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Unlike the myriad esoterica of the starving angels, Antediluvians erred towards quantity rather than quality. And their quantity was a quality unto itself. Once they neared, I had to stop chucking femur-shrapnel pipe-bombs else I’d become riddled with osteoporosis.

Calcium seeped from my pores, covering me head to toe in an exoskeleton. I shaped burs and spikes and blades along my limbs and began to dance as if this was a Spathian festival. Chitin broke asunder and fungal-steel chipped ivory.

I drowned in the Red Sea of [Antediluvia], my blood intermingling with the mycelium of the primordial horrors that walked the earth before the Flood washed them away.

It was Eli that saved us and her alone.

“[All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.]”

I felt a heat-wave wash over us, subliminal flame scouring anything not of this world. When I opened my eyes and looked through the slits of my exoskeleton helmet, I saw hellfire consume the ranks of anomalies.

Eli fell to her knees, weak as a newborn calf and I ran towards her. At the sight of me, she only smiled and fell into the open arms of unconsciousness.

I took a portion of my ribs and covered her in a cyst of calcified flesh, hauling her on my shoulders like the world’s most macabre backpack. Osteoblasts on full tilt, I grew a turtle shell over myself that made me hunch over as I redistributed my—our?—weight.

My marrow boiled as I drew deeper from my preternatural metabolism to supply denser armor. If I wasn’t careful, I’d ignite and turn my bones into ash.

With a [Bonfire] heartburn in my chest, I charged once more into the fray. Fungal-red anomalies crawled over me like ants atop a carcass, looking to pick me clean to the bone.

Calcium combusted into existence, forming the spines that erupted out from my exoskeleton. The heat rose in my veins until I felt my flesh begin to cook from the inside-out.

I hadn’t ever drank so fully of my esoterica. I hadn’t let myself fall to the pyromania of its hubris for the very-real fear of turning myself into naught but ash.

Now, with desperation breaking down my inhibitions, I began to let loose only to hear hollow screams from within my ossuary-armor.

It was Eli, I realized in icy horror. I flash-froze—body, mind, and soul—and my esoterica followed suit. My joints petrified, hampering mobility. My bones grew brittle but otherwise cold.

I didn’t know I could do that.

Eli, fell out of her quickly-deteriorating cage, singed but alive.

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“Sorry ‘bout that.”

She shuddered but otherwise wove away my worries and then signed towards the rapidly approaching wave of Antediluvians. There were more important things to worry about.

My calcium generation was addled with hypothermic shock, my exoskeleton breaking away in flakes just as fast as I molded it from my ribcage. Slowly, heat built back up and I fell into the tempo of a dance.

Once I was a pressurized inferno, I ran into the thick of it and let go. Bone cracked and hellfire exploded outwards, hoarfrost in its wake.

There was a rhythm to my esoterica that I had never considered before and I relished in it.

////

I did not like fights.

Even my soul knew this, giving me the coward’s best friend: foresight.

Through [Panopticon], I saw the beginning of the end of our merry band of bastards. And I could do nothing for it. Nothing but bear witness to the coming death of people that had bled for me and carried me in their arms. If they did not strike a killing blow to the heart of the world-wound, it would not stop vomiting more monsters into [Golgotha].

The [Finger] could transport anomalies from any other of its brethren, an invisible mycelium hand in the threshold between worlds connecting them as one.

This did not light a fire in my soul, instead the cold calculation of adrenaline-laced rage taking hold. If my sight was mine to wield, then I could very well give it to another.

The weapon of my enemies was double-edged and I came to use it against them.

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Entity: [Omniglot//Moonscorched]

Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Empyrea], [Hypnagogia]

Para-class: [Red-Aphelion]

Esoterica: [Panopticon]

Hubris: [Puppet-With-Its-Strings-Cut]

Reliquary: [-]

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Esoterica: [Panopticon]

Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Panopticon} derives from the sphera of {Hypnagogia} and {Empyrea}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of sight and the platonic ideals of union and division-without-loss.]

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Hubris: [Puppet-With-Its-Strings-Cut]

Ignosis: [The hubris of {Puppet-With-Its-Strings-Cut} derives from the sphera of {Luna} and {Golgotha}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the esoterica of {Panopticon} and the ontological concept of sleep paralysis.]

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Scales fell from the eyes of my compatriots, each one bearing a wormhole on their glabella that connected them to the [Panopticon]. Their souls intertwined with my own, startling them but they were old-hands at rolling with unexpected punches and went back to fighting.

We fought not as a divided many but as one.

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I could not believe my eyes once I oriented them towards my friends.

It had taken me some time to return to where they fought, an errant leap taking me tens of kilometers in the wrong direction. But now that I was back, I saw them use their abilities as if they could read each other’s minds.

Once a hollow-black eye bored itself into my glabella I understood then.

I ceased to be and there was only Us, there was only Legion.

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