"All that is cast off is mine. Not eventually, not later. Now."
Old Fen's scream thundered across the shards reflecting his past. His malnourished, teenage self shook his head. The version of him that forsook humans to live with dogs sighed, and the smirking him who stood over the ashes of his village bit his lip.
Finally, the most accomplished past version of him, the leader of the Sump Dogs, gazed at him. With sadness. With regret.
With pity.
Why? That was what he had always wanted. Or... did he?
It closed its eyes, and when it did, the suspended rot devoured every shard. From Fen's chin, it stormed to his head, shattering the meaning of his truth, his questions.
And his personality with them.
Silma's braid fluttered when the lost meaning of his truth blasted into a concentric shockwave from Fen's rotten body.
Her men staggered, leaning against the gales of Fen's crumbling frame.
"He..." One of them swallowed the horror that seared his throat. The red tassel of his sword fluttered as he charged Old Fen. "Anchor-Ghast! Kill him!"
Silma tilted her head toward him. Her smile twisted as the back of her hand slammed the man away.
"Old dogs listen, but they forget to question. Why do you think I entertained his foolishness? You chose the same ending as dozens before you had. Predictably pathetic." She jumped behind the dark shields raised against the wind.
Under her men's wide eyes, she threw her head back.
"Hahaha! Let his truth warp. Let him build a core of rot and madness to sustain his own downfall. We're no priests. We do not fear heretics turning anchor-ghasts; Garrick seeks it, and your core will be his. Come! Show me what you'll become!"
The bearers pushing against the wind froze. A shiver crawled down their spines before their knuckles whitened on their weapons. No one spoke, but they all understood. The gang war's real purpose—its only purpose—had always been to push Fen toward the cliff until he broke his anchor in a last try to drag them into the abyss with him.
Now, they couldn't tear their eyes from the pile of rot on the ground.
Fen was lost. Not his truth. It shuffled the rot without knowing what it meant anymore. Or rather... it rebuilt its definition on the ashes of the previous one.
Everything will rot back to me.
Rots to me.
Me.
The crawling heap.
The rot surged upward, a green wave as noxious as the most lethal gas. From the cracked core at its center, tentacles latched onto the forty corpses sprawled on the ground floor of the tannery.
Weaponry and flesh dissolved in a heartbeat before the tentacles snapped back to the growing wave. It swirled into a distorted sphere that didn't harden just yet. Most of the tentacles were still outside. On the dogs' carcasses. Dozens of them, all drawn into it, leaving the wet street clean of even the slightest drop of blood.
The sphere swelled once they entered it. From the rippling right side, an arm emerged. Covered in cracks, pestilential green, it ended in a broadsword longer than two men. The left side dripped into an oversized, boneless limb, like a whip. A torso formed, arched with crooked limbs jutting out from its back. The four legs of a dog supported its corrupted frame.
The anchor-ghast towered in front of Silma. Her men trembled in its shadow. Heads sprouted right beneath the high ceiling. An old one first, with empty eye sockets in which greed still glinted. Two dogs' heads followed on each of his shoulders... then dozens sprouted across his torso like a gown.
Some cursed in betrayal. Others wept blood, pleading for death. A third group sneered that they'd kill every last one of the Black Cask members.
"A-AHH!"
The man wielding the paper umbrella plugged his ears. He dug his fingers into his head as if pain would dispel the nightmare. His eyes only found the giant monster, though.
CLANG
A deafening clang broke the curse of fear tying every man. They lowered their gaze to Silma, who had slammed her knives against each other in front of the nightmare.
"Terrified by a pitiful runt? Or did you forget who you should truly fear? Very well, then. Try not to bleed." Her smile was more crooked than ever.
Still, she didn't blame them. Heretics were a rare breed—those who survived long enough for their anchors to break were even rarer. So, she'd remind them that anchor-ghasts were far less terrifying than she was.
The ghast roared, but she overpowered the putrid sound with her own voice. "Old Fen enjoyed making himself bigger than the small man he truly was, but he wasn't stupid. Madmen chose sewers and trash over gold; he collected them to preserve his anchor." Her eyes narrowed on the shifting shoulder of the anchor-ghast. She spoke as she hurled her back parallel to the ground. "His distorted truth is painfully obvious: he assimilates instead of collecting."
A boom cut her off. The shadow of the boneless limb whipped at her in a horizontal arc. It passed over her chest with such pressure that her broad shirt tugged at her skin, as if the fabric would rip.
Her lips curved. Would it?
She bent until her palms pressed on the ground. With a push, she backflipped elegantly, her own rotation dispersing the pressure.
Mid-air, she hurled her knives at the anchor-ghast. They flew like needles thrown at a hill. But even hills collapsed once tunnels riddled their bases.
The knives struck two heads squarely as she landed. They wailed, and the broadsword split the wind.
She spun to the right, the edge close enough for its surface to reflect her face. The ground caved in a circle, rocks hurled from the long gash splitting it in half.
Her men scrambled behind the shield wielders for cover, screaming. "We'll help."
"All of you out." Silma flicked her wrist, and eight needles erupted from her broad sleeves.
They grew into knives she gripped between her fingers as her men rushed out of the tannery. With a swing, she hurled them at the anchor-ghast. Not every projectile found a face, but with how bloated the bastard had become, she'd be damned if she missed its frame.
Another swing, then another. She ran across the room, dancing between crushing strikes while raining knives on the anchor-ghast. It rushed at her, its dogs' heads howling, putrefied blood pouring from wounds that didn't heal.
It didn't assimilate her men or knives either. Ignoring them to focus on threats, or limited? Likely limited. Didn't matter why.
Boring.
The last anchor-ghast was more challenging. This one? She won't need her relic to unmake the context of its distorted truth. Still, it would be fine to enjoy the fight... right?
"Hahaha. Come!"
A dog's head shot from the monster's left shoulder. Purulent liquid dripped from its jagged fangs, but not only. Shards from the broken beams that had barricaded the door jutted from its jaw like additional rows of teeth.
She let icy breath like winds in a crypt blow on her face without backing off. Too slow to dodge. Not that she needed to, or Brannick's unfair speed or strength to fight. A brawling warrior who had discarded weapons to refine himself into one.
Right or Wrong? Neither. A choice; a matter of preference, or carved statues of Theda wouldn't hold spears, shields, blades, or axes.
Silma chose as well, from her childhood. Nothing grand or elaborate. Quite the opposite: the most sacred duty of a warrior.
She narrowed her eyes as she plunged a metallic toothpick into the dog's maw. It grew into a spear, both ends bladed, heads drilling between teeth and piercing the upper and lower jaws simultaneously. The weapon kept growing until her hand couldn't close around the pillar that punched through the muzzle in a spray of corrupted blood.
With a howl, the dog tried to snap its mouth shut on Silma, only for the pillar to groan in refusal.
Silma didn't let the momentum fling her away. Using the pillar, she launched herself out of the mouth, over the head. Then, she swung the curved edge of a palm-sized axe down.
The small weapon shot into a bar of dark steel that cleaved the dog's head from the anchor-ghast's shoulder. Before it could collapse to the ground, she chopped it in half like damp wood. Then in half again, and again.
What met the ground were deformed morsels of flesh from which bones and metallic shards jutted out in a growing pool of pus.
The anchor-ghast old head shrieked. Not in agony, or hate. It struck with the hunger of someone robbed of what was his. Both of his arms whipped and cleaved down. Its front legs burst, claws ripping at Silma.
Amidst gales and the bite of steel, she laughed again. From her sleeve, a rectangular piece of metal erupted into her palm. She tossed it in front of her, and it grew into a dark tower shield as tall as her foe and wider than four doors.
She didn't wait for the strikes to clang on her defense; the moment her feet kissed the ground, she already gripped two knives and leapt.
Dust blasted outwards as the anchor-ghast collapsed on her shield. Its boneless arm carved a horizontal trench on its surface, while the blade dug deep vertically. Legs racked the metal, forcing the shield to tumble back.
Perched on its tilting peak, Silma smirked. A warrior had only one sacred duty. Why, who, and how many didn't matter. Kill or be killed. That was the only truth about combat she ever needed. No matter where, no one would ever catch her off guard.
She carried the tools to kill with her. She was a walking arsenal. And she had learned to use it.
She slid down the shield, toward the anchor ghast's face. It noticed her, too, with its empty eye sockets. Too late.
She hurled her growing knives, then spears and axes. So many that the sheen of steel swamped the tannery. The spears punctured the old head, while the bladed weapons chopped off limbs. Arms flew in grim arcs, and heads fell from the anchor-ghast's chest.
Ignoring their vengeful and relieved screams, Silma leapt from the shield. Her knives extended and retracted, edges digging into her prey's chest. The surrounding flesh crumpled to the ground, and soon only the stomach remained.
She landed on it, her blades raised, her smile as twisted as her knives. "You won't ever own anything again, Old Fen." Both blades sank into the stomach. She pulled them aside, revealing the cracked core glowing a weak, scaly green. "And with nothing to own, you can't sustain your pitiable truth."
She tore the core out. It squirmed in her palm, as if it searched for something to assimilate without finding it. A box appeared in her hand, the same one that had held Giovanni's core, and she stored it inside. " I expected a battle, but I guess you were right all along. It was an execution."
She glanced at the doorway. Her wide-eyed men gazed at her, at the shrinking weapons stabbed into the walls, and the grooves dug into a ground better fit to a butchery than a tannery.
"Clean the place and my weapons. The war's over." She chuckled, but it died in her throat when she pulled on her filthy shirt. "And get me a new shirt."