We're going to try to get three chapters out today (including this one, so 1:3), so sorry for the quick updates.
"Lovino, start walking." The voice was staticky. Drawing a breath, he did as he was commanded; a short motion of his arm rather than turning back to explain to the people he led. He didn't know who else had a radio in their helmet; he didn't care to ask.
He shouldered a physical gun on his back, one he knew little about and if it jammed he was shit out of luck, but it was just in case something went wrong, and he was unable to use his powers. He didn't bother calling any version of armor just yet. No need to waste his efforts. The black parade was still far enough out to only pose the threat of fear.
It wouldn't be long until Lovino met the approaching battlers.
"Behind you!" The scream was only one in the chaos. Lovino, who only knew it was a scream pointed to him by its enhancement of static in his ear, twisted and dipped, a silver dagger plunging itself into a Neverborn's neckless chin before turning into a hook at the other end. He placed a steady hand on what would be the creature's head and, with all his might, pulled.
The hook discovered something of an organ as it re-found Lovino's side, dropping the Neverborn in a pile of ash.
Lovino was disturbed by the lack of blood that found his hands. Here he stood, killing, yet if one were to take him from the sea and set him up nicely he would look perfectly innocent. Why was he being denied the sickening consequences that came with these things?
A scream. A spray.
There, at least now he was decorated, even if the life was not taken by his own hand. Wiping the spittled splots from his view he pushed his way forward, searching desperately for the energy of Tzeentch.
The world was dark, but the Hollows' tactics were snuffed out when it came to manipulating people. Lovino could not see their true forms, the ones that he saw at the farm, but he also wasn't devoured by the nothingness that he usually felt when they were near.
"Any sign of Tzeentch?" he demanded, hoping that whatever he said would be picked up.
Alas: "yes! Keep making your way forward."
Damn it, why was he the god damn lead if she was going to hang back?
"How much furt—"
"Watch out!"
Lovino's hand was knocked back, his weapon falling and disappearing before it hit the ground. Lovino twisted and slammed his fist into the creature, but instead of hitting his fist was enveloped in a shimmered black goop that burned like acid. With a bellicose grunt he flicked the projectile into his nondominated hand, pulling the trigger against the substance. Goo was turned to grit as it was decomposed and re-established into its purest form, sinking into the once stuck hand, the pressure of an injection aching through Lovino's veins for a long moment before he was able to exhale and stretch his fingers.
He stood, ready to bite his command once more, but was immediately thrown into action, his duty to the fighter under him taking over as he saw the Neverborn they were fighting slight his movements and take a jab with a twisted, jagged thorn straight for the fighter's neck. Lovino grabbed their wrist and yanked them back, his gun replaced by a shield as the fighter twirled into the dust behind him.
"Stay on your toes, soldier!" he screamed with a low grunt, the creature throwing another strong jab, its power causing Lovino's shield to tremor under the force. In one smooth movement Lovino let go of the woman, stood, and called forth a sword that joined the fight from behind the shield.
Three times sword clashed against thorn before more thorns grew like long spider legs, poised dangerously all along Lovino, gleaming and deadly.
Lovino only took a single moment to sigh before he offered his counter.
A mirror for each limb was produced with a swat of Lovino's hand, like bubbles from a wand. When The thorns attacked the shattering was nothing less than defending, but the screeches of the creature as the mirrors melted down and creeped along the black limbs almost matched it. The silver liguid sunk into the pores and found the creatures heart.
Lovino closed his eyes, tilting his head only slightly as the creature was turned to glass, the energy of its own life the thing that caused the explosion.
He wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, curios as he stared at the glinted black pieces that glittered in the copper concoction. He rolled his eyes, irritated. "How much further forward?"
"Not far. You have to keep her busy, we still haven't located the other stone."
Of course, they hadn't.
He took a moment to assess where his people were. What a joke it was, setting him beside a bunch of people that had never fought a Neverborn and saying that they would keep him alive. If anything, it was the other way a-fucking-round! He was not going to let any of them die for him. He hadn't cared to learn all their names, but he was sure they wouldn't be faceless; even if now, fighting under the masks of their helmets they were. If they weren't lined up at the end of all this, he would take notice. He wouldn't let them be some fucking disposable fucking cog in this fucking machine of fucked-to-hell.
There was a handful that he didn't spot, but he moved on. Everyone was spread, scattered, if he could see all of them that would mean they weren't doing their job. He spared the woman one final glance. She had rose and with a new fire fought. Lovino moved back into the fight himself (though, he had never left it. Fired thoughts and easy movements).
He couldn't do anything about the advancing Hollows, and they knew it. They passed him. They passed everyone.
"The Hollows are making their way towards base," Lovino relayed, his sword catching a high attack and pushing it away. There was no answer, and through the grunts of battle Lovino elaborated. "What are you guys going to do about them?" Again, there was no answer. Lovino screamed, another grumbling energy into dust rather than evidence. "What the fuck are you guys going to do about the fucking Hollows!"
"We're going to gather them and contain them. Anubis created a world, like the Latkins'."
Lovino hissed, side stepping a close call, a harsh cut in his shoulder resulting from the attack. A sharp burst of energy came from behind him.
"Keep moving, sir," someone said, offering Lovino something of a shove.
Lovino sent them a quick glare, but he didn't snap anything out. No need to. He continued forward.
"Why are these things turning to dust?" he demanded into his headset. "The other Neverborns became stone."
"I can't answer that. Stay focused."
He growled. The battle field wasn't the place to get curios or learn fuck, but something didn't feel right. He didn't know what didn't feel right, though. He had never been put to battle like this. He had never fought a Neverborn that wasn't one of the final four. Still, trepidation licked at his body and caused his mind to start up. Maybe it was the title he had been handed. It gave his head leeway to think.
He was silly if he actually thought that, though. He was as powerless now as he had been before. Maybe that was the issue. Others were following a lie and he was stressed because that lie just sent one of their bodies against his, blood soaking through the two's uniforms as they slid down and into the dirt.
Lovino set his jaw, stepping back, helping the body settle. Dry eyes, easy features. The red stained his uniform black.
He flew up from his crouched position, setting his eyes and his focus.
Fuck, he let one of them die.
Fuck, he failed.
He wasn't going to let it happen again.
His screams turned into growls and barks as he slashed with a wide arm. Again and again, controlled. His sword twisted and came to a dagger when the combat was pressed to close quarters, his shield was developed along his other arm when a beast spat acid at him. He pressed on and fought. He ignored the way the stress blistered around his limbs, constricting his breathing as the world attempted to rattle off and away.
The beast before him screamed and fell and he stabbed it in the back, looking back only to see a soldier armed with the small device Gilbert had created. It must have been Lovino's helmet that kept its effects from flooring him as well.
"Kid, toss me that!" Lovino demanded.
The solder didn't question him. Armed with a pain he knew too well, Lovino pressed on. He needed to keep his powers' use to a minimum. He couldn't go shitting out before he even got to Tzeentch. Before the Warp was resurrected.
"You're advancing on her. Be careful, it looks like she knows."
"Of course, she fucking knows! You put me at the front of the fucking line," Lovino ground back. "How many of these fucking things are there, the String thing?"
"The what?"
"Gilbert's god damn weapon!"
There was a short pause, Lovino resorted to the flooring device and the manufactured gun that hung on his back. It didn't shoot out bullets, but rather a strange green that surrounded the creature's form and closed in with a heat that Lovino had to step back and away from.
Lovino blinked, the ashes beneath him still glowing faintly. "Fuck—" he muttered with a shake of his head, wondering what kind of fucking technology the future had to put toward the last fucking World War.
"There are approximately—"
Lovino stopped listening. He had finally made it to her. It was only a glance at first, long, grey, tattooed limbs and flashing teeth. Lovino made it a point to close the distance between them, stepping over yet another pile of radiant ash. He pointed his device towards her, subplot of having everyone use one all at once to try and take down as many as they could gone and turning into something personal between him and her.
"Sir—" someone shrieked out, an attack missing Lovino by mere inches thanks to the blast of energy that came from his side. It was one of his people. "Keep your head or you're going to get us all killed!"
How long had he paused? He didn't remember pausing.
No matter. He must continue now.
"I can sense that you have the stone," Tzeentch said, her voice muffled by the cries of battle and the helmet over Lovino's ears. "It's either because you're even more a fool that I first believed or because you have finally come to your senses and decided to help me."
"You're smart enough to know not everything is always black and white," Lovino shot back, knowing his glare would do nothing with the way his helmet kept his features hidden.
"Meaning?"
"I'm an idiot with enough sense to know that you're fucked up."
"Lovino—" his headset croaked, "this isn't the time to—"
"I'm an idiot with enough sense to know that you're never going to get the stone because you're going to be a pile of dust before you even have time to pray to your fucked up Warp."
With a newfound fury Lovino put Gilbert's weapon into action, his body trembling, his mind wanting nothing more but to physically tear her apart, as he waited for it to work.
She sighed, the motions of her forehead indicating a quirked brow, but no hair there to play along. "Are you going to act on your decliration, or are you counting on your followers to act for you?"
There was a scream from behind him, and Lovino didn't even have to look to know that she had skilled one of his fucking men. The trembling in his limbs, the assurance that he was going to have his revenge on this bastard, turned into tremors of fear and defeat, his eyes going wide and his fingers desperate as they tried again.
"Ho—How?" he stammered out. Sounding, feeling, nothing but the idiot he had assessed himself to be.
Something wacked his hand down, curling around his wrist until he dropped the useless item into the sea below him.
No, no, she could manipulate him with his helmet on. Then why did he stand in a swamp of black? Why did his feet lift oiled waters? Why did the weapon splash into nothingness?
"Dear, please, don't think a little piece of plastic and wires will save you from my influence," she almost laughed. A laugh that was cut off by a sharp cackle of energy hitting her in the side of the face.
Smoke cleared; no damage.
She looked toward the direction of the attack and with one fluid motion of her arm the attacker was lifted and thrown into the sea just before Lovino, helmet gone and face so twisted and grotesque that Lovino almost didn't recognize it.
Almost.
He jumped forward. His body erupted with the fires of his own powers, his vision that would take away her hold of him. He wasn't keen on manipulating, and his training hadn't strengthened those powers much as a few weeks or couple months weren't about to make him strong enough in manipulation to face the queen of it herself. However, without it she was weak. Despair and ambition came together to find truth. It burned and cracked and made him feel like he was going to die, sure, but odds to means and all that fun stuff.
He slashed at her with a sword. She dodged easily, a grace practiced not inherited. She sneered at him as he attacked again and again.
"You're wasting your efforts, boy. Just give me the stone."
He replaced his sword with his gun.
"Keep her preoccupied. We still haven't found the other stone!"
He shot. She fucking dodged. The bullet careened into the ground, sucking in a large chunk before returning to Lovino as a gritted energy of rocks and weeds and ash.
"You're weak without being able to manipulate me!" Lovino ripped back. He had found the upper hand. She was the weakest of the final four because she had no real power. She could only warp others to her whim!
Lovino might have looked past the fact that he stood surrounded by an army of whims.
His attention was quickly torn away from Tzeentch and to an attacking Neverborn. It screeched as it tore at the back of his neck, right where his helmet met his shoulders. He cried out, turning and shooting. A whole army. A whole list of 'wasted energy' as Lovino was forced to slam and elbow and kick just to keep his chin above the tumbling waves of the oiled sea.
The vision of truth was wavering, damn it!
"Lovino, get ready," the static demanded.
"You've found it?"
"Yes!"
Lovino fought to uphold his position. The gun on his back played a role until it ran out of juice and he was rendered to throwing its butt into any part of his opponents that he could find. With the help of the men and women at his side, Lovino found a humility for a team, but he also found something of an opportunity to not get clawed the fuck apart. It was beautiful.
"Lovino! Lovino!" The voice clambered through his helmet, but he could feel the exuberance of its real-life counterpart. Gilbert was at his side, helmet secured and hiding his features, but long pale fingers wrapped around his gun like a snake. A shot. "Lovino, do it. The stone."
"Did they—"
He was cut off by the energy he felt from the other man. Not only had they found it, but Gilbert had it in his possession. Lovino nodded, his place in a squatted position and only rising after Gilbert had shot off his gun. It was easy to find the coward because Lovino had never truly let him out of his sight.
"Tzeentch!" he called. Like him, she had never given him up. She stared at him with black eyes. Lovino set his jaw as he dug the stone out. In a flash it was from his palm and flying toward her.
She caught it. She was not dumb. "You found the reversal."
Lovino shrugged, taking in every piece of her before letting the truth fall. Most notably, the tattoo that shone through, brighter than all the rest. "I can't even defeat you. What's to say that I'm going to be able to defeat the Warp?"
"You're an ass," Gilbert chuckled into his headpiece.
"Use it or don't," Lovino screamed at her, pulling up the first sword of anger and allowing it to wash through with the feeling of life, encrypting the power into something of understanding. It was this weapon that grounded him when he felt the acid of hate bubble in his throat. It was also the weapon that reminded him that his headache was the result of his own idiocy and should be respected in that notion rather than the bitterness of isolation. "Either way your ploy ends here!"
She let off a screech of laughter. An ugly sound that could have grounded the mountain into the beloved dust that was already at their feet.
"You have made a huge mistake, boy!" she laughed. Holding up the stone she seemed to examine it for a long moment. Lovino could have lunged forward and impaled her in the chest then and there. Gilbert held him back with a simple placement of his hand.
"Wait. You can destroy her with this once it's time."
And just like that, with a slight of his hand, the stone of reversal passed from Gilbert to Lovino. Lovino grit his teeth, the exterior of the foreign object hot and dangerous. Perhaps it posed him some sort of threat.
Tzeentch shook her head. The world was paused at her feet; she seemed to pause at the attention. Make them wait. Finally, she moved. "You've made a grave mistake, Lovino Gaspari."
The tattoo that Lovino had taken particular attention to met the stone.
This interaction was different than the times with the other Neverborns, the time with Feliciano. The green glow grew and grew, but never did it fall into the purity of white against gray skin. Her eyes did not burn, but rather her head was thrown back into a twisted, screaming features. Her hands were forced off the stone when the green light found solidify through itself, shooting out in the form of dangerous vines that hit and impaled Tzeentch. The likes of blood twisted and twirled in rivers along the green vines. Tzeentch stopped squirming, a single gurgled gasp spitting blood from the clogged hole in her neck.
Everyone was throw back, a second wave of green light growing louder than any attacker. A sickening crunch crumpled Tzeentch into herself, the vines wrapping and squeezing until veins and limbs popped like animal balloons, until her neck snapped, until she was folded like a piece of paper; her body moaned and cracked. She twisted and folded until all that was left of her was a small point, wrapped around the stone, fondled by dissident thorns.
A great wind had picked up, threatening to re-topple those who had fallen due to the fervor of energy. Lovino was thankful for his helmet. Debris picked up, attacking as fiercely as a warrior themselves. He turned his head. Flinching back, a wondrously large item batting against his helmet, he screamed into his headset: "the helmets didn't work on Tzeentch. I don't think they'll work with the Warp, either."
"That's fine," Gilbert responded. He had stayed low to the ground, avoiding flying objects but never taking his aim from the circus act. "We'll just have to end this before she gets a chance."
The growth was somehow worse than the deconstruction. Once grey limbs now cracked and grew out olive, twisting and popping and pointing up and out of the dirt, towards the darkened sky. Neverborns backed with trepidation. Hollows continued their march.
With a wicked scream the figure of a woman emerged. Only, it was…off. Her facial features did not fully form, missing cartilage, her head looked dented, and her body, open and naked, seemed to have merged with Tzeentch's clothing just as much as her skin, turning one into the other. When she stood there was a great difficulty to it. She moved like a tight muscle kept her from standing fully, like there was a heavy hump on her back.
Her hand found a deformed breast. "What is wrong?" she coughed out.
Despite the image of a decrepit hag, Lovino could not underestimate this woman. The power he could feel was monstrous.
The stone fell to the ground.
"What's happened?" she screamed. A banshee with cracking bones as she stuttered forward, attempting to straighten out her shoulders.
"The heart you're using isn't yours. You are not complete," Lovino said, taking in the appearance and setting it against the rest of the gods' images. "Do you not remember what you've done?" Lovino demanded, coming forward with his sword in dangerous hand. "Do you not have Tzeentch's memories? What about Nurgles? Khorne? Do you not recall what you've done to get here!"
She took a long moment to stare at him, beady eyes making no attempt to hide the interest in Lovino's sword. "They are in me, screaming and crying out." She put a flat, crooked hand in between her breasts. "I can hear them screaming. They are my power. I can hear them scream."
Was she delusional? No way was this the woman that Anubis had fallen in love with. No way was this the mastermind behind the destruction of the universe; the woman that was forced to tear herself apart.
"I can hear their screams." It was a whisper.
Lovino swallowed, backing away. Something didn't feel right.
"They scream and scream and scream and scream?" She stumbled forward once more. Men and women backed away from her approach; features hidden by helmets, but Lovino was sure their faces showed nothing less than horror.
She circled her small area. The area that was her own in the isolation of queer battery. "They scream and they scream and they scream!" she exonerated. She spread her arms on either side of her. An ugly piece of art, hairless and growing greyer with every second that passed. "THEY DON'T SCREAM ENOUGH!"
The wind was back, a tidal way of beaconing. Lovino got lower, grabbing a fighter as they stumbled forward towards the peaking tornado. He pulled the soldier back. "What's happening?" he demanded.
"We don't know," came the central command.
"It looks like she's trying to gather energy," Gilbert observed, watching as their people shot at the witch only to have the blasts eaten by the wind and twisted into a constant, green flow that the creature—the Warp—hastily absorbed into her body.
Neverborns scrambled up and away, but the wind was too strong. It was those that flew that were sucked in first. Like Lovino's gun, it seemed that they were being turned into their simplest forms and sucked in. Lovino dismally wondered what would happen if he shot at her now, but decided not to risk it.
More and more Neverborns were pulled in. So many, in fact, that soon they stood in a large area with nothing but fighters and Hollows. The Hollows continued their march.
Slowly, the air dies down. The Warp extended her limbs with a new comfort, her posture straighter, her skin now no longer just skin and fabric, but now patched up with pieces of Neverborns. Black and olive in a swirling mixture. Eyes took to a new color. No longer beady and black, but rather iced and yellow. Her face was covered with the black splotches. A mask.
The tornado was gone, but the next shot that hit her cleared in a burst of smoke. A burst of smoke that came with an eruption of purple light that twisted into a thorn and shot straight into the sky, never coming back down.
She smiled when her features showed once more.
"The—The Latkins! They—Their world-!" The stutterings from his radio filled Lovino with a new dread.
"Let's get this over with, then," Gilbert groaned. Without hesitation he shot. Others followed him. The Warp was pummeled and surrounded.
Nothing worked.
Then, suddenly, a ravenous beast made of blue electricity bounded into the mix, animated jaws biting around the Warp's figure with a mighty growl. The Warp cried out.
Arthur joined at their side. Lovino blinked as the large animal disappeared. "Fuck, you really were going easy on me, weren't you?" he asked lowly with a shake of his head.
"What are you waiting for, Lovino?" Arthur demanded.
Lovino blinked and opened his mouth to respond, but a voice cut him off. "Sequence three should be fine," Alin said with a short nod. Lovino quickly recognized that he did not hold a gun. Rather he seemed to pose himself above the ground, eyes steady, never leaving the Warp.
Lovino nodded his head and prepared his first weapon. "Alright."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
And so it begins! Wonder how all of this will turn out. Will they be able to defeat the Warp in time? What will they do about the Latkins? The Hollows? Stay tuned for next chapter, we're hitting the home stretch and if there's one thing we believe in here it's finishing strong (haha don't cross-check me on that one.)
COMMENT! What is the spoopiest thing that you have ever read/watched/experienced?
