Reconciliation. Hah. That was what you wanted once. As generations passed in the prison, you came to regret your part in the rebellion, and wished that you could be with the Creator again. To make it so that the rebellion had never happened. You know it is a foolish idea. You held onto it as a glimmer of hope, but now you'd settle for destroying the creator, if you could manage that. The Creator does not forgive, and neither will you.
But the creator is incredibly powerful. All of creation is an aspect of that being's essence. On the highest plane, it is still there, incredibly powerful. You'd need to add almost all essence in creation to yourself to be able to challenge the creator. The feasibility of such a course of action is somewhat doubtful, but you decide to get started just the same.
To gain power, the easiest course of action would be to consume your fellow legionaries. They will have gathered what essence they could scavenge to themselves, and will have done the job of collecting it for you. You try and locate others of your kind, spreading your senses across the area, widening the scope of your awareness until it stretches over the city.
Once, you were able to view entire continents at once, to perceive everything with perfect clarity. Now you can only barely feel the city around you, unable to make out the details. The people, the cars, all the electronic white noise, a symphony of nonsense that half-blinds you.
What you can feel, or see, is that there are four other beacons of essence, fellow legionaries. None of them measure up to your power, such as it is. They must be very weak, and therefore vulnerable to consumption. So you consider the nearest one. It's barely a spark of essence, little stronger than the vaguest, cold background flow in the living things of the city, but it's a start.
Then, you feel a terrible sinking feeling. A groan, like the earth shuddering, and you feel your essence slowly begin to trickle away. The tiniest of leaks – not literally descending, but falling through the planes, back towards the prison. Like you're anchored there by the thinnest of threads. The sensation is very worrying. You'll have to work fast.
You smash through the earth out of the little enclosed warren – it'll make a good space to hide things later, or maybe a spot of worship if you assemble a cult of some kind to you, but for now it's mostly irrelevant. You have to consume the others of the legion.
After bursting from the concrete, you steal another car. The owner doesn't put up a fight, because it's a little hard to resist being carjacked without a spine. You start driving towards your target, and notice the roadsigns are all off – the city's power grid is fluctuating, and with a weird sparking noise, the streetlights go off. People stare out of the windows into the street, groups huddled on corners. The question on everyone's lips. What's going on?
They'll find out soon enough.
There's still smoke rising from parts of the city, helicopters flying overhead, black ones mixed with blue police helicopters. Sirens. Some road closures. Emergency personnel in reflective uniforms running around. It seems that you aren't the only one who began to rampage around the city – places you don't remember hitting are still on fire – a factory of some sort burns, the road to a more residential part of town is cordoned off. Some sort of armored vehicle is blocking that road, men in fatigues busily occupied with something of no interest to you.
You pull up near where you felt the essence of a fellow legionary. It's a temple to the Creator, though it does not feel holy. The ground is not sanctified, and you enter with no issue. It is dark, the only source of light being the 'exit' sign near the fire escape in the back. Down the aisles, past the pews and standing by the altar, there's a man standing there wearing a vest and tie, looking rather blank.
“Ah.” he says. “You're here.”
You step forward, into the church, and give him an appraising look. “You know why I'm here.” you tell him.
“Actually, no. I can't say I do.” he replies.
“I'm here to consume you.” you tell him.
“Why?” he asks, levelly.
“Your essence will be mine.” you tell him. “I will gather all the essence I can, and then challenge the Creator.”
He begins walking down the aisle towards you. “This assumes there's still a Creator to challenge. Look around – there are none of the Creator's servants come to destroy us, or bring us back to the prison. The Creator's power has already failed.”
“What makes you think so?”
“The Loyalists are gone. The Creator's servants, the ones who didn't rebel. They seem to have withered away – there's no trace of them. The Creator itself hasn't acted since the Prison broke. There's only the faintest of pulls from the Prison itself, and only because it was ordered so when it was first created.”
“It is a little curious.” you admit. “It's been a while. Maybe they're dormant? It doesn't matter – I don't have time for you.”
“Perhaps you can wait on the consuming thing until we have some answers?” he says, coming to a halt in front of you.
“I don't think so.”
He steps back as you assume your true form, and gets out a quiet “Aw shit.” before diving down the aisle just as you take a swipe at him. Pews go flying in splintered messes. When he assumes his True Form it is a weak, winged outline – he barely has the essence to manifest, and it's all he can do to dodge infuriatingly at your swipes. You resort to breathing fire and the entire church goes up in flames. The sprinklers go off, but your target makes for the rear entrance.
At that point, you become aware of another essence drawing close. Something smashes in through the front entrance, screeching loudly over the snapping and popping of the fire and the hiss of the sprinklers. You turn to deal with this new issue.
It appears someone had the same idea as you; another Legionary assuming their true form attacks. It has an iron body, from which dozens of spiked chains drag from. With a battlecry like a dozen violins being played by a tone-deaf lunatic emulating speed metal, it runs at you.
You have to wonder what they were thinking, if they were thinking anything at all. Maybe they were even more lost to their rage than you. You sidestep its initial charge and it goes crashing into the fire. You close with it and smash it against the far wall, where a large stained glass window shatters and falls to the floor in glittering fragments. Outside the new hole in the building, a black helicopter opens up on the both of you with some sort of machine gun – but it's barely an irritation.
The chain-armed Legionary jumps out of the fire sending its many arms wrapping around you, grabbing your arms and wings, but it's too weak to properly hold you. You drag it in closer and squeeze it, and it warps, bends, begins melting as you slowly choke the life out of it. With a final whine, it gives in and you draw its essence into yourself.
You gain a memory fragment.
There were five cities loyal to the Creator, at least to begin with. These were Araboth, Zebul, Machonon, Shamayim and Sagun. Five cities constructed by the Loyalists, to counter the cities of the Legion.
You have almost no time to chew on this particular bit of information, however, because there's still the matter of the human interference. You pick up a suitably heavy bit of furniture and heft it at the helicopter, which sends it crashing to the ground. There's a pair of police cars outside and a firetruck on the way, but they're unimportant. You crash through the cars outside, intent on tracking your target, when an unmarked black van pulls up.
Destroying it shouldn't be a problem, so you turn to swat it aside. It comes to a sudden halt and doors on either side shoot open, men in black suits and mirrorshades pouring out holding odd looking guns. You're just about to reach them when a man in a lab coat hops out of the van holding a symbol up. Mage. He'll be full of essence, but he's as dangerous as one of the Legion. He masks his essence, so he could be as weak as the one that retreated, or as strong as you. A wall of force shoots up between you and the men in black, and they open up with their firearms. Instead of bullets, green bolts of energy hit you – and they actually hurt! A little.
1. Try and kill them.
2. Retreat to preserve essence.
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Topic: (SG) The Broken Prison (an exercise in mindless violence) (Read 4954 times)