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| Unrecognizable to All. From Here. |
WOULD YOU
ASSIST US IN
EXAMINING
THIS
SYSTEM
?
Said the doll-simulacra of Edoni. He agreed.
As three of the doll-persons walked to a metal cube in each corner of the room Edoni followed. He stood before the copper one, and saw that atop it was a blue button. A doll-person spoke.
WOULD YOU
PREFER TO
INITIATE
THE
EXAMINATION
?
Edoni pressed the button. At the very instant it was pressed flat his feet left the floor, as if were plummeting downward into open air. They were almost a foot from the ground when he pulled his finger away from it, causing him and all others inside the chamber to clatter to the floor. The dolls whirred, and cliked.
After gravity had been restored, the two remaing dolls began to approach the chamber beyond this one.
WE SHALL
PEFORM
SIMULTANEOUS
EXAMINATION
ELSEWHERE
.
The chamber they walked into was stark and nearly empty, save for two massive dark metal spheres that floated above the ground on opposite ends of the room. Up above there floated two pyramids, each connected to the other at the tip. From the bottom of the angular hourglass dangled many thin wires of sparkling silver. Two mechanical oddities, completely identical, buzzed through the air overhead.
The dolls approached the space between the spheres, and saw that the ground was covered in an intricate design of loops, lines, and curves. They touched them, so that they might determine their purpose through tactile interaction, and they began to glow a lurid green.
The two spheres then fly up into the air in a distinct curve, collided with each other causing a tremendous crash, and began to veer wildly around the room. The buzzing guardians then descended towards the dolls while emitting a hissing noise along with a yellowish spray.
Seeing this fracas erupt lead to Gerald, Nasr, and Edith deciding to take a different route back the the chamber of the pyramid, so that they might retrieve the great silver disc. While there Edith also befriended the snake-like chain, which enjoyed her gentle petting. She let it curl up in her knapsack before they left.
The sound of the anomaly was scarcely heard over the din of crashing spheres. Five figures in matte white jumpsuits and smooth faceless black helmets found themselves standing before a great pyramid erected beneath a flat black ceiling. They withdrew their military grade plasma rifles, and crouched into formation. They crept around the pyramid, and made visual contact with three bipedals carrying a large metallic object.
The voices that barked out of their helmets spoke a language rooted in Chinese, but it was language that was several thousand years older than the Chinese spoken by the Adventurers. They were startled by this strange militia, who gestured at them to kneel and raise their hands through aggressive gesturing with their rifles.
Nasr would have none of this, and flung an explosive device at them as he dropped to the floor. The resulting blast tore off the soldiers limbs and scattered pieces of them in all directions, and this trauma was enough to overcome their exponential healing factors that had been amplified by nanotechnologies beyond Nasr, or anyones, understanding. They were dead, and their rifles clattered and skid across the ground. Nasr proceeded to gather them.
It was decided that discretion would be the appropriate virtue to pursue at this time, so the Adventurers began to head towards the chamber which contained the sphere that might transport them back to the land of Vilnid.
Edoni was still occupied by the doll-people in the room of gravity and orangey gasses, however. One doll pressed down a blue button that sat atop a bronze cube, and then all things in the room suddenly began to dift about as if they were suspended in water. The smell or oranges began to spread throughout the room, as the layer of vapor began expanding.
In the chamber of the sphere, meanwhile, the four pyramids throughout the room began to spew out numerous vapors, which previously had caused paralysis and grim hallucinations.
The three dolls then pushed themselves off of wall and floor to propel themselves towards the ceiling, as the spindly guardian pursued them shooting gouts of flame. These gouts of flame burst larger, and seemed to set the very air on fire where the wisps of orange-scented gas were hanging.
Nasr then wrapped a bit of cloth around his chain that could become a rod, ignited this cloth, and extended the rod into the room. Edoni propelled himself from the wall in a manner similar to the dolls, but instead towards Nasr, and the sphere, and a means of escape. He reached him just as the chamber became engulfed in citrus flames, the dolls began to tear down the device, and the guardian covered them in gouts of fire.
As the sphere chamber filled with gasses, Markana ran from Tallius, but stumbled and fell. Edith tried to drag Tallius along with her into the sphere, leaving Markana behind, but she protested.
"No...you must never...abandon...a Cadet"
Begrudgingly, Tallius then flung Markana, and Tallius, then finally herself in the smoky orb. Edoni, Nasr, and Gerald flung themselves in as well. They all tumbled through a heady cloud, until they were then suddenly in the now familiar pink dust and greenish sky of the lands of Vilnid.
Markana had roused the ire of the Adventurers through cowardice, so Gerald offered them a mushroom for nourishment. This was of course the same sort of mushroom that had caused derangment and disease in Gerald, and so upon eating it Markana immediately began to babble as their pupils widened into black saucers. Markana began to writhe along the ground.
"I am a snake. I'm a little baby snake. I hiss. Hiss. Hiss."
Tallius was nearly unconcious, weak from fever and trauma, and so did not question these proceedings too closely. In the distance a great prismatic caterpillar began squirming towards the Adventurers, and so they quickly fled towards the ruins of Vilnid.
Gerald still felt animosity towards the pit of violet slime which had nearly killed him once before, so he insisted they visit it one final time. As he drew near it he requested that Nasr lend him his last explosive, a rather large one, and then rolled it into the muck with the match cord lit.
The resulting eruption flung burnt and crumbling clumps of violet scum across the landscape, and Gerald felt deeply satisfied. In the bottom of the former violet slime pit lay a fist sized gemstone, also violet.
But beyond this violet pit was another, a smaller fuschia one. It let out a plaintive cry into the minds of the Adventurers. A cooing, pitiful little voice.
Please, oh please help me! I am trapped here.
They appraoched it.
Please, help me. I am trapped! I was born from that terrible Life Stone, as all we slimes were. Do not touch it! It is poison! Will you help me? Please.
Edoni asked how he might help, and it replied.
Drink me. Will you drink me?
Edoni knelt down, and did drink. The fuschia muck then immediately engulfed his face, and forced itself down his nostrils and throat. It roiled about inside his stomach, and Edoni gurgled and strained to resist it as it tried to consume his mind. Grunting heavily, he then retched and began vomiting it out while it whimpered and screamed, it seeped into the earth and vanished. Edonu coughed and sputtered, and felt a new resilience within his soul.
Curious about the so-called "Life Stone", they encouraged the deranged Markana to touch it. When this did not work they placed his hand upon it instead.
His hand became a birds claw while his arm grew scales like a fish, he rose up on antelope legs while many mouths grew along his torso. His eyes became a cats eyes, then almonds, then tongues. His head elongated and became a corkscrew tail, while from the back to front he became a nine-foot pig. His limbs no mushrooms, hands grew from his spine as it limbered forward. The lion with the apple tree branches tried to roar with a frog mouth, and only an eel came out as it crumbled into the dirt and shuddred becoming a jellyfish of dogs that crumbled.
Gerald then wrapped this stone in cloth, very carefully, and placed it into his backpack.
They stepped through the bone tower, and all heard tales of the miserable dead.
Tallius in particular was told the story of a brave Captain who was transformed into something inhuman by forces beyond his comprehension, and then disemboweled and compressed into a biological fog by forces he would never understand.
Tales of merchants torn to pieces in their stalls, and great singers who would have become legends were they not trampled by fleeing crowds.
They stepped out of the tower into Khirima, and all was chaos. Eerie stillness punctuated by roars and screams, and the distant clamor of marching spearmen.
They ran from it all, out of the city, praying that nothing would see them fleeing. Something did.
Near the shores of the lake was a small crowd of flying men, now armed with metal weapons. They appraoched. The adventurers then bared their teeth at them, the signal of non-aggression they were shown so long ago in the Aerie. The flying men stood still, and gazed at them as they did this. After a moment of tense scrutiny the flying men then turned away, and took to the air.
The Adventurers then ran down a road once traveled many weeks prior by four foolish Germans who theought they could steal a fortune in silver from a forbidden temple, and so left the devasted world of Khirima behind for the changed and ruined world beyond that.
Their small fortune in silver allowed them to bribe and bargain their way to safety much faster than other, less wealthy refugees. They went from Khirima to Lagos, and from there took a ship to Morocco. They stayed there with Nasr for some time before departing their separate ways.
The horrors of the plateau rampaged across Nigeria in all directions, spreading wanton destruction and eliminating all chance of normalcy for the peoples who remained there. King Ishola died in the fall of Khirima, along with his kingdom.
Gerald returned to England, and finding the island lifeless and empty then returned to Lagos. Lagos became the last bastion against the various horrors of the land beyond: The Exiles now ruled it, and had transformed it from a port-city to a walled fortress. After making an alliance with the Exile leadership, he then hired the bravest of mercenaries and returned to Khirima. There he found the bone tower, and made expeditions into the world of Vilnid where he gathered the potions still produced by those burbling slime pits.
Edith, with Tallius, returned to France and also discovered it empty. She claimed what she found there, and with her fortunes began a new nation with her as Queen. Her crest was a tiger, encircled by a snakelike chain.
Edoni set sail for the now abandoned colonies of England, once word had spread that all the English had fallen dead. With his fortunes he thought he might achieve some influence over this newly born nation.
The beings which had once created and the Temple, and then abandoned it, had long forgotten it was ever there.
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