Now, Threnosh World

No! No! No! NO!

Darkness and warmth.

A smothering blanket wrapped around him.

Cal panicked.

Until a voice reminded him.

Look at your walls! They stand! You must do the same!

He recognized it. It was his own.

He snapped back to reality.

Mother Madrigal had a dozen hands restraining him as she wrapped him up in her skin cloak. Her sound, her song chipped away at the telepathic wall he had built around his mind, but it was weaker.

Cal heard it in his head like nails on a chalkboard.

The Mother’s song was a broken string, a skipped record, a badly tuned piano. It sounded wrong. As if there was another orchestra playing in complete opposition to the Mother’s.

The discordance in Cal’s thoughts was uncomfortable, painful, but it was keeping him awake and aware of the Mother’s insidious influence seeking to regain control over him.

Never again!

An explosion of telekinetic force blew the Mother’s hands off of Cal.

A multitude of strong fingers were broken and her skin cloak was torn to shreds.

Cal gathered his legs under him and kicked off the Mother’s chest. He shot away toward the side of the immense shaft.

Push and pull.

He used his telekinesis to fly toward a tunnel.

Mother Madrigal keened. The sound was disconcertingly musical to Cal’s ears.

The tunnel’s door was sealed shut.

Cal punched right through with his fists above his head, like a bullet. He skimmed the metallic floor before coming to a halt and spinning around to face the door.

A thin shaft of light shined through the small hole his body had made. It didn’t do much to illuminate the pitch blackness. He was deep in one of Orchestral Meridian’s sublevels. The sun’s light struggled to reach that far.

The light suddenly vanished as a great shadow descended over the hole.

Cal tensed.

Heartbeats.

The door tore open with a loud screech of metal.

The Mother drifted down to alight on the floor with her skin cloak unfurled in its full glory. Her fingers on multiple hands lining the edge of her cloak were broken. The cloak bled from numerous wounds.

The sound that seemed to emanate from the Mother’s hooded void of a head was as ragged as her physical appearance.

Despite that all, she still radiated an immense sense of danger to Cal.

Unbidden fear spiked in him.

He forced it down with effort.

Fight!

Mother Madrigal wrapped herself in her skin cloak.

Corrupted and Inheritors flanked her on both sides.

Cal hadn’t picked up their presence.

The Mother’s influence on his mind had been weakened, but not completely stopped.

“You hurt the Mother!” Gyxdor, the mountain of muscle with dangerous bone protrusions bellowed.

Memories rushed through Cal’s brain as the giant Inheritor’s voice washed over him and echoed across the cavernous tunnel. He remembered facing Gyxdor several times in the arena during his long captivity. The Mother had used him to strengthen her children. To test her obscene manipulation of the Threnosh’s genes.

The Inheritors were fundamentally different from the Threnosh, whose genetic code the Mother had based them on. The Inheritors had genders similar to humanity, unlike the Threnosh.

Gyxdor pounded the metallic floor like an angry gorilla. His massive fists left deep craters.

That was the signal.

The corrupted were barely restrained creatures of violence. All they knew, all they did was attack.

They rushed toward Cal like a wave crashing on the shoreline.

The transport tunnel was as wide as a four lane highway. The corrupted mass filled it from one side to the other and was many ranks deep.

Cal blunted them with a battering ram of telekinetic force.

The first few ranks were crushed against the ones behind them. Broken and splattered bodies tripped up the rest long enough for Cal to turn and run.

He wasn’t a fool.

A fight against overwhelming numbers in a cavernous tunnel wasn’t a winning proposition.

He needed to change the field and bring the battle to a ground of his choosing.

He got a few hundred yards in a handful of seconds when he skidded to a halt.

More Inheritors and corrupted blocked his way.

“No escape. Rejected the Mother for the last time,” Brynax said.

An inky, black smoke erupted from the Inheritor.

Cal remembered too late that Brynax’s smoke induced complete sensory deprivation for any caught within. Even his extrasensory powers were muted.

He had to move.

The corrupted didn’t care about the lack of sensory perceptions. They’d throw themselves into the cloud and attack anything they could get their claws and teeth on. Even each other.

Cal threw himself back with an assist from his telekinesis. The transition from total sensory deprivation was jarring when he cleared the jet black cloud. So many sounds assaulted his ears. The tunnel was full of attackers coming from every direction.

He could perhaps be forgiven for missing the one being that barely made a sound amidst the clamor of the snarling corrupted. thudding steps of Gyxdor and the buzzing insects of Tylox. Let alone Mother Madrigal’s presence which dwarfed and enhanced the cacophony of the rest.

Sharp claws cut through the back of Cal’s Threnosh body suit.

He spun and backhanded nothing but air.

Another slash darkened his thigh.

Focus, damn you!

Cal listened to himself.

His telepathy singled out a predatory mind in close proximity.

He turned and caught the Inheritor in a telekinetic grip.

Oncalynx was suspended midleap. She snarled at Cal, but he held her firmly.

Cal remembered this one too. She’d honed her skills against him in the arena as well. Oh, he had exacted a toll for the lessons, but Mother Madrigal had seen Oncalynx as a worthy specimen so she was healed and improved after every fight. Not all of the Inheritors sent against him had been so honored.

Cal tightened his invisible grip.

The Inheritor yowled with pain as her bones started to crack under the pressure.

Vengeance!

Cal’s gaze hardened.

Oncalynx whimpered.

“Release her!”

Cal half turned and threw his hands up with a telekinetic shield just in time to block Gyxdor’s massive fist as it crashed down on him like a falling mountain.

Oncalynx dropped to the metallic floor as Cal’s hold on her disappeared. She limped away like a wounded animal, but Cal had his hands full and he couldn’t finish her off.

Gyxdor roared with each thunderous blow on Cal’s invisible shield.

Pain lanced through Cal’s brain to the rhythm of Gyxdor’s drum beats.

A swarm of insects flew over Gyxdor’s shoulder, streaking toward Cal like miniature missiles.

Cal pushed his left hand out at the swarm and blew them back into Gyxdor’s face.

The insects weren’t particularly intelligent.

Cal sensed that Tylox was further back in the tunnel, near the exit where Mother Madrigal remained. He remembered that the Inheritor’s control over the swarms weakened with time and distance.

As Gyxdor discovered when the swarm started biting and stinging him.

The huge Inheritor’s assault ceased.

Cal took the opening and scrambled back for distance. Close combat with the behemoth wasn’t a win condition. He backed right into the corrupted that had survived their fellows inside Brynax’s slowly dissipating cloud.

Claws scratched, but didn’t penetrate his skin.

A corrupted chomped down on Cal’s trapezius. The teeth pierced through Cal’s bodysuit, but not his skin. Pressure, but no pain.

Cal punched the corrupted then grabbed it by its head and threw it at Gyxdor.

The Inheritor swatted the corrupted aside like an insect.

Ironic, that. Seeing as how Gyxdor’s gray-skinned face was covered in reddened welts from the insects’ venom.

Cal knew that the Inheritor would heal fairly quickly. He had plenty of experience against Gyxdor in the arena. Injuries only made the Inheritor angrier, which also made him dumber.

Corrupted continued to swarm Cal as Gyxdor advanced.

Cal grabbed a corrupted with each hand and threw them all at Gyxdor.

The Inheritor smashed them aside without concern. He leapt at Cal with a two-handed, overhead smash.

Cal jumped to the side.

Gyxdor’s fists hammered a crater into the floor and caused a small tremor to shake the entire tunnel. Dust and debris shook loose from the ceiling and walls.

Cal snapped a left hook to the side of Gyxdor’s huge head, careful to avoid the bony growths protruding from the Inheritor’s brow, cheeks and jaw.

Gyxdor backhanded Cal in the side. The sharp bone growth at his knuckles would’ve torn Cal’s suit and skin had he not blocked it with a telekinetic shield.

Still, the force of the impact took Cal of his feet and sent him flying toward the side of the tunnel. He used his telekinesis to control his flight and slow his momentum so that he was able to plant his feet on the wall and shoot back toward Gyxdor.

It happened so fast that Cal planted his fists into Gyxdor’s gut before the Inheritor could even think to react.

The Inheritor coughed as the air was driven out of his body.

Cal grimaced. He had shaped a telekinetic shield around his fists, but he had still felt the jarring impact. It was like hitting a solid metal wall.

Cal scrambled back and dodged as Gyxdor punched and smashed wildly. The Inheritor created small craters and large gouges in the metallic floor with each strike.

Cal saw an opening and jabbed at Gyxdor’s throat with a telekinetically-enhanced punch.

The Inheritor stopped his relentless attack to choke for breath.

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Cal backed away.

Brynax and corrupted were content to watch.

“You can’t stop me! I’ll get my hands on you eventually!” Gyxdor advanced a few steps before breaking into a run.

Cal pushed at Gyxdor with his telekinesis. The behemoth slowed, but kept moving.

Cal changed tack. He cut his telekinesis off.

Gyxdor pitched forward off balance.

Cal grabbed the one ton plus Inheritor and lifted him up in a telekinetic grip.

Gyxdor bellowed impotently as Cal sent him flying back into the mass of corrupted. He turned the Inheritor into a cannon ball that smashed dozens of the corrupted into bloody smears against the metallic floor.

Jet black smoke engulfed Cal once again.

Pay attention!

He saw, heard and felt nothing as he pushed himself back toward Brynax’s location.

Cal’s world was fire as soon as he escaped the cloud.

The left side of his upper body was drenched in an acid-like liquid. His Threnosh body suit had already melted and his skin was next.

Use your telekinesis! Throw the acid molecules off!

“I… can’t…” Cal whispered through grit teeth.

Yes, you can.

Memories flooded Cal’s thoughts.

Of exploration and experimentation of his powers in a mindscape of his own creation.

Mother Madrigal had erred in that regard.

She had given him time, a place and a reason to push the limits of what he was capable of.

Cal had the power to move things with his mind. Large and small. He had never considered the possibility that he could affect things at the microscopic level.

Together with his vast array of extrasensory powers he could see and manipulate the very molecules of the impossibly potent acid-like substance.

Cal pulled every bit of it off his burned and scarred body before it could work its way into his bloodstream.

He collected the acidic liquid into a large ball then sprayed it at Brynax and the corrupted.

The Inheritor threw an arm up over his face as several dots of the liquid splashed on his arm.

Brynax howled with pain as the acidic substance quickly ate away at his flesh, leaving disgusting, weeping wounds.

The black cloud behind Cal disappeared as the Inheritor was no longer able to concentrate.

Cal scanned the area.

The acid-spitter didn’t have much range.

There!

Cal spotted Zeyt trying to hide in the shadows along the side of the tunnel wall to his left.

Zeyt spat their acid-like liquid.

Cal was ready. He telekinetically gathered it and sprayed it at the corrupted charging at him from both sides of the tunnel.

The stench they gave off as the acid-like substance dissolved their flesh was enough to water the eyes.

Cal was able to ignore it. Nearly ten years of fighting monsters and other horrors had hardened him. There was much he was able to tolerate and ignore.

There was a rush of wind and something hard and fast hit Cal and sent him tumbling deeper into the tunnel. Even farther away from the already meager sunlight.

A terrible song filled Cal’s head.

The discordance was still there, but this song was stronger than before. It had completed subsumed the weaker strands of the sounds that had managed to disrupt its power over Cal.

Mother Madrigal’s silhouette loomed over him like a statue.

Dreadful thoughts filled Cal’s head.

Remember, your walls are strong!

“I know!” Cal snapped.

The Mother didn’t move. She towered over Cal, close to three times his height. She seemed to dominate the space.

Her blow had sent Cal past the corrupted Brynax had brought to cut of his escape.

Cal glanced back down the dark tunnel. It looked clear. He could try it again. Run. This time there didn’t seem to be anyone in his way.

The Mother was content to stand motionless and seemingly just watch.

Corrupted gathered behind her. They flexed their claws and gnashed their teeth.

Cal didn’t need to see into their thoughts to know what they wanted.

He could sense and see the Inheritors’ thoughts. They were surprisingly similar to the corrupted’s. Sapience didn’t preclude one from savagery. Human history was rife with such.

Cal reached out with his telepathy. Perhaps a spiky mental ball inserted into their thoughts was what he needed.

He was met by a song of such pain that sent his head into a wild spin.

Mother Madrigal wasn’t going to allow that.

You have hurt me. I am saddened. Why betray me? Don’t you see how I have made you stronger?

The words in his head sounded so close to his own, but he wasn’t going to be fooled any longer.

Focus on your pain. It’s real.

Cal listened to this one.

The upper left side of his torso and a good chunk of his upper arm, shoulder, down to his elbow was a skinless wound, weeping blood. He kept the arm away from his body so that it wouldn’t touch.

The pain was enough to make a man cry.

Use it!

Cal grounded himself in reality with the horrific injury.

The Mother wasn’t able to drag him under her influence this time.

So be it.

Mother Madrigal languidly raised a too-long arm to point a too-long finger at Cal.

The corrupted milling around her howled and surged forward.

“This again,” Cal grit his teeth. The pain was a good reminder of what was real, but it was making it difficult to concentrate on using his powers. “I’m killing your kids in droves here… shouldn’t you be feeling a little guilty for sending them at me?”

They serve my purpose.

Cal roared back at the onrushing tide.

It had the same effect as yelling at the ocean, which was absolutely none.

Cal called on his telekinesis when he heard it.

The soft hum of anti-gravity generators was buried by the roar of thrusters.

Projectiles ripped through the air.

The Mother and the Inheritors turned to face the new threat.

An aerial transport zoomed down the tunnel.

The large transport took up the upper half of the tunnel.

The Mother and Gyxdor had to press themselves to the floor to avoid getting struck.

The transport showered the enemy with munitions as they passed overhead.

The darkness was driven away by the harsh glare of light as dozens of explosions rocked the cavernous space.

Cal squeezed his eyes shut and surrounded himself with a telekinetic shield to protect himself from the blast waves.

The transport flew past him. Slowed and landed. The rear ramp opened to reveal his T-Men armed and ready for battle.

“Combat drones forward,” Salamander said.

Tracked drones rolled out of the transport in two lines on either side of the Threnosh. They passed Cal as they spat projectile fire at the enemy.

“We deployed the other half of our drone complement on the other side. The enemy was occupied with your presence, so they did not notice,” Salamander said.

Cal nodded. He was at a loss for words. It was surreal. To see his team. No, his friends coming to his rescue.

“My sound worked,” Frequency flashed a rare smile.

“That was you? You’re the one that created the interference to the Mother’s… I mean, Mother Madrigal’s sound?”

“Yes. Designation: Mother Madrigal’s sound is powerful. It was difficult to find the exact counter and then to deploy it with enough coverage to reach you. Let alone tracking the source. If it was not for PJ15 we would have taken much longer,” Frequency said.

“Yeah, PJ15 and… Brightstrike…” Cal remembered and wavered. “They, you, all of you saved my ass.”

“Your declaration is premature. There are still enemies in front of us,” Salamander said.

“Retreat is a possibility,” PJ15 said.

Cal shook his head. It was tempting. His open wound of an upper body hurt with an almost indescribable level of pain. It was like that one time the giant, manta ray squid kaiju ripped a good chunk of skin, ironically from the right half of his upper body. Except on that occasion he had passed out pretty quickly, so the pain wasn’t much more than a brief memory. He glanced at the four experimental weapons squad soldiers.

They had decided to deploy them. Not a good sign. It meant that they must’ve been desperate.

“Things not going well out there?”

“In your absence we have claimed several city sections. They are now under concentrated Inheritor and corrupted assault,” Salamander said.

“We cannot flee. I have surmised that Mother Madrigal exerts control over the corrupted with the sound. If disrupted then—”

“They’ll go berserk and attack anything in sight, which includes each other and the Inheritors.” Cal remembered things from when the Mother was in his head and he was in hers. “I’m pretty sure you’re spot on with that take, Frequency.”

“Then we kill Designation: Mother Madrigal. It is a Task, as is freeing you, Honor, from captivity,” Salamander said.

Cal watched the smoke from the explosives rise to clump in the upper quarter of the tunnel. Small fires were spread out amongst the scattered corrupted corpses.

Shadowy silhouettes loomed in the sun light from the tunnel opening.

He felt the Mother trying to reach out with her sound, her song.

“Active interference detected. Deploying counter measures,” Frequency said.

A jarring sound, static mixed with scraping metal on metal caused Cal to wince and shiver.

The Mother’s influence was muffled. He could still sense it, but Frequency’s sound managed to mute it.

“We’re outnumbered,” Cal said.

“It is a tactical mistake to fight the enemy on their terms. The Task only requires one kill. Honor, can you occupy Designation: Mother Madrigal?” Smoke licked along the sides of Salamander’s draconic maw.

“Yes,” Cal said. He believed it.

“The Inheritors and corrupted are distractions. We must destroy them quickly, if not possible then we must remove them from this battlefield.”

“Easier said than done, Salamander,” Cal said.

Salamander nodded almost imperceptibly. “But possible.”

Gyxdor roared a challenge.

“I will handle that one,” Salamander said.

“None of the remainder are close to as durable as Designation: Gyxdor,” PJ15 said.

“We can handle the rest,” Frequency said.

Cal nodded, surprised at the open display of confidence.

“I’m counting on you guys,” Cal said.

----------------------------------------

Now, Earth

“Bang for you! And you!” Veronica blasted the charging super mutants.

The behemoths stumbled as their brains short-circuited.

Veronica jumped in before anyone else could react. She stabbed the end of her staff into the throat of the one on the right and slammed Tessa’s kanabo down on the foot of the one on the left.

“Dual wielding, mother fuckers!” Veronica crowed.

Twinkle Star squeaked indignantly from within the small bad at Veronica’s side at all the jostling.

The super mutants roared and struck at Veronica.

“Oh sh—” Veronica’s eyes widened. She was careless.

“Move!” Nila jumped in and blocked a fist bigger than her head on her shield. The blow rattled her down to the bone. She lashed out with her own solid metal weapon and cracked the side of the super mutant’s head.

A fearsome growl heralded the weredog, Rino, barreling into the second super mutant before he could smash Veronica.

Weredog Kare jumped over Nila to grapple with the other super mutant.

The four bit, slashed and punched at each other all over the wide lobby space.

“Do we… help?” Gene stared agog at the awesome display of sheer power and violence.

“No, through the door,” Nila said.

They gave the battling weredogs and super mutants a wide berth as they rushed to the door that the cultist had fled through. They felt like ants trying not to get stepped on as giants fought. The snarling of the weredogs and the bellowing of the super mutants was too much to be contained by the space.

The whole room seemed to shake as if the ground was about to tear itself in two.

Getting through the door and shutting it was only marginally better. The sounds followed them.

“Jesus Christ that was intense,” Johnny said.

Nila looked left, then right.

The door led into a narrow hallway equidistant down both directions.

“Which way?” Megan said.

“I don’t know.” Nila couldn’t think. The space was crowded with so many people. Claustrophobic. She could feel her breath beginning to quicken. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “We’ll have to split up. Unless someone knows the way.”

The Resistance members shrugged.

Alexa still looked a little green. “What I’m sensing is… everywhere. I can’t tell you either.”

Nila chewed her lip. How to split the group up to maximize everyone’s chances of survival?

“I’ll go left with Megan, Veronica and the kids,” Nila nodded at Team F.C.W.R and Mads.

“Dude, I’m like twenty four,” Johnny muttered.

“Hanna, Keisha, Max and Alexa, think you’re enough to handle going right?”

“Sounds good to me,” Hanna said.

Nila turned to the Resistance and the fighters from Sacramento. “I’m not about to try to order you around.”

“I’ve got no problems with that, ma’am. Our chain of command got chewed up to hell and back. We’re all the same rank. I’m just the oldest,” the soldier said.

“Same with us,” the lead Resistance member said.

“The cult’s more likely to go after your group,” Hanna said as she looked at Veronica, then at Nila.

“Then we’ll go with you, ma’am,” the soldier said to Nila.

“We’ll go with them to make things even,” the Resistance member looked to Hanna.

Nila nodded. “Any objections?”

Johnny started to raise a hand, but hastily dropped it when Mads elbowed him in the side.

“Let’s go,” Nila said.

The two groups left the terrifying sounds of the fight taking place just on the other side of the door.

Rino slashed at the super mutant even as he bashed her muzzle with a meaty fist.

The bastard wasn’t going down despite the dozens of deep gashes covering his body. She had managed to claw through his thick stomach deeply enough that his guts were visible and leaking out, but he wasn’t slowing.

A knee strike to Rino’s midsection had her panting for breath.

Not good.

The super mutant seized on the momentary weakness and slammed a two-handed hammer blow on the back of her lupine head.

Rino hit the ground with a resounding crash. Her vision dimmed.

A loud yelp reached her muffled ears.

It seemed that Kare was having her own troubles. Rino couldn’t count on her pack mate for help.

The thought brought a pang of bitter sadness.

The pack wasn’t a thing anymore.

Rino wondered if Cordelia had known about the kidnapped women and girls.

Cordelia wasn’t a weredog, but she had brought the pack together and guided them through the early days until they hooked up with the Scions of the Deep Azure.

The super mutant kicked Rino across the floor and sent her slamming into a pillar. Dust and masonry showered down on her.

A deep growl rumbled out of Rino’s belly.

Cordelia was on the cult’s inner council. She had to have known.

Rino rose in a flash. She wasn’t going to lose to an over-muscled meathead. The cult had much to answer for. As did Cordelia. She was going to rip it out of them if she had to.

But first, there was a super mutant to deal with.

Rino leapt at the super mutant’s throat with her sharp-toothed maw wide open.