The Mantis Equilibrium - Book Two - 14. Chapter 14 - Vion, Part Four

Vion and his two inquisitors rushed through the dark city streets of the industrial district. The Principal Messiah sent word for the trio to hold on their attack and report to the temple at once, but as they turned the corner that led to the Messiah Tower, they were surprised to see a crowd in front of it. Several heavily armed guards blocked the way, but they nodded Vion and his officers through the perimeter. They saw the Principal Messiah kneeling beside four more corpses.

“Curse these monsters!” she raged. “Now they’ve attacked our sacred place!” The Principal Messiah stood upright as Vion approached. “Our fallen kin at this attack site,” she informed him, “only display two of the three types of murderous energies we’ve encountered. With any luck, our enemies are facing dissension in their ranks. Come inside, now,” she commanded, and without waiting, she stormed in through the broken doors.

Vion left his inquisitors in the street and followed her.

“Do you know what happens when a Messiah consumes another mantis gland?” the Principal Messiah asked.

“Another, milady?”

She furrowed her brow. “Yes, another,” she replied. The woman glared at Vion with an expression that dared him to interrupt her again. “You remember eating the mantis gland that turned you into a Messiah, correct?” Her question was rhetorical, and her tone was sarcastic. She continued without allowing him to reply.

“Far to the south, the mountains end in a vast flatland, but between the two is a region of foothills that serve as the monsterdom of the mutated. Those twisted addicts,” she continued, as she began to climb the stairs, “are not part of this society.”

Vion followed.

“Their kind are not welcome in Teshon City,” the Principal Messiah elucidated, “but from time to time, my brother comes to visit.”

She reached the top step, approached a window, and pointed down.

Vion joined her and looked where she indicated.

In a narrow alleyway adjacent to the tower, a coachman stepped down from his carriage and opened its door. Then Vion was shocked by what he saw.

Something vaguely humanoid emerged from the Tower at street level. The creature was naked, with the same skin tone as the Principle Messiah. However, unlike her, this being was made up of too much person. Its arms were normal human arms, as were its legs, but there were too many of each. The thing slithered into the carriage, moving more like an animal than a human, and the coachman shut the door behind it.

“What on earth was that?” Vion exclaimed.

“That’s my brother,” the Principal Messiah replied in a calm tone. “After his second mantis gland, he grew the arm that comes out of his sternum. You couldn’t see it from here, but his mouth also developed,” she paused, “another mouth, for lack of a better explanation. It’s almost as if he has two separate lower jaws.”

She continued. “The third and fourth mantis glands he ate grew him extra legs and the fleshy boulder that protrudes from his back. There are also fingers that extend out all over his upper chest, and he has a partial arm sticking out from one side that just pokes like an elbow. His fifth mantis gland gave him a third eye on the back of his head, a second penis, and also a foot coming out of one shoulder blade.”

Vion watched the carriage until it rolled into the main street and disappeared from sight.

“He will never be the same again,” the Principal Messiah went on, “and he will likely never stop hunting for mantis glands. Don’t worry,” she answered before Vion could even formulate the question, “he always asks, but never gets any from us when he visits me. No,” she added, “in fact, let me show you the way that we, your superiors, enjoy Shift.”

The Principal Messiah continued up the stairs to the next story and Vion followed her. She nodded at a pair of guards who stood in front of a massive steel door, and one of them opened it. Vion followed her into a dark room with one of the guards behind him, and the man closed the door again. Vion heard a harsh snicker from the Principal Messiah.

She flipped a switch and the lights flickered on, but Vion did not comprehend what she was showing him.

Strapped to a gurney was a man. He was covered in a sheet up to his neck, and many tubes reached between him and several different pieces of equipment. They appeared medical in nature to Vion’s untrained eye.

“Bring me two SF teas,” the Principal Messiah commanded of the guard.

On a cart in one corner, the man set a kettle to boil on a heating element, and he collected two teacups from the shelf on the wall above it. The guard approached the largest piece of equipment, held one of the mugs under a tiny spigot, and he pulled its tap. Clear watery fluid dripped from it. He swapped one cup for the other, then turned off the little faucet again. A moment later the kettle was steaming and the man poured some warm water into the mugs. He handed one to each of them, nodded, and exited the room.

The Principal Messiah took a sip.

“Drink,” she commanded Vion.

“What is it?” he asked her.

She gave him a smug expression and took another sip.

He looked down at his mug. It appeared to contain only water, and he tried it. It tasted of nothing. He sniffed it and took another sip.

“I don’t taste anything. What does SF stand for?”

“Spinal fluid,” she replied casually. “They want to call us cannibals; we’ll act like cannibals.”

Vion looked down at his mug with a disgusted expression.

“Keep your judgments to yourself,” the Principal Messiah snapped. Her scowl was back in place. “Don’t pretend that you haven’t eaten part of a Shift.”

He looked back up at her and quietly asked in a kowtowed voice, “What does drinking Shift spinal fluid do?”

“It is power over the powerful,” she replied with a wicked laugh. “I would eat every scrap of this monstrosity,” and the woman waved at the helpless victim, “except for his mantis gland. I have no interest in mutating like my brother. This thing,” she spat at the unconscious man, “is meat. He is prey to our kind. He is nothing more than an animal upon which we feed.” The Principal Messiah finished her beverage and placed the mug on a table.

She looked at him expectantly, as Vion took another sip and then also finished his beverage. “Come with me,” she commanded.

They descended and returned to the dark street in front of the damaged doors.

A small army of Messiahs was guarding the base of the Temple.

“I want you lot,” the Principal Messiah ordered, and she waved at a group of them who were huddled together, “to join Vion on a mission of vengeance tonight. Bring battle to the filth that lives in Gate Town.” She nodded at Vion and returned to the interior of the tower.

He looked up at the night sky and told them all, “When the buildings are burning, there will be plenty of light by which to fight.”

The moon was beginning to slide up from the horizon, as he and his inquisitors led the march. Darkness would not stop Vion from accomplishing the task that his leader set before him, and at the edge of Gate Town, he ordered the Messiahs to diverge. They began to head down several different narrow streets, and soon there was an ominous orange glow on the underside of the thin clouds above.

Gate Town was on fire.

Screams rang out from a number of different directions around the neighborhood, as the inhabitants realized that something was terribly wrong.

Vion and Proge stalked down a quiet street with Chenchi.

A fleeing man ran out and tried to get past her, but she grabbed him by the head and asked in a booming voice, “Where are the murderers?” Chenchi simultaneously smashed his skull against the wall, making her question moot.

Proge circumvented his fellow Messiah and lunged for another confused and frightened man who stepped outside to see what was happening.

However, the individual turned out to be a Shift, and he released an orb of energy that appeared to collide with Proge. The sphere of power passed through the Messiah as if he were nothing; at the same time, it also absorbed part of him. The ball of light then vanished, and one of Proge’s entire arms and a massive portion of his torso disappeared with it. He fell to the pavement, but he was dead before he hit the ground.

Chenchi grabbed a cinder block from the alleyway floor and hurtled it at the Shift man. Her aim was off and it exploded against the wall. He launched another orb of power, but Chenchi dove out of the way. She snatched up a pipe, threw it like a spear, and her aim was true. It impaled the man through his guts and nailed him to the wall behind. He feebly clutched at the horrible metal tube that protruded from his stomach, but he managed to launch another orb. It was much smaller and shot wide, hitting the side of a building and taking a chunk of bricks and mortar with it.

Chenchi roared as she charged the man, swinging another cinder block like it was a club. She spun her body and the concrete brick moved in a majestic arc through the air, held fast in her empowered grip. The Messiah slammed her makeshift weapon into the skewered man’s head and it exploded with a halo of brains on the wall around it.

“Fucking Shift,” Chenchi spat.

“You better find the mantis gland in all that mess,” Vion warned her. “I want it.”

He knelt beside Proge’s body and examined the damage. “This doesn’t match the three types of corpses that we’ve found at each of the massacre sites. That Shift was not one of our targets,” he declared. “The killers are still out there.”

Chenchi was not paying attention to Vion’s observations, and she stormed around the corner into a startled group of two men and a woman. There was no resistance from the three.

She body-checked one man into a building so hard that the wall cracked and he fell to the ground. Blood seeped from his ears and mouth. Chenchi uppercuted the woman in the jaw, snapping her head back and breaking her neck instantly. Her corpse crashed to the pavement. The third man tried to run, but Chenchi grabbed his wrist. She brought her opposite hand to his ribs, and with horrible screams from both Chenchi and her victim, she ripped off his arm. The man was silenced, as she began to pummel him with his own limb. She left the man a bloody mess.

Vion stood at the corner and smiled at Chenchi’s carnage. A man suddenly exited a building between them, and Vion charged at him. He swung his empowered fist like a wrecking ball and it collided with the other man’s jaw. Vion expected his head to twist around, but the man barely flinched.

Without warning, his would-be victim struck out, punching Vion in the guts with a battering ram fist. The man landed several blows before Chenchi grabbed him from behind. Vion retaliated and the two Messiahs forced the man to the ground.

“Traitor!” Chenchi screamed. “You fucking traitor!” She pushed his face against the pavement. “You’re disgusting! A Messiah, living with Shifts? You are a predator and they are your fucking food, and you will die a traitor’s death!”

The two Messiahs would have struggled to kill one of their own nigh-invulnerable kind, and the ex-Messiah man seemed more irritated by them than worried, but Vion pulled a diamond dagger from its sheath at his hip.

“The Principal Messiah stole this from the High Chemist,” he said, “and she entrusted it to me.”

The pinned man’s eyes went wild with fear. It took a lot to frighten the empowered, but that blade would easily end his life, and he tried to scream.

Vion stabbed the man in his jugular, yanked it out, and slashed it across his throat. He and Chenchi stepped back, as the man squirmed on the pavement and gripped at his neck. His mouth gaped like a fish, but no noise came out of it. Chenchi approached and put her foot on his chest. She held him against the concrete as his blood flowed. In a matter of moments, his eyes became unfocused, and he groped feebly at her ankle. He twitched, then fell still in a pool of his own blood.

“Fucking traitor,” Vion growled. “Set that building on fire,” he ordered Chenchi, and he pointed at a wooden structure.

People in the streets all around them screamed and fled from the violence. Many were hunted down.

Vion shook himself from the pummeling, rounded a corner, and he collided with a group of angry men.

They were armed with clubs and bats, and they swung at him with their weapons.

After facing off against someone as strong as himself, Vion threw his hands up in defense, but he was barely aware of the blows. The men were all mere humans.

Vion turned a wicked smile at them and lashed out with both fists. One hit a man so hard that Vion’s hand entered the man’s guts. He gripped a fistful of organs and yanked his hand out again. The man collapsed beside the pile of his innards. Vion’s other brick of knuckles smashed into the side of a man’s lower jaw, and it was torn completely from his head. His throat was ripped open by the terrible impact, and he collapsed, convulsing to the pavement and clutching at the chasm that was now his face.

Vion bore down on the others, slamming one into and straight through a brick wall, breaking countless of the man’s bones. Another caught a downward blow of Vion’s fist to his collarbone, and the man crumpled with his spine bent to a horrible angle.

Something slammed into the back of Vion’s head, but it felt like no more than a gentle tap.

A man was holding an iron fire poker that now was warped and bent near the end where it came into contact with Vion’s almost indestructible skull.

Vion grabbed the man, squatted down, and he leapt straight up with all his might. The two of them launched high into the air above the Teshon City streets.

“Look down,” Vion said when they were at the apex, and he let the man go.

Both of them fell, tumbling through the air with the concrete speeding up from below them, and all the while Vion laughed. His terrible laughter rang out through the dark city streets, and he continued to laugh, as both he and the man with the fire poker hit the ground.

Vion kept right on cackling, as he lay in the crater that his body created when he landed in the pavement. The man impacted beside him, but his body had no effect whatsoever on the pavement.

He was mangled and twisted. Both his arms were pierced at multiple locations where his broken bones protruded through the flesh. One leg was under him facing the wrong direction, and his other was in pieces; his foot was no longer connected, and the shin only remained attached to the knee by a gruesome chunk of tendony flesh. The man wheezed the last of his breaths beneath the sound of Vion’s laughter.

Chenchi stepped up and reached down to Vion. She assisted him to his feet and brushed him off rather roughly with a smirk.

“That was a good kill,” she said to him.

Vion nodded. “We’re done here.”

He pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew a long shrill note. He took a breath and blew another. Vion let out several piercing wails with the whistle, then he nodded at Chenchi.

As they returned the way they came, Vion’s eyes moved over the corpse of Proge. They left his body in the street and made their way out of the neighborhood. At the edge of Gate Town, Vion blew the whistle several more times, and the other officers who were assigned to him by the Principal Messiah also abandoned their assault. Several were covered in blood. Two others of the group along with Proge did not return.

Vion and his horde turned their backs on the burning neighborhood and left the chaos behind.

All along the border to Gate Town, the fires began to spread✪