MonsterVille
Twenty Nine

Mellie didn’t know who the interloper was. But that didn’t matter. There was a monster challenging her, attacking her in her own territory. A monster that had chosen the worst possible moment to strike, the moment when Mellie and her monstrous aspect had experienced a moment of disharmony. Where the monster had tasted blood and was surging with strength, with hunger.

A frosted fist struck Mellie’s stomach—icy pain lancing through her as It took control. She blinked and new eyes took in the woman. She brushed aside a fist and pushed the woman’s arm into the wall with a crunch before backhanding her and flinging them apart.

She stared out across the woman. She was petite, fair of skin, hair that Mellie had first mistaken as blonde but was snow-white. Eyes like the hoarfrost. Cold radiated off her, an ice breeze that reduced the room to a glacial state.

“You attack me in my home? Interrupt when I am so close to being born, to finally being realised. You are a fool Snegurochka. Whatever imagined grievance you hold, it was not worth your life.”

The Snegurochka eyes swirled with the rage of a snowstorm and the temperature dropped another degree. “But perhaps it is worth his.” Her eyes flicked to River, vainly attempting to hold his throat together. She frowned at that. The wound had been inadvertent, but it would kill him in short order. The Snegurochka must have realised that as well; she twitched in his direction and ‘Mellie’ flowed into her path. Snegurochka snarled softly.

“He is going to die.”

“Humans die. It is their nature.”

“Move,” the Snegurochka threatened, “let me save him and then I will beat you down all night long.”

“Tempting offer.”

“Oh I’m sorry? Did that sound like an offer? Let me rephrase. I will not let him die, I will go through you. So move your ass.”

There was a twinge of Mellie beneath her other nature. A twinge of the woman she so desperately fought to be. River was going to die. No maybes, or possiblies, he was literally bleeding to death on the bed while Mellie and the Snegurochka bickered like school girls. What the hell was wrong with her? She clenched her fists, her nails scouring deep through her palms as she gasped at the pain. For the first time she felt it, really felt the conflict within herself. She had never really experienced it before because she had never over lapped. When her inner monster rose her normal self-vanished, but not this time? They were a fusion, a blending of minds and desires. If it had just been the monster it wouldn’t have cared about River—not beyond hunger at any rate—but now? God it was doing her head in.

“Why do you even care what happens to this human? He is my property.”

“Well fuck you too bitch, he’s my friend.”

Friend. The word rocked Mellie to the core and chased the last vestiges of her other nature back into the recesses of her being. It was queer to feel the monsters strength flowing through her, the power, the hunger, but to have repressed the voice aching to sink its teeth into hot human flesh, desperate to rip her enemies to pieces.

Mellie shook her head, her iris bleeding back to their natural blue.

“Oh God River!” she turned and saw him, really saw him. He was unconscious, blood was pouring down his throat. She must have just nicked the jugular; if she had separated it he would already be dead. “What are you waiting for?” Mellie shouted, “Save him!”

The Snegurochka spared a half second to give Mellie the ‘you’re insane’ look before rushing to River’s side. The woman’s hands wrapped around his still bleeding throat. The room plummeted to sub-zero temperatures. Frost crusted over every surface—Mellie included.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Mellie asked through chattering teeth; rubbing her arms for the sparse warmth it offered.

“Saving him.”

Ice grew and shifted over River, it spread from the Snegurochka’s hands, over his throat and down his chest. Thick glacial ice that moved and changed; living ice was the only way Mellie could describe it. Half his body was covered in the strange shifting ice before the Snegurochka sighed, her forehead rested against his in relief, and she would likely have remained that way if Mellie hadn’t also sighed and broken the shell of ice crusting over her.

The Snegurochka moved like the winter chill, a motion so fast Mellie had difficult tracking it. She found herself on the wrong side of the room with the Snegurochka standing between her and River.

“He’ll live,” the Snegurochka said. Warily staring Mellie down.

“Good.” Mellie responded.

The door to the room shattered inwards in a devastating explosion of shards, tiny wooden skewers impaling the exposed surfaces of the room. Mellie and the Snegurochka included—the shards bouncing off River’s icy exoskeleton. The Snegurochka looked towards the berserker towering in the doorway, and the two smaller beasts standing behind them. Her gaze flicked from them, to Mellie, to River, before she cursed violently and threw herself out the window in a wash of icy air.

“What just happened?”

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