Knights of the Grey City

Chapter 75 - TRANSFORMATION

Another ripple shot through the area, followed by a vibration in the air. Yael fell back again. The black mist was torn away, leaving her demonic body visible for the first time. Her arms were too long, her hands and feet skeletal and clawed. Her rib cage and spine were visible, no stomach or innards. She fell to her knees, wings lying limp behind her, patches of her inky skin showing a more human colour.

The ground shifted under my feet. I grabbed hold of Huang and Rayne, who grabbed Katie, the four of us steadying ourselves as the surface we were standing on gave another shudder.

I looked over my shoulder at the dissolving Angel. "Yael!"

She peered at me, one blank white eye and one shining, living, brown iris, and then the world exploded.

I thought I died.

Heat rushed through every cell of my body, then cold. I hurtled through every memory I still had knocking around in my stressed-out brain. Warmth—school—friends—money—parents—fight—anger—fight—

Silence.

I gasped and found that I still had breath. But it wasn't my breath. It was the strange lung-and-gill system belonging to Leviathan, and the hands that I glimpsed were black-scaled feet tipped with claws. I was the original again, no wings.

I seemed to be... falling.

I whirled around, instinctively stretching out my spatial sense to get my bearings. It returned absolutely nothing.

After a moment of panic, I realized that, even though I couldn't sense anything spatially, I could still see. I was falling through a golden void, and to my left, I could see the Gargoyle falling as well. His eyes were closed.

"Huang!" I yelled.

He flinched, popping to awareness. Beyond him, also falling, I could see the Firedrake, as well as... the Queen!? Even further, the tattered wings of the Angel marked where Yael fell.

"What's going on?" Huang called.

"I don't know." I twisted around, trying to control my fall, but I couldn't. Despite the sense of vertigo convincing me that I was falling, there was no change in the golden void around us, no indication of how fast we fell or to where.

My spatial sense kicked in.

I was instantly overwhelmed by the amount of feedback. The golden void was thrumming with energy, alive and powerful, and it was all being pulled in the same direction we were. It was like an entire ocean was being funneled away, and the four of us were tiny fish caught in the current.

When I tried to sense where we were being pulled to, my sense hit a wall.

"Leviathan?" I called.

I hadn't expected a response, but from far off, deep in the golden void, I caught the tail end of a thought directed at me. Turn human!

I blinked multiple eyelids. "Guys, I think... I know this sounds like a dumb idea, but we need to be human, now."

"Of course we do," Huang snapped. "Leviathan's reformatting the entire Grey City. As it stands, we're a part of the Grey City, too—unless we're in human form."

"All right, then do it, dumbass!" I snapped, and tried.

Nothing happened.

Panicked, I grasped for whatever had triggered the change before. For a long time, it had involved pushing aside the raging instincts of the Leviathan. But, once that had stopped being an issue, transforming back had been easy... hadn't it?