Cath

The Cradle

She opened her eyes slowly, blinking in the light. She could see her own bare hands laying on a moss-strewn stone floor in front of her. Pushing down on the floor, she rose to her knees. Her breath billowed away from her in clouds of vapour. She groggily looked around, trying to focus on her surroundings.

She was in a vast square pergola. Detailed stone pillars surrounded her, holding up a heavy roof. Icy wind howled through the gaps between pillars, dredging up constellations of dust from the floor and whipping the sconced torches into long thin needles of fire. In front of her, up a few steps, was an exquisite throne.

Something was sitting there, but she couldn’t see what. Rays of light blinded her when she tried, like how she imagined looking at a sun would feel. “Tell me.” a voice commanded, in a strange language that she somehow understood. She tried to clamp her mouth closed, but the words forced their way out. Long streams of them in the same tongue.

Her back stiffened and her face rose to stare at the ceiling as information poured out of her mouth. She tried to hold onto what it all meant, but it’s meaning slipped from her grasp as quickly as it’d arrived. Despite the freezing wind, she was sweating.

She flitted in and out of consciousness, but eventually the talking stopped. She collapsed onto the floor, face to the ground. A cool hand stroked her forehead, like she imagined a mother would’ve done. “Shhh...shhh.” the voice soothed. She slept.

The Cradle

595’s suit alarms pinged as the massive centipede rolled her flat. “Pressure warning. Twenty eight thousand kilopascals. Please remove..-” The Agent left her pistol lodged in the thing’s head and pushed against the thing’s body with both her arms and legs. Her grunt of exertion turned into a shout as its mass gradually began rolling off the other side.

The beast must have sensed it was going to flip back over, because it decided to right itself. The roll accelerated rapidly, with 595 providing more encouragement as she freed her right arm and leg. It’s head crushed the wedged pistol against the floor, driving the bayonet and barrel deep into the soft tissue.

The centipede gurgled, thrashing about desperately as it completed the roll. 595 didn’t waste time, jumping to her feet and leaping onto its neck again. She hung on for dear life, yelling angrily as the creature careened around the narrow passage. They crashed against a wall and clung on by virtue of the bayonet stuck in it’s armour. She yanked it out and shoved her hand in the cavity instead.

Suddenly, she could feel the thing’s primitive thoughts and feelings, it’s pain and drive to protect the hive. She grasped her hand around that consciousness and squeezed like she’d been taught, all those years ago. Their mouths opened simultaneous and the same incandescent burst emitted from both. And then, the centipede disintegrated into a heap of black particles with one last screech and 595 disappeared in a flash of light.

Song Reference time

I guess I'm not funny
I guess that you don't like the way I think
It's not about money
But I've been buying dinner twice a week

I know that you love me
But we never say it when we speak
It's really unlikely
To think that I would do what's best for me

The Cradle

595 ran through the gap Rareth had created past the first two creatures. With the ease of someone who practiced weapon assembly in their sleep, she attached her energy dagger to the front of her spook pistol like a bayonet while on the move.

The third beast was advancing more slowly and cautiously, but lifted up it’s impressive head and lunged for her as she approached head-on. The agent turned on a coin, juking around the massive pincers. She skirted the cavern wall, pushed off of a stalagmite with one foot and landed on the creature’s armoured back.

The thing chittered manically and bounced from one side of its legs to the other, trying to throw her off. But 595 perched in place, one hand gripping the edge of it’s armour plating to stabilise her footing. Picking her moment, she clambered forward until she was right behind the creature’s head. She could hear that it was spitting acid at Rareth while trying to throw her off, and could see the other creatures had untangled in quick time.

595’s suit identified two potential weak points to try. The first was on the sides near it’s legs and the second was underneath the armour plating on its head. From where she stood, the agent could see a crack in it’s armour where two plates overlapped on the back of its ‘neck’. This seemed like the most promising bet to her.

Using her bayoneted pistol with both hands like a shovel, 595 reached up and jammed the energy blade between the two plates repeatedly, firing her pistol until she suddenly it was stuck. She kept firing. The creature screamed and rolled over suddenly, taking the agent with it.

The Cradle

The creatures disappeared in the massive ball of plasma-fire as it filled the narrow space. 595 fired her pistol gleefully into the inferno, until all three of the beasts charged out of the maelstrom.

They were closer now, and coated in plasma. They screamed and chittered, rushing forward with their front halves raised to trample them. The creatures were bigger than both of the soldiers, and angrier too now.

The Cradle

The many-legged creatures didn’t react to Rareth’s call in any discernible way. They carried on shuffling forward, their heads rippling slightly from side to side and their segmented bodies following. The loud chittering continued.“Fuck that. We’re getting through this cavern.” 595 spat.

She activated a lighting sequence she’d quickly pieced together on the walk after the lake. Her suit flashed bright red in an aggressive, undulating pattern. Dr Ngata had assured her in private that it replicated many of the same defence mechanisms that animals used back on Outremer. 595 turned up her external speaker and stepped forward before talking. “Stop right there! DO NOT MOVE.”

The creatures immediately cried out at the sound and light. They erected their front halves in the air, mouths and pincers pointing toward the interlopers. “They’re going to attack!” 595 yelled, firing her pistol on automatic at the first creature from about twenty metres away. The shots connected with it’s mouthparts and eyes, sending chain lightning between all three of them.

The whole area erupted with frenetic screeching. All three of the creatures began spitting viscous green blobs of material at them, one of which landed squarely on 595’s head. “Acid!” She yelled, glancing at her readout. It fizzled against her shields, using up power in the process.

The Cradle

“Hey, you don’t automatically get to take point like that!” 595 called out loud as Rareth ran past her, before giving chase. “Everything alright in there?” Thebes crackled feebly over comms. “Yeah, all good. We’re checking out some noises.” 595 quickly replied before Rareth got a chance to. “Want some assistance?” He asked. “No, we’re fine for now. Maintain your perimeter.” She snapped.

They moved quickly uphill through a gradually tightening passageway. Before long, 595’s sensory net described a series of large circular hollows off of the main path. The chittering grew louder and louder, and the smell emulsified into a pungent, wet, rotting tsunami that forced the agent to close her visor again. The moving objects were close now, all around really, and moving in random patterns.

Until they weren’t. Almost simultaneously, most of the motion blips stopped. So did the incessant chittering.

595 instinctively slowed her pace just behind and to one side of Rareth, and moved her pistol into centre axis relock. They took a few steps forward. The agent wet her dry throat.

Her suit pinged movement on the ceiling of the cavern, 595 marked it. It looked like a flat insect head with some pincers. It peeked from an opening that may have connected this area to one of the spherical hollows.

The creature carefully lowered it’s armoured body and many legs down onto the ground, before shuffling toward them, staying low to the rock. A couple more of them appeared from opening in the sides of the space behind it. The chittering and movement started again, deafening and on all sides. Each of the creature’s tails lit up, casting long shadows in the confined space.

The Cradle

595 smiled, ducking under a stalactite and swerving round a stalagmite in quick succession. So there was a common ground between the two of them after all. “Neat. Is there a Datius for every field, then?”

Suddenly, the agent’s sensory net detected a fork in the path ahead, going up and off to the right. Imagining it from the outside, 595 guessed it headed toward the next mountain along in the chain. Their current path continued going straight forward.

As they approached the convergence, 595 slowed her sprint down to a jog, before stopping altogether in the centre of the fork. She could see now that the stream came from the sharper incline on the right, cascading down both of the other paths. “If straight-on is going downwards now, I think we have less chance of being deposited on the top of a mountain heading that way.” 595 surmised.

After a few moments, an alien chittering echoed through the cavern, marginally louder than the tinkling of water. Finally! 595 drew her pistol and checked her sensory net again. Another ping revealed moving objects on the right path. "Did you hear that? I think it came from this way. We’ll need to check that out; can’t have any critters cutting us off.” she sent, eagerly moving toward the opening.

Hello!

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Song Reference time

I just want to get out of this place
I'd hit the road with the change in my pocket
I don't care if it rains everyday
I'd rather have an umbrella than be staring out the window

So tellll me
Why I can't live my life this way
And tellll me
Why I should stay