The Faces You Remember In Exile: Chapter 2
Okay so I suck at consistent chapter length. BITE ME.
Sometimes Raki wondered where the hell the time went. A month ago he’d been wandering into a small hamlet with Priscilla on his shoulders, then there was like this supremely massive disruption of Yoma (apparently) and the girl-creature went haring off with a look he’d never seen before and hoped never to see again, then these weird…THINGS just appeared out of the freakin’ ground and massacred the whole town, and then he wound up at the place the Claymores were made.
It was all a bit of a blur, really.
They had him strapped to some kind of table. This room stank of blood, thick and heavy and a little dusty, as if it’d been used for grisly things many a time but not recently. The young man groaned as he awoke. The pain in his left arm was fierce, as always. Two of the weird things that the Raphaela/Luciela merged Awakened Being had sent out were still lodged in his arm and torso, hissing and struggling as they struggled to do whatever it was they did. Expand. Take him over. Nobody seemed to know why he hadn’t been eaten by them yet; all Raki could figure out was that they were feeding off him, somehow, because he could feel it. It was horrible.
At his groan, someone had quietly entered. Raki eyed him now through eyes bloodshot from poor sleep and constant agony. They’d also given him some muscle relaxant that impaired his vision, but the figure standing next to him was easily recognisable as one of the strange ‘men in black’ who dispatched the Claymore warriors on their hunts. When he turned to glance at some notes on a clipboard on the small table against the wall, Raki could see that the left side of his face was horrible scarred, eye protruding from its socket in a really, really, really gross kind of way. The man had a look of cold, detached interest as he examined Raki’s little problem, and blithely ignored all attempts at communication. Even his rasping plaint for water went unheeded.
He was just a test subject, a curiosity, fascinating but unworthy of basic human courtesy.
The surface beneath him was slick with sweat; he could feel the fever that wracked his bones every chance it got when his attention wasn’t on the disgusting things stuck in him. Raki dimly realised that the man had said something and attempted to refocus on him again, but the words hadn’t been directed to him, anyway. A cowled woman came to his side now, her expression a little more open and human, and finally he got some water. It wasn’t enough, but it was better than none. She even put a cold compress on his burning forehead. Well, it made sense to keep your specimens alive if you wanted to study them for any length of time, right? He made an attempt to say as much, but the words didn’t come out and the woman had pulled out some needle thing with a tube attached and then she was sticking it in his freakin’ possessed arm and-
It was all too much. Raki gasped as his blood seeped sluggishly down the tube and into a small vial, and then passed out. All this stress, man. He was going to die of high blood pressure before he even hit twenty. Well, as long as all this other bullshit didn’t kill him first.
The next time he awoke his fever had abated somewhat, and there was a barrier between his head and the clamouring Yoma-growths he was playing house for. That wasn’t a good sign - it meant he’d been out long enough for all of this to happen, and somehow Raki didn’t think that they’d magically cured his fever in a couple of hours. His hypothesis was confirmed when the same ‘nurse’ looked up briefly from some notes she was taking with a murmured, “Finally awake, I see.”
She brought him water, a more generous portion that the first time, and Raki sucked it down with a grateful sigh. Now his voice remembered who its master was, though it was still crackly from disuse and exhaustion. “How long’ve I been out?”
“Just over a week.” The woman didn’t appear to notice his obvious dismay, continuing about whatever-the-hell she was doing. He could feel her pressing fingertips against the inside of his elbow, wary of the snapping mouths that tried to twist to reach her and evading them with a deftness that bespoke a lot of practice. Was she the only one caring for him?
Raki drew a deep breath. “What do you plan to do with me? I want to get out of here. I have - things I have to do. It’s important, and not just to me.” Oh, God, what if Clare had been caught up by that monstrous thing somehow?! He had no way of knowing. Somehow he had the feeling that he wouldn’t get answers here even if Nursey knew them. And there was the ever-troubling matter of Priscilla, too. She’d had such a scary look on her face when she’d run off…was she marauding the countryside in her full form, eating humans? Or was she still childlike in that oddly pure way of hers, worried about him and scared? Raki had to go and find her. Both hers. Clare was his goal, Priscilla his responsibility. He stared pleadingly at the woman, praying she’d look at him and tell him something he could count as good news.
Well, life was just a bitch sometimes. “You can’t leave.” She said it softly, as if he were a small child asking a question that wasn’t really important but also shouldn’t have been asked. “We need to figure out why this thing isn’t able to take you over. We also need to figure out exactly how it’s keeping itself alive without actively feeding.” Raki began to speak, but the woman didn’t notice or didn’t care. “It could take years. Your cooperation would hasten it, of course, but that doesn’t mean it will be fast.” His spirits crumpled and withered. Somehow he’d known that was the answer, and expected it, but there had to be some way…
“This is most interesting.” It was the creepy guy from the first time he’d woken. Now Raki could remember that he’d actually seem him first in the town where they’ve picked him up. He shot a glare across the small room, but it went unnoticed or uncared for. Jerk. “You are the only known person to have survived this without turning into a Awakened Being. Well, I suppose that the capacity to do such isn’t in your range, which might account for it.” Whatever that was supposed to mean. Raki was a little uneasy at the tacit admission that there were people who had been turned into big-super-mega-Yoma-badguys like this, though. What did the guy mean, ‘capacity?’ Was he referring to other Yoma? Claymores? This was making his head ache.
“Thanks. I’m enjoying it, myself.”
Apparently irony was lost on this dude. “I’m sure. Even more remarkable is that the creatures are still alive, even without devouring you. You’re a very intriguing puzzle, young man. I would commend you on your good fortune under the circumstances, but somehow I doubt you’d appreciate it.”
Okay, it wasn’t just him. The man’s sense of humour sucked. “Rude of me, I know. Still, you know what they say about us kids these days and how ungrateful we are.” Raki managed a tight grin, part of him highfiving himself in awe at his ability to snark around in a position like this. He was being kept alive on a whim to satisfy this messed-up place’s sense of curiosity…taunting his keeping probably wasn’t the best idea. But, hey, how much worse could things get? The man smiled a thin smile, like a crust of ice on a muddy puddle. It was cold and sullied, and Raki felt immediately dirtier as a human being for having witnessed it. A wishful image of the nurse-lady suddenly whipping out a scalpel and slicing this jackass to all hell played through Raki’s head, but alas, it was only a happy vision. She was still poking and prodding at him and taking various notes.
Jerkface MacGee spoke again. “So it would appear. I have a story for you, young man. One which will come to interest you greatly in short order.” He’d pulled up a chair now, sitting himself comfortably on Raki’s ‘good’ side like a friend come to visit him on his sickbed. Raki wanted to punch him…stupid restraints. “Did you know that the warriors known as ‘Claymore’ were not always solely women?” Of course I knew, Raki wanted to retort, but he held his tongue. It appeared that this strange organisation knew nothing about him; that was all to the good. That meant they had nothing to use as leverage. He sighed theatrically, as if bored, and rolled his eyes at the dark ceiling. Jerkface continued his little sob story.
“Originally most of the subjects we made were male. However, they had one tremendous flaw: they couldn’t hold themselves back from Awakening. The sudden surge of power called to them like sexual ecstasy, and without exception they all threw themselves over that edge.” Raki died a little on the inside to hear this creep mention ‘sexual ecstasy’. That was just freaking wrong, man. He made a slight gagging motion which was blithely ignored. Typical. “It seemed the women had better restraint. At the very least, they all retained enough human pride to want to die as humans, rather than let themselves fall so low. We culled the rest of the male subjects and from then on trained only girls. Still, ever since we have searched for a way to cure this…problem.”
Oh, no. All of a sudden, Raki could see where this was going. He met the man’s eyes with a horrified pair of his own, sweating beading anew on his brow in stress. This couldn’t be happening. They wouldn’t be so stupid. Did they really think that he’d be able to break the chain of doomed male tests, just because of some stupid thing in his arm?!
The man smiled again, and it was worse than the first. Raki felt dizzy. “Ah, you look like you’ve deciphered our aim. Congratulations, young man. You’ve been selected as the first male Claymore-elect in over a century. How does it feel to be awarded such a singular honour?”
Nursey had paused for just a moment at this announcement; Raki had felt it. It gave him another sliver of hope. Maybe he could convince her to help him escape, although there was still the problem of his testy passengers… “I’m too old for this shit,” he rasped, angry at how his voice quaked. Well, blame it on the damn fever. He wasn’t scared, just horrified.
Okay, so he was scared as all hell. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want this creepy dude having any sort of say on the rest of his life. He really didn’t want to become an Awakened Being!! “Besides, are you stupid? You have no idea if this will really even work! Are you willing to risk it all on a Goddamned whim?!”
“While you were unconscious, we managed to clone off one of the feeders on your arm - we were unable to directly extract them.” Jerkface was still totally calm, even lightly amused at his reaction. “Every subject we presented to the clones was devoured, and the feeder died shortly thereafter. Why are you the exception? There appears to be nothing in your bloodwork that indicates anything special. You’re just a normal, average human lad.” The man leaned over him, over the barrier apparently designed to keep Raki’s face away from being bitten. The ‘feeders’ rose towards him, hissing soundlessly. “Fascinating, indeed. As for age…well, if you can survive one Yoma penetration, we’re fairly confident you can survive the rest of the process.”
Well, that was small freaking comfort. Raki was nearly mesmerised by the sheer bullshit that was this plan. “What’re you gonna do with those, then?”
For once the man displayed something other than supercilious self-satisfaction, blinking at him in honest surprise. When he gave his answer, Raki felt like an idiot - of course they were this crazy. “Do with them, dear boy? Why, they’re what we’ll be fusing you with. After all, you’re already halfway there.”
Raki wondered if it were possible to wish death on himself.
“It should be interesting to see how this pans out. Especially considering that those things have already Awakened.”
Chapter 1
Chapter 3
Sometimes Raki wondered where the hell the time went. A month ago he’d been wandering into a small hamlet with Priscilla on his shoulders, then there was like this supremely massive disruption of Yoma (apparently) and the girl-creature went haring off with a look he’d never seen before and hoped never to see again, then these weird…THINGS just appeared out of the freakin’ ground and massacred the whole town, and then he wound up at the place the Claymores were made.
It was all a bit of a blur, really.
They had him strapped to some kind of table. This room stank of blood, thick and heavy and a little dusty, as if it’d been used for grisly things many a time but not recently. The young man groaned as he awoke. The pain in his left arm was fierce, as always. Two of the weird things that the Raphaela/Luciela merged Awakened Being had sent out were still lodged in his arm and torso, hissing and struggling as they struggled to do whatever it was they did. Expand. Take him over. Nobody seemed to know why he hadn’t been eaten by them yet; all Raki could figure out was that they were feeding off him, somehow, because he could feel it. It was horrible.
At his groan, someone had quietly entered. Raki eyed him now through eyes bloodshot from poor sleep and constant agony. They’d also given him some muscle relaxant that impaired his vision, but the figure standing next to him was easily recognisable as one of the strange ‘men in black’ who dispatched the Claymore warriors on their hunts. When he turned to glance at some notes on a clipboard on the small table against the wall, Raki could see that the left side of his face was horrible scarred, eye protruding from its socket in a really, really, really gross kind of way. The man had a look of cold, detached interest as he examined Raki’s little problem, and blithely ignored all attempts at communication. Even his rasping plaint for water went unheeded.
He was just a test subject, a curiosity, fascinating but unworthy of basic human courtesy.
The surface beneath him was slick with sweat; he could feel the fever that wracked his bones every chance it got when his attention wasn’t on the disgusting things stuck in him. Raki dimly realised that the man had said something and attempted to refocus on him again, but the words hadn’t been directed to him, anyway. A cowled woman came to his side now, her expression a little more open and human, and finally he got some water. It wasn’t enough, but it was better than none. She even put a cold compress on his burning forehead. Well, it made sense to keep your specimens alive if you wanted to study them for any length of time, right? He made an attempt to say as much, but the words didn’t come out and the woman had pulled out some needle thing with a tube attached and then she was sticking it in his freakin’ possessed arm and-
It was all too much. Raki gasped as his blood seeped sluggishly down the tube and into a small vial, and then passed out. All this stress, man. He was going to die of high blood pressure before he even hit twenty. Well, as long as all this other bullshit didn’t kill him first.
The next time he awoke his fever had abated somewhat, and there was a barrier between his head and the clamouring Yoma-growths he was playing house for. That wasn’t a good sign - it meant he’d been out long enough for all of this to happen, and somehow Raki didn’t think that they’d magically cured his fever in a couple of hours. His hypothesis was confirmed when the same ‘nurse’ looked up briefly from some notes she was taking with a murmured, “Finally awake, I see.”
She brought him water, a more generous portion that the first time, and Raki sucked it down with a grateful sigh. Now his voice remembered who its master was, though it was still crackly from disuse and exhaustion. “How long’ve I been out?”
“Just over a week.” The woman didn’t appear to notice his obvious dismay, continuing about whatever-the-hell she was doing. He could feel her pressing fingertips against the inside of his elbow, wary of the snapping mouths that tried to twist to reach her and evading them with a deftness that bespoke a lot of practice. Was she the only one caring for him?
Raki drew a deep breath. “What do you plan to do with me? I want to get out of here. I have - things I have to do. It’s important, and not just to me.” Oh, God, what if Clare had been caught up by that monstrous thing somehow?! He had no way of knowing. Somehow he had the feeling that he wouldn’t get answers here even if Nursey knew them. And there was the ever-troubling matter of Priscilla, too. She’d had such a scary look on her face when she’d run off…was she marauding the countryside in her full form, eating humans? Or was she still childlike in that oddly pure way of hers, worried about him and scared? Raki had to go and find her. Both hers. Clare was his goal, Priscilla his responsibility. He stared pleadingly at the woman, praying she’d look at him and tell him something he could count as good news.
Well, life was just a bitch sometimes. “You can’t leave.” She said it softly, as if he were a small child asking a question that wasn’t really important but also shouldn’t have been asked. “We need to figure out why this thing isn’t able to take you over. We also need to figure out exactly how it’s keeping itself alive without actively feeding.” Raki began to speak, but the woman didn’t notice or didn’t care. “It could take years. Your cooperation would hasten it, of course, but that doesn’t mean it will be fast.” His spirits crumpled and withered. Somehow he’d known that was the answer, and expected it, but there had to be some way…
“This is most interesting.” It was the creepy guy from the first time he’d woken. Now Raki could remember that he’d actually seem him first in the town where they’ve picked him up. He shot a glare across the small room, but it went unnoticed or uncared for. Jerk. “You are the only known person to have survived this without turning into a Awakened Being. Well, I suppose that the capacity to do such isn’t in your range, which might account for it.” Whatever that was supposed to mean. Raki was a little uneasy at the tacit admission that there were people who had been turned into big-super-mega-Yoma-badguys like this, though. What did the guy mean, ‘capacity?’ Was he referring to other Yoma? Claymores? This was making his head ache.
“Thanks. I’m enjoying it, myself.”
Apparently irony was lost on this dude. “I’m sure. Even more remarkable is that the creatures are still alive, even without devouring you. You’re a very intriguing puzzle, young man. I would commend you on your good fortune under the circumstances, but somehow I doubt you’d appreciate it.”
Okay, it wasn’t just him. The man’s sense of humour sucked. “Rude of me, I know. Still, you know what they say about us kids these days and how ungrateful we are.” Raki managed a tight grin, part of him highfiving himself in awe at his ability to snark around in a position like this. He was being kept alive on a whim to satisfy this messed-up place’s sense of curiosity…taunting his keeping probably wasn’t the best idea. But, hey, how much worse could things get? The man smiled a thin smile, like a crust of ice on a muddy puddle. It was cold and sullied, and Raki felt immediately dirtier as a human being for having witnessed it. A wishful image of the nurse-lady suddenly whipping out a scalpel and slicing this jackass to all hell played through Raki’s head, but alas, it was only a happy vision. She was still poking and prodding at him and taking various notes.
Jerkface MacGee spoke again. “So it would appear. I have a story for you, young man. One which will come to interest you greatly in short order.” He’d pulled up a chair now, sitting himself comfortably on Raki’s ‘good’ side like a friend come to visit him on his sickbed. Raki wanted to punch him…stupid restraints. “Did you know that the warriors known as ‘Claymore’ were not always solely women?” Of course I knew, Raki wanted to retort, but he held his tongue. It appeared that this strange organisation knew nothing about him; that was all to the good. That meant they had nothing to use as leverage. He sighed theatrically, as if bored, and rolled his eyes at the dark ceiling. Jerkface continued his little sob story.
“Originally most of the subjects we made were male. However, they had one tremendous flaw: they couldn’t hold themselves back from Awakening. The sudden surge of power called to them like sexual ecstasy, and without exception they all threw themselves over that edge.” Raki died a little on the inside to hear this creep mention ‘sexual ecstasy’. That was just freaking wrong, man. He made a slight gagging motion which was blithely ignored. Typical. “It seemed the women had better restraint. At the very least, they all retained enough human pride to want to die as humans, rather than let themselves fall so low. We culled the rest of the male subjects and from then on trained only girls. Still, ever since we have searched for a way to cure this…problem.”
Oh, no. All of a sudden, Raki could see where this was going. He met the man’s eyes with a horrified pair of his own, sweating beading anew on his brow in stress. This couldn’t be happening. They wouldn’t be so stupid. Did they really think that he’d be able to break the chain of doomed male tests, just because of some stupid thing in his arm?!
The man smiled again, and it was worse than the first. Raki felt dizzy. “Ah, you look like you’ve deciphered our aim. Congratulations, young man. You’ve been selected as the first male Claymore-elect in over a century. How does it feel to be awarded such a singular honour?”
Nursey had paused for just a moment at this announcement; Raki had felt it. It gave him another sliver of hope. Maybe he could convince her to help him escape, although there was still the problem of his testy passengers… “I’m too old for this shit,” he rasped, angry at how his voice quaked. Well, blame it on the damn fever. He wasn’t scared, just horrified.
Okay, so he was scared as all hell. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want this creepy dude having any sort of say on the rest of his life. He really didn’t want to become an Awakened Being!! “Besides, are you stupid? You have no idea if this will really even work! Are you willing to risk it all on a Goddamned whim?!”
“While you were unconscious, we managed to clone off one of the feeders on your arm - we were unable to directly extract them.” Jerkface was still totally calm, even lightly amused at his reaction. “Every subject we presented to the clones was devoured, and the feeder died shortly thereafter. Why are you the exception? There appears to be nothing in your bloodwork that indicates anything special. You’re just a normal, average human lad.” The man leaned over him, over the barrier apparently designed to keep Raki’s face away from being bitten. The ‘feeders’ rose towards him, hissing soundlessly. “Fascinating, indeed. As for age…well, if you can survive one Yoma penetration, we’re fairly confident you can survive the rest of the process.”
Well, that was small freaking comfort. Raki was nearly mesmerised by the sheer bullshit that was this plan. “What’re you gonna do with those, then?”
For once the man displayed something other than supercilious self-satisfaction, blinking at him in honest surprise. When he gave his answer, Raki felt like an idiot - of course they were this crazy. “Do with them, dear boy? Why, they’re what we’ll be fusing you with. After all, you’re already halfway there.”
Raki wondered if it were possible to wish death on himself.
“It should be interesting to see how this pans out. Especially considering that those things have already Awakened.”
Chapter 1
Chapter 3