Surrounded by fire on all sides Ere’th’var huddled up, tears in her eyes. She was in the basement of a burning building, and outside she was outgunned and outnumbered by pyromaniac zealots who wanted nothing more than to reduce her to a fine ember. Hopeless and crying for her mistress the maid burned away

Outgunned and outmatched Ere’lur saw no way out of her situation. If she stayed she was dead, but if she tried to get out she’d be shot down by the pyromaniacs. Donning a wicked grin she dashed forth, daring them to try. She’d escape, or she’d go out like a proper regulator.

Both options flashed before her, before E4 shook them off and focused on the task at hand. All around her E4 saw fire, bright and orange. The air was hot, but not yet enough to set her alight. With a gesture she conjured a plume of metabolic fire and threw it at her feet. Immediately she fed resonance into the lambent green flames which devoured the fuel around her, making the fire burn out. More metabolic flames climbed up her outfit, yet to her surprise it resisted the flames only leaving the edges somewhat scorched before she stopped. In the wan light she saw cracks forming in the stone supports, and most of the wood was already gone. Covering her face with a mask from her healer’s satchel, reinforced through flesh fabrication, E4 quickly found a spot beneath the staircase occupied with some barrels. She quickly shoved them out of the way, and just in time as a section of the ceiling fell revealing the barrel to be full of pickled herring as well as her idea for shelter to be sound.

“Red Queen, I need options.”

[[Analysis: unless there is a hole in the wall you can go up or you can go down. Clearly you can’t stay here, even if you don’t burn you’ll run out of oxygen. That is, assuming you still need it within The Distant Shores which I think we do but the exact physics are a little fuzzy]]

“Well I can’t go up, and it’s not like there’s a hole in the wall, wait, oxygen!” E4 reached out, telekinetic fingers groping until she felt it. “There’s airflow! That must mean,” She bounded over the debris and ripped away a wine rack which immediately went up in flames to reveal a tunnel. It took E4 all of half a second to practically throw her down it. Casting her eyes around E4 saw it was reinforced with wooden supports, small LED lanterns hung from the ceiling though none were active. E4 crept down the tunnel, her ravager eye letting her see through the darkness as she traveled. Despite her care loose rocks plagued her steps, forcing her to use telekinesis to stop them from rolling further down the hall and giving her away.

Stepping around a corner she sensed a light switch. Flipping it she heard a generator spark to life. She waited a few moments before sensing the Myst around her increase and the LED lit up. Immediately her eyes fell upon the generator, a device that resembled something between a wood stove and a furnace. According to the indicator it was less than a quarter full, which E4 remembered was not entirely accurate in older models as the float tended to stick.1 Judging by the rust, this was an older model, and judging by the increasing humidity it was also leaking.

“If the Myst is thick and the air is damp first you should take out a lamp.” E4 whispered the rhyme Marissa had showed her in one of the tomes. “For by sight and by light do the creatures feel slight. Yet within the dark of the night do they spawn and bite.” E4’s eyes went immediately towards the darkest shadow she could find, and immediately sensed a small cloud of Myst beginning to form. With a gesture her arm crackled with electricity and she blasted the area with bio-lightning, dispersing the gathering Myst. “No.”

E4 quickly pressed forwards, coming to a thick metal door emblazoned with the symbol of The Purifiers. In exactly 15 seconds she had her dagger out and had unscrewed the heavy screws that connected it to the stone, proving that Purifiers never update their security protocols. The moment she was through she found a tablet made from onyx and entered Password, before realizing that the tablets used didn’t have password protection.

[[Did one of them leave the key under the mat?]] There wasn’t a welcome mat E4 could find, but what she did find was quite concerning. Within the complex were several tunnels, also barred with heavy doors. Each door was unlocked, and she quickly explored through them. The Purifiers, in their nature, had a bathroom and bunks that were spotless and sterile. The armory was empty, every flamethrower and firearm taken from their place. Fuel and ammunition had been left behind, but not much. A few lockers remained closed, but each had a thick combination lock that E4 could not reach into to unlock from within. All that remained were some rations and a few canisters of fuel, which E4 quickly helped herself to. As she did the liter sized canisters clinked and jostled noisily in her pockets and bag. “Red, any idea when we can make some of these extra-dimensional pockets?”

[[Analysis is currently inconclusive. It is thought a skill may be used in their creation]]

Meandering through the secret basement E4 found a large map, which she quickly made a copy of through flesh fabrication. As she worked she heard a sound, just at the edge of her hearing. The quiet splashing of water flowed into her ear, and E4 drew her claws at the sound.

“Hello? Any hungry ferals about?” E4 whispered in resonant. Her mind jumped to the six fingered bodies she had passed not five minutes ago. She took out another ration bar and opened it up. “Got some tasty blueberry rations for,” Even as she spoke her own tongue whipped from her mouth and dragged the ration back as if it were a fly and she a hungry frog. “never mind.”

Following the sound of flowing water E4 found herself before a well fortified door. Unlike the other doors this one was not screwed into the surrounding stone but bonded by thick steel plates hammered into the stone, then filed down to the surrounding steel so it could not be pulled free. A several digit code was implanted into the door on a wheel system, and a steel cover had been secured over the wheel with a hefty padlock requiring a key. Examining the lock E4 found it was emblazoned ith the word “UNPICKABLE” in bold letters. Reaching inside with her telekinesis she found it was indeed an intricate piece of work. The key hole was large and round, and the oversized tumblers would make turning the thing with picks very difficult. Closing her eyes she stuck her claws into the lock, telekinetic force filling in where the key should be. She turned slowly, only for her concentration to be broken when a metal hammer cam down on her claws, startling her and causing the force to dissipate. “Ok, that was smart, but what if…” E4 tried again, and this time when the hammer fell she didn’t flinch at the sudden force. The sudden electric jolt that sent her flying back into the wall with an “Eep!” was another story.

[[Having fun?]]

“Concussion aside? Sure, I love breaking into Purifier strongholds.” E4 replied tossing the remnants of the lock she had been holding to the ground. She stood and stretched, “One lock down,” she spun through the wheel system, finding 8 wheels with several letters on them. “You have a favorite 8 letter word? None of the letters are X?” For kicks she tried entering Purifier, but it didn’t work. She tried reaching into the mechanisms, but the results of her telekinesis were confusing. “Why does this need so many gears? I can’t tell what goes where.” She huffed. “Maybe Kindred left his code lying around?”

“TAP”. E4 paused as she heard the sound. Immediately she walked back into the locker room and listened. “Tap tap.” She turned, finding a small puddle on the ground. Slowly… painfully slowly… she did not look up and see what was making the sound. Immediately she darted back three meters and raised her crossbow towards the dripping pipe that snaked through the room. She reached out with her telekinesis, but didn’t detect any movement save for the dripping of the pipe. She quickly followed the pipe to the showers, a large square room with several shower heads and no privacy. She kept her human eye up while her ravager eye scanned ahead, granting expanded vision without losing too much depth perception and causing only a little vertigo.

“Drip… drip.” One of the showers continued to drip, each drop landing on a small pool. E4 eyed it, but her telekinesis found only water, object reading indicating there was a high concentration of limestone but no lead or other hazards. Still, something felt off. Casting another glance at the ceiling, finding it shadowy but not enough for something to hide, she approached the shower head. To her surprise she felt a sudden coldness.

“Red, what was that?”

[[Analysis indicates a unit of ATP just vanished. Several unknown introns have turned into extrons and have begun producing something. I believe it is that skill you obtained earlier when exploiting your Hymn Listener skill, but analysis is inconclusive on what it does. On a very much related note, how attached are you to your left hand? It appears several nodes of nervous tissue are growing there and connecting to the muscles in unknown ways. Amputation is not recommended at this time, for Mara has a morbid fascination.]]

“Red, be serious. How dangerous is this?” E4 asked.

[[Analysis inconclusive. Mass of nervous tissue is still being formed. Unknown nodes present with high levels of repairable nervous tissue similar to horns. I am more concerned about what triggered so many introns to go off, and also where they came from. I suspect when gaining a skill you gain several introns, and as you experience more stimuli some become extrons. Analysis on if this is unique to you as a ravager or common to all regulators is ongoing.]]2

E4 eyed her arm, before deciding it was not worth amputating yet. “What are the odds it’s a reflexive organ, somehting that can detect danger and react to it before my conscious mind is aware of it?” Her hand flexed, and she felt pins and needles as water from the floor seemed to jump to her hand, before falling away.

[[Estimation: High.]]

“So why trigger now?” E4 asked as she walked back to the troublesome door. As she did she felt as if a rope were tied around her wrist, pulling her towards a door she had not examined. The door was unlocked, and behind it she found a huge box made from steel and filled with vacuum tubes and printed circuit boards. Countless punch cards and rolls of ticker tape lay scattered around it. “Ugh, Kindred what is this nonsense?” She approached the device carefully and tapped it. Immediately it began humming and spit out a page of code. E4 examined it, then flipped it upside down, then right side up. “I have no idea what this says.” Turning it around she noticed someone had sketched an image of a Purifier shooting at a humanoid figure. “You don’t have to be a Wizard to cast fireball.” She read captioned at the bottom. “I really hope that’s supposed to be a zombie and not a civilian.” Putting the page down she turned and immediately drew her crossbow. Five bolts were in the air before she realized the figure behind her was a stone sculpture, which now sported four deep bolt wounds and was missing a finger from an upraised hand. “Whoops, sorry Kindred.” She chuckled, letting her arms relax as she fed resonance into her crossbow to reload. The sculpture fit the man to a T, from his proportions to his clothing to his hair. The only flaw was the face, which was completely blank. “Hey Red, you think Kindred commissioned this?”

[[It is in Stone-Weaver’s style, so either that or it was a gift.]]

E4 noticed a bit of Aether burning where it had been struck, shortly before the bolts burned themselves away taking small bits of the stone with them. “That’s handy, but hold on.” She holstered her crossbow and put a hand on the statue. “There’s a slight current of Aether running through this statue.” She examined it, and on a whim began scanning it with her arm, waving the new sensory organs over the statue. Nothing happened, until she fed it another unit of ATP, which it accepted greedily. Immediately her hand and arm twitched, before her thumbs pulled in two opposite directions and her middle finger pulled sharply in one direction. It did this for a few seconds then returned to normal. “What was that about?”

[[Hard to say, though the nerves located in your arm seemed to react quite similarly to your auditory organs, though if they actually heard anything or were just straining to I can’t tell. Whatever they did it was quite energy intensive. On that note,]] E4’s stomach growled loudly.

E4 winced as she took one of the rations from her pocket. “Please don’t be mint.3” she whispered at the leaf symbol on the foil seal. As she opened it the scent of mint permeated the room, causing her isopod to flinch and her entire body to freeze up for just a moment. Not only was the wafer mint flavored, but it was charged with Aether as well. Not much, definitely not enough to provoke a skill, but possibly enough to give a buff.

The low THUD that reached her ears caught her attention. Immediately she threw the wafer into her mouth as she whipped around and ran into the previous room, dagger drawn. The previous room had nothing, save a strange scuff mark leading towards the showers. Slowly, quietly, E4 moved towards the shower room again. She adjusted her grip on her knife, ready to either stab or throw it. As she did the telekinetic edge flickered, and began to release the scent of mint. “Seriously?” As if triggered by the scent a loud banging erupted from above. E4 just barely caught the sight of something in the shadows just before it vanished into a hole. “What was that?”As if called by her words a cockroach like creature covered in fuzzy blue fungus darted along the pipes towards the hole. Quick as a wink her dagger was in the air and the creature was down. Even as E4 withdrew the dagger the creature was already evaporating away. “Ok, just a bug. A big one, but nothing I can’t handle.” She looked at the hole again. “No way I’m crawling through that? Red, what are the odds that hole used to be a vent that leads deeper into this tunnel?”

Not needing a response E4 returned to the door, which led her back to the computer. She hit a few buttons, which led to the computer spitting out a chunk of paper asking for a password. She immediately started examining the walls looking for a sticky note, and checking under the computer for clues. As she did she found the computer was not plugged into anything, and was in fact powered by an independent aetheric steam generator. A good chunk of the bottom was actually a water and oil reserve, Myst infused oil boiling Myst infused water to generate electricity. As she examined the computer further she found several vacuum tubes, countless gears, a dozen green printed circuit boards, a disk hard drive, a solid state drive, and a complex gold and white crystal glowing from a human skull with sapphires for eyes.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“There is so much about this I do not understand.” E4 muttered, shutting the door on the joke at her expense. As if to mock her pain there was an etching of a cloud of Myst that had formed into the shape of an eye and a hand pulling down on the lower eyelid. There were several characters beneath, which might have been a brand but were not in any language I could read. They could have also been gibberish. “Oh, that’s lovely.” E4 tapped on the branding, which immediately changed color and revealed itself to be a LCD screen. It promptly displayed a ticking grandfather clock, before asking for a password. “Are you BLOODY KIDDING ME?” She stood up and sure enough, there were punch cards. She looked back to the clearly modern screen, then to the tickertape print outs, then to the punch cards. “Red, I think this place is messing with me.”

[[Analysis: Now is a bad time to tell you that computer has been a hologram this entire time.]] Immediately E4’s blood pressure spiked 10 points. She put a single claw on the computer, and the tickertape immediately began going. The computer was, in fact, not a hologram.

“Password required… why yes I know that. I don’t suppose you can give me a hint?” The tickertape immediately continued. “I don’t care how big the room is…” E4 paused, reading it again. “I don’t care how big the room is,” She turned over a few more pieces of paper, finding the drawing. “I don’t care how big the room is, I cast fireball.”

Immediately the computer dinged and printed out a map. E4 took it, examined it, turned it upside down, and examined it again. “I feel like this is important.” She turned it over, but there was nothing on the back. She knelt down by the screen. “Ok, so what is this map?”

The computer hummed, then beeped a few times, then everything immediately stopped. “Huh, what?” E4 opened up the computer, only to find the water tank had run dry. “Oh come on.” She stored the map in one of her pockets. “We’ll research this later, now let’s get that door open.”

To E4’s expectations the code on the door was fireball, and with a few turns of the wheel the door opened up into a tunnel. Trusting her ravager eye E4 walked forth without a light source. Yet within a few meters and one turn she didn’t need one anyhow.

“What… The… Blood?” E4 paled as she beheld the nightmare before her. “Kindred, what did you do?”

Before her E4 saw dozens of metal and glass tanks. Rather than being large glass cylinders they were mostly brass, with glass plates where an observer could look in. In all but two E4 saw a body, some twitching some still and one in the process of being dissected by several mechanical arms. Each body was covered in mycilium and some were growing strange growths. A full dozen cylinders filled the room, the broken ones leaking blue growth. Books and notes lay stacked on tables, boards and sketches scattered around the room some knocked over most standing. Immediately she began breathing heavily, her heart rate skyrocketing as her thoughts became panicked. E4 quickly scanned the boards with her Wise Mind, but she needed no assistance in analysis. Still, she asked.

“Red, tell me I’m misreading this. This is a time chart based on time to infection. Where did he get this?” Her breaths were now panicked and non-conductive. “Growth patterns? Antigen strains, alternate vectors.” E4 closed her mind. “There are no emergencies in a pandemic, there are no emergencies in a pandemic. Oh God, I need strength, grant me clarity.” She continued praying for a few moments, my awareness receding to give her some privacy, before finally her breathing steadied.

“Red, we need to burn this place.” R4’s voice was steady, despite or perhaps because of the slick of chemicals flowing down her face. “Samples will be taken, but this place must burn.”

Immediately E4 went to work. Quickly she found a cabinet full of reagents, and her flesh fabrication went into overdrive as she mixed and distilled several concoctions from the dregs that remained. Swiftly her healer’s satchel was filled with several chemicals that while useful in the medical field would fall more under poison than medicine. From there she further strayed from the hypocratic suggestion to create works of chemistry that had no purpose being within the human body. As she worked she found she had not been the first with this idea. “Composite 5,” She muttered while placing a bubbling beaker full of accelerant beneath one of the cylinders. “Less force the C4, but much more heat. I guess on this both Kindred and I agree.” She quickly added a few layers of bone, converting the brick into a shaped charge that would project all the heat and force straight up into the cylinder that even as she worked was producing more spores. She made sure to leave a small tube in her shaped charge so a sharp red hot bolt of force would blast into the beaker and send burning accelerant across the floor. To ensure it worked she added a tiny bone spike to the tube which would shoot out like a bullet. As she worked she braided hair from her head into long strands of rope, impregnated with metabolic fire that smoldered in small cysts of keratin, just waiting to be released. “Sure hope this works.”

“You seem to be doing alright.”

“The last time I tried to break into a Purifier base I was just deleting black mail, and look I got sent to another dimension. Now I’m playing with both resonant and Purifier explosives. I’ll be lucky if I don’t blast myself straight to Heaven.”

“Scritch… scritch… scratch…” E4 froze as she heard the sound, whipping around to see nothing. Her eyes peered through the dim lights of the lab, lit only by flickering lights and the glow from the fungal infested cylinders. Yet she did not see the source of the sound. “Red, what was that?”

“Look up!” E4 looked up, just in time to jump to see something scurry into one of the vents. “Analysis indicates that is going to be an issue soon.”

“And my analysis indicates this place is going to be a fireball soon. Perhaps one last look over everything to make sure there are no surprises.”

“Yeah, I really have to get a camera or a copier like Imnad so I can record this stuff.” E4 laced a chamber full of fungus and what looked like some sort of giant cricket with an ATP imbued ethanol mix which would burst into metabolic fire at the slightest prompting. She found a progress log and made sure to wrap it in gause before packing it into her bag. Each of the cylinders had one, but most were too far gone to be read. As she approached the second to last one it lashed out at her with chitinous barbs. “Hey!” She slashed out, her ravager toxin affecting the fungal mass with a numbing coldness, before the aether within the toxin set upon it like starving wolves on a steak. “Red, I’m going to guess that was a tier 0 monster.” That statement needed no response. Lifting the last log book E4 eyed the creature inside, or more the lack thereof. “Mataan4? Shouldn’t that be Mat’aan?” E4 paused. “Unless it was a Blessed. Would Kindred test something like this on a Blessed?” E4 quickly looked into the notes, and frowned. The notes were done in a sloppy scrawl, as if the person who wrote it couldn’t get their thoughts onto the page fast enough. E4 eyed the scrawl, tipped it up, then frowned. “I can’t read this.”

“I thought you had practice reading a doctor’s handwriting. Your own can pass for military encryption.”

“Only when I’m going fast.” E4 shot back a little too quickly. She turned a few pages, glancing up at the vent a few times. “Aha, someone has started translating.” She turned a few more pages before she stopped. “They only got a few pages deep, I’ll need to,” without a second’s hesitation her dagger was in the air and the thing in the vents let out a rasping squeal. “Gotcha!” She quickly shoved the book into her bag, yet the thing in the vents did not emerge. “Bleeding havoc, get back here you!” She reached out, felt her dagger, and pulled. Immediately the blade expanded, holding fast into the quickly retreating form. “I’m going to have to track that later, aren’t I?” She reached out, and with a gesture her hand burst into metabolic fire. A moment later she felt a surge of resonance followed by dissonance as the blade burst into metabolic fire within its target.

Immediately E4 went back to work. It took a few more minutes, but finally she was satisfied. Ropes of aetheric ethanol infused hair connected bricks of composite 5, and numerous bone pots filled with viscous oils and chunks of fat smouldering with metabolic fire filled the room, awaiting a spark.

“Ok, now just have to get to a safe distance and we can light this candle.” E4 took a moment to admire her work. “Is it a bad thing I can’t wait to see this go off? I don’t want to become a Purifier.”

“Hello?” Immediately E4’s moment of glee dropped into her stomach.

“Hello? Child?” E4 called back, concern evident in her voice. “Did someone wander down here?” She reached out with her horns, attempting to use her telekinesis in reverse to get a sense of what was around her. “Can you hear me?” She glanced back to the lab, one hand itching to destroy the threat once and for all. She gestured, it would just take a snap of her fingers, and it would be gone. “There is no emergency in a pandemic.” She spoke, heart calming, “and the lab will be there when I get back,” A sly smile crossed her face, “Though not much longer.”

“Hello?” Immediately E4 abandoned her Purifier like musings to rejoin the search, leaving a trail of woven red hair like a lethal ribbon behind her. Every few meters she left a cyst full of metabolic fire, just waiting for the signal to go off.

“Child, where are you?” She called out.

“Hello?” Immediately E4 froze, extending her claws. She reached out with her senses, her telekinesis pinging off something not too far off. Slowly she crept forwards, turning a corner and seeing a child, lying on the ground.

“Hello, can you hear me?” E4 asked. The child did not react. “Speak up, say something else.” A cold pit opened in her stomach as E4 dreaded what was before her. Mara had forbidden the creation of child ravagers, yet the isopods were often not so discerning. From birth they hungered for sentient blood, and the concept of age did not exist for them. “Please don’t be infected.”

The claws hit before E4 had any time to react. Six blades sank into her back from behind. Immediately the telekinetic force that held them together collapsed, but there was so much force behind it that didn’t matter once. Immediately E4 coughed up a mouthful of blood as one of her lungs collapsed. Her tail lashed out, leaving a line of aetheric fire along the offending ravager as she threw herself away from it.

Immediately E4 knew she was in trouble. The wound was healing, yet even as her lungs sealed she could feel the fungus trying to grow within her. Already a mutant form that could tolerate the higher heat spread along her skin, and with every breath the brute before her puffed out more of the pale blue spores like tainted smoke. In the scant second it took her to realize this the brute was on her, unformed claws flickering into existence just in time to strike before shattering and fading away into nothing. E4 furiously tried to block, her own claws holding up far better. Yet even for her skills the creature was impossibly strong and radiated an icy dissonance that made her muscles feel cold and limp.

“Red, tell me that’s not an infected ravager!” E4 chittered, ducking a blow and lashing out with her own claws. Her claws pierced skin and hit a layer of mycelium beneath which answered her question. “I need options, that thing’s got to be second tier!”

“I’m working on fighting off these spores. They use a quite novel approach to targeting the insect nervous system, they’re resistant to heat, brace for a cough.”

E4 burst into a hacking cough, during which the infected feral grabbed onto her. The creature eyed his prize for just a moment, giving E4 a chance to see the isopod replacing its right eye. Blue fungus stretched the chitinous plates of the isopod, growing from it like moss from between window blinds. Skin to skin contact let its corrupted dissonance interfere with E4’s resonance, and let me interact with its dissonant cells.

Within the infected ravager its body was fighting itself. Its human skin looked as if an eczema patient had taken a bath in acid and scrubbed down with steel wool. Blue fungal carpet stretched from every wound, giving it a look not dissimilar to a half transformed werewolf. Its long fangs were stained with blue, and partially fused into the beak E4 had noted on the dissected rotten. Its body was swollen with muscle, and starving for fuel. It wasn’t resonating properly, its cells relying on blood flow alone to supply it the oxygen and nutrients it needed. The fungus in its lungs were somehow increasing the oxygen levels even as they overclocked the muscles giving the creature hysteric strength. Rather than the horns of a normal ravager strange fungal growths curled from its head in seventeen corkscrew horns that bore erosion marks as if they had been eaten by acid. Its six fingered hands had fused into a thumb and two fingers with the last knuckle locked straight.

However most importantly, without resonance it had no ATP. The creature seemed to be using Myst, channeling it directly into its muscles, and turning it into some mockery of ATP that didn’t work as well as it should have.

“E4, it’s locked in hysteric strength, its muscles are pushed to the limit.”

“I’ve noticed!” E4 chittered, before breaking into another coughing fit as she tried to rid her lungs of the wretched fungus. “E4, how fireproof do you think I am?”

“Do it!” Immediately E4 conjured metabolic fire within her own lungs. Normally this would have been a horrible idea, lungs aren’t meant to do that. Yet I could see E4’s line of thought.

Fire starter (Acquired): Fire leaps to your will and hesitates to burn you. You can always create fire, even with green or wet wood. Expend Aether to imbue existing fire with Aether, making it burn hotter and do increased damage to creatures of The Myst without using additional fuel. Fire based weapons are less likely to explode. In addition the wielder is resistant to fire their rank or lower. Uses the higher of intellect or speed

→ Friendly fire (achievement): In defiance of all sense you have lit yourself ablaze to defy your foes. Your fire does not burn you. You may designate a number of allies who are immune, and whom you take reduce damage from. Increases tenacity by 1

Metabolic fire*: Generate lambent green flames that can feed off resonance rather than air or fuel. Rapidly breaks down unwanted matter into components, especially potent against prions. This fire will go out without resonance. Grants host immunity to fire of their tier or lower

Two of her skills granted her explicitly immunity to her own fire. Of course, it still irritated her lungs and sent her into a choking fit, her lungs spasming to finally spit up the burning fungus right into the infected ravager’s face. Suddenly presented by a face full of burning phlegm it let go, trying to scrape off the mass only to find it spreading to its hands. The dying flesh, already pushed far beyond the breaking point, burned hot and fast.

“Looks like you’re hefting a lot of bulk,” with the honed skill of a surgeon and the preternatural speed granted by The Myst E4 had a syringe in the ravager’s gut in the same moment it touched her hands. “I prescribe 2,4 DNP. Might make you a little warm though.”

E4 turned and ran giving the infected ravager one last kiss goodbye with her tail. The creature let out a scream before lumbering after her, yet its steps were slowed. E4 dashed back the way she had come, following the red thread of hair back to the lab. She whipped around, only to see that the creature was not behind her.

“Don’t tell me it turned around.”

E4 watched and waited, drawing her crossbow and readying herself. Yet it was a scratching sound from above that got her attention. She threw herself forwards into a roll and came up shooting, a bolt striking and deflecting off a layer of mycelium. The infected ravager rose from where it had fallen, ripping chunks of stone out with it. The creature shook its head as it lumbered forwards in a reckless charge. E4 ducked out of the way, an errant claw cutting into the creature. The brute hit the wall with enough force that cracks crawled all the way to the ceiling, before turning and roaring at her, “Hungry!”

“Eat bone.” E4 replied, shooting the thing right in the mouth. To her surprise it knocked the bolts aside and with a gesture grabbed her in a crushing telekinetic embrace. Clouds of dark Myst encircled her, the infected ravager’s crude imitation of E4’s own telekinesis showing themselves as tricks of The Myst.

“E4, blow it!”

E4 gestured, yet even as her resonant signal reached out to the explosives a deluge of dissonance squashed it. The sheer force of it sent E4 reeling, her ears ringing and her human eye flickering. The creature stepped forwards, its maw stretched wide even as mycelium dripped down its lips. “Hungry.” It spoke, a dozen voices stretching from its hollow throat. “So hungry.”

In a flurry of motion E4 reached into her bag and with a low ripping sound the scent of mint permiated the room. She winced, but the ravager staggered back at the scent. Stepping forwards E4 flung the mint flavored ration right into the ravager’s jaws, sending it into a choking fit.

The heat of the blast did the rest.