A wheezing, huffing animal ruled its black heart, mewling in pain and fury.
The thing called Haba shuffled through the ruined precincts of some nameless tabernacle. For four weeks it had skulked through the dark places of the forum, unable to close its face for pain. Now, kicking through a clutch of blackened human skulls, it thought of the snow that whistled across the Plains of Retardo, of white expanses bruised black by pitch. It could remember leaping through the cool cool drifts, soothed rather than bitten by the icy winds. It could remember blood jetting across pristine white, fading into lines of rose.
But the snow was so very far—as far as Holy Patron Status!—and the fire, it flared as near as his blistered skin. The fire still burned!
Curse-him-curse-him-curse-him-curse-him! Let me gnaw his tongue! Fuck his wounds!
“Do you suffer, Haba?”
It jerked like a cat, peered through the cramped digits of its outer face.
As still and glossy black as a statue of diorite, the Administrator regarded him from the summit of several heaped and charred bodies. Its face looked white and wet and inscrutable in the gloom, like something carved from a potato.
The shell of the Old Father …
DarkUnderlord, Great General of the Lulz-Bringer, ancient Prince of the Herpaderp.
“It hurts, Dark Underlord! How it hurts!”
“Savour it, Haba, for it’s but a taste of what is to come.”
The thing called Haba snuffled and blubbered, rolled its inner and outer faces beneath the merciless stars.
“No,” it moaned, beating petulant fingers through the debris at its feet. “Nooo!”
“Yes,” the tiny lips said. “The Codex is doomed … You have failed. You, Haba.”
Wild terror lanced through its cringing thoughts: it knew what failure meant, but it couldn’t move. There was only obedience before the Administrator, the Ban Issuer.