The Rising - Ennead 1

Act 6

Galahad

I'm halfway between rage and... I don't know. There's a complex cocktail of other emotions tumbling around inside me.

Temi has shot our relationship with the Berserkers and almost revealed her identity. Let's not even count the "PR" damage she's wreaked in the minds of the Gaines siblings.

As a plus, the 1-ton lump of Alchemical alloys that I was pulling from back home is lost. The Cube dropped in the sea when the No. 4 stabbed me with the business end of his spear.

Okay, so Temi was kinda-sorta-maybe justified. The dude was trying to kill me, key word: trying. As painful as the kid's skewering was, Temi should have held back just a little bit. I've come to expect more subtlety from her.

So I feel like a dick for leaving her alone to deal with her bowl of suck but hey, tough love right? Besides. I'm not built for diplomacy, talking and shit.

One of the gargouille evades my whipblade and touches down in the midst of an already hysterical crowd. The hysteria rises by several notches.

The screaming, fleeing and curses are a distraction. They make it even more difficult for me to help them. I can't kill a fucking darkling if I can't fucking see it can I?

A voice calls out in the chaos, "This way mate!"

It's the stocky Brit who took a shine to her majesty, the Spider Magus. He leads a squad of 'battle scarred vets' as they push through the tempest.

I don't ask questions when providence gives me means. I take the rear of their rowdy human spear as they push towards danger point.

"Out of th' way you bloody wankers! Comin' through!", The mob leader has a voice like a drill sergeant.

The crowd gradually gets the idea and the going gets much smoother. It helps that we are the only insane guys heading towards danger instead of away from it.

I don't wait till I have a clear line of sight on the gargouille. I try and mark it as soon as I catch a glimpse. The darkling is far more agile that one would think. It screeches and skitters back a few meters.

A gargouille is one of the more ugly darklings. I mean it's not even ugly by accident. Gargouille seem to have been created for the express purpose of being ugly. They look ugly compared to the gothic stone gutter things. They even look ugly compared to ugly.

To start with, their spindly front appendages double as their wings. When they're on the ground, all that excess skin bunches and gathers like cheap synthetic leather. The hind legs of the thing are punier than its fore limbs, not strong enough to launch it into the air from the ground.

The only part of a gargouille that doesn't have excess folds and creases of leathery, pitted, skin is the spine. On the spine, skin is drawn in tight to emphasize an absurdly large and bony spinal column.

And then we come to the gargouille head; their crowning glory. All the excess skin that should have been gathered on the spine must've shifted to the skull. A gargouille head looks like a cross between a wildly wrinkled prune, a griffyn and a vulture - a face even a mother couldn't love.

The gargouille has already taken three lives. It's a gut-eating darkling, and the pavement is slick with the remains of splattered innards.

I'll never get used to the smell of death. I shut off my nose and strike at the thing four times in rapid succession. I guess it's stunned by the speed, and to be honest so am I. I'm yet to find the limits of all this Magus witchery.