II-95 Assassination (III)

“They’re attacking from everywhere! We need support! Support! Divert more casters to boost the shielding! Pull the scouts back—the skirmishers too, they’re just getting killed out there.

Send out the Unseen. We need to find out how they’re hitting us from so far, we need to—

BREACH! BREACH! SHIELD BREACH! WHERE ARE MY MASOCHISTS? PLUG THE GAP! PLUG THE GAP! PLUG—

Oh, by the Harbinger, what is th—”

-Last message of Maiara Sweetsong, Maquis of Lust (Seconds before being obliterated by an ICBM)

II-95

Assassination (III)

Getting obliterated by the missile didn’t hurt as much as Vendrian thought it would. It wasn’t pleasant by any means, but what killed him was the intense heat combusting his lungs rather being turned to paste inside his armor from raw kinetic force.

It didn’t mean he didn’t die screaming this time. It didn’t mean any of it felt good. It was just faster and cleaner; made his transition faster.

The world vanished into mist and darkness. Vendrian was still there, but it was as if he was in a deep sleep, or underwater, far away from his own body, from the world, from even his spirit. It was like being buried underground, the discomfort existential, almost ontological. Everything that came with death was hard to describe, but the coldness, that bone-chilling cold that washed through him… that never left him. It was not his power. He was merely a conduit. And with every resurrection, his father reminded him of that fact—that he was only a scion of death, and not the source itself.

Somewhere, someplace the hound was speaking. Somewhere, thousands of demons and sinners were being pulled along surging lakes of frost and death. The final end was eating well today. So much essence cast into the fathomless black. And then, slowly, light began to descend into Vendrian’s eyes. They came as pinpricks at first, brightening, expanding, like a tunnel rushing towards him. Sounds. Sensations. Awareness. These things followed thereafter—these things, and the voice of his sister calling to him.

Somehow he found himself moving, trudging through a tundra of cold, walking between thousands of lakes, crossing over that final precipice. Vendrian turned. He saw the cold break apart from his body, saw himself hatching anew, this cocoon of death shed and melting in pieces. Far behind, the Hound of the Withered Moon glared at him with those baleful eyes, standing upon that platform, his lupine shadow bathed in nightmarish moonlight. “Go, then, my child. Go, claim your revenge, and bring me my prized death.”

With every syllable the gods spoke, Vendrian felt his bones rattle. It was like he was made of ice, and his father, a drill burrowing through him, threatening to unmake him. He said nothing. He gave no reply. There was no point in defying death. He was more concept than parent. Rage did not rage. Neither decision made a difference.

And so, Vendrian walked on the tree, to the point where he would grow and rise beyond this wretched realm, return to reality alongside his sister. His coherence was still a mess. Things popped in and out of his awareness, and he trudged forward as if a drunkard walking through a mile of snow. At some point, he managed to wrap his hands around Morning’s hilt, and it was only her soothing voice that guided him back, back to the world that was.

He wouldn’t be himself without his sister. She was the broader part of his sanity, the better part of his nature. If he hadn’t had the fortune to be born kin to a scion of life, then he might have been like so many of his other half-siblings—merely creatures of madness, always reaping death, always seeking respites from life, lost even to themselves.

And then the wind was rushing along his body. He was climbing. His senses were fully awakening, and his mind was rooting back, back in his own shell, mingling with his spirit once more. “Brother, brother, have you returned?” Vendrian blinked. His breaths came quickly. His heart was pumping. He was alive. Once more, once more, he was alive. When he wasn’t, moments before.

Every resurrection was a harrowing experience, and his spirit felt raw, like nails had been dragged along his back. So many, so many had been taken in his place—an equivalent amount of essence, perhaps, maybe even more. Soon, he would be doing this again. But next time, he would do it gladly. The Collectress’s end was soon to be approaching.

The ground beneath him thrummed with nature and vitality. The Tree of Life was carrying him aloft, shooting him back into the world that was at an alarming pace. Even so, he found its speed comforting after his nightmarish ordeal on the missile. Retrospectively, he didn’t know what possessed him to agree. That was among the worst experiences of his life, the worst ride he had ever taken. If he ever saw a missile like that in a thousand years, it would be too soon. But still, he owed Wei. He owed a great many people for his freedom. But this part was on him. They sacrificed much already. 

Time for him to give the little bit he had.

Suddenly, he felt the tree burst through a threshold, passing between the realm of the final end, where death dwelled, and the claimed hells, where the degeneracy union between life and sin reigned. He burst out from a cocoon of deathly chill, something calcified over his body at the point of the missile’s impact.

He erupted back into existence, and found himself stepping over burning bodies and the howling dead.

Around him, the remains of sprawling trenches were embroiled in combat. Heavily armored obsidian warriors fired their rifles into the trenches, gunning down what few survivors lingered among the demons of lust. Hounds with chainsaws inside their mouths rushed along these narrow canals as well, ripping into the downed and dying, detonating themselves against those they deemed of significant threat or who could still put up a fight.

A loud wailing sound echoed overhead, and Vendrian looked up, saw shrieks of arcing missiles crash down at distant positions. Bunkers were hammered, small domes of radiant energy were erected at random points as pockets of defenders tried to sustain their collapsing position.

Everything was chaos. Everything was noise. Everything was death.

“I have eyes on the Scion,” Vendrian heard. 

A group of heavily armored soldiers came behind him, their faces obscured beneath black stone helmets. Volcanic veins ran along their bodies and fused their arms with the rifles they carried. Vendrian stared at them, gripping his sword tight.

“So how’d you enjoy the ride?” asked one of the obsidian-armored soldiers.

Vendrian’s expression turned sour. “I didn’t. Now, Portal. Where is it?”

“Yeah, yeah, we got orders to take you there,” the soldier said. “Position’s getting secured. We’ll move you once it’s secured. It’s best that none of these Sinners or demons catch sight of you. Something about, uh, keeping your approach circumspect.”

Vendrian didn’t say anything. The Circle of Wrath had a reputation for being populated by reckless brutes. What he saw right now wasn’t reckless, though still brutal—instead, it was surgical. Sophisticated. The artillery and soldiers worked as an interplay, separate notes and instruments to a symphony. The hammer came down. The soldiers moved up. What wasn’t shattered in the initial barrage was methodically culled thereafter.

This, this wasn’t any kind of enemy he would enjoy fighting, which meant that he needed to start preparing to kill these people at some point in the future.

“I don’t like this,” Mourning said. “I don’t like them. They are too organized, too deviant from their nature.”

“Me neither,” Vendrian replied internally. “But we put up with this. We’ll put up with them. We’ll get rid of the Colleinitial barragectress. And after that… after that…”

His mind trailed off. After that, what did he do? In a sudden now, Araya hadn’t returned to him. They’d all lost so much. But with freedom in sight, where would he go? And how long would this freedom last?

“We could potentially stay with Wei,” Mourning replied.

“With Wei,” Vendrian said. Yes, the thought did appeal. But the young master wasn’t walking a path towards peace. In fact, Vendrian would bet that he would see more bloodshed by the boy’s side than anywhere else in the Fathoms.

He followed after the squad of soldiers. They moved ahead of him, as they moved into the trenches. Even the way they fought, moving as a unit of four, each one guarding the other. Sometimes, they fired over the trenches—dropping targets that even Vendrian couldn’t see. He heard the impacts however, smelled the bursting of flesh and the flowing of blood. Their helmets shimmered with strange energies, and their communication was constant—nearly prescient. Their accuracy was also inhuman, and their gun’s effectiveness far exceeded even their collective Essence levels. All this was the work of the armor more than their own Classes, indicating that this army was being held together by a very sophisticated craftsman—the Forgemaster’s work, if he had to guess.

So Vendrian watched, studied, and followed. They led him deeper into the trenches, into a facility under the earth that was once defended by a legion of snake-like demons. Demons that were now cracking and ablaze. The air hissed with stinging heat—the kind of heat that lingered in the aftermath of dragon fire.

“Incendiaries,” one of the soldiers commented, stomping down hard on a serpent's corpse. A crispy, crunching noise followed. “Love ‘em. Love the burn. Love skipping over all that CQB bullshit.” He turned and eyed Vendrian briefly. “Sorry that you didn’t get to use that oversized hunk of metal to paste some of the fuckers.”

“This oversized hunk of metal can hear you,” Mourning said with a slight edge.

“Oh, shit! A talking sword. With a sexy voice too. Damn. Your name Swordi by any chance?”

“What?” Mourning’s voice rose an octave in outrage and confusion.

“Guzman, shut the fuck up and keep your head forward,” another soldier growled.

“I’m focused, Sarge.”

“The fuck you are. And if you make another shit joke like that again, I’m going to make you pull latrine duty with your tongue.”

“What? What the fuck was wrong—”

“You literally rammed the words Siri and sword together. What you just did was the opposite of comedy, was the opposite of entertaining, and at least ten comedians are now fated to commit suicide because of you. So please, shut the fuck up and keep it moving.”

The soldier referred to as Guzman degenerated into muttering under his breath about how everything treats him unfairly, but rather than starting a fight, he ultimately did what he was told. Another heavy departure from the standard Wrathful norms.

As they ventured deeper into the facility, Vendrian saw rows of slaves within cages. They were burned too. Some were cooked so severely that their flesh was melted into the steel bars, their fat dolloping through burst skin. The Scion looked away in disgust.

“Is this the work of your Skill as well?” Mourning asked.

The soldiers walked on. The leader of the group offered only a terse reply. “The good doctor hasn’t optimized our thermobarics. We’ll get back to you when this shit can start doing selective targeting.”

“The slaves…”

“Were probably already fucked,” the soldier continued. “And honestly, I’m not risking me or my boys in miserable room to room combat for any of this shit. We’re cooking the Sex Freaks out, collateral be damned. And besides,” he said as they rounded a corner. “We wouldn’t be able to keep the portal open without frying everyone at once.”

True to the soldier’s words, a vibrating spatial rift stood open before Vendrian. Rows of undelivered slaves in cages were bunched in front of the portal, and several charred demons had died mid-crawl to a place of salvation. Across the other would be the Collectress’s home—the slave market that Vendrian suffered for so many months.

Now. Now he was on the cusp of returning and bringing an end to the nightmare. But even so, he couldn’t help but feel like he was wading through a sea of filth. Right now, his retribution was being enable by one group of monsters against another. He didn’t know why the General wanted the Collectress and the Duke dead, only that it probably wasn’t for a good or decent reason.

This was supposed to be his home now. Where his son would grow up.

This place.

“Fuck,” Vendrian muttered under his breath.

“All right, this is you,” the Sargent said. A sliver of essence snaked out from the soldier’s mind and drifted beyond the range of Vendrian’s perception—doubtless an update to command. “The portal is stable and no one laid eyes on the VIP. I’d say that’s a win for us, boys.” The one called Guzman cleared his throat, but his Sargent interrupted him. “Guzman. If you’re going to say something sexual or weird to the talking sword, I will shoot you.”

“What? Sarge, how could you think that?”

“Because you’ve made a fucking habit of spitting sexual quips at people just before the cross through rifts, and the last thing I need is command breathing down my neck because you pissed off the wrong person. So. No noise this time.”

“Fuck’s sake, man, I never get to have any fun.”

While the soldiers quipped at each other, Vendrian sent his own update to Wei: “Hey, kid. I’m about to cross. We’re about to hit the Collectors hard. Are you ready?”

A moment passed, but the young master’s reply was resolute: “I am more than ready. I have been looking forward to this.”

“Yeah, me too,” Vendrian finished. “I just… there are things I want to talk about afterward. About what we do going forward.”

“After,” Wei said. “When the deed is done.”

The Scion paused. The boy was locked in on the task. Which meant that it was time to stop hesitating, stop waiting. He walked past the soldiers and gripped Mourning with both hands. When he crossed, he expected to be on one of the bridges. After that—well, he knew where the Collectress would probably be—at the very top, looking down, surveying the damage.

He wouldn’t have long before she reacted—and she would absolutely sense his coming. That was fine. He didn’t need to kill her himself, he just needed to die close to her. The Hound would come and claim its due thereafter.

“Steel yourself brother. The end comes.”

“An end, maybe,” Vendrian said. “But the Collectress—she isn’t even a great evil here.” He looked at the soldiers that escorted him, and then stared at the simmering remains of the slaves. “It’s everywhere. It’s all around us.”

“Yes… I suspect there is going to be more bloodshed in our future, isn’t there?”

“Maybe. But there is another place we can go. Beyond the reach of the Claimed Hells. And someone else that might be able to seize it.”

“Earth?”

“Yes. Earth. That might just be a worthwhile escape.” Vendrian let out a breath. “But we must prevail right now.”

“Are you ready? When you die, your mind—”

“Yes,” Vendrian said, stepping into the portal as his expression turned into a mask of feral rage. “It doesn’t matter what it does to me—I will gladly see myself tortured a thousand times over if it means ruining her.”