Taken Horizon Origin, volume 2, Descension

Episode 22 : Invoker the hidden

Being careful with where i stepped, i approached Strife's dead body in his crater -overgrown in golden roots - taking planned step after step as Pettel and the sentient wolf named Thorn watched from outside the crater, whilst I stood under the spotlight of the hole atop the giant skull we stood inside of.

"Tell me again how this happened?" Pettel asked

"Ugh, i already told you. That idiot flushed all the aether he held inside him outside his body." The wolf groaned every word as he repeated an answer we had already heard thrice now. "I was hibernating when it happened so don't know the specifics of what happened. All I know is that he was so pissed that he managed to forcibly control aether as he pleased for an instant."

Huffing out of his nose Pettel was displeased with the same answer. "How convenient of you to not be awake at the time of your masters death."

The shadowy wolf leered up at the man making his disdain clear in his misty white eyes. "Fuck you, crusty."

Pettel and Thorn were either getting along or at each other's throats. It's hard to tell if I'm being honest.

Arriving at the bottom of the crater, i took a seat beside the left side of Strife's corpse. Leaning over, I moved Strife's cracked helmet around slightly, trying to peel it off but it seemed almost like it was part of his skin.

"Thats not coming off no matter how hard you pull, buster. It's literally made from pisspot's body." Thorn spoke even more crass than he was already as he informed me.

"How interesting..." putting the fingers of my glove in between the cracks of the helmet revealing Strife's dead left eye, i gave a final tug but the helmet truly was bound to him.

Lifting up his right gauntlet in my hand, several metallic scale-plates shaped like kites were dangling from other parts of Strife's forearm, revealing a burn scar along his right forearm. Pulling a scale off, i felt it trying to magnetically reattach as i held it, but the pull was too weak for it to be taken from me.

Dropping his arm several snaps of roots crackled out and i moved onto the most important detail. Peering into the opening in Strife's chest, the two hearts that glowed silver and orange were not like actual hearts but more so as engines of a vehicle as they are not beating but revving.

The same could be said for the heart with two holes being stitched shut by roots in the centre. It was more of a canister for fuel than an implement of pumping blood. Where a proper heart was supposed to rest was only a rigid crystalline engine shaped as a proper heart.

Reaching my gloved hand inside Strife's chest, my fingers stroked against Strife's heart, feeling the friction against the crystalline surfaces.

My eyes glanced at Strife's stomach where a belly button should have been but he lacked it - that should not of been possible unless it was a birth defect or he was created in a test tube. "...clone?"

"Nearly. He's a homunculus." The wolf heard my short breath and jerking around I saw it sitting comfortably at the top of the crater's edge. "We aren't sure of all the details unlike why he was awakened, but we know that his body was originally intended for someone else and it was created by an outer god."

"He is also a homunculi?" Words full of shock whispered out into the open from my mouth.

"What do you mean by 'also' there, Chernobyl?" The wolf quizzed intuitively with narrowed eyes.

Focusing on Strife's limp body to see how quickly I could move it I didn't answer.

"Invoker is also a homunculi." Pettel spoke on my behalf getting a surprised grunt from the wolf. "He was originally meant to be a weapon against kralscell's but ended up as one of the many failed projects. His old tags were... HDP-566-...1? I get that right, Invoker?"