Chapter 168: The Killer (Patreon)

+1 Mind!

Carem Sageva sighed, rolling his shoulders as the pleasant tingling worked its way up from his fingers, all the way to the nape of his neck, into his brain. There, new ideas, new insights, and raw power swirled, expanding his self.

At the end of his fingers, was the skull of Amela Kriss, drops of blood welling right at the tips of his fingers where his roots dug into her brain.

Interesting fact about absorbing someone’s Mind: You can’t pump it out without pumping something back in.

As Amela shuddered and twitched, her nose bleeding under his ministrations, Amela was slowly being drawn out, into him, and replaced with Carem. It wasn’t being taken from him, though, more like copied into her.

“Uuuh…” Amela’s jaw relaxed as she temporarily lost control of it. It would go back to clenching in a matter of seconds, as more of her was overridden.

More and more of Amela spilled into him, a chaotic jumble of ideas, insights, preconceptions and ignorances.

Sorting through them was somewhat akin to seperating truth from fiction with a sieve. Amela believed that men didn’t have the capacity to weep, which was blatantly untrue, but she also had a few rare nuggets of insight into human behavior and many tricks geared toward making a poor person’s life easier.

Some of these were at odds with what Carem believed to be true, but when he examined his beliefs, he didn’t find any strict evidence supporting them, whereas Amela had seen tangible proof.

Carem opened his mind, carefully cataloging his mind before he replaced what was wrong with what was objectively right. He absolutely detested being proven wrong.

+1 Mind!

Two in one sitting, Carem thought, mildly impressed. This particular prey had been rather clever. It explained why she’d tried to run so early into their ‘date’.

Gods, I wished more of them ran. Carem thought with a faint smile. He’d come to enjoy his little excursions, taking tokens from each of the women he’d taken Mind from.

The men he’d absorbed, he just did out of necessity.

Carem wasn’t absolutely sure, because there was no information on his particular mutation, but he believed that each kill changed him a little, and in order to stay as close to himself as possible, he had to target the occasional male.

Basically a palate cleanser.

“I…Can help you.” Amela began to groan.

Ah, we’ve almost reached the end of our time together.

“You don’t have to do this. I am you. I would never –“

Carem braced himself and twisted Amela’s head all the way around on her neck, severing her spine.

“Yeah, that’s what the first one said,” Carem muttered, the roots slowly retracting back into his fingers, the last fading moments of consciousness licking against the tendrils like a dying flame.

Confusion. Fear. Sadness.

He withdrew his fingers and wiped them on her shirt before fetching his saw. Now the tedious part, He thought with a sigh as he lined the blades up on her neck and began to saw her head off.

He couldn’t very well produce corpses with holes in the brain, could he? Headless women were far preferable, and harder to identify. If the corpses showed signs of their Mind being drained, the entire city would be up in arms, looking for a mutant.

Very rarely, a child will fall asleep in the middle of their Forming Day, and mutate, and even rarer, it will be something beneficial rather than horrific. Fourteen years ago, Carem had been basically a slave to his father. Even on his Breaking day, he’d been forced by his father to stay awake and do his chores rather than sleep when the Break began to show signs, until he was finally rendered blissfully unconscious.

The next day had been no different. His father assaulted him mercilessly throughout the entire day, relentlessly tearing him down with words designed to make him feel small, weak, and dependent. Carem didn’t know why his father was doing it at the time, but it created a tiny little fire of anger in his chest, that flickered and guttered under every insult, every casual cuff.

But he didn’t let it go out. He protected that flame, nursed it, and when necessary, he used it as fuel to go on when all other emotions weren’t enough to keep him going.

Carem knew now that his father had been hoping to trigger Obeisance, the Skill that made him more docile, more fit to cater to the old man’s whims, treating him like a woman.

Instead he’d gotten a Cleaning Skill, Mental Fortitude, some Body, and when he’d snuck off to the shed to catch a nap, he’d gotten a Mutation.

Carem didn’t tell anyone. Everyone knew mutants were evil and would be cast out immediately. Luckily it didn’t show visibly on his body.

Carem hadn’t even known how to use it at first. It only showed on his System as Mind Burrower, not giving him anything more than that. But he felt…a compulsion. Over the next few months, without realizing it, the fire that he’d carefully nursed in his chest had grown so strong that sometimes, it reached his head, momentarily driving him to do things against his best interest.

One day he snapped.

It was nothing out of the ordinary. A normal strike upside the head for a perceived slight, followed by a rambling diatribe about how much of a whore Carem’s mother was.

All normal.

But that fire inside him chose that moment to break whatever flimsy container he’d been keeping it in, and he forgot about propriety, or consequences, and simply picked up a nearby length of steel from his father’s workshop and began bludgeoning him.

His father hadn’t died instantly like in the stories, he’d fallen, bleeding profusely from his scalp. He’d fought, beating Carem upside the head and wrenching the steel out of his hand before beating him on the arm and chest with it.

It made no difference to Carem. That pure anger wouldn’t be put out by any physical injury.

He bit deep into his father’s wrist, resulting in a slackened grip and a torrent of blood before the old man pushed him off with a howl. Carem followed the man to the ground, screaming mindlessly and punching the old man with a broken arm, barely enough to bloody the man’s nose, but he’d take anything he could get at that point.

Right there, at their most excellent moment together, Carem had cradled the old man’s head and looked into his eyes, grinning as the coppery blood flowed out of his mouth, his father’s and his own.

This is what you made. You see?

As he cradled the man’s head, something tensed in Carem’s fingertips, as something unfamiliar, but undeniably pleasurable ground its way out of his fingers, forcing its way into his father’s skull.

Carem didn’t know it at the time, but it felt like molten climax, like the most satisfying lovemaking that forced it’s way out of the shaft. As if each of his fingers had turned into a cock and he was currently raping his father’s brain.

Which wasn’t too far off.

That was when he’d gotten his first extra point of Mind. And it was when he learned not to trust himself.

His father had become him, terrified and confused at being stuck in his father’s body, frantic and inconsolable.

Carem couldn’t think of a worse punishment than becoming his father, and so after the scuffle was over, he’d done everything he could to make it right. They’d come to an arrangement, decided to live as equals, sharing in everything.

And yet, society saw him as lesser than this copy of himself, deferring to the apparently older one at every turn. At the same time, Carem’s skill at smithing had grown by leaps and bounds after absorbing his father’s Mind, while his copy in his father’s body was exactly as unskilled as he had been before.

It created a horrible dynamic.

Carem was forced to work day and night, using the skills he’d acquired from his father to care for an aging, talentless version of himself, constantly complaining about aching knees or back, and yet able to order him about in public without oversight.

The relationship grew warped, as the Carem in his father’s body grew jealous and demanding, slowly becoming the man he’d been before Carem had changed him, but less. He forced Carem to work harder than before, inviting all manner of women over to enjoy their company and force Carem to act the child.

But Carem put up with it. It was his fault that another him was stuck in his father’s body after all.

This went on for four years, slowly growing worse as Carem grew into his body. While the other him slowly aged, becoming shorter than him, fatter, and weaker.

Eventually, the other Carem snapped, just like he had.

Carem woke to hands around his neck one night, and the rest, as they say, is history.

After that deadly brawl, he never, never, let himself stay in the body of one of his victims.

The strangest part was that the copy always knew its fate and tried to beg for mercy, tried to appeal to his better nature in that single instant before he snapped their neck.

This only served to hold a mirror up, displaying his own cowardice in the face of death, which infuriated him even more.

You’d think I would take it like a man.

Alas, Mind was a woman’s Attribute, so all his gains would never translate to courage. Even skilled craftsmen didn’t bother to get more than a few points in it to make sure they could level their hybrid trade skill to ten or possibly fifteen.

Magnetic Field Generation was based on Strength, and it was the cornerstone of their entire world, so a man raising their Mind was practically unheard of, except as a joke.

But it was the reason Carem had risen from a smelter’s son to the leader of a number of businesses throughout the city. He was smarter, more stable, and more driven than every other man or woman in the entire city, and he owed it all to the women whose Mind he’d taken.

Between his second and third break, he’d packed on a dozen points of Mind. Upon his third Break during a deadly fire in his late teens, he’d spent the resulting amount of Warp raising his Body, balancing his Attributes so that they were, on average, much higher than an ordinary man, rivaling that of a Veteran.

When he’d become a Veteran in the bloody riots that followed years later, he’d ascended to something beyond what a Veteran should be, approaching the strength of a Diocese.

He was no noble-born Diocese, but he held far more power than the average man, and yet, he was anonymous, the extent of his influence unknown except to a tiny few in the city.

Carem knew for a fact that his hobby would be unsustainable were he ever to gain public recognition, and the Diocese would not look kindly on his power that rivaled their own. Were they to discover he was only a fourth-Break veteran, they would have him killed.

Carem was not arrogant enough to think he could singlehandedly overpower the entire government, so he was happy to be quietly wealthy, and no more.

Until he saw the foreigners.

Carem cut through the last flap of the woman’s skin holding her head on, then set aside the saw. He took the woman’s severed head and inspected it for a moment, his thumb wandering down toward the woman’s perfect teeth, as white in death as they had been in life. The only thing unchanged by his ministrations. Her mind was gone, her body dead, but her teeth were just as vibrant as they had been when she’d smiled at him.

With a wrench, Carem pulled out one of the woman’s canines before he tossed the head in the smelter, watching it carbonize down to nothing but bone fragments under the extreme heat of the furnace.

Carem cleaned the tooth off with his thumb and dropped it in the leather purse around his neck, listening to the soft click of teeth settling against each other. He might keep them all mixed up in the same place, but he could identify each and every one of them at a glance.

What do the Foreigners know that I don’t? Carem wondered, fondling the bag under his neck, feeling the teeth shift against each other under his grip.

Carem knew Juntai like the back of his hand. Everyone’s secrets had long since been laid bare to him, including the skills of many a hapless man and woman. But their scope was limited, their experiences and insights had grown stale. What once gave him six Mind or more had dwindled to one or two, if he was lucky.

The foreigners on the other hand, could provide a completely different perspective on things.

Perhaps they can give me something new.

Carem normally waited for at least three months between hunts for the furor to die down, but he didn’t know how long these foreigners would be here.

He watched them for days, looking for some kind of weakness, but it quickly became obvious that they were not only capable of defending themselves, but also under the close supervision of the Diocese.

Carem had been particularly put off when the young man in the group had turned around and stared directly at Carem’s hiding spot before mouthing the words ‘get lost’ in Juntai.

The young man was far more perceptive than he’d supposed, and Carem had probably lost any chance he’d had at getting close to them. He still didn’t know how the young man had seen him, but he attributed it to a Skill.

There will be other foreigners, He’d consoled himself, briefly entertaining the possibility of leaving Juntai, willfully ignoring that he was too much of a coward and creature of habit to leave the comfort of his home.

It was during one of his walks around the city where he warred with himself internally, debating leaving, or risking taking one of the foreingers, where he came across another foreigner. This one, he was sure was unaffiliated with the others.

This particular woman was Ilethan by Carem’s hazy recollection of other people’s memories. He’d never seen one personally, but he’d absorbed some people who had. From what he understood, the Ilethan and Gadveran people – of which the other party was mostly comprised – were constantly at war with each other.

collapsed in the middle of the street, breasts straining to escape the tight leather bodice as she panted, surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers.

Juntai women simply did not dress like that, and every man nearby was fascinated with her appearance. They could not see her skin, but could also make out every curve of her body. It was more alluring than if she had been completely unclothed, as it fanned curiosity. She was collapsed in the middle of the street, breasts straining to escape the tight leather bodice as she panted, surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers, mostly men, whose gaze traveled up and down her body.

Gods bless, opportunity knocks!

“Are you alright?” Carem asked, shrugging off the impropriety of touching a woman who wasn’t his, putting her arm over his neck, bringing her to her feet. He might catch some fallout for this, but it was nothing compared to what he hoped to gain.

“It’s a bleeeh,” the Ilethan girl groaned, peering at him, then the onlookers. “Lezz pepple.” She said, her tongue twitching uncontrollably.

“Less people?” Carem confirmed in Ilethan.

“Yeh,” The girl nodded, her supple body sagging against him

Right away.

***Calvin***

Calvin was in the middle of having dinner with Kala and Ella, when a loud noise, like a horn played by a tiny demon, resounded through his head, causing him to wince and clutch his ears.

>> Chained Spirit Has suffered Data Corruption!<<

Purging corrupted Data.

Restoring Backup from last uncorrupted Continuity timestamp

Backup Restored.

Initializing.

Repair Complete.

Continuity has lost 8 hours 43 minutes and 21 seconds of unpackaged memory.

Calvin blinked.

“What the Abyss was that?”

What the hell was that? Elliot’s voice sounded just as confused as Calvin’s as Ella and Kala frowned at him.

Okay, show tunes it is, Nadia’s voice echoed in the back of Calvin’s head before she began braying deliberately off-key.

Forget your troubles, come on, get happy....wait, when did we get here?