Blood🍶Strider
11-Sep-18 09:38 PM
/The Corpse/
The garish and gruesome visage of the Strider's half-detonated helm stared down at the ground, at the tea. Where Isa's head once laid in his lap and palms.
There, amidst the charred biometal, were two sockets; circular and embedded amidst desperately clinging meat. Lightless, they delighted in the sight of the Orokin teaset. With his scarf and sash so charred, and the alloys peeled away evermore from his helm, the grim smile over the Strider's facing was more apparent than ever.
Half his torso was missing, where the prosthetic and Harkonar breastplate had been; the Grineer alloys had been vaporized in light of the expent void-energy, both from Isa's outburst and from Lekalis' own stores.
What was left was only the vaguest sense of ribs, spine, and meat. In truth, it was a marvel of Warframe creation that the Corpse didn't collapse.
Besides that, the Frame looked darker than usual, but only near the leylines that conducted energy to the various bulbous prosthetics at his joints.
His good hand still remained, unblemished by any of the flames or implosion, the long and lithe digits were slightly curled in contemplative grace. The burnt metal, copper tinged, still glimmered in the pinkish lights exuded from Kapak's demesne.
Even amongst the gruesome displays of Helminth Infestation, The Strider's Corpse held an art to its desecration.
Indeed, it was almost an aura that... until today, had been little more than a tingling, prickling sensation.
The Infestation nearest the Strider had changed in the subtlest of ways; the winding flesh no longer coiled and spread in an organic sense, rather, the meat looked smoothed out... But tense. Hairs and folicles and antennae in the room seemed a bit less lively, standing straighter.
There was an unmistakeable crackle, with Kapak sitting so close; Radiation.
[1/3]
[2/3]
The tea infront of The Corpse began to fizz, and eventually, so did the tea in Kapak's hand.
Slowly, like rain winding its way down a pane of glass, the One Hand of The Corpse reached out and scooped up the tea cup. There was a flicker of almost blindingly sun-hued energy that crackled across the open wound of his chest, and the room vanished...
The Infestation was gone, the Orbiter was gone, the Black Sea between the stars was gone. Instead of Infested flesh, Kapak knelt with the Corpse of The Strider atop an unending Red Sea whose surface glimmered in the light of a Red sun in a pale sky.
"Press the leaves of Ruk's Klaw, dry them.
Then put them in water that is simmering, not boiling.
Don't forget to stir--" The Corpse raised its little finger with the fluid grace of a fish in a stream,
"-- Once.", The little finger danced in a single revolution. The Red Sun blinked out of existence, the Red Sea turned from a cherry red to a bloody vermillion. The sky turned black.
"Twice.", It twirled in counter to its initial twist, and a long red line was drawn in the ink black sky. A crescent over a sickened, green-yellow planet. A planet of Harvest and festival, plagued to produce weapons of war.
"Three times and--", The Strider's jubilant tone vanished as quickly as the Blood Red Sea. Screams became the World; Men, Women, Children, Mothers and the Elderly howled in Pain and Sorrow. Their screams echoed in the sudden blank Void where the only reprieve from The Dark was the Corpse of the Strider.
It stared, eyeless from it sockets, at the tea offered; it boiled and the cup shook as if something beneath the waters was fighting to break free. The Orokin gold stained red and the pale white turned pinkish in hue. Veins and Skin. A heartbeat thrummed in the distance, faster and faster.
The water turned to blood and, just as the screams seemed like to cut one's mind in twain... It vanished.
[3/3]
The Orbiter, the familiar Infested Flesh, the gloomsome light filled reality with light. The sudden vision had felt like an entire lifetime gone by... Perhaps it had. But whatever had happened had vanished as quick as it had arose.
The Corpse's hand still lay in its stricken grace. The Infested Flesh nearest the Strider had coiled back into familiar biological spontaneiety.
Though, one thing remained; the Orokin teacup had been chipped and turned over, its contents spilling out onto the meaty floor. It had burned into the meat, scarring it for as long as it took to heal.