"Wait! I can hel-"
Ruby watched her sister disappear with the scary man through a tunnel in the rain. It sounded as if thunder came from the earth. She tried to run after them, but she only found herself alone in an empty street again. She thought she would at least be able to hear them fighting through the rain.
She kept running, chasing after her older sister. Her feet splashed through the puddles and got her legs covered up in dirt and soot.
She was not worried about her sister losing. Her sister was naturally the strongest. That's the way it simply was. She never lost a fight.
But even the strong could get hurt. She knew that. Ruby hated seeing Yang hurt. She hated it more than the darkest nights. She hated it more than the creepiest bugs that would crawl out of the trees. She hated it more than the most shameful embarrassments in school. She hated it more than the loneliest days when everyone was busy.
The rain washed down over her face and plastered her hair over her eyes. Even when she pushed it away to the side, it would simply droop back down. The wind from the storm and the wind from her running ventured to push off her cloak and jacket, the only things preventing her body from freezing and stopping.
Every street and alley looked the same. The rain continued to grow worse.
With every lightning flash, Ruby was only reminded of how empty the city looked.
Perhaps it was only her paranoia and imagination, but sometimes the thunder sounded like bones being crunched.
The water swept past her feet into the drains.
'Stop being a baby, Ruby. You're going to be a huntress one day…' Her eyes darted back and forth between the glassy windows, expecting a monster to jump out at her the instant she looked back.
She heard a rattle. It could've just been a stray dog. Or, it could've been a flesh eating monster that stalks children to their homes and hides under their beds until their parents fall asleep.
Just a thought.
Either she could check on the source of the sound, or constantly look over her shoulder for the rest of the night.
She heard a pained gasp belonging to a woman. Her sister told to her wait somewhere away from the rain and stay out of any trouble. This could be another dangerous person.
She could still remember the rattling of her bones when she tried to attack the guy with the devil's smile. Ruby was the youngest and weakest member of her family. She was not a match for monsters that devour monsters. It meant she had to be more careful.
However, she was still young. Though even young children are cautioned by natural fear, they are also impulsive and willing to take risks.
A person sounded hurt and in need of help. The girl was not someone who could consider weighing the risks. She briskly wandered towards the source of the sound, taking care not to slip in the rain.
Ruby came to a dark alleyway. She found it hard to breath as her heart started pounding. Her scythe was held behind her at the ready. Even as she went forward, her small muscles were tensed to leap back at the first hint of danger.
The girl looked into the dark passage in the rainy city.
Silver eyes met yellow. Ruby was face to face with a woman on death's door.
The woman's breath was ragged as if her throat was torn from the inside. Her legs shook as if they were being broken. Her body was covered in injuries. The injuries looked more reminiscent of a crash than a fight. Black hair matted with blood spilled over a pale face.
Ruby just managed to catch her before she collapsed.
"Whoa! H-Hey are you... alright?" She winced as she supported the woman's weight. Her legs strained under the pressure. Ruby was practically buried under the woman now. She looked for a place out of the rain, trying to see further past the downpour.
She took a step and felt the woman slump over. Something sticky dripped onto her hand. It wasn't the rain.
Ruby quickened her pace as much as she could. There wasn't bound to be any helpful doctors casually roaming about in a thunderstorm, but the least she could do was get the lady someplace warmer.
Luckily, there was a dry patch under a tree in the middle of a road they passed. It offered brief respite from the rain. Ruby checked on the injured woman. Her eyes were beginning to dull. A groaning noise came from her throat. Looking around her at her surroundings, the city looked like mottled smudges on a wet canvas to her.
Ruby wiped her face and took a deeper breath. She forced words out of her throat.
"Um… is there- I mean, what can I do to help?" Her words didn't sound confident at all. She was painfully aware of that.
A whisper slinked through the air and rain.
It was too quite for her to hear. She held her ear closer to the woman's mouth. "Mn?"
"...out... cuo- out..."
Hearing her words was like listening to a broken record player. Something intrinsic to it was simply gone. It was like a truck rolling downhill with flat tires, like a tree without leaves, like a radio without a signal. Ruby was reminded of the eerie noise a wasp makes.
With her body going completely limp, the woman's whispers were cut off.
The air cracked as if a whip was struck out. Blood from damaged capillaries leaked out, being trapped under the skin with no other place to go.
Ruby was slammed through the tree and sent tumbling against the unforgiving street. A gasp of shock and pain left her. Her body instinctively curled around the pain as she shuddered in an icy cold puddle on cobblestone. She forced her eyes to open and pushed herself away just before the ground she had sprawled on was shattered. The girl wasn't even given time to breath. The bruise forming on her midriff felt like it was spreading a mind numbing poison through her body.
That was pain.
Something snaked forward along the slippery ground, a long dark limb matted with fur and grime. It came from the drain on the curb. It was in the sewers beneath the city. The large claw at the end of the limb dug into the ground. Ugly yellow eyes stared at the girl from its hiding place.
It was pulling itself out.
With the claw as an anchor, another limb crept out from the sewer drain. The creature continued to drag itself out, breaking through the cobblestone and concrete. It neither snarled nor growled. Raising itself to full height, taller than her house, it opened its lupine jaw and howled.
It looked like the mutated corpse of a wolf. Long, skeletal limbs extended its distorted frame. Some of its ribs poked through its leathery flesh. Its mouth filled with conical teeth and opened vertically like some sort of insect's. Viscous saliva mixed with blood dripped from its jaws.
This was a grimm, a monster that hounds humans.
Crescent Rose glimmered in the rain like a lone star in a black sky. Ruby shifted her grip on it and pulled her hood back over her head. She was backed against a wall. Her heart beat louder than the rain. It felt like needles were pricking her all over her skin.
Neither monster nor girl moved.
In nature, wolves are not predators that hide and ambush their prey. They rely on outrunning and outlasting their targets in order to eat. Their enhanced senses ensure that nothing can simply hide from them. Most of their attacks come from behind. The corpses of their victims are often found with bite marks and lacerations on their backs and hindquarters. Their prey gets worn down to death through constant attacks and exhaustion.
Fleeing from a grimm such as this meant attempting to prolong death. Survival could only be ensured by killing it first.
Ruby's eyes flickered over to the stranger collapsed on the ground. She wasn't moving.
The slimy red contents of the grimm's mouth filled her vision. She had let herself get distracted. The blade of her weapon arced up in a flash as teeth came a hair away from piercing her skull. She managed to steer the monster away from her whilst drawing blood.
Snarling, the grimm jumped from the wall with horrific agility and attacked her from above.
Ruby cut open the door to a butcher's shop behind her and lunged inside. It was dry and cold. The shop was completely empty like every other building she had seen that night. She ducked behind a shelf when the grimms slender arm shot through the window and speared through the wall.
Gritting her teeth, Ruby drew Crescent Rose behind her with both arms all the way back before swinging it with all of her strength, an action she had repeated countless times during training. The tip of the scythe nailed the grimm's claw to the ground like the start of a crucifixion.
The grimm howled and screamed, whipping its other arm around the store without rhyme or reason to trying and squash her.
The girl squeezed her eyes shut and continued to exert pressure downwards. Even when it felt like her legs were screaming at her, she refused to release the squirming claw from the tile and concrete floor. A rotting limb came a hair away from bashing her face off.
Finally, the grimm's head burst through the shop, bringing down the ceiling. Its mouth opened wider than the building could even allowing, meaning to swallow her whole and crush the child inside its throat.
Pressing her foot against the wall, Ruby kicked off of it and blitzed forward, carving her scythe through the fur and skin of the monster. She continued all the way until Crescent Rose cut straight through one of the monstrous wolf grimm's eyes before the building collapsed on its head.
Under the rain once more, Ruby struck the ground with her polearm to stagger her momentum and turn around. Unlike before, her attacks were effective, even if she couldn't cut through the muscle and bone.
Enraged, the monster burst out of the rubble and continued to snap its jaws at her, jaws that could tear and splatter entire families at once.
Ruby seemingly danced away from the murderous jaws like a delicate butterfly. Her speed eclipsed the monster's. Every time she ducked, and every time she weaved past a furious limb, her scythe curved around the air and cut through more monster flesh. Black steel scratched along pale bones.
Her counterattacks swept around the grimm as a whirlwind, swift and untouchable.
Its leg erupted from the ground and slammed into her from a blindside. Ruby could just barely guard with the shaft of her scythe. She was still hit, even if indirectly. The bruise on her cheek swelled up and forced her eye to begin closing up. Her body skidded across the slippery road into a fire hydrant.
Thinking quickly, Ruby kicked it with her foot. A geyser of water spat out from the ground and blinded the pursuing monster.
It spat out the water and murderously swept its head side to side looking for the girl. Flicking its sole remaining eye upwards, it saw a figure as the winds started to blow with renewed vigor.
An image of the moon appeared through the storm for a faint instant. A little red cloak fluttered under the rain and wind, twinkling under the silver light. A girl from the countryside held a wickedly sharp scythe in her hands as if she were the innocent apprentice of a death god.
She descended back upon the world faster than gravity would even allow, nailing the wolf monster through the hollow socket in its skull. The blade rocked against the inside of a lupine skull, tearing it all apart in a single clean sweep.
Ruby took a step back, her hands shaking. Frantic breaths spilled out from her throat. The scythe changed back into its sheath form and rested on her back. Her body didn't stop shaking. She didn't know if it was from strain or the cold. She immediately rushed over to the fallen woman to see if she was alright, or at least, no worse than she already was.
Her skin felt cold and sticky to the touch. She held her ear to her chest and heard what she thought was a pulse. Letting out a breath she was holding, Ruby helped the woman up. Ruby supported her weight once more. This time, she nearly buckled to her knees. The fight had tired her out after a night of wandering through cold, rainy streets.
'Even Yang isn't this heavy…'
Ruby trudged through nearly flooding cobblestone paved roads and channels. Her cloak and the coat given to her were completely soaked by the rain. She was freezing more than she ever had in her life.
But still, she felt relieved…
"...out... cuo- out..."
"Hn?" Ruby tilted her head slightly at the strange mutterings.
"…come…. out."
Carnivorous teeth bit into a young girl's flesh, drawing crimson red blood.
The woman's skin split open to reveal a twisted lupine corpse. Rotten flesh and matted fur on the verge of falling from the bone, grisly red liquids leaking from the wounds, and a skeletal frame like a wasp crawling through the wall, it was also a monster that sought to eat children.
A piercing shriek came out of her lips as Ruby tore herself away from the monster and scrambled away, slipping on the wet stone and falling to the ground. Even then, she hurriedly pushed herself away from the approaching monster.
Its legs were too damaged to support its body, forcing it to stumble forward a single crooked step at a time. Yellow inhuman eyes followed the girl with blind malice. Its jaw split its skull apart, allowing a long tongue, barbed and bloody, to slip out.
Ruby pulled out her scythe once more to slash at the shifting grimm. Her attack severed a limb.
The monster let out a hissing scream and fell to the ground before it began to crawl towards her, but not before licking the blood that stained its teeth.
Ruby tried to find purchase in the rain with widening eyes. She realized too late that she was surrounded by corpses.
The crippled bodies she saw earlier in the night crept silently through the rain, their skin and flesh ripping apart to reveal monstrous black flesh. All of them crept towards her. All of them sought to rip her to pieces.
Its barbed tongue shot past her, impaling another corpse through the skull. The corpse croaked out its own tongue and did the same to another. The monsters had started eating each other. The grimm that was slain by the girl shuddered. When all of the corrupt corpses were connected, they latched onto the body of the dead monstrous wolf like the strings on a marionette.
It arose ten times more massive than before. Over a hundred rotten, severed body parts decorated it like armor. Dozens of pale glowing eyes in the rain rolled around to stare at her.
Forty-seven grotesque limbs elongated through the streets and buildings like the web of a spider.
There was nowhere to run or hide anymore. A wave of teeth, claws, limbs, flesh, and bone swept towards the girl.
Ruby felt her head slam into the ground. She was overwhelmed. Her legs were pinned to the ground by several of the many monstrous tendrils. They felt warm and slimy. Her back shuddered. Her scythe was knocked out of her hand and scattered too far away to reach.
Rain wasn't falling on her anymore. She could still hear the sound of rain, but it wasn't falling on her anymore. Trembling, she tilted her head up.
An unhinged, repulsive jaw stretched over her like a grisly umbrella. She stared up at rows of bloody, spiny teeth between filthy gums and exposed bone.
The child whimpered as the fleshy cave began to close.
And then, just like that, the terror vanished as if it were a dream. Ruby was swept up in warm, comforting arms. Her eyes were shut tight as her hair was blown by a stormy wind of motion.
Ruby blinked her eyes open to see a cascade of golden hair.
龙与女猎手
Mountain after mountain was shattered. Something more akin to a great evil spirit than a human crashed through the harsh, unforgiving environment.
Furious streams and torrents of fire swept past him to the stars. A night bathed in moonlight was engulfed in darkness under an empty sky. It was only for a flickering moment.
The moon continued to shine over him, as if it favored him.
His heart felt like it was tearing apart.
Many wonders are told to the children of man in the stories of old, of courageous heroes worthy of praise and reward, of mighty children of gods and spirits, of great kings and queens of vast lands, of extravagant feasts and terrible wars, legendary weapons and horrific curses…
As there are stories for heroes and men, so there are also for monsters and beasts.
At the pinnacle of all creatures, phantasmal and monstrous life beyond mortals, exist the races of dragons with hunger unmatched and power feared by all.
With a single breath, a fire dragon could set the seas on fire.
With a single bite, an iron dragon could crush all a kingdom's armories.
With a single beat of its wings, a wind dragon could create a hurricane.
With a single glance, a light dragon could turn night into day.
With a single roar, a shadow dragon could block out the sun.
With a single intent, a dragon king could devour the stars and heavens.
They exist beyond the reach of mere mortals and kingdoms as creatures that can devour humans simply by living, existences on par with the divine.
Though they do not hold an inherent hatred for civilization, neither do they hold an inherent love.
There are dragons that offer blessings and dragons that offer curses, dragons that slumber and dragons that rampage.
He was one who was raised by a dragon. He was a dragon's son.
Finally, his body was buried deep into a mountain that pierced the clouds. He was still. The force of the blow had twisted into his heart. Burning blood seeped down his skin.
"Ha… haha…"
His hand crushed the rock as he bared his teeth.
"Hahaha… HAHAHAHHAHAH~"
The mountain melted down. Rapturous laughter resonated through the storm and valleys.
The dragon's son stumbled out of molten rivers of lava like a madman.
"I'm Fired Up!"
龙与女猎手
With a crescent motion through the air, an arc of devastation carved through the buildings and rain as well as four of the grimm's ghastly tendrils of flesh.
Ruby felt herself bounce as her sister kicked off stone steps and ducked under a crumbling bridge near a canal.
She held her sister with one arm and the scythe with the other.
Crashing into the water, the monster howled and skewered everything in its range with barbed, blackened limbs. Unhinging its jaw, a thick and slimy tongue shot out and missed Yang's leg by a hair's width.
The older sister was breathing heavily with ragged breaths. Her body would shudder as often as the lightning flashed. She nearly stumbled into the path of a vicious claw that sought to rip her skin off.
"Yang, put me down!" Ruby desperately pleaded, her vision near blinded by her hair and drenched hood.
Her sister avoided fourteen more murderous attempts from the monster while weaving through the dark city. "Please don't move recklessly right now. I'm taking care of things. Don't worry."
She sounded tired to the young girl, like she might collapse at any moment.
Ruby tried to squirm out of her sister's hold, but she was being held too close. She saw the monstrous wolf pursuing them with relentless hatred, pulling and thrusting itself forward with many disfigured limbs. Its jaw split apart in seven ways as if it were a bloody flower.
A squelchy noise emanated from it. It continued nonstop.
Then it screamed.
The sisters were blasted through a city block by a mass of frenzied sound waves and air pressure. The older one took on the entirety of the lethal force, slamming through concrete, brick, iron, copper, steel, and glass.
Ruby was released from her sister's grasp and left tumbling over the rubble, getting tangled up in her cloak.
A single step, and slow crawl, and revolting lurch, the grimm crept through the trail of ruination it had caused. Each of its red teeth were eagerly licked clean back to a rotten white.
It wanted to rip apart the small one first. It wanted to do so limb by limb.
Ruby looked around for her sister in a panic. She rushed through the rain and rubble, getting small cuts on her hands and knees when she scraped past the wreckage. Crescent Rose was abandoned in a deep puddle before she picked it up.
"Yang!?"
The woman erupted from shattered glass and broken rock. She slumped over and breathed heavily, grasping her chest as if her heart was about to burst. She stumbled over to her sister and adjusted her hood for her. "Haa?"
Grotesque jaws snapped open and lunged towards them, blood and drool spilling out from its throat.
Yang pivoted on the ball of her foot and kicked the monster up into the air, cracking its neck back.
Its arms swung forward, nearly ripping out from their sockets, and curled around the lady's torso. With a beastly scream, it trashed her through the streets into the underground.
The tip of a scythe plunged into its remaining original eye, a desperate attack from behind.
It shook and twisted its head in trying to get to the little girl as she hung on for dear life. Blood and pus seeped out from its gouged out sockets. The disfigured arms and legs on its body writhed and spasmed.
A pale hand grabbed Ruby's arm and pulled her down. The monstrous wolf swept its gigantic arm and struck her across her torso. It felt like her lungs were going to collapse. She was hurled into a leaking canal.
Before it could pursue her, the grimm was forcefully pulled into the underground.
Its skull was smashed into the damp ground by the enraged woman. Its body began to break down. All of the parasites puppeteering the body cried out in agony. They wanted blood.
Hundreds of tendrils like vipers hurled out from corroding skin. It started to destroy its own body just for the sake of tasting more human blood.
Thousands of barbarous whips of flesh lashed against the exhausted figure. She found no chance to breathe or recover. A cruel blow to her abdomen forced spittle to flow out of her mouth. The accumulated damage had finally taken its toll.
Wiry tendrils latched around her hands and bound them together, raising her into the air. Sinewy cords wrapped around her eyes, blinding her. Writhing tentacles like melting tar coiled around her mouth, gagging her. Corpse fueled limbs of rotting flesh and bone snaked around her throat, strangling her.
The grimm watched its prey struggle using the dozens of eyes covering its body. Rather than a twisted wolf, its appearance resembled a spider more in this awakened state. Its eyes began to pulse and dilate as its mouth pried itself open. Teeth like needles and tongue like thorns quivered with hunger.
They had been alive for hundreds of years, feeding and killing until its body nearly burst apart from the inside. Every now and then, it would slumber deep under forests or settlements until they were woken up once more. They relished in the blood and meat of every huntsman and huntress who thought they could butcher it. Each and every one was sublimely easy to fool, so much so that they smiled. It and they made sure to savor those particular morsels.
They were the predator. Humans were the prey. The injuries it had received drew seething hatred like it had never known. Hatred that overshadowed even the natural hatred instilled in its blood. They would return the suffering a hundred-fold.
Sneering through bloody teeth and torn lips, the grimm tightened its unmerciful tendrils, watching her squirm.
It drew the young woman closer to its mouth. They listened to her muffled groans as she tried to free herself.
The cavern of rot slammed shut. Subsequently, the monster screamed, howled, and cried.
Shards of bone ruptured through thick skin and fur. Its jaws were brutally pried open from its most fragile areas. The skull was being torn in two.
Yang forced her legs to wrench the gaping maw open whilst she freed herself, using the grimm's own teeth to cut apart her living bindings.
A second burst of violent sound waves and air pressure blasted her away.
Lightning arced down from the clouds brilliantly, flooding an image of terror with harsh light for but a moment.
Her heart was thumping and pounding furiously. She had fallen to her knees. The uncommonly long hair she'd always taken care of spilled over the murky ground. Her pupils were shaking uncontrollably.
Rain enveloped the sickening frame of a monster. They tore through the street on bloody limbs like a cockroach, howling with too many sets of disfigured vocal cords. It would never stop. It would not flee.
One more attack…
She was going to tear out its spine with one more attack.
That was her final plan. Worst case scenario, she gets to count teeth.
"Yang!"
The blonde woman barely had time to react to her baby sister tackling her out of the way. They tumbled into a shallow trench in the city and became further drenched in icy water.
Ruby nervously smiled at her sister, looking to see if she was alright. She thought her sister was going to be injured. The young girl simply did whatever she could to help, but when she saw her sister's face, all she saw was a look of distress and anger.
The corpse cloaked monster burst through the ground, tearing everything in its range apart. Its jaws opened out in seventeen crude directions like a gruesome blossoming flower. Its limbs speared around the girls, caging them in.
Yang pulled Ruby close and shielded her with her body as it closed in. Hundreds of teeth plummeted down like a rain of knives.
Deep down, Ruby felt a bitter emotion arising.
'Did I screw up again?'
The sound of flesh tearing and bones crunching rattled the empty streets.
Ruby peeked at the source of the noise.
A violent man with a scary smile stood under the rain, his body of ungodly strength heaving as if he had just finished crawling out of the underworld. The sliver of flesh over his heart was twisted in a spiral. With every breath, the rain around him vaporized. The ground crackled beneath his feet. Eyes of coal stared dead on at the golden-haired sister.
The grimm was biting down on him with shattering teeth. Its own jaw broke and tore apart from the backlash.
Reaching up behind him, the dragon's son gripped the inside of the monster's mouth, slowly crushing the skull.
Hundreds of tendrils like vipers shot towards him, seeking to rip off his skin from his flesh and his flesh from his bones.
Striking his arm back with one swift motion, he turned the nightmarish maneater into a blood splatter to be washed away by the rain. His arm limply fell down as if it had gone numb, throwing his body off balance.
The rain washed the blood off his body. He walked towards them like a starving Ashura, leaving scorched devil's footprints behind him.
"Are you fired up? Then let's keep dancing! Let's dance till we burn up!" He roared with a voice overflowing with a hunger for bloodshed. A brutal arm traced with flames arose as an unyielding fist in challenge and welcoming. Hellish embers ignited within his shadowy eyes.
Gritting her teeth and letting go of her sister, Yang forced herself to her feet with a guttural snarl, clenching her fists and leaning her center forward. Her eyes flickered a tempestuous red.
Furious flames burned away at the ground and lit up the city as the man readied a true strike once more. However, something forced him to restrain himself.
"Can… can you move away… please?"
A child that would barely even reach his chest was clinging to the woman, stubbornly shielding her from him.
Yang tried to gently pull Ruby off her to no avail. "R-Ruby, now's not the time. Leave this to-"
Ruby vigorously shook her head, shaking off her hood and messing her hair even further. "Yang's already been hurt. You can't fight her anymore!" She stared angrily up at the burning man with all the pent up fury she could muster.
He circled left and right, trying to get around the girl, but with each attempt, she turned in kind and continued to bar his treasured fight.
His eyes darkened, like a starving tiger being provoked by a heedless kitten. The girl was drenched in freezing water and shivering for her life. And yet, she was really trying to stop someone who could rip apart the sea.
Wisps of fire left his mouth while the heavy rain continued pouring over them.
"Damn, guess I got no choice then."
Yang felt a deep chill in her heart and immediately thrust her baby sister protectively behind her whilst raising her guard before the man did something that immediately threw her off.
The fire dragon's son reached out his hand in offering. "Goodnight, my name is Natsu Dragneel. Would you share a meal with me?"