Chapter 11: The Gala of Nightmares and the Blood Requiem
[I. The Cathedral of Steel and Sin] The Kruger Industrial Complex stood as a jagged cathedral of steel and arrogance. Tonight, the main turbine hall—cleared of its rhythmic thunder—had been transformed into a macabre ballroom. Crimson velvet carpets suppressed the cold ring of metal floors, and opulent banquet tables were arranged between the silent, mountainous machinery. Classical music drifted through the air, a futile attempt to mask the pervasive scent of industrial grease and ancient rust that haunted the walls.
Victor Kruger stood upon a high dais, raising a crystal flute of champagne. His face shone with the greasy luster of a false victory.
"Tonight, we toast to the end of chaos!" Kruger bellowed, his voice amplified by the cavernous ceiling. Below him, hundreds of guests—nobles, corrupt officials, and bribed police commanders—erupted in applause. "We have burned the rats' nest, and Azmareel is once again secure under my protection!"
Five meters beneath their polished boots, in the humid, absolute darkness of the crawlspaces, the "rats" were moving.
Alexander, Silas, and ten of the Shadows moved with the synchronized silence of a predatory hive. They wore reinforced leather gas masks with circular glass lenses, giving them the appearance of giant, chitinous insects.
They reached the central ventilation hub. The gargantuan intake fans spun with a low, hypnotic thrum.
"Is everyone ready for the abyss?" Alexander's voice was a metallic rasp behind his filter.
Silas nodded, obsessively wiping the heavy head of his mallet with a rag, his aura a Thick, Violent Violet.
Alexander uncorked the ancient vials from the Aurelius vault. A viscous, iridescent green liquid began to exhale a heavy, swirling vapor. He poured it into the intake.
"Breathe deep, gentlemen," Alexander whispered. "The nightmare is free."
[II. The Red Delirium] In the hall above, the atmosphere curdled. Guests began to notice a copper-penny taste at the back of their throats. The classical music seemed to warp, the violin notes stretching and distorting into the sound of a dying child's wail.
Kruger stopped laughing. He looked into his champagne; the golden liquid began to bubble and darken, transforming into thick, clotting blood.
"What... what is this?"
Then, the first scream shattered the night.
A noblewoman shrieked as she tore at her pearl necklace, hallucinating that it was a pale serpent choking her. She clawed at her own throat with manicured nails until the skin peeled away in ribbons, her white dress becoming a canvas of arterial spray.
A security guard, his mind shattered by the gas, saw the guests' faces melting into demonic visages with rows of serrated teeth.
"Stay back, you monsters!" he roared, unslinging his submachine gun.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! The muzzle flashes illuminated a scene of pure slaughter. A bloated businessman in the front row was caught in the burst; his skull detonated like a ripe melon, painting the caviar-laden table with shards of bone and pink, quivering brain matter.
The hall became a slaughterhouse of the elite.
[III. The Shadows Emerge] Suddenly, the floor grates exploded.
A thick, pea-green fog billowed upward, and from its heart emerged the Shadows. They didn't come with guns; they came for the intimacy of the blade.
Silas moved like a thresher through wheat. A guard rushed him, eyes wide with drug-induced terror. Silas swung his mallet in a wide, horizontal arc.
CRUNCH. The impact cave in the guard's ribcage with the sound of a dry branch snapping. The man was hurled ten feet back, his chest a sunken ruin, vomiting chunks of lung before he hit the ground.
Alexander moved through the carnage with a terrifying, ghost-like tranquility. He saw the world in shades of Rotten Black—the color of absolute, paralyzing horror.
A personal bodyguard lunged at him with a tactical knife. Alexander didn't flinch. He parried the strike, seized the man's arm, and with a brutal, calculated twist, snapped the elbow backward. The sound of the joint popping was audible even over the screams. Without pausing, Alexander drove his own dagger into the man's heart and ripped it horizontally across his chest.
A hot fountain of blood erupted, drenching Alexander's glass goggles. He didn't wipe it away. He let the crimson veil smear across his vision, looking like a demon emerging from a lake of gore.
[IV. The Squeezing of the King] Kruger was crawling across the dais, his regal coat ruined, sobbing as he saw the ghosts of his victims clawing their way out of the shadows. A black-gloved hand clamped onto his ankle and yanked with the strength of a hydraulic press.
Kruger's face slammed into the metal floor, his front teeth shattering and skittering across the iron like dice. Alexander flipped him over and knelt on his chest, the weight of his knee crushing Kruger's diaphragm.
Alexander removed his mask. His face was splattered with the blood of guards, his ash-grey eyes burning with a cold, necrotizing madness.
"Do you see your ghosts, Victor? I am their King."
"You... you are a monster!" Kruger wailed, blood and saliva bubbling from his ruined mouth.
"No," Alexander whispered, pulling a crumpled parchment from his coat. "I am the Collector."
He flattened the document on Kruger's chest—a total surrender of Kruger Industries to The Shadow Holding Co."Sign."
"I... I won't! Kill me! You get nothing!" Kruger spat a mouthful of blood into Alexander's face.
Alexander slowly wiped the warm blood from his cheek and smiled—a jagged, terrifying expression. "I hoped you'd say that."
He seized Kruger's left hand. He laid the pinky finger across a sharp metal edge of the dais. He raised the heavy grip of his golden pistol.
CRUSH. The finger was pulverized. Not just broken, but turned into a pulpy paste of shredded flesh and splintered bone. Kruger's scream tore through his vocal cords until they bled.
"We have nine more fingers, Victor. Ten toes. Two eyes. Two ears," Alexander said with surgical detachment. "How much of your body are you prepared to lose before you sign?"
By the third finger, Kruger's spirit broke. "I'll sign! I'll sign! Just stop!"
"I don't have a pen," Alexander said. "But fortunately, ink is in abundance."
He drew his dagger and sliced a shallow but steady vein in Kruger's shattered wrist. He dipped a fountain pen into the pooling blood and jammed it into Kruger's trembling fingers.
"Sign in your own life-force, Victor. So the contract is binding in this world and the next."
Sobbing like a child, Victor Kruger scrawled his name in his own thickening blood.
[V. The Grinding of the Gears] Alexander stood, holding the blood-stained document to dry in the tainted air. "It's over."
The hall was silent now, save for the low moans of the dying and the hiss of the receding gas. Silas stood over the head of the security detail; the man's skull had been hammered into a flat, unrecognizable mess of red and grey.
"Did you promise to let me live?" Kruger gasped, clutching his mangled hand.
"I promised I wouldn't kill you with my hands," Alexander said, his back turned as he walked toward the exit.
He gestured to Silas. "Silas... start the machine."
Kruger's eyes bulged with primal terror. "No! No! I signed! You promised!"
Silas pulled the heavy iron lever.
The massive gears that drove the factory began to churn... Krr-Krr-Grown.
Kruger's long gala coat was caught in the teeth of the lower cogs. The fabric began to pull, dragging his body into the machinery.
"ALEXANDER! MERCY!"
Alexander didn't look back.
The sound was sickening—the wet pop of a hip dislocating, followed by the rhythmic crunch-crunch-crunch of a human body being fed through steel teeth. The gears weren't fast; they were relentless. They pressed the life out of him like grapes in a wine press. Blood geared outward in a frantic spray, lubricating the very machines Kruger had worshipped. The screaming was mercifully short, replaced by the sound of bone being ground into grit.
[VI. The New Horizon] Alexander stepped out into the freezing night air. He inhaled deeply. The scent of blood was still in his nostrils, but this time, it was the scent of Ascension.
His suit was ruined, his face was a mask of red, but he didn't look like a beast. He looked like an ancient War-King awakened from a long slumber.
Silas, dripping with gore from head to toe, approached him. "Kruger is grease, Boss. The city is yours."
Alexander looked at the distant lights of Azmareel, the smoke from the factories still rising.
"Not yet," Alexander said, wiping a stray drop of blood from his eyelid. "Kruger was the Body. But the Head is still out there... in the shadows."