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Sizzling burns echoed in the silence of the aftermath of a terrible battle. Dust settled, and the scent of burning flesh and other more horrible things permeated the dark, torchlit chamber. Helena stood at the base of an altar, blonde hair damp with sweat and up to her neck in blood stains. She panted heavily, her right prosthetic cyber-arm shattered and dripping intermittent sparks, and her left cyber-arm holding a humming tachyonic antitelecaster pistol leveled at a slender woman wearing black robes. The woman's lips trailed blood, but her hood obscured the rest of her face and her robes hid any injuries. Both of her hands were planted on the altar. The standoff took place against a backdrop of the corpses of Helena’s strike force, as well as those of cultists and the carcass of an unspeakable creature with flesh of pitch and blinking pustules of green light that slowly faded.
Helena stared daggers at the woman, shivering with every breath except for her firearm, which remained steady.
“It’s just you and me now, asshole. Twitch and you fucking die.”
The woman coughed a bloody chuckle, “There are no more tricks, Sergeant Margrave. No more rites or spells. No more defenses, no more blood that the altar will accept. You win,” her gaze turned to the creature as its black coruscating iridescence faded, “You have snuffed out a tragic, beautiful existence tonight. As far as I am aware, there were no others.”
Helena scoffed, keeping her eyes trained on the woman, “You know that you sound exactly how I expect you to.”
She nodded, “Yes, I’m aware. I’m aware.”
“You’re buying time,” Helena said.
She shook her head, “There is no help for me, Margrave. Nezyogtha was all the help we had. Now he’s dead, and I suppose, I’m hoping that I leave something meaningful to you before your god-slaying bullets rend my flesh. Maybe you could gain something from it, too. You’re now as cut off as I am.”
Helena released her held breath as she lowered her gun and turned to survey the temple chamber, which was dense with the debris of gore and horror, “Alright, cultist. How do you justify this and call your beast beautiful?”
The cultist relaxed her posture, thankful for a reprieve from the deadly standoff as she let her hands slide from the bloodstained stone sigils on the altar, “It’s a matter of understanding. The life you called a protoplasmic anomaly is an entire history unto itself, whose flesh and blood offered insights into the birth of all life.”
Helena knelt over a seemingly uninjured, yet unresponsive teammate. She inspected his eyelids and checked his pulse. Nothing, “And the anticognitive cacophony? A real dulcet tone he had once those… mouths, opened.”
“I’d thank you not to mock the voice of our elder brethren. It wasn’t his fault our mortality makes us too frail for their truths.”
Helena turned to her with her eyes as thin as blades, “You’re going to tell me he was just trying to tell me that the sky is blue?”
“We both resorted to violence, Margrave. How are we different then?”
Helena raised her weapon again, stormed towards the cultist, and forcibly pulled back her cloak before pressing the barrel of the humming firearm against her temple. The woman had short black hair, glossy pale olive skin, and most notably golden, serpentine eyes.
“What the fuck are you?” Helena asked through a piercing scowl, “You’re keeping pretty cool for someone whose god was just killed; the others literally threw themselves at my gunfire screaming unholy battle cries. Now you’re talking like we’re on some kind of even ground; what’s your game?”
The cultist grimaced in pain, “You got me. I’m not one of them. I’m Deema, embracer of my curse, progeny of Yig.”
“… jealous protector of serpents.”
“Yess,” Deema smiled weakly, showing her bloodied teeth and coyly revealing her sharply forked tongue, “Then could I assume that you’ll believe me when I say that you’ll be punished for harming me?”
Helena dropped her adversary, “Actually yes. I do believe that.”
Deema coughed again and sighed with relief. Helena looked around to once more survey the chamber before holstering her weapon, and drew a small, glowing canister, the size of a pen from a pouch in her belt. She undid the clasp on Deema’s robe and found a gunshot wound near the left shoulder. After giving the canister a good shake, she sprayed down the injury with a sizzling foam, “Your clavicle is likely still shattered, but the immediate threat to your life is dealt with. You’ll be strong enough to escape in seconds. I won’t stop you, and I won’t write about you in the report.”
Deema looked pleased, but a little confused, “What happened to all of the bloodthirsty determination you had before? Did I perhaps-”
A communicator from one of the fallen soldiers suddenly crackled to life, “-copy? Th-… mission control, B.C.D. six-oh-five, do you copy?”
“Huh,” Helena tilted her head, “Yig answers prayers quick, doesn’t he?” and she hopped off the altar to answer the call.
“Sly,” Deema said, as she stood back on her feet between labored breaths, “Yig responds to both the cruelties inflicted upon his kin and the kindnesses imparted upon them. You knew he’d bless you for helping me.”
Helena picked up the communicator and turned back to face Deema, “Praise be to fuckin’ Yig. Now get out, before my friends at damage control decide that you belong in an incinerator.”
Deema nodded with a smile. She fixed her posture, dropping her robes and revealing a much more alluring outfit which had been hidden beneath. She held out her hands to perform some foreign somatics and a portal opened to a nighttime realm of stars and trees that swayed like seaweed, “You know, Margrave, you may think you cheated Yig, but there are no loopholes. The serpent father knows what you have done, and has rewarded you accordingly. He forgets neither slights nor good will. Toodles...”