XXXIII.
The drone followed at a near distance, seemingly intuitive of their apprehension of it. Vagari had created them a handful of times before in the most dire of circumstances, and only then. They weren’t of his design, and that terrified him to no end. He didn’t have to instill his will in them, nor craft the image of them in his mind. All he needed was fear and the rest came on its own. It seemed to be written within him, like his greater comprehension of Adamic – remnants of the eldritch design, or perhaps the monster he was supposed to be. What did they call him, Abaddon? Was that creature what he was meant to release upon the world in his transformation? The thought made his stomach churn. The drone’s eyes glimmered brightly in the moonlight, marking its silent advance as it crawled along on four humanoid limbs all too similar to Vagari’s own. It held the sickles of its forearms up to border its sunken humanoid face, nearly hidden beneath the tatters of thick hair. The drone chittered as it went, clacking its mandibles against long mammalian teeth in response to BP whistling to it.
True to character, she couldn’t reject the horrid thing for long whilst it was in their company. It felt wholly wrong, and its mind was entirely alien, but it felt worse to her to abandon it for a feeling. Vagari insisted the creature wouldn’t care either way how they felt about it, that it was as soulless as anything he created, but BP didn’t care. The thought stuck too close to Xu’s own ideology for her comfort, a comparison Vagari didn’t much care for, so he left it well alone. “Does he have a name?” BP asked, chirping back and forth with the nightmarish thing.
“Don’t get too attached,” Vagari said in reply as they went. “None of my creations have extensive lifespans. The longest I’ve managed to keep one alive was a small tracking drone, and that was for about two days.”
“So, he’ll die soon?” she pressed morosely.
“It, and not before we’re through,” Vagari answered.
“Then he deserves a name,” BP said adamantly. “How about Carlos?”
“We’re not naming it Carlos,” Vagari denied with a drawn out sigh. “We’re not naming it at all.”
Vagari, BP, and Carlos soon found themselves looking over what appeared to be Xu’s base encampment. A small city in its own right, the large makeshift compound’s walls were attached directly to the immense cargo doors at the aft of the Tevat, growing off the ship like a parasite. Fitting, Vagari thought illy, judging by its new inhabitants. For the size of the place, it was wholly odd that they hadn’t been discovered yet, slithering across its outer walls, or even on the approach. There were only a handful of guards, spattered here and there. No army awaited them when they finally arrived, no grand champion, save for the one they had left dead a mile or two back. The compound appeared skeletal at best in regards to its defenses, to the point Vagari was convinced it had to be a trap. Xu and his master must be withholding their greater numbers inside, he speculated, until they were ready to make their move. It made the most sense, weighed against the fear that perhaps they had quite literally jumped ship, leaving a few guards behind only as a distraction.
Between Vagari and his drone, however, what guards they couldn’t avoid proved to be no real challenge at all, with the three of them making it inside the walls without a single shot fired. Inside the walls was even colder than without. There, the ground crunched with sheets of ice as well as the glass beneath. The cause of the cold remained pure speculation, though some affect of the yet to be encountered demon was still Vagari’s top bet. “Why does it have to be so dang cold?” groaned BP with a shiver as she rubbed her stubby hands together vigorously. “It’s worse than Lab Storage!” Storage – Vagari echoed the word in thought – was that it? Was the frigidity something to do with imprisoning the Godhead? Initially Vagari had believed it to be some side-effect of the archdemon that lived at the heart of the place, a warp in reality as it had been with Esh, maybe due to whatever infernal defense it had used against the angels. But now… The Godhead’s overwhelming sense of warmth came fresh to mind, body, and soul; how it infiltrated every corner of his being. Was it all to blind her light?
As they stealthily made their way through the nearly abandoned encampment, Vagari couldn’t help but ponder Xu’s motives. Something wasn’t adding up. If they had wanted to keep the Godhead trapped, why open the ship at all? Why go through the dangers and troubles of assaulting the descendants of the ship’s former inhabitants on the wall? Why bother capturing them if their blood was the only thing able to open it? She had been trapped there since the ship fell generations ago, why tempt fate now? Exactly what was Xu and his master looking for on that ship? Near the massive cargo doors of the Tevat, the encampment began opening up, transforming into an area very reminiscent of the hospital’s entrance back in New Houston. Large vehicles lined either side of them, some ancient, with some being heavily retrofitted with newly printed parts. They were all damaged in one way or another, with one clawed beyond repair by some great thing with talons as long as a man, and another riddled with bullet holes. They were all military grade transports, probably leftover from when Xu fled his last lair, judging by how old they were. Vagari made note of them. They lacked any of the angel-tech the giant husk’s vehicle had, so in the event they needed to make a quick escape with survivors, they would be their best bet.
Passed the vehicles they found the remnants of a camp not too long abandoned. It stood out greatly from the surrounding encampment, if by quality of equipment alone. Unlike the rest of the makeshift city which was cobbled together by whatever they could fine, this area was almost entirely newly printed. “Woah,” Vagari uttered with a stifled whistle. “If I had a printer that could make half this stuff, I’d be set for life… Computer terminals, medical stations, a machine for vehicle repairs – jeez, they have everything right here, and they just left it out here to rot.”
He was impressed up until they stumbled upon the row of hastily printed cages – no doubt where they had kept their captives. Most were squat, too short to stand, and seemed to be suffering damage of an escape attempt with bent or broken bars on almost half of them. There was no sign of violence, no taste of blood in the air, so while their rebellion seemed to have been short lived, the silver lining was Xu hadn’t killed them outright once the doors were open. Instead it appeared that he had them moved inside with him, probably to the more secure cells of the ship’s brig. Vagari’s only hope was that that sliver of silver wasn’t really mercury, and that their fates weren’t worse further in. “Reminds me of the room we were kept in…” BP uttered softly, dragging a hand across the bars, “the Nursery… Cold and full of cages. I remember how happy I was that I didn’t have to be there anymore. Vagari, no one should have to live in a cage.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Vagari replied grimly, “I can think of a few.”
The immense doorway of the Tevat’s cargo bay towered above them, looming like the skyscrapers of the old world. In truth they weren’t simply a set, but a series: nine bay doors, side by side, two per level with the exception being the ninth. Each alone were wide enough to fit a battleship in comfortably, which upon closer inspection, Vagari realized, may have been the case. Only four of the nine were labeled ‘Cargo’. The rest were marked with ‘LB’, subtitled A through F, with F being the massive single door at the top. Vagari could only guess the acronym stood for ‘Launch Bay’, meaning the Tevat hadn’t just been an ark as its name implied, but a mothership. Vagari stared in awe, and gnawing dread. They must have been able to fit hundreds of shuttles in each of them. For what possible reason would they need so many? Unless it hadn’t been shuttles. Fighters? Drones? If the Tevat wasn’t an ark, what was it? A warship? “I don’t know what we were expecting, honestly,” BP muttered, looking the doorway before them side to side. “It’s locked. Think we should knock?”
Vagari knit his brows and shook the wonderment out of mind for the problem at hand. How were they going to get in? “I guess we’ll need to find a console,” Vagari suggested. “Though, that might not work at all if it’s still biometrically sealed. Shit…”
“I’m gonna knock,” BP offered with a shrug, doing just that. No sooner did her gnarled knuckles rap the metal did the doorway begin to groan and open. With a surprised squeak, BP stumbled backwards before ducking behind the nearest wall of abandoned tech. “Carlos, defend me!” The ghastly drone let out a sharp hiss as it lurched forward toward at her command, scratching and slashing at the parting metal. Vagari took a step back, raising his claws, a word of power teetering on the back of his tongue. “This… is all I can offer,” whispered a voice in Vagari’s mind. “You are close… So close now. Free me. Free me, and we’ll end this together…”
“Elizabeth…” Vagari realized, the core of him being flooded with that nigh overwhelming warmth as her voice bounded in his thoughts. “She’s opening the way, BP. Quick, lets hurry before the alarm is sounded! Quick, inside!”
Before Vagari could even question the sanity of barging in blind, the three rushed between the parting doors and into the shadowed depths of the Tevat. The bay door behind them groaned and stuttered as if at war with conflicting commands – to open or to close. Within a moment, however, a clear winner arose and it slammed shut behind them, throwing them fully into darkness. Vagari felt BP clutch tight to his side in shock, unable to make any sense of her surroundings. He gave her a comforting pat and told her to follow closely. His eyes may be useless in the dark, but his other senses would make up for the handicap. A step forward, however, would solve the issue.
Lights flickered on above them, and only above them, as if the igniting power followed their every step. Was this too Elizabeth’s doing? Vagari could only wonder, hope, feeling that warmth still blossoming within him. Even though he couldn’t hear her, he knew in his heart that she was there with him. The feeling almost scared him – hell, it did scare him. Was it what people called faith? ‘We’ll end this together,’ she had said, and he believed her wholly. They were so close now, so damned close to only thing in this new life of his he had ever dared dream of – redemption, undoing those fateful crimes of his past. Vagari’s heart raced in his chest. “Do… Do you feel anything?” Vagari questioned with a hard swallow. “They have to know we’re here by now. We should have run into more opposition, right? Or maybe the ship’s defense turrets, if they’ve gotten full control yet.”
“Nothing,” BP admitted quietly. “I don’t feel anything but the three of us… and the book.”
“The book?” Vagari pressed, pausing a moment to look down at her.
“Yeah,” she confirmed with a curt nod. “It’s loud here, Vagari… Not words or anything, but… something else. A feeling? Like, it wants to be here.”
‘Wants to be here…’ that was an unsettling suggestion, Vagari thought, feeling for the tome tucked away in his backpack. If it were sentient, why did it have to be him to bring it? Xu would have done the same. Vagari remembered spinning the mirror at his house, the plane back passing – passing – passing, and then the book, the Libro ex Portarum. Once more Vagari could feel the strings tugging at his back, countering that hopeful warmth in his gut.
As they strode through the center of the hanger, just beyond the dimness of the overhead light, Vagari could see the ruins of ancient dwellings, storage units and other such things cobbled together in the same fashion as the makeshift city outside. The Godhead’s followers seemed to have lived there for quite some time before fleeing the ship. What drove them out again, Vagari wondered; did the boys tell him? Suddenly there came a terrible sound of grinding metal from behind them, and then a deep gurgling roar, loud and resounding. The monstrous sound echoed from one end of the hanger to the other as Vagari stared back in silence. Far behind them looked as if there were a single flickering candleflame – dim and blue. It took Vagari a moment to understand what it really was, but when he had, all sense of that warmth fled from his body. It wasn’t a flame, but the door, wrenched open and lit by moonlight, and the flickering was something weaving in front of it. “Something’s come inside,” BP announced, her bulging eyes shining under the ships light, “I can feel it.”
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“What do you feel?” Vagari pressed in a cautious whisper, though there was no doubt whatever it was could see them as clear as day, lit as they were.
“Ugh – it’s loud!” BP cried, clapping her hands over her avian ears. “It’s so loud it’s hurting my head! So many… voices, crying out in pain!”
Many – that was how she had described the giant husk before. Was there a twin to Xu’s pet project, Vagari wondered, or was it the same one? It couldn’t be, there wasn’t flesh and blood in the world that could withstand his drone’s venom. That was what he wanted to believe, but no small part of him really did. Vagari could see it now, just barely in the dim light, a twist of lurching cancerous biomass advancing upon them. It was the husk, Xu’s ‘Synbio’, in a constant state of corrosion due to the drone’s liberal injection of its venom, but kept alive, if barely, by its infernal regeneration. It looked more like the amalgamation he had fought back at Site-B now than anything remotely humanoid. The homunculus lurched forward, howling in agony as parts of it fell free in dirt-mottled clumps, leaving behind ghastly sores that were near instantly filled in with fresh red flesh oozing up from within.
Run – run – run! The urge to flee roared within him, but where? Only darkness surrounded them. They were lit up by the dim overhead light, spotting them out while blinding them to all else. Vagari cursed and pushed BP back, to keep going. She winced under his touch, the psychic intrusion of the nearing creature quickly proving too much for her to focus on anything else. “Fuck!” Vagari cursed, looking for any angle of escape. Flight was a possibility, even with a torn wing, but not whilst carrying BP and everything she carried. Vagari steeled himself with a stomp – there would be no aerial escape. Leaving her behind would never be an option. He would have to fight.
Abruptly static filled the room as the bay’s loudspeakers chimed to life, and a grainy voice soon boomed out in all directions. “I have to say, this is quite the development,” Xu said – no, not Xu but the parasite. “The regeneration abilities of this specimen are remarkable – near Shassuru even. Xu is proving quite the weaver of flesh, don’t you think, Abaddon? Unexpected. Might even put you to shame. Your drone, its venom is legendarily destructive… I could never replicate it in all my years. It's adaptive, a made-to-order toxoid for whatever it sticks.” There came a moments pause and a drawn out seethe. “When Tehom told me who you really are… I couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be – not her best, not her most loyal Abaddon, gone mad like the others! Was it Tzalmavet’s handywork, the blasted Misborn?! Who broke you?!” The voice shouted, pain clear to the ear even through the veil of static. “Or maybe a fouler poison than your own, whispered by that vile serpent, Esh? Cowards. Fools. Betrayers, the lot of you! Why? Why betray her? Blessed Nintu, our most holy mother?! The one who gave you mind, body, and soul?” In an instant, all the rage and hurt proliferating the parasite’s stolen voice faded to cold neutrality. “Whatever the reasons are, it matters not,” it would say darkly. “The price is death. There’s no reasoning with you, no possible redemption in this life, and no escaping it. You will die today, Abaddon, and be remade. Now, answer the Mother’s call.”
“Not before you,” Vagari hissed into the darkness. Though, his belief in that statement wasn’t an ironclad one, not with the unkillable thing steadily making its way towards him. He turned his attention to BP, calling to her. “Can you reach out to it in its diminished state?”
BP shook her head, covering her ears tightly, though he doubted it helped drown out the voices. Whatever chaotic state the creature’s mind was in, it was an active assault on her own. Vagari scooped her up in his arms and backed away as the horrific thing lurched towards them, dragging itself on one long cancerous appendage. The grotesque arm flailed about searchingly, a tree of spiny tendrils that’s branches lashed out, reaching, feeling for any living thing they could draw in. Vagari cursed a half-dozen times under his breath. They needed time – time for a plan, time to escape, time to do what they came there to do, to free the Godhead and just be done with it all! “Sorry, Carlos… Keep it busy!” Barked Vagari, directing with a long arachnoid finger. “Give it everything you have! We need to remove its healing factor – now!”
It couldn’t heal forever, Vagari thought, he hoped. With how much energy it must be expending on its regeneration, it must be in a starving state, animalistic – dulled to one thought, hunger. So, with any luck, the drone would either keep it’s attention long enough for whatever energy it had left to burn out, or be appetizing enough to keep it distracted. The drone shrieked at his command, acting upon it without hesitation. It leapt, locust wings whooping like helicopter blades, and struck true upon the pustuled and spasming flesh of the monstrous husk’s back. The drone sunk its sickles in deep and held on tight as it stung and bit repeatedly, tearing off mouthfuls of putrid meat while pumping every bit of its venom into the creeping abomination. Xu’s monster wailed even louder than before as it writhed under the sudden attack. “Run – run now!” Vagari shouted to himself as he turned heel and started down the cargo hold in a dead sprint, BP held tight in his arms.
“Run? Run where?” the parasite droned over the speakers. “There’s nowhere to run to, Abaddon, only the Mother’s embrace. All doors are closed to you, which is funny, considering the relic you hold – the ‘Book of Portals’ as you call it in your degenerative tongue. Xu, he would want to offer you a deal: leave the book and go – live your lives beyond our reach. Nowhere is beyond our reach, and I will make no such deal. Whatever sad thing you’ve become, whatever castoff imitation, the Forge awaits. Rejoice, you will be as she designed you once more.”
“Shut up!” Vagari hollered as he ran, before turning his attention to BP. She groaned in his arms, nearly paralyzed by the psychic drone that plagued her. “Don’t worry – don’t worry – don’t worry…” He repeated in haste, cradling her like a child. “This time… This time I’m going to keep you safe, okay? You won’t have to save me. I’ll save us both!”
“Save you both? You can’t even save yourself,” Xu’s symbiote uttered mockingly. “You’re so broken, you don’t even know what power the Mother instilled in you. You’ve abandoned all you were, all you were meant to be – and for what?! The lies of this false prophet? What did it promise you? That you would be spared? That your little pet would be? Lies, as they always have been!”
Vagari didn’t dignify the parasite with a response to it’s insane rambling. Instead, he broke away from the light, darting into the ruins of the former residents dwellings. The light followed, zig-zagging above as he made his way through the hive of makeshift shelters until he found one that rose up high above them. He leapt and scrambled to the top, figuring that the higher he got, the more time he would have to come up with a plan to destroy the abomination that hunted them. Once he was as high as he could get atop of the tower of storage unit apartments, he set BP down. From his back he took his remaining two eggs and set them at her sides and instilled his will into them. “Protect her,” he insisted, whispering his designs. “Keep her safe, hidden.”
The eggs instantly melted and began spreading over her like a slime-mold. The cocoon it would form was as hard as honeycombed plasteel and bended what light there was, effectively making it invisible. Whatever senses Xu’s monster still possessed, hopefully BP would be shielded from them. The blinding light followed Vagari as he jumped down, trailing him like the ever watchful eye of GOD, or rather the devil, knowing now it was Xu at the controls, as he made his way across to another building. Even as he drew near to his target, the light nearly overshadowed the abomination in the dark depths just beyond, but thankfully he didn’t need to find it by sight alone. If it’s horrendous howling hadn’t been enough, the scent of it would have. The vile thing oozed and steamed as it trudged along, filling the air with a miasma of rotting flesh and puss.
In the darkness, Vagari could see that the drone had fell pray to it, but not before seemingly having done some irreparable damage. Now, where it had been, was a deep bilious hole, that every few moments would seal up only to burst open again, splashing the surrounding area with ichorous voidings. How the sickening thing was still alive after all that, was beyond him, but worst was that the drone’s sacrifice hadn’t seemed to slow it in the least. The cancerous husk’s movements were all still targeted, directed even – towards him. It was tracking him somehow, despite everything, it seemed to be keen on acting out it’s last order. Xu truly seemed to have created the perfect soldier in that aspect, in the sense that not death or hell would divert it from its mission. It was beyond sickening, that through all the pain and suffering, all it could think of was bringing Vagari to his end.
Tendrils of raw flesh in the vaguest shape of arms burst out of the central body, latching onto the twist of steel under Vagari’s perch. At first Vagari thought it aimed to pull the whole structure down, but then it began hoisting itself up towards him, one sloshing foot at a time. Vagari hissed, looking up and around for an escape route. It was a loading bay, a staging area for massive cargo intakes, so there must be cranes, or docking clamps for shuttles somewhere above him that he could fly to, he figured. But, with the blinding light pinpointed upon him, he couldn’t spot anything of the sort. Vagari let out a sharp hiss as the viscous monster drew nearer and nearer. It was nearly upon him, its lashing arms digging their claws into the metal rim of the shipping container. Vagari thrust his hand forward, attempting to draw the pneuma in the air into a burst of hellfire. “Hengnis!” he shouted, but before the word could fully escape his mouth a harsh bluntness came crashing across the length of him as one of Xu’s monster’s arms burst from the surrounding darkness. Vagari fell, thrown from the light into the abyss below. Even with his wings mostly intact, the landing was anything but graceful, striking down hard against the plated flooring before skidding several feet into a wall assisted stop.
“Your diabolist tricks wont save you here,” Xu’s voice echoed out, dulled by the ringing in Vagari’s ears. “If that’s all you’re capable of now, then this truly is a mercy. Her glorious blessing was wasted upon you, Abaddon, this broken iteration of you. Such power you once held, her sword, her divine destroyer.”
“Power?! What fucking power?!” Vagari questioned with a bloodied spit. “Everything I am, I discovered on my own! What, do you think I woke up with a manual? You insufferable prick… You act like you actually know anything with your whiny monologue, but you don’t know shit about me – what I’ve been through. You talk of blessings and power, but unlike Esh and unlike you, I imagine, I actually remember the process – the pain of it! It wasn’t a blessing, it was hell. However long I was trapped in that damned cocoon, it felt like ages, dying and being reborn over and over until I became this… thing! If she had killed me then, that would have been a blessing… But no, no I’m stuck here with you.”
“Not for long,” the parasite uttered darkly.
Vagari cursed as the sound of something large and wet slamming onto the floor rung out. There was no doubt that it was the infernal Synbio reversing its ascent, letting itself fall away to the ground to continue its pursuit. Vagari staggered backwards as the slow slicking sound of the abomination’s movement grew louder. He didn’t have to run, but he was effectively locked in there with it and it would catch him eventually. Be it by some stroke of misfortune or by pure mistake, it would catch him. BP’s protective shell wouldn’t last forever either, not even an hour probably, so figuring out how to defeat the monster before him and soon was paramount.
The abomination soon crept into sight, letting loose a ghastly wail as it spotted him. Vagari backed away more, raising his hand again before releasing a word of power. “Dheht-Hengnis!” Vagari cried, sending a burst of hellfire soaring across the distance. The bolt of flame lit up the ruined city around him, turning his world from one of black and white to crimson silhouettes, as it struck true. In an instant the fire engulfed it wholly in lashing tongues, but just as quickly faded, doused by the creature’s oozing hide. He thrust his hands out again, “Dheht-Stenh!” This time a lash of electricity shot out with a thunderous crack, shifting the rooms hue from the red of lingering flame to the white-blue of lightning. The kelhsterg struck, piercing the abomination through with an explosive pop, leaving a gaping hole through the heart of it. But, even then, it proved futile, with ropes of flesh tying it back together in a few short breaths. “Dheht-Stenh!” Vagari shouted again, thrusting forward repeatedly, “Dheht-Stenh! Dheht-Stenh!”
Each crackling bolt struck true, carving craters out of the ever advancing monstrosity, but in the end the results were always the same – temporary devastation. No matter what he threw at it, the homunculus just kept coming. Vagari heaved, the strain of the spells beginning to weigh heavy upon him. “What more can I do?!” Vagari seethed in thought, unexpecting the reply and the chill that accompanied it.
“Phle… gigneħ…” the alien utterance insisted, words that were more feeling than anything truly spoken. Feel – experience, lost – forgotten: remember. The frigid wave of absolute aversion washed over him, filling him with an overwhelming sense of dread.
“No, no-no-no-no, not now!” Vagari frantically thought, unable to force the words to leave his mouth, or his feet to leave the floor. He stood frozen, staring at the slowly advancing death before him, true terror that this may actually be his end rising up within him. “Remember what?!”
“Phlegigneħ,” the frigid intrusion urged, the feeling of dread nearly overwhelming him with each spoken word, “tuħ sekh!”
‘Remember what you severed,’ that was what those words meant, what the foreign dread demanded of him. Vagari already knew what. Not just bits and pieces, not a glimpse of the past, not what he wanted to remember, but what he had to. It wanted everything, the truth of what happened that fateful day two-hundred years ago, the truth he denied himself, the truth of his greatest sin. As the icy grip tightened on his soul and Xu’s monster rose up for the kill, it all came flooding back to him – the fear, the shame, the regret, and the memories that followed.