The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

C29 - Dawn

Chapter 29 – Dawn.

Velvet charged heedlessly into the night.

Steel boots clanked harshly against shingles underfoot as she bounded from roof to roof, her figure silhouetted by the full moon with a cascade of raven hair trailing her every move. Her breath came out in short, quick exhales, her eyes unceasingly keen as she scanned her surroundings.

In the sea of buildings before her, patches of smoke rose outward to vanish into the cold night air. In the streets below her, groups of civilians and soldiers scrambled to and from in a near universal panic amidst the shadowed moonlight. The occasional distant boom of energy in the distance spontaneously rattled the cobblestones and walls of the city, driving the city dwellers into even more of a confused frenzy.

She briefly extended her daemon arm and slammed it onto a rooftop below, the momentum propelling her across a major thoroughfare to land atop a stopped waterwheel on the other side. Perching atop the giant mechanism, her eyes narrowed as she spotted activity across from her.

There, in the middle of a street, huddled a group of civilians shakily wielding swords against a pack of lizardmen hellions. The children in the group had huddled tightly against the adults, terror in their eyes. The hellions snarled as they stepped forward, raising their swords and batting the weapons of the parents heedlessly aside. With inhuman deftness, they moved to skewer the civilians.

She didn't give them a chance to do so.

"DEVOUR!"

Her monstrous claw slammed into the leader of the hellions, greedily consuming the malevolence while it struggled helplessly. Without even pausing in devouring the hellion in her grasp, Velvet twisted her body around and used its struggling body as a club to bash away the others with inhuman strength. Blood flew in an explosion of gore as the hellion was consumed, leaving her claw free for more.

She charged, parrying the curved swords of the lizard hellions while thrusting her own into their hides with fierce cries. Her claw consumed hellion after hellion, each disappearing into the appendage with grotesque squelches after the next.

Within moments, she had annihilated the entire squad of scouts.

Catching her breath, she stood up straight. A cool night breeze tinged with the scent of ashes brushed past her as she did, toying with her hair and clothing in a soft symphony of clinking metal. During the battle, the street had been filled with the repetitive sound of metal on metal and of the squelching of her claw devouring victims. Now, it was completely silent.

She glanced at the civilians huddled in the middle of the street, unsurprisingly finding nothing but terror and fear in their expressions.

She waved her hand to the side. "Go on," she said dryly, heedless of their expressions. "The underground ruins are being used as shelters right now – I suggest you go there."

"Y... you," one of the women in the group stammered, pointing directly at her while looking as if she'd seen a ghost. "Y-you're the-!"

"The 'Demon of the Shepherd,' right?" Velvet sighed, shaking her head while callously waving her monstrous arm in the air. "Yeah, yeah."

"You're... really letting us live?" another of the group, an older man, said in disbelief.

"If I wasn't," she said at length, giving the man a look, "would I really be wasting time talking to you right now?" She shook her head. "The city's being invaded," she said curtly. "It wouldn't be wise to linger." She raised an eyebrow questioningly at them. "...That is, unless you want me to devour you too?"