Riven began to push himself off the wall when he felt the bones in his arms snap back into place. The pain was imnse, and he could barely breathe as he began violently coughing up fluid that his lungs had accumulated—but he managed to get to his knees.
He needed to speed up his recovery.
That’s when he saw the second vial of Sinner’s Blood he’d accidentally dropped on the floor. He reached for it, fumbling with the cork.
The second vial was drained in an instant, and just as the monster bellowed to charge Ben up against the wall with its horned head down, Riven knew that Ben was about to die. There was no way the slender man could take the many-ton monster crushing him against a stone backdrop…and in that instant, Riven’s heart twisted with hate. Visions of the school bus, of the dead children, of his sister’s wish that they find the courage to make a better life for themselves that last night they’d spent together scrounging for scraps of food… They all flashed through his mind.
He had failed to save the others, but he wasn’t going to let the satyr get its way.
Riven’s vision began to turn red, his muscles began to pulse, and a hunger for the satyr’s blood boiled over to envelop his very soul. Everything he’d been imbued with, from the way his magic worked at a base level, to the hate boiling up in his gut, to how the power felt when summoned and unleashed, was brought to bear. The way his muscles tensed and his mind warped with each casting ca to light, and he applied all of it here and now.
Then sothing finally clicked, sothing primal that had been there ever since he’d been born but had never surfaced until now, and his entire life abruptly changed in that instant.
[Sinner’s Blood has caused the remnant biological locks on your body to finally degrade. You have regained your dormant heritage:
provided details of what Elysium has in store for you. In order to do so, please focus on the command Exit Dungeon to summon a stair portal to your location.]
Riven remained there: panting, hunched over, and in a good amount of pain as two enormous wooden chests of platinum, gold, silver, and bronze coins blood into being in front of him—setting themselves down one after the other as the lids flipped up to reveal their contents. His body was covered in viscera, body parts, and blood, and gingerly he picked his mask up off the floor; it had fallen off at an undisclosed ti in the conflict. His insides burned and recoiled with every movent he made, but the hunger…the hunger still persisted.
It was an extre, compulsive feeling. Sothing that he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. It clawed painfully at his gut and his mind, forcing his will to submit to it as it beca an all-encompassing need.
He wanted to feed.
He needed to feed.
He needed blood.
Desperately, he got down on his knees and began licking up the satyr’s blood, but he quickly spat it out and let a primal hiss of disgust escape his lips. It made him want to gag, and the compulsion beca even greater as he let out a scream of rage that it wasn’t what his body needed to satiate the painful, ruthless craving he was experiencing.
“Riven?”
Ben’s hesitant voice called out to him from behind, and Riven stiffened.
Fangs extended, Riven whirled with a manic look in his eyes—hungrily staring Ben down.
The other man shrieked in terror upon seeing the obvious change, and he didn’t take more than another second to start running, but he was far too slow. The last thing that Ben ever saw was Riven’s bloody, clawed hand reaching out for him—and then everything went black.
Reviews
All reviews (0)