The hallway beyond the bend was an image straight out of a cautionary tale. The walls were covered in burn marks and gashes, the panels cracked at points, nanolith shrapnel embedded in the walls, parts of the floor, even the ceiling. Most of the rogue proxies were completely dismembered, torn apart at the joints and scattered all about, their shells cracked open and insides either violently scrambled or burned out with voidfire to ensure they wouldn't get back up.
The most intact proxy in this section of hallway now sat slumped against a wall. Ouroboros had ripped off its lower jaw, and from the gaping hole of its mouth there hung a number of cables and tubes, at the end of which was an arcane mechanism. It had a hole in its chest as wide as Ouroboros’ arm - more than enough to deduce what he had done to disembowel it in this manner.
The aftermath of the battle stretched on for long enough that they had the time to walk through and take it in, to take note of how far apart some of the proxies’ body parts had been scattered in the fray.
“Why the brutality?” Vezkig asked. “They’ll be harder to study this banged-up.”
“I had to make sure they would stay down,” Ouroboros answered. “Speaking of…”
A snap of his fingers.
A loud ringing from behind, soon followed by a concussive blast, a bright flash, and the sound of metal banging against metal. They continued to walk for a few minutes more, and eventually the Gatekeeper’s voice sounded in their radios.
“You were correct to be cautious. This type of security proxy has a robust self-repair system. Unless all five modules are eliminated, the proxy will eventually recover. Admittedly, their arrangement along the central vertical axis makes this easier, but I am not at liberty to disclose the reasons behind such an intentio-”
Its voice cut off, then returned as if it had never gone, finishing its sentence with “-incidental flaw.”
The VI’s somewhat strange behavior elicited slight confusion, but the three of them paid it no further mind as they continued to delve yet deeper into the great ship’s deepest corridors. Wherever they turned, they found all doors locked but those that led them towards their intended destination, with even their consoles utterly unresponsive beyond showing a map of where they were and the direction they should move.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
For minutes more they walked, for miles through the winding hallways, their construction subtly changing as they went. At first, they noticed angular patterns of black lines on the white paneling, yet the deeper they went, the denser it became, until the walls gleamed with the polish of solid black-stone.
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Left. Right. Left. Right.
With each step Ouroboros took away from the site of the battle, he felt his body knit itself together. With each step, old connections were re-made and new ones began to form where none had been previously. The nanites that suffused every fibre of his being offered themselves as building blocks upon a scaffold of synthfiber and livingmetal. So it was that he grew stronger even through wounds.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
As he walked, he reflected on the strength within his comrades, and knew that it grew through adversity just as his strength did. The flame of the void within Red-eye’s being shone with a brightness that he could not ignore even if he tried, an empyrean blaze of such pure intensity that not even he could replicate it. As much voidfire as Ouroboros could call forth, not even the arcane machinery of his form could produce such a pure flame. He found solace in the fact he was surrounded by individuals with the potential to strike against him, should he ever lose himself.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
As for Vezkig… He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t ever seen him manifesting void energy even once, and as far as his sensor arrays could tell, his inner voidfire was only sufficient to power those horrendous scrap-cybernetics of his. The engineer’s excessive consumption of restoratives seemed to be affecting him in a purely beneficial manner, his body’s progressive blackening notwithstanding.
That being said, Ouroboros couldn’t help but wonder what the diminutive madman was capable of, considering the extraordinary feats of ingenuity he had witnessed him perform. Creating his left arm, restoring Nesgon to health, even operating arcane machinery that he himself had no understanding of whatsoever to make Fulgent as she was now.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
He felt himself slowly pulled from the ocean of rumination by the gradual changing of the light, from bright neon lights to the soft lilac glow of glyphs etched into black-stone walls. He could feel free-floating void energy in the very air, it radiated from the glyphs and from every surface within sight.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
They at last came upon a closed door, a dead end. It had no console, no seam in the wall to outline it, its constituent black-stone was too dense for his sensors to penetrate. The only thing to suggest this dead end was a door was the fact it was marked as such on his mental map. Without thinking, he reached out and placed his palm upon its cold surface, hoping it would perhaps project a console from some hidden hololens.
The heat of void energy immediately left his palm, hungrily sucked up by the arcane machinery. “I think it needs power,” he said as he channeled void energy through his arm and into the door, steadily increasing the amount. At first there was no visual feedback, but soon there came small sparks dancing down his arm’s bronze plates. The sparks grew larger and more intense, and soon turned to great tendrils of lightning leaping from from his shoulder to his forearm, and from there whipping at the stone.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The glow of arcane glyphs began to spread from the point of contact, inch by inch. The more energy he provided, the more the stone sucked away, as if it had been utterly starved of it for centuries prior. Before even a third of its surface could be brought alight, it stopped absorbing energy altogether as the ancient stone shifted upward without so much as a sound.
As the door slid away it exposed nothing but another solid wall, but he knew better than to be fooled. “You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me! A dead end?!” Vezkig yelled, exasperated. “The map said-”
”That there is a large chamber past this door, yes. This is a holoshroud,” Ouroboros interrupted, stepping forward and through the apparition. He heard Vezkig squawk out “Wha-” before all sound from outside the chamber died and he was left on his own for the few scant seconds before his companions passed through the shroud as well.
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Vezkig felt a chill run down his spine as he crossed the holoshroud’s threshold. The chamber was… Bare. Utterly so. The air was stale and cold, the black-stone matte and dull as if it had lost its self-polishing properties.
The chamber had seven walls, and it was split into seven segments by narrow channels carved into the stone. At its center there was a seven-sided altar, and each of its sides bore a seven-sided slot as wide as a finger. Myriad possibilities for this place’s ritualistic significance rocketed through his mind, but before he could speak out, Ouroboros and Red-eye had already walked halfway toward the altar.
Before he could cry out for them to be careful, the nanolith all about them began to vibrate in such a violent manner as to produce something barely approximating speech, thunderous and nearly illegible.
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The roar which they heard within the chamber was utterly unintelligible, to the point of indescribability in any manner other than a mountain trying to speak through the grinding of stone against stone.
They expected a radio transmission or some other alternative method of communication, but there was no signal down here. Even Ouroboros’ attempts at making a connection were met with nothing - not just a rejection, but an utter lack of response.
The rumbling faded. The black-stone floor in front of Ouroboros’ feet lit up with faint glyphs, drawing on the ambient void energy radiating off him. Illegible in any traditional sense, they would nevertheless be understood by any who looked upon them and desired to understand.
Don your skin of stone, serpent.
Set these old bones of mine alight.
Allow me to serve my purpose.
Vezkig immediately ran over at the sight of this occurrence, thinking aloud “What’s that even mean?”
Much to his surprise, the glyphs changed in response.
Are you aware of this vessel’s name, short one?
“N-no, don’t think so…” the tinkerer stuttered, visibly racking his brain for any conceivable memory of it. Red-eye’s expression remained calm, but his left eye betrayed his mental state - it whipped to and fro wildly, scanning every inch of the room whilst his living eye remained fixed on the glyphs.
Ouroboros knew. It immediately sprang to mind, the moment his gaze fell upon the question.
“Viriditas.”
The glyphs took a few seconds more to change, as if in surprise.
Correct.
However… That is not the full designation.
“What is it then?” Vezkig questioned eagerly, staring at the glyphs as he waited for them to change, the deep-scanner in his eye blinking a nervous staccato.
Macrodimension Environmental Adjustment Engine “AISS Viriditas”
This vessel’s primary directive is terraformation.
A walking oasis engine.
“Walkin’? Ain’t this a crashed spaceship?” Vezkig asked.
Correct.
This vessel was intended to transition to terrestrial movement upon landing.
Vezkig balked “Wouldn’t the pressure just cause the ground to-” only to cut himself off when he saw the glyphs change near-instantly in retort.
This vessel’s graviton manipulation engine is capable of counteracting three times its specification mass when at full operational capacity.
The glyphs flickered, faded, then returned, their glow even weaker than before.
I cannot remain awake for much longer.
The three fell silent, giving way to the deafening absence of any ambient sound that permeated these walls. “How many injectors of enhancer do we have with us?”
“Four,” Vezkig answered, looking around as he realized the hoverslate hadn’t followed them into this chamber.
“Bring all of them.”
The tinkerer gave a solemn nod, and disappeared past the holoshroud. He returned a few seconds later, carrying two injectors in each arm. Ouroboros took and injected two at a time, his body completely absorbing the nanites instead of forming the usual protective shell. When the last injector was empty, he raised his right arm into position so that his palm was at waist height. The aperture on his palm opened, and a muzzle emerged from within.
There was a strange squelching sound as the sideways dragon-head ornament emerged from his lower stomach. From where he was, Vezkig could see that its right side was flat, polished black-stone, with a slot in the center.
“You may want to step away,” he said as he looked to his comrades. They did as asked, each walking halfway across the room. Coincidentally, this resulted in a triangular arrangement around the central altar.
As Ouroboros willed the Dragonrider System to activate, the sight of his mind’s eye was filled with new images, the System communicating how this transformation and each one to come after would be different from the first. He had no casement to recycle, his body had fully repaired and adjusted to usage of the System during the trip back. As the void energy within his infrastructure built, his eye-sockets began to expel familiar horn-shaped geysers of exotic particles.
“Go forth and devour, Ouroboros!” he roared as he funneled all his inner fire into his right arm, slamming Apeiron’s muzzle into the connection port. At that moment, he heard a familiar voice sound in his head, one he had not heard in a long time.
“Firing Mode recognized: Dragonrider Ignition. Ready to fire,” Apeiron said.
Voidfire flooded forth into the belt, datacables emerging from within its maw to plug into points on his body, soon followed by a brightly shining gemstone that sat betwixt the ornament’s teeth.