There was… something on the horizon. Truthfully Cobalt still didn’t know if this was a weird dream, but the stench of rot seemed to be something beyond what her mind could conjure even in her most feverish nightmares. There was a wind blowing now from the direction of the thing, dry like ash against her skin, carrying with it an unmistakable stench of death. What… what was that? It was vaguely humanoid, larger than the size of the most physically massive cultivators recorded in the archives for sure, but at first glance, it looked almost like a regular corpse expanded beyond possibility. Yet there was something instinctively wrong about it, something that made her gut boil in her body, an all-pervasive dread that defied description let alone categorisation.
If she were to put it into words, it would be divine. Or at least, a vile parody of it. Equal in scope and scale, with a majesty that cannot be put into words, but nonetheless a twisted decaying mass.
In her pocket the geiger counter screamed before falling silent, the ancient mechanism somehow giving out. She didn’t even know that could happen. Strangely she did not feel the effects such overwhelming Si exposure should have had on her body, the Curse remaining silent and no strange warmth in her meridians. No, this was something else.
“Cobalt, snap out of it! Let’s go!” The voice of John called out.
She forced herself to focus. It was no use thinking of such things. She turned to the strange spectre that called itself John. They spoke with the voice alright, but it was more like the outline of a person than a human being. The suggestion of a human being through the absence of something rather than the presence of one. Artos seemed to know something, however, and her gut seemed to trust that.
“Alright… so John… do you know what that is?” She asked as the three of them started to move.
“Honestly I have no idea, it wasn’t here the last time I was here, and I don’t think it was here the time before either.” John answered honestly.
She felt a headache coming on thinking about it. “You have been here… twice before? It’s so confusing, we were sucked in here by some sort of ancient technology… but you just…”
“Our presence in this plane seems to correspond to incidents of incredible brain trauma.” Artos explained with its usual robotic monotone. “Something my host appears to be in the habit of acquiring.”
“Hey! It’s not like I seek it out on purpose… usually… you know what nevermind! Time’s wasting!” John growled in annoyance. She couldn’t really see his face right now, but she could picture a stupid pout on his cheeks crystal clear in her mind.
Despite it all, the traumatic events of not even a few hours ago, the pervasive scent of rot and slinking sense of unease crawling up every crevice, the uncertainty of their whole situation and the absence of any real answers, Cobalt permitted herself to let out a little laugh at that. Though John’s spectral form didn’t have many ways of expressing it, it was clear they had no small amount of annoyance at Cobalt’s reaction as he stomped away into the endless piles of ruin and rust.
The moment of levity, however brief, was a more than welcome respite. Unfortunately, things like that were not fated to last long.
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“So…” John asked with a confused expression on his face that he was fairly certain only he knew he was expressing. “As I understand it Cobalt got a mission that involved finding this ancient tech cache and destroying the valuable secrets before the enemy could grab hold of it and have a chance to let loose some sort of golden age tech nobody knows the purpose of… and you two just decided to wreck shit without even knowing what it does?”
“What else was I meant to do!” Cobalt complained behind him. “It’s not like we had many options!”
Time seemed to be a useless concept here, it was unclear if they had been wandering for hours, days or even minutes. There was no sun in the sky, no signs of movement besides each other even when the desolate wind blew and certainly no other signs of life save the decaying corpse that ever since it appeared never seemed to change size no matter how far they travelled or how many landmarks they passed. Idle chatter was inevitable, if only to keep the trio sane.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“And ARTOS… while you were in my body helping Cobalt with her mission you got a…” He began to ask again, mostly for clarification.
“Storage ring yes. Evidence suggests it is a smaller, portable model of the machine that transported me and Cobalt here built to be specifically compatible with ARTOS models.” It explained, helpful and mechanical as ever.
“Uh huh… well I guess that’s something we just have to figure out later, doubt it would be of any use inside this place somehow.” He decided to say in response. “By the way, I am surprised it’s just you two. Magni would totally be up for the opportunity to wreck stuff!”
The silence that followed was telling, simply the salient lack of response was enough to chill all the blood in John’s veins. He turned around, Cobalt was rapidly shifting colour to disappear into the background and ARTOS in his body was slick with a thick layer of slime.
“What…. What happened to Magni?” He managed to ask. “H-how bad is it out there?”
“It’s… I… i’m sorry John…” Cobalt managed. “I-it’s awful out there. Things went bad nearly immediately…”
“Why didn’t you tell me first!” He shouted. “Why wait until now? Why!”
“It would cause undue emotional distress that would likely be detrimental. Ultimately until conditions were more optimal such news was best left hidden.” ARTOS answered like a knife to the chest.
“What about everyone else? Did all the civilians-” He desperately asked, only letting out a breath when he saw Cobalt gently nod.
With at least that little reassurance he asked another question. “Alright… I imagine whatever shit went down that did Magni in… the Elders got involved too. Did they make it?”
“We are wasting time.” ARTOS complained. “We need to prioriti-”
Cobalt’s arm spasmed violently and swelled easily four times its size to deck Artos in John’s body across the wasteland of broken metal, hitting hard enough for John to feel it. “They stayed behind! Bought time for the evacuation, had to make it look like a proper last stand to avoid questions about where everyone actually was until evacuation efforts could get completed!” She answered.
“And is there anyone else I should know that didn’t make it?” He asked finally.
Cobalt was silent for a single, awful moment, before speaking softly. “The three armed man… Elder Aurelium’s son and former heir…”
“No…”
“Alexander Aurelium was with Magni last we saw him, he joined him in order to fix the broken regions of the formation.” She answered with terrible finality. “By all means, he likely shared his fate. I am… I am truly sorry John.”
If time wasn’t already broken enough it shattered then and there. Eternity passed in his mind as John processed the terrible words over and over. It didn’t feel real, the false-world spun on a strange axis as he fell to his ass. He- he wasn’t even there. Had he been awake he certainly would have volunteered to join Magni on whatever final mission he had instead of Alexander. He didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye, it was all too sudden. He was no stranger to death, nobody who lived through the Great Famine was, but all this… it couldn’t possibly just-
“You… I don’t care about the excuses of ARTOS… why didn’t YOU tell me!” He growled. Letting the numb grief eating away inside change shape into rage.
“I know.” Cobalt said quietly, with such genuine vulnerability that it took John genuinely off guard. Her outline shimmered back into view as she returned to her usual colours, fat teardrops dancing at the edge of her bloodshot already ruby-red eyes. “I kracking know alright… I- I don’t have an excuse. But I thought you wouldn’t- I didn’t want you t- I don’t even know…”
“Yo- you should have! You shouldn’t have…” he fumbled himself, the words choking and dying on his tongue. Frustrated at so many things and choked with so many emotions his thoughts would have a better chance of rising if they were trapped in tar and tied to heavy stones he walked up to her and slapped her with his semi-solid hand. There was a pathetic little sound as weaker half-solid flesh made impact with scales that would put most forged armour to shame. But he was far beyond caring, ugly tears travelled down his eyes so thickly he could barely even see.
“I truly apologise to bring this up now, but we must move, unfortunate circumstances have arisen.” The voice of ARTOS in his body called out. John rubbed the tears from his eyes to see the machine scuttling up a pile of scrap almost like a Spider in the manner Alexander used to crawl through the ruin openings through which he could fit. “The corpse does not appear as dead as initial data suggested.
“What… what do you mean?” Cobalt managed first.
ARTOS got up in a clearly unnatural manner, muscles moving jerkily as if pulled by invisible strings, and pointed with a metallic finger towards the towering body in the distance. Turning around John saw its single eye staring straight at him, into his soul, weeping a waterfall of black… stuff… not quite a liquid, in fact it moved almost as though it was made of insects.
And judging by the way a black mass began to flow towards their position, that did in fact seem to be the case.