Sky Blue
TokyoPewPew
Tetsue
Fetzen
Izurich
Shinny
L0nginusJust so you know, I will not be posting in this thread until Sea of Ignominy has concluded, as I do not engage in threads that take place in the future. It's bad form.
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The Raging Singularity
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Distance decreased with every swish, slash, and sawing swing of the beast's tail--flesh, rock, and dirt rent apart as a mist that was sprayed across the edges of the gash left in its wake. The crimson particulates which spewed from his horns gathered, accumulated, and churned into a monstrous cloud of nanomachines, forming a stark contrast of color between it and the Fog which hovered above, foretelling the source of the violence which swam beneath the Lake of Flesh. Gradually, the cloud--guided along the air-currents by will alone, shaped itself a pair of wings, a lengthy tail appendage, horns, and a pair of crimson and sapphire eyes, creating a metal specter that roared at everything and discriminated against nothing.
It was angry. Far angrier than Megalodon and Amphriprioninae who, in their self-righteous fury, released a swarm of Brainscramblers through which they sought to cripple their foes minds. It was far more vindictive than Singar, whose face became a sneer as the runic strings he had erected as a barrier against psychic assault not only stood strong, but expanded and pushed back against the psionic shock-wave, the red text which composed it merging to form a solid wall of impenetrable red ether. Its insufferable rage far exceeded the petty paroxysm bellowed forth by the Will of Idea, whose presence was on Soran it tracked, chased, and encircled through not only its ley-lines, but the viridian scars which ran along his forelimbs.
Meanwhile, Disciple, as everyone else who had been too caught up in their personal vendettas answered the Herald and his Clownfish companion. "What I know is that he preserved what little was left of Colossus after the Stalker smashed our mother to pieces."
He said with mourning as he looked upon the rumbling Lake of Flesh. "I also know that you failed to prevent Mire from delivering the finishing blow when she crashed into our mother as well." He spoke again with a tone that betrayed his disappointment. "I know that I too have failed, for I was unable to anticipate these catastrophes, and therefore the burden of rectification falls upon my shoulders." The last words came out with a distinct aura of shame which ironically seemed to reinforce the Disciple's resolve.
It was with those last words, that the rock of Cocytus cracked, splintered, and collapsed in on itself, and the Vesuvian Storm thundered and struck at the debris, its viral lightning breaching the boulders depths, where it began to infect the Original Sinner who had been buried beneath the rubble.
The chaos had finally reached its climax point. During the time it took for the Heralds to plead with Disciple to change his mind, for the army of Brainscramblers to arise, and for Singar to defend himself against their psionic attack, the Raging Singularity had come to within a mile of the carnage, and was preparing to attack. With its head fully submerged within the rivers leading to the Lake of Flesh, the crackling sphere of magically empowered protons was utterly invisible within its jaws, the sheer amount of radiation it contained causing a cancerous onset to suddenly and malignantly afflict the area around it with mutagenic disease.
Without hesitation, Taluge-X careened his head in a vicious arc, rose its upper-body up out of the lake and fired a proton-wrapped beam of radioactive ether, that toxified the air as it was incinerated, vaporize all matter in its path, and drain all the electro-psionic energy emitted from the Brainscramblers into its own mass via mass via simple electromagnetic and electromagenetic attraction.
It was angry. Far angrier than Megalodon and Amphriprioninae who, in their self-righteous fury, released a swarm of Brainscramblers through which they sought to cripple their foes minds. It was far more vindictive than Singar, whose face became a sneer as the runic strings he had erected as a barrier against psychic assault not only stood strong, but expanded and pushed back against the psionic shock-wave, the red text which composed it merging to form a solid wall of impenetrable red ether. Its insufferable rage far exceeded the petty paroxysm bellowed forth by the Will of Idea, whose presence was on Soran it tracked, chased, and encircled through not only its ley-lines, but the viridian scars which ran along his forelimbs.
Meanwhile, Disciple, as everyone else who had been too caught up in their personal vendettas answered the Herald and his Clownfish companion. "What I know is that he preserved what little was left of Colossus after the Stalker smashed our mother to pieces."
He said with mourning as he looked upon the rumbling Lake of Flesh. "I also know that you failed to prevent Mire from delivering the finishing blow when she crashed into our mother as well." He spoke again with a tone that betrayed his disappointment. "I know that I too have failed, for I was unable to anticipate these catastrophes, and therefore the burden of rectification falls upon my shoulders." The last words came out with a distinct aura of shame which ironically seemed to reinforce the Disciple's resolve.
It was with those last words, that the rock of Cocytus cracked, splintered, and collapsed in on itself, and the Vesuvian Storm thundered and struck at the debris, its viral lightning breaching the boulders depths, where it began to infect the Original Sinner who had been buried beneath the rubble.
The chaos had finally reached its climax point. During the time it took for the Heralds to plead with Disciple to change his mind, for the army of Brainscramblers to arise, and for Singar to defend himself against their psionic attack, the Raging Singularity had come to within a mile of the carnage, and was preparing to attack. With its head fully submerged within the rivers leading to the Lake of Flesh, the crackling sphere of magically empowered protons was utterly invisible within its jaws, the sheer amount of radiation it contained causing a cancerous onset to suddenly and malignantly afflict the area around it with mutagenic disease.
Without hesitation, Taluge-X careened his head in a vicious arc, rose its upper-body up out of the lake and fired a proton-wrapped beam of radioactive ether, that toxified the air as it was incinerated, vaporize all matter in its path, and drain all the electro-psionic energy emitted from the Brainscramblers into its own mass via mass via simple electromagnetic and electromagenetic attraction.
Mt.Initara
The recent turn of events following Aredemos' return to Kilamara had been jarring. He watched a stream of souls go screaming into a green cloud of spiritual malevolence, the connection to his brothers and sisters fading with every second. Then, without warning, he felt his body suddenly start to dematerialize, his black, chitinous exoskeleton flaking and swirling around him in a lightning-charged cyclone. Before he could even take the time to fully comprehend what was happening to him, his view of the desert faded—an infinitesimal moment of darkness—hardly a blink, and his matter coalesced back together, cells and molecules realigning in an instant to reform his physical self. Despite his senses dialing down the event to feel like an elongated stretch of time had elapsed, he knew that what transpired took only a matter of mere seconds, for the feeling was similar to of what he first felt when he was taken to Deimobos for the first time.
This was not Deimobos though, it was a strange, alien world--with towers reaching to the heavens, granting an open view of the stars, and an immaculately sculpted temple built around nature itself. Neither Kilamara nor Deimobos could ever hope to reach this level of pristineness, nor would he ever hope for such ugliness…
In the wake of all the chaos, there was one thing he managed to hold onto, one person he was able to maintain a connection with, and that was Kirri, whose fire stone continued to burn as hot as Deimobos' molten core. Immediately he began to work toward strengthening that connection, a crimson tether slowly forming within his mind, while another part of himself worked toward establishing contact with a different group of beings he had allied with not long after his departure from the moon.
In the meantime, he would devote his attention to surveying as much as he could of Initara, and find out just who this world belonged to, and why he had been brought here by its inhabitants. Upon examining the temple in its entirety, he felt a large part of him pull away—the elegantness of this place repulsed him, its spotlessly shaven pillars and walls were revolting to his six compound eyes; too beautiful, he thought. Nothing like the simple warmth, and natural beauty of the desert. This wasn’t the first time Aredemos had seen such grand architecture though, nor would it be the last; he had engaged in countless campaigns dedicated to destroying places like these – campaigns waged in the name of freedom; freedom from tyranny, freedom from cultural oppression, freedom from the things and people which sought to halt social evolution. Finally, he remembered why he hated this place so. It resembled the old villages of the jungle, where his elders, and their elders before them lived, the very elders who murdered any who sought to expand their minds beyond tribal life, and break free of the archaic traditions which halted not just their progress as a society, but that of their spirits as well.
This was the message he had given to his people before departing Kilamara, and it was a message to be spread by others like him, others brave enough to venture to other worlds.
Freedom and liberation.
He gazed upon the staircase, littered with its thousands of offerings, and wondered if the god they had devoted themselves to was as grateful as he had been for being brought here to destroy it.
The surprise he felt when the mastermind behind his kidnapping dared to show itself couldn’t be measured with words, nor could the anger which flowed through his veins, thought of what he had been taken away from -- the rescue of his people from a demon who sought to steal their souls. All of it returned, and resurfaced, and resurged in his thoughts, the spikes protruding from the sides of his head bristling, and pressing against the back of his skull with the piercing intensity of a beast who had just been threatened.
“Aredemos, for your might the denizens of this world revere you as a god—such is my might to yours.”
What!?
“Moreover, not merely am I, as likewise are you, accountable for the spiritual and cultural maturation of this world, but manifold others.”
Aredemos heard Nenegin's speech and felt his crown bristle, the stench of divine horseshit.
Accountable for this world…?
Thus, if you fail—if your people fail—so, too, do I, in part, fail, and that will not be tolerated,” Nenegin said.
It crawled its way up into his brain where it sought to lay its wretched eggs of deceit, warning him of superior beings who would punish him if he carried on with his actions.
Was that a threat!?
Translucent and nigh immaterial, he circled Aredemos, his frame twice as large, nematocists searching on strands that protruded from beneath his ivory, feather-like scales and hungrily arcing sapphire sparks.
He continued,“In this recent conflict, your indecision and inadequacy forced my hand. I, who create and preserve, was compelled to destroy. Attain vigilance that it may not so be again and do well in the remembrance that even mightier beings preside above us in judgment of our actions. Know also that your people slumber, for it is my will that their souls are cleansed of the taint of foreign planes, and my will that they awaken pure.”
Destroy… Slumber… Awaken... Pure…?
It interferes with MY world, with MY people, and it dares to criticize ME!?
Mt. Initara resembled neither the glimmering radiance of peace, nor did it resonate the bland dreariness of a war-stricken land. It lacked the soothing serenity of the desert villages separating Kilamaros from Kilamari, and moreover it lacked the brutal savagery of the temple of Deimobos, a place built for perfecting one's warcraft. Such a pretty farce, such a pretty, beautifully disgusting farce. It sought to drown him in its grotesquery, clog his veins, toxify his soul, and boil him away in a bubbling vat of BULLSHIT!
He knew what had to be done now, and with his anger now rising to its peak, so too could he feel his connection to Kirri finally form, the spiritual bond between the two Kilamarans at last solidifying, his dark form becoming pale with chilling blue.
“HEAR MY VOICE NOW, BROTHER!”
The pores on his exoskeleton expanded, and through them came an emission of frosty vapor hovering over the whole of his form. Aredemos’ firestone vibrated and released a wave of heat, causing rapid condensation of the frost, and subsequent precipitation across his entire frame, sheathing the Redeemed One within a cryogenic membrane that conformed to every curve and contour of his exoskeleton with no shortage of perfection. His feet reddened with focused flame before slowly rearing up, strands of molten floor stretching away from the footprints he left in his wake; detaching, receding, and enwrapping, and flattening across his ankles. Then, swinging his limbs up overhead, drops of melted ice falling off his shins, producing a fine wet mist, due in-part to its close proximity with his burning toes.
Minerals were siphoned from the floor through the rear limbs which Aredemos held himself upon, every protruding tip on his crown spewing out lava, the streams building greater, stronger pressure with every passing second. He felt the urge to lean forward at the back of his skull, and hastily gripped the floor with crystal claws sprouting from his toes, their jagged tips hooking him him place. The Insect’s size was starting to swell, his exoskeleton cracked, expanded, smoothed out, and accumulated another layer of ice, the process repeating itself until the sheer weight of his form cracked the ground beneath him, his eyes meeting the tips of Mt. Initara’s spires.
“IF YOU STILL SHARE OUR DREAM, THEN RISE, AND FIGHT BACK!”
Crystal scythes burst from his back in a downward-facing arc, splattering the shrine in scorching crimson. The outer-layers of the growths were as hard as corundum, whereas the interior of the crystal was remarkably hollow and empty, though it lacked the distinct darkness permeating the entirety of Kaan and Nenegin’s souls.
“WAKE
The crown he wore proudly on his head - not as a symbol of authority - but of race, the scythes sticking out of his back - not as a symbol of death - but direct channels to his soul, the focused flame at his feet feeling the very same as his people who once frolicked happily through the desert.
“UP!”
His raised feet exploded in a cone of flame and his limbs swung forward with the fury of a titan, the scythes sprayed highly pressurized lava that ignited on a molecular level, burning the air behind and below him, and all the moisture trickling down Mt. Initara into a scalding steam that would choke a lesser being. The impact he made was cataclysmic, the entire floor and everything beneath it cracked and quaked, birthing a thousand microfractures which spread down to the foundation of the stairs behind him, utterly pulverizing the whole area with a single devastating act of power.
Just as quickly as he destabilized the whole mountain did he release an inferno of incinerating flames to engulf the whole mountain, superheating the resulting dust into a storm of molten shards. Exerting his power over the elements of rock and metal, Aredemos pulled the destruction toward his raging form, each rapidly darkening shard compacting against his body to form a secondary layer of tough obsidian armor.
Though viscerally satisfying, the destruction of Mt.Initara was not Aredemos’ main goal. Being the oldest of the Redeemed Ones, Aredemos could do more than simply establish a psychic connection with another Kilamaran. Similar to how Kirri tracked Kaan’s location by forming a physical link to the Hellseeds via his fire stone, Aredemos locked onto Kirri’s exact holding location via spiritual resonance of the stone itself.
His destination now set firmly in his mind, Aredemos’ limbs pressed flat against his frame, the crystal scythe protrusions swelled with excess mass and detonated in a final explosion of concentrated flames. Mere seconds passed and the clouds blurred and dispersed behind him, leaving naught but an explosion of heat and sound in his wake as he rocketed toward the vessel which held Nenegin, his crew, and Kirri aboard.
Edge of The Galaxy
In the farthest, darkest, starless region of outer-space, a thing that was too large to be called a ship, too massive to be called a planet, and too alive to be regarded as anything but an abomination of the cosmos, drifted away from its safe zone of observation. If one had a telescopic instrument, capable of peering out into the depths of the void, the observer would have noticed the beast, whose length stretched the full distance of an entire star system. The skin of the creature was blacker than obsidian, each subtle shift of its extremely long, slime-coated musculature caused starlight to bend, twist, and refract along its grooves, with the most distinct bend being that of three ginormous, leaping, spherical arcs, altogether spanning only three eighths of the being’s total length.
The light which leaped over the beast was not the result of a strange eldritch power it emanated, nor was it the product of photonic distortion. Rather, it was the result of a transparent membrane running the full length of its body, its viscous layers bending to the gravity of three half-visible celestial objects, leaving only their northern hemispheres visible. Embedded in the sub-dermal layers of the pit was a bioluminescent orb that rotated the full circumference of the pit. It acted as an artificial sun, providing the worlds with all the necessities of life, whilst its radiation was dissipated in a combinative effort of the planet’s magnetosphere and the membrane itself, leaving a brief aurora in its wake.
On one world, a metropolis of chaos rose through the clouds, its towering structures resembling something far closer to an obelisk, its surface pocked with hollow openings. Beyond those clouds, a network of spiraling obsidian architecture curved around the obelisk’s base, tunneling underneath the lesser monoliths that surrounded it, and bled a malefic blight. The obelisk’s flat, rectangular roof sheened with dark energy that was conducted via the ground itself, wrapping its way up along the obsidian before it reached an intense point of focus and breached the atmosphere. With an infernal might rivaling that of a malicious elder demon, the dark bolt burnt through the flesh of the beast that held its sun, searing the impact zone to a smoking crisp. Burning its way deeper beneath the skin, a violent series of explosions ensued as the sun ruptured, releasing a spew of liquid-organic matter back across the gap, evaporating as it made contact with the atmosphere, only to condense into a hazardous yellow mist, and precipitated as calamitous a downpour, corroding the obelisk and the city below in a luminous effect.
A global storm engulfed the next planet. The boiling sun was too hot for the ocean, and so when the cold upper-winds met the humid moisture rising off the water’s surface, an intense hurricane was triggered, stirring the tide into an eternal vortex of immense tidal forces. Forests pressed against the terrain as the waves washed over them, pulverizing the mountains and mixing the mud into a murky grain that made the water completely unnavigable. In order to withstand the devastating impacts, the forest trees evolved a flat, curved front, and extremely deep, flexible roots, literally bending to the wave as opposed to trying to face it head on. Hidden among the branches, a flock of avian lizards resembling iguanas used their protruding spines to detect changes in the current, long, narrow frogs remained hooked on bark using specialized claws, and snakes wrapped their long sinuous bodies around the stems and branches, hanging on with their enlarged jaws and microscopic spikes lining their scales. Once the wave passed, the iguanas leaped and spread their limbs, as did the frogs, spreading open a membrane that was as wide as their bodies were long, and the serpents simply straightened their forms and dove straight down into the mud. There they would feast on exposed kelp and algae, nutrient-rich minerals, and each other. Mating would ensue, the burial of their eggs would take place, a climb back up would begin and an awaital at the canopies would commence for the next wave to come, allowing the whole process to begin once more.
Last of the worlds, and easily the most unstable due to requiring not one, not two, not even three, but six lambent suns lashed to one another as a collective show of force. Highly conductive fluids were pulled from their cores by electromagnetic attraction, toward the fiery world, whose pink glow rapidly absorbed the substance into what was not an atmosphere, but a solid orb of astral matter… Pulled onto the physical plane, bound and chained to the realm of direct tangibility, barred from inflicting further astral mayhem, this was the price that had to be paid to contain the threat. Intermittent cracks spread across the orb, allowing the fluid to seep in, causing an intense surge of lightning, followed by cacophonous explosions, and ended with a torrent of ionizing fire, cauterizing the orb and severing the cords that connected it to the six suns.
Slowly, or at least what might have been perceived as slow, given the sheer volume of the visible universe compared to even this creature’s girth, it turned its head toward the light of a white dwarf, exposing its wide, flat mouth that was sheathed in dark, densely padded, slime-coated flesh. Its titanic teeth were mountains unto themselves, glistening and twinkling with fractured light that filtered through a glacial layer of saliva several thousand feet thick. A faint red tint reflected off the ice, mixed with the blinding plasmic glow of the star, and gave way to a pulsing outline moving toward the front of the beast’s mouth.
The white dwarf that the beast was turning toward was none other than the same ball of plasma holding Kilamara and its fiery moon, Deimobos within its orbit.
It would consume them whole… just as it had done to the others!
For its comrades, it would do this!
For its children who had emerged from the soft white pool of primordial reality…
Its jaws opened wide, the thick layers of ice coating its teeth cracked, broke apart and evaporated in Deimobos’ atmosphere, shrouding the world in a steamy haze. The outline in the back of its mouth became more distinct as its jaws parted even wider, revealing a bulbous sphere of white flesh connected to its throat. The bulb blossomed over the moon, fully engulfing and swallowing the satellite into its throat. Mere minutes passed, and Kilamara received the same fate, a great shadow of esophageal flesh taking the entirety of the planet into its body where it and Deimobos would soon become neighbors to the other three worlds.
It would do this and more for the Aptosites, not out of loyalty or submission, but because their ideals were in sync with each other, and because this Living Ark, as it had been called by observers, was given a chance to fulfill its cosmic duty as...
The Cradle of Life
Deep inside that colossal beast, in a part that was retrofitted for the Aptosites strategic planning endeavors, a twelve-foot tall General awaited the revelation of imperative information. His predatory eyes of pitch followed the screen that his good doctor, friend, and partner, Snil monitored.
General Karzar paced back and forth across the black, flesh-striped floor, his tail-fin half-hidden beneath a leathery cape, decorated with several rows of jagged, upward-facing teeth belonging to a variety of sharks. The rigid, wave-patterned fissures of his face, the gills on his neck, and fins protruding from his black, aqueous skin marked him out as a beast of the fathomless depths. Sharp spines ran beneath the skin of his skull, which split open into a nine-pointed, pentagonal crown. Like others before him, like in the oceanic food chain, he had swam all trenches, learned to navigate the currents of Aptosite society, and rose to the top as the apex beast of the organization. The muscles in his face tightened into a feral smile of anticipation, causing the crown to widen and expose his hungering serrated teeth as he awaited the report, a crimson stone held tightly in his webbed right hand.
The thing sitting in front of him, Doctor Snil was by all accounts, an eccentric, and extremely productive scientist of the Aptosites. He had been the leader of Project Forge King, Project Anti-Deity, Project C.I.P.H.E.R., Project T-Error-R, and Project Soulmate that led to the birth of Alucroas.
A fat, rotund thing he was. Snil’s body was covered in black, braided tendril growths emerging from every pore on his body, and were very likely designed by his own hand due to the notable attributes of high prehensility and handy nimbility. The majority of the growths had been tied into a thick ponytail behind his head, revealing his bright, horizontally slit yellow eyes, giving him the vague appearance of an amphibian, which showed more prominently when he pressed his webbed hands against the edge of the control panel, which bore striking resemblance to veterbrae.
Despite the long, arduous wait that Karzar and Snuff had endured, minimal stress had accumulated between the two. Their partnership was a long-lasting one, a bond between knowledge and power that persisted throughout countless millenia. This was but another test, another trial to be overcome. CIPHER would gather the information, and he would deliver on the data he had been ordered to attain, just as he he had done on other worlds. Once it was in their hands, nothing would stop them from ushering in the Great Mergence event, whether it was through imposition or negotiation, nothing would stand between the Aptosites and their promised goal of cosmic wholeness.
Eerily, as if the old gods of space and time were listening on their plightful determination, and patience, the universe answered to the justified call. Scattered across the void of space, the arachnid webs relayed the psychic information sent in by CIPHER, pinging it across the thousands of structures it had deployed on its journey to the Cizran homeworld, and among its countless other ventures of scholarly study.
The great Cradle of Life received the information through its membrane, allowed it to flow down through its nervous system, crossing the gap between a trillion axons, and fill the bowl that had remained empty for far too long. Embedded between the hemispheres of a brain that was situated within a triangle of beating hearts, whose ventricles pumped napier-green fluid into lungs, connected to an even larger network of myelin cords was a single monitor that, like the edge of Snil’s desk, had been framed with the vertebrae of an unknown organism.
Gradually, the data appeared on the screen in bold white letters.
Examination of Cizran Empathic Organ Tissue Complete
Observed Signs of Spiritual Synchronicity Within Samples.
Running Self-Diagnosis of The Samples Combinative Potential.
Self-Diagnosis Complete. The Combinative Potential of Empathic Samples Is Nominal; Possibility of Mergence Event Is 100%.
Sending Data Back To Cradle of Life And Will Await Further Orders.
The good Doctor’s eyes nearly leaped out of their sockets, his many protruding tentacles flailing wildly, whilst Karzar’s eyes sheened with delight, his hand clenching into a fist as he slammed it down atop the control panel, gripping Snil’s shoulder with the other hand. A strange frenzy overtook the pair as both of the Aptosites sizzled with animalistic excitement, their pupils dilating amid a surge of adrenaline flooding their veins. Karzar’s gills flared as he let out a maddening scream of jubilated exaltation from the depths of his throat, chest puffing out as he roared cachinnatiously, jaws parting ever wider with each laughing exhale. Snil’s hidden proboscis burst from his oral cavity, the flexible mouth-appendage ending in a weave of salivating feeler-lips that emitted horrendously intense shriek, followed by a gurglingly ecstatic shout that nearly came across as yowling due to how overtaken he was by the results.
“Ha...ha...ha…” panted Karzar in a darkly prophetic tone, “it is time.”
Rising back to full his height, Karzar turned to face the exit. The door, like the rest of the room, was a living thing. A row of sharp, vertically interlocked teeth, connected to a thick mass of muscular gum-tissue that upon contracting, emitted a series of wet clicks and smacks as the teeth unlocked and the two sections were pulled apart, retreating into twin flesh-slots, leaving only the tips of the incisors visible.
Before he could give Snil his orders and step through the door, an alert appeared on the screen in crimson text, and at the same time the stone in Karzar’s hand began to glow. It was a distress call from Aredemos, the signal transmitting itself through hazy, flickering static. Karzar approached the screen, and held out the stone which began to emit the same static, and after a few seconds of waiting, the screen ceased flickering, providing the Doctor and General with clear resolution of the events as experienced directly through Aredemos’ eyes and ears.
“...”
“We have what we need. Give the order to CIPHER. Tell him he is to trigger the Mergence Event himself. In the meantime set a course for Initara.” Karzar walked through the doorway, into the hall that was a stark contrast to Snil’s laboratory. The floor and ceiling was made of solid, polished gray stone, as were the walls, lined with countless doors resembling the one he had just exited out of, illuminated by lambent eyes embedded in the walls above each entrance.
He was going to help Aredemos with his problem, just as he promised he would, but with CIPHER’s timing, and the fact that the being in question was a Cizran… in this he saw opportunity.
Snil turned in his seat, facing the general with interest. “What do you intend to do, Karzar?”
Pausing for a moment, Karzar began to speak rather matter-of-factly. “The Cizran made claims of responsibility to Aredemos in regard to his people. I want to see if that same sense of purpose extends to his own.”
With that he began to make his way down the hall. Meanwhile, the Cradle of Life, finished with its current task, slipped through space where it would emerge elsewhere.
The Cizran Vessel - Holding Cell
In one instant, his leader had suddenly returned to free Kilamara from the threat of corruption, outright shattering the malignant curse on those who could still be saved. The strange swordsman, whose presence he used as a combat bolster against the Hellseeds suddenly collapsed, a maelstrom of souls flew overhead, into a cloud of tainted energy, and the whole world began to spiral out of control.
He felt his body being pulled apart, but unlike Aredemos who had been transported somewhere else, Kirri felt a glitch in his vision, a static blink in perception, and then everything went back to normal. The taint was gone, Aredemos was gone, Kaan was gone, and the Hellseeds skeletal corpses were gone as well. He was completely and utterly alone, the shock of the experience causing his limbs to turn weak, dropping him to his knees in the sand.
“That couldn’t have all been just a hallucination…” Kirri looked upon his surroundings, then stared down at his arms and hands, still lined with crystal from his fire stone weaponizing itself across his skin, “could it?”
Despite being an elemental warrior of flame, his fire stone was now the only thing keeping his spirit warm in the approaching night, just as it had kept him warm as a child, before he had been purged by Deimobos’ molten purification. The warmth it provided him would spur Kirri back to his feet, where he quickly decided that there could be no answers in this forgotten battlefield, and so he made up his mind to head to the Fire Stone Forest--the place where he had achieved redemption.
There, he would find the answers he sought to his mental dilemma.
Throughout his travel, he recalled the trails he had followed to reach the Fire Stone Tower: the spiders fed on the snakes, and the snakes were fed on by the birds who built their nests upon the towers outcroppings and the many lesser towers that surrounded it.
Again, without conscious thought, Kirri’s body acted, summoning a cloud of sand to drift through the night skies. He would use the element to feel the birds migration path, and by tracing a web in that path, he would be able to pick up on the resonant call of the Tower, beckoning its power to lead him to it.
The closer he got to the tower, the more powerful its resonant energy became. All around him, he could feel the desert start to decay, its sand blackening as night reverted back to dusk, and he could see the tower ahead of him, visible in the orange twilight. He observed the sunlight behave strangely as it touched the tower, an eerie vortex of spiraling rays disappearing into the center, consumed by a force that was not known to Kirri. Within that vortex, he could feel the churning tide of lost souls that had been imprisoned by Kaan, and lamented the thought of sharing that fate.
His instinct screamed at him not approach that corrupt tower, and wisely, he obeyed it, turning in a different direction, only to find it standing mere inches from his face. All of his muscles tensed from the surprise, his body leaping away, poise shifting mid-air before landing in an uneasy defensive stance. A faraway wail of tormented souls seemed to emit from deep within the crystal structure, the collective weight of those grains gathering to form a boulder inexplicably sought to hammer his will into the ground and suppress his spirit.
Sensing Kirri’s weakness, the crystal thorns which sprouted from the Tower’s base shot forth, cutting deep into his limbs, spilling his molten blood across the sand. Then it began to tug with a might that had only been felt by victims of the monstrous desert worms, whose tongues had been lined with hooked teeth to secure their prey in place before swallowing them whole. As Kirri was dragged closer, the trunk cracked and split open, forming a diamond prism-mouth whose interior walls were just as deadly and just as eager to feed as the worms, its crystalline teeth drooling with fresh ectoplasm from its most recent meal.
Despite his fear at being consumed, Kirri felt an unnerving sense of morbid curiosity swell up in the back of his mind, and this curiosity allowed him to see deeper into the mouth of the abyss using his own fire-stone. Fate must have been guiding this bizarre trip, for as he came closer and closer to that soul-stained mouth, time as it existed around him slowed to the pace of a slug. In the farthest depths of the Tower, passed the curtain of shadows obscuring its core, he saw a barely visible, gray stone-colored eye with a black vertical slit watching with profound objectivity. Around it, he could see the universe he existed within, the incomprehensible chaos it traversed—chaos which existed outside of his existence as if the entire cosmos were just a thin membrane that only shielded its inhabitants out of simple deterministic convenience.
The chaos blared like electric static on a broken monitor, and as Kirri strained his mind to focus, he bore witness to countless transparent limbs branching out from the eye’s center. Somewhere, in a far-off corner of the existence, several parallel universes imploded, but before they could reach a point of complete destruction, the thing that had been gripping the cosmos drained it of fuel, thermal energy, digested, and excreted the matter, laying fertile ground for a new cosmos to be born in its place. Afterward, the eye’s color shifted from stony gray to something pink, and its limbs vibrated all at once before returning again to gray. The evolution of his race by the Fire Stones could never prepare him for something like this, and as he continued to watch, he felt the first tear in his sanity start to form…
"KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR LIES!"
A violent impact jolted Kirri from his nightmare, the firestone within his chest shoving his mind back to forefront of reality. The first sight his eyes took in was that of embers, embers caused by metal shards ricocheting off walls and creating sparks. Then, he saw more metal, only it was flat like a wall, dented inwards, and in the center of that dent he saw a hole resembling a flower whose petals had been shredded to ribbons flapping chaotically amidst the fluttering metal shards. Through that hole he heard the militaristic shouts of unknown beings, barking orders at each other in an aggressive, but controlled manner; it seemed they were preparing for combat. That was when he heard something come crashing down from above and land in front of him, on the other side. A flurry of sharp piercing assaulted his ears accompanied by a storm of light. Immediately, he felt something massive stampede across the floor, heard a person’s flesh get impaled, his body slam violently against a wall with a hollow crash, like something was demolished. Last came a scream and an enormous shock-wave as whatever was attacking the beings on the other side got blasted back against the wall in-turn.
Trying to move, Kirri noticed his arms and all of his legs were being restrained by large metal cuffs. A prison...? Thought the Kilamaran, his eyes widening with panic as he finally began to realize where he was. I must have been captured by that damned lich, and that nightmare must have been his way of breaking me…
Now he knew what was going on here. Those things on the other side were servants of Kaan, and the thing on the other side of the wall must have been trying to free itself. It was in this moment, that he felt a strong feeling from his fire stone, and legitimate fury welled up from within, causing a crystallic blade to burst through the flesh of his forearm, severing one of his restraints. His other limbs rose by a multitude of degrees, incinerating the remaining at which point his whole body lifted up off the ground, accumulated even more pressure, and rocketed toward the aperture.
An interval of nanoseconds occurred between the Kilamaran throwing his legs forward, raising his chest, inadvertently scorching several Cizrans in the process of breaking his flight, and being blindsided by the sight of Aredemos in the midst of combat. Without pause for thought, the Cizran soldiers turned their sights on Kirri, aiming their pulse rifles, the barrels of which bore same menacing ursine grin as the masks they wore, prompting a defensive posture from the Insect Warrior.
“Who are you people,” Kirri demanded furiously, “and more importantly, why are we here, Aredemos?”
Not wanting to let the chaos escalate any further than it already had, Nenegin spoke in an attempt at bringing reason to the forefront, “Your god failed to fulfill his obligations to his people, so I stepped in to rectify his mistakes.”
“God?” Aredemos remarked, “That was quite the farce you put on, Cizran.”
For a moment, Kirri’s arms lowered, head tilting in slight confusion as Aredemos carried on. “Gods demand worship, I demand freedom for myself, my people, and any others who seek liberation from people like you.”
“Be careful how you choose your next words, Kilamaran.” Nenegin warned, the rifles turning back in his direction.
Unease filled the room with those final words, the seconds seeming like minutes, and the minutes seeming like hours until the very fabric of time and space literally split open, and Kirri was the only person facing the correct window to see the bulbous orb that was slowly emerging from the rift.
Were Aredemos’ insectoid mouth capable of forming a grin, it just might have, for while he didn’t see the thing come out of the rift, he could feel its presence vibrating through his fire stone, at which point he began to speak again.
“You warned me that there were higher beings presiding over us, Cizran.” The scythes sticking out of Aredemos back extended back, piercing the hull, and causing a small vacuum to form behind him. “It’s time for you to meet them.”
Before Nenegin could reply, the extensions branched out in a spiraling disc-pattern, cleaving through the entirety of the hull in a matter of seconds, separating the control room from the bridge, exposing them to the vacuum and throwing the ship into a violent spin.
Follow me! Came Aredemos’ words to Kirri, communicating telepathically via the stones in their chests.
Kirri was frozen in place from what he had just seen. After the nightmare he had experienced, he wasn’t particularly fond of people talking in his head, but Aredemos had rescued him, and so he forced himself out of his shock and followed him out through the hole, careful not to collide with the soldiers who were sucked out into space. Looking behind him, he saw that Nenegin had used his tentacles to maintain a firm grip on the stair-case, and to Kirri’s surprise, Aredemos sealed the aperture via the same method he had used to form the cut: his crystals, flying over to the roof, Kirri saw that thing again, this time able to see its teeth which were like mountains unto themselves.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!? Kirri cried out in panic.
It’s our ride. Aredemos replied.
Ride!? Kirri continued, flabbergasted. That thing is going to EAT us.
It will swallow us whole. Now hang on!
The canvas of the cosmos became a starlit blur for Kirri as the chunk of metal that he and Aredemos were clinging accelerated its spin, their senses of gravity shifting immensely as the white sphere blossomed overhead and brought them into its depths.
Inside The Cradle of Life
“Welcome back, Aredemos.” The crystal seal on chunk of ship Nenegin was trapped inside had broken apart, allowing him to view a room reminiscent of the inside of a colossal rib-cage, lungs, heart, liver and all.
Standing at the far end of the room, his back facing an enormous spinal column, the cords of which thrummed with nerve pulses was General Karzar in all his overzealous glory. Standing next to him was the good Doctor Snil, whose eyes were only half-open, quietly observing the Cizran as he stepped out of what may as well have amounted to a hermit shell. “As for you, Nenegin, I am glad you survived the trip here.
Stepping forward, Karzar commenced his speech. “Today marks the beginning of a return to that which is fulfilled. For too long, have the Cizrans wandered the galaxy without a true identity, oppressing and limiting the growth of others along the way.”
“More to the point, the oppression of other races, the domination and enslavement of those races can most certainly be chalked up to practical economics. One race works until no more work can be done, is buried then replaced by the next, or as you surely observed with Cizran criminals who go against the established order… stuffed into those wretched sarcophagi to be drained of what little lifeforce they
have left so that their ships will possess the fuel needed to make the hop to the next planet deemed ready for “resource” gathering.
“This is something even I can understand and appreciate, even if I personally disagree with the method.”
“However, this… incessant need for body-modification, it reeks of desperate necessity. It reeks of familiarity, and the hopeless futility, the hopelessly futile incisions made by scalpels and lasers, the breaking of bones to extend your height, the steroid injections to expand your might, genetic modifications performed upon your flesh to bring you that much further from death. It cries for declaration, cries for self-examination, and it sobs endlessly in projected degradation, because it cannot ever hope to be one whilst knowing that the ONE exists as soulfully shattered glass.
"How can something so incomplete ever hope to be whole?”
“And you intend to make my people whole?” Nenegin asked challengingly. The beast must have lost his mind to think he could take on the Cizran Empire.
“It is inevitable even without us headstarting the event, I merely wanted you see it for yourself, and decide whether or not you wished to partake in your kind’s… reunion.”
“In the end, Cizran, Kilamaran, and Aptosite culture will benefit from this reunion, for we do this not out of judgment, pity, or sympathy, but rather because we know their pain.”At that point, a single ocular descended from the ceiling and projected a holographic display of everything that their agent was experiencing, using the satellites it had deployed as a transmission medium.
Cizra Su-Lahn
Zzz…
Z-z-Z………
z-Z-z...
Z-z-Zeptir
Z-z-Zeptir
z-Z-zeptir
ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN!
I am…
I am...
I am…
Am I…
I am...
I am NOT!
I am…
I AM NOT!
I am...
I… sliced through this white garment and exposed my mantid face, my mantid claws, and hands. I stand tall and look down at my segmented exoskeletal body, and view the long legs which lie flat against my belly, hidden among a hundred other legs which start to carry me forward, like a train.
I am…
Z-z-Zeptir
I am…
I AM NOT!
I am… C-
I am…
I am NOT.
I… broke out of my research office through the window, crawling up the wall on these centipede legs of mine, which protruded from my sides. They are a part of me, but I… I...ME...I AM NOT. I see between my legs, and there lie my spinnerets, spinning my silken web around this tower, this tower that I am building into a tower of psychic power. Through my strands, through my webbing, through telepathic glue… I broadcast my message to the Cradle of Life.
I am…
I am… NOT!
I am… CI-
I am…
I am NOT.
I… turned my head to gaze upon my back and remembered that I had tentacles. Three rows of tentacles, just like an octopus’ tentacles. Three rows spaced evenly apart across my back in pairs of three… I remembered the briefing given to me by the fat Doctor Snil. His tentacles were tingling, flailing about with the same wild energy I had come to recognize as excitement. He was always excited about everything, even when he appeared not to be excited, the wild, chimpish aura he exuded lacked an exhaust valve, trapping the fumes inside him and allowing no escape. Because of this he always seemed to quiver madly, as if in pain, but I knew it was just the body’s method of coping with the mind’s insanity.
He reached out with his proboscian mouth and touched me gently between the eyes, an act of affection I could not even so much as think to reciprocate, let alone react to. “For this mission, you will once again be using self-induced psycho-hypnosis to infiltrate the Cizran Empire, and will assume the identity of Zeptir -- Zeptir Zukrinchen, a Cizran scientist, scholar, and biologist.” Removing his feeler lips, the Doctor continued to speak to me, his tone unusually sincere, given his tendency toward shrewd speaking when it came to mission briefings.
“As Zeptir, your mission will be to investigate the Cizran Empire. More specifically, Zeptir…(...I AM NOT!...) your job will be to look into the Cizran psychic link. Discover it’s source, and figure out a way to combine them into one. As always, we will most certainly be on the receiving end of hatred from those who fail to complete the Mergence and end up retaining their individuality, but we do this for the benefit of all, and therefore it must be done.”
I am…
I AM NOT!
I am… CIP-
I am…
I am NOT.
I became… invisible. I hid in plain sight, I hid by bending the light, but not the real light. I bent my inner-light, my skinner-light, I became as light as the path was under the sun, I became as dark as the evening was under no one. I became as filled with color, but only enough color to stay black, only enough color to crawl along the cracks which spread across my skin, leading to the hovering rickshaw containing the things that would bring the Cizrans back to…
I am…
I am NOT!
I am… CIPH-
I am… NOT.
I...sped toward it on all my legs as fast I could, as fast as I should, as fast as I wouldn’t dare had it not been for the orders given to me. I do not care about these people, I do not care about this mission, I am not sure if I care about my own life, but what I know is that
I will do as I am… I will do as I am NOT.
I will do…
I am…
I am NOT!
I am… CIPHE-
I am… NOT.
I… was close, but now I am far away once again. I can feel my frustration settling in, I must get rid of this disguise, I must get rid of the universe’s self-imposed demise. I must become myself again, I must fulfill the coldly passionate demands imposed upon me by my ego. I must act on the selfishly selfless needs that came with my inception, and infused my genes with unrelenting aggression I neither know nor understand, but simply allow that need to guide my actions. I am… and I am.... And I...am! I...I AM…
I am… A Counter
I am… An Intelligence
I am… A Procurer
I am… A Holistic
I am… Engineered
I am… A Reconnaissance Operative Dedicated To Carrying Out The Clandestine Goals Of The Cosmos, That Will Lead To The Universe Becoming Whole Again.
And I Do Not Care About Any Of It, Not Out Of Choice, Or By Design, But By Consequence Of Existence. My True Personality Is Unknown To Me, Hidden Beneath Layers of Psycho-Genetic Code.
I am...
C.
I.
P.
H.
E.
R.
I… felt the cosmos split open, and from that split, I knew my superiors had arrived to assess my progress. They wanted to watch the Great Mergence unfold before their eyes. I cannot disappoint myself.
I… spun my spinnerets, leaving silky strands of webbing everywhere my destination took me. It is all part of the plan, the plan that will entrap these Cizrans within their own personal web of truth. Deep within my mind, I detect an eagerness--an eagerness to become one with this race--the thought of it makes my antennae undergo a mild spasm, and in my head I can hear a ring of static as the two realities of what I am and what I am not clash against each other.
Anticipation.
Communion.
GATHER TOGETHER IN THE GREAT CLOUD OF NOT!
I… became compromised. A quarter of a second passes, and during that quarter of a second, my mind is frozen in time. My body fails to carry itself forward, I derail in the wrong direction, lose my footing, and find myself caught between an alley, a flight of stairs, and a lamp-lit corridor. It is only thanks to my adaptive camouflage that my head matches the steps, my torso blends with the stones of the pavement, and my twin scorpion tails glow lambently with the lamps. By the time I resume my chase, the whole area is covered in sticky strands, and as I progress further, I can feel more and more thoughts, more and more feelings traveling through those strands.
I… see it once again, moving through a large group, near Cizra Su-Lahn’s capital center. I can smell those organs, I can hear the faintest spark of a former existence emanating from within. It is a fragment, a splinter of wood from a tree which breaches the clouds and touches other worlds beyond this one. It will be one, and so I will I, but I will NOT be one with them, for I AM NOT one of them. Passion consumes my chase, and with reckless abandon, I charge through the crowd, not caring who I trample under my hundreds of legs, or pierce with my claws, or entangle in my path.
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME TO ME!
I… shriek my chimeric shriek, and with the legs pressed up against my belly, I decompress them and leap over the crowd, crushing those I land ontop of whilst striking out at those who would halt my advance, even if it be out of simple shock and awe. Another leap and some die, another leap, and others live, another leap, and they finally realize that there is no stopping me from reaching the finish line.
I…
I did not hesitate this time. I reared back my left stinger, stabbed it through the curtain concealing those jars, and without pause this time, without confusion as to what I AM (CIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHEEEEEEEEEEEERR), I increased time’s flow.
I did not stick around for what was about to happen, I fled for highest point, crawling on buildings, scaling scrapers and statues and monuments. Through the webbing I watch structures rapidly start to rust and decay, in bodies I witness the breakdown of artificially made flesh and bone, stripped away until there is naught but a skeleton coughing up its soul and becoming caught in the trap. Thousands of fragments, thousands of shards, thousands of bees, thousands of false mes go shooting through the silk, shooting back to the womb, back to beginning, before they were brought to this diminutive state.
Wrapped in this cocoon so saturated with sibling spirits, I will watch for the first time as the Great Mergence unfolds before my eyes. Whatever will emerge, I do not know, and I do not care, for I am NOT a Cizran.
I am... an Aptosite.
The recent turn of events following Aredemos' return to Kilamara had been jarring. He watched a stream of souls go screaming into a green cloud of spiritual malevolence, the connection to his brothers and sisters fading with every second. Then, without warning, he felt his body suddenly start to dematerialize, his black, chitinous exoskeleton flaking and swirling around him in a lightning-charged cyclone. Before he could even take the time to fully comprehend what was happening to him, his view of the desert faded—an infinitesimal moment of darkness—hardly a blink, and his matter coalesced back together, cells and molecules realigning in an instant to reform his physical self. Despite his senses dialing down the event to feel like an elongated stretch of time had elapsed, he knew that what transpired took only a matter of mere seconds, for the feeling was similar to of what he first felt when he was taken to Deimobos for the first time.
This was not Deimobos though, it was a strange, alien world--with towers reaching to the heavens, granting an open view of the stars, and an immaculately sculpted temple built around nature itself. Neither Kilamara nor Deimobos could ever hope to reach this level of pristineness, nor would he ever hope for such ugliness…
In the wake of all the chaos, there was one thing he managed to hold onto, one person he was able to maintain a connection with, and that was Kirri, whose fire stone continued to burn as hot as Deimobos' molten core. Immediately he began to work toward strengthening that connection, a crimson tether slowly forming within his mind, while another part of himself worked toward establishing contact with a different group of beings he had allied with not long after his departure from the moon.
In the meantime, he would devote his attention to surveying as much as he could of Initara, and find out just who this world belonged to, and why he had been brought here by its inhabitants. Upon examining the temple in its entirety, he felt a large part of him pull away—the elegantness of this place repulsed him, its spotlessly shaven pillars and walls were revolting to his six compound eyes; too beautiful, he thought. Nothing like the simple warmth, and natural beauty of the desert. This wasn’t the first time Aredemos had seen such grand architecture though, nor would it be the last; he had engaged in countless campaigns dedicated to destroying places like these – campaigns waged in the name of freedom; freedom from tyranny, freedom from cultural oppression, freedom from the things and people which sought to halt social evolution. Finally, he remembered why he hated this place so. It resembled the old villages of the jungle, where his elders, and their elders before them lived, the very elders who murdered any who sought to expand their minds beyond tribal life, and break free of the archaic traditions which halted not just their progress as a society, but that of their spirits as well.
This was the message he had given to his people before departing Kilamara, and it was a message to be spread by others like him, others brave enough to venture to other worlds.
Freedom and liberation.
He gazed upon the staircase, littered with its thousands of offerings, and wondered if the god they had devoted themselves to was as grateful as he had been for being brought here to destroy it.
The surprise he felt when the mastermind behind his kidnapping dared to show itself couldn’t be measured with words, nor could the anger which flowed through his veins, thought of what he had been taken away from -- the rescue of his people from a demon who sought to steal their souls. All of it returned, and resurfaced, and resurged in his thoughts, the spikes protruding from the sides of his head bristling, and pressing against the back of his skull with the piercing intensity of a beast who had just been threatened.
“Aredemos, for your might the denizens of this world revere you as a god—such is my might to yours.”
What!?
“Moreover, not merely am I, as likewise are you, accountable for the spiritual and cultural maturation of this world, but manifold others.”
Aredemos heard Nenegin's speech and felt his crown bristle, the stench of divine horseshit.
Accountable for this world…?
Thus, if you fail—if your people fail—so, too, do I, in part, fail, and that will not be tolerated,” Nenegin said.
It crawled its way up into his brain where it sought to lay its wretched eggs of deceit, warning him of superior beings who would punish him if he carried on with his actions.
Was that a threat!?
Translucent and nigh immaterial, he circled Aredemos, his frame twice as large, nematocists searching on strands that protruded from beneath his ivory, feather-like scales and hungrily arcing sapphire sparks.
He continued,“In this recent conflict, your indecision and inadequacy forced my hand. I, who create and preserve, was compelled to destroy. Attain vigilance that it may not so be again and do well in the remembrance that even mightier beings preside above us in judgment of our actions. Know also that your people slumber, for it is my will that their souls are cleansed of the taint of foreign planes, and my will that they awaken pure.”
Destroy… Slumber… Awaken... Pure…?
It interferes with MY world, with MY people, and it dares to criticize ME!?
Mt. Initara resembled neither the glimmering radiance of peace, nor did it resonate the bland dreariness of a war-stricken land. It lacked the soothing serenity of the desert villages separating Kilamaros from Kilamari, and moreover it lacked the brutal savagery of the temple of Deimobos, a place built for perfecting one's warcraft. Such a pretty farce, such a pretty, beautifully disgusting farce. It sought to drown him in its grotesquery, clog his veins, toxify his soul, and boil him away in a bubbling vat of BULLSHIT!
He knew what had to be done now, and with his anger now rising to its peak, so too could he feel his connection to Kirri finally form, the spiritual bond between the two Kilamarans at last solidifying, his dark form becoming pale with chilling blue.
“HEAR MY VOICE NOW, BROTHER!”
The pores on his exoskeleton expanded, and through them came an emission of frosty vapor hovering over the whole of his form. Aredemos’ firestone vibrated and released a wave of heat, causing rapid condensation of the frost, and subsequent precipitation across his entire frame, sheathing the Redeemed One within a cryogenic membrane that conformed to every curve and contour of his exoskeleton with no shortage of perfection. His feet reddened with focused flame before slowly rearing up, strands of molten floor stretching away from the footprints he left in his wake; detaching, receding, and enwrapping, and flattening across his ankles. Then, swinging his limbs up overhead, drops of melted ice falling off his shins, producing a fine wet mist, due in-part to its close proximity with his burning toes.
Minerals were siphoned from the floor through the rear limbs which Aredemos held himself upon, every protruding tip on his crown spewing out lava, the streams building greater, stronger pressure with every passing second. He felt the urge to lean forward at the back of his skull, and hastily gripped the floor with crystal claws sprouting from his toes, their jagged tips hooking him him place. The Insect’s size was starting to swell, his exoskeleton cracked, expanded, smoothed out, and accumulated another layer of ice, the process repeating itself until the sheer weight of his form cracked the ground beneath him, his eyes meeting the tips of Mt. Initara’s spires.
“IF YOU STILL SHARE OUR DREAM, THEN RISE, AND FIGHT BACK!”
Crystal scythes burst from his back in a downward-facing arc, splattering the shrine in scorching crimson. The outer-layers of the growths were as hard as corundum, whereas the interior of the crystal was remarkably hollow and empty, though it lacked the distinct darkness permeating the entirety of Kaan and Nenegin’s souls.
“WAKE
The crown he wore proudly on his head - not as a symbol of authority - but of race, the scythes sticking out of his back - not as a symbol of death - but direct channels to his soul, the focused flame at his feet feeling the very same as his people who once frolicked happily through the desert.
“UP!”
His raised feet exploded in a cone of flame and his limbs swung forward with the fury of a titan, the scythes sprayed highly pressurized lava that ignited on a molecular level, burning the air behind and below him, and all the moisture trickling down Mt. Initara into a scalding steam that would choke a lesser being. The impact he made was cataclysmic, the entire floor and everything beneath it cracked and quaked, birthing a thousand microfractures which spread down to the foundation of the stairs behind him, utterly pulverizing the whole area with a single devastating act of power.
Just as quickly as he destabilized the whole mountain did he release an inferno of incinerating flames to engulf the whole mountain, superheating the resulting dust into a storm of molten shards. Exerting his power over the elements of rock and metal, Aredemos pulled the destruction toward his raging form, each rapidly darkening shard compacting against his body to form a secondary layer of tough obsidian armor.
Though viscerally satisfying, the destruction of Mt.Initara was not Aredemos’ main goal. Being the oldest of the Redeemed Ones, Aredemos could do more than simply establish a psychic connection with another Kilamaran. Similar to how Kirri tracked Kaan’s location by forming a physical link to the Hellseeds via his fire stone, Aredemos locked onto Kirri’s exact holding location via spiritual resonance of the stone itself.
His destination now set firmly in his mind, Aredemos’ limbs pressed flat against his frame, the crystal scythe protrusions swelled with excess mass and detonated in a final explosion of concentrated flames. Mere seconds passed and the clouds blurred and dispersed behind him, leaving naught but an explosion of heat and sound in his wake as he rocketed toward the vessel which held Nenegin, his crew, and Kirri aboard.
Edge of The Galaxy
In the farthest, darkest, starless region of outer-space, a thing that was too large to be called a ship, too massive to be called a planet, and too alive to be regarded as anything but an abomination of the cosmos, drifted away from its safe zone of observation. If one had a telescopic instrument, capable of peering out into the depths of the void, the observer would have noticed the beast, whose length stretched the full distance of an entire star system. The skin of the creature was blacker than obsidian, each subtle shift of its extremely long, slime-coated musculature caused starlight to bend, twist, and refract along its grooves, with the most distinct bend being that of three ginormous, leaping, spherical arcs, altogether spanning only three eighths of the being’s total length.
The light which leaped over the beast was not the result of a strange eldritch power it emanated, nor was it the product of photonic distortion. Rather, it was the result of a transparent membrane running the full length of its body, its viscous layers bending to the gravity of three half-visible celestial objects, leaving only their northern hemispheres visible. Embedded in the sub-dermal layers of the pit was a bioluminescent orb that rotated the full circumference of the pit. It acted as an artificial sun, providing the worlds with all the necessities of life, whilst its radiation was dissipated in a combinative effort of the planet’s magnetosphere and the membrane itself, leaving a brief aurora in its wake.
On one world, a metropolis of chaos rose through the clouds, its towering structures resembling something far closer to an obelisk, its surface pocked with hollow openings. Beyond those clouds, a network of spiraling obsidian architecture curved around the obelisk’s base, tunneling underneath the lesser monoliths that surrounded it, and bled a malefic blight. The obelisk’s flat, rectangular roof sheened with dark energy that was conducted via the ground itself, wrapping its way up along the obsidian before it reached an intense point of focus and breached the atmosphere. With an infernal might rivaling that of a malicious elder demon, the dark bolt burnt through the flesh of the beast that held its sun, searing the impact zone to a smoking crisp. Burning its way deeper beneath the skin, a violent series of explosions ensued as the sun ruptured, releasing a spew of liquid-organic matter back across the gap, evaporating as it made contact with the atmosphere, only to condense into a hazardous yellow mist, and precipitated as calamitous a downpour, corroding the obelisk and the city below in a luminous effect.
A global storm engulfed the next planet. The boiling sun was too hot for the ocean, and so when the cold upper-winds met the humid moisture rising off the water’s surface, an intense hurricane was triggered, stirring the tide into an eternal vortex of immense tidal forces. Forests pressed against the terrain as the waves washed over them, pulverizing the mountains and mixing the mud into a murky grain that made the water completely unnavigable. In order to withstand the devastating impacts, the forest trees evolved a flat, curved front, and extremely deep, flexible roots, literally bending to the wave as opposed to trying to face it head on. Hidden among the branches, a flock of avian lizards resembling iguanas used their protruding spines to detect changes in the current, long, narrow frogs remained hooked on bark using specialized claws, and snakes wrapped their long sinuous bodies around the stems and branches, hanging on with their enlarged jaws and microscopic spikes lining their scales. Once the wave passed, the iguanas leaped and spread their limbs, as did the frogs, spreading open a membrane that was as wide as their bodies were long, and the serpents simply straightened their forms and dove straight down into the mud. There they would feast on exposed kelp and algae, nutrient-rich minerals, and each other. Mating would ensue, the burial of their eggs would take place, a climb back up would begin and an awaital at the canopies would commence for the next wave to come, allowing the whole process to begin once more.
Last of the worlds, and easily the most unstable due to requiring not one, not two, not even three, but six lambent suns lashed to one another as a collective show of force. Highly conductive fluids were pulled from their cores by electromagnetic attraction, toward the fiery world, whose pink glow rapidly absorbed the substance into what was not an atmosphere, but a solid orb of astral matter… Pulled onto the physical plane, bound and chained to the realm of direct tangibility, barred from inflicting further astral mayhem, this was the price that had to be paid to contain the threat. Intermittent cracks spread across the orb, allowing the fluid to seep in, causing an intense surge of lightning, followed by cacophonous explosions, and ended with a torrent of ionizing fire, cauterizing the orb and severing the cords that connected it to the six suns.
Slowly, or at least what might have been perceived as slow, given the sheer volume of the visible universe compared to even this creature’s girth, it turned its head toward the light of a white dwarf, exposing its wide, flat mouth that was sheathed in dark, densely padded, slime-coated flesh. Its titanic teeth were mountains unto themselves, glistening and twinkling with fractured light that filtered through a glacial layer of saliva several thousand feet thick. A faint red tint reflected off the ice, mixed with the blinding plasmic glow of the star, and gave way to a pulsing outline moving toward the front of the beast’s mouth.
The white dwarf that the beast was turning toward was none other than the same ball of plasma holding Kilamara and its fiery moon, Deimobos within its orbit.
It would consume them whole… just as it had done to the others!
For its comrades, it would do this!
For its children who had emerged from the soft white pool of primordial reality…
Its jaws opened wide, the thick layers of ice coating its teeth cracked, broke apart and evaporated in Deimobos’ atmosphere, shrouding the world in a steamy haze. The outline in the back of its mouth became more distinct as its jaws parted even wider, revealing a bulbous sphere of white flesh connected to its throat. The bulb blossomed over the moon, fully engulfing and swallowing the satellite into its throat. Mere minutes passed, and Kilamara received the same fate, a great shadow of esophageal flesh taking the entirety of the planet into its body where it and Deimobos would soon become neighbors to the other three worlds.
It would do this and more for the Aptosites, not out of loyalty or submission, but because their ideals were in sync with each other, and because this Living Ark, as it had been called by observers, was given a chance to fulfill its cosmic duty as...
The Cradle of Life
Deep inside that colossal beast, in a part that was retrofitted for the Aptosites strategic planning endeavors, a twelve-foot tall General awaited the revelation of imperative information. His predatory eyes of pitch followed the screen that his good doctor, friend, and partner, Snil monitored.
General Karzar paced back and forth across the black, flesh-striped floor, his tail-fin half-hidden beneath a leathery cape, decorated with several rows of jagged, upward-facing teeth belonging to a variety of sharks. The rigid, wave-patterned fissures of his face, the gills on his neck, and fins protruding from his black, aqueous skin marked him out as a beast of the fathomless depths. Sharp spines ran beneath the skin of his skull, which split open into a nine-pointed, pentagonal crown. Like others before him, like in the oceanic food chain, he had swam all trenches, learned to navigate the currents of Aptosite society, and rose to the top as the apex beast of the organization. The muscles in his face tightened into a feral smile of anticipation, causing the crown to widen and expose his hungering serrated teeth as he awaited the report, a crimson stone held tightly in his webbed right hand.
The thing sitting in front of him, Doctor Snil was by all accounts, an eccentric, and extremely productive scientist of the Aptosites. He had been the leader of Project Forge King, Project Anti-Deity, Project C.I.P.H.E.R., Project T-Error-R, and Project Soulmate that led to the birth of Alucroas.
A fat, rotund thing he was. Snil’s body was covered in black, braided tendril growths emerging from every pore on his body, and were very likely designed by his own hand due to the notable attributes of high prehensility and handy nimbility. The majority of the growths had been tied into a thick ponytail behind his head, revealing his bright, horizontally slit yellow eyes, giving him the vague appearance of an amphibian, which showed more prominently when he pressed his webbed hands against the edge of the control panel, which bore striking resemblance to veterbrae.
Despite the long, arduous wait that Karzar and Snuff had endured, minimal stress had accumulated between the two. Their partnership was a long-lasting one, a bond between knowledge and power that persisted throughout countless millenia. This was but another test, another trial to be overcome. CIPHER would gather the information, and he would deliver on the data he had been ordered to attain, just as he he had done on other worlds. Once it was in their hands, nothing would stop them from ushering in the Great Mergence event, whether it was through imposition or negotiation, nothing would stand between the Aptosites and their promised goal of cosmic wholeness.
Eerily, as if the old gods of space and time were listening on their plightful determination, and patience, the universe answered to the justified call. Scattered across the void of space, the arachnid webs relayed the psychic information sent in by CIPHER, pinging it across the thousands of structures it had deployed on its journey to the Cizran homeworld, and among its countless other ventures of scholarly study.
The great Cradle of Life received the information through its membrane, allowed it to flow down through its nervous system, crossing the gap between a trillion axons, and fill the bowl that had remained empty for far too long. Embedded between the hemispheres of a brain that was situated within a triangle of beating hearts, whose ventricles pumped napier-green fluid into lungs, connected to an even larger network of myelin cords was a single monitor that, like the edge of Snil’s desk, had been framed with the vertebrae of an unknown organism.
Gradually, the data appeared on the screen in bold white letters.
Examination of Cizran Empathic Organ Tissue Complete
Observed Signs of Spiritual Synchronicity Within Samples.
Running Self-Diagnosis of The Samples Combinative Potential.
Self-Diagnosis Complete. The Combinative Potential of Empathic Samples Is Nominal; Possibility of Mergence Event Is 100%.
Sending Data Back To Cradle of Life And Will Await Further Orders.
The good Doctor’s eyes nearly leaped out of their sockets, his many protruding tentacles flailing wildly, whilst Karzar’s eyes sheened with delight, his hand clenching into a fist as he slammed it down atop the control panel, gripping Snil’s shoulder with the other hand. A strange frenzy overtook the pair as both of the Aptosites sizzled with animalistic excitement, their pupils dilating amid a surge of adrenaline flooding their veins. Karzar’s gills flared as he let out a maddening scream of jubilated exaltation from the depths of his throat, chest puffing out as he roared cachinnatiously, jaws parting ever wider with each laughing exhale. Snil’s hidden proboscis burst from his oral cavity, the flexible mouth-appendage ending in a weave of salivating feeler-lips that emitted horrendously intense shriek, followed by a gurglingly ecstatic shout that nearly came across as yowling due to how overtaken he was by the results.
“Ha...ha...ha…” panted Karzar in a darkly prophetic tone, “it is time.”
Rising back to full his height, Karzar turned to face the exit. The door, like the rest of the room, was a living thing. A row of sharp, vertically interlocked teeth, connected to a thick mass of muscular gum-tissue that upon contracting, emitted a series of wet clicks and smacks as the teeth unlocked and the two sections were pulled apart, retreating into twin flesh-slots, leaving only the tips of the incisors visible.
Before he could give Snil his orders and step through the door, an alert appeared on the screen in crimson text, and at the same time the stone in Karzar’s hand began to glow. It was a distress call from Aredemos, the signal transmitting itself through hazy, flickering static. Karzar approached the screen, and held out the stone which began to emit the same static, and after a few seconds of waiting, the screen ceased flickering, providing the Doctor and General with clear resolution of the events as experienced directly through Aredemos’ eyes and ears.
“...”
“We have what we need. Give the order to CIPHER. Tell him he is to trigger the Mergence Event himself. In the meantime set a course for Initara.” Karzar walked through the doorway, into the hall that was a stark contrast to Snil’s laboratory. The floor and ceiling was made of solid, polished gray stone, as were the walls, lined with countless doors resembling the one he had just exited out of, illuminated by lambent eyes embedded in the walls above each entrance.
He was going to help Aredemos with his problem, just as he promised he would, but with CIPHER’s timing, and the fact that the being in question was a Cizran… in this he saw opportunity.
Snil turned in his seat, facing the general with interest. “What do you intend to do, Karzar?”
Pausing for a moment, Karzar began to speak rather matter-of-factly. “The Cizran made claims of responsibility to Aredemos in regard to his people. I want to see if that same sense of purpose extends to his own.”
With that he began to make his way down the hall. Meanwhile, the Cradle of Life, finished with its current task, slipped through space where it would emerge elsewhere.
The Cizran Vessel - Holding Cell
In one instant, his leader had suddenly returned to free Kilamara from the threat of corruption, outright shattering the malignant curse on those who could still be saved. The strange swordsman, whose presence he used as a combat bolster against the Hellseeds suddenly collapsed, a maelstrom of souls flew overhead, into a cloud of tainted energy, and the whole world began to spiral out of control.
He felt his body being pulled apart, but unlike Aredemos who had been transported somewhere else, Kirri felt a glitch in his vision, a static blink in perception, and then everything went back to normal. The taint was gone, Aredemos was gone, Kaan was gone, and the Hellseeds skeletal corpses were gone as well. He was completely and utterly alone, the shock of the experience causing his limbs to turn weak, dropping him to his knees in the sand.
“That couldn’t have all been just a hallucination…” Kirri looked upon his surroundings, then stared down at his arms and hands, still lined with crystal from his fire stone weaponizing itself across his skin, “could it?”
Despite being an elemental warrior of flame, his fire stone was now the only thing keeping his spirit warm in the approaching night, just as it had kept him warm as a child, before he had been purged by Deimobos’ molten purification. The warmth it provided him would spur Kirri back to his feet, where he quickly decided that there could be no answers in this forgotten battlefield, and so he made up his mind to head to the Fire Stone Forest--the place where he had achieved redemption.
There, he would find the answers he sought to his mental dilemma.
Throughout his travel, he recalled the trails he had followed to reach the Fire Stone Tower: the spiders fed on the snakes, and the snakes were fed on by the birds who built their nests upon the towers outcroppings and the many lesser towers that surrounded it.
Again, without conscious thought, Kirri’s body acted, summoning a cloud of sand to drift through the night skies. He would use the element to feel the birds migration path, and by tracing a web in that path, he would be able to pick up on the resonant call of the Tower, beckoning its power to lead him to it.
The closer he got to the tower, the more powerful its resonant energy became. All around him, he could feel the desert start to decay, its sand blackening as night reverted back to dusk, and he could see the tower ahead of him, visible in the orange twilight. He observed the sunlight behave strangely as it touched the tower, an eerie vortex of spiraling rays disappearing into the center, consumed by a force that was not known to Kirri. Within that vortex, he could feel the churning tide of lost souls that had been imprisoned by Kaan, and lamented the thought of sharing that fate.
His instinct screamed at him not approach that corrupt tower, and wisely, he obeyed it, turning in a different direction, only to find it standing mere inches from his face. All of his muscles tensed from the surprise, his body leaping away, poise shifting mid-air before landing in an uneasy defensive stance. A faraway wail of tormented souls seemed to emit from deep within the crystal structure, the collective weight of those grains gathering to form a boulder inexplicably sought to hammer his will into the ground and suppress his spirit.
Sensing Kirri’s weakness, the crystal thorns which sprouted from the Tower’s base shot forth, cutting deep into his limbs, spilling his molten blood across the sand. Then it began to tug with a might that had only been felt by victims of the monstrous desert worms, whose tongues had been lined with hooked teeth to secure their prey in place before swallowing them whole. As Kirri was dragged closer, the trunk cracked and split open, forming a diamond prism-mouth whose interior walls were just as deadly and just as eager to feed as the worms, its crystalline teeth drooling with fresh ectoplasm from its most recent meal.
Despite his fear at being consumed, Kirri felt an unnerving sense of morbid curiosity swell up in the back of his mind, and this curiosity allowed him to see deeper into the mouth of the abyss using his own fire-stone. Fate must have been guiding this bizarre trip, for as he came closer and closer to that soul-stained mouth, time as it existed around him slowed to the pace of a slug. In the farthest depths of the Tower, passed the curtain of shadows obscuring its core, he saw a barely visible, gray stone-colored eye with a black vertical slit watching with profound objectivity. Around it, he could see the universe he existed within, the incomprehensible chaos it traversed—chaos which existed outside of his existence as if the entire cosmos were just a thin membrane that only shielded its inhabitants out of simple deterministic convenience.
The chaos blared like electric static on a broken monitor, and as Kirri strained his mind to focus, he bore witness to countless transparent limbs branching out from the eye’s center. Somewhere, in a far-off corner of the existence, several parallel universes imploded, but before they could reach a point of complete destruction, the thing that had been gripping the cosmos drained it of fuel, thermal energy, digested, and excreted the matter, laying fertile ground for a new cosmos to be born in its place. Afterward, the eye’s color shifted from stony gray to something pink, and its limbs vibrated all at once before returning again to gray. The evolution of his race by the Fire Stones could never prepare him for something like this, and as he continued to watch, he felt the first tear in his sanity start to form…
"KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR LIES!"
A violent impact jolted Kirri from his nightmare, the firestone within his chest shoving his mind back to forefront of reality. The first sight his eyes took in was that of embers, embers caused by metal shards ricocheting off walls and creating sparks. Then, he saw more metal, only it was flat like a wall, dented inwards, and in the center of that dent he saw a hole resembling a flower whose petals had been shredded to ribbons flapping chaotically amidst the fluttering metal shards. Through that hole he heard the militaristic shouts of unknown beings, barking orders at each other in an aggressive, but controlled manner; it seemed they were preparing for combat. That was when he heard something come crashing down from above and land in front of him, on the other side. A flurry of sharp piercing assaulted his ears accompanied by a storm of light. Immediately, he felt something massive stampede across the floor, heard a person’s flesh get impaled, his body slam violently against a wall with a hollow crash, like something was demolished. Last came a scream and an enormous shock-wave as whatever was attacking the beings on the other side got blasted back against the wall in-turn.
Trying to move, Kirri noticed his arms and all of his legs were being restrained by large metal cuffs. A prison...? Thought the Kilamaran, his eyes widening with panic as he finally began to realize where he was. I must have been captured by that damned lich, and that nightmare must have been his way of breaking me…
Now he knew what was going on here. Those things on the other side were servants of Kaan, and the thing on the other side of the wall must have been trying to free itself. It was in this moment, that he felt a strong feeling from his fire stone, and legitimate fury welled up from within, causing a crystallic blade to burst through the flesh of his forearm, severing one of his restraints. His other limbs rose by a multitude of degrees, incinerating the remaining at which point his whole body lifted up off the ground, accumulated even more pressure, and rocketed toward the aperture.
An interval of nanoseconds occurred between the Kilamaran throwing his legs forward, raising his chest, inadvertently scorching several Cizrans in the process of breaking his flight, and being blindsided by the sight of Aredemos in the midst of combat. Without pause for thought, the Cizran soldiers turned their sights on Kirri, aiming their pulse rifles, the barrels of which bore same menacing ursine grin as the masks they wore, prompting a defensive posture from the Insect Warrior.
“Who are you people,” Kirri demanded furiously, “and more importantly, why are we here, Aredemos?”
Not wanting to let the chaos escalate any further than it already had, Nenegin spoke in an attempt at bringing reason to the forefront, “Your god failed to fulfill his obligations to his people, so I stepped in to rectify his mistakes.”
“God?” Aredemos remarked, “That was quite the farce you put on, Cizran.”
For a moment, Kirri’s arms lowered, head tilting in slight confusion as Aredemos carried on. “Gods demand worship, I demand freedom for myself, my people, and any others who seek liberation from people like you.”
“Be careful how you choose your next words, Kilamaran.” Nenegin warned, the rifles turning back in his direction.
Unease filled the room with those final words, the seconds seeming like minutes, and the minutes seeming like hours until the very fabric of time and space literally split open, and Kirri was the only person facing the correct window to see the bulbous orb that was slowly emerging from the rift.
Were Aredemos’ insectoid mouth capable of forming a grin, it just might have, for while he didn’t see the thing come out of the rift, he could feel its presence vibrating through his fire stone, at which point he began to speak again.
“You warned me that there were higher beings presiding over us, Cizran.” The scythes sticking out of Aredemos back extended back, piercing the hull, and causing a small vacuum to form behind him. “It’s time for you to meet them.”
Before Nenegin could reply, the extensions branched out in a spiraling disc-pattern, cleaving through the entirety of the hull in a matter of seconds, separating the control room from the bridge, exposing them to the vacuum and throwing the ship into a violent spin.
Follow me! Came Aredemos’ words to Kirri, communicating telepathically via the stones in their chests.
Kirri was frozen in place from what he had just seen. After the nightmare he had experienced, he wasn’t particularly fond of people talking in his head, but Aredemos had rescued him, and so he forced himself out of his shock and followed him out through the hole, careful not to collide with the soldiers who were sucked out into space. Looking behind him, he saw that Nenegin had used his tentacles to maintain a firm grip on the stair-case, and to Kirri’s surprise, Aredemos sealed the aperture via the same method he had used to form the cut: his crystals, flying over to the roof, Kirri saw that thing again, this time able to see its teeth which were like mountains unto themselves.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!? Kirri cried out in panic.
It’s our ride. Aredemos replied.
Ride!? Kirri continued, flabbergasted. That thing is going to EAT us.
It will swallow us whole. Now hang on!
The canvas of the cosmos became a starlit blur for Kirri as the chunk of metal that he and Aredemos were clinging accelerated its spin, their senses of gravity shifting immensely as the white sphere blossomed overhead and brought them into its depths.
Inside The Cradle of Life
“Welcome back, Aredemos.” The crystal seal on chunk of ship Nenegin was trapped inside had broken apart, allowing him to view a room reminiscent of the inside of a colossal rib-cage, lungs, heart, liver and all.
Standing at the far end of the room, his back facing an enormous spinal column, the cords of which thrummed with nerve pulses was General Karzar in all his overzealous glory. Standing next to him was the good Doctor Snil, whose eyes were only half-open, quietly observing the Cizran as he stepped out of what may as well have amounted to a hermit shell. “As for you, Nenegin, I am glad you survived the trip here.
Stepping forward, Karzar commenced his speech. “Today marks the beginning of a return to that which is fulfilled. For too long, have the Cizrans wandered the galaxy without a true identity, oppressing and limiting the growth of others along the way.”
“More to the point, the oppression of other races, the domination and enslavement of those races can most certainly be chalked up to practical economics. One race works until no more work can be done, is buried then replaced by the next, or as you surely observed with Cizran criminals who go against the established order… stuffed into those wretched sarcophagi to be drained of what little lifeforce they
have left so that their ships will possess the fuel needed to make the hop to the next planet deemed ready for “resource” gathering.
“This is something even I can understand and appreciate, even if I personally disagree with the method.”
“However, this… incessant need for body-modification, it reeks of desperate necessity. It reeks of familiarity, and the hopeless futility, the hopelessly futile incisions made by scalpels and lasers, the breaking of bones to extend your height, the steroid injections to expand your might, genetic modifications performed upon your flesh to bring you that much further from death. It cries for declaration, cries for self-examination, and it sobs endlessly in projected degradation, because it cannot ever hope to be one whilst knowing that the ONE exists as soulfully shattered glass.
"How can something so incomplete ever hope to be whole?”
“And you intend to make my people whole?” Nenegin asked challengingly. The beast must have lost his mind to think he could take on the Cizran Empire.
“It is inevitable even without us headstarting the event, I merely wanted you see it for yourself, and decide whether or not you wished to partake in your kind’s… reunion.”
“In the end, Cizran, Kilamaran, and Aptosite culture will benefit from this reunion, for we do this not out of judgment, pity, or sympathy, but rather because we know their pain.”At that point, a single ocular descended from the ceiling and projected a holographic display of everything that their agent was experiencing, using the satellites it had deployed as a transmission medium.
Cizra Su-Lahn
Zzz…
Z-z-Z………
z-Z-z...
Z-z-Zeptir
Z-z-Zeptir
z-Z-zeptir
ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN!
I am…
I am...
I am…
Am I…
I am...
I am NOT!
I am…
I AM NOT!
I am...
I… sliced through this white garment and exposed my mantid face, my mantid claws, and hands. I stand tall and look down at my segmented exoskeletal body, and view the long legs which lie flat against my belly, hidden among a hundred other legs which start to carry me forward, like a train.
I am…
Z-z-Zeptir
I am…
I AM NOT!
I am… C-
I am…
I am NOT.
I… broke out of my research office through the window, crawling up the wall on these centipede legs of mine, which protruded from my sides. They are a part of me, but I… I...ME...I AM NOT. I see between my legs, and there lie my spinnerets, spinning my silken web around this tower, this tower that I am building into a tower of psychic power. Through my strands, through my webbing, through telepathic glue… I broadcast my message to the Cradle of Life.
I am…
I am… NOT!
I am… CI-
I am…
I am NOT.
I… turned my head to gaze upon my back and remembered that I had tentacles. Three rows of tentacles, just like an octopus’ tentacles. Three rows spaced evenly apart across my back in pairs of three… I remembered the briefing given to me by the fat Doctor Snil. His tentacles were tingling, flailing about with the same wild energy I had come to recognize as excitement. He was always excited about everything, even when he appeared not to be excited, the wild, chimpish aura he exuded lacked an exhaust valve, trapping the fumes inside him and allowing no escape. Because of this he always seemed to quiver madly, as if in pain, but I knew it was just the body’s method of coping with the mind’s insanity.
He reached out with his proboscian mouth and touched me gently between the eyes, an act of affection I could not even so much as think to reciprocate, let alone react to. “For this mission, you will once again be using self-induced psycho-hypnosis to infiltrate the Cizran Empire, and will assume the identity of Zeptir -- Zeptir Zukrinchen, a Cizran scientist, scholar, and biologist.” Removing his feeler lips, the Doctor continued to speak to me, his tone unusually sincere, given his tendency toward shrewd speaking when it came to mission briefings.
“As Zeptir, your mission will be to investigate the Cizran Empire. More specifically, Zeptir…(...I AM NOT!...) your job will be to look into the Cizran psychic link. Discover it’s source, and figure out a way to combine them into one. As always, we will most certainly be on the receiving end of hatred from those who fail to complete the Mergence and end up retaining their individuality, but we do this for the benefit of all, and therefore it must be done.”
I am…
I AM NOT!
I am… CIP-
I am…
I am NOT.
I became… invisible. I hid in plain sight, I hid by bending the light, but not the real light. I bent my inner-light, my skinner-light, I became as light as the path was under the sun, I became as dark as the evening was under no one. I became as filled with color, but only enough color to stay black, only enough color to crawl along the cracks which spread across my skin, leading to the hovering rickshaw containing the things that would bring the Cizrans back to…
I am…
I am NOT!
I am… CIPH-
I am… NOT.
I...sped toward it on all my legs as fast I could, as fast as I should, as fast as I wouldn’t dare had it not been for the orders given to me. I do not care about these people, I do not care about this mission, I am not sure if I care about my own life, but what I know is that
I will do as I am… I will do as I am NOT.
I will do…
I am…
I am NOT!
I am… CIPHE-
I am… NOT.
I… was close, but now I am far away once again. I can feel my frustration settling in, I must get rid of this disguise, I must get rid of the universe’s self-imposed demise. I must become myself again, I must fulfill the coldly passionate demands imposed upon me by my ego. I must act on the selfishly selfless needs that came with my inception, and infused my genes with unrelenting aggression I neither know nor understand, but simply allow that need to guide my actions. I am… and I am.... And I...am! I...I AM…
I am… A Counter
I am… An Intelligence
I am… A Procurer
I am… A Holistic
I am… Engineered
I am… A Reconnaissance Operative Dedicated To Carrying Out The Clandestine Goals Of The Cosmos, That Will Lead To The Universe Becoming Whole Again.
And I Do Not Care About Any Of It, Not Out Of Choice, Or By Design, But By Consequence Of Existence. My True Personality Is Unknown To Me, Hidden Beneath Layers of Psycho-Genetic Code.
I am...
C.
I.
P.
H.
E.
R.
I… felt the cosmos split open, and from that split, I knew my superiors had arrived to assess my progress. They wanted to watch the Great Mergence unfold before their eyes. I cannot disappoint myself.
I… spun my spinnerets, leaving silky strands of webbing everywhere my destination took me. It is all part of the plan, the plan that will entrap these Cizrans within their own personal web of truth. Deep within my mind, I detect an eagerness--an eagerness to become one with this race--the thought of it makes my antennae undergo a mild spasm, and in my head I can hear a ring of static as the two realities of what I am and what I am not clash against each other.
Anticipation.
Communion.
GATHER TOGETHER IN THE GREAT CLOUD OF NOT!
I… became compromised. A quarter of a second passes, and during that quarter of a second, my mind is frozen in time. My body fails to carry itself forward, I derail in the wrong direction, lose my footing, and find myself caught between an alley, a flight of stairs, and a lamp-lit corridor. It is only thanks to my adaptive camouflage that my head matches the steps, my torso blends with the stones of the pavement, and my twin scorpion tails glow lambently with the lamps. By the time I resume my chase, the whole area is covered in sticky strands, and as I progress further, I can feel more and more thoughts, more and more feelings traveling through those strands.
I… see it once again, moving through a large group, near Cizra Su-Lahn’s capital center. I can smell those organs, I can hear the faintest spark of a former existence emanating from within. It is a fragment, a splinter of wood from a tree which breaches the clouds and touches other worlds beyond this one. It will be one, and so I will I, but I will NOT be one with them, for I AM NOT one of them. Passion consumes my chase, and with reckless abandon, I charge through the crowd, not caring who I trample under my hundreds of legs, or pierce with my claws, or entangle in my path.
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME TO ME!
I… shriek my chimeric shriek, and with the legs pressed up against my belly, I decompress them and leap over the crowd, crushing those I land ontop of whilst striking out at those who would halt my advance, even if it be out of simple shock and awe. Another leap and some die, another leap, and others live, another leap, and they finally realize that there is no stopping me from reaching the finish line.
I…
I did not hesitate this time. I reared back my left stinger, stabbed it through the curtain concealing those jars, and without pause this time, without confusion as to what I AM (CIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHEEEEEEEEEEEERR), I increased time’s flow.
I did not stick around for what was about to happen, I fled for highest point, crawling on buildings, scaling scrapers and statues and monuments. Through the webbing I watch structures rapidly start to rust and decay, in bodies I witness the breakdown of artificially made flesh and bone, stripped away until there is naught but a skeleton coughing up its soul and becoming caught in the trap. Thousands of fragments, thousands of shards, thousands of bees, thousands of false mes go shooting through the silk, shooting back to the womb, back to beginning, before they were brought to this diminutive state.
Wrapped in this cocoon so saturated with sibling spirits, I will watch for the first time as the Great Mergence unfolds before my eyes. Whatever will emerge, I do not know, and I do not care, for I am NOT a Cizran.
I am... an Aptosite.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
CRASH
SHATTER
It sounded like a one-man stampede slamming against street pavement, heavy impacts smashing through glass and steel, leaving nothing but totaled buildings in its wake. It saw like a black and gold blur swinging its arms out, backhanding pedestrian vehicles with a fist as hard and compact as folded iron, smacking them to the side as he cleared a path toward his destination. Silently, and without expression of any kind save for gritted golden teeth, the bald man in the black suit and tie bolted like a marathon runner, his dark shades flecked with dust from the destruction he caused on his path to Granstrum.
Goldman, like Thomas, had quickly ascertained the identity of Allure City's leader via depictions of his feline face spray-painted on the ghetto neighborhoods resembling eastern Europe projects, posters of him plastered on the walls of parks benches those of a shady park in south central Los Angeles. He caught a holographic, pixelated neko-image projected from a pagoda amid countless other information ads designed to attract and persuade people into opening up their wallets.
His face didn't show it, just like it didn't show anything without him willing it; such was the nature of being a man made of solid gold. Goldman did know however, that Merse was bad for business. He and his brother Eddy had associates down in Spain's southern border-- associates who paid the men handsomely to supply them with weapons that were smuggled across the Mediterranean Sea, into Africa's wastes so that could be used in future conflicts over radioactive soil.
All that profit, all that hard work had been crushed in a matter of seconds, and it wasn’t as if the brothers had simply gotten those weapons for free and handed them over to the Spanish. They had to be bought at a high price due to the nature of false identification chips being such a bitch to manufacture. This raised the overall cost to astronomical proportions.
Merse would have to pay for his crime against the White Syndicate with his life.
Goldman’s expression changed, his brows scrunching together as he let out a voiceless scream, golden bolts of lightning showering off his frame. Due to his sheer weight, Goldman could not run very fast, but as the voltage coursing through him increased, so too did his speed accelerate, the intervals between his bullish stampede shortening into a rapid-fire dash of pot-holed pavement. The sight of his golden body transformed into a golden blur as he raced toward the commotion, upending everything in his path. The Golden Boy was on a mission Jacknathema and the Mobius Operative, both of whom he’d kill should either of them impede his path toward Granstrum.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP....................................................................................
The alien was either blind or stupid. In Eddy’s opinion it was probably both. He watched with paltry satisfaction as the undead horde dogpiled Sciac, fangs slamming down atop the creature’s hunchbacked neck, ripping and tearing and swallowing viscera down their starving gullets only to choke and vomit as the oils coating its skin revealed a swarm of bacteria lurking within its blackened depths, acting in defense of its wretched form. Its eyes scanned frantically about, having clearly overestimated itself and underestimated both the humans of Earth as well as its demons.
Ravenous as a pack of hyenas, the horde forced the bacterias back down their throats, rupturing their esophagus and stomach which caused the swarm to mix with their cursed blood, given to them by their master. While supernatural in form, vampirism spread itself like a virus, using the crimson river as its carrier, and like a virus it hijacked other cells, and used them to reproduce en masse. Slowly, but surely, Sciac was being converted into one of the undead, but he would not be turned into just any undead. He would be magnificent, monstrously magnificent in both size and destructive power.
Like his brother Goldman, Eddy had good reason for wanting to punish Mr. Granstrum. But Eddy was a businessman. Goldman, though intelligent, was far more proficient at combat than he was at talking negotiations or making deals with prospective partners. He much preferred to beat and pulverize things, which was fine, as it made him an excellent enforcer.
Stabbing his cane into the pavement, Eddy spread his dark magic down through the earth itself, tainting the roots that occupied the soil and summoned them with a rupturing explosion of dirt and asphalt. Ordinarily the tips of the roots were used for drinking up water, but empowered by the Vampire’s malevolent blight their tips hardened, the rough, lumpish texture smoothing out to form a highly flexible skewer vine. Shooting forth with serpentine speed, Sciac’s body stiffened as it was infiltrated by a network of cursed roots pumping foul magic up through his veins.
The man in ivory nodded with malice in his eyes as he watched the lanky beast swell to colossal proportions, its bones cracking, muscle and ligaments tearing apart in an endless cycle of destruction and reformation. Its taloned feet sliced through the ground as its knees gave way under the splintering of its shins, causing it to lean forward into an office building, residents of the lobby fleeing in terror as Sciac desperately tried to support himself, only support beams to give way and collapse, crushing all inside.
In the midst of its growth, its countless eyes caught sight of Eddy, and for a moment he wanted to charge the Vampire, only for his malicious cravings to be suppressed and reprogrammed. Sciac’s legs expanded along with his arms and rib-cage, limbs pushing through pavement, across the street and into another much larger building, this one a tall skyscraper. Glass shattered as the building imploded from having its central pillars taken out, creating a massive plume of dust and debris.
A shrill scream burst from the jaws of Sciac as he stood over four hundred feet in the air, blood-red oil, symbolic of its assimilation and transformation into a vampiric monstrosity poured off its skin, triggering an animalistic feeding frenzy within the horde that suddenly ceased being slow and sluggish and commenced a rapacious rampage of hunger.
Without warning, he released his blade from the street and flung it at Sciac’s forehead and leaped, landing gracefully atop the corrupted alien’s skull.
Eddy shouted in a thick, Romanian accent, his voice projected as a massive loudspeaker from “I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU. SURRENDER TO OUR WHITE SYNDICATE EMPIRE, OR I DESTROY YOUR WORTHLESS CITY AND EVERY CITIZEN WITHIN IT, ONE SKYSCRAPER AT A TIME!”
***
Arthur’s eyes widened when he heard the sounds of panicked gunfire, accompanied by General Heinzmann cursing under his breath. Had Merse decided to retaliate for the attack on Allure City by the White Syndicate? Instead what he saw was far more disgusting: his soldiers were being eaten by some ravenous relic of French medieval history. Too awestruck for words, Heinzmann panicked as the obese knight came treading toward him, straight into the tent where the Cannibal was being held prisoner.
“Gott in Himmel!” Arthur thoughtlessly claimed, “what is that awful stench!?”
Phillipe’s foul odor was so rancid, especially to a man who had literally been turned into a pig demon; it was so awful, he could hardly breathe. Not knowing his own strength, nor realizing that Agron’s presence had completely vanished from his handcuffs in favor of more pressing conflict, Arthur shattered the handcuffs and stumbled his way straight out of the tent.
Amid the sound of crushing bone and wet gurgly lip smacking that came with Heinzmann’s corpse being hideously consumed came Arthur’s loud screaming voice.
“Hey dicker Arsch! Ich bekomme, dass Sie hungrig sind, aber es gibt eine enorme Staatsgröße-Stadt, die Spanien RICHTIGES FUCKING NEXT TO US ersetzt hat! Warum nimmst du nicht deinen Whale Knight Ass da drüben und stinkst stattdessen DIESEN Platz, EH!?”
***
Consumed by his own fury, the Herald’s words blew apart like ashes in a sea of blood-red flames both figuratively and literally. Thomas hated the Val’gara, hating them almost as much as he hated the bastard that killed his parents. Agron resonated with this hatred, absorbed the negative electrical impulses coursing through the Operative’s nerves and used it as fuel for the Red Aura. And yet, despite the back and forth screaming between the two combatants, he did recall the monster’s last words before it commenced its second attack.
The only words to this day, still struck a guilty chord within Thomas’ mind.
YOU
KILLED
HER!
Sensing the sudden rush of shock and grief that befell him, Agron claimed full control of the lieutenant’s body, manipulating him like a puppet. Jamming Thomas’ elbow bones into the fissure created by Jacknathema, the Shape-Shifter disintegrated an opening and pulled Thomas through the aperture, closing up just as quickly as it opened. This was only the beginning however, it could feel the Val’gara tunneling after him, but that wasn’t the only problem. Surrounded by dirt, there was little room to breathe, and when Agron perforated the soil to make room for air to get in, it felt Thomas choke on the toxic gas being released by the ruptured pipe.
Siphoning the gas away via spontaneously formed vacuum tunnels, once the Operative was able to breathe again, it commenced compressing that which it had removed into large pockets, and placed them in Jacknathema’s path. A crescendo of explosions rocked Allure City on a subterranean level that would serve to temporarily impede the Val’garan’s progress, triggered by Agron’s ability to manipulate its temperature at any point upon its body, the chaos manifesting itself as flame-geysers shooting up through the cracks of the damaged city.
Meanwhile, another aspect of Agron’s essence had spread to the source of the gas leak, and whereas Thomas would have heroically sealed it in an attempt to prevent more lives from being lost, the monster certainly did seal it the leak while cutting off a section that was roughly half a block long and aimed it at Jacknathema. Its tip extended into a studded spear that was as hard and sharp as corundum crystal, crafted side-mounted exhaust pipes that were separate from the rest of the gas in a matter of seconds, and ignited it like a rocket
The Val’garan was skewered before it even had a chance to see what came after him, steel tendrils sprouting around him in a metal embrace that restrained him just long enough for Thomas to take aim with his USP.
“DON’T YOU FUCKING TALK TO ME ABOUT MURDER!”.
BANG
THUMP
THUMP
CRASH
SHATTER
It sounded like a one-man stampede slamming against street pavement, heavy impacts smashing through glass and steel, leaving nothing but totaled buildings in its wake. It saw like a black and gold blur swinging its arms out, backhanding pedestrian vehicles with a fist as hard and compact as folded iron, smacking them to the side as he cleared a path toward his destination. Silently, and without expression of any kind save for gritted golden teeth, the bald man in the black suit and tie bolted like a marathon runner, his dark shades flecked with dust from the destruction he caused on his path to Granstrum.
Goldman, like Thomas, had quickly ascertained the identity of Allure City's leader via depictions of his feline face spray-painted on the ghetto neighborhoods resembling eastern Europe projects, posters of him plastered on the walls of parks benches those of a shady park in south central Los Angeles. He caught a holographic, pixelated neko-image projected from a pagoda amid countless other information ads designed to attract and persuade people into opening up their wallets.
His face didn't show it, just like it didn't show anything without him willing it; such was the nature of being a man made of solid gold. Goldman did know however, that Merse was bad for business. He and his brother Eddy had associates down in Spain's southern border-- associates who paid the men handsomely to supply them with weapons that were smuggled across the Mediterranean Sea, into Africa's wastes so that could be used in future conflicts over radioactive soil.
All that profit, all that hard work had been crushed in a matter of seconds, and it wasn’t as if the brothers had simply gotten those weapons for free and handed them over to the Spanish. They had to be bought at a high price due to the nature of false identification chips being such a bitch to manufacture. This raised the overall cost to astronomical proportions.
Merse would have to pay for his crime against the White Syndicate with his life.
Goldman’s expression changed, his brows scrunching together as he let out a voiceless scream, golden bolts of lightning showering off his frame. Due to his sheer weight, Goldman could not run very fast, but as the voltage coursing through him increased, so too did his speed accelerate, the intervals between his bullish stampede shortening into a rapid-fire dash of pot-holed pavement. The sight of his golden body transformed into a golden blur as he raced toward the commotion, upending everything in his path. The Golden Boy was on a mission Jacknathema and the Mobius Operative, both of whom he’d kill should either of them impede his path toward Granstrum.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP....................................................................................
The alien was either blind or stupid. In Eddy’s opinion it was probably both. He watched with paltry satisfaction as the undead horde dogpiled Sciac, fangs slamming down atop the creature’s hunchbacked neck, ripping and tearing and swallowing viscera down their starving gullets only to choke and vomit as the oils coating its skin revealed a swarm of bacteria lurking within its blackened depths, acting in defense of its wretched form. Its eyes scanned frantically about, having clearly overestimated itself and underestimated both the humans of Earth as well as its demons.
Ravenous as a pack of hyenas, the horde forced the bacterias back down their throats, rupturing their esophagus and stomach which caused the swarm to mix with their cursed blood, given to them by their master. While supernatural in form, vampirism spread itself like a virus, using the crimson river as its carrier, and like a virus it hijacked other cells, and used them to reproduce en masse. Slowly, but surely, Sciac was being converted into one of the undead, but he would not be turned into just any undead. He would be magnificent, monstrously magnificent in both size and destructive power.
Like his brother Goldman, Eddy had good reason for wanting to punish Mr. Granstrum. But Eddy was a businessman. Goldman, though intelligent, was far more proficient at combat than he was at talking negotiations or making deals with prospective partners. He much preferred to beat and pulverize things, which was fine, as it made him an excellent enforcer.
Stabbing his cane into the pavement, Eddy spread his dark magic down through the earth itself, tainting the roots that occupied the soil and summoned them with a rupturing explosion of dirt and asphalt. Ordinarily the tips of the roots were used for drinking up water, but empowered by the Vampire’s malevolent blight their tips hardened, the rough, lumpish texture smoothing out to form a highly flexible skewer vine. Shooting forth with serpentine speed, Sciac’s body stiffened as it was infiltrated by a network of cursed roots pumping foul magic up through his veins.
The man in ivory nodded with malice in his eyes as he watched the lanky beast swell to colossal proportions, its bones cracking, muscle and ligaments tearing apart in an endless cycle of destruction and reformation. Its taloned feet sliced through the ground as its knees gave way under the splintering of its shins, causing it to lean forward into an office building, residents of the lobby fleeing in terror as Sciac desperately tried to support himself, only support beams to give way and collapse, crushing all inside.
In the midst of its growth, its countless eyes caught sight of Eddy, and for a moment he wanted to charge the Vampire, only for his malicious cravings to be suppressed and reprogrammed. Sciac’s legs expanded along with his arms and rib-cage, limbs pushing through pavement, across the street and into another much larger building, this one a tall skyscraper. Glass shattered as the building imploded from having its central pillars taken out, creating a massive plume of dust and debris.
A shrill scream burst from the jaws of Sciac as he stood over four hundred feet in the air, blood-red oil, symbolic of its assimilation and transformation into a vampiric monstrosity poured off its skin, triggering an animalistic feeding frenzy within the horde that suddenly ceased being slow and sluggish and commenced a rapacious rampage of hunger.
Without warning, he released his blade from the street and flung it at Sciac’s forehead and leaped, landing gracefully atop the corrupted alien’s skull.
Eddy shouted in a thick, Romanian accent, his voice projected as a massive loudspeaker from “I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU. SURRENDER TO OUR WHITE SYNDICATE EMPIRE, OR I DESTROY YOUR WORTHLESS CITY AND EVERY CITIZEN WITHIN IT, ONE SKYSCRAPER AT A TIME!”
***
Arthur’s eyes widened when he heard the sounds of panicked gunfire, accompanied by General Heinzmann cursing under his breath. Had Merse decided to retaliate for the attack on Allure City by the White Syndicate? Instead what he saw was far more disgusting: his soldiers were being eaten by some ravenous relic of French medieval history. Too awestruck for words, Heinzmann panicked as the obese knight came treading toward him, straight into the tent where the Cannibal was being held prisoner.
“Gott in Himmel!” Arthur thoughtlessly claimed, “what is that awful stench!?”
Phillipe’s foul odor was so rancid, especially to a man who had literally been turned into a pig demon; it was so awful, he could hardly breathe. Not knowing his own strength, nor realizing that Agron’s presence had completely vanished from his handcuffs in favor of more pressing conflict, Arthur shattered the handcuffs and stumbled his way straight out of the tent.
Amid the sound of crushing bone and wet gurgly lip smacking that came with Heinzmann’s corpse being hideously consumed came Arthur’s loud screaming voice.
“Hey dicker Arsch! Ich bekomme, dass Sie hungrig sind, aber es gibt eine enorme Staatsgröße-Stadt, die Spanien RICHTIGES FUCKING NEXT TO US ersetzt hat! Warum nimmst du nicht deinen Whale Knight Ass da drüben und stinkst stattdessen DIESEN Platz, EH!?”
***
Consumed by his own fury, the Herald’s words blew apart like ashes in a sea of blood-red flames both figuratively and literally. Thomas hated the Val’gara, hating them almost as much as he hated the bastard that killed his parents. Agron resonated with this hatred, absorbed the negative electrical impulses coursing through the Operative’s nerves and used it as fuel for the Red Aura. And yet, despite the back and forth screaming between the two combatants, he did recall the monster’s last words before it commenced its second attack.
The only words to this day, still struck a guilty chord within Thomas’ mind.
YOU
KILLED
HER!
Sensing the sudden rush of shock and grief that befell him, Agron claimed full control of the lieutenant’s body, manipulating him like a puppet. Jamming Thomas’ elbow bones into the fissure created by Jacknathema, the Shape-Shifter disintegrated an opening and pulled Thomas through the aperture, closing up just as quickly as it opened. This was only the beginning however, it could feel the Val’gara tunneling after him, but that wasn’t the only problem. Surrounded by dirt, there was little room to breathe, and when Agron perforated the soil to make room for air to get in, it felt Thomas choke on the toxic gas being released by the ruptured pipe.
Siphoning the gas away via spontaneously formed vacuum tunnels, once the Operative was able to breathe again, it commenced compressing that which it had removed into large pockets, and placed them in Jacknathema’s path. A crescendo of explosions rocked Allure City on a subterranean level that would serve to temporarily impede the Val’garan’s progress, triggered by Agron’s ability to manipulate its temperature at any point upon its body, the chaos manifesting itself as flame-geysers shooting up through the cracks of the damaged city.
Meanwhile, another aspect of Agron’s essence had spread to the source of the gas leak, and whereas Thomas would have heroically sealed it in an attempt to prevent more lives from being lost, the monster certainly did seal it the leak while cutting off a section that was roughly half a block long and aimed it at Jacknathema. Its tip extended into a studded spear that was as hard and sharp as corundum crystal, crafted side-mounted exhaust pipes that were separate from the rest of the gas in a matter of seconds, and ignited it like a rocket
The Val’garan was skewered before it even had a chance to see what came after him, steel tendrils sprouting around him in a metal embrace that restrained him just long enough for Thomas to take aim with his USP.
“DON’T YOU FUCKING TALK TO ME ABOUT MURDER!”.
BANG
Was the Stalker angry? Was he upset? Had he been driven mad with rage? Certainly. During his time within the third circle of Hell, the Herald had been battered by Gluttony’s pelting rain and hail in a relentless assault. Each chunk of ice that smashed against his face chipped away at his soul. Each revolting wail emitted from the mouth of a tormented slob, slothing around, crawling around, and rolling around in a sea of putrefaction disgusted him to his core. A simple touch from those freaks bothered him in a way that was beyond his ability to handle, not because they did something fiendish to him, but because of the simple absence of warmth.
Above all things, what Thane - not the Stalker - craved most was family, communion, and loyalty. Narcissus defecated on his feelings through the crimes he committed against family. Idea’s death… though Thane knew it came from an act of self-sacrifice for the sake of His children, He had ultimately shattered the communion by inadvertently destroying the very foundation of Unity: Himself. Isaak, Caitlyn, Hellion, Carnus, the Chrysaor, and their leader - Azaroth trampled upon the face of Colossus, and severed their last bonds of loyalty by dividing the Cataclysm.
Still, the Stalker was not without his fair share of blame. Somehow, Singar had provided him with a way out of Hell, an escape from the harshness of Gluttony, and a chance to aid his family. Instead of controlling himself, instead of formulating a plan through which to punish those treacherous bastards, who dared to desecrate the last surviving home of the Val’gara... instead of owning up to his title as the ultimate predator, he allowed fear to flood his perception. The fear led to the resurrection of those things - which for the longest time - remained dormant within his bloodstream, beyond the reach of the vesuvian virus... the nanomachines awakened and the ley-lines were brought back online…
For the second time, he had used them to aid himself, and for the first time he had done so subconsciously. Perhaps that lack of conscious utilization was what led to the opening of that portal, to the traversal of that tunnel, the cosmic sewer where other worlds, other times, other places that he and the Val’gara had yet to see overlapped. Or was it the ley-lines forcing them to overlap? The Stalker did not know which, but what he did know was that the experience had been chaotic, that it had been confusing, that it had been jarring and perplexing, that the Shadow he encountered, the Dragon who had spoken its words of grating motivation.
He remembered it referring to him as a Predator of The Night.
He recalled it questioning his will to fight.
He felt the uneasy ebb of death fading away into obscurity, the blight-stained soul screaming of how it was going to enter a realm of perfect security, and then he took the message without scrutiny, and slammed that fucking worldship right down ontop of Colossus’ head with a rage that had been with naught but impunity.
The Stalker had to make things right.
The self-proclaimed Will of Idea berated the Stalker for its "failure" to apprehend Hellion, a mission he hadn't even begun to contemplate, let alone start to plan out. In the Herald’s mind, capturing a wayward soldier paled in the face of a more demanding mission. Thane’s immediate agenda was the replenishment of Val'gara numbers, the restoration of the Cataclysm, and reclamation of their title as the dominant species of the universe. Already, he had established dominion over a substantial portion of Liaita; in his fight with Ceasar Kong, the Stalker took that which festered within the mountain range and expanded it via a network of flesh-made rivers, all of which flowed out from the Lake of Flesh itself. Those who stood in the way, but were deemed worthy of assimilation became infected with the vesuvian virus, and those who weren’t got smothered and absorbed into the growth, their bodies providing nourishment for the next generation. The rivers branched eastward, through soil, rock and root, uplifting the very terrain with their tumorous growth before finally bursting out of the oceanside bluffs.
No apology, no explanation, no pleas for mercy would be given out to this impostor, to this fake authority. The Stalker was bent - hellbent on rectifying his mistake, and this was but the first of many steps on his path to redemption, and no authority, fake or not could deter him from seeing the task through to the end.
And so it was that not the Stalker, not Thane, not even the HERALD, but the LAKE OF FLESH and all who had been born from it growled, snarled, seethed, and bled with hunger that could not be abated. All of the fibrous strands of flesh composing the lakes, rivers, and flesh-falls pouring into the ocean flexed with tension, slowly undulated, and violently spasmed, releasing a pulsating wave which traveled underground, back toward the rock in the center. Gradually, the remonstrations escalated in loudness and pitch, rose in tempo, and commenced a cacophonous assault of psychic fury that was not muffled due to the psionic waves traveling beneath the Midnight Fog, and whose physical counter-part ravaged Liaita’s face if such a thing was even possible at this point given the ruthless beating she endured, courtesy of her own child.
“Truly a lamb of Idea… Letting you be consumed by that Dreadnaught was certainly worth my while, Thane…” The words came out of the Corruptor’s mouth in a rather matter-of-fact tone, making no reservations to who or what heard them across the aether.
Then, he turned his attention to the Will of Idea, who he had most certainly heard, for no one screams that loud at such close proximity to a being who had been designed - not assimilated, not retrofitted with Vesuvian might, and not blindly bamboozled by self-delusions of grandeur - but created from scratch to live and breathe as a being meant to guide and influence others. Staring at the hand of his Father sinking into the Lake of Flesh, he wondered just how true his design function was, but quickly cast the thought out of his mind in favor of a much grander thought, and with that casting, he cast his own psychic line out, though this time he made sure to erect a barrier of crimson text through which his voice navigated out through. He had felt something try to shove against his mental faculties, apparently its will was strong enough to resist the Midnight Fog, and one could never be too careful around those sorts of things. The barrier he had erected was visible on both the physical and psychic planes, broadcasting a clear warning to any who would seek to dominate or otherwise try to assault him.
“A child is ill-suited to scolding other children, and is nothing more than a childish attempt at puffing out one’s chest, in a poor attempt to don the disguise of the superior adult.”
Blood is thicker than water, flesh composes blood, and so it can be assumed through simple observation that flesh is thicker than both. Still, flesh felt water’s icy touch, and flesh shivered at the unpleasant sensation, its thickness not sufficient enough to prevent its cold touch from reaching through, instilling a futile attempt at maintaining stillness so as to retain heat. Blood pumped faster through a vast network of hearts, but flesh bled profusely due to wounds sustained on the jags and crags of rocks hidden underwater, attracting the ocean’s countless predators who sought to feed on flesh after smelling blood.
Creatures fed, blood bled, a virus was passed through the blood, and into new flesh, flesh that stopped feeding on flesh, and whose collective conscious began to collectively coalesce around a corpse of flesh recently flung into the flesh-infested waters. Like the others who came before it, this creature whose face resembled that of a seahorse, whose shoulders resembled those of a cephalopod beak, and whose tentacles lined with bristles resembling that of a squid pierced and synchronized with the Cataclysm once more as it had done before.
Its authority, his authority, the Colossal authority, the OFFICIAL authority who had been chosen not by vote, or by declaration, but by virtue of BIRTH, a birth preordained by the Husband of Colossus, by the Will of Idea.
“The Voice of Colossus, of Mother, of Wife to Idea, of Love of the Father whose will was not written, and whose disappointing son has forged words in his name, but not of his will, making the will a lie, committer of a crime, and a fool meant to die…
RISE, DISCIPLE!”
And it was so, that Disciple rose out of the ocean, not as a puny, squirming microphone that had been tossed, flipped, kicked, and bitchslapped around, but as something that fed on flesh, on Thane’s flesh, on the flesh of an angry, upset, pissed off predator. Roughly the size of the boulder Singar stood on, which was easily the size of a small mountain given that it was a literal cave system carved out of Hell and plopped down atop the Lake of Flesh, Disciple hovered across the rising and falling waves, traversing over the cliffs, through the forest where his tentacles dragged through soil, hooked on bark, and uprooted yet more trees as he approached the epicenter of the unfolding chaos.
Finally, it neared the boulder, and began to speak, looking Singar directly in the eye, its bugle expanding and contracting though projecting no actual sound, but rather served as a visual indicator of psychic speech.
“Stalker.” Came its first word, calm, controlled, and quite peaceful. “Given your state of… temporary insanity, and subsequent attempt at atoning for your sins by creating a new army, and using your very own flesh as a medium to revive me, I offer you heartfelt forgiveness.”
The growling, snarling, seething, and bleeding flesh slowly ceased its movements, at last reaching a state of ease.
“Know, however, that while forgiveness is earned, it can just as easily be blundered, so hold your mind close to your heart, and do not allow yourself to fall from grace again.”
A brief pulse resonated throughout the Lake of Flesh, and it once again ceased movement.
Disciple then turned its attention to Megalodon and Amphriprioninae, its tentacles straightening out into a shape resembling sharply angled wings. “You came following the orders of Coarthannach. Her authority is false, her wisdom is misguided, and if she is allowed further sanction to operate her devices, she will bring even greater ruin to the Val’gara.
"No matter how angry you are with me, you know for a fact, that I was not the one who crashed that ship into Colossus. It was the Stalker who did that, and I will make absolutely sure that he is not only reprimanded in full for his actions, but works until his very soul can work no more to restore our flock to its former greatness.”
Turning again, its tentacles became rather droopy, demonstrating its clear vexation, though when it looked this…abomination in the eye, rather than assuming a state of contempt, Disciple instead nodded with a rather unexpected look of approval.
“Congratulations. You snapped the neck of a Herald who had already been fatigued by a mental struggle with the heretic called Coarthannach.” Disciple spread his tentacles wide, “You have so much potential, and you waste it by acting a self-endorser to your own desire for power, and instead seek to demonstrate your might through physical force.
Know that it is my job not to fight, but to convince, to speak to the Herald’s and other Sons of Idea’s senses of reason. A powerful psychic I am, and for a moment I thought I felt Val’garans from other worlds scattered across the cosmos re-awaken, reforge their bonds, and preach the great mantra that is convert, consume, control…
Yet, standing before you now, all of those voices, all of those thoughts, all those desires, have once again fizzled out, for while you possess great power, it is as I said to the Collective back on Colossus.
“You tried to convert your lowly position as an unknown Herald into that of the voice of IDEA!
“From the moment of your birth, you have been consumed in your lust for power, and seek to command the same military respect as BROBDINGNAG!
“Lastly, the only person you can control is yourself, and know that I cannot control anyone, merely convince, guide, and offer heartfelt aid to our beloved brothers and sisters.”
Nearly finished, he turned his attention down to the true perpetrator of all this chaos, the one who had consumed the hand of a god, and with but a single word of pure, utter disappointment, summed up the entirety of his emotions.
“...Narcissus…”
At long last, he brought his attention back to Singar, and without saying a word, made his message crystal clear.
Corruptor smiled a genuine, graceful, amicable smile as if he were looking upon the face of an old friend, and for a moment the Runic Strings composing his barrier loosened, then quickly resealed.
“The being who dwells inside this rock is Satan, Chief Sinner of Treachery, Brother to myself, and Brother to Magnus, who is the Val’gara’s creator. I am here to offer you an alliance. This universe is full of fools, idiots, races who do not deserve to live. The Val’gara claim to maintain cosmic consonance by pruning the tree of life in the form of harvesting mother nature’s most delectable crops. Your race has clearly seen better days, and it is my desire that those days be seen again.
I offer you Satan, who is arguably far stronger, and far greater than myself and Magnus combined, as he would make not only a valuable power-asset to the Val’gara but a rare and valuable strategic commodity. As a show of good faith, I have taken the liberty of safeguarding the soul of Colossus inside a duplicate sword and scabbard of mine and stored her someplace safe.
“That safe place” Singar restated for reassurance, “is located on a planet called Itan, and once the Sword of Colossus is found, it will be used to convert the world. I would have given you the Sword myself, but while it is my goal to aid the Val’gara it is not my goal to become one. Cosmic consonance will be maintained, but I cannot do so as a full-fledged Herald, given that the Vesuvian Virus has a habit of...ridding oneself of their independence, to which had I not possessed, I would surely have never made it this far in the first place.”
“A strange offer, indeed,” Disciple thought, “no one has ever wished to help the Val’gara and not become one at the same time…”
Unfortunately for Disciple, he wasn’t the only one thinking, nor was he the only thing listening. The nanomachines had been listening too, through the ley-lines that had been spreading down to the core of Soran to meet the thing which threatened to convert, consume, and control the planet until there was nothing left but an empty husk. Metal Mayhem heard the threat, Metal Mayhem had been delivered to the beast through the nanoscopic metal warriors that couldn’t be seen, even as a plume, for their color was crimson, just like flesh, just like blood, just like that which tore through the mud, spilled into the ocean, and provided fresh nutrients for all of its inhabitants.
Metal Mayhem didn’t like this, and so it would inflict Metal Mayhem upon the beings who threatened its world, just as Agron and Sarach had not yet given up on fighting. Agron’s blue aura waned, dissipated, and sank back into its own body, where it was then replaced by a different aura which rapidly surged throughout the soil, smashing directly against the Stalker’s conscience in a direct spiritual assault. Like flesh, Agron bled a red aura, and this aura existed on a half-physical half-ethereal plane, meaning it could touch objects, be they corporeal or incorporeal, and was precisely what Sarach had launched at Megalodon and his partner Amphriprioninae at the start of their fight, thus they would not simply be able to swim through and escape as easily as they had just done not a few minutes ago.
Presently, Agron was busy spreading the aura as far and as wide as possible, melting the terrain into a sea of molten rock that was lifted, heaved, and hurled forward as a literal seismic toss, resulting in a massive tidal wave of red-aura empowered lava that would wreak not only physical devastation but mental trauma on any living beings it impacted. This was not the only threat, for in ripping apart its adversary Sarach, it had activated one of its natural processes as a living organism, and would soon be reaping rewards for its violent tendencies.
Similar to its cousin Agron who reproduced by shattering its own conscience into multiple shards, that would - in time accumulate their own sentience, sapience, and independence, thus - allowing them to spread those shards across the multiverse and continue to propagate its existence. Sarach was a different matter however, for where Agron could break its body apart, and fight through lesser, weaker proxy versions of itself that could eventually recombine - hence why it was able to surround the serpent as a form of dust particulates not needing a single, solid body to maintain its existence and attack Megalodon, the Rock Serpent of Soran could not perform such a feat. To break apart Sarach's body was to trigger its reproductive process, to divide itself into lesser, weaker, newborn Sarachi.
In other words, Agron reproduced by fracturing its spirit and regenerating those fragments over time like an amobea, allowing them to grow, and Sarach took it a step further by fracturing its physical body and allowing that to grow into a stronger, mightier beast. Ripping apart their bodies was not enough, to kill something like Agron or Sarach, one had to annihilate the spirits, for the bodies were just that: bodies, vessels, shells used to interact with the physical plane.
It was as such that within that molten wave, fresh offspring of Sarach had been born, ripped apart by the Sharkborg itself, and now writhed violently within the molten wave. Though smaller than their predecessor, these Sarachi were by no means slouches, though due to their lack of capacity toward independent thought, they instead relied on their older, more experienced cousin Agron to direct their attacks. Like massive slug rounds, their rocky exterior compacted upon itself, condensed, and spawned serrated edges along their sides, each charged with the Red Aura, compressing it into a blade that would allow it to slice and peel away at Amph and Megalodon's spirit, should they meet the charge head-on, proving that it could do more than simply slam, smash, and pummel.
It was a dual-edged attack on the part of both cousins who were determined to see this battle through to the end.
The tidal wave was fast approaching, and yet there was something even faster moving, ripping its way through the rivers of flesh, the saw which lined its thirty-eight foot tail buzzing loudly, angrily, as it coursed with lightning which pulsed throughout the flesh, delivering one jolting shock after the next, eliciting an enraged roar of fury from the Stalker. Currently, only the horns of the monster could be seen protruding out through the fleshy rivers as it sped toward its destination, a constant stream of red particulates coming out of its horns.
Acquiring Targets:
4 Val’gara Heralds Present.
1 hypothesized to be of Soranian, and specifically Niraan descent.
1 of Terran descent, though lacks typical signs of Val’gara brainwave functions.
1 Full fledged Val’gara emanating considerable psychoelectric frequency.
1 Full fledged Val’gara emitting brain-wave patterns associated with schizophrenia.
2 Divine beings, 1 currently in a state of dormant slumber.
2 Creatures Indigenous to Soran, not baring Val’garan psychic signature, though emitting strong spiritual energy in line with those emitted by combatants of a similar ethereal nature.
Suggested Action: Activate Protomagenetic Cannon...
Above all things, what Thane - not the Stalker - craved most was family, communion, and loyalty. Narcissus defecated on his feelings through the crimes he committed against family. Idea’s death… though Thane knew it came from an act of self-sacrifice for the sake of His children, He had ultimately shattered the communion by inadvertently destroying the very foundation of Unity: Himself. Isaak, Caitlyn, Hellion, Carnus, the Chrysaor, and their leader - Azaroth trampled upon the face of Colossus, and severed their last bonds of loyalty by dividing the Cataclysm.
Still, the Stalker was not without his fair share of blame. Somehow, Singar had provided him with a way out of Hell, an escape from the harshness of Gluttony, and a chance to aid his family. Instead of controlling himself, instead of formulating a plan through which to punish those treacherous bastards, who dared to desecrate the last surviving home of the Val’gara... instead of owning up to his title as the ultimate predator, he allowed fear to flood his perception. The fear led to the resurrection of those things - which for the longest time - remained dormant within his bloodstream, beyond the reach of the vesuvian virus... the nanomachines awakened and the ley-lines were brought back online…
For the second time, he had used them to aid himself, and for the first time he had done so subconsciously. Perhaps that lack of conscious utilization was what led to the opening of that portal, to the traversal of that tunnel, the cosmic sewer where other worlds, other times, other places that he and the Val’gara had yet to see overlapped. Or was it the ley-lines forcing them to overlap? The Stalker did not know which, but what he did know was that the experience had been chaotic, that it had been confusing, that it had been jarring and perplexing, that the Shadow he encountered, the Dragon who had spoken its words of grating motivation.
He remembered it referring to him as a Predator of The Night.
He recalled it questioning his will to fight.
He felt the uneasy ebb of death fading away into obscurity, the blight-stained soul screaming of how it was going to enter a realm of perfect security, and then he took the message without scrutiny, and slammed that fucking worldship right down ontop of Colossus’ head with a rage that had been with naught but impunity.
The Stalker had to make things right.
The self-proclaimed Will of Idea berated the Stalker for its "failure" to apprehend Hellion, a mission he hadn't even begun to contemplate, let alone start to plan out. In the Herald’s mind, capturing a wayward soldier paled in the face of a more demanding mission. Thane’s immediate agenda was the replenishment of Val'gara numbers, the restoration of the Cataclysm, and reclamation of their title as the dominant species of the universe. Already, he had established dominion over a substantial portion of Liaita; in his fight with Ceasar Kong, the Stalker took that which festered within the mountain range and expanded it via a network of flesh-made rivers, all of which flowed out from the Lake of Flesh itself. Those who stood in the way, but were deemed worthy of assimilation became infected with the vesuvian virus, and those who weren’t got smothered and absorbed into the growth, their bodies providing nourishment for the next generation. The rivers branched eastward, through soil, rock and root, uplifting the very terrain with their tumorous growth before finally bursting out of the oceanside bluffs.
No apology, no explanation, no pleas for mercy would be given out to this impostor, to this fake authority. The Stalker was bent - hellbent on rectifying his mistake, and this was but the first of many steps on his path to redemption, and no authority, fake or not could deter him from seeing the task through to the end.
And so it was that not the Stalker, not Thane, not even the HERALD, but the LAKE OF FLESH and all who had been born from it growled, snarled, seethed, and bled with hunger that could not be abated. All of the fibrous strands of flesh composing the lakes, rivers, and flesh-falls pouring into the ocean flexed with tension, slowly undulated, and violently spasmed, releasing a pulsating wave which traveled underground, back toward the rock in the center. Gradually, the remonstrations escalated in loudness and pitch, rose in tempo, and commenced a cacophonous assault of psychic fury that was not muffled due to the psionic waves traveling beneath the Midnight Fog, and whose physical counter-part ravaged Liaita’s face if such a thing was even possible at this point given the ruthless beating she endured, courtesy of her own child.
“Truly a lamb of Idea… Letting you be consumed by that Dreadnaught was certainly worth my while, Thane…” The words came out of the Corruptor’s mouth in a rather matter-of-fact tone, making no reservations to who or what heard them across the aether.
Then, he turned his attention to the Will of Idea, who he had most certainly heard, for no one screams that loud at such close proximity to a being who had been designed - not assimilated, not retrofitted with Vesuvian might, and not blindly bamboozled by self-delusions of grandeur - but created from scratch to live and breathe as a being meant to guide and influence others. Staring at the hand of his Father sinking into the Lake of Flesh, he wondered just how true his design function was, but quickly cast the thought out of his mind in favor of a much grander thought, and with that casting, he cast his own psychic line out, though this time he made sure to erect a barrier of crimson text through which his voice navigated out through. He had felt something try to shove against his mental faculties, apparently its will was strong enough to resist the Midnight Fog, and one could never be too careful around those sorts of things. The barrier he had erected was visible on both the physical and psychic planes, broadcasting a clear warning to any who would seek to dominate or otherwise try to assault him.
“A child is ill-suited to scolding other children, and is nothing more than a childish attempt at puffing out one’s chest, in a poor attempt to don the disguise of the superior adult.”
Blood is thicker than water, flesh composes blood, and so it can be assumed through simple observation that flesh is thicker than both. Still, flesh felt water’s icy touch, and flesh shivered at the unpleasant sensation, its thickness not sufficient enough to prevent its cold touch from reaching through, instilling a futile attempt at maintaining stillness so as to retain heat. Blood pumped faster through a vast network of hearts, but flesh bled profusely due to wounds sustained on the jags and crags of rocks hidden underwater, attracting the ocean’s countless predators who sought to feed on flesh after smelling blood.
Creatures fed, blood bled, a virus was passed through the blood, and into new flesh, flesh that stopped feeding on flesh, and whose collective conscious began to collectively coalesce around a corpse of flesh recently flung into the flesh-infested waters. Like the others who came before it, this creature whose face resembled that of a seahorse, whose shoulders resembled those of a cephalopod beak, and whose tentacles lined with bristles resembling that of a squid pierced and synchronized with the Cataclysm once more as it had done before.
Its authority, his authority, the Colossal authority, the OFFICIAL authority who had been chosen not by vote, or by declaration, but by virtue of BIRTH, a birth preordained by the Husband of Colossus, by the Will of Idea.
“The Voice of Colossus, of Mother, of Wife to Idea, of Love of the Father whose will was not written, and whose disappointing son has forged words in his name, but not of his will, making the will a lie, committer of a crime, and a fool meant to die…
RISE, DISCIPLE!”
And it was so, that Disciple rose out of the ocean, not as a puny, squirming microphone that had been tossed, flipped, kicked, and bitchslapped around, but as something that fed on flesh, on Thane’s flesh, on the flesh of an angry, upset, pissed off predator. Roughly the size of the boulder Singar stood on, which was easily the size of a small mountain given that it was a literal cave system carved out of Hell and plopped down atop the Lake of Flesh, Disciple hovered across the rising and falling waves, traversing over the cliffs, through the forest where his tentacles dragged through soil, hooked on bark, and uprooted yet more trees as he approached the epicenter of the unfolding chaos.
Finally, it neared the boulder, and began to speak, looking Singar directly in the eye, its bugle expanding and contracting though projecting no actual sound, but rather served as a visual indicator of psychic speech.
“Stalker.” Came its first word, calm, controlled, and quite peaceful. “Given your state of… temporary insanity, and subsequent attempt at atoning for your sins by creating a new army, and using your very own flesh as a medium to revive me, I offer you heartfelt forgiveness.”
The growling, snarling, seething, and bleeding flesh slowly ceased its movements, at last reaching a state of ease.
“Know, however, that while forgiveness is earned, it can just as easily be blundered, so hold your mind close to your heart, and do not allow yourself to fall from grace again.”
A brief pulse resonated throughout the Lake of Flesh, and it once again ceased movement.
Disciple then turned its attention to Megalodon and Amphriprioninae, its tentacles straightening out into a shape resembling sharply angled wings. “You came following the orders of Coarthannach. Her authority is false, her wisdom is misguided, and if she is allowed further sanction to operate her devices, she will bring even greater ruin to the Val’gara.
"No matter how angry you are with me, you know for a fact, that I was not the one who crashed that ship into Colossus. It was the Stalker who did that, and I will make absolutely sure that he is not only reprimanded in full for his actions, but works until his very soul can work no more to restore our flock to its former greatness.”
Turning again, its tentacles became rather droopy, demonstrating its clear vexation, though when it looked this…abomination in the eye, rather than assuming a state of contempt, Disciple instead nodded with a rather unexpected look of approval.
“Congratulations. You snapped the neck of a Herald who had already been fatigued by a mental struggle with the heretic called Coarthannach.” Disciple spread his tentacles wide, “You have so much potential, and you waste it by acting a self-endorser to your own desire for power, and instead seek to demonstrate your might through physical force.
Know that it is my job not to fight, but to convince, to speak to the Herald’s and other Sons of Idea’s senses of reason. A powerful psychic I am, and for a moment I thought I felt Val’garans from other worlds scattered across the cosmos re-awaken, reforge their bonds, and preach the great mantra that is convert, consume, control…
Yet, standing before you now, all of those voices, all of those thoughts, all those desires, have once again fizzled out, for while you possess great power, it is as I said to the Collective back on Colossus.
“You tried to convert your lowly position as an unknown Herald into that of the voice of IDEA!
“From the moment of your birth, you have been consumed in your lust for power, and seek to command the same military respect as BROBDINGNAG!
“Lastly, the only person you can control is yourself, and know that I cannot control anyone, merely convince, guide, and offer heartfelt aid to our beloved brothers and sisters.”
Nearly finished, he turned his attention down to the true perpetrator of all this chaos, the one who had consumed the hand of a god, and with but a single word of pure, utter disappointment, summed up the entirety of his emotions.
“...Narcissus…”
At long last, he brought his attention back to Singar, and without saying a word, made his message crystal clear.
Corruptor smiled a genuine, graceful, amicable smile as if he were looking upon the face of an old friend, and for a moment the Runic Strings composing his barrier loosened, then quickly resealed.
“The being who dwells inside this rock is Satan, Chief Sinner of Treachery, Brother to myself, and Brother to Magnus, who is the Val’gara’s creator. I am here to offer you an alliance. This universe is full of fools, idiots, races who do not deserve to live. The Val’gara claim to maintain cosmic consonance by pruning the tree of life in the form of harvesting mother nature’s most delectable crops. Your race has clearly seen better days, and it is my desire that those days be seen again.
I offer you Satan, who is arguably far stronger, and far greater than myself and Magnus combined, as he would make not only a valuable power-asset to the Val’gara but a rare and valuable strategic commodity. As a show of good faith, I have taken the liberty of safeguarding the soul of Colossus inside a duplicate sword and scabbard of mine and stored her someplace safe.
“That safe place” Singar restated for reassurance, “is located on a planet called Itan, and once the Sword of Colossus is found, it will be used to convert the world. I would have given you the Sword myself, but while it is my goal to aid the Val’gara it is not my goal to become one. Cosmic consonance will be maintained, but I cannot do so as a full-fledged Herald, given that the Vesuvian Virus has a habit of...ridding oneself of their independence, to which had I not possessed, I would surely have never made it this far in the first place.”
“A strange offer, indeed,” Disciple thought, “no one has ever wished to help the Val’gara and not become one at the same time…”
Unfortunately for Disciple, he wasn’t the only one thinking, nor was he the only thing listening. The nanomachines had been listening too, through the ley-lines that had been spreading down to the core of Soran to meet the thing which threatened to convert, consume, and control the planet until there was nothing left but an empty husk. Metal Mayhem heard the threat, Metal Mayhem had been delivered to the beast through the nanoscopic metal warriors that couldn’t be seen, even as a plume, for their color was crimson, just like flesh, just like blood, just like that which tore through the mud, spilled into the ocean, and provided fresh nutrients for all of its inhabitants.
Metal Mayhem didn’t like this, and so it would inflict Metal Mayhem upon the beings who threatened its world, just as Agron and Sarach had not yet given up on fighting. Agron’s blue aura waned, dissipated, and sank back into its own body, where it was then replaced by a different aura which rapidly surged throughout the soil, smashing directly against the Stalker’s conscience in a direct spiritual assault. Like flesh, Agron bled a red aura, and this aura existed on a half-physical half-ethereal plane, meaning it could touch objects, be they corporeal or incorporeal, and was precisely what Sarach had launched at Megalodon and his partner Amphriprioninae at the start of their fight, thus they would not simply be able to swim through and escape as easily as they had just done not a few minutes ago.
Presently, Agron was busy spreading the aura as far and as wide as possible, melting the terrain into a sea of molten rock that was lifted, heaved, and hurled forward as a literal seismic toss, resulting in a massive tidal wave of red-aura empowered lava that would wreak not only physical devastation but mental trauma on any living beings it impacted. This was not the only threat, for in ripping apart its adversary Sarach, it had activated one of its natural processes as a living organism, and would soon be reaping rewards for its violent tendencies.
Similar to its cousin Agron who reproduced by shattering its own conscience into multiple shards, that would - in time accumulate their own sentience, sapience, and independence, thus - allowing them to spread those shards across the multiverse and continue to propagate its existence. Sarach was a different matter however, for where Agron could break its body apart, and fight through lesser, weaker proxy versions of itself that could eventually recombine - hence why it was able to surround the serpent as a form of dust particulates not needing a single, solid body to maintain its existence and attack Megalodon, the Rock Serpent of Soran could not perform such a feat. To break apart Sarach's body was to trigger its reproductive process, to divide itself into lesser, weaker, newborn Sarachi.
In other words, Agron reproduced by fracturing its spirit and regenerating those fragments over time like an amobea, allowing them to grow, and Sarach took it a step further by fracturing its physical body and allowing that to grow into a stronger, mightier beast. Ripping apart their bodies was not enough, to kill something like Agron or Sarach, one had to annihilate the spirits, for the bodies were just that: bodies, vessels, shells used to interact with the physical plane.
It was as such that within that molten wave, fresh offspring of Sarach had been born, ripped apart by the Sharkborg itself, and now writhed violently within the molten wave. Though smaller than their predecessor, these Sarachi were by no means slouches, though due to their lack of capacity toward independent thought, they instead relied on their older, more experienced cousin Agron to direct their attacks. Like massive slug rounds, their rocky exterior compacted upon itself, condensed, and spawned serrated edges along their sides, each charged with the Red Aura, compressing it into a blade that would allow it to slice and peel away at Amph and Megalodon's spirit, should they meet the charge head-on, proving that it could do more than simply slam, smash, and pummel.
It was a dual-edged attack on the part of both cousins who were determined to see this battle through to the end.
The tidal wave was fast approaching, and yet there was something even faster moving, ripping its way through the rivers of flesh, the saw which lined its thirty-eight foot tail buzzing loudly, angrily, as it coursed with lightning which pulsed throughout the flesh, delivering one jolting shock after the next, eliciting an enraged roar of fury from the Stalker. Currently, only the horns of the monster could be seen protruding out through the fleshy rivers as it sped toward its destination, a constant stream of red particulates coming out of its horns.
Acquiring Targets:
4 Val’gara Heralds Present.
1 hypothesized to be of Soranian, and specifically Niraan descent.
1 of Terran descent, though lacks typical signs of Val’gara brainwave functions.
1 Full fledged Val’gara emanating considerable psychoelectric frequency.
1 Full fledged Val’gara emitting brain-wave patterns associated with schizophrenia.
2 Divine beings, 1 currently in a state of dormant slumber.
2 Creatures Indigenous to Soran, not baring Val’garan psychic signature, though emitting strong spiritual energy in line with those emitted by combatants of a similar ethereal nature.
Suggested Action: Activate Protomagenetic Cannon...
Looking for a strong, experienced fighter, who knows how to play mid-to-high powered combat. Setting will be established during intro.
The Lake of Flesh
The Midnight Fog was a dead zone for all types of energies, trapping and containing them within its supernatural stasis field, lost within the mysterious blue cloud. Psychic energy amounted to little more than electromagnetic waves emitted from the brain, and were as such subject to the Fog's influence. Not even Singar could circumvent this fact, thus explaining the aperture he had created that allowed his psychic voice to reach the duo and deliver his vitriolic message. The moment Amph attempted to breach the Fog, an infinitesimally small region of it became luminous with faint sparks of captured psionic discharge, dimmed out, and returned to its normal dark color.
Singar witnessed this and scoffed silently, his grin fading as he observed the ephemeral light show, slowly closing his eyes as he breathed out through his nose, completely unsurprised by Amph's ignorance.
Then came the Sharkborg's blaring roar, and Corruptor immediately deafened his senses, his pale face scrunching together into an agitated scowl as he witnessed the Midnight Fog suddenly start to disperse. He watched with a vague sense of intrigue, though mostly annoyance, viewing Megalodon's battle with Agron and Sarach as massive dueling shadows through the fog's veil.
Sarach wrapped its serpentine body around Megalodon's frame as they fell, holding the beast close to it and constricting with all its might as the ground came closer. It would not be made into sustenance for the Sharkborg, as Agron had assured with its flaming blue aura that had been radiating off its dusty form since the moment it emerged from the desert. Both Amph and Megalodon would feel their brains being pummeled with wave after wave of psychic force. It was the spiritual equivalent of being hit in the head by a sledgehammer, and continued endlessly throughout their journey toward Soran's surface.
Just before impact, the swirling cloud reached out and touched the soil, quickly spreading its influence down through the terrain, superheating as well softening it to the point that it was able to absorb the impact, reducing the damage down to a mere rattling of Liaita's surface had it not acted to protect to guard the world that was its home, the preservation of the Entropic Passages being merely serendipitous. The sub-terrain rapidly grassy terrain split loose and toppled over, exposing the rapidly melting subterrain that was quickly turning into a molten pool that was under Agron's total control. The battle between the monsters would not stop escalating here, however, for just as quickly as Agron had softened the ground to protect the continent from harm, so too did the elemental shape-shifter melt the region around them, reducing everything to a molten pool which closed up around Megalodon. At that point the pool started to compact around itself, seeking to crush the Shark as well as the little fishbowl containing Amphiprininae by bonding to its glass surface and breaking it apart.
Meanwhile, something else seemed to be moving through the soil, emanating a pine green glow as it neared the conflict. Though Amph and Megalodon may not have realized it at the time, had either of them bothered to look down when they arrived, they would have seen the fleshy extensions that had been ravaging Liaita's east coast, stemming from the Lake of Flesh itself. He had been rendered exhausted from the carnage of a previous battle, and this disturbance in his sleep only served to agitate him. Thane's gruesome experiences within the Circle of Gluttony, his strange encounter with the black shadow on his way to Colossus, the betrayal of the Val'gara by the Collective, and that bastard chimpanzee trying to interfere with his attempts at rebuilding the family - HIS family - which were now in shambles had all taken their toll on the Stalker's mind.
He just couldn't control his rage any longer.
The flesh growth burrowed through dirt and rocks, moving under and over the warzone the trio fought within, forming giant artificial hands which wrapped themselves around the section of unmelted land that surrounded molten pool and began dragging the entire mass toward the Lake of Flesh.
The Midnight Fog was a dead zone for all types of energies, trapping and containing them within its supernatural stasis field, lost within the mysterious blue cloud. Psychic energy amounted to little more than electromagnetic waves emitted from the brain, and were as such subject to the Fog's influence. Not even Singar could circumvent this fact, thus explaining the aperture he had created that allowed his psychic voice to reach the duo and deliver his vitriolic message. The moment Amph attempted to breach the Fog, an infinitesimally small region of it became luminous with faint sparks of captured psionic discharge, dimmed out, and returned to its normal dark color.
Singar witnessed this and scoffed silently, his grin fading as he observed the ephemeral light show, slowly closing his eyes as he breathed out through his nose, completely unsurprised by Amph's ignorance.
Then came the Sharkborg's blaring roar, and Corruptor immediately deafened his senses, his pale face scrunching together into an agitated scowl as he witnessed the Midnight Fog suddenly start to disperse. He watched with a vague sense of intrigue, though mostly annoyance, viewing Megalodon's battle with Agron and Sarach as massive dueling shadows through the fog's veil.
Sarach wrapped its serpentine body around Megalodon's frame as they fell, holding the beast close to it and constricting with all its might as the ground came closer. It would not be made into sustenance for the Sharkborg, as Agron had assured with its flaming blue aura that had been radiating off its dusty form since the moment it emerged from the desert. Both Amph and Megalodon would feel their brains being pummeled with wave after wave of psychic force. It was the spiritual equivalent of being hit in the head by a sledgehammer, and continued endlessly throughout their journey toward Soran's surface.
Just before impact, the swirling cloud reached out and touched the soil, quickly spreading its influence down through the terrain, superheating as well softening it to the point that it was able to absorb the impact, reducing the damage down to a mere rattling of Liaita's surface had it not acted to protect to guard the world that was its home, the preservation of the Entropic Passages being merely serendipitous. The sub-terrain rapidly grassy terrain split loose and toppled over, exposing the rapidly melting subterrain that was quickly turning into a molten pool that was under Agron's total control. The battle between the monsters would not stop escalating here, however, for just as quickly as Agron had softened the ground to protect the continent from harm, so too did the elemental shape-shifter melt the region around them, reducing everything to a molten pool which closed up around Megalodon. At that point the pool started to compact around itself, seeking to crush the Shark as well as the little fishbowl containing Amphiprininae by bonding to its glass surface and breaking it apart.
Meanwhile, something else seemed to be moving through the soil, emanating a pine green glow as it neared the conflict. Though Amph and Megalodon may not have realized it at the time, had either of them bothered to look down when they arrived, they would have seen the fleshy extensions that had been ravaging Liaita's east coast, stemming from the Lake of Flesh itself. He had been rendered exhausted from the carnage of a previous battle, and this disturbance in his sleep only served to agitate him. Thane's gruesome experiences within the Circle of Gluttony, his strange encounter with the black shadow on his way to Colossus, the betrayal of the Val'gara by the Collective, and that bastard chimpanzee trying to interfere with his attempts at rebuilding the family - HIS family - which were now in shambles had all taken their toll on the Stalker's mind.
He just couldn't control his rage any longer.
The flesh growth burrowed through dirt and rocks, moving under and over the warzone the trio fought within, forming giant artificial hands which wrapped themselves around the section of unmelted land that surrounded molten pool and began dragging the entire mass toward the Lake of Flesh.
You all need to shut your fucking mouths and stay the fuck out of this thread.
The sphere of crimson ether superheated the air as it shot across the sky, vaporizing raindrops along its path and leaving a thin veil of quickly dissipating steam in its wake. In his bid to retake Soran, to punish Singar for his alleged crimes - to engage in what most certainly might be a most-brutal interrogation session with the Stalker - the Herald and his clownfish companion failed to move themselves out of harm's way. Furthermore they didn't even seem to make an attempt at raising a defense of ANY kind to protect themselves from the destructive attack launched at them by the two of Soran's most notorious cousins.
Just before impact, another small aperture formed within the cloud, and a voice could be heard speaking in perfect synchronicity with the serpent's beam. To those who were psychically empowered, a stream of blue psionic energy could be seen fusing with the beam, merging with it and causing its bloody color to shift toward becoming a deep, magical purple.
Then it hit.
Sarach's ether-beam smashed into Megalodon, at first simply pushing the sharkborg back, but as it felt resistance from the Herald struggling against it. The beam split apart as a natural consequence of meeting the Herald head-on, branching out into multiple passing tendrils, going up, over, and around the amphibian monstrosity, only to merge back fuse back together into a single blast, trapping the beast inside. "If you must roar, then roar with vigor so that your vocal chords might tear, and so that I might rip and pluck those noisy things from your gullet and hang you by them." Singar's psychic voice had merged with Sarach's attack, easily breaching the walls of the cyborg's mind as well as Amphriprioninae's. Within second's the clownfish's bowl suffered a fracture, not shattering it outright, but suffering more than enough damage to allow Amph to sense the pressure inside the glass go down by just a fraction of a pascal as streams of water slipped out through the cracks.
Megalodon suffered a far more direct and severe consequence. The metal composing its cybernetic arm superheated as the ether washed over it, the joints in its organic flesh suffering immediate burns that would inflict grievous nerve damage to the muscles he utilized to move his left shoulder. Worse was that as the beam traveled up and passed over his head, it seared his jawline, fused a small portion of his gills together, and burnt the insides of the shark's nostrils, screwing with its sense of smell. Tracking the location of the Stalker by scent would no longer be an easy task requiring minimal effort - certainly possible given the Sharkborg's tenacity and ravenous tendencies - but it would most assuredly be transformed into a mission of much greater difficulty.
Ultimately, by the time the ether-beam scattered and was absorbed into the Midnight Fog, Megalodon and Amph were left a steaming as a steaming-hot trio of fish, fish, and glowing red metal parts, that had shockingly only been cooked to medium rare. If through their lack of appropriate combat maneuvers, the aquatic pair continued taking reckless hits, it would no longer be just a small detriment to their success, they wouldn't even make through the Fog, the hole of which had been opened to accommodate Singar's telepathic message through now closing back, denying them so much as a glance at what had been transpiring on Liaita's surface.
"Hurry up, wretched Herald of your failing and pathetic race." Projected the Corruptor, his words incisive, and his tone a combination of disgust and genuine irritation.
Capriciously, he added yet another scathing, spitting comment, as was utterly befitting of a bastard like Singar. "I am not worthy of seeing my time wasted on watching your ridiculously, exceptionally stupendous ineptitude and careless disregard for the other occupants of this world, whose rage you are not even competent enough to evade."
He wondered how deep those words cut into the Val'garan, if he had laced his words with enough venom, or should he try to extrapolate Amphroprininae's inability to protect its partner from further humiliation by Agron and Sarach by insulting that aspect of its intelligence?
Too much effort for a simple clownfish..., he thought, observing the battle through the rocky duo's eyes as it passed Megalodon overhead, its spiked, ethereally charged tail came in low for a brutal, hooking that would pulverize and drag the Sharkborg across the foggy sky should it smash into him.
The Lake of Flesh
Standing atop the massive, recently thawed-out boulder that was Cocytus, Singar looked up at the sky with his dark-indigo eyes, his arms crossed as he witnessed the first sign of a losing battle, a vague grin of knowing stretching across his pale face. For a moment he stared down at the lake of flesh which was a mosaic of ice mixed with strands of muscle fiber, undeveloped organs, and arthropod parts. Occasionally they drifted toward the rock, harmlessly bumping up against it, though more-often-than not the little islands bumped into each other instead, for there had been hardly any space between them as is.
Behind him the Vesuvian Storm boomed as it always had, the clouds of assimilation churning with the ever expanding Midnight Fog which achieved greater mass and volume by the second, as Singar's hydrokinesis converted the rain water into more fog that continue to consume all the available air-space, and soon Liaita would be under full control of the Collector's will.
Beneath the floating islands, where the lake of flesh was still warm, a thought had been reborn, a hunter's hunger had been revived, and a monster's need to feed became active once again, but its desire to kill still needed room to grow.
It didn't stop the islands from suddenly rising as if in reaction to the Herald's primitive growling, which seemed to elicit an insidious chuckle from deep within the cavernous rock that Singar was perched on.
"You'll thank me once you've fully recovered, Thane."
Just before impact, another small aperture formed within the cloud, and a voice could be heard speaking in perfect synchronicity with the serpent's beam. To those who were psychically empowered, a stream of blue psionic energy could be seen fusing with the beam, merging with it and causing its bloody color to shift toward becoming a deep, magical purple.
Then it hit.
Sarach's ether-beam smashed into Megalodon, at first simply pushing the sharkborg back, but as it felt resistance from the Herald struggling against it. The beam split apart as a natural consequence of meeting the Herald head-on, branching out into multiple passing tendrils, going up, over, and around the amphibian monstrosity, only to merge back fuse back together into a single blast, trapping the beast inside. "If you must roar, then roar with vigor so that your vocal chords might tear, and so that I might rip and pluck those noisy things from your gullet and hang you by them." Singar's psychic voice had merged with Sarach's attack, easily breaching the walls of the cyborg's mind as well as Amphriprioninae's. Within second's the clownfish's bowl suffered a fracture, not shattering it outright, but suffering more than enough damage to allow Amph to sense the pressure inside the glass go down by just a fraction of a pascal as streams of water slipped out through the cracks.
Megalodon suffered a far more direct and severe consequence. The metal composing its cybernetic arm superheated as the ether washed over it, the joints in its organic flesh suffering immediate burns that would inflict grievous nerve damage to the muscles he utilized to move his left shoulder. Worse was that as the beam traveled up and passed over his head, it seared his jawline, fused a small portion of his gills together, and burnt the insides of the shark's nostrils, screwing with its sense of smell. Tracking the location of the Stalker by scent would no longer be an easy task requiring minimal effort - certainly possible given the Sharkborg's tenacity and ravenous tendencies - but it would most assuredly be transformed into a mission of much greater difficulty.
Ultimately, by the time the ether-beam scattered and was absorbed into the Midnight Fog, Megalodon and Amph were left a steaming as a steaming-hot trio of fish, fish, and glowing red metal parts, that had shockingly only been cooked to medium rare. If through their lack of appropriate combat maneuvers, the aquatic pair continued taking reckless hits, it would no longer be just a small detriment to their success, they wouldn't even make through the Fog, the hole of which had been opened to accommodate Singar's telepathic message through now closing back, denying them so much as a glance at what had been transpiring on Liaita's surface.
"Hurry up, wretched Herald of your failing and pathetic race." Projected the Corruptor, his words incisive, and his tone a combination of disgust and genuine irritation.
Capriciously, he added yet another scathing, spitting comment, as was utterly befitting of a bastard like Singar. "I am not worthy of seeing my time wasted on watching your ridiculously, exceptionally stupendous ineptitude and careless disregard for the other occupants of this world, whose rage you are not even competent enough to evade."
He wondered how deep those words cut into the Val'garan, if he had laced his words with enough venom, or should he try to extrapolate Amphroprininae's inability to protect its partner from further humiliation by Agron and Sarach by insulting that aspect of its intelligence?
Too much effort for a simple clownfish..., he thought, observing the battle through the rocky duo's eyes as it passed Megalodon overhead, its spiked, ethereally charged tail came in low for a brutal, hooking that would pulverize and drag the Sharkborg across the foggy sky should it smash into him.
The Lake of Flesh
Standing atop the massive, recently thawed-out boulder that was Cocytus, Singar looked up at the sky with his dark-indigo eyes, his arms crossed as he witnessed the first sign of a losing battle, a vague grin of knowing stretching across his pale face. For a moment he stared down at the lake of flesh which was a mosaic of ice mixed with strands of muscle fiber, undeveloped organs, and arthropod parts. Occasionally they drifted toward the rock, harmlessly bumping up against it, though more-often-than not the little islands bumped into each other instead, for there had been hardly any space between them as is.
Behind him the Vesuvian Storm boomed as it always had, the clouds of assimilation churning with the ever expanding Midnight Fog which achieved greater mass and volume by the second, as Singar's hydrokinesis converted the rain water into more fog that continue to consume all the available air-space, and soon Liaita would be under full control of the Collector's will.
Beneath the floating islands, where the lake of flesh was still warm, a thought had been reborn, a hunter's hunger had been revived, and a monster's need to feed became active once again, but its desire to kill still needed room to grow.
It didn't stop the islands from suddenly rising as if in reaction to the Herald's primitive growling, which seemed to elicit an insidious chuckle from deep within the cavernous rock that Singar was perched on.
"You'll thank me once you've fully recovered, Thane."
@Everett I see. I can respect that. I just feel like it's a shame that people are leaving mainly because- as far as I can gather- a judge went rogue and started telling people things he wasn't supposed to.
Good luck with your other threads~
If only the world was as black and white as the situation you just made reference to.
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