There were a lot of foreign voices around her, some were whispers and others even cheers, one of which she recognized from their only encounter, the spirit that had possessed Diablo once before was nearby, that meant only one thing.
He had come for her.
Serene slowly blinked her eyes open, only to raise her eyebrows at the strange sight of
orcs being amicable around her, many curious faces stood around her, one of which looked a lot older than perhaps her race was capable of being. She grunted to her side, the pain still there but the worse of her wounds were gone.
She had remembered fainting of the pain, the iron creating a small carapace around her breast which was succumbing to the heat, melting her flesh and skin, and then it all turned black. Such wound was perfectly healed, but the rest were not, she could feel it. Slowly she turned around to see her right limbs, still unfixed and broken beyond repair. The orcs looked concerned as the eldest of them applied a healing spell on her limbs, but she felt no better, there was no improvement.
The knight captain had made sure her limbs healed in the wrong way, in this he had succeeded damaging her, perhaps even permanently. The eldest orc looked over to Serene with pleading eyes, almost as if begging her forgiveness. Serene was shaken by the strange animosity of the orcs, having always thought of them as mindless beasts without reason or emotion beyond the need of war.
But then, that had also been the case for the demon she now longed for. She wasted no time and used her functioning leg to raise herself up to the eldest orc and take his hand over hers, gently squeezing his rugged skin. The orc looked up to her and gave her a sad smile before nodding and parting ways, taking the roudest of orcs with him.
Serene's eyes searched around the forest she now found herself in until the picked up her Diablo lying down on the grass, soaked in blood and entrails still. He very much looked just like her, it made her laugh a bit. Then she turned to her eyes ot the entrance of the dungeon, a second time she had exited it, though now in a state that would only become a burden to her. This world was no place for the weak, much less of her race, it nearly broke all her spirits to continue on, until she remembered.
Her memories were brought to the time she had healed herself with the flesh of others, consuming the white
monster until her injuries were all but gone, even those that had not been immediately inflicted. An idea formed in her head then, her eyes looking over her deformed limbs then back to the dungeon again, she could very well guess what had transpired in there and why the orcs seemed to avoid entering back into the dungeon all together.
Her constant screaming had left her out of voice, it was coarse and practically non-existent, it'd take a few hours before she'd recover as this was nothing a healing spell could help her with, she had no way of telling this to anyone then.
Slowly, she turned to the dungeon and crawled to it, dragging her useless limbs under her, using them as a mattress. It hurt to drag herself over rock and dirt, her skin scrapping over her weight on the rock, but compared to the pain she had endured over their torture, it was nothing.
Soon the elder orc returned to the spot she was in, only to see her gone. He began calling out to his race and quickly they searched for her, they found her just outside the dungeon's entrance and pointed at her with a grunt and a growl. The eldest orc tried his best to run towards her, his old age preventing im from going very far. Some of the orcs were helping him reach over to her as she had stopped stilll outside the dungeon's entrance.
The other orcs would not dare approach her, much less reprimand her. The eldest orc had taken some trust in the dark elf's smile and gently knelt right next to her, in his own language speaking with her. She could not understand it, of course, there was no way she could. Regardless, she looked back at im and smiled, a pocket of tendrils had accumulated over her neck, twisting and turning her flesh around, one of her
iris had grown tendrils over her eyes, nearly covering it whole, and yet it felt like it was her own.
Gently, she entered the dungeon and allowed her body to tumble over the stairs, a much quicker form of descending than carefully tending her already broken body, if her plan worked it'd not matter, she just needed to try this and see for herself without the risk of anyone becoming her next meal.
The elder orc simply stared from atop the stairs and then turned to his orcs, crying out to them. Quickly, the orcs formed a circle around the entrance and turned their swords and shields to it, but they did not move further from it, they guarded the entrance from whatever might come.
Once she had reached the base of the dungeon, immediately the puddles of blood started to cover her skin, it had been as she had thought it had happened, one giant massacre in her name, at the hands of the demon she had shared so many experiences with. It brought a strange smile to her face, seeing the carnage in front dedicated to her.
But it was time to begin her experimentation. She crawled out to one of the knights, still mostly intanct, his legs twitching from body reflexes as she dragged him closer to her. She took a bite of his flesh, chewing on it then swallowed, then looked at her arm or leg, there was no change.
She took bigger chunks then, ripping his flesh apart five more times, still nothing. She grunted and slammed the floor in desperation, her voice coming out as mere grunts as she punched the body away, turning her eyes to the darkness of the place.
It was quiet, awfully so, and lonely, but to be a burden felt like a worse fate than being in the dungeon until her death. She was ready to turn away, when her arm slipped, dropping her weight against the floor. It hurt, a foolish move from her part.
Just as she was to sit up though, her eyes came to stare to one of the other corpses nearby, his arm and leg were missing entirely from his body, only leaving muscle, blood and bone cut entirely through, it gave her another idea, one she might regret if she thought too much about it.
On her leg, she positioned her limbs next to her, dragging another nearby corpse to her other side, a chunk of flesh ready to go. She took her arm first and with her teeth she quickly ripped her own arm's skin open, tearing it out slightly before her jaw started to tremble, the pain of doing so more unimaginable than she had first thought. Quickly, she turned to the chunk of flesh and started to eat. Before her second time swallowing, she felt a shift in her body, her eyes immediately going to the wound, it slowly started to close itself as if new flesh had integrated to her body and soon the wound was no more.
She was elated, but she had to keep her experiments. She looked to her crushed fingers and then took a mouthful, more in trust with herself as she chewed through bone, ripping her thumb out. Immediately, another bite on the corpse and slowly she felt an itch in her arm as her skin made a vacuum in itself where her wound was, tendrils shifted all around it as they stretched her skin and muscle in, bone felt like it was being fractured all over again, only in reverse. She gitted her teeth together while still consuming flesh, and soon her thumb had grown back.
Now it was the time of truth, she looked at her new thumb, it was as if nothing had happened to it in contrast to the rest of her unrecognizable limb, and focused.
A twitch, it soon turned into a small circular motion as her thumb responded to her desires. She felt more than elated and looked up to thank the dark elf gods. Perhaps the first gratitude she ever felt for them in her entire life. But now came the worst part of her experiment, her hand slowly traveled over to her broken limb all the way until she touched sensible, unbroken bone and flesh.
She had to prepare, not knowing the consequences of her future actions, Serene crawled over the room, dragging with her multiple corpses all in one pile, not once recognizing the knight captain among them as nothing had remained of him to remember. Once she was done, she took one of the axes found nearby an orc's body. There was a lot to say about its quality but she could not deny its sharpness, outdoing that of common human swords.
With a slow breath, she broke the axe's handle and dragged the blade with her to the pile of corpses, all this crawling was turning exhausting to her, but it was little to what would come after. She laid against the corpses to catch her breath then looked over the blade on her hand, finding the sharpest edge of it. She took another breath, and another, her heart was pumping out of her chest as common sense screamed at her to stop what she was thinking, but there was nothing else for her to do.
Taking herself by surprise, Serene swinged the axe blade against her limb, just barely missing from injuring an all-new part of her body. Her eyes shot open as her voice struggled to come out, pain and adrenaline combining together to make a horrible knot over her stomach, she was uncapable of vomiting however as she felt hte tendrils held her food in check. With blood pouring out of her wound, she took the blade out and swung it back to her shoulder. Her cries slowly becoming more vivid as her head throbbed, threatening to make her pass out.
Before she allowed it to be, she took the blade and swung it over again and again and again until finally her arm dropped from her side. There was no time, she wobbled to her side and started to eat the closest body to her.
She didn't know how long this would take, but with her focus completely in task, she failed to notice the purple spores that her arm had slowly started to crumble into.
