18. Thestle Part V Abominations

"Wake, friend…"A distant voice crackled into the medbay from the ship's speakers.

Ophion groaned, blinking his eyes disorientedly as he blurred awake. He grasped around clumsily before finding a series of tubes and ripping them from himself. He sat up weakly, rubbing a finger over the jagged scar tissue on his shoulders that the Pirate King had left him with.

"We need you," the distant voice implored. He realized that it belonged to the human Lupo.

Ophion's gaze darted around the unfamiliar surroundings, his mind struggling to comprehend his situation. He was back on the human vessel, a realization that struck him with a mix of relief and confusion. Why had they chosen to rescue him when they could have left him to die?

"I've printed you a space suit. You're currently in a loading bay within an asteroid where we are held hostage. My motor functions are disabled, and I'm working to restore them. My god, Ophion, Bartie is having Auren carved apart piece by piece while he forces me to watch. If there is any good in you, help me save him…" The voice grew fainter until he couldn't hear it anymore.

Ophion staggered to his feet, steadying himself against the wall before stumbling out of the medbay and crossing into the fab room, clumsily zipping himself into the awaiting space suit. The human design didn't accommodate his tail, and Ophion wrapped it tightly around his waist. He grasped his invisibility mantle and made his way out of the ship.

He departed into the asteroid's bay, immediately spotting the only airlock in sight. He looked around through the alien-designed space suit uneasily and moved clumsily to the door. It granted him access as he approached.

Within, he was pleased to slip out of the awkward confines of the suit and put on his mantle. It allowed him to fade instantly from sight. He licked and tasted the air, identifying the familiar scent of his abominations trailing off into the shadowy stone tunnel. Ophion set off at a dead sprint, thundering down the hall. It was easy to track them, and his kind didn't need light to find their way in the dark. He was a hunter.

Finally, up ahead, he heard the unfamiliar voice of a human rambling on in a monologue. Ophion slowed to a creep, peering into a vast chamber filled with human cuisine and oddly dressed… abominations. He froze. Ophion could taste them. There were hundreds, all totally immobile. Directly before him on a raised dais were Lupo, Auren, and… another Lupo? This puzzled him.

His tongue arced out, and it was instantly clear which Lupo was the one he'd come to know—the one he owed a life debt to.

ThatLupo was on the ground, prone, watching, immobilized as the naked Lupo swung at Auren with a katana, giggling as the wounds he inflicted healed almost instantly, albeit imperfectly. His body was spattered with Auren's blood.

It appeared that the pair and their considerable strength had been rendered inoperable to facilitate the performance of this crude torture. Ophion boiled with rage at the offense of such a one-sided Game, fighting the urge to leap across the room and rip the man attacking Auren limb from limb.

But he wasn't a man—and Ophion wasn't sure what such a large horde of abominations might be capable of if they moved against him en masse. He still felt weak and sluggish from the spider's toxins, and his frailty and recent failure caused him to hesitate uncharacteristically.

"Bring me his head!" the man on the couch bellowed.

He slammed a glass goblet down so hard it shattered, and he giggled drunkenly to himself as his hand stitched itself back together.

Before Ophion could act, the blood-spattered Lupo flourished his glinting weapon, twirling around this way and that before arcing the blade through the air in a single, elegant swipe—cleanly decapitating Auren. His head landed on the floor with a thud, rolling to a stop directly in front of Ophion's Lupo. Ophion watched as Auren's body fell limply to the ground.

He hissedfrom the doorway, then launched himself into action to save his crew.