Lucian’s crows took shape in front of him, and as they did, a map formed before him of the wards he’d already cleared. As Lucian had expected, there was still plenty of hunting to do, but to really level up, he was going to have to find a place that was severely infested.
He descended into the hallway beneath him, moving past a series of offices, a few lights still on.
He saw the peach-colored tail of a parasite and passed by it, even as an eye lifted off the limb.
If he could help it, Lucian wasn’t planning to hunt normal parasites any longer, not when he could get two and a half SP for the parasites that haunted those with mental health issues.
Lucian felt for these patients too, knowing that they were suffering, and hoping that his actions would alleviate a little of their pain.
He would have to check back in on one of these people in the future, perhaps one of his first kills, to see if there had been any change.
But at least he wasn’t signing their death warrants.
So there was that.
Lucian’s crows zipped ahead, swerving through the hallway, his cape following them. Two male nurses passed him, both their death dates appearing before Lucian as they spoke.
Name: Michael Truax
Date of Birth: 01/26/1978
Date of Death: 12/03/2052
Name: Shalim Nolasco
Date of Birth: 10/24/1982
Date of Death: 04/19/2070
“I know, I know, I’ve got to get up there,” the first nurse said to the second. “I have been meaning to use my vacation time to head up, but you know how it goes.”
“It’s cheaper to go right now,” the second nurse explained. “Leaf-peeping season is over, and winter hasn’t come just yet. Soon, though. You don’t want to go up there when winter hits. Trust me there.”
“Winters are for cruises.”
“I did that two years ago. We tore up the Bahamas, ha! Just make sure you buy the drink package, which is only a couple hundred dollars more. Otherwise, you’ll get taxed on booze. You could try to smuggle some in. I heard about people doing that, but it’s easier just to prepay for drinks.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Lucian continued past the men, heading toward the ward that his crows had prescreened.
As he floated on, he thought about the fact that he’d never been on a cruise before. Not that it was really on his bucket list, but now that he could do anything…
Lucian smiled.
He could go anywhere in the world, yet he mostly stuck to Massachusetts and New York, with a quick trip to Japan. Once he got better at this, once he was able to rescue Old Death, Lucian would do more traveling. There was no telling who he’d encounter, and it would give him time to improve his power, with the hopes of eventually helping his brother.
Lucian came to the floor in question, his crows and cape stopping at the end of the hallway.
“How should we do this?” he asked aloud. His first spherical creation made a gesture that looked like a shrug.
“One of these days, I’m going to give you more sentience,” Lucian told it. “But I guess you are right, it is my decision.”
The rooms were close enough together that if he went after one parasite, the others would come too.
But Lucian also didn’t like inviting all the parasites out to the hallway at once. While this could be a dynamic fight, it was also one that he could end up getting caught up in, one that could be detrimental to him, especially if he grew weak and injuresouls came.
Lucian counted six rooms. The hallway took a left turn, and it was pretty clear there were more rooms on the other side.
Lucian pulled out his smartphone, and as he normally did when he pulled out his phone, he checked to see if the email to his brother had sent.
Of course, it hadn’t.
The video feed appeared on his phone, linked to his first crow.
He sent the crow forward, zipping into all six of the rooms, noting that the patients were asleep and ignoring the death dates. He then sent the crow down the hallway, where he found six additional rooms, two of which were empty.
Ten parasites in total.
Wanting to make this as quick as possible, Lucian created forty injurecrows.
They all hovered together in a wall behind him now, which would allow him to send them at his will. It would also create a barrier for him to get behind if the parasites all tried to overwhelm him at once.
He would deal with this part of the hallway, then the next.
Lucian equipped his MX-11 and handed it to his cape. The swath of black fabric looked down at the weapon, and looked back up to him.
“Point and squeeze,” he said, and the cape nodded.
His cape took off to the other side of the room, giving Lucian what looked like a thumbs-up gesture as it got into place.
After his cape was ready, Lucian sent four injurecrows into the room on the left, followed by four into the room on the right. The explosions rang out into the hallway, blowing out parts of the walls.
Tentacles and muscled stingers ruptured out of the space before the dust could clear, and Lucian hacked away at them with his lava sword.
He planned to switch to heavy artillery in a matter of moments, but he wanted to get better with his sword, especially since the older Deaths seemed to fight with more traditional weapons.
One of the tentacles slipped around him, slapping Lucian in the back of the head and sending him to the ground. His clothing caught him and threw him back up to the ceiling, Lucian now upsidedown as he hacked away at the parasite’s limbs.
Activity in the other rooms signaled more parasites were on the attack, clear tentacles breaking through the window, seeping under the door and eventually taking the door off its hinges as they made their way down the hallway.
While Lucian engaged the first two, his cape started firing on the others, and more injurecrows entered the equation, twisting around the hallway and exploding anything they came into contact with.
Unfortunately, the blast radius of a particular injurecrow came too close to Lucian’s face, blinding him momentarily, allowing for one of the sharpened parasite stingers to stab into his chest and yank him to the ground.
The parasite lurched out of the room, carried forward by muscular arms with sharp claws, a mouth opening on its center mass.
It reached Lucian’s foot before he could get his next weapon equipped, chomping down and quickly severing his leg from the knee down.
Now with his plasma blowtorch in his hands, and at a completely awkward angle, Lucian pulled back on the lever, blasting the creature with thermal energy.
This also had the effect of sending him skidding into what was left of the wall behind him. A tentacle reached out of the adjacent room and immediately grabbed him by the neck.
Lucian continued to blast the parasite in the opposite room, his claws coming to the tentacle covering his face and ripping it off.
He saw his crow spin through the air, divebombing into the room across from him. The parasite gave up and a white light spiraled into Lucian’s chest.
He was still engaging the parasite behind him, and rather than continue to try to pull its tentacles off his body, he let it take over, the monster pulling him into its room.
His leg now healing up, Lucian met the parasite head-on, blasting a hole through its semi-translucent back with his plasma blowtorch, making the parasite hiss and screech.
One of his crows catapulted into the room and found the vertical eye on its back, diving right in and killing the parasite.
Using what was left of the wall for support, Lucian hobbled to one leg, the sound of firing weapons and explosions meeting his ears in the hallway outside.
He saw one of his crows blaze past and sent a few of his injurecrows after it.
Lucian stumbled into the hallway with his sword in one hand and his carbine in the other, hacking and firing his way toward the back of the hallway.
It was a bloodie
d mess now, the air tinged with smoke, the occasional explosion sending more debris out to the hallway, tentacles wrapping around him just as quickly as he could cut them away.
An oversized fist came out of the room on his right and knocked Lucian off balance. The hand slapped him to the ground, and everything went black for a second.
One of its tentacles dove into his mouth. Lucian bit down on it and spit it out as he fought the hand away.
His feet were whipped out from beneath him, and he hit the ground again, losing his weapon this time. Using his clothing to press himself off the ground, he shot up to the ceiling, where he stuck as if he had been caught in a spider’s web.
His cape zipped beneath him and came to the other side of the space, turning and firing Lucian’s MX-11, his creation barely able to stabilize itself as the gun fired off blasts of concentrated energy.
Lucian commanded more injurecrows to come forward. His spherical IEDs flew into the room beneath him, all exploding at once, the parasites hissing and screeching.
More light poured into him as one of his crows was able to cut into one of the parasites’ vertical eyes.
This left three more in the hallway. Lucian dropped back to the ground and charged into the room on his left, his sword drawn again as he cut away the limbs aimed at him, narrowly avoiding a stinger tipped in red which grazed the side of his face.
He drove his blade into the mouth of the parasite, pressing it up to the top of what would be its skull.
And even though it clamped down on his arms, its teeth tearing into his flesh, Lucian held it in place, his bicep bulging, veins appearing on his arm as his crow smashed into the parasite’s vertical eye.
The parasite gave in, an energy lifting off its body and filtering into Lucian’s chest as its mouth slipped off his arm.
He caught his cape whipping by again out of the corner of his eye.
Lucian went for his scythe this time, advancing toward the hallway. He threw his scythe into the air, his cape latching onto it and spinning wildly, exuberated.
The parasite on the right burst out of what was left of the wall, muscled arms carrying it forward, its body lifting up like the tail of a scorpion. No stinger on top; there was a mouth that started to open like a flower instead, revealing hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.
It struck Lucian in the shoulder, its teeth digging in.
Lucian held what could be considered its neck with one hand, his claws digging in as his crow flew up and around, diving into the parasite’s vertical eye.
The creature died. Lucian slouched for a moment, his hand on his shoulder as it healed up.
“Here we go,” Lucian said as he equipped his grenade launcher, firing four rounds into the next room.
The parasite squealed as its limbs were ripped from its body.
Lucian’s crow zipped over his shoulder, moving into the now darkened space and finding its target. More energy poured into his chest.
With all that commotion, the four parasites remaining were definitely disturbed, the monsters now out of their rooms and forming a pulsing abomination in the middle of the hallway.
Two claws started to tear out of Lucian’s knuckles.
He kicked into action as a slew of tentacles reached him, spinning and lobbing dagger-ridden fireballs at the giant parasite.
His cape charged forward as well with his scythe, using it to dig into a huge limb, only to be flung back into the wall, the end of the tentacle collapsing open and latching onto the cape, pinning it against the wall.
“I’ve got you!” Lucian shouted to his cape as he fired off the rest of his injurecrows; they connected with their target, splattering the wall with chunks of flesh.
An orifice opened up at the front of the parasite, a sharp tail firing out of it. Lucian was barely able to get out of the way in time.
The tail brought a portion of the ceiling down as Lucian leaped onto the wall. He started running sideways toward the parasite, still cutting away at the tentacles reaching for him, his MX-11 tucked under one arm.
Lucian severed the tentacle pinning his cape down with the long claws still jutting out of his knuckles. From there, he turned his attention back to a large parasite, his plasma blowtorch reappearing in his hands as he lit the fucker up.
He kept blasting it with thermal energy, oblivious to an arm crawling in his direction, a large stinger attached to it.
The arm popped up, grabbing Lucian by the throat and sending the stinger through his body. As soon as the stinger cut into his chest it started to grow in size, tearing all the way down to Lucian’s waist and up to his neck, ripping him apart.
Dropping his plasma weapon, Lucian began hacking away at the parasite’s limb with his lava sword, yet he could do little to stop the movement of the stinger inside his body.
A portion of it tore out of his shoulder, and Lucian’s arm fell to the side.
Another struck out just above his hip, severing his leg.
He fell backward as the stinger continued to increase its size. Lucian tried to pull it out of his body, focusing all of his might into the arm he had left.
Realizing it was hopeless, he equipped his grenade and pulled the safety pin, pressing it against the stinger with his one good hand.
The explosion tore it to shreds, but it also destroyed most of Lucian’s body aside from a portion of his other shoulder, his neck, and his head.
What was left of Lucian slapped against the wall, blood trailing as slapped onto the ground.
“Crap…” Lucian whispered, his vision flashing red and black.
Another tentacle came for him.
Before it could reach Lucian, he was swept up into the air by his cape, which pulled him away from the main fight, around the corner to the entrance to the hallway.
As his body started to heal, Lucian conjured a dozen injurecrows, and sent them around the corner to protect him. Once he had an arm again, and a portion of the side of his body, he equipped his grenade launcher and peeked around the corner, firing all twelve rounds.
A tentacle lunged for him, only to be pinned to the wall by one of his crows.
Still floating in the air, Lucian had now reformed the top of his torso and both arms, his legs started to stitch together beneath him.
He looked down to see his waist taking shape, his thighs, his knees, his shins, and finally his feet.
With his plasma blowtorch raring to go, Lucian turned the corner, searing what was left of the giant parasite with thermal energy.
“Go!” he called to his crows, both of them zipping to the other side of the conjoined parasite searching for vertical eyes.
The creature weakened substantially after one of his crows found the first target point. It let out a wheeze and died, energy coming into Lucian.
His weapon overheating, Lucian tucked his carbine under one arm and his MX-11 under the other, alternating blasts of bullets and concentrated energy while his crow searched.
The parasite grew smaller once they found another vertical eye, and even smaller when they found a third. Losing its power now, and unable to defend itself, the parasite went into panic mode, dozens of spiked tentacles emitting from what was left of its body.
Lucian’s cape wrapped itself around as many of the tentacles as it could and pulled them back, exposing the parasite’s vertical eye.
His crows finished the job, one of them driving itself deep into the parasite’s body, and the monster let out a gasp and died.
Lucian waited for the last bit of energy to fill him.
He collapsed to one knee, sucking in deep breaths as his stats took shape in the air.
He had killed ten parasites, giving him twenty-five SP. But he also had taken quite a beating and didn’t have a whole lot left.
Still, he could hunt slowly, and with this in mind Lucian pressed back up to his feet, his cape settling around his shoulders, his hood coming up over his head.
His crows were just about to take off when he noticed a black mist seeping in
to the space.
“Injuresouls,” Lucian whispered.
And before the first bandaged monstrosity could show its grotesque face, Lucian vanished.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Wide Open Spaces
Lucian appeared over his brother’s home.
He didn’t know if he was strong enough, and if he was, he only had thirty-one Soul Points. Regardless, it was worth a shot.
This was one of the reasons he had been power-leveling.
Lucian descended into the home, coming into Jennifer’s room, where the three-year-old was having a bedtime story read to her by Samantha.
“Hi, Sam; hi, Jennifer,” Lucian said as he floated into the hallway.
There were family pictures hanging on the walls, including one of Lucian taken years before he was diagnosed. Some of the folks he worked with were in the picture as well as his ex-girlfriend Kate, a thin smile on her face.
Lucian looked back to his own image, acknowledging just how different he looked now.
He could see his own reflection in the glass of the picture frame, the hood obscuring his facial features.
Lucian pulled the hood back, and as he did so, Tuck the cat stepped into the hallway. The hairs on the back of the cat’s body stood to attention as he reared back, hissing in Lucian’s direction.
His crows floated down to the cat, examined it, and looked back at Lucian.
“We already have one at home,” he reminded his spherical creations.
One of Lucian’s crows, which he identified as the first one he created, dipped its head as if it were sad.
“Don’t give me that, bud.”
His crows returned to his side as Lucian drifted into the kitchen. The TV was on in the other room, the New England Patriots playing a game.
He didn’t find his brother in the living room, and assuming he was downstairs, Lucian lowered himself into the concrete foundation, where he moved forward until he reached the basement.
And that’s where he found Connor lying on the ground, his mouth open, his older brother barely breathing.
Death's Mantle Page 20
