The Beast God

Chapter 2: The Cost Of Claws

Damon woke to the taste of copper. His mouth was full of blood—not his own. The memory of the previous night flooded back: the hyena-creature’s hot breath, the crunch of bone beneath his claws, the rush of power as its essence fused with his own. He sat up, his back against the crumbling wall of an abandoned subway station. Daylight filtered through cracks in the ceiling, casting jagged shadows over the graffiti-scarred walls. His hands trembled. No, not hands. 'Claws'. Black, curved, and sharp enough to slice steel.

He stared at them, bile rising in his throat. This isn’t me. But the itch beneath his skin argued otherwise. It had started hours ago, a restless energy demanding release. He needed to hunt. To evolve.

The streets were quieter now, the initial chaos replaced by a predatory silence. Damon moved like a shadow, his enhanced senses tracking the faintest sounds: the skitter of insect legs on rooftops, the drip of acidic sap from mutated trees. He’d learned quickly that noise attracted the worst kinds of attention.

He found the first body near a gutted convenience store. A man, half-eaten, his face frozen in terror. The bite marks were clean, precise—something with surgical teeth. Damon crouched, ignoring the stench, and pressed a claw to the wound. A flicker of instinct made him lick the blood.

Birdlike. Fast. Venomous.*

The information flooded his mind like a corrupted file. His pupils dilated, adjusting to unseen ultraviolet trails left by the killer. New prey.

He followed the scent to a narrow alley, where the walls oozed a gelatinous mucus. There, perched on a fire escape, was the creature: a humanoid thing with featherless wings, its mouth a vertical slit lined with needle teeth. It gnawed on a severed arm.

Damon didn’t hesitate. He leaped, claws slashing. The creature shrieked, its wings flapping wildly as it dodged. Too slow. His second strike tore through its ribcage, spilling organs that writhed like independent slugs. The creature dissolved into crimson light before hitting the ground.

The energy hit him like a drug. His wings—no, wait, he didn’t have wings—

Pain seared his shoulder blades. Two bony protrusions erupted, tearing through his shirt. Membrane stretched between them, thin and veined. He collapsed, gasping, as the wings unfurled fully. They were grotesque, bat-like but translucent, shimmering with iridescent toxins.

“What… am I?” he rasped, flexing the new limbs. They responded sluggishly, as if part of him rebelled against the mutation.

A whimper cut through his panic.

Damon froze. At the alley’s mouth stood a girl—no older than twelve—her face streaked with grime, clutching a stuffed rabbit missing an eye. She stared at his wings, then at the fading bloodstains where the creature had died.

“You’re one of them,” she whispered.

“No,” Damon said too quickly. The wings twitched, dripping venom that hissed against the pavement. “I’m not.”

The girl backed away. “Liar! They told us—the monsters look human sometimes!”

They. Survivors. A tribe. Damon’s pulse quickened. “Who’s ‘they’? Where are they?”

She bolted.

He followed her, wings dragging awkwardly until he learned to tuck them tight. She led him to a subway tunnel sealed with scrap metal and barbed wire. Voices echoed from within—arguing.

“…won’t last another week!” a man shouted. “We need to raid the Flesh-Tenders’ stash!”

“And die like Marcus did?” a woman snapped. “Their ‘stash’ is a trap. They want us to come.”

Damon pressed against the tunnel wall, listening. The girl slipped through a hidden gap in the barricade. He hesitated, claws retracting involuntarily. They’ll shoot me on sight.But the itch beneath his skin worsened. He needed to know what they knew.

He scaled the tunnel wall, wings scraping concrete, and clung to the ceiling like a grotesque moth. Below, two dozen survivors huddled around a flickering fire. The girl whispered to a bearded man with a makeshift bandage around his arm.

“A winged one,” she said. “Outside.”

The man paled. “Harbinger?”

“No. It talked. Like… like a person.”

The group erupted in fearful chatter.

“Silence!” The woman who’d spoken earlier stood. She was tall, her hair shorn to stubble, a jagged scar running from cheek to collarbone. “If it’s not a full Harbinger, we can kill it. Jax, Eli—gear up.”

Damon dropped from the ceiling.

Chaos erupted. A man swung a pipe at his head; Damon caught it, the metal crumpling in his grip. Another survivor fired a handgun—bullets tore through his wing, but the holes sealed instantly, smoking.

“Stop!” he roared. The command came out distorted, his vocal cords vibrating with a subsonic growl that rattled teeth. The survivors froze.

The scarred woman stepped forward, a machete in hand. “What are you?”

“Someone who can help,” Damon lied. His wings twitched, betraying his impatience. “I’m looking for the Flesh-Tenders.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“They have something I need.” Their leader’s head. Their knowledge. Their mutations.The hunger filled in the blanks.

The woman spat. “You’ll die like the others. The Tenders aren’t human anymore. They’re farmers growing people like crops.”

Damon’s claws lengthened. “Where?”

She smirked, bitter. “You’re already too late. They’re coming here. Tonight.”

The survivors let him stay, though they barred him in a rusted train car. “Try anything, and we’ll fry you,” the scarred woman—Anya—warned, pointing to a car battery rigged to the door.

Damon didn’t sleep. His body buzzed, veins glowing faintly as he processed the winged creature’s DNA. By midnight, he’d mastered the wings, folding them seamlessly into his back.

Shouts woke him. Red flares lit the tunnel.

“They’re here!”

Damon burst from the car, ignoring the sparks from the battery. The barricade was breached. Flesh-Tenders poured in—not mutants, but worse. They wore human skin like robes, their true forms pulsating beneath: tentacles, chitinous plates, eyes on stalks.

Anya fought viciously, her machete hacking at a Tender whose “face” peeled back to reveal a lamprey mouth. She was losing.

Damon moved.

His claws shredded through Tenders like wet paper. He absorbed one, gaining temporary armored scales. Another dissolved into his veins, sharpening his vision to thermal. The survivors stared, equal parts awe and terror.

Anya cornered the last Tender, a spindly thing with too many joints. “Why attack us?” she demanded.

The Tender gurgled, its voice a wet collage of stolen larynxes. “The Beast God… hungers. You’re… feedstock.”

Damon ripped its head off. The body dissolved, but not before he caught a flash of its final memory: a warehouse district, towers of flesh grafted into greenhouses. The farm.

Anya grabbed his arm. “You’re one of them. A Harbinger.”

He wrenched free. “I’m what "works”.

“At what cost?” She pointed to the girl, huddled in a corner. “You think she’ll live long in your world?”

Damon’s claws retracted. For a moment, he saw himself in her eyes: a monster, wings dripping venom, skin shimmering with stolen traits.

Then the itch returned, worse than ever.

“Stay alive,” he said, and took to the air.

The farm was worse than he’d imagined. Human bodies hung from hooks, their skin grafted with fungal blooms. Tenders moved among them, harvesting glowing organs.

Damon landed silently, wings dissolving into his back. He’d need stealth here.

A voice stopped him.

“Ah. The Beast God’s favorite.”

A figure emerged from the shadows—a man, if not for the antlers growing from his skull and the dozen eyes blinking along his neck. He smiled, teeth like shards of mirror.

“You’re early,” the man said. “The harvest isn’t ripe.”

Damon lunged. The man sidestepped, unnaturally fast.

“Tsk. You still think like a human.” The antlered man gestured, and the ground erupted with tendrils that pinned Damon. “The Beast God wants you to understand. Evolution isn’t survival. It’s art.”

He pressed a hand to Damon’s chest. Agony erupted as his ribs cracked, reshaping.

“You’ll make a magnificent masterpiece.”