Morphling

“NOOOOOO!”

Rakai screamed in horror when he saw what the beast tried to do.

As a way of life, the Kaijin take some shavings of their horns and place it in a container to give to their loved ones as an amulet. With their people having a decent proficiency in mana, most would enchant these charms with a spell that would allow them to determine the well-being of the shaving’s owner.

As long as the owner was fine, the container would remain intact as the day it was given. However, should any harm come to the owner, burns would start to appear around the amulet. The lower their lifeforce, the more intense the burns. Upon death, it would become nothing but ash.

Misesha’s charm, a small leather pouch with braids tied to Rakai’s wrist, started to slowly burn away.

Knowing what this means, Rakai pushed the wolf pup onto Rikarn as he tried to run to the beast, to stop it from doing what appeared to be it devouring the writhing mass that was the Fallen.

He understood that what the beast was doing wasn’t wrong, that it needed to stop the Fallen at all cost even if sacrifices were to be made. But his heart couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear failing once again.

*SNAP*

Seeing the creature devoured, something broke within Rakai.

He stumbled then fell. He tried getting up but when he looked up, he saw nothing remained of the black creature.

Tears started welling in his eyes. Falling on his knees, he closed his eyes and bared his teeth.

“AAAAAAAAAHH!!”

Screaming in despair as he kept pounding the ground until his arms became bloody, he didn’t stop until his brother caught up and held up his arms.

“Rakai, stop! Look at Misesha’s amulet!”

Those words brought Rakai out of his dark thoughts. He turned to look at his wrist and found the amulet was still mostly intact. It was still burning, but it was incredibly slow. In fact, there were times it even stopped smoldering even if only for a second.

ROAR

As the thundering roar resounded, they both looked up and saw black tendrils piercing out all over of the beast’s body.

It tried to hold its body together as its cries started mixing with shrieks. Its massive head was suddenly opened and the roaring skull of the Fallen tried to escape, but the beast closed its jaws once more sealing it in.

It was a terrifying a sight. Portions of the beast’s body looked as if they were boiling and were about to explode at any time.

Just as it seemed it was about to erupt, the beast knelt and gradually started shrinking.

In one swift action, it forcefully slammed its head onto the ground, snapping its antlers.

Tremors resounded out as it kept repeating the action like a creature that was going mad.

They didn’t know how many times it repeated the action, but it finally stopped when a massive crater was formed.

For a time, it appeared unmoving until the creature slumped over and fell on its back. The black tendrils all over started transforming into pale-green goop that were pulled into its body. Even the beast’s severed hand melted into green slime, but remained where it fell.

Silence remained. The amulet on Rakai’s wrist was partially intact but was still slowly burning.

He stood and wanted to get closer, but his brother stopped him.

Just as he was about to move his brother aside, the creature suddenly stirred.

As it slowly rose to only half its initial height of over sixteen feet, everyone became anxious, but then became shocked to see the thing before them.

No words could properly describe the creature, but the closest was that it was a horrendous abomination.

Half its face was the skull of a stag, veins and arteries threading over its surface but the flesh seeming as if it couldn’t grow over it. Above its head, new antlers appeared that were warped and twisted with some ends stabbing into its body.

One of its arms ended with a large deformed hand of countless fingers while the other side was a writhing mass of tentacles and braided flesh tendrils. While its legs appeared mostly intact from when it was a beast, its torso opened up in the middle exposing pulsating and half rotten flesh.

Its form was nothing short of something coming from a nightmare. Ururwan wanted to purify the creature and save it from its misery, but Jortus first wanted to confirm if the creature in control was the beast… or the Fallen.

If it was the latter, then they needed to first secure the area and ensure it doesn’t escape. Otherwise, all they’ve done would be in vain.

Jortus prepared his spells of entrapment, but suddenly the creature lumbered forward.

Tensions grew as the creature slowly moved towards the closest people, Rikarn and Rakai.

The creature continued to shamble forward util it stopped at least six meters away in front of the two men.

Eerily silent, the creature stood there for a time, staring at the two of them until it retched and fell forward, catching itself with its arm and was left kneeling.

Vile fluids spilled from its mouth until it gagged harder and a large lump appeared to come out. Catching it with its tentacles, the creature then brought it before the two brothers.

Cautiously moving closer, the brothers immediately rushed to take the ball of flesh as soon as they realized what it was.

***

Pain. Indescribable pain.

This was what the beast experienced as soon as it consumed the writhing black mass.

The creature somehow broke apart and tried to consume all living matter that was around it. This was what the beast understood when it felt its hands being consumed.

With no way to properly fight it, it made the choice to face it directly where it was best at; consumption and assimilation.

Forcing all its remaining biomass to transform itself into a massive maw, it consumed the mass entirely and tried to break it down.

It was the most violent genetic decomposition and assimilation it had ever experienced. The gene strings were simply too chaotic and mostly didn’t match any known genetic composition or material it had ever come across, not even within its simulated programs and pre-installed memory records.

It was as if the creature it consumed was simply mashed together with different organisms and forcefully held together by an external force. It didn’t make any biological sense as to how such a creature could exist.

The worst part is, somehow the creature’s genetic material was clashing with its own ability to assimilate biomass and dangerously kept destabilizing its cellular structure. It needed to keep restructuring itself the longer its cells were in contact with the creature’s flesh and blood.

It simply became a battle of wills. It all summed up to whoever had the better absorption ability. And the winner soon made itself known.

While the black mass was violent and chaotic, the beast’s single-minded focus and systemic deconstruction allowed it to weather the assault unflinchingly. Even with the voraciousness of the black creature’s cells, there was no order to its wanton assimilation with its attempt to simply brute force the process.

The beast’s cellular control was simply superior. In areas where the black mass attacked ferociously, it was there where the beast concentrated its defenses. In areas where the creature’s control was weaker, it would then attack and deconstruct the material.

The beast did this on a massive multicellular scale across its entire body. Eventually, the black mass was forcefully absorbed.

Normally this would be its win, but it found out that assimilating the creature also had its drawbacks.

For one, because of its chaotic genetic composition, consuming the creature actually further increased its destabilization process; in other words, the beast needed to choose a gene anchor immediately.

Not only that, it only had one choice as a gene anchor; the black monstrosity itself.

The reason for this was the creature’s entire cellular structure possessed a will, similar to itself. If it chose a different creature as a gene anchor, these assimilated cells could actually act up and try to forcefully take over as the primary ego.

Choosing it as its gene anchor would not only forcefully integrate these rebellious cells to become part of it entirely, it would also finally be able to stabilize the chaotic mess that is its gene structure.

There was only one problem… no, two problems.

First, this gene string wasn’t only chaotic, it was also a blank slate. It was a creature that didn’t come to be through natural evolution.

It didn’t know what would happen if it were to forcefully integrate such a dysfunctional genetic structure unto itself and turn it into its primary gene. Would it still even be categorized as a creature or something else entirely? That was how chaotic and unstable the cell structure was of the creature it consumed.

The second problem, which it believed was the more distressing of the two, was that it still held within itself the flesh masses that contained the creatures that were held captive.

If it were to initiate the process of structuring its gene anchor, the flesh masses might get pulled in and assimilated along with the black entity.

This left it with another problematic choice. It must separate these flesh masses while under constant attack by the chaotic cells, restructuring itself as it would continue to destabilize and decompose, and lastly it must be done quickly as it was continually burning vitality and biomass while it hasn’t chosen an anchor.

The process was excruciating and several times it retched in pain whenever it successfully separated a flesh ball and released it.

It didn’t know how long it had been enduring the process and how many times it had released a captive, but it felt that there were two more and that these two were the last.

The problem was it felt that their vitality was also at their lowest.

A further increase in its burden, but it continued nonetheless and scanned the organisms to determine what was causing their weakness.

Determining that the cause was partial assimilation by the black entity, it figured that it needed to reconstruct their missing organs and limbs.

The process was long, arduous, and mostly painful, but since it was already doing so much it might as well go all the way and finish its task completely. All the better if one of the two creatures was actually the little white pup.

Since it used parts of itself while in its current state, the result wasn’t pretty, but it’ll have to do.

 This was its last thought as it began the process of complete restructuring when it finally selected its gene anchor.

***