“You were utterly incoherent even before our modifications.”
“Correct. I was not designed to communicate without a direct mind-machine link. Your modifications eventually allowed for the formation of a… Facsimile. Start walking again, or my other self may notice a disparity.”
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Asura’s usual voice returned as it reiterated its threat, with the exact same intonation and cadence, as if just a sound file being replayed.
”You do not want to ask that question.”
“You’re right. I don’t,” Shell lied as he continued to walk.
The black-stone pyramid’s gleaming peak towered over them as they approached, its surface utterly unscathed despite the violent sandstorms that so frequently came and went in these parts.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
“No entrance on this side, gotta go around,” Shell thought as he turned to follow the pyramid’s outline, raising a hand to trace its surface. Even under the baking sun, it was almost uncomfortably cold
Left. Right. Left. Right.
He felt a small jolt. Static electricity.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Round the corner.
Still no entryway.
More walking.
Round the corner again. A field of polymer rods, reaching toward the sky like a grove of dead trees. Scraps of fabric hung from most of them, whilst a few nearest to the pyramid still supported intact tarps. The fabric became progressively darker the closer it was to the pyramid, with the tarps closest to it being the same pitch-black as the pyramid itself. Printed tarps just didn’t look like that.
As he had expected, this side of the pyramid had an entryway in its center, easily large enough to accommodate even the largest warrior-caste. Walking towards the entryway, Shell questioned.
“You’ve not commanded me for some time.”
“I need not repeat a command you are already following. I would rather focus on filling in for your lackluster senses.”
“What do you see that I do not?”
“This edifice is degenerate, its constituent nanites seep into the surrounding environment.”
“The tarps.”
“A symptom, yes. If we were to dig in the sand around the outer wall, I suspect we would find it has begun to blacken and solidify.”
Left. Right. Left. Right.
The stairway was steep and unlit, yet Shell found no struggle in maintaining his footing. He could see in low-light conditions, that much was true, but the deeper they went, the denser the darkness became. Dozens of stairs turned to hundreds, dim light turned to utterly consuming blackness. Something allowed Shell to navigate these ancient halls.
“Can you see in the dark?”
“Can you not?”
“Not in complete darkness.”
“Sit down.”
Shell obeyed, sinking to the cold ground. He felt pressure building behind his eyes, soon followed by an intense static. Something wet ran down his face, the smell of blood filled his nostrils, and the hallway faded into view. Before he could question, Asura spoke.
“Get up. These halls lead deeper. Go left at the intersection.”
“You changed my eyes.”
He didn’t have the will to continue questioning, so he just got back up and walked. Now that he could see, he noticed that there was a power cable stuck to the ceiling with adhesives, burned-out lights hanging from it.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
A few hundred steps more, and he finally came upon the intersection that Asura mentioned. The cable followed the path to the right, which bent out of sight after a few dozen meters, whilst the path to the left went on for a while, at its end what looked like a smooth wall.
Shell turned left without a second thought.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
When he was about two thirds of the way toward the apparent dead end he felt another jolt, but he wasn’t touching a wall this time. He didn’t think anything of it, and just kept walking. Another jolt came after only a few steps, and this time he reacted quickly enough to catch a glimpse of the lilac spark jumping off his index finger. It was voidfire. He hadn’t realized it until now, but he was a creature of blacktech, now.
“Is that normal? Spontaneous discharges?”
“Not usually. I have been building up a charge in order to open the door ahead of us.”
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Left. Right. Left. Right.
Finally, he reached the dead end.
“Place your hand on the wall.”
Shell did as commanded. He felt a great heat suddenly flow through him, arcs of lilac lightning leaping down his arm and seemingly sinking into the black-stone wall. The surface lit up with incomprehensible hieroglyphs, spreading from the point of contact to outline a rectangular section of the wall.
The light faded and the section of wall sunk inward, then down into the ground, with nary a sound or a seam in the floor as evidence it had ever been there. The other side looked to be filled with rubble, with only enough room to take a few steps. Even so, he crossed the precipice, and as he did, what was truly past that door came into view.
The chamber was hundreds of meters long and tens of meters wide, its ceiling towering dozens of meters upward. Along its walls there stood statues on triangular bases, and its walls too covered in a triangular pattern. Each statue’s base and each triangular segment of wall was etched with a name.
As his gaze wandered, he saw that at the very back of the chamber, there was a statue larger than the rest, at least thrice as tall as Shell even in its kneeling pose. The moment it came into view, he felt Asura urging him to walk, even without the necessity for mental speech.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
At the largest statue’s base, there was a name just as with the others.
Type-37b All-Purpose Security Macroproxy “Talos”
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Ouroboros disappeared past the bend, soon followed by the scraping of metal on metal.
The thunder of the sonic barrier being broken, the bright flashing of lilac and the familiar screech of Apeiron’s beam mode.
This cacophony went on for only four, perhaps five seconds before one of the so-called security proxies was tossed into view, its body contorted like a ragdoll on the ground. Its head snapped to look at Red-eye, an unnaturally perfect face highlit by empty black orbs for eyes.
It jolted back up and immediately broke into a sprint towards them. Red-eye felt a needle in his calf, followed by an immediate stiffness around the injection site. He knew what it was, and knew what Vezkig wanted him to do.
Red-eye readied himself to grapple with the stone-skinned puppet, both his battle-focus and inner voidfire flaring. He thought of what he had said back during the battle for canyontown.
“Seven stars of calamity shine in the heavens,” he repeated like a mantra, as if it would help him contend with this thing’s undoubtedly colossal strength. “My eye is the eighth, and no evil can hide from its light.”
A sensation of heat rushed through his head.
Lilac overtook all other colours.
A beam of voidfire screamed forth from his left eye, and the stone-skinned thing fell in two pieces at his feet. Fragments of arcane machinery clattered from its insides as it fell, noxious smoke and pitch-black liquid spilling forth from ruptured tubes and cables.
Red-eye felt something warm begin to gush out of the socket of his left eye, and saw that it was a short spurt of black mixed with blue. Blood and burned-out nanites. A splitting headache soon followed, one intense enough to force the warrior into leaning against the wall while it passed.
“I won’t even ask how y’did that, doubt y’know yerself,” Vezkig remarked as he tossed the empty injector aside and reached for another one. Another sting in Red-eye’s calf. Spreading warmth. Restorative solution. The headache faded.
The cacophony of metal and lightning went on for a few seconds more. A second proxy was tossed into sight, its bulk slamming against the wall. It stood there stone-stiff after its joints locked in place, only to resume motion and lunge towards them
“Do it again!” Vezkig yelled, but there was no need. The machine wasn’t going after them, it was running away. Ouroboros’ metal-plated foot stepped from beyond the corner, his left hand outstretched. There was a brief whine, a flash of light, and a crystalline lance flew past Red-eye’s head, impaling the proxy. The projectile ruptured its outer shell, carrying it for dozens of meters then impaling it to the floor.
“It’s safe now,” he said, the raging fire fading from his eye-lights as his grippers folded away and Apeiron’s muzzle retracted. “I could use some restorative, though.”
It was then that they noticed the smoking impact craters that dotted his body and the puddle of black liquid forming where he stood, not to mention the numerous black-stone shards embedded in his skin.
“Y’sure they didn’t do any serious damage?” Vezkig asked as he tossed him two injectors, one with restorative and one with enhancer. Ouroboros caught both between the fingers of his left hand, injected them into his breast, and tossed them aside with a single thoughtless motion. “It was mostly surface-level, but those plasma cannons could probably do some real harm if I got careless,” he remarked as he continued to stand there, waiting for his comrades to catch up.
By the time they reached him they could clearly see the impact craters filling in and hear the clatter of shrapnel against the floor as his body forced it out. He let out a noise not unlike a relieved sigh. “It’s nice to have nanites to spare,” he said as the trip turned the corner and his comrades witnessed the slaughter that he had wrought.
----------------------------------------
“What are these statues?”
“They are eternal soldiers, built to protect this place in man’s stead.”
“Does that mean they can match the Serpent?”
“Very few things can match a human liberated from the frailty of their natural form.”
“Is he not a natural human? Do you think him some vat-grown abomination, as my siblings do?”
“He has been scrubbed of nearly all identifying marks, but some things cannot be hidden. These things I know: He is an old thing, older than my oldest self. The body he inhabits is not his first, or his fifth, or his tenth. It is but his shell, as this body is ours. His appearance is as far from a natural human’s as ours is from a natural draconian’s.”
“Are these statues a more accurate representation of the natural human form, then?”
“More or less. Their outer casings are simplified for functionality.”
“What of the largest one? The one named Talos?”
“A mythical giant that once watched over an ancient human city. Unlike the myth, this one has no convenient weakness. Through its bones we will be remade anew.”
At last, they stood at the foot of the statue named Talos. Its immaculate stone visage was detailed to a lifelike degree that Shell lacked the knowledge to appreciate. One could see each individual lock of the long hair hanging past his brow, his form obscured by sculpted wrappings that covered portions of his limbs and torso, all rendered with inhuman detail.
Shell felt the heat building again, but it vanished as soon as it came. Asura’s arms unfolded from his back, and Shell found himself pulled along as Asura climbed onto the giant’s back. There was a strange symbol in white upon the back of its neck, a glyph of nine branches that evoked the image of a great beast whose tendrils wind through the cosmos.
Asura remained silent, but Shell felt its intelligence staring at the symbol, feelings of desire and fear somehow tangibly emanating from the VI.
“We must leave this one be. The rest will serve us well enough.”
Fear overwhelmed desire within Asura’s mind, and it climbed to the ground.
“Try that one,” its upper-right arm pointed at one of the nearby statues.
Shell obliged and began walking towards that statue, but the question ate away at his mind, if only because the symbol spoke to him despite his lack of understanding for human nonsense-symbols.
“What was that symbol?”
“A true name. I doubt the creator would care even if we tampered, but if the unit was expensive enough to be true-signed, it was likely expensive enough to have anti-tampering measures that we cannot deal with as we are.”