As he progressed deeper into the city, Reed continued to come across beings eager to rip him open. There were a few more of the canine beasts, alone thankfully, that he was able to dispatch easily as well as more of the mutated denizens. Like the creature with the arm amalgamation he often encountered, the others too were misshapen humanoids donning the inhabitants' signature gray skin, though stretched unnaturally around its distorted features in a rather grotesque manner.
He had encountered two of them. The first bore an absurdly oversized head, with many of the typical facial features adorning the body part forgone. Rather than lips or a nose, the lower half of its skull had been deformed into a cavern of sorts. Sharp teeth protruded from the imitation of a mouth at an angle, pointing outwards as the top and bottom rows clashed with one another. Unable to do anything other than rush at him headfirst, a quick swing with a blade immediately extending from his arm was enough to dispatch the thing.
The other abomination he ran into a short while later. This mutated denizen was more emaciated than Reed thought possible for a living thing. Not a shred of fat or muscle seemed to dwell beneath the creature's flesh. Its skin clung to remarkably thin bones, which made the species' long features appear even more unsettling. Strung between its arms and sides hung the poor reproduction of some manner of wings. They hung like useless flaps of skin, dangling upon either side of the creature until its arms rose into the air, whereupon the skin stretched out like a grotesque glider. However, when Reed engaged with it the creature did not take flight. It didn't even try, leading to another quick slash with a blade before the unsettling thing was bisected.
After making his way down the same street for quite a time, the buildings that decorated either side abruptly vanished. The road opened up into a massive courtyard, in the center of which stood the towering cathedral that he had observed before. Casting his gaze to the surroundings, there were roads leading into the courtyard spaced out all along the perimeter. This seemed to be the center of the city, in more than just location.
Bodies littered the open space surrounding the cathedral in such numbers Reed had not yet seen. Cracks and craters within the courtyard gouged deep into the solid stone while large pillars of bone stuck out of the ground without arrangement, all angled to his left.
Embroiled in an intense free for all, at least two dozen of the gray and white-robed denizens fought one another in the surrounding courtyard. Shards of bone flew through the air like bullets, smashing through the building surrounding the courtyard while harmlessly bouncing off the mostly ivory walls of the cathedral. A veritable sea of blood spewed, flowed, and spattered out of the combatants, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. Flesh whipped, twisted, entrapped, and entangled, transforming into all manner of unique and grotesque forms of attack that Reed never could have hoped to come up with.
It was chaos. An endless battle between immortal beings plagued with madness. Each figure seemed to make use of the godly powers that they wielded in a unique way. Reed watched as a massive denizen that towered over his peers lumbered across the battlefield. His enormous torso sprouted two extra sets of arms, both of which carried equally oversized sets of bone spears.
The giant, robed denizen marched its way towards another of average build. The target of the behemoth's ire noticed the large combatant's movements, and after turning its attention to the new attacker, blood began spouting out of its palms. The red liquid rushed into the air in volumes that defied the laws of physics and created a rain so thick that not even light could permeate it. Reed couldn't see what occurred in the obscured area, but after several seconds of downpour, the last droplets of blood fell to the ground revealing the oversized denizen in pieces on the ground.
The one responsible for the obscuring rain did nothing more to the diced giant as it quickly regenerated in the pool of blood upon the ground. The average-sized denizen was already on its way to engage in another scuffle when a massive pillar of bone slammed into it from the side. The robed figure was obliterated as the pillar's impact was great enough to shake the ground itself as it embedded itself into the stone courtyard.
Reed turned to look in the direction the attack had come from to see something of a familiar sight. Another robed inhabitant stood atop a building on the perimeter. It too was oversized like the one he had just seen sliced to pieces, but rather than several sets of arms, it had the typical two. These two limbs stretched behind it, warping into one long and oversized appendage like the creature he often saw at his place of awakening.
He saw another of the large stone pillars growing from the amalgamation of hands that stretched behind it. It only took a moment before the creation had reached a suitable length and a sharpened tip began to protrude from one end. The denizens' eyes scanned the battlefield before it, locking onto the form of an inhabitant whose features varied from the race's typical. It darted across the courtyard with a body that seemed to be a melding between it and some black-scaled reptile. The denizen's hands sprouted viciously long claws, and it wove its way between ongoing conflicts, slashing at its unsuspecting brethren and retreating without retaliation.
Reed saw the large, one-armed denizen lock its eyes upon the beastly inhabitant. The appendage that trailed across the rooftops behind it rose into the air, the muscles within tensing. He saw the arm amalgamation blur through the air as it whipped forward, the pillar of bone vanishing. The sound of an explosion resounded through the area, the ground trembling as rubble flew away from the point of impact. A bone pillar had taken the place of the beast-like denizen, the only remnants of it within the vicinity being small chunks of flesh and a smattering of blood. Just a few seconds later, he saw the beast-like denizen tearing through the battlefield again, likely having regenerated from a chunk of flesh that had been thrown a distance from the projectile.
As Reed observed the frenzied conflict, he noticed that not a single one of the warring denizens ever set foot upon the steps leading up to the cathedral. They seemed to be actively avoiding it, as there were several occasions in which a fight between two or more of the robed inhabitants drew rather close to the ivory stairs, however, the combatants would clearly go out of their way to avoid the towering structure. Even if it resulted in them losing the scuffle.
Reed observed the battlefield from the outskirts, preparing to enter the fray himself and test his recent improvements, but he spotted something not far from the courtyard's perimeter that resulted in a change in his plans. A building towered above the others in its vicinity, with a massive circular window embedded near the top that gazed out upon the cathedral below.
He made note of the direction in which the likely research building was located and, rather than try his luck skirting the perimeter of the battlefield, found a narrow side street leading in the right direction. Zigzagging through the asymmetrical pathways, Reed eventually found himself standing in front of yet another research building. The structure of the building was much the same, albeit a bit larger, but the unmistakable evidence lay in the sprawling library of tomes that he could see through the extensive damage to its walls.
As he wove around and stepped over debris from the large openings in the building's side, he glimpsed a path of destruction through the library, heading from another trashed wall to the opening he was currently climbing through. The tomes of flesh caught in the trail of destruction lay scattered about along with the shelves upon which they'd once found support. Surprisingly, due to their material, most of the books remained intact.
Reed cautiously approached the destroyed wall that marked the trail of destruction's origin and took a step within, his head swiveling about to quickly get a read on the surroundings. It was a plain room without decorations, the only thing of note being a stone staircase similar to the other research building. The difference was, however, that said staircase was in fact two. There was a set of stairs leading to the floor above, just like the other building, but the bottom steps were completely obliterated. Through the opening that damage created, Reed could see another staircase leading below. It wasn't in the best of shape either, with damage to the top and sides of the passageway underground evident even from where he stood. Something large had clearly come from there.