A seemingly endless swarm of zombies ambled toward the desperate trio. Officer Riley slammed a fresh clip in his service pistol as Sara attempted to find some shelter for them all.
“Get out of there, kid!” Riley bellowed over the sickening sound of hungry shamblers.
“Jon! Please run!” Sara screamed, huddling near the cop for support.
The young man was unresponsive. All that mattered was fighting. He punched, and threw, and tore, gathering strength with every monster he dispatched. His clothes strained beneath the taut cables of his muscles. He swelled with power, absorbed through his thickening skin from the magic that sustained the cadavers. Thoughts of a world of undead invaded his mind, along with whispers of what he was being gifted to do.
“What’s happening to him?” Sara screamed, barely dodging a zombie slash.
Riley popped more rounds into anything dead that didn’t stop moving. “Dunno, and don’t care, as long as he’s on our side!”
Jon’s body rapidly doubled in mass and height. He flexed his fingers, bearing long razor talons, which he quickly used to slash more zombies apart. His face warped itself, the eyes becoming chalk white as his mouth twisted and partitioned into an X shaped orifice. Jagged fangs sprouted from the four corners, coupled with an articulate tube like tongue. It lashed from his mouth, sinking a circle of fangs into a zombie and siphoning it dry of its magic.
Riley and Sara were having significantly less luck with their opponents. They screamed for help against the monsters around them, just as Monster Jon dispatched the last of his attackers.
Jon’s attention snapped behind him, to the wave of zombies that had already overwhelmed Riley. He screamed, as the flesh on his chest and back writhed and bulged. Countless nubs opened themselves like flower buds. The pain overwhelmed Jon, and he screamed as countless tentacles, fanged and whip-like, shot across the room, impaling every undead and draining their magic to fuel his own reserves.
Sara screamed. Riley made his best attempt to keep breathing, through the pain of his many wounds.
Jon’s attention turned to them. He thrashed his tendrils through the air, trying to discern them as friend or foe.