“You’ve beaten me. I am at your mercy. So let me ask you this. Everyone has a reason,  everyone has a price. Money? I can make you rich. Ambition? I can help you climb to any position you may seek. Safety? I can see to it that you are more than untouchable - that you cease to exist. Revenge? I can help see to the death of anyone who might have wronged you - and I know it is not myself, as I am well aware of whom I have wronged. What is it? What will it take for me to see another sunrise?”

“I’m afraid that which drives me is the one thing you cannot give, Damrus. I’ve lived in a world where men like you-”

“Where men like me went unpunished? Come now. Even if I dissolve my Hashem Family, another will just take its place.”

She shot him in the stomach, taking only marginal care not to hit anything vital. 

“Let me finish. I lived in a world where no matter how many Hashems I killed, more sprung up… And they always happened to serve the ends of the same few groups of people in the end,. I lived in a world where those people - those like your Benefactors - had entrenched themselves so deeply, built ivory towers so high that they may as well have been the Outer Gods, so untouchable were they. I saw it and lived it, Damrus. You know what I want, and I don’t think you can give it. They have something to stop you from selling them out, don’t they? Those Benefactors of yours. A curse, a hostage, a simple explosive in your true body, I don’t know. But They always have something to stop the puppet from cutting its own strings.”

As she spoke, Krahe gradually lowered herself down to better meet his gaze, until she squatted down in front of him, resting her left hand against the ground, letting it soak in the small pool of blood which had formed around Damrus’ body. His flesh suit was dying, but he, the Baneworm, would live.

“In my world, they started by installing puppet rulers of truly…revolting proclivities. Pedophiles. Rapists. Sadists. They provided for their puppets’ revolting desires, and kept them in control with simple blackmail. That scheme went out the window once they figured out how to control someone with a graft. I worked all my life trying to get at Them, to tear down the curtain and put a bullet in the showrunner’s head. At first, it was just revenge for turning my home into a desert of anathema-burned glass. Then, my simple revenge became punishment for what they had done to the whole world, a desire to curtail what they were still doing, to prevent what they would do in the future. But… As you said, nearly everyone has a price, and They bought one of the few people who could get to me. That’s how I ended up here. A Greater Pilgrim with a little seed of Chernobog rooted into my soul. It looks a bit like this, when I look at it in my head,” she said, holding up her hand and opening her Kenoma Pocket. A fanged, wound-like grin with a bottomless void inside.

“The likes of your Benefactors rule the world I come from, Damrus. All of mankind regardless of race, nation or creed are nothing but cattle to them, just slaves and meat, a self-replenishing natural resource to be exploited. I would compare them to locusts, but locusts only care to eat. Those who rule my world have not the grace of a locust. The sadistic fucks take joy in their own depravity, theyopenly say what they’re doing as if to mock anyone with the thought to oppose them. They believe themselves to be superior to all others, and they control not just my world’s governments, but even its equivalent to the Twin Churches, grafting included. Our cities extend far beneath the earth, just like Jas’raba, and just like Jas’raba, those subterranean places are full of poison and monsters. The air on the surface is poison, too. All Nature is either dead or twisted by something akin to anathema. The food is artificial and filled with drugs, designed to make you sick so that you buy medication from the same company that makes the food. Some food makes you sick if you have grafts from its competitor. The government is omnipresent and omnipotent, but only when it comes to crushing dissent and resistance, only when it’s convenient to Them.”

She scuttled over towards the mafioso, staring into his face at nearly point-blank. For once, Krahe wasn’t in control. A dam inside her had broken, and now that the deluge had begun, she couldn’t halt it. She took his face in her hands.

“Imagine that kind of world, Damrus. Imagine it. Now imagine dying there, waking up in Jas’raba, and crawling your way to the surface… Only to be greeted by utterly pristine Nature. The filthiest parts of Audunpoint are paradise compared to the brightest parts of Megacity Gamma. Slaughterhouse 9 looked like one of the nicer streets back home. Do you understand?”

Damrus stared at her hand, then back at her face. He struggled to speak, but his face spoke a hundred, a thousand words. Simple survival instinct became confusion, then understanding, then terror as he parsed the idea of a world where his Benefactors ruled everything.

“Why…” he mouthed nearly breathlessly.

“You know why I’m telling you,” she sighed, letting go of him. As she stood, the manic tension vanished from her, and once more she was her in-control self. “There is no risk of you ever telling anyone else. You have one way of buying your life…And it seems the bank has frozen your account.”

He gave a faint, yet determined nod - a defiant one, even, but not one in defiance of her. 

“Only a fool keeps more than a fifth of his money in a bank account,” the mafioso hissed, his eyes bulging out of their sockets with effort. His Voidkey emerged from the side of his head and clattered onto the ground. A moment later, she saw him retract all his tendrils as all his limbs save for his left arm went limp, and by contrast, his left arm suddenly bulged and sprang into lively motion. The limb distended as Damrus’s tendrils tore out through his fingertips and wove together, smearing his flesh-suit’s blood across the floor in the effort to write a word. Before he could smear out an R, his entire left arm unraveled from his fingertips to his shoulder, spraying gore everywhere and leaving only bloodied bones behind. Panicked, the Baneworm that was Damrus Hashem tore itself out of its shell, erupted out of his mouth… And flew right past Krahe. Its many tendrils were shredded, leaving only one, but Damrus yet lived even as his body tore itself apart. 

Damrus pathetically slithered over to her, and tried again.

This time, it wrote numerals and letters.

M-3
R-1-5
E-2-4
S-

It started what could’ve been a 6, a 0, or an 8, but before the numeral could become distinct, Damrus Hashem’s true body unraveled… Though it looked much more like he exploded.