Chapter 11: Cataclysm, Pt 11
The ground under your feet shakes with incredible intensity, and the rumbling is almost as deafening as the gunfire. Which makes sense, seeing as there's tens of thousands of insectoid legs out there, all moving with frenzied abandon.
Each of them drum against the concrete into a furious crescendo, causing the world near you to quake. It's enough to cause the buildings all around to start to fall apart, specifically the ones that have already been damaged a great deal.
Huge chunks of them break off and careen to the ground with heavy thuds. They crunch and crush numerous insects on impact. The heavy wet thuds are punctuated by all manner of insectoid screaming and wailing.
Though that hardly slows their advance. Insects push forward from the rear and climb over and around the fallen debris.
Kaja's blade slices cleanly through a number of insects, splashing their gruesome blue-black innards all over the place. She swings it up and around as quickly as she can, then slashes it across the road, cutting down dozens of insects at a time. Then, she swings it back as quickly as she can.
As she sweeps the road, a half dozen soldiers or so fire controlled three-round bursts into whatever makes it past Kaja's reaping. They make simple, slight movements as they bear their aim on insect after insect, and rip into each of them with devastating bursts.
Though you certainly feel a sense of fear emanating from each and every person around you, they don't let that overwhelm them. Each of them exude an overwhelming sense of duty and dedication, and that helps them maintain their deadly focus.
More than that, you can sense just how mentally exhausting it is for them to maintain said focus, and keep firing with extreme precision.
"You two!" cries the officer in charge. "Get over here and outta the way! You're in the middle of everything!"
You and Kaja realize that you are indeed kind of in the way, and head over to his station as fast as you can. It's only a hop, skip, and jump away, and Kaja is very easily able to keep her concentration on swinging the blade around as she moves.
"You're the one making that weapon swing around, right?" he asks Kaja.
"Yeah, trying to anyway," she replies. "Why, you need me to do something else with it?"
"No, you're doing great. Could you move it a bit over to the left? There's a concentration of those bugs incoming."
"No prob."
Kaja adjusts where she's swinging the blade, and moves it further towards the left of the street, as requested. Then she tears through a particularly concentrated area infested with the insects, who have begun to climb over each other as they skitter.
"Also, how far can you swing it out?" the officer asks Kaja.
"No idea," she replies. "I could probably fling it pretty far. But I probably wouldn't be able to get it back. Best I don't try anything crazy right now."
You glance over at Kaja and notice that she's beginning to strain as she swings the huge blade around. Moving it around so violently is clearly taking a toll on her. It dawns on you that it's probably taking a whole lot of her concentration to use it, just like with the soldiers and their weapons.
Except, unlike them, she isn't exactly practiced with her weapon - all she's been doing with it is carry it around thus far. Moving it the way she is currently is clearly taxing her mentally.
As you ponder your predicament, a half dozen soldiers come up from behind and go to relieve the ones up front. All they do is tap their shoulders three times to let them know they're there. Then, one by one, they stop firing and allow their relief to step in their place.
The transition is relatively seamless, and their lethality as a whole barely abates.
As the relief soldiers settle into position, the relieved soldiers back away with relaxed shoulders and stances. Each of them are breathing hard and heavy as they clear their weapons and reload their magazines.
One of them steps up to the commanding officer, even as he's recuperating and checking his equipment.
"Sir, permission to remove body armor," he says.
"Absolutely not," the officer replies.
"Well we ain't exactly getting shot at, so all it's doing is weighing us down."
"Well, regulations say they've gotta stay on during combat operations, no exceptions."
"Pardon me sir, but regulations didn't account for this kinda firefight against this kinda enemy. If we don't-"
Their argument is cut short when the ground shakes with a violent rumble, and almost causes all of you to fall down. It's definitely enough to cause you to stumble, and for Kaja's concentration to slip.
The blade she's controlling slams into the asphalt edge-first, cutting into two or three insects before embedding itself into the ground. At the same time, most of the soldiers at the front line pause their firing just for that moment, in order to keep themselves standing.
There's just enough of a lull in activity that the insects surge forward as a result, and gain precious ground.
Thankfully all of you recover rather quickly, and the slaughter begins anew again.
Kaja picks up the blade as swiftly as she can, and gets back to cutting down swaths of insects. At the same time, the soldiers around you switch to full-auto for only a few seconds, and empty out their magazines. It's as though they're attempting to catch up to that lost moment.
The relieved soldiers immediately hop to their sides to back them up as they reload, to keep the pressure up. But despite all their efforts, it hardly matters. That momentary lapse of defense has allowed the insects to gain a little bit of ground. Far more than any of you like. More than that, they're slowly gaining even more.
You can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stick up as more and more of those bugs get ever closer. They're going to overrun you, slowly but surely.
It dawns on you that you need to help somehow, that you can't just stand there doing nothing. If anything, you should do your best to try to relieve Kaja, so she can rest, if even for a moment.
But again, you don't know what you can do besides maybe use your Telepathy. Your Third Eye certainly won't do much - at least as far as you can tell. Performing a Surge like you earlier would affect everyone around you, not just the bugs.
Still, what would your Telepathy accomplish though? Would you try to reach out and talk to the bugs? And even if you could, how could you possibly talk all of them down? Especially since they all seem to be going absolutely berserk…
You decide to try anyway. It's the very least you could do. Certainly better than doing nothing, right?
You open up your mind and sweep outward with your Telepathy in an attempt to reach out to as many of those insects as you possibly can. As you open up and reach out, the low throbbing at the sides of your head begin to sharpen and take shape. The pain intensifies the more you spread yourself out, seemingly enveloping your mind as the moments pass.
Despite that, you keep going. And you do your best to sense the insects' minds. But unlike human thought patterns, you simply can't quite make out what they're thinking. It's all a mad jumble of signals and gestures and tones and movements that are somehow interrelated to each other.
It's almost as though they're all moving and thinking in unison, but with enough individuality to warrant a repetition of their individual signal. Or, rather, all their individual "speeches" are like all the others around them, just slightly in or out of step from each other.
As though their thoughts travel through every single one in waves, but originating from different points within the swarm itself.
It dawns on you that they have a hive mind, which is why you're having difficulty understanding them at all. But maybe, you can tap into their patterns, somehow. And maybe by doing that you can talk them down. If you can figure out how to talk to them at all.
You try to suss out what they mean by a certain chirp or wail or flicking of antennae or bristling of setae, but find no meaning to any of them. It's simply far too alien for you to comprehend. Certainly not while you're already pressed for time.
Instead of trying to find a way to translate how they communicate, you attempt to focus on their emotional state. A part of you thinks that if they're enraged, maybe you could try to calm them down. Like how you believe your despair had driven away the shadow creature earlier.
Something like that anyway.
You switch your perspective slightly, and focus on their emotions while tuning out their conscious thoughts. Though you're unsure how exactly to do it, you find it relatively easy to actually accomplish. A bit like turning the dial on something. Like a radio, or a volume knob.
And as you do so, you find yourself flooded with the insect's collective mood. It rushes at you with such intensity that you're almost knocked off your feet. It's potent enough that you can feel it wash over you in waves.
Though you open up expecting a great deal of anger and bloodthirstiness coming from them, you instead find yourself awash with fear and dread. And it's a deeply existential kind - run or die.
This surprises you a great deal - you imagine that their charge towards all of you has been their attempt to kill all of you. Because maybe they've got this instinctive need to wipe you out, the same way people tend to wipe out insects in their homes and such.
It only makes sense to you - they find these 'pests' everywhere, and have some deep need to remove them.
But in the end, it turns out they're afraid of something, and they're frantically running away from it with everything they've got. The entire hive is filled with absolute fear and dread - one that's driving them to the point of ruin, right into the tip of a blade, or into a storm of bullets. A fear and dread that far exceeds the amount of fear and dread that any of you are able to apply in return.
They're not here to wipe you all out - you all just happen to be in their highly destructive path as they run from something.
Your heart thumps at the thought of what that something could be. So you reach out further with your Telepathy in an attempt to figure out what. Your mind stretches out past the tens of thousands of insects further down the street - they're practically flooding it as they stream down in your direction.
All those minds, clamoring for escape - it's like a sea of deadly desperation.
And on the other side of it all, right where the insects end and that something begins, you realize why they're so afraid. Why they're running for their collective lives. The blood drains from your face as that familiar presence reaches the very edge of your Telepathic perception.
Its bottomless darkness tells you everything you need to know what's out there.
"The shadow thing's back," you say breathlessly. "And I think it's… it's coming this way. These bugs? All they're doing is trying to get away from it as best they can."
Kaja's eyes go wide the moment you mention the shadow creature. You can feel her heart thump with fear. It perfectly matches the fear that has settled inside you as well.
"It's coming here?" she asks nervously. "To us?
"Yeah, I think," you reply with a shaky voice. "I can sense it getting closer and closer, as it nips at the bugs from the rear. I can feel 'em getting snuffed out a dozen at a time."
A gravely worried sigh escapes Kaja's mouth, even as the ground rumbles more and more violently, as the insects slowly but surely crawl forward further and further.
Though everyone's doing their best to keep the tide back, there's little any of you can do against their eventual encroachment. And with the shadow creature right behind them? It all seems hopeless. Even Kaja's starting to feel that way.
"What do we do?" she asks. "Does it want this blade back? Do we hand it over? Do we fight it? Does it just want to kill everything? What the hell?!"
Outside, the blade wavers as her own control of it weakens, though it still cuts as easily as it always has.
You're unable to answer her - it's not like you know what to do. Between the both of you, Kaja's the one who knows everything, knows what to do, knows all the answers. Then again, who would know what to do at the end of the world?
Part of you wants to grab Kaja, find your Dad, and run away from all this. Why bother with any of it? Who cares what happens to all these people? But once again, the better part of you stops yourself. None of you are gonna get very far if you simply run off.
If you do run, what then? Out to that impossible heat? Into more dangerous chaos? Into the path of other fleeing creatures and insects? At least here, there's plenty who can protect the three of you from most of what's out there. That is, except that shadow creature.
A myriad of questions and thoughts batter your mind, even as the pain begins to become acute.
But how could you beat it? Like you had done last time? You could try again, but you're not sure if you can replicate that feat. And if you do, what would it do to the insects? What about the other telepaths? What would it do to them?
Worst of all, at what point will you stop caring about what would happen to them, and simply lash out due to your own frenzied desperation?
Chapter 12: Cataclysm, Pt 12
You push back against your self doubt, and your apprehensiveness. If you don't help in doing anything at all, you might all end up dead. Either trampled to death by the rampaging bugs, or erased by the incoming shadow creature.
Either scenario frightens you terribly.
As you rack your brain in search of a way through these insurmountable problems, the relieved soldiers rush to reload all of their spent magazines and strap them into their pouches. The few that are done faster than the rest of their team quickly tag in and get straight to the fight.
They slip into their roles rather easily, and enter their hyper focused combat states with little issue. They clearly know what they need to do, something you wish you had insight on.
It's the same with Kaja. She's certainly not a soldier, and doesn't have their particular brand of discipline. But she still takes to her task easily. Everyone around you seems to know what to do and how to do it, which leaves you desperately wanting.
You can only watch in awe as they all bring what they've got to bear to this massive fight. In fact, you can see each and every one of them get more and more worn out as time goes on, as they pour their whole selves into this harrowing defense.
Much like the insects attacking you, everyone is working in conjunction as best they can. And it dawns on you that even though people don't operate with a hive-mind like the insects, they seem to settle into a similar thought pattern.
It's like they all act as one - when Kaja swipes at a dozen or so insects, the soldiers do their best to catch stragglers. And it's the same when it goes the other way. If the soldiers concentrate their fire into a particularly nasty cluster of bugs, Kaja sweeps in to pick off any they don't catch. Even the officer is swept up in their orchestra, directing and conducting the carnage with a deft and practiced hand.
Their thoughts and emotions swirl all around, indirectly affecting each other, and guiding their actions as a whole. When one of them moves, the rest follow suit in their own way, and add to the symphony with their own destructive notes.
It occurs to you that you could, perhaps, influence it. After all, only you can see how everyone is swept up by everyone else around them. You could help the officer conduct it all, somehow, some way.
You wonder if you could do something like abate the fears they're all feeling - that lingering dread that seems to be eating away at their cores. It's like an acid that's constantly wearing away at their resolve and will to fight. The closer the bugs get, the more they're worn away.
But of course, you're not sure how to do anything of the sort. Remove their fear? Help them overcome it? How on Earth could you possibly do anything like that? You have no clue what courage is, what it means to face what's out there.
You're extremely afraid, just being this close to all the fighting.
All of them certainly know how to overcome fear, far more than you do. After all, they're right at the front lines of it all, facing it right this moment.
The bugs! They're a hive mind, right?!
Maybe if you can't affect the people around you, maybe you could affect the bugs! And you won't have to sweep across every single one of them - you just have to affect enough to cause those individual thoughts and emotions to ripple out and spread to the rest.
If you could do that…
You grit your teeth and close your eyes as you reach out Telepathically once again. And in doing so, you feel that familiar sharp pain stab you in the head. But you push it away as much as you can, and instead concentrate on the task at hand.
You do your best to take a page from Kaja, from the soldiers all around you, from the officer, and focus. You train your mind on a cluster of insects just beyond the front, far enough away that they won't get automatically slaughtered by your defenses. They need to be alive long enough for you to project through them.
If you can just counter the fear that the shadow creature is exuding, and make the insects fear all you more, it might just turn them in the other direction.
Just like that time when you pushed away the shadow creature, you dig into the depths of your soul, and brandish your despair and your fear and your insecurity. Then you inject it into that cluster with as much strength as you can muster.
It works, to some small degree. Many of the insects in the cluster begin to exude a fear about what's in front of them, equally as much as what's behind them. And it spreads to the insects around them, outwards, further and further.
They echo your emotions, and spread your desperation and helplessness to the point where handfuls of them simply stop in their tracks, unable to act.
But the recursion is slow, at least in comparison to how fast they're smashing themselves against your defenses. The few that stop are soon overrun by their own, and trampled by dozens of others as they scramble for safety.
Their chitin is cracked and shattered by their sharp insectoid legs.
And thankfully, they don't echo out whatever pain they feel, if they feel any pain at all. You have no doubts that if they did so, you would be instantly crippled by the feeling. They all would be.
Besides, you have your own crippling pain to deal with. You certainly don't need any more to weigh you down and break you.
You fall to your knees as the pounding in your head increases to unbearable heights. It's as though the pain wraps itself around your head, and squeezes with preternatural might. You can feel every part of your head strain: your eyes, your ears, your skull, your jaw, everything.
Part of you wants to plunge yourself into an icy-cold lake simply to alleviate what you're feeling, to stop what you're doing and collapse. But there's no such relief for you. All that exists is the promise of destruction, and you use that fact to prevent yourself from giving up.
Not only that, but you simply can't imagine Kaja, or your Dad, getting cut down by any of those bugs. Or by that shadow creature. You refuse to see a future where that happens.
So you do your best to push past the blinding pain and continue to pour those debilitating emotions into the insects. Though you have no idea how long you can hold out. The pain is so much stronger than before, and you feel your consciousness begin to slip.
You feel your body waver, and your consciousness starts to narrow as you push more of yourself into the insects. It's right at that moment that you pour everything you've got into the bugs and flood absolutely everything that you're feeling into the bugs. Like a kind of last-ditch effort.
And everything you've got bottled up inside sweeps through the small cluster of insects like a wildfire. In turn, they echo your raw emotions and spread them to the rest of their hive. They start a hypnotic chittering that rises through the din and the fighting and the screaming and the dying, which courses through every bug around them.
As a result, all that you are is echoed through the hive, up down the entirety of their ranks. Most of them practically stop in their tracks as they echo that same hypnotic chittering, which heightens to a vast, deafening crescendo.
Everyone around you is utterly stunned at the sight, but more so by the sound of it all.
The chittering easily drowns out all other sounds to the point where it invades all your ears and dazes you. Your minds are literally stunned to the point that many of you fall over stumbling - your inner ears are completely thrown out of whack as your sense of balance is thoroughly upturned.
You yourself stop your Telepathic attack, unable to keep going simply due to the pain you feel. It's soon replaced by that dizzying insectoid note that all but causes you to black out and fall over. Although your eyes are shut through all of this, you can feel the ground shudder and shake beneath you.
More than that, you can sense as the insects scramble in every direction away from you. And also away from the shadow creature.
They skitter up the buildings and down the streets by the thousands as panic and terror pincers them. Some even dig down through the asphalt and concrete in an attempt to burrow into the ground. Every single insect does everything they can to get away as fast as they can.
You can literally feel their hive mind splinter as the hive itself breaks apart, as each of the insects flee in whatever direction they see fit. As though you've imbued them with some small sense of individuality and shattered their sense of one-ness.
At least, temporarily. Even as they scatter, you feel the hive mind begin to recover. Though that doesn't stop the insects from continuing to run off.
The chittering and the rumbling abates moment after moment as they flee from the area. Certainly more than enough to allow all of you to recover from the dissonant chorus.
Kaja leans down and helps pick you up off your hands and knees, even as the soldiers around you watch with absolute awe at what's transpiring right in front of them. The insects literally evacuate from the street ahead with absolute abandon, leaving behind the cracked and broken bodies of their dead.
Thousands of fractured chitinous shells litter the intersection in front of all you, each one dripping with fresh blue-black ichor. It spills out onto the shattered asphalt and concrete surrounding all of you, and coats it all with a thick layer of bug innards.
Of course, that sulfuric smell begins to diffuse into the air, and threatens to suffocate each and every one of you. It causes some of you to cough and gag. One or two soldiers even retch violently from the smell, though surely the sight of all those insectoid corpses heightens their nausea significantly.
With Kaja's help, you steady yourself just as the last few remaining insects skitter away.
You want to look at what you've helped create with some sense of pride, but all you can feel is a deepening sickness enveloping you. And that isn't just due to all the bug guts and rancid smells. It's the pain in your head, still pounding away despite the fact that you've long since stopped using Telepathy.
Thankfully, it ebbs away as the moments pass by, albeit too slowly for your own preference.
"Did you do that?" Kaja asks you. Her face is a mixture of worry and pride and relief, which part of you is glad to see. It's nice to be looked up to, for once. If even for only a few seconds.
"Maybe a bit," you say, your voice strained.
"You shoudn't have pushed yourself that hard. I mean, thank you. But still. You're a mess right now."
"Didn't exactly have a choice, right? It's do that, or get… I dunno, skewered. Or worse."
Kaja hugs you tightly, and you feel her warmth on your body. The feeling puts you at ease almost instantly, and the headache that plagues you seems to abate even faster as a result. You embrace her in return, with as much strength as you can muster, but you feel completely drained, both physically and mentally.
Perhaps emotionally, too. You put quite a lot of yourself and your innermost feelings into those bugs.
You gasp as you realize something, just as you sense its approach. It has been coming towards you since the beginning of this mess, and it hasn't stopped or slowed in the slightest. Not only that, but you can sense that whatever you've projected hardly has hardly affected it.
Its bleak all-encompassing ephemeral shadow seems to swallow up more and more of the street the closer it gets to you.
"The shadow creature thing!" you exclaim. "It's still headed this way!"
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
0 Power
stone 
Paragraph comment