The Spirit Eater

"Defiler! Monster! Cursed child!" A phantasmal Orca wailed. It had been mutated almost beyond recognition, with sickeningly gaunt arms bursting from its sides, and eye-covered tumors covering its back.

"Yeah, yeah, heard it all before. C'mon, got anything new in you?" Taunted the ever-grinning Crimson McNabb, crouched before the bound body of the spirit.

Not only had it been filled with several enchanted harpoons, tied and bolted to the ground, but it had dozens of spiritual chains wrapped around it as well, held by the young and confident "knight" of the Dreamspeakers.

"Oye! Mind picking up the pace!?" The youthful mage strained.

"Aww, is the prodigal Roxana Reyes having trouble?"

"YOU TRY HOLDING BACK A FUCKING WHALE, THEN SASS ME!!!"

"Fine, fine." She said, standing up with her tell-tale cackle. "As a note, though, you might wanna look away for this." Her teeth and claws began to extend, as her inner beast appeared without fully bursting from her.

"Mutant! Bastard! Weaver Bitch! SPIRIT EAT-"

The wailing of the spirit is silenced, as the sound of viscous feasting takes its place for mere seconds.

Roxana did close her eyes, although she opened them as she felt her chains go loose. This was an error, as that meant she had to see the aftermath. As blue spiritual energy weaved into Crimson's body, she violently threw up black, viscous bile, with eyes similar to the mutations on the spirit.

Before she can recover, the bile tries to lunge towards her. Still, Roxana's attention allows her to bind it in a net of spiritual energy before closing her fist, turning that net into an omnidirectional guillotine, slicing and splattering the bile into motionless globs that dissipate into the air.

"Thanks, kid, that'd've been a rough one to deal with on my own! C'mon, you old enough to drink?" Crimson asked, wiping saliva from her lips as her features returned to normal.

"Not for two more years, but I'll take a meal if you don't bitch about the price!"

"HA! Deal, I know a good place down the road."

The pair get through their main dish and about three plates of appetizers at the bar, before the young mage can't hold back her curiosity any longer.

"So, odd question."

"You're too young for me." Crimson said, pausing her drinking.

"NOT THAT!" Roxana blurted, a slight fluster reddening her face. "I just noticed, you don't use spirits like others...like you." She looked around the bar, unsure about the location.

"Oh, you can be direct, this is one of our joints." Crimson assured, starting a howl that spread across the decently filled bar space.

Uncovering her ears, Roxana rolls her eyes. "Alright fine, you just seem to either not use spirits a lot of the time or just...use them in a really weird way. Plus, that mutated one tonight, it seemed almost...scared of you."

"Well duh, I'm six-feet-five of kickass with a shotgun!" She began, with a cackle. "But, yeah, spirits and I have never really gotten along too well. I can work with Weaver Spirits a little bit easier, but the others run from me or straight up just don't like me."

"Damn, did you do something messed up?"

"I mean, I've had to adapt, that's what you saw tonight, but honestly I've always had this problem. You see, I come from a family that has, 'luckily' had a Garou in every generation, so we're pretty intertwined. Even before my first change, I was brought before our family's guardian spirit in order to begin my education and my work for Gaia. But that went a little bit like..."

"DEFLIER! MONSTER! CURSED CHILD!" A golden spectral hawk screeched, as it bared its talons and flapped its wings in defiance of a young Crimson before she had ever given herself that name. What was supposed to be a joyful day of initiation turned into a moment of pure fear and panic for her, as her father and extended family had to drag her away, and pacify the family's guardian.

It was bad enough it had nearly scratched her chest open, and that it continued to curse and accuse her from the next room, but when the voice quieted, and her father came out to see her, his face only had confusion and utter disgust for his own child. She tried to apologize for whatever she had done in any way she could, but he had to get answers from one man. The wisest Garou in the whole of the south sound.

"████████ is perfectly fine." The salt-and-pepper-haired man said, after taking a long drag of his cigarette.

"BULLSHIT!" Her father shouted, throwing down his baseball cap. "Ask the spirits again, Knowles! There must be something they can tell us!"

"Arnold, please, calm yourself. I can understand you're worried, but spirits, they're sometimes more id than ego, if you know the terms."

"I don't and I also don't care. Seabhac Móira has been overseeing our family since the old world, and even at its worst showed only disinterest! Hell, it called [her] cursed, Merlyn!"

"I'm sure it did, but spirits are fickle. They are the purest manifestations of nature and its forces, and that doesn't always play well with oddities and differences. Maybe [she]'s not a Garou, maybe [she]'s bound for a less warrior-like fate, maybe it has something to do with [her] mother's death, hell maybe [she]'s gay!" He threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Would something minor like that really cause this much of a reaction?" Arnold doubted, dusting off his hat.

"When you're a spirit of antiquity, especially one who's used to shit being passed down since, as you said, the old world, then it just might. My point is this, Arnold. Your guardian might have rejected [her], and that's scary for you," Merlyn began, with Arnold scoffing at the concept. "But, my divination shows nothing about [her] that is damaging, that is dangerous, that is harmful. There's nothing wrong with ████████, so don't let one spirit's judgment affect how you parent your child."

"Damn," Roxana remarked, hearing a slightly edited version of Crimson's memories. "I can't imagine how fucked up that must've made you feel."

"You're telling me! But, for better or worse, it became normal."

"I mean, not to be a dick but, are you cursed?"

"See that's the worst part! Spirits go hog-wild around me, but day to day? Absolutely normal. No random bad luck, no seeping aura or even wyrm-taint or anything. That is what fucked me up for the longest time. Imagine going through your day, doing everything right, but constantly being told there's something wrong with you."

"Life hit you with a double dose of that one, ey?"

"Oh no seriously it took me so long to differentiate my general state of anxiety and discomfort from my dysphoria, until I stopped giving a shit about most of it."

"Well hey, at least you still had your dad on your side, yeah? After that whole meaningful message from that Merlyn guy?"

Crimson had her trademark cackle, but this was one of the few times Roxana heard her fully burst into laughter, almost to the point she choked on the mozzarella stick she was halfway through chewing. 

"Oh, absolutely fuckin' not!"

A night without a moon, with a quivering Crimson reeling on the ground before a writhing mass of centipede spirits. She had just thrown up for the third time, and her senses were beginning to go numb.

"God DAMMIT ████████, stand up! They're fucking insects!" He had armed her with nothing but an axe. An axe enchanted to actually harm spirits, but without training and without the strength. She was barely 12.

The writhing centipedes were much larger than any could imagine, and she could only barely see them. They writhed in their mass sphere and lashed out to strike, landing another hit in her stomach, eating away at her t-shirt, already soaked by sweat and stained by the grass.

Of course, he wasn't a total monster. She wouldn't die, no matter how much she got hurt, he'd make sure of that. This was training, a first look into the world of spirits, and she would prove her worth by subjugating them. Then, Seabhac Móira would see the error of its ways. He wasn't a monster, but he was far too prideful to realize that fate does not take kindly to attempts to subvert it.

The spirits are done playing around. They wouldn't harbor the existence of such a weakling, especially when all of their senses were turned to aggression by whatever curse Crimson had. They unfurled from their sphere, and Crimson thought she might be freed. Arnold knew otherwise, yet reacted too late.

Like a writhing spiritual cage, they lunged and wrapped around Crimson in the blink of an eye. Each scratch, each bite, tearing more and more into her flesh, as they chittered and swarmed closer and closer.

Panic began to take over in the mind of the child. Fear and anguish filled every thought that popped up, dozens in each second. But, there was also a sense of relief. Perhaps this was to be her cursed end, to finally be free of whatever made her father and the spirits hate her so much. Maybe, just maybe, this would be for the best.

But a werewolf should never give in.

The mind that was Crimson sank into her first taste of bestial sensations, as her body began to mutate and shift. For what it's worth, Arnold was already doing his best to tear Crimson away from the spirits, but they were calling on their fellows, falling to a state of rage themselves.

Then, he saw the hive begin to expand. They were starting to be spread too thin, letting the first patches of fur be exposed to the moonless night sky.

"No, no no no! It's not the right time! Hold back ████████, dammit HOLD BACK!" He cried out in futility. The McNabb family had been a lineage of Ahroun, brave warriors illuminated by the full moon. 

But Crimson was a cursed child. She could never be what her family, what her father, wanted.

She was something much worse.

In a burst of violent transformation, the strange maned wolf-like form awakened for the first time. Smaller, with more gaunt limbs, but still with the eeriest air about it, as the mane unfurled like tendrils flowing in the air, with Crimson's eyes thin and obsidian-black, but still shining with an eldritch gleam.

The centipede spirits, usually lacking emotion, shuddered and curled in fear, squeaking out only one word in unison. 

"SPIRIT-EATER!"

A violent feast began, with Crimson fully giving into her childish rage, with tears falling down from her inhuman eyes despite her hyena-like cackle that echoed through the night. Each centipede spirit could not run, as the monster tore into their spiritual flesh, devouring their essence fully into herself.

The only ones who were spared were those who didn't join the hives attack. 

It wasn't long before the meal was finished, and the Spirit Eater couldn't find any more prey. She let out a powerful, resounding howl into the night, which petered into a canine cackle.

Arnold was stunned, eyes wide and mouth held open. The monster in front of him was nothing like he or the clan had seen before. He was so certain that Merlyn was wrong. Something was deeply wrong with his child. Or perhaps, he feared, something was far too right, in a way his ancestors could never accept.

As Crimson's canine head is raised towards the sky to release the cackles of her soul, she suddenly bends back, so that her obsidian eyes match with her father's, who immediately jumps into a battle stance. She twists her body around, keeping her neck steady as she turns to face her father, sharp grin wide with perceived malice.

Her gaunt legs push her forward with a burst of speed, her arms moving to close in on her father, and he brandishes his shotgun, aimed right for her heart.

But he wasn't expecting this murderous, mutated monster to pull him into a hug. The steel of the barrel hugged both of their chests, but if Crimson noticed, she didn't remark on it.

To add to the confusion, another curiosity occurred. "I...do...good?" The mangled voice of Crimson squeaked out, holding her father close.

Confused ten ways to Sunday, Arnold did the only thing he could think of at the moment. He took his left arm, freed it from the grasp, and gave a reasonably firm pat on the back. "Yeah...y-you did good, kid."

With an eerie sigh of relief, the mutated form melted away, as the exhausted, sleeping form of Crimson, the child, nestled into her father's arms.

The ice in Roxana's soda had fully melted, while Crimson was on her 5th drink. 

"So yeah, that's how that happened, and how I figured out how I can use spirits."

"...Crimson that's fucked up and I kinda want to punch your dad?"

"HA! Join the club!"

"The hell even is a Spirit Eater?"

"Fuck if I know! Not even Merlyn has been able to tell me. But, y'know, it's apt! I eat instead of communicating. They sure as hell don't like me for it, but I tend to keep it to Wyrm-tainted stuff, hence all the upchucking afterward tonight, or like minor spirits."

"Wait what was tonight for?"

"Oh, I need to do some surveillance in the Sound later and needed to get a good gift to use for stealth in the water."

"Huh, hey what abo-"

The door opened, and the leather-clad figure of Don Phillips entered the bar, with the main bartender brandishing his pump-action shotgun at the presence of a vampire, before recognizing him. "Hey Paul, nice polish job!" He said, before sitting down with Roxana and Crimson.

"Sorry, a friend of mine held me up with some weird tunnel talk? I rainchecked him, haven't missed anything, right?"

"Uh, yeah! Crimson just-" Roxana began before Crimson handwaved her away from the subject.

"Nah, not much. But hey, tell us about your night?" She began. The cursed child could bare her heart, but only so much.