Mag Beast Leveling

Vincent walked over the mangled bodies, the night heavy with the aroma of blood and flame and devastation. His city, sprawled in ruins before him, had been a playground, the walls of its crumbling buildings echoing the screams once raking through them.

Now there was only silence and the occasional crackle of flames before the slow, purposeful steps he made toward the darkened alleys.

Owning a mind filled with an acidic lust, with a rending and eternal longing that the slaughter of nations could never appease.

It wasn't merely the excitement of killing that set his pulse racing; it was the power.

The feeling of something old and visceral writhing under his skin, propelling him on.

"They run because they still believe in salvation," Vira purred, her voice a silk noose constricting his thoughts. "Make them see. Make them break."

Vincent blew out his breath, misting the cold air.

His body had begun to feel not quite human anymore.

He was something more than flesh, something more than that, the fusion with Vira remaking him into greater than what was lost.

His claws honed, dark ichor still wet from his previous victim between his fingers.

A spark of motion in the distance.

He sharply turned his head, a smile stretching across his face.

The woman who asked for the child had not yet stopped running. Good.

He liked when they ran.

It made the inevitable moment of realization, when they knew there was no escape, all the more delicious.

Vincent moved like a ghost, his form flickering through the wreckage as he bridged the space between them. The woman gasped, her breathing jagged as she moved frantically.

She wrapped the child in her arms, holding him as if sheer desperation could shield him from what was hunting them.

She stumbled. It was all he needed.

He was on her before she could think, the force of him slamming her against a crumbled stone wall, his claws slicing into her shoulders.

The child slipped from her grip, tumbling onto the cobblestones with a strangled cry.

The woman sputtered, her fingers digging into Vincent's wrists as she tried to pry him off.

She choked out, at nearly a whisper.

"You don't have to do this."

Vincent tipped his head, mischief dancing behind his glowing eyes.

"But I want to."

He raked his claws down her arms, enjoying the way her skin broke under his touch.

Blood pooled against his fingertips, hot and oily. The woman convulsed, breath catching painfully, but she didn't scream. Not yet.

Vira's laughter wrapped around his mind. "She's still holding out hope. How pathetic."

Instead, Vincent bent toward her, his breath hot on her ear.

"Tell me," he said, mockery in his voice. (Do you still believe in mercy?)

The woman shook, but her eyes held his defiance still in death's face.

"You weren't so evil all the time," she whispered.

"I remember. I saw you before the hunger.

You still have a choice."

A flicker of something he was not expecting rose in Vincent's chest, a vestige buried beneath layers of bloodlust. A summer afternoon. Laughter. A vow hushed in the dark.

He snorted, dispelling the feeling, and tightened his grip around her neck. "You don't know me."

The boy cried, huddling into himself against the rubble. Vincent glanced at him and then the woman.

It was the way that she held that boy to her and shielded him, even bleeding, that stirred in him a feeling that he wanted to forget, didn't want to have.

Vira's presence bristled in his consciousness, displeased.

"Why do you hesitate? Take what's yours."

Vincent took a sharp breath and shook his head.

"No."

The woman's eyes widened a bit. "No?"

His fingers slackened ever so slightly, and she inhaled.

He didn't know why he had said it. Perhaps it was the embers of humanity remaining in his bones, refusing to be completely snuffed out.

Or perhaps, for the first time since his transformation, he wanted to show himself he could still be selected.

He released her.

The woman fell to her knees, the breath knocked out of her, her arms holding the child close to her body.

She didn't question it. She just snatched up the boy and fell to her feet, fleeing into the darkness without glancing back.

Vincent watched them go, jaw tight.

"You let them go," Vira's voice coiling in his brain, sharp with disapproval.

"Weakness."

Vincent let out a low growl in his throat.

"I decide who lives and dies. Not you."

Silence lay between them.

Then, soft laughter. "Is that so?"

Then he felt a sharp, searing pain in his chest.

Vincent gasped, reeling as his sight dimmed.

When his veins darkened with constrictors flexing, her form twisted obscenely in him, her body a noose around his soul.

"You forget, my love," she said softly, "I am you.

And I am always hungry."

Vincent sank to one knee, scratching at his skin as his body burned out from inside.

Vira enveloped him, coursing through every hollow, every cranny of his every being. His muscles contracted, his senses sharpened, and his hunger returned ten times what it was.

His vision cleared.

He could smell them.

The survivors.

The ones who still ran. The ones who believed they had a chance.

A slow, predatory smile spread across his lips.

"Let them run," he whispered, standing slowly up to his full height, his posture straighter, more confident. "It just makes the hunt that much more fun."

Vira purred in satisfaction.

"That's my king."

Vincent stretched his fingers, the rough, throbbing energy below his skin.

The hunger would never depart from him. It would never be sated.

But maybe that was the idea.

He strode onwards, vanishing into the ruins, his shadow devoured by the dark.

The night was passing slowly, and there was so much left to hunt.