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Who: Heat, Jack, John and Serph.
What: It's dangerous to trap and starve a cannibalistic demon. Serph's three roommates (RVmates?) working together to save him from himself.
When: After Serph is trapped and is forced into a new harpy form.
Where: At the carnival's menagerie where the Freak and Peek takes place.
Warnings: Violence, gore, and cannibalistic hunger. Basically the Digital Devil Saga standard lmao.

After his capture, Serph had calmly and patiently paced his cage, observing and testing as much as he can to try and find a way to escape. Whoever had made the cages had made them strong enough to be undeterred by even a demon's strength. Ice magic had done little to force the bars apart. Serph isn't one to waste energy unnecessarily, considering that maybe an escape can be made when they're let out to perform.

But a rising anxiety wells up in him as he's only ever brought out to fight other Drifters rather than the monsters that come from husks. Hunger gnaws at his belly, an impulse that hovers at the fringes of his consciousness, always. They're fed (sometimes) but that does nothing to soothe his demon's ravenous nature. Every time he closes his eyes, he can feel Varuna's sharpened teeth closing around him.

He won't eat his comrades. He has to choose better.

When even threats of withholding nourishment (that wouldn't do anything for him anyway) or harming others doesn't do anything to spur him to fight (he is so weak with hunger) his cage is pulled away from the main show to a more dimly lit area to be stared at by an unending sea of shadowy eyes.

But when he looks back, defiance still in his eyes, a vision fills his mind, all encompassing until he's slammed back into the present.

The transformation violently takes him, feathers bursting out of flesh like a thousand knives. Bones of his arms and legs push out into new shapes accompanied by a horrid grinding noise as muscle and sinew are warped and stretched. A pressure builds behind his teeth with the force of a tightening vice and he wants to rip open his face to let it out but he doesn't have hands.

The beak of his new, monstrous form tears itself free as his skull crunches and compacts into a new shape, feathers rapidly rippling out over his head. Blood streaming down his face -- when had he hit the floor of the cage? -- Serph can barely see, so blinded by agonising pain he's barely aware of someone not ghostly entering the tent.

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Jack is the first to find him, but it doesn't look like Jack, at first. He's walking carefully, holding the illusion of one of the shadows wrapped around him, afraid to dislodge it. But he's getting closer to the cage than the shadows do, or the monsters, or even those who come to try and feed him.

"Serph," he whispers through the bars, and his voice sounds like his own. "Serph, it's Jack. I'm going to get you out, okay?"

Serph can't make out Jack from the shadowy blur in front of him, but he recognises Jack's voice ringing clearer than the bell on a cat's collar.

An anxiety rises up in him. "No... Jack, you have to leave."

He'd told Jack, he can't keep repeating this cycle, he doesn't want to devour Jack.

"My demon..."

As if summoned, the brand on his face glows a sickly blue.

Jack is not afraid of Serph's demon any more than Serph is afraid of his wolf. He may or may not be wrong about that, but it's still the truth.

"You are bleeding, Serph. We're being tormented here." He shifts so he can block the sight of the lock on the cage door, withdrawing some picks from a sleeve that he'd put together from debris near his own cage. "We'll get you out and flee. There are places we can hide."

No!

"I'm losing control... of Varuna."

Even speaking is a struggle as he pushes himself up onto his now clawed feet, leaning heavily against the bars of his cage. The glow is spreading slowly across his body as he valiantly tries to rein in Varuna, but he knows its only a matter of time.

"My demon isn't like the wolf."

He has to make Jack understand. He has to.

"He'll devour you."

"Would you rather he comes out in this crowded circus space, or outside away from people?" Jack asks, working as rapidly as he can on the lock. "Just follow me and I'll lead you out." The lock clicks open a beat later: they're not complicated to open. "Hurry," he says. "As soon as this door swings open, someone will probably notice."

And he opens the door, stepping back quickly.

Serph would rather Varuna not come out at all, but that's not a choice that he has. He doesn't reply to Jack's question.

Eat them all

The constant refrain that's his constant companion slams into him with the force of a sledgehammer.

He's weak and trapped and bleeding out and Varuna knows the most straightforward solution to their continued survival.

Eat them all

Unlike the very first time his demon's form took over his own -- control ripped from him by an unknown hand, his own screams reverberating through his skull -- this time Varuna merely surfaces like a sleeping giant arising from the depths of the sea and pushes Serph beneath the waves.

He doesn't have the strength to struggle.

When Serph's wings at his back fold down into Varuna's carapace and long flight feathers cluster back into arms and fingers, the roar billows out from his monstrous throat belongs completely to the demon. Varuna barrels through the open door, but with Jack being the nearest target he swerves and unsheathes the blades from within his right arm, aiming to cut Jack's legs out from under him.

As soon as the transformation took over, Jack was already hurrying back to give them both more space. The wolf might run with Serph, but frankly he's more used to the wolf being like this, and this is what he expects now.

He leaps nimbly over the swipe, almost supernaturally quick, lands on his feet, and bolts for the entrance to the tent, phantom fire flickering over his tails and dripping behind him.

Come chase him, Varuna.

The problem is that while Varuna is a creature of instinct, that instinct is honed for hunting. He's larger and heavier than Serph, but with more power in his legs he explodes out of the tent entrance after Jack with a snarl.

A wall of ice coalesces before Jack in an attempt to block off his options and to herd him in a direction that would force him back towards Varuna.

Jack leaps right at the ice wall, and the flickers of phantom fire on his fingers give him enough traction to dig in some finger holds and scramble upwards.

A second image of Jack slides down the wall, scrabbling uselessly as if unable to actually climb, hopefully a distraction, while the real Jack keeps climbing, fire melting him handholds. He's aiming to get up and over and towards where Heat and John are waiting so they can come to the rescue.

Though Heat and John probably can see the ice wall and at least one of them will guess what's happening.

Illusion magic was virtually non-existent in the Junkyard and 'Nirvana'. Other than the fake walls and floors that Sera had left behind to stop them from following after her, Serph and Varuna's combined experience of visions that aren't real is narrow. Demons are straightforward. Kill or be killed. No trickery about it.

Varuna makes the snap decision to chase the Jack that's struggling. Easier prey. Closer prey. With a snarl, Varuna surges forward on powerful legs, hand outstretched to rip Jack from the ice... only for his fingers to close around air.

(Serph would have picked the Jack that's escaping. But Varuna won't make the same mistake twice.)

Enraged, the howl that rips out of Varuna's throat reverberates through the air.

Cages are an insult Heat doesn't tolerate well, but there's something unreal about the watching spectres that mean for a while he simply watches back, attention more on figuring out how to get out; the bars were reinforced even against his strength, so that wasn't going to work.

He doesn't expect the vision. He's never HAD ONE before. He'd seen the riverlands. He didn't expect to see them again in strange dreams that didn't feel like dreams, full of things he'd only ever seen beneath the Wolves' base. Canals, dams, waterwheels, things of purpose to control the flow of water. Some of it pulls at memories, his own and fragments of someone else's life, marking castles and ruins for what they are.

The water rises as the moon breaks, distorting the monster changes this place had inflicted on him, but the force of cool deep magic is met with Agni's inherent, furious rejection. The calm blue serenity flashes to steam and then to flame.

Heat's cage is meant to contain a unicorn and a water elemental. It is not meant to resist fire. Funny how the timing works out.

Varuna's howl of rage is enough of a marker, if the wall of ice hadn't been, as to where his Leader was. Where his nominal Tribe was, and Heat knows that sound. Knows what it could mean, without Sera present.

"Keep moving, fuzzball!" Jack's been spotted. That's not the massive unicorn form though, he's using Agni's crimson and gold, familiar, comfortable, and actively burning as he reaches back, long knuckle-claws flexed, two sets of teeth bared in a parody of a ghastly grin. For the first time since getting to this planet, he feels the way he should, and it's a good thing too with ice still being Agni's painful weakness.

The ice is slammed into from the other side, fire crawling along its gleaming surface in hissing steam and boiling water, the gutteral growl rising as a relentlessly hungry challenge. There's easy prey in a little fleeing fox-man, and then there's the real challenge. Agni and Varuna have faced each other before. "C'mon out, Serph, I just wanna have a little fun."

A very dangerous, potentially lethal game. Run distraction so Jack doesn't get mutilated, til he determines if Serph's really lost his mind or if this is some weird effect of this place that would inevitably fade. If it's all Varuna now, there's ... only one thing anyone could do.

Heat's challenge is met with a booming bellow in response. When Serph is in control he keeps a tight leash on Varuna, only allowing his demon to howl freely when all threats have been eliminated. The man keeps the demon as quiet as himself, except when severely injured and his control slips sideways.

So Serph, who had refused to fight Heat and had to take a beating before he would even nominally fight back, even as 'just' a distraction rather than anything real, isn't home. It's Varuna, through and through. Varuna recognises Agni -- how could he not? -- but as a threat, not a comrade.

No, Agni is just another demon to be devoured.

Clawed feet kick up dirt as Varuna dashes towards his new target, blades unsheathing and scything down towards Agni's forearms where they aren't covered in bright, protective plating.

"I am not a fuzzball," Jack mutters, mostly just to himself since it's unlikely Heat is paying him any attention even if he's close enough to hear it, but he's already launching himself over the other side of the ice wall, sliding down and rolling to his feet and continuing to run, so Heat should have nothing to complain about.

Well, not a lot to complain about. He only runs0 so far, to the edge of the nearest tent. He isn't going to just leave them there. He has to help somehow.

There's the connection he knows is there, the one that pulled Serph back last time, that he's sure the wolf is reacting to during the moon warps. He doesn't know what it is, or why, but it's there, he knows it is. He tries to feel along it, eyes darting from one demon to the other, looking for something along that connection that can bring Serph back.

There's no accident in where Agni places himself, directly in the path of any route Varuna could take to get at Jack, who is definitely a fuzzball. There's at least some measure of paying attention at play, as he's careful to maintain some sense of where the kitsune is. Just in case.

But in fairness most of his attention's on Varuna, and he's not bothering with placation or speeches of friendship in favor of making sure he doesn't get killed (or, reluctantly, anyone else) in the process, deflecting the sweep of one blade to the side with his own claws and turning into the other so it grates along armor ridging instead of softer red hide. That it still shears off a flurry of golden plates does not help his mood any, and his retaliation is a wide arc of crimson flame; it'll hurt, but it's not meant to kill, it's meant to keep Varuna's attention where it belongs: not on Jack.

They've fought against each other before. Serph had always pulled Varuna's strength back. This ... isn't that, is it.

The flames are met with a furious howl as they scorch carapace and fins and burn unprotected flesh. Agni was always physically stronger than Varuna, but when it came to elemental domains Varuna is the greater and the god of oceans will not allow Agni's flames to go unchallenged.

Retaliation comes in a rapid temperature drop as Varuna sucks in a lungful of air before letting out a bone-chilling breath of icy air, cold enough to rapidly freeze anyone and anything caught in its path. Serph never would have done this at such close proximity to Agni.

Yeah, Jack is not finding anything to reach, anywhere. It doesn't help that he honestly doesn't know how he did it. Think about the wolf maybe? Except he doesn't really remember that so he can't really focus on it.

He looks around instead, trying to find something he can-- use, somehow. Throw to distract Serph, make something protective with, maybe feed him?? Would feeding him be enough at this point?

From the tent beside Jack comes a familiar voice.

"What the fuck is going on out there?" Something clangs loudly against steel bars, growls low and warped in a very particular way. "Hello! Anyone!"

Inside, John looks almost entirely himself. His yellow robe is in fresh tatters, and he paces a constant, restless pattern like a caged lion; his mundane human hands constantly flex as though expecting claws. A sickly yellow glow blazes behind his eyes and sigil, bright enough to sap the light of the candles arrayed around his cage.

"Water!" He pitches his voice rough and desperate. It sounds very little like John's genuine panic, but a stranger might be convinced. "A glass of water! Anything, please!"

Jack's not the target anymore and Heat's fine with that. The next step is luring Varuna away from these tents and cages, where people might get hurt. He didn't really CARE if anyone else got hurt, but if Serph managed to wrest control back from Varuna, Serph would care.

That's enough of a reason. There's a snarl at John's yelling, but that's way over there and not currently his problem. His problem is the bitter, biting cold, and that weakness had never gone away; dodging just isn't something he usually bothers with, even against the very element that hurt the most. It looks innocent enough, the rime that forms in jagged spikes across arms crossed in front of his faces and down his chest and shoulders, but it is pure agony. Blood freezes, tissues lock up, and every movement to break off the layer of ice is bitter pain.

"Why couldn't you be ... fucking ..wind or something, it's always--" He hates ice. He hates the cold. Heat could heal it, he had the power since arriving to this planet. He doesn't, deliberately, and instead retreats, the smell of ruptured, frozen blood vessels and muscles, the signs of weakness a purposeful bait.

Come along, Varuna. Wounded prey is escaping.

Varuna crowds out the space that would be occupied by Serph. His connection to Jack is getting blocked by the demon in control, whose hunger is eternal and unending.

And the demon, sensing weakness, closes in. Despite having teeth that can crack through bone like a knife through butter, completely frozen prey is of no use; an iced over demon may as well be inedible. So Varuna's nostrils flare before he gives chase, eager for a swift conclusion to the hunt so he can begin a new one with the rest of the prey he knows is near.

Frustrated and unhappy, Jack focuses on something he can do, following John's voice and ducking inside to find his cage. "I don't have any water!" he hisses. "But I can pick the lock!"

Water will be coming, sure, but Jack doesn't know that. He fumbles for his lockpicks. If there's something he can do, he's at least going to try to do it.

"Jack!" John deflates all at once, leaning forward against the bars just to put himself closer to his friend. The feigned desperation vanishes from his voice like a fog lifted. "What's happening? Are you hurt?"

He's jittery, knuckles flexing, pupils blown. The visions of this place have left him feeling... sharp-edged. Dangerous. Territorial and impulsive, the way he gets under the moon. The way he used to be, in worse places than this one, before he had friends like these.

"Let me out," he encourages, such a growl to his voice that he'd normally be embarrassed at it. "I'll make sure we get away."

If he's going to be keeping Varuna occupied long enough to determine if his Leader's gone for good or not, he.. is going to have to sideline Agni.

The thought is almost insulting, and as Heat retreats to a place a bit more open, and a bit further from Jack. The fire elemental magic is different from what he's used to but he knows how to use flames regardless, the bits of faire detritus ignited by the earlier swipe of fire fanned to a sudden inferno behind them in a slowly spreading crescent to try to keep Varuna contained. If it melts the ice wall, all the better, he really, really doesn't like ice.

No easy conclusion is waiting for Varuna's hunt; no sooner does the ice demon close in on his weakened, fleeing prey than Heat strikes, curved claws resheathing in a faint click, intending to try to drive one fist into Varuna's unarmored stomach with .. somewhat less force than he is fully capable of. The point is to hurt, not to kill, the other reaching to try to get ahold that narrow gap in armor between throat and chin. Catching hold might allow him some measure of control of where Varuna's teeth go.

He's not used to pulling his punches. It doesn't matter if it means getting inside the reach of Varuna's arm-blades, that's just the price to be paid.

The suddenly increase in heat speeds up the melting of Varuna's ice wall. Steam billows out, sweeping through the immediate area like fog. It seeps in between tent flaps, spreading out and settling like mist.

The blow to the stomach briefly stuns Varuna long enough for him to be grabbed, teeth clacking as Agni's large hand grasps his jaw. Serph would know Heat's holding back. Varuna doesn't do the same. Instead, Varuna's rage flares, a sharp snort of cold air expelled through his nostrils before he tries to snap his teeth out of reflex.

At this distance, the grinding sound of arm blades unsheathing is unmistakeable as Varuna drives them into Agni's unarmoured sides.

"We can't just leave Serph and Heat!" Jack hisses back, but he's already popping the lock open. He doesn't bother with an illusion here, because there's enough ruckus outside that no one is going to notice one more empty cage. And also he doesn't know if he has the focus for it, with the fight outside.

The cage door swings open and Jack hastily steps back, motioning for John to come out.

"We don't—" John doesn't get far. Steam sweeps into the tent: he recoils into the haze, and a dozen candles gutter out with a damp hiss. The little room is plunged into a wet, clinging darkness.

In that fog, John's shape begins to twist and change. Fabric slides over itself in whispering folds. Two dull yellow flames seem to rekindle in the dark, and then the curling sigil flickers to life between them, carved across the white chitin of John's mask. The whole plane of his face is cracked through with a faint inner glow.

"Very well." His voice has plunged deep and low, as though it resonates from some distant cavern. It aches in the mind until he reins himself in. "I'll take care of it."

A great tangled shape barrels past Jack's shoulder and out into the fog of the street. It doesn't move with John's clumsy, skittish lack of grace. His bulk never seems to touch the ground; the dark tentacles billow yellow like his robe and back again, impossible to focus on for longer than a moment, snapping in the air as a windswept mirage.

The cage's fucking visions showed him briar, brambles, a tower of thorns. A red oasis. If Serph has broken to hunger, to instinct— but he didn't want to. He so desperately didn't want to. They can't let him.

"Serph!"

It's not going to be hard for John to figure out where Serph is, with all the fire. A terrible way to contain something weak to flames, cruel and deliberate. But it does mean if a tempting target isn't directly nearby, Varuna might not wander off.

Hopefully Jack's gotten the hell out befor-- nope. That sounded like Jack.

And the other one. Ugh.

Priorities. Like not getting gutted. Nothing actually stops Varuna's blades from tearing into his target beyond Agni's ridiculous resilience, but it's not enough to do more than what would be simply delaying the inevitable normally. Aside from a sharp snarl of pain, it's ignored, the reach of Varuna's weaponry isn't the best this close and he deliberately shoves closer, intending to drive the ice demon backwards towards the wall of flame. Planning really isn't Heat's specialty, he's not really thinking this through beyond keeping Varuna occupied and utterly unwilling to kill his Leader until he's sure.

He doesn't need to feign greater injury than he has anymore, not with the metallic red smell of blood so sharp in the air, edged in the bitter acrid smell of punctured organs.

The sharp tang of blood so close has Varuna snapping his trap-like teeth in anticipation, even as Agni shoves him backwards. Varuna doesn't react to the call of Serph's name so much as that unmistakeable voice beneath the oasis, that taste of charred lightning and swirling stars beyond this world's.

That sliver of bitten-off tongue and ichor hadn't been enough.

Varuna digs his clawed feet into the ground, resisting, strength surging through lean muscle. Agni may be stronger most days but Varuna is still a demon, significantly stronger than his host. And on a day where Agni is now having a very bad day? Varuna's bloodied blades sheathe back into his arms, long legs curling beneath him before he shoves back with a frenzied roar, intent on using that demonic strength to knock Agni off-balance.

Oh. Huh. So that's what John is. Or at least what he is now, Jack isn't sure if that's related to his not being human before or if he's been hiding this change since they got here somehow.

Kind of neat-looking, all things considered, though now he's charging right for Serph and Heat and now Jack has to worry about all three of them.

He hesitates a moment, then starts looking for something he can throw over the combatants to maybe foul up claws and teeth and weird arm blades, keeping one eye on the fight, in case there's something he can do.

In this state, the monster sounds nothing at all like Serph. John sweeps through the fog, rippling across the street like the band of Heat's fire. He tastes blood and bitter acid in the air, like he had on that shoreline, back when Serph chewed heavy and wet through a man's chest.

But now it's Heat. And Jack is behind him, too brave to run, warm and vulnerable as Arthur ever was—

"God damn it, Serph!" His voice thrums deep as a toothache. For the first time, he doesn't lash out like a beast with claws. He flares in the air like a yellow star and bears down with the weight of his crown. "Stop!"

Injury is just how it goes. It'll heal, or not, and he'll worry about that later if he was still alive to do so. Weakening Varuna required fire, and there's plenty of that around, and he's more than willing to pit his strength directly against the ice demon's.

If he was uninjured this wouldn't be a contest. He knows he's stronger, ordinarily. But right now, Varuna's an easy match, and maintaining his footing against a shove he should have been able to brush off is a stumbling struggle. And there are no words at all for how frustrating it is to detect Jack coming BACK when the whole point was to give him room to LEAVE.

And John.

Who can still die for all Heat's concerned; having two heads simply means he can bare teeth at both Varuna AND John in a guttural angry snarl. The command isn't for him, he doesn't have to obey it, but it feels like a compulsion regardless, just aimed elsewhere. Like the one Serph had used on him when he'd gone after the goddamn squid right after arriving.

But if Varuna obeys, if that aggravating, insulting power does actually make the demon hesitate, Heat's going to take advantage as best he can with holes torn through him, and attempt to seize him and pin Varuna's arms to his sides so those long vicious blades can't unsheathe again.

"Aren't you supposed to be escaping?" That's definitely to Jack and not John.

Demons are made of God and humanity both. In that moment John is more god than man, the weight of his command forces the demon into silence, hunger forgotten briefly forgotten.

And in that silence, Serph's awareness becomes a pinprick in the all encompassing darkness of the ocean.

Varuna doesn't immediately react, Heat easily seizing him and locking Varuna's arms with his own. He sways, unfocused, before he seems to gather himself, a low growl rumbling in his throat before it grows into a snarl. The temperature around him drops as he draws air into his lungs from between sharpened teeth.

At this range, Varuna's freezing breath won't miss if he has the chance to release it.

Jack twitches at the bellowed order, looking anxiously over his shoulder, and spots Serph going still for a moment. He makes another attempt at feeling for him, in his head. He still has no idea if it will work, but he has to try.

Especially since, kind of weirdly, he can feel John and Heat, in a way. Like scent trails in his thoughts, connected to memories and feelings. Surely Serph's is there, too, and he can follow it, maybe pull him out--

That pinprick of light in the darkness widens, that moment of feeling able to pierce through the wall of Varuna's hunger after John's command.

Warmth blooms beneath the surface of the sea.

Serph reaches for the source of it.

The icy breath stills in Varuna's throat, the demon calming but not quite ready to relinquish control, a low growling vibrating between his teeth. On the outside, the effect is rather similar to a demon on the verge of being lost to hunger being calmed by Sera's song, the glowing lines that mark a transformation and reversion encroaching on Varuna's form.

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in the background..

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