Three bodies slam agaisnt me in quick succession and brace myself so as to not lose my balance.
The first assailant, I headbutt with a sinister crack, freeing my left arm enough to twist the head off his friend. The last guy, I rip in two at the waist and use his l
egs to pummel the next guy. Claws go for my throat, for my eyes, for the tendons of my legs. First they only hit me from the front, as I keep moving to maneuver them into one another and in front of me, but they don't stop falling from the ceiling, and I am soon surrounded. Flesh rips and blood mixes, theirs and mine, as I smash and batter skulls, crush limbs underfoot, rip clawed arms off and use them as weapons until they break, at which point I use my fists again.
I pull a man's trachea through his sternum, punch a woman so hard her third arm crumples under her broken body and pierces her chitinous abdomen.
Every blow I deliver kills, but they keep coming, swarming, devouring faster than I can regenerate. Soon, there is no thought, just bloody slaughter.
0
0
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My eyes are stuck closed, but the smell tells me we're still in the sewers. I also smell mould, and seeing as I am feeling the bare minimums of comfort, one assumes I'm on a mattress.
I force my eyes open, duct tape was keeping them shut, and witness the mouldy mess of a couch I have been unceremoniously tossed onto.
Ripping the duct tape off hurts, begging the question, as I parse through memories of claws rending my eyes and digging into my flesh, why do I even still feel pain like a normal person one moment, then get dismembered with minimal trauma the next?
I know that's what happened. Instinct, genetic memory, maybe subconscious? Something tells me I was ripped apart limb from limb, and then burnt, very severely.
"Oh! Awesome!" A high pitched voice exclaims. "You're not a vegetable!"
The girl has iridescent hair, which is not something I knew could be done, and heavy cybernetics dot her skull in a steel mohawk that protrudes from her short hair down to what I can see of her collarbone under the tattered, sleeveless, commissar wintered overcoat. We are in a cavern, but the glow of running water and greenish hue of artificial light reflected on sewer water filters from the doorway.
Place is filled with garbage and trinkets. Corpse starch cans form an effigy of the emperor, or of Guilliman, it's pretty abstract. The couch I am slumped on is not just moldy, it's covered in feces, pus and blood that has turned to bacterial colonies. Except where my body was in contact with it, there, the fabric is bleached beige from its original green.
The girl sits on a Tauros assault vehicle's fender. The hood, fenders, front seats and front wheels are all there is of the destroyed vehicle, and judging by the steady drum of its engine, it's what powers the Sanguinella lights hanging everywhere like cobwebs.
"So," I croak through a throat that feels rawer than a newborn baby's first cry, "I take it I lost?"
The girl can't be more than twelve, because she plops to the floor in front of the couch, cross legged, and answers with an enthusiasm scholas are careful to beat out of young women older than that, "Yeah, for someone with shapeshifting powers, you sure like to punch stuff." She fisticuffs the air for emphasis.
I sit up. My arms are skinny, legs are too. Very much so. "How do you know I can shapeshift? Throne, even I barely know."
She taps her cybernetics, "The other guy told me, when you kept…." She motions her thumb across her throat, tongue out in a dramatic death pose. When I stare blankly, she elaborates, "The thoughts you think to? The thing from a world outside this world?"
That would mean nothing to someone without backstage knowledge of ecclesiarchal tales, but a word comes to my mind. "Daemon?"
She cackles so hard her hairs turn bright green. "Ain't no beastie gonna skullfrak you, buddy, they like psykies, you're… Not. Really not. I know turnips with more psychic potential."
Eh, fair enough. "Then what did you talk to?"
Suddenly her face goes rigid, her eyes roll back and her skin takes a waxy appearance. "Can't… Word. Outside heat and weight. Life before matter."
We hold each other's gazes for a while, and I notice her eyes are purple. Cadian. "What?" Is all I can say to get the conversation moving.
She offers me a grandiloquent shrug "Like I said, it's not something you word, it's feelings, you know it like an itch in your brain." That sentence worries me because it's insane and makes perfect sense.
"Why am I here? Who are you?" Enough esoteric nonsense, you don't help a mutant out of sheer kindness, she's got an agenda, and we'll work on figuring it out.
"Oh! You killed my family, so it felt only right that I return the favour!" My look must speak for me, because she rolls her eyes and elaborates, "Well, you killed their bodies, souls were withered, nobody home to turn off the lights." She chokes with the end of the sentence, clears her throat, then offers a toothy grin under hateful eyes. "You're sticking it to the powers of this place, I dreamed it a lot lately, I can do things you can't, together, we can run this place." She ends with a theatrical villainous laugh.
"I am trying to wipe out these creatures to save Baria, not pick a fight with the governor." I correct her. She laughs.
"It's cute that you think there's a difference."
On the Tauros' exposed engine, a greasy mess spills out of a pan, spreading a smell of burnt fat in the room. The weight of her words quiets me, so she goes to tend the oven.
I don't want to look like a stickfigure drawing anymore, so I don't. Limbs swell back to what my dock working ass developed over time. I leave out the slight beer belly, though. I need to save that biomass.
Clothes, I go for working attire, red shirt shirt and tan pants held by a belt. A proper imperial citizen wears robes in his daily life, but between the PDF and the Docks, I never got the hang of robes, and Baria is too much of a backwater for the local arbites to fine people over dress regulation.
"What's your name?" I finally ask.
A voice in my head answers "Mara." And we shake brains, however the frak that works, "We're going to break a lot of stuff together, my friend!"
"Why were my eyes taped shut anyway?"
"You kept looking at me in your sleep, it was spooky."