[Awakened Fleshling Scout]
[Extracting Origin from prey…]
[Description: Right after being born from a sacred womb, the proctor designs their flesh according to the image of higher beings. To reach immortality, sacrifices must be made.]
To his left, Rachel's fire streaked across the corridor in silence. The white hot flames engulfed the left silhouette. It thrashed around for a moment, falling onto the floor, and then dropping to the floor lifeless.
Two breaths. That's all it took.
Ollie tapped his phone screen, and sound came crashing back into the world. The high pitched whistling from behind them continued its grating sound as blue steam escaped. Their boots clanged on the metal grill floor as they closed in on the lifeless silhouettes that dripped with blood.
"What the fuck were those?" Kyle asked, kicking at one of the fallen shapes. "Just Awakened. Not even Tainted level. Didn't put up much of a fight."
"Can't take chances," Ollie said.
The haze surrounding the bodies began to fade, similar to when Distort faded from Gale's skin. Beneath the distortion of the light, something laid that made him wince at the view.
The human-shaped figure was about 6ft tall, but describing it as human seemed generous for the most part. Its eyes had been surgically removed, replaced by the red optical eyes they had seen on the spider mechs on the first floor. The throat had the familiar speaker grafted right onto it that the flesh warriors had. Its arms were no longer arms. They were but crude mechanical reconstructions as wires ran through the gaps of the plating that snaked along specific connectors that also connected to the figure's flesh until it converged at its chest. On its chest, a rectangular plate that seemed to have merged with the flesh. The plate itself was etched with familiar symbols and glyphs, and a singular rhombus by its side closer to the heart.
Analyze.
[Visual Disturbance Field]
[Object Type: Active Item, Mana Artifact]
[Cost: 0.2 mana per second]
[State: Broken]
[Description: Creates a distortion around the host to direct light away, causing visual invisibility]
Gale stepped closer to the second body, where Rachel's fire had mostly consumed the figure. The chest plate there had melted, warped beyond recognition by the intense heat. But clearly, it was the same one that was on the more intact body. It explained their ability to go invisible, yet also not as well as the creepy eye spiderlings.
"This is getting more disgusting by the second," Clyde stared from a safe distance. "It's like someone's just jamming whatever technology they can find into human bodies."
Gale knelt beside the first body, looking closer at the seams between metal and flesh. The transition wasn't clean. The skin and muscles were inflamed at the parts where the metal met flesh. Fresh scars crisscrossed along the torso where it looked like there should have been metal or some part of technology that the proctor wanted. It could only mean one thing.
"These modifications weren't done long ago," Gale said.
"Should we destroy them completely? Make sure they don't get back up?" Rachel asked.
"Let's move," Ollie ignored her question. "We need to get to the end of this corridor and find the main controls. Power up this whole place so we can finally get out of this rift."
Moving past the bodies, they continued down the path. Fleshy growths began to appear again on the floor pipes. Rachel took to the front, burning off the floor she walked through. At first, it was thin and subtle. 10 minutes later, the floor in which they walked through had a thick layer of charred flesh.
By the time they reached the end of the corridor, the charred flesh they walked through had a give to it as if only the surface layer was burnt. The group then stopped as they met a wall of flesh.
Rachel lit up a fireball that floated in the air and neared it to the fleshy wall. However, it did not give. It charred and burnt in its place, not revealing what was behind it. To the left of the dead end, a massive fleshy pod filled the corner. All the veins from the fleshy growths converged to this single pod.
The pod's walls rippled and beat quite fast per minute. A deep red glow emanated from the right side of the flesh walls. In the middle of the pod was a cavity that opened to an oversized human mouth at its base. The mouth itself gaped open, and around it was a single row of molar teeth. Peering down below, it was pitch black looking like an enlarged human throat. What was most disturbing was that it had a steady breath. When it exhaled, it filled the surroundings with a putrid ammonia scent that washed over the group.
"What the hell is that thing?" Kyle whispered, face contorting and almost gagged.
Ollie stared at the pulsing pod, seeming to hold back any emotion. He turned to Rachel. "I don't care what it is. Doesn't look like it's attacking us. Rachel, just burn it. No point keeping it alive."
Rachel stepped forward, raising her palm toward the flesh pod. Heat rippled the air around her hand, distorting the view of the grotesque mass beyond. Fire spewed out from her palm like a flamethrower. The blaze caught the pod, engulfing it in flames and quickly blackening its surface.
Despite it being in flames, the pod continued its breathing in the same cadence. The only difference was the glowing heart. Its beating quicked considerably, the only indicator of it being in actual pain.
Gale stepped forward, Weber extended. A quick stab to the glowing red heart immediately stopped the pod's breathing. Its fleshy walls sagged inwards, collapsing in on themselves and almost falling into the throat.
[Tainted Throat Canal felled.]
[Extracting Origin from prey…]
[Description: The proctor sacrifices the disloyal to become a method of transport for his army. Those poor beings are forever put into eternal pain.]
Gale pulled Weber free. Deep red blood dripped from his blade. In half a minute, the red glow of the heart finally faded, leaving a dull lifeless unbreathing mass of flesh that no longer resembled what it was just a couple of seconds ago.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
"You didn't have to dirty your sword," Rachel said as her palm stopped spewing out flames.
"I know," Gale said. "I was just wondering what that was. The Late Corrupted monster we saw had the same glowing red heart. Might be its weak point. Look how it died immediately."
Then again… what wouldn't die when something stabbed them directly at their heart? Even vampires wouldn't be able to live if someone stabbed a wooden stake directly at their heart.
"You're right," Rachel noticed the dripping blood from his blade. She raised her hand again, directing a small jet of flame at the edge where he had stabbed. "Sanitation."
The fire licked along the blade, burning away blood, turning it red before completely clearing the blade.
After a while, Gale noticed the fleshy growths on the floor and the pipes started becoming more visible. The veins no longer pulsed nor writhed. All of it started to dry out and collapse on themselves. Metal floor started to show itself. The wall they thought was just flesh now revealed itself to just be a simple metal wall with no etchings.
"This is a dead end." Ollie glanced left and right. "Back to the fork we go."
Lily frowned, her brow furrowed as she studied the wall. "This makes no sense. Why would an advanced race build a corridor that just ends? There has to be a hidden door or something."
"You're asking the right questions at the wrong time," Ollie said. "There's a monster out there that could come patrolling any minute and murder all of us in less than five seconds."
He turned away from the wall, stepping over the remains of the pod. "Let's go. We don't have time for this."
"But-"
"Now," Ollie said firmly.
The group retreated back the way they had come. The stench that came from the charred path that Rachel laid out followed them through the corridor. Kyle scrunched his nose while Clyde pinched his nose.
When they reached the fork, Ollie directed them left without hesitation. "Last option."
The group moved through the left path. It stretched straight ahead with not even an inch of curve. Unlike the previous routes with their turns and twists, this one was just a straight single direction. Pipes still along the side of the path, but the width of the path was noticeably much larger than the other paths they took so far. That was probably a good sign.
For minutes, they walked in silence. That stretched into half an hour, then an hour. Nothing changed in the scenery, and Gale almost thought that they were going into an endless loop like the corridor to the Core Chamber. But there were some sections on the pipes that had dents and coloured outlines that told him they were still progressing forward.
"How much longer?" Kyle asked.
"As long as it takes," Ollie said.
Gradually, the corridor widened even further. Pipes on the side now covered with metal plating. After what felt like an eternity of walking, they emerged into a large clearing. A large dome-shaped facility stood at the centre of it; no other paths led elsewhere other than the path they were currently in. At the top of the dome, a structure that looked like a Tesla coil reached up to the sky, where a couple of strands of electricity reached outwards to the pipes nearby.
"Finally," Clyde said, rolling his shoulders.
"Let's check it out," Ollie pointed to the side of the dome, where a set of double doors hung loosely from broken hinges. The metal was warped, bent inward as if something had forced its way inside. "Gale, take point."
Gale approached first, Weber materialized into his right hand. He peeked through the gap between the two damaged double doors. Tendrils reached outwards even further. Nothing of concern, as tendrils fed him nothing that was alive.
"Looks clear."
They entered, passing through the broken doorway with minimal noise. Inside, they encountered a second set of security doors, also hanging from their hinges, same damage as the outer doors. Beyond that, a third set of doors lay in the same condition.
"Something really wanted to get in," Rachel said.
The layout became increasingly familiar to Gale. This matched what they'd seen on the map in the Core Chamber. This would be where the blue dot was located.
"We need to get to the blue dot," Gale said. "It might be the control centre for the power."
"Yeah, that was the plan," Ollie said. "This has to be the place."
"Everyone agree?" Gale asked.
Kyle nodded. "Not like we have any other options left."
"Let's do it," Rachel said.
"Just follow what I say," Ollie said. "Go straight from here. Turn left on the 2nd door just before the dead end."
Gale followed the instructions, leading the group. He went straight through the corridor, finding a dead end. And what do you know, there was a metal door hanging by its hinge as the second door before the dead end.
"Straight ahead, and then we'll reach the main area of this facility," Ollie said.
Moving past the broken door, Gale led the team for at least 5 minutes before reaching a dead end with a door in the middle. This one wasn't broken. It had claw marks on the door, but no sign of damage. In the centre of the door was the familiar rhombus with a circle in the centre. The rhombus had lines coming out of it from its four points. If the pattern wasn't clear enough before, now it was clear as day. Something about the rhombus with the circle inside represented "ACCESS."
Gale placed his palm against the circle. The door slid open silently, revealing the chamber beyond.
The room stretched out before them, vast and dimly lit. Two pods stood at the centre of the space. Not flesh pods, but actual metallic pods that were used to contain something. Two thick giant cables connected to the pods, and a strip of colour on them had red and blue. The cables themselves would have had the thickness of a small car. Upon closer look at the dark walls of the pods, they weren’t dark. The walls were filled with billions of shapes and lines that were etched at every millimetre of the surface.
The pod on the right had its front glass shattered, jagged edges framing the empty space where the viewing window had been. No fluid leaked out, signifying that this had been shattered for a long time now.
The left pod remained intact, its window whole. Clear blue liquid filled the container, and frost had covered the window, obscuring the view of what was inside.
Beyond the two pods was what appeared to be the control centre. Twelve monitors hung shattered in a semicircle around a complex array of switches, buttons, and levers that resembled an airplane cockpit.
"That's it," Ollie said. "That's the control panel."
The group moved forward between the pods. Movement in the window of the intact pod caught the side of Gale's eye. He slowed his pace, turning his head in the direction of the window.
There.
In the pod. What looked like strands of hair floated around in the fluid. Difficult to see due to the frost that had built up. Somehow, the Void's tendrils couldn't seep in through the containment. Gale stopped walking, fully turning around before a hand clamped down on his arm.
Ollie had pulled him back. "What are you doing? The prize is right in front of us. This was your idea, remember? To power this whole place up?"
"I saw something," Gale said, trying to pull away. "In the pod. Something's in there."
"It's probably just some old experiment," Ollie said. "Come on. We need to focus on the mission."
"Just give me a second," Gale said.
"We don't have a second," Ollie said. "That thing could come back any minute."
Rachel stepped between them. "Let him look. It'll only take a moment."
Ollie released Gale's arm. "Fine. Make it quick. Leave it if it's not something that'll make money."
Gale went around the pod to stand directly in front of the window.
Rachel followed beside him and smiled. "Units don't leave each other. Standard rift raid rules."
Gale nodded and looked at the pod's window directly. It was fogged up with thick frost. Good thing Rachel followed him.
Turning to her, he asked, "Can you do something about the frost?"
She nodded and engulfed her hand with flames. The frost soon melted and receded, revealing what was inside.
The strands of blue hair caught his attention Gale. Inside the pod, he saw a woman in a skin tight white suit. Her blue hair reached down to her feet, flowing with and against the current of the fluid inside. There was a sense of ancientness to her being, similar to how he felt when he saw Esther. Somehow, he saw the essence around her ripple out of her spine and flow through the giant tubes connected to the pod.
[Warning: Extreme Danger.]
Gale looked up on the pod.
Analyze.
[Dainv Heart Reactor]
[Description: Essence extractor used to fill planetary capacity batteries.]
[Current output: 25397 essence/second]
[State: Essence output throttled to 210 essence/second]
[Maker: The Architect]