265, 1/2

Fifteen days ago, Slave Intake #45 had been a collection of different structures all designed like a meat processing plant meant to process around 100,000 people a year.

Slave Intake #45 was now House Benevolence, the original structure ripped out to the roots and replaced in white. Eternal stonewood was the building material of choice, and that material made apartments, offices, extra work spaces for whoever wanted to have one, strip malls, learning spaces, food halls, an entire sewer system, as well as defenses to keep all of that working well. Erick and his Overseers and the resurrected of the Waiting Room had worked hard to make that happen. Almost none of it was actively being used except for the essential places, but it was there for the using, as soon as people got around to it. They were in the middle of a war, though, so no one really cared about the economy at the moment.

Slave Intake #38 was a relatively 1-for-1 copy of Slave Intake #45, but the internals were all different.

Erick investigated those internals now.

The series of black structures known as Slave Intake #38 stood amid the tan wasteland and took up about 40 square kilometers of land, with each building connected to each other via well-controlled underground tunnels. There was some above-ground movement here and there, but people only moved above-ground when they were at this or that ‘processing zone’.

To be seen moving above ground outside of those specific zones was to be shot at by the turrets that rose above the place on tall black towers.

In the center of the Intake was the spaceport. Ships of all kinds and sizes —but mostly 400-meter-long transports— rested on black stone, while slavers and slave-soldiers moved would-be-slaves into the facilities, shuffling them off the tarmac toward the left. Those new would-be-slaves numbered in the thousands. Slave Intake #38 had just finished a raid, and the captured people were yelling and spitting and cursing and hating. Those that got too rowdy often got blasted with vile light from cruel captors, causing no real damage to their ‘livestock’ but a whole lot of pain. Those that got rowdy in those large transports often had their fellow captured people drag them down and away from the bars, so that they didn’t all get blasted with pain over and over again.

There was screaming. Some of it was because of the pain. Some was because of sorrow.

On the right side of the spaceport’s tarmac a much different flow of people came out of the ground, to head off to much smaller transports, to head off to sale. The difference in the number of people heading into the facility on the left and coming out of the facility on the right was maybe 8 to 1. For every 8 would-be-slaves, only 1 got ‘processed’ to satisfaction. The rest got eaten by demons, which was not technically a soul sundering. Not yet.

They did the sundering on Layer 1.

The demons ate the souls of the ‘failures’ here, digesting them for as long as they wanted, and when it came time to actually rid themselves of those souls, the demons usually went to Layer 1 and completed the digestion process.

Erick moved his gaze onward, investigating defenses and barriers to ingress and the locations of targets and infrastructure.

All across Slave Intake #38 were black turrets on tall black towers. They were mostly Vile-based laser-based defenses; useful against people. Not so useful against anything else. They did have guns with bullets and automatic targeting systems and such, but the real defenses of this land were the demons and talents in this place.

Those guys were in the main eviscerating area; the largest area.

Erick looked to the receiving station, first.

The receiving station was about five square kilometers of various structures that were more or less jail cells on steroids. This is where the main breaking took place. Unlike Slave Intake #45, where they captured families and broke people by having them break their loved ones, this place identified pairs of people through some sort of demonic intelligence. Erick watched as the processed people were forced to walk through scanners.

These people were elves, which were the most prominent people in the universe. These particular elves were some sort of forest elves, with slight brown skin and green-ish hair. As they walked through the scanners, light flickered and burned away whatever clothes they had, and then branded them on their back with big numbers. Burned flesh instantly healed over under different sorts of light. It was not a pleasant experience.

People screamed as they were forced to walk through the pain.

The jailers called them ‘weak shits’ and more. They were taunting whoever they could. When the captured people tried to fight they were incinerated from the outside in, and slowly, so that everyone walking by could see.

When the enslaved got past that intake, they were paired up based on their numbers and then stuffed into cells. Erick rapidly deduced that the pairings were made to inflict maximum emotional pain on the pair, with the person who had a dot burned onto their shoulder the one that they expected to survive.

The next part of intake stuffed people into cells, where only one left alive.

Those ‘victors’ got on to the next part of the whole ordeal, in which a pair of Contracts appeared out of the walls of the room, under protective glass so that the Contracts couldn’t be injured. A lot of people were trying to injure the Contracts and also failing. Videos played on the screens of those cells, showcasing ‘this is how good of a life you will have!’ if you signed the bigger Contract; the one they wanted you to sign. The smaller Contract was if the person wanted to be ‘processed’ more.

That smaller Contract imparted tracking and auto-pain magics into the person signing it, to be used at the discretion of any slaver.

The larger Contract had the contents of the smaller Contract, and also a lot of soul and body control curses. The larger Contract promised to get them out of here and into their new lives as slaves.

People signed the smaller Contract, mostly, but only when the water started filling the room.

No matter which contract the people signed, they ended up moving in the same direction.

The newly-Contracted people went to the main building where they learned what was expected of them in their new lives —from cooking to cleaning to simple obedience, to worse— and were disciplined when they failed to live up to their demands. This area of Slave Intake #38 was the largest by far, at over a full 20 square kilometers of the place. Multiple teaching buildings, the main administration center, main housing for demons and slavers; all of that, and more.

Erick wasn’t quite sure what signing the different Contracts got a person, if anything; it seemed to be a way to torture them more.

‘Graduates’ of that main area —which took about 4 months based on what Erick was reading and hearing— then moved on, all of them under heavy Contract, which was the large contract of the first offering, and more. ‘Failures’ of the main area got ‘walked’ into an ‘inferno exit’ in the center of the main area, whereupon they were incinerated and eaten by demons. The slaves were free and even encouraged to walk through the ‘inferno exit’ whenever they wished.

One person was ‘walking’ that way right now, under strict orders to go through the inferno, but she clearly did not want to do that. She was standing as still as she could right now, and yet even her simple body movements had her breathing away from the exit, the movements of her body that moved away from the exit causing agony. Looking through the nearby past, Erick saw that the woman had tried walking away, but she fell to the ground in agony. And so, she walked sideways from the exit and simply cried as she desperately tried to ‘do what the demons wanted, except exit’. They were giving her orders, and promising that if she did those orders she could be free of the inferno exit.

She did not want to die. She tried to do what they wanted.

But what they wanted was her painful death. Invariably, with small movements and accidental stumbles as she moved in an arc from the watering station to bathrooms to clean them up, she ended closer to the exit. From what Erick was hearing, she had been ‘walking’ toward the exit for three days now, because of some made up shit by the slavers, just to show off what they could do.

… Moving on.

The exit area had slaves under heavy Contract, and then under orders to sign new Contracts, which were just about the harshest things that Erick had ever seen. Bones would automatically break in fingers if the slave stepped out of line. Body parts would rot away…

Erick couldn’t read anymore.

He had only been looking over Slave Intake #38 for 20 seconds, and even that much was too much.

Every moment he delayed meant yet another person was subjected to the horrors of Slaver’s Den.

And so, 25 kilometers away from Slave Intake #38, under a considerable number of illusionary and other hiding magics, Erick conjured an eternal stonewood tree and then Shaped it into an actual defensive structure. Some walls. A thick, domed roof. Spaces for defensive valkyries to stand and to watch, and to defend. Ingress through one direction only. It was completely inadequate for any sort of true defense. It would be wiped away with a single nuclear bomb. But for the actual defense, there was Erick.

Currently, he was a 20-meter tall dragon. It was more than enough.

And then Erick cast some magic, combining [Spellsurge Weave] and [Blood of the Valkyrie] into a spellwork at the center of the forward base.

Carnage red glows floated above the solid white ground, and up above, high over the domed roof of the central structure, a red light began to glow, to cascade. The weaver was up, but it was not actively infecting people with [Blood of the Valkyrie]. Not yet. The glows in front of Erick began to change into a map of the area.

Down below that Valkyrie room, Erick cast an [Infinite Imaging], tuned to finding people. Outside, a white orb began to manifest and cascade into the air. In a much less worrisome way, people began to appear as blue dots on a white map.

Erick returned to the red map. Erick imagined the red map was a little less precise than the white one, a little more sloppy, and less refined, because he was worried about propagative effects spiraling out of control with unintended targets, and erring on the side of ‘this is not a target’. But no. The red map was just as well-made as the white. Whatever he wanted to infect, he could infect.

“And this is it, Erick,” he said to himself, floating above the red map.

Any target he picked would be the infection-vector for the rest of the propagative spell, and from there the valkyries would… spread. Erick cast a glance down below, to the white map, to see 37,000-ish blue dots pop up all over the 40 square kilometers of structure. Erick had that map search for ‘Good people’, just because; he wasn’t even sure why he picked that option.

19 people showed up. Erick was not one of them.

He kinda laughed at that.

And then he searched for ‘people about to die inside Slave Intake #38’.

783 targets.

… A bad idea, that one. The spell would fail pretty fast if it had to infect that many people at once, since each infection cost 50,000 mana.

‘Guards of Slave Intake #38’ had the same problem, but worse, at around 7,200 targets.

“How about ‘Graduates of Slave Intake #38 who wish for death’,” Erick asked himself, as he cast into the white map down below.

Erick’s eyes went wide, and then he let out a breath he had been holding. Erick wasn’t sure why he had picked that option, but it soon proved to be the better option. Only 8 targets. He imagined there would have been more, or maybe less for whatever reason, but perhaps Slave Intake #38 killed all of those who wished for death.

He didn’t want to think too much about it.

Erick gazed down upon the red map.

He began pumping it full of [Renew], and soon, the map was absolutely crimson with density. The light of the red weaver above began to drip sharp crimson, smoke grey, and shine black and gold at the same time. It was ready.

Erick cast [Spellsurge Weave] into the red map, intoning, “Graduates of Slave Intake #38 who wish for death.”

– – – –

A bloody crystal orb suddenly appeared over the black roofs of the graduate center, and then it descended fast. It smacked a ‘guard’ standing tall outside of a doorway, passing through the man, coming out the other side and taking the man’s entrails with it. The man was not dead yet, but he would be soon. The other ‘guard’ beside the first one had a surreal moment and failed to raise any alert at all.

The red ball was already gone.

The orb flew down a corridor, following the center path, but angled slightly. It went right past two demons in lab coats and deteriorating bodies, ignoring them. The demons looked at the orb as it passed, and then at each other and then at the orb again. They ignored it and walked on.

The Blood aimed for a woman down the hall who was ‘mopping’ the floor with her own spit and tongue while a nearby guard —an elven man this time— watched the woman mop, while also making her life more miserable by dribbling something nasty onto the ground.

The Blood caved through the woman’s shoulder, chest, and then went out through her hip and out the other side. The guard paused, unable to process what had just happened.

The Blood took a sharp turn through a wall and passed through that wall without impediment.

It killed a guy in a bunk unable to sleep because his bunkmate below had been kicking the bed. Gore splashed on the bunkmate.

The Blood took another sharp turn through the floor and caved a person in from their head to their feet. That person had been playing cards with real guards and losing their clothes in the process and now that person was gore on the ground. The guards complained of ‘what the fuck!’ and ‘shitting pranks.’

The Blood went through four more people, each of them actively wishing to die. It finished in some leader’s office, killing a woman who had been dusting the shelves while the leader went over progress reports and news of Erick’s resistance to Slaver’s Den. That cleaner’s gore splashed over those reports, and over the face of that leader.

The leader was stunned for a moment, then he frowned, saying, “What fool put auto-destruct pranks in the Contracts again?! What the fuck was she even doing to… trigger… Hmm.” He stopped talking.

For the body, lying broken on the ground with a hole in its chest and stomach, was subtly glowing. And then all subtlety was gone. The gaping wound flashed bright red and inflamed with light, both black and gold. Veins of red and grey spread throughout the corpse in a flashing instant.

The hole in the woman’s chest crushed inward, forming a ball of roiling flesh that—

The leader waved a hand and the blood splattered away, and then he tapped a black square on his desk, saying, “Get a cleanup crew in here, and get me Fa—”

Alarms blared. Softly. Was there a problem right now?

Unsure.

For that first ‘guard’s’ body had gone through the full transformation, uninterrupted, and out stepped a monster.

Three meters tall, human-shaped, androgynous with crimson skin and no sex. A peaceful face that almost looked like the man it had killed, but softer. Nicer. The man was at rest, and now came the monster with closed eyes, and a crown of eyes that blazed red and judgmental.

Thin yet strong, its muscles like cables stretched on bones of adamantine. Four blackened-gold wings hovered at its back and hips like a hundred floating swords, knives, and daggers. It held its clawed hands across its chest, as it floated there, looking dead and in a state of eternal repose, and yet like it would wake at any moment. A baleful, blackened-gold light shone from its wings and its crown. The world was darker where it floated.

The secondary guard, who had remained the whole time to see what was happening, had fallen to the ground, screaming in utter pain as his body flickered with black-gold fire that infected him and yet barely injured him. It didn’t need to injure. The infection of red veins under his skin did not need to kill.

That’s what the actual valkyrie was for.

The monster opened its eyes.

With eternal grace, the valkyrie reached over and carved away the guard’s face and pulled apart his chest, leaving the very-dead man behind as the valkyrie turned toward the hallway. The fresh gore turned to liquid and flowed together, into another valkyrie cocoon.

Down the hallway, tens of meters away, the two demons were staring at the red monster. One of them asked the other one, “Demon-spawning Contracts now? Who did that?”

“I’m not sure it is a demon, brother,” said the other demon. “It feels… weird. Can you feel that? I think… I think it is coming for us. Trying to convert us. What the black! The nerve of some youngsters!”

“Is that a conversion-pull? It seems weird, but I venture you are correct, brother.” The first demon said, “You shouldn’t try that against your elders, little demon. We’ll eat you up.”

The valkyrie advanced down the hallway, softly walking as though it were a single movement away from dancing instead.

“I think it aims to attack us! Actually attack us!” said the first demon, completely unable to understand why it would ever try that shit. “Can you believe this?”

“You seem correct,” said the other demon. “Come now then, little fresh-demon. Show us how— Ouch ouch! What the fuck is thaaAHH— FUCK YOU! AHHH!”

Blackgold fire erupted from the two demons, burning at their fleshy shells, infecting those shells with red and grey. The valkyrie advanced, its claws glinting, its smile faint.

The first demon sloughed off its skin and revealed its true nature as a four-meter-long teal-and-red slug. The slug spat acid even as it burned in the blackgold aura of the valkyrie. The second demon shed its burning flesh and stood as a skeleton made of putrid yellow bones. It went down screaming as blackgold fires tried to consume it; it had a lot more surface area to burn than the slug, and the slug was wet, so bones apparently burned a lot better than mucus.

The valkyrie flicked its blade wings around, splattering the slug’s acid onto the hallway, smoke rising from every drop, and then the valkyrie danced through the slug, blades flashing, blackgold burning slug slices went wide, each one infected with red-grey veins. The valkyrie then reached down and pulled the screaming skeleton demon apart with its bare hands, casting yellowed bone left and right.

Down the hall, the other valkyrie spawned from the mopping woman was just finishing playing in the entrails of the man that had been tormenting her. Those entrails glowed red-grey and turned to blood, coming together in another valkyrie cocoon.

Down below, amid blaring alarms and flashing warning lights, bloody playing cards turned less bloody as that blood floated into the air, away from the cards, to come together into a pair of cocoons.

A terrible roommate was reborn as another valkyrie, another tall, sexless creature of baleful blacklight and many blackened swords. Nearby, some bars were broken, sliced and twisted by incredible strength and powerful cutting edges. Beyond that open cage ‘graduates’ turned into meat, and then into balls of blood floating amid Siphoning blackgold light.

A dungeon further down, a playroom of the vile, held two more valkyries and several orbs of blood ready to be born soon enough, as soon as the rest of the valkyries siphoned enough power from those around them.

The leader of the graduate center was still alive. He was fighting.

He battled a valkyrie outside of his office while four more Siphoning orbs of blood pulled at him. He waved a hand and splashed away the valkyrie’s arm, but then the arm reformed and blackgold claws came for the leader’s throat again. Again, the leader bashed away the valkyrie, though every time he tried to form some sort of spellwork outside of his body the Siphoning orbs all around him pulled that magic apart.

So the leader ran.

Straight through his office, out the large window, the leader rushed to get away from a battlefield he could not win, triggering some tech in his office on the way out. The valkyrie followed and was promptly blown up as the office exploded around it.

The leader flew outside of his office, smiling as he looked back… His smile fell.

The valkyrie was dormant again; a ball of blood floating amid the burning wreckage of the room.

And the leader’s flesh was infected with red-grey veins.

The guy ran even more, calling out, “Margleknot! Travel to Wraithborne!”

Text appeared in the air,

You are currently infected with propagative magic. Travel is forbidden.

The same message was all over the place in Slave Intake #38, for many people were trying to leave the easy way. It was a technique that the slaves could not employ, due to ancient decrees of space and war made long ago in Margleknot, but the slavers could.

But not right now. Not in the middle of a war, and certainly not in the middle of a propagative event.

And so the leader of the graduate center flew faster, cursing and yelling and then yelling into a bit of tech he retrieved from his pockets—

Something darker than black descended, evaporating the man from his chest outward. A head went that way. Limbs and body went in other directions. All were infected with red, though. The ‘phone’ that had been in those hands fell away, some guy on the other side softly asking if everything was okay, and what was going on. When there was no answer the man’s voice turned frantic.

“Raza! Raza! Are you there?! ANSWER ME RAZA!”

The former leader of the graduate zone of Slave Intake #38 was already a ball of floating blood.

– – – –

Erick sighed.

Erick had regretfully learned the leader man’s name in that last phone call exchange. He did not want to, but he had.

He saw all of the destruction as his valkyries began to multiply at an alarming rate. After he had turned off the auto-targeting for new targets, letting the valkyries propagate on their own, he had only needed to supply an extra million mana to get the system rolling. And roll it did.

Some people tried to escape the battle. Erick couldn’t have that.

And so, Erick had added another Weave to another part of the building and combined that one with [Annihilation Bolt] in order to automate the killing of runners. Annihilation was fantastic at killing in one stroke of power against targets that had no defenses against that, and not many people did. It was better than doing it himself… though he was supplying all the mana to that Weave as well, and he had to directly do that. But really, only the strong were even able to make an escape attempt.

The valkyries were advancing too fast.

– – – –

A woman burned on the ground for her hatred of being captured. She hated and she hated and she wanted to kill and kill and never stop killing.

That deep conviction proved to be the thing that changed everything for her.

A valkyrie found the woman on the way to killing others. It did not do a thing to the woman that was not already being done, and worse, but the mere presence of a valkyrie was enough. Blackgold fire infected the downed woman anyway. She died to the automatic killing systems of Intake, and then she rose again as a vengeful angel.

She was not sexless. She was the same shape as the other valkyries, but her face was her own, and her body was her own, and she stared at her hands, and at how she knew what was happening around her from all of her sisters and brothers in the fight, and how all the world was filled with red orbs of former friends and neighbors and otherwise from home.

And yet she had a new home.

She was of House Benevolence now.

And Slave Intake #38 needed to be fully purged.

She roared, the first Valkyrie to give voice to the pain inside of her soul, and then she grabbed a sword from her wings, transforming the feather into a 4 meter-long blackgold instrument of death.

She moved so much faster than her slow brothers and sisters.

She carved a ballet of blood out of the entrails of slavers and former loved ones alike, knowing that all of them would be reborn in Benevolence.

Just like her.

The valkyrie smiled.

– – – –

A woman walked toward the Inferno Exit. Her body burned with vile light.

It was a relief when that black turned to blackgold. She had been struggling so hard against that demon pit in the center of the compound. She did not want to go into that oblivion. It had been days already, and she thought the end had come.

And then there was an angel.

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The angel blessed her with redgrey death that promised something better, if she wanted.

And then the angel killed her, because that is what the angels did, and that was fine. The woman was ready for death; but not for oblivion.

… And then, somehow, the woman was still alive, in some odd way. But she was not herself. The woman watched the slaughter all around, disconnected from her body, from anything physical at all, as though from inside a bubble of glass inside a red ocean—

Oh?

The angels were killing the demons?

She wanted to help.

It was a simple emotion at first, but then that emotion doubled, tripled. And became an all-consuming need for vengeance.

And so, in a way she did not understand, she extended her arms, her legs, her wings, and she could move again. She was no longer on her way to the Inferno Exit. She did not hurt. She hurt others, instead.

And she moved so much faster than her new family.

She found supreme joy in reaping the guards who had tried to break her, to then transform them into something better. Because they would be better. This was a trial for everyone right now, and the Apparent King was watching. Maybe, if she proved herself, the King would let her kill more at the next location.

– – – –

A man stood over the cooling corpse of his mother, a knife in his hand, tears on his face, and his mother’s last words eternally on his mind.

‘Kill me and live a good life, son. Don’t ever think twice about what you have to do, because they’re only letting one of us go, and I want you to live. So do it. I’m ready.’

The Contracts held on the side of the room, each of them under glass except for where the man’s signature needed to go. A red pen sat in a little nook that had extended out from the wall along with the Contracts.

And the man held the knife. He had stopped sobbing only minutes ago, because an alarm went on, and the body was still there, the Contracts were still there, and tears still flowed when they could. Mostly, though, there was anger. Fury. Hate beyond measure.

And then the monster appeared. It stood outside the cell and flicked its wings across the bars and through the man at the same time. Iron bars turned to broken shrapnel. The man turned to slices of himself.

The man died not knowing that he was dead.

He was reborn as himself, but more. Taller. Stronger. Once again connected to others.

His mother’s corpse lay on the ground. It was cold.

She was not there anymore.

But something whispered in his mind; A susurrus of general knowledge and tactics, yes, but more than that. There were distinct voices. 17 of them so far. Some of those voices knew things, and so, they all knew things.

This land where the demons had taken them was known as Margleknot. People here didn’t die unless they were sundered, and people didn’t get sundered here at Slave Intake #38, unless the demons ate them. The man’s mother had not been eaten. The man had killed his own mother. And so his mother would go and wait for a while in a room that was not a room.

If the man proved himself as worthy of the power granted unto him, he might see his mother again.

The world did not make sense at all.

But it made enough sense, for now.

The valkyrie bent a knee, gathered his mother’s corpse, and incinerated it in blackgold fire. And then he said, “Thank you, House Benevolence, for sparing me from further pain of this place. I pledge myself to House Benevolence and the Apparent King.”