Sweet Venom Arc 03 Ch. 13

The snake collapsed to the ground and dropped the slime, but the other Baron hadn't been caught so off-guard. He raised his heavy arm up to protect himself as an ear splitting thwack rang out and the metal impacted his underarm, punching into his flesh and embedding itself firmly into his ribcage.

Oh shit. It didn't kill him.

The boar squealed at the top of his lungs, then let out a deep, pained grunt. His arm was broken and fixed in place, stapled by the giant metal protrusion. His hand loosely flapped about as he twisted on the spot and began to shuffle towards the alarm behind him.

Oh no you don't.

Seeth sprinted across the room, expertly leaping over the rows of tables as the Baron desperately plodded over to the alarm, reaching towards a small red button on the back wall with his stubby fingers. He grunted loudly with every stumbling step he took, his various knives and tools shaking furiously on his belt, but just as he reached towards the button, his second arm was severed clean off and hit the floor with a wet slap. Seeth had thrown her axe across the room. The blade punched cleanly into the wall and stayed there, with a splatter of blood along its silver blade.

The Baron spun around to face Seeth, just as she charged and knocked him off his feet. With her one arm over his shoulder, and her other under him, she heaved him up and lifted him off the ground, his immense mass shifting uncomfortably as she held him horizontally, and then drove his entire body into a protruding support column on the wall, spine first.

The hangar shook slightly from the sheer impact of the Baron, and a bassy metallic thud echoed around the room. The support column was left with a hefty dent in the multi-inch thick metal as the boar went limp in her grip. Seeth dumped him on the floor, head first, watching as his vast bulk collapsed onto his head and neck, turning his already mangled spine into more of a mess than it already was.

Seeth spun on her heels and quickly checked the rest of the room. The other Barons hadn't seemed to have heard her. All around her were only the bewildered expressions of the various nomads, as they slowly realised what had just happened. Pulling her axe from the wall, she addressed the nearest prisoner, carefully bringing the blade down on his restraints in such a manner as to not spook him. The restraints clinked cleanly as he was freed, on limb at a time.

"Do you know how many Barons are on this ship?" She asked sternly, her eyes taking in every detail of the hangar as soon as he was free.

"M-Maybe ten!" The nomad sat up slowly, rubbing his wrists, his body trembling. "B-But they have a horde of Famished behind the door!"

"Famished?"

The nomad pointed at the giant hangar door, plastered with warning signs.

"I-If the Barons find out you've killed one of their own, they'll set them free! And if they set them free with everyone still tied down... we'll get butchered!"

"What are the Famished?" Seeth demanded, crouching over the boar Baron's body and pulling a large ring of keys free from his belt.

"I-I... They used to be prisoners, l-like us, b-but... they're not anymore!" The nomad's voice was rising, and Seeth was quickly becoming concerned now that he might start acting hysterical. She spied the biggest, most-ornate looking key and unthreaded it from the ring.

Master key.

"Start unlocking the others." Seeth ordered, throwing the ring over to the nomad.

He fumbled but caught the keys, and moved towards the closest prisoner.

"T-That was incredible, though! I've n-never seen someone lift a Baron like that..."

Seeth didn't reply; she slipped the master key into a pocket on her suit and moved towards one of the other rows of prisoners, axe-blade lined up with their restraints. She cut through the metal cleanly with every strike, but her eyes kept drifting to the warning signs behind her.

STARVING DOGS.

It wasn't long before all the nomads in the room were freed. They all appeared confused and extremely anxious, as they stared up at Seeth and struggled to process the situation - was this actually happening? Were they actually going to... live?

The young girl, who had been kneeling on the floor, stood up and walked over to Seeth, unsteady on her feet. She was clutching the orange blob to her chest. She cradled it carefully and gave Seeth a teary, wide smile.

"T-Thank you! You saved us! You saved Pupa from being eaten!"

The orange blob stretched out a small, shaky appenditch. Unsure of what to do, Seeth reached out gently towards it and the blob rested its shaking limb on her hand, as if to say 'thank you.'

Everyone then began thanking her together. They stayed behind the girl but began to crowd around Seeth, practically crying with relief

All, except one man.

On the outside of the group, someone had broken away from the rest. His eyes were sunken and heavy in the back of his head. His face twitched as he shuffled towards the back of the room, towards the shiny red alarm panel at the back of the room.

"N-No, n-n-o. Too laaaaaaaate," the man muttered to himself, in an odd little sing-song voice. His voice was harsh, and a single bead of saliva trickled down his face. He stared down at his large swollen belly, unable to see his feet.

Seeth was overwhelmed by the sudden rush of praise. She stood about awkwardly, eyes on the floor, her fingers playing with the end of her plait.

Nobody noticed the man until it was too late.

"Always to laaaaaaaaate..."

He stepped over the dead Baron, completely transfixed by the button. The harrowing screams of his children, of his wife, echoed through his head. His eyes like pin-pricks, he reached out and pressed the alarm with a single, stone-solid finger.

The alarm above the door blared loudly, bathing the room in a red haze as the huge door began to retract into the floor. The prisoners, and Seeth, jumped out of their skins. The man held his finger on the alarm, as though his life depended on it, turning to look at the door with that same lost expression.

"We're not waiting to see what's behind that door. Get into the corridor!" Seeth yelled, guiding the nomads back through her point of entry.

The terrified group shuffled out through the door as fast as they could as the room filled with the rumble of the retracting door, and the gurgle of its concealed occupants.

Seeth turned, and made to go back for the man.

Under the crimson glow of the alarm, a figure clambered out on top of the door, despite being only half-retracted into the floor. His body was a mess of industrial bionics and badly grafted flesh. Several vials of clear fluid were attached to his back, feeding into what little organic matter was left inside his body. His hands had been replaced with blades, which he rubbed together with a sharp, piercing screech. Despite the awkward, unbalanced nature of his body, he moved with an unsettling grace, well accustomed to his abhorrent body.

More and more sets of blades, hooks and hands latched onto the door as more of the beast's kin emerged, eager to make the most of this given opportunity. The first jumped over, landing with a metallic thump and turned to face the single, quivering nomad, still holding down the button.

The Famished surged towards him. Its blades cut straight through his flesh and bone, severing his arm at the shoulder. In a curl of blood, it snatched the limb right out of the air and clamped its half-metal jaw onto the warm flesh, crunching into it with a distinct, loud, synthetic purr as the blood hit its tongue.

A blood-curdling scream filled the room as the man collapsed to the floor.

More of them were clambering on top of the door, each one mangled and deformed in their own way, their bodies a twisted husk of sharp metal, with desperate eyes and organs clinging onto life. The most mutilated of them had their organs held in clear, plastic sacks, which hung from the frame of a completely bionic skeletal shell. They eyed Seeth with a mixture of confusion and hunger, with the hunger taking precedence as more of them emerged into the room, and began to spread out like a pack of dogs.

Seeth stood in front of the main door, separating the nomads from the monsters inside the hangar.

The smell of blood had filled the room, and prompted an excited wave of mechanical savagery from the Famished.

Their somewhat calm demeanour began to change quite dramatically however as the smell of blood began to fill the room. The first one, who was chomping at the man's arm, only became more vicious as he continued his feast. Its bites became more aggressive, and lashed out as some of its kin crawled over, and began to tear into the nomad's body. They reacted as a pack to the scene as a ripple of excitement ran across their bodies, tapping their blades together with increasing vigour.

The hangar only continued to fill with more of them as the door eventually fully retracted to the floor, revealing a secondary hangar filled to the brim with malice and metal. They clung to the walls and crawled over the floor in a disorganised horde, each as hungry and ravenous as the last.

Seeing over a hundred opponents, Seeth's heart was pounding in her chest. She was confident about taking on one, maybe five without injury. But this?

The Famished began a chorus of half-organic, half-rusting voice boxes, united only by their hunger and their suffering. Their malice was aimed directly at the Controller, watching, waiting for the slightest hint of weakness.

Seeth's eyes quickly darted around the room, deciding on her next move. Then, as quickly as she could she backed out of the room, closing the metal door behind her sharply and wedging her axe into the handle, to keep it closed. The Famished charged towards her the second she moved. A blade punched through the glass panel millimetres from Seeth's face and she jerked back to avoid it, narrowly dodging the blade.

They clawed and teared at the door, metal scraping against metal, but for the time being, it seemed to be holding.

The prisoners had gone down the corridor and opened up the cell by the smaller butcher's kitchen. They all stood together in the corridor, unsure of what to do next, and as Seeth approached them, they all immediately turned to her. She could hear the sounds of several Barons in rooms further down the corridor, apparently still unalerted. Their hearty laughs and chewing echoes from one side of the corridor, the synthetic growl and metallic scrabble of the Famished from the other.

"There are people in tanks through that door; get them out." Seeth ordered. A group of nomads quickly broke off with the keys, and did as she said. Seeth then turned to address those remaining. "I need you all to stay out of sight and look after your own, give me room to fight. Don't die from stray shots."

The nomads immediately did as she asked and hid low and quiet. Most moved into the now open cell, or back into the kitchen and ducking behind the tables. Seeth started to move towards the sound of Baron laughter, when a new set of footsteps from down the corridor made her stop in her tracks.

An overly muscular wolf appeared in the corridor. He initially seemed to just be passing from one side to another, but he slowed down and his ears pricked as the sound of the scrabbling Famished reached him. He was shorter than Seeth, and looked a little more well kept than the other Barons she'd encountered; his upper body was overflowing with bulging muscle rather than that, making his normal-sized legs look a little anaemic in comparison. He had a bionic grafted onto his back between his shoulder blades which fed small tubes into his arms and into his neck. The bionic whirred quietly as he turned to address Seeth.

"I don't think I've seen you before... Are you a new Baron?" He asked, head cocked and eyes curious.

Seeth faltered for a second, stumbling over her words.

"Y-Yes. I'm just having a wander about the ship."

The bionic on the wolf's back began to hum louder, like an angry bee. His face twitched.

"What do you mean you're having a wander? The fuck is there to look at?! We're in a windowless metal box!" His temper was rising quickly as he spoke, rising in volume with the increasing aggravated whirring emanating from his back.

"I was checking out the latest captives, picking my prize." Seeth feigned, staring the wolf down calmly. He seemed briefly convinced; the persistent whirring noise dropped in volume, but after a few seconds he suddenly snapped back at her.

"If you're a Baron, you'll know who runs this barge! Give me a name!" He hissed, his eyes narrowing, the bionic increasing in volume once again.

"You shouldn't talk to a fellow -"

"GIVE ME A FUCKING NAME!" He screamed, his eyes practically bulging in their sockets.

"Ah shit." Seeth muttered, bracing herself.

"WE HAVE AN INTRUDER!" He growled, grabbing a bladed club that hung from his belt. "THEY'RE TAKING OUR FUCKING FOOD!"

"Rager! I-It's a Rager!" One of the nomads called out from behind the czarite. The Rager's hands clamped around his bat, squeezing it so tightly that they could hear his joints clicking from down the corridor. The wolf's entire body began to shake, blood oozed from nose as his eyes locked onto Seeth with a violent madness. The feasting and laughter on the other side of the ship suddenly cut out, and was replaced with the sound of scraping chairs and heavy stomping.

"YOU'RE GONNA - YOU'RE GONNA - GONNA - DIE!" The wolf screamed, half choking on his own frothing words as he launched himself down the corridor as fast as his legs could carry him, gunning straight for Seeth with his bat at the ready.

The nomads were screaming. The Famished were screeching. All around her was aggression, anger, and fear. But Seeth was calm.

"I hope this packs the punch Garnet said it did."

As the wolf charged her, she lunged forward and met his charge with a kick to the stomach, hitting him like a cannonball and sending his shaking body skittering back down the corridor. His bat clattered to the floor and Seeth quickly drew the SAFU, which was currently strapped to her back. One hand on the pump, the other on the trigger, she took aim at the spitting Rager who was clambering back to his feet and screamed at her again, blood squirting from his eyes and underneath his claws.

He was trying to speak, to unleash a few slur of insults and threats onto his opponent, but his shaking maw could only scream froth and blood, and all that stuttered out were broken syllables.

A thunderous roar erupted from the barrel of the SAFU as a flesh-splitting barrage of tungsten launched down the corridor.

Multiple ball bearings connected with the Rager. The sound of pulverised flesh was immediately preceded by the ear splitting *ping* of tungsten slamming into the ship's floor and walls. And just like that, as the cloud of smoke cleared, the Rager was gone. He had been reduced to smouldering, bloody chunks on the floor, an unrecognisable mass of gristle and bone, like someone had dumped a can of dog food onto the ship's plating. The SAFU had also left a visible spread of deep craters, puncturing deep into the ship's carcass like a halo around the wolf.

A weapon like this didn't leave corpses. It left mulch and scraps.

The silence that followed was deafening. The nomads didn't even dare breathe. Seeth cycled the weapon with a beefy *clack-clack*, ejecting the spent shell which thudded to the ground, smoke gently wafting from its interior.

The silence was broken by the howl of Vora Barons as they came pouring out of their various rooms ahead of her, each of them as fat, blood stained and smelly as the last. The floor shook with every stumbling, ravenous step they took. Fury and hunger was plastered across all of their faces, but as they got closer, and eyed up their perpetrator, their demeanour shifted slightly.

"That's a delicious looking piece of meat, look at those thick thighs!" One of them cackled, reaching for a hook on his belt. "Leave her unmarked by lead, I want her meat unfowled."

The others didn't seem to agree with their fellow Baron's approach, and reached for the oversized pistols and other weapons they had on hand.

Seeth did not even acknowledge their threats.

*BLAM*

Another flesh-shredding wave of tungsten filled the corridor, with plenty of flesh to hit. The noise was unlike anything Seeth had ever heard before. The sound of multiple kilograms of ball bearings punching through what was literally metres worth of flesh, fat and leather. Beyond the crunch, there was a sickening sound of gushing blood and hell knows what else, as gallons of bodily fluid evacuated through the fresh, gaping holes in the Baron's wall of bodies.

Seeth emptied the SAFU's magazine in several more head splitting blasts and charged forward, rushing towards a Baroness slightly smaller than her who had waddled out of the next door just up from the security room. Seeth rammed the gun into her face, forcing the Baroness back inside the room as the corridor filled with heavy calibre gunfire from the surviving Barons.

The room was only small; a bedroom, with a makeshift bed and TV inside, finished with a half-eaten nomad dangling from the ceiling by his arms. The bite marks on the nomad's body fit the Baroness' jaw perfectly, and her lips covered in fresh blood. Footsteps were rapidly approaching the door but Seeth kept her focus on the Baroness before her, who was wrenching the gun out of her face with a fierce scowl and going for a knife on her belt. The Controller responded with a skull cracking jab to the baron's cheek, sending her scuttling backwards and thumping against the wall. Seeth loaded a fresh shell into the SAFU, cocked it, and blasted the Baroness in one smooth, single, motion. The force of the shot sent bloody chunks of mashed ribs and pasted organs spraying over the Controller, as the Baroness' torso practically exploded.

That hellish whirring of two new Ragers echoed around the room as they appeared at the door. They skidded and sprinted straight into the room, lunging at Seeth with bladed clubs. They were already fully revved up and incapable of speech, screaming from the base of their throat as they attacked her. She blocked their blows with the SAFU's body and booted the first in the chest, sending him straight back out of the room, his head clattering against the opposite wall with a firm crack. The other narrowly avoided his comrad's catapulted body, and swung his club horizontally in a vicious arc.

Seeth dodged backwards with what little room she had and the club smashed through the torso of the hanging nomad instead, busting straight through him. His meat clung to the blades of the club. As the Rager recovered from his swing, Seeth lunged at him, using the back of the SAFU as a club. The Rager's overgrown muscles might have afforded him some protection versus an average nomad, but they did nothing to protect against the bone-breaking slams of a Controller. He may as well have had all the strength of a children's toy after three distinct, crushing blows of solid metal, the final of which drove the stock of the SAFU straight through his skull. The bionic on his back spluttered to a stop as his skull crunched, and the Rager stopped moving.

Seeth quickly returned to a firing stance and loaded more shells as the first Rager came stumbling back into the room, despite the wound on the back of his head. He swung his club at Seeth again but this time, the Controller caught it at the base, wrenching it free of his shaking grip with one hand and bringing the bladed lump of metal straight into his chest, sending him straight back through the door. He hit the floor a mangled pile of bone and flesh.

More footsteps followed, heavier this time. A tall, lumbering Baron lurched around the corner and surged towards Seeth with a vicious, hungry grin on his face - it was the same one that had called out to her earlier. He clutched a massive, metal hook in his hands, the corpse of a dead nomad already impaled firmly on it. The body jerked violently as the baron raised the hook over his head and prepared to slam it down onto Seeth.