The woman had stopped her laughter, mainly because she had run out of dopamine to draw from, but also because she had to prepare herself for what was about to come.
She stood up to the cold silence that the place fostered, truly, there was no sound offered but that of her breath, and even that was strained.
She walked in the opposite direction of the cube, pacing up the river’s bank, not even blinking, not even thinking. As for Brody, he was crouched in the grass, knees to his chest, eyes fixed on the cube.
As for their cargo, May and Bob were still laying there, tossed asunder in the foliage. Kim would eventually stop a ways away, turning to face the cube. She’d unsheathe her dagger with trembling hands and hold it with both, pointing it towards the golden relic.
She shook so much that she almost dropped the thing, yet she never let go. They waited, and though it should have been a while, it was only seconds later. The cube did not shake or gyrate, in fact, it lost its golden hue and returned to what it was before. The consequences of such actions were nigh still.
The ground below the cube shattered as if struck from below by a great blow, but more was awry. It stayed there, in the air, debris, and as for the ground below it, a void.
A hand would emerge holding the cube, silver, moments later the cube would regain its golden hue, but for a different purpose. The thing would let out currents like pillars of dust, only they were golden, and there was no wind.
The constructs of golden dust flailed in the air, as if alive, and then they reached into the river’s depths. They’d begin their retrieval, as removing themselves, they were holding something covered in black burning sludge, it was August, but his body was lifeless, and human.
He’d be set down, and the pillars would fade into him. Thus, he stood on his own. As for the cube, it had long lost its hue, the void and the hand long gone, the fragments of earth scattered about.
He’d soon fall to his hands, regurgitating a barrel’s fill of water and sludge. He’d cough uncontollably for a few moments after that, spitting out all remnants of the depths he emerged from.
He’d soon gather the strength to stand, the sludge evaporating as if steaming water, a crimson full body suit donning him from out of thin air. He’d look around at it all, his sister, his friend, the cabin, the armed woman, the waterbody, and the burly man cowering in the grass.
He looked to be patient too as he walked straight to his sister, ignoring everything else. He picked her up, and ensured that she was indeed still alive. He’d then bring her to the river’s bank, and lowering himself to his knees, he let her down into the stream.
By some sorcery, her body began to drift away, and as it did, she sunk to just beneath the water’s surface, crossing the expansive divide, all on her own.
“You have until she makes it to the other side, to convince me not to kill you…” The aspect stood up, looking out onto the water’s surface, content.
Brody, hearing those words, knew that he finally had his chance, but the words were deliberate, as they always were. He had to convince someone that was an aspect, he had to bargain with someone that had nothing to gain, and then, nothing to lose. It was an impossible task, by every metric, and by every measure, but he’d still try. He’d stand up first though, and he’d dust himself off.
“Even if… even if we’re no longer the people you knew… you’d still be killing your friends… their memories… we still have their memories… we’re—” Brody would be refused the chance to blunder.
“You’re not them…” The silver man finally turned to look at Brody, and his eyes were bleeding.
Brody would instinctually step back as they made eye contact, but he’d keep going.
“You’re right… but could you truly bring yourself to kill them… to kill us…?!” Brody pounded his aching chest with a fist.
“Is that a challenge…?” The monster in a man’s body, even as he spoke, he looked back out into the water. “Because I’d be happy to oblige… Look… Your usefulness has run out, but there is still one avenue to redemption for you, for you both, give the bodies back, simple… no?” A choice presented by the executioner.
“You know we can’t do that!” Kim rediscovered her voice. “If we do… If we do what’ll happen to us in this new world!? Everything’s changing… worlds are colliding?! Collapsing atop one another…! And without a host… we’ll cease to exist! Are you that cruel… you know that we can no longer be reborn… don’t you?! Even in here… we can die!? In here!?” She pleaded to the monster.
“You know exactly what this about, don’t beg to me concerning your lives, what about their souls…? Trapped in the bodies you stole… forever out of time… mad because of your influence… eternal suffering… hell… literal hell… and for what…? So that a dead idea can be put on life support, no, give the bodies back… or I kill you.” The man began to twitch, his anger building, even in his weak body.
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“…I … I can’t do that… not unless you find me—” Kim was promptly shut up.
“I’m not going to spend days searching for a vessel for you… nor will I liberate a taken one… you made a choice when you declined my offer, when you betrayed me… you all did… if you had waited… maybe you could have been born human… but no… as disgusting as you are… that is as disgusting as you all are… power hungry… you had a choice…! I gave you a choice! And you didn’t take it! I no longer feel bad for your suffering… nor will I regret causing it.” The monster watched his sister drift, she was a minute, if that, away from the other bank.
“Wait…!? Wait how much longer…!? We should have waited how much longer…!? How many more eons!? How many more eternities without a body, without children, without family, without freedom, without life… meaning… love?! You tell me! Go ahead!” Kim was so far gone she was no longer shaking out of fear, but anger, her veins all bulging and her eyes bleeding.
“782… I watched them die… ‘people’ bred in a machine on the wastelands your kind caused… conceived for the sole purpose of dying so your kind can live… 10 people… for every 1 of you, yes, their dumb, but their conscious, and they were just as human as anybody else, I could see it, feel it, their pain… so I’ll ask you again…? What makes your ‘1’ life worth ‘10’ of theirs…? And don’t say cause their dumb… because you’d have taken a dumb body if it was the closest to you… The technology needed time, and you knew that…! You all did!”
August waited, but she said nothing in response.
“These eyes… they see everything, always… so when you come to me… Me! Saying these things after all who have suffered to try… ‘try’ and get you bodies… what do you think I feel… if not rage and disgust towards your kind… The atrocities that you require to be born… they did all of that in hopes of a peace you things never even wanted… 28:04:06:09:06 and 35:03:01:02:32. Do those numbers mean anything to you…? Of course not… because you never asked her… because you never cared… I know what you want… human bodies, but you want them undying, indestructible, with all the power you have… you don’t want to be human… you want to be gods… ‘She’ was right… about all of you…” The psychopath let go of all his fleeting emotions, his sister had long reached the other side anyway.
“Then why did she do this to us… trap us here?! We can manifest form in that world on our own? Can’t we…? Or are we not allowed that…?” Kim’s retort.
“You’d feel nothing of flesh… that is unless you took feeling bodies, but you want human bodies, so what flesh would you take? This is pointless, you know what you’re saying. We both saw that thing, your ‘revolutionary’, a twisted amalgamation of all who have entered here… dead and stitched together in that twisted body… and he gets to keep it all… his powers… and that’s what you want… what you want me to allow…?” August would take hold of his own face as he tried to make sense of it all.
“So what do we do…? Stay unfeeling husks for the rest of time…? Suffering… for the rest of time…?” Perhaps Kim had a point.
“You could die. I have the ability to kill pure ideas… even forgotten ones… though, not even I know your name.” His eyes wandered, but they found nothing.
“Oh…! Eat shit!” Kim was done reasoning. “You can’t even answer me seriously! And I’m pathetic…!? Is this even you talking… August…?”
“Well… at first, it was just her, Fate… but that’s not what she wanted, eventually, I was left to lead, to form my own opinion… and all that she had told me made sense, you will never be satisfied… you are the ones that abandoned death, flesh and a stable dimension… it was your choice… all of you…! And now that consequences have come due and we’ve stopped you form driving yourselves into self-destruction, you seek to take our power for yourselves… you are pathetic.”
“Ok… but… even then… we couldn’t have children… nor could we love… but in these bodies… In these bodies! We feel everything! love, hate… pain, heat… cold—” Kim would be interrupted.
“In those bodies…? Those… Stolen…! Bodies….? Hm…?! Here’s a thought… you are not human, you were never meant to be human, you will never be human… and I will not allow you to be human…! You had your chance, and you squandered it!” The psychopath began stretching his muscles, decided.
“Typical… you’re not happy unless you can control us… how surprising…?” Kim raised her dagger higher, hands still.
“Your time’s up…” The man turned around, making eye contact with both assailants. “I’m going to kill you now.”
His words sounded with a rasp, as if he wasn’t even trying to speak in the first place, as if taking their lives was an inconvenience. It wouldn’t all go his way though, as the ferry woman had said, Kim had gone riding on the coattails of the sins, and one of them was still there.
The small inconspicuous, out of place, hut, exploded from the inside releasing a black bog, or rather, the thing moved so unnaturally that, that was the only way to describe it. It sprung hands and faces from all the cracks and crevasses on its rotten body as it grew. It was not a moment later before the diseased creature’s shadow and many hands were the staple of the banking.
“Not you… Not you!” The psychopath paced towards the thing, as if it was a child. He’d stop feet away from it, standing beneath its arched figure he looked into a pair of its eyes. “If you so much as— no… if you intervene… I’ll leave you be… but just know I’ll be bringing back the heads of all those you love… Wrath… Gluttony… Pride… Envy… Lust… Sloth… all of them, you’ll have to live with that... can you…?”
The mountain of flesh leaned forward almost as if to fall atop the man, yet he did not so much as flinch. It’d wail like a dieing animal, six actually, or maybe it was a scream. It’d flail its building sized hands, destroying the entire flower bed, yet it didn’t hit August.
It lowered itself, making its largest and most prominent face visible, a rotting head with no eyes and dried powdered skin, curly hair dangling from it. The thing would lean in on him opening its mouth, wailing, so loud that even Kim and Brody were forced to cover their ears.
“Are you done?!” August moved in even closer, so close that he was basically in the thing’s mouth.
It’d back off, and soon it began to fall apart, the ground, and even the river being tossed asunder. It would all result in nothing but smoke though, and at the end of it all, all there was, was the crying of a woman. As the smoke cleared, the giant woman could be seen hunched over with her head in her hands, weeping.
“You made the right choice… this time…” The silver tyrant went down on one knee, patting her on the shoulder.
“What’s wrong with you…!?” The sin didn’t look him in the eyes, but she did make herself heard.
“Are we forgetting the past now…? Remember, even if I did kill ‘all’ of you… I would only be avenging my own death… let’s not pretend like I’m the bad guy here… I gave you a chance…” He looked away with one brow high above the other. “Actually… this is a second chance… you should be grateful… you should be thanking me…!” He’d finally leave the woman to weep, standing.