Frenzy

Canon: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic.
Characters: Ren Kouen, Razol.
Words: 1949 words.

Warnings & Triggers
  • blood & gore

    It was impossible to say that any Fanalis had a great deal of patience. Captain Mu was the only exception, but even he had his moments. It was in the blood of the ancient beasts that originated from a completely different world, after all.

    And one who definitely lacked a lot of patience was the fairly short (but not shortest) of the red-haired soldiers; Razol, who was one of the strongest in the Fanalis Corps serving the Reim Empire. She didn't even try to hide it. That didn't mean that she was angry all the time, though. No, she was one of the more cheerful ones.

    But when she did get angry, then, well, things tended to get quite bloody.

    Not that she couldn't show restraint, and right now, that was pretty good. She couldn't entirely recall, now, what it was that had set her off. Not with fists curled around shattering skulls and brains, legs knee deep in intestines and blood spattering almost every spot of her golden armor.

    She couldn't recall the reason for her fury, not caught up in the moment as she was.

    The anger was still bubbling inside her, the only thing she knew was that she loathed, hated these people that first had come after her, then had tried to run. No one was able to escape her, absolutely not a single one, and screams was torn off along with their heads, pleas of mercy bypassed as limbs was forcefully rearranged.

    At first, she didn't notice she got new company.

    But she soon detected new scents, the scent of prey that had come right into a predator's hunting grounds.

    Her eyes was wild, her sharp teeth was bared in a threatening snarl and they was the only thing on her not covered in blood. Her flashing whites and her large eyes. There was some confusion, when one new presence raised a hand to stop the small-fry from advancing on her, right into their deaths.

    She regarded him carefully. With hunger. With thirst for blood.

    He smelled of strength. Of countless battles won. Of an unnumbered amount of foes overtaken.

    Her lips curled upwards, and when she leapt towards him, fast as lightning he was barely able to dodge in time. But he had avoided her destructive fist, and she stared in bewilderment as a wall crumbled around it. She growled, and spun around toward him. Watched him more intently.

    There was something familiar about him, that slowly registered in her mind, and made it less clouded with death and blood and intestines.

    He was careful not to turn his attention from her, wary of the situation. When it came to brute force, there was no one that was capable of overpowering a Fanalis. Least of all a Fanalis on a rampage to kill. He had seen that much on the battle field, and he was glad that he was allied with her superior, and that she knew it. She was figuring it out, at least. He could tell, by the shifting light in her eyes, by how her expression narrowed, and by the slight loosening of her stance.

    If she didn't realize who he was, and instead was in any way provoked into attacking him again, he might have her at his throat. And that was not anything that he desired; he had seen her rip out spines and lungs through throats with only the strength of her teeth, just some minutes ago.

    He would not show her his throat in a sign of submission, the way inferior animals in a pack did their betters. Perhaps it would be wise to, perhaps it wouldn't. It was hard to tell. He wasn't intenting on doing it, however. On the other hand, he had no intentions of riling her up more, and was silent for a long time. Not that it was hard for him to be silent, as he was not as prone to talking as some of his siblings, and then it was, in a macabre way, incredibly interesting to see a Fanalis run on instincts of battle, rather than on thoughts of logic.

    It took a long time, and the excruciatingly slow retreat of his men for her to calm down enough.

    "You've caused quite the mayhem," he said, after he had seen her eyes clear. She shook her head, hair - which had come loose sometime during the battle - flying around her as she did. As if she was trying to clear her mind of the rampaging fog inside it. Or as if she was trying to get rid of some of the blood her hair was soaked in. She rocked back and forth between heels and toes a few times, watching him. Perhaps wondering if it was alright to take her eyes off of him for a moment. But her instincts was sharp enough for her to be able to counter any attack, even if he did decide to break the sudden deafening sound of silence and lack of screams. She looked away, and looked over the street and backalleys leading off of it.

    The walls were painted red all the way up, pieces of broken humans spread all around, a carpet of body parts covering the ground.

    The smell of blood was so thick it was nauseating.

    "Hmn," she looked back at him, over her shoulder. "Seen worse," she claimed. He wouldn't be surprised if that was true. She didn't seem to be the dishonest type in the first place, and anyone knew that Fanalis were the most violent out of anyone, even before they got started. "Good to know." Because it was. It was good to know things about your allies, and most of all, it was good to know how far their violent behavior stretched. "What caused this?" he asked, and she raised an eyebrow in his direction, before giving the site another look. "Don't remember." She actually shrugged, as if she had done nothing more than kicked a hole in a wall. Which, granted, she probably did often enough. She probably had a lot of practice in the art of casual shrugs.

    However, his eyebrows had shot up in an imitaion of her expression. "With an outcome like this, one would expect you to at least recall the cause." She made a face at him, pulling up her upper lip and showing her teeth at him as she stepped closer. "I might not feel like it," she said, and he tilted his head to the side just a small fraction. Even if his men, if they had been present, wouldn't have been able to see the motion, he knew well enough that she would catch it. "explaining myself to you." She was face to face with him in a moment. Or as close to it as was possible, considering the great difference of height between them. She wasn't as tall as most her brethren, after all. And he was a tall human.

    "You have caused a scene in our capital," he countered, and she growled, the wall behind him cracking under the grip of her hands.

    "Maybe you're better off not knowing." she remarked, and he eyed her. Tried to figure it out without her telling him, but with hot-blooded creatures such as the Fanalis, it was hard to know. "It seems you managed to work up quite a temper," he simply said, and she grinned sharply. The look was close to the crazed one he had seen on her face before, like the one when she had happily shoved a hand into a man's chest and crushed his heart as if it were just a cluster of grapes.

    She raised up on her toes, pulling him down by the front of his clothes, leaving traces with drying blood and human pieces, and her red-dyed face really was just inches from his. "Oh yeah? And does Your Lordship know what'll happen if I really get pissed?"

    He looked over at the carnage she had caused, only briefly looking away from the woman. "I am fairly sure that I can guess," he assured her. He wouldn't like to see it, though. Except for research, but his biggest interest was in the past, not the madness a tribe could fall into at the sight of blood.

    She let out a barking laugh when she noticed him looking, and she pulled him down further. Her cheek against his as she moved to move her lips up close to his ear rubbed off some of the blood and smeared it on his skin. "I wonder what your blood taste like." Her voice was dark, but it wasn't entirely threatening. He glanced toward her face in thought, but couldn't see it until she pulled back.

    This, she did with a surprised look on her face, because he had gripped one of her wrists and had pried her fingers loose from his clothes. "Perhaps another time, Miss Soldier." he said, and she grinned again, expectation glowing dangerously in her eyes. "Watch it, General, or I'll corner you and bite." Somehow, he got the feeling that she didn't only mean the deadly bites she could deliver so ruthlessly.

    "Why don't you give it a try?" It was more a suggestion than a question, and this time when she laughed, her eyes glistened with amusement. "If I do, you've only yourself to blame." She let go of his clothes, and put her hands on her hips as he brushed off what blood and human debris he could, and arranged his robes back into place. "I am quite aware of that," he said, and she chuckled. It now sounded completely different, void of any hint of the gruesome scene just behind her back. "Really. I bet you're as insane as we are."

    He shook his head. "You can call yourself insane if you like," he said, wiping his face clean. "but I am not." She nodded. "Suuuure you're not."

    As he opened his mouth to argument against her claims, she jumped up on a rooftop, as silent as a ghost. She surveyed the scene she had caused. "Oh man." She rubbed her cheek and caked blood peeled off, leaving a pale spot of skin visible. "and cleaning's such a fucking pain."

    Sighing, he brushed the last wrinkles out of his clothes. "Just this once, I will send some of my men to clean this up." He turned his eyes up to her. "Technically, you did us a favor." Or half a favor, at least. They had, he had figued out from what pieces of clothing and items that he could glimpse, detected that they were bandits that had been terrorizing his people. Not that she had to decorate the walls with them, but at least they were rid of one menace. She looked at him in confusion. He shrugged, another imitation of her. She grinned, and laughed. Why she found his small action to be so hilarious, he didn't know, but he dismissed it as she uttered a thanks. She made a bow; a fist over the heart and a closing of eyes. Just a brief one, and not as deep a proof of respect as he had seen the Fanalis Corps show towards Captain Alexius, but for now, it would have to be enough. Either way, she was already gone before he would have had the time to tell her to show respect better.

    No matter now though. He could hear people close in and he didn't want civilians to stumble upon this scene. It would be more than they would be able to stomach, he feared. It was time to get back to work.

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