They both woke up at the same time with a gasp and stood up, then their eyes immediately met again, and they just knew that everything had changed. Alistar could almost see some sort of ghostly presence overlapping with the image of the seductive catgirl before him, while Shayla felt an indescribable feeling of yearning as she stared at the handsome catman towering over her.
His brow was furrowed, sharpening even further his wild features and intense stare, yet his jaw was slack, letting his cheeks and lips seem so soft and gentle while increasing the prominence of his manly chin. He had both a wild air due to his gaze and a softness underneath that endeared Shayla, especially due to the new magical feelings clouding her judgment. But on his side, his mind was empty as he was merely confused about what was wrong with his eyes.
Eventually, he realized that there was a stunning beauty behind the odd visual effect. Short and gently wild black hair with many layers, combed into curves that dug into her cheeks and made her face look adorably small, delicate but icy cold eyes that seemed to look into his soul, pretty little red lips that were crying for a blood red lipstick, and a gentle and round face of a sultry and seductive beauty.
Then his eyes continued down and got a perfect view of a delicious pink color. He even knew how well she kept it short down there. Her body was just entrancingly sexy.
But the fake gentleman acted like a real gentleman and turned around in respect. "I'm sorry. Do you have any spare clothes?"
And she took a few extra seconds to recover from her daze. "Huh…? Oh, oh…! Uh… yes, I do…" Then she began to very embarrassedly rifle through her few belongings in search for her other, old but still wearable, outfit she had. The better one was filthy from the water of the Twelve Fingers while the second best one had been ripped. It was a mere shirt, pants, cloak, and boots, but it looked well enough in her alluring body as long as she didn't hide it under the cloak as usual.
While she changed, Alistar took in the state of the rest of her little shack while he attempted to pierce together his fuzzy memories.
"What… happened here…?" he mumbled as he had only seen less than half of what happened in this place.
"I don't understand myself," she replied soberly as she finished changing then turned to him, eager to gaze upon his handsome face again, and she realized the nasty wound at his back had fully healed, including the stab at his heart.
He heard her step closer and turned around, then offered a hand for a polite shake. "I'm Alistar Rouge, and… I assumed you saved me from drowning in the river."
She nodded shyly, avoiding his gaze as it was still too entrancing for her, then took his clawed hand, which looked massive as it wrapped around hers. "I'm Shayla. I thought you were a noble."
"Unfortunately, I'm a Slum Dweller like you," he casually replied with a chuckle and bowed like a blue blood, but his hat and cane were lost in the Fingers, so he couldn't do the full gesture. His handsome smile showed the quality of unwavering bravery behind it, though, even at the face of such a dreadful situation, but those who knew Alistar better would rather say that while pretty on the outside, there wasn't a single thought inside his hollow skull.
For Shayla, his confidence made her comfortable enough to joke back, "And you're also someone in shit deeper than the Fingers."
Ever upbeat, Alistar welcomed her joke and even followed through, "What a dreadful day-… rather, night. What an unfortunate sequence of events, but the worst of it all is that my only suit has been absolutely ruined!"
Something inside Shayla told her it would be very appropriate for her to smack him quite hard for his pompous understatement, but she mostly couldn't believe how easy it was to crack jokes with someone she had just (properly) met a second ago. And this level of levity hit her heat perfectly, so she felt quite relaxed in his presence.
Too relaxed considering the cold body at their feet.
She smiled and looked away to break the spell that befell her whenever she gazed upon his handsome face. And then she remember the third guest: Frederik. "We have to deal with this before more guards come," she worriedly suggested as she pointed down.
Though his mind should've been in crisis mode, the ghost he saw whenever he looked at Shayla was so distracting that he decided to stretch his hand forward and attempt to grab it. "The man wasn't a guard, but before that, there's something within my sight that's bothering me," he soberly replied and closed his hand.
She suddenly jerked her head towards him and her pretty blue eyes widened. "Huh…? Oh… w-w-what are you doing?" she moaned weakly and hugged herself.
"There's… something in my vision that…" he mumbled as he concentrated on gripping that ghost.
And Shayla began to breathe heavily, her tail pointing straight up and her furs standing on end. "Hah… hah… hah! W-what is this?!"
Once Alistar believed he finally gripped the "ghost" (which surprsingly felt like squeezing a squeaky doll), he focused on the sensuous catwoman moaning before him, then he felt something drain into the ghost. Rather than loosen his grip, the catman simply remained still and waited, curious about what was going to happen, and something did happen.
Shayla's body began to change. As she moaned in ecstasy, she grew a good ten centimeters, her pointy canines lengthened even further, her delicate hands became bigger and gained claws sharp like curved blades, and then her back started to hunch over as something under her shirt wished to break free. She desperately removed her shirt, revealing her pretty upper body and breasts again, but also releasing a pair of black, leathery wings like that of a bat's.
This surprised (but not scared) the young man so much he released the "ghost," and then the magic was gone, and Shayla returned to normal in the two blinks of an eye.
Now they were both stunned, and they remained silent again for a couple of second as a new feeling grew within them: hunger.
Both their stomachs growled, and they held back a smile, their minds unable to fully comprehend the absurdity of the situation. Then Alistar noticed the body under them, and Shayla followed his gaze a couple of seconds later.
They hungered for human blood and flesh.
In the half blink of an eye, they were both at the stump, now cold and the blood congealed, but they still licked and gnawed at it while attempting to rip open the armor to get into the flesh goodies inside. And the armor did rip open.
The two pieces of the breastplate fell onto the floor with a metallic crash, then they ripped apart the padding underneath as if it was paper and began feasting upon the flesh of Frederik's upper body. They were like ravenous beasts, wildly chewing, swallowing, drinking, and making an unholy bloody mess everywhere.
But for them, it tasted like the finest meal.
"Hahahahaha!" Alistar laughed euphorically, his voice warping up into something truly monstrous.
"Hahahahahaha!" Shayla followed up, hers more of an ethereal song that wormed into the back one's mind.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" their laughter turned maniacal, their chests heaving as they reached euphoria, but the hunger called them back, and they resumed eating while giggling.
For him, the belly was the most delicious for it had a considerable amount of fat, and the slender young man was in need of lots of calories. For her, the thigh had the finest taste as it had strong muscle with a small amount of fat that complimented the flavor more than overpowered it.
They delighted themselves as they gorged in the bountiful flesh, but as their ravenous hunger was sated, it made way to worry, then to fear, and finally they gave in to panic.
"What is happening?!" Shayla exclaimed as she stared at her bloodied hands as if they were covered in chocolate.
"Why are we like this?!" Alistar despaired but couldn't stop chewing.
And she wildly gesticulated at him, the blood dripping down her still bare chest. "You tell me! You were the one who survived getting stabbed in the heart!" Then she took another bite of Frederik's thigh.
The reminder made him reflexively touch the hole in his shirt, staining it with even more blood. "I-I did… but I don't know how. I just saw you and felt like I had to help you no matter what!"
Her heart beat faster at his sudden confession, which just made her even more confused. "W-well… thank you, I think…?"
So the ever positive catman snagged this chance to just make her even more flustered. "And I thank you for saving me. What you did was very noble, but I'm sorry for having cursed both of us like this."
And he said it with such earnest innocence that his words sobered then calmed them down, but neither stopped chewing the human flesh in their mouths. They then fell onto an embarrassed silence and their eyes fell too, towards the half-eaten man. As gruesome of a scene as it looked, it didn't sate their cannibalistic appetite one bit.
Shayla had forgotten she was shirtless, and the silence allowed Alistar to be reminded of it. Though her breasts were covered in blood, for Alistar it was as if they were covered in nectar, which made him quickly become excited, but while his sword eventually reached the limit of its growth, his arousal didn't stop rising, so to keep himself under control he held his breath, and he discovered that it was now curiously easy to do so.
"We have to leave; what if another man comes?" the bloodied beauty worriedly remarked, her soft, round breasts jiggling gently as her body twitched in anxiety.
Perfect timing for the serious question supported his efforts to return to his brain the blood that was stolen to supply his lower member. "I don't think the Countessa had another knight, but yes, we have to throw away the body, and then we can hide in my community while things calm down. But first, I think you need a shirt," he remarked and lowered his head. He was a hot-blooded, carnivorous (and now cannibalistic) man, so of course the sight of such beautifully supple breasts would greatly stimulate him, but never it had to this extent, and it worried him.
"OH!" she exclaimed yet refused to cover them, but at least she hurried to find her also bloodied shirt. Needless to say, everything in their immediate vicinity was thoroughly bloodied; human bodies can hold a surprising amount of the vibrant fluid. "What has been happening to me today…?"
"A lot," he wryly remarked.
And it elicited a terse chuckle, "Hmph, yes… Now, you meant Countessa Narcisa? This is her knight?"
It seemed she had her shirt on, so Alistar resumed looking at the seductive beauty, though the wetness did mean that the cloth clung to her skin, but by now it seemed like Shayla didn't care much about being exposed anymore.
"The very same. I think he was called Frederik," he hummed.
"That bitch was always throwing trash down onto our heads," the catgirl hissed quietly, her mood briefly darkening.
"Well, now we killed her lover as revenge, but let's get on with it and deal with the body," the catman casually stated. He found it odd how positive he felt about killing Frederik, but there'd be time for philosophically introspection another day. "We should also pawn off his stuff."
"Huh?"
And Alistar smirked. The gambeson was mostly ruined (and too stained with blood to just wash away), but the plate was still very valuable since it seemed to be made of very high quality metal. There was also the sword, and after ruffling through the dead man's stuff, they found an odd gadget similar to Alistar's Chaos Detector.
It was some sort of small metal box with gauges and switches, typical detector design, but instead of having an iridescent liquid (or dull-looking in Alistar's case), it had a sliver of a familiar-looking black crystal floating inside a glass sphere. After flipping the "ON" switch, it pinged twice, and of the multiple light bulbs around the edge of the device, only those who pointed to both of them started glowing.
"This means that I also have whatever you have," Shayla remarked, oddly unconcerned.
"And I have no idea what it is," Alistar replied with a shrug, also oddly unconcerned.
Next, they attempted to clean themselves of all the blood on their clothes. Shayla's shack didn't have much clean water, but since she didn't think she'd return to it any time soon, they used most of it. While they bathed, Shayla had a prescient thought and took one of the pills she kept stored just in case some fortunate or unfortunate event happened. Considering how she'd been behaving, she was looking forward to getting lucky, which was now an almost certainty to happen, she'd make sure of it.
Once the cats finished grooming themselves, they wrapped the body on the only carpet, and Alistar surprised himself by easily lifting the massive headless man and then dropping him into the nearby Twelve Fingers river. Shayla carried his head in a bucket and simply turned it over then also threw the bucket.
A part of them wished that they could've eaten more of the delicious man. The other part of was terrified of the first.
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