Esper Labyrinth - ESP - Superhero - LITRPG

Chapter 78: The Silver Beast.

There was a large bonfire, in the middle of the camp. It’s embers licking the edges of the circle of stones that kept the flames at bay.

Yet, the crackling of firewood did not permeate through the night.

No.

That place of honor was reserved for the screams and the laughter of the men who were coaxing them from their victims.

Over by the side, one of them was struggling. Fighting to free himself from his bindings, even as his Psy was being drained. His head bobbing up and down as he struggled to stay awake whilst standing at the precipice.

A gaunt man, Scab, I think, approached him from the side. A blazing hot poker held firmly in his gnarled hands. The red-hot end pierced Luigi’s muscles. Starting with his thighs and trailing up until the metal rod reached his right ear.

Luigi was brought out of his stupor at once. Screaming. Yet that only made our captors laugh harder. He writhed in place. Trying desperately to free himself from bondage. Trying to summon a bolt of fire or force that he could use to free himself or to fight back.

It didn’t work.

He only drained himself fully once more. His head collapsing downwards for half a heartbeat before the pain forced him upright.

I tried to look away, but even that mercy was denied. The bindings had been tied in such a way that my head was locked on to the main show, and no amount of struggling could undo them.

The ropes were not ordinary. They had been weaved from the leaves of the whispering trees found at the very heart of the central island. Even now, they bit into me on a level that was hard to describe. Draining Psy as the barbs within dug into my exposed flesh.

The pain had been enough to break my friends from gentler worlds. Though, it was merely a return to normal for me.

No. What broke me was the realization that this freedom I so cherished had been fleeting. That, and the cries of my adoptive father, as Halkon tormented him on the improvised rack.

There was a twist that cut through the air

To my shame, I couldn’t even look at him.

I knew how this sort of theatre ended.

They had told me to stay strong. They had all asked me to hold back the tears.

Yet I couldn’t do it. Even that was beyond me.

‘It is all my fault. None of this would have happened if I didn’t ask for help. None of this would have happened if I had gone along meekly with Halkon in the first place. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t dared to hope.’

Yes. Hope.

It had been so very, intoxicating.

I hadn’t known what the word meant before coming to the island. I had heard some of my old master’s children and favourites speaking of it. But I had never truly understood the idea. The power it held.

It wasn’t until I found myself stranded on the beach, without the overbearing shadow of the lash, that I truly began to hold on to hope.

The notion that I could go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, speak and mingle and dance and sing with whomever I wanted, was so powerful. So overwhelming, that I had hoped that it would never end. That hope had seemed to blossom when I kept meeting people that would not even consider enslaving mutants like me. I hoped that they would all be like that. Like dad and mom. I hoped that this dream would never end.

I had to choke back more tears after that.

The Carters… they shouldn’t have cared.

I was just another mongrel. An ugly, twisted thing. Less than human. Fit only to grovel and serve at the feet of my betters. That had been my lot in life since I was born.

But they took me in anyway.

Even when Halkon came calling. Even when most of the stronger fighters gathered to his side. Even when giving me up would have been easy.

‘It’s all my fault.’ I thought again. ‘Most of the people that came over to us didn’t know the world me and Halkon came from. They didn’t know the casual ease with which they employed cruelty. They didn’t know how quickly the masters would resort to depravity.’

But Halkon did.

He was a young master, with all the training that was expected of him. He would have been trained in tracking, in fighting, in tactics and strategy. Not only was he stronger than any of ours, he was a born leader, with the kind of ruthlessness my new family couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

‘I should have surrendered myself to him. I should have given up the second I saw him. If I had done that, then dad and mom and Luigi wouldn’t be suffering right now. This is all my fault. If only I wasn’t so selfish. If only I wasn’t so stupid….’

Another scream cut through the darkness. This time coming from dad.

His body writhing in agony as Halkon sliced off bits of skin from his face and chest.

“Tut tut. Reggie. It isn’t polite to fall asleep when someone is talking to you.” He spoke in a sickeningly sweet tone.

His words eliciting another round of laughter from the audience.

“Please…” Dad wheezed. “You don’t have to do this. You need people for the monster waves…”

Halkon sighed theatrically and pressed another hot poker to dad’s skin.

“That is where you’re wrong Reggie. Of course I have to do this. You defying me would have been one thing. I could forgive that. My boys would have had their fun with you and then your people could have joined us as normal. Secure in the knowledge that my way, was the only way. What with you having served as an example. But now? After killing off so many of my good boys? After doing whatever it is that you did to all our Telepaths and leading us around for almost a month as you hopped around from island to island? After all the people we lost to bosses after you got them all riled up? After all the folks that lost limbs to your traps?”

Halkon shook his head.

“No. Reggie. I can’t suffer such insolence. Not only did you fight back. You fought back well. All while I had promised my boys an easy ride through this Tutorial. You made me out to be a liar. Worse, you made me lose respect. That, I cannot have.”

He sliced off an ear, eliciting more screams. More anguished cries.

“You see, Reggie. Monsters come and go. But they’re not a threat. Not truly. They’re like, the weather. It comes and goes and comes again. Sometimes you lose a hut to a hurricane, sometimes you lose a foot to a crab, sometimes you lose one of your slower fighters to either one. It happens. But people….”

Halkon raised a finger. Wagging it back and forth.

“People are not so easily handled. No sir. A leader requires a strong, firm hand to provide for his own supporters, as well as a mailed fist to handle dissenters. Why, if the herd of sheep you ferried around kept getting away with their disrespect, then me and my men look foolish. We were made to look like idiots who can’t impose a proper sense of law and order. And that, my feather-brained friend, is how masters are undone. First, a whisper, then a word, then, a gathering crowd.”

Halkon stood up. Grabbing dad by the hair and pulling his weeping head upwards.

“I told you all of this when we first met. Reggie boy. I can be a gentle overlord. But I don’t have to be. You made your choice. All the people that followed you made their choices.”

He spat down at his captive.

“The blind leading the blind. The weak following the weak. You were all too stupid to see that you needed a real man to take the reins. Too craven to do what was needed to make up a strong host. If anyone here is to blame, it’s you. Reggie boy.”

Halkon smiled a sharp, sinister smile.

“And boy, is it going to cost you.”

He drew back. Laughing.

“Now then lads! Ten extra rations and five extra turns with the prettier ones for the lucky fellow who can make Reggie here scream the loudest! Be careful though! If he dies, then the last person to hurt him loses a day’s worth of both privileges.”

Halkon raised his arms up high. As if he were signalling the start of a day’s bloodshed at the arena.

“Tell me! Who will be the first to try their luck!?”

Two dozen individuals came forward. Opening their mouths as if to cry out.

Yet, strangely, no sound was heard. A hushed silence fell over the whole island like a storm. Culling the cries of birds and monkeys out in the distance, as well as the crackles of the fires and the moans of my fellow captives.

That strangling grip held for a few, tense seconds.

Until another voice cut through it all. Coming from above and below. From my left and my right. From the shadows of the trees out in the distance, and from right behind my ears.

“Halkon is sweet.”

The words sent goose prickles up my spine. A deep, resonating terror overtaking the dread in my belly.

My Shifter instincts roiled. Blaring out to me and begging me to move. To flee.

I struggled harder against my bindings, despite knowing how futile it all was.

My body simply couldn’t help itself then. Not when all the other monster in the island seemed to be fleeing out into the skies. My nose catching the scent of monkeys and tigers as they whirled around and disappeared deeper into the jungle or even out towards the blackened, brackish waters of the seas. None of them could swim, but it seemed like they didn’t care.

“Halkon is meat.” The voice repeated.

I felt cold then. My bones being suffused with a chill that threatened to freeze me solid. Leaving nothing but a statute behind.

Over in the corners of my vision, I saw that all the men and women were paralyzed as well. Their muscles taught as they watched the fires change color until the billowing orange embers turned into a sickly green mixed with hues of purple, blue, red, gold and silver.

Yet, the flames made no sound as they changed.

Instead, a series of shapes could be seen within. Outlines of children and larger, more twisted things.

“Mittens shall beat.”

The bonfire swelled up. Rising higher and higher, until it turned into a pillar that reached the very skies above. The flames spreading through the night sky in all directions until they overtook the moon and stars.

“Mittens shall eat.”

Then, when the heavens were all but covered up, the pillar imploded. The flames withering like dried grass. Leaving behind a massive silver-haired giant. A woman dressed in man-skin leathers. Robes of still-twitching human skin covered with piercing grey-blue eyes like chips of dirty ice. With nine eyes, four arms, four horns, three outstretched serpentine tongues, a scorpion’s tail and a colossal great sword fashioned from bone.

Her face, or what passed for a face, smiled a crooked smile. Bloodied tusks peeking out from her lower jaw as those tongues tasted the air around her.

Her hair quivered, and I realized with a start that it was not hair at all, but a collection of thin, almost needle-like serpents that also hissed and tasted the air alongside her.

Her voice…

That terrible, resonating voice… sounded like the trumpets of the starving prophets in the legends of my world. The echoes of the dammed, as the courts of blighted fire signalled the arrival of the final nights. The twilight of the Accursed Monster. The Week of Nightmares.

That being now took a single, delicate step towards Halkon. Its many eyes boring into his. Only then, did it speak. A predatory smile lacerating its face as it did so.

“Mittens is here.”

Halkon blinked. Only once.

Before the creature stabbed him through the heart.

Yet, miraculously, he did not bleed.

Instead, Halkon gasped. His very flesh disappearing slowly into the sword as all of us lay frozen.

It wasn’t that his men wanted to watch. It was that they too couldn’t help themselves. Held tightly by bonds beyond this world.

Halkon began to scream then. His wailing overtaking the silence, as the demon licked its lips.

Yet the transformation did not stop.

Not until the master known as Halkon was reduced to a still-living, still quivering scabbard for the blade.

Only then did the thing turn to the rest of us. Still smiling its hellish smile.

“The Supreme One wants him alive. Mittens shall provide. Mittens is here.”

She took another step. The ground beneath her talons freezing over as she walked. The sounds of sand solidifying into layers of ice almost drowning out her words.

“The rest have naught to offer. Your souls shall feed his coffers. Mittens is here.”

One of the hands not holding the sword snapped its fingers.

The motion caused my instincts to scream. Louder than any of Halkon’s victims had before. Louder than any of the wretches I had seen dying in the arena back home or any of the foolish runaways my old master caught. It felt as though my heart was trying to explode. To die on its own before whatever horror the thing was calling made its way into this world.

I could hear them a moment later. Laughing and braying. Children and goats and other things that could not, should not be named. They whispered to me. Behind the corner of my eyes and behind my ears. Inside my belly and behind my eyes.

They were everywhere and nowhere. They were coming.

The air around us popped a second later. Releasing mangled things with circular blades for hands into the world. Strips of blackened, shiny leather covering their heads, their ears, their faces. Running down their bodies until they reached their cloven feet.

All the things breathed out at once and their breath smelled like sulfur. Like the stench of burning offal. Yet there were more layers to the sensations. The smells twisting and turning inside my lungs until I could hear the tortured screams of thousands of souls from the smell of the fumes. Until I could make out the flayed and crippled bodies of bearded children in colourful, conical hats impaled on iron spikes.

At once the laughter re-doubled and I craned my eyes to gaze upwards.

There, flying overhead, were winged children. With wide smiles and cold, grey-blue eyes that shone like lanterns in the unnatural darkness.

And in the middle of the swarm, was death itself.

A two-headed, bone thin…. Thing.

Donning the same dressing as the children. With two pairs of wings that radiated power and a crown of crystalline cobwebs on each of its two brows. One of the heads had eyes as red as rubies, whilst the other had the same eyes as the children.

Dirty sapphires that banished the night, and all the terrors it held.

I could hear strangled gasps coming from all around me and I stared at my captors. Noting with mute horror that their skins were turning into a thick broth. Running down their bodies like showers of gore until their exposed muscles were laid bare.

Yet none of them moved.

None of them could move.

Not while those eyes held them in their grasp.

‘They look like dad’s eyes.’ I thought absentmindedly.

The realization shook me to my core. My own eyes taking note of other similarities in the children. Such as the oily, shiny black hair or the slightly too-big noses. Or the way their cheeks puffed out as they maintained their smiles.

The children reached down then. Their faces coming so close as to almost touch mine own.

Somehow, I was sure this was it. That a fate far worse than anything Halkon could’ve imagined was at hand.

But the children did not harm me. Instead, they… freed me. And dad and mom and Luigi and all the other survivors.

Their wings unmoving as their small bodies floated about. Then the Tall Man placed his hand on each of us in turn. Healing whatever wounds he found. Before the children took us away.

Dragging us up into the air and away from the camp.

I was sure that morning had come. That enough time had passed by now. That the first hints of dawn should be breaking through the abyssal darkness any second.

Yet darkness reigned supreme.

Worse yet, the whole island was drenched. The heavy raindrops splattering against the dense foliage. Turning the green leaves red as more and more boiling blood fell from the sky. The syrupy liquid had seeped into the soil and into the stones. Changing them into other monsters that bit at my heels as I ran past. Gnawing off even more strips of muscle and shards of bone.

I wanted to stop. I wanted to give up so badly. But I didn’t dare.

Death had been a terrifying prospect, before last night. Now, it was perhaps a blessing. At least, compared to what had happened to Halkon. Or to the others the silver beast had hunted down.

‘They’re alive. They are all still alive. The thing kept them alive. It kept them suffering. It kept them screaming.’

And it would happen to me too. Should that sword ever graze me.

My lungs were on fire. My chest heaving with all the force I could muster as I ran deeper and deeper into the jungle. My eyes weeping blood as my body felt the thing’s eyes slicing my muscles open even now. Even after putting so much distance between us.

‘Damn it! Damn that thing! Damn this whole (Crab)ing place! This is way out of line! Where did a monster like that even come from!? It doesn’t make sense!’

Even the other monsters on the island had chosen to turn tail and run. Sometimes opting to drown in the ocean instead of remaining on land with those things.

Common beasts or boss monsters, it made no matter. None could stand to be in their presence for very long.

I rushed forward past a fallen log. Leaping up into the air and landing on another sandy beach. Even from here, I could make out thousands of serpents, monkeys, lizards, tigers and giant insects floating face down on the waves. Their corpses washing ashore and gathering into heaps.

The smell was sickening, yet it all served to put my current situation into perspective.

‘Should I jump into the sea too?’

Death by drowning wasn’t particularly appealing, but it sure would beat facing the silver demon.

I coughed and only then noticed that I had been holding my breath.

I sobbed. Unable to hold on to the emotions welling up in my chest. Wondering once more how it had all gone so wrong so quickly.

“Damn it. Damnit all!”

I fell to my knees. The strength in my legs fading as my wounds bled out into the rushing waves. My blood mixing with the red ichor raining down even now.

I saw my own blurred reflection and thought back to the winged children. To the way they had carried off Reggie and his band of idiots. Unharmed.

I sobbed harder. Recalling the old stories that my grandmother used to tell me. Tales of animal-faced wizards that would take the wicked and the guilty. Spiriting off the sinners in the night. Off to a plane of existence where they would be chased and hunted for all eternity.

“How did this happen!? Why did this happen!? All I wanted to do was live! I just chose the stronger side! I’m not a sinner! I didn’t commit any crimes! It was the others! It was Halkon! I don’t deserve this! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

No spirit answered my pleas. No one, but the silver giantess. Her face rising from the waters.

“Mittens will chase. All throughout space. Mittens is here.”

Her head rose up from beneath the waves. Halkon’s form still pleading for death as she held him tightly. His mouth and teeth grating against his crumpled skin as he covered the blade in her hands.

“Go on, little mouse. Mittens will joust. Mittens is here.”

I… could not find the strength to move. Could not bring myself to stand.

I just, looked up. Into her many silver eyes and her cruel, predatory smile.

“Why?” I pleaded. “Why me?”

The thing laughed and I could hear the laughter behind and underneath me. Echoing in my lungs and from within my bleeding wounds.

“Mittens does sigh. Your innocence denied. Mittens is here.”

“What?” I stammered. “What do you…? Why would you care? Isn’t this supposed to be a place for us to get stronger? Why would you chase us instead of the weaklings? I did my part! I trained as hard as I could! I followed the strong and got stronger! I did everything right! I… I shouldn’t be suffering like this!”

The thing laughed again.

“Lies and deceptions. Sweet lies and foul affections. Self-serving and debased. Your suffering you chase. The Supreme one you’ve offended. His punishment descended. Mittens is his portent. Mittens will torment. Mittens is here.”

Then she punched me and I flew through the air, what little skin I had left dangling off like dirty rags as I fell and tumbled through the sands.

The agony that followed was exquisite. Visions of a deep, dark hell that stretched on and on towards eternity overtaking every fiber of my being. Until I could only beg for final death.

“Go on, mouse. Do not play house. Mittens will dash. Mittens will slash. Mittens is here.”

I urged my muscles to move.

None did.

So, I lay there. Weeping. Begging for someone or something to kill me.

Before the thing touched me again.