Chapter 146: 146
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There was nothing to reach for, nothing to call on that could hear him. Even if the young mage could see and hear, even if he could feel, he was no less a prisoner of his own body. Twelve strangers' faces leered down at him, insulted every facet of his existence. Twelve mouths mocked all that Orison thought of as good and wholesome, that he strove to reflect more greatly in himself. Those faces didn't focus on him for long.
Once the ritual was under way, the strange noises coming from the crates reached new heights, trumpeting a clarion call of agony that was completely alien yet suffocating in it familiarity. From the peeling wails of men that followed, Orison realized that the ritual was divided into circles. The outer circle of participants had just been overwhelmed.
A man from the middle said, "Santos, what's going on? Why is that happening?"
Zeke answered. "You were instructed not to talk during the ritual and he can't answer. If it helps put your mind at ease, those are chrysalis shells. All of you will have them. Once the spillover reaches the center, the sin eating will remove the corruption, leaving only that which is useful."
Several doubtful murmurs ceased. Instead, they now braced for a pain they now knew was coming, assured that all would be resolved as they were told. The irony was so thick, Orison thought he would choke and die on it before the corruption did. A whole group who was intimately aware of how the whole sin eating concept worked, blindly and willingly put their trust into what was likely some kind of pyramid scheme of predation.
He had a sudden realization. Each ring acted to purify and condense what he could only believe was chrism. He wasn't the only sin eater. They all were. He was only the last stop and repository. That didn't make it any less deadly.
The saddest part of all of this was, before Orison had been adjusted and everything brought into best alignment, he would have jumped to gobble down as much chrism as he could stand but now, it was all structure poison. Whether it was himself, his space or his fragile conduit, all of it would only be harmed by taking in chrism.
If he was in control of himself, he could try to compress and isolate it til it could be used or passed on. As it was, he could only passively observe as he absorbed it until he too was surrounded by a chrysalis. The only positive note, he wouldn't live long enough to turn into a twisted abomination or possibly a mad god.
One of the twelve people around him said, "Uh, Zeke. How about you take the honor?"
The ex-soldier was halfway there before Mitchell said, "We talked about this. If someone chickened out, I get their spot. You only get it if a second does."
Unable to move, the man cried out in bubbly voiced accusation and horror at the realization of what was happening before his face sealed over. "You sacrificed us all! Ahhhgurblurble!"
Mitchell said, "It's finally past the part where we have to pretend. All those nasty f***ing miscreants are going to die at last... How many of our good men will this harvest support, Zeke?"
The ex-soldier sighed. "Enough to stand on equal footing with any other society... Damned or not, I take no joy in seeing them fall. They were the worst of the worst but they treated me like family and put their trust in me."
With heavy condescension in his voice, Mitchell said, "If a pig treats you like family, will you feel sad when you slaughter it for food?"
Zeke simply said, "Yes. More so if it was my pig."
Mitchell turned to look at Zeke in actual disgust. "How can someone so powerful be so weak. If I had the stren-"
Whatever else Mitchell was going to say was torn away by the spray of bullets that chewed through him. Half a second later, another spray let out but the teaser suit that Zeke wore stopped it from accomplishing anything as he stood in front of Santos.
In an almost hypnotic tone, Zeke droned, "Nothing can be done. In seconds, Orison will begin filling with the..."
From behind him, Santos said, "It makes gods, yes? Then ambrosia is a good name, no?"
The ex-soldier continued. "Whatever you want to call it, he's going to start filling with it. If you want to stop it, you can put yourself between-"
The answer was another spray of bullets that kept going until empty clicking sound followed.
Zeke cleared his throat and tried a third time. "In less than five seconds, he'll start taking it in...two...one."
Suddenly, a sobbing Jacob threw himself on top of Orison. It wasn't the most pleasant of sights but it was touching. The young mage also thought it was pretty pointless of a sacrifice outside of the intent it showed. Somewhat overwhelmed with sadness, Orison hoped that maybe willing sacrifice would take a chunk out of the smoky film on Jacob's aura before he turned into a chrysalis as well.
"You stopped me from becoming a monster. I may not be able to return that favor but if I can't then, at least I tried. Maybe that's enough? I hope it-" was all that Jacob managed before he started silently screaming.
He wasn't a tough guy. How the man had managed to hang around the crowd he did probably had a lot to do with how intimidating James was and how the trio were never seen apart.
Zeke said, "If you wait too long to act, me and Santos will be able to stop you from taking it."
A young man holding a familiar book came into view. Before he could say whatever words were about to issue from a mouth hooked into a smirk, Zeke was in front of him like a blurry magic trick. By the time the young man registered that he was capable of seeing his own rear end, Zeke finished twisting his head off, letting the shower of blood coat the book before tossing it on top of Jacob. Just like that, the random, dark souled man who had briefly came to Orison's attention in the museum, was no more. Not knowing where the feeling came from, the young mage felt like a person who was supposed to matter much more than he did, had just ceased to be.
"Santos, if you stop the ritual, you'll die." Zeke said with the same slightly depressed tone a person might use to inform someone that it started raining.
The brujo said in a strained voice, "Tell me something I don't know.
Zeke said, "Alright. Here in a second, the book on Jacob is going to possess him and use him to do something that's going to make the ritual much harder... You didn't know that and it's why I warned you."
When Jacob stood up, white eyed and shouting about some daughter of darkness and mother of a thousand young, Santos heavily panted, "Pinche cabron!"
As the fabric of reality above Orison sagged, vaguely resembling a mother offering to feed a fussy baby, his half real remnant of conduit floated out of his chest and positioned itself above his head. The book in Jacob's hand practically flew out of it, intent on eating the semi transparent sapphire with a key inside it. A whispered word from Zeke caused Orison to be wrapped in a world of pain as dozens of small hymnals with inverted pentagrams burst through his chest.
The ruby ring in his space was still connected to Zeke and the man had just called for the release of all the objects in its main gem. Every single one of the books was similar to a conduit. Each one contained the impression of having sealed souls in them and even if their 'owners' were no more, the greater issuer would want them back. So summoned in such mass, his space was unable to hold them from ripping their way back into the world from the weakest point of his space.
Things became hard to follow after that. What Orison knew was that the soul holding books distracted the 'silently wailing' book long enough for the key to do what it was wanting to do. For a brief moment, Orison felt like the key could do what he wanted or he could leave it to do what seemed best. A flood of possibilities crossed his mind, that may or may not work but his fragile conduit wouldn't survive most of them.
It irked him that his one choice in all of this seemed to have fallen into Zeke's scheme. At that point, he wasn't sure if he could trust the man or not. Still, his conduit had one prime directive and it was to be the 'one' key he needed and this situation was beyond the point were any single action of his was capable of fixing so he bet big and let it ride, trusting his key as Zeke instructed. Inside, he was seething. For good or ill, Zeke had things to answer for.
Finished chasing what fleeing hymnals it could, the book set its goal back on Orison's conduit as the key shined, freed to follow its own directive. A sickly sweet smell, like milk on the verge of going bad, filled the room as everything became distorted. Orison knew no more.
***
Santos approached the 'thing' in the center of the room. The thing wasn't very aware of itself but it was curious about the man-thing coming near it.
Santos said, "Zeke told me that for a short time, you'd be able to recall things you saw or heard around this part of your sealing... You'll probably be confused and angry later so I hope this helps. I'm going to give you the short version.
"Your buddy tried a couple of different ways to get you a ticket out of this doomed world but obviously failed... He found out why... You got a mean old thing after your a**. It doesn't just want a piece, either. It wants the whole damn thing.
"He had to make you disappear and find a way to smuggle you out. Now there were plenty of ways to do that which would be bad for you but to do it in a way that would be good for you was one hell of a challenge. He's also got a heart too big for his own good and wanted to help other people too. Lots of f***ing people, amigo.
"So there's this scary chica, Noxflora. Her and a bunch of bruha got this scheme bubbling in their pots to fake 'damn' people and then yank them up. Don't know how Zeke caught wind of it but we tried playing in. We drummed up a herd of dirty cabrones and then pushed that dirt on some good people. She catches them and then we send those goats to the slaughter, taking their dirty sh*t back on their way out the door. We only got one good run but it was one hell of a fiesta. The rest of that was Zeke doing Zeke. I have no f***ing clue what all happened. Most of the time I had my eyes closed.
"Ah, you're looking sleepy. At least I think you are. It's hard to tell with all those eyes... Then let uncle Santos tell you a quick bedtime story, mijo... Once upon a time, there was too much crap in a little man's way to get the hell off a rock. One of the little man's friends did a whole bunch of crazy sh*t and found a way. I don't know how the rest of the story goes. Maybe you can tell me later.
***
The creature's life started out simple. It would stalk things with heavy souls and eat them. After a little more time went by, it added a new routine. When it started feeling heavy itself, it would find a thing with a 'light' soul and squirt the heavy at it. This made it feel strange sensations it would later understand as guilt, embarrassment and pleasure.
A little more time went by and it's life rapidly became more complex. First, it became aware of a thing inside of it that wasn't part of it that told it what to do and then it became aware of something that wasn't part of it that ate some of what it ate and some of the stuff its body made. That was fine. An instinct it had, let it know that what it ate was food but what ate it from the inside was spawn. It didn't feel like it could make spawn, so it was happy to find out that it had one.
Soon enough, it was stronger. It started hunting heavy souls that it hid from before. Sometimes it won and got to eat and sometimes it lost and had to run through one of the anywhere holes that its food couldn't see or use for some reason. When the stronger heavy souls started hunting it back, the situation became frustrating. There were even a couple of times it would swallow some of the heavy air and put part of itself in it so the spawn would have something to eat.
With little choice, it went back to the lesser food and started to migrate. That was when the thing inside that told it what to do, nudged it south. The controlling thing also nudged it to start imitating its prey, learning how to be human. Within days, it could pass for one at a distance and after a month or so, it had learned how to take a few different forms. When it wanted to be left alone, it would imitate a scary man. When it wanted to hunt, it would take the form of a fragile woman or a child. Both seemed to work well for heavy and light souls alike. They worked even better after it learned how to be 'pretty'.
Once it had learned how to pass as a human well, the controlling thing started telling it where to find hidden caches that had money and other things useful to humans inside. With the help of such resources, moving great distances and more elaborate hunting became possible. That became important as the people hunting it were learning its old tricks and it had to become more cunning to stay ahead of them.
As it developed greater intellect, its forms not only were becoming more flawlessly human imitative. It was also becoming capable of simulating human experience. Sympathy and repulsion evolved into compassion and disgust. Love and hate were harder and so were the proper lines for pleasure and pain. Over a year went by before such complicated and dynamic concepts became somewhat understood.
By then, an instinct was warning the creature that its pursuers were slowly closing a net around it. To escape, it fasted for a little while, picking up one of the last caches and swam across the gulf. The trip ended up being an unexpected delight as it had discovered some of its distant kin and ate them.
Like many of the humans it imitated frequently, it hadn't given much thought to mortality until it faced the realization of death's existence within itself. For a small time, it railed against such a thing. Then it denied that death could be. It just needed to eat more, eat more powerful things. Its leisurely wanderings became focused expeditions until it stumbled onto a place where something much more powerful than itself resided.
It took all the cunning it possessed with some guidance from the controlling thing to gather a group of heavy soul humans to help it in its goal to eat the more powerful thing. Money, affection, promises of power, it used everything in its mental and emotional arsenal to convince a large group of 'bad' men to follow it to a secret temple where a mad god resided.
The mad god was powerful but not overly bright. It was ruled by the chaos that had made it. The creature that stalked the mad god had picked up some of the better parts of human cunning, will and desire but unlike the fragile beings that fell like wheat to the mad god, the ones that murdered their way past the powerful entity's cultists, the creature was nearly immune to corrupting influence.
With the heavy soul people as distractions, it devised traps and employed weapons that would harm the thing without destroying the temple which the controlling thing did not want to happen. It was a battle that lasted for days. A cut off piece here, a blasted off piece there and the puddles of power laced ichor kept the creature regenerating as it slowly tried to wear the mad god down. Occasionally it would even eat one of the people once they had been corrupted enough.
Somewhere along the way, the creature had taken enough of the mad god in that it saw the creature as its spawn. It stopped fighting and allowed the creature to finish consuming it. That was fortunate. Even with all that the creature had employed, it wouldn't have been able to win.
With matronly instinct, it knew that its own spawn didn't have the ability to withstand such a strong corrosion and sectioned off a part of itself to safely seep what the spawn wanted from the creature. As it relished its victory, the creature noticed that its lifespan had increased but only by a small amount. It was then that it was forced to accept that there was no substitute for the milk of its 'mother' that had truly sustained its existence all along. The controlling thing explained that it would lose more time trying to find other mad gods or a way to get more 'mother's milk' than it would gain. The creature believed that and cried for the first time in its existence.
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There was nothing to reach for, nothing to call on that could hear him. Even if the young mage could see and hear, even if he could feel, he was no less a prisoner of his own body. Twelve strangers' faces leered down at him, insulted every facet of his existence. Twelve mouths mocked all that Orison thought of as good and wholesome, that he strove to reflect more greatly in himself. Those faces didn't focus on him for long.
Once the ritual was under way, the strange noises coming from the crates reached new heights, trumpeting a clarion call of agony that was completely alien yet suffocating in it familiarity. From the peeling wails of men that followed, Orison realized that the ritual was divided into circles. The outer circle of participants had just been overwhelmed.
A man from the middle said, "Santos, what's going on? Why is that happening?"
Zeke answered. "You were instructed not to talk during the ritual and he can't answer. If it helps put your mind at ease, those are chrysalis shells. All of you will have them. Once the spillover reaches the center, the sin eating will remove the corruption, leaving only that which is useful."
Several doubtful murmurs ceased. Instead, they now braced for a pain they now knew was coming, assured that all would be resolved as they were told. The irony was so thick, Orison thought he would choke and die on it before the corruption did. A whole group who was intimately aware of how the whole sin eating concept worked, blindly and willingly put their trust into what was likely some kind of pyramid scheme of predation.
He had a sudden realization. Each ring acted to purify and condense what he could only believe was chrism. He wasn't the only sin eater. They all were. He was only the last stop and repository. That didn't make it any less deadly.
The saddest part of all of this was, before Orison had been adjusted and everything brought into best alignment, he would have jumped to gobble down as much chrism as he could stand but now, it was all structure poison. Whether it was himself, his space or his fragile conduit, all of it would only be harmed by taking in chrism.
If he was in control of himself, he could try to compress and isolate it til it could be used or passed on. As it was, he could only passively observe as he absorbed it until he too was surrounded by a chrysalis. The only positive note, he wouldn't live long enough to turn into a twisted abomination or possibly a mad god.
One of the twelve people around him said, "Uh, Zeke. How about you take the honor?"
The ex-soldier was halfway there before Mitchell said, "We talked about this. If someone chickened out, I get their spot. You only get it if a second does."
Unable to move, the man cried out in bubbly voiced accusation and horror at the realization of what was happening before his face sealed over. "You sacrificed us all! Ahhhgurblurble!"
Mitchell said, "It's finally past the part where we have to pretend. All those nasty f***ing miscreants are going to die at last... How many of our good men will this harvest support, Zeke?"
The ex-soldier sighed. "Enough to stand on equal footing with any other society... Damned or not, I take no joy in seeing them fall. They were the worst of the worst but they treated me like family and put their trust in me."
With heavy condescension in his voice, Mitchell said, "If a pig treats you like family, will you feel sad when you slaughter it for food?"
Zeke simply said, "Yes. More so if it was my pig."
Mitchell turned to look at Zeke in actual disgust. "How can someone so powerful be so weak. If I had the stren-"
Whatever else Mitchell was going to say was torn away by the spray of bullets that chewed through him. Half a second later, another spray let out but the teaser suit that Zeke wore stopped it from accomplishing anything as he stood in front of Santos.
In an almost hypnotic tone, Zeke droned, "Nothing can be done. In seconds, Orison will begin filling with the..."
From behind him, Santos said, "It makes gods, yes? Then ambrosia is a good name, no?"
The ex-soldier continued. "Whatever you want to call it, he's going to start filling with it. If you want to stop it, you can put yourself between-"
The answer was another spray of bullets that kept going until empty clicking sound followed.
Zeke cleared his throat and tried a third time. "In less than five seconds, he'll start taking it in...two...one."
Suddenly, a sobbing Jacob threw himself on top of Orison. It wasn't the most pleasant of sights but it was touching. The young mage also thought it was pretty pointless of a sacrifice outside of the intent it showed. Somewhat overwhelmed with sadness, Orison hoped that maybe willing sacrifice would take a chunk out of the smoky film on Jacob's aura before he turned into a chrysalis as well.
"You stopped me from becoming a monster. I may not be able to return that favor but if I can't then, at least I tried. Maybe that's enough? I hope it-" was all that Jacob managed before he started silently screaming.
He wasn't a tough guy. How the man had managed to hang around the crowd he did probably had a lot to do with how intimidating James was and how the trio were never seen apart.
Zeke said, "If you wait too long to act, me and Santos will be able to stop you from taking it."
A young man holding a familiar book came into view. Before he could say whatever words were about to issue from a mouth hooked into a smirk, Zeke was in front of him like a blurry magic trick. By the time the young man registered that he was capable of seeing his own rear end, Zeke finished twisting his head off, letting the shower of blood coat the book before tossing it on top of Jacob. Just like that, the random, dark souled man who had briefly came to Orison's attention in the museum, was no more. Not knowing where the feeling came from, the young mage felt like a person who was supposed to matter much more than he did, had just ceased to be.
"Santos, if you stop the ritual, you'll die." Zeke said with the same slightly depressed tone a person might use to inform someone that it started raining.
The brujo said in a strained voice, "Tell me something I don't know.
Zeke said, "Alright. Here in a second, the book on Jacob is going to possess him and use him to do something that's going to make the ritual much harder... You didn't know that and it's why I warned you."
When Jacob stood up, white eyed and shouting about some daughter of darkness and mother of a thousand young, Santos heavily panted, "Pinche cabron!"
As the fabric of reality above Orison sagged, vaguely resembling a mother offering to feed a fussy baby, his half real remnant of conduit floated out of his chest and positioned itself above his head. The book in Jacob's hand practically flew out of it, intent on eating the semi transparent sapphire with a key inside it. A whispered word from Zeke caused Orison to be wrapped in a world of pain as dozens of small hymnals with inverted pentagrams burst through his chest.
The ruby ring in his space was still connected to Zeke and the man had just called for the release of all the objects in its main gem. Every single one of the books was similar to a conduit. Each one contained the impression of having sealed souls in them and even if their 'owners' were no more, the greater issuer would want them back. So summoned in such mass, his space was unable to hold them from ripping their way back into the world from the weakest point of his space.
Things became hard to follow after that. What Orison knew was that the soul holding books distracted the 'silently wailing' book long enough for the key to do what it was wanting to do. For a brief moment, Orison felt like the key could do what he wanted or he could leave it to do what seemed best. A flood of possibilities crossed his mind, that may or may not work but his fragile conduit wouldn't survive most of them.
It irked him that his one choice in all of this seemed to have fallen into Zeke's scheme. At that point, he wasn't sure if he could trust the man or not. Still, his conduit had one prime directive and it was to be the 'one' key he needed and this situation was beyond the point were any single action of his was capable of fixing so he bet big and let it ride, trusting his key as Zeke instructed. Inside, he was seething. For good or ill, Zeke had things to answer for.
Finished chasing what fleeing hymnals it could, the book set its goal back on Orison's conduit as the key shined, freed to follow its own directive. A sickly sweet smell, like milk on the verge of going bad, filled the room as everything became distorted. Orison knew no more.
***
Santos approached the 'thing' in the center of the room. The thing wasn't very aware of itself but it was curious about the man-thing coming near it.
Santos said, "Zeke told me that for a short time, you'd be able to recall things you saw or heard around this part of your sealing... You'll probably be confused and angry later so I hope this helps. I'm going to give you the short version.
"Your buddy tried a couple of different ways to get you a ticket out of this doomed world but obviously failed... He found out why... You got a mean old thing after your a**. It doesn't just want a piece, either. It wants the whole damn thing.
"He had to make you disappear and find a way to smuggle you out. Now there were plenty of ways to do that which would be bad for you but to do it in a way that would be good for you was one hell of a challenge. He's also got a heart too big for his own good and wanted to help other people too. Lots of f***ing people, amigo.
"So there's this scary chica, Noxflora. Her and a bunch of bruha got this scheme bubbling in their pots to fake 'damn' people and then yank them up. Don't know how Zeke caught wind of it but we tried playing in. We drummed up a herd of dirty cabrones and then pushed that dirt on some good people. She catches them and then we send those goats to the slaughter, taking their dirty sh*t back on their way out the door. We only got one good run but it was one hell of a fiesta. The rest of that was Zeke doing Zeke. I have no f***ing clue what all happened. Most of the time I had my eyes closed.
"Ah, you're looking sleepy. At least I think you are. It's hard to tell with all those eyes... Then let uncle Santos tell you a quick bedtime story, mijo... Once upon a time, there was too much crap in a little man's way to get the hell off a rock. One of the little man's friends did a whole bunch of crazy sh*t and found a way. I don't know how the rest of the story goes. Maybe you can tell me later.
***
The creature's life started out simple. It would stalk things with heavy souls and eat them. After a little more time went by, it added a new routine. When it started feeling heavy itself, it would find a thing with a 'light' soul and squirt the heavy at it. This made it feel strange sensations it would later understand as guilt, embarrassment and pleasure.
A little more time went by and it's life rapidly became more complex. First, it became aware of a thing inside of it that wasn't part of it that told it what to do and then it became aware of something that wasn't part of it that ate some of what it ate and some of the stuff its body made. That was fine. An instinct it had, let it know that what it ate was food but what ate it from the inside was spawn. It didn't feel like it could make spawn, so it was happy to find out that it had one.
Soon enough, it was stronger. It started hunting heavy souls that it hid from before. Sometimes it won and got to eat and sometimes it lost and had to run through one of the anywhere holes that its food couldn't see or use for some reason. When the stronger heavy souls started hunting it back, the situation became frustrating. There were even a couple of times it would swallow some of the heavy air and put part of itself in it so the spawn would have something to eat.
With little choice, it went back to the lesser food and started to migrate. That was when the thing inside that told it what to do, nudged it south. The controlling thing also nudged it to start imitating its prey, learning how to be human. Within days, it could pass for one at a distance and after a month or so, it had learned how to take a few different forms. When it wanted to be left alone, it would imitate a scary man. When it wanted to hunt, it would take the form of a fragile woman or a child. Both seemed to work well for heavy and light souls alike. They worked even better after it learned how to be 'pretty'.
Once it had learned how to pass as a human well, the controlling thing started telling it where to find hidden caches that had money and other things useful to humans inside. With the help of such resources, moving great distances and more elaborate hunting became possible. That became important as the people hunting it were learning its old tricks and it had to become more cunning to stay ahead of them.
As it developed greater intellect, its forms not only were becoming more flawlessly human imitative. It was also becoming capable of simulating human experience. Sympathy and repulsion evolved into compassion and disgust. Love and hate were harder and so were the proper lines for pleasure and pain. Over a year went by before such complicated and dynamic concepts became somewhat understood.
By then, an instinct was warning the creature that its pursuers were slowly closing a net around it. To escape, it fasted for a little while, picking up one of the last caches and swam across the gulf. The trip ended up being an unexpected delight as it had discovered some of its distant kin and ate them.
Like many of the humans it imitated frequently, it hadn't given much thought to mortality until it faced the realization of death's existence within itself. For a small time, it railed against such a thing. Then it denied that death could be. It just needed to eat more, eat more powerful things. Its leisurely wanderings became focused expeditions until it stumbled onto a place where something much more powerful than itself resided.
It took all the cunning it possessed with some guidance from the controlling thing to gather a group of heavy soul humans to help it in its goal to eat the more powerful thing. Money, affection, promises of power, it used everything in its mental and emotional arsenal to convince a large group of 'bad' men to follow it to a secret temple where a mad god resided.
The mad god was powerful but not overly bright. It was ruled by the chaos that had made it. The creature that stalked the mad god had picked up some of the better parts of human cunning, will and desire but unlike the fragile beings that fell like wheat to the mad god, the ones that murdered their way past the powerful entity's cultists, the creature was nearly immune to corrupting influence.
With the heavy soul people as distractions, it devised traps and employed weapons that would harm the thing without destroying the temple which the controlling thing did not want to happen. It was a battle that lasted for days. A cut off piece here, a blasted off piece there and the puddles of power laced ichor kept the creature regenerating as it slowly tried to wear the mad god down. Occasionally it would even eat one of the people once they had been corrupted enough.
Somewhere along the way, the creature had taken enough of the mad god in that it saw the creature as its spawn. It stopped fighting and allowed the creature to finish consuming it. That was fortunate. Even with all that the creature had employed, it wouldn't have been able to win.
With matronly instinct, it knew that its own spawn didn't have the ability to withstand such a strong corrosion and sectioned off a part of itself to safely seep what the spawn wanted from the creature. As it relished its victory, the creature noticed that its lifespan had increased but only by a small amount. It was then that it was forced to accept that there was no substitute for the milk of its 'mother' that had truly sustained its existence all along. The controlling thing explained that it would lose more time trying to find other mad gods or a way to get more 'mother's milk' than it would gain. The creature believed that and cried for the first time in its existence.
There was nothing to reach for, nothing to call on that could hear him. Even if the young mage could see and hear, even if he could feel, he was no less a prisoner of his own body. Twelve strangers' faces leered down at him, insulted every facet of his existence. Twelve mouths mocked all that Orison thought of as good and wholesome, that he strove to reflect more greatly in himself. Those faces didn't focus on him for long. Once the ritual was under way, the strange noises coming from the crates reached new heights, trumpeting a clarion call of agony that was completely alien yet suffocating in it familiarity. From the peeling wails of men that followed, Orison realized that the ritual was divided into circles. The outer circle of participants had just been overwhelmed. A man from the middle said, "Santos, what's going on? Why is that happening?" Zeke answered. "You were instructed not to talk during the ritual and he can't answer. If it helps put your mind at ease, those are chrysalis shells. All of you will have them. Once the spillover reaches the center, the sin eating will remove the corruption, leaving only that which is useful." Several doubtful murmurs ceased. Instead, they now braced for a pain they now knew was coming, assured that all would be resolved as they were told. The irony was so thick, Orison thought he would choke and die on it before the corruption did. A whole group who was intimately aware of how the whole sin eating concept worked, blindly and willingly put their trust into what was likely some kind of pyramid scheme of predation. He had a sudden realization. Each ring acted to purify and condense what he could only believe was chrism. He wasn't the only sin eater. They all were. He was only the last stop and repository. That didn't make it any less deadly. The saddest part of all of this was, before Orison had been adjusted and everything brought into best alignment, he would have jumped to gobble down as much chrism as he could stand but now, it was all structure poison. Whether it was himself, his space or his fragile conduit, all of it would only be harmed by taking in chrism. If he was in control of himself, he could try to compress and isolate it til it could be used or passed on. As it was, he could only passively observe as he absorbed it until he too was surrounded by a chrysalis. The only positive note, he wouldn't live long enough to turn into a twisted abomination or possibly a mad god. One of the twelve people around him said, "Uh, Zeke. How about you take the honor?" The ex-soldier was halfway there before Mitchell said, "We talked about this. If someone chickened out, I get their spot. You only get it if a second does." Unable to move, the man cried out in bubbly voiced accusation and horror at the realization of what was happening before his face sealed over. "You sacrificed us all! Ahhhgurblurble!" Mitchell said, "It's finally past the part where we have to pretend. All those nasty f***ing miscreants are going to die at last... How many of our good men will this harvest support, Zeke?" The ex-soldier sighed. "Enough to stand on equal footing with any other society... Damned or not, I take no joy in seeing them fall. They were the worst of the worst but they treated me like family and put their trust in me." With heavy condescension in his voice, Mitchell said, "If a pig treats you like family, will you feel sad when you slaughter it for food?" Zeke simply said, "Yes. More so if it was my pig." Mitchell turned to look at Zeke in actual disgust. "How can someone so powerful be so weak. If I had the stren-" Whatever else Mitchell was going to say was torn away by the spray of bullets that chewed through him. Half a second later, another spray let out but the teaser suit that Zeke wore stopped it from accomplishing anything as he stood in front of Santos. In an almost hypnotic tone, Zeke droned, "Nothing can be done. In seconds, Orison will begin filling with the..." From behind him, Santos said, "It makes gods, yes? Then ambrosia is a good name, no?" The ex-soldier continued. "Whatever you want to call it, he's going to start filling with it. If you want to stop it, you can put yourself between-" The answer was another spray of bullets that kept going until empty clicking sound followed. Zeke cleared his throat and tried a third time. "In less than five seconds, he'll start taking it in...two...one." Suddenly, a sobbing Jacob threw himself on top of Orison. It wasn't the most pleasant of sights but it was touching. The young mage also thought it was pretty pointless of a sacrifice outside of the intent it showed. Somewhat overwhelmed with sadness, Orison hoped that maybe willing sacrifice would take a chunk out of the smoky film on Jacob's aura before he turned into a chrysalis as well. "You stopped me from becoming a monster. I may not be able to return that favor but if I can't then, at least I tried. Maybe that's enough? I hope it-" was all that Jacob managed before he started silently screaming. He wasn't a tough guy. How the man had managed to hang around the crowd he did probably had a lot to do with how intimidating James was and how the trio were never seen apart. Zeke said, "If you wait too long to act, me and Santos will be able to stop you from taking it." A young man holding a familiar book came into view. Before he could say whatever words were about to issue from a mouth hooked into a smirk, Zeke was in front of him like a blurry magic trick. By the time the young man registered that he was capable of seeing his own rear end, Zeke finished twisting his head off, letting the shower of blood coat the book before tossing it on top of Jacob. Just like that, the random, dark souled man who had briefly came to Orison's attention in the museum, was no more. Not knowing where the feeling came from, the young mage felt like a person who was supposed to matter much more than he did, had just ceased to be. "Santos, if you stop the ritual, you'll die." Zeke said with the same slightly depressed tone a person might use to inform someone that it started raining. The brujo said in a strained voice, "Tell me something I don't know. Zeke said, "Alright. Here in a second, the book on Jacob is going to possess him and use him to do something that's going to make the ritual much harder... You didn't know that and it's why I warned you." When Jacob stood up, white eyed and shouting about some daughter of darkness and mother of a thousand young, Santos heavily panted, "Pinche cabron!" As the fabric of reality above Orison sagged, vaguely resembling a mother offering to feed a fussy baby, his half real remnant of conduit floated out of his chest and positioned itself above his head. The book in Jacob's hand practically flew out of it, intent on eating the semi transparent sapphire with a key inside it. A whispered word from Zeke caused Orison to be wrapped in a world of pain as dozens of small hymnals with inverted pentagrams burst through his chest. The ruby ring in his space was still connected to Zeke and the man had just called for the release of all the objects in its main gem. Every single one of the books was similar to a conduit. Each one contained the impression of having sealed souls in them and even if their 'owners' were no more, the greater issuer would want them back. So summoned in such mass, his space was unable to hold them from ripping their way back into the world from the weakest point of his space. Things became hard to follow after that. What Orison knew was that the soul holding books distracted the 'silently wailing' book long enough for the key to do what it was wanting to do. For a brief moment, Orison felt like the key could do what he wanted or he could leave it to do what seemed best. A flood of possibilities crossed his mind, that may or may not work but his fragile conduit wouldn't survive most of them. It irked him that his one choice in all of this seemed to have fallen into Zeke's scheme. At that point, he wasn't sure if he could trust the man or not. Still, his conduit had one prime directive and it was to be the 'one' key he needed and this situation was beyond the point were any single action of his was capable of fixing so he bet big and let it ride, trusting his key as Zeke instructed. Inside, he was seething. For good or ill, Zeke had things to answer for. Finished chasing what fleeing hymnals it could, the book set its goal back on Orison's conduit as the key shined, freed to follow its own directive. A sickly sweet smell, like milk on the verge of going bad, filled the room as everything became distorted. Orison knew no more.*** Santos approached the 'thing' in the center of the room. The thing wasn't very aware of itself but it was curious about the man-thing coming near it. Santos said, "Zeke told me that for a short time, you'd be able to recall things you saw or heard around this part of your sealing... You'll probably be confused and angry later so I hope this helps. I'm going to give you the short version. "Your buddy tried a couple of different ways to get you a ticket out of this doomed world but obviously failed... He found out why... You got a mean old thing after your a**. It doesn't just want a piece, either. It wants the whole damn thing. "He had to make you disappear and find a way to smuggle you out. Now there were plenty of ways to do that which would be bad for you but to do it in a way that would be good for you was one hell of a challenge. He's also got a heart too big for his own good and wanted to help other people too. Lots of f***ing people, amigo. "So there's this scary chica, Noxflora. Her and a bunch of bruha got this scheme bubbling in their pots to fake 'damn' people and then yank them up. Don't know how Zeke caught wind of it but we tried playing in. We drummed up a herd of dirty cabrones and then pushed that dirt on some good people. She catches them and then we send those goats to the slaughter, taking their dirty sh*t back on their way out the door. We only got one good run but it was one hell of a fiesta. The rest of that was Zeke doing Zeke. I have no f***ing clue what all happened. Most of the time I had my eyes closed. "Ah, you're looking sleepy. At least I think you are. It's hard to tell with all those eyes... Then let uncle Santos tell you a quick bedtime story, mijo... Once upon a time, there was too much crap in a little man's way to get the hell off a rock. One of the little man's friends did a whole bunch of crazy sh*t and found a way. I don't know how the rest of the story goes. Maybe you can tell me later.*** The creature's life started out simple. It would stalk things with heavy souls and eat them. After a little more time went by, it added a new routine. When it started feeling heavy itself, it would find a thing with a 'light' soul and squirt the heavy at it. This made it feel strange sensations it would later understand as guilt, embarrassment and pleasure. A little more time went by and it's life rapidly became more complex. First, it became aware of a thing inside of it that wasn't part of it that told it what to do and then it became aware of something that wasn't part of it that ate some of what it ate and some of the stuff its body made. That was fine. An instinct it had, let it know that what it ate was food but what ate it from the inside was spawn. It didn't feel like it could make spawn, so it was happy to find out that it had one. Soon enough, it was stronger. It started hunting heavy souls that it hid from before. Sometimes it won and got to eat and sometimes it lost and had to run through one of the anywhere holes that its food couldn't see or use for some reason. When the stronger heavy souls started hunting it back, the situation became frustrating. There were even a couple of times it would swallow some of the heavy air and put part of itself in it so the spawn would have something to eat. With little choice, it went back to the lesser food and started to migrate. That was when the thing inside that told it what to do, nudged it south. The controlling thing also nudged it to start imitating its prey, learning how to be human. Within days, it could pass for one at a distance and after a month or so, it had learned how to take a few different forms. When it wanted to be left alone, it would imitate a scary man. When it wanted to hunt, it would take the form of a fragile woman or a child. Both seemed to work well for heavy and light souls alike. They worked even better after it learned how to be 'pretty'. Once it had learned how to pass as a human well, the controlling thing started telling it where to find hidden caches that had money and other things useful to humans inside. With the help of such resources, moving great distances and more elaborate hunting became possible. That became important as the people hunting it were learning its old tricks and it had to become more cunning to stay ahead of them. As it developed greater intellect, its forms not only were becoming more flawlessly human imitative. It was also becoming capable of simulating human experience. Sympathy and repulsion evolved into compassion and disgust. Love and hate were harder and so were the proper lines for pleasure and pain. Over a year went by before such complicated and dynamic concepts became somewhat understood. By then, an instinct was warning the creature that its pursuers were slowly closing a net around it. To escape, it fasted for a little while, picking up one of the last caches and swam across the gulf. The trip ended up being an unexpected delight as it had discovered some of its distant kin and ate them. Like many of the humans it imitated frequently, it hadn't given much thought to mortality until it faced the realization of death's existence within itself. For a small time, it railed against such a thing. Then it denied that death could be. It just needed to eat more, eat more powerful things. Its leisurely wanderings became focused expeditions until it stumbled onto a place where something much more powerful than itself resided. It took all the cunning it possessed with some guidance from the controlling thing to gather a group of heavy soul humans to help it in its goal to eat the more powerful thing. Money, affection, promises of power, it used everything in its mental and emotional arsenal to convince a large group of 'bad' men to follow it to a secret temple where a mad god resided. The mad god was powerful but not overly bright. It was ruled by the chaos that had made it. The creature that stalked the mad god had picked up some of the better parts of human cunning, will and desire but unlike the fragile beings that fell like wheat to the mad god, the ones that murdered their way past the powerful entity's cultists, the creature was nearly immune to corrupting influence. With the heavy soul people as distractions, it devised traps and employed weapons that would harm the thing without destroying the temple which the controlling thing did not want to happen. It was a battle that lasted for days. A cut off piece here, a blasted off piece there and the puddles of power laced ichor kept the creature regenerating as it slowly tried to wear the mad god down. Occasionally it would even eat one of the people once they had been corrupted enough. Somewhere along the way, the creature had taken enough of the mad god in that it saw the creature as its spawn. It stopped fighting and allowed the creature to finish consuming it. That was fortunate. Even with all that the creature had employed, it wouldn't have been able to win. With matronly instinct, it knew that its own spawn didn't have the ability to withstand such a strong corrosion and sectioned off a part of itself to safely seep what the spawn wanted from the creature. As it relished its victory, the creature noticed that its lifespan had increased but only by a small amount. It was then that it was forced to accept that there was no substitute for the milk of its 'mother' that had truly sustained its existence all along. The controlling thing explained that it would lose more time trying to find other mad gods or a way to get more 'mother's milk' than it would gain. The creature believed that and cried for the first time in its existence.
