CHAPTER 240: CROWNLESS

I grimaced as I stepped back from the cocoon. Looks like Project Lazarus is a failure. I need something more than what I have available. I had a feeling for some time, but I was hoping to find a workaround. Alas, it seems I will need to get my hands on a Firstborn heart…

I can’t make the mind transition work without it; only the Firstborn core is adaptable enough to handle a complete transfer of both body and soul without any form of rejection. So for now, Cecilia was exposed and mortal, well not completely mortal as an Heir of the Firstborn, she could eat the odd prisoner or two every few months to extend her life span. She is twenty-two now by chronological age, but biologically, she is still twenty. It seems for her, twenty seems to be the golden number for maintaining youth.

Oh well, this was the closest I got, and since it's failed for now, I decided to repurpose this one into a weapon. It's a bit like Legiana in concept, but she wasn’t a commander; she was this walking disaster of a creature, born to tear my enemies to pieces.

I retreated slightly as the cocoon split open. The cocoon opened as it should. The seam split down the centre, wet tissue peeling back. Steam bled into the chamber as she stepped forward, slow and steady.

Yep, that’s Cecilia, down to the last detail…

Her body matched the template: narrow waist, wide hips, and long legs. Her breasts were full and firm. Muscle distribution was even. There was no excess fat, and there was no asymmetry.

Skin was smooth and unblemished. No scars, no marks, no visible veins. Proportions were exact.

Her face was an exact copy of Cecilia’s. Same bone structure, same eyes, same mouth. No variance.

She stood still. No breathing. No tension. No response to temperature. Just idle flesh, waiting.

This was an empty vessel, and of course, empty vessels don’t move on their own, so I created a mind in the Hive Mind and implanted it inside this body. But that mind couldn’t fill the void made to accommodate an heir of the Firstborn, so I worked hard to repurpose this void into something useful. I called it the Hollow Child Core. It's a weird little adaptation that would come in handy.

“Get dressed.” I said, and instantly her body started to shift.

The shift began at the spine. Flesh moved, reshaping along preset lines. Plates pushed through the skin, hardening on contact with air. The armour was bone-coloured, matte white, with a smooth surface and no seams. Gaps closed as the armour formed over her chest, abdomen, and hips.

Her limbs followed. Segmented plating wrapped around her arms and legs, locking in place without sound. Joints remained flexible, and there was no visible strain.

Claws formed last. Forearms split open with a wet crack. Dense organic mass surged outward, folding into heavy, brutal shapes. Each claw was thick, jagged, and edged with small, uneven spikes. Seams along the surface pulsed faintly with red light, the glow constant and low. The blades curved forward, built for rending, function over form.

As the process finished, the upper half of her face was covered. A smooth, seamless visor extended from her forehead to just above her lips. No eyes were visible; only her chin and mouth were left exposed.

“Good.” I said as I circled her.

This one would do well, from the testing I have done her claws could rend through even the toughest of material. But her claws aren’t the worst part of her…

The Hollow Child Core lodged behind her sternum makes her truly dangerous.

It was meant to house Cecilia’s soul. A perfect vessel for transfer. Stable, self-repairing, built to last. Now, without a soul to contain, it serves a different function.

The core emits a passive field. Not visible to the eye, but it reacts under stress. When she strikes, the claws tear more than just flesh and armor. The impact releases a secondary effect. Glowing red slashes linger in the air for a moment before sinking into the target. They don’t cut the body. They cut the Essence, pulling it apart strand by strand.

The more she cuts, the weaker their Essence Core becomes. Regeneration falters. Healing stalls. Eventually, the system can’t hold. At a certain point, the Ether Core buckles inward, crushed under the strain of disrupted flow and feedback. That’s when the body turns against itself.

The Ether inside starts to crystalize, locking up muscles, freezing joints. Then the rupture begins. Sharp red crystals erupt outward from within. Through the ribs. The throat. The spine. Jagged growths punch through skin like bone spears, tearing the body from the inside out mid-motion.

Then the body stills.

What’s left is a twitching, bloody flesh statue. Crystals spike out through torn muscle and split bone. The skin stretches around the growths, wet and cracking. Some of them still breathe for a few seconds. Limbs jerk. Fingers twitch. Eyes blink without focus.

The Ether keeps pulsing faintly inside the core, even after everything else stops. The glow flickers through the crystal seams, slow and dim, like it’s trying to hold on, but eventually the statue goes quiet.

Malegaros named her Crownless because she was supposed to be an Empress, but we settled for a butcher. As to Legiana she suggest Lazarine, in reference to her status as being the failed prototype of Project Lazarus.

Cecilia decided that both was quite fitting, so she named her cruel, empty doppleganger…

◦◦,`°.✽✦✽.♚.✽✦✽.°`,◦◦

“Lazarine the Crownless…” Ordias muttered as he stared down at the report, looking this new unit up and down as he scratched his head. This was a sudden surprise, Malgeros didn’t tell him he was testing a new unit.

“Can you talk?” Ordias asked as he looked up at the sleek humanoid with disconcertingly lethal claws.

“Yes.” the creature said in the most monotone voice Ordias has ever heard, but the voice and the physique did confirm one thing. It was female and its voice sounded human, but everything in Ordias’s bones told him this thing in front of him was anything but human. It kind of resembled a living armour cavalry infantry unit at face value but… this one gave him worse chills than a Briar.

In the back of his mind, Ordias wondered what brand of horror this woman was. Also strangely its voice bore a slight resemblance to the Empress, its not exactly the same but the resemblance was there.

Ordias sighed as he glanced at the forest. It had been weeks since that Elf decided she was going to start a revolution, and just yesterday, his lines weathered an Elven skirmish. In all honesty, Ordias’s patience was wearing thin. So he wondered if perhaps he should just send this unit out as a test run.

“Can you command this one?” Ordias asked as he turned to a nearby Hive Adjutant.

“No.” the Adjutant replied and Ordias paused for a moment. He had asked just as a precaution and also to ensure the chain of command in the Hive is correct but that “no” seemed different from the usual.

“Meaning?” Ordias pressed.

“We can give it instructions but direct command is not possible. Crownless exists outside the Hive Command Network, it is synced directly to the Great Beast.” the Adjutant said.

“So the Hive Mind just asks as a message channel, you cannot compel this one to do anything?” Ordias asked now feeling even more disconcerted.

“Yes, only the Great Beast can issue commands, but even then, the control is weak as compared to us.” the Adjutant replied.

“Fantastic…” Ordias muttered as he glanced at the so-called Lazarine the Crownless.

Ordias grimaced before making his decision. The Great Beast wouldn’t send something mindless or entirely uncontrollable for him, and the report did label her as a testing unit.

Ordias scratched the back of his head in mild frustration. This was a thinly veiled order but for someone like him, sending something this ambiguous out to fight would jeopardise his operational integrity.

Then Ordias heard the war horn being sounded, looks like there is another incursion.

Ordias made his decision there, for now this Crownless would stay put while they sorted out this skirmish and then he would decide…

Ordias blinked at where Crownless was standing a moment ago before muttering.

Where did it go?

◦◦,`°.✽✦✽.♚.✽✦✽.°`,◦◦

Minuvae grimaced as she watched from the treeline alongside her band of rebels. The council loyalists were launching another probing attack. The council had sensed the growing dissent, and they needed a victory to cement their position. Still, launching an assault on the heavily fortified imperial trenchline was suicide.

Her people, the elves, were well-versed in using height and trees to fight, but the vampires fought in dead lands where trenches reigned supreme. Combined with dwarven expertise, it was like throwing a set of knives at a cliff face. To her people's credit, they were using magic to form makeshift barriers, and their attacks were striking home. But the dwarven cannons and vampiric signifiers were gouging holes in their lines.

Minuvae would have been down there with her kin if not for the current situation. She could not risk her supporters or herself at such a critical point. Furthermore, her people would retreat if things turned bad. They would take casualties, but these were elite veterans who knew when to fall back.

Out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly caught a flash of red. Shifting her gaze, she saw a white blur tearing across a section of the line, red glowing slashes trailing behind it. Minuvae felt her blood run cold as she watched a Veteran Ancient get cut in half before even reacting. Just a white blur, then the veteran’s body detached at the waist in a spray of blood.

Minuvae stared, stunned, as the blur moved like some kind of animal, snaking along the elven lines like a spectre of death. There was a moment where it paused briefly to skewer a pair of elite elves.

She caught a clearer glimpse of it then, a white humanoid body covered in hive carapace armor, with a pair of claws tipped with cruelly curved bone blades. The claws looked almost deformed, twisted and warped into unnatural shapes.

Minuvae readied her bow. At this rate, her kin would be decimated.

"Are we going?" one of her fellow rebels asked.

"Yes. We can't leave them to whatever that thing is," Minuvae said through gritted teeth.

Minuvae and her small band dismounted from the canopy and started running toward the battlefield.

"We contain it, not kill it. We can't kill that thing. Focus on pinning it down, then retreat," Minuvae ordered, and received coordinated assent.

"[Pinning Shot]," Minuvae intoned as she fired a pair of glowing gold arrows at the white creature.

The creature dodged, sliding across the earth on all fours, its claws digging into the mud. The humanoid figure in white carapace made no sound. Its body language barely registered her presence, completely unlike the snarling beasts of the hive. This one seemed hollow. Empty.

The white creature moved through the mud on two legs, upright and direct. Its steps were heavy, each landing with mechanical certainty. When it surged, it dropped onto all fours for an instant before rising again without hesitation.

Minuvae twisted aside as a claw slashed past, slicing the air where she had stood.

"Circle it," she snapped.

Her rebels moved wide. Arrows flashed. Shots glanced off the creature’s armor with dull sparks, spells fizzling out against the plates. The creature advanced without slowing.

A young archer stumbled. The creature lunged, a sweeping slash opening him from shoulder to waist. His torso split apart mid-motion, blood spraying across the churned mud, his ribs now cut free fell to the earth like white bloody sticks in the mud.

Minuvae fired low. The arrow struck and bounced away.

"Bind it."

Chains of light wrapped around its limbs. The creature halted mid-step, then tore through the bindings and kept moving.

A shield split under a blow. The creature barreled through, hooking its claws into the nearest rebel and ripping him open hip to ribcage in a single dragging cut. Guts spilled onto the ground as he dropped. The second rebel barely raised his sabre before a claw swept across his head, carving four two inch deep gouges into his skull before he crumpled with a gurgle, his jaw hanging loose.

Minuvae fired again. The arrow snapped off the armor and vanished into the blood-soaked earth.

Binding spells hit again. The creature slowed, shoulders tensing, then tore free, trampling over the bodies without breaking pace.

Blood slicked the ground. Every few strides, it dropped to all fours in a burst, then rose again, pacing forward through the carnage.

Minuvae fired. Sparks flared from its chestplate. No effect.

Another rebel tried to run and was caught mid-step. A slash opened his spine to the air, his legs folding uselessly beneath him as he hit the mud. Another was taken across the stomach, his entrails spilling out as he fell forward with a wet slap.

The line was breaking. Minuvae saw other units pulling back beyond the treeline, horns sounding through the smoke.

"Fall back!" she barked.

The survivors ran, scattering into the trees. Minuvae moved last, bow raised, covering their retreat with shallow breaths. She stepped back, arrow nocked, sighting down the clearing.

The creature moved.

One moment it was pacing. The next, it crossed the distance in a surge. Minuvae loosed her shot, but the arrow just bounced off its face plate.

A clawed hand closed around her neck.

The force lifted her off the ground. Her bow fell from numb fingers, thudding into the mud.

"Go!" she rasped, forcing the word past the pressure on her throat.

Her rebels hesitated, casting desperate looks over their shoulders.

"Run!" she managed again, voice breaking.

The last of them vanished into the trees, boots hammering against the earth.

Minuvae clawed at the creature’s grip. The carapace was slick and cold, impossible to pry apart. The creature held her aloft, head tilting as if examining a broken tool. No breath. No heartbeat. It was just there.

Minuvae drove a knee into its armor. Sparks leapt from the impact. No reaction.

The edges of her vision darkened.

A sharp crack split the air.

A projectile struck the back of the creature’s head, glancing off in a spray of shattered light. It did not fall. It did not stagger.

But it paused.

Its head tilted slightly.

Without a word, it released her.

Minuvae dropped into the mud, coughing and gasping, clutching at her throat. The creature stood over her a moment longer, then turned away, pacing back toward the trenches without a sound.

She lay still, mud soaking into her armour, watching through blurred vision until it vanished into the smoke.

Minuvae looked at Grand General Ordias as he stood there in his black and red armour, his pistol still smoking in his right hand, the silent battlefield stretched between them. His cape snapped in the blood-scented wind as he raised his head slightly, almost in a sneer. Minuvae spat into the mud as she shakily got back to her feet, staring at him for a moment before turning away.

Just as she was about to leave, a crossbow bolt thudded into the ground nearby. She saw it carried a message. Minuvae turned to look at Ordias suspiciously. He only nodded.

Minuvae sighed and picked up the bolt, unfurling the message.

For your bravery, I will allow you to recover your dead tonight

Minuvae let out an exasperated breath. She knew what he was doing. An olive branch like this would help her cause, nudging her toward some kind of compromise with the Empire.

The fact that it was so obvious left a sour taste in her mouth.

But at the end of the day, it was still a good thing. Kind of.

She nodded back at Ordias in bitter concession, then turned away. She picked up her bow, only to find it snapped clean in two. She sighed, tossed it into the mud, and muttered one last curse before walking back into the forest.

Fucking vampire…