Come the early morning, we set off once more.
There hadn’t been much improvement in my companions’ moods, even given the extra sleep. We broke our collective fast in silence, and our communication remained perfunctory as we forged onwards towards the low-frequency emission’s source.
Quarrel stalked with gritted teeth, every step seeming a vicious battle to restrain her temper. Glare floated emptily through the air, still uncharacteristically somber, and Vox fumed as we carved a path through the dense foliage. Incredibly, the only exception to the morbid atmosphere was Thaum. Our sorceress leader was surprisingly chipper, striding quickly and confidently beside me, never straying too far, her song less nervy than I’d ever seen it before. I didn’t know exactly what had changed her demeanor, but was grateful for it all the same.
Unfortunately, Rover was in the worst condition of us all.
Clearly, the extra sleep had done the lycan little good, as he appeared even more disheveled than when I’d seen him last. He wasn’t scouting anymore–and for good reason. Our progress was slow and cautious this time, all of us taking great care to remain within Vox’s bubble of high-frequency sound.
Because the bugs had never left.
We’d encounter their swarms intermittently, every now and again as we progressed. Even under what little dim light broke through the dense canopy, they made for a haunting sight. The mechanical insects formed clouds so thick they resembled greyish-yellow soup, a living liquid. The humming of their countless wings produced a grating, unsettling buzz that set one’s teeth on edge.
They didn’t even try to pierce through the invisible sonic barrier, though, content to simply hover around it, observing us for minutes or even hours before breaking away to travel to where the Gods only knew. Perhaps they were different groups entirely, part of a myriad machine hive that ceaselessly patrolled the great green sea.
Rover, in particular, shrunk considerably every time they approached, ears flattened, back bent, arms hugged tightly over his chest. Their presence alone seemed to torture the poor wolfman. We didn’t bother trying to attack the creatures. They dropped no crystals, after all, and were so ubiquitous that such an endeavor seemed nothing more than wasted effort.
In fact, we hadn’t fought once since our waking. The cybernetic chimps had seen fit not to make a reappearance, so there really wasn’t anything to fight. It seemed a blessing, but just as easily could have been a curse, as a pitched battle might’ve done wonders to work off our collective stress. Whilst I monotonously carved us a path through the underbrush, I wracked my mind for ways I might raise my teams’ spirits, finding none.
The heat, the stench, the fear, the swarms, the fatigue.
All of it added together, compounding exponentially to make our journey nothing less than abject misery. This awful place and its malformed denizens had pushed my teammates to their breaking points. I didn’t know how far we’d last exactly, but it couldn’t be long. Even if the environment didn’t manage to kill us, we’d do its job ourselves. Thank the Priest, though, whether or not he’d really existed, we finally seemed to be getting somewhere.
It was around midday when the scenery first started to change.
It began subtly, unobtrusively, the mutations barely noticeable to the naked eye. Here and there, little lines of metal and mercury infiltrated the otherwise botanic ground, running up and down the massive trees. They were joined by the scarcely audible rumbling hum of machinery far, far in the distance.
Slowly, gradually, over the course of many hours, these metallic features increased in density, the jungle itself giving way to a forest of steel and circuitry.
The impenetrable canopy’s dense leaves were replaced with banks upon banks of blue-green solar panels. The trees turned from wood to corrugated iron, sharp and spiky and uneven, grown in some unnatural manner, some aberrant melange of manmade and procedurally generated architecture. The vines that crawled over and around them had morphed into thick, glowing cables. It was a machine infestation, and we were nearing its source.
The corrupted jungle’s mechanical heart.
Despite their novel composition, Fang cut through the faux-vegetation just as easily as ever, and at last, we broke through, emerging into a massive clearing. It was huge and circular and barren, hundreds upon hundreds of feet from one end to the other.
Its ground was gleaming, polished steel that glistened gloriously in the light of the afternoon sun, the same thick, pulsating cables crisscrossing it like synthetic arteries. At its nucleus was a massive metallic spire, distinct from those that populated Talos’s skyline. The latter had been wide, glassy cylinders meant to house and serve humanity, but there was nothing human about this.
It was a giant tooth.
A massive metal stalagmite, a dagger that reached so high in the sky that it towered over even the gargantuan trees. All along it, in smooth lines and sharp corners, ran precious metals, gold and silver and copper and cobalt. And studded all up and down its height, slotted into countless minute notches, were the Dungeon’s lifeblood.
Glowing, blue, Entropy crystals.
They were everywhere around the thing, too, gathered in great mounds and piles beneath it. Hundreds of Cybersimians saw to them, some emerging from various points in the treeline to bring new gems to the spire, others scaling it with the things grasped delicately in hand, carefully slotting them into place.
Were the machines…harvesting the Dungeon from within?
“Gods above and below…” Rover murmured, melancholy momentarily replaced by awe.
“Priest, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Quarrel added, eyes wide, taking a couple of steps closer. “There’s…so many of them! I’ve never seen this many crystals in one place before!” She exclaimed, before tsking.
“Too bad it’s only the first floor. Still, a quantity like this…” she trailed off, muttering muted calculations to herself. “…ten delves, at least…or more…,” she whistled, before hawkishly shooting a glance our way. “Even split six ways.”
Vox was silent as ever, scanning the horizon with a frown.
“Where’s the Champion?” I asked.
My teammates looked my way, questioningly.
“I mean, look at this,” I said, gesturing around us. “Exotic or no, I doubt there’s another room after this one. And this sure looks like a Champion’s arena to me.” I said.
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No one responded, each of us looking around, finding nothing.
“Maybe it won’t reveal itself until we get close enough to that…that thing. Over there. That tower,” Thaum suggested, pointing at the corresponding structure.
“I’m more concerned about those,” Glare commented, drawing our attention to the skies above it. Circling around its tip in a series of endless helixes, were no less than six giant swarms of the mechanical bugs.
“Oh, Gods…,” Quarrel whispered. Rover whimpered. I grimaced, none too eager to face off against the horrible creatures for a second time.
“So, we fight together.” Thaum, of all people, spoke up with a determined look on her face. “I can’t use my shades to block them; it’d obstruct our sight, too. But as long as Vox can keep up his bubble, the fucking things can’t hurt us.”
I did a double take at the Aristocrat, surprised by her use of such language. She faced us confidently. “They can’t hurt us, but we can pick them off easily from within. The apes, too. We’ve nothing to fear.” I found myself surprised even more by her words, themselves.
“She’s right,” I said, voicing my thoughts. “Rover and I take frontline. We soak up whatever damage Vox lets through. Quarrel and Thaum hit them hard from behind us and Glare incinerates them from above. She’s right,” I repeated, smiling at the Master.
“We can do this.”
She nodded back at me, returning my grin. Rover twirled his axes nervously, but took my side all the same. Glare covered himself by the pearlescent armor he’d demonstrated before, taking to the skies above us. With his power, he’d nothing to fear from the wasps and so was free to range outside our protective sonic sphere. Vox was still frowning, and seemed as if deep in thought, but took his position, as well. Meaning that we were all in place.
Though perhaps not totally united, we stepped forth into the clearing as one.
The moment we’d passed the invisible barrier separating the circle’s inside from the woods around it, the corrupted creatures began to react. Two clouds of mechanical wasps immediately abandoned their lazy patrol, diverting towards our location with worrying speed.
The Cybersimians staffing the spire started to screech in a high-pitched, half-robotic wail, scores of them abandoning their posts to rush towards us. Those equipped with laser weaponry simply opened fire upon us, even from afar.
We, too, jumped into action.
Or, at least, my teammates did. Quarrel opened fire, focusing her efforts upon the creatures nearest to us whilst laser fire splashed uselessly against Vox’s barrier. The apes were too far yet for Thaum to strike, so she instead focused on absorbing what few shots got through with her expendable army of servants.
Rover and I didn’t do much.
The lycan possessed no ranged options, and things weren’t dire enough yet for me to risk revealing my own, so the two of us simply waited, feeling somewhat useless.
“High Inquisitor!” Thaum shouted, fingers contorting as she directed her army of shades. “Leave us! Destroy the swarms, and our greatest threat will be gone!” Her words were drowned out by the sheer volume of laser fire being discharged in our direction but, courtesy of her power, we all heard her just fine through her servants.
“My pleasure,” Glare growled, glowing bright white before rocketing towards the two clouds of insects bearing down on us like a shooting star, and I looked up for a moment as they clashed. For a terrible moment, I beheld what the Immolator was capable of.
Glare exploded in brilliance right in the very center of the two swarms, a star going supernova. A massive sphere of light and Fire formed for a split second in the air around him, liquefying the insectoid horrors and sending millions of them flying off in all directions. The once cohesive hives fell to earth like little comets, trailing sparks and steel and fuel.
It was…beautiful.
A laser slammed into my head from the left, doing little damage, but knocking my wits back into me. Glare, having defeated the first two groups, was flying off to meet the other four above the spires, which meant the danger was gone. Rover was already racing forward, canines bared, powerful digitigrade legs eating up the ground.
Which meant I could join the fight, too.
I breathed in deeply for but moment, centering my mind and filling my lungs to the brim. From within, I called upon my Blessings. Draconic Blood roared to life, filling my limbs with superhuman might. Fang howled from within, muscles tensing, ready to pounce. Flash Step attended patiently, should its services be necessary. The song beat like a second heart in my soul.
I stepped forward, and the ground cracked beneath my feet.
I covered tens of feet in an instant, propelling myself through space with brute force alone, slamming into the nearest simian and slicing it cleanly in two. It was a completely different experience to using Flash Step. That was a Mover’s Blessing, and locomotion under its effects felt tight, precise, and controlled. This was a Brute’s Blessing, and to it, control was an alien notion entirely. It was wild, brutal, feral, like being strapped helplessly to a racing locomotive.
But what a rush.
I grinned, hurling Fang towards another group of the creatures, watching him scream through the air. The wind brought tears to my eyes and cut into my cheeks as I sped after him. My weapon and I fought together, twirling into one another’s attacks as we tore the apes apart. We fought stronger as one, but these creatures were weak and flimsy, and this way we could take them down twice as quickly.
And it was working.
The cyborg’s ranks were thinning quickly, our group absolutely devastating them. Thaum, Quarrel and Vox moved forward slowly, cautiously gaining ground towards the central spire whilst Rover and I served as vicious vanguard. The machine hybrids simply stood no chance against us. The way things were going, we’d reach the spire without breaking a sweat.
Of course, though, it couldn’t have remained that easy.
I didn’t know what triggered it exactly, whether we’d killed a sufficient amount of the creatures or simply made our way far enough towards the nucleus, but it all started with a great trembling in the ground.
“Something’s happening at the spire! Retreat!” Thaum’s voice hissed sibilantly through her attached servant, and I rushed to fulfill her directives, Rover hot on my heels.
The precious metals that covered the spire like gaudy circuitry began to glow.
From the bottom they lit up, turning bright blue like the Entropy crystals that powered them, filling the air with a piercing, high-pitched hum. I’d no idea what to expect. The last first-floor Champion I’d faced would represent nothing more than a pushover to me now, but this Dungeon was far from ordinary.
Then the whole thing was alight, the azure glow outshining even the sun, and a ear-splitting CRACK filled the air.
With the torturous screech of tearing metal, the spire’s precipice split open like a great mechanical egg. The fissure spread downwards, wrenching apart gold and wiring, crystalline electronics shattering as the spire split in two, and our true adversary emerged from between the fallen halves of its broken form.
The ringing hum of Entropy crystals was replaced by an ever-increasing drone of fusion cells and plasmic engines, and a great, hair-raising hiss.
A gargantuan serpent emerged from the wrecked husk that had once served as its incubator, its head alone three times my size. Its body was covered in thick grey panels of armor all interlocking together, clanking and clicking as the creature slithered ungainly forth from its chrysalis, upper body lifting many stories into the sky. From between its many metallic scales, yellow and blue light glowed, and mounted on either side of its azure headlights were massive Entropic cannons.
The machine-jungle’s overlord observed us from on high with a cold, emotionless gaze.
~~~
ALPHA NODE #CXC7, UNIT DESIGNATION:
TITANOBOA
~~~