Chapter 153 – An unexpectedly warm welcome.

Just a few hours later, John walked down the stairs of the bunker. His mind was sharp, focused on his goal: to save Rave. One after another the elemental girls materialized. Gnome appeared first, “Finally we are back,” she said with a smile, “let’s hope what we did pays off, and don’t lose your patience down there.”

“I won’t,” John promised. The stone elemental hesitated for a moment and then kissed him on the cheek, blushing and then quickly retreating to the rear of the group.

“Man, I remember bathing this staircase in fire,” Salamander said as she suddenly started floating next to his head, lying in the air, arms folded behind her head. “Sadly, that wasn’t very effective then,” she complained, “but now we will reduce that bloody bitch to cinders.”

“I want to hear her story first,” John told Salamander. “Maybe she does have a good reason after all.”

“You do you, I am just ready to do what I want to do,” Salamander cackled.

Sylph flew around his head a couple of times, “Last few weeks were great, I got sex, I got gummy bears, I am now a concubine, and really strong – and and even faster, like, all is super dandy,” she blabbered, “I really hope you won’t let it end here, I want to have a lot more fun and unlike Sally I really think that maybe we can find a fun solution.”

“I hope so too,” John agreed.

Undine finally appeared at his side and they walked (or flowed) side by side. The mending elemental had no words for John, only the determination that matched his: To do what they needed to do.

“This is what we trained for, Master,” Aclysia whispered, the broken, bloodstained floor at the bottom coming into view. “Are you feeling ready?”

“Not really, no,” John said.

“Maybe you could have made a bit more room for training if you had spent less time sleeping,” Mono drily commented from the back.

Aclysia sent her a reprimanding gaze. “Our bedroom activities were fundamental for morale and concentration.”

“…If you say so,” Mono gave in.

John sighed, his new Artificial Spirit wasn’t exactly wrong, probably, but Aclysia was definitely correct. Not that this moment was the time to deliberate such things.

They all fell silent, while a soft cackling echoed up from the room below. After a month’s worth of training John planted his feet on the fateful red carpet and entered the main hall of the former Bloodfallen base.

He was surprised to find out how little of the vision the Fear Eater had shown him was true. There was only a single corpse around, every other one had been removed from the bloodstained carpet. The room had been mostly cleaned of human innards or other such disgusting things. Even the walls had been scrubbed clean. The smell of rot, however, had settled into the walls.

The one corpse that was around however lay right next to Thana. The pale woman’s body was sitting cross legged, one of the black cloaks of the Bloodfallen tossed over her naked body. They were much too large for her, spread out on the ground like a blanket.

John mustered the body, it was a man of sturdy build in a military uniform of brown, with red lines along the edges. He even wore a fitting hat, the soviet star in the middle. ‘Guess I know who that guy belonged to,’ John thought and turned his attention to Thana. 

The pale girl was giggling without pause. It sounded forced, as if she was tearing the joy out of her soul in small chunks. “There you are, there you fucking are,” she said, her voice a melody as broken as the facets of her amethyst eyes. “I would applaud you but I need one of my hands to choke this bitch.”

Thana shifted her weight and it was only then that John realized she was sitting on something. A forceful tug at the spread-out robe, and she revealed Rave’s head.

John felt his calm compromise when he saw his girlfriend. The four scars along her neck were not even the grimmest reminder of the pain she must have gone through these last couple of days. Her face was covered in blemishes, surprisingly slight all things considered, and her hair had gone from its usual bright pink to a washed out white. Nevertheless, her blue eyes were wide open and alive, despite the obvious pain she was in they seemed to beg John to save himself. Any words she wanted to speak out were silenced by the blood claws digging into her skin.

“These did a good job,” Thana said and tossed John the Gloves of Rejuvenation, they were torn to the point that John couldn’t even get any sensible information out of Observe. Familiarity was all that kept them recognizable. “For the longest time anyway, they ripped apart in our, what was the fucking number, seizure hands?” Thana paused, contemplating the rhetorical question with a giggle. “15th fucking fight? Got to hand it to her, she’s a vital set of holes. Shame I had to repeatedly tear new ones into her.”

“I thought you wanted to fight me?” John said while keeping his eyes locked with her. The shattered lavender of her iris shifted; the golden dots inside slowly rotated.

Then, suddenly, violently, the laughter she had been keeping to a giggle burst out. Her legs kicked the air, her wide hips balanced on Rave’s back, and while she laughed at the ceiling, her hand pawed at one of the black dots all over her body. From start to finish, her delight sounded tormented.

“Of course I wanna do that, you palm fucker, but I am so fucking done with these!” She clawed at the object, embedded into her. A hissing inhale ended her laughter, the mad smile dropping into a visage of pure hate. “Remove these.” She sounded too tired to make either demand or request. “She wouldn’t do it because I didn’t have a hostage. EVEN THOUGH!” Thana’s voice suddenly rose into a scream. Bowed over Rave, she yelled, sending spit flying from her perfect white teeth. “I TOLD YOUR CHIEF BITCH REPEATEDLY THAT IT WON’T EVEN MAKE ME STRONGER!”

“You will have to excuse us if we don’t believe you after killing our allies,” John carefully pushed back, while approaching.

“I’m sorry…” Thana mumbled, when he stopped in front of her. She looked up and suddenly he realized again how small she actually was. Big eyes blinked against the light of the chandelier. “I’m sorry… I’m so… so…”

John noticed her mood swing back in the sudden anger in her eyes. Before he knew it, she had grabbed his shirt and pulled him down. There was no intent to harm in the gesture, somehow, evident by Mana Protection not activating. She genuinely just wanted him closer.

“Give me a break, you moral fuckwit,” she hissed in his face. “I was in jolly old agony for about 2,270,592,000 seconds and YES I fucking calculated that, because I could – do – nothing – else. Pain and the inability to feel even as much as loathing about my own situation. EXCUSE ME if I was A BIT LIVID after getting my pale ass out of the agony chamber.” Thana pushed him away, then started coughing into both of her hands. John spied rivulets of blood oozing out between her fingers.

‘Maybe I can…’ John prepared to strike, while the agony still held Thana in its grip.

The blood turned into a stream that winded through the air. Quicker than John could react, it grew towards and stopped dead in front of Rave’s eyes. A thin streak, like a worm ending in a thorn, just hovering there, keeping John at bay.

Finally, she stopped and giggled tiredly. “Don’t even try, I hold the cards here, you absolute dumbass.” Drops of blood that ran down her chin followed an unnatural path over her naked skin. All the way to the tip of her fingers, the crimson flowed, where it became part of her fingernails and vanished. “Whew, constantly bleeding into my lungs is great fun, I tell you.” Her wide smile turned sour, her voice into a growl. “Want to try too?”

“Why aren’t you removing these things yourself?” John asked, just to buy time. The puncture wounds on Rave’s neck were closing. The reason why was obvious, even if John preferred not to think about it.

“Oh, wow, what a great fucking suggestion – ‘CAUSE I OBVIOUSLY CAN NOT YOU SKULLFUCKING IDIOT!” Thana seemed to want to say more to him, but her attention was suddenly gripped by something to her left. “I DON’T KNOW WHO ELIZA IS NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP EVERYONE!”

There was no one there. “Who are you talking to?”

“Just the faces all around the floor. Ignore me. Instead, listen to me and pull these fucking nails out,” the maniac girl started out warmly but ended the sentence with a pissed off tone. “Be useful.”

“Why can’t you remove them yourself though?” John probed further, he not only wanted to wait as long as possible for the fight to happen but was also genuinely curious.

He managed to catch her in a talkative mood swing. “I have a thing in my head that keeps me from doing it.”

“You can’t do it because you are insane?”

“NO, you smug prick, I have a literal something in my brain that messes with my body,” Thana visibly resisted the urge to gouge John’s eyes out. Her face was a grimace of pure anger, then it relaxed and she cackled. “Khehehe, but what the fuck would you know, just pull these things out please and start with this one,” she pointed at one left of her collarbone.

John inspected what he was tasked to tug at. It was a flat piece of metal, like the head of a nail. As John, with shock and disgust, realized, using the word ‘like’ was superfluous. When he pulled at it, bloody metal became visible. The flesh around it moved with it, testifying just how deep and entrenched the nail was.

“Oh for fuck’s sake – JUST RIP IT OUT!” Thana screamed at the ceiling, then continued in a whimper. “Please just get it out, please, I can’t stand this anymore. It’s too much.” John hesitated until the blood mage sighed and gripped Rave’s throat again. “Do – it.”

John took a deep breath and entered the calm state of mind that he had lost when he had seen Rave. He exhaled and at the same moment ripped the nail out.

Blood sprayed from the frayed flesh.

“DUPA! KURWA!” Thana cursed and bit into her own hand until her white teeth were also stained with crimson. A mere distraction, likely, compared to the gap in her collar. John looked at the thing in his hand. The nail was a disgusting tool, ten centimetres long and covered in barbs.

“That’s the good pain,” Thana giggled while John was staring at the item description. This explained why he couldn’t Observe her, it created another question however. Josef Mengele, that wasn’t a Soviet at all. That was the mad scientist who had conducted experiments on humans in the concentration camp of Auschwitz.

“Who made you?” John asked.

“No-hoho, you answer one of my questions for a change,” Thana giggled, the hole in her chest now quickly closing. “Did you really think selling me to the Shark-Week of the Proletariat would work?”

“It was an accident. I looked for people who would help me prepare for today and told them your name. How they found out you were here is not clear to me,” John truthfully said. “Although it couldn’t have been too hard to connect the dots, even when I wasn’t around.”

“Okay,” Thana shrugged it off. “Oh well, at least you sent me some bloodbags that deserved it.”

“Why are you that bent on killing people in your last days?” John asked and moved onto the second nail. She had a dozen of those in her body, the pain must have been incredible.

“First of all, communists aren’t people. AT BEST, they’re suicide victims,” Thana responded with matter-of-fact dryness. “Moving on, John Birdbrain, I cannot FEEL unless I do and I want to die feeling SOMETHING, even if it is just regret,” Thana told him. John was about to ask another question when Thana groaned, “Shut the fuck up, I will just tell you everything. Not like I have anything better to do right now, you just be a good little nail puller and I will tell you the story of my life. Sound good?!”

“Sure,” John agreed, and exchanged a glance with his still silent girlfriend. “Could you let Jane go?”

“No, if I don’t ‘fight’ something, I become a vegetable. Send your complaints for this trainwreck of a clusterfuck to the butcher, this is not my fault… it’s not my fault.” She repeated it a few more times, quietly, as the second nail was ripped out of her. “Get ready for cruelty and a lot of blood, through which I will GREATLY enjoy your dumbass face going through all sorts of sorry expressions,” Thana stared with a wide grin. It was a little less tormented now, but the underlying instability was still apparent.

“My first memory is inside a blank chamber,” Thana began her tale. “The walls in front of me were just black, grey stone. I couldn’t turn as I was bound by arms and feet to the ceiling and floor. I could barely move my head thanks to the shackle around my neck and the tube down my throat. The only thing that broke the monotony of the silent room was the steel door at the edge of my vision. That and the pain.

The pain that tore apart my soul as I was left alone – as voices filled my mind. The pain of the tube rammed into my throat that occasionally forced food into me. The pain of the rusty shackles that chafed open my skin. The pain of my joints screaming for rest. The pain of being alone… all alone…

There were all kinds of pain… and it just got worse from there.”