Second Genesis

Chapter 574: Hypocrites [1050 GT Bonus]

Mauve and Elowen both stepped in around Grey almost without thinking, their brows furrowed as they placed themselves between him and the newly arrived Guardians.

Everyone present had seen enough of the battle to understand that The Immovable wasn’t the reason Grey looked like he was about to collapse. He had dismantled her far too easily for that, which meant the damage tearing through him now had come from everything he had already forced himself through during the Culling, and by extension, from everything he had done for them.

Elowen felt that realization settle particularly heavily.

Grey had taken her place when she failed to understand the Angelic writing, carried the burden of their Territory when she couldn’t, and now her own city was turning on him while he was barely standing, once again because he had refused to let them drag her somewhere she didn’t want to go.

The guilt sat like a stone in her chest, and when she stepped closer to Grey, there was nothing subconscious about it anymore.

"What are you ladies doing?" Grey asked with a tired chuckle as he looked between them. "Your husband here still has a few extra legs to work with."

Elowen immediately glared at him, but Mauve didn’t bother reacting to the joke. Her expression remained serious as she said, "If you need me to help, I can. I’m a lot stronger now."

Grey took in a long breath, exhaled slowly, then forced himself upright until he stood at his full height again. The motion made his limbs protest, but he only shook his head.

"No. The gap between the lower Classes and Dominion isn’t something you brute-force. It’s too tricky for you to deal with right now." he wasn’t speaking out of his ass, he could feel Mauve’s abilities through their connection. He knew exactly where her limits lay. "It stopped being about who could punch harder a long time ago, unfortunately."

Grey hadn’t been able to just punch harder than an enemy for a very long time now, but didn’t he win every time anyway? Their problems were a lot deeper now.

Mauve’s expression tightened, but Grey was already thinking about a more immediate problem.

His body was easy enough to repair, relatively speaking, because food, blood, regeneration, and half the bullshit packed into his Frames could handle flesh. His Neural Frame was another matter entirely.

Eating hadn’t healed the fractures running through it, and he was beginning to suspect ordinary recovery wouldn’t either, which was particularly annoying considering that almost every important trick he had relied on recently involved abusing the thing even more.

His gaze drifted toward Xerchen, or at least toward what Grey had assumed would be Xerchen’s corpse by now. The gnome-blooded disciple was lying motionless where The Immovable had left him, but Grey’s Resonant Sense caught the faintest shallow breath, which meant the idiot was somehow still hanging on.

Grey pointed toward Brad instead and said, "You two keep the big brute alive. Don’t worry about me, these idiots aren’t worth enough for me to activate my Frame again."

Mauve looked as though she wanted to argue, but Grey was already sizing up the three new Guardians.

The Boundless was still the same big-bellied bastard Grey remembered, built like lumpy flesh incarnate. Grey would have bet half his life savings and a used condom that the idiot gained a pound every time he bitched like a woman. But the others...

The Eternal was a short stack with spiked white hair and enough product in it that Grey was pretty sure his scalp had been laminated, while The Forsaken somehow looked even more skeletal than Lloron, with sickly pale skin and sunken cheeks that made Grey wonder how nobody had accidentally buried him yet. The Radiant looked like he was about 12 years old, a church boy with a radiant smile if Grey had ever seen one. But also about the only boy scout that could show up at his door with cookies that Grey would gleefully punt across the street.

The three of them seemed ready for Grey to attack, but instead he raised one hand toward The Immovable’s body. The corpse jerked as the blood inside her surged violently toward Grey’s palm, dragging her flesh upward slightly before his fangs extended. Grey bent down and bit into her neck, ripping every drop of blood from her body in a single instant, and when the corpse hit the ground afterward, it collapsed into ash almost as soon as it touched the stone.

Grey straightened with blood coating his mouth and looked toward the frozen Guardians with a wide, crimson grin.

"What difference does it make?" he asked, wiping a thumb across his lower lip. "Go ahead and scream about Dark Kin now, call me a monster, a heretic, whatever makes you feel better. You were already going to try and kill me anyway, so why should I care what label you slap on it?"

The Eternal’s jaw tightened while The Forsaken’s hollow eyes narrowed, but Grey’s expression only became more amused.

"Actually, I think I’ve changed my mind. Kind people are only second on the list of people I hate most now, because hypocrites are definitely number one. You people love talking about honor, restraint, justice, protecting the innocent, all while turning around and doing whatever the fuck suits you the second nobody’s looking. At least when I’m being an asshole, I have the decency to tell you I’m being one."

The atmosphere in the catacombs shifted as Grey opened his palm and blood-red light began gathering above it.

Iron Veil activated, condensing the blood into a long, metallic spike that extended from his hand, and all three Guardians tensed immediately because the direction of Grey’s gaze made it obvious he was about to throw it.

Grey’s wrist snapped forward, but the spike didn’t fly toward The Boundless, The Eternal, or The Forsaken at all.

It tore through the chamber past all three of them and shot straight toward Xerchen instead.

It buried itself right through his chest, gouging out another hole right next to the one that his master had left. Could Grey had just as well aimed it at the original hole? Sure. But truly, fuck that guy. Grey hoped it hurt like hell too.

Xerchen’s body rippled like a heartbeat.