Mhaieiyu

  Arc 3, Chapter 12

  Pride

  The stinging graze of that elastic tendril’s final snap tingled his neck with a kind of hot pain one experiences mere glimpses before death. It’s quick: much quicker than the burn of a hot pan, and yet so slow, too. A cut like this runs deep, and at least partly beheads its victim. The loom of death is the afterthought that lingers during the pain, that brief pain that guarantees fatality. What is an eternal fate for anyone else, Tokken experienced much differently. The same sting still took over, yes, but it came accompanied with a new sensation. A memory of one, that he’d long suppressed in the dreams that ailed him. Those dreams, where the clutch of jaws closed his lifespan.

  That final bite. A menace of a jarring, throaty sound. The splatter of saliva as those prickly teeth snap, just like the tendril had, slicing unevenly through flesh and crushing delicate bones, splashing the contents of arteries, rupturing nerves and surely, so surely, causing death. Naturally, somebody would experience this once, too.

  Tokken had. But it wasn’t once. Goddess, the thought of it paled his skin. It might’ve been twice, maybe thrice. It could’ve been a dozen times. He never wagered to guess. He couldn’t count then, he had no wish to now. This memory, which only resurfaced in his dreams and never stayed in his consciousness, reemerged now of all times, but of course it did.

  He felt it again, the edged whip’s blow. Vicks, it hurt each time. But it didn’t give closure. It wasn’t the end. The scene would replay again, as it had for him then. As it had when he fell. Reality itself changed in its course. It corrected itself, tried again. It replayed, seconds back, the same scene, but only slightly differently. If Tokken couldn’t compel himself to thrust the knife he always carried, perhaps a tree would fall on the monster that tried to eat Chloe. If his fall couldn’t be helped, an unwilling participant’s mind would so suddenly have to change. If this tendril had a thirst for his blood, his special blood, then what would have to change to prevent its spill?

  Who knows. Perhaps nobody did. Perhaps even Mortos had no clue. Who cares, either way? Leonidas had decided that his blood was too good to spill, and so, it wouldn’t.

  Tokken dropped his head down at the whip, weaving under its elastic and hardy reach. It swung through his hair, breaking through a small knot and tearing out a couple strands. Tokken, breathless but with momentum, backstepped a second swing of the whip. This was a mere combat experience to the cultist, but Tokken had seen this already. It was a choreographed dance by now. Under threat of another bout of that hot sting, the teen slipped delicately and deliberately through each of the cultist’s attacks, leveraging each hop of his paralysed leg. The Lesser Ordained was astonished, but unsurprised. He had been ordered to kill Pride. An impossible task.

  Tokken travelled the length of the scaly black rope, each time coming a little closer, further out of reach of the weapon’s hellish blades. The cultist, not foolish, too walked backward; but there was only so much space to be had before his back met the wall. Tokken took his knife from his pocket. That crimson blade, his accursed heirloom, which refused to leave his side no matter how far he chucked it. With one precise cut, leveraged by his own stumbling legs, the knife dug itself deep in the roots of the appendage, hacking down its base like a lumberjack’s notch cut and ceasing its function — a curse defeating a parasite.

  The cultist, astonished by the injured cadet’s capabilities, only stood alongside him as they both caught their breath.

  “You were right,” the hooded figure said, his hands shaking in place. “You are Pride.”

  “I wasn’t lying,” Tokken blurted, spitting saliva between heaves, “I found this out today, a minute ago.”

  “That explains it. Capricorn isn’t just cruel, he had no idea who I was up against.”

  Tokken uprighted himself, standing eye to eye with the Crimson. “I’m sorry you were put up to this.”

  The man lowered his head. “It’s alright.”

  “Now that I’ve won, can I ask you something?” he asked, not really expecting an answer from his adversary. “Can we talk instead? I’m not big on fighting.”

  Naturally, an answer he’d come to expect. The Crimsoneer looked at him with a twisted expression between sympathy and refusal. Tokken’s ever-hopeful smile wouldn’t bend.

  “We’ve discussed this,” he said, “that is beyond my means. My superior——”

  “Then let me talk to them, too. You called them ‘Capricorn’, is that right?”

  “The Disciple of Capricorn, yes. His is a fiery tempest. You may survive him, but he won’t take easily to words of reason.”

  As he said this, something of a commotion rang from outside. Gunfire, followed by a sizzle and a bang. The crisp smell of something burnt filled their nostrils. Somebody—or something—had been reduced to ash. The stench of blood began to recede in place of an almost satisfying odour. Cooked meat. If Tokken were to guess, the tempting flesh of a Mynotaur had been ripped apart.

  “Would you like to live?” Tokken asked. “If we’re being honest, I’d rather spare you, if I could.”

  The Lesser Ordained looked about himself; the airtight presence of armed riflemen ready to gun him down if he were to run, the sweat-inducing state of the bored out window, the trickle of dust from the ceiling and the black oil leaking out his destroyed tendril. With a slump almost amusing to himself, he conceded with a simple, “Yes.”

  “Then, lead me to Capricorn. Show me him, and give me a chance to change his mind. At the very least, let me understand your perspectives.”

  There was no doubt about it, what with such a sympathetic show of face. The cultist had no confidence whatsoever. He knew his superior, and now the ignorance of this boy. Worse, though he didn’t embody it now, his arrogance as Pride could emerge at any second. It reminded him of the brief interaction he’d witnessed of Aquarius, or more aptly, Lust, while waiting on that brutalised island. That man was already deeply enthralled by his own ego and desires. How long before true Pride would show worse symptoms? The thought raised his blood pressure.

  With no desire to upset such a Sin, the cultist bowed his head a tad. “I last saw him stationed a few streets adjacent to us, ‘overseeing', as he put it.”

  Tokken pawed at his damaged leg and sighed. Of course it was far away. This might be the most painful thing he’d ever endured, but such were the stings onward the path of uncertainty.

  Never mind the throbbing of his head and heart. The fear of getting cut again, of getting whipped again, of being beheaded. That roaring tempest that had finally been set free overwhelmed all other thought. Tokken understood now to more depth just how controversial a figure he had been — how could he break this to Mumble, he wondered?

  ? ? ? ?

  A thick musk settled in his nose, and Emris, old primitive instincts his forté, sniffed at the air. It was an unpleasant smell that was hard to shape. It was sharp enough to peer through the haze, rancid enough to overwhelm the metal, and powerful enough to bypass the oils of the deceased Crawlers strewn about the streets. That horrid, nauseating fragrance was familiar, but only strangely. Emris struggled to imagine what on Earth it could be. His one tendril, wrapped around his belly, tightened a tad in response.

  Emris grunted, steering his bike to the best of his ability. He’d dropped low enough on a turn to nick the concrete, but he paid it no mind. This old Betty was knackered anyway. As he peeled down the road, he caught a glimpse of something all too bizarre. A lone soldier fell out a first story window, rolling haphazardly to his feet. The wheels screeched to a halt, and finally that bastard snake loosened a tad. Emris watched on, noticing the red that had masked a bit of his forehead. It was just one man, and he’d torn his top wear to the point his chest and part of his back were exposed, also covered in bloody gashes. He swung a shotgun from his chest and cocked it, pointing it at the building, and then around himself.

  Memories of the Mercater riflemen tore into his head wound, knocking unkindly in his brain. Endorphins and adrenaline wrestled in his blood system and pumped his heart like a freight train’s coupling rods; his entire system in motion. The Grinner had spared no leniency on the lone human. His communicator had served him no purpose. His higher ups were too focused on maintaining order in the core of the conflict and, stranded out here, Sven’s stress and enthusiasm had intertwined to keep him alive. The whizzing of bullets was nostalgic now — even as he stood, soaked in his own sweat, blood and the oil blood of that monster, glimpses of his being fired upon by revolutionaries reemerged.

  What a sight.

  He'd kept his wits about him, outpacing the laughing Northbeast by clambering into an apartment and luring it up a tight flight of stairs. An illegally kept rifle had been his choice to fire a fat slug into the thing's jaws, smashing apart its teeth into a nasty assortment of small shards and driving through the side of its skull. With a blown face, the Grinner's giggles were gargled and messy, but it still roamed alive. A horror that should not still be did so unflinchingly, unaware or unconcerned in its undoing.

  He'd leapt from the window, cutting his thigh in the process. Sven's knees ached, but he had to stay grounded. His eyes returned to his surroundings, keeping track of the beast through the reflections on the windows. Sven's brows tightened when he realised the Grinner had noticed, and started smashing the glass, dispersing dangerous shards. His shoe crunched on one when he turned, and he looked down. From one of those tiny pieces, a reflection revealed the beast's position.

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  Sven swivelled quickly, firing a volley toward the general direction he'd discerned. The Northbeast, laughing, surprised him by swooping past him, its enormity subsumed by a total lack of foot noise. Sven's good arm was clamped down by those mashed razors, tugging it out of its socket and dragging him along for the ride. Sven wasted no time. He shuffled his gun to his free hand and pulled the barrel to meet the beast's neck, lodging six rounds into its snake-like blasphemous skin.

  The Grinner cried out a mixture of chuckles and distress, a vile and oily ink-black substance dribbling down the man's arm. With a fervent shake of its head, Sven's body was hurled violently against a collection of rubble, a few new rocks falling atop him and chambering his broken self within the dust and gravel.

  Sven looked up, his face caked grey and his sight swollen to high hell. A blur of a slinking beast approached him, like a cat stalking its prey. Between glints of clarity, its mangled face struck in the man a fear he didn't remember experiencing before. How would it be, to be devoured by a broken jaw and ruined fangs? He almost wished he hadn't taken the shot. A good mouth would just kill him.

  It snarled its vicious noises, a snotty hyena cackling at its disabled prey. It couldn't have been seven feet away when it flew — it flew sideways.

  A rocket had jetted past and taken the Northbeast like a fly on a windshield. The sharp bang split Sven's ears.

  Emris shuffled between carrying on or lending a hand. The soldier he'd watched seemed well enough capable, and if he ran into him by chance later, he might even offer a word of thought. The Cadet's position had worsened in a matter of seconds, though. That tendril had resumed its tight squeeze. Emris reached behind himself and clamped the fucking thing hard until it crunched, and with a tug that hurt a lot more than he'd expected, he ripped it out from his spine, ending the constriction. Undoing himself from this tangle, Emris' loose mouth and showing teeth tickled at the sight of the beast further ahead. It had thrust the poor bastard into a dust heap, and seemed ready to kill him off. Emris grunted, putting one foot forward.

  His figure disappeared. His afterimage blitzed forward in a sequence of zips, firing himself like a bullet of his own. By the time he had time to think of it, his fist collided brutally with the Northbeast's skull. The Grinner's body flew beside Emris, coming to a halt a good few feet past what he'd travelled. His newly cast shield was wasted when he realised its head, already poorly attached after gunfire had riddled its neck with holes, had fully severed from its frame and smashed into a building side, reducing it to a husky splat of black oil. Finally, it had died.

  Emris took a single breath. Of course, looking back at the soldier that fought tooth and nail, he felt insulted on the Cadet's behalf.

  Approaching the rubble wasn't easy. Loose bricks, shards of glass and foundation lining was scattered about the floor. The poor sod had been tossed into a ruined building's crumpled memory of a facade. From the heap jutted whole rebars and severed pipes. It'd be a miracle if he hadn't been impaled.

  The hardest part was looking at that disgraced, buried face. Just an eye remained above ground, his nose snorting dust to get some air. Emris took to peeling the heavy rubble that weighed him down before ripping the body from its tomb. A cascade of dust fell off him and his clothes as the Cadet was made to stand. His shoulder and arm had been bitten into, though his time underground had slowed his bleeding enough to clot; dry blood clung to his forearm. One of his eyes, likely caked in dirt, wouldn't open, and he stood on wobbling legs. Emris ignored the fact he'd probably pissed himself as he already looked mudded regardless.

  Emris looked him up and down. Pitied as he might be, the Brigadier bore no patience for heroes. He wanted to admonish him for tackling the beast alone, or condemn him for not wearing his battle vest, or not communicating outside his local bubble of operators. But, just as the Guardian parted his teeth to speak, the lonesome learner did something unimaginable.

  At a thread from death and battered to ruin, the Cadet shook his arm a bit, willing it into proper motion, and pounded his chest. With the same arm, he made an L shape to his right and showed four skyward fingers, of which three had been severed from the first knuckle. The miserable sod had had the gall to salute. Of course his legs gave in and he fell after the gesture. Emris caught him by the chest and kept him on his toes.

  The Brigadier glanced at the badge on his shoulder and committed his name to memory. "Sven," he uttered. "Right."

  ? ? ? ?

  One last wave from behind the large rounded glass would cast off the Celestial elite and their entourage. Of all of them, Elior noted just how flabbergasting Thaumiel's exit was. Though the Skyborn Major’s power over their flock was supreme, it was his right hand man that possessed the wherewithal to make uncontested such a right. Indeed not his voice but his true power must be immeasurable; he hoped never to have to cross paths with a being as he. Closing his eyes, Elior revised his plan, and with a fickle smile, he quickly confirmed that wouldn't ever be necessary.

  The Head of Men retreated from the window gaze to favour the room he was in. He was utterly surrounded by boxy devices—computers—and a cesspool of blurry screens, scattered papers and furiously hammered keyboards. A number counting three dozen: young and old, men and women. Three seniors, one for each dozen, reported directly to Elior and two other chief strategists: his most resourceful first senior, Merean, and her still-recovering grey-haired counterpart, Hoern, whose mobility had been restricted to a wheelchair for the sake of not stressing his chest wound.

  This arrangement allowed reasonably effective supervision regarding the broader defence operation, which had escalated dramatically from what was originally presumed to be a simpler cleanup endeavour. One of those men hammering away at his keyboard struggled to hold up the right speaker of his headset to his ear, having just finished communicating a mission detail to one of several scattered divisions. The whole of the room was desperately trying to stitch the formation back into shape, but the lack of visual aid made every bit of new intel equally vital and nauseating.

  “We need a scout,” a remarkably bold junior strategian blurted out.

  “We should have asked to hire Celestial aid when the executives stopped by,” fired off another. More tacticians chimed in.

  “Any worthwhile Nynx suit engagement?”

  “We had half a dozen, but they’ve been dropped.”

  “Status?”

  “MIA, save one. He’s definitely dead. Gear was faulty.”

  “Fucking Hephaestus.”

  “Yes, fucking Heph.”

  Elior seemed amused. He never appeared to lose his composure, regardless of the boiler room setting. Hoern would assess any questions thrown, a solitary thinker. Merean was also the sort, but ever since Elior showed up, they pooled their knowledge and thought together. Elior kept stumping her, it was fascinating. He could close his eyes, rub his chin and cook up the exact right answer. Sometimes he’d just bounce off with such a response in an instant of being questioned by these lackeys. Remarkable, like asking a resplendent God.

  “Elior, sir!” a senior strategist called.

  Merean, defensive and traditional, cocked her brow and spat. “You address your supervisor first.”

  “Forgiveness, Madam Chief. Two platoons have reached a vantage point. Crawler presence is being shortened with shrapnel explosive application, but they’re cornered.”

  She stirred the black coffee in her paper cup with a wooden spoon. The roasty smell was strong. “Ask them if they have observational equipment.”

  “I was about to say, they already scoped the main incursion. They’ve spotted a huge concentration of Crawlers in what is likely a square with considerable cultist presence.”

  Elior took an empty seat when its occupant ran out the room to gather something or other. “Anything else?”

  The senior strategian seemed unnerved to respond, whether it be for the news she had or the lack of permission to address their supreme authority. With apprehension, she replied, “Yes. Among a pool of soldiers, he’s trapped in the middle. Without a doubt: the Harvirillian noble, Amar.”

  A brief pause of dialogue set between the three, a silence doused by the incoherent murmurs and panicked shufflings of the room. After a while, Elior struggled to contain his satisfaction, the corners of his lips tensing as not to show a smile. He knew she noticed, and divined how disturbed she may have become for it.

  “Very well,” he said. “Focus your attention elsewhere.”

  Merean looked away from the monitors to face the Head of Men. “But, your plans…?”

  “I’ll ask you to remember my blood, Merean,” Elior rebutted, creaking the swivel chair as he stood again, its previous occupant having returned and very politely recovered their seat. With a look that mixed between frigid and sly, he said, “Do not underestimate the Harvirillian line. Their crest is their sword, and Amar is the perfect example of such.”

  Merean straightened herself to meet his level.

  Elior opened the door and took a step outside for a breath of fresh air. Before the door closed behind him, he said, “It’s about time we gave those bitter families a more cherishable reunion. Merean, advise the ground team of this: we’re dispatching the Wraithsman. Upon my authority.”

  Chief Strategian Merean looked put off thereafter. She faced forward, ever the steely-eyed woman, kept her focus on the bleating ruckus of the room as she received intel passively from her subordinates as she long now had. An elbow met her thigh and she dropped her eyes further down.

  The older sod wheezed a bit as he spoke. “I figured you’d settled in by now.”

  “There’s a lot at stake, Hoern, and too many pieces are out of place. The Galloping’s purification is weeks behind schedule; we have no knowledge of the cultists’ next move; The Ward and R&D are constantly asking questions that I simply don’t have the answer to; and now we’re putting ourselves at the mercy of old, prodigious, surely pompous family lines. It’s all distressing, I suppose,” Merean went into depth to explain, rubbing her forehead raw with her fingers. “I’ll need stronger stimulants than these, at this rate,” she pointed out, shaking her nearly empty cup.

  “Suffice is to say, a lot has fallen on our plates. Agh, I’ll admit, with all the old Heads dead or gone within a month, this feels too much like an intentional decapitation of power.” Hoern groaned, leaning back into his chair. In something between a breath and a whisper, he asked, “Do you doubt the Syndicate’s future?”

  Merean suppressed a scoff. “By Elior’s hand, unorthodox as this may all be, I’m strangely confident.”

  Hoern produced an old cackle and ground more of his elbow into her. “Are you sure you’ve not just caught eyes for the man?”

  A natural smile finally adorned her stressed, wrinkled face. “Well, if I were younger, I might have given it more thought. But no. His reign is different, and differences will surely bring change. I had less faith before.”

  Amid their conversation, a spike in volume drew their attention. One of the younger men had dropped his head between his knees and shook with anxiety. Seeing how overwhelmed he had gotten, two more tried in vain to comfort him as they continued to work through the stress.

  “Where’s our fucking Celestial gone?!”

  Hoern coughed, and raised his voice to a horrid boom of authority and grim lungs. “QUIET!”

  His apathy toward Corvus was obvious; to be truthed, he’d wished him a dead man. Of course he had. The gash on his chest was by that Celestial’s hands — proof of his sudden becoming of madness after Erica’s passing. Hoern took a blurry glance at his lackeys to make sure they continued to work before he succumbed to his weariness. Addressing Merean again, he exhaled and said, “I hope so. Give me another year and I’ll be in the ground. We won’t be breathing well much longer.”

  Merean shook her head and reached for a loosely opened document on the table, rereading its material for the eighth time. With a passive, absent voice, she asked, “Why do you ghoul us so?”

  Hoern coughed again, resting his hands on his lap. “Haven’t you heard? Elior fetched us a new candidate to be Head of Arms, and took him on as an advisor.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed on the nearly-snoozing soul.

  “Of course, ‘nought to be a single bloody threat to these peoples’,” A bleak, almost sadistic sort of grin grew under his baggy eyes. “Aye, a Yanksie of course, and a nutcase. He proposed a solution to the Dwellers problem. Burn their fucking trees down.”