Chapter Five: Outsiders



This world fucking sucked.

Maggie scowled as she played her half-smoked cigarette between her fingers, ignoring the disgusted looks she was getting from some of the horses passing by. She didn't know what upset these uptight, racist assholes more: her tattoos, her piercings, or the way she dressed, in her tight, ripped jeans and her leather jacket and the complete lack of bizarre fascist paraphernalia.

She moodily flicked her cigarette away, then glanced up as her partner emerged from the convenience store with a magazine open in one hand and a plastic bag dangling from the other, asking mildly: "Get everything you need, Daddy?"

"I'm not your Dad." the tall but otherwise unassuming stallion said absently, as they headed towards the car she had stolen outside of town. He climbed in the passenger seat as she hopped in through the driver's window, gunning the engine as he calmly turned the page of the magazine, noting: "You should eat something. You need to keep your strength up."

"Thought you said you weren't my Dad, Corvus." Maggie teased, and the stallion gave her a mild look: his eyes were deep, a little sunken, dark and beautiful and abyssal all at once. She loved his eyes, before she sighed and accepted the half of a gyro he offered to her from the bag. "You should eat too."

"To keep up the illusion?" True, okay, he didn't need to eat. He wasn't precisely... alive, so to speak.

Still, she felt like a dick when she ate but he didn't.

He seemed to sense that, and he dug out the other half of the sandwich to nibble at, while she wolfed her own down in a few bites as they rolled into traffic. They drove down the street in silence, before Maggie said abruptly: "His stink is fucking everywhere. Even if we kill him-"

"We cut the head off the snake." Corvus said patiently, and Maggie couldn't really argue with that, even if it also sounded like some strategy senpai bullshit that didn't really mean anything. "We eliminate the Shard in this world, and our job is done."

"Fuck, I wish I had your confidence. And, you know, the whole lack of a conscience thing." Maggie said ironically, and Corvus gave her a dry side-eye. "Eat me."

"No." The stallion returned to his magazine, and Maggie snorted and rolled her own eyes. 

The target hadn't been difficult to hunt down, at least: he wasn't trying to hide his lair. He might not even really be aware of what he was, a fragment of the eldritch horror, Hollow Bell... or maybe he just felt secure in his position here in this hellhole of a world, where it seemed like the bad guys had won and a big enough horse with the right coat colors could get away with murder.

Very literally, in the case of the freak they were hunting.

"So, oh wise Librarian, tell me about this sick fuck." Maggie said, and Corvus glanced up for a moment from his magazine. "What precisely are we dealing with here and why were we sent to kill this asshole?"

"Because Freyja wanted us out of the way due to the incident with Jackdaw." Corvus replied in that frustrating, matter-of-fact way of his, and Maggie glared at him before the stallion continued: "And because even if this Shard doesn't seem like much of a threat and this world may not seem worth saving, everyone deserves a second chance. Removing this Shard will have a ripple effect on this world and beyond: his brood will be leaderless, lives will be saved, and his corruption will no longer exacerbate the sickness in the heart of this nation."

"These people are bad, though, Cor." Maggie said after a moment, shaking her head briefly. "It's not gonna all just turn around."

"This is only one nation, one culture." countered Cor, before he asked pointedly: "Do you think we should just leave his victims to die, then?"

Maggie grumbled under her breath, then she blew a raspberry as she squeezed the wheel firmly before jerking it hard, cutting across traffic and earning several honks and shouts as she crashed haphazardly over the curb and into the parking lot outside an apartment building. They banged their way to a stop, triple-parked sideways, and Corvus gave her a mild look as Maggie groaned, then grumpily banged her head several times against the wheel before she slumped and mumbled: "Fuck fuck fuck. Let's just go beat the shit out of this asshole. We can figure the rest out later."

Corvus shrugged, then he folded a page in the magazine and put it down as he climbed out of the car. He looked curiously over the structure, frowning slightly as he brushed his mane out of his eyes and took in not just the sight, but the miasmatic sense of corruption that the building stank of. 

He could understand people living under fascism, even being happy about it: people naturally wanted to be ruled, to have a king. But he couldn't understand how people could live in this place, in the presence of a monster.

Albeit, not the worst monster they had ever encountered, not by far: as Shards went, their target was relatively simplistic. He was no Jackdaw, no demon with intent to rule the world. He was more like an animal, spreading sickness and disease and glorifying in his own pathetic power.

Maggie grumbled as she exited the car and slammed the door, and Corvus pointed at an open window on the second floor that faced out onto the fire escape. "Easy way in."

"Yeah, let's do it the easy way, sure, fine. Boost me- no, wait, forget it, I got this." Maggie clambered gracelessly up on top of the car, and Corvus watched her with mild entertainment as she leapt up and clawed wildly at the guardrail of the fire escape before squawking as she fell out of the air and landed hard on the pavement.

She grumbled under her breath, then hissed at him like a cat when the stallion offered a hand before she leapt back up onto the car. This time, she jumped with much more grace, showing some of her supernatural strength as she easily made it to the second floor and neatly jackknifed onto the fire escape, giving a short 'ha!' before she firmly booted the pulled-up ladder to send it clanking down to the ground.

Corvus climbed calmly as Maggie peered in through the window, then shouldered it higher and slipped inside. She grimaced in disgust at the putrid reek that hit her nose: like rot and unwashed musk, the mare waving a hand in front of her nose as her eyes adjusted to the eerie dimness of the apartment and she noted the emptiness, the bags of garbage, the...

"Shit." Maggie shivered as she walked over and carefully nudged the crunched-in face of a corpse with her boot. The head lolled to the side as her eyes slid to the exploded belly... something big had given this poor girl a cesarean section from the inside, it looked like. "So are there little demonspawn kids running around, d'you think, or are we talking monsters and mutants?"

"Likely both." Corvus said, as he ignored the corpses, making his way through the room, and Maggie rolled her eyes as she followed after him, grimacing a bit at the stinking, disgusting corpses.

Not that she minded corpses, mind you. As a matter of fact, she had no problem with a good dead body. But these stank, these had been defiled, these weren't just rotten, but poisoned... and god, she fucking hated how that evil essence was like a corrupted version of her father.

But her father had been a Shard... even if he had also been anything except a monster.

Maggie shook her head, then huffed a bit when Corvus looked at her pointedly, the mare half-shouldering him aside as she headed to the exit and unlocked the door to storm out into the apartment hall. She grimaced as she looked back and forth, muttering: "Guess at least he isn't going to be that hard to find. Small favors, huh?"

"This place is stained with his evil." Corvus agreed, and Maggie grunted as she cracked her knuckles before striding quickly past him, leading him towards the source of this... awful stink in the air.

They found his apartment, and Maggie raised her hand before Corvus quickly grasped her wrist, making her huff before she frowned when he said quietly: "Wait. Think. Listen."

She did so... then puckered her lips before muttering: "He's not here, is he?"

"No. But there's someone else in there. We should be... tactful." Corvus suggested.

"I'll take it under advisement." Maggie said dryly, and then she rose a pink-painted hoof and kicked the door hard, smashing it open as she shouted: "Knock knock, motherfucker!"

Corvus sighed tiredly, slumping after the mare as Maggie stormed inside, glaring back and forth before her eyes widened in disbelief at the sight of the mares clustered on the floor around a massive, decrepit armchair. They looked at her with terror, and she winced before holding up her hands, saying awkwardly: "Hey, uh, I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm-"

A scream cut through the air, and Maggie winced as a figure lunged at her with a butcher knife. She dodged back, then slammed a knee into the stomach of her attacker, knocking the wind out of the mare and sending her crumpling back against the wall.

Maggie began to step forwards, then squawked and shouted, wriggling angrily in the grip of Corvus as he carefully pulled her backwards and said pointedly in her ear: "Tact. They're addicted."

Maggie grumbled grouchily, then blew her mane out of her eyes before she winced when the naked mare that had attacked her clambered to her feet. She was... tattooed, pierced, mane dyed, and she looked young, so goddamn young in spite of how tall she was, her eyes wild with frenzy and fury and fear as she rose the knife and shrieked: "Out! Get out!"

She lunged forwards, and Maggie rose her fists gamely, then yelped when Corvus calmly picked her up around the waist and stepped backwards, pulling her first out of harm's way before he almost casually tossed her aside, Maggie wincing as she hit the ground hard before she groaned in disgust as she realized she had landed on a pile of pizza boxes and trash. She sat up and glared as Corvus gracefully dodged two swipes of the knife, before he rose his hand and simply allowed the blade to stab into his palm.

The mare's eyes flickered in shock, staring in disbelief as Corvus looked at her calmly before he carefully pulled his hand back, not flinching in the slightest, leaving a stain of black blood behind. The wound flexed, spoke blood like a drooling mouth, winked like an eye, then closed and sealed with barely a mark, leaving only a dribble of darkness behind to hint that it had ever been there at all.

He gripped the mare's wrist gently and guided the knife back to her lips.. She licked it, and her eyes flickered again before she dropped the knife and trembled, slowly tilting her head as her whole body shook before she whispered: "You... you're like him. A second him. But you're... so different. But... but how?"

"It's complicated." Corvus said gently, before he glanced back at Maggie, who grunted as she moodily brushed at herself. "I'll handle here."

"Fuck. Could have done that first, wouldn't have had to deal with any of this shit." Maggie mumbled as she continued to try and sweep crumbs off her body. Of course, they both knew that either way, she had to be here. She had to see for herself what this monster had done...

And fuck, what a twisted son of a bitch he was. He lived in squalor, he kept a sick menagerie of pets - and those were only the ones she could see! - and he looked like he liked his girls young. Real young, from how a few of those broken girls clustered around his chair were literally... girls. High schoolers, she guessed.

Oh, she was going to enjoy hurting the hell out him.

Maggie snorted, then turned and headed out of the apartment. She found a door leading downstairs, ans she shivered as she passed through the disgusting hallway below, lined with trash, stinking of lazily-hidden corpses.

Sure, he was a monster. But this whole world had to be one hell of a sick place for a twisted son of a bitch like him to be able to get away with all this awfulness, and live big and bold like this, all his disease right out in the open, and never being punished for it.

She let herself out into the parking lot and crossed her arms, waiting impatiently. But it was only a few minutes before a cruiser pulled into the parking lot: of course the motherfucker was a fucking cop. Or some kind of gestapo soldier... no, schutzstaffel was probably a better metaphor.

The stallion calmly climbed out of his car, and his eyes immediately locked on her. A grin spread across his face as he slammed the door and cocked his head, mocking: "I don't remember ordering a snack."

The fucker was a hulk. More than ten feet tall, in an officer's uniform and fitted body armor, a huge handgun at his side and fists the size of her head. She might have been tall where she came from at six and a half feet, but he was almost double that, looking down at her with the eyes of a tyrannical toddler who was used to getting his way.

And the piece of shit was wearing her father's face.

God, that made her so fucking mad.

"Hey, dipshit. I'm more than you could chew." Maggie growled, before she pulled her handgun out of her jacket and pointed it at him, the silver barrel gleaming in the light of day. "But I can make you a lead sandwich if you're hungry, asshole."

The hulking horsebeast sneered at her, then he spread his arms, asking easily: "Are you really going to shoot me, a lieutenant in the Fatherland Protection Agency, out in the open like this? What do you think will happen to you, babe? If you're lucky, they'll send you to prison where you'll get two rapes a day if you're lucky, cunt. Or maybe I'll request that they put you in a detention facility, where I can come visit you any time I please and make use of  you, bitch. You look almost like Equarian stock... but you're probably a Yktoli parasite, aren't you, cunt?"

Maggie glared at him, hand steady, gun held out, and the stallion snorted in contempt before he mocked: "Besides, do you really think your pea shooter is going to help you? Look at me. Alpha male power, the ultimate stallion. The perfect Equarian. Get on your knees and apologize and beg to suck my cock, and maybe after you tell me which of your sisters I raped to death I'll fuck-"

"Oh, just shut the fuck up!" Maggie groaned, before she lowered the gun slightly and fired, and the stallion's eyes bulged in shock as he was knocked to a kneel before he hissed and grasped at his knee, staring in horror as his broken, bloody knee trembled beneath him.

Then he snarled in fury, looking up at the mare as she began to approach, but Maggie smiled thinly as she pulled the trigger twice more, two more massive rounds punching into the monster's stomach and chest, shattering his outer armor and turning the ceramic plates beneath into shrapnel, the stallion flailing his arms for balance before a third round caught him in the side of the head and sent him crashing painfully down on his back.

He grasped at his bloody skull, trembling, shaking his head as dark ichor spilled from the wound before he screamed when Maggie stomped a hoof down onto his groin and pointed the gun at his face, the beast staring up at her as fear, real fear, filled the tyrant's eyes: here was a mare he couldn't just terrify into submission, a mare with a  gun big enough to hurt even him, a mare who had knowledge, and power, and was defying what he thought, had been taught, fucking knew was the natural order of things.

"I am a stallion! I am the Alpha horse, you stupid fucking cunt! What are you doing?" he almost screamed, and his voice was tinny, and frightened, and his eyes widened as Maggie cocked the hammer of her gun back.

"My job, dumbass." Maggie retorted, and then she fired a round into the stallion's face, shattering his muzzle and teeth and making his body spasm, then slump as a pool of black blood spread slowly around his skull.

Maggie whistled to herself as she headed back to the car, popping open the trunk and pulling out a can of gasoline. She sauntered back towards the stallion's body, and smiled wryly as it slowly sat up, a hellish miasma fuming off the wicked, wretched thing, mouth drooling open, hands flexing and scrabbling as a snarl spread over what remained of the stallion's features-

The mare casually rose her gun and fired as she continued to walk towards him, and the monster's head was blown almost entirely off, fragments of skull and brain matter splattering the sidewalk behind him, leaving a long black stain as his corpse unceremoniously flopped backwards. He twitched a few times, a strange, rattling noise escaping the neck of the monstrous thing, but Maggie hadn't expected this freak to go down this easily: Shards, whether they were splinters of Hollow's essence, beings infected with his corruption, or incarnations of his hideous will and desires, almost always had supernatural vitality and were incredibly difficult to kill.

But, you know, she had an easy answer for that problem, as she continued to whistle while splashing gasoline liberally across the twitching, headless body, before tossing emptied can away and pulling out a box of matches.

She spun a matchstick out of the box and danced it through her fingers before lighting it with a flick of her thumb, looking for a moment at the sprawled out body in front of her before she snorted and said contemptibly: "This is a lot nicer than you deserve, asshole."

She tossed the match down, and the body immediately burst into flames and began to writhe wildly, flailing as a hideous, mutant screaming rose up from the smoking corpse. The fires burned with unnatural ferocity as Maggie stepped back, crossing her arms and watching as the 'alpha male' was consumed in flame.

Ten minutes later, all that was left was a smoldering, scorched ruin of a body. There were a few gawkers on the sidewalk, but it didn't look like anyone had called the police. They flinched when Maggie's eyes shifted to them, but she only flipped off the crowd before snorting and turning away from the smoking ruin of a body.

A crackling caught her attention, and the mare turned sharply before she cursed as an ugly, fleshy slime ripped its way out of the ashes, leaving a bloody trail in its wake as it surged towards the crowd. Before Maggie could do more than take a step, the slime had flung itself through a sewer grate, the gawkers panicking and bolting in all directions as the mare slapped her forehead with a groan of disgust.

She looked up awkwardly as Corvus emerged from the building, gently guiding the girl who had attacked them before, who was now wrapped in a blanket. She stared at the torched stain on the pavement as if she knew precisely what had happened here, while the stallion gave his partner a pointed look, and Maggie huffed as she rose her hands in defense as she complained: "I couldn't have possibly known that shit was going to happen!"

"We should get out of here before the police show up and we have even more trouble on our hands." Corvus said, and Maggie grumbled in agreement before she pointedly tilted her head towards the girl.

"Tainted. We'll bring her with us." Corvus explained, and Maggie sighed, studying the... the sad, strangely empty mare, who was taller than her but seemed so... small, and young, and helpless.

"What's your name?" she asked abruptly.

"I think it's... Genocide. Jenny." the mare answered after a moment, her cloudy eyes looking with such infinite emptiness at Maggie. "Jenny. Genocide. That's all I know. I don't remember... anything else."

"Shit." Maggie muttered, and then she sighed before grimacing as the sound of sirens tore the air, quickly closing on them. "Well, no time to dawdle. Let's get out of here and then we'll bring her home. Maybe Freyja can help."

Corvus only nodded as he calmly picked the girl up, and she immediately clung to him, helpless, needy, broken, holding on to the thing that reminded her most of her tormentor, her captor, and her reason for existence.

Jack was all she had ever had, after all.

And now, Jack was gone, and she was free.

And freedom was nothing but vast and meaningless space, with no meaning, no destination, and nothing but an endless stretch of empty tomorrows.



A hand clawed at the concrete wall, a skinned, sludgy, hideous shape yanking itself around the corner with a gargle. Breath rasped in and out of its throat as it struggled down a tunnel, not even seeing the mesh grate that blocked the exit as its body osmosed through, separating and rejoining like sludge.

The horse-shaped monster collapsed to all fours, gurgling as its melted body shook with pain before it looked vacantly up as a hand politely extended to it. A hand, with the same coat color as his had once been, leading up a thin arm, the turtlenecked stallion these things belonged to smiling down at him as he said pleasantly: "Hello there, Jack. My name is Azrael Jackdaw.

"It seems we have a mutual enemy. Come with me, my friend. I have wonderful things to teach you, and such sights to show you." invited the stranger.

The melted, waxen creature looked up at this lithe, small, almost foppish stallion as those promises reverberated in his head before he rose a hand... but hesitated, all the same, even as the very stuff that made him up trembled and struggled to maintain cohesion. Even to him, something felt strange, and wrong, and terrible, and his fingers clenched and unclenched as they flowed and ebbed like melting butter before he rasped out: "Can I... trust you?"

"If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?" Jackdaw asked kindly, and the monster breathed before he took the hand of the stranger, who smiled wider. "You've made a good choice today, Jack. Now, let's put you back together, and bring out what you truly are."

Jack smiled uneasily as the small stallion easily pulled him up to his slimy hooves before he turned and led him on, and, with no other choice but to move forwards, he followed in the wake of Azrael Jackdaw, and into the waiting jaws of the dark night beyond.