My patrons voted for it, so we have a continuation of Pets, with the aftermath of the encounter with Luckbreaker. It’s been a while since last chapter, but the events of it have stayed as raw and horrific as the moment they saw what their benefactor had left for them.
Below is an introduction to that scene. For the rest, check out the link above!
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Her recollection of Kuraka was faint, but Caitlin remembered the Pedlar as an imposing figure, broader across the shoulders than their father, meaty arms as large as she was and powerfully built. What she saw on Luckbreaker’s command chair was something more terrifying than any of her memories.
Kuraka’s arms and legs were gone. So was his lower torso and half of his upper body. Beneath the remaining skin and enmeshed in and around his organs were more of the growths, spreading out from the structure of the command chair, melding into it perfectly like folds of skin pulled taut, blending from metal to meat seamlessly. It looked like the man was being consumed by his own throne… or like an insect with its limbs severed by a parasitoid, its torso webbed up for later consumption. Both images felt terrifyingly apt. He looked like a carcass that was had been cleaned and butchered but was still alive.
Blood was encrusted in Kuraka’s hide and mane, with surgical scars across the top and sides of his skull. His chest, rather the mixture of original tissue and parasitic growths that had become his chest, still rose and fell with every breath Kuraka took, keeping him alive like a patient in an artificial respirator. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, but madness brought on by isolation and despair danced within his eyes.
“Gods above and below,” Calvin said. Caitlin stared in silent horror. There was a section of the Pedlar’s chest that was translucent. She could see the Plagued Lord’s heart beat within his chest, and the worm-like tendrils that were wrapped around it, forcing it to continue on. “What happened here, Kuraka?”
The Pedlar turned his head towards the young man. It was the only motion that he was capable of. “What does it look like?” he laughed, foam flecking the sides of his mouth. There was movement under his skin, like questing fronds searching for shelter. “You made a friend.”
~
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