“...Stop them, Dalang. By all means necessary. We can not let the Sapiens have contact with what is here.” That was the order from E05.

“You gotta be shitting me.” Dalang just woke up. The explosion knocked him out earlier and disemboweled him. After checking if he still had everything on him, internally and externally, he started to think about defending the pit entrance.

“Exo-suits, all of them. We can see them from here.” Y42’s voice came through. “The wind is not on our side; hold the entrance, P16.”

“Yeah, I kinda just woke up. Can yall tell me more? ” Dalang lit up a blood-stained cigarette from his pocket and started smoking.

“Well, this pit was an ancient Sapien project, a failed exploration to dig a hole through this planet. Some fool started digging again and woke up something messed up.” Y42 explained. “Hurry and arm yourself. We have granted you full access to the armory; configure your celestial pocket and connect to the armory. Pick whatever you need to wipe them out. No witnesses.”

“Never hunted something that is half-machine, half-man before. What kind of trophies to take?”

“They are small men wearing big armors; beneath the frames, they are still meat bags.” P10’s gloomy voice reached Dalang’s mind. “They have some serious firepower, so don’t forget to deploy your divinity shield.”

“Pfff, I know.” Dalang exhaled grey, thick smoke from his giant porcine nostril. “I have been waiting for this day to use our armory.” He tossed away the cigarette butt, reached for his pouch, and took out an object wrapped in fragile linens. On them were words and symbols written in cinnabar.

Dalang tore the linens layer by layer until the pale and cracked animal skull appeared. Just holding it in his hand, Dalang felt the bitter chill overflowing through the cloth. The two antlers sticking out made the artifact look even more vicious.

The noise was closing in his position, making him fasten his actions. Dalang picked up a severed Sapien arm and squeezed its blood onto the skull he was holding. As soon as the skull came into contact with the blood, it immediately broke free from Dalang’s grasps and started levitating and glowing in an ominous red aura. Cracks and the fractured parts grew back, the antlers elongated, and the jaw opened widely, welcoming any fools to condemn themselves with a gruesome curse.

The approaching smell of polymer, metal, and biofuel reminded Dalang that there was no time for hesitation. He snatched the floating skull and shoved his head into it. From the smell of it, the Sapiens brought their elites.

Dalang felt the burn in his guts as if someone poured acid and slowly melting everything away. He felt it: an unquenchable glutinous bloodthirst, an insatiable gnawing flesh-hunger. The skull whispered to him that he needed to fill his stomach to ease the pain.

The artifact felt somewhat familiar to him. The divinity signature it radiated was identified close to his mother, Morana’s: Winter and Death.

No wonder T11 told Dalang the artifact was made for him. The two would synchronize and work seamlessly like gasoline and fire.

A low, belching howl came from Dalang's as he slowly lost control. His body turned pale and slender, with his outfit hanging loosely around his skinny body. It seemed the skull took the liberty to feed itself with Dalang’s divinity as its first meal.

In other words, Dalang did not put on the skull, but the other way around.

As the sun was about to set, chilling dusk wind greeted the exo-skeleton-armed Sapien infantry with goosebumps and minor nausea.

Tech granted the Sapiens the strength of the Giants and the firepower of the Dragons. The irony was unparalleled: Dalang’s used to hunt those two types of creatures for a living. In his prime, Dalang made his stand with Freyr by the roots of Yggdrasil, protecting the source of the world tree from an endless onslaught of lindworms and wyverns.

Tales of another time. Glories of another life. For there were no glory nor honor, only blood, and guts.

Morbid screams broke the silence of the dusky, misty woods.

A Sapien scout was running frantically with his helmet in his hand and told everyone to escape. No one knew what he saw, but some still felt what he felt. His exoskeleton was covered in blood and guts, brains and bones. The poor man had never borne witness to such gruesome brutality; the sudden loss of his comrades had shattered his mind.

Limbs, heads, and mechanical parts were tossed at their position like tumbleweeds in the wind. Finally, the Wendigo’s blood-chilling, high-pitched porcine squeal announced the commencement of a slaughter.

The clouds covered the last bit of the setting sun, and two faint red lights stared right at the soldiers.

Some of them were overwhelmed by fear on the spot, collapsed, and started vomiting. Days ago, they were trained to defend humanity against hostile humanoids with enhanced strength, mobility, resilience, and recovery. Some of them even succeeded in capturing immortals and killing monsters.

"...more...meat...Burp --" in the mist and the shadow of the trees, the wendigo that was Dalang grunted.

The soldiers fired at the light as it rapidly approached. Bullets cannot penetrate the Skull nor stop the monster. Worst of all, the distance was too close for any use of explosives.

One cannot kill what is fueled by killing.

“Hostile deployed kinetic-nullifying force field! Switch to flamethrowers and shock spears! '' As the elites of the elites, some exoskeleton soldiers stood their ground and started organizing counterattacks. A wall of flames was formed in an attempt to stop the Wendigo.

The scorching flames burnt off its hairs and seared its skin but did nothing to slow him down.

“So long as the mind is willing, the body can keep killing...” The Skull told Dalang. Every death was an oblation; every oblation powered the Wendigo with perverted divinity.

He charged into their ranks and continued ripping and tearing. With each kill, the skull grew bigger and fuller with more flesh and skin.

Gunshots fired, screams echoed, bones cracked, blood splashed, guts squashed. The hot, smoking cartridge cases fell into the streams of blood, making hissing sounds equals melodies to the blood gods and war gods. Of course, some of them had their familiars watching the carnage already. After all, they were curious what the Sapiens are capable of.

It wasn't long before it was all over. The last sunset disappeared with the last living man on the battlefield. Then, everything fell into darkness and silence. Only blood dripping and flesh carving sounds echoed through the woods.

The dancing and the socializing were done, time for a real feast.

The monster grabbed a fallen soldier’s dagger with its bloody hand, cutting into the chest cavities of the corpses skillfully like a gutting fish on a cutting board. With each heart and liver, it gorged down, the skull and the Immortal became more synchronized. The burn injuries and bullet holes started to heal as the monster subsisted on freshly harvested organs.

The clouds in the sky dispersed, and a pale moon was reflected upon the stream of blood. Through the crimson reflection, the Wendigo saw an enormous paper crane silently approaching it.

That was Y42 ’s paper trick. The rest of Norashu arrived.

“We have lost our psionic connection with him.”

“Of course, that’s him down there.” P10 pointed at the creature shining an obsidian and sanguine sheen.

“Tsk, Now what do we do?” Y42 frowned, even with his third eye on his forehead.

“I can try to invade his mind; that is not his form, nor his shape. Maybe I can isolate his mind from the influence for a while so we can deal with the curse itself.” P10 suggested. “”

“I regret not reading any of the files on the stored artifacts.” Y42 sighed.

They both jumped off the paper crane and landed in the woods to commence their attack.

Y42 wasted no time and charged into the monster with his three-tip, double-edged blade.

The wendigo’ lowered its head and took the hit with its giant antlers. The blade was only able to chip their tips.

Y42 was surprised by the toughness of the antlers and backflipped away from the slender monster’s reach

The wendigo tore off a machine gun from one of the dead Sapiens’s exoskeleton frames and started firing it at Y42.

Streams of bullets rained upon Y42’s armor and blade as he dashed in for another attack. Sparks flashed as metals crashed into each other. Hundreds of rounds of ricochets shredded the leaves, branches, the undergrowth, and the dead bodies around the dueling two, painting a kaleidoscopic work of destruction.

“Great work, keep him busy, and I will attack his mind.” P10

“Yeah, you are not the one dealing with fifty cal bullets,” Y42 complained as he tried his best to stand on his feet. Keeping his balance against the impact and the kinetic energy from the bullets was not easy for him.

“I’ve had enough.” As soon as the gun ran out of bullets, Y42 used his hydrokinetic abilities to extract water from the environment and formed countless orbs of water and blood floating around him.

“Huh, isn’t this a bit overkill for stalling? You might kill him.” Dolus felt Y42’s divinity spreading beneath them, collecting water from the undergrowth.

“Have you seen a wendigo wielding a Gatling? That thing is not only sucking on his head but also accessing his knowledge and memory.”

“Fair enough. I am still working on my script. Should trap P16’s mind for at least a day.”

“Hurry up.” Y42 sent all the water orbs towards the wendigo’s direction. They slowly levitated with a pulsing ruby glow like a school of arctic red jellyfish.

With a mixture of howling and squeaking, the monster threw a corpse at the orbs to test their effect.

The orbs encased the corpse and drained all the water from it. A mummified and shriveled figure hit the ground and crumbled into pieces. The wendigo started to throw more corpses at the orbs to slow them down.

When the orbs were busy draining the corpses, the cunning monster salvaged a functional flamethrower in the piles of blood and guts. With the fuel tank in one hand and the handle on the other, the wendigo aimed at the orbs and started to put out water with fire.

Y42 grinned as his plan was working. He started to create more and more orbs from the water he had gathered underneath. If all worked out, the orbs should trap the wendigo long enough for P10 to finish up whatever he got up his sleeves.

The flamethrower quickly ran out of fuel. The wendigo tiled his disproportionately large antlers and looked up, searching for branches to land and initiate an aerial attack.

Y42 noticed its action and knew the monster was going to jump up and attack from above. His third eye glowed brightly as it emitted a focused beam of light, with the newly created, crystal clear water orbs worked as lenses, magnifying and reflecting the light into a scorching thin line.

“Apologies, P16.This is gonna hurt.” He adjusted the orbs and targetted the monster as it leaped into the air. Limbs were sliced off the wendigo like a disassembled mannequin. Its body thudded onto the ground. Y42’s orbs quickly encased its torso and froze it solid with his divinity.

“What a novel approach of hydromancy! ” Dolus applauded while he walked out of the shadows.

“He can grow them back, right？” Y42 frowned. “I hope he won’t be mad at me.”

“Well, eventually. He survived falling from the Bifrost, remember?” Undersized vipers slithered out of Dolus’s sleeves and approached the howling and struggling monster. “The problem is smaller if you beat him here. He won’t be just losing limbs if the Management knows about this.”

“Right. The Management never liked P16.” Y42 sighed as a gentle and compassionate would. “I only wish he can find his peace one day.”

The vipers bit the wendigo’s exposed head and neck, one was even eaten by it in the process.

“What’s the purpose. You know he is immune to all known poison and venom, right?”

“Yeah, I know. That was neither. I gave something the mortals would call ‘drug’. Now I need you to blind him with some light show to induce hypnosis.”

“This sounds awfully like an interrogation. ” Y42 unwillingly lit up his third eye and starting flashing it at the wendigo’s hollowed eyes. It only took seconds for the plan to work. The monster stopped squirming and screeching and closed its eyes peacefully.

“How does it look up there? P16 is not answering comm.” E05’s voice came through to both of them. “Are you two there yet?”

“There… was some complication. P16 was under the influence of a curse after using the necromantic skull we have stored.” Y42 was too honest to neglect any details.

“That’s not very nice,” E05 replied. “T11 should’ve never told him about its existence.”

“We have the situation under control, E05. I have contained him and soon will gain control of his mind...”

“That is NOT very nice.” E05 interrupted P16’s explanation and sounded irritated. “What did I say about reporting before acting? What did I say about meddling with others’ minds?”

“In his defense. That was the best call we could make.”

“Listen. That skull is a crown. Anything killed by the crown bearer would rise and follow the crown bearer’s will. You are looking at a potential necrophage outbreak. And guess what? We are stuck down here with tides of insectoids, and the best exterminator we got is in a coma.” E05 sighed. “The situation is not very nice. The sapiens dug too deep and awoke a hidden brood.”

Dolus removed his mask and lit up a rolled cigarette. A vice he picked up from P16.

“Uhm, Uhm.” He inhaled deeply the “The rolling paper is made of leaves of Yggdrasil, I see. And runes to boost the smoker’s psionic power, too.”

“Why do you bring that up? Does that help to solve our problem?” Y42’s confusion and nervousness were written all over his unmasked, chiseled face.

“Ge gave me this pack of mortal vice and told me to smoke them to create immersive illusions.” Taking off his mask, Dolus explained to Y42. “I believe in your honor and nobility, Yang. I’ll keep your real name confidential, and I hope you do the same for me.”

“Well, I guess I am going to start wearing masks, the midnight son of darkness, the spirit of deception.” Y42 smiled.“You are not the only perceptive one in the batch, Dolus. And your identity is safe with me.”

“It wouldn’t help, by the way. Not a lot of immortals have a third eye on their forehead and wields an odd-shaped blade.” Dolus grinned, showing his healthy but obsidian-colored teeth. “Now that I have revealed my real name, it’s time to get to work. Stay back and keep your blade up. The dead sapiens may rise and attack us, Yang.”

Dolus finished smoking and closed his eyes. Psionic abilities require immense focus and divinity, which he had acquired both.

“You named this trick and gave me the concept, P16. Now good night and have a good sleep. I’ll borrow your stinking body for a bit. ”Dolus whispered and reached out his hand to touch the wendigo’s head.

“May the sweet dreams deliver you from the nightmare and grant me access to your mind--”