Trying to run around and eat things while in my Valkyrie form ended up being a frustrating endeavor. Partly because I was still human-shaped, partly because I couldn't be spotted going crazy devouring things, I found myself severely restricted in what kinds of things I could actually eat. Part of a leg here, another runt-sized grabber there. Objectively speaking, it was all pure gain. The actual experience, though, was really fucking annoying to the point I'd almost prefer to not even bother.

  I continued 'bothering' anyway, though. More food is more strength. More strength is good. There was also the need to satiate my hunger, but 'satiate' was a bit of an overstatement. The hunger never diminished further than what I would have called 'pretty hungry, actually' prior to 'hatching.' Nevertheless, it could still be better or worse. Aside from indulging in pure, primal gluttony befitting of my nature, it was more about extending the amount of time before I'd hit the edge of going feral again.

  The strength gain was also important. While Katherine and the others grew their power by fighting, training, and cultivating anima, I gained power by devouring. I was still a high Tier 3—well, I was still a powerful Tier 3. I'd definitely pushed myself further towards the edge of Tier 4 over the past few weeks, if only by a bit. Most of the progress came from the previous incursion, right after losing control of my hunger.

  It was hard to exactly quantify where I was in the current Tier, but I would guess I had been roughly in the middle at the start. I was now somewhere between half and two thirds. Regardless, strength was good, and so was pushing back the deadline on my hunger. For that reason, I kept snacking on what I could as I wandered my way through the incursion. Hmm. I wonder if...?

  There was another large, almost oversized grabber nearby. It had been a few minutes since I'd slipped away from Max, and I'd traveled a good distance in that time. That meant it probably wasn't the same one, but then again, they all looked basically the same for any given size.

  And this one was big. It was crawling back out of a house, literally breaking the frames around the already shattered windows as it squeezed and slithered its way back out. Walking over to it, I flicked out my tongue. Tier 2. Good. Most of the grabbers were just Tier 1, but this one was so big I thought it might have been higher. It seemed like I was right, and I briefly wondered if it had any notable abilities accompanying the tier increase.

  It didn't seem like it, though, and I really didn't care even if I did. My plan here was simple. Go inside of it and eat as much as you can. I still vividly recalled tearing my way straight through some of the larger grabbers in the first incursion—I hadn't been a fan of it then, but that was because I wasn't trying to figure out a way to eat them. The thought of all those smooth, rubbery tentacles crawling over me was still gross, but, as was increasingly common, the hunger won out.

  Discarding my sword, I dove straight into the center of the writhing black mass.

  To anyone watching, I must have looked like a suicidal maniac. Burrowing inside larger Anathema was already second to nature for me, now, and there wasn't much a low tier grabber could do to actually hurt me. Indeed, I barely even felt the pressure as the creature grabbed and enveloped me.

  I could feel it trying to crush, pull, and twist me, but even with a dozen different tentacles thicker than my own arm, it still felt pretty pathetic. Even as it tightened its grip, drawing me inexorably deeper, the inner mouths could only nibble ineffectually against my metal skin. While grabbers were almost entirely featureless from the outside, truly looking like a tangle of dark, rubbery tendrils, they did have mouths deeper inside. Quite a few of them, actually. It was still challenging to get a sense of the overall geometry of the thing—even being pressed up against its core body, I had a hard time identifying how many mouths there were, or even how big they were or their general shape.

  Still, I could feel way too many tiny and sharp but nub-like teeth scraping against my surface. Quit doing that, would you? Even if it didn't hurt, the fact that I could feel anything touching my 'armor' made it disturbing and a bit uncomfortable. So, I finally did what I set out to do in the first place. I bit the damn thing back.

  That got a reaction. The grabber didn't scream or anything, but I could feel the way it suddenly flinched and tensed. Just seconds later, it began untangling from me, pulling away from the meal that dared to eat it back. Too late for that, idiot. I held on. Yummy yummy! Properly unhinging my massive jaws now, I bit down again, and again, and I kept chewing my way through the thrashing mass. Ohhhh yeah. This is it. Sooooo good. Mmm.

  The Tier 2 was quite tasty, and being able to just cut loose and devour as much as I could without worrying if someone was looking was delightfully freeing. It ended all too soon, though, and the remaining mass of tentacles collapsed into a nearly tasteless, floppy heap. Well, so much for that. Crawling my way out and retrieving my sword, I looked around. I'd eaten a lot, but almost all of the enormous grabber was still there. It was hard to tell from the outside that I'd even chewed my way through it at all.

  Right then. It was time to go find whoever was next on the menu.

  The grabber might have been big, but I wouldn't have called it a titan. The kraken I found a few minutes later was, though, and it was also a Tier 3 like myself.

  Most Anathema had stupid and silly names that weren't just taken straight from pre-existing mythologies. There were exceptions, though, and krakens were a great example. Pretty much guaranteed to be a Titan no matter what, krakens were big, towering beasts with a radial, fivefold symmetry. In many ways, they resembled enlarged starfish more than a squid or octopus, or perhaps two different starfish that had been stacked on top of each other.

  The Anathema towering over the houses on either side of the street ambled along with the same overall kind of vertical posture that a human had. The difference was that, in place of a two-sided, mirror symmetry, the top and bottom half had a five-sided, radial symmetry instead. The head was also 'upside down,' in the sense that the closest analogue to a head—the part with the mouth, basically—hung down from the bottom.

  I wasn't the only 'Guardian' facing off against it. There was already a full team of five there when I arrived. Neither the team of Guardians nor the kraken were faring very well against the other, though—it looked like one of them had unleashed some kind of oily, slippery sludge that coated half the street and all five of the kraken's lower set of limbs. The same dark substance bubbled and boiled against the Anathema's tough, scaly hide—clearly an attempt at sustained damage of some kind.

  It wasn't really doing much other than getting the titan pissed off, though. All five of them were frantically scurrying around, running in between the titan's legs while the hulking Anathema tried to smash them. They weren't having a good time, but neither was the kraken. While its ground-smashing strikes were powerful, the thing was unwieldy and slow. The slippery, corrosive sludge really wasn't helping it, and the thing was clearly having a hard enough time staying upright without having to also worry about hitting the Guardians running around below.

  I wonder why it doesn't just sit on them? I took a closer look at its underside. Oh, right. That's where all the important and vulnerable bits are.

  I just stood there for a good ten seconds, watching the ridiculous scene play out from up close. I also needed to figure out how to approach this—literally, because I don't fancy getting that nasty shit all over me. I might be able to jump way higher now—it was just shoving off the ground at the end of the day, and I could shove things real good now—but there was no way I could leap all the way up to its main body from down on the ground. I couldn't manage anything remotely close to that yet, which meant the only option seemed like it would be shimmying up one of the legs.

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  Unfortunately, even if I could somehow circumvent all the oily sludge between me and the titan, its legs were all coated in it. Seems like I'll have to deal with this bullshit no matter what. I remembered the way my metal skin acted almost like a non-stick pan, of course—but that was with the alien blood and guts of other Anathema. The slippery, corrosive sludge had to be from an ability—there was a decent chance, then, that it would work to actively counter my own slipperiness.

  Only one way to find out. The kraken was also Tier 3, and it didn't seem to be doing too much. One of my main strengths as an Anathema type was also durability, so I figured it wouldn't be too bad. Just go ahead and do it, bitch.

  Steeling myself, I then broke into a run straight towards the nearest leg—and immediately slipped, skidded, and fell hard on my ass. Fucking great. Way to go, genius. I wanted to slap myself, but that would just get more of the oily goo all over me. You knew that it was supposed to be slippery, and you just ran at it carelessly anyway. The result was that I got a bunch of it all over my legs, butt, and hands. Even my arms weren't spared as I struggled back to my feet.

  God this is fucking annoying. I was right on both counts—the shit was both corrosive and way too fucking slick. Much like the kraken, the substance immediately attacked my metal skin, hissing and bubbling like Hollywood acid. It definitely stung at least a little bit, but overall, it wasn't that bad. While I could feel things to a certain degree through my metal exterior, that was mostly from the pale, ruddy gold that threaded across the surface as well as forming my claws, talons, and jaws.

  The darker and duller metal that comprised the majority of my exterior bulk was far less sensitive to tactile feedback. Ironically then—or perhaps fortunately—it was the darker metal that the sludge attacked most. Even then, it wasn't doing much other than sizzle against the outermost surface. The lighter colored, slightly gold and reddish hued material was practically inert in comparison. If anything, the corrosive action of the oily sludge was polishing it.

  Interesting. It was more evidence for a significant and fundamental difference between the two materials. It was also evidence in favor of my hypothesis that the pale, burnished gold was the more intrinsic, 'living' component of my alien tissue. It also hinted that it might also be the more resilient of the two, which was a little surprising. Regardless, my displeasure at getting coated in the stuff was quickly forgotten.

  I also started making my way closer to the tower kraken. I went a bit more carefully—it was annoyingly difficult to keep myself from slipping again. I didn't know whose ability it was, but I was getting increasingly tempted to find out and kill them. I swear, I'm going to be super pissed if I end up having to actually fight people with annoying ass powers like this. Fucking Lasso Guy was already bad enough.

  Danger in combat was one thing. It was to be expected, really, and I didn't doubt I'd get myself in some dangerous situations in the future. That being said, I'd much rather a difficult but straightforward fight than an annoying one. Like imagine if this guy was on the same team as Lasso Guy. I almost shuddered. That would have been—interesting.

  It fortunately didn't take me too long to reach the heart of the action. The other 'Guardians' noticed my arrival, of course—most of them were rather occupied with their ineffectual flailing against the looming kraken, though. I also realized who was responsible for the nasty oil spill. It wasn't hard to figure out, now that I realized one of them was naked and quite literally oozing the stuff off his own body. He kept trying to fling blobs of it up at the titan's 'head,' but it wasn't really working. Guess he's naked because it dissolved his clothing?

  That's kind of funny, actually. Imagine having a power so foul and obnoxious that it even sucks for the guy using it. Damn. I also noted that someone else was also attacking the soft, vulnerable underbelly, and they were having a lot more success actually hitting it. Unfortunately, while her bursts of sparkling light could actually do damage to the sensitive underside of the main body, it was regenerating too fast for it to do anything other than keep pissing off the titan.

  Maybe it would work if Oil Spill could actually hit the damn thing, ha. As things were, Glitterpuff wasn't having much success without a source of persistent damage to burn through the constant, Tier 3 regeneration.

  It worked out for me, though, because it meant I would have the titan to myself. Discarding my sword again, I sunk my claws into the side of the nearest tree trunk like leg. It was actually pretty tough—not as tough as the shell of that giant scuttler variant had been, but still tougher than most. Its scaly, wrinkled hide was even tougher than the pelt of the smasher titan I faced early on. It wasn't so tough that I couldn't use it to climb, though, and climb I did.

  I made it to the top shortly after. Alright, now what? The most juicy part was on the bottom side, but that would be pretty hard to reach. I'd have to essentially crawl upside down. No, it seemed like it would be far easier to just burrow down from the top. So that's what I did—or at least, that's what I started to do. I'd barely even dug my claws in when a gargantuan limb plucked me straight off its back. Wait—it has arms!

  Shit! I kind of forgot that it could just reach up with the top set of limps. Those ended with small, flexible tips, but unlike a normal squid or octopus tentacle, they were covered in little grabby pincers instead of suckers. More importantly, I was now being flung around like a ragdoll. Shit shit shit!

  The limbs were quite long, and I was being flung around fast. The g-force was immense, and coupled with the way the whole world was blurring past at a confusing angle, I struggled to even orient myself. Not good—not—woah!

  I had expected it to try to eat me, or maybe just smash me into the ground. But no—the big bastard had just been winding itself up for a powerful swing—put simply, the titan had decided I wasn't worth fighting and decided to solve the problem by throwing me. It was a pretty good throw, too—it had been several seconds since release, and I was still soaring sideways through the air. Tumbling every which way, I caught sight of at least several blocks blurring past—and then I slammed straight through a concrete wall.

  Ugh. Something collapsed right next to me, and my vision was momentarily clouded with stone dust. I was also sprawled out on my back, head pounding and insides aching. That was... not good. It hurt. It hurt a lot. I dare say it was even a good bit worse than my first ill-considered attempt at jumping off the building roof. Turns out getting fucking hurled by a giant with forty foot arms into the side of a building isn't good for you. Go figure.

  I was pretty sure my 'armor' was dented or even busted in a few places. That part hurt way more than I expected too—sitting up and wincing, I realized the most severe pain was from where distorted or cracked plates tugged at or even ripped the pale gold threading. Yep, that tracks, I guess. But being a part of my own body came with upsides, and my own Tier 3 regeneration was already hard at work repairing the damage.

  Waving away the settling dust, I hacked a cough—well, sort of. With the way my voice now worked as a chamelium, it sounded kind of like an asthmatic smoker wheezing into a harmonica. Something about the sound was just way too fucking funny to me, and I just barely managed to stop myself from falling into a doom loop of coughing and laughing. Panting now, I realized I could taste—oh, God damn it.

  "Wait... Alex?" Turning my head to the side, I saw Laurence poking his own head through a gap in the brickwork of the shed I'd landed in. "It's you!" Ducking back out, he called out to the other team members nearby. "Hey, I found Alex!"

  Ugh. Fucking great. I hauled myself to my feet and shambled out of the ruined shed and into the grassy alleyway on the other side. The whole team was there—including Katherine, who was charging over like she was going to tackle me. I couldn't help but notice she had a goddamned uzi flailing about in one hand. Guns are useful, huh Katherine? I wonder where you found that? Before reaching me though, she suddenly froze—and shouted out in alarm.

  A flying, Tier 2 Anathema had just swooped down to land on the roof of the nearby shed—a volter. The lanky, oversized bird-like creature screeched at us, flaring its razor wings. Those same wings began to crackle and sizzle with a gathering storm of power—exactly the ability that gave this uncommon type its stupid name. Everyone backed up—well, everyone except me. It was about time I established my role as the team's frontline centerpiece.

  Let's go, bitch.

  A flick of my hand and a crack of violet lightning was all it took to once again summon my awesome new sword.

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