5 Vicious No-Scales

[Hostility detected! Temporal slowdown unavailable, please quickly choose a song from the presented list or request a specific effect for the system to randomly pull from.]

To my relief, the grating voice I had become grudgingly accustomed to had been replaced by the feminine voice I had heard in Jasyn's memories.

"Uh, let's just go for the one that offers the best boost." I said.

[Warning! User does not currently have access to *Continuous Play*. Symphonic Battle Spirit will automatically enter a 10 minute cooldown once the randomized track has reached its conclusion.... Warning! The user does not currently have access to *Impulse Counteraction*. The user will very likely be directly influenced by the stats that the selected track affects.]

"You think I've got time to listen to all of these fucking warnings?! Hurry up and start the damned song!"

My Brood-kin had begun to edge closer, their hesitation beginning to wane as they finally came to the conclusion that them outnumbering me could become a lethal advantage. A screeching sound echoed in my head as a song began to play.

I felt a strange pull in my body as my muscles began to tense, my arms shivering, not from cold, but the sheer amount of flexing they were doing. I could feel the blood rush to my arms and legs, a sense of power swirling in my stomach.

There were no words to this song, and I realized it was an instrumental that I vaguely remembered hearing Jasyn play in his room from time to time. A high, loopy, swirling guitar seared itself into my brain, and I took a heavy step forward, planting myself, preparing to lunge forward.

But *I* hadn't told my body to move at all.

[Warning, *Impulse Counteraction* not found!]

I felt the desire to crush everything in front of me, and I rushed forward, slamming straight into the nearest Salamander. I felt my own body ache as our heads collided, the rough feel of his scales against my skin like sandpaper. He stumbled backwards, bumping into two of the others, and sending them all to the ground.

My muscles felt awful, like something was yanking back and forth on them. Worse yet, when I tried to hold myself in place, I failed. I swooped down on the Brood-kin I had slammed into, and -

*Sclorp*

My hand went straight into his chest, the thin, black scales on my fingers piercing right through his own scales and between his ribs. I felt my hand grip tightly around a warm, pulsating object. I looked at my own hand as I wrenched it out, staring at the small, red, still beating heart.

I was expecting to feel some sort of disgust with myself, but the feeling never came. I watched, bewitched as my Brood-kin fell to the ground, his eyes locked onto his own heart, hands outstretched, groping desperately in the open air as if bringing the organ back to his body could save him.

As the light left his slit-pupiled eyes, my own gaze moved to the rest of the Salamanders that had only just gotten to their feet. Undeniable fear was prevalent on their faces as they stared at their now deceased brother.

I could feel my fingers squeezing tightly around the heart in my hand, wet blood dripping through my fingers and plopping on the ground with a gentle sound that felt like hammers against iron in the dead silence.

A dull thudding echoed in my ears, and for a moment I thought the heart in my hands was still beating. In reality, my own heart had begun to pound vigorously as the adrenaline of my first kill set in.

The sensations were myriad.

First, the disgust I had been expecting to feel finally began to set in, though it was nowhere near as powerful as I had been anticipating.

Secondly, a sensation of deep, powerful self control flooded my stomach, as though nothing could possibly shake me after what I had just done.

Most surprisingly, however, was this odd sense of anticipation in my chest. My body knew that this wasn't the only creature that I would hurt, or even kill, and it was looking forward to it.

Was this just the impulse from the heavy metal music playing in my head, or a natural reaction from this foreign body I had been reborn into? Maybe, I pondered, I was more like Jasyn than I understood.

That last one was unlikely; he and I had lived together for our entire lives, and even then, we had grown and evolved in different directions. Surely that was enough to prove that we were different people despite the circumstances of our birth, right?

I, of course, didn't have time to ponder the philosophical and psychological differences between myself and my twin brother, as there were still three opponents looking to end my life.

My body seemed to agree, and, under the influence of the song in my head, I shot forward once again, halting just in front of the nearest 2 Salamanders. My hands reached out, but, rather than aiming towards their chests, my fingers squeezed around one side of each if their heads.

When I pulled inward, their heads collided with a muffled thud, and I felt something snap, almost like a thick, dry tree branch. Both of them collapsed, unmoving. There was no resurgence of disgust this time, just a cold indifference as they lie there.

There was only a single opponent remaining at this point, and something deep in my chest told me that now wasn't the time to take a break; the music in my head had begun to slow, evolving from its rapid pace and smoothing out into a gentle bass solo that pulled at my emotions.

I felt my chest heave as I turned my head to the last of my brood. Our eyes met, and he collapsed back onto his ass, trembling.

"Sorry, pal, but right now, it seems like it's you or me, and I'm damn sure not gonna let myself die twice in the span of a few hours."

Even as the words left my lips, I had leapt behind him, sliding my hands around his head and twisting, a sharp *pop* jerking through my arms as his neck snapped.

I had lived through a lot of dangerous moments in my life, but, until now, I hadn't even hit someone, let alone kill them, and now, I had ended more than one life in short measure. The sensation of disgust had dwindled into nothing, but the feeling of power and confidence remained, as though embossed upon my very soul.

It felt good, too good.

I turned away from the corpses of my brothers, my eyes drifting towards the cause of this massacre: the shadowy Salamanders sat watching from behind the arena walls. I noticed that there was no uniform color to them. Scales of red, green, white, blue, and silver were common, and two larger Salamanders that seemed likely to be the ones in charge had even more unique colors. One with vibrant purple scales was staring at me with undisguised interest, and another, with shining golden scales watched me, almost bored.

The purple one hissed at the golden one, using a plethora of loud, sharp sounds that only vaguely sounded like language.

The music in my head stopped dead, replaced with something far more familiar to me than anything I had experienced so far.

[Ding! Dialogue Tree is now available! Activating Automatic Translation.]

"It is very interesting to me, Tarkus, that the whelp you fathered with that human slave is stronger than the others of his brood. Perhaps that woman was even stronger than you realized." Came the raspy, inhuman growl from the purple Salamander.

"As I'm sure you can attest to, Aterix, it has been recorded in the past that No-Scales have a tendency towards vicious acts when one of the parents is human. As for the woman, she managed to survive birthing a Salamander egg, when very few creatures could do so." The golden one, Tarkus, responded.

"True enough, ah, it would seem that the boy is staring at us. I doubt that he understands our words, but I wonder if he's as intelligent as he is powerful." Aterix said, tilting his head towards Jacksyn.

"Oh I understand you just fine." Jacksyn said, but the words his brain intended to say left his lips in the same garbled bunch of guttural noises that the two before him had been conversing with.

Both of them jerked their heads around to look at him, their eyes widened with shock, and, if Jacksyn was right, fear.

"Yeah, so, is it normal to pit your offspring against one another moments after birth in a bloodsport or was there something special about me and my 'Brood-kin'"? Jacksyn asked.

"...Because you and your Brood-kin are my children, it was necessary for you to fight until one remained, due to an agreement that our race had with the Sirens." Tarkus explained after a moment of contemplation.

Jacksyn nodded as he listened to the words, then, when he had digested this bit of information, promptly collapsed onto the ground beneath him, exhausted and unconscious.