Swallowed by shadows

[Tenzin]

She found solace in the hunt. In formless instinct, free of thought and guilt and sadness. Jacinda’s face would haunt if she let it; the painful shifting of her scent in the moment Tenzin had fled. She’d never noticed signs; nothing she did not associate with the closeness of pack, anyway. Right now she could not think of it at all. The wolves beyond the city howled in her mind, but it was the darkness of the undercity where Tenzin ran, not at their sides. The animal urges burgeoned fierce, and though she needed an outlet she was wary too of that line where humanity became but a blurred memory. Red already spattered her throat. Teeth bared white. Her blood ran hot, but though the initial frenzy passed the emotion still sat high and unfathomable in her chest. She did not want to go home yet.

The stink of filth was strong, but did not distract from the stench of the prey she followed now. None of it smelled right. Her jaw flexed when the scent of human mingled, a moment before the echo of distant male voices. Tenzin rested on her haunches, ears perked to the unwelcomed complication. The urumi balanced between her knees now, pulled free from her waist, its curling blade yet clean -- for her first kill had been far more primal. She scowled, not listening to the words but the direction of travel. The foolishness did not please her. A scream followed. The pungent searing of burning flesh and hair that flared her nostrils.

She took off. The swift pad of her feet was silent. Oni were a job better suited to pack, and this one was not alone -- all stinking of disease that curled her lip with disgust. She would need the urumai for their numbers, and to keep distance from snapping jaws, yet the human males were a problem if they did not stay back from the fly of the wicked blade. She had a simple handled kathi knife tucked into a boot, but it would be useless against thick hide. If she could even get close without goring herself on the burning oni’s wide horns. And that wasn’t even considering the chupes.

A snarl announced her fall into the dance of kalaripayattu. The metal of the urumai sang as it smacked the stone floor with the first strike, a bone-curdling screech to cool the heart. A jet of blood erupted from the back of the first chupe, splitting a lesion open from neck through shoulder, then arced to slice half the face of the next to turn to the new predator amongst them.

[[Kalaripayattu is an Indian martial art that uses various weapons. The urumai looks somewhere between a whip and a sword. It probably lengthens out to the same height as she is. It is pretty lethal, as you can probably imagine, and great for multiple opponents. Try not to get decapitated.]]