Page 123 of A Soul to Guide

What happened next was faded, hazy images and senses, as invisible, invasive hands squeezed at the squishy meat of his brain. It was like he was being manipulated, controlled to lose his sense of reasoning, to just battle until he’d ravaged everything within his path.

Bloodthirsty and angry,everythingwas a foe.

His body shifted into his monstrous form to better fight. It heightened his senses, his speed, his strength. It extended his quills and made him even larger than he already was.

While he was on his side, Merikh let out an agonised yelp when the bone in his arm was snapped. Claws went to slash at his back, but the raven-skulled Mavka jumped back when he was impaled by Merikh’s quills. Instead, he slashed at Merikh’s side until Merikh booted him in the head.

He spun and sat on his arse, grabbed the bat-skulled Mavka’s horn, and tried to twist his head to get him to let go. He just wanted it to let go, his arm in so much agony that it radiated all the way to his spine. It felt like he was trying to pull Merikh’s body inside out through his left shoulder as the Mavka yanked and bit, slowly climbing higher up his arm with chomping bites until he was near Merikh’s elbow.

Twisting the Mavka’s neck and head did nothing, since their heads could rotate nearly three-sixty degrees. It was the only thing that saved him when the raven-skulled Mavka yanked on Merikh’s own horn with his fangs and tugged him the other way.

Merikh clawed at the underside of his neck to free himself, but to no avail. He was being torn in two from his shoulder joint, and he let out a bellowing roar.

He did the only thing he could.

Flattening his hand once more, he shoved his claws into his own shoulder and pulled. His yell only highlighted how much effort it took to rip his own arm from his body in desperation, freeing himself in a spray of blood and snapping tendons.

The bat-skulled Mavka tripped back, not expecting the sudden release. Once he regained his footing and shook his head from side to side, the upper part of Merikh’s arm wiggled in the air from his maw.

Now freed from the nuisance of his arm, Merikh rose to his knees to keep himself stable and then shoved his claws into the raven-skulled Mavka’s throat, piercing his trachea and windpipe.

His strangled choke only grew worse as Merikh swiped and tore the front of his neck completely open.

That didn’t put him down; it only made him weak. Blood poured from his wound faster than it leaked from Merikh’s shoulder, but the raven-skulled Mavka was still quick on his four limbs as he leapt for Merikh.

Merikh turned, dodging him completely. He spun, grabbed his beak and twisted it as he stood on top of the Mavka’s spine. He pulled back until the little bones in his neck caved in and snapped before exploding through the front of his wounded throat.

The roar that exploded from the bat-skulled Mavka was too late, as was his sprint to save his twin. Merikh tore the raven’s head from his body and then proceeded to carry it backwards as he was chased.

In the midst of his bloodlust, despite how little he could truly formulate a thought, he’d always done one thing when fighting these two.

If he temporarily killed one, he’d carry their skull and toss it away from the fight so the other couldn’t accidentally destroy it.

Perhaps, on a subconscious level not even he could hear, a voice was telling him to protect his siblings – even when he wanted nothing more than to destroy them.

He ditched raven skull’s head when he couldn’t support himself on his bowed, bear-shaped back legs for too much longer. He dropped back down to all three limbs and then sprinted towards bat skull, who was already heading in his direction.

It only took a few moments for Merikh to wrap his thick, meaty legs around the Mavka’s flailing arms and trap them to his sides. He wrapped his only arm around bat skull’s face to keep him in place as he squirmed and snapped his jaw with sharp clicks.

Then Merikh tore into the Mavka’s injured neck with his fangs, spitting away muscle and bone until he’d decapitated him as well.

Although his quills were useful in any fight, a Mavka would just keep fighting. Even if their heart was pierced, even if they were down to no limbs, they would keep fighting, would keep moving, growing more and more lethargic until the fighting had stopped.

The only way to stop one was to remove their head, and hundreds of years of knowledge had imbedded that into his subconscious. Even when his mind was muddled, he went for the weak spot of every creature.

For a Demon, it was their spine and throat. A human’s was their heart and throat. Animals were generally weakest at their soft exposed underbellies.

Once the fighting stopped, Merikh was in far too much pain to return to his normal state, both physically and mentally. He sniffed at the ground, at the blood that wasn’t enticing at all, searching for a safe place to lie down.

Darkness was taking hold, the cliff wall making it seem like night was falling long before it actually did.

Two fully intact Mavka skulls lay metres away from each other without their orbs. Their bodies eventually disintegrated into black sand.

Merikh limped over to the entrance of his cave and lay down next to it against the wall.

He whimpered, licking at his shoulder in hopes of getting it to stop bleeding. When it did, he rested his head against the ground, too agitated from fighting to sleep, too panicked to let himself be vulnerable.

Any sound caused him to growl in warning, even if it was only a fluttering leaf.

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