The Soul Engine Ch. 3 (Original Fantasy) (Patreon)

A/N: Here we are with Chapter 3. In which reports of Mikael's death turn out to be greatly exaggerated!

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Coming back to life sucks, Mikael quickly decides. Zero out of ten, would not recommend. Then again, it was better than the alternative, he supposed. But only ever so slightly. Dying had really, really sucked. There was no denying that. And if you asked Mikael whether he would be dead as a door nail or alive but in a shitty situation, he’d pick alive but in a shitty situation every time.

… That said, his last memory of the sunlight beating down upon his face and chest had been… nice. It had almost made up for the fact that he’d just been stabbed through the chest by some bitch in golden armor called ‘The Dame’. Not quite… but almost.

Still, one thing was for sure. He was getting really sick and tired of waking up in random places with absolutely no clue of how he got there. This time around, he’s coming to laid out on a slanted metal slab, the cold of which feels like it’s seeping into his naked back as he lays there and just… tries to get his bearings. Key word being ‘tries’, because honestly, nothing feels very good at the moment.

There’s this heavy weight on his chest that he can’t quite put into words, and a bone-deep exhaustion that means he can’t even begin trying to lift himself up in spite of the wait. He feels like he’s ran a dozen marathons back to back to back with no water and no rest. He would say that he’s dying, but seeing as the last thing he remembers is experiencing death, that’s the one thing he can be sure he’s NOT doing at the moment.

Still, his head is pounding and his vision is swimming. His memory problems are worse than ever too. He can feel the foreign half of his mind all but assaulting the native half with demands to get his act together and get his bearings. Wake up, soldier! Get the fuck off the damn table, you bastard! You can sleep when you’re dead!

Guess it was too much to hope that dying would get rid of those false memories. Whatever bullshit that evil wizard had done to his mind had persisted through death itself. Which was frankly fucking bullshit. Couldn’t he catch one goddamn break? But no. His mind was still Swiss cheese. He still couldn’t remember half of the life he’d actually lived.

People he KNEW he loved with all his heart were coming up almost entirely blank. And then there were people who he knew everything about but couldn’t say how HE was connected to them. And what did he get in return for the mess? The memories of a bunch of killers stuffed into his head to fill up the empty space left behind by that jackass’ ham-fisted work.

The thing was, he WAS dead. Everything Mikael knew about anatomy, as well as everything he suddenly knew about the best ways to kill someone… it told him that he should be dead. The Dame’s sword had stabbed deep into his chest and skewered his heart. And it’d been big enough that the organ was likely completely demolished in the act as well.

You didn’t survive long without a heart. At least… not without magic. But Mikael isn’t lucky enough to find himself in some magical hospital with a cute nurse standing nearby to tell him all that it was just one big misunderstanding. Nor was he in some church being seen to by a sexy nun. No, as his vision finally stops swimming, the first things Mikael notes are that he’s in a grimy, blood-covered basement… and the nearby table is filled with what could either be surgical tools… or torture implements.

It's hard to tell, mostly because the only source of light in the basement is a very, very faint teal light that washes over the table and his immediate surroundings. Admittedly, it takes far longer than it should have for Mikael to realize that said teal light is coming from HIM. But then, to be fair… he’s had a rough day so far.

Either way, he finally registers that the heavy weight on his chest that he’d noticed before is also the source of the glow. And as he looks down at himself, Mikael realizes that the weight isn’t ON his chest… it’s IN his chest. There, something that’s very much NOT supposed to be there, on account of it most definitely NOT being biological in any way, is… a contraption for lack of better word.

Encased in a dark metal with some sort of glowing teal material at its center, there’s a heavy device in Mikael’s chest right where his heart should be. Embedded in his skin, it hums quietly, almost too quietly for him to hear even in the near silence of the basement.

“… Holy shit…”

Reaching out with trembling fingers, Mikael touches the thing, half-expecting it to zap him. But… no. It feels almost cool to the touch, even as he runs his hands over the outer casing. He was right then. He HAD lost his heart to the Dame. She’d obliterated it with her sword, ruining the thing keeping him alive and pumping blood through his veins. And then… then someone had taken his corpse and brought him back. With this… thing.

How the fuck did that even work? Wasn’t there something about how the longer your heart wasn’t beating, the more brain damage you were suffering? Or was it to do with breathing and keeping your blood oxygenated or something? Shouldn’t Mikael be missing MORE as a result of dying and being brought back? As far as he knew, he wasn’t. Then again, if he WAS missing more than he had been before, how the fuck would he even know? Fuck. This whole situation was a crapshoot.

Before Mikael can figure anything else out on his own, the door to the basement suddenly explodes open and Mikael finds himself jolting as someone rushes into the room only to stop dead in their tracks as they see him moving around.

“No way… it worked?!”

Mikael blinks as he takes in the beautiful woman in front of him. Dressed all in black, with black lips and black bags under her eyes and even some startling black freckles on incredibly pale skin… she positively screams goth to him. Of course, that’s as long as one ignores the bloodstained apron and gloves she’s wearing over the incredibly gothic dress she has on underneath.

“IT WORKED!”

Mikael winces at the sudden scream that leaves the young woman’s mouth, even as she rushes over to him.

“I can’t believe this! I’d given up all hope… but no! I knew it. I knew I just wasn’t working with the right materials. And now look. I finally get what I need and it works immediately! Hah!”

Looking at her, you wouldn’t expect someone dressed like she is to be so damn exuberant. But then, maybe that’s just because she’s positively exploding with excitement over ‘it’ working. ‘It’ clearly being the damn thing in his chest, especially with the way she was looking it over, tapping the outer casing like he had.

Except she doesn’t stop there. She moves on from the device that’s replaced Mikael’s heart in record time, reaching up and patting his cheeks next, then going as far as to pull on his eyelids, staring at his pupils. She reminds him of a doctor checking for dilation or something, except she exhibits increasing mad scientist energy that, combined with the macabre setting they’re in, only serves to freak Mikael the fuck out.

“Stop… get away from me…”

He tries to push her away, tries to force some space… but he still feels incredibly weak. The device in his chest flickers and he groans as he falls back onto the slanted metal slab, exhausted as all hell.

Meanwhile, the goth woman’s dark eyes widen at this.

“Ah! I know exactly what you need. Don’t you worry, I have just the thing for you!”

Turning away, she rushes over to the opposite side of the basement, a darkened area that the teal glow coming from Mikael’s chest couldn’t reach. Now that he’s focusing on her though, he sees the cages that she’s currently fussing over.

As she busies herself with that, Mikael scrambles to get his bearings. He’s not alone anymore… which means he’s not safe. The foreign half of his mind is urging him to find the closest weapon, which just so happens to be a hacksaw on the table next to him. A hacksaw covered in blood. Looking down at the state of his naked chest and recognizing that he must have been operated on VERY recently, Mikael quickly realizes that that’s HIS blood.

… At the same time, his ears twitch towards the door that the goth woman had come rushing through. He thinks he hears the sounds of crashing and shouting in the distance. Angry shouting at that.

Before he can question any of it though, his mysterious benefactor comes back over to him with a rat of all things held out in her gloved hands.

“Go on. Take it.”

Confused as all hell, Mikael struggles to lift a hand and take the wriggling creature from the woman… only for her to pull it out of his reach and shake her head.

“No. Not like that.”

In that moment, the urge to grab the hacksaw and bury it in the pale girl’s exposed neck is very, VERY strong. So strong in fact, that it startles Mikael quite badly. Fortunately he’s able to recognize that the urge comes from the memories forced upon him by that bastard evil wizard. Memories that are not his own. And he’s not about to give into them, damn it. He’s not about to try and kill someone who’s just trying to help him!

Thankfully, this is not something that all of the ‘people’ who have been forced into his head are in agreement on. Those who are just soldiers and warriors, those who still have honor… they agree with Mikael himself that violence is not the answer here. Even still, he needs more fucking information. Through gritted teeth, he looks at the woman and asks for clarification.

“I don’t… know what you mean. Explain.”

He’s so exhausted that even getting the words out is hard. But at least he manages to get his point across because her eyes light up again and she at least has the good grace to look sheepish. Looking from him to the rat and then back at him again, her freckled pale face goes a little red as she squirms under his deadpan gaze.

“R-Right. Sorry. Err… focus. It should come as naturally to you as breathing. Just… focus on the rat. Focus on taking its energy for your own. It’s literally nothing but a rodent, so it can’t possibly defend itself against you.”

That was… both informative and fucking ominous. What was supposed to be as natural as breathing? What did it mean to take the rat’s energy? Unfortunately, the crashing and shouting is getting closer so he really doesn’t have time to ask more questions. Though… does she not hear it? She’s not even looking towards the door.

He almost mentions it, almost brings it up… but he’s just so tired. And she’s giving him this expectant look, like she’s wondering what the fuck is taking him so long. She even shakes the rat at him, clearly miming for him to get a move on already.

Either way, Mikael focuses on the rat in her hands like he’s been told. He focuses on… on its energy. Surprisingly, it’s just as easy as she said. Looking past the physical shell, looking past the rat’s body, there’s something else. Something metaphysical. That’s what Mikael reaches out for. And that’s what he takes, abruptly sucking out every last drop of energy from the rat in one fell swoop.

Squealing and shrieking, the rodent goes crazy in the pale woman’s gloved hands… for all of a second anyways before it literally shrivels up and dies right there in her grasp. Mikael barely has a moment to register that however, because as it dies, a teal energy flows out of its corpse and straight into his chest. Or rather, it flows straight into the device now embedded in his chest.

Instantly, Mikael finds himself feeling a LOT better. Really good, in fact. So good that his savior has to back up from him as he suddenly rises from the metal slab, staring down at his chest. The dim glow isn’t quite so dim anymore. In fact, it’s glowing rather brightly, bathing more of the blood-covered basement in its teal light as Mikael stands there and slowly comes to terms with how he’s feeling.

The device doesn’t seem like such a dead weight in his chest anymore. Now that it has some juice in it, it actually feels like it belongs there. Like it’s doing all the work of a flesh and blood heart and more. Mikael feels like he could run one of those metaphorical marathons he’d mentioned earlier. Power courses through every fiber of his body and… and he feels like he could take on the world in this moment. And all of that because… because he’d what? Sucked the life force out of some rat?

… Just what had this woman done to him? What exactly had she replaced his heart with? And most importantly of all, how often was he going to have to suck rat energy in order to survive going forward?

He might no longer be dead. He might no longer be suffering from such bad exhaustion that he could barely move a muscle. But that just meant he had time to worry about everything else. And as his brow furrows at the numerous questions filling his mind, Mikael turns to the goth woman, fully intending to grill her for answers.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

But before he can ask a single question, there’s a sudden loud banging on the door to the basement, and a raised snarling voice that echoes through it.

“AVINA! OPEN UP!”

Suddenly, the girl has his hands in her own and is clutching at them frantically. Her eyes are filled with fear but also hope.

“T-There’s no time. Please… they’re here. You’ll have to fight.”

The door busts down a moment later and three men come rushing into the room. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

-x-X-x-

A/N: It hasn't been said yet, but it's probably pretty obvious from the title of this story if nothing else. Meet the Soul Engine, the thing in Mikael's chest. Also meet Avina! She's fun, isn't she? :D

Hopefully you guys like what you see of her in the coming chapters, because she's a pretty major character, heh.

And of course, as always please let me know what you think of the chapter itself! Your feedback sustains me!