0037 — The Infernal Delivery
1607 Words
Outside, the acid rain had turned into a steady, hissing drizzle. It coated the overgrown gardens of Blackwood Manor in a sheen of toxic silver.
Grizzwald wiped the rain from his goggles and spat into a puddle. The saliva sizzled.
"Stupid rain," he muttered, crouching behind a stone gargoyle that had long since lost its head. "Stupid job. Stupid boss."
The rain wasn't just wet; it was industrial runoff from the Hex-Foundries up north. It tasted like copper pennies and bad decisions. Grizzwald pulled his collar up, trying to protect his neck. Red Caps were tough—they had to be, to survive the corporate ladder of the Infernal Development Corp—but even they dissolved if they stood still too long.
The manor, however, didn't seem to care. It drank the acid. The black vines choking the gate were thriving, pulsing with a faint, bioluminescent vein-structure that looked disturbingly like a circulatory system.
He adjusted the leather straps of his chest rig. He was a Red Cap—a scout for the Infernal Development Corp—but right now, he felt more like a drowned rat. His mission was simple: Recon. Check the perimeter. See if the "mad doctor" was home.
But Grizzwald had an eye for opportunity.
He peeked around the gargoyle's base. The manor loomed ahead, a dark, jagged silhouette against the bruised purple sky. It looked abandoned. Dead.
And there, on the massive front door, was a doorknob.
It wasn't just a knob. It was the size of a melon, shaped like a lion's head, and even from here, twenty yards away, it glinted with the unmistakable luster of gold.
Real gold. Not the fool's gold they minted in the sulfur mines. This was Old World gold.
Grizzwald's greedy heart did a little flip. One knob. Just one. He could pry it off in ten seconds. The boss wouldn't know. The boss didn't need to know.
He drew his dagger—a rusty, serrated piece of scrap metal he'd sharpened on a tombstone. He licked his lips.
"Finders keepers," he whispered, and dashed across the overgrown lawn.
Victor stumbled into the grand foyer, his boots skidding slightly on the dusty parquet.
He gripped the heavy wooden coat rack to stabilize his shaking knees. The hypoglycemia was no longer a dull ache; it was a siren screaming in the back of his skull. His vision swam with static—not the magical kind, just the mundane, biological failure of a body running on zero calories.
Proteins.
The demand from the greenhouse still vibrated in his molars. Yggdrasil wasn't asking; it was contracting.
Victor wiped a line of cold sweat from his forehead. He didn't need to search for the source. He had already identified it three floors up.
Target: Goblin Scout.
Nutritional Value: High.
The diagnosis he'd made in the greenhouse was still scrolling across his retina, overlapping with the physical reality of the hallway.
He gasped, air rattling in his empty chest. He needed to sit down. No, he needed to feed the house.
Ding-dong.
The doorbell didn't ring—the wires had rotted away decades ago. But there was a scratching sound. Metal on metal. Someone was trying to pry the lock.
Victor didn't feel fear. He felt a profound, confusing sense of gratitude.
"Service," he mumbled, his eyes glazing over. "So fast."
Grizzwald jammed the dagger under the lion's mane. The brass—it was brass, not gold, but he was too deep in his greed to notice—groaned.
"Come on, you heavy bastard," he grunted, putting his weight into it.
The wood around the lock splintered.
Suddenly, the door didn't just open. It swung inward with a smooth, silent grace that shouldn't have been possible for hinges that rusty.
Grizzwald stumbled forward, his momentum carrying him over the threshold. He landed on his knees on the dusty Persian rug.
He scrambled up, dagger raised, his yellow eyes wide. "Don't move! I'll cut you! I'm crazy! I'm—"
He stopped.
Standing in the shadows of the foyer was a tall, thin figure. The man was wearing a lab coat that was gray with dust. His hair was a mess of black tangles. But it was his eyes that froze the goblin's blood.
They weren't looking at Grizzwald. They were looking through him. They were scanning him like a butcher scans a carcass, looking for the prime cuts.
"You..." the man whispered. His voice was dry, cracking like old parchment.
Grizzwald brandished the knife. "Back off! I'm a Red Cap! We have an army! We'll burn this place to the—"
"You look..." The man took a step forward. He wiped a string of drool from his chin with the back of his hand. "So rich."
Grizzwald blinked. "Rich? Yeah! I mean, no! I'm poor! I have nothing!"
"Rich in nitrogen," the man clarified. He smiled. It was a weak, trembling smile, but it showed too many teeth. "And calcium. Your bone density is... exquisite."
The goblin took a step back. The air in the foyer suddenly felt very cold. And very heavy.
"What are you?" Grizzwald squeaked.
"I'm the gardener," Victor said. He gestured vaguely toward the hallway behind him. "And the garden is starving."
Victor didn't see a goblin.
The hunger had rewritten his cognitive overlay. He saw a walking sack of Miracle-Gro.
The creature in front of him wasn't holding a knife; it was holding a label that read 'Trace Minerals Included'.
"Please," Victor said, his politeness automatic, a reflex honed by years of customer service even as his predator brain calculated the caloric yield. "Come in. You're getting the floor wet."
"I'm leaving!" the fertilizer-sack yelled. It turned to run.
Victor felt a flash of irritation. The delivery is trying to return itself.
"No," he said. "We signed for the package."
He didn't move. He didn't have the energy to chase a goblin. He just looked down at the floorboards.
"Yggdrasil. Tip the driver."
The floor didn't creak. It exploded.
Three thick, fibrous roots burst through the oak planks like striking cobras. They didn't grab Grizzwald; they enveloped him.
There was no scream. There was no fight. One moment, the goblin was scrambling for the door. The next, he was gone. Pulled down.
The roots retracted instantly. The shattered floorboards knit themselves back together with a wet squelch, leaving only a few splinters and a single, lonely boot on the rug.
Silence returned to the foyer.
Victor stared at the empty space. He blinked, the red haze of hunger slowly receding, replaced by the cold, grey reality of what had just happened.
He swayed.
"Did..." He licked his dry lips. "Did I just order a hit?"
No, his mind rationalized, desperate to maintain the facade of a civilized doctor. I just accepted a donation. It was a charitable contribution to the ecosystem.
A deep, satisfied thrum vibrated through the soles of his boots. It traveled up his legs, settling in his stomach.
The cramps stopped.
It wasn't that he had eaten. It was that the house had eaten. And in this place, the landlord and the property were not two separate things. A phantom warmth spread through his chest, the ghostly sensation of a full meal.
"Nutrient absorption complete," Yggdrasil's voice whispered. It sounded sleepy. Drunk on nitrogen. "Processing... The Legacy Code accepts the offering."
Victor slid down the wall until he hit the floor. He pulled his knees to his chest.
"I need to put a **," he murmured, closing his eyes. "No solicitors. Unless organic."
Two Hours Later.
Victor stood in the greenhouse again.
He rummaged through his lab coat, fingers scraping against the empty seams. Nothing. Not a crumb, not even a lint-covered mint. By all medical logic, his blood sugar should have flatlined hours ago.
But it hadn't.
The phantom fullness from Yggdrasil's meal sat in his stomach, heavy and warm. It was a borrowed satiety—a caloric ghost transmitted through the floorboards. It felt intrusive, like receiving a blood transfusion from a stranger, but it kept his knees from buckling.
He looked at the potato patch.
It had changed.
The dark soil was disturbed. The "Legacy Code" had compiled.
In the center of the patch, a single, massive tuber had pushed its way to the surface. It was the size of a human head. Its skin was pale and lumpy, covered in wet dirt. But upon closer inspection, the texture wasn't just starchy skin. It had the rough, pebbled quality of cheap leather armor, now organic and fused with the vegetable matter. A tiny, calcified ridge ran along the side—the remains of a dagger, digested and repurposed into a root node.
Victor leaned in, frowning.
The potato had features.
A slit for a mouth. Two shallow depressions for eyes. And a nose that looked suspiciously like Grizzwald's, though flattened and starchy.
As Victor watched, the potato's eyes opened. They were small, black beads.
"Boss?" the potato whispered. Its voice was muffled, like it was speaking through a mouthful of mash.
Victor froze.
"Boss," the potato said again. "It's dark in here. And I can't feel my legs."
Victor stared at the vegetable. He felt a headache coming on. A migraine of cosmic proportions.
"You don't have legs," Victor told the potato gently. "You are a carbohydrate."
The potato blinked. "Oh. Okay."
It closed its eyes and seemed to go back to sleep.
Victor stood up slowly. He backed away toward the door, careful not to make a sound.
He needed to update the patient charts.
Diagnosis: Post-Mortem Reincarnation via Starch Matrix.
Prescription: Butter. Lots of butter.
- Writer
