Re: The Phenomenal Fracas! (GBS2G6): [Round Four: The Warped Edifice]
05-08-2012, 02:49 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Anomaly.
Syvex continued to move forward at speeds much greater that a giant snake should have reasonably been able to attain, seemingly ignorant of the fact that there were guns and cannons firing all around him. Smaller buildings around the towers were being destroyed instantly, blown to bits by cannon fire. None of it mattered to Syvex. The whole goddamn universe could come down around him, for all he cared. He didn't even care if he died in the process, he had to find her. He had to kill whatever remained of the Malevolence before it consumed her. Consumed everyone. It probably wasn't even dead back in the mansion, but that was in another universe and Syvex had really stopped worrying about that.
Syvex paused for a moment as he heard long series of crashes, accompanied by screaming. He couldn't see far enough to tell what it was, but it was fair to guess that one of the towers surrounding the temple had crashed down. The whole city was coming down around him for... some reason? Syvex had no idea what was actually going on. Couldn't have been the doing of the Under-dwellers. Maybe the priest guy. Syvex didn't care, as long as the North Tower still stood.
As Syvex charged forward, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his side, followed by a feeling of drowsiness. He pulled a dart out of his body, one which was apparently loaded with tranquilizers. Slowly, he fell to the ground. Two SCP agents, dressed in black, moved in to capture him now that he was incapacitated.
Except for the fact that they underestimated the amount of tranquiliziers it would actually take to bring down a giant shadow snake. The chemicals were neutralized by his regenerative processes. He promptly demonstrated this fact by leaping at one, picking him up, and tossing him at the other, sending both crashing to the ground. Syvex immediately continued onward, meeting little other resistance, until an enormous, ornate tower came into view. It was hard for the serpent to see the top despite the relative darkness of the city, but it appeared to continue all the way into the cavern's ceiling. Its facade was also twisted quite a bit in comparison with the others, angling in several different directions as it approached the ceiling.
Syvex noted also a painfully-glowing object rapidly descending from the tower; the distinctive glow of Ripper's jetpack. She landed next to the serpent, the grim look on her face blocked by her mask.
"Did you find her?" the serpent asked, urgently.
"...Serpent, I've got grave news for you. She's been killin' everyone she crosses paths with. Got a knife 'n everything. Th' lass is mad, alright?"
"No. No, that isn't possible." Yes that is possible, she's still got the goddamn tentacle in her! "Are you sure it was her?"
"That or I'm goin' blind. Y'gotta accept it, she's addled. Might have to kill her if she attack us."
Syvex grabbed Blackmask by the collar. "No. No! You're wrong. Something's wrong! You really think she could kill someone? She's not like that, Ripper! It's..."
Syvex paused for a moment and dropped Ripper. "It's my fault. I had to leave her to find the infirmary. If I'd gone with her, none of this would've happened. But no, I had to go off and leave her in the hands of some doctors that couldn't even defend themselves. We can't just kill her, Ripper! I'm going to tear whatever's left of that fucking thing to shreds! She'll be fine after that."
Ripper looked on in mild surprise. The serpent certainly hadn't had that kind of outburst before. Must really care about the mage, she thought.
"Look, let's just keep going. We're not going to save anyone by standing around."
"Aye..." Ripper followed after Syvex as he rushed off for the tower.
It was a stupid thought. What did the knife even do for him? It gave him some useless knowledge and gave him an instant-kill lever. Not a good tradeoff. But deep down, feelings of paranoia welled up. He had to protect the knife. He had to keep everyone else away from it. And perhaps that was why, when the cloth mage showed up, grinning, oozing black sludge, and wielding a very bloody knife, he decided to run.
He ran with a strength he didn't know he had. It was ridiculous. He was a fighter, not a coward. And yet when the first sign of trouble showed up, he sprinted off into the depths of the tower. What was worse was that in spite of her shorter and seemingly frailer stature, Eureka was keeping pace. And singing. Singing about conductors and trains and tearing out entrails and taking the knife. His knife. No, no. The knife, the one that just happened to be in his arm. It wasn't his.
In looking back to find that Eureka was closing the gap between them, Tamerlane inadvertently tripped down a flight of stairs. Collapsed in a heap on the floor and in a daze, Tamerlane quickly stumbled his way through a series of hotel rooms, locking each door behind him. He slumped against the wall. The knife was- he was safe.
Also, there was insane babbling coming from behind the closet door on the other side of the room. Violating what might have been common sense, Tamerlane crept across the room and flung open the doors. Huddled in the corner of the closet was a dirty, disheveled man, huddled in the corner and talking to himself. He yelled when the door opened, revealing a wad of paper clutched in his hands.
Tamerlane picked up the document the man dropped after being clobbered with a potted plant. It wasn't especially helpful. Just an account of a guy going mad in what seemed to be another warped structure. Apparently the warping was caused by something called SCP-184, though there was no mention of the knife. Tamerlane threw the paper to the ground. Maybe the place drove everyone insane. It was hard to say. Tamerlane certainly wasn't insane anyway. Not at all.
The door burst open, and Eureka giggled to herself while making train noises. She hadn't even finished shouting "All abooooooaaaaaard" before Tamerlane had taken off.
But with that needless complexity came opportunity. One method of bringing the Under-dwellers to kneel before him had failed, but surely there were more. Their "god" had perished, leaving a severe leadership gap. Intense desperation permeated the minds of all of the city's people unanimously. They were weak. Laguja could establish itself easily among them.
There wouldn't be much point in gaining leadership of a collapsing city, though. Two of the towers had already collapsed, and several more were damaged. Under-dwellers died by the dozens as volley after volley of shells poured from the cannons. The pincushion immediately directed its priest back into the temple, to seek out a method of stopping the cannons at their source. Not certain where to go within the sprawling corridors of the temple, Muriegro waited in the shadows for a pair of SCP agents to walk by. The priest followed, quiet footsteps going unnoticed by his unknowing guides, until they led him to another unassuming corridor (seemingly made entirely of diamond) in which two other operatives were posted. Each was heavily armed; it was quite evident that there was something important nearby.
In its weakened state, though, there was little Laguja could do against a quartet of armed guards without getting its priest very messily killed. The most it could do was conceal Muriegro from their eyes as it waited for an opening. The odds of such a thing weren't in the god's favor.
"Told you. 'S not pretty. Y'alright, serpent?" Ripper asked.
"Yeah, sure. Just a bunch of mangled corpses. Let's keep going. Get away from all the bodies, preferably."
Ripper's footsteps, accompanied by the quiet sliding of Syvex's body, echoed through corridor after empty corridor. Bits of sludge and blood left an easy trail for the two to follow, but the number of corpses essentially dropped to nothing as they ascended. It seemed that the tower had mostly been unoccupied from the start.
The sheer amount of nothing was much worse than any of the countless somethings that could have happened. Eureka could have been waiting around the corner, ready to ambush them at a moment's notice. SCP operatives could appear at any time and attempt to capture Syvex. Hell, the entire place could have come down with the rest of the town. It was almost maddening how uneventful the journey was. Blood and sludge and corridors made out of alternatingly wacky and horrible things might have been exciting or awful at first, but they quickly became part of the norm. It was maddening, perhaps, because it was boring. The entire battle so far had been a parade of things, no empty corridors in sight. Even the mostly-empty mansion had the distinction of being haunted. Here? A floor, some walls, and a ceiling, sometimes stairs too.
Perhaps that was why, when Syvex saw something scratched into the walls, he felt something akin to relief.
"VAGABONDS? What the hell does that mean?" Syvex asked.
Ripper, however, looked much more confused than her companion. "Th' hell d'you mean? You tellin' me you can read that nonsense up there?"
"Nonsense? It's just..." Syvex looked back at the wall. The words etched in the wall were, in fact, not in any language resembling English. Strange, angular runes were arranged on the wall, yet, in some way, the serpent didn't see nonsense. He saw "VAGABONDS", plain as could be.
"I don't know. I guess? Maybe I just forgot?"
"I see y'be just as daft as always, serpent. Let's go."
Another couple of floors up, the two found another carving. "ONE OF LIGHT, ONE OF DARK," Syvex mumbled.
"Dark? Don't s'pose it's talkin' about you, d'you?"
"Don't see how. I'm not even sure how I'm reading this in the first place. Besides, who would 'one of light' describe, then? We don't have time for this. Eureka's up here somewhere."
Ascending one final staircase, the serpent and the pirate entered a very long corridor, comprised of fairly normal materials for a hotel, excepting the lack of doors anywhere. Syvex couldn't see anything else wrong, but Ripper stopped to stare for a moment.
"We above th' city now? 'S much longer than anything that would fit in the tower."
"I think we're getting close if that's the case. Let's go."
They hadn't been moving for long before another carving presented itself. "JOURNEYS MIRROR," Syvex read. "Not any help. Who's leaving these, anyway? Eureka?"
"If that's the case, how are y' readin' 'em?"
"You know that I don't know that." Syvex stopped for a moment. The writing did look familiar, but not to anything he had seen in reality. On GRIMACE's ship, he'd had a dream. Most of it was lost, but only one part still stood out - the words "WAKE UP", etched into one of Afterparty's enormous cables. The exact same writing. Was it also in these runes? Syvex couldn't remember, and didn't want to dwell on it.
The two sped through the completely-uniform corridor for several minutes, unsure if they were even making any progress. Eventually, though, one of the perfectly-flat walls was interrupted, this time by more than a simple carving. On the wall hung a large and ornate mirror, shattered by the knife which pinned a piece of paper to it. Above it were etched the words "CHECK YOUR BOTTLE". Syvex looked at the bottle clutched in his hand. At some point, it had been topped off with the same caliginous fluid, as if he had never even opened it. More and more questions presented themselves, with nary an answer in sight.
"Serpent!" came the voice of the pirate. Syvex diverted his attention from the bottle just long enough to notice the faint gleam of a spidery mask, fading away into the darkness at the edge of his small vision field. He'd seen that mask before. On the ship, more than once. Had it been in his dream? Maybe.
"Another of those blaggards running th' thing? I've had enough of 'em as is."
Syvex pulled the knife from the mirror, catching the paper in another hand. The ornate design looked familiar to him - a pattern resembling a spider, eight golden eyes adorning the pommel and eight spindly legs emerging from the end of the hilt. The same type of knife had pinned the map to the wall on the Thunderhead.
"I've seen him before. Always disappears before I can even be sure of what I'm seeing, though. At least I know I'm not crazy, if you also saw it."
"He been leavin' th' messages?"
"Maybe. I guess. It'd make sense." A moment of silence passed. "Here, can you take a look at this? I can't read it." Syvex handed the paper to the pirate, who unfolded it and looked it over as they continued past the broken mirror.
Ripper read over the paper, then gave Syvex the short version. Apparently the knife that had been mentioned at the round's start didn't work exactly how it had been described. The document called it "SCP-1485", and described it as "Euclid", whatever that meant. Apparently the knife wasn't simply an instant-death weapon. It gave "relevant knowledge" to whoever was stabbed with it, be it first aid or the layout of a building. On being removed, it would cause the host to quickly deteriorate: dead in fifteen minutes, reduced to little more than dust in thirty. Technically they hadn't been lied to entirely - a "small cut" would be enough to kill someone.
The document described some other things - something about dependence and the importance of always keeping it in a host (apparently not doing so would lead to bad things within an hour or two). It seemingly cut off in the middle - Ripper tossed the paper aside when she was done describing it. The corridor's end was finally in sight.
The TRAIN PEOPLE had stopped bothering her, because she had killed them all and they were dead. It was only her and THE CONDUCTOR and he was leading her straight to THE ENGINE ROOM. She knew this for sure, because where else would he be going in such a hurry?
She wished he would slow down. The knife-arm looked really nice. She wanted that knife-arm. But she couldn't take it from him because she hadn't UNKNOWN yet. She just kept following him. There were a lot of floors IN THE TRAIN.
And soon enough, he had led her to THE ENGINE ROOM. The BOILER stood in front of her now. THE CONDUCTOR continued to elude her, but what did she care now? She was UNKNOWN and she had to REFUEL THE BOILER so that UNKNOWN.
He realized he should have been thinking when suddenly there was a glass door in front of him, next to a sign reading "Lobby". He threw the door open and ran in.
It wasn't really much of a lobby.
What might have once been the central room of a hotel had been twisted beyond belief. The lower part formed a rough dome shape, complete with a gravity-defying pond stretching up the side. The tables and chairs of some sort of dining area sat on the other side, looking pristine despite the apparent disuse of the entire building. The top of the dome opened up into a square tower, walkways around the perimeter stacked higher than Tamerlane could make out. It hurt his head a little.
Of greatest note, however, was a strangely ornate fountain in the center of the floor, completely dry. A few inches above the highest layer floated a small, hollow decahedron of black stone, each vertex adorned with a small sphere and each face bearing a small, circular hole.
Before he could really admire the scene any further, a hideous burst of laughter came from directly behind him. He whipped around to find Eureka, grinning eye-to-eye and waving her knife around in a manner that very much defied any and all knife safety rules at once. Tamerlane slowly backed away, inadvertently approaching the fountain at the same time. As he got closer he could feel the spatial distortions emanating from the object, trying to warp his body in the same way it had warped the Under-dwellers. He wisely decided to duck away and stand next to the reception desk before the object decided he'd look better a couple feet taller and with another arm or three. Eureka didn't seem to care, and stood frozen at the fountain's edge, grinning at the object at the top.
Suddenly, the door slammed open hard enough to shatter the plane of glass, and Syvex and Ripper charged into the room.
Tamerlane caught Syvex's fist in his hand, flinching slightly at the impact. Tamerlane's eyes widened slightly - apparently he had even surprised himself. Syvex nonetheless had a clear advantage without the use of magic or magic-esque abilities, being a thousand-pound, six-armed shadow snake against an average-sized one-armed human. He briefly wondered if it was even worth the trouble, and contemplated just crushing the guy's head like an overripe melon and getting it over with. It's not like he could do much but run - and even then, he was too occupied with holding back the serpent's fist and the razor-sharp spikes that came with it.
A perfect plan, he realized, except for the fact that killing Tamerlane would just throw him and Eureka and whoever else was even left miles apart once again. Had to just knock him out then. Which was kind of a problem, seeing as Ripper was now pointing her gun at his head, prepared to blow it off.
"Ripper, we need him alive!"
"I s'pose so. Send 'im reelin', then."
Syvex obliged by punching Tamerlane in the gut with another fist, sending him stumbling backwards. Tamerlane retaliated by... running. Running far and fast. Disappointing, really. One of the greatest adversaries Syvex had faced, running like a coward.
"I guess it's because of the knife. I don't think he'll be a problem. Let's kill the Malevolence, and then you can put a bullet in his head or whatever."
Syvex had barely started for the fountain before a cloud of ash violently ripped across his midsection, flaying off an assortment of purple scales accompanied by a spray of blood. Tamerlane dropped back into view, dark silt flowing through the air around him. "Flowing", in this case, meaning "floating around in a constant struggle to not fall to the ground". Either way, Syvex really wished the room weren't so bright. He hadn't seen Tamerlane running around the far end of the lobby gathering dust from the ashtrays.
Ripper hadn't noticed either, her attention diverted to the seemingly-endless hotel above and the possibility of equally-unlimited riches within. Her attention was certainly not focused on an increasing difficulty of breathing or anything else of the sort. Probably just the orb thing, anyway.
But that didn't matter, because in spite of his weakened state, Tamerlane now posed a legitimate threat. Ripper had nothing on hand to feed into the Endorphic Core; nothing to rely on but a gun she wasn't allowed to use and her jetpack. And a baton, for all the good it would do against magic that could rip flesh from bone in an instant.
Opportunity struck, however, as Syvex and Tamerlane continued to struggle with each other. Syvex haphazardly launched weak bursts of shadow, doing little more than causing slight bruising when they actually contacted, and Tamerlane strained just to keep the ash under his control in order to protect himself. Ripper quickly crept up behind Tamerlane, and, before he could react, brought the baton down hard on his back. She heard a sickening crack before the mage fell to the ground, then tried to slowly crawl away.
"Let 'im go. Lubber's not fit fer fightin' a child."
Syvex didn't respond. In the part of the room he had been ignoring, the part where Eureka stood staring at the fountain. She was still there, of course, same unnerving grin and everything. What was more worrying was the fact that a number of tentacles had begun to pour out of the wound that contained a piece of the original Malevolence. These appendages stretched out toward the warping object, coalescing into a large mass and surrounding it.
The Malevolence was returning to life, and Eureka was already becoming eclipsed by the rapid growth of the abomination. Pretty soon, it would probably absorb her into its mass or something like that, and she'd be lost forever. Syvex couldn't just let that happen.
In spite of the power-dampening, in spite of the level of light, Syvex had to stop it before it was too late. He held up the bottle, the same bottle he had clutched in his hand since he had arrived on the H.M.S. Thunderhead, now once more topped off. He wrenched the cork out with a single claw and, with slight hesitation, threw his head back and guzzled the entirety of the dark liquid inside.
To say that the effects of the massive quantities of Caliginosity were significant would not be unlike saying that water is wet, or perhaps that breathing is usually good for your health. It was not quite as profound as when Hebris had attempted to kill him with it - he was neither levitating nor shooting lasers all over the place - but his senses were sharpened to an intense degree, and the light didn't even matter anymore. He didn't need to find shadow, he was shadow, or at least the essence of it.
He merely had to wave his hand toward the nearly-engulfed orb. In a blinding flash of light, Syvex, Ripper, Tamerlane, and Eureka were knocked to the ground as the orb fell into two pieces. A great splash of water accompanied the reassertion of gravity on the pool which previously occupied the wall.
Syvex began to drag himself from the ground, feeling an even greater rush of power as the inhibiting field was destroyed. This rush of power, however, was slightly negated when one of the Malevolence's many tentacles grabbed his arm and successfully ripped it off. He struggled for a while, attempting to slice off the appendages of the abomination as easily as he had destroyed the orb, but found that it wasn't working at all.
Caliginosity apparently didn't take too kindly to someone drinking it.
Laguja decided to test this return to power on one of the guards as he scrambled from the ground, returning to his post. His stolid demeanor quickly melted away, shifting to worry, followed by a full-on panic attack.
"You alright, Jerry?" one of the guards asked him.
Jerry responded by blowing the heads off of his fellow guardsmen and running away, screaming maniacally. Laguja commanded Muriegro past the corpses, vaguely amused. How simple it was, now, to turn them against each other. Simple and efficient.
The high priest threw the now-unguarded door open. It was little more than a glorified broom closet, containing little but a chair, a couple of control panels, and some monitors and other machinery. In the chair sat, as a quick mind-probing revealed, one Agent Korsikov, the leader of the mobile task force that was attempting to destroy the city. Korsikov pointed a very large assault rifle at Muriegro's face. As he attempted to pull the trigger, his hand instead decided to throw the weapon into the hallway.
Agent Korsikov soiled his pants.
Muriegro walked back toward the temple's entrance, trailing behind the braindead body of Agent Korsikov. The two emerged from the entrance to the temple, and, as the mass of Under-dwellers gathered around the body of Xiuhcoatl watched, Muriegro waved his hand. The agent flung himself from the temple, tumbling down the side before crashing to the ground far below. As the Under-dwellers stared in awe, the priest descended the steps and approached the group, clutching the pincushion in his outstretched hand. A gravelly voice whispered in their minds.
I am Huitzilopochtli. The death of your god is unfortunate, but do not lose all hope. Xiuhcoatl was overcome by the dark forces that inhabit this city. I am another god, and sadly arrived too late to save him. It is not too late for you, however. It took the extent of my power, but the leader of the dark elements has been destroyed, as you have seen. You are not yet safe, though. These agents must be destroyed at all costs.
The Under-dwellers, having both witnessed the powers of Laguja and being extremely willing to accept any explanation for the apparent death of their god, were rallied by Laguja's short speech. In an instant they had charged into the city, arming themselves and preparing to hunt down some "dark powers", real or imagined. It was almost too easy.
Sitting in his mindscape was a large opaque sphere. He’d tried opening it once. But now it was falling apart. Crumbling to dust. As long as he could remember, the sphere had been sitting there, in the back of his mind. As long as he could remember.
He hadn't remembered much.
A disjointed series of images assaulted Tamerlane. Sitting alone on a beach, the laughter of other children echoing across the shore. Isolation. A gift, or perhaps a curse.
Suddenly he was in town and she was there with him. He didn't recognize her, yet she had been there for him for years. He felt happiness - that emotion he had for years viewed as foul, something to be abhorred, something he had never once let slip through. And yet here it was and it was wonderful. He didn't know who she was. He loved her.
Suddenly he was on the beach with her and they were younger and he still didn't know who she was but of course he didn't she had just walked from further down the beach and now she was here with him. She was beautiful, she was a stranger.
She wasn't a stranger, they were getting married, it was the happiest time of their lives. There weren't many people but they didn't care, it was just them and they were together. Miriam a voice said, and he knew the name but he didn't. He was marrying a lover he didn't know, yet he always had. Miriam. They thought the good times would last forever.
He stood stolid over her body, blood staining the floor a deep crimson. He sheathed his sword and walked away, emotionless.
He was with her and everything was good, they were going to raise a family together, grow old together. He was different but she didn't care, she loved him all the more for it, it was wonderful and it would never end.
The king's messenger returned with a final warning from His Majesty and he was different. The King demanded his services and he couldn't refuse yet he wouldn't be himself anymore, but it didn't matter because she would be fine and they would still be together. It wouldn't end, he would find himself again, it wasn't over. It wasn't over.
She cried and he hadn't noticed or cared and she was the King's and it didn't matter. The King was everything and his word was law. She was just the latest wife of His Majesty and there wasn't a reason to address her so he didn't. Bitter tears fell like rain, rain upon the tiles. He was a monster but he was a subject of the King and the King was pleased. Long live the King.
The King was displeased with her and she had tried to fight it but she couldn't get over him but he was gone. She was the King's but she refused and the King was angry and that was the end, the law. He drew his sword, and she cried, and she screamed his name, it wasn't important, she was no one.
She was everyone.
He was in a city, a tall city full of monsters and there was a serpent of shadow and they clashed. The city was falling down and he was flying, the desert swallowed it all and thousands of lives were gone in an instant, it didn't matter, nothing mattered but the King.
Damn the King. Long live the King.
A haunted mansion, a train, a ship sailing the stars themselves, a hotel. He would be instilled with wonder, but the King forbade wonder and so there was none. He slew everyone in his path and they were all obstacles but no longer, but the serpent refused to die, refused to yield. An abomination. A free-fall. An arm. His arm.
He was dying. He was alive.
Tamerlane remembered it all. The King's cruel gaze. He was decieved. He was lied to.
He had killed her, and felt nothing.
He wanted to curl into a ball, to crawl into a hole and die, to be alone forever. Nothing but pain and death had flowed from his being for fifteen years. She was dead. They were all dead.
Tamerlane looked up. They weren't all dead. Not yet. The abomination wasn't dead, it was back, it was the cloth mage. He watched the serpent's anguish. He could do nothing but watch as it tore him apart bit by bit, as it destroyed him. He called desperately to the cloth mage, but she didn't hear, she couldn't hear. But she wasn't dead. Not yet. Tamerlane stood up.
For fifteen years, he had brought nothing but misery.
Finally he could set something right.
The train was going through a forest. A dark forest. Syvex knew this forest. The train had passed through this forest many times on its route. He watched the trees go by. It was dark in the forest and there was nothing but trees. He could see vague shapes that might not have been trees but he couldn't tell. The stop was up ahead. It was lonely on the train. Syvex hoped they would come soon. Eureka was here but she was in first class and he wasn't allowed in first class.
Suddenly the train was derailing. He held onto his seat, but the train shook violently and he was thrown across the room and out the door
and crashed to the floor, away from the Malevolence. His head hurt. As he came to his senses, he noticed Tamerlane, standing tall like a pillar in a hallway, a pillar that also had control over sand and was fighting against a horrific abomination that was probably going to consume everyone.
...Wait, Tamerlane? Syvex couldn't quite comprehend what was going on. He'd have thought that Tamerlane, of all people, would want him to die. Maybe the sandman wanted the satisfaction of the kill to himself, but in his state he didn't stand a chance against Syvex. He shouldn't have stood a chance against the Malevolence. He didn't stand a chance against the Malevolence. It was only growing as he fought it - every time he shredded a tentacle, another had already sprung up to replace it, like an especially mediocre hydra. But for some reason, he kept fighting it.
"Get out of there, Tamerlane!" Syvex found himself shouting, though he didn't really know why. He raised his arm to give another attempt at slicing the thing apart, only to find it had been roughly torn off at the elbow. In a stroke of irony, he only had one arm left that was still mostly whole. The others weren't especially quick to grow back under the despicable flourescent lights, even in spite of the influence of caliginosity.
Tamerlane was trying to retreat at this point. A gnarled appendage grabbed his leg. Syvex succeeded in the use of Caliginosity once more, allowing the sandman to scramble away. The Malevolence attempted to ensnare him but, being immobile and far from its full potential, it only succeeded in throwing him across the room. Syvex watched him collapse to the floor, shrugged, then continued his attempt to reach Eureka. Silently, he wondered where the pirate had gone. Surely he could help with this somehow.
She decided to stop off on a random floor and investigate some of the rooms. Maybe she'd find treasure there. Yes, that was it, she was looking for treasure. That was why she left. Not some kind of mysterious shortness of breath that almost seemed to be getting worse. That would be ridiculous and she certainly wasn't feeling any worse than usual. She just needed to refuel, and she needed treasure for that.
Besides, here was a room made of diamonds! Exactly what she had meant to find, of course. Why had she even been sticking around with Syvex in the first place? The hotel was probably full of things like this. Pretty soon someone down there would die and she'd lose her opportunity entirely. She hadn't even had time to properly relieve the townsfolk of their valuables. The least she could do was start shoving diamonds into the Core. It took a while to cut them down to a managable size with a gun.
She felt absolutely fine, Syvex could handle it without her for a while. Nothing at all was going on here.
Syvex couldn't let this happen to Eureka. Silently, he lifted his hand, prepared to end it before it was too late.
"Stop!" yelled a voice both familiar and strange. ...Tamerlane? Syvex saw the sand mage running toward him, and slowly lowered his hand.
"Wha... but... What the hell?" Syvex managed to articulate, noticing the drastic change in his mortal enemy's demeanor.
"Syvex, I'm... I'm sorry. For everything."
"What? You're seriously deciding this now? Look, there's not time!"
"Look, I'm not who you think I am. I'm not here to kill anyone. It's too late for me, Syvex!" he suddenly shouted.
"Too late for what? You're not making any sense!"
"It was a lie! I was being controlled, and I didn't even realize it. My memories were blocked. I... I can't let this happen again. Syvex, take the knife."
In twenty minutes, Tamerlane had gone from murderous and self-absorbed to selfless enough to sacrifice himself to save everyone else? Syvex honestly had no idea what was going on. It didn't make sense. Being controlled? Memories blocked? He guessed it was possible, if a bit unlikely. It's not like the Tamerlane he knew would sacrifice himself, so he must have been sincere about it.
Syvex hesitated a moment, then, wordlessly, ripped the knife out of Tamerlane's body. The latter immediately grew pale and retreated to the side of the room, breaking out in a sweat. The knife was cold in his hand. It seemed to be calling out to him. A part of him wanted to simply plunge the knife into himself, to uncover whatever secrets it held. Fortunately, that part of him was easily suppressed. The knife wasn't for him. It was for no one but his enemy.
Syvex wasn't even sure how Eureka would survive this, but it didn't matter. He had just drunk a bottle full of liquefied shadow dimension, and insane levels of power were bursting from his body. He'd find a goddamn way. He charged foward, slicing bits of Malevolence apart with arm-spikes that had, as he had failed to notice, grown longer and sharper since he had consumed the contents of the bottle. Each tentacle he drove the knife through, he noticed, was immediately detached from the mass and failed to regrow. Soon he had reached the center and, without so much as thinking, he rammed a clawed hand into Eureka's abdomen and tore out the core of the Malevolence - some sort of odd heart-brain thing that was no larger than the palm of his hand.
He supposed that simply ripping it in half might have been enough, but he couldn't take any risks. Slowly, he raised the knife, desperately ignoring it as it called to him, and plunged it into the core. Just as quickly, he pulled it out, and dropped the now-decaying Malevolence to the floor. He held the knife in front of him, the weapon wavering in this hand, before he flung it across the room.
Powerful as it was, Caliginosity could not continually abandon Syvex - a host so attuned to shadows was not an especially common thing so far across the multiverse, and, perhaps, Syvex was managing to exert some amount of influence over such a weak detachment of the dimension. Whatever the cause, though, it found particular interest in the serpent's regeneration systems. So limited in scope, so weak - it could do so much more.
As such, what could best be described as a "cloud of Caliginosity-infused regeneration stuff" shot out of Syvex's body and into the air. There was nothing it could do for either Tamerlane or the Malevolence - both had been stabbed by the knife and were decaying beyond repair. The focus of the serpent's attentions, though, was still alive, in spite of the heavily-bleeding stomach wound. She wouldn't be alive for long. The cloud washed over her, depositing the biological components of Syvex's own regeneration systems into the wounded cloth mage. All traces of Caliginosity dissipated as it did its job, and the target's wounds started to slowly repair themselves.
Sure, the stuff used to regenerate shadow snake things was technically not supposed to work on humans as well, but liquefied shadow dimensions don't know any better. Besides, it did a reasonably good job. Things probably wouldn't go too severely wrong.
At this point, though, Caliginosity's power was quickly waning, especially since it had just broken several laws of biology. The blue glow around Syvex slowly died down, returning to its familiar purple-gray hue. Caliginosity had not gone - with the quantity Syvex had ingested at once, it probably never would.
"I don't see the problem. It's only like I said. Far more interesting."
"Look, reviving my entrant was one thing, but this? How is this even close to fair?"
"Fair? What's unfair about it? In another timeline, he would have still had the entire bottle at this time. I merely nudged things toward the far more interesting possibility."
"But Victoria-"
"What about Victoria. It's not as if she'll know about this, is it? Unless you were planning on telling her about it." An unnerving grin emerged from beneath the gentleman's spider mask.
"I..." Fifth had a point - Fourth was far too much of a coward to tell her himself.
"If it is any consolation, Fourth, your wager would almost certainly have died even without my intervention. I was merely pushing for far more entertaining things. And you know as well as I that what transpired - perhaps in part due to a simple push from an external force - will prove much more interesting in the long run."
Fourth said nothing.
He didn't even have the energy to be angry. If he was going to die, the least he could do was die with dignity. At least it wasn't completely in vain. He indirectly saved someone and killed perhaps the biggest threat to any world it entered. That had to count for something, right?
At least he had learned the truth before he died. Though he could hardly bear to think about it, he looked back on the time he had been a mindless pawn of the King, all the times he could have died pursuing the asinine objectives of an insane tyrant. He now only wanted to go back there and shove his blade into the King's smug face. He almost died as someone else, someone whose only purpose was to hunt, to kill.
Someone who would unflinchingly kill his own wife.
Miriam now filled his thoughts. She was his entire world. She was all he had. The King had taken even that away. He had made a promise, and failed to uphold it. But it wasn't his fault, he kept telling himself. It wasn't him that made the kill. If only he could bring himself to believe it.
The world began fading around him. Maybe it wasn't the end. Maybe they'd be together again.
He'd like that.
"The last one... my lord..." the leader of the cadre wheezed. "Found him in... a closet..."
Laguja probed the man's mind - whatever the cause, it had been completely broken. His thoughts were disjointed and random; his actions basically harmless. The worst he would do is kill himself. He probably would if he stayed in this place for much longer. The pincushion saw no reason to keep him - there was essentially nothing left of the SCP operative he had once been. Muriegro waved his hand, and the Under-dwellers let the man run free.
Perfect. Everything had worked out precisely as planned, even with the unanticipated attack right in the middle of it all. Fortunately, the Under-dwellers were of weak minds, likely to follow anyone who even looked like they might have been a god. They had once been men and women, people of much stronger wills. These twisted beings, some of them borderline monstrosities, lived only to serve.
Laguja chuckled internally. Only to serve it, now.
It hadn't been more than twenty or thirty minutes, and already the people of the Underlands were scrambling to prepare the throne room for their new god. Fabrics were rolled out, and Under-dwellers surged out into the depths of the Hotel in search of materials for a throne befitting of a true god.
Unlike the slow-but-steadily-growing cult that Laguja had come from, news of the new god spread throughout the town like a wildfire. In such a short amount of time, hundreds of minds had chimed in, proving the pincushion-dwelling diety with belief. It could feel its power growing rapidly. Not much longer, and it would destroy the ones who had trapped it here and escape. It wouldn't be long now.
It wouldn't even be half that long, however, before it was all torn away again.
He did, for a moment, worry about what the regenerative abilities of a distinctly non-human creature would do in a human, but it didn't matter that much. It was much better than the alternative (the alternative, of course, being bleeding out).
Eureka taken care of, he approached the body of Tamerlane. He wasn't dead yet, but he was very visibly rotting away, and was already unconscious. It was almost unbelievable. One moment, they were at each other's throats, and the next, he was sacrificing himself for the good of everyone else. What was that he had said? Being controlled? Memories blocked? Syvex didn't want to believe it, but he had given his life for them. Ripper too, he supposed, though the pirate still made him uneasy for some reason.
Moreover, though, what about the messages on the wall? Mirrors? Syvex didn't really see what that had to do with anything, but then again, there was the broken mirror. If, somehow, Tamerlane was his mirror, the mirror had effectively been broken. It made sense, and this scared him a bit. Syvex was beginning to worry about his own sanity. Was anyone who they said they were? Was he who he thought he was? He didn't know, and frankly, he didn't want to think about it.
Syvex stood over his fallen enemy-turned-friend for a while as the piles of dust on the ground grew. Slowly, he reached down and took the hat off of Tamerlane's head. He wasn't really sure why - to honor the hero that his greatest enemy apparently really was. Maybe he wasn't actually that bad, Syvex supposed.
Besides, it was a really nice hat.
Syvex remained still, watching Tamerlane's body slowly degrade. That pathetic, half-dead pile of decay had died a hero.
Tamerlane's life finally faded away, seemingly taking the light with it as the hotel faded into nothingness around them. Syvex's greatest enemy, or perhaps the greatest friend he had never known, was no more.
Syvex continued to move forward at speeds much greater that a giant snake should have reasonably been able to attain, seemingly ignorant of the fact that there were guns and cannons firing all around him. Smaller buildings around the towers were being destroyed instantly, blown to bits by cannon fire. None of it mattered to Syvex. The whole goddamn universe could come down around him, for all he cared. He didn't even care if he died in the process, he had to find her. He had to kill whatever remained of the Malevolence before it consumed her. Consumed everyone. It probably wasn't even dead back in the mansion, but that was in another universe and Syvex had really stopped worrying about that.
Syvex paused for a moment as he heard long series of crashes, accompanied by screaming. He couldn't see far enough to tell what it was, but it was fair to guess that one of the towers surrounding the temple had crashed down. The whole city was coming down around him for... some reason? Syvex had no idea what was actually going on. Couldn't have been the doing of the Under-dwellers. Maybe the priest guy. Syvex didn't care, as long as the North Tower still stood.
As Syvex charged forward, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his side, followed by a feeling of drowsiness. He pulled a dart out of his body, one which was apparently loaded with tranquilizers. Slowly, he fell to the ground. Two SCP agents, dressed in black, moved in to capture him now that he was incapacitated.
Except for the fact that they underestimated the amount of tranquiliziers it would actually take to bring down a giant shadow snake. The chemicals were neutralized by his regenerative processes. He promptly demonstrated this fact by leaping at one, picking him up, and tossing him at the other, sending both crashing to the ground. Syvex immediately continued onward, meeting little other resistance, until an enormous, ornate tower came into view. It was hard for the serpent to see the top despite the relative darkness of the city, but it appeared to continue all the way into the cavern's ceiling. Its facade was also twisted quite a bit in comparison with the others, angling in several different directions as it approached the ceiling.
Syvex noted also a painfully-glowing object rapidly descending from the tower; the distinctive glow of Ripper's jetpack. She landed next to the serpent, the grim look on her face blocked by her mask.
"Did you find her?" the serpent asked, urgently.
"...Serpent, I've got grave news for you. She's been killin' everyone she crosses paths with. Got a knife 'n everything. Th' lass is mad, alright?"
"No. No, that isn't possible." Yes that is possible, she's still got the goddamn tentacle in her! "Are you sure it was her?"
"That or I'm goin' blind. Y'gotta accept it, she's addled. Might have to kill her if she attack us."
Syvex grabbed Blackmask by the collar. "No. No! You're wrong. Something's wrong! You really think she could kill someone? She's not like that, Ripper! It's..."
Syvex paused for a moment and dropped Ripper. "It's my fault. I had to leave her to find the infirmary. If I'd gone with her, none of this would've happened. But no, I had to go off and leave her in the hands of some doctors that couldn't even defend themselves. We can't just kill her, Ripper! I'm going to tear whatever's left of that fucking thing to shreds! She'll be fine after that."
Ripper looked on in mild surprise. The serpent certainly hadn't had that kind of outburst before. Must really care about the mage, she thought.
"Look, let's just keep going. We're not going to save anyone by standing around."
"Aye..." Ripper followed after Syvex as he rushed off for the tower.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tamerlane didn't know where he was going. He didn't care. He had stopped the bleeding now, but for what? So he could run out into a battleground one arm poorer and get himself slaughtered? There was only so much the body could take, and perhaps Tamerlane had reached the edge. He was wandering corridors blindly at this point. Not blindly, exactly. He knew his way around this building better than anyone, but mysterious knife-granted knowledge didn't extend to actually knowing where he wanted to go. Kill them all, he thought. Protect the knife at any cost.It was a stupid thought. What did the knife even do for him? It gave him some useless knowledge and gave him an instant-kill lever. Not a good tradeoff. But deep down, feelings of paranoia welled up. He had to protect the knife. He had to keep everyone else away from it. And perhaps that was why, when the cloth mage showed up, grinning, oozing black sludge, and wielding a very bloody knife, he decided to run.
He ran with a strength he didn't know he had. It was ridiculous. He was a fighter, not a coward. And yet when the first sign of trouble showed up, he sprinted off into the depths of the tower. What was worse was that in spite of her shorter and seemingly frailer stature, Eureka was keeping pace. And singing. Singing about conductors and trains and tearing out entrails and taking the knife. His knife. No, no. The knife, the one that just happened to be in his arm. It wasn't his.
In looking back to find that Eureka was closing the gap between them, Tamerlane inadvertently tripped down a flight of stairs. Collapsed in a heap on the floor and in a daze, Tamerlane quickly stumbled his way through a series of hotel rooms, locking each door behind him. He slumped against the wall. The knife was- he was safe.
Also, there was insane babbling coming from behind the closet door on the other side of the room. Violating what might have been common sense, Tamerlane crept across the room and flung open the doors. Huddled in the corner of the closet was a dirty, disheveled man, huddled in the corner and talking to himself. He yelled when the door opened, revealing a wad of paper clutched in his hands.
Tamerlane picked up the document the man dropped after being clobbered with a potted plant. It wasn't especially helpful. Just an account of a guy going mad in what seemed to be another warped structure. Apparently the warping was caused by something called SCP-184, though there was no mention of the knife. Tamerlane threw the paper to the ground. Maybe the place drove everyone insane. It was hard to say. Tamerlane certainly wasn't insane anyway. Not at all.
The door burst open, and Eureka giggled to herself while making train noises. She hadn't even finished shouting "All abooooooaaaaaard" before Tamerlane had taken off.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Another carefully-arranged plan, utterly destroyed. Laguja should have noticed that everything was being recorded. Under normal circumstances it would have, but these were certainly not normal circumstances. Had everything gone according to plan, Laguja would already be gaining power from a mass of new subjects, too dull to even question their false god's lack of divine abilities. But now the city was coming down, SCP agents were running rampant, and there was more-or-less utter chaos. Even the god could barely fathom why the entire temple was built to raise up just to fire cannons at the city. From what little Agent Saenger had managed to describe, this Foundation had much quicker and more efficient ways to bring down a city. More likely, they had long ago abandoned common sense for needless complexity.But with that needless complexity came opportunity. One method of bringing the Under-dwellers to kneel before him had failed, but surely there were more. Their "god" had perished, leaving a severe leadership gap. Intense desperation permeated the minds of all of the city's people unanimously. They were weak. Laguja could establish itself easily among them.
There wouldn't be much point in gaining leadership of a collapsing city, though. Two of the towers had already collapsed, and several more were damaged. Under-dwellers died by the dozens as volley after volley of shells poured from the cannons. The pincushion immediately directed its priest back into the temple, to seek out a method of stopping the cannons at their source. Not certain where to go within the sprawling corridors of the temple, Muriegro waited in the shadows for a pair of SCP agents to walk by. The priest followed, quiet footsteps going unnoticed by his unknowing guides, until they led him to another unassuming corridor (seemingly made entirely of diamond) in which two other operatives were posted. Each was heavily armed; it was quite evident that there was something important nearby.
In its weakened state, though, there was little Laguja could do against a quartet of armed guards without getting its priest very messily killed. The most it could do was conceal Muriegro from their eyes as it waited for an opening. The odds of such a thing weren't in the god's favor.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The inside of the North Tower was conspicuously empty. Empty of anything living, that is. Strewn throughout the halls were a number of corpses, both of Under-dwellers and SCP operatives, apparently hacked apart by some sort of knife. Weaker stomachs might have churned at such a ghastly sight, but Ripper was more than used to seeing such things on a daily basis. Syvex, on the other hand, felt sick for an entirely different reason, albeit one that should be obvious by this point. Black sludge mixed with the puddles of blood, staining the mahogany shag carpet with a dark-red slurry that Syvex would have looked away from were he able. He kind of wanted to vomit."Told you. 'S not pretty. Y'alright, serpent?" Ripper asked.
"Yeah, sure. Just a bunch of mangled corpses. Let's keep going. Get away from all the bodies, preferably."
Ripper's footsteps, accompanied by the quiet sliding of Syvex's body, echoed through corridor after empty corridor. Bits of sludge and blood left an easy trail for the two to follow, but the number of corpses essentially dropped to nothing as they ascended. It seemed that the tower had mostly been unoccupied from the start.
The sheer amount of nothing was much worse than any of the countless somethings that could have happened. Eureka could have been waiting around the corner, ready to ambush them at a moment's notice. SCP operatives could appear at any time and attempt to capture Syvex. Hell, the entire place could have come down with the rest of the town. It was almost maddening how uneventful the journey was. Blood and sludge and corridors made out of alternatingly wacky and horrible things might have been exciting or awful at first, but they quickly became part of the norm. It was maddening, perhaps, because it was boring. The entire battle so far had been a parade of things, no empty corridors in sight. Even the mostly-empty mansion had the distinction of being haunted. Here? A floor, some walls, and a ceiling, sometimes stairs too.
Perhaps that was why, when Syvex saw something scratched into the walls, he felt something akin to relief.
"VAGABONDS? What the hell does that mean?" Syvex asked.
Ripper, however, looked much more confused than her companion. "Th' hell d'you mean? You tellin' me you can read that nonsense up there?"
"Nonsense? It's just..." Syvex looked back at the wall. The words etched in the wall were, in fact, not in any language resembling English. Strange, angular runes were arranged on the wall, yet, in some way, the serpent didn't see nonsense. He saw "VAGABONDS", plain as could be.
"I don't know. I guess? Maybe I just forgot?"
"I see y'be just as daft as always, serpent. Let's go."
Another couple of floors up, the two found another carving. "ONE OF LIGHT, ONE OF DARK," Syvex mumbled.
"Dark? Don't s'pose it's talkin' about you, d'you?"
"Don't see how. I'm not even sure how I'm reading this in the first place. Besides, who would 'one of light' describe, then? We don't have time for this. Eureka's up here somewhere."
Ascending one final staircase, the serpent and the pirate entered a very long corridor, comprised of fairly normal materials for a hotel, excepting the lack of doors anywhere. Syvex couldn't see anything else wrong, but Ripper stopped to stare for a moment.
"We above th' city now? 'S much longer than anything that would fit in the tower."
"I think we're getting close if that's the case. Let's go."
They hadn't been moving for long before another carving presented itself. "JOURNEYS MIRROR," Syvex read. "Not any help. Who's leaving these, anyway? Eureka?"
"If that's the case, how are y' readin' 'em?"
"You know that I don't know that." Syvex stopped for a moment. The writing did look familiar, but not to anything he had seen in reality. On GRIMACE's ship, he'd had a dream. Most of it was lost, but only one part still stood out - the words "WAKE UP", etched into one of Afterparty's enormous cables. The exact same writing. Was it also in these runes? Syvex couldn't remember, and didn't want to dwell on it.
The two sped through the completely-uniform corridor for several minutes, unsure if they were even making any progress. Eventually, though, one of the perfectly-flat walls was interrupted, this time by more than a simple carving. On the wall hung a large and ornate mirror, shattered by the knife which pinned a piece of paper to it. Above it were etched the words "CHECK YOUR BOTTLE". Syvex looked at the bottle clutched in his hand. At some point, it had been topped off with the same caliginous fluid, as if he had never even opened it. More and more questions presented themselves, with nary an answer in sight.
"Serpent!" came the voice of the pirate. Syvex diverted his attention from the bottle just long enough to notice the faint gleam of a spidery mask, fading away into the darkness at the edge of his small vision field. He'd seen that mask before. On the ship, more than once. Had it been in his dream? Maybe.
"Another of those blaggards running th' thing? I've had enough of 'em as is."
Syvex pulled the knife from the mirror, catching the paper in another hand. The ornate design looked familiar to him - a pattern resembling a spider, eight golden eyes adorning the pommel and eight spindly legs emerging from the end of the hilt. The same type of knife had pinned the map to the wall on the Thunderhead.
"I've seen him before. Always disappears before I can even be sure of what I'm seeing, though. At least I know I'm not crazy, if you also saw it."
"He been leavin' th' messages?"
"Maybe. I guess. It'd make sense." A moment of silence passed. "Here, can you take a look at this? I can't read it." Syvex handed the paper to the pirate, who unfolded it and looked it over as they continued past the broken mirror.
Ripper read over the paper, then gave Syvex the short version. Apparently the knife that had been mentioned at the round's start didn't work exactly how it had been described. The document called it "SCP-1485", and described it as "Euclid", whatever that meant. Apparently the knife wasn't simply an instant-death weapon. It gave "relevant knowledge" to whoever was stabbed with it, be it first aid or the layout of a building. On being removed, it would cause the host to quickly deteriorate: dead in fifteen minutes, reduced to little more than dust in thirty. Technically they hadn't been lied to entirely - a "small cut" would be enough to kill someone.
The document described some other things - something about dependence and the importance of always keeping it in a host (apparently not doing so would lead to bad things within an hour or two). It seemingly cut off in the middle - Ripper tossed the paper aside when she was done describing it. The corridor's end was finally in sight.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Eureka kept following THE CONDUCTOR through the TRAIN CARS. There were a lot of them. There must have been a lot of PASSENGERS in this TRAIN.The TRAIN PEOPLE had stopped bothering her, because she had killed them all and they were dead. It was only her and THE CONDUCTOR and he was leading her straight to THE ENGINE ROOM. She knew this for sure, because where else would he be going in such a hurry?
She wished he would slow down. The knife-arm looked really nice. She wanted that knife-arm. But she couldn't take it from him because she hadn't UNKNOWN yet. She just kept following him. There were a lot of floors IN THE TRAIN.
And soon enough, he had led her to THE ENGINE ROOM. The BOILER stood in front of her now. THE CONDUCTOR continued to elude her, but what did she care now? She was UNKNOWN and she had to REFUEL THE BOILER so that UNKNOWN.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tamerlane kept running. The knife itched. He wanted to rip it out. He wanted to leave it in. He wanted to rid himself of it. He wanted to keep it to himself forever. Conflicting thoughts that were simultaneously his and not his wracked his brain and he could barely even focus on the fact that he was running for his life. He shook his head violently. There was no dust or silt or anything anywhere that he could possibly use to defend against Eureka, and his sword had been confiscated at the round's outset. At least the hallway wasn't horribly distorted like most of the hotel was. He didn't have to think.He realized he should have been thinking when suddenly there was a glass door in front of him, next to a sign reading "Lobby". He threw the door open and ran in.
It wasn't really much of a lobby.
What might have once been the central room of a hotel had been twisted beyond belief. The lower part formed a rough dome shape, complete with a gravity-defying pond stretching up the side. The tables and chairs of some sort of dining area sat on the other side, looking pristine despite the apparent disuse of the entire building. The top of the dome opened up into a square tower, walkways around the perimeter stacked higher than Tamerlane could make out. It hurt his head a little.
Of greatest note, however, was a strangely ornate fountain in the center of the floor, completely dry. A few inches above the highest layer floated a small, hollow decahedron of black stone, each vertex adorned with a small sphere and each face bearing a small, circular hole.
Before he could really admire the scene any further, a hideous burst of laughter came from directly behind him. He whipped around to find Eureka, grinning eye-to-eye and waving her knife around in a manner that very much defied any and all knife safety rules at once. Tamerlane slowly backed away, inadvertently approaching the fountain at the same time. As he got closer he could feel the spatial distortions emanating from the object, trying to warp his body in the same way it had warped the Under-dwellers. He wisely decided to duck away and stand next to the reception desk before the object decided he'd look better a couple feet taller and with another arm or three. Eureka didn't seem to care, and stood frozen at the fountain's edge, grinning at the object at the top.
Suddenly, the door slammed open hard enough to shatter the plane of glass, and Syvex and Ripper charged into the room.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Eureka!" Syvex shouted, before suddenly realizing how strange it sounded. "Finch! Get away from that!" She didn't listen to him, perfectly content in staring at the orb-looking thing at the top of the fountain. Now was his chance to destroy the Malevolence definitively. He cautiously slid across the floor toward Eureka, but soon stopped in his lack of tracks. Tamerlane was there, standing against the far wall, just coming into the serpent's view. Syvex wasn't sure why he was standing so far away, but it wouldn't be easy to save Eureka from a parasitic abomination when a murderous sand mage could attack and any time. Reason be damned, Syvex charged toward Tamerlane, followed close behind by the pirate.Tamerlane caught Syvex's fist in his hand, flinching slightly at the impact. Tamerlane's eyes widened slightly - apparently he had even surprised himself. Syvex nonetheless had a clear advantage without the use of magic or magic-esque abilities, being a thousand-pound, six-armed shadow snake against an average-sized one-armed human. He briefly wondered if it was even worth the trouble, and contemplated just crushing the guy's head like an overripe melon and getting it over with. It's not like he could do much but run - and even then, he was too occupied with holding back the serpent's fist and the razor-sharp spikes that came with it.
A perfect plan, he realized, except for the fact that killing Tamerlane would just throw him and Eureka and whoever else was even left miles apart once again. Had to just knock him out then. Which was kind of a problem, seeing as Ripper was now pointing her gun at his head, prepared to blow it off.
"Ripper, we need him alive!"
"I s'pose so. Send 'im reelin', then."
Syvex obliged by punching Tamerlane in the gut with another fist, sending him stumbling backwards. Tamerlane retaliated by... running. Running far and fast. Disappointing, really. One of the greatest adversaries Syvex had faced, running like a coward.
"I guess it's because of the knife. I don't think he'll be a problem. Let's kill the Malevolence, and then you can put a bullet in his head or whatever."
Syvex had barely started for the fountain before a cloud of ash violently ripped across his midsection, flaying off an assortment of purple scales accompanied by a spray of blood. Tamerlane dropped back into view, dark silt flowing through the air around him. "Flowing", in this case, meaning "floating around in a constant struggle to not fall to the ground". Either way, Syvex really wished the room weren't so bright. He hadn't seen Tamerlane running around the far end of the lobby gathering dust from the ashtrays.
Ripper hadn't noticed either, her attention diverted to the seemingly-endless hotel above and the possibility of equally-unlimited riches within. Her attention was certainly not focused on an increasing difficulty of breathing or anything else of the sort. Probably just the orb thing, anyway.
But that didn't matter, because in spite of his weakened state, Tamerlane now posed a legitimate threat. Ripper had nothing on hand to feed into the Endorphic Core; nothing to rely on but a gun she wasn't allowed to use and her jetpack. And a baton, for all the good it would do against magic that could rip flesh from bone in an instant.
Opportunity struck, however, as Syvex and Tamerlane continued to struggle with each other. Syvex haphazardly launched weak bursts of shadow, doing little more than causing slight bruising when they actually contacted, and Tamerlane strained just to keep the ash under his control in order to protect himself. Ripper quickly crept up behind Tamerlane, and, before he could react, brought the baton down hard on his back. She heard a sickening crack before the mage fell to the ground, then tried to slowly crawl away.
"Let 'im go. Lubber's not fit fer fightin' a child."
Syvex didn't respond. In the part of the room he had been ignoring, the part where Eureka stood staring at the fountain. She was still there, of course, same unnerving grin and everything. What was more worrying was the fact that a number of tentacles had begun to pour out of the wound that contained a piece of the original Malevolence. These appendages stretched out toward the warping object, coalescing into a large mass and surrounding it.
The Malevolence was returning to life, and Eureka was already becoming eclipsed by the rapid growth of the abomination. Pretty soon, it would probably absorb her into its mass or something like that, and she'd be lost forever. Syvex couldn't just let that happen.
In spite of the power-dampening, in spite of the level of light, Syvex had to stop it before it was too late. He held up the bottle, the same bottle he had clutched in his hand since he had arrived on the H.M.S. Thunderhead, now once more topped off. He wrenched the cork out with a single claw and, with slight hesitation, threw his head back and guzzled the entirety of the dark liquid inside.
To say that the effects of the massive quantities of Caliginosity were significant would not be unlike saying that water is wet, or perhaps that breathing is usually good for your health. It was not quite as profound as when Hebris had attempted to kill him with it - he was neither levitating nor shooting lasers all over the place - but his senses were sharpened to an intense degree, and the light didn't even matter anymore. He didn't need to find shadow, he was shadow, or at least the essence of it.
He merely had to wave his hand toward the nearly-engulfed orb. In a blinding flash of light, Syvex, Ripper, Tamerlane, and Eureka were knocked to the ground as the orb fell into two pieces. A great splash of water accompanied the reassertion of gravity on the pool which previously occupied the wall.
Syvex began to drag himself from the ground, feeling an even greater rush of power as the inhibiting field was destroyed. This rush of power, however, was slightly negated when one of the Malevolence's many tentacles grabbed his arm and successfully ripped it off. He struggled for a while, attempting to slice off the appendages of the abomination as easily as he had destroyed the orb, but found that it wasn't working at all.
Caliginosity apparently didn't take too kindly to someone drinking it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Muriegro pulled himself onto his feet. His god had not anticipated a sudden, inexplicable shockwave, and he was caught completely off-guard. As he got up, however, Laguja could feel its power rushing back to it, its dominion over weaker minds rushing back as if through a freshly burst dam. Whatever force had allowed Muriegro freedom from the control of the pincushion had been utterly quashed, and the priest was again completely servile.Laguja decided to test this return to power on one of the guards as he scrambled from the ground, returning to his post. His stolid demeanor quickly melted away, shifting to worry, followed by a full-on panic attack.
"You alright, Jerry?" one of the guards asked him.
Jerry responded by blowing the heads off of his fellow guardsmen and running away, screaming maniacally. Laguja commanded Muriegro past the corpses, vaguely amused. How simple it was, now, to turn them against each other. Simple and efficient.
The high priest threw the now-unguarded door open. It was little more than a glorified broom closet, containing little but a chair, a couple of control panels, and some monitors and other machinery. In the chair sat, as a quick mind-probing revealed, one Agent Korsikov, the leader of the mobile task force that was attempting to destroy the city. Korsikov pointed a very large assault rifle at Muriegro's face. As he attempted to pull the trigger, his hand instead decided to throw the weapon into the hallway.
Agent Korsikov soiled his pants.
Muriegro walked back toward the temple's entrance, trailing behind the braindead body of Agent Korsikov. The two emerged from the entrance to the temple, and, as the mass of Under-dwellers gathered around the body of Xiuhcoatl watched, Muriegro waved his hand. The agent flung himself from the temple, tumbling down the side before crashing to the ground far below. As the Under-dwellers stared in awe, the priest descended the steps and approached the group, clutching the pincushion in his outstretched hand. A gravelly voice whispered in their minds.
I am Huitzilopochtli. The death of your god is unfortunate, but do not lose all hope. Xiuhcoatl was overcome by the dark forces that inhabit this city. I am another god, and sadly arrived too late to save him. It is not too late for you, however. It took the extent of my power, but the leader of the dark elements has been destroyed, as you have seen. You are not yet safe, though. These agents must be destroyed at all costs.
The Under-dwellers, having both witnessed the powers of Laguja and being extremely willing to accept any explanation for the apparent death of their god, were rallied by Laguja's short speech. In an instant they had charged into the city, arming themselves and preparing to hunt down some "dark powers", real or imagined. It was almost too easy.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Everything was pain. Tamerlane lay in a collapsed heap on the ground, having dragged himself to the dome's edge. He could barely focus. He had a splitting headache, as if his brain was trying its best to evacuate. Soon Tamerlane had forgotten he was even in a mangled hotel, that he was fighting to the death at all.Sitting in his mindscape was a large opaque sphere. He’d tried opening it once. But now it was falling apart. Crumbling to dust. As long as he could remember, the sphere had been sitting there, in the back of his mind. As long as he could remember.
He hadn't remembered much.
A disjointed series of images assaulted Tamerlane. Sitting alone on a beach, the laughter of other children echoing across the shore. Isolation. A gift, or perhaps a curse.
Suddenly he was in town and she was there with him. He didn't recognize her, yet she had been there for him for years. He felt happiness - that emotion he had for years viewed as foul, something to be abhorred, something he had never once let slip through. And yet here it was and it was wonderful. He didn't know who she was. He loved her.
Suddenly he was on the beach with her and they were younger and he still didn't know who she was but of course he didn't she had just walked from further down the beach and now she was here with him. She was beautiful, she was a stranger.
She wasn't a stranger, they were getting married, it was the happiest time of their lives. There weren't many people but they didn't care, it was just them and they were together. Miriam a voice said, and he knew the name but he didn't. He was marrying a lover he didn't know, yet he always had. Miriam. They thought the good times would last forever.
He stood stolid over her body, blood staining the floor a deep crimson. He sheathed his sword and walked away, emotionless.
He was with her and everything was good, they were going to raise a family together, grow old together. He was different but she didn't care, she loved him all the more for it, it was wonderful and it would never end.
The king's messenger returned with a final warning from His Majesty and he was different. The King demanded his services and he couldn't refuse yet he wouldn't be himself anymore, but it didn't matter because she would be fine and they would still be together. It wouldn't end, he would find himself again, it wasn't over. It wasn't over.
She cried and he hadn't noticed or cared and she was the King's and it didn't matter. The King was everything and his word was law. She was just the latest wife of His Majesty and there wasn't a reason to address her so he didn't. Bitter tears fell like rain, rain upon the tiles. He was a monster but he was a subject of the King and the King was pleased. Long live the King.
The King was displeased with her and she had tried to fight it but she couldn't get over him but he was gone. She was the King's but she refused and the King was angry and that was the end, the law. He drew his sword, and she cried, and she screamed his name, it wasn't important, she was no one.
She was everyone.
He was in a city, a tall city full of monsters and there was a serpent of shadow and they clashed. The city was falling down and he was flying, the desert swallowed it all and thousands of lives were gone in an instant, it didn't matter, nothing mattered but the King.
Damn the King. Long live the King.
A haunted mansion, a train, a ship sailing the stars themselves, a hotel. He would be instilled with wonder, but the King forbade wonder and so there was none. He slew everyone in his path and they were all obstacles but no longer, but the serpent refused to die, refused to yield. An abomination. A free-fall. An arm. His arm.
He was dying. He was alive.
Tamerlane remembered it all. The King's cruel gaze. He was decieved. He was lied to.
He had killed her, and felt nothing.
He wanted to curl into a ball, to crawl into a hole and die, to be alone forever. Nothing but pain and death had flowed from his being for fifteen years. She was dead. They were all dead.
Tamerlane looked up. They weren't all dead. Not yet. The abomination wasn't dead, it was back, it was the cloth mage. He watched the serpent's anguish. He could do nothing but watch as it tore him apart bit by bit, as it destroyed him. He called desperately to the cloth mage, but she didn't hear, she couldn't hear. But she wasn't dead. Not yet. Tamerlane stood up.
For fifteen years, he had brought nothing but misery.
Finally he could set something right.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He was on a train. The train was moving fast. The train was going to stop for more passengers. There were going to be a lot of passengers on this train. Right now there were only two but there was a stop ahead. They were on a train. Everyone was going to be on the train soon.The train was going through a forest. A dark forest. Syvex knew this forest. The train had passed through this forest many times on its route. He watched the trees go by. It was dark in the forest and there was nothing but trees. He could see vague shapes that might not have been trees but he couldn't tell. The stop was up ahead. It was lonely on the train. Syvex hoped they would come soon. Eureka was here but she was in first class and he wasn't allowed in first class.
Suddenly the train was derailing. He held onto his seat, but the train shook violently and he was thrown across the room and out the door
and crashed to the floor, away from the Malevolence. His head hurt. As he came to his senses, he noticed Tamerlane, standing tall like a pillar in a hallway, a pillar that also had control over sand and was fighting against a horrific abomination that was probably going to consume everyone.
...Wait, Tamerlane? Syvex couldn't quite comprehend what was going on. He'd have thought that Tamerlane, of all people, would want him to die. Maybe the sandman wanted the satisfaction of the kill to himself, but in his state he didn't stand a chance against Syvex. He shouldn't have stood a chance against the Malevolence. He didn't stand a chance against the Malevolence. It was only growing as he fought it - every time he shredded a tentacle, another had already sprung up to replace it, like an especially mediocre hydra. But for some reason, he kept fighting it.
"Get out of there, Tamerlane!" Syvex found himself shouting, though he didn't really know why. He raised his arm to give another attempt at slicing the thing apart, only to find it had been roughly torn off at the elbow. In a stroke of irony, he only had one arm left that was still mostly whole. The others weren't especially quick to grow back under the despicable flourescent lights, even in spite of the influence of caliginosity.
Tamerlane was trying to retreat at this point. A gnarled appendage grabbed his leg. Syvex succeeded in the use of Caliginosity once more, allowing the sandman to scramble away. The Malevolence attempted to ensnare him but, being immobile and far from its full potential, it only succeeded in throwing him across the room. Syvex watched him collapse to the floor, shrugged, then continued his attempt to reach Eureka. Silently, he wondered where the pirate had gone. Surely he could help with this somehow.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ripper could not help Syvex with his fight, because she was, at the moment, very busy with important business. Important business, in this case, meaning "copious amounts of thievery". Sometime after she realized she wasn't going to be much use to Syvex (especially since she had neglected the Core for so long), she had taken off to see how high the hotel tower actually went. A couple hundred floors up, there was still no end in sight.She decided to stop off on a random floor and investigate some of the rooms. Maybe she'd find treasure there. Yes, that was it, she was looking for treasure. That was why she left. Not some kind of mysterious shortness of breath that almost seemed to be getting worse. That would be ridiculous and she certainly wasn't feeling any worse than usual. She just needed to refuel, and she needed treasure for that.
Besides, here was a room made of diamonds! Exactly what she had meant to find, of course. Why had she even been sticking around with Syvex in the first place? The hotel was probably full of things like this. Pretty soon someone down there would die and she'd lose her opportunity entirely. She hadn't even had time to properly relieve the townsfolk of their valuables. The least she could do was start shoving diamonds into the Core. It took a while to cut them down to a managable size with a gun.
She felt absolutely fine, Syvex could handle it without her for a while. Nothing at all was going on here.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Syvex stopped flinging Caliginosity all over the place. What was the use? The Malevolence was completely impenetrable. Whatever it had managed to absorb from the orb before it was destroyed had been enough to protect its core. Eureka was on the verge of being lost, and there was nothing Syvex could even do about it. He didn't even care about Tamerlane anymore. He had helped, but what did that matter? Syvex thought back to the manor. The Malevolence didn't even have the decency to kill the people it absorbed properly. Their bodies were lost to a horrific amalgamation, but their minds were simply doomed to forever wander the world, never at peace, unable to rest.Syvex couldn't let this happen to Eureka. Silently, he lifted his hand, prepared to end it before it was too late.
"Stop!" yelled a voice both familiar and strange. ...Tamerlane? Syvex saw the sand mage running toward him, and slowly lowered his hand.
"Wha... but... What the hell?" Syvex managed to articulate, noticing the drastic change in his mortal enemy's demeanor.
"Syvex, I'm... I'm sorry. For everything."
"What? You're seriously deciding this now? Look, there's not time!"
"Look, I'm not who you think I am. I'm not here to kill anyone. It's too late for me, Syvex!" he suddenly shouted.
"Too late for what? You're not making any sense!"
"It was a lie! I was being controlled, and I didn't even realize it. My memories were blocked. I... I can't let this happen again. Syvex, take the knife."
In twenty minutes, Tamerlane had gone from murderous and self-absorbed to selfless enough to sacrifice himself to save everyone else? Syvex honestly had no idea what was going on. It didn't make sense. Being controlled? Memories blocked? He guessed it was possible, if a bit unlikely. It's not like the Tamerlane he knew would sacrifice himself, so he must have been sincere about it.
Syvex hesitated a moment, then, wordlessly, ripped the knife out of Tamerlane's body. The latter immediately grew pale and retreated to the side of the room, breaking out in a sweat. The knife was cold in his hand. It seemed to be calling out to him. A part of him wanted to simply plunge the knife into himself, to uncover whatever secrets it held. Fortunately, that part of him was easily suppressed. The knife wasn't for him. It was for no one but his enemy.
Syvex wasn't even sure how Eureka would survive this, but it didn't matter. He had just drunk a bottle full of liquefied shadow dimension, and insane levels of power were bursting from his body. He'd find a goddamn way. He charged foward, slicing bits of Malevolence apart with arm-spikes that had, as he had failed to notice, grown longer and sharper since he had consumed the contents of the bottle. Each tentacle he drove the knife through, he noticed, was immediately detached from the mass and failed to regrow. Soon he had reached the center and, without so much as thinking, he rammed a clawed hand into Eureka's abdomen and tore out the core of the Malevolence - some sort of odd heart-brain thing that was no larger than the palm of his hand.
He supposed that simply ripping it in half might have been enough, but he couldn't take any risks. Slowly, he raised the knife, desperately ignoring it as it called to him, and plunged it into the core. Just as quickly, he pulled it out, and dropped the now-decaying Malevolence to the floor. He held the knife in front of him, the weapon wavering in this hand, before he flung it across the room.
Powerful as it was, Caliginosity could not continually abandon Syvex - a host so attuned to shadows was not an especially common thing so far across the multiverse, and, perhaps, Syvex was managing to exert some amount of influence over such a weak detachment of the dimension. Whatever the cause, though, it found particular interest in the serpent's regeneration systems. So limited in scope, so weak - it could do so much more.
As such, what could best be described as a "cloud of Caliginosity-infused regeneration stuff" shot out of Syvex's body and into the air. There was nothing it could do for either Tamerlane or the Malevolence - both had been stabbed by the knife and were decaying beyond repair. The focus of the serpent's attentions, though, was still alive, in spite of the heavily-bleeding stomach wound. She wouldn't be alive for long. The cloud washed over her, depositing the biological components of Syvex's own regeneration systems into the wounded cloth mage. All traces of Caliginosity dissipated as it did its job, and the target's wounds started to slowly repair themselves.
Sure, the stuff used to regenerate shadow snake things was technically not supposed to work on humans as well, but liquefied shadow dimensions don't know any better. Besides, it did a reasonably good job. Things probably wouldn't go too severely wrong.
At this point, though, Caliginosity's power was quickly waning, especially since it had just broken several laws of biology. The blue glow around Syvex slowly died down, returning to its familiar purple-gray hue. Caliginosity had not gone - with the quantity Syvex had ingested at once, it probably never would.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"And you don't call that cheating?""I don't see the problem. It's only like I said. Far more interesting."
"Look, reviving my entrant was one thing, but this? How is this even close to fair?"
"Fair? What's unfair about it? In another timeline, he would have still had the entire bottle at this time. I merely nudged things toward the far more interesting possibility."
"But Victoria-"
"What about Victoria. It's not as if she'll know about this, is it? Unless you were planning on telling her about it." An unnerving grin emerged from beneath the gentleman's spider mask.
"I..." Fifth had a point - Fourth was far too much of a coward to tell her himself.
"If it is any consolation, Fourth, your wager would almost certainly have died even without my intervention. I was merely pushing for far more entertaining things. And you know as well as I that what transpired - perhaps in part due to a simple push from an external force - will prove much more interesting in the long run."
Fourth said nothing.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tamerlane gazed on from a distance, a feeling of empty satisfaction continually welling up and draining away again. He gazed half-heartedly at his remaining hand, finding that it was quickly decaying. Necrotic tissue slowly degraded and abandoned his body, settling to the floor as little more than dust. He was dying. Even the blue cloud that emerged from the serpent passed him over without the slightest effect. The same cloud that saved the dying cloth mage could do nothing for him.He didn't even have the energy to be angry. If he was going to die, the least he could do was die with dignity. At least it wasn't completely in vain. He indirectly saved someone and killed perhaps the biggest threat to any world it entered. That had to count for something, right?
At least he had learned the truth before he died. Though he could hardly bear to think about it, he looked back on the time he had been a mindless pawn of the King, all the times he could have died pursuing the asinine objectives of an insane tyrant. He now only wanted to go back there and shove his blade into the King's smug face. He almost died as someone else, someone whose only purpose was to hunt, to kill.
Someone who would unflinchingly kill his own wife.
Miriam now filled his thoughts. She was his entire world. She was all he had. The King had taken even that away. He had made a promise, and failed to uphold it. But it wasn't his fault, he kept telling himself. It wasn't him that made the kill. If only he could bring himself to believe it.
The world began fading around him. Maybe it wasn't the end. Maybe they'd be together again.
He'd like that.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The squad of Under-dwellers dumped the agent at their new god's feet. The agent looked extremely ragged - clothes in tatters, hair and beard dirty and unkempt. All of his equipment was long gone - ammunition expended, gun battered and bent to the point of uselessness, flashlight batteries dead. He curled into a ball on the ground, mumbling nonsense to himself, something about "his papers" and "the demons" and many less intelligible things."The last one... my lord..." the leader of the cadre wheezed. "Found him in... a closet..."
Laguja probed the man's mind - whatever the cause, it had been completely broken. His thoughts were disjointed and random; his actions basically harmless. The worst he would do is kill himself. He probably would if he stayed in this place for much longer. The pincushion saw no reason to keep him - there was essentially nothing left of the SCP operative he had once been. Muriegro waved his hand, and the Under-dwellers let the man run free.
Perfect. Everything had worked out precisely as planned, even with the unanticipated attack right in the middle of it all. Fortunately, the Under-dwellers were of weak minds, likely to follow anyone who even looked like they might have been a god. They had once been men and women, people of much stronger wills. These twisted beings, some of them borderline monstrosities, lived only to serve.
Laguja chuckled internally. Only to serve it, now.
It hadn't been more than twenty or thirty minutes, and already the people of the Underlands were scrambling to prepare the throne room for their new god. Fabrics were rolled out, and Under-dwellers surged out into the depths of the Hotel in search of materials for a throne befitting of a true god.
Unlike the slow-but-steadily-growing cult that Laguja had come from, news of the new god spread throughout the town like a wildfire. In such a short amount of time, hundreds of minds had chimed in, proving the pincushion-dwelling diety with belief. It could feel its power growing rapidly. Not much longer, and it would destroy the ones who had trapped it here and escape. It wouldn't be long now.
It wouldn't even be half that long, however, before it was all torn away again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A grin spread across Syvex's face. Somehow, it had actually worked. Somehow, he had actually killed the Malevolence without taking Eureka with it. She was unconscious at the moment, but she seemed to be fine. Syvex picked her up in his lowest pair of arms. Didn't want her to be thrown halfway across a city or something when the next round started.He did, for a moment, worry about what the regenerative abilities of a distinctly non-human creature would do in a human, but it didn't matter that much. It was much better than the alternative (the alternative, of course, being bleeding out).
Eureka taken care of, he approached the body of Tamerlane. He wasn't dead yet, but he was very visibly rotting away, and was already unconscious. It was almost unbelievable. One moment, they were at each other's throats, and the next, he was sacrificing himself for the good of everyone else. What was that he had said? Being controlled? Memories blocked? Syvex didn't want to believe it, but he had given his life for them. Ripper too, he supposed, though the pirate still made him uneasy for some reason.
Moreover, though, what about the messages on the wall? Mirrors? Syvex didn't really see what that had to do with anything, but then again, there was the broken mirror. If, somehow, Tamerlane was his mirror, the mirror had effectively been broken. It made sense, and this scared him a bit. Syvex was beginning to worry about his own sanity. Was anyone who they said they were? Was he who he thought he was? He didn't know, and frankly, he didn't want to think about it.
Syvex stood over his fallen enemy-turned-friend for a while as the piles of dust on the ground grew. Slowly, he reached down and took the hat off of Tamerlane's head. He wasn't really sure why - to honor the hero that his greatest enemy apparently really was. Maybe he wasn't actually that bad, Syvex supposed.
Besides, it was a really nice hat.
Syvex remained still, watching Tamerlane's body slowly degrade. That pathetic, half-dead pile of decay had died a hero.
Tamerlane's life finally faded away, seemingly taking the light with it as the hotel faded into nothingness around them. Syvex's greatest enemy, or perhaps the greatest friend he had never known, was no more.