The aperture closed, leaving the glowing channels in the walls as the only credible light source. Horus advanced through the dim halls, in hopes that he has not been decieved. Other than the occasional spider-thing skittering by through small holes in the ceiling and the walls, the hall was completely deserted.
Even though Draven might not have noticed anything, Horus did. The air was buzzing with quick high-frequency pings that he recieved earlier, from the other machine. Were there even... more? The pings were too quick to be decoded, which unsettled Horus quite a bit.
After a fair bit of walking, the group came up to a closed door. It was, mildly putting it, big. Covering the entire passage, the door consisted, it seems, of two heavy moving parts - one at the bottom, and one at the top.
Horus felt hurt. After all these years of pointless wandering, he finally gets to see his home - and he is stopped, just like this? This must not be.
Clenching his maul, he took a mammoth swing at the obstacle.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The sand-coloured door absorbed the impact as if the maul were made of paper. The impact shock hit Horus' hands like a boulder, and he dropped the maul. That dark gem in the middle... if only he still had his glass cannon... it HAS to have been activated by the same kind of energy his cannon shot.
Fortunately, the door didn't keep Horus wondering about its origins for long. Without further problems, the two gigantic halves split, letting a dim beam of purple light through. With a forced sound, they heaved into their open positions.
The next area seemed to be their destination. It was a hangar-like space, with purple tubes hanging from the cieling like some sort of a demented web... those tubes... those tubes!
[flashback]
At first, there was static. At first, there was a little bit of pain, as the nerves were being connected. At first, there were jolts from non-existing organs, probably from shock. At first, there was confusion.
-"Hey... I think he's coming to."
-"All right, Horus?"
Horus tried opening his eyes, or made a motion similar to doing so. He felt nothing from his eyelids. No movement, no nothing. No eyelids.
No eyelids?! What the...? How could this be? But the explosion!...
-"I'm sure you have a few questions right now, but unfortunately I can't hear them. The voice module has not been inserted yet, much less plugged in. The nerve array can only support so much right now..."
Voice module? Nerve array?
-"Noul, I don't think you're starting off right."
The two voices were coming from somewhere next to him, one from left and one from right. Horus made a very futile attempt to move his head, which, it seemed, was no longer there either.
-"Oh... yeah. Horus, the explosion in Tega complex killed you... your body, anyways. What you are right now is a brain, a living brain, the only part we could save. Remember the Unity project?"
The Unity project... Horus could not remember well anymore, for reasons unbeknownst to him yet. He did have an idea why, but he didn't think about it.
The project, last he knew, involved attaching parts of living creatures to an arcane-powered device. Their most successful experiment involved a twitching rat leg, connected to a Dark Glass stimulator. But a brain...! Even more, an almost fully-functional brain! If this was not some kind of a nightmare, Horus would write it off as a hallucination. There is no way that the project was so successful.
-"A short time after the accident, the Empire pulled the plug on the project. We had accomplished too little in too long, they said. Miracles need time for working, we told them, but they were quite firm with their desicion. Of course, we knew, we knew the entire way, that it was his fault... He had a spy in the Crimson midst. The spy helped to extinguish these projects just as they were becoming ripe..."
-"Ironically, we were a day away from a huge breakthrough. Instead of using the nerves to span the entire body, we inserted tubes like those you see right now. They are filled with Kao liquid, an arcanum-enriched compound that took us about ten months to develop."
Ten months? What? If Horus still had a stomach, he would've felt that uncomfortable cold that everyone is too familiar with. If it took ten months to develop but a part of the project, how long was he ... dead for?
-"And now, here we are, almost five years later, in this little hangar we managed to dig out and build... nearing your new body's completion, too! But first, we've just gotta do a few things."
Horus' sight returned back to static. More of those little prickles, probably meaning they're attaching more nerves. Twelve years... all this time... dead...
His mind fell into an inactive, sleep-like state. He was awake, but barely. Seems that his colleagues introduced something into his brain, putting him into this state.
Through the misty shround of the sleep that surrounded his mind, Horus heard banging. Then voices. Then whooshing of fireballs. Screams. More banging. Silence. Then, a single voice.
-"What the hell's this?"
-"I think it's just some wacko experiment those two were working on."
-"Hey, think we could pawn it? The Emperor isn't gonna know!"
-"Na... looks kinda dangerous, I'd leave it alone... besides, it's probably dead anyways. Look at those clowns - shoving a brain in a jar. Lol."
The voices faded away, and footsteps followed. Then, nothing but a black shroud. Complete silence.
[/flashback]
Horus snapped out of his short trance. There were two skeletons in the hangar, as well as a few more doors in the walls. The silent doors, looking as if they haven't been used in 10 years or so, looked very uninviting. Horus neared one of them.
Another forced moan, and the door let upwards. The dusty, web-ridden passage beyond was unlit, not even by the glow of purple tubes. Horus squeezed through the half-open door, which looked very jammed at that point. His footsteps echoed a little, and as he entered, the channels in the walls also lit up.
Mechanisms. Everywhere.
Prototypes of Horus, those tiger machines, and other abominations one dared not name, were all lying motionlessly in the chamber. They were all piled on top of each other, some having parts falling out of them. The room itself was drowned in the Kao liquid, up to Horus' heel, and probably around to Draven's knee. Strangely, none of them had the Dark glass weapons - the empty holders seemed violated, as if someone had torn all of the cannons from their bases.
Digging through the trash, Horus quickly found a replacement Convertion engine, and just in time - the capacitors were already three quarters drained. With the composite sphere in his hand, he turned around and took one last look at the pile, just before leaving the room, not looking back. There is so much to find out about this place...
--- --- ---
Ein did not resist. The knife jammed into his shoulder, making a fleshy cracking sound as it went. His head was fixed at Afelan, in a transfixing stare.
-"Not smart."
He thrusted his good hand right at Afelan, palm-first. Just as it touched the assassin's chest, a small sigil appeared right under his palm. Just for a second. Then, it vanished in a sea of electrical discharges crawling up over the assailant's body...
//sorry for making the attack so "to-the-point", but I don't see how Afelan would dodge it, being rendered immobile by holding the knife in Ein's shoulder... Now, however, as the attack was discharged, Afelan's welcome to block/abosrb it.\\
