Alpha
...the steps continued for several minutes before they eventually stopped...
An eerie silence started filling the spaceship once more, Grisha could hear his very heartbeat...and Golms stomach, until suddenly...
...
The steps continued again, this time in the other direction, whatever this thing was, was apparently incredibly dumb...or simply didn´t take any interest in entering the ship...
Slowly they came closer to the void, it was even larger than expected, the massive black disc stretching from one side of the view to the other, long purple and red lightnings occassionally lashed out from it´s borders, a green and a black silhouette were also somewhere in range of it´s borders, lights occassionally sparking up between them...
Spatial-Temporal-Anomaly [Beyond][Finished]
"Can't be much longer now. This is the last time I'm willingly going to the Bloodcult territory."
"But how about the lovely beasties who live there?"
"Didn't I tell you Golm? Those things would rather smell your underpants than befriend with you. Maybe they would be even so disgusted by your presence that they would burn you alive instead of eating you."
"But in my bo..."
"Your book is fiction! Do you ever listen to what I say?"
"What is fiction?"
Grisha gives Golm a light smack at the back of his head.
"Idiot."
- Edited
Alpha
...as they continued to drift utter blackness started enveloping the ship, a deep dread started filling the mind of the Orcs, behind them the white void, red and purple lightning strikes passing by the ship, lighting up the bridge...
The ship itself started creaking like a tree in a storm and the two dot´s in the distance turned out to be the ships they saw earlier, though at this point rather than the black ship following the green one, the black one simply stood there motionless, firing long ranged blasts of light at the green one in the distance which also halted near the borders of the dark sphere...
Then one of the lightningstrikes hit the green ship, literally impaling it from one side to the other and without any further sounds it drifted off, being devoured by the blackness they were themselves heading towards...
Their ship accellerated, the white of the antispace was no longer visable, just utter darkness surrounded them...
One of the lightning strikes hit the ship and all system simply ceased to function the exact same moment, the only thing still lighting up the ship were the now quite frequent lightning strikes, Grisha heard someone screaming until realizing a few moments later it was Golm...and himself, he couldn´t remember when he started...
Then they submerged in the sphere, Grisha saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing...
...and then the gaze came, Grisha didn´t feel his own body, but he saw the stare of this eye which was floating amidst a blackness so dark it was damaging his mind, though less than the eye itself...
Yet, he couldn´t avert his eyes, his mind was fixated on the gaze of this "thing", it felt like it try tried to devour all he was, all he had been and all he could possibly ever be by simply staring through his entire being...
For a brief moment which felt like eternity itself, the stare continued, straining his sanity to it´s limits, then...
(Well and this is the point where we´ll wait for Randos next reply before we continue, so we´ll all see what happens simultaneously. Crypts reply comes when I´m alive again tomorrow or rather today morning .)
RandomCommander
...as the Cores drifted silently in the anti-space the environment slowly started to change, occassionally Hunter-beasts started to drift by, most of them unconscious others apparently cought in some weird sort of trance, as the cores had spent so much time in the Cults territory they were not registered as an immediate threat...
As they continued to drift a large black sphere started coming into sight on the white background, slowly growing in size, the closer they came, purple and red lights flashing occassionally at it´s borders...
Only a few minutes later both, the Cores and the Cult beasts, started accellerating due to the pull of whatever was there in the distance, a massive construct seemingly consisting of three interconnected moons came into sight near the sphere, though only moments later it was hit by a massive red lightning which lashed out from the sphere and then started to drift off into the blackness, eventually disappearing within it...
Due to the excessive energy levels the threat sensors of the cores started triggering and some of them awoke, however by this time it was already too late, the pull outmatched the Cultbeasts and Bloodcores propulsion power, as they got drawn further in the man on top of the Bloodcore simply stood there, silent, unmoving...
In horror the active cores watched as one Core after the other got hit by purple and red lightning and deactivated in utter silence, their pings going silent on the network of the Bloodcores, drifting off to the massive black sphere which now encompassed their entire sight, the entire process went so fast that once the mentally already strained core awoke it had no time to react, the last thing it saw was a purple flash of light piercing the core it was on, sending them both unconscious once more...
...
As all cores and beasts had been incapacitated, the man turned his head in an impossible angle towards the point where the other being was currently standing on the orcs ship, which submerged in it´s corresponding sphere at roughly about the same time...
"Free at last, hm?"
...was the only thing he noted before he submerged in the black sphere along with the remaining few beasts and cores...
...
When they passed the borders of the sphere the Android awoke again...or at least he thought so, as his mind booted up he was surrounded by a familiar, unreal blackness, ahead of him the horrific stare which had already driven him to the borders of madness once, incapable of averting his focus, unable to scream, he floated cought amongst the void once more, his existance diminishing to an insignificant point amongst an endless, infinite, eternal void, stared upon by an entity with a hunger equally as insatiable as the void was vast...
( @RandomCommander @Alpha To be continued once I´m back from work...)
Drakador_Chaos (Very nice design your square)
Gladiaxa Selfmade.
Drakador_Chaos (It does look great, anyways I'm not sure if I can reply on this, as the minds of Grisha and Golm are both fixated on whatever they are fixated on.)
Alpha (A reply is currently not required as it´s technically a cliffhanger, partly due to my lack of time to continue until I´m back from work.)
- Edited
Drakador_Chaos Alpha
( I realize I took too long, but I never expect to type up walls of text - somehow it just happens )
The Last Reaper - or so it thought - senses a disturbance. No other bloodcore felt it, only this one. It's like a new part of it that is now far away has gotten itself into trouble... The patches of corridor-skin on the armored suits, with the Reaper sigils! The Uruks they befriended in an impromptu manner! Something dreadful threatens them!
Wait, no... something dreadful threatens the Bloodcores as well!
The Reaper re-awakens and maneuvers away from its friends, turning towards the fragment it once came from... Nothing out of the ordinary? The corrupted core of the once free soul within the ship makes a hypothesis: Everything is backwards here. Building upon the term Anti-space, the Bloodcores are floating within a massive, occupied area-- no... that doesn't seem correct... but they seem to be on the right track.
The laws of each layer differ from each other. The first step is to determine the layer... Force... Width... Space... Time... Parallel... Possibility...
This is the Fifth layer. Space and Time are processed through a set of laws parallel to the set they are familiar with, but presented in a way with definitive similarities and differences. This layer has the most flexibility in the case of interacting with the Sixth to allow a conduit for the Collective's powers - the Rift of unlimited possibility and manipulative mentality.
So most laws are flipped upside-down with relativity to Space at any given moment, but not all are. Already, some facts are noticeable - the electromagnetic spectrum is inversed, and anti-matter is more prevalent here. There are conduits which matter is allowed, the rest of space is filled with a deadly energy that consumes all it comes into contact with - at least those who do not adapt to the backwards nature that is an abyss of pure chaos.
Wait... It's not anti-matter! It's...!
The Bloodcore shakes a little as infected, bloody hardpoints begin to raise powerful weapon platforms from within the hull, and the plates once again harden and close together - except a small part beside the old man, in which the same Android from before frantically scurries out from inside the Bloodcore. The singular, bloodshot eye that contrasts the mechanical visor of the other half has a widened pupil, but a narrow glare, and small letters and numbers seem to scroll past the visor in a very fast speed. It seems a fight-or-flight response was triggered, and the Bloodcore chose to fight.
"That darkness from before! The dreadful, consuming stare! It's back! HOW DO WE SURVIVE IT!?"
...
As the Bloodcores one by one reawaken and the man dissapears, the Android looks on in worry. His question was only vaguely answered... then the Bloodcores lost themselves in the stare. They did not feel the lightning strikes that deactivated them.
- Edited
RandomCommander
...an unknown amount of time later, the reaper awoke amongst it´s brethern, they were floating in space...
An endless void, covered with stars...
...stars...
A brief moment later he realized they were back in realspace, his now equally mentally scarred brethern scattered in the space surrouning him, regardless of what just happened they surprisingly all seemed to be mostly intact...
As he started to take a look at the surrounding space he ntoiced that there was no sign of the Cultbeasts which had been with them in the antispace, the same could be said about the orcs which were nowhere to be seen...
Then, somewhere behind him the next surpise waited for him, as he turned massive, black, oddly shaped pillars came into his field of view, covered in odd red runes and lines, lights floating amongst the construct...
While the construct was certainly massive, he didn´t know just how far away it was until his more advanced sensors sprung back to life, which indicated that the construct was in fact a rather excessive distance away, considering the visual size and the distance to the object, each of the segments would have to be several astral units long, the patterns on it´s surface dimly pulsating like a living heart...
After a few minutes all of his systems were back online, telling him that they were somewhere along the approximate borders of the universe, far beyond any cartographed sectors...
At least it was still the universe they came from as as he could tell...
Over time the other bloodcores also sprung back to life, as he tried to get information on damages or losses he noticed that the man which had accompanied them...was also gone...
Alpha
...an unknown amount of time later, the Uruks awoke in the ship they had occupied...
Grisha felt weird, the ship was floating silently amongst space as the stars passed by...
Grisha stared...Stars! Were they back? Golm was still in the same seat in which he left him, though he was currently still asleep, or unconscious, from what it looked like...
The ships systems started to spring back to life and notified him that they were somewhere in neutral space between BloodCult and Kel´Shir territory...
...it took him a few minutes to realize that the steps had stopped, whatever had been walking on their hull before they left the weird place they had been at. was either also uncosncious, or gone...
That is when he rememberred yet another thing, frantically he ran around the ship towards every single on eof it´s windows...
Neither the black nor the green ship were here, they were both gone...
Yet there was no sign of the Bloodcores either...
A few moments later noises came from the cockpit, indicating Golm had awoken, and was likely struggling to get rid of the security belt...
Drakador_Chaos
After a while of helping Golm remove the safety belt, Grisha decides they stayed there for long enough
"It is time to get the shrakh out of here, Golm?"
"Yes Grisha?"
"Make sure the engineer and Saint are still safe, I'm going to fire up the engines and prepare for a warp back at the fleet near Eriero."
Slowly the engines start heating up again, they only need to do the required safety checks before they are ready to go.
- Edited
Alpha
...There had been no further interruptions, nothing out of the ordinary happened, yet there was no sign of anything else which had been with them in this weird place...
...the Warp drives spin up and Golm and Grisha get away safely, along with their "souvenirs".
None of the Bloodcores knew what happened or what to do now... except the one unfortunate enough to have a twice-encounter with the "eye," the one formerly self-proclaimed as the "Last Reaper."
Many questions linger within the pack of Bloodcores. What is going on in the Core territories of the Bloodcult? What happened to the Inquisitor Bloodcores? Where are they now? What is that giant gateway and who was it made by? The Last Reaper then drew attention to itself to address its troubled brethren...
"We were just transported into another dimension by the powers of the hivemind - whoever that may be as of now. Our directive should be to return to the core territories and assess the state of the Cult. We can search for the Inquisitor Bloodcores when we have more information on their whereabouts. For now, we must make the pilgrimage. We should also make an effort to hunt down any localized Collective assets to bolster our numbers once more."
Rallied, the Bloodcores begin their journey Coreward. They make haste to retreat from the massive warpgate behind them - it reminded them too much of events that transpired which had scarred their memory banks.
- Edited
RandomCommander
The moment they got some distance from the massive gate it simply disappeared without any traces or Special-effects, apart of that nothing out of the ordinary happened, considering they were at the borders of universe...
(If the Inquisitor-Cores where with the other cores then they were likely with them in the Anti-Space as well, so they, theoretically, should be here with them. If not they probably dropped out somewhere nearby, or near Cult-territory should they have been on the same shard as the Orcs. I will leave that one to you.)
Drakador_Chaos ((Hrm, maybe some of the Bloodcult ships that appeared last-minute were actually Inquisitor Bloodcores, and had been transported somewhere nearby, separate from both the Reaper Bloodcores and the Cultbeasts.))
One of the Bloodcores suddenly registers familliar signals from a nearby sector... VERY familliar signals. The Reapers deploy one of their scarce Blood-Rift beacons and generate pathways for their Rift-drives that are lenient on the allowance of Cultmagic. About a few minutes after the Beacon had finished setting up, Rift-signatures were detected and the Inquisitor Bloodcores enter the sector.
Noticing the improved potential of The Last Reaper, the Bloodcores all began to respect it and follow its orders. Earning the name of Dral'Zaard Voth'ahr, or Warleader Dral, he led the Bloodcores toward the center of the galaxy, to return to familiar land and see what has happened.
RandomCommander
Alpha
Event end.
...for now.