Entombment of a Machine

[Slayer of the Rot]

"There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised.”
- Anton LaVey


Dan Lagh'ratham cocked his head to the sounds of chirping birds, scowling as he jabbed at his temple with one gnarled hand. His head felt as though it had been crammed full of tissue paper, reds and blues, the types his (adoptive) mother had used on those colorful bags when he was younger, and the year had crept around to his birthday. There was something pressing at his back, and with a groan, he looked down at it. Shifting his weight, the slayer found himself in a small, wooden chair, painted in pinks and whites. How it was holding his bulk, he would never be able to tell. Slowly he blinked, and when he opened his eyes, it was as if the world chose to turn on a light.

A small wooden table, of the same colors of the chair he was sitting upon, was between his spread knees. His hands rested on the top of it, and large, rough hewn manacles lay snug around his wrists. They were made of dark, cold iron, and had numerous small, black pits across them, as though they'd been rolled in soot. With a derisive snort, Dan lifted his arms, and gave one, sharp pull that had enough strength in it to tear a grown bear's arms off. The chain snapped taut, but didn't even give so much as a groan. The slayer's contort with rage as he strained against an ore that should have shattered no differently than a man's spine.

"Don't do that, daddy. You'll dirty your nice clothes." His fury melted away into numb shock when his face snapped up towards the source of the voice - and he found himself staring into light hazel eyes, framed by cherry red hair. The little girl of seven was in a white cotton sun dress that showed a breeze that he couldn't feel. He was suddenly aware of the small patch of flowers that had appeared under him, and the soft, colorless light that seemed to be coming from them. Even the girl seemed to be glowing, radiant with pale, white skin, that made her tresses look all the more like fire. She held a white porcelain tea pot in her hand, and even that seemed to glow with an impossible luminescence. It had the effect of bright lines, burning down upon priceless jewelry.

Beyond them, the world was dark. Featureless. Something told him that it wasn't even there.

"Meredith...where did you - "

"Wake up, daddy." Dan winced and let out a savage bellow of pain as his shackled hands leapt to his head. For a brief, insane moment, he pictured a worm, pale and fat, coiled across the inside of his skull, chewing at his brain, there in the dark, pressing it's thick, eyeless face further inside...as mad as it was, as he imagined it, the agony increased.

waking up it's waking up

my my no reason to get worked up it's happened before

we haven't repaired the damage from last time

simplicity my brothers and sisters just apply more force

The words were shouted in his ears, but no lips or faces hung in the blank darkness around him and the little girl to have said him. The pain rose in a sudden crescendo of agony, then vanished, just as quickly as it had reared its ugly head. But before it went, snuffed out like a guttering candle in the wind...

'Saint Matthew.'

The little girl...his daughter, seemed completely unpeturbed by the event, but cold beads of sweat had soaked his forehead. A very fragile looking cup sat on the table where his hands had lain, filled with a dark, steaming liquid. Disregarding it, he looked to Meredith in her sun dress. Now, she was blindingly brilliant, and it stung his eyes to look upon her. "Where have you been?"

"Sleeping, like you," she replied in a singsong voice that curled through the air like a ribbon, let free on the breeze. The sound intertwined itself with the song of the birds, and the slayer found himself in awe. "They want the beast to sleep, daddy. Isn't about time you woke up?"

As though someone had flicked a switch, it was gone. The cup, the birds, the flowers, and his daughter, leaving him in darkness. A second later, the piercing pain came back, and he thought 'Sleeping...the beast...wake up.'

As the sharp pain suddenly spiked with a mind clearing agony, The Red Beast woke.

[Slayer of the Rot]

Klaxons shrieked in the gloom that Dan Lagh'ratham's eyes opened to. The deafening noise violating his ears was the least of his worries, though; that pain, the eleven point five on the migraine scale of one to ten, had spiked exponentially, and for some odd reason, he felt incredibly drowsy.

"Argh, these damn alarms. What did you say? I can barely hear."

"I SAID THAT SOMEONE HAS GOTTEN INTO THE CASTLE!"

"They...what? Who?"

"WE'RE NOT SURE, GONRIS. THE POSTMEN SAY IT WAS A WOMAN."

"Stop shouting! You're giving me a headache! Is it Mother Mary? No, no...she just left for Salvar."

'Mother Mary...' The name lit a flickering flame of recognition in his pained head; it summoned the image of a stern face, butch-ish, and thoroughly unattractive woman in heavy, dark, spiked iron armor. The slayer bared his teeth and let out a sharp hiss as something bit into his skull, followed by an unsettling sensation of something twisting through his very brain. He tried to raise his arm to swat at it, and the clanking sound of a chain joined the alarms. Likewise, when he tried to turn his head, his stiff neck held still. All that could be seen was a ceiling of gray, carved stone, lit with pale, blue light. Fingertips pressed into his temples, and then a face - man's face, with green eyes - blocked out his view. The man was wearing a white cotton mask over his nose and mouth, and appeared to be very surprised. Clumsy, cold fingers of panic began to climb up Dan's spine, as he began to realize that something was awfully wrong with the way he was waking up.

"M-my Thayne...I...I think he's awake again," the masked man said in a breathless voice hat was lost beneath the cacophony of the klaxons. When he repeated it, Dan heard the sound of shuffling feet, and people cursing under their breath. The man in the white mask drew back a little, and a new face came to hover over the slayer's bleary eyes. This one had a large, disfiguring scar cutting through his thin white lips, a leather eyepatch, and a crewcut the color of war-worn steel.

"Not possible. It's only been a month since that last little episode. This is probably just the freak's brain reacting to your Thayne-awful handling of that auger. You're supposed to have entered here," the man with the eyepatch snarled, raised a hand, and jabbed a finger at Dan's forehead. Dashes of red light burst behind his eyeballs as the agony surged, and he let out a loud bellow of fury from his mouth. The man's remaining eye popped open with shock and terror and he vanished, with the man in the white mask.

"Well, hell, slap my ass, stuff me in a gingham dress, stick a blueberry pie in my hand and call me Gertrude, but I think our boy is awake. Madji, you want to get your wierd ass over here and put him back under?" Dan didn't know what that meant, but he was absolutely positive that he didn't want it to happen. The shapeless spots of light popped and faded in his eyes as, with a wet, sucking noise, culminating in a muffled pop - a blood drenched hand drill passed over him. It drip-drip-dripped on his cheeks, and one drop even landed in his eye. It was cold by the time it struck his cornea, but it didn't make it sting any less. He let out another furious cry of pain, gave a sharp push with the muscles in his neck - and with the sound of groaning, splintering wood and bending nails, his head popped upward, throwing a curved metal band down over his face.

The slayer could clearly see now that he was bound to a wooden table, and that the cold, blue light was coming from queer black torches, hung upon the gray stone walls. The room he'd woken in wasn't a large chamber; the seven men inside made it look more cramped than it should be, with their armor and weapons strapped upon their bodies. Three of them were covered head to toe in dark robes and mythril helms that glowed strangely in the torchlight. The man in the white mask, which he could see from the corner of his right eye, was backing up slowly, trying to keep his footsteps quiet, holding the bloody auger up between him and the beast on the table like a crucifix to ward off a vampire. Dan bared his teeth in the ghostly light, and broke the thick chains that held his shackles to the table, and with a grunt, tore loose the band that held his torso down. With a groan, he raised one hand to his bloody head - and felt the unmistakable depression of a wound, just above his right eye.

"NOW would be a fantastic time to show your worth, madji! The damn lobotomy isn't finished yet!" Dan tore loose from the iron holding his feet fast, and swung his legs out over the table, rubbing carefully at his aching head. A dull throb had struck up in it, much like the beat of a slave master's drum, and with each pulse of his heart, a muffled red flashed across his vision. When he looked up the man with the eyepatch was staring at the figures in the mythril helms, who had their attentions turned to each other. Cursing, he waved forward a man and a woman that had been standing behind him; both wore expressionless, humanoid masks of polished silver, and hoisted large axes. Dan snarled as they approached.

The man was first, and Dan reacted with all the savagery and anger of a wounded, caged animal. The axe swung up, ready to come down in a heavy cleave, but the slayer's fist shot forward with stone crushing force. The damascus plate he was wearing buckled under the blow, which lifted him off his feet and carried him across the room with the woman behind him. They both slammed into the wall, and the man slumped to the ground, groaning as blood dribbled out of the unfeeling metal lips of his mask. The woman struggled to push him off, and the figures in the helms had come to a decision. Gloved hands raised from belled robe sleeves, but the beast they'd imprisoned moved much faster than they could. Dan's naked feet pounded across stone, snatched the auger from the man in the white mask, lunged through the air, and rammed the bloody tool through the visor of one of the 'madji's' helms. A piteous, wailing shriek tore out from under the glorious piece of armor. The slayer reached out, grabbed the second of the three, stretched his jaws, and bit down on the forearm of the flailing hand that fought against him. He pulled back a great, gory chunk of flesh, muscle, and cloth. Voraciously chewing his raw, dripping meal, Dan yanked on the arm - and looked terribly disappointed when it only popped out of the socket. The madji collapsed, screaming, held up only by the beast's hold. Dan braced a hand on his rib cage, gave another monstrous pull - and successfully tore the arm free in a brilliant gout of crimson.

Dan bit into the arm again in the cold blue light, glancing towards the last madji. The last one had gathered his wits, and frosty clouds of rime swirled about his gloved hands. With a gesture, a thin lance of ice burst from his finger tips and punched through the slayer's chest. Dan looked at it with as much annoyance as one would give a bee string, dropped his meal, and snapped off the protruding bit of it. This, he turned around, and rammed it through the eye hole of the man's shining helm; much like he had to the first of them. As the last madji crumbled to the floor, the silver masked woman came back, swinging her axe in a disemboweling stroke. Hopping back away from it, Dan grabbed her by the head, pushed her down, and snatched the blade she wore on her back. It was a mid-sized sword, with an odd carving that gave strange shadows in the blue torchlight. Shrugging, the slayer drove it down through her neck, turned, and decapitated the man in the white mask who had been poking his brains with a drill.

The man with the eyepatch was up against the heavy oak door, his single eye full of fear, from the sounds of the dying men, the doctor's head rolling across the floor, and the thick smell of hot blood in the air. Dan, wearing nothing but a thick coat of the red stuff, pressed his empty hand to his wounded brow again, casting his burning eyes on the last living soul of the room. "Where..." His voice cracked, as though from disuse; his tongue felt sluggish in his mouth.

"Where...am...I?!"

[Slayer of the Rot]

"S-stand buh-back from me, monster..." The gray haired man with the eyepatch fumbled at the collar of his gray jacket, eye never leaving the grotesque form of Dan Lagh'ratham in the azure glow. A little carved idol of strange yellow stone was in his hand, held up towards the slayer. It hung from a coarse length of fibrous thread around his neck. "Back from me, Lagh'ratham, ye Eater, ye Red Beast..." Dan only stood and watched with bloody lips, his stolen sword at his side. The man's voice was at first soft, almost lost to the noise of the alarm, but as he went on, it gained volume and power. He'd slid down the ground with his back to the door at first, but now he was rising to his feet, thrusting the stone idol forward with each word. "Cower now, abomination, ye spoiled, ye lost, in the name of Jom - "

The sword, which Dan had finally identified as a spatha, flashed through the air, and sent the man's hand and his precious idol tumbling across the floor. "Would you shut your fucking mouth, worm? Thaynes, how I have a headache...but you would know, wouldn't you?!" The man was screaming, holding his stump up to his face, and Dan gave him a light kick in the side - though with his strength, it was certain to have cracked a rib. He shut his mouth immediately, letting loose only a few muted whimpers, and curled up against the door as though it promised some form of protection from the slayer. "Name, maggot."

"Guh-Gonris," the man gasped, holding his wrist, which was giving a decent amount of blood with every heartbeat. He was already going pale; Dan was going to have to move quickly. Stepping forward, he put a foot on Gonris's stomach, then pointed the tip of the spatha at the man's throat.

"Huh...to call you Goon, or Gonnorhea? Heh, I'll just alternate between the two. Well then, Goon, we're going to play a game. I'll ask you a question, and you'll answer it. If I like your answers, you'll die quick and clean-like. I don't like them; well, I'll show you pieces of yourself and make sure you're still alive when I start eating. Believe me, I'm awfully hungry. Let's start with something simple. Where am I?"

"Castle Fuh-Faerin..." The blade wickered through the air, and Gonris's left ear came off. A scream burst from his mouth as he clapped his remaining hand to the new wound on his head. Dan speared the ear with the sword, popped it into his mouth, chewed, gulped loudly, and said, "That doesn't tell me shit. Keep it up and you'll only have one of everything; one foot, one ball, one tooth - "

"ALERAR! You're in Castle Faerin in Alerar! South of the L'Renor Harlilen!" He screamed in a panic, wincing away from the sharp blade that was being waved a mere inch from his eye. "The Wuh-Wilmhearst took it uh-over in best interest of - "

"Wilmhearst? You're not Wilmhearst. I know Wilmhearst. They're assholes, but they don't pull nasty fucking stunts like this," Dan snapped irritably, pointing at the botched lobotomy wound on his forehead. His blood smeared mouth twisted into a hateful scowl when Gonris began to laugh; quietly at first, but soon enough, his whole body was shaking from gales of laughter.

"You stupid, stupid bastard...hahahaha! I bet you still think you're a 'Saraelian Demon', too? Ha! Maybe we didn't turn you into the tool we wanted, but at least I'll die knowing we fucked you up real good. Thaynes know we stirred up your brain enough for it." Dan's eyes flicked upwards, and he once again poked at the dark hole. He struggled to remember his life - Earth, the wars, Claire, all of it - and found much of it didn't make sense. In fact, there were scores of memories that shouldn't have been there. He could suddenly remember a man - Garen was the name that came to him - that had been his father. He could remember being in the Coronian Army. He could recall slaughtering and eating his entire squadron...drinking the blood and eating the flesh of men he'd called close friends. Brothers even. But he could also remember another father - but this one had had no name. He could remember a brother too...but the more he struggled to remember, the man he could remember as a blood brother seemed like a device injected into a failing story by a sub-par writer. The slayer groaned, swaying a bit on his feet. The headache was back; everything was a dizzying, confused swirl.

"What did you do to me..."

"Hahaha! You'll never know - "

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!" The Spatha darted down, stabbed into the man's chest, slid out, and drove into Gonris's belly. His eye bulged in its socket, and Dan grabbed him up by the shoulders, lifting him off the floor. Gonris shrieked without shame or dignity when the slayer's teeth snapped down on his throat, and that changed to a low gurgle when half of his windpipe came away with the meat. Chewing slowly, Dan dropped the man to the ground without a single hint of care, and looked around the strange, blue hued chamber he'd woken in. He stood there for a long time, even after the last of these "Wilmhearst" had bled out and turned cold on the floor, struggling to remember his life - but it was of no use. It was all a jumbled, tangled mess. He ate a little more, taking a bit from everyone in the room - and found the least tasty of them was the man with the white mask. Taking that one's coat, he cleaned much of the blood from himself, stripped Gonris's corpse of its uniform, took the sheath from the silver masked woman, and stepped out through the doorway into the blaring alarms of Caste Faerin.

[Slayer of the Rot]

"Hoom! Troubling, troubling indeed. It seems they finally botched the procedure. He's gotten loose before, but we were always able to pick him back up in a delirious state. He was never aware enough to cause any casualties to us. Very, very troubling." More of the men and women in the silver masks and damascus plate armor stood in the room with the blue torchlight. Four in all, Gathered about a great, round man, with merry, twinkling eyes over a squashed, red nose, with a blonde mustache beneath it, shot through with white. Through habit, the fat man reached up, and curled one end of the mustache. The action had an air of ritual about it; indeed, the man known as Saint Matthew amonst the Wilmhearst family was best known for it. His other hand was settled on his great loping gut. Despite the blood and carnage around him, he watched the masked men and women shuffle around the room with a smile of good humor, identifying bodies as they could.

"Doctor Guelants made a faulty entry, an inch to the left of the intended point. It is what pulled the beast out of its slumber," announced one of the men in the dusky purple robe and mythril, single horned helm, who was holding one bare hand to the broken wooden table Dan Lagh'ratham had been laying on only half an hour ago. The helmetted one, a madji of the Wilmhearst, had shut off the alarms with a gesture when Saint Matthew had cheerily joked that he'd be hearing them on his death bed. The ungloved hand was pale as snow, and marked with a series of curious twisting red tattoos. "There was panic. Gonris tried to spur my brothers to subdue him, but they weren't fast enough. Lagh'ratham got off the table and crushed the ribcage of that slayer over there. The other escaped with only mild injuries. He then took the instrument the doctor was using and - "

"Yes, yes, my boy, we can see it all, plain as day," the rotund slayer interjected, chuckling softly to himself, his pudgy hands resting idly on the lapels of his uniform jacket. "I'm afraid we need no psychometry to know what must be done, now. You may put your glove back on, madji." The helmed man did so, and the shortest of the masked slayers edged towards the enromous presence of Saint Matthew.

"Wuh-which is, sir?"

"Ohhh!" The bulky slayer looked down at his sister (really no more than an incredibly distance cousin, several times removed), still smiling with some unspoken delight, blue eyes still sparkling with unknown amusement. One hand reached up to adjust his own helmet; a dark brown Brodie affair, which looked ludicrous and unecessary on his head, and the other tweaked his mustache. "A young one then, hmm? How long out of the academy, my dear?"

"A...month now, sir," the voice replied from behind the smooth, expressionless mask. While the polished metal revealed nothing of the person did, the very way she stood, and her voice, easily gave away her worry and fear. She'd heard the stories - but only in a boogeyman-like fashion. Dan Lagh'ratham, the Red Beast, lay with a woman, ett up the child. The little rhyme from her anxious, cocky peers in the academy played briefly through her head, and she looked at the bitten and brutalized body. The madji behind his helm by the table seemed to perk, as though he could hear the child's foolish little jingle in her thoughts.

"Why...what must be done..." Saint Matthew leaned down, holding a hand out, "is...CATCH 'IM!" The larger, older slayer's hand snapped abruptly shut with startling speed. "And why, my young one? Why, because Mister Lagh'ratham is a monster. The worst kind. Once a man, that one decided that he wanted more - and that he would get it through old, lost rituals. Mister Lagh'ratham ett up his friends, his fellow soldiers, and became a monster. All he wants to do is cut flesh and split bone. We, the Wilmhearst, are honor bound to stop him - doubly so, as our very blood pumps through his tainted veins! Why, left to his own devices, Thaynes only know what kind of chaos he could bring down on our heads." The young woman, behind her flat, cold metal mask, took a step back. The good natured glee that had been dancing in Saint Matthew's eyes, like the cool, blue torchlight around them, had taken a more unsettling quality. Like madness. As though the man truly wanted to come across the beast the family had imprisoned here at Castle Faerin. The huge slayer's chubby hands had once again settled on his lapels.

"But, I...sir. Are you sure we would be able to fight the Red Beast? They told me he can rip fully armored men apart with only his hands. They said he could be shot in the heart with an arrow, and still not die." The young woman's voice wavered a bit, and her hand fell instinctively to the comfort of her sword - a spatha exactly like the one Dan had divested from an older, female slayer in this very room. Through the sculpted eyes of her mask, she stared up at Saint Matthew. He was one of the most experienced of the slayer faction of the family, and one of their generals. He answered to no one but the Seven, and there had been serious talk of adding him to the council, before Mother Augustine had been elected, instead. If any of them stood any chance against the beast, it was him - though no one could confidently say what he could do. In fact, when someone had asked if they'd ever seen the heavy man fight the night before, they'd all scratched their heads.

"Cast aside your worries, young one," Saint Matthew finally said, producing a cherrywood pipe from the hip pocket of his pants, patting the young woman on the shoulder with one beefy hand. The term hamfisted flickered through her mind (though in a decidedly wrong context), and she struggled so hard to hold in a gale of laughter that her eyes stung and tears rolled down her her cheeks beneath his coverings. Behind them though, the madji in the horned helm let out a loud laugh. The jolly, fat slayer shot him a puzzled look, but turned back to the young woman. "Should we come across Mister Lagh'ratham, I shall make sure you are absolutely safe."

Saint Matthew stepped back into the middle of the room, and the four slayers snapped to attention, a gloved fist at their heart, their free hand settled on the hilts of their swords. "Madji! Send out a message to all personnel in Castle Faerin. We hunt tonight!"