Let Tonight Be a Snug Night

Like poison laced with honey… it felt great as it was addictive, especially when the flow of the warm blood was being pumped up full of painful yet sweet brittle little shards of pink crystal. It all came like they were crumbling down into his body through the warm flesh under the scab on the young man's blistered and swollen back connected directly to his beating heart. Softly unraveling, the sensation of like being swallowed up whole… so painful yet so sweet this sensation was… this sensation that he felt not for the first time like it was going to melt away before this heat. His face flushed so red, increasing his pulse; the medicine was about to work so it seemed… this blessed disease… building his body that was once so faint and so brittle… and yet now, so powerful,

Such that could be spoken through his eyes glowing in a fiery pink flame; after all, every eye represented the window of the soul… and the soul of the young man now was as if speaking directly to that beast before him… more accurately, that freak of nature; of a large winged, and three tailed wolf who stood menacingly before him, whose enormous body cladded in many thick layers of ice acting as its seemingly impenetrable armor from the outside. That was the kind of beast who always breathed out frosty mist of ice through its long and large muzzle, towards which this man was dragging his steps on top of the slippery surface of the lake as he felt chilly no more, even when bathed in that beast's frosty breath… he grabbed for another crystal seed and shattered it,

"So, it is Animals of Anomaly, eh? That really is unfortunate. Though I knew how rare your kind is… but since you're getting in my way, please forgive me… for I shall have your head to be cut loose,"

That which was once coating the young man's left enclosed palm, was now seen flowing out of his fist through narrow gaps of his fingers… the fiery flame of pinky-red shade began to coagulate around his clenched hands before crawling up towards his elbow and up towards his shoulder. As if having no viscosity; it was as if this pink flame possessed its own will, turning itself into a hot pink fluid-like flame that glowed and shaped itself after the shape of the young man's whole left arm. Such was helping as if to reshape his left arm by seeping itself through the young man's skin pores and then into the flesh, before straight into the bones and straight up bulging it bigger to make it appeared bigger with noticeable increase in his muscle mass and an obvious anatomical change of his whole left arm,

A massive change that one was, and becoming something that a normal human should not possess, as the pink liquid of fiery flame slowly came back crystalizing itself once it had done concealing the young man's whole left arm, changing his whole left arm into something a whole different breed – an arm resembled to that of a monster. It was big as it was stretched long… his left arm which had now been fully crystallized was growing wider than his shoulder blade and stretching down till it reached over his lower knee and almost touching the ankle,

Such was his left arm now – that arm of his was no human's; not only it was a colossal one, such an arm was too, overgrown by many sharp thorns while his fingers had been turned into monstrously large and long five bladed claws that were smeared by the same fiery flame of pinky-red shade. Such was his left arm now – that arm which was no mean to rip apart the flesh of his foes only, but to encase them as well in the pink flame… injecting the heat of the pink crystal directly into their flesh through these five bladed fingers, and melted the said flesh away,

A very handy hand for sure, especially if its handiness was to be applied to a foe encased in thick layers of ice. A foe who had been wary since then, ever since seeing such a hand made its form again before its light brown eyes; the big wolf that encased in ice, durst not to move from where it stood silent as the dead. It instead kept growling and snarling, showing its aggressive face with bared teeth shrouded in frosty mist… as though ready to attack, yet there was something as if holding back its feet for doing so. Likely so because the sight of that young man's left hand, somewhat muddled its beastly instinct, telling itself not to approach with gratuitous… because such a sight, apparently, dug up the long-lost memory inside its beastly mind… about the past memory with which it could not reconcile itself,

"What's wrong? You aren't going to attack?" asked the young man to that three tailed and winged wolf encased in ice, smiling sweetly, "See, you can be a good boy after all. Let there be no more bloodshed, alright? And Let me tend for the woman. She's not you guys' meat. I'm sure you'll be capable of finding it somewhere else,"

Attempting of a peaceful end, the young man was uttering peacefully his offers; should the wolf before him not understand a word coming out of him, about this—practically—a biased offering for it may benefit only to him and that woman; and even though the wolf's beastly facade still exhibited gnawing hostility, the young man took the bait out of the slightest hint alluding the wolf's unwillingness to do the first strike even after so much aggression it showed just earlier,

And so, he concluded that his drastic change in physical appearance of his left hand, had engendered sufficient fear into that wolf's instinct; to scare away that wolf, for wolves were generally very intelligent animals, who were caring, and above all… devoted to their pack family. And as their tendency to become submissive when other animals demonstrated dominance; fear for the safety of their pack family thus pushing their luck no further and would simply run away from the threat,

Or so that was what the young man thought… mastering the knowledge of 'how to survive' in the winter wilderness. The knowledge was true—well, most of it—so much so for acting so menacingly before the wolf by using his body as a stake… he meant to make a wager on the outcome of an event that he knew very unlikely to occur,

Because no matter he looked upon it, the wolf before him wasn't just an usual wolf: having three tails with two of them encased in ice, a pair of wings encased in ice as well, and an ice-encased body towering high before him… wasn't just an ordinary animal either… but Animals of Anomaly; and to make things worse, their kin could also understand, even if a little, human's speeches. And the young man's offering for a peaceful solution without any bloodshed, in their understanding, such an offering was meant to look down on them. And they were the kind of animals bound by honor, and were craving an honorable end… they would not bow their heads first without bloodshed first,

In the end, the underwhelming wariness that the ice-encased wolf sensed through its own animalistic instinct, inwardly telling itself not to mess with that human before its light brown eyes… such eventually got beaten down by its own sense of honor… accepting not itself to be no more than an annoying hindrance for that mere human,

Began to spread its ice wings therefore, stretching long its neck and lifting high its head up to the skies full of the star clusters, and then started to howl… a ravening howl,

"…!"

Not only it was an ear-blasting sound; a deafening howl coming out of that ravening wolf frenzied no doubt because of the young man. So loud and so forceful the howl was, so destructive that it instantly deformed and shattered the upper layers of the frozen lake no doubt because of a shock wave traversing so quick and so devastating out of that ravening wolf's mouth. Like some kind of invisible fast-moving walls and unseeable blast of derechos, such was eventually striking the young man… almost losing his footing, and about to be thrown violently backward if not for his left arm that helped him to block and absorb most of that invisible force,

In the end, such force was capable only of staggering him; startled the young man albeit a little. But still, the environmental damage had been done. The frozen surface of the lake was no longer a hazard because of its glossy yet cold and slippery surface, but because of now it had become uneven with the ground level. Many fragments of the shattered ice were jutting out and as if towering into the skies because of that howl… hence no place from his feet to step onto and his body to squeeze through without those massive ice spikes piercing the soles of his feet and penetrating his whole body. In the end, he could do nothing but to force himself falling back a few leaps backward to find a better footing… to a place with less severe damage, which was quite a distance far back, as though that ice-encased wolf had purposely created this massive enough distance to keep itself far from the young man,

"So a peaceful solution is really not possible, eh?" as he heaved a dysphoric sigh of somewhat woe, the young man expressed a disappointment mien to himself, "Thought I could drive it back by turning this left hand of mine into this… monstrous-looking… and might as well scare it away. Haaa… what was I thinking really… to think it would be a good idea; to think this would scare the hell out of that honor-bound animal. Instead of scaring him away, I unintentionally provoked him. So I have to deal him somehow… and be quick… because I might haven't got enough time,"

In the midst of uncertainty, blaming himself certainly for his own lack of determining the broad outcome, for this outcome he did not foresee. Should have foreseen it long since; should have known that the beast before him wasn't just an ordinary Wild Beast but their other brethren of a complete opposite; of which many of his kin called Animals of Anomaly – animals unlike the others were capable of thinking, reasoning, and were bound by a sense of honor… leaving him no choice but to rightly serve that ice-encased wolf with his flaming claws, even when his mind was muddled with another matter and his glowing pinkish eyes were diverted entirely from the supposed main focus right in front of him,

To sneak a peek into the corner of his gaze; to stare with a hopeful gape, hoping that the young damsel… who was still lying listless down on the frozen lake, who was only a few more steps away before her reaching his arms… was still unharmed.

And so, words were then hummed through his mouth, about to thank the gods for their protection; for those five starving wolves hadn't done anything to her impuissant body; hadn't land a bite on her impuissant body… just yet. Yet oddly enough, those hummed words of thanking the gods had yet to come out; should he be grateful or awe in horror… instead something worse that he already expected to be happened, or at least something worse yet in a cogent way… yet this something weirdly deviant that he caught in his sneak peek instead, something that added only to his bafflement,

"What's going on there?"

Apparently, the damsel wasn't in distress at all after all,

"W-what… what the hell is that?!"