Wohali sliced across the doors with his blade, giving them a good kick to knock them down. He stepped into the utter darkness that reigned supreme in King’s bedchamber. Wohali’s eyes saw a truly enormous bed at the far end of the room, standing next to a working desk filled with papers and documents. Rows of bookshelves filled the room's walls, filled with books about just every subject, arranged in a strict system that allowed for easier finding of any needed material. Soft-looking carpets covered the floors and muffled the sound of Wohali’s steps. Several banners, mostly Soultakers and Bentos, were resting on the walls.
The flesh carver stepped inside, small sonic waves struck forth from his head, mapping the room via echolocation. As if in response, a loud clank sound came from behind the bed. King came forth, shaking the room with each of his thunderous steps clumsily securing the bucket-shaped gauntlet on his left hand. Two lenses, one orange and the other fully dark, focused on the flesh carver.
"Wohali. It is a pity to see such a good surgeon become a murderer." King thundered forward, his armored form covered by dark robes, the massive, gilded horns stood upright on his helmet. Wohali looked like a child compared to this oversized giant clad in the finest steel that the tribe could provide.
"You seemed content when I was killing for your sake, King." Wohali greeted him dryly, receiving readings from his inner systems. King's armor powered up with each step, connecting to various systems in the room. The Resistance's leader had already given the order to activate the hidden turrets above the bookshelves. It was in vain, the flesh carver introduced the keep’s main system to one of his viruses, preventing the activation of automatic systems in this dome.
"Is this it, then? You really came to kill me? To betray the cause?" King glanced around, speaking far too calmly for someone in his situation.
In his generosity, Tlaltzin provided King with full access to the tribe’s main storage, which contained all the artifacts of the bygone era that had been collected over the years and were meant to be studied, researched, and reproduced at a later date. Instead, King burned through them, destroying the precious teleportation device. This power armor of his was another relic, reimagined by King and decorated with ridiculous trinkets. Wohali felt almost physical pain at the thought that he would need to destroy this marvel.
At the end of the day, King was merely the flesh hiding behind the steel. Wohali was steel incarnate, beneath his main frame writhed tendrils capable of tearing away bunker doors and burning, disassembling, and melting the foe with various devices of his own making. His entire body could transform into weapons of destruction at will.
In every combat simulation that Wohali ran before coming here, he came to the same conclusion. King was an amateur fighter at best, the video feed from Belaz proved it well. He lasted so long against the captains thanks to his power armor rather than skill.
"The body is simply a means to an end for the brain to live. Sometimes, for the brain to survive, parts of the body must be replaced or cut off. Change is inevitable, to resist it is to perish in vain. No one understands this better than a bento, King. And right now, you are the rot that threatens our very existence by forcing us to struggle further in the lost war."
"You dare to judge me?!" When the massive generator behind his back started working, King thundered in rage, and the power readings of his armor went off the charts: "I am one who united the people of the Ravaged Lands under a single banner with cunning and force! I educated savages and humbled prideful fools! I brought stability and prosperity where there was none, I forged you into a weapon capable of standing up to others! What have you ever done to compare to my achievements?!" King stopped five steps away from the flesh carver, "Sweet, loyal Wohali. Abandon this course of action and go back to healing. Think of what you are doing. This struggle between you and I will not make the bentos stronger. Countless people sacrificed their lives so I could live and lead the fight for freedom! Their blood and tears watered the foundation of our future triumph! Would you deprive their children of the opportunity to see the fruits of their parents' labor? I am the only one who can make their dreams a reality! The only one who can save our people from the reclaimers’ unsatiated jaws! Would you render the sacrifices of our people void out of mere fear?"
"And now, through your sacrifice, the Bento Tribe will survive, and all the Ravaged Lands will know peace." Wohali raised his right hand, which started to change into the energy gun. The fingers became barrels, and a separate energy cell moved to his wrist.
Twin energy beams shot from King’s lenses, splashing against the force field that had risen in front of Wohali. The flesh carver fired back, aiming for the enemy’s chest. King never bothered to dodge, a shield generator within his own power armor created a bubble of energy around him. King never tried to dodge or move aside, confident enough that nothing that Wohali could do could harm him.
Wohali smiled briefly, seeing how the surge of energy fired by him disappeared for a moment, switching between dimensions. It reappeared a moment later, within the bubble of energy around King, slamming the man in the chest and melting through the armor. The massive, armored figure tried to lean forward, shocked from pain at a new hole that went straight through his body, burning the heart, exploding both lungs, and disabling the generator on his back. Only the power armor kept him upright. With his spinal column severed, the man could no longer move. His robes caught fire, ignited by Wohali’s experimental weapon.
It was a legacy of the teleportation device. It worked by injecting two sets of coordinates into complex machinery installed inside the flesh carver's main frame. The first set of coordinates opened a small wormhole in the path of the energy burst, and the second opened an exit point, right in front of King’s chest armor. After King summoned him to repair the magnificent technology of the past, this was all he could get out of it.
Of course, he kept this development hidden, partly because he no longer trusted King and partly because of the energy costs. A single use of this device nearly depowered Wohali, causing his vision to go blurry while the plasma generator was busy pumping out new energy into his body.
King’s trembling hand tried to touch the injury before falling from sudden weakness. His blood poured out, hissing on the surface of his armor and devouring the rich carpets beneath him.
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King barely made a single gasp before two more shots, this time made by a simple armor-piercing gun, pierced his lens, throwing the massive body backward onto the bed. He tumbled over, the fire spreading from his robes, and it quickly started devouring the bed. The Wohali looked at how the flames moved onto the carpets and soon to the books and banners, lowering his weapons. It was time to…
King's armor exploded, igniting everything and shrouding the darkness in a thick fog of smoke. Something charged at him from this smoke—a living organism of some sort. The creature was moving too fast for Wohali to register what it was. He simply cut the biped with the plasma sword, allowing the creature to fall to the side.
The darkness before him shifted, entire wall filled with strange, ghastly green smoke moved toward the flesh carver, devouring all sounds of cracking fire. And within this mist, Wohali saw a towering figure, leaping at him. His trench coat acted before Wohali could, raising the sharp edges to kill the creature. The moment the blades connected to the mist, the artificial intelligence screamed about massive structural damage, flooding Wohali’s vision with damage reports, indicating fast disassembly.
The flesh carver recoiled, retreating back and allowing his arms to change back to weapons. Before he could open fire, an unknown force hit him, first in the head, forcing him to lean back, then in his arms, sending them backward. In the next moment, the mist was on him, devouring the outer shell, blinding Wohali by evaporating cameras on his body. A single massive, inhuman-looking hand struck from within the mist, grasping Wohali’s head and crushing him against the floor.
"Wohali. Can you hear me?" A voice hissed from the swirling mist, "You should have stayed loyal. I was planning to ensure your survival. You would have seen the bright future that I will create if you had a little faith, a little loyalty."
Ignoring the damage to his body, Wohali abandoned the idea of gaining distance, instead embracing the possibility of self-destruction. King was something else, something that he missed in his calculations. According to the medical personnel that he captured and questioned before coming here, King had an inhuman physiology. However, fast healing was never among his strong points, in fact, the injury that he received in Belaz gnawed at his health for long days. So how…
Irrelevant. Wohali made his decision, firing his outer shell in every direction, eliciting a grunt of pain from within the mist. His true form was revealed—the writhing knot of steel tendrils centered on a single armored brain case linked to a plasma generator. The mist struck, eating away at his sensory devices, and the inhuman, pale hand reached out to collapse the brain case. Just as Wohali hoped for. A needle came from his brain case, a dart with his most recent biological virus. One of his tendrils pushed the dart into the pale arm, and the creature within the mist howled.
The flesh became even paler, cracking and breaking in front of the few remaining cameras placed across Wohali's tendrils. On reflex, King jerked his hand, attempting to shake off the numb feeling. His hand shattered into countless pieces in response, and the pale wave moved up his arm toward his body.
A crystallization virus—this was the deadly biological weapon that Wohali found in the laboratory—remains from the Old World. Upon researching the data stored in the main server of the laboratory and examining the crystalized remains of the scientists, Wohali deduced the true nature of this deadly plague. Upon coming into contact with a living person, it would slowly worm its way into a person’s brain, guiding him toward a gathering of not-infected people. From there, it would spread via air from one host to many, spreading itself far and wide, causing unnatural paranoia and fear of others in people, preventing them from revealing their symptoms to doctors.
And in a matter of days, all of these people would turn into crystallized hulks, their flesh hardening to the point where not even regeneration machines could save the infected people's brain matter, unless they completely cloned the victim.
Wohali kept this discovery to himself, never wanting to reintroduce this plague to humanity. He destroyed the original plague and created another crystallization virus based on the original. This one worked immediately, fueling the victim’s paranoia and flooding the brain with horrible visages. At the same time, this virus would not spread to others. At least in theory.
And now he observed how something within the mist howled in pain, tearing away whole chunks of hardened flesh, panicking and thrashing around the room. Sometimes it would disappear altogether, only to reappear in another place. Wohali was unsure if this was the being’s speed or if his sensors were finally breaking down. He merely tried to move toward the exit, assured that this time King was dead. There was no way for him to survive. Not this. King’s last arm shattered into chunks of crystal, and he stopped, turning to the flesh carver.
A heavy foot stomped upon Wohali’s brain case, and Wohali glanced up, seeing something blinking in the clouds of mist.
"Nothing can stop me now," The being spoke in a surprisingly soft voice, and new arms pushed from his shoulders, replacing the lost ones and adding two more. Its body was no longer hardened or covered in crystal, and its panicked expression had vanished. "At long last, my fate is my own. No one can hold sway over me ever again. Finally. I am free."
Wohali said nothing. All personnel were already evacuated from this section of the dome based on the false alarm that he sent before. It was now just him and King. The flesh carver simply overloaded the plasma generator, and, in a moment, he was no more when an explosion that equaled two thousand tons of explosive power burst free from him, ending the flesh carver forever and ravaging the towering being above him. This was Wohali’s last and final gambit to keep his people safe from King’s influence.
*****
"Father," Chochmingwu spoke in a text-to-speech voice, feeling tears running down her cheeks and hating herself for being unable to say the words with her own tongue, "Goodbye."
She and her fellow students were standing on the stone ridge, near the capital. The brightest spark that illuminated the skies and evaporated King’s palace from existence could be seen even from here, from several kilometers away. The moment Wohali went to face King, they ran, taking several vehicles and driving as fast from the city as they could, taking both the captured flesh carvers and King’s secretary with them.
And now they were alone. Or mostly alone.
"Way to go with a bang," Earless One said, folding her arms on her chest. Chochmingwu felt a desire to smash the mutant’s face into a bloody pulp, to unleash her anger at someone… She swallowed, forcing back these stupid emotions, "Farewell, Wohali. You were… fun to speak with. What will you do?"
"We will return the prisoners to our people," One of the students said, a young man in the frame of the heavy assault team, "Then we beeline to Iterna. Tlaltzin is not the one to forgive slights easily."
"And I will go with you." Chochmingwu turned to face the shaman and the other prisoners. They freed every reclaimer, this was Wohali’s final wish, a way to force the enemies to show mercy to his people.
"Why?" The shaman demanded to know.
"My father wanted to learn more about your kind," Chochmingwu stated flatly, "and the task falls to me."
"Commendable," The wolfkin nodded simply, "Let us leave, before they find us."
"Stay safe, everyone," Chochmingwu turned to her fellow students and, following some strange urge, hugged each and every one of them, even those who were missing the frame and now were the floating brains in a jar. "One day we will come back to our people."
"Until we meet again, sister," Almost all of them hugged her back, "Don’t forget to call."
"I won’t." Chochmingwu smiled through tears and hurried to the vehicle, preparing to lead the prisoners back to the reclaimers.
Her father was dead, perished along with the instigator of this war. Chochmingwu prayed to the Sun God that she and her father had made the right choice in the end.