Khaos Rising - Chapter 5

ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS WORK OF FICTION IS 18+.

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I only call you when it’s half past five…

For nearly one straight minute, the only company I had on my slow, menacing descent down into Club Ravenous was the rippling, Mist-laden shadows of the marble and bronze-threaded staircase and the high-pitched crooning of The Weeknd’s The Hills, bumping loudly from somewhere several dozen feet beneath my own. Gibby’s dreary if solid presence had long since faded, gone practically the instant I’d shut his door a couple flights up, but after years of taking care of myself and a flighty, chronically online goth-coded Chaos Goddess, solitude didn’t really bother me.

Instead, I only felt excitement. No fear.

Probably an unintended side-effect of Battle Hungry.

‘This is insane,’ I thought, even as my sneakers squeaked with each smooth step down into the darkness. The music grew louder every second, the aggressive bass sending vibrations up my legs through the soles of my feet. ‘I’m probably gonna die. Or get fucking maimed. Or get my soul sucked out and stored in a painting somewhere. All for a chance at power.’

Or I’d live. 

Get a stiff drink, rizz up some baddies, carve my way through an army of horny, inebriated monsters with my shiny new God-Killing sword and my shiny new superpowers, and finish my night of triumph and violence with a recently de-virginified dick shoved balls deep in a Latina Lamia’s unhinged maw. The thing about the Chaos Gacha was that it was all about risk vs reward - I was finding that out in real-time. This wasn’t like one of those Gamer Systems in manhwa and webnovels where you were given Quests to seek out for your power-ups and upgrades.

I had to weigh my options. Explore every opportunity. Map out the best, most impressive ways to claw my way to power, because Khaos didn’t reward stagnation, cowardice, or lazy, half-assed measures. 

And just my luck-

Tonight was the one night ‘Queen Lamia’ was away from the nest. The one night I wouldn’t get one-tapped by a legendary monster for culling Miami’s monster nightlife population. 

‘Good thing I had followed my gut, huh.’

By the time I reached the landing at the bottom of the unnecessarily long staircase, the music was so loud and close that I may as well have been right there in the middle of the dance floor. The landing was small and bare, nothing more than an elaborate marble entryway another pair of doors - these ones smaller and less ornate than Gibby’s, yet made of that same dark, lacquered wood - connected to what had to be Club Ravenous proper. Colorful lights chased away the writhing shadows beneath the door, bruise purples and bloody reds and poisonous greens dancing together like smoke.

This was it.

‘Play it cool,’ I reminded myself, one leather-gloved hand drifting up to finger the disguised, gleaming silver of Soulfyre’s priceless Cuban Links. ‘You’re just another horny, cocky Demi-God looking for fun. Don’t make the block hot. Don’t let ‘em know you’re bringing Stygian Iron and an unholy shotgun to a neutral zone. Chill.’

As cool as a cucumber.

Just to be safe, I slid my phone out of my pocket, ignoring the ‘5 unread messages’ from Marcus (Mom), and swiped to the front-facing camera. 

“Shit.”

No wonder my face felt numb.

I was grinning.

Cheek-to-cheek, ivory teeth glinting in the light of my iPhone, I looked like an addict well on his way to getting his first real fix of the good stuff- or a virgin who’d just seen his first pair of tits. My Eye of Discernment gleamed an unnatural purple and gold from beneath dark red lashes, the edges crinkled from the sheer ferocity in my grin, and the half-blocked rays the nightclub’s lights played dull shadows  across my tan, sweat-dampened skin. My hair was a mess, wild and wind-swept from the ride over, and I knew from experience that no amount of finger-flicking would see it tamed without water and a comb.

I looked fucking wired.

… But still kinda cool? In a way? 

Fuck it.

I smacked my cheeks, forcibly restrained my ‘I really wanna slay monsters right now’ grin to something more suitable to a horny young man walking into a nightclub for the first time, and ran a hand uselessly through my tangled wolf cut, knowing full well the practiced motion was an exercise in futility.

‘In for a Bronze, out for a Platinum…’

There was no more time to waste:

I pushed the doors open.

___________________________

Yumei sensed it the exact moment the Demi-God took their very first step into Club Ravenous. 

Everyone did.

‘Mm. Gibby’s done it this time…’

It was as if the dance floor was the ocean, her fellow monsters were ravenous piranhas, and some foolish man - a three-hundred year old former sculptor, that is - had just dangled an entire bloody carcass into the water. The music didn’t stop, and neither did the grinding of furred, scaled, chitinous, bestial bodies, but noses had been angled all across the room. Both subtle and embarrassingly obvious movements were made to keep the one main entrance, small and unassuming on the far side of the dance floor, in some manner of sight.

She could almost hear their thoughts now.

Little Godling is lost. Fresh meat. Fresh divine meat.

They wouldn’t break the rules in favor of their greed, of course. At least not immediately. Marian was a cruel, petty, and fickle mistress, but, ironically enough, she’d always been more strict about rule breaks when done in her absence rather than flagrantly in her face. Yumei thought that it was some prideful Grecian thing, something something ‘FOMO’, but that was neither here nor there; for better or worse, the majority of Club Ravenous’ patrons would be on their best behavior for the rest of the Queen’s absence.

Which wasn’t saying much, but still.

“Smell that, Yumei? Demi-God. Actual Demi-God. When’s the last time we got one of those in here, huh? Oh, and one Scarlet Dream on the rocks!”

Yumei spared the speaker - some matted-fur Hellhound the color of dried blood - a single eye’s worth of attention, even as the other seven remained coolly focused on the only thing truly worth her time in this tacky nightclub; alcohol. All eight of her lean, tattooed arms were already busy mixing drinks, prepping the bar for the inevitable rush of lonely and horny monsters who’d drown their sorrows and bloodlust in bottles of magical spirits once they realized their anticipated ‘treat’ was either too strong to fuck with, here on official business, claimed by some VIP who’s too strong to duck with, or even more humiliating-

All of the above.

She’d seen it happen before, and not just with Demi-Gods. If you weren’t a monster but somehow still managed to find your way into Club Ravenous, that meant you were something even better.

That meant you were special.

And these creatures, Yumei had learned decades upon decades ago, had a hard-on for anything and everything ‘special’.

It made her actually miss her old home. Her old family. Back then, in the East where everything was so much simpler, the only thing a Jorogumo cared about was whether or not her prey - a man, typically - had enough meat on his bones to feed her all of her hatchlings. None of this ‘Demi-God’ nonsense. But she’d wanted to break away from her nest. To rage against her fate and refuse to be yet another murderous Yokai preying on young humans and spinning a web of blood and deceit. 

She’d wanted to be a bartender.

How ironic it was, then, that she found herself wrapped up in yet another web of the same design, unhappy and bored as she made drinks for a club of ungrateful beasts with more of a taste for blood and misery than alcohol?

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave the Godling be and find less complicated prey,” she finally responded to the russet-furred Hellhound, sprinkling a pinky-nail’s worth of crushed Lotus into his drink and wiping the rim with sticky, granulated blood sugar. Her husky voice was as quiet and raspy as ever, lower chelicerae clicking softly with subdued agitation. “They’re unpredictable. Many are strong. You want to risk clawing your way back out of Tartarus for a taste of Demi-God meat?”

There was a yellow-toothed grin on his maw when she slid the purplish-black drink towards him, his golden eyes gleaming beneath the strobing lights of the packed-out dance floor behind them. Like most of the Hellhounds looking to party, he was in his ‘humanoid’ form; big, bipedal, and ugly, reminiscent of what the mortals in Hollywood assumed Western werewolves to look like. 

Yumei didn't know his name, but truthfully, she didn’t know the name of most of the wastrels who frequented Club Ravenous.

There were only a select few important enough to actively remember, enough to maybe count on one of her eight hands, and Queen Marian Lamia already took up a single finger. ‘Gibby’, the Queen’s former boytoy turned masterpiece, claimed the second. Then there were the four Lamia daughters - Isabella, Camila, Aurora, and Valentina. 

And finally, last but unfortunately not least, there was the resident DJ - a loud-mouthed, small-chested, bird-brained headache of a Harpy named ‘DJ Shriek’ who somehow endeared herself enough to the Queen to gain permission to livestream the dance floor and music to her online fanbase. To be fair, her DJing skills weren’t lacking. Yumei rather liked some of her song choices, and the way she spliced them all together. But Gods was she annoying. And loud. And absolutely thirsty for blood. 

No wonder the patrons loved her.

“You don’t get it ‘cause you’re not from around here, Miss Fancy Pants Spider Lady, but this ain’t just about gettin’ a bite of ‘Demi-God flesh’,” the Hellhound grunted, reaching into the pocket of his wrinkled gray suit and dropping a heavy handful of glittering gold drachmae on the bar. Her sixth arm darted like a blur across the polished wooden surface, sweeping the money up and depositing it beneath the bar in the same amount of time it took him to properly finish his sentence.

He blinked. Scratched his head with one long, dirty claw. Glanced down to where the drachmae had disappeared.

Yumei's dispassive lips curved upwards ever so slightly.

“Then enlighten me, Hellhound,” she drawled, crossing two of her arms beneath the massive swell of her breasts - contained as they were inside of her modest white dress shirt and bow tie. “What makes the flesh of a Demi-God so tantalizing to your kind that you’d risk gaining the attention of the Fates themselves for a mere taste?”

He barked out a laugh.

“You kiddin’ me? You’ve been workin’ these parts for how long, and you’ve never even been tempted to hunt one down and have a nibble?” He grabbed his drink with one tough, clawed fist, spilling Lotus-touched spirits down the side of his fingers, and downed the drink in one aggressive gulp. “Ahhhhh! That’s… yeahhh, that’s a nice fuckin’ buzz.”

His eyelids drooped, the golden glow of his eyes becoming less molten and more like… honey as the Scarlet Dream worked its drowsy magic. “The-… yawn- The Demi-Gods, they… they’ve got a certain power to their flesh. Like their bodies were tenderized by the lightning of that old fuck Zeus himself and slathered in eleven herbs and spices. Once you get your first bite, you can’t-… can’t-“

Yumei’s black-kissed lips curled in distaste. “No sleeping on the bar.”

“… Yeahhh yeah. I know the rules.” 

The Hellhound yawned rudely, right in her face. Again. His maw stretched wide open, blunt tongue quivering, and the smell of old blood masked by cheap Listerine assaulted her sensitive nostrils and made all eight of her eyes water. Yumei didn’t say a word, but whatever emotion flitted across her face in that moment clearly relayed her thoughts without her needing to break her professional countenance because he suddenly looked very, very frightened.

The Patrons of Club Ravenous were intimately familiar with the eight katanas Yumei kept beneath her bar. It wasn’t too uncommon for some brute to get handsy or pushy and end up sent on a one-way ticket to ‘Tartarus’.

She’d had centuries to study the art of the blade, None wanted to see them come out again. 

“Uh,” he drowsily fumbled in his wrinkled suit pocket again, the magic of the Lotus already dulling his awareness to the point of slurred speech and numb finger tips, “I- I’m gonna find a spot to crash and watch the show. Thanks for the-“

The entrance doors suddenly swung open.

And it was immediately as if time froze still.

Even Yumei couldn’t help but turn her head and look, if only to be one of the first to see the Godling bright-eyed and healthy before Club Ravenous did what it did best and swallowed him whole.

The young man who stepped through those doors without an iota of hesitation… Well, he wasn’t exactly what she’d expected to see.

Long, messy crimson hair the color of fresh blood. Broad shoulders, lean physique, and an athletic definition that was clear even through his off-white ‘Love Bomb-omb’ shirt and leather jacket. Around his neck was an expensive-looking chain made of what seemed to be gleaming silver links, the only real ‘high fashion’ accessory that Yumei could glean on his person. He wasn’t notably tall, at least not compared to most of the monsters on the dance floor, but he carried himself like he was two meters tall. 

Shoulders pushed back. Head held high. A white, toothy grin that just looked like trouble. He couldn’t have been any older than seventeen or eighteen, and yet he knowingly walked into a den of bloodthirsty monsters with seemingly no fear.

This boy. 

This Godling.

He was…

‘Adorable,’ Yumei decided, and that one word sent a jolt of hunger through her stomach - a hunger she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. It was partly a carnivorous hunger, sure - she didn’t suffer whatever mysterious ailment that made these Grecian monsters so hellbent on savoring Demi-God flesh, and the Hellhound was almost certainly just talking out of his hairy ass, but her kind had spent thousands of years seducing and luring young, handsome men to their deaths for food. 

Though Yumei had grown something of a ‘conscience’, in so far as a several hundred year old Jorogumo was capable of doing so, she still held that ancient hunger. 

This boy made her hungry.

But it wasn’t just that.

Because, even more than a Yokai, Yumei was a woman. A woman whose earlier years were spent hunting down, sometimes formicating with, and wholly consuming humans. Her sex life had dribbled all but to a halt after she’d left behind her old ways, and though many monsters showed interest in ‘taming the spider’, she’d rather go cold turkey and join AA before fucking any of the disgusting, bottom-feeding rabble that frequented Marian’s ‘elite’ club.

This boy, however… 

‘He smells good,’ she thought, a long, fanged smile growing on her slim lips. The expression felt strange after so much time spent frowning. ‘Powerful. He would give me strong eggs. ’

A shame, then, that he wouldn’t survive the night. Already the club had started its ‘hunt’, and the little Demi-God didn’t even know it yet. 

Wouldn’t know it.

Not until it was already far too late.

____________________________________

Whatever fucked up magical spell Queen Lamia did to bind Gibby to Club Ravenous, it clearly didn’t restrict her versatility as a ‘legendary sorceress’ to just curses. 

It was like I stepped foot into a whole new world.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I heard the name ‘Club Ravenous’, but somehow my expectations still managed to be blown out of the water. Unlike the classy, old-school vibe that the masterworked carvings Gibby had painstakingly etched into every inch of the front entrance gave off, the nightclub’s magically-enlarged interior was almost a complete tonal opposite; high ceilings, sleek black marble flooring threaded through with glowing veins of burnished bronze, and an overall gothic-industrial-sex dungeon vibe that immediately reminded me of both Underworld and Blade simultaneously. 

Strippers were dangling from the fucking ceiling.

It sounded crazy, but literally- between the strobe light systems that shone those same sickly LEDs across the dance floor of grinding bodies, scattered just enough to ensure they wouldn’t draw attention away from each other, half-naked strippers were bumping and rolling their hips from within the confines of large, gleaming bronze cages, oiled hands stroking up and down their sweat-covered bodies. I counted six - two lean, muscular men with fishnets and harnesses, and four voluptuous women of varying body sizes, each and every single one of them freely showing their chests and ass to the entirety of the nightclub.

The Mist tried its best to sell me the illusion. It painted the lascivious scene in different shades of mundane humanity - these wet, gorgeous strippers dripping in sex appeal, their skin all different colors of brown and white and pale and dark - but no amount of Mist chicanery could fool the Eye of Discernment. It tore through the illusions and deception like a hot knife through butter.

Monsters. All of them.

Overlaid over the top of one of the slimmer women like something straight out of a freaky gooner’s fever dream was the tall, looming visage of a reptilian woman - not a Lamia like Isabella, with her voluptuous curves and smooth emerald scales and mostly human facial structure, but a blunt-faced, Voldemort-nosed monster with deep crimson scales, a fin-like hood for hair, and a long, lean, muscular body that seemed more suited for constricting and strangling prey than fucking and cuddling.

She saw me staring, wide-eyed, and grinned like a cat who caught the canary. Her long, clawed fingers glided down her tight, scaled abs, ghosted over her muscular hips, and slowly spread apart the glistening, puffy folds of her-

Ohhh…

Okay.

‘That’s totally a Dracaenae, right?’

Isabella’s significantly less arousing cousin. 

I’d need to be at least five shots in to even entertain that thought.

The rest of the dance floor was no less a mythological crockpot of monstrous, ugly, and sexy, but already I was starting to get used to this odd dual-reality perception that the Eye of Discernment granted me. It was almost as if these monsters had Stands, except the Stands were just their real selves, existing behind a thin layer of Mist that I could break apart just by focusing my attention even the slightest bit. 

That gorgeous woman in the red dress swaying near the back of the dance floor, closest to me? Her skin rippled with scales that gleamed oil-slicked black beneath the strobe lights, serpentine eyes with vertical pupils tracking my movement while a forked tongue - too long and wet - slipped out to taste the air. Another Dracaenae. Her ‘date’, an abnormally tall baldie wearing an expensive black suit, was pale to the point of curdled milk. Bluish-gray veins pulsated beneath his waxen skin, and his eyes were these deep, abyssal pools of complete and utter darkness - pits that made me shiver when they locked onto me with an unnatural hunger.

Some sort of zombie? Wight? Undead?

I didn’t know. And that somehow made Battle Maniac thrum all the more hotter in the pit of my stomach.

Another couple nearby consisted of what looked like blonde supermodels - twins - in matching black cocktail dresses, their movements perfectly synchronized as they danced. Except through my enhanced sight, I could see the way their golden-spun hair was a little too bright. Almost like fire. And those long, supple, smooth white legs weren’t actually supple, or smooth, or even white. Both of the twins had one leg made of the same gleaming celestial bronze that pulsated through the marble floor, while the others were the brown-furred legs of a donkey. 

They smiled at me, crimson eyes wide with delight, and I saw a flash of needle-like teeth the color of bone before the rolling tide of dancing bodies swept them away.

Empousai. Definitely Empousai. Greek vampire-succubi with fire powers. 

And scattered throughout, practically outnumbering the monsters that I could identify on first discernment, were something even more nerve-wracking: monsters that I couldn't even hope to recognize without some sort of mythological bestiary, or maybe Gibby’s voice yapping British-ly in my ear. There was something with too many arms and not enough eyes. Something that looked human until you noticed it had no shadow at all, and glancing away from it meant it no longer occupied that same space in your field of view. Something, something, something-

‘Chill. Breathe. You’ve got this.’

Drachma was on the line. And so was power.

I had to admit; I was starting to get addicted to it.

So I kept walking.

I cut a path through the packed floor toward the bar I could distantly see gleaming, black and sleek, in the distance through the roiling monster mash. Each step felt like walking through water, but the crowd didn't exactly part for me like I was Moses at the Red Sea - but even still, space opened. Dancers shifted without seeming to notice they were shifting. Conversations stuttered. And everywhere, distinctly inhuman eyes found me and locked on, but not a single one of the monsters made a conscious effort to break away from their own fun and try and eat me. 

Gibby wasn’t kidding.

‘The Three Rules,’ I realized, suppressing a grin that wanted to split my face in half. ‘Rule Number One: No hunting. They can look, but they can't touch. Not unless I give permission. Or they wanna get creamed by the Enforcers.’

Thanks, Lamia. And fuck you.

I straightened my shoulders, cracked my neck, and-

"Fresh meat on the floor, babies! Give our newest patron some love!"

The voice cut through the music like a missile, bright and manic and crackling with a high-pitched, barely-contained glee. It came from above, amplified through powerful speakers until it practically shook the walls, and the crowd of partying monsters gave their own roar in response that nearly gave me a fucking heart-attack from its volume and power. When I craned my neck to find the source of the commotion, I finally spotted the DJ booth.

It was elevated maybe twenty feet off the ground, built into the wall and jutting out over the front section of the dance floor like a balcony. The equipment was high-end - turntables, mixers, laptop, synthesizers, all of it bathed in blue-white and bright pink LED lighting that made the entire setup look like something straight out of Tron or Cyberpunk. And behind it all, dancing like she was participating in a rave instead of hosting it, was the DJ herself.

The Mist tried to paint her as just another alt manic pixie dream girl; oversized pink headphones with cat ears, a black crop top that said ‘UWUSUAL SUSPECT’ in glittery letters across the chest, booty shorts so tiny and tight that they barely even qualified as clothing, and a shit ton of white fishnet that clung so tightly to her petite, slender body that I would’ve been concerned for her skin if not for the fact that I already knew she was a monster. 

Her pale face was cute, almost cherubic - physically closer to my age than anything else, dappled with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her hair was a wild, messy tangle of fiery red that was several shades brighter and ginger..ier than my own. Smoky eyeshadow sharpened her viridian green eyes, clashing cutely with her soft, glittering pink lips.

All in all? A complete and utter 10/10. The type of girl to make bank off of fat, desperate Tier 3 subs and keep a Cashapp link in her social media bio.

However, my eyes saw her true form overlay the illusion like a hologram.

And in reality?

This Harpy had wings.

Massive, gorgeous, absolutely fucking badass wings that sprouted from her shoulder blades and spread maybe eight feet to either side, covered in feathers that shifted between cherry blossom pink and Flaming Hot Cheetos red depending on how the LED lights hit them. Her legs - which the Mist desperately tried to convince me were soft, squishy, and utterly human - were taloned, ending in wickedly curved claws that gripped the edge of her equipment with the casual ease of a bird perched on a branch. 

And her hands, currently flying across the mixer with practiced skill, had fingers just slightly too long and too jointed to be entirely human, topped with claws that should have torn the fragile tech to pieces but somehow didn’t.

She was also live-streaming, or recording a video, or something. Who even knew nowadays?

I could see her phone propped up on a tripod stand next to her brightly bedazzled laptop, the camera pointed at her face, and she very specifically kept herself placed in such a way that she was never out of its limited cone of sight for more than a second at most. She bobbed her head to the beat, some phonk-heavy mix I’d never heard before, and read something on her laptop.

Whatever it was, it made her cackle like a witch.

“Chat, chill! CHILL! Okay, okay, I’ll ask him- hey, Demi-God! Cutie with the luscious red locks! Literally the only Godling on the dance floor! Yoo-hooo; my chat’s got a question!”

Fuck. I instinctively locked eyes with her.

Her oddly human grin turned absolutely feral.

“Kronos or Olympus?”

…

I flipped her off.

Her cackling turned into full-blown squawking laughter, and she just turned the music up louder.

Heat suffused my skin as the crowd of monsters laughed, cheered, or booed depending on their own personal political standings. The attention made the chain around my neck feel heavier, like Soulfyre was reminding me it was there and ready for when shit turned bad. I didn’t mind having eyes on me. Hell, despite the whole ‘lone wolf’ attitude I was pretty fond of my getting my fair share of the spotlight. I’d never shied away from it. But judging by that very specific usage of the word ‘chat’, and the way she was acting-

The Harpy was, without a doubt now, some kind of streamer. Probably to a whole community of monsters. And I was the special snowflake Demi-God crashing the party. I didn’t need that kind of heat just yet.

‘Then again,’ Devil Andreas grinned from my right shoulder, ‘Feats. Imagine becoming an internet microcelebrity? What kinda Drachma would that be? Bronze? Silver? Gold?’

…

I waited for Angel Andreas to chime in, then I realized he never actually existed. So I was stuck with my problematic side’s admittedly logical opinion.

… Sure. 

I wouldn’t chase internet fame, but feats were feats.

That train of thought derailed the moment I actually got a good look at the bar itself.

It stretched along the entire far wall of the club, polished black wood that gleamed like obsidian. Behind the bar, the wall was mirrored, reflecting the chaos of the dance floor in fragmented kaleidoscope patterns, while shelves rested above and below the glass, packed to the brim with bottles. There were some that I recognized, even from a distance (Jack Daniels, Patrón, Grey Goose), but there were also others that I didn’t that were definitely not sold at your average liquor store (glowing purple liquid in crystal decanters, something that looked like condensed starlight, a bottle filled with what appeared to be actual magma).

And in front of that mirror and alcohol, moving with fluid grace that should have been impossible, was the bartender.

‘Holy shit.’

Even through the Mist she was stunning. 

The illusion painted her as a tall, curvy Japanese woman with flawless, caramel-tanned skin, short black hair cut in a sleek, no-nonsense bob, and a face that could have contributed to the fucking Trojan War if only she’d been there - high cheekbones, soft, slim lips painted the color of dark plums, and sharp, half-lidded eyes so dark they were almost as black as the bar. 

She wore a simple white dress-shirt that clung to her body like a second skin, the buttons damn near twitching from the tension, and a cute little bow tie that could’ve been any color of the rainbow because Gods know I wasn’t paying attention to it. The shirt was tucked neatly into a pair of slim black slacks, the front covered in a short white apron 

But with my enhanced sight?

She was a fucking spider lady. A Jorogumo if my fleeting knowledge of random Yokai trivia, learned over the course of a full night’s hyperfixation, were to be believed. The kind that seduced men, dragged them back to her lair, wrapped them up in silk, and… well, the stories got pretty fucking dark from there. 

But unlike the Dracaenae and Empousai grinding on the dance floor, this particular monster didn't ping my brain as ‘immediate threat’. Maybe it was the way she moved - efficient, professional, no wasted motion as she worked the bar with the practiced ease of someone who'd been doing this for decades, maybe centuries. Or maybe it was the complete and utter disinterest in her half-lidded black eyes as she ignored the hungry stares from her patrons and focused entirely on her craft.

The first monster I’d seen tonight who didn’t immediately look like they wanted to eat me - other than the DJ, I guess.

As it turns out, her skin wasn't just that soft, tanned caramel color. It was covered and protected by this flexible, grayish-white exoskeleton that gleamed like polished bone under the club's lighting. Chitin, I realized, watching the way it moved with her as she worked behind the bar. It wasn’t rigid like armor, but flowing, almost liquid in how it shifted across her shoulders, down her arms, across the generous swell of her chest that strained against her white button-down. 

And she had six fucking arms.

I stared as I approached, transfixed, as she worked. Two arms poured vodka into a shaker with measured precision. Another pair sliced limes with a knife that moved so fast it blurred, my Eye of Discernment unable to keep up with the inhuman speed. The fifth arm had reached across the bar and grabbed that bottle of starlight, uncorking it with a pop, while the sixth scribbled something on a notepad. It was like watching a one-woman assembly line, and her bar was the conveyor belt.

But it was her face that really got me.

She had six eyes, arranged neatly in a pattern that shouldn't work but somehow did - the two primary ones where human eyes would be, glowing a molten gold against black sclera that seemed to drink in the light around them, and four smaller ones positioned above below, tracking all nearby movement with a predatory precision. Below those gorgeous, terrifying eyes, her lips were even slimmer than the illusion’s, creased on the sides by razor-thin gaps of exoskeleton that carved up through her rows of eyes and connected in the middle of her forehead into a small black dot. 

She was a nightmare and a wet dream rolled into one impossibly hot, tall, monstrous package.

‘Okay,’ I thought, forcing my feet to keep moving toward the bar even as my brain was still processing the fact that I was about to order a drink from a literal spider monster. ‘Just… be cool. You've already fucked a Lamia tonight. Turned her into your monster slave. You've got a shotgun in your shadow that shoots unholy napalm, a sword that can kill Gods, and a Gacha system that can make you into one. You can handle one hot bartender, Ashcroft.’

Even if she could probably tie me up in silk webs and drain my blood - and semen - while I slept.

Especially because she could probably do that.

Gods, I was fucked up.

But even still, I made it to the bar. Uneaten. 

I slid onto one of the barstools beside a slumped over, shaggy-haired man in a wrinkled gray suit. His true form, overlaid over his tall, lanky body, was that of an even skinnier looking werewolf with rust-colored fur and bloodshot amber eyes. He wasn’t unconscious; his eyes were still open for one, despite being dilated to Tartarus and back, and he still played with his own crimson-rimmed glass between jagged, dirty claws, but something told me he wouldn’t be awake for too much longer.

His drugged-out eyes flickered to me as I sat, that familiar glint of hunger shining in their amber depths, but then he yawned, smacked his fangs together, and decided I wasn’t worth breaking the high. For now.

Cool.

The bartender finished whatever complicated drink she'd been crafting with two of her arms (something that glowed bluish-white and looked suspiciously like the chug juice in Fortnite), slid it down the bar to a waiting customer, some kind of blue-skinned humanoid with gills, and finally turned her eyes towards me.

All six of them.

Something electric tingled down my spine.

"You're either very brave or very stupid," she murmured, her voice a low, husky, distinctly unnatural rasp that scratched at something in the back of my (mostly) human brain. It had an almost musical quality to it, each word enunciated with careful precision, like English wasn't her first language but she'd long since mastered it. "Most Demi-Gods have the sense to stay far away from places like this."

Her chelicerae - visible only when she opened her mouth, two small, razor-sharp looking fangs made of ivory bone - clicked softly, a sound like knitting needles tapping together.

I leaned forward on the barstool, resting my elbows on the smooth black surface of the bartop, and let a crooked grin spread across my face. "I've been called both before. Usually in the same sentence."

"Mm." She tilted her head, and I watched all six eyes narrow slightly, studying me like a spider would a fly that flew willingly into its web. One of her hands - the free one that wasn't actively mixing a drink or wiping down the bar - reached up to tuck a strand of sleek, glossy black hair behind her ear. "And yet here you are, walking into Club Ravenous like you own the place. Alone. Unarmed."

Not even. But she didn’t need to know that.

So I just shrugged. “Guess I’ve got a bit of a death wish then, huh?”

Judging by the deadpan glare she sent my way, the Jorogumo did not believe that one bit. She sighed, one arm reaching across the bar to grab the rust-furred werewolf’s empty cup. Another one reached beneath the counter, collected a nice heaping of this blood-red… sugar(?) and wipe it slowly around the stained red rim. 

“What are you doing here, Godling? This isn't a place for your kind."

My eyebrows arched.

Was it just me, or did she almost sound… concerned?

"What, beautiful women serving drinks in a club that plays decent enough music?” I tapped my finger against the bar, on beat with the Harpy’s electronica music, and winked at her. “This seems exactly like my kind of place."

One of her smaller eyes twitched. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was fighting a smile.

"Flattery," she said dryly. "How original."

…

And that was it.

Cold. But I could practically see the chink in her armor, and I didn’t mean the exo-skeleton. I’d always been the type to take the more frigid women as a challenge, because going after the type who already wanted to jump your bones before you even put any effort in got boring after a while. I doubted I’d achieve any kind of feat for bagging a Spider Yokai’s number, but not everything had to be for business. I’d be getting plenty of that soon enough.

"What's your name?" I asked instead, deciding to just go for it. Best case scenario, I get her phone number and Instagram (if monsters even had Instagram). Worst case scenario… well, I was trying not to think about worst case scenarios while sitting in a nightclub full of monsters who wanted to eat me.

She regarded me silently for a long moment, her multiple hands never stopping their work. Pouring. Mixing. Shaking. Slicing. Garnishing. It was fucking hypnotic to watch.

"Yumei," she finally answered me, her chelicerae clicking together once again. "And you are?"

"Andreas." I extended my gloved hand across the bar, and after a beat, she reached out with one of her own - smooth, warm, with a grip that was firm but not crushing. Her fingers were longer than they should be, the joints slightly wrong and the chitin carving thin lines across the back of her palm, but her touch - and the exo-skeleton itself - was oddly soft. "Andreas Ashcroft. And my sixteenth birthday’s comin’ up soon, so I figured I’d have an early b-day party. Couldn’t have picked a better venue."

"Sixteen," she repeated, and I couldn't tell if she was amused or concerned. The dispassionate tone of voice and sleek, almost mask-like exoskeleton made it really hard to decipher her emotions. "You're a child."

"I'm fifteen going on thirty-two," I retorted. "Trust me, I've seen some shit."

"Not like this, you haven't." Yumei released my hand and gestured vaguely at the club around us - the grinding bodies, the strobing lights, the very obvious monsters trying very hard not to stare at me. Scattered down the bar, nursing drinks that they were barely even paying attention to, were several monsters that were not-so-subtly listening in on everything we were saying. "This is not a place for children, Andreas Ashcroft. Demi-God or not."

"Didn’t think monsters gave a fuck about the age of consent."

“Yokai,” she corrected dully, sending me a glare that failed to display any real anger or offense. “And I don’t. Your mortal rules and moralities mean nothing to me, or the true monsters who lurk in this place. And that is exactly my point.”

I tilted my head, a messy lock of crimson falling into my vision before I blew it away. “If it helps, I’m not from Miami. Age of consent’s different in Atlanta, and I’m born and raised in Georgia. I don’t go by Florida’s rules.”

“That is-.... That is not how law, or the age of consent works, Andreas Ashcroft.”

“Somehow I don’t think Rick Scott, the Governor of Florida, cares too much about what I get up to in an illegal, underground nightclub run by a mass-murdering monster queen.”

…

Yumei paused. Her chelicerae clicked again, faster this time. Irritation? Amusement? I still couldn't tell.

"What do you drink?" she sighed, already reaching for bottles before I could answer. "And don't say ‘vodka’ or ‘whiskey’. I can smell the inexperience on you. You'd probably gag on the first sip and embarrass yourself."

My ‘manly pride’ had me bristling slightly at that, but I immediately forced myself to relax. It wasn’t as if she was wrong. I'd only had alcohol a couple handful of times, usually whatever Kali left lying around the penthouse, and it very rarely actually tasted like something I wanted to swallow. Hard liquor and Andreas Ashcroft never really meshed all too well.

"Surprise me," I said instead, resting my chin in my palm and watching her work. "But keep it light. I need to stay sharp tonight."

"Smart." 

Yumei pulled down three crystal-like decanters - one filled with something amber and glowing faintly, another with a clear liquid that seemed to shimmer when the light hit it, and a third that was just straight-up normal-looking orange juice. "Most clear-sighted mortals who come here get drunk immediately and end up doing something stupid. Like challenging a Cyclops to a drinking contest. Or trying to dance with a Siren."

"What happens when they do that?"

"They die." She said it so matter-of-factly, without even a hint of emotion, that it took me a second to process. "Painfully. Usually."

"Yeesh. Good to know."

She mixed the ingredients with practiced efficiency, her six arms working in perfect synchronization. The amber liquid went first, then a splash of the shimmering stuff, then orange juice to cut the taste. She shook it all together in a silver cocktail shaker, the clearly defined muscles in her arms flexing beneath mocha skin, and I tried very hard not to stare at the way her button-down shirt strained across her massive, jiggling chest with every sharp, jerking movement.

Failed, obviously. But I tried.

Judging by the tiny quirk of her painted lips, Yumei clearly witnessed the struggle.

Once she was done with the mixing, she slid the shaker to the side and raised one of her hands. I watched, morbidly curious, as the white chitin coating that hand began melting and morphing before my very eyes, smoothly transforming itself into one large, curved, deadly-looking black claw. One of her normal hands brought up a heavy block of ice from some hidden freezer that she carved into with swift, blurring slices of the scythe-like appendage.

It was like watching a master swordsman at work.

One slice. Two. Five. Ten. It continued until my gaze grew cross-eyed, trying in vain to follow the cuts that could have easily turned me into all sorts of sliced-up Demi-God meat if she’d ever decided to aim those pincers across the bar. Little flecks of ice erupted from her blurred spectacle, turning to water on contact with my heated skin, and I took the moment to enjoy both the refreshing shower and the show. The other monsters were clearly enamored by her as well, their bloodthirsty gazes finally shifting away from me to watch the Jorogumo bartender.

It didn’t take her longer than maybe half a minute.

By the time she was finished, the ice had been carved down to roughly the size of a normal ice cube - except it was no longer a block, but a sun, masterfully carved and sliced until it looked more like a piece of art than something that would end up melting in my stomach. 

"Here." 

She dropped the ice-sun into a tall glass, poured the mixed drink inside, and garnished it with a slice of blood orange from beneath the bar and what looked like a sprig of rosemary. When she slid the drink towards me, I saw that the orange-gold liquid was shimmering, glowing softly at the edges and spilling its light across the dark surface of the bar. "Sunrise Arancello. Light on the alcohol, heavy on the magic. It'll keep you alert but take the edge off."

“Sweet knife skills,” I said honestly, my eyes still somewhat wide from the show. 

That tiny little smile grew ever so slightly wider.

“Thank you.”

I picked up the glass and sniffed it cautiously. It smelled like citrus and something floral, with an underlying sweetness that reminded me of honey. It also made my tongue tingle - like licking the end of a low-voltage battery. "You said it’s magic? Like, it has magic or it is magic?"

"Everything here has magic, Andreas." 

Yumei leaned forward on the bar, resting her weight on four arms while the other two continued working on another order. The position put her face level with mine, close enough that I could see the faint iridescent sheen to her bone white chitin, like oil on water. "The drinks, the music, the air you're breathing. This place is woven with Marian's Essence. You didn't think a nightclub full of monsters could exist beneath Miami without serious magical infrastructure, did you?"

"Marian," I repeated, taking a cautious sip. The drink was ridiculously good - sweet but not cloying, with a warmth that spread through my chest without the burn of straight liquor. Already, I could feel the adrenaline-pumping edge of Battle Maniac fading away to the background. "That's Queen Lamia, right? The one who runs this place?"

Yumei's expression shifted, just slightly. There was a subtle tightening around her eyes, a fractional downturn of her lips that had her chelicerae clicking aggressively. "Yes. Queen Marian Lamia. Ancient Libyan royalty, daughter of Hecate, spurned lover of Zeus, and the most powerful sorceress I've ever had the misfortune of meeting."

There was history there. Bad history, judging by the venom in her tone.

"You don't like her," I observed.

"No one likes Marian," Yumei responded flatly. "You fear her, you serve her, or you die. Sometimes all three." 

She straightened up, her claw-tipped legs clicking against the marble floor beneath her as she grabbed a bottle of starlight for another customer. "She's away right now, thank the Fates. Business at the Sea of Monsters. Otherwise, you'd already be dead or enslaved, and I'd be cleaning your blood off my bar."

"That's… comforting."

"It should be. Her absence is the only reason you're still breathing."

I took another sip of my drink, processing the rather macabre news that I’d already suspected long before stepping foot at the bar. Queen Lamia was powerful, this was egregiously apparent - powerful enough, even, that a monster as old and dangerous as Yumei was terrified of her. And she'd cursed Gibby, the door guy, turning him into literal wood for… what? Sleeping with her? Creating art she didn't like? Being Dutch? 

It wasn’t painting a pretty picture, but at this point I’d already classified Queen Lamia under the category of ‘BBEG, literal party wipe’, so I guess it didn’t matter.

Yumei watched me as I nursed her creation, all six of her eyes focused entirely on my face - and my expression - like I was the only patron she was meant to be serving. It should’ve been disturbing, looking up and seeing three rows of black and gold staring at me with such intensity, but instead, it sorta felt… nice, in a way? Intimate? I tried to keep my calm, but I could already feel the flushed embarrassment drifting up the side of my neck, coloring my cheeks a deep, frustrating red.

She spoke before I could look away.

“You are… different. Different from the other Demi-Gods I have met before.”

There was a hint of smug satisfaction in her deep, raspy voice. As if my embarrassment was a cause for pride. 

Ugh.

I took the bait.

“Different how?” I asked, setting my glass down.

Yumei's expression shifted, something vulnerable flickering across her features before she locked it down behind that cool, professional mask. "Your eyes. They're… unusual. Glowing. Purple with gold, like sunset over a battlefield. Not normal for Demi-Gods, at least not ones I've encountered. Divine blessing? Curse? Something worse?"

Ah. Right. Eye of Discernment wasn’t subtle.

I shrugged, deflecting smoothly. "Family trait. My sister's got funky eyes too. Purple, actually - hers don't glow though. Guess I got the upgrade."

It wasn’t necessarily a lie. Eris did have purple eyes. I just conveniently left out the whole 'she's a literal goddess' part.

"Mm."

Yumei didn’t look convinced, but neither did she push, which I was very thankful for.

Instead, two of her arms continued mixing drinks for other patrons while the other four focused on me and my area - one wiping the bar, one resting possessively near my glass, one idly toying with the edge of her bow tie, and one reaching beneath the bar for… something.

When that hand re-emerged, it was holding a small bowl of what looked like roasted nuts. She slid them toward me.

"You'll want something to absorb the ambient magic. Unless you're trying to get drunk quickly, in which case ignore me."

I popped a nut in my mouth - some kind of spiced cashew that tasted faintly of cinnamon and something else I couldn't identify. "Appreciate the looking out. Though, I gotta ask…"

I leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering my voice even though the music had gotten loud enough that no one else could probably hear us anyway. "Why? I'm pretty sure half this club wants to eat me, but you're giving me food and warnings. What's your angle, beautiful spider lady?"

All six of her eyes widened fractionally. Her chelicerae stopped mid-click.

"You can see me.”

… Wait.

What?

"Yeah," I admitted, figuring there was no point in lying about something that obvious. Plus, I was very confused. "The Mist doesn’t work too well on Demi-Gods, didn’t you know? I can see everything. Have been able to since I walked in the front door. And you…"

I let my gaze travel deliberately over her true form, taking in the chitin plating, the multiple arms, the predatory grace of her movements.

"You look absolutely stunning in ways that probably make me some kind of deviant in the Demi-God community, but fuck it. I'm into what I’m into."

…

Silence.

That was a buzzer beater shot from across the whole fucking court, but I couldn’t find it in me to regret it. Yumei was pretty much my type down to a science, and all of the ‘creepy’ parts that most dudes in my shoes would be turned off by only made her look all the more exotic and attractive to me. Isabella was hot, and I’d definitely be taking her and her sisters to pound town at some point before the night ended, but she wasn’t… I wasn’t interested in her. She was my servant. A warm, scaly body.

I actually wanted Yumei’s number. And not just to smash.

She genuinely seemed cool.

And Yumei?

Yumei just stared at me.

For a second, I thought that I actually broke her. All six of her eyes were locked onto my face, her expression as blank and white as a sheet of paper, and the clawed hand that rested near my glass began tapping a discord beat against the gleaming surface of the bartop. 

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"The Mist here has been weaved and cultivated by Queen Lamia herself," she finally said, her raspy voice somehow even lower than before. Her hand stopped tapping the bar, hesitantly gliding up and over to touch my wrist where it rested on the wood. Her fingers were cool, and I could feel the slight pressure of her claws as they pressed against my very fragile, very human skin. "Most mortals who come here see me as just a normal, yet slightly unusual bartender. Demi-Gods may get a flash of ‘monster’, enough to know that what they are seeing are not human, but rarely enough to properly categorize what we are. Not until it is too late.”

“Damn,” I breathed, my pulse racing in spite of myself. “Guess I’m just super fuckin’ special then, huh?”

Her chelicerae clicked together rapidly, far faster than they ever had before. Belatedly, as I watched her lips curve upwards and her eyes widen, I realized it was Yumei’s way of laughing.

Cute.

"Complimenting a Jorogumo on her true form is very… ballsy, Andreas.” Her claws ghosted over the back of my hand before sliding back down to my wrist, flipping it around to circle its veins. I knew she could probably feel how fast my heart was beating through my pulse. Probably even hear it. “Do you know what my kind does to handsome young men?"

I swallowed and licked my lips. 

My dick was rock hard in my pants.

"Educated guess? Seduce them, wrap them up, drain them dry."

She tilted her head, silky black locks of midnight black falling into her face and covering three of her wide-opened eyes. "Mm. Close. We seduce them, mate with them, and then consume them to feed our eggs."

"Hot."

Her chelicerae clicked rapidly - definitely a laugh this time, startled and genuine. "You are actually crazy, little Godling."

"Crazy interested," I corrected smoothly, taking another sip of my drink and enjoying the way her golden eyes tracked the movement of my throat as I swallowed. "You're clearly not here to hunt - otherwise you'd have broken the rules already. Gods know I gave enough hints. You're a bartender. An extremely skilled one, from what I can tell. And you're warning me about danger instead of contributing to it. So either you've gone soft-"

"I haven't."

"-or you've got principles. Which is rare, according to everything I’ve seen tonight. So yeah, I'm interested. In you, specifically. Not just because you're gorgeous-"

"Flattery again."

"-but because you're genuinely interesting."

She stared at me for another long moment, and I could practically see the wheels turning behind those monstrous, beautiful eyes. Weighing. Measuring. Deciding whether I was genuine or just running game. I wasn’t one-hundred percent certain myself, either - a lot of my interest was genuine, but I’d be lying to myself if I said that there wasn't some measure of selfish desire in my flirting as well. But considering she literally admitted to killing and eating several (probably) innocent men, I found it hard to feel guilty.

Finally, she pulled her hand back, but not before giving my wrist a light squeeze that sent pleasant electricity up my arm.

"You asked why I'm helping you," she said quietly, two of her arms returning to work while the others crossed themselves beneath her bust. "Truthfully? I am bored, Andreas. I've been tending this bar for decades, serving monsters who see me as furniture at best and a threat at worst. None of them look at me. Truly look at me, beyond the illusions they’ve placed over me in their own feeble minds. They don't see me."

Her chelicerae clicked softly, and something in her eyes softened. 

"But you do. You see exactly what I am, as a Demi-God at that, but instead of fear or disgust or hatred… you're sitting here flirting with me like I'm just another pretty girl at a bar. It's… refreshing. Dangerous, but refreshing."

‘Lonely,’ I slowly realized, listening to that low, discordant warble in the back of her throat - the only evidence of the emotion coursing through her body right now. ‘She's so fucking lonely.’

And wasn't that something I could relate to? Thirteen schools in sixteen years, never forming real connections because I was always moving, always keeping secrets, always playing some sort of role. I'd had friends - casual ones, temporary ones - but no one who really knew me. Not even Kali, despite loving me, knew about my reincarnation or the depths of my past life trauma. At least, as far as I was aware. There wasn’t a single soul in this world beyond Grandma K that actually fucking saw or knew me for who I truly was, and that was a brutal truth that had taken me years to cope with.

This spider lady and I had more in common than she even knew.

"For what it's worth," I began, genuine warmth bleeding into my voice, "I think you're one of the most interesting people I've met in a long, long time. And I've met a lot of fuckin’ weirdoes, Yumei."

That earned me a small, helpless, genuine smile - the first real one I'd seen from her that didn’t possess an edge of cynicism or amusement or wryness. It transformed her chitin-covered face, softening the predatory edges and making her look almost… shy.

"You're trouble," she murmured, looking away and rummaging for something beneath the bar.

I grinned.

“But at least I’m not boring."

________________________________________

The conversation flowed easier after that. I nursed my Sunrise Aracello and munched on spiced nuts while Yumei worked, her six arms moving in hypnotic synchronization as she mixed drinks and snacks for the steady stream of monsters who approached the bar. Between orders, we talked - shorter exchanges at first, feeling each other out, then longer as we both relaxed into the rhythm.

I learned that she'd been born in Japan centuries ago, back when Jorogumo and Yokai in general were still feared and worshipped in equal measure. That she'd left her nest because she didn't want to spend eternity hunting men and spinning webs. That she'd bounced around the world for decades before landing here, working for Queen Lamia in exchange for protection from local monster politics and a steady paycheck.

"Marian isn't the worst employer," Yumei admitted, sliding a glowing green drink down the bar to a scale-covered hand. "She's ruthless, petty, and holds grudges for millenia, but she pays well and doesn't micromanage. As long as I keep the bar stocked and don't cause trouble, she leaves me alone."

"Speaking of Marian- er, Lamia, I mean - how bad would it be if she were here tonight? Like, specifically"

All six eyes focused on me with laser intensity.

"You wouldn't be having this conversation," Yumei said flatly. "You'd be wrapped in magical bindings, drained of your godly Essence, and probably decorating her private collection of 'trophies' before you could even so much as blink. The Queen doesn't tolerate Demi-Gods in her territory unless they're here as part of some conniving scheme that involves the latter, are the sanctioned guests of one of her true VIPs, or is acting as a toy for one of her daughters."

Her daughters.

"Like Isabella?"

Yumei's expression shifted, mouth falling open and her two main eyes widening in a mixture of surprise and resignation. "So you are a toy. I should have guessed. Isabella doesn't usually bring her conquests to the club, though. She prefers to hunt alone and keep her… encounters private."

"We're not-" 

I paused, considering. Were Isabella and I 'together'? I'd fucked her, sure, and then bound her with a Styx oath after nearly killing her, and now she was technically my spy/slave/something, but my very limited experience with committed relationships struggled to find a way to put any of that into a neat little box.

"It's complicated."

Yumei nodded slowly. "Mm. It usually is with Lamias."

There was something in her tone. It wasn’t quite jealousy, because we’d only met maybe half an hour before and something told me that this bartender wasn’t too quick to grow attached, but there was definitely a bite of… disappointment. Like knowing I was here on behalf of Isabella, who apparently had a pretty acerbic reputation according to her and Gibby, solidified some fear she’d been nursing in the back of her mind.

That bothered me a bit more than it should have.

"For the record," I said carefully, meeting her half-lidded gaze…s, "Isabella and I have an… arrangement. But it's not exclusive, and it's definitely not romantic. She's more like an informant who occasionally benefits from our professional relationship. I’d rather die before I became some chick’s little boytoy."

Debatable. But you had to be a lot more than Isabella fucking Reyes to make me bark like a dog.

Yumei's chelicerae clicked softly. "A ‘professional relationship’. Is that what we're calling it now?"

"Hey, I'm trying to be diplomatic here. What would you call 'defeated in combat and negotiated terms of service with'? Because I could’ve just killed her ass and called it a day.”

She blinked. Her eyes widened.

And then she laughed. Actually laughed.

It was a genuine, deep, husky sound that came directly from her stomach instead of her little chelicerae fangs click-clacking together. It made her shoulders shake and all six eyes crinkle at the corners. Several monsters at the bar turned to stare, shocked by the sound, but she clearly didn’t care. Apparently, Yumei didn't laugh often.

"You…” She exhaled, the laughter finally dying in her throat. “You defeated Isabella? One of the Queen's daughters?"

I swiped my nose. “Amongst other things.”

She leaned forward, forearms on the bar, close enough that I could smell her - something earthy and sweet, like vanilla mixed with fabric softener and freshly cut grass. "Tell. Me. Everything."

So I did, because why the fuck not.

It was the sanitized version, obviously - I left out the Chaos Gacha and Khaos and Eris being my goddess sister and all the supernatural cheat-code bullshit, making it sound like I was just a very skilled Demi-God with a very colorful array of abilities. I told her about prom, about Isabella's attempted seduction-slash-murder, about our fight in the bathroom and how I'd managed to get the upper hand through a combination of skill, luck, and Soulfyre.

Her eyes practically glowed when I mentioned the Stygian Iron blade. That was a calculated risk, revealing it, but I wanted to confirm something important.

"You have a Styx-forged weapon," she breathed, her voice nearly silent as she whispered to me, her cool and minty breath ghosting over my lips. "That's… Andreas, do you understand how rare those are? How valuable? "

"Family heirloom," I smirked, which was technically true if you counted Eris as family. "My sister gave it to me for protection."

"Your sister has access to Stygian Iron and just… gave it to you?"

"She's well-connected."

"Clearly. Does she happen to know Hades as well?"

…

“Dunno actually. Probably? He kinda sounds like a dickhead though, so maybe not.”

Yumei studied me for a long moment, six eyes narrowed with thought. Then she reached beneath the bar and pulled out a bottle I hadn't seen before - dark glass, unmarked, filled with liquid that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

"On the house," she said, pouring a small amount into a fresh glass and sliding it toward me. "For surviving an encounter with a Lamia, one of Marian’s favorites, and actually coming out on top. That's worth celebrating."

I picked up the glass, swirling the black liquid cautiously. "What is it?"

"Lethe water. Very, very diluted, mixed with sake and a few other magical things to make it safe for consumption. Won't make you forget anything permanently, but it'll give you a pleasant buzz and dull painful memories for a few hours."

"Memories I want dulled, or random memories?"

"Whatever hurts most."

I considered that. Sixteen years of Thomas Vaughn's street rat trauma? The complicated mess of feelings around Kali/Eris? The low-grade anxiety about my growing power and the curses I'd taken? I was probably more fucked-up than I’d thought, honestly, considering I had two lifetimes worth of trauma to deal with, but I’d never really given it all that much thought before tonight. Hadn’t really thought about how much it may have bothered or limited me in my day-to-day living.

… A few hours of peace sounded nice.

I knocked it back in one smooth motion.

It tasted like nothing - literally nothing, like drinking liquid absence - and then warmth spread through my chest, my shoulders relaxing as tension I didn't know I'd been carrying melted away. The club sounds softened slightly, becoming less overwhelming. The hungry stares from the crowd felt more distant, less immediately threatening. I didn’t suddenly develop dementia, didn’t forget my name or my Eris or my old life, but the worst of my experiences felt… cloudy. Detached. I knew they existed, but it was like they didn’t actually matter, or that someone else who looked ridiculously similar to me had gone through it.

"Damn," I breathed appreciatively, smacking my lips and savoring the sweet aftertaste. "That's good shit."

"I know."

There was pride in her voice, and I realized that bartending wasn't just a job for her - it was a craft. She took genuine satisfaction in mixing the perfect drink, in reading her customers and knowing exactly what they needed. I’d gathered as much, hearing about her travels and the reason why she left her nest, but it was different actually seeing that glow right in front of me.

‘She's an artist. Just like Gibby was, before Marian cursed him.’

Speaking of…

"Can I ask you about something?" I murmured, keeping my voice low. "Or someone, actually. Gibby. The door."

Yumei's expression shuttered immediately, six eyes going flat and distant. "What about him?"

This could either bite me in the ass majorly, or confirm that I had one other ally in this horrible place. 

Fuck it.

"He's suffering,” I answered bluntly, frowning as I thought about the hollow pain and desperation that had coated his voice after he’d realized that I could potentially save him. “He has been for centuries, apparently. And I promised I'd help him. Free him, if I could. But I don't know the first thing about breaking a curse that powerful."

Silence stretched between us, heavy and tense Around us, the club pulsed with music and movement, but our little corner of the bar felt isolated, like we'd carved out a pocket of stillness in the chaos. The other patrons had already stopped trying to eavesdrop on our conversation, and it was clear enough to anyone looking in that I held the bartender’s undivided attention for the foreseeable future.

Finally, Yumei sighed - a quiet, defeated sound.

"Grinling Gibbons," she said softly. "He was a sculptor. Dutch, if I remember correctly. Three hundred years ago, he was commissioned by Queen Marian to create artwork for her - something to commemorate her hatred of the Olympians and her eternal grudge against Zeus."

Her hands moved automatically, mixing another drink, but I could tell her attention was on the story.

"He was brilliant. Talented beyond measure. And handsome, which was his first mistake. The Queen… she doesn't handle rejection well. When he finished the commission and tried to leave, she offered him immortality, wealth, power - everything a mortal artist could want. He refused. Said he'd rather die human than live forever as a monster's plaything."

"So she turned him into his own artwork," I finished grimly.

"Exactly. Bound his soul to the door he'd carved, made him the guardian of her club. He's been there ever since, watching, warning, unable to die but no longer truly alive. It is one of her crueler punishments.”

Four of her arms stilled, and she looked at me with something approaching respect.

"You want to free him. Even though it benefits you in no way, and very well may anger the Queen if she ever finds out."

"Yeah," I said simply. "Because it's the right thing to do. And because fuck anyone who thinks they can torture someone for centuries just because they hurt their feelings."

The story had only confirmed what I’d already suspected, and holy shit did it piss me off. Gibby didn’t deserve that fate. Not for refusing the advances of a megalomaniacal narcissist of a snake cunt. Hell, I’d even go as far as to say that only the worst of the worst deserved a punishment like that - otherwise, just fucking kill him and move on with your day. 

It made me want to fucking throttle something.

My anger must’ve been obvious, because Yumei's expression softened. Her eyes warmed with genuine affection, though the confusion was unmistakable.

"You really are different," she murmured. Shaking her head, the Jorogumo leaned in even closer, so close that her lips ghosted against the shell of my right ear and nearly sent me into cardiac arrest. "Your Stygian Iron blade will work. If you cut him free - not just the wood, but the curse binding him - the blade should absorb both. He'd be released from his torment, though his soul would be trapped in your weapon instead of Tartarus. There is even a chance, though slim, that some vestiges of his Essence remains within his wooden head - if you slice fast enough. For someone like Gibby, who's suffered so long…"

"It'd be mercy," I finished, the sobering reality of the situation quenching my teenage hormones. "Better than this half-existence."

"Much better."

Before I could respond, the Hellhound next to me suddenly jolted upright with a snort, his golden eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to remember where he was. He looked around, spotted his empty glass, then slumped back down with a groan and choked-off laughter. His suit was even more wrinkled up close, stained with what looked like old blood and recent alcohol, and his maw hung open in a dopey, vacant grin.

"You good, man?" I asked, admittedly unnerved.

He turned those bloodshot golden eyes toward me, squinting like he was trying to focus through a fog. "Goooood? 'M great, Demi-God kid. Jus'… jus' vibin', y'know? The Lotus… makes everything…" He trailed off, giggling to himself like he'd just heard the world's funniest joke.

Yumei sighed. "That's his third Scarlet Dream tonight. He's going to pass out soon."

"Is that… safe?"

"For him? Yes. Hellhounds have ridiculous constitutions. He'll sleep it off and wake up with a headache." She paused, fingers tapping her crossed arms, and pursed her lips. "For everyone else? Debatable. They can get very aggressive when startled. And, speaking of aggressive monsters…”

Yumei looked to me again, her eyes narrowed in that very particular way that I was starting to learn meant she was planning to either give me advice or fuss at me for doing or saying something silly. “You should know, Andreas, that your presence here has been noticed. Widely, thanks to DJ Shriek and her massive following. The scuttlebutt in monster circles will already start to spread; a seemingly powerful Demi-God of unknown parentage, walking into Club Ravenous alone. If you survive the night, you will become even more infamous. If.”

"Hey, I've got a plan,” I protested, nursing my Lethe Water. “Kinda.”

I did.

Kinda.

Her pursed lips shifted into a weary frown. "Does this plan involve Isabella and her sisters protecting you?"

"Parts of it."

"And the other parts?"

I grinned lazily, wide and sharp and probably a little unhinged.

"Improvisation, my dear Yumei. I'm pretty fuckin’ good at that."

The Spider Yokai shook her head, but I caught the small smile playing on her lips before she hid it behind one of her upper limbs and turned away. "You're going to get yourself killed. And I'm going to feel bad about it, which is inconvenient because I've worked very hard to stop caring about idiots who walk into obvious danger."

"Sorry to complicate your emotional detachment."

"You should be."

But her hand found mine on the bar again, this time not pulling away. Cool fingers, tipped with claws that could shred flesh, gently squeezed my wrist in what might have been reassurance but could also come off as ‘goodbye’ - not that I was planning to die anytime soon. The moment stretched, both comfortable and charged all at once, and I found myself genuinely hoping I'd survive the night just to see if this - whatever this was - could develop into something more. Which was kinda crazy to think about, since I had a Lamia spy/fuck buddy and I still had the whole ‘Kali is Eris and we kissed and have unfinished business in New York’ to deal with.

Then the moment shattered.

"No," Yumei hissed sharply, her six eyes suddenly focused over my shoulder. "Not her. Not now."

I half-turned on my barstool just in time to see - and smell - what was approaching.

Eight feet of drunk, horny Minotaur.

She was massive, even taller than Yumei, who had to be at least seven foot something standing straight up. She swayed as she walked, her hooves clicking against the marble floor with an unsteady rhythm that she probably hoped looked seductive but came off more like a newborn colt finding its legs for the first time. Through the Mist, she looked like the most stereotypical ‘butch’ I’d ever seen in my life - muscular to the point of grotesque, dark skin, black cornrows, and an oversized gold septum ring that gleamed beneath the lights.

Through my enhanced sight, however, I saw the truth: a literal bull's head atop a grotesquely muscular female body, complete with curved horns that gleamed wickedly under the strobing lights, brown fur that couldn't quite hide the definition of her ridiculous physique, and hands the size of basketballs that currently held a half-empty bottle of something that looked suspiciously like Absinthe. But it was her chest that really drew the eye - massive H-cup breasts that somehow defied physics despite her bovine head, straining against what looked like a black tactical vest that was not designed for that kind of stress.

She zeroed in on me with the single-minded focus of the very drunk and very horny.

"Oh fuck," I muttered.

"Taureen," Yumei called out, her raspy voice sharp with warning. "You're on duty. Go and finish your patrol before you do something you will regret."

"'M on break," ‘Taureen’ slurred, her bovine jaw working around the words awkwardly. Her beady black eyes - shot through with red, pupils blown wide - locked onto me with predatory interest. "An' I smell… ohhh, I smell Demi-God. Fresh. Young. Been soooo long since I had me some divine dick…"

She was close now. Too close. I could smell the alcohol on her breath mixing with her natural musk of sweat and dirt. I narrowed my eyes, one hand reaching up to grip the dazzling silver chain of Soulfyre. “Yeah, we’re not doing that. Fuck off before I puke all over your fancy vest, cow-bitch.”

If anything, my words only turned her on even more.

"Awww, c'mon pretty boy. 'S not huntin' if I jus' wanna talk…"

And then her arm - thick as my torso, covered in brown fur and corded muscle - slung over my shoulders with enough force to nearly knock me off the barstool.

"TAUREEN."

Yumei's voice cracked like a whip, its edge leaping from ‘sexy rasp’ to ‘discordant demon growl straight out of Tartarus’. Her six arms bristled with barely contained violence, two of them creaking as the hands shifted and morphed into those gleaming black claws from before, while the other four reached beneath the bar and grabbed onto something - several somethings - that made a noise like metal rasping on metal as she moved them.

But Taureen either didn't hear or didn't care. 

Her massive hand gripped my shoulder, claws digging through my leather jacket, and with strength that would have been impressive if it wasn't currently being used to yank me into her chest-

"HEY-!"

I found my face smashed into her breasts hard enough to see stars. Soft, overwhelming, suffocating pressure surrounded my head as she basically motorboated me in reverse, her other hand coming up to cradle the back of my skull and hold me in place. I couldn’t get a proper grip on Soulfyre like this, couldn’t summon it forth and eviscerate her without cleaving through my own chest and neck. Synapses fired liked bullets through my brain, the earlier buzz from the two alcoholic drinks disappearing as Battle Maniac flooded my veins with adrenaline.

"Sssee? Much better! So soft… you like that, pretty Demi-God? Like Taureen's big, soft tits?"

I can't fucking breathe-

"Taureen, let him go. You are breaking Rule One."

"'M not- hic… ‘M not huntin', you old bat! Jus' bein' friendly! Ain't illegal to be friendly!"

I tried to pull back, but her grip was iron. My hands found her vest, pushing, but it was like trying to move a brick wall. She was strong. A fuck ton stronger than Tormac the half-starved Hobo Giant, that’s for damn fucking sure. And while I was pretty damn proud of my own advancements in the physical strength department, it meant fuck all to an actual, honest-to-God Minotaur Woman with biceps the size of my entire torso.

I couldn’t see anything but tit flesh and darkness, but I heard that rasping sound of metal on metal behind the bar turn into a loud, piercing shriek. Yumei had drawn something - swords, if my gut was correct.

“Taureen! Last warni-”

"Ssso tense, baby boy. Ssso feisty. Lemme Momma T help you relax…"

Her large, calloused hand slid down from my shoulder, over my chest, down my stomach-

Belatedly, I realized I was hyperventilating.

And grabbed my dick through my jeans.

Hard.

She groped me with a drunken enthusiasm that bordered on painful, her massive palm encompassing my entire package with an effortless ease as she fondled me in the middle of a crowded bar like I was a fucking stress toy.

Yumei gasped with horror. I heard her hiss, heard her chelicerae clicking rapidly as she lunged forward-

But for me?

Time stopped.

Not literally. This wasn’t a Chaos Gacha thing, and I wasn't freezing reality again. But everything slowed to a crystalline clarity as rage and adrenaline flooded my system like liquid nitrogen.

Cold. Precise. Furious.

In my previous life, I'd been weak. Small. Thomas Vaughn had gotten his ass kicked by bigger, stronger assholes who took what they wanted and laughed while doing it, and he fought tirelessly to prove to other streetkids that, no matter how he looked or how weak he was, he didn’t lack heart. He’d died because he’d picked a fight he couldn't win, all to show that he was strong where it mattered, and I guess some part of me had carried that helplessness into this life-

But I wasn't Thomas anymore.

I was Andreas fucking Ashcroft, blessed by Khaos itself, brother to Eris the God of Fucking Discord, and this drunk cow had just crossed a line that no one had ever dared to - not in this life, or the last. 

The rage crystallized into something colder. Sharper. And funnily enough, simpler.

Shadow Storage.

Darkness rippled outward from beneath my feet like spilled ink, shadows spreading across the bar floor in a way that didn’t even try to hide how unnatural it was. Taureen, drunk and oblivious, just kept groping me, her hand working my dick through my jeans while making little pleased sounds - but her arousal and interest had shifted our positions just enough that I could actually see and move my arm with a little more mobility. My one visible eye locked with Yumei’s six, caught her as she was about to hop over the bar, two of her hands tearing chunks out of the dark wood as four others aimed four long, sleek, razor-sharp katanas forward-

I winked, and she froze mid-leap.

Onyx Blaster ejected from my shadow with the sound of reality tearing into pieces.

I caught it left-handed, the familiar weight settling into my palm as purple-black energy coursed through the barrel. All it took was a sharp flick of my wrist to toss it over to my right hand, the one she wasn't restraining because she was too busy molesting me. Swinging the shotgun up and around in one smooth motion was a little bit harder, stressed my muscles a bit more with how hard she was pressing my side against the bar, but I had a lot of motivation to see me through the minor pain.

I jammed the barrel into her mouth.

Taureen's eyes went wide. Her hand froze on my dick.

"Gag on it," I said.

My voice came out cold. Flat. Utterly devoid of the warmth and humor I'd been using with Yumei. Because this wasn't Andreas the Flirt. This wasn’t even Andreas the Khaosborne. This was Andreas the Street Rat. Andreas who'd killed and died and refused to be a victim ever again.

"I said- GAG. ON. IT."

I shoved the barrel deeper into her mouth, past her blunt, herbivore teeth, hitting the back of her throat and jamming it even harder. Taureen gagged, her beady black eyes watering, finally releasing my dick to grab at the shotgun with both hands - but I'd already pumped it with a shot of Essence into the weapon, feeling it hum and glow with barely restrained power, and she hissed and drooled in pain, confusion, and fear as her big ass hands sizzled against the dark metal.

"MMMMPH-!"

"You broke Rule One," I continued, somehow keeping my voice conversational despite the fury singing in my veins. "Hunted me. Touched me without permission. Sexually assaulted me, actually, which is a new fucking low. So here's what's gonna happen: I'm going to shoot you. You're going to survive, ‘prolly because you're tough. And then you're going to die, because I’m gonna kill you, and every motherfucker here’s gonna learn that I'm not some scared little Demi-God you can paw at whenever you get drunk and horny."

Her eyes were wide now, the alcohol fog finally burning off as survival instincts kicked in. Drool pooled uselessly around the barrel crammed in her jaw, dripping down her fur and sticking across her muscular neck and the massive, exposed cleavage of her cow titties. Her hands went from burning against the barrel to scrambling straight for my neck when she realized what was going on.

But it was too late.

"Choke, bitch."

I pulled the trigger.

BOOM.

The blast hit like the wrath of Zeus himself.

Unholy black-and-purple buckshot erupted from the Onyx Blaster's barrel in a tight cone of devastation, each individual pellet trailing noxious green flames that smelled like burning sulfur and rotten eggs. At point-blank range, with the barrel jammed so deep into Taureen's throat that I could feel her molars scraping against the metal, there was nowhere for the energy to go but through.

Through flesh.

Through bone.

Through the structural integrity of her entire fucking jaw.

The right side of her face simply ceased to exist.

I watched- Hell, I felt the exact moment the Minotaur's jaw disintegrated. Chunks of brown fur, fragments of yellowing bone, and thick ropes of viscous black blood sprayed across the bar in a grotesque arc that painted Yumei's pristine white shirt crimson-black and changed the words on mine from ‘Sex Bomb-omb’ to just ‘Sex’. Teeth scattered like dice across the marble floor, each one the size of my thumb, clattering and skittering beneath barstools. Her tongue - what remained of it, at least - flopped uselessly from the gaping crater where her mouth used to be, severed halfway through and leaking more of that tar-thick ichor.

The recoil slammed into my shoulder, but I’d already jammed my feet against the corner of the bar to keep myself anchored. My ass stayed planted on that barstool even as the shotgun tried to buck itself out of my grip, purple-black muzzle flash illuminating Taureen's rapidly-glazing eyes for a single, frozen heartbeat.

And then the unholy flames kicked in.

Those noxious green fires - the ones that had turned Tormac's flesh into desiccated, weeping sludge - latched onto the raw, exposed meat of Taureen's ruined face like a virus. Skin blackened and cracked. Muscle tissue bubbled and liquefied. The flames didn't just burn; they consumed, turning monstrous Minotaur flesh into something that resembled melted plastic more than anything organic.

Taureen's scream was a wet, choked, inhuman thing, more of a gurgle than a roar. Her massive hands flew to her ruined face, basketball-sized palms trying desperately to smother flames that couldn't be smothered. The bottle of Absinthe she'd been carrying had already shattered on the floor, clear liquid mixing with her blood in a puddle that reeked of copper.

I slowly stood up.

My legs didn't shake despite the adrenaline singing through my veins like a live wire. Battle Maniac purred its satisfaction in the back of my skull, a warm, pleasant buzz that made my grin stretch wider even as cold fury kept my hands steady.

"That," I said casually, loudly, my voice cutting through her agonized wailing with the same ease as Soulfyre through flesh, "was for touching my dick without permission, you drunken fucking cow."

The Onyx Blaster still hummed in my hand, residual unholy energy crackling along the barrel in purple-black arcs. I cycled the action with a sharp, satisfying cha-chunk, ejecting the spent shell that clattered onto the bar and faded away into motes of light. The weapon reloaded itself automatically, drawing from my Essence, and I could feel that faint drain as even more dark, unholy energy manifested in the chamber.

Let’s fucking go.

Taureen staggered backward, her hooves, each one the size of dinner plates, cracking marble with every unsteady step. Over eight feet of pure muscle and bovine rage, reduced to a stumbling, whimpering wreck in less than three seconds. Her eyes, bloodshot and streaming tears, locked onto me with a hatred so pure it could've melted steel beams.

But beneath that hatred?

There was fear.

She was fucking terrified.

Good. Or not good, depending on how wet that made her.

"Andreas-" Yumei's raspy voice cut through the sudden, suffocating silence that had fallen over the bar, devoid of the demonic growl from before. I glanced back at her, catching her six golden eyes wide with shock, her four katanas still drawn and gleaming. Two of her hands gripped the bar so hard the wood groaned. "You need to leave. Now-"

I pulled a stack of twenties from my jacket pocket - maybe two hundred dollars, give or take - and tossed them onto the bar between us. They landed in a puddle of Taureen's blood, green flames licking at the edges of the bills but not quite catching.

"For the mess," I said, and winked at her. "And the drinks. You make a mean Sunrise Arancello, Yumei. Look me up on IG later, yeah?”

Her chelicerae clicked rapidly - surprise, worry, amusement, I don’t fucking know- 

But I was already moving.

_____________________________________

Taureen bellowed.

The sound that tore from her mangled throat was barely recognizable as language - more of a primal, wounded-animal roar that vibrated through the club's foundation and made the disco balls overhead sway. Spittle and blood flew from her ruined maw, splattering the floor in thick, ropy strands.

And then she charged.

Lowering her horns - each one maybe two feet long, curved and wicked-sharp and gleaming bronze beneath the strobing lights - the Minotaur bouncer launched herself forward with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for something that big and that injured. Her hooves hit the marble like sledgehammers, each impact sending spider-web cracks radiating outward, and I had maybe half a second to process the fact that this drunk, half-faced cow was about to gore me like a matador who'd fucked around and found out.

I juked right.

Hard.

My Jordan high-tops screeched against the blood-slicked marble as I threw my entire body weight into the dodge, Onyx Blaster raised defensively even though I knew damn well a shotgun wasn't going to do shit against a charging Minotaur's momentum. Cat's Feet kept me from slipping in the growing puddle of Taureen's ichor, my sneakers finding purchase where they shouldn't, and I felt the wind of her passage - hot, reeking of blood and Absinthe - ghost across my left side as two thousand pounds of pissed-off beef thundered past me.

Her horns missed me by inches.

They did not miss the Hellhound.

"GYAAAAAAH-!"

The russet-furred monster - still slumped on his barstool, still drowsy from his third Scarlet Dream, still blissfully unaware that the world had gone to absolute shit approximately ten seconds ago - didn't even have time to register what was happening before Taureen's right horn punched clean through his ribs. 

I heard the crack of bone shattering. Heard the wet, meaty schlorp as bronze pierced fur and flesh and internal organs. Heard the Hellhound's high-pitched, agonized shriek as he was lifted bodily off his seat, impaled like a kebab, and carried forward by Taureen's unstoppable momentum straight into the dance floor.

His wrinkled gray suit tore. Hot, crimson blood gushed from the wound in thick, pulsing jets that painted the marble and the Minotaur's face in equal measure. His amber eyes, previously glazed and drowsy, snapped wide open with shock and pain and the sudden, terrible clarity of someone who'd just been violently ripped from a drug-induced stupor.

"WHAT- WHO- FUCK-!"

Taureen hit the edge of the dance floor and didn't slow down.

She plowed through a cluster of dancing monsters - two Dracaenae in cocktail dresses, some kind of blue-skinned humanoid with gills, and what looked like a walking tree made of gray bark - scattering them like bowling pins. Bodies flew. Screams erupted. The Hellhound, still impaled and flailing, clawed desperately at the horn buried in his chest, his transformation already beginning.

He grew.

And grew.

And grew.

By the time Taureen finally skidded to a halt near the center of the dance floor, the Hellhound impaled on her horn was no longer a drowsy werewolf in a suit but a massive, quadrupedal wolf that was easily ten feet tall at the shoulders, all wiry muscle and exposed ribs and bloodshot amber eyes that burned with pain and fury and primal fucking fury. He bit onto Taureen’s bull skull with a maw that could swallow her whole if she wasn’t careful, dug his fangs into her matted brown fur, and pulled.

The sound of the Hellhound ripping himself free was genuinely one of the most disgusting things I'd ever heard.

Wet. Meaty. Like tearing a phone book in half, except the phone book was made of muscle and sinew and the person doing the tearing was a drug-addled Hellhound hopped up on Lotus and adrenaline. Blood sprayed. Flesh tore. Taureen bellowed again as the Hellhound wrenched himself backward, his own intestines briefly visible through the gaping hole in his torso before his supernatural healing kicked in and started knitting the wound closed.

He hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, lying on his side with one gargantuan paw pressed to his ruined chest while the others dug furrows into the marble. His muzzle peeled back, revealing rows of yellowing, razor-sharp teeth, and when he growled, it was a sound that made every single hair on my body stand on end.

Low. Resonant. Feral.

The time for talking was clearly over-

Because he roared, spittle flying from his mouth, and lunged right back into the fight.

The Minotaur, still reeling from her self-inflicted goring, barely managed to raise her arms before several hundred pounds of drug-addled werewolf slammed into her chest with enough force to crack ribs. They went down together in a tangle of fur and flesh and flailing limbs, the Hellhound's jaws snapping at her throat while Taureen's massive fists hammered into his exposed ribs. Black blood and red blood mixed on the marble, their combined roars shaking the walls, and then they were rolling, smashing through dancers who didn't get out of the way fast enough.

A Dracaena went down with a shriek, the Hellhound's hind leg catching her in the stomach.

One of the Empousai twins tried to jump clear and got backhanded by Taureen's flailing arm, her body ragdolling into the crowd.

The blue-skinned humanoid with gills just fucking exploded into water when the two combatants rolled over him.

And that, apparently, was the last straw.

Because the entire dance floor erupted.

Later - much, much later, when I had time to actually think about what happened instead of just reacting to it - I'd realize that Club Ravenous had been a powder keg waiting for a spark. All those monsters, packed into an enclosed space, high on drugs and alcohol and the barely-restrained urge to hunt and kill and feed. All of them bound by the Three Rules, forced to play nice, forced to pretend they weren't apex predators surrounded by competition. All of them watching me, a lone Demi-God, fresh and young and smelling like divine fucking ambrosia, and knowing they couldn't touch me.

Taureen breaking Rule One had cracked the dam.

The Hellhound's rampage smashed it wide open.

A Dracaena, her red cocktail dress torn and her serpentine lower body coiled tight, hissed at a nearby Cyclops who'd accidentally stepped on her tail. He snarled back, raising a fist the size of an anvil. She struck first, fangs sinking into his thigh, and he roared and grabbed her by the throat and squeezed-

Another Hellhound, this one coal-black and significantly more sober than his rust-colored brother, saw an opportunity and pounced on that very same Cyclops from behind, jaws closing around the back of his neck-

One of the Empousai twins shrieked with laughter and lunged at a different Dracaena, fire erupting from her hands-

The tree made of gray bark lashed out with branches that moved like whips, catching three monsters at once and wrapping around their midsections, only to sprout spiked thorns the size of ice picks-

And just like that, the dance floor became a war zone.

Monsters attacked each other with the kind of vicious, savage glee that only came from weeks or months of pent-up bloodlust finally being given an outlet. Claws raked across scales. Fangs tore into flesh. Fire and shadow and raw, physical violence exploded across the marble in a beautiful, chaotic symphony of destruction that made Battle Maniac sing in my veins like the sweetest fucking drug. I didn’t even realize that I was shaking, that I was walking towards the pandemonium until I had to tilt my head to avoid someone’s decapitated, bleeding head.

I grinned.

Wide enough to hurt.

And then I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled.

"YO, DJ! SPIN THAT SHIT!"

Up in her booth, twenty feet above the carnage, the Harpy DJ's head snapped toward me.

For a split second, our eyes met across the chaos - my glowing purple-and-gold, hers a vibrant, manic green - and I saw her grin split her cute, freckled face from ear to ear. Her massive pink-and-red wings flared wide, feathers ruffling with excitement, and she threw both hands up in the air like a DJ at a rave who'd just been given permission to drop the filthiest bass in her entire library.

"OHHHH FUCK YES!" she shrieked into her microphone, her voice amplified through the club's speakers until it drowned out even the screams of dying monsters. "CHAT, ARE YOU SEEING THIS?! THE DEMI-GOD JUST SAID SPIN THAT SHIT! HE SAID SPIN! THAT! SHIT! YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS-"

Her taloned hands flew across her equipment.

Mixers. Turntables. Laptop keys clicking faster than any human could manage.

The current music cut off mid-note.

Silence.

One heartbeat.

Two.

And then-

Trumpets. Loud, jazzy, electronic.

The opening number for ‘Lone Digger’ hit like a freight train made of pure, distilled, chaotic swing.

Brass instruments blared. The tempo kicked in, fast, frenetic, aggressive, and the entire bloody (literally) club seemed to pulse with the rhythm. The strobing lights shifted, syncing with the beat, bathing the dance floor in alternating flashes of crimsons and silvers and purples. The bass was so deep I could feel it in my teeth, in my bones, vibrating through the marble and up into my sneakers.

It was perfect.

It was exactly what I needed.

"WOOOOOO!" DJ Shriek threw her head back and cackled, her wings beating the air in time with the music. "LONE DIGGER, BITCHES! LET'S! FUCKING! GOOOOOO! Chat, spam those POG emotes! SPAM THEM! THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR!"

She slammed her hand down on a button on her laptop, and above her DJ set, displayed in a massive holographic screen that flickered and swam at the edges, was what I could only assume was her chat display. It scrolled too fast for me to read more than a handful of messages-

🔴 LIVE

     👁️ 23,128 viewers

      🎵 CLUB RAVENOUS MASSACRE STREAM 🎵

          NOW PLAYING: Lone Digger - Caravan Palace

 xXDarkLord420Xx: POGGERS POGGERS POGGERS

 MonsterMommyLuvr: YOOOOO THAT MINOTAUR GOT REKT

 TwitchPrime_Chad donated 50 drachma 💰: PLAY IT AGAIN

 ThiccShaedy: THE DEMI-GOD IS KINDA HOT THO 👀

 ClubRegular_Mike: Taureen had it coming lmaooo

 HarpySimp_01 donated 600 drachma 💰: SHRIEK UR A GODDESS

 MonsterHunter_Real: what is BRO DOING??!1

 SatyrGaming: CLIP THAT CLIP THAT CLIP THAT

 QueenLamiaFanClub donated 500 drachma 💰: The Queen won't be happy

 GyaruCow: IS THE DEMI-GOD SINGLE???

 BlackEndForge: this is fucked up..

 ThunderGoth is betting 200 drachma 💰: no clue if this is real or what but no fucking shot he survives

Almost twenty-five thousand viewers. And they were all watching me. Well, me and a bunch of monsters who were killing each other. But I was still mentioned in almost every message. That had to count for something, right-

[FEAT ACHIEVED: BECOME AN INTERNET MICRO-CELEBRITY OVERNIGHT]

Reward: (1x) Silver Drachma

…

“Fuck. Yes.”

I didn't waste time basking in my newfound internet fame.’

The fight was already spreading like wildfire, monsters tearing into each other with the kind of savage abandon that would've made the Colosseum look like a fucking daycare. Taureen and the rust-furred Hellhound were still rolling near the center of the floor, a whirlwind of claws and horns and blood that left craters in the marble wherever they landed. The Empousai twins had tag-teamed a Giant, fire and bronze legs working in brutal synchronization to cut him down to heel. Three Dracaenae formed a hissing, writhing knot of scales and fangs, fighting over… something. I couldn't tell what. 

Didn't really care, either.

Because I was already moving.

Soulfyre practically leapt into my hand the moment I reached for it, the Cuban link chain unraveling from my neck in a stream of liquid silver that solidified into seven-plus feet of gleaming, void-black claymore. The weight settled into my grip like it belonged there, perfectly balanced, the blade so sharp it seemed to drink the light around it. Those runic etchings - ΦΑΝΤΑΣΜΑ ΠΥΡΟΣ - pulsed with faint purple light, and I felt the weapon's hunger echo my own.

Feed me, it seemed to whisper. Let me feast.

"Yeah," I muttered, grinning as I pumped Essence into the blade. "Let's fucking eat."

The claymore segments unlocked with a sound like breaking glass played backward. One. Two. Seven. Each section separated smoothly, connected now only by threads of silvery-white ghostly energy that crackled and hissed like live wire. The weapon's weight shifted instantly - still heavy towards the hilt but fluid now, responsive, each segment capable of independent movement while staying connected to the whole.

I gave it an experimental flick.

The segmented blade lashed out, faster than thought, and carved a clean line into the marble floor six feet away. The ghostly connectors glowed brighter, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, and I could feel each individual segment like they were extensions of my own fingers.

The edges of my hair bled darkness as Murder Swarm activated, ten crows flitting out from behind me and spreading across the dance floor.

A Dracaena - not one of the ones currently fighting, but a solo hunter who'd been circling the edge of the chaos like a shark - spotted me as I started forward. Her serpentine eyes, vertical-pupiled and gleaming predatory gold, locked onto mine. The Mist tried to paint her as just another clubgoer in a sparkly dress, but my Eye of Discernment showed me the truth: eight feet of scaled muscle, aquamarine blue from head to tail, with a face that was more reptile than woman and a mouth full of fangs designed to tear through flesh and bone with ease.

She hissed, forked tongue flickering.

And lunged.

I didn't think.

Just reacted.

My left hand came up, fingers spread, and I focused on the sensation of my shadow - that cold, depthless extension of myself that even now was rippling beneath my feet like disturbed water. I’d dropped Onyx Blaster back inside at some point after the chaos had begun, and it was still there, waiting, loaded and humming with unholy potential. 

‘Up.’

The shotgun erupted from the darkness at my feet, ejecting upward at the exact velocity I'd dropped it in. My hand closed around the forend mid-flight, the familiar weight settling into my grip, and I swung it up, aimed down with my head tilted, and squeezed the trigger before the Dracaena had even cleared half the distance between us.

BOOM.

Buckshot and green hellfire caught her center-mass.

Her charge became a stumble, then a skid, her scaled torso suddenly sporting a dozen weeping holes that wept black ichor instead of blood. The unholy flames latched on instantly, spreading across her crimson scales like a disease, and she shrieked - high-pitched and agonized - as her flesh began to melt.

But she wasn't dead.

Not yet.

Scythian Dracanae were tough, acting as the foot soldiers for Kronos’ Army from what I could remember about Percy Jackson. That was fiction, however, and this was reality. She was already trying to heal, her supernatural constitution fighting against the unholy napalm, but it was too slow. New flesh would grow, scales forming out of nothing to protect the softer meat beneath, only to melt away as she screamed and the unholy fire burned her alive.

"Cute.”

I swung Soulfyre.

The whip-sword lashed out in a wide, horizontal arc, each segment moving independently but in perfect harmony. The ghostly connectors left trails of silver-white light in the air, beautiful and deadly, and when the blade made contact with the Dracaena's neck-

SHLICK!

Her head came off clean.

No resistance. No hesitation. Just a whisper of severed flesh and the wet thump of her skull hitting the marble and rolling. Her body stood for a moment longer, headless and twitching, before it collapsed and began to dissolve into that familiar golden dust.

One down.

I cycled the shotgun's action, ejecting the spent shell, and let the weapon drop back into my shadow. It vanished without a sound, swallowed by the darkness, ready to be summoned again at a moment's notice.

Efficient.

The music pounded. Brass and percussion and that frenetic swing tempo driving the chaos to even greater heights. Monsters were dying left and right now, their golden dust mixing with blood and fire and the strobing lights to create this weird, apocalyptic disco aesthetic that would've been funny if I wasn't actively participating in the massacre. A Hellhound spotted me and broke off from his fight with an Empousai to charge, tongue lolling out of his maw and dripping saliva. He was smaller than Taureen's accidental victim, maybe seven and a half feet in his hybrid form, but fast. His paws barely touched the ground as he closed the distance, jaws open wide, aiming straight for my throat.

I clapped my thigh.

SMACK.

And the world lurched.

Crow #7 had been perched on the second-floor railing, watching the carnage from above. Through its eyes, I could see myself on the first floor, Soulfyre still extended in whip mode, the Hellhound mid-leap.

And then I was there, on the second floor, looking down at where I'd just been.

The Hellhound, confused and disoriented by his target's sudden disappearance, landed hard on the marble where I'd been standing a half-second ago. His claws scrabbled for purchase, his head whipping around as he tried to figure out what the fuck just happened-

And the crow I'd swapped with, now occupying the space where I'd just been, erupted back into motion.

It launched itself at the Hellhound's face.

Tiny. Furious.

It went straight for his eyes.

"GRAHHH- GET OFF-!"

I grinned, leaning over the second-floor railing, and raised my right hand. The Onyx Blaster materialized from my shadow in a plume of darkness, and I took careful aim at the distracted Hellhound below.

Held the trigger.

Charged the shot.

The weapon began to hum, that familiar purple-black glow intensifying until the barrel looked more like a miniature black hole than anything else, and I could feel the Essence draining from my reserves as the gun converted it into one single, devastating payload.

Three seconds.

The crow abandoned its kamikaze dive and rejoined the murder, nine other bodies swooping in to collect it and cover its retreat.

The Hellhound, finally free of the feathered menace, looked up.

He saw me.

He saw the glowing shotgun.

His eyes went wide.

"Aw, fuck-”

I released the trigger.

The obsidian slug that erupted from the Onyx Blaster was the size of a softball, condensed and crystalline and trailing streamers of that same noxious green flame. It shrieked through the air like a meteor, and when it hit the Hellhound square in the chest-

CRACK-

BOOOOOM.

The explosion lit up the entire first floor.

Dark energy detonated outward in a sphere of force and fire, the blast radius easily fifteen feet across. The Hellhound at ground zero simply ceased to exist, his body vaporized so completely that not even golden dust remained. But the monsters around him - a couple Empousai, three more Hellhounds, and some kind of goat-legged satyr with red fur and twirling a pair of sickles - weren't so lucky. They were thrown backward by the concussive force, their bodies ragdolling through the air and slamming into walls, furniture, other monsters. The green napalm clung to everything it touched, spreading like a plague, and within seconds the entire area was consumed by unholy flame.

Screams.

So many fucking screams.

I watched three monsters try to pat out the fires on their bodies, watched their efforts fail, watched them stumble and collapse and dissolve as the flames ate them from the outside in.

“Holy shit.”

That was… a lot more powerful than I'd expected.

The charged shot drained maybe twenty percent of my Essence in one go, and I could feel the deficit now - a hollow, slightly nauseating sensation in my gut, like I'd sprinted a mile on an empty stomach. But the devastation it caused…

Fucking worth it.

I dropped the shotgun back into Shadow Storage and vaulted over the railing.

Cat's Feet kicked in the moment I left the second floor, my body twisting mid-air to orient feet-first toward the ground twenty feet below. The fall should've shattered my ankles and turned my knees into jelly, but the trait didn't give a single fuck about physics. I hit the marble in a three-point landing, one hand down and both feet planted firm, and felt exactly zero impact.

I stood up and cracked my neck.

"YOOOOO!" DJ Shriek voice shrieked through the speakers, barely audible over the music and chaos. "CHAT, DID YOU SEE THAT?! DEMI-GOD JUST DROPPED A NUKE! AN ACTUAL NUKE! OH MY GODS, THE DONATIONS ARE GOING CRAZY- thank you, 'DemiSimp69,' five thousand Drachma, holy shit - KEEP IT COMING, PEOPLE! THIS IS PEAK CINEMA!"

I glanced up at her booth, caught her manic grin and the way her wings were spread wide like a victory banner, and couldn't help but grin back.

She was having the time of her life.

So was I.

The next several minutes were a nightmarish blur of spilled blood and golden dust.

I waded into the melee with Soulfyre singing in my hands, the whip-sword's segmented blade carving through monsters like they were made of tissue paper. A Dracanae there. A hobbled Hellhound there. I didn’t really question it; I just kept moving, kept juking, kept swinging, racking up a kill-count that fed my sword and (hopefully) contributed to my high score at the end of this thing. Soulfyre didn’t give a fuck who it killed - Stygian Iron, I quickly learned, cut through anything and everything with the same contemptuous ease, so much so that I was very much looking forward to having Eris ride my face for giving me an endgame-level weapon at the very start of my journey.

At some point a swarm of Empousai - four of them, all with those bronze legs and vampire fangs - tried to surround me, their fire magic igniting the air around us in a superheated cage.

I scattered my crows.

Ten bodies, ten different directions, all of them staying within my sensory range but spreading out across the club like a net. Through their eyes, I could see everything - the Empousai closing in from all sides, Taureen and the Hellhound still brawling near the bar, Yumei defending her station with six katanas and a mastery of swordsmanship that went so very beyond just your run of the mill Jorogumo bartender. 

I clapped my thigh and swapped with the crow that had touched down behind the Empousai leader.

Her head whipped around, confusion flickering across her beautiful, pale, predatory features an instant before understanding dawned. She screeched, razor-sharp claws blurring as they swiped up straight towards my face, but I’d seen the textbook attack coming from a mile away. I juked back, feet shifting beneath me like I was back in the boxing ring, and easily ducked around her second swing. 

I feinted to her right, and when she moved to dodge I twisted around, heels sliding against marble, and back-handed her across the cheek.The slap echoed loudly through the din of screams and roars, but before she could even fully acknowledge the disrespectful hit, I’d used the smack to swap places with the second Empousa that had been lunging at me from behind - a sneak attack I’d seen coming from one of my crow spies hovering over the massacre.

Her sister’s claws tore through her chest like paper mache.

Their traumatized wails rang through my skull like bells.

But then I was lunging forward, Soulfyre’s claymore form lifted up with both hands and thrust forward with all of the not-inconsiderable strength in my body, and suddenly both of the vampires were skewered by several feet of Stygian Iron that drained them the way they’d wanted to drain me. There was literally no time for them to do anything but screech in agony and fear.

Golden dust clouded my vision.

“LILITH! XARIEL! NOOOOO!”

The other two Empousai shrieked with rage and lunged, but I was already clapping again, swapping with another crow - this one perched on a shattered speaker near the DJ booth right above us. I appeared mid-air, over twenty feet up, Soulfyre pointed down like a spear. My feet scrambled up the blade, sneakers wedging themselves in those tight little spots beneath either side of the guard, and my fists gripped the pommel hard enough to turn my knuckles white.

Gravity took hold.

I fell, cackling, riding the claymore point-down straight to the battlefield-

And drove seven feet of Stygian Iron through the spine of an Empousai who'd been too focused on where I'd been to notice where I was.

The impact jarred through my arms, but Cat's Feet absorbed the worst of it. The tip of the blade was more like a battering ram than an actual sword, bone and organs crunching and turning to wet, squishy pulp beneath the metal as momentum and gravity did what it did best and broke her body beneath the overwhelming weight. She dissolved beneath me, golden dust exploding outward, and I hit the ground rolling, coming up in a crouch, Soulfyre already swinging in a wide, vicious arc that caught the fourth Empousa across the knees.

She went down shrieking.

I finished her with a curb stomp that scattered brain matter, blood, and fragments of bone across both the dirty marble floor and my Size Twelves Jordans.

Four Empousai in under thirty seconds.

‘Fuck, this is addictive.’

Battle Maniac purred its approval, that warm, pleasant buzz intensifying until my grin was so wide it ached. My heart was hammering in my chest, adrenaline and Essence depletion making everything feel sharp and bright and alive, and even though my lungs were starting to burn from exertion-

I wanted more. 

So much more.

A Cyclops - twelve feet of muscle with a single, dinner-plate-sized eyeball placed right in the center of his forehead - roared and charged me from across the dance floor, trampling and throwing aside all of the much smaller monsters in his way. His fist, as big as a fucking boulder, came down like a sledgehammer aimed at my skull. I didn’t even bother thinking - raw, primal instincts kicked in and I dove forward, sliding beneath the blow on my knees, marble tearing through my jeans and scraping skin. His fist cratered the floor where I'd been, and I came up behind him already swinging.

Soulfyre lashed out in whip-sword mode, wrapping around his thick, tree-trunk leg.

I planted my feet and pulled.

Hard.

“OOF!”

The Cyclops's leg went out from under him, his massive body toppling forward with a surprised bellow, and his face met the marble with a wet, crunching THUD that echoed even over the music.

I didn't give him time to recover. Breathing heavily through my nose, eyes wide and body quivering with adrenaline and bloodlust, I let out a roar and sprinted forward. One step flowed into another, and then another, and then I was jumping through the air like an Olympic gold medallist, strength that I’d barely even known I possessed giving me an extra few feet of height to bring Soulfyre around, draw my Essence back from its blade, and aim the claymore down just in the nick of time.

CRACK-

SQUELCH!

The blade punched through bone and brain matter like butter, erupting from his open mouth in a spray of crimson ichor, and I felt the weapon drink. Essence flowed from the Cyclops's dying body into Soulfyre, but instead of letting it suffuse the weapon and do whatever the fuck it did with stolen Essence, I followed my instincts and fed the essence from Soulfyre into me - a feedback loop of stolen vitality that filled my muscles with energy and replenished maybe five percent of what I'd burned on that charged shotgun blast.

…

Oh.

‘Well, isn’t that fucking useful?’

The Cyclops dissolved beneath my feet, adding to the mass of golden dust that was already pooling in my shoes and coating my clothes. I pulled Soulfyre free from the mess, already scanning for the next target, and-

Crow #4 saw her move. Saw the blur of motion as she charged. My hand moved to clap, but I was just a second too slow.

WHAM.

Something heavy and fast slammed into my left side with enough force to lift me off my feet and send me flying.

The world spun, Cat’s Feet attempting to straighten my body and land me safely on my feet but only succeeding in contributing to the uncontrollable spin. Marble floor became ceiling became floor again, my stomach flip-flopping and threatening to upchuck all of the alcohol I’d drank earlier. I hit something solid - a support pillar, judging by the way it cracked - and sheer, unadulterated pain exploded through my back and ribs in a white-hot starburst that made my vision blur.

"Fuck-!"

I hit the ground gasping for air that wheezed and rattled in my chest, Soulfyre skittering from my grip and clattering to the floor, and for a moment all I could do was lie there and try to remember how to breathe. My ribs were screaming. My back felt like I'd been hit by a truck. Battle Maniac was still singing its approval, drowning out most of the pain, but not enough to make me forget that I'd just gotten rocked, or that my lungs had probably just been clipped by my own fucking broken ribcage.

Somewhere behind me, large hooves clicked against marble.

Heavy. Deliberate.

And getting closer with every struggling breath.

I forced my eyes open, forced myself to look up through the haze of pain and adrenaline, and saw-

Taureen. Upside down, but unmistakably her.

“Y-you-” I wheezed, blood dribbling from the corner of my mouth, “You look like shit.”

Half her face was still a melted, weeping crater of exposed bone and charred flesh. Her tactical vest was torn to shreds, revealing deep gouges from the Hellhound's claws across her massive chest and shoulders. One of her horns was cracked, golden ichor leaking from the fracture. Her breathing came in wet, rattling gasps that sprayed black blood with every exhale.

But she was still standing.

Still moving.

And her beady black eyes, bloodshot and burning with pain and hatred and single-minded fury, were locked on me with the kind of focus that said she'd crawl through Tartarus itself if it meant getting her hands around my throat.

"You…" she slurred, each word thick and garbled from her ruined jaw. Black blood and drool streamed from the crater where her mouth used to be, her tongue flapping uselessly with every motion. "Little… fuck… You think… you can… hurt Taureen… and live…?"

She raised one massive fist.

I saw crimson light beginning to gather around her knuckles- some kind of magical ability, maybe inherited from whatever god or titan or whatever had spawned her bloodline. I didn’t know. I didn’t know shit about Minotaurs beyond the fact that the progenitor of them ran around some Labyrinth chasing tail. Oh, and he got murked by a twelve year old Perseis Jackson.

So basically nothing.

Shit.

My hand scrabbled across the marble, deadened limbs trying in vain to clap against some part of my body in spite of the exhaustion dragging them down, but I was too slow and her fist was already moving and I didn’t fucking have time-

SCHLICK.

A familiar blade - sleek, gleaming, the color of an ocean beneath the night sky - erupted from Taureen's chest.

Right through her heart.

The Minotaur's bloodshot eyes went wide. Her fist, still glowing with that crimson light, faltered mid-swing, tapping gently against my forehead before falling limply against the floor beside my wheezing body. Taureen looked down at the katana protruding from between her breasts, black blood already pouring down the blade, and made a wet, confused sound.

"No hunting," Yumei's raspy voice whispered from behind the Minotaur, cold and flat and utterly devoid of mercy. "No killing except in self-defense. Those are the rules, Taureen. You broke them."

She twisted the blade, and the razor-sharp metal squelched as it tore through whatever remained of her bovine heart.

"You die now."

Three more katanas plunged into Taureen's back simultaneously. Through the spine. Through the kidneys. Through the base of the skull. The dark bluish-black blades punched through the Minotaur's body like she was made of paper, erupting from her front in a spray of black ichor that painted the marble and me in streams of foul-smelling liquid.

Taureen tried to roar.

Managed only a pitiful gurgle.

And then she dissolved.

Golden dust exploded outward, glittering in the strobing lights, and Yumei stood in the midst of it like some kind of avenging war goddess clad in armor of bone. All six of her eyes were blazing molten gold against black sclera, her grayish-white chitin exo-skeleton splattered with blood - black, red, gold, every color of monster ichor imaginable. Her four katanas dripped with the same rainbow of violence, and the two arms that weren't holding weapons were extended toward me.

Offering to help me up.

"You're bleeding," she hissed, her chelicerae clicking with what could’ve been either concern or frustration. "Ribs cracked. Probably two, maybe three. Back bruised. You need to-"

"I need to keep fighting," I interrupted gently, grabbing her hands and letting her pull me to my feet. Pain lanced through my side when I stood, sharp enough to make me hiss, but Battle Maniac was already flooding my system with enough adrenaline to make it background noise. "Thanks for the assist, though. Thought I was about to get pasted by that bitch."

"You were." Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you smiling?"

I was?

…

Fuck, I was.

"Because this," I gestured vaguely at the carnage around us - the burning corpses, the fighting monsters, the golden dust that littered the air like ash, "is ‘prolly the most fun I've ever had in my entire life."

Both lives, actually. But she didn’t need to know that.

All six of Yumei’s eyes stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time, covered head to toe in monster blood and dust and still grinning in spite of broken ribs and bruises. Then her chelicerae clicked rapidly, that laugh-sound she liked to make, and she shook her head.

"You're going to get yourself killed, Andreas Ashcroft."

"Probably," I agreed, stooping to grab Soulfyre from where it had landed. The blade hummed with satisfaction when my fingers closed around the handle, like it was happy to be back in my hand. "But not today."

I spun the claymore once with both hands, testing my grip, and winced when the motion pulled at my cracked ribs.

‘Okay. Maybe don't do any spinning.’

"Stay near the bar," I told Yumei, already scanning the chaos for my next target. It was frustratingly hard to do from ground-level, and I’d already summoned most of my crows to help with the Essence drain. "Defend your territory. I'll handle the rest of this shitstorm."

"Andreas-"

I clapped my hand against her shoulder and swapped with Crow #2 perched on the DJ booth railing.

The view from up there was insane.

Twenty+ feet above the dance floor, I could see everything. The full scope of the massacre I'd helped create. Bodies, or, rather, what was left of them, littered the marble in various states of dissolution. Golden dust drifted through the air like pollen, mixing with smoke from the unholy fires and the strobing lights to create this surreal, dreamlike atmosphere.

Fortunately my share of the destruction hadn’t reached the bar, but somehow I doubted it would’ve made much of a difference. Yumei had somehow turned it into a webbed-up cocoon in the meanwhile, the entire bar webbed up so tightly and securely that it looked more like one big ass egg-sac than an actual part of the nightclub. Gold dust littered the floor around it in thick sheets, and hanging above it were several huge, bulging bodies wrapped in silken thread like dangling mummies. 

Yumei… was one scary woman.

I think I was falling in love. Which said more about me and my tastes than literally anything else.

Overall, there had been well over a hundred monsters on the dance floor when this started.

At least half of them were dead now.

The rest were still fighting, but the frenzy was starting to die down. Exhaustion setting in. Wounds taking their toll. Some of the smarter ones were backing off, retreating to the edges of the floor or up to the second level, content to watch rather than participate.

But there were still plenty who wanted blood.

"OH MY GODS, CHAT!" The DJ spun towards me, her green eyes wide, manic, and literally glowing with excitement. Somehow I’d completely ignored the fact that I was literally a few feet away from her. "HE JUST TELEPORTED AGAIN, NO CAP! That's, LIKE, SO broken! Chat, what abilities does he even have?! Huh chat?!"

I glanced at her phone screen from where it was set-up on its tripod. She was on some sort of app that tracked her facial structure with a light gray 3d model, and its blank eyes and featureless face moved just as she did, its head even turning in real time. Little black devices were attached to her ankles and wrists - something I could actually see now that I was closer - and, as I glanced around her setup, I saw what looked like sensors pointed down at her body.

A VTuber.

She was a motherfucking VTuber.

Messages scrolled by so fast on her laptop that I could barely read them, but I caught fragments:

🔴 LIVE

     👁️ 30,128 viewers

      🎵 CLUB RAVENOUS MASSACRE STREAM 🎵

          NOW PLAYING: Free Bird - MOONLIGHT Edit

fireball77: BRO IS THAT STYGIAN IRON?????

ThunderGoth: how the fuck is he still alive

ThunderGoth: wait is this actually fucking real

ThunderGoth: who is his parent?? WHERE IS THIS???

seeweedbrain: was sent this link hello

seeweedbrain: is this porn 

ThiccShaedy: WE LOVE U DEMI-GODDD

TwitchPrime_Chad donated 400 drachma💰: MORE BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GODS

SatyrGaming donated 1000 drachma💰: DO A BACK FLIP TO FREE BIRD

‘ThunderGoth’, huh?

And ‘seeweedbrain’.

That wasn’t super fucking telling at all.

Hopefully my 'fellow' Demi-Gods enjoyed the show.

“What’s your name, kid?!” DJ Screech screeched, her wings excitedly flapping so fast that the wind nearly pushed me off the side of the fucking ledge. “C’MON! Give us SOMETHING! THE PEOPLE WANNA KNOW!”

I rolled my eyes.

"I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. Names have power, and you’re streaming to, what, thirty thousand Demi-God eating monsters right now? Come the fuck on.”

She was practically vibrating in place. “SASSY! I LIKE IT! Can we get some W’s in the chat for such a SMART and SEXY Demi-God piece of-”

A roar from below cut her off.

The rust-furred Hellhound - the one that had been fighting Taureen earlier - had finally noticed that his Minotaur opponent had dissolved into dust. And now, covered in wounds and blood and still clearly high as fuck on Lotus, he was looking around for something else to kill.

His bloodshot amber eyes found me.

Up on the DJ booth.

Twenty feet in the air.

And even through the drug-induced haze, I saw recognition flicker across his canine features.

"YOU…" he snarled, his voice echoing across the club even over the music. Foam and blood dripped from his maw. "Demi-God… flesh. Taste- good. You will taste GOOD."

Oh, fuck.

"Uh," the DJ whispered, her manic energy dialing back slightly as she followed my gaze down to the very large, very angry, very transformed Hellhound. "So, that's who we like to call ‘Methhead Lycaon’, ‘cause he claims to be the big bad dude’s cousin twice-removed or whatever but he’s also a homeless drug-addict. Dude’s kind of a problem when he's sober. But when he's high? He's a disaster. And he looks pretty pissed at you specifically, Mystery Man. Totes not kosher for living. At all, dude."

"Yeah," I muttered, watching as the Hellhound dropped to all fours. His body began to shift, bones cracking and reforming, his already-massive frame expanding even further. "I noticed."

He grew even more, if that was even at all fucking possible, and at some point that transformation said ‘fuck you’ to any attempt at realism and decided to go full-on eldritch mode.

His flesh squelched where his ribs began growing through his mangy, rust-colored fur, each bone visible and sharp enough to use as a lethal weapon. His legs, already long and gangly, became more like telephone poles than actual appendages, ending in paws the size of sedans and claws that gouged trenches in the marble just by existing. His head was a nightmare of teeth and hunger - jaws that could swallow several Taureens whole, yellowed fangs longer than my entire torso, and those same bloodshot amber eyes that now burned with feral, drugged-out rage.

He looked like death incarnate, if death incarnate was coked up on meth and going through a three-day bender.

And he was staring right at me.

"Okay," I said slowly, "that's… that's a big fucking dog."

"Hellhound," the DJ corrected. "And he's about to-"

Methhead Lycaon howled.

The sound shook the entire club, rattling bottles behind the bar, making the strobing lights flicker. It was a sound of pure, primal fury, the kind of noise that bypassed the brain entirely and went straight to the lizard-brain survival instinct that said run.

Battle Maniac told the lizard brain to shut the fuck up.

"KILL!" the Hellhound roared. "KILL DEMI-GOD! RIP GODLING! TEAR FLESH! FEAST ON SOUL!"

He bunched his haunches.

And jumped.

Straight up.

Toward the DJ booth.

Toward me.

"OH SHIT-" The DJ grabbed my arm with one taloned hand, her wings spreading wide. "HOLD ON!"

She launched us backward, her wings beating once with enough force to send us tumbling through the air away from the booth, and not a second too soon-

Methhead Lycaon crashed through the spot where we'd been standing, and the entire fucking DJ booth exploded.

Wood and metal and expensive sound equipment detonated outward in a shower of splinters and sparks. The Hellhound landed on the platform, his weight too much for the structure to bear, and the whole thing began to collapse, torn from its moorings on the wall and crashing back down into the gaggle of monsters that were left slaughtering each other on the dance floor.

And we were falling.

The DJ's wings flapped frantically, trying to slow our descent, but she couldn't support both of us properly - we were dropping too fast, spinning, the floor rushing up to meet us-

I clapped my hands and swapped with Crow #3.

The world lurched.

Suddenly I was standing on solid marble, looking up, watching as the DJ continued falling. She shrieked - not in fear, but in surprised delight - and managed to spread her wings fully just before impact, catching air and swooping up in a graceful arc that ended with her perched back up on the second-floor railing, where a small crowd of monsters were standing and watching the massacre while nursing drinks and weeping wounds.

"WOOO! THAT WAS AWESOME!"

Our doggy friend was not so graceful.

The massive Hellhound, still tangled in what remained of the wreckage of the DJ booth, hit the dance floor like a meteor. The impact cratered the marble, sent cracks spiderwebbing outward, and I felt the shockwave through my shoes even from well over a hundred feet away. But he wasn't hurt.

It only made him angrier.

The beast surged to its feet, shaking off broken wood and sparking electronics, and his bloodshot eyes found me again. Foam and drool poured from his maw, sizzling when it hit the floor, and when he growled, it was a sound that came from deep within his chest - low, resonant, promising violence.

"SMELL YOU…" he snarled. "SMELL TORMAC… ON YOU… KILLER… MURDERER…"

Wait, what?

Did he-

Homeless Hellhound.

Homeless Cyclops.

It made sense in a way.

I raised Soulfyre, and the massive claymore hummed in anticipation.

"Yeah," I said calmly, unapologetically, staring up at the massive Hellhound with my eyes narrowed and my ribs screaming at me to sit the fuck down. "I killed your buddy. Shot him in the face with a shotgun that shoots darkness and unholy fire, then blew him up with a fuckin’ missile. He tried to eat me. So I put him down like the rabid animal he was."

The Hellhound's eyes widened.

His growl intensified.

"You… WHAT?!"

"And you know what?" I continued, grinning even as my heart hammered in my chest. Because this thing was big. Bigger than anything I'd fought so far. And I was running low on Essence, my ribs were cracked, my back was bruised, and I was pretty sure I'd pulled something in my shoulder during that last swap.

But Battle Maniac didn't care about any of that.

Battle Maniac wanted more.

And so did I.

This had to be building up to a crazy good Gacha Feat.

"He went down like a little pussy ass bitch," I finished, cracking my neck loudly with one sharp sideways tilt of my head. "Just like you're about to."

The Hellhound, at least twelve feet tall at this point and looking like something straight out of StudioFOW porn animation, roared his fury at me and charged, each step shaking the dance floor and eating up several dozen feet in all the time it would’ve taken me to even think about a counter-attack.

…

So I didn’t think.

VROOOOOOOOOOOM!

I grabbed the motorcycle-disguised War Chariot by the handlebars the instant its front wheel tore its way out of Shadow Storage. 

My left arm cracked, shoulder screaming in pain as the sheer momentum from grabbing onto a motorcycle already going sixty miles per hour wrenched it right out of its socket, but I was so far beyond pain at this point that I barely even noticed it - not with my hair blasting past my face, my eyes growing dry from the rushing wind, and all of my energy being focused on actually mounting the motorcycle while holding onto a seven foot tall claymore made of Stygian Iron. 

It was even more difficult than it sounded.

Essence bled from my body and suffused Soulfyre, triggering its whip-sword mode and letting its segmented length unclasp and trail behind me in the wind as I struggled to properly seat myself on the warm leather. The motorcycle wobbled against the marble flooring, crunching over dying monster corpses and nearly launching me off as it slid against inches-thick piles of golden dust, but my Khaosborne reflexes were better than even the world’s greatest motorcyclist. I kept it controlled, kept it steady, and kept it aimed directly towards the charging Hellhound.

‘Who wins? Twelve foot tall Methead Lycaon or Ares’ motorcycle?’

It was the scariest game of chicken I’d ever played in either of my lives.

Battle Maniac fucking loved it.

By the time I’d finally scooted back onto the seat and had my left hand wrapped securely around the handlebar, the Hellhound was so close I could practically smell his rancid fucking breath. We were maybe twenty feet away from each other, maybe even closer, and judging by the clouded-over rage in his eyes and the way he half-stumbled, half charged directly towards my seventy MPH bike, he wasn’t gonna be the chicken in this scenario. Probably didn’t even have the brain power to back out.

Well, I did.

And yet I revved the engine even louder.

VROOOOOOM-

Steady.

Steaaady…

Stead-SKRRRRT!

NOW.

I yanked back on the clutch, shifted the gear downwards, and clenched my teeth as Ares’ motorcycle twisted to its side and nearly crashed into the ground. The bike didn't just tilt - it lurched, over a dozen feet of cold, hard, segmented Stygian Iron and hundreds of pounds of divine motorcycle engineering throwing itself sideways with all the grace of a freight train derailing. 

My right heel hit the marble first, sparking like a goddamn firework as I dragged it across the floor, and the friction was so intense I could smell burning rubber through the chaos. The BMW's left side slammed down next with a metallic SCREEEEECH that made my teeth ache, and suddenly I wasn't riding anymore.

I was sliding. 

Sixty miles per hour of pure momentum carried me and five hundred pounds of Ares's stolen motorcycle across the dance floor in a spray of sparks and marble dust. My dislocated shoulder screamed at me, white-hot agony lancing through the joint every time the bike bucked or wobbled, but even then I didn't let go of Soulfyre. I couldn't. The whipsword's segmented length trailed behind me like a streamer of midnight-black death, each piece connected by that ghostly, silvery-white Essence that pulsed in time with my racing heart.

The Hellhound's massive form loomed closer, closer, closer-

And then I was sliding beneath him, right between his massive paws.

I let go of the handlebars.

The world inverted. Above me, instead of the strobing club lights and the haze of smoke and Essence, there was just dog. Twelve feet of muscle, fur, and rage condensed into a living missile that was too fucking stupid or too fucking angry to stop charging. I could see his underbelly now - surprisingly vulnerable-looking compared to the rest of him, all soft pink-gray flesh stretched tight over ribs and organs, marred with old scars and fresh wounds from our earlier exchange.

My right hand - my good hand, the one attached to the shoulder that wasn't dangling like a broken puppet - shot upward, fingers wrapped tight around Soulfyre's hilt, and I swung. The whipsword responded instantly, segments spreading wide as they carved through the air in a vicious, upward arc. I didn't aim for anything specific. Didn't need to. The blade's reach was obscene, and the Hellhound's gut was right fucking there, close enough that I could've reached up and touched it with my bare hand if I was feeling suicidal.

Stygian Iron met flesh.

And flesh lost.

The sound was wet; a meaty, tearing SCHLORP that somehow cut through the bass-heavy music still thumping through the club's speakers. I felt the resistance, brief and firm, as the first segment of Soulfyre's blade punched through hide and muscle. Then the second. The third. The fourth. Each piece of the whipsword carving its own separate trench through the Hellhound's unprotected underbelly as I slid beneath him, trailing destruction like a comet trail of viscera and hot, steamy intestines.

Blood sprayed.

Not a trickle. Not a splash.

A fucking deluge.

Hot, copper-scented, disturbingly thick Hellhound blood rained down on me like someone had upended a bucket directly over my head. It splashed across my face, into my hair, soaked through my jacket and shirt until the fabric clung to my skin. I tasted it on my lips - bitter and sulfuric, like licking a battery dipped in spoiled meat - and had to fight the urge to gag as more of it poured down, painting the marble floor beneath me in slick, steaming crimson.

‘Fuck, that's gross.’

The Hellhound screamed.

It wasn’t a roar this time. Not a growl or a snarl or any of the bestial posturing he'd been doing before. This was a shriek - high-pitched, agonized, the sound of something that had just realized it was dying. His massive body stumbled, momentum carrying him forward even as his legs buckled, and I caught a glimpse of his face from one of my crows as I slid out from beneath him.

His eyes were wide. Terrified.

Good.

The motorcycle kept sliding, carrying me another ten, fifteen feet before friction and physics finally decided I'd had enough fun. We came to a grinding, spark-spewing halt near the edge of the dance floor, and I didn't waste a single second. My left hand snapped upward, fuck the pain, and came together with my right wrist in a thunderous, echoing-

CLAP.

Reality lurched.

One second I was lying half-sprawled across a motorcycle, drenched in blood, staring at the Hellhound's stumbling form as he staggered and bled out across the marble.

The next, I was falling.

The perspective shift hit me like a sledgehammer to the exhaustion-tinged brain. My stomach dropped into my feet, my inner ear screamed conflicting messages about which way was up, and for one dizzying, disorienting heartbeat I couldn't figure out what the fuck had just happened. Then my eyes focused, my crow-self's vision snapping into clarity, and I understood.

I'd swapped.

I was at least sixty feet in the air, directly above the Hellhound's massive, bleeding form, and gravity had opinions about that.

‘Lock in, Andreas. LOCK IN.’

Adrenaline surged through me, sharp and electric, cutting through the pain and exhaustion like a hit of the world's best cocaine. My right hand, still gripping Soulfyre because I sure as shit hadn't let go during the swap, pulsed with the one of the very last vestiges of Essence contained within my body. I felt it flow out of me, a river of purple-black energy that sank into the whipsword's segmented blade like water into sand. The weapon responded, segments snapping together with a series of crisp, mechanical CLICKs that sounded almost eager.

Whipsword became claymore.

Seven feet of cold, light-devouring Stygian Iron, solid and heavy and hungry.

The Hellhound was directly below me. His back, broad and muscular and covered in matted, blood-soaked fur, rose up rapidly to meet me as I fell. I could see the ridge of his spine, the knobs of his vertebrae pressing up against the skin, the way his shoulders bunched and flexed as he tried to keep himself upright despite the grievous wound I'd just carved through his guts. My hair was whipping wildly around my face, my eyes watering from the speed of the drop, and in the background I could hear DJ Shriek screeching something to her chat, but I didn’t have the brainpower to focus on that.

My entire existence crystallized, focused entirely on the body beneath me.

Aim.

Brace.

DRIVE.

I twisted mid-fall, angling Soulfyre downward until its point was aimed directly at the base of the Hellhound's skull, and pulled on my Essence. It wasn’t a trickle this time, or a careful, calculated flow. I yanked, channeling everything I had left into the blade, and Soulfyre sang. The ghostly, silvery-white energy that had connected its segments when it was a whipsword flared bright, visible even in the strobing club lights, and I felt the weapon's hunger spike.

It wanted this kill.

And fuck-

So did I.

CRUNCH.

Stygian Iron punched through fur, skin, muscle, and bone without slowing.

The sound was devastating. Wet, solid, and final, like snapping a tree branch the size of a telephone pole, and I felt the impact reverberate up through the blade, through my hands, into my shoulders and spine. The Hellhound's spine shattered under Soulfyre's edge, vertebrae exploding into shrapnel, and I felt the blade sink deep - through his back, through his chest cavity, until the tip burst out the other side and scraped against the marble floor beneath him with a teeth-grinding SCREEEEE.

The Hellhound's entire body went rigid.

…

Then he started bucking.

“Oh, you've gotta be fucking kidding me.”

His front legs locked, and his hindquarters exploded upward in a violent, convulsive thrash that would've launched me off his back and into the ceiling if I hadn't been gripping Soulfyre with both hands. My dislocated shoulder shrieked in protest, agony lancing through the joint like someone had shoved a red-hot railroad spike through it, but I held on. I wrapped both hands around the hilt, locked my elbows, and used the blade like a goddamn anchor as the Hellhound threw himself around the dance floor in a frothing, dying frenzy.

He bucked left.

I leaned right, legs clamping down on his sides hard enough to make my thighs burn.

He bucked right.

I leaned left, boots digging into his ribs, and felt something crack beneath my heel.

He reared up on his hind legs, front paws clawing at the air, and I had to flatten myself against his back to avoid getting thrown. My face pressed into his blood-matted fur, the stench of sulfur and copper filling my nose, and I bit back a gag as I felt his body shudder beneath me.

‘Die already, you fuck!’

But he didn't.

He spun.

The Hellhound twisted his entire massive body in a corkscrew motion, trying to shake me off like a dog shaking water from its coat, and the g-forces were fucking obscene. My vision blurred at the edges, my inner ear screaming that I was about to die, and I felt my grip on Soulfyre's hilt start to slip. My left hand gave out first, fingers going numb and weak, and suddenly I was holding on with just my right.

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

FUCK.

I clenched my thighs tighter, so tight I could feel my muscles cramping, and twisted Soulfyre sharp enough to hear my wrist bone click.

The blade, still buried hilt-deep in the Hellhound's shattered spine, rotated. I felt it carve through more tissue, more bone, grinding and tearing and destroying everything in its path. The Hellhound's spinning stopped mid-rotation, his body seizing up like someone had hit him with a taser, and he let out a sound I'd never heard before.

A whimper.

Broken. Defeated. Dying.

“There it is.”

I pulled myself upright, left hand flopping uselessly at my side, and used my right to yank Soulfyre upward. The blade resisted, stuck fast in the Hellhound's ruined spine, but I pulled as hard as I could, channeling the last dregs of my Essence into the weapon. Soulfyre pulsed once, twice, and then the silvery-white energy flared bright, so bright I had to squint against it.

The blade drank deep.

I felt it happen. Felt the moment Soulfyre's Stygian Iron edge latched onto the Hellhound's essence - that core spark of divine life that made him a monster instead of just a really big, really angry dog - and pulled. The Hellhound's body convulsed one last time, a full-body spasm that nearly threw me off, and then he went still. His essence flowed through Soulfyre, circulating through its divine metal, before I ‘grabbed’ onto it with my own soul and wrenched it forcibly into my own body.

It was like gobbling down ice cold water in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

The Hellhound’s massive legs folded beneath him, and he collapsed onto the dance floor like a puppet with its strings cut. I rode him down, still gripping Soulfyre's hilt tightly with my right hand, and the impact rattled my teeth as his body hit the marble with a wet, meaty thud. Dust and golden particles - the beginnings of his dissolution - puffed up around us, glittering in the strobing lights.

For a moment, I just sat there.

Straddling a dead Hellhound.

Covered head to toe in blood and guts and monster dust, Soulfyre still buried in his spine.

Breathing like I'd just run a marathon while getting the shit kicked out of me.

‘…Did I just do that?’

My left shoulder throbbed, a dull, nauseating ache that promised I was going to regret this in about five minutes when the adrenaline wore off. My ribs weren't much better - every breath felt like someone was jabbing me with a cattle prod, and although it was less painful than it had been a few minutes ago, I knew without a doubt that I needed some actual healing, and soon. My thighs were cramping, my back was bruised to hell from getting thrown around on the motorcycle, and I was pretty sure I'd pulled something in my neck during one of the Hellhound's spins.

But I was alive.

And he was dead.

“Fuck yes.”

I yanked Soulfyre free with a wet, sucking SCHLORP, and the Hellhound's body immediately began to dissolve. Golden dust poured from the massive wound in his back, cascading down his sides and pooling on the floor like glittering sand. His fur lost its luster, his muscles deflated, and within seconds his entire twelve-foot frame had collapsed into nothing but a massive pile of shimmering gold particles.

I slid off the pile, boots crunching on marble and dust, and nearly fell on my ass when my legs decided they were done holding me up. I caught myself at the last second, right hand still gripping Soulfyre, and used the blade like a cane to keep myself upright.

“Ow. Fuck. Ow.”

…

Discomfortingly enough, the entire club was quieter. 

A lot quieter.

It wasn’t silent - the music was still playing, but the fighting had mostly died down. The monsters who were still alive had retreated to the edges of the dance floor, watching me with expressions that ranged from fear to awe to hunger.

But none of them approached.

None of them challenged me.

Because I'd just killed Methhead Lycaos and so many other monsters that I’d genuinely lost count.

Everything felt floaty. Probably the adrenaline crash hitting me like a fucking bulldozer.

"Holy shit," the DJ's voice crackled through what remained of the speaker system. She'd found a backup mic somewhere, and her phone had apparently survived the destruction because now it was trained directly on me from her perch on the second floor. "Chat, I… I don't even know what to say. That was the most insane thing I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of crazy shit."

I looked up at the camera, propped myself up against Soulfyre-

And took a small bow.

…

The club promptly erupted into noise - but it wasn’t fighting this time. This time, it was cheering.

Monsters who'd been trying to kill each other minutes ago were now stomping, howling, roaring their approval. The sound washed over me in a wave, and I felt it in my chest, felt it vibrate through the marble floor and up into my bones. Even the ones who probably wanted to eat me were caught up in the moment, unable to resist the primal satisfaction of witnessing a good hunt. Monsters, both injured and unharmed, were leaning over the railings of the second floor lounge area and tossing down all sorts of random bullshit as favors. Actual roses. Potted plants. 

Panties and bras.

I'd given them a show, and they fucking loved it.

"OUR MYSTERIOUS DEMI-GOD, EVERYBODY!" The DJ shrieked into her mic, her wings spread wide in a victory pose. "LET’S GIVE IT UP FOR ‘THE SLAYER’! The Demi-God who walked into Club Ravenous and turned it into his personal SLAUGHTERHOUSE! Chat, we just crossed fifty-thousand fucking viewers! This is the biggest stream I've EVER had! Someone clip that motorcycle thing- he fucking did the Akira Slide! FUCK, CLIP IT ALL!"

I breathed slowly through my rattling ribs, letting the side of my head rest against the abnormally cool surface of my blade as I surveyed the carnage. Golden dust hung in the air like fog, glittering in the strobing lights. The dance floor was destroyed - craters, scorch marks, blood splatter in every color imaginable. Bodies were still dissolving, their essence feeding back into whatever cosmic recycling system sent dead monsters to Tartarus for reformation, while others still littered the floor - Satyrs, nymphs, centaurs, and creatures who hadn’t been monsters but still found themselves pulled into the massacre.

Thirty-eight kills, by my rough count.

Maybe more.

Probably enough for at least a Gold Drachma, possibly Platinum.

Worth it.

My ribs were screaming. My back felt like I'd been hit by a truck. My Essence reserves were  hovering around forty percent, give or take five or ten, and I was pretty sure my dislocated shoulder was being compounded by several muscle tears all throughout the bicep. But Battle Maniac was still flooding my system with enough adrenaline and satisfaction to make it all feel distant, like it was happening to someone else.

Fuck, I felt amazing.

"You," Yumei's raspy voice cut through my post-battle high, "are absolutely insane."

I turned to find her walking towards me, away from her silk-coated bar, all six eyes locked on me with an expression I couldn't quite read. Her white shirt was practically destroyed - torn, blood-soaked, barely hanging on. Her chitin armor was cracked in places, black ichor still leaking from a gash above her upper right eye. The four katanas she'd been wielding were now nowhere to be seen, but four of her hands were morphed into black claws, still gleaming wet with blood.

Butterflies flitted through my stomach in spite of myself.

"Guilty," I admitted, limping toward her. Each step pulled at my injuries, but I kept the grin plastered on my face. "But you gotta admit, that was pretty fuckin’ cool."

Her chelicerae clicked rapidly. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed. You do not come back when slain, Andreas. You are mortal.”

“Yeah? And this mortal just kicked a fuck-ton of ass. I didn’t die. That’s all that matters.”

…

Yumei sighed, long-suffering and exhausted.

"You're very strange, Andreas Ashcroft."

"So I’ve been told."

"And reckless."

"Yep."

"And probably brain-damaged from all those hits you took."

"Almost definitely."

Her lips spread into a smile. "I like you."

Something warm bloomed in my chest - so sudden and strong that I almost didn't know what to say.

Almost.

"I like you too," I said, and found myself surprised to know that I actually meant it. "And you look hella fucking sexy covered in monster blood."

"Mm. And so do you." Her chelicerae clicked again, and she reached out with one hand - claws retracted, palm open - to gently touch the side of my face. Her fingers were cool against my overheated skin, her body so tall that I had to crane my head back in order to actually look her in the eyes. "You're bleeding. Here."

She gestured to my forehead.

I reached up, felt the wetness, and looked down at my gloved fingers to see red. My vision swam with nausea

When the Hell did that happen?

"Probably when Taureen threw you into the pillar," Yumei murmured, reading my confusion. "You hit hard. I'm surprised you didn't crack your skull open and spill your squishy human brain all over the dance floor"

"Cat's Feet," I explained vaguely. "Takes the edge off fall damage. Probably helped with the impact."

Yumei tilted her head, but didn’t even bother questioning the random info drop. "Convenient."

"Suuuper convenient."

She studied me for a moment longer, her six eyes roaming over my battered, blood-soaked form, and I could practically see her cataloging my injuries. Cracked ribs. Bruised back. Torn shoulder. Cut forehead. The list was probably longer, but those were the ones I could actually feel through the adrenaline, and probably the only ones visible to the naked eye.

"You need healing," she said finally, the steel in her husky voice non-negotiable. "Real healing. The kind designed for mortals like you. Club Ravenous has a medical station on the third floor for esteemed guests, but…"

"But it's in the VIP section," I finished drily. "Where Isabella and her sisters are."

"Yes."

I glanced up toward the third floor.

From here, I could see the balcony railing overlooking the dance floor, and beyond that, the soft glow of what looked like private rooms. The VIP section was quieter, more exclusive, separated from the chaos below by both physical distance and (most-likely) magical wards erected by Queen Lamia herself. Isabella was up there, waiting, either wondering what the fuck I’d been doing for the last hour and a half or even watching that damned livestream herself.

It was probably time to collect on that rain check. And maybe see if this ‘medical station’ had any percocets.

"I'll head up," I groaned, already turning toward the stairs that led to the second floor. "But first-"

I pulled out my phone, somewhat surprised it survived that whole battle sequence, and swiped up to check my notifications. 

[15 Unread Messages]

[Marcus Wheeler (MOM)]

I swiped through them quickly.

[Marcus - 2:47 AM]

yo dude r u alive

[Marcus - 2:50 AM]

andreas seriously answer ur phone

[Marcus - 2:53 AM]

bro i just saw u on a LIVESTREAM wtf

[Marcus - 2:55 AM]

DUDE UR ON TWITCH

[Marcus - 2:58 AM]

https://twitch.tv/ShriekHarpy CLICK THIS WAIT NVM U CANT

[Marcus - 3:01 AM]

WHY R U FIGHTING A MINOTAUR

[Marcus - 3:10 AM]

OK THAT MOTORCYCLE THING WAS SICK BUT UR GONNA DIE

[Marcus - 3:12 AM]

nvm u killed it

[Marcus - 3:13 AM]

dude chiron is gonna FLIP when he sees this

[Marcus - 3:13 AM]

call me when ur done being internet famous

[Marcus - 3:13 AM]

also if u die can i have ur xbox

[Marcus - 3:13 AM]

jk dont die

[Marcus - 3:14 AM]

seriously tho call me

[Marcus - 3:15 AM]

DUDE UR TRENDING ON TWITTER

I couldn't help but laugh.

Of course Marcus had been watching. The perpetually-stoned Satyr probably thought this whole thing was both the scariest and funniest shit he'd ever fucking seen.

I typed back quickly:

[Andreas - 3:17 AM]

still alive. heading to VIP section now. also no you cant have my xbox

[Andreas - 3:17 AM]

tell chiron i said hi

I pocketed the phone and looked back at Yumei.

"Sorry. Anyways, you sure you're okay down here?" I asked concernedly, giving a subtle glance around at the lurking remnants of monster survivors. "No one's gonna try and finish what Taureen started?"

"They know better," she said simply. "I've killed more monsters in this club than you have, Andreas. And I've been doing it for decades. They respect strength here. You just proved yours. So did I."

That was a fair point. They did seem intent on giving us, and her bar, a very wide berth.

"Still," I frowned, "if you need backup-"

"I don't." Her chelicerae clicked, and she shooed me away with two hands while the other four got busy clearing debris. "Go. Your Lamia is waiting. And Andreas?"

I paused mid-turn.

"Yeah?"

"Don't die up there." Her eyes softened. "I'd like to see you again. Ah, and also- I… ‘followed’ you on Instagram during the battle. I’ll directly message you my phone number soon."

The warmth in my chest intensified. 

"Just say ‘DM’, Yumei," I grinned, blushing despite the pain. "And sweet. I’ll text you later."

__________________________________

The second floor was significantly less destroyed than the first - probably because most of the monsters who'd been up here had either fled to the VIP section, joined the massacre downstairs, or had headed back down to help with the clean-up. There were still bodies - golden dust piles, empty barstools, overturned furniture - but it was quiet. Almost peaceful, in a post-apocalyptic sort of way. DJ Shriek had already flown the coop to go and scavenge what remained of her streaming setup, meaning I wouldn’t have to deal with her loud ass voice when I was already nursing a major fucking migraine.

She seemed chill, but fuuuck that.

The lounge area was exactly what it sounded like: sleek black couches, low tables, ambient purple lighting that made everything look like a high-end nightclub from a cyberpunk movie. There was a smaller bar up here too, unmanned and untouched, bottles still gleaming behind frosted glass. A few monsters were scattered around - nursing drinks, tending wounds, watching me with wary eyes as I passed - but none of them made a move. They'd seen what I'd done downstairs. They knew better.

I collapsed on one of the couches, laid my head back, and allowed myself to just breathe.

…

…

…

BZZZT.

BZZZT.

BZZZT.

BZZZT-

“Marcus,” I growled, opening my eyes and yanking my phone out of my pocket. “Fuck off you mangy fucking-”

[FEAT ACHIEVED: SLAY AN ELITE-RANKED ENEMY]

Reward: (1x) Gold Advantage Drachma

[FEAT ACHIEVED: DOMINATE A MONSTER FREE-FOR-ALL]

        Reward: (1x) Platinum Drachma

[FEAT ACHIEVED: SLAY TWENTY MONSTERS IN UNDER 10 MINUTES]

Reward: (1x) Gold Drachma

[FEAT ACHIEVED: CHARM AN EPIC-RANKED MONSTER]

Reward: (1x) Platinum Drachma

The words caught in my throat. In fact, I nearly fucking choked on them. It took all I had within my body not to flip my lid and scream at the text boxes hovering over my phone screen, their fractal edges warped with all the colors of the rainbow.

Because holy shit.

Holy. Fucking. Shitballs.

“Y’know what… maybe Isabella can wait a couple more minutes.”

…

Who knew committing mass murder and putting my life on the line would be worth so much fucking power?

This-

This was the kind of shit that truly made me hard.

“Alright, Grandma K,” I whispered, eyes gleaming purple and gold beneath my sweat-soaked bangs of crimson hair. “Let’s see what you’ve got in store for your favorite grandson.”

Spoiler alert:

I wasn’t disappointed.