Grey
Dialectical Hermeticist
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.
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.
