The River King 16
Taylor Hebert
There was a clear distinction now between “Taylor” and “Monarch,” even in my own head. I’d noticed that my thought process changed when I put on the mask. I didn’t used to be this detached, this calculating.
I didn’t mind it. It was a natural consequence of shunting so much of my emotions into my swarm. Take away the rage, depression, frustration, and hopelessness of a teenage girl and all that was left was cold, rational thought. It made me more effective, more decisive.
My attack began the same way as it always did, with watery crab constructs chucked through the River. They emerged in strategically sound locations to surround, corral, and overwhelm my enemies. Then, when everyone was distracted, I’d show myself for the final push.
In this case, “strategically sound” was right beneath the feet of the Nazi valkyries. The shock value of thirty, child-sized crabs crawling from right below your feet could not be underestimated. They panicked and momentarily forgot their training, stomping wildly.
It worked in my favor. The twins were ten feet tall at the moment, and probably weighed around five or six hundred pounds. That was a lot of force to bring to bear, but water did not like to be compressed. Blunt force was the easiest kind of damage for my constructs to withstand, especially when the twins weren’t really using their weight and strength optimally.
That gave me the chance to spread out my army in the middle of the Empire contingent. Some crabs climbed atop the twins, crawling over their legs to hopefully reach their torsos. They couldn’t harm the twins, but I’d settle for stripping away their armor or keeping them thrashing.
At the same time, the bulk of my swarm circled behind the retreating ABB. This was the most underappreciated part of my power, I felt. With my increased awareness, I was able to make several moves simultaneously while everyone else made one. All the more incentive for me to be decisive.
I’d watched initially as the ABB pushed into Empire territory. They started the raid with another cluster bomb, but met with stiff resistance when the twins appeared with reinforcements. Those esoteric bombs–transmutation, time bubble, and the like–were thankfully rare. Most ABB squads stuck to the less extreme weaponry. That allowed the Nazis to push them back this time.
I couldn’t let that happen. I was still trying to lure out Oni Lee, and that meant killing all ABB squad leaders until he showed himself. But nor did I want the Nazis to win even a single battle; that’d just be un-American.
So, I appeared in front of the retreating ABB while the Empire was occupied. Two torrents of brackish water erupted from my hands as I spread them apart. That swept the surviving ABB grunts aside like Moses parting the sea, leaving me with their leader.
My foot collided with his chest, hard enough to launch him onto his ass. He dropped the grenade launcher and scrambled for his knife but it was too late. A column of water spouted behind him and enclosed his head in a vicegrip. It dragged him backwards and downwards, slamming the back of his head into the ground with crushing force. A sharp twist of the water made sure he wouldn’t be getting up again.
The rest got to leave. The more mooks who reported my actions, the better.
That left me with the Empire. The Nazi twins had gathered themselves. Whatever else could be said about them, they worked well together. They swiped the crabs off each other before stabbing them with spear and sword. They were fifteen or sixteen feet tall now.
I lost six units. I hadn’t had the chance to get more living crabs so twenty-four was what I had now. Not wanting to lose more, I turned my crab army on the mooks before rushing towards them as thick tentacles of water formed from my arms.
Menja, the one with the spear, met me first. Her twenty foot long spear thrust with impressive speed. I tried to entangle it in my tentacles, but she pulled it away with such force that they tore apart.
I dodged out of the way as she swept her spear to the side, denting a parked truck. A followup sword thrust from her twin had me frantically dodging away. Their durability and strength increased proportionate to their height and as they were now, I couldn’t match them.
Still, I had to engage. Now that I was here, I refused to let them claim a victory over me. Hookwolf had been bad enough.
I shaped my tentacles together, forming a single, long one that thrust forward like a rapier. It was aimed at Menja’s unprotected armpit, a perfect target from my low angle.
Fenja stepped smoothly between me and her sister, shield raised to counter. The water spear glanced off its burnished surface harmlessly.
We kept this up for another minute before I was ready. They thought they were pressuring me, and they were, but I was never alone. The swarm I’d used to cut off the ABB gathered around them like a dense fog.
I wondered what the swarm looked like from their perspective. Bugs were small enough from a human lens. As the fifteen foot tall titans they were, each individual insect must have felt like the sprinkling of fine mist. They wore closed-face helmets, but that wasn’t enough. My bugs crawled through the eye holes and breathing holes and up from their necks.
The panic at the appearance of my crab army had been momentary. This made their earlier thrashing look composed in comparison. There was much shrieking and swearing, which promptly stopped when they remembered that opening their mouths made my job easier.
I wasn’t a fan of this method, either. As effective as it was, I now knew intimately what it felt like to drown in snot and phlegm.
Still, I capitalized on the opening. I tripped them with whips of water. Tentacles wrapped around their arms and legs before morphing into shackles. They pulled the twins flush against the asphalt. Now that they were closer to the ground, and me, water flowed into their mouths, closing the gaps left by my swarm.
They kicked and thrashed, but lacked the leverage to free themselves. Each moment of panicked flailing only caused them to consume their limited oxygen faster. This was… nice. Better than the usual begging I’d gotten used to ignoring.
I had to hurry. As much as they deserved to drown on dry land, they might have been the vanguards. Even I’d be hard pressed to fight their entire roster alone. Besides, these two weren’t really my targets, just a convenient opportunity.
I picked up Menja’s spear. Discarded as it was, it had shrunk back to its regular size. It was still about seven feet long, with a leaf-shaped tip made for precise thrusting.
I studied them like one might study a can of pasta with a new can opener. Their armors were stylized like a valkyrie’s, with wing motifs and revealing a lot more skin than a medieval knight’s, but they covered the essentials. As far as cape costumes went, they were probably the most well-armored. And because their power proportionally negated force relative to size, I had to be selective.
Eventually, I found the juncture between Menja’s helmet and her collar. She hadn’t bothered with gorget in favor of showing off her neckline, which she no doubt regretted now. Wrapping my new spear in a coiled tentacle, I thrust. It probably felt like a needle, not a spear. But a needle could also be lethal, provided I pierced the jugular.
I was no spearman. I missed the first time, then the second. Embarrassingly, I had to get a bug to feel her pounding heartbeat to locate her jugular, but I eventually succeeded. All the while, Fenja watched, screaming her wrath and curses as her sister bled out.
I withdrew the spear with an unpleasant squelch. As I made my way to Fenja, I noticed something nearby. A figure moved exceptionally quickly towards my position from blocks away. They were a blur of motion to my lookout bugs, even the dragonfly’s exceptional sight catching them for only breaths at a time.
The River formed beneath my feet. I sank into the water as a demon-masked figure materialized between us. He dropped a metallic sphere that ticked away ominously. It was the perfect alpha strike. Three of his enemies, all obviously distracted, but I was ready.
Fenja’s eyes widened in dawning horror as I sank into the River. She thrashed with renewed desperation. I lost control of the water that held her as I warped away, but it was too little, too late. The water, her sister’s corpse, her, they were all disintegrated, dusted as if cremated and ground into the consistency of flour.
I emerged onto a nearby rooftop. Across the street, Oni Lee watched me with unblinking eyes. Below us, I could hear the screams of two Empire goons, those that had been wrestled to the ground by my crabs but hadn’t been quite close enough to take the blast cleanly. The rest knew enough to begin running and not look back.
I couldn’t give chase even if I wanted to. My quarry was here, giving me the fight I’d been looking for.
Then, with no warning, the fight began. No words, no attempt at intimidation, just identification and aggression. I didn’t even know he’d teleported until the “Oni Lee” I was looking at collapsed into ash.
I felt the sharp pain of a knife digging into the back of my throat. It would have severed my spine, or skidded off the bone to rip my jugular. Either way, the only reason I wasn’t bleeding out like I’d done to Menja was thanks to the layered silk I used as my hood and mask.
I whirled around, backhanding him with enough force to shatter ribs. He burst into ash again, yet another clone. I needed a better plan, or at least a way to know when he’d snuck up on me. I gathered my swarm around me in a loose cloud. It wasn’t enough to hide my location, but I’d notice if my bugs got displaced by the sudden arrival of Oni Lee.
He came again, and this time, I was ready. I whirled in place. A lash of water bisected a clone as soon as it formed, but the cloud of ash told me I’d missed the original. Then a second time, and a third.
Each time, I killed his clone before it could trigger a grenade. Yet, each time, I was too slow to hit the teleporter. The only thing I had to show from our exchange was the cluster of flies tucked into the fold of his costume. They’d been blinked away when he left.
He changed tactics on the fourth. Instead of teleporting directly into my swarm, he appeared on the edge, a blurry haze to my insects’ vision. The two identical copies stared me down from opposite ends of the roof. Then a third, then a fourth. The fifth, the real one, appeared on the street below and lobbed a grenade my way, pin already off.
“Son of a bi–” I swore even as I sank into the River.
Oni Lee’s power copied everything on his person, presumably in the exact state it was when he teleported. That was one way to decrease the timer, an absolutely suicidal method that worked only because of who he was.
I swam away just in time. The rooftop was consumed in a storm of conflicting pressure waves. The swarm I had on the roof was annihilated to the last, crushed and burned by his attack.
I emerged behind Oni Lee, hoping to catch him by surprise. Yet, he never dropped his guard. The moment the water began to pool beneath his feet, he’d already blinked away.
We continued this deadly game of cat and mouse. Each time I built up a big enough swarm, he’d obliterate them all with a clone swarm of his own. I would teleport away, never quite fast enough to hit him. He retaliated with grenades and cluster bombs, but I’d yet to see another disintegration bomb like he’d dropped on the twins and me earlier.
That confused the hell out of me. If you had an assortment of deadly weapons and were sociopathic enough to bomb a city, wouldn’t you use them all the time? It made no sense since Oni Lee could copy an infinite stockpile of them.
Which meant he couldn’t.
The realization struck me like a bolt from the blue. I stilled for the briefest moment, and it cost me. I was but a second slow, but that was the time Oni Lee needed to prime and detonate a grenade.
I raised a wall of water between me and the bomb. It blunted the explosion, but did little to stop the shrapnel. I grunted in pain as burning lines were carved into my body. I wanted to scream but drowned it out into the swarm. Pain could wait; Oni Lee was a constant whirlwind of suicide bombers.
Instead, the River washed over me. Spikes of murky, brown water sprouted from my makeshift shield like the needles of a porcupine, taking out three more clones before they could detonate themselves.
That bought me the precious few seconds necessary to warp away. It frustrated me to admit it, but I didn’t see myself winning this one. He was my perfect counter. He had a more agile teleportation power, the numbers to divide my attention, and the destructive weapons to make those advantages count.
Still, I refused to run without finding out something. He used Bakuda’s special bombs sparingly. Either he was arrogant enough to feel like he didn’t need them, or he was limited in some other way. It was important, and I needed to figure out why.
Like Cricket, Hookwolf, and Purity, fighting him was a puzzle to be solved, a lock to be opened. I won, if not immediately, then the second time around. But to do that, I needed to learn more about his power.
I lured him into an alley. There, in the chaos of the constant explosions, I began to notice a pattern. Never once did he teleport behind a wall or dumpster or directly in my shadow. Despite being a ninja stereotype, he always came at me from a relatively open place.
He had no honor, so this had to be because he had no choice. A few more exchanges followed. I took a regular grenade, shielding my neck and head with my left arm. I narrowly avoided a wave of light that I assumed was the same pain bomb that had brought low Glory Girl.
But I figured it out. One of my flies crawled from around the fold of his collar to his mask. That gave me an idea of where he was facing at any given time. Line of sight. He needed to see the space he was moving into.
That was good to know, but my swarm had already been greatly depleted, nor could my water constructs keep up.. It was a strange thought. For once, my bug control would be more important to the outcome of a fight than Tahm’s gifts. Strange, but not unpleasant.
The next time Oni Lee tried to bomb me, I sank into the River and emerged across the city. There was no point in continuing for now; I had the clues to kill him. I’d be picking shrapnel out of my body as it was.
X
I settled into my hideout. This old warehouse had gone largely untouched, thanks largely in part due to how far it was from damn near everything. No one gave a damn because everything within two blocks of here had already been looted to the bedrock.
Gingerly, I began to strip. The layered silk and leather I used as my costume kept my head, neck, and torso mostly protected, but they weren’t perfect. I could feel pieces of metal in shallow holes on my back, with a deeper one in my stomach. A small cluster of them found my thigh, which had been less protected because I only wore cargo work pants.
Slowly, I began the long, painful process of prying the metal out. I could regenerate, and pretty damn well. That said, I didn’t know what would happen if I left a piece of metal inside me. Even if it couldn’t kill me, it sounded pretty annoying.
After a bit of trial and error, I grabbed a looted butterfly knife. It had a smaller, narrower blade for those flashy tricks. Then, I pulled my leg as high as my flexibility allowed and began to dig. It was funny almost; this wasn’t the most macabre thing I’d done to myself. That night after my first encounter with Hookwolf still took the cake there.
Eventually, I got out everything I could reach with my hands. The ones in my back were a bit of a problem until I remembered that I had bugs. I could now say that I willingly let ants dig around in gaping lesions on my own body. I didn’t know what that said about my mental state, probably nothing good.
I finished cleaning myself and dressed again before resting here awhile. I had to give dad a call so I could make up an excuse, but it was necessary. There was no way in hell I was going home like this.
As I waited for my body to knit itself back together, Tahm Kench arrived in a brackish deluge. He was wearing a comically large t-shirt with the Statue of Liberty stretched across his chest. It looked wrong on him for some reason.
“Hello, Tahm,” I greeted my best friend. “New York?”
“Indeed, my friend. Ol’ Two-Coats has been busy. I’ve been visiting some of the famous monuments in this country,” he drawled with a frog-mouthed grin. “Did you know there’s a mountain with four of your leaders’ heads carved into it?”
“Mount Rushmore? Yeah, we learn about it in school. How was it?”
“Dreadfully boring. You look like you’ve had a rough time of things, Taylor. I should be the one asking: How are you?”
“I’m good. I just had a scuffle against three capes back-to-back.”
“Oh? Was it what you wanted?”
That was Tahm. He never cared much about heroes or villains, just what I wanted for myself. I huffed in amusement. “I don’t go around looking to get jumped, Tahm.”
“Of course not,” he said with an indulgent smile. “But I do seem to hear an awful lot about heroes and villains fighting. Come, tell ol’ Tahm.”
So, I did. I told her about how the twins died, and about Oni Lee. He never seemed bothered by death. It was a little humbling to know that he knew I killed people but chose to call me his friend anyway.
As we talked, I gathered his sacrifice for him. I barely flinched at the violence anymore; animal abuse had become something routine to me, like taking out the trash. The thought made me uncomfortable, but that was probably what Tahm’s power needed from me. It needed to be a sacrifice. If it was easy, it wouldn’t trigger as a deal to him.
“This Oni Lee character seems quite tricky,” he said. He fiddled with the ring on his left whisker. “I’m sorry my power could not help you, my friend.”
“Don’t say that. Your power is why I’m alive at all. He’s just faster than me,” I reassured him. I asked, knowing I’d likely not like the answer. “Do you have any advice for me? The River, it calls to me, but I need to be faster.”
“No, I’m afraid you’ve been using my gifts better than I ever imagined. As you are now, there is little you can improve upon.”
“But I can get stronger. I can make another deal with you. That’s what you mean, right?”
He frowned. “Not if it makes you uncomfortable, Taylor. My power… It is not a kind thing. It requires sacrifice, and all sacrifices change people, don’t they?”
“They do,” I said quietly. I shoved my hesitation aside, into the swarm where it fragmented into ten million minds. “Tell me. Your power is the power of the deal. That means I should at least hear the offer, right?”
“As you wish, my friend. But I fear you’ll resent ol’ Tahm once you hear it.”
“I won’t. Never.”
“Emma Barnes.”
My world ground to a halt. Two words, the name of a girl I once called my sister. Our parents had been close when mom was alive. There was a reason Emma’s older sister was named Anne. Technically, I was pretty sure Aunt Zoe was still my godmother.
And yet, a part of me was darkly tempted. It was the part of me that chafed and raged at all the shit she put me through, the part that desperately wanted to get even.
We hadn’t grown apart as childhood friends often did. No, she’d abused and tormented me. She’d desecrated mom’s flute, full well knowing what it meant to me. She’d caused my trigger and put me in a psych ward for a week. I wasn’t the one who burned our relationship and pissed on the ashes.
It’d be so easy. Before I could stop myself, I was already planning Emma’s abduction like a mission. Despite what she thought, I was the strong one. She wasn’t a cape; I knew because she was the exact kind of arrogant bitch who’d tell me just to gloat, just so she’d have one more thing to hold over my head.
Hell, I didn’t even need to portal into her room. I still remembered that there was a spare key on the windowsill next to the kitchen. It was right beneath the flowerpot with the fake orchid, because Aunt Zoe had the blackest thumb imaginable but still loved pretty colors.
I could imagine it already. Her pretty face, contorted in a rictus of panic and terror. Her voice, hoarse and raw from screaming. From begging. All the apologies I wished I’d heard.
Two sharp cracks filled the warehouse. My cheeks stung. My palms pressed against my face, bringing me back to the present. That was… That had been too real, a bit too easy to imagine.
Slowly, I took a deep breath and pushed that part of me aside. I couldn’t, not like this. Everyone I’d killed so far–Cricket, Stormtiger, Hookwolf, and Purity–were unequivocally villains. They were literal Nazis, people who killed others in turn.
It wasn’t as if I’d never thought about it before. More than once, I wondered what it’d be like to drown the school in bees. Or, if I was in a subtler mood, to arrange for an “accident” with a black widow. There were plenty of those about the school.
I’d always stopped myself. I told myself that Winslow was nothing, that their petty bullying was just a phase. And it was. It was a season of my life I would outgrow, so there was no need for me to sink to their level. Because I was a hero.
Before I fought Hookwolf, when I went back to school, I remembered feeling as if I’d changed. I evaded them with such ease now. I barely noticed when Sophia, with her human limits, elbowed me in the hallway. I felt like I was already starting to do the outgrowing.
I let out a hollow laugh. That had clearly been a lie. Tahm’s power had to have a thinker component, the ability to lock on to what bothered us most.
Emma was a civilian. A bitch, but ultimately a normal person, just a dumb bitch high on teenage popularity. She was easy, and paradoxically, that made the thought of killing her so much harder to stomach.
“I guess we found it, Tahm, a line I won’t cross,” I said with a hollow laugh.
“Is that a no?” he asked with a knowing smile.
“No, I can’t give you Emma. I’m sorry.
“Do not apologize, my friend. My power is not kind. It seeks out a need, and seeks to meet it, but the trade is always costly.”
“But it’s a trade. And that means I can choose to walk away.”
“So you can, Taylor. So you can.”
Author’s Note
Welp, RIP, valkyrie twins. I mean, at this point, are you surprised that I’m killing people off? Taylor gets to find Oni Lee before the hit squad finds her. It doesn’t end well.
Oni Lee is honestly really scary. When I first read Worm, I was really surprised that he was such a minor character. With Bakuda’s inclusion, he felt like he was being built up to be this huge, impactful antagonist. Maybe not have an entire arc named after him or anything, but at least a more dangerous figure than he turned out to be.
I’m calling cap. Imo, Wildbow made him a blank slate via Shard-xerox because an even remotely competent Oni Lee would have broken the anti-Bakuda coalition. Seriously, those of you who read Worm, can you tell me, off the top of your head, what happened to Oni Lee in canon? Because I legitimately could not.
No, I will not be killing Emma off next chapter. We found a line that Taylor won’t cross. Now, it remains to be seen how long this lasts.
Animal Fact: Sloths are some of the only mammals that cannot regulate their own body temperature. They also only pee/poo once a week and digest plant matter over the course of a full month. This combination of factoids means sloths can and do starve to death on a full stomach. Let me explain:
The reason sloths live in neotropical environments is because they literally can’t live anywhere else. In rainforests like the Amazon, temperatures stay consistently in a narrow range. Which isn’t to say the forest doesn’t see hot or cold flashes on occasion.
When it’s too hot, sloths have no choice but to move to a lower canopy for shade. They then sit still, because moving any more costs too much energy.
But the cold is much worse. Sloths curl up and hope to wait things out. Unfortunately, they can’t regulate their own body temperature so that drops with the environment.
This causes the cold-sensitive microbes which digest cellulose in their digestive systems to die. And since it takes a full month to fully digest plant matter, a sloth can keep eating but be unable to extract nutrients from the food they eat. It’s like starving to death in a grocery store.