Queen Of The Ventils

LII

WARNING!!! THERE IS SOME HEAVY STUFF HERE!!!

This chapter contains EXTREME amounts of violence. Like, it's gratuitous, and it's detailed. Don't read this if you're a pacifist, you get sick easily, you get triggered by gore/death/graphic depictions of violence, or even if you're under the age of, like, 15. I'm being serious.

You don't need to read this chapter for the story. Technically speaking, you could skip this and not miss anything; the actual plot picks back up in the next one. This is Lunalis extracting revenge on Idonio in gratuitous detail and me wondering if I'm a little sociopathic for writing this.

I'll leave a description of what happens for those of you who want it at the end.

I HAVE WARNED YOU!!!

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The scream—an inhumane, unholy SCREECH—penetrated deep into the ears of all who were cursed to endure it. Ringing out across the battlefield louder than an explosion, impossible to escape. Everyone was hunched over in pain, gripping their ears in a futile attempt to make it stop, to rid themselves of the indescribable agony they felt.

Some screamed in pain until they went deaf or their lungs gave out, but they were silenced under it. Some even blacked out from the sheer power of the volume. Others took their claws and began to mutilate themselves in their madness, searching for something, anything, that could stand as a contender beyond the unrelenting torrent of a goddess screaming. Others decided to end it there, deciding death was a kinder fate than listening for a second more.

The listeners, if they weren't unconscious or deaf or suicidal, were forced to experience such powerful waves of emotion it nearly drove them insane. Torrents of sower, drowning them in a grief so strong they could barely breathe from it. It clung to them like quicksand, dragging them down, down, down, into a pool of depression so deep they couldn't hope to escape, filling their lungs with wetness that buried them further.

Then, came the pain. The unceasing, excruciating pain of loss. The pure agony felt worse than any one person could describe. To come close would to describe the worst of torture incapable of putting into words, for it would make the readers so horrified and scarred for life that they would never be the same.

It was so horrible, so raw, and so real, that people were collapsing from the overload and simply couldn't bear it. Even the most stoic Proditorus were howling with it, bashing their heads into the ground until they bled to try and relieve the pressure compressing them like a can in the Mariana Trench.

Finally, blooming from that pain came the red hot flames of rage. Pure, unbridled, burning and seething and seeking to tear down and consume anyone who stood in its way. Nobody could escape it. Everyone was forced to stay and simply take it.

The screams felt as if they lasted forever. Tears were streaming down faces, mixed with blood from bleeding noses and scratch marks and burst eardrums. The trolls were smashing each other into rubble, the Proditorus were tearing into each other in their frenzy, and the Ventils were howling along with them.

Idonio stumbled to the ground, yelling in pain as he writhed, dropping his weapon. My eyes snapped back up to him, my screams finally ending. My throat felt raw as if I had swallowed sandpaper, and everyone was staring at me in horror. I felt something warm and sticky dripping from my ears, but I barely felt it beyond the tunnel vision taking over me.

He did this. He did this. He did this. Over and over and over and over and over it screamed, my barely registering that he had begun to rise and reach for his serrator. Numbly and without thought, I kicked the weapon out of his hand, sending it bending back the wrong way. He yowled in pain before I kicked him square in the rips, sending him skidding back and leaving a huge trail of ripped-up turf in his wake. People began to run from the two of us, sensing that if they didn't run now, they may not have had a chance to.

The Sisters and Guardians began hurriedly ushering people away as I stepped over Krel's body and began walking towards Idonio. Walking turned to a jog, jogging turned to a run, and running turned into an all-out sprint as my body collapsed and reformed to suit a better need. By the time Idonio got back up, I was already bearing down on him as a Chimera, as tall as a mountain and arguably just as wide.

He screamed as a gigantic claw slashed off his leg, crushing the other one into oblivion. The snake's head on my tail urged to bite down, to sink fangs into flesh and turn him into a liquidized meat sack. But I decided against it. No, I needed to make his death slow. I needed to make it hurt. A proper punishment. And Eclipse knew that I was good at doing that.

Shrinking down to size in an instant, I grabbed him by the arm and began to fly, pushing harder and harder as he still grappled against me, pushing against the edges of the atmosphere before I decided this was good enough. In a split second, I let him go, and dove with wings tucked like a missile straight into his chest, sending him plummeting back to earth as astronomically high speeds, the edges of his skin and armor turning black with burns.

He made contact with the earth like a burning, screaming comet, sending a reverberation through the ground that I swore pierced the core of the earth. His gurgled cries were the only sound he was capable of making, his spine and entire back shattered from the impact. In a minute or two he would be going into shock. That wasn't enough for me.

I grabbed him by the neck, lifting his paralyzed body out of the crater he had created. "Please," he somehow spluttered out around the blue blood erupting from his mouth and various wounds. "Please, spare me."

I stared at him eyes roving over this pathetic excuse for a dictator. His skin was singed and burned away in places, his armor was smoking and breaking into pieces, weapon lost long before. All four of his eyes were bruised and streaked through with bloodshot, the teeth in his mouth chipped or missing entirely. Half of his bones had been crushed to oblivion, one of his legs mangled beyond recognition and the other missing entirely, not to mention the paralysis.

My free hand surged forward, breaking through exposed skin and alien flesh to grasp something solid in the center of his chest. He gasped in pain one last time, bulging eyes looking down to where my arm was up to the elbow in his body and then back up to my face. "You killed him," I snarled in his ear, gripping the thing tighter and twisting, driving another shocked intake from him. "Why should I show you an ounce of mercy?" And with that, I ripped his core from his chest, hoisting it like a bloody trophy and crushing it to dust in my hand.

Instantly, Idonio's body began to dissolve before my eyes, neon blue particles drifting away into the breeze before being broke up into nothing. Starting with his fingers and the ends of his legs, before migrating further inward. His empty eyes full of fear were the last to disappear, locked on me until the very last moment.

I didn't recognize the growling wheeze until I noticed it was my own heavy breathing, weighed down with the reality of everything I had done. I was shaking now, the shock fading and the horror of what I did setting in. And yet, I couldn't find it in myself to cry for him. He did not cry for Krel, I reminded myself. "Krel," I gasped, remembering. I raced back to where he had been left, crashing to my knees next to his corpse.

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So, to summarize:

Lunalis dismembered Idonio. She then dropped him from an enormous height and broke his back, paralyzing him. She finished by ripping his core out.

Yeah, told you it was hardcore.