Chapter 13: Enough
He woke choking on blood. Blood that wasn't his, the air thick with rot, wet and heavy.
He slowly stood, eyes wide as he pulled his tail in close. He had thought he'd died, so he was surprised to find himself waking, but the sight around him made him wonder if he was right. Maybe he was dead.
Bodies. Miles of them. Piled high and torn apart. Some still steamed and bled, limbs jutting from impossible places, eyes open in frozen terror.
Demons and other things he didn't have names for. Towering things, winged things, bone things, all of them dead. All of them mangled. Whatever had killed them hadn't just won. It had made a point.
The imp's claws twitched at his sides. His breath came shallow. He was standing in a graveyard built from war. And it stretched farther than he could see.
Suddenly, he remembered, arms jerking forward, eyes scanning up and down them, but no wounds, no burrowing metal.
"They're gone?"
He looked again. No blood. No steel. Just skin and claws.
"Pathetic."
The imp dropped low. His head snapped side to side, claws tapping against bone as he crouched. His instincts screamed, run. But he somehow knew, if he moved, he'd die.
"Wh-who is... there?"
"Weak!"
The ground rumbled.
A deep, splitting sound like the world cracking in half shot through his skull. He scrambled back, eyes wide as the mountains of bodies around him started to collapse
"Filth beyond hope... Worthless... Pointless!"
The voice wasn't sound, it was impact. It tore through him harder than the rumbling earth.
Then, a spear tore from the ground. It shot up beneath him, impaling him through the waist and lifting him. He screamed, twitching on the shaft, body convulsing. The pain swallowed him whole, so completely, he didn't even notice the sky had changed.
Didn't see the storm of arrows raining down from above.
"Die."
Black steel ripped through him, each one jerking his body like a puppet on snapped strings. By the time the last arrow struck, when the final thud of steel into flesh echoed out across the dead field, the earth stilled.
The shaking stopped...
And something impossible happened.
Shredded. Skewered. Torn from the spear and scattered in pieces. There shouldn't have been enough left to live, let alone move.
"Grgg-grrl-g-g!"
He crawled. If you could call it that.
From the ribs down, gone. One arm missing, replaced by the arrows still stuck through him. The other was a splintered stump. More bone than meat.
His face, barely a face. Only a ragged patch of skin around one eye. His jaw torn off. Tongue dragging through the blood soaked earth.
And still, he moved.
He stabbed the ground with the jagged end of his arm, clawing forward. Inch by inch. The eye, the only one left, was enough.
Enough to see.
Enough to hate.
His blood boiled. It poured down his ruined face, searing what little flesh remained. But he didn't notice. Didn't care.
Wrath had replaced everything.
This wasn't hunger, it was death. Not his. But theirs. He would kill everything before he died.
The field was silent now. No wind. No movement. Only the soft, sickening stab of bone.
The rage of a single demon refusing to fall.
"Death would be better... just let go. You'll find—"
"AAAGH-GLAAAH!"
Stab!... Stab... stab... but the sound started to come slower, weaker.
But he kept going.
The voice promised peace. Whispered like a mother to her child, but he didn't hear. He didn't want peace, only violence.
He stabbed with what was left of his body until he couldn't anymore. Until there was nothing left to fight with. Until he finally stopped moving.
'I... will... kill... ev...ery...th...'
Torn apart. Dead. Still enraged.
The world around him began to fade. Colors bled like old paint, washed into red, into black. A world dissolving into silence.
"You will... for me."
----
Everything hurt.
And it was getting old.
The moment his consciousness awakened, it hadn't stopped. Bitten, slashed, now impaled and torn apart. Pain. Again and again.
'No more...'
His muscles tensed, a rising growl escaping his throat. Waking from that hell, realizing he was still alive, he didn't care where he'd been or what had happened.
He'd had enough.
"No more! I want to...me! Hurt things! Maim! Tear, rip, bite!"
All that existed now was murder.
The panel blinked to life. He swiped it away without reading. The roar in his veins drowned out the system's voice before it could even start.
"Kill!"
He stood.
And ran.
He didn't stop to think. He had no need to. He knew what waited at the top of the tunnel. That thought alone swallowed everything else.
His claws tore into the walls around him as he sprinted. Not fast enough. He needed to rip deeper, claw harder, pull, push. Move!
Something needed to die. Soon. Deep inside, an urge stirred, raw and buried, now clawing its way up. It needed to be fed.
He shot through the tunnel, breath ragged, muscles screaming, vision locked forward. Towards the surface. Towards the Flesh Fields.
He could see it now, an opening at the end of the tunnel. His vision pierced the dark, saw the surface bleeding through. He didn't know how long he'd been running, but that didn't matter, only the thought of slaughter drove him faster. Fed the fire already eating him alive.
He burst from the tunnel like a cannon shot, screeching as he hit the surface, eyes scanning.
He didn't have to look long.
The suffering... the rage. Every shattered bone, every severed nerve, none of it mattered. Whether it killed him or not, he was ready to unleash it. Every hurt he'd suffered needed to be repaid in blood.
And there it was.
A swarm of his own kind. A few hundred strong. A rolling wave of teeth, claws, and rot tearing through the flesh fields.
He ran straight for them. Half a mile. That was all.
As he got closer, his arms slowly started to burn. Not from the sprint. Something else. Deeper. Like heat building under the skin, like an ember flaring into flame.
More torment.
Clawing into whatever he could as he ran, growths, meat walls, pulsing mounds of tissue, anything to release the pressure.
Nothing helped.
The hurt only continued to climb. The rage surged. Again, something was trying to stop him, and it shattered what was left of his sanity.
He stopped, and screeched.
He couldn't push past it. His arms shook violently. He looked down, ready to bite them off just to move again, and saw it.
Skin peeling open. Veins and tendons twisting. Wrapping and stretching.
Metal tore through him, his forearms flayed, and the cleavers began to push out from inside, carving their way into his hands.
He should've passed out.
The torture should've broke him.
Instead, it shattered everything left. The imp from before the system was all that remained. Only the swarm mattered now.
Only the kill.
And now, he had weapons.
In the distance, the churning mass of imps had piled onto a large mound, meat, organs, whatever they could tear apart. Enough to keep them fed. Enough to keep them distracted.
Even the ones near the back, limping and crawling, dragging torn bodies behind them, didn't notice the madness closing in.
Didn't hear the scrape of steel.
Didn't feel the hate building at their backs.
He leapt, landing hard on the back of a crawling imp, bones snapping beneath his feet.
The cleavers came down. Over and over, falling like rain.
Chunks of meat, spinal fluid, screams, he didn't hear any of it. He'd lost his mind to the slaughter.
"KGREEEEAAAHH!"
The scream to the sky split the field. Raw. Deep. Not just noise, but a challenge.
Every imp turned. Even mid-feast, they froze. That sound... they didn't know it. Had never heard anything like it.
Standing over a crater of pulp, his cleavers buried in split bone, the imp stood tall. Shaking and breathing steam. Eyes blind with bloodlust.
He lowered his head to the swarm.
And charged.