8. Thomas ?

If the first journey to Limbo had been painful before, this was excruciating. Behind his ear-drums Thomas heard the piercing roar of Nergigante and felt every spike on its upper back (Nergigante plows its face into the ground when it charges as it did earlier) skewering through him, like clear through him, he could see spikes sticking out the front of his shins, thighs, and abdomen.

But strangely, he wasn't dead, at least he didn't think so. If anything this pain pissed him off,

'Where is the source? I need to destroy it, break it, eat it!'

Thomas let out a growl of his own and grimaced.

'Ouch, that's weird, were my teeth always that large?'

He cut his lip with his own dagger-like fangs. Suddenly, like a wave of morphine coursing through his veins the spikes through his arms started to break off and fall, taking their pain with them. In their place was left just patches of blackened, hard skin. Has his head always been this heavy?

'What is this? This can't be good?'

"AAAAAAARGH!"

Never before had Thomas's mind felt so scrambled, disorderly, or more accurately, noisy. Like a wave the breaking of spikes spread from their roots and spread outward, he could feel new protrusions from his skin, and he felt, oddly stronger. But with the blackening and transmogrification of his skin came something much worse than the mere physical pain he felt before. He was RAVENOUS.

Suddenly his stomach felt like someone had driven a stake through it, and then created a vacuum of space in there.

'I don't care about any pain anymore, but I MUST EAT!'

Collapsing to his knees under the pressure of this hunger he crawled in the static. His fingers finding an oddly great amount of purchase with the ground.

"Close Your Eyes!"

"What? Who is that?"

Thomas could have sworn he just heard a voice in his head.

"Do As I Say Or You Will Die!"

'With my current situation that's not hard to believe at all.'

So Thomas did as the voice commanded. And the world exploded in color around him. No longer did he see mere shapes, he saw waves, and something in him instinctively knew what the origin of those waves were.

"FOOOD!"

The most potent one was just about 50 yards away.

'I can make that! I must have that!'

Pushing against the ground Thomas did his best to stand up.

'Odd, did my fingernails grow? Whatever, I Need FOOD!'

Scraping his new, longer, apparently rock, hard fingernails against the ground Thomas shambles up and forward.

'Just one foot, then the other.'

Slowly, Thomas walked his way over, and threw himself in the portal.

Sunlight exploded in front of his closed eyelids, and with it his heart sank.

'No...'

The source of that fragrant smell was apparently nowhere near him, from the frequency of its scent-waves Thomas could tell that.

However, nearby in the dark he could see a minor wave coming from a bush.

'Anything will do, I MUST EAT!!!'

Drool fell from Thomas's mouth as he lurched in over to the bush with its unsuspecting subject.

With a roar he reached out and pulled it out, digging his new fingernails into the shoulder of whatever it was. The creature squealed, must be a pig, as it was drug out of its hiding place by a slobbering Thomas. Opening his eyes, Thomas sank his teeth into the beast's neck. Oddly enough even though he could tell it's pitch-black all around him his vision was perfect. In his jaws was a pock-marked man-pig creature. Slowly the squeals became fainter as the life drained from it and it lied limp on the ground in a pool of blood.

'Probably tastes the same, whelp, no time for table manners!'

Thomas thrust his face into the fresh corpse of his prey and ripped out flesh and gore. Oddly enough this helped, not much, but the pain was no longer excruciating.

After about half an hour Thomas finished up his man-pig, leaving nothing to waste. And the hunger subsided, partly, it still hung at the back of his mind, taunting him, torturing and cluttering his mind.

'I need to find the source. It will fill me up, I'm sure of it!'

But in the meantime, am I still human?

Thomas looked down at his hands and arms. They looked like dragon arms and claws, except covered in spikes instead of scales.

'Wait a minute, am I...?'

Thomas looked down at his legs and discovered more of the same. His shoes were completely punctured and destroyed by claw-like nails and his legs and foot were all black and covered in spikes.

"No, nononononono!"

Thomas ran over to the blood-pool he had created on the ground and looked into it. To his relief, his face looked human, if you ignore the two twisting horns coming out of the top of his head.

Still hyperventilating, Thomas made a quick goal of bringing his breath under control.

'In...out,

In...out,

In...out'

He then heard a surprised-sounding squeal behind him.

Turning Thomas immediately saw the source.

Before him stood another man-pig, except this one was bigger, had some sort of leather armor on, and carried a ball and chain.

Thomas smiled a big-toothy grin,

'I was just thinking, I could really use a snack for the road.'