Tread Lightly – Among Monsters And Men

The first thing I feel when the Bakwas tendril-fingers touch me is a surge of freezing cold and paralysis. All I can do is slowly move my head to look at it while it stares back at me. The progenitor of all the other damned apparitions stand before me, the bottom half invisible or incorporeal, and the other half tangible and visible.

It towers over me and while similar to the other Bakwas at a glance, it removes the vague humanoid look entirely. The head of the 3rd Sigil ghost is the size of a washbasin with a neck the size of a forearm. Its limbs are dark blue with black veins that run over them that end in those inhuman hands.

I look into its eyes as they are the only part of me that is not paralyzed the second it touched me. The face of the creature has only eyes. No mouth, no eyes, not even a single small feature that lends itself to being humanoid anymore as if it never was one, to begin with.

But the eyes. They stare deep into me and send bolts of lightning into my brain continuously, wreaking havoc on my mind. Paralyzed, I attempt to rally my Ether to fight against whatever it is doing to me, but I cannot. The core in the back of my head is still and unmoving, the paralysis reaching even my Ether.

There is one thing that I notice, though. My Daydream ended the second I was paralyzed, but I don’t hear any whispers. No dark shavings from the Bloody Palm enter my mind as I lock eyes with the ghost.

I know what it’s trying to do to me. It’s trying to control me. Turn me into one of those things, forcefully. There’s one thing it doesn't know though as the cerulean lightning from its eyes digs into the crevices of my body and freezes me still.

Something else already claimed my mind.

The Blood Palm dislikes anything that threatens its survival in any way. And it retaliates at full force, doing something that I didn't even know it could do.

I feel dark energies, that make me feel sick, leave my left hand and fight against the azureous lightning. Black-red and sky-blue energy wrestle for control of my body in my veins, organs, and muscles as the Bakwa holds onto me.

Energy quickly fades from my body as the Bloody Palm devours my flesh for power and agony blossoms through me to increase the volume of its dark energy. Bursts of multi-colored lightning, red and blue, escape my body from the clash and make the progenitor in front of me flinch and the canopy shake.

Yells from my companions below me echo through the night air and into my ears that scream for immediate help, but I cannot help them. I can’t even help myself in this war that is happening in my own body.

The Bakwa grabs onto me tighter and brings its disgusting disproportionate inhuman face closer to my face, placing its eyes right in front of mine. I see a flash of multi-spectrum color followed by thousands of colors I didn’t know existed within a boundless pane of glass ever-spinning that makes my head explode in pain.

Unable to comprehend what I’m seeing, my mind partially shuts down and allows for the battle within me to rise in scale. Iridescent sights that end in blue constantly attack my mind, and without Ether, I struggle to hold my own.

But I’m not alone. The Bloody Palm seems to hate the intrusion of the host it is seeking to devour and fights for me even while I”m removed from the situation. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. For now, until the palm turns its ravenous hunger to me once more.

The red-black lightning and deep sky-blue lighting continue to arc from my body, causing small explosions and fires around me. The bursts of energy catch the canopy that I’m standing on ablaze and make it creak under my feet.

Light appears amongst the dim and Bakwa-covered streets. The two brothers beneath me continue to fight for their lives but have stopped asking for my aid. I can see in the corner of my eye that Vernon sees me being held up above but cannot spare the time to help.

So, I continue to watch the struggle within me and the two brothers fight for their lives like an ignored spectator.

The war in my veins only grows in scale as time passes. The Bakwa progenitor is powerful and stands with its 3rd Sigil full of Ether to use, but the Bloody Palm slowly loses the fight and is pushed back into my left hand despite its higher Sigil as it fights alone, hungry, and malnourished.

But just as the sickly energy of the palm is forced back into the hand, it realizes the threat that is presented to it. I’ve always thought that the palm was the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen, but even that thought underestimated the artifact.

I’ve never seen it cornered.

I’ve come close to death many times, but for the artifact, I guess that wasn’t a worry for it. Only when the Bakwa threatens to destroy it from the inside out through its host does it truly fight back.

A small lull is made in the battle when the palm is cornered back into my left hand, but it lasts only a short amount of time as the lightning of the Bakwa begins to change my body. Only when my fingers begin to elongate and my head grows with painful throbs does the Bloody Palm stand once more to fight.

Out of nowhere, the dormant artifact bursts with dark sticky energy. Energy so dark and syrupy that as it escapes my body it rips off chunks of flesh and muscle. For a split second after the energy erupts from me, a dark image with a backdrop of endless death of humans and rivers of blood enters my mind’s eye as two massive Sigils made up of endless streams of Ether loom in the air of my mind.

The larger one that is on the left is an enormous hand with four mismatching fingers that drip blood and flesh down onto the dying underneath it. Each drop of blood turns the human into an ooze made of dark red flesh. and the falling flesh crushes those beneath it before consuming and becoming whatever it ate, only a featureless version.

Opposite the floating hand is a cracked pane of glass with a single long tendril-like finger pressed up against it. Millions of rays of light come from the cracks, rays of light that target the living yet to die. Each color of the light does something different, but they all go toward one purpose, transforming the living into nonliving, unthinking, unfeeling ghosts that seek only to spread.

These two Sigils command their armies of depravity at each other by taking over what was already living between them. In a single glance, less than a fraction of a second, the still image turns into a scene as an entire war occurs before my paralyzed and delirious mind. A war that the Bloody Palm that hangs from the air is losing.

At the final moment of the war, the hand in the air erupts with a scream that makes blood exit my ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. Then, an entire deformed and malnourished finger detaches from the hand and splashes into a tsunami of flesh, blood, and bone that overwhelms the spirits, breaking the scene in my mind.

But that is not all that is broken, the hand of the ghost that held onto me cracks and then melts when the red-black Ether sticks to it from my body. This frees me from its grasp and removes the source of the cerulean lightning from me. A moment passes between the spirit and me as we both try to understand what is happening before more energy erupts like a volcano.

The second wave of Ether explodes out of me with such force that it breaks the canopy beneath me that is in tatters from the fire, sending me forwards, propelled by the blast, several feet away from the progenitor into the sea of Bakwas.

As I fall into the group of apparitions, though, the remnants of the Bloody Palm’s energy followed by a third surge make all the imminent threats that seek to petrify me into a red-black ooze.

While I’m in the air falling, I feel my core freed and force Ether through my body to clear it of the masterless cerulean lightning. As the paralysis on my upper body fades from my own Ether clearing out the lightning, I crash into the hard road of Harmony Town.

The air is knocked out of me that I held onto for a full minute and I take another breath desperately. The first breath in a full minute enters my lungs and fills me with energy. I forcefully seize one more breath with shaky lungs after the first as the situation definitely calls for it.

A gasp of defiance, of Struggle, enters my body siphoning the Ether around me and filling me wholly with Ether. I’m careful not to take in too much so that I go beyond my limit so far that I’ll die and instead stop the gasp around seventy percent of the way through filling my lungs with Ether.

The second thing I do is restart Adrenaline Surge, the pain that encompasses my body and mind from the battle of colored lightning. An internal sigh without breath escapes me with the relief that the Ether grants me.

Something that I notice soon after the Ether fills me and is commanded to loosen my chains now that my pain is gone, is that the Bloody Palm is quiet, even without Daydream. So with this passenger in my body dormant, I use a large amount of this Ether as well to focus a Daydream on my legs.

I require swiftness right now, and the loosened chains in my legs alongside the extra Ether allow me to stand despite the paralysis that still plagues my lower body. When I get up from the ground, covered in sand, my own flesh, and ooze, I see a sphere of Bakwas that stare at me from several feet away, and below their feet are translucent spirits.

The Bakwas below them look as if they were drained of essence. Of Ether. A smile comes across my lightning-charred lips. The progenitor floats just a few feet away from the side of the building, the bottom half of its body invisible. I take a quick glance and see the two brothers, Vernon and Virgil, desperately fighting for their lives and Dakota’s against the horde.

Freedom for an old friend who died, or the lives of the current. It's an easy choice to make.

Flicking the bowie knife, Dirge, into a reverse grip in my right hand, I attempt to do the same with the left hand and another dagger, but I am unable to. The Bloody Palm is limp, bloodless, and unresponsive as it hangs from my partially devoured body. I quickly try to pump Ether into it before I move to see if it recovers and it does, but just barely as only an incredibly quiet and almost inaudible whisper enters my mind.

So, with a weapon in one hand, I dash toward my companions. Unburdened by the Bloody Palm that expended its energy to save the both of us, I move so swiftly that dust flies into the air as I dash among and between ghosts to save my friends.

Bullets from Virgil's Colt fly past my face as radiant bombs explode beside me during my warpath to them. Quickly and covered in wounds, as usual, I return to my group and the small circle of safety they have made, roughly five feet in diameter.

Virgil sees me first and is shocked, but recovers almost instantly and continues to shoot his gun while giving commands.

“Damn! Wyatt! I have no clue how you did whatever you did, but I’m happy you did. Now, let's end this as quickly as we can. Lead us to the progenitor while you still have strength. You look like you're about to drop at any second and you’re not healing like usual.”

Virgil’s words make Vernon glance over and yell in excitement at seeing me alive before firing another bomb of radiance that makes him puke afterward from saturation sickness. His words also make me look down at my own body as I notice that the constant healing I'm used to is absent.

Large strips and chunks of flesh are missing from just about every part of my body. Something also feels wrong about the left side of my face as I raise my hand to touch my mouth and my fingers touch my tongue without any flesh in the way. A hole in my cheek is present and I can only imagine how ghastly it looks, especially in the dark that is only lit by gunfire and Ether.

A shadow to my right calls for my attention to be drawn away from my injuries as a Bakwa lunges at me. I react by accurately placing Dirge into its mouthless face. I then attack another with my left hand as a habit that has quickly formed.

This is quickly found out to be a mistake as all I end up doing is slapping a deadly ghost with a useless limp left hand. A small chuckle rings through my mind during the middle combat that brightens my mood despite the dark night and dangerous situation.

I rectify my mistake by stabbing Dirge, the bowie knife, into the Bakwa’s face that I slapped. From then on, I stab and kill these ghosts toward the progenitor Bakwa that just observes me weirdly from the window it hangs upon.

By the time we get halfway to the giant and Bakwa that is even more deformed than the others, Vernon runs out of steam, his mind unable to resist his body’s exhaustion. Something both me and Virgil were expecting, he did do a large amount of preparation before nightfall and used a huge amount of Ether while at night after all.

Fainting like this occurs when the mind cannot push past the body's request for rest. Sleep is the best way to allow a body to expel personal Ether, foreign Ether is a conscious act and is different.

So, when we are twenty feet from the building the progenitor is on, Virgil has to begin carrying his brother who passed out from Ether saturation, unable to push himself further. The bad part about the older brother carrying the younger though is that he now has to shoot and reload with one hand which makes our job of staying safe just that much harder.

Not to mention that my chest is beginning to grow tight and uncomfortable from the period of not breathing and the mass of Ether that dwells within. We’re not moving fast enough. I’m spending too much time killing the Bakwas in front of me while advancing.

If only I could just get these damned things out of the way! Wait, I can! They are incredibly light and bursts of air-powered Ether have pushed them back before!

There’s only one issue. If I breathe out, my Strugglers Gasp will end. That means that Virgil will have to finish the job, and I can't even tell him that without wasting Ether with my exiting breath.

I look at the experienced bounty hunter and monster slayer and he gazes back at me, understanding something.

“If you got something you can do, Wyatt. You better do it now. I’m almost out of steam, the body just about full, but I can handle one last push.”

I nod back at the man, and he drops both Dakota and Vernon in preparation for what's to come. We both know that if we fail now we die anyway. Might as well drop them to give us a better chance to kill the progenitor.

Then, I point at his Colt and hold out my bowie knife for him to take. At least I can try to help from afar with the gun if he is going to attack up close. Virgil quickly gets my meaning and possesses the Colt to me while taking the bowie knife back. He does leave me with a warning about it, though.

“Pistol is very heavy and only has a few bullets left. We’re gonna have to scavenge for some tough this town after.”

After we trade, I raise my right hand and count down from four while holding Dirge with my thumb. Then, I point my mouth at the ground in preparation for the zephyr of air to leave me and send the Bakwas flying away with their light bodies.

Four.

Three.

Two.

O–

The countdown is interrupted on the drop of the last finger as wind flutters above us. Looking up, I see the oversized and deformed Bakwa flying in the air. It must have ended its break and jumped from the building it hung from.

Only one thought exits me as the giant spirit lands on me and pushes me backward onto the ground on my back, the surprise and the impact making the newly acquired Colt fall out of my hand and onto the dirt several feet away.

Fuck.

The Bakwa progenitor reaches down to touch me once more and without the unwanted but needed aid of the Bloody Palm, this time it would win. Easily. But before it can, a man tackles it off of me into a group of other Bakwas that reach down to touch him while stabbing the massive spirit the whole way with a long knife.

Virgil.

I force myself to roll over and point myself toward the man and the spirits that are upon him like a ravenous horde. Desperately, I release my breath of defiance. The first that is aimed to save someone other than myself.

A massive squall exits my lungs and streams of my mouth. The rush of wind which is more similar to a miniature directional tornado sends all the Bakwa within a hundred feet of Virgil into the air and away. Far enough away that a fight would end before their slow bodies return.

Immediately afterward, though, a monumental Ether headache knocks down the doors into my mind. I grimace with pain as all the energy leaves my body and I end all my flows of Ether because I’m at the tipping point. The razor’s edge that would send my body into a total breakdown. Something I’ve grown to dislike and loathe to the point I’m careful not to experience its effects.

Acute Ether saturation.

But as I collapse into weakness, I watch Virgil wrestle against a king of ghosts all alone.