2018-12-03: Mother's Boy

• Log: 2018-12-03: Mother's Boy
• Cast:Yarobeleedt>
• Where: Photosphere
• Date: December 3rd, 2018
• Summary: Who would ever remain loyal to a so-called goddess who has disowned all her children and made her true ambitions crystal clear for all? (Special thanks to Ida Everstead-Rey's, Siegfried's players for permission to use some snippets of their own writing here.)

---

The cacophony of panic and anger was muffled within the narrow, piping passages Yarobeleedt situated himself within. The sound was further droned out by the noisy chewing and slurping of semi-solid nutrient slurries from the nursery, so greedily devoured both by need and by pleasure. Those assigned to see to the neonates' care were too occupied to take up the duty of shooing him off. Situated upon a steep slant, he had to rely on his less solid arm to keep hold, for he didn't want to risk losing his ill-gotten meal.

This was one of his favorite places to be, within the less-maintained ventilation systems of the Photosphere. Spacious enough for himself, and only himself, without having to even look at the rest of his own kind. His own hive-like assigned living space was unpleasant, for he detested hearing others come and go, to hear the footfalls and bellows of the more triumphant. A sentiment that was mutual. Even in less turbulent times, his peers - a word that would carry shame when referred to Yarobeleedt - made no secret of their lack of enjoyment of his company. A company that, even before Arctica, was rife with self-aggrandizing lies and boastful promises he couldn't back up.

The Gutter would've taken him, after Arctica. He rebuked the first hand of friendship. He rebuked the eighty-ninth hand of friendship. They were unsightly, they were weak, they were worthless for Mother's conquest, he was not Tainted. He was injured to the brink of death several times over, and each regenerative torpor failed to heal him to progressively greater degrees. Capabilities he had were long gone, never to return. But he was not Tainted. Yarobeleedt, the most loyal of Mother by his own estimates, was not a Tainted. Mother's own Metal Demons! Her chosen champions.

That was what he told himself as he once more slid down a steep vertical slant within the ventilations as his less solid arm inevitably lost his grip, and helplessly collected at the bottom as a soupy pile of incorrectly set muscles that spasmed and cramped in an attempt to try and ascertain where they were actually supposed to be within his lower body. All the while, the slurry he was consuming found itself lodged down too far down his throat to be properly swallowed. He choked. He screeched. This deeply wedged into the ventilation, no one would have come to his aid.

He wriggled violently, desperately, fruitlessly as Her words - the thing he loved most - seemed to reverberate through the ventilation. They were not Her speaking live.

'It makes it sweeter, knowing I will carve out your world's heart and consume it. It grows... tiring at times. So many worlds, to satiate my appetite...'

'But you will be wonderful children, my killer. Just as my Metal Demons were. As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia, and claim you as my own.'

These were repeats of the same words She spoke. Everyone heard Her the first time. Everyone's hearing Her the second time.

'As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia...'

These words didn't bear further repeating, in their simplicity and their complicity.

'As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia...'

They repeated anyway, by someone's hand. So preoccupied with cramps from below, and asphyxiation from above, another great pain had to be confronted from another angle, another layer, neither of which conformed to physical space by nature nor description but instead the presumption that there was much of anything beyond that. A presumption numerous among the Drifters were ready to accept the presence of, but one that might have been demonstrably lacking all along in this specimen.

All that could have been said, is that it hurt somewhere.

'Orphans of Hyades, you have been deceived.' A synethesized voice spoke. 'I am Voice, and I bring the truth about the thing you call Mother.'

Yarobeleedt continued to wriggle impotently from his little self-made prison. He had no room to twist or turn, in which to flex out one's body as to have corrected the cramping. No leverage in which to heave out choking foodstuffs. No outlet for the additional pain.

'Conspire about me if you wish, but know that I am a warrior, and I stand against her to the bitter end.'

As it was, Yarobeleedt was facing the latest candidate for a definitively ignoble, and by default also bitter, end through choking.

'Stand with her, and you will gain nothing but certain death.'

Who was speaking? Where were they speaking from? He could hear it anywhere and everywhere. He wanted it to stop.

'I have seen too much blood spilled in her name. No more. Not another drop!'

The more solid arm gained itself an unwieldy set of serrated but misaligned spikes, and struck out against the ventilation walls with fury that seemed so muted for its impotence that it was more apt to say it was struck with mere repetition. It only accomplished in rupturing the framework of this impromptu passage, and Yarobeleedt found open air all around.

Including beneath. A freefall, from high up. He felt an instinctual twinge from his back by instinct he never would again be able to satisfy. His screeching filled the air, which only did so much to drown the words from that Voice.

He found himself caught by a passing elevator-lift, presently malfunctioning across its numerous tracks. His ill-gotten meal ejected itself, and the lower half of his body stretched and flexed as it took the newly afforded space to correct the cramping.

The other pain that transcended physical explanation remained. He found himself pressed up against the elevator-lift as it abruptly ascended at speeds whose resulting g-forces should have turned him into a puddle. Its abrupt stop launched him up on high into exposed piping from another maintenance shaft. He never caught himself, so much that it caught him, and had him slink around its lengths like a spiraling coil of a substance that couldn't decide if it was liquid or the biomass of a single multicellular organism.

He collapsed within the depths of the maintenance shaft, disoriented and distressed... save for one most wondrous sight. One most welcome sight. One most desired sight, for the eyes decided they took precedence over the ears and the mind.

Her.

He saw Her again.

The indescribable pain within evaporated instantly, though the aches without conspired to stuff it right back in. He crawled with uncommon restraint and reverence further across the shaft he now inhabited. From where he was, he could have seen Her in all Her glory. The ears and the mind fell back in lock-step with the eyes.

Her mask, feminine and serene, betrayed no discomfort or uncertainty. Her presence was heavy, overbearing. Befitting of their very goddess. The silver-hued diety, with only the redness within the gleaming gray shell a disruptive, contradictory element to the whole of Her form. It was not a flaw, he may have reminded himself if he ever acknowledged it as such. He did not. It was Her.

...

It was not just Her. There were others.

There was a voice that every Metal Demon had been drilled to heed from their very births. There was a sight every Metal Demon had been made to understand was to be noticed no matter the situation. There was a Metal Demon that every Metal Demon had to pay heed to - and for an advance scout like Yarobeleedt, whose very purpose was to observe, they could never have hid themselves.

Zeikfried, Yarobeleedt mouthed. He did not speak, for air still had yet to reach his lungs. His Mother's splendor, in truth, almost killed him, for he had only noticed he'd forgotten to breathe at all as he tried to speak the Quarter Knight Commander's name... incorrectly. He was not alone.

He flinched at the red that he detested seeing, and sank ever lower out of view. The pain that did not prescribe to the physical returned, as he lost his view of Mother. The other colors he did make out - shining whites, earthy tans, ceased to be of consequence as he heard a whisper he was never intended to hear, but a whisper he could not help but hear. Their voice was one that was to be heeded.

'Then... she must die.'

Those were the words the Quarter Knight Commander said, and the world grew hollow.

'She has killed our home once. She has remade our people once. We will not suffer this to occur again.'

Yarobeleedt froze.

'I would have us help the Drifters. Loathe as I am to suffer the Guardians' presence, it is anathema to her. We will help them come here.'

He wanted to scream to the Quarter Knight, but lacked the courage. He wanted to shout to Mother, but he lacked the gumption. He wanted to yell defiance, but he lacked the fortitude.

This sheer cowardice, unwittingly, so well-practiced throughout his seven decades of life, may well have been what saved him from discovery as others shared similar sentiments and resolves. He held his breath as to not have it echo across the maintenance shaft. He froze as to not be picked up by motion detection. His blood felt as though it ran so cold it couldn't have been picked up by a thermal scanner, but that last one was more artful thinking.

Other names... Harken, Elvis. K.K., and Ragnell. He dared not lift his head in which to see back out into the inner sanctum in which Mother worked. He only heard three of them speak. He waited until he heard all of them leave. Other words spoken could not have registered, as Siegfried's continued to resound. The Quarter Knight Commander...

He was to betray Mother. The Quarter Knight Commander was to betray Mother.

No. Everyone was to betray Mother.

He felt himself growing dehydrated. He wasn't paying much attention to where the moisture was escaping from in specific. He was quickly defaulting on attention loans as he crawled about the very scenery of the Photosphere. Every sound, every sight, they were frightening. He was, once more, in a solitary existence and estranged ever further from his own kind. He felt his own weakness stab through every pore of his being.

He was too weak to speak up for Mother.

He was too feeble to dare raise any sort of weapon against the Quarter Knight Commander.

He was too powerless to ever destroy any of the Guardian Statues. (*squeak*, went the Stare Roe toy in his possession.)

He was too...

...much of a coward.

He darted to and fro about the corners and crevices of the Photosphere as he was beside himself with this misery. Other Metal Demons might have called his name, but he did not pay attention. If there were footfalls of verifiable proximity, he fled. If there were voices of origins clear, he vacated. He never looked any of them in the eyes. It was hard enough to look anything in the eye, the way he was.

He kept this up until he found a part of the Photosphere in his sheer panic that absolutely no one was approaching. He swiped his arms across the gaps of the bulkhead that prevented further entry, as though he were frantically trying to pick a lock to go inside. He didn't stop to think why it was quieter in these parts. He didn't want anything to do with the reality that was collapsing around him on all sides.

The more solid arm caught hold of some mechanism, and a pneumatic hiss escaped the opening hatch. He did not enter through the way, so much instead that the opening hatch incidentally scooped him up and painfully squeezed him through the narrow opening as it folded and turned as part of a more elaborate opening sequence. He tumbled across the once-sterile floors. The space was too open for his liking, and he rapidly retreated further into the chambers ahead until he found a place to his satisfaction.

He was accompanied by the soft bubbling of boiling liquids of colors that were none too pleasing to perceive - some may have indeed been standing at the cusp of the visible spectrum. They were connected by a complex series of tubes set up to an exacting but impentrenably readable arrangement, most of which terminated before a spigot that produced a yellowish, faintly glowing liquid that was being collected within a glass vial adorned by protective metal casing.

"Forty-eight units." A voice spoke. A voice that seemed untroubled by the circumstances outside, as though having forty-eight units were enough. The voice belonged to a tall, wiry, multi-limbed octopus-like Metal Demon who cast a shadow far more humble than their appearance would have seemed to aspire to. "Have forty-eight units of the new combat serum been produced?"

"If we must use the colloquial name, yes." Answered another, one of more humanoid proportion but a lack of discernible eyes. "Alhazred has requested they be administered without delay, so that they may enter combat at original capability immediately." Their voice was steady. Their movements weren't. They found themselves constantly looking over their shoulder. "Does he truly believe the laboratory to be secure?"

The question was, in a way, both timed well, and too late. The octopus-like Metal Demon took notice of a slimy, fimly substance at the tip of one of their limbs touching against the ground. "A breach."

"A breach." The other one echoes. "Find it."

"It can no longer be helped." The octopus-like Metal Demon seemed resigned.

"Find it!" The eyeless one slammed their hands against the table, and the equipment rattled. "We will not be... I will not be the one raked over the coals over a breach this deep, as the damnable humans throw themselves at us, when there is work to be done!"

"Alhazred may yet appreciate the new specimens." The octopus-like Metal Demon had that silver lining. They both understood that the lining was not truly ever made of silver, in so far as that was concerned. "These Tainted do not look promising as subjects."

"Science cares not for luxury of choice!" The eyeless one shouted. "Science cares not for what sentiments or pedantic nonsense--"

'Orphans of Hyades, you have served loyally--'

"Find. The. Breach!" The eyeless one slammed the table one last time, and both of them moved with haste as they had the Voice continue their regularly scheduled-and-unscheduled rallying cry. Logic had met with fear, and the latter overtook the former. They did not think to look to where the trail may have lead going further inside, as though there were greater fears that required confirmation from outside.

Yarobeleedt peeked back out from behind his cover as they left. That is when he comprehended where, exactly, he was - cowering behind a table where one of those Tainted lied strapped to a table. They were sedate, ostensibly by chemical means. They were missing the lower halves of both their legs, the ends having constantly churned like the biomass knew there should be something there but could not produce.

Much like Yarobeleedt himself, whose lower body could have been confused for serpentine but was truly nothing more than an ambulatory biomass that barely understood it belonged to the rest of the organism that had yet to succumb to it. The two had that likeness going for the both of them, as the wounded advance scout rose over them.

"Mother does not want." Yarobeleedt says. "Mother does not happy."

'--thing you serve deserves neither your loyalty nor your lives.' The Voice continued.

"Why?" Yarobeleedt asks, looking into the Tainted's eyes. He couldn't determine whether they were open, or closed, or actually not even there. They were Tainted. They might not even have ever been functional.

'Your Mother has used you.'

"Do all for Mother. Do all five Mother." Yarobeleedt continues.

'Your Mother has lied to you.'

The Tainted, in the first sign of life they have ever shown, turned their head to their unlikely comforter.

'There is no shame in abandoning this wretched creature.'

"So week. Not even week. So day. Very day. No! Nono. Not even day. Hour. Too hour." Yarobeleedt loomed closer. "Tainted. Quarter Knight."

'The only shame lies in defending her!'

"...Fu fu fu. Yarobeleedt slithered away. His voice lowered, so quiet as though to tame the natural nasal screeching that accompanied anything and everything he ever said. "Nonono. All Metal Demon."

Her voice returned. 'It makes it sweeter, knowing I will carve out your world's heart and consume it. It grows... tiring at times. So many worlds, to satiate my appetite...'

"Mother... Mother is exappointed." Yarobeleedt faced back. "Only Yarobeleedt loyal. So loyal, is hiyal."

The Tainted tried to raise their arm. Their body was too fastened to the table to be able to, but there was an attempt made.

"If most loyal, Yarobeleedt, can not make Guardian Statue be postplode? If only hiyal, can not stop human? Then what good is Metal Demon?" Yarobeleedt inched closer to the array of beakers and tubes... and approached the stockpile of glowing yellow liquids. All forty-seven of them.

'But you will be wonderful children, my killer. Just as my Metal Demons were. As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia, and claim you as my own.'

"Then Mother want ^Meat Remon^? That is better name for human." Yarobeleedt glowered before the pile.

The Tainted let out a breath. It was more a sigh. They had not the strength to speak.

"Fu fu fu... no no. Alhazad selum? For better battle? For Tainted? Is worthlessy." The worm-snake-thing raised their more solid arm, as it transmogrified itself into the form of a mismatched pair of scissor blades.

'As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia...'

They descended upon the spigot. He lacked the strength to cut it all the way through. Enthusiasting wriggling jostled loose more of the pooling liquids. The forty-eighth vial wouldn't be wrenched free so much as torn off the spigot and some of the surrounding tubing.

"Quarter Knights are nothing." Yarobeleedt said, as he held the vial aloft.

The Tainted shuddered anew. They had enough range of motion in their left shoulder that they could have worked up a soft 'thunk' at best. Was it a demand that Yarobeleedt stop? Was it a call for help? Was it an attempt to reassure them?

Yarobeleedt didn't listen, as he poured the vial's contents into his open maw. Not all of it reached him the conventional method of 'down one's throat.' Half of it dribbled down the side of his face. His less stable biology picked up the slack, as the descending mixture found itself absorbed as it hit his more tumultuous external physiology.

'As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia...'

"But Tainted?" Yarobeleedt asked. "And Tainted? Or Tainted? If Tainted?" Whatever he had just ingested, it did not seem to have any discernible effect. He undulated further along the laboratory, to what would have been a most predictable next step.

It had already dawned upon the Tainted on the table, who was already established to have been powerless to affect much. They were meant to be observed. They got to observe Yarobeleedt take grasp of another vial. And another. And another. And another. There were forty-seven vials lined up and ready for administering.

"They are allvoid!!!"

One by one by three by one by three by an especially inspired moment in which seven were collected in one motion, their casings were compromised, their contents were consumed. Yarobeleedt did not stop at trying to cram them down his mouth. Sometimes he threw them on the ground and just rolled on top of it. He cackled with screeching glee as he seemed to challenge himself to find new and inventive ways to administer latest liquid atrocity to come from Alhazred's machinations that would not have been encouraged... above and beyond the idea of administering any of them at all.

More time passed than ever would have in better circumstances. It could have been ten minutes. It could have been an hour. Time blurred when much of it seemed to be defined by the Voice and its constantly replaying message. Time blurred when there was an understanding of a problem but an uncertainty as to its very origin or character. Time blurred when one had the reminder that the Photosphere beyond Alhazred's laboratories was rapidly descending into uncontrollable mayhem, no doubt hastened by the decision to simply release the caged Metal Beasts throughout.

In time, both the eyeless and octopus-like lab assistants found their way back. The eyeless one bore fresh lacerations and a deep-set burn wound located in their right shoulder - grievous wounds, . The octopus-like lab assistant appeared to have come out of whatever situation that transpired unscathed.

"...Alhazred will have our hides," the eyeless one spoke, "and if I am to take the fall, it will be through /this/ projec--" The eyeless one did not have sight. They had every other inclination that something was wrong. One of them was, as it turned out, their cohort having said something along the lines of 'something is wrong.'

"The samples." That was the 'something is wrong,' from the octopus-like assistant. "Someone just destroyed the samples."

"What?!" The eyeless one recoiled. "Just... just the samples? The forty-eight samples."

"Just the forty-eight samples and surrounding equipment." The sum of their fears.

The Tainted on the table wriggled uselessly. If they could have spoken, it was uncertain whether the lab assistants would have cared. Neither seemed inclined to ask, as the octopus-like of the duo left the eyeless one to investigate the damages. The ruined distiller. The shards of glass and pieces of metal. The sheer amount of waste, as though whoever had done this had ended up letting at least ten vials' worth of product spill in total.

"Please... tell me it was administered." The eyeless one pleaded. "To any of the subjects. Any of the forty-eight." Absolutely none of them wanted to be the one to break the news to Alhazred. They might even have been silently watching this, waiting to voice their disapproval in a time this fragile.

"One." The octopus-like one said.

"Just one?!"

"An educated guess, just one." The octopus-like one reached down with a tentacle to the table.

No, beyond the table, and took hold of something he knew his comrade could not have seen. A metallic scratching filled the chamber as some oblong object was dragged across the soupy puddle of bright yellow serum and detritus.

"Subject log #ADJG-1505782?" The eyeless one's voice shook. "The one with the leg stumps."

"This one is unregistered."

The eyeless one slumped against the damaged equipment, as quicksilver continued to leak from their wounds. "Unregistered... d-did they know?" Fear overtook him. "No! They must be one of those Tainted sympathizers..."

"We have a subject." The octopus-like one reassured, in so much that they spoke calmly as they drew out the offending object - the presence of their infiltrator - out further in the open.

A steel-like fabric cocoon.

"This is a protective cocoon. A common capability among units intended for long-term field work."

"They would dare ruin this critical project and allow themselves to rest?!"

"I am to presume they may have been wounded in the present altercations." The octopus-like assistant continued. "Desperation. A unique situation has presented itself."

"..Just one..."

"Just one."

"Damn it all! Alhazred specified that all forty-eight test subjects be prepared for immediate testing and deployment! He will not accept /just one/!"

"If they are wounded, the serum should - in theory - be radically accelerating their regeneration." The octopus-like assistant narrated, as though either of them actually needed any of that. "I would presume they might have lost a limb. This should stimulate the ability for it to regrow."

"That is what the hypothesis is for the amount of /one vial/." The eyeless one cringed. "How much did the subject consume?"

"Excluding the amount presently spoiled on the laboratory floor," the octopus-like one stated, "I would place estimates on an amount best summarized as--"

The cocoon shuddered, and both were taken to silence.

"--All of them." The octopus-like one spoke when he grew reasonably comfortable with the pacing and intensity of the cocoon's movements.

This comfort did not last.

The cocoon ceased to shudder, so much as it did thrash. It rebelled against the space it occupied. As though what was within was no longer meant to be contained nor constrained by the shell it had made for itself.

This was normal behavior for living things that lived as such.

It was not normal for such a thing to have become so animated and mobile as to be a self-determining blunt weapon. Its twists and flexes occasionally - no, frequently - grew so spirited and violent that it would have popped into the air. This act, too, wasn't exactly foreign to nature.

It didn't apply to oblong objects at least six feet Imperial in length, as more crashed over at the impact. More valuable, presently irreplaceable equipment shattered.

"Shall I call for the containment uni--"

"Don't call attention to this!" The eyeless one snapped. Enough was already out of control - to say nothing of the lacerations they themselves suffered. "Are you getting this down?!"

"Yes. Filming has been ongoing since prior to the arrival of the humans." This was no reassurance. This more or less condemned them to already being subjects unto themselves.

As was a timely development, a tear started to form from the steely fabric. The dangerous bodily cocoon-flinging came to a halt, for a more sedate rolling that seemed to target the nearest sturdy surface it could find...

The table behind where the wounded eyeless scientist rested.

He dared not move.

The split widened with an airy sigh. Something sharp and scythe-like scratched noisily before it escaped into the open air, and dug its claw-like hook into the workstation that once held forty-seven vials.

Long, bushy, thick tendrils - antennae - rose into view.

The octopus-like assistant quietly circled around for a different angle.

The Tainted on the table continued to be helpless to say or affect much of anything, but the increasing frequency in which they attempted to wriggle meaningfully was as communicative as anything of their discomfort.

The scythe-like claw was joined by a second. Insect-like forelegs pressed against the weight that supported it, and pulled up more from the cocoon. Compound eyes peeked out into the laboratory, and a hiss escaped them as they pulled more of themselves up.

A sharp proboscis leaked especially unpleasant fluids, to strange mouthparts that occasionally peeked out of the proboscis. Said proboscis occasionally pulsated. Widening, contracting. Widening, contracting.

"Kkkkkh. Kkkkhh." The creature crawled atop the workstation. It loomed over the downed, injured lab assistant as more of itself emerged. Its throax appeared to be somewhere between that, and a humanoid torso. Running down its back, wet and ragged, were a set of clear tissue.

The eyeless one could not see it, but they could hear it. They could feel it... breathing, down their lower back, as it glacially vaulted the obstruction that was its support.

Its yellow-hued abdomen was nowhere near as proportionally large as the rest of the anatomy would have suggested... demanded, even, as two further matching sets of insectoid legs struggled to find strength to climb.

"Undernourished." The octopus-like assistant noted. "The subject overdosed. It seems unlikely it should have ever emerged--"

The body mass throbbed suddenly, which compelled watchful silence. Veins of quicksilver bulged as though the veins themselves were indecisive of their width and thickness between heartbeats. Even the various eyes within the compound occasionally seemed ready to burst, as another indecipherable whine left the... creature?

"...T-Tainteeeed." It spoke a coherent word as it leaned closer towards the eyeless scientist. "Tainteeed..." Some sort of ichor left its proboscis, and dripped on their shoulder.

"I-I'm not a--" The wounded eyeless scinetist fell to all fours. Their body was already conserving strength and resources to not keel over and die from their wounds. It wasn't ready to flee at a moment's notice.

It took less than a blink for the emergent insect to hurl themselves upon the wounded. The proboscis plunged deep into their shoulder... retracted, back into their back, retracted, into that same shoulder, and retracted once more before it stabbed deep into the neck. The abdomen did not yet shed the entirety of the cocoon, which seemed to stick to it like a rag.

The octopus-like assistant knew at this point it was time to call containment - occupied as they might have been - as of ten seconds ago. Four of their tentacles reconfigured their tips into electrical conduits, and surged to life with an ear-splitting hum.

A thin stream of quicksilver leaked out the side of the victim's neck, only to be loudly slurped up. The insect's body thrummed and pulsed with every passing moment, as blood appeared to rapidly fill the underdeveloped parts of its anatomy. Thin, glassy, transparent tissues hardened into fully-developed cicada-like wings. The abdomen grew in size and definition.

The one standing assistant opened fire with their electrical charges.

The limp, split cocoon cloth hardened and separated into orbiting steel plates that intercepted these shots, and the insectoid one turned their head towards the octopus-like assistant.

They kept firing.

The insectoid one's body shimmered and flashed in and out of view, and the assistant's composure wavered as they ran away, firing wildly into the air. Not one shot registered. Each one passed through uninterrupted, leaving scorch marks throughout the laboratory.

The insect appeared again atop the table that housed one of the forty-eight intended recipients of the ingested serum.

'It makes it sweeter, knowing I will carve out your world's heart and consume it. It grows... tiring at times. So many worlds, to satiate my appetite...' Mother's voice replayed.

"Tainteeeed," hissed the insect, "waste! Waste. Waste. Waste."

'It makes it sweeter, knowing I will carve out your world's heart and consume it. It grows... tiring at times. So many worlds, to satiate my appetite...'

The octopus-like one renewed their weapons fire. Once more, they were intercepted by the orbiting steel segments, which allowed this newly emergent predator to continue to feed upon the helpless uninterrupted.

The trapped Tainted, held at a more favorable angle for viewing by their table, became a dry, dessicated, motionless husk before their very eyes - just like the eyeless lab assistant before them.

"Weed the weak...!" They hissed. "Give strength! Give all. Do not deserve..." They did not even look the other lab assistant in the eye, as they stabbed a foreleg into the dried corpse. "

'As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia...'

"As Mother kill Hyades, Mother kill Filgaia..."

'As I killed Hyades, I will kill Filgaia...'

"Yarobeleedt will give Mother the ^Meat Remons^...!"

"Subject is Yarobeleedt... Advance Scout unit, grievous permanent injuries recorded in wake of Arctica operation." The octopus-like assistant recoiled in body, but maintained decorum in voice. This was important to catalogue, even at personal risk.

That was Yarobeleedt... the same one he knows they kept trying to feed into the recycler time and time again.

Yarobeleedt's form flashed out of view again, but the displaced air by their rapid movement saw the one present survivor to the ensuing slaughter the only chance they had of throwing themselves out of harm's way as Yarobeleedt reappeared again. His forelegs twitched and contorted into more complex shapes. No longer was he restricted to malformed melee weapons.

"This appears to have gone beyond a full restoration of lost capabilities." The survivor noted.

The forelegs formed laser cannons that discharged as soon as they were willed. They melted holes through hulls meant to contain and withstand, theoretically, far worse, with little ceremony.

Theoretically far worse? No, Yarobeleedt now was /the/ far worse, and he flung himself back through this new opening out into the greater Photosphere.

'Orphans of Hyades, you have been deceived. I am Voice, and I bring the truth about the thing you call Mother.' The Voice's message started to repeat, as the octopus-like one was helpless only to watch.

"Subject displays heightened capabilities far beyond original designation." The octopus-like assistant noted dutifully, for any recording devices. "On personal note--"

'Conspire about me if you wish, but know that I am a warrior, and I stand against her to the bitter end.' Voice interrupted, as pre-recordings are often wont.

"On personal note," they begin again with the short break in the recording, "I believe I have born personal witness to the doom of our world... and yet others, beyond ours."

The recording, when reviewed from a future where this observation may or may not have yet come to pass as stated, would have stopped there.