Foundry VI: The Bottom of the Hole
"Sun's up, Terence. Or you fancy Hogarth more?"
Duke's blighted face was the first thing Hog saw after he was kicked awake. There was something behind his pale eyes that reminded him of the days he'd spent in the Vault's calaboose, something that during his last weeks on the surface had become an inseparable companion.
Fear. He smelled it. Almost tasted it on his tongue, swirling around his canines.
Hog blinked at the foreign sensations, trying to orient himself. Prison cells had a certain quality that transcended time and space, surface or underground, but the musty hole, choking stench, the chains binding his wrists over his head, even being stripped down to his undies took a backseat when memories slipped past the initial grogginess and disorientation.
Amata was dead. Drowned in the river. He wanted to believe otherwise, that it was all a lengthy, detailed, and perverse hallucination born of exhaustion and a poor diet, and that at any moment he'd just wake up on his cot in the belly of Vault 101, but his body was possessed by the certainty that Wally wasn't lying. It stomped out any attempt at denial.
Hog blinked again and looked down at himself, searching for... something. He felt the screams bubbling up in his chest, only his throat wouldn't articulate them. He wanted to cry, but his eyes remained dry, lids pulled halfway down by encrusted blood. It was like all the sorrow, grief, and anger had been siphoned behind an unbreakable barrier. All he could do was watch them swirl in a maelstrom begging only to be let out and slam his palms against it.
Feeling it all just out of reach scared him more than the armed slaver before him.
"Look at me. Look at me!" There was a knife at his throat now. Duke's breath was foul with anger and impatience. "You two pulled a fast one on me, but playtime's over. Now you'll tell me where that one-eyed cripple has got his hidey-hole, and I'll make it quick for you. The Hole doesn't take well to grinders and scabs killing bosses. You kicked one too many down that stairwell."
"W-What have you done to me?" He could still hear his skull cracking under the rifle butts, but only the dried blood slathering half his face attested to that ever happening. A concussion? Was it drugs? Had they drugged him?
"Mex's boys must've cracked your skull pretty bad," Duke said after a moment, then smiled a self-reassuring, cruel smile, "and trust me, that's got nothing on what's to come. Faydra has a special event planned all for you. But I can make it end right now. One slash. Just tell me where Wernher is!"
Duke was, no, felt like a ten-year-old seeing that there was a party and gifts waiting for him in the Vault's cafeteria, not some mean surprise by Butch and the Snakes. Eagerness and expectation meshing with lingering fear. That memory, Hog's own, pulsated vivid for a moment, then came apart at the seams, sinking down into the recesses of his mind.
'Why this? Why now? What's happening to me?!"
"You're filtering his emotions through what is familiar to you. Memories. Thoughts. Helps you understand them. Now use that fear."
Hog hacked as Duke punched him in the belly and grabbed him by an ear, twisting it and lifting his chin up. The metal was cold against his neck, but his abdomen barely smarted. "Speak, or you'll wish you were trog chow by the time I'm through with you!"
An image flashed in Hog's mind then. An old man staring down from a high-backed throne. A ravaged face on top of old power armor marked like a tribal idol. Duke's fear spiked again. Hog chortled.
"You won't be too long after me when Ashur gets word of your fuckup, will you? Tut-tut, letting public enemy number one back in, right under your nose."
He was sure Duke would knife him in the neck there and then. That was alright. He could have probably kneed him in the crotch and kicked him away in the few moments it took his words to sink in, but he didn't. He just waited for the blade to sink.
The air cracked inches away from his face instead. Duke was jerked back. His hands flew up, dropping the knife, grasping at the whip coiled around his throat like a black snake a more pressing priority.
"Foolish pup. You aren't meant to die here."
"The rules, Duke? Be a good boy and spell 'em."
The tiniest croak slipped out of Duke's throat as his fingers dug and clawed for breathing space. His face quickly assumed a distinct shade of purple. The heavy stomp of boots followed just on the heels of a wave of enjoyment and pride for a shot well aimed. Hog closed his eyes against the blurry images of a shooting range and the satisfying plink of pellets on metal.
"No. Touchin'. My. Gladiators."
The whip uncoiled and Duke fell on all fours, gasping and spitting. Faydra toppled him on one side with the steel-capped point of her boot, then sauntered up to Hog, giving his chain a good yank.
"And you, Vault Boy. You've gathered quite a bit of a crowd. Can you hear them? They're just above us. Here to see the rat turned boss turned pit dog fight to the death." She smiled. "Why, your friends became quite chatty when it was you or water. Even Lord Ashur came down from Haven after he heard your sob story." She patted his cheek, then the whip hissed and cracked and Duke howled in pain. "Well, not all of it, but there'll be time later for that. Now be a darlin' and entertain us a spell. Why, win, and you'll have the honor of tellin' Lord Ashur everythin' from your live lips."
Faydra and two of her goons pulled him through poorly lit corridors and past more cells resounding with guttural screams or echoing silence. Hogarth staggered behind them, too overwhelmed by flashes of hunger and hate and pain to even think of planting his feet. Under it all, like a tidal wave gathering up before crashing onto the shore, a buzz grew, composed of voices and thoughts unified under one will and desire.
Kill. Maim. Eat. Bloodshed. Fun.
A drop of pity rippled the surface of that churning, burning maelstrom. The weight of bindings fell from his wrist, their rattle on the floor marked by the click of bullets being chambered and muzzles levelled at him. Weapons of all sizes and type were arrayed before him, hanging or strewn across metal tables. Blades, maces, cudgels, axes, spikes, spears, cleavers, and many more; anything but guns. A bowed figure regarded him with eyes of black, congealed blood, gender and age burned away by a fire that left its flesh one cooked, blistering scar. It reminded Hogarth of overcooked bacon.
"Another kid… Choose your weapon," it rasped with toothless gums. A non-feral ghoul. When Hog didn't make a move, hands shaking, it just shrugged, and the pity sunk under a sea of practiced indifference. "Just do it. Before they do it for you."
Not it. He. Hog had a glimpse of a straight-backed man on the helm of a ship, shouting at a crew heaving a net bursting with fish. A fisherman. A captain. Now old and broken, chained underground, a hundred miles away from his sea, cleaning weapons from the blood and guts of dead people. A fledging sense of kinship almost made Hog reach out for that leathery, worn hand. The muzzle that poked into his back shattered the moment, and the bloodlust of a hundred minds in tune flooded over him again, pulling him under.
"Pick a weapon, rat," Faydra hissed into his ear, adding her two cents to the chorus and tipping the balance. His hands complied and moved on their own, spurred into action by a collective will beating down on his own. The spiked knuckles fit like a glove.
The voice answered his wordless, building panic.
"When I walled off your emotions, your basic instincts were repressed as well. A temporary drawback that's left you vulnerable to what you're missing. Now you're incorporating their bloodlust as your own. A natural response."
'You've done this to me? You've – You -! Who the fuck do you think you are?!'
"Good. Feel it. Channel it. I couldn't let you fall apart on me over one female, pup. I've been waiting for too long for one of you to awake."
'When I get my hands on you -!'
"First you have to survive. Prevail. Show me that I didn't waste a century waiting for you."
Faydra and her goons were replaced by more ghouls. They escorted him to a spiked, blood-rusted gate that opened into a large, irregular pit dug in the middle of a hockey field. He found himself following their raspy commands before he could even process them. His mind remained sluggish, jumping between shock and numbness as his body acted independently, stretching and limbering up, piloted by the collective desire of the crowd. Hundreds were ammassed on the old stands, shouting and betting and cursing. Up above, the Pitt's leaden sky watched down through the broken roof, pouring in a light drizzle that hit him like nails.
Toxic waste mixed with the drizzle, dripping from barrels hanging several feet off the ground in cocoons of chains. His skin began to itch at the sight and warmth spread deeper from every spot the rain touched.
'What have you done to me?!'
"This is all you, pup. You've been awake since the moment you were injected. Now, you're becoming aware of your Legacy. You've become more than these leftovers, these doomed meat sacks. The radiation that harms and destroys their bodies will make you stronger, in ways that naïve female, Moira Brown, can't even begin to understand."
Faydra cawed and crowed from speakers, but her words were lost in the answering cheer from the crowd and the deafening shriek of the gates before him rising, echoed by many more. A single word beat into his brain and ears like drums, chanted religiously by voices and minds alike.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.
Underneath that, the fear, anxiety, excitement, and panic from the other gladiators pushed or rushing into the Hole were just flickering flames that disappeared the moment he looked away from one to the other. Men and women in patchwork armor or leather harnesses, clutching at their weapons like lifelines. Some stood still, wide-eyed and riveted to the ground by the same pressure Hog felt tenfolds, a hundred times, shaking his mind like a snow globe. A few, all of them armored, wielded their weapons with grim determination, faces cracking masks of indifference, or lusting in anticipation. Their eyes and bodies were turned to a podium, dominating both the stands and the slaughtering grounds.
Ashur watched from there, resplendent and confident in his suit of power armor and brahmin skulls. Hog's mind and body found common ground for what felt like the first time in ages. He met the Pitt Lord's eyes as he looked down at him and held it.
"There's your target. He took her away from you. Now take everything away from him."
Ashur lifted one arm, then let it fall, slashing the air. The crowd roared. Chains rattled and the toxic barrels slammed down all over the arena, rolling around and vomiting gunk from widening cracks.
"But first, these meat sacks. Deal with them."
'No. Enough death.' Hog's voice was just a whisper under the deluge of homicidal instinct pumping every muscle in his body into overdrive, flooding through his veins. A prisoner behind his own eyes, he watched as the spikes adorning his knuckles tore and crashed into the chest and belly of the nearest unfortunate to turn his way with a knife. He smelled the fresh blood and ruptured intestines, felt the vibrations with every blow traveling up his arms, but barely noticed the blade slicing his forearms as the slave succumbed to his punches.
"They are nothing. Dregs of a time long past. Leftovers from a feast. Weak, crippled runts, pawing blindly, feeding on their own Pack to survive just another day. No purpose. No Unity. You are more. So much more."
'No. Stop it. Let me stop!'
A gladiator swung a pickaxe at him from behind. His body dodged to the side without even looking. The pickaxe sent debris and sparks flying as his body swung around for a comeback. He smelled the gladiator's fear and his voiding bowels as the spikes punched through the thin bone of his nape and crushed the upper vertebras and the spinal cord underneath.
"I'm only acting as your Guardian here. This is all you. The purest you, bereft of the restraints and fears and checks of your upbringing."
'I'm better than this. I can be better than this.'
The warmth of radiation increased to a scalding, feverish heat. His hands slammed some poor bastard's face into the top of one of the toxic barrels, leaving a wide smear of blood. His face hurt and pulled with how wide and deep he was grinning.
"You tried. She died. When you can't beat them, join them. Be better at their own game. Overwhelm them, and make them yours. Nobody will be able to stop you."
The disfigured sod crumpled at his feet, whining and convulsing as arterial blood spurted from the ruin of pulp and radiation burns that was his face. The chains holding the barrel were light and wet in his hands as he wrapped them around the slave's neck and pulled. The crunch of snapping bones was sickeningly melodious. The flopping corpse, merely an afterthought.
He stood there, feet burning and regenerating in the toxic waste, head tilted high to let the radioactive rain clean the blood from his face. He let the exhilarating cries and cheers of the audience wash over him and edge him on. They drowned that nagging, weak voice that had been in control most of his life, silencing the whispers that this mayhem and bloodshed wasn't what he was born for, that it wasn't right or what he'd fantasized about every time the 101s stomped on his life and then scraped him away from the soles of their regulation boots like shit.
That voice, that part of him, he realized with contempt, was afraid. Afraid of himself, of what he could do. Behind a childish façade of abrasiveness, it craved recognition and acceptance. He saw it so clearly now. It had made him a rat scampering in the dark tunnels of the Vault, too afraid to take what could have been his, what should have been his, by right of intellect and might. The recognition of his father, the respect and obedience of the 101s, the affection of the woman he hadn't dared love, but now knew had loved the pitiful, weak him back anyway.
He threw his head back. Laughter bubbled up in his chest and roared out. It challenged the crowd, the rain, the whole blasted wasteland and God Almighty to put him down, to drown him, to suffocate and silence him. Let them try.
Let them fail to stop the Master.
A dog's echoing howl joined into the cacophony, the canine's heart beating in rhythm with his own. Slit eyes a glowing yellow raked him behind the bent, welded bars of a large drainage pipe jutting out into the Hole. The Master watched himself through those eyes, smelled his own euphoria through the dog's wet nostrils. He felt the beast's chest heave and his fur stand on edge, electrified.
Through his servant's eyes, he saw the last gladiator thrust at his exposed back with a spear. A desperate blow from a scrawny, wide-eyed human female, terribly, embarrassingly slow. Barking laughter, the Master spun around and backhanded her across the face. The spikes gouged out one brown eye and tore open her cheek, shredding warm, mocha skin, then the spear was in his hands. The butt slammed into her solar plexus, cutting off her scream into a choking gasp. The broomstick cracked and the shaft broke in two on his knee. He stood over the meat sack deserving no pity, tall and bursting with power, her judge, jury, executioner, and God.
"You're ready. Stop running from what you are. Confront it, embrace it, and go for its throat!"
The mental barrier vanished in the time between two thoughts. Every emotion his servant had repressed in the dark corners of his vessel's mind jumped out to make tehmselves at home again. All the bloodlust and euphoria shattered, crumbled, and disappeared, drained down and dragging the Master with it. The world faded in, then out, then in again, dulled by the buzz in his ears. He was on his knees, his forehead kissing the blood-soaked dirt, body buckling and hiccupping as tears burned a path down his face with a vengeance of anguish and grief too vast to grasp. Images flashed through his mind, too many and too fast to distinguish. Their sharp edges carved paths, leaving only molten agony flowing in their wake.
Inside his mind, the dog - his servant, his Guardian - snarled and gnashed its teeth, convulsing against the bars of the drainage pipe. It fought back and lashed out, trying to mend again the same barrier it had torn down too soon, trying to restore control to its Master. Again and again, it failed, and the waves of grief and pain pushed it away, isolating his mind within a storm of darkness and pain. They flaked and stripped him until they weren't wailing on the Master, rather on Hog, a curled-up boy huddled in a corner and screaming for his security blanket.
0 * TTL * 0
He couldn't do it. He couldn't face it. Couldn't face her. It was too much, and he was too weak and pitiful, too much of a coward. Better it be over, for good. Then the pain and grief and anguish would be over too, just… gone. Dying seemed like a bargain compared to carrying on like this a moment longer.
That conclusion didn't grant him peace, just enough hollowness to drape around his shivering mind like a wet towel, waiting everything out. Sound faded. A dull, sterile hue blanketed the world outside his head, numbing his body to anything and anyone but the drizzle plinking off him a hundred drops a second.
An impossibly large silhouette, more mutated bear than man, towered over him. He sent vibrations shaking up Hog's prone body with every breath, oozing killing intent and a profound, feral joy in what he was. Hog envied him, brutal killer that he was, but he soon lost his interest, even as the blocky, spinning axe in paw-hands revved up. The bear-man lifted it up over his head. Hog's chin bobbed down, to the jagged half of a broomstick that had made itself cozy in the lower right of his abdomen, stinging somewhat. Then his head lolled to the side.
Through the bars of the drainage pipe, the Guardian's yellow eyes held a pain similar to the one pressing down on his every sense, barely held at bay. It blinked and an alien thought wormed its way through Hog's eroding, safe mental island, nudging the child at its core. A soft growl quietened his mental screaming. What was he screaming for, anyway? Who was there to listen? It wasn't like anyone but the dog could hear him, and the beast certainly didn't care.
Staring in those eyes was like watching a curtain he'd been poking holes into for a while give up from too much abuse, revealing the predictable truth behind in all its decadent splendor 'It was you, all along. The taunts, the provocations, –'
"I was saving your pathetic human life. Trying to grow you a spine and lick the amniotic fluid off your eyes. So much potential, wasted. And all over a single female."
As far as manipulation attempt went, it was pretty weak. Predictable. Wernher was better at it, and that was without the backdoor into his head. Hog told as much to the dog.
"You're not going to survive a blow like that. Not like you are. But the Master can. You just had a glimpse of what you can be. A true god among mortals. Just rebuild the barrier and let him come out."
'I can?'
"When he's in control, you can do anything, if you want to. Hunt them, one by one. All of them. Ashur. Burke. James. Make them fear you. Put them in awe. Make them suffer."
'… What's the point? Ten more will crop up in their place. It won't bring Amata back.' Silence was the dog's answer. All around him, every word corroded the shroud of hollow indifference between him and the ugly truth waiting to break him on its knee for good. Emotions were such nasty things. 'Will it? I mean, if I listen to you and rev up this Master-God machine, can I bring her back?'
"No."
'So much for anything, huh?' He remembered he had eyes. Like, real, physical, squishy eyes. The world through them moved like it was wading through very thick molasses, a thousand yards away. He could see every spinning blade of the auto-ax and the arc that would bury them into his skull. 'I'm tired, dog. All this death, and for what? Only more death. Death for one more day alive. Death for one more mile. Death for fun. I, part of me anyway, enjoyed that wanton slaughter. I'm not that different from the scum the Sheriff reviles so much. He'd probably cap me if he was here right now.'
"Then bring him out. You'll thrive. Everyone will. Put your humanity to sleep and fulfill the Legacy."
'No.'
Rain plinked on his pupils, forcing him to blink. The spinning blades were kind of pretty. Then it was time for the dog to swing back.
"You're just like your father. The failure youngling of a failure. He gave up too when it was time to be more than a mewling pup. More than just another human. All for a promise he ended up breaking anyway. Humans."
That… stung. Truth always did, he supposed. But more than the direct comparison with James, more than the deeper truth he felt hidden beneath those words – all things he honestly couldn't bring himself to care for at the moment - it was the mention of a broken promise that hit close to home. Why did it? He felt it had something to do with Amata, but the answer eluded him, just like her face did. He stared out of his safe island then, and mouthed a question.
The churning darkness all around him answered, closing in and silencing the dog. Curious despite himself and really, he was about to buy it anyway, Hog reached out beyond the crumbling confines of stale sanity with a finger, dipping it in.
- too young to understand the pastor's sermon at their first burning service. "Never forsake me and I'll never forsake you. I'll never forsake you as long as I live." They repeated the words with the adults, then promised each other, serious and grave as only children could be. The word was such a mouthful, but it stuck in their six-year-old brains' -
He remembered her face. He remembered that too, and that years later, Amata and he learned they kind of turned the pastor's message on its head in a way, addressing each other with words meant only from man to divinity. They'd shared a laugh over that.
I'll never forsake you as long as I live. All five seconds left of it. He dipped another finger and her last words to him pierced the silence.
Run, she'd said. Amata had wanted him to live. Wouldn't dying mean… betraying her?
All the grief and pain and sadness over her death, rooted in every single moment they shared, terrified him. He could barely deal and come to terms, maybe, with two fingers-dips worth of it. That maelstrom would swallow him, shatter him, leaving a drooling husk behind. Maybe that was what he deserved. That wouldn't count as living, probably.
Maybe the dog did have the right idea. Better feel nothing, if only for a little while. At least until there weren't bear-sized men about to murder him, or somesuch.
Admittedly, that might take more than a little while.
Hog willed it and the barriers came up, stronger than before. They swept up and coalesced the maelstrom into a tight, sealed ball in his palm, leaving only tendrils and wisps to float in the vast and empty expanse of his mind. Finding the link to the dog next was easier and more natural than breathing. Its awe was almost palpable.
'Distraction, please.'
"...Yes, Master."
'Hogarth. Or Hog. I'm not him. Whatever he is.'
The groan and shriek of bending, rusted metal bars under the impact of the big, damn dog startled the bear-man. A primeval part of his mutated brain probably registered the protective, malicious intent pouring from the beast in waves. It wasn't much, but enough for the spinning ax-blades to miss Hog's head. Toxic dirt flew in every direction. The auto-ax bounced up in bear-man's meaty hands.
Rolling around with half a foot of broomstick in his gut hurt, but not as much as he'd expected. He probably had to thank the half-blind, fully dead gladiator woman for that little gift. Seemed fair, since he'd almost skewered her with two of those. Removing it hurt enough to make him falter. For a moment, his control slipped, and the renewed, pounding orgy of demanding clamor from the Hole's audience echoed in his blood, supplying for missing instincts. Long enough for the gory broomstick to find a new home through soft hollow of bear-man' knee.
Bear-man howled louder than the dog and let go of the auto-ax, pawing at his knee. The heavy tool fell blades-first into the dirt, skidded, and tore through the closest chunk of meat with abandon. Namely, bear-man's other leg.
The crowd loved it. Faydra swore on the mic. The drainage pipe groaned with another impact and the bars snapped, delivering a tumbling, huge mass of sewage-soaked fur into the gladiatorial arena.
For long, heady moments, silence reigned, threatened only by the dying gasps rising from the toxic sands. Surprise hamstrung the collective bloodlust, easing the pounding pressure on Hog's perception. In that lull, he breathed in, tightening his leash on the struggling, uncaring, bloodthirsty, megalomaniac… Master-thing he'd become for the wildest moments of his entire life. The thing the dog wanted him to become full-time. A shiver ran up his arm as said dog's coarse tongue licked his palm.
"The manling has a litter-brother."
Two pairs of eyes, one slit and yellow, the other dark brown and flecked with green, turned on another bear-man, this one possibly even larger than the one bleeding out nearby. Hog studied the muzzle hanging limply in his hands and the tank strapped to his bare, hairy chest with narrowed eyes. His nose crinkled at the waft of burning flesh from a few man-pyres not too far off. He must have been pretty out of it to have missed those. Through the dog's nose, the smell was more… enticing. He really couldn't tell if the growling stomach was the dog's or his.
The bear-man brothers weren't gladiators. A flamethrower against a knife or, looking down at his red hands, spiked knuckles? That was just cheating. A mop-up crew, then. Butchers. Executioners. Reaching out with his new senses, he judged there were two or three more other gladiators in different stages of alive, strewn around the Hole. One was likely exaggerating a flesh-wound, biding her time for an ambush.
He wondered if he could influence the flamethrower-toting bear-man. Dog said he could do anything, after all. Closing his eyes and feeling around for his rabid, fear-stricken mind, Hog willed him to sleep. Drop the muzzle. Dance a little jig. After a long moment, he lifted an eyelid. Nothing. No, not nothing. From the angle of the muzzle, the bear-man was recovering from the shock of seeing his brother cut down, or the dog barge in, or whatever psychic bullshit was going on.
'You and I have different definitions of anything, dog. Do you even have a name? Dog and Guardian don't really roll off the tongue.'
"The Alpha, your ancestor, used to call me Dogmeat."
'… Jesus. Poor taste runs in the family. Let's take bear-two down without killing him.'
If ripping a foot of wood from his gut made him falter, a quick bath in burning fuel made him almost black out. If it wasn't for the mental link with Dogmeat shouldering some of the pain on the furball and his acquired heightened threshold, he'd certainly have, twice over. As it was, he was left flailing and rolling on the ground, trying to snuff out the flames and protect his eyes, as Dogmeat nearly ripped bear-two's arm out at the elbow with a single bite. The next crushed his throat. So much for a non-lethal takedown.
He rolled up on all fours, then stumbled to his feet. His underwear was gone, burned to nothing, leaving him stark naked, wheezing, and gritting his teeth into dust as half the flesh on his body, including the sensitive bits, took a swing at the whole regeneration game. Right then, Hog didn't feel much pity for the bear-man butcher choking and bleeding out on the soaked sands. Truth be told, other than the pain, the heady taste of blood in Dogmeat's mouth, and the chaos of surprise-shock-anger-fear-disappointment from the audience, he didn't feel much of anything.
'I see. So this is how it's going to be. Complete mental breakdown or a forced, emotional cripple.' He shrugged. Sounded fitting.
He silenced Dogmeat's thought-suggestion to take a walk on the wild side before it could even properly form, then turned to stare up at the VIP box and the Lord of The Pitt brooding there. Hog crossed his arms over his healing chest, straight-backed and pushing down any hint of shame from standing in even less than his birthday suit before the vilest collection of raiders, slavers, kidnappers, and sexual abusers he could picture. The pulling and itching of muscles and tissue on his face alone told him that he'd probably make a ghoul look pretty if he stood beside him.
Good.
"Well? I won. This farce is over, Ashur. We're overdue for a chat, you and I."
0 = TTL = 0
My thanks to Paladin Bailey, DmCrebel25, The Desert Dancer, ScrimshawPen, Aegon Blacksteel, Master Doom Maker (x2), Alternate NonFiction (x2), colstrent (x2), WilSquare, Nawghty, and PaladinDelta for their reviews and feedback. Much appreciated.
This was a very strange chapter to write. Bit of a rollercoaster, hence the delay. Half the time, I didn't know where I was going with it. Then I reached the scene where child-Hog dips a finger into the maelstrom of emotion taking over most of his mind, and looking back I figured that things kind of fit the way they were. Bit of a shorter chapter this time, but putting the Ashur scenes in this one I feel would have stolen the stage from the weird, allegory-laced, bullshit-psyker-stuff character moments.
To everyone else reading this for the past 100.000 words, the review box isn't a reserved club. I know there's some of you by the visitor count alone. Don't be shy, 'kay? Drop a review. Do it. This fic is past average novel length now, it's less about enjoyment and more about good manners now. Thank you for reading.