Chapter 43: War

43

Monique feels the seismic pounding of the Great Beast's blows as its fists crash down upon Jo-Mel's shield. It takes her a moment to rise back up through the depths of her inner voyage.

She opens her eyes to find Jo-Mel struggling to hold her enchantment.

With each blow that the beast rains down upon the Breaker, the shock wave causes the Earth to shake and the neighborhood immediately surrounding them is torn apart as burst gas mains sporadically erupt into flame.

Mass panic grips the neighborhood as police, emergency and fire crews, already stretched thin due to the building collapses caused by the earthquake, are dispatched to the scene. The area residents, unable to flee in their cars because of the buckled and shattered streets, run as fast and as frantically as possible, attempting to distance themselves from the ongoing destruction.

None, in their mindless panic, seem to even acknowledge the supernatural presence of a treetops tall demonic being in their midst. As if they were somehow either blinded to it, or, horrifyingly, much too comfortable with its possibility.

The fires and the intermittent explosions kill dozens in the first instances of the Great Beast's assault. As the Earth opens up beneath some, many more die from the flying debris or simply from the force of the shock wave itself.

The beast pays no heed to the panic she'd sparked. She was growing angry at the persistence of the Breaker. With another vicious hammering, though, she cracks the enchantment just enough to work her wickedly talon-ed hands inside and rip it apart with a savage, triumphant roar.

Jo-Mel falls to her knees inside, dazed and dizzied from the beast's powerful blows.

Monique could feel the rush and swirl of heat as the fires erupt within her. She began to rise up, to meet the beast in her cloud form.

The Great Beast snatches her back down, though, and pins her to what remained of the floor in the partially destroyed house.

“Oh no,” she says, bringing her slavering, snapping jaws close to sniff at Monique's breath, her flesh, her sex.

“We'll have none of that, little felani.”