[b]Mt.Initara[/b] The recent turn of events following Aredemos' return to Kilamara had been jarring. He watched a stream of souls go screaming into a green cloud of spiritual malevolence, the connection to his brothers and sisters fading with every second. Then, without warning, he felt his body suddenly start to dematerialize, his black, chitinous exoskeleton flaking and swirling around him in a lightning-charged cyclone. Before he could even take the time to fully comprehend what was happening to him, his view of the desert faded—an infinitesimal moment of darkness—hardly a blink, and his matter coalesced back together, cells and molecules realigning in an instant to reform his physical self. Despite his senses dialing down the event to feel like an elongated stretch of time had elapsed, he knew that what transpired took only a matter of mere seconds, for the feeling was similar to of what he first felt when he was taken to Deimobos for the first time. This was not Deimobos though, it was a strange, alien world--with towers reaching to the heavens, granting an open view of the stars, and an immaculately sculpted temple built around nature itself. Neither Kilamara nor Deimobos could ever hope to reach this level of pristineness, nor would he ever hope for such ugliness… In the wake of all the chaos, there was one thing he managed to hold onto, one person he was able to maintain a connection with, and that was Kirri, whose fire stone continued to burn as hot as Deimobos' molten core. Immediately he began to work toward strengthening that connection, a crimson tether slowly forming within his mind, while another part of himself worked toward establishing contact with a different group of beings he had allied with not long after his departure from the moon. In the meantime, he would devote his attention to surveying as much as he could of Initara, and find out just who this world belonged to, and why he had been brought here by its inhabitants. Upon examining the temple in its entirety, he felt a large part of him pull away—the elegantness of this place repulsed him, its spotlessly shaven pillars and walls were revolting to his six compound eyes; too beautiful, he thought. Nothing like the simple warmth, and natural beauty of the desert. This wasn’t the first time Aredemos had seen such grand architecture though, nor would it be the last; he had engaged in countless campaigns dedicated to destroying places like these – campaigns waged in the name of freedom; freedom from tyranny, freedom from cultural oppression, freedom from the things and people which sought to halt social evolution. Finally, he remembered why he hated this place so. It resembled the old villages of the jungle, where his elders, and their elders before them lived, the very elders who murdered any who sought to expand their minds beyond tribal life, and break free of the archaic traditions which halted not just their progress as a society, but that of their spirits as well. This was the message he had given to his people before departing Kilamara, and it was a message to be spread by others like him, others brave enough to venture to other worlds. Freedom and liberation. He gazed upon the staircase, littered with its thousands of offerings, and wondered if the god they had devoted themselves to was as grateful as he had been for being brought here to destroy it. The surprise he felt when the mastermind behind his kidnapping dared to show itself couldn’t be measured with words, nor could the anger which flowed through his veins, thought of what he had been taken away from -- the rescue of his people from a demon who sought to steal their souls. All of it returned, and resurfaced, and resurged in his thoughts, the spikes protruding from the sides of his head bristling, and pressing against the back of his skull with the piercing intensity of a beast who had just been threatened. “Aredemos, for your might the denizens of this world revere you as a god—such is my might to yours.” [i]What!?[/i] “Moreover, not merely am I, as likewise are you, accountable for the spiritual and cultural maturation of this world, but manifold others.” Aredemos heard Nenegin's speech and felt his crown bristle, the stench of divine horseshit. Accountable for this world…? Thus, if you fail—if your people fail—so, too, do I, in part, fail, and that will not be tolerated,” Nenegin said. It crawled its way up into his brain where it sought to lay its wretched eggs of deceit, warning him of superior beings who would punish him if he carried on with his actions. [i]Was that a threat!?[/i] Translucent and nigh immaterial, he circled Aredemos, his frame twice as large, nematocists searching on strands that protruded from beneath his ivory, feather-like scales and hungrily arcing sapphire sparks. He continued,“In this recent conflict, your indecision and inadequacy forced my hand. I, who create and preserve, was compelled to destroy. Attain vigilance that it may not so be again and do well in the remembrance that even mightier beings preside above us in judgment of our actions. Know also that your people slumber, for it is my will that their souls are cleansed of the taint of foreign planes, and my will that they awaken pure.” [i]Destroy… Slumber… Awaken... Pure…? It interferes with MY world, with MY people, and it dares to criticize ME!?[/i] Mt. Initara resembled neither the glimmering radiance of peace, nor did it resonate the bland dreariness of a war-stricken land. It lacked the soothing serenity of the desert villages separating Kilamaros from Kilamari, and moreover it lacked the brutal savagery of the temple of Deimobos, a place built for perfecting one's warcraft. Such a pretty farce, such a pretty, beautifully disgusting farce. It sought to drown him in its grotesquery, clog his veins, toxify his soul, and boil him away in a bubbling vat of BULLSHIT! He knew what had to be done now, and with his anger now rising to its peak, so too could he feel his connection to Kirri finally form, the spiritual bond between the two Kilamarans at last solidifying, his dark form becoming pale with chilling blue. “HEAR MY VOICE NOW, BROTHER!” The pores on his exoskeleton expanded, and through them came an emission of frosty vapor hovering over the whole of his form. Aredemos’ firestone vibrated and released a wave of heat, causing rapid condensation of the frost, and subsequent precipitation across his entire frame, sheathing the Redeemed One within a cryogenic membrane that conformed to every curve and contour of his exoskeleton with no shortage of perfection. His feet reddened with focused flame before slowly rearing up, strands of molten floor stretching away from the footprints he left in his wake; detaching, receding, and enwrapping, and flattening across his ankles. Then, swinging his limbs up overhead, drops of melted ice falling off his shins, producing a fine wet mist, due in-part to its close proximity with his burning toes. Minerals were siphoned from the floor through the rear limbs which Aredemos held himself upon, every protruding tip on his crown spewing out lava, the streams building greater, stronger pressure with every passing second. He felt the urge to lean forward at the back of his skull, and hastily gripped the floor with crystal claws sprouting from his toes, their jagged tips hooking him him place. The Insect’s size was starting to swell, his exoskeleton cracked, expanded, smoothed out, and accumulated another layer of ice, the process repeating itself until the sheer weight of his form cracked the ground beneath him, his eyes meeting the tips of Mt. Initara’s spires. “IF YOU STILL SHARE OUR DREAM, THEN RISE, AND FIGHT BACK!” Crystal scythes burst from his back in a downward-facing arc, splattering the shrine in scorching crimson. The outer-layers of the growths were as hard as corundum, whereas the interior of the crystal was remarkably hollow and empty, though it lacked the distinct darkness permeating the entirety of Kaan and Nenegin’s souls. “WAKE The crown he wore proudly on his head - not as a symbol of authority - but of race, the scythes sticking out of his back - not as a symbol of death - but direct channels to his soul, the focused flame at his feet feeling the very same as his people who once frolicked happily through the desert. “UP!” His raised feet exploded in a cone of flame and his limbs swung forward with the fury of a titan, the scythes sprayed highly pressurized lava that ignited on a molecular level, burning the air behind and below him, and all the moisture trickling down Mt. Initara into a scalding steam that would choke a lesser being. The impact he made was cataclysmic, the entire floor and everything beneath it cracked and quaked, birthing a thousand microfractures which spread down to the foundation of the stairs behind him, utterly pulverizing the whole area with a single devastating act of power. Just as quickly as he destabilized the whole mountain did he release an inferno of incinerating flames to engulf the whole mountain, superheating the resulting dust into a storm of molten shards. Exerting his power over the elements of rock and metal, Aredemos pulled the destruction toward his raging form, each rapidly darkening shard compacting against his body to form a secondary layer of tough obsidian armor. Though viscerally satisfying, the destruction of Mt.Initara was not Aredemos’ main goal. Being the oldest of the Redeemed Ones, Aredemos could do more than simply establish a psychic connection with another Kilamaran. Similar to how Kirri tracked Kaan’s location by forming a physical link to the Hellseeds via his fire stone, Aredemos locked onto Kirri’s exact holding location via spiritual resonance of the stone itself. His destination now set firmly in his mind, Aredemos’ limbs pressed flat against his frame, the crystal scythe protrusions swelled with excess mass and detonated in a final explosion of concentrated flames. Mere seconds passed and the clouds blurred and dispersed behind him, leaving naught but an explosion of heat and sound in his wake as he rocketed toward the vessel which held Nenegin, his crew, and Kirri aboard. [b]Edge of The Galaxy[/b] In the farthest, darkest, starless region of outer-space, a thing that was too large to be called a ship, too massive to be called a planet, and too alive to be regarded as anything but an abomination of the cosmos, drifted away from its safe zone of observation. If one had a telescopic instrument, capable of peering out into the depths of the void, the observer would have noticed the beast, whose length stretched the full distance of an entire star system. The skin of the creature was blacker than obsidian, each subtle shift of its extremely long, slime-coated musculature caused starlight to bend, twist, and refract along its grooves, with the most distinct bend being that of three ginormous, leaping, spherical arcs, altogether spanning only three eighths of the being’s total length. The light which leaped over the beast was not the result of a strange eldritch power it emanated, nor was it the product of photonic distortion. Rather, it was the result of a transparent membrane running the full length of its body, its viscous layers bending to the gravity of three half-visible celestial objects, leaving only their northern hemispheres visible. Embedded in the sub-dermal layers of the pit was a bioluminescent orb that rotated the full circumference of the pit. It acted as an artificial sun, providing the worlds with all the necessities of life, whilst its radiation was dissipated in a combinative effort of the planet’s magnetosphere and the membrane itself, leaving a brief aurora in its wake. On one world, a metropolis of chaos rose through the clouds, its towering structures resembling something far closer to an obelisk, its surface pocked with hollow openings. Beyond those clouds, a network of spiraling obsidian architecture curved around the obelisk’s base, tunneling underneath the lesser monoliths that surrounded it, and bled a malefic blight. The obelisk’s flat, rectangular roof sheened with dark energy that was conducted via the ground itself, wrapping its way up along the obsidian before it reached an intense point of focus and breached the atmosphere. With an infernal might rivaling that of a malicious elder demon, the dark bolt burnt through the flesh of the beast that held its sun, searing the impact zone to a smoking crisp. Burning its way deeper beneath the skin, a violent series of explosions ensued as the sun ruptured, releasing a spew of liquid-organic matter back across the gap, evaporating as it made contact with the atmosphere, only to condense into a hazardous yellow mist, and precipitated as calamitous a downpour, corroding the obelisk and the city below in a luminous effect. A global storm engulfed the next planet. The boiling sun was too hot for the ocean, and so when the cold upper-winds met the humid moisture rising off the water’s surface, an intense hurricane was triggered, stirring the tide into an eternal vortex of immense tidal forces. Forests pressed against the terrain as the waves washed over them, pulverizing the mountains and mixing the mud into a murky grain that made the water completely unnavigable. In order to withstand the devastating impacts, the forest trees evolved a flat, curved front, and extremely deep, flexible roots, literally bending to the wave as opposed to trying to face it head on. Hidden among the branches, a flock of avian lizards resembling iguanas used their protruding spines to detect changes in the current, long, narrow frogs remained hooked on bark using specialized claws, and snakes wrapped their long sinuous bodies around the stems and branches, hanging on with their enlarged jaws and microscopic spikes lining their scales. Once the wave passed, the iguanas leaped and spread their limbs, as did the frogs, spreading open a membrane that was as wide as their bodies were long, and the serpents simply straightened their forms and dove straight down into the mud. There they would feast on exposed kelp and algae, nutrient-rich minerals, and each other. Mating would ensue, the burial of their eggs would take place, a climb back up would begin and an awaital at the canopies would commence for the next wave to come, allowing the whole process to begin once more. Last of the worlds, and easily the most unstable due to requiring not one, not two, not even three, but six lambent suns lashed to one another as a collective show of force. Highly conductive fluids were pulled from their cores by electromagnetic attraction, toward the fiery world, whose pink glow rapidly absorbed the substance into what was not an atmosphere, but a solid orb of astral matter… Pulled onto the physical plane, bound and chained to the realm of direct tangibility, barred from inflicting further astral mayhem, this was the price that had to be paid to contain the threat. Intermittent cracks spread across the orb, allowing the fluid to seep in, causing an intense surge of lightning, followed by cacophonous explosions, and ended with a torrent of ionizing fire, cauterizing the orb and severing the cords that connected it to the six suns. Slowly, or at least what might have been perceived as slow, given the sheer volume of the visible universe compared to even [b]this[/b] creature’s girth, it turned its head toward the light of a white dwarf, exposing its wide, flat mouth that was sheathed in dark, densely padded, slime-coated flesh. Its titanic teeth were mountains unto themselves, glistening and twinkling with fractured light that filtered through a glacial layer of saliva several thousand feet thick. A faint red tint reflected off the ice, mixed with the blinding plasmic glow of the star, and gave way to a pulsing outline moving toward the front of the beast’s mouth. The white dwarf that the beast was turning toward was none other than the same ball of plasma holding Kilamara and its fiery moon, Deimobos within its orbit. It would consume them whole… just as it had done to the others! For its comrades, it would do this! For its children who had emerged from the soft white pool of primordial reality… Its jaws opened wide, the thick layers of ice coating its teeth cracked, broke apart and evaporated in Deimobos’ atmosphere, shrouding the world in a steamy haze. The outline in the back of its mouth became more distinct as its jaws parted even wider, revealing a bulbous sphere of white flesh connected to its throat. The bulb blossomed over the moon, fully engulfing and swallowing the satellite into its throat. Mere minutes passed, and Kilamara received the same fate, a great shadow of esophageal flesh taking the entirety of the planet into its body where it and Deimobos would soon become neighbors to the other three worlds. It would do this and more for the Aptosites, not out of loyalty or submission, but because their ideals were in sync with each other, and because this Living Ark, as it had been called by observers, was given a chance to fulfill its cosmic duty as... [b]The Cradle of Life[/b] Deep inside that colossal beast, in a part that was retrofitted for the Aptosites strategic planning endeavors, a twelve-foot tall General awaited the revelation of imperative information. His predatory eyes of pitch followed the screen that his good doctor, friend, and partner, Snil monitored. General Karzar paced back and forth across the black, flesh-striped floor, his tail-fin half-hidden beneath a leathery cape, decorated with several rows of jagged, upward-facing teeth belonging to a variety of sharks. The rigid, wave-patterned fissures of his face, the gills on his neck, and fins protruding from his black, aqueous skin marked him out as a beast of the fathomless depths. Sharp spines ran beneath the skin of his skull, which split open into a nine-pointed, pentagonal crown. Like others before him, like in the oceanic food chain, he had swam all trenches, learned to navigate the currents of Aptosite society, and rose to the top as the apex beast of the organization. The muscles in his face tightened into a feral smile of anticipation, causing the crown to widen and expose his hungering serrated teeth as he awaited the report, a crimson stone held tightly in his webbed right hand. The thing sitting in front of him, Doctor Snil was by all accounts, an eccentric, and extremely productive scientist of the Aptosites. He had been the leader of Project Forge King, Project Anti-Deity, Project C.I.P.H.E.R., Project T-Error-R, and Project Soulmate that led to the birth of Alucroas. A fat, rotund thing he was. Snil’s body was covered in black, braided tendril growths emerging from every pore on his body, and were very likely designed by his own hand due to the notable attributes of high prehensility and handy nimbility. The majority of the growths had been tied into a thick ponytail behind his head, revealing his bright, horizontally slit yellow eyes, giving him the vague appearance of an amphibian, which showed more prominently when he pressed his webbed hands against the edge of the control panel, which bore striking resemblance to veterbrae. Despite the long, arduous wait that Karzar and Snuff had endured, minimal stress had accumulated between the two. Their partnership was a long-lasting one, a bond between knowledge and power that persisted throughout countless millenia. This was but another test, another trial to be overcome. CIPHER would gather the information, and he would deliver on the data he had been ordered to attain, just as he he had done on other worlds. Once it was in their hands, nothing would stop them from ushering in the Great Mergence event, whether it was through imposition or negotiation, nothing would stand between the Aptosites and their promised goal of cosmic wholeness. Eerily, as if the old gods of space and time were listening on their plightful determination, and patience, the universe answered to the justified call. Scattered across the void of space, the arachnid webs relayed the psychic information sent in by CIPHER, pinging it across the thousands of structures it had deployed on its journey to the Cizran homeworld, and among its countless other ventures of scholarly study. The great Cradle of Life received the information through its membrane, allowed it to flow down through its nervous system, crossing the gap between a trillion axons, and fill the bowl that had remained empty for far too long. Embedded between the hemispheres of a brain that was situated within a triangle of beating hearts, whose ventricles pumped napier-green fluid into lungs, connected to an even larger network of myelin cords was a single monitor that, like the edge of Snil’s desk, had been framed with the vertebrae of an unknown organism. Gradually, the data appeared on the screen in bold white letters. [b]Examination of Cizran Empathic Organ Tissue Complete Observed Signs of Spiritual Synchronicity Within Samples. Running Self-Diagnosis of The Samples Combinative Potential. Self-Diagnosis Complete. The Combinative Potential of Empathic Samples Is Nominal; Possibility of Mergence Event Is 100%. Sending Data Back To Cradle of Life And Will Await Further Orders.[/b] The good Doctor’s eyes nearly leaped out of their sockets, his many protruding tentacles flailing wildly, whilst Karzar’s eyes sheened with delight, his hand clenching into a fist as he slammed it down atop the control panel, gripping Snil’s shoulder with the other hand. A strange frenzy overtook the pair as both of the Aptosites sizzled with animalistic excitement, their pupils dilating amid a surge of adrenaline flooding their veins. Karzar’s gills flared as he let out a maddening scream of jubilated exaltation from the depths of his throat, chest puffing out as he roared cachinnatiously, jaws parting ever wider with each laughing exhale. Snil’s hidden proboscis burst from his oral cavity, the flexible mouth-appendage ending in a weave of salivating feeler-lips that emitted horrendously intense shriek, followed by a gurglingly ecstatic shout that nearly came across as yowling due to how overtaken he was by the results. [i]“Ha...ha...ha…”[/i] panted Karzar in a darkly prophetic tone, “it is time.” Rising back to full his height, Karzar turned to face the exit. The door, like the rest of the room, was a living thing. A row of sharp, vertically interlocked teeth, connected to a thick mass of muscular gum-tissue that upon contracting, emitted a series of wet clicks and smacks as the teeth unlocked and the two sections were pulled apart, retreating into twin flesh-slots, leaving only the tips of the incisors visible. Before he could give Snil his orders and step through the door, an alert appeared on the screen in crimson text, and at the same time the stone in Karzar’s hand began to glow. It was a distress call from Aredemos, the signal transmitting itself through hazy, flickering static. Karzar approached the screen, and held out the stone which began to emit the same static, and after a few seconds of waiting, the screen ceased flickering, providing the Doctor and General with clear resolution of the events as experienced directly through Aredemos’ eyes and ears. “...” “We have what we need. Give the order to CIPHER. Tell him he is to trigger the Mergence Event himself. In the meantime set a course for Initara.” Karzar walked through the doorway, into the hall that was a stark contrast to Snil’s laboratory. The floor and ceiling was made of solid, polished gray stone, as were the walls, lined with countless doors resembling the one he had just exited out of, illuminated by lambent eyes embedded in the walls above each entrance. He was going to help Aredemos with his problem, just as he promised he would, but with CIPHER’s timing, and the fact that the being in question was a Cizran… in this he saw opportunity. Snil turned in his seat, facing the general with interest. “What do you intend to do, Karzar?” Pausing for a moment, Karzar began to speak rather matter-of-factly. “The Cizran made claims of responsibility to Aredemos in regard to his people. I want to see if that same sense of purpose extends to his own.” With that he began to make his way down the hall. Meanwhile, the Cradle of Life, finished with its current task, slipped through space where it would emerge elsewhere. [b]The Cizran Vessel - Holding Cell[/b] In one instant, his leader had suddenly returned to free Kilamara from the threat of corruption, outright shattering the malignant curse on those who could still be saved. The strange swordsman, whose presence he used as a combat bolster against the Hellseeds suddenly collapsed, a maelstrom of souls flew overhead, into a cloud of tainted energy, and the whole world began to spiral out of control. He felt his body being pulled apart, but unlike Aredemos who had been transported somewhere else, Kirri felt a glitch in his vision, a static blink in perception, and then everything went back to normal. The taint was gone, Aredemos was gone, Kaan was gone, and the Hellseeds skeletal corpses were gone as well. He was completely and utterly alone, the shock of the experience causing his limbs to turn weak, dropping him to his knees in the sand. “That couldn’t have all been just a hallucination…” Kirri looked upon his surroundings, then stared down at his arms and hands, still lined with crystal from his fire stone weaponizing itself across his skin, “could it?” Despite being an elemental warrior of flame, his fire stone was now the only thing keeping his spirit warm in the approaching night, just as it had kept him warm as a child, before he had been purged by Deimobos’ molten purification. The warmth it provided him would spur Kirri back to his feet, where he quickly decided that there could be no answers in this forgotten battlefield, and so he made up his mind to head to the Fire Stone Forest--the place where he had achieved redemption. There, he would find the answers he sought to his mental dilemma. Throughout his travel, he recalled the trails he had followed to reach the Fire Stone Tower: the spiders fed on the snakes, and the snakes were fed on by the birds who built their nests upon the towers outcroppings and the many lesser towers that surrounded it. Again, without conscious thought, Kirri’s body acted, summoning a cloud of sand to drift through the night skies. He would use the element to feel the birds migration path, and by tracing a web in that path, he would be able to pick up on the resonant call of the Tower, beckoning its power to lead him to it. The closer he got to the tower, the more powerful its resonant energy became. All around him, he could feel the desert start to decay, its sand blackening as night reverted back to dusk, and he could see the tower ahead of him, visible in the orange twilight. He observed the sunlight behave strangely as it touched the tower, an eerie vortex of spiraling rays disappearing into the center, consumed by a force that was not known to Kirri. Within that vortex, he could feel the churning tide of lost souls that had been imprisoned by Kaan, and lamented the thought of sharing that fate. His instinct screamed at him not approach that corrupt tower, and wisely, he obeyed it, turning in a different direction, only to find it standing mere inches from his face. All of his muscles tensed from the surprise, his body leaping away, poise shifting mid-air before landing in an uneasy defensive stance. A faraway wail of tormented souls seemed to emit from deep within the crystal structure, the collective weight of those grains gathering to form a boulder inexplicably sought to hammer his will into the ground and suppress his spirit. Sensing Kirri’s weakness, the crystal thorns which sprouted from the Tower’s base shot forth, cutting deep into his limbs, spilling his molten blood across the sand. Then it began to tug with a might that had only been felt by victims of the monstrous desert worms, whose tongues had been lined with hooked teeth to secure their prey in place before swallowing them whole. As Kirri was dragged closer, the trunk cracked and split open, forming a diamond prism-mouth whose interior walls were just as deadly and just as eager to feed as the worms, its crystalline teeth drooling with fresh ectoplasm from its most recent meal. Despite his fear at being consumed, Kirri felt an unnerving sense of morbid curiosity swell up in the back of his mind, and this curiosity allowed him to see deeper into the mouth of the abyss using his own fire-stone. Fate must have been guiding this bizarre trip, for as he came closer and closer to that soul-stained mouth, time as it existed around him slowed to the pace of a slug. In the farthest depths of the Tower, passed the curtain of shadows obscuring its core, he saw a barely visible, gray stone-colored eye with a black vertical slit watching with profound objectivity. Around it, he could see the universe he existed within, the incomprehensible chaos it traversed—chaos which existed outside of his existence as if the entire cosmos were just a thin membrane that only shielded its inhabitants out of simple deterministic convenience. The chaos blared like electric static on a broken monitor, and as Kirri strained his mind to focus, he bore witness to countless transparent limbs branching out from the eye’s center. Somewhere, in a far-off corner of the existence, several parallel universes imploded, but before they could reach a point of complete destruction, the thing that had been gripping the cosmos drained it of fuel, thermal energy, digested, and excreted the matter, laying fertile ground for a new cosmos to be born in its place. Afterward, the eye’s color shifted from stony gray to something pink, and its limbs vibrated all at once before returning again to gray. The evolution of his race by the Fire Stones could never prepare him for something like this, and as he continued to watch, he felt the first tear in his sanity start to form… [i]"KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR LIES!"[/i] A violent impact jolted Kirri from his nightmare, the firestone within his chest shoving his mind back to forefront of reality. The first sight his eyes took in was that of embers, embers caused by metal shards ricocheting off walls and creating sparks. Then, he saw more metal, only it was flat like a wall, dented inwards, and in the center of that dent he saw a hole resembling a flower whose petals had been shredded to ribbons flapping chaotically amidst the fluttering metal shards. Through that hole he heard the militaristic shouts of unknown beings, barking orders at each other in an aggressive, but controlled manner; it seemed they were preparing for combat. That was when he heard something come crashing down from above and land in front of him, on the other side. A flurry of sharp piercing assaulted his ears accompanied by a storm of light. Immediately, he felt something massive stampede across the floor, heard a person’s flesh get impaled, his body slam violently against a wall with a hollow crash, like something was demolished. Last came a scream and an enormous shock-wave as whatever was attacking the beings on the other side got blasted back against the wall in-turn. Trying to move, Kirri noticed his arms and all of his legs were being restrained by large metal cuffs. A prison...? Thought the Kilamaran, his eyes widening with panic as he finally began to realize where he was. I must have been captured by that damned lich, and that nightmare must have been his way of breaking me… Now he knew what was going on here. Those things on the other side were servants of Kaan, and the thing on the other side of the wall must have been trying to free itself. It was in this moment, that he felt a strong feeling from his fire stone, and legitimate fury welled up from within, causing a crystallic blade to burst through the flesh of his forearm, severing one of his restraints. His other limbs rose by a multitude of degrees, incinerating the remaining at which point his whole body lifted up off the ground, accumulated even more pressure, and rocketed toward the aperture. An interval of nanoseconds occurred between the Kilamaran throwing his legs forward, raising his chest, inadvertently scorching several Cizrans in the process of breaking his flight, and being blindsided by the sight of Aredemos in the midst of combat. Without pause for thought, the Cizran soldiers turned their sights on Kirri, aiming their pulse rifles, the barrels of which bore same menacing ursine grin as the masks they wore, prompting a defensive posture from the Insect Warrior. “Who are you people,” Kirri demanded furiously, “and more importantly, why are we here, Aredemos?” Not wanting to let the chaos escalate any further than it already had, Nenegin spoke in an attempt at bringing reason to the forefront, “Your god failed to fulfill his obligations to his people, so I stepped in to rectify his mistakes.” “God?” Aredemos remarked, “That was quite the farce you put on, [i]Cizran[/i].” For a moment, Kirri’s arms lowered, head tilting in slight confusion as Aredemos carried on. “Gods demand worship, I demand freedom for myself, my people, and any others who seek liberation from people like you.” “Be careful how you choose your next words, [i]Kilamaran[/i].” Nenegin warned, the rifles turning back in his direction. Unease filled the room with those final words, the seconds seeming like minutes, and the minutes seeming like hours until the very fabric of time and space literally split open, and Kirri was the only person facing the correct window to see the bulbous orb that was slowly emerging from the rift. Were Aredemos’ insectoid mouth capable of forming a grin, it just might have, for while he didn’t see the thing come out of the rift, he could feel its presence vibrating through his fire stone, at which point he began to speak again. “You warned me that there were higher beings presiding over us, Cizran.” The scythes sticking out of Aredemos back extended back, piercing the hull, and causing a small vacuum to form behind him. “It’s time for you to meet them.” Before Nenegin could reply, the extensions branched out in a spiraling disc-pattern, cleaving through the entirety of the hull in a matter of seconds, separating the control room from the bridge, exposing them to the vacuum and throwing the ship into a violent spin. [i]Follow me![/i] Came Aredemos’ words to Kirri, communicating telepathically via the stones in their chests. Kirri was frozen in place from what he had just seen. After the nightmare he had experienced, he wasn’t particularly fond of people talking in his head, but Aredemos had rescued him, and so he forced himself out of his shock and followed him out through the hole, careful not to collide with the soldiers who were sucked out into space. Looking behind him, he saw that Nenegin had used his tentacles to maintain a firm grip on the stair-case, and to Kirri’s surprise, Aredemos sealed the aperture via the same method he had used to form the cut: his crystals, flying over to the roof, Kirri saw that thing again, this time able to see its teeth which were like mountains unto themselves. [i]WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!?[/i] Kirri cried out in panic. [i]It’s our ride.[/i] Aredemos replied. [i]Ride!? Kirri continued, flabbergasted.[/i] That thing is going to EAT us. [i]It will swallow us whole.[/i] Now hang on! The canvas of the cosmos became a starlit blur for Kirri as the chunk of metal that he and Aredemos were clinging accelerated its spin, their senses of gravity shifting immensely as the white sphere blossomed overhead and brought them into its depths. Inside The Cradle of Life “Welcome back, Aredemos.” The crystal seal on chunk of ship Nenegin was trapped inside had broken apart, allowing him to view a room reminiscent of the inside of a colossal rib-cage, lungs, heart, liver and all. Standing at the far end of the room, his back facing an enormous spinal column, the cords of which thrummed with nerve pulses was General Karzar in all his overzealous glory. Standing next to him was the good Doctor Snil, whose eyes were only half-open, quietly observing the Cizran as he stepped out of what may as well have amounted to a hermit shell. “As for you, Nenegin, I am glad you survived the trip here. Stepping forward, Karzar commenced his speech. “Today marks the beginning of a return to that which is fulfilled. For too long, have the Cizrans wandered the galaxy without a true identity, oppressing and limiting the growth of others along the way.” “More to the point, the oppression of other races, the domination and enslavement of those races can most certainly be chalked up to practical economics. One race works until no more work can be done, is buried then replaced by the next, or as you surely observed with Cizran criminals who go against the established order… stuffed into those wretched sarcophagi to be drained of what little lifeforce they have left so that their ships will possess the fuel needed to make the hop to the next planet deemed ready for “resource” gathering. “This is something even I can understand and appreciate, even if I personally disagree with the method.” “However, this… incessant need for body-modification, it reeks of desperate necessity. It reeks of familiarity, and the hopeless futility, the hopelessly futile incisions made by scalpels and lasers, the breaking of bones to extend your height, the steroid injections to expand your might, genetic modifications performed upon your flesh to bring you that much further from death. It cries for declaration, cries for self-examination, and it sobs endlessly in projected degradation, because it cannot ever hope to be one whilst knowing that the ONE exists as [b][i]soulfully[/i][/b] shattered glass. "How can something so incomplete [i]ever[/i] hope to be whole?” “And [i]you[/i] intend to make [i]my[/i] people whole?” Nenegin asked challengingly. The beast must have lost his mind to think he could take on the Cizran Empire. “It is inevitable even without us headstarting the event, I merely wanted you see it for yourself, and decide whether or not you wished to partake in your kind’s… reunion.” “In the end, Cizran, Kilamaran, and Aptosite culture will benefit from this reunion, for we do this not out of judgment, pity, or sympathy, but rather because we know their pain.”At that point, a single ocular descended from the ceiling and projected a holographic display of everything that their agent was experiencing, using the satellites it had deployed as a transmission medium. [b]Cizra Su-Lahn[/b] [i]Zzz… Z-z-Z……… z-Z-z... Z-z-Zeptir Z-z-Zeptir z-Z-zeptir ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN![/i] I am… I am... I am… Am I… I am... I am NOT! I am… I AM NOT! I am... I… [i]sliced[/i] through this white garment and exposed my mantid face, my mantid claws, and hands. I stand tall and look down at my segmented exoskeletal body, and view the long legs which lie flat against my belly, hidden among a hundred other legs which start to carry me forward, like a train. I am… [i]Z-z-Zeptir[/i] I am… I AM [i]NOT![/i] I am… C- I am… I am [i]NOT.[/i] I…[i] broke[/i] out of my research office through the window, crawling up the wall on these centipede legs of mine, which protruded from my sides. They are a part of me, but I… I...ME...I AM NOT. I see between my legs, and there lie my spinnerets, spinning my silken web around this tower, this tower that I am building into a tower of psychic power. Through my strands, through my webbing, through telepathic glue… I broadcast my message to the Cradle of Life. I am… I am… NOT! I am… CI- I am… I am NOT. I… [i]turned[/i] my head to gaze upon my back and remembered that I had tentacles. Three rows of tentacles, just like an octopus’ tentacles. Three rows spaced evenly apart across my back in pairs of three… I remembered the briefing given to me by the fat Doctor Snil. His tentacles were tingling, flailing about with the same wild energy I had come to recognize as excitement. He was always excited about everything, even when he appeared not to be excited, the wild, chimpish aura he exuded lacked an exhaust valve, trapping the fumes inside him and allowing no escape. Because of this he always seemed to quiver madly, as if in pain, but I knew it was just the body’s method of coping with the mind’s insanity. He reached out with his proboscian mouth and touched me gently between the eyes, an act of affection I could not even so much as think to reciprocate, let alone react to. “For this mission, you will once again be using self-induced psycho-hypnosis to infiltrate the Cizran Empire, and will assume the identity of Zeptir -- Zeptir Zukrinchen, a Cizran scientist, scholar, and biologist.” Removing his feeler lips, the Doctor continued to speak to me, his tone unusually sincere, given his tendency toward shrewd speaking when it came to mission briefings. “As Zeptir, your mission will be to investigate the Cizran Empire. More specifically, Zeptir…(...I AM [i]NOT![/i]...) your job will be to look into the Cizran psychic link. Discover it’s source, and figure out a way to combine them into one. As always, we will most certainly be on the receiving end of hatred from those who fail to complete the Mergence and end up retaining their individuality, but we do this for the benefit of all, and therefore it must be done.” I am… I AM NOT! I am… CIP- I am… I am NOT. I [i]became…[/i] invisible. I hid in plain sight, I hid by bending the light, but not the real light. I bent my inner-light, my skinner-light, I became as light as the path was under the sun, I became as dark as the evening was under no one. I became as filled with color, but only enough color to stay black, only enough color to crawl along the cracks which spread across my skin, leading to the hovering rickshaw containing the things that would bring the Cizrans back to… I am… I am NOT! I am… CIPH- I am… [i]NOT.[/i] I...[i]sped[/i] toward it on all my legs as fast I could, as fast as I should, as fast as I wouldn’t dare had it not been for the orders given to me. I do not care about these people, I do not care about this mission, I am not sure if I care about my own life, but what I know is that I will do as I am… I will do as I am NOT. I will do… I am… I am [i]NOT![/i] I am… CIPHE- I am… [i]NOT.[/i] I… [i]was[/i] close, but now I am far away once again. I can feel my frustration settling in, I must get rid of this disguise, I must get rid of the universe’s self-imposed demise. I must become myself again, I must fulfill the coldly passionate demands imposed upon me by my ego. I must act on the selfishly selfless needs that came with my inception, and infused my genes with unrelenting aggression I neither know nor understand, but simply allow that need to guide my actions. I am… and I am.... And I...am! I...[i]I AM… [/i] I am… A Counter I am… An Intelligence I am… A Procurer I am… A Holistic I am… Engineered I am… A Reconnaissance Operative Dedicated To Carrying Out The Clandestine Goals Of The Cosmos, That Will Lead To The Universe Becoming Whole Again. And I Do Not Care About Any Of It, Not Out Of Choice, Or By Design, But By Consequence Of Existence. My True Personality Is Unknown To Me, Hidden Beneath Layers of Psycho-Genetic Code. I am... C. I. P. H. E. R. I… [i]felt[/i] the cosmos split open, and from that split, I knew my superiors had arrived to assess my progress. They wanted to watch the Great Mergence unfold before their eyes. I cannot disappoint myself. I… [i]spun[/i] my spinnerets, leaving silky strands of webbing everywhere my destination took me. It is all part of the plan, the plan that will entrap these Cizrans within their own personal web of truth. Deep within my mind, I detect an eagerness--an eagerness to become one with this race--the thought of it makes my antennae undergo a mild spasm, and in my head I can hear a ring of static as the two realities of what I am and what I am not clash against each other. Anticipation. Communion. [i]GATHER TOGETHER IN THE GREAT CLOUD OF NOT![/i] I… [i]became[/i] compromised. A quarter of a second passes, and during that quarter of a second, my mind is frozen in time. My body fails to carry itself forward, I derail in the wrong direction, lose my footing, and find myself caught between an alley, a flight of stairs, and a lamp-lit corridor. It is only thanks to my adaptive camouflage that my head matches the steps, my torso blends with the stones of the pavement, and my twin scorpion tails glow lambently with the lamps. By the time I resume my chase, the whole area is covered in sticky strands, and as I progress further, I can feel more and more thoughts, more and more feelings traveling through those strands. I… [i]see[/i] it once again, moving through a large group, near Cizra Su-Lahn’s capital center. I can smell those organs, I can hear the faintest spark of a former existence emanating from within. It is a fragment, a splinter of wood from a tree which breaches the clouds and touches other worlds beyond this one. It will be one, and so I will I, but I will NOT be one with them, for I AM NOT one of them. Passion consumes my chase, and with reckless abandon, I charge through the crowd, not caring who I trample under my hundreds of legs, or pierce with my claws, or entangle in my path. [i]THEY ARE ALL THE SAME TO ME![/i] I… [i]shriek[/i] my chimeric shriek, and with the legs pressed up against my belly, I decompress them and leap over the crowd, crushing those I land ontop of whilst striking out at those who would halt my advance, even if it be out of simple shock and awe. Another leap and some die, another leap, and others live, another leap, and they finally realize that there is no stopping me from reaching the finish line. I… I did not hesitate this time. I reared back my left stinger, stabbed it through the curtain concealing those jars, and without pause this time, without confusion as to what I AM [b][i](CIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHEEEEEEEEEEEERR)[/i][/b], I increased time’s flow. I did not stick around for what was about to happen, I fled for highest point, crawling on buildings, scaling scrapers and statues and monuments. Through the webbing I watch structures rapidly start to rust and decay, in bodies I witness the breakdown of artificially made flesh and bone, stripped away until there is naught but a skeleton coughing up its soul and becoming caught in the trap. Thousands of fragments, thousands of shards, thousands of bees, thousands of false mes go shooting through the silk, shooting back to the womb, back to beginning, before they were brought to this diminutive state. Wrapped in this cocoon so saturated with sibling spirits, I will watch for the first time as the Great Mergence unfolds before my eyes. Whatever will emerge, I do not know, and I do not care, for I am NOT a Cizran. I am... an Aptosite.