Kairos turned his attention towards the werewolf for a moment, it was still being held in place by Jeff. While he was thinking of coming over to help, Sara had swooped down after a sidelong glance.
As she dive-bombed, her body suddenly became ink black, condensing into a sharp point, as though it had become a spear. The werewolf tensed up, seemingly noticing the imminent danger that it was in. Unfortunately, there was little to nothing it could do to dodge it.
The werewolf lowered its head before the skin on the back of his head hardened, becoming a dull gray color. However, it wasn't going in that direction. Instead of going straight for the werewolf, the mass of black spear she had become went for Jeff's arms, the ones holding the target in place.
And then, it went straight through.
There was no mark left of Jeff's golem-like body. Yet, the werewolf spasmed, coughing up large amounts of black blood as it similarly began leaking out from a new wound in the middle of its body.
All of the arms attached to its body had fallen off. After that, it looked down and began biting into its own chest, seemingly going for a last ditch effort. Jeff still held on with one arm but slowly moved the other one before smushing it against the back of the werewolf's head. In the end, it wasn't even able to do that, simply slowly dying of blood loss, feeling its life gradually leaving itself.
As for Sara, she briefly reappeared on the ground in her eagle form before taking to the air once more.
Kairos could feel the emotions of the werewolf.
It was filled with despair and regrets. However, the regrets didn't come from all the actions that led to this point. But rather, that it couldn't die in a different way.
Since that person was more or less dealt with, he shifted his attention towards Nyoka. In the end, he didn't seem to be particularly struggling either, opting not to focus on the enemy in his jaws, but rather looking at him strangely.
The fox used this opportunity to try and pry itself free. Unfortunately, it didn't come to much success, only moving slightly before Nyoka put in more effort directly invalidating any effort made.
Like the werewolf, Kairos could feel its despair. However, there was also an incredibly strong sense of determination. Not out of the desire to live. Not from any sort of achieved goal, or even the simple acknowledgment that it was their best.
Instead, it was more along the lines of revenge.
The fox reached into its chest, clawing through it, before directly pulling out their heart. The dull black suddenly began to gray in certain areas while shining brightly in others. Nyoka watched on without much care, as though it was insignificant to him.
And his emotions matched how he looked too.
Just as the bright shining reached its apex, a thin black streak suddenly flashed through the air. In just a moment, the fox found its arm suddenly was no longer connected with the rest of its body.
Sara appeared on the other side, with a still beating heart in her beak.
The fox watched in horror, but before Kairos could even realistically read the emotions, it had died. As for the only survivors left, it was the werewolf that ended up slowly bleeding, until its body could no longer handle the strain. Like this, it slowly died.
Kairos and the others watched on silently for a long while before its final breaths were taken. At some point along the way, they had reverted to their normal forms, save Jeff.
While watching this unfold, he couldn't help but think of what had happened. After a moment, he spoke up.
"So, this is what swan songs are like? Some kind of mode with increased power?"
Nyoka shrugged his shoulders.
"This is a form of it, sure. Though it isn't truly referring to some sort of power or technique. Instead, it's simply the results. The results of a mentality that stems from wanting to harm other people as much as possible in the end."
He lifted up one hand.
"For example, the attempt at detonating one's own heart to cause as much damage as possible, and destroying any kinds of rewards we might've gotten. Should the others have gotten the chance, they very likely would've done the same thing."
He let out a small sigh.
"Even if it doesn't come to their benefit, or even harms them in the end."
Sara had a bitter smile on her face.
"The people that are down here care more about spite than their own wellbeing. It seems that the people selected to come here were specifically the worst of the worst, and the lowest of the low. While I would like to think otherwise, I've yet to see any exceptions."
Kairos remained silent for a short while before nodding a few times.
"I suppose I fit right at home here."
Sara couldn't help but let out a laugh.
"I'm surprised you didn't deny it."
Kairos didn't retort, unable to find the urge to even do so in the first place. On the other hand, Nyoka raised an eyebrow before laughing.
"Honestly, I don't know if I can consider you as one of us. Nobody else actually eats the corpses, and even the few beasts that do, don't do it nearly as quickly, or nearly as much. I couldn't help but remember you were like that initially, yet your tune changed so quickly."
Hearing that Kairos only shrugged his shoulders.
"I was simply hungry, so I ate."
He was aware that he was oversimplifying the situation, especially considering he essentially bathed in the flesh. Still, he had no plans of being any clearer. As for Nyoka, he responded with a chuckle.
"Even when hungry, there's hardly anything that can stand eating more than a few bites of flesh. When considering their existence it is already considered an exception would make you an exception among exceptions."
Kairos' expression didn't change in the slightest. After a few moments of silence, he shrugged his shoulders.
"I guess so."
Both Nyoka and Sara seemed to be a bit put off by his reaction. As for Jeff, he had just reverted from his stone golem form before pointing at the corpses in the distance.
"Are we not going to take their cubes?"
With the shift in topic, Nyoka turned to Kairos with an expressionless smile.
"So, is there anything in particular cubes that you want?"
Kairos blinked a few times before shaking his head.
"I don't really care. If there are any leftovers then I will take them, but what I want is to eat the flesh."
He couldn't truly understand why, but he had an extreme compulsion to essentially cannibalize. Initially, he thought that it came from his very real hunger, but he was already more or less satisfied with what he had gotten before.
Kairos was no longer hungry, but he craved the flesh. Not for the taste, but rather for the idea that he was eating flesh in the first place.
At this point, he realized that some sort of other personality, or collections of personalities were influencing him in a strange way. However, as much as he logically understood such a fact, before he even knew it, Kairos found himself digging into the flesh of another monster.
The flesh that he had eaten was digested incredibly quickly thanks to his second stomach, meaning that even if he continued to consume the flesh, so long as it wasn't too fast, then he wouldn't fill his stomach or need to vomit in any capacity.
The others were simply watching awkwardly as they fetched the hearts of the monsters. As for Jeff, he glanced over before nodding a few times to himself.
"It must taste very good to you."
However, that couldn't be further from the truth. While admittedly, this isn't his first time eating a corpse, this was the first time he did so unprompted and for no true reason. Not to mention, the corpses of the strange monsters formed by the red sun still tasted countless times better than these ones.
Not that any semblance of them had tasted good in the first place.
Kairos well and truly hated every single second of it. The taste was horrifying and was burning into his tongue. It felt as though his mouth was being polluted. He reckoned that it would be better if he were eating live maggots as they crawled around in his mouth.
While not taking on the form of an avatar, his mouth was naturally far smaller. But despite this, he was still incredibly fast. Nyoka and the others waited for a while, yet even they were surprised by how fast an entire corpse had been reduced to nothing more than bloodstains on the ground.
Kairos felt absolutely awful afterwards, like one of the worst hangovers in the world. Yet, seeing another one of the corpses made him feel incredibly compelled to do the very same thing all over again.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺