Mune'stahr and Pylott: HELLMARROW, a tale of the Ventriculum

Part 8,"On That Day, Murder Will Be the Optimism of Insanity..."

*** For him, his dark journey into foreignness and lifelong bondage had all begun during a long stormy day in the territories of the LowShore, past the Undefined Provinces of the Aggregotham Incendia. The LowShore, more properly known by Void-faring travelers as the 'Epidermatus Planescapes', a submodal isthmus of the Far Frontier, had been a temporary refuge for he and several members, survivors actually, of his decimated tribe. He'd been tall and strong, emotionally rough-hewn through his experiences as a native child of the Ventriculum, though he'd been intellectually segregated by virtue of his LowShore origins from the artisans, engineers, philosophers and scientists who had become the Ruling Class of the civilized places in the Far Frontier.

But his captors had cared nothing for that. They overran and seized the edgelands of the Aggregotham Incendia through sheer force. He and his motley brethren had apparently possessed something, some special spark, that the invading army of brutal conquerors had considered to be valuable. So they had been captured and subjected to political and medi-genetic 'reconditioning', forcibly metamorphosed, by order of the Monarchical BioPresence of the Arkyngales. Chemical Mutagens, radioactive isotopes and viral-nanotech enhancements had been bonded to his morphological base and his flesh had been re-sculpted. He had been irreversibly changed. He had not been born a Vamfyrr... No normal humanoid organism had ever been born that way, it was developmentally counter-intuitive -- being born a rapacious, conscienceless, cannibalistic parasite was intrinsically detrimental to human evolution. Self-destructive. Those who fed on their own would presumptively end their own bloodlines. But Vamfyrr's were useful to conquerors and terrorist nations. So he and his brethren were re-made.

Before that, he had been, by most societal benchmarks, little more than an adolescent. But as he grew into adulthood, his power had blossomed. It was a power born of the mind, a power capable of warping another sentient individual's perception of Reality. It was the power to actualize illusion and nightmare, the ability to unhinge and derange other minds. And he physically fed off that madness. Next he'd been unceremoniously dragged into an audience with the intimidating Arkyngale military commander who had been responsible for the slaughter of his people... And since that day, he'd seen or participated in all things illicit, felonious and nightmarish.

He was a victim of Fate, abandoned by Destiny. He had no remorse. He had no regrets. What would be the point? He had never known whether or not what was done to him had in any way improved or benefited him. All things considered, it hadn't really mattered. His situation became such that he could no longer escape his circumstances. He was, for all intents and purposes, alone. One by one the other survivors of the massacre of his people succumbed to the ravages of disease, rejection of their artificially-induced mutations, and, ultimately, Time and disease. He remained, untouched by Mortality. He was forever. He was left to do what he had to do to survive.

He became a predator, a weapon, a killer, and he discovered he had a taste for bloodshed and chaos. He didn't look back. ***

Pylott's eyes opened slowly. Her face felt stiff, as if the muscles under her skin had become unused to flexing. There was an electric buzzing resounding inside her head and she felt slightly disoriented. She felt the presence of a light and filmy, diaphanous hood over her head. The hood did not restrict her breathing nor her vision. She looked around: she was hovering some distance, she estimated it to be about the height of a tall man, above a stone or tiled floor, her arms outstretched at her sides at shoulder height and her hands encased by an odd orange light that felt solid and cold as polar ice. She cautiously moved her head from side to side, taking in her surroundings as best she could through the haze of her blurred vision. She could see that she was inside a small saucer-shaped, internal amphitheater flooded with soft, muted light. The predominant colors of the chamber's interior were shades of copper, brass and dulled antiqued gold. What few details she could make out revealed the chamber's walls to be lined with complex machine circuitry, like the face of an open computer motherboard. She turned her head just a bit further to look over one shoulder and could see Poli'Artta Ranzireth and Lt. Cmdr. Syngulareus hovering a short distance away, suspended just as she was.