The thought just occurred to me earlier this afternoon that writing a small fiction to complement my painting might be fun. I have a painting blog on here and a small story might add something to it. I banged it out in just under two hours and it was a nice little exercise. I like how it turned out.. Curious what others think--anyone care to comment?
"Delicious" grinned Kelzarel, wizened lips parting in crooked smile as he admired his refection gleaming in the motionless onyx visors of his newest creations. Like an evil thought, severed and given form, he floated down their assembled ranks. How many souls had he sacrificed to get here, he mused. Thousands. Tens of thousands. A small price to pay to give his vision form. He was an artist. A sculptor of bone and tissue. He mind drifted back to the day he saw the Arch Haemonculous Rakarth unveil his newest creations. "Grotesques" the master had named them, and throughout the covens the name was whispered like a thunderclap. A personal challenge to every would-be sculptor. Kelzarel would have tasted bile, had he the internal organs to produce it, at the thought.
He drew first upon those most readily available: his rivals. By means most foul he began to cull the unlucky. Bargaining with the promise pain and power, the very currency of the Dark City, the haemonculous gained the support of the archon of the Kabal of the Twisting Abyss. Immediately, Kelzarel's underground workshops began to scream and shudder with activity. Two hundred cloning vats held his prizes, like an ungodly nest filled with monstrous eggs. With a malefic chuckle, he thought back on his foolishness in those early days. He remembered how his dolls twitched at the dissolving of their existing bone tissue and and how they contorted as he filled the resulting cavities with new, enhanced bones. Perhaps it was haste that caused the miscalculation. As the growth began to escalate, the dolls began to pop audibly in their vats. It was not a total loss, however, as it did provide Kelzarel and his apprentices a welcome diversion from their labours. The failures would of course be liquified and used a nutrients for the next batch; Kelzaral would not tolerate waste. It would set a bad example, after all.
And so it went, year after year, failure after failure. Green-skin, pink-skin, and grey-skin, all were transformed under his loving touch. His fevered mind would not be denied. Perched on his platform high above chamber, Kelzarel would conduct them all with a gesture from one of his appendages--an elegant custom he had grafted for just this purpose-- and his minions would set to work. Great symphonies of blood he lead. The shriek of drills and dermatomes, the solid crack of retractors, and the gentle song of the harmonic scalpels. Such music he made!
It was only on the Hive world of Lastrati, that the Kelzarel made the breakthrough he had been seeking. The inhabitants, in their primitive quest to find genetic perfection, sought out all manner of ritual. Perhaps it was the touch of the ruinous powers or something native to their homeworld that altered them. Regardless of the cause, the cults of Lastrati had come under the most unpleasant gaze of the master himself, Urien Rakarth. The great haemonculous unceasingly scoured the galaxy for samples to add to his genetic library and to this end, he dispatched one of his lieutenants, the Croniarch Sekh, to raid Lastrati. Kelzarel had long ago placed agents in the coven of the master. Dutifully, Kelzarel's spy, a wretched little apprentice by the name of Crehndera, brought the details to Kelzarel in exchange for the antidote to a rather horrific concoction that rendered her genetic material useless for alteration. After hearing of the plan and liquifying Crehndera, Kelzarel immediately dispatched his Kabal allies to seize the prize. The lightning raid took only eleven of the crude monkeigh minutes, and the entire cult was removed from the face of Lastrati.
Such beautiful flesh he found. Slowly, he crafted their bones. Gently, he layered sheet after sheet of dark muscle. Lovingly, he pulled and repositioned organ after organ. Finally, he anointed them will the blend of compounds he named after himself, for like him, the cocktail was perfect. And thus tens of thousands of deaths were distilled into these eight. Towering above even an astartes, Kelzarel's grotesques would drag untold thousands back to the Dark City. The thought warmed Kelzarel as he drifted away from the uniformly motionless, upturned visors of his creations.
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