The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T5.3 The Ëchüha Incident (Part 4)

Fhá couldn't describe why, but she felt it, even through the VirtuCast, even disconnected from it, and by so much time and so many parsecs. It was there. The creature's hatred. It exuded it like an aura. Burning with intensity, the wraith harboured hate for all life that Fhá could neither explain nor ignore. It was unnatural—uncanny, even—as if made by humans. Not so much by their own handiwork or device—though great witches were known to have manifested creatures even they themselves could not control—but awakened...

No...

It had been birthed. Birthed from the condensed weight of humanity's negligence, greed, and pollution. Its womb, the cradle of its inception, were pools of filth and industrial waste so caustic a single drop would melt the flesh off one's bones. Swimming, growing in that concentrated cesspit of reckless exploitation, it became consumed with hate. Unfettered wrath, as hot as it burned for all life, humanity made of it a greater conflagration of impassioned antipathy than a department overseer could muster upon receipt of a finalised Imperial Province Tax Audit lacking the requisite three stamps of Interdepartmental Review as outlined in IMA Librarian Manual Chapter 231 Section 94(d)-17.

The wraith, and Fhá knew that as its name, though should could not explain why, it was the incarnate wrath of nature. Compelled by insatiable hunger to scour clean the face of worlds, it would not—no, could not—stop until the last of humanity had fallen at its feet, drained, exsanguinated, the last dram of life drawn even from the bacterium fermenting the last, half completed turd in their lower intestines.

What the fuck? Fhá thought, realising where her mind had gone.

She was Rewinding. Hvórþ's internal monologue on the dropship playing back in her own mind, reworded, reconstructed, but the same tone, same euphuistic fustian. Grand overtures to dead worlds in language the local poet's society would use to describe an oddly misshapen rubbish bin or the unpleasant surprise of drunkenly going down on one's girlfriend on her period.

Pitch and Pennies, Fhá mused, closing her eyes.

Her boyfriend had lovingly immortalised that particularly embarrassing episode in verse. Free wine, good company, and erotic poetry, the only three things she needed to demand a double helping of hot salsa—cramps and tampons be damned. The thought of that night almost gave her headache a headache.

Fhá leaned over, attempting to rub her temples for some relief, only for images of Hvórþ and Co.'s blind panic and terror to flash behind her eyelids.

"Fuck," she swore, under her breath.

Fhá gripped her favourite wickerball, clenching the hard, fibre ball until her knuckles went white and—

"Hey, Fhá!" someone exclaimed, startling her.

The ball exploded in her hand, shards of hardened fibres splintering into her skin. In a blind panic, she grabbed a stapler from her desk and hurled it at the voice, while the contents of her bladder violently vacated themselves.

"Ah! What the hell!" Hvang yelped, as the stapler flew past his head and smashed into the cubicle wall behind him, splintering into a hundred pieces.

Cheap Imperial manufacturing...

"Emperor's Dingleberries, Hvang!" She snapped, leaping out of her chair. "Fuck!"

They both ducked out of the way as Fhá's neighbour across the aisle returned fire with her own stapler.

"By the Crone, what do they have you on?" Hvang reacted, as bits of stapler exploded against a nearby support column.

"Fuck you!" Fhá snapped. "Son of a bitch! Ruined my best skirt!"