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dasstan
:)
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"That one just looks like a conjoined twin version of Taylia. And it's holding a sign that reads "Eidolon #1". The mystery of the Endmakers' identity deepens."
Omake: Personal Ads
Daunmi
Shun the sun, night so nice
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...
Just so you know, I'm blaming you for this.
Contessa stared at Eidolon for a moment as he sat at the table, knuckles whitening as he clutched ever tighter at the newspaper Doormaker had 'borrowed' from someone. The model of him that she used for her paths wasn't perfect, and it was at times like this that her power became useless for figuring him out.
"Something interesting in the paper?" She asked. Hmm, lets try path to telling myself what page the paper is open at...
'Next step, say "Personal ads".
She wasn't quite sure what to say.
'Next step, say "Personal ads".
She wasn't quite sure what to say, but she was damn sure she wouldn't say that.
'Next step, say "Personal ads".
Contessa knew she should stop the path. It certainly didn't seem to be going anywhere, and she had no intention of following it even if it did. This situation was still salvageable though. All she had to do was get out of here before anyone else-
"Morning Contessa." Alexandria called.
"Taking vacation talk later bye." She said, spinning on her heel and marching out of the room on a perfectly agreeable path.
"Are you feeling alright, Contessa?"
"Path, can't talk." God damn it. What did I do to deserve having to deal with this.
Her mind actually functioned for a small moment, and her feet faltered, a slight stumble along the path.
Oh. Right.
Empiricist
GSV
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Yup I wouldn't say it either.
Amelia, Ch 314- Sabah
TanaNari
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Amelia, Ch 314- Sabah
"Clotho, I need your help," Lily spoke through the com while rushing over to my position with my team.
I hesitated for a second. There were so many things I wanted to say, that I couldn't decide on any of them. It's a battlefield, Sabah, everything else can wait. If she needs help, it's as a team member. You swore to Crystal that the job comes before personal issues, time to prove it. "Okay," I agreed. She wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. "What are we doing?"
"I think I know what the Endbringer plans to do," she informed. "I've already told Lisa and she agreed that it's likely. I want to help, but I'm not fast enough to get there in time."
"I... okay, I can do that," I responded. I glanced over at Crystal.
"Go," she ordered. Of course she'd already be aware. Either told by Lisa, or by listening in on our coms. One of those advantages team leaders got was an override that let them access their team's com systems at any time.
I wrapped three of Tapestry's remaining ribbons around Lily, as information blinked onto my HUD. Oh. Oh fuck. I took off at top speed, an experience that wasn't fun for either of us. I was sure we would have some ugly bruises in the morning thanks to that. Tapestry had some incredible acceleration potential, capped off for the sole purpose of keeping me from accidentally knocking myself out with the G-forces.
I heard Lily grunt as she was pulled along by the ribbons that held her by both wings and around her waist. She'd be pulled in 'flying' position, it was less painful on the human body this way, my training instructions insisted. We found our spot after a couple minutes, underneath the park near the Eiffel Tower. I'd seen it before, when I toured Europe with Lily and Faultline's crew. It was far more romantic then than now.
The building was still standing, although a couple of others nearby weren't. A handful of zerg had already gotten here, and was guarding the grounds. And by the apparent damage done, they'd already been doing that.
Not to protect the landmarks, I was certain. I knew my bosses better than that. It was the Endbringer shelter beneath the park that needed defending. In every Endbringer conflict, that was a given. Khepri always placed her guards surrounding the shelters. Scenery be damned, the lives were her priority. She'd rip down the pyramids if it meant saving one more person.
I felt the ebb and flow of power as Lily carefully adjusted my ribbons with her power. There were dozens of properties she could grant to the material she was touching, and Tapestry's ribbons were specifically designed to be especially compatible with that. Something of a happy coincidence that the 'nanofiber mesh' was both incredibly durable and responded very well to my power.
"Straight down," Lily instructed.
Relationship issues aside, we had a lot of practice working as a team, training to be as effective as possible together in situations just like this one. I trusted her completely as I dropped, my ribbons forming like a giant arrow beneath us. The earth below didn't stand a chance. Nor did the tinker reinforced superstructure that was the shelter itself. We punched through like we were walking through the wall of a bubble.
People shouted and backed away as we dropped into the center room. This shelter looked more like a subway terminal without the tracks, with a long series of concrete and steel reinforced rooms inside. Smart design, people could take shelter in pocket rooms and seal themselves off, rather than all be sitting ducks out in the open if anything got through the blast door.
<Don't be afraid,> Lily shouted in French. Was she using the translator, or did she get that language permanently installed? I was using the translator. <We're here to keep you safe. Just stay calm.>
They didn't seem too convinced, but at least the officials took our words at face value, continuing to usher people into rooms to keep them as safe as one could hope under the circumstances. "Are they really going to attack here?" I asked Lily.
"They keep saying the Endbringers are here to hurt us, fuck with our heads," Lily replied. "Adapting to the tactics used against them so whatever we used to kill their predecessors will never work again. This one's out of reach, untouchable in a way that resembles how Taylor and Amelia fight. We keep killing them, so naturally the new ones are meant to fight us. Can you imagine a better way to attack Taylor than to drop an Endbringer right into the center of the shelter?"
I paused for a second. "No, I really can't," I admitted. "You're sure?"
"If I wasn't, the giant spider made of human blood would have convinced me," Lily replied. "Surprised it wasn't holding a 'hey, Taylia, fuck you' sign. Then there was the flying one with ice blasts, which I'm guessing was Crystal. Not sure who the harpy represented, but somewhere in my heart I'll always pretend it was Lisa."
The way she said it made it all sound so obvious, and I felt a little ashamed I didn't think of it myself. "But there are a bunch of them out there, they can't all be weird insults to us, can they?"
"Maybe not," she admitted. "Maybe just the first few, maybe there can be multiple monsters for each of us. Maybe the only one that was there to send a personal message was the blood spider, and all the rest are just random horrors. All I can tell you is that I saw how Taylor fought Leviathan, monsters appearing out of nowhere to flank the Endbringer at every opportunity, cutting off his retreat like a pack of wolves going after a deer. That's what we're watching. When they're ready to go for the throat, they'll come here. Symbolic reenactment of Leviathan's death."
I forgot how confident she could be. "It makes a sick sort of sense," I agreed. "But... is that enough?"
She looked at me. "I don't know," she admitted. "Let's hope so."
We got our answer too quickly, as our monster shunted over. It was a solid black centipede like creature, and lashed out with its jaws immediately, impaling one of the help personnel, and started charging people.
My ribbons reacted to my thoughts, before my conscious mind could realize what I was doing, slamming into the monster and trying to force it to the ground, pin it down for Lily to kill. It was viscous, not entirely solid. Made of tar, like its spider cousin was made of blood. A few of Lily's bolts struck the thing's face, doing little notable damage. It started oozing around my ribbons, and I started twisting them around to hold it back. Then it started trailing up the ribbons themselves. Lily grabbed my armor and again I felt the nature of my armor change to her power's whim.
The centipede dissolved where it touched my armor, completely erased from our reality. Lisa's best guess is that it was banished to whatever Nowhere we saw before Elle set a portal into a given reality.
The half destroyed creature collapsed to the ground, and then it started to spread out like a puddle. The fuck? Thousands of tiny place centipedes spread from the corpse of their mother, or however that worked, and began rushing toward the screams of the civilians.
Lily started taking shots with her armor, and each one was a kill. She dropped into the path, letting her armor itself destroy countless others, but she couldn't protect more than a fraction of the massive hallways and all the people in them.
I added what I could, bringing my ribbons down on them with enough force to crack the concrete. There was just too many of them. Too many to count, let alone kill with our mostly single target weapons. In desperation, I fired my TK gun into the mix, hoping that controlling the ground would be enough to combat their push forward. It was a disappointment, but not a surprise, that I failed. People fell screaming under the mass of insect sized Endbringer spawn.
I quickly turned off my translator. It was painful enough just hearing the screaming, I would have trouble enough sleeping without knowing the words they were saying. Everyone was dying and there wasn't a thing we could do for them.
An explosion rocked the shelter. They must still be fighting up above. Right, this is a war between armies. One failure doesn't mean the battle is completely lost. I hit the com.
"Some of them can break down into smaller monsters and will attack as a swarm," I informed. We failed, the least we can do is warn others. "Try to contain them behind forcefields before you kill them, if possible."
It's the best I can do, let the others know that we failed, how we failed. Maybe that way they'll be able to do better. The screaming was starting to die down as the centipedes ran out of victims. How many people were in here? Thousands? Tens of thousands? I didn't know, but gathering everyone in one place just made this that much easier for the Endbringer.
What I wasn't prepared for was when the dead started to stand. Black ichor leaked from their mouths, and the look of horror was still in their eyes. They were still screaming, even. One of them leapt at Lily, destroying himself utterly. Others piled forward, picking up the dismembered limbs and trying to attack her. Shoes and other bits of debris were thrown at me by the enraged, what, zombies? Is that what these were?
No, they weren't. Every bit of tech on this suit insisted they were still alive. Heartbeat, brain activity, the whole nine yards. They were puppets controlled by the centipedes, but they were still alive and conscious under that control.
They started rushing for the exit to the building, in a mindless stampede. Some would trip and be trampled by the others. No sense of coordination between them. One leapt toward me with enough speed that he actually caught my leg, despite my position about twenty feet above their heads. I kicked away, but the man, still screaming in horror, had grown claws sharp enough to cut into the armor. Alarms flashed throughout my suit, but I didn't need them. I felt the pain.
A shot from Lily puncture the man's skull, and he dropped, no longer attacking, but his claws were embedded in my leg so he didn't fall. I kept screaming, only held in the air by my suit's autopilot failsafes.
"I can feel it inside me!" I screamed. "It's climbing up inside my leg!"
Lily didn't even hesitate, her wing cleaving through my armor. The dead man, and my limb, fell to the floor below. It was amazing how little pain I felt at that. Alerts flashed in my HUD, telling me of damage I already knew about. I felt pressure around the wound, and a strange sensation as the medical functions took effect.
Lily caught me. "I'm sorry, I had no choice," she insisted. I sobbed against her. The loss of the limb wasn't that bad, really. It didn't hurt that much, and was something I knew could be fixed. But the look on the man's face as he tried to kill me. He was honestly sorry for what he was doing.
"Alert," Dragon's voice was shockingly calm over the coms. "Endbringer is displaying ability to infect and control humans. Infected display increased physical abilities and other mutations. This appears to be contagious from physical contact with the infected. Tactics have changed from defense to quarantine."
============
A/N- So, does this count as suitably horrible?
"Clotho, I need your help," Lily spoke through the com while rushing over to my position with my team.
I hesitated for a second. There were so many things I wanted to say, that I couldn't decide on any of them. It's a battlefield, Sabah, everything else can wait. If she needs help, it's as a team member. You swore to Crystal that the job comes before personal issues, time to prove it. "Okay," I agreed. She wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. "What are we doing?"
"I think I know what the Endbringer plans to do," she informed. "I've already told Lisa and she agreed that it's likely. I want to help, but I'm not fast enough to get there in time."
"I... okay, I can do that," I responded. I glanced over at Crystal.
"Go," she ordered. Of course she'd already be aware. Either told by Lisa, or by listening in on our coms. One of those advantages team leaders got was an override that let them access their team's com systems at any time.
I wrapped three of Tapestry's remaining ribbons around Lily, as information blinked onto my HUD. Oh. Oh fuck. I took off at top speed, an experience that wasn't fun for either of us. I was sure we would have some ugly bruises in the morning thanks to that. Tapestry had some incredible acceleration potential, capped off for the sole purpose of keeping me from accidentally knocking myself out with the G-forces.
I heard Lily grunt as she was pulled along by the ribbons that held her by both wings and around her waist. She'd be pulled in 'flying' position, it was less painful on the human body this way, my training instructions insisted. We found our spot after a couple minutes, underneath the park near the Eiffel Tower. I'd seen it before, when I toured Europe with Lily and Faultline's crew. It was far more romantic then than now.
The building was still standing, although a couple of others nearby weren't. A handful of zerg had already gotten here, and was guarding the grounds. And by the apparent damage done, they'd already been doing that.
Not to protect the landmarks, I was certain. I knew my bosses better than that. It was the Endbringer shelter beneath the park that needed defending. In every Endbringer conflict, that was a given. Khepri always placed her guards surrounding the shelters. Scenery be damned, the lives were her priority. She'd rip down the pyramids if it meant saving one more person.
I felt the ebb and flow of power as Lily carefully adjusted my ribbons with her power. There were dozens of properties she could grant to the material she was touching, and Tapestry's ribbons were specifically designed to be especially compatible with that. Something of a happy coincidence that the 'nanofiber mesh' was both incredibly durable and responded very well to my power.
"Straight down," Lily instructed.
Relationship issues aside, we had a lot of practice working as a team, training to be as effective as possible together in situations just like this one. I trusted her completely as I dropped, my ribbons forming like a giant arrow beneath us. The earth below didn't stand a chance. Nor did the tinker reinforced superstructure that was the shelter itself. We punched through like we were walking through the wall of a bubble.
People shouted and backed away as we dropped into the center room. This shelter looked more like a subway terminal without the tracks, with a long series of concrete and steel reinforced rooms inside. Smart design, people could take shelter in pocket rooms and seal themselves off, rather than all be sitting ducks out in the open if anything got through the blast door.
<Don't be afraid,> Lily shouted in French. Was she using the translator, or did she get that language permanently installed? I was using the translator. <We're here to keep you safe. Just stay calm.>
They didn't seem too convinced, but at least the officials took our words at face value, continuing to usher people into rooms to keep them as safe as one could hope under the circumstances. "Are they really going to attack here?" I asked Lily.
"They keep saying the Endbringers are here to hurt us, fuck with our heads," Lily replied. "Adapting to the tactics used against them so whatever we used to kill their predecessors will never work again. This one's out of reach, untouchable in a way that resembles how Taylor and Amelia fight. We keep killing them, so naturally the new ones are meant to fight us. Can you imagine a better way to attack Taylor than to drop an Endbringer right into the center of the shelter?"
I paused for a second. "No, I really can't," I admitted. "You're sure?"
"If I wasn't, the giant spider made of human blood would have convinced me," Lily replied. "Surprised it wasn't holding a 'hey, Taylia, fuck you' sign. Then there was the flying one with ice blasts, which I'm guessing was Crystal. Not sure who the harpy represented, but somewhere in my heart I'll always pretend it was Lisa."
The way she said it made it all sound so obvious, and I felt a little ashamed I didn't think of it myself. "But there are a bunch of them out there, they can't all be weird insults to us, can they?"
"Maybe not," she admitted. "Maybe just the first few, maybe there can be multiple monsters for each of us. Maybe the only one that was there to send a personal message was the blood spider, and all the rest are just random horrors. All I can tell you is that I saw how Taylor fought Leviathan, monsters appearing out of nowhere to flank the Endbringer at every opportunity, cutting off his retreat like a pack of wolves going after a deer. That's what we're watching. When they're ready to go for the throat, they'll come here. Symbolic reenactment of Leviathan's death."
I forgot how confident she could be. "It makes a sick sort of sense," I agreed. "But... is that enough?"
She looked at me. "I don't know," she admitted. "Let's hope so."
We got our answer too quickly, as our monster shunted over. It was a solid black centipede like creature, and lashed out with its jaws immediately, impaling one of the help personnel, and started charging people.
My ribbons reacted to my thoughts, before my conscious mind could realize what I was doing, slamming into the monster and trying to force it to the ground, pin it down for Lily to kill. It was viscous, not entirely solid. Made of tar, like its spider cousin was made of blood. A few of Lily's bolts struck the thing's face, doing little notable damage. It started oozing around my ribbons, and I started twisting them around to hold it back. Then it started trailing up the ribbons themselves. Lily grabbed my armor and again I felt the nature of my armor change to her power's whim.
The centipede dissolved where it touched my armor, completely erased from our reality. Lisa's best guess is that it was banished to whatever Nowhere we saw before Elle set a portal into a given reality.
The half destroyed creature collapsed to the ground, and then it started to spread out like a puddle. The fuck? Thousands of tiny place centipedes spread from the corpse of their mother, or however that worked, and began rushing toward the screams of the civilians.
Lily started taking shots with her armor, and each one was a kill. She dropped into the path, letting her armor itself destroy countless others, but she couldn't protect more than a fraction of the massive hallways and all the people in them.
I added what I could, bringing my ribbons down on them with enough force to crack the concrete. There was just too many of them. Too many to count, let alone kill with our mostly single target weapons. In desperation, I fired my TK gun into the mix, hoping that controlling the ground would be enough to combat their push forward. It was a disappointment, but not a surprise, that I failed. People fell screaming under the mass of insect sized Endbringer spawn.
I quickly turned off my translator. It was painful enough just hearing the screaming, I would have trouble enough sleeping without knowing the words they were saying. Everyone was dying and there wasn't a thing we could do for them.
An explosion rocked the shelter. They must still be fighting up above. Right, this is a war between armies. One failure doesn't mean the battle is completely lost. I hit the com.
"Some of them can break down into smaller monsters and will attack as a swarm," I informed. We failed, the least we can do is warn others. "Try to contain them behind forcefields before you kill them, if possible."
It's the best I can do, let the others know that we failed, how we failed. Maybe that way they'll be able to do better. The screaming was starting to die down as the centipedes ran out of victims. How many people were in here? Thousands? Tens of thousands? I didn't know, but gathering everyone in one place just made this that much easier for the Endbringer.
What I wasn't prepared for was when the dead started to stand. Black ichor leaked from their mouths, and the look of horror was still in their eyes. They were still screaming, even. One of them leapt at Lily, destroying himself utterly. Others piled forward, picking up the dismembered limbs and trying to attack her. Shoes and other bits of debris were thrown at me by the enraged, what, zombies? Is that what these were?
No, they weren't. Every bit of tech on this suit insisted they were still alive. Heartbeat, brain activity, the whole nine yards. They were puppets controlled by the centipedes, but they were still alive and conscious under that control.
They started rushing for the exit to the building, in a mindless stampede. Some would trip and be trampled by the others. No sense of coordination between them. One leapt toward me with enough speed that he actually caught my leg, despite my position about twenty feet above their heads. I kicked away, but the man, still screaming in horror, had grown claws sharp enough to cut into the armor. Alarms flashed throughout my suit, but I didn't need them. I felt the pain.
A shot from Lily puncture the man's skull, and he dropped, no longer attacking, but his claws were embedded in my leg so he didn't fall. I kept screaming, only held in the air by my suit's autopilot failsafes.
"I can feel it inside me!" I screamed. "It's climbing up inside my leg!"
Lily didn't even hesitate, her wing cleaving through my armor. The dead man, and my limb, fell to the floor below. It was amazing how little pain I felt at that. Alerts flashed in my HUD, telling me of damage I already knew about. I felt pressure around the wound, and a strange sensation as the medical functions took effect.
Lily caught me. "I'm sorry, I had no choice," she insisted. I sobbed against her. The loss of the limb wasn't that bad, really. It didn't hurt that much, and was something I knew could be fixed. But the look on the man's face as he tried to kill me. He was honestly sorry for what he was doing.
"Alert," Dragon's voice was shockingly calm over the coms. "Endbringer is displaying ability to infect and control humans. Infected display increased physical abilities and other mutations. This appears to be contagious from physical contact with the infected. Tactics have changed from defense to quarantine."
============
A/N- So, does this count as suitably horrible?
Last edited:
gatewaewanderer
Wandering Fool & Veteran Lurker
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Welp, I guess we have confirmation. This is the new Simurgh, with just as much 'I'm going to fuck with all your shit,' personalized as a giant 'Eff you,' to Pantheon. Question now is, how do they beat this? Is infection permanent? And if it is, what can they do about it?
ECCM
Know what you're doing yet?
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Classic Riley. You see unending horror, Riley sees only opportunity for !!SCIENCE!!.
thebrute7
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Fuck. Just, fuck.
I have no words. God, and to think I had almost decided to stop reading because the last couple Endbringers had been kind of boring.
And then Bam! New Endbringer that's legitimately fucking terrifying and whose threat actually feels like it has gravitas.
Well played, TanaNari you magnificent bastard.
I have no words. God, and to think I had almost decided to stop reading because the last couple Endbringers had been kind of boring.
And then Bam! New Endbringer that's legitimately fucking terrifying and whose threat actually feels like it has gravitas.
Well played, TanaNari you magnificent bastard.
Daunmi
Shun the sun, night so nice
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I liked the chapter but the Endbringer... reminded me too much of Anubis from Atonement to shock me enough to make it horrible. Sorry? It wasn't badly done though.
Fouredged
Experienced.
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New tactic, evac all civilians first using mass shut/teleport tech. Maybe a tinkertech combo of Missy's spacial echolocation and Eric's teleport ability. Something like "press button, empty city to safe zone". Fight in an empty city.
Zarohk
Worldbuilder, Idea Collector
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It's funny, the Anubis-like aspects are what made it the most horrible to me: Pantheon has escalated far enough that what would be an Endbringer in and of itself in another story is just an Endbringer's mook here. Also, the people are still alive, aware, and in control of their own faces enough to look upset and sorry. Pretty terrifying all around.
Now, on to an important question: So the Endminons and the people they infect with their control parasites are controlled by the Endbringer itself. Does it give each minion a task that the minion then figures out how to execute itself, or does it know where the minions are at all times, controlling them directly? If it's modeled more after Amelia it would be the first, but given that some of its minions look like spiders as a deliberate jab at Taylor and the Endbringer knew to drop minions directly into the shelter it makes more sense assuming direct control.
Z000
If this is trash, then find me in the dumpster
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Then this new one would just make some other monster in other placeds
nothing stopping it from doing that
Volkogluk
Getting out there.
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Hmmm... After thinking abot it, a horrible thought came to me. It was pretty horrible, which I knew right away meant that Tana already thought it, and incorporated it in the story somewhere.
Thought is this: what if the whole point of the new EB is for one of its "insects" to get to Avalon?
How does zombie PLANET sounds?
Thought is this: what if the whole point of the new EB is for one of its "insects" to get to Avalon?
How does zombie PLANET sounds?
Coruscant Knave
'Twas love that did this to you.
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Such smart design! Good thing they closed all the... nope, zombie chow.
Hey! My blood spider IS holding a sign that says "Fuck you, Tana!"
GiftofLove
A Gift From The Heart
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Whelp, time to invent dimensional jamming tech.
I wonder if the monsters being made out of human blood gives them the manton effect? That would be a nice fuck you to Missy if she was still around.
I wonder if the monsters being made out of human blood gives them the manton effect? That would be a nice fuck you to Missy if she was still around.
Amelia, Ch 315- Crystal
TanaNari
Verified Dick
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Amelia, Ch 315- Crystal
"They're breaking through the northeast barricades, R12," Lisa informed me over the com. The Endbringer spawn, it turned out, didn't attack the infected. Once fully mutated, they were as capable as Lung before he started ramping up in power. Not unbeatable, but hard to stop.
Victoria was there with me. Anima retreated to Avalon, but left her summons behind to do the fighting for her. I unleashed a torrent of sonic power down on the nearest Endspawn, breaking some kind of strange scorpion made of diamond into fragments. Then I rushed toward the barricade.
There was a series of explosions deeper in the city, clearing the area around the gate. "Earth Gaul separated from portal network," Trevor announced over the speakers. "Confirming no infected or spawn crossed the gate in time. The colony is safe."
Safe, and cut off from Bet. I had to wonder why the Endbringer didn't just drop one of its number in the other Earths. It had been throwing these monsters at us like the disposable minions that they were, when it could have effectively ended the colony program in a single day by releasing a single plague spawn in each of the colony worlds. By the time we even knew what was happening, every last colony world except maybe Avalon would be uninhabitable.
I caught sight of another. Apparently made of mud. Fire? I switched over to the microwave setting and fired a beam that would boil all the water out of a human body in under a second. It seemed to be working, as hardened dirt broke off and collapsed to the ground. How many of these fuckers will we have to kill before this is over?
"Head in the game, cuz," Vicky spoke from beside me. A stream of dozens of rays fired from her 'scattershot' weapon setting. She was the only one that could use such a weapon efficiently, relying on her combat senses to make sure each shot was a hit. Infected fell dead, or those few still alive died quickly after. She mowed them down like they were nothing.
"Vicky!" I exclaimed. "How could-"
"They're already dead," Vicky spoke, her voice pained. "There's no way to separate them from the parasites. The things have completely replaced their nervous systems from the brain stem down. What's left is nothing more than a puppet that feels pain. Take it from someone who can see everything that's happening inside their bodies in real time. Death is the only mercy left for them."
As if to punctuate her point, Chevalier's sword lanced forward, cutting through several. That looks uncomfortably like how Jack Slash fought.
I kept that insight to myself, instead bolting off toward another Endspawn. I can't kill people, no matter how they're suffering. Walls of ice formed themselves near the damaged part of barricade. The wall we were building to trap most of the city of Paris and the surrounding area.
This wasn't even like the Simurgh quarantines. At least with those, we could tell ourselves there was hope. That they were compromised, but alive. The infected were implacable. They ran toward the nearest living thing and spread their disease. They only started moving outward after the city was entirely caught up in their power. We were fighting to prevent the spread, not to save the city.
One of the infected leapt toward me from the top of a building. I avoided her on reflex. After all, she didn't have a way to correct her trajectory in mid air. She twisted around in the air, attempting to claw at me as she fell to the street. She hit hard and stayed there motionless. They weren't much more durable than normal people. They were alive, they were dying.
Alexandra shot past, followed by a dragon that looked to be made out of mucous. "Don't let it touch you!" she shouted as she started a wide curve back toward me. "It should be vulnerable to cold."
I pushed away, switching to the ice weapon and reducing its core temperature to near absolute zero. It dropped and shattered against the roof of a building. Moments later, the building started to collaps inward as the thing's scattered bodyparts melted through it. Alexandria's arm was mutilated, and it looked to be spreading.
"Freeze my arm," she commanded, forcing the shoulder to work and extend the limb outward. Although the elbow didn't have much flesh left on it and thus her hand drooped down. Her voice left no room for disobedience. I pointed the weapon and tried to hit as far out as possible, the frozen air spread up to her shoulder. "That'll have to do for now. Alexandria to Atropos. Assistance needed, R9, high priority."
The largest of the spawn thus far manifested near the wall, an elephant thing with three trunks and bony spines across its body. This one actually looked like it was alive, instead of just made of random raw materials. It charged the wall. The zerg tried to block its path, throwing up shields and even a couple of the gargants, but it broke through them and collided hard enough to crack the wall in that area.
"Barricade down, P9," Dragon's automatic announcement declared. I rushed toward the monster, already swapping out to straight laser light. A steady stream of steel melting power started cutting into the thing's side. Even with the targeting AI, I was too far away for a precision move like cutting off its legs. A wall of mirror metal formed near the wall, protecting the worst of the damage. Theo, I recognized quickly.
Dozens of infected charged toward the opening. Theo can't cover that kind of area very long. At least he was smart enough to stay high in the air, using his suit to handle much of the effort in keeping him safe.
One of the Azazel suits shunted over, launching its nanothorn thrower across the area and disintegrating everything. Moments later, it was ripped apart from the inside by one of the Endspawn. They'd been doing that to every single one of Dragon's armors that took a spot in the city. For whatever reason, they ignored the ones outside the city. Best guess was some kind of range limit for the Endbringer's variant of shunting. My armor blipped an alert aura around Theo's suit. Yellow, with a black outline. Injured or otherwise nonresponsive, but stable. He probably overtaxed his power.
I fired on the spawn climbing out of the Azazel shell, a nasty spiked octopus looking monster, I didn't care. Enough electricity to power a city for a couple seconds hit it, and it exploded violently, sending shrapnel everywhere. Luckily, Theo wasn't hit by any of it.
I flew over and touched him. Commander override, automatic shunt engaged. I let go and he vanished back to Avalon. Chances are, it would be Riley or the currently depowered Missy to take care of him.
I turned, taking position to defend the wall. Other alerts came across the com. At least four other areas were in danger of being breached, including the one I left Vicky and Chevalier protecting.
I was alone here.
A massive, skinless, cobra moved around one of the nearby piles of rubble with a speed that belonged to a mover, not a giant monster. That might be explained by the fact that it was using its rib bones to pull itself rapidly along like freakish centipede legs. On its back rode a dozen infected. Does this mean they're getting smarter?
I fired at the monster's head, a shot it avoided easily. A second and third didn't make much difference, and I was running out of power. I dropped the weapon and gave the now subvocal command for my sonic weapon. The only one with a wide area of effect. I fired, and the nearby surviving windows exploded at the pulse of sonic energy that at least slowed the cobra down.
It reached the wall and slammed its head hard against it. The hasty, power erected, stone cracked. It had already been damaged by the prior spawn, and wouldn't hold. I had to count myself lucky the nanothorns took time to dissolve, or the monster could have gone for the gap that had already formed. It repeated the process, smashing its bony face into the stone. It's going to get through.
"This is Eki, requesting immediate assistance. I can't hold this point on my own!" I shouted. I didn't have a weapon I could fire at the thing's head without risking destroying the wall if I missed, and as fast as it was I would probably miss.
It smashed its head into the wall one more time, and the stone caved, leaving a gap. The infected started scrambling up the thing's neck, using its spine as a ladder. If they got out, everything was lost. I fought back the tears as I dialed the sonic weapon to maximum output.
Fuck you, Endmakers. Is this what you wanted to see? You sick sacks of shit. I took a deep breath, and through the tears I watched as I became a murderer.
====================
A/N- All aboard the mindfuck express!
"They're breaking through the northeast barricades, R12," Lisa informed me over the com. The Endbringer spawn, it turned out, didn't attack the infected. Once fully mutated, they were as capable as Lung before he started ramping up in power. Not unbeatable, but hard to stop.
Victoria was there with me. Anima retreated to Avalon, but left her summons behind to do the fighting for her. I unleashed a torrent of sonic power down on the nearest Endspawn, breaking some kind of strange scorpion made of diamond into fragments. Then I rushed toward the barricade.
There was a series of explosions deeper in the city, clearing the area around the gate. "Earth Gaul separated from portal network," Trevor announced over the speakers. "Confirming no infected or spawn crossed the gate in time. The colony is safe."
Safe, and cut off from Bet. I had to wonder why the Endbringer didn't just drop one of its number in the other Earths. It had been throwing these monsters at us like the disposable minions that they were, when it could have effectively ended the colony program in a single day by releasing a single plague spawn in each of the colony worlds. By the time we even knew what was happening, every last colony world except maybe Avalon would be uninhabitable.
I caught sight of another. Apparently made of mud. Fire? I switched over to the microwave setting and fired a beam that would boil all the water out of a human body in under a second. It seemed to be working, as hardened dirt broke off and collapsed to the ground. How many of these fuckers will we have to kill before this is over?
"Head in the game, cuz," Vicky spoke from beside me. A stream of dozens of rays fired from her 'scattershot' weapon setting. She was the only one that could use such a weapon efficiently, relying on her combat senses to make sure each shot was a hit. Infected fell dead, or those few still alive died quickly after. She mowed them down like they were nothing.
"Vicky!" I exclaimed. "How could-"
"They're already dead," Vicky spoke, her voice pained. "There's no way to separate them from the parasites. The things have completely replaced their nervous systems from the brain stem down. What's left is nothing more than a puppet that feels pain. Take it from someone who can see everything that's happening inside their bodies in real time. Death is the only mercy left for them."
As if to punctuate her point, Chevalier's sword lanced forward, cutting through several. That looks uncomfortably like how Jack Slash fought.
I kept that insight to myself, instead bolting off toward another Endspawn. I can't kill people, no matter how they're suffering. Walls of ice formed themselves near the damaged part of barricade. The wall we were building to trap most of the city of Paris and the surrounding area.
This wasn't even like the Simurgh quarantines. At least with those, we could tell ourselves there was hope. That they were compromised, but alive. The infected were implacable. They ran toward the nearest living thing and spread their disease. They only started moving outward after the city was entirely caught up in their power. We were fighting to prevent the spread, not to save the city.
One of the infected leapt toward me from the top of a building. I avoided her on reflex. After all, she didn't have a way to correct her trajectory in mid air. She twisted around in the air, attempting to claw at me as she fell to the street. She hit hard and stayed there motionless. They weren't much more durable than normal people. They were alive, they were dying.
Alexandra shot past, followed by a dragon that looked to be made out of mucous. "Don't let it touch you!" she shouted as she started a wide curve back toward me. "It should be vulnerable to cold."
I pushed away, switching to the ice weapon and reducing its core temperature to near absolute zero. It dropped and shattered against the roof of a building. Moments later, the building started to collaps inward as the thing's scattered bodyparts melted through it. Alexandria's arm was mutilated, and it looked to be spreading.
"Freeze my arm," she commanded, forcing the shoulder to work and extend the limb outward. Although the elbow didn't have much flesh left on it and thus her hand drooped down. Her voice left no room for disobedience. I pointed the weapon and tried to hit as far out as possible, the frozen air spread up to her shoulder. "That'll have to do for now. Alexandria to Atropos. Assistance needed, R9, high priority."
The largest of the spawn thus far manifested near the wall, an elephant thing with three trunks and bony spines across its body. This one actually looked like it was alive, instead of just made of random raw materials. It charged the wall. The zerg tried to block its path, throwing up shields and even a couple of the gargants, but it broke through them and collided hard enough to crack the wall in that area.
"Barricade down, P9," Dragon's automatic announcement declared. I rushed toward the monster, already swapping out to straight laser light. A steady stream of steel melting power started cutting into the thing's side. Even with the targeting AI, I was too far away for a precision move like cutting off its legs. A wall of mirror metal formed near the wall, protecting the worst of the damage. Theo, I recognized quickly.
Dozens of infected charged toward the opening. Theo can't cover that kind of area very long. At least he was smart enough to stay high in the air, using his suit to handle much of the effort in keeping him safe.
One of the Azazel suits shunted over, launching its nanothorn thrower across the area and disintegrating everything. Moments later, it was ripped apart from the inside by one of the Endspawn. They'd been doing that to every single one of Dragon's armors that took a spot in the city. For whatever reason, they ignored the ones outside the city. Best guess was some kind of range limit for the Endbringer's variant of shunting. My armor blipped an alert aura around Theo's suit. Yellow, with a black outline. Injured or otherwise nonresponsive, but stable. He probably overtaxed his power.
I fired on the spawn climbing out of the Azazel shell, a nasty spiked octopus looking monster, I didn't care. Enough electricity to power a city for a couple seconds hit it, and it exploded violently, sending shrapnel everywhere. Luckily, Theo wasn't hit by any of it.
I flew over and touched him. Commander override, automatic shunt engaged. I let go and he vanished back to Avalon. Chances are, it would be Riley or the currently depowered Missy to take care of him.
I turned, taking position to defend the wall. Other alerts came across the com. At least four other areas were in danger of being breached, including the one I left Vicky and Chevalier protecting.
I was alone here.
A massive, skinless, cobra moved around one of the nearby piles of rubble with a speed that belonged to a mover, not a giant monster. That might be explained by the fact that it was using its rib bones to pull itself rapidly along like freakish centipede legs. On its back rode a dozen infected. Does this mean they're getting smarter?
I fired at the monster's head, a shot it avoided easily. A second and third didn't make much difference, and I was running out of power. I dropped the weapon and gave the now subvocal command for my sonic weapon. The only one with a wide area of effect. I fired, and the nearby surviving windows exploded at the pulse of sonic energy that at least slowed the cobra down.
It reached the wall and slammed its head hard against it. The hasty, power erected, stone cracked. It had already been damaged by the prior spawn, and wouldn't hold. I had to count myself lucky the nanothorns took time to dissolve, or the monster could have gone for the gap that had already formed. It repeated the process, smashing its bony face into the stone. It's going to get through.
"This is Eki, requesting immediate assistance. I can't hold this point on my own!" I shouted. I didn't have a weapon I could fire at the thing's head without risking destroying the wall if I missed, and as fast as it was I would probably miss.
It smashed its head into the wall one more time, and the stone caved, leaving a gap. The infected started scrambling up the thing's neck, using its spine as a ladder. If they got out, everything was lost. I fought back the tears as I dialed the sonic weapon to maximum output.
Fuck you, Endmakers. Is this what you wanted to see? You sick sacks of shit. I took a deep breath, and through the tears I watched as I became a murderer.
====================
A/N- All aboard the mindfuck express!
Chulup
Know what you're doing yet?
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Godwinson
Making the rounds.
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FTFY. We don't have time for him to get his head on straight.
Finbar
Versed in the lewd.
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Yeah, you know, up until this point, Pantheon may have been in the 'Get Eidolon some help' category when they find out he is the Endbringer.
Now? They will likely be in the 'We will remove the brain from your body and do science to it, while keeping you alive and able to feel everything. AKA: Give him to Riley."
Well, maybe. At the very least, a Death sentence.
That shit is just too fucked up.
Now? They will likely be in the 'We will remove the brain from your body and do science to it, while keeping you alive and able to feel everything. AKA: Give him to Riley."
Well, maybe. At the very least, a Death sentence.
That shit is just too fucked up.
Destrark
The Ebon Dragon. On vacation from Malfeas.
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Wow. The moment anyone finds out that Eidolon is the Endmaker, even unconsciously?... He's fucked.
Is it Eidolon that's the Endbringer maker in this universe? cause I actually have a hard time believing this sort of shit is something his subconscious would come up with.
Is it Eidolon that's the Endbringer maker in this universe? cause I actually have a hard time believing this sort of shit is something his subconscious would come up with.
jaelin910
habitual lurker
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I'm wondering what's up with the dragon being made of mucous. presumably that's representing dragon but what's with the mucous?
unless they're just made of random vaguely-liquids...
well, it seems fairly likely that he is and tananari gave us WoG to that effect. on the other hand, this is tananari. your guess is as good as mine.
unless they're just made of random vaguely-liquids...
the possibility of him not being the endmaker was brought up a while back. tananari said something that seemed like an answer in the negative so...
well, it seems fairly likely that he is and tananari gave us WoG to that effect. on the other hand, this is tananari. your guess is as good as mine.
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Diller
Versed in the lewd.
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It might not be. Eden did have at least 20 EBs planned. It's likely Eidolon simply activates the EB that best fits his purpose.
Ziz did refer to him as the Summoner while the Entites were the Creators.
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What the fuck, how did Alexandria get hurt again?
Coruscant Knave
'Twas love that did this to you.
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Nope, still didn't explain anything, unless Alexandria know it's made of bullshit just from looking at it.