09-05-2016, 04:14 PM
After a time, Nealaphh began to notice the downstream current that he was walking against begin to stiffen. As it grew in strength, he picked up on an echoing roar coming down the pipes, as if a great effluence of the stuff was crashing into a lake some distance ahead. The force of the sound was enough to set the entire tube vibrating, and in addition to that, Nealaphh could also detect a faint thrumming that pulsed in regular intervals. It was like a heartbeat, a comparison which he instantly regretted making.
Soon enough, the ex-Enigma emerged into a cavernous space, at the mouth of a single pipe that networked into what appeared to be an immense underground reservoir of this white slop. The room was immense, easily a mile deep and half as wide. Nealaphh craned his neck to search for a ceiling, but saw only a spiderweb network of black scaffolding stretching up into the abyss. Small electronic lights winked along the precipice of every twisted ledge and outcrop within the space, and he could tell that there was intelligence behind them. Even now as he waded forth into the deepening sludge, he was aware of shapes moving just below the surface of the fluid, causing long ripples to stretch along the otherwise calm lake.
Indeed, a massive waterfall of sorts was plummeting from untold heights down into this eggshell mire, but the thick fluid created no mist or clouds of vapor as it the torrent descended into the primary pool. This, in and of itself, may have been sufficient to create the slow current that Nealaphh had noticed this whole time, but that wasn’t the only thing. The primary waterfall fell into a smaller, elevated pool approximately one hundred meters in diameter, which then pumped the vile liquid into the primary holding tank that Nealaphh found himself in. The pump, however, was no mechanical edifice.
It was a heart, as he had feared, towering almost to thirty meters tall, and ghastly pale as the fluid that it used to keep itself sustained. The heart gave off a stark bright light, similar to the electronic lights that had so far illuminated Nealaphh’s path. Heavy metal components pierced and wound themselves around the organic monolith, as if forcing it to beat in a rhythm that it found unnatural. Embedded in the front atrium, looking outwards upon the great pale lake, was the upperhalf of a woman’s torso, bare breasted and corpulent, with a circuitry infused face. Long loops of thick flesh hung from her skull in a mockery of thick, silken locks, and her eyes held nothing but a remorseless metallic glare. It was if she had grown, tumorous, from the side of the beating goliath organ, and now surveyed the expanse of the lake as her personal royal court.
Much in the same way that Grooota, the sentient city, had spoken to Nealaphh, this being now also spoke, though in a way that Nealaphh had not been expecting. For this forsaken mockery of the female form also spoke directly into Nealaphh’s mind with the haunting chime of telepathy.
It comes to us. It comes from Grooota. It comes from the Grooota to slay us and our children. It comes, does it not? To serve this ghastly purpose? Does it not? Come from Grooota?
Nealaphh, initially taken aback by the fact that something had the mental strength to pierce his own psychic barriers, responded in kind. What was more haunting, however, was that the female’s tone was eerily matched to Nealaphh’s own, making it hard to distinguish which of them was speaking at a given time. It was a trick of telepathy that Nealaphh had used many times on those weaker minded than he. Now he knew full well the discomfort that such manipulation could cause.
I come from Grooota, yes. If you are a weirdling, then it is my job to slay you.
I come from Grooota as well, and I have tried to slay the weirdlings. There are many. Will you kill them all?
I will kill them all, as many as I can, before I myself am killed.
Why am I going to kill them?
No, I am going to kill them, unless you plan on assisting me.
Why would I assist you? I have no quarrel with the weirdlings.
Grooota demands it. That is reason enough.
I do not obey Grooota. His reason is not enough.
Neither do I, but I choose to do so, in the interest of my own continued survival.
So are there weirdlings here?
I thought there were weirdlings here. I do not see any.
Have you seen any?
Yes, I encountered a few on my way here. I killed them.
Because I obey Grooota.
No, because I choose to obey Grooota. You do not, as you have stated. This attempt at confusing me will not succeed.
There was a pause, and all seemed still for a moment. The dull thumping of the she-heart and the roar of the slime-torrent produced such tremendous white noise that Nealaphh could barely recover from having this mental battle with the heart. He would have liked to conjecture that she served some specific purpose, but Nealaphh was certain, based on her efforts to persuade him against his chosen task, that she herself was one of the hybrid entities he had been tasked with slaying.
Suddenly, there was motion, and Nealaphh glanced around to see that the myriad dots of light which had been twinkling in the iron ramparts now began to descend along the vaulted walls like iridescent spiders. There came the sound of bursting water, as hundreds of vile amalgamations of demon and machine rose from the milky depths of the reservoir, eager to defend their queen. The heart-woman began to project more telepathic messages, but this time it was not words. It was music, a doleful, instrumental broadcast. Slowly, the weirdlings that surged towards Nealaphh from every corner began to softly sing in time with the psychic melody.
And then the Queen herself began to sing. Had Nealaphh possessed a mouth, he was sure that he too would have been compelled to join the weirdlings in this compulsive dirge. At first, he could not fathom the purpose of such a telepathic emanation, but then it became evident as the weirdlings launched their first attack.
It was synchronized beautifully, a fusillade of infernal gunfire and whirling blades that Nealaphh narrowly escaped from with a sudden surge upwards into the air. Without missing a beat, the orchestrated horde turned to follow him as he alighted on a low-hanging beam. It was only after a moment that Nealaphh realized that he too was being forced to move in time with the beat. Not only was it a way of coordinating the movements of a thousands otherwise mindless killers, its overpowering force allowed her to predict Nealaphh’s own movements. This was highlighted when, a moment later, the support rivets to the beam were shot out in perfect time with a small crescendo in the current stanza.
Nealaphh barely dodged in time as another barrage whizzed through the air where he had been crouching a moment prior. With a small flicker of mental power, Nealaphh sent the beam careening towards the group of misshapen skeletal cyborgs firing at him, but they dodged gracefully out of the way in keeping with the end of a verse. This was rapidly becoming a situation more dangerous than Nealaphh could have predicted, but the shadow was not without his own wiles.
As he plummeted back down into the mire, he took the momentary obfuscation to teleport directly behind the Heart Queen, and began to distort the space directly around where he sensed her head to be. Directly on cue, he felt himself being plucked into the air and tossed back into the crowd of scything monstrosities under the force of her own telekinetic prowess. The distraction caused the spatial tension to disperse harmlessly, but it gave Nealaphh the moment he needed to call his Aspects into existence. As he landed, a great gout of thick fluid gushed up into the air, and with it, more than two dozen small black prisms, who all immediately began to fire piercing blasts of energy into the encroaching weirdlings.
Nealaphh himself gathered up his mental power and caused the gravity in his immediate vicinity to fluctuate, pinning almost fifty of the variable scrapped weaponoids to their place in the white lake. One mental scream later, and they were sent flying through the air like rattling grey and black matchsticks, crunching horribly against the distant walls of the chamber.
Somehow, the utter cacophony of the energy blasts, gunfire and slime-fall still could not drown out the force of the Heart Queen’s haunting strains. Nealaphh felt his footing slipping somewhat, and was unsure if he had been snatched by an unseen foe, when he realized that the floor beneath his feet was moving. As he was hoisted into the air, Nealaphh realized that he was on the slimy back of a hunched over giant, whose hunched posture remained stiff. All at once, a dozen small hatches opened down the length of the twenty-foot monster’s back, and a fusillade of small missiles rocketed out into the darkness, their orange contrails lending a rare burst of color to the otherwise grayscale scene.
Nealaphh barely had a moment to try and telekinietically launch himself in an evasive maneuver before the supersonic warheads impacted him two, three, four times in progressively stronger explosions, blasting the ex-Enigma high into the air. It was at this point that he blacked out…
Soon enough, the ex-Enigma emerged into a cavernous space, at the mouth of a single pipe that networked into what appeared to be an immense underground reservoir of this white slop. The room was immense, easily a mile deep and half as wide. Nealaphh craned his neck to search for a ceiling, but saw only a spiderweb network of black scaffolding stretching up into the abyss. Small electronic lights winked along the precipice of every twisted ledge and outcrop within the space, and he could tell that there was intelligence behind them. Even now as he waded forth into the deepening sludge, he was aware of shapes moving just below the surface of the fluid, causing long ripples to stretch along the otherwise calm lake.
Indeed, a massive waterfall of sorts was plummeting from untold heights down into this eggshell mire, but the thick fluid created no mist or clouds of vapor as it the torrent descended into the primary pool. This, in and of itself, may have been sufficient to create the slow current that Nealaphh had noticed this whole time, but that wasn’t the only thing. The primary waterfall fell into a smaller, elevated pool approximately one hundred meters in diameter, which then pumped the vile liquid into the primary holding tank that Nealaphh found himself in. The pump, however, was no mechanical edifice.
It was a heart, as he had feared, towering almost to thirty meters tall, and ghastly pale as the fluid that it used to keep itself sustained. The heart gave off a stark bright light, similar to the electronic lights that had so far illuminated Nealaphh’s path. Heavy metal components pierced and wound themselves around the organic monolith, as if forcing it to beat in a rhythm that it found unnatural. Embedded in the front atrium, looking outwards upon the great pale lake, was the upperhalf of a woman’s torso, bare breasted and corpulent, with a circuitry infused face. Long loops of thick flesh hung from her skull in a mockery of thick, silken locks, and her eyes held nothing but a remorseless metallic glare. It was if she had grown, tumorous, from the side of the beating goliath organ, and now surveyed the expanse of the lake as her personal royal court.
Much in the same way that Grooota, the sentient city, had spoken to Nealaphh, this being now also spoke, though in a way that Nealaphh had not been expecting. For this forsaken mockery of the female form also spoke directly into Nealaphh’s mind with the haunting chime of telepathy.
It comes to us. It comes from Grooota. It comes from the Grooota to slay us and our children. It comes, does it not? To serve this ghastly purpose? Does it not? Come from Grooota?
Nealaphh, initially taken aback by the fact that something had the mental strength to pierce his own psychic barriers, responded in kind. What was more haunting, however, was that the female’s tone was eerily matched to Nealaphh’s own, making it hard to distinguish which of them was speaking at a given time. It was a trick of telepathy that Nealaphh had used many times on those weaker minded than he. Now he knew full well the discomfort that such manipulation could cause.
I come from Grooota, yes. If you are a weirdling, then it is my job to slay you.
I come from Grooota as well, and I have tried to slay the weirdlings. There are many. Will you kill them all?
I will kill them all, as many as I can, before I myself am killed.
Why am I going to kill them?
No, I am going to kill them, unless you plan on assisting me.
Why would I assist you? I have no quarrel with the weirdlings.
Grooota demands it. That is reason enough.
I do not obey Grooota. His reason is not enough.
Neither do I, but I choose to do so, in the interest of my own continued survival.
So are there weirdlings here?
I thought there were weirdlings here. I do not see any.
Have you seen any?
Yes, I encountered a few on my way here. I killed them.
Because I obey Grooota.
No, because I choose to obey Grooota. You do not, as you have stated. This attempt at confusing me will not succeed.
There was a pause, and all seemed still for a moment. The dull thumping of the she-heart and the roar of the slime-torrent produced such tremendous white noise that Nealaphh could barely recover from having this mental battle with the heart. He would have liked to conjecture that she served some specific purpose, but Nealaphh was certain, based on her efforts to persuade him against his chosen task, that she herself was one of the hybrid entities he had been tasked with slaying.
Suddenly, there was motion, and Nealaphh glanced around to see that the myriad dots of light which had been twinkling in the iron ramparts now began to descend along the vaulted walls like iridescent spiders. There came the sound of bursting water, as hundreds of vile amalgamations of demon and machine rose from the milky depths of the reservoir, eager to defend their queen. The heart-woman began to project more telepathic messages, but this time it was not words. It was music, a doleful, instrumental broadcast. Slowly, the weirdlings that surged towards Nealaphh from every corner began to softly sing in time with the psychic melody.
And then the Queen herself began to sing. Had Nealaphh possessed a mouth, he was sure that he too would have been compelled to join the weirdlings in this compulsive dirge. At first, he could not fathom the purpose of such a telepathic emanation, but then it became evident as the weirdlings launched their first attack.
It was synchronized beautifully, a fusillade of infernal gunfire and whirling blades that Nealaphh narrowly escaped from with a sudden surge upwards into the air. Without missing a beat, the orchestrated horde turned to follow him as he alighted on a low-hanging beam. It was only after a moment that Nealaphh realized that he too was being forced to move in time with the beat. Not only was it a way of coordinating the movements of a thousands otherwise mindless killers, its overpowering force allowed her to predict Nealaphh’s own movements. This was highlighted when, a moment later, the support rivets to the beam were shot out in perfect time with a small crescendo in the current stanza.
Nealaphh barely dodged in time as another barrage whizzed through the air where he had been crouching a moment prior. With a small flicker of mental power, Nealaphh sent the beam careening towards the group of misshapen skeletal cyborgs firing at him, but they dodged gracefully out of the way in keeping with the end of a verse. This was rapidly becoming a situation more dangerous than Nealaphh could have predicted, but the shadow was not without his own wiles.
As he plummeted back down into the mire, he took the momentary obfuscation to teleport directly behind the Heart Queen, and began to distort the space directly around where he sensed her head to be. Directly on cue, he felt himself being plucked into the air and tossed back into the crowd of scything monstrosities under the force of her own telekinetic prowess. The distraction caused the spatial tension to disperse harmlessly, but it gave Nealaphh the moment he needed to call his Aspects into existence. As he landed, a great gout of thick fluid gushed up into the air, and with it, more than two dozen small black prisms, who all immediately began to fire piercing blasts of energy into the encroaching weirdlings.
Nealaphh himself gathered up his mental power and caused the gravity in his immediate vicinity to fluctuate, pinning almost fifty of the variable scrapped weaponoids to their place in the white lake. One mental scream later, and they were sent flying through the air like rattling grey and black matchsticks, crunching horribly against the distant walls of the chamber.
Somehow, the utter cacophony of the energy blasts, gunfire and slime-fall still could not drown out the force of the Heart Queen’s haunting strains. Nealaphh felt his footing slipping somewhat, and was unsure if he had been snatched by an unseen foe, when he realized that the floor beneath his feet was moving. As he was hoisted into the air, Nealaphh realized that he was on the slimy back of a hunched over giant, whose hunched posture remained stiff. All at once, a dozen small hatches opened down the length of the twenty-foot monster’s back, and a fusillade of small missiles rocketed out into the darkness, their orange contrails lending a rare burst of color to the otherwise grayscale scene.
Nealaphh barely had a moment to try and telekinietically launch himself in an evasive maneuver before the supersonic warheads impacted him two, three, four times in progressively stronger explosions, blasting the ex-Enigma high into the air. It was at this point that he blacked out…
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