Chapter 39 (Patreon)

A man crawled through a cloud of heated mist. He was wounded, the tendons of his legs severed. A gash along his eyes impeded his sight. “Please,” he sobbed.Two naked feet stepped after him through the steam. Leaving a trail of blood along a frayed carpet. A figure with a mask frozen in joy and a broken rapier in hand. 

Wretch drove the splintered weapon into the man’s skull. 

He stumbled forward. In the corridor behind him, laid a handful of broken figures, throats and faces torn open.

Wretch wasn’t unhurt either. He reached with a clawed hand, gripping a handle sticking out of his neck. With a rip, he tore the dagger from his flesh. He walked forward with fiery eyes, the skin and muscles twisting itself back together. 

Blood dripped from the tips of his claws and each breath wheezed out between his gore-stained teeth. But his eyes were still cold despite the fire in their irises. His body had long gone beyond its limits, forced to continue by fire and will. He’d ripped and tore through anyone he could find, searching for a revelation. And one had come, twisted out of the guts of his enemies.Violence was a language, and he had just learned his first words.  

He focused on his ember, It was flickering at less than a fifth capacity.Any more and he risked going mad, unless he already were.But the professor was somewhere, and they needed to speak. 

As he crossed a corridor, a recognizable smell brushed against his senses. Moldy herbs. There we are..

He followed the scent up to a large double door. It was locked. But that wouldn’t stop him. Bloodied keys filled Wretch’s pockets and he worked through them. Finally one slid into the mechanism with a soft click. 

Freezing air welled out as the doors opened. The gust cooled his bruised skin and aching muscles. Chains. Hundreds of them, swaying from the ceiling. Each ending in a metal hook, some occupied. Dark arms with clawed hands, lower jaws and legs, some sewn together into amalgamations of twisting anatomy. Each, a limb that once had been his.

He walked forward through the forest of metal and flesh, a testament to his suffering. Voices. From the other side of the hall. Lanterns shining through the chains.

Wretch swayed through the chains on naked feet. Stepping out from the shadows of chains with his grinning mask. Two guards. One screamed, but Wretch didn’t hear. A spear thrust towards him and he took a step to the side, like seaweed moving in the current.In one smooth motion, he moved forward. Thrusting a broken rapier into an eye-socket. The whistle of a blade came from behind. 

He ducked, turned, and lunged. 

His claws tore and the tail strangled. In just a few heartbeats, Wretch tore him to pieces. The guards’ scream echoed in the hall beyond. 

Wretch left bloodied footprints across the stone as he stumbled forward into the next hall. It was massive, hewn from the spire itself and lined with enormous cages. On the other side, a group of twenty figures loaded goods into an elevator at a panicked pace. 

Among them stood a middle aged man with a clean-shaven chin, a pair of glasses over cold blue eyes and blackish gray hair. Wretch froze. For a moment, Wretch and the professor locked eyes.

Finally

Wretch burst into a sprint. His feet making soft sounds against the stone floor.

The professor gave a solemn smile and said something to a young man beside him. The boy went pale, then nodded. Running out of the elevator towards a massive lever. 

“Faster,” Wretch wheezed, closing the gap at a blitzering pace. 

The Gulschak grabbed the lever and pulled with all his might.Chains screamed along the ceiling and counterweights shifted. One by one, The gates drew open. 

Things moved within the cages. Bundles of limbs shuffling and twitching. 

In a flash something shot out from the bars beside the young Gulschak, an ashen limb the size of a tree-trunk.It impaled him through the chest and yanked him inside the cage, cutting his scream short.  

“Oh Wretch. My boy,” the professor said with a voice like silk from the other side of the hall. “To think I thought you just a source of material. Now you are a proper Blessed.”

“If only we had more time together. But alas,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Now all I offer is a heartfelt reunion.”

From the cages, distorted bodies extended hands and feet, each stitched amalgamation more unnatural than the next. They blocked his path.Then, from the cage by the lever, came something worse. 

Six long limbs crawled forward, each ashen and lined with teeth. His skin, his teeth. They  unfurled, the core of the creature dangling under the spidery legs. A mass of dark arms, wrapped around its center like macabre armor. Between a narrow slit in the arms, two fiery eyes peeked out.

It looked at Wretch and showed him his name. 

Jonah of Lost Hope. 

Wretch’s body shuddered, a scene flashing before his eyes. Jonah’s massacred figure whispering his goodbyes before the Gulschak’s took him. 

His lethargic body boiled. His howl reverberating against the walls“YOU TWISTED PIECE OF FILTH!”

“Show me,” the professor answered. “Who among you is my finest work.”

The creature that had once been Jonah stretched its limbs, its arms serrated with teeth scraping against the stone. All around the twisted creations crawled forward. Some hissing, others quiet. 

Wretch ignored them all. His mask grinning as he lunged forward with broken rapier in hand. Sprinting straight for Jonah. 

The creature was fast, striking towards him with its arms in wide arcs. Each limb flashing forward like a scythe. 

Wretch dodged low, rolling under a strike. Another arm brushed past. It tore open his back before crashing against the stone. The ground trembled.

Pain shot through him. It didn’t matter. He rushed forward, aiming not for Jonah but at the elevator beyond. 

On the other side of the chamber, the professor's followers shoved the last of the luggage inside the elevator. Thick metal bars slammed down with the grinding of gears and rattling chains. 

A moment later, Wretch crashed into the bars with a thud. Claws reaching through the gap and tail thrashing. The closest of the group stumbled back, just out of reach. 

“Yes! Wretch, that’s it. Hold on to that anger and fury, use it.” the professor said in the tone of fatherly advice.

With a snarl, Wretch threw the broken weapon through the gap in the bars. The blade cut through the air, flashing straight for the professor’s throat. 

A cobblestone shot upwards With a clang, it deflected the blade, a second away from the man’s smiling face. 

The stone hovered impossibly in the air. A broad and squat man stood beside the professor, hand outstretched to control the stones. On the other side another man, tall and skinny gripped a longsword.

“That mask,” the Blessed with the stones whispered with sorrow. “That was Jusjenko’s…” 

“You,” Wretch growled, clawing against the metal bars. “I know your faces, I’ll find you. And when I do, you will beg like we did.” 

Wretch stared at the group as the hidden elevator rattled downwards. He burned their faces into his memory. 

“Goodbye Wretch, the Rat-Eater.” The professor said gently. Remember, the only true sin is mediocrity. But I believe in you, I truly do.”

The platform rattled downwards, vanishing into the dark. “And when you beg.” Wretch roared after them. “I won’t listen, because you never did!” 

Behind him, the freed creatures howled with him.