Lieutenants were the prey offered by their own bad luck and her crimes of opportunity, not something to be tracked down with a will. Nobody was ********’ paying her for it after all. Last week brought a good piece of chance, though. A two for one and her magic had worked with the doubled strength it sometimes gained when it deigned to ********’ work at all. The chaos ridden bodies had dropped into a neat little pile, easy enough to bring up here and leave to their own devices.
Grieve wondered if they’d found water and were still breathing, persisting. Despite the weakness of Earth’s children, it seemed likely. They’d probably had some food in their subspace, at least. Or not. A ghoulish smile stretched across her harsh features. Maybe they’d eaten one another, yeah?
Maybe they got a real taste of what chaos meant for a world.
The sun was low on the horizon, her world’s days and nights stretched and distorted long past Earth’s simple, reliable cycle. Against the last, vengeful line of its caustic brilliance, there was a distinctly soft pool of shadow in the near distance. A form that was more than common a thousand years ago, now novel. Now a little treat.
So at least one of them hadn’t made it even a week.
Sauntering forward, her grin spread further still, her face a thing of teeth and malice as she squatted down to inspect the poor ********. The blood was thick and liberal, crusting the body into a scabrous existence. For all that, it looked mostly intact, save a few fingers. Still there, but at ragged angles. Chewed, but with teeth too dull for the work.
Her quiet, gravel-filled chuckle accompanied the wind’s rising whine. She turned their face, the same as before but without the dissonance of glamour protecting it. Grieve would describe it as more raw, but well, it was hard for this face, flaking all over with blood and cratered with missing chunks of flesh, to be anything but raw.
It was satisfying. She could leave the empathy and hope for better turns of the heart to Murikabushi and his ilk. For her, loss, pain, and rage wore a lot ********’ lighter when she stretched them out and smothered, chocked, and buried some deserving bodies in them. On the ground was another ugly bouquet of flowers to place on the grave of the universe.
Her features softened into an almost peaceful look for a moment, an expression that slowed, still, and then abruptly canted.
What.
Out of the wretch’s sticky maw, came a buzzing.
What.
Then, movement. For a horrible moment, Grieve thought that it had finally happened. That, like other worlds, life had finally decided to rise from the dust of her own. That the still and peace of the cesspit that was her responsibility was over. But then the tiny fly, iridescent where it wasn’t a deep, unsettling red, was wrong in a way that echoed back and back and back to the fall of the world. The sound gre louder and more small bodies crawled up an out of that gaping mouth, spilling out into the air to form a cloud that hovered around her for only a moment before moving slowly away, toward the shadow of a nearby mountain. Her eyes tracked the swarm as it faded against the growing darkness, mouth turned hard and grim.
b*****d had gotten a real ********’ taste of chaos, alright. <******** class="postcontent-align-center" style="text-align: center">
