Kenese Dīng sighed as the left head of the busty, muscular Cerberus that he and his two friends were enjoying the body of. Putting their hands on their hips, he casually remarked: "Really wasn't expecting a costume with a side of existential dread..." The black dots of his eyes shifted to look at the head with the red dreadlocks. "I mean, it's neat and all. But... well, whatever let's get going," he said, motioning with their left hand over their heads.
Rebecca Charmer was the central head, and she sniffed the air, then licked her black lips. "Oh, whoa... what is that?" Shaking her head, her blonde ponytail wiggled behind their back. Their tail whipped left and right and the left hand was placed on the ground as the three of them turned their heads.
"There," was Jamal Stanford's recently feminized voice. His green eyes caught a sight-smell of something dark moving in the graveyard towards them. "Lucky you pointed it out or I'd never known to see it..." he said motioning forward with his canine nose that was just a little bigger than theirs in size. "I'm barely picking it up now... but I guess I still have my magic sense... limited as always."
The central head turned her blue eyes to where Jay was looking. "May have saved our literal collective ass," she whispered. "It smells... corrupted... angry... malevolent." Kenny's black eyes shifted towards Becky's. "It's atop the world... like a seventh sense... or eighth, I guess, if Jay's magic sense counts..." she offered, still speaking softly. She couldn't see the spirit but she could certainly smell it. "Yeah, eighth. And it's turning to come towards us."
Ken took in a smell of the air. "I smell it... the message..." The two other heads asked softly for clarification. "It's tripping my xenoglolia... there's a message in the scent," he explained. "It's noticed us and thinks we're competing for—"
"—souls," Rebecca finished, watching a blackened shimmer began to make itself seen over the cemetery near where a tarp was set up for some recent burial. They took another quadruped step forward with their right hand... then a rear leg. "It's going to eat a soul. Should we stop it?"
There was a tension in their shoulders. Each of the human minds weighed their options and all of them decided at once they should leave. They weren't really a Cerberus. They weren't really a Demon. This wasn't really their territory... and the souls were of people already dead. Top that all off with their form was, as far as they knew, muscled and fast, but was it combative? None of them new self defense, so no... they should leave.
But the singular plural that they were, the Greater Cerberus, scented in the air that this creature was going to make ferrying souls to the afterlife impossible. Whatever it was, it had consumed many. It was a threat and left unchecked it would imbalance the local demon hierarchy and just generally be a pain in the ass later. Instinctually the three who were one knew that this would be a challenge, but that confidence—Pride, maybe—swore to their subconscious that they could do this.
They took another step forward.
"Not to weird you guys out," Rebecca growled softly. "But sometimes—sometimes often... I can't tell—" but it was Jamal finishing the thought, "—which of us is acting... But we are. We're doing this aren't we... OK. Let's give it our all—" he said, but the next words were continued by Kenese, "—and figure out later why sometimes we can't remember which one of us said what."
With that, the team of three synced up their actions, approaching the larger spirit made of spirits. It's shimmer was made more clear as the Cerberus sized it up. Without words, the right head used his knowledge as a power forward of the basketball team to watch the movement, hands and feet of the ichor-dripping creature. It was the center head who tracked their own movement like she did on the cheerleader squad back in high school, seamlessly making changes to their balance while focusing on their body entirely. And, of course, it was the leftmost of them who was using the available data to predict as many moves ahead as he could, just like the strategic mind that he was.
It wasn't a perfect system, to be clear. They were all learning how their own body moved and none of them had ever once fought a spirit... let alone some kind of soul collector.
A dozen eyes opened up into red glow, fanning out around a half-circle of jagged, dripping black teeth. It lunged, and the Cerberus understood the attack without seeing it. It was too fast to see, but some instinct from the form was built in, and quickly the four-legged leap got them up and into the air and away from the immediate damage.
It wasn't the right call, though, as the Cerberus was quickly smashed by an eight-fingered hand of black, and crushed into the earth. Their tail stretched out flat on the dirt and uncurled at the end, dropping their More Than Masks bag on the most recent grave. Without words, each of the three heads bit into a different one of the fingers and the creature roared. It raised that damaged hand upwards to make a 'fist' of solid blackness over them.
Cerberus was quickly back on four feet. "Our bite works," said one of the three heads. Remarks of "let us use our tail" and "I wonder what it tastes like?" came audibly in the air between them as they dodged repeated slashes of what seemed to be three tails out behind the creature, each ending in mace-like ball of spiked blades. In truth, it was semi-humanoid, semi-gelatinous form, so it kept changing. "Bloodeborne bitch!" was another remark as they dodged to the side and just out of reach. "Why are we doing this again?" was the final thought before sudden, immense pain came from the left.
Kenese Dīng was screaming.
That broke their concentration for a moment and right then their full body was knocked up into the air and through tall stone arch of the main path up to the old church. Ribs might be broken, they all realized at once. Kenny was crying, and when Jamal and Becca both turned to their left, they saw red slash wound from just under Ken's right eye to just above his left. It was wide and gushing blood over that left eye.
The head with the slanted eyes opened those black irises to look to his right. "If one of you says 'Oh my god, they killed Kenny'..." he began, but soon Rebecca and Jamal were covering their friend muzzle with licks. They knew something happened, but not what, and as they licked, the wound felt a little better and the bleeding slowed... but it didn't close or heal. "I guess demons are weak to iron like fey, not silver," he remarked. "Like bagh nakh," he added, weakly motioning the left arm up towards the figure.
Cerberus's heads all looked up... between the fingers of one of the creature's two left hands were a set of pickets from the nearby church fence. The three heads all realized that the fence was as old as the building, and likely made of cast iron. Now the creature wielded something akin to claws, actual supernaturally damaging claws.
The burning of the hollowed ground gave Ken an idea. "Cerberus are workers... we guard. But, like a bouncer, sometimes we have to throw people out of line," came that feminized voice of Kenese as the Cerberus stood back up on two legs. "Normally, we'd have control of fires of hell around us—wait, would we? How do we know that—oh, fuck it, here's my idea: we need fire..."
Rebecca's voice was next: "The drive has one of the city's lamps..."
Jamal finished the though: "...we drop it on the cloth and spark a fire."
They were already moving, and the creature was reaching one of it's many hands down into the grave, partially intangable, seemingly trying to pull out whoever was buried there without moving the earth. As if to light their approach, the street lamp turned on. Becca would later mark that up as 'luck'. The sun was setting, and dusk was here. There was no way they'd be late for the party!
Two legs weren't as fast as four, but they were faster than they needed... Leaping between arms of the soul collector, they grabbed ahold of the lamp post high up on it and swung around it. Their body stopped and held on as their hundreds of pounds of mass pulled the poll into an untenable bend. In the next moment, the wood of the poll snapped.
The light stayed on all the way to the ground. The Cerberus spun in the air, kicking the poll to the ground as the creature reached out and grabbed them. Sparks flew free of the cables as they snapped off from the top of the poll. All of the remains of the lamp landed in the dried bush, grass while the lights ended up crashing into the cloth the grave cover. Suddenly there was fire, and it was good!
Trashing about, their tail wrapped around the big arm that held them and tightened up like the whip it was. "New Muscle! Pull!" Cerberus roared as one. In the next moment, that ten foot tail was cutting the creature as they pulled with the muscles above their ass. The spade-blade at the end cut the hand completely off. As it fell and crashed to the ground, the Cerberus rolled and made it back to four legs to scamper away from an incoming foot.
The Cerberus stood up, moving it's two hands in front of itself in a circular motion. It didn't need all the fire, so it let some of it just burn. But some of it, the circular motion brewed and multiplied the flames, ticking them upwards into hotter forms. An instant later, the flames climbed up their arms and down their backs. The shovel-tip of their whip-like tail burst into flames, green in color.
It felt great... like a cozy fireplace of home... hell.
The blackness was barely hampered by the light of the fire as it wasn't solar or holy-based, but the fire... the fire was becoming hellfire as the trio used the flames. The center chest of the creature gushed out ichor of black and blood and covered the Cerberus... but a sphere of flame protected them and quickly pushed up against the attack.
Suddenly, it was a beam-struggle. The creature kept picking up the parts of itself that crashed to the sides of the Cerberus, all the while being bitten by the left and right heads for its impudence. The central head stayed focused, and the arms swirled the fire around them still, protecting and burning as more of the blackness cascaded downward over them.
"It's weakening," the three said together.
Dīng groaned, "And us without a Ghost Trap..."
Jamal bit off a finger that had gotten to close to him. "What would a real Cerberus do!?"
Rebecca growled, leaning her head forward as she focused. "No idea! We're gunna have to wing it... put your essence into banishment! Whatever that means to you, focus! We may not have the words, or spells, but we can follow the instincts and do what feels right... and that'll work! It has too!"
Their hands went out wide, and a shockwave blasted off much of the fire into a single burst that knocked the creature back. Moving on two legs, Kenese began muttering words under his breath. The creature was becoming a tornado with no where to go but up. Their two hands went from motioning wide along the ground to drawing up symbols which glowed with flames of energy.
It was some kind of circle of power, and they were trapping the creature. One at a time, it threw each of the pickets of the fence at the Cerberus, and they barely dodged each on. Kenny took another strike at his hairline, Becca got an ear nicked, and Jamal head barely turned to the side in just enough time that a light cut hit him across the nose. But nothing would dissuade them from their task, and they decided to finish this!
Reaching up into the air with their right hand, the Cerberus jumped and smashed the earth between the creatures legs. A dome of fire burst upwards to the top of the circle and everyone was trapped within when it stayed as a ceiling... a snowglobe made of hellfire instead of glass. There was screaming but it wasn't any of the trio. The blackness had begun to dissipate leaving spirits, more than three dozen, floating in the energy that swirled around the bubble of fire.
"Do we let them out?" one of the heads was asking. "They might posses people!" called another. They were still taking turns leaping off the insides of the fire dome, biting at blackness and slashing with their tail. "Really wish we hadn't capped out talons," was another voice. "What if we consume them?" asked a voice they were sure had a point. "We don't have time to flip a coin!" roared one or more heads. "Go with our gut! No wrong answers!"
Collectively, the Cerberus decided...