after chase and Andrew wiped out the goblin forces attacking the village, they were looking at the carnage for a good while before speaking.
"We've gotten much stronger now" Chase said.
Thanks to combining with Vantriel, his enhanced demon physiology as well as gaining access to mana, he wasn't even tired. He was moving so fast
He cloak had flown from over his head and his horn's elongated on accident.
Andrew stopped siphoning the blood from the goblin corpses, they were all dead now, he flicked his hand, sending the tiny ball made of goblin blood from behind his back onto the destroyed bodies.
As he did, he saw Chase with his hood off.
"Hey, before we get back to the gate…"
Chase wondered what he was talking about before touching his forehead. "Oh"
Andrew sighed. "Yeah. Those are definitely bigger than last time."
Chase ran a finger along the curve of his left horn, feeling the jagged ridges where it had split into new growth. The tips were still warm—hotter than his skin—and pulsed faintly with the same red energy crackling in his veins. He hadn't noticed them lengthening mid-fight, too busy carving through goblins with claws that left afterimages in the air. Now, the weight felt wrong. Unbalanced.
"Fear not, I came up with a solution last night at the half guild half inn" Chase said, closing his eyes and focusing. As he did, he felt his horns shrinking back into tiny stubbles again.
Andrew stared at him. "How did u do that?"
"I just did" Chase shrugged.
Andrew rolled his eyes so hard his head tilted back with the motion. "That's not an answer." He kicked a goblin skull aside, watching it bounce across the trampled earth. The smell of iron and ruptured organs clung to the battlefield like a second skin. "You're telling me you can just... retract them now? Like claws?"
Chase flexed his fingers, watching the blackened tips of his nails extend and contract with a thought. "Not exactly." He tapped his temple. "Horns are bone. Bone doesn't bend. But mana?" His grin showed too many teeth. "Mana *reshapes*."
"Yeah, this is why I prefer to just keep a mask, too much hastle" Andrew said. It was on his face at all times, with small eyeholes. "Anyway, we should probably get back behind the gate, Damian is for sure jealous, and we have to extort that old timer."
As they walked back, Chase spoke. "I have to ask, just in case you were joking back there. You think me turning you was for the best?"
Andrew paused mid-step, his boots crunching on a shattered goblin femur. The mask made his silence unreadable, but his shoulders tensed. "What kind of question is that?"
Chase kept walking, kicking a stray dagger out of his path. It skittered across the blood-slick grass. "The kind you don't answer with another question."
Andrew exhaled sharply through the mask's filtration slits—a habit left over from when he still needed to breathe. The scent of rot and iron flooded in anyway. "You really pick the worst times for deep conversations." He nudged a disembodied goblin hand aside with his boot. "Right after a slaughter? Really?"
"Hey either that thing inside you killed all of us and used your body as a puppet or this. I know what outcome I prefer. Even Damian would tell you that."
Andrew said, looking back. "But beyond that, i can fo blood magic now. Not to mention everything else i can do."
Chase smirked, stepping over a goblin corpse still twitching with residual nerve impulses. "Yeah, but you still can't outrun me." He kicked off the ground, blurring forward twenty paces in less than a second before stopping abruptly—the displaced air rippling his cloak.
"Idiot" Andrew sighed.