Chapter One: First Blood

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Ella's POV

I rushed through the forest as fast as I could to get far while occasionally using the glyphs I carved onto myself to teleport into a cave. As I entered, the sky darkened, warning of the hot and deadly rain that would fall soon. The cave was dark and damp with mildew and moss appearing in patches.The deeper I went, the hotter it got. While walking, I saw many bones belonging to witches, demons, and monsters alike.

My guts tell me to turn back and wait out the rain, but my mind tells me to continue due to the abominations not being affected by the rain and could follow me any minute now. I have to find a way to at least damage the tracker spell on my collar or, better yet, get it off. My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a roar from behind me; as I turned around I saw a severely injured large 8ft tall cat-like demon with six legs and a pair of tentacles 5 feet long sprouting from their shoulders. The tentacles ended in pads with sharp horny edges, brownish yellow in color. They were covered in a pelt of blue-black fur, but some of its black fur had patches of red flesh where some of the rain had touched it, and its tendrils were badly burned as well. The Displacer Beast stalks closer to me, ready to pounce. As it leaped towards me, I duck down but was surprised that it completely missed me.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could also notice its eyes were also injured, which would give me the advantage. I looked around to find something that could help, but before I could, it vanished to only appear above me as I used a random bone to hold back its bite. I was struggling on the ground, trying to make a plan or find something that would help when a slight shine caught my attention. Underneath a layer of dust and dirt was a dagger old and rusted but still held a slight shine. I used one hand to hold the bone as it's starting to break from the force of the bite as I quickly grabbed the dagger and stabbed it in the eye causing it to screech in pain as it stumbled backwards.

Using the broken and now sharp and jagged bone, I rushed it to stab it in the other eye. But as I did, it managed to bite me in the shoulder, but I managed to dig the bone deeper in and killed it. I was tired and bleeding out as I heard the soft sound of skulttering coming towards me as my vision became blurred. The only thing I could see before I passed out was a tall silhouette of black and gray.

I woke up with a jolt as my vision slowly came back to me to reveal a small hand sized black and gray spider with a single diamond shaped eye on its back. There was power carved into its being revealing it to be a Palisman. The spider came to me as I realized that my wounds were wrapped in glowing green spider webs that were healing me. The spider snuggled up to me as I lightly smiled.

My wounds were mostly healed as I moved to the corpse of the Displacer Beast and started to consume some of its flesh along with its fur. Strangely, this didn't hinder me as I kept eating until I couldn't anymore, leaving a good quarter of the corpse along with its bones gone. Since this was my first absorption, my physical appearance started to change. My skin darkened into a gray as a slight light of glowing blue came from my pupils indicating my glowing blue eyes. My body became more refined and slimer without a change in height.

The biggest difference at the moment was the excruciating pain that followed the transformation. Hopefully, that was only a first-time deal and won't happen again. Thankfully, the spider web dulled the pain and healed some of my muscles. As I recovered from the pain, a tall witch in a black cloak with short red hair and green eyes. She had a scar going across her face.

She was looking at me with both interest and pity as the pailsman went to her and transformed into a strange staff that seemed to actually be a sword. "Oh, my. Little one I've been looking for you." She said, which made me go on edge. She noticed this and tried to calm me. "Wait; I'm not a lackey for the Emperor or the Blights. My name is Widow Ace, and this little guy is Neith." She introduced while pointing from herself to the pailsman.

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