QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Throwing Florica into a battlefield should have been the same as tossing a juicy steak into a pack of ravening hounds. Before she was released from the Outsider’s grip she already knew what awaited her. It would be like that day she spent in Ironbrook only ten times worse, if not more. Here every death was bloody and brutal, every spirit would have unfinished business and a grudge to bear. Maybe she hoped they would bicker amongst themselves and leave her alone, alone to weep her sorrow into the scarred land. When she found herself free to move again she expected that freedom to be short-lived, to find herself the rope in a spectral tug of war. This did not appear to be the case. There was no chill of vaporous hands as they took her motility from her, there was no dulling of thought as a spectral presence threatened to subsume her mind; there was no ghostly presence at all.

For a moment it did not register, she stood stock still and waited for her will to be subjugated. The memory of the melody that had ended her life rang in the sound of distant gunfire and explosions. She mumbled it to herself as she waited. In the distance there were figures, dressed in black hoods, carrying metal contraptions and herded by some kind of moving metal vehicle. Somehow the notion that she would not be a scrap fought over by ghosts hungry to finish off their business in the mortal realm was even more distressing than the idea that she would. The thought that she would have to deal with this event, to process that which she had been told by that thing and potentially do something about it one way or another… Though she would not have admitted as much if she had had the capability she would have called a ghost to her, to take her over so she didn’t have to think, didn’t have to worry, so she could escape the responsibility that had been placed upon her, even if such escape was fleeting.

So she walked and did her best not to think. She hummed along to the empty memory of the tune that haunted her, her eyes cast up at the cloudy grey sky, the oppressing gloom that overshadowed this sorrowful scene. The battlefield on which she walked though now silent bore the scars of a battle waged most brutally. Craters dotted the landscape, and here and there there was the stain of blood, the shells of bullets trodden into the mud, or weapons that had been abandoned, discarded or simply dropped. But missing from this battlefield were the bodies of the dead. Florica did not notice, she had her own issues to deal with and they seemed to involve fervently pretending that none of this was happening.

She walked in the direction of the dark figures. As she got closer she got a better look at what they were doing. A trio of black robed figures was making their way down the centre of the battlefield, the centre one carried a metal hose which connected to what appeared to be a dark purple tank strapped upon his back. Strange shapes like those she had once seen in the city were drawn upon the tank. Those that stood upon either side of him were carrying black candles and chanting an onerous dark chant. Spread out in a line behind them there were other hooded figures. Florica watched as they gathered up the corpses of the fallen and loaded them into the trucks that were moving in pace with the line of cultists. Though she did not, could not, know what was going on, it made her shiver to look upon these figures carrying out their task in solemn silence. Now she noticed that the battlefield she was walking upon had been picked clean of corpses. It was wearily that she contemplated turning back. She didn’t want to confront these men and at the same time she didn’t want to walk away. She didn’t know what she wanted if she wanted anything at all.

Ultimately the decision was made for her; movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she turned to see a thing bearing down upon her. It looked like it had once been a woman though now it was better described as a monstrosity; pieces of people that had been stitched together. It was tall and thin, lanky and deceptively quick. Its eyes were the mirror of Florica’s empty dead eyes, its hands like claws of bone and nail wrapping around Florica and lifting her from the ground with seemingly little hardship. She might have resisted more if she hadn’t been so lost in her own mental turmoil, if she hadn’t so been caught by surprise by the light-footed stalker. For a second she stared into the face of the mass of parts that held her aloft, there was a moment where she felt some connection to the thing, or it seemed more likely to her, to what was driving the thing.

Then there was a howl in the distance, quickly silenced by the sound of gunfire. Looking over towards the group of black robed figures she watched for a second as they started hurrying towards their metal vehicles. In the distance a phalanx of indistinct soldiers pressed forwards. The thing that had picked her up took a moment, and then carrying her ahead of it as though she were weightless, it loped towards the trucks. Of all the reactions she might have been having she was mildly surprised to find she was pleased in the same way she had been somewhat disappointed when there had been no army of ghosts to greet her. She did not want to think right now, and while being taken prisoner was not the same as being possessed it offered the same reprieve from blame, from responsibility. Just for the moment she did not want to be acting of her own will, her own volition. She was worried about what she might do if she did.