Floating.
Hovering.
Drifting aimlessly.
Where?.. Nowhere.
How?.. He didn't know.
When had it?.. He didn't remember.
Elgan's body floated in a warm liquid, his eyes felt open, but he couldn't see, his ears worked, but there was nothing to hear, his lungs wouldn't rise, because there was no air to breathe.
Out of all the questions, the why was clear in his mind. The pressure his body had taken had been too much and now he was unable to move. Its body wouldn't listen, sure, but it did answer, his nerves carried palpitating blasts of brutal pain, nonstop.
And yet Elgan pushed through... Hidden under that ocean of inhuman suffering he found the strength to resist, the gentle feeling of the steel heart touching against his chest. That was the only reason he hadn't given up just yet.
Pain, as cruel of a thing as it was, allowed the youth to clear his foggy mind, his own powerlessness in that situation permitted him to dive inside his memories, to think.
Indeed, his body was ruined. Incurable, obliterated, the severely fractured bones on his limbs, the burned, torn through skin, the broken joints, the torn muscles. Even if he somehow survived, Elgan Klein would be fated to live as a cripple for the rest of his life.
Yeah, he had failed to be with his family on their deaths, he had abandoned those people he loved and cherished. But he had come back, he had come back, found his way out of earth's crust with his own two hands, and avenged them as best as he could fathom.
Yes, he was probably going to die. Perhaps he wouldn't get any more opportunities, his purpose had been completed and his life would come to an end before his eyes. Turning off, progressively failing, his organs would collapse soon.
Still, even though all those horrible things had happened as a consequence of his actions, he didn't regret his decisions. Not having run away, not living on as a coward, not dying as a complete failure. Those were irreplaceable trophies for him, a mark that he had redeemed himself as a human being, as a spirit, as whatever he was. Even if he had to do it a thousand times on end, he would...
No matter what. Again and agai-
| How... How did you. How could you? |
How many times, how much suffering, how much pain, if it was for them for all those he left behind...
| Even though you relived those moments, hundreds, thousands of times. |
Elgan's body was paralyzed, but there was something... His face, his broken expression, his cracked lips, they opened to reveal a dumb, masochistic but undefeatable smile.
| Monster!!! |
Monster? No, that was wrong... That grotesque voice whispering in his ears was wrong.
"Monster, no."
The youth's fading voice made its way out. Somehow.
"Relentless."
| No. No, NO, NO NO! NO! NOO!!!! |
This is not it, this can't be it. All the work, the centuries he spent, all that time lost, like that?
Feebly struggling against its fate, the calamity's consciousness began fading into nonexistence. Its voice irredeemably cut by the gluttonous waves of the dark sea.
| It's not over, I can't die, It's not.... by such a flawed, imperfect... |
Resigned to death, the creature refused to accept its fate.
| CURSE YOU HUMAN!!! I'LLGH-- |
At last, the turmoils of the dark sea shallowed, erasing the creature from that realm.
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['You did well, Elgan.]'
'I, yes I... Thanks.'
The smile on his gaze grew tender as his eyes closed. Lost in the void... Even then, his body resisted the embrace of death.
It shifted, fought, and battled to resist the deadly environment, to restore the lost cause that was his life... With help from the inherited curse, surpassing all odds, his body managed to win the struggle. Though at a heavy cost, the struggle for survival was over. Still, the fight raged on the highest hill had yet to be conquered, the trial of return, that was. Alive but unconscious, in order to return to reality, someone other than Elgan would have to obliterate the parasitic nothingness that threatened to consume him whole. The only way to defeat nothingness was... Creation.
But could his shattered body achieve such a thing on time? Could it create such a complex existence before it was too late?.. Not alone.
Elgan was not alone. The spirits that had accompanied him had yet to stop beating, they had yet to give up on him. Seduced and comforted by the nature of that green, eternal flame that danced inside him, they flowed through his veins and walked along his brain, tearing apart the imperfections inside the youth's broken mind, sacrificing the few vanishing memories stored inside his unconsciousness to create something else.
Glued, given shape by those mementos he cherished, given structure and purpose by the mountain of ashes left behind by the dead calamity. It was their humble thanks, their gratefulness for his effort, for his life, and undying will. The bubble of nothingness shattered.
Inspired by the beauty of the relentless flame, the creation reflected pale blue light.
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Lost somewhere on the outside, obscured under the ground, under the vast plains of inhospitable deadlands, hidden to the best of its ability from the creatures that roamed through the surface.
| Zooom |
The measuring tools indicated the absence of beasts in the vicinity, and so it observed through its glassy eye. Maintaining most of its cold steel body protected deep underground, only a few select, adequate instruments were allowed to operate on the outside. A thin set of wires were everything that connected the device to the outside, traveling through a small, almost indetectable opening in the ground.
| Zoom Zoom |
Carefully shifting, rotating, and altering the set of lenses on its camera in search of any noticeable change, event, or danger... Nothing. No new wildlife to study, no anomalies to report, it was the same ordinary sight day and night. The mysterious dome that had been his companion for nearly fifty years wouldn't budge, wouldn't lift, and wouldn't grow, it just stood there like it always had. Greedily absorbing every speck of light that pierced it, childishly hiding its secrets from its stalker's mechanical, sand-coated eyes. Of course, it was the stalker that viewed their relationship that way.
Reflecting...
There was no better way to become a philosopher than to be left alone in the middle of nowhere, and so it proudly considered itself just that. A thinker.
His preferred topics were those to do with existence and meaning, while it fervently despised treating the subject of creation.
He especially enjoyed thinking in its most active periods, when sunlight hit and its batteries ran strong. There was nothing in that world as a good monologue as it lazily shot its encrypted messages with the help of a laser, surreptitiously attempting to shoot those shooting stars in the eyes, wishing them to fall to slip and fall to earth, to be reduced to cinders on the upper atmosphere. Needless to say, none ever had actually fallen prey to its laser...
It was like talking to a wall at times, communicating with something that may or may not be listening, reporting on data, information, boring information at that. If it wasn't for the software updates and weather updates, the artificial tin can would have gone completely insane by that point. It understood, there was no need to shy away, its purpose was to feed information to those apes, That was its value, and it couldn't even care that much. Stranded on that wasteland until the day its circuits failed, knowing that the day would arrive in which maintenance would be too expensive, as Shweakspear's ancient texts said 'There is beauty in traged-'... The rest had been lost in tim-
| Click Click |
Something...
The primitive AI halted its internal, irrelevant, philosophical processes as one of its surface instruments detected subtle deviations in the models of air pressure and temperature. To say it bluntly, something was wrong. What was wrong though? There were possibilities, plenty of them... A Storm? A sandstorm?.. No, it should have been informed. No, worse, an instance of SF-301?!?!
No, no... Ease your resistances, that couldn't be, that shouldn't be possible in its assigned area... That's not it. But then what was the cause, the reason behind-? Its artificial thought process staggered as the answer anticlimactically revealed itself.
| GrrRLll |
Reducing its augments to the bare minimum, the probe thoughtlessly stared as the lightless dome lifted. Like a snarling dog, the eternal, moonless night had been broken, forced to recede back to nothingness. For more than fifty ape damned years they had been in this together... its companion's last and only words had been a cruel, confusing growl.
In just a few seconds, the wall that meant hell was gone, leaving behind no semblance of its past existence but a forgotten, ruined city, the column of grey rose to the heavens...
What was, how the?..
Without a mouth to leave hanging agape, the AI could only observe powerlessly as the curse that had haunted that land for more than four centuries vanished from the world for no reason whatsoever.
| Clanck |
| Bip Bip Bip |
'Hope I get a promotion..' The artificial consciousness thought for itself, hoping for the best.
Without even bothering to find an explanation for the phenomena, the laser instrument on the surface recalibrated, following the established protocol, the probe filed an emergency report on the situation.
What would happen next? That was for the stronghold in charge to decide.
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"An emergency report from Vigilante code:#SF-16. the communication was established at 21:36:12... We have run several checks on possible errors and found nothing, satellite images also confirm the possibility, no, certainty, the Anomaly has been disposed of."
As usual, neither of the men's steps halted. Official Armstrong simply nodded, pushing him to continue his report.
"No signs of further presence have been detected for on a radius of thirty kilometers from the location. Though SOES scans have spotted a pack of large anomalies near the region we presume they are not to pose any real threat. As for the images we have received from the Vigilante, we have confirmed the existence of a decently preserved human city. From a broad perspective, it can be considered a safe b-"
The sub-official was cut silent, as his superior spoke, his tone calm and articulate.
"The cause of its disappearance, what do we know about that?"
The man's eyes narrowed, slightly bothered by being interrupted, he nonetheless summoned his hologram, checking through different filings he had received over the last hours. After a long, muffled sigh, he reluctantly answered.
"Nothing."
They continued advancing through the straight, empty corridors. Silence often said more than any words could. After several minutes, Armstrong uttered his verdict.
"Deploy Achilles in four hours, I'll forward their informs personally... You are dismissed."
Nodding politely, the sub-official halted his steps and turned around, disappearing down the endless, reinforced hallways.
----------------------------------------
Orders were set in stone. Greed? Desperation? Ignorance? He didn't know which, perhaps it was none of them. The facts didn't change.
The automated steel doors opened, splitting the colorless engraving of a human eye with an arrow accurately piercing through its pupil. The burly man chuckled to himself as the usual scene opened before him.
A large yet simple meeting room with a broad, rectangular table. The shy sounds of informal conversation disappeared the moment he entered the room, his steps clanging against the floor, then stopping completely.
Without bothering to take a seat next to... most of his subordinates, the tan, broad-shouldered man threw the floating data cube over the table's surface, his eyes settled on the familiar faces across the room. At least what was visible of them.
"Achilles will be deployed in 3:01:21 hours. Another rushed operation on our hands, you know how this goes, prepare as you see fit."
Their leader said as he turned around to leave the room. His words although blunt for some, suited perfectly with his direct, non-bullshit character.
...
Silence engulfed the room, no more conversations followed, only lifeless stares. They knew perfectly what was to come.