Darwinian Disorder

[ziggythetrygon]

Adnak hated his cows.

It was a hatred far too intense to be put into words, or even coherent thoughts, in the wee hours of the morning, when he was wrapped around his Murie and their bedclothes were wrapped around them to ward off the night's chill. The last vestiges of sleep died screaming as the clamor from the stockyards reached new and thunderous heights.

Emperor's putrid turds, had the dumb beasts broken free and wrecked their pens?

He got up, taking a few moments to shake the stiffness from his limbs and bid his wife to stay abed, and yanked his overcoat tight about himself before making his way outside. There was one last bellow from the cows, and then that black sort of silence which smothers reason and feeds fear. It blanketed not only the pens, but the comforting confines of his own home besides. Perhaps the children had been woken as well, and lay there in silent terror, for they normally murmured in their sleep and shifted in their sheets restlessly. Regardless, his grumpiness at having his rest interrupted after a grueling day's work dispelled any trepidation he might have had.

(There should be more daily. And yes, this involves and centers on Tyranids. Enjoy!)

[ziggythetrygon]

(Well, naturally, the moment I start a daily paragraph or so bit of writing, my computer goes on the fritz and life beco0mes chaotic. So, from this point out, I'll update this when I can.)

Adnak stole quietly down the stairs and crammed his feet into the boots he had left by the door. Hopefully the cold would not be too bitter and his robe would be enough. The moment he opened the door the thought of warmth was dashed to pieces as the bite of the air ripped the breath from his lungs. With an urgency brought on by a sudden desperate need to empty his bladder, he sprinted full-out around the house and to the stockyard pens. The animals were nowhere in sight, and were most likely hiding in the blessedly warm confines of the barn. Not even bothering to open the gate, he vaulted the fence and slipped through the conveniently ajar door. Which was a problem because the draft from some idiot of a milker's mistake would most likely result in some sick livestock.

With the door safely shut and locked behind him, he paused and took in the heat of several hundred large, hairy bodies. Several hundred butchered....dismembered....scattered even onto the ceiling....bodies....At that moment the problem of his full bladder, and the comfort of his full stomach, was alleviated. He had slaughtered cows before, personally, and was no stranger to gore. This, though...this...was something beyond his experience. What could have done this? Some sort of cult? Were there Khornate cultists on his farm right now? Emperor help him, he had to get back to his house!

[ziggythetrygon]

That was when he felt something roughly yank him back, with a force so great that his feet left the ground and his body left the building through the wall. The moment after the pain from his now shattered limbs set in, he began to turn slowly around, manipulated by an unseen hand. With his horror at its utmost intensity, the shock from what he saw next when he finally halted in his rotation was but a dull throb in the back of his mind. A hideous creature floated there, held aloft by strands of flame the color of gore and shadow. From its many-tentacled maw to its almost human body, the creature exuded a sense of despair and wanton hunger. The tentacles shifted, and the creature's eyes flashed with an inhuman desire as its four arms reached out and gripped Adnak with disturbingly humanoid claws. Even the pain from his broken bones was gone now. All that remained was dread and the desperate hope that somehow his children and wife would flee while he awaited his fate. And then even that was stolen from him as the creature, as if sensing what was in his heart, flattened the house with a gesture, the twitch of its hands launching a crimson tidal wave that splintered the otherwise resilient frame like a toothpick. Screaming in impotent rage, he swung his head hard into the thing's face, and bit like a wild animal until he felt a tentacle come loose. Then his breath, and indeed any ability he might have had to move, was ripped from him in a rush of that same gory flame, and the wounds he had given his adversary sealed while his eyes closed for the last time.

[Threeshades]

Sounds very interesting. Especially, I hae no idea what that creature described there is. although i have a sneaking suspicion it is a nid Lictor that is still half-camouflaged and described in the very subjective view of the so-far main character. and I'm hoping hte death of said character doesn't mark the end of the story.

[zoat]

Ah, I wish I could write that way but sadly English is just my second language.
As far as I as a german writer can assess it your spelling style is very good, atmospheric and advanced. I totally like how you described that farmers thoughts in the beginning. He is just bored of his job but loves his family. Then this horror and his struggle for death in the claws of that lictor. Awesome! I found it fascinating that he actually bit that monster to somehow defend his home, wife and children, though it was useless.
Yes, I would like to read more, please.

[ziggythetrygon]

(Well, folks, it's nice to see responses, and I'm definitely going to try and keep up with this, but school is rather busy and I have research grants to work on, so I'll do the best I can and try to make at least 2-4 small posts a week for ya'll. I thank you for your compliments, and I will tantalize your minds by giving you a hint: that creature is not a Lictor. As for what it IS, well, you'll have to keep reading. Now, on with the show!)

Roughly 700 years before, Lan System, the planet Alment-Lan

A chilly dawn broke over the Capital Hive City of Alment-Lan. Not that most of its two billion denizens would have noticed, being sealed away from the elements inside innumerable buildings stacked upon one another like some sort of grotesque collection of Jenga towers. One man, at least, did fill the bite of the wind on his cheeks. Jaff the Heckler, or the man who went by that name, was currently putting himself through his morning paces. Which, of course, meant leading the local authorities on a rambling chase through whatever part of the city he happened to be in. He made a strong point of earning his title, and the small crumbs of fame he had gleaned through his exploits, and today was no exception. Instead of paying for his breakfast like any decent, boring person, he had opted to steal a sweet treat from an actual baby. While the baby was being tickled by the neighborhood Watchman, who, being a dutiful, hardworking Officer of the Law, had immediately laid hold of Jaff's arm in protest. Naturally, Jaff had kicked him soundly in the shins before throwing a handful of his trademark fireworks onto the ground at their feet. Within minutes, he had wound up on the topmost buildings of the Hive City, weaving and rolling through the vast network of cooling vents and pipes that kept the body heat of the populace from baking everyone alive.

As he ducked to avoid a low hanging metal bar, and the lawman just behind him did not, he thought, not for the first time, at how troublesome it could be to make your own fun in place so dull as to have been named Capitol City due to the undeniably vast numbers of dim lightbulbs amongst the populace. He had hated that name with an ideological passion so much that when he had first moved here...well, he had called it moving, but most reasoned people would call it being thrown bodily out of his home town by means of extreme force. The past aside, his first act of chicanery was to paint over the giant sign at the city's main entrance with a crudely crafted smile and a "Welcome to the Capitol, where 1% of the people do 100% of the thinking!" The truly hilarious part was that so many visitors, and so many of the Watchmen, could not read their own name if it had been placed right under their noses. It had taken a special call to the Neighborhood Captain, who had actually attended a school in his youth, to enlighten the large crowd of confused civil servants who removed his beautiful vandalism.

[ziggythetrygon]

A few more moments saw the Long Arm of the Law safely behind him, and himself safely in his chosen hideaway. The Emperor's Blessing was, true to form, a den of lawless cutthroats and who knew what else. It was also a good place to let society lose track of you for as long as you desired. The shady bar was anything but clean, and the same could be said of most of its occupants. Jaff almost forgot to remove his mask before he walked around to the front entrance. That mistake could have been lethal. The man beneath it had no bounty on his head that anyone inside cared to claim. The mask itself, however...while the reward for his capture was small, it was certainly enough to pay for several rounds of decent drink and more than a bit of quality nourishment. And those were things that many of the lawless folk of Capitol City would happily kill for. Regardless of whether the wanted posters actually said "dead or alive" or not.

Uri Deneb also found himself in The Emperor's Blessing just then. His deceptively lax eyes noted well the way that the cloaked man entered the bar. He had the gait of an acrobat, sure-footed, at ease, with a hint of intense explosive energy. His robes hid it fairly well, and would easily have hidden it entirely if Uri had not been truly watching, or had not been trained how to watch. That sort of skill was a rare thing in a place like this. Everyone here moved like a supply truck or heavy dozer, muscling their way through the bunches of harsh, sweaty men with gravely voices and unkind dispositions. Everyone, that is, except for the women. They either darted like frightened mice from place to place, praying to the Emperor that no one would look at them too long and decide that they took a fancy to what they saw, or danced among their eager customers, flitting from killer to thief to killer again, searching for the right amount of coin and eyes that held no threat of back-alley mutilations. Uri hated these places. He hated them so much that despite the frequency of his visits to them, that hatred never waned, and most certainly waxed stronger by the hour.

Jaff, on the other hand, had gone numb to the outrage, or at least had learned how to bury it deep within him. He was not overly sure which anymore. He was so caught up in getting a drink to wash his stolen pastry down that he did not notice the eyes that watched both him and each and every bottom-feeder currently in the bar. He was paying attention to Gilly, though. The waif of of woman, so delicate that she might have been emaciated, was artfully concealed behind a pile of rags and some oil drums that had been substituting as ale kegs for the time being. All that was visible was one striking emerald eye that peered out from between the steel barrels. He had no idea what her real name was, but he had decided to aide her in her hour of need. Right now, her need consisted largely of getting some food in her belly. To that end, Jaff rambled over to her hiding place, leaned on one of the drums, and began to casually eat. The pastry was absolutely delicious, full of what seemed to be, at least in some measure, real butter and sugar. He had to fight the temptation to scarf the whole thing himself with a heroic exertion of willpower.

[ziggythetrygon]

Gilly had an equal struggle within herself to keep her hands out of sight and away from the delightful morsel of sustenance. It had been over a day since she had eaten last, and it was only with luck and the Emperor's Blessing that she had managed to drink and relieve herself during that time period. She stared listlessly down at her once-ivory limbs, now ashen and grimed from the filth of the city, and shook her head slowly. Nothing had gone according to plan for nearly a week now. She was beginning to wonder if any of this was truly worth it. Her skin chafed against the cloth she wore, and against the dozens, if not hundreds, of mites that she was now afflicted with for the first time in her life. She had to be bruised and cut in a dozen places, and counted herself fortunate to only have those injuries and an aching stomach for all her trials and tribulations. Her self-pitying introspection was interrupted by a half-eaten pastry flopping onto her head. That pastry's descent onto he lap was interrupted by her hands cramming as much of the thing into her mouth as possible. She cared little for the fact that it was poorly made and lacked all but the smallest trace of flavor, and that it was so full of processed and re-used material that it would sit in her gut like an ill-tempered lapdog, at least the pangs in her side would stop and she might even be able to sleep. Once she found a better hiding place, of course.

Uri was slightly bemused, even intrigued, by what he was now seeing. Pretending to find a convenient place to enjoy breakfast was an excellent ploy. "Accidentally" dropping the pastry into what anyone would naturally assume was a dirt-encrusted, rat-infested dunghole, looking put-off, and walking away with a frown that could curdle the insides of a cow was even better. Whoever it was the unidentified acrobat had hidden in that pile of steel drums was surely one of three things: a mouse of a man who had a ponderous bounty on his head, a child, or a woman. He doubted that it was a man, no one with a price on him could afford to be in such a compromising position. He would need to move those drums out of the way quickly, in the event of discovery, and the sort of man who could fit between them easily would lack the strength. A child, on the other hand, could simply jump out and flee if it had to. Yet, a child would be much easier to hide elsewhere, preferably in an air duct or drainpipe where it could not be so easily reached, and its occasional noises could be passed off as shifting metal or rodents. A woman undoubtedly made the most sense. A woman would be expected to be found tied up in a closet somewhere, or hidden under a bed, as most captors/rescuers tended to treat them more gently than other cargo. Chivalry or fear of damaged goods ruled the day there. Uri smiled on the inside and spit a wad of phlegm on the outside. Judging by the intelligence and skill the acrobat was demonstrating so far, that person was most likely a woman. He appeared to smart for it to be anything else. Which made him wonder about their connection in the first place.

[ziggythetrygon]

(Fellas, I promise I'll keep updating this, but between school, Halloween, and All Saints Day, this week has been monstrously busy.)