Heart of a Monster

Chapter One

Part one; chapter one

A/N: the honorifics go like this; jii, syl, noc, haal. Basically if you go by the metal rankings; Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze. Those are the dominant honorifics. The honorifics change if it's a lower ranked person speaking to a high tanker. Jai, suu, nuul, and there's nobody below haal.

Those barriers held for twenty years. Twenty years of uneasy peace. And now, at the young age of seventeen, I get to be one of the lucky few who were here on the wall when they broke through again.

This wall was just called East, after the direction it protected. East Wall fell in mere hours. They tunneled below, ripping through the electron nets under the wall, and burst from the ground.

I wasn't on the part of the wall that witnessed that. I was in Maria district, far from Dev district. In Maria district, we dealt with winged ones. Massive, easily fourteen meters long, they advanced in massive legions. Each beast had wings at least four meters long, six of them lining their wyvern-like bodies.

They swarmed the wall, breaking through as simply as though they were flying over a barricade of trees. They tore through a sixteen meter wall in seconds. I was fighting on the wall, swinging my short sword and slicing their wings open with arrows.

Suddenly, a gaping maw rushed at me faster than I could comprehend. One of the subterranean new ones had tunneled right to the edge of the wall. It leapt from the ground and took me into its mouth.

I was slicing blindly, ripping open its insides as I lay prone in its throat. After a while, my arms felt like lead and I could barely keep my eyes open. Warm water lapped over me before I was dropped onto hard ground.

Eerie, glowing, black blood coated my blade and red saliva dripped in strings from my acid-worn armor. I passed out as a voice echoed in my head.

"....make him like me?"

I woke in a relatively dark room, not knowing at first what had happened. The splitting pain in my neck told me. I'd been fighting in what would later be called the Battle of East Wall, and had been taken prisoner.

I cautiously felt my neck, where it hurt. Upon the lightest brush of my fingertips, I found two fresh fang marks in my neck. So there's a vampire here? Or.......no it couldn't be.......it has to be.

Reaching back to my shoulders, I feel the sharp spines and the scales that tell me all I need to know. I've been made like them.

Wings, three rows just like theirs line my back. Spiraling horns curve down from my head. Focusing on my hands, I watch talons slip from my flesh like a cats retractable claws.

No. I'm just dreaming, just hallucinating. After all I have no idea what I might've breathed in when the subterranean carried me.

Then the door creaks open. A boy, like me, stands in the doorway. His wings are a faint bluish color, like the sky after it rains. His horns curl once, unlike mine; mine spiral three times. A faint light drifts into the room from somewhere behind him.

"Nice to meet you. Well I've already met you but it doesn't really count if you're knocked out."

Knocked out? Wtf happened?

"My name is Niami. I'm like you, a halfling raised by the Elvine Draks. I'm also the one who turned you."

Elvine Draks? That's what they're called? And whaaaat?! I'm a halfling now?! Okay I'll listen to him but I better get some answers.

He walks over to me, handing me a cloak with holes cut into it for my wings, as well as a tunic with similar openings for my wings.

I get up, noting that my armor is removed. Ignoring it, I change. It's a bit hard getting my wings in, but I manage. Niami hands me a silver chain, with beautiful teardrop shaped jewels hanging from it.

"The colors are to show your Master. The metal shows your ranking."

The jewels are a pretty color, halfway between red and purple. So this is his color. I curve my wings forwards, pissed off at myself for letting myself get caught, for letting myself be given a Master.

His eyes widen as he stares at my wings, thrown up in the air behind me.

"Y-your wings!?"

I curve them in front of me to see them. My wings are a dull greyish-blue color fading to a neon, ghostly light blue. As I calm down, the blue fades.

"Xena Jiivan?"

His tone is suspicious. I have no idea who or even what a Xena Jiivan is, but I assume it's something powerful.

He's being very skeptical, but he shrugs and leads me through a twisting maze of halls. Claw marks line the dirt floors, the wooden walls bear scorch marks from acidic saliva.

He eventually stops in front of a door. I take the room behind the door to be our final destination. The door opens onto a room with several rows of tables.

So this is where they eat their meals. I'll know so much when I go back, it'll be easy to kill them. One thing bugs me. The tables are all human sized. The food is the food I'd have eaten at home.

Then they all walk in. Normal looking humans. Each one has either Elvine Drak eyes, or they have talons, or they have small horns, or they have sharp fangs. One or two have a tail. So the beasts we fight are their shifted forms?

The gems on my horns feel heavy, the chain cold where it wraps around the spires of bone. I feel very out of place.

A boy with neon red horns walks over to me, looking at me curiously. He addresses Niami.

"Niami-jai. Who have you found?"

He says the last part looking at me curiously. I don't cower under his gaze, I stand taller and flare my wings.

"Oooooh. Niami-jai found a Xena Jiivan."

Interest sparks in his gold eyes, I feel a bit attacked but stand my ground. He walks around me, poking at my wings and my horns.

"Silver already?"

Addressing Niami, who nods.

"What did you do before we got to you?"

This addressed to me.

"I was massacring the monsters you are."

He smirks, entertained by my reaction. He seems to gain a very self-important aura for a moment, standing tall.

"Keep in mind you're one of us now."

He leaves. Niami turns to address me.

"That was Kanii-syl. He's not very nice, but a very loyal ally."

I frown, confused by the honorifics.

"Your rank determines your sec name. I rank just higher than Kanii-syl. So he calls me Niami-jai. He would call you Cera-noc."

How does he know my name? Oh well. He'd have learnt it eventually.

"Cera-noc, come along. We'll sit near Kanii-syl today so that he might understand you better."