Book 4 - Chapter 150 (Patreon)

Author's note: 150 chapters. Wow, ladies and gents. Thanks for coming along.

The interior of the Furnace roared. Pistons shuddered, gears revolted, and fans thrummed in displeasure. Like a beast trying to regurgitate something vile consumed in the heat of the moment.

Wretch.

A dark form slithered through its interior. An unwelcomed guest. A parasite. At this very moment, he hid in a space barely large enough to accommodate a human. A junction between three sections of pipe that now lay unused. Beneath him he could hear the taps of footsteps, and he reckoned the space was nestled above a street.

A flicker of light and a tiny tongue of flame lit the junction with an orange glow. His Captain’s lighter, marked by an impaled beast's head.

Rats stood before him, close to two hundred of the tiny creatures. Many gathered from within the closed city itself. Though his space had shrunk, his web of control was growing. And soon he would try to snare Grendel and take his life.

He knew his half-brother well. They both were spawn of the mysterious figure in their own city that produced unruly children drawn to the Beast-Flame. Leaving them with only mad memories and a book of monsters. The Compendium of the Hunt.

He drew the book from inside his torn shirt. The tome had seen better days. Its surface was marred by scratches and cuts. The thick paper shriveled from moisture. This former treasure had led him down a winding path of misery, and when the time came to discard it. He would rejoice. But that time wasn't now.

He opened the first page in the flickering light. A pen had marked the first page with a simple message. One he guessed all his half-brothers and sisters had been given as well. Black ink on a page turned yellow.

Grow thy flame and meet me at the summit. What remains of you, I shall call kin.

Wretch didn’t care. Whatever creature had sired him, he had no intention of ever meeting him. He had brought this book with him for another reason. He flipped through the pages, each depicting a monster in the black ink. Some he had already met.

Shasmara the Storm Cadaver. A hulking creature made of rotting sea behemoths that had once threatened to ruin his own city.

Others now nestled around his flame.

Yarok, Glutton of the Black City. A massive bird with human hands reaching from its torso. He spared Buttons a glance through a particular black string available to him alone. The bird was still bound to his will, and it now perched above the Furnace, glaring down at it in disapproval.

She’ll be alright. With time you'll forget me altogether, he told himself and flipped through the pages in search of a particularly vile monster.

Another flip of a page and a man stared back at him from the ink. White hair and young features. Perhaps they had looked like siblings had he not lost his own face on the gruesome path he’d walked.

Grendel the White Death
Tier: Pyre
Blessings: Time-limited transformation into a monstrous variant of a mountain ape and mist-related abilities.

He let his fingertips trail over the page in the flickering light. Wretch had fought him twice. The first was a resounding defeat, and the other a close draw. But he had learned what he could do. He knew Grendel’s Blessings in more detail than perhaps anyone besides the Pyre himself.

“Regeneration, just like me. Then the ability to spawn mist from his lungs. Those he likely got as an Ember.”

The lighter from his captain reflected in the eyes of the rats. The Brood watched him like spellbound children. Every now and then, another joined their ranks from the three pipes, pulled from kitchen cupboards and food-sacks around the closed city.

“Then at Fireling, the Blessing to flicker from place to place in the mist. At Blaze, the form of the monstrous ape. And finally, the power to lock the mist away from the world itself. Isn’t that right, half-brother?”

Another rat scurried through the tunnel to the right, hurrying to join the others. More. He needed more. Some as spies, and others as tools of revenge.

You'll no doubt be armed to the teeth, but so will I.

He placed the two swords before him on the metal floor. The first was a serrated blade of crimson steel. Despite the many battles, it looked as pristine as the day he had killed its former master. The second was a simpler, curved weapon, adorned with markings of eyes along its entire surface.

Blood-Starved Edge
The red steel drinks blood and gore, robbing your flame to induce bloodlust and brutal strength. The ravenous hunger in your gut refuses to settle until you have tasted the enemy’s flesh.

Eyebite
Expend flame for the next attack to inflict a wound that refuses to heal except through the strongest of flame. A successful strike robs you of sight until you have taken a life.

These two he had taken from Kattla, a powerful Blaze of Nov Yanosk capable of wielding many Blessed weapons instead of the regular three. He’d chosen these with care back then. For this very purpose. One blade to close the physical gap between Blaze and Pyre, and the other to counter his healing skin.

Then there was the locket protecting from divination. It now dangled around his wrist on a thin silver chain. Without it, he’d already been caught. Those were the three Blessed items he had chosen, for he could only carry any more. But there was a surprise nestled in the stomach of one of the rats. Taken from a Blaze in the city above. A last surprise.

“Even then, it will not be enough…” He turned to the heap of vermin. To his senses, they were black dots. Some bound to him directly, capable of sharing senses and sights from any distance. The rest followed his iron command as long as they stayed within his area of control. There were other dots around the city. Carefully planted in locations of importance or movement. He spared those spies a glance.

Curfew. The civilians locked in their homes while the Blessed and Gearheads patrolled the streets with rods ending in a cage-like crown with meat inside. Ratcatchers. He felt the sensation of the cured food through his spies and the growl in their stomachs. In other places, walls and pipes were ripped from their sockets. Machines sent in to search for him. Grendel, however, had yet to make an appearance.

I’ll find you, search house by house if I must. But then, I must be ready to act.

In the low light, he turned his gaze to the waiting rats.

“You,” he said, and pointed to a particularly sturdy one. The rat squeaked and rushed up his torn shirt to nestle in the palm of his hand. He released the thumb on the lighter and plunged them into darkness, then reached out with his mind through the connection they shared. Carefully, he sensed the creature’s consciousness. It was a whirl of hunger, itchy skin, and fear. All emotions bleeding into one another like paint down a drain. There were no clear thoughts or structure to its state, unlike the intelligence of Buttons or the three thieves. Yet there were urges, unlike the few times he had tried his hands at binding insects to his will. Their minds were just a net of actions responding to sight.

Now, little rat, it is time to bow.

His own will slithered through the connection, and pounced. A jolt went through the creature. An urge to scurry, but that too he smothered. It was his. Its flesh and blood, his. Its will and life, all of it, was his. And now he was going to use it.

A fire lit in his eyes, strong enough to reflect in the metal surface around him. Then he pushed a form upon the claimed flesh, utilizing all he had learned from Vasili and his own gruesome experimentation.

First, its heart grew so large it bulged through its stomach. Then the arteries pulsed into slithering cords under its patchy fur. Only then was it time for the bone and muscle. Its back curved, its claws elongated one at a time, and new teeth pierced through its gum. A screech threatened to rip from its throat, but he demanded silence, so the quiet remained.

He placed it onto the metal floor with tenderness as it grew too large, whispering words of encouragement during the vile ordeal.

“Good. Breathe. It’s just a little further.”

A minute later, the glow of his eyes died, and the darkness flooded forward again. A series of sparks. Then again. On the third try, the lighter finally caught life. Something stared back at him in the narrow space. A human. No, not quite.

A creature with fur, claws, and a wolfish head but the base anatomy of a man. A slaughter hound. A small one made to fit in the pipes. It growled at him, and he scratched its chin.

“Well done,” he whispered and sent it crawling away into the dark. Such creatures were weapons too, and he would place them throughout this system of forgotten gears and pipes.

He moved on to the next. This one he made into a spider. The third into a ball of human limbs that slunk through the machinery with ease.

A headache settled in his mind, whispers from within crawling forth to revel at his exertion. His flame was strong and vast. But these changes required not only concentration but a mountain of his power. Next was his own flesh. It was time to weave the deadliest form he could from all his slain prey. To become a creature built for a singular purpose.

Four arms, two for the swords and two with claws. I'll have to be—

A series of taps from below.

He had sent a spy to peer over the road beneath. A rat hiding under a metal contraption. It gazed over the street with its blurry vision. Gearheads stood idle among the gold-trimmed filigree and fluttering flags.

Strange…

His eyes grew to slits. He turned to the brood of rats. He’d been calling them to him from all over the city. A flash of white in their midst.

His hand shot forward, digging deep in the pool of moving bodies. He ripped something hiding within. A rat. But this one was not like the others, it was covered in porcelain. A cog exposed from its skull made a singular tiny click.

Good, it felt a little too simple.

A thump from below. Ceramic hands burst through the floor of the space he was hiding in. Beams of light pierced the dark. The vermin scrambled. Wretch crushed the white rat and scooped up his belongings. “Two stay, the rest with me,” he said and disappeared into the shadows.

A moment later, a trio of dolls ripped through the floor. Two rats jumped from above. Three porcelain fists shot towards them. A twitch ran through their tiny bodies, and they exploded in a hail of black shards. A boom rocked the city. But Wretch was already far away.

Rats encased in porcelain, and Gearheads planted with explosives dug deeper. The Furnace itself groaned at the war in its stomach. But Wretch had only begun.