Outworld Liberators

Radeon's lesson rang on the head of Fay and the other three. It etched not only on their minds, and their heart settled to the words, as it was now for them the best and right thing to do.

"Help has to be on time. Late help is just a gesture. It doesn't change the outcome."

"Help has to be generous. Give scraps, you buy complaints and an insincere reputation. You plant resentment instead."

"Count the cost. Cultivation costs a fortune. One spirit stone feeds a mortal family of five for a month. Remember that."

"And lastly, and most important of all," Radeon said, voice colder, "it must be free."

"Free means it costs you almost nothing. Breath. Sweat. Nothing else. If it costs your future, it isn't help. It's a gambling."

As the words struck the right chords in the young people's hearts, Radeon lay on the grass, exhausted.

"Now it's all on them," he said.

Oisin stifled a laugh for him, then failed. The rest of the ghosts, despite being in a fragmented state, followed.

Their roars were not pretty, but they succeeded. They knew the Aberrant would be an idiot for a while.

A few of them watched the soul flung back into the alien's physical form.

Calyx lay flat on the grass, arms spread, staring up at the sky like she expected it to split.

It had worked, but not the way prayers claimed.

They had used the White Impertinence offering table, and the thin seam of ghost realm energy buried under the mountain.

They had pulled at something the eldritch had taught itself to believe in. A soul.

Eldritch did not need souls. They existed like storms exist, without conscience, without breath, without a single center you could call a heart.

But this thing had eaten men. It had taken their habits, their fears, their little private hopes.

Somewhere in that consumption it had decided that a soul was a core, a fuel, a rule.

So they gave it one. Not whole. Not clean.

Radeon had reached into the Aberrant's belly of stolen lives and found the parts it could not digest.

Unassimilated fragments that refused to melt. Memories that did not belong together, faces that did not match names, prayers spoken in the wrong mouths.

He tugged those fragments loose and fed them back into the creature like hooks.

The Aberrant had swallowed. And now the cost showed.

Its inner memory, the one stamped into it by whatever eldritch birthed it, had not vanished.

It had been crowded out. Replaced, fragmented, altered. Like a book rewritten by a drunk scribe, still telling a story, just not the right one.

Now it was a man, in its own mind. A strong man. A king, even.

Radeon counted time by the incense that burned down beside the offering table.

Three sticks and a half, one after the other. In the circle, that was only a fourteen breaths of time, because each lifetime cost four to build.

Outside, those few breaths were worth more than a miracle.

On the broken peak of Ledgegrove Bazaar, the Aberrant was encased in ice, pinned like a relic in a shrine no one wanted to visit.

Below, the stopped hybrids were already fewer. Silent Severance did not pause.

They moved as they always moved, masks forward, weapons up, finishing what they had begun.

The Ledgegrove Bazaar had been emptied. People streamed toward other peaks and other cities.

Jekyll felt the shift before he saw it. A twitch from its vein, a ripple that meant the monster had found its way back to awareness.

The Aberrant surfaced inside its own skin and found that skin bruised and charred, hammered and scored like worked steel.

Something had been done to its joints. Nails, small as an inch, driven in with material too stubborn to bend.

There were no chains. There did not need to be. Every nail was a lock, every joint a gate held shut.

The Aberrant turned its head and saw masked men ringed around it.

Recognition hit it like a thrown stone.

Subjects, its mind insisted. Loyal men. A court gathered for their king.

Then the false memories arrived, thick and sudden. Trust rose with them. Distrust rose too, just as fast, and the two emotions fought for the same space behind its eyes.

The clash made its thoughts stutter.

Then more confusion arrived, as it had forgotten how to control so many bodies at once with one mind as men weren't born that way.

The instinct came, the command followed, and nothing answered cleanly.

Its mind buckled under the effort. It felt like it had known how to do it but the relentless pounding was started to shatter its physique.

Fine thin cracks were appearing from its skin. Thinking fast, it called to the people with the masks.

"Subjects of the land, what is the meaning of this? I am your king, am I not?"

Radeon's nose flared, but hid it right away, however Fay saw it, with her mouth twitching, suppressing a laughter of eruption.

Calyx, Oisin, Elsin, Maeron, and Ewan had no such reservations. Their laughter boomed as if there was no tomorrow. Their large bodies rolling on the grass.

"That bloke had really lost his marvels. Hahaha."

"Wait till it bark. Woof. Woof. Hahaha."

"I'm dying of laughter. Wait, I'm already dead. Hahaha."

"Wait for it. Wait for it. The real joke is coming."

The members of Silent Severance could not help but pause.

For a few heartbeats they stood with blades half raised, listening as if the wind had started speaking and they needed to be sure of the words. Eyes fixed on the Aberrant, waiting for the next wrong move, the next lie.

The creature looked back at them and did not snarl. It lifted its chin, like a man expecting a bow.

Seeing their attention settle, it seemed to find its confidence again. The Aberrant, wearing the king's stolen certainty, spoke.

"I am King of Mufatballs. Please listen to me."

Silence hit the line of evacuees like a slap. Grief and terror were still in them, raw and close.

Even so, something ugly and helpless tried to claw its way out as laughter.

Men bit their cheeks. Women pressed fists to mouths. A few failed at the edges, snorts breaking loose, snot running, a shameful fart here and there.

One poor bastard went stiff as a board and prayed no one noticed the wet stain spreading down his trousers.

They wanted to laugh. They did not dare.

This creature had chased them to the ends of the earth.

Idiot or not, it was still an ominous figure, and they were not sure this was the moment when a laugh would cost them their lives.

Jekyll's nostrils flared so wide it hurt. The mask saved his face from showing what his mouth wanted to do.

He pressed his tongue to his teeth and forced his breath slow.

'We were about to die,' he thought. 'Now it is talking about ball sacks.'

He could not make sense of it. Not cleanly. Not in a world where mistakes cost lives.

Then a silent transmission slipped through his skull, quiet and certain, not his own. It was Eldric.

"I made the creature an idiot for a while, I'm not sure how long, but you best use your cards right."