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They reprimand the Central Order Knight who reports the human.
In the report, Central Order Commander Dumas pens: altercation with unidentified human, light hair, light eyes, dressed in black. Suspect matched knights in battle and escaped. Permission to take an assault team to investigate.
He is the leader of a hundred successful battles, the head of an elite recon squad, Mergas Squad 1.
"You're sure he's human?"
"On my life."
His Lord, the Mergas Clan Leader, looks up at him, eyes calm like water, and says, "Tell me when pigs start flying, soldier."
His squad don't back him up. They don't know what they saw, they don't know what they scuffled about with in the thick wood forrest in the human world, claws digging into their skin. (They still have the scars. They don't know it now, but the scars will not heal.)
Dumas is stripped of his rank and squad. Everyone laughs behind his back, including Central Order Knight Ligur. Ligur goes up behind him, pats him on the cheek, and leans past his ear to whisper, "Did the big, bad, scary human frighten you, Knight?"
One of Dumas's knights did not come back.
He is marked as a deserter, but no one finds him.
Disturbances happen. Bodies turn up on human streets, bodies pile up in ditches and gorges and deep in the woods. Bodies of mutants, beaten, dismembered, burned. Of infected, sliced up, beheaded, burned.
Contracts with humans have been outlawed for as long as Lukedonia has isolated itself away from the rest of the world; away from human whims, their short-lived empires, their frivolous conflicts, their inane, little mayfly lives. It is illegal to create mutants just as it is illegal to create true contracts. The nobles should be worried about how this influx of mutants sprang from the ground, who had created them, and why.
But that isn't what gets their attention.
Nothing in the human world, no weapon or animal or hunter can possibly kill a creature as berserk as a mutant. What gets their attention is the rate at which these mutants are being killed.
The Central Order Knights in charge of scouting this section get antsy.
"We have to report this."
Knight Loras, one of Dumas's former squad corners Knight Heath, another former squad member.
Heath bites her lip. "No." He shoves Loras's arm off her, going past him to pick up her pike from where it is stuck into a rock.
Loras rounds on him, pushing her to face him again. "We saw it again! We saw the thing that took Claude! The thing our Commander lost his position over to speak of. We have to tell someone!"
"I don't know what I saw."
"We saw a monster stand over the body of a noble! It killed him! It took him! We saw!"
"No, no," Heath says. She looks Loras in his eyes, apologetic. "I didn't see anything."
Heath goes to un-wedge the second pike from where they'd thrown towards the thing they didn't see. She kicks dust on the drag marks of nails in dirt.
Central Order Knight Ligur kneels before a dark, obsidian throne, where his Clan Leader sits with his face leaned into his knuckles, looking down on him boredly.
"Do you have something to add, Ligur?"
Ligur shivers. His Clan Leader's aura swims around him; all of a sudden the air thins acutely and his chest hurts from the sudden change in pressure. His Clan Leader isn't happy with the results. He isn't happy at all.
"Whatever is killing the mutants…it's doing much damage to the numbers we've been building up, My Clan Leader. The mutant population is too small to replenish itself naturally…we will have to make more…from the source."
"Fix the problem," his Clan Leader says.
"Par—pardon?"
"Fix the problem," the Kravei Clan Leader waves his hand with the air of someone who has better things to do than listen to subordinates messing up the likes of an ant farm. "Kill whatever is killing them."
Roctis Kravei says without turning, "Replenish the numbers."
"C'mon, Ligur," a knight says, taking a sip out of his canteen. The members of Kravei Squad 4 sit around a fire, each of them weary from travel. They'd finally settled down in the heart of where mutants have been dropping like insects.
"It's probably some mountain bear or something. There's bears up here. Maybe the odd tiger."
"There are no tigers in these areas. How do you even know what a tiger is?"
"Can you both shut the fuck up and help me put out this fire?"
Ligur sighs, snuffs out the fire with a burst of power.
"What?!" Another knight cries. "Why the fire? Haven't we suffered enough camping out in the woods like — like some homeless, backwards-ass peasant humans?"
"Because," Ligur enunciates, "we're trying to attract whatever is killing mutants! Not scare them off—"
"Because whatever is killing off the likes of mutants is surely scared of a little firelight. Yup. Sure."
Ligur gestures to the youngest knight of the lot. "Gar—Garte, right? Hand me over one of those unconscious humans."
"It's Garth."
Garth, a young Kravei Clan Knight, carefully picks any old human body out of the pile they'd stunned earlier. As Ligur grabs them by the collar, strokes their hair out of the way of their neck, Garth's stomach drops.
"Wait! Where are you doing? We're not — we're meant to be investigating the disturbances. Not…not…" He wrings his hands on his black uniform and his eyes drop to the floor, unsure where to look. "…We're not supposed to kill humans."
A few of the other Kravei Squad 4 members snigger. A few of them turn their heads, looking intently the other way.
"Oh, I'm not killing humans," Ligur slurs. He opens his mouth, fangs protruding, and takes a large, bloody bite on the human's neck. "I'm just making bait."
Kravei Squad 4 never report back to Lukedonia.
Landegre Squad 12 are assigned to the desertion cases.
They dress in unassuming human's clothes, sensibly brown, and speak to the humans. And by 'speak to the humans' they mean taking them to a damp alleyway where they open their glowing red eyes and use their mind control to make them spill their guts. Figuratively.
The humans have lots to say. They tell of evil monsters walking with faces of humans, devoid of blood, skin sagged or stretched over their bones like something had sucked the life out of them. Like they are dead, moving corpses, without the things that once illuminated them, the things that made them human. They tell of a scarier being, a boogeyman lurking deep in the woods, who looks like them and speaks like them but is not, in any way, one of them.
His skin is made of purple fire, and his eyes are made of cold, blue ice, and the humans tell Landegre Squad 12: only monsters hunt monsters.
No one in the human village dares to walk outdoors after sundown. He is not a man but a thing, and too many people have mistaken him for the former.
Landegre Squad 12 don't find a trace of the deserted nobles, because they did not desert.
"Fifty," Prasis, the leader of Landegre Squad 12 reports back to the leader of the Mergas Clan Leader, who oversees the Central Order Knights. "That's the number of currently unaccounted-for or missing Central Order Knights, Sir. But our operatives active in the human world is at an all time high due our response to the 'disturbances.' The number could easily be higher."
The Mergas Clan Leader considers this. After a moment of silence, the Clan Leader nods. "What do the humans say of this perpetrator?"
"Only that he is a monster, Sir."
"Prasis, Prasis," he says. "Don't be daft. It's probably just another rogue noble, high off human blood. They'll be no need to report this to the court. Nor to other Clan Leaders. Just take care of it."
"Do you think…" Visenya, one of the Landegre Squad 12 knights, thinks of the numbers, thinks of Kravei Squad 4. He swallows, tries again. "Do you think there's really something out there?"
"Don't say that." Another member pipes up, throwing a dagger into a tree. They've been out here for weeks and nothing's happened, not a trace of the missing nobles. "Don't call it a 'something.' It's a rogue noble, okay? Lord! It's like you're really letting what those humans said get inside your head! You really believe in monsters, Visenya? Think a monster is going around eating up nobles?!"
A quiet, masked member of the group, clearly a borrowed Kertia, speaks up for the first time. "I wouldn't discredit them so easily," he says, so low it could be a whisper. Kertias and their awkward silences. "All the humans given an accurate account of what was out there. Always 'purple.' 'Fire.' 'Light eyes.' What if—"
"I think you should take your 'purple, fire, light' and shove it up your—'
A piercing scream echoes through the woods, followed by a mass of birds flocking into the air all at once, blackening out the skies. The humans who like to talk would say with great assurance and even greater certainty, that this is a thing called a 'bad omen.' But humans are a superstitious, backwards organism. The nobles move, all of them darting to their feet, eyes and heads flickering around the dark enclave, searching for where the sound had come from. Another scream breaks out, louder than the last, but it breaks into sobs, into desperate growls and mewls, until the sound is strangled out, wet and limp.
Squad 12 do not go towards the screams.
When daylight comes, and they go to the scene of the slaughter, but there is no one left to save.
This time, they announce the truth, straight from the Central Order: there is a creature out there, it likes the taste of mutants—
And it is hunting nobles for sport.
The order: "Kill it."
Visenya goes against orders. He can't help it. He's curious. He's heard of the other reports, and he thinks they're worth looking at closer. He sneaks off to the human villages at the break of dawn, wearing a simple disguise. He doesn't use mind control this time. The humans have lots to say. They live on stories and fantasies and dreams, and soon he finds a kind baker women eager to speak.
She says, "Once upon a time there was a man. He was a good doctor who treated his patients well. One day his patient lay dying, and there was nothing he could do. He was arrogant, as he could not accept this, and went to speak to the gods. But gods said: it is how it is, all people must all die in the end. But the doctor, being arrogant, could not accept this. So he goes to the devil. And the devil said: I will grant you immortality if you do me one thing. The doctor, intrigued, asked what he should do. And the devil said: you must kill the gods. The doctor, who ever only cared about his patients, who thought eternal life could mean he could save as many lives as he wished, said yes. And that is why you should not go into the woods alone. The doctor is still alive, and his patients do not die, and he stalks the night hunting the gods…And that is what I tell my children to keep them from playing in that dour old wood."
"…So this doctor…he is only a story told to scare children from the woods?" Visenya asks her.
"No. The doctor is real. He lived in this very village. He left years ago. He did impossible things, Sir. He cured diseases no doctor could cure. He created medicines no apothecary could create. And then he…" she looks away, covers her mouth in distress. As if remembering terrible things.
"We tell stories only to make sense of what we saw him do."
Instead of splitting off into doubles, or triples, the Central Order Knights that are deployed this time split off into large, well-embellished and well-armed groups. They stick together in the dark. They watch each other's backs. They stalk through the woods with their aura pumping beneath their skin, ready to draw at the first sign of attack.
They expect to be attacked.
Nobles have been disappearing like flies expire in summer heat. Their footsteps make holes in the ashes of mutants hordes. Their breaths tinged with the bitter iron tang of old, spilled blood. Their eyes lit up like red blinking lights, animals packed in alarm.
They are afraid, but they don't know of what.
“What did you see him do?” Visenya asks.
The baker woman, all of a sudden, is no longer eager to speak. Her tongue swells in her mouth, her face going pale, like she is weighing words she cannot be heard saying.
“What did you see?”
She shakes her head, again and again.
She is afraid, but she knows exactly what there is to be afraid of.
Soon, the murders start.
Dead nobles fixed on pikes. Disembodied torsos carrying the sigils of Kravei, or Agvain, or Tradio.
They look at the bodies and know they have been tortured before death.
They look at the bodies and find angry sparks of purple, they see bodies eaten away by something like acid, or rot, or — something dripping with dark energy, darker than they'd ever seen. It was like the corpses had been dead for months, even though the recovery squads might have gotten there only hours too late. Sometimes they were still warm. Sometimes hot. Like on fire from the inside. And they know. This was not a rogue noble but something else entirely.
A never ending stream of reports come flowing into the Central Order Headquarters: a creature with four long limbs, large razor claws, skin on fire, eyes light to the point of being white, a monster sometimes trailing black rags, sometimes covered so bloody it looks painted red, sometimes so grotesque it looks black and purple like bruises.
One of the bodies is identified by the recovery squad as Ligur. Ligur from Kravei Squad 4. He was found in three parts. Some of him is still unaccounted for.
The message is clear: those who get caught don't just disappear anymore. They die.
The Kravei Clan Leader speaks to the old, weather-worn Tradio Clan Leader.
"The numbers have been declining. Our loyal agents cannot create mutants fast enough to replenish the numbers we are losing. The Central Order Knights are paralysed by this so-called creature."
The Tradio Clan Leader clutches at his staff, breathing in and out at an uneven pace. He is discontented, Roctis can tell.
"…Our opportunity has closed. At this rate, the Noblesse will never need to make a move. The declined mutant population will not warrant it."
Lagus Tradio sighs tiredly. "And the massacred nobles are more under the Lord's jurisdiction."
Roctis sits quietly as Lagus taps his walking stick against the floor, causing soft tremors in the hall. A bad, stress-induced habit.
Lagus looks up. "This creature…"
"We shall do nothing," Roctis says. "I have men on the inside. They will keep our involvement under control. Let it rampage. Perhaps it could be a good enough distraction for the other Leaders." He gets up, ready to leave discreetly. "We will reconfigure."
"Yes, Roctis. We will."
"Once upon a time," says a father with two dead, mutant children. "There was a hideous beast, who once was a beautiful young man. He was wonderful to look at, and wonderfully well-spoken, but he didn't like to talk to the living. Instead, he was obsessed with the dead. He was always slicing apart dead bodies to look at what was inside. He liked to look at people before they died, and he liked to split their organs apart to look at that. It was sacrilege. We didn't know back then, that he had started a thing called an 'experiment.' He would experiment on the dead, and then he would experiment on himself. Whatever he did to himself must have worked in the end. For now we have a beast who walks the night, ever content on feasting on the bodies of the mutants…And that is what I told my children before they, too, became mutants. "
"…What became of your children, then?" Visenya asks.
"Same as all who turn mutant. We shun them into the woods. The beast would take care of them."
"…You say this as if you know the beast will not harm you humans. Is that so?"
The childless father sinks back into his seat, drained and tired. "We know. It is dangerous. But it will not take a living human."
One day, a Kravei Clan Knight comes ambling home, his clothes ripped and dirtied, his mind stirred like soup.
"Stop! Stop right there!"
"Who are you, approaching the Central Order like this?!"
The Knight blinks, glancing from side to side like he has trouble focusing on one voice. The dawning sun peers down from a slip in the distance and the ragged Knight gasps. He pulls his eyes away like he hasn't seen light in years and it burns.
"Wait." A Siriana Knight steps up, yanks the other's weapons aside. "Garth?"
"Garth? Garth from Kravei Squad 4?"
"Now, Garth, I know a lot of people have been questioning you for a lot of time, but I must ask you one last time." Prasis puts a reassuring hand on Garth's shoulders, looking him square in his eyes.
"Where did this creature take you?"
Garth swallows. "I told you. He took me to a…a kind of cell. There were — there were nobles there. An underground cell. There was no light. He kept us in complete darkness all the time. He kept us in chains. These chains — these chains! They were like, as if they were made of fire. The second you struggled against them, they would send a huge shock down your spine. They burned us if we so much as moved to speak."
Garth lifts his arms onto the table, peeling back the medic bay gown to show two massive strips of raw skin, angry red around each of his wrists.
"You struggled hard."
"Yea. I did. Didn't do much though."
"What do you mean?"
Garth looks up. "Didn't they tell you? I didn't escape. He let me go."
Prasis considers this. "Why did he let you go?"
"…I think, to send a message." Garth pulls down his sleeves again, eager to cover the burns. "…My squad leader…Ligur. He was…rogue. He made mutants — tons and tons of them. Frankenstein, he—"
"Pardon, who?"
"His name. Frankenstein. That's his name."
Loras says to Heath, "Do you think Claude's still alive?"
Heath looks at him, like he's a child too optimistic to know goddamned better. She puts her head down, ashamed. "We should have reported him."
"Maybe not."
The admission stuns Heath, she looks up with wide, wet eyes at Loras. Loras kicks around a rock.
"Nobody would have believed us. Nobody would believe it's a human that's doing this."
A Loyard Knight crouches by a stream, cupping water in their hands to take a sip. She's been separated from Loyard Squad 2, doing a clean sweep of the premises before heading back with intel. Fastened to her back are two long sickles, crossing over to make an 'x.' She is Knight Carpa and she is here to kill the creature.
Out of the blue, a man pops out of the fernery, gasping for air as if gravely short of breath. He stumbles out into the small clearing, long legs crumpling, long, blonde hair falling to curtain his face.
"I didn't ask you to come out. You come when called. You come when called!" he demands to no one. "You do not…order me…"
When he looks up, he spots Carpa with her two long sickles, crossed like massive scissors at his neck.
The man gapes, reels to his feet, stumbles directly into a rock. But his knee gives out and he falls. His light eyes dart from side to side. He is clearly injured, or sick. Humans are easily injured and sick. But the human is cornered like an bug between fingers, and his wide eyes look up at Carpa like he knows just how easily he can be crushed.
"No, no, please." Carpa gestures with the sickles non-threateningly. Then she looks down at them as if seeing them for the first time, realising they are indeed very sharp and intimidating, and throws them to the ground. "Don't be frightened…please?"
The man looks at her. His panic seems to slide out of his eyes slowly.
Carpa's eyes wander down to the red spreading on his frilled, white shirt. He is injured.
"I can help."
"No," he says quickly. His voice is deep and velvet and very on edge. Carpa wouldn't blame him, for the things happening in these areas. "No. I'm fine. Leave me."
"You're bleeding out."
A beat. "That's what humans do."
Carpa's nose scrunches. "You know I am a noble."
The human doesn't move, just continues to clutch at his wound. "Please leave," he says politely, tryingly. "Just go."
Carpa scoffs, rummages through her coat to find anti-scarring dressing from the Central Order Healing Bay. She tosses it at the human. "There are mutants in these woods. And something worse. Don't your people know? They must. Not even your lot are that ignorant. Bandage yourself, I'll stand over here."
"Stand over there waiting for me to expose my neck? Like hell."
Carpa rolls her eyes and turns around, showing her back to the human. "Why are you humans so obsessed with your ugly vampire myths — no one wants to drink your nutrientless blood!"
"No?" It's his turn to scoff. "But what about your good people? Your kin?" He spits on the ground, full of hate. His voice breaks, like the anger in them had mounted to breaking point. "Your companions."
"My companions?—"
Has he seen the rest of Loyard Squad 2?
Carpa spins around. But the human is gone. In his place is…is…she doesn't know what that is. Its skin has darkened and discoloured, a creeping, crawling, disease-like thing making its way up a face that was handsome just a moment before, coating it in a layer of purple. It opens its mouth to scream. Then its body starts shaking, teeth chattering as if below freezing, its neck twisting this way then that. It's too violent, too outlandish to be a mutant transformation, she's never seen anything like this.
She watches the thing's body start to contort, its back snapping into a crescent shape, its shoulder's slamming into the rock behind it, streaking very red, very human blood onto it.
It is — he is human.
Carpa picks up one sickle, but turns it around to the curved, blunt outer edge and pins down one shoulder while she tries to stop him from dragging himself over the sharp rocks.
His jaws, fanged, open too wide, and a strangled, meshed yell struggles out as if he is forcing himself to be quiet. The Central Order Code chapter dealing with conduct around humans did not specify what the hell to do in this sort of situation. Carpa seizes one wrist before it claws apart its own torso.
"Stop! Stop — oh what the fuck in the name of the Lord — stop! Please!"
But the human just shakes and shakes, his legs kicking madly in all directions, teeth chattering and chattering…
"What is wrong with you?! — Please stop! What is — stop!—"
Her hands start to sear from touching him. All of a sudden he is made of fire, or electricity, or lava, he burns on contact. The smell of cooking meat rises into the air and she's forced to drop him deftly.
Carpa turns and runs.
She runs through the bushes, runs for the human's life, stumbles on the root of a tree and trips right into Loyard Squad 2.
"Carpa!" The Squad leader of Loyard 2 grabs her, shakes her shoulders, "Are you safe? Are you well?! Did you see it? The creature — the creature with purple skin — it passed right here, we fought it and we got him!—"
"Purple?" Carpa utters, but the wind leaves her all at once as the realisation hits her. But then she remembers the man's terrible, painful garbling and insists, "I need help! — A human — he— dying!"
When they trek back to the clearing with the stream, there is no human, and no creature.
Just a couple of claw marks and blood.
Visenya finds a child willing to talk and she recounts what her grandmother told her.
"Once upon a time, there was a man who could not age. He looked always young and always spry, and he had all the time in the world. So he used his time to play with fire. All his life he played with fire, always cupping it in his hands and watching it burn. He liked fire so much, and he played with fire all his life until one day, fire ceased to burn him. He had conquered fire, so he began to taunt the old gods with it. Then the old gods noticed he had copied their fire, so they created mutants to kill the man. So the man had to protect himself, and he fashioned the fire into a weapon. A weapon so strong it can even kill gods."
"What is the weapon?" Visenya asks her.
"I've seen it," the little girl says. "I've saw him one day while foraging where I shouldn't have. I saw the unageing man — and I saw a stroke of lightning come down from the sky. He was holding a spear."
"And the spear…" the noble says. "It was…made of fire?"
The little girl nods. She goes to her tip toes, so Visenya bends down to let her whisper in his ear, "Don't tell me grandmother that I saw him."
Other disappeared nobles begin show up. They wander back to Lukedonia, eyes vacant and empty, like there is nothing inside their heads but the command to go home echoing against hollow chambers. And when they get home, the Central Order Knights who question them cannot understand how they cannot describe what happened to them, or where they were kept, or who had commanded them home.
Their time held captive, unlike Garth, was wiped clean away.
Among them is Claude. The first one presumed deserted. The missing Mergas Squad 1 member. He had been missing so long, and his mind under influence so long, he could barely speak his name.
"Describe it to me," The Clan Leader of Landegre 12, now instated as the prime creature-hunting force, asks Carpa.
"Him."
He is a kindly old man with black streaks amidst white hair and a well-cropped salt and pepper beard.
"Describe him," he says accommodatingly.
"He's a man. A human. He wears black. He wears white lace. His hair is light, like the sun. His eyes are blue, like the sky," Carpa says methodically; she has practiced this. She has told the Loyard Clan Leader, and now she has an audience with the Landegre Clan Leader. "And he's diseased. Something's wrong with him. He looked…in pain." Carpa takes a breath. "I don't think he can help it. I don't think he...I'm not sure he wants to attack anyone."
Gejutel K. Landegre goes to the archive room. He does the grunt work of going through files and files of dusty reports, one after the other, on and on and on. After a few days, he finds an old, fabled report.
Altercation with unidentified human, light hair, light eyes, dressed in black. Suspect matched knights in battle and escaped. Permission to take an assault team to investigate.
It now matches all the succeeding reports and information. Skin made of purple fire, eyes cold, blue ice. Something lurking in the woods, who looks human and speaks like a human but makes humans uneasy, not accepted as one of them. Extremely deadly, with the power to kill mutants en masse, drain them of their half-life into early rot, the power to disappear nobles and kill nobles and release nobles at will.
But apparently not the ability to control their own powers.
He's human.
He's human.
Whispers crest up as a wave of rumours are legitimised. More reports of the truth come scuttling out of the woodwork, people shamed into silence or disbelief speaking out. Telling of the human, of his burning fire, and his deformed frame, and his gnarled claws, and his sadistic laugh. Dumas's name is cleared and he returns to command Mergas Squad 1.
The stories break out all over Lukedonia, from the families of Central Knights to Clansmen to civilians, all the way to the Clan Leaders, the Lord, and, hearsay has it, even to the Noblesse himself. They are inescapable. Undeniable. Their boogeyman, their noble eater, a human.
This does not allay fears as the higher ups of the Central Order Knights thought would.
"Claude?" Loras enters the Healing Bay Intensive Care Unit with Heath tottering on behind him.
A noble with shaggy, unkempt black hair sits in his bed. His eyes are completely glazed over, hands resting on his covers loosely. He is staring at his fingers like they aren't really there.
"Claude. It's us. Loras. And Heath," Loras says with a smile in his voice. "It's Mergas Squad 1. We've been reinstated."
Loras goes up to him. Slowly, carefully within his view, he reaches out to take his team mate's hand. Claude lets him. Or maybe he doesn't. He can't really tell.
Neither can Heath, who looks anywhere but at the long line of bedridden nobles who couldn't tell her which clan they belong to.
"Claude," Loras tries again.
"Claude?
"Claude?"
"What he's doing is right." Garth's fingers curl into fists. Speaking this could be considered treason. But at some point, wasting away in a deep, dark dungeon for months on end, he's stopped caring about things as trivial as that.
"…Have you seen those humans?" he says, knuckles shaking unbidden. "Their bodies, I mean. They didn't ask to be mutants. It doesn't matter what they asked of us…nobles decide whether to make a contract or create a curse. Nobles hold the power. The line of dirty contracts do start with us."
Garth looks up, tired. "We have traitors amongst us, Sir."
Prasis strokes his chin thoughtfully. "Traitors, you say?"
"The other Kravei squads, maybe. Even the Siriana…they all confessed after a while. He just wanted the truth, he let me go because he knew I didn't…" Garth's eyes fill up with water, and he puts his head down to hide them. They drop onto the table with an almost audible patter.
Prasis plants a hand on his shoulder.
"It would be so easy," Garth says, voice low and hoarse. "So easy to make a mutant. Ligur and the others were all doing it, calling it 'bait'…if he didn't come that night, maybe I would have just…those humans…"
"You speak of highly of him."
Garth swallows and looks Prasis in the eyes. "Frankenstein's right. We didn't care about the mutants mauling the humans until he started killing them."
"No. We didn't care."
Prasis's hand moves to the back of Garth's neck. Then he grabs Garth's hair and slams his head into the interrogation table. Garth's nose breaks, blood pools onto the table and quickly drips down one side. He comes to after a disorientated, blacked-out moment.
"Why in Ragnorok should we care what happens to humans? They're pests, Garth. Yet they rule the world in our stead. Isn't that bizarre?" Prasis slam's Garth into the table a second time, splattering blood all over.
Garth's fingers scratch violently at the smooth surface of the table, jittery with panic. "Wh—who are you?! You're a Landegre! You're Landegre 12!"
"Yes. But — what did you call us?" Prasis looks up, feigning thinking hard. "'Traitors,' yes. Us traitors have spread quite evenly across the board by now. Though even I'm not sure which Clan Leaders are giving the orders. Oh well. So long as those orders are about overthrowing our pest-loving Lord and vacant, negligent little Noblesse…I don't really care where I'm getting them from."
Garth, summoning all the power he has left, kicks the table into Prasis, lunging to get away. But Prasis is powerful, locking his movements in place with mind control easily. Garth is too weak to resist. Garth splutters, his head shakes as he tries to get free, but it's useless. Prasis points a finger to the back of Garth's head, and sends a jet of aura through it.
He dies. His body goes limp, dropping in a pile at Prasis's feet.
"Report back to Central," Prasis says leisurely, to the two Tradio subordinates coming in to do clean-up. "Our part of Central. Poor Garth has expired due to the experimentation he received at the hands of this 'Frankenstein.'"
"Prasis," the Tradio starts, looking uncomfortable. "Your Clan Leader is here. He's come to hear Garth speak." His eyes dart to the lump of meat that is the body.
"No matter. I will speak in his stead," Prasis says. "After all, he's my Clan Leader."
Gejutel K. Landegre sits down with the Kertia Clan Leader.
"Lucerne Mergas and I have already spoken on this matter. A few of my clansmen in my 12th squad have conferred with me as well — the survivor entered eternal sleep this morning. It seems this 'Frankenstein' had kept him alive and awake as a messenger. Once the message was delivered…"
Gejutel sighs, heavy and tired, running his hand hard up his face. "This matter is much worse than I initially anticipated, Sir."
"Gejutel, you may call me Ragar. There's no one here to reel at informalities."
"Ragar, things have been fucked lately."
Ragar's mask twitches and he lifts a hand to adjust it, covering his reaction. "Hm. Yes. So I've heard. Or shall I say — so I have not heard until the problem had exacerbated to this point."
"It should never have gotten this far. We weren't contacted."
"Are you suggesting...information was kept from us?"
Gejutel shakes his head. That seems ludicrous. The two of them could both be lost to the fact that other people were simply not as noble as themselves. "They thought they could handle it."
Ragar gets up and crosses his arms. "Now we shall handle it."
Gejutel's broad shoulders crumple a bit, his fingers mashing into his face. "…It's time to report this to the Lord."
Visenya finds a middle aged woman who tends to her farm everyday. She invites him into her home to tell her story.
"There was a young woman who came from far away, who said she was driven from her own village by infectious disease. Many had no choice but to flee when disease stuck, as there were no cure to be seen. Then the woman met a man one day while foraging. The man was dressed in black, with silk-fine hair, who seemed to glow. One look in his eyes and it was like you were trapped in a spell. Like fae, luring villagers into the woods never to be seen again. But the woman did not think that. She began to walk in his direction. She did not have a choice. There was something wrong with his eyes, they collected with strange light, moonlight distorted around him and his pupils bled away into nothing. His eyes were red. He put his hands on the woman, dipped low to her neck, and opened his foul, monstrous mouth with large, protruding fangs, and…"
"...And she became a mutant?" Visenya finishes. "The creature is capable of creating mutants?"
The middle aged woman shakes her head. "No. No. The man tried to bite the woman — but the monster was in the woods that day, and he set his arms on fire, gripped the man by the head, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, splitting him down the middle."
The woman gets up, shuffles around her house and props her chair against her door.
Visenya looks at her, blinking. The attacker. The attacker had been a noble, trying to create more mutants.
Visenya's jaw hardened. "…So what of the—"
Suddenly, with speed Visenya didn't think a normal, human woman could have, she charges at him with a knife. The woman cries out, grimacing, and strikes her weapon to Visenya's abdomen. Visenya is pushed backwards, knife still in him, the woman still holding the knife.
"I was that woman," she said. "And I know who you are. You're one of the bloodsuckers. You're one of the nobles he hunts."
The woman grunts, trying to push the knife deeper. "He's not some monster. You're the ones who turn us into mutants!" she cries, driving the knife as deep as it would go. "I won't let you hurt Frankenstein!"
Startled by her actions, Visenya knocks her behind her head. She falls to the ground unconscious. He yanks her knife out of him, which clatters loudly to the floor. Visenya waits for a while, willing his wound to heal.
Then he leaves the way he came.
Visenya returns to Lukedonia.
He recounts the human's stories to anyone who would listen.
Maybe if they just listened from the start, they would have known he was human all along.
Ragar and Gejutel walk down the exalted halls from the Lord's palace.
"Tell. What do you think of the Lord sending both of us to capture him?" Ragar says.
"The Lord would have had his reasons," Gejutel answers.
"The Lord has given his orders, and we must follow them without question. Rather, I am asking about the human. Whether he is truly so powerful that both of us are required."
Gejutel walks with him shoulder to shoulder, deep in thought.
"I am not belittling human ability," Ragar continues, "but there is no possibility that a human could have such power."
"Ragar," Gejutel says, "I understand your thoughts. But have we not watched the human world for many long years? Soon, there will come a time when they no longer find us necessary. Humanity has accomplished many things with the passing of time. And they will achieve still more in the future."
They walk in more silence.
"Ragar," Gejutel starts again, but this time his voice quivers lowly. Though they are in a public place, his words are only for Ragar to hear. "It bothers me that the knights that fought him could not recall the encounter."
Ragar's hand slips up to fix his mask. "Yes. I cannot understand how that came to be. Most returned to live normal lives with partially erased memories. But the earliest ones…they remember almost nothing about their lives before they were taken."
"Which points to someone's meddling," Gejutel muses sagely. "…Is it…not similar to the way we erase memories using mind control?"
Ragar stops briefly. Gejutal wanders on before realising the pause and stopping as well. Ragar speaks. "You mean to say that he gained that ability by experimenting on the nobles he caught?"
"That may not be the only thing he's gained."
The sound of another set of footprints startle them out of their thoughts.
"Roctis?" they say, as Roctis approaches to speak to the Lord.
They make small talk to their fellow Clan Leader.
After they review their information, a noble comes running into their counsel room.
"My Clan Leaders! — something's wrong! It's Dumas — he's taken a taskforce by himself and gone after the monster!"
"…Impulsive," Ragar whispers.
"Order them back," Gejutel grimaces, the hair at his neck standing on end. Entirely too many dead nobles lay heavy on his mind. "They don't stand a chance — order them back now!"
"We've already lost contact with the knights, My Clan Leader."
"…Fuck," Ragar says.
Heath and Loras stand by, hidden by vegetation and illusion. Months of tracking, mapping, planning had led to this, a sliver of a clue that lay in the hearsay of a few humans, the stories recounted by a fellow noble, and Prasis's interrogation.
Footsteps sound in the dirt path ahead, leaves crunching in the undergrowth. It is the beast, the monster, the human. He walks and walks, slowly coming into view.
Heath balances on the balls of her feet. Pike at the ready. She wants to attack. This man destroyed Claude. He's killed so many nobles, left their bodies in the dirt to rot like vermin. Heath has always known he was human, but she hadn't the courage to speak out like Dumas. The scars on her back, rotted and gangrenous from the claws of the thing she has in view, throb angrily; she wants justice, and she wants pain, and she wants vengeance for all he's done to them.
Loras looks at her, nodding his head as he draws out his sword, but—
But a jet of black and purple zips through his chest, and he looks down, frowning at the hole in his body — and Heath looks down, seeing the same thing — and the human, Frankenstein, has stopped in his path, his arm outstretched after the split-second attack, a large, gaping, overjoyed smile on his face — and all Heath can manage to do is open her mind because she owes it to send a psychic message to Commander Dumas a short way up ahead—
He's coming.
"We're close!" Dumas yells, "Prepare for battle! Contact has been made up ahead from that direction, let everyone know!"
A group of nobles run beside him: the reunited Mergas Squad 1, a few brash Landegre 12, some of Loyard 2, the borrowed Kertia who believed the humans, Prasis who was sent after the deserters, Carpa who saw the twitching creature, Visenya who listened to stories. Everyone.
They are all high strung, each with their own demons that sprang from the creature, and they are here to exorcise them. To find the truth, and face the human — the shapes and splotches of him they see behind closed eyes. The creature has killed their friends, or destroyed their conspiracies, or vegetated comrade's minds, or forced sleepless nights upon them, and they are here to apprehend him. The group spreads out, each clutching their weapon, calling upon ancestors to give them strength.
And then comes a voice which cuts through their thoughts, deep and velvety. "Where are you going in such a hurry?"
The squads freeze. He can't be here this fast. The scouts, Heath and Loras were so far away…But the human, Frankenstein, steps out of the shadows, his light eyes gleaming, one hand in his pocket, lace cuffs billowing, without a care in the world for the logic of the world, nor the shock on their faces, nor the hate in their eyes.
The nobles look at the human and they all think: It's him.
So they all move, kick off the ground and surround him in seconds. He just stands there, happily, like this is all happening at his leisure, like he is secure in the fact that he has found them, not the other way around. He takes his hand out of his pocket, and watches contently as the rest of them cower, step wearily back in response.
"So you were looking for me after all," Frankenstein says sarcastically. "Why are the knights of nobles pursuing little old me?"
Dumas crunches down on his teeth so hard it's audible. "To punish you for the crime of attacking nobles."
"Aha," Frankenstein chuckles.
Dumas breathes in. "Come with us."
"Nope."
Everyone grips their weapons harder, ready to attack.
"Then we will have to resort to using force," Dumas grits out.
"Haha…"
Frankenstein braces a hand to his face, gripping hair between his fingers, obscuring his eyes. Then, his handsome face contorts, he gives them a pointed, sadistic, toothy smile, like he really was no gladder to be stood accused here than doing anything else. Like this is a game to him. Like this is a treat, and he is impressed by their impunity. He beings to laugh.
"Hahah….hahahahhahahahahah! Ahahahahahahaha—"
He laughs and laughs, and as he laughs, a strange, magnetic, electric power pulses out, him in the epicentre, embers of purple igniting the air like a thousand shocks of lightning. It hits them all at once, Dumas is shocked backwards into the ground; Visenya, Carpa, Prasis, vaulted from the power of the pulse. Dumas screams, nursing burns magically appearing on his body, Visenya thinks back on the human's stories and knows at once they all hold truth, Carpa shudders as she realises that he doesn't even remember her, and shouldn't, all the nobles he's disposed of, and Prasis cowers, finally seeing this human for what he is.
"Arrest me if you can, oh great nobles."
Frankenstein stands on the tip of the cliffside, mesmerised by the tides crashing on the rock, of the curved mainland on the horizon from which he came. His eyes reflected all the colours of the bleeding sunset, and his long, cherubic curls flutter into his face, the ends of his bow tie carried by wind. He is tall, dignified, and solemn in thought. Calm and content like he knows exactly who he is, and what he's done. Almost angelic.
He is the human that haunts Lukedonia, stalking the nightmares of Central Order Knights, and he is the one who has conquered fire, who lives forever, who obsesses with the dead, cutting himself open, and making himself this way. He is the thing that Knights fear. The human who hunts nobles. The creature who changes face. He has killed many nobles, and he doesn't regret it. He has cleaned up their messes, and they don't even know it. Now he has found Lukedonia, those nobles led him here.
He hasn't planned to come so early, but he was backed into a corner. It's time to reconfigure.
Gejutel K. Landegre and Ragar Kertia, concealed not far away, look on.
"So that is he."
"It seems so."