“Sorry, Logan - I still don’t know what got into me. I was inspired by Mara’s improvisation…” Jarek muttered into his binoculars. From atop the garrison’s battlements, the three stared through binoculars - to the east, where a distant farmstead was producing vast amounts of caravans to disperse into the city; caravans clad with white sheets. Their visit had worked in pressuring the administrator - forcing his hand and in so doing exposing himself as co-conspirator.
Curiously, there seemed to be no system in where the citizens pulled the caravans. They would unload white, floppy packs of what was undoubtedly meat into garages, cellars and stores; a series of actions that Logan found blatantly obvious. The man, and his advisors, were bigger idiots than he’d have thought.
Logan shook his head and was again reminded of the embarrassing display. “Just what on earth do you two actually read? That prose…” He shuddered and trailed the long line of caravans to see that he recognized several of the men pulling them from his wanderings through the streets.
He could feel Mara look out from her binoculars before cheekily adding: “Oh, I don’t know… you seemed pretty familiar with it, yourself.” He froze before glaring out the sides of his mask’s slits, pondering if he liked it better when she had been paralyzed with fear.
“I like to keep my mind occupied when I’m on the road - I’ll read what I’ve got handy and sometimes fiction is more available.”
Jarek cleared his throat and said: “There’s no reason to get defensive, Commander. We’ve all got guilty pleasures.” Logan sighed a deep exhalation.
“Well, it’s not one of mine. Now, any ideas? What, dear friends, is our Administrator and the Priest doing here?”
Jarek finally lowered his binoculars and raised his foot to rest on the granite bricks. Following a deep murmur of thought, he shielded his eyes from the sun to look at his dark companion and said: “I’ve been trying to come up with an idea… To my knowledge, there aren’t anyone capable of going toe-to-toe with Monstrum in Cadia, let alone in this volume.” Logan nodded and awaited the continuation. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were farming them somehow. I mean… your lover’s report made it sound as if the priest was working with this entity - this ‘Life Mother’. Could it be a Monstrum?” It was refreshing to hear another use the term Monstrum rather than the Bravellian equivalent of ‘spawn’. Furthermore, Logan was impressed to hear the soundness of his conclusion and that they shared in the belief - the fact that one could not harness the Monstrum.
Mara chimed in from Logan’s side - uncomfortably close to his ear.
“You make it sound like that’s impossible. There’s ants farming aphids, you know… now, what’s this about a lover? Wait - Smile’s your lover?”
Logan grumbled his response: “Focus on the task at hand, girl. And that’s a negative to both - I’ve never met Monstrum that could communicate with humans. And…” Logan lowered his eyelids as he began to form a conclusion - something barely escaping the tip of his tongue. He raised his binoculars back up and continued on to scan the city.
Jarek raised his voice to question: “What? What are you seeing, Logan?”
“It’s more about what I’m not seeing… I didn’t notice before, but… where are your poor? Where are the homeless, the crippled and your orphans?” Jarek reared his glistening head at the sudden question.
“That’s…” Having never served as a Captain of the guard before his arrival in Cadia, he hadn’t even considered such a thing. He continued:
“The town’s fairly new… the population mostly comes from the Citadel and from the surrounding villages - I just assumed you wouldn’t make that journey if you were ill-disposed. What are you thinking?” Logan raised his finger to tap the mask in deep musings.
“Could be. In my experience, you’d see some misfortuned still… this might be a long-winded explanation, but-” Jarek raised a flat palm and nodded before cutting the Ghast off: “Whatever’s producing all this meat has to do a lot of digestion. You’re thinking it’s gotten its tentacles on some of the homeless? We haven’t gotten any reports of missing persons, after all - who better than the unwanted?” Logan nodded, continuously impressed by the Captain and how much he had learned of the Monstrum.
“You’ve read the Codex well, General. Good thinking. And with the reduction in exports of vegetables and starches, I’m inclined to believe they’re actually somehow utilizing the Monstrum… if only I could find it. I can feel it all around us, but I can’t see it.” The Ghast spoke, hoping to receive more advice from his wise companion.
“You can feel it?” Jarek squinted his eyes to shield his retinas from the sun.
“I can. No one knows much about the Monstrum’s psychic abilities, but they definitely have some. I can pick it up, but it’s not very specific.” He could see by the twitch to Jarek’s lips that he wanted to ask - chances were, if he had been there in the Eastern Pass, he’d seen the symbiote.
“I’m not a Monstrum… not entirely. I’m a monster; disfigured and with certain properties, but I’m not one of them.” He seemed to know better than to ask. As opposed to his daughter whose arms quickly found their way to his arm, where she made a point out of pressing it between her breasts and stare up the mask.
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“Really? Can I have a peek? I won’t tell anyone - I bet you’re still handsome under there.” He scoffed, bemused at how she had missed the point entirely. Still… it wouldn’t hurt.
With a tip of his mask, he grinned to display only his full mouth of shark-like, white teeth, running his tongue over them to find that what should have been his left incisor had loosened - it was almost time for a shedding.
She did not rear. She did not yelp. She just stayed there, staring up as he attempted to distance herself from her again.
Jarek spoke up: “You never wrote anything about it in the Codex. I thought I’d gone mad when I saw that - back in the Pass. I can certainly see the appeal of the mask.” He ran his hand over his scarred cheek and for a moment, Logan felt something akin to a kinship with the veteran. At least until he heard a whisper in his ear: “It’s just like in the books…”
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Smile’s dark form was invisible up in the rafters, where she loomed high above the church floor. Ever since landing their plan, she had taken her perch and sat down to shroud herself in a combination of the shadows’ own cloak and her own abilities. Even if they were to look up and see that something was amiss, a great discomfort would overcome them - that lingering feeling of something staring back, yet knowing it was an irrational fear. Only this time, it would be far from irrational.
Finally, Logan’s plans bore harvest in the form of the tall church doors opening ever-so-slightly to allow a blue-suited form to slip through; a young man with an impressive crow’s nest atop his head - extending all the way from his forehead and onwards to the fontanelle. She’d never understood the fashion of the Citadel, but such was the condition of the youth - even out in the peripheries.
From afar, she could see him quickly glance about in nervosity, walking up the fine gray marble aisle before speaking at increasing volume: “Guillotte! Guillotte - please!”
By the time he had arrived on the podium, she could hear a rumbling from the back chamber - a chamber she’d been hard-pressed to enter, only to find that it had provided her with little cover to hide in. Therefore, she had chosen the next-best option and landed on the rafters.
She could sense no psychic powers in the man, but the preacher had a lower level aura that she hesitated to disturb, if only as a precaution to not be discovered. Still, she sent out a single pulse of discomfort and succeeded in making the man stop to scratch his armpit at the sudden, intrusive need to do so.
Finally, the door to the back chamber swung open to the familiar, young priest’s form. He strode across the atrium and stopped a good distance away from the Administrator to question: “What? I had a long night - I need to rest for tonight.”
“Fuck your rest - the Ghasts are onto us! I just had a visit from the man with the angry mask - he was so… so damn uncomfortable. If it hadn’t been for the Captain, I’d have spilled everything!” The Administrator rubbed his hands hard over his scalp and muttered obscenities.
“But you didn’t tell them anything, did you!? The Life Mother isn’t ready yet - we need more time!” The Administrator had begun to pace around, continuously rubbing his scalp in a panic.
“You keep saying that, but I’m still not sure what that even means! Honestly, I don’t give a shit about your ‘ascension’ - I had to order them to scrub down the butcherhouses and dump the mana! The town’s bleeding gold at this point!” The fury came off of the priest’s psyche in pulses. He straightened his back to protest: “You what!? You threw away our Mother’s Mana!? As if her nourishing flesh was debris!?”
The Administrator came to a halt, sighed and waved his hands about in an attempt to calm the priest.
“Of course not! I had it moved back into the cellars… I figured she could make use of it again. If she doesn’t we can always continue slaughtering it after they’re done with their inspects - if we survive it. You’ve been blatantly obvious in your tactics as of late - this is your fault, Guillotte! If it hadn’t been for your ‘missionaries’ ending up missing in the Citadel, this could’ve all been avoided!” The Priest shook his head as he continued buttoning his blue blazer.
“You watch your mouth in this Holy Town. The Mother demands her word’s spread throughout Cradle. She needs more men, women and children - she wants more to ascend before the Great Ascent. If you can’t get her what she needs, then I will. By any means necessary - even if I have to take the matters into my own hands.”
“You stupid fuck! Don’t you get it!? The Ghasts are here! They’ll break every bone in your body and shove you into your Mother’s asshole! And that’s what they’ll do for fun!”
“You watch your filthy mouth, heathen slave of the Governor!” an impressive, powerful pulse of rage burst from the priest. Within seconds, the room had transformed from the comfortable blue hue of sunlight through colored glass, to a dark red overgrown mass of tendrils. Tentacular growths bled up through the floor, crept along the walls and reached up for the rafters, where only a quick maneuvering from Smile landed her outside the creep’s reach.
As the priest raged, the pulsations in his neck seemed to match the pulse of the vines: “Even here, that False God spreads his lies and influence! He is not the Master of Cadia - she is!” The terrified administrator was frozen in place, too terrified to even turn and run as the growths wrapped around his legs. The priest extended his arms to his sides and seemed to take great joy in the thin strings crawling up his leather shoes to disappear under his clothing. He remained still, moaning as his clothes writhed with life, but nothing could’ve prepared the Ghast for the sight that followed.
His neck and face began to writhe with subdermal twitches as the countless tendrils squirmed beneath his skin - inserted through the flesh of his throat through minute incisions. As they writhed and bored, the priest moaned: “She commands us - She commands we give her more children; more young for her Great Preparation! Are you prepared to follow!? Will you hear her words!?” He seemed ecstatic with pleasure as a thin droplet of blood from his nose preceded the dribble of more of the stringy growths protruding from his every orifice.
“Will you obey!?” He roared - a roar that seemed to reverberate through all of the flesh on the walls.
“Y-yes, God yes! Yes!” The panicked administrator squealed, yet the growths did not cease their endless stretching. When they were almost upon Smile, she saw no other choice but to run - to escape the landscape of madness and climb higher - towards the clocktower. |