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

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

The cr, of a crunch, that reserved for a foot less silent and graceful than that of the god of the hunt, was heard by no man or beast. Kedemonas sniffed the air, sniffed the blood in the air, barely espying a flash of gold through the trees, just as irrelevant to the mortal world.
Signals all. Kedemonas stalked it, spun unsurprised on a hoof as the light danced on the edge of his vision.

A wolf snarled, eyes blazing gold, already leaping for his flank. Kedemonas had no recourse but to counter with something bigger - a cougar, hunting the hunter. His quarry twisted about, chasing the god's tail, now hooved and cantering and seeking to gore Kedemonas on its twisting horns.

A giant eagle, to hunt the mountain goat - a rat, to raid its nest - a snake - a mongoose - a wildcat-

Kedemonas blinked, looking for his gold-haloed quarry, but felt only a twist at his gut. Then another, smacking of something more symbolic than realistic. Something coiled, bringing an alien impression to the god's inner eye. No snap of the neck, no blood, no urgency to it. The sensation was disease and slow death condensed into a single idea, and as always, the god of the hunt had only one word.

"Unsporting."

The feeling faded, replaced by the something instead settling behind his eyes - borrowing them, or perhaps more aptly, sharing.

Hello
my son

It said. Kedemonas growled, but the tussle was insubstantial. A mere ritual.

"It is hardly victory if you must stoop to tapeworms and leeches, Zoo."

Your only recourse for my assuming man's form is man yourself
Or have you forgotten our last bout
I envision a legion more beasts worthy of slaying your wildcat if it pleases you
Though you lack the time for such games with your father
For what reason have you sought me out

Kedemonas paused, shifting deliberate from the corporeal glade at which they'd agreed to meet, back to wherever the gods go when there's no need to manifest. The gold faded from behind his eyes, diffusing instead into the entirety of the nowhere. The old god seemed content to let the younger lead the way wherever, barely enough of a presence to be frightfully rude were it any other god.

"It's not only I short of time, Zoo. Do the softskins' rumours fail to reach your ears?"

They do not

"Does it not concern you?"

It does not

The gold laughed this time, merry at the other god's angry confusion.

Do you forget I am, quite unequivocally, the mind of all things
Perhaps more specifically, the mind of all things dying
In one permutation or another
And bear in mind (haha) how that differs from being all the minds, my son

The stand of forest Kedemonas was barely traipsing through had, somehow, escaped the triple-gauntlet's teeth of flames and progress and the river. Perhaps it was magic, though they both sorely doubted it. Regardless, Zoo's voice was borrowed from the trees and the scrub and the chorus in the loam, the sort of struggles for existence with which Kedemonas never concerned himself. The larger creatures, the familiar creatures, had fled.

What I imply is this
The components do not concern me as much as the whole
The Circle rests on one thing predating the next- Kedemonas cringed, hoping the old fool wouldn't crack his usual quip -though you're the expert on that
Some things are brighter, or louder, or play some other part disproportionate
But their time also comes
And as the mind of all things dying, I see you and I and the rest of a rabble you call a pantheon, we're all the same
We're struggling like the owls for nests where the rats can't reach, the rats for eggs they can
And by we I mean everyone but myself
And the river I suppose

The hunt-god twitched, licked away the pre-emptive taste of throat upon his teeth. It made sense, really. Kedemonas could respect her as a predator of the finest order; he'd rallied his hounds to the pursuit of lesser prey even as she chased them. "You know her?"

She's competition is what she is
She's eating the valley to death, not a single morsel to tick back over
She's just a very violent order to my similarly violent flux
If my emotional investment in the matter matched my godly investment you are talking to a god in the throes of despair

"You seem cheerful enough," growled Kedemonas. Zoo laughed again, borrowed the chorus of local insect chirps and let it ring out in a noise completely unlike laughter.

And thus, the sentiments so clearly lack the action's gravity
Logic, my son
Though considering all things I shall bawl all my literal eyes out and then some to sufficiently care
You tire of my presence, you are free to leave as I know where you head
If it pleases you I'm off to help a priest or two of mine

The local Between was being slowly absolved of Zoo, leaving Kedemonas with his own thoughts again.

---

Robin had found herself a better-fitting helmet, gloves which were more like gauntlets (with retractable fingers for fiddly work) a nice coat, and had just procured a pack from a surprisingly peacable... thing. It had plated armour fused to its skin, but Robin had had a polite chat with it about enough of its life story to placate it that she was pretty sure it was human.

She was just strapping her bundled-up labcoat in the spot a bedroll would've been, when Barbary hissed his petty little heron-noise of disapproval. Robin plucked the rafic from between her lips, where she'd put it for safekeeping, and gave the nearest heron a questioning look.

“Problem, officer?”

“Nothing so pertinent as to raise contention.” He flinched a bit as Robin unsheathed the dead soldier's knife, several of his birds taking flight as the blade whined into presumably-dangerous life. “Put that down!” he barked, assuming the voice and bodies of a quartet of coyotes. Robin raised an eyebrow, but slid it back out of harm's way.

“I'll tolerate your disregard for Zoo's will, but you'll make no use of the liar god's trinkets if you want my guidance.”

Robin would've laughed, but four coyotes were appreciably more convincing than a sedge of herons. She laid the combat knife beside its owner, and motioned at the pack. “I can still use this, right? I'm pretty sure it's just a bog-standard pack.”

“Before this war began,” growled Barbary, “I was raised Inderigan.”

Robin sighed internally, avoiding the physical act as a small courtesy but more because of the body a couple metres off. Barbary had steered her clear of any unwelcome attention, at least, so she owed him this much. Robin dragged her backpack a respectful distance from the priest, taking Barbary's lack of anger as approval.

“Right. But you changed allegiances to Zoo?”

“I'm a scholar, Pearson. Worship to me was a mere social more, though Inderigo was a pleasant enough god to live under. Knowledge for progress' sake, unlike the cults of Desolo or Res Rex.”

“Right, so which one's the liar god you're worried about?”

The coyotes paced around her, an arbitrary one uttering a bark of derision. “Neither! Even they preached reason and order, though they used Inderigan technology to seek it. I came to the valley to wage my own war, one my old god cares little about.”

“And that's... this guy's god?” Robin pointed at the priest, tacking the little voodoo needle into the lining of her coat's inner breast pocket. “He sort of looks like one of your guys, but tried turning into a pangolin and messed up. He said his god's name was... Cindy? Sidney?”

“Visindi,” spat Barbary, “is a self-styled 'God of Science.'”

“Wait. Like, just, science? Are we talking arcane sciences, or the traditional kind, or-”

“He purports to preach 'Science.'” Clang clang, went the quotation marks. “Under this institution, he grants boons that casually disregard laws of physics and biology, in pursuit of some... aesthetic.”

Robin scoffed. “Aesthetic? You mean, like, steel corridors, labcoat and goggles and rubber gloves to the elbows, tests tubes and clipboards and green vats with 'genetic experiments' floating in-”

Robin was forced to stop here, because Barbary looked awestruck. Fourstruck, even.

She snorted - well, laughed, mostly, but there was definitely a hint of something condescending and nasally therein. “Seriously? Of all the progress and reason he could've brought to the world, that's what the god of science is doing?” Barbary took a trepidatious pace or four back, hackles rising. “Colour me impressed, because I've never seen a cause I could justify killing another human over, but that is borderline-”

Robin didn't get to finish that, because something plucked her by the neck with two ugly great talons, and stabbed her through the stomach with a third.

---

The chimera, on the non-pointy end of the claws, announced with a laugh: “Greetings, Barbary! It is I, Deacon Cathedral, dispatch on behalf of brilliant merciful Visindi himself!”

“Save your breath, buffoon. Your physiology is an impossibility, to speak and belch your plague-breath in a single organism.”

Cathedral just laughed again, waving a semi-carapaced paw with a necrologist still dangling off it. “Doubt not the miracles bestowed upon we servants of Visindi! I offer you the chance again, Brother, to repent and join us!”

“How do you loudmouths not attract gunfire wherever you fly,” snarled Barbary.

“Invisibility!” boomed Cathedral, leaning in nice and close to get the point across, beaming at the terrified hounds. A forelimb swung forth in what would've been a genial movement were the deacon not the size of a house. Three of the coyotes sprinted for cover, one holding the chimera's gaze even as its own legs tried to scramble to safety.

"Every time, Cathedral! You perform this charade as though I have a choice - as though my answer could be any different!"

Cathedral tilted his head back and cackled - the battle-cry of some avatar of the mad scientist archetype. A porcupine's tail rattled, loosing yardstick barbs in an arc behind the last coyote. His eyes - predatory, perhaps mammalian, but hard to say in that melanged face of multiple creatures- glowed, with a cruelty more human than beastly.

"Visindi may have infinite patience for you, Barbary, but he is an immortal god. I am not, and I find your resistance - not to mention my constant stationing in this position to convert you - tiresome. Degrading. An insult. You're the scraps of a pack of curs, Visindi forbid he tells me what worth you are to anyone!"

"Less than nothing," retorted the coyote, after a pause to let its racing mind find a place to stop. "I am a loss to your organisation, not a gain."

Cathedral seemed to consider, before bellowing again. "How Inderigan of you, heathen! Regardless! I tire. You've been given ample chances, so on pain of death and or your body's contribution to the furthering of Visindi: Will you join us?"

Coyotes to maggots, to a great horde of ants. They rushed the chimera as one, as many crushed beneath Cathedral's hooves as successfully latching to the hide and scales and fur, the sea of red rippling with grub-white as chitin cracked and mandibles were torn off, before it reformed and new ants drew fresh blood.

Cathedral roared, tossed the aberration's companion to the rocks like a bag headed for the autoclave to get its claws free, then gave up and unfurled seven rows of dragonfly wings and leapt into the air. He screeched obscenities and yelled a pox upon Barbary and all his ilk, the latter of whom was showering the clearing in maggots.

Robin's eyes snapped open, clenching shut again at the faint wet noise of one of Barbary's constituent grubs landing on her cheek. She clenched them shut again until the deacon's shadow flashed across her eyelids, before lifting a hand with almost mechanical slowness, curiously tremor-free. Robin explored the wound in her stomach, gingerly poking around to figure out what was ripped up, while a handful of crows bounced into the kiltered-over slice of sky from which she couldn't tear her gaze.

"What manner of monstrosity are you," marvelled the crow. Robin took a deep a breath as she could, still quite conspicuously moving single muscles at a time, and found Cathedral had done the small mercy of missing her lungs.

"Good," she said, still not moving, in a monotone that would've been relatively amicable in any other situation. "It's a quirk of mine. Body shut down but I missed the crash and I'm back to clean up."

"I can still breathe. Small mercy. Ha," said Robin, after an unpleasant couple of seconds trying to squelch out an actual laugh. "Makes talking easier. Need a doctor though."

"No surgeon could fix you, Pearson."

"Stop the bleeding. Digestive system's inefficient anyway. Shut it off. Everything else should work after. Barbary. Please. I can't say I've had worse but. I studied to be a surgeon before things changed. I know anatomy. Ha. Ha."

Barbary shifted through a few forms again, perhaps in some approximation of his internal turmoil, before finally finding the form of some parrot, presumably to handle words better. "I suggest an alternative, Pearson. I pass to you Zoo's teachings. With will like yours, you'd shrug off any injury, and he would not reject you if you chose-"

"No. Thanks though. Just. Please help me. Do as I say and I'll be fine."

Robin yanked the corners of her mouth into a smirk-snarl-smile.

"You help me and I'll help you. We'll destroy the-" gurgle-snigger "-church. Of Visindi. Sounds like a blast."