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"Begin again," she crooned.
The human choked, its whole body shuddering with ragged sobs, until, with one final retch, it vomited onto its own blood-soaked fatigues. Fragments of teeth rolled down its shirt and hit the floor with tiny wet pings. It looked up to the overlord. Then with one more ragged, torn shred of defiance pulled from a far deeper supply than Sit-zenakh had first suspected, it glared up at her with genuine fury. It almost sparked an illusion of pride in her flux.
Then it balled up what vomit still stained its mouth and spat it upon her foot.
Her hand was wrapped around its head now, thumb and index finger pinching hard on the round tips of its cheekbones. She felt the silent creak of the skull threatening to give way under her grip with a ticktickticktick like wood, and she twisted the head up to face hers. Under the shadow of her looming bulk, of her deathmask and chain-draped headcrest, two wet eyes bulged out at her.
"Begin again, I said."
"Fuck you."
Overlord Sit-zenakh released the human's skull then, pleased. Only verbal bile now. Better. She did have to debase herself into speaking the human's language, yes, but it was a necessary unpleasantness if they were to get anywhere with this conversation. A pity she could not just crack its skull open yet, not when the brain within held what it did.
"Tell me where your commanders will make planetfall."
"I don't know. You bitch."
Another slap. The cheek split this time under her hand. Pink-stained bone peeked from between shorn skin and fat before blood welled up to veil it and dribble down the lines of the human's face. The human choked a sob at the suddenness of it but succeeded in swallowing the rest of the pain. Some of the blood stayed with Sit-zenakh as she withdrew her hand, bringing it close to her chest in an affectation of astonishment.
"Liars do not fare well under me." Her fingers slid against each other with the blood as their lubricant, and she examined them openly. "I am a generous overlord, though - ten worlds stand beside me to attest. Ah - perhaps that is not the right word."
The human only looked up at her. Its jaw clenched and unclenched, and its breathing was still, still coming in quick, hot gasps. The muscles twitched strangely around the welt in its cheek where she had split them. But, at least, it appeared that it was ready to listen.
"I am… fair," Sit-zenakh said, speaking as though the words were rolling around a tongue. "I am just. I am… not merciful, no. I cannot find the word with the correct connotations. Pity."
"How fucking dare you call yourself fair." Ah. So it wasn't ready to be completely quiet yet. "You are the opposite of justice. Your existence is against the natural order. I abhor you."
"You don't even know what that word means, do you?"
"I hate you."
"Ah, 'abhor', yes, that too. But justice. If you were to tell me such a thing has ever graced your people, I'd consider slaying you on the spot for the blasphemy of it."
"Not surprised you're familiar with blasphemy, xenos whore-queen."
A light pinch this time, just below the existing wound. The human hissed, and blood rushed up to stain her fingers afresh.
"Be polite." Such a lovely color, that red. Vibrant, calling for more than the nominal standards of her cognitive partitioning. She let go of the wound and traced the skull downward. The blood followed her fingers to paint a thick stripe of that beautiful red over the human's lips and down its chin. There, her fingers curled under the bony prominence and tugged upward, forcing it to meet her gaze. "Justice. Abhorrence. And yes, blasphemy. Your kind's conceptions of such ideals are but pitiable shadows of a properly developed philosophy. It is like attempting to discuss ethics with a hatchling. It would be cute if you weren't armed."
For the first time, as far as Sit-zenakh had known it, the human smiled. It was a grim, faint smirk, just enough to send another rivulet of blood out of its cheek. "And seeing as we are indeed armed? Not so cute, is it?"
The arrogance of it was revolting.
Her hand came down upon its left arm with such speed that the air burned in her wake. The flesh beneath her exploded from the force. Skin and fat tore and split like fresh fruit; the muscle fibers did not have time to tear and instead simply burst in place, annihilated; blood continued on its myriad paths before realizing the sudden severing of the vessels had released it to run free and wild; the bone at the core snapped clean, the tissue around it simply not moving out of the way quickly enough to let it splinter. The arm went flipping downwards, bounced off the blackstone tiles, and ended up careening across the room into a corner. A dazzling arc of blood went flying with it to decorate the room and the human and Sit-zenakh with an abstract arc of that beautiful red.
The human screamed.
"Arrogance," she hissed, "will not be tolerated beneath me either." She did not think that the human heard, but she felt vindicated all the same. It was screaming at a frankly impressive volume for something so small. The sound was raw, wet, wordless, simply mindless animal pain being let loose. Its face was turning purple from an apparent inability to breathe between screams. She wondered it it would stop before it passed out.
Almost. Eventually, its eyes dulled, and the scream died to a choking, horrible whimper. It appeared not to have stopped, simply run out of steam. Blood loss, too, may have been hampering it, as a rather significant pool had spewed and then dripped from the stump halfway down its arm. Sit-zenakh stood in the thin layer of warmth just before the human.
With her hand still coated in shreds of its own flesh, Sit-zenakh took the human's chin again and forced it to meet her gaze again.
"We are going to try this again, dear."
It only stared back, pain and fear clouding its vision too much to offer anything else. Its eyes were wet, and the whites had been shocked through with streaks of red, not to mention the skin surrounding them.
She stroked it with her thumb. "Where are your commanders planning to make planetfall?"
It made a sound. Then it swallowed, and with a voice hoarse from its earlier labor, "I don't know."
"Would you like to lose your other arm?"
"I don't know!" it screamed again, not so loud as before but still soaked in panic.
"Why not?"
"I don't know, I don't know."
Sit-zenakh let her hand trail gently down its neck. Her fingers traced the lines where its tears had fallen to soak its fatigues, then across the collarbone toward the still-intact arm, where she gave just the tiniest hint of pressure. Her palm followed, pushing up and over the shoulder to cup the band of muscle over it. Slowly, teasingly, she rubbed small circles around the muscle.
She let herself ease closer to the humerus with each stroke.
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know," it kept whining. Panic was coming back to its eyes and voice.
"Why not, dear?"
"I'm a guardswoman, they don't tell me anything, I don't know where we go!"
"I told you that liars do not fare well with me." The muscle was pleasantly warm against her cold fingers.
"I don't know!"
There was a divot between the muscle and the collarbone. Her thumb pressed into it, hard.
"I don't know, please, I don't know!"
"I told you to not lie to me."
"I'm a footsoldier! I just follow orders. They don't tell us anything. Not even after planetfall, sometimes. I swear. Please!"
Sit-zenakh stared at the human as it continue babbling, scrutinized it. The tears were flowing again, and the muscle ran hot with panicked blood.
But it simply must be lying.
Skin broke, blood flowed, and the human screamed again. Warmth, wet and inviting, swallowed just the tip of her thumb as it dug into the meat of its shoulder. She pressed in further, relished the pressure of the tissue as it fought her advance in its token effort before giving way. It was as if she was being pulled inward, suctioned deep by the loss of the blood which had filled the space she now took. She pressed until she felt bone, and she nearly choked with the sensation as the human swallowed her thumb nearly to the base.
Sit-zenakh could no longer hear the human’s horrid noises. They were there, oh yes, it was screaming quite insistently now, but the noise was at the same time distant, as though heard through a dozen thick cloths. No, she was lost in the warmth that had welcomed nearly her entire digit and now pulsed around it as the muscle spasmed in panicked agony. She felt more alive in that one finger than she did the entire rest of her frame. Her hand was being coated with more of that beautiful, shining blood with each twitch and heartbeat – ah, the heartbeat! It swirled around her, fast and strong. Tenacious, that little thing. The human was like a luxurious bath, and she was being washed and cleansed by it.
Another finger dug in with the second, and Sit-zenakh gasped. Exquisite.
The human had stopped screaming now. It was mumbling in a breathless stutter interspersed with ragged breaths and the swallowing of spittle.
“Merciful God-Emperor, upon the Throne of Holy Terra, grant unto me your grace. I have been your faithful, I have been your servant, I am one who has done your will upon all worlds beneath your light. Please, grant me peace. I have been your servant, I have given all I am. Grant me peace, please, grant me peace, grant me peace-”
It did not even scream as another questing finger entered it, this time in the other shoulder. It only choked and shuddered before taking up its prayer again. This was good; no more irritating shrieking, at last. But at the same time, Sit-zenakh was concerned that she may have broken the thing, and that there would be no more to pull from its mind regarding the landing. Whatever that mattered to her now.
She dropped her face low to study it. She was kneeling in front of it now, one knee soaking in its blood and the other raised by its hip. Debasing for an overlord, perhaps, but it was hardly as if there was anyone but the two of them. This would stay private.
“Can you hear me, dear?”
It continued muttering senselessly. With her hands occupied, Sit-zenakh resorted to bumping its forehead gently with her own. Again, no response but a soft swaying from the impact.
“Grant me peace, grant me peace. God-Emperor, I beg of you to release me from my duty. I have been a good servant according to your will. Please, upon your holy Throne, release me, grant me peace, grant me peace.” Its voice was little more than the brushing of river rushes against each other in the wind now.
“He can’t hear you.”
“Grant me peace, holy, holy upon your throne.”
With a wet pop as the suction kissed her goodbye, she pulled her fingers from its shoulders. The human only whimpered briefly before continuing to beg its god for release. That wouldn’t do. Sit-zenakh took its head in her hands and forced it to look up. Her hands were soft against its skin, sated for the moment by the blood that stained them.
“You’ll need to countenance with me before being granted such things.”
Its eyes did manage to make their way up to hers. They were glazed over and shot through with blood, and it seemed to take a great effort to keep them focused, as they kept twitching and contracting at random. Over half its face was wet with tears, snot, spit, and its own blood. The cheek wound, so long ago now, that Sit-zenakh had inflicted with her earlier slap, was a gummy mess of half-clotted, mucus-slicked filth. But it did follow her order.
“Good, dear,” she said, and brushed her thumbs below its eyes. Tears were replaced with matching streaks of the blood that stained her. “Keep looking at me.”
“Grant me peace, grant me peace, I have been a good servant, God-Emperor, I beg of you,” it continued. Its eyes remained on her as best they could.
“He isn’t here.”
“I have been a good servant, release me from my station, grant me peace, grant me peace.”
It was fading. The voice was so weak and its lips so numb that the words were coming out as a nearly incoherent rasp. Where the pulse has earlier been dangerously fast and hard, it had now dropped to suck a light flutter that she had to press in hard to feel it at all.
Sit-zenakh thought.
“Beg me,” she said.
“Grant me mercy.”
Her head tilted to the side just a few degrees. “Do you know your place? Or are you still denying me? Because I can continue for as long as I please, even if you cannot.”
It finally paused its incessant prayer. So, there was some consciousness left to it. It licked at cracked lips and panted as it apparently tried to think. She let it have a moment. Her thumbs rubbed tiny circles around its jaw.
Such a tiny thing, to have so much blood and noise in it.
The jaw clenched under her fingers, then released. “Grant me mercy.”
“By name.”
“I don’t know it.”
She pressed her forehead against its own again. “Sit-zenakh.”
“Sit-zenakh.” An exhausted whisper, close enough to reverence to please her.
“Are you still his?”
“Grant me release from this.”
“Or are you mine?”
Tears ran anew. A few of them started to wash the blood off her fingers. Sit-zenakh wiped them away as they came. "Tell me your name."
"…Alicia."
"Alicia…" Sit-zenakh whispered. The word was sweet. "Are you mine?"
Barely a rasp was left in it. “I beg of you, Sit-zenakh. Grant me mercy.”
This, too, was exquisite.
"Good," she crooned, her own voice low and her face still close.
True to her word, she did make it quick.
The brain was where Alicia was, and so the brain is where she went first - no mucking about with the heart or the neck. Sit-zenakh prized herself on being a pragmatic sort.
So she crushed it entirely. She placed her hands flat on their side of the skull, and with one last bump of her forehead against the human's, she drove her hands together. The brain case cracked and exploded outward, becoming shards of bone taped together by the stubborn skin of the scalp. The brain itself was reduced to a gray-pink slurry that leapt from the splits in its skull to form a great fan of gore in the air. Where it landed, the more solid pieces stuck to the tiles and the walls to give the whole stain a fascinating texture. Blood, too, joined it, tinged a soft pink with froth and fluid, less vigorous and moreso just dripping down from the seams where Alicia met Sit-zenakh.
Alicia made no response. The face was still roughly intact, though new fluids now leaked from the nose and the corners of the eyes. One eye appeared to have been pierced from somewhere in its rear and was now shifting through pinks toward a vibrant red. The same placid expression with which the guardswoman had pleaded - first to Him on Terra, then to a more proper overlord - was now locked in place as a permanent fixture of beatific peace.
The rest of the body was not quite so quiet. It thrashed incoherently, held in place only by the hands in its head. The one hand that was still attached slapped at Sit-zenakh a couple times blindly. She did not fault Alicia for it. Her aim had been true. Alicia's body, poor thing, was simply in mutiny with its commander now absent. And sure enough, the last few desperate signals died down soon enough, and the body began to realize it was dead.
Meaning that Alicia was gone.
Her hands were shaking. This was odd to Sit-zenakh, as they felt lovely. She was drenched up to her elbows in Alicia, all wet and warm, with much more spattered across her face and chest. Lightning shot through every twitch of her hands as sensation swelled in them, pushing past the veil of mechanical distance so that, for the first time in 65 million years, Sit-zenakh could feel exactly where her self met air.
She let her hands part and stared at them. The body dropped heavy behind them with a dull thud. It was eerie, distantly so, to watch a thing that had so recently been alive and capable of argument now reduced to an object. A corpse, that's what it was.
Her hands shook.
A thought occurred to Sit-zenakh then. It was a thought that would damn her, she knew, but it was made blurry by the warmth of flesh on her hands and the pinpricks of lucidity it sparked.
She knew it would fade when she washed herself. And she wondered if she might be able to reach more than just that twinge of reality before it all wore off.
Her hands still shook as she drew them up toward her mouth.