Everywhere around there was a sickening smell of dead fish, and with each step, the foot lightly sank into the floor, as it was soft. The stick went deeper into the ground as the man without a single leg moved forward in a dark tunnel, lightly lit by a few green glowing rocks. The walls all around were pink, and they were moving. Drops of water fell from each side of the ceiling and wall alike.
“Why did he have to be at a place like this…” The man grunted in annoyance, lowering his cape so the water wouldn’t fall down onto his face.
After his fight with Lucius Strada, Adiren didn’t leave unscathed, as he lost his leg. With an injury like that, he barely escaped the mansion. He ran out into the streets, patrolled by thugs of all the barons. He turned himself into a beggar so the people would ignore him.
He thought that the gods would think of him as a broken toy. He stared into the street, lost in thought. “What should I do… Will they try to get rid of me? I can’t just die…” Right then, he heard whispers gathering around him, mist getting closer, blocking his path of escape. “No point in running…” He embraced the mist and waited for a finishing blow.
Instead, the whispers turned into a single voice that echoed between the mists. “Well done, Drowned.” Adrien did not expect those words from the gods; he never expected praise from them, not toward a puppet they controlled. “You killed one of our greatest enemies… Unfortunately… You did lose something…” The mists moved like tentacles toward Adrien’s wound. “As a reward, I will help you. Head to the beach… A carp will be waiting for you. The fish will take you to the man I blessed.”
“To God’s Finger?” Adrien whispered as he had only heard about those humans, the blessing that made them almost as strong as demigods. There are only a few of them on earth, yet god sent him to one.
On the beach, there was a giant fish which opened its mouth as Adiren approached it, using a cane he stole to balance himself. He sat inside its mouth and patiently waited till it reached the designated destination.
“To think a man blessed by the gods themselves would stay in a disgusting place like this.” Adrien silently cursed as he took a step to the side to avoid a bigger drop of white liquid.
He could see the end of a tunnel, which led to a massive cave. He had seen many things and experienced the worst stench since he got to this place, but the sight in front of him stunned him. Near the entrance he came through were two piles of bodies. The corpses barely show any sign of degradation. On one pile were people with single wounds or many small ones that caused their death, while on the other were bodies, or rather parts of them, as no one was in one piece.
“Why does he look familiar?” Thought Adrien as he looked at a corpse that was in a good state except for its face, which was mashed meat and bones.
“Noticed a familiar face?” A hoarse voice suddenly came from behind Adrien. As he turned around in surprise, he lost his balance and fell down to the ground. Standing right behind him was a man towering over six feet. He wore a long grey cape that covered his whole body. He barely had any hair on his head. He had stitches all over his head, the lines made of the stitches separating the many colored skin. Some of them pure white, while some of them sickening green and blue. “That’s one of ours, ‘Drowned’. He got himself killed after fighting a man named Godan.”
Even though Adrien was startled by the tall man, he was surprised to hear the name Godan. “So Simon failed to kill him…” Adrien lingered on Simon’s death for a moment; he felt a bit better about his current state as he took a look at what was left of his companion.
“I was interested in that ‘Godan’ until I heard he doesn’t have any gates… Imagine the irony of the man calling himself a prodigy just to lose to someone without any gates.” The man mumbled as he walked away, toward the center of the cavern.
Adrien stood up and did his best to catch up to the tall man. His mouth closed as he took in the sight of countless tables with bodies on them, cut into pieces, and cutting knives placed all around them. Scattered around the place were containers with some kind of green liquid, and placed inside them were perfectly cut limbs. Adrien knew nothing about this man except for the part that he would do something about his injury.
“The God Of Mist sent me to you-” Adrien spoke to get it done as fast as possible and get away from that man, but as he tried to talk, the man raised a finger without even looking at him while taking a knife with the other.
“Just a moment, I need to focus on this.” The man standing over the body of a man with a hole in his forehead left after a knife. “He also used to be one of us. The details of his death are unknown except for the way he died. A knife to the head. Someone strong as it pierced his skull without any effort. He was supposed to be a God’s Finger like me, training his power of controlling people like puppets.” With one clean cut, he took off the whole hand. “But nothing will be wasted…” The man used a knife to cut the stitches on his right hand. His own hand fell to the ground, and he placed the hand of the dead man to his own arm; the stitches created a transparent green aura, and they tied themselves to the new hand. He clenched the new hand and closed his eyes.
“Yes… I can feel it…” He suddenly flicked his right arm to the side and moved his finger; suddenly, a body began to move from under the pile of corpses. The corpse had the uniform of a Berionian soldier. As it moved forward, its bones cracked as they bent the wrong way. “I’ll figure it out eventually.” The man dropped his arm down and the corpse stopped moving as it fell prone to the ground.
“How…” Adiren was stunned to see a man using the gate of someone else's. He knew about the puppeteer who was supposed to lead an army of monsters, and to witness this power even after his death was most surprising.
“Apologies… I didn’t introduce myself sooner because I had to finish my work. My name is Peligon… The finger of Nebula, God of Mist.” The man bowed, leaning forward with one hand on his chest and the other stretching to the side, revealing his naked body under the coat with stitches all over. On the outside and inside, there was barely any part of his original body. He was put together out of the flesh and bones of other people. “I possess two gates of my own… The one you saw in action is called Disassembled. By attaching someone else's limbs to my own, I can take their gates and use them as my own. The man who called himself a prodigy was a genius since he opened eight gates. But when we count pure numbers, I have more… Twenty at the current moment to be precise.” Peligon had a wicked smile on his face as he announced his power to Adrien. He was proud of it, of the fact that he was made out of the flesh of twenty people.
From whispers and gossip between the few Drowned he met, he knew that God’s Fingers were special and strong, but after witnessing the man in front of him, he understood that his imagination barely scraped the truth about those people.
“So my lige had sent you to me… And I can already tell why…” As Peligon spoke, he looked at Adrien’s wound with his hungry eyes. He was glad to see him with a missing leg. That left a space for experiment. He approached a table and pushed the corpse out of it. “Lay down here…” Peligon gestured an open hand to the table and waited for Adrien to lie down on it.
Adrien was unsure of what the man was about to do, especially with that wicked smile on his face. There was no hesitation, only a worried look in his eyes. “Either that, or I’m going to die. Remember Adrien… You’re a broken toy. You’re on a thin line…” Thought to himself, Adrien, as he lay down as instructed.
“Good… Now. Do you have your own leg here?” Asked Peligon, even though he could guess the answer, he still asked the question. The man was cautious and always expected the unexpected.
“Didn’t think about taking it. Either way, I didn’t even have time to take it since I had to run.” Plainly answered Adrien, washing that smile off Peligon’s face.
“Broken… But still a puppet of the gods.” Peligon noted in his mind. “What is your shoe size?” The man asked as he took out measure, starting from the wound and extending it to the line where his foot would be.
“Forty two…” Answered Adrien, unsure of what the man was planning until he went to the pile of corpses, tossing them around like dolls.
“Ah! This one looks most similar.” Peligon stated as he lifted a knife, and with one move, he perfectly cut it off. The blood was slowly dripping onto the floor as he walked toward the table.
“Wait… Are you gonna…” Before Adrien could finish his words, Peligon answered for him. “Stitch someone’s leg to your body. Yes. I used to be a field medic. So I know how to operate on a breathing subject.”
“Breathing?” Adiren knew that the man was about to perform some kind of surgery, but what made him fear the man was the lack of anesthesia. The man placed the leg on the table where Adrien’s limb used to be, and with one hand, he grabbed the man’s wound and with the other, he grabbed the severed limb.
The stitches on his hands began to glow with a sickening green aura, and they started to stretch and grow. A green transparent needle appeared and sewed the leg to Adrien’s body. The process was slow and painful, and Adrien clenched his teeth to not whimper in pain, but the reaction was impossible to avoid.
In the process of connecting the limb to Adiren, Peligon looked him in the eyes and said, “There is nothing wrong with showing the effects of pain; it’s natural for humans. Unavoidable. Pain is present with us from birth and accompanies us throughout our whole life. Only in death do we separate ourselves from this feeling. So in the meantime, enjoy it and take all that you can because who knows… Maybe you will miss it in the afterlife…” The man groaned with a light smile and the end.
After ten painful minutes, he said, “Done”. He looked with pride at what he had done. Adrien somehow lifted his upper body to look at his new leg. Peligon lightly tapped his new leg and asked, “Can you feel it?”
“Barely… But I do.” Answered Adrien, in shock that someone else's leg was attached to his body and that he felt it. It was his leg now.
“Good. It will take some time before it fully connects with your body. Try to move it.” The man moved closer to his foot, waiting for it to move, and once Adrien slowly moved his fingers, he giggled like a child, except it was almost like he was choking on something. “Yes… Yes…” The man suddenly froze and slowly moved his eyes toward the ceiling. “Oh… We have a guest… An interesting one from what I feel… Too bad we have to go for the time being.”
“Go? Where?” Asked Adrien, sitting on the table and slowly trying to stand on his new leg.
“I got another order from my liege… And at the same time, I have to look out for your new leg for a short time. Let’s call this your rehabilitation.” Peligon dashed to Adrien and grabbed him before he stumbled forward. “In time, you won’t even remember that this is not your leg.”
“What about the intruder?” Asked a bit concerned, Adrien, his voice weak and exhausted, he clearly had a hard time moving the new limb.
“I would like to take care of it myself, but there is no time. They won’t survive for long down here, but as a precaution, I will send one of my creations to take care of them.” Peligon lifted his finger, and a purple circle appeared in the air; from it, a skeleton monster descended to the ground.
The creature was much taller than Peligon. Instead of a human head, it had the skull of an anglerfish with the bulb of light hanging from a thin muscle fiber. In its hand, it had a long harpoon with gashes in the blade. Adrien didn’t have to think long about how strong it is. The moment he saw the monster, he thought to himself. “I stand no chance against it.”
“One of my greatest creations…” With one swipe of his hand, the monster moved away, toward the tunnel out of the cavern they stayed in. He then took one arm to help Adrien walk, “Now let’s take care of the task and hand.”
“And where are we going?” Asked Adrien as he walked the path Peligon led him.
“To the Lost City, what people used to call Brimwon.”