It wasn’t what I was supposed to be focusing on, but the exercise was still hugely relieving. My scarred-over knife wounds kept flaring up, but every shot I got in felt like it took away a little more of the sick blackness trying to eat me alive from the inside out.
When I was back down to just a couple of slow-moving ferals, I stepped back next to the Heartchamber and focused. Breathe in, breathe out, drop into oblivion.
Except it didn’t work.
Perhaps Death cultivator would rather be seen killing than hide his actions, Hungry Ghost suggested. Perhaps he is proud of surpassing his father’s crimes.
Screaming rage burned through my whole body like I was a pile of gas-soaked rags somebody had tossed a match into. My dad wasn’t a great guy. He made crappy decisions and then justified them like he was doing the right thing for us, like there wasn’t anything else he could’ve done but sold drugs, when it was obvious that he just liked the constant flow of cash. But at least he’d never killed anybody.
I slammed my fist into the brick wall of the Heartchamber, over and over, not stopping when I saw blood, wishing I could pound myself down to nothing as easy as punching a wall.
Now, Death cultivator, Hungry Ghost said.
It took a second for understanding to break through the red haze in my brain.
When it did, I exhaled and dove into oblivion like a swimming pool. The words Last Light, Last Breath surrounded my thoughts in a cool, soothing blanket of nothingness. It was such a huge relief that I felt physically lighter.
Four bog ferals closed in on me. None of them looked surprised when I tore out their oozing brown life points, because none of them felt the cloaked Dead Man’s Hand reaching into their Spirit. They just tumbled down dead.
No burst of excitement at getting the cloak right came along with the oily life point boost that time. Instead, I stayed in that oblivion place, waiting for the next small band of ferals. I slowed them down with Death Grip, invisible ghost hands grabbing at their feet and legs, then went through finishing each of them off with Death Metal shields they couldn’t see.
It wasn’t exactly a rampage, because there wasn’t any of the trademark fury you get with a rampage. This was cold and calm, surrounded by layers of nothingness.
Don’t get me wrong, I was still doing Miasma-charged jumps, kicks, and bashes, throwing sprays of gore and sucking down Death Spirit from the fresh corpses. But while I was fighting, it felt like I was a million miles away watching what was happening on TV or something. Like this was a movie about some dude whose problems I didn’t have. I could get sort of invested in it, but only up to a point, because I wasn’t him and I wasn’t really feeling what he felt.
Right then that was pretty great.
Broken Pieces
HUNGRY GHOST AND I kept working at it, whittling down the ferals coming at the Heartchamber until the waves finally stopped coming. The last of the day suns sank out of the clouds and the night sun took over, turning the cloudy sky black with tinges of orange and purple. I was cultivating the fresh Miasma and looting the bodies when the steel entry door creaked open behind me.
“So you are out here,” Kest said. She stopped a few feet away from me and hugged her arms around her stomach. “Your HUD must be broken.”
I glanced down at the cracked screen of my Winchester and the slew of messages I’d been ignoring.
“I’m messing with you, Hake,” she said. “I know there’s nothing wrong with the Winchester, I refurbished it myself. Obviously, it was user prioritization.”
“Sorry,” I snapped, knocking the grabbing hand of a dead feral off my wrist. I triggered Corpse Fire to burn off the soul contamination and went back to scooping Spirit stones out of his pocket. “Some people have other stuff going on besides messaging you every five minutes, you know.”
Icy cold crackled through my veins, and the raindrops closest to us turned to plinking hail midair. When I looked up, Kest’s lacy eyes were almost fully black and her skin was glowing blue from the inside with Cold Metal Spirit.
“I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.” The temperature of her voice had dropped past absolute zero. “The Technols made me a good offer, and I’m going to take it.”
My gaze fell on the sidewalk. Kest and I had been sitting there holding hands, like, a day ago. Now it felt like I could never get back to that, like it was so far away that I wasn’t even the same person anymore, and what had changed was something Kest could never understand.
Metal cultivator is as rigid as her affinity, Hungry Ghost said in an agreeing tone. She cannot grasp the intricacies of Death.
I racked my brain for something to say that would make this better, but it felt like a knife was lodged in my throat.
“Okay,” Kest said and headed for the door. “Well, bye then.”
“Wait!” I hit the Ki-speed and sprinted after her. I grabbed her elbow as she reached for the handle.
With a crunchy freezing sound, my fingertips stuck to her like a tongue on an icy metal light pole. I stopped myself from automatically jerking away because I wasn’t sure whether my skin or hers would rip; hers felt a lot more fragile than mine did.
“Don’t go yet, please,” I said.
She didn’t say anything, just looked at me over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised. She looked as rigid and unforgiving as Hungry Ghost had said. But that wasn’t fair. Cold Metal wasn’t all there was to Kest. Memories ran through my head of her laughing when she and Rali played that rain barrel prank on me, of her holding my hands to her stomach while she used Hot Metal Spirit to warm
