"Oh... shit..." This has gotten much larger than I thought. There are many people and ACC corpsmen in the streets. The corpsmen are doing the best they can, which isn't much. The triage they keep attempting to set up continues to be overrun by flora of incredible size. It's truly a little overwhelming, I-
Lo, Behold! Great Father, can you not see that she is capable of creation? Am I not the proof needed for the Starborn to exist? The Cosmic Queen truly does live up to the level of Celestial! You must acknowledge the Queen of the Cosmos, or this pantheon is nothing without her!
-Blacked out. I feel rather foolish. I slowly open my eyes to find that I'm no longer on the balcony of the crumbling house of the scientist, but a block away from the throne hall of King Bartle. Looking around, the city is in ruins. Buildings have become mere cases for large trees, the streets have been replaced by dirt, roots, and vines, and the trees have grown so large that the sunlight from the Eagle star has become diminished, now forced to flitter through the openings in the leaves. To my right is Kassidy, who has an odd look upon her face. The scientist is nowhere to be found, however what is most odd of all is what is in my hands. The stardust is gone, the case holding it is at my feet, now empty. In my hands I find a new core, sparking with energy. tiny bolts of lighting shoot from it, but do not strike me.
"What..." Kassidy gasps, "Who are you?"
I blink. "That's a silly question. You know who I am."
"Do I?" she says, horrified. Yet, at the same time, somehow responds with a smile on her face, saying "I do." She looks down at her hands, confused by her own actions.
"Where did the old man go?"
"He... didn't make it. Don't you remember?"
"I, uh... blacked out."
"That was blacking out??"
"It would appear so..." My head hurts. "The old man say what to do with this?"
"There's a chamber in the throne hall. If we... 'plant' it in there, the deadzone should... release" I raise my eyebrows. That's quite a lot of information she got from the old man.
"How... how long was I out?"
"About... an hour or so? You- did a lot. Were you really blacked out?" She swallows.
"What did I do?" Before Kassidy can answer, a loud rumble silences our conversation. Roots shoot across the street and begin to converge on our position. "Well, looks like that's our cue to get running to the throne hall!" I take Kassidy's hand and we sprint towards the massive building.
"Stanley!" Kassidy yells out to me as she yanks me to the side, saving me from the crumbling remains of a collapsing building. Bartlem alloy flies everywhere in the destruction as we run, creating a thick fog of ash-like dust as we run. Roots, vines and rocks appear to trail behind us as we go, quite literally seeming to follow us through the street.
"Is this... this forest... alive?" I gasp as a tree stump shoots upwards, directly through a car's engine, resulting in a massive explosion. I grasp my head, my mind ringing. Coughing, I can spot the extravagant front side of the throne hall through the smoke, decorated in gold-tinted Bartlem, now cracked and perverted by a massive growth of moss running up its height.
A loud thud from the right of the intersection in front of us tells me we're not alone. The first thud is accompanied by many more, each growing in speed and volume. Taking these horrifying noises as the bad omen that I imagine they most certainly are, I grab Kassidy by the arm and use all of the energy I have left to sprint forwards.
"Wait!" Kassidy begs with a half-whisper, pulling me behind the cover of a car. Her eyes wide and pupils dilated, she points to the intersection as I notice that the loud thuds have stopped. Peeking my head around the car, I spot a massive beast, roughly three stories tall.
"A Tyrannus" I breathe. The sick, genetically modified weapon of war created by the ACC that was a living reminder that not even the noble T. Rex couldn't be perverted by the Anti-Creation Coalition. When they deemed these things too unruly to be controlled, the ACC dumped them in unhospitable areas of the galaxy, which I suppose included the Stenian Deadzone. "How... did they live in this country with that thing roaming around?"
"Maybe the core drove the Tyrannus away, too?" Kassidy shrugs. I look down at the hand clutching the new core as a sharp bolt of energy flies out of the orb and strikes the ground. Peeking around the car again, I spot the jet-black scales of the monster, formed not from natural serpentine scales, but from a steel-chitin alloy.
"We have no chance against it. We're going to have to run for the Throne Hall"
"Are you kidding? Let's just wait for the damn thing to pass!"
"Normally I would agree with you," I point behind us to the encroaching flora, moving at a concerningly increasing rate, "But we're out of options." She gulps and nods at me.
"Okay. This is insane."
"Right. On the count of three, then." I check on the massive weapon once more as it emits a deafening roar. "One... Two..." I take a deep breath, which I recognize may be my last. "Three..."