Devourer

Chapter 203: Same Rules for All

Malegaros skittered towards his latest creation. He poked and prodded at the slightly squirming creature, breaking bones, cutting tendons, and ripping flesh just to see how the body had formed. All the while, he monitored the creature’s mind state through the vivisection. He didn’t like what he was seeing in this one’s mind; he could sense resentment for its current predicament. Resentment was not a permitted emotion towards a superior in the hierarchy.

“A failure then.” Malegaros said as he stabbed a claw deep into the creature’s insides. There was a gnashing of teeth from the creature before him. There was a wave of disgust from the other minds within the Hive Mind as they realised what was happening.

Traitor

Blasphemer

Heretic

Rogue

Rebel

The insults and curses were thrown at the creature as it writhed against its restraints. The resentment turned to rage, but the tendrils holding it down tightened.

“Disappointing.” Malegaros said as he backed away from the creature. He had learned all he could, but it seemed his skill was far from sufficient.

Malegaros gave a mental command, and the surrounding creatures pounced. The rebel was swiftly torn to pieces. Malegaros gazed apathetically at the creature as it was torn limb from limb before its flesh was dragged away to digestion vats.

Still not good enough, Malegaros clicked his mandibles in frustration. His king has tasked him with creating something about as independently intelligent as a human but still absolutely loyal to the hive. Malegaros assumed with the King’s new abilities this would be easier since the Hive Mind had grown stronger.

But it always reenters the same problem, with intelligence comes independence. Independance means potential for rebellion. Rebellion is an unacceptable possibility. The Hive is one mind with one vision.

Malegaros knew it was certainly possible, Legiana and Nafas were living examples of that it was possible. But thus far, only his King has managed to do it, the sheer ease with which he managed to strike that delicate balance. Legiana was the most independent of the members of Hive, so independent she was able to stand in for the king. However, Malegaros knew without a doubt she was easily the most loyal of the members of the Hive. She treated the king's words as divine mandate, as far as she was concerned, his will is the law. There is nothing she wouldn’t do to accomplish his goals.

He let out another annoyed huff as he turned to the gestation chamber and started again. He spun the essence, formed flesh and forged bone. Flesh crafting was a delicate art, the body affected the mind and vice versa. If anything is out of balance there will be consequences. Hyper aggression, laziness, dulled minds, and unchecked ambition were just some of the problems.

Malegaros grimaced as he worked, he worked and worked, the past one was iteration 1582 of this particular project. He had no idea why his king was so intent on him succeeding in this task. Legiana had her own project, as did Nafas. Malegaros could see the parallels between project, they were working towards the creation of a single entity. He knew not everything created would be used, chances are his king would merely use all their findings to create his magnum opus.

He had no idea what that project was, all he knew was that it must be very important and he had a nagging suspicion that it has something to do with that human empress…

A free mind is rebellious one…

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Legiana quietly worked in her lab as she plucked and pulled at the dummy brain in front of her. It was a modified human brain of the female variant. There were minor differences to the two with most difference having to do with the type of hormones that are more prevalent. Sexual dimorphism for intelligence is none existent with mere variation of respective affinities for certain emotions. However, the differences were minimal and of little concern when dealing with the average human on the street.

The only problem was, Legiana was not just working with the end goal of creating just a normal human. She was creating something for her king’s favourite human.

Project Lazarus was an ambitious project, Legiana didn’t even know if it would be successful. Judging by all the tests and failed attempts, the King wasn’t so sure either but he was certainly adamant in his decision to attempt it.

However, the project does yield results that are quite applicable in other areas. This was probably why her king has Malegaros and Nafas working on it as well. Although the other two seem none the wiser of his true intentions. Only Legiana and Azatherine seem to be privy to this part of her King’s grand design.

The Briars were the fruit of this project. Their high-level link to the Hive Mind was only possible due to Project Lazarus’s mind transference adaptation. Now, all the major minds within the Hive have backup bodies on standby, thus insuring the Hive against its leadership being decapitated.

Other benefits include improved ether circuitry, better flight abilties, better ether pools and of course the twin core syncronisation. It was no small feat to create creatures that could take on Syndicate Elites and Seraphim Inquisitors on equal ground. Yet her king had managed to do so without resorting to massive monsters that got by on raw power rather than finesse. Malegaros had created some monstrosities of course but a more elegant design was needed as well, hence the Briars.

Legiana plucked and pulled at the brain, injecting stimulants and depressants to see how it reacted. She was closely monitoring its mind through the Hive Mind as she did so. She noted that achieving the stable equilibrium found in humanoids was difficult. The aeons of decayed atrophy have ruined any sense of intelligent design among humans. There was nothing standard about them anymore; their variances were more significant than anything sexual dimorphism manifested. It was a complete and utter mess when one peered into the human essence code.

Lots of tangled mistakes, created from random mutation with little semblance of intelligent design. Yet some of that intelligence was there…

Legiana extracted the code from the brain and scanned it again. Her mind probed into the Hive Mind and recovered the database of recorded Human essence codes. Again she saw them, the markers left by the Watchers within the humanoids, it was there across all the humanoids.

But still these were buried deep within, the rest of the code has atrophied due to an intentional lack of anchoring. The humanoids were designed to decay, they were designed to wither and fade.

This little problem meant what she was trying to do was extremely difficult.

She moved towards another specimen and started to making some slight modification.

The brain in front of her twitched as the woman it was attached to spasmed. Legiana glanced down at the woman as she croaked and groaned, regaining some sense of lucidity.

“More sedatives.” Legiana commanded into the Hive Mind and more was injected into her through the tubes connected to her back.

“We can’t have you waking up just yet.” Legiana mused as she gazed at the struggling woman.

The woman’s body belonged to someone who decided to murder her husband when she found out he was having an affair. The husband was of healthy and fit stock, he was a stone mason and so had useful skills. His life, his body and his skills were not hers to take so as just punishment she was to be repurposed to pay her debt. Right now, she was testing the cocktail of stimulants she had devised in the dummy brain. It would be interesting to see how she reacts once she regains lucidity.

“You really are a fool.” Legiana said as she turned to the enchanted capsule that held the woman’s soul.

“And as for you, was all that gold really worth it?” Legiana mused as she stared down at the body that held the soul of another woman who poisoned her husband to receive his assets.

This task was proving difficult, transporting a soul into another body was causing some inconvenient side effects. The soul would not take well, to the new body, the differing physiology causes confusion, hence the need for chemical corrections to the brain. Legiana has a potential solution to this issue but it involves, creating what is in her mind a pure body. Her experiments have yielded that a body free of the errors born of random mutations, yet still distinctly human would be the most suitable candidate. Once the first transition was completed, she can slowly transfer the soul to a more powerful body. In essence she needed to give soul time to acclimitise to a body that is superioir to the flawed original.

However, with regards to Cecilia there was a much larger problem she was picking at. She was an Heir of Firstborn, which means she has a flexibile Ether Core. This was not easily replicated, but on that front her king said he would handle that problem.

Legiana would trust him as she always does. With that she finished her work on this particular experiment and ordered her test subject to be awakened.

The woman instantly screamed and when unshackled she started screaming about how this body was wrong and how her limbs didn’t belong to her. She started clawing at her face and limbs, her nails dragged deep gashes into her flesh as she seemingly tried to tear herself to pieces.

Legiana calmly watched as the woman flailed, all the while she observed the woman’s mental state through the parasite Legiana had infected her with. Her mind was rejecting her new body, the exact same outcome of all the pervious experiments. Although this one hasn’t gone to the point of suicide yet.

Legiana nodded at a nearby creature and it handed her a Focii pistol. In the meantime Legiana injected the knowledge of what the pistol does to her. Perhaps with a way out she might just override her survival instincts. The woman gazed at the pistol horror as she moved away, her instinct for self preservation still holding strong.

“Log improvement, success number seventeen for initial retention of self preservation.” Legaina said into the Hive Mind and an assistant logged it into the database.

Legiana gave the Hive Mind the command to start injecting adrenaline into the woman to see how she responds to stress. At the same time one of her servants approached weapons raised as a threat. Now it was time to see if she would fight for her life.

The woman screamed as she picked up the pistol and started firing at the Adjutant, the bolts just bounced off, and the woman seeing this panicked and tried to run. She was then swiftly restrained and knocked out.

“Excellent.” Legiana said with a smile as they dragged the unconcious woman back to the holding pods.

Log success seventeen of prelimary tests…

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Silvana watched calmly as the Divine Council walked around in mute horror. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes at their reactions. They truly were the coddled children. During the war with the Firstborn the Seraphim were used as common soldiers but many of Heaven’s best weapons were made by the Light Born. Silvana being one herself has watched with disdain at how the Seraphim foolishly bumble their way through managing the realms.

Her mind wandered to the legion of Light Born still locked in stasis in the room next door. Silvana let out a small sigh at the thought. Despite the fact that the Light Born did not age, their bodies would still atrophy without constant warfare. They were adapted to a world of violence and war. The Virtues knew this so they elected for this solution. It was better to conserve their strength rather than expend it needlessly. So thus the Virtues and Silvana stayed behind as the rest entered their deep sleep.

There were just ten thousand Light Born left and there was no way to repopulate without intervention from either a First Born or the Watchers. Unfortunately both are dead and extinct, which means Silvana’a race was doomed to wither into nothing.

Silvana rarely left the palace because the last thing she wanted to see was the Cherubim, with their weak bodies and stunted wings. They were disgusting aberrant creatures, when she was a child if something like a Cherubim was ever spawned it would be thrown from the tallest spire in Heaven. As for the wretch that bred such a creature, their wings would have been cut off and they thesmelves would then be thrown off the same spire.

Silvana noted Uriel’s horror as she saw the tubes embedded in the body of one particular Seraphim. Silvana walked over and peered into this capsule and saw that this one was a young girl.

“Ah the murderer, killed her three siblings in blood-fueled rage I believe.” Silvana said dispassionately.

“She’s a child.” Uriel spat back.

“Who was sentenced to death, I just made sure she could still be useful.” Silvana replied coldly.

“I suggest you get accustomed to this Archangel, I see the sprouts of another war growing at the feet of the Great Beast. Heaven will burn unless we are prepared to meet whatever the ancients have in store.” Silvana said coldly.

“Are we not better than this?” Uriel asked as she looked up at massive chamber. The pods gleamed with an ominous light, their macabre cargo held in place for who knows how long.

Silvana just sighed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. This was to be expected to an extent the Virtues chose this bunch of bleeding hearts to help give Heaven a pretty nice demeanour to make them seem more palatable to the lesser creatures.

So the Virtues decided on making this new testament of sorts, a new set of commandments to guide the sheep in a more gentle world. Of course that means they would invariably forget the horrors of the old world.

But even the old soldiers were not fully privy to the true depths of preparation the Light Born had to conduct in order to acheive victory. You do not kill a god, let alone gods by playing nice, or fighting fair.

One just needed to seriously ponder it for a moment to realise it. The demons are terrible ruthless creatures and yet they play second fiddle to forces of Heaven. No one has ever won a war and acheived peace using bleeding hearts and moral indignation. Peace is won with war, safety is won through violence.

In the back of her mind, the new teachings the Virtues bestowed may not have been such a good idea. Silvana protested at the time, but she was overruled. So hence she decided to join the Divine Council. No one knew who she was, the official story was that she was a rare breed of Seraphim that held close rlations to the Light Born and that throughout the the war she was a researcher. This was mostly true since she was a researcher for the conflict, infact she was the foremost expert in anti-Hive countermeasures.

“No, we are not, better. What does that even mean? That we are too soft to fight? That we won’t use the tools presented to us?” Silvana replied in exasperation, the frustration of ten thousand years bubbling up to the surface.

“You all might follow the drip fed bullshit the Virtues have been feeding you. In fact you all follow it quite well, you all are excellent sheperds. You guard the herd, cull it when it needs culling, remove the more insignficant threats. But the moment something dangerous comes along, well that is the moment you can no longer remain sheperds.” Silvana said as she stalked towards Uriel.

Though Silvana was a head shorter than Uriel she still took an steady step back. Silvana’s gaze was cold and merciless. Uriel was just a soldier in the war, she had no idea what it really took to win it.

“I don’t have time for your tender sensibilities and honestly, neither does Heaven. So I would suggest you cut all this saviour complex nonsense. There is only one thing you need to know about me Archangel.” Silvana said as she stopped and held out her arms. Her wings flared out and shone with an ethereal white light that caused all the nearby servants to shriek in terror.

Uriel looked around and saw the trembling bodies of the servants all of them chained within their moving coffins. Their souls are terrified but their bodies are unable to disobey and flee.

I follow the Old Testament…

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