29. Vesper
VESPER
For about five seconds, nothing happens. We stare at the penguin Emperor. He stares back at us. The rest of the penguin colony around us doesn’t move. And then, the emperor tips his head into the air and lets out an awful squawk that makes me clamp my hands around my ears and grimace.
Locke has his hammer in his hand immediately, his stance dropping as he prepares to fight.
It takes me longer to accept that these cute creatures are going to cause me any harm.
The first little penguin that comes up to me is barely half a meter tall.
It’s short and fat and has little tufts of yellow feathers on the sides of its face.
It shrieks and pecks at my shin. It hurts enough for me to jump back and say, “Hey!” but not enough to actually wound me. It’s more like a pinch.
That’s what lulls me into a false sense of complacency.
They can’t hurt me. They’re small and relatively slow as they waddle around. Their beaks are the only weapon they have.
“What are you doing?” Svetlana asks. “We should ready for battle!”
“They’re just little birds,” I answer. “They can’t even fly.”
“Umnitsa,” she says touching her arms to my face and looking me in the eyes. “These flightless birds are the most disturbing, most disgusting, most evil creatures. They will not give you the same gentleness you’re attempting to give them.”
I narrow my eyes on her and then shoot a look over at Locke where he’s swinging a hammer at the mass of penguins waddling toward him.
“Are you sure?” I ask, confused. “They don’t look like—”
Something sweeps my legs out from underneath me. One second, I’m standing up, relatively unharmed. The next, I land on my tailbone on the ice. I let out a shout at the sudden pain.
“Get up!” Svetlana hisses. “You must not be at their level!”
I scramble to my feet, still not sure what got me. Not until one of the penguins come sliding in on its belly and takes my legs out again. I go down harder this time, slamming into the ice hard enough to make my teeth chatter.
“Fuck,” I growl, launching myself back to my feet. This time, I pull out my Fang and hold it in my hands. “You wanna fight, birds, then lets fight!”
The first slice of my Fang through one of the smaller penguins makes my stomach twist, my new Beast Bound powers making the sensation twofold.
The second through another taller one makes me taste bile.
There are hundreds of the birds around us, so many swarming, I’m not sure we can take them all on.
I’m not even sure if I can handle taking this much life when I’m so intrinsically tied to it.
Why didn’t I think of that when I chose my Glitch?
Beside me, Locke swings his hammer, hitting penguin after penguin when they stab him with their sharp beaks.
I wince as each crunch echoes in the crater we’re standing in, the sounds bouncing off the ridges and making a symphony of breaking bones.
With each swing, Locke seems to grow more erratic, his eyes wide and feral.
Something stabs me in the thigh and I scream in pain. I bring the Fang down without looking, horrified when it goes right through the penguin’s skull. It’s warm blood splatters across my clothing, my hands, my face.
The bile in my throat comes up and I puke right there in the middle of the fight.
I retch and swing my blade, trying to keep the creatures away.
A few of the penguins stop when I start puking and immediately start picking at my throw up.
They filter feed through it, swallowing the chunks and violently fighting over who gets to eat it first. My stomach twists again and another round comes up, making them squawk in excitement.
Steam rises up from the puke on the ground, the contrast between temperatures apparent.
“Disgusting creatures,” Svetlana says. “I told you this.”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my sleeve and back away from the penguins fighting over their meal, trying to move closer to Locke.
I have to swipe my blade repeatedly through attacking penguins, wading through the creatures as they start to pile up.
All around us, steam billows, the snow painted red with the innards of our attackers.
Locke is screaming now as he swings, his arms bulging as he decimates their numbers. Still, the onslaught doesn’t stop. Beaks stab into my legs, into Locke’s legs, and Svetlana growls at me to move faster.
“The Emperor!” I shout, realizing that he must be the true target.
I swing my blade at a large penguin in front of me, but he ducks, avoiding it.
Svetlana is there a moment later, running down my forearm with a battle cry of her own.
She swipes her tibial spines out with a savagery that surprises me.
The penguin’s eyes widen just before its head slides off and rolls across the ground, lost in the waddle of the attacking army.
The headless body falls a second later, adding to the pile. “Fucking—"
“Kill the Emperor!” Svetlana shouts, raising her bloody arms into the air. “Quickly!”
The Minor Boss is the Emperor, which means he should be our target. All the other penguins are just distractions. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. We could very well kill the Emperor and still have to fight the hundreds of penguins still coming at us.
The Emperor squawks at my words, watching it all in his tiny golden crown.
He stands very regally at the head of the battle, his wings flapping every so often in agitation while his hen hovers behind him unsure what to do.
She settles on fluttering her insanely large eyelashes that I’m near certain are growing larger by the second.
Locke turns his gaze to the Emperor at Svetlana’s shout and starts wading through the piles of bodies and the still attacking penguins.
All around us, the ice is stained red, freezing the moment it spills onto the snow.
Steam billows around us, rising into the air like tendrils of guilt.
I try not to focus on that, on the gore of it.
There are body parts I shouldn’t be seeing, tiny organs I don’t want to see spilled onto the ice like strange meat, open eyes that make me feel even more horrible.
These creatures aren’t exactly difficult to fight despite their sheer numbers.
They’re more annoying than anything even with their sharp beaks.
I’ve killed before. I’ve harvested resources from many bodies, but this? This feels . . . different . . . worse.
“The brutality is the point,” Svetlana answers my thoughts, turning her big eyes to me. “Once you understand that, Umnitsa, it will no longer effect you so.”
I doubt there will come a time where this much gore won’t affect me.
If it does, well . . . we’ll have bigger problems. Our humanity is what keeps us human.
Once that’s lost, we’re no better than the Luxe assholes at the top.
Those same assholes who are watching us right now and probably placing bets on how many of the poor things we’re going to kill.
The brutality is the point.
I grit my teeth and start to slash faster, heading for the Emperor when Locke gets caught up in a swarm of penguins. I pull my hyena mask down over my face, letting my awareness spread, picking up on those penguins still alive and the many that are dead.
“Yes,” Svetlana coos. “Stay angry. Bite back. This is how we win, Umnitsa.”
I stop seeing the creatures as anything but an obstacle as I wade through them.
I step over bodies that crunch under foot.
I’m covered in their gore, in pieces I’d rather not look too closely at.
Every part of me wants to end this, wants to end that Emperor, because in my mind, that tiny golden crown is Luxe.
That tiny golden crown is all the suffering in Dross.
That golden crown is my father.
I’m screaming. I don’t know when I started, but the sound echoes in my ears now as I cut and cut and cut. I push myself harder, kicking the creatures with my heavy snow boots. Svetlana slices as we pass, chopping off heads that hit the ice with a strange, gentle thud that echoes in my ears.
“Stay angry,” I snarl through gritted teeth. “Bite back.”
The red, black, and white blurs around me as I storm my way toward the Emperor.
Locke is beside me, slamming his hammer into the creatures, trying to keep up with me as I push through.
I’m smaller than him, can slip through the swarm, while Locke is forced to use brute strength to follow.
He falls behind me quickly. The Emperor is three meters away now.
He doesn’t flee. He just stares at me with black eyes as I approach.
I bear down on him, raising my Fang above my head.
The Emperor penguin seems to smile as my Fang hangs above him. “You will not remember who you are at the end of this, player,” he says, clear as day.
The scream tears from the very depths of my soul as I bring the Fang down, my momentum already carrying it forward. The blade slices through the Emperor penguin’s neck, down, cutting down diagonally until the meat inside him flays open and he falls apart.
The tiny crown falls from his head and rolls on the ice, through the pools of blood, coming to a stop at the feet of the female we’d been showing the pebbles to. She curls her head down elegantly, her beak touching the gold, and begins to cry.
Great wracking sobs tear from her body, her pain pouring out. Tears drip from her eyes and freeze before they hit the ground, creating pebbles of another kind.
The rest of the penguins stop fighting and join in until we’re surrounded by sobbing and dead penguins. My hands are shaking, the blood on my body freezing and cracking as I move. I’m going to be sick again. Oh, Harrow, I’m going to be sick.
You will not remember who you are at the end of this . . .
Locke takes a hesitant step back from the scene, not sure what to do. I don’t know either, standing frozen over the Emperor’s body and his crying hen.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
You only had to kill one penguin but it looks like you killed two-hundred and thirty-one of them! Congrats you little murderer you.
REWARD: the tears of the beloved and the emperor’s crown.
The tears from the Emperor’s mate rise into the air and swirl, glowing blue. They spin and float over to me where they drop into my outstretched hand. I stare at them, horrified.
“This is a joke,” I croak. “I can’t . . . I can’t take these.”
“They are very valuable,” Cipher says.
“I don’t care,” I wheeze. “I don’t want them.”
Locke comes over and stares at the frozen pearls in my hand. They’re heavy, heavier than they should be. Everything about them repulses me, from the pearlescent shine to the weight.
“Put them in your inventory, Vespera,” Cipher orders. “Do not leave them here.”
Bile stirs in my throat again and my eyes meet Locke’s. “I can’t carry these.”
Locke seems to understand I’m not saying that I don’t have room. He seems to understand I can’t bear to carry them at all.
Carefully, he takes them from my palm and murmurs a gentle, “Inventory” before they disappear. He looks at the crown on the ground sitting in a pool of blood. “What about that?”
“Take it,” I rasp. “Please.”
We’re both covered in gore and blood. Still, I shy away from the blood on the crown as Locke dusts the frozen bits off it and makes the crown disappear, too.
Only then do I look around.
Two hundred and thirty-one penguins. It’s hard to fathom that’s what I’m looking at.
The bodies lay scattered across the ice, the red bright against the black and white and bits of yellow.
There’s no dripping. It’s too cold for that.
Instead, the ice seems to crawl along the dead, consuming it, taking it.
Just like in Dross, nothing here is wasted.
“We should go back to the safehouse,” Locke says. “Get cleaned up.”
I nod, but I don’t speak. I’m too numb for that.
You will not remember who you are at the end of this . . .
My face pinches, knowing my XP is increased because of this slaughter. Knowing that I’m gaining power in exchange for this brutality makes my stomach twist all over again.
“Yeah,” I finally croak out. “We should go.”
In an hour, this boss will reset. With it, I hope the gore is wiped clean. I hope the sobs stop. I hope it all looks like it never happened.
I turn, and come to an abrupt stop, my eyes finding the witness we hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t heard him approach, nor had I sensed him at all. But there he stands, hair as white as the snow we stand in, eyes as blue as the ice.
He grins. “Hello, Beastie,” he purrs. “Did you miss me?”