Silver Hound, Black Moon

For Gods Sake

Grey hound Sif stood with stoic grace, stepping in front of Havelock so he knew she was there with him, even if it meant filling her vision with nothing but Caroline. She had certainly seen bigger monsters before -The kraken just one of them- but Caroline had something about her, the way her muscles twitched at every impulse, the way that her skin seemed taught and ready to tear. She was strapping the power of a god to a body of flesh and both were giving out. Sif was a machine herself, a channel of death, alive to kill, but Caroline was something else entirely, an unliving creature, animated to exist, defying nature with every breath she needn't even take. If Sif was born to do evil, was Caroline made for the sake of it?

"What's that look in your eye?" The looming terror tolled "That little speck at the back of your gaze... It's seething with killing intent. What's that feeling boiling up inside you, willing you by force to kill me. Hunger? Fear?"

"Pity," Sif responded, the word gliding off her tongue so easily

Thunder boomed in the distance, lighting the cloudy sky for just a moment, and arcing a beam of visibility across Caroline's face... or rather, her lack of one. It appeared torn at, scratched at, and wilfully mauled, as if she'd tried to claw it off her head in a fit of self-hatred. Her living visage appeared just as mangled as Lancard's deceased.

"Alright then," she grinned through serrated teeth

The whistle of metal through the air stung Sif's ears and warned her of an oncoming impedance. The hound leapt to her side, narrowly avoiding the cleave of her axe, but still letting herself be sprayed with chunks of road kicked up by it. As soon as her feet touched the ground, Caroline struck again, lashing out with a powerful hook of her fist. Sif weathered the blow with her sword, letting the sound of meat against metal ring out and signal to Havelock that the fight had begun. He dashed forward, opening fire on the vein filled wrist of the sea queens arm, blood sprayed and loose threads dangled like silly string, but there was no deviation in strength on her part. She turned to him and hissed through her teeth.

"Insect,"

The demon grit and clenched her wrist, spraying sickly, bile filled blood in Sif's eyes. She used the opportunity to bat the dog away with barely a slap, then set her sights on Havelock. A volley of shots did nothing as he fired them into her chest, the monster not even flinching. She closed the distance, cutting the space between them and Caroline began to reach for the blunderbuss strapped to her back.

"Lets see how well you sting as a fine red mist,"

Havelock holstered his pistols with a spin and reached for his own repeater, a quickdraw of rifles. While Caroline's meaty implements reached behind her bulbous back, Havelock swiftly unclasped the gun from his own and hip fired for her hand.

BANG!

In a flash and spray, her black-wrapped, left index finger was gone.

CHIK-CHIK!

Caroline wailed in anger and fired spittle from her mouth, dropping the weapon and leaving it loosely slung over her shoulder with a homemade leather strap. She hadn't time to ponder her loss, her mind instead filled with tantalus rebukes, most of which involved tearing him into sinew. With thundering boot falls, she lurched forward, but before Caroline could scrape her axe or cleave his head, Havelock fired his grappling hook, not at a distant building to retreat, but next to her head, letting it zoom behind her.

"From behind!" he barked to Sif, who understood without question. Sword raised, she deflected the heavy head of the grapple as it flew towards her, redirecting it with even more force straight into the base of Caroline's spine and gleefully wincing as she heard its internal mechanism dig into the bone.