Chapter 183

◈ Chapter 183:

"Why are all the monsters gone! Why are they all gone!?"

Screamed the sandy scaled drake as he turned the corner.

"What the fuck is happening Quistis?!"

The large black scaled lamia slithered into the scatter of ruins that held Rain and the two girl's cages, her lips set in an irritated line, a number of men following behind her.

Her gaze found Rain and her eyes narrowed.

"I don't know, but the new ones are still here."

The drake followed her gaze, expression lighting up with anger as he spotted Rain.

He strode forward and slammed his spear against the cage.

"What the fuck did you doooo?!?"

He rattled the bars and practically spat as Rain sat calmly cross legged in the middle of the cage and stared back with a steady gaze.

This just seemed to piss the drake off even more and he made a strangled scream, grabbing the spear with both sets of claws and jabbing it through the bars, trying to stab Rain with it.

Before he got far however a large lamia hand clamped down on his shoulder and hauled him back.

"Calm down Triskian and use your scale rotted head. We don't know what happened to the monsters, you could be killing the most valuable prize of the night for no reason."

The drake stared at her and jabbed out a claw, pointing accusingly at Rain.

"Look at this thing, just look at it, its fucking covered from top to bottom in blood!"

"...Admittedly that is quite suspicious, but still." She turned to the goblin and harpy.

"You two, tell me what happened here." A wave of smoke rose from the sands and slipped into the cage, "Or I will tear you apart from the inside out."

The two girls looked at the smoke crawling about the bottom of their cage and then glanced at each other, something unsaid passing between them.

The fanged goblin spoke first.

"Someone came here… and… threw a big bucket of blood over this monster. They weren't a monster, they were wearing leveler clothes..."

"A long black robe with a hood so we couldn't see their face," the harpy continued, shrugging lightly, "They had gold rings on their fingers, shiny, good for a nest. I was napping so I didn't see more than that, they left after."

Quistis tilted her head, pondering this story. "Not one of ours, but… one of the guests? they kill the monsters stealing the leveling potential and then… a dimensional bag to hide the remains? And the blood thrown here, an attempt to obscure what they did?"

"You don't believe them do you? Are you mad?! Look at this fucking thing! It looks like it just got done slaughtering a zoo!"

"Then where are the bodies Triskian? And how did it get out and into the other cages? And for that matter why would it even do such a thing, it's not like it can level. There is a motive here, I can smell it, but it's not a monster's motive. The monster corpses had to be destroyed or hidden away because the way they were killed with blade or magic would have identified the one who committed the act."

Triskian hesitated. "But- that's- listen you can't-!— Look this nonsense doesn't matter! It did it! Have you seen this fucking thing?! Just look at its eyes!"

Quistis sighed. "Whether or not it did kill the monsters doesn't matter right now as we have nearly a hundred powerful and wealthy levelers waiting for monsters to kill. Either way we aren't killing this monster as retribution, we are selling it to be killed."

The lamia turned, the few humans who were with them straightening as her gaze fell upon them.

"Go warn the others of a client that is thieving monsters. Make mention of the rings in particular. They may be dangerous, especially if they have gained a great number of levels from this, so only approach the suspicious with others."

The men nodded and hurried away, eager to be out from the lamia's intense gaze.

She turned back to Rain and looked him over, considering. "At least the damn thing looks more dangerous, we should be able to push the price sky high with this."

She snapped her fingers and a flood of smoke poured from the sands and into the cage, rolling over Rain's lap and up his fur.

The smoke formed bands on his wrists, what felt like significantly stronger manacles than before. It didn't stop there and more smoke manacles formed up his arms, a dozen one after the other, squeezing against him. His legs too became covered in the things, and around his neck and torso, a full body prison made from bands of smoke.

Last of all came his mouth. The smoke crawled up his chin and over his firmly closed lips. Finding no way in it slipped up to his nostrils.

Before it began to flow inside Rain focused, forming a little predation inside his mouth, a cluster of tiny claws. The dark latched onto the black stone ball on his tongue and pushed it down his throat, guiding it into an extremely uncomfortable place.

Rain grimaced as the ball slotted into position, a plug for his trachea, blocking off passage to his lungs. It was a pretty horrible feeling and there was no way for him to breathe, so he had to make do with holding his breath as the predation held the stone in place.

He forced down the urge to cough and choke and retch and remained still and unmoving as the smoke poured into his nose and then mouth and then down his throat.

The terrifying smoke reached the black ball being held in place… and flowed past it, passing it by and heading down where he wanted the smoke to go, directly into his stomach.

It was a simple plan really. He would defeat Quistis's smoke by straight up digesting it and leaving nothing for her to turn into his death. She wouldn't even be able to smoke the black ball and use that as a weapon as she could not affect it. It was a clean and effective plan. He'd hold his breath, step outside, and then snap her neck.

The smoke stopped pouring into his nostrils and he felt the smoke manacles begin to move, dragging him up.

He smiled internally, it seemed that things had gone perfectly, Quistis wasn't even looking in his direction, instead concentrating as she formed a large key out of the smoke in front of her to open the cage door.

The key formed and she inserted it into the keyhole, about to turn it.

She paused.

Her gaze snapped up and a snarl of fury appeared on her face. "You little shit!"

She lifted her hand, fingers curled in the air as though gripping Rain's throat.

She clucked her tongue with extreme annoyance.

"What is it?"

"It's doing the trick."

"Trick?"

Quistis didn't say anything, blowing out a breath of anger as she stared at Rain.

"Drop it."

Rain remained still.

"Drop it, I said drop it! Get that thing out of your fucking mouth!"

Ran remained still.

She snarled, "For fucks sake!"

Losing patience she flicked out her hand and Rain was sent flying across the cell, the smoke dragging him bodily. He crashed against the bars with a boom, the entire cage shifting across the sand, his head cracking against steel even as he remained sitting.

"What are you doing?" hissed the drake in alarm.

"It's got something in its mouth. Spit it out you stupid monster!"

Rain remained stubbornly still as the smoke smashed his head against the bars repeatedly. It barely hurt, but the lamia was getting more and more pissed.

And then she really lost it. The smoke that had yet to fall down to his stomach and was resting in his mouth abruptly transformed, instantly creating long razor spikes of metal. Worse, the smoke hadn't been all used up and it was feeding the dozens of metal spars filling him, making them grow longer, puncturing his flesh, sinking into the roof of his mouth, piercing through his tongue, stabbing through the side of his cheek.

He let out a choked gasp of pain, jaws falling open revealing a mouth full of blades. The choke of course launched the ball from his throat, stone clattering against metal as he wheezed, falling to all fours as he tried to open his jaws wider, trying to stop the growing lengthening metal from cutting further into him.

Clack, clink, clack—the ball rattled in his spar filled mouth and throat, and then a silent moment where the ball was falling from his maw and then— Thud. The heavy stone marble hit the bloodied steel floor and rolled a few inches.

"There's a good boy. That wasn't so hard was it?" spoke Quistis, like she was talking to a large pet dog that had eaten something it wasn't supposed to.

Rain was too busy dealing with the pain to even look in her direction, blood pouring from his mouth in a waterfall of red, splattering across the floor and washing away the black marble. The pain made white hot flashes cross his vision as steel pierced sensitive flesh and bone, digging into his skull.

Thankfully a moment later the blades smoked, becoming lost amongst a torrent of fresh smoke that poured into his mouth, surging down his throat and filling his lungs full in moments.

His vision became fuzzy around the edges as the soporific effect took hold, making him docile and pliant, dulling the pain.

He sat back on his rear.

"Is this…" murmured the drake, looking at the black sphere on the steel cage floor.

"Yes, the same as the panthara." She sneered down at Rain. "You might have gotten somewhere if the Abattoir didn't keep panthara. Most of that particular monster we have through try that same trick. They see what I do with smoke. They come into the Abattoir. They see the ruins. And then they immediately deduce that the only reason that the ruins are still here is because my power doesn't work on them. They then try what you just did, filling their throats with stone in the moment they attempt to kill me."

She turned the key in the lock.

"I do have to thank you for the attempt however. It tells me that you are incredibly vulnerable to what I can do, otherwise you wouldn't have tried such a desperate thing."

Despite the sopoforic effect Rain couldn't help but feel a sense of shock.

The panthara had already thought of his idea, and they hadn't even needed to hear it from the mouths of others like he had. They figured out the lamia's inability to affect the stone on their own. Panthara were incredibly sadistic things, and distressingly had an intellect to match that sadism.

He supposed it was fitting that those awful things had somehow managed to absolutely fuck him without actually doing anything at all.

He closed his eyes in frustration. The plan likely would have worked if not for that.

The drake shuddered, gripping his spear tightly.

"Hey, hey, are you telling me this wolf thing here did something that panthara do? You really want to bring that thing outside now?"

"It knows as well as any panthara that it can do nothing. They know they have no choice. Resistance is death."

She flicked her hand and Rain found himself being forced to stand, the full set of smoke bands lifting him and straightening his legs. He suspected he could rip through the smoke with some effort, but he had no way to deal with the smoke in his lungs, he'd free himself, and then promptly die as his lungs became filled with solid stone or razor blades and poison and acid and probably worse things he couldn't think of with no way to remove them even if he killed Quistis.

So he did as he was made to do, letting the smoke stand him up. He moved toward the entrance as the door swung wide, having to duck down as he stepped outside.

The drake took a careful step back and squinted up at him.

"...Was- Was this thing quite so large when you put it in the cage…?"

Quistis frowned as she looked Rain's body over. After eating so many huge monsters Rain was now a touch over ten foot tall, a truly monstrous size, the volume of his body so much more due to the square cube law, putting on a huge amount of mass.

"I uh… think…?" said the lamia, clearly racking her memory to recall Rain's size before she tossed him in the cage. Lamia were a large species, over seven foot tall in Quisitis's case, but Rain still towered over her. She rubbed her chin. "I think it must have been slouching before, with this smoke around its torso it straightened up. Whatever, let's get this thing in pride of place with as many eyeballs on it as possible."

She flung out a hand and a key in the other cell clicked open as the smoke holding it twisted it. Both the goblin and harpy were dragged out forcefully, stumbling as the smoke ringing their necks hauled on them, their feet stumbling in the sand as they tried to keep upright.

The drake scowled. "My instincts are telling me we should slaughter this monster right here and now and be done with it. But fine, stick in front of the fucking crowd, you'd better get our money's worth and then some. Damn you Quis."

He stalked into the ruins, his tail lashing the air as Quistis followed in his wake, Rain behind and then finally the two girls bringing up the rear.

They made their way like that through the ruins, great cages looming from the dark, all of them empty, and quite unsettling to look at as they were puddled with gore and blood that washed out onto the sands. He could hear the two monster girls behind him making worried murmurs as they saw what he had been doing and just how many of the cages were now empty.

Eventually though they started to near where Rain had first entered the Abattoir, the great open space. The sound of a crowd echoed through the ruins, a large crowd.

Magical light from above shone down like the sun and Rain blinked in the brightness as they stepped past the last blackstone wall and he found himself looking down upon a great arena that hadn't been there when he arrived, a vast thing with great white stone blockwork surrounding a lower sandy pit area. Detailed reliefs and statues were carved into the arched architecture of the stone itself, scenes of muscular half naked levelers fighting and killing monsters, standing triumphant over their corpses. Words were etched into the stone above their heads, words like 'level up!' and 'this could be you!'. Apparently Quistis had a certain flair when it came to architectural advertising.

The broad stretch of sand to fight upon was surrounded not by rising steps like a common arena but by private boxes staggered in ever higher rows, small open rooms with carpets and ornate tables and well dressed servants serving the wealthy levelers with drinks and food. Roasted boar stuffed with goose, sweet meats and rainbow veined cheeses, spiced pear and cranberry pie, pastry horns stuffed with snow cream and blanched apple tarts, cinnamon eggnog and spiced wine that spilled the scent of crisp alcohol into the air. Heat and warmth emanated from each private box as glowing magical enchantments warmed the stones and comfortable cushioned chairs and armchairs, all making the place jarringly opposite to the cold silent darkness of the ruins.

Rain stared. Was this really an arena about to see brutal death and dismemberment? It was more like a gathering for an affluent dinner party amongst high society.

It made quite clear the truly astonishing amount of money the Abattoir made to treat its clients like this.

Before the drop down to the wide sandy fighting pit were scattered a number of enormous cages, as well as an open pen.

To Rain's surprise the cages were occupied, nearly two dozen massive and ferocious looking monsters prowling within them. It seemed that he hadn't found all of the monsters in the vast ruin.

The pen was filled with nearly three hundred smaller monsters, a swarm of wild variation, all of whom seemed to be evolved in some rare way. He thought he spotted the blue kobold from the ruins amongst them for a moment, but then lost sight of her as a crowd of hobgoblins attacked a crowd of kobolds, punching and kicking and biting until a number of levelers leaned over the pen with twenty foot long poles, the ends sparking with electricity. They beat at the monsters until they separated. A dead kobold was left on the sand, although not a blue.

The smoke of course hadn't let Rain stop moving and he found his steps had taken him to a rise above the arena pit, a stone platform with one single cage on it in pride of place, a cage that directly overlooked the sands.

The door was open and waiting for him.

He stepped inside.