9 The Weapon Speaks
For a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, there was only the humid, chittering silence of the jungle, broken by the drip of black ichor from Aris's fingertips.
Kai's brain, usually a whirlwind of quips and fire, had flatlined. "R-Rimo?" he tried again, the name a fragile lifeline to the friend who had just vanished behind those cold, golden eyes.
Aris didn't even look at him. His gaze was a predator's scan, assessing the remaining Skitterclaws. There were about twenty of them, circling, their compound eyes reflecting the faint, sickly light. They were hesitant now, unnerved by the sudden, brutal dismantling of their packmate.
"Designation: Skitterclaw," Aris stated, his voice devoid of inflection. "Alpha-predator of this biome. Exoskeleton vulnerable at the joint seams. Primary threat: numbers and envenomated claws. Secondary threat: negligible."
"He's giving it a fucking book report," Kai whispered to Athena, his voice trembling.
Athena, pale but analytical even in her terror, was staring intently. "It's not Rimo. The vocal patterns, the posture, the micro-expressions… it's a completely different consciousness."
The largest of the Skitterclaws, an alpha with a scarred carapace, let out a challenging shriek and charged.
Aris moved.
It wasn't the fluid, instinctual grace Rimo sometimes displayed. This was something else. It was pure, brutal economy. No wasted motion. No flourish. He didn't dodge the charge; he sidestepped it by a hair's breadth, his body a blur. As the beast passed, his hand—the same hand that had trembled holding a practice sword—shot out and plunged into the seam between its head and thorax.
There was a wet, cracking sound. The alpha collapsed, its legs spasming.
The remaining creatures surged forward in a wave of chitin and rage.
What followed wasn't a fight. It was a dissection.
Aris became a whirlwind of controlled violence. He used the environment as part of his arsenal. He kicked one creature into the path of another, tangling their limbs. He used a smaller Skitterclaw as a living shield, letting it absorb the slashing claws of its kin before discarding the corpse. He didn't block attacks; he redirected them, using the monsters' own momentum to break their limbs against the stone ruins.
He moved through them like a scythe through wheat. A precise jab to a leg joint here, a shattering blow to a mandible there. He didn't kill them all immediately. He disabled them, creating a writhing, shrieking barrier of wounded bodies that impeded the others.
Kai watched, his stomach churning. He saw Aris catch a slashing claw bare-handed, twist, and with a sickening pop, rip the entire limb from its socket before driving the sharp end of the severed limb into the creature's primary eye.
"Gods above," Kai breathed, feeling his own magic fizzle and die in his palms. What was the point? This… this was a level of destruction he couldn't comprehend.
Athena was vomiting quietly behind the stone block.
In less than a minute, it was over. The clearing was a charnel house. Not a single Skitterclaw was left standing. Some were dead. Most were maimed, twitching, and mewling piteously. The chittering was replaced by the sounds of agony.
Aris stood in the center of the carnage, barely winded. His clothes were splattered with black ichor, but he was unscathed. He calmly wiped his hands on his trousers, his expression one of mild distaste, as if he'd just finished a messy chore.
He finally turned his golden gaze to Kai and Athena. The look was not one of recognition, but of assessment. Of categorization.
"Subjects: Kai and Athena. Associated with the Rimo construct," he stated. "Current threat level: Low. Utility: Questionable."
"The… the what construct?" Kai stammered, finding his voice through a haze of shock and rage. "What did you do to Rimo, you son of a bitch?"
Aris tilted his head. "The Rimo construct is a non-combatant personality. A buffer. A shield. It was created to contain trauma and allow for baseline cognitive function. It is… sleeping. Its presence in a high-threat environment was illogical. I have reasserted operational control."
"You're a… a personality?" Athena asked, pushing herself up, wiping her mouth. Her scholar's mind was wrestling with the concept. "Dissociative Identity? But the physical proficiency… it's impossible for a mere psychological construct to—"
"I am not a 'construct'," Aris interrupted, his voice sharpening for the first time. It was like a shard of ice. "I am the original. The Prime. He is the echo. I am the product of Project Chimera. He is the scar it left behind."
The names meant nothing to them, but the cold certainty in his voice was undeniable.
"Project Chimera?" Kai echoed. "What the hell is that? Some kind of mage academy?"
Aris almost smiled. It was a thin, bloodless thing. "An academy. Yes. You could call it that. They specialized in one subject: forging the perfect, mana-less weapon. They succeeded." He gestured to the surrounding carnage. "This is the curriculum."
He began walking, not away from them, but toward the deeper part of the jungle, past the ruins. "This location is not secure. The chemical signals from the deceased will attract larger predators. Follow me if you wish to survive."
Kai and Athena looked at each other. Every instinct screamed against following this… thing that wore their friend's face. But the alternative was staying in a clearing filled with dismembered monsters, waiting for whatever was big enough to eat them.
"We don't have a choice," Athena murmured, her face grim.
"He's in there somewhere, right?" Kai whispered back, desperation in his eyes. "Rimo's still in there?"
"The theory suggests he is," Athena said, though she didn't sound convinced. "But the dominant personality has full control. We need to… we need to play along. Learn what we can."
They hurried after Aris, who was already several yards ahead, moving through the treacherous jungle with an uncanny ease they had to scramble to match.
"So," Kai said, his voice strained as he clambered over a pulsating, root-like thing. "'Aris.' You got a last name? A favorite color? Anything, you know, person-like?"
Aris didn't turn. "Last names are irrelevant identifiers. Color preference is a neurological aberration with no survival value."
"Right. So you're a riot at parties, I bet." Kai paused. "What did you mean, you 'escaped'?"
This time, Aris stopped. He turned, and the look in his eyes was so ancient and full of a cold, simmering fury that Kai took an involuntary step back.
"I did not 'escape'," Aris corrected, his voice low and deadly. "I exterminated the staff. I slaughtered my creators. I painted the white walls of that facility with their internal fluids. And then, because the silence that followed was… loud, I buried myself in the deepest part of our shared mind and let a blank slate take the wheel. I let 'Rimo' be born. He woke up in a forest, covered in the blood of the men I killed."
The confession hung in the humid air, stark and horrifying. Athena felt her legs go weak. Kai just stared, his smart-ass remarks completely failing him.
Aris turned and continued walking. "The emotional fragility of the Rimo construct is a liability. Its attachment to you is a vulnerability. But for now, your survival marginally increases my own. Do not become a burden."
He led them to a small, relatively clear area dominated by the giant, twisted roots of a tree. It was defensible.
"We will shelter here," Aris declared.
As he began methodically setting up a perimeter, checking for threats, Kai slumped against a root, his head in his hands.
"He killed them all," Kai muttered. "He just… he said it like he was talking about taking out the trash."
Athena sat beside him, her body trembling with adrenaline and fear. "He's not a person, Kai. He's a weapon. A weapon that gained sentience and turned on its makers. And now… now it's awake again."
Inside the quiet, dark space he'd been shoved into, Rimo floated. He couldn't see. He couldn't hear. But he could feel. He felt the cold satisfaction of the fight. He felt the chilling calm of Aris's thoughts. And he felt the devastating, soul-crushing weight of his friend's horror.
He was a prisoner in his own body, and the warden was a monster he had unknowingly carried all along.