[Warpworld] Ch 8 – Feeding Time
Added 2025-03-29 04:01:40 +0000 UTC« Chapter 7 | Index | Chapter 9 »
The Ices were looking at the mess eagerly. He hissed a question back at them, and #1 indicated that the mortals down there were decent food, and there were a lot of them, they would just have to be careful about who they picked off.
Other heads turned and pointed tellingly at a storm brewing in the distance, shot through with occasional unclean lights that indicated it was no natural kind of snowstorm.
-Master, there’s an enemy camp within potential visible range of the Pyramid you are going to raise, at least a couple thousand in number. Warriors, followers, and there are several units of minor demons or the equivalent about the place.-
-Do they have a color, numbers, or other aesthetic theme?- came the /answer back from one of his Master’s less-occupied thoughtstreams from miles away.
Feature tilted his head as he considered the camp more closely, looking for more details. -Red is predominant, with bronze runework. Mostly males, many in heavy armor with Dire patterns, the same style of weapons, all inordinately large or heavy for their size. Unarmored men showing many scars, tattoos, excessive musculature. Their Banners are showing a modified symbol like so.- He visualized the X with the horizontal line in the middle and a vertical one on the left side.
-The demons are also red, horned, and armed with weapons?- was the rapid /reply.
-That seems to be mostly the case, yes,- Feature /agreed upon further inspection.
-Demons and servants of Klaw. We’re on a world being leeched by the four Warp Gods. It explains the planar rupture. They prefer worlds with transient deific representation, not having the power to defy real deities. True deities can toss them around, which doesn’t stop them from being utterly horrific for natives of said worlds to deal with. The prevailing thought is that the Warp gods of the old Warhammer game were inspired by cross-dimensional contamination by these four, the recognition of their existence taking root in the Akasha and giving them something to lock into over time.
-If The Thing hadn’t acted first, perhaps some time in the distant future the Warp Gods would have done the same sort of thing to Terra.-
Feature considered the implications of a demonic invasion from those visualizations, and realized he really did have carte blanche to get rid of as many of these things as he deemed appropriate. Demon gods... this was just like the Tainted mortals the Oni had corrupted in the Shadowlands on the previous world they’d come from!
Just more demons feasting on souls of mortal for one reason or another, or just because they could!
“So,” he hissed back to the Ices, “you must be hungry...”
All of the hydra’s heads perked up eagerly.
------
The Warpstorm blizzard was still mostly snow, but there were a lot of colors flashing through it that were completely unnatural. The Vivic Fires on his fangs and those of the Ices ensured that they didn’t have to worry about breathing any of the stuff in, and the way it was popping and fizzing in his lungs and through his blood meant any trying to infect him on the outside was doing the same thing.
Still, it was loud and howling and it did a very good job of blocking line of sight from anything.
Ices were happy, as moving along on the Disks was both quick and quiet. They flattened down as low to the ground as they could, looking more like a large snowdrift than anything else, the glinting of their clustered eyes lost in the swirl of the snow and its cryotechnic displays.
Feature just glided forward above the ground. Black was black wherever it went, and it was both dark and blowing around him. He was no more visible than Ices, even the reflective gleam of his scales just seeming like more psychedelics in the night.
The demons hadn’t bothered to find shelter, standing outside and facing into the driving winds with obvious pleasure. Their unstable ectoplasmic forms were gaining strength with the Chaotic energy on display here, helping solidify them and prolong their stay in the mortal realm, instead of taking any damage from the cold.
They were unappetizing and dissolved on death, so Ices didn’t want any of them, but their permanent destruction was definitely a priority for Feature!
Given Ices was very inexperienced at this kind of thing, although an instinctive ambush predator, Feature told it to wait a moment as they approached the camp from downwind.
The demons, large and small, had been nice enough to group themselves up nicely for his attention. He applauded their nominal cohesiveness, the ripples of reality altering about them eased by clinging together, even as he built up the power of his breath weapon for maximized power.
It just took a push against the wind to get into position to the side of the demons, approach, and open his jaws.
One of the demons staring about in mesmerized fascination at the plays of lights within the storm, maybe trying to read some sign from its deranged masters in them, happened to look over as he opened his jaws, the vivic flames poofing into a streaming unwhite cloud of Warp-devouring mists in midair, and out of that whiteness the absolute chill of icefire came forth.
His Master’s Void Phoenix Bloodline had also had an effect on him, as Feature was Companion, Familiar, and Eidolon to his master. Thus, he could breathe forth fire or ice as he deemed appropriate, and the faint flames flickering on the skin and horns of these demons indicated the latter was more appropriate.
Also, icefire wasn’t nearly as bright, and it carried vivus just as well as flames.
The demons there didn’t have a chance. They weren’t weak, but the blast of frozen dragonflame was completely beyond the bounds of what they could have expected to endure. The atmosphere froze in its wake, frozen air tinkling to the ground, and their ectoplasmic bodies were drained of heat, shattered, and the vivus drove into them with the cold that was quenching them.
They did try to scream, and maybe their spirits did in psychic terror as they realized with horror what was about to happen. The slightest touch of vivus caressed their damned essences, grabbed on, and blazed up into them like they were made of gasoline, even as their false bodies shattered into dust and less, thick clouds that became short-lived flares of psychedelic streams in the night before abruptly going away forever.
There were no screams or calls. There had been far too much cold, and any such were frozen in the demons’ throats as they died. Their eternity came to an end as they dissolved into vivus and the Land’s insatiable appetite devoured them utterly. They’d be carrying no tales back to their master.
Feature turned his gaze on the disorganized structure of the camp, its crude fence of stakes providing some scant protection from the wind for the furry, mutated herdbeasts that might have been horse or oxen at one point, it was hard to tell.
The tents were of the hides of other beasts, stitched together to provide protection against wind and cold and the warping effect of the storms that swept the place.
Feature advised the Ices on how to approach things, using their multiple heads like hands and limbs. Rawhide strips were gnawed away, and the stakes lifted out with muscular heads, one by one, in quiet movements buried in the howls of the storm, until an opening was big enough to admit them.
Then the Ices came up on a tent. Two sets of two heads, always operating in pairs, grabbed the stakes that secured it down, and with a surge of strength, lifted the whole end of the structure up against the wind.
That left four more pairs of heads staring at the prizes looking around in shock as their tent rose up around them, and death was limned in the light of dim cookfires burning in iron coal pots, shining off their intent eyes.
There were four scarred and muscular male humans inside, all out of their armor, all astonished as they gaped up at the cold white-scaled form and the eight heads looking down at them.
Those heads lashed out, each man inheriting one of the heads, its jaws clamping on their skulls to stifle any warning cries. The second heads of the pairs first snapped at the arms that grabbed for weapons, tearing them off as the struggling marauders were lifted from their feet, then shaken wildly, like a terrier shakes a rat.
Neck bones popped and cracked, and the four men’s struggles stopped in seconds.
The tent’s side poles were lowered back into their holes, the eight heads curving down to stay within the confines of the tent. The four other heads slithered inside, and aided the others in dismembering the corpses so they could be swallowed down in pieces, taking care to be as quiet as possible. Limbs were chomped on, pulled free, and clothing was torn off, vivic fires dancing over the warm dead flesh and accompanying each swallow in a cool, invigorating rush.
The torsos were the hardest, being the widest and not really fitting easily down their throats. At Feature’s patient hissing advice, the Ices tore out the innards, the lack of bones making that a quick and easy task, and then cracked the skulls open to nibble on the brains, and pluck out the eyes, disdaining to swallow the skulls completely.
Feature advised them that if they had more time, they should just strip the corpses of meat and not bother with the bones unless they felt they needed to, and the Ices nodded along as they finished up, staying slow and methodical.
Four humans weren’t going to satisfy them at all, of course, and there were many hundreds of men in the camp, all hunkering down against the night, listening to the howl of the wind, and unaware of a very hungry, very big monster in their midst.
The Ices quietly shifted the Disks they were still standing on, enjoying the smooth flight and ease of movement of the gliding things, and went to the next tent. A dozen heads listened from all angles around it, hearing the breathing of four more men inside, indicating agreement among themselves with shakes of their heads.
Four different heads split to grab the tent stakes slowly, the other eight heads poised, and the next mealtent was lifted.
---
Feature watched the Ices at work without emotion. The hydra wasn’t very intelligent and had no reservations against eating other sapient creatures whatsoever, not that Feature considered any humans worshiping demonic powers to be worthy of being called sapient. The Ices did ask him if he wanted any, and he politely demurred and told them to eat their fill while he stood watch. They happily dug in, yet still kept the ongoing slaughter as quiet and stealthy as they could.
Feature was privately amazed when a full score of tents had been breached, and more than six dozen marauders had gone into the gullet of the hydra, all without provoking an alarm. It was a lot of meat, but then the Ices had to retreat, starting to cough and gurgle. Feature politely pulled them out of earshot of the rest of the tents before they belched and gagged and vomited up a fine collection of femurs, tibias, ulnas, and other bones in piles smoking with some extremely deadly crystallizing acids. He noted all the bones were cracked open and the marrow gone, too.
“Still hungry?” he hissed gently to the hydra, who actually appeared to think about that for a few minutes.
“Not... full. But not hungry,” Ice #1 hissed back to him, actually seeming a little surprised. It couldn’t remember ever not feeling hungry, really, its unnatural metabolism always aching for more.
With like three tons of meat ingested, however, they were as sated as they could ever remember, which was saying something.
It was at times like these that Feature knew some experimentation was in order. Everyone had to know their limits. “Let’s see how many you can eat before you are full, so that you all know in the future.”
Ices’ thick tail waved in the snow happily, totally willing to find that particular fact out. Feature indicated the next tent for the Ices to go after, and the hydra glided up to it, four heads poised to grab and lift...
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