Soulless Beauty Aorta

THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER

The dust cleared, and what it revealed was truly horrific; the cube had completely crushed Gardenia's lower body and part of her midsection, but it hadn't killed her. She could still be seen taking loud, labored breaths. Rose felt a heat rise in her face and the tips of her ears. She suppressed the urge to throw up. The room was frozen. No one dared move or speak. The sound of droplets of water falling in the pool came from below Lascera's location as he forced out the words, "I didn't... she's still... Heather...?"

After what felt like an eternity, Heather, now on his hands and knees, cautiously crawled over to the nightmarish sight. "G-Gardenia? Sweetie?" his voice trembled. With some effort, he pulled the top half of his daughter's partially liquefied remains from under the rubble, the thick gray fluid stretching and becoming more viscous the longer it remained outside of her form. He clutched her bloody body to his chest, and began softly crying. Lascera buried his head in his hands as he curled up in the air. "Da...", a single syllable escaped Gardenia's lips, as Heather cried even harder. Gardenia's eyes went dark. No one knew what to do. "No no no no no no no no it's okay, you'll be okay." Heather knew it was over, yet he still tried in vain to rock and comfort her. It only took moments for the rest of her corpse to liquefy and be absorbed back into the floor of The Shell.

His hands covered in her blood, Heather dropped his head, and began to shake uncontrollably on his hands and knees, filled with shock and self-hatred. Heather began to sob loudly, his cries turning to screams as he clenched at the ground and rocked back and forth, hunched over on all fours with thick snot and spit mixing with the tears on his face. He solemnly and deeply mourned her for what felt like days, eventually losing his voice, but still releasing hollow screams regardless, as his battery light came on and eventually came dangerously close to losing its power. All the while, the three observers could do nothing, trapped by their own fear and shock. Heather's sounds of endless pain and sorrow began to mute, and then went completely quiet, as his body finally ran out of battery.

...............

Heather jerked his head up. It should have been impossible without power, but his rage was all he needed. His eyes had completely lost any sign of humanity, the eye on his forehead glowing red, and his body violently twitching. "Heather?" Lascera looked up at Heather, calling his name with vocal fry in his words. No longer tethered by naive things like empathy or a need to protect, Heather stood, and his forearms stretched out and transformed, ending in massive, sharp claws. He slammed down onto all fours, shaking the ground. His spine extended, cracking, and his neck pulled up and backwards, a tendon ripping from the back of his skull, securing itself between his shoulder blades. His back feet ripped and elongated. His cracked faceplate burst off into chunks tethered to his skull, revealing the muscle, bone, nerves and veins of a rotted human face, with a third eye socket drilled into the middle of the forehead, lined with rotted muscle and fat. The third eye glowed red as The Beast let loose a deafening mix of a scream and a roar.

[Instinctive Beast HEATHER]

Heather launched his gigantic beast form at Lascera, ripping him from the air and pinning him to the ground in the pool, the water hissing and steaming as their superheated platinum skin made contact with it. Heather growled and opened his mouth, three rows of razor sharp teeth showing behind his lips, his ancient, rotted breath filling the room. Lascera began screaming in sheer terror. "HEATHER!!" Hyacinth called out, her voice breaking. Heather brought his face down swiftly, and began to tear at Lascera's throat with his teeth, as his screams became deafening. Rose and Hyacinth could do nothing but watch in horror as Lascera was eviscerated by the person who, just earlier, was coddling his sleeping daughter, sweetly humming to her.

Lascera's incoherent and repeated cry-screams became quieter and quieter as he bled, still very much alive. Veins and muscles snapped and ripped. Heather's claws dug into Lascera's chest, rending his ribs at the sternum, and revealing his organic, frantically beating heart. He wrenched it out with his teeth, resulting in a series of wet wet snaps. Unconcerned with the still connected main artery, he began chewing on the heart, making satisfied, low groaning sounds. The water in the pool had nearly evaporated, the room filled with steam as Heather resumed his slaughter with his feast's heart still clenched in his jaws, tearing out the intestines. Lascera continued in his attempted vocalizations, more gurgles than screams at this point, as he weakly tried to raise the tattered remains of his arms. Seemingly content with his work, Heather unhinged his jaw, Lascera's pounding heart sitting on his proudly displayed tongue. With a swift crunch shut, the heart burst in Heather's teeth, and blood filled the now empty pool.

The beast heaved, taking deep breaths while staring into the thick, iron-laced water at his front feet. With that same broken smile on his face, Heather slowly turned his head, still twitching, toward Rose. He looked her in the eyes for a brief moment before lunging at her. Rose began to dodge to the right, but was a fraction of a second too slow, as Heather hit his target, ripping her left arm off at the shoulder. Rose's screams filled the air, and Hyacinth had to gather her small torso up under her arm to drag her away, the other hand gripping one of the horns on her back to keep her upright, running from Heather.

Fleeing through the door of the chamber opposite of the one they had used to enter it, Rose's knees and the tips of her feet scraped and sparked and bounced off the metal floors as her screams had turned to groans of pain, Hyacinth dragging her all the way, "God damn it, Rose! Please, we need to go, NOW!!" The entity formerly known as Heather slammed against the pipes that ran against the wall facing the exit door, in pursuit of Rose and Hyacinth. Noticing a sizable vent in the floor just big enough for herself to fit into, Hyacinth shoved her fingers into the slats of the vent and ripped it open, dropping Rose in and then climbing in after her, the motion of squeezing through the makeshift opening knocking Hyacinth's chainsaw from her back.

Heather had made it over top of them and was clawing at the torn-open vent. This place won't be safe much longer, Hyacinth thought as she scooped up the still motionless and now silent Rose, and kept running, repeating the process every other vent until they could no longer hear Heather's pounding feet or his grieving, furious moans.

The two had made it to a dark underhall, with Hyacinth having set Rose down sitting back against the wall of the corridor. The sound of blood dripping from Rose's arm was the only thing breaking the silence- not even the mechanical noises of The Shell could be heard. Rose looked down at the bloody mess of her shoulder, and curling up, began to cry.

The same automated voice that had played twice before pierced the air once again, "MEGASYSTEM ERROR: NO DRIVERS. POWER FAILURE IN CAPILLARY, HIPPOCAMPUS, AND FRONTAL REGIONS. MEGASYSTEM DISABLED."