Story Disconnected Bits and Pieces

[Grey]

Gods in the Machine


Sstheno-419 moves with feline grace down the wide streets of Tartarus Womb, keeping close to the edges where the dark, humming spires of the Roots rose out of sight into the polluted murk above.


Sstheno-419 is terrified, clenching flat and uniform bands of bone tight in a fascimile of grinding teeth. It barely dares to consider the price of this journey, or even the purpose, for the air is alive with the faint blue tinge of free-floating bacterial drones, compiling a composite of every sight and sound on the silent street.


The drone constantly checks over its shoulder, panics at every sound, flinches at every shadow. It is glad not to have been given a time limit; more than once it has paused to weep in a dark alcove, and wait for the intensity of this unfamiliar paranoia to pass. Sstheno-419 desires nothing more than to return to service and empty the painfully bloated cleansing sacs on its back, but the God-Engine has spoken in portents and signs impossible to ignore.


The streets seem to go on forever, and Sstheno-419 slips into a practiced trance from the repetative comfort of simply running. It doesn't notice the black bulk of a carrier daemon approach, guardian beasts clinging to tbe metallic hull, until one of the terrible serrated things uncoils and keens an alarm. Sstheno-419's calm shatters as a trio of howling black monsters leap from the daemon and skitter towards it in a storm of sharp edges and fanged maws. Throwing its hands over its head, Sstheno-419 cowers on the floor and invokes the Rite of Proper Clearance, wailing a high-pitched prayer for deliverance. As one, the protectors stop, carapaces resealing with a hiss. The daemon rumbles past, and its guardians return to their sockets.


This visit is unexpected, then. Does Archthing Tartarus not heed the signs?


Sstheno-419 shudders and curls into a ball at the prospect of such fatal heresy.


But the God-Engine has spoken, and the factory-temple is close

 

[Grey]

Morning Lessons


The ruins were quiet but for the sound of breathing and birdsong, the ivy-covered white walls and silent buildings barely touched by decay in centuries of vigil. But by no means unhabited, as a broad, old man with leonine features stood and watched his young student practice beside wooden dummies.


"Gently now,' he reminded the boy.


Frowning in concentration, his student thrust a fist towards the nearest dummy, and gasped in horror as flames buirst across his hand. Before he could scream, the teacher hurled a bucket of water at him. No harm done, in the end.


"Hm," mused the teacher, a shaft of sunlight giving his mane of hair a golden sheen. "Perhaps Fire is not the way for you."


"I can do this, master."


"I know, but perhaps not with Fire. Do as I do."


The teacher set another bucket of water between himself and the student. Breathing deeply, he brought his hands over his stomach, as if to hold a ball between them.


"Remember that you are heir to a power as old as time itself, and a duty almost as old, for we are far from the walls of the First City here. One day the whole pack will look to you for guidance."


"I will remember, master."


Slowly, the master raised one foot so his toes touched the ground, all the weight on his right leg.


"And that is why you must master War. Everyone moment is struggle, for War, like Water, suffuses life. Tides of battle ebb and flow, break against each other or overwhelm. The worst mutants among the Mongrels might bully the cosmos into their doing their will, and you can hear the universe itself cry out in agony and rage. Gently, my student; grasp and bend the power, but do not force."


Droplets of water began to form on the teacher's fists as he traced the forms, breaking off into lazy orbits around his limbs rather than fall away.


"Fire strikes with ferocity and speed; with Water, you must understand the current and the tide. Water is the most tempermental Element, and must be guided from a stream to a torrent."


Thin streams of water were flowing through the air around the teacher now, tracing lines around his body, gathering near a foot-


And he struck like a sudden storm, kicking one of the dummies with the force of a wave, the water crashing and freezing against the target as his bare foot splintered wood. He returned to standing, relaxed.


"You try."


The wolfish student wobbled slightly, face just showing the strain, his motions rising and looping like waves - before kicking as his master had, the water rising from the bucket to flow over and around him where his master had simply conjured it.


The dummy was damp, and dented, and this was progress.