This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Twenty-Two

Azrael's sense of reason had been discarded.

He actively thought about nothing; only his instincts drove him, like a cracking whip that struck incessantly against the back of his conscious. He considered nothing except where Reya was in position to himself, and he considered the best way to tear the hardened carapaces of the pale spiders from their bodies to rend their exposed and wrinkled flesh.

His claws could pierce their shells, he discovered, as he shredded the first spider, but the talons broke if he struck with a straight angle. It was no matter; he was biologically perfect, the pinnacle of genetic tampering - his talons were flooded with stem cells and grew back, thicker and sharper than before.

He grunted with each swing of his arm and felt each satisfying crack of the spider's shell. He broke through the hardened carapace and felt his claws sink into gooey flesh. With a renewed focus, he roared - an echoing, rumbling, draconic noise that blasted through the forest like a lightning-charged avalanche - and plunged one of his arms into the core organs of the spider, grabbing hold of some slimy bladder and ripping it out of the top of the spider's shell.

Dirty blue blood was flung in every direction, spattering Azrael, Reya, and the snow of the clearing, hot and sizzling on the icy ground. Azrael reveled in it and spun around, hungrily searching for his next victim.

His breathing was fast and hard, his heart pounding like a gong inside his muscled chest. The thick, oily black hair that fell around his shoulders was shaken briefly, like an onyx lion displaying its mane. Azrael's rippling black muscles spasmed, and as he pinpointed the spider nearest to Reya, his protective urges took over, and he pounced.

As he soared through the air, the eight-fingered talons at the ends of his arms morphed, merging together and elongating until he no longer had hands, but long, sweeping bone swords at the ends of his arms.

And as he landed atop the spider, his bone blades came crashing down upon the spider's back with ten times the momentum and power that his claws had brought.

Each blade cut deep, and the angle of his right arm had loped off two of the spider's legs. The spider made a noise that was somewhere between a scream and a gurgle, and Azrael quickly withdrew his left sword and plunged it into the spider's face in a single fluid motion to silence it.

Around him, the dozen spiders that had invaded his home were chittering and screeching, a chaotic orchestra of animalistic rage.

Azrael turned to them, blue blood dripping from his swords. He strafed right, coming to stand defensively in front of Reya. His human face contorted, opened its mouth, and screamed back. The finger-like mandibles framing it opened as well, and they spread outward menacingly, convulsing furiously in the battle-rage that had engulfed Azrael's body.

For a moment, the spiders seemed afraid; their screeching quieted, and they hesitated collectively in their onslaught.

Then a spider to Azrael's right sprung forward, leaping through the air in an attempt to latch onto Azrael.

Azrael whipped his right arm around him, spinning with the momentum, and it sliced the spider cleanly in half before it even came within six feet of his body. Blue blood rained through the clearing, coating Reya, who covered her face, gasped, and then watched in shock as Azrael finished off the rest of the pale spiders.

They came in waves, trying to overwhelm him with numbers and weight; but Azrael's very essence was that of adaptation, and his muscles grew when he needed them, his bones thickened, and he shifted the bone weapons on his arms as the fight demanded. The well of stem cells, dormant within his core, responded to his every whim, and the pale spiders could not overcome him.