The high-pitched ringing in my ears slowly tapered down until pop, my hearing returned to normal.
The scarred Aberrant with skin like bleached bone stood in a circle of scorched earth, embers quickly picked up by the hot wind and scattered into the air. It seemed unbothered by the fact it had just been struck by lightning.
The same could not be said for the people nearby. Our initial opponent, the one with animal growths coming out of him had been hit, the front legs of the rhino had lesions in its skin that demonstrated the path electricity had taken through his body. He groaned and muttered something under his breath. Various members of our group were rising unsteadily to their feet. One soldier near the front was clutching his leg, burned by the lightning.
“Capiz!” the squad leader shouted.
Capiz tore off her loose fitting clothes, revealing iridescent pearl skin that was already peeling off her body into hand-sized shards. She had a second, normal layer of skin underneath. The shards immediately began to fly in an orbit around her, picking up speed until there was a white tornado circling around her, Isipho, Conrad, and Kay.
Another soldier collapsed to the ground, unmoving, and the other soldiers seemed confused as to the source, some of them firing into empty space.
“Fendi!” the beast Shaper roared.
The black-haired person had repositioned to a hill on the other side of us. They shrugged, holding a knife now drenched in blood as they replied, “What? Seize the opportunity. Don’t be naive, Ark. This isn’t a ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ kind of situation. They aren’t going to play nice if we tell them that we want what’s best for humankind. Everyone has got to go.” That last line was uttered coldly as another bullet whizzed straight through them.
Ark said nothing for a moment as the still-living soldier squirmed in the grip of his wolf head. Then the soldier cried out as their flesh began to melt, blood and flesh being absorbed into the teeth of the Wolf.
“Wolf confirmed,” the squad leader spoke into his radio. “Regenerator. Begin plan Wolf Pack. Main force will keep moving towards the objective.”
That was the cue. I ran down the hill, steering clear of the swaying living lightning rod. It seemed to be recovering from the strike, but it still turned its deformed head towards the sound of my approach. A soldier followed close behind me.
Ark saw me coming and his animals began to suck back into his body, revealing a tall, muscular, bearded man wearing nothing but a loincloth. Spent bullets dropped into the grass as the rhino melted back into his skin. He backed away.
I projected a branch of antlers towards his eyes and Nell blossomed flowers along its length in various violently bright colours. He swatted the branch, breaking it away as I leaped on top of him, planting armored legs already wound with tension onto his shoulders.
The Locust Legs released, launching me high into the air while driving Ark backwards. The soldier pressed in, wielding an electrified baton.
I twisted in the air and caught a glimpse of Host. Now that the fighting had moved away from her, she had risen to her feet. A giant red centipede pushed its way free from the knife wound, scything the air and ground around him with hundreds of sharp legs.
She had the right idea. Fendi’s visible body was likely an illusion. Unless it was an ‘exclusion’ power like Daria, but that didn’t explain how he kept stabbing people from so far away.
I landed as one of Ark’s legs finally buckled from the shocking strikes from the soldier. As the soldier went in to attack his head, a lion head exploded out from Ark’s shoulder, catching him in its jaws. Ark changed focus with a satisfied smile, looking at me instead. There was another protrusion, shiny with scales, trailing away from his back and into the grass.
Shit.
I saw the snake too late as it sprang from the grass, sinking its fangs straight through my armour and into my leg. It pulled me to the ground, thrashing me around and pulling me towards Ark. I bared my teeth against the pain and immediately began assimilating, hoping that Nell would recognize if I’d been poisoned.
Ark swiveled his head, distracted by something.
The soldier was still alive. He had dropped his baton and caught the lion’s jaws just in time. To my and Ark’s disbelief, he was now slowly prying them open.
A memory of Ark’s flooded my mind’s eye. Ice cream on a hot day. The heat making the roads shimmer like a sun-dappled lake. Sometimes they lasted only seconds; the moments where I could forget the pain of a loved one slowly dying. Seconds I cherished.
The snake withered and let me go, but the memory lingered, making it hard for me to see Ark as anything but a confusing reflection in the mirror.
Ark noticed I’d broken free and a new beast erupted from his stomach. A rushing bull, horns lowered to impale me.
I backed off and the bull’s charge halted, confirming a theory I’d had.
“The animals can’t act independent of your body, huh Ark? That’s why they’re stuck to you. And you can only push them out so far.”
“Ye done figured me out. Standing ovation for ye and yer friend,” Ark grunted. Then two small alligators emerged from the lion’s mane, going for the soldier’s wrists. The soldier responded with incredible reflexes, releasing the lion and jumping backwards.
With his back to me, I saw something twitch through the back of the soldier’s uniform. I had heard that Host had been giving gifts to willing H.E.S.P. soldiers, a parasite that enhanced their physical abilities, allowing them to match a Wolf’s strength and speed.
The soldier rolled his shoulder and nodded to me, before drawing a karambit knife.
I glanced past Ark to see that Capiz’s storm was safely escorting the rest of our group towards the manor, over the hill and out of sight.
Suddenly, Fendi appeared at Ark’s side, nursing a cut on their hand. “I can’t get past that fucking white tornado and the uniformed goons are hard to cut,” they said. “Looks like Ichor’s attack on the entrance was fairly successful. I’m going for the caribou bitch next, then we should join her.” With that said, they vanished.
“Fuck off. Doin as ye please,” Ark said, glowering.
Ark’s memory was hard to shake. I wanted to know more.
“Hey,” I spoke up. “Who is Natan?”
The man turned his furious gaze on me. “Ye can take that mind fuckin’ and shove it up ye arse. Ah won’t bite.”
The bull huffed and pawed at the ground. Then it lunged. To my shock, it hit me and kept going, carrying me backward. The backend of the bull turned from fur to fish scales then to hide then snakeskin, stitching together in a chain, driving me further and further away, caught up in the bull’s horns.
My back slammed into something sturdy. Large white hands lowered into my sight, wrapping around me.
Fuck. Fuck!
I hadn’t realized how close the Aberrant had gotten. The bull chimera pulled away, leaving me to my fate. I tried to push myself away to no avail. This thing’s arms were strong and its skin felt like stone.
I spotted Fir encircled by her three elks. She looked panicked as she met my eyes.
“I could use a little help!” I shouted.
“No fucking way we’re going near that thing!” she shouted back. “Plus the stabby guy is still around!”
In horror, I saw the hairs on my arms start to stand on end. No no no. I looked for any way out.
Host was on her knees again, two more stab wounds in her belly.
“Host!” I shouted.
She looked up with heavy eyelids. The centipede ran through the grass and up the Aberrant’s leg, slicing into it as it clawed its way upwards in a spiral. I managed to grab onto the centipede’s segmented body and it pulled me upwards and free.
There was a metallic taste in my mouth. I threw myself to the ground just as the hills were lit up by a brilliant flash. The crack of thunder drowned out everything else and hot air washed over my back.
Looking back, the centipede hadn’t managed to escape, its flesh charred and torn away. It writhed weakly in the grass.
Host, in turn, had collapsed. Another wound opened on her back. Fendi watched from the top of the hill, their knife getting bloodier. Then their smile dropped from their face as something small emerged from Host and leapt into thin air. Fendi’s visible body flung out a hand and grabbed at nothing, halting the squirming, darkly green parasite.
“Close, but I was expecting that,” they said. “How many have you got left in you, big man?”
The parasite sprayed a fine mist into the air and Fendi dropped it, coughing in disgust before disappearing and appearing next to me.
“Ugh, that was disgusting.” He looked at me with watering eyes. “What? You want some too? You’d be leaving your swat team friend to die. Ark is fucking him up.”
“Go, Marrow,” Fir said. It looked like she had steeled herself. “I got this one now.”
“Oh?” Fendi said, lazily letting their head droop to the side to look at her. “Caribou girl deciding to finally stop playing defense? Just try to find me, I’ll carve up some deer meat.”
“We’ll see,” she replied, splaying her fingers. The elks flared their nostrils and began to fan outwards, stamping their feet and tossing their heads.
I turned back to the soldier. Ark had him pinned down under an elephant’s foot. He had ripped open the back of the soldier’s uniform and was pulling something red and stringy off the soldier’s back.
Locust Legs formed as I crouched.
Fendi’s arm snapped up in my peripheral vision and I felt his knife bite into my neck armour just before I leapt. Luckily the armour held and I shot upwards.
The height of the leap gave me a brief look over the hills, at the front of the manor. The ‘suicide car’ was ablaze and a white wax-like substance was oozing from the window.
I landed right next to Ark and he paused his work. The soldier writhed in pain from the extraction.
“You and Natan were close,” I said. “I could taste the ice cream you shared. Rose flavour is pretty unusual where I’m from.
Ark looked back down and continued pulling. The soldier screamed and something about it cut right to my heart.
“If ye want to git me scared, ye’lll have to try harder than that.”
“I’m just trying to understand. Every time I eat someone, I get a bit of their memories. And every time it gets harder to see them as just an enemy. You aren’t a monster. So why are you doing this?”
Ark stopped and released the parasite in disgust. “Ah’m not hard to figure out. Natan is sick and dyin’. There is no cure. And him bein’ a Witch means we can’t just Shape it out of him. God is our only hope now. And these fools are trynta kill it.”
“Kill it?”
“Aye. With the weapon. That’s what we’re here for.”
Fendi appeared next to Ark with a panicked expression on his face. “Ark! I need help, the smell-” His eyes bulged as bloody points ruptured through his chest, strangling his words.
Ark winced. “Och, ye could’ve asked me sooner, Fendi. Ah know the elk can smell ye.”
He pretended to pat Fendi’s cheek before Fendi flickered out of existence. His expression darkened as he dropped his hand to his side. “Ah’m not intimidated by ye outnumberin’ me. Ye’ll have to fight the whole zoo before Ah go down.”
I raised my hands. “Perhaps we can have a truce? I don’t want them to use the weapon either. Although I don’t understand what exactly this God is.”
Ark shook his head. “No, Fendi was right. We ain’t on the same side. If ye win, it’s the same as them winnin’. Natan dies.”
Lightning struck again, lighting up the battlefield. Another ashen white Aberrant had climbed a hill nearby and was looking down at us with its eyeless face. Next to it were two women wearing suits, their faces hidden behind masks, painted to depict fierce grinning demons.
Ark cracked his neck. “Ye see? We’re about to have a right ol’ brawl. See who comes out on top.”