past its head.
With a deep bellow, it loped off towards Tio- he couldn't see all of what happened, but Tio's cackling intermingled with the explosive splash of water suggested she was at least still in the fight.
More importantly, he was finally out of the beast's sight line- time to act like a proper Thief.
The Great Ape had overextended when it lunged at Tio- the ability to use weapons and the skill with wielding them were very different things- the club let it hit harder and reach farther, both dangerous things, but looking at it another way, that was all it was.
Tio, for all the beast-like ferocity she was displaying, was still a more skilled fighter, and the abnormal strength and swiftness that her berserker state granted her had, while not eliminated, at least lessened the gap in basic physical ability.
And it showed when the actual physical distance between the two shrank.
There was a meaty, resonant thud, and the ape's upper body rocked to one side as several white jagged somethings went flying away from the brawling titans when Tio's armored fist landed, and landed hard.
… He was pretty sure the ape had just lost a few teeth.
From his hiding place behind the tree, Haruhiro leaned out, trying to get a sense of the pathway he could take towards the other two.
Tio went flying again, kicked away by the rearing Great Ape, when Haruhiro began to move, as quietly and swiftly as he could- taking advantage of the awful noise the two larger combatants made to muffle his passage through the shallows.
The Ogress made it back to her feet, only to leap to the side as the club came down from above.
This time, the water beneath the massive blow was shallow, enough to send murky, bloody water spraying everywhere, but in quantities Haruhiro could deal with.
The red returning to his eyes and pain spiking through his skull, Haruhiro went right through the murky shroud and whirled in with his dagger clenched in both hands.
A stricken bellow filled the air as the Great Ape violently recoiled its weapon arm- leaving behind both hand and weapon.
Haruhiro staggered and fell as the pain spiked through his skull, and the Great Ape's blood crashed down onto his head.
Unbalanced by the sudden, bewildering loss, the Great Ape staggered onto all fours, bloody stump sinking within the waters.
With a maddened howl of fury and confusion, the Great Ape lunged back in towards the downed Thief-
Only for its head to sharply reverse direction as its own war club smashed brutally across its face, breaking off both the top foot or so of the weapon and its bottom jaw in one sickening crack that echoed off the dead waters and dead trees.
The garbled shriek that ripped from its broken maw was abruptly silenced by the now jagged end of the club, thrust into its throat like some oversized skewer.
With a high-pitched howl of fury, Tio withdrew one gauntleted fist and slammed it as hard as she could against the butt of the buried club.
The ape lurched, and both the club, and Tio's upper body were engulfed in a torrent of blood.
As the Great Ape toppled, Haruhiro made it to his feet just in time to cover his ears.
Bloody golden locks whipping about violently, Tio threw back her head with a feral scream of triumph that sent waves across the water and shook every one of his bones.
Head tilted towards the sky, Tio slowly sank to her knees, her gory hands splashing into the water as she slumped.
The fallen Great Ape gave one last shudder and went still, leaving a tense silence in its wake.
Slowly, the fiendish glow bled out from Tio's eyes, and she began to blink slowly, once, twice.
As if waking from a long slumber, she sluggishly turned her head to and fro, surveying the scene of apocalyptic carnage that radiated out before her in every direction.
Haruhiro watched quietly as the shivering seemed to grow in intensity with every passing second, until at last her gaze fell upon him. As if shaking it off, the keen ferocity fell away from those painfully wide eyes, leaving behind the soft ruby orbs of the Tio he knew and adored.
'Ha-" He watched her eyes brighten in joy as she reached out in his direction.
He watched as the gauntlets caked with so much blood and gore that they might never be clean again reached her eyes. "...ru?" Her joy in her tone sputtered and died like a drowned candle, leaving behind little more than fear.
He watched her eyes widen in horror and the color drain from her cheeks.
She met his eyes and her expression quivered.
She turned her head almost violently, ducking away as if to hide behind her bloody curtain of hair.
He watched those hands that still managed to look small and dainty, despite being larger and stronger than his could ever hope to be, as they began to powerlessly drop.
He watched her whole body jolt in surprise as a noisy splash filled the air, and flushed with embarrassment at the fact that catching those powerless hands had nearly spilled him into the muck.
Haruhiro managed to land on his knees instead as Tio's head shot up in surprise, and slowly, almost painfully began to turn his way.
That quivering expression that didn't suit her at all met his gentle smile, and Tio flinched once again as shock slipped past that subtle boundary that turned it into wonder.
"Welcome back, Tio." Was all he said.
Tio's whole body shook like a leaf caught in a gale as her voice trembled back, "I was so scared… I thought I was gonna lose y-you… and t-then I saw red and it hurt and I was so scared and-"
"Me too." Gently, Haruhiro deposited Tio's shaking hands into her lap as he rose to his feet. "It's okay… we're alive… I'm just glad you're okay… Tionishia."
Her cheeks scrunched up, and moisture pooled at the bottoms of those watery red eyes as Tio's sniffle shook her bloodstained body.
Haruhiro carefully draped his arms around the back of her neck, and pulled her head against his chest.
Her hands rose and took great, fabric tearing fistfuls of his shirt as Tio gave another sniffle, and another, until sniffling turned into sobbing, and grew louder, and louder.
Haruhiro said nothing, merely embracing the hurt, terrified young woman as she cried and cried, soothingly rubbing the back of her head with a tender smile on his face.
A while had passed now, he was pretty sure.
He was pretty lucky that Tio was so warm, because he was soaking wet, and being knee-deep in water certainly wasn't helping him dry off.
He, or rather they, were also lucky that apparently Tio's berserker state helped her heal faster as well, because while she was still cut and bruised and otherwise beaten up, she also didn't seem to be making any definitive progress towards bleeding to death.
Seemed like a good time to focus on the little things, since he had no idea how to deal with the larger issue that was a crying girl.
Oh wait, she wasn't crying anymore so… go team?
"You're not… gonna ask?" Tio's voice was muffled by what was left of his shirt.
"Do you really feel like talking about it right now?"
"... Aren't you scared?"
"All the monsters are dead." And yes, his word choice was deliberate.
"... You sure?"
Was she asking about the fear or the monsters?
"Yep." Well, if there were any monsters left they could just die later.
"C-can I... can we talk about… you know? Please I… I can't keep it a secret anymore."
"If you'd like."
"You know when I s-said that we… y'know, my people, worship the Eleven?"
"Those are the Titans, right?"
Tio nodded against his leather chestplate.
"Well, we worship eleven, but there are actually twelve." Tio paused for a moment. "Twelve left, anyways. We worship eleven Titans, fear the twelfth, and mourn the rest, because even the other Titans don't remember how many of them there used to be."
"... So what does the twelfth Titan have to do with… whatever that was that happened to you?"
"I'm blessed by a Titan other than Rhea…" Tio murmured. "It's just when the Child-Eater blesses someone, we call it a curse instead."
"So you're carrying the curse of this… Child-Eater?"
Tio nodded.
"The true oldest and strongest of the Titans; Kronos." He decided he didn't like anything that could make Tio, Tio of all people sound tired and bitter. "When Kronos gives a giant-kin his gift, the gift is given the name of the great war that saw him overthrown, and sealed away in the bowels of the earth."
Tio took a deep, shuddering breath, and Haruhiro tried not to squirm as it tickled his stomach.
"That's the name of my curse, Haru; Titanomachy." As that ominous word seemed to hang above them in the air, pressing down like a physical force, Tio sighed something that Haruhiro paid far, far more attention to, ignoring the pain as the red seethed back into his eyes.
"And it's the reason I was banished from my home."
Suddenly, it made sense to him; why Tio hardly seemed to know he was there, at first.
That brief, puzzling moment of lucidity that she had taken to reassure someone who wasn't even there finally made sense to him.
Tio hadn't been fighting the same battle that he had been fighting.
She'd been desperately struggling all alone to save someone that wasn't even there anymore.
… And she'd taken all the blame when she'd failed.
Haruhiro grit his teeth so hard that something cracked, and-
Tio's head shot up in confusion.
"H-huh? What was that sound?"
… No, wait, something had cracked, and it wasn't him.
Tio slowly twisted her head around to see what Haruhiro was staring at in numb confusion.
Something had cracked, but neither of them could have ever guessed that the 'cracked thing' would be thin air, or that pieces of said thin air were crumbling away like shards of lifeless grey glass.
"H-Haru… w-what's happening!?"
"... I… I have no idea, Tio."
Running away would have been the logical thing to do, but the thought never crossed their minds, even once.
The empty space continued to break open, and as the breakage grew wider and wider, wide enough that even Tio would have easily been able to walk through the opened path.
Because that's what it was; a path.
Through the strange portal they could see a long road, covered in cobblestone and hemmed in by what they could only assume were trees, all effused with the same twilight glow that the living sections of the Shadow Forest were lit by.
Far away, just visible at the edge of the gloomy road was a wide, barred gate.
Swinging slowly open, as if to invite them in.
And past that gate was…
"Is that a… house?" Tio's hushed and hesitant whisper came.
"More of a mansion, I think." Haruhiro suggested calmly.
How could he not be calm?
Nothing made sense to him, which meant that everything was normal.
… He might have a problem.
"We should go check it out." Haruhiro suggested before his brain could question his sanity any further.
"We totally shouldn't!" Tio protested. "This is super duper weird!"
… Well, at least she was speaking normally.
"I don't think we have a choice."
Tio went rigid at the mild retort, and slowly turned her head to look at him.
"H-Haru! D-don't say scary things like that!"
"Well, just look around you, Tio."
"What do you- huh? HUH!?"
That was a reasonable reaction, he felt.
After all, the neatly ordered cobblestones of the mansion road, and the dark, looming trees that formed an almost perfect corridor were the only things that surrounded them.
No dead apes, no water save for what clung to them, no dead grey trees, and no weapons.
-As if to offer some sort of ominous and ill-timed reassurance, the clean and undamaged war club of the Great Ape clattered to the ground up ahead of them.
Accompanied by the clean black dagger he'd lost after he'd cut the Great Ape.
Tio let out a sound that sounded suspiciously like a whimper and buried her head against his chest.
"Okay…" Haruhiro admitted slowly, after a while. "So I guess I'm pretty weirded out too."
He never did figure out what about that sentence made Tio glare at him.
We're getting into the spooky time of year, so have a spooky cliffhanger.
And surprise, Tio's the party berserker!
Sometimes anyways, she's cursed, not repressed. I even have it in my character notes that her alignment is Lawful Snuggly.
'Titanomachy' is the Greek myth of the war between the Gods and the Titans, here I altered it to be a war between Titan and Titan; and though there are 12 Titans in Greek myth, there only twelve Titans 'left' in this setting.
Seeing how Monmusu has the Ogres, the Oni, the Trolls and the Gigantes, can anyone guess what culture the 'other' Titans might be from? As a hint, not all the remaining 'Titans' are Greek in origin, I draw on giants from other countries as well.
Anyways, enough of that for now; Tio wasn't the only one to reveal her deep dark secret.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and unfortunately for her, Rachnera has experienced a lot of desperate times.
She certainly didn't see Centorea's reaction coming, but did any of you? Let me know, I'm curious.
And last but not least, Yukio being forced to come to terms with the fact she'll outlive almost everyone else without even trying.
Unlike Iormu, though, she didn't have to learn that the hard way.
PS: Oops, as a reviewer pointed out, Kronos is the youngest Titan in Greek myth, not the eldest. I was aware of that, and the change was deliberate on my part, but I forgot to make note of it for those familiar with the myths.