The murder took a second. Curtbastra’s fingers were the fastest part of his body, not counting his charisma. Pebbles flew describing flaming arches, partly due to air friction, and partly because some had all the curves in the right place, for a pebble.
Heads blew left and right. The pebbles seemed to be homing onto its targets, each one as small as a pea, but with the force to obliterate organic matter due, partly, to their infusion with Dand —TVE, and no, not meaning “TV Española”. The girl called Jagger didn’t fell when her head got blow off. She crossed her arms, as if offended, while walking over to her mother. Then, she pointed at the rotund, pink-cheeked, blood-and-brains-covered woman.
“Well, yes, I may have lied to you about who your father was.”
“…” The headless girl argued with utmost eloquence.
“You have no right to speak to me like that, insolent brat!” The mother instinctively slapped a cheek that wasn’t there. The headless girl’s neck spurted blood on her mother’s face and then she went over to her beheaded relative. They began flirting in braille.
“Ah, young love is beautiful,” Cutbastra commented, seeing the two lovebirds make the best of the Jagger Genocide.
Kalon put all of his killing intent, puppy intent, tax avoiding intent, and choccy milk drinking intent in a desperate strike against Cutbastra’s back. In addition, he made most of his Ankok (Cultivator girl fuel) flow to Jagger.
Feeling the hit, the immortal perked up. “Oh, right there. That contracture has built tension for weeks.”
Kalon, breathing heavily, fell to his knees, spent. Cutbastra turned to look at him and put his hand out just before Kalon’s head hit the ground, saving him from a nasty hit against a rock. “Careful there, Laddie.”
Jagger, once again, crawled from below his owner.
“I have the feeling you are not so bad. Why are you killing all these children?” Jagger asked, turning his head.
“Prophecy-related self-defense. It’s contemplated in the law of the land since Grulina v. Kormoro set the antecedent. If one or a certified oracle gets a heavens-certified vision of an event that results in one’s death or severe injury, it’s licit to undertake any actions deemed logical and necessary to avoid such future.” Cutbastra explained, almost robotically.
“I am a certified oracle,” added Oracle. “Cutbastra can be killed by no man nor woman, but there are so many caveats to that statement that any time I get a vague vision about something able to kill him being born or spawned or called forth from the queer dimension, I urge him to act in his best interest.”
“The queer dimension?” Jagger asked.
“As in strange, not as in gay-related. Old-timey queer. No-homo queer,” Cutbastra clarified.
While the immortals expounded on the queer dimension for the puppy to learn, Kalon’s conscience was trapped deep in a place of its own. Amidst total darkness, a couple of mayonnaise (as in color, not made of eggs and oil) eyes opened.
“You are weak,” the presence stated, matter-of-factly.
“No, I am Kalon,” Kalon’s conscience answered, taking form, shaping like his body to give him some sort of familiarity to grasp onto, even lost in that cranny of his psyche.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Where are you?” Kalon asked, knowing very well that he was knocked out on the floor.
“I am inside your head.”
“You must be very small, then.”
The presence rolled his eyes. “I am inside your mind.”
“Even smaller!” Kalon’s amazement was difficult to measure.
The presence grunted in disgust and revealed the rest of its head. It was a relatively-person-sized, inexistent, fiery Rottweiler head.
“I am the personification of the Road you walk. Here, I’ll throw you a bone.”
A hospital-yellow window popped up in front of Kalon’s embodiment.
WOULD YOU LIKE A SYSTEM TO HELP YOU CULTIVATE?
[YES] [NO]
Kalon stared at the arcane sigils like a bull at an UFO casually abducting his favorite wife. What a conundrum. This could mean something, and there were a couple buttons with engravings there. He touched the one with the O, because shorter words were always a safer bet, or so his mom had preached for years on end, and because the O was less menacing than the Snake-shaped S.
“… Hint taken: don’t offer a system to illiterate fucks.”
“Guh, why do you torture me with written words.”
An ethereal, bluish hand manifested by the side of the Rottweiler head, it was offering a bottle of aged whiskey. “Avaunt, demon of my past, imp of the perverse vice! I am clean! I am clean!” He repeated as a mantra. After the hand disappeared, the avatar of the Road suspired. “Well, Kalon, you are ready for a breakthrough anyway. Do you want power?”
“Political? No.”
The hand manifested again, this time holding a revolver with a single bullet. Once away, the Rottweiler resisted its allure.
“Practical power. Punch-harder-power.”
“That would be useful, I reckon,” Kalon tried to appear intelligent.
“You cannot reckon anything, you bead-deprived abacus.”
Kalon stepped forward and booped the avatar’s nose. Moments later, he stared at the bloody stump that had sprouted in place of his wrist. A most strange experience.
The avatar spat out the chewed and mushed up hand. “It’s just a spirit-representation hand, it will grow back.”
“I see. They also do in the real world, then?”
The Avatar of the Road developed an eye tic so violent one could call it an eye thicc. “Have the power and let me fall back into alcoholism to forget this interaction.”
The avatar vanished in a poof, and so did the representation of Kalon.
Cutbastra, whose attention was caught by the shining light suspended above somewhere nearby to the middle of the town, turned back to search for the source of the horrid flute music that now infected the atmosphere like a vicious nerve agent. It was Kalon, who had a subtle golden glow around him.
Jagger and Brunhilda, who were happily lapping up tasty children remains, turned as the music grew stronger.
“Dear lords of heaven, the boy is main-charactering too hard,” Jagger growled before going back to his delicious, improvised raw meal.
Kalon raised to his feet, falling into a standing position as he was wont to do. Without opening his eyes, he extended his hand, and Jagger felt his butt began to tingle. An external force pulled on his face, creased his skin towards his rear end as he held onto a child’s cadaver and trashed to get a piece of meat off.
Finally, Jagger let his meal go and flew back to Kalon’s hand. Kalon raised his other arm and above him, a second Rottweiler puppy, thin and trembling, took form, brought to life by Kalon’s Orohi (The vital energy).
“Cutbastra, you killed my peers. Prepare to—”
Cutbastra bitch-slapped Kalon, knocking him out, making the second Rottweiler disperse into thin air as it cried. It didn’t want to die, but that was part and parcel of being a Karet (The vital energy) construct.
“I think we are done in this place, Oracle.”
“Was it necessary to knock Kalon out?” Jagger asked, once again having to crawl from below the unconscious form of his owner. It was becoming a routine.
Cutbastra nodded. “No. But it was an easy way to make him stop being stupid for a wee while.”
“Well, I bid you two farewell. I have tons of children innards to feast onto. Bye.”
Cutbastra crouched and scratched Jagger’s head. “Goodbye, puppy! Hope I see you again!” Then he stood and addressed the mourning fathers and mothers that knelt next to the bodies of their beheaded children. “It breaks my handsome heart to say goodbye, Valelike Valey. I’ll see you in my dreams.”
“Heh, nightmares,” Oracle chuckled in a low voice.
Cutbastra winked at the sky and a rainbow descended for him to step on it, because the sky was that kinky.
“Farewell, my lovely ladies and lads, I may return to fuck you all one day,“ he saluted again, voice full of melodramatism, as he ascended the multicolored path.
And that’s how the Jaggercide concluded, leaving the only Jagger Cutbastra needed to worry about alive and well-fed.