INGRESSED: Unleash
Chapter 86 - Act V - INGRESSION
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Chapter 86 - INGRESSED: Unleash
Paysha/Jaysian
The enemy’s troopships sport varied emblems of blood and carbon, but their consistent flag of allegiance is the flaming ruby and onyx demon marking their ships’ noses and fins. They unload cargoes of barbarous flesh, avoiding the remnants of the earlier aerial destruction, and then retreat to hover behind the Lake’s mountainous rim.
The General joins us at the head of his massed forces, standing tall in traditional armour between First Daughter and our host body. He is eager to end this cold, false war between two warring, earthbound tribes. Two guards accompany him, one cradling his Seed within its mahogany box. We wait for the next move in our aeons-long game.
The expected happens. We sense a flickering within the blackened diamond of Diamorpheus’ monolith. A compulsive wave erupts from it, a crimson demonic dome encapsulating its forces, bending them to its will. Our enemy is powerful and greedy, wanting to engulf everyone and everything. But its forces need constant direction, unlike our allies, who are guided from within by a common compass.
Its umbra continues to expand, threatening to snare and enslave the Solar Army. We are forced to act in concert. At least twenty millennia have elapsed since an Ancient’s umbra last intersected with a re-Seeded other. And never with such a divided, impetuous youth. But we must succeed. This universe still deserves to exist. Our umbras manifest themselves – one desert yellow, the other sea green – erupting from our Seeds and mushrooming outwards to prevent minds being gripped and allies turned against each other. Our defensive shields overlap to form glittering arcs, rippling outwards to meet and repel the intruder’s, the air above the battlefield becoming a coruscating haze.
A lone figure emerges from the Slavers’ aerial wreckage and staggers shoeless towards the Solar Army’s ranks. Its clothes are singed, tattered rags. Raw burns and bloody wounds adorn its limbs and face. It should not have survived. Twice it falls to its knees, each time rising in agony. No-one steps forward to aid her, for it might still be a woman. Closer she comes, her blonde hair hanging as straggling, matted clumps from a bloody scalp. She might be Slaver or slave, gaoler or captive. She extends a flayed hand as she approaches us, imploring. The only movement is the fluttering Panoptiki banners. Her lips are swollen and skinless, eyebrows absent. Melted plastic coats one side of her neck. She draws closer and unformed words croak from a throat raw from smoke and flame. A body’s length from the General and his motionless vanguard, she raises both hands, beseeching. A tattoo adorns her blistered palm, a captive’s insignia, the mark of a slave. General Hanif doesn’t hesitate, stepping forward to plunge his sword into her blackened and bleeding body. Her skewered carcass jerks, eyes wide, bloodshot red circling jaded blue, streaked with symmetrical, meteoric splashes of white. Yes, we know this blue-eyed angel: doctor, Remainer, false mother to my unwilling knight. We wanted her to heal every part of us, in our former primitive way. A last small mercy is your adopted son has not witnessed your ghastly resurrection, nor known your months of brutal suffering.
The General’s expression is blank and pitiless as he studies the tortured face of his involuntary enemy as she grimaces in terminal agony. “For my son, his wife and their children,” he says, grinding out the syllables with long-repressed rage; punctuating dead family member with a deeper thrust of his blade. Each is met with a bubbling gasp from his heedless victim until, with her last breath, she exhales: “Thank you.” His reply is a final twist before he withdraws his sword. Her eyes roll upwards as she folds to the ground. She is the first to die by the sword in this battle, the first to wish for nothing less.
A resounding cheer erupts from the Solar Army’s jostling ranks at this facile, necessary death, its spectra of race and gender united in common creed and purpose – at least, for today.
Diamorpheus intrudes on the soldiers’ jubilation with a final ultimatum. Its words resonate through air encased by its controlling umbra and beyond, through the salt-laden earth and into every mind surrounding us: “Come to me or die.”
The Seeds’ protective auras darken, buffering the impact of its Janus-faced words. There are no converts and the General commands Phoebus to find safety from the enemy’s storm. A tumultuous cascade of salt water impacts the Lake’s arid floor. The twisted, smouldering carcasses of downed enemy ships splutter and hiss from the downpour. Above them, Phoebus sparkles through its self-made rain. Ballast dumped, it ascends rapidly to safety, diminishing to a diamond in the sky. It will remain an observer, safe but impotent against the bubbles of aggression and suppression being cast below.
Observations are relayed from mountains, buildings and sky, but we know the human part of our enemy is almost here. We sense the menacing compulsion that drives them towards us. We warn the General his Spartan fighters will succumb if they stray past the boundary of our defences. We cast braveness into the men and women around us. Each must act on their own, whilst trusting the other. Their targets are obvious. We are not the demon possessed. Save one: ourselves.
We can hear the clash of battle commencing at the periphery of our still dominant boundary. The screams of the wounded, the extinguishing of brave minds. We take the banshee from her hiding place and secure her in our mind. We cannot avoid our love witnessing her actions. We hope their old poets are right, that love is truly blind.
We see Erebus emerge from between two mountains, hugging the side of the valley. It carries the host, the one called Lewey, co-opted by Diamorpheus. Their way to us must be clear, with no distractions nor weak emotions. No infiltration of beguiling notions. As it has always been. For them. For us. We cradle our small demon, embracing her into our unified symbiote, despite knowing it still won’t be enough.
We inject her.
We enhance.
We activate.
And we unleash…
She draws her first shuddering breath in her enhanced form, flexes her unbound muscles and bestial mind, and surveys the battlefield. Then she begins her labours.
She is no virgin to her task and our eyes smoulder viridian with untamed lust for violence as we join the tumult. Her limbs expertly enfold each enemy body with unbridled passion, her mouth tasting and fingers invading whatever and wherever she wants. As the screaming starts and the first of their fluids daub our clothes, we see what she truly is; what she was made for: our beautiful, bloody, bellicose banshee.
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