Archive of Our Own

It wasn’t his place to judge his Witness’ choices, of course it wasn’t, but. This one? Truly? Of course the Psions had promise, minds tangled together even past the borders of death, dragging each other closer… No, that part made perfect sense to him.

It was this specific psion that had him wondering. There was such a…lack of respect, never mind the correct level of devotion, not that the Witness seemed to care.
But Rhulk cared. He cared about the callous disrespect, the way the Mindflayer postured and talked back like he had any right to do so while he stood in the back, showing the proper manners.

At first he’d hoped that modeling the right behaviour would be enough. This Nezarec was clearly bright enough. But no, he didn’t want to learn. So he had to be made to learn.

—----

It didn’t take long for an opportunity to present itself. The Witness was dividing up tasks for its disciplines and Nezarec…Nezarec was not paying attention. The blunt end of his glaive hit the other precisely in the back of the knees, toppling him down with a sound that was more surprise than pain, but all music to Rhulk.

He stepped closer, looming over Nezarec’s now-kneeling form at perfect attention - arms crossed behind his straight back - pleased with the result, pleased with the way the Witness didn’t even pause in giving orders, barely even seemed to take notice at all the discipline that had been enforced here. Good.

Of course, the soft glow of pleasure in his chest lasted only a few short moments, before he wished to have used the sharp end of the glaive instead. The psions' newly-dexterous feet were pawing at his own legs, the over-jointed toes crawling up over his ankles and there wasn’t any way to get away from this without breaking the posture, without drawing attention to the fact that Nezarec was busy with everything but listening.

It was distracting to have his legs fondled like that, and there was no other word for it, the way those toes were all but stroking his skin, revulsion slowly rising in his chest, much as he held onto the emotion until his Witness was gone again.

But the second the thin glass plane of existence shattered, power flared up into his collar, white hot anger taking physical form.
This time he made no effort to let Nezarec avoid the pain of correction. It was as fast as a thought. The flare of power, a step back and then the hard sound of his foot impacting on the other disciple’s horned head.
It was enough force to kill, had Nezarec still been a mere mortal. But he had been chosen, for reasons entirely beyond Rhulk’s understanding. So instead of removing that empty excuse of a head, Nezarec was thrown across the floor, sliding along the smooth rock of the pyramid to impact on a pillar of polished yellow marble.

“Never. Do that. Again.”
Rhulk’s will couldn’t cut reality to ribbons the way his Witness could, but oh the sound left Nezarec trembling either way. At least so he thought, for the split second before the noise that went with the motion reached him.
It wasn’t the soft keening of pain he’d hoped for. No, Nezarec was laughing, the sound of it growing from a throaty chuckle to full laughter, reverberating along the walls of the pyramid and the inside of his head like more grasping fingers.

“No? But you’re handing out such lovely rewards for it. Perhaps I should be more creative next time? Would that please you better?”

He bristled, literally, the shining thorns on his collar rustling with barely contained rage. He wanted to step close, roll Nezarec on his back, sit the blade of his glaive down on his throat and lean on it, slowly, enjoying every second as the metal sank down, spilling dark, sticky blood onto the floor.
But his Witness had chosen, and it wasn’t on him to unchoose. No matter how much he craved the sight of Psion guts on the floor.
For a second, it was still almost too tempting, that enduring laugh grating across his mind.
It took all his self control to just turn sharply and leave the hall, that laugh still echoing after him, running along his spine like a hand.

—--

Unfortunately, Nezarec clearly meant it. The next time the Witness called on them both, he stood too close, never quite enough to justify a reaction but…he was there, at the edge of Rhulk’s vision, a featherlight touch at the edge of his thoughts, always just out of arms’ reach but close enough to bother him.
At least this time he paid attention, and Rhulk…well, if it took this to ensure his Witness got the service it deserved? Then he would endure the slide of strange thoughts against his own. He could almost ignore it, the occasional touch, then nothing, then touch again, then nothing - the touches increasing and lingering until the presence of them became something he could ignore.

Right until that barest breath of contact turned solid. Between one word and the next, he couldn’t pay attention to the Witness’ anymore, distracted by the images that slid into his head like fine steel daggers:

Rhulk on his knees in front of the Witness, where he belonged, a dozen superimposed hands shoved into his chest, caressing the tender lines of his nervous system with a touch like ice like fire like ecstasy.

Rhulk on his knees, in a ruined pyramid, chest still gaping open, sap and gore dripping down down down, his own glaive broken off inside the cavity.

Rhulk on his knees, Nezarec standing over him, a tongue like a tendril uncoiling from a mouth filled with knifes, dripping acid over his shoulder, licking his chest open, burying his face in the golden sap-

He whirled and this time it was the sharp end of the blade that came up and around, faster than most eyes could see - and then it stopped, the manifold hand of his Witness solid on the twisting blade, and he might as well have tried to swing it through a neutron star, except he didn’t even try.
The contact reverberated through the blade and the rest of him stopped like the blade had, caught in utter stillness, almost unbalanced in the middle of the motion.

There were no words. There didn’t need to be any. Eyes like the darkest part of space met his, and the reprimand might as well have been a slap to the face. Those eyes turned from him to Nezarec, and there was no change of expression, but the other disciple flinched all the same, and three of the new eyes budding on his face withered to dust. The thinnest sliver of satisfaction bloomed in Rhulk’s chest. There, he hadn’t been put in his place like that.

“You will work together.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a demand. His Witness commanded the way entropy did, and he obeyed the same way, the glaive all but vanishing behind his back, to his usual rest position, the moment the Witness’ hand fell away from it.
Nezarec didn’t quite manage the poise. No, he looked to be hurting, head turning this way and that to get used to his diminished field of vision. Served him right.

The Witness turned from them both without another word, and between one blink and the next, it was gone.
Rhulk watched Nezarec stare at him. The withered eyes would heal, eventually, but for now he took pleasure in the sight of them flaking down in a shimmering trail of dust as the other stalked from the room.

—--

If he had hoped that the incident had left Nezarec more demure, he was bitterly disappointed. The next time they met - centuries later, both having been sent to different ends of the galaxy - the Psion had wrought more changes on himself. He was taller now, broader, the horns of his helmet long-since fused into his skull, but he still swaggered with a confidence entirely unbefitting a disciple.
But then, he had also taken to styling himself as the ‘god of pain’, a title so ridiculous that when he’d heard of it, Rhulk had been sure that that had been some terrified and silly mortal invention. And perhaps it had been, but Nezarec had adopted it with more zeal than he’d ever shown the work they were to do.

Now he strode along the path between the statues, relaxed enough to brush his clawed hands along the surface of the stone, marr perfect polish with long scratches.
Truly, his most distinctive skill was how he could annoy Rhulk to the point of rage within ten seconds of coming into his sight.

He knew his face didn’t move, and yet Nezarec’s face split into a grin that threatened to take the top of his head off. The teeth had become more numerous in the meantime, it seemed, and sharper.
“Rhulk, it has been quite too long.”

Not long enough, and he didn’t deign answering, not that that stopped Nezarec. No, he just walked right up to him, and this time he didn’t stop out of arm’s reach. No, he only stopped when they were almost chest to chest, leaving Rhulk free to stare down at the other, the spines of his collar slowly unfurling behind him like a poison flower.

Which apparently was no more of a deterrent than his silence had been. Nezarec tilted his head up, baring his throat and oh how he wanted to put his hands around it and squeeze, until his palms met in the middle again.
But his Witness had been clear. They were not to fight. He kept repeating it inside his head like a mantra. They were not to fight. They were not to fight.

Nezarec lifted a hand - long fingers, claws, joint spaced out in disconcerting evenness - and put the fingertips low on his chest, claws so light they were barely felt, and it had pure, undiluted rage bubbling up his throat but they were not to fight, they were not to fight and these fingertips slid higher, trailing the dip along the center, the hidden seam, with just enough pressure to make long-dead hunger raise its head again.

“Stop that.” The words came out sharp enough to open cuts on Nezarec’s face. It was a final warning. It fell on deaf ears.
The former Psion’s long tongue lolled out to lick up his own blood.

“Really? You’re not very convincing.” His voice slid into Rhulk’s head like another hand, stroking along the inside of his skin, pressing behind his eyes like a caress, soft and intimate and the thorns in Rhulk’s collar were glowing bright enough to cast shadows now.

They were not to fight. But clearly Nezarec was spoiling for one, and perhaps he did need a lesson on where he could put his hands - and where he would pay for putting them.

He didn’t even have to want it. He just had to stop suppressing it, and his body still knew what to do. How to hunt.
His chest split down the center, as fast as his nerves could convey his decision. Between two thoughts, the hardened edges of his flesh parted, spring-loaded tendrils curled around Nezarec’s wrist, yanked his hand forward and his chest snapped closed again.
The edges of his chest cut as cleanly as any knife, and it took no effort at all to sever the limb in the joint.

Nezarec jerked back in reflex, but this time it was Rhulk not letting him go, one elegant hand gripping those ridiculous horns and craning his head back harshly.

The scent of blood rose metallic and delightful, and inside his chest, the tendrils coiled and rend, turning flesh into sustenance. Blood was dripping down his chest, from the outside and within and for a split second, he was tempted to drag him close, open his chest wide and devour the rest of him. That way at least he would be of some final use.

But they were not to fight.

“I do not need to convince you. Every limb you put on me, you will lose. More worthy disciples than you can be found.” If Nezarec was too stupid to learn the lesson he was offered, the lesson Rhulk had been taught by the Witness itself? Then perhaps he had to suffer the consequences of his stupidity.

His grip tightened further, cracking the horn he held and ah, so it was part of the skull. More blood spilled down, and for once, Nezarec squirmed in his grip. There still wasn’t quite enough fear for his liking, but at least that grating confidence had fled for the time being.

After an eternity of service, Rhulk could feel the approach of his Witness, the shivering of reality, the way physics would bend.
It was more than time enough to all but fling Nezarec away from him, onto the floor, where he belonged, and turn to await the arrival, arms folded behind his back, spine straight, like there wasn’t blood still dripping down his chest, like he couldn’t hear the Psion scramble upright behind him.

When the Witness arrived, it never commented on any of this.

—--

When he retreated to rest, wrapped in the comfort of his casket, the image still stuck in his head, Nezarec bleeding onto the stone, silenced by pain, his severed hand still twitching inside his chest as it got digested.
He could still feel the remains of bone rattling around, and as delicious as the memory of this was, it was also distracting.

This time Rhulk’s chest parted slowly, unfurling into a glowing trap for creatures that hadn’t existed in an eternity or two, gone with Lubrae itself. The tendrils brought the bones close to the surface, ready to eject them like the refuse they were. Useless, drained of any nutrients, not that his body still needed food.

He still picked the little shreds of them up and turned them over in his fingers before grinding them to dust between his finger tips. It sent a shiver through him at the thought of how easily Nezarec could be broken after all, taken down to the barest components. He could picture it all too well: digging down through altered, hardened skin, glaive - no, hands, hands dipped into the gore as he pulled guts and viscera out and spread it in careful patterns across the stone, a sacrifice for his Witness and oh the image was so clear in his head that it sent light under his skin, along the budding lines, in a shivering wave of anticipation.

He crushed the bit of bone into his hand with a sudden motion. The light winked out immediately, leaving the casket a comfortable darkness. No. As much as Nezarec deserved to be disciplined, he wasn’t going to give him even the most ephemeral power by fantasizing about his death like this. The Psion was nothing, less than nothing, for all that he carried the title of ‘Disciple’. Every unnecessary thought spent on him was one too many.

—----

At least he was free of him for entire centuries afterwards. The Worms needed only a little adjusting, but Xita… Xita needed oversight, to ensure she knew her place in this world. It kept him busy enough to entirely forget about Nezarec. One more failed disciple, one more case of disappointed expectations as he proved too weak, no doubt.

Except after centuries of blessed solitude, as he cultivated the Hive into something useful through their worms, his Witness returned, and not alone this time.

No, this time it had company, and for all that the body had changed again, the swagger hadn’t. Nezarec had grown to tower even beyond a mindflayer, gorged on a thousand million scraps of power from lesser beings, body adjusted with even more parts - carapace and armour, something that might turn into wings if left to grow another millennium or so.

It was disgusting, this obvious scavenging, this obvious weakness. And yet, the Witness tolerated it, moreover, it left Nezarec here, with him. There was some great assault on the enemy to come, another hiding spot to route, but that didn’t make it any less galling, for all Rhulk kept his demeanor even.

His Witness had a reason for this, no doubt, and he? He would deal. Nezarec could be cowed just fine, after all, and the memory of that was still sweet, centuries later, and no doubt would gain company soon enough.

In the end, the fragile peace between Rhulk’s desire to be left alone, and Nezarec seemingly trying to work up the nerve to bother him anyway lasted less than three rest cycles. It might have been days on the planet his pyramid was currently shadowing, or years. He only cared because it had been too short a time either way before the Psion slid his mind up against him, watching from some perch atop a dias as Rhulk tried to fuse a hive worm into the local sentients.

It didn’t work. His little test subject died screaming, like they often did, and he had long since grown numb to the faint pleasure of their deaths. They were too unimportant, and too small. But Nezarec clearly still enjoyed it.
His pleasure rolled across Rhulk’s mind in a fetid wave that curled his fingers in disdain, nearly reaching for his glaive. No. Not yet.

“Contain yourself.” It was an easy enough order, really. Surely every Psion had been taught the necessary skill, and surely Nezarec could employ it while salivating over the death of some tiny morsel.

“But where’s the fun in that?” For all the body had changed, Nezarec’s voice had remained the same. Confident, borrowing into the mind without any physical need for hearing, far too intimate to be permitted like this.
“Last time, you had a taste of me. This time, I deserve to get one.”

He climbed down from the dias with the grace of a snake, double jointed at every possible point, and quite a few that Psions didn’t usually have. The air behind him shimmered, and resolved into a giant warhammer.

It was almost entertaining, the way it was so clearly modeled after his own glaive, a pale, unrefined imitation of his own work, the way Nezarec himself was.
“Then come and try to get it.” Rhulk let all his amusement show in his voice. Oh yes, this was going to be fun. Much more fun than the still-twitching body of his experiment behind him.

Nezarec came at him, fast, low to the ground, warhammer dragging behind him and then coming around in a great arch.
For all his speed, he looked almost lazy to Rhulk. He only needed to step aside, a sparse turn of his body and half a step. He didn’t even need to unfold his arms or summon his glaive to avoid a blow that shattered the ground, and the twitching corpse on it, into a fine shower of blood and splinters.
“Sloppy.” Too slow, motions too telegraphed, and that warhammer was wielding Nezarec nearly as much as he was wielding it.

Said warhammer dragged across the floor, sending another shower of splinters his way, but it was just another long, elegant step backwards to avoid the worst of it. The smaller grit bounced harmlessly off the bark of his skin. “And slow.”
It was almost a pity.

Almost.

Nezarec bared his teeth at him, saliva shining on the black enamel of them and came at him again, faster this time, fast enough that Rhulk did have to pull his glaive together from the thick air of the pyramid, bringing it around in a quick spin to deflect the warhammer to the side.

He was right though, it was wielding Nezarec in turn. The momentum of the hammer dragged his upper body around in the sudden shift of direction and that made it easy, oh so easy to spin the glaive once more, part flesh in its wake.

Nezarec stumbled back, his chest opened to the bone, dark blood sheeting down over his skin, pale bone showing in between. Good.
Rhulk couldn’t help the satisfaction shining off him, collar quivering in excitement. He was almost hoping that this wasn’t going to be enough for Nezarec, that he would keep pushing, and give him a good excuse to push back, to finally teach him where he belonged: on the floor, groveling for mercy.

The Psion did him the favour. The gash in his chest closed, knitting back together like soft clay. He spun the war hammer over his head, and this time it became lined in soft, purple energy, the void-call of a Psion. That was such a cheap, useless trick and Rhulk just ignored it.
He closed the distance again, long legs only needing two steps to bring him close enough to lash out, the blade of his glaive making to shear through one of those ridiculous horns before Nezarec had a chance to react - but the void-glow around the hammer arched down at him and suddenly his world turned dulled and slow, muted save for the noise of Nezarec’s laughter in his head.

Now he was too slow. The hammer caught him in the side and threw him across the hall, shattering two statues in his way and cracking the fine amber-glass crystal of a wall. Anger bloomed hot and sudden in him, cresting in the spikes of his collar. He landed on his feet and launched himself back at Nezarec, and if he had seemed fast before, it was nothing compared to this, rage coalescing to turn him into a blur of light and red that hit Nezarec and cut his laughter off with a wet noise.

The expression on his mismatched eyes was almost comical. It certainly served to entertain Rhulk as he leaned back. His glaive was embedded not just into Nezarec’s chest, but through it, the curved blade of it jutting out of his back like another limb and two thirds of the length not even pushed through him yet.

The Psion stared down at his own chest, the metal piercing through it, and the soft whistle of a destroyed breathing organ turned into another laugh, bubbling and wet and half-choked but a laugh all the same. Nezarec’s mouth split into another wide grin as his gaze transferred from the glaive to Rhulk’s face.
“Why, you could just have asked.” For all his breath was wheezing in his chest, his mind-voice was steady, rich with pleasure. “I would have been happy to taste your glaive. See?”
And he stepped forward, forcing the square, spinning handle of the glaive into his body, through it, rending the wound even wider.

Blood spilled down in long, eager pulses, dripping onto the stone like rain, and half of what kept Rhulk rooted into the spot was surprise, as Nezarec took another step forward, and another, until the ragged, gaping edges of the wound pressed up against Rhulk’s fingers.
But the other half of it was some shivering emotion partway between revulsion and something else he didn’t care to name as Nezarec’s mind wrapped around him like swamp mud, cloying all else, as many-jointed fingers came to rest on the glowing budding lines of his shoulder, scalpel claws cutting down into the delicate tissue there.

The pain of it was sharp and sweet and jarred Rhulk into motion again. He jerked back and spun, tearing the glaive out through Nezarec’s chest at the same time as Psion’s claws tightened on his shoulder with crushing strength.

Their pain echoed each other, howls that shook the walls of the pyramid, reality itself trembling as an explosion of Darkness forced them apart.
When the amber light cleared, they were on opposite ends of the hall. Rhulk was still holding his glaive, but now he was leaning on it too, skin pulsing erratically with lure-light, the seam on his chest shivering open and closed minutely as his body demanded sustenance to heal the ragged, raw wound where his second shoulder had been before. Sap was already starting to harden over the torn flesh.

Opposite from him, Nezarec was leaning against a statue, one hand pressed against his side in a near-futile attempt to keep his organs in place, the other still holding Rhulk’s now-severed arm. The fingers of it were twitching against the stone, not quite dead yet.
Nezarec was still laughing in his mind, the voice somehow even richer now, slowly oozing into Rhulk’s head as he watched the other Disciple lift the severed arm and lick the golden sap of it from the joint, tongue long enough to curl over the entire thing, to burrow into the wound until the phantom pain of it refracted through Rhulk’s head.
“But I think I like the taste of your pain better than your glaive.”

His reaction was pure instinct. He dropped the glaive and flung his hand out. The Darkness bolt he threw at Nezarec was so dense it bent the illumination of the room around it and tore up two more of the statues just with its passing. Its impact silenced the laughter and voice on his head immediately.
When the Darkness dissipated, Nezarec was gone, for all the echo of his amusement still hung in the air like perfume.

—--

This time, his reprieve would be brief. The Witness wanted them to work together, so they would.

Rhulk returned to his casket and sank into it with a low groan. The wound in his shoulder was already healing, cells growing under the protective shell of sap, but the pain remained, burning though his body as if a small sun had been shoved into the socket of the joint.
Even the soothing dark of the closed casket didn’t serve to muffle it, if anything it made him focus on the pain more. The echo of Nezarec’s fingers digging through his shoulder didn’t want to abate at all; no, it grew until he could have sworn that once more, physical digits were sunk into his flesh, shattering sap and bark and bone to sink into the new, tender growth of the limb, overlaid with the phantom sensation of a twitching hand he no longer possessed.

The feeling chased him into his sleep, long-forgotten memories of growing pains mixing with the way the sensitive new growth would press up against its sap shell, shatter and expand it, mixing with the feeling of claws digging into his body, until he woke nearly as tired as he’d started.

—--

When he met Nezarec face to face again, his new arm was still delicate, a lattice work of vines and roots that hadn’t yet filled out or lengthened properly, covered in an uncomfortable, protective shell of sap. It was yet too weak to hold his glaive, so that was transferred to his working hand, held as upright as his back, but still his composure nearly broke when the other disciple stepped out of a dark portal.

His body had been modified once again, and this time Rhulk knew exactly what had been done, and why.
A third arm rose from the Psion’s shoulder, red bark shining in the pyramid’s illumination, familiar joints folding forward to rest over his chest in some mockery of an embrace.

This time what rose in his throat was beyond anger, beyond wrath, it was hatred, pure and distilled, clear as a glass blade. He wanted to tear that limb off Nezarec’s body and beat him to death with it, feed the dead limb down his grin until he choked on it. He knew he wasn’t subtle, didn’t care to hide it, even as Nezarec’s grin widened further.

And yet, he found new heights of hatred when the stolen arm reached up to caress along the Psion’s jaw and he could feel the pressure of it in his own, newly formed fingertips, the exact texture of the skin. How dare he? How dare Nezarec do this, defile the flesh of his betters for his scavenging ways?! Rhulk’s newly grown hand curled into a fist, the sap-shell shattered in a burst of pain at the sudden motion before new liquid hardened it again.

He hadn’t noticed that he’d taken an angry step forward, collar fully unfurled and glowing like a deadly sun.
And yet, the single, cutting noise of an inhale was enough to stop him short, jerk out of the half-lunge he had worked up to.

His Witness was there, by his side, face as clean and empty as ever, and yet, disappointment was radiating off it with enough force to make him flinch.
“My Witness, I-”

“Silence.” The pressure of the voice cracked the sap-shell of his arm, grew hoarfrost on it, and Rhulk bowed without hesitation. His Witness demanded silence, and he could be silent.
The cutting attention slid from him to Nezarec, and while he couldn’t see the grin wiped off his face, the sudden withdrawal of the Psion’s mind spoke clearly enough. The faintest sliver of blood scent wafted through the air and Rhulk knew that his obedience was being rewarded once more.

“You will work together. We will not tolerate such diversions.” It was laid down as a law, and Rhulk accepted it as such, bowing deeper. Distantly, through that accursed link with his stolen arm, he could feel Nezarec do the same, arms swept wide in a grand gesture of submission. He didn’t believe for one second that it was submission to more than an appearance of truce.

—-

But a truce it was either way, and perhaps the most grating thing about it was that Nezarec wasn’t in fact entirely inept. If he put actual effort into his work, instead of terrifying meaningless mortals to feed himself, he was…efficient. Deadly. Perhaps this was what the Witness had seen and what had moved it to choose the Psion despite all his flaws.

It only made it more upsetting to see how often he was slacking on his duties, how often he prioritized his own pleasure over the necessary work they did. Having a gift and squandering it was even worse than having had no gift at all.

Sometimes, it left Rhulk quietly fuming when they parted. Sometimes, like today, it fed into the simmering hatred in his chest as he watched Nezarec use that stolen arm to pick up one of his cultists and crush it slowly in a shower of gore. What was the point of that even? These insects were already worshiping him, and for all Rhulk understood the appeal of fear just fine, that was clearly not the point here.

No, the stupid little insect had looked almost ecstatic to be chosen for death. Useless, like their ‘god’, and even worse with that stolen limb he paraded around like a trophy.

Rhulk let himself sink back through the darkness. There was work to be done in his pyramid, more useful work than this. More tiring, too, and after carefully reviewing his plans - and some destruction that served to vent the twisting rage in his chest - he retreated to his casket again, mind quieted by the darkness within.

But not for long.

He didn’t wake. No, he knew this was a dream, he was sure of it. But he was fully aware all the same, of himself kneeling on the floor, of ever-shifting walls that became transparent and opaque in turn, filled with moving shapes. Shadows pooled like tar in the corners. It should have unsettled him, but it didn’t. Too long he had spent in the ever-shifting geography of his pyramid, where physical dimensions meant so very little.

Rhulk pushed at the dream, willing himself awake, but instead of dissolving, the shapes of the dream snapped into crystal focus, his body suddenly feeling more solid as well, the structure of the ground pressing into his body in a way that would be pain, eventually, but wasn’t yet. He tried to stand, and shackles snapped around his ankles and legs, tightened down until the metal cut into bark.

The pain was just a minor irritation, but that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t going to let his own subconscious deny him. But the shackles wouldn’t budge, the ground wouldn’t budge, not even as the scent of burning amber filled the air and the glass walls of the dream melted under the onslaught. Flames licked at the ruined frames of stone, so blue and hot they were barely visible scorching his skin even at the distance.

A sliver of fear ran through his mind, quickly squashed, but the dream responded to it just as quickly anyhow. The flames wreathed around him, exquisite pain, as his bark crisped and flaked, burning sap carrying the pain deeper into his body until fire burst through his chest. He wanted to scream, but no, no he refused to give in to his mind like that. Pain was only that, pain, and he had endured it often enough. He was not going to yield to that he was not, he was not, he-

From one second to the next, the flames were gone, his flesh restored and unburned. The shackles remained, but the ground writhed, melted, and when it stopped its nauseating dance, it had turned into the floor of his pyramid, its meticulously polished walls, the view out onto the lovely emptiness of space, dark save for the tiniest pinpricks of stars far away.

The view framed the Witness, pale smoke and manifold hands, an afterimage burned into Rhulk’s mind as his Witness suddenly stood in front of him, almost close enough to touch.
The Witness just looked down on him, disapproval in its dark eyes and something inside him was shivering in fear as his Witness leaned in, fingers steepled together into a singularity.

“You have failed us.” Each word hurt like a blow, digging right into his self. “We had given you one task, and you failed us.”
Rhulk started to tremble, fear a clawing cold in his chest, an acid in his veins. Surely not. He would have done anything, given anything, for whatever his Witness desired him to do. He just needed a chance to make this right, to prove his devotion. Any number of planets that could be burned would be burnt, any amount of blood spilled and voices silenced.

Even his own. Those layered hands rested lightly against his head, pain bloomed inside his skull. His own life was the price then, and for a sharp moment, fear and self preservation fought against devotion.
It was a fierce battle, but brief. If he had failed his Witness, his life was spoken for. Period. There were no thoughts needed to fold his arms behind his back, fingers digging into bark to hold himself still. He would bear this. No matter the rising panic in his throat. No matter the pain blotting out any thought, any words, any-

He was on his feet, unshackled, the illusion of the Witness gone, the walls of the pyramid dissolving into a landscape he hadn’t seen in eons and yet was burnt into his mind. The dark shapes of rocks cast against a pale blue sun. The walls of a City burning into the sky. The shape of his father bent over a smaller figure-
His glaive was in his hand and he was halfway across the expanse of dying land between them before the next thought formed. The blade carved into hard flesh and a hand went flying, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough by far. The next thing he knew, Rhulk had his bare hands on his father’s body, forced him to the ground with momentum alone as his hands already dug through bark. The impact shook the walls with a groan that almost sounded like a voice.
The bark was hard enough to cut at his hands and he did not care. No, he only cared to drag the golden sap out from him, cling onto the thrashing body as he tore bits and pieces off. This had been so much less satisfying last time. There it had been a fight, and the cut of a glaive, but this, this, his hands buried in his father’s body, tearing up tendrils and shoots, digging for the writhing heart inside.

His father fought him, of course, of course, he would, but it was feeble now, or felt feeble. Rhulk had grown in power since then, buoyed up by the power of his Witness, by the power of his own devotion, and death was the only possible outcome here. But he wanted to make it slow, make it last, enjoy the feeling of flesh crushed between his fingers, the feeling of destroying his father like this, the way he’d deserved…Light flared along the buddling lines in his shoulders and hips, opening them as his chest opened, hungry vines lashing out to grab what tissue they could find, pull it into the cavity to feed-

Hands settled on his shoulders, sliding into the glowing groves with a motion that had a different kind of fire run through him, melting into the need for violence until the glowing lines blossomed up further, fine petals pushing up against those fingers - and then a long, wet tongue curled against his neck with a purr, and his shoulders snapped close hard and suddenly enough to take three fingertips off and oh how he’d have loved to take off more when he whirled and knew he’d been right.

Nezarec stood there, hands bleeding, surprise spiking heavily in the air around him.

“You.” Of course. Who else would dare, who else would try- And it had been a nightmare, or meant to be one, and the Psion was so very proud of his skill on those.

“Yes, me. Did you not enjoy my gift?” The spikes of surprise were smothered quickly, but this was his dream after all, and Rhulk could still taste them. Surprise, disappointment, a faint pain that had nothing to do with a few lost bones. Who did Nezarec think he was fooling?
“You seemed to be having so much fun,” The last word slid up from his hips to his shoulders, pressed against his chest like an invisible hug, “I thought we might share a little.”

The dream-corpse at his feet multiplied, turned into a field of torn, twitching flesh at his feet, but it wasn’t tempting. It was revolting in a way that had nothing to do with the gore and everything with the audacity.
None of this belonged to Nezarec, none of it was his to touch, much less to give, and all the rage he had mustered, all the hatred he’d felt for that mirage of his father found a new target.
A target that laughed at him. “Oh so you do want to play, hmm? Come then, I’ll show you how.”

The dream-ground underneath Rhulk turned to quicksand, swallowing his legs up past the third joint. He struggled, but once sunk in, the ground turned to stone again, keeping him trapped and letting Nezarec tower over him, for all he didn’t dare to come into range of Rhulk’s itching claws.

He tried to force himself to wake, but the dream seemed to have its own gravity, sucking him back in only to watch Nezarec smile at him as that stolen arm reached down to pet over his chest and neck. His tongue lolled out to curl around fingers that didn’t belong to him, and Rhulk could feel the slick, acidic saliva of it against his finger tips. He didn’t even try to hide his disgust, which only seemed to entertain Nezarec more, seeing how he made a point to suck the fingers into his mouth as he walked closer.

The ground tightened around his legs, slowly crushing the limbs until bark shattered, the vines underneath slowly turned to paste. It hurt, but he refused to scream, to let any of it show even as sap leaked up through the rock. And still, Nezarec didn’t dare come into arms reach.

“Coward.” That was the only reaction the Psion deserved. Hiding like this, coming at him in his dreams because the Witness had forbidden them to fight. It was such a cheap out, the letter of the command but not the spirit of it. Not that he seemed to be the least bit ashamed, swaggering over, rolling a ball of Void energy between his own hands while still fondling the stolen one with his tongue.

And yet he seemed to have hit a nerve. The nightmare quivered with indignant rage that wasn't his own.

"You think I'm a coward?" The words slithered inside his skull.

"I know you are." There were entire worlds of insults in that sentence, all his disdain for someone who always stayed out of reach, who had to invade a dream to win a fight. Pathetic, to the last.

He could see that all of that was sinking home. Nezarec crushed the orb of Void in his hand and surged forward, yes, into range, Rhulk was going to tear his head off his shoulders, claws swiping up towards the Psion's throat- only to get caught short, his own stolen arm catching the wrist in a grip like stone. A moment later, his new, sap-covered arm was caught in Nezarec's own hand, touch deceptively gentle even as he leaned in to run his tongue along the side of Rhulk's face, slow enough to make it obvious how much he was savouring this, the taste, the rage as Rhulk strained against the grip, and most importantly, the degradation of it.

He twisted in that grip, but Nezarec had other plans. His tongue ran up towards Rhulk’s eyes, the edges of the appendage becoming sharp and rough, a saw edge and sword tip that pierced and worked through the hard surface, through sticky, golden sap-tears, coiled around the small orb of an eye- and tore it out.

Rhulk didn’t scream. Not when the tongue sawed through his flesh, not when it wrapped around the eye, not when his field of vision lost three colors on the left side. He had better things to do with the lance of pain in his head, like wield it against Nezarec.

The other disciple was distracted, smiling widely as his tongue drew back to swallow the eyeball, near-ecstatic pleasure shivering in the air around him, settling on Rhulk’s skin like a heated coat.
But it also distracted Nezarec. Enough that Rhulk could wretch his new arm free and plunge his fingers into the twitching throat of the other.
The hardened skin didn’t stop him, it only shattered the sap-shell and left shrapnel in Nezarec’s neck and oh how he took delight in pushing those shards deeper into the flesh as he dug for whatever tube a former Psion might swallow with. And those noises….Nezarec choking on his fingers, on his eye, on his own blood as some large vessel was torn open, and then torn wider as Nezarec jerked back from the pain.

It made him laugh as he gently put the eye back where it belonged. It healed instantly, but half of his vision was tainted a delicate purple now, a veil of Psion blood to watch the world through. How lovely.

His hands were all free now, Nezarec busy pressing down on his throat, willing it to heal, and now…now it was Rhulk’s dream again, not his nightmare, as he stepped out of the ground, his legs now the same tender latticework of vines as his new arm, the same shell of hard golden sap coming almost up to his hips.
It shattered, leaving even more shards of amber in Nezarec’s chest as he kicked the other disciple back onto the floor, put his foot down on his bleeding throat and slowly, slowly, started putting his full weight on it.

Oh what a feeling, to have flesh that had been reenforced by the Dark, by his Witness, give under his foot, to watch the blood well up like fruit pulp between his toes, to watch as Nezarec clawed as his leg and only earned himself his hands cut to ribbons on sap-edges…
This time he didn’t stop the budding lines from opening, too focused on the look on Nezarec’s face, the fear, the pain, struggle for air….

The first delicate tips of blossoms were peeking out of his shoulders as he leaned forward further to get a better view, to properly relish the last twitches as Nezarec arched up underneath him, clawing in just underneath his hip and the pain of that was more pleasant than annoyance.
The first blossom opened just over the puncture point, delicate white-gold petals brushing against black claws just in time for Rhulk’s foot to sink down far enough to touch bone, both sensations blending into each other like a vibrato note in his body, a tension mirrored by the thrashing under his foot-

Underneath his foot, Nezarec fell limp, hand sliding off his leg with almost sensual languor. Boring. Rhulk stepped back, shaking his bloodied foot delicately to clean it off. Not that it helped any, and worse, it let him watch Nezarec just heal right up, rollover onto his front and laugh, the noise turning from a pained wheeze to deep satisfaction.

“Oh if I had known you could be this good, I would have done this sooner.”

The look on his face could only be described as a leer, mismatched eyes dragging over Rhulk like a physical touch, up the length of his sap-covered legs; it lingered on the budding lines on his hips and jumped from there to the matching ones on his shoulder and oh now he was aware, so very aware of the fact that those lines were open, flowering widely enough that he could smell the pheromones of it on the air, heady and light and mortifying.

At once, all of it withered and the lines snapped closed again, but it was too late, much too late, and it only made Nezarec laugh louder, the dream quivering with his amusement and the aftershocks of pleasure.
It eroded the grasp of it enough to let the nightmare shatter, to let Rhulk wake back into the darkness of his casket, wreathed in a tender scent of his own blossoms.

—--

If Nezarec had been bad before, he was utterly insufferable after. Smug and even more likely to try to touch him, never quite saying anything but always alluding to it. And worse, always trying to get another reaction from him.
As if a lapse of better judgment that had happened in a dream was some sort of open invitation.

He ignored these…advances…as often as possible, keeping a tight lid on his own irritation, his rage. They both had more important things to focus on, like the work the Witness had given them both.

It didn’t take him long to realize that not reacting was perhaps the best possible punishment for the other disciple. He could see the growing frustration in every gesture of Nezarec, in the way he’d pace and snap at his little congregation of worshipful insects.
It was balm on his own bruised pride, and all the more motivation not to react, not even the next time his dreams were disrupted.

Now, the second time around, it was almost laughably easy to tell when his dreams weren’t truly his own, and then? Then there was nothing Nezarec could do, and oh he tried. He tried for pain, and fear and wrath but now? Now that he had seen the smoke and mirrors, Rhulk could ignore the mirages and dreamscapes, and for all the pain was real…it was only pain, and Nezarec soon found out how much he could suffer without a single noise.
The other disciple peeled the bark off one night, spent another letting the stalks of egregore grow through his limbs like nails, and finally even took to prying his chest open and sinking his arms elbow deep into the tendrils to play with.

All of it hurt exquisitely, and all of it Rhulk could ignore if it meant pushing Nezarec back further. The hardest part had been not to give in to his body’s urge to feed, to bite, to cost the other disciple another hand or two- and then suddenly it was over. The Light-touched planet was a burnt out husk, its people still busy tearing themselves to pieces and his Witness had no more need of them here. It sent them on separate ways again, and once more, Rhulk was free of the most infuriating creature he’d ever met.

For a given value of free. Nezarec still had that stolen arm, and even on the other side of the galaxy, the Darkness stretched between them and he could feel…touches sometimes, even though his arm had already healed.

Still, there were moments when the ghost-sensation of skin pressed against his palm, or a disembodied fingertip running along the length of the limb and he knew exactly who to blame for this particular sensation, and why. Clearly Nezarec was bored, and clearly he needed that arm taken away from him because this was an intolerable distraction.

Of course he could fulfill his tasks just fine, and to his Witness’ exact desires, but he wasn’t living up to his own exacting standards when his glaive was just the smallest fracture of a measure off on a blow, when the power he commanded was just the smallest moment too slow because of course Nezarec had a truly loathsome gift for knowing when a sudden touch would be the most disruptive.

This couldn’t stand. But he was here, in another arm of the galaxy, and his Witness..well, it had plans and his own discomfort was no reason to change those. Nor would he ask for any such thing. He would have to deal with it himself, without neglecting his orders.

In the end, he settled on finding a proxy, but that came with its own difficulties. A proxy needed to be biddable, of course, easy to control, but it would also need to be durable. It had to be able to stand his own control, without turning into a useless wreck, and it would have to be strong enough to survive Nezarec’s wrath.
No doubt he wouldn’t give up his little trophy without a fight, and what mortal could stand against even the least Disciple?

He spent years on the project. He tried splices and merges, taking the strongest specimens of each species he eradicated and experimenting on them, all while these gentle touches persisted, sometimes only the most fleeting contact, sometimes hours of sensuous caresses that left him distractible and fuming and all the more motivated to take back what was rightfully his. Especially when he could tell that half the time, the hands he could feel were small and soft and certainly not what Nezarec had molded his own body into by now.
The indignity of it all, of knowing that Nezarec was having his hoards of mortal cultists fawn over him, touch him, touch the limb he had stolen from Rhulk- disgusting.

The final solution turned out laughably easy. He only needed to graft a seed of himself into the Hive. They were already primed for it, settled with the worm larvae, adding yet another parasite to them was easy.
Getting the seed itself was harder. It required blossoming. It required allowing his mind to wander down roads he would normally forbid himself, a glorious mixture of memories and wishes and dreams: The bloody death of Lubrae and his own exaltation at the hands of his Witness, mixed with his impossible desire for a reward for his devotion - what higher reward could there be? Desiring manifold hands on his body was stupid when he had already been uplifted - and perhaps even the faintest, shimmering memory of agonizing nightmares.
All of it swirled together, until he stood in the very center of my pyramid, blossoms trailing his body and blood dripping down behind his back, where his own claws had dug deep into his arms.

Harvesting the seeds afterwards was but a formality, and yet, by the time he had everything ready, had a Hive knight bent to the task, and slowly overgrown with vines as the seed ripened within him…it was too late.

He woke in his casket and knew, as surely as he knew that his Witness would win this long conflict, that Nezarec was dead. The minuscule yet persistent pressure in the back of his mind, where he could feel other Disciples, where Nezarec had been an enduring annoyance, was changed. Empty of a familiar weight.

He rose, stretched his senses into the conduits of his pyramids and felt - ah. There. The Witch might as well have sung her triumph from the obsidian black peak of his home. Her Throne was ringing with it like a bell. She had killed Nezarec, or at least her plans had facilitated his death as much as if she herself had wielded the final blade.

Around him, the pyramid groaned and rumbled, his wrath sinking down into the stone of it and tearing at the very foundations of it until the Throne sang with his rage instead. How dare she? This had not been her kill to take, it would have been his privilege, his, to finally dispose of Nezarec once he had outlived his usefulness. And now…now there was but a hole in the weave of Darkness that held all Disciples together.
The groans of the pyramid rose to a final, pained shriek of tearing stone and metal, crumbling architecture and then silence fell, as absolute as the vacuum of space.
Whatever Hive had made the mistake of being too close had fallen dead, hemolymph gushing from their faces.

Rhulk stepped out of the circle of crushed stone that had been his casket. He would repair that. Later. Now he had to retrieve his arm.
At least now it would be easier. Nezarec was dead. He could hardly fight anyone anymore. The Knight would be more than enough.

—--

The pyramid was buried in the satellite of the planet Nezarec had been meant to deal with. The round, white shape of the Traveler was still there, even if the Knight’s vision was rather insufficient to see the ribbons of Light that no doubt orbitted it.

Rhulk had his proxy turn from the sight. He could feel the draw of another pyramid even through this distant relay, an easy guiding thread to follow through the maze-like tunnels the Hive had dug into the rock. The utter darkness didn’t bother him. For all their faults, Hive saw well in the dark.

None of the local brood dared to approach his Knight, fear obvious on their bodies as they ducked away. As they should. His proxy was infused with enough of his own power to squash them all, even now when its weak body was already starting to fail as vines borrowed deeper into the tissue, slowly replacing carapace with bark.

It was a long descent, before the pyramid finally loomed into few, its shape searing through the eyes of the Knight. A psychic imprint tried to hunt for fear, and failed. Rhulk wasn’t afraid, and the Knight had no mind left. He hadn’t needed it for this, after all.

There had been cultists here, once. He found their desiccated, starved bodies in the halls, still clawing at each other as they died, preserved until the Knight’s feet crushed them to dust. Now, this close, he could feel the aftershock of Nezarec’s death, and his life. The magic the Witch had used still hung in the air, a green veil that grew thick towards the heart of the pyramid, and trapped in it were the red, undefined shapes of fears and pains. He walked past them, too.

It was where he knew it would be. A great stone sarcophagus, no doubt made by the starved cultists outside, judging by the crude work of it, and how he was judging it as he used the Knight and its vine-enhanced strength to push the lid of it to the side and only then did he pause.

Death had diminished Nezarec, as it diminished all things, pared them down to their true nature. Here, it had left a miasma of pain thick enough to choke Rhulk’s proxy, and underneath it, the corpse, laid out in state, covered in gold and trinkets that yet could not hide the unnatural stillness.
Nezarec had never been still. Always in motion, always on the hunt for another taste of pain, of fear, of hatred, always making some annoying noise.

His own hands had been folded over his chest, over the handle of his warhammer. The stolen one, the one that Rhulk had come for, wrapped over him, the palm resting delicately over Nezarec’s throat.

He made the Knight reach in and oh his proxy better not fall apart before he could retrieve it. Its hands were shaking as they reached into the sarcophagus, despite his best efforts to keep them still.
The hands laid upon the red bark of the limb, and the world- shifted, tore and Rhulk found himself not watching through dying Hive eyes, not even through his own, but through a dozen disparate, mismatched eyes as his own body struggled free of stone, his legs covered in healing sap and oh, oh he remembered this.
But this wasn’t his memory. It was Nezarec, who watched him approach with anticipation shivering in his mind, who submitted all too eagerly when his clawed foot came down on his bleeding throat, who delighted in the taste of his own blood, in the pressure of the foot coming down on his throat.
Who enjoyed the taste of rage as much as his own pain, his own hatred because oh he did hate Rhulk with green envy and a burning fire but that same fire was also swelling inside his body in wanton abandon. He wanted to tear off the sap-covered legs and lick the skin off them while Rhulk begged for mercy. He wanted to wrap them around his hips and fuck him until he got the same begging. He wanted to beg, for more, for mercy, for everything as his throat was crushed down into his spine in an explosion of pleasure so intense it shattered the memory.

The Knight was shivering all over now, green hemolymph and golden sap dripping down into the sarcophagus from his face as he tore the stolen arm off. It came away easily, like it wanted to be gone off that dead body and Rhulk was grateful for it. His proxy was clearly failing now, shivering and making soft, gasping noises he had certainly not authorized, tears running down its face. Likely, what was left of the brain had taken damage in the psychic imprint and was now leaking out of the eyes.
Truly, Hive were disgustingly frail creatures, and they were some of the hardier ones out there. This one had better not come apart and force him to send another one to retrieve his arm from somewhere in the tunnels.

He needn’t have worried about that. The Knight returned as intended, arm carried in its hands like an offering. He took it back and withdrew his mind from the proxy. The creature swayed and sagged and now it was truly beginning to be annoying, making those keening noises that- ah. The seed had progressed too far. It would take proper control of the Knight soon, absorb the rest of its flesh and start molding into its proper Lubrean shape.
That wasn’t acceptable. Lubrae was dead, as it should be. There would be no new shoots. His hand lifted - the soon-to-be-shoot watched on its own accord now - darkness gathered, and hit the proxy with a bolt of solid energy that disintegrated the Hive shell and the seed in the same moment.

There. Fixed. Now, for his arm… he had a bath of liquid crystal prepared for it. He did not need the limb anymore, but incinerating it…no. He rejected that thought wholesale. It seemed wrong to destroy this. No, it might be useful yet. Perhaps he would want another proxy eventually. One that didn’t need a seed.