In the burning inferno of demolished war-machines, two former hunters stared at each other. One, clad in wolfish features, while the other looked fair and human. Soot and embers fell from the sky, and the continuous rumble of war played in the distance. But here in the burning debris, Wretch and his two dogs were alone against the man who had killed his Captain. And that man was hurt.
Grendel, in his human form, wheezed with each breath, cuts and burns marring his skin. Despite that, a power still leaked from his eyes with enough authority to make the shadows around them dance.
Fifty yards away stood Wretch, fur scorched, eyes wide, and his snout pulled up into a snarl. His flame still pulsing at more than half strength. Plenty for revenge.
“Fingers, Waddles, you’re going to help me kill this man. Right here and now.”
The two Blessed he had taken under his wings, two criminals of no importance, looked at him.
“That thing,” Fingers shuddered. “Are you mad? His pressure moves the bloody shadows. I’ll not die for—”
Wretch twitched his gaze to the tiny Blessed. His visage must have held enough meaning, for they fell silent.
From across the war-torn grounds, Grendel changed. His skin squirmed in much the same way Wretch’s did. White fur grew from his skin, nails morphing into claws, and words pushed through sharpening teeth.
“I told you back then that Nov Yanosk would use you. Burn you out like a candle, push you until you break. Look at you, ravaged and torn.”
A twitch ran down Wretch’s claw, his snarl growing into an eerie smile as he took a step closer.
“I’ll gladly lay down my life for any cause that would deliver you wounded and weak before me. Now let’s get started.”
Grendel threw the head clutched in his hand to the side. The skull of the former Nov Yanosk champion thudding unceremoniously against the burnt mud.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but a mere Fireling will not be my end.”
Wretch didn’t answer. Instead, he hissed an order to the two soot-stained Blessed beside him.
“Just look for an opening. I’ll give him hell. I’ll get you both out of this war after this is done.”
No other words were spoken. Instead, Wretch stepped forward carefully, each step measured. Grendel cracked his neck and furrowed his brow but held his ground.
Wretch was not stupid. This wasn’t going to be an easy fight. Hurt or not, Grendel was a Pyre. But this time Wretch was prepared. How could he not be? He had gone through the scenario in his head a hundred times. Grendel’s blessings and his own, their movement and tendencies. The hidden weapon he had holstered on his hip, loaded with a coal and a precious memory in anticipation of this very moment.
Wretch lunged first. If the other two followed mattered only a little.
Grendel gritted his teeth and drew a deep breath of the soot-stained air. He exhaled with a cough, a grayish and unhealthy mist pouring from his mouth.
Then Wretch was upon him, burning eyes and twitching claw. A swipe at the Pyre’s neck, a sidestep from Grendel. His claws cut nothing but thin mist.
Wretch had anticipated as much. A human arm burst from his side, channeled through concentration and one of the many forms at his disposal. The limb twisting out of his ribs to reach for the Pyre’s throat.
Grendel stepped back just as quickly, throwing a simple punch that burst the conjured limb into bloody ribbons. Wretch didn’t let up, continuing a string of brutal attacks. As Wretch continued his onslaught, human hands burst from his furred body, reaching for the Pyre in a display of morbid transformation.
They both moved in a blur, eclipsing the possibilities of human strength and speed with ease.
“You’ve grown faster,” Grendel said despite the close combat. “Stronger too, but you’re no match for me alone.”
Wretch might be acting mindless, driven only by his urge to hurt at any cost, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking. He’d pushed Grendel around, led their steps back around. Towards his underlings.
Waddles roared as he charged forward. Fingers cursed but nonetheless followed, human digits crawling from the fair skin to envelop the tiny Blessed in armor.
They had him surrounded.
“Alone?” Wretch growled.
“I don’t count these flies,” Grendel scoffed, dodging another claw by a hair’s breadth.
Wretch’s claw, Fingers’ fist, and Waddles’ open grasp crashed towards the wounded Pyre. But Wretch knew that didn’t mean they had him cornered.
The thin mist shook, enveloping Grendel in a breath of time. And he was gone, transported somewhere else in the haze as their attacks struck air. He could have fled, but Wretch doubted it. He knew Grendel and how he fought. He was the kind of beast that struck the weakest first.
A kick cracked against Fingers’ skull, sending the tiny Blessed into the earth. A shudder ran through Waddles’ form, a naked fist punching straight through the giant’s gut.
But Wretch was already on him, gripping Grendel’s wrist protruding from his underling before the Pyre could pull it back. His claws scraped against Grendel’s skin, but the skin was stronger than steel. The claws that could shred metal only leaving thin cuts. No, something else was needed to hurt a Pyre. And he had something in mind.
“Waddles, I’m sorry,” Wretch said as blood gushed out of his gut. “But I need you to sleep now.”
He had vowed not to kill any of the other dogs, and doing so would burst his own heart. The giant tried to speak, but instead only blood blurted past his teeth.
Wretch whipped his trump card from its holster, Final Purpose. The devastating hand-cannon stolen from a Gulschak in months past. Loaded with a coal and a memory of his first shower.
Grendel’s free hand grabbed Waddles’ neck and ripped it free. The changes the Ember had stolen through his life amounting to nothing more than a slight resistance to the Pyre’s strength.
So died Waddles, a murderer, a human only in origin, unfit for anything but violence. Wretch had led him to his death, in search of this brief opportunity.
With one hand clutching Grendel’s wrist, he pressed the hand-cannon to Waddles’ chest and pulled the trigger.
The blast tore against his shoulder, the power of a coal and its potential exchanged for a brief flash of power.
In the blink of an eye, a hole had formed in the flesh of his former underling, and Grendel’s wrist slipped from his grip. A groan coming from the other side that was as sweet as nectar to Wretch’s ears.
Waddles’ headless corpse fell to his knees with a thud, tumbling to the side as a glow came from the dead man’s chest. Beyond, Grendel had stumbled a dozen paces away, clutching his chest. The mist, struggling in the heat of the war-machines burning around them, enveloped him and he reappeared a hundred yards back.
A scorched indentation ran along his ribcage, and the Pyre hissed with fury, the thin mist shuddering around them.
Wretch’s weapon was powerful, but no mere contraption made from a Fireling could kill a Pyre in one shot, wounded or not.
“That bloody hurts,” Grendel growled with fiery eyes. “You know how hard it is to regenerate burns.”
Wretch didn’t answer. Instead, he ripped the freshly formed coal from Waddles’ already massacred remains.
The brass weapon in his left hand glowed from heat. With a whip of his wrist, the barrel folded, releasing a wisp of black smoke into the oversaturated air.
He pushed Waddles’ bloodied coal in and straightened the barrel with a click. But still the weapon demanded more.
For each shot, the weapon must be reloaded with a coal and a treasured memory.
It took from him a memory without consent nor the opportunity to choose. The feeling of his Captain’s hand on his shoulder.
Grendel spat on the ground, the fist-sized indentation in his chest squirming as it partially repaired itself. Wretch raised the weapon again, taking aim as best he could.
“Don’t you—”
Grendel’s eyes went wide and the mist shot towards him. A blast rang through the fumes. Where the Pyre had stood, the earth shot into the air. Grendel reappearing behind him, hands on his knees and breathing laboriously.
Damn, Wretch thought.
A dark chuckle escaped Grendel’s throat. “Not even giving your brother the courtesy to speak, are you?”
“No,” Wretch replied, looking to the side. Fingers’ body lay there, their head bleeding from a kick but breathing. Wretch gave the tiny Blessed a long look, then threw the weapon beside them.
“Alright, kin, you’ve proven your point,” Grendel said as he straightened. “There is nothing you wouldn’t sacrifice to hurt me, that much is clear. I’m so low on flame that the whispers roar in my ears, but if I flee I’m sure you’ll not stop chasing, would you?”
“Not for anything,” Wretch replied, stepping closer with flexed claws.
“I thought so,” Grendel said with a cathartic laugh. “Then I’ll pour the last of my flame into one final form and we’ll settle this as beasts. If you win, I’ll tell you everything about the one who spawned us and the secrets of Pyre and beyond, and if I win, I’ll have one more head to return to the Gulschaks.”
“Fair.”
Grendel’s flesh squirmed and roiled, his back hunching, his bones moving beneath the skin. A thick growl of pain escaped the man as he changed into something else. What remained of the mist enveloped him and a pressure grew against Wretch’s skin.
After a few seconds, Grendel stretched his neck towards the sky. For the first time, Wretch saw his half-brother’s monstrous form clearly, the mist too thin to shield him from his gaze. Curved fangs frozen in a grin, burning eyes, a flat nose, and human-like palms. All of it covered in fur as white as snow. Opposing him stood Wretch, clad in black, but with fangs and claws of his own.
There could be no misinterpretation. A battle between monsters was about to unfold.
Despite standing several heads taller, Grendel still carried stubborn injuries, burns that oozed, hastily regenerated cuts. Despite the gap in peak strength, the killing field had been leveled.
Grendel let out a roar that made the shadows vibrate, and Wretch answered with a howl fit for his houndlike throat. And with that, the monsters lunged at each other, the inferno and something high above bearing witness.
The white and black forms clashed. At the last moment, Wretch whispered words of murder to his flame, letting it pour through him without even so much as a shred of restraint.
His own muscles bulged, claws growing longer, fur lengthening as he took on the full form of its previous owner.
They collided with a crack, the forces sending a shockwave through the air.
Their claws intertwined, both struggling to press the other to the ground. They had done this once before. And despite Grendel’s wounds, Wretch knew he couldn’t win. Not with this form alone.
He pulled on another, holding several changes at once as his head ached and nerves screamed. Human arms burst from his fur, all reaching for one thing. Grendel’s eyes.
The white-furred monster roared and overpowered him anyway. Both tumbled to the ground. Fingers dug into a fiery eye, a massive palm twisted another with a crack. Claws flashed and blood sprayed.
They rolled on the ground. Wretch held on to the changes, forcing new ones with pulses of quickly diminishing flame. Brittle human hands twisted and crunched between Grendel’s teeth. But he had plenty. Only when a dozen arms reached deep into Grendel’s mouth in an effort to choke him did the monster kick his counterpart away.
They both fell to either side. Then rose in unison.
Wretch was a mass of shredded flesh and fur. The several dozen human arms forced from his skin hanging limp around him like a living mound of cadavers. With a squirm, they retreated back into him, leaving him as a bloodied mockery of a man. He was hurt, one arm twisted from his shoulder, a patch of fur and skin ripped clean from his side.
Grendel, on the other hand, wheezed in his far larger form, one eye reduced to a bloodied gash that bloomed red in the white mane.
“Your claws can't even pierce my skin. You can rip out both my eyes, but in a minute I’ll have collected enough flame to regrow them entirely. Can you say the same?”
Wretch flashed his fangs in a snarl. The flesh of his missing arm squirmed, the wound closing, with the intention not to prolong his survival, but to give him another chance to hurt.
“You think you can convince me with words?”
“No, not you. But know that wherever you go under the Saint’s banner, the comrades around you will perish, as they have now.” Grendel gestured to the massacred corpse of Waddles and the unmoving Fingers. “And it will be known that Wretch was always the omen of Nov Yanosk’s defeat.”
Wretch, on his way forward with an open claw, froze.
Omen…
That word had made his weakening flame shudder.
He thought back then, not to what the twists of fate had changed him into, a youngling searching for his father, a hunter, a Blessed collecting wounds to the soul itself, but to what he had been before it all began. A being whose presence spelled tragedy to all those he had held dear. The words of his mother, willfully forgotten, rang in his mind, tainted by revenge and madness. He found it then. What he was.
“No,” Wretch said slowly. He trailed his bloodied head upwards to stare at the beast who shared his blood.
“If I am an omen, it’s not of defeat. I am..."
He paused for a breath of time. His flame, kindled enough to almost burst at the seams, struggled to break free. Around it, his prey dug their claws and nails into the ground.
He straightened, pulling the soot-stained air deep into his lungs. Sweat and blood matting his fur while the embers fell around them. Something deep within was waiting for his words, so he uttered them.
“Wretch, Omen of Misfortune.”
The words shivered, his flame roared, and a fiery light grew to rival the inferno.