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The mutated Vulpimancer kept fleeing; a primal, panicked flight that had nothing to do with territory or hunger and everything to do with the searing memory of green neuro-energy overloading its symbiotic core. The parasite in its chest screamed in sympathetic agony, a silent, psychic shriek that pulsed through its veins: RUN. ESCAPE. SURVIVE. NEW THREAT. FASTER. FASTER!
Its form was a nightmare given flesh and fire. The parasite having swelled its mass to titanic proportions during its final, desperate mutation, now an engine of destruction. Its purple fur was now matted with ash and glowing embers, the V-shaped patterns along its spine and legs blazing with a malevolent, strobing blue-white light that painted the night in frantic, pulsing strokes. Where it stepped, the ground scorched and ignited. Dry grass burst into flame. Fallen leaves became instant kindling. The very air around it shimmered with heat haze, a visible corona of superheated energy that made its outline waver like a mirage.
It was the "Demon Dog" of Sina made manifest, the rumor given roaring, flaming flesh.
Garrison Outpost #7, Southern Wall Rose Perimeter
The alarm horns had been blaring for twenty minutes, a panicked, bleating sound that spoke of confusion more than protocol. The fire had started in the forest near the 103rd grounds; a distant, ominous glow; but now new columns of smoke were rising closer, much closer, marching in a terrified, straight line toward the outer districts of Trost.
"Move it! Bucket line! Where the hell is the water wagon?!" Sergeant Bauer bellowed, his face smeared with soot. His garrison unit, twenty men strong, was fighting a losing battle against a fire that seemed to be spreading with unnatural speed. They threw buckets of drawn-well water onto the advancing wall of flame, only for the steam to hiss back at them, the fire leaping to new fuel just beyond.
"What in King Fritz's name caused this?" a young recruit panted, his uniform soaked with sweat and water. "Lightning? There's no storm!"
Bauer didn't have an answer. Until the cause exploded from the treeline like a demon from the abyss.
A shape detached itself from the burning treeline. It wasn't a spreading flame. It was a thing made of flame, moving with a predator's terrifying grace. It bounded onto the roof of a nearby woodshed with a sound like cracking timber, its six-meter frame silhouetted against the inferno behind it. Four powerful, too-long legs carried it with impossible speed across the thatched rooftop, which immediately burst into flames beneath its passage.
"By the Walls..." Bauer whispered, his blood turning to ice.
The creature's head, a smooth, horrifying dome, swiveled. Five burning blue eyes, arranged in a cruel crown, scanned the garrison soldiers whilst the sixth one pulsed with sickly light. Its chest, through patches of scorched-away fur, glowed with an inner, writhing white fire—then there was that thing, visible and wrapped around its ribs.
Wha-WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!
"FIRE! OPEN FIRE!" Bauer screamed, finding his voice.
A ragged volley of rifle shots rang out. The bullets didn't ricochet. They melted. As they entered the creature's superheated aura; a sphere of air hotter than a blacksmith's forge; melted and softened the lead, before dropping as harmless droplets to the ground, sizzling on the dirt. The creature didn't even flinch.
It leaped from the shed.
The impact shook the ground. Two garrison soldiers directly in its path didn't have time to scream. A massive, clawed paw swiped through the space they occupied. The heat aura hit them first; their uniforms and hair ignited instantly. Then the physical blow connected, not with a tearing sound, but with a wet, sizzling crunch-thud. They were thrown back like ragdolls, their bodies smoking, leaving twin trails of flame across the grass.
The Vulpimancer didn't pause to feed. It didn't even look at the carnage. It was a being of pure flight response. It barreled through the broken bucket line, knocking men aside like ninepins, leaving a path of scorched earth, trampled bodies, and fresh fire in its wake before vanishing into the maze of outer-Trost's narrow streets and storage yards.
Bauer staggered to his feet, clutching a broken rib. He stared at the retreating inferno, then at the two smoldering corpses of his men. His mind, trained for Titans and bandits, couldn't process what he'd just seen. He grabbed a stunned runner. "To headquarters! NOW! Tell them... tell them the Demon Dog is real, it's here, and it's setting the city on fire!"
Meanwhile the Vulpimancer raced through the deserted outskirts, its sonic senses a blurred nightmare of panic. The vibrations of shouting humans, the crackle of spreading fire, the distant horns; all of it was more terrible noise! It leaped fences, crashed through hedgerows, each impact birthing new fires that danced in the night wind. The open area was a sea of grass and scattered barns, and the Vulpimancer tore through it like a wildfire given legs. Its mind was a storm of fragmented instincts: the crystal merchant's betrayal, the two-legs' traps, the cub's deception. Everything was pain. Everything was enemy. Run. Burn. Survive.
It needed distance. It needed to hide. Was the winged threat gone? Had it escaped?
The parasite in its chest convulsed, sending a psychic spike of pure alarm directly into its brainstem.
ABOVE!
The Vulpimancer's head snapped up, all five eyes and the milky sixth scanning the sky. There, silhouetted against the stars was a dashing figure hurtling downward like a meteor. Wings folded for speed, a sleek, red-and-black form with a glowing green symbol on its chest. The new threat. The predator.
Eren; in his Aerophibian form; pushed his new body to its limits. The chase was a dizzying, high-stakes learning curve. This one was nothing like Buzzrot. It was raw, visceral, a constant adjustment of wing angles and tail rudder. And he had already crashed more than three times already! His mind was a storm of conflicting impulses: Alright Eren, stop the fires! Catch it-or heck just kill it! Don't let it hurt anyone else!
He saw the trail of fresh blazes springing up in the creature's wake. With a powerful downstroke of his wings, he aimed not at the beast, but at the burning buildings beside it. The gust of wind he generated was hurricane-force, ripping through the narrow street. Flames were whipped into spirals and then snuffed out as the oxygen was stolen, leaving behind smoldering, blackened timber and stunned Garrison soldiers who had been trying to fight the blaze.
"LOOK! IN THE SKY!"
"ANOTHER ONE?!"
"IT'S PUTTING OUT THE FIRE?"
The gathered soldiers and fleeing civilians gaped as the sleek, alien form banked sharply, its glowing green symbol pulsing on its chest. It was a nightmare, but it was fighting the other nightmare.
Eren's visored eyes locked onto the Vulpimancer. He felt the energy building behind his eyes; the neuroshock blasters. He needed a clear shot. He needed to stop its rampage.
The Vulpimancer saw the green energy gathering in the predator's visor. Terror, fresh and absolute, washed over it. It didn't think. It phased.
One moment it was there, a tower of flame in the street. The next, the space it occupied was empty, distorting like a heat mirage. It rematerialized thirty yards away, on the roof of a granary, shattering tiles. It turned, gathered its heat, and roared at Eren; a blast of superheated air and psychic defiance that shattered the windows of the street below.
LEAVE! PREY! MINE! the psychic echo screamed, layered with fear and territorial rage.
Eren banked, avoiding the worst of the heat wash. "Oi watch it, you oversized mutt!" he shouted through the filter, but the words were just noise to the beast. He pushed forward, wings beating hard.
The chase escalated into a hyper-kinetic blur through the industrial district.
Eren dove, lasers flashing from his eyes. The beams fired tore gouges in cobblestones where the Vulpimancer had been a microsecond before, leaving glassy, molten scars. The creature phased through walls, appearing in alleyways, leaping across gaps. Eren followed, his aerial agility allowing him to cut corners, but the instant, unpredictable teleportation of the phasing was maddening.
Frustration boiled over. He needed more power, more speed. He was concentrating on the energy in his eye-beams, pushing it, when he felt a strange, sympathetic tingle at the base of his spine; where his long, streamlined tail ended in an arrowhead tip.
In his anger and focus, he accidentally channeled energy there too.
A second, smaller neuroshock beam, vibrant green and crackling, erupted from his tail.
ZAP-FWOOM!
The uncontrolled burst acted like a rogue thruster. Eren's flight path became a violent, corkscrewing disaster. He yawed wildly to the left, over-corrected…and spun out of control.
"WHOA—WHAT THE—?!"
He was a missile without guidance. He smashed through a second-story window in a residential building, trailing splinters of wood and shattered glass.
He landed in a heap in a small, steamy room, skidding across wet tiles. He shook his head, the world spinning. The air smelled of soap and lavender. He looked up.
A middle-aged woman, her hair in a towel, was standing frozen in a large wooden tub, a bar of soap clutched to her chest. She had been in the middle of bathing. Water dripped from the edge of the tub. They stared at each other; the sleek, alien, red-and-black creature with wings filling half her bathroom, and the very naked, very shocked woman.
An eternity passed in two seconds.
"Uh," Eren's filtered voice buzzed, the hum awkward and flat. He quickly averted his visored gaze to the wall. "S-sorry for the intrusion—"
The woman's scream could have shattered the remaining glass. It was a pure, unadulterated sound of mortal terror.
"MONSTER!"
She didn't think. She grabbed the nearest object; a heavy, wooden-backed hairbrush from a stool; and hurled it at the said monster with all her might.
THWACK!
It bounced harmlessly off Jetray's reinforced forehead.
"Gah! Okay, leaving!" Eren yelped. He scrambled backward, wings crumpling awkwardly against the walls, and launched himself back out through the hole he'd made, trailing the sound of continuing screams.
His face beneath the visor was burning with a humiliation hotter than the Vulpimancer's aura. "Focus, Eren. FOCUS!"
He burst back into the night air, sonic senses and sharp eyes scanning. There! A flicker of movement and heat, three blocks over, heading deeper into the sleeping city ahead, toward the residential district of Trost proper. The parasite was screaming at its host, driving it into a frenzy of escape. Eren could almost feel the psychic static of its panic.
Unfortunately for him, all that time of his momentary distraction had bought time for a garrison patrol to be on his tail too, a bullet soaring past him hadn't Eren dodged on time. Before he knew it more bullets came in reigning down from below.
"Hurry up and kill it!"
"It's guiding the demon dog!"
Eren felt angry, He was on THEIR side! Can't they see-Ugh you know what forget it. He doesn't have time for this shit. He fired a non lethal shot at one of the horses of the garrisons, resulting in the horse's legs to buckle due to the assault done on its nervous system before it fell over. The crash had also caused the others to stumble making the other garrisons fall as well.
"SORRY!" That was all Eren shouted before he dashed back to the Vulpimancer's location. He was gaining, the beast looked like it was tiring, its phasing becoming slightly slower, less precise. He had it in his sights over a wider street. He charged his eye-beams for a decisive shot...
"SQUAWK!"
Something small, fast, and feathery slammed directly into his visor.
"GAAH! What the—?!" Eren yelped, instinctively banking hard. The neuro-energy fizzled out unspent. A flurry of brown feathers and indignant chirping exploded in front of his face. A nightjar; a small, insect-eating bird confused by the fires, the lights, and the giant, flying thing; had flown right into him on its own panicked flight path.
The bird, dazed but alive, tumbled away, righted itself with an offended chirp, and dove toward the ground, vanishing into the shadows between buildings.
Eren shook his head, the absurdity of it cutting through his fury.
'First trees, then people, then a bathhouse, now a bird to the face! Why is this happening to me today?!'
But as he watched the bird's retreating form, something clicked.
That's it...
He looked down at the Vulpimancer, which had gained precious distance during his distraction. It was moving into more open areas; warehouse districts, wider roads leading toward the market squares of inner Trost.
'I'm chasing it on its same level. Trying to match it move for move. That's what it expects. That's what its phasing is built to counter.'
A grim, determined smile spread across Eren's face beneath the visor.
'But what if I don't chase? What if I... hunt?'
He remembered watching hawks with his father back in Shiganshina. Grisha would point them out, circling high on thermal currents, patient, watching. Then the fold, the dive, the unstoppable strike.
'I can be faster than any hawk. I have a better weapon than talons.'
Instead of continuing the frantic horizontal pursuit, Eren beat his wings with powerful, deliberate strokes and shot upward, climbing vertically into the cold night sky. He rose above the smoke, above the reach of musket fire, above where any sane creature would look for pursuit.
The air grew thin and cold. The sounds of the city; the screams, the fires, the alarms; faded to a distant, tinny murmur. Up here, there was only the moon, the stars, and the wind singing over his streamlined body. He could see all of southern Trost spread out below him like a detailed map. And there, moving like a slow-burning comet through the streets, was the Vulpimancer's heat signature, a brilliant, terrified white blob against the cooler blues and blacks of the sleeping city.
He stopped climbing, hovering at an altitude that would make any Scout's ODM gear cry. He curled his wings tight against his body, adopting the most aerodynamic profile he could instinctively feel was right for this form. He became a living missile, pointed straight down.
'Okay, bird. Thanks for the lesson.'
He fixed his gaze on the moving heat signature. He calculated its path, its speed. He didn't just aim for where it was. He aimed for where it would be in ten seconds.
He took a final breath of the thin air.
And let go.
____________________
Somewhere in Trost…
Jean groaned, shoving his history textbook aside. The echoes of distant alarms had put him on edge, but his mother's voice was a more immediate demand.
"Jean-boy! Dinner's getting cold! Stop daydreaming about joining the MPs and come eat!"
"Coming, coming!" he grumbled, getting up from his desk. He was still fuming about the run-in in the market. That scowling, wild-eyed brat and his terrifying, beautiful friend. Who does he think he is? Jean thought, running a hand through his hair. Calling me horse-faced... Acting all high and mighty, tch. I'll show that runt the next I—
His window exploded.
Not with a crash, but with a SUPERSONIC BANG that was all pressure and shockwave. Every pane of glass turned to crystalline dust. The wall shuddered. A vacuum sucked the papers off his desk, followed instantly by a thunderclap of air rushing back in.
Jean was thrown off his feet, landing hard on his backside, ears ringing. He stared, dumbfounded, at the empty, jagged frame where his window used to be. A strange, ozone-like smell filled the room. For a split second, he thought he saw a red-and-black blur streak past, trailing a faint, greenish light, but it was gone faster than a blink.
His mother burst into the room, apron dusted with flour, eyes wide with panic. "Jean! What happened?! Are you alright?!"
Jean pushed himself up, shards tinkling from his hair, staring at the broken window in stunned confusion. The straw haired boy could only point a trembling finger at the window, his mouth working soundlessly.
"Something... something just...flew by?"
Chapter 28-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.