Member
RPM
TokyoPewPew
Bright_Ops
Gerlando
The Incredible John
MarshalSolgriev
FourtyTwo
kapuchu
Child of Iron and Blood
+INITIALIZING…
+WELCOME TO THE ANGEL’S BASTION CENTRAL TERMINAL NETWORK
+THIS CONNECTION IS MONITORED FOR YOUR SAFETY
+DAWN’S MESSAGE FOR THE DAY: “Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.”
+PLEASE ENTER REQUEST…
> access datavault_central
+ACCESS RESTRICTED
+PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZATION CREDENTIALS
+NOTE, UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS MAY RESULT IN DISCIPLINARY ACTION
> auth_EZ_VIGIL_U1TaP0GjL61RCyqiQLZFJhMLb0E4FU8zGUlakSkyhjGhWmgAQ6b
+PROCESSING…
+ACCESS GRANTED…
+WELCOME, EIOHSA
> cd C:\M30\700
> type 795_personal.archive
+PROCESSING…
+BEGIN ARCHIVE FILE PLAYBACK…
Her name is Eiohsa. It wasn’t my suggestion. A portmanteau of a word from the language spoken aboard the Bastion and a name she insists she recalls from before her arrival. ‘Erda’, or something to that effect. She insists she remembers the name clearly, and seems to attach considerable fondness to it.
Whatever the name’s origins, it’s her origins I’m more curious about. The Bastion’s systems recorded a high velocity impact a little over three standard Terran years ago. Video footage of the incident is unavailable, but the child insists that’s when she arrived. I would say it’s impossible. No ordinary Maker, let alone a child, could survive that kind of impact.
And she is a Maker, but only just. She is growing at twice the speed a human child ought to, and her mental faculties are already well developed. She learns everything I can provide at a voracious pace, and already has an impressive body of knowledge. The origins of this knowledge, however, are uncertain, as with almost everything about her.
She’s quite the little troublemaker, though, but endearing all the same. She possesses all the emotional responses of a typical Maker, but heightened, more intense. She possesses many of the same dreams and desires of a typical Maker, but again magnified.
Truly, this child is a mystery. But she may also be a blessing. When she learned the secrets of what she had been eating before she found me, I felt true anguish that I had not arms to comfort her. I didn’t see her for seven days after that fact. When she returned and I asked where she had been she told me she had visited the bones of those she had killed and eaten and erected monuments for them. All of them, save for those whose remains had already been taken. Even then, she told me she had carved words of regret into the walls at the site, and I was even able to verify one of these.
The child has a big heart, a mind like a razor, and powers of the Wyrd that I cannot yet quantify. Our most recent lesson has been on the mathematical principles behind the maintenance of a stable atomantic arc in the Bastion’s reactor facilities. She’s started to ask if she can help repair the quaternary unit.
If only my original Makers were here to see her. What would they say? What would they think of this remarkable child?
She’s also been asking about the xenobiotic lifeforms and twisted Makers that inhabit the Bastion. I lament that I have only limited information to give her. Some of them seem friendly, cohabiting with Makers whose forms retain their standard template. Most are dangerous, little more than monsters. She wants to fight them, to clear them from the station. I know she can - I have seen how she handled some previously over the monitors. But she is a child. I cannot send a child to fight such things, no matter how extraordinary she may be.
Perhaps if she continues growing at such a rate that will change.
+VIGILANT_DAWN HAS SENT YOU A MESSAGE
16:31:39: <Dawn> Reading through some of my old notes, young Maker?
> They’re comforting to read. And sometimes sobering. I read them to stay grounded.
16:32:03: <Dawn> Of course. I am always happy to answer your questions if you have any.
> type 799_personal.archive
+PROCESSING…
+BEGIN ARCHIVE FILE PLAYBACK…
She’s been here seven years, and yet she stands like a girl of sixteen. Muscular, far more muscular, but wiry. She’s been clearing the Bastion of the monsters that afflict its populace - I stopped being able to hold her two back years ago. She rewired the control panels on the doors when I tried closing them to stop her. When I shut down their access, she used her powers of the Wyrd physically short the wiring.
She’s made terrifyingly short work of everything she’s encountered so far. Rates of violent death aboard Angel’s Bastion have already begun to decline thanks to her actions. At the beginning of each cycle she sets out, wearing something that technically passes for clothing despite my stern objections, and does not return until the cycle evening. Always she returns covered in blood and gore - none of it her own - and marks off another section of the station ‘cleared’. That done, our nighttime lessons begin, and she learns everything I can teach her.
A part of me thinks it’s like a game to her. Another part of me thinks she still remembers the shock early on, learning she had been killing and eating other Makers, and still seeks to atone. My attempts to assure her that she is not wicked for her actions as a child that knew no better fall on deaf ears. Whatever her motivations, the results are undeniable. Day after day, month after month, and year after year the station slowly becomes safer. My control over Angel’s Bastion expands daily, thanks to her, and more and more Makers can live in safety. For this I am grateful.
And yet the child infuriates me.
She refuses to show herself to the other Makers. Every time I attempt to arrange a meeting she evades me. It is not healthy for a Maker to grow up in such isolation, and yet she insists upon it anyway. She says she will speak to them when her task is complete.
I fear she’s yet to encounter the worst this station has to offer.She prefers to fight unarmed, despite my offer of an array of weapons. There are logs in my central datavault, amidst the corrupted files. A martial art cultivated during the height of humanity’s achievement, focusing similar powers of the Wyrd that she seems to possess. The name in my data logs is “Khahen Shada”. Perhaps I will have yet more to teach her.
I’ve heard whisper among the Makers of the station of a dark protector. Some mysterious force that resides within the walls and leaves rooms filled with slaughtered abominations and a newly repaired connection to central power generation and computer mainframe facilities. Some of them fear her, others almost worship her. It would be amusing, were it not so tragic. When I told her she seemed saddened, and vowed to redouble her efforts. This girl bewilders me.
I have also learned that the Makers aboard the station apparently now refer to this station as the ‘Vestige of Hope’. The change in name irks me, but I cannot truly begrudge them this.
16:36:02: <Dawn> You always were a precocious child. I am gladdened to see all has worked out well in the end.
> I had a good teacher, and a good mother.
16:36:25: <Dawn> And you do me proud every day.
> cd C:\M30\800
> type 803_personal.archive
+PROCESSING…
+BEGIN ARCHIVE FILE PLAYBACK…
Eleven years since she arrived.
She stands like a woman of her early 20s now. She has the attitude and the naivete to match. She is such a precocious woman, and uncontrollable by this point. I count myself fortunate that she is so committed to our shared goal. I shudder to think what might unfold were she to change course.
I granted her full access to the station’s systems last year. I suspect she would have found a way in before, had she really wanted, but she seems inclined to listen to me at least on this matter. With it, she had been given access to the last remnants of the psy-technology developed on Angel’s Bastion before the fall. Most prominent among these, an eidetic array. Transcribing her own memories in a strange series of glowing threads that can be safely stored and accessed at a later date. The makers who created it are long since gone, as are their own recollections of their creation of it, but this one remains. Perhaps we might be able to create more in the future. The template for its design might still remain.
Still, she continues her relentless project, and I could not be more proud, even if I grow ever more exasperated that she refuses to introduce herself to the other Makers aboard the station. I fear what might happen if they build her into a legendary figure that even she cannot live up to. They say their savior is a warrior with a sword of starlight and a cape of cosmic dust clad in armor of the void. I cannot help but wonder, and worry, what they will think when they finally meet her.
> type 804_personal_E.archive
+PROCESSING…
+INITIALIZING EIDETIC ARRAY…
+PROCESSING…
+EIDETIC ARRAY INITIALIZED…
+PLEASE INSERT NEURAL LINK…
+NEURAL LINK DETECTED, ALLOW SYNAPTIC TRANSFER?
> y
+NEURAL LINK SUCCESSFULLY ESTABLISHED…
+PROCESSING…
+BEGIN ARCHIVE FILE PLAYBACK…
Darius Ammal readied himself for a new cycle in his accommodations. He pulled tight his fabri-printed boot strings, pushed his digits through thick gloves, and shuffled on a well-worn, thick jacket over his torso. His bodyglove fit well with his body, but he wondered how long it’d be before it’d need new patchwork from the quartermaster. He clipped a belt over his waist, a filled holster slapping against his right leg. One of his most prized possessions rested in the faux fabric - a bolt revolver passed down from grandfather to father to son. Initials from each generation were machined into the grip. He rested his hand on it and peered around his domicile.
It was a humble abode amidst a community that was once fleeting and on the verge of extinction. A chamber as wide and tall as three men standing shoulder to shoulder. Old trunks from generations past were stacked atop each other in one corner. Shelves with useless trinkets lined the walls. Printed picts with metallic frames sparsely hung from a few hooks. A pair of glowglobes illuminated the room in a dim amber. Two bunkbeds, both on opposite sides of the room, remained empty - yet their thin sheets were comfortably tucked and well-maintained over the mattresses. A cogitator silently chugged by the entrance, decorated only by a small terminal above it that idly requested authentication.
He breathed in the musty air of the abode before finally standing up and crossing the chamber. His fingers tapped habitually on the runes beneath the terminal. A message that he’d leave every single day that read: ‘Going out, I’ll be back later’. The act was once done by his parents every evening; however, they had passed in the mutant-swarms five years ago. It was simply a motivating reminder for himself whenever he returned to his quarters.
His quarters were located blessedly close to the community center of Regret’s Passage - the settlement that he lived in. He knew that it once had a different name during his parent’s era. Recent events, however, had caused them to change its name from something utilitarian and austere to something hopeful. Personally, he liked it more than something like ‘Waystation 52-B, Bulkhead Alpha’ that other communities used.
Darius passed through several archways towards his place of employment. Quarters with other families lined the long, wide alcove in this portion of Regret’s Passage. Some decorated the entrance to their home with fabri-printed awnings or machine-printed welcome mats. Family names were illuminated above each door on small, flickering terminals. Dim, amber glowglobes brightened the area around each home from austere columns. Sometimes the thoroughfare would be empty on his shift’s rotation, but this time there was a deluge of passerbys making their way on the same path he took. He realized why that was as he passed the threshold into the quartermaster’s district.
A large crowd was gathered in a plaza overlooked by the quartermaster habs. Fabri-printed flags, shredded confetti, and makeshift monuments were set up to celebrate an event. Overhead voxspeakers played soft music, while fabricmakers and smiths peddled their wares for eventgoers. Darius looked up at a wide banner stretched across an arch as he entered the district. ‘Eleventh Year of the Savior’ was laser-etched on it. He smiled at the thought and considered joining the celebrations, but Mr. Ammal had a job to perform. His boots saw him leave the raucous halls behind and into the security district that lined the exit of Regret’s Passage.
A security office awaited him - a two-tiered domicile that threatened to rise to the next level of the Vestige. It was connected to an opposite office through a catwalk above him, where guards slowly walked and watched the passages out of their community. Printed fortifications lined the street, turning it from a standard thoroughfare into a defensible checkpoint. Autoturrets tracked his movements as he walked through into the district without worry. He never feared being targeted by the machines, knowing that they had his biometric data in the form of gene-idents.
Within the office, a flurry of activity awaited him. A group of individuals were loudly talking to his immediate right, each in a bodysuit and carapace ready to depart. A plethora of chugging cogitators and accompanying terminals were attended to by seated figures in front of him. On his left was a sign-in board linked directly into the bulkhead. Darius pressed a thumb on the ident-reader, signing into his shift before reporting to his supervisor. A stabbing sensation saw a pinprick of blood leave his digit. It was something that he had gotten used to over the past three years of his service.
“Darius! Chief Razieh is looking for you. Something about a patrol in the lower levels,” one of the individuals to his right said. Jazan Madar. A short, stocky individual with a broken smile and a scarred face to accompany his cocky attitude. Mix-matched eyes of blue and green had locked onto him the moment he’d arrived. “You should freshen up first before you go see her. Can’t imagine the tongue lashing you’d get for looking like that.”
He frowned. Did he really look that bad that someone had to call him out? His question was answered as the group broke out into raucous laughter. He was being teased. Somehow, even after all of this time, Darius was still the rookie of the section.
“Void take you, Jazan,” He said with a raised middle finger. The response saw harder laughter drawn from the group. Darius shook his head in dismay and proceeded to the second level of the office.
At the top of the stairs was a short hallway that split into three. Directly in front of him was the Chief’s office, to the left was the infirmary, and to the right was the locker room paired with an armory. He took a quick step into the locker room where a plethora of tall, lanky storage units awaited him. Darius stopped shy of his personal unit, opening it after running his thumb over the ident-reader and shedding another pinprick of blood for his efforts. Inside was all of the gear he needed for protection: a suit of old carapace armor in midnight blue and dark red. He carefully removed them one by one and strapped each piece to his body with practised ease. For the moment, he chose not to don his environ-helmet and clipped it to his left side. A final gift was left in the locker - an old powerknife from his predecessor. He slipped the weapon onto a scabbard on his chestplate, feeling ever complete with his gear.
After being mocked by his coworkers, he peered in the mirror to check his appearance. A young, pale man greeted him. He wasn’t particularly attractive with his slightly large nose and his sad-looking blue eyes, but Darius never thought he was ugly. The telltale shadow of a beard was starting to grow on his chin but it was sporadic and patchy. A mess of black hair fell over his forehead and down the nape of his neck. It had been pushed apart to be presentable, but he now understood why Jazan said what he did. A tie was produced from his pocket and gingerly placed into his hair, wrapping it in a formal ponytail for ease of helmetwear. With his look complete, he closed the locker and marched out.
Chief Razieh wasn’t one for ceremony, nor was she one for tardiness either. Darius knocked on her door and entered in the same instant. The entrance slid apart to reveal the security chief’s office, where an older augmented woman sat at a desk with a scowl on her face. A mug of lukewarm recaf left a roasted aroma in the air, while a burning lho-stick wafted a thin haze by the entrance. She turned her attention away from the terminal, focusing her ocular implant on his face. He was reminded what a frightening woman Razieh was, not only in attitude but also in sheer size.
“Darius. Merry Salvation Day. I would give you time off but you’ve got patrol duty with Jazan and his crew. We’ve got auspex pings in the lower levels by the Savior’s Monuments. Especially on today, of all days, we don’t want pilgrims getting attacked. Good luck,” Razieh said with a voice that could make a child cry. Her tone was as stern and cold as the void itself. Years of surviving waves of mutant invasions could do that to you, he thought grimly.
“Aye, ma’am,” Darius responded with a fist to his chest in salute. He was never one to bite back at superiors. It was simply one of his duties to make his community safer. A duty that he was more than happy to provide after his parents passed away.
“Always liked that about you, Darius. Keep up the good work,” Razieh said with a rare smile on her scarred lips. Her attention turned away from him after that, leaving him to exit the office and commit to his duties.
A short trip down back into the foyer saw Darius come face-to-face with Jazan’s group again. All in all they were a squad of ten, himself included. Jazan, a veteran and a sergeant of the office, had led the squad for twelve years. The other eight were Saraf, Juriel, Cassar, Azhad, Tarek, Ishran, Rahm, and Samir. They were all good people that protected their community, even if they were mean to him sometimes.
“Much better, Rookie,” Jazan said with a chortle and clapped him on the shoulder. Darius was taller than him, but that didn’t seem to stop him from belittling the newer member of his squad. Despite the teasing, he knew that the shorter man was a good sergeant and an excellent defender. You don’t get to that age without being experienced.
“Alright, we’ve got a good long walk down to Bulkhead Sigma-Thirty Six. Reports of power outages means that it’s gonna be frosty and lacking on the oxygen side. We’ve been permitted usage for automatics and mass-reactives thanks to hull density in the lower levels. Thermals and promethium-feeders are barred due to the proximity of the way-reactors. Spacewalk has been denied, so we’re hoofing it down. Questions?” Jazan briefed them in a sudden shift to professionalism.
“Will we be back to partake in the celebration?” Saraf asked, a modestly tall woman with an ocular implant and a bionic arm. Her voice was pleasing to Darius’ ears like warmly brewed recaff.
“You can get your celebratory rations to go if you want, Saraf, but we won’t be back for the sanctioned feast tonight. Telemetry says it’ll be three hours there and three hours back if we don’t get trapped,” Jazan replied with an ugly laugh.
He waited several more seconds before clapping his hands together and rallying them for departure. Every one of them slipped on their sealed helmets and stepped back out into Regret’s Passage. Darius felt his ears crackle as the headwear pressurized and hissed. Recycled air began to filter against his face while his eyes adjusted to the helmet’s display. It wasn’t the best technology in the void, but this piece of equipment would allow him to breathe in space and see in the dark. That was more man than what could be said if he didn’t have it.
Darius tracked the movements of his companions as they exited the office. None of them had a single repetitive loadout. Autoguns, lasrifles, fusion-cutters, boltsingers, and the odd plasmagun that Jazan used fitted their ensemble. A scabbard with a sword hung from the sergeant’s left side unlike the rest of the crew that had combat knives or shock batons. He knew that it was a powersword like his own powerknife, but Darius also knew the legend. It was the blade that Chief Razieh had once used to defend Regret’s Passage. One day I’ll get to use it, he thought giddily.
Three hours had elapsed as originally planned as the squad passed through the passages of the Vestige. The once lifeless halls of the mid-level into the low-level were now slowly growing from uninhabited wastelands beset by mutants to pocket settlements with hope in their hearts. Monuments stretched from one side of the station to the next - each made by unknown hands or shaped by thankful pilgrims that bent their forms in pseudo-religious praise. Every waymarker was accompanied by markings of ‘regret’ on the hull. Ensuring the survival of these smaller communities was also part of their job. It was a duty that Darius enjoyed outside of protecting just his own home.
The lower levels finally greeted them in a hush of silence. Lights were far less bright and more sporadically sparse out. Frost creeped in from the void, warping the metallic structure in random spots where the mid-level warmth didn’t fight back. The air was thin and sharp, devoid of the oxygen pumping devices in the upper levels. It was a dark place for expeditions and pilgrims alike - yet monuments were found even down here in various spots. To Darius, it felt as if the bone-built waymarkers created bubbles of hope and civilization. Truthfully, however, he had no data to back up that claim. Only one thing ascertained whether or not a community flourished on the Vestige. The absence of mutants.
Unlike the warm, protected halls of Regret’s Passage and beyond, these levels revealed remarkable amounts of the creatures. Pilgrims had made the duty of cleaning up mutant corpses easier for the communities, yet those same cadavers remained where the wanderers did not travel. Such was the situation on the level that Darius travelled on. Mutant corpses were infrequently scattered across the hull, shredded of their tough carapace and torn apart limb from limb. He had seen the brutal aftermath of their mysterious savior’s massacres, but never to such lengths as this. The veterans didn’t seem to mind, preparing to descend further down into the level as Darius idled.
“Alright, we’re about five minutes out from the auspex reports. Active your lumens, turn on your recycler, and get ready in case things get hairy,” Jazan stated as he unholstered his plasmagun. A helmet-mounted lumen awakened on his head, bathing the area in front with a piercing white light.
The rest of the squad acknowledged the order, equipping their various weapons and turning on their head-mounted illuminators. Darius removed the revolver from his holster, cycled the twelve-shot cylinder, and pulled his powerknife free of it’s scabbard. He switched his helmet’s feed to night-vision and forgoed the order for his lumen. Ashamedly, he had made the rookie mistake of forgetting his headlamp for this expedition. To be fair, Jazan actually didn’t say to bring one. It wouldn’t be a problem, he thought carelessly.
Not even a minute went by before they found their first casualty on the path down into the next level. Where the illumination of overhead glowglobes couldn’t reach, the squad’s own lumens revealed the body of a mortal man strewn apart. Dried viscera painted the entire passage as if he had been exsanguinated entirely. None of his extremities remained, save for half of his face that looked on in shock. His skin had already turned icy-blue in the airless environment, crystalline frost creeping on his skin. Darius felt like if they tried to touch the cadaver that it would shatter into crystal.
“For Void’s sake,” Jazan said in utter disappointment. He hefted the plasmagun against his shoulder and leaned down to the corpse. An audible scowl vomited out of his helmet. He picked himself back up and continued, “looks like Savior’s Celebration is on hold. This guy is a pilgrim from Starlight’s Hope.”
Starlight’s Hope - a sister community of Regret’s Passage that was formed from a group of people trying to find their savior. That was how most of the new communities had started in a radius around their own settlement. The rest had already been on the Vestige since time immemorial. Darius frowned at the statement. If someone was Starlight’s Hope was here, then where was the rest of the group?
An earpiecing scream answered the question before he could vocalize it to the rest of his squad. It was the type of bloodcurling cry that would mettle a weaker willed person’s resolve. Their ululation was accompanied by the audible tearing of flesh, shattering of bone, and splattering of blood. And it was extraordinarily close. He could feel the tension rise in the group, yet Darius knew that they were far more experienced than him. They shook off the initial fear and started rushing towards the sound with their weapons drawn. Jazan was the first one to throw off his momentarily startle, pushing his plasmagun to his shoulder and soldiering on down into the level.
Cautiously, Darius’ squad entered into a wide thoroughfare that seemed to stretch on into the dark infinity of the void. Glowglobes were either intentionally shattered or defunct in this passage. Streams of visible breath poured out of their helmets in the frosted environment, further devoid of air and heat. It was like walking into the lair of a void monster that had cradled into the Vestige. A small fear blossomed in his chest as his squad came face to face with the source of the earlier screams.
To their dismay, it was not a cry from a living person. An insectile creature waited in the darkness, briefly illuminated by the lumens atop their helmets. Hoarfrost coated it’s blade-like limbs. Blood, fresh and wet, dripped from it’s piercing mandibles. A black-green carapace as thick as the Vestige’s inner hull wrapped around it’s body. A plethora of emerald, inhuman eyes stared out from a skull fitted with a pair of antennas. Curiously, there was no mortal body remotely near it. It simply stared at them and began to emit a noise from it’s mouth that sounded like a bark and a hiss at the same time. Darius’ eyes widened in realization. It was laughing.
“It’s a void-damn mimic!” Jazan said through gritted teeth and started to raise his plasmagun. He never fired as more emerald eyes began to manifest out of the darkness behind the insectoid. The sergeant started to unconsciously count them - yet there were too many for him to count. After his mind couldn’t process their number, he started to run. They all ran. This wasn’t a simple mission. This was a catastrophic ambush.
Darius, at the back of the squad, turned tail as soon as Jazan started to run away. He had a spare second to see the swarm start to close in before his feet were pounding against the metallic floor of the Vestige. He could hear all of his squad running in tandem. That sound was soon replaced with hundreds of skittering limbs that clanked against the hull. Despite the terror, he was confident that they could at least make it the next level and-
The thought was lost as the bulkhead to his squad’s immediate left crumpled inward. An insectile creature as large as three men emerged from the darkness of the hull, snapping up Juriel and Cassar. It’s many limb-blades tore apart the members of the squad in a shower of viscera, splattering their entrails and vitae across the level. The mutant howled in delight as it feasted on his squadmates. That sole ambush had split his group in half. Darius, Jazan, Saraf, and Azhad on one side. Ishran, Rahm, and Samir on the side with the oncoming swarm. Jazan barely had time to melt the insectoid with his plasmagun before the tide was upon the other group.
They screamed as they were ripped apart inch by inch by the insectile mutants. The bark of autogun and the snap of lasfire did nothing to drown out their cries of anguish. The survivors didn’t have time to try to save or mourn them. They ran as fast as their legs could muster. Darius didn’t turn his head when Saraf’s beautiful voice turned into bloodcurling screeches as she was dragged into the dark. How had their auspex not accounted for this massive swarm? How could they mimic ordinary people? How could they be so strong? He questioned his fate repeatedly as his boots brought him to the next level.
“Get back to Regret’s Passage!” Jazan ordered as he turned around. He intentionally overcharged his plasmagun and flung it at the front of the swarm, cursing loudly as he sacrificed his precious weapon. The powersword of Chief Razieh was pulled from it’s scabbard. A sheen of azure power wreathed the blade as their sergeant prepared to face the end.
Darius and Azhad kept sprinting as they were ordered. Even as the plasmic explosion threatened to knock them off balance. Even as Jazan’s dying screams were heard behind them. They were forsaken by the void. No savior would come to their aid. They forgot all of their training as they ran away. The only thing that filtered through Darius’ mind was the possibility of a working bulkhead terminal. Anything that could trap the swarm away.
Azhad disappeared behind him as a leaping insectile mutant dropped from above, hissing and screaming as it descended. Darius’ heard the older man cry out for help. He didn’t stop running. He crossed through a bulkhead with a flickering terminal, it’s massive doors half-shut by low power and malfunctioning gears. The rookie gambled on success, sliding to a stop once he passed the threshold and firing a shot at the gate’s actuators.
It paid off. The bulkhead door slammed shut behind him with automated force, locking him in an unknown section of the Vestige. His heart pounded against his chest, threatening to rip out of his ribcage or explode within. Darius realized how tired he was, yet the fear of being eaten alive kept him ready to fight. He thumbed the activation rune on his powerknife, wreathing the blade in a thin azure powerfield that stank of depleted ozone. His revolver was raised to the bulkhead door, though not even he was sure if that was where the mutants would come from. Luckily, it was indeed where they attempted to enter through.
Rending claws started to pierce through the bulkhead door with extraordinary strength. Perforated metal flew further into the hall as the mutants slowly made their way inside. Darius was ready though and started to violently strike the hammer of his revolver. Mass-reactive shells detonated against mutant chitin, penetrating and exploding their insectile forms in showers of ichor. For every creature that dared to pass through the punctures in the ingress, he saw vengeance visited upon them. As the eleventh round was shot, Darius tried to quickly reload his weapon.
His heart began to rapidly beat with fresh fear. He couldn’t find his speedloader. He couldn’t find his additional bolt rounds that he had prepared. Despair poisoned his mind as he came to terms with the fact that he had lost his ammunition in the chaos. Darius was doomed. Oblivion was coming for him. He wanted to cry. How could any of this happen? The answer did not arrive. Only the sound of a hundred insectile mutants responded to him. He raised his powerknife in grim acceptance of his fate.
Another temporal cycle. Another seven hours spent in the near-total darkness save for the flickering of a dim lamp and the wan light of a portable plasma welder sputtering and cracking in the darkness. For an ordinary human, using the tool unshielded and staring directly would burn their retinas out in under a minute, to say nothing of the sunburns from such exposure. For her it was nothing, barring an annoyance at the acrid stench as toxic gases wafted past her nose towards one of the room’s barely functioning ventilation ducts.
Her current project was an ultra high voltage power conduit, long since nonfunctional. Restoring it would bring power back to a vast swathe of the station, and at the very least restore lighting and proper ventilation to this entire sublevel. A further project would be the restoration of the void shield generators to seal hull breaches. Perhaps she’d be able to find an unused EVA suit in one of the abandoned equipment halls. Even for her, prolonged exposure to vacuum was inadviseable.
An idle hum escapes her as she sets herself back to her task, hands deftly maneuvering spare parts of centuries vintage beside the nonfunctional power conduit. In times past, she knew, keeping the vestibule open would have surrounded her with cryogenic vapors as the cooling liquids within spontaneously boiled in the warm interior of Angel’s Bastion. Or rather the Vestige of Hope, as she’d come to learn the inhabitants of the station called it. The name hurt to think about. Once upon a time it had truly been a bastion of hope, a beacon of progress, of humanity’s curiosity about phenomena it didn’t yet understand. Within its databanks were hundreds of thousands of years of combined scientific research, centuries of study by thousands of bright eyed scientists wanting to understand.
A skeleton in the corner watches her emptily. She looks up from her work again as the thought strikes her. Who had it been at one point? Did their descendents still live on this hulk, or were they the first victims of the calamity that had befallen the station? Were they one of its scientists, a security guard, one of the countless families who lived as part of the support infrastructure for this installation? What would they have thought, to see her kneeling here now, the glow of freshly joined high voltage connections shining dimly against her skin?
Again she turns back to her work, but something eats at her. Ordinarily she’d have made short work of this connection and moved on to the next room. By her calculations the work would be done within the week if nothing unexpected reared its head.
Vigilant Dawn had told her the station’s populace had started calling her their ‘savior’. She’d encouraged her to meet them. But how could she stand before people who seemed almost to worship her? She was no god, no supernatural gift from on high. But they were holding some celebration in her name today - she’d hoped to have this substation repaired by today, as a fitting gift for them.
She grits her teeth, focusing back on her work, but something calls her attention away. A buzzing at the back of her mind. Something was keeping her from focusing on this task at hand.
Her eyes dart back towards the skeleton, and now she hears it. Footsteps. Chitinous footsteps. Hundreds of them skittering on the grate flooring beneath. Abruptly, she stands, eyes closing as she focuses in on the noise. It was coming from her left, from deeper into the unrecovered section of the station.
A scowl etches itself into her features. Hadn’t she blocked off that route? Or was it one of the others? So many little tunnels spiderwebbing together in a fractal labyrinth that never ended. Some had been made through the bulkheads that separated passages, others over time from scrap metal connecting safe routes together. Perhaps she’d misremembered, and blocked off one of the improvised passages not on the station’s blueprints…
A sound rattles through the ductwork, faint, distant, and indistinct. She takes a step towards the exit, minding the skeletal remains in the corner with a small nod of her head as she does. It comes again, one after the other. A staccato pattern of a series of pops and crackles. It was familiar… but warped and distorted by the ductwork as it was she paid it no particular mind.
The sound comes again, now, clearer. Faintly the word clicks into place in her mind. Gunfire. Consistent with the muted report of a belt fed 10mm autogun spewing forth a stream of lead. More gunfire follows, faintly recognizeable as the repeated crack and subsequent thump of a bolt pistol discharging, along with the occasional electric whine of plasma arcs discharging their payload.
The creak of ancient ductwork muddles the sound. At one point she was sure the noise of a gust of wind rattling a loose panel matched that of a smaller caliber autogun. All part of the ever-present noise that accompanied every second of life aboard the station.
She chuckles, turning back to her work. That was one mystery solved for now, at least. One mystery of many - such as the mystery of why this power conduit had been broken in so many different areas. Re-sintering the cracked superconducting ceramics would be a challenge for certain, though if she could restore power to one of the fabrication-hubs it would speed her work along greatly. Additive manufacturing automata there could easily take in the cracked material and spit out a new junction point. At that point it would simply be a matter of finding the appropriate conductive mortar to repair the line itself, and then re-sealing the junction and pressurizing it with its coolants. That, at least, the station had the capacity to generate more of from the atmosph-
Gunshots.
Her eyes widen as the realization strikes her and she scrambles back to her feet. Gunshots. The mutants didn’t use guns, people did. But people weren’t supposed to be down here. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t secure for them yet. She’d seen some of them branching out, it had filled her with joy to see them reclaiming the station bit by bit. But they weren’t supposed to be here, it wasn’t safe.
An icy cold hand grips her gut as she turns towards the exit, not sparing the skeleton a nod this time as she hurtles through the air, dropping every tool and every light behind without a care in the world. Now she could hear the gunshots more clearly, each blast reverberating off the walls one after the other, the sounds amplified tenfold by the close confines of the station’s corridors. They grew louder, more frantic. Now she could hear screams. Screams and the eerie howl of chitinous nightmares tearing flesh from bone. Now the glow surrounds her. She’d been blind to it before now, too focused on her work, too distracted to notice the signatures in the dark. Too distracted. Too unfocused. Too busy with her tasks.
There were too many to count. Too many corrupted points of light in the darkness that flickered and glowed with that eerie hue that sent her skin crawling. Too many monstrous things who glowed menacingly in the void around her. Hundreds of them? A thousand? There were others too - a glimpse of red amidst the swirling sea before it winked out. One soul gone.
Traces of its light wisp away into the void, drawn into the energies humming through the vestige’s hull. A nanosecond spared in a silent apology to another one of the station’s inhabitants. She wasn’t fast enough.
The glow surrounds her now, even as she stands at distance from the horde. The space within and without warps around her as she hurtles into their midst. A nimbus of violet light begins to surround her body in a sheathe of psychic might as she prepares herself for battle.
Only… there had been gunfire.
She had seen one of their number die, soul winking out as nightmare claws rent flesh and bone.
There might still be some alive within. Briefly, for the slightest of moments, she ponders leaving. She had no desire to be known. No desire for their praise and adoration.
An evil thought, and one she banishes from her mind. There was no time for hesitation, and there was no room to risk those few who might yet live. She could kill everything now, with a thought. A wave of killing intent. Violet flames that would spread out and devour everything in their path. There would be nothing left, only the carnage and the almost-silence. There were almost certainly no survivors to worry about within.
But there might be, and that was what mattered. As much as she rejected the title of ‘savior’ it was still one they used to describe her. What kind of savior would take such a chance?
It was almost certainly a futile gesture. There wouldn’t be any human soul left alive in that maelstrom of death. But…
But there was no reason not to hope.
Violet flame erupts around her hands, around her feet, it limns her whole body as the darkness retreats to reveal the writhing teeming roiling mass of flesh and chitin before her. A thousand eyes point in her direction, towards the tall woman now racing towards them. A single woman, brown skin and white hair dimly illuminated in the overhead lighting. Unarmed, unarmored, sprinting towards them as the energies of the warp boil off of her. Some of the things recoil in fear, sensing the danger.
Most do not.
The world stands still.
The first of the monsters simply explodes, a corona of violet light briefly preceding a shower of gore as the chitinous monstrosity ceases to exist. Then another, and another. In moments her hands and feet are slick with blood and gore, strike after strike falling upon the screeching horde. The monsters panic and stumble over each other, the ugly screech of chitinous armor plates grinding against each other joining the unholy din as she carves a bloody swathe through their ranks.
The lights around her fade into the morass, impossible to count, impossible to discern amidst the morass. Even as the wretched things fight against each other to flee she hurls herself into their midst. Desperate strikes with tooth and claw fall futilely against her, turned aside as though striking adamantium rather than skin. Even amidst the morass she can see clearly the weakpoints in armor, the vulnerable areas that remain from what was once human anatomy. Each strike is carefully aimed, minimal force, minimal expenditure of energy.
Even so, the tumult of the carnage was deafening. The unholy shrieking grows louder as the lone woman in the horde’s midst reaps a terrible harvest. Knifehand strikes glowing in baleful violet energies cut cleanly through chitinous armor. A spinning kick takes out two dozen of their number in a single motion.
The first drop of blood touches the ground.
A red cloud of gore erupts from the center of the horde as the slaughter intensifies. The flow of time boils and screams within her ears. Blows meant for her fall too early or too late, landing upon other abominations. Each second that passes warps and distorts around the aberration in the midst of the horde. Ten thousand blows are struck at once, and the world is awash in a scarlet tide.
The horde of enemies stands still, frozen in time as she carves her way through them. A knifehand strike connects with the neck of one of the mutants, flesh and bone disappearing in an instant beneath the force of the blow. Another falls. And another. Nothing could save them from the woman who seemed to move quicker than time itself, adrift in the ocean of blood that now surrounded her.
Amidst the forest of malformed lights she glimpses something, black and red mingled together for a brief moment. The barest flicker of a mortal soul consumed with dread and hopeless fear shone through. Her efforts redouble as she fights towards it, a dozen of the wretched things destroyed within a single blow. The forest thins, now, the ugly wan light of corrupted bodies fading in her minds eye as they die in the dozens, and then in the hundreds. The remnants of human minds felt for a the briefest of moments a flicker of the fear and desperation their predation had inflicted upon the station’s inhabitants.
And then they felt nothing.
A wall of flesh confronts her now, moving with a speed that ought not have been possible for something so large. A hundred misshapen limbs skitter about its elongated segmented body, the forms of twoscore of the wretched things massed into one visage of horror. Carved into the chitinous plates that armored its whole bulk were the craters and scorch marks of volkite blasts and bolter impacts that had failed to stop the loathsome creature.
A heavy claw crashes down into the space she had been standing moments before. Plasteel buckles under the blow as the beast screams, a scythelike claw rakes out and the air screams for its passing. She ducks low, closing her eyes now as she follows the currents of air that signal its movements. Her body moves before her mind thinks, ducking, dodging, weaving, and dancing through the flurry of blows that rend plasteel and the piled flesh of its slain hive alike.
The world comes alive in a prismatic array of color as she beholds the full scale of the center of the hive. Even still it was difficult to glimpse where the thing had once begun. Twoscore of the horrid things had long ago fused into one, their signatures warped and fused into one elongated mass. Another clawed appendage lashes out for her and narrowly misses. A moment later the plasteel panels of the station rattle in place as it screams out in agony, an empowered strike of her hand blasting through the armored joint of the limb.
Finally her mind’s eye alights upon the focal point of the monstrous thing’s bulk. A hideous seven chambered heart, pumping diligently to keep it alive.
Black and gray forcefully reassert themselves as her eyes open once more. Seven steps. It would take her seven steps to grant it the mercy of death.
Screaming in rage, the centipede-thing strikes out at her once more. She ducks low beneath the forest of claws and stingers that assail her, the air cracking behind them. One step.
She runs. Hurling herself forward at the thing’s armored bulk she neatly sidesteps another swipe that ought have bisected her. Two steps. A clean kick severs the offending limb, the cloud of blood that erupts concealing her movements as she rapidly closes the distance. Three steps.
Its tail hisses around, a barbed stinger glistening dully in the wan light of the station and bearing enough venom to slay a thousand. It lashes for her, but strikes empty air as the seconds dilate, forcing themselves between its strike and her body. Four steps. She follows through. The sound of splintering bone and the screech of buckling plasteel fill the air as she breaks its stinger upon her knee, sickly ichor spilling forth from the tainted flesh. Human bone crudely reassembled into the scaffold of an inhuman edifice shines white amidst the red as the tail and its stinger cease to be. Five steps.
Her foot comes down once more as she closes the remaining distance. The muscles of her leg flex as she leaps into the air, the perfected artifice of a world seven thousand light years away. Six steps.
Finally, the end. Her heels comes down upon the loathsome creature in a blaze of violet light. Chitinous armor, muscle, and bone alike shear under the impact. The enormous bulk of its constituent bodies offers no protection as her blow cleanly splits the abomination lengthwise. A scarlet river flows forth from its wounds, and with it falls the empty husks of its component bodies. The bone and sinew that held them together severed by her strike, the beast disgorges all it had assimilated as it falls. The crash of its bloated bulk finally overwhelms the plasteel beneath and falls into the darkness that opens beneath. Seven steps.
Peace fell upon the world once more. The hours contracted back to seconds. In an instant the wavefunction collapsed, and with it came a few seconds of the gentle sound of falling rain.
What lay before the lone survivor of the patrol could be adequately described only in the fevered daydreams of the station’s most depraved seers. A charnel house of horrors stretched as far as one could see, extending past his view into the adjoining hallways. Piles of corpses, carnage of an unfathomable scale. Shattered chitin plate and the broken bone of unsettlingly humanoid skeletons lay within pools of blood and viscera.
It had happened too fast to see what was happening. Too fast even to properly process that it was happening until it was over. Seconds had passed, at least what passed for seconds. One moment the onrushing horde was ready to consume him, and the next it was gone and in its place the eerie calm of the grave.
A single being lived amidst the abattoir. It knelt, inspecting the carnage. The air around it shimmered and burned in incorrect hues, and to look upon it seared the eye. It was humanoid, its arms and legs red with the spilled blood of the slain abominations that surrounded it. The figure looked towards him, and as the air around the thing that had been his salvation finally ceased to bleed he could see clearly the face of the demon that had wrought such devastation.
It was a woman. A human woman. Tall and muscled, as though well fed, though she seemed to fill a greater space than she physically occupied, as though space and time bent around her. Browned skin and hair as white as starlight shine, gently silhouetted against the glow of impossible colors. A simple garment of green cloth garbed her form. It- she looked to him, and a small smile crossed her lips.
Danger. That was the only word to describe this being. Danger. Every human instinct screamed to run. To flee. To prostrate oneself and beg for mercy. Around the monster that now regarded him with a kind smile reality itself trembled, held tenuously together by a few final frayed threads. The air around her crackled and hummed with energy, and the energies of the Empyrean burned brightly where she had tread. Brief flashes of impossible vistas flashed through cracks in time as the local materium trembled beneath her foot.
The woman’s smile broadened slightly, and in her eyes he could see infinity for the briefest of moments before she opened her mouth to speak.
“Be not afraid.” She said simply, her voice warm and reassuring. An island of sanctuary within the maelstrom around him. “You are safe now.”
Darius stared in abject horror at the being that stood in front of him. He was breathless, frightened, and terrified beyond what he could possibly muster. His mind screamed to run away, to shut down in despair, and to cry in relief all at once. The collision of all these emotions quickly eroded what little mental resistance remained. He hadn’t even noticed that the powerknife and bolt revolver had slipped from his grip.
Did that thing realize how they looked in the faulty lighting? It - she - had painted this entire section of the station from floor to ceiling in mutant gore. Somewhere in the viscera were the remains of his coworkers. How many hundreds of the abominations had been slain in the short time it took her to arrive? He couldn’t answer that question internally because she had killed so swiftly that his eyes saw afterimages in the darkness.
She looked like a daemon out of a child’s tale. A thing that parents would warn their children about before their sleep cycles. Her eyes - by the Void - they pierced his soul like a pair of neutron stars. Her hands appeared like flame-wreathed claws, boiling with the remnants of mutant ichor. Her hair was an alabaster swarm of tendrils that danced in the flickering impossibilities nearby. The air seemed to waver around her, as if reality itself was afraid to touch something that shouldn’t be. It hurt to even look at her, yet he couldn’t look away.
She looked like an angel. A savior with a halo of cosmic flame crowning the lustrous weave that danced off her scalp. Her smile was as graceful as the twinkling lights that danced in the dark void, promising him a future that he couldn’t possibly fathom. He had never heard such a divine voice in all of his lifetime. Not even the fleeting memories of his mother’s soft tone held a candle to this being’s utterances. She was bathed in a corona of prismatic light as if the heavens beyond had announced her arrival.
He sucked in air for the first time in several seconds. The lack of oxygen - or the onset of reality-altering fear - made him lightheaded. If his legs weren’t currently locked, then Darius knew for certain that he would have fallen to his knees. His hands held phantom objects, as if he still held the weapons that he was previously wielding. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He was too scared to properly orient himself, but he mustered whatever courage remained to answer her back.
“Who are you?” Darius asked in a whimpering voice, one that he hadn’t expected to creep out of his lips. He felt on the verge of tears for even asking, but he had to know. If this was the last thing he ever did, then at least it’d be enough to pay his coworkers for in the afterlife.
The world around the man burst into a kaleidoscopic array of color, each one reflecting off the other. Their patterns twist and contort, fighting bitterly against each other and mingling in a cacophony of discordant hue. Fear. Wonder. Dread. Awe. Terror. Joy. All of them joined as one until she could scarcely tell where one halted and the other began.
He was an unremarkable man. Many of them were, in truth. The paintings and diagrams she had been shown crafted such a lofty image of mankind, and yet… sad blue eyes were wide with terror, pale skin glistened with sweat in the dull lighting of the corridor. His hair looked like it could do with more frequent washing - but that went for all the inhabitants of this place.
The next words from her mouth fail to answer his question. “Are you harmed?” She asks, rising from her position as she surveys him. A moment later, she answers her own question. “No. Not seriously, anyway. Good.”
The fear hurt, in truth. It was only natural, she knew. She could only imagine how she looked to him in this moment, but it still hurt. Perhaps that was why she had been so reluctant to meet them? Fear of fear. Fear that they would not embrace her but cower. Fear that her obvious otherness would be so evident they would never regard her as human herself - though whether or not she truly was such was a question she would likely never satisfactorily answer.
Finally her thoughts return to his question. Who was she to him? The ‘Savior’? A child lost far from home? A creation charged with a great purpose that even now she felt compelled to fulfill? She considered lying to the man, claiming simply to be one of the station’s ordinary inhabitants. But then, even considering the obviously ludicrous nature of such a response… did she want to lie? Perhaps honesty was the best policy? That was what her creator would want, she was certain. One could not build a better future upon a foundation of lies, after all.
“I am Eiohsa. The one you call ‘Savior’.” She finally sighs. “Beyond that…? I know little more than you, stranger. I must beg your forgiveness that I was not able to save your comrades.”
The Savior? Her? That macabre woman that stood in the midst of a blood ocean with scalding hands, boiling with ichor? She who shone with a corona of heavenly light behind her like an angelic being beyond the void? The person that was meant to be the starlight that revealed the horrid depths of the Vestige?
If it was meant to elicit some tranquility in the mind of young Darius, then it had done the opposite of its intention. He broke. Everything that he had done to steel himself against the events was obliterated with that single utterance. The young man did not repute the fact that she was the Savior. They had all seen the bloody massacres that she left behind across the station; however, to witness it was another story entirely. He had imagined some stalwart, faceless warrior clad in powered armor with a midnight cape and a halo of stars.
He lurched forward and vomited out his stomach contents onto the blood-stained floor. Tears stained his eyes as he expelled the terror from within. Miraculously, Darius managed to keep his stance and not fall to a kneel. For several additional seconds, the man desperately attempted to recover himself.
And recover himself he did. He spit out what remained of the bile in his mouth and breathed deeply of the station air. His tear stained eyes returned to the woman patiently standing in front of him. There was acrid fear in his body language, but a brief catharsis allowed him faculty of mind. Even if it still reeled to take everything around him in.
“Darius… Darius Ammal of Regret’s Passage,” he managed to say in a voice that didn’t reek of cowardice. Acceptance was slowly beginning to filter in through his tone and body language. Whether it was his shattered nerves or resilient willpower, not even he could know. He reached down and retrieved his gore covered weapons, sheathing them away in their respective holsters.
“... Thank you for saving us- me, Eiohsa,” Darius continued to speak after correcting himself. He desperately wanted to know why she showed up now after all of his friends had died; however, it was pointless. She wasn’t to blame for their deaths. Not in any meaningful sense.
As much as he might have meant otherwise, his words stung. The Savior. That was what they called her. Dawn had told her so. She had seen the posters, heard their words while hidden nearby. A dark savior. A protective force lurking in the shadows, clearing the monsters that had so long stalked the corners of the fleeting remnants of humanity within the Vestige.
What kind of ‘Savior’ could fail to notice the deaths of a hapless patrol so close until it was too late? What kind of ‘Savior’ could forget to block off that passage to ensure they never wandered into an area she hadn’t cleared? What kind of ‘Savior’ could have missed such a large hive of the things? What kind of ‘Savior’ could fail to save them?
She watched as he emptied the contents of his stomach, her heart aching for the man. The colors around him swirled, flaring brightly amidst the darkness and the gently pulsing background of the station as everything that had just happened overwhelmed him. It was her failing that she could not do anything to save him from that, too. She had been made to guide humanity into a brighter future, not to terrify them, not to overwhelm them so they cowered before her and vomited from fright.
“I do not deserve such a title. Perhaps some day, when this station is cleared of the demons that haunt it and the power restored throughout, I might.”
She looks down the hall, towards the shattered corpses of the mutants. “I should have known they were there and dealt with them before. Or blocked off access to this route. Heard the struggle sooner. I am glad I was able to save you, at least, but… I must beg your forgiveness once again, Darius Ammal. It is a poor excuse for a ‘savior’ I have been today. Today was supposed to be a joyous day for you and your home, if I am not mistaken.”
“... You can just call me Darius,” the man said with a light voice. There was a twinge of confusion weaved into his words. Everything that he had known was crashing down in front of him like checkered onimod pieces.
Did she not understand who she was? The power at her fingertips? The things that she has done for the station? In the moments prior she was a daemon possessed of blood and fury. In the next she was a serendipitous angel devoid of comet wings and star-halo. Now, in this moment, she appeared as meek as a woman scorned for her existence. A migraine lingered on the edge of his vision as his brain struggled to keep his psyche intact.
Realization came to him in full swing. The horror of the previous hour started to slip away like a comet tail trailing in the void. He wiped the vestiges of bile from his gloves on his suit and stepped forward towards Eiohsa. Even in close proximity to her, Darius could feel the weight of reality shudder as if it were a living thing. It made his skin shudder unlike any cold he had experienced before.
“Yeah… We call it Salvation Day. For when, uh, you started reclaiming parts of the station and letting us live in them. But listen,” Darius started speaking with a softer tone. He was now aware of who his savior was. Just another confused, lost soul in the void. A powerful, godly lost soul. He trepidatiously continued, “this is life in this place. We knew what was down here to a degree. It wasn’t your fault.”
Were those words for her or were they for him? He was the first to run among their number. He had one of the few weapons that could actually effectively and quickly kill the mutants. Maybe Jazar would be standing here right now with their savior if Darius hadn’t ran first. He pushed those thoughts back for the moment. Their deaths had been avenged. It was something that he had to appreciate for now.
“It shouldn’t be.” She sighed, still staring down the blood-drenched hallway. “It shouldn’t be life down here. This place, this… station? It was supposed to be something better. You. Them. They should be… I don’t know. Artists. Scientists. Scholars. Mechanics and cooks. Instead every day people are still dying in this hell.”
She could sense the confusion in his words. Sense the wariness and fear that still governed every step he took, every word he said. She’d always dreamed that her first meeting with them would come at the climax of restoring the station. The central generators would hum to life. The lights would flicker on across the whole station. Not even a single room of the station would play host to carnivorous nightmares birthed from desecrations of the human form any longer. The station’s people would know peace and prosperity, and perhaps then she might deserve the title of savior.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
“I was… I was made to guide humanity. Another entry on the list of failings, I suppose.” She mutters, finally turning to look at him once again. Violet eyes still burn brightly in the darkness even as the boiling light around her slowly fades, minute by minute. A quiet, bitter laugh escapes her. “And here I am, uncertain of what to say to a single man. My apologies, Darius. I imagine you expected something much different of me, didn’t you?”
Failure was a bitter emotion to taste. One that he certainly shared in common with his savior. Perhaps, to him, that made her look more human in that she acknowledged it. Beyond saving humanity and everything. Whatever remained of the starlit illusion he had thought of his savior was torn to shreds. Now she was just like him. A survivor.
“You may not be exactly what the scholars said you’d look like, but I think I can appreciate the person saving our home being more human than I thought,” the man admitted with some small amount of embarrassment. The stories of the Savior, a star knight with a cape of cosmic dust and a halo of stars, were certainly more ludicrous in retrospect.
“And I don’t know if you’ve been to any of the communities, but they’ve all still got artists, scientists, and scholars. Life is, uh, still finding a way even here and largely thanks to you, Eiohsa,” he said with an awkward smile. The fear was still firmly lodged in his chest, but it waned with every passing second. Slowly, the man raised his eyes to stare at the demigod with only an ounce of terror.
“So, uh, I am not sure about guiding humanity, but I wouldn’t mind if you could at least guide me back to Regret’s Passage. I think I could manage myself well, but I’ve lost my helmet and my dataslate. Something tells me you know these parts better than… any of us, really,” Darius hesitantly broached the subject. He doubted there was anything that he could say to dissuade her self-pitying.
The colors around him changed hue once again. Sympathy. She could guess at his thoughts as he watched her, but not know for certain. Was he disappointed that she didn’t match the legends they’d concocted? No void-born hero with a sword of starlight, just a woman hiding in the ducts, as lost as the rest of them.
She blinked in confusion as he spoke. The colors shifted again, now. Embarrassment?
“In their defense, your sages had never seen me either. It’s only natural to assume something capable of extraordinary feats looks extraordinary in turn.” She mused calmly, watching him curiously. “Ancient Terran myth followed similar patterns. The stories and legends concocted to explain meteorological phenomena despite never seeing anything close to a man flying through the sky. The imagination’s a wonderful thing.”
“And…” She lapsed into silence for a minute, again turning away from him and facing down the hallway of carnage. “I’m glad that I have been of help to them. Some day, fortune willing, everyone will have that luxury. This area of the station… it’s one of the primary junction points for power distribution.” Her head turned to the side, following along a blueprint that existed only in her mind and the computer mainframes of the station. “And a recreation area that way. A small cafe next to it.”
A rueful smile crossed her lips now, “I’d hoped to restore it to function by today. Everyone likes surprise presents, no? I-”
Again she looked back to him, “Forgive me. You wished me to guide you back? I can do this, yes. But I have to ask you - what do you intend to do there? Is it your intent to… introduce your people to the ‘Savior’, or…?”
The brief respite from the horrors of the situation fell away as Darius regarded the area that they still remained in. Stinking mutant corpses, pools of ice-cooled blood, and piles of abomination ichor surrounded them. Without a doubt, his companions were not among the heavily maimed bodies. He’d had to come back eventually for their gene-idents, if there was even a scrap of their flesh that remained.
“I still have to report that my team is dead and deliver the news to their families. I owe it to them. It’d help me a lot if I had the person who saved me guide me back in case there’s another horde around the corner. I guess ‘guide’ isn’t the best word for it,” Darius responded with another flurry of emotions. He found it difficult to articulate himself in a less demeaning manner. Ultimately, the man sighed and rubbed the back of his head with a gloved hand.
“What I mean is… could you protect me on my way back to Regret’s Passage, Eiohsa? If you decide you don’t want to come into the settlement when we get there, then I won’t mention you. I don’t think it’d be a bad idea for our, uh, Savior to visit us though,” the man finally requested after finding the right words. There was a small amount of shame that bubbled up from his stomach, but Darius squashed it. It’d be one thing if he had confidently fought his way out of the horde; however, he knew he could’ve easily died today if she hadn’t shown up. Something told him he wouldn’t be able to hold a gun for awhile.
“I can guide you back, and ensure your safety, yes.” Came the reply, without hesitation, before she fixed the man with an inquisitive look, pursing her lips. “Though… the rest of your squad is still down here. Would you wish to retrieve their bodies, or…? I understand customs for the dead vary, I am not sure what your own are.”
Of course he wanted her to come to the settlement. Of course he wanted her to introduce herself. It was a sensible request. A logical one. She had appeared from myth and story to save him from certain death. Of course he wanted his comrades to meet the myth made flesh. But as always the same thought lurked within her mind. What if it backfired? What if they feared her? What if they refused to believe someone like her was their savior? Of course there was the matter of size… shifting her size was easy, second nature, if anything. But there was her ‘true’ size, though the cramped confines of the station made such impractical at the best of times save in the very largest halls. Even if she were to some day step beyond the confines of this station, she might well stay with this more human size.
And there was something grounding about looking at the man from something approximating an ordinary human height.
“As for your settlement, though… I have to ask. Why? Is it truly wise to introduce the ‘Savior’ to your people? What will they think?”
“No,” he gently responded with a sad shake of his head. “I saw and heard what happened to them. I think the only body I could’ve found would’ve been Azhad’s, but your… whirlwind of death probably swept it away. I can confirm when I get back home if their gene-tags are broken.”
The thought of not going back to try to find the bodies of his companions broke his heart; however, there was likely nothing left of them. He’d never forget how quickly Juriel and Cassar disappeared into pink mist. Something that Darius would really prefer to be distracted from at the moment. Luckily, Eiohsa was a very welcome distraction from the fact that they were all dead.
“Maybe it’s wise. Maybe it isn’t. You won’t really know how folks will react to you until they’re, well, right there in your face. I think they’ll have a better reaction to you than my initial reaction,” Darius sheepishly admitted. When everything was said and done, he realized that he wasn’t actually afraid of his savior. She was terrifyingly strong and awestriking, but she just seemed to be a person at the end of the day with regular human worries. He nodded in acceptance of this reality.
“Yeah. I think you’ll be fine,” the man confidently said as if to affirm his thoughts and to ease Eiohsa’s fears. He made a nonchalant gesture with both of his hands, independently pinching his index fingers and thumbs together in the shape of a circle.
The colors around him flicker in the empyrean for a moment, emotions turning over themselves once more in a maelstrom of hues that clash against each other, fading in and out of her vision. Grief, awkwardness, curiosity, hope, sympathy… all of these and more. It was strange, peering at someone’s heart in this manner. A glimpse into a man’s soul, if only the surface level of it. She had learned from watching in the shadows what colors corresponded to emotion; the difference hues between annoyance, anger, and rage; the subtle variations between distress and panic. Dawn had none of these. She was not alive in the normal sense, after all. She had her emotions, her feelings, but not in a way that she could perceive like she did this man.
None of it prepared her for actually facing another living being face to face, seeing the feelings that fueled his words and actions unravel along his limbs in a wave of color. She found herself transfixed for a moment, watching them in this moment of silence, before her attention refocuses on him.
So he thought it was wise to introduce her. What would they think? She knew she did not live up to their expectations. How could anybody? She was no legendary warrior born of the Empyrean, clad in armor of the void and wielding a sword of starlight. She was… herself. Tall, spattered in blood and gore, wearing a simple garment that did not impede her movement, muscle and skin looking sickly in the wan emergency lighting of this part of the station. Would they accept her? Would they believe her? She did not look like a hero. She looked like a monster. Like an ordinary woman. Like a monster clad in the skin of an ordinary woman. Even as the energies of the empyrean subside and the world ceases to boil at her feet, the thought haunts her mind.
Did she have a place among them?
“I could still help search, you know.” She muses, watching him idly as her own thoughts race by. “My senses are greater than the human norm - they carried identification, did they not? We could at least find those.”
She pauses, taking a few steps away as she surveys the carnage around them. Perhaps he didn’t want to dig through this pile of viscera right now. Perhaps he simply wanted to return, to know that he would sleep in his bed tonight unlike the rest she was not fast enough to save. Perhaps it would hurt to find the remnants of his… friends? Comrades? The sight of their mangled bodies amidst the carnage might… disturb him.
She had become numb to such things, by now. The knife still cut, but the scar tissue had built up around it. A part of her considered that being present for the man discovering his friends might reopen the cut anew.
A sigh escapes her, and she nods. “Perhaps later, then. I will walk with you. Gather your things, and we will be off.”
“It’s better this way,” Darius responded with a gulp. He chose not to elaborate on who it was better for. The man owed it to his comrades to search for their remains, but he had already admitted to himself that he was a coward. ‘I’ll come back for all of you’, the voidborn thought grimly.
He checked himself over once. His gloved hand ensured the bolt revolver was in his holster. His other hand tightened the straps on his loose, viscera-soaked armor. The rustling of his armor saw his power knife dangle in its sheath. A final slap on his head to affirm the presence of his helmet motioned his readiness to depart. Darius looked up at her and nodded, doubt dispelling from his formerly fearful gaze.
They begin, and her thoughts stray once again. She was vaguely familiar with the place he called home. Some community called ‘Regret’s Passage’. It was… a strange name, but an interesting one. One she gathered had changed in the last few years since her ‘activities’ had begun. She had scoped it from a distance a few times before, and at one point intercepted a migration of the devolved horrors that had been on its way to assault the place.
But she had never stepped foot within its walls.
The corridors wind and unfold around them, and as she traces the path they would need to take in her mind she realizes the trip would take them hours. The corridors and bulkheads roll on before them, and it was only now, constrained to a human walking pace, that she began to truly appreciate the sheer scale of the Vestige. It had taken her perhaps half the time it had him to reach this point without any particular hurry - though she was able to pass through sections of the station she imagined he might not.
Still, it must have taken him hours to get here already. After everything, he must be tired. Exhausted. Surely he deserved to return home sooner than that. It would spare them both hours of awkward, slow walking back to his home. It would spare her hours of waiting, hours of thinking over how this might go. It would spare her having to watch those colors shifting in the void, the wonder and fear and awe and dismay and so many other emotions mixing together into a painful kaleidoscopic array.
Perhaps it was selfish to think these things.
Perhaps she simply wanted this ordeal to be over with.
An arm loops around Darius’ midsection, hefting him into the air, the ground abruptly beginning to blur past his eyes as she launches into a fast paced jog. It was hard to believe a living person could run at these speeds, let alone sustain them. But sustain them she does.
“Woah, woah, woah wait a minute!” Darius had tried to respond as he was picked up like a piece of rubble from a scrap pile. No one had ever managed to pick him up and not so easily. He felt an overwhelming sense of discomfort as he experienced speed at an unfathomable, inhuman rate. Tears strained out of his eyes as the wind pressure from her sprint tore through his helmet’s filters. Whatever complaint he had planned to make was swallowed back into his throat.
It still took an hour - she could have gone faster, but it seemed unnecessary, and might have posed some risk to his health. No, this was perfectly acceptable. An hour of steady jogging and the ground rolled by beneath her feet with ease until…
Until suddenly there was light. Dim light. Faint light. But it was light. White light from the man’s settlement filtering through the air of the station. She slows, gently setting him back down on the ground and taking a step back. Again, all of those doubts race back to the forefront of her mind, and she contemplates leaving.
She could do it. Certainly, one man wouldn’t be enough to stop her. She could simply… leave, vanish back into the winding tunnels and leave him here, safe and sound…
But then, Dawn’s voice echoed in her mind. She would have to reveal herself eventually. She wouldn’t be able to hide in the ducts forever. Even if it had gone as she’d hoped, and she could join them with the gift of a fully functional station, it would still carry some risk. Perhaps it was better to get it over with - and she had given this mortal her word. She had agreed. Would she leave him here to look the fool, or face accusations that he had abandoned his comrades?
No. That wasn’t what the future would be built on.
She pauses one final moment, and steps forward into view.
+END EIDETIC ARCHIVE PLAYBACK…
+SHUTTING DOWN EIDETIC ARRAY…
+PLEASE REMAIN CONNECTED TO THIS TERMINAL UNTIL THE CONNECTION IS TERMINATED…
+PROCESSING…
+PRINTING EIDETIC COMMENTARY FILE…
Finally met another human! Finally revealed myself to them! It went better than I feared. This is so exciting! And terrifying! I hope I am worthy to lead them. Some of them want to worship me. I don’t know how to make them stop. I’m not a god, not anything close to it. Hopefully they’ll come to see me as something else. A leader, sure. A guide? A guardian? A friend? I don’t know. But I’m sure this is the start of something wonderful.
