Chapter 2: Error
The Carrion Hound didn't have eyes, just skin stretched tight over its face, twitching as it sniffed the air. Rows of teeth, too many, all wrong, clicked wetly behind peeled lips. Bone crunched under its paws as it circled its opponent.
The hound didn't snarl or bark. They didn't make noise unless they were eating.
Built like a nightmare, hunched and heavy, it moved low to the ground. Flesh clung to muscle, seemingly nailed in place, ripping, falling, and growing as it moved. Open wounds lined its shoulders, weeping black fluid. It's body pulsed with heat as every step left a print of steaming blood.
It didn't see its prey. It didn't need to. It hunted by scent, by heat, by the stutter in a heartbeat.
Used by higher demons to clean up the weak, the broken, and the slow. A gluttonous scavenger for a trash world.
The curious imp crouched behind a split nerve stalk, watching as its heart pumped. It didn't understand what it was feeling, only that it desperately needed to stay quiet and still.
The bigger imp didn't run. Just raised its club and waited.
The hound charged.
The smaller imp watched, expecting the other imp to flee, its claws digging deep into the nerve stalk beneath them.
But the larger imp didn't flinch. Muscles tensed. The club came down hard, straight into the hound's skull.
KRNCH!
The watching imp's breathing turned ragged. Not from fear. Not from hunger, at least not any kind it understood.
No words for it. Just a feeling, twisting beneath the skin. Like a second layer trying to grow under the first.
Jealousy.
It kept staring as the bigger imp wrenched its club free, bone and gore peeling from the hounds skull.
Something pulled at the smaller imp.
Not instinct. Not need.
Want.
Its body moved on its own. Limbs crept low, dragging it forward. No reason. No hesitation. Just want. For the first time, something beyond food, something sharp and real. And it was powerful.
So powerful, it didn't even realize it was heading toward death.
If the larger imp could kill a Carrion Hound, something like this, small and half-rabid, stood no chance.
Didn't matter.
It crawled lower, slipping past a snapping row of tumor-ridden teeth. Closer and closer.
Dark Vision locked on the target.
The bigger imp didn't move. Just stood there, waving one hand slowly in front of its face, deliberate. Controlled.
The movements were strange.
But the feeling in its chest drowned out everything else. It needed to get closer.
The larger one turned. Alert. Club rising again.
Didn't change anything. Closer still. Until suddenly... the target vanished.
Gone.
The creeping imp froze, hidden beneath a curtain of oily hair.
A sound followed.
Not a roar, but a scream.
The bigger imp flailed as the swarm hit, Scorch Gnats, thick as ashfall. A thousand burning specks tore into it, setting its skin boiling. Shouts of agony echoed across the fleshscape.
Scorch Gnats bred by laying eggs inside living flesh. The heat from their bodies boiled their victims alive, cooking the host. That burst of protein hatched the larvae instantly.
Then they tunneled out. On fire, joining and swelling their numbers. Some swarms stretched for miles, clearing whole sections of the Maw in hours. This one was small. Just starting.
The screams started to quiet. The sound of popping skin faded.
The swarm moved on, seeking the next pulse.
The watching imp didn't know how it survived. Didn't even think about it. Instinct. That was all. The only reason it hadn't crawled closer. If the swarm had been any other threat, it would've kept advancing. Would've still attacked.
But nothing, not beast, not demon, challenged a swarm. Nothing that strong lived in the first layer.
A swarm of Scorch Gnats was the true king of the Maw.
It was alone again, something it was getting used to. It skittered forward, slow and low. Always under cover. Instinct still screamed to stay hidden.
But that feeling, whatever it was, kept pushing.
What the imp wanted was finally in front of it. Burned and ruined. Still smoking, but it didn't matter.
This wasn't about feeding, this was about need. A want that wasn't instinct, wasn't hunger. A want that was something personal.
And nothing would stop it.
It chewed. It tore. Bones cracked between its teeth. Steam hissed from the char. It bit deeper and faster as something inside it howled in satisfaction.
For the first time in the Maw's long, rotting history...
An Imp smiled.
Toward the center of the corpse, the blackened blood still bubbled. Drilling its tongue in, it lapped like a starved animal. Its body trembled. Muscles flexed and veins twitched. The field beneath the corpse shifted as it tore into that too.
Then, something solid. Too hard. Didn't matter.
It swallowed it anyway. Felt something sharp and hot rip down its throat. Its own blood boiled from the cuts, and that just drove it deeper.
It couldn't stop, and it didn't want to.
The feeling, whatever it was, overwhelmed it. Its eyes ruptured with bloody tears. Pleasure. Joy. Happiness.
Wrong emotions that didn't belong here. They didn't belong to an imp.
But they were real.
A single joyous entity, feasting in the gore fields of Hell.
DUM!
Something inside the imp exploded. It convulsed. Limbs locked up. Its body seized and twisted.
Rage.
Something was stealing it.
The joy, gone. Replaced with pain. That first moment of something pure, robbed.
DUM!
It thrashed. Bit into the ground. Ripped deeper. Faster. Mindlessly tearing into the ground beneath it.
Chewing and swallowing.
The deeper it went, behind it, the flesh field closed in.
Pain. Rage. Pain. Rage.
DUM! DUM! DUM!
It spiraled. Pulse after pulse shook it from the inside. Dark Vision collapsed. Blind, it clawed at its eyes, ripping, gouging, trying to fix them. It didn't know why. Just that it couldn't lose anything else.
It refused, but it wasn't enough. The pressure inside pushed harder. Wouldn't stop.
DUM!
The imp's head snapped back, blood burst from its mouth as it screamed.
Then... silence.
Collapse.
And in that quiet…
Something flickered in the blackness.
It saw it. No concepts. No meaning. Just something floating in red.
[ERROR // Class Type // INVALID]
[Entity // Imp // REJECTED]
[.....System Overload Detected...]
[Bypassing Hierarchy Check...]
[ERROR // UNREGISTERED Soul Signature]
[Manual Bind Initiated...]