Chapter 5 – Lusus Naturae

Mk23 -IRJ Droplet – Class 7 – Carpe Victoria (Wrecked)

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

3rd May 2341 (BSST)

The ghost rose from the ground. Barely disturbing the swirling and endless whirling eddy of mist. It smothered the muddied the withered dying ground. The colours of the world seeming to leech into shades of grey. The lively, vividness of life fading away like water swirling down the drain. More silent than death the ghostly apparition stood, or rather floated there. Narrow sharp cheekbones covered in a pale white skin that looked like a silk cloth had been draped over the bones. Thin, gaunt and skeletal the ghost had merciless, lifeless grey eyes that seemed to sap my every emotion. With less and less feelings I could feel my strength and will collapsing and folding in on myself.

It beckoned with a single thin, withered finger and like a beaten dog I didn’t even question it. I followed step by step, not even noting the cobblestone path nor the graves that I stepped around and on desecrating the once loved remains. With every step I took my head felt leaden and my arms drooped lower and lower. She became more solid. Seeming to phase into reality. What once was a mere suggestion at form was now a physical reality. Tall, ever so tall. He loomed over me like the sword of Damocles, ever a look away. Waiting just waiting for the mistake. With every step I could feel the infamous sword drop a foot, until I could feel its sharp grained point pressing into the nape of my neck.

Like a conductor she moved her arms and the dark grey tatty cloak shifted revealing an ice white skin with perfect diagonal crisscrossing scars etched in silver. Like a sculptor had cut them himself. Like a puppeteer had woken the bodies I had missing in my thoughtless obedience rose in jerky motions. She didn’t care about me and a cold echoing laugh reverberated around me from her toothy grin as the bodies closed me in, one perilous step at a time.

Curling into a ball I fell to the ground shivering. A tear falling from my eye stinging as it traced my jaw bone. Falling to the damp ground and fading away. The mud sticking to my bare thigh as a hand tugs and pulls. I slapped at it trying to shake it off, but it was to no avail. A terrible screech sounded out and I flinched before recognising it as my own. A hand slapped over my mouth dampening it down. Reflexively I bit hard hearing and feeling the crunch of bones shifting under the pressure of my teeth. The metallic coppery taste fills my mouth. Rich and salty. It flows down my throat in slow viscous globs coating it with a thin oily film. Like a shot it came with a burning chaser. Unlike a shot it was occurring in my hand. An intense burst of pain shoots up my arm to my brain where it registers as pulsing spikes of pain.

I have bitten myself in my panic. More tears coalesce in the corners of my eyes and trace my cheeks colouring them in a similar silver to the ghost’s scars. Less violent and more tragic.

Looking up I stare into the face of one of the bodies. It might just be his grave I’m lying on. Wearing an old soldier uniform his right hand is missing and a suppurating lesion runs up his right arm. The uniform is discoloured the whites blemished with shades of brown. The reds almost black with the dried blood staining the once regal, honoured mark of country. His head is split open and a sword handle sticks out from his trapezius on his left side. The fully caked with blood marring the otherwise shiny, iridescent silver of the blade.

He takes another step and like a tensed cable springs at me his bony hand arching for my head. It impacts like a truck and like a marionette with its strings cut I fall, collapsing back to lie down like the bodies that have just assaulted me. The dark grey world is split and overwhelmed by a white light bursting down from above and fanning out to expand around me. The all-consuming white I’ve heard so much about. You know, it’s not so bad to die. Relatively painless, quick. One second your alive. The other its gone and the comforting white surrounds you…

“RONJA!”

“WAKE UP OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!” a voice screams at me. It isn’t very nice. Who is this, interrupting my death and speaking nonsense. I’m already dead how can I die again.

“RONJA!” it bleats at me again. Like an annoying little brother that won’t leave you the fuck alone. Sighing, “fine I’ll go sort this out” I think to myself resigned to a positively awful afternoon.

Blinking fiercely as colour floods back into the room, the white fading and being replaced by the softer yellows of sand. I take a deep breath feeling the stitch fade slightly.

The lovely yellow colour is somewhat ruined by the warning lights flashing around my HUD. Blinking again I start to regain my composure. I can feel the residue of the tears from the nightmare and as a result my vision is slightly blurred.

With a sharp jerking motion, I’m tossed onto my front and straddled in the mount position by a monstrous humanoid thing. The first thing I see after coming out of my nightmare is an affront to nature. Face to face an instant after coming from the white it is antithetical and so, so off putting.

The creature was heavy and stifling, restraining me. Compressing my organs. I could feel a small spike digging into me. It was I assumed its coccyx for the beast was skeletal and disfigured. I stared into raw, oozing, eye sockets. The eyes absent yet still searching, penetrating and examining me. Strands of congealed blood flapped around in the empty bowls. The surrounding skin was rucked and crimpled like layered syrup and discoloured with shades of green and brown, starkly in contrast to the white of the rest of the beast. Corded muscles, ribbon like and well accentuated made it seem like it had an exterior ribcage. The bones still showing somehow. The skin was taut like an elastic band, almost to the point of ripping in some places whilst loose and flappy in other places. In some places it had indeed ripped and from the gashed a viscous goop dripped. Like great globs of phlegm, it fell in stages down the monster collecting in its folds. Dried and crusty flakes fall off of it like dandruff.

Rocking from side to side it swept its head across me breathing in deep breaths. As if scenting me out despite sitting astride me. It opened its mouth to breath out and its huge canines were revealed to me. Serrated edges and needle like points they protruded and pierced through its upper jaw leaving punctures that constantly bled staining its mouth red. The rest of its jaw was human like with incisors and molars with the four-point crown. An awful stench rolled out and over me as it breathed out a rattily, shuddering breath. Like a winch slowly winding in, the ratchet of its throat clicks with a soft, metallic sound. Almost like a purr. In its malicious and malevolent nature, I suppose it could indeed have been a purr. Albeit an unsettling one.

Like raw sewage and rot its stench was paralysing and overwhelming. Seeking out my senses like a missile and violating them.

I felt like I had been studying it for hours such was its beautiful horror. Captivating and violating. In fact, it was just a moment, a moment that bombards me, inundates and buries me.

It draws back an arm and I spot the talons. Warping out of finger nails to chipped fractured nails, rust coloured and tainted. Like a whip it speeds towards me.

On instinct I block, flipping up my arm. My thumb rests on my collar bone and my fingers extend down my back my ear resting on my wrist. It pulls my arm together, tensing the bicep and blocking my neck and head in a wall of armoured flesh. It impacts and skates off my armour leaving scratches. I force my head back, but it still catches me in passing whipping my neck round.

Like a fighter driven mad in rage it beats on me, coming from each side raining blows down upon me. I block, again and again. Enduring and abiding its rule, waiting my moment.

It comes a short time later as the monster leans back bellowing its dominance to the sky and removing the pressure on my chest.

I drive up with my hips, dislodging it. Ramming my knee into its back I flip in over my head and spring to my feet. Turning and drawing my knives in one smooth motion. Now I see it standing its presence seems to grow and loom like a storm. Growing in scale, and viciousness. Seven or eight feet tall with protrusions, spikes I guess you could call them on its joints. A large plate like spike. Like those from a stegosaurus protrudes from its head, a natural roman crest, though situated a little more behind. It flicks it tongue at me as a snake tastes the air. Split as well. It tenses ready to rush me berserker like.

Before it can pounce though something seems to catch its attention. It lifts its head and looks around as if waking up. Crouching low it launches itself up at me, over me. I slice as it passes catching it low in the abdomen. Blood splashes over me but it doesn’t seem to bother it. It lands maybe thirty metres away at the tree line. Gives me one last glance before melting away into the foliage and completely disappearing leaving nary a trace.