Heroes to Hunted

A sense of dreaded foreboding crippled my nerves as I approached the charred room with bated breaths. "No... No... It can't be..."

Just around the corner, I heard the tone of a disturbingly familiar and measured voice. "Huhhhh, this suit is a goner... What a pity."

'No... It can't be!'

Every inch of bone, every thread of flesh, and every cell in my body howled for a full retreat.

'I should probably run...right?' The smallest fibers of my being tugged on my consciousness. They begged me to cut Joseph loose and run from the room. Yet, a maddening curiosity overpowered my senses.

I tossed my logic away, discarding it into the winds of intrigue.

A grotesque, pungent stench of grilled flesh permeated the air. The odor assailed my senses with increasing strength as I turned the corner.

What I beheld next... It was a sight beyond the understanding of sanity.

"What the... What the hell?" I murmured, staring at a manifestation of creation's madness, an abomination of nature. It was the visage of a true fiend of hell.

The dust's grand explosion had flaked and annihilated its flesh, leaving the creature charred beyond recognition.

Chunks of stripped skin hung low from its abdomen, adorning its waist like ragged cloth ribbons. The raw, pulsating tissue beneath glistened with the few strands of light that pierced into the cell.

The strong odor of decay and guts intensified as I observed a revolting affront to existence itself. The repugnant smell seemed to transcend the physical realm, saturating my being with its nauseating presence.

I staggered backward a pace, holding a clutched hand to my lips, twisted with squeamish nausea. An inner war was waged within my flesh as a rising sensation of burning acidity rose in my throat.

The column of curved bones on the left side was exposed, its jagged edges dripping with the blackened ooze of the creature's blood. Despite the damage, the organs writhing beneath the ribcage still sputtered with life. They twitched and squirmed in a grotesque dance of purpose.

Amongst those organs was a pulsating violet heart. Its veins were translucent and webbed across the creature's body. They were pumping a disturbing display of radiant energy.

Its breath came in ragged gasps, the sound of air rushing through shattered ribs with a sound akin to a macabre whistle. The skin around its mouth was blackened and blistered as if seared by a branding iron.

"That's...Vincent? A fullkin is capable of this?" I mumbled in horror, unable to comprehend the twisted abomination before me. It was as if my nightmares manifested themselves into a single, monstrous mass of flesh and bone.

The living corpse looked at me, its eyes as yellow as the burning Sun. They seemed to bore into my very soul, filling me with a primal terror.

"Oh, you're still here; I assumed you would've fled." The creature smiled, strands of the skin left in its cheek tearing and stretching to expose a pearly white jawline.

"I must say, I'm a tad disappointed with what you've done to my attire. Yet, I suppose we should be grateful enough of it survived that my modesty is covered!" it chuckled, rattling the organs inside.

"How?" I paused to take a hard swallow, my mind dizzy with the truth of Vincent's apparent immortality. Yet, I completed my question. "How are you still alive? How is that possible?"

"You really thought I was dead?" Vincent asked, raising an eyebrow. "It takes much more than that to kill one of my kind."

I gaped in astonishment as I witnessed his wounds miraculously heal before my very eyes. The flesh contorted and squirmed as it knit itself back together, seamlessly fusing the once-dangling skin flaps to his body and erasing any trace of injury.

In due time, he stood as the epitome of vitality and rejuvenation. His fleshy vessel was impeccably chiseled, as if untouched by any prior injury or flaw.

'Their regeneration, it can heal beyond critical wounding?!'

Vincent swaggered and reached for his cane as the process finished. He wrapped his fingers around one end and lifted. Despite the scorch marks, it remained mostly unscathed.

I took a deep breath, regaining enough composure to make my usual quips. "Well, I guess I can't blame myself for hoping," I joked, attempting to suppress the panic that had overtaken me.

However, I couldn't shake off the surge of angst that swept through me, leaving me uncertain of my next move. My gaze flickered back and forth between the monster standing before me and the knives I had left behind by the lantern.

'Should I make a run for them? Attack him now, hand-to-hand? Give up and accept my fate? How can I even win?!' My thoughts were a jumbled mess, and for the first time in a long time, I had no plan.

"I'm in over my head," I muttered to myself as my confidence crumbled under the weight of doubt and fear.

"Indeed you are," Vincent replied with a sigh. His fingers coiled tightly around the cane's curved silver end, and he tugged on it, ripping free a thin, rapier-like blade.

The deep sound of metal grinding on metal as the weapon left the hilt filled the cell.

'The cane is a sword... Of course it is,' I scowled, my fear briefly replaced by annoyance.

Vincent flourished the weapon with elegance, its blue-silver luminance glinting from the torchlight. Then, in a shocking twist of events, he turned the sword onto himself and swiped it down, slashing his opposite hand's wrist and repeating the action with the other.

"Oh, shit!" I dove behind cover, expecting a blood spear akin to what the woman had done in the manor.

However, there was none.

'What?' Confused and alarmed, I peeked around the corner to see Vincent standing alone within a pool of black liquid.

'What is he doing?' is what I thought, but a moment later, I had my answer.

Vincent, after a brief delay of gathering a stockpile of onyx energy, his wounds bled not a thickened ooze but a swirling black mist.

The shadows fell to the floor, shifting and steadily advancing up and outward until darkness enveloped the room, fully blotting out and extinguishing any lantern light.

In those final moments before Vincent's visage was entirely consumed by the veil of midnight-hued blood mist, his piercing yellow eyes bore into mine. "Prepare yourself," he warned. "I won't be holding back anymore."

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