As the sun began to rise and the T.H.C. HQ started to get busier, something weird happened. The light display thingy I had been standing near began to make a really weird sound. Then the sirens went off. Hailey and a bunch of other random humans showed up and started messing around with a bunch of light display thingies. After yelling at people to do their jobs better and muttering about hiring a night shift, Hailey walked over to me.
“Hound, did you do something to the computers?” Hailey asked.
“The light making things? I didn’t touch them. I was mesmerized by the one with the spinning line and the funny sounds that it made every time it went around the circle,” I said.
“You like to watch the radar? That’s a first,” Hailey stated.
“So what’s going on? Why did the flashing lights get brighter and the sounds more annoying?” I asked.
“The radar and thermal scanners are picking up a growing heat mass in a plains-type area 30 miles northwest of us. It’s currently believed that it’s just underground magma activity, but it could be something else,” Hailey explained.
“Wait a second, you said a heat mass?” I asked, suspicious.
“Yeah, it could be a volcano in the making,” she responded confidently.
“Oh shit. Oh fuck. Not again, why is this happening?!” I started rambling like a madman.
“What?” Hailey asked in a confused voice. “What’s wrong?”
“The Typhon might be following me and my people,” I responded, calmer now.
“Why would they follow your people?” she asked
“Because they are judges of sinners, deeming their punishment by hunting and killing their prey. Atroxis 3 was destroyed by our failures as a people. Keep an eye on that computer. If the heat stays it's most definitely them,” I answered, worried.
* * *
I stood there for a few hours as Hailey guided the humans in their investigation of the heat mass. When something interesting finally happened, most of the humans had left. Hailey was still there though. I was allowed to watch what Hailey and the other humans called a radar until someone cried out.
“Something just happened!” Someone yelled.
“What?!” Hailey yelled in response.
“Yeah, come look at i… Wait the computer just short-circuited never mind,” the guy who’d yelled earlier said. Wait, I knew him! It was Guard Three! Knowing him wasn’t important but it was good to know the people of the T.H.C. I would be seen better by them if I knew people.
They quickly ushered me out of the room so that the “more important” people could do their work, leaving me to wander the halls for a bit. It was boring, but it was only a few minutes before people started yelling again.
“WE ARE REPORTING THE LARGEST HEAT MASS SEEN TO DATE. WARNING, WARNING, WARNING, WARNING. REPEAT. LARGEST HEAT MASS SEEN TO DATE,” someone I didn’t know yelled over the loudspeaker. They didn’t stop for a very long time and the constant buzz of noise in my ears annoyed me ever so slightly. It would’ve annoyed me more if I could hear as well as humans.
I rushed down the stairs, making my way to the room where people had been monitoring the machines. The room was filled with smoke and people were rushing out. Everyone was coughing, but I didn’t have a problem. I looked around, trying to see who was left in the room. I spotted Guard Three, Hailey, and a few others. I lifted Guard Three’s unconscious form over my shoulder and walked over to where Hailey struggled to crawl out from under some debris. I lifted the debris so she could crawl out from under, setting it down once she was out. She crawled forward a few feet before passing out, so I picked her up and carried her and Guard Three out of the room. I dropped them gingerly onto the floor before going back into the room and helping four other random people. When I made it back out, Hailey and Guard Three had woken up.
“What happened?” I asked Hailey before setting down the other people I had rescued.
“The computers—” cough, “—overloaded, causing them to catch fire. I’m not sure why things—” cough cough “—started—” COUGH “—falling apart,” Hailey managed to say between coughs
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“Something big is happening,” Guard Three said, “the heat mass is expanding faster than anything possibly could.”
“There is something that could expand that fast. A portal to hell,” I told them.
“HELL?!?!?” Guard Three shouted.
“Yes,” I said calmly. “The home of Typhon and the other 6 great fire demons.”
“I am not fighting demons,” Guard Three said, walking out of the room and presumably out of the base.
“Isn’t he important?” I asked, turning to face Hailey.
“Yeah. We’ll—” cough “—get him back though,” Hailey replied.
After a moment of silence, I spoke. “I think the demons are following me and my people.”
“That’s not good,” Hailey said. “How hard would it be to stop them?”
“Extremely,” I said simply.
“Well shit,” Hailey cursed. “We can’t let them destroy the earth.”
“You’re right. I will rally my people to defend our new home. Jim and I will investigate the disturbance,” I said as I exited the room.
As I left, I heard Hailey yelling at other humans to fix the terminal and clear the smoke and other probably unimportant things. I walked through the bland halls for a long time, trying to find the exit. I encountered very little of the T.H.C. workers as I walked. When I finally made it to the exit and entered the village, the day was ending. I began wandering, searching for Jim. I made it to his house, and he was sitting inside reading a tome named “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s War Adventures”.
“Oh, hello there Hound!” Jim said excitedly. “I just started reading this book my new human friend Kim gave me. It’s fascinating.”
“I don’t care,” I growled.
“Is something wrong? You’re normally more interested in violence,” Jim said worriedly.
“It’s the Typhon. They’re coming,” I snarled.
“Oh shit. We gotta prepare,” Jim stated.
“Go rally the tribes. I’ll gather our weapons so that we can investigate the portal,” I told him.
I left Jim’s house with him in tow, breaking off to excite our people for the coming battle. I went to my house, gathering a myriad of weapons and placing them in a backpack before clambering onto my bunker spider. I have it walk to where I see Jim has gathered many Atroxians, giving a speech of some sort.
“Hey, Jim!” I called out. “It’s time to go.”
Jim grabbed one of the pellet launchers the humans had created and jogged over to me. He wore attire similar to that of the human guards, although with several Atroxianite pieces and fewer pieces overall. He hopped up behind me and I spurred the spider back into motion. It galloped across the open field leading to the last known location of the heat mass. There was nothing in sight, just a massive open field. Then I saw it. A massive portal partially in the ground, slowly growing larger.
“It looks like there's about a week till the invasion,” Jim told me.
“That sounds about right,” I responded. “We should go back and tell the T.H.C. and the rest of our people.”
“Then let’s go,” Jim said.
I spurred the bunker spider back into motion, trotting back to the base. Everything is functioning as normal. None of them know what is coming.
“Hey! You’re back! That was fast,” Hailey shouted after spotting me.
“Why would it have taken a longer amount of time? All I had to do was look at the portal coming through the ground,” I stated blankly.
“Portal? How soon are they coming?” Hailey asked.
“It’ll be about a week before they arrive,” I told her.
She walked off, presumably to tell her organization what was going on, but I didn’t truly know why. Jim had hopped off the spider during my short conversation with Hailey. I dismounted my bunker spider and led it to the stables. I fed it, washed it, and gave it the general care it had missed while I was in and out of comas. Afterward, I went off to find Jim. I saw him on a little raised platform, the entirety of the clans gathered around him. When I joined the crowd, Jim began speaking.
“My fellows! I have gathered you here today because we must make preparations! Preparations of war!” Jim’s voice bellowed through the open area, “But it is not a good thing this time. The army of Typhon is coming. If he defeats us, then there will be no one to stop the destruction he imposes upon worlds. Many of us will die, and those that remain will mourn. But we must at the very least attempt to stop such a powerful force. So gather your weapons. Prepare defenses. All of you will be soldiers in the coming battle against the demon lord of wrath. We will fight for our safety and our homes.”
“For Atroxis! Not the planet, but the civilization it fostered,” Jim shouted, pumping his fist in the air.
Everyone gave him a confused look.
“We are the civilization,” Jim stated monotonously at normal speaking volume.
“FOR ATROXIS,” the crowd shouted back, pumping their fists into the air.
Hailey walked onto the thing Jim was standing on.
“You don’t need to worry about this. The T.H.C. will handle it. It’s not that big a deal,” she said. “This portal does not appear to be a threat to this planet. You will all be fine.”
Everyone in the crowd with a weapon drew it.
“You’re wrong!” Someone shouted. “Typhon is the bringer of death! He will kill us all! He must be stopped!”
“Now now, everyone calm down,” Hailey said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
All the drawn weapons were pointed at her.
“Ok, never mind. I will leave you lunatics with your warmongering.” With that statement, she walked off the platform. Jim seemed offended, but everyone else acted the same so I figured she didn’t say anything bad. That might be because Jim was the only one who fully understood the statement, but he didn’t bother telling us.