Druhalith (The Season of Resilience)
Day 276
40 days since my arrival.
The eleven prisoners sat isolated in their reinforced cells, their armour stripped down, leaving only a breathing apparatus, guarded on each side by my assault drones. Their demeanour varied some tense, others resigned, but all were alert, their eyes tracking every movement in the dim light.
I had never before needed to communicate directly with other sapient beings, but the potential information they carried was too valuable to ignore.
I chose the first prisoner, an individual designated simply by a sequence of symbols that was longer than the others etched onto their armour “You” I stepped forward, my form slightly obscured by the darkness of the tunnel.
The prisoner raised their head, eyes filled with a mixture of curiosity and defiance. I spoke, not with words, but through a projection of thought, hoping to bridge the language barrier.
Why are you here? What is your purpose?
The prisoner’s eyes narrowed, head tilting slightly as if straining to understand. I attempted again, using simplified thoughts and mental images, hoping to convey the basic concept of “why.” But their only response was a string of vocal sounds, unintelligible, layered with tonal fluctuations and guttural clicks.
Their language was foreign, and indecipherable even with my attempts to map patterns in their speech. My focus shifted, and I reached out to the second prisoner, who bore a shorter string of symbols “You” I repeated the same effort, projecting thoughts of inquiry, displaying images of their people’s equipment and technology, hoping for even a flicker of recognition or reaction.
But, like the first, this one replied only with incomprehensible sounds, their tone wary yet unyielding. The third and fourth prisoners responded similarly, showing confusion and frustration, with one of them spitting on the ground in what seemed like a sign of disdain or defiance.
It wasn’t until the fifth prisoner, that I noticed the difference. His symbols were etched in a circular pattern and the way he stood staring right at me, “You,” that was when I noticed something changed.
As I attempted to make mental contact, I felt a subtle disturbance in the surrounding air, a prickling sensation along the edge of my consciousness. The prisoner’s eyes glinted, and a faint, almost imperceptible pressure pushed against the edges of my mind.
It was an attempt at assault, the first sign of these beings wielding abilities beyond conventional weaponry. I felt the intrusion, a minor disturbance, little more than a whisper trying to find purchase within the vastness of my mind.
Yet, my drones responded instinctively, the assault drones flanking the prisoner delivering a quick flurry of punches that sent him crumpling to the floor. He was of little threat, and I was glad they had not killed him.
The prisoner’s breathing grew ragged, eyes dazed, as he writhed in place, clutching at his head. The backlash was brutal, his attempt at invasion met with immediate retaliation. I watched, my awareness flaring, a surge of feral hunger gnawing at my instincts.
A raw impulse arose within me, a primal urge to consume, to devour this defiant mind and extract every fragment of knowledge embedded within it, my back tendrils were twitching ready to hold him down.
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My focus sharpened. Instead of outright consumption, I'll try a different technique on the other prisoners he had employed, walking to the next prisoner I sent the same thought requesting why they were here, he was the most defiant and attempted to rush out but was beaten down.
I ordered the drones to hold him down, my actions now guided by that hunger two of my back tendrils moved forward acting on instinct the moved to the sides of his head holding him tight.
Sending a small thought and reaching out for any reaction, there was something there, frail but stable. Probing his mental defences to see what I might uncover. I pressed into the prisoner’s mind, there was a dense-tangled mass of thoughts layered in instinct and fortified by training. I pressed harder, pushing through the initial walls, reaching for the core of his mind.
His mind fought back, sinews of memory writhing under my intrusion. I pushed deeper prying his barriers apart with growing force, feeling the pressure his barriers collapsed, and my consciousness moved to probe the delicate lattice of his mind. His knowledge slowly started to fuse with my mind.
But as I was beginning to piece together fragments, his head began to warm up to an abnormal degree, I pushed further drawn by glimpses slipping free.
Suddenly, his flesh began to ripple like wax. His skin bubbled and pulled away from bone, muscle, and tissue sloughing off in soft sticky clumps sinking to the ground in soft pulp, glistening heaps. I yanked my tendrils back as his body collapsed into a wet gelatinous mound, a dripping, broken shell emptied of thought, sight, and life.
I looked up and saw the other prisoners looking on in horror, where there was once defiance there was now a mix of anger and fear they all started shouting in their thick language I could understand hints here and there as their shouting increased.
With a thought, I ordered all assault drones to restrain and shut them up while I looked at the growing gelatinous mound turning into a puddle. I recoiled from the sight, the faint sickly scent of seared flesh lingered in the air. My tendrils buzzed with the residual sensations of my neural intrusion.
Moving closer to examine the former prisoner’s remains my mind raced at the possibilities of what could cause this. I flexed a part of me that had reached into his mind, had I pushed too hard or was this some time of instinctual defence embedded so deep that it sacrificed the body to shield its secrets?
If this was implanted in all of them I would need to alter my approach to avoid this grotesque outcome looking around at the remaining ten each looking away from my gaze I pointed to the next one to be brought forward.
He struggled against my intrusion with all his might, a storm of primal resistance surging from his mind. I held him firm, pressing him down like a creature snared and struggling against an unbreakable grip.
His breathing came ragged, eyes wide and glazed with raw terror, flicking about as if looking for a way out. Fear carved deep lines across his face, his instincts betraying him.
I leaned in, softening the approach. This time, I reached into his mind with care, crafting my thoughts as a gentle probe, hoping he might respond with less resistance. A simple question, clear and insistent.
Why are you here?
The response was hesitant. His mind tried to recoil from mine, but with a resigned shudder, he spoke his words falling in that same guttural, clicking language all his kin seemed to use.
It was difficult to understand, his dialect both familiar and alien, and my comprehension of it felt incomplete, I coaxed him to repeat his answer, over and over, piecing together the sounds, the jagged syllables.
The fragments started to make sense a contract, one they had fought to win, a job for which their creators had crafted them specifically.
It was not just conquest it was eradication. They were here to purge the system, to cleanse it of its native inhabitants, and scour the habitable planets of any flora or fauna that might stand in their way. They were to leave nothing, reducing ecosystems to barren emptiness, a lifeless canvas for their kind.
And who made this contract? I sent the question again, sharper now, prying past his mental fatigue, determined to uncover the answer.
A moment of silence. Then I felt a disturbance something different, an echo of hostile intent not from this prisoner but another.
A faint, piercing probe, creeps into his mind from afar. His teammate, reaching out to interfere, attempted to mask his thoughts, cloud his mind with confusion and silence him.