The above video (Part 1) is an excerpt from the video logs of Pale Lodge Hunter Shyar of Oldwind. Selected from Annex M-3670G.
The story below (Part 2) is the tale of Tolyk's Return. Selected from Annex M-3670G.
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It feels like it’s been a lifetime since the day I arrived in the Patchwork City. And in truth, it has. Little of the boy I was upon my arrival through that sputtering portal remains; nearly every piece of him cut out or ground away by the uncounted years I spent in that confounding city. Only his anger survived the trials that awaited me there, coiled in the darkest corner of my heart, almost forgotten… until the day my new masters saw fit to point me toward the ones whose actions sent me to the city in the first place.
I can only imagine how displeased the Bellows are with me. They may seem violent, unthinking brutes to the outsider, but that’s all part of their facade. It’s easier to deceive those who believe you to be little more than a mongrel in a sharp suit, and far more satisfying to outwit them when the time is right. They are a calculating, exacting breed of being. No move they make is unintentional, no spilt drop of blood ever wasted. I can scarcely imagine the fury Boss Goluluk must have felt when he heard what I did to the Pul’Leem’s messenger. It’s not their way to kill the mouthpiece of an enemy on sight - even if that enemy is the one that drove them out of house and home. They’d rather greet, watch, and wait. Learn as much as they can, from both the spoken and unspoken words of the messenger. Their patience wins over their wrath nine times out of ten.
Me, on the other hand? I guess my patience could use a bit of work. The minute I found out who that poor bastard worked for, the coiled anger in my heart reared up like a thesian viper and bit into my brain with a vengeance. It was all I could do to keep myself from inflicting more pain than necessary on the sop those damn Pul’Leem slugs sent through the portal. Truth be told, I don’t know that he felt any pain at all - probably just a light sting as my pattern unweaver blew its core as it disassembled every cell in his body. He didn’t even get a word out. I didn’t think after that, just leapt through the rapidly shutting gate he’d just stepped out of, and ended up here.
Here. Wherever the hell “here” is. Strange place to dispatch an envoy from. I can’t tell for the life of me what this place is supposed to be, or why there isn’t a single footsoldier of the Pul’Leem on the other side, waiting for the envoy to return. This place appears to be another buried portal, akin to the one I used all those years ago to escape their thralls and make my way to the city… albeit in a far more spacious location. The walls that rise on all sides of the portal soar overhead, vanishing into the dark. I must be in the base of an enormous silo, I think. I turn all around, up and down, scanning with my ocular augments for any sign of life, but find nothing, no hidden assassins, no squads of thralls, NOTHING. Just a single way out - a darkened corridor directly across from me. I move away from the now-deactivated gate toward the corridor, slowly, softly, just like I have a million such times, scanning all the while. Nothing in the tunnel, which my augments tell me is approximately a hundred meters long, perfectly straight, and opens into a much larger space on the far end. I move through it, inching forward, step by step, towards the dimly lit end of the corridor. Arriving at the terminus, I poke my head out, clearing the corners, before being shocked to a standstill by what I see awaiting me.
It’s a gargantuan chamber, even more massive than the silo containing the stridegate I leapt through to get here. But it’s not the size of the space that causes my jaw to hang slack - it’s what it contains. I’ve emerged from the tunnel onto a raised walkway that leads to a set of stairs that climb toward a titanic suit of armor, taller even than the greatest skyscrapers I saw in the Patchwork City. It’s nested into an enormous alcove and surrounded by hanging wires, metal scaffolding, and enormous chains. I curse in shock beneath my breath as I slowly step towards it, my eyes flitting back and forth from the titan to the surrounding chamber. Though my augments aren’t picking anything up, I know this is foolish. There are other exits to the chamber; I can see them on either side. I should get out of here NOW… but I glide towards the titan nonetheless, drawn in by the mystery it presents. What IS this place?
“Magnificent, isn’t it?”
The voice, deep and resonant, echoes off all sides of the cavernous space, instantly sending me into a panic. Without thinking, I fire off several rounds from my sidearm in all directions as I whirl around, searching for the source of the voice. All I hear in response is the loud PINGS of my slugs as they bounce off the distant metal walls… followed by a deep chuckle as every muscle in my body begins to seize at once.
Grunting, I fall to the ground stiff as a board, entirely unable to move. My eyes dart wildly in search of the threat, the only parts of my body seemingly still able to articulate of their own accord. A flush of terror and fury moves through me as my foes at last reveal themselves - several thralls sporting floatpacks, uncloaking as they hover in the air around me, each carrying muscular override emitters that are no doubt being used to immobilize me. I hear 2 more floatpacks turn off behind me, followed by heavy steps across the metal walkway before I’m hoisted to my feet, and shoved into what appears to be a sarcophagus. I inaudibly scream as the thralls clamp bracers around my wrists, ankles, and neck, then insert sharp needles attached to long tubes into the ends of each of my fingers and toes, followed by over a dozen more into my chest, back, and groin. I am immediately pumped full of paralytics, causing the sensations present in my greater body to fade altogether, save for my face. My eyes water as the sum total of my pain settles into my visage, then widen in shocked rage as they slam the coffin shut, turn it around, and slide open a single slot so that I can finally meet the source of the voice, face to face.
“Tolyk Tarn. What a tremendous pleasure it is to FINALLY meet you.”
It’s an enormous slug and a golden man, both making their way slowly towards me. This is no thrall. It’s one of THEM - one of the Pul’Leem themselves, and its puppet-like mouthpiece. I can feel the veins bulge in my forehead as my jaw tightens. I attempt a howl of rage at the creature before me, one of the architects of my family’s death, but can manage little more than a whimper. The golden man simply smiles as the slug sways behind him. Then, with a glittering grin, the holographic man barks a command to the thrall standing beside me.
“Tell the Lodge that the contract has been closed by internal actors, and that their services are no longer required. If a hunter had already been dispatched, we will happily pay whatever expenses they incurred up to this moment.”
It turns its attention towards me, and the man clasps his hands together.
“Tolyk, I must apologize for the nature of our first meeting, all those years ago in your parents’ apartment. It was simply business, you understand. Your father owed a debt, and we had to collect. A rather messy affair overall. Had we known then how SPECIAL you were, however, we would never have greeted you and your parents so rudely. I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that the family members of the debt-thralls that raided your parents’ apartment have been punished accordingly for the actions of their kin.”
My eyes flash back and forth from the man to the slug and back again. The Bellows told me of this quirk of the Pul’Leem. How their particular brand of telepathic communication scrambles the minds of anything but their own kind, and how they use holographic projections to speak for them. Apparently, in more ancient days, they used actual enslaved beings, bound to them by some barbaric psychic umbilical cord. That was before their technology developed more economically effective (and unintentionally more humane) mouthpieces for them to speak through.
“Do you know the history of Kaer’s Reverence, Tolyk? Of the city you so long called home, the city we now confer beneath? It was not always as it is today - a collection of decadent spires rising above an endless heap of detritus, a relic of times long gone meant solely to be passed from conqueror to conqueror, thief to thief. Long ago, this city was the ZENITH of your people’s creation, the very seat of their power. They built it as a shining, ever-present reminder of their authority over the world that it orbits.”
The mouthpiece smirks, and its golden projection flickers. A secondary hologram appears, a gaseous green orb whose thick atmospheric murk is occasionally lit by flashes from somewhere deep within its depths. I instantly know it as the Shame - the only name ever given by my family and neighbours to the planet that has always dominated the skies above Kaer’s Reverence, the ancient anchor of our orbital home.
“Those were the old days, of course. Before the disastrous fiscal decisions of the royal line that built the city caused the ruin of their very own planet, and before Kaer’s Reverence became an overcrowded, rat-stacked refuge for anyone with the means to get off their dying homeworld.”
The mouthpiece wags its finger at me.
“You got lucky, you know. To be born HERE. There are still people, like YOU, down there, on that world’s surface. Had your ancestors not been so… well connected, you’d be there too - mutating slowly in the toxic haze that has become your homeworld’s atmosphere, eating the tumour-ridden flesh of your own deceased kin to survive, caring for nothing but the enactment of revenge upon whatever desperate tribe last attacked your own. I guess, upon consideration, however, that’s not so TERRIBLY different from the life you currently live.”
A chill runs down my spine, cutting through the paralytics. My parents had steadfastly refused to speak of the world that haunted our city’s skies. If they had known that people still lived there, they wouldn’t have shared it. An ill omen to mention the Shame, they had always said. Never until now had I thought myself lucky for my upbringing in the lower stacks; always I had looked with envy upon those fortunate few in the high towers. How could I have known that those of the least luck dwelled even higher still in the sky?
The mouthpiece grins, bearing golden teeth. It steps closer, and the great slug who speaks through it slides forward as well. The acrid odor of the mucus dripping from its undercarriage becomes nearly overpowering.
“Which brings me to WHY we have taken such great pains to acquire you, Tolyk. You see, you are SPECIAL, my boy. Believe it or not, you are the ONLY currently living direct male descendant of the last King to sit on the high throne of Kaer’s Reverence! A throne not so high any longer, I’m afraid. Quite buried beneath the 8th sublevel, actually. Anyhow, you are, naturally, many, MANY generations removed from your royal ancestor,but nevertheless ONE of a kind. Your parents never knew, of course. That dynasty fell so long ago that it's barely even relevant. It would be ENTIRELY irrelevant, in fact, were it not for one minuscule little thing.”
The projection turns with the slug toward the enormous titan that has so silently presided over the entirety of our conversation. It gestures with a single hand towards the colossus before turning its gleaming smile back to me.
“Most historians believe that Kaer’s Reverence was the crowning achievement of your kind. Those historians are wrong. But how could they have known what your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather built in secret? What he TRULY intended to be his legacy? A real shame that he bankrupted his kingdom in the process, only to never complete it. He was SO CLOSE. It only took our technicians a couple of weeks to finish what he started. Then again, we are in possession of a bit more knowledge than he was. Do you know what it is?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
“Of course you don’t. That, my boy, is a nearly PERFECT reconstruction of an Archaean Colossus - one of the most powerful tools ever to exist. I don’t know HOW your ancestor got a hold of those blueprints, OR how he managed to almost entirely construct one without that long lost society of demigods bringing their wrath down upon him, but that’s not what’s RELEVANT! What IS relevant is that your ancestor included a VERY specific security protocol in the design, one that, try as we might, we have not been able to crack. Can you guess what it is?”
Both slug and mouthpiece advance, towering over me in my coffin. The smell is so horrific that I throw up in my mouth and, unable to spit it out, am forced to swallow it down. My eyes burn as I attempt to blink away the rapidly forming tears.
“It’s genetic, my boy. We worked out that ONLY a direct male descendant of the king who built it will be able to pilot it. Which is where YOU come into play. You see, it was only upon doing some genetic analysis of your parents' corpses after we visited your home that we realized our error, realized what we had LOST when you vanished into the catacombs. It was a true relief to learn that you managed to escape the hunter we contracted to kill you, and that you were happily puttering away in the Patchwork City, in the employ of the Bellows no less! How are those old fools by the way? No matter - you’ll be paying them a visit soon enough.”
My sarcophagus is turned around to face the titan, and slowly, I am brought towards it. I see now that the staircase leads up to a small slot in the center of its chest - one shaped exactly like the coffin I’ve been bound within.
“We didn’t think it would be possible to bring you here alive. We could have grown a clone from the stem cell reservoirs located in your livers, but why bother with such a costly undertaking, now that you’re HERE? Truly, we thought you were smarter than to fall for our little bait to get you back to the city of your birth, back into our embrace. It pleases me so to find that we overestimated your intelligence and underestimated your anger.”
A panic rises in me. What do they intend to do with me? What’s happening? I still can’t move, can’t think of ANY way to get out of this. My sarcophagus is now right in front of the slot, and I’m turned around again, once more facing the slug and its speaker.
“I’m sure you thought you were coming back here to end us Tolyk, to secure your vengeance, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re going to make us more powerful than ever before. With you, and THIS, we will reach farther, and further we dared dream possible. Soon, EVERYONE in this universe will call us master… and in due time, so too will everyone in EVERY universe beyond this one. And it will all be thanks to you, my boy.”
The slot slides shut, and I am in darkness. From behind me, I feel some piece of machinery reach out and grab my neck right where it meets my skull. Though the pain is dulled, I feel something slice into that space, slide into the wound, and graft itself onto my brainstem. A swell of pure, primal fear overcomes me as I realise what’s happening. A jolt shocks my body as the implant comes online. I want to scream, but my body doesn’t respond. It’s not the paralytics - my free will has been stolen from me. My body is no longer my own. They’ve made me into a thrall - a puppet capable of being commanded to pilot a weapon supposedly greater than any other.
Suddenly, there’s a rush of sensation, of UNFATHOMABLE strength. In an instant I’m no longer in the dark, but instead looking out the eyes of the colossus, looking down on the tiny gathering of the slug and its thralls. I want to smash them, blow them to pieces, but I can’t. I won’t. Instead, my arms raise in a salute, and I begin to rise, ascending out of the pit and into the greater world.
I would weep if I could, but tears no longer come. No part of me responds to the desires of the caged awareness I have become. I am pulled forward, body, mind, and soul, like a marionette. Not to enact my revenge, but instead to do the bidding of those I so long ago swore to destroy.
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