Trigger Warning:
- blood
- gore
- burning alive
- massacre
- inventive methods of death
- mutilation
- sexual assault
- poison/venom
What feels like lightning ripples through my body.
Blood flows through my veins in tsunamis.
But I feel no more migraine.
Smoke escapes my lungs in black puffs.
But I do not feel any burning in my chest.
My vision is clear, hearing is acute, and smell is particular.
With my arthritis and terrible condition earlier, none of this should be possible. I should have died from suffocation by now. Yet I have never felt more powerful than I have in this instant. Why do I feel like this? I do not know. I'll think about it later.
Death has spared me for one more day at the price of the lives of others. I shall not let her mercy be for naught.
Those manacles designed to hinder quirks are nothing more than measly obstacles now. Drawing a line with one finger on my palm, I invite the fire to climb higher. To burn hotter. Red turns to white. White turns to blue. My trenchcoat is reduced to cinders. I do not feel the sear anymore. Flames ripple around the shackles of my feet. Soon enough, solid metal runs in rivulets down my boots.
The blaze reaches heights taller than me. It tickles me as it wraps around the chains binding my wrists. Like those on my feet, liquid streams down my arms.
I stretch them and my back. My gaze falls on my opened waistcoat. Her perverse touch has sullied my possession. Even using just my fingertips to take it off feels disgusting. No matter; I'll wash them with her blood. Like my coat, it too becomes ashes.
So will the rest of my charred clothes if I do not leave now. There is no distinction between my black shirt and white trousers anymore. Everything is covered in grime and soot.
Slowly, I creep down the pyre. The crunch of burnt firewood beneath my heels is nothing compared to the uproar of the fools who think I am dead. I turn myself invisible just before I come out into the open. Analyzing my surroundings, a strategy to punish them concocts in my mind. My execution was to take place on land already ravaged by my colleagues. I will gladly destroy it some more.
Fire is not my master anymore; I am its.
A simple curl of my finger against my thigh forces the blue flames to execute my will. A ring of fire spanning kilometers encircles my poor victims to their fate. No outside assistance for them. The jeers stop. Their heads turn around to marvel at the new sight. Questions arise. Confusion stirs. Then the first to regain his awareness looks at the empty stake and shouts.
Within the chaos, I search for the priestess. There. About a kilometer directly across from me. My hyper-vision is like that of an eagle. I observe her as if she were right in front of me. She is not bothered by the chaos. Instead, my cane is the subject of her attention.
Not a problem. Soon, I will become the only thing she focuses on for the last day of her pathetic life.
Raising my hand in the air, the cane comes flying out of her hands. It spins arcs in the air, hitting a few unwary idiots in the head before landing perfectly in mine.
I drop the invisibility.
Everyone stares at me. The audacious woman glares daggers at me.
I smirk.
"After that exercise just a while ago," I say with a quick glance behind me at the stake, "A bath is desperately needed. But here is the dilemma. I don't want a bath with water. I want it from your blood. So tell me something.
"How many must I slaughter until black bleeds into red?"
The crowd rush at me. Their wrath is etched into their features like carvings on stone. Their curses spewed from the mouth wish upon me fates much worse than death. But all of that falls onto blind eyes and deaf ears. There is something far more interesting I notice.
Every inhalation and exhalation I can see with clarity. Every heartbeat I can hear with precision. Every chemical released I can smell with accuracy. Every wave of body heat emitted I can feel with definiteness.
I can practically taste the bloodlust in the air.
Never have my senses been this powerful. This is not a product of my amplification ability. Something has changed inside me, and I am not averse to it. A poem I read from a novel a long time ago manifests in my head.
Fire wants to burn.
Water wants to flow.
Air wants to rise.
Earth wants to bind.
Chaos wants to devour.
These people know about my elemental abilities. How about I give them a taste of their true potential?
I am in the standing in the center of the melee. They charge from all directions. It is easy to divide them into five sectors. Those who manage to climb up the steps to me are welcomed with my signature skull-shattering smash of the cane. When the number of attackers starts to become overwhelming, I levitate them in the air and toss them far away. Now is the moment to test my amplification power on the elements.
Fire wants to burn. Those in the sector facing me are my first test subjects. Their cumulative body heat becomes my focus of attention. Normal body temperature is between 36 and 37 degrees Celsius. Above that range is a sign of a fever. I imagine increasing that body temperature little by little. One degree. Two degrees. Sweating, dehydration, heart palpitation, and breathlessness. Three degrees. Four degrees. Fainting, vomiting, headache, dizziness. Five degrees. Six degrees. Comatose to those who are fortunate; delirium and convulsions to those who are not. Seven degrees. Death.
Surviving Liberation Army members gape at their fallen comrades.
"Oh my," I say. Sarcasm oozes from every word. "I was supposed to deprive them of their blood for my bath. My mistake."
They come at me with more fury than earlier. It does not escape my notice that the priestess has not joined the ruckus yet. Hypocritical woman.
Next element.
Water wants to flow. Next sector of victims will have the pleasure of experiencing this death. Kidney failure leads to excessive water retention. For them, I envision precisely that happening. First the blood pressure will rise. Their unanimous rapid heart rates are proof of it. Then the fluid will build up in the appendages. Indeed, they start to look like balloons as they stagger to reach me. Finally, the killer symptom: edema in the lungs. Blood comes out as they cough vigorously. They fall to their knees and clasp their throats for air. Moments later, they fall dead.
"That's much better," I remark at the splotches of blood. "But more is required."
Sector Number Three, your turn now.
Air wants to rise. I read that a bubble of air in the bloodstream caused a slow and painful death. To speed up that process, I summon more than one bubble in Sector Three's bloodstream. Those air embolisms pass from the lungs into the heart into the blood to the brain, and back to the blood, the heart, the lungs. But that trapped air never escapes the body. The process repeats. My attackers' health worsens with each cycle. Like the previous two sectors, difficulty breathing is their primary symptom. I hear them moan and groan from chest pain. Soon enough, they lose consciousness from heart failure and stroke. As their skin turns bluer, death approaches faster.
Earth wants to bind. Sector Four has had plenty of time to observe my rhythmic strategy. They believe that keeping their distance from me is the safer option, so they throw all kinds of debris at me. A block of concrete manages to hit my head. For a few seconds, I lose my hyper-awareness. They seize that moment to climb onto the execution platform and grapple me. Immense weight pushes me down to my knees. I know they will crush me to death if I do not counter now.
My initial response is to hover my cane in the air and thread it through the eyeballs of those touching me. Mutual howls of agony ripple in waves amongst my assaulters. Their grip finally slackens. I slither out of the horde of human mass. Seeing them clutch at the bloody holes where their eyeballs used to be brings me immense satisfaction. I turn to the remainder of Sector Four. Ion concentrations in the body are precarious. What seems like an infinitesimal bit much or less can be lethal. So I imagine their bones slowly whittling away. Their calcium levels rise. Calcium deposits form where they should not. Dehydration, muscle weakness, and irregular heartbeats manifest almost immediately. Some begin to vomit; others appear lethargic and confused. Their pace slows, and by the time they reach me, most of them are dead. Just a little more and your misery will be over. The last of their bones dissolves. They are nothing more than puddles of skin, guts, and blood.
Chaos wants to devour. Those who were unfortunate to be in Sector 5 huddle around the priestess, forming a human shield. Because these poor souls are about to experience the most painful death yet. After all, I saved the best for last. I descend the stairs one by one. Their fear grows with each step covered. The blood from where the concrete hit me trickles has long since trickled down my temple. I wipe it with an ashy glove and grasp the head of my cane. Suddenly, I hear a click. So faint that if my hearing were not superb right now, I would have missed it. I look at the cane. A streak of blood coats the fangs of the dragon's teeth. And a ring of metal peeps out. My cane unscrewed. That has never happened before. What is this? Hesitant, I pull the handle out of the shaft.
My eyes widen at the discovery.
A long length of silver emerges from the interior of the cane. One end is melded to the dragon head. The other end cuts off in a diagonal. I know what this is. Hero Killer Stain had it, and I wanted one, too.
A katana.
It is a little heavy, but it fits in my palm perfectly.
For a moment, the surrounding battlefield vanishes. I am enamored with the glimmer of the metal. Before I lost it in the river during the summer, never had a sword appeared from my cane. A few months later, the League of Villains enacted an ambush on the Eight Precepts of Death. About two months after that, they returned my cane to me. So sometime in those two months, they modified my cane. But how did I not notice? It should have made a different sound when I tapped it on the ground. Even so, why didn't Shigaraki or anyone else tell me, for that matter? Did they know? Did they not know? The stream of thoughts about secrets flashes to the present about my sudden burst in abilities. I should be a writhing mess of flaring joints and frenzied nerves right now. Innumerable abrasions should impede my movement from all the quirks I absorbed. Does the League know something about this, too? I cannot help but question.
I am so consumed by my doubts that it is not until a pair of hands wraps around my neck and pushes me onto my back that my alertness returns. The angle of the sun renders my attacker's features in shadow. His hold on my neck tightens. The throttling starts to become unbearable. Killer instinct compels me to stop trying to poke his eyes out and seize a knife from my boot. There. A straight, fine slice across his jugular. Blood spills like a waterfall onto my face. Whiffs of burning flesh titillate my nostrils. He lets go of me to try to stop the blood flow. It's too late for him, though. Seconds later, he is dead.
His comrade rushes to avenge him. The dagger that killed his friend pierces his skull. I look at the remaining offenders. I don't have the time to pry my weapon out of the corpse. The priestess is my priority.
I lift my katana from the ground. The sunlight reflects off the metal. It allows me to spot something I did not see earlier. A carving. In the center of the blade is a proverb: The head of a dragon, the tail of a snake.
I scoff.
My end will not be so pathetic. Not anymore.
To prove my point, I announce, "I am chaos, and chaos is me. Come and become my feast."
Actually, I don't wait for them to come toward me. As quick as this immunity to power appeared, I know it will disappear quicker. I must finish this game before it does.
Spinner's lessons reverberate in my mind. I had already known about the killing points of the body and how to cut. During my midnight rendezvouses, he would teach me how to wield daggers properly. How to slice minimally and cause the most damage. How to throw them at my opponent. And sometimes, he would let me hold one of his swords and practice fighting with that.
I use that knowledge now as I shift one leg back and lift the katana to eye level. Charging forward like there is no tomorrow, the blade swings back to one shoulder, only to slice cleanly through the neck of the closest attacker. A fountain of blood spurts from where her head once used to be. Rotting flesh around the edges tells me that like my knives, the sword is coated with golden viper venom as well. Perfect.
The priestess shouts at them to circle and close in on me. Someone emits laser beams from their eyes. That one loses the upper half of his face. Another attempts to land a smashing kick on me. He loses a leg. My trickiest yet is a soldier who converts metal shreds into arrowheads. I use my katana to block as many as I can. Yet a few nick me here and there. One almost embeds itself into my arm. The soldier is persistent. Her partners gang up around me to take advantage of my position.
I almost trip onto one of the fallen arrowheads. It's a fatal mistake. The soldier glees with delight as the next barrage aims directly for my vital organs. I kick the nearest assailant's shin and use his body as a shield. Those spires riddle her body like darts on a dartboard. Some poke out of his back, nearly pricking me. At the same time, I summon a wall of tree roots behind the soldier. The roots slither up the feet and curl around the arms. She screams for help. None will be found here. She is wrapped in a straitjacket of nature, which only tightens further. Bones crunch and snap as the roots slowly squeeze around her, ultimately killing her.
Finally, my enemies are afraid of me. I must admit, their profound loyalty to their cause was worthy of admiration. That does not mean I will let those who want to survive flee. They scatter and run away. "Get back here!" I shout as I grab the collar of one of them.
As the last of them find themselves beheaded, I turn to the priestess. Bloody coward thought that hiding behind a throne of ostentatious fake feathers and cheap jewels would protect her. I kick the throne aside. Oh, would you look at that! It was made of plastic, too!
She screeches as she tries to escape. I grab her headdress and pull it off. She looks at me with the face of nightmare Shouto. I mutter, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. You're losing your charm, priestess. Think of something new."
"And do you think committing sin after sin makes you any better," she retorts. She still wears that horrible face. "Go ahead. Kill me. One more body to add to your count. One more reason for that boy to hate you."
I crouch to her level. Her endeavor to scare me off was a mask to hide her terror. It is my turn to intimidate her. As I crawl forward, she scoots backward. That is until her back hits the wall. I've cornered her now. I can only imagine how I look like right now. If the reflection in her eyes is anything to go by, a demon sits before her. A demon who took a bath in blood. I relish her fear.
"I never preached to be better than you, priestess. I never was. But you did. You who manipulates religion to suit your own purposes. Pretty girls to bring to bed … was not that proposition you made to me? Let me tell you something just before you die. I don't think you're better than me; I know that you are equally evil and wicked as me. You wouldn't have been the first to subdue me in your bed." Her eyes slowly widen at the implication. I leer closer, "That's right. I am a seductress. I was damned even before I became a villain."
At the pyre, she had the insolence to undress me. I decide to return the favor with a little gift. Making a show of licking the blood off my lips, I unfasten the ribbons holding the woman's gown together. She never drops the illusion of Shouto. I will only murder her when she does. It is only that determination that helps me swallow my revulsion at my behavior.
The sleeves of the dress fall off her shoulders. I touch the bare skin with my bloodied, gloved fingers and blow. She shivers at the sensation. The illusion flickers for an instant. It's working … I wonder if this is what she does to the girls she rapes. And when they resist, I wonder if she also kills them, passing off their deaths as holy judgment. I try to remind myself that by degrading myself like this, I am sparing all those girls from another horrific night for good.
That reminder becomes more necessary when lust consumes her wholly.
Her hands unbutton my dress shirt one by one. It is the last barrier between my skin and hers. My shirt is nothing more than tatters stuck to my skin at this point, but she is meticulous, nonetheless.
Later, I might laugh about how carnal temptation seems to have the ability to override the fear of death. After Ahearn-san's ex-husband and the Phoenix mafia, this is the third instance where this pattern has proven true. In both those cases, I pretended to submit to the pedophilia desires of men older than me. Here, I am doing it for a woman. So I utilize the same tactic I have used in the past situations: baiting and waiting patiently for her to drop her guard. What she does not know is that with every swipe of my tongue on my lips, the blood is replaced with venom. When she removes the shirt does she reveal her true face.
And like the scorpion she said I was, I strike. My lips smash onto hers. The effect takes place immediately. She scratches at my arms, drawing blood upon blood. I am persistent, though. She tries to break the kiss, but I dig my fingers into her hair and shove her to the blood-stained ground. The poison has already touched her lips and is singing the skin. I want it to enter her body as well. Glaring at her, I force her mouth to part with my tongue. Venom coats her teeth and her own tongue. I feel her swallow. At last.
I end the kiss and straddle her. Her eyes roll back into her head as she shrieks like a banshee. Her knee kicks into my back. I break it. The brain aneurysms burst and leak from her eyes. She claws at her throat, gasping for air. Feeling even more sadistic at her plight, I grab her face with one hand and hold it still. With the other, I slap her harder than she hit me. She bawls crazily. Another slap. My dark side savors her pain.
She is almost dead. I lean close to her ear and whisper, "See you in hell, priestess. Perhaps if you agree to become my servant, I may be lenient with your punishment."
My revenge is complete once she takes her final breath.
And so are my powers.
I struggle to stand on my feet. Gigantomachia is not here yet, I have no idea where the rest of the League is, and I do not know in which direction the tower is. Memory reminds me that Mr. Compress brought his phone with him. I summon my burner phone from the interdimensional vault and dial his number. As it rings, I feel small spasms rock through my body.
Oh, no. Not now.
Mr. Compress answers the call.
"Selene?" I hear him say.
The only response I give him is the sound of coughing up blood. I fall to my hands and knees. Then roll onto my back. He calls out my name again in worry. I do not have the power to speak.
Arthritic flares that feel like a million warrior wasps charged at me rattle my bones. Tremors shiver down my spine. It is only rivaled by deep lacerations that an army of enraged bullet ants would inflict. Foamy saliva dribbles from the corners of my mouth as I spit out more blood.
"Don't cut the phone! I'm tracking your location! I'm on my way!" he exclaims.
Like I have the strength to do utterly anything right now.
This is by far the worst arthritic attack I have experienced. Seems like an unjust payment for the absolute torture I went through. All I want is some rest. Is that too much to ask? A proper, luxurious bath … Rose petals floating above the water … and scented oils … Lavender for the migraine and sandalwood for the joint pain. And a tray of decadent chocolate on the side …
The more I get lost in my bathroom fantasy, the more delirious I become, the more bearable the agony.
The bathtub looks so enticing.
What if I get a bath masseuse, too?
A humanoid shadow blocks the sunlight.
Are you my masseuse?
"Why is it that your clothes go missing every time you are invited to a murder spree?"
The voice is male.
My mistake.
Are you my masseur?
Citation:
"Fire wants to burn. Water wants to flow. Air wants to rise. Earth wants to bind. Chaos wants to devour." - The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare