Board Thread:What Would You Do?/@comment-34263048-20181201061225/@comment-36855838-20181201191633

Tale of three, part 01

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I stand flabberghasted, my old War buddy, he had been the one who'd saved me that night.

That war was no land, it was hell on earth, and he had clearly let the gnarled roots of hatred and fear dig deep into his soul.

His eyes swiveled wildly, and he seemed to flinch at the sight of every mamono who passed us by.

His coat was holed, and sparsely patched.

His beard had grown long, and not out of his desire, for it was ragged, tangled, and unkempt.

His hair was carefully braided into thick ropes, which sat close ti his scalp.

Suddenly, he looked through the wall, and backed away, screaming.

He crumbled to the street, moaning.

"I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die!"

I checked in the storefront window, and sure enough, a succubus had seated herself at the cash register, and begun to flip through a magazine.

I had never learned where it came from, his blinding sense of mana.

But whether from natural talent or augmentation, he had been extremely sensitive to the ambient energy of others, he could tell friend from foe easily, and he had been rigorously conditioned to sense monsters as foes.

I had long possessed a similar sense, having recieved it experimentally, as part of the war effort, many had, but none were as "observent" as he.

He had been unable to sleep whenever a monster was within eight miles, and had ruthlessly stalked them down and killed them to find rest.

Under his guidance, we had carved a path of blood through the fields and valleys and mountains, and our fully experimental group were hailed as war heroes until the signing of the treaty.

Many had clamored for our executuon, many sisters, mothers, and daughter had been slaughtered in our night raids.

Whether fortunate or not, a vast majority had advocated for our rehabilitation instead.

It had taken many years, but most of us had been slowly reconditioned not to kill upon sensing powerful sources of mamono mana, it had begun with Alps and Dhampirs, who had the mos human-like mana of all, and slowly but surely we had worked our way up.

When the urge to kill no longer haunted our dreams and clawed at our apetites, we were allowed to go free, two men had relapsed, and were under house arrest "until further notice".

They had been assigned Yeti as wives to keep them docile, and from what I had heard, it had worked.

Another ten had paired off with their counsilors, of which my brother was one, she had fallen into the habit of drinking his blood, but from what I could tell, he hadn't relapsed from it.

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Then there was me, having showed no outward signs of aggression, I was spared from rehabilitaion, and been released to the general public.

I had married almost immediately to a minotaur, and having feared what would happen I had told her to remove every blade from the house.

She hadn't listened, and when her friend, a Succubus, came to visit, I had. ..

I had. ..

I had killed her.

Or at least, I had tried to, luckily, my wife had gotten the knife out of my hands after the third stab.

I had needed to be tied down, and then she barely got her friend to a unicorn in time.

After that, she had heeded my advice, stowing all the blades in a safe and burying them in the back yard.

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Now I saw the man who had led us, curled like a baby in the alley, a woman walked up slowly, long curly blonde hair paired with her outstretched wings and her swaying tail.

She wore a long yellow sweater and baggy gray sweatpants, surely to hide her generous curves, this was an Alp, I had no doubt.

She knelt next to him, gently stroking his hair, and he whimpered, his head nuzzling into her hand.

"Come, Rufus. You need to get up, I finally got us a cottage out of town, we can chat about the war, about how well we fought, you remember me, right, Rufus?"

He slowly stood, leaning on her for support, clutching at her with everything that he had.

As they walked by, I decided to follow them, and as we walked down street after street, I saw the telltale scars at the base of her wings and tail, thin pale bands where she had tried many times to cut them off of her body, only for them to sprout fresh.

This woman had been in another war party, but had trained in the same place as Rufus and I, judging by the freckles which dappled her face, her name had been Joseph, but as a nametag haphazardly clipped to her sweater proudly proclaimed, had been changed to Iosefka.

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End of part 01.

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Author's note: Both the J in Joseph and the I in Iosefka are pronounced like the Y in Yacht.