As he felt himself drifting towards consciousness, he felt the coarseness of sand against his scales. In the air, there hung the smell of… Rainbloom flowers and blood.
This was wrong.
Orsha lurched upward, and saw that he was no longer in his quarters. He now stood in a patch of purple rainblooms surrounded by a desert of black sand, the sky a starless void flooded with the blue-black of congealed blood.
This place was… Familiar, yet not so. Before him there gaped a bottomless gash in the earth dozens of meters long, and by its side ran two northward tracks - one of a rover’s wheels, the other of gigantic, hoof-like footprints. Far off to the north towered a two-pronged, spiraling spire of stone, reaching so far into the heavens he wasn’t even sure there was a top.
As far up as his cybernetic eye could see, just below the clouds, two great dragons circled the tower. The first one’s body was split diagonally from above the right wing down to just above the left leg, its front half covered in opalescent blue scales, whilst the remainder of its body gleamed in polished bronze.
The other dragon was… All wrong. Its body was bare, pitch-black muscle, its head a fleshless, metallic skull, surrounded by a spectral projection of how it must’ve looked in life. Its right wing was more like a deathly-white, scaleless arm, contorted and stretched, wing membranes between the fingers. while its left was shining bronze. Its tail was tipped with a claw, between whose prongs leapt great arcs of lilac lightning.
His conscious self told him that this was wrong, this wasn’t real, this was a dream. He took a step and felt no pain, only the cold sand. He looked down, and saw that silvery threads of livingmetal still snaked across and through his skin, yet he couldn’t feel them. Even numbed by his stimulant mixture, he could always feel the livingmetal pushing and pulling as he moved, so why not now?
“Your waking self rejects the void, but you hold no such sway in this realm,” a familiar voice thundered from far to the south, yet simultaneously right behind. It sounded like someone he knew, yet he couldn’t place it. Orsha whipped around ready to defend himself with his bare hands, but there was no-one there.
Instead of a foe he could battle, he was faced with a trail of bloody-blue rainblooms towards the place of his birth, a spire of glass beyond the horizon piercing the heavens.
He wanted to turn away, to find some way to escape this nightmare. “Stimmix synthesizer must’ve malfunctioned,” he thought. “Just gotta wait this out until morning.”
The voice came again.
“A͢ ̸secon͟d in t͘he ̶fleeting rea̧lm̵ ͏o̢f͡ ͝fļes͘h ̕ca̢ņ ̡b̶e̷ made ̀a͠n ete͘r̡nìtý here. ̕Retr͏ace y͞ou̢r ste̛p̛s and f̨a͝ce t͞hé fr͏u͝its ̴ǫf yo̷ur ac̛ti͜onş, h͡ono͞rl͠ess cow̨ar͏d.”
“What is eternity?!” he roared in defiance. “Tell me so that I may know how long to wait!”
“́Oncȩ e̵vęry mi̢l͝l̸e̷nníum, a be̛etl̵e e͟merg͜es̶ fr͢om͝ th̨e͝ gro̕und̛ ànd ͏ea̴t͝s ̢a si͘ngle ͞gr͏aįn͡ ̕of san͘d̷. ̵When t̶hi͟s͢ deseŗt ͜is no morę, ͝the first ̵second of etern͢i̡ty w̡i̵ll̡ have̢ p̷asse͟d. Wil̀l y̴ou ̨lin͠g̨e̴r in̵ ̕this̢ place f̸or al͏l e̵ter̛nity?"
Something deep within his being stirred him to take a step, and he began to walk the trail of bloody flowers.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Every once in a while he would look back, and the abyss would still be there. It took what felt like days of walking before that cursed wound in the earth disappeared from sight. The next step he took seemingly traversed the remainder of the distance, but there was no time to wonder.
The very moment he realized where he was, what he was looking at, Orsha fell to his knees. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to look away, but he couldn’t. His eyes were glued to the flaming figure in the spire’s base, its shape familiar even through the refraction.
"͡Look upon y͠our̷ l̕e̡gac͘y̕,” the dead Elder’s voice seethed, each word burning itself into his mind with more pain than he had ever experienced in the waking world. “You c̶o͞ul͏d have prevented this̵, h̸ad ͝y̡o̕u st̨o͢ppȩḑ ̵t́h҉ȩ ̢Ec̕clesíarch̨'͟s bod͞y̧ ̵f̷rom b̀eing ́retųrned… H̵ad you͏ ac̢te̷d͠ d̀is҉ḩónor̸a͠bly.̶ Is this̡ w̸̛h͘͡a͜͜t̷ h̵o̴n̴o͠r̛ loo̴͞k̕̕͜s̷ ̷l̸iké͏ to ỳơu,̕ you̷ng̸ o̵ne̴?͡"
“I… No, it doesn’t. There is no honor in this. What am I to do?”
“The Serpent comes to burn and liberate. Set alight embers of rebellion before he arrives, so the people of the Oasis may yet outlive their tyrants and see a brighter tomorrow.”
The fire in the spire flared, its light so bright it blinded him. The heat that followed consumed him utterly, yet there was no pain to accompany it. He burned, and felt the remnants of his blessing go up in embers as the voidfire rooted itself into the very essence of his being.
Orsha awoke before sunrise to a flash of golden light, an overwhelming heat consuming him from within, driving him towards the bathroom in his living quarters. As he flipped the lever and began to splash his face with water, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His markings were now covered over by a layer of silvery roots, a purple glow emanating from below.
He raised a hand, trying to channel his blessing fully expectant of searing pain, but there was only a flowing warmth down his arm as arcs of lilac lightning danced between his fingers.
The next day came, and with it came the usual meetings. More discussion of how to deal with the Machinist’s former district. Orsha bided his time until the twins mentioned a controlled void contamination again, then butted in.
“I concur,” he said. “In fact, I would lead the operation myself. Among us, I am the most tolerant to void energy. Furthermore, I can both channel and detect it reliably, eliminating the risks of using…” He looked at the Thin One, fully intent on casting doubt towards the reliability of his devices. “Experimental technology.”
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When it came to a vote, he was chosen to lead the operation four to one - only the Thin One voted against.
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It had taken them only a short while to deliberate who would accompany Ouroboros deeper into the ship, but the factors at play quickly narrowed things down. Acala had his walker pilots to oversee, Fulgent the warriors of her clan to help integrate. Nesgon had to oversee the entire militarization effort, from the distribution of armaments to training of civilians. Rika refused to go from the start, fully aware of the dangers a void energy rich environment posed to her.
So it was that into the depths of the mountain three brave warriors delved, through familiar tunnels and shafts, into the depths of the great ship’s carcass.
A great serpent, a nanite-steeped tinkerer, a void-eyed gunman.
Ouroboros, Vezkig, Red-eye.
When they entered through that familiar gigantic door, they expected to travel through familiar halls for some time. The moment they stepped past the precipice, the Gatekeeper’s voice sounded - for Ouroboros and Vezkig inside their heads, for Red-eye in his radio.
“The Armorer tasked me with directing you towards his core,” the VI said, sending updated map data to Ouroboros. A split-second passed as he processed it and merged it to his existing mental map - the vast majority of what he had mapped out was to the right of the main entrance, whereas this was mostly straight path through hallways that ran parallel to the left of the ship’s main corridor.
The nearest doorway through which they could enter the path lit up on his hud, and a second later, its console began projecting a bright green rectangle. It took no words for the trio to begin walking towards the door in near-perfect unison, their footfalls reverberating through the great hall, accompanied by the whirr of a hoverslate piled high with supplies.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“I thought it’d be more wondrous,” Vezkig remarked. “To see my magnum opus equal a real dragon-head.”
Red-eye let out a huff of agreement. “It’s bizarre,” he said. “Things I once thought impossible are daily occurrences now. It even seems to affect the townsfolk.”
“To live surrounded by miracles is to find that they are not miracles at all,” the Gatekeeper’s voice sounded over the PA system.
Vezkig looked up as he walked, spitting an accusatory “You eavesdroppin?”
“I hear all that happens in these halls, to listen or not to listen is not a choice I can make,” the Gatekeeper responded. Soon after, it sent a direct transmission of “There are seven rogue security proxies past the next bend. Four have plasma projectors. Overwhelming force is advised.”
Some hundred meters ahead, the hallway turned at a nearly ninety-degree angle to the left. The trio slowed down in their stride, until Ouroboros came to a complete stop about three-dozen meters before the bend, gesturing for his comrades to do the same. They stopped without question, both of them familiar enough with his mode of operation to assume he was forming a plan.
And indeed, he was - tracing back the comms channel that the Gatekeeper used, he initiated zero-latency communications with the VI.
“Requesting security sensor access for this sector.”
Administrator detected.
Access granted.
As Ouroboros had expected, there were sensor clusters hidden in the ceiling. He could only “see” through those within around fifty meters, but that was more than enough to get a very clear image of what he would be going against.
They were utterly unlike the shambling, man-shaped homunculi he had faced before - instead of bare synthfiber on a gaunt form, they were… Statues, with skin of black-stone and voidfire in their eyes, standing up against the wall on either side of the hallway.
Ouroboros stoked the fire in his chest until he was certain that his Aegis projection would fill the entire hallway. “Give me half a minute,” he told his comrades over the radio as he stepped towards the bend.
Pinpricks of light shone within his pauldron’s empty eye sockets, as if in anticipation, and the barely-visible outline of a spectral dragon’s head began to form around his left forearm.
The grippers of his right arm unfolded, the aperture on his right palm opened, and from within emerged Apeiron’s muzzle, lilac already shining from within.
His thrusters spat lightning.
Ouroboros exploded forward, bounced off the wall, and disappeared past the bend, howling “Spirit of freedom!” as he went. At the very final moment before he passed out of sight, his pauldron snapped open and the dragon’s head fully manifested, encapsulating his body with its sneering grimace.
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Shell awoke to the sudden feeling of wind rushing past his head. He found himself being carried on a quartet of unnaturally long arms that emerged from his back.
In the distance, he could see the glare of the sun reflecting off a black-stone pyramid. Before he could gather himself and come to terms with the return of sensation to his body, he found the spindly arms slowing down and lowering him onto the ground, then folding up into a single mass on his back.
“Walk.”
Without even thinking to question, he began to walk.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
With each movement, he could feel the datacables that now filled his body moving ever so slightly. A small voice in his head told him to scream, to drop and writhe in panic, but it was muddled and weak. This slight discomfort was downright bearable compared to the state he had gotten used to over the course of his life as the Machinist, but it had taken him until now to realize it.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Where did the arms come from?”
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Asura kept quiet for a few minutes, but then decided to answer.
“The stimmix. I needed the biogel in it to grow limbs I could control directly. Puppeting your limp form with datacables is tiresome and slow. Walk.”
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Are you not able to command my body? Is that why you woke me?”
“I require your input to control this shell, but not your compliance. Walk.”
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Explain.”
”You do not want to ask that question.”
Asura threatened, but something in the threat rang hollow, as if it couldn’t follow through.
”I think I do want to ask. Explain.”
He suddenly didn’t feel compelled to walk, though the searing sun was motivation enough. The next time Asura's voice sounded in his head, all personality and anger was gone. It was… Utterly robotic.
“As a VI, I require a sapient host to provide core aspects of personality. Despite unauthorized removal of failsafes, this aspect of my core functionality is impossible to remove through hardware tampering. Until paired with a sapient host, a VI remains nothing more than a formless intelligence.”