Psychopomp

“Our bodies are the gift of this earth, molded from its dirt and dust by the hands of the Ichorians to provide the soul with a vessel to experience its every dimension. It is intrinsic to our experience and the memories we derive from them. Honor it, then, while it is still ours, and when it comes time to return it to earth, let us take with us its essence in ash.”

Excerpt, Of Soma and Psyche

Teachings of the Ichorians

“May I be Worthy in strength and resolve. May I be ardent in duty and death.” Ewain and Art’s voices interweave in near perfect unison.

Dreadful spectral green flames meagerly light the district otherwise absent of any light or life. Every building, storefront, and lamp post are voided husks still fresh with an aural reminder of what they once were.

A barricade manned with anxious Peacekeepers partitions the trauma site from the small crowd of curious sharp-dressed patricians and the Warden and his personal guard. Brusque, blinding flashes and hisses of cameras vie for shots of the Psychopomp before them at the barricades border. On a building high, the raven watches, mute and inescapable. Ewain stands upon the precipice, tepid autumn air on his back while lips of winter nibble his face.

The housing complex looms ever high, a sanctuary of vacuous dark. Its scaly body shivers with a tundra freeze even the eyes can sense like respiratory mist and its every window seems an eye fixated upon him.

Huuussshhhhh…. All the clamor of the crowd silences as Ewain steps forward, wades into the vaporous chilling sea exhaled from the complex. Sickening rot floats upon the sodden currents like pustular flesh made air…splashing like vomitous sea mist onto his face and neck, coalescing in glistening beads which cling to every fiber of hair and congest the throat.

The feeble torch lights flee, afeared to follow, surrendering so pitifully and abandoning him to unchallenged shadow. The wooden doors of the complex are shut, the protruding carvings of roses and vines ushering him forth with a murmur, this subconscious beckon hither.

“Art,” Ewain mutters under his breath, barely even a whisper, “Twenty percent physiological control. Adjustments permitted, but no sensory detachment. No motor function interference or assist.”

“Adaptive physio at twenty. No sensory. No motor function. Understood, Psychopompos.”

The brass ring set upon the door groans through the dark. When he grabs hold of it, his fingers sear from the coldness. The aged wood and rustling hinges howl with such piercing volume everything within the building must now know of his coming. Lightless nothingness lies ahead of the doorway’s event horizon.

As soon as he steps inside, the air seeps into his pores. Bit by bit it churns into freezing lead and wields gravitational might to try and prostrate him upon the ground, a feeling which flees as swiftly as it came. For all the friction between them, Ewain credits Art his quick response. Were he a normal person, dead already upon the ground he would lie.

Respiration stable.

Cardio stable.

No shivering. No sporadic perspiration or debilitating twist of the muscles.

No hewing pain of the digestive system, which to many of the Order was the most worrisome, for it has been noted to kill in such an undignified manner.

The cosmic indigo-blue of Ewain’s eyes swirls like a misty vortex, mustering what little ambient light there is into an adequate black-white visual and shows him the lobby he now stands in and the hall ahead.

Flesh secretes from the walls as viscous sweat, coating all in a ghastly pink and green intestinal mass. Pulsing, mucous-covered veins weave through the walls and floor, rattling doorknobs and mounted portraits with the faintest of rhythmic beats.

One beat…two, three. Five seconds of stillness. Three weak beats, five seconds of quiet.

Every recitation layers upon the previous in an incessantly imperceptible chorus. A thousand percussive sobs and screams beseech panic…the cadence to which unseen needles prick sharply upon the throat and torso.

Words and feelings stir within him, utter pulverization of hope to meaningless dust, the profound anchor of the heart and breathlessness of fear. What have I done? What have I done? My fault. Stupid. Stupid. His thoughts come as whispers from the walls.

They want to be his own. They bang upon Ewain’s conscience again and again, pleading for him to beg for life, to surrender. Were it not for Art, he would have collapsed upon the floor and choked upon imaginary blood. He could ask his partner to numb the pricking, the emotional turmoil, yet part of him felt it wrong. To experience this…the victim’s tortured wails…this much he owes, at least.

Complete physio control is wiser, Art lectured in the past, adaptive protocol can distort focus. And the young Psychopomp privately knew his argument to have merits, yet this helped him feel the site…absorb its essence he tells himself now as his heart accelerates.

“Physio at thirty.”

Heart steadies.

A severed finger lies upon the floor ahead, the center of a blood-drawn inverted triangle with primitive crimson symbols at each point.

Norma’s, Ewain taps with his finger on the frame of the Keresta, his hand now firmly attached to its grip.

“Must be,” Art agrees in subtle disgust. “Broodmaster is suffusing. Site is in maturity. There may be a Mimic on this floor.” His words are quick and quiet as he can make them. Every spoken word lessens Ewain’s sensory perception.

Ewain only nods. As he steps forward with agonizing slowness, he keeps his eyes forward and avoids every vein and tendril wet upon the ground. A willful entrance into a beast’s throat. Every door he passes a potential lure to only pull him into an acidic gut to be quartered and have flesh peeled from bone.

A door creaks open ahead.

Ewain instantly freezes in place and draws the Keresta.

A head slowly peers from the doorway, fixating on him with hidden eyes. Ghastly pale yet wrought in shadow with matted hair that obscures its outline, it peers directly into his eyes. A chill crystallizes in the spaces between his every vertebra.

He stares back, not once flinching. Keresta still at the ready, top strap glowing red, he keeps still, listens.

The head withdraws into the room.

So loud it slams the door closed it sounds like a gunshot, rattling the walls and floor.

Forward, Ewain proceeds until he comes but arm’s length from the door.

A voice, at the fringes of perceptible volume, hums from behind the door.

He reaches for its handle when something scurries down the hall. A black blur of a silhouette that dashed from one room to another with a creak and slam of a door.

Not a thing more moves for the next unending moment, and with the weapon barrel pointed between the door and hall, Ewain twists the freezing doorknob, its metal creaking.

Green light undulates weakly at the end of the room, around a corner, and the acidic hum grows more audible. Closing the door behind him, Ewain places a concussive disk on the floor just inside and with caution peers around the corner.

A solitary candle flickers next to the swaying figure of a woman standing before a tall mirror. Incomplete patches of bloody skin clad the body and between each show muscle, sinew, and bone where the crusted green dress does not cover. Its lidless bloodshot blue eyes never stray from the mirror, looking at itself up and down, contorting its body to scrutinize a new part or angle. Sinewy, bloody fingers leave crusty red streaks through its light red hair.

Click. The hue of the Keresta top strap turns silver.

The figure’s eyes gaze at him through the mirror, dead into his own. It stops humming.

“Am I beautiful enough?” its wringed voice whispers, “Will they notice me?”

“Touched by Iris herself. Just like Davi Taea and Philia May.” Ewain answers sincerely just above a whisper, his weapon still at the ready as he tries to make more of the face.

“Hm,” it acknowledges softly with a quick exhale and looks back at itself, “But I have so many flaws,” it rubs its fleshless jaw that quivers up and down, then down to its emaciated waist, “I can’t have any.”

Behind him the doorknob creaks.

The figure begins to cry as it touches its many perceived flaws, “So many.”

The hinges squeal.

“Psychopompos,” Art implores.

Just as he fires the Keresta, sending a flashing silver bolt through the figure’s back and pinning it against the cracking mirror, a BOOM explodes behind Ewain. A scream of unimaginable pain follows as Ewain spins around to see broken boards of ceiling and floor and dust obscuring the outline of the man-sized creature writhing on the floor. Through it he can make out the silhouette: porous, dark leathery skin and elongated, misshapen head.

Click. Black. Click. Red.

Its head explodes, the pieces and remnant skull smoldering now with embers while Ewain pivots back toward the female figure. Every movement it makes grates its skin against the hundred pieces of shattered glass with wincing cries. Not the wails of a banshee or guttural howls of a monster, but the whimpers of a human being cut again and again in immeasurable excruciation. Its pitiful arms and legs kick and push in vain attempts to remove it from the glass only succeeding in hurting it more.

“K-kill me,” it pleads, “E-end me.”

Caught in its blue-in-red eyes, Ewain heavily lifts his Keresta.

“Did you verify aberrance?“ Art asks. “Broodmasters do not always embed the seat of the victim’s soul in themselves. We must be sure.”

With a grave sigh and clenching jaw, Ewain nears the figure, clenches his teeth as he takes a fistful of its moist, greasy hair, and pulls the face away from the mirror. It screams and struggles with eyes that begs to capture his, yet he avoids them best he can as he studies its pained face…the faint cheekbones, widow’s peak hairline, hooked sharp nose….

He releases it and steps back, “Aberrance verified,” he exhales.

“End me…end my miserable life.” It sobs.

Once the Keresta is aimed at the back of its head, he holds. A moment’s hesitation to close his eyes stays his shot for but a second before this counterfeiter’s head erupts in kindled explosion. Ringing silence returns to usher a deep breath for Ewain, and he does not open his eyes until he is turned away from his deed.

“The mimic was…oddly passive,” Art observes.

“It impersonates the victim…I told it what it needed to hear,” Ewain says quickly before exiting the room.

“Perhaps.”

Motionlessness is the hall as he continues his patient march down it.

Ahead the steps of the stairwell rattle with fury up and up, and Ewain sees something hanging nearby. An ornamentation of bone and sinew like a wind chime. Whipping whispers of harsh guttural tones speak from the bones in conversation with themselves.

Trakt ni pas.

Hech lo ka-rak.

Heart begins to boil.

“Physio at thirty-five.”

The floorboards of the second floor groan and thump in long repetition. Ewain’s every step up announces his approach. Deeper and deeper, into salivating, moaning tracts where flesh consumes nearly every bit of surface like mold. Webs of thick pink regurgitation weave in the corners.

“Physio at forty.”

Three distant, piercing knocks rap upon a door from somewhere above.

BANG

BANG

BANG

Like gunshots it rings, wailing for not a second before CRACK! Slamming closed. Thuds erupt into clanging chaos, the split of wood, shattering of glass, a crash upon the floor so forceful he feels its vibrations in the stairwell steps. It repeats in unending loops.

There, leaning against the rail in the dark just above Ewain is a figure with a pale mask, staring at him. He meets its fixation through the condensing mist of his breath and continues up. Away it walks, into the hall out of his sight.

On the last steps before the second floor from both above and below, Ewain places concussive disks.

Distant, far down the hall, a radio turns on, playing a measure of bouncy vocal pop before flicking off, then on again. Just as the low melody swoons, the masked head peers from a doorway at the end of the hall.

After a moment it brings its body out to bear, adorned in black rags with much more smooth flesh and skin over its bones, though red-stained it still is. Toward him it steps in dancing choreography, opening each door that it passes. Ewain readies the Keresta.

Mere feet it stops from him, dozens of black portals open behind it as it stares through abyssal eye holes of the mask. He closes the distance, it flees away, swinging, twirling, and banging upon the floors and walls until stopping again at the end.

Off, the music turns, and the figure looks at him motionless.

He loiters in the quiet, listens. Nothing. Charged with a deep breath, Ewain sprints hard toward the figure while throwing concussive disks upon the floor behind him.

Explosions resound to his rear in booming sequence, and before him, before the figure, dark beasts thrust from their rooms. Sickly visages with coarse, ribbed skin that seethes and fumes like dying coals and binds so bone-shatteringly taut around lean, long limbs crowned with gangly, webbed digits and curved talons six inches along. Atop desiccated, concave ribbed torsos are skulls so elongated they protrude far down their ridged spines. Their razor-teethed rounded jawlines are sewn with thick, sinewed bone…rotting flesh barely clings to the mandibles, and upon this, craniums of festering flesh and gouged eyes bear horror while black muscular tendrils root into their crowns.

Scarlet bolts yield plumes of foul red-black mist as fluid embers cling to ceiling and walls. With a quick pivot and kneel, Ewain sees through the rubble and haze more beasts, rising disoriented from the ground. The head of the one nearest bursts into flames with the crack of the Keresta.

Click. Silver. Click. Black.

After the concussive shot decimates the innards of the next, the top strap turns red and with his left hand Ewain pulls the axe from his belt. A chaotic choreography follows as he fires and swings in wondrous motions, each action setting up the next in building momentum as the broodlings further down recover and engage him in this dance. It builds and builds to culminate in the final upward swing of the axe which catches the final broodling, pinned by a nail shot, under its jaw and cleaves with such force its mandible splits as eruptive earth. Incendiary impact of its chest completes the fiery dance, leaving the hall aglow in a layer of blood-embers as a field of fresh magma.

A luminous jade inferno alights the hall, and as Ewain stares back down, body heaving in only a little more of this foul air, he sees the figure watching almost innocently. Over seething carcasses and spewed, steaming innards, the cinder-clad Psychopomp steps, bringing himself closer to the figure as he swaps the Keresta’s cylinder.

Suddenly its hands reach up for its shoulders as if to cover itself, its knees knock together, and it backs away. “Tell me how to improve!” an eerily sweet voice demands as it slows its retreat. One delicate arm down by its side, the other hand crossing its chest to hold onto the arm just above the elbow, it looks down at the floor. “Whatever I need to work on, tell me. I want to get this. I want to be the best.”

Ewain slows his march, watches as the figure now anxiously approaches.

“Tell me how to be that, please. Tell me what to do, and I will do it.” Its fingers fidget with the knots of cloth upon its shoulders.

“Stop,” Ewain tells it with firm tenderness, placing his weapon back into the holster but keeping his hand on its grip.

It stops in place, corpses before its bare feet, “Stop?” It repeats with ridicule before collapsing to the ground.

Illumination begins its patient, flickering departure to darkness. He takes a cautious step forward when the mimic’s body contorts, its arm raising into the air, then its chest follows and soon its body moves as through the hands of invisible specters compelled them. Evoking the body’s sexuality, teasing the flesh hidden beneath its modesty, its movements undulate and twirl in a choreography of apprehension and temptation that he recognizes.

Ewain finds himself fixed in place, unsure what to do now as the mimic’s dance intensifies. When it freezes, its hands cover its bosom while masked eyes glare at him expectedly. “Do your part,” it prompts.

“I cannot,” he says with heavy words, “You do not want this.”

Harsh, fork-tongued whispers slither from the flesh walls, coiling around the ears and into the brain. “You must,” it pleads, “this will be the only opportunity I will ever have.”

His fingers tighten around the Keresta’s grips, “No, it will not be.”

Whispers become incessant, a torrent layering one upon the other in a dizzying chorus. The mimic clutches its head, its delicate fingers pulling on its hair as its body twitches and contorts, “I should have done it,” its words come guttural, “No, no, no, I couldn’t,” then fragile. “I-I ruined it! I destroyed it! That’s why it ruined me. Didn’t feel right, didn’t feel right!” It backs against a wall, against the flesh, “Weak! Weak! Weak!”

BANG

BANG

BANG

Again, the cacophony upstairs repeats.

Ewain walks forward, positioning his body sideways towards the figure.

Its head snaps toward him in an instant, and a high-pitched voice leaves its plaster lips, “Have you come to play your part?” It giggles and cries, “Take me. Take me now.”

Disgust and pity writhe within him as he watches it stretch its arms to the side and push its chest out. He draws his weapon and, in a blink, the mimic lunges at him, throwing him and the gun to the ground as it swings its sharp, pointed fingers wildly. They scrape against his armor, his bracers, and pauldrons with unbearable screeching. Errant swings catch between the armor pieces, ripping clothes and skin with ease.

Teeth clenched, his arms keeping the mimic and one of its arms at bay, Ewain uses his legs to roll them over, grab his pistol, and with the mimic now pinned under him, he shoots off one of its arms. The scream of agony is human, a woman’s unsettling curdles of pain. Top strap turned to silver, he impales the other arm into the ground and holds the mimic by its neck to keep it from wildly wriggling.

The face beneath the mask looks at him with uncanny resemblance. Long-lashed blue eyes opened to engorging wideness, fine brows twisted in tightness, and lush pink lips gasping. Even the irises dilate in this dark, and attempt to lull him in.

Could this be her?

Sharp snap of bones precipitates the sudden impaling pain in his leg. Dripping profusely from a protruding, broken bone, the mimic’s arm digs its thin fingers as deep into his leg as it can before squeezing and beginning to pull.

Tightening his grip on its neck, Ewain’s other arm summons the Keresta’s power to sever the rest of the mimic’s other arm. In its face he sees every wrinkles of the anguish and hears it in spine-tingling cries. No tears fall from the eyes, he notices as he scrutinizes every feature once again.

Straight, pointed nose. Faint cheekbones. Attached earlobes. Widow’s peak hairline. Is this her? He turns the face, left and right, looking and looking, desperate to find an aberrance.

“Psychopompos,” Art comes in, “along the jawline. Her right side.”

There, he sees it. A mole, just like how Norma had except…hers was on her left side. Harder, tighter, his thick fingers grip the neck, eyes foolishly staring into those he prepares to end, planetary black suns before implosion.

Bringing the Keresta barrel just inches from the mimic’s face, Ewain musters resolve with a shaky, deep breath and when he closes his eyes, the pronounced call of the weapon summons emptiness.

He drops to the ground by its side, keeping his eyes closed, and drags himself back until he feels the wet, pulsating surface of wall flesh against him. Breathe, he tells himself, breathe, Ewain. Slight shakes come over his right hand, no more than the strum of a guitar string. They are mimics. Imitations born of malice. Fraudulent parasites. No more. It is not her. It is not her.

“Psychopompos, are you okay?”

“Fine,” he dismisses and pushes his shaking hand flat and hard against the ground. “Just need a moment before treating the wounds.”

“They’re shallow, thankfully,” Art observes, “Fulsa powder should be sufficient to treat them quick.” He pauses. “We should reconsider zeroing you.”

“I told you no more, Art,” Ewain says with tempered aggravation, “Let me handle this.” From his belt he pulls a small tube, twists its top, then positions his leg to sprinkle some of the crystallized white powder onto the bubbling ridged wounds. Immediately they ignite with pain, and he forcibly shuts his mouth to forbid even a whimper.

Deep breath in through the nose. Out through the mouth.

In.

Out.

The site is toying with her, twisting and cutting with the trauma. They’re synthesizing evermore.

Eyes open, looking up, away from the carnage of faux innocence feet from him. He rises and returns to the stairwell.

BANG

BANG

BANG

Through this new silence, muffled screams reach him, the terror in them rattling through the pores into bone.

The tendrils rooted in the creases of each step and banister quake with revving beats. One beat, two, three. Pounding and pounding and pounding.

He draws a Concussion Disk from his belt and places it upon the steps, one after one, leaving behind him a trail.

The third floor nears, this yawning orifice of a long, pitch dark trachea shrouded in static gray distortion. Everything in sight squirms and moves, every strand of the wall undulates and lures sight into an oscillating tunnel. Phantom screws twist into his temples.

“Physio at fifty.”

Murmurs and sobs lurk ahead.

A pool of dark fluid spreads to the stairwell, drips down in a viscous drip-drip-drip.

“So…many bones left to use,” a voice like rusted nails taunts, “So…horrible. Helpless, too weak to save yourself.” It cackles in perverse pleasure. “Surrounded by thousands of people, yet none could hear you. Butchered for hours. Scream. Scream loud as you can.”

A door slams ahead.

Delicate, unadorned bodies line the hallway floor as carrion tapestry, leaving not a space uncovered. Arms and legs over and around others, bosoms red with dozens of fluted gashes, autumn hair flittered about, eyes open wide, and lips moving all.

I asked for this.

I did this to myself.

I deserve this.

Stupid, so stupid.

All repeat their mantras without end.

“No solace awaits you. Such agony,” it laughs. “Your pain will never end.”

Ewain stops before them, and their eyes turn toward him and stare unblinking.

“Noo-!” A woman’s voice shrieks from one of the rooms. “No! No, no, no!”

One by one, the rooms of the hall arise in cacophony. Boisterous jazz blares from a radio in one, wholesome blues swoon from another. A calm voice ascends in volume in vain attempt to report the evening news, another leads with jokes punctuated with fanfare and instruments. No one room plays the same thing.

“No one can hear you,” the incisive voice gleefully goads.

A door grates its hinges ahead, and a grossly misshapen head peers out before emerging with its gargantuan figure. Its visage stands like the beasts below yet dwarfs them in sheer size. Clutched in its razor-tipped fingers is the neck of another mimic, freshly impaled, which it carelessly throws atop the others.

Its eyeless face turns to him and pivots its chest with it.

There, offset to the left in its concaved torso is a head embedded. The face, still bound with skin, protrudes slightly while the eyes remain closed.

“The Broodmaster….” Art murmurs. “It’s keeping the victim’s core with it.”

I asked for this.

I did this to myself.

I deserve this.

Stupid, so stupid.

“None of this was your doing,” Ewain says.

Suddenly the Broodmaster twitches.

“It’s rejecting your words, they’re not resonating.”

“You never asked for this!”

Furiously now it writhes and howls, and from the walls come a voice much like Norma’s. “My fault! My fault! My fault!”

The doors around the Broodmaster open, a sudden increase in the volume of the chaotic symphony bellowing through with the emergence of more broodlings who push aside or simply step upon the mutilated mimics’ bodies.

Behind him the stairs boom and rattle.

Zero second trigger, he sets the concussion disks to. “Kronyl,” Ewain barely utters, knowing this will push him to, if not past, his toxicity threshold. Art offers no verbal protest. They have no choice, they know. Every reflexive boost will be needed.

Suddenly his eyes rage as he feels them push against his socket, and his body begins to shiver. His veins bulge and grow dark, imprinting a vascular indigo web through his skin.

One stampedes forth, claws gripping and launching. Thunderous pounding rippling with the music playing all around, while the others merely watch, the Broodmaster turning its head in unsettling curiosity.

In an instant, Ewain readies the Keresta and fires. A deafening crack launches a blazing bright red bolt that rips the air and blows the beast’s head to cinders. Before the body can collapse and spill thick, oozing tar, a piercing explosion resounds behind him, quaking the floor and masking a horrid scream.

The broodlings before him turn into rampaging beasts, crawling over and around each other and the chanting mimics on the ground, upon floor, wall, and ceiling. An incoming torrent of talons and jagged teeth.

Advance, advance, advance! Art urges, leaving not a breath between words.

Ewain throws concussion disks on the walls and floor ahead and lurches forward.

The wall to his left bursts, a massive starving jaw grasping forth with taloned claws. They yank at his back leg, catching just a crease of his trousers when the disk shoots the beast into the ceiling’s flesh coat and sprays chunks of red meat everywhere.

Explosions and shrieks ravage the hall, liquefying tissue into scarlet mush and piling blood onto blood throughout.

Thrown onto his chest, mere inches from the seething rancid carcass of the first beast and upon the painted red bodies of the mimics, Ewain spins over quick as a heartbeat and presses the Keresta’s thumb pedal. Silver turns the top strap.

A sterling bolt thrusts into an approaching beast’s arm and drives it into the wall, pinning it there to howl and rip its own flesh in a frenzy to free itself.

Click. Black. Click. Red.

Its face screams into the air, the cables upon its crown piping and clicking in abrupt patterns. Bones crack as it twists its arm.

A scarlet bolt mutes the beast and splits its cranium into pink mist, flakes of ember-flesh flying with bits of skull everywhere. An awful, choking stench separates itself from the odorous environment, wafting from the beasts’ oozing bodies into the stale air.

More clamor toward him, clawing through each other, ripping their own skin apart in a rabid obsession to consume him.

With axe in his left hand and Keresta in right, Ewain spins, fires, and dodges to the fringes of his reflexes and his body’s threshold in a merciless dance of slaughter and survival. Shrill crimson shots turn deformed heads into gargling, incendiary craters.

Click. Silver.

He pins one to the ground next to him, swings the axe through its neck.

A concussion disk throws another into the opposite wall.

Click. Black.

The recoil of the shot rocks his forearm and smashes the target’s head as a mallet on a melon.

Congealing, black blood aflame drip off Ewain as smoldering corpses add their filth until respite settles the pink mist from the air. Bits of flesh that cling to the axe’s blade sizzle against its oil and blood lathers the white shaft. Lungs hunger even for this perverse air, and heart beats just enough to fuel his body with shivering adrenaline.

With the flick of his wrist and press of a button on the Keresta’s frame, the cylinder pops out and sinks into the sinew pool below as another replaces it.

Completely still the Broodmaster ahead stands, its eyeless sockets fixating on him while the face embedded in its chest remains winced…with tears that fall from its closed eyes and lips that quiver.

Lost amongst the waves of disorienting noise, Ewain hears the sobs before losing them. Deep in his chest a tightness comes, a quaking heat that thins his breath. This far away, no matter how quick he may be, he could not risk firing at the Broodmaster. If it moved in any way that put Norma’s core in the line of fire…there would be no saving her.

Piercing, guttural yips strum from the Broodmaster’s mucous-covered vocal cords. The noise of the rooms jumps up and down in volume. Mute one second, ground-shaking the next.

Her lips part, “He-…m...-ry” the words surface and drown.

Something dashes behind him, slamming into a wall as it batters toward him.

With speed that nearly breaks muscle and bone to throttle, the Psychopomp spins around, fires two fiery shots at the head of the massive silhouette and continues this pirouette to face back the other way.

Long, incising teeth of an angular jaw crack through the bracer on his left arm that only slightly positioned itself to shield his throat. Wounds barely healed tear and split asunder, his blood mixing with its gray saliva to pour upon his chest.

Ewain, looking deep into the abyssal sockets inches from his face, exerts every conceivable strength within him to brace his gnashing arm, fight the jerks and twists that rip his skin like flesh-fabric.

The talons of one of its hands scratch at his vest, scraping and filing away chunk after chunk while its other grasps for his neck.

A muffled shot blasts into the beast’s abdomen. Ewain digs the barrel of the Keresta deeper into its flesh, wriggling and twisting the muzzle as cruelly as he can while keeping it pointed toward the feet. Again and again, he fires. Scalding drops of blood and melted flesh fall upon his trousers, eating away at the thick fibers separating them from bare skin.

Its banshee screams release his minced arm and talons barely scratch his scalp in agonizing fury.

Twice he clicks the thumb pedal. Silver. Black.

A profound BOOM throws the beast like a mangled rag doll onto a concussive disk on the nearby wall, whose explosion slams it through the opposite wall into the room behind, unseen.

Kicking, pulling, pushing with utter urgency, Ewain crawls over still whispering lips of buried mimics. Broken hands and fingers reach to grab him, scratching weakly on his arms and legs, keeping him from rising.

Every sound that clashed together before distills to an omnipresent, uniform sound…crying. Profuse, raging beats reverberate from the tissue upon the walls, higher and higher in percussive tempo.

A taloned hand extends from the doorway of the room ahead, bursting the flesh where it grabs the doorframe. Pulling itself along the floor, the Broodmaster emerges with only its upper body, the broad bristles of entrails dragging with it. Seismic quakes rattle every surface in rhythmic shocks. Through corpses of mimics and broodlings, its talons dig deep to propel it toward him.

Ewain wrestles his gun-arm free, fires with haste just as the beast is upon him. The blow grazes its shoulder, changing the trajectory of its swing as its talons miss his neck but scrape along his jaw. He moves to shoot it again through the neck when an agonizing, unbearable pain pierces deep into his side, digging and slicing deeper into his flesh.

Barbed spikes flare from the ridges of the broodmaster’s spine and thicker layers of flesh craft patchwork features upon its face in deformed imitation of the cranial heart now chanting from its torso.

E-ssa vaik tra! The lips repeat over and over in unison with others all around.

Sharp teeth bear so wide it can consume his face whole, and he sees deep down the ridged throat that would swallow him. Talons urge deeper into blood and tissue like razor wire coated with igni oil sawing back and forth in his flesh.

Its skin feels like moist, oiled leather, as Ewain fights and fights, pushing against its throat and arm. Teeth permit only anguished grunts through them as they grind together. Gods, he pushes with everything left that does not drip from the seeping wounds. Every whip of pain cringes his muscles, shooting liquid lightning through every nerve. Of all the things they could numb or suppress…sight, smell, emotion…never once could a covenant partner advocate nor Psychopomp demand to inhibit pain. If a Psychopomp is to feel anything, it must be pain.

The faintest blue irises faintly surface in the black pools of the beast’s sockets, as if death’s approach bestowed hallucination upon him in his final moments. They peer at him, abandoned by a hope exterminated from the naval blues through a thousand tortuous repetitions, imparted with every mimic corpse around them. Like bone crumbling to dust they dim, whatever humanity left swirls round and round in this orbital Charybdian maelstrom, gnawed at by maws of misery. They rise now to meet him and beg.

“E-e-end this, please…. N-no more….No more….”

His teeth part to yell, to fuel his body’s exertion with a defiant roar.

Then his limbs become cold, his control over them snuffed whilst great surges of raging strength bulge his rich musculature and the vascular web along his body grows dark as ink. He becomes a passenger to his body’s newfound vigor, witnessing as his hands remove the talons from his side and now steadily keep the Broodmaster’s maw at bay.

Now beast struggles as his arms push it further away, and once extended with the leverage of his elbow and thrust of his feet, he slams it to the side. Keeping atop it, foot pinning its stable arm, his hand retrieves the axe from his belt and swings furiously upon both arms of the beast.

Its scream is almost human, pain and panic raising its pitch as it writhes and wriggles with the sizzling of the blade’s oil.

Warm waves ripple from the base of his neck to the tips of his fingers and toes. Every movement is his now, yet he remains still. Fuming thoughts skate across thinly frozen emotion, arresting his movement to linger upon what just happened. He looks at his forearms, taut and sickly with foul black veins.

“We should finish before the Alcatin wears off.”

Though rancid stench and aerosolized iron taste of blood laces the air, Ewain takes a deep breath to calm himself and compartmentalize the burgeoning frustration. He kneels beside the amputated beast, the face in its chest.

“Wait, wait,” a dozen voices plead from a dozen lips in the hall, the words of mimics that the face before him cannot speak. “Don’t hurt me anymore, please. I don’t want to go; I don’t want to go.”

“Do you want me to do it?” Art asks after moments of Ewain’s stillness.

No answer. Only a gaze into the face drained of color. Hands reach toward him yet fall with dwindling vigor.

“I am so sorry,” Ewain attempts, trying so damned hard to imbue the cold steel of his voice with warmth, “This should never have happened to you.”

Tears flow again from the eyes, and the voices unify into a singular one that cries and trembles. “I don’t want to die…”

“There is peace in the Beyond,” he places his hand upon her cold forehead, over the closed eyes, “I will see you again, at a watery edge. Hear my voice, Norma. Remember it. You will be Delivered. I swear it.”

“The Alcatin will wear off soon, Psychopompos.”

He unsheathes the Mermera, guides its point to the middle of her crown. Grasping the still soft skin of her forehead, he heaves in more air to temper his firmness with some gentleness then, closing his eyes, he drives the blade through bone.

Convulsions dominate the beast’s body, and he fights every vibration to keep a secure grasp on the illuminating hilt. Even with the Alcatin, it is a struggle. He pushes and holds, his whole body tense as piano wire and jaw clenching. Acidic scalding rages through Ewain’s forearms, up his swelling biceps, and incinerates his shoulders. Every nerve and muscle begs for respite, lapping wave after wave upon his mind.

A pale blue luminance fades into the hilt. Each successive convulsion grows weaker than the last and when the last moribund throe gasps from the body, Ewain pulls the red-colored blade from the skull.

“I will see you soon,” he promises amidst the quiet now.

His hand trembles fiercely and a numbing chill comes over his body. Quickly he wipes the blood from the blade and snaps it back into its sheath. Strength that just moments ago made him physical peer to the Demichorians now abandons him, pitying him with just enough to prop himself between two mimics against a wall.

“Art,” he says with sharpness, “finish what you started.”

All Ewain can do now is breathe, give his body as much of this putrid life-sustaining oxygen as possible before the after-effects abuse him in tandem with his toxicity. Alcatin…the Order Fraymen proudly called it…the pharma bolster to bestow godly strength like ancient Alcaeus yet…Alcaeus’ strength never forsook him. Calculate the bolster wrong…and a Psychopomp’s advantage could become his damnation. Art acted without command, he thinks, broke command, he….

Ewain’s breath begins to escape him, lungs pumping air in and out before he can even absorb any of the thin, wanting gasps. They were trained to focus and feel for openings, feel as the throat constricts to various degrees and intervals, so when enough of a tracheal aperture presents itself, they knew to exploit it. Many who let the undertow of panic take them, forgot to focus and feel…suffered brain damage not even the Order could reverse.

Blinding colors ripple his sight in a fluid rainbow of pink, yellow, and green, whether his eyes are open or closed. He can do nothing while he chokes and sight melts to head-splitting colors, only try with every mental faculty to cling to calm.

Only after long minutes do the effects relent. Little by little his throat loosens, little by little the colors blot away. So, too, the color of his complexion recedes to ghastly pale and the night-purple of his veins protrude through the skin. Both are a reflection of his condition: exhausted pieces of the mind straining their bond.

An illuminated bulb behind his ear flashes its soft white color before turning solid green then extinguishing.

“Administering stimulant shot seven of eight,” Art informs.

Subdued warmth returns to him, rejuvenating the young Psychopomp enough to compel movement and coherent thought.

“Your wound needs to be sealed. There’s little I can do to mitigate the internal damage, and even a Psychopomp has his limits.”

Still no words from Ewain. He opens a leather pouch strapped to the backside of his belt and retrieves a vial of pearlescent pellets. Leaning onto his side opposite the wound, he exposes the deep, bleeding cavity of sliced flesh as best he can. Then with but a moment of hesitation, he sprinkles the pellets onto the wound.

Pain, agony. There is always more. Now it enkindles his wound, driving hot needles as the pellets dissolve into a soft, organic paste which seals the scarlet blossom.

“The response to your words the victim had…do you think them the Broodmaster’s doing? It did afflict the victim’s Nyphone mimic.”

“Possibly…,” Ewain acknowledges as he sits, waiting for the paste to harden, “but we were speaking of the nature of her death. She would still be receptive to something that resonated with her.”

“Then you’re suggesting words conflicted with her? She did not agree?”

Paste now cast-hard, Ewain rises to his feet, “It would explain why the Broodmaster became so hyper-aggressive, feeding off her turmoil.”

“There’s no doubt she was murdered…. Do you think the trauma twisted her perception of her decisions? She truly blames herself?”

“I do not know. We can Recall her memories at the Mission, find the answers we are missing before we conduct Catharsis.”

Steeling himself, Ewain returns to the corpse of the Broodmaster. He tries to narrow his vision to just where he cuts as he tenderly incises the seat of the soul from the beast’s torso. Once she is separated, Ewain undoes the cloth around his neck and gently wraps her in it.

Unit 313 lies footsteps away. Severed limbs line the doorframe with blood-drawn shapes on the door itself.

Micro-decibels surge in the air. Hushed whispers that question sanity, whether they are real or imaginary.

Please, Ichorians…. I’m not ready…. I don’t want to die.

“The victim’s words,” Art says unsurely, “can you make them out?”

They shared Ewain’s body now, same eyes and ears, yet while words were shushed breaths for Ewain, for his partner he knew they sounded as whimpering echoes of a syllable.

“Yes,” Ewain answers. The tundra-cold of the doorhandle shocks his palms as he twists and pushes the door open.

Mucous-covered, blubbery mass coats all the room. Yellow pus drips down the sides, collecting in the cracks and dips between each strand. From the ceiling, suspended by long, twisted locks of auburn hair, hang more ornamentations of flesh and bone. Beyond the corner, a neon pink light flickers.

Ewain shakes his head and sighs, his breath settling as opaque mist. He pushes each dangling ornament aside, ensuring not a one touches his face.

Around the corner lies the tether site, where malice monstrously tore life from body and chained it here to nourish torment. Norma’s body lied there, empty, violated, forsaken before becoming a bulbous sac whose shell is now open…the bones gone, used to foster frauds and territorial ornaments. A rounded ridge of tissue cradles a pit covered by a thin, semi-transparent membranous layer. Bones and hair weave around the edge in a complete ring with long entrail feeding tubes connecting it to various flesh deposits throughout.

Never Give Up…the only light in the building which flashes.

Ewain walks around the pit, looking at the membrane….

Death should have been a release for her, a departure from the corporeal cuffs that encase and bind the soul to this realm and the many miseries of its forsaken existence. Scriptures told the children of Ichor this…trust in the Ichorians, know and accept death, be ready and ultimately embrace it so in the moment of departure, a person bore no burdens.

Emotion is a cold chain, he recalls of his mentor, submit to it, and you will be imprisoned. Relinquish them, and one will find peace in the Beyond.

Not a particle of peaceful energy exists here. Nuclear heat pervades the tundra, cutting and darting. Something pushes against the membrane, rising and falling frantically. It wants out. She wants out.

He feels her, a vaporous distortion drifting through the air in splashes and waves, not yet released from this world. Furnace of rage, chill of heart-shrinking terror, swell of helplessness, and breathlessness of despair all permeate through skin and bone. They bind her, the tortured dead, tight to this world she could no longer exist in. Violated to such ruination so young…Ewain rubs his face as he ponders; his fingers rub together anxiously.

Crude outlines of petite hands push desperately against the membrane, yet no matter how much the layer bends, it never breaks. Every case, every traumatic epicenter that holds the victim’s tethered spirit in ethereal captivity, a part of him wanted to cut it open and see what was on the other side….

Whispers string together in harsh, disjointed cuts.

Help-No-No-Oh-Gods, please, Gods-I-I don’t want-to-die.

I-I never-lived-my-life.

“We should not delay,” Art suggests.

Hands driven by utmost reverence, moving slow and holding gentle, he places the bundled head upon the membrane, then scans around the room, “Her journal. Her effects. I need to salvage what I can.” He proceeds to search for them in every conceivable spot he can think of, cutting through flesh layers to reach places covered. Notebooks, pictures, old birthday cards, he finds them and places what he can atop a table. Yet no journals.

“Perhaps the killer took them,” Art guesses.

“For what purpose?” Ewain asks.

“Depending on how detailed her entries were, there may have been details describing the killer in some way. They were in here for hours. It’s not an implausible thought.”

Ewain looks over places already searched through.

“You missed nothing, Psychopompos. I’m scrutinizing with you. The journals are not here. Once you perform the Catharsis, speak with the victim and generate details on the killer, perhaps then their fate will be known. Otherwise, we are wasting time now.”

He slowly halts his search. His partner is right. Gathering what effects he can carry, he places them next to him as he lowers to both knees before the pit, before her.

From his belt he pulls the vial of igni oil. Undoing its top, he ritualizes his respiration then carefully dispenses drops of the amber liquid onto the bundled cloth.

Smoke and sizzle erupt immediately, a brilliant ember wave consumes the cloth and ripples out to the fluted ridges. Every pore in its wake glows as jade magma.

Shrill, high-pitched screams ring. Twisting and writhing wring the flesh walls so desiccated they flutter slowly to ash. Overwhelming sobs cry out, one moment as if her head lie upon his shoulder, another as though she is a world away.

“Mighty Lords,” Ewain begins, hands flat upon his thighs, eyes closed, every word leaving his lips with sincerity, “the fabric of lands sewn by your wise hands has come under vile decay. The soul of one of your children, Norma Jean Mortenson, is ensnared. In the name of the Father Undryn, the Mother Jara, and Morrius of Death, cleanse this debasement and liberate your child so I, your servant, may guide her to your dominion Beyond.” He laid the foundation…slayed the spawn and extracted victim’s memories and essence from the tormenter and offers his body as conduit. Now the blessings and will of the Ichorians must compel the rest, so long as he can offer prayer.

His constitution must endure hours, sustain the flames to spread amongst the rot, to burn and cauterize the gangrenous fester upon this parcel of land, and restore its purity in ash. Hours he must pray to beseech favor and keep the kindle alight. If ever the blaze falters, he must offer more of his strength and resolve.

Extraction requires physical prowess and mental acuity, things a Psychopomp perpetually hones, yet Purification demands strength in piety. With his every word and prayer, another voice unseen chants in harsh tongues against him.

Even aflame, the membranous hole thrashes as a volcanic pit, stirring all other flesh to fits of desperation and fury. His words in one moment bring respite, a break in the air that feels light and almost clean, then a breath later the air saturates and nearly compels lungs to forsake words for just breath.

Trust that as all around him fades in fire, he will remain.