The Furies are at home in the mirror

[MalfGuy2]

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Your retreat into the wilderness even further from the psychedelic city leads you closer to a grey, frigid space.

Moisture vapours rise off the nearby volcanoside.

"Uncomfortably warm."

Distant bells chime. Firestacks poke into the sky in either direction.

A modestly industrialized space; They must be working the shiny pebbles.

"When are we getting a reload?"

You scratch at your dominant arm's elbow every now and again as you trudge along, and brush against a thin, wiry plant of some kind.

"Bloodied dewdrops, bloodied clawtips."

"Well? What's it taste like?"

"You don't quite have the words, but it speaks to the bright, shiny ball in the center of your being."

"And it says..."

This feels damnably good.

You need more of it.

"Feeding frenzy."

You turn back to the grassy hills just to the southwest, separated by the thinnest of water-cycle-barriers that formed the higher tundra.

You can't rest. Not really.

"Still more to be eaten."

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Dusty pebbles, dusty fingers.

"We're running out! Best find some more off of the angry apes."

You barely register the other Monsters' own retreats.

"Crashing skies above, gentle rivers below."

"What power did we take this time?"
"Best be ready for the next one."

You don't know.

Something's not quite right. This energy isn't like the others, where they were just raw beams of light and colour.

"You're a prince in your own right."

"You should do whatever you think the apes' princes do. Binge on their fineries, their weapons, their shinies."

"Leave nothing unturned."

New Magickal knowledge unlocked: Tempest Magic.

Something else stirs within. Your Mana reserve is condensing, pulsating around the congealed piece of stormy winds...

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Your arms bristle & crack in immediate response. They're lengthening, gaining feathers & scales.

Like the Monsters you'd been fighting at the beachheads every now and again.

"Sire, we're losing hand dexterity! Something's wrong!"

"Hold on just a little while. You'll still be useful for visual calculus with these garbage eyes."

"Forty legs, four-hundred arms, four-thousand wings..."

"Feel the burn. Taste the joints snapping and popping."

The pain subsides after a good seven minutes or so. You weren't counting.

Which is a good thing, because in the next instant, you're face-to-face with another mass of rotting flesh.

This one's shaped different though.

Different, like it vaguely resembles you...

"Why isn't this one sparkling like the other? It's wings dare to soar like you, but no 'pizzazz'? No 'disco'?"

"Man the battlestations."

"We can't throw the shiny pebbles anymore."

"What? Why not?"

Your hands turned into clawtips, your arms, into wings.

Better get used to it - and get used to it yesterday.

The thing is already bearing down on us.

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That was close. Too close. That aberration nearly had you and the Spirits following you - Good thing we got those wings.

"You still feel the throbbing in your joints, both where you'd transformed, and where that other Monster hit you."

"You're lucky. I can barely do anything."

"It's bothersome. When do we get to take the edge off?"

"When the world says we can land on solid ground again."

"Rather rough start to existence, isn't it?"

"This is a place with a lot of past, some present, and no future."

The updraft of a few campers' bonfires swings you towards the northern shores.

It's quieter here.

Perhaps even too quiet.

"Denning here will do for now. That took a lot out of us."

A peculiarly-masked hunk of metal in the vague shape of the apes floats by.

They, too, had the weapons that the city-apes were wielding,

But it turns away from you.

"They're scanning for something like us."

"Maybe that other creature from earlier is getting too popular to be ignored. Doesn't matter."

They stop in mid-air. Hesitation.

"In the middle of the night's Delphina Bay watch, two bespoke superweapons pass by one another."

"One is an imposing, bloodied truth; The other, a beautiful but false ideal."

"But their paths were destined to never cross."

"Hells yeah, we're a superweapon! Sounds cool. When's the next other beastie to break?"

"And does this spot have another one of those *absolutely psychedelic* berry branches to eat?"

Your vision blurs as the starry sky overhead steals your attention with a flashing cyan light,

And then, the metal creature is gone. Just like that.

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