Chapter 4 - Using Bodies In Ways For Which They Were Never Intended
Bruno returned from school to see the kiln's chimney smoking. This was usually a good sign - when his father was working the kiln, it usually meant he was in something of a good mood. He always seemed calmer when he was working on the ancient, lumbering golem stored in the barn. Bruno didn't know why, and he didn't really want to ask - it made his father happy and it kept him out of the house, and that was all he needed to know.
He opened the front door softly, setting his lunch pail down on the shelf to the left and crossing through the kitchen to his room, toeing off his shoes beneath his chest of drawers. He turned around to find his father at the foot of his bed. Bruno flinched violently at the surprise, losing his balance and falling to the floor with a soft thud,and his father smirked. He was leaning against the wall, arms - covered past the elbow in bulky enchanter's gloves - crossed over his chest, and sharp teeth gleaming from between parted lips. A knot of panic clenched in Bruno's stomach at the sight, because this wasn't supposed to happen. His father never came into his room if he wasn't angry, and he was almost never angry when the kilns were lit. But he didn't seem angry, Bruno thought as he carefully rose, which means this must be something… different.
"Hey, kid," said his father, pushing off the wall and taking one long stride towards him. Bruno edged backwards out of reflex, swallowing as his calves met the wood of his chest. His father smirked a little wider.
"Hello, Father," Bruno said, trying to keep any hint of unease from his voice. "Is there something you need?"
"You could say that," he replied evasively, rocking back on his heels and taking a step towards the door. He glanced back over his shoulder at Bruno, expression souring with impatience. "Hurry up, there's something I need you for in the barn."
Bruno blinked, confusion warring with shock. Why did his father want with him there? Until recently, he'd been forbidden on pain of brutal punishment from going anywhere near the barn and its enchanting facilities - even now, he was only allowed inside for menial labor that his father couldn't be bothered with any longer. A small, cautious spark of hope sprung up that perhaps he'd be learning to enchant golems, but he quickly banked it with caution. It wouldn't help him to throw optimism around like confetti.
He followed his father to the barn, where the massive golem stood dormant in the middle of the floor. Sunlight streamed in through the door, painting the bone-white clay of its legs a soft gold. Its eyes were still a dead black, clogged with spiderwebs. Bruno paused, staring up at it with a shiver. He'd always felt uneasy around it, even though it hadn't been activated in years.
"Come here, I don't have all day," his father snapped, voice echoing from the other side of the golem, and Bruno hurried after him. He stood at a respectful distance to the furnace, watching as his father stoked the flames. He turned to face Bruno when he was done, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. It left a dark stain on the leather of the enchanter's gloves, but he didn't seem to notice.
"I think it's about time to pass down the family business, kid," he said, walking over to the golem and sliding his hand up the hardened ceramic plate of its thigh. "She's not gonna service herself, you know."
His father grinned again, tongue sliding out from between pointed teeth, and Bruno chuckled weakly, unsure of the correct response. He couldn't believe it. Was his father actually going to teach him enchanting?
"What do you need me to do?" he asked, voice eager and shocked in equal measure as he stepped closer to the golem. His father tilted his head to the side, dragging his gaze down Bruno's body. His eyes narrowed.
"Just stay still," he said, whipping one arm out to grab Bruno by the back of the neck and slam him into the ground. Bruno hit the ground with a thud, already trying to scramble upright - the ground was no place to be in a fight, especially if the other side had the upper hand - but his father planted one heavy, booted foot on his back to keep him pinned. Bruno rolled desperately, reaching behind him to grab his father's ankle with the hopes to maybe, somehow, knock him off-balance. Instead, he felt his hand caught in the grip of an enchanter's glove. His arm was yanked straight up behind him and Bruno let out a sob of pain, which soon became a scream as the limb was pushed to the brink of dislocation. His father laughed.
"I told you to stay still, you little shit," came the voice from behind him, and the pressure of the boot on his back became nearly-crushing before vanishing entirely. Bruno wheezed, shoulder throbbing, cheek pressed into the dirt. He could hear footsteps from behind, and clothes rustling, until a leather glove grabbed his aching shoulder and roughly flipped him over. The back of his head slammed into the golem's foot. His father grabbed him by the throat with one hand, eyes wild, breathing heavy, one knee planted on either side of his torso.
"This might pinch a bit," he said, teeth bared in a mockery of a smile. He squeezed the hand around Bruno's throat and placed the other one on his face, palm pressed to Bruno's forehead and fingers splayed against his hair. The leather smelled of smoke and rot, and Bruno bucked wildly against the pressure of the hands. He could see the gears on the back of the gloves glowing red with the touch of his father's soul wavelength, and his stomach clenched as he struggled harder. What was he doing? Enchanter's gloves focused the wavelength of their user to create small pseudo-souls for their creations, designed for use on inanimate objects only - as far as he knew, you couldn't use them on humans. He bucked again, desperate to get out of his father's grip. His father lifted one knee from the ground, slamming it into his stomach, and he let out a strangled moan.
"Now, now, we can't have you trying to leave yet. This isn't even the fun part," he hissed, pressing harder on Bruno's throat. Bruno choked, head aching and vision swimming into grey, before the pressure lifted enough for him to gasp for breath again. The stench of rot was stronger, now, dark stains seeping through the leather of the gloves, and he gagged as a streak of foul-smelling fluid was smeared across the bridge of his nose. The reek of burning leather was rising off the gloves, now, too, as the gears on the back glowed brighter and brighter.
"Now, see," his father started conversationally, eyes narrowed in focus, "your old pop's not doing so well. Falling apart at the seams, you know."
Bruno watched dark tendrils of ooze slink up and over the cuffs of his father's gloves, eyes watering at the stench as his head began to throb in earnest.
"I can usually hold it together longer than this, but, eh. Bodies wear out so quickly these days, you never know how long you've got."
Bruno whimpered as the throbbing in his head grew nearly unbearable, feebly pawing at his father's arms to make him stop. The rot was roiling its way up the enchanter's throat, now, blisters of pus swelling and popping as he spoke, and Bruno retched, eyes watering at the sting of bile in his mouth.
"At least that bitch of a wife I had gave me a son this time - it took me a year and a half to track down this body, did you know that? Eh, not like it matters. You're next."
Clear, yellowish fluid dripped from his perforated skin as he talked, his tongue slipping out through a hole in the flesh below his jaw. His outline began to glow, enveloping his body in a wavering light that shivered at the outlines until it collapsed and poured into the putrefaction-stained gloves. The gloves remained in place, leather burning as it touched the gears, which were glowing with a blue-white intensity, vibrating slightly as they tried to contain the full force of the decaying enchanter's soul. Bruno's face was burning with heat, and he squirmed weakly in a last-ditch attempt at escape. The gloves were stronger, though, pinning him to the floor with his father's brute strength as the glow of his father's soul wavelength rose from the burning gears like steam. The glove on his throat clenched its fingers, forcing his mouth open with a gasp of breath, and the gears abruptly lost their glow as the vaporous mass of his father's soul erupted out of them. Slick, oily tendrils of the pearlescent vapor rushed down his nose and mouth, clogging his throat and pooling in his lungs, and thick tears leaked from the corners of his eyes as he struggled for breath.
When the rot-stained gloves finally fell to the ground, no longer sustained by the will of their master, Bruno struggled feebly onto all-fours, one hand clutching his throat as he retched again. The gloves were gone, and the vapor had settled, but something was still trapped in his throat. He heaved again, and again, horror rising like bile as he felt his neck distend and stretch under the girth of the thing lodged inside it. He heaved again, gag reflex going wild as it reached the back of his mouth, and with a strangled, guttural cough the mystery object slid out of his mouth on a wave of saliva and stomach acid. He stared down at it blankly, eyes dull and unblinking in their sockets as sweat and spit dripped softly from his chin.
The thing on the floor was a glowing sphere the size of an apple, with a wispy blue vapor tail waving off of it - something that he might, at one point, have called beautiful. As it was, he simply knelt in the shadow of his father's golem, muscles twitching with the aftershocks of his ordeal. He didn't notice as his hand released his throat of its own accord, reaching out to touch the soul pulsing gently amid the vomit, nor did he notice as his body sat itself back on its heels. His head tilted back as the soul was lifted towards it, and white curls of vapor wisped out with his breath. The soul dropped into his open mouth, slipping past cracked lips as the already-bruising jaw worked to chew and swallow. His body flared blue-white as it slid into his stomach, jags of light wavering indecisively before condensing into a thick-bladed short sword. It clattered to the ground by the puddle of bile, and sat dormant.
Time lapsed by with a serenity belying the past few minutes' violence. The light pouring in through the opened door cast a sundial shadow behind the golem, its hulking shape tracing an arc against the back wall as the hours passed. The furnace crackled fitfully, fed by the light breeze and the remnants of a few seasoned logs. The sun, bloodred and massive, was sinking behind the treeline before anything stirred.
The sword flashed white along its blade, jags of brilliance burning off to nothing as the steel slid back beneath the bones of its human host. The body of Bruno Dusek stood up, arms reaching above his head in a deep stretch. His back arched far enough for his fingers to graze the dirt, accompanied by an audible pop of vertebrae, before he snapped upright again and shook each limb experimentally.
"Yeah, this'll do fine," he muttered, hoarse voice slipping out between his sharpened teeth.
A/N - We're never really told how golem-enchanting works or why the gloves are necessary, only that it's a localized industry that animates clay figures. So, again, I had to do a LOT of worldbuilding on my own. Here's what I came up with:
Enchanter's gloves focus the user's soul wavelength into a tiny pseudo-soul that's enough to animate the golem but not enough to grant true sentience.
This explains why they could even be affected by the Kishin's wavelength in the first place, as they do technically have souls, and also why the golems would be the last ones to be affected - their souls are too simple to be corrupted by anything other than complete, irreversible madness. This also explains how Giriko was able to body-jump with it in the first place. Assuming that souls are made of 'concentrated wavelength', for lack of a better word, the gloves should - at an extreme end - theoretically be capable of converting someone's entire soul into pure wavelength and embedding it in the body of another creature, whether that creature is a clay golem or a prototype weapon.
Also, re: Giriko's rot issue. Remember when Black*Star was so dead set on mastering the Uncanny Sword that the intensity of his soul wavelength started exceeding his body's capacity to absorb it, with basically resulted in him soul-force-attacking himself every time he tried and almost getting permanent muscle damage? Same thing's happening here. Giriko was the first successful weapon prototype. Giriko's been eating the souls of his vessels as a quick power boost to seal himself into the new body, and as we all know, eating human souls is Bad News. This on top of his soul already having the equivalent of super buggy alpha version weapon 'software' installed, and you end up with a soul corrodes each new vessel a little bit faster every time.