A New Life in the Wastes of Madness
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2022 10:52 am
Glade 30th, 4622
Clawed mitts clutched brown, weathered paper.
A letter, from the lizard that gave him boiling blood.
A letter, from the lizard that trailblazed his descent.
A letter, from that troublesome Arkash.
It was getting hard to be numb. Ambitions dashed, Vesper fled the Brotherhood of Scaeva once he learned of a rogue servitor operating against him, the betrayal cutting deep at his trust. When next he felt the call to return to Amoren and conduct an initiation, he ignored those summons.
Then, he had a dream . . . and he awoke a different person. His features were more weathered now, aged from toil and the seething corruption within his veins. None of the physical scars remained, but the loss of being Corvo brought him down from some great height. No longer did he have boundless motivation and desire, no longer were his ambitions being magnified by some petulant god. He understood this now, from the outside, in its entirety.
And as much as it hurt, he was thankful.
Such vague directions, Arkash gave him. From Rustbucket, east so many kilometers... an indeterminate amount of time, landmarks and clues. In this scorching desert. Holding a crimson colored cloak tight to his person, Vesper shielded himself beneath that red cowl below the baking sun, the blistering hot earth shimmering in the far distance.
Then, he heard a familiar sound.
Engines.
That gentle whirring faded into his ears, the hum of cantankerous whirly-tracks beating the sand in unison. A band of three, and they were gunning right for him. As metallic helms of polished scrap gleamed beneath the sun, Vesper bent his knees and set his pack and briefcase upon the ground.
Testing me, hm?
Vesper knew they were out for blood when he saw the jagged, crude clubs of twisted metal sweeping out from the sides of those two-wheelers. A hundred meters. Eighty. Sixty. Raising his chin, he leered at them down the bridge of his nose, then envisioned the Weave, spreading it out in a fine shimmer across the wastes in front of him. As those tires struck the translucent-purple folds of space, he thrust his mind forward upon it, reeling backwards.
The tires and screeching metal raised, the riders falling forwards. They spun out of control, guided towards him by the surging Weave. Each metal vehicle crashed together in front of him, nuts and bolts flying in all direction. The riders didn't have time to scream before their helmets clacked together, all but one of the three laying motionless in the waste as the wreckage of their bikes lay strewn about.
One was already crawling forward, shudders and whimpers breaking the silence of the wastes. Stunned, from hitting the earth, but not so wounded. Vesper stalked closer and leaned down to kick away the man's broken gun, disarming him further of every knife and tool upon his belt without a word.
The Raider turned over, breathing hollow through his helmet as he held up his fingerless-gloved hands. "Wasn' my idea," he crowed, his voice trembling at the seams. "You gonna snuff me too?"
"Take off your helmet," Vesper finally said. "And don't try anything, or I won't hesitate to leave you bleeding a slow death. If I swatted you lot like flies, just imagine what I can do when I'm pissed off." He turned his attention to the wreckage paw cupped beneath his elbow as he stroked his whiskers in thought.
Behind him, the man grunted, sweat-glistening face exposed to the harsh sun as that fully visored helm clattered uselessly. "The Anointed are gonna kill you for this."
"Oh, I'm sure," Vesper rasped without looking back. "They can try, but I have other plans." He pointed to the wreckage, to those dead bodies laying face-down at odd angles, unmoving. "You know your scrap. Start disassembling those two vehicles—the frame in that one is still good. We'll be replacing anything that's broken." The sun was beginning to set, casting a gloomy purple haze over them. "We work beneath the shadow of the night sky."
Bending over a body, Vesper fished the tool belt from it, tossing the wrench at the man's lap. "Get to work, scrapper," he leered. "Show me your value. Maybe I won't sell you to the Raiders at Rustbucket."
"Oh, no, no, no. Fuck." The man hissed, clutching the wrench. He hobbled for the two bikes and moved upon them while Vesper continued looting, amassing a pile of broken equipment.
Two busted flintlocks, a musket with the barrel snapped but the triggering mechanism otherwise intact, another wrench, a smith hammer, and all the screws and bolts he could find. Indicating different piles to his conscript, the parts only grew in number over time, and Vesper had the frame that would be his new Chariot broken down to just its drivetrain, steering, and core components.
He worked quickly, coordinating with the man to lift so he could squeeze on the bolts where they needed to be. Fond memories bled into his mind from another life he'd long left behind . . . why did he never return? This place was never beneath him, this world of savagery and rusted technology.
The bald fellow with a ring-pierced nose peered at his work from several feet away. "You from Rustbucket?" he groused. "Ain't never seen someone work that fast without a blueprint."
"I've built many Chariots," Vesper sighed. "My loyalty is not with that group, but I was once a member before I left," he explained, banging out a metal panel for the front end. He picked up a piece from the pile, then scowled. "All three of the intake manifolds are ruptured. I won't be able to move air through the Wurmblood engine without…" He lifted his chin, then glanced at the dead body.
"Yeah, we gonna part ways now, or?" mumbled the man.
"Oh no, I'm keeping you," Vesper laughed as he drove a knife into one of the corpse's clothing. "Why would I let you go?" Slicing down through the back, his knife sawed through, the sopping crimson bubbling up upon the small of the spine like a natural, sloping bowl that wouldn't spill.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever man, so long as I'm still breathin' . . . that's some fucked up shit you're doing. You a Necromancer?" asked the enslaved man.
"Yes, and so much more~" Vesper smiled. With the manifold next to him, he extended his paw over the pool of red and wiggled his fingers, eyes glazing over as he felt the blood begin to sing back to his mind, like little nerve endings that were dull from a lack of use. He wasn't so skilled as to make something so complex, but he knew simple geometry might suffice.
The blood began to swirl, a slow ring forming in the basin. Vesper touched it with his claw, swirling as he Leeched it slowly, extruding the Blighted crimson turned solid as one would shape clay. The gleaming tube began to take shape, fraught with irregularities yet wholly suitable for Vesper's purposes. Setting his claw to the tube, he shaped a simple set of holes into the 'neck' of the tube before tapering it off ever so slightly.
When the tube was finished, Vesper smiled over his creation. Paw dripping with smears and utterly stained with that deep, dark hue, he lifted the still-dripping component and used the heavier end to smack off the twisted bit of barely hanging metal from the manifold before pushing his component snugly into place.
Hammering a metal punch through the edges of the tubing, he then screwed two more rivets between them. He held it up to the light of the fading sky; "the manifold is mostly fine now," he stated.
"That is some whack-ass magery-fucking-shit, man," huffed the human. "You didn't—wow, parts from fuckin' blood? You gotta teach me how to do that."
"The odds of surviving a Blood Magic initiation are slim," he told the Raider as he jiggered the manifold into the engine compartment, the socket wrench he'd finessed from these idiots rattling away at a steady pace.
"I'm rolling with the wrong crew, clearly. That's ice cold." He squatted down, then really got into helping Vesper. "I'm Ham Sandwich," he said.
To give a man purpose, and truth within his life... but this man? THIS man?
Do I really want his loyalty? Or is he a cow?
Vesper blinked, then looked at him. "Not anymore. New name."
"Uhh, Melon Slice."
Vesper scowled with disgust. "Do you only think of food? Are you ill?"
The man's voice quieted down. "I'm a cook, a runaway slave who used to cook for a Valran…"
"Then be an unappealing dish. These are the Badlands. Not reservations to satisfy Pier Prairie Pauper's Prancing Palate," he sighed, screwing in another plate.
"Whiskey?"
"Overdone. Think . . . expired."
"Ah." Ham Sandwich touched his chin. "Spoiled cake."
Vesper didn't answer.
"Spit-in-your-food, no-"
"Pie Thrower!"
"Dead Meat."
"About to be," Vesper agreed with a snort. "You have no talent with poetry, I'm afraid. You should give up on a food name and choose something simple without such complicated meaning."
The man seemed to quake in his boots at the thought, shuffling his heel through the dirt. "You know, someone called me Hazel once, like hazelnut."
"Hazel." Vesper's hammer rattled through the night. "I like the sound of that."
"Hazel," Hazel repeated. "Hazel. Hazel."
"Hazardous Hazel," nodded Vesper.
"Hazardous Hazel."
Vesper filled the Wurmblood tank with a hose he'd ripped from another tank, siphoning each until it was topped off. He pulled the engine and tried the clutch, and that shitty-lookign Chariot purred to life. "It still needs work, but it'll get us where we're going."
"And where's that?" Hazel asked, spittin' on one of the dead bodies with an audible hack.
Vesper passed Arkash' letter to the man, loading up the tools, broken guns, and a whole bag of spare parts. "You tell me. Do you know these landmarks?" He even siphoned the blood into tanks after several minutes of trial and error, bagging several parcels worth of flesh.
"Oh yeah, this is by the ridge with that rock formation that looks like a duck," murmured Hazel. "We're easily twenty miles off though." The man's weight crowded in around him on that narrow bike. "Can you see in the dark, cat man?"
Vesper kicked the two-wheeler into gear. "It's Vesper. Indeed I can," he said as they started rolling across the wastes. As the sun fully set, his eyes reflected off the starlight like little candles in the night.
Clawed mitts clutched brown, weathered paper.
A letter, from the lizard that gave him boiling blood.
A letter, from the lizard that trailblazed his descent.
A letter, from that troublesome Arkash.
It was getting hard to be numb. Ambitions dashed, Vesper fled the Brotherhood of Scaeva once he learned of a rogue servitor operating against him, the betrayal cutting deep at his trust. When next he felt the call to return to Amoren and conduct an initiation, he ignored those summons.
Then, he had a dream . . . and he awoke a different person. His features were more weathered now, aged from toil and the seething corruption within his veins. None of the physical scars remained, but the loss of being Corvo brought him down from some great height. No longer did he have boundless motivation and desire, no longer were his ambitions being magnified by some petulant god. He understood this now, from the outside, in its entirety.
And as much as it hurt, he was thankful.
Such vague directions, Arkash gave him. From Rustbucket, east so many kilometers... an indeterminate amount of time, landmarks and clues. In this scorching desert. Holding a crimson colored cloak tight to his person, Vesper shielded himself beneath that red cowl below the baking sun, the blistering hot earth shimmering in the far distance.
Then, he heard a familiar sound.
Engines.
That gentle whirring faded into his ears, the hum of cantankerous whirly-tracks beating the sand in unison. A band of three, and they were gunning right for him. As metallic helms of polished scrap gleamed beneath the sun, Vesper bent his knees and set his pack and briefcase upon the ground.
Testing me, hm?
Vesper knew they were out for blood when he saw the jagged, crude clubs of twisted metal sweeping out from the sides of those two-wheelers. A hundred meters. Eighty. Sixty. Raising his chin, he leered at them down the bridge of his nose, then envisioned the Weave, spreading it out in a fine shimmer across the wastes in front of him. As those tires struck the translucent-purple folds of space, he thrust his mind forward upon it, reeling backwards.
The tires and screeching metal raised, the riders falling forwards. They spun out of control, guided towards him by the surging Weave. Each metal vehicle crashed together in front of him, nuts and bolts flying in all direction. The riders didn't have time to scream before their helmets clacked together, all but one of the three laying motionless in the waste as the wreckage of their bikes lay strewn about.
One was already crawling forward, shudders and whimpers breaking the silence of the wastes. Stunned, from hitting the earth, but not so wounded. Vesper stalked closer and leaned down to kick away the man's broken gun, disarming him further of every knife and tool upon his belt without a word.
The Raider turned over, breathing hollow through his helmet as he held up his fingerless-gloved hands. "Wasn' my idea," he crowed, his voice trembling at the seams. "You gonna snuff me too?"
"Take off your helmet," Vesper finally said. "And don't try anything, or I won't hesitate to leave you bleeding a slow death. If I swatted you lot like flies, just imagine what I can do when I'm pissed off." He turned his attention to the wreckage paw cupped beneath his elbow as he stroked his whiskers in thought.
Behind him, the man grunted, sweat-glistening face exposed to the harsh sun as that fully visored helm clattered uselessly. "The Anointed are gonna kill you for this."
"Oh, I'm sure," Vesper rasped without looking back. "They can try, but I have other plans." He pointed to the wreckage, to those dead bodies laying face-down at odd angles, unmoving. "You know your scrap. Start disassembling those two vehicles—the frame in that one is still good. We'll be replacing anything that's broken." The sun was beginning to set, casting a gloomy purple haze over them. "We work beneath the shadow of the night sky."
Bending over a body, Vesper fished the tool belt from it, tossing the wrench at the man's lap. "Get to work, scrapper," he leered. "Show me your value. Maybe I won't sell you to the Raiders at Rustbucket."
"Oh, no, no, no. Fuck." The man hissed, clutching the wrench. He hobbled for the two bikes and moved upon them while Vesper continued looting, amassing a pile of broken equipment.
Two busted flintlocks, a musket with the barrel snapped but the triggering mechanism otherwise intact, another wrench, a smith hammer, and all the screws and bolts he could find. Indicating different piles to his conscript, the parts only grew in number over time, and Vesper had the frame that would be his new Chariot broken down to just its drivetrain, steering, and core components.
He worked quickly, coordinating with the man to lift so he could squeeze on the bolts where they needed to be. Fond memories bled into his mind from another life he'd long left behind . . . why did he never return? This place was never beneath him, this world of savagery and rusted technology.
The bald fellow with a ring-pierced nose peered at his work from several feet away. "You from Rustbucket?" he groused. "Ain't never seen someone work that fast without a blueprint."
"I've built many Chariots," Vesper sighed. "My loyalty is not with that group, but I was once a member before I left," he explained, banging out a metal panel for the front end. He picked up a piece from the pile, then scowled. "All three of the intake manifolds are ruptured. I won't be able to move air through the Wurmblood engine without…" He lifted his chin, then glanced at the dead body.
"Yeah, we gonna part ways now, or?" mumbled the man.
"Oh no, I'm keeping you," Vesper laughed as he drove a knife into one of the corpse's clothing. "Why would I let you go?" Slicing down through the back, his knife sawed through, the sopping crimson bubbling up upon the small of the spine like a natural, sloping bowl that wouldn't spill.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever man, so long as I'm still breathin' . . . that's some fucked up shit you're doing. You a Necromancer?" asked the enslaved man.
"Yes, and so much more~" Vesper smiled. With the manifold next to him, he extended his paw over the pool of red and wiggled his fingers, eyes glazing over as he felt the blood begin to sing back to his mind, like little nerve endings that were dull from a lack of use. He wasn't so skilled as to make something so complex, but he knew simple geometry might suffice.
The blood began to swirl, a slow ring forming in the basin. Vesper touched it with his claw, swirling as he Leeched it slowly, extruding the Blighted crimson turned solid as one would shape clay. The gleaming tube began to take shape, fraught with irregularities yet wholly suitable for Vesper's purposes. Setting his claw to the tube, he shaped a simple set of holes into the 'neck' of the tube before tapering it off ever so slightly.
When the tube was finished, Vesper smiled over his creation. Paw dripping with smears and utterly stained with that deep, dark hue, he lifted the still-dripping component and used the heavier end to smack off the twisted bit of barely hanging metal from the manifold before pushing his component snugly into place.
Hammering a metal punch through the edges of the tubing, he then screwed two more rivets between them. He held it up to the light of the fading sky; "the manifold is mostly fine now," he stated.
"That is some whack-ass magery-fucking-shit, man," huffed the human. "You didn't—wow, parts from fuckin' blood? You gotta teach me how to do that."
"The odds of surviving a Blood Magic initiation are slim," he told the Raider as he jiggered the manifold into the engine compartment, the socket wrench he'd finessed from these idiots rattling away at a steady pace.
"I'm rolling with the wrong crew, clearly. That's ice cold." He squatted down, then really got into helping Vesper. "I'm Ham Sandwich," he said.
To give a man purpose, and truth within his life... but this man? THIS man?
Do I really want his loyalty? Or is he a cow?
Vesper blinked, then looked at him. "Not anymore. New name."
"Uhh, Melon Slice."
Vesper scowled with disgust. "Do you only think of food? Are you ill?"
The man's voice quieted down. "I'm a cook, a runaway slave who used to cook for a Valran…"
"Then be an unappealing dish. These are the Badlands. Not reservations to satisfy Pier Prairie Pauper's Prancing Palate," he sighed, screwing in another plate.
"Whiskey?"
"Overdone. Think . . . expired."
"Ah." Ham Sandwich touched his chin. "Spoiled cake."
Vesper didn't answer.
"Spit-in-your-food, no-"
"Pie Thrower!"
"Dead Meat."
"About to be," Vesper agreed with a snort. "You have no talent with poetry, I'm afraid. You should give up on a food name and choose something simple without such complicated meaning."
The man seemed to quake in his boots at the thought, shuffling his heel through the dirt. "You know, someone called me Hazel once, like hazelnut."
"Hazel." Vesper's hammer rattled through the night. "I like the sound of that."
"Hazel," Hazel repeated. "Hazel. Hazel."
"Hazardous Hazel," nodded Vesper.
"Hazardous Hazel."
Vesper filled the Wurmblood tank with a hose he'd ripped from another tank, siphoning each until it was topped off. He pulled the engine and tried the clutch, and that shitty-lookign Chariot purred to life. "It still needs work, but it'll get us where we're going."
"And where's that?" Hazel asked, spittin' on one of the dead bodies with an audible hack.
Vesper passed Arkash' letter to the man, loading up the tools, broken guns, and a whole bag of spare parts. "You tell me. Do you know these landmarks?" He even siphoned the blood into tanks after several minutes of trial and error, bagging several parcels worth of flesh.
"Oh yeah, this is by the ridge with that rock formation that looks like a duck," murmured Hazel. "We're easily twenty miles off though." The man's weight crowded in around him on that narrow bike. "Can you see in the dark, cat man?"
Vesper kicked the two-wheeler into gear. "It's Vesper. Indeed I can," he said as they started rolling across the wastes. As the sun fully set, his eyes reflected off the starlight like little candles in the night.