By The Blood In Our Vain

[Emprexx Plush]

((Helena Fury Continued From you're nobody until somebody kills you))

From the bird's eye view what they were doing couldn't have looked all that different from the aimless wandering they'd got up to more often than not in the last week. They kept changing directions without warning. Hadn't looked at the map in a couple days, not since well before they left Axel. Looking at where they'd been Hel didn't have any kinda plan and y'know they couldn't fault nobody for that assessment. Hel hadn't built up much in the way of competence lately. By the Vegas odds every morning they woke up had to be an upset and this right here? Ambling about all over the woods, picking up stones, digging up dirt, plucking leaves, collecting well water, so much random bullshit that left them exposed? Yeah, that couldn't be helping. Focus on random bits of scenery beat walking around with glazed over eyes writing messages home about how they were gonna die, but it wasn't a plan. Well at least it didn't look like much of one, yeah? But Hel was focused. What they were up to probably looked random 'cuz it kinda was, but it was in service to an end. One that anybody else would care about maybe not so much but it was something left to do. With everybody they'd heard go down already they might be the only person left who'd think to try it.

They'd been thinking about the bay. About Sapphire. Burial at sea and the offering they'd made beside her body. What they'd said was a blur, that was kinda how this shit worked for them. They let what they were feeling move them and thought some stuff that felt right for the intent they wanted to put out into the universe, then hoped for the best. At home they'd had some consistent tools; tarot, songs, personal effects, fire, those were all elements they drew on pretty often. It'd be a stretch to say they had rituals in any kinda codified sense though. That was part of the appeal for them. Yeah it was risky as all fuck based on the principles they believed in, but they kinda imagined they rode the chaos like a wave. If they weren't dedicated to a specific outcome so much as a vibe they could roll with what came and sometimes that probably brought trouble down on them but there was a kinda thrill when they could draw the connections like they'd influenced their fate in ways good or bad. Magic wasn't something they took super seriously that way. On a rational level they knew that belief was more of a coping mechanism than anything else and if they'd gone into detail about their Witchy Business with most people they would have looked at them like they popped a second head. That's how it'd been on the beach with Sapphire too. This impulse where they'd felt helpless and they wanted to do something to feel like they could assert control over their face. Write some names. Think some nonsense that sounded somber and arcane. Offer them to an envisioned spirit and forget about it until days later because it's not like most of the names they'd offered up had faced any kinda backlash they could confirm.

The only time they could speculate something had really worked, that they'd had clear, singular intent in anything they'd call magical in months, was when they held Axel to his body in song. That'd work like a charm. They just didn't know what they were asking for, and they'd paid the price.

This time Hel knew exactly what they wanted. They knew how they were gonna get it too. What they needed was the right tools.

Pieces of the island were important. Fragments it discarded, broken branches and rocks and fur, that could all be useful. Then there were the things they had to claim. The leaves and sprouts, clumps of dirt and sand collected in one of their empty tins. Water from the wells and from the natural bodies. Wood chipped from the dilapidated buildings, old discarded clothes, pamphlets that had belonged to the people here before them. It wasn’t the stuff you usually imagined going into a curse but it was all perspective. Hel wanted to gather what had been wronged, and the place they had been forced to live in was its own kind of victim. Hel doubted they were its first intruders but the history it had before them would be erased by the game. No one would care what happened here before, so in a way it was the first victim of this tragedy. Excluding it was asking to start on a cosmic blind eye, and there would be no conscious omissions on their part.

All that they could say they planned, but there was some luck too. They’d had ideas about what to offer on their part. Axel had left them a couple gifts that would come in handy there and might stand in for Andy too. Other than the three of them they could wrack their brain for the names they’d heard over the last few days and offer some of those up too once they had everything else in place. Cards on the table they’d just been looking for shelter when they saw the balcony looming in the distance. They near tripped over the bag before they saw it, ‘cuz once they got closer they were mostly trying to figure out what the hell happened out here. The ground was all stained in patches and it looked like something heavy had been dragged through several places. None too recent by the look of it but still. They wanted answers and there was nobody in the shadow of the manor to give them any. All they could do was crack open the bag.

They sat there staring at the binder they found inside for a good long while.

B002 Carter, Wyatt Alligator Tooth Sword

B003 Tavares, Lorenzo Splitting Maul

B004 Fontaine, Axel Knife-wielding Tentacle

B028 Valter, Aurelien Spiked Mace

B029 Volker, Marcus "Marco" Amaranta Montalvo’s M4 Carbine Rifle

B030 Sparks, Henry Punt Gun

B064 Greene, Justin J.R. Rizzolo's tire iron

B065 Figueroa, Manuel Shuriken x 5

B079 McCabe, Colin 1000-piece puzzle (missing 2 pieces)

B085 Murphy, Brandon Billhook

G004 Jones, Bree Syringe w/ needle containing adrenaline

G005 Cook, Sierra Stun Gun

G006 Quinn, Violet Prison Flail (sock w/ a padlock inside)

G021 Zhou, Meilin Haladie

G022 Quin, Forrest Ball-gag and Handcuffs

G023 Upton, Dolores "Dolly" Bowie knife

G032 Fury, Helena "Hel" Luger P08

G033 Lawson, Rhonda Iron Fan

G034 Fischer, Amelia Arsenal Firearms AF2011-A1 Second Century

G051 DeBerg, Layla Swordbreaker

G052 Coleman, Joanne George Hunter High School mascot costume

G053 Kirkpatrick, Katelynne Cochise High School 2015 yearbook

G071 Jackson, Sakurako A. Prop knife set (plastic knife w/ collapsible blade + 2 fake blood capsules)

G072 Abert, Quinn Bullwhip

G073 Johnson, Terra Gas mask

They were all here. Names they recognized and ones that they didn’t. Murderers and victims. Dead and alive. With the kinda detail that’d been put in they could be sure nobody was missing. Hel had no idea how somebody got all this, but it had answers for that too.

B033 Cohen, Adonis Binder containing the student roster (names, numbers & assigned weapons)

The binder was all they were to the people who had put them here. Names, numbers, and assigned weapons. Maybe they added a few more details in post. Boil it all down though and that was how they were dehumanized. Lines on a roster that would be replaced in the next run. Well, mostly. There was one more secret to give up that they’d never have known if they hadn’t found this thing.

B001 RETIRED (Min-jae Parker from V6) ---

B012 RETIRED (Bryan Calvert from V2) ---

B058 RETIRED (J.R. Rizzolo from V3) ---

B077 RETIRED (Adam Dodd from V1) ---

G027 RETIRED (Amaranta Montalvo from V5) ---

G059 RETIRED (Kimberly Nguyen from V4) ---

When someone their number was retired. In a fucked up way it was cute, like hanging up the jersey of a star player. Hel didn’t follow the attacks too closely but they had to wonder if this was something they’d ever made obvious, or if whoever got their hands on this binder was the only outsider who would ever be clued in. Nothing about knowing it was all that useful in knowing it but it wasn’t gonna demoralize anybody either. So there was the energy of an office in-joke about the whole thing. Another small way their captors mocked them while they stayed untouchable.

Hel found themself smiling.

Because yeah, maybe everything they were doing was a crazy way to pretend they had any purpose left and stave off the dark thoughts. There was a pretty good chance it would never mean anything to anyone but them, and a better one that nothing would come of it. Assuming for a second it could though, magic was all about buy in. What you worked with had to have meaning to the practitioner and the practiced, not equal meaning but it had to have some significance on both ends. That didn’t require any explicit kinda contract or whatever though; people gave power to things all the time without thinking about it. Anything notable had power over the person noting it.

These numbers were not only notable to their captors but they’d explicitly attached them to the living, breathing manifestations of all the suffering they’d ever committed. By extension Hel could envision a connection not just to everyone in this game but every game that had come before though this binder. The weight of hundreds, maybe close to a thousand or more, restless dead pushed on their hands. If they believed it.

Hel found themself smiling.

They kept walking.

---

First they had to pick a song. Driving. Steady. Not too complicated, something with a lot of repetition. Lotta songs had passed their lips for a lotta folks here but this needed to be completely different. They wanted to get angry. Whole lotta candidates in their mental playlist for that but there was a guitar line that stuck out on their walk away.

Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, droning for near a minute straight without change. Before long their footfalls came in time, and they started to remember the words. Yeah. That’d do perfect.

Far from the manor they swayed in time to the music only they could hear in preparation. They removed all the paper from the binder, spread it out in loose layers on the forest floor, and weighed it down with rocks before stacking more of them around it. It was the heart of the ritual. All else was bridging the other elements; the terrorists, the island, and themself. “Mark out the points,” they sang softly, “build the pyre…” Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum.

The rest of the verse stayed in their head while they assembled pieces of the island. Portions of everything they’d scavenged all day went in around the roster. Some of it like the cloth and the fur, they weren’t sure how that was gonna burn, but the spirit was there. More than enough in everything else. “Recurring themes..times again...illumination...illumination…” .Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum.

Links to the terrorists came easier than anything else. On to the pile went their shitty joke of a survival guide Hel needed about five seconds to figure out was another fucked up joke. It captured one side of their nature, but for the other a more substantial offering was needed. All the mockery aside these assholes wanted a good show, so everybody got a little something to make sure they performed. The map that had been in Axel’s bag would stand in for what they gave everybody, and the manual that came with Hel’s gun caught their thirst for violence done right. “Illumination...Illumination…” Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum.

The only piece left was them. What they had to offer was another piece of paper like the others in their bag, though this one was crumpled into a ball. Axe did that a lot when he wasn’t happy with what he was working on. They remembered how he’d asked for it one night before starting his watch, a little something to help keep his mind occupied. He’d never talked about it after. They woulda forgot all about it if they didn’t find it in his bag. Probably trash, yeah? Axel wrote random lyrics all the time and usually he just threw them out, didn’t seem unlikely this was different. They’d been ready to leave it until they thought about the last thing he’d said to them. ‘I got... gotta song for you. Later, okay? Promise. Love you.’ And they’d wondered. Wondered if this could be it. If he was unhappy with it because it wasn’t good enough to be the last thing he wrote. The last notes he sang to them. It probably wasn’t. It was probably just trash. Only way to find out was to open it up and read it. Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum.

The ball of paper went to the top of the pile.

They held out the lighter.

“Burn burn, burn brightly burn burn, burn white heat…”

One of the advantages to being a lowkey pryomaniac was that you were good at making shit burn. Picked up helpful little tips like you were in the Scouts or something, y’know? For instance when they were digging through their kit Hel’d found a bottle of hand sanitizer, and they knew exactly what a few nicely placed squirts of that could do to tinder that wouldn’t cooperate on its own. So when they commanded their offering to burn burn, burn brightly, it took right to the task. Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum.

Hel stared into the growing flames. It’d be awhile before it all burnt out. Good a time as any to get ready for the next step. Out of their bag came antiseptic pads and a small, blood covered knife. Axe’s knife. They’d found it on the forest floor where he left it and weren’t real sure why they kept it other than to have one more thing of his to cling to but now they’d figured its purpose. Up and down went the pad real careful to get all the blood off and like, maybe it wasn’t the most sterile idea but that wouldn’t matter all that much with what they had planned. Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum.

Flame devoured most everything they laid down with enough time. Their song had been on cycle more times than they’d bothered to keep track but other than the occasional lyric they kept their head down to that guitar line. They didn’t let it change until there wasn’t nothing but ash left in their circle of rocks, ash and some bits and pieces leastwise. Hel gave that awhile to cool before scooping most of it into an empty cracker tin. Bottled well water poured over what was left followed by dirt sprinkled out of their tin, all coming into this muddy ashy slurry they stirred around with the scissors from their first aid kit. It was almost ready, but they waited. Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum, Ba-da-da-dum-dum--drums crashed in their head, then the instruments went silent.

It was time.

They jabbed one thumb and then the other with the knife. It dropped to the ground with them. They perched on their knees, squeezing and shaking droplets into the mixture. It wouldn’t be much, not this time. They didn’t want to overdue it when they weren’t sure how many of these they had left in them. It was a start though. Tomorrow they would go bigger. They gave the mixture another thorough stir with their head bowed over it, then closed their eyes. Handfuls of gloop smeared over their face, their fore-arms, their stomach, their legs, just about anywhere they could easily reach. They had to look filthy by the time they were done. But they’d decided this was the way to go, that it meant more if they had to feel it on them, otherwise it was just a puddle of mud.

Hel had chosen this spot in part because all they had to do was raise their head to look right into a camera. The camera itself, no one behind it. They aimed their intent not at the voice they’d heard over the loudspeaker or the man who killed Ms. Garcia, it didn’t go to any person or persons they could imagine. What had swallowed up them and so many others was bigger than any number of living people. It was an idea. More accurately an organization. Anyone could be replaced in it as long as it survived and no individual operator could bear responsibility for what it had done. When Hel cursed now and every day they survived to come, they cursed the entity. They cursed everyone and everything it touched until its debts were repaid. They cursed any iteration that was, is, or will be until the day came that like so many collections of loose ideals and sociopathic violence it imploded and left nothing for the rest of the world to recognize in its crater. They cursed without words, because no words could capture the hate of hundreds of victims they wrapped themself in. It was just a stare. Maybe nobody on the other end would understand. Maybe they didn't deserve to before whatever Hel willed into shape came for them.

Was that all so much fantasy?

Probably. But it’s not like they were gonna live long enough to find out. Having this purpose would let them live as long as they could without putting a bullet in their skull, and that was worth the effort all on its own

((Helena Fury Continued When You Kill What You Are Meant To, There Is No Remorse))