And then Chesed pointed her shotgun at Vilithe and pulled the trigger while the others were still chanting and yodeling and dancing about as if to indicate to them- gurls, we’re still on the job here! Vilithe was just able to stumble back and fall back into the hatch, landing uncomfortably hard on the cot and knocking the wind out of her, before the shotgun blast could blow her away.

  totalDomination.gestalt( //wait, they can do that?!

  [Serpent Sisters]

  ).mindBlast(Vi);

  A collection of ghoulish faces and skulls and snakes now appeared from every single little nook, cranny, and surface of the reaver’s insides, now decrepit and decaying arms, limbs and many, many little rotten fingers pulsing in and out from everywhere like worms, they approached and approached. They closed it on Vilithe, cackling and screeching in fae bassy, deep demonic tones, and fae high pitched shrill tones. They spoke unspeakable things, wicked monstrous deeds, foul sins, and truly awful predicaments. And now all Vi could smell was the sharp pungency of bleach.

  She curled up into the fetal position, the psi-projection of Eidren holding her close and tight.

  sanctuary();

  A fae invisible force field repulsed the hallucinatory ghoul faces, and skulls, and snakeheads with flickering forked tongues, and decayed fingers, and they stopped just short of centimeters from touching Vi. They locked their maniacal and putrid, pus-oozing eyes right at her, and snarled, and screamed, and gawked, and leered, and hissed, but it was audibly muted now. The smell of bleach faded somewhat.

  There were no other psionic nodes, none of real note, proper brains, in the vicinity. So, to redirect was out of the question. And while Talisa could repulse back to sender, Vi didn’t know quite how to do that yet. That was meta-psionics, the manipulation of other psionic phenomena as a third party, or as a target of it. And that was a little too advanced even for Vi.

  And so, Talisa’s head squirmed and wormed its way through the pillars of skulls, and faces, and fingers, and snakes, all surrounding Vi, and barked at her daughter-in-law, “Vi! You got this! Just listen carefully to my instructions!”

  Tears had begun to form in the corner of Vi’s eyes as she buried her head in her arms, even though the hallucination would force her to see right through them, “M- Mom?”

  “You’re trying tai-ah-aah”, a finger had hooked to the corner of Talisa’s mouth and was pulling her cheek, she shook it away by turning her neck to the side,

  “Aikido it, dear! Redirect it to ngh-”, two fingers now pulled her temple skin taut, giving her squinty eyes, so she shook her head again to shake them away,

  “Redirect it somewhere else, when there’s nowhere else now, you’re surrounded, trapped. To push back means you will have to take some of the psionic force into yourself, it will hurt you too. But bear through it.”

  “Change the vector so that the opposite direction faces inward, into your own mind. AHK! GODS DAMN IT!” A lecherous zombie face had started licking her, so she had to swing to it, and snarl, and bite, and snap her incisors with quick chomps to scare it off. Then she bit and caught a lunging snake by the head before it could sink its fangs in her, and ripped its fae skull right off, before chewing and swallowing.

  Vi did so. “Ngh!” She felt what Talisa was talking about. But it felt like- a pressure headache. An overwhelming tension headache that squeezed from all sides. But that’s not as bad as a migraine. And like that, the grotesque macabre disappeared.

  When Vi shook herself back to mindfulness, rubbing her eyes, she found all six of the remaining Serpent Sisters had already climbed into the reaver, quite a tight fit, forced the reaver’s hatch closed for air, pulled off their breathing helms to wiggle free their pointed ears, their psionic antennae, and had pointed their middle fingers right at her head, centimeters away from touching her third eye, still dripping with ectoplasm. And they would have been able to totally dominate her with their combined might, and induct her into their ranks, had she not learned how to repulse back just in time. So now they had all fallen backwards, screaming and clawing at their bodies and flailing, suffering the exact same thing they put on Vi, but without the aid of the sanctuary to stop the faces, fingers, and snakes from reaching their fae body- the poor Serpent Sisters could do nothing but sense it.

  Vi was shook.

  But Eidren was not. This was hero time. I got this. He took over, full puppeteer, all the better to stop Vi’s shaking.

  He pounced to Gevurah and smashed his heel into her jaw once, twice, three times, until he was certain her neck had snapped, before moving on to Chesed-

  Who had recovered from the repulsed mind blast because she was a little bit more of an independent thinker than the others, and didn’t attach so closely to the gestalt, thereby receiving less repulsion feedback, and stabbed at Vi with a knife. But she didn’t know how to fight properly with a knife, so it was a downward stab instead of a suave upwards shank from below.

  Eidren was able to puppet-catch the attack by the forearm with an arm block, which he deftly follow-countered to a lock by grabbing onto Chesed’s wrist, but the blade stopped just short of Vi’s face, the blade’s tip coming millimeters away from her dragonrider’s lens.

  Too close!

  Too close!

  They took a deep breath. She was not blind yet. She had not yet lost an eye.

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  Eidren viciously puppet-twisted the wrist and knife the other way so hard that it snapped entirely, “AAAAAAAAAAAAH!” The blade clattered to the ground, they were close enough, and inside the reaver now still with a pocket full of quickly releasing recycled oxygen, that the thin air could still carry a little of the scream. Vi felt a little bad. Then Eidren puppet-hooked the back of Chesed neck with Vi’s elbow to keep her in place, and with Vi’s other arm puppet-pummeled her first in the solar plexus, always the solar plexus, every time, and then the gut, again, “Hng-”, and again, “Hng-, Hng-, Hng-, Hng-, Hng”, and again, and again until Chesed was gurgling blood all into her helm’s mouthguard. Vi felt very bad now, but this was par for the course for Eidren.

  But then Binah had roused from the mind blast repulsion, and was struggling to her feet to lunge at Vi, so for the finisher, Eidren puppet-unhooked the elbow to grab the back of the head and smashed Chesed’s forehead right into Vi’s puppet-snap raised knee so hard that Chesed’s head floated back up to Vi’s grabbing hand in a dribble, and finally Eidren puppet-threw Chesed face first to the ground. She hit it hard and didn’t move any longer. Before throwing Vi’s elbow right into Binah’s lun yeung [撚樣]. “GAHK!” Binah stumbled and tumbled backwards and fell, also still.

  Tiferet had recovered, and came at Vilithe now, from behind. But using Vi’s psionic senses, Eidren threw his lover around the other way in a puppet-roundhouse-kick- PAK! Sending Tiferet reeling, before fainting, and fluttering to the floor. Which left Eidren feeling a little chuffed because that rarely worked in real combat, but with Vi’s superior psionic perception it came easy. Also, Tiferet did not know how to fight. Then- Stomp. He raised Vi’s heel and stomped Tiferet in the face. Stomp. Again. Stomp. Again, and again. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. He looked away from Tiferet’s disfigured face when they could sense she was no longer breathing.

  Four down, two to go.

  But this was Eidren’s psionic limit. “I can’t… I’m- I’m sorry bae-”, and his psionic projection doubled over and faded away.

  Keter and Chokmah were still recovering because they were the strongest psions and so took the greatest repulsion feedback.

  The fae Talisa was leaning on the reaver’s ribcage behind them, arms folded around her just appropriately sized bosom, said, “Here’s where Auntie Talisa takes over.”

  Vi was still woozy from repulsing the gestalt mind blast, “M- Mom?”

  “Don’t Mom me now and pay attention daughter-in-law! Your life's on the line. Grab that one-”

  Vi, without hesitation, like a gwai lui [乖女], an obedient gurl, nabbed Chokmah.

  “Not by the waist! By the neck and back of the head!” She gesticulated disapprovingly.

  “I’m sorry, Mom! I’m new at this!” Vi did so, but now it was rousing Chokmah to have a hand on her throat.

  “Okay, slam her head as hard as you can on that countertop.”

  “What?” Vilithe was so shocked that she didn’t know how to immediately respond.

  “I said slam her head as hard as you can on that countertop!” Talisa had to flare her psionic aura as evilly as a Tiger Mother could.

  “AAAAAAAAAHH!” Vilithe was completely horrified at what she was about to do but she knew she had to do it, because it was do or die, now or never. She seized Chokmah’s head hard, and with pumping adrenaline and twisted acetylcholine driven fear, madness, powering her strength, she threw Chokmah’s nose into the blunt, smoothed, hard, rounded edge of the counter so forcefully that the cartilage was all completely smushed now.

  “GAAAA-AAAAH!”, Chokmah screamed as black flowed profusely out of her ruined nostrils.

  “On the corner! The corner! Not the edge!” Fae Talisa threw out her arms and palms in exasperation as if to ask, what are you doing? What are you doing?

  “AAAAAAAAAHH!” Even more mortified at the ugly savagery of aiming at the corner and not just the edge, and also super anxious that she had got the instructions wrong, like obedient gurls do, Vi now threw Chokmah’s face again, and again, into the corner of the counter top, sharp, angled, and very much not rounded or smooth or blunt at all, which smashed through the bloody cartilaginous smush to cave in the edges of Chokmah’s inner eye sockets, so that the vertice struck through right into the lower frontal lobe.

  Chokmah no longer screamed.

  Five down, one to go.

  “Eh, good enough.” She put one hand on her hip and snapped with her other hand’s fingers. Still as a simulacrum, she still had some tricks up her sleeve.

  rage(Vi);

  “Okay, dear, now just do the exact same thing to the other one.”

  Keter was stumbling through the gross faces, and teeth, and nails, and fae fang bites, just about to reach cognizance, when-

  “YOU-” Vilithe saw red now, lunged at Keter the Fourth and seized her by the chin and scalp.

  “-AREN’T-”, with a running start, Vi pulled Keter by the neck and shoved her lun yeung [撚樣] as hard as she could- Bam! Into that black blood stained corner of the countertop.

  “-EVEN-”, then she did it again, swinging Keter up by the neck and back with the torque and twist of her waist this time for leverage like a golf club, bashing Keter’s lun yeung [撚樣] once again- Bang! Into that corner.

  “-FUCKING-”, once more. But it wasn’t a bang, but more of a sickening, squishy, mushy sound that kept going on for way too long. With a shudder and a jerk, Keter’s limbs were now clearly lifeless, only flopping about by the random neuroelectric flaring of mortis.

  “-JEWISH!”, with a swing of her arms she let go of Keter’s head, yeeting it once again straight into that corner of the countertop. Keter struck it and the concave in her face was so deep that she stuck to it, hung to the countertop corner like it was a coat peg, with a gross squelch.

  Six down.

  Vilithe was panting, hyperventilating, her hands rested on her thighs, and with that, fae Talisa vanished. She pulled off her own breathing helm, to better inhale the fresh air inside the reaver.

  Vilithe crumpled to her cot, putting her sweaty palms to her sweaty brow, trying to calm herself and keep the intensely traumatizing violence from fraying her poor mind.

  She was finally alone again, all ten Serpent Sisters of the Sefirot now well and truly dead.

  “DIE, GOYIM [?????]!”

  Wait, never mind! One got back up!

  Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?!

  Ozzy Osbourne style. Goddess damn, Queen Talisa is metal. You’re damn right, Heyshush.

  This Gevurah was once Maiven Phagebrin.

  In the manner of the psychotic Norman Bates

  In the manner of Angry Juror Number Five of Twelve

  This Chesed had once been Yaveth Zilis.

  This Binah was once… you know what, save this for later.

  This Tiferet had once been Kytherin Boucher.

  This Chokmah used to be Nurine Saud.

  Keter the Fourth was once Awnrahn Talauth.

  ‘Goyim’, Hebrew / Yiddish for ‘non-Jew’. But, like Vilithe had correctly pointed out, they were not Jewish. Not really. They had taken a sacred concept and profaned it, corrupted something that was beautiful. Like just about everything else in this damned universe. And, also, like Bibi.