“You will not win every battle as you are. This is not a critique on your skills, but a statent of circumstance. Look at yourselves. Feel your current biological template–your standard baseline sheathe.
That burning in your lungs after re hours of activity? The strain in your muscles as you struggle to bear weights barely heavier than yourselves? This is a limitation of physical attributes. You–without thaumaturgy or high technology–cannot alter your attributes. Instead, you must work around them.
Now, erging out from this cage before you is a Manticore-Retriever. We call him Mattis. This model of nu-dog is one ton of synthetic hyper-muscle capable of tearing through a LIAC. It moves five tis faster than a flat–which is what you all are right now–and it does not feel pain or fear.
Over the course of the next few seconds to minute, Mattis will kill all of you. You have no chance of surviving, but survival has nothing to do with your orders.
Sell your lives. Bleed the dog. Write a post-session report during your death-ti in your Phylacteries.
Mattis. Kill–
Oh, hells, [laughs]. Looks like it’s gonna be a short day."
-Commander Winston Nicoma, Highfla Regular
8-10
Bleed it Out
The monowire raked across Avo’s headplates inch by inch, the slithering strand sinking with each retraction.
A blow thundered against his chest, the impact heavy one mont and gone the next. His new mycelia drank blunt force far better than the muscles he used to have. Twice more he felt Draus strike him with her free hand, propelled back by bursts of force from her wing-scythes.
Retaliating, he clawed as she struck, his new digits leaving ugly scratches upon her rig, the tips of his fingers splitting even titanium. Operating on sheer instinct, he clasped her tight around him as her wire sawed through his armor, the serrated edges of his eight Echoheads slashed across her back, curving in to spear at her.
The world was spinning fast, but their fall was long, the neutering of ti making even gravity hobbled.
In the sa mont her wire severed the ceramite under his jaw, one of his Echoheads punched true. They sang with a crackle, the air popping with a small shockwave. Through layers of tal, at, and bone, the Echohead dived, impacting hard against the Regular’s ribs. Blood gushed and the tail fed. Avo fed. It didn’t matter that her wire was still working to decapitate him, the thrill was afire in him.
It was better to be alive at this mont than be spared, safe but bored for the rest of ti.
She twisted. Force burst free from her side. Avo felt his gut lurch as his armored back clashed against a hardened pillar. The impact shuddered through him, the structure behind him fissuring. As he was before, his bones would have shattered. He would have died. Now, though the impact thundered his breath out of his lungs, the blow danced down his mycellial fibers, evening across his body
Twisting again, she dove him down as they struck another pillar. The wiring twisted around his outer skull and he felt it tighten more, biting halfway through ceramide. Pain began to tinkle through his senses as his Echoheads chittered, clearing the confusion.
Spinning, crashing, grinding, and brawling, she was driving him against the column holding up the third-highest dueling ring. With fifty feet running between each pillar, the velocity at which she slamd him was enough to crumble a comrcial aerovec.
Angling herself, she tid a surge of acceleration from both wings to smash him back-first against the pillar again. A heavy impact staggered him, but his plating and thread-like interior kept him from losing his breath.
He felt himself scrape, twisting away from the wall again. The wire chewed even deeper. Another squeeze and he’d be without a head. A static picture greeted him–a thin thrumming extension erging from between the knuckles of her right sub-arm.
Implanted frequency stilleto. Because of course she had one.
She clenched her fist, making to finish him before her wire did–
But his blow ca first.
The Echohead, still lodged deep inside her punctured midsection, extended once more. This ti, even the lacing of her ribs failed her. Her core shattered against the head of his tail–the flavor of his devastation like shoving one’s tongue into soone else’s shattered mouth, licking at fragnts of bone dancing like teeth broken free of gums.
The monowire sliced through. A line of pain glided deep. Yet, her blade never ca, and her grip slackened. With brutal delight, he found that his Echohead had instinctively clamped its teeth around the shaft of her spine.
He had her. Now, she would–
Her wings exploded with force. Sothing hard crashed into him as several courses of pain comingled across his body. With a sickening snap, he felt her pull free from his tail, a piece of her vertebrae still bitten between its jaws. He, anwhile, struck a pillar at a diagonal angle, with all the force of his acceleration cracking down between his neck and shoulder.
It was a testant to his new body’s durabliity that he only folded instead of splattering. His exterior plates held, but the mycelia tore. Chasms of pain opened down his back and shoulders, the agony consuming his mind. He felt his Echoheads lash out, haywire and uncommanded, desperate to protect their host.
anwhile, Avo felt, his skull spinning, focus lost.
And with that, his Celerostylus went untensed. The weight of ti fell like a hamr blow from the skies as gravity tore down from the air. A hoarse cry wheezed out from Avo’s mangled lip. He blinked. Licking at his wounds, he found the front half of his mouth missing, his incisors chipped, and the plate beneath his skull severed clean.
The monowire must have sliced through him as Draus shot past him.
He coughed, hacking out blood.
Sothing was filling one of his lungs as well.
Had Draus managed burst his lungs from a few punches thrown an inch away? What the hells did they learn at Regular academy.
Unable to use his own voice, he had his Echoheads cry out. Another snapshot of the world ford around him. Ten feet until he struck water. A disturbance so eight feet away, ripples beneath the water. Probably where Draus struck.
Splashing into the murky depths, Avo felt the sting of fetid water pouring into his wounds.
Then, subsequently, he felt no pain at all. Hurt and wounds dissolved from his body like salt in water. The missing flap of flesh grew across his mouth. His fangs reford. From hewn edges, his ceramite plating pooled back together.
Swallowing a drink of the foul water, he felt his collapsed lung begin to expand even as he choked.
The water beneath the rings wasn’t just water, but midnight rainwater. But the fact that the bones of so many fighters lay scattered at the base of the pool like ominous sedint spurred Avo back to motion.
The rains restored, but they couldn’t spare one of death.
He grinned. That was good. He didn’t much care about killing anyway. He just wanted to hurt the Regular.
Ghouls were not natural swimrs. They were capable of it, much like people could, but their designs led to poisoning the water with their blood. With his new Echoheads, however, Avo was a harpoon cutting past the softness of the waves, the tails undulating behind him, propelling him forward at a pace on par with his land-based movent.
Firing his reflexes anew, the water slowed as tumbling tides of displacent billowed out from his sides. His tails sang out and the shifting waters responded, his tactile sense fed more generously by currents of water than air.
Draus was sixty feet away from him. Sixty feet and half-healed. Sixty feet with thirty more before she reached the surface.
The way she struck and struggled against the shaking pool made him break out into a feral grin. She fought the flow with each stroke, each kick, and the pulses of force from her scythes was misfiring.
The waters nded all that was organic, but dead tal remained bricked.
Strange it was for a Regular to beco a wounded seal to a ghoul’s shark, but life brought new flavors for those who dared dream.
Avo circled up to her her, savoring the mont.
Coming for you, Avo sent, activating a brief session.
What he got back was a groan of annoyance. No shit. This fuckin’ rig’s not built for the water–godsdammit I miss my old combat skin.
His smile widened. Oh, but her complaining was so sweet, her frustration so pure. Just a sha he couldn't pull her down and drown her. It would take a long ti for one, considering her natural enhancent, but also because that would actually kill her.
And he didn’t want that.
Well, most of him didn’t want that. The beast would have to settle for tasting her eyes.
He darted behind her. She turned. Just in ti for him to lash her across the skull with an extending Echohead. One of her palps burst into greenish ichor as her visor cracked. Blood leaked free as she spun and tumbled like he did in the air.
Behind her, her monowire trailed, pulled out of pace by the grip of the pool.
Her wings flared again, but only the barest plu of force responded. Pushing through the bubbles, Avo took his ti, lashing at her and delighting in the play using his new appendages. She batted at the water, trying to keep pace but he severed her left sub-arm at the elbow first, his surging Echohead like a gunshot underwater.
Armor and chitin burst free. Bone spewed patterns of red into the murk-tinged waters. She kicked back in that instant, forsaking her escape to take from him his advantage of distance. She dove and guarded her vitals against his spearing tails. Draus ca loose in strips and pieces, rig breaking–half-nding–wounds oozing.
He bled her as fast as the waters could heal, and he focused on her limbs. Two tails struck her in the chest. She lurched back, bubbles escaping from her cracked helt. He seized her limbs using his other Echoheads, their jaws clamping around her limbs, black teeth punching deep even into the armor lacing her bones.
He swam forth using his two remaining tails, slamming her back first against a pillar. Karma was a delight and so was driving his claws through the outer shell of her helt. But where most enforcers and squires would have broken from panic, the Regular fought on, her enhanced constitution wrestling against his remodified body, and more impressive, her unbreaking discipline.
Sothing he was tired of suffering.
Driving his head into her head, ceramite eting titanium-reinforced chitin as her helt cracked further. Pieces cracked free from her visor. The biomass on the outside was mangled beyond even what disfigurent could describe. Through the opening, he saw her vicious glare, her augnted eyes still flashing, its internal components afire as she scanned him.
His claws lashed out, digits seeking sockets. Shaking her head, her helt shattered as she opened her mouth.
And bit down on the first two fingers of his right hand.
“Despite your… many virtues, master, I cannot fathom why she would assu taste to be one.” The Woundshaper said, confused. “Lest this be so kind of… disturbing insult of reverse symbology.”
Though he felt a few of her teeth slip free from their roots, they still speared down between his plates, into his fibers. Avo froze, face contorting in raw confusion as his mind struggled to process the absurdity of her action.
He turned on a session, ignoring the potential discomfort. You bit… !
She didn’t stop trying to chew her way through his fingers. It was beginning to hurt. What? You ghouls got the monopoly bitin’ half-strands now?
Avo shrugged. I just–
Her armor detonated outward. A blooming of absolute darkness sprayed free. Sothing rang in the waters, it sound high in pitch, like the constant peal of a bell. Sothing swiped across his arms, his guts, flicking high and skipping across his cheek after piecing through the plates around his skull.
Snarling, he yanked hard, tearing her limbs free from her torso. Still, another stab sank deep through his chest. It jerked montarily against his plate before biting through his mycelia.
Avo gasped. Water flooded his lungs–and spilled out from the one that was pierced. His Echoheads scread. A new picture of his surroundings greeted him. Parts of a discarded rig were in his hands while Draus, ejected free from her protected shell, was currently slicing through him with a frequency blade.
Armored though his body might be, a frequency blade was made for the parting of matter. She twisted, the blade chipped up through stretches of his ribs, spitting deeper toward his spine. Roaring, he tried shoving his thumbs into her eyes.
He realized a beat after his arms were actually floating away from him–the first thing she managed to sever.
All the sa, he speared the jutting bones stumps into her eyes. She didn’t bother dodging, accepting the trade as the mangled remains of his forearms caved through her eye sockets. As the last trickles of his echolocation map faded, he felt a smirk on her lips.
Her arm twisted. Her blade licked up at an angle.
His Celerostylus split open.
Ti snapped back in pace like a rubber band as every nerve in his body ca afla. Limbs twitch, and he watched as Draus pulled her blade free to deliver a stab toward his skull. A stab that never ca as a wildly thrown Echohead lashed across her stomach. Edged carapace parted flesh and nicked reinforced bones.
A gurgle bubbled out from Draus as she bounced hard against the pillar spinning and kicking blindly toward the surface, trailing blood from her missing eyes and disembowelnt. She tracked her path using her sensation of the air pockets leaving her mouth.
He groped weakly for her as the filthy waters began to reknit his arms. Electric tornt firing across every arc of his being, he struggled to control his spasming body as he forced his Echohead to swim, propelling his unresponsive form after his prey.
Her Accelero–an implant he guessed to be found in the back of her head–was still working. She had the reflex advantage, but that still didn’t matter if she couldn’t swim fast enough.
Mind blank, devoid of anything but primal brutality, he slamd into her for a third ti that day and completed the cycle.
From the water, their entangled bodies tore free bound for the lowest ring–one that was near-subrged itself.
He landed on her, the water around them splashing. Pawing his way atop her, he drove an elbow down. She slipped past the blow before shifting her hips and hooking her legs around his shoulder.
The Woundshaper winced. “Best bite down, master.”
Avo hissed in confusion. The answer to what Draus was doing ca as she extended her hips and torqued his half-repaired forearm using her hand. The fibers of his shoulder were far more flexible than his obsoleted tendons, but the bone itself had limits. She jerked. His shoulder snapped, rattling loud as it ca loose from its socket.
The sudden hurt made him bite down on his tongue, drawing blood.
“Not quite my intent.”
“Shuth up!” Avo growled. He speared at her using his Echoheads, but with her Accelero active, she was too fast. She spun, rolling with his arm still in her grasp, the montum flinging him across the arena despite his drastic weight advantage.
Avo tumbled and slid. She managed to strike him twice mid-flight before he passed her reach. Impacting the ring hard, he felt the ball of his shoulder snap back into place as he landed poorly. With a flex, he felt his fibers tighten, but the bone ached with soreness.
Groaning, he made to stand but crumpled to his knees as blood flowed free from his ribs.
Across from him, Draus looked little better, face mangled, intestines swaying. But her fingers were still tight around the frequency blade humming in her hands. She wasn’t close to breaking. Neither was he.
For a frozen instant, their eyes t, and they beheld the damage their wrought on each other. Her large intestines were still spooled at her feet, the wound half-healed, leaving parts of her organs on the outside. Parts of her optical nerves had regrown, but the tech was gone.
They breathed, waiting for the rains to heal them enough to stand. A cheer ca from the stands.
“I love free entertainnt!” Bright-Wealth shouted.
Draus grinned then, an expression of brutal delight that seed to mirror his own.
He shook his head. “Biting. Suppose to be my thing.”
“Kiss my ass, rotlick, you steal my tricks, I get to steal one of yours.”
He groaned. “It’s not a trick… just hungry.”
She snorted a laugh and spat a globule of blood. “A think one of my ribs might be floating inside . A couple of pieces maybe.”
Avo inhaled and felt the sa way. “Cut my reflex booster.”
She sighed. “Fuck. Is that why you’re still standin’? I was trying to get your spine. Godsdamned booster is thick as shit. Was already hell cutting through those plates.” She spat again and swallowed so rainwater. “That grafter’s probably a keeper, you know. Might want to add her m-data to your ta. Maybe share a session.”
He nodded slowly. “Your rig. Broke it.”
“Yeah, River’ll be annoyed but… I would’ve bricked it sooner or later.” Draus wiped her face, saring blood as she began blinking. She had been fighting him blind this entire ti. And he was the one with Echolocation.
“Eyes coming back?” he asked.
“I can see sorta the light again. You owe so mods there. Had so custom chro done there you decided to ruin with your stumps.” She shook her head. “Stabbed with your stumps. Who does that.”
“Wanted to use my thumbs.”
“Yeah, I cut your arms off for a reason. Now, I’m wonderin’ what that reason was.”
Avo hissed a low laugh. “Forced my hand… by removing my hands.”
The joke seed to hurt her more than any of her wounds did. “Jaus, Avo. Maybe leave the jokes to .”
“Yeah,” Avo said. “You were pretty funny flailing in the water. Like a baby seal.”
“Baby seal that took your arms and nearly put one through your head. You need more practice.”
“Nearly got you.”
“Yeah. Sure you did. How’d you like the monowire?”
“A little tight.” He made his tails chitter. “Echoheads?”
“Yeah, I think they go well on you. Sothin’ that can make up for your dog-shit hand-to-hand. I an, godsdamned, Avo, I was blind and I felt that elbow comin’. Where were you throwing that from? The sky?”
Hissing, he waved her off. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Twisted. Grabbed arm. Broke it. Weird.”
“It’s just basic grappling. What? They don’t teach that in ghoul academy.”
“No,” Avo said. “Teach ghouls how to die there.”
A beat passed. Draus humd. “I suppose they do.”
“You get the anger out?” Avo asked.
“No. Still got half a mind to pop you with my projectile launcher. You?”
“Still hungry. Tempted to pull the air out from your lungs.”
“Well, ain’t that a happy ending: all that hurtin’ for us to co out perfectly unsatisfied.”
“Welco to New Vultun.”
She laughed.
As the rain fell, Avo watched his hand nd back together entirely, the whiteness of his plating fusing over the claws. He made to stand but frowned as he twitched his fingers. He held his hand up, gazing up into the mist, and just… existed for a mont.
“Draus?” Avo asked.
“Hm?”
“Do you feel like… you’re real?"
Reviews
All reviews (0)