The Festival of Flesh
Titansfall, quite the unique city. It was built upon the body of the Tarrasque, captured ages ago. The Tarrasque has since become an important cultural and economic source, as the locals harvest its ever-regenerating flesh. Upon recommendation of a contact, from the undercity of Nordran, I have traveled here to visit the Flesh Pits during the Festival of Flesh. The Flesh Pits are a disturbing natural phenomenon, caused by the Tarrasque’s constantly mutating flesh as it slowly grows and melds into the tunnels dug around it for harvesting.
As I made my way into the Festival of Flesh, only recently starting, I saw a crowd gathered around several people isolated in separate booths facing outward. Each of them was sculpting what looked like clay figures. Above and behind them, in holding cells, there were some sorts of large creatures mirroring what was being done to the clay figures. One of the sculptors, a small child by all looks, had balled up their effigy and was ripping it apart and mashing it together aimlessly. Its creature screamed and groaned in agony as its bones broke and flesh rent only to mend and fuse once more again and again. Its overall shape became something of a giant worm. In another booth sat a man… of sorts. He wore nothing above the waist, bone plating covered almost all of his vitals, and bones appeared to grow from his own flesh. Flesh that did not match, seeming to come from several sources not of his own. Tubes conveying a bright, almost glowing, green fluid were interwoven through his flesh. He expertly manipulated his effigy, gently molding and precisely carving it. The creature behind him morphed seemingly without pain. It became a hulking figure with stout legs, a secondary ribcage covered its chest, and its head was encased within a helm of bone. Its large arms were wide, and its fingers were long and grasping. Roping tendrils were molded to its back and arched over its shoulders with jagged, cleaver-like blades at the end.
I watched for a time, enraptured by the scene, unable to look away. Finally, I peeled away my vision and ventured further into the tunnels. There was a loud boom coming from an arena, dug down into the massive alcove of the tunnels. Two biomancers were dueling beneath the sky. The sky that should not have been visible this deep underground. The sun shined brightly, but it all looked unplaceable wrong. On one side of the arena, a human woman appeared to be tearing off her fingers and throwing them at her opponent. They exploded in a shower of acid and blood. Her opponent, a dwarven man, held out his hands and produced a shower of shards that flew with alarming velocity, piercing her in some places but deflecting off of her bone carapace in others. The dwarf’s acid pocked skin healed as the woman’s fingers were depleted. His arms ruptured into blades as he rushed towards her and quickly cut her down. The crowd erupted into cheers as the dwarf seemed to absorb parts of her flesh into his own, using their grotesque magic.
All these strange sights began to feel overwhelming. My contact had warned me of this place, but his warnings did it no justice. As I wandered away from the arena, I came upon another large alcove with half a dozen large platforms. Upon each one, a massive mound of flesh rested, each being reshaped into gruesome yet beautiful figures. Some had taken on a humanoid shape, but only just. Flesh and bone intertwined in bizarre and impossible shapes about their bodies. Others took on abstract shapes. One that struck me as particularly stunning was what looked like a plant the size of 10 men. A rosette of pointed, serrated leaves formed its base, each leaf sprouted a large eye, each of which tracked different passersby. A thick stalk sprouted from its center, covered in small mouths. Each of which spewed a small geyser of blood down to its base which was quickly consumed by small orifices of lapping tongues.
Many similar sights could be found throughout the alcoves within the tunnels of the Flesh Pits. Some seemed like talent shows, displaying differing biomancy abilities and their applications, while others were more akin to carnival game stands. A row of biomancers had sprouted stalks that sprayed acid at moving targets. Another game stand had biomancers growing homunculi in jars, racing to complete theirs first. At one more was a pit of acid that the biomancers had to wade through to collect tokens along the bottom before their bodies gave out. Not a game for the weak of stomach to watch.
A sudden surge of the crowd rushed towards the arena. The sculptors I first witnessed had gathered on balconies spaced equally around the arena and held aloft their molded effigies in their hands for all to see. Their creations’ holding cells had been moved beneath them. An announcer’s voice boomed through the arena, showering the sculptors with platitudes and admonishments before declaring that the Festival of Flesh’s main event was beginning. The unusual sky above revealed itself to be an illusion when it suddenly turned blood red and began pulsing with a deeper red. The sculpted creatures bellowed horrifying war cries and charged each other. The child’s worm creature flailed in place unable to move and was set upon by the others.
A beast I had not yet seen challenged the hulking mass crafted by the veteran sculptor. It had a canid shape to it. A thick muscular body, devoid of hair with short powerful back legs, both adorned with three long claws. Its front legs were bladed stilts. Bony spines protruded from its back, and fleshy wings were pressed flat against either side of its spine. Its eyeless head ended in a large, circular mouth lined with rows upon rows of teeth, that rested at the end of a long snake-like neck.
The two creatures were on opposite sides of the arena. The canid’s powerful legs launched it forward at an incredible speed. Its wings spread to carry it, and its bladed front legs extended forward as it flew towards its target. Its bladed arms pierced through the hulking creature's exterior ribcage, becoming lodged within it. While the canid struggled to free itself, the hulk’s long grasping fingers wrapped around it and pinned the canid to its chest as its bladed tendrils whipped forward and carved deep wounds across its back. The canid’s spines burst outwards, severing all the hulk’s fingers. Its back legs dug into the gut of the hulk as its rows of circular teeth rapidly spun and cut holes through the hulk’s shoulders. It managed to pull itself free of the hulk’s ribcage and attempted to leap free, but the hulk’s tendrils cut its wings away and it slammed to the ground. The hulk lifted one of its thick legs and stomped down on the back legs of the canid, pinning it. The canid quickly cut its own legs away and, with freakish speed, circled to the back of the hulk, dragging itself with its bladed front legs. It began climbing up its back, driving its legs deep into the hulk’s unprotected flesh. It reached up and severed the tendrils with its mouth before sawing its way into the hulk’s body with its teeth, disappearing entirely. The hulk began flailing and screaming as it stomped its way across the arena, crushing all the remaining amalgamations of flesh. I could see the undulating mass of the canid beneath the hulk’s flesh, wreaking havoc within its body. Finally, the hulk collapsed to the ground and the canid burrowed its way free, and victorious.
The crowd went into a frenzy of excitement at the spectacle, and the illusory sky returned to its normal hue. I could only stand there, wide eyed and mouth agape, not believing what I had just seen. The Festival of Flesh was coming to a close, and I quickly egressed to the surface. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, as I would never return.
I hope you enjoyed this short story with me. It started out as an errant thought I had at work. While in the focused thoughts of my job, the scene of the sculptors making their creation forced its way into my head and just kept expanding. Thinking it would be entertaining to Nolan and the others in our DnD group I shared it. Nolan apparently had recently dreamed, or nightmared depending on your view, of a creature that inspired the canid above. He encouraged me to write a short story so here you have it. A deeper look into the lore of the underground biomancers of Titansfall.
- Arizona (TheOneTrueAzzy)
