บท 13: Ripples and Tremors
Despite doing our best to root humanity's assorted sub-species within the realm of the rational, all of human history is still basically just down to "magic."
Most researchers and scholars within the STEM fields will reject this notion while there are few who will wryly agree.
The endless march of progress that makes the average person's daily life possible is hidden behind a wall of mystery. We still don't know how consciousness works, we've barely begun to understand the mechanisms that make up our bodies actually function.
Even now in the current age when we've figured out the secrets behind making machines smaller than a grain of sand, effective methods for safely altering the human genome, and the principles behind faster-than-light flight, we still barely understand the underlying principles behind all those discoveries.
Consciousness still escapes us, and you can drive physicists to drink simply by asking them to try and explain exactly how 'power' based flight was supposed to work, or why certain power users could throw cars without having the vehicles crumble in their hands, when others couldn't.
Clarks law and its reverse has continued to get the better of humanity. We unravel the magic around us to make it science, only to find that behind that science lies yet more magic.
In truth, in the current age using the words 'powers-based' was the academic equivalent of mumbling very quickly through the vaguer parts of your argument. In much the same way hip-hop artists mumble through the parts of their lyrics that can't be matched with proper rhymes. With most academics knowing to empathetically nod along and ignore those words if they hoped to stay sane and get any meaningful work done.
If you want to have some fun, you can go into your nearest university physics or chemistry department and ask them what exactly the 'prana' that was so vital to so many modern technologies was supposed to be.
By around the point someone starts mentioning string theory you would likely get to watch the old men come to figurative (sometimes literal) blows.
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Walder and Henri walked into the power station's core room, and as they did, they blow felt a strange wind blow through their clothing. The wind ignoring their clothing and armor as it chilled both youths to their bones.
"Ah….Well, S***. That's uh...That's not what the drones picked up, Walder." said Henri. Switching out her rifle's light explosive rounds, for a magazine filled with heavier munitions that packed more 'umph'.
"Yes...Yes it is not." said Walder. Stepping forwards and planting himself right in front of Henrika as if he were trying to hide her from the eyes of the baleful, blue-bodied, entity that squatted in the center of its room. Its body so large it could barely fit in the chamber. Its skin covered in hundreds of bloodshot, unblinking, eyes.
"And...It looks like I was also incorrect to surmise that this isn't like a videogame where entering a boss chamber locks you in for the fight...it seems that the space behind us has quite literally ceased to exist...Damn." said Henri. Gloomily scrutinizing her tablet and the dire readings it was giving her.
Walder chuckled dryly, not a hint of mirth in his voice.
"Look on the bright side….At least we now know what Nabrok did to get its whole population turned into trogs."
"Huh? We do?" said Henri. Blinking slowly.
Walder nodded, his expression.
"That creature with its limbs sawed off and plugged into the generators and operation equipment, and the top of its skull replaced with a big-ass computer, is an Argus Panoptes. A many-eyed giant of the fifth dimensional plane. An extradimensional being. Speaking more specifically, that is an Argus Panoptes….A late-stage adolescent Argus Panoptes...They grow slowly...despite their heights…."
Henri gazed from Walder to the giant. One line of thought, wondering exactly how the young man knew all these things. The other lines of thought simply wanting to hear more…
"And what does this have to do with an entire world getting trogified?" asked Henri.
"Let me paint you a picture...Imagine a sufficiently advanced alien race running into an even more advanced race of massive beings with glowing blue flesh and hundreds of eyes. The giants fly over the planet in what looks like a battleship…Naturally, the Nabrokians believe their getting invaded. The aliens fight back, win, and realize that the surviving giants are a unique physiology that can amongst other things, serve as an answer to the world's power supply problems...So they make the best use of them….Years go by, and things are fine, then one day another ship flies by, a bigger ship with even bigger giants...It turns out what the Nabrokians 'defeated' was a school bus, filled with teenagers...it turns out those enemies they were taking apart and using for research and resources, were children….Their parents have come looking for them...and now that they know what the Nabrokians have done, they aren't inclined to show mercy…"
Henri frowned, imagining an entire ship full of giant even bigger than the one before her. Her mind went on to guess that most likely the adult giants wouldn't have simply handled things on their own. They would have called their friends and family, and perhaps a few related local authorities…
Henri imagined an entire fleet of ships filled with many-eyed, mountain sized, extradimensionals all of them filled with a righteous fury, and then she shivered.
"....Exactly how do you know all this again?" asked Henri. Her voice soft to the point of being barely audible.
"He...just told me." said Walder.
Henri met the giant's gaze and felt her eyes begin to throb, feeling as if they were on the verge of bursting within their sockets. Sensing danger, she quickly looked away returning her attention to Walder who seemed to have grown several inches since the moment he'd stepped into the room.
"He's not saying anything…" said Henri.
"That's just cause you can't hear it. You're 'unenlightened'...Which is a good thing. It means you're exactly as sane as you should be."
Henri blinked and then decided that this wasn't the time to try and have the man unpack that whole sentence for her.
"So…if you can speak to this thing...Any chance we can get out of her without a fight?" asked Henri.
Walder shook his head.
"You know, how in the horror movies, all angry ghosts are 'indiscriminately' angry regardless of whether you had anything to do with the wrongs that had been done to them or not…?" said Walder.
Henri nodded, her expression growing more wary as she activated every safety measure and protective feature she had in her gear.
"Yeah…"
"This is sort of like that….Nabrok was a planet powered by dead children, and this big fellow was one of the few kids that weren't found by the adult Argus Panoptes...The Nabrokians hid him too well...Now he's all grown up, and super insane...and super pissed…."
"Well, s****."
"I'll take point. You try to find a weakness on this thing." said Walder.
"I'm the one who's supposed to find a weakness on this thing?!" exclaimed Henri.
Walder turned to her with a sly smile on his face. Unwitting revealing that his eyes had turned to crimson fire surrounded by darkness, and there was pair of what looked like red and silver horns on his head.
"Well, you 'are' the former heroes academy student...besides Argus Panoptes were said to be near undefeatable...So I'm going to need help figuring out how to bring this big boy down…"
Henri scowled, aware of the man's ploy. She could recognize a half-truth when she saw one, and it wasn't lost on her that staying back and reading the situation as was her specialty would also sideline her during the period while she was supposed to be analyzing the extradimensional being in her attempt to find a weakness.
Walder rushed forwards, moving faster than he'd ever moved in his current life and current body.
He could feel a powerful surge of anomalous energy heading in his and Henri's direction and instead of ducking out of the way, he was heading right for it.
A beam of crackling white plasma shot out of the cyborg-giant's largest eye. Walder continued dashing forward, his head, shoulders, and back tilted forwards like that of a charging bull. He met the white beam head on, and the plasma washed over him, shorting out his shields and eating through the combat armor that used to be his coat.
His skin was cooked away, his flesh was charred in charcoal, but his bones and his blood, the two portions of his person that were most strongly affected by his eldritch soul, withstood the heat.
His blood sang answering the giant's silent screams with a cacophonous roar, like the war cry of a host of angels and an army of fiends clashing together. The song turned his bones into a material harder than diamond, creating an illusion that his body was something more absolute than physical law.
A concerned Henri would watch Walder take the brunt of the metal-giant's attack. The blue-white plasma washing over his body and sizzling as it ate through his armor, clothing, and flesh.
"Grimwald!? S***, are you okay?" said Henri.
"I'm fine...just stay clear...I think its going to go for a scatter attack."
In the same moment that Walder bellowed his warning the metal-giant opened all its eyes shouting balls of blue-white plasma out each eye.
Henri swore beneath her breath, as she saw the room turning into a scene from out of a bullet hell game, with orbs of dazzling blue-white light rapidly scattering everywhere.
She pressed a button on her utility belt that sent a grappling hook flying out of the back of her blazer to pull her out of the range of fire. She pressed another button to get her belt to fire another grappling line that would pull her to one of the giant's few blind angles.
While she flew the creature waved a large metal limb and out from an aperture on this limb flew, a small troop of mecha-gorillas.
Henri killed them all, blowing them away with her heavy explosive rounds, while she continued to make her retreat.
She fired wildly but accurately, her focus reaching a familiar level that she'd never expected to end up being forced to enter again, a level of focus that encumbered her thoughts with a peculiar tunnel vision.
Henri tried to fire as many rounds as she could at the creature and its few remaining minions. She was aware that the angle she was flying towards would also place her right square in the monsters most armored side. Meaning that getting a good shot off from there would be nearly impossible.
On the ground Walder continued to take the creature's attacks head on, only bothering to dodge when it seemed like the structural damage he was taking put his body in danger of completely falling apart.
Henri pulled out her tablet deciding to fight through another means, holding back from doing some rash because she could clearly see that Walder recovering at a near instantaneous pace from each plasma bolt that hit him.
A few clicks on tablets virtual keyboard later the metal-giant's mechanical parts began to spark and stutter. The creature's body slumping over like its strings had been cut.
Walder saw the creature's endless assault finally end, he shelved the plan he'd had and decided to go for an easier win. His antennae glowing red, as his eyes glowed black, and two black-red beams of harmonic energy exploded out of his skull.
He followed up the eye-rays with a breath of cosmic fire, releasing the rest of the power that he'd been stealing from the giant, and blowing away two-thirds of its torso.
The two guildsmen got back together and threw up a new set of shields while waiting to see if the fight would bring the powerstation down on their heads. Then when it didn't, Walder pulled a change of clothing out of his storage devices because after being bathed in plasma hot enough to melt away steel like it was made of ice, his clothes had been vaporized.
"So...uh...what exactly did you just do?" said Walder.
Henri didn't answer focusing on storing away their group's extradimensional quarry and everything else in the chamber that looked like it might have some worth.
"I hacked the single the giant was putting out to control the monsters in the rest of the station…" said Henri.
"Ah….Cool."
"How about you? Since when did 'you' have f***ing laser eyes?" asked Henri.
"Since I was seven?" said Walder. Truthfully answering and revealing when exactly the otherness that had followed him from his past life, had begun to aggressively change his current body's physiology.
"Ah...Cool. Alright, I've had enough for today. How about you?" asked Henri.
Walder wiped the nosebleed that had continued even after the rest of his body had recovered. His body struggling to find its new equilibrium after suddenly coming in contact with the alien forces that Walder had been repressing and the extreme energies from the metallized Argus Panoptes.
"Yeah...These past few days were fun but exhausting. I'm pretty sure I'm ready to get back to the ship too." said Walder.
Just as soon as the two of them had decided that they were going to head above ground and call the Julianne's dinghy so they could go back to the ship, Walder vomitted a little more blood then the average human would normally have in their entire body.
The blood splattering down in a pool at his feet, while he keeled over. Henri blinked her myriad thoughts all crashing to a halt as she caught up with what had just happened, moving in time to be able to catch the man before he felt.
"S***! I asked you if you were okay! Why say yes when the answer is clearly no?!" said an incensed Henri.
"I...I 'am' okay...Just...Just get me back to the ship. I'm just...tired." said Walder. His consciousness fading as the inside of his skull began to hum.
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