Chapter 447 - 390: Brianna: The Inspiring Vulture Head

Chapter 447: Chapter 390: Brianna: The Inspiring Vulture Head

...When she finally came back to herself, Brianna was lying face-down in a pool of blood.

The blood was cold and slick, thick and rank.

Her head was tilted to the side, her cheek half-submerged in it; when she cast her eyes downward, she could see her own body stretched out below her — like a long dead snake, utterly still.

Jacqueline, the one she had so carefully cherished and protected, was gone from the room.

All that remained was the dark, viscous blood that had pooled out of the dead — spreading across every inch of the floor.

And great smears of it, flung together with shredded flesh, viscera, and severed limbs, plastered across the walls; the shapeless, bloody masses were slowly sliding down through the dark — like some malevolent, alien creatures crawling toward her inch by inch.

This was the Nest. Even if severed limbs actually did turn into crawling things, it wouldn’t be strange.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore.

Brianna stared at the dark walls of the room for a long time before she finally blinked.

Because Vulture’s head had rolled to a stop right in front of her eyes.

She lay motionless, staring at it. It lay motionless, staring back.

After a moment of silent mutual regard, Vulture spoke first. "I have to say — you’re pretty terrifying when you lose your temper."

Brianna said nothing.

She didn’t have the energy to open her mouth.

"It’s just a dead person, isn’t it? Gone is gone. Hunters dying in the Nest — when has that ever been rare? Just find another one who died looking decent."

It understood nothing. Not a single thing.

Ever since Brianna had died in the Nest, Jacqueline had been her first real chance to walk the world again as a woman — and her first genuine chance to get a foothold in the Westley Family’s game.

Now it was all over.

Just like all those years before her death, Brianna once again had no way through the Westley Family’s door.

And yet that was where she had been born. That place had been her home first.

"Why don’t you ask me? Go on, ask." Vulture stretched its tongue out long, curled the tip, used it to point at its own face, then drew it back in. "Ask me how my head ended up detached. Come on, ask."

Weighing the effort of batting it away against the effort of asking, Brianna decided asking was marginally less work.

"...How did your head..." Her voice came out hoarse and barely audible. She didn’t finish the sentence.

But Vulture already had all the stage it needed.

It couldn’t quite hide its smugness. "I was watching you smash and crash and throw yourself around, thinking — even if you tear this whole room apart and grind every resident hiding in here into dust, that’s still not my problem. I’ve got people to kill in Blackmoor City, and I’m still waiting."

Brianna looked at it.

"So I figured I’d come in and talk you down. But I forgot — this room doesn’t let anyone in except someone wearing Jin Xueli’s face. The moment I stepped through, that flour-blob guarding the place came at me and just — popped my head right off."

"But then it hit me, all at once — a stroke of genius!" it said, clearly delighted with itself. "This room doesn’t let outsiders in, sure. But it lets in the dead. My head had just been knocked clean off — didn’t that count as being dead?"

...This particular dead thing just couldn’t stop talking.

Vulture rolled its eyes back, let its tongue loll out the corner of its mouth, and pulled the classic cartoon-corpse face.

With its tongue pressed to the floor, it slurred thickly: "Sho I ushed my tongue. Ushed my head, inch by inch, to drag myshelf in..."

It crawled in on its tongue.

The entry protocol for this room was simultaneously strict and completely absurd.

Jin Xueli, she—

Don’t. She was like a floodgate. The moment she thought of her, the darkness would swallow her whole.

"Why?" Brianna finally spoke. Her voice came out, but the rest of her remained dead and motionless. "Why did you come in?"

"Because I believe that a person — a resident — should keep their word."

"You promised to take me to Blackmoor City to kill people," Vulture said. "You painted me such a beautiful picture, and now you have to deliver. You can’t just pull a — a what-do-you-call-it — a startup move on me, where I do everything I’m supposed to and then you just cut me loose at the end. That’s not how this works."

Maybe it was the sheer weight of everything, the sheer absurdity — Brianna almost wanted to laugh.

She had thrown herself against every wall, desperately trying to love, risking everything over and over... And even as she sank deeper with every struggle, she had believed she would survive it. That there was someone waiting for her on the other side.

And in the end, here in this silence where everything had been taken from her, the only one who refused to give up on her was a severed head.

"I can’t go back," she said quietly. "Go find someone else."

Vulture wasn’t about to be dismissed that easily.

"Aren’t you the one who just said it? Just find another Hunter to wear — what’s the problem?"

As it spoke, Vulture’s head was slowly inching toward the door — the head was in a hurry to rejoin its body. "Get up! Pull yourself together, find another Hunter to put on, and we’ll go to Blackmoor City together — go after Chaisi Monroe! I need to kill a Dominion Game player to make a name for myself!"

Brianna let out a single, hollow syllable from her nose.

"I’m guessing you hate that person too, right? That’s why you offered him up to me. Don’t you want him dead?"

"...Doesn’t matter anymore."

Even if Chaisi died right in front of her eyes this very moment — so what.

She was still neither human nor ghost, just a snake lying flat on the ground with nothing left in her.

"Well — well what about Jin Xueli?" Vulture switched targets. "Hold my head down first, or it’ll slide out the door in a minute. That much you can do, right? Come on, lift your arm!"

Brianna didn’t particularly care either way, but it was too loud to ignore, so she dragged her arm across the floor and pressed down on Vulture’s head.

"Thank you," Vulture said, quite politely. "Now, let’s talk about Jin Xueli."

Brianna let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "There’s nothing to talk about... It’s pointless."

"Why?" said Vulture. "You just find another Hunter to wear and—"

"Would you shut up," Brianna finally raised her voice. "You don’t understand my plan at all. If I put on some nobody’s body, I lose all access to the Westley Family. I can’t get to the target Illusion. The Dominion Game is done for me.

"And if I don’t hold the Nest’s power, I can’t change a thing. On top of that — even if I could wear Jin Xueli, I’d have to tiptoe around that body for the rest of my life, making sure nothing ever went wrong with it. Even the slightest accident, and her body might not be able to heal properly — it could just rot, slowly and disgustingly, all the way to the end."

Her voice was climbing, growing more agitated with every word.

"So what — am I supposed to spend my life crammed into a body that could break and rot at any moment but might never age, pressed up against Morando, enduring her contempt, her suspicion, her—"

Brianna’s anger cut off abruptly.

Without the power of the Nest, it didn’t matter how many bodies she cycled through, how many times she walked up to Morando — it would all amount to nothing.

"...At least this way," she murmured, her head dropping back to the floor with a dull thud, "I’ve kept some last shred of dignity."

Vulture clearly hadn’t followed most of that — but the part it had caught was the Dominion Game.

"If you want to win, just kill off all the other competitors," it said, as if this were the most straightforward thing in the world, shooting Brianna a sideways look. "Collect their Illusions off the bodies. Simple, right?"

Brianna couldn’t even be bothered to respond.

"I’m serious. The way I see it, if you enter the human world exactly as you are right now, your edge as a resident is way bigger than whatever that—"

It had forgotten Jacqueline’s name. Its gaze swept the room.

"—way bigger than whatever that shattered one had."

Brianna nearly let go so its head could roll out the door.

"I’m already a resident now,"

It was the first time she had ever admitted it out loud. There came a point where you had to face reality. Her problem, all along, had been exactly that — she never wanted to accept it, always fighting, always struggling, and that was what had brought her to this. "...I can’t enter the human world."

"That used to be true. But right now, I’m not so sure."

"Oh."

A few seconds of silence settled over the room. Then Brianna’s head snapped up. "What?"

"Hm? What do you mean, what?"

She fixed her eyes on Vulture’s head. "What did you just mean by that?"

Vulture then spoke a name she absolutely had not expected to hear at this moment, in this place.

"You know Fu Tailan?"

Brianna stared at it blankly. The very reason she had sought out Vulture in the first place was because she’d followed a Fu Tailan Vulture — it had been looking for its companions and had asked Brianna for directions... So why was she hearing that name again now?

"I do," she said at last, in a murmur.

"Good, that saves some explaining. You also know that we Vultures can send messages to each other through a special call between our own kind, right?"

"Yes. Incredibly annoying."

"Perfect, then I’ll just get straight to it."

Vulture licked its lips, and across that face with its ever-shifting features, something almost like anticipation flickered to the surface. "That Fu Tailan had a run of bad luck — got replaced by one of our companions. Our companion is something else, I’ll tell you that. Managed to hold onto both Fu Tailan’s and Vulture’s consciousness at the same time."

"I know that part already. Skip it, keep going."

"Oh? Hm. Know quite a bit, don’t you." Vulture carried on. "Anyway, it took another one of our companions with it, to teach it how to hold onto its own consciousness. None of that’s the point though — because both of them went to Blackmoor City through Hunter’s Path. But while you were losing your mind in here, I received a message from our companion."

"...What did it say?" Brianna held back the urge to smack it.

"Fu Tailan Vulture didn’t enter the Nest through the Path."

Vulture glanced at her. "Strange, isn’t it? There was a resident crouched in the shadows by the roadside, and it saw Fu Tailan Vulture drop straight down from midair. Fu Tailan Vulture even asked it if it knew where the other Vultures were."

That Fu Tailan Vulture had asked for directions the whole way until it found the Vulture group — it never once used its call?

Which meant... was that thing even really a "Vulture"?

"Our companion found it interesting, so it went to take a look at the spot where Fu Tailan Vulture had fallen from."

Vulture glanced left and right, then, seemingly remembering it currently had no thighs to slap, loaded extra emphasis into its voice instead: "And you know what it found? There was a faint drift of black mist floating in that spot!"

Brianna had already pushed herself upright. "Black mist...? What is that?"

"Well, I’m not certain of the specifics — there’s all kinds of speculation going around."

Vulture shot Brianna a distinctly slippery look.

"Some of the more well-traveled residents are saying that between the Nest and Blackmoor City, there’s a stretch of... what was it called... oh, the ’Black Abyss Belt.’ That black mist might be exactly that. Which is to say — if you walk through it, you might just come out in Blackmoor City. Even looking the way you do right now, as a resident, you could pass through it and enter the human world."