83rd of Ash, 4621
'Break it in half,' commanded his mind to the Construct across the broken earth. There it stood, staring at the pile of broken bodies it had gathered. Arkash stared intently at the ragged femur that stuck jaggedly from the pile and tried to force the bile construct to break it without so much as a word.
No such action came from the construct, but it did look at the bone, then look to Arkash. That was to say that Arkash imagined that the Construct looked at him; the golem-like mass of blood had no features to speak of; no eyes; no definition at all. Arkash curled his nose, then kicked through some of the dried foliage that jutted from the cracks in the earth. "It doesn't work," he spoke with a dark twist to his tone, a mixture of disappointment and violent frustration.
"You did it once before," the mage reminded as he crossed his arms. "Maybe you're going about it the wrong way? What were you thinking when the golem started picking up the bodies?"
A roll of his eyes followed "I wanted it to move the bodies," he explained, then furrowed his brow. "...I didn't even tell it to do that."
Raphael snapped his fingers at the Rath. "So maybe it only listens to what you want?" Raphael leaned back a little and put a foot forward to help with balance. "Try wanting something, see what happens?"
Arkash had caught that same thing at around the time Raphael had. Maybe desire was the key? But how would that help him? An exhale through his nose accompanied a light shake of his head, and he looked about the wasteland. What did he want from there, that the golem could bring him? He spied the shrubbery, the trees, some pale blue flowers, some rocks, pieces of weapons...
The golem began to move, and Arkash blinked as it drunkenly wobbled its undulating legs toward one direction of the wasteland. Arkash almost couldn't believe it was moving, let alone doing something he wished of it. Raphael stared with just as much intrigue from beneath the eyeholes of his mask as the Bile Construct passed him, then bent down in an inhuman fashion to collect a handful of those flowers.
Arkash furrowed his brow as the Construct drew near, and Raphael smiled with an open mouth under his mask. "...Flowers?" The noble asked as the construct reached over, and dropped the plants in Arkash's open claw. "You wanted flowers... Are you kidding me?"
The rathor rolled his eyes. "I thought they looked nice, okay."
Was the noble really about to challenge him over something like that? What did it matter if the color blue struck his fancy at a given second? It didn't define him, and it wasn't as though he'd looked at those flowers with any real desire to pick them up. Was it really so wrong to enjoy something?
Arkash curled his claws around those flowers and crushed them in his grasp. In that same instance, the golem turned around and began its awkward trudge on a b-line for Raphael. Raphael's smile dropped, and he took a step back.
Lost in his anger, Arkash hadn't even noticed until Raphael called, and drew his attention to the violet weave that wrapped around his construct. Raphael was nailing it in place, restricted by the weight of his weave. "Lizard!" Raphael called. "You need to want something else, right now!"
Arkash blinked. For just a moment, he'd wanted to shut Raphael up very forcefully. The Construct took that to heart, it seemed. "...I-" He shook his head, still angry. "I don't know how to stop it." He supposed he didn't really want it to stop, either.
"Use your words!" Raphael yelled again as the construct tried its hardest to push through and scraped the dirt with its feet as it tried to reach its mark.
That was right, Verbal overrides did seem to work... But again, he didn't really want to stop the Construct. Arkash crossed his arms while he stood there, and his excuse of not knowing how to stop the construct was forfeit as just that: an excuse.
"ARKASH!" The noble barked, still draining his ether on the weave.
"...Stop," he called at last, and the golem stopped. Raphael let it go, then took a moment to breathe after the exertion. "Come here," he followed up the command. The construct, which was otherwise still staring down the Veir turned on the spot and began to walk back toward him. it appeared to look over its shoulder as it returned to the rathor, staring down what the rathor truly wanted in those moments.
"Good," Raphael spoke over his quickened breath. "You came to your senses." Raphael's eyes watched the Rathor as his claws let go of the crushed flowers, and dropped them to the floor. "...Anyway. I think we're ready for the next ability. This will be a bomb; a rather messy bomb... Very large. Let's start by sharpening the Bile Construct's arms," he declared. How convenient it was for Raphael that he could change the subject so freely. It didn't hurt that Arkash was keen to learn more of his abilities.
Still iffy on forgiving the noble, Arkash hardened the golem's arms from the elbow down with sway, then pressed an edge along the blade of the forearm before he cast suffuse to sharpen it. At that point, he was completely out of his blight. Everything spent on his abilities from there on was his own Ether. "...Am I exploding this guy?" He spoke in reference to his Construct.
"...No," replied the Veir, who brushed off the lower parts of his cloak. "So the ability is commonly known as 'Living Bomb'... As the name implies, we need some sort of host for the ability to work..." Raphael motioned to one of the bound Druskai that were tied to the four pillars, the one furthest from the others. Arkash pursed his lips. "I think I heard this one volunteer," the Veir spoke with a crude laugh.
He looked to his crossed arms for a moment, then looked at the golem with a glance of his yellow eyes. "...Okay, so what do I do?" He asked with a tap of his foot claws.
"First, let's move your golem closer. We'll need it for the setup."
Arkash gave a shrug, then motioned his head beside the bound Druskai. "Move over there," he spoke a verbal command.
Raphael furrowed one brow under his mask, and it reflected in his voice with a slight smile. "You don't have to waste your breath, just think your commands," the man offered with a turn of his hand, gesturing to the golem.
"...Well maybe I want to waste my breath," Arkash offered in turn with the beginnings of an annoyed frown. "What next?"
Raphael tilted his head back inquisitively after that stroke of rebellion. "I see..." He spoke as if to prompt more from the Rathor. Arkash didn't take the bait. "...You want to cast an ether leech around the elf first," he explained.
"Then?" Arkash followed with little patience.
"Then cut the elf to leech its blood," the noble returned quickly, without a moment of hesitation.
A deep exhale left his lungs as he turned to face the elf, then wove an ether leech around him. Stillness followed, and Arkash stared long and hard at the bound elf, who tried so desperately against his bindings to get away from the construct. He tried to make the Bile Construct attack the man, to cut him open and expose his blood to the leech, but no such movement came. His eyes narrowed as he tried to force it... to no avail.
"...Well?" Raphael asked, a curl of spit in his tone.
"Cut him," Arkash ordered. The golem lifted its sharpened arms, and cut two lacerations through the Druskai's chest, above the ropes. The man screamed into his gag, Arkash could smell the blood and the tears downwind. The Druskai's wounds wept in tandem with his eyes, and the layer of ether that surrounded him steadily drank from those gashes. "Now what?"
The mage was quiet for a moment, tapping his foot while his tongue clicked. "...You have to somehow put the blood as blight, back inside it," Raphael explained at last. "The blight will be the bomb, reacting with the rest of the hosts' blood to cause a chain reaction and explode dramatically."
So that was what Raphael had meant when he said that they needed a host. Not to extract material from, but to build into a bomb. That was to say that the Druskai was going to die. He sighed, knowing that his next action would waste yet another life.
