Mortals have a hard time looking at the City-Eating Demon Beast directly. It's a hideous thing, they've heard, a creature of incomprehensible shapes, of rending claws, of dripping, oozing acid and of too many sharp teeth. It shifts forms with every step, undulates across the landscape in a way that defies rational thought.
They say this.
Those who aren't mortal have an easier time, or so they hope. One full year after this city was warned by a desperate refugee about the coming of the Beast, they hired two Anathema - strictly forbidden, of course, and so done in absolute secrecy - to stand against it and hopefully fell the creature.
The city's Lord was sure that the peasants who warned of its coming were exaggerating the size. After all, the Beast was a myth. Demons were real, of course, everyone knew that, but something that devoured whole cities could not possibly have escaped the notice of the Realm for as long as the superstitious claimed it had been around. And therefore, it was a minor demon, or Wyld-corrupted beast, or some other nonsense.
They were waiting, these two Anathema, two young and determined chosen of the Unconquered Sun, already by definition heroes with the possibility of becoming legendary. One was a Zenith, a warrior-priest, standing in a ready stance in front of the gate. The other a Night, a speedy, stealthy thing who had already concealed herself in the darkness cast by the guardhouse.
When the City-Eating Demon Beast arrived, it didn't arrive as an undulating, oozing mass of teeth and claw. It arrived in a human shape, an old man with bright green eyes and thin grey hair, winded, clutching a bleeding wound, grasping desperately for them. "Please," it said, voice weak and reedy, "please, my people need help, the Beast is here. Please, surely you can do something. We need help."
And the legendary heroes stared down at it with scorn in their eyes and told it they weren't hired to help his people. They were hired to defend this city, and they had a beast to kill. And this creature was in the way.
But still it reached for them, fingers thin and trembling. Please, it said, please.
The warrior priest finally could take no more and slapped the creature's hand away. He rolled his eyes, puffed up his chest, and pulled out his staff to give the pitiful thing a solid whack to teach it not to speak to him any more.
"We've got better things to do than deal with you, old man. Better people to help, even."
When he swung the staff into what he assumed was the helpless body of an old man, however, the weapon stopped as solidly as though he had swung it into solid stone. The City-Eating Demon Beast began to slowly seep out around the edges of the form it had assumed, becoming stronger, larger.
"No," said Shahi Azih, starting to laugh. He laughed and laughed, without a shred of mirth, until his laugh split his mouth open so far that it continued all the way down past the edges of his face. By this time the Beast had poured out of him enough that the acid inside of him was dripping from the corners of his lips, forming burning puddles in the ground beneath him. "You do not have something better to do, someone better to help! How many times do I have to tell you? You're not better! No one is better! You're not better than me!"
The Night caste solar, an assassin by trade, made her attempt at taking the Beast out before it could assume its full monstrous form, blades landing in where the neck should be, and it didn't even notice, didn't even shake her off like a cow might shake at a fly, so intent it was on the Zenith whose resolve to slay a Beast was quickly waning in the face of the creature.
"Maybe next time, it will stick," it hissed, and bit down.
---
* Shahi has green eyes in this memory. Like, really green. They have a weird shine to them that's almost a glow. (His eyes in Imeeji are dark amber.)
* The City-Eating Demon Beast is sort of a quadruped but has way too many limbs. It's a shifting amount of limbs. Its entire head is mostly mouth, and that mouth is mostly teeth. It drools, spits, and bleeds a powerful superacid. It is 400 feet tall when its mass is concentrated 'upright'. Sometimes it like, spits up Shahi's humanoid form and then all the extra bulk melts into a horrible acid explosion.
* When Shahi fights the two Solars, he spends most of the time trying to eat the Zenith, and the Zenith keeps using Perfect Defenses, so it takes a while. The Night spends that entire time trying to murder him and he just like, lets it happen. He regenerates all the damage as soon as it happens.
* After he kills the two Solars Shahi straight up kills everyone in the town. It's not a small town. This is thousands of people AND all their infrastructure AND all the buildings. He destroys and eats all of it including the buildings.
Better things to do
They say this.
Those who aren't mortal have an easier time, or so they hope. One full year after this city was warned by a desperate refugee about the coming of the Beast, they hired two Anathema - strictly forbidden, of course, and so done in absolute secrecy - to stand against it and hopefully fell the creature.
The city's Lord was sure that the peasants who warned of its coming were exaggerating the size. After all, the Beast was a myth. Demons were real, of course, everyone knew that, but something that devoured whole cities could not possibly have escaped the notice of the Realm for as long as the superstitious claimed it had been around. And therefore, it was a minor demon, or Wyld-corrupted beast, or some other nonsense.
They were waiting, these two Anathema, two young and determined chosen of the Unconquered Sun, already by definition heroes with the possibility of becoming legendary. One was a Zenith, a warrior-priest, standing in a ready stance in front of the gate. The other a Night, a speedy, stealthy thing who had already concealed herself in the darkness cast by the guardhouse.
When the City-Eating Demon Beast arrived, it didn't arrive as an undulating, oozing mass of teeth and claw. It arrived in a human shape, an old man with bright green eyes and thin grey hair, winded, clutching a bleeding wound, grasping desperately for them. "Please," it said, voice weak and reedy, "please, my people need help, the Beast is here. Please, surely you can do something. We need help."
And the legendary heroes stared down at it with scorn in their eyes and told it they weren't hired to help his people. They were hired to defend this city, and they had a beast to kill. And this creature was in the way.
But still it reached for them, fingers thin and trembling. Please, it said, please.
The warrior priest finally could take no more and slapped the creature's hand away. He rolled his eyes, puffed up his chest, and pulled out his staff to give the pitiful thing a solid whack to teach it not to speak to him any more.
"We've got better things to do than deal with you, old man. Better people to help, even."
When he swung the staff into what he assumed was the helpless body of an old man, however, the weapon stopped as solidly as though he had swung it into solid stone. The City-Eating Demon Beast began to slowly seep out around the edges of the form it had assumed, becoming stronger, larger.
"No," said Shahi Azih, starting to laugh. He laughed and laughed, without a shred of mirth, until his laugh split his mouth open so far that it continued all the way down past the edges of his face. By this time the Beast had poured out of him enough that the acid inside of him was dripping from the corners of his lips, forming burning puddles in the ground beneath him. "You do not have something better to do, someone better to help! How many times do I have to tell you? You're not better! No one is better! You're not better than me!"
The Night caste solar, an assassin by trade, made her attempt at taking the Beast out before it could assume its full monstrous form, blades landing in where the neck should be, and it didn't even notice, didn't even shake her off like a cow might shake at a fly, so intent it was on the Zenith whose resolve to slay a Beast was quickly waning in the face of the creature.
"Maybe next time, it will stick," it hissed, and bit down.
---
* Shahi has green eyes in this memory. Like, really green. They have a weird shine to them that's almost a glow. (His eyes in Imeeji are dark amber.)
* The City-Eating Demon Beast is sort of a quadruped but has way too many limbs. It's a shifting amount of limbs. Its entire head is mostly mouth, and that mouth is mostly teeth. It drools, spits, and bleeds a powerful superacid. It is 400 feet tall when its mass is concentrated 'upright'. Sometimes it like, spits up Shahi's humanoid form and then all the extra bulk melts into a horrible acid explosion.
* When Shahi fights the two Solars, he spends most of the time trying to eat the Zenith, and the Zenith keeps using Perfect Defenses, so it takes a while. The Night spends that entire time trying to murder him and he just like, lets it happen. He regenerates all the damage as soon as it happens.
* After he kills the two Solars Shahi straight up kills everyone in the town. It's not a small town. This is thousands of people AND all their infrastructure AND all the buildings. He destroys and eats all of it including the buildings.