Miles away from Oakwoods, and all dingy pretenses of a simple town, under a subtle, quiet night, was a bustling city known as New York.
Large, loud, lavishly forged over years and years of human effort and bloody toil, it was a hub of humanity and vices. People of all lives lived in it, dreamed in it, cried in it and died in it like wasteful and hopeful bags of flesh and souls. These walking misfortunes were not all that abided in that city, just like roaches and pests lived with the sewer rats, so too were others that lived with the humans.
One such was running down a dark alleyway in fear and panic, his steps loud and clipped from his cloven feet.
Tall with a flat gut, skin brown like dirty sugar and eyes a sickly yellow, the thing was anything but human, yet it had human features. A human head, a human torso that might have fooled anyone who ignored it's other characteristics. It carried a smell of barns and hummus that would cringe any nose, enough to pollute the air infront of it before it's presence reached. Two curved horns on its head, brown haired goat legs with a twitching goat tail. A bulging sweaty thing in its blue shorts showed it was male, and a fuzzy beard like a goat blended it together.
Wheezh! Clip! Wheezh! Clip!
Each gasping breath made the thing reach a bit further, but already it was becoming slower from exhaustion.
Squeal!
It looked behind to see how close it's pursuer was, only to see a pair of pitch black eyes gazing a few steps away with cold fury.
"For fucks sake! It's just a baby!" The thing cried in pitiful terror and regret.
The dark eyes closed like night shutting down and the thing knew it was finished.
From the ground ahead, a ghastly pale arm shot up from the concrete pavement, grabbing the things skull like a plump eggplant. A single squeeze, a bit of pressure and the things skull would be crushed as melon under a sledgehammer strike.
Would the thing die?
No, but it would satisfy the black eyed pursuer a tiny bit.
Only a tiny bit.
Fling! Crash!
"Ughhh!" The thing groaned in agony as its body was flung into a wall, slamming into trash cans filled with garbage.
Smash! Smash! Smash!
Before it could get it's breath, the ghastly hand reappeared and grabbed it by the neck and smashed it head first into the same wall thrice before letting it go. The thing's skull was cracked open like a jar of pickles, slimy green juices dripping off its mangled top disgustingly slow.
Teeth were broken beyond any recognisable semblance of use or functionality, piercing flesh with each ragged breath, they caused the damage to be worse and far from viewable. The left eye was crushed, leaving the right eye spinning in the socket like a top, looking for the ghastly arm's next attack.
The next attack did not come.
Instead slow footsteps emerged from the alley, sounding like the hushed echo of a death knell. The thing tried to get up but its body was too broken, it's will had been crushed even more by that last attack and it knew, escape was not coming this night. So it lay there, waiting with baited breath and flimsy anger, regret and self-pity.
A pair of black heeled boots stopped three steps away, not daring to get closer to the awful mess. The boots were attached to the legs of a white skinned young woman with raven black hair and pitch black eyes. She wore a white shirt, black knee length skirt, a black bow in her hair, with a single black glove on her left hand. Tilting her head, she looked at the thing and gave a large yawn to show her boredom, lack of effort and taunt the thing's pitiful state.
The woman was cold and cruel and she knew it.
"Satyr, I do not wish to get involved with your very presence. Return to me the babe's soul or I will indulge my Spectre's whims to break you until sunrise." The woman's voice was monotonous and soft, her eyes seemingly gazing at the satyr and everywhere all at once.
From her side, the ghastly hand reappeared in its full form: a twisted limb as long as a giraffe's neck but as thin as a human forearm, it's forearm was half the woman's height thougg. It coiled around the woman like a snapping snaked, the skin was a sickly pale greyish yellow, pimply like an infections paradise home. The palm rested on the woman's head, it was frozen in a position like giving a head pat, something that should have been adorable though was only macabre and very grim.
The satyr snorted loudly, it's human like face scowling, all the injuries had melded together as the woman approached and spoke. Gone was the ugly and mangled features of the satyr, instead a slightly handsome face with yellow eyes glared up at the woman in silent bitter anger.
"Don't scowl, or do you forfeit your eye sight while we talk?" The woman asked and the ghastly hand acted.
Fast as a blur it struck down, clawing the left eye from the satyr's head with a brutal agony. Like a steel claw, the ghastly hand pried flesh, sinew and bone with the skill of an ice cream scooper.
"Ahhhhh! Fuck! Grim bitch!" The satyr's cries of agony barely made the woman flinch.
"Return it." The woman opened her gloved hand and three more ghastly arms rose from the ground, coiling around her like serpents tamed at their lady's heels.
The satyr's pants grew wet as it ejaculated and peed on itself all at once. A slight twitch occured on the woman's eye brow, but it was so quick it might as well have not happened.
The ghastly hands reached closer to the satyr and it snorted in fear, then rammed a hand straight into its gut.
Squelch!
The clawed hand plunged through the flesh, making squishy noises like sausages and grease going through a trash compactor. With the urgency of a desperate beggar the satyr rummaged in its body, it's hand moving organs and tissue aside, looking for something.
The ghastly hands stopped, a few inches from the satyr's head, a silent threat of pain and agony.
"Here! I got it," The satyr pulled out it's clawed hand, covered in bloody juices and strangely smelling of incense and fruits.
In its palm was a marble of transparent crystal with a shinintgolden center, it was roughly the size of a peanut. The hands quickly grabbed the satyr's own, binding the arm, before wrenching off the wrist entirely.The satyr didn't even cry out this time, knowing it's cries were nothing to the woman.
"Good." The ghastly hands dropped the marble into the woman's gloved hand and she looked at it with her pitch black eyes, assessing it and peeling back it's layers.
This was the soul of a stillborn baby, born that very night, and sent to the morgue. The woman had been going to get the soul when this satyr had snatched the baby's body to eat, and eaten the soul aswell. The satyr wasn't a demon of high enough rank that needed souls for anything, so she'd asked for it back, while nicely snapping it's arms off.
The fool ran for three blocks and now, she'd finally gotten what she needed.
The three ghastly arms vanished, leaving the singular arm to coil around the woman's waist, thinning out until it became a transparent grey belt. The woman's eye gained white pupils and normal looking irises, her skin still stayed pale but now she looked human... human-ish.
"I could have made so much dow with that," The satyr mourned softly, looking at the soul in her hands with regret and self-pity.
The woman turned around, his existence utterly irrelevant to her now.
Suddenly a pitch black hole tore through the space next to her without warning, like a hairline crack in reality itself.
"Huh?" The woman raised a brow in confusion.
"Ahhhh!"
Slam! Crash!
A flailing girl smashed into the woman, knocking them both into a pile of trash cans, the soul slipping out of the woman's hand and sliding away, until stopping right infront of the satyr.
The satyr looked down at the soul, then back to the woman, then down, up again.
It snatched the soul and fled with its cloven feet, snorting happily like an addict who'd just got paid.