The Voidbeast pens were difficult to miss - they took up a grand slice of the Port’s perimeter and stood higher than everything bar the Magus towers. Prospero wandered the widening streets and felt as if he was shrinking on his way towards the solid runway scaffolded high upon the vanishing hills, he recoiled at the sight of colossal beasts poking their heads out from the warehouse-sized barns, corralled from feeding and resting by labourers yanking the ropes of their harnesses. Many displaced families had already arrived - dishevelled - to the site of the ongoing evacuation as bells tolled in the distance. The Magus towers sought rifts in the skies above, where the first of the Voidbeasts were already crossing into the Great Incandescence.

  Prospero called to a worker hammering lids onto barrels, but found his greeting interrupted by some heaving reflex. A stink the likes of which could trouble Gods was rising from the unsealed barrels. The worker, unfazed, chuckled to himself and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I wouldn’t get so close, young man,” he warned. “Most folks can’t handle being around the feed.”

  “Gods above…” Prospero coughed into his fist. “What is that?”

  “Couldn’t tell you, but the Voidbeasts love it like nothing else. We use it to feed ‘em, lure ‘em - some owners even bathe ‘em in this stuff,” he slapped his hand on one of the lids. “Portmaster wants us stocked up in case we need to spend a few days out there.”

  “Are there enough Voidbeasts to evacuate everyone in the Port?” Prospero wondered.

  “It’ll be cozy, but there should be,” he replied. “Especially if we could get that old monster holed up in 9-E out here. But those Sunflower killjoys won’t let anyone near it.”

  9-E? Must be the pen I’m looking for, Prospero thought. “I’m not sure how you could ever get used to that smell, but keep up the good work, I suppose.”

  “Hah! The smell I can cope with. It’s the damn rats that give me the willies,” the worker smiled. “Could swear they get bigger every year. Wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, considering how nutrient-dense this stuff must be to feed Voidbeasts.”

  The two of them exchanged waves and parted ways. A quick glance at the nearby pens revealed the slathering of white paint denoting their IDs. Prospero was walking beside the A-row, and the pen he was searching for was all the way at the back, where colossal shadows kept the area cool and - most importantly - deprived of sunlight.

  “Rats, eh?” he muttered. “I wonder…”

  He picked up the pace on his way to the rear row and found 9-E without a sliver of trouble. Most of the nearby pens were in states of disrepair or decommission. The barn in question was guarded by two stocky men wearing yellow sashes over their fading leather vests. Scabbards rested at their hips.

  Prospero wandered into the emptiness of a pen further down the row. His olfactories cringed at the presence of a familiar scent. The barrels stacked against the barn’s wall had long been emptied, but their sourness remained, inviting all manner of critters and insects to feast upon the microscopic remnants. A pack of rats scurried from his presence, though a bloated and greedy specimen remained with its nose planted firmly against the wood. It squealed with sudden fright when Prospero leaned down to pick it up.

  He sighed. “...Let the ends justify the means.”

  A twist of the head was all it took. His own strength surprised him as the critter’s tiny neck tore between his fingers. No doubt filthy and diseased, the sight of its blood stirred him nonetheless. No amount of it could satisfy the growing hunger in his core - a stiff reminder of the pitiable creature he had become.

  The rodent blood danced across his tongue. He tasted spiced honey, so delectably sweet; refreshing like ice water on a summer’s day; rich with the tartness of freshly-plucked fruit, and flooded with the fiery delirium of distilled spirits. Prospero was doing himself a disservice by refusing to admit that it was the greatest delicacy he had ever enjoyed in his life, and all he had ever tasted were mangy beasts frolicking in the dirt. How would the blood of a human compare, he wondered?

  [Common Rat] Defeated

  [Rat Proficiency] + 1

  [Rodent] Form Unlocked! (Aptitude - Stealth)

  I need to be careful, he thought. My Beasthood is sitting at [47%], and the mere sight of blood is enough to tempt me at this point. But I don’t have the time to let it wear off…

  He took a look at his misbegotten form.

  Ability - Rodent Form (Beastblood)

  Description - Adopt the form of a rodent, choosing from any [Rodent] creature you have previously slain provided its original level was lower than or equal to your own at the time of death. Changing to this form increases your Beasthood by [5%] and bestows a [100%] bonus to all skills within the [Finesse] category for its duration.

  Weaker forms don’t seem to increase my Beasthood as much, he noticed. I can get away with using this or the Rabbit form a few times without the risk of losing myself.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  [Rodent] Form Activated

  Finesse (+100%) / Beasthood (+5%)

  Prospero pushed away the thought of his appearance while shapeshifting and quietly thanked the Gods for choosing to make the process painless. His point of view dropped to just an inch or two off the floor, a familiar snugness coating his skin as twilight-grey hairs formed a coat over his body. His vision, as if damaged, grew blurry and unfocused.

  I can barely see a thing, he thought. And my face itches…

  He lifted a paw to push aside his newfound whiskers and found them remarkably sensitive to his touch. They brushed against the ground, and he perceived what his eyes could not; miniscule crumbs of dirt and tiny ridges in the soil. This was how a rodent lived, he realised, and for the first time, he felt grateful for the efficacy of human eyes.

  So that’s why they stand on their hind legs sometimes, he realised, and he did so to get a better view of things. The pen which had once seemed oversized was now a world he could have comfortably dwelled in for the rest of his life. The rats which had scurried away earlier returned with curiosity in their eyes, wondering where the human had gone to.

  Prospero, meanwhile, crawled to the entrance and stopped just short of the daylight.

  I can’t protect myself from the sun without my cape, he realised. I’ll have to wait for an opportunity to pass over to the next pen…

  His prayers were shortly answered. The silhouette of a rising Voidbeast granted him peace from the light. The wooden deck constructed atop its carapace was stuffed to bursting with panicked families. Prospero crossed over to the pen marked 9-E before the opportunity was wasted, passing by the guards at the entrance without attracting so much as a sideways glance.

  Victima lingered there in all of her glory; a great pink giant in the dark. She was a prawn, like many of her celestial kin, but larger than Prospero could have ever dreamed of. Her legs rested uncomfortably, fidgeting every so often to redistribute her weight across the length of the pen. The twin antennae curling above her beady eyes rose over the enormous gate restricting her to three-quarters of the building’s area. An elevated catwalk provided access to the platform running along her spine, just large enough to support a deck and the cabin beneath but not much else - apart from the cannons poking over her broadsides.

  The Sunflowers were much less the sort of gang Prospero had anticipated. Only the two men out front and a handful of others were wearing uniforms. The rest were plainclothes commoners lugging crates and barrels, or lingering near the rotted walls with bottles in hand.

  “Oh, Gods above,” a member spat something grainy and dark onto the ground. “We’ve got another rat. Someone else kill that fucking thing - I nearly lost a finger last time.”

  -But his words fell on deaf ears. Those lucid enough to wander had their hands full tending to Victima. It seemed to Prospero as if his presence would be tolerated as long as he didn’t make a habit of getting in anyone’s way.

  Most of these fools aren’t any better than Alto, he thought. I’ll track down the leader and begin from there.

  He didn’t have to search far. A wander near the centre of the pen revealed a fellow larger than the rest barking what sounded like orders through the chaos, though Prospero could only make out his blurry silhouette from a distance. Something heavy and wicked was lugged over his shoulder. A blunt weapon of crude iron. Standing on his hind legs, Prospero focused on the individual until a familiar box materialised out of thin air.

  Aldruag Colin

  Grade 5 Warrior (Human)

  Physical Resistance - 5% Magical Resistance - 0%

  Grade 5… higher than mine, but not by much, he thought. Considering his size, I doubt the others are half as dangerous. But I’d rather do this without fighting…

  He shifted back to his human form, ushered in a chorus of screams as his body contorted to accommodate the sudden change. “W-What the fuck!?” a labourer wearing an amber headband pointed a finger and scuttled backwards. “Oi, Aldruag! There’s a fuckin’ monster in here!”

  The man in question peered over his shoulder and turned. Below his head of golden hair, a great fissure ran crooked from his misshapen right eye down to the cleft of his chin - less like scar and more like a slice of his face which no longer existed. The disfigurement made it difficult to gauge his expression. “Be at peace. It’s no monster,” he began calmly. ‘Tis a man who stands before us, though perhaps not the sort we’re familiar with.”

  He took the weapon over his shoulder - a great hammer, Prospero now knew - and held it out as if pointing a sword, not at all bothered by the feat of touting it at such an angle with only a single hand. “What are you?” he asked. “A Vampire? Heard a group of them was approaching, but I didn’t expect to see one so soon.”

  “I am,” Prospero answered. “-But not the sort you’ve heard of. I was the one who brought word of them, actually. Aren’t you planning to evacuate with the rest of the Port?”

  “...Baptista,” for a moment, Aldruag’s singular gaze snaked high, parsing a name from the unseen System. “I don’t believe it’s any business of yours whether we plan on evacuating or not. But it certainly is our business when a Vampire comes strolling onto our turf.”

  “Time is a luxury neither of us have, so I won’t mince words,” he began. “I’ve come to have you return this Voidbeast to the man named Alto.”

  “Hoh. You say that as if we stole it.” Aldruag lugged the weapon back over his shoulder. “Alto owed us a sum of silver he couldn’t afford, so we took the Voidbeast to make up for the difference. Unless you’ve got enough to pay for it, the prawn is staying with us.”

  Prospero relaxed his shoulders and asked, “What was this debt of his for, exactly?”

  “Ran up a tab letting us pay for his drinks. Never intended to pay it back, of course - selfish prick.” Aldruag shrugged. “Didn’t stop us from spotting him, though. Always knew he had the Voidbeast, so it was just a matter of taking what we were owed when his time was up.”

  Prospero shook his head, “Feeding a man’s addiction to take his possessions is just plain wicked, even if he should have known better to begin with.”

  “I appreciate the lesson in morals, Baptista. But nothing in this world’s free,” he replied. “We’ve all got our debts to repay, and the goodness of a man’s heart doesn’t put food on the table like it used to.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Prospero widened his stance. “I’ll happily take the Voidbeast if that’s what this is going to come to.”

  “Gods alive, this kid…” Aldruag’s head sulked. “I was kind enough not to give you the boot the second you appeared, and this is how you’re going to act? And to think I was going to let you go. You’re making a foul mistake, boy.”