Welcome to Gaia! ::

The given location was a small cave tucked into the island cliffs. On a normal day, and most especially evening, the waters would take the place over, obscuring it from view and making it near inaccessible. Tonight though, circumstances aligned and there was a small path leading right down to it. At the cave's entrance, Konstantin did not have to wait long, Jane's figure appearing from within and gesturing silently for him to follow. She led him to what was definitely a portal, but not one that had the usual trappings of runic technology. It appeared to be somehow natural.

Stepping through, the portal opened into the chill of a desert nightscape, ruined slightly by the scar of deep, abrupt crater the size of several city blocks. A woman in a white flowing dress with glossy black hair stood at the edge of it, in her hand was the thin line of a leash that led down to a thin figure, crouched and shivering nakedly at her feet.

The woman turned and Sasha Belrose (the old one, the scarred one, the one with glossy straight hair and over a year of harsh realities) glanced at him dismissively before focusing on Jane, a petulant curl to her mouth. "You should let them stay out here, them I do not want." She jerked at the leash, and the figure looked up, revealing the features of one Obadiah Thompson.

Jane smiled pleasantly, "You should clothe them."

"Non!" The woman snarled, "They smell! They are stupid and undeserving! I ask of you such things as I need and you send me a dozen dolls, ugly dolls, to play with and dress up! We asked for an army!"

Calmly, Jane answered, "Did you intentionally let the others go?"

A shake of the head and exasperated sigh, "They are, maybe, perhaps not so stupid. But I do not wish to bother further with them."

His superior turned to Kostya with a look of confidence, "There's eleven more of," she nodded toward the crouching figure, choking unhappily at the leash, "hidden through the area. Retrieve them."

The woman with Sasha's gave Kostya a smile, and a feeling of kinship and shared-purpose filled him at her focus. "You can kill them a little, it matters not. They are very stupid, but they do not die for long."

The not-Sasha sniffed and jerked the leash once more, "They are not all so for obedience. You will see."

Jane gave him a reassuring look, "Whichever you find efficient." From her jacket she pulled out eleven collars, glowing faintly with red runes. "It will go easier with these. Once on, they'll obey your commands as long as you wear your pendant. Prior to that, however," Jane stared out into the night, "they're growing closer to their source material."

The woman had been a stranger in an acquaintance's body, but she had darkly promised Kostya an ill-fate that was swiftly coming into fruition. They huddled near a rock, pitiful and caked in sand and dirt and blood, their eyes wild and feral. He had seen this look before: in frightened animals, in wounded minipets, in the humans he had laid to rest in the moment before their death.

It was fear, raw and ephemeral, the world's most renewable resource if treated with care. Kostya found it easier to disassociate these creatures from Obadiah upon seeing them, their wild faces in the dim. Three hungry clones, staring at him, sets of teeth bared in triplicate, skeleton-thin frames and tattered cloth.

They were animals. Kostya approached them as such, slowly, but their hackles were raised and their maws screeching, clawing at him as if he were the prey rather than the predator. There were words he had, here, to commentate on how apt it was that Obadiah was the debased one, that these clones were physical evidence of his failures, but they would fall on deaf ears no matter the language he chose.

So he used one that was universal, that required no words and utilized no nouns or adjectives or prepositions. He slammed a weapon-clad fist into Taym's face, and he did not know which one. Teeth flew from his mouth, spilling like marbles on the sand, blood sticky against Syntax's surface. It felt...strange, to do this.

They were soft, like humans. They screamed in pain and redoubled their efforts upon seeing a comrade in such a state, clawing at his skin with teeth and nails, ragged and filthy. But Kostya was not human, not like these bags of meat and flesh and bone that crunched under his boot-- the snap of a tibula beneath steel, the scent of singed flesh from a blast of energy that penetrated through muscle and sinew-- he was more. He was a hunter, and they were to be put to rest so that they could be of service.

To destroy them would be inefficient, but to incapacitate them was logical, and so he did. The whimpering sobs of sorrow, the howls of pain cut off by crushed tracheas and ruined jawbone, exposed to the night, cut deep from Syntax's newly formed edge. He had changed, over the months: he was stronger, faster, and hesitation that used to accompany him at every turn melted away into the sticky darkness that clung to his legs and crept upwards, a black slime that coated everything he touched, a contagion.

It was malice, and so was he.

Kostya dragged them back, collars snapped around their necks, and all their pieces too. He dumped them in front of the women before embarking in a new direction, following the lazy pulse of runic collars as his beacons.

Three down, seven to go.

This herd docile in comparison to the last ones. It was easy for Kostya to differentiate them from the true Obadiah: in the way they grunted, the way they shuffled, the way they looked beyond him with glazed eyes. They were creatures wearing the man's face.

One clone huddled against a rock, scrabbling against it with fingernails cracked and dirty with sand and caked over blood. He howled in fury at the idea of going back, hand rocketing out to clutch at another's, as if another skin and bone construct could offer him protection from the likes of Konstantin.

(It was unsuccessful; quickly fixed with a rough blow to the temple, designed to disorient.)

He did not fight the collar, accepting it calmly without a fuss, and the other two deferred to his wisdom.

Kostya laid a hand against his head, smiling a little. "Is time for you to be good," he instructed, the words stern, and the clone ducked its head in reluctant shame.

He brought them back to camp.

These ones were skittish. It made sense: these ones were the furthest away from camp, and had likely wandered off first. One let out a mournful bay and Kostya realised that wandered was the incorrect verbiage: they had fled, jackrabbits in the dim, and were repeating it again. Light on their feet, the three of them scattered to the winds, climbing over rocks and stumbling over debris.

There was no point in talking to them. In their panicked state, there wasn't going to be a lot they could understand.

Instead, Kostya stood still, the whine of Syntax's charging thunderous in the night. From a hundred paces he could shoot a target if it was moving and he was standing still, and one by one, he shot them in the knees, six rapid fire shots fueled by adrenaline and quiet fury.

Difficult, she had said, and they still struggled to crawl away even with gore for legs. One by one, Kostya clasped the collars on, watching in intrigue as the legs stitched themselves back against thighs.

All the same, he dragged them back to camp, not a one of them strong enough to support themselves.

"Ten," he said, flat. "All of them."

'Going with' implied that there was a destination besides this desolate wasteland. He had never trained any one or thing before; minipets were distasteful, and his association with animals had been brief at best.

There was a first time for everything, he supposed, and literature too, if he could procure it.

"Goodbye, Jane," he said, nodding once. He hadn't been aware that it would be such an extended visit, but after seeing the creatures, it made a great deal of sense: they needed a lot of help.

A lot.

Kostya looked at the one who wore Sasha's body, expectant.

He was in for a long week.