viper

Isaac Cole Powell

Interview Magazine

Kossathi blood and burning flesh permeated the air as the last of the Kossith retreated from Haven - the ground was cracked and dry, crunching beneath his feet before ambient blooms seeded everywhere that Diarmad stepped. Smoke still clung to the trees like a mourning veil, and he walked through it - unfettered and unafraid of the retreating, horned beasts. His hands, blackened at the fingertips, hovered outstretched ahead of him as vines lashed and entangled the wailing beasts of men.

"Too slow," he murmured, voice like ash over coals. "Too proud. You should have run when she gave you the chance." He crouched beside one of them - a brute whose skin now peeled in wet layers, sloughing from muscle already dissolving into mush. Necrosis crept like a tide, leaving behind glistening bone and the sour stench of the Kossith's failure. The eyes were cloudy now, pupils rolling as milky film spun across them like trapped oil on water.

Diarmad remembered Kiaransalee - the agony, the betrayal, the debt - etched into the marrow of his bones. The dark remembered him well, but she and these Kossith were a reminder that there were many paths to walk through the night. If the Dark One wished to claim the genath'asir, he would find that Diarmad was for himself alone.

"You’ll live," he whispered, tilting his head with characteristic and malevolent deadpan. "Longer than any mortal ought to. As your lungs collapse, my rot will breathe for you. As your blood blackens, I’ll flow in your veins. Until, one by one, every cell forgets your name and remembers only mine."

And then it began as the red bloom took root beneath the brute’s ribs, blooming outward in slow, spiraling corruption. Not exactly a flame, but the illusion of it - threadlike bacterial fronds igniting through the body like living embers. Capillaries burst into crimson webs. Skin blistered and calcified as the microflora, hungry and engineered through Diarmad's instinct, found their host and made it a hive.

"Live in agony." Their screams rang sharp and bright - then snuffed to a wet choke as mycelial threads sprouted through their throats, blooming into corpse-pale fungi that spread across the jaw like lichen. Diarmad rose, indifferent, already stepping into the smoke again. Into the earth they sank, their corpse-blooms all that remained visible, peaking from the ground. Diarmad was in the air, in the trees and wherever warmth lingered, wherever breath dared persist - he followed. “That is the last of them,” he said, looking to Njal as Diarmad rose to his feet - satisfied with his work, though there was little inflection to his candor to indicate as much.

Whether his friends were alive or not was a mystery, but all he knew was that he wanted these Kossith erased. Blood had splattered on his face and clothes from his constant stabbing into the body of one or two of them. His anger had elevated to a point that he could not control. And he didn’t want to. He wanted them gone and he didn’t care how many of them pleaded or begged. If they were even capable of that.

Diarmad spoke and it felt like white noise in his ears before he heard the last of it, the body that sank into the earth the only thing that caught his attention. Shaking his head, he stood from his squatted position and looked towards the genath’asir. As he moved forward, his bloodied hands placed his weapons back in their rightful places.

“They’re not back,” he muttered under his breath as his gaze flitted across the ground a few times. Then they settled on Diarmad. “We should have feasted on their innards.” It was the least they deserved.

where: njal where you at

when:  current timeline

note: my son

Agnes was trying to remain collected, she had known Nyla was amongst those taken from the very moment the Nightingale's whispers flitted through Eterna. Worse, though, she had also known that Freydis was amongst them. She had felt the familiar twinge of pain from their shared bracelet's and then a cruel nothingness, and though Agnes had made her way to Haven to confirmed such damning fate, she realized quickly she vied for help.

Perhaps they weren't friends, barely much of allies, but there was value in Njal's strengths and she'd demand him for help against the Kossith. If anything, his propensity for violence would probably translate well against these creatures, and Agnes was rather pleased to discover him, one of the few not taken.

Over and over again, it seemed that the people he cared for were suffering and he was not. Maybe he should have considered himself lucky to not have been placed in the situation that Torsten and Freydis had been placed into. Luckier than he had ever been. All he could think now though was that he wished it had been him instead. The two of them certainly didn't deserve everything that was constantly thrown at them. Njal though? He deserved much more than that for every action he had taken before they had gotten to Lysara.

Lost in thoughts that had been plaguing him for too long now, he didn't notice Agnes' presence. They weren't particularly tethered to each other like he was to his Circle, but they were linked through battle. They had fought together and, to Njal, that held importance to him. And it was also amusing to think about the fact that she had indeed turned into a fucking wereshark in front of his eyes.