RE: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 2: Krei'kii'kelriz]
06-28-2017, 12:13 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-28-2017, 02:08 AM by Hellfish.)
Roses, roses.
These roses, they said, feed only on the dead buried beneath them. And they do not need sun, or water. That is where their beautiful red comes from, deep underground. Maybe one day you too will feed the roses. You will be a red so pure only death could pay for such loveliness. This is the only garden in the world like it. No one else knows it’s here.
I’m biting my tongue.
_
Stars flew past in only the briefest flecks of light, bright smudges belying the furious speed of her passage. Whatever archaic engines powered her, this was the limit of their ability, and it was a journey she would not be able to repeat. She was not even certain she would survive, but the children were calling her. They needed her- had needed her- and she had failed. She had not been there. It was no excuse that she had received no warning; she was their guardian, and they were dead. All dead. All those millions.
She pushed herself harder. The stars faded into streaks, into lines, into bright nothingness.
-
The corpse had once been Asclepias Tagetes, at first an engineer, then a cult sympathizer, then a cultist. Asclepias had hidden his sympathies well, at first, but the tunnels of the Krei’kii’kelriz could wait until such lurking thoughts emerged into the light. He had met the oracle years ago, witnessed his radiant fervor, and been transformed. He had died in that same fervor, his body’s face still flushed with the memory.
Something else was in that body now. It had been dead for a long time, and the sudden return to life was nauseating. It cursed Asclepias’ eyes, with their meager three cones, and his wet mouth full of calcified blocks. It hated how his bones strained inside him against rubbery tendons and soft muscles, despised the gurgling and churning of empty organs. If it were not for the memories of its own body (and how perfect that body had been) it would have fled, back to the ghostly arms of its brothers and sisters. But it remembered its own life, that distant taste of motion, and could not refuse what was laid before it now.
It took a breath, and stepped forward.
-
Arokht watched with cold calculation as the corpses around the room heaved and staggered to life. From his perch, positioned midway up the wall, he had the most strategic view of the field. Most of the others seemed to have no experience in zero-g conditions, he noted with distaste. They had been thrown into various states of chaos, scrambling for purchase. Only Mary, Robin, and Anila seemed to have any semblance of calm- and the last due only to her critical condition.
Pathetic. And they had the audacity to question his judgement?
He aimed his cannon at the nearest corpse and fired, disintegrating it. He grunted at the kickback, bracing against the wall. It threatened to collapse beneath him.
“Sonora,” he commanded, charging his cannon. “At my side. Take the right flank.”
The wet thing- stilled curled inside the flickering console- hisssed and withdrew, bubbling in the crevices of the machinery. It did not move.
Arokht growled in anger, sweeping the room. There were close to fifty of the shambling corpses in various states of composition, and more were rising. Some were struggling to hold together shattered limbs and ruptured organs; others merely prodded at their wounds with vague disinterest. Not a challenge to him, but his companions were far too fragile to handle even this modest force. He would have to do the bulk of the fighting on his own.
From the far side of the room an explosion of radioactive heat sent his sensors scrambling, screaming solar flare. Rachel- her body limmed with poisonous light- had her hand outstretched. Piled at her feet were smoking ashes. Arokht could not read human expressions with any level of ease, but the set of her face indicated a proclivity for violence.
The iceworlder returned to his targets. Dangerous allies, if allies they could be called. They would require additional monitoring.
-
In that arcane engine room, where Florica lay and the ghosts of the children roiled and seethed as they fled to their new bodies, the cultists clasped each other’s hands. Some of them had perished breaching this most sacred of chambers, but their deaths had been those of martyrs. The heart of the Krei’kii’kelriz was a prize they could not have imagined: a colossal sphere of winding, twisting hoops and pipes, pulsing like a great organ. From punctures and crevices it glowed with a terrible green light that cast dancing, shivering shadows over the ancient floor. Even now their oracle swayed before its majesty, his eyes bright with prophecy.
“Let us behold,” he said, “This new coming, this vision of endless light. From beyond the farthest reaches of this galaxy she has come to take us into her, beyond to where our bodies shall hold us no longer.”
“We pray for her coming,” they chanted, their knuckles white. Florica’s body twitched and kicked; the strongest of the cultists held her down with desperate strength.
“She shall come in a rain of fire and starlight, and our perseverance shall be rewarded.”
“We pray for her coming.”
“She shall take us beyond, and we will know the touch of flesh no longer!”
“We pray for her coming!”
“We will not be denied, my brothers and sisters,” the oracle said, his smile a beaming beacon. “We will not be denied for one moment longer.”
_
She came in an explosion of light, stolen from the stars. For parsecs around the planets shuddered in their revolutions, moons torn from their orbits to drift free in darkness.
Here: the ship- their ship- her ship- floated alone, bathed in the dim light of a nearby gas giant. Its silhouette- once sleek, cleverly jointed, the pride of its fleet- was a devastated mockery. Entire sections had been gutted, crushed by asteroids or wayward freighters. Its shields were defunct. Its engines were cold. The windows that had once gazed out across the living darkness of the galaxy were faded, cracked, gone. It was dead, irrevocably and finally. It was a graveyard.
She drifted towards it and laid her great arms over its bow. Eons ago, when she had been built, she had been built to live forever. The metal of her shell would never rust, would never suffer the pits of age or the rust of neglect. She would know no illness, no pain, no death. She would stand as a silent guardian until the stars grew cold and the nebulae dimmed.
But her children- all of her children- they had not been made the same. This ship had been made only to shelter them, to house them- never to outlive them. They had not been built, as she was. And their lives, as brief as they were to her, had been cut short.
If she could not have her children again- if she could not hold them to her, defend them from their enemies, save them from their deaths- then she would become their resting place. Their ghosts would be a part of her forever.
Her jaws set to work.
_
A titanic crash rolled through the room, rattling the walls like shaken paper. The lights flickered, submerging them all in darkness for several agonizing seconds before reigniting. The scene it revealed was not one that Robin was ready to welcome.
The possessed bodies- those that remained despite Arokht and Rachel’s efforts- had entered into full frenzy. Blood and ichor coated the walls. Inhuman howls from mouths not used to tongues or teeth echoed over the thunder of weaponry and the snarling burns of directed solar fusion. More were coming with every second, piling in through the narrow corridor, trampling over each other in their hurry. For every body that was cut down, five more came in- and these were fresh, Robin realized with a churning stomach. They bore wounds from what looked like makeshift weapons and wore uniforms she recognized from the other sectors of the ship.
Extra vessels. The cult’s working quickly.
Robin chewed her lip. The situation was turning dire. The portal behind them was regurgitating insect-child ghosts faster than could be accounted for- and she knew just how many were still waiting. Mary and Amaranth had done their best to stem the tide, but the machine resisted their efforts, heightening its output more and more with every second.
It wasn’t that Robin afraid of dying- not strictly, anyway. She had been disembodied only minutes before and, all things considered, the Krei’kii’kelriz seemed like a popular place to be postmortem. But this would be far from a quick death, or a clean one. The ship was collapsing around them, from the sound of the howling machinery audible even over the carnage. The shudders that rocked the floors and walls hinted ominously at something greater tearing away at the infrastructure, cult-borne or otherwise.
Robin looked over the violence unfolding before her and thought: There’s no way out of this.
Amaranth must have realized by now, she figured, watching the girl hammer away uselessly at the portal as Mary fired straight into it with every weapon she could lay a hand on. Maybe Rachel as well. Arokht seemed unlikely to stop fighting until the revenants had completely overwhelmed him, and even then it was doubtful. Florica was MIA, hostage in the ship’s heart. And Sonora…
Robin turned her head.
By some accident of the air currents in the room, Anila had drifted to the console where Sonora had hidden itself. And gently, ever so gently, it was slithering out to wrap itself around her like a great dark shroud, nudging her into position. It paused, and Robin knew that it had seen her. She watched, setting her jaw in a grim line.
“Go on,” she murmured.
The black fluid bubbled for only a moment, and then with a surgeon’s precision it shifted Anila’s body within itself so that her neck lolled along a row of long, black teeth, her hair billowing weightlessly in its mouth.
And it waited.
Robin understood.
Give me some warning. That’s all.
Anila looked at Robin desperately, mouthing something she couldn’t hear over the chaos. Around her Sonora’s body rippled with shockwaves from Arokht’s cannon and Rachel’s sunfire. An electric blue eye stared out at her from the darkness, watching, pleading.
Amaranth turned and saw, too late. “SONORA! SONORA! SO-”
Robin nodded.
The jaws slammed shut.
These roses, they said, feed only on the dead buried beneath them. And they do not need sun, or water. That is where their beautiful red comes from, deep underground. Maybe one day you too will feed the roses. You will be a red so pure only death could pay for such loveliness. This is the only garden in the world like it. No one else knows it’s here.
I’m biting my tongue.
_
Stars flew past in only the briefest flecks of light, bright smudges belying the furious speed of her passage. Whatever archaic engines powered her, this was the limit of their ability, and it was a journey she would not be able to repeat. She was not even certain she would survive, but the children were calling her. They needed her- had needed her- and she had failed. She had not been there. It was no excuse that she had received no warning; she was their guardian, and they were dead. All dead. All those millions.
She pushed herself harder. The stars faded into streaks, into lines, into bright nothingness.
-
The corpse had once been Asclepias Tagetes, at first an engineer, then a cult sympathizer, then a cultist. Asclepias had hidden his sympathies well, at first, but the tunnels of the Krei’kii’kelriz could wait until such lurking thoughts emerged into the light. He had met the oracle years ago, witnessed his radiant fervor, and been transformed. He had died in that same fervor, his body’s face still flushed with the memory.
Something else was in that body now. It had been dead for a long time, and the sudden return to life was nauseating. It cursed Asclepias’ eyes, with their meager three cones, and his wet mouth full of calcified blocks. It hated how his bones strained inside him against rubbery tendons and soft muscles, despised the gurgling and churning of empty organs. If it were not for the memories of its own body (and how perfect that body had been) it would have fled, back to the ghostly arms of its brothers and sisters. But it remembered its own life, that distant taste of motion, and could not refuse what was laid before it now.
It took a breath, and stepped forward.
-
Arokht watched with cold calculation as the corpses around the room heaved and staggered to life. From his perch, positioned midway up the wall, he had the most strategic view of the field. Most of the others seemed to have no experience in zero-g conditions, he noted with distaste. They had been thrown into various states of chaos, scrambling for purchase. Only Mary, Robin, and Anila seemed to have any semblance of calm- and the last due only to her critical condition.
Pathetic. And they had the audacity to question his judgement?
He aimed his cannon at the nearest corpse and fired, disintegrating it. He grunted at the kickback, bracing against the wall. It threatened to collapse beneath him.
“Sonora,” he commanded, charging his cannon. “At my side. Take the right flank.”
The wet thing- stilled curled inside the flickering console- hisssed and withdrew, bubbling in the crevices of the machinery. It did not move.
Arokht growled in anger, sweeping the room. There were close to fifty of the shambling corpses in various states of composition, and more were rising. Some were struggling to hold together shattered limbs and ruptured organs; others merely prodded at their wounds with vague disinterest. Not a challenge to him, but his companions were far too fragile to handle even this modest force. He would have to do the bulk of the fighting on his own.
From the far side of the room an explosion of radioactive heat sent his sensors scrambling, screaming solar flare. Rachel- her body limmed with poisonous light- had her hand outstretched. Piled at her feet were smoking ashes. Arokht could not read human expressions with any level of ease, but the set of her face indicated a proclivity for violence.
The iceworlder returned to his targets. Dangerous allies, if allies they could be called. They would require additional monitoring.
-
In that arcane engine room, where Florica lay and the ghosts of the children roiled and seethed as they fled to their new bodies, the cultists clasped each other’s hands. Some of them had perished breaching this most sacred of chambers, but their deaths had been those of martyrs. The heart of the Krei’kii’kelriz was a prize they could not have imagined: a colossal sphere of winding, twisting hoops and pipes, pulsing like a great organ. From punctures and crevices it glowed with a terrible green light that cast dancing, shivering shadows over the ancient floor. Even now their oracle swayed before its majesty, his eyes bright with prophecy.
“Let us behold,” he said, “This new coming, this vision of endless light. From beyond the farthest reaches of this galaxy she has come to take us into her, beyond to where our bodies shall hold us no longer.”
“We pray for her coming,” they chanted, their knuckles white. Florica’s body twitched and kicked; the strongest of the cultists held her down with desperate strength.
“She shall come in a rain of fire and starlight, and our perseverance shall be rewarded.”
“We pray for her coming.”
“She shall take us beyond, and we will know the touch of flesh no longer!”
“We pray for her coming!”
“We will not be denied, my brothers and sisters,” the oracle said, his smile a beaming beacon. “We will not be denied for one moment longer.”
_
She came in an explosion of light, stolen from the stars. For parsecs around the planets shuddered in their revolutions, moons torn from their orbits to drift free in darkness.
Here: the ship- their ship- her ship- floated alone, bathed in the dim light of a nearby gas giant. Its silhouette- once sleek, cleverly jointed, the pride of its fleet- was a devastated mockery. Entire sections had been gutted, crushed by asteroids or wayward freighters. Its shields were defunct. Its engines were cold. The windows that had once gazed out across the living darkness of the galaxy were faded, cracked, gone. It was dead, irrevocably and finally. It was a graveyard.
She drifted towards it and laid her great arms over its bow. Eons ago, when she had been built, she had been built to live forever. The metal of her shell would never rust, would never suffer the pits of age or the rust of neglect. She would know no illness, no pain, no death. She would stand as a silent guardian until the stars grew cold and the nebulae dimmed.
But her children- all of her children- they had not been made the same. This ship had been made only to shelter them, to house them- never to outlive them. They had not been built, as she was. And their lives, as brief as they were to her, had been cut short.
If she could not have her children again- if she could not hold them to her, defend them from their enemies, save them from their deaths- then she would become their resting place. Their ghosts would be a part of her forever.
Her jaws set to work.
_
A titanic crash rolled through the room, rattling the walls like shaken paper. The lights flickered, submerging them all in darkness for several agonizing seconds before reigniting. The scene it revealed was not one that Robin was ready to welcome.
The possessed bodies- those that remained despite Arokht and Rachel’s efforts- had entered into full frenzy. Blood and ichor coated the walls. Inhuman howls from mouths not used to tongues or teeth echoed over the thunder of weaponry and the snarling burns of directed solar fusion. More were coming with every second, piling in through the narrow corridor, trampling over each other in their hurry. For every body that was cut down, five more came in- and these were fresh, Robin realized with a churning stomach. They bore wounds from what looked like makeshift weapons and wore uniforms she recognized from the other sectors of the ship.
Extra vessels. The cult’s working quickly.
Robin chewed her lip. The situation was turning dire. The portal behind them was regurgitating insect-child ghosts faster than could be accounted for- and she knew just how many were still waiting. Mary and Amaranth had done their best to stem the tide, but the machine resisted their efforts, heightening its output more and more with every second.
It wasn’t that Robin afraid of dying- not strictly, anyway. She had been disembodied only minutes before and, all things considered, the Krei’kii’kelriz seemed like a popular place to be postmortem. But this would be far from a quick death, or a clean one. The ship was collapsing around them, from the sound of the howling machinery audible even over the carnage. The shudders that rocked the floors and walls hinted ominously at something greater tearing away at the infrastructure, cult-borne or otherwise.
Robin looked over the violence unfolding before her and thought: There’s no way out of this.
Amaranth must have realized by now, she figured, watching the girl hammer away uselessly at the portal as Mary fired straight into it with every weapon she could lay a hand on. Maybe Rachel as well. Arokht seemed unlikely to stop fighting until the revenants had completely overwhelmed him, and even then it was doubtful. Florica was MIA, hostage in the ship’s heart. And Sonora…
Robin turned her head.
By some accident of the air currents in the room, Anila had drifted to the console where Sonora had hidden itself. And gently, ever so gently, it was slithering out to wrap itself around her like a great dark shroud, nudging her into position. It paused, and Robin knew that it had seen her. She watched, setting her jaw in a grim line.
“Go on,” she murmured.
The black fluid bubbled for only a moment, and then with a surgeon’s precision it shifted Anila’s body within itself so that her neck lolled along a row of long, black teeth, her hair billowing weightlessly in its mouth.
And it waited.
Robin understood.
Give me some warning. That’s all.
Anila looked at Robin desperately, mouthing something she couldn’t hear over the chaos. Around her Sonora’s body rippled with shockwaves from Arokht’s cannon and Rachel’s sunfire. An electric blue eye stared out at her from the darkness, watching, pleading.
Amaranth turned and saw, too late. “SONORA! SONORA! SO-”
Robin nodded.
The jaws slammed shut.