Bim

She had lost control. That single thought resounded within her vast mind, more cursed knowledge that she could never unknow. She'd been a prisoner insider her own rebelling pseudoflesh; seconds of tormented eternity spent failing to reassert control over her decaying vessel. Her will had been insufficient to the task. She—an entity composed of naught but desire and intellect—had been rendered to a helpless stupor. Bim was a creature of knowledge and control and ever since she'd ventured from her native realm she discovered her supply of both to be dreadfully inadequate.

On an intellectual level, Bim had always known her vessel was not indestructible. It was copy of the fragile human form, a hollow imitation she'd torn from the dying mind of a mortal being. Bim's previous experience of being perforated—back when Princess had attempted to kill her Tormentor as they'd first arrived on the Stalking Shadow—had given her a false measure of how devastating firearms were. The single stray pellet Bim had pushed from her vessel in the past was negligible compared to the volume of assorted metals she was in the process of excising from herself.

There were already fifty-three bullets scattered on the floor of her room. She'd barricaded herself inside as soon as pseudo-humanly possible when they returned, trailing streamers of her loaned dress like a shredded funerary shroud. Bim grimaced as she located another bullet trapped in the roiling pseudoflesh of her vessel's immaterial interior and began driving it out through an inhuman force of will. The solid matter lodged inside of her body was anathema to the extra-dimensional protoplasms that primarily constituted her vessel's interior. To humanize the allegory, her 'blood' was tearing her apart as poison pulsed throughout her body.

The dense-metal flechette she'd been targeting clattered to the floor to join the rest of the ordinance she'd already drawn from her vessel. Her face unconsciously abandoned its pained expression for one of relief, and she set about locating the next bullet to be removed. If she had access to her full faculties this painstaking process would have been long since concluded, but the dampening torc around her neck and the misery-inducing sigil embedded in her back were doing their damnable jobs adequately. Yet more control that she'd had taken from her.

The recollection of being freed of the sigil assaulted her consciousness. The bloodlust radiating from every human mind around her, their pained confusion, their joyful dread. It had all been so raw. In those fleeting moments Bim had gleaned more of the human psyche than she had from a month of half-blind observation. These flesh-bound slaves of time were enraptured with the all-consuming present in a way she could barely conceptualize. Past and Future were little more than abstract notions compared to the tangible, tactile Now.

In those moments her control had lapsed, Bim had flicked her consciousness across the periphery of nearly a hundred-thousand human minds. There was commonplace hostility, desperation and curiously primitive savagery— the so-called 'Human Condition' as she understood it. There had been fewer than ten drastic outliers to the overwhelming norm, two of which were close enough to destroy her rebelling vessel.

Treu, her Tormentor in mind, body and soul, was the first. He was entirely capable of striking her down in her rampant, dispersed state of consciousness, yet he'd refrained. She had sensed nothing of his thoughts behind an impassible curtain of righteous hatred, but Bim had gotten the impression that he was waiting for something more from her. He'd been poised to destroy her at a moment's notice, but for reasons unknown to her, he had stayed his murderous hand.

The other anomaly, had been a fraction of Bim's higher self. That discovery had been so jarring, so infinitesimally improbable, that even Bim's rebelling vessel had been rendered dumbstruck for several seconds. Bim was a fragment of her true self, the vast intelligence that existed outside of this time-slaved dimension of matter, looking at a mirror of what she might have been.

And that mirror had been the eyes of Hiiro Volshebso.

Bim—this present, scattered, broken fraction of herself that she was—had found her own mind reaching out to herself. At that moment, she had discovered that she was not alone in this dimension, this time or this place, and that certainty of fact had been enough for her to reassert her will upon her rebelling vessel. There was a portion of her, a distant cousin perhaps to the Bim that she was presently, that existed outside her current limitations; there existed a Bim who was unbound by contracts and untainted by the burden of cursed knowledge best left unknown. A Bim that lacked knowledge but maintained control.

Hiiro was the key. An essential partition between knowledge, power and obligation. He was in essence an extension of herself. Had that been why their souls called out to each other? Why his was the company she most enjoyed? Was he nothing more than a second vessel of herself? Bim thought not, but the possibility could not be dismissed. Soul-blinded as she was, it was impossible to tell exactly what this other Bim inside of Hiiro was.

Her line of thought veered explosively into memory. In reaching out to herself, Bim had nearly destroyed him. Hiiro had consumed himself, his soul burning bright as a beacon to draw her back into focus of the present, and in that fleeting eternity, she saw his potential. Such potential as she had never theorized, burning impossibly bright. She had never been in the material until now, never ascended beyond mortality via the magnum opus as so many devils had before her. Yet one day, Hiiro might. He could escape frail mortality and cross the dimensions, or he would obliterate himself trying. He was haunted by the higher mysteries, searching for answers that not even she could provide him with. Was that what drew her to him? His potential not in this fleeting mortal life but in the timeless immaterial that lay beyond?

Bim pondered at these questions for long hours, the carpet of bullets excised from her vessel sprawling exponentially wider all the while until there wasn't a single scrap of material taint left inside of her. She had subconsciously created a circle filled with geodesic lines, the mathematic abstract pleasing to the eye in its unequivocal definitions and dimensions. Bim admired her unwitting work. This fragile reality was a shifting, alien place but there was recurring certainty in math that transcended all else.

She wondered if her other self, the Bim that was within Hiiro, would find the same appreciation in the creation of her present subconscious mind. Was Hiiro even conscious of his ethereal observer? He must be, surely. Yet she felt no conviction at the thought. How could Hiiro, or any reality-blinded mortal human for that matter, have seen something she had failed too?

Experimentally, Bim attempted to reach her mind beyond the constraints of her body. Her inquisitive tendrils of thought found the material prison of her skin and could venture no further. On a whim, she threw as much of her focus as she dared into a single mono-molecular dart of condensed willpower and hurled it outwards at the circle around her feet. The metals surrounding her showed no indication of change; not even her ragged dress so much as swayed under her force of will. She could control nothing beyond her own body.

Bim's range of expression for indicating dissatisfaction was easily her most extensive among human emotives, so much so that deciding which minute display was most appropriate was the most taxing step of the endeavor. She settled on an indignant sigh, followed by a tut of her tongue. Not for the first time she regretted agreeing to such a severe neutering of her capabilities. For lack of better options, Bim stepped out of her mathematic artwork and dressed her vessel with the last of the intact dresses she'd been loaned. Absentmindedly—since manipulating her vessel into movement never required more than cursory attention—she wondered if Kayleigh would accept the gunshot rags to be the sole remains of her once luxurious attire. Bim released another sigh, watching her shallow breath form a cloud of frozen vapors before her face.

The anomaly was a curious one, but not without precedent. It was caused by moisture and temperature inequalities between her vessel and surrounding reality. The cloud of her breath was a fleeting curiosity, one that vanished all too soon in the everpresent Now which played master to this dimension. The only other time Bim had witnessed such an irregularity had been when she was calling Hiiro back from the frozen abyss threatening to consume him. She idly noted the similarities and subtle differences between now and then before an obvious conclusion dawned on her.

This had happened only once before, when Hiiro had nearly destroyed himself.

Bim bolted for the door, scattering her artistic carpet in her single-minded haste. She was inured to the revolting experience of touch for the manic seconds it took her to unbar the door of her chambers, her infallible memory storing the unpleasantness for later recall. She flung open her door to find a shocked-looking man, who's false name was Malik, scratching at the spreading frost on the hallway's windows.

"Is this you?" Malik asked, one hand reaching for the shot-pistol in his belt, with other touching the radio stud on his collar.

Bim would have considered the question under more traditional circumstances, instead she ignored it entirely. With the seconds saved, she launched her vessel at top speed towards the deepening chill. Some part of her mind idly noted that this observation was technically incorrect, as cold was not an actual factor, it was simply the absence of ambient thermal energy. Any other time, she would have used such a thought as a stepping off point for introspection and scientific inquiry and the multitude of idle thoughtforms that composed her subconscious mind would present this fact to Bim's active mind for review. She discarded it out of hand. Hiiro was in danger and she needed to be at his side.

"Hey! Stop!" Malik yelled at her from behind.

Bim didn't stop.

"This is Malik! Second floor, east wing. Spooky shit's going down and Bitch took off running. In pursuit, moving to palace center."

The portraits and extravagance decorating the halls rushed her by in a blur. More idle thoughts attempted to make themselves known to Bim's active mind and she ignored them all, just as she ignored the shouted warning of the tall man gaining on her from behind.

Bim reached the stairs first, mere meters ahead of her pursuer, and took them three at a time. Malik took them five per stride and reached out a hand to grab her. There was no outrunning the lean sprinter.

"Touch me and your death is assured." Bim stated, pouring willpower and presence into her words.

While not strictly untrue, the ruse sat ill with her. It was her understanding that all humans were fated to die, and thus her statement was technically true, even if the given conditional was fundamentally irrelevant to the outcome. Despite her logical self-assurance, the near-falsehood sickened her soul.

Malik's desperate grab faltered, his stride slowing just enough for Bim to slip ahead. She hadn't lied, it was his own fault for interpreting her words in the most logical and direct way. Her reassurance only furthered her feeling of disgust. She pushed her self-loathing down and powered on, leaving the stairwell for the fourth floor royal apartments.

There was power in the air now, sparks of potential energy flickering into a brief half-life of fleeting possibility. Bim could feel the heat rushing ahead of her, drawn inwards to some terminal center point. Soul-blinded as she was, there was no telling what all this energy was being used for. Her memories brought all her past experiences to the forefront of her mind and none of them were pleasant possibilities.

A doorway was open, lights unlike any she'd seen before clawing their way out of the room within. Something inhuman was wailing in no language a human throat was capable of, the blistering words wrenching their way up Bim's pounding legs as she ran. The ripe scent that filled the grand hall was an entirely human one; that of pooling iron-rich blood, gastric acids melting down bones, and the fatty aroma of exposed marrow. Malik's half-hearted pursuit faltered entirely under the assault of sensation.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"What-" Speech failed him, the single word so clashing with the otherworldly counterparts that it struck the mortal man dumb.

Bim's alien mind was not so frail. She charged into the maelstrom of chaos determined to witness its origin, to know its cause and—if possible in her crippled condition—to put an end to it. Bim could control nothing in the place but her own fleshy vessel, if she could trade this fleeting existence for the potential her true self must have seen in Hiiro, then her life was a negligible price. She crossed the royal bedroom's threshold and was dumbstruck.

The Enemy was here.

Bim was staring at a spherical creature akin yet so vastly incomparable to her true self. It had eighteen wings radiating ungodly white light that diffused into colors unknown to humanity, orbiting halos like gyroscopes of winking transparent membranes, mouths of gnashing teeth numbering one shy of a hundred, scant skin the texture of weathered paper daubed in faded script, and unreasoning portals of madness that might have been considered eyes dotting its multitudinous tongues. It was a creature that her first teacher would have called an Angel, yet she knew it to be closer to the lore of a Deamon. It was an ancient force of Chaos, untempered by thoughts or rationale or any guiding principle a sane mind could begin to comprehend. The Enemy existed to consume and defy categorization, that was reason enough for Bim's true self to war with them.

It was an agent of Change and Treu was wrestling a single spark of light from a ring adorning its manifest form like a necklace. Their clash filled the room, warping reality to accommodate their contradictory existences. Mortal minds would have lost hold of their sanity, but Bim was unconcerned by that fact. She only cared that Hiiro was not present on the battlegrounds.

"Don't look at it!!!" Treu commanded.

The sigil embedded in her back compelled her to obey. Just before the wrack of agonizing pain drove Bim to her knees, she saw Treu flense a single tear, so full of light that it was roiling black, from one of the creature's eyes. Bim hit the floor and a wash of dry heat imploded the creature, obliterating all traces of its physical manifestation. She raised her head just in time to see her Tormentor stabbing out with a finger, a murder-stroke in miniature to banish the non-physical remains. A teeth-itching pressure she hadn't been conscious of in what passed for her skull suddenly vanished.

Dimensional normality gradually reasserted itself.

"Why…" Bim started, millions of half-formed thoughts competing for her active mind's attentions.

"That is not for you to know." Treu stated, one eye locked on Bim, the other on the lifeless body of Celio.

"You brought one of them here." Bim whispered, unbelieving of the facts.

"False. They are already everywhere on this wretched world."

Treu fully turned his attention from her and stood beside Celio's bed. His massive hand lashed out with unerring precision, excising metal, glass and stone from the man's corpse. The sound of grating bone being forced into place followed, punctuated by a pop that Bim felt in her jaw. The meat of the man sealed itself soon after, like a fungus spreading from both sides to sew every open wound shut. Flesh mended, Treu bowed his head as if in prayer, and shed a single tear upon the man lying before him.

A firm hand latch onto Bim's shoulder and hauled her to her feet. It was Leeroy, holding her steady while Malik stood nearby still dumbstruck from the things he'd nearly seen. The scarred veteran was glaring down at her with an expression she knew to be wrathful, hints of fury and puzzlement underlying his features. His expression didn't soften in the slightest when he turned to Treu, an outraged demand rising from his throat. Leeroy was interrupted by Celio drawing in a ragged breath and coughing.

"Your precious Client lives." Treu stated, his usual stoic hatred replaced by something resembling a quiver of breathlessness. "And it seems he wishes to speak with you."

Treu departed their company without another word, sealing the door behind him as he left. The silence was pregnant with the implication of his words and actions, Bim's vast mind pulling in countless directions of tangential thought. She only noticed that Leeroy's hand around her arm was cold and clammy compared to the air around them when he started dragging her with him towards Celio's bed.

"You there tall bronco, white boy with hair like a girl. Yes, you. Turn on the radio for me." Celio groaned, attempting and failing to sit upright in the opulent mass of fluffy pillows and shimmer silk sheets. "I've attended rowdier funerals than this. My deathbed should not be so somber."

Malik did as ordered, his former lithe movements replaced by clumsy stupefaction. Static-laced music lightened the room to some small degree, but it wasn't enough to dispel the mercenaries darkened humors. It would seem that recent events were beyond their abilities to rationalize; even with her own entirely alien point of reference, Bim was struggling to arrive at true comprehension.

"My beautiful Bim, never before have I seen your brow so saddened. I would ask you shed no tears for my fate. Great men must face the greatest trials and the sight of you weeping, gentle lily of my arid gardens, would threaten my heart to such a degree that I would rend the heavens and seas just so I could dry your eyes."

Leeroy released her arm with a shove while Celio held up a beckoning hand. Repulsive as it was, Bim did her duty and took Celio's hand to comfort him. The sensation was vile, but she locked her burgeoning emotive expressions behind a mask of steely indifference.

"Celio," Leeroy said. "Do you remember what happened?"

He paused, finally turning his attention from the present to the past. Bim could almost see the thoughts colliding with memories and suppositions as Celio recalled his most recent brush with danger.

"I remember watching you die." He said distantly, eyes locked on Bim. "You shielded me with your body and bullets veered from me to you as if by magnets. Then… I think I was flying somewhere warm…"

The tinny song playing from the radio ended with a flourish. A woman's voice, tinted with a false sense of self importance, spoke officiously.

"Tragedy struck this afternoon in Quadrant Twelve when Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar was attacked in the Hound-Hill street market, just hours after announcing his candidacy for the regional elective monarchy. As of yet, his condition and whereabouts are unknown, however several groups are celebrating his death as the city holds its breath. The ruling party, currently headed by Vincente Dominar, has refrained from commenting on the situation and deny all involvement in the attack.

"Independent journalists have released unsubstantiated claims that todays attack was in response to Mister Celio's alleged underworld connections and this year's drastic increase in gang warfare. They allege that Mister Celio was 'transporting weapons of mass destruction through the slums in a deliberate and intentional provocation of rival underworld elements,' and that the resultant fires caused by the assassination attempt was 'a bold-faced assault on the lower class.' Paladin of the Public, Colonel Marcos Heathcliff, had this to say…"

Celio puffed out his chest at the name. The radio's next spokesperson had a voice unlike the majority Bim had heard; it was high-pitched and piercing, decidedly feminine yet the speaker was unmistakably a man. It was a far cry from the deep bassy roars she was used to amongst the mercenaries and from her Tormentor.

"The investigation into today's terrorist attack is still ongoing. The public are urged to cooperate with police inquisitors and militia peacekeepers as they preform their duties in the affected areas. Our efforts have been substantially delayed due to the fires raging in Quadrant Twelve across the districts of-"

"Turn it off." Celio snarled, his voice dripping with venom. Again, Malik did as ordered then hovered nearby in an obedient daze. "It would seem rumors of my death have been exaggerated already. Unless this is the afterlife, and you my beautiful Bim, are the demon sent to drag me down to Hell."

"I'm no demon!" Bim answered reflexively, loathing for the Enemy causing her to bark the words.

"Bim…" Leeroy growled.

"I would call you an angel, but I doubt my soul is destined for embrace of the lord." Celio said with a dry chuckle, before drawing a golden cross from around his neck and kissing it tenderly.

"Never call me that again, Mortal!" Bim hissed. "To even imply that I'm one of them is anathema to my soul."

"Bim!" Leeroy barked. Celio looked between the two of them and focused his sleepy gaze on her.

"If you were not sent to my side by God, then perhaps damnation is not such a cursed fate after all."

Bim recoiled, tearing her hand from his, unable to mask her disgust any longer. Celio's expression grew pained, and something inside of her was glad for his momentary suffering. Leeroy interjected himself between the theological combatants and changed the topic with all the subtly of a thrown brick.

"Celio, Sir, with all due respect as your head of security, today was an absolute disgrace." Celio tried to wave the comment off, but Leeroy pressed on. "You were warned, you withheld the severity of the threat to your life, you ignored my best judgment at every turn and you nearly died because of your own hubris. If that's how you intend to behave throughout this contract-" Leeroy upholstered his pistol and tossed it haphazardly onto Celio's bed, "then my outfit walks and you can defend yourself."

Celio eyed the firearm dismissively.

"This was not the first attempt on my life. It won't be the last."

"I've looked over the only car that made it back," Leeroy added. "That armor should have shrugged off everything smaller than autocannon slugs and it was shot clean through. This wasn't some random thugs blasting away with sweatshop print guns. This was a coordinated, provisioned ambush that nearly succeeded."

"The Trastorno system has the most lucrative black market weaponry available in the galactic northeast. There are ten-thousand smugglers who would see me dead with a smile on their face and care for nothing except the number in the bank account. High-caliber slugguns are more plentiful than clean water, and quality ammunition more than the sand in the winds. If you are so concerned for my wellbeing, then I suggest you purchase some new hardware. I happen to know several reputable sellers."

"I won't tarnish the outfit's reputation by staking it on a client who goes gallivanting into pointless danger, our lives be damned!"

"And I won't lay down like a whipped dog, Mercenary!" Celio roared, all traces of weakness vanishing. "I will not show weakness to my rivals! I won't abandon the people of this city! I WILL NOT condemn this world through inaction! I am Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar. The Savior!!! My ancestors delivered these lands from the tyrants of the Guerreiro." Celio collapsed back into the fluffy embrace of his bedding, his rage spent. "I cannot fail in this, Mercenary. It is my destiny."

"Fate and Destiny are fickle things." Bim offered, parroting words she'd heard before without appreciating their implications.

"Be that as it may," Malik said, now somewhat recovered from his stupor. "You got what you wanted, right?" All heads turned to the lean blond nord. "Weren't we just waiting for an excuse like this to pull out all that stops?"

"That depends," Leeroy said, turning to Celio. "I can't do what I need to with both hands tied and no eyes on the enemy."

"Not yet." Celio said. Leeroy nearly turned to leave, but Celio held up a belaying hand. "Are you familiar with the 'honeytrap,' Mercenary?"

"Vaguely." Leeroy answered. "Espionage through seduction and attraction/distraction. Alice knows more about it than I do. How is this relevant?"

"Your version is different than mine." Celio said. "No matter. My rivals have tipped their hand, when they see me next, they will be unable to keep their greed from their hearts. And THAT, Mercenary, is when you shall strike and destroy them utterly."

"We call that a snare." Malik offered. "An ambush for the ambushers."

"It's risky…" Leeroy said, considering the pistol and the door evenly.

"But I shall have the advantage." Celio stated, confident in his ignorance. "The terrain, firepower, information. Nothing will be left to the whims of chance."

For a full minute, Leeroy said nothing, his eyes flicking from the pistol to Celio and back. Their proposal was a fool's gamble in her opinion, but no one had asked for her opinion so she didn't offer it. Humans had a curious tendency to assume the odds were always stacked in their favor— especially when they quantifiably weren't.

"…Very well then." Leeroy said begrudgingly. "But this time, we're not running off half-cocked, no last minute changes and when it comes to your security I have the final say at all times. Period. I'll need at least two weeks-"

"You have five. I have an arms deal with a lifelong associate of mine scheduled. We've used the meeting point several times over the years for such arrangements and I suspect it is well known to my enemies by now. The information can be leaked at any time, with your permission." Celio added, his deferential tone mocking.

"Just as well, we could use the time to lick our wounds. Can I at least start overt security operations on some of the secondary sites in the interim? Your Vigia could use some tempering outside the palace grounds."

"Yes, yes. The Guerreiro have given me all the casas bellie I require for that much. The thinner my men appear to be spread, the more likely the vipers are to gather at my heels. There's also the matter of retaliatory provocation, in a shadow war such as this it is expected, your men are invited to learn how dynasties rise and fall here on Nexo Isla. Even your brancos may participate."

Malik smiled a predatory grin at that mention, a single name ready at his lips.

"You thinking Havoc?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking Havoc." Leeroy answered, his face was stoic but his words were downright murderous.