Down by Ludo

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Auroria

1.

Down by Ludo

Lore

“You only make one mistake,” Ludo said, his huge Chua eyes flashing with wicked glee. “You forget first rule of Chua science.”

“What is that, puny worm?” the Osun warlord growled. “Hurry your words. I want to smash you, and you bore me.”

“‘BORE you’? That huge insult! Very, very not cozmotronic. Also not smart. Because,” the Chua said, “you only make one mistake, but it big, BIG mistake!”

“Yeah, still want to smash you. What mistake?” the Osun asked.

“Never loom over an armed Chua when wearing
a stupid loincloth!” With a cackle of pure malevolent joy, Ludo pulled the trigger on the molecular destabilizer ray, blasting the Osun’s undercarriage with thousands of particles of destructive energy.

The results were immediate. The towering Osun warlord, so confident of victory moments before, screamed in shock and pain as most of his body below the waist disintegrates into raw atoms. He continued to scream as his upper torso dropped with a sickeningly wet crunch onto the smoldering remains of his
shins, driving the jagged edges of his leg bones deep into his lower abdomen. Still screaming, the grotesque creature – who now appeared to have feet growing directly out of his mangled and bleeding intestinal cavity – swung his massive, meaty arms at the quick-footed Chua. Ludo easily rolled out of the way, then brought up his molecular destabilizer ray for another blast. This one caught the warlord a glancing blow alongside his face, stripping the flesh to the bone and forcing an even less intelligible
bellow from the dying warlord that sprayed blood, spittle, and pieces of flesh into the air.

Two more shots, and the Osun was armless and still roaring in agony. With a slightly unhinged laugh, Ludo stepped back, took careful aim at the Osun’s face, and asked, “You see now, yes yes?”

“Kill me,” the Osun gasped, his strength bleeding out into the muddy soil. With half his face missing, it sounded more like “kith mith,” but Ludo was able to understand.

“Yep yep! I think you understand after all. And
good news! No one will miss stupid warlord when gone. Because Ludo going to kill your whole tribe!”

The warlord continued to beg for death, but he would have to wait. Ludo and his molecular destabilizer ray had a lot of work to do.

[The previous excerpt is taken from a presumably fictional novel about a heroic Chua warrior who goes on to single-handedly destroy an entire clan of Osun using his cozmotronic technology. The rest of the story appears to be just as relentlessly violent.]