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Tharurun

Like any person with a double identity in movies, Marcus, too, led an additional secret life. During the day he was a regular run-of-the-mill honors student... fine, perhaps that was a stretch, but close enough!

And during the night, he left Timothy's body behind and explored his surroundings in his original appearance while eating small astrals. He tried to stay mostly on and by roofs and accessed the sea of consciousness of Hades to track the movement of his fellow criminal Hadeans.

None of them were in this city, and their numbers had dropped, only about a fourth remained from the moment they fell. Marcus could neither see their names or faces, but he could feel their pulse, which reflected their aether amount. And while most of them were weaker than him, two had jumped way and beyond, so Marcus didn't have any leeway to be lax.

Of course, consuming another being took more than aether amount, mental strength was a more significant part of it, but it could cause distortion or even cracking if a vessel too small took in something way over its size. While Marcus had not experienced it himself, records told of a pain bordering insanity. That was not something he wished to experience, so - for the worst-case scenario, he needed to grow his aether amount.

And soon, he discovered that the astrals he ate came with lingering bits of information about this world, which mostly was the same thing he had gotten from the dustbun - the essentials for survival in other words. While for dustbun, almost every other astral was a predator, for a snarling(snake with butterfly wings), a rompel(oversized slug) was the prey, and another creature was a predator.

Marcus slowly built up from there. The only creature he truly didn't enjoy eating was Rompel. If he picked one up, it turned into genitalia like thing and eating that just-- it was okay if it turned into a woman's part, but male parts made him feel like he was half-way cheating and engaging in cannibalism at the same time.

For about a month, he was lucky. He used the knowledge of little astrals and stayed away from the big bad boys and hid inside and under various objects if a humanoid type flew past or walked somewhere nearby - those were no less intelligent than humans and who knows what ties they might have.

And then about three weeks before the summer break in school, his luck ran out. First, a humanoid type spotted him, and he turned to flee, but just as he felt he had gotten away, Marcus realized he had stumbled in a place he should have avoided at all cost - a temple.

Stephanie had said that temples and some other objects are the so-called 'safe zones' and that most astrals can not enter them. But he, who was by all appearances, an astral, had easily slipped into one, and he had no idea why. While it was true that technically he was just an alien rather than an astral, but being correctly identified as one could only spell trouble.

Marcus turned around to get away, but something had noticed him already. One by one, oil laps lit along the walls, and force aking to gravity locked him in place. He had a hard time to stand.

With a clicking noise, something made steps towards him, and Marcus forced his head to turn to look. On top of a tiger shaped armor, was an upper half of a black-haired man with burning orange eyes. The armor was real, but the body moving it and the upper body half above it were both astral formations. It was a god shaped like a tiger taur - Tharurun. A war god who had gradually transitioned to be a god of fortune. He still had armor, but his clothes above it were freely flowing and rich in pattern.

"Who sent you, eater of souls?" Tharurun asked, his eyes seething with hostility.

That was not a good start.

No one had sent him, and Marcus had little idea for why he was 'eater of souls.' After all, he had avoided humanoid types with all his might, and none of the lesser animal type astrals had known a thing about him, viewing him just as another astral.