Unfortunately the warm introduction was cut short as death once again knocked at the door, a little too literally and eagerly for Seth's taste. Right before his eyes, a fist rammed its way through the door, sending bits and pieces everywhere.
It came all the way through, including the forearm, before seeming to get stuck, then quickly retracted. In the brief moments that the arm was in the room, Seth managed to get a quick glimpse at it, and what he saw shocked him. This content belongs to N0veI.Fiɾe.net
The entire arm, at least of what he could see, was charcoal black. Not metaphorically either, it was literally black as charcoal as that's what it seemed to be made up of. The rough texture, the deep colour, the sharp edges especially around the knuckles. It was an arm made up of chunks of charcoal cobbled together, and within the cracks between the chunks was the unmistakable glow of a burning, crackling fire.
Seth hoisted up his weapon, waiting with bated breath for the next attack to come. But it never did. For ten seconds he stood there, listening to the carnage playing outside, still feeling the waves of heat pouring through the hole in the door. But no second attack ever came.
He frowned slightly, wondering why it didn't come for the cornered meal.
'Is it scared? No, that's stupid. So why isn't it attacking me again? Unless… it was never attacking me in the first place.'
Feeling confident in his reasoning, he slowly inched towards the door and dared to peek out through the hole the flaming fist had left. What he saw was definitely not what anyone would have expected when they came into work today.
Outside of that fist sized hole, he could see utter chaos at work. All manners of creatures and monsters fighting one another, as well as the casualties of war strewn about the place.
Corpses of office workers lay in a multitude of positions, killed in different ways. Some were torn apart, others with chests or their heads caved in, some being burned and others melted by some sort of acid.
And that was just the dead ones, plenty were still alive. Some normal looking, as if untouched by all this mutation nonsense, while others were twisted and changed in different ways.
One petite woman was constantly engorging her throat, like a croaking frog, before spewing out a pressurised spout of liquid at those which were attacking her. And judging by the way the liquid hissed against their skin, and how her assailants flailed and screamed, that definitely wasn't water she was spitting.
Another was seemingly able to extend his muscle fibres out from underneath his skin and was using them to restrain his attackers, or simply whip things through the air at them. An ability which Seth was absolutely not jealous of and definitely was not resenting the man for having.
These weren't the only one's fighting, in fact everything that was moving was fighting something or running for its life. It was pure and unadulterated chaos.
Thankfully, the room that Seth was in was quite out of the way, so while he could see a lot of the chaos going on, there wasn't much happening nearby. But that didn't mean there wasn't something. A few metres away from his room, seperated from the rest of the mindless slaughter, was a fight that, unsurprisingly, involved a man made fully of flaming charcoal, the tatters of a charred and destroyed suit still clinging to his body in places. He was swinging his fists in the air in a mad rage, sending a barrage of uncoordinated haymakers towards his opponent, a living skeleton with bones that shined like polished chrome.
The skeletal creature weaved through the punches, twisting and turning as it moved like a butterfly and stung like a bee. Using knife hands, and its unnaturally sharp fingers as the tips of those knives, to slash at the flaming man's torso with every dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. Despite its impressive display and constant barrage of slices, it didn't seem to deter or wound the charcoaled man in any significant way.
Every slash took away a chunk of the blackened rock that was his flesh, the fire within licking at the freshly opened wound, but he never faltered and kept swinging away, hoping to eventually land a hit on the dexterous devil.
Eventually his chance came when, in a moment of desperation, the skeleton ducked under another punch and changed its tactics. Its hand shifted, the bones shattered like glass, swirling in the air and rearranging themselves before slotting back together. It thrust its hand forward, which was now in the shape of a perfect boney spearhead, and stabbed the man straight through the gut, until the tip came out of his back.
The boney devil chattered its pointed, fanged teeth almost like it was laughing before it tilted its head up to look at the face of its first victim, eager to see the light in its eyes go out. Unfortunately, the only sight it was faced with was a large, rock hard hand barreling towards it before it was given the ultimate back hand across its boney face. Instead of cracking and caving in the way bone naturally would, the skull instead shattered into tiny pieces that were quickly scattered throughout the chaotic room. It was like a porcelain vase trying its hardest to stop a speeding bus.
The now headless skeleton went limp, the only thing keeping it upright was the arm still embedded in the molten man's stomach. However, the rocky horror quickly solved that issue. Without hesitation, it reached down and grabbed the embedded arm with one hand before crushing it like it was nothing more than a toothpick. Now that it had nothing to support itself, the skeletal remains collapsed to the floor, yet still stayed together through some unknown force, as the molten monstrosity removed the rest of the arm from his stomach and tossed it to the floor.
With the annoying insect now dealt with, he slowly turned to find his next victim, only to lock those devilish, red glowing eyes onto Seth, who was still peeking through the hole the rock man's fist had left in the door. The towering terror glared at him, locking eyes for what seemed like eternity, before making his way over to the door he had partially destroyed. Unfortunately for him, this meant that he didn't see the fragments of glass-like bone skirting across the floor towards the twitching skeletal remains.
To be fair on the molten man, Seth didn't see it either, as he was too busy scrambling away from the door and preparing his fire extinguisher, hoping that a faceful of foam would be enough to stop the behemoth for at least a few seconds. It only took a few moments for the skeletal devil to fully reform itself, giving out a soft chattering cackle to itself, before it sprung to its feet and charged at its foe once again.
It leaped into the air, landing on the rock man's back just before he could reach Seth's door. It didn't even wait a second before starting to stab into the crusty skin of the volcanic behemoth once again, even using its fangs to bite into its neck like a vampire.
Seth could only watch in anticipation and ever creeping anxiety as the two duked it out once more. The glass skeleton unable to fatally wound the rock man with its relentless barrage of cuts and stabs and the volcanic beast unable to kill the fanged fiend. Despite his powerful blows shattering it apart again and again, only to have it reform moments later.
It truly was a battle between an unstoppable force and an unrelenting mountain. For two agonising minutes this fruitless battle continued once again, with poor Seth unable to escape from the room without getting in the middle of the two of them. Only able to wait it out and see which of these beasts would finally win the grand prize of getting to kill him.