An Emnity Eternal

Have you got a game, book or movie you'd like to make a story out of? Want to expand on a story or plot that stopped? Have an original idea for a story that you want to post somewhere? Here's where to do it. Basically an RPG where one player controls ALL characters in the story.

An Emnity Eternal

Postby mega raptor » Thu May 15, 2008 12:45 am

Alright, glad I could get this one out sooner than the last one (though it might be in need of some editing). Now, I'm curious, are you more curious about the ending or Deus and Samael's back story? If you're more curious about the ending, I'll go straight to Warped, but if you're more curious about the backstory I'll write Deus Ex Machina and we'll go to Warped from there.

Oh, and also, do you empathize with the Eternal Empire or the EIM so far? Just curious about this one.

And another thing-are these getting too long? I hope not, because these are probably only going to be getting longer.

-----

Damn conduit keeps breaking, Samael thought, examining the thick cords running from the Warpgate out to the emitters at the nose of the ship. I wish Phasol would tell me where he found this damn ship-it would help if I had access to the schematics.

Samael voiced his complaints to Echand over his wristpad in his speaker’s Surski, and the suskee replied between gasps from his air-tank, “Good luck with that one-whoever made this has probably been dead for a million years.”

Samael nodded, said “Yeah, probably…” And added, “Anyway, when are you gonna get down here? I could use your help.”

On the other end of the connection, the suskee cocked his head, looking into the screen with two of his eyes. “You need my help?” To Samael, it sounded like Echand was faking incredulity, but he could never tell with alien languages. “I thought you were the one that knew how to work the Warpgate.”

“I do, but I can’t use the minifacturing plant, and this is definitely a mechanical problem.”

The suskee angled his triangular head up, their equivalent to a nod. “I’ll be down in a few.”

“Alright, but hurry down, I’d rather not be zooming around the beginning of time.”

“Least we won’t run out of fuel.”

Samael snorted. “The anti-matter everywhere is why I’d rather not be zooming around the beginning of time.”

I probably should learn to use the minifacturing plant, Samael thought. It could be quite useful, and can’t be too hard-whatever built these things probably used them on a day-to-day basis. Of course, they also apparently built machines that can punch holes in time and space and compressed it to something that you could fit in a house, but still, I can use the Warpgates, so it can’t be that hard.

Soon, the airlock opened and Echand emerged, pushing aside a frond of one of the plants that they used to keep maintain oxygen levels as he walked, in that odd manner that reminded Samael of a predator stalking its prey, over to examine the damage. Samael showed him the damage-one of the wires had been melted, probably by the massive amount of energy they had been putting through it in just a few hours as they had jumped across the universe in search of anti-matter for fuel.

Echand nodded, cut part of the wire off with his claw, and took it over to the minifacturing plant. Samael had always thought it odd that the Suskee kept their claws sharpened, even for a species that prided itself on its carnivorous heritage, and for Echand to keep all of his sharpened was even stranger. Occasionally, Samael had asked why, and Echand had given him answers ranging from “tradition” to “they come in handy in a fight.”

Lying down in his hammock, Samael watched as Echand worked the minifacturing plant, the strange little machine that could manufacture almost anything if it was fed in enough matter. To Samael’s knowledge, it had been in the ship when Phasol had found it, and no one had ever figured out how it worked. In fact, no one had figured out how much of the ship worked-almost everything that with the ship, from the onboard weapons system to the Warpgate and its emitters to the minifacturing plant and even the ship’s computer.

In fact, to Samael’s knowledge, the computer, for an ancient alien artifact, was in excellent condition and had come to understand several different modern languages after it had been connected to a comm satellite, after which it had ignored any questions about its past and its sophistication, while attempts to delve into its programming had been stopped by the incomprehensible alien language it was written in. Minor changes to the strange language had resulted in bizarre changes in the computer’s operational functions, and after the third such incident the computer had sealed off all access to its system files, and since then they had had to be careful about where they placed their documents.

But it was the Warpgates themselves that Samael had been the most interested in: the strange, silver devices with an alien keyboard shaped in a spiral, with a dozen numbers and another alphabet that Samael did not come close to understanding, the portals they produced that seemed to defy laws of physics, the strange silver liquid over each end of the portal that seemed to be created out of nowhere.

Occasionally, Samael had taken a guess at how they worked, but they seemed unwilling to give up their secrets-save for the arch, apparently made of solid metal, and the keyboard, placed on a panel on the arch’s side, there was nothing that even could be examined. Even the conduit was unable to provide answers-it was clumsily clamped onto the Warpgate’s side, opposite the keyboard.

It was almost maddening to watch the Warpgate work, simply sitting there, defying laws of physics, unwilling to allow even the tiniest secret to be teased from its grasp. It simply defied Samael’s explanation.
So he asked Echand. The Suskee replied: “Honestly Samael, I don’t know, and I don’t really care.”

And behind him, two creatures fell out of the Warpgate and hit the floor with a thud-one, a purple crystalline centipede-like creature with perhaps two dozen flailing limbs and a bizarre alien crossbow strapped too its back, the other, an eyeless spider-like creature with eight limbs and a futuristic rifle in two of them.

“They might be able to tell you though,” Echand said as he reached for his needle rifle. Not that he intended to fire it-it used anti-matter to fire projectiles and would blow a hole straight through its target, out into space while sending Echand flying into a wall. But it was extremely threatening.

Samael rolled off his hammock and opened up a drawer of the small wardrobe he kept there, searching for the pistol he had hid in there. Pulling out the weapon, Samael kept it steady as he pulled himself up and approached the creatures on the floor.

The two aliens were breathing shallowly, apparently not used to their atmosphere. The centipede-like one in particular was breathing out strange, solid disks of some unknown material. It reached for a pocket on a bandolier slung over his shoulder, and slid something-it looked like a wristpad, but Samael couldn’t tell-over to Echand. He picked it up with one of his dexterous feet, glanced at it for a second and tossed it over to Samael.

Catching it in his free hand, Samael oriented the machine, a portable computer, designed for no hand Samael had ever seen, and read the Surski typed on it. ‘I am PRISM. My friends need an atmosphere with a ratio of approximately sixty parts nitrogen to thirty-six parts oxygen-could you find supplies of such gases?’

“Why should I help them?” Samael asked as he began to write the characters with a stylus.

‘Because they have information that is vital to you,’ The computer answered before he even finished.

Samael turned the computer called PRISM over, found the speaker on it, and asked suspiciously, “Are you an AI, and Artificial Intelligence?”

‘Yes.’

Samael cringed, and then asked, ‘What kind of information?’

‘They can tell you where Deus is,’ Was the AI’s answer.

Samael stuffed the computer in his shirt pocket and opened up the airlock and grabbed two oxygen tanks off the rack. Hurried over to the aliens, he put tanks in the creature’s hands and backed away, aiming his pistol at them.

The creatures began to breath deeply, and they stirred and woke on the floor. The spider-like one was first, and it gestured for something-Its computer, Samael concluded. He slid the computer across the floor to it, and it picked it up and began to speak in some strange, clicking language. PRISM translated into Surski: “Are you Samael?”

“Yes,” Samael replied through his speaker.

The spider-like creature began to speak as the centipede-like one awoke. “We have important information for you,” the AI translated.

“About Deus?” Samael asked, wishing that the speaker could translate the emotion in his voice.

“About Deus and his Empire,” the computer said.

“What Empire?” Samael began to think: Deus had disappeared seven years ago by Samael’s watch, (though it was more, since Samael had left through a Warpgate leading to the future) after people claiming to be Deus and Samael from the future had arrived at Machina with an army of strange creatures-some of which Samael now recognized as the spider-like thing at his feet.

“Deus has founded what he calls the Eternal Empire in another galaxy. Using the Warpgates, he found us and used us to build his army and then his Empire.” Samael clenched his fist-that sounded exactly like Deus.

“So tell me, who is ‘us’?” Samael asked.

“‘Us’ are Eternals,” the creature on the floor told him. “And I am Ptraer. We died off long before your time, but Deus found what was left of us and brought us back.”

Samael peered at the Eternal on the floor quizzically. “What was it of you that was left behind?”

“We always knew that we find something that would destroy us, and so we built Sanctuaries, hidden across the multiverse, where we could rest, dead but dreaming. And so I was, so we all were, for time everlasting, from time unknown, until Deus found us, and he helped us rebuild our civilization, and made it into his Eternal Empire. But many of us refused to be cogs in Deus’s war machine, and so we rebelled. And we brought other species to our side, like my noscilis friend Thraj.”

“So then why are you here?”

“Because we thought you could help us.” Behind Ptraer, the noscilis Thraj was standing up and had drawn the strange, crossbow-like device that had been holstered on his back.

“Why would I be able to help you?”

“Because Deus’s files said you could.”

“Yes, that was my doing.” Samael turned around and there was a man, leaning against the wall, large wings protruding from his back, one orange and one blue, dressed in an old business suit and nibbling on an apple. “I altered those files, but I felt that guaranteeing my future made it rather necessary. Oh, Samael, good to see you again-how long has it been on your end? Just a few months, a few years tops?” He finished the apple, incinerated the remains of it and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“Who are you?” Samael asked, pointing his gun at him.

“You don’t know? You can’t tell by your friend’s reactions?” He stepped forward. “I’m Deus.”

Behind Samael, he heard a snap and he felt something whiz by him. Then Deus was standing with a glowing hot bolt caught between his fingers inches from his face. Samael turned to see what must have been Thraj’s surprised look, his head held low, the strange proboscis protruding from his face drooping like many of his limbs, the crossbow-like device now in four of his many hands.

“Was that really necessary?” Deus asked, irritation clear in his voice. He tossed the bolt down to the floor and glared at Thraj. “You’re just wasting your ammo anyway.”

Thraj responded by cocking the crossbow and firing again. Deus’s hand disappeared behind his back as the bolt pierced his chest. Deus barely flinched as the red-hot bolt pierced his body and he turned around, holding the end of the bolt that protruded from his body in his hand. “Still caught it,” Deus declared triumphantly.

Echand sidled up to Samael and asked him in whispered Suskee, “Can humans normally do that?”

“No,” Samael said. And he stepped up to Deus, pointed the pistol at his head and fired. Deus’s corpse fell to the floor with a dull thud and a repulsive crack that could only be his wings.

Thraj and Ptraer exchanged glances with each other that could have been of relief or of worry, and before Samael could ask them what they were thinking a portal opened and Deus stepped through again. He hefted his corpse up, pulled out the now blood-red bolt that had been lodged in his chest, tossed it casually to Thraj, and threw his body roughly through the portal.

“Told you people, you were just wasting your ammo. As therapeutic as it might be for you three to put a bullet through my brain, it’s really just a waste of all of our time.” Deus clapped his hands together, and continued, “Anyway, Thraj, Ptraer, you’ve told my old friend of your current situation?”

Samael gawked at Deus. The man-if he was still a man, and not some alien monster from another universe-had simply walked onto Samael’s ship, after he had disappeared years ago in the middle of a bizarre battle between Machina’s forces and the strange alien species Ptraer referred to as the Eternals. Samael could only ask, toneless, “Deus, where have you been these years?”

“To list for you everywhere I have been would take up another few years, and to tell you of all worthy of mention I did at those places more years still. Suffice it to say…” He stepped forward, and switched from Suskee to their native language. “I have seen such things, Samael, wonderful things, I wish you could have seen them. I have lived, I have learned, I have escaped Machina’s shadow-oh God, how I wish you could have seen what I have seen. It would all be so clear to you, so wonderfully clear what you must do-what I am doing!”

“Apparently,” Samael said acidly as he pointed to Thraj and Ptraer, “You have escaped Machina’s shadow and created your own.”

Deus continued, unabated. “I’ve seen above this illusion, past all this noise, this confusion, Samael. I’ve gone so far-”

“You went too far,” Samael growled.

“It’s like I can see now-”

“You’re still a blind man,” Samael said bitterly.

“It’s like I can think now-”

“You’re still a mad man,” Samael snapped.

“No Samael, you don’t understand-they don’t understand-” Deus’s voice was a little desperate, and he neared Samael. His resolve strengthened, and he said,

“Understand what, Deus?” Samael said, hoping the bitterness he felt was apparent in his words. “Understand how it was a mistake, like what happened at Machina? Like what happened during the war? Like what happened after-when you became Machina’s Chief of Security?”

Deus stepped forward, continued his tirade. “Mark my words, Samael, there will be peace when I’m done.”

Samael snorted. “From what I hear, all you’ve done is start wars.”

“That was a long time ago,” Deus said tonelessly. “I’ve changed since then, I’ve changed everything.” But Samael only snorted again.

Deus stepped back, looked down, his forehead in his palm and his wings ruffling. Samael caught a glimpse at Deus’s face, and it only looked defeated. Deus sighed. “I don’t know why I’m arguing with you about this again. I should have let matters go-you’ve made your decision, that’s obvious, and I’ve made mine. I just hope you don’t regret it.” He looked up, his face changed-accepting of Samael’s decision, perhaps? And he stared into Samael’s eyes. “I truly mean that, my old friend.”

“I don’t give a damn what you mean anymore,” Samael said. He looked around, and was aware that the others in the room had been aware that they had been arguing.

Echand looked at him, his reptilian face, it if could be called that, unreadable. What was the suskee thinking-curiosity, perhaps, or suspicion? Samael couldn’t tell. Aliens were unreadable-their facial muscles moved in all the wrong ways, if they had a face at all, their body language was strange and tone and pitch in their languages often conveyed meaning completely different from languages Samael was used to.

Deus turned to the three, and began talking in Suskee while the PRISM computer translated it into whatever Thraj and Ptraer spoke in. “Now, as I was saying earlier, don’t waste your ammo on me. You’ll be needing it for where you’ll be going.” And then he turned to Echand and added, “Except for you, you’re free to pump me full of anti-matter-propelled carbon-nano-fiber-blades all you like, except the recoil might send you flying out into space.”

“Why should we listen to you?” Thraj asked in what probably passed for a defiant tone among his species. His crossbow was still pointed at Deus, and the bloodied bolt was still held in one of his limbs.

“Because if I wanted to,” Deus said, advancing closer, his voice strangely toneless, or maybe a little cheerful, “I could light you on fire, destroy your world, murder your hive and your queen and erase you from every history of every universe I’ve ever visited. Now shut the hell up and listen to me, otherwise the whole universe and every goddamned thing I’ve worked for over the last several billion years will be utterly obliterated.”

Thraj lowered his crossbow and lowered himself as Deus continued. “Now, Samael, Ptraer and Thraj are going to go through the Warpgate to the coordinates Thraj and Ptraer got off me on the other end of the portal they stepped out of. You are going to go in the first building you see, ask if they’ve seen a man like me without the wings and keep going from there-the guide will give you a map and some mounts to get you where you’re going. Ptraer should be pretty useful from there. And Echand? Give someone your needle rifle, they’ll need it.”

Echand obeyed and offered the rifle to Samael. Samael objected, saying, “This thing won’t work-the recoil will send us flying-” and impatiently Deus took the rifle from Samael, threw it over his back to a portal that opened behind him and caught it as it fell out, this time with strange modifications sloppily grafted on.

“Just throw the heat coils when they pop out, alright?” Deus said. “You know what? Here Thraj, you take it, your kind loves the heat.”

“How do we know that you didn’t plant a bomb in it or something?” Samael questioned. “You’ve betrayed me bef-” And then Samael was stopped mid-word by a jolt that ran through his entire body, and he collapsed to the floor as Deus said in their language:

“You don’t know what happened that day,” Deus said, his voice toneless again. When the shock wore off, Deus helped Samael to his feet before saying, irritated, “Now go, all of you!” And Deus, with the flick of his wrist, lit a fire beside Ptraer, and another beside Thraj, and a third beside Samael. As the alarm went off, Samael ran to the Warpgate, grabbed PRISM out of someone’s hands, brought up the coordinates and quickly typed them into the Warpgate’s console on the confusing spiral keyboard.

Before he went through, Samael glanced, and heard the airlock open over the sound of the alarm while Echand cried, “Go on, go, I’ll be fine!” and Deus disappeared into a portal of his own. Ptraer and Thraj pushed through, and then Samael finally followed them into the silvery portal of the Warpgate.

-----

When Samael fell out of the Warpgate, he couldn’t see anything-for a few seconds, he was blinded by the light. But he landed on something hard and bumpy, and it pushed itself up and Samael realized that it must have been Ptraer’s insect-like carapace. As he stood on the ground, he felt sand shift beneath his boots.

His eyes adjusted to the light, and he could see that they were on a desert world. The nearest building was a small tent, constructed of some alien leather, with several strange tusked, two-limbed reptiles tethered outside. A dirt road led up a hill to some unknown destination, the only signal that this was not an old hermit’s retreat on some long-forgotten world.

Beside him, Thraj was brushing sand off the bolt still clutched in between his fingers while Ptraer was glancing around, probably clicking away since his head clearly lacked eyes.

Samael walked to the building while he told his companions to remain outside. And then Deus was there again, stepping out of a portal, a speaker in one of his hands and a purse of jingling coins in the other. “So sorry,” He said. “Forgot about this-it’s already programmed with the Rytel’s language, and you know how to use a speaker. And these coins should cover the amount needed to buy mounts, supplies and a map, but I’m not so sure-you wouldn’t believe how many places use a currency called a rupee.”

Deus handed them over to Samael and then stepped through the portal again. He examined it for traps before wrapping it around his neck and pushing the needles into the back of his spine. Prepared, Samael walked into the tent and began to question the thing that Deus had called a Rytel. “I’m looking for an old friend of mine, one of the same species as me, who came by here not that long ago. I heard that you had dealings with him?”

The Rytel’s overarching arm scratched its back, presumably where its brain was. “He disappeared into the ruins north of here. I won’t go near them now, not now that he has angered the spirits in venturing into their city, but I can sell you a mount to get to them.”

Samael stepped back and glanced at the strange mounts outside. They looked hardy, and could probably get him wherever he was going. “Sounds good.” But remembering Thraj and Ptraer, he added, “But I’ll need two. And a map and supplies.”

“Of course,” The Rytel clicked.

-----

Soon, the three were headed north, riding the strange mounts that bounded ahead like some bizarre creature Samael could barely remember from his childhood. And still Thraj was examining the blood-covered bolt that had killed Deus. Finally, when they stopped to let the creatures rest, Samael asked Thraj what he was doing.

“It’s a tradition,” Thraj replied through PRISM. “After any weapon has killed an enemy, it is to be named.”

“Did you really kill Deus?” Samael asked. “I mean, he came back after all.”

“His pulse stopped,” Ptraer interjected. “He was dead, if only temporarily.

“So you don’t have a name for it yet?” Samael continued.

“No, not yet.” Thraj said.

“Can I see it?”

Thraj gave it to him. Examining it, a name suddenly came, one of his old language-What was the word for ‘blood’ again? He thought. Ah yes, ‘sanguine.’ Samael suggested it to Thraj.

The noscilis sounded it out with his strange vocal cords, and out came a passable imitation of the word. “Sanguine, yes, a good choice. What does it mean?”

Samael told him. “Fitting,” was all Thraj said.

-----

Soon, they continued on. They decided to stop for the night at recently abandoned camp, one with a fire still burning. Trying to see through the bright flames, Samael recognized the orange-red gel that was the substance that was Deus’s fire-starter.

“Do either of you know how long ago this camp was used?”

“Couldn’t have been too long ago-fire’s still burning,” Thraj said.

“Yes, but it’s Deus’s fire-and whatever the hell it is Deus has all up his arm can burn for days with enough oxygen.”

“How can that happen?” Thraj said.

Ptraer said, “It’s probably some extremophile bacteria that gives off a flammable waste.”

Thraj sunk low again, apparently confused. “Forgive me, but I don’t understand exactly what that means.”

Samael looked at him, now curious about Thraj’s background. Samael waited for Ptraer to explain it to Thraj before he asked, “Thraj, why is it that you don’t know what a bacteria is?”

“I suppose that, compared to yours, our civilization never got as far as yours technologically.” He hoisted the crossbow, showing it to him. “This was new and innovative technology at the time the Eternal Empire found us. You can imagine how long we lasted.”

“Were you involved in the military?”

“You could say that.” Thraj put the crossbow down, “I was an Ensis, a soldier chosen by the hive queen specifically for safeguarding it.”

“Queen?”

“Our species reproduces differently than yours does-we have a single queen, a creature you would probably recognize more as a machine than a being, that reproduces. We have no genders, and only when the current queen is about to die is another one born.”

Samael nodded, curiosity sated for the moment. He lay on the bedroll and stared up at the stars, recognizing no constellations and curious if Thraj and Ptraer had come from any of them.

-----

Thraj awoke the next morning wondering why it was so cold before remembering that he was in a foreign galaxy, perhaps a foreign universe, with two other people he didn’t know particularly well, ordered to arbitrarily search for a place known as the ruins by the very leader of the enemy that he had so long sought to crush. It would have shamed the queen and his soldiers for them to know this, that while they defended and fought for their worlds their leader was wondering the stars at the enemy’s command.

Rising up, he packed his supplies and woke the Eternal Ptraer and the human Samael. He was starting to take a liking to them, but he was unsure about what Samael had to do with Deus-They both spoke what I think was the same language and I think they were getting into an argument, but I can never tell with aliens.

The three mounted the strange reptiles and continued north. While they rode, Thraj thought about the situation he had left behind-Deus’s Citadel Disk had been devastated by the atomic bombs that they had barely managed to steal, and the Juggernaut tank they had worked so hard to capture had been lost (though now they understood how to capture more) and no doubt the maneuver would prove that the Eternal Independence Movement could stand on its own.

But their fleet had been damaged heavily by General Iphrey and now the Eternal Empire would be hunting them with a vengeance. They would have to flee to the dimensions that they had scouted out and hope that none of the ships that had been captured by the Empire contained records of those scattered universes.

Though it was, of course, now debatable whether or not the Empire would be able to move their troops around-Deus’s Citadel Disk had been the center of their black-hole based transportation network, and damaging it as they had would have removed a critical cog in Deus’s war machine. It was entirely possible that system commanders were without communication, while the EIM’s Warpgate and Conduit-based transit could allow them to make quick raids and perhaps even conquests on unsuspecting worlds.

Unfortunately, this was a moot point if the Eternal Empire understood the Conduit-based transit. The fact that they had seen one on Samael’s ship was an ominous indicator that, in whatever time they had come out in, the technology had become mainstream. If the Empire came to understand the Conduit, then the EIM’s greatest advantage would disappear and even quick hit-and-runs would become risky affairs, with the Eternal Empire quick to dispatch ships to even carriers with the most mundane cargo.

It made Thraj think back to the liberation of Fomerra, just before the Ambromancer, Telemancer and Chronomancer had cut the space elevator’s cord. They had vigorously found and controlled train tracks, and had destroyed them to prevent any of their enemies from using them, if only to hold of Empire reinforcements a little longer. And it had worked, as Fomerra had been left to its own devices after the elevator was cut-many, Thraj included, had supposed that the Empire simply did not consider Fomerra a prize worthy of the costly descent through Fomerra’s thick atmosphere, and that had quite possibly been their saving grace-the poisoned atmosphere that had forced them to wear gas masks whenever they left the cities had saved them all from the massive military might of the Eternal Empire.

But simply breaking the black-hole network’s controls were no longer an option if the Empire came to gain understanding of the Conduits. But perhaps, if they broke their entry point into their universe, then perhaps they would be free. Perhaps the Empire would not consider a galaxy worth it if its inhabitants fought so hard, inflicted such heavy casualties on the Empire. And so perhaps that would be their strategy-break the Empire’s hold on their galaxy by breaking what let them into their galaxy. But Thraj would need to get back to exact that strategy…

And suddenly a jolt hit him like a blow to the chest, and for a second he felt the silicon dioxide begin to slide back into his lungs before he began to breathe again. He looked to Ptraer and shouted over the thumping of their mount’s feet: “We forgot to find a way back!”

Ptraer’s chirping sonar intensified in panicked frequency and he said, “You’re right-we’ll never be able to go back!”

Samael interjected, “I know a way to recover coordinates-I can get you back to where you left!”

Thraj waved his proboscis up and down. “We can’t do that-that’ll just put us back into Deus’s office!”

“You guys broke into Deus’s office!” Samael shouted in a different tone. “You’ll have to tell me how you did that!”

“We’ll tell you later!” Ptraer replied. “Just let it be said that we had to stage a massive battle to get in, and even then we almost got caught!”

They stopped speaking and rode on. As they rode on, Thraj wondered what he would do-they could not go back home now, they were trapped in a strange world and their only contact in it was a human who had strange connections to their worst enemy, a man who was supposed to help them employ the soldiers that had saved Thraj’s world but had been just as confused and aggravated at their sudden appearance as they were at Deus’s.

Finally, Thraj came to accept that there was no going back-he would never see Fomerra again. And so he wondered how the noscilis would proceed. Thraj trusted the Eternals, who had helped to enlighten them and move them off of their dying world, but some of the other species that he had seen, such as the caliope, he mistrusted-they were not fighters but cowards, content to remain away from fire and quick to change allegiances should their side fail.

They would likely be forced to flee even the galaxy that had spawned them, into other universes that the EIM had pioneered, had wrestled from foreign forces, dimensional bottlenecks and mirror universes obeying strange physics. They were a hardy species, they would doggedly survive and thrive, half-alive, in the most extreme, hostile environments. Thraj understood, of course, that he could not have made a difference in this fate, but it still disheartened him to know that he would not be able to save the live of another EIM solider.

As he contemplated his fortunes and that of his species, the sun fell lower until it was night again, and again they found one of Deus’s fires, still burning. It reminded Thraj of stories he had heard of Deus’s victims simply being melted before their corpses could be found and sent back home, leading to massive lines of names swathes of names marked “Missing, Presumed Dead.” He wondered if the sand below the fire had turned to glass, but could not see it well.

Pondering Deus’s fires, Thraj wondered if somewhere up among the stars, there was a computer with a file on it that listed his fate as “Missing, Presumed Dead.”

-----

When Ptraer awoke, he realized immediately that something was wrong-he was clearly not where he had laid down the last night. Instead, he was on a train that felt strangely familiar, rocketing through something he could only guess at-his sonar pulses were not returning to him. And Deus was standing opposite him, his bat-like wings spread and easy to penetrate.

Ptraer reached for the shard gun on his back, if only to irritate Deus, but grasped only air. “Just listen, Ptraer,” Deus said. “You and your friends are headed to an old Eternal city. You can look around, blow some buildings up, try to figure out what the hell happened to the place-I really don’t give a damn what you do. But when you’re done, head for the top of the mountain, go through the doorway and keep heading down. Take the Warpgate to the coordinates I’m downloading onto PRISM. Understood?”

Having no other options, Ptraer agreed. “Good. See you then.” And then, he was awake, his head pointed up to the skies.

-----

They continued to ride that day, and to occupy the time Ptraer speculated on what he would do now that he could not return home. Samael apparently had work on his ship, if he would take them, if he was even in charge. He was an adept soldier, was used to hard work, he could be useful on Samael’s ship. But it would be mundane after years of service in the military as a covert ops soldier, years of infiltrating bases, stealing information, assassinating the worst the Empire had to offer.
Never again would he feel an adrenaline rush from a good firefight, feel his heart and the hearts of his teammate’s pound as they ran for the carefully-secured evac point, never again would he down a crab with a single grenade or clear a hallway with half a clip of mirror-matter rifle ammo. Never again would he duck behind cover as shards tore through the air he had been, never again would he throw a grenade back at its unfortunate owner, never again would he shrug off shard and mirror-matter wounds as he stubbornly pursued his objective. Never again would he experience the thrills and fears of warfare. Those days were over now.

Yes, it would be a strange shift from military service to working on a ship. But he had no other choice. The transition would be one he would have to suffer through. Like going in the pod and coming up a million years later to find everyone you ever knew was dead, He thought.

As he thought about being relegated to civilian life, the city came into view, a magnificent thing, the entire ancient metropolis covering and spreading out from a single, ominously solitary mountain. When they reached the city gates, the creatures they rode refused to go further, and so they leashed them to broken remains of pillars and fence posts and continued into the city on foot.

As they walked into the city cautiously, weapons unconsciously drawn, Ptraer noticed, in their old language, “That is not dead can eternal lie/and with strange aeons even death may die.” He repeated it to Thraj and Samael, and they puzzled at its meaning before Ptraer made its meaning clear:

“It means that we’re headed in the right direction. I saw the same thing as I left the city I had been sleeping in.” They nodded in understanding, and Samael seemed to be staring off into space, though Ptraer had no idea why.

As they continued through the city, Thraj and Samael occasionally made comments about odd architecture and proportions: they noted that there were no right angles, for example, and doorways seemed too tall and not wide enough for them, especially for Thraj, whose many limbs often scraped against the sides. But Ptraer was at home in them.

Of course, the place also had a strange, ghost-like feeling to it, it was entirely too ancient and too full of memories, memories belonging to those long dead and buried. Occasionally, when they came to areas that must once have been crowded boulevards and beautifully decorated plazas, Ptraer could almost see the ancients, bustling about, going about their business, ignoring the interloper from another era as he caught a glimpse of their long-gone existence.

Many creatures respected them now-the city was empty of life, and they never caught a glimpse of even intruding lichen. But occasionally, they ran into vulgar reminders of Deus’s trespassing: fires alight in dark areas, a camp built near the city’s entrance, a courtyard completely excavated.

They made their way up the city slowly, and came across many odd sights: once, they caught a glimpse through ancient buildings of piers standing above what must have once been a cove, leading Ptraer to speculate this city must have been a prosperous coastal one. But the ocean was long gone now.

Another time, they found a skyscraper on its side, unbalanced by the changing of the terrain, perhaps over a mile tall, completely undamaged by its fall. A memory struck Ptraer, and he fired a round of his shard rifle into the side. The round of hardened carbon simply ricocheted off, not leaving a dent on the building’s side, and erasing any doubt from Ptraer’s mind: the building was made of hardened diamond, as he had long ago been taught. Ptraer explained this to his companions, and Samael asked, incredulously, “Where do you get that much diamond?”

“You make it.”

"How?”

“Nanobots.”

The answer satisfied Samael, and they continued up the mountain.

-----

Soon, as they hiked up the mountain, they found a darkened doorway leading down into the mountain. Samael was especially tense as they descended the narrow stairway and wide, tall steps, holding his weapon up, even though Deus’s fires lit the way and he held up the back. But the human was claustrophobic and afraid of the dark, and disliked the mountain stairwell. Ptraer wondered if he would have made it if he and Thraj were not there.

Thraj and himself didn’t find the tunnels particularly frightening: Thraj was accustomed to small underground tunnels, as his species had evolved in tight volcanic tunnels, and even today on foreign worlds preferred the underground to the surface. Ptraer’s sonar, meanwhile, and his general comfort with the architecture, continued unabated down the dark stairs. And of course, if Deus had done it, there was no reason Ptraer could not.

Ptraer did not keep track of how long it took to descend the stairs, but when the stairs finally opened into a room lined with pillars that opened out onto a bridge reaching across an underground river, Ptraer longed to sleep. But he would not, could not, he was driven by some force greater than him, begging him, ordering him, dragging him on, into the great unknown ahead of him.

But Samael simply would not continue on, and Thraj simply picked him, before the great heat of his body woke the unfortunate human with a start. And so they continued even further, crossing the bridge over the river that dropped into some unknown abyss, and they continued into a single solitary building jutting out of the river with a single, broken disk of unknown origin providing broken fragments of strange dialogue that Ptraer himself barely understood.

Ptraer pinged at the broken figure, marveling at the outline that was emitted from the disk that even his sonar could detect. Nanites, he reasoned, were the cause of this, just as they were the cause of the buildings above. And he mourned the death of this figure and that of his final testimony, perhaps the final testimony of the earlier age of his species. Gone forever, destroyed by Deus so that none else could see what he had seen. Another crime he would suffer for.

The three moved through the building and continued across the bridge, and here they found a marvelous thing: another city, stretching down a slope to the far wall of the massive cavern perhaps five or six kilometers away from them, marked by a single, monolithic tower, stretching to the cave’s ceiling and perhaps down into the cave’s abyss.
Between them and the far end of the city, they could see many buildings, perhaps once markets, hospitals, offices, homes, apartments, barracks, factories-who was to say? But Ptraer felt a ghostly presence among all of them, lives that had imprinted themselves on the very places they had once inhabited. This place is making me insane, Ptraer thought grimly. Soon I’ll be seeing ghosts.

Strangely, when Ptraer suggested they keep heading down, neither Thraj nor Samael protested-they said the area was lighted, lit by massive lights in the cave’s ceilings-Ptraer wondered if the Eternals of old had shared this space with other species, or perhaps had built it thinking that the creatures that would discover it would perceive with light.

Regardless, they continued down the city’s slope. As they did, Ptraer noticed Thraj and Samael were both talking, joking, sharing experiences. Thraj talked of narrow escapes from the Eternal Empire and his adventures with the Ambromancer, Chronomancer and Telemancer, while Samael told of his work as a security officer in a place called Machina and his more recent time on Phasol’s ship as a pirate. They helped keep each other going, as Thraj’s silicon skin burned to the touch for Samael, while Samael’s skin was freezing for the noscilis. Meanwhile, Ptraer kept going simply because he refused to be stopped.

They continued moving, still walking for the tower that Samael described as “ivory,” differentiating it from the rest of the buildings that were apparently weren’t “ivory.”

Walking through the city, Ptraer occasionally wondered if this had happened to his species before. Were the Eternals trapped forever in a cycle of life and death, of prosperity in extinction, awaiting their demise before being resurrected by charismatic usurpers like Deus? Ptraer had no idea. It was a strange thought, really, that all of his life was simply part of a cycle greater than he could ever really comprehend. So he stopped thinking about it.

It didn’t take long to reach the tower, and as they entered it they found it a huge hall of terminals and booths, punctuated occasionally by escalators still humming along. Perhaps some it was some ancient spaceport. Perhaps somewhere up above, the remains of a space elevator socket were buried in the sand, and the top of the ivory tower was somewhere with it.

At the end of the long hall, there were the entrances to many huge elevators, each with two stories and equipped with a kitchen, bathroom, several bedrooms and what appeared to be an entertainment room. Another room was a multi-storied glass-roomed wall with the elevator’s control panel. Ptraer read symbols indicating ‘up’ and ‘down’ on the panel, and everyone agreed to hit ‘down’.

The elevator began to move.

-----

They stayed in the observation room as the elevator zoomed downwards, and soon the view of the shaft opened up into a view of an utterly massive cavern, so vast that Samael could not see the other end, even in the bright light. Venturing close to the window, Samael gingerly touched the wall, found it sturdy, and leaned forward on the glass, looked down and saw, far, far below them, a distance so vast it make Samael feel like he was an ant atop Mount Everest, there was only a covering of mist. And they were approaching it very, very fast.

“We’re moving so fast-do you think we’re in freefall?” He asked.

“It’ll be a long time ‘till we find out,” Thraj replied.

“Well, I think I’ll get some sleep. Wake me for my imminent death.”

And he went upstairs, found a bed and began to sleep.

-----

Samael awoke later to find Thraj in another bed, but Ptraer absent from the room. He went down to the observation room, and still found Ptraer staring, or perhaps pinging, out the window.

“I was wondering when you were going to get up,” Ptraer said.

“How long was I asleep?”

“According to PRISM, nine hours.”

Samael whistled in amazement and looked out the window. They were about to penetrate the mist-they had almost reached the floor of the abyss.

“Can you see through that mist?” Samael asked.

“No-you probably know more about what’s down there than I do.”

Then the elevator fell into the mist, and for a second they could see nothing out the window, nothing but white mist.

And then they were out, and staring down to the real bottom of the abyss-somewhere far below, on the floor of the abyss, they could see a sea, stretching beyond their vision, and several clusters of lights around its shores-cities, entire cities! Port cities, built on this massive ocean an unbelievable distance underground. The Eternals had built an entire country down here, down in this massive cavern, complete with its own clouds-perhaps even built the entire cave. It was so vast, Samael had to laugh. An entire country, an entire ocean, underground! It boggled the mind, that Eternals had done such a thing.

Samael looked to Ptraer, wondered what the inexpressive, muscle-less face, if it could even be called a face, was trying to portray, trying to communicate to him. Wonder, perhaps, at what his forefathers had done? Or egotistical condescension at Thraj and Samael for what his species had done? Samael couldn’t tell. And it didn’t matter either-it was still possible that they were in freefall, and they were all hurdling to their deaths anyway.

But Samael was distracted from his thoughts by activity on the shores of the sea below. Somewhere below them, more lights flickered on-somewhere beneath them, Deus had activated a power plant, searching for something-records, maybe, or the genes to create some horrific bio-hack, or an artifact of strange and terrible power, or perhaps soldiers, surviving Eternals kept in stasis in one of the cities far below-that seemed right, Ptraer on the ship had said something about Eternal sanctuaries.

Samael told Ptraer about the city, and the Eternal grimly agreed that it was the Sanctuary that Deus was going after.

Still the elevator rocketed down, flying down to meet the strange sea stretching out beneath them. A thought struck him, and he asked Ptraer, “How far underground do you think we are?”

“I have no idea-but we’ve been going so fast for so long we must be a few hundred kilometers down at least…”

“Don’t you think we should have run into the mantle or lava or something?”

Thraj made an odd gesture with his legs that might have been a shrug. “I have no idea.”

Samael thought again, trying to come up with more conversation, hoping to get an idea of what Ptraer thought. “What do you think happened to our mounts?”

Again, the strange shrugging gesture from Ptraer. “They might still be up there, or maybe they’ve run off or dead.”

“I hope so-those things were so uncomfortable.”

Ptraer turned his head to him. “You don’t think that’s a little extreme?”

“I don’t really care-they’re just animals really.”

The Eternal turned away, looking and pinging out the window. “Still. And I don’t know think they’re uncomfortable.”

Samael stroked the stubble on his chin, thinking. “I wonder if the Eternals brought them here from their home world.”

For the third time, the Eternal’s shrug. “Maybe. But they have eyes, so we’re probably not common ancestors. Maybe they’re from some world we conquered or colonized long ago. But it doesn’t matter anymore-this world is dying, and they probably are too.”

Samael only replied “Hmm.” And he turned away and sat down on a strange couch with a high back.

Then, Ptraer asked, “Samael, I’m curious, what does your name mean?”

Samael looked at him, wondered why Ptraer was curious, and asked that.

“Just curious.”

“To my knowledge, Samael means something like ‘God Poisoner’ or ‘He Who Poisons God’.”

“That seems like an odd name.”

Samael shrugged. “It is. But Machina gave it to me and erased any memory of anything else. So I’m stuck with it.”

“What is Machina? Didn’t you talk about it with Deus back on the ship?”

“Machina is a very long story. I’ll tell you later.”

“We’ve got lots of time now.”

“I’ll need time to think of ways to explain everything for you. Like I said, it’s a very long story.”

Another strange Eternal shrug. “Alright.”

And Samael kicked his feet up on the couch and began to wait for them to reach bottom.

-----

Many hours later, when they were a hundred meters from the bottom, the three of them gathered around to wait and see if they would slow down or simply slam into the ground and die.

Samael watched the ground approach, and said aloud, “So what do you think our odds are?”

Ptraer said, “Deus made it.”

“Deus is a quasi-immortal psychotic thug who shoots fire and electricity from his hands and would happily kill a thousand people if they wouldn’t move out of his way fast enough. Of course he made it.”

Thraj simply turned away, and Samael realized that of course they were going to survive. And as he thought this, the elevator began to slow and as they descended the last few hundred meters, and stopped as a monotone voice announced in some ancient language what was, presumably, a notice that the elevator had stopped.

They left, and found the building they had left in was a large terminal like the one they had started in so many kilometers above. Signs that Ptraer translated and PRISM re-translated indicated the ways to trains, and since they had no intention of walking to the last city Deus had activated, they had little choice but to use the train.

Boarding the train, a slick, sleek thing that operated on magnetic rails, they made their way to the cockpit and Ptraer activated it from there, assuring them that they were headed for the last city Deus had activated. The train sped smoothly and silently out of the station, speeding along tracks set scenically by the underground sea.

They talked as the ocean sped by, exchanging stories of battles and barracks antics. Thraj told of his first meeting with the Ambromancer, Chronomancer and Telemancer, when they had been trying to escape from Eternal Empire forces on a train and had been pursued through the tunnels by a Gunship. Though the train had been lost, Thraj had brought down the Gunship and lead them through the service tunnels up to the surface.

Samael talked of his time in Machina’s security force on a raid against refugees trying to escape the city on the city’s waterways. It had turned into a disaster as the refugees had pulled out weapons and attacked back, escaping into the abandoned water treatment plant mounted above the old subterranean aquifer. The guerillas had escaped through the plant’s tunnels and had ambushed the security forces before escaping via airboat down the nearly empty drainage canals that led away down Olympus Mons. In the end, twenty-seven people had died, twelve guerillas and fifteen security officers.

They asked Ptraer if he had any fun stories, and Ptraer started to tell of a mission he had undertaken into one of the Empire’s biological weapons development labs.

“This was back, probably seven or eight years ago-I don’t know what that translates to for you Samael-and there were six of us. We were an elite unit, the six of us, handling the most difficult missions they could find for us: theft and recovery of classified information, destruction of sensitive targets, sabotage, even hostage recovery once or twice. But we also had a reputation for rather…” Ptraer stopped, tenting his fingers as he searched for the right word.

“Shifting?” Thraj offered.

“I suppose… Rather shifting in squad composition. We lost a man or two every missions, and were always taking on new recruits. I got shifted out of this squad and moved to solo ops about a year after this, and I think Gardrid’s still alive somewhere too… Anyways, things started bad from the start.

“Before the Dragonfly even dropped us off, we ran into trouble-some Crabs fitted for artillery shot us down and when I woke up one of our six was already dead. But we kept going, the five of us. And we make it past the guard towers alright-we almost tripped the security once or twice, but they’re scanning the place in infra-red, visible light, sonar, everything, so I figure we do all right.

“But the real trouble starts as soon as we set the charges to break through the door, what you’d expect to happen happens and all hell breaks loose. We’ve got squads of Elites coming at us from everywhere, and they’re armed with those mirror-matter rifles. Thraj, I know you’ve seen them, but Samael might want to know that when you shoot those things, the shot keeps bouncing around for quite a while, and they rip straight through people too. You can kill a dozen men with half a clip of it if when you shoot it if they’re all lined up right.”

“So we’re barely in the place and we’ve got Elites coming at us, our CO’s don’t know if we’re dead or not and we don’t know how we’re going to get out. But those warheads can kill off a whole planet if they’re detonated right, so we’re not going to let them go without giving our best shot at them.

“And we manage to fight off the first wave all right. One of our boys goes down, and another one gets shot through the leg and we have to drag him around, but we all get new mirror-matter rifles. Unfortunately, we’ve still got Elites streaming out of the woodwork to try to kill us. I probably threw two or three grenades back at their owners as we tried to fight down those halls, and I got quite a lot of shrapnel embedded in my carapace too. And we lose Behtreh, a good friend of mine-he lost a leg, and stayed behind to fight off Elites. Last I ever saw of him.” Samael noticed a subtle change in Ptraer’s voice-was he sad at the loss of his friend? Happy at Behtreh’s death for a greater cause? Conflicted, perhaps trying to indicate a mixture of both thoughts? Samael couldn’t tell, and PRISM’s monotone voice erased any emotion Ptraer might have been portraying.

“Still, we make it into the main lab and are able to temporarily seal the doors from there. And the three of us, we’ve got a few charges left, the ones we haven’t used to blow open doors. And we set them down and prepare to blow those containers wide open when the Elites bust through the door and we’re running, shooting behind us as we’re trying to make it through the opposite door, and then I remember I’ve got the detonator with me since our deconstruction boy was the first to go. And I hit it, and, well, those poor Elites were sent flying, limbs flying everywhere, blood and guts spraying all over us, the roof collapsing in on us.

“Even still, we make it down through the distribution bay, and we figure we can hijack ourselves a plane or spacecraft or something and go from there. And we do-we find a dropship. You ever see one of those thing up close, either of you? Weirdest things-triangular, two rotors near the end, strange little pods along the edges and back that propel it, I guess, and these four things-eyes, I think, probably compound eyes like Thraj’s, though I couldn’t tell. Covered in this weird armor that bleeds if you shoot it, and you even hear them making grunts and moans when you’re up close to them. And they’ve got a pod beneath them that seems to have the cockpit and everything attached-they’re cyborgs, I guess, but I don’t know where the hell Deus got them.

“Anyway, we take one and try to get the thing started up as fast as we can. We’re lucky Gardrid had had to break into the things before, otherwise we’d be screwed. But we make it out of there, barely, Gardrid is able to steer us past the turrets, and thing actually maneuvers pretty well for something its size. But then apparently they decided we weren’t going to let us get away that easily, so they decided they were going to send a gunship after us. And those, they’re just like the dropships, but they’ve got guns in place of the pod-don’t ask me how they fly though, I guess they do it themselves.

“But anyway, the thing starts shooting at us, and it blows open the back door, so the two of us are holding on for our lives, trying not to get sucked out down onto the planet while Gardrid drags the thing up and down and we’ve got a gunship firing mirror-matter rounds at us. And we’re probably screwed, right? We’ve got no way to take the gunship down, literally no way we’re going to get out of this alive-the dropship is unarmed and practically useless in a firefight unless you want to get behind it and use it as a shield.

“But then, an idea hits me-it’s the mirror-matter that causes the projectile to move so fast, right? That’s why they’ll bounce around so many times, they just don’t have enough energy to stop.

“So I pull out a spare clip of the ammo and I throw it as best I can at the thing. And the poor stupid thing shoots at it, thinking it’s a rocket or something, and that sets the matter off and it blows up, right in the gunship’s face. And the thing falls down smoking. After that, we landed and we check our wound-some burns and wounds, but really not too bad. And luckily for us, the dropship does have a communications array in it, and we’re able to call for help from the Dragonfly we’d still had in orbit.

“When we got out of there, the three of us were rewarded with the Eternal Star, which was quite an honor. It was sad, watching friends get torn apart, but that was a long time ago, and I’ve gotten over it. And considering how many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions they must have spent developing those viruses and training those Elites, I’d say it was worth it.”

Samael looked at Ptraer, thinking, That’s a little… strange. He watched three of his friends die, but he seems more interested in losses inflicted on the Empire… I guess that’s a good thing to focus on when friends are dropping like flies…

He sat in silence with his thoughts and heard Thraj talk of the liberation of Fomerra as the train rolled silently on.

-----

They disembarked from the train after a few more hours, and quickly began to search the station for a map, or something similar that would lead them to Deus’s goal. They reasoned a map wouldn’t be hard to find in a train station that probably had been used by tourists, but they searched for an hour before they admitted and headed out to the street to search the city manually.

Still cursing the time wasted searching for a map, Samael asked if anyone remembered what the city looked like from the elevator. Neither of them did, but as they headed down the ancient abandoned avenues, they realized that the city was constructed with the streets a series of concentric circles, with many streets ringing out from a central point. They decided they’d go to the center of the city, and see if anything there could indicate their goal.

As they walked down the ancient streets, Samael couldn’t help but wonder what had gone on here. There wasn’t much evidence of use, of wear and tear-the curbs weren’t torn up, there were no cracks in the sidewalks or streets, and much of the buildings looked new, regardless of their age. It was possible that the nanobots had maintained the city, but Samael doubted the city had ever been inhabited. Perhaps this entire underground area was meant to be an escape hatch, the last refuge of their entire civilization, after the onset of the nameless tragedy that had destroyed their species.

Samael’s wondering was interrupted by their arrival in the city center, and he saw that many massive flames stood above a park where they stood, memorials to some unknown civilization. As they walked further into the park, they found the flames were contained in massive braziers, positioned in a pattern, with one small brazier, perhaps as tall as Samael was, followed by another one incrementally taller, and then another and another until the braziers and their fires combined were the size of a large building. The pattern was repeated four times, with the braziers positioned in a circle, and it appeared Deus had lit most of them, but one of the four largest braziers was only partially lit, with small flames flickering out from the edge.

And at the base of the brazier, a door, too thin and too tall as always, was hanging open.

-----

The walked through the door cautiously, weapons drawn-they had no intention of being ambushed after coming so far.

Inside the brazier, they found another elevator. As they walked inside and hit ‘down’, Thraj asked, “What did those flames mean?”

“It’s a metaphor,” Ptraer said. “The flames represent civilization, growing higher and higher until it is extinguished, with another one taking its place. This brazier-” Ptraer pointed up-“Was ours. We broke the cycle.”

Thraj nodded, and the elevator continued down in silence. When the elevator doors opened, Ptraer held them back and left first, only saying through PRISM that he thought the place could be laden with traps.

Samael and Thraj waited in the elevator, again sharing stories of their time in service for perhaps five minutes, when Ptraer returned, saying that the way to the Warpgate was clear. They followed him out of the elevator, across a hallway, down a flight of stairs and across another hallway before arriving in a large chamber with a Warpgate at the opposite end and a strange, warm black fluid ankle deep filling the room. Several of Deus’s fires were also lit around the room.

“What is this?” Samael asked, examining his boots.

“Their name in my language roughly translates to ‘shock trooper’,” Ptraer explained. “They’re made out of nanobots and are used to guard important locations. I don’t know why there was one here, but it was probably just an extra precaution. I don’t know why Deus killed it either, but I imagine he found the nanobots interesting enough to steal, which would be rather difficult while they were alive.”

Samael approached the Warpgate’s console, but Ptraer stopped him. “Allow me,” the Eternal explained, and he entered in coordinates from PRISM.

A portal opened, and the three stepped through.

-----

Samael fell out, stood up and looked around, examining his surroundings. They were in a huge dome, perhaps a few kilometers wide. Outside the dome, he could see some strange plants apparently swaying in the water currents. Inside the dome, the floor was a series of terraces, with many dozens of pods, each containing an Eternal and green fluid that gave off a strange light. The Eternals were connected to dozens of strange wires of unknown function, likely life support and simulation equipment. There were several lights hung clumsily from the ceiling, and more scattered around the terraces. It was a strange place, this Sanctuary, and Samael wondered if they were all like this before returning to a more pressing matter: Deus’s location.

As Ptraer and Thraj returned to their feet, Samael knew that Deus would probably be at the Sanctuary’s control room, and he asked Ptraer if he knew where that would be. “In this place, probably at the top of the terraces.”

So they started walking, weapons drawn. Samael watched Ptraer to see if he had any reaction to seeing his compatriots suspended in the green fluid. If the Eternal had any, he didn’t show it save for glancing around occasionally-perhaps wondering what Deus would do with them, or what they had been before they were condemned to this place.

As they progressed further up the terraces, they noticed that some of the pods had been emptied-Deus was already at work activating the Eternals. They found one Eternal in a pod with the fluid drained out, slumped against the transparent wall of the pod. Ptraer paused by the pod, perhaps thinking about the cause of the creature’s death, before shooting the Eternal in the spine. Samael took note of that, assuming it to be the location of the Eternal’s brain, before asking, “What do you think the mortality rate of these things are?”

“Don’t know-I’m not sure he was dead. But he would have been in debt to Deus and slow to wake up, and I’d rather face them now while they’re asleep than later when they’re pointing guns at us.”

Samael nodded, and they continued on, faster this time, trying to catch up to Deus before the Eternals he awoke overwhelmed them.

When they came to the highest terrace, they spread out and approached the terrace from three different directions. Samael held his pistol out, glanced up the staircase he had chosen, and saw maybe three or four Eternals, one of them working at a terminal and the other three holding powerful-looking rifles in two hands and strange, semi-transparent shields in the other two.

As Samael thought out how he would attack, he heard a sound coming from up the terrace and wondered what the Eternals were talking about, when he heard footsteps and realized that they were coming down the stairs for him. For a second, he was unconcerned. And then fear overwhelmed him, and he knew that it was very likely that he was going to die in only a few moments unless he acted.

So he ducked out of cover, startling the Eternal, and quickly aimed for the head. He pulled the trigger just as he realized it was useless, and missed before the Eternal fired his rifle and hit Samael’s kneecap. The wound burned, and he cried out in pain and tried to aim again before collapsing onto one knee, and then the Eternal was aiming the rifle at his head. There was no way to win, and so Samael put up his hands and surrendered.

The Eternal holstered his rifle and pulled Samael up by his arm, forcefully taking him up the stairs before letting him fall to the ground in front of the Eternal standing at the console. Beside him, Thraj and Ptraer were thrown down with bullet wounds as well.

The Eternal at the console turned around, and asked through a speaker on its throat in their old language, “Samael, is that you?”

Samael looked u
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This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper. - T.S. Eliot
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Postby Doc 42 » Fri May 16, 2008 10:58 pm

Deus continues to breech the boundarys of cool.
I really liked this one, esspeicailly the three aliens' conversations.
As for who I sympathise with. Its hard to go with the empire, but at the same time, by fighting, the EIM cause even more deaths. It really seems pretty pointless in the end as Deus most likely has some other huge plan in which their little war is meaningless.


and the longer the better :P
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