Methkog: Bunker
Methkog stood at the bunker’s entrance, staring at the black opening set into the brown dust. Down there were two squads of his raiders. One had been guarding it from Vijari thieves. The second had gone down to find the first. Neither had returned or reported.
The salts of Pormos swirled around his armored legs and pulled at his cloak. In one hand his mace glowed dark violet with hex, while the other stayed clenched at his side. Something happened down there and he intended to find out what it was. With any luck it would put up a good fight before he killed it. Those had been severely lacking of late.
He descended, footfalls bouncing off the rough stone walls. His armored shoulders scratched at the rock enveloping him, the passage was so narrow.
Engines, yils, rifles, swords, rare components—he’d hidden an entire cache here under the ground within eyesight of Zurual. The transmitter had been coded for secrecy, and it wasn’t as though either the Dkors or Vijari had the capacity to intercept their transmissions anyway. Save for the monthly changing of the guards, this place was so well hidden from the local population he’d turned it into one of his biggest stores. Nothing like this was on Asylum or Xydak.
Deep in the ground under the narrow corridor, a small reactor still churned with life; he could feel the energy cascading through the air rather than hear the sound or feel any vibration. Why, then, were half the lights out?
Along the hall thin cones of light stretched down from the ceiling. The optics built into his helmet were able to lighten the lengthy stretches of shadows from pitch black to light gray, but it didn’t make much difference. Just as he readjusted to the bright light he walked through darkness. It played merry hell on his eyes and the technology.
By the time he reached the main chamber, he’d turned the optics off. He trusted his own eyes more.
What they saw was a black room with three pools of light cast on the floor. In each circle were the remains of his guards. Their bodies were piled on top of each other, with anything that had been torn off crowning the summit. All the blood had turned black, and the thick, dry streams of it merged with the darkness enveloping the room.
Methkog had stopped breathing, but it wasn’t from fear. He stood in the doorway, perfectly still, stretching his natural hearing and the microphones in his helm to their fullest extent.
His heartbeat ticked away in his ears, a steady rhythm that would never reach a higher pitch for something as trivial as corpses. Deep in his chest the first flicker of pain from oxygen deprivation lit up. He ignored it.
Something was here. It was watching him. It was waiting.
Air hissed through his teeth as he took a breath.
There was a flash to his left. He dived right.
Stone crumbled to the floor as something took a chunk out of the wall. Methkog rolled to his feet, bringing the mace up with both hands. It thudded into something hard, shaking the weapon’s handle in his grip. A blast of hot air washed over his faceplate, rippling through the seals, and in the violet glow of his hex he could make out scales.
A claw grabbed at his shoulder. It tossed him through the air.
Methkog landed in a circle of light, tangled in the stiffened arms and legs of his former raiders. A roar erupted from his throat, echoing in the room and sending spittle flying against his helmet. There was a scratching sound to his right—talons on stone—and he threw a corpse at it.
A thud sounded from the darkness. It was human flesh hitting stone. He knew the sound well.
A red dot appeared in his helmet’s display.
Behind him.
Spinning, bringing the shield on his arm up, he blocked the attack. Claws tore uselessly at the strong hex barrier. They were as long as his forearm, sharper than a knife, and coated in dried blood.
Methkog pulled back, unbalancing the beast as the shield shifted. He brought the mace around, intending to sink it into the scales. It connected, but slid across. He swung around backhand, and struck something even harder. The impacts were some of the hardest blows he could deal, yet they weren’t sinking into his enemy’s flesh. His arm could only shudder impotently.
Damn this creature.
Something else was glowing besides his mace. Two spheres hung in the darkness, both possessing a rainbow sheen that trailed behind them as they shifted from side to side. Methkog had seen the same finish on pearls he’d ripped from wealthy women’s necks. The spheres rose into the air, nearly to the ceiling, and blinked.
Methkog’s voice rumbled into the ink surrounding him.
“What the hell are you?”
There were no words in the answer: only a mesh of buzzing and snarling that scraped through the air and left gashes in its wake.
Claws lashed out. They sunk into his armor’s sides, tearing into the steel shell like plows into fertile soil. A row of fangs appeared out of the darkness, long, sharp, and dotted with flesh. Methkog drove his mace into the monster’s mouth. Fangs snapped and the gagging sound drowned out the rending of steel.
The grip on his armor loosened and Methkog drove his fist into the beast’s eye. It staggered back, spitting the mace from its craw and lashing out with a wild backhand.
The blow caught Methkog in the helmet, crushing the steel alongside his head, shattering the optic displays, and sending him reeling to the ground.
He couldn’t see. Cobwebs of broken glass obscured everything.
He could hear the talons scraping toward him. Was it laughing at him?
Tearing the helmet off, Methkog rose, swinging the crumpled helm in his hand. It clashed with the beast’s own strike, and the shock of it nearly dislocated Methkog’s shoulder. He dropped the impromptu weapon, and as it clattered to the floor he saw claws slashing toward his bare head.
Clutching at the creature’s thick wrists, Methkog was able to deflect the deadly talons into the wall behind him. They sunk into the stone, trapping those weapons but effectively pinning Methkog against the wall.
The creature had a sweet smell: that of the freshly dead.
Pearlescent eyes rushed at him, fangs bared underneath.
Methkog maxed his Behemoth ability. His muscled tripled in size. He tore the beast’s talons from the stone, held them aside, and head-butted the bastard in the throat. That stunned it.
He wrapped an arm around its neck. Tendons bulged under his skin as Methkog planted his feet, pivoted, screamed, and slammed the killer on the floor. On it a second later, the Harbinger drove his fists into the beast’s head and jaw, wanting to smell blood as it spewed into the air and feel the warmth of it on his skin.
Something rough wrapped around his neck. It had a tail, apparently.
The hex blade popped out of his greaves. He jammed it into the monster’s neck. Digging through the scales was like stabbing concrete—he had to work the blade to and fro to get into the meat. He stopped only when he felt the steady pulse of life tapping against the knife’s point.
Neither combatant could guess how long they were frozen in that position: one with a knife digging through his neck and the other with a garrote slowly strangling him. The first was silent, while the latter huffed as he struggled to get air into his chest.
The creature spoke again, a series of buzzes and grunts that Methkog didn’t understand, but it drowned out the sound of his pulse hammering in his head all the same.
It happened again, and slowly resolved itself into Banin. Methkog realized it was a question.
“You kill?”
“Yes,” Methkog said, the word hissing through his lips.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
An explosion of laughter. It was like a grenade going off with static.
Methkog edged the knife forward. The grip on his neck tightened. He didn’t care.
“I’m good at it.”
“Why?”
“Lots of people needed killing.”
For a moment a deep buzzing sound rose into the air. Methkog couldn’t guess what it meant, but then the lights snapped on.
He was blind for a moment. Pure white seared at his eyes, sending tears streaming down his face. Yet his blade never wavered from its target. Blinking, he could see the creature was pure white as well, huge, with spines jutting back from its head. Methkog did indeed have his knife wedged between the scales at the base of its long neck, and thick tail coiled loosely around his neck—just like a noose at a hanging.
The creature tossed its massive head upward.
Methkog glanced up. Creatures—Spawn—with fangs, tendrils, wings, hooks, tails, and horns covered the upper walls and ceiling. They scuttled over each other, buzzing and hissing as their bright eyes focused on him. Mandibles and teeth ground against each other as they anticipated dining on his flesh.
“Kill me, die,” the beast ground out.
Methkog glared at the pearl eyes, not saying a word.
The monstrosity continued. “Strong. Resourceful. Intelligent?”
“I know Spawn when I see them. You’re their leader,” Methkog said.
“Yes.” The Spawn’s massive head craned forward, nearly looking Methkog in the eyes. “Could be yours.”
Methkog’s hand instinctively twitched. The knife edged deeper, which caused the grip on his own neck to tighten. He could still croak out a question of his own, however.
“Why?”
“Worlds need killing.”
It was the sort of choice Methkog’s life had been leading up to after, at the age of seven, he drove a broken bottle into a man’s neck. Destruction came as naturally to him as breathing. If faced with the decision to continue a life of piracy that had grown old and left him with a deepening sense of ennui or joining this Spawn on a campaign toward annihilation, it was a simple conclusion. The system no longer had anything to offer him, nothing to console him, and his grand plan to rescue Karyzel had shattered in a Cryce blizzard. Burning it all down?
“Why not?”
He drew the hex blade out of the Spawn’s neck. Scales melded back together instantly.
Methkog got to his feet, stepping back as the creature arose. It towered over him, head held low so the spines and thin feelers on its head didn’t scrape the ceiling. The broad expanse of fangs stretching across its maw might have been a smile.
As he tucked the hex knife back into its spring-loaded sheath, Methkog asked one last question.
“Who are you?”
“Xeurval,” the Spawn said, turning away. “Come. Much to see.”
The pirate king followed, walking past the piles of his slaughtered comrades without a backwards glance.