A hybrid fiend versus the wolf-born Garou of rare birth. An Ahroun. A Warrior that had long been hunted out of existence.
The collective amount of rarity in the small forest was nothing short of astounding.
The two outliers— omegas, fought like they held a grudge over lifetimes.
They fought with ferocity.
The evolved bloodworm stomped and stabbed at him.
Amaru moved as a blur of fur and fang, phasing in and out of sight with explosive bursts of speed to avoid and blitz the creature on fresh legs.
He ran his claws through its fatty body and felt it heal over even while he was still cutting deep.
Garou blood did numbers for the bloodworm. It made Amaru move faster, knowing, if the creature got a bite of him, things would grow grim.
And that was just it.
Knowing.
He knew.
He had instinct that flowed at the back of his mind like thought. He had thought. Partial and fractured but he was present.
The bloodworm jumped on its blood-spider limbs to pounce on him out of starved frustration.
Amaru wanted to jump aswell and sink his claws into the creature. He stopped himself with a shake of his head and ran ahead, clutching an imaginary ball like he was running a pick-six straight to the end-zone. Imagining the football field helped him focus. Seeing a giant monster on the imaginary field only made it seem more real.
He ran forward at a dash.
The bloodworm landed behind him.
His ears twitched as he heard it spin around before he could. He lost that battle. The war was far from over.
Quickly— without thinking, he jumped, back flipping over the charging fiend to land near its flank on all fours.
He snarled as he pounced on the creature. As soon as he landed on its spine exposed back, he sprinted up to its head and slashed into its last humanoid appendage.
He cut deep and swung hard, feeling deteriorated skull fragments clump under his nails and flesh plop on the ground in the distance.
Almost immediately after, a swarm of evil glowing mosquitos and smoke flew from the wounds after him.
He expected it. He bit his own tongue to avoid the bloodlust clouding his mind. He could still remember what the magical insects did to Lexa.
Wildly, he side flipped off of the creature and avoided the swarm.
The cloud hovered and chased after him.
The sky called to him. Or more accurately, the things waiting there did.
He took off at a sprint, pulling the enemies away from Lexa and the wolves.
With a single leap, he cleared twenty feet and dug his claws into the thick bark of a tree. He climbed expertly with three swarms chasing behind him. Their incessant buzzing was deafening to his sensitive ears.
He ignored it— shaking off the sound as he flipped around branches and zig zagged from tree to tree.
They neared.
Reaching his feet almost before he reached the top of a thin oak and jumped straight into the sky.
From there, he turned and roared at the swarms as Hawk spirits formed in his wake and divebombed the swarms.
With massive fiery talons they tore apart the swarms and evaporated the evil magics with the purified essence of Gaia.
As they passed by, they whispered in his ears in ancient feral languages.
He didn't listen. He was too busy being terrified of falling over one hundred and fifty feet into a bed of jagged stones rolling through the forestry.
He fell as the Hawk spirits tore apart the swarms.
He snarled and reached for the branches that he blew past in a panic.
It was useless.
As he fell, he noticed a hawk spirit diving with him. He heard it's ancient tongues, spoken in words of the wind and skies. Of rain and snow reflecting the lights of the world. He listened. As he fell, he shut his eyes and listened.
Gnosis flowed and collected around his back.
His fur morphed into dense dark feathers as massive hawk wings unfurled from his back and caught hold of the midnight winds.
As if he'd always had the wings of a hawk, he spun through the forestry to chase down the bloodworm.
It fled in its weakened state. Its head— the breeding ground, was still healing with glowing tendrils of blood and evil viscera.
With a heavy flap of Amaru's wings, he dashed after the fiend.
Hawk spirits followed. His own spiritual swarm of earthly origin to combat the evil filth ahead.
The bloodworm jumped up to climb a tree.
Unknowing of what was coming.
Amaru's tacklers instincts overrode his beastial ones as he speared the bloodworm, ducking low to drive his hulking shoulder into the fiends ribs. With his built up speed and mass, he blew past the fat and foul blood until he felt bones snap.
They went down in a mess of and things better left unsaid.
Amaru fought hard but the massive worm kicked him off with a stab of its remaining blood limbs.
He crashed back first into a tree at the edge of the forest.
A mountainous stone valley rose in the dark behind him.
His bell was rung.
His vision shook, causing him to see the creature rise in flashes. He could feel his flesh and muscle knitting itself back together. His wings were gone. The Hawk spirits came and went like the winds.
But he could still hear the ancient language.
Different now.
Harsh and jagged with crumbling cadences and booming hallows.
Like a cave.
Like….
He turned his head and looked back at the mountain region rising behind him.
There were figures looming there.
Giant stone titans of spiritual essence and golem looking creatures with one glimmering eye. They were old. As old as the earth and speaking to him. Speaking power into his limbs. Into his hands where the weight of the mountain rested.
Gnosis took the round rocky shape of stone around his hands.
In his head— instinctively, he knew it was another Gift. Taught by the stone titans. The earthly elementals.
This time, a word followed.
"Avalanche…."
The ground rumbled, fracturing the bloodworms balance as it closed in on him.
Weakly, he stood, struggling to maintain the spiritual weight of the mountain behind him.
"Avalanche…"
Small stones rolled down the mountain and fell at his feet.
The elementals chanted, screaming to be released upon the evil.
Amaru snarled and squatted low like he was ready for a personal record in the weight room.
The gnosis brightened around his hands as he rose up and reached for the sky.
The weight was unbearable.
He closed his hands into fists and threw them down to the ground, triggering a full scale avalanche to fall down onto the bloodworm.
It was cataclysmic.
Massive boulders and toppled logs fell from the mountain. Currents of thick black mud and soot crashed and flowed through the forest. All around Amaru.
The bloodworm tried to evade by jumping up into the trees only for the boulders to knock them over.
The bloodworm screamed as it was taken over by the violent downward flows of nature.
By the time it was over, the forest looked more marshy as waters rose up past his ankles.
It was done.
The early morning sun was just beginning to rise.
He was so exhausted he could feel his knees throb.
He huffed, looking down at his hands in partial disbelief. But more so understanding. The missing link of it all was that he was supposed to be this.
The visions. The anger. The senses and bursts of strength. The loneliness.
A tear rolled down his snout.
Something in the distance huffed.
He looked up and found a griffin standing across from him.
A great untamable spirit. On all fours it was easily ten feet tall with massive hawk wings and a feathered bird head of ancient origin. It's leonine body was robust but agile with thick tendons rippling with power. It was violent even in stillness. Unfathomably real even in transparent spiritual form.
Instinctively, Amaru bowed.
Rushed movement had him raising his head to find the griffin was gone.
In its place, two women wadded through the shallow waters brought from the landslide. They sported short haircuts, tattoos, no clothes and lean muscle.
One of them carried Lexa over her shoulder.
They gave a bow to Amaru,
"Your first change was as any Ahroun-born Garou's should be. Mr. Watanokami will be pleased." The darker skinned woman said. Her accent was west African.
The woman to her left spoke then, "We'd celebrate you both right this moment if we could, but the motel was attacked. We must go before pentex operatives triangulate our location."
Amaru tried to speak, finding it difficult in his Wolven form.
The darker skinned lady held up a hand, "All you need to do is follow us back to the motel. No one of worry is present. You won't trigger the delirium either. It's safe. We all survived. As the Garou always has."
"Let's go."
This time, Amaru followed without hesitation.
He knew he was among his own. For the first time in his entire life it felt like.
As he headed through the marsh, he passed the remains of the bloodworm. It was left impaled by a dozen wooden shards and smashed by boulders all along its length. And it wasn't much of a worm anymore. It was….. well, it was unrecognizable.
And dead.
No.
It was defeated.
By him.
Any urge to howl that Amaru had vanished when he exited the forest and found the motel was a crime scene straight out of a horror movie.
Windows were beat in. Blood and viscera dripped from ceilings. Bulletholes smoked through walls. A few doors were beat off the hinges.
Ms. Markos stepped out of the wreckage with her bags packed and the others followed in her wake, stopping as they saw Amaru and the others.
She ran over with the rest of her warrior women of all ages.
"The fuck happened?!"
"A bloodworm." The darker skinned woman asked before looking back to Amaru.
"He killed it."
"He saved Lexa." The other said.
Ms. Markos grinned, "Let's get the hell out of here."
As she walked past them she yelled back, "Your questions will be answered soon, Amaru. It's official. You're one of us. You're a Garou. A dying breed. How does it feel to be endangered?"
"Good."