Z'rynda Hun'ana.
9th of Sextrand, 1492.
Mii'etus Praesyris.
23:41
***
{System boot.}
{YES?}
{NO?}
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{YES? <—}
{ZAE V2.0… Boot Up Sequence Initiated.}
{TG BIOS… Initializing POST.}
{Running Diagnostic… 16%… 25%… 42%… 59%… 90%… 100%}
{POST Complete.}
{Establishing Mana Web Connection… Connection Established… Encrypting… Encryption Complete.}
{Establishing VoidNet Connection… User Access Verified… Connection Established… Encrypting… Encryption Complete}
{Establishing NoxNet Connections… User Access Verified… Dux-level Access Granted…. Connection Established…. Encrypting… Encryption Complete.}
{Loading Profile: Dux Noctis Z'rynda Hun'ana… Load Complete.}
{Downloading NoxNet Archives… 0%… 10%… 24%…}
{Transfer download to background.}
{Transfer complete. Estimated Time of Completion: 932 seconds.}
{Running ArionAssimilator.Exe.}
—
I awoke in an utterly alien environment. Metal and ceramics coated the walls instead of stone, lined with copper conduits and glass bulbs that splayed a red hue onto the visages of my sister, brothers, and… former slaves, staring at me or pointedly looking away.
I could feel my eyes humming as illusory words and pictures highlighted their every feature, listing their coinciding emotions. Embarrassment. Anger. Awe. Shame. More so, I saw flickering lights in the blues of their eyes and the coinciding illusions describing their meaning in grand detail.
I looked down and saw I was practically nude but hardly cared, for what I sensed felt different. Distant, almost. I flexed my hands, knowing they'd been changed inside and out despite looking and feeling the same, and so I closed my eyes, inhaling a deep breath to feel more air and power enter my lungs than ever before. Then, my senses truly opened.
The divinity pouring off my deities was like pulsing points of light, and I could feel their radiance. Iris, Leary, and the Eternal God-Emperor, Amun shone like grand stars in an infinite expanse of darkness. As their light flowed over me, visions of exotic realms and grand machinations I still struggled to comprehend passed through my mind before the feeling regressed with my opening eyes, bringing back the descriptive illusions; this time focused around the machinations in their weapons and gear. And more, in the weapons and gear around us.
I could… feel them; sense them as I would mana; but also… speak with them, in a way. I could hear them, at least; begging and pleading to become greater- to become one. But no matter how much I tried, I could not respond. Not without a… connection.
Turning to the loudest things brought me to my old robe, armor, staff, and mace. On instinct alone, I reached for them. Not to put them on but simply to… connect with them.
The result was most peculiar.
The mana flowing through those inanimate things synergized with the mana in my spirit. It merged at the point of contact, forming a matted web of silvery-blue mycelium beneath my finger before spreading through the fibers and metal like a living entity, infecting or engulfing them until all that was left was a thick pile of the strange material, then it reversed.
Far faster than it formed, the mithral mycelium flowed up my arm to cascade down my form and morph into the flowing shapes and plates of my gear while my thrumming eyes told me every detail of the armor; how it was remade, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it could be improved more than it already was.
As I saw within my genes, the basic design of my robes was reserved while the worst aspects were cast aside and replaced with something better. Those foul demonic webs woven between the robe's mithral and faerie flax threads were redesigned with the webs of the God Emperor's spiders and reinforced with hairs from the Arion- the divine horse of the Tech Goddess' pantheon. The jewelry and trinkets of amethyst, opal, and pearl that once displayed my station were now embedded in my skin as much as my clothes, granting me spells and abilities of flight, stone swimming, spider climbing, disguises, and invisibility; all in in the instant it took the web of mycelium to form and crumble dust.
Consequently, my hand crossbows were redesigned into bracers that held no bow or string; only a rail to fire a bolt of energy pulled from my very spirit. My whip was integrated into my spine, enabling me to stretch and unnaturally curl every part of my body while keeping the tool as an extendable and detachable tail. And my scimitars, which I've trained with every day, were upgraded into ergonomic handles that projected curved blades of solid deep blue energy—tools I- we would need to destroy House Hun'ana and reconstruct it into House Arion.
***
Amun.
***
While I was curious to see how Iris would handle her first war on the Mortal Plane, she wasn't the center of my focus when it shifted to House Hun'ana. She had warred against me in Eotrom just as I had warred against Grandpa Lich in Odissi, after all, and the same was true for her companions; both the homebodies in the Cuttleship and those in her adventuring party.
In that way, I knew what to expect. However, there were new augmented beings among them, and one had more potential than even Iris.
The drow paragons in Iris' cohort had their skeletons augmented with Iris' mycelial mithral and their organs had been restructured with arcane crystals, turning them into MycoMithral drow. That opened the door for their Assimilation Sorcery to develop from their blessing of technomancy; a cousin to Ed's Integration.
Like any augmented being, they rebooted with preprogrammed software meant to assist them in various tasks, including the development of their classes. Z'ress, however, had something no other augmented being would possess- a training protocol.
Specifically, the N.V.G Training Protocol.
So it was, I kept a close eye on her as she and Iris moved to their staging point, feeling a little invasive as my senses melded with hers and her thoughts began whispering in my mind.
Like I was, she and Iris were using the Net to watch their archmage, Gaheris Rainer spring from a corner to bury his knife in the neck of a dwarven slave, palm his mouth, and drag him to the shadows, giving her a small sense of satisfaction before it was drowned by embarrassed shame, then resolution once her path was set before her.
Through Gaheris' eyes, she watched every detail of the dwarf's visage be analyzed before the young elf's frame began to shift, shrinking and popping as the signs of a thick bushy beard peered through his field of view. Even then, Gaheris never slowed, withdrawing something similar to an aerosol can and depressing the nozzle with controlled sweeps over the corpse.
Through her own eyes, Z'ress could see a mist of darkness spray from the can, occluding the dwarf entirely before it began to sink into the shadows. Only for a nearly transparent silhouette of the dwarf detach from the body and turn its glazed eyes about.
Spreading her hands, palm up, she summoned the slightest hint of my divine mana and sent it toward the dwarven soul before lifting her finger, guiding the dwarven soul not to my realm, but to Iris' databanks.
As for the body, it sank through one shadow and fell from another in an abandoned mining tunnel directly above House Hun'ana. It was filled with the discarded scraps of the dead and carpeted with metallic dust; spores, of the augmented variety; Daulery's family.
Upon rebooting as Mycodroids, fell back into their old niche by dispersing into countless spores amidst the Falls. Yet, like their biological counterparts, few spores could connect their two genetic halves in a suitable location. And so, they remained dormant, waiting for their spores to be carried into their new domain.
With the fall of the towers, the slave guild, and two of the eight eyes, that had changed, and so their catalyst was deposited before them. Mountains of discarded weapons and armor were taken by the darkness and claimed by the ensuing mycelial network, forming a conduit, or rather, a nexus within the tunnel.
Much like my growing pool of draconic twilight, House Daulery's network had since colonized House Hun'ana's surroundings, where it has been probing and analyzing the superstructure, waiting for the arrival of Iris' team so they could colonize their new domain.
"You are in the central annex." Z'ress' serene voice drew me back to her senses and thus pushed me through Gaheris' point of view. He was amidst countless slaves; mostly dwarves pulling hand carts to and from various alcoves carved into the stone, where drow slaves were selling all types of trinkets and wares made by their slaves.
"There is a residential wing in each upper corner." She continued. "The mines are opposite the main entrance, with the Matron's primary wing being above it. It holds her temple to the spider, along with a tunnel leading directly to G'eldantaar. Be wary of reinforcements."
Maps and orders littered her field of view the moment her words were spent. The automated processes of her enhanced mind latched onto them instantly, taking milliseconds to analyze their contents and compare where the others were meant to go and do as opposed to her, only to throw a solution of dissatisfaction back at her stream of thought.
Gaheris was to delve deeper into the mines and breach the compacted stone for the Mycodroids, allowing them to colonize the space and reinforce their numbers. Deeke, Erja, Margo, and Kane were taking the residential wings. Aqsa was to hold down the central annex. Meanwhile, they were not meant to take part in the battle of their old house. Or rather, they were not permitted to taint their souls by killing kin. And so, they were tasked with conquering the lesser House of Talaste'ven Hun'ep; the 5th Leg of Zimysta.
She buried her feelings beneath a mountain of data as they met Kane at their rally point a few hundred kilometers away from the House. He was the most grizzled gnome she and I had ever seen. His opaque monocle, gray imperial mustache, goatee, and denim vest made him look as if he was of the garden variety as he waddled towards her, four hefty adamantine crates filled with gadgets slithering on umbral tendrils behind him.
Trusting the analytics powering her eyes, Z'ress reached for her trove without delay, followed by her sister and brothers. In his eagerness, Kane backpedaled to watch the assimilation process with a keen eye. Yet it was just unceremoniously efficient as before.
A thick carpet of silvery-blue mycelium spread throughout the boxes and their umbral arms before colonizing its contents and glowing brightly. Then they regressed, cascading into their fingers to spread the matter and information to different parts of their bodies; or in the case of their crates, atop them; and in the case of their new holy symbols, within them.
Pious as they were, the thick blue rings Iris' followers prayed to were assimilated into their sternums amidst the reformatted adamantine and umbral tendrils; becoming metal-weave robes, organic-looking armor, and bracers along with a quarterstaff for Z'rynda, Z'rret, and Z'benna respectively.
As for Z'ress, the MycoMithral guided those things to her spine to sprout sweeping skeletal wings of adamantine, wreathed in the umbral-bladed wings of a Valkyrie.
Zed Legion's Valkyrie.
"These are not to be integrated." Kane waddled forth with a handful of rods. Blue, circuit-lined wise rocks contained in a metal and glass sphere were held in a claw at the end, primed with mana and instructions but not matter.
"Not with you, anyway." He chortled to himself as he transferred the devices, and with it came the relative data regarding the so-called Lairnades; or Lair Stone Grenades.
Kane's gadgets along with the understanding of her orders birthed a deep sense of resolve within Z'ress. She cast aside her distractions and outright deleted her disdain for her orders, for what she would soon gain would be far greater. And so, she darted after Iris with the gnomish rogue artificer trailing them.
The blue-limned edifice of House Hun'ana loomed before them moments later, as did Deeke, Aqsa, Erja, and Margo; all flicking their glowing yellow eyes across the surface and paying no outward attention to Iris as she unhooked her earring.
As she held it in her palm, her belt of metallic leather unraveled itself into a simian-like tail, its end glowing a brighter blue as it slowed its snaking and slithering, eventually pulsing to release a cascading wave of what appeared to be flipping scales down from the tip, widening the tail into a flat serrated blade reminiscent of a pangolin's.
She increased a bit in height as the wave continued down to her legs, birthing an opposable thumb on the inside of her heels that curled into hoof-like fists as she adjusted her weight. Similarly, her size and mass increased as the cascade flowed over her torso and head to form avian wings and a faceless helm.
Simultaneously, the relatively tiny earring in her palm glowed as the size mana enchantment deactivated; and rather comically, Gamp Daedalus grew into existence in the palm of her hand. The canvas-less parasol's blades were configured into a spear point as she held it upward, making it appear like a comically large arrow until the point split and lowered into three prongs surrounding the inner blade; much like an antennae.
A squeeze was all it took for Iris to transmit the blueprints of countless technologies she developed throughout her seven years in heaven. The influx of data- her clerical prayer to me- saw the three prongs spin soundlessly, rotating faster and faster until a pure blue light began to shine from its blades; and faster still until it seemed as if it was becoming unstable, wherein it suddenly stopped with a satisfactory ping.
As her plague-invoking prayer of a ping echoed across the Falls, a wave of Iris's divine blue light swept toward House Hun'ana, giving chase. In turn, a tangled mess of crimson divine mana poured from the remaining Eyes and G'eldantaar above, limiting the flow of Iris' energy to a single point on the lower Eye.
Responding in kind, Iris opened her arcane well, dumping it through her molecular magic and Technecromancy cores to send a fused spear of the broken energy chasing after her clerical spell. The latter barreled through the front face like a boulder thrown by a giant, dislodging and unsettling the dwarven-compacted stone before the meters-long spear of blue-black arcana finished it off.
The effect of Iris' divine plague spread to the gates, levers, firing platforms, and other machinations as the stone dipped and buckled like a rock thrown in a pond. The entire Eye quaked in protest of the rippling of its hard surface; overshadowed by the genesis scream of something synthetic echoing from within.
Blocks set in place for centuries pivoted out of place as the energy swept over them and fell in on themselves once it had passed, seemingly with purpose given how they shifted away from the technological flora and fauna forming within, forming alcoves sealed behind the armored embrasures of a gaping throat opened to the House's gullet.
As predicted, an army of spiders poured from the wound. Foul, demonic, powerful spiders and the drow who accompanied them.
They were met by the metals and gems inlaid into the shattered stone, dispersing to reform as a mat of metallic sunflowers. Their black petals turned the rushing enemy as they drank the ambient arcana, causing their radiant seeds to spit out a harsh blue-white light that revealed an army of scowling visages, stunned in place for the blue-leafed bonsai trees turning their angled trunks toward them.
A wall of lightning, fire, and acid descended on their waxy, fleshy chitin or arcane shields, splattering or deflecting them onto the sea of slaves dragged into the fray. Even as the drow retreated to foolishly shroud the corridor in magical darkness, they were pushed forth beneath the spiders to their deaths, and many more took their place.
For each that fell, the divine mana flowing from me to Z'ress made her feel twice as much. Her training protocol saw her seek the memories of those souls, drifting above the fray; to witness them; and to guide them. In the meantime, Z'rynda gathered the mana she'd been given in her hand and merged it with her arcana to form a shimmering greenish-black crystal she let fall gently to the battlefield.
As it fell, two friendlies rushed toward the halted army, putting themselves on an intercept course for Z'rynda's spell; mostly. It bounced off the ground a few steps away from Aqsa and Oliva and halted at its apex before it surged. The crystal doubled in size and then tripled upon shifting to a monolithic spire. Sparks of the same greenish-black energy cascaded over its surface as it began to spin, eventually forming a veil of a domain before it slammed into the ground and exploded to encompass the House's outer yard.
Aqsa Gould charged through the barrier first and staggered as the first of many bolts came whizzing through the opening. The Barbaric Artificer never swayed, however, instead using it as a point of rage while the latent green energy seeped into her broken skin to repair her wounds. Her breathing became labored with aggression as the bolts and spells increased in intensity and at last, she bellowed. The mana heart in her spirit began pumping its rage-inducing cocktail through her body, making her eyes glow redder than her titanium limbs as she charged on.
With a laugh and a feral taunt, the Burning Armory lunged, trailing her right arm behind her as it seemed to melt from her heat and reform into a screaming chainsaw she brought down across House Hun'ana's enslaved vanguard. Bodies parted as she slashed at the onrushing slaves with wild abandon, her right arm remaining trained ahead, palm open to fire beam after eldritch beam while her fingers danced lasers across the untouched edifice.
Tucking one of Kane's spell grenades in his arm like a baby, Oliva ran low under the cover of his Marshal while his sorcery spread in a wake behind him, pulling the streaming particles of disassembled weapons and armor around his arm to form a wedged shield he used to barrel through the line.
More streaming particles swarmed him as Aqsa's frenzy continued, congealing around his back to form spiked or bell-shaped nozzles that ejected his arcana like miniature rockets to push him forward once he slowed.
With his faith in Iris and thus me, he paid no heed to his mana reserves and pushed through the line like a runaway speedboat, creating a rain of viscera and steel until the echoing bangs of the weaponized augmented flora rattled the Falls. Yet still, he continued. Down the corridor, through the fire and acid, Oliva charged, allowing the particles surrounding his left arm to lose their shape so that he could aim his right.
Having complete trust in Kane's work, Oliva didn't watch the spell grenade rocket through the air as I did. His sorcery grabbed hold of his discarded particles and layered them atop his body, allowing the perks of his legendary class to meld them into a suit of armor thicker than any armor could hope to be. It was more of a Frankenstein's monster of parts fit for a tank. Or rather, the Fighting Artificer, Tech Juggernaut.
He moved behind Aqsa as the enemy met them, covering her frenzy with his sheer bulk for those intense moments the spell bomb spun madly into the ceiling.
A deep warble was the only sign before Z'ress, her siblings, and the rest of Iris' party found themselves drifting in the face of an arcane shockwave, rippling down House Hun'ana's ceiling to pour the orange-white glow of Iris' rotational mana into the tiled floor. The ground began to quake as the glow rose to a high and the ceiling began to quiver, loosing stones atop the disheveled drow faces before they lost their footing.
Deeke, Erja, Margo, and Kane rushed forward as a singular unit, headed in opposing directions to the four wings off each corner while the great tumble began. Those who kept their balance naturally turned their sights toward the breached wall and watched the ground rise in pitch to seal these intruders within the House; confusion, horror, or glee written across their faces before they turned their eyes back to Aqsa and Oliva, unknowing of the others probing the wings or the disguised elf breaching the mines, now pitched overhead.
Therein birthed pure chaos.