He'd seen worse at second half in away games. He'd seen massive fire breathing larvae crawl out of a kickers eyes with forty seconds left on the clock. He'd seen coaches with horns and bat wings screaming fire at their star players.
But it was always up for debate. Everytime. Amaru saw the madness. He had a compulsive urge to fight it. To go to war. He'd lose it. And when he came to, they'd look normal. Like it was a trick.
He'd fallen for it again.
The trick.
He tackled the beast. Lexa called it a bloodworm. The name fit. To Amaru — in his panicked state, the best way he could describe it was a worm made from twisted human parts. It was horrendous and writhing in his grip, secreting a foul blood-slime from its stretched out pores and gaping mouth.
They blasted through a tree like it was made of hollow plastic.
Wood shards and leaves clouded his vision and fell from above as they rolled.
He punched and kicked, feeling his knuckles dig into watery bubbling flesh. He punched until bruises formed in the dark and the red went purple.
It was then— as he was thrown off the creature and collided with a tree so hard his ribs creaked, that he realized.
The bloodworm writhed on the floor angrily. It's tongue-like prehensile sucker spiraled from its screaming face and sucked up the blood spurting from the bruise-ringed holes in its body where Amaru punched. It was purely greedy. Entirely enraged. Absolutely abhorrent.
It wasn't a trick.
"It's real…"
It was the most bizzare realization for Amaru. For his whole life— for as long as he could remember, he'd been told what he saw wasn't real. Doctors, therapists, school counselors, foster care coordinators. They all told him he had an active imagination. Trauma. Fears to face reality.
He was seeing reality. He'd BEEN seeing it. Reality was as nightmarish as he thought. And he just tackled it through a tree.
A eight foot tall man so full of blood and foul substances that he'd turned into a bright red worm with a scorpion tongue.
It wasn't a trick.
The fear began to set in as the bloodworm rose up with a chortling hiss. It's tongue spun and licked at the air, scenting his fear. Tasting the blood molecules wafting from his cuts and splintered wounds.
He could distantly hear Lexa and the wolves.
It all faded as the bloodworm charged.
Everything faded.
The trees. The dead earth. The stars beaming through the night sky from light years away. It was all gone. All Amaru could see was the bloodworm slithering after him.
Suddenly the rage was overshadowed by fear. The monsters were real and worse than ever.
And he was only a orphaned teenager with a criminal record as long as a grocery list.
The bloodworm tackled him. He went down hard under the liquid-filled weight of the beast. It should've killed him right there. He froze. On the field he only froze once and it cost him a broken nose and rib after a division one running back ran through him. That was death on the field. He was taken out of the game.
The bloodworm should've been his death in real life.
But it was too fat. Too full of blood like a mosquito at a cookout.
The thing squirmed and rolled to try and reach him. It's prehensile barbed tongue spiraled and cut deep arcs into the earth trying to swat at him and make his blood flow.
All Amaru could do was thrash and panick. He was being crushed by a monster.
Until he wasn't.
Something pierced his chest. It was cold as ice but it left his skin surrounding with a fiery hotness.
The bloodworm screeched.
The sound of flesh tearing echoed. He could hear again.
When the bloodworm was torn off of him he realized then that he could also see again. More than the bloodworm.
He could see wolves standing over him defensively. Even the one that was once damaged beyond repair. She was as good as new and ready to do it all again.
As he recovered he found the bloodworm slithering after someone.
Someone he recognized by the clothing. The gothic shoes and leather pants. The dark hair and tanned skin. But the familiarity ended there.
Lexa was different. Her brows had thickened, casting shadows over her eyes that now glowed yellow. Her sideburns thickened and flowed down her jaw. Claws tipped her fingers, fangs touched her lips as she grinned. Her sharpened—almost eleven, ears twitched.
Her black axe blazed with shadowy black Fire.
"You're a male. Good."
The bloodworm healed before she could finish speaking and charged.
She snarled and spun her axe with inhuman speed.