“Just through here, meat.”
Yeah, that much was obvious, the Door was, like most Doors, Big, capital B.
“Everyone ready?”
Firm looks all around, time to-, the ship rocked and their party was bounced a foot into the air and slapped down to the ground, hard.
Jack was first up and looked around. Lots of broken noses and bleeding faces but it didn’t seem like any serious injuries. He looked at Jonah who shook his head in response. There wasn’t any more time to waste, he slipped in the AI Disk in the Door, then paused a few moments and made sure to meet everyone’s eyes.
“Open the Door.” He withdrew and pocketed the AI disk.
The first thing he saw was rows upon rows of humans standing completely still, his shield came up fast, but none of them were moving. At all. Worse yet, there were hundreds of them, row after row.
The Bridge was both larger and smaller than he had been expecting. There were circular ‘pods’ of computers that were sunk into the deck, with each pod possessing a Terminal in their center. Running between them were trenches, seemingly at random, that connected certain pods to other ones. Jack stopped counting after seeing 40 of the Terminal ‘pods’, the room was ringed by a slightly raised walkway that stretched around the room.
The Bridge Core was impossible to miss. It was in the direct center of the room, a huge orb of black nano-steel suspended in the center of the room by a Nano-steel pillar that dropped from the ceiling. It was pitted and had broken mechanisms and machinery that jutted out from uncountable angles. Yuma could barely make out small seams in the steel which she suspected held more defensive turrets.
They could see three walkways that intersected at the Bridge Core, the one above their heads looked to be in terrible shape. In fact, upon closer look, the entire room looked like it was in between battles.
“You dare.”
Jack thankfully missed the psy component of that statement but he still heard the two words spoken in flat unison by several hundred voices in near-perfect harmony.
Goosebumps rippled over everyone’s skin.
The Clan beat him to it as they opened their weapons up on the massed ranks of worm-infested ‘humans’. They scythed them like wheat, but any worms of the brain worms simply dove out of their host and swarmed behind their ranks. The Clan continued to fire and upgrade the fire they were putting downstream, the Clan Head had to wave off one member who looked to fire their last thermo-electric rocket.
Jack lowered his Gauntlet, waiting to see what the result of this was. He didn’t have a good feeling about it, but whatever it was, the Clan’s fire was too heavy to walk in front of it. After all, he could only block from the front.
They continued to shoot until the skulls of the final few popped in unison and the worms swept under the writhing robes of 3 figures. They were near 7 feet tall and covered in robes that seemed to move and sway under the influence of an invisible breeze. They weren’t alone. Behind them were three more figures, each of these standing at the point of a triangle with outstretched hands, waves of a rippling purple emitting from their palms. No one wanted to wait to see what they were doing.
The Clan, Yuma, and Jonah started shooting as everyone scattered around the room as they flanked the 6 robed worm-amalgamations. Jack, Korl, and the Clan Head sprinted directly toward the hooded figures. The figures weren’t just sitting there, they swept their arms and sent a waves of rippling, semi-invisible force that burst the head of whomever it hit. Korl and the Clan Head were close enough to Jack to be unaffected while some of the other Clan and hapless unauged Humans who had tagged along were much less fortunate.
Jack pulled up and caught the purple energy on his pink shield, while he continued to close the distance. He felt it, the call to violence. He was more than happy to oblige.
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We are Them. Them in the dark. Them in the night. Them that come from far between stars to consume your own’s paltry warmth. Them thank you for unsealing this galaxy so Them may grace you with the gift of cold night.
Yuma was somewhere in the middle of mentally rolling her eyes and being terrified of the ramblings of the worms. For her, somewhere in the middle also meant unloading every projectile she had into the robed multi-worms, which she was doing from behind a Terminal. She saw what happened if you were caught by the purple energy, you were flayed. The rippling waves popped your head in a burst of overloaded gray-matter. No thank you.
None can stand the power of Them, the power of the deep-dark, sheparded through the void. You’ve opened your galaxy because you know the Truth. Yours is not the first galaxy but it will be your last. Bask in the grace of the Cold.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
This time she did roll her eyes and pointed her finger with her thumb raised and let rip several lightbars that plunged into the lead robed worm. She smiled as the electricity struck it and popped gaping, gushing holes into its side, dislodged scores of worms. Then she ducked as layers were flayed from the computers around her. Thankfully, the Terminal was not so easy to break, though it was clearly taking some damage.
Jack, Korl, and the Clan Head used her distraction to finish closing the gap. Jack bashed the stunned one with his shield that sent ripples through it and swiped with his sword. Then he turned to catch a purple lance on his shield and moved to the second worm as Korl moved up and swung a flurry of cuts with his held sword and the magnetically tethered blade. The robed worm split and reformed as it avoided his strikes, but the sheer number of swings that Korl unleashed was rewarded by scores of sliced worms dropping off the main body. Then, he dodged a purple lance and moved to close on the other robed worm that Jack wasn’t attacking. The Clan Head was close behind Korl and, not leaving the shocked worm time to properly recover, burst forward, his white-hot blade letting loose a keening whistle as he slashed upward and split the worm from foot to neck, his own burning Nano spreading like a wildfire as its form completely disintegrated.
“What are the ones in the back doing?”
Jonah’s eyes were narrow and tense, never a good sign, she looked for herself. The one at the point of the triangle had plunged its hands forward. The air started sucking toward a newly formed rent that sat heavy in the middle of the air. Behind it was dark madness, a thousand billion writhing worms of a plane of rippling unreality, swarming over surfaces that, upon closer look, were also worms. Worms on worms. Forever.
Feartastepleasurebeingsomethinggreaterpursueendless
She didn’t notice anything until Jonah tackled her to the ground, “Don’t you start having one of Jack’s little freakouts! What was it?”
She felt her electricity that constantly ran through her brain start to char something that had nearly come into reality inside of her skull.
“Infinite worms. Don’t look at it.”
He scoffed, “Impossible!” The keening wind betrayed that assertion.
Then, time slowed.
_______________________
The fight against the tall robed worm was easy for Jack, seemingly inside of his null space its otherworldly, writhing coordination became unstable as uncoordinated worms frequently fell out of the man-shaped pile and were forced to slowly crawl back towards the main body. He squished those when possible. It was a mixed bag, one on hand killing them felt great, on the other sentient-psy-worms internals between your toes was a potent combination of awful. Thankfully, he had plenty of experience in ignoring uncomfortable bare-foot sensations from the long run through Waste-Disposal.
The lack of psy-based coordination also meant that his attacks were never really avoided, each slice splitting huge quantities of worms wherever his black rat-blade touched. The creature fired off one last purple beam that managed to clip his upper arm before he squished and sliced the last of the body. He looked to Korl and the Clan Head that were double-teaming the last worm. Mr. Lee’s white sword charred even near misses and the flurry and unpredictable angles of Korl’s attacks meant that avoiding all of his strikes was essentially impossible. Jack ran closer to them and the coordination of the worm-host faltered and the two quickly dispatched it.
The fight wasn’t over. The surrounding air started to suck and he instantly felt himself sliding across the deck. The Clan Head drove his burning sword into the ground along with Korl, though his conventional blades were having more trouble finding purchase. Jack’s new Constitution provided some substantial mass increases that neither the old man nor the young one could match. He worked his way over, grabbed Korl’s leg and blocked his reflexive attack, then tossed him out of the immediate danger of being dragged into the suction. He looked toward the hole in their reality, unsure if it was a dimensional bridge or just a spacial one. He didn’t like what he saw.
The two worms to either side of the rent were using both of their purple glowing hands to pull on each side of the tear, dragging and ripping it constantly wider, even as it increased the force of the suction. The worm-amalgamation in the middle was steadily being pulled closer and closer to the widening gap.
Jack felt a heavy-writhing invasion trickle across his scalp, “Mr. Lee! Don’t look at it!” He didn’t know what it was, but ‘head-pop’ sounded close enough.
He grabbed the Clan Head and repeated what he had done with Korl as he swung him away, the increasing force of the suction turning what would have been a hard landing into a floating settle. Jack looked back at the rent and started to carefully edge his way toward it. Just because the psy-attack couldn’t reach him didn’t mean that he was ready to be sucked inside of it.
The middle robed worm then stood up to its full height and stretched its hands wide to either side.
Something answered.
Most of the pull stopped, only a small whistle continued to sound out in the shockingly quiet room. A conventional earthworm, if an earthworm with an 10-foot diameter and rippling waves of worms under the surface of its skin could still be considered ‘conventional’, had slammed through the portal and chomped down on the robed worm-man-amalgamation in the middle. The two robed worms to the side continued to pull the rent in space further apart as the giant worm continued to work its way through the portal.
Jack’s eyes widened and he sprinted toward one of the worm-men still holding it open and split a mouth of viral fluid at it. Unable to dodge and still continue its holy task the robed-worm decayed to nondescript fluid-based biological sludge within moments. The portal snapped closed, cutting the Great Worm off from the rest of its body.
The Great Worm screamed and at close range, even Jack stumbled as blood trickled from his ears, down the side of his face. He was knocked to the ground as the deck rumbled beneath him. He didn’t think the big worm had caused that one.
It slammed itself down in a heap and laid still. Unmoving.
Clan and Human alike started to appear from behind consoles and the Terminals spread around the room.
Still suspicious, Jack approached the last few feet to it, very carefully.