|
Unperturbed by the girl's minuscule attack, Thomas calmly aligns the sights of his rifle over her bobbing skull as she sprints away. With his battle hormones suffusing his blood, she seems to barely move at all, his focus perfect, his finger curling around the hair-trigger...
Until a BLASPHEMY erupts just next to her. That wracked form of the angel dissolving, transmuting, Hellish, serpentine... a hundred vipers exploding from the carcass. The brunt of them leap at Kadia, as she runs past, crashing against her with their fearsome weight, fangs sinking deep, venom flowing... More scrape their teeth uselessly against Rurik's steel hide. One surges at Dante, jaws snapping at his left eye, only to seize upon lifeless cloth, hanging dangling... More attack the strange, sea-smelling wanderer standing so near, unnoticed, biting into the meat of limbs, the sinew of his neck, one launching itself into his mouth, piercing the back of his tongue with its fangs, and slithering down his esophagus, injecting poison all the way. Several fly at Diogenes, repelled by the ceramic plates in his robe. he catches one and tears it half, throwing it down stamping its brain to pulp upon the filthy floor. He sees several writhing over toward Lev, and assumes the vicious man can take care of himself. He instead stalks forward to the milling, devastated body in the wheelchair and promptly sprays fire from his right wrist, modulating the flow so as not to catch any of his allies, as much as to conserve his dwindling accelerant. He does not relent until nothing but ash decorate the charred steel of the wheelchair. Thomas snaps a fist up to forestall his men as they reach for weapons, and hurls his rifle away. Rolling his wrists, the blades shoot forth once more, and he begins dicing apart the few serpents who advance down the hall. His soldiers follow suit, drawing combat knives and setting to work. In all, unimpressive for the powers of Hell. Though an irritating distraction. |
Focused on keep flying debris at bay, it took little effort on Tarja’s part to switch her attention to flying snakes. Still, several now dangled from her back, their fangs stuck in her body armour, while several more were tangled in her robes. A few suspended in mid-air before her, and she narrowed her eyes, the snake suddenly writing unnaturally as they started to hiss, smoke, and erupt into flame, then crumple into ash.
She dropped the sword, its flame finally dying as it hit the floor in the path of one of the snakes. Leaving the ones on her back to dangle, she proceeded to rip the snakes from her ropes with her hands, and her mind, incinerating the ones she held in her telekinetic grasp and swinging others wide until their heads connected sharply with the asylum wall. |
Lev had barely began to adjust to sanity before he was set upon by the vipers. They snapped and lunged, sinking fangs in to both boots below and skin and cloth above. It was all too much. Lev had lost it.
He screamed as he gripped behind the head of one of the snakes dangling from his arm. With a massive pull he ripped it from his skin, shouted in to its scaly face before biting its head off. He used the decapitated body as a whip, beating at the rest of the snakes as he spit blood and scale from his mouth. He finally let his makeshift whip fly, now useless that the bones inside were crushed and ill fit for damaging. He pulled yet another from his leg, fighting to shove fingers from both hands in to the mouth of the beast. He achieved a decent grip and pulled apart, ripping the jaw free. He continued pulling, screaming over the creaking pops and snaps of sinew as it began to tear. The strong skin held, and the creature was ripped down the side, tearing away in to two portions. Freed organs slopped lazily on to the floor, free of their cage of bones and tissue. And yet they refused to relent. Lev unfastened the heavy revolver from his chest holster. The long and heavy cylinder was filled with five .410 gauge shot shell rounds, and he made quick use of them. Not caring for assaulting himself with the pellets, he fire point blank across his body. Snakes attached to him became confetti as they were stripped down, cut apart and dismembered by the pellets passing through them. Quite a few entered Lev's own body, shredding in to muscle and burying themselves in his denser tissue. He kept this up, firing again and again until he emptied the revolver. What was left of the creatures continued to hang off of him in ribbons, giving him the look of some sort of nightmarish piñata as he bled once again. Even still he was assaulted. There was no time to reload. But the revolver was metal, and it was heavy. A sickening crunch signaled the crushing of small bones as he brought the revolver down on the head of a snake, using the cylinder to literally beat the serpents down. He fell upon the floor as he came to their territory, sanity slipping ever so quickly. Eventually the gun slipped from his hands, clattering along the floor. He did not care though. At this point he was grabbing any snake he could find, literally choking the life out of them with his hands as he ignored the ones biting down in to him. Their poison burned, coursed through his veins. But he did not care. Lev carried a much darker poison, a much more final fate. A disease that had not yet run its course upon the world. And with sanity taking its leave, Lev began to once again feed upon his foes. |
Running in the shivering structure, Kadia heard a shriek. She turned, eyes growing, and saw brown-grey forms swimming through the air towards her and Rurik. Snakes, like the horned ones that seemed to crawl around outside, were coming for them. Believing it to be some trick from the priest, she mentally broke up pieces of wall and threw them at the creatures, hitting many, killing a few. Rurik, a little behind, jumped into the fray of snakes as they passed, taking a significant chunk with him. A large group was still heading towards her, horned reptiles with extending jaws. Quickly, Kadia swung her hooked swords, severing the heads of many of the fellows. However, there were still a few who landed on her, immediately knocking her on her back with force, and latching onto her lower leg. Fortunate enough not to hit her head, Kadia felt a fire in her legs as venom was pumped in from seven snakes. A normal person would have died, but Kadia had been given doses of many kinds of poison and venom for 20 years. Still, the snakes were annoying, and Kadia could still have some issues with such venom – this was a place that defied logic, afterall. Unchaining the swords, she sliced the horned snakes with two swipes. Looking, she saw the group also had snakes attacking them. Rurik was chewing through five while stomping on another three. An odd… fellow was fighting his own, but also had a few of the ones she threw back head towards him. Feeling the fire in her legs, Kadia mentally lifted her firewheels and spun them towards the snakes surrounding Rurik… -------- [Enemy_Count = 12 Attacking Enemy…] Rurik was of the opinion that he hated these snakes. His senses, relying on wavelengths other than color, and a tinge of aura sight, made these annoying creatures difficult to spot. Fortunately, his metal hide caused the reptiles to leave only slight dents…and broken fangs. Rurik let off hot air as he crunched another two. [Enemy_Count = 10 Attacking Enemy…] A swack of metal slicing through three snakes called Rurik’s attention to his mistress. From their link, he felt her pain, one of the few actual sensations he gets. Rurik swings his tail, bashing another two in the head while the wheel slices through the heads of two more. [Enemy_Count = 3 Attacking Enemy… Mistress.Danger = 1 Running Help.Mistress!] Rurik grabbed the other three horned fellows between his mechanical lever-jaws, and crunches. A series of heads, arrow-pointed, sightless, and crowned, fell to the ground. Rurik bound towards Kadia, readying the antivenom and chemical toxin kit… --------- Kadia hobbled over to Rurik. With a sigh of opening machinery, the anti-kit was revealed, stored in Rurik. Kadia put in two IV’s – one to pull out venom, another to inject chemical neutralizers. Within minutes, the pain ebbed to a dull ache, and Kadia could walk again. However, the creatures were still fighting the others. Kadia spotted Thomas’s men heading forward with an uncertainty about them, and despite her common sense, decided to help, asking Rurik to assist Dante… |
Dante clawed the blindfold off his face, flinging it and the viper onto the ground and stomping down hard. Things were moving fast. Too fast. And the snakes were barely even visible. And his sword would only hurt both friend and foe alike, |
He hadn't the time to fathom his distaste for the apparent power struggle between the Mimic and its somethings before one, an unimpressive juvenile as far as he could tell, lashed out. The juvenile and its stone beast attacked not only the Mimic, but the very cavern in which they all stood, and suddenly the butcher was no more, broken into countless serpents, flung outraged at them all.
No sooner had he processed the scene that he realized the vipers were already upon him as well, his throat bulging with one all too eager to force itself within his body. Their fangs scratched and prodded at his skin as they climbed, surely seeking the same entrance as the first. His surprise was short lived. Swallowing down the tail at the back of his tongue, he yanked a snake from under his jaw, and held it up. It hissed and snapped inches from his face, its body twining around his wrist and arm as it sought leverage. Around him, the minnows and their leaders slaughtered the creatures. He gave them what they wanted. One after another, he plucked the vipers from his bare form and guided them to his mouth, only taking the time to kill ones too impatient to wait their turn. He crouched to pull apart the masses ensnaring his legs and feet, leaving countless shallow pinpricks where their fangs had sunk, but now only oozed venom. |
Rurik saw the man…the helpful one…chased by a handful of the slippery-scaled fellows…but another, a rusty black-brown and milky belly-crawler was among them, with ivory horns. Rurik’s rear legs bent, the rotors resisting gravity’s pull to sit, and leapt across the corridor. With a crunch and release of bodily spew, the front paws landed on a sandy viper clinging to an abandoned scarf. Springs dampening the impact, Rurik bounded again, visual sensors trying to identify the odd snake of the two chasing Dante. [Snake.colors == {33000, fffaa; 04400, ffaac} Snake.pattern == 2:1_upperlower _ratio Snake.head == Large and narrow, coffin-like Snake.bodysize ~~ 2.2 meters Identifying snake…] Rurik was catching up, but Dante’s pace slowed as he seemed weakened. The odd snake hissed loudly, angrily…like a cross between a rattle and steam. The dark snake collided with the man, and bit hard. Oddly, the man did not seem to notice this one, but the sandy snake sent him falling. A third snake Rurik snapped with powerful jaws of steel canines, crushing the flying meat-spine. [Snake identified… Unknown.snake == Dendroaspis polylepis mortus] Rurik rapidly clawed at the creatures, tearing snake meat from bone and freeing the convulsing Dante from their bites. Still, the Devil’s Mamba tried to strike Rurik’s hide, black mouth open. Rurik answered with a bite to the head, and continued to the man. Almost in mourning…for a robot…he curled his flexible tail around Dante, Rurik began tugging the man. Kadia would have to help him… Dante began vomiting, but otherwise, his limbs hung, paralyzed. Rurik turned the feverish, unconscious Dante so as to avoid bile-choking. Rurik pedaled faster forward towards Kadia and Thomas, unleashing a mental cry. ------------ A howl in her head alerted her to Rurik, bounding towards her, a convulsing Dante behind, slowing him down. Kadia ran towards the pair. Dante was a mess of puke, with red/black blood streaming from three bite wounds… Kadia had Rurik keep Dante on his side, and opened the aid box inside of Rurik. Grapping one of Rurik’s syringe-pumps, and a relaxant, she administered that to Dante to reduce the convulsing. Now able to grab the bitten limbs, she wrapped chords around them, greatly reducing the bloodflow momentarily to those limbs. She could not flush such toxins out of Dante’s system, and he had went eerily still. With another syringe, she tried multiple antivenoms…to little effect. Limited, Kadia did the only thing possible. Cleaning the blood away, she tied Dante’s limb stiff, and injected the two now-empty syringe-pumps near the black-red swollen bite-marks on the leg. Pulling in reverse, despite being a near futile effort, she tried to draw the tainted blood. In coagulated clumps, it collected… Dante was starting to grow stiff. His pulse and breath were...nothing. Kadia, frantic to not let another person die…not again…withdrew the syringes. She charged her hands with the weak holy healing she posessed. Shoulders over his chest, in a vertical position above his sternum, she began CPR. “One…Two…Three…Four…Live!” The dim light from her hands flowed into Dante to no effect. She went down and forced a breath through his still mouth. She got back up, and repeated, not quite remembering the proper count… "You...Have...To...Live!" Kadia had tears raining from her eyes...desperate. |
At last, the room is still once more, the writhing of serpentine forms at last brought to cessation. Scanning the chamber with his meta-sight, Diogenes sees Thomas stalking back down the hallway, bending to retrieve his rifle and slinging it across his back. Sees the woman Tarja standing over the ashes of dozens of the vipers. Sees Lev surrounded by blasted gore, gnashing the dead creatures between his jaws in frenzy. Sees the nameless wanderer covered in bites, bitter blood leaking from his lips, seemingly undisturbed by what must be a pint and more of hellish venom swirling through his veins.
Scoffing, he sends to the bizarre man, Lo, I was naked, Lord, and thou didst clothe me. And sees, finally, Dante, inert, empty of thought, dying. The girl frantically ministering useless aid, failing. And, dead. Calling to Thomas, he conveys, We've lost one. If you would be so kind, priest... assuming your tantrum is finished. I could label you a traitor to this cause for your inaction. The woman is a heretic. A heretic. To your cult of the dead God. Tell me, priest, where is it written, "The harmless and the helpless, they shall be put to death. Try them not upon the laws of man, for theirs is the judgment of the Lord thy God"? The girl has done nothing to harm this mission. I could swear the neuroplasty was intended to strip the conscience from you. Such failure. The Celestrine will be displeased. Press the matter, priest, and see how my soul cries in anguish at the terrors I wreak on you. Terror? Pathetic. Do you ever wonder why you are unique? Perhaps even grim Zaccheus cannot stomach the monster he has created. We are, one and all, children of the same God. May He be blessed, lest we all perish, eh? And needs must as the Devil drives. You think the Celestrine's favor will defend you here? I could render your soul in bloody ruin across the night with but a thought, Diogenes. And your precious Zaccheus would shed no tears. Dante's soul withers, Thomas. The man served us faithfully and died for it. Very well... I am growing tired of casual martyrdom. Crossing the room flanked by his soldiers, Thomas halts behind Kadia's attempt to resuscitate the blind man. He lays his mutilated titanium hand on her shoulder as gently as he can. "You cannot help him." His voice is flat, without affect. "But my God was merciful, once." He kneels beside the body, almost solemn. He looks the girl in her eyes. "I will be vulnerable during the resurrection. If you mean to attempt my murder, now is your moment. At the price of this man's immortal soul." His eyes close, and he goes utterly still. |
There were voices. There was shouting, sobbing, an inescapable chill. Something cold pulled him along the even colder ground through a foul-smelling...slush? Pressure. There was pressure on...where was it? Somewhere... |
Kadia looked up at the tall, imposing, robed priest, eyes brimming with tears. A clunk alerted her to Rurik moving away. No…she didn’t want to leave Dante...but she had no choice. Not able to meet Thomas’s gaze, she pushed herself up. Dropping her weapons, she turned away. Another failure, another person hurt… The threatening one…the one who could help…she had to trust…her fault…too much. Kadia shrunk down next to Rurik, folding in on herself. The night was covered in shadow…dark beyond nature. Hound-like figures stalked the streets the night she left home. Her pack, holding rations and a set of multitools, strained her back. Pain, but freedom was worth the pain. Kadia looked back on her past. So much to do, but now was her opportunity. Kadia trekked along the alleyways of the decayed town, looking in wonder at the facades and torn brickware. Lost in thought and wonder, a hand grabbed her. In shock, she could not cry out. Kadia was dragged into the underground while baleflames erupted from her home district… Kadia snapped to, shaking. She turned and saw Thomas and Dante…her fault…she can’t save anyone…she should just leave… A hissing…a snake of red and black, spiked all over, reared itself near the group. Banishing her thoughts, Kadia mentally thrust into the snake. She grabbed and broke the creature’s spine, feeling its life fade. Kadia rose for a second time, and stood over the two. She may be unable to help, but she would at least be there, and at least she could try to protect them... |
Ignoring the girl as she clears out of the way, Thomas positions himself at the feet of the corpse, wrapping his hands around Dante's ankles.
Immediately, a biting, unearthly chill descends upon the room. Hearing the cries of the blind man's soul, Thomas is too focused to acknowledge them. The longer this takes, the worse the trauma upon the spirit will be. The priest measures his power, careful not to overwhelm the body with the touch the divine, and begins to spread it into the flesh, into tormented muscle and veins bloated with perverse toxins. He begins slowly, reaching into capillaries and infusing Theurgy into the very cells of Dante's body, shaping, restoring... transmuting. One by one, the molecules touched by the outflow of blessed magicks reform, transubstantiated into more perfect structure: crystals, flawless geometry of ice, angles upon infinite angles pleasing in the sight of God. With intimate precision, the priest turns Dante's blood to ice, a transcendental coldness, reaching through the ether, obliterating the presence of venom within his body. The power of the ritual is twofold, purifying intoxicated flesh and binding the spirit to the healing process to cast out the Hellish poison that has seeped into the man's fundamental being. Channeling the merciless spirit of Heaven, Thomas sets about freezing Dante's soul into perfection. Every drop of blood, frozen; every artery transfigured into the sacred harmonious architecture of resurrection. The experience is one Thomas has never undergone, though he knows it is agony, terrifying anguish, a quintessential suffocation of the self, sealing the eternal identity of the soul into a crystalline coma, and they are aware every instant. The priest does not relent, does waver from the euphoric invocation of his power, until the body is pristine, an effigy of the natal spirit, fresh from the womb of God. Without blemish, unstained. Ideal. An impeccable casting of the image absolute. And now begins the difficulty of the process: reanimation. This will require fire. Reining in the thunderous pulse of miraculous possibilities within himself, Thomas begins to THAW the crystal, blessing it with flame, breathing empyrosis into cell after cell, rekindling life. There will be screams, soon, reechoing through the firmament. Life can be so very torturous, awakening to vitality in a meticulous crawl, one organ at a time, blood gasping into energetic flow, surging up through reborn veins, washing through the regenerated heart, whispering into the lungs, rejuvenating, crashing, threatening to burst yet appallingly ALIVE. And into the brain, igniting lightning across uncountable neurons, recreating consciousness, revivifying the mind, the presence of perspective, electrocuting Dante back into semblance. A forced reincarnation, but under the circumstances, effective for their purposes. Not without its costs. He can do no more. |
Kadia stood above Thomas and Dante, knees apart, flamewheels spinning, and hook-swords poised to hack at any who came near. However, a light appeared in the back of her senses, a brilliant disturbance of aura. Turning, she saw Thomas gripping Dante’s ankles tightly, and a maelstrom of power where the connection was. Debris of the storm flew into Dante. Kadia watched in awe while Thomas worked. That such a will could call such things…was foreign to her. At her temple, it was said the living and dead, God and the material universe, were all parts of the whole, the Balance. It was often whispered how God’s death broke the Balance, and at first, in her falsely restored ego, Kadia believed she could restore the balance. Here before her was a man…a zealot of such power. One who could right wrongs, and restore lives. It was said the High Priestess could do similar things, but Kadia left prematurely to carve her own path… ------ Rurik stood over Dante, looking confusedly at the unresponsive man. “Seeing” his life being rekindled, courtesy of Kadia’s link, Rurik still did not understand. target.friend_02.alive == 0 ERROR#97: Program “alive == 0” does not exist… Activating program… target.friend_02.lickface(1,0) face.found() == 1 if found = 1, then commence Lick() Rurik’s cold rubber motorized tongue began to lick Dante’s worn and dirty face. A small crack in the antibacterial chemical casing caused some of it to leak down the tongue onto the man. ----- While waiting, Kadia waved over to the others of the group, inviting them over in the hopes that they wouldn’t be too unforgiving… |
The last of the angry writhing within his stretched stomach grew still. The burning discomfort, too, faded, what hadn't been forced out of healing punctures dissolved and devoured in his blood.
'Lo, I was naked, Lord, and thou didst clothe me.' The Lion. "I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked." He stood and looked to the minnows. A few were already gathering together. "I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls." There, the Lion. Able to speak without speaking. Curious. "You live?" |
Diogenes doesn't bother to turn toward the unexpected reply, nor even look at the disturbed man. The muteness of tone is telling enough, with the outflux of power filling the room, and this one completely unimpressed -- no, oblivious. Blase resurrection. Enough almost to bring the remembrance of laughter.
You're asking the wrong question. What you want to know is, is living worth it? Walking to stand behind the still-kneeling priest, he suppresses scorn at the facade of strength the man even now puts forth. That resurrection was no mean feat. Impressive, though. Diogenes hadn't thought him capable of such subtlety. Overhearing the cusp of the girl's thought, he murmurs to Kadia's mind, Don't be so star-struck. That thing... no, don't dignify him calling him a man, is an artist of destruction. Righting wrongs is incidental, trust me. If you're searching for a hero or an idol, I might suggest my lord the Celestrine. This... exhibition of hypocrisy is nothing but a child's imitation of its father's craft. Think on that. |
Lev writhed upon the ground. Agony and pain wracked his blood soaked body. He thrashed in puddles of blood and bone and organ, smearing himself crimson. Inside his skull his brain pressed against itself, swelling from the massive hemorrhaging caused by the venom coursing through him. Blood vessels burst, spewing their precious fluids in to his skull. His mad lashing out became uncontrollable movements as his brain became overloaded. Neurons fired off in insane patterns before dying out. His senses betrayed him with false information, assaulting him with sights and sounds that were now there before they began to slowly fade away. Even the pounding headache threatening to split his head open had began to dull. Everything was so far now. So dreary. So grey and blurry and so hard to...
To see... Lev Gurevich closed his eyes. The fire in his veins was burning, but not so close now. The rupturing veins spilling out in to his brain were too numerous, too severe. He was too far gone now. The parts of his brain that were in charge of motor control were dying out. His entire nervous system was failing. Breathing became erratic, quick in disjointed breaths, and then ceased. It was there, in that hellish domain of indescribable torture and torment that Lev Gurevich met his end. After countless wars, famines, torture, he had finally come to rest his fury at the hand of the snake, deception itself made manifest. It was there that Lev Gurevich died. No! I will put it back together! Organs sputtered, choked lazily as they attempted to restart. The heart inside the body of Lev began to pulse weakly. With a low rumbling inhale, his lungs breathed in the putrid, fetid air. Bloodshot eyes opened once again, taking in the ceiling above him but not understanding. The brain itself was still dark. Neurons fired off in to nothing, portions of matter still swam in blood. The actual body was moved as if being controlled by some unseen puppeteer, not by its own will. With jerky movements, an open hand with arched fingers was raised in front of the body's face. It stared in curiosity as it turned the hand slowly one way and then the other. It then placed the hand upon the ground and gave a mighty heave. The body rose, standing upwards. It stumbled as it brought itself to its bearings. Eyes no longer sending messages to a brain surveyed the scene of chaos before them, the other beings of note that inhabited their view. Then with a voice like oil and grit, it spoke. "I. Am. MANIFEST! I am FLESH! I am NA'LSA!" |
Tarja stood and watched. She was unharmed by the venom, but torn wool and entrails hung from her robes and body armour where snake teeth remained impaled. If there was concern in her eyes, it was not to be seen in the dark shadow cast over her face by her helm. The bronze sword lay abandoned on the asylum floor.
Her eyes moved briefly to Kadia, noting the girl’s demeanor and feeling some degree of pity, or perhaps that was all she was capable of feeling at the moment. The girl had stood up to Thomas and that took some courage, even if it was more than a little foolhardy. A man was dead, though that could be remedied, it seemed. Another crouched low, naked, and covered in wounds dripping venom and blood. He babbled. Lev babbled, too: something about a being called Na’lsa. She didn’t pay attention; didn’t care. She stood and watched Thomas work, though there was little to see. She stood and tried not to think about whether she should offer to help Thomas; whether she should try to comfort Kadia; whether she should offer a naked man clothes when he didn’t want them… The thoughts were fleeting. Being human could be far too complicated sometimes. |
And then that panic changed to flame. He was back in the burning house of thirteen years ago, reliving the nightmare he had time and time again, carrying his brother, pushed out into the chilly night wind by his father... |
Thomas ignores Dante's hands upon him. He ignores the man's very existence, sitting transfixed, exhausted, drained in his very soul -- staring at Lev.
He cannot bring himself to rise, cannot even move. His hands remain braced on the floor, away from the weapons that might destroy the creature before it attacks them in this moment of vulnerability. "What..." he speaks on shuddering breath, "are you?" He can sense the creature's aura, its maleficence, its sublime hunger, shameless wantonness and manifest rage. An ancient spirit, fallen from Heaven so long ago, twisted, corrupted, beaten down in shame by the golden scepter, and somehow... evolved. The priest weighs his options. Diogenes shows no weakness, but he felt the damage in his flesh and knows the warrior is in no shape for such a battle. His men still have their grenades, but would it be enough? The damage he would sustain in the crossfire would be... devastating. It would certainly end the mission. Hatred seethes through the priest -- helpless hatred of his own powerlessness. They hedge failure here, the Law is in tatters, and Hell has gained a foothold on the doorstep of their empire. Almost pathetically, he demands of the demon, "What in God's name do you want?" |
Kadia swerved her head, looking for the presence that spoke in her mind. Never had she felt such a force within – usually she was the one coordinating via mind. Spotting Diogenesis, she made the connection. What did he mean, though…surely such a miracle worker had some good in him…Then she thought about the priest’s reaction, not to her hiding, but to her connection. Looking at Thomas, she wondered what he was… Seeing Thomas look upon something, and hearing his voice, Kadia turned towards Lev, and felt sick fear. -------- Rurik watched as the –friend– was engulfed in flames. With Kadia’s aura-sensing, he saw Dante bolt from darkness and grasp at the priest who saved him. Then, a sound alerted him…another person. A gun-toting fellow tossed off the last of the snakes, but smelled…unclean. The man fell. target.man_04 == ally ally.life == 0 initiating.. …The man rose, with a reeking bile-smell… initiation stopped… ally.life == 1 ally.life == 0 ERROR: Multiple values for “ally.life” Rurik, pausing in confusion, tilted his head back with a clank. A recording played a long, mournful wolf howl. Tilting forward on the rubber balls of his paws, Rurik felt Kadia’s fear. Growling, Rurik started towards Lev. target.man_04 == cause.fear initiate program Stop.target()? Y/N -------- Kadia, sensing the gun-toting man, blanched. Behind her, a firewheel rose. In unconscious fear, she started spinning a firewheel, about to send it towards the presence. It radiating of burned atmosphere and gorged toxins. It was an impulse to kill the threat, but she killed the impulse, recalling that Dante and the priest were now vulnerable. Mentally, she commanded Rurik to stop his charge and fall back from what felt like possessed Lev. “Such an…unbalance…unnatural…” |
"What am I?"
Na'lsa looked at his, or rather, Lev's hands. He grinned as he touched one hand and then the other. Dropping them to his sides, he looked back up to the priest. Malevolent eyes stared madness as his mouth broke in to a toothy, wide smile. "I am, Priest. I simply am." The grin melted abruptly as he coughed. A strange feeling indeed. Blood welled up in his throat, attempting to remove itself from a now functioning body. Na'lsa ungracefully bent to the side, retching for a moment before coughing up more blood. He took a moment to gather himself before rising again, somewhat less inflated than he was before. The wild-eyed face returned though, as well as his toothy grin as he surveyed those around him. "I am Na'lsa. The Consumer. Cast out. Stricken. Reduced to nothing. I subsisted my very existence on the single celled organisms that infested this Earth for millenia. I shoved myself from organism to organism, latching on to what I could. To be thrown out! To be reduced to mindless hunger! It was a debilitating existence!" He shouted, jumping forward as he raised his hands. He panted for a moment as he attempted to calm down, shortly regaining his composure. "Over millenia I clawed my way through the food chain, through the jaws of every animal until that one was consumed by something bigger. I fed upon the feeding. I induced pure, maddening gluttony. I buried myself in the very life of every creature I latched to. And buried in the plains of Africa, I found this one, this...human. This Lev. Oh, to inhabit such a creature! A one and true soul! Tainted, corrupted, fractured, but a soul I could insert myself in to! To have actual consciousness, to have actual thoughts! Agendas! Not just maddening, raving urges, murderous instincts to consume! To be able to ACT and think the ACT beforehand! To BE once again a shadow of what I was! Just simply to BE, PRIEST!" He had begun shouting again, waving his arms like a madman preaching to desperate masses. Deep within, there was small pang of hunger. "I fed from him. In turn, he fed from me. I whispered, and he heard. I manipulated, positioned, and he followed. And through some way, some power unknown, I have implanted myself in to this body so deeply that it has become my own." Hunger. "He will live. That is, if you do not attempt to eradicate me. To do so would be...taxing, to say the least, Priest. Many here who gave service to you would perish. Many may still." Unbearable hunger. "For now you see...I Am. And I am so very Hungry." |
They have eyes for none but the thing that speaks. Na'lsa.
The ensuing silence is interminable, alive with fear. Reaching to the slit in his balaclava, Diogenes pulls it down, freeing scar-tracked gray skin and bloodless lips. His flat voice disturbs the impasse, empty of inflection. "What is this creature? Not resident to this unholy place -- brought here by us. To what end? Thomas!" The priest snaps his attention upward. "What do you sense of this spirit?" He has not yet drawn a weapon on the thing inside the man called Lev. Thomas sighs. "It is an Incarnation. Manifest sin. Intrinsic. Diabolically aware on the most fundamental level. A virus. And it does not lie. To destroy such a creature, in this place of all place... it is beyond us." He pushes himself to his feet, shoulders sagging in defeat. "Do not attempt it." "Then what would you have us do? Ally with such a creature? What has become of you? We came to this place to battle Hell and you have given battle to everything but, and when the infernal children at last crawl from their fiery wombs, you blanch and surrender? You will hang for this, priest!" Thomas eyes him for a long moment, then turns away. "I am weary, and surrounded by sinners. If you strike the fiend, you kill us all. The blood is on your hands, Diogenes." "What is our purpose, if not to die in sacrificial battle against Satan's hordes, as our Savior once sacrificed his own life on the cross?" "And see the victory he has won!" The priest whirls, the charred metal of his hand waving in forlorn dismissal of earth and heaven. "You speak of purpose? We have none. Our God is dead. The Law is broken. We are no longer even human! This war is lost, Diogenes, and no barb of scripture nor threat of dogma will change that." There is movement, disruptive to the eyes, nauseating, faster than thought, and the assassin stands before the priest, his arm outstretched, pistol leveled against Thomas' forehead. He speaks one word. "Heretic." And pulls the trigger. Carved with the Celestrine's blessing, invested with a field of disruptive psykhosis, the bullet erupts from the chamber, shearing through graphene and titanium into the brain. Into the soul. The back of Thomas' head explodes in a clatter of sundered metal, in a scattering a circuits and a squelch of pulp. Nacreous light leaks from the wound, dimming as it streaks down the ruin of Thomas' face. The body collapses. The light goes out. Before anyone can react, Diogenes screams to the soldiers. "STAND DOWN! Under the law of the Celestrine, I have executed this man for treason. Command of this mission is now mine." Hesitation. Confusion. Acceptance. One by one, the warriors kneel, heads bowed, weapons lowered. Diogenes turns to face Lev. He says nothing. |
Well this was a turn of events. They had walked into hell, and it seemed another sort had followed them in. What was one more beast, really? At least this Na’lsa was upfront about things, if verbose. Still, the demon was a matter unresolved, and Tarja would not feel comfortable around him until she knew where things stood.
The seams of the mission were holding, but the cloth it was made from was starting to wear thin, and much too soon. They still had a hole in the ceiling and something to follow out of it. Perhaps the mechanical wolf had a good nose, though if their quarry was in the habit of leaving big holes and broken stones in its wake, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find, assuming that’s what their new leader decided they would do. Thomas’ rule of law had been extinguished, puffed out with the light from his corpse. Whatever excuse Diogenes was giving for his action, the end result was still the same. Thomas was dead. Diogenes was in charge now. Simple, really. Tarja cracked a small smile. |
Na'lsa cackled. The sinister laugh was both childlike and diabolical at the same time, a sound that hinted at intense pleasure derived from the current events. The hunger, however, lingered on.
"You would do well here. Oh, so very well." He stumbled forward a bit in hesitant steps. Hands and arms clutched to a hungering stomach, a stomach craving the fresh flesh of what remained of the priest that was just slain before him. He spoke in a weathered and halted manner, trying to keep his urges in check...for the moment. "Hell is...broken. I am a stranger to this plane and even I know that. The only reason you still exist is because they spend more time posturing and positioning for power than anything. You forget that we are driven by petty desires. After all, hell is the result of pettiness itself." He took cautious steps closer. Oh, the flesh of the priest was delectable. What little was left was tantalizing. Someone of holy power, someone alive not seconds ago, someone so divine slain by divine in the bowels of Hell itself. The irony was almost as succulent as the meat. "I will not twist words. You desire to kill me. And the hunger that drives me pulls me to devour you, or the wonderful meal that you have just prepared. You have a choice. There is always a choice. Let me lay them out for you." Maddening hunger now. "You let me feed. Let me suppress my hunger. Allow me to consume the Priest, re-purpose his flesh. Bind it to these bones and blood. I have as much love for this place as you. Allow me to slake my thirsts and there will be more alive here than dead when this ordeal is over. Or...or..." He had started to pant. Sunken lines were evident under his eyes. He began to take in sharp breaths not unlike an alarmed animal, one on the verge of lashing out. "Or you sacrifice your comrades. Possibly yourself. Perhaps you do end me, and survive. But mark my words. I will devour the one brought back from death. I will remove the spines from these mere children. I will rend flesh time and time again before I fall. The flesh I touch is tainted. Unclean. I will spread through it. Alter it. Consume it. Like your Priest said, before he was so unceremoniously ejected from his position...I am a virus. He spoke truth. I am a virus, and I have not yet ran my course. Either submit flesh to me, or risk me invading your own." He stumbled closer to the corpse, still keeping distance between Diogenes and himself. If he lunged he might be upon the body before anyone could try to remove him. Oh, the flesh called. It sang to him. The sweet chorus began to erode his sanity. "We are not so different, you and I. I see in you a wish to destroy my kind. I share the same, so long as they pass through my jaws first. But I will consume ANYTHING that gets in my way. Think...think on that. Think hard, but think fast. Because even I cannot contain this hungry maw for much longer. Oh the sweet throats call to be crushed by the jaws of the All Consuming! Oh how they cry out for sustenance!" |
So, those were his terms.
Tarja turned and looked at Diogenes through the hollow sockets of her skull helm. "How important is the priest's corpse to you?" |
Focused solely upon the demon with deadly intent, Diogenes is taken aback by the woman's words. Irritated, he mutters,
"Irrelevant. He said as much himself, not even human. Let the buzzards of Hell glut on this artificial carrion, and may it prove a joyless meal." He returns his attention once more to Na'lsa. "But not you. You have no right to this. Parasite." |
At first, joy! The blind guy…Dante lived! This faded in moments as the man grabbed at Thomas, leaving Kadia confused. Then, Na’lsa appeared, and Thomas gave up…and died. Kadia looked on in shock at the sudden movement of Diogenes, and almost reflexively acted to defend the people she watched over. However, the moment flew by, and Thomas now lay, dead, upon the floor. “I was supposed to watch over him…” she muttered, feeling guilt even though the man was content to let a demon walk alongside them. There was guilt even though, or perhaps because of, the fact that she had been asked to do no such thing. A glare towards Diogenes quickly reminded her of the current threat, and her wheels of fire, one bent from battle, looking like a reaper’s scythe, spun nearer to Na’lsa. Kadia’s stance was that of a viper, ready to strike. “Foul though Thomas was, I will not let a demon of Gluttony feast upon him.” Kadia’s pride remained strong, and she believed strongly in honoring the dead. ------ Rurik, still confused over the Not-man, responded to his mistress’s stance, arcing his tail like the weapon it was, and letting out growls broken by barks. target.man_04 == identified.(enemy) Activating Firenet… ERROR: Firenet device blocked Rurik hit the tail against the ground, dislodging the blockage. Reloading Firenet… Firenet loaded, ready to fire Rurik gave a purr of fulfillment, and kept his focus on Na’lsa, with his ears open to other dangers in this realm. ------ Kadia looked at Tarja in unpleasant surprise. This person seemed so laconic, so why would she speak now. The sentence distracted her momentarily as Tarja commanded attention. No…she could not let some monster do this. Already, it had hurt the gunman…Kadia realized she did not even know his name… Think, genius, think! There has to be a better way out of this… Kadia noticed an uneven flow in Na’lsa/Lev’s aura…could something be done there? If not, could they escape or hide from the sin incarnate? Kadia reached in, seeking the path of the voice that earlier spoke to her. "Hey, would it be possible to send Na'lsa into "recession" by manipulating his aura?" |
The somethings were getting... angry? No. Just the Lion. At least, he could see no other reason to kill, yet not feed. There was too much jabbering for him to keep interested in their little scene. Only one made any sense to him.
Flesh, so it had called itself. That was a title he could recall. Making sense was hardly interesting. He huffed, his attention turned to where the butcher had once waited for them. A few steps took him away from the volatile group, to kneeling before a pile of ash. Tilting his head this way and that, he reached out, blackened his fingertips with the remains, then brought him to his tongue. He preferred the snakes. |
Dante grabbed at the wall, propping himself up against it against the desires of his feet. The emotions racing around his head didn't quite seem like slowing down to be handled one at a time, and he wasn't sure any words he spoke would come out right. Still, there was a point to be made. |
Fixed on the creature Na'lsa, Diogenes snarls at Dante's words.
"What would you have me do? There are no angels to spirit this fallen flesh to blissful rest. A cairn in Hell is hypocrisy enough to make Satan himself weep amid his death throes in bitter laughter. I don't suppose you've sunfire on hand to blast those titanium bones to ash? Let the heretic rot." Struck by a sudden realization, he diverts his attention from the demon to kneel beside the priest's body and roughly rolls him onto his back, exposing the devastated ruin of his face. Gripping the neck of the robe, he sends a jolt of psychic force to his muscles and violently tears the kevlar apart, revealing the armored vest beneath. And secured in the top-most compartment, the Ordinance Transceiver entrusted to the priest. Diogenes takes it and secures it on his own person. As he is about to rise, something strikes him. Ethereal, ephemeral, an instinct, a sensation, a revelation. This. Is. Not. Real. Something not himself speaks the word aloud. A voice echoing from nowhere, omnipresent, crushing, sibilant. An ancient sound, bound with authority, bound with the majesty of Hell, cacophonous with inconceivable potentials, unthinkable atrocities. Beautiful. Rapturous. Erotic. And the world falls away. Gone is the asylum, the carcasses of the vipers, the ashes of the angel. Gone the strange stars above. They stand once more in daylight, in the barrens of Smyrna, inside the Abbot's chamber in the monastery tower. It was built for luxury, for opulence, velour carpets in crimson, stretching from one corner fifty feet and more to the other, now tattered, stained, faded, moth-eaten. Against the far wall, surrounded by the mauled corpses of a dozen monks, stands the Abbot's bed, draped with sable shrouds, nested in a frame of tarnished gold. A strange coalescence of power, like dusted pearls, exudes from the ivory crown upon his brow. But he is irrelevant, insignificant, to the other occupant of the chamber, circling the room in obese coils, sheathed in oiled scales like feathers of nauseous gray: a serpent. Hundreds of feet long, bloated impossibly and leaking rank blood and... smoke... from what appear dozens of wombs in the grotesque heaps of her flesh. The shapes of unholy things writhe visibly within, bulging and deforming her body. And at the head, looming over the priest's rest, where the scales taper away, is the torso of a woman like a statue carved by hallucinating angels. Knotted clumps of night-dark hair fall in torrents down over an inhuman skull. She has no flesh, and maggots crawl across the necrotic tissue of her face, into the pits of her eyes. Long arms of dull, bare bone fall from warped shoulders, jointed at impossible angles. Her ribs jut outward, stretched taut with spidery tissue and tumescent veins, laying bare a pit of obscene organs within. Seeing the party, a horrific smile splits her features, and she spreads her arms in welcome. Again, the voice comes, haunting, appallingly dulcet, the song of a profane muse. ""All the Host of the Heaven recoiled, and called me SIN. His own begotten daughter." Rippling with vulgar motion, heaving, excreting blood and bane, she extends herself closer to the group, her words assaulting them like the cataracts of Hell. "And see what I hath become,accursed and driv'n out from the palace of my Father.I once held in troth the Tarterian Key itself,to open the Adamantine Gates and so release Hell in all its terror upon thy world. But he came, the glorious one, Adonis, the Scepter'd One, Beelzebub, and did wrest it from my grasp. I have been usurped, unable to avenge Michael's regicide upon my father. I am hunted by demons, hated by Heaven, and the nightmare of every man." And then she sees, the slavering form of Na'lsa on the ground far below. And her smile widens. "Oh, my beautiful son...." |
"Hello...Mother."
Na'lsa spoke with all the awkwardness of a teenager encountering their overbearing parents. Stepping hesitantly towards her, he opened his arms in a semi-welcoming gesture. "It has been so very long. I have grown so much. So very much, Mother. I have gone in to the world. I have opened my gaping Maw and consumed, I have gorged myself. I have evolved from the quivering masses of primitive flesh I once infested. I have risen." He stopped, staring at her quivering scales, at the mass of movement just below them that housed untold numbers of his siblings. Untold amounts of unprotected sins made manifest, all yearning to be let loose upon the world. "I grew within your womb for sustenance..." So much flesh. It writhed. Called him to enter. To impale. To open. To violate with his maw and consume. Her innate urges called to him, but on the same level of his own perversion. Oh, the HUNGER finally ate to his last vestiges of sanity. "AND I WILL RETURN FOR THE SAME!" He had barely finished speaking before he reared back his head, his jaw unhinging in a nightmarishly huge bite. Na'lsa threw himself forward with great force, clawing in between Sin's feathered scales. His mouth worked furiously to consume bits of scale and flesh. His hands found the wound he had caused, and with great strength he forced his body head first inside her, splitting the gouge open even further. And as he burrowed, he fed on the countless fetuses that were his siblings. Plucking them like grapes from their many wombs, he tore into and devoured them, ripping their sanctuaries apart with his mindless hunger. Organs and body parts and various giblets pressed in against him, but he burrowed still in to brethren. There was no caution. There was no consideration. No preservation. There was only hunger, and the need above all else to sate it. |
Without an answer from Diogenes, Kadia took initiative. Mentally, she commanded Rurik to lock onto Na’lsa with the net. Kadia twisted the studs from the far end of the building, forming them into metal snakes. With a command, she sent them to the embodiment of hunger. Kadia would attempt to shove the demon under Lev again. Sitting down in a cross-legged position, she closed her eyes. Within a few breaths, the world around faded. The snakes and Rurik would do their work. Opening her eyes without seeing, Kadia began her meditation… .A trickle of water fell in her minds eye, swallowed by the heat of her element. The water vapor congealed and spread, becoming both dark and light. Droplets became stars, swirling in eternal expansion. She pushed herself into it. The tempest, the water, the universe, it entered her crown and filled it, an orb of power and wisdom. Kadia had done this before, opening her mind, but never to work anything. She felt the auras around her, but they were off. This hellhole…it was something far more foul... Sins and memories of regrets and wrongs distracted her from any attempt to exorcise or contain Na’lsa. Beatings and orgies, murder and betrayals rushed by in traumatic pictures too quick for the conscious mind. Fast as light the image of her first friend, dead at the behest of a paid assassin. Then the charred remains of her mother in her hand, courtesy of demons. The strong bum who raped her, his hands… Suddenly, everyone was too close to her. Every person…a threat of wrongs and sins to her. All had a presence that she needed to be free of. Above them, Sin touched all, even her. To be touched...she had to be rid of that touch. Kadia screamed as she touched her own spirit, and felt the presence of Sin. The ground around her erupted through the dissolving illusion, forming a tornado of hellish debris. All her blades, from knives to the flame wheels, circled her as both approached the source. The source of the dead loved ones. The source of the traitorous gangs. The source of vile judgments and prejudices. The source of beatings. One thought ran through a mind shut down to logic: “You will not survive ME!” A mantra formed as Kadia walked slowly to the creature. “Blood! I will rend your mouth! Flesh! I will rape your brain! Soul! I will end you NOw! No More! No More! Blood! I will rend your mouth!” A fell light, the corruption of what weak Theulogical ability she had, scattered within the whirlwind, causing it to spin much faster. This was Kadia the huntress, the hidden destroyer, marching with a gale of remains, marching to her death in the name of righteous vengeance - vengeance for the force of Sin and wrong |
This. This is what he was created for, the demoniac truth at the heart of all their absolute dogma. This... excess, this obscenity, the wretched powers of the world that would see Mankind as ants in a burning hill.
And that cannot be permitted. Even as the demon charges its mother, tearing into Sin's flesh in the violation of reversed birth, Diogenes acts, stretching his mind out beyond walls of stone, out to the soldiers in the assault vehicle beyond the walls. The entity has revealed itself. This site is consigned to holy purgation. Destroy it by any means necessary. He further commands his men in the chamber to hold fire, unnerved by the writhing bulges in Sin's many wombs. Stooping, he collects the hypersonic rifle from the priest's corpse, by far a mightier weapon than his own, and chambers a round, leveling the five-foot barrel at the demon-mother's skull. He imparts a psychic charge to the bullet within and pulls the trigger. Flashfire sprays from the barrel as the tungsten-carbide round blasts through the intervening air with a defeaning sonic burst. There is a sound of... shattering, but it is not the devil's bone that scatters across the carpet. Tungsten-carbide dust. There is a visible dent in Sin's brow, but nothing more. She does not seem to acknowledge the attack. Instead, she seems preoccupied with the assault inside her, staring at the wriggling shape of Na'lsa at it mutilates her from within. She looks... saddened, remorseful. Worried. And then her multi-hinged jaw stretches open in an impossible gape of abject horror. She manages a single word, "No before it begins. The birthing. Sin's coils pulse, gorge, buckle, and constrict horribly in a spasm that draws a keening, sobbing gasp from the demoness. She shudders, is still for a moment, and then heaves, cloacae opening all along her glutted form, twelve at least, ripped savagely open in flooding blood and spattering placentae. Heads emerge from the savaged orificia, massive, thick skulls coated in squalid amneosis; deep, predatory eyes sparking like furnaces; Cerberian snouts, gushing Hellish smoke, lined with hierarchies of acrid fangs. The stench is like nothing on Earth. The Hounds of Hell, bastard children of Death, filled with the Profane Spirit. They stand at least seven feet at the shoulder, impossibly muscled, ebon claws the length of shortswords slashing the carpet as they stamp and shake the clinging afterbirth from their hides. But they do not attack, not immediately. No, their unholy maws part, slavering tongues flitting, and a voice, a single voice, proclaims in thunder from their throats: IN NOMINE SATANAS, ET BESTIAE ET SPIRITUS PROFANAE, VOS ADVERSUM EGO EVOCANT DIABOLUM, PER EXITIUM CRUCE CHRISTI ET LUMINOS LUCIFER, ANIMA VESTRI DAMNARE AD INFERNOS ETERNUM And as one, they rear onto their hind legs, towering fifteen feet on titanic legs. Their throats swell and bulge, and as one, the Hounds slam back to the ground, shuddering the chamber, and vomit utter darkness upon the party. |
Tarja was rapidly growing impatient with the banter between Sin and her “son,” but the demon’s sudden lunge for his mother, and subsequent burrowing beneath her flesh, was enough to rattle her perceptions, more-so than their shift in surroundings. Then the birthing began, and the great hounds that spawned from Sin’s coils made howls of their own.
She’d had enough with speeches. Barely paying attention to the Kadia and her psychic tornado, Tarja focused the tiny particles in the air around her, in the stone, in the blood spewing from wounds, coalescing and weaving them into a shield around her. She would only have this one attempt. Time was a fleeting luxury, and the speeches were done. When the darkness surged forth, she reached back with her mind, grasping the particles in the air surrounding the hounds, urging them into more rapid movement, movement beyond even her own psychic vision. Shimmers of heat begin to waver in the air around the hounds, around Sin. Dust and hanging shrouds smoldered in the heated air, smoking and coiling, flash fires erupted and extinguished in the blink of one eye. Lev would have time, if he needed it, before Sin was cooked through. Tarja wasn’t so sure about herself. |
Oh no. Not this. Not again.
But this time, it was different. This time, Dante could feel his skin burning, the searing flames shooting up his arms. At least he wasn't dead. But then again, it was likely he would be in just a few minutes. Again. He reached out with his mind. There was nothing. The nauseating aura the snake-woman had been coated with -- yes, coated as if the light had been layers upon layers of silk, or soap films -- was gone, but the pressure in his head still remained. The suffocating darkness threatened to overwhelm him. But isn't it the same? A small, yet persistent, voice crept in from the inner recesses, the long-forgotten depths of his mind. The same as before. It was true. The darkness, the feeling of being completely lost -- it was something familiar to him, something he had thought was a weakness, shoved into a dusty coffin, and nailed shut. In the pitch black of blindness, anything could be out there, things that he couldn't see but could likely see him. If there was only a way to make himself invisible as well. He took a deep breath. He couldn't see any of the usual green flowing around himself, but he could feel it. Dante inhaled again and unholstered the gun the priest had given him weeks ago, mentally willing the now-invisible green tendrils to come back. He felt their presence lessen, not completely, but even this little bit could possibly help. It would be difficult to maintain for long. Taking note of where he had last seen his traveling...companions, Dante ran sideways, doing his best to dodge the flames as they sped towards Sin, and fired a volley at the hounds. |
Before her, the enemy lay, its coils and obscene body bulging, as with some unnatural pregnancy. Kadia marched towards the creature, rage defying common sense. Her eyes counted the multiple bulges, before they ripped out into ferocious hellish hounds. She directed the tornado, the ferocious column of metal and granite towards the newest creatures…no…they were part of the serpentine demoness. Kadia resumed her original target, but her aim was off. The spiraling columns hit the chords connecting beast to mother, and parts of the tornado crumbled. Cursing, Kadia forced the fallen pieces up. Kadia accessed the energy of the air itself, and forced a change in energy. The air around began to flux, and convectional activity lead to a twisting of the air, and the pressure was drained from all objects nearby. A pulling... Her heart racing with the strain, and only her rage staving off sheer mental pain, Kadia raised a second tornado. Then, blackness, blindness. What vile magic was this!? There was no sense of the floor beneath. Kadia couldn’t feel her own breathing…but her rage continued. As if feeling objects with numb limbs, she continued the tornadoes spinning. Through remembered motion, she held them up. A spark of intelligence in the mental storm told her that an inwards spiral would inevitably slam into the beasts. Forcing the core of both artificial tornadoes to move, Kadia began to spin with her columns of destruction. They edged closer to a cluster of three beasts. The hellhounds snapped at the wind. Within, Kadia was blind. There were no friends, no good. All was black, and all in her way would perish! The youthful, playful Kadia – the child – hid away in a small corner of the mind. Each moment in the darkness caused her logic and reason to hide away with the child further…further. To the conscious part of Kadia, it was as if hanging in complete nothingness, where the endless void…no, even void was absent…and here she was striking at nothing in pure instinct. Forged in the abuse of her youth, the huntress…no, the Maiden of Death. A spark lit as flint and steel met the divine core, and a column of flame erupted within the original tornado. ------ Rurik readied his net, his tail pointing at one of the beasts whose connection to Sin remained. Target_23 == enemy If Target() == enemy, then initiate peogram.attack() Initiating… Target.strength == overpowering Activate net… Net activated… Firing… From a chrome-steel tail, a hole appeared. A flash of gunpowder, and an object was ejected from the tail. It expanded, a fishermans net. However, it was a flexible metal, woven steel…and every crossing of the net had a long, barbed with diamond-shards. The net was hollow, with a mysterious liquid inside…blessed water mixed with crushed cherry bark, concentrated for its cyanide. Through the barbs, a hole carried the stuff into its enemies. Arcing across the room, Rurik’s projectile hit one of the beasts with impeccable accuracy. The net wrapped around the head like a living vine of thorns. The creature howled with pain, as holy poison entered its system. Jaws snapped and fractured with the net. Fluid accumulated and drained, yet through the blood, the skin restructured and grew over, sealing the poisonous web to the flesh. Holy cyanide continued to run through the beast's system. As the darkness engulfed Rurik, he found himself full of...Kadia. Kadia's consciousness, to escape from the boiling rage, had sequestered a good part of herself in her robotic soul-bound companion. Rurik, who was accustomed to a lack of sensory function, was momentarily overwhelmed by the additional strain. |
Na'lsa continued to burrow in a maddening ecstasy, boring through flesh and tissue like some sort of monstrous parasite. The Sins he consumed were absorbed, assimilated, and repurposed within him. The number rose higher and higher as he feasted. Nearly formed physical manifestations as well as the mere fetus of several were consumed in his blind hunger. He mangled several dozen wombs, violating the protection they offered his unborn brethren. Umbilical cords were devoured in mass like some sort of putrid spaghetti dish, stuffed in to his all-consuming maw. But it was not enough. This mere hellspawn unborn was insufficient.
He clawed upwards. Gnawing through bone and sinew led him away from the wombs, through Sin's organs. Oh, what ancient and delicate meats pulsed before him! With stifled laughter, he began his meal again. He was pressed tightly on each side, but his unending hunger would soon carve his own space among the origin of many Sins. Nothing else mattered. He would eat. He would glut himself on the unending meal that he swam in. After millenia, Na'lsa had finally realized the purpose he was meant to have. The taste of sin was so sweet, so delectable. And all those inhabited by it would be claimed by his hunger. |
Kadia’s mind was in the dark…there was nothing. Where was she? She hung in silence, no light…no absence of light…no feeling. Waiting…nothing. Waiting…nothing. Kadia, surrounded by the absence, wrapped herself in memories most recently recalled…dark memories, but recollections of feeling. In the current situation, feeling was all memory, and worse for it. She recalled…a strange face, a leer, a sneer, visiting her father…talking in whispers she could not hear. Her father turned, saw her, and glared with promise…promise of the crack of a riding crop. Kadia was excited. She would be free of the controls at last. Free… She slipped past the sleeping forms of that man and woman, stealth training serving her well With footsteps of feathers, she crept towards the riding crop. A spark of fear was quelled. Grasping its base, Kadia twisted and popped off the hollow grip. A key… She tried the door. Nothing. Hmm…the weapons? She tried the key…success! She took the twin swords, pocketed euros and food, a sleeping bag and water filter, and returned to the door. Kadia gazed at the thing, barred to her for so long, and sliced it open with a few swings of the sword. Freedom… The stars shone outside, and the air was different. The streets, though filthy, represented opportunity. Adventure, life, dreams…Kadia walked along, partially lost in fantasy of success. Then, cold…hands that burned. The hands grabbed her. Fear. Kadia tried to escape, flipping, tugging, shifting, sliding…no use. The hands were like tentacles, and began pulling her down an alley. Kadia soon met with that face…the sneering leer of a lusty man… He said little, but the tentacles…not visible…began to disrobe her. No…no…no…I can fight him. I have been trained to… This can’t be possible… A sharp pain ran through her system, and Kadia was locked in her thoughts away from the terrible moment… That sneer…Sin…those limbs…tentacles… She awoke to the dawn with an acrid smell and a filthy feeling..and hunger. Her clothing rags, but her swords still available, Kadia stumbled into a building. Blurry-eyed, she pulled spare clothing on and took a guzzle of water. Pouring some over her eyes, Kadia looked around. The building was in ruin, corroded…burned. Skeletal forms leaned against the wall, their skulls forms bursted from boiling temperatures. Gasping, Kadia ran out. Smoke filled the sky. Building by building was ruined, a few struggling scavengers the only life in the alleyways. Kadia made her way to her home, fearing what she would find. Bloodtrails went in insane paths. Upon reaching home…ash…there was no building form left. No bodies…no metal…only ash in the form of a reverse pentagram. Kadia fell to her knees in shock… ----- Kadia’s body swung around in a pirouette, like an active puppet without a puppeteer. The tornado of metal and stone slammed into a hell-beast, tearing its mouth open and filling the inside with jagged pieces. The howl was stolen from the beast. A force so great began ripping it apart from the inside, yet no damage was done to the skin…or bone of the beast. ----- Rurik sought the shielded presence in his circuits. His reaching caused an outside sensation, triggering another memory for Kadia… Target.mistress unresponsive… Trying to reach Mistress… ----- Kadia was held down by three men, leather vests, guns, and bikes in the background. In the alley…they needed release. “Annoying whore, get down!” Glen, the leader of the group, was ready to take position. One would have thought that a lack of resistance would have been enough to prevent the clammy calloused hands from holding her down. However, as Kadia did not fling herself at the men, she was “uncoorerative.” Despite learning to heal them. Despite stealing for them, she was uncooperative where it counted. So, the stones took out their piercing frustrations on her while the man tore off her clothing, with several stinging slaps to her face for good measure. Then, the man gave that look…that sneer… A strange emotional power, greater than any of her psychokinetic abilities, came, filling her with feelings heretofore absent. Hate…red blood pouring exploding satisfactory vengeance hate,,, Suddenly a spark went off in one of the gas-powered motor vehicles. Then another. Then one of the men holding her screamed, stepping back. His skin, flaying…piece by piece…dripping blood and pus and urine as he died.Fires began twirling as the airflow was shifted…a fiery whirlwind burned the faces off of two others. Glen felt something rise on his legs. Kadia’s eyes were covered by her pupil, reflecting his shock. With an insane grin, she pulled the earth itself up his body, swallowing his screams alive while pulling the invading…thing away from her. Kadia passed out. ----- “…Rurik?...” ----- One hellbeast cried silently as its organs turned to mush, pouring hellish liquid into its system. The tornado moved on to a second hellbeast, its mouth closed, ripping at its ears and knocking it to the ground. Kadia’s body spun faster and faster, sending the fiery tornado up higher and wider. The fire tornado spread out, wider and hotter, engulfing a hellbeast. Though the fur burned, it merely growled in the flames, now a 50 meter monster. Heat met the cold absence, and mixed, beginning to spread with the darkness… A beast moved towards the pirouetting form, giant jaw gaping to snap. Blood sprayed... |
Inert and unfeelng, bound by invisible shackles, tethered to darkness in every ordination of time or space, alone with the singularity of his mind. Ancient mystics would have called it transcendence, a liminal state, oneness with the mind of God, unity through dissolving, self-annihilation.
It was nothing of the sort. Out-of-body experiences were a trivial thing, a second nature to this new psionic breed of humanity. Total environmental awareness, at all times, and to have that taken away... Blindness, on a plane inconceivable to a living mind. Trapped in a house of memories, instincts, and ideations where every door was a mirror opening to another distortion of himself. Naked, in a world without eyes. The triumph of solipsism. Diogenes was going mad. But madness was relative, and the universe no longer existed. He was not so different from God, in this newfound paradigm of existence. None would argue the point, at least. A circuit of electrical life edifying itself into self-contemplation over the paradox of identity in a realm without definition. Somewhere, he knew, his body lay slumped and useless, his brain, the divine impetus of this new creation, toiling on in dumb persistence, ignorant to the marvelous fractals within itself. Somewhere, Hell reigned with every conceivable abomination. And he found he did not care. He had become limitless, unfettered, uncreated in the most sublime sense. There was only his will, and its assessment of its own conception. There was everything, existent within a specific instance, a thought-space. I am greater than myself, than which nothing greater can be. Existence is impossible. I exist. α = ~α √-1 = √-1 .9‾ = 1 x/0 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. The Beginning and the End. God has no beginning, nor end. God is all things. If I am not God, I am nothing. Nothing am I. There is no thing that is me. EGO ERGO NON SUM. EGO ERGO NON SUM EGO ERGO NON SUM NIHIL NIHIL NIHIL NIHIL -------------- But madness, like the narcotic gasses used by those mystics of old, was fleeting. Diogenes at once became aware of several things. The first, that he was once more aware, at all. The second, that he was in pain. A gale of fire had blasted him across the chamber and pinned him to the far wall, igniting his robe, left burning for however long it had taken his senses to clear. With his psychic sight, he could see his own face, his naked form, burned to smoking, liquefying tissue. The tattoo on his chest protected the flesh there, but all else was char and ruin. He had only his mind. Sin's brood had been taken aback, staggered by the furious assault of his companions who had evidently not suffered as he had from the catatonia they exhaled. But it would not last long. Those flames were meaningless to creatures who bathed in the magmatic oceans of Hell. The missiles were readied, about to be launched, but in these winds, they would go wild. They had been a desperate plan, at any rate. The ordinance transceiver was a smoldering streak of melted plastic running down his chest, a broken Damoclean blade. This assault was futile. No force of fire could harm an Incarnation like Sin. However her noxious brood might reel in pain, the Hell-Mother was indifferent to the battle raging within the delineation of her coils. There was but one recourse. Diogenes did not know if he had it within him. Setting aside agony, calling upon an iron focus of will, he called up the Network inside his mindscape, inputting the psykhordinates of his master. Diogenes drafted a frantic message. Hell is revealed. The Satan-spawn and Her bastard brood. We are overcome. A final surge of sparking axons to hurl the words into the ether. A meaningless prayer, to hope they found their mark, for vengeance if not salvation. And a return to the nothingness awaiting him. |
And the darkness retreated. Perhaps not enough to stimulate the normal eye, but for Dante, Sin's shimmering soap-film-like glow was now visible, as was the redness of the Hounds, weaving itself into and out of the surface of their flesh like the streams of a solar flare.
At the same time, the scalding heat presented itself fully, and nearly bit through his lip. The decision to leap sideways had perhaps saved his life, but the others... Kadia's green, darker than his own, sprayed out, a sharp contrast against the snaking red. Blood. Dante tumbled through the air, changing course as his boots his the solid ground. Glancing back he noticed a red string, frayed but not yet cut through, and the whipblade shot out. Did I...Did that work? But there was no time to check, and Dante whirled around, the sharp segments of the blade burying themselves into the Hound. It dropped the green form. ...I might have just become its next meal, and even as he thought this, even as his sword came whirling back to him, the Hound seemed staggered back, Dante's bullets catching it in its lower jaw. Then, out of nowhere, its tail thudded into his chest and he flew into the wall, the lights of auras flickering. He felt bile rising up, and mentally forced himself to not be sick, his breaths coming in short gulps. We can't hold this for much longer. Why had they been sent here to die? What did the Celetrine think they would have accomplished? Those fuckers. The rage-produced adrenaline shot through his system, and finally, his vision grew sharper. And he noticed...an ivory pinprick? No, it grew...definitely not just a pinprick. The aura took almost a crystalline form, yet pulsated-- And then it was gone, masked by the fiery Hellhound hide. But it had been there. Our objective. The crown. He clambered to his feet, took a deep breath, and ran, foregoing any sort of attack on the Hounds, on Sin, sliding under their bellies. Like moth to flame, perhaps? |
The tornado’s winds cleared the darkness from before her shield and Tarja could see now that the flames and heat were doing nothing to the hounds that remained. She could not drop her shield, as broken pieces of the tower spun wildly about and the flames consumed much of the air, but there was nothing else she could do.
The dust, the heat, the ruin, and a welcoming party of Hell’s rejected. If there was a threshold to her focus, Tarja felt she was getting close, and close was just enough for one of the hounds. A small psychic stumble, perhaps an eye-blink in reaction to sudden light, and her body armour was shattering, thick teeth puncturing cloth and skin as hot breath rolled over her flesh like her own blood. Tarja roared, a mixture of pain and anger. She snarled as though she meant to bite back, but instead fisted what she could of the hound’s taut hide and mentally hurled the beast into the turret wall. Teeth still clenched savagely to her arm and shoulder, Tarja was carried with it until both smashed through stone and mortar, daylight flooding in through the broken wall, dust and debris flying out of it. The hound hit first. She felt the impact when her body snapped over beast’s ribcage. The hell-hound lay on its side, snarling through teeth still holding her useless left arm, attached to a shoulder hanging low from a broken collar bone. Forcing herself as upright as she could manage, Tarja mentally impacted the side of the hound’s head, accompanying each telekinetic pulse with a blow from her fist and a string of curses. One tooth broken. Two. The hell-hound was rising to its feet. Three. Popping sounds Tarja barely heard echoed a short distance away, and the hound’s hide began to ripple, undulating with small crater impacts and eruptions of blood. Bloodied jaws opened and Tarja fell back onto the dirt. The hound swung its massive head to face the bullet shower, turned and bellowed. A cloud of dark fell from its mouth again, this time towards the incoming infantry vehicle, machine gun turrets on rapid fire. It dispersed easily, but the hound was no longer behind it. It was in the air. Dirt scattered in Tarja’s face as its claws ripped into the terrain and it launched itself high, easily to the height of the broken wall they had come through, and towards the vehicle. The front of the vehicle slammed into the dirt as the hell-hound landed on top of it, suspension groaning as spinning wheels kicked up more dirt and dust. It wrapped its jaws around the edge of the roof and bit down, then it began to pull. Metal shrieked, bolts popped as it heaved at the armour plating. It opened a hole large enough to fit one paw and thrashed about, swiping wildly at the soldier's inside as it forced its body side to side, metal plates warping and buckling as it shouldered it's way further in. One of the guns stopped, the remaining weapons aimed towards the hound's back, boring holes into its spine. More gun fire sounded from inside the vehicle, punctuated with deep, wet growls and watery breathing. Head and shoulders buried in twisted metal, the hound started to stagger, its body sagged and its snarling dropped to a low, monotonous growl. Lying flat, Tarja collected her wits and gathered her breath. |
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