She blew in like a hurricane, a maelstrom of dark mana, chasing her own screams as a tide of blood flooded through the barricade.

  Temjun and I both moved, me to the side, him toward the front. I was glad the big man seemed to have an instinct for tactics as the time for explanations and plans was long past.

  My tendrils almost vibrated and my heart hammered faster in my chest than it ever had before.

  As time slowed and the blood banshee finally tore her way through the barricade and flowed into the lab, I realized exactly how the elixir had been enhanced. I was balls deep in a Mana Rush, the Wyld power forcing my senses and reflexes way beyond the pale. I drew in a breath as Temjun met her shriek with his roar, the bloody mist thrown back by a wave power I'd only heard about in old Northman songs.

  I punctuated his howled Uruk Warsong with a blast of lead and alchemical fire. The fancy Scaras rounds hadn't done shit to her but as the mundane metal impacted her gore soaked cloak of animated blood, it scattered, revealing the pale and scarred woman beneath.

  She had just long to get a good look at the five foot length of steel Temjun was wieldin' before he swung the improvised weapon with the force and precision of a master.

  Boom!

  Forces collided in an eruption of chaos. It had all happened in an instant I knew, but thanks to the Rush I was living seconds like lifetimes.

  I saw her arm shatter as she used it in a desperate block. Every instant of her pain a was fodder for the freezin' cold that roiled in my guts.

  It was the most powerful sensation I had ever experienced, and the most sickenin'.

  Such glee had never been my way. No matter what she was now, this monster had been born a human. Several. She had suffered, and fought, and lived, and lost, and now she was here, in pain, and I was...

  I was drinkin' it in like a man dying of thirst.

  The world warped as I rode the delayed Drift in to fire a point blank blast at the already wounded demon. The shot sizzled where it tore holes in her flesh, sweetinin' the agony that bleed from her richer and thicker than any mana or blood.

  As she tried to slash her good arm out to counter my flank, Temjun brought the hammer down again, the barest traces of lifeforce clinging to the makeshift club as he did.

  Splat!

  Her body flew, ragdolling to impact against one of the slabs the big man had stacked. Might not have mattered much as a barricade but it seemed to word just fine as the anvil for the half-Uruks hammer.

  Click.

  I stepped in-

  Boom! Boom!

  Two more shots, a Drift women cleanly between, my reward the sweet song of her impending death. At some point the pain of the blood banshees wails had faded-

  No. It had just changed.

  The Rush and the Drift, and the Elixir, the Mana, the Entropy, the cold. It was joinin' together into a very different song that I had heard above in the town. Something colder, and older and filled with hate. I felt myself open to it as I reloaded and the giant battered the stunned demon like a butcher dispatchin' a pig. Each blow sent her closer to the edge and seemed to feed that cold hunger in my guts. Fed it until it grew and started to flow up and up, movin' to take more of me, to spread the terrible song that had replaced my own.

  She'd die.

  It was inevitable.

  And I almost regretted it. I wanted to savor every moment that she bled and screamed, I wanted to crush each and everyone of the spirit trapped in her black maw beneath my own tendrils. I wanted to pluck them free and consume them as my own to-

  My teeth clenched and a shiver ran through me as i felt that cold touch my heart, touch it and begin to make some change.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  No!

  Some part of me, some bit that was still good rallied against whatever bullshit in a bottle had me enjoying the pain those six tortured souls. I felt the icy cold in me thaw, felt the madness I had been listenin' too fade, along with the Rush and nearly all the power it had imprated.

  I froze mid-reload, failed to cover Temjun's heavy swing.

  Tentacles of blood and mutated flesh exploded from the fading mantle of entropic magic that protected the banshee. In an instant all the eyes on her twisted form were open.

  Her jaw dropped, the maw opening wider than possible.

  I watched, almost too slow to dodge the grasping, groping limbs that shot forward seeking my heart.

  I moved, dancing through the onslaught on the barest fumes of my nearly faded rush, but Temjun, he was plain too slow for any of that.

  The giant tried to dodge back, tried to strike out at the dozens of bloody, bladed appendages that sought him. But he was just too damn slow.

  One wrapped around his wrist, another caught his throat, a third punched deep into the muscle and fat of his stomach. The big man grunted in pain, his eyes going wide as his improvised weapon slipped from his fingers.

  I fired, aiming for the tentacles that restrained my ally, and rode the Drift out of the lethal tangle that had sprung up all around me.

  One shot, and a half tentacles were severed. But another brood quickly took their place. The blood banshee drew her limbs back as she rose from the wreckage we'd pinned her to. Her body was broken and bent, but a mad light shone in her eyes. For a brief moment I saw something human there, something afraid, somethin' tired and in pain.

  I felt pity.

  And I knew that this was the moment, the one I had been waiting for, and the one the banshee had feared. We had to finish it before she could recover. We could not let her run.

  Dim as I was, her weakness to iron and lead had been made terribly clear. Likely she shared some lineage with the lords of the Entropic realm, Winter Wryms and the twisted cousins of elves and Wyld fey.

  I could think of only one way to finish this, half recalled lore and a prayer were all I had left, but it would have to be enough.

  "Grab her!" I bellowed as I fired and rode the Drift in close.

  Temjun, to his immense credit, only hesitate a blink. Then he dove forward, his free arm reaching for the woman who'd and was rapidly meltin' into a torrent of flowing blood. The massive man snatched her up in his big hands, and as I had hope the iron manacles that still adorned his wrists burned her.

  She screamed, and he winced but the half-uruk held fast, her attempt at fleeing temporary foiled.

  I charged in, dropping my scattergun and drawing the ugly old hunk of rusty, salt stricken iron I'd found on the beach so long ago. I figured if the knife was good enough to make my rune and bound the magic in me, well then, maybe it was good enough to fuck up the magic in her.

  As I closed the distance her arms formed again and slammed into the man holding her, Temjun howled in agony as they pierced his arms, his neck, his back and chest, but he held strong.

  What came next was almost... intimate. I grabbed the banshees jaw, her black, bloodshot eyes locked on mine as I jammed the rusted blade between her scarred breasts.

  I wanted to look away, wanted to refuse the sight of the horror she'd become, but I forced myself to watch as the cold iron and the blood magic warred for control.

  It was a short fight.

  The ancient iron won.

  I watched true despair invade the black pits of her eyes. Watched them give over to the pink and green, brown and blue of all those she'd been made from.

  I saw them again, for a moment, sacrificed, murdered and left to stare blind at the opulent vaulted ceiling above.

  Then the last of the blood magic failed. Whatever magic made her, broke.

  As she dissolved the spirits of the lost grabbed and tore at her widening maw until it split open, and a blast of mana rushed on out.

  "I'm sorry." I whispered as her body fell to the ground, the rusted blade still stuck fast in her crumblin' breast.

  Temjun gave me a strange look, heavin' and bleedin' as each and every one of the trapped souls circled the space where she'd died. They gathered and whirled and slowly faded into the faint whisper of a freezing gust of unnatural wind.

  We stood in silence for a second, then Temjun sat on his ass with a crash, "She wasn't very nice, was she?"

  I laughed.

  Not cause any of it was funny, but because if I didn't laugh, if I didn't make a little bit of noise, well then I might have just gone and cried.

  "No," I said wiping something wet from the corners of my eyes, "she wasn't the problem big man," I sighed and sat next to him. My legs were shaking and my body was tired, and despite the power of the elixir and the magic of the gun, the exhaustion was catching up.

  "The real monster was," I waved at the lab around us, at the mansion and the broken town above, "whoever the fuck thought any of this was a good idea."

  Temjun just sat, the nodded sagely, "I knew the mayor was a buddun," he said thickly as he pressed a hand over his bleedin' neck, "I told mama that, she just never believed me," he turned and looked me dead in the eye, "I think we should go kill him, Mister Roche"

  I looked the big old simpleton in his small blue eyes, "Well," I sniffed and moved to stand before offering the giant an unneeded hand, "I think we just might, Mister Temjun."

  He smiled as I helped him up.

  "Good."