Chapter 316: CHPT 316: Hibernation Broken....
Cold, wet and white.
Three words that were constant in a blizzard. Three words that were constant in Ursula's world….in her blizzard.
She ran endlessly.... forever. She couldn't even remember a time when her lungs weren't screaming in pain, feeling like two plates of fire in her chest while her throat took in the icy cold air that cut up the insides of her mouth and gums with it's solid blade-like snowflakes.
She never stopped– even when she wanted to more than anything. Even when she wanted to lie and sleep beneath the white unforgiving tundra. She was dead anyway so what did it matter? A life taken by a Demon…a life left for her closest friend to witness it's eventual fade. For some reason she couldn't remember her closest friends name….not even her own.
All she could remember was his eyes. Two green fireballs doused in the liquid glimmer of endless tears. He cried for her. She did too. She couldn't remember why, but she cried so hard– so much pain it felt like a steak being driven into her chest where it would eventually explode repeatedly. Then it was black….something bit her and the blizzard welcomed her.
Almost in an instinctive manner, she began running. She knew what was behind her….and what was in front of her.
She'd had the dream before, the infinite swirling landscape of white. A murky bleached hurricane of snow and debris that fuzzied the feral figures of the creatures pursuing her enough for them to look like they could be anything….as if her massive cold world enjoyed the terror of allowing her imagination to fill in the blanks of the figures behind.
She didn't need to imagine. She knew…she didn't have a name or a distinct memory of each one she'd seen. But she knew.
Sure they were Monsters…..but behind the glow in their eyes, there was a cunning human intelligence and something vastly unknown that terrified her even more than the latter.
Running was the only option. Away from the beasts and onward through the footsteps that laid ahead like a path deeper into the unknown.
The run lasted forever...until it didn't.
One moment her feet were smashing through the snow, furthering the stiffness of her boots an numbness of her toes, the next minute she was airborne.
As if the floor was pulled right out from under her. A more accurate guess would be that she'd just ran herself off a cliff. Maybe the dream would end, maybe it would only get worse.
She considered it all during her downward descent. The cold winds rushed up her pants, chiling her legs to the bone as if they weren't already while rampant snowflakes flooded her nostrils and pushed apart her eyelids. It was like being thrown through an ice cold shredder.
There was never a time where she wanted things to end more than when she was falling from the cliffs edge. Hundreds upon hundreds of feet. Just her, the deafening winds and razor sharp snowflakes.
FPOOM!
She hit the ground, digging deep into the endless layers of snow to be buried beneath the cold in her own snowwhite grave.
Part of her was comfortable laying there– just being done with it. And then the claws came, scooping up handfuls of snow to reach her. Swipe after swipe after swipe, the sunlight above ground became increasingly more visible with every scoop until the sky welcomed her again.
More whiteness. Above her, back at the cliffsedge above, she could see the feral figures looming like glowy eyed omens of death. A shiver shook her spine like a rattle-snake. They were coming for her….
A harmless huff grabbed her attention, pulling her eyes from the creatures at the cliffsedge to what stood over her at her front.
In a lot of ways it looked just like the others, causing her breaths to quicken and her legs to go limp.
It looked so unreal, so tall that it's features disappeared behind the thick mask of wind and snow, leaving only it's eyes to permeate the chalky expanse. A eerily familiar green.
The beast crouched, she could practically hear the muscles beneath it's shadowy black fur flexing and constricting.
She was so busy staring at it's eyes that she didn't notice the hand hovering in front of her right away. The hand with more shiny black fur on it's backside while dark greyish black leathery skin occupied it's palms. The blade-like claws were completely still, but she could almost feel the focus in the creatures stance.
There wasn't much else she could do…..
She reached for the hand, eager to be pulled from the cold grave and away from death. As soon as their hands connected, the creature burst into green flames. They flickered and danced along it's fur, eager to spread to her like a virus.
Reflexively, she tried to pull away only to find the beast wouldn't let her go, giving her no choice but to watch the Magic crawl over her skin, changing from a bright shade of verdant to an icy blue. It was warm, nipping at her skin and her mind as if it were a physical lifeform studying her. The first bit of welcoming warmth in so long…..
She almost fell to her knees.
She would've. Until the Magic entered her. It went from probing and licking at her skin and the freckles on her face, to jamming it's way into her pores, nose and mouth like millions of snakes. The warmth became a hellish blaze that repeatedly evaporated and rebuilt her insides with it's magical heat.
She screamed endlessly as the world grew brighter and the distant howls climbed. When the beast finally let her go, she stood– barely present and a hollow husk of her previous self.
Finally, sleep welcomed her. She assumed it was death.
But, a much more fitting description would be the opposite.
She was finally waking up.
***
Wood, leather, oils, lavender, human sweat and alcohol.
The smells were everywhere, like a flock of birds or a cloud of smoke. Overwhelming…almost nauseating. She took another smooth inhale.
Definitely nauseating.
As if to purposefully make matters worse, the constant and wild pound of something in the distance grew in noise by the second. It sounded like small explosions. She was so confused she lay frozen, letting the steady boom creep closer while she checked herself for injuries.
Nothing. In fact she felt great– a little groggy, but also in need of movement.
CREEAAAK!
The sliding sound of friction threatened to split her eardrums. She continued to play the game of possum for one reason.
Someone entered her space. She could smell the sweat and touch of outside air on him. Him?? She questioned a number of things as the continuous booming following the man's movements forced her to realize she was hearing his footsteps....they were just….loud.
The man continued prancing around her space, mumbling to himself and touching things.
"Ok…..Gnoll's out of the forest. We are safe…..in theory…hehe. We will be safe, young bête-Femme, no?"
She ignored his words, straightening the fingers of her left hand into a sharp point for her Ice to follow the shape of and give her a natural weapon.
The crackle of her element forming was louder than ever….she was surprised the man couldn't hear it over his own voice.
His loss she thought with a growl.
They sat in silence for another stretch of seconds until he suddenly bursted from his seat and jogged to the door.
The explosion of movements caused something to snap in her brain, forcing her eyes open and pulling her out of her bed to pursue the one fleeing her area.
FWOOSH!
She was moving before she could even think, ripping apart the hammock in a whirlwind of highspeed movements she didn't know she was capable of before landing and lunging at the man across from her.
"OH–"
Boom!
Her right hand clamped over his throat in a flash and slammed him into the wall with his feet dangling above ground. Her iced hand hovered over his face with a cold sharpness that reflected the light in the room.
"You tell me where I am right now or I'm putting a hole in your face!" She snarled, partially startled by the change in her voice.
The man smiled, ".....I can….see the….erhm…similarity already…."
The man pulled at her hand, struggling for space and the ability to breathe properly.
"TELL ME!"
".....You are in a fo–...a forest….on the….the outskirts of the Vada District….Uhuagh!" He forced out a reply.
Panic and confusion rose in her chest, spreading an intense heat across her arms and face followed by an internal pain that could only be described as pulling. The pulling of her bones….her tendons..her muscles.
Her eye's flickered in and out of honey brown and pure white. She could hear her heartbeat like an internal alarm.
Her grip tightened, followed by her fingernails dripping blood onto the man's trashed sweater….they were growing…and going dark..
"What the hell is this?" She said, startled again by how deep her voice had dropped in a matter of seconds. She tried to speak again only for an odd gutteral chuffing sound to come out.
"C—...Claws….claws!" The man stammered, causing her to look up and find her fingers in his neck, just deep enough to see part of her claws penetrating the sides of his throat,
"AH!" She jumped backward, startled by the never before seen change and bumped into the table in the center of the room. The scents of blood filled her mind like an empty glass in a rainstorm.
A headache split her skull as the chaos and unfamiliar area continued to worsen her condition. The sounds heightened, the smells followed as her vision pulsed and patches of her skin darkened to a feral shade of tawny bronze.
"What….what is happening?"
"He's in the forest…" The man forced out.
There was no reason to ask, she spun around and looked at him, feeling the bones in her face pressing up against her skin while her gums bled and eyes went white as insanity.
"WHERE?!"
The man jumped, "Straight ahead, you'll find him."
She was off in less than a second, clearing the room and escaping into the outside air.
CRASH!
She pushed through the door and felt her feet connect with cold stiff grass. The entire door held in her left hand like a wooden shield. She looked behind her and found the hinges of the…..tree house completely ripped apart. The man stood in the doorway looking as if she'd just robbed him of his kidneys.
Right when she turned back to head into the forest an oddly colored screen blocked her vision.
DING!
[You are know Level 9!]
[3 Stat Points Available!]
DING!
[Unique Power Requirement Met!]
[You have participated in killing a HellBreeder Demon and a number of it's spawn!]
[Power of the HellSlayer is now yours to claim!]
[Choose your HellSlayer Power!]
Still stunned by the chaotic shift of being awake, Ursula cursed out her System screen and swiped at it like a raging bear until it disappeared.
The urge to move took hold of her, carrying her into an effortless run towards the forest. The smells were even stronger outside. As she entered the forest, an entire new world of sensory communication spoke to her.
Birds called back and forth across the forest, Sheep bayed outside of it, foxes yipped and cried while they played, the scent of bucks lingered on the barks of each and every tree she passed….and lastly, the scent of Wolves…Wolves, Magic and something incredibly familiar. She'd never smelled it before, but when it hit her nose it was as if it was always there. Like remembering a dream at the end of the day.
Her legs moved faster, her lungs sucked in more oxygen. She never liked running, but if it always felt as it did now, she definitely would've. She felt endless. She felt like jumping…and climbing….and swimming…and hunting. The last urge unsettled her, but she couldn't get the scent of the man's blood out of her mind.
"Stop." She told herself, slowing to a jog before eventually walking– stumbling unevenly to use the tree's as support beams.
Her claws were no more, the tawny bronze blotches of hot skin were gone as well, leaving her tired and in pain….and most importantly, confused.
She froze, the smell of something familiar returned to her on her walk through the woodland, this time followed by sound.
The sound of things cutting through the wind– weapons.
Warily, she pushed forward, feeling the forest splitting and clearing until she faced an open area basking in early morning sunlight.
Standing beneath it's rays was a young man of undetermined age. He had the build and speed of someone young– full of life and youth. But the deep scaring that cut into his bronze skin and ran along the dips of the muscles in his back and arms spoke of someone who'd walked through a thousand battles.
Like the man she'd escaped from, he wore a blindfold over his eyes, forcing his long black hair to cling close to his head and chest. It had grown since she'd last seen it.
"Claude…."
He looked different– as different as she felt. Older, more damaged, larger. However long she was…..asleep, he'd been working that whole time and it didn't take a genius to figure that out.
She'd seen his scars before. The tiger-like markings that ran along his arms, sides and legs. Now they were merely parts of something larger. A world of new markings on his back where it looked like he'd been stabbed, and his shoulders and even more on his arms…..where a tattoo lay as clear as day– swirling down his forearm like a chain that twisted over his hand and intertwined with another tattoo placed on his palm.
The sight disappeared as he picked up his spears and began fighting. Fighting didn't feel like the right word. It was almost like a dance– and then the wood came, mirroring his movements.
He jumped and lunged and flipped across the field with it following him. Like he was sowing violence and Nature was his needle. He looked so controlled and unlike himself in the clearing. She was used to seeing him fight in a much more feral fashion. What she was looking at now was a trained style. Something old and tried through time.
"How long was I out for?" The thought came and went as she followed and found herself face to face with a pack of Wolves.
She knew one of them, seeing him almost made her cry….even he looked different. Older, leaner, more battered.
"Frosty….." The name came to her quicker than her movements.
The PitWolfs tail wagged faintly while he sniffed the ground in her direction.
The other creatures did the same, as if they knew her somehow.
Something moved behind her, causing her to spin around and find something straight out of her nightmares pacing in front of her.
It had the body of something feline with a canine head…and spiraling horns for eyes. The barbs jutting from it's back shook and steamed as it opened it's mouth and let out a crocodilian growl, baring it's endless rows of teeth and glowing green throat. The onyx scales wrapping it's body only made it look even more horrifying…somehow.
The urge to flee the forest of monsters almost overwhelmed her until she heard Claude stiffen and look in her direction.
The previous urge to run disappeared as he removed the blindfold and looked at her through dark shocked eyes.
A tidalwave of memories rocked her brain. All events involving the HellBreeder that must've resulted in how they got where they were now.
She was so shocked…confused…scared. She didn't know what to say. She asked him what she'd asked the man before, needing to confirm it was all real, confirm she wasn't in another blizzarding mirage.
"C-Claude….where are we?"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
_Avatar0FFury_
_Avatar0FFury_ POV SWITCH! Just to convey some things......not all will be caught of course, but in time all will be revealed. Anyway thanks for reading, let me know what you think! BERSERKER WOMAN IS BACK!
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone