And Lucian knew that he, especially as the Grim Reaper, wasn’t the person to solve this crisis.
In actuality, he benefited from this crisis, and others like him did as well.
Life benefited through the false hope the opioid epidemic created, and Death benefited from the lives that these medications took.
But there was another side to this, a side that Lucian had experienced with his own heart condition.
There were those that needed these types of medications and actually benefited from them, many able to stop taking them once the pain subsided, never going to the same extremes as Connor, who now sat on the couch in a stash house, his hands on his chest as he took in deep breaths, staring up at the ceiling.
So there was something else at play as well, something else that the pills did for Connor.
The drug revealed a hidden part of his older brother’s personality that rarely showed itself, and not just his inclination toward addiction, but a thirst for numbness.
“I wish you could hear me right now,” Lucian told his brother, tears coming to him. “I wish you knew that I was here watching you destroy yourself, that I know when you’ll die, that you don’t have much longer unless you do something. Fuck, Connor, I just wish you knew…”
One of Lucian’s crows hovered in front of his face, slowly starting to turn.
“You don’t get it,” he told his spherical creation, pushing it to the side so he could see his brother. He felt his cape bunch up as if it were trying to massage his shoulders, to warm him, but all Lucian could focus on was the person in front of him, the one who was seven months away from his deathbed.
All he could think about was how useless he was to prevent it from happening.
Lucian brought his hand to his face, wiping away a couple of tears, steeling himself.
“You have to hunt,” he whispered as he slowly started to turn away from his brother. “You have to get stronger.”
Lucian thought about looking over his shoulder at his brother again but stopped himself, ready to be done with this scene.
Pressing his thumb and pinky finger together sent Lucian away, his form reappearing in yet another one of the wards at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.
He looked down the hallway, which was lit by a few sterile halogen lamps, the place clean and polished, an abstract portrait on one of the walls. His cape slowly started to slip off his shoulders, appearing at his side.
“What weapon do you want?”
His cape morphed into the shape of a gun.
“Ask and you shall receive.” Lucian’s MX-11 appeared in front of him, a green light on the side of the power pack indicating it was charged and ready to go.
He handed it off to his cape.
His two crows buzzed in front of him, both tilting their heads as they looked to Lucian for instructions.
“What are you looking at me for? You know what to do.”
His crows took off into the first room, rooting out the parasite as his cape moved to the end of the hallway. The wall bunched, the parasite’s clear tentacles breaking out and finding their way into the hallway.
Electricity flaring around his hands, Lucian charged the tentacles.
His brother had almost died right before his very eyes.
It hit him again at that moment, harder than it had as he had watched it play out.
Electricity shot out of the palm of his hands as he went upside down, his feet on the ceiling.
He continued to shock the parasite, knowing that he needed to kill eighteen of them to bring his Soul Points over the two hundred mark.
It was arbitrary to reach that milestone, but as more of the parasite spilled into the hallway, its vertical eye presenting itself, Lucian made it his goal.
It was nice having a finish line.
One of his crows speared into the vertical eye, killing the parasite just as another one tore out of the room directly across from where Lucian had been standing.
As he absorbed the energy, Lucian mentally switched to his ice daggers, still upside down as he fired them at the tentacles swatting at him.
He heard the building’s structure creak as more parasites started to awaken, their bodies squeezing into the hallway.
Lucian continued to pour cold energy into the parasite in question, an icy blue starting to move down its semi-translucent form.
One of his crows dove headfirst into its vertical eye and destroyed it, pressing out the other end as the ground trembled.
Tentacles, stingers, claws, and fists descended upon Lucian. They were met by a wall of injurecrows, his spherical creations flying forward and exploding on contact as he equipped his plasma blowtorch.
Pulling the lever back, Lucian cut into the mass of parasites from his position on the ceiling.
The mass of parasites before him was so voluminous that he couldn’t tell where his cape was firing from.
Aside from the occasional squeal or hiss, the parasites were generally quiet, the only sound associated with them being a squishy noise that reminded Lucian of an amplified version of someone walking on a waterbed.
Lucian hoped to keep the killing contained to this hallway, which was why it took him off guard when a tentacle burst through the ceiling, wrapping around his feet and immediately cutting into his flesh, moving under Lucian’s skin toward his head.
He tried to jump off the ceiling, dropping his weapon as he felt something move under the skin of his back.
Lucian grew his claws and bent forward, ripping the exposed part of the tentacle to shreds.
He smacked into the tiled floor below, what was left of the tentacle in his body still moving under his flesh.
“Fuck, fuck…” he whispered, panic washing over him.
Lucian shifted to his side.
He brought his nails into the side of his back and tried to find what was left of the demon bug’s limb.
His clothing swelled and pressed back, exposing his skin, the tentacle moving every time he was finally able to locate it.
One of his crows dropped in front of him.
“Get this fucking thing out of me,” he said as he rolled to his stomach.
He conjured dozens of injurecrows, and his spherical IEDs took off toward the giant mass of mental health parasites. Figuring it would be helpful, he also equipped his carbine, firing it at anything that made it past his injurecrows.
A visceral amount of blood and guts misted into the air as Lucian waited for his crow to deal with the tentacle moving beneath his skin.
His spherical creation spotted the tentacle and dove in, Lucian clenching his jaw shut as his crow moved through his body. It tore out of his back, a foot-long strip of tentacle held in the crow’s beak.
“Thanks!” Lucian said, back to his feet, his clothing reforming over his back, his eyes shut for just a second as the wound healed up.
Two waves of light came into him, his cape and his other crow still shredding their way through parasites on the other side of the hallway.
“Fourteen more to go,” Lucian said as he launched back into the fight. “I think.”
Rather than doing the math, he equipped his grenade launcher, the cylindrical magazine clicking as he fired at the conjoined monstrosity.
Glass exploded, the ceiling started to collapse, the halogen lamps shattered into a million bits and pieces.
Lucian dropped his grenade launcher and went for his lava sword, charging into the fray and narrowly avoiding a sharp stinger extending down from the ceiling.
Another wave of light flowed into him.
“Thanks!” Lucian called out to his crows or his cape, whoever had done it.
He cut through a fat limb covered in hairs and razor bristles.
A tentacle with suction cups wrapped around his foot and brought him down. Lucian launched a series of fire daggers into it.
Adding fire to the mix only made it harder to see in the hallway, which was covered in debris, writhing tentacles, smoke, and now a terrible inferno.
&nbs
p; Feeling like he was his avatar in Zero Enigma fresh off a quick save, Lucian charged right into the fire with his sword held high.
He tore into a tentacle that tried to wrap around his face, swinging and swinging his lava blade even as two more bursts of energy swirled into him.
His crows were doing a damn good job of picking off the pieces of this parasite, and hoping to make their lives easier, Lucian continued to distract the conjoined bastard, alternating between using his sword and blasting it with electricity.
A large arm swooped down from the ceiling and tried to grab him, Lucian pressing back just in time to avoid it.
He fired an electric tripwire at the parasite attacking him from above. The tripwire wrapped around the arm coming from the ceiling, preventing it from engaging Lucian.
Since his surroundings were now tangible, Lucian had to blast through the ceiling to get to the parasite above, which he did using his plasma blowtorch, cutting a hole for him to jump through.
Once he reached the floor above he was greeted by a series of enormous appendages, one immediately severing the arm holding his plasma blowtorch.
The arm and his weapon hit the ground, Lucian spilling off to the right to avoid another bladed attack from a parasite that was in the hallway, an absolutely terrifying one with cleaver-like spikes all over its body.
A thermal energy burst from the plasma torch hit the creature; Lucian looked over to see that his severed left arm had flipped around and pulled the weapon’s lever, his arm now using the wall to stabilize itself as it shot the creature.
“That’s new,” Lucian said, wondering if…
He looked at the stub where his left arm used to be, and the appendage immediately started to regrow. This did nothing to the other arm that was still using the wall as leverage to fire the plasma blowtorch. Lucian quickly realized that like his cape, severed portions of his body could also be used as a weapon.
“In that case…” Lucian equipped his lava sword.
He held his right arm out and sliced it off at the elbow, wincing in pain as the burning blade cauterized the wound. His sword disappeared and he conjured his switchblade, which he threw on the ground to his severed right hand.
The hand wrapped around the switchblade. He picked up the appendage with his left hand and lobbed it at the sinister parasite.
Sure enough, the parasite was so busy being fried to death by his plasma blowtorch that it didn’t notice Lucian’s appendage land on its side.
The hand swiftly used the switchblade to drag itself forward, workings its way around until it found the parasite’s vertical eye, ending the creature’s life.
As the light spiraled into Lucian, he went and picked up his left arm, which still held his plasma blowtorch. He then sifted through the mess of the parasite’s splattered body to find the right hand tightly gripping his switchblade. He reattached his right arm from the elbow down, nodding as it healed.
It was still utterly bizarre to see his own flesh reach forward, fibers connecting, muscle stitching together and bone grafting until he had full usage of his right hand.
Figuring it couldn’t hurt, he looked at the hole in the ground, where his cape, his crows and a few injurecrows were still engaging the parasites below. Lucian dropped the arm that was holding his plasma blowtorch into the hole, jumping down after them.
As soon as he landed, a couple more arcs of spiraling light moved into him, bringing Lucian closer and closer to his goal.
It wouldn’t be long until he reached his goal of two hundred Soul Points.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Legging an Arm
Lucian appeared in his bedroom at Old Death’s home to find Ezra the cat resting on his bed. He turned toward the spiral staircase that led to the top.
“Do you want to come up?”
It was night outside, as always, which perfectly matched the fact that Lucian was tired.
Ezra stood, curled his back, and dug his claws into Lucian’s comforter before hopping off the bed. The cat twisted up the spiral staircase, Lucian’s crows chasing after it.
“What about you?” Lucian asked as his cape lifted itself off his form, settling on the chair. “I’ll take that as an indication that you would like to stay here.”
Lucian took the stairs to the top and opened the door, letting Ezra and his crows out to play. His stats flashed before him and he smiled.
He had reached his goal, as arbitrary as it was, he still had enough SP to tinker around with some ideas he’d had during his last fight.
Lucian turned toward the stretch of land between his workshop and the large body of water that lay beyond, observing as Ezra slinked along the waterline, his crows zipping in and out of the water as they chased each other.
It was a strange life he lived now; Lucian was well aware of this, and while some of the things that brought him happiness were the same, such as video games, other things like watching his crows play with each other were a true pleasure.
And just thinking of the video game made him want to play Zero Enigma in that moment, to escape from his reality, his concern for his brother and his desire to get OP as quickly as possible.
But he knew that he also had work to do, especially if he was supposed to meet up with Yoshimi the following day.
“Crafting, crafting,” he said, getting back in the proper mindset.
One of the things that Lucian needed was something to watch his back, and not something like his crows, which were often busy moving in and out of places and acting as his eyes in the sky.
What he needed was a semi-autonomous weapon, one that was on his person.
He recalled a tabletop game he had played in his teens in which one of the mechs had a shoulder-mounted cannon.
With this in mind, Lucian began to create a shoulder pad, a table appeared before him, giving him a place to set it on while he modified the piece. He didn’t want it to be very large; he wanted the weapon piece to work the same way the retractable claws on the back of his crows worked.
But before he could get to that part, he needed to design the shoulder pad proper, which gave him plenty of time to experiment. Lucian cycled through a variety of options, his creation corresponding with his ideas.
It reminded him, yet again, of playing an RPG and customizing a weapon on the dashboard.
His concepts came from things he had seen and experienced in the past, his mind always a step ahead of him as he built the main base of the autonomous weapon.
He didn’t want something that was bulky, not like a football shoulder pad, and he also didn’t want something fancy akin to what a nineteenth-century French general might sport.
Mostly, he wanted it to blend in, which caused his other construction materials to darken and become opaque. Lucian also needed it to be sleek; the pad decreased in size to the point that it almost looked like an overturned bowl.
He picked it up and placed it on his left shoulder, the appliance matching the contours of his body.
Once that was set, Lucian set it back on the table and worked on the energy weapon portion.
Tracing his hand over the shoulder pad caused a circular indent to form. It lifted, and as it did, the top section retracted by splitting down the middle and pulling to the sides. The muzzle of a weapon took shape, telescoping out of the new opening in the shoulder pad.
“Retract,” Lucian said, and the muzzle did just that, the circular cover reforming and lowering back to the shoulder pad. The outline of the circle was the only indication that there was even a weapon there.
“Let’s see you in action,” Lucian said as he placed his new device on his shoulder, his clothing melting backward and merging fabric and metal.
Lucian invoked a few injurecrows, his spherical IEDs floating in the air.
He took several steps back, and as he did, he felt the rumble of his shoulder pad as the compartment opened, the muzzle of the weapon pressing out.
“Fly in front of me,” he instructed his creations. The black injurecrows move
d out before him in a cone, swirling as they flew higher into the air. His autonomous shoulder-mounted cannon tracked them and quickly exploded his devices.
Debris rained down from the sky, Ezra staring over at him as his crows continued to play.
Lucian lifted some of his dummies from the ground and drew his sword, testing his ability to engage while his shoulder-mounted cannon fired at the next set of injurecrows he conjured.
It was definitely an improvement, and it would make him a tougher opponent to take down in the future.
“Sweet,” he said, his thoughts shifting to the next item on the docket.
Lucian held his arm out and used his lava sword to cut through just above the elbow of his right arm. The visual of this made him cringe, but the pain wasn’t as bad as it should have been.
His severed arm dropped onto the table as a new arm re-grew. Lucian waited a moment for a portion of his bicep to form, followed by his elbow, his forearm, his wrist and finally his hand.
“Cute,” Lucian said, turning his attention to the severed arm, which was slowly drumming its fingers.
He picked the arm up, noticing its weight, and flipped it over so the bottom side was exposed.
The fabric that was left on the arm peeled back, scooting along the table until it reached Lucian’s side so it could rejoin the fabric on his body. Once that was set, Lucian brought his hand to his chin, looking the severed arm over.
While it had worked against the parasite back at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, it was difficult for the severed arm to stabilize itself.
“That’s going to be weird,” Lucian said, as his idea took shape.
Eight centipede legs grew from the side of his severed forearm, each about three inches long, and two and a half inches thick.
He then increased the flesh around the base of each leg, mentally strengthening the bone inside. The eight legs curled up, Lucian watching as his arm started to turn itself over.
His severed arm crawled to the other side of the table, where it hopped onto the ground, picking up speed as it took off toward one of his dummies. It reached the dummy and quickly scaled up to the top of its torso, wrapping itself around the dummy’s neck.
Death's Mantle: A Dark Fantasy GameLit Novel Page 24
