Star Trek: Foothold - To Relieve Paine

The Blooded

The room at the end of the hall was labeled 'Séance', and it was tucked into a shallow alcove that set it back from the hall. Its door was slightly ajar, still swinging ever so slowly closer to closed after the Groth she'd run off had charged through it. She drew her brows together on contemplation, wondering what a police station would possibly do with an official room labelled 'Séance', but pushed her way through the door to find out. The layout was straight forward enough, a large, open concept square with alcoves laid out at regular intervals around the room with strange devices in them, some lit, others dim. The Groth she'd chased through were here, conferring with a number of their ugly contemporaries, but between herself and them was a much different, more interesting arrangement.

The middle of the room was an elaborate wooden pattern with iron inlays laid out in a nine-point star. At each point on the star a human being had been tied to a chair and had their throat slashed, angled to bleed out into the sigildry in the middle of the room. A mire of black, soured, fly-infested blood caked there, tacky but long dried. Something had burned in the middle of the room, and it wasn't the array of black candles which had melted to the floor in a circle around the mess, and there seemed to have been something encased in the muck at some point, but whatever it was had been removed by someone who'd left booted tracks half way to the door where she now stood.

It did not take her long to take in the details, but the enemies in the room hadn't approached her, although they did begin to circle the room, angling defensively. She was curious about this behaviour, and stepped past the threshold, in a boisterous saunter, panning her gaze around the room to look at each Groth in turn. She almost didn't count one of their number, as the creature appeared like it was already almost dead, being propped up by another two of its number, but there were 8 of the creatures here, all told. She tapped the point of her meat hook against the armored cap on her knee, as much for intimidation as anything else, but contemplated that, ironically, this room would be the perfect place to let loose with her preferred giant sword.

She was beginning to wonder what the Groth had planned for her, when the two propping up their companion started upending a large leather drinking skin into the creature's face. At first, their deathly companion gagged, spitting up what appeared to be a dark wine with pale insects swimming in it, but one of the two slapped him across the face, pinching his cheeks and holding his nose to force the drink down his gullet. She probably could have interrupted whatever it was, but when she stepped forward, so did the other five Groth, brandishing spears at her in warning. Curious, but unintimidated, she opted to watch the show with interest.

The wounded Groth was not simply injured, but looked frail and sickly. Its body was covered in lacerations, and its skin hung from it in wrinkled bags, marbled with scars, like a deflated balloon. Its head lolled weakly on a bony neck, and its eyes rolled in its head as its belly began to distend with the fluid being forced into it. Paine considered the insects she saw in the spilled wine on the floor, which looked like glass-filament worms of white thread, and cast about seeking from their small pools of mess. Not long after they were exposed to the air, they shuddered and died, sinking back into the wine. Gross, she thought, but her consideration was met with a silence that was louder than usual, and she found herself puzzled by that.

When the skin was emptied, the two Groth who had fed it to their victim tossed him forward towards Paine unceremoniously, and fell back to take up spears with their brethren. As she watched, the creature began to grunt, gagging, but not throwing up the noxious mixture in its belly, obviously blossoming in growing pain. It dragged its useless lower body behind it as it crawled towards her, reaching out, not to her, but to something only it could see, and all at once a ripple ran through its saggy body as something inside it swelled up, filling the ugly sacks of meat with tissue. It jerked spasmodically, bones jittering, howling gutturally as it strained under the change, and Paine raised an eyebrow at the display, impressed by the detail.