| SRR Morrahe`Vnu | Chapter One Hundred - Twenty-Three:
Ninte`a Lyreth`ie, Jh`aak tr`Rh`phir
< yours truly, jack the ripper > | | |
< Joint effort between Chris (idea) and Katt (writing it). If you're the type that's easily grossed out....be warned!! ;) >
[240103.10 Ancient ch`Rihan]
=\/= The Preparation =\/=
All that day and some of that night, the Figure had crept in and out of shelters and the Superior's tents, gathering items and belongings in preparation of this night's Duties to be performed: The Weeding Out of the UnWorthy......
Entering the tent, the cloaked Figure looked around cautiously. It was the same tent as the rest of those owned by the superior officers... only this one had someone sleeping under the blankets. This did not surprise the Figure in the least. At this time of the night, the Figure had known that most were now tucking themselves in for slumber anyway. It was simply a matter of being quiet.
Creeping up on the sleeping form, the cloaked Figure pulled back the blankets slightly from the one who slept and looked down at her sleeping face. {{Civilian....}} the Figure remembered, {{From the Bar.....}} Pulling the blankets back up the way the sleeping girl had had them, the Figure nodded to itself, as it glanced around the tent {{She, apparently, has been found Worthy.... not like the other io.... the other io that causes so much trouble and strife......that io will need to be dealt with.....}} the Figure smiled to itself behind its personal-cloak
Moving quietly around the tent, creeping silently in the darkness within so as not to disturb the sleeping Worthy One, the Figure found a few items that it would need for this night. A small sliver kalen (dagger), a long piece of muslin, stained green with blood, and a curious little box. Putting the kalen through the belt it wore to hold it in place, and stuffing the long strip of muslin in a bag, the crouched and cloaked Figure opened the box quietly.
Rummaging around inside the box, the Figure found a silver chain with a small silver charm on the end of it. The charm was a stylized monogram, two Romulan letters intertwined with each other, an "R" and a "K". The Figure paused a moment, holding the necklace before its face, watching the moonlight that came through the tent flaps dance on the little charm. {{Proof of her Worthiness.....}} the Figure thought, {{Her first-letter with His own.....a gift of a God........}} Putting the necklace in one of the pockets of its uniform, the Figure once more crept silently back out of the tent.
The cloaked Figure walked silently though the encampment - Silent Death among the Sleeping Gods - and paused to look up at the hulking figure of the fallen ship. Somewhere contained within it was the Father of the Gods... Perhaps now, looking out over His sleeping Children, His Crew?.... Perhaps not. But the Figure would perform his Duties in either case. Its Duty was of the Utmost Importance, a High Responsibility that only it was capable of seeing and carrying out. To Weed Out the UnWorthy. No one else was chosen for this Great Task but the Figure....the Figure knew its task was Ultimately Important to the Gods around it....even if they didn't see its tasks as such right now.
And it would Prove itself Worthy by carrying out those Duties......
=\/= With Victims Chosen =\/=
The cloaked figure followed her, the one found UnWorthy, and palmed the hypospray with the sedative inside, getting itself ready to strike. As t`Bahyk stomped around the encampment a while, to walk around to the other side of the ship - away now from the camp - wiping the tears from her eyes angrily as she went, the cloaked Figure ran up behind her. Reaching a hand around to hold across her mouth, the Figure slammed the hypospray against her neck. With a quick press of the hypospray's trigger, the sedative was sent into her bloodstream with an audible "hissss". The Figure released the now-unconscious girl, and let her fall to the ground.
The sound of footsteps approached from behind it, and the Figure spun around with the hypospray still ready. As tr`Beck rounded the corner, his eyes firmly on the scanner before him, the Figure lashed out and hit the boy against the side of the temple, knocking him out.
The Figure bent down to the knocked out Eredh, and with the hypospray, insured the boy's unconsciousness with the sedative for a few hours more......
=\/= The Deed Itself =\/=
The Figure waited at the base of the tree, looking up at the pair that dangled upside down before it from the branch above. The blood stained muslin gagged their mouths. The micrographic computer cabling that bound the pair before the Figure securely from the branch - like a spider's web encasing it's prey about to be drained of blood for the spider's dinner - made a soft "eeeque... eeeque...." sound as the bodies dangled slightly from side to side. The computer cabling wrapped around their throats, around their chests, binding their arms and hands securely behind them, encased their legs and ankles, and left a taunt line of six inches from their feet to the branch above them.
The eyes of t`Bahyk and tr`Beck were forced open. With t`Bahyk, the Figure had taken its time.... insured that her eyes would remain open with the use of small cotter-pins that spread her lids open and nailed them to the flesh of her face. The Figure had grown bored at this painstaking technique when it came to tr`Beck, however. So the Figure had simply used the kalen that it had taken from a Superior-Tent, and cut off tr`Beck's eyelids all together. Now the Figure saw that tr`Beck's eyes were starting to have a little difficulty in staying within the sockets themselves. No matter.... the Figure could see that tr`Beck was starting to wake, as the boy tried to move his arms, which rocked his body a bit more. The Figure stood, then approached the girls upside-down body first, waking her with the hypospray now filled with stimulant. As she woke, and the realization of what kind of predicament she was in finally registered within her UnWorthy mind, t`Bahyk tried to scream. Thanks to the muslin gag, her scream only came out as a faint, muffled murmur. The Figure helped tr`Beck on his way back to consciousness, by giving him some of the stimulant as well.
As the pair both tried to scream and free themselves, the Figure paced before them a moment, the same thoughts turning over and over in his mind...
{{UnWorthy....They're UnWorthy.... I'll be UnWorthy unless I do... UnWorthy....Kill the UnWorthy....I'll be UnWorthy unless I do....}}
Over and over again, like a mantra of power, the thoughts twirled and whirled inside the Figure's mind, as its Victims struggled and strained and tried to scream for help far off in the distance in the night by a solitary stream....by a solitary tree....away from the safety of the Camp of the Gods....
.....In the Valley of the Shadow of Death.....
The Figure suddenly turned, lunged forward and set tr`Beck on fire. The boy's muffled pleas not able to escape past the muslin, the Eredh's body rocked savagely back and forth...forth and back... in his frantic struggles to survive the flames. The Figure smiled a moment, turning the struggling, dangling body of t`Bahyk around so that she would be sure to see the boy incased in flames. Crouching down to murmur in t`Bahyk's ear like a lover in the night, the Figure whispered, "See how he burns so brightly....See how he struggles....now�.watch this...."
The Figure suddenly rose, and kicked the still burning and twirling, dangling figure of tr`Beck, sending the on-fire boy to crash into to the base of the tree, bounce back, only to be kicked towards the tree again...and again....over and over, till the boy's head split like a melon against the trunk of the tree, and the burning encased boy swung back and forth...forth and back.... until the micrographic computer cabling burned away from the tree branch, and sent tr`Beck's dead body to fall to the ground with a ...thump!.... sending a few sparks up in emphasis of tr`Beck's death.
"Oh...." the Figure looked at the terrified and tearful propped-open eyes of t`Bahyk, "...We can't have that now, can we? Should put that out.... always take care of ninte campfires au know....." the Figure released its grip on the girl's bound body, and with a robe that it had stolen earlier from one of the native's tents, put out the flames on the boy's burned and melted military boots, and dragged the boy's still burning body to the nearby stream to put out the flames. Soaking the robe with the icy-cold water as well, the Figure dragged the soaking garment back over the short trail in the grass that it had dragged the boy's burning body through; ensuring that the dry, dead grass would not start a wildfire.
Returning to the stream, the Figure recovers the dead and blackened body of tr`Beck and half-carries, half-drags the boy back to dry land. Wrapping the body in the soaked civilian robe, the Figure looks over to t`Bahyk - still struggling, crying, and trying to scream past the muslin which muffled her - and slowly approached the girl.
Pacing around and around in a circle around her, the Figure murmured quietly, "Now...what shall we do with au?.....Set au on fire as he?....Hmmm?.... Or perhaps.... I know!" the Figure grinned at her, as it reached in a pocket of its uniform pants, to pull out a Splicer, "Let's do this!" and with a lighting quick movement, the Figure reached out to steady the girl's bound body and proceeded to cut one of her arms off just below the shoulder. The arm itself was still bound within the computer cabling, and wouldn't fall to the ground, though a pool of blood was forming. "Oh...have to be quick with the other io don't we?" the Figure grinned at the still alive girl, "Don't want au dying and missing out on all the fun..." It spun her around a bit until the other arm was facing it, then began to separate t`Bahyk's other arm from her body as well.
After a few minutes of hacking away at the girl's flesh, the Figure stood back a step away and watched the still-alive, crying girl dangling before it, watching her blood soak into the ground. Beginning to feel a touch of guilt over this, and pity for the girl's whimpering and muffled crying, the Figure once more resumed its restless pacing, back and forth...forth and back, the mantra dancing and weaving its message into the Figure's mind.....
{{....She's UnWorthy....I'll be UnWorthy....Kill the UnWorthy....I'll be UnWorthy....Unless....I....DO!!}}
The figure suddenly lunged forward and disemboweled the slowly-dying t`Bahyk, sending her innards to the ground with a squishy ...plop!... sound.
The Figure grinned down at the girl's still propped open eyes, could see that the girl still breathed, could still hear the muffled sounds of her cries. Taking a few steps away, to the bag of items that the Figure had brought with it, the Figure rummaged around inside, and pulled out what looked like a child's water-gun. Walking purposefully back towards the barely alive girl, the Figure aimed the water-gun at her face, and grinning, whispered, "Target practice...." and pulled the trigger.
A thick green-goo shot out of the water-gun and hit the girl in several places on her face. The Figure lowered the gun as it noticed the flesh of her face started to bubble and ripple. Soon little butterfly wings appeared, covering t`Bahyk's features. The little wings all fluttering sporadically, till they all opened, and lay still.
"Must be dead...." the Figure whispered to itself. The Figure waited a moment more, then stepped forward and cut t`Bahyk's dead body down from the cabling with the Splicer, letting her drop harshly to the ground to land in her own entrails.
Walking back over to the bag, the Figure rummaged around to set up the game......
[Sometime later....]
=\/= The Calling Card =\/=
After taking the time to clean itself from all the blood, sweat and gore from its body in the icy-cold waters of the stream, the Figure stood back to admire its work in the wee small hours of the morning. Esin would yet to rise for another three hours, but by the light of the moonlight, and the stars above - from whence the Gods came - the Figure could see the scene before it just fine. It grinned to itself at its handiwork.
tr`Beck, now dressed in the civilian's robe, sat on one side of the chessboard, while t`Bahyk's cut open body sat on the other side. The figure had cut up some of t`Bahyk's entrails and used them as chess pieces. The Queen's of the gory chess-set were tr`Beck's eyes, that the Figure had found on the ground near the base of the tree where he had set up this scene...the eyes were miraculously intact. By the placement of the 'pieces' on the chessboard, it looked much like tr`Beck was winning the game.....
t`Bahyk's arms that the Figure had separated from her body were pointed at the dead couple in a V formation. The index finders of each of t`Bahyk's hands were pointed, accusingly, at t`Bahyk and tr`Beck; the other fingers of the hands on the separated arms were neatly curled together.
The Figure looked down to the message it had painstakingly spelled out in between the V of the arms. A message contained within a Rhian-fleshed-arrow that pointed directly at the dead chess-players. Using the personal and professional items that he had taken from the tents of the Crew and Superiors, the Figure had labeled its victims for what they were.
The necklace and kalen (now blood covered)... the Mutagen-gun that had given t`Bahyk's face a mass of little butterfly wings�.the hypospray.... an isd (which, surprisingly, attributed the Figure's hard work to everyone in the camp)....an ancient and hardbound alternative-history book (surprisingly on the tribbles taking over the universe, if one could believe it!).... another isd with a game contained inside on piloting a ship through an asteroid field.... computer chips....rings.... belts.... music discs... and many other such assorted items of personal or duty-bound use that he had stolen from the Crew, all spelled out the Figure's message:
NA ARRHAE
Turning around, the Figure activated the personal-cloak once more, and started the hike back to the Crews' Encampment.
< The message translates out to: "Not Worthy">
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