Donivan’s eyes widened behind his visor; the monstrosity didn’t even have the decency to walk on the ground. It hovered a few inches above it, and turned its sights towards the holes it had put through the walls. The eerie silent way it traversed the length of the room and appeared in the side-hall was the stuff of nightmares, but the way it looked down on the Knight who’d been spying on them was worse. Its head tilted aside slightly as it observed, and the entire bridge of the Aegis watched as one of those wretched, withered hands came trembling forward…and waved.

There was nothing humane-enough about whatever the entity had become to bother trying to reason with it. It was a being of chaos and violence now, and its first chosen victim in its new form was Wing Commander Two. The order to retreat came too late; the arms that hung aside the being’s head swept forward and grabbed Donivan’s helmet with unnatural speed. The ones that were kept curled close to its chest went to the man’s hands – more specifically, the weapons held in them, and quickly found the trigger to turn them off – and pointed their now-open ends directly into Donivan’s chest, daring him to reactivate them. It leaned close to that faceplate, the jaws of those mouth-borne eyes narrowing slightly, as if leering, “Take off your mask…” It said, its ‘voice’ like the echo of a whisper, heard as though spoken directly into the Knight’s mind.

There was no way, and Donivan refused to answer it in kind. Instead, the plasma-turret on the backs of his forearms started to light-up.

The beast just heaved a few breaths, quietly laughing, “…You…don’t learn.”

“Napple, Remmy, Einhardt, get in there!” Furion ordered.

The queer ‘wings’ that sprouted from the entity’s back writhed with fury, and launched forward, pouring through the gaps in the walls like the waters of a raging river. The three Fafnir who had made it to the cliff-face barely dodged the first pass, but those tentacles flailed and twisted from that small hole in the rock, and one of them got lucky. Like the coils of a great constrictor, once it felt the armor brush against its skin, the arm wrapped and squeezed with speed…and pulled the hapless second victim through the hole, leaving the remaining arms as sentries to block the way.

“Sir, we can’t get through! It took Michelle!” Sammy called back, swatting off those thick tendrils with his plasma-edged blades.

“Find another way!” Furion diverted, and focused quickly on the feed from the aforementioned Knight’s visuals, “Dame Napple! Come in!”

All that answered were the suffocating gasps of a woman whose air-intake valves had been plugged, “…Can’t…breathe…”

The main-screen imagery shifted when Scyrexian pulled Donivan’s helmet off in spite of him, groping at the sides of it with its thin, clawed fingers until it clicked and came loose. The perspective jostled as the helmet was cast aside, and landed roughly at an angle, giving the bridge a front-row seat to the horror that it had in store. It hovered back into the room, dragging Donivan with it – though he struggled against the pull as well as he could. Against the inhuman strength of that fused being, even a Fafnir Knight couldn’t resist, and soon, Donivan found himself cast hard to the ground.

He saw a pair of dying eyes looking back at him. Whatever had happened to Ianori in the moments he was trapped within the rift, it left his eyes blackened and body ruined. Dark red dribbled from his mouth and nose, and every breath was wet, labored, and gurgled. But, he still managed to look forward, where Donivan had been so roughly slammed down, and for an instant, their eyes met.

Scyrexian perched atop the Fafnir, sitting like a gargoyle between those shock-paralyzed wings. Its lower set of arms had pulled Donivan’s arms painfully back – try as he might to flex them forward in resistance – until, with one last jerking motion, both shoulders came dislocated within the armor. Donivan grunted out in agony as his hands released the hilts of his melee weapons, but grit his teeth, hissing his breath as the disbelief of it washed over him like a sick chaser behind the pain. A second vantage to the scene was allowed then, as Scyrexian drew Michelle forward through the flood of fibrous, snaking limbs, bringing her up and over as the life was choked out of her.

Rylen and Furion looked on in trepidation as the P.O.V. changed on the screen, and they witnessed from Michelle’s helm-cam as Scyrexian continued its mockery of Fafnir prowess. They were as children before its strength, and it gently stroked Donivan’s hair as the man yelled-out Ianori’s name…not for the should-be-dead-man’s benefit, but for the bridge-crew to hear it.

“You did your best, Fafnir.” Scyrexian spoke in that guttural, primeval whisper, “But you no longer have say over the narrative. What trivial influence you wielded while I was trapped inside your blind and brittle frame, is ended. Now watch…” It taunted, and started to lean its weight onto Donivan’s head, pressing it down into the hard floor, “…Watch as I show your comrades how inconsequential they are before the gaze of opened eyes.”

Donivan screamed out, and then went silent, as the pressure pushed past the limits allowed by his mortal skull. The last thing Ianori saw before his own fade to black was the sight of the Wing Commander’s cranium imploding, and the viscera within was squeezed out the top of his head like a chunky, red slurry of dirt and stone. The sound of it – like a large egg being crushed – made half the bridge crew nauseated. Three of the Aegis’ navigators vomited beside their seats; the rest were paralyzed in fear and disgust.

The First echoed the name, however, “…Ianori? Sir Ianori?” It was foreign on his lips, like it should have been scrubbed from memory…and yet, there it was, and there he was, visible for all of them to see on the screen from two different points of view. Donivan’s power-armor went limp, and the glow of his wings faded with the severance of his connection to the World Cloud, making everything even easier to see. Ianori’s own body was clear to see as well; his hair a shock of white, skin was mottled and threaded with dark veins beneath his skin, and he wore the tattered remains of whatever clothing hadn’t been ruined by the growth of that twisted organic armor.

Scyrexian turned its sights towards the second Fafnir it had in its clutches, and it pulled her closer as it stood on top of Donivan’s body. Those tendrils that had previously stopped their advance by simply blocking the air-intake system now pushed further within, pushing through and breaking every filter and barrier until it squeezed into the interior of the suit. It was, perhaps, a mercy that Michelle was on the edge of unconsciousness by then – even a genetically-enhanced elite warrior could only go without oxygen for so long – and she barely felt it when those probing threads forced their way under her skin. They wormed and tore their way through her whole frame, wriggling just beneath the surface, until bursting out from the back of her throat and behind her eyes. The last thing the bridge crew heard before her life-signs terminated was the horrific gurgling sound of her flesh being rendered inside her own armor, and it was left to fall to the ground like a broken marionette.

“I know you can still hear me, Fafnir.” Scyrexian taunted, and bent down to look into Michelle’s visor for the last few moments before it went offline, “I do hope you are pleased that I returned your fellow. Please put up the biggest fuss you can while I help you reunite with one another more permanently.” The way it gargled its laugh as it went upright again and floated out of the room like a wraith was haunting.

Furion was incensed, fists clenched angrily, “I’m going down there. Charge the forward cannon. If it won’t come out, we’ll blow the whole damn place up.”

“I’ll go warn the dawdlers to hurry up.” Rylen said, in complete agreement with the plan.

“No! Sir, you can’t go down there.” Furion refused, and actually stepped over to grab the Eidolon’s arm. Rylen stared at the Captain in shock, but Furion shook his head, “It’s already proven it can harm you. The Council can’t afford to lose an Eidolon. Stay here while we go to finish this.”

Rylen could hardly believe the manhandling, but the Captain’s words had some sense to them, and he pulled his arm back, “…Fine. Go. The second you’re clear, though…”

“Yessir.”

As Furion took off to join the others, Rylen turned back to the bridge, “Will someone roll back the fucking clock on the orbital that’s been watching Laurier’s little home-away-from-home in Kitez? I need to know if this thing really came from there, and if it did, I want to know why no one noticed it blowing up the building when it left the other day.”

The Fafnir who were already inside the building were oblivious to the tragedies that had just transpired; keeping comms wide open during an operation would be damaging to the mission’s completion. That being the case, however, none of them knew about the whorl of death that was heading their way, and it was the first thing Furion announced as he launched off the back of the Aegis, “Everyone listen up; the evacuation is our top priority. We will not engage the target. Do your best to get everyone to the tram or the escape-hutches and follow after. …Don’t worry about a head-count on one another; once your sections are empty, get the Hell out. For safety, you’re also to use your on-board air-supply. Completely block your intake valves and go into contamination-mode.”

Gareth and Xandra looked up from where they were trying to get the cells open that the abandoned Myrmidon were in, then at one another. Though they couldn’t see each other’s faces through their visors, there was an air of trepidation, and the valves on the back of their suits hissed with the last draw of air before sealing shut. While Gareth tried frantically to get the doors to open with the control-pad at the exit, Xandra focused on trying to pry them open manually. She appeared to have quicker success, and with the combined force of one plasma-edged rapier and a good tug, she was able to force through the lock on the first cell. The figure inside – the eyeless corner-stander – had gone down to crouch instead, and was too busy trying to claw at those empty sockets to notice the way had been cleared.

“Hey! You have to get out!” Xandra hollered, and rushed forward to grab the man’s shoulder. The savagery of desperation had left the man’s face bloodied and raw, and he screamed horribly as his visage turned to the shocked Fafnir. He didn’t even have the wherewithal to pull his fingers from the sunken, bruised flaps of what were once his eyelids before he began that visceral bellowing. The others started to cry out as well…and it only served to mask the sound of Gareth out in the hall.

Scyrexian had managed to sneak-up behind him, and ever-so-gently clicked the releases on either side of his helmet. His legs were kicked-out from under him and he collapsed to his knees – he literally dropped out of his own helm, as it was suspended in the space his head had once occupied – and he was yanked back by those second arms reaching into the crease of armor at his neck and shoulders. The last thing he saw as he was forced to look up was the cluster of crawling arthropod-like legs that emerged from the empty, upside-down skulls of the Gemini. They probed and grasped at his skin with those hooked finger-tips, then pulled him face-first into that gaping maw. Like several insectoid mandibles all biting at once, the front of the Fafnir’s skull was crushed and clipped away, and yet another Knight’s interface was terminated on the Aegis’ bridge.

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They never even saw what happened to him; they could only hear it, as Scyrexian continued to hold up that helm throughout the goring like Gareth had never moved at all.

Xandra flapped her hybridized dragon-butterfly wings as she backed up from the cell-door in disgust and terror, “Man, screw this place…” She said to herself, and turned just in time to see the hulking beast emerge through the room’s singular entry-way, mandibles clicking and wriggling with the blood and gore stuck between them. It finally cast aside the helm it had taken. A ravaged section of Gareth’s lower jaw came loose from its lamprey-like mouth, and fell to the floor beneath its feet. There was no thought – only instinct – and Xandra unleashed her entire payload onto the creature.

Rylen struggled to comprehend what he’d seen, but he recognized the explosive gush of dense smoke that arose in response to the Fafnir’s ranged weaponry, “Captain, it’s in the holding bloc. Avoid going that way.”

“Yessir.” He answered, and diverted his flight-path from the broken rock-wall to the main entrance over the built-in waterfall. Wings folded-in behind him and the feathers interlocked with one another, keeping a shield behind him as he made his way forward through those abandoned halls. He immediately felt his heart in his throat as he heard the panicked scrambling of a straggler around a far corner. It was the Myrmidon who’d been trapped in the room with the Magi when Scyrexianori burst in, and every instinct in the Captain’s body told him to attack those Limitless eyes. Hands gripped down on the sword-hilts in his grip, but he made himself reset, and he gestured back the way he’d come, “Get out! Now!”

“The whispers…the whispers, it’s talking to me, you have to get it out of my head!” The rattled Myrmidon cried, throwing himself at the Fafnir.

Furion easily deflected the man, but when that flailing researcher crumpled to the floor, the last thing he expected was for the man to push up onto an elbow…and immediately swing his face towards the lowered tip of his blade. The Captain quickly stepped backward, barely avoiding the gruesome self-impalement, and pointed again – with the sword, this time, to keep it out of reach – at the exit-doors, “GO ON! Someone will come collect you!”

Depraved from the exposure and mentally broken, the Myrmidon simply scrambled back to his feet, rushed out the door, and threw himself immediately off the ledge. No one saw the landing, but they all knew there were rocks at the bottom of that river, and they all knew what happened when a body hit a solid surface from a sizable height.

Everyone on the bridge saw what Furion had just witnessed, and were stunned to silence, except Rylen, who could only mutter in disbelief, “…What the Hell is happening here…?”

Furion wondered the exact same thing, but as he thought back on the state he’d found the Magistrate’s ship in, it was hard to deny the logic of simply cutting the experience short. He steeled himself and turned to go further inside, “Where is everyone right now?”

Scyrexian watched with gleeful indifference as Xandra collapsed; it had ripped one of the limbs of her mechanical wings right off the back of her armor and stuffed it nearly to the shoulder down her throat. And without remorse, it set a foot down onto her chest and reached for the implement, ripping it right back out again like a gruesome souvenir as it pushed her down. It kicked her over onto her stomach and tore the second limb off with the other hand, and made its way back out of the room. It had less than an iota of care for its three original victims, as they all clawed at their own eyes and throats to escape the deafening cacophony of unyielding whispers that emanated into their minds.

There were still nine Fafnir left to slaughter, and one to find.

A good half of them were in the subterranean tram-station, trying to keep the evacuees calm as they were stuck waiting for one of the trollies to return on the dual-direction tracks. The number of them had blazing golden eyes, and the sight of it was enough to unsettle the Fafnir.

Jense commented into their private comms the sentiment that they all had, “…Suddenly it’s clear why they normally wear those fucking masks.”

“This many afflicted in one place is always a bad sign.” Annashi agreed, “I can’t imagine how itchy all of your trigger-fingers are right now. Mine sure are…”

Furion’s words suddenly came into all of their ears, and their attention shifted. Sammy was the one who answered, “Sir, Wing Team Two is at the bottom of this place. Wing Team One is in the upper levels, trying to find stragglers.”

Rylen’s voice interrupted that train of thought, but he only spoke to Furion, “Captain, we’ve lost two more. You need to get the rest of them out of there. Time has run out for anyone who hasn’t already gotten out.”

Gritting his teeth, Furion bent his head, “…Yessir.” He answered…and all the remaining lights suddenly cut out.

The main and emergency power supply had been blown apart; one of Xandra’s wing-arms had been driven straight through each generator. Scyrexian’s mandibles clicked in amusement, and the terrified figure it had dragged into whole mess scrambled to get away in the dark; the dim light of that red eclipse-like nimbus was all he had to flee by. The malevolent entity could hear the dread screaming from a different floor, right through the walls, and reveled in the sound of that pervasive fear.

Wing Team Two suddenly had its hands full with a room possessing of a not-insignificant number of spooked afflicted who were quickly becoming berserk. The light flaring from their eyes was all that the gathered had to use to see by, but the brighter it got, the more scared they became, until delirious mania drove the rest to start running out into the rail-line. They were trampling each other in their fear, and ran blindly beyond the incandescence of that golden glow.

“Wing Team One, emergency withdrawal, now!” Furion ordered, quickly turning on the building’s floorplan-overlay to display in his sights. Even in the dark, he could at least tell where the walls and floors were supposed to be, visualized like a schematic from a topographical-mapper.

When only Ravan and Alexander answered, the entire team suddenly felt a deep sense of dread, like freezing-hot water had been poured through their chests.

“…Is anyone…else there…?” Bianca – the nervous first-year – asked dubiously, “…Anyone…? Commander Parker…?”

“Stay calm and stick together.” Sammy ordered; without Donivan, and as the next-most-senior Knight, he was now the de facto Commander of Wing Team Two, “Jense and Corbin, you two fly out over the crowd and drop flares to guide the way. Michael; you’re with me. Bianca and Annashi, try to get those goddamn Myrmidon moving.”

“Sir!”

There were seven afflicted in all who had succumbed to the pressure of whatever was making their eyes blaze, but they all abruptly collapsed to their knees where they stood just seconds before the ceiling at the south-end of the room collapsed in a roar of crushed concrete and dust. That golden light was like a latticework of auroras, connecting eyes to eyes from all sides of the platform.

“East-wing is as clear as I think it’s gonna get, Captain.” Ravan commented, “I’m heading up and out.”

“West-wing still has some people hunkered down who won’t move.” Alexander noted, and pled his case one last time to the huddled mass of people who had fortified themselves in a cold-storage room, “You have to get moving! Whatever is here, it’s on the lower levels now! Just go up!”

“Get moving, Alex.” Furion answered, “We can’t force the unwilling.”

“But sir-”

No response came, and Alexander grudgingly turned his back on the fearful staff. He and Ravan weren’t terribly far inside the facility, so it was an easy enough task to get to the level above where they were, and escape out through the doors onto the terrace. They each had their melee weapons at the ready, and hovered at a presumably-safe distance, keeping an eye on whatever they could.

Furion had managed to find his way over to the generator-room, and found the unsettling sight of the hole that had been blasted through the floor nearby. The traumatized staffer who’d been made to show the way was huddled nearby, face aglow in the dim light emanating off the Captain’s wings. He crouched down beside the figure, “Can you find your way up to the overlook?”

“It’s…it’s hunting you…” The man answered in a frightful tone, “It just…just wants…y-y-you…”

Furion’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he wasn’t sure if the staffer meant him specifically or him as a Fafnir, so he considered the worse option. The only option was to follow the boreholes in the floor, and he left immediately, dropping through the first to land on the level below and take off for the next.

Scyrexian hovered silently into view, emerging through the debris and dust. Its halo was clearly visible through the cloud, until the entire being stepped into view of those four Fafnir. Behind them, the tram-road was illuminated with the flickering candle-like light of the flares that had been dropped, disappearing far into the distance with a throng of panicked researchers and obsolete security trying to keep pace. The twin-roar of the Gemini made the walls quake and dust crackle from the roof, and it lunged forward at the nearest Knight; Annashi.

She tried to jump back, but the Myrmidon she’d been trying to rouse grabbed and startled her. Scyrexian was on her in a flash, grabbing the blade from her right hand. It spun the hilt in its own palm, grabbed tight, and immediately plunged it down into the neck of the Knight. It sparked and flared in resistance, and the creature just chittered a ghastly laugh as it swatted away the woman’s attempt to parry with the other side, “Your external armor may be tempered to withstand the intense heat of hypersonic flight…but not your joins. What do you think will happen when it surrenders to the pressure?”

She looked up with wide, trembling eyes through her visor; she could feel the heat of the weapon against her skin, but with two spindly arms grabbing at her throat, she couldn’t get away. Forced down to a knee by both the pressure of those hands and the force of her own blade being driven into her torso, everything suddenly went out from under her…and the burning heat of that plasma-edge was driven through her core. Wings dimmed and shattered as she fell back, and the smell of broiled human meat filled the air; the impalement left Annashi’s flesh sizzling and charred from collarbone to pelvis.

“Annashi!” Sammy yelled out in horror. The afflicted lifted off their knees and stood up like ghouls on strings, and rushed at the other Fafnir. They were able to get onto Bianca, but Sammy and Michael jumped back and out of the way. They were quick to Bianca’s aid, slashing at the unfortunate Myrmidon who’d fallen prey to Scyrexian’s will, and rendered them until they were dead and motionless at their feet, “Captain, the afflicted turned on us! And that thing just killed Dame Dessow!”

That self-same Captain suddenly dropped-down through the hole that Scyrexian had made, and quickly lunged at the beast. He was stopped only by the unexpected deflection of his blades by not just one, but both of the legs that had – up to that point – been kept hidden. The thighs connected to the creature’s waist as though the Magi they sprouted from had been strapped back-to-back against it. The ankles had been twisted around, and scythe-like blades grew from where the feet once were, and both of them kept one-each of Furion’s swords at bay.

Scyrexian didn’t turn around yet. It made a sickening sound, as if coughing from that unnatural hole it called a mouth. Through the mass of oily tendrils coming off its shoulders, Furion couldn’t yet see the entity’s face, and he was quick to withdraw and take several steps back to avoid the sweep that struck into his footprints. The creature heaved the breathy, wet sounds of a laugh, and it finally made itself face the Captain. Those glowing golden orbits within each of the Magi’s inverted jaws flashed slightly within that oily ichor emanating form those ‘eyes,’ “Captain Rydell… I’ve now seen every Fafnir but one. How disappointing it must be for you to show up at the last, after so many have fallen already.” It taunted, and hovered closer, the disquieting sight of those twitching insectoid limbs making the Captain a bit uneasy, “I’ve learned so many things over these last few weeks… Cutting through the fog of your underling’s reluctant mind, surgically exposing every secret, every memory…right down to the bone…”

“Is that how you knew how to slip through the Aegis’ sensors? Drawing-up ideas from Ianori’s experience?” Furion wondered carefully, hoping to keep the being’s attention.

It made that guttural heaving sound again, laughing as it could with what anatomy it had transfigured for itself, “He was so hoping that you would give him the Wing Commander spot. Babysitting your little brother…demeaning as it was…and his only reward was me.”

Furion’s eyes narrowed, and he and the beast seemed to stalk around one another, each waiting for the other to make a move, “What are you?”

“…That’s entirely dependent on your perspective…”

Without an order to retreat, Michael and Sammy both drew their weapons and took-up position behind, but Bianca didn’t have the constitution to stay, and she took off in terror.

“Primal good and evil.” Scyrexian continued, “God, and the divine. Chaos, and the order that presides over it. Pain, suffering, or the salve for both… To you, however…I am only one thing.”

“And that is?”

It lifted its head, “Ruin.”