ONYXSPIRE: THE DESCENT OF CLIVE COLLINS

Chapter 04. Feast at Death's Edge

The world existed only in shattered fragments. Cold, darkness, and the stench of rust thick enough to choke on.

Clive Collins gasped for breath, each inhale feeling like shards of glass scraping down his throat. He could feel his broken ribs piercing into his lungs. But the worst pain came from his left arm. It was pinned beneath a massive slab of granite that had fallen with him into the abyss. The flesh was crushed, the nerves screaming in an endless symphony of agony.

“Hah... hah... Kael?”

Clive’s voice came out as a broken whisper. He turned his heavy head to the side. There, sprawled across snow now stained the color of red wine, lay Kael’s body.

Headless.

The old porter’s corpse had landed only a few feet away, stiff and cold, no longer carrying the warmth Clive used to feel whenever they shared bread by the fire.

“Kael... sorry... I...”

Tears mixed with blood ran down Clive’s temples. He tried to move, but the weight of the boulder kept him trapped. He was buried at the bottom of the abyss known as The Maw, a pit without hope in the heart of Shadowfell.

[Warning: Massive Internal Bleeding Detected.]

[Subject Body Temperature: 32°C. Stage 3 Hypothermia.]

[WREN: Clive, if you do not stop grieving immediately, you will die in 180 seconds. Statistics indicate that sadness cannot reconnect severed blood vessels.]

“Shut up... you’re just a machine...” Clive thought weakly.

[Correction: I am your final opportunity to avoid becoming a pile of calcium beneath the snow. Look to your right.]

Clive forced himself to turn his head.

The Silver Box.

Its casing had cracked open from the impact, split cleanly in two. From the beautiful silver seams, something dark began to crawl out. It was neither liquid nor gas. It was thick black smoke with mass, pulsing like the heartbeat of something furious.

That was Lycus.

The ancient parasite feared and worshiped by the nobles of Lumeria.

The smoke did not go to Clive immediately. Instead, it slithered toward Kael’s lifeless body. Clive watched in horror as the black mass seeped into the open wound where Kael’s neck had been severed.

Krrk... krrk... slurp...

Lycus was feeding on the remnants of Kael’s biological energy.

“No... don’t... don’t eat Kael...” Clive tried to crawl forward, but his mangled arm trapped him in place.

Within seconds, Kael’s once powerful body began to shrivel, drying out like a thousand-year-old mummy. Lycus left behind nothing but brittle bones. When the feast ended, the black smoke twisted in the air, forming the face of a eyeless monster with jaws lined by thousands of tiny razor-sharp teeth.

Then it turned toward Clive.

"Hungry... So... Hungry..."

The voice did not come through his ears. It echoed directly inside his spine.

Lycus crept closer and touched Clive’s leg. A cold more vicious than the ice of Shadowfell spread upward through his body.

“You gonna eat me too?” Clive laughed bitterly, a laugh soaked in despair. “Go ahead. Eat me. This world’s trash... Benedict’s trash... I’m trash too.”

Lycus stopped.

Its smoky head tilted slightly, as though evaluating the pain radiating from Clive’s soul.

"Anger... Fragrant... Revenge... Sweet..." Lycus whispered. "You... Want... Vengeance?"

“I want them all dead,” Clive hissed. The dead look in his eyes ignited into something darker. “I want Benedict to feel what Kael felt. I want Lumeria to burn.”

[Warning: Mental Synchronization Detected.]

[WREN: Clive, this monster is offering you a contract. It will become your weapon, but it will consume your humanity as fuel. Do you consent to surrendering bodily sovereignty to the WREN Protocol and Lycus Symbiosis?]

“If it means I can kill every last one of them... then yes!” Clive screamed.

Suddenly, Lycus lunged.

The black smoke did not enter through his mouth. It shot directly into Clive’s crushed left arm beneath the boulder.

“AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!”

Clive’s scream shattered the silence of the abyss, so piercing that the carrion birds circling above the cliffs scattered in terror. Lycus bit into the base of Clive’s arm, its tiny teeth chewing through ruined flesh and snapping apart what remained of the bone.

This was not simply consumption.

It was replacement.

[Blood Synchronization Initializing...]

[Biological Amputation Process in Progress: 10%... 30%...]

[WREN: Endure it, Porter. This may feel slightly uncomfortable. Comparable to having your skin peeled off slowly while acid is poured over the exposed tissue. Do not lose consciousness or synchronization will fail.]

“Slightly... uncomfortable...? YOU CALL THIS SLIGHTLY UNCOMFORTABLE?!” Clive shrieked as violent convulsions overtook his body. He could feel the black smoke flooding through his veins, rushing toward his heart, replacing every red blood cell with something black and freezing cold.

The smoke began forming new muscle where his old arm had been. Dark purple veins spread from his shoulder and wrapped around the massive granite boulder crushing him.

With one unnatural jerk, the new black arm shattered the granite into dust.

Clive was free.

But the price had been catastrophic.

He rolled across the snow, clutching his shoulder. Where his ordinary arm had once been now grew something monstrous. A limb covered in jet-black scales, with elongated fingers tipped by claws like sharpened steel. A tiny blinking eye opened on the back of its hand.

"We... Are... One... Now..." Lycus whispered intimately inside his skull.

Clive stared at the new arm with equal parts horror and fascination. He flexed his fingers, and the sound of metal grinding echoed through the abyss.

“I’m... not human anymore?” Clive whispered.

[Status: Infected / Evolved.]

[Subject Name: Clive Collins (Vessel).]

[Symbiote Partner: Lycus (Sovereignty Parasite).]

[WREN: Congratulations, Clive. You have successfully traded your soul for a pair of claws. Now stop crying. Your enemies are descending the cliff. They intend to retrieve the ‘Silver Box,’ which has now fused with your nervous system.]

Slowly, Clive rose to his feet.

His legs trembled, but the pain had transformed into something far worse.

Hunger.

A terrible hunger that bread could never satisfy. A hunger that demanded blood.

He looked upward. Along the cliff wall, several lights from Radiant Guard torches were descending on ropes.

“They’re coming,” Clive muttered.

He turned toward the pile of bones that had once been Kael. Kneeling, he picked up the old porter’s massive axe from the snow. His black arm wrapped around the handle with enough strength to crush steel.

“Kael... you told me to run.” Clive wiped the blood from his face. His left eye now glowed with a faint crimson light, pulsing in rhythm with Lycus’s heartbeat. “But I’m tired of running. I’m gonna send every last one of them... to hell.”

[Combat Preparation Initiated.]

[Lycus Energy: 15% (Critically Low).]

[WREN: Consume living subjects immediately after termination. And Clive... attempt to refrain from excessive screaming while killing them. It is inefficient.]

“No promises, WREN,” Clive answered coldly.

Clive Collins, the naive porter from Lumeria, had died at the bottom of that abyss.

What stood there now was a vessel of vengeance, a biological anomaly ready to tear the sacred white armor of Lumeria into worthless scraps.

The darkness of Shadowfell itself seemed to kneel beneath his feet as he stepped into the shadows between the rocks, waiting for his first prey to descend into the trap.

The feast had only just begun.

And this time, Clive was no longer the main course.

“Come on, bro. Hell’s waiting.”