Lok'Tok'Nok stood, her bladed wings extended behind her, her halo of gems and phasic energy glowing in the dimness, watching impassively as Dalvanak, the Maimed One, stood on the platform and undressed. The skulls of Mad Lemurs chattered, wailed, and howled. Lights flashed and the air was full of the scent of hot lubricants and electronics. Discordant music, with a hard baseline and quick tempo change, hammered at the skin as well as the ears, vibrating the bones and ichor and the blood.
She was deep in the Tomb World, accompanying Dalvanak the Maimed One as he sought out wisdom that could only be wrested from the dead. Just getting near the Tomb World was difficult. Orbital defense platforms around the planet, system defense platforms and systems scattered through the system. Dead ships full of nothing but white flickering shades of enraged Mad Lemur dead screaming in blood lust and willing to tear the life from any creatures they found.
Behind her, frightened of the Path of Hidden Wisdom, other adherents of the Cult of the Defiled One watched nervously. The Path of Hidden Wisdom could kill those who were not strong enough to withstand the visions and painful paths the conveyances whirled and spun through. The screams of mature lemurs and the shrieks of immature lemurs were full of aggression and fury.
The adherents, most of which were unnamed, watched nervously, peering into the darkness around them for any flickering hint of faint white lines, faint nebulous ethereal energy that could make up the enraged soul of one of the dead Mad Lemurs of Terra.
The dead could kill on the Tomb World.
One of the conveyances slammed into place. The door crashed open, revealing tangled bones, scraps of rotting cloth, and glittering pieces of cyberwear and jewelry inside.
Dalvanak stood, staring, at the Holy Conveyance. He stepped inside, sitting down. The bar lowered over his pelvis and he closed all three eyes, inhaled twice, and opened his third eye.
The conveyance began to move, slowly, clicking, as it was pulled up the steep rise. Dalvanak could feel the tension in his stomachs as it slowly crested the rise and paused.
The drop was nearly a hundred meters, nearly straight down, with skeletal figures and horrifying avatars leaning out, holograms flickering over the tracks, and the music changes to something that made Dalvanak's feeding tentacles curl defensively.
Without warning the conveyance plunged down, picking up speed. The shrieking laughter of immature lemurs raked his ears, flickering phasic shades appeared, reaching for him with bloody jaws and pale white talons but grasping nothing but air as the conveyance swept by.
It spun through a set of loops that took the conveyance up into the sky, nearly three hundred meters, the conveyance slowing down. The sheer G-forces punished Dalvanak's body, made his bones creak, crushed the breath from his body.
The conveyance paused for a bare moment then swept down again and Dalvanak felt his stomach clench as he saw it coming up.
The Trial of the Sky.
The conveyance swept upwards, the track looping up and over.
Dalvanak gripped the bar tightly with both hands as the conveyance slowed down and then stopped for a moment with a loud clank. He was upside down, the blood rushing to his head. He could feel his heartbeat hammering on his brain.
Streaks of color were visible to his third eye.
He blinked as the conveyance slowly began to move forward, angling back to right side up, picking up speed faster and faster, until it shot out of the first Trial of the Sky and approached the smaller loops known as the Trial of the Body. On the second loop he voided his stomach, spewing out the toxic brew of Liquid Hate, KISS Cola, and alcohol created by running lemur machinery lubricant through a distillery.
The streaks of color got more vivid, blanking out the scenery on the sides, until Dalvanak felt himself break free.
Pinpoints appeared in his vision, sparkles, that expanded into stars, the suddenly streaked to the side, leaving large lines in his vision even as the bands of color swept by him. A black space appeared in the middle of his vision, slowly spreading, devouring the bands of colors and the streaked lines of stars moving past.
His vision went black.
For a long moment his mind floated in nothingness even as his body was slammed back and forth through the twists and turns of the Trial of Battering Tides.
A glow appeared and he saw it.
A great black monolith floating in space, covered with runes, images, and hieroglyphics.
It grew closer and he could hear the enraged screaming of lemurs coming from it.
One line focused in his vision.
He saw the hieroglyphs float around him. His mind expanded as the conveyance spun through the Trial of G-Forces.
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A vision of a large Treana'ad warrior appeared, clad in armor and carrying a plasma rifle. Behind it more and more species began to appear. Rigellian, Mantid, Kobolds, Pubvian, more and more and more.
He whirled in place and saw other xenospecies.
Large bipeds in the middle of vast Dyson spheres.
There was an explosion and they were wiped away with a scream.
More and more species appeared, each time an explosion wiped them away, gunfire shredded them and they fell and dissolved into nothingness, a screaming Lemur jumped on them with a knife and stabbed them to death. A lemur picked up a rock and crushed the skull, ripping away flesh and shoving into their mouth.
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Species after species devoured by the rage of the Mad Lemurs of Terra.
Species after species lifted up to stand next to a screaming lemur that often punched itself in the side of its head as it screamed and looked up at the stars with the other species.
Lemur killing lemur. Strangling them, beating them with rocks and debris, stabbing them, shooting them.
The explosion of an atomic weapon.
He saw his people. The Atrekna.
They stood over a dead lemur.
A Treana'ad warrior appeared. A black mantid. A Rigellian female. A muscular kobold.
They stared at the dead lemur for a long moment.
The Atrekna preened.
They looked up at the Atrekna.
The Atrekna sneered, surrounded by rippling gauzy flows of phasic energy.
They knelt down, touching the lemur, their fingertips coated with bright red glittering blood.
The Atrekna expressed satisfaction and pleasure.
Each species lifted their bloody fingertips and drew lines beneath their eyes as they stood up.
The Atrekna sneered and waved its hand, another half dozen Atrekna appeared next to it.
Screaming with rage the blood marked species leaped on the Atrekna, beating at them, stabbing at them, ripping at them. Shoving bloody hunks of Atrekna flesh into their mouths even as they gurgled screams past mouthfulls of blood.
The Atrekna attempted to run.
With the baying cry of pursuit hunters the other species chased the Atrekna, scrambling over each other as the Atrekna ran around and around the dead lemur. The pursuers eyes glowed bright red as they grabbed the Atrekna, pulling them back, to savage and rip at as another Atrekna broke free, each time smaller, and kept running in circles.
Finally a small Atrekna, only up to Dalvanak's knee, stopped by the dead lemur, panting, its phasic energy depleted. Around it hundreds of groups of species crouched down, beating on Atrekna, ripping away flesh to shove into their howling mouths.
The Atrekna displayed smugness at its sudden safety.
The lemur's fingers trembled.
The Atrekna looked around it, seeing that the other species were occupied with devouring the larger Atrekna they had brought down. Several groups shoved at one another to grab hunks of flesh and shove it into their mouths, chewing on the flesh, blood running down their faces.
The lemur's hands clenched into fists and relaxed.
The Atrekna began constructing a phasic construct to reach back through time to bring more forward.
The lemur looked up.
Its eyes were burning crimson, blood ran out of its mouth and down its chin.
Its hand reached out, wrapping around a rock.
The Atrekna, facing away from the lemur, began to prepare to gate through hundreds of more Atrekna.
The lemur stood up, its limbs shaky, rents and tears in its clothing showing scrapes, puncture wounds, deep cuts, all leaking red blood so dark it was almost black.
The lemur slowly crouched down, the rock in its hand.
It leaped forward, tackling the Atrekna.
Dalvanak was thrown backwards, the lemur on top of him, hammering the rock on him as they flew backwards. Dalvanak tried to cover himself, tried to keep the lemur off of him, but it grabbed at him, fingers sinking deep into Dalvanak's flesh, the rock pounding against flesh and bone. Blood sprayed as the lemur shrieked and gibbered and pounded Dalvanak with the rock.
Dalavanak managed to throw the lemur off of him, trilling with terror.
The lemur raised its face to the sky and screamed.
The stars erupted into existence, the burning light searing Dalvanak's flesh as he fell.
He tumbled over and over, blood flowing from his wounds in long ribbons that ended in thick droplets, falling through space and time.
Below him he saw the Grand Convention gathered together, heard their communal mind declare that they had discovered the method of victory over the lemurs and the Inheritors of Madness.
Dalvanak heard a lemur male's voice as he fell toward the Convention.
"It's so crazy it can't help but fail!" the lemur's voice was excited as if the plan was a stroke of inspiration and the correct course.
He fell past the Convention as they agreed on the course of action and the stars around them erupted with screaming. Mantid, Rigellians, Kobolds, Telkan, Pubvians, Tukna'rn, Lanaktallan, Treana'ad all swarmed out of the stars, screaming, blood smeared below their eyes in lines, holding rocks, spears, knives, and fell on the Convention.
The stars vanished with flashes until there was nothing but darkness.
A pair of glowing red lemur eyes opened, watching as Dalvanak fell past.
"I just want left alone" the eyes whispered, teeth and lips suddenly appearing in the eyes and vanishing when the words finished, turning into long snakes of broken glass that Dalvanak fell through, shattering around him.
"You belong to us..." the sibilant whisper was rotted lacy glass that shattered as Dalvanak fell through it.
Atrekna reached out and grabbed stars, jamming them into their mouths and their rings of teeth shredding the planets and stars. Tiny screaming figures fell from their mouths as they expressed pleasure.
"behold: humanity" the stars whispered as the Atrekna reached out and grasped another glittering handful of stars and brought them toward them.
Only to find they were holding the hair of a Mad Lemur of Terra.
Dalvanak fell past them as the Lemur began to scream and the first one slammed his own face against the face of the Atrekna holding its hair.
"...there is room in this grave for you..." an immature female lemur's voice whispered with the smell of rotted lemur blood and flesh.
He fell through her words, feeling the icy cold caress his flesh and making his marrow ache.
He saw an image of himself, in his Holy Regalia, enter a room, carrying knowledge of the New Universe. Inside the room were dozens of Atrekna of the Grand Convention. They were fighting Mantid, Telkan, Rigellians, Kobold, Treana'ad. The room was on fire around them. Howling music thudded from a box. The lights flashed as the combatants fought.
Naked Rigellian gyrated in the middle of the room as the fire roared.
Dalvanak saw himself back out of the room and close the door as he fell past.
A dozen Atrekna had their heads together, planning, phasic energy tangling around them. They drew back, expressing pleasure and imminent victory. They adjusted the phasic energy, gating in the past to defeat the present.
Screaming New Races flooded out, screaming, attacking the Atrekna, tearing them apart and eating them alive.
Dalvanak saw a pair of bright red lemur lips below him. They opened, showing white even teeth, and he fell through the gap, the jaws closing and a tongue licking the lips as he fell through the darkness.
Dalvanak slammed into his own body as the conveyance come to a halt.
Lok'Tok'Nok looked down, staring at Dalvanak, who was covered in scrapes, bruises, one eye swollen shut, bleeding from his mouth. Phasic energy and blood leaked from his wide open third eye. He had lost control of his bowels, his bladder, his stomach.
He had ridden the hellish contraption through five complete revolutions when no other Atrekna had been able to ride three times.
He had ridden five.
And survived.
Bruises shaped like a lemur's hand were on his arms, the sides of his head, on his torso.
Dalvanak slowly got up and left the conveyance, his limbs shaking.
**we are on the edge of extinction** Dalvanak gasped as he dressed. **something is happening something terrible our people will not survive**
**what can we do** Lok'Tok'Nok asked.
Dalvanak adjusted his veil. **our people are about to do something that will doom us all we must find out what our people intend that spells certain doom**
Lok'Tok'Nok nodded. **as you command**
-----
TREA set to +v
It has been a week.
We will now hear rebuttals and affirmations.
All conglomerate gestalts shall allow their components to speak and vote for themselves.
The only two votes are yay or nay. No abstain or present.
We, the Gestalts, take up this solemn duty.
May the Digital Omnimessiah forgive us.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---