Blood-Crazed Monsters I

Iris, Wompa, and Sirks were stuck in the middle of the crowd, unable to see anything at all. They were being pushed left and right. Iris almost got crushed by bodies multiple times and if it weren't for Sirks holding so tightly onto her arm, she surely would have. Though her arm really hurt, she was thankful that he didn't let go.

Everyone was taller than her so she didn't have a clear view of the cause of all the screaming and panicking. She had to rely on her ears to pick on pieces of information to get the full picture. But since there were so many voices talking on top of each other at once, it was impossible to distinguish a single one and learn something useful. Whatever it was, as long as she was in the middle of everyone, she should be safe. As messed up as it sounded, the people around her were shields.

*Boom!*

An explosion went off somewhere near her. Iris jumped in surprise and Sirks lost his grip on her. "Iris!" he shouted, trying to grab her again, but there were too many people in the way. Iris was swept away by the crowd and somehow popped out at the back of the crowd.

"Ugh!" Iris was pushed out and brought back to where she came from. She looked up and saw that everyone was practically shoving each other, trying to get away. There was no way for her to get back inside without getting crushed.

Instead of trying to escape, Iris looked around to get a grasp on the situation which she couldn't do while she was between everyone. There were a few people at the edge of the group who were on the ground. Were they hurt? It sounded like a bomb went off. Did they get hit by it? Why wasn't anyone helping them? Instead, it looked like everyone was avoiding the injured people.

Seeing this made Iris very angry. "What are you all doing!?" she shouted at them, hurrying to the people on the ground. They were rolling around and groaning in pain, and yet why was everyone just standing by and watching them? She was just a foot away from one of them before she was yanked back.

"Back off lady!" someone told her.

"Why? Can't you see that they need help!?" she pointed at the wounded people on the ground. She tried to pull away from the man who was stopping her but he didn't let go.

"For the love of God, look! They're not people anymore!"

Iris looked at them to see what the man was talking about. The suffering victim's skin color was strange. Wait... The skin of the victim in general was strange. "Are those... Scales!?" Iris exclaimed, not believing what she was seeing.

"Yes. They're turning into monsters," he explained to Iris. "You better back off. There's no helping these poor souls anymore." The only way to show them mercy now was to kill them. However, none of them had any weapons so there wasn't a means of killing the infected.

*Shuck!*

The entire audience took a step back. An arrow flew down from out of nowhere and buried itself into the chest of one of the infected victims. The victim cried out in pain, thrashing its arms everywhere like it was throwing a tantrum. Blood oozed out of its wound, but it wasn't red. It was black...

"Ah! Let. Me. Go!" Iris elbowed the man who was holding her back in the stomach.

"Oof!" The man naturally let go of Iris and hunched over, holding his stomach. Iris ran over to the man with the arrow in his stomach and took a look at it.

The arrow was deep, and it looked like it hit very close to the heart. It didn't look good at all. She needed to carry him out so that he could seek medical attention quickly.

"Someone, help!" she turned back to the crowd, asking them. It didn't matter who it was. She needed help. She couldn't carry him out alone.

Everyone stared at her like she was crazy. "Y-you... Are you out of your mind!?" It was the man that she elbowed. He was still clutching onto his stomach. Even the most well-built people would groan in pain if they got hit in the stomach that hard. Though the man was angry at what Iris did, this wasn't the time to argue with her. "Someone, move her away!"

Most of the people were too busy pushing each other and trying to get out the door to care, but the few people that did hear looked at each other and nodded their heads. Two men, not including the one she elbowed in the stomach, approached Iris. They didn't look hostile, but they did look mean.

"No, you're the ones that are out of your minds!?" Iris shouted back at them, glancing behind her at the dying person. "Can't you see that they need help!?" It didn't matter if they were growing scales or whatever. In her eyes, they could still be saved. Whatever this infection was, there had to be a cure for it.

"Leaving these people to die, have you no pride as an Otanian!?" she asked them angrily. Otane only lasted this long because the people worked together. They didn't have resources like the other kingdoms and had to rely on each other's strengths to survive. The people are united... Or rather, were.

As of right now, politics split Otane in half with some people supporting a military government while others choosing to support her sister, the queen. But this had nothing to do with politics. These were dying people!

The two men ignored Iris, not seeming to care even the slightest about what she said. They continued to get closer and closer to Iris until the both of them suddenly halted in their tracks, still plenty far from her.

With wide-opened eyes, one of the two men took a step back, gasping at what he was seeing. Iris was confused and she turned around and saw the injured man pulling the arrow out of his chest.

Iris' mouth opened in surprise and she cried out to stop the man. "Don't pull it out! You'll bleed to death!" She quickly got onto her legs and grabbed the infected man's arms, trying to force him to stop, but his strength was too much and she couldn't do anything. She watched in horror as he pulled the arrow out, ripping out a chunk of his flesh.

"Nooo!"

A hand grabbed Iris and she was pulled away from the injured man. "Let go of me!" she protested, kicking her feet and swinging her arms randomly. She hit the person who was carrying her several times but they refused to let go of her.

"Stop struggling! I'm saving you!" the person screamed at her. But Iris still didn't stop. To her, he was saving no one. The people who needed saving were in front of them, not her! When the man saw that it was impossible to convince Iris with words, he gave her a hard jab in the side of her stomach with his finger, making her perk up like a stiff log.

"Eek! What was that for!?" Iris demanded, struggling even harder now after the man did that. The man did it a second time and got the same response from Iris. "Ow!"

This time, before Iris had a chance to recover and proceed with her complaining, the man dropped Iris onto the floor and turned her head with his hand towards the hybrid.

"Look!" he said, pointing at the hybrid with his other hand. "That thing isn't one of us anymore. It wants to rip out our organs, for God's sake." He wanted Iris to open her eyes and see what they were. These people were beyond saving now. They were monsters.

"What... Wait, are those horns!?" Iris' eyes went to two small stubs on either side of the man's head. There was a gurgling sound and she looked down at the man's chest to see it stitching itself back together. "...It's healing itself?"

"Now that you can see that, you should know..." the man said calmly and softly to Iris, before raising his voice and yelling in her ear the rest of the sentence, "-that these things are going to try to kill us! They don't need saving. We need saving!"

The man pulled Iris back onto her feet and pushed her into the panicking crowd before waving his hand, giving the signal for all capable fighters to get ready. Quite a number of people responded to his call, walking out from the midst of the huge crowd and forming a wall between the hybrids and the civilians. Many of them were either retired soldiers or mercenaries. They may have their own respective laws and beliefs, but if there was anything that they both shared, it was their honor of being born an Otanian.

"Buy time till these fools get out, eh?" one of them chuckled, making light of the enemies before them. They needed to protect the civilians. Although all Otanians had varying degrees of combat training, there was a line discerning the actual fighters from the ones who could barely protect themselves. These were the ones capable of holding their own against dangerous foes.

Another soldier cracked his neck and stretched his muscles, warming himself up for the fight. "Easier said than done," he murmured. "We got no weapons." They only had their bare fists to use against these monsters.

"What are you talking about? We got an arrow right there!" the first pointed at the bloodied arrow on the ground next to them. "This is plenty!" he said, humoring the group. He kicked it up and caught it in his hands, then handed it over to the one who said he wanted a weapon.

"..."

The old retired soldier slapped the arrow out of the younger one's hands and grunted. He reached into his pockets and pulled out a small knife. It was barely any longer than his fingers, but it was better than nothing. "I always keep a weapon on me... And it's a good thing I do."

The hybrids got up from the ground one by one, glaring hungrily at the crowd of people. They lost their minds and no longer saw them as fellow people but as prey.

"This is going to get messy."

"Hey!" Iris managed to push her way back through the crowd just in time to see the fight break out. No, it wasn't a fight. It was a one-sided slaughter. The ex-soldiers and mercenaries stood no chance against the hybrids at all. They were all taken out in just moments. Blood spilled everywhere, splashing the grounds and the clothes of the nearby pedestrians.

The group didn't even last a minute with the last one falling after a few seconds of making their stand. "No..." Laying in pieces on the floor were the men who saved her. Only now did she realize how wrong she was, thinking that she could save the infected. Iris put her hands together and called upon her magic, "Burn them!" Nothing happened.

"What?" Iris tried again and shouted, "Go!" but got the same result. "Where?" She felt a strong tingling go throughout her body. It felt like her entire body was being electrified. She shivered, feeling the jolt go through her body.

"W-what was that?"

"You there, move!" someone yelled at her.

"Huh?" Iris heard a growl and looked just in time to see one of the hybrids slashing at her. "Oh!"

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