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

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.

“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.