Chapter 96: 96 – Safe For Now

“Hrrgh… Victory Echoes!” he roared, and fire issued forth from his mouth. Twitcher’s blowtorch of a left arm was met with his fist, plugging shut the muzzle then splitting it wide open until the insect’s forearm fell apart at the seams. Somehow, the essentia sac remained intact even as it fell to the ground and spilt its volatile, noxious contents onto the dirt.

Twitcher turned his body to swing his entire right arm into a vague approximation of a punch, but Strol countered by grabbing the bug’s stump right arm and pulling in the other direction, throwing him to the ground. 

A quick downward stab to the head turned the screeching maniac to a gibbering corpse, murmuring its death-rattle. Deranged gibbering was replaced by the oh so familiar reverberating tone, that of prophetic speech, and Twitcher spilled the last sparks of its soul into heavily-accented Ikesian, but comprehensible Ikesian nonetheless. 

“You will not burn much longer,” it said. “You will not burn, for it is too honorable a fate for scum like you. When all this is over, your kind will be bred down into perfect serfs just barely intelligent enough to function, to consume, to serve. That is the fate of all those who dare oppose the Div-urgh!”

Strolvath’s boot-heel silenced the bug’s speech. He’d heard a variation of it a dozen times over, and each time, it only elicited greater fury in him. With every death-rattle speech, he felt himself slipping further into the very anti-Pateirian propaganda he had helped conceptualize and spread. Letting out a deep breath and putting the knife back in his boot, he kicked the bug’s corpse with all the strength he could muster, taking care to use his prosthetic leg. It bounced off the dome just as his strength faded and the fire in his gut was replaced by wrenching hunger, the blazing strength in his limbs replaced by what could be described as pins-and-needles if they were heated to just below the boiling point of water.

In short, searing pain and equally searing hunger consumed his being, but he was used to it. More used to it than he wanted to be. A swig of Vitamax dulled the pain enough to make his way to the barrier and cross it, collapsing in the grass with a plea of, “Y’mind dragging me inside?”

The three of them took to the task, each of them breathing Fog to hoist his considerable bulk into the shack on stilts. It was almost humorous, that he was the most thoroughly trained in aethermancy, probably had the highest aether rating out of all of them, yet was the only to not know some form of Fog-breathing. 

They set him down on one of the four cots, where he remained for the remainder of the day and night. Strolvath spent the rest of the day keeping to himself, drinking Vitamax and grinning through his pain as he made repeated attempts at grasping the method of Fog-breathing that Zelsys had described, each time with no result beyond yet greater self-inflicted pain. 

The shack had no cooking utensils, but it did hold mixed rations sufficient for both the rest of the trek and the return trip, plus a small cask of… Something. None of them could figure out what it was, beyond the fact it was some type of restoration elixir. It was light-golden and tasted somewhat like short-aged mead, but also carried the trace aftertastes of Viriditas and conferred similar boons. 

Partaking of this beverage relieved pain to a greater degree than either Vitamax or Liquid Vigor, but it also intoxicated the mind in a manner not unlike normal liquor. 

Strolvath quickly inebriated himself off the nectar, and took to ruminating on the state of things as pertaining to the threat that locust-men were whilst the others did… Whatever it was that they did. Sitting, talking, drinking, eating, that was where his attention to detail ended for the moment. He didn’t have spare mental energy to focus outward.

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When the scarred singer invoked those words, Zelsys swore she could see the fire of a funeral pyre blaze behind his eye. The brass ornament in his other eye-socket lit up like a beacon, glowing white with incredible heat that somehow didn’t so much as sear his flesh.

That tiny moment, those scant few seconds of explosive power served to remind Zel that she was among equals, even if they chose not to employ their raw strength as liberally as she did. When he crossed the barrier and collapsed in the grass, the air filled with the smell of whiskey, blood, and smoke.

“Y’mind dragging me inside?” he slurred, looking up with a blank, unfocused stare.

Seeing him on the ground like that, what he’d just done called forth the memory of a conversation she’d had before they crossed the border. “Victory Wash?” she asked Zef with a Fog-filled breath as the three of them hefted the agencyless veteran up the shack’s ladder. 

“Looks like it to me,” the markswoman affirmed once they put him down on one of the cots. “No burns, but he’ll be out of it for a lil’ while.”

After that, it was all silence. With the rations and the cask of mead-like nectar being simply set on the ground, they just took their share. The Inquisitor filled one of her empty bottles and slowly sipped the honey-flavored elixir while she ate some of the dried fruits that were found in the shack’s store of food, all along taking meticulous care to not reveal her face.

She even turned aside in the scant moments when she did pull her gas mask up. 

Zel and Zef did much the same, using their own empty seal-bottles for vessels. Once she’d eaten Zefaris returned to cleaning Pentacle, and soon enough asked for the Tablet. 

After she retrieved the device from her cleaver’s holster and handed it over, she decided to just take the holster off altogether for the night, setting it down on the ground next to her cot. With this great weight off her back, she even took off the ammo belt and her arm-harness in an attempt to assuage the pervasive muscle pain she’d caused herself. 

It was fading, that much was true, but it would still be a little while before it was gone - much the same was the case for her visible wounds. 

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