The sound of technology shattering against the ancient and mystical engraved marble floors of the Axis Mundi brought Kei’taro out of a seemingly deep stupor. He drug his eyes to the floor to see the broken remains of an old music device resting at his feet. Yet even this look could not save him from the horror of seeing Limand’s body, decomposing and bone exposed, before him. He considered that the body may have belonged to a trespasser, but the sense of smell Kei’taro possessed would not allow him to believe such a falsehood
He felt the presence of his father next to him, in all his ever powerful glory, yet still possessing none of the familial warmth and empathy one would expect of the father to a saddened son.

“Sigmund…,” the older man whispered, his voice catching in his throat. Kei’taro stirred at this notion, silently wondering whom Sigmund was. Before he could ask, his father, the Spirit Beast King, had already stolen away to the spirit world.

That was several months ago, Kei’taro had no idea how long anymore. He walked with a sort of aloofness, none of the kind hearted swagger that once accompanied him on his jaunts. Windswept hair, long unkempt swung backwards behind his head and began forming the tell-tale signs of frost. Another scent had brought him back to the hated cold lands that were inhabited by Drom, and his bitch of a wife, Pikatok. He had carried nothing with him, except his impossibly durable staff, Wukong. Tears stung at his face, as the increasingly chilly weather began dipping into unbearable extremes.

He didn’t know what to say when he arrived, expecting the same ill fated back and forth the two had reluctantly shared. Then it hit him, the air and cold hit different, it felt and tasted different. He could have sworn that even the sight of it was different. Yet what was more important was the way the smell hit him. The same smell from the Axis Mundi, the smell of a terrible assailant.

RyuKyu, an incredibly large Lion-Dog bounded forward first, and Ket’taro was no further than a few steps behind him.

Horror.

The beaten body of Pikatok, limp in the hands of a man he had never seen before, caused his stomach to turn over. The instincts of every animal he held within him, be it as tattoo or part of his own flesh, kicked into high gear. None expressed a need to flee, his body tingled with the urge to attack. Even his solid metal staff flew from his hand and transformed into a powerfully built and ornately dressed monkey, as regal and commanding as Kei’taro was wild and rugged.

“Do you recognize as we do who stands before us? The being who has set us all alight with the urge to use teeth and claw to mangle its vile existence?” Wukong asked with more of a snarl than a powerful voice befitting of his station.

And to him, Kei’taro did not answer. His feet moved of its own accord, though every fiber of his soul ached to push forward with primal mindlessness. He knew, in his mind, that there was nothing he could do to save the woman whom had caused him more torment than any other being he had ever encountered, including the wicked skin thief that had been an unknowing catalyst for the awakening of his newest set of abilities, Creature Skin.

He marched towards her assailant, uncaring about the art of stealth. Intent on an act of heroism, tainted by the overwhelming urge to kill.

-

The harsh crunching of snow cut through the eerie whit expanse as the enraged Beast King plowed towards the murderer of Drom. Though he had hardly ever met the man, and his power frightened him, he hated to see the husband of the trapped woman before him laid in a heap of the winter weather. It wasn’t until the subsequent flashes of immense power did he stop his forward gait.

The first he felt he knew intimately, the coursing green power of Pikatok. She was a druid, a powerful one at that. They had never seen eye to eye, the similarity of their powers but the different ways they harnessed them had driven a wedge between them years ago; a wedge that had both grown and shortened simultaneously. He surmised that for her to have given him this gift that he had somehow gained her respect. In truth, he had loved her. Not in a romantic sense, but more as a child loved a mother who may have been harsh, but harsh in a way to teach him a lesson.

However, the second blast, figuratively leveled him. Despite the harshness of the snow, as it were here, he could see in full detail the obliteration of Pikatok. Her upper half going from mangled body to a fine red mist that painted the snow around her killer.
Kei’taro stood in terror, but not the terror that prompted one to turn tail and run, as both Pikatok and Sigmund had so bluntly advised. But the type of terror that one found when face to face with an inescapable predator, whose sole goal was ones annihilation. The type of terror, raw fear, where there was only one option – fight.

Was this beast so powerful that the son of the Spirit Beast King could not find victory. Pikatok had used her last moments to fill him with an energy that he had never been able to grasp, her own. With the power coursing through him, he knew what he had to do.

I am no demon, but what happens to you here today will seem like the work of one,” Kei’taro spit across the white void. His senses sharpened as he stood almost sixty yards away from the man, the demon, whatever the malformed thing was before him. A solitary spider tattoo on the inside of his left wrist burned black as power began coursing through it. It was true he may not be able to best whatever this foe was in physical combat, but he was trained of animals, he was learned in the way that hundreds defended themselves and were predators in their own right.

Today the Splatterer would find that the cold embrace of death would greet him much in the same fashion that he had sent at least three of associates. His body tensed up and immediately loosened, his stance as ready as he were limber, He was used to combat on this terrain, he hoped his opponent could not stay the same.

Within soul and his mind, two distinct growls exerted themselves. WuKong and RyuKyu were as ready as he, as they ever were.

-

Kei'taro's eyes never left the horribly disfigured monstrosity before him. The vile being that had killed several people of meaning in his life, as though he were on a personal mission to cause Kei'taro irreparable mental anguish. Because of this he was able to note the quickly melting ice around the feet perimeter of the humanoid creature. He was able to note his change in stance, he was able to prepare himself.

Kei'taro was a man of animals, he had been in love with their primal actions since he could remember. Being birthed to the Spirit Beast King, he had grown up watching animals, both mundane and legendary, at their freest. And so, as strife caused a rift between he and his father, he was able to see the mortal plane and all its wild inhabitants. In an environment were predators and prey danced a dance that became the gears of the ecosystem.

When the man launched towards him, it was his time with animals that had triggered the muscles in his legs to work. The streak of melting ice gave the mans trajectory away and his speed was truly impeccable. Someone not used to surviving in habitats with animals that struck as fast as lightning would have been caught off-guard, but Kei'taro was not someone like that. His body moved with an unnatural reflex. He seemed to move on instinct rather than mental stimulation.

His opponent would have struck air, while Kei'taro was already on the move. The spider tattoo had stopped its mystical glowing and another had taken its place. The monkey paw like markings on his staff began to pulse a deep royal blue; as the monkey king returned to it. RyuKyu had returned as well, residing in his soul - a safe place.

He had a plan and he would seek to enact it soon, but as he learned in many a scrap, a plan is always good until someone got punched in the mouth. And with what this man had done, Kei'taro had no intention of being on the receiving end of one of his demonic punches.
With his eyes still on the creature, he raced towards the body of Pikatok, whom had given him power beyond comprehension. She had given him something only a mother would give a son, Hope.

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