Petrus had lost his mind. He thought making himself bigger would make him safer.
He swelled until he stood over five hundred meters, a thing that was barely body at all, more like a vast floating brain trailed by tentacles.
Mantle and lobe and slick growths pulsed around him. The sickly rainbow sheen slid over his hide like oil on water, shifting with every breath.
Psychic waves lashed outward.
Men on the ground staggered as if struck. Silent Severance and civilians alike went down in ugly heaps, hands to skulls, teeth clenched, vision tearing.
There had been no time to prepare for an attack that did not need claws.
Petrus drove himself toward the other peaks. His large body became an afterimage, and he arrived right beside Highroost District.
His plan was to absorb the rest of the hybrids, along with the ones in Ironcrest Forges, Shopcap Ventures, and Sunkissed Bazaar.
But a desperate animal's move was easy to see through.
