Fever Blood

Chapter 110: Hunger Blood

That was the day that the Eight learned of the great and terrible things mortals were capable of. These powers were horrendous when turned towards evil. Yet, to the Eight, they were terrifying when turned to serve good.

***

Haema Rin knew something was wrong immediately.

For one thing, the Dragonblessed  actually relaxed when Haema Rin carved a gash into his collarbone. He stopped screaming and his muscles went slack. He hadn't died, Haema Rin knew, as he saw the man's chest rise and fall. It rose and fell deeply, slowly, as if he was sleeping.

Second​, the blood on his knife was changing.

It had stopped glowing like molten metal, and had stopped giving off heat. Haema Rin had woven an enchantment around his hands to protect him from the heat. He would still feel some vestige of the heat as a slightly uncomfortable warmth, but that was gone.

Now, it was darkening, turning black. "Open his eyes," he commanded. One of his assistants nodded and lifted his head up, and with her finger, she pulled his eyelid back.

His eyes had been normally-shaped before, with a circular pupil, and amber irises. He didn't see those eyes now. Instead, he saw an iris of brilliant blue, cold as the glaciers that Saefel Caeld made its home. A slit of a pupil, like that of an envenomed viper, stared ahead, unfocused.

As he watched, Haema Rin saw the whites of his eyes turn black, and the inky darkness began to spread into his golden scales.

"Run!" Haema Rin was running as he shouted that, already gathering the principles and motivations of the aether, the building blocks of matter and energy, the fundamental elements of sorcery.

He never got a chance to use it.

The Ranger, now completely blackened by this newfound blood, roared. He yanked his arm down, tearing through flesh, which immediately began to join seamlessly back together. He grabbed the other chain, the meat hook having been stabbed through his large bicep, and yanked. 

The chain, hooked up to a pulley, snapped. That was impossible. The process used to make those chains made them so they didn't soften and weaken when heated. But he didn't use heat. He used brute strength, even in his wounded condition, to rip the metal apart as if it had been made of paper. 

He yanked a leg down, ripping through it, still suspended by the hook in his shoulder. The other leg ripped itself free, and he rose on ruined legs, the flesh joining back together. His electric blue eyes fixed on them. 

There was nothing behind those eyes, no emotion, no hatred. He was sizing them up, figuring out the best way to kill them, in the way a predator does. 

He walked over, but stopped when he must have felt the remaining hook in his shoulder. He turned to it and casually ripped it out. 

He took the chain and hook in his hand and began to walk. 

Everyone ran, but it was too late. 

His male assistant was the first to go. He almost made it to the door, before the chain wrapped around his ankle. He howled in pain, before being dragged out of sight. Haema Rin could hear his pained screams before suddenly, they went quiet. 

He reappeared in the passageway, now colored red. His female assistant turned, staring at him, and that was all the time he needed. 

He ran, body moving faster than anything that Haema Rin had seen. He slammed the woman's head into the stone wall, and then with a sharp twist, snapped her neck. His talons raked into her flesh, and Haema Rin stared as blood flowed up his arm, sealing the cuts on his body bleeding black.