Now, Earth
Something had changed.
Remy heard voices from outside, way down below at the front door of the lighthouse.
The guards were arguing about something.
Remy was only a captive because he had consented to it. The cult held the promise of Tessa’s continued safety in exchange for him sitting in the converted prison cell near the top of the lighthouse. They had yet to show proof that they had Tessa, but he couldn’t risk it.
The voices, however, piqued his interest.
A normal human wouldn’t have been able to listen in from such a great distance with the ocean waves crashing against the rocky island in the background.
Remy wasn’t normal. He focused on the heated conversation.
“This is bullshit! We’ve already covered two straight shifts. Now, we get last minute notice that we have to do a third straight one! Fuck that noise!”
“Yeah, Tom, what the fuck is going on out there?”
“C’mon, guys. I’m just passing on the message.”
“What’re the bosses smoking? Cause if they think I’m cool with sitting out here for twenty four hours straight then they must be wasted on some really dank stuff.”
There was a long pause.
“Okay, but you didn’t hear this from me. Apparently the operation to take out the Resistance didn’t go well—”
“Get the fuck out of here, bro! Those pussies? You ain’t telling me that they actually fought back and—”
“You want to hear this or what?”
“Fine… whatever, keep going, asshole.”
“I just heard about all this from… well, I’m not saying cause I don’t want to get them in trouble, but something went wrong. The fight was a lot tougher than we expected. We got our butts kicked and the Resistance mostly got away clear.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
“That’s not all. I overhead the bosses talking just now while I was waiting for what turned out to be me having to tell you two dicks that you’ve got to take another shift. It sounded like there’s some sort of trouble at the Bastion.”
“What’s that got to do with us here? Our unit’s strictly for defending the island and the special guests.”
“Well, it’s an all hands on deck situation. They’re expecting an attack here, plus it sounded like the scions still haven’t caught that girl down in the tunnels. They think she’s headed in this direction, so obviously everyone is freaking out. Word is it took fifty scions to capture her. Plus, she took down one of those huge crocodile-looking monsters and a bunch of scions in the process. We’re screwed if she makes it here before they can catch her again.”
“Fuck me!”
“That’s some shit news, bro.”
“It’s not all bad. I also heard that the Grand Priestess is coming here with a few other inner council members. From what it sounds like the Deep Azure is done playing around. We just need to sit tight and stay cool. They’ll take care of it.”
Remy had heard enough.
He tapped his magnetic powers experimentally. Slowly stretching out further and further. Something was definitely going on. It didn’t hurt as much as before. Whatever was countering his abilities wasn’t as strong.
He broke the look on the door and walked out of his cell. He spotted the open window and jumped through without hesitation. He plummeted over eighty feet down to land with a loud crash right in front of the guards.
They were stunned and didn’t react before Remy pulled the weapons out of their hands with a magnetic field.
He created another one to hoist them up in the air by the metal on their clothing and bodies.
It looked especially painful for the man with earrings and a nose ring.
“Tell me about the girl in the tunnels. Don’t lie to me, I can tell when you do. Be honest, be concise or I’ll show you what it’s like to fly.”
Loyalty had its limits. The three men squealed for all they were worth.
Remy took their weapons and sealed them in the lighthouse.
Thanks to them he knew exactly where to go. The entrance to the tunnels that apparently ran all the way down to and under the ocean floor to emerge in the mainland.
The old woman cult leader had lied.
Surprise, surprise.
They briefly had Tessa, but she had escaped and was now being hunted somewhere in the deep, dark fishmen tunnels.
Remy tried to bury the fear and panic that threatened to well up within him at the thought of his daughter all alone in the cold dark.
He needed to get to her first.
----------------------------------------
The tunnel’s rough-hewn spiraling patterns slowly gave way to smoother surfaces, as if done by purposeful hands.
Tessa had the impression that she had been traveling upwards, but it was hard to tell. Her surroundings were so claustrophobic, dark and dank.
Her only knowledge of cave environments was from that one scary movie that her Uncle Eron had gotten in trouble for allowing her to watch with him, when she was a young girl.
At least she had light and weapons from the fishmen she had killed.
Although, fighting devolved humans would’ve been definitely easier. If a bunch of normal woman had been able to fight them, then she would’ve had no problems.
Tessa moved one cautious step after another. Whenever the tunnel split in two or more directions and presented her with a choice she decisively knew which to take. There was no deliberation. She simply took the correct one as it seemed. Since she moved in what felt like an upward trajectory.
The voice in her head prodded her to keep moving. It said that she was getting closer to her freedom.
Her surroundings shifted without warning. At least that’s what it felt like.
Tessa had to stop and wipe her eyes.
The tunnel walls had gone from plain rock to carved with patterns and what looked like pictures. The dim fluorescent light provided by the strange moss sparsely scattered on the ground and ceiling made it hard to pick out specific details.
Tessa peered closer then suddenly had to look away.
Something about the images depicted made her feel sick.
She felt the wrongness on an instinctive level.
When she wasn’t looking at them directly she found that she couldn’t quite recall what they showed. It fluttered on the edges of her memory, tantalizing, yet repulsive at the same time.
Tessa longed to look again, but with a force of will focused her eyes on the dark tunnel ahead.
She was getting closer to where she needed to be.
She knew it in her heart.
After all, that’s what her inner voice said.
Tessa didn’t know how long she walked, for she felt as if she was in a dream. Her eyes were unfocused and her steps unsteady. Her body moved as if on autopilot.
She hadn’t noticed when the rough natural ground had given way to precisely cut stone tiles with more obscene images carved into them.
Tessa couldn’t hold the memory in her mind’s eye.
Part of her knew that was a mercy for some things weren’t meant for mortal minds to fully comprehend.
Indeed, hers was stronger.
A normal human would’ve long given in and lost themselves.
Tessa finally emerged from the tunnel into a dim and dank chamber. It was enormous. Like the church she dimly remembered attending on a weekly basis with her mother and sister.
Except to call it a church was wrong.
This place was wrong.
It didn’t provide a feeling of comfort and warmth.
It was profane in all aspects of its existence. A temple to obscenity.
Tessa let out a scream.
She needed to deny it, them, what, them, it.
Tessa screamed again.
Something was wrong. It, them, he, was in her thoughts, in her body, no, yes.
She dug bloody wounds in the palm of her hand with her fingernails.
The pain helped her focus. Closer, yet still so far.
Her body walked toward the altar in the center of the chamber. It looked like a stone bed in the shape of some sort of sea creature. More grotesque sea creatures stood around the altar. No, they were merely stone statues.
Watchers for the dark deeds done. Tessa’s rational mind knew this. Just as it screamed in her head to stop and flee.
Her body continued to move with agonizing slowness toward the altar.
Profane blasphemy surrounded Tessa.
Every statue, every carving on the walls, floor tiles, and ceilings touched Tessa in ways that made her feel as if she would never ever be clean.
Mommy! Daddy! Help!
That sounded like Tessa’s voice, but that couldn’t be. She hadn’t spoken. Or had she?
Please, Mommy, Daddy! I don’t want to!
But she was alone down in this unholy place.
Where the light of the sun couldn’t reach.
Where the Deep Azure ruled.
“No!” Tessa screamed.
The fishman bone spear splintered in her grip. The shards cut into her hand.
Pain woke her.
Tessa stopped.
Her eyes opened.
She saw.
Such profanity all around her.
Tessa made the sign of the cross. The gesture helped ease her fears, just a fraction, but enough. She reclaimed clarity.
The voice in her head went silent.
“Not my voice,” Tessa realized. “You fishy piece of shit! That was you in my head! Leading me here! Well, I’m awake now and I’m not going to sleep again! I’m not going to let you use me in some kind of evil sacrifice!” she roared into the obscene cavern.
Her voice echoed into silence.
Steps. Soft ones.
Tessa spun around toward the sound. She drew a fishman’s tooth-like sword from where she had tucked it into her belt and clutched the broken spear in her other hand. The blood in her palms made her grips slippery.
An old woman appeared at the far end of the chamber on the third level in what resembled an old-style theater box. The surface of her robe seemed to undulate like the ocean surface.
Tessa was forced to look away lest she fall back under the waves.
“You are mistaken, child,” the old woman smiled serenely. “This is not a ceremony of death. It is one of birth.”
“I don’t care if this is some kind of stupid cult graduation ceremony to reach thetan level thirty two. Now that I’m not under your spell, I’m stopping it!” Tessa snapped.
“There was no spell.”
More figures slowly appeared all around Tessa. More cult members and fishmen on both the first and second levels.
She was surrounded and grossly outnumbered.
“You are the guest of honor in the Deep Azure’s rebirth,” the old woman said. “You can no more fight this than you can the ocean.”
Tessa didn’t have any metal on her, but she could feel something, somethings tingling on the edges of her senses.
A feral grin graced her lips.
The fishmen she had fought and killed in the tunnels didn’t carry any metal on them.
It appeared that the cultists didn’t take the same precaution.
The voice in her head tried to say something, but Tessa wasn’t listening. She was on to it.
“You screwed up,” Tessa said. “I’m not trapped in here with you,” she growled, “you’re trapped in here with me!”
She had always wanted to say that.
Tessa attacked first.
----------------------------------------
Bang. Veronica mouthed the word as she sent off an electromagnetic pulse in a random direction.
She felt the dark mist over her thoughts recede a bit.
“Don’t waste your energy,” Megan whispered.
Veronica scowled at her mother’s back.
“And don’t give me that look.” Megan didn’t turn her head back.
“I’m driving back the evil presence like before. Remember back at that old, bearded guy’s house? When it was like making you all go crazy and depressed? My brain blasts make it go away for a little bit. How can you tell I’m doing it anyways?” Veronica pouted.
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“I can feel a tingling in my head. It’s very disturbing.”
“Like licking a battery?” Veronica was curious.
“Yes… wait, when did you lick batteries?” Megan stopped and turned around.
“Dunno… when I was a kid,” Veronica shrugged.
Bang. Veronica sent a pulse behind her.
“What did I just tell you?” Megan hissed.
“How did you even feel that? I shot behind me,” Veronica frowned.
Megan narrowed her eyes. “You can’t get anything past me, young lady. Now—”
“Hold on…” Nila said.
The other two waited with bated breath.
Nila’s half-turned face looked eerie in the fluorescent bluish green light from the strange mossy substance scattered throughout the tunnel.
Seconds passed into minutes.
“Do it again, Veronica,” Nila said.
Veronica sent out another pulse.
Nila nodded. “I think it’s working. The voice in my head telling me we’re doomed isn’t as loud. How often can you keep that up, while conserving enough energy for a fight?”
“I’m not even tired,” Veronica lied.
“Okay, keep doing it, but space them out as long as you can.”
Megan grumbled, but didn’t say anything. She felt the same relief from the dark voice in her head. The insidious whispers kept telling her that she was going to watch as her entire family suffered.
They were silent for a precious moment.
The tunnel architecture changed the further the trio descended. It went from roughly cut, spiraling grooves in the curved surfaces to smoothened stone to tiles and carvings that had to have been done by thinking beings.
They knew which beings it had to be.
Occasionally, they came across dead fishmen.
A gross if hopeful sight.
Veronica was certain that it was Tessa’s handiwork, which meant that she had gotten away and was still free, fighting. She grew giddy with the hope that they’d reunite soon and together they’d crush the fishmen and the stupid dark god thing lurking in their thoughts.
Unless, it was too late and Tessa had already been captured. After all, she had been down in the dark, dank tunnels for two days.
Alone.
After Veronica had abandoned her and allowed her sister to sacrifice herself.
“Shut up, asshole,” Veronica muttered as she sent another electromagnetic pulse forth.
This one was stronger than she had intended.
The dark thoughts receded.
“Thanks, hon,” Megan whispered.
Veronica’s mother sounded pained. Her steps looked shaky.
“It’s okay, mom. I won’t let it get us,” Veronica said.
“I know,” Megan said. “How far have we gone? It feels like we’ve been walking down here for hours.” she asked Nila.
“It feels like we’ve been walking on level ground for a while now, so I guess that means we must be underneath the sea floor at this stage.” Nila remembered after the initial gentle slope of the tunnel from the cult fort they had to walk down a spiraling path almost straight down for what felt like a really long time. Although, she figured that the near pitch black of the abyss they had plunged into had made time seem to flow slower.
“What if we’re lost? What if we should’ve taken different turns at those forks that we passed?” Megan said. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t voice it for some reason.
“I don’t know,” Nila was forced to admit. “It feels like I know that I’m going the right way and… now that you mention it— that’s weird. The shift in architecture suggests that we’re going the right way though.”
“What if it’s a trap? Something’s already messed with our heads before and I can still feel it in the back of my mind. Only Veronica’s brain blasts—” Megan frowned, “I don’t know if I like that term—” she shook her head, “they’re the only thing keeping it at bay.”
“Good,” Veronica said, “trap or no trap, doesn’t matter. We’ll crush them all and get Tessa back. Then we’ll get Dad back.” She let out a brain blast for good measure. There was a squeak from the small bag at Veronica’s side. “See, Twinkle Star agrees.”
“He doesn’t have any powers does he?” Nila said. “Can he track Tessa’s scent.”
Veronica peeked into the bag. “No, I don’t think so. He’s just really old.”
“We keep moving forward then,” Nila said.
They marched on. Hours seemed to pass at a glacial pace. They only stopped briefly to eat and drink from the dwindling supplies they had brought.
Their lanterns and torch had long been extinguished.
Luckily, the strange, glowing mossy substance served as sufficient replacements when packed inside the lanterns or tied to the end of the dead torch.
“Wait,” Veronica’s ears perked.
“What is it, hon?” Megan said.
“Shhh…” Veronica trained her ear back down the way they had come, “I don’t know… but I think I can hear voices.”
Nila kept her eyes straight ahead, down the dimly lit tunnel. They hadn’t encountered anything except dead fishmen, but the dark void could hide anything. She kept her shield and baseball bat-like club ready. Shadows could become monsters at any time. She remembered the gremlins doing just that.
“Do another pulse?” Nila suggested.
“I did. It’s not in my head. I think I can hear whispering, like actual people talking,” Veronica said.
“Could the cultists have gotten past our people?” Megan said.
“If that’s the case then we can’t allow them to catch up before we find Tessa. We need to get through to Alcatraz and free Remy,” Nila said.
“Why don’t we set up an ambush?” Veronica said.
“No, we can’t fight a super mutant in such tight quarters. They might also have fishmen with them,” Nila said.
“Okay, we should go faster then,” Veronica said.
Nila agreed. She picked up the pace.
The narrow tunnel continued to wind around like a serpent. The twists and turns worried Nila. Her earlier realization made it impossible for her to dismiss the idea that she was being led around.
There could’ve only been one entity behind such a thing, if that was the case.
The Deep Azure.
Thinking of it in direct terms made a shiver run up Nila’s back. She felt so small, so vulnerable despite her superhuman strength.
“Don’t look at them,” Megan hissed.
“I’m not, Mom… they make me feel sick,” Veronica said. “It’s stupid cause they’re on the floor too.”
Nila looked down.
A mistake.
The obscene images carved into the stone tiles brought on a wave of nausea. She had been focusing her eyes straight into the darkness ahead for a reason.
Behind her somebody vomited.
She nearly followed suit. The sounds and the smells almost triggered a cascade of sickness.
Nila heard it then, before Megan and Veronica did.
Voices up ahead.
Not in her head. She was fairly certain.
Talking. Then shouting.
Fighting.
“Tessa.”
“What?” Megan rasped. She had made the mistake of looking too closely at one of the carvings set into the side of the tunnel wall and had vomited up the contents of her stomach.
“Mom, you okay?” Veronica said.
“Up ahead, I think I hear fighting and… Tessa’s voice,” Nila stumbled forward on unsteady legs.
“Tessa!” Veronica perked up. The teen was stronger than both adults. She barged past her mother and Nila.
“Wait,” Nila called out to no avail.
Veronica was gone.
Into the darkness ahead.
Toward the unknown.
Straight for the sounds of violence.
“C’mon. We have to hurry,” Nila dragged Megan along as she tried to run after Veronica.
Their thoughts were in a fog and their bodies felt heavy with a sudden onset of days worth of fatigue.
Nila had a terrible thought.
The dark presence had been leading them all along and now had them right where it desired.
Megan muttered something.
Nila’s eyes fluttered.
A soft glow became a bright light.
Megan’s hands.
It banished the darkness crowding on their thoughts.
Nila suddenly felt refreshed.
“I don’t know what I did, but I feel better, like I had a good night’s sleep,” Megan said in disbelief, “You?”
“The same,” Nila stood straighter. “It’s still in my head, but I don’t feel tired anymore. I thought there had to be injuries for you to heal? You can’t heal tired, can you?”
“I— I— I don’t know…” Megan looked at her hands. She pulled out her pistol. “We have to hurry!”
The two women sprinted into the darkness.
----------------------------------------
Now, Threnosh World
Salamander slashed their dragon claw-like right gauntlet across Gyxdor’s broad chest as the two tangled while they fell down the shaft. The Threnosh planted their boots into the Inheritor’s stomach and kicked off while engaging their thrusters.
Gyxdor roared as the flames burned his flesh.
Salamander aimed for an opening in the side of the shaft. An access tunnel of some kind.
They reached for the edge of the platform.
It was so close.
Salamander was suddenly jerked down.
Gyxdor had grabbed their legs with a massive hand.
The massive Inheritor threw Salamander down toward another platform several dozen meters below.
Salamander hit with a thud, but they rolled away just in time to avoid Gyxdor’s massive feet as the Inheritor cratered the metallic floor with their feet.
The behemoth snarled and flexed his fists. Jagged, bony protrusions threatened like wicked claws.
Salamander wasn’t sure if their tough and durable armor could stand up to the Inheritor’s massive strength. They came up to a crouch and breathed fire on the advancing Inheritor.
They backed away and kept the stream going as Gyxdor charged forward.
A massive ball of fire slammed into Salamander and the next thing they knew was that they had crashed right through the thin metal of the large door and into the dark tunnel behind.
Gyxdor was silhouetted by the light behind him as he pealed the door open with his bare hands. Dying flames licked across his body.
Salamander’s faceplate took a moment to adjust to the low light conditions in the tunnel.
“Like I said. You’re not going to be able to get away from me this time,” Gyxdor said.
Salamander grew concerned.
The front of Gyxdor’s body was a blackened and charred mess, yet the Inheritor still looked strong.
Next to the durability and toughness that Salamander’s power armor provided, the fire was their strongest ability.
More.
They needed more.
Their only option was to burn the Inheritor until there was nothing left, but ashes.
With a thought, Salamander released the liquid substance from dozens of holes all over the surface of their power armor. Like pores secreting sweat.
They ignited themselves with a quick breath of flame.
“You’d destroy yourself to avoid what I will do to you? Understandable, if cowardly,” Gyxdor said.
Salamander was wreathed in a mantle of intense fire. It was like being in the heart of furnace. They felt nothing of the heat.
“You fight with your fists,” Salamander said flatly. “You will burn with every touch.”
Gyxdor roared and charged.
Salamander leapt forward to meet him.
A few hundred meters above, separated by tons of rock, crisscrossed by dozens of tunnels of varying sizes, battle raged.
Bolter rounds shredded corrupted in the dozens.
Sonic emitters liquefied internal organs.
The chaos was all around Cal, but he only had eyes for one thing.
Mother Madrigal suddenly appeared on the ceiling.
How had something so big escaped his notice?
She descended down on him with her flesh cloak wide. Her impossibly long fingers reached out, grasping, hungry.
Cal had a moment of panic. He remembered what felt like a warm and comforting blanket. It elicited longing and disgust in equal measure.
“Not this time!” Cal snapped.
He punched out with an angry blast of telekinetic force.
It thrust Mother Madrigal into the side of the tunnel.
Metal crumpled around her.
Cal bared his teeth.
Rage.
He embraced it.
Kill her.
Destroy her.
Make you pay for what you made me do.
Cal kept his distance.
Instead of closing, he grabbed corrupted with his telekinesis and hurled them at the Mother like cannonballs.
How do you like that? Your children pulped on your body.
Mother Madrigal closed her flesh cloak and simply allowed the corrupted to crash into her.
She barely moved, like a statue.
Cal pulled more corrupted from the front of their mass as they tried to swarm him and the pillbox he had made, where Frequency and the two E.W.S. soldiers fought from in relative safety.
I can keep this up all day long!
Cal was throwing so many corrupted at the Mother, that she couldn’t move.
Perhaps you can, but can you say the same for the ones you claim to care about?
Cal blinked.
That wasn’t his voice.
“My walls…”
He had thought that his telepathic walls in conjunction with Frequency’s disruptive sound meant he was safe from the Mother’s mental intrusion.
The distraction was further compounded by an altogether unexpected event.
The aerial transport exploded.
The fireball singed Cal and the shockwave threw him dozens of meters along with the corrupted.
Only the Mother kept her feet.
Only Frequency and the Threnosh inside the pillbox were unaffected.
“PJ15…” Cal said as he looked at the burning wreckage in horror.
Something dark and terrible writhed on the other side of the flames.
You are distracted.
Cal blinked.
He was no longer in the tunnel.
He stood in nothingness.
The T-Men and the corrupted were gone.
A warm blanket suddenly enveloped him from behind.
Cal threw it off.
“I told you. Not this time.”
He turned to strike and was confronted by a sight that brought a pang of longing and regret to his heart.
Nila.
Sweet, smiling Nila stood with her arms open for an embrace.
Cal was tempted for he missed her more than anything in the world.
Instead, he stepped back.
A thought, an exertion of will swept through the black emptiness of his surroundings.
Nila. Rather, the image of Nila fuzzed for a moment. Then coalesced to reveal Mother Madrigal in all her wrongness. Her cloak of flesh, with grasping hands all along the edges. The hood of flesh that never revealed her face, hidden behind a darker than black void.
“How dare you use my most precious—” Cal snarled. He stopped. “You made a mistake,” he said calmly. “You’ve gotten into my head again, but now that means I’m also in yours. The same tricks won’t work again.”
Cal exerted his mind.
The empty void suddenly turned into a room. There was nothing in it. Just four walls, a ceiling and a floor, painted in a bland white color.
The image fuzzed.
Cal fought against it and stabilized things.
“I’m in control now. I’m not going to let you use my memories to twist me up. I’ve learned from before. This is where you lose.”
A laugh, like wind chimes in a soft breeze. Or a musical instrument, light and airy.
If you are in here then your children are alone out there with mine.
“Your corrupted are down to what? Less than a hundred? As for your Inheritors, Salamander took care of Gyxdor. The ones you brought into the tunnel are either injured or easily handle-able… is that a word? Doesn’t seem like a word,” Cal spoke lightly. He felt more like himself than he had been in awhile. Mother Madrigal might’ve been some kind of eldritch being older than human civilizations, at least that was what he got from the glimpses into her thoughts, but he was shocked to realize that she wasn’t way above him in terms of power.
Fear was self-fulfilling in many ways.
Cal was still afraid, but this time he wasn’t going to let it consume him.
“The T-Men aren’t my children. They’re deadly fighters in their own right. I caught it, you know, right after the explosion. While you’re stuck in this mindscape with me, you’re basically alone out there. Vulnerable.”
Foolish child. I have lived ages beyond your entire species. I am not trapped here. Not entirely.
“Oh, I know that. In fact, I learned it from you.”
Cal leapt at the Mother and grappled her.
Out in the physical world, Cal stood up amidst the carnage of corrupted bodies.
“Frequency, get your most powerful sound ready!” Cal called out.
“Acknowledged!” Frequency yelled out from inside the pillbox.
The last remnants of the corrupted crowded the front, but they couldn’t breach Cal’s construction even as they were being shot to pieces with short-ranged lasers.
Mother Madrigal stood like a statue near the fires that raged over the remains of the transport.
Slowly, her head turned to face Cal.
“It’s quiet isn’t it?” Cal said. “You can’t use that cursed song of yours to mess with our heads and equipment when I’m fighting you in here,” he tapped his temple.
“You’ve stolen my song. I will have it back. Then you will have reason to regret your foolish decisions,” Mother Madrigal’s voice was a deep rasp.
Cal wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she hadn’t physically spoken in centuries.
“No regrets, just revenge,” Cal said flatly.
The two moved at the same time.
An eldritch entity that had seen millennia pass and a once-human man a fraction of her age clashed with worlds on the line.
One fought for power, while one fought for others.
Only one would triumph.