This Thing Don't Look So Tough

[China]

Afrátos’ vertical maw flicked open, the fang-lined cavity splitting his face in half as the hovering eyeball within his skull rolled and darted around madly for a moment, before settling as he remembered where he was. That room in the building they’d entered to sleep. He’d curled up on master's bed, since she hadn't been here to claim it, whilst the other two—Yuuka and Cirno, he remembered them being called—had each taken one of their own. Glancing across at them, they both seemed to be fast asleep.

Stretching his many limbs and arching his back, Afrátos yawned quietly, his eye drifting around lazily as he did… he felt as if he'd been sleeping for weeks, or even months… though he couldn't have properly articulated that thought himself, lacking as he did any knowledge of even the most basic of units of time. His eye drifted lazily around as he did this, and after a moment it occurred to Afrátos that he had teeth.

Yes, this came as a truly shocking revelation to him.

He blinked… which, with his head in its current form, meant snapping his mouth shut and then immediately opening it again. The thing was, before he’d gone to sleep, he hadn't had a mouth to close; the entire front section of his face had been shorn away. Reaching up to touch it gingerly, he confirmed that his head was in fact fully intact. It would seem that in this strange, new world, he was able to heal at a much faster rate than he had been able to back home. Looking down at himself, he realised that it wasn't just his face that was fixed; other than the permanent, heart-shaped hole on his left breast, and the network of cracks that bordered it, every scratch he had taken had vanished. He was whole again.

He would have grinned if he could, but sadly his vertical mouth could not form such expressions… he paused. He closed his mouth, focused for a couple seconds, then opened his two, pupil-less, exterior eyes, his face having reverted to its basic, mouthless state… though that didn't last long. An instant later, a horizontal line formed on the lower half of his head, then his jaws split apart, exposing his rows of jagged, razor-edged, blue teeth.

“Yes-yes, feel much-very good to smile-smile… now, me-me go find master, see-see if she also had big-long sleepy time.” muttering softly to himself, his whispery, breathy voice so soft that even the gentle breathing of the two sleeping on their beds could be heard above it, the Ceramic Beast slipped almost silently from the mattress onto the floor, creeping along on all four hands and two feet, he made his way to the door and twisted the handle. It creaked loudly as it opened, but a glance over his shoulder told him that neither of the master’s tasty-looking, bright-coloured-hair friends had stirred.

His mouth closing and vanishing from sight, he slunk out into the hallway with predatory grace, peered around for a moment to check that he was alone, then rose up to stand bipedal, though he still leaned pretty far forwards in this position, his twin tails held out behind him as a counterweight, to keep his centre of gravity in place, to keep him perfectly balanced.

Despite this, he still almost crashed to the ground a second later, after having taken but a single step forwards, when a sudden pang of intense hunger tore through his gut. He stumbled, hissing slightly in pain, his lower-right hand clutching at his stomach, as if simply touching it could somehow appease his hunger.

After a moment, though, Afrátos managed to straighten up a bit and somewhat regain his composure, though when he next spoke his tone was more than a little panicked and fearful, “Master need-must wait. Much sorry-sorry, but need find-find food first, me-me got eat something, quick-fast before starve.”

So saying, the golem loped quietly down the stairs towards the ground floor, his pace increasing slightly when the first traces of the scent of blood reached his non-existent nostrils. His grin sprung back to life. Hunting for food was all well and good, but finding piles of fresh meat simply lying around—and judging by the scent’s strength, there must indeed be a lot of yum-yums there for the taking—certainly made things a lot easier.

Once there, in the building's entrance hall, he looked around and marvelled at all the lovely meat before him. Blood was everywhere, and a giant snake lay crumpled on one side of the room, whilst near a hole in the floor, severed limbs were scattered, alongside a two-leg's body. Nearer to him was another corpse, it's chest reduced to a gruesome mess of shattered bone and shredded muscle. Over by the entrance—which now lacked a door… the object in question having been somehow thrown across the room to where it now lay, soaking in blood—four yum-yums were talking amicably to master and her friend. The golem heard them saying something about congratulating Clownpiece and Dane for overcoming a powerful criminal gang, wanted for multiple cases of homicide, who had thus far eluded all attempts of the local authorities to locate them… not that Afrátos had even the slightest of inklings as to what this nonsensical gibberish could possibly mean, of course. He tuned out their inconsequential babbling pretty quickly.

None of what the two-legs said ever mattered. They loved to hear the sounds of their own voices so much that they were happy to just talk on and on and on whilst all this perfectly good food grew cold. Well, if they weren't going to eat their prey then the golem would happily volunteer to help them out in that regard.

Falling into a crouch, he prowled across the floor on all six limbs, over to the closest meat. As he approached, he recognised its face; it was the one that had gotten between master and her friend. Good. He was sure that its death must have pleased the Hell Fairy greatly. Now all that was left was to clean up the mess.

He reached out with his upper-left hand and grasped the body around its left elbow, then lifted it and leaned forwards, stretching his maw wide, before clamping his jaws shut about halfway up the yum-yum’s left forearm, and biting all the way through the bone with a loud crunch. He swallowed, then realised that the room had gone silent. He looked up at the six of them by the entranceway.

The four foods were looking at him, horror-stricken, as if they couldn't even believe that anyone would ever do something so uncouth as to steal another's meal. It was a little rude, the Ceramic Beast conceded, but they clearly had a lot still to learn about the way the world worked. It wasn't always the case that the strong survived whilst the weak died out; scavenging for food was a perfectly acceptable means of getting by, even if not the most dignified… it was especially effective when predators grew so overconfident that they didn't even bother to protect their kills. Master was wincing a little as she looked at him, as if embarrassed that he had taken their food without asking... which did make him feel a little guilty... but as always, his hunger overrode his every other emotion. Dane alone didn't seem concerned at all. The Fast One’s visage was utterly blank, his emotions unreadable... that two-legs really creeped Afrátos out.

Realising that he should probably try to appease those whose meal he was partaking of, the golem lifted the corpse higher and fastened his jaws around its left shoulder this time, before crunching down through bone once again, separating the half-eaten arm entirely from the rest of the body, which flopped lifelessly to the blood-drenched floor, landing with a slight splash that spattered the bottoms of Afrátos’ porcelain limbs with droplets of sanguine liquid. The flesh and bone he’d chomped off had already vanished into the mysterious nothingness that formed his insides in the time it took the Ceramic Beast to cast his gaze down upon the corpse, which now lay on its front, head turned to one side, the one eye that he could see from this angle wide and staring.

His mouth closing and disappearing once again, Afrátos was able to speak regardless of this, as he held out the remains of Myst’s arm towards the Hell Fairy like a peace offering, “Master want-like eat some-some of food? Is much tasty-nice.”

The star-spangled girl cringed slightly and started to shake her head, but before she could reply, there came a sudden, wild battlecry as the four foods—roaring curses at the ‘man-eating abomination’—loosed the bolts from the crossbows they each carried. Afrátos shrieked with fright, dropping the disembodied limb as three of the bolts found their mark, punching little holes in his hollow shell as they sped straight through him, barely slowed at all. All four of the shots buried themselves in the wall behind the Ceramic Beast.

Hissing, he took a step backwards, before realising that the four yum-yums were vulnerable for the moment, as they hastily tried to reload their weapons. He grinned savagely. Master was yelling something about calming down and not fighting, but the others weren’t listening to her, so Afrátos opted not to either. She was probably just worried that he’d get hurt… which was reasonable, he supposed, but with a golden opportunity such as this, how could he not take it? Master would understand after it was all over, he was sure of it; when he offered to share his kills with her, she would be more than grateful enough to overlook a little bit of him not doing as he was told. Afrátos darted forwards, maw opening wide and arms outstretched to either side, talons at the ready.

And then, all of a sudden, there was Dane. He looked battered and bloodied from the fight he’d clearly just been involved in, yet even so, still he managed to somehow dash in front of the foods before Afrátos could reach them, his two swords flashing. Before the Ceramic Beast had even realised what was happening, a flick of the shortsword had sheared his lower-left hand from his wrist, and a powerful, downward sweep of the longsword was but a moment from slicing him in twain. Spinning and leaning to one side to evade, Afrátos managed to avoid being slain outright, though his master’s friend was much too fast for him to avoid the blow entirely, and both of his tails were severed less than a foot from where they joined his body.

Wailing in dismay and tumbling forwards—suddenly finding himself terribly off-balance—the golem scrambled towards a window and scratched madly at its handle for a moment until he managed to swing wide the pane of glass. Just before clambering out, he turned to glance back at the sound of raised voices. The foods were aiming their now-loaded weapons once more, but seemed reluctant to fire with Dane and Clownpiece between them and Afrátos. For her part, the Hell Fairy was fluttering by her friend’s side, gripping him by his left bicep and shoulder, and trying to tug him back, whilst the golem’s three severed body parts flopped weakly on the blood-drenched floor.

That moment’s hesitation very nearly cost him his life. In an instant, the swordsman had shrugged off master and shoved her aside. Still, his face betrayed not a hint of his thoughts; he was utterly focused on the task at hand. Afrátos quickly turned back to the window and began wriggling through. In but a second or so, he’d managed to haul through everything above his waist, but then came a horrible shattering sound, along with a feeling of greatly reduced weight, and the Ceramic Beast shoved hard on the window frame, launching himself forwards.

He would have simply kept racing straight onwards if he could have, but on the other side of the street there was an almost sheer wall towering above him; he may have managed to climb it if he took his time, given how sharp his claws all were, but not when in a rush. The street stretched on to his left and right, but he knew he couldn’t hope to outrun the Fast One for long on a straight path; he was doomed.

Turning to face his demise head-on, he looked back at the window, expecting Dane to have already slipped through it and to be but a moment from finishing him off. Instead, however, the two-legs remained inside, staring at Afrátos, his expression now an amalgamation of irritation and consternation. The golem realised that Dane wasn’t actually looking directly at him, but rather down at his legs instead, and so he followed his master’s friend’s gaze… and immediately froze in shock, his painted-on, amber eyes bulging with surprise.

Afrátos had no legs.

It seemed as if that breaking noise he’d heard must have been the swordsman crudely shattering more of his statuesque body, leaving him with almost nothing below his waist. Despite this, somehow, in his desperation to get away, the golem had managed to take to the skies. It only took another second for the two-legs to come to terms with this new development, though, and then he was climbing through the open window himself, still not giving up on snaring his prey. Whimpering in terror, Afrátos willed his surprisingly magical body to get him out of there, just as surprised to have discovered himself capable of this sort of thing as the swordsman was, and with absolutely no idea how to control this strange power. Luckily, it seemed amenable to his desires, and so he found himself rocketing upwards.

It was just as well; but a fraction of a second after he’d cleared the area, the swordsman reached his former spot, swords cleaving through the air where he’d hovered. Dane looked up, and the golem grinned hysterically down at him. At this height, the wind roared, snatching away any sounds he made almost before Afrátos himself could pick them up, never mind the two-legs standing far, far below… which was good, as the half-giggling, half-sobbing noise that the golem made was hardly the sort of thing to strike fear into the hearts of enemies.

Afrátos had simply tried to sate his hunger, and that lunatic had completely lost his mind and practically smashed him to pieces, whilst master had done little more than object loudly. It was at last clear to the Ceramic Beast that whatever many other redeeming qualities she may have, the Hell Fairy was simply unable to keep that Fast One in check… for all that he felt safe and secure around her, he could see now that that was but an illusion; at any moment, her favourite swordsman could inexplicably flip out at some utterly random thing and mercilessly butcher any poor, helpless, hungry people who happened to be nearby at the time. If even something as simple as eating would set him off, there was simply no hope of getting by in his company.

The Ceramic Beast turned away from Dane and the building, willing his cracked and abused shell of a body to carry him off to safety. It heeded his wish, thankfully, though he had no idea how or why he was able to do this, and that scared him almost as much as the Fast One. What if his body remembered that it didn’t have wings mid-flight? What if he could only fly like this because of some strange magic that covered this place, and as soon as he left these two-leg buildings behind, he’d crash ignominiously to the ground? Or it could have been his food? Could Myst have had some sort of magical power that allowed her to give anyone who ate her the ability to fly… until her meat was finished being digested? There could be any number of possibilities, and even being such a magnificent genius as he was, Afrátos knew he’d never have a chance at figuring out which it could really be, never mind how long the effect would last…

The safest thing, he decided, as he sped past, high above the buildings beneath him, would be to set down somewhere safe once he had escaped that horrid place and try to find some scraps of food to make do with whilst he rested yet again, to once more heal up his many wounds… he really needed to make more of an effort to keep out of harm’s way from now on; the golem was coming far too close to death entirely too often for his liking.

It wasn’t long before he left the two-legs far behind, and at some point it began raining, washing the blood from his body… but he was tiring quickly. Either the strange magic that had allowed him to fly was now wearing off, and that was making it progressively harder and harder to remain airborne… or perhaps it was simply the case that Flying was much more tiring a thing to do than running… Afrátos had never been a bird until now, so he wouldn’t know.

Thankfully, before he had tired himself enough to drift off to sleep in mid-air, and inevitably dash his body fatally against the grassy plains below, the edges of a dark forest loomed up before him, huge fir trees seeming to appear suddenly from a bank of mist, almost as if they hadn’t even existed a moment before, but had then been spat out into reality by the whim of some mysterious being like the one that had somehow brought the golem himself to this incomprehensible place.

Regardless of the suspiciousness of their abrupt arrival, Afrátos was much too tired to care, and swooped gracefully down towards the largest pine he could see—some small voice at the back of his mind noting that the less conscious thought he put into flying, the more smoothly it seemed to go—colliding with its trunk gently enough not to further damage his body, his talons sinking into the wood, then scuttling around its upper boughs to find one thick enough to rest upon. When at last he had located a suitable spot, the hungry person wrapped his limbs tightly around it and promptly fell fast asleep, too exhausted from all the flying about to even muster up the energy to look for food.