- [Deep Infiltration Scout Flight] -

The ultra-light scout planes slice through the ravenous winds of the spirit world, their paper-thin metal frames vibrating against the violent bite of the storm that has taken over everything. Flashes of spectral lightning crackle across the sky, illuminating the warped landscape below the wing in motion — a twisted reflection of the reality of the mortal world. The mountains bend like the crooked teeth of forlorn giants, and the rivers flow with an unsettling thickness. Everything in the spirit world gives the impression of it being a prototype of the world they’re all from. Inside one of the cramped cockpits, Lieutenant Marcus Grau clenches the controls, his knuckles white against the chill of the plane’s metal interior. It’s cold as all hell in here. The plane is a barebones metal skeleton with no love to it at all. The only things keeping him warm are his jacket and gloves and the in-draft coming from the plane's roaring engine. The heavy storm howls outside, a cacophony of wailing spirits intermingled with the rush of air like a chorus of lost souls, which only seems fitting for where they are. He squints into the darkness, his goggles raised over his forehead, searching for any signs of the targets they have been ordered to observe.

“Can you see anything?” Corporal Helen's voice crackles through the radio, laced with anxiety. It sounds like there is some white noise to her signal, but it’s just the rain coming from both ends of the radio.

“No,” Marcus replies tersely, his heart racing as a shudder runs through the plane, the engine kicking for a moment as it protests having to work for whatever reason it might have. “Just shadows and more shadows.” Winds whip around the wing as they press deeper into the heartlands of hostile territory. Flashes of ghostly figures dance along the periphery of his vision, ephemeral and threatening, mere whispers in the storm. Even the clouds here are fucky. Sometimes he swears that he can see the silhouettes of people floating through them on the periphery. The sensation sends a chill down his spine; he can almost feel their eyes watching him. Although the truth is that he’s never actually confirmed such a sighting. They always seem to be gone when he turns his head…

“Steady, Marcus,” Helen breathes out, her voice barely masking her own trepidation. “Don’t wig out on me,” she says, hearing the uncertainty in his voice.

The thunder roars overhead, like the battle cries of unseen warriors, and Marcus swallows back his fear. He knows this reconnaissance mission could turn perilous at any moment. He glances at the flight instruments, but everything seems stable. For now. He braves another look outside toward his side as the planes divert course at an angle, bracing himself against the frames of the cockpit.

Below them, the ground churns and shimmers, revealing glimpses of ruins speared by skeletal trees that almost seem to be moving and clawing toward the planes flying above. Each flash of lightning in the air close to them reveals grotesque shapes on the writhing ground, their outlines rippling like mirages — crumbling cities abandoned to despair and blackwater.

“This place is a nightmare,” Marcus mutters, biting back the rising dread as he watches what looks like an old house move by itself — far too organically to be possible — setting itself up in the middle of the swamp, as if waiting for something. It’s more like a fleshy thing pretending to be a house than an actual house. “Did you get that?”

“It’s in the roll,” confirms his co-pilot cramped up behind him, manning the scout plane’s mounted camera. Other than a single small-caliber machine gun, it doesn’t have any armanents. Fast and light is the name of the game for them.

“It’s just a mission like any other, Marcus,” Helen counters, her voice steadying him. “We need data for command. Things are too weird here for the others to push in blind.” He nods, knowing she’s right, though the reassurance feels quite hollow. The mission feels cursed. But Helen, despite being of a lower rank than him, has a way of calming him down. She feels like the authority here, even though he really ought to be, by all rights.

Suddenly, a piercing wail crescendos above the wind, and any remnants of bravado evaporate. “What the hell is that?” Marcus shouts, his voice nearly swallowed by the roiling storm.

“I don’t… wait,” replies Helen, her tone changing, which he really doesn’t like. “Something’s wrong!” Helen’s voice rises, tension sharp. “We need to -”

Before she can finish, a shadow swoops from the darkness, a colossal figure emerging from the storm’s heart, wreathed in ethereal tendrils that rip through the air. Its eyes burn with a hollow blue glow, a malevolent presence locking onto their planes, pulling the weight of terror straight through Marcus’ gut and dangerously close to his pants.

“Evade! Evade!” he yells, yanking the controls to the right as Helen’s plane veers to the left. Something, like a living cloud, crashes through between them. It’s amorphous and vague, but he can feel it. Whatever the creature is, it has a presence that is maybe even more tangible than its odd body. The plane responds with a soul-shaking jolt as his wings slice perpendicular to the world. They veer off course, but the specter hounds them relentlessly.

“Helen, what exactly does the damn data say about this?!” he asks, trying to keep calm, though panic gnaws at his resolve as he makes the joke, watching in the plane’s mirror as the shape behind them crashes through plane five of the squadron. There isn’t even a fireball or an explosion. The plane just vanishes into the sky, as if it had flown into a fog bank and never come out of the other side.

“It’s a wraith! But they can’t be -” Her words are lost to the wind as the wraith lunges closer, its intangible shape creating several pairs of grasping hands that reach out to ensnare them.

“Hold on!” Marcus yells, leaning into a steep dive, his heart racing as adrenaline floods his veins. They spiral towards the shimmering ground below, desperate to shake free of the haunting creature. “Are you getting this?!” he asks feverishly, looking over his shoulder as his co-pilot swivels the camera toward their tale.

“I’m getting something! Damned if I know what it is, though, boss-man!” replies the co-pilot, his eyes pressed to the viewfinder as the plane swoops through the night. The wraith howls again, a sound that reverberates through the air, echoing around them and pressing in like a blanket of ice, which seems fitting given the crystals on the corners of the cockpit’s glass. The monster seems almost sentient as it hounds them through the sky, weaving through the wind. “Uh, Marcus.”

“Wait!” yells Marcus through gritted teeth.

“MARCUS!”

“WHAT?!” screams the pilot back at his co-pilot, who swivels the rear camera’s screen toward him, a massive amalgamation of something skin to a hundred faces smushed together into one present in the monitor.

“DODGE!” yells the co-pilot

Marcus screams through gritted teeth, each heartbeat pounding like a war drum in his ears as he yanks on the stick, the scout plane shooting off to the side in a tumble like an uncoordinated comet. Wild laughter comes over the radio, Helen’s voice howling.

“This isn’t funny, Helen!” shouts Marcus into the receiver, watching as the wraith shoots past them, chasing after plane number three instead. It seems almost indifferent to its target, always going after whatever it sees next, like some kind of feral dog chasing after the chickens in a hen-house.

“Sorry, sorry, I know,” she says into the radio, the stain of laughter still present on her voice as she calms down. “It’s just your scream was really funny.”

“Oh, yeah, very funny,” sighs Marcus, the two planes reconvening. Thunder hammers the sky around them. The cockpit shakes violently, and Marcus can feel the plane’s structure groan under the pressure of the vibration. “All planes, engage emergency protocol. Proceed to target Prime,” he orders into the radio. “If you haven’t been eaten yet. Three. Status?”

“MY STATUS IS FUCK!” yells a man’s voice over the radio, his plane’s screaming engine audible over the the communications. “Wait… wait…” says the man in a contrastingly quiet voice, calming down. “I think we lost it…” he mutters quietly, the channel going silent.

“Everyone, reduce altitude below cloud level,” orders Helen into the communications channel. “It can’t hide there.”

“Smart thinking, Helen,” replies Marcus, pulling the plane down lower. “Status, check in.”

“Plane two here,” replies Helen.

“Plane four here,” replies another pilot.

Three and five don’t respond.

“Plane three,” calls Marcus into the receiver, calling for the man who was just speaking a moment ago.

No response.

The flight reconvenes, the three planes escaping the cloud cover as they fly between the swampy world and the sky above. Marcus watches up through the canopy as they descend and as the clouds above them swirl.

The wraith is still there; he can see it watching them from above. But it won’t come out of the clouds and into the clear sky, where it would stand out. But eventually, it seems to lose interest and then fades back into the storm — the weight of which lingers as the remaining scout planes glide cautiously through the shrouded landscape of the spirit world. The air feels thick, almost viscous, with each breath pulling against an unseen gravity that saturates the atmosphere with an unsettling heaviness. Marcus leans forward in his cockpit, his eyes scanning the horizon, where islands float in the sky as if they were out at sea.

“Hey, look at that.” Helen gestures to the left, her voice low and reverent. “It’s… well, damn. It's beautiful. Get me a shot of that.” Marcus follows her gaze, and for a fleeting moment, the horror they’ve just escaped dims at the sight before them. The islands — floating above the black, soggy, corrupted ground below — are draped in phosphorescent flora, thick vines cascading over jagged rocks, glowing softly in shades of purple and green even in the storm. Luminous flowers pulse with an inner light, their petals unfurling like the fingers of curious spirits reaching for warmth. Beneath that beauty lies a grotesque reality, though — dark waves of a thick, corrupting sludge cling to the edge of the islands, foaming and bubbling with a malevolence that is palpable. These things have managed to avoid the corruption for a while, but it has begun to reach them all the way up here too. “The lab will love that. Try to get some shots of the in between there,” she adds, tipping her wings, the mounted camera on her plane turned toward the island, and taking snapshots.

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Marcus murmurs, steering between two of the islands, his heart steadying from the chase now. “Keep your eyes open. Stay low.”

The three remaining scout planes soar through the narrow gaps, maneuvering through the twisted shapes of massive trees that jut out like fingers clawing at the sky. They look like ‘fake’ world trees, almost. Like prototypes. These ethereal monuments appear both alive and dead — their bark is slick with the black ooze and sap that glimmers ominously in the light.

The radio is filled with whispers, barely audible beneath the soft thrum of the engines, hinting at secrets long forgotten and stories left to decay. Marcus stares at his receiver.

“I hear it too,” says Helen quietly, knowing what he was about to say. “I get the feeling that we’re unwelcome here,” Helen says, her grip tightening on the control yoke.

“No, no, I couldn't imagine why,” Marcus replies, unease crawling up his spine as he takes in the horizon. “Get that on film." A clicking comes from behind him.

As they fly further into the heartlands of the spirit world, the landscape reveals itself. The sludge beneath them shimmers darkly, its surface occasionally erupting in restless bubbles, releasing noxious fumes that swirl into tendrils, waiting to consume. Eventually, the ground itself becomes so soft and mushy that it almost looks like water, like an ocean of sludge. Sure enough, after a few minutes more and after they bypass the last of the floating islands, that really is all that remains down below them. Blackwater. And the black ocean churns and swirls, thick waves of poison sludge crashing and trying to rise up to grab hold of the planes cutting overhead.

The third plane draws closer to them to strengthen the crackling radio signal. Its pilot, Allen, peering cautiously over his panel. “What do we know about the terrain here?”

“Well. It’s slimy, dangerous, and unwelcoming — so it’s a little like your mom,” she quips.

“Ha. Ha,” replies Allen dryly. The rolling of his eyes can be heard through his tone.

“Not much; we’re the first ones in this deep,” Marcus admits, scanning the shifting layout below. “Reports mentioned strange formations, but the extent of this blackwater is… unexpected. Is that camera rolling?”

“I’m trying to take photos but… there’s not really any sense of scale to them,” replies his co-pilot. “It just looks like the camera lens is blocked. It’s all just black,” he concedes. “I need some contrast for scale or something,” he notes.

Marcus looks back ahead, diverting. “I think I got you some,” says the pilot. “On me.”

The planes glide over clusters of floating rocks, some barely the size of a house, each adorned with pulsating vegetation and strange crystalline structures protruding from their surfaces. The crystals catch the dim light of the cracking storm above them, fracturing it into a spectrum of haunting colors that dance across the landscape with strobes following every lightning strike. It is mesmerizing in an odd way, like an out of sync heartbeat.

“Everything feels alive,” Helen says quietly, echoing Marcus’s thoughts. “It almost feels like it’s breathing, doesn’t it?” she asks as they soar past the broken formation from a long, distant past, the cameras clicking as they take photos of the decaying scenery.

"Breathing?" asks Marcus. "Looks more like bloating to me." He shakes his head, searching the area around them. The environment fluctuates as if the world itself is conscious and responsive to their presence. Tendrils of black ink stretch toward the planes, and he pulls away. Following his evasion, the planes soar higher, leaving the sludge behind. In the distance, swirling fog envelops another cluster of islands, obscuring the landscape beyond them. Oddly enough, they look like the same exact islands as before, as if they had been set back by some unseen power.

“That’s weird… Should we go in for a closer look?” Allen suggests.

“No,” Marcus replies sharply. “Keep a safe distance. We need to get to Tango Prime before we hit half tank,” he explains, looking down at his fuel gauge.

“Marcus!” Helen’s sudden shout rips through his thoughts. “Something’s moving down there! In the water!” calls a frantic voice over the radio. “There’s something in the water!”

He snaps his attention below, his heart leaping, and a knot forms in his throat. The sludge churns violently — a shape emerging from its depths, distorted and grotesque. But it can really only be described as a shape and not as anything more defined than that. It lurches, a figure comprised of twisted limbs and empty holes that veer between being hollow eye sockets and screaming mouths. It pulsates like a festering wound.

“What the hell is that?” Allen gasps, tracing the shape below with his gaze.

“Just another abomination,” Marcus breathes, feeling the thrumming energy pulsate through the air as the shape in the water moves below them. The scale of it is hard to define, like his co-pilot said before. There’s nothing here anymore for as far as the eye can see except blackwater in all directions. But it may as well be the size of a mountain, from what he could tell. “Can’t wait till we close this shithole back off for good,” he says, the planes increasing their speed. "When I die, make sure my soul stays trapped within my rotting corpse forever, okay?"

"You got it," replies Helen. The figure dissipates back into the sludge, vanishing as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind rippling echoes across the surface of the blackwater ocean. “It’s not safe here,” Helen murmurs, dread creeping back into her voice. “Let’s get to Tango Prime and get out of here,” she says.

“Agreed,” Marcus replies, his voice firm, a spine of steel reestablished through silent resolve. They shift their formation, the planes aligning.

“Ag-” starts Allen, his voice turning into a scream suddenly. Marcus yanks on the yoke, his plane and his co-pilot screaming as they lurch into a sudden climb, as behind them the ocean rises as if a tsunami had formed from nothing at all. A massive, black wave of endless screaming faces that look like they are drowning forever launches out of the ocean, careening toward the sky. He pushes the throttle forward, the blackwater just barely missing his plane’s tail as the wave crashes back down again into the disturbed ocean.

“The hell?! ALLEN!” shouts Marcus into the receiver, watching as the ocean begins to settle.

Plane three of the original five is nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck,” whispers Helen’s voice over the radio a moment later as the two of them reconvene. “Is everything trying to kill us here?” he asks.

The console of his plane rattles as his clenched fist hits the metal plating. “Keep a steady altitude here,” he orders. “No more distractions,” he explains, listening to the clicking coming from behind him as the photographer takes his shots of the resettling ocean.

The storm rages violently above them. The black ocean sits deceivingly calmly below them. And the two last planes float steadily toward the dark horizon, trying not to get too close to either element.

“Look ahead!” Helen's voice crackles through the radio, infused with awe.

He follows her instructions; his eyes wander to a structure looming in the center of the spirit world, a titanic silhouette against the backdrop of swirling fog and drifting islands. It is a tower — an inverted white stone spire that suspends from the underside of a floating island larger than any other they’ve seen so far. Its majestic form contrasts starkly with the dark sludge that oozes down from it like viscous, foul honey from a rotten hive. “Tango Prime,” Marcus breathes, both reverence and dread twisting in his gut. The pilots have heard rumors and whispered tales of a core structure that serves as the heart of this blighted world, but now it stands before them, tangible and daunting. It’s real. “Hey, get th-”

“- Already on it,” answers the co-pilot before he can finish, the camera taking snapshots by the dozens of the structure that is the primary target of the assault operation.

This is where everything stems from. All of the poison, all of the rot, all of the monsters and all of the corruption — it all, for whatever reason — begins here.

“If it was this easy to get here, they should’ve sent some bombers instead of us,” notes Helen.

“I don’t think a few bombers will cut it…” remarks Marcus, looking at the massive structure that is larger than anything he’s ever seen. Even the world tree, standing tall against the sky, fails to compare in size to whatever this leviathan construction is — a tower of the gods. “Let’s circle it,” he orders.

The closer they get, the more the tower reveals its odd majesty. The white stone surface shimmers faintly, blemished yet beautiful even below the ooze, as if the structure is both a part of this entire realm’s decay and still somehow a solitary bastion of former glory. Black sludge streams down its sides, a slow trickle that gives the illusion of life — a dark, oozing river that slides toward the ocean below as the source of all of it. This thing is the fountain from which the poison comes.

Marcus taps the controls inside the cockpit, activating the plane-mounted secondary recording devices. Audio, temperature, wind speed, and everything else in between begin being recorded by a state-of-the-art automated system. Flickers of light dance across the displays as images of the tower etch themselves into bands of cassettes. “Capture everything,” he instructs, keeping his eyes fixed on the spire. “Command wants to know what it smells like.”

As they circle the structure, taking a full minute to even begin rounding its suspended base — an inverted island hanging over their heads with upside-down trees and fields — the air thickens with an odd heaviness, the sound of their engines mixing with the unearthly stillness that blankets this part of the world. A faint humming resonates from the tower, an undercurrent that vibrates in their bones, tugging at something deep within.

“This is unreal,” Helen comments, his voice reflective, all traces of earlier tension replaced by awe. “It’s like we’re witnessing history. Or… what’s left of it. Hey, Marcus, did you ever read alternative scripture?” she asks.

“More like witnessing a curse,” Marcus adds, his tone dropping with a hint of sorrow. “And no, just what my nana hammered into my head when I was a boy,” he mutters, looking out of the window.

The radio crackles. “It’s like the story of Isaiah, remember?” she asks. “Do you think…?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Marcus adds. “Not really religious after the whole childhood thing,” he explains, the words tasting bitter as they leave his mouth. His eyes are locked on the tower. The structure draws some primal attention in him, the dark sludge spilling from its structure. It really does feel like… something he knows from a past life. It’s familiar and strange at the same time.

A whispering comes through the radio.

“What was that?” she asks, sounding dazed.

Marcus shakes his head. “Felt like some kind of… manipulation. Magical maybe? Some kind of aura?” he looks down at his console. “Sensor’s got nothing. You?”

“Negative,” replies Hellen.

“Fuck it. Let’s get out of here,” says Marcus. He glances at the images on his dashboard as the co-pilot’s photos display on a small side monitor. “We’ll have to send these to command immediately. They need to know what we’ve found. Besides, this place gives me the creeps.”

“Agreed,” Marcus says, another round of shivers racing down his spine. The gnawing fear lingers within the allure, intertwining like threads of shadow and light fighting for dominance. “Let’s get out of here. There’s something… off about this place.”

“Yeah, anyway, where the hell is Tango?” asks Helen. “There’s not a single monster here,” she mutters, confused.

“Not our question to answer,” replies Marcus. “I’m calling it. We’re out. Warm up your séance drive.”

“Way ahead of you. She’s cooking now,” replies Helen.

The two remaining scout planes realign, taking their last photos with their camera’s mounted toward the tower behind them, which is so massive that it almost never seems to shrink at all as they fly away.

Pilots Marcus and Helen each grab hold of the throttle down to the lower right of their seats, adjusting their trajectory back toward home. There’s just enough fuel for one mad sprint back using the dangerous prototype thruster, hence why these scouting planes are so barebones. The original war hero, a man with no name other than Pilot, passed the design onto them after having had it refined by several high-grade enchanters.

“...Hey, Marcus,” Helen whispers, her voice cautious, filled with unease. “What if there’s nothing out here because it’s all inside the tower?” she asks quietly.

“Again, that’s not our problem to deal with,” he replies, the unease creeping into his core. The gentle whir of the engines grows deafening in the thick silence that envelops them. “Our orders were to take photos of the outside. Let’s go home. I need to dry off. Activate drive.”

“Affirmative,” replies Helen, the two planes letting out a high-pitched banshee’s wail next to each other in synchronization.

Then, a second later, they shoot off toward the horizon with incredible speed, tearing through the honey-comb webbing that appears throughout the sky. Behind them is left nothing but a loud, supersonic cracking like a gunshot that echoes over the water and throughout the massive open archways covering the white tower’s facade.

The two planes leave, but something in the tower stirs because of the world-shattering noise of their experimental thrusters. Something is awakening — something that perhaps should have remained forgotten.