'Meat!'
'Starting to go bad.'
'Starting to go good, you mean!'
Dark laughter then, with a hungry edge to it.
Inside the hood I couldn't see what was coming for me, but I already knew: carrion imps, some of the nastiest little scavengers in the city. Normally the miniature versions of ghouls aren't much of a threat, but I no longer had a body with which to defend myself. Now I was just a hunk of discarded meat, an unexpected but quite welcome feast for the little bastards, and once they picked my skull clean not all the magic in Nekropolis could resurrect me again.
All in all it was turning out to be a pretty shitty night.
FOUR
I may have only been a decapitated head, but I still had my brain, so the first thing I did was send out a telepathic SOS to Devona. I'd never tried to communicate with her through our psychic link at such a great distance before, but even if she did receive my message I knew there was no way she could reach me in time to prevent the carrion imps from chowing down on me – both sections of me.
I'd heard my body fall at the same time as my head struck the ground, so presumably my other half was lying close by. I wondered then who'd done this to me, sliced me in two and left me lying on the street for scavengers to snack on. I had any number of enemies, but there was only one person I'd seriously pissed off that evening: Overkill. Devona's words came back to me then.
The only way for her to regain face is to confront the person who forced her to stand down without so much as raising a hand against her.
Well, I certainly couldn't raise a hand now – or any other body part, for that matter. But I had a hard time believing Overkill was responsible for my current state. She was certainly capable of ambushing me and slicing off my head before I could react, no doubt about that. But my attacker hadn't said a single word to me and Overkill would have definitely wanted me to know she was the one who'd taken me out. But I didn't have time to worry about that now. I needed to survive long enough for Devona to reach me – assuming she'd received my psychic call for help and was on her way. If she hadn't… I thrust the thought aside and focused on not becoming imp food.
They approached cautiously, clawed feet scratching against the pavement, breath softly hissing in and out of their nostrils as they scented the air.
'You really don't want to do this.' My voice came out as a rough croak, but it seemed I still possessed enough of my throat to speak. How I managed to do so without a pair of lungs to move air over my vocal cords, I'm not sure. I decided to put it down to zombie magic. A severed head is much scarier if it can talk, right?
The scuffling stopped and was replaced by a tense silence. I pictured a crowd of carrion imps gathered around my hooded head, standing frozen, eyes agape as they realized what they'd taken for a hunk of discarded meat was, in fact, alive – or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
A few seconds passed and then one of the braver imps spoke. 'Yeah? Why not?'
His words were tough enough, but his voice quavered. Individually carrion imps are cowards. They're only truly dangerous when gathered together in packs. If I could keep them off balance and play on their fearful nature I might be able to prevent them from swarming me. It wasn't much of a plan, I admit, but it was all I had.
'Because I'm lying in wait for prey, and while I'd rather feed on something more tasty than imp, I'll settle for you if I have to.'
A few more moments of silence and then the imps began whispering among themselves. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I had a good idea. Eventually the brave one spoke again.
'What sort of creature are you that lies in wait for prey concealed by a piece of cloth?'
Damn good question, I thought. 'I'm a… a sharpsting,' I said, thinking fast. 'I'm waiting for some curious passerby to reach into the hood. When they do, I'll sting them and implant an egg in their body. The egg will carry my consciousness, so I'll leave my current body and take up residence in my new host. Once my egg hatches I'll begin to slowly devour the host from the inside over the course of several months and when the host dies I'll leave the hollowed out corpse in search of a new home.'
I was impressed with myself for coming up with such a good bluff on the fly. But then the imps – all of them – began talking.
'You fill up that hood pretty good. Big as you are, you don't seem like you'd be a very effective ambush predator. I think-'
'Would a creature like you need to be sentient at all, let alone possess the power of speech? How does thinking and talking help you find new hosts? It's not-'
'Even if you are what you say you are, why should we be afraid of you?'
'Yeah, you can only lay an egg in one of us.'
'That's right. The rest of us will eat the body you leave behind and then kill your new host – and then we'll devour him too.'
'Seems like a win-win scenario for us.'
'Besides, 'sharpsting' is a stupid name,' one of the imps concluded and there were murmurs of agreement all round.
I'd known carrion imps could talk, but because they were scavengers, I'd assumed they weren't too bright. I'd assumed wrong and it looked like it was going to result in my skull being picked clean by the smart little bastards.
I heard claws scratch pavement as the imps started toward me again. I tried to turn my head from side to side in the hope that the movement might frighten them, but I couldn't do it. The most movement I could manage was to open and close my eyes and mouth and wiggle my tongue. Not exactly the most intimidating of actions.
I felt tiny hands grab hold of the hood's cloth and begin searching for an opening, as if I were some kind of treat the imps were trying to unwrap. This would be an excellent time for Devona to get here, I thought, with more than a hint of desperation.
That's when I heard the first imp scream. It was quickly followed by a second scream, then a third, and then dozens of imps were shrieking in terror and I heard them scuttle away en masse as they fled into the alley. I felt a tug on the hood and I allowed myself to hope that help had arrived.
'Devona? Is that you?'
No reply, just another tug on the hood. Then I felt myself being dragged slowly across the pavement away from the alley, which meant I was being dragged toward the street. I wasn't currently connected to my body, so technically I couldn't feel a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, but that's exactly what I did feel when I realized what was happening. The Azure Slime had hold of my head and was pulling me toward the nearest sewer grate. This was worse than being eaten by carrion imps. At least they would've left my skull behind. Once the Azure Slime was done digesting me there'd be nothing left but a memory.
No one knows for certain what the Slime is or where it came from. Some believe it migrated from Earth with the other Darkfolk when they first came to Nekropolis, while others believe Varvara created the amoeba-like monstrosity to keep the streets of her Dominion clean, while still others believe the Slime evolved from all the nasty stuff that's been dumped into the Sprawl's sewer system over the centuries. Whatever the truth is, while the Azure Slime mostly confines itself to feeding on trash left in the Sprawl's streets and gutters, if anything remains on the sidewalks too long, the Slime will try to grab hold of it and drag it down into the sewers where the main mass of its body can begin the digestion process – and that includes pedestrians, which as you might guess, tends to discourage loitering. When the imps had decided to check me out, they'd ventured too close to the mouth of the alley and lingered there too long. They'd drawn the Slime's attention and, from the way it had sounded, a number of them had been snatched by the Slime before the rest had managed to escape. Unfortunately for me the Slime had discovered my head and was now retracting its pseudopod, pulling me hood and all toward the main mass of its body where I would be absorbed and then digested. Since I don't feel pain I wasn't worried that being digested would hurt, but I did wonder how long it would take before enough of my brain was destroyed for me to lose consciousness. If I managed to retain consciousness long enough there was a chance that Devona might be able to
