He smashed the Ogre Cataclysm into the ground with a heavy rock across her back. Her head twisted around like her spine didn't understand the limitations of human anatomy and she tried to bite him. Hector let it happen, then drove his fist deeper into her mouth.

Maybe it had been foolish to believe in his aura after how she shrugged off his cables, but Hector was rewarded for his faith when her teeth proved harmless. He drove the thumb of his free hand deep into her eye socket, eager to do damage.

Then his allies were there. Mila seized the Ogre's head and began siphoning a very specific wavelength of life energy from their foe's head. Finn went to work with his flint knife, slicing the neck apart. Though they were dominating at the moment, their efforts didn't seem to do much good. The neck healed almost instantly. Barely any energy emerged to be siphoned away by Mila. And Hector was beginning to struggle to hold the rock down even using the entire strength of both his body and his domain.

Rather than panic at the lack of results, Hector decided to accelerate their efforts.

He wrapped a cable under the jaw of Cataclysm and pulled her head away as Finn sawed at flesh. The amount of strength he used was not inconsiderable. As a result, her head ripped free of the damaged neck. Mila, unstable due to her missing leg, rolled like a tumbleweed when the Ogre head flew into her gut.

At that moment, it seemed like they had won.

In the next, he knew true horror.

The flesh of the severed head grew into the flesh of Mila. The Strigoi screamed in terror as she was consumed in a matter of seconds, cancerous growths bulging out all over until the woman looked no different than the Ogre that had taken over her. The only difference was the decrease in overall mass. The body stopped screaming and then charged at them.

Beneath the rock, the rest of the Ogre's body turned to liquid tendrils and snaked free to join with the new body. Cataclysm grew slightly larger as the mass combined. Finn threw his stone maul in fury. It bounced harmlessly off the Ogre's chest.

"Things are worse now, demon! She is well fed and angry! She will be a plague on every human for a thousand miles!" Spittle flew from Finn's mouth as he raged. "She was fleeing! Why could you not let her leave?"

Hector checked his energy reserves. Eighty percent. More than enough.

While Finn continued to rage and the wrathful Ogre stalked towards them, Hector summoned his transit sphere. It rose into reality from the primordial, its cross-section expanding from subatomic size into visibility in mere seconds. The reflective surface depicted an environment of dead trees as it swelled larger. Clearly visible in its mirror was the specter of a human-shaped cancer advancing on its chosen victims.

The Ogre lunged at Hector even as he was using his cables to invert the surface of his sphere for travel. He found himself on the ground, strong fingers struggling to rip at his ears and gouge out his eyes. His aura resisted the damage, though at the cost of exorbitant amounts of cosmic energy. Cataclysm's clawed fingers were encased in a layer of life energy that managed to partially overcome his defenses.

Finn retreated away from the two of them. "Damn demon! The world is about to be reminded why we named this beast Cataclysm!"

Hector couldn't dislodge the Ogre above him. Tendrils of flesh emerged from her body to wrap his arms and torso, gluing them together so that she could rain down destruction. Hector arched his back to get a view of his transit sphere. It was almost ready for occupants. He pressed the cavity into shape using his cables and then had to return his attention to the battle.

A finger had entered one of his nostrils and it was growing longer, threading back towards his sinuses. Hector bucked like wild but could not dislodge Cataclysm. He needed to get off the ground. Preferably before she fingered his brain.

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Hector fired energy free of the back of his head like he did with his feet when he flew. That shot him up to his feet like the vampire rising from its coffin in Nosferatu. He almost fell back down right away as the Ogre's flesh crawled all over him, enveloping him.

In the background, Finn continued to spew his vile imprecations.

Though his vision was now obstructed, Hector knew the location of his externality. He stumbled towards it and jumped inside. Then he squeezed the opening back together. His surroundings dimmed as the hole shrank and then welded shut.

As he shifted them out of the world of Eden, Cataclysm separated from him and lunged at the surface of the sphere. Hector laughed. "You just figured out something is wrong, did you?"

The Ogre smacked the weld hard enough that Hector's dark chuckles turned to a concerned yelp. If she breached that seal, they were both instantly dead. Hector channeled cosmic energy through his body and punched the Ogre's amorphous form hard enough that bones snapped like twigs and soft flesh splattered across the surface of the sphere.

Her response was quick. Cataclysm extended the jagged end of a broken rib and stabbed him in the face. The implement was coated with a thick layer of life energy that nullified the defense of his aura. Hector flinched away fast enough to save his eye but received a large gash across his cheek.

Hector seized the rib in two hands to prevent any further mischief, then grunted as a femur bone drove up into his gut. Teeth latched onto his left hand, their points breaking skin with a huge outflow of life energy.

He roared and flailed about with all the strength he could manage. "You might want to conserve your energy! There won't be much for you to eat where we're going!"

Cataclysm clawed at his neck, going straight for the jugular. The points of her fingers were now teeth, he was fairly certain. Hector squirmed and punched his way out of that situation. Then he kicked off the surface of his sphere to escape the next. The internal volume wasn't very large, though, and he only avoided the Ogre for a few seconds more.

Slashes soon decorated his exposed flesh, oozing blood.

Worse, he struggled to navigate the primordial while being so distracted. The only world he could locate on autopilot was Earth and he was most definitely not bringing this monster there. Which meant he needed to keep a metaphorical eye on the road.

The rib knife stabbed deep into Hector's gut, piercing all the way to the stomach.

He trapped the wrist with his hands to prevent the weapon from being withdrawn and inserted elsewhere. The Ogre swiped at his face while he was preoccupied. Hector ducked and received the rake across the top of his head. Scratches burned all over and his body felt like it was overheating from the exertion. He could barely catch his breath.

Cataclysm bit him on the nose hard enough that he worried he might lose a facial feature. Still unwilling to release the knife in his guts, Hector fired cosmic energy directly from his head. The two of them exploded apart, rebounded off the sphere, and tumbled at one another again.

Hector punched hard and scrambled away. The Ogre flowed over him like water and then solidified into a suit of muscle with inward-pointed spikes of bone and tooth. She was like the medieval torture device called an iron maiden. He fired out cosmic energy from all over his body, dispersing his tormentor like he was painting a wall.

Just then, he reached their destination. As Hector forcefully submerged his externality, causing the transit sphere to vanish all at once like a popped bubble, the Ogre was just managing to reform herself. They both dropped hard to the ground. Hector staggered to his feet, shoving his fist into the gut wound to staunch his bleeding.

Cataclysm spun about, eyeing their new surroundings in mounting horror. This certainly was not Eden, where life energy was plentiful as air. An Ogre would never get enough to survive long in this environment. In fact, what little life energy Hector could sense in their surroundings was so thin and wispy that it was barely there – the analogy that came to mind was the flavored seltzer water drinks that had some vague, minimal impression of fruit.

He grinned savagely at his opponent.

Then screamed in a thoroughly unmanly fashion as she proceeded to launch a sharpened arm bone like a spear directly at him. Hector successfully blocked with an arm and a flare of aura. Then he flew up into the air to hover high above.

Despite his new resolve to cultivate respect, Hector decided that in this particular instance he owed none whatsoever. Fuck this beast. He took the time to work up a large gob of saliva and blood in his mouth and then spat it onto Cataclysm. "You're going to starve to death, bitch."

Then he glanced towards a familiar landmark and decided it really was time to flee. If the owner of the black tower caught him, his fate would be no better than that of the Ogre.

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