Chapter 323 – (T)he (H)uman (Ana)thema

John could only watch helplessly as the goddess of genocide took a simple step forward and then vanished from his field of view.

Moving faster than his eyes could register, she appeared behind one of the invaders and rammed her arm straight through his back, bursting through his ribcage at the front. It all happened so quickly that the knight opposing that soldier executed a downwards strike before realizing what had transpired.

Thana pulled her arm back. Stained with the red of human ichor from her elbow to her fingertips. The hole she left behind didn’t heal. If Gamer’s Body failed, then why wouldn’t this artefact, The embedded cross was ripped apart like paper anyhow.

The corpse fell to the ground like a meaty sack of bones, and the battlefield slowly calmed as everyone realized what had just happened. The invincible looking soldiers of the Blood had just lost one of their members. There was yet hope, that is what it must have looked like to them.

They cheered for Thana, loudly did they applaud her, their morale reinvigorated. It only lasted a moment, then the goddess of genocide cowered down next to the corpse. She unveiled her teeth, omnivorous perfection.

“Soulburn,” the six pillars of pale blue fire appeared behind her back, much more pronounced than they had ever been for the girl John had known. They hovered behind her back as she rammed her teeth into the corpse, clenched her jaw and pulled back.

The raw meat stretched, unwilling to just fall apart after having lived just moments earlier. The sound of bones breaking as she greedily ripped out the man's collarbone, stuffing the shards into her face, all the while still busy devouring the first bite she took.

In the arena. In front of the atomic fire contained by the emperor, blind and deaf, occupied by the horror of mass-destruction, the goddess of genocide feasted. Under the careless eyes of his comrades, interested only in how this could jeopardize the mission. Under the shocked gaze of the knights, disbelieving of the casual cannibalism they witnessed. Under the senseless watch of the world, spying from the distance and unable to do anything about it.

She cracked open his skull and gorged herself on the squishy matter that spilled out. Then she was attacked.

The Knights of Rome were still unsure what to do. Many of them even took fearful steps back. They had no idea what they were facing, but by now even they became aware that they weren’t just facing an average psychopath.

The Blood of the Proletariat, however, had identified a threat to their cause, and now they had to eliminate it with all their might. All remaining 99 of them closed down on Thana, brandishing all the weapons they had in their arsenal.

The goddess of genocide carelessly continued to maul the corpse even as they approached. The ground around her, tinged green and blue, started to shift. With the ethereal moans of a million anguished souls struck at once. Innocent voices spewed forth, rambling and weaving together into a horrible cacophony of beauty that sounded like an archangel’s choir.

The tinge gave rise to the forms of these voices, a writhing, ever growing sea of faces and screams. Despaired humans, reliving their last moments over and over again. Death by betrayal. Death by firing line. Death by starvation. Death by poison. Death, endless all-encompassing death.

A duo of soldiers reached her first, ready to ram their swords into her back.

“First choir, for I am the sword of Damocles hanging above the mindlessly indulging humanity,” she spoke those words so silently nobody should have been able to hear them. Yet, they permeated the air with undeniable power.

Each of these words carried the same, otherworldly significance as Bloodburn had. Words that shouldn’t have been understandable but were cracking through every language and into every mind. Words that didn’t carry meaning but were meaning itself.

“Song of Bone.” The top two flames of Soulburn disappeared as the robe below moved like the surface of boiling water.Then, the robe was torn asunder. Two skeletal wings like oversized, thin, white claws grew in place of the upper row of blue fire. The two Bloods that were already in mid-leap could no longer stop, neither would they as their single-minded ambition drove them forward.

The chorus of tortured souls grew louder. The tips of the wings stretched several metres with a bony creak. Impaling the two soldiers coming directly for her heart. She took a final bite out of the corpse and rose. “Run. Please run,” voices inside the chorus screamed. “We failed to warn.” “We failed to stop.”

“Quiet down,” the blood dripping maw of the goddess of genocide formed these simple words as she turned around to face the storm coming for her. The souls around her feasted on themselves upon her command. She grabbed the other girl’s black robe and tore at it until it ripped. It was carelessly removed like an annoying rag; the same happened to the rest of her clothes.

The first two attackers slid off her wings like overripe fruit, sinking together on the ground. They became naught but spots of blood and meat, completely boneless. Their material fed the goddess of genocide. Where the wings of bone connected to her body, an exoskeleton began to form. It spread only a bit around her shoulder blade.

But Thana was in no need of protection. The bulk of the enemy forces finally reached her. One punch and the first enemy to reach her had a hole blown in his stomach  by the sheer force of the impact. She grabbed another assailant by the skull as five more jumped at her from all directions.

The wings cracked as they broke themselves into positions that allowed them to impale these enemies as well. Thana grabbed the Blood soldier who she had blown into bits by the ribs sticking out. Even now he felt no fear. All their feelings, except for those to keep them motivated, were suppressed by magic so they wouldn’t feel doubt over killing themselves during this mission.

They should have feared. The goddess of genocide crushed the face of the man whose head she was holding, just as she killed everyone else around her. Just like their comrades, their bodies were robbed of their bones, cultivating the awakening power of humanity’s self-forged bane.

The exoskeleton grew all over her body. The absorbed matter spread over her back, hiding her sickly pale skin under a second ribcage. Her fingers were extended by another segment, ending in needle-like claws.

“Second choir, for I shall burn their blood to ashes and grind all their works and all that they have touched to dust,” the horrible disfigurement of the girl, which John had come to love, coldly spewed forth as she clawed apart another two soldiers and then ripped a third one into two halves. “Song of Blood.”

The bottom row of blue pillar-like wings changed into a crimson red crystal. Blood began flowing from the sacks of meat and the muddy red floor towards these newly coloured wings, leaving only dried sand and disgusting piles of dried meat in uniform. The blood touched the crystal and was set ablaze.

In a pair of two, they seemed like two leaves with crystallized veins and ever shifting crimson fire between them. John knew those however, and he knew that sound of metallic violin that accompanied them. Had Bloodburn always been the girl he knew tapping into Thana’s powers?

Had Soulburn’s first activation allowed this thing to finally awaken?

All his familiars were around him; Undine tried to heal his shoulder to no avail. They could do nothing but watch the slaughter continue.

In a mere few seconds, Thana cut, ripped and bit through more than two dozen of the attackers. Their lack of fear made them bold, but also thoughtless. They still hadn’t realized that they were only breakfast to the beast that would devour the world. Trying to surround her with their superior numbers, acting on pure battle doctrine, they fed her more blood and bones.

For a moment she disappeared from his sight; all he could see was a pile of bodies trying to stab or smash their foe. But he could hear her. “Third choir, for I will devour the souls of humanity to fuel their own demise,” the pile of bodies rose and then scattered in all directions. Bodies hung off the bone wings like tattered rags, tendrils of blood seeking out the throats of whoever they could reach.

The souls on the floor boiled over and screamed, the choir synchronizing with the sound of the violins to create the symphony of the dawning apocalypse. The last pair of blue pillars branched out like a withered tree, growing in rapid bursts. “Song of Soul.”

The blue tree bore golden leaves of screaming faces. Souls forced into physical form by the sheer power, strong enough to break one of the laws of magic. What kind of power had to manifest to create a human god? The answer was the combined sin of every act of murder, every soul lost to systematic genocide.

And there she stood, with six wings, body clad in a white exoskeleton of robbed bones, the gaps filled with pulsating blood. Her hair had grown down to her hips again, and despite being only below average height, she was the greatest terror John had ever beheld as she spoke her final lyrics to the death rattles of the last living invaders being torn apart by tendrils of blood.

“I cast aside my humanity. Let them burn as I have burned. I am the faceless noise that will drown out humanity’s screams and leave nothing but silence. This is my oath to Armageddon.”

As she spoke her voice regressed until it was nothing more than savage spewing. Her straight posture became hunched. Her spine breaking out of her body, it extended to form a prehensile tail the length of her whole body. The bone grew over her face, hiding all but her eyes, from ears to lips, under a smooth, blank surface.

The nightmarish abomination started moving. Her shadow cast against the atomic fire behind her, she headed for Maximillian. The king didn’t even try to use his powers on that thing. It couldn’t have been described as a human, much less a female anymore. Aside from the placement of its limbs, it had nothing remaining that was human.

Just a hunched forward thing, segmented bones armouring its body, so thickly plated that all feminine curves had vanished underneath. Leaving only dried husks behind, it stepped closer in the now eerie silence of the colosseum. Slowly, without a care, it came ever closer to Maximillian, spiked tail dragging through the sand.

The Knights of Rome were too scared to intervene. Everyone in the audience was frozen in terror, and even John was gripped by pure desperation. The only person they could rely on right now was Romulus, but the emperor was still occupied and unaware of all that happened. The moment he stopped, they were doomed by nuclear fire.

It was terrible and hopeless. Maximillian would be a victim to buy them time.

And then the king showed his true self. His arms wide open he stood up proud, facing the monster and keeping his back to the traitor. “If you have to kill me, fine, but Alex will face the judgement of law,” Maximillian declared. It was a movement that was awe inspiring, indeed.

But that helped nothing when the goddess of genocide swiped him aside like he was just a particle of dust obscuring her view. The victorious smile on Alexej’s face was nowhere to be seen, only blank fear. No, something beyond fear.

It was the knowledge that his whole lifework had just been destroyed by something that didn’t even really care for him, something that was more terrible than all of his acts of betrayal could ever be, for it was the essence of all victims of betrayal.

“What are you?” he asked. Thana kneeled down. The mask cracked along the height of her mouth and broke open. It seemed like an answer would be bestowed upon the traitor. Then her maw opened wide, and there was nothing but silence as the three rows of teeth dripped with saliva and thick blood. The first row was the shattered mask. The second-row needles of half-crystallized crimson. The third-row lipless human teeth.

In the last moments of Alexej, before the goddess of genocide ripped out his throat, he cried. Cried as his blood was sucked out of his veins. Cried as his bones began to liquify. Cried as his soul was torn apart and absorbed into the tree-like wings. Thana left nothing behind but yet another shrivelled pile of dry, dead meat. She rose again and inhaled deeply.

A scream that rattled every bone to the core, that denied hope. A scream so savage and full of nihilistic purpose that it could only belong to this beast. That scream, loud enough to echo throughout the city, Thana threw at the sky.

Then it hunched forwards again and turned to her next target.

Wherever her eyes went, shattered violet with seven slits crossing a golden ring, people instinctively jumped back or tried to hide. The hellfire in the background had slowly reached its zenith.

Her eyes fell on the defenceless Romulus. She vanished to everyone, then they heard the surprised, pained shout of the emperor. They all looked in terror as the goddess of genocide forced her hand through the heavily enchanted toga, the ribcage of a man that had lived eons and into his chest.

Then she ripped out the emperor’s heart.