The scarflock leader bit the air like a rabid animal before grunting something to the rest. Evelyn had never seen them so close, at least not alive, if she considered the one she and Alice had found as bait on the ratdog ambush yesterday. She had heard the rumours though and made sure to pay good attention to them.
Psychopaths. Cannibals. Brutal.
Those were all words she had heard often associated with the scarflock. But even more than those characteristics, which were already bad enough, Evelyn had always found very curious another thing that was told about them.
They behaved like primitive humans. No spoken words, scared of technology, rudimentary tools and weapons. It was like they had completely devolved, losing their intellect in the process of getting their mysterious abilities. They weren't chimeras and they certaintly weren't runicrons, but they still managed to perform superhuman feats if the stories about them were to be believed.
Something about their scars gave them powers, but it was unclear if like most mutants those possible Skills were Aspect based or it was something else.
Evelyn noticed that, apart from varied cases of grotesque mutations on their complex scar tatoos, they looked very human to her. No special limbs, horns, wings or tails. Not outside the scars, at least. Which only made her worry more at her lack of trustworthy information. She had never fought one of them before, much less a group or even worse, a scarflock pack leader.
That guy looked dangerous. If wasn't just that his skin scarf was long enough to reach below his waist or that his brutish looking scrap and bone mace was gnarly to look at, with a whole human jaw mounted at the top reinforced with thick rusted nails.
There was a special degree of madness in his eyes that made her feel deep unease, like she was looking at someone that no longer recognized itself as a person. His eyes kept darting around, half scanning, half wandering, like what little remained of his brain was debating between the present hunt and devouring itself.
What terrible fate could await her if she was captured was a question that fought to take over the front of her mind, much to her displease.
How can someone turn into this? She asked herself, horrified by their clicking and guttural responses to one another. Insanity in the face of the apocalypse I can understand, but they are still organized enough to be a group. They wear self-made clothing made with their victims in a ritualistic manner so they seem to practice some form of human sacrifices.
That's culture, as horrible as it may be. So they are insane, but they retain human characteristics in their behaviour. I won't make myself look foolish by trying to reason with them though.
Evelyn had absorbed the pile of things she had picked up around the museum for her Skill testing, so she had plenty of ammo, but she was still feeling a little tired. She had to force herself to remember her limitations.
There were four of them, one a clear boss and she was alone. These weren't regular raiders either. They all had mutated scars, so Evelyn had to assume they all had powers.
Kornos should be returning soon. Do I fight, flee or hide? She kept asking the same thing, undecisive, when one of the scarflock, a woman with dirty blonde hair and a crooked nose, turned in her direction, sniffing the air like a hunting dog, before deciding to take to the second floor where she was. Evelyn hold her breath and crawled back as she heard the cannibal continue her stalking up the stairs. Fortunately, it didn't seem like she had been discovered yet, but it was a matter of time.
They are spreading out to look for prey. Either they are confident in taking on anything they find alone, or they are too stupid to think tactically. I can work with that.
She was gonna prepare a quick welcome party for the lone scarflock that had decided to inspect the second floor on her own. If she managed to hunt them down one by one, maybe she could take themby herself. This was just another chance to test her training and by extend, learn about this particular type of enemy.
Evelyn tried her Inventory really quick, trying to mentally remember everything in there that could be useful. While Inventory was an incredible asset to have, its biggest weakpoint was that she couldn't take out something she didn't know was in there, so if she forgot, it was as good as lost unless she did a full checkout and summoned everything out at the same time.
There were a couple of things that she had taken from the Last Glade before leaving Menagerie that were now in her mind. Specifically from Alice's workshop.
With a poof of mana dust, Evelyn took out three items. The first was a sack full of ball bearings, small metal marbles that Alice made with leftover metal from her work for the children in Menagerie. The second was a metal rod with a handle and fork teeth, charged with a mana battery, to create a makeshift taser. The third item was a last resort that Evelyn didn't want to use until she reached the underground lab, in case there was a powerful monster there, so she decided to store it again.
The ball bearings were common ammunition for Evelyn to use with her runitronic arm, she could make use of the Runic Skill engraved in it to make them grow into deadly size, just like she had done when she damaged the NVOS billboard on Menagerie. But now that she had [Hylosynthesis], they were gonna be more useful than ever before.
Evelyn focused her Awareness, hearing the steps of the scarflock woman as she wandered around on the second floor. She was still searching on the adjacent exhibitions before going into the chapel chamber where Evelyn was, so there was still time.
Grasping the taser in her hand, Evelyn sent mana to its battery, concentrating very carefully as to not overload it. She had practiced for years and years how to unload her mana, trying and failing to achieve enough control to ensure Alice's safety if she were to ever charge her directly. Now Alice was gone, but the training was not.
She felt the current of mana circulating through the simple but effective Runic Skill engraved on the taser, creating a tiny arc of electricity between the fork teeth. But there was something else, a different sensation. Like a part of her was calling to be used.
Her Core was resonating with not just the activated Runic Skill, but the taser itself, like there was more she could do at that moment. Her Awareness was spiking, trying to tell her to pay attention to what she had before her eyes.
Before it suddenly shifted to something coming from behind. Evelyn rolled away just in time before the blonde scarflock skewered her with a rusted spear.
The woman grunted and then chuckled like a crazy person, not stopping her franctic attacks at all, even when the tip of her spear broken off against the floor from her failed surprise attack.
Evelyn commanded the cable vines in her arm to grab the woman's spear, trying to disarm her. The technorganic plant coiled around the shaft of the weapon like a serpent and pulled, but the scarflock held it firmly and like a fisher, used her own cable vines against Evelyn to reil her in. With a strong pull, Evelyn was sent flying forward into a gut punch that took her breath away.
Commanding her cable vines to let the spear go, Evelyn was pushed back into a defensive stance. She poofed out her metal staff, feeling the damage to her internal organs already healing.
The scarflock weren't just crazy. They were strong. It had to be mana induced rather than physical training; the woman before her looked like she hadn't eaten in weeks, with her skin so thin and taut, that Evelyn could see the shape of her bones.
Her scarring covered most of her naked torso, shoulders, legs and arms, but there were no marks on her face, nor signs of mutations. Her grotesque scarf only had two sections, reaching down to her breasts, less than a third in length compared to her pack leader.
She was in a different room just a few moments before, I'm sure my Awareness caught the sound of her steps. How could she attack me from behind like that? She didn't come through the door!
The scarflock woman growled at her, showing her yellowed out teeth. They weren't even sharp, just regular human teeth, dirty and in dire need of a dentist, but normal otherwise.
Her scars had taken the appearance of smooth glass, making them look somewhat artistic, maybe even beautiful in different circumnstances. Evelyn couldn't imagine how painful they were, as they looked to be constantly bleeding where glass met flesh, cutting herself with every movement.
Then, the woman did something Evelyn wasn't expecting at all. She talked.
"Kill me." She said with a wicked smile, betraying the desperate tone of her plea. Her body contorted and shook as tears came out of her eyes as if her own body rejected the words, the evil and crazed expresion never leaving her face as she dribbled saliva out of the corner of her mouth. "Please..."
Horror filled Evelyn's heart.
"What did this to you?" She managed to ask, before the woman lunged forward with her spear again, missing Evelyn's face just by second as she avoided a new barrage of wild hits.
There was no technique, no style or planning in her fighting. Just a wild animal in human form, relentlessly using her superior strength until her prey was dead.
Was this woman really asking for mercy or had that just been a tactic to confuse her in to lowering her guard? There was no time to tal, even if there was a chance that the woman was still human underneath the insanity of her demeanor.
Survival came before kindness. Such was the way of the world she was living in.
Evelyn avoided the spear's attacks all the way to one of the columns, leading the scarflock to where she wanted her. Her movements were getting more erratic by the second, so it was easy for someone with Evelyn's training to not get hit by such a poor fighter. But the pain in her gut kept reminding her to not understimate her enemy.
Timing the incoming strike, Evelyn dodged let the spear hit the column before throwing a few ball bearings at her feet.
"[Hylosynthesis]!" Her Skill activated on the metal marbles just as they hit the floor, cable vines with sharp amber metal blades all growing at the same time under the crying scarflock. "Stop her!" She commanded the vines as she retreated behind the column, where the scarflock's strength had imbedded her spear with her last attack.
As she struggled to get her weapon out, the cable vines coiled around her legs. She tried kicking them off her, which wouldn't be hard given they weren't rooted on the floor, but the momentary distraction was enough for Evelyn to strike back.
With a full swing, she generated momentum on her metal staff for a powerful blow on the scarflock's back, just as she completed her atack with two words.
"[Grow Metal]" The Runeskill on her crimson runitronic arm activated, making her metal staff grow as big as a lamp post just as it hit the scarflock on the column. Pushed with the full power of her runitronic limb plus the increase in mass, made the woman get skewered by the end of her rusty metal spear as she got crushed into the column.
Or so it should have been. The spear went through her body alright, but so did she through the column, like there was nothing there. The scarflock was still sent flying from the force of Evelyn's attack, crashing against one of the broken glass display cases. The sharp glass pierced her flesh just fine, sending blood everywhere as she tried to get back on her feet.
And much to Evelyn's relief, all of it happened in complete silence, both the crash and the subsequent trashing of the woman on the glass.
So that's how she almost got me before! She can phase through matter and manipulate sound, so she must have gone through the walls. Doesn't seem like she has the best control over her abilities or she would have also avoided the glass.
Evelyn eyes darted towards the door to the chapel chamber. If her enemy kept things relatively quiet, that would be to her advantage, but she couldn't trust that the rest of her pack wouldn't hear them fighting. She needed to end things quickly.
"[Shrink Metal]" She said, making her metal staff a normal size once more. It was much easier for her to use the Runeskill Alice had prepared for her now that she had control over her mana flow. No more embarassing accidents while fighting.
The scarflock woman was hurt, probably with a broken spine, and hundreds of glass shards, some as big as a hand, were cutting her in many places as she struggled to get back up with paralyzed legs.
Evelyn went to the woman and gave her a pitiful look as she kept trying to claw at her, behaving more like a wounded beast more than a human. No sound came from her mouth or her broken body, nor it did from the glass she was touching. But the same wasn't true for Evelyn, so she decided to give a few words out of mercy.
"I don't feel good about this, but I can't afford you calling the others." Evelyn raised her staff and struck down on the woman's head, bashing her brains out with a wet splatter. "I'm sorry. If you were still in there somehow, please forgive me. Be at peace, you are free now." Remembering something, she added, "May the All-Mother embrace your soul."
Evelyn still wasn't sure if she believed in the mythical figure of the Goddess like Kornos did, but it felt like the right thing to do given her upbringing. It was better to think that the dead didn't have to go alone to whatever may come next.
She turned her back on the corpse and started to plan her next move. Maybe she could really take them by herself after all, train her Skill and free potential victims from a dark fate, wether it was becoming food and scarves or another scarflock. Which one was worse to her, she couldn't decide.
Her Awareness flared, warning her of incoming danger. Evelyn barely had time to react as the corpse of the scarflock jumped on her, pushing her to the ground. The woman's head was caved in, her brain spluttering out of the skull and her spine was still broken, but she was still strong like a beast.
Her scars were glowing a pale blue color inside her body, visible thanks to her glassy skin mutation on the scarring. The woman was dead, but it didn't matter. Evelyn understood the terrible truth as she struggled to kept her from clawing her eyes out. She had never been fighting the woman herself.
The scarflock were trapped in their own bodies. She was fighting a meat puppet, controlled by the scars and what laid hidden under them.
The poor bastard they had found dead with half made scars by the road yesterday wasn't lost. He wasn't missing the skin scarf or human flesh to eat because he was a weak member of a pack. He had been a runaway.
He had somehow managed to escape from becoming a scarflock, only to end up killed by ratdogs and used as bait anyway.
The animated corpse kept trying to bite her face off, so Evelyn put her metal staff in its mouth. Much to her surprise, the meat puppet gnawed at it with such ferocity that the metal staff was quickly starting to break.
"[Hylosynthesis]!" She screamed desperately, making cable vines appear from the metal staff itself. As she was touching it directly, the cable vines were as strong as she could make them. Her will commanded them to immobilize the raging corpse, coiling around its limbs, pulling it back from her. The amber blades sunk deep in the dead flesh, acting as anchors, but it still wasn't enough.
She had barely managed to get herself a few seconds as the cable vines were already tearing from the tremendous force of the scarflock's body on top of her.
Evelyn pulled out the taser and hit the metal staff on the corpse's mouth, sending an electric discharge throughout its entire body thanks to the cable vines coiled around it.
And still it wasn't enough.
Smoking from the electricity that was frying its flesh, the corse refused to let go, breaking the cable vines one by one as its hands went towards Evelyn's throat.
She couldn't get it off her, its inhuman strength made her feel like a defenseless child once more.
The smell of burnt flesh brought her back to that terrible night when she had lost everything. The orphanage fire. The dead children. Her mother.
Then there was another memory. One forgotten by trauma and pain. One awaken by the smell and the familiar enemy before her.
A mental block was lifted and Evelyn remembered.
The people that came that night. The ones in the cloaks. Her mother had fought them, but they wouldn't die until she evaporated them with her powers. There had been someone with them, commanding them to throw their lives to take Eva Anima down.
She had believed it a lie, told to Kornos and Alice to protect her secret shame as Eva's murderer.
But in her damaged mental state, she had mixed lies with truth.
A man had came that night demanding Eva to surrender Evelyn to him. A man with an army of meat puppets. Slaves under his will. A man capable of the most horrific act in the name of his mission.
The one that made the scarflock.
And the one that made Evelyn.
She finally remembered the face of her enemy. A metal face with blue eyes.
A runicron with a goat mark on the palm of his right hand.
And his name. The same that Alice had spoken about full of admiration as she regaled Evelyn with tales of her benefactor's teachings, the same that Kornos had lauded as the greatest defender of the chimera cause. A good man. A great man. A doctor and a healer. One that had made the greatest oath to protect and serve humanity as one of the highest runicrons in Neo Vorath.
A falsehood in metal.
An oathbreaker.
"CROWLEY! I remember everything now. Can you see me through your puppet? Everything is your fault! Where are you hiding? SHOW ME!"
It was a instinct, no more than a hunch, but at that moment her Awareness gave her the edge. The scars weren't decorative nor were just to create mutated scarring for power. They were how he controlled the scarflock, like the strings of a puppeteer. And a runicron, no matter how old and powerful, can only really do one thing.
Runitronics. They weren't scars, they were circuits. These people had been engraved with Fauno's Runeskills, turning them into living runic tools at his disposal. Which meant, that to control his creations, he had to be connected to them.
And Evelyn had one way of connecting with all things created by someone.
"[Pulse Link]!" She activated her passive Skill, which sent her senses through the body of the dead scarflock. She felt the terrible pain of the scars as if they were on her own body, the cuts of the glass and the fatal last blow on her skull. The sensation of her brains leaving her almost forced her to break off the connection, the pain so unbearable that it would have been perfectly reasonable for her to let go. But Evelyn was now a woman on a mission.
Revenge.
Her Endurance helped her push beyond the phantom pain of the dead woman, resisting as she also kept pumping mana into the taser and her cable vines. She would be out soon, her Core was being forced beyond what was safe anymore. But she kept pushing.
Until she felt it. The connection in the flesh. A presence at the other side, pulling on the strings. Evelyn's will pulled back, sensing the direction of where the strings of mana took her. At that moment she felt the Skill level up to Adept, unlocking a new sense in the process.
Sound.
A voice, echoing in metal, came through. Smooth, almost sweet in its tone as it regarded her intrusion in his connection to his creation.
"So, it's true. The vessel lives. My masterpiece. Come home now, let me show you your true destiny."
Through [Pulse Link], even as her body was struggling against the corpse, Evelyn managed to send a message out of pure hatred.
"You will die by my hands."
Her Core pulsed, something inside her stirring. A power that had yet to be understood. A Skill that she had failed to use.
The runitronic taser in her hands was about to break, the scarflock's corpse was breaking the last cable vines and she was inches away from strangling Evelyn.
So she let her instincts take over.
"[Verdant Toolset]" She muttered as both her eyes shone with mana, the golden amber eye and the runitronic blue eye.
The Skill charged the taser and changed it. It transformed in her hands, metal turning to bark, cables turning to vines. It grew in her hands as it became a verdant tool, a perfect communion of technology and nature. The power of the Runeskill engraved in it shifted before her eyes. It evolved.
The electrical discharge went from smoking the corpse into bursting it into flames, charring it as it flailed uselessly. The fire burned her cable vines away as well. The heat, the smell and the vision of a burning human body were too much for her.
A lightning bolt came from the verdant taser like a primordial spear, launching the reanimated corpse into the air.
Gasping for air and almost completely drained, Evelyn looked at the taser in her hands still sparking with the power of a miniature storm as she saw cobalt blue flowers growing where the fork teeth had been, amber pulsing with mana as if they were veins. It was alive. And it was hers.
The burning corpse crashed into a charred pile, finally defeated and unmoving. The massive amount of electricity must have destroyed the engraved runitronics inside its flesh, breaking Crowley's control over her. Now, that poor woman really was at peace.
Evelyn struggled to get on her feet just as the sound of many rapid steps approached.
The rest of the scarflock were coming. Now that he knew she was alive, Crowley wanted her back.
And he would stop at nothing. Just like he had that night.
But this time, Evelyn could fight back. And Crowley would pay for all that he had done. The lives he had broken. The dream he had betrayed.
Evelyn knew where he was now, back where all began.
She would go there, but not as a prisoner or a prize to reclaim. When she faced her prey, it would be as hunter.
Turning back from the incoming scarflock, Evelyn ran towards the balcony and jumped.
