In plain sight [animated + HR+ alts] (Patreon)

[continuing from: https://www.patreon.com/posts/forgotten-short-90720500]

The amanathine began coursing through my body, burning into my veins with each pulse from my heart and with it, the rage that was a simmer became a torrential volcanic explosion.

Suddenly, my body moved in such a way I couldn't grasp, too fast, too agile. It was if the beasts tailing me were moving on another physical plane of existence. Slow. So very slow. I felt and saw blue pulses in my vision as the chemical cocktail reached my eyes and brain and I could hear the song now, loudly. Clear as day.

"Become," was the closest word I could understand. The Chaos, it wanted to become, or maybe it was becoming? I couldn't understand. I didn't want to understand.

My claws gripped the dirt and before I had realized I'd slammed my horns into the side of one of the great beasts, sending it plowing into its companion. While they were tangled in each others legs and scratching at the earth to right themselves they had a brief bicker, snapping black fangs and bickering--Or at least, the sliver of the original animals left inside the host of the Chaos were bickering.

I was already gone though, moving at an unthinkable speed I ran into a crumbling village, a place once occupied by my own kind and my ancestors--Now a rotting corpse, like the rest of our lands, infected.

I tried not to take notice of the naked virus as it climbed walls of buildings, snaked around the limbs of trees and even seeped into the ground itself, infecting the very dirt and the grasses growing from it. I climbed a broken building, dragging myself in through a shattered window, pushing the ragged curtain from my path then as soon as I'd entered I slammed the curtains shut, making certain to grab them by the bottoms to still the movement of the fabric.

It hadn't taken the beasts long to track the path I'd taken, but the virus infecting their brains made them less capable at scenting the air. Regardless, I held my breath and watched through torn curtains as they circled the once smooth road, passing in front of a tree bursting with Chaos cells. The virus had rewritten the tree to produce a sort of fungal looking growth from its bark, and from that growth raw cells were spewed out, floating in the air.

In the dim light I made out the shapes of native insects that had been infected, circling and swarming the diseased plants, mindless slaves to Chaos.

The hunters passed me over and over, they kept circling, knowing I was nearby. The one on the left looked weak, and if I focused my ears….Yes, I could hear the irregular beating of its heart. A heart being choked and eaten by the virus. It would soon die and was already emaciated, while its traveling companion still was of thick body and strong limb.

Maybe…there was a way, a chance…If I could just separate them…