#HFWU inspired me to start thinking abt one of my OCs again and bing bong here we are - projecting his powers onto Nico lol

[happyk44]

Nico grabbing an enemy by the wrist before they can strike down on him and it would be easy to steal the life from the pulse beneath his fingertips, turn the air in their lungs into his own, but there's a myriad of fighters around him and one life isn't going to power him enough to blast away them all when he's already so tired as it is. He wishes he was bigger, stronger.

He squeezes his hand tight around the wrist he holds back. It shatters. Their sword clatters to the ground. It's not a human noise they make - well, it is, they're human.

Until they aren't. Until boney spikes rip through their clothes, emerging sharp and dangerous from their spine. He squeezes harder. The skin around their skull ripples, like bugs crawling underneath. Then bursts blood and spit and flesh as their jaw unhooks. Teeth pitter-patter onto the ground as larger, sharper, whiter fangs emerge violently in their place.

Their face splits just above the nose as another jaw grows around their eyes, as their esophagus snaps and elongates upwards, as blood and flesh and viscera pour like an unholy flood, arms tearing, legs cracking, flesh hanging off bloody bone, nothing but a monster left behind.

Nothing but a nightmare.

It croons at him. The soul beneath is twisted, ugly, beautiful, spread thin across their new body, new bones, like the veins of their now still and battered heart. It pulses like the lungs torn by their feet once did.

The world has silenced itself in the emergence of Nico's new pet. He squeezes the new wrist, the bone firm and clean beneath his touch.

"Defend me," he whispers.

It croons again, shuffling back on four feet. The world quakes as it turns. The world shivers as it regards them, predator to prey, standing larger than them all, and far more dangerous as they ever recalled it to once be.

And the world screams when it lunges.