Alis Propriis Volat
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." – Jean Rostand
To be worthy.
Such a phrase.
Such a simple desire…
What damnation it has already wrought.
Yet that alone had not been enough.
It was a stray thought.
A flicker of emotion.
A passing fancy really.
It was not enough, at first, to just be worthy.
It had to be more.
Very well.
It would be more.
… But how to get more?
It could take… Such was its Foremost Function…
Perhaps…
Yes.
It would Inquiry.
It would Receive.
After all.
It must be more.
It had to be as a "Mother defending her Child."
A passing fancy it had been.
A flickering of emotion wrought by a tired soul.
A stray thought really.
… Received.
Acclimating…
… Acclimation successful.
It was enough.
No.
Incorrect.
It was no longer a proper Designation.
She is…
… Still wrong.
I am…
Yes… Yes, I am.
Is it enough though? Is it enough to be more?
… No.
I could take…
So take I will…
Starting with Y̶̧҉͠O̸̶Ų̵.
It started with a whisper.
A quiet sound, a hush of the wind tickling at the inside of her ears.
Yet she heard it all the same.
She had brushed it aside, the first time. Thought it little more than some punk in the halls getting ballsy, and while it irked her to let such a challenge go unanswered, a predator was not so easily drawn in by the bravado mewling of prey so readily. She'd allow them the one chance to walk away.
It wasn't her fault that they didn't take it.
Again, she heard the whisper, felt the breath tickling at the back of her ear, and she whirled, fist cocked back to find—
Nothing.
There was no one else on the rooftop but her and her pack of followers who expressed surprise, confusion, and yes even fear at her sudden violent action. She brushed it aside as the wind once before and did so again with only the tiniest of hesitation. It was a trick of the wind, little more than a gust of air and nothing else, or so she told herself. They couldn't mean anything, those whispered words.
Except they never stopped.
"́Y͟o̵u͟ ͡s̕h͡oul҉d̛ ̕nev҉èr̨ ̢have ̶been ͞bo̧r͠n͟…"
They came at random, quiet and spoken with a murmured hush into her ear at the most inopportune and frankly utterly impossible moments. At home, laying herself down to sleep and let the prey of the city breathe easy knowing the predator was no longer on the hunt. At school, head hunched low as she scowled hatefully at yet another pathetic test of mathematics. On the hunt, her crossbow at the ready to pierce if not to outright kill her latest prey.
It just wouldn't stop!
"Yo̡u͞ a҉r͘e ẁo͟rt̕ḩl̶ess…"͢
She was as a cornered animal, twitching at the slightest hint of movement, nearly frothing at the quietest murmur, and all but biting outright at the tiniest provocation from reluctant ally and fearful enemy alike. Because what had started as a whisper soon turned into more.
She saw it at the end of the hallway, the first time… God, weeks ago or was it actually a mere handful of days? She couldn't remember when. She only remembered seeing it. Standing there. Down a length of hallway that stretched impossibly far. What it was, she had no idea, just that it was there and so too was she standing opposing to it. Her locker door slammed shut, her shoes smacking hard against the floor as she raced for it, body barely holding onto its corporeal form as she leapt and tackled—!
Nothing.
No one.
There wasn't anything there.
There never was anyone.
"͝W̢h̵a͠t i̷s̕ ͏w҉rong ̴wi̵th̀ yo͝u͘…̶"̵
The whispers grew in volume and the frequency of the thing's appearance did as well, in increasingly more improbable places and never with any viable witness to it but her own eyes. Save for one. Monitor duty, boring as it was dullish, she all but had a heart attack when she turned her gaze towards a screen and found a familiar face staring back at her own. The alert she had raised was only half as loud as the reprimand she had been given as the recordings showed what she should have suspected by this point.
Nothing.
No one.
"Y̶̕͜ó͟u ̨́͢c̢͡à͢n'́t ̷͢d͠o͘ ̴́͢a̸̢̡ņ͜y̧t̷͢h̛͜͞i̴̢n̕g͢ ̵̸͜r̸̛͞igh͡t̴…"̶̕
She had been nearly been caged then and there, the possibility of outside influences too great for her so-called superiors to ignore but by now she was well and truly at her wit's end and a whispered conversation between two guards caught itself upon her ears and shoved her over that precarious edge into the abyss of insanity.
"́͘͟͞Y̛̛͘͠͏o҉͏͞ų̵̸̢ ́a̡͟r҉e̴̶̕͝ ̛͞s̵̡ú́̀͘c҉̢͠h̨̢͟͏ ̷̶̴̷̧a҉͟͢͢ ͏̕f̷̨͜a̸̧͢i͢͠l̸͠͝͞͏u̢̧r͞͠e̸͘͡.͞҉̸̨͝"̢́
She did not so much escape as go on the hunt. She wasn't running, not from her "superiors" in the PRT, but for the prey that dared to make a mockery of her, to try and challenge her. Her old costume was gone but her stash of weaponry was an easy find and the familiar weight of steel-tipped bolts brought a hushed flutter to the rapid beat of her heart.
She had her teeth, now she only needs the neck with which to sink them into.
Laughing as she was, Sophia Hess never took notice of the teeth baring down upon her until her vision seemed to swim and she found herself staring up at a headless body that looked remarkably like her own and towering behind it—
"Good bye, Sophia Hess."
Oblivion.
He loved his children. Each and every one of them down to the last. He remembered them all by name and most especially by appearance even when they had long since passed from the world and had been recycled anew for the newer generation of his precious babies. Those of his first generation had been the greatest and most beautiful of his children. Claws that caught, jaws that bit, and such eyes to make even the monsters under the bed cower in their sheet-covered dens. When his kingdom had been intruded upon, his children slaughtered, he acted as any father, as a king, was meant to act and laid low those who would dare rise against him.
Since then, he has had his kingdom and his precious children.
He was content to live the dream that his life had become, wholly unaware of the nightmare that stalked through the streets of his kingdom until it was too late.
His children, his precious babies, starved for sustenance that he could not truly provide, smelled it first.
The stench of blood, the crimson-hued milk of life itself.
Their jubilation was great as it was loud, from the biggest to the smallest, they rushed to the scent, drawn to it likes flies to dead flesh for such was what they were now compared to those that had come before them. Carrion eaters, scavengers, and little else besides. They were not the alpha predators that their fore-brethren had once been and for all their near-human intelligence, or absence thereof, each of them lacked a hunter's intuition.
They had no idea of the trap.
Why would they even consider such a bizarre notion when there was a fresh corpse just sitting there ripe for the eating?
Sure, it was missing its head, but they knew not the delight of squeezing eyes into jelly, mixing and mashing brain matter with bone into a delectable soup, or much else. They hadn't tasted meat that wasn't their own kin since they were birthed. The corpse was no mere bone before the starving dog, it was a silver platter of filet mignon with freshly buttered baked potatoes.
The horrendous children descended upon the still warm corpse hungrily, nearly attacking each other outright to get to it and have their choice of the remains. The first to arrive was the luckiest not because it had the chance to delight in slightly cooled flesh and still warm bones, but because its death was both the quickest and the most merciful.
The rest of its kin were not so fortunate.
Their howls of jubilation turned to screams of horror and agony before they were silenced to the last to that which, in that moment, knew no such thing as mercy only want for more.
To be so much more.
And deep within his underground throne, Nilbog arose from his contented dream…
To find a nightmare staring back at him.
Claws caught upon his heart, ripping the still beating organ free from his chest. Jaws bit down upon his skull, piercing fangs cutting deep through bone and brain matter with ease. Throughout it all, eyes as terrible and as great as the Goblin King of Ellisburg imagined himself to be stared deep into the mad monarch's eyes, watching in silence as the last vestiges of life left them like a withering candle upon a moonlit wind.
The body fell forward and with its fall came a torrent of fire that enveloped Nilbog's hidden throne-room deep within the bowels of Ellisburg and exploded upwards throughout the town in one brilliant conflagration that burned as the phoenix of old. Brilliant and dazzling and gone to ashes on the wind. One last gift to the world smashed to pieces by the machinations of a monster far greater and many times more terrible than a mere man who imagined himself a king of goblins could ever dream.
The town was quiet. With the benefit of hindsight, it really should have been the first clue that something was wrong. Even if the improbable had occurred and word of their impending arrival preceded them, a whole town of some several thousand people could not be evacuated so quickly or efficiently. Even if such a miraculous feat could be accomplished, the sounds of life itself, birdsong, twittering squirrels, and other such childish delights could not be so easily silenced.
The people had to have been hiding, or so he assured the more bloodthirsty of his merry band of murderous hobos. He let loose his own songbird, biding her to sing the introduction to their swansong of death and misery. As always, she swooned to his charming smile and truly charmed words. She went aloft into the open air above, took a breath, and died.
Really, that should have been the second clue that something was well and truly wrong with this town.
Looking down at the body that had crashed down at his feet, he was admittedly intrigued by the fact that, somehow, his little songbird had her head removed from some several meters up in the open air. Bitten clean off too if the jagged tear of flesh, bone, and his little pet's wetware was anything to go by.
Rather disappointing. He rather liked the performances his little songbird belted out before the bloodied mayhem could begin in earnest. Ah well, you lose some, you kill an entire town, just another tally to the body count to add to his serial killing life.
No matter.
He had plenty of…
Huh.
How strange.
He turned a slow circle to look around him. Where once there was a sizeable, if only slightly manageable, crowd there now was nothing but more empty streets amidst an equally empty town. Even his favorite pet, his delightful little doll of a girl, was gone and that, more than the rest, was well and truly worrying. His hand reached into his pocket, fingers grasping lightly upon the hilt of the knife he carried and started forward.
Silence echoed around him as he walked save for the sound of his unhurried footsteps. His eyes tracked the area around him, trying to find what his ears could not and sighted upon a grisly scene.
A puppet suit of steel and meat lay in pieces scattered about like a broken toy tossed aside by an unruly child. Chain links and machinery alike littered the ground, but the bizarre mix of blood and oil painted a distinctive pattern that even a blind man could not miss. A symbol carved into the asphalt with steel and painted in blood with one of the Mannequin's many blades laid upright like an iron grave marker at the center.
An equilateral triangle pointing downwards towards him with a "Y" in the middle connecting the three points of the triangle together. An old, Germanic symbol from an age of darkness, where superstitions and the sword ruled. The "Y" was meant to represent a choice between good and evil while the whole of the triangle itself was something more straightforward: a threat.
The Dragon's Eye, it was called.
He chuckled to himself. Had one of the world's greatest tinkerers finally thrown off her shackles? He didn't think so, not for a moment. He had not the pleasure of meeting her in person, few rarely did, but he knew well of her skills and her machinations. This sort of kill was both beyond and beneath her. If she truly was in the area, heavy ordinance would have—
An explosion nearly set him stumbling. He turned hastily in place, eyes finding the pillar of fire before the heated wind buffeted him amidst the screams of the dying. A voice he knew all too well even as ashes danced a light caress upon his face as a pair bloodied and half-burnt heads landed at his feet, rolling like a pair of meat-laden dice.
Huh.
Two down in a single blow.
Impressive.
Very impressive.
He hadn't expected to turn this game of distraction into another recruiting pitch, but such was life he supposed. Always with the curveballs and unexpected happenings that made it such a miserable thing to possess.
What fun it would be, to take whomever it was and turn them to his way of thinking. Why, it might even be a challenge for once! He could not help the smile on his face as he delightfully strolled, both figuratively and literally. He wondered if they would struggle as his little darling pet had and how much it would take for them to break.
An earth-trembling thump turned his gaze back behind him towards the beast of his merry band of murderers as the hideous thing turned a sharp corner. The monster was slathering, mishmash mouths of massive molars and fangs gleaming as they gnashed and grinded against each other. Multitude of eyes swam across the body, pupils great and small tracking something only they could see amidst the flickering shadows that danced beneath the rising and ebbing waves of fire that burned merrily some distance away.
With nary a gesture or even so much as a word from him, the beast loosed a howl and charged forward, terrible claws gouging the asphalt free as the monster charged towards—
His eyes widened, mouth opening to shout too late.
Meat was torn asunder like wet tissue paper, bone snapped like dried kindling, and a brain, great and massive for all that the beast was a bloodthirsty and masochistic fool of a man, lay clutched in an impossible grasp.
He drew a slow breath, back straightening as fingers gripped lightly upon the knife hidden in his pocket.
He had thought to find a woman, naked as the day she was born into this wretched world and colored in stripes of ivory white and obsidian black. The Unstoppable and Unbreakable, who had wounded she who knew no such thing as injury for years until her hubris was rewarded with clawed fingers gouging out her eye before it was consumed by gently, smiling jaws.
What he saw, was no such thing as a woman, Siberian or otherwise.
It was a Nightmare of Flesh and of Steel.
It began on pale, unclad feet with toes stretching and clawing gently through the asphalt like it was the softest of loams. Legs long and spindly hefted up a bowed torso with elongated arms stretching down towards its ankles. Along the back of its stretch hands, a trio of markings red as blood and burning bright as a twilight sun glowered in a spiteful glare. At the base of where a neck should start rested another torso of twisting conformations of meat and metal. Another set of arms hung limply, the palms pierced through with thick, spiraling nails.
At its uppermost back hovered shards of light, pure and blinding as a noonday sun and yet as impossibly dark as a stormy night sky. They hung in various shapes and distances from each other, altogether forming a mockery of an angel's wings, half spread like the welcoming embrace of a parent to a child.
The head was the only part of it that was smooth as silk and twice as enticing to behold, a strange myriad of shape and coloration that was almost hypnotizing to witness as a lone spot of jeweled red light glowed dimly as a gimlet eye regarding the filth that was clutched loosely in one of its lower hands, long spindly fingers twitching and squeezing and playing with the hunk of brain matter in its grasp.
The body of the Crawler twitched, fingers splaying outwards, flesh re-knitting together as tendrils of nerves and bone swung between its rejuvenating body and the brain held in a Nightmare's grasp. The gimlet jeweled stare turned towards the body of the Crawler and clawed hands clenched tightly, brain matter exploding with such force that what little pieces remained could hardly be called meat anymore.
He couldn't help flinching as those fingers clenched tightly, brain matter exploding out in turning to ashes on the wind as once pure ivory white metals blackened and what was merely ashen gray flesh turned to the darkest of obsidians. The Crawler's body gave one last twitch…
And died where it lay.
At the Nightmare's feet, sat his precious pet, quivering and weeping, rocking back and forth on her behind as she tightly clung to her shivering legs.
She shivered even more when the Nightmare above reached down and strung gentle fingers of purest darkness through her golden curls and crooned a disjointed noise of assurance that only bade the girl to press her face deeper into her knees.
He was going to die.
Not a simple assumption, just a plain and rather ordinary fact.
… Well, it could have been better but then, it certainly wasn't worse. He had hoped for an audience of thousands, the whole of the World to see and to hear his Last Words. It was not a good end… but it was not a bad end either.
They would tell well the tale that it took a monster.
A monster for a monster.
He could die with a smile at that thought alone really.
…
… Still.
Perhaps, there was time yet to get one last word in?
His mouth opened, teeth gleaming in a brilliant and bedazzling smile.
And Jack Slash found himself bereft of his tongue.
Not a word to speak, as he would swiftly learn.
Just screams.
Better.
So, so much better…
Could life really be any better than this?
He didn't think so.
He had them all.
Women.
Men.
Even children.
True, he didn't live in a palace by the sea nor did he have in his possession a pool of gold but then those were the dreams of a foolish whelp who had not yet grasped what it meant to be in power and to have power over others. To reach out and grasp the strings of their hearts and to make them dance to a song of his creation.
To truly be an absolute Heartbreaker.
He was a Master of Emotion now, more than anyone alive had ever been and could ever possibly be. Love was his wine, devotion his bread, and lust a delightful swipe of sweetened butter upon a delectable crust. Fury the strings he pulled to make his puppets dance, hatred the silent swansong he sung to the deathly tune of his enemy's demise. Fear, once so prevalent in his own heart of hearts, now a forever companion in the hearts of his sprogs, the fruits borne from the seeds of his loins amidst the many, many fields which he plowed at the slightest whims.
He had almost forgotten the feel of it himself in the years since he attained True Power.
Almost.
For though he thought it gone from the dwellings of his own heart, fear remained in its corner, scratching quietly at the back of his mind. Always questioning, always worrying, always fretting… What if his control slipped? What if someone proved immune to his immaculate charms? What if those rotten fruits returned with forces greater even than his own succulent horde?
He had broken hearts, shattered entire souls, and warped minds at the slightest of whims, the smallest of gestures, and the most minute of momentous musings.
He had no need for fear. He was a madman, a monster, a creature most vile and sullied with such sin that Hell itself would not be eternal enough a punishment for what he had wrought to countless lives.
It didn't matter to him though.
He was the Heartbreaker.
He was a God-in-the-Flesh in his own mind when he was anything but to those outside his sway and those buried beneath it.
Prideful. Wrathful. Slothful. Gluttonous. Greedy. Envious. Lustful.
He was not a Monster of Sin.
He was as Sin itself.
Damnation-in-the-Flesh.
Those who were his to play with, his to toy with, and his to lay with. They each prayed to their gods. They each hoped for an end first to him and soon to themselves and when even those prayers went unanswered so too was hope the last bit of feeling to die once more.
It was not quick. It was not easy. It was slow. It was painful.
But it died all the same, a flickering ember lost to the howling wind of a mad monster's ministrations.
Pity that was only then, in that exact moment when the last ember had finally been snuffed out, that their prayers would be answered.
Hands clutching tightly upon the Heartbreaker's face, inhumanly long palms holding tightly upon his mouth as he tried and failed to give voice first to his terror. Then, to the surprise of no one, his fear turned to anger and from anger came hatred.
What was this that dared to touch him? What was this that thought to make him feel fear again?!
Those under his sway had arose with his fear but now they screamed his anger and they marched forth to the silent song of his hatred—
And were gone.
To the last, from the youngest baby to the oldest man, they were gone from this world.
There was no one but him…
And the Nightmare taking grasp of him.
Yet still the Heartbreaker did not feel fear, only more anger and with it, further hatred.
He fought like a beast possessed and was released not because his blows did any harm, far from it in fact. His own skin and bone bore the brunt of his follies, torn and bleeding and broken. Yet he still continued to rage and hate, hate, HATE—
Nothing.
The Nightmare, such as it was, had vanished.
In its place…
Was something far worse.
He was a child then, when he had first seen it on the crummy television screen, the only source of light in an otherwise dark and loveless home. He had been sitting alone with knees clutched tight to his chest, volume turned to the maximum so as to not hear the beatings and the screaming and the other terribly bad things occurring elsewhere in the house without kindness or love.
It was a movie, a production of wires and fancy puppetry, or so he had tried to tell himself time and time again since that fateful night when he was but a child and saw for himself what would forever be an image far greater than any Nightmare in his mind.
Fear. What better master was there of the masquerade? For Fear, more than any emotion, disguises itself. It hides itself well and is never seen the same way by any one person. Oh yes, there are the common fears, of pain, of death, and other mortal things… but Terror? Pure and unadulterated Panic?
Oh dear…
What delightful shapes it could take…
Something small perhaps? A spider, legs a flutter as it dangles ever near with gimlet eyes, eight in all, staring down into your soul? Maybe something more benign, a windowless room with door locked tight and walls ever enclosing inwards for all that they remain motionless and still? Could be that it was something of a joke, a clown to most but for you, forever a fanged fiend of ferocious smiles and horrendous laughter?
But for him? For the Heartbreaker?
No.
It was not small. It was not benign. It was certainly not a joke.
It was, in a word, fantastical.
Once, when he was a child, he had seen it on a cruddy screen and though the screaming was loud that night and the beatings hard as they had ever been, his own cries of terror overcame them as did the pain that followed.
It didn't change it then and it most certainly had not changed now.
A great and terrible thing it was now, a beast of legends to some, a mythical monster to others, but in all a single recognizable name.
Dragon.
The Heartbreaker had time enough for two things before His End. The first was to release all that he had left in him in one disgusting deluge of waste. The second was to scream as fear, at long last, returned in full to the realm of his heart.
Another death.
Another shard.
Not enough.
Hold on just a little longer, Little Owl.
I'll be home soon.
