Myrae sat there in the rain for some time, rolling the words around her tongue until it started to feel natural.
"Bleeder Myrae."
That would be her name from now on, if she lived of course, many Bleeders never make it out of their first tear event with their lives or, those that did often left a piece of themselves behind... she paused for a moment.
Looking down at herself she was amazed to see that all her wounds had closed, not even a single scar remaining, on her blood soaked skin.
The corruption of the bleed had healed her, more than that, it had made her better than before, she could feel the layers of muscle under her skin, they had grown tighter, denser.
Her senses felt sharper, her mind felt strangely calm and relaxed, as if she wasn't in a scene from a horrible nightmare.
Underneath the falling rain she heard the chirping of a strange creature nearby, her familiar, a name given to the creature's which acted as a faithful companion to all Bleeder.
Bleeders are composed of two halves, their human half, and their familial half. On their own they were relatively weak compared to other bleed-spawn, but combined, their powers would grow more than the sum of their parts.
This was due to the nature of their relationship, whilst Bleeders innately contained a source of strange powers within themselves, known as a "Growth", they had no way of activating their full effect without their familiar, who in turn posses no true powers of their own and act as the catalyst for their masters.
Familiars are known to take the shape of various animals of all shapes and sizes, from smaller creatures like birds and snakes, others were much larger such as tigers, crocodiles, there had even been reports of an elephant before.
But they always were mutated, twisted forms of the original, with bodies lacking fur, skin or scales in most places and with serious deformities, each as unique as the person commanding them.
Myrae watched the familiar walking on all four of its limbs chirped quietly as it stumbled its way towards her, the sight of it sent small shivers down her spine as she could clearly see its bloodied sockets where eyes should have been.
Making its way next to her, it chirped happily as it brushed against her skin, sitting there quiet for a moment as she reached out her hand, and scratched behind its ear.
One of its legs started to jitter as a strange squeak escaped its mouth as it stared up at her, she smiled before standing suddenly, as the realisation of her situation started to dawn on her once again she rushed towards her bag.
Grabbing her spare set of clothes which only consisted of badly ripped jeans, a white shirt with long sleeves and a dark grey scarf.
Hurriedly placing her clothes on and wrapping the scarf around her waist she rummaged in the bag until she found a small stick with a rusty sheet of pointed metal sticking off the end.
It wasn't much but the makeshift knife would be better than her bare hands..maybe, in all honesty neither was really a good option but it did make her feel a little safer in the end.
Putting the bag over her shoulder she stood up looking at the twisted remains of the house before her, catching herself in the reflection of a shattered window.
Her appearance was mostly the same, her pale skin still seemingly smudged with dust despite the rain, her ash-blond still flowed over her head even if drenched in the visceral liquids from the sky above, what caught her attention was her eyes.
The once sunken grey voids were suddenly filled with colour, hues of purple and red filled the iris with tinges of pink lines spread throughout.
Whistling to her familiar, she guided it along as they began to walk these desolate streets together.
The duo walked through the silent streets of the Scarfront with an almost palpable anxiety, the clarity provided to her by the transformation had long since subsided, now just leaving a dull ache where her body was recovering from the results of the brutal injuries.
Guiding the familiar with one hand, she kept the other gripping the makeshift handle of her knife, keeping watch of her surroundings it was getting harder to keep her eyes open.
Everywhere she looked, blood, gore and destruction had taken the place of the slums she had come to call her home, with not a single soul bothering to make itself known.
That was not what made her way to to shut her eyes, no she had seen this type of carnage before from old videos and images of expeditions into various zones.
It was the fact that she was still seeing double, well not quite, it was like she could still see the stone walls of the buildings, the cracked tarmac where the moss had grown in its place but it was overplayed by the reality which she saw.
She had begun to expect it had something to do with her growth, each growth passed a passive and active affect after all so it was likely a side effect of her passive ability, whatever it was or maybe all Bleeders saw the world this way.
Sadly she didn't get long to ponder her thoughts on the matter as her familiar suddenly stopped and started to chirp ferociously into the sky.
Myrae looked to the sky, it was hard to make out due to the rain but a figure was fast approaching from the sky.
With a wingspan of at least three meters, it had pale red spines growing in place of feathers and blackened protrusion of bone, its talons and beak pointed towards its next meal, Myrae dropped her bag and prepared for a fight.
The creature dives from high above aiming to pierce into her skull with its long, sharp beak, she dived just in time hearing the rushing wind swoop by her head as the creature headed straight for the wall behind her.
She rushed forward aiming to strike after it impaled itself in the wall, however the vile bird simply shimmered with an almost ethereal purple sheen as it passed through the wall unscathed.
Myrae had to jump back to prevent herself rushing head first into the wall and stared at it in disbelief.
Cursing to herself she readied her stance waiting, suddenly a dark silhouette flew through the wall, flying back into the sky, its giant wings flapping with audible force.
The bird wasted no time in attempting to dive once again, barely missing its mark but managing to leave a cut on its prey's cheek before flying back into a nearby wall.
Myrae was thrown back by the force of the strike, even though the damage was minimal the force it was delivered with was not.
She could barely stagger to her feet before the next strike came, then the next, the damn winged abomination was leaving more and more cuts over her body. Yes she was still unable to hit it a single time, every time she tried it would shine in the purple light and simply pass right through her blade.
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to think of a solution to her problem, she knew by now that the creature could pass through solid matter at will, so killing it would not be easy.
Usually wealthy Bleeders would have specially crafted tools for such a beast but here that luxury was nothing but a distant dream, looking around she tried to see anything that could help her here.
The eyes danced around, looking for both a tool to use and the bird in between all these buildings, suddenly an idea came to mind just as she felt a pain shoot through her side as she barely avoided her side being torn out again.
She crouched down in pain, feeling the warm blood leaking from her side, the bird saw this as its chance to land its finishing strike, aiming for the nape of her neck, it swooped down at terrifying speed hungry for the joys of human flesh.
As the abomination grew closer to its prey, its speed only getting faster on the way down, it was so close that it could almost taste it, however as if drew mere centimeters from its prey, it smiled, suddenly a dark figure appeared from above it, diving from the roof of a nearby structure.
Myrae had leaned down not in pain, but to give an order, the bird had been solely focused on her forgetting that there was another here as well, she had asked her familiar to wait at the top of a nearby structure and attack when it saw an opening she would provide.
The plan worked perfectly, with her familiar taking a bite at the creature's neck drawing thick black blood from the wound, as the bat-like creature dug its claws in deeper; however the creature simply shimmered and passed through it and its master in one solid motion.
Myrae was kneeling in pain, her body being covered in a litany of cuts from the creature, and even though she had finally managed to wound it, it wouldn't be enough, soon it would come back and finish the job, she didn't have much strength left but trying to lift herself of the ground she managed to stand once more, her vision going blurry as she looked for the bird.
But the bird never came; instead, she had heard the shouting of voices coming from nearby as she heard something heavy thud against the floor, she followed soon and slammed against the floor in a deep, using her familiar as a pillow the last thing she saw was the gauge outline of a person reaching out to her.
But she was too tired to care.