“I do wonder, what wanton deeds will Mother and Father be of use of you? Oh, I crave to witness them breaking every little bone on your body… and… put you all back together Darling.~” Lysithea blithely pouted.

The Black-Winged Angel charged forth; raptorial wings unbound at blinding speeds towards the Doctor-Commander. Her Sorrowscythe’s ravenous readied to achieve more wonton acts of blissful murder.

And Lysithea’s lips fancied to taste upon Cold Iron’s blood…

Izo’s blood drafted into his veins as his instincts kicked him away from the intoxication this ‘Feast’ held. His body and mind fought both what besieged within and from without as he expelled all notions of constraining felicities from what willpower he could convoke back into himself. Feeling the Leshy’s flesh, those neighborly floral Lilliputians, he could swore he could feel their screams churn in his stomach. The Doctor-Commander wanted to disgorge those poor souls out of him, but he knows if he stays in place for a second longer, it would be his turn to be served onto the table by the horde of Vellumis’ most degenerate of freaks. His mind fell into a blur as adrenaline coursed into his muscles.

All that Cold Iron could think of was one word:

Flee

“Seize him.” Lysithea pointed her scythe forward.

Two Whispering Way Patrons hedged Izo from his front back, armed with knives yet bellies famished for naked insatiety upon the dining of living flesh.

Cold Iron crouched down to the floor and rolled himself below the table, strafing his two would-be butchers from the other side of the table.

Thanks to great strength bestowed upon him by his Vulcan Exo-Suit, Izo pushed the table with a mighty thrust, dragging both the table and the Whispering Way Cultists towards the wall. About Ten of them were pinned to the wall, their bodies stuck between the rock of the keep’s walls and their feasting table. Food, beverage, and flowers spilled into the floor of the glutinous ground as some Cultists turned their gaze from the contumacious guest to rescue the night’s feast.

“How crass!” Lysithea brusquely fretted. “I have to clean that when this is all over!”

As Izo pulled himself away, from the table only to be sidewinded by the glint of the blade drawing close to him. His unexpected assailant thrust his blade onto him, only to miss its mark by the bulwark of his armored pads from the Vulcan Suit. Knowing he is unarmed, the Doctor-Commander clenched his fist and began to swing his arms with two wild hooks. Each of their strikes crumpled the Urgathoan Cultist’s poise. The cannibalistic assailant buckled backward, his feet slipping to the ground, not helped by the spilled drinks that now wetted the floor.

The ‘Fight’ in Izo’s Flight-or-Flight instincts grabbed hold of his left leg, and with the strength of thousands of men composed into the steel hydraulics of his arm, he cleaved the Cultist’s leg. The shock of such a devastating blow knocked the reaver down, likely for good.

“He’s a wild animal!” one Cultist screamed.

Cold Iron sneered, an animal he had become, defiant to not become prey to the wicked whims of this Den of Wolves. Surrounded with no hope of escape, he was as an old adage called: a ‘cornered animal’. And that same adage continued that when it was placed into such perilous plight, this waking terror of this fight is when that animal is at its most dangerous.

“Oh my… that is… exhalatory… Darling~.” Lysithea purred as she toted her Scythe with tactile enjoyment from the death of one of her own patrons. “You got… me starving. Now I MUST taste you!”

She leaped off the table with her murderous blade at hand. Agile as a hawk readied to swoop down onto its prey with mythically furious focus. The Black-Winged Angel’s Sorrowscythe yawed its fangs forward like a puncturing lance towards Izo. Cold Iron backed away just as the blade was about to strike the position he was on. Stamina punished out of Izo’s breath as he barely dodged that attack. All of his instincts screamed at him to not take a direct hit from that heinous blade.

But the Black-Winged Murderess was a deceptively agile assaulter. She ripostes her Scythe and at the time it takes to sound a click, her Sorrowscythe modulated its structure alongside its wielding shifting her knees aback into a deft stance. Its handle became listless and rope-like, akin to chains than a staff sacrificing its strength for reach. The wicked Sorrowscythe had the uncanny ability to shift its form according to its master's will from a swift Chain and Sickle to a reaping Billhook. In blissful rapture, she began to swing her scythe into a butchery-filled dance. Striking wildly in a torrent of slaughter-hungered blades, Sorrowscythe’s fangs cut and crashed objects and fellow Cultists alike. But she did not care for the ravages and atrocities she created, what all mattered to her was the thrill of the kill.

When her Sorrowscythe tasted blood, cut through flesh or sliced down bone, Lysithea fell into a histaminic communion with Her Mother of Despair and Her Father the Tyrant. Reveling in the Bloodbath she so cruelly concocts.

“More…” she maniacally grinned as blood, wine, and fluids began to spill across her body. Daubing her snow-white body into a surreal mural depicting the mindless euphoria within the bliss of rakish massacres.

Cold Iron guarded his head high with his two arms. He weaved through Lysithea’s assaults by the skin of his teeth, taking several glancing slices from his Vulcan Armor. The terror of the fight threatened to consume him, but his indignation, his wrath of being made to consume the flesh of a living creature, even if it’s a mutant was an affront to all Nature, Law, and Moral.

The Feast Guests began to scurry away, not wanting to be caught on the now rivers of blood that were cultivated by their mistress’ reaping enfilade.

“The fight in you Darling, so strong… so vigorous!” Lysithea cooed as she retracted her Sorrowscythe. “But there are other ways we can get… Physical~.”

The Black-Winged Angel raised the pommel end of her weapon atop of her and twirled her wrists over her head. Its momentum spun in blinding speeds that when she hurled the blunted end of her Sorrowscythe towards Izo, it struck him as fast a bullet. The chains snatched themselves around his left arm. With equally inhuman strength, Lysithea yanked Izo all the way closer to her…

To the awaiting kiss of her Sorrowscythe’s edge…

Blood exhaled from the Doctor-Commander’s throat as the wicked edge of Lysithea’s weapon sank deep into his abdomen. A noxious grasp began to seep into his body. This antigen, this infection, this pallid-borne plague that had coated Lysithea’s evil blade permeated with foreordained doom that now beset his body with the susurrations of approaching death. His skin turned white as the Pallid Angel pulled away her blade as she delighted herself on Izo’s bleeding body.

“W-wha—did you do --- me?!” Cold Iron reached into his pockets and pulled out his spare Stimpack. It stopped the bleeding but not the stinging contagion that is slowly turning his body asunder.

“Don’t fight it. Enjoy it!” Lysithea jeered. She coursed her finger upon the freshly spilt blood that had wetted itself onto her skin. The Pallid Angel then gently, like a paintbrush, trailed Izo’s blood over her chest forming the image of a skull-decorated fly.

“Screw you!” Izo roared.

Using the weight of the legs of his Exo-Armor, the Doctor-Commander assaulted Lysithea with a flurry of blows from the Vulcan Armor, reinforced by the weight of thousands upon thousands of Newton Forces all powered through its large kinematic arms. With one-two-and-a-three of his strikes and more so afterward, Cold Iron bludgeoned Lysithea Sorrowscythe in his own torrent of attacks.

But as he stood there, striking each thousand-strengthened fist onto the Pallid Angel, he realized to his bewilderment that Lysithea wasn’t even bothering to attempt to defend nor avoid his attacks. Instead, she stood there stoically taking each blow without a care for her wellbeing. Not when her teeth were sent flying off her mouth, not when bruises bled forth from her skin or her bones fractured outwards of her.

Fatigued into near exhaustion, his abeyant body more accustomed to the reins of a Control Room than on the battlefield, Cold Iron reeled himself back. Unnerved yet still unwavering.

“Are you trying to tell me… you can only last… THIS Long?” Lysithea mocked him.

“Die!” Izo screamed. He redoubled his attacks. Once more he struck Lysithea, but once again, each of his attacks didn’t even show a hint of genuinely damaging her in any significant form.

She stood there, arms wide open, uncaring of what bodily harm was sent her way just as much as how she lacked the compunction to use her Sorrowscythe against even her own cultish followers.

He was doing as much damage as punching a seven-foot and two-hundred-pound feather pillow with what he is doing now.

“That… hurts… SO WELL…” Lysithea smiled through with broken teeth and bleeding gums as if the strike didn’t even hurt at all to her. She may have been bruised and even one of her teeth fell out yes from Izo’s hook but she gave off a disquieting glee through the reddening of her jaw.

Just as swiftly she braced for his feeble attempts of reprisals, the damages and bruises inflicted slowly healed to their once immaculately pearlescent texture.

“What are you!?” the Doctor-Commander shrieked, his breath going heavy as he realized just how useless his fisticuffed offensive was demonstrated on the Black-Winged Angel’s candid

“Urgathoa’s Blessings my darling! I HARDEN whenever I see, feel or experience any kind of pain.” She maniacally smirked. “You cannot hurt me Izo. But I do find your puny attempts… arousing~”

“You… You…” Izo fumbled in between his breaths. He attempted to punch her once again but all of the strength he can muster was one frail jab that the Pallid Angel grappled easily with her sin-drunk hands.

“Perhaps I might have taken things too quickly for you Darling~. How about… let’s say… we slip o-ourselves into something m-m-much m-m-more… comfortable Outworlder~?” Lysithea purred as she glided his hand across her breasts sensually, making sure each of Izo’s fingers caressed her prurient cupidity. Whether Izo would consent to so or not.

This woman, this creature had impossibly shrugged off the weight of thousands of newtons produced forth from his Exo-Suit’s Arms. Lysithea defied all earthly logic that he knows of. Izo’s brain renumerated his situation once again. This time at a much more half-lighted calculation than he amply prefer to be of what state of mind.

All that Doctor-Commander could draw, however, was one word:

Flee

Izo’s head spiraled desperately for a way out. The beleaguered Doctor-Commander marked two avenues of escape. The Main Door he came from at his back was sprawling with the Whispering Way Cultists, the sooner will be dog-piled to death by their numbers. Especially for the fact he is still wounded and bleeding. He wasn’t confident that his Engineering Suit can take on so many of them at once. There was, however, much to his fret, the Kitchen Door to his left. It would likely take him deeper into the Keep however as he tries to juke his way out of Lysithea and her hordes of sycophants but it was a much better chance of his survival he forecasted than trying to leave from the front door. He could only count on right now if there is a solace beneath everything betiding, H.E.N.R.I.’s threat assessments may be able to realize the disarrayed residents of Vellumis that are fleeing out of or charging into the Keep will trigger his Contingency Protocols.

To break Lysithea’s gaze for the split second he needs to flee, Izo grabbed a goblet of wine near him and splattered its contents into her face. With the Black-Winged Angel momentarily stunned, the Doctor-Commander made a break for the Kitchen’s door.

“Don’t let him get away!” the brazen colossal Lysithea wiped the wine off of her face, but not before swirling her tongue of its sweet taste.

The Whispering Way Cultists that managed to survive their mistresses’ bloodbath rallied to her side, carrying knives, forks, and other sharp implements. They howled fervently as the Hunt begins.

Crashing into the Kitchen Door, Izo sealed the portal towards the Feasting Hall by crashing down several large pot-pangled cupboards and a cast iron stove as a barricade. Yet his pursuers were undaunted, already several of the cultists barred from the other side began to brandish Axes to chisel the wood off from the door little by little. Lysithea herself, using her conquering limbs was already splintering the door with each mighty thrust.

“Feast for the maggots!” one of the cooks, an emaciated yet ferally individual of skin as white as a funerary corpse, raised his Butcher’s Cleaver fresh of the blood of Leshen red, green, and purple corpuscles.

Izo caught the Butcher’s Cleaver quickly with his Exo-Suit’s claws. Extending the ghoulish man’s arm out he chopped them off ferociously.

Izo wheezed his breath at such an exertion, he was already losing wind from his lungs but he knew he couldn’t stop now. With a clumsy and exhaustive force of fortitude, Izo pushed the next door across the Kitchen…

Only for him to coarsely fall down upon a flight of stairs leading to a cold and dark larder.

“It’s the Outlander!” one of the imprisoned Villagers from Crossfen that Mama Sopas and Lysithea had mentioned, a Leshy of twisting vines wrapped with evergreen leaves.

Izo palmed his wobbling head as his eyes bore witness to what evil this underground basement was. Leshies, over at least a dozen of them, locked and boxed like enslaved beasts waiting to be slaughtered. Only a singular light from a small window that peaked above to the surface was the only source of illumination and of tantalizing salvation.

“Help us!” another Leshy, a flowery folk of white petals reached out of his pen.

More of the Leshies edged towards the end of their coops and began to reach out between the creaks of their foreboding cages that kept them away from freedom. Their tiny little hands reached out towards the Doctor-Commander. Seeing all of those souls, those huddled masses that yearned to live free. It struck old memories within Izo. Memories of the loss of his home, his exile… all of the pain he saw come from his family and friends back in Houston erupted forth into him. His blood boiled as his mind raced to transact all of these pains, fears, and doubts within himself. But all he could conjure was white blanks.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!!!” Izo pulled his hair and manically sweated. Tears streamed over his eyes as his anguish was pushed to the breaking point.

The wretched refuse of his last ‘meal’ flowed upwards to his throat as Izo reconstituted the fleshed bits of a once living, talking, and amiable creature onto the larder’s stone floor.

“Master!” H.E.N.R.I. happened to chance himself upon the said small window.

Leaning over his toes, Izo looked towards the blank camera eyes of his mechanical manservant, having his weapon Hammer-Gap in hand. The window was too small however for Izo to grab off his weapon from his faithful companion

“What is happening, I heard a commotion and several of the villagers hav---” H.E.N.R.I. inquired.

“They are fucking cannibals! Those sick fucks!” Izo gagged, wiping away the vomit from his mouth.

“They ar---”

“All of them! H.E.N.R.I. listen to me. Do NOT trust Lysithea. I repeat, do NOT trust her.” Izo screamed. “Take Hammer-Gap with you and run away back to Three Pines. You need to warn Mama Sopas and Myrmidon about Vellumis.”

“What about you Master?”

“I will try to find my way out of here and meet you there,” Izo instructed. “Above all else, Lysithea must not be allowed anywhere close to the Bunker. She cannot have the Myrmidons.”

“He’s over there! Don’t let him escape through the other side!” the Whispering Way Cultists shouted as they broke through the kitchen barricade.

“Go!” Izo turned away from the window.

Hoisting himself once again, Izo turned away from the imprisoned Leshies and ran off.

The Larder had a second entrance on the other side of the large basement. Already more of the Vellumites sickening secrets were revealed to him. Corpses, skeletons and other macabre articles of some reverent showmanship were abounded in this darkest of dungeons all for Izo’s eyes to see in raw and gruesome details. He quivered to think just how long Lysithea and her demonic ilk had practiced such depraving indulgencies. This ‘Mother Urgathoa’ and ‘Father Tar-Baphon’ she speaks highly about were the peak of barbarity, even more so than the Rangers and their decadent Democratic Institutions.

The maze of relics was so easy to be lost in. Cleverly, however, Izo noticed that there was a line of lit torches that dotted the walls. Izo reasoned, that if he followed these lights, he should perhaps eventually find an exit off this horrible place.

As he gained distance from his pursuers, Lysithea Sorrowscythe laughed excitingly, her legs wettening at such a death-defiant prey. The fight on such eyes was the sweetest of tastes for an august murderess such as herself. And she couldn’t wait for the joyous apogee of seeing such fire in Izo’s eyes fade away as she sinks Sorrowscythe’s fangs onto his heart. The despair, the pain the anguish was honey to her sadomasochistic idiosyncrasies.

The blood she had drawn from Izo earlier was still fresh. Already she can scent the occasional drops of his essence spilling to the floor, giving her an inexact notion of where her ‘Darling’ had scampered-scurried off to. Years of hunting down so many selections of ‘Game’ for her feasts were her specialty.

“Even as we fight, you continue to both intrigue and disappoint me Izo.” Lysithea coyly skipped around the embellished halls of the reliquary. “One you oh so almost willingly wished to partake in our Whispered Truths. Yet at the very first sight of what price you must pay, you cowered, you rejected our gifts! I thought you wanted to live forever? To never see, feel, or witness pain ever again?”

Izo quietly tossed several small-handed trinkets he managed to swipe away from him to draw her attention. Lysithea turned her gaze quickly at the source of the sound, gliding her Amazonian frame carefully towards its source. However, she only finds that, like a wounded animal that desperately clings to its life, the Doctor-Commander eludes her predations.

“The Spirit of yours is willing but your flesh, so weak!” she frustratingly bisected a bookshelf. “The need to sleep? To eat! No. Your time can be better spent with me… together we could have truly brought all of Golarion into the new age: An Age of Serenity! Your intelligence with my fervor? We would have been… perfect together.”

Lysithea once more swung her Sorrowscythe at her perfect collection. Tearing down the precious relics of past triumphs to dust and rubble.

“But you threw it all away! For an Onion!? A talking Onion!” she grated over Izo’s rejection.

“Perhaps… you are too much trouble than I have anticipated.” She curled her lips and wrinkled her nose after seeing so many of her precious relics of hers be tossed away like broken toys. Brandishing her Sorrowscythe, the Black-Winged Angel curt her gaze forward amidst the maze to hunt down her prey.

The Doctor-Commander, hidden amongst the blocks of precious items lay feverishly as he waited for an opening. He just needed to get away from her and he could be able to make a break for that window. But the wound on his abdomen continues to devour his body in its cancerous growth. Already a sickly pallid plague began to enrapture his body as multiple choirs within his body clashed on keeping this new infectious disease away or escaping the tyrannical grasps from its malefactor.

“Got too… lure them away from me…” Izo grabbed hold of a particular relic, a clay jar that had traces of blood dropping below from its neck. Atop its cap lay a skull with horns pointed downwards. It’s grisly visage invoked the same macabre aura that Izo now knows that Lysithea loves to exuberate. If he can recall from the history books he would often read back at Houston, these are called Canopic Jars. Said to house the preserved organs of fallen folks of significant note.

The Doctor-Commander couldn’t help but wonder, what is so significant the previous owner of whatever organ preserved in the Canopic Jar would a cabal of cannibals would store? He didn’t have time to process an answer unfortunately as Izo felt the cold sting of a blade pierce him from the back. His fingers were mortified, still grasping the Jar as he fell down to the ground as he saw his murderer with blood-soaked eyes.

Lysithea Sorrowscythe had found him.

“That’s it Darling…” Lysithea dug her heels onto Izo’s throat. Triumphantly letting out an orgasmic laugh as the light in Izo’s eyes faded. “Enjoy this last moment, ‘Last Pioneer’. I have so many ideas what I can do to your body tom--- by Abbadon’s Maws...”

The Pallid’s Angel froze as her eyes were lured away to the Canopic Jar that Izo held. It began to glow to life. A faint hum reverberated into her ears. Those Ears jaded through orchestras of scurrilous music, depraved screams, and ingratiatory adulations, felt an emotion that blasé Urgathoan had not felt in her impetuous pursuit for earthly gratifications:

Compunction, the lexeme that the most astute epicurean abhors above all else.

The Skull-shaped canopic jar glowed blinding red. A divine, a truly divine glow as its imprisoned contents tasted Izo’s blood…

A beating Heart emerged from the Canopic Jar. Its cadence heralded the renaissance of winds: Serene yet Audacious.

“Awake... I am.”

The sadistic smile eroded from what should have been another fleeting felicity for the voluptuary Lysithea. Instead, the Pallid Angel let a loathsome gasp, stepping away from Izo’s corpse. She recognized that voice. She could only watch and curse her own over-indulgences as the Heart fused itself into Cold Iron’s chest. Its radiant light emblazoned her dark eyes.