The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Sarin, doing her best to be a gracious host, invited the Countess to try the champagne they'd procured from somewhere. The amalgam merely took the thing's word for it. She was content to sulk, talons slung over the edge of Richter's cagelike claws.

When one broke above the mists in an ornithopter like Richter, you could really appreciate how thick all the fog really was without your realising. It cast a pearly mourning shroud over the best part of Holm a comforting distance below, leaving a driftwood atoll of roofs gasping above it. If anything, the ramshackle stamps of tenacity ruined the Countess' mood even further. She wanted off this ship. She had no desire to spend further time in the swamp.

'Bryan' had taken a seat near the rear of the vehicle, the Message apparently content to leave the Countess to her seething. They hadn't corresponded since their departure from Airstrip Hill.

Sarin worked her mouthparts in a fretful little dance, gnawing heedlessly away at the cup in her hand. She knew better than to offer any of Message's... associates a hand, but this Countess creature had seemed cognizant enough to suggest she wasn't one of them. Maybe she was just a creature that didn't talk. The mantid leaned against what might've been an analogue for one of Richter's many radii, seeking reassurance, then approached the sullen machine.

"We don't fly this way often without good reason; there's nowhere for Richter to rest. You said you were travelling to Fernwood, yes?"

Countess had said no such thing, nor had she exchanged more than a few words with Sarin since they'd boarded. Her head creaked round, until it pointedly glared in Devon's direction. "That was Mess- my intention. That was my intention. Yes." 'Bryan' shifted slightly in his coat, prompting Countess to pointedly lock her jaw at him in mutual dislike.

Sarin wrapped a talon around a bone-strut at Richter's request, receiving some aeronautical information from the spectral pilot. "Richter says we're another two days out, perhaps less if Message could arrange a breeze-"

"Ask it yourself," trilled the Countess, sociopathic boredom poorly disguised. "I've nothing further to discuss with it." She began etching a picture into the mesh of carpals that comprised their ship, but stopped with an even sulkier air at Sarin's nervous request.

"Richter is the boat." Countess couldn't be bothered trying to inject or remove sarcasm or incredulity from her voice. She just didn't see the point of any of it.

Richter was the boat. Richter was the reanimated remains of some great beast of aerial burden with eight low-slung limbs like whale-flippers, on long (perhaps-humanlike) arms. The hand-bones all wove together in a big, easily-dismantled basket, swaying slightly beneath a ballooning ribcage full of spectral fire. His skull had gone missing in his own battle, but Sarin loved him anyway.

She had to - she was the one that sliced it clean off. It had been for the best.

The Misty Swamp had never known Richter's roar, but that was probably for the best, too. The only one he talked to these days was Sarin, anyway. Countess sighed again, mind wandering to her fellow contestants - wondering if killing one would summon the Controller. It seemed worth a shot. Better than these abysmal "plans" Message seemed to be assembling for her. Better than acknowledging the wordy little ingrate might've been right-

Sarin chattered nervously. Countess turned, and more on reflex than anything else, shot the messenger. Stabbed him in the gut. Whatever. There was a momentary regret, mollified somewhat by the sudden spark of life in Bryan's eyes, that she hadn't shot him. She chirped contentedly instead, clamping her fingers shut on what tenuously felt like intestine, before springing them apart and yanking her arm out. The mantis-woman shrieked, scrambling to safety atop the hellfire glow in her companion's ribcage. The whole ship creaked ominously, or more ominously than the flying haunted skeleton of an eight-legged skywhaleboat was inclined to do anyway.

The amalgam stood stock-still, arm primed to impale 'Bryan' on it again if he ever stopped kneeling and bleeding all over the woven-bone floor. He didn't, but the Message's efforts to stifle whatever cries of pain he might've uttered were quite obvious.

With a clenched hand full of envelope, and a disappointing lack of emotion in his eyes, the man shoved the letter Countess-ward. She took his fist in her own spidery claws, then clenched, spearing parchment and tendon with her permanent grin.

Richter flung his hands apart, needing no prompting from Sarin, reconfiguring the basket of bone into four pairs of oar-like wings. His passengers fell, but strangely devoid of screaming. The ghostcraft floated where he was for a minute or so, as though expecting the fog to part and a clockwork murderess to fly shrieking at them, but nothing happened.

Rick, we should go. Warn everyone at Airstrip that Message is an enemy again.

thought it never stopped being one.

Yeah, well.

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Splash.

Dear Countess,

You've no time to be sulking, you merely brought this upon yourself. You saw the lights of a boardwalk on your left – no, your other left, even if your sense of direction failed you on the fall down.

Worry about the mud later. You've got bigger problems.

Yours reluctantly,
The Message

P.S: On the bright side, we can now dispense with those clumsy paper notes you seemed so fond of eviscerating, like my last Messenger. I'd exclaim that's grand, but really it's small solace for either of us.

The Countess would've snarled, but for the swamp mire in the cogs of her throat.