Freyja went through the rusted, barbed wire-mounted gates of some kind of amusement park, something she had no way of knowing was a reflection of Luchesi’s happier memories. It was dark, freezing cold, and releasing streamers of mist from fissures unseen. As she pressed through the turnstile and looked around, she noticed the floor was more of that rusted iron grate, with huge, gaping holes into bottomless darkness where pieces were missing. She stood in a plaza with withered and torn awnings, the merry little signs and window displays at odds with the doom, gloom, and grime of the place. Creaking ferris wheels turned on the horizon, reminding Freyja of gears in an old gothic clock tower. Wild roller coaster tracks, the framework missing pieces and dropping rotted boards, weaved across the murky horizon, a stretch of orange banding marking the bottom of the sky like a perpetual twilight. A bloodied, anthropomorphic animal mascot costume was slumped over on a bench like a corpse. The ‘street’ was littered with trash and half-eaten snacks.
“Uh huh.” Freyja nodded. “I’m goth, dipshits. This place is on my vacation bucket list.”
It was certainly an upgrade from the literal anus of Hell, seeping hungry hemorrhoids. Or, as they were officially known, shades. After having to endure the sanity and willpower drain of that fetid cesspool, this was practically pussyfooting around.
She walked around the park, whistling at decorative odds and ends here, admiring whatever warped artistic vision painted itself using this environment as its paint and canvas in one.
“Love what they’ve done with the place, whoever they are.” she said, and pushed through a mesh gate at the end of a corridor of iron fencing.
She came into a circular area with a merry go round at its center. It started spontaneously, creaking as it whirred to life, and Freyja saw that, in place of horses and carriages, the mounts were weird fleshy quadruped things with eyeless heads that twitched about spastically, as if in the grip of perpetual seizures. They made horrible shrieking sounds like television static on full blast. Freyja circled the ride and came to another gate, peeking over it through thick waves of fog. Beyond the perimeter of grate flooring, forming a walkway to the next stretch of the park, there was empty air, the ground suddenly giving way into an infinite expanse of darkness. Perhaps she was on some threshold of the Void, yawning below and calling to her? Straining, she almost thought she could hear despairing whispers, and feel cold gusts of plutonian wind rising up to brush her face like the caress of a ghostly lover.
She pushed through the gate and ascended iron steps, her footsteps loud and clanking on each rung, until at last she surmounted the top of the rusted scaffolding. She was in the waiting line area of one of the roller coasters she had gleamed in the distance. Vaguely, she could see lonely party balloons rising out of the gloom beyond the tracks like lost bits of dandelion fuzz, the strings like gossamer strands of web. She heard a bird-like call at her back, and turned around to see a crimson pterodactyl with a flayed body and exposed muscle and sinew flap by, minding its pterodactyl business.
Probably looking for a car to shit on, or someone’s picnic to swoop down on.
Goddamned prehistoric seagulls.
She may or may not have been carrying a grudge against the birds of that feather, shameless sandwich thieves that they were. For a moment, she felt a pang of nostalgia and fondness for the playful crows she had ‘stalemated’ with back in the junkyard. That was where she indulged her little scifi fantasy romp, and also where she had found the newspapers on the scandal with the Misty Glen apartment complex schemes. The mafia had its fingers in that, right? Maybe she should ask Rugal and his ilk if they knew anything about that.
Glancing around, Freyja realized that the only way forward across the gulf was the coaster tracks themselves, looking decrepit, rotten, and overall untrustworthy.
“Mmmhmmm. I know how this shit goes.” Freyja nodded to herself. “I’ll get partway across the tracks, not close enough to make a run for it, and too far to get back to safety, then the ghost carts will barrel into me and make roadkill of my pretty little figure. Nice try, nightmares.” Freyja said. “Cause you know what? I got the hellhound flash pass, bitches.” she assumed her unholy wolfen form, and began traipsing across the tracks, ready and waiting for the haunted amusement park schtick booby trap. There were the low-ish roofs of buildings, towers, it looked like, adjacent to the course of the tracks, in bounding leap distance the moment Freyja smelled any funny business.
Exactly as she had prophesied, the coaster proper came racing down the tracks at her, manned by no one, bars pulled down over ghosts, painted fanged maw at its front car grinning at her and gloating about its impending not-victory.
“Too easy.” Freyja engorged her hind legs and cleared the distance onto the top of a leaning, fucked-foundation tower. “What’s next?” she told herself, padding around on the more or less solid surface, tail wagging with pride.
She wasn’t positive, but she had a feeling the black rain had washed her out of bounds, no-clipping through the layers of reality as had the likes of Richie and Holly, dropping her unexpectedly into some place beyond logic. Prior evidence pointed toward it being the Backyards, but if that was the case, the yards had a serious case of clinical depression this time of year.
“It gets better.” she coddled the yards, hoping to lift its spirits.
She walked along the rooftops, surveying a dark side cityscape that seemed to go on forever. There were more groaning, grating sounds down below, and the windows were all broken or bordered up. A misplaced windmill, taller than the skyscrapers, turned in the distance, looking somehow like an evil eye keeping watch over her. Freyja felt her consciousness flicker to some place above and beyond the darkened, murky sky, a rolling field of grassy green hills that should have felt vibrant, but didn't. There was something oppressive in the air, bitter and full of grudges. Freyja didn't recognize any of the constellations in the alien sky, but heard the hum and shrieks of Venus in fear, all the ambient sounds of the void of space trickling down like the black rain itself. She saw the naked jester plunged into the sewer sea, and the silhouette of the gold and jewel-encrusted boat creature at its back, performing the baptism of evil. She saw, beyond the edge of man's universe, the great demonic eye of a blood red galaxy in the shape of a distorted human face.
She shivered, huddling for warmth, as the buildings below her seemed to creak and sway like great urban reeds in the wind. It gave her a dizzying sense of vertigo, and a profound feeling of being lost, far away from anything called home.
"This is how you see it, isn't it?" she asked no one. "This is the world you see every time you open your eyes. The broken world you carry in your heart - Luchesi?" she looked up, seeing the four-armed beast descending, claws spread out like a jaguar dropping on its prey from a tree above.
Those claws sank into the roof, making the tower shudder, and Freyja slid back, her own claws out and ready, the ones on her feet pulling scratches in the roof. Freyja glared as a single streamer of blood rolled over her eye and pooled at her chin, dislodging plinking little drops, a grazing blade having cut her forehead and rendered the call too close for her liking.
Luchesi's head, twitching like the fleshy horses on the merry go round had been, lifted, and gave Freyja a death glare, inky black tongue swirling around in a lewd and obscene manner.
"Hey there, hot topic." he growled.
“Hey.” Freyja waved.
Then she turned tail and began sprinting across the rooftops.
Luchesi blinked, trying to process this. “Really?” he said, exasperated.
He gave chase.
Freyja bounded, seamlessly shifting between humanoid and wolfen configurations as suited the obstacles before her, pulling off parkour that would get applause from Richie. She could smell corruption on and in Luchesi, but it was fainter than it had been in the black pond when his claw emerged to try to gouge at the group by surprise. Freyja could also smell internal bleeding and marrow leaking through cracked bones. Luchesi's body was having a hard time holding itself together.
This was her chance to wear the brute out and lay into him.
She triangle jumped off of walls, then began grinding down a rail, her claws clutching the iron and kicking off cascading sparks.
"Can you do anything besides run?!" Luchesi called after her, sprinting down the rail.
Freyja cleared another roof, leaping across a wide gap for the edge of a clock tower with only a narrow ledge for purchase.
"Heh." Luchesi jumped after her, throwing his arm out and unveiling a slit in his wrist, from which one of his throwing knives expelled itself into his grip, birthed from the fleshy 'sleeve'. He tossed it at high velocity, outpacing Freyja's flight, and it struck the glass face of the clock. It shattered, the hour and minute hands falling, and the open frame became a plunge into uncertainty. It couldn't be known if the interior even had a bottom.
Freyja gasped and tucked, rolling, botching her arc and landing awkwardly smashed up against one corner of the tower. Luchesi's upper arms plunged their claws into either edge of the circular frame, arms stretched far ahead of his body, boxing Freyja in. He flew forward toward her, teeth gnashing. His lower arms pointed their claws forward, ready to impale the fuck out of Freyja. Instead, Freyja shifted her hind legs into those of a roided-up wolf, and sprang forward to meet Luchesi head-on.
“Fool!” Luchesi cackled, lunging his claws forward.
Freyja leaned forward and flattened her head, face stretching out into a wrinkled snout, eyes glowing bright orange, teeth turning into massive, stake-like fangs. She assumed her hellhound form and aimed to weave between the pair of arms on Luchesi’s right side. She stretched her upper body forward, bones spacing themselves further apart, ligaments groaning, muscles stretching, as she manipulated the ebb and flow of her shifting body as such to contort through the safety window. It seemed to work too, her body flying between the spindly arms and evading the lower set of claws as Luchesi flew past her.
But then, she felt a gash open down her shoulder blade, netting a pained grunt and a sharp hiss of air. Luchesi was quite the contortionist himself, having hiked his right leg back as if ready to kick a soccer ball, lower segment bent at an impossible acute angle to the knee, boot knife jutting out. His leg had kicked out straight as Freyja bypassed the jester’s initial lunge, tearing through flesh and muscle, driven deep by Freyja’s own momentum.
Freyja's blood flew, a streak of it pulled forth by Luchesi's boot knife, and his tongue spun about like a fan, sucking up the sweet drops.
The hellhound plummeted onto the lower roof, crash-landing, and whined. Luchesi turned around on his perch, scraping his claws together excitedly. They were moaning that they wanted to taste blood, and had only gotten a teasing taste back at the forest. What a lovely girl she was! And she'd be so much lovelier as he slowly peeled the skin from her like a captured doe.
Below, Freyja returned to her human shape and tried to lift herself, looking like a PE student in their first semester struggling to hold a plank. Luchesi ground his claws against each other, throwing an amber ball of sparks down at Freyja, like a fragmented cannonball of incandescent particles. The sparks broke on Freyja's back, scattering, and would have burned were it not for Freyja's immunity to heat. The impact drove her back into the ground, sprawled flat.
Luchesi leaped high, all four arms stretched out, and all sixteen hand blades gleaming, and his shadow descended upon the prone Freyja.
-
Richie heard a rumbling above his head, and looked up at the ‘cave’ ceiling, stars twitching and shaking like loose icicles. It sounded like a distant building had collapsed, and he felt Freyja’s scent flow through his being.
The illusionary Thratta joined Richie’s stargazing, and addressed him. “Should you really be here right now?”
Richie smiled after some time. “Freyja can take care of herself. If I’m to be any use to them, I have to be stronger than the rest. I picked the fight with Luchesi, I’m going to be the one to finish it. I’ll usurp control of his yard after I solidify my possession over this one. Freyja won’t go down easy. Just hold out a bit longer, I’ll be there soon.” he said into the aether.
“You’re confident you can control this yard so easily?” Thratta asked.
“I am. I’m not sure what exactly changed between then and now, but for some reason…” he clutched his fist. “I don’t feel like losing at all this time.”
Thratta entered a guard position once again. “Then show me.”
-
Freyja panted on the adjacent roof, the tower she had been astride moments earlier collapsed inward and falling in a cloud of dark smoke and dust. Luchesi flew up out of the plumes like a rocket, landing on the ledge beside her, and scraped his claws together eagerly. Freyja stood, growled at him - and took off running again, bounding across rooftops once more. Luchesi continued the chase, seeming to close the distance with every huge stride. As Freyja wove between pipes, shafts, scaffolding, and other obstructing fixtures and features, so too did Luchesi slice and dice through them, leaving a wake of debris behind the epicenter of the ongoing chase. He cackled and roared after the fleeing Freyja, promising her that there was no escape. At the edge of another long jump, he took notice of a misplaced trash can, and kicked it hard into Freyja’s back. The obstacle struck the hellhound, sending her careening out of view. Luchesi jumped over the ledge, eyes rolling and scanning for the sight of the stumbled quarry. They fall on her too late, seeing that the girl had entered a crouch with her leg, shifted into a muscle-layered amalgamation of human and wolf features ending in a massive burning paw, hiked back, ready to spring. The burning paw and its vicious talons plunged into Luchesi’s stomach. Freyja’s kick threw Luchesi through the window of a tower bearing a resemblance to an abandoned hospital wing, and she flipped over onto her hind legs again, standing tall.
Freyja clutched her swelling bicep, arm shifting over in black fur and red-hot claws, as she concentrated a roaring hellfire in her pawpad. Thrusting her arm out forward, not unlike Dai Funka’s palm strikes, she ejected a torrent of raging flame in through the shattered window frame after Luchesi. The scorching heat surged and blew out all of the windows on that floor, flames spurting out and crackling together as a single massive bonfire that engulfed the building.
Freyja nodded emphatically and turned on her heels, ready to continue sprinting for an exit, wherever it may be. Instead, Luchesi, untouched by the fires, flung himself up from below the ledge in front of her, blocking her path, four arms spread out wide.
He dodged it. Freyja gnashed her fangs, face shifting over into a wrinkled muzzle frothing boiling spittle.
Luchesi ejected his elbow blades from his upper set of arms, and positioned them over Freyja. He ran through a little simulation in his mind. He intended to bring his bladed elbows down over Freyja’s outstretched arms, stabbing them through the cruxes. Then, he would extend his arms at the elbow, grab Freyja by the fabric of her shirt, or the black fur of her chest, and expel his knuckle blades straight through her body. Then, raising his lower set of arms, he would hook either side of her head with his remaining eight finger blades, wrench the girl’s head forward, and take a nice big bite out of her skull.
His sinister eyes glittered with malice. Maybe he could finally have some fun after all!
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He quivered in excitement, and dropped his elbows down.
As Kinga Valentine’s mallet had been unexpectedly stopped in its tracks, so too were Luchesi’s knives. Freyja grabbed them both in an iron grip, deadening Luchesi’s momentum and throwing him off his rhythm.
“What?!” Luchesi hissed.
Freyja’s paws glowed bright red, hissing and warping the metal, and her grip squeezed tighter like a crushing vice. The blades shattered to flying, smoking shards in her claws.
That certainly brings back memories. Freyja thought, remembering the triumph of snapping the bunyip’s proud tusks, and doing her best to vanish the traumatic memory of what had come next. She couldn’t do anything about that right now. But she could do this;
Freyja planted her feet, cocked her fist, and engulfed it in a crimson ball of flame that was nearly blinding. Luchesi flinched back, one eye squeezed shut against the hellish glow. Freyja didn’t need to be a telepath to read what was in Luchesi’s mind. Last time they had met, she could do nothing but stand there, next to useless, and eat a claw stroke that sent her tumbling from the tree like an egg falling out of a nest. He thought she was just some weak puppy.
It was time to correct that little underestimation.
She plunged her burning fist into Luchesi’s gut, folding him over, and her hand, like a magma-coated cannonball, plunged straight through the rival demon’s abdomen and into his body cavity with a sickly squelching noise. Blood and organ tissues boiled and fried inside Luchesi’s body even as the shockwave of the blow set steam and wisps of fire, ignited in the air behind him, flying from Luchesi’s back.
In short, Freyja fisted him.
Luchesi’s mouth hung open, boiling spittle falling from his mouth and sizzling on the floor, light glowing in the back of his throat.
HOT!!! he would have screamed if his vocal cords weren’t incinerated. His lungs were charred bags of barbecue coals, and his bones were cracking and popping as the marrow inside them vaporized into rushing steam looking to burst from every fissure.
Freyja’s arm, buried up to the wrist, pushed deeper, burying itself up to her elbow in Luchesi’s guts, and burning hotter. After a few agonizing seconds, she retracted, yanking her arm out of the beast with another visceral noise, causing the jester’s black blood to rush from the circular hole in his stomach like bubbling hot tar shot from a fire hydrant at high pressure. Freyja casually twisted her upper body to the side to avoid getting hit by the gunk, not for fear of incurring any damage, but out of mere disgust.
Luchesi’s arms fell at his sides, dangling limply, as steam and smoke continued to pour out of the gaping hole in his belly, as well as his maw. He dropped onto one knee.
“L-last time…” he managed to utter, his inner workings already trying to reconfigure themselves.
Freyja grabbed either of Luchesi’s upper arms by the wrists, clutched them tight, bones snapping under her grip and eliciting more agonized cries. She planted her feet in Luchesi’s face and flipped over backward, twisting and contorting the jester’s upper pair of arms, dislocating their shoulder sockets.
“Don’t-!” Luchesi tried to plead, his request falling on deaf ears.
Freyja, face morphed fully into that of a guard dog of Hell, growled and yanked, ripping Luchesi’s extra pair of arms from his body like plucking wings from a crispy fried chicken. He gave another gut-wrenching scream as black blood gushed in twin fountains from the empty stumps, leaving nought but sallow bone points sticking out.
“Last time I was tired, hungry, had a dislocated shoulder, and on my period.” Freyja said, tossing the dismembered arms away like trash. The limbs twitched and writhed, still flexing and unflexing their claws, on the ground a dozen feet behind her.
She readied her arm again, this time flexing her own claws, gleaming black hooks extended from their fleshy sheaths and glowing red hot. The glow of those vengeful claws seemed to burn and peel the flesh of Luchesi's eyes. Freyja's eyes glowed orange too, like the light of a campfire on a dark night, accompanied by the serene sounds of the forests, and the lunar caress of the moon above. Luchesi heard cicadas cry, and firewood snap.
Freyja plunged her claws into Luchesi, hooking a greedy handful of the underside of his stomach hole, and slashed upward, ripping Luchesi's body open like a plastic bag with a pitchfork. At the moment of impact, the glow of Freyja's campfire eyes expanded and overlapped, becoming a single sphere that continued ballooning outward in an exponential radius. The sphere of aura shimmered and danced like the bands within one of those exploratorium plasma globes, engulfing Freyja and Luchesi alike. Luchesi's own aura, a sickly, poisonous purple, seeped out of his body, destroyed under the surge of Freyja's own unbound spirit. Time seemed to freeze.
In the Garden of the Forged, the sigil of the shaggy black beast glowed that same orange.
Crocus, standing in the flow of the windmill area's chill winds, robes fluttering, chuckled softly.
"Yes…" he said.
Everything was coming together nicely so far
Freyja couldn't identify it, but this felt right. It was as though the mindless rampage she had lapsed into last when Chikita was administering Backyards training was now condensed and channeled through her being at the appropriate time and place. She pictured her hellfire and brimstone wrath as water running through floodgates, or an electrical circuit with restricted amperage - the fury of Hell bent to her will. Rather than be consumed by her inner demon, she was taming it - and turning the purifying flames of judgment on a deserving sinner.
Richie, at last emerging from the cave below the shrine, felt a pleasant warm breeze ripple outward, and smiled. His yard was connected with Luchesi's, it seemed. Or, rather, Luchesi had been linking his yard to the free zone that was the Misty Glen interstice until now. But this feeling was that of Freyja, a familiar, comforting euphoria. Richie smiled.
"Atta girl." he said.
Freyja finished her clawstroke, ripping open Luchesi's chest, leaving his body from belly button to sternum a shredded mess. Black blood sprayed, along with an unfurling spaghetti-like mess of ruptured and drawn entrails. The force of the swipe threw Luchesi through the air, and Freyja saw, intermixed and merged with the rest of the viscera, long party streamers drawn out of Luchesi's cavity by her claws.
As the disemboweled monstrosity flew backward, watching his own fleshy streamers flutter in the wind, he felt a final dam break. That last blow - it had been infused with Freyja's very soul, though the mutt didn't realize it. The likes of Officers Wilcox and Dean had come close before, getting the jump on him with a few potshots, but this blatant, heavy blow in the sanctity of his own castle had blurred the rules of the game board. He had felt terror and crushing pain, and it punched through his caul of divinity, as had the burning fist punched through his gut. He, for an instant, did not recognize himself as master, or Freyja as mere prey. He lost his nerve, and the yard, lashed and bound under Luchesi's oppressive, abusive control, had begun to buck, as a horse who realizes their reigns are tied to a rotted, brittle post.
At the same time, the cavalcade of damage he had just taken, compounded by having the arms of the hobo's vengeful ghost ripped right out of his body, definitively tipped the scales. As he flew back toward a tower wall, he wretched, and felt an unstoppable nausea. He threw his head back, and a massive column of black rain exploded out of his mouth so hard it dislocated his jaw. The column flew high, punching through the clouds of the ruined cityscape yard and rejoining the Void from whence it was distilled. Luchesi felt his body shrivel and revert, and then he was once again only human.
When he crashed into the wall, being planted there and embedded in the stone, the blood that leaked from his mouth and open wound was the red blood of a human.
"Oh." he mumbled groggily.
His head fell forward, and his body dislodged from the crater, plummeting into the eerie fog below.
Freyja turned up the heat, blazing rings of fire up her arm, until the black blood coating it was evaporated and gone. She wouldn't let a drop of that shit remain on her body.
"While you were pulling the wings off flies, we were working our asses off." Freyja growled.
The twisted cityscape shimmered and rippled a bit, as though a painted canvas being shaken from beneath, or a tarp across a wave pool. The scents of mismatched tropical and subtropical fruits, jungle vines, and the salty breeze of the sea fluttered through Freyja’s nostrils as her own internal paradise began to imprint its mark on Luchesi’s waning Hell. She regarded her fist, still burning, and realized that it was more than fire glowing orange. Like Richie’s azure light, so too did she have a sphere of orange energy radiating from her paw, a thin layer of it encircling the rest of her body and moving in gentle waves and swells. She felt… warm.
She smiled, tail wagging a bit.
She walked toward the edge of the tower and looked out over the hazy horizon, trying to will the clouds cleared so she could get her bearings - whatever that meant in the Backyards.
How did we get back last time, again? Seems like everytime I’ve gotten in, it’s been on accident, and everytime I’ve gotten out, it’s been because a guide led me out. I guess if I just pick a direction and keep going, I’ll-
She felt a shadow fall over her, and whirled around. Luchesi, still bleeding from the mouth, swept his claws at Freyja, his other hand holding his bloodied, misshapen stomach. Freyja leaned back, losing her footing and beginning to fall backward. The tip of Luchesi’s curved blade cut a small nick in Freyja’s nose as she toppled away from him.
Luchesi watched Freyja’s body fall into the murk below, and he craned his head, ears attuned to hear the plop. When none came, he grunted and glared, and the next moment felt a rush of air as a corvid form flew up and past him, trailing black feathers. It was a jet-black crow with a hooked, shiny beak, red talons, and glowing red eyes. Freyja had thought back to her little game of war with the crows at the junkyard, and felt her body change to reflect it. She shrank and narrowed, her bones becoming hollow and light, her paws and forelimbs morphing into wings with fanned-out feathers. Her muzzle hardened and curved into a cheeky beak, perfect for grabbing shiny objects or nipping exploratory, overambitious cats. At last, she had her answer as to whether or not she could become other shit, found out at the best time she could think of. She looked down over the city as she flew on, tips of her feathers burning and trailing embers like flaming sticks caught in a hurricane gale, and she cawed victoriously as she left the jester, blue-balled and trembling in quiet rage, behind, stranded from further pursuit.
She flew on and on until she breached the horizon, and sooner or later found herself gliding over the streets of Station Bay proper, having popped out of a passing cloud.
As for Luchesi himself, he fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. It had taken a supreme effort to close the wound, but even now it still felt like his insides were scrambled.
"It hurts…" he grunted, folding over. He was sick of pain.
At the very least, Freyja had done him a favor by beating the black rain out of him. He felt like he had a modicum of clarity back, even as shaken black feathers fluttered in the wind like avian middle fingers, the departed bird giving him the bird.
The scenery around him began to waver and fade in and out again. The grimy roof at his feet seemed to take on the dimensions of a tree top, and the grid system of mist crawling along the hidden city streets seemed to clear up and give way to a brackish river, a channel cut between pristine banks crowded with lush jungle vegetation. While the demonic influence of the shade essence clouding his mind was cleared, Luchesi should have found it comforting that his yard was thusly reverting from the trappings of a dreary nightmare, he instead felt wariness and a twinge of fear. This was not his garden, his greenhouse throne room of stained glass murals, or the park trail as he had known it. This unfamiliar landscape trying to crowd out his influence must have been the yard Freyja carried in her soul instead. The territory Luchesi had taken for granted, his divine right, was rebelling, seduced to the call of another master.
What was that tremendous explosion of orange aura? What was this wound that would not heal correctly? The bony knobs of the extra arms Freyja had severed quivered, the vengeful soul they represented, still trapped in Luchesi's being, crying out, despairing that it was no longer able to exert its own influence over the world. When Luchesi closed his eyes, he saw the sneering face of the tramp he had slaughtered to frame Richie staring back at him. The restless spirit stirred within Luchesi, like an absorbed fetal twin with a lingering grudge.
For just a moment, Luchesi realized something - the hatred he felt for the likes of his father and other entrenched elite, able to inflict abuse without consequence, should have been reserved for them and them alone. His father had been his only justifiable killing, a fitting punishment for the man who single handedly ruined his life. When he was turned out on the streets, cold, hungry, alone, and embittered, he had become one and the same with the hobo he had devoured, much as they were literally one now. He didn't know his story. They could have been brothers in another life. Perhaps he too had been cast out and left to fend for himself, no less ruined by fate than Luchesi was. When did he begin to look down on everyone else, and believe himself a god? When did he decide that, like god, he would condemn the 'corrupted' human species to be swept away by a great flood? The great flood that was the Void.
"I'm the corrupted one." he realized miserably, coughing up flecks of blood. "I've always been the corrupted one…"
That was what really hit a raw nerve about Richie looking down on him from above, slashed to fuck and bleeding all over the place. No matter how much power Luchesi had, he did not have strength. When dealt the same cards, the difference was that Luchesi gave up.
The dead hobo inside Luchesi gave a phlegmy cackle, his revenge complete. Luchesi was awake now, his power trip faded away to a waking nightmare, a filthy bed he had made for himself that he must now languish in.
The knobs twisted and retracted into Luchesi's body, and the fallen jester saw the spirit exorcized from his body, clutched in the grip of a great stygian hand which dragged him down into the Void. Even as he was pulled into oblivion, the ghost laughed up at Luchesi, and that laugh echoed for sometime after.
Luchesi remembered the wish his mother had always had for Luchesi - to hold onto the kind and gentle nature he once had.
That promise was irrevocably broken now.
Luchesi bowed his head, as if to accept the executioner's ax from on high, and only stirred after he realized, sometime later, that no heavenly judgment was coming to bring closure to his story just yet.
Finally, he stood again. There was far too much blood on his hands to ever be washed away. If atonement was impossible, there was only one path left - to finish it.
"Oh well." he shrugged.
He threw his head back and cackled, cackled until the laughter was indistinguishable from sobs.
"No point faltering now." he saw a shade emerge from a puddle of shadow and bequeath him the bladed gauntlets Crocus had once taken away.
They felt comforting on Luchesi's hands, and his fingers tingled with warmth.
As the Backyards began to reject him, he felt his body fade in and out, as transient as the decrepit scenery around him, his identity bearing toward the same ultimate fate as the hapless phantom pains.
"Your existence has become faint." Crocus said, appearing behind Luchesi. "Without the recognition of the shades feeding on you, the respect of your yard, new insights from which to renew ownership, or any captured souls remaining to pay the price in your stead, karma is coming to claim you."
"You knew this would happen from the very beginning, didn't you?" Luchesi asked Crocus.
"Of course I did. As you said, I am always innumerable steps above all others." Crocus said.
"You don't need me to cleanse the city now that your army is ready to punch through the veil between fantasy and reality. What do you want from me?" Luchesi asked wearily.
"Richie yet lives." Crocus said.
"Is that so?" Luchesi hummed, impressed. "That's what I get for not recovering a body. Seems I've gotten sloppy in my pride." he gave a mirthless chuckle.
"You have a final scene to play. Go, fulfill your role. Have your destined duel with the dragon boy - in the Backyards." Crocus pointed out over the abstract distance. "That is the only salvation left to you. Renew your dominance over the yard by slaying your rival within said yard, and forcing it to recognize your Candidacy over his. If, by Halloween, you have not triumphed, paradise will be lost to you."
"Do I even have a chance?" Luchesi asked, tired of his master's coyness.
"God only knows." Crocus said. "And he's not telling."
He disappeared, leaving Luchesi's plaster theater mask in his hand. Luchesi looked at the false face he had worn, then tossed it aside, letting it shatter to bits at his side.
-
The agents, both of Brock’s and of Mason’s, began to sweep the island, shooting any shade refugees they managed to locate.
“Sort of surprising guns work so well against these things.” Mason muttered, watching one evaporate as it was shot by one of Brock’s soldiers.
The Institute director looked the soldier over for a moment, assessing his gear and weapons. No patches, insignia, or marks of rank, solid black coveralls, a heavy-looking armored vest and a face-obscuring gas mask made up the soldier’s attire, and lent well to an imposing look. His weapon, a suppressed, polymer-bodied submachine gun, looked expensive but practical. Mason regarded his own personnel comparatively. The few that were in tactical gear at all were clad in police-blue uniforms, carried cheap, unmodified Glock handguns, and more than a few were visibly out of shape. Brock’s men seemed to be unnaturally tall, much like Brock himself, and lean. Mason couldn't help but feel a little jealous, and more than a little outgunned.
Still, the two parties worked amicably to go room by room, building by building, clearing out any anomalies they spotted, until eventually the two squadrons reported back to their respective heads that the island was clear, though it was possible and even likely that some shades had scrambled away before the groups could reach them.
“That’ll have to do, for now. Pack up and let’s get out of here. Someone’s gotta figure out how to keep this out of the news...” Mason grumbled, and overheard Brock addressing his men as well, in a dialect he didn’t recognize. Something like German, but not quite.
The two leaders met up again outside the tent as the private armies filed away to their vehicles.
“Thank you for the assistance, Director.” Brock said, extending his hand.
Assistance? Smug little… Mason twitched. It was a subtle jab, Brock’s way of letting Mason know who he thought was in the lead. Mason forced a smile, shaking his hand.
“And for yours, Commander.” Mason said, barely concealing a scowl. The irritable director followed his small remaining escort group back to the last of the giant SUV’s and took his seat in the back, before the vehicle rolled off like the inelegant boat it was.