07-06-2016, 10:28 PM
The sandstorm was beyond fierce, and absolutely nothing was visible under the choking cloud of hell-driven sand particles. Nealaphh could see nothing, but its senses allowed it to keep track of the ones known as Usshot and Klicka, who had evidently taken him prisoner. They tugged him along in tow, a pair of heavy shackles around his wrists and ankles, limiting Nealaphh's movement to a solemn shuffle through the biting lead grit. The demons had covered themselves in heavy black shawls, most likely the same coverings they had used to conceal themselves in the sand dunes. Nealaphh had been well aware of their presence before they had rushed him, but hadn't bothered to react. There was little point, after all. Ultimately, his position was no different than when he had been wandering the desert on his own, only this time, there was a destination ahead.
The three of them were silent as they marched through the biting cloud, Nealaphh's hyper-perceptive mind registering each and every grain of blown sand that burnished the surface of its bleeding and cracked body. This body that it hated. It had known, from the moment that it had entered the Omniverse, that Omni had done something to its fleshy brain…given it some biological compulsion to experience existence from a mortal point of view. Until the Battle of Death Mountain, it had ignored the niggling thoughts and flickers of emotion in the back of its cosmic psyche, warning it of things to come. For all his foresight and worldly thought, however, Nealaphh rarely bothered to look inwards, at himself. Perhaps that was why he had become what he was in the first place; trying to escape the premise of having to confront his own iniquities.
The slaying of Volvagia, and the subsequent realization that it had wrought total destruction on an entire way of life, had blown that portal wide open. Everything had come out at once, all the terrors and horrors that it had committed over the span of an entire universe's existence. Things it would have never dreamed itself capable of doing, had it maintained a semblance, even a shred of human ethos. Omni had been so kind as to shove that expunged element back into its brain, and now, here it was, caught in the sordid results of its own temper tantrum.
They continued to march for an interminably long time. As much as Nealaphh hated to admit it, it felt like a span of time somewhere in the order of two days. This was another phenomenon that he had been trying to ignore for so long; feeling subjected to the human perception of the time stream. Regardless, whatever sustained these demons' bodies must be similar to its own. It had noticed, however, that the heat had actually been rising as time had gone on. A vorpal, orange glow began to permeate the swirling buffets of sand, like a cloudy night illuminated by the lights of a filthy metropolis.
All at once, however, the three emerged from the swirling vortex, and came to gaze upon an outcropping that overlooked exactly what Nealaphh had been thinking. It was a city, sprawling and grasping for territory in every direction. Rows upon rows of towering, bruise-colored smoke stacks, each emblazoned with an immense, molten numeral, belched smoke and fire into the dull red air. The charcoal black haze was drifting in the direction they had just been walking from, and it dawned on Nealaphh that what they had been walking through was not, in fact, a natural desert of some dark silicate. It was a vast, nearly endless field of ash and soot from the thousand factories that spat the grit high into the sky. How long and how fierce must these smokestacks have been burning to produce such a feature?
On top of that, there were pipes and superstructures that wound around low lying buildings that resembled the mutilated entrails of some beastly behemoth, all steaming and smoking with the life of industry. Molten shapes were ferried to and fro on singed, leathery conveyor belts, and power hubs crackled with a purple, sinister electrical current, which drove the entire operation. This entire facility, or city, rather, stretched on far into the distance, which wasn't actually that far on account of the thick smog that permeated the air. The noise was discordant, to say the least, with a choir of clanging and crashing machinery that really sounded more like something was perpetually breaking rather than simply running. Beneath that, a great, bass rumble deafened the deepest pits of Nealaphh's ears, and made it hard to even think straight.
"C'mon, no more dawdlin'." Usshot said with a harsh tug. The trio resumed their march once again, down out of the foothills of soot and into the living city. They passed along catwalks and rusted palisades that were stitched and patched together in a twisting, wiry fashion that reminded Nealaphh of a bone that had fused together incorrectly. Other demons and imps filed past, wearing heavy masks as they cut into the metallic flesh of the city with torches, fusing and severing its mechanical organs to an end that Nealaphh couldn't fathom. They paid Usshot and Klicka little attention as they tromped past on the vibrating, rickety walkways. After another span of marching, the group finally arrived at a large door, which really looked more like some sort of hideous sphincter. It ground and sucked itself open, unleashed a blast of scalding hot air.
Inside, the clanging and banging of the outer city was muted, and replaced with intermittent clicks and hisses, as if they were inside of an immense clock. Pistons and gears sullenly ground around and around, back and forth, performing operations that, again Nealaphh couldn't figure out. It was quite frustrating for someone whose mind worked on such a fundamentally logical level, and Nealaphh half suspected that a large portion of all this machinery was exponentially redundant. They came upon a large, spiral staircase, smooth and beveled in a more organic fashion than otherwise, and ascended higher and higher into a tower that Nealaphh hadn't even noticed. As they ascended, video screens began to adorn the rusted flesh walls, most of them abuzz with nothing but snowy static. Others showed various portions of the factory city, watching the worker demons closely, while others still displayed scrawls of symbols that didn't seem to be either schematics, or language, or a cipher.
Had Nealaphh been in its normal god-mind, it would have found all of this quite lovely. As things were, it was almost too much to take in.
Finally, Usshot, Klicka and Nealaphh arrived on a landing at the top of the tower. A circular dias hung suspended from five chains, cables and wires feeding in and out of it, making it resemble something akin to an upside-down jellyfish. The platform was about fifty yards in diameter, and the floor was scarred and pitted from a source Nealaphh couldn't identify. Around them, near the linking section of each chain, there was a large mound of electronics, quietly winking diodes and beeping in sinister fashion. Nealaphh could sense a mind within each one of them; were they the organic computers that kept this entire apparatus working? There was so much that was unknown. The far most mound of machinery, however, had a mind that was very much awake. Nealaphh looked closer at the entity seated in the throne of tubes and wires, illuminated only by golden diodes that winked in the metallic skulls that formed the armcaps of the rusted seat.
The being, grafted perhaps, into this throne looked more human than not, with sagging, aged facial features and a long, dark beard. Nealaphh did recognize, however, that what may have served as this being’s body was completely cybernetic, and of a configuration more like an octopus rather than a bipedal humanoid. In place of suckers, the gently pulsing tendrils had vents and buttons, most of which were rusted shut. Two large arms, with three joints each, branched from a torso that sat atop the molluscoid corpus, and were capped with dextrous, biological hands. Upon closer inspection, Nealaphh realized that what it had originally thought was a hairy beard and balding head, was actually a tangled network of tiny wires and cables that fed up into the fleshy, ancient face they adorned. The creature’s eyes were hidden behind individual, cylindrical caps that belied no way of perceiving the outside world.
The entity spoke. His voice was surprisingly soft and measured, and had a slightly modulated aspect to it. When he spoke however, the voice did not emanate from his mouth, but from what Nealaphh assumed were loudspeakers arrayed all around the chamber, which caused his words to reverberate deeply in the thunder-heavy air.
“And what have you dragged to me this time?” he asked in a bored tone, running a finger through the fine wires that made up his beard. Usshot and Klicka shifted uncomfortably; their nervousness was palpable.
“Well, we uh…dunno. Found him wandrin in da soot ‘n couldn’ figger out wot ‘e wuz.” Klicka said, clicking his despicable mandibles together with each gurgled word. The entity did not respond for some time, steepling his fingers in careful consideration. A large gout of steam blasted forth from some unseen aperture behind his body, causing the vapor to swirl around and veil his face for a moment. Nealaphh seemed to figure that this was the entity’s equivalent of sighing.
“Of course. And you didn’t just throw him into the slave pits because…?” the entity responded. Now it was Usshot’s turn to speak up.
“Well…it seems kinda…slow. Y’know. Can’t speak or hear or anyfin I reckonz, so I figger we bring ‘im to you, Master Grooota.” Usshot said, pushing Nealaphh forward with a harsh shove. His bare, mineral feet clanged loudly on the corroded metal of the platform. Usshot’s words confirmed that this being was who Nealaphh had suspected he was.
“Effectively useless. How wonderful. But curious, yes. Let us take a look.” Grooota said. With that, there came a great creaking, and a robotic arm descended from the darkness overhead, plucking Nealaphh off of the ground like a mewling kitten and hoisting him right over in front of Groota’s face. The cybernetic entity ran a clammy, fleshy finger down Nealaphh’s blank, featureless face and torso, wicking away a smear of his glinting iron blood. Grooota now did open his mouth, and a segmented tube, writhing with an uncanny life of its own, sucked the blood off of the cold finger, like a fly dabbing its proboscis on a succulent morsel.
“Hmmmmm…” Grooota said, his utterance bouncing up and down the walls in an electronic echo. Nealaphh could feel Klicka and Usshot tense in anticipation, and not a small amount of fear.
“…Prime.” Grooota said at last, unceremoniously dumping Nealaphh back onto the metallic floor, where he crumpled to the ground like a wet rag. By this point, being completely unresponsive had just become a habit for him. He just didn’t have the will to do anything for himself at this point; everything was still too confusing…too upsetting.
“Wot? Are you serious? That fing izza Prime?” Klicka shouted, taking a step forward. Grooota nodded slowly.
“No mistaking it. Omnilium flows in his blood, like flecks of gold through a river.” Grooota said. As his echoing words faded away, Usshot let out a low, ironic chuckle.
“Wot good izza Prime wot can’t even stand on ‘is own?” the brute asked, crossing his spined arms over one another, not appearing to care that he was severely lacerating his own flesh.
“Perhaps…” Grooota started, running another finger through his mechanical beard, “…he is still somewhat shellshocked upon having been banished. I think I may have a purpose to put him to, though.”
Klicka and Usshot looked at each other dubiously.
“Uh…like what?” Klicka asked, tapping one of his four feet on the platform impatiently. Grooota let out a long laugh, a hoarse chuckle that echoed and reverberated over itself, making it seem like an entire pantheon of trans-humans were laughing at the mentally stunted Imp.
“Well, I’m sure you’re aware of the little infestation problem we have in the Basement. Perhaps this Prime can clear them out.” Grooota said, picking Nealaphh up and placing him on his feet by using the large robotic arm he had called from the ceiling. Nealaphh’s head hung low, but he remained standing.
“Fugger couldn’t even put up a fight against us! Howya figger ‘e kin take on dem Weirdlings?”
Weirdlings. Nealaphh earmarked the word for later reference. Grooota let out another ghostly laugh.
“Maybe he just didn’t think you were enough of a threat to care.” the cyborg said with a completely unmasked overtone of mirth. Klicka and Usshot grumbled uncomfortably, and almost proceeded to object to this sentiment, but thought better of it. There was only so much back talk Grooota was willing to take. Besides, he was probably right, as usual.
“Show him to the Basement. If he kills even a few of them before dying, it’ll be a load off my processors. After that, he’ll just pop up somewhere else. Someone else’s problem.” Grooota said. With that, the cyborg folded his arms and seemed to suddenly seize into a dormant state, the diodes on his body and integrated throne suddenly going dark. Nealaphh conjectured that the body in front of them was just a convenient avatar for the one known as Grooota. The being itself was probably the primary artificial intelligence that ran the city. In other words, Grooota was the factory city.
With that, Usshot hoisted Nealaphh back towards himself and Klicka, the heavy chain clanging loudly on the iron deck.
“Better get goin…” the larger Demon grumbled. Klicka muttered something in a language Nealaphh could not place and followed along.
The trip to the location known as The Basement was not as long as Nealaphh had been anticipating. Grooota being what he was, after all, it only made sense that the infrastructure of the city had some form of public transportation…even if that transportation was large, flat platforms grafted onto the backs of monstrous centipedes the size of a steam engine. By the time that the welded monstrosity scuttled to a halt, they were miles from their original location at the nexus of Grooota. A short walk later, and they were taking an elevator deep, deep into the bowels of the city. Unlike the fiery, molten surface of Grooota, this lower subsection was dark and clammy. Moisture clung to every surface like glimmering lichen, and there seemed to be some sort of milky, slimy runoff that flooded every corridor and passage of the basement. The only illumination was from intermittent, flickering neon lamps that offered a pallid, stark light.
For all intents and purposes, Nealaphh conflated The Basement with being in the deepest intestines of Grooota. It was a concept that would not have bothered it a few days ago, but now, it felt a sense of intuitive revulsion. Nealaphh was half-tempted to speak up for the first time since arriving in the Underverse, and ask what exactly the Weirdlings were, and why it was necessary to kill them. Luckily, the one known as Klicka seemed more than eager to dole out Nealaphh’s orders.
“Roit. Weirdlings. Named perfectly cuz dere da flesh ‘n metal experiments wot didn’t work out for Grooota ‘n Lord Diablo.”
“Always tryin’ to improve on whatz already perfectly fine.” Grumbled Usshot, kissing one of his needle covered biceps.
“Yeh. Just kill ‘em till you die. Or just die. Not our problem anymore.” Klicka grumbled, pushing Nealaphh off of the lift into the milky muck that rose up to his knees. Without further ceremony, the Imps boarded the lift they had come down on and pressed a button on the platform itself, causing it to loudly creak back up into the hellish warmth above. Nealaphh was not concerned about being trapped, on account of its vast capabilities to rescue itself from the situation, but now, curiosity had gripped his mind. It was a welcome distraction from the endless self-scrutiny and recollection that had been wracking his brain for the past few days.
With slow, but unhesitant strides, Nealaphh waded off into the pallid goo in search of these Weirdlings to kill…
The three of them were silent as they marched through the biting cloud, Nealaphh's hyper-perceptive mind registering each and every grain of blown sand that burnished the surface of its bleeding and cracked body. This body that it hated. It had known, from the moment that it had entered the Omniverse, that Omni had done something to its fleshy brain…given it some biological compulsion to experience existence from a mortal point of view. Until the Battle of Death Mountain, it had ignored the niggling thoughts and flickers of emotion in the back of its cosmic psyche, warning it of things to come. For all his foresight and worldly thought, however, Nealaphh rarely bothered to look inwards, at himself. Perhaps that was why he had become what he was in the first place; trying to escape the premise of having to confront his own iniquities.
The slaying of Volvagia, and the subsequent realization that it had wrought total destruction on an entire way of life, had blown that portal wide open. Everything had come out at once, all the terrors and horrors that it had committed over the span of an entire universe's existence. Things it would have never dreamed itself capable of doing, had it maintained a semblance, even a shred of human ethos. Omni had been so kind as to shove that expunged element back into its brain, and now, here it was, caught in the sordid results of its own temper tantrum.
They continued to march for an interminably long time. As much as Nealaphh hated to admit it, it felt like a span of time somewhere in the order of two days. This was another phenomenon that he had been trying to ignore for so long; feeling subjected to the human perception of the time stream. Regardless, whatever sustained these demons' bodies must be similar to its own. It had noticed, however, that the heat had actually been rising as time had gone on. A vorpal, orange glow began to permeate the swirling buffets of sand, like a cloudy night illuminated by the lights of a filthy metropolis.
All at once, however, the three emerged from the swirling vortex, and came to gaze upon an outcropping that overlooked exactly what Nealaphh had been thinking. It was a city, sprawling and grasping for territory in every direction. Rows upon rows of towering, bruise-colored smoke stacks, each emblazoned with an immense, molten numeral, belched smoke and fire into the dull red air. The charcoal black haze was drifting in the direction they had just been walking from, and it dawned on Nealaphh that what they had been walking through was not, in fact, a natural desert of some dark silicate. It was a vast, nearly endless field of ash and soot from the thousand factories that spat the grit high into the sky. How long and how fierce must these smokestacks have been burning to produce such a feature?
On top of that, there were pipes and superstructures that wound around low lying buildings that resembled the mutilated entrails of some beastly behemoth, all steaming and smoking with the life of industry. Molten shapes were ferried to and fro on singed, leathery conveyor belts, and power hubs crackled with a purple, sinister electrical current, which drove the entire operation. This entire facility, or city, rather, stretched on far into the distance, which wasn't actually that far on account of the thick smog that permeated the air. The noise was discordant, to say the least, with a choir of clanging and crashing machinery that really sounded more like something was perpetually breaking rather than simply running. Beneath that, a great, bass rumble deafened the deepest pits of Nealaphh's ears, and made it hard to even think straight.
"C'mon, no more dawdlin'." Usshot said with a harsh tug. The trio resumed their march once again, down out of the foothills of soot and into the living city. They passed along catwalks and rusted palisades that were stitched and patched together in a twisting, wiry fashion that reminded Nealaphh of a bone that had fused together incorrectly. Other demons and imps filed past, wearing heavy masks as they cut into the metallic flesh of the city with torches, fusing and severing its mechanical organs to an end that Nealaphh couldn't fathom. They paid Usshot and Klicka little attention as they tromped past on the vibrating, rickety walkways. After another span of marching, the group finally arrived at a large door, which really looked more like some sort of hideous sphincter. It ground and sucked itself open, unleashed a blast of scalding hot air.
Inside, the clanging and banging of the outer city was muted, and replaced with intermittent clicks and hisses, as if they were inside of an immense clock. Pistons and gears sullenly ground around and around, back and forth, performing operations that, again Nealaphh couldn't figure out. It was quite frustrating for someone whose mind worked on such a fundamentally logical level, and Nealaphh half suspected that a large portion of all this machinery was exponentially redundant. They came upon a large, spiral staircase, smooth and beveled in a more organic fashion than otherwise, and ascended higher and higher into a tower that Nealaphh hadn't even noticed. As they ascended, video screens began to adorn the rusted flesh walls, most of them abuzz with nothing but snowy static. Others showed various portions of the factory city, watching the worker demons closely, while others still displayed scrawls of symbols that didn't seem to be either schematics, or language, or a cipher.
Had Nealaphh been in its normal god-mind, it would have found all of this quite lovely. As things were, it was almost too much to take in.
Finally, Usshot, Klicka and Nealaphh arrived on a landing at the top of the tower. A circular dias hung suspended from five chains, cables and wires feeding in and out of it, making it resemble something akin to an upside-down jellyfish. The platform was about fifty yards in diameter, and the floor was scarred and pitted from a source Nealaphh couldn't identify. Around them, near the linking section of each chain, there was a large mound of electronics, quietly winking diodes and beeping in sinister fashion. Nealaphh could sense a mind within each one of them; were they the organic computers that kept this entire apparatus working? There was so much that was unknown. The far most mound of machinery, however, had a mind that was very much awake. Nealaphh looked closer at the entity seated in the throne of tubes and wires, illuminated only by golden diodes that winked in the metallic skulls that formed the armcaps of the rusted seat.
The being, grafted perhaps, into this throne looked more human than not, with sagging, aged facial features and a long, dark beard. Nealaphh did recognize, however, that what may have served as this being’s body was completely cybernetic, and of a configuration more like an octopus rather than a bipedal humanoid. In place of suckers, the gently pulsing tendrils had vents and buttons, most of which were rusted shut. Two large arms, with three joints each, branched from a torso that sat atop the molluscoid corpus, and were capped with dextrous, biological hands. Upon closer inspection, Nealaphh realized that what it had originally thought was a hairy beard and balding head, was actually a tangled network of tiny wires and cables that fed up into the fleshy, ancient face they adorned. The creature’s eyes were hidden behind individual, cylindrical caps that belied no way of perceiving the outside world.
The entity spoke. His voice was surprisingly soft and measured, and had a slightly modulated aspect to it. When he spoke however, the voice did not emanate from his mouth, but from what Nealaphh assumed were loudspeakers arrayed all around the chamber, which caused his words to reverberate deeply in the thunder-heavy air.
“And what have you dragged to me this time?” he asked in a bored tone, running a finger through the fine wires that made up his beard. Usshot and Klicka shifted uncomfortably; their nervousness was palpable.
“Well, we uh…dunno. Found him wandrin in da soot ‘n couldn’ figger out wot ‘e wuz.” Klicka said, clicking his despicable mandibles together with each gurgled word. The entity did not respond for some time, steepling his fingers in careful consideration. A large gout of steam blasted forth from some unseen aperture behind his body, causing the vapor to swirl around and veil his face for a moment. Nealaphh seemed to figure that this was the entity’s equivalent of sighing.
“Of course. And you didn’t just throw him into the slave pits because…?” the entity responded. Now it was Usshot’s turn to speak up.
“Well…it seems kinda…slow. Y’know. Can’t speak or hear or anyfin I reckonz, so I figger we bring ‘im to you, Master Grooota.” Usshot said, pushing Nealaphh forward with a harsh shove. His bare, mineral feet clanged loudly on the corroded metal of the platform. Usshot’s words confirmed that this being was who Nealaphh had suspected he was.
“Effectively useless. How wonderful. But curious, yes. Let us take a look.” Grooota said. With that, there came a great creaking, and a robotic arm descended from the darkness overhead, plucking Nealaphh off of the ground like a mewling kitten and hoisting him right over in front of Groota’s face. The cybernetic entity ran a clammy, fleshy finger down Nealaphh’s blank, featureless face and torso, wicking away a smear of his glinting iron blood. Grooota now did open his mouth, and a segmented tube, writhing with an uncanny life of its own, sucked the blood off of the cold finger, like a fly dabbing its proboscis on a succulent morsel.
“Hmmmmm…” Grooota said, his utterance bouncing up and down the walls in an electronic echo. Nealaphh could feel Klicka and Usshot tense in anticipation, and not a small amount of fear.
“…Prime.” Grooota said at last, unceremoniously dumping Nealaphh back onto the metallic floor, where he crumpled to the ground like a wet rag. By this point, being completely unresponsive had just become a habit for him. He just didn’t have the will to do anything for himself at this point; everything was still too confusing…too upsetting.
“Wot? Are you serious? That fing izza Prime?” Klicka shouted, taking a step forward. Grooota nodded slowly.
“No mistaking it. Omnilium flows in his blood, like flecks of gold through a river.” Grooota said. As his echoing words faded away, Usshot let out a low, ironic chuckle.
“Wot good izza Prime wot can’t even stand on ‘is own?” the brute asked, crossing his spined arms over one another, not appearing to care that he was severely lacerating his own flesh.
“Perhaps…” Grooota started, running another finger through his mechanical beard, “…he is still somewhat shellshocked upon having been banished. I think I may have a purpose to put him to, though.”
Klicka and Usshot looked at each other dubiously.
“Uh…like what?” Klicka asked, tapping one of his four feet on the platform impatiently. Grooota let out a long laugh, a hoarse chuckle that echoed and reverberated over itself, making it seem like an entire pantheon of trans-humans were laughing at the mentally stunted Imp.
“Well, I’m sure you’re aware of the little infestation problem we have in the Basement. Perhaps this Prime can clear them out.” Grooota said, picking Nealaphh up and placing him on his feet by using the large robotic arm he had called from the ceiling. Nealaphh’s head hung low, but he remained standing.
“Fugger couldn’t even put up a fight against us! Howya figger ‘e kin take on dem Weirdlings?”
Weirdlings. Nealaphh earmarked the word for later reference. Grooota let out another ghostly laugh.
“Maybe he just didn’t think you were enough of a threat to care.” the cyborg said with a completely unmasked overtone of mirth. Klicka and Usshot grumbled uncomfortably, and almost proceeded to object to this sentiment, but thought better of it. There was only so much back talk Grooota was willing to take. Besides, he was probably right, as usual.
“Show him to the Basement. If he kills even a few of them before dying, it’ll be a load off my processors. After that, he’ll just pop up somewhere else. Someone else’s problem.” Grooota said. With that, the cyborg folded his arms and seemed to suddenly seize into a dormant state, the diodes on his body and integrated throne suddenly going dark. Nealaphh conjectured that the body in front of them was just a convenient avatar for the one known as Grooota. The being itself was probably the primary artificial intelligence that ran the city. In other words, Grooota was the factory city.
With that, Usshot hoisted Nealaphh back towards himself and Klicka, the heavy chain clanging loudly on the iron deck.
“Better get goin…” the larger Demon grumbled. Klicka muttered something in a language Nealaphh could not place and followed along.
The trip to the location known as The Basement was not as long as Nealaphh had been anticipating. Grooota being what he was, after all, it only made sense that the infrastructure of the city had some form of public transportation…even if that transportation was large, flat platforms grafted onto the backs of monstrous centipedes the size of a steam engine. By the time that the welded monstrosity scuttled to a halt, they were miles from their original location at the nexus of Grooota. A short walk later, and they were taking an elevator deep, deep into the bowels of the city. Unlike the fiery, molten surface of Grooota, this lower subsection was dark and clammy. Moisture clung to every surface like glimmering lichen, and there seemed to be some sort of milky, slimy runoff that flooded every corridor and passage of the basement. The only illumination was from intermittent, flickering neon lamps that offered a pallid, stark light.
For all intents and purposes, Nealaphh conflated The Basement with being in the deepest intestines of Grooota. It was a concept that would not have bothered it a few days ago, but now, it felt a sense of intuitive revulsion. Nealaphh was half-tempted to speak up for the first time since arriving in the Underverse, and ask what exactly the Weirdlings were, and why it was necessary to kill them. Luckily, the one known as Klicka seemed more than eager to dole out Nealaphh’s orders.
“Roit. Weirdlings. Named perfectly cuz dere da flesh ‘n metal experiments wot didn’t work out for Grooota ‘n Lord Diablo.”
“Always tryin’ to improve on whatz already perfectly fine.” Grumbled Usshot, kissing one of his needle covered biceps.
“Yeh. Just kill ‘em till you die. Or just die. Not our problem anymore.” Klicka grumbled, pushing Nealaphh off of the lift into the milky muck that rose up to his knees. Without further ceremony, the Imps boarded the lift they had come down on and pressed a button on the platform itself, causing it to loudly creak back up into the hellish warmth above. Nealaphh was not concerned about being trapped, on account of its vast capabilities to rescue itself from the situation, but now, curiosity had gripped his mind. It was a welcome distraction from the endless self-scrutiny and recollection that had been wracking his brain for the past few days.
With slow, but unhesitant strides, Nealaphh waded off into the pallid goo in search of these Weirdlings to kill…
And, we dream of home I dream of life out of here Their dreams are small My dreams don't know fear I got my heart full of hope I will change everything No matter what I'm told How impossible it seems We did it before And we'll do it again We're indestructible Even when we're tired And we've been here before Just you and I
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued