A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 130: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The fighting was intense. The background of an earthquake, storm, and a growing tsunami in the distance made it even more intense. The area was covered in the darkness of the clouds' heavy shadows, all premonitions of light being blocked off. It seemed like the night would never end, even though it was the afternoon on what should've been a normal rainy day turned turbulent by the spell the gods cast to demonstrate their irritation.

     In the distance of my mind, I could pick up these tiny wails that screamed inharmoniously in my mind, telepathically reaching me. There were physical, blood curdling ones as well, but they were soon enough quenched by the seas as they were dragged down underneath the water, drowned and battered by the debris of nature lying on the new ocean floor. There was the sound of a notification that popped up in front of me, but I swept it out of the way with a desperate claw as it notified me of a new Skill for poisonous blood or something like that.

     My claws sparked as they glanced off some sparkling rock, one that was falling towards the water from high up in the clouds where we were dueling. The mountains weren't just collapsing and crumbling to pieces now, they were also exploding. There weren't just regular ores in the mountain, there were also stones that adventurers loved to hunt for that exploded if hit with enough force. Soot was what the surroundings became after the flames of hell rained down on it and me, dodging off of falling rocks as I shot up to the sky like a lightning streak, purple sparks trailing in my path.

     Thanos gave chase. He came to the other side of the rocks that I launched off of, popping out of nowhere and engaging in close combat with me as the world spun around and around, actual lightning strikes brewing in the bemoaning skies as the storm started to pick up. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the slapping of rain whipping in the air as my scales turned sleek, glancing the weapons thrown at me away and diluting the basic pain sent coursing to the junk drawer of my nervous system.

     Like I was on an adrenaline high, I didn't feel a thing. I attacked with what I had, not even paying attention to the fact that my arm was at the bottom of the ocean.

     The mysterious sizzling blood continued to stream from my chest and stomach wounds, my arm repeatedly spurting out my vital liquids at the ocean as my fangs were still bared, displaying the gold ichor on my teeth and staining the center of the narrow piece of skin not scaly on my sternum.  They seemed to be growing sharper by the minute - my teeth - and it was a wonder how they didn't pierce my gums or my lips whenever they got blown in harm's way by the gale force currents shot at me from some attack's tailwind after I dodged. We churned the waves with blasts of power, made the seas roar and capsize anything that may have been traveling even hundreds of miles away.

     My mind was not my own. Yes, I could feel what I was doing as I shredded the enemy to pieces, I could smell the salt from the seas, I could taste the sanguine plasma on my lips, and hear the cries of despair from some dying animal or even the weeping of the lands...all as I throttled everything and unleashed self-inflicted anarchy on my body to delve for more power, tearing up my soul even further when I could find no magic to draw from. My reservoir was closed to me from my regular supply, so I had to reach into the very mana that made my body to create the beams of energy I shot from my mouth, counter attacking the long distance attacks with some of my own.

     The screaming was not just outside, but inside too.

     Takuya and Kaya, I could feel them trying to pull me out of that pool again. There was no rope on me, so they couldn't yank me out; I wasn't all the way in the egg, so I wasn't conscious; I was unconsciously in the waters, so I couldn't wake up as I was stuck in this state of confusion and blood-thirst.

     Both of us, energized. Both of us, reeling from the blows we'd dealt. Both of us, feeling the need, the burn, the passion to go on. Both of us...unable to pick up on the surrounding circumstances as we went on.