Heartworm [WEIRD progression fantasy] (Volume 1 complete!)

"Guys I am selling a pack of several drawings of Babesi in lewd situations, just HMUP for pricing."

—The comment that got user StateOfTheWart banned from the New Creation Forums.

The angry mound of muscle readied to crash over the Chihuahua and consume his crystal core. As hastily as he could, Dirofil took stock of his stolen body and devised a plan. To dodge was to live, and he was partial to living. Bared fangs saluted bared fangs, eyes that raged with pain and hatred met the cold dead photoreceptors that had become half metal under the influence of Dirofil's flesh. The big betrayed beast faced the miniature masquerading monster, and swung his weapons, their arcs honed by instinct, their trajectories homing onto the Chihuahua from both left and right.

Dirofil hopped backwards again and again, putting distance between him and the fails. His contender left a thin trail of blood droplets over the butts of the Basset hounds with every step it took. Dirofil found himself wondering what the ground thought about their battle. The odd way in which Cynothalassa altered one's perception of what ought to be a mere battlefield, he would never shake the unease about it off.

How to strike safely? Going under once more wouldn't be feasible, as the beast, enraged and vigilant of his wound, wouldn't let him slip between the heavy legs.

How to strike safely? The monster of the powerful, delectable soul had been blessed with quickness of feet and enviable reflexes.

One wanted the soul to consume, one wanted the fails to wield. One counted with shattered and stolen bones, and the other suffered from a burning, throbbing wound in his crotch. One was driven by hunger. The other by thirst for desperately-needed power.

Dirofil tried to flank his adversary, but the Early Bird just spun in place, following with his gaze, arms twitching as it considered where to strike next.

Dirofil kept himself just out of reach as he ran circles around and around his adversary, skipping over a wagging tail or two that threatened to trip him and get the skull he had worked so hard to acquire crushed. He couldn't allow that: the skull had the eyes, and, more importantly, the teeth and the brain. What were brains good for, he wasn't completely sure but Caenor collected them and they interacted with his core. They couldn't be just for show. Sources? Capacitors? Transformers? Amplifiers? So many possible interactions they could have with thoughtenergy.

The Early bird pivoted on a single leg at last, and, with the flail outstretched, slammed straight onto Dirofil's left hind leg, crushing it against a particularly happy or restless-reared hound. It didn't matter much, legs were plenty in the sea, and losing body parts an everytide affair. An affair that opened a window for him to prevail. He bit onto the cord-life piece of arm that led to the mace, and let the creature drag him with the swing back. With his three remaining legs he kicked up the arm and towards the surprised brute's face, aiming for the nearest eye just as the creature opened it's mouth to snap at him. But The lithe Chihuahua was faster, and he sunk his needle-like teeth into the brute's eye, pressurized blood shooting from the wound, flowing into the Chihuahua's mouth.

The taste was… a taste. He had nothing to compare it with. A fast kick and a fresh coat of psychosarc to form a sac over his leg-rendered-ribbon meant Dirofil was ready for another strike as soon as he landed back on the Bassets. He had lost a leg, but now his adversary suffered from a blind spot. A spot where he could hide all tide long if he wished to.

The Early bird, however, was no idiot. He nested his ugly head against his shoulder, hiding the blinded eye. And with one of its deformed hands it pulled a basset from the ground, rage-injected eye fixed on Dirofil. Then, it swung the dog behind its back in an arch, Dirofil readying his three legs to dodge.

The basset launched, and the Heartworm dodged by diving to a side. It had been easier to dodge.

For the first time in his life, Dirofil gritted his teeth consciously. His enemy had used the basset as a distraction to launch a final charge, intending to crush the small body of the Chihuahua. Dirofil knew the time had come to have some balls, and the one he had crystallized and readied in his throat was ready to shot at the first back, strung tense the high-density psychosarc that held it in place, an improvised, high power slingshot hid deep in his throat.

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The Chi's mouth snapped open, snout aiming at the chest of the creature looming immediately over him. The Early bird was instants away from crashing over the body he had stolen, gaining access to his core, devouring his soul. And so, with a pump of condensed energy added to the tension in the strings, Dirofil shoot his one shot.

So forceful was the exist of the testicle that it shattered the Chihuahua's teeth. So perfect was the hole in the chest that when as Dirofil's small body got smothered under the weight of his enemy, he was the sole survivor of the battle. A heart torn apart, a bleeding wound over the twitching, limp hulk that pinned him against the Basset hounds.

With the aid of Caenor he moved the battered body of the Chihuahua from under the early bird.

Grant me a while to build myself a new vessel, and we can be on our merry way.

"You did go for the heart." The Splinter stated flatly. "Be hasty with the process, assimilate all that's necessary to get moving first and then adapt the rest as we travel. Make sure to be fit to fight after a couple hours of walking." He started in the direction of their intended quarry territory, found a patch of snouts up dogs, and used his tentacles to keep their mouths closed as he sat on the intersection of five heads, his tail flowing over shining eyes and around wet noses and among long whiskers.

Dirofil lost no time nor spent any energy in crafting a reply. He, like his grandsplinter's tail, flowed. Out of the Chihuahua's cadaver, carrying little shattered bones to use as a knives, needles, scissors, and with ropes of his flesh running through the chi's veins he applied torque on the neck, twisting and twisting the head of broken smile.

Torn from the body in a macabre act of unscrewing, the head fell before the body of shattered bones, Dirofil's core emerging from between the fragmented ribs at last.

The dead dog's jaw lay slack, granting the Thinker the perfect opportunity to slide down the digestive track of the defunct beast and sconce himself in a stomach he would soon cut his way out of. He opened little tears in the useless esophagus as he slid down, struggling to mold his hard heart into something easier to fit down the dog's dark gullet. Using bone splinters he wounded the slimy walls of his disgusting bed, giving his own mucus the chance to seep into the circulatory system and spread, cables for the transforming pulses his mind was about to send all over.

As a last measure, he ordered the fraction of his flesh that remained outside his prey to pull the Chihuahua's severed head into the ruptured scrotum, using every tissue that could be threaded and bone needles to sew the broken flesh of the neck to the dangling fur and connective tissue. His magic would soon weld them, melding flesh with flesh like one would two pieces of steel: with clear purpose and steady "hand".

The dead Early bird stood under new management, the brain of neurons crystalizing, becoming another resource for Dirofil to use.

Wait for me, Shadiran. I am coming even if I need to tear through every dog this sea throws at me, and every thinker that dares step between us. But please, wait for me. He prayed, unknowing of the fact that all possible ears had already been rendered deaf.

After a few paces he got tired of commanding a cyclops, and popped one of the half-metallized eyes of the Chihuahua, together with the wiry nerve from which it dangled, out of its original skull, using little tendrils of slime to move it up his fur in a coiling pattern, finally swapping it for the still fleshy, ruptured one that smeared blood all over the aberrant Bull Terrier's gnarled snout. With the useless eye discarded and the fully operational one in place, he stuffed some Chihuahua bits into the hole in the chest. It didn't serve as a way to escape but it was a weakness he had to account for. Until then, most dogs, sans the Reaper and whatever the light-emitting long one had been, presented as solid entities. That didn't meant he could discard gaseous, or liquid ones capable of using most orifices as an entry point. And if he liked to nest inside the chest, a window out of it and into the world remained… problematic.

Yet more problematic was the reality of the inverted proportionality between body size and sensory feedback: the thicker the layer of flesh and bones protecting his core, the harder it would be to psycholocate with any degree of accuracy. Holes in his armors were an inelegant but practical solution, yet filling them only with psychosarc would leave his core exposed. Tunnels to see out into the world were entry points, and ones that would flare with thought energy for anything with eyes akin to the Reaper's. Camouflaging them with a thin layer of skin or fur could trick those whose sight was limited to the visible spectrum, but he had no idea of the senses his enemies could wield. If he understood alternociception well—and he was all but sure the nuances of it escaped his grasp— even Lyssav would be able to identify the disguised holes unless he engineered some sort of… pain flare. No sense existed that one couldn't overwhelm into uselessness. Yet… he had no idea how to create a homogeneous field of pain around him. Or, if pain was a wave function he was emitting, he had no idea how to create deflector shields with the shapes of his body. What sort of materials did pain bounce against? Which ones absorbed it?

Idle ruminating wouldn't help him catch up with the now-strutting Caenor. So he followed with stiff, heavy movements, not minding the snapping hounds anymore. The Splinter's expertise was one of many tools he wanted to include in his box, so he better played along for the time being.

And besides, as long as they were hunting, he would keep expanding his arsenal. Until he needed Caenor anymore and he could ride on to the middle of the sea, where he would meet the barrier again. And this time, he would come up with a way to shatter it.