Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #66 – Möbius

The scorpion tail impacted once again with Lacrima’s black blade. Sparks flew all over the place, all while the guns roared, bullets pierced the metallic body of the assailant. The spikes protected all the vital sections, only surface damage and dents sullied its massive frame. All while its blade kept shredding the walls, meeting resistance at every slash. Lacrima dashed forward, raised her sword in a perfect vertical arc. The weapon clashed with the spider legs, bounced on them. She let her arm vines loose, spread them like the tentacles of a sea anemone, wrapped them around the closest spider leg. The pull unbalanced the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮, almost to the point of making it fall. Its forward manipulators stopped the momentum, solidified its stance. Lacrima left the grip, jumped in with a wide, horizontal slash, aiming at the joints, the knees of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮. A heavy weight on her hips, something striking them at full force, throwing her away like a rag doll. The tail. The scorpion tail had turned around, hitting her in the middle of her leap, using her momentum against her. Lacrima landed badly on the tiles, bounced on the floor, slid on the ground. She gritted her teeth, stood up one more time. Breathed. Breathed. That creature. That biomechanical thing targeted the soldiers at every chance it got, forcing her to move around more than she intended to. By attacking them, it made her dance to its tempo, exhausting her stamina quicker than she had expected.

A grin opened on her face.

Any other rhizome would have been in trouble, after overexerting themselves so much. Any other rhizome, except her. Green fluid dripped out of her flower again, before drying up. Her vascular system was generating new lymph faster than she could consume it, refilling the amount she used up to keep acting. All thanks to her watering can. All thanks to their union. All thanks to her water. A painful lessons imparted to Lacrima by her better replacement, one that bore fruit in the most unthinkable way. It was as if she unlocked a trick for infinite fuel, or something that looked like it – at least on short stints. The more it went forward, the more her delicate balance would break, but for rapid exchange of blows it was as if she couldn’t run out of energy. She redirected her excess again to her arm, forging, knitting new connections in her plant tissue.

The scorpion tail started moving one more time, all while the guns roared, all while the sides of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ were riddled with countless bullets. The metal coating regenerated, the wires, the pipes rebuilt the damaged sections. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ raised its manipulators, swung them down like dual guillotines. Lacrima slid underneath them, thrusted her blade up. The tip of her weapon scratched the belly of the beast, cracked it. Before bursting into a shower of black fragments, leaving only a hilt. Lacrima spun her legs, jumped back on her feet, pulled one of the vines of her left ‘arm’. The vine twisted, consolidated, turned into a new blade right in her hand. Fragile. Improvised. Quantity over quality. The only way to harness her true potential.

The new sword slashed one of the shoulder of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮, severed the arm from the rest of the body. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ growled, swung its tail once more, faster than Lacrima could follow with her eye. A knife edge emerged from its tip.

And pierced the rhizome right in her chest, just above the belly button.

Lacrima gasped, her pupil shrunk, her mouth agape. The tail reeled her in, slammed her to the ground, then to the wall, then against a display, breaking it, crushing the glass-like surface. A cobweb of cracks spread on the screen, green fluid soaked the blade, dripping down on the rings of the tail. Lacrima squirmed, kicked with her legs, bit her lips. The wound pulsated, sending jolts of pain through her body. She was pinned like a dead butterfly, yet still fighting, still trying to free herself. She raised her sword, screamed, swung it down. The blade shattered in a mist of shards, breaking in half as soon as it thrashed the metal, denting it in a desperate strike. Still, the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ didn’t flinch, didn’t bend. It pushed its nail deeper into her chest, causing her to jolt again, lymph to spray out of the wound.

Yet, Lacrima smirked. That was exactly what she wanted. She wrapped her arm, her vines around the tail, forced it even deeper inside her body, trying to keep herself from puking, from writhing in pain. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ kept its gaze trained on its prisoner, on that grimace of suffering that crossed her face. Till it heard something, something mixed with the continuous ratatata of the guns, something that went almost unnoticed at first.

A sound different from anything else.

A sound repeated multiple times.

The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ felt something hitting its spider legs, bouncing close to them.

Its eyes turned down, glanced at the origin of that weird noise.

And recoiled immediately after.

Just an instant before the grenades exploded.

Burning through the metal, scrapping away parts of its armor, ripping wires and pipes from every limb. All the legs on its left side were trounced by the explosions, craters in the metallic floors, shrapnel flying everywhere, piercing the spiked body. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ fell on its side, stopped its fall with its hand, shrieked, screamed in something akin to agony. Words chewed, barely contained by its speaking grid, words in a language that felt similar and yet so different from what Lacrima knew. A human language, no less, one she thought she heard somewhere before. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ shook its head, its eyes burned brighter. The wires and pipes twitched and twisted, as red fluid poured out of them, out of the severed limbs. Gunfire invested the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ one more time, opening more and more holes, causing its voice to thunder again through the salvo. It suddenly swung its tail like a whip, in a fit of rage, throwing Lacrima away. That freed its blade again, still bathed in green drops, but now ready to strike. Lacrima crash landed on the tiles, rolled on the floor, slid on the ground till her momentum waned. She stopped on her knees, slowly stood up. Breathe. Breathe. She tapped her hand on her wound, focused all of her lymph there. Her skin started to repair, the hemorrhage to subside, the broken flesh to seal. More lymph. She still had more lymph. She retook control of her vines, coiled them into a mockery of an arm. Her human fingers went for her belt, pulled out a short knife from a holster, pushed the button on the hilt. Plasma burned up on the blade, making it shine in the dim lights of the room.

That fizzling noise caught the attention of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮, made it turn around. New spider legs emerged from its body, replaced those destroyed by the bombs, as wires slithered and creeped, digesting the stumps of their predecessors. Its tail swung once more, in a wide horizontal arc. The Pangean soldiers ducked, threw themselves to the ground, kept their guns under their bodies. But the tail stopped mid swing, twisted up. And slammed down in a terrifying vertical slash.

Bisecting one of the men.

Cutting him in half.

Under the horrified gaze of his comrades.

Under the angered gaze of Lacrima.

“Sophoros! We lost Sophoros!”

Panic. The soldiers were struck by panic. They broke ranks, started shooting all together, in a chaotic pattern that lost all of its regularity. And the tail swung once more. Looming over Soulaki. Lacrima growled, dashes in front of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮, raised her plasma knife, intercepted the swipe at the last moment. A glowing gash opened in its armor, segments of the scorpion tail broke down, severed from the rest of its rings. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ wailed, screamed, its voice echoed in the chamber in a cacophony of sounds. Lacrima listened to them again. It felt like a human language, but not the language of exchange. More similar to the dialect of that woman at the market, the one who tried to sell her fake bird feathers. Yet, it was unquestionably a language. She put some distance between herself and the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮, looked at it, at the convulsions of its body, at the emergence of a new tail nail – one more similar to an harpoon than to a knife. The creature screamed one more time, its voice blasting through its speakers.

[[▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮! ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮!]]

Those were words. There was no mistake. Lacrima couldn’t understand them, but it was clear that the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ could communicate. So, she stomped her foot on the ground, roared, shadowed the noises, the screams, the utterances.

“Please, stop! We just want to contain the swarm! This fight is meaningless!”

The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ raised its tail, arced it above its body.

[[Meaningless?!]]

Death rained from above. Harpoons shot in a repeated pattern, a storm of metal piercing other metal. The soldiers pulled up their tactical shields, broke the incoming fire, as more and more of their protection layers were chipped and dented by the spikes. Lacrima felt a cold touch through her shoulder, through her thigh, through her hips. She fell back, as green fluid poured from the holes, as every nerve flared, as the skin, the flesh quickly patched itself over and over. Her body was pumping out lymph, turning water and nutrients into it, in an endless cycle that was draining her. She let her back tendrils grow, burst out of her dress, delve into the corpses of the Niteowls, suck their water out. She had to keep up. She had to keep fighting. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ loomed over her, a new harpoon growing out of its tail in record time.

[[This is not meaningless, you ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮! You have no right to be here!]]

Lacrima retracted the vines, recalled her anchors, slashed the legs of the creature. The plasma blade burned through their armor, breaking one of them. The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ limped, growled, lashed its two manipulators like whips. Lacrima deflected the first, slid under the second. Then, she thrusted the knife under the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮’s belly, melted through it. The arachnid legs kicked her out, two of them together, making her hit the floor at full speed. She gasped, barely managed to stand up again. Green droplets fell from her flower. Her body was slowly reaching her limit.

[[We’ve waited so long to see the sky again. So long. You can’t fathom it, you can’t even fathom it! So! Long!]]

The ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ felt something on its legs. Grenades. One more time. It bellowed, leapt upwards, turned mid-air, clasped the ceiling. The bombs exploded, shattering the screens, the panels, spreading shrapnel all over the place. The guns sang, riddling its body with bullets, making more and more red fluid splash around. Lacrima reignited the blade, stared at the colossal figure, now standing upside down, hanging from above.

“…we? You said… we?! Who… who are you?”

The tail swung in a wide horizontal slash, breaking down more displays, trouncing the screens. Sparks discharged around the room, the lights flickered.

[[We are the only true humans left on this planet]]

The body of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ twisted, twitched, more manipulators emerged from it. The tail split, turning into a fan of spires, the spikes extended. Tendrils emerged from its core, spread all around like a net. Before Lacrima could retort, the figure elongated, expanded, turned into a gruesome tangle of cables and wires.

[[We’ve been here from the beginning. We travelled through space from Earth, for thousands of years and waited thousands of years longer]]

Rows of spider legs emerged from its sides, new spikes sprouted. The massive body let go of the ceiling, slammed on the ground. The tangle of black metal wires writhed, turned up, rose like a tower, the red eyes glowing brighter in the dimly lit room. The surviving screens switched on all at the same time, displayed a distorted white and black noise pattern, shining like a halo around the massive figure.

[[We are the crew of Lagash]]

The panels on the ceiling opened all together, one by one. Eyes. Red eyes everywhere. White masks. Spider legs. Black metal. The soldiers gasped backed down. Lacrima stood still, incapable of reacting, incapable of grasping the grandness of the scene unfolding in front of her eyes.

[[We make the rules]]

What once was a scorpion tail spread out in ten, twenty spiked appendages.

And they bursted forward, all directed towards Lacrima.

From every direction at once.

**

Robin lay down in the water, her nape almost submerged, her hair completely wet. Kryzalid stood close to her, kept her hand in hers, closed her fingers around it.

“Robbie, this is… this is suicidal, you know that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then…”

“I want to do it. End of the discussion.”

The memory crystal of the ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ was safely taped on her bare chest, while her body, her whole body, was placidly washed by the dirty waters that flowed through the corridor. It was warm, with lumps of congealed blood floating all over it. Yet, Robin didn’t care. The cables from her neck were ready to connect, ready to dive through that alien conscience, an alien that used the same recording mechanism as her species. That had to mean something, it couldn’t be a coincidence. And, if she let that occasion go unused, she might have never had another chance to do that.

Everyone knew how likely it was for each of them to meet their end there, in the belly of that colony ship. Nobody of them expected to get to see the day after, deep within. So, they understood. Maybe not consciously, but they understood.

“I just need five minutes.”

That was what she asked for. Five minutes to try her luck. Five minutes to scan the depths of that crystal. Five minutes out of the thirty-five they had left. Without further ado, she stripped down to her skin, immersed herself in that thin layer of water. Not enough to cool her down, maybe just enough to let her get a short peek inside that repository of memories. Line patterns glowed all over her skin, her emerald shone too, a bright green light in the gallery. All while Kryzalid was keeping her hand close in hers. Trembling. Shaking. Robin didn’t give much weight to that. Kryzalid was a weird woman, one that she couldn’t get a read on. She could have almost believed that, somehow, that societal reject, that absolute horny fool, cared about her wellbeing.

That was, of course, impossible.

That weird mix of undesirable human traits, one that thought with her private parts more than with her brain, one that was absolutely prey of her own feelings, henpecked by her cravings, could not care about her. Could not care about anything except getting laid.

So, there was no reasons to care about her either.

Robin sighed.

That was, of course, a lie.

Kryzalid suffered enough. Kryzalid saw her whole world collapse and put up a brave front. She was a creep, true, and was weirdly fond of being wrapped by plant vines, but that was just one part of her. The rest was what Robin was desperately trying to ignore. If she didn’t, she couldn’t have found the resolve to connect, to try that desperate maneuver.

“Okay, Robbie, but… don’t overdo it, awright? Me and them soldiers will keep an eye on the corridor, ‘kay?”

Kryzalid tapped Robin’s gem, patted her wet hair.

“If anything happens or a spider barges in, we pull the plug. No ifs or buts.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Then, why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to know that we ain’t leaving you behind… even if you’re an annoying prick with a secret agenda that played mystery gal too much for her own good, you know?”

Robin groaned, let go of Kryzalid’s fingers.

“Was that supposed to be a compliment, Chris?”

“No, no, I was dissing you.”

A smile opened on the elf’s face, a genuine smile for once.

“Well, at least some things never change.”

“As it should be.”

Robin’s hand closed around the small crystal, almost to the point of cutting her palm. The connector was just hanging outside of the socket, ready to become one with it.

“Oh, one last thing.”

Chris’s voice again. Robin rolled her eyes, groaned.

“Yes?”

“If you stumble on some second-hand horniness… don’t. I ain’t gonna let you kiss me again in that state, ‘kay? That was hella creepy.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kiss any trashy weirdo against my will. I don’t care about kisses at all.”

“Then, why were you so annoyed that nobody shared their bed with you last night?”

Robin fell silent, almost bit her lip, still keeping the small gemstone in her grasp. Only for Kryzalid’s hand to caress her hair one more time.

“Seriously, if you want a piece of my body, be a chad and ask me that directly. Ask and you shall be given once – if Laccy’s okay with it, of course, but! No sucker-kissing me! No sucker-hugging me! And absolutely no sucker-fucking me! Alright, Robbie?”

“…I’ll think about it.”

“…and, hey, Robbie…?”

Robin shook her head, groaned once again.

“Yes?”

“Good luck. And, please… come back. I hate you to the guts and I’d like to shove my foot up your ass for how much you fucked up… but you paid enough in advance. You can’t give up now, awright?”

Robin felt her cheeks burning a little, her heartbeat accelerating. Still, she silenced them. She silenced that sudden reaction of her body. Neither the time, nor the place. She heaved a long sigh, felt the embrace of the water on her skin, closed her eyes.

Then, she plug the jack into the crystal.

And a vortex of memories invaded her mind.

Memories of another existence.

Now mingling with her brain.

In a neverending loop that circled back to the beginning.

As a prelude to end.