If he was human, he was the basest facsimile. A metaphor almost without meaning. The streets were empty of people, and yet crowded with chaos. Black pantomimes of humanity were all around, but they did not wail silently. They did not flicker their limbs about, mimicking the last seconds of their victims lives. They walked, and walked tall, each step leaving broiling marks on the cobblestones.

Gelstadt came in meandering steps beneath a stone archway. The street, already foreboding with its grime and shadows, had become a hell of its own in Gelstadt's presence. Fire roared throughout the buildings above. The sounds of collapsing building groaned through the earth and ground alike – and though it all the streets were silent. The silence that screamed in Gelstadt's mind.

The thoughts, the words of that mind were Gelstadt's, were human. The rest, Redmun only experienced as a slick, unknowable mass, its meaning gleaned only through Gelstadt. That conscious-less mass controlled the body, and the oozing bodies around him. Gelstadt only followed, thoughts mere quiet mumblings, and when a man bearing the Possessor's mark appeared around the corner, circling at a distance, that mumbling spewed out the word 'Brother,' and suddenly anger overrode it all.

Three more Possessors, two women, dropped down from the windows and rooves of nearby buildings, brushing apart flames as they fell. Before their bent knees had straightened, the Corruption had already made its move. Dozens of black shapes came from the shadows. Once shapeless hands shined with the glint of a blade.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Gelstadt, who was barely aware of his own mumbling, didn't know or care why he was so bitterly furious. He roared, and felt the Corruption rush down his throat, between his teeth.

The Possessors died screaming and fighting. It was nothing compared to the horde before them. The Ichor-people fought with the ferocity of soulless beasts, and when the things retreated, and Gelstadt approached, the parts of the Possessors were joining up once more. Ooze-digested intestines wormed their way towards where a stomach once was. The top half of one of the woman – her face still showed – crawled its way towards the legs, and joined once more. When that woman stood, her eyes were still swiveling in its skull, her jaw working uselessly until, at last, she was consumed in full.

Then Gelstadt noticed the flow of citizens down the street. A strong, swift flow of survivors, dashing between the buildings. Geltadt, vague as he now was, put it together immediately.

The Possessors, their hands forced, had died trying to buy time for their escape.

Again, that reasonless, vital rage flooded Gelstadt and his Corruption, and his gritted teeth stopped the constant flow of its oil-like mass on his tongue. It tasted like flowers, and then salt, then a maggot's insides.

The Corruption's minions charged. Their bodies splashed and swarmed down the street until it was full. Then they climbed along the walls and over the rooves, moving faster than their human counterparts could hope to. There were hundreds, and something told Redmun these were but those close to him. They filled Gelstadt's warped vision so completely that by the time they reached the citizens, and the true screams of sanity's death began, there was nothing but black, and the sky.