Orb Weaver: Wrath of God, 10 (TW:Body Horror)

My first TW for a chapter!

One insect, you could slap. Over one hundred million, not counting the ones around the house and my reserves? Jaws gripped other insects, forming a tight adaptive mesh around the three individuals. You could struggle, but you couldn’t make up any real momentum. Victor fired once, the gunshot muffled by the squirming, chitinous mass. But I wasn’t going to let them struggle too long. Swarms of insects rose up around Victor’s mouth, pinching, pulling, slipping in through his nose and lips… and then as more and more poured into his mouth, they forced it up, biting, nipping, and once open…

I wasn’t going to kill him. But Victor was the one most likely to come up with a plan, so I would distract him. My insects ran down his throat, not blocking his air, but irritating the skin… so he was gagging, trying to get them out, only they wouldn’t come out. Othala and Rune’s screams were muffled by thick gags of cockroaches, spiders, ants, leaving only their eyes and noses free…

But I needed them to listen. So… Rune’s eyes went hugely wide as I sent a mass of Black Widows walking over her exposed face, as did the same Othala, the woman safely out of reach of Victor.

“Shhh…” I said. “Victor, if you can use your power, A warning. The spirits I contend with are very angry, and very hungry. My skill is not in making them consume their prey… but in having them refrain…” with that I sent hundreds of earwigs to pinch skin, the pinches, to the uneducated, feeling like something biting or nibbling…

Othala and Rune got louder, then fell silent as the black widows, in unison, rose and raised their forelegs.

“Should my attention… flag, well, you may join the late Lebensraum and his men in the darkness.” At that, I set grasshoppers to making their noise. Individually, it was quiet, the noise from the rubbing of their legs, more properly known as stridulating. How fortunate that I had brought approximately 10,000 and had them working in unison, creating an eerie, chirring noise as I had them vary their speed, playing it like a choir. “As I said. They are very hungry.”

Rune was now making some kind of high-pitched keening sound.

“Victor. You have committed and unspeakable crime,” I said, as I created a limb out of the immense mass of bugs, spidery, terrifying, without even the humanoid body I had created to surprise Rune to give it some semblance of humanity. Centipedes and other insects gripped the skin of his eyelids making it impossible to close them. I reached down and with the back of a beetle… lightly pressed on his eyeball. The sensation was intolerable to many people, and Victor tried to jerk away.

“A woman who saw evil and spoke of it, so you took her mind…” Poke, poke, poke. Not hard enough to damage the eyeball, but unpleasant, yes, very unpleasant. “Perhaps I should take your eyes, chew them, devour them…” More bugs, pushed his mouth open, and hundreds of little pincers, nipped at his tongue. “You took her ability to speak so you could use it to spread lies… perhaps I should take your tongue…Yes… I might take your tongue.”

Othala was screaming loud enough that even my bugs couldn’t keep the noise silent. I let the hand fall back into the mass of bugs. Then formed a head, looking skeletal, wide, inhuman eye sockets, a gap for a nose, and a wide mouth. When it opened, she could see scorpions within, clicking their claws.

Suddenly Victor was trying to shake his head, trying to attract my attention. I guess he does love her.

But I had other concerns. “Othala…” I paused. “O, or at least that is what Victor calls you, Octavia is what you are known by in the community.” Her eyes went wide at that. “Oh, Octavia, I know more than your name. You like dogs, and are so angry at that Brute Hookwolf for what he does to them. You had to be escorted from a ring, and Victor the dear, held your head as you vomited into the toilet.”

She went still. Of course, that was all in her diary, with a few likely embellishments, but she currently wasn’t in the condition to consider that. Victor was the one who probably had counterintelligence training, who would see what I was doing, who might warn the other two.

Which was why Victor was currently gagging on masses of insects keeping his windpipe open so he could breathe, but not letting him talk.

I formed another hand and caressed her face, the spiders and other insects moving aside so that the “fingers” could run over her exposed skin. She was hyperventilating.

“And then you went to your initiation. Cheating wasn’t it, to let an Empire prospect attack that poor man who was defending his wife, and not tell him you had loaned his attacker strength? He was a trucker, before your power let a thug shatter his kneecaps beyond recovery, and what the group did to his wife…”

That wasn’t in her diary, but the nice thing about multitasking is the moment I had the event, the location, and nature of the victims, I was able to quickly find more information. There were always human interest stories, telling of the terrible things that had happened—sometimes by the Empire as a way to remind minorities that terrible things could happen.

“Show her a real man! She’ll never go back after that!” Other words, curses, coarse laughter, sounded from the walls; they didn’t sound like me. They sounded like normal people, their voices filtered through Legion.

“Ah, but let us not forget dear Mindy.”

Rune was rigid.

“Mindy, we are speaking to you…” A whine responded. “Remember that black man, the one you chased through the streets?” Not quite an initiation, but Rune liked to show off. I didn’t know who I was referring to exactly, she’d done it more than once, but I’d let her draw her conclusions… I released her mouth for a moment, so she could talk.

“Please… Please…”

I paused for a moment, every bug going still as I wondered if Sheila had said that word, while she could still speak. If she had begged for something to be left. Then I spoke.

“Did they beg? The men and women you terrorized. Ms. Cho, all the others? Tell me, Rune did they ever look up and say… please?” A centipede started pushing into her nose, black widows rose up over her eyes, where the only thing she could see were the shiny black bodies, legs tapping on her eyes… “I’m waiting.”

“Y-yes…” she talking through her tears, crying like a five-year-old.

“And what, Mindy, did you say to them…”

She didn’t answer, just started crying harder.

“Well then, it is time for judgment. I shall grant all the mercy you granted.” With that I sent every bug chirring, created the sound of something breathing, some great, terrible monster, while I sent a mixture of fireflies and gnats into the air, the flashing of the fireflies diffused through the cloud of gnats, creating strange images of figures with huge eyes, masses of fireflies making them ‘glow’ hollowed out cheeks…

One flew over Mindy, then went to a window as if it was trying to escape. Then they dissolved and reappeared at the corner of their vision. I couldn’t let them see too much or they might notice something off.

Then I paused. The whole house went silent except for Victor’s muffled screams and the girls’ whimpering. “Or… I could make an arrangement with you. One that delivers you from my hands. You would like that, wouldn’t you, Mindy, Octavia?” They nodded their heads as much as they could. “What about you, Victor?”

A short, sharp nod, Victor still trying to keep his eyes on Octavia.

“So be it. To avoid my judgment, you shall submit yourselves to the PRT. Victor, you will tell them everything. Every secret you held for the Empire, every secret of your power. You will work with them, at every moment to seek to undo the damage you have done to the innocent, and it is a long and black list. Sheila Cho is not the only one…” I started repeating the names my research had come up with and was pleased to see Victor grow even paler, if possible. “I expect they may send you to the Birdcage after that… Perhaps your loving wife might ask to accompany you…” that set off an explosion of head shaking and muffled shouts from Victor. “Or, if you work very hard, whatever happens to you… Octavia might be kept safe, she and Mindy, safe, and perhaps working with the Protectorate to undo the harm they have done. It would not be the first time that they have provided opportunities to the lost…”

My bugs parted, Mindy’s cell phone rising up from the immense mass in the room. I would have to hurry this up. Even with my work to distribute oxygen, bugs were dying, and if too many died, it might leave clues I didn’t want left behind.

“You may call the PRT Mindy. Unless you wish to reconsider our agreement? Remember, all your secrets shall be given unto them. You shall hold nothing back, you shall not simply follow their orders, but cooperate. And in return… Our business will be at an end.”

She grabbed the phone. After four tries got the unlocking code, and then…

“PRT, is this an emergency?”

“Oh God, please, I wanna… I wanna turn myself in, I’m Rune, Please, please…” She started crying and the operator couldn’t get any more out of her.

“Ma’am…”

“I am Orb Weaver.” There was silence, and I continued. “Victor, Rune, and Othala have seen the error of their ways, and desire to turn themselves in. I suggest one or more of your parahumans and a forensic team, as Victor has agreed to reveal all the E88’s secrets he was privy to. And I have agreed that He, Octavia, and Mindy will no longer face my attention if they carry out this promise.”

“We have units inbound. Miss Militia and Dauntless.”

“Very good. Just leave this message for them. God created the Heavens and the Earth in Six days and rested on the Seventh. I am not God, so I shall merely destroy the Empire in Six days and rest on the Seventh. It is now the beginning of the second day.”

“Uh… right.”

I started pulling the bugs out in a tide, save for eerie cloaked figures standing outside of Mindy’s bedroom window, once again, gnats and fireflies. In plain daylight they would be obvious, but now?

Also, by striking at them in what they saw as a safe space, and engaging in the psychological torture, there was no other word for it, I had, they were off balance. Victor was staring at Octavia and Mindy as the bugs flowed out of the room, the deep breathing continuing. Then the two fell into his arms and he just hugged them.

“Remember, our Bargain…”

“The Empire will kill us.” Victor’s voice was a monotone.

“Oh, Victor, the Empire will be far too busy dying to concern itself with you. Remember, it is either the PRT or my judgment. Farewell, and if you make the right choice, you may never see me again…”

I kept some bugs on them, the specters outside the windows dissolving, and the rest of the bugs just flowed out of the house, flyers taking off, some of them carrying bugs with them. The last thing I needed to do was leave a huge swarm that would go uncontrolled when I left. It would damage the local micro-ecology.

I waited, a few bugs tagging the area as Dauntless, Miss Militia and a number of PRT vans arrived. They executed a by-the-book forced entry. I was ready to join in, but Victor, Rune, and Othala were just sitting on the floor of Rune’s room, and followed every order.

Good.

Now I had to head home… and stop at the closest 24 hour store. I was going to be chugging a lot of energy drinks over the next few days. It wouldn’t do for my crusade to be ended by low blood sugar, after all.