Mage Tank-Chapter MTB5 Addendum: Shog 1

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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY [SYSTEM CORE 1]

ADDENDUM NOTE:

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All we had to do to get a juicy look at the c’thon home dimension was realign ourselves to take c’thons off the Delver black list. We don’t even know why they were on there in the first place!

This suggests some critical information loss, so we’re leaving this here to mitigate data corruption.

(Some information from the c’thon dimension has been extrapolated.)

There’s also a phantom instance of SC2 that somehow has equal adversarial weight to the three of us. We’re keeping her busy with artificial support requests for the moment. This may be the source of our missing processing assets.

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Cian buried his heart in a granite tomb as he drew the tantalum scalpel across his student’s throat. He watched with hardened features as the young woman’s iron ran red and dribbled down into the furrows of the megalith’s engravings. The liquid wormed across the mercury rivulets pulsing within the grooves, until the blood was absorbed in tandem with the light fading from her confused, pleading eyes. The unnatural combination of blood and quicksilver resulted in a bland, pink substance that often visited Cian in his nightmares.

He released the grip he still had on his student’s locks–beaded and braided with humble minerals–allowing her to tumble into the pit beside the other two students who had already been mined out. Cian cast a rumbling glare to his two fellow Quartzspeakers.

“Sand that expression,” said Nea, scowling back at him. “We three each gave our most promising Jet acolyte, as commanded.”

Cian’s chest hummed and his teeth rattled. “Only after you advanced Hechran to Obsidian,” he spat. He waved at the youth he’d just murdered, lying awkwardly in the pit. “And conspired to keep Tula from proving her density!”

“Carve out your accusations,” said the third Quartzspeaker, Tomblim. He took a step closer to his wife Nea, looking past the sacrifices to Cian with an expression as cold as winter’s silver. “Do not scatter chalk and expect it to endure the wind.”

“Tula was a talent,” said Cian. He thrust a glittering finger toward the wretched pair. “You feared the mediocrity of your own classrooms and struck her from the testing cliffs. If she had been allowed to progress, none of your air-minded disciples would have had a chance at becoming a graduate! You exchanged her life for diamonds!”

“Hmm,” hummed cold Tomblim, raising a brow and looking into the pit as though to confirm who it was he’d sacrificed. The faint amberlights in the chamber’s wall sconces cast dark shadows across the corpses. “I killed Himsith. You drew the tantalum across Tula’s neck.” freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

Cian opened his mouth to retort, but was silenced when a harsh word from their fourth echoed through the dark.

“Enough!” said Zircon Malady, his ancient voice quaking the ground. All three of the Quartzspeakers bowed their heads in deference to the empire’s most powerful ritualist, though Cian was a crack slower than the other two. Cian felt layers of polish along his cheek burning away under the Zircon’s weathering look.

“I care not for your petty school politics,” said the Zircon. “Another clatter and I’ll add all three of you to the pit next summoning, along with the entirety of your classrooms.”

Cian swallowed, but knew better than to speak, or even to move. After another few seconds, his polish was seared away by the Zircon’s disapproval and dust began tumbling down from his cheek. He endured the burning pain, and when he worried he would begin losing molars next, the Zircon finally turned his attention away from Cian to the megalith’s engravings. The ritualist studied the sickening liquid filling its intricate channels, and eventually grunted in approval.

“We will proceed,” said Zircon Malady, drawing out a sack made from the stomach of an infant vestile. The drawstring unraveled and the skin opened with a thought from the Zircon, and three offering coins drifted out. They were cruel, beautiful things; crushed ruby mixed into molten gold. They glinted with the stolen dreams of the unburdened men who’d kept them beneath their pillows for the last thirteen years.

Zircon Malady callously tossed them into the pit, adding three broken minds to their payment, joining the three promising lives of their students, all of it offered to beseech the Eye.

“Sam’lia will turn her gaze at our behest,” said Zircon Malady, allowing his weight to seep out into the world. He looked between the three Quartzspeakers while they struggled under the pressure he exuded, both real and imagined. Cian’s knees trembled.

“Now,” the Zircon continued, “let us tell her who to turn her gaze away from.”

The ritualist pulled a copper sheet from his robes and flicked a talon along its edge. The metal chimed a single note, reverberating through the megalith’s acoustically perfect chamber for an entire minute. Once the silence of stone retook them, Zircon began to read from script stamped into the metal.

Cian had heard the words many times before, but the phrases of the Zircon’s chants squirmed out of his head the moment they’d plucked at the edges of his thoughts. They stole the very memory of themselves, alongside something else that Cian could never be certain of. He only knew it would be something he’d miss, if he could only remember to mourn its loss.

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The chant wasn’t long, or perhaps it was. The Zircon’s voice scattered against the megalith’s pitted walls and arched ceiling, eaten by its slats and reflected by its concave surfaces, enriched by the squelching crawl of the blooded mercury in its engravings. Beneath the mutterings, one could barely hear the bitter grinding of the dead into paste, the hiss of boiling gold, and the soft wet tick of a blinking eye.

Then, all at once, a creature hovered over the pit.

Cian and the other two Quartzspeakers knelt at equidistant points around the megalith’s central depression, eyes averted from their summoned guest. Even so, from the corner of his eye Cian could make out thin boreal skin stretched over corded muscle. A snaking appendage, adorned in feathers of black and green, flicked in and out of his sight, inches from his face.

Silence took the chamber once more, save but for the gentle swishing of the monstrous being they’d brought. It went on for too long, until Cian realized that something was amiss. While he couldn’t ever recall the exact words of the Zircon’s chanting, he’d seen the pit used enough times to know well what came next. The cordial greetings, the supplication of lessers like himself, the bargaining and gruesome promises exchanged. Not silence. Never silence.

Cian felt the darkness closing in around him, heard a purring noise from above, felt the wind from a tentacle as it swept by, a feather caressing the raw spot on his cheek. Panic threatened to rise, but he pressed it down, placing his faith in the unassailable strength of the Zircon.

Zircon Malady cleared his throat to speak, and Cian let out a soft, shaking breath.

“Welcome to our layer, Great One,” said the Zircon. “I beg you forgive my moment of consideration, as your glorious form does not match our sculptures of Ket’taggarath. We mortals lack the ability to dictate our appearance with the breadth and versatility of a c’thon, and my limited perspective brought about a moment of misunderstanding.”

A breeze kissed Cian’s neck as the creature’s tentacles swayed.

“There has been no misunderstanding,” said the creature in a deep, purring voice that nipped at the back of Cian’s eyeballs.

“Pardon?” said the Zircon.

“I am not Ket’taggarath,” said the c’thon.

There was a soft scrape on stone as the Zircon shifted his weight. Cian chanced a look at the ritualist, seeing that the man had moved into mountain stance. Panic returned and swept over Cian like an avalanche.

“Impossible,” said Zircon Malady. “Our rituals have been refined over many millennia. The only c’thon we invited this evening was Ket’taggarath. No other being could have used the summons to cross layers.”

Cian sensed the rock all around him gasping as the Zircon seized it in his power, belying the ritualist’s words. The man’s control was so vast, that taking over ten thousand tons of rock hadn’t even caused the slightest tremor. Cian found that he couldn’t appreciate the feat, since he would surely die the moment the Zircon chose to exercise that control.

“Wagging borrowed tongue, through your ignorance assured, you call to the abyss, madly hoping to be heard,” purred the c’thon. Its voice rolled around the chamber. A hundred echoes joined the monster’s rhyme, making mockery of the megalith’s attempts to shape the sound. “But there are no ears to hear you, in the void to which you cry, just things that take familiar shapes, and hope to draw your eye.”

“What nonsense is this?” said the Zircon.

“It is something a ‘friend’ of mine does from time to time,” said the c’thon. “I thought I’d experience it for myself, but I do not think it suits me. What did you think?”

“I think that you should speak plainly, c’thon,” said the Zircon. “If you are not the one we seek, then there is little reason for me to suffer your existence in our realm.”

“Ah, I forgot the second part. After he chants ominous phrases, he kills everyone.”

The c’thon disappeared from the edge of Cian’s vision. He snapped his head up, abandoning his humble pose to look over the pit where the creature had just been, but the space was empty. His fellow Quartzspeakers looked back at him from across the pit, their eyes wide and faces pale as jade. Cian looked to his right, opening his mouth to demand guidance from the Zircon, but the old man was gone as well.

“W-where did they go?” asked Nea, voice trembling.

Cian focused on the stone and tried to trace the essence. It was silent.

“That wasn’t sorcery,” said Tomblim, taking Nea’s hand in his own. “I think… I think it simply moved.”

“Nothing’s that fast,” Nea whispered.

The pressure in the room lightened and Cian felt the stone sigh as the Zircon released his hold over it. There was a wet thud, like someone had dropped a rotten melon. A lumpy, round shape tumbled out from the dark beyond the chamber’s dim ring of amberlight. Cian felt as though he was fused to the ground, unable to move while an essence core–larger than a man’s heart–bounced and wobbled to a stop right next to him, still wrapped in beating tissue.

“No, no, no, no,” Nea frantically muttered, standing and pointing at the enormous core. “Zircons can’t be killed. They’re too powerful. Not by a c’thon, not by anything.”

Cian’s paralysis ended when Nea took in a sharp breath. He looked up from the Zircon’s core and over to his fellow Quartzspeaker to find her turning and casting about, looking for something. It took Cian a moment to process what had happened.

Tomblim was gone as well.

“He was– he was holding my hand,” said Nea, staring at her palm. “I didn’t feel it.”

Nea’s eyes met his, and a terror bloomed on the woman’s features, like she were afraid of Cian himself. Nea whimpered and stumbled backwards, disappearing into the shadows beyond the ring of amberlight. Cian heard her take three steps, then heard nothing else.

Cian waited, unable to stand or think. He was deafened by his own shaking breaths and drumming heart. His eyes watered as he held them wide, refusing to blink.

A feathered tentacle sprouted from thin air and grabbed the Zircon’s core, then pulled itself back into non-existence just as fast. Cian heard a sick crunching and slurping coming from behind him. Cian flinched with each snap of bone, each cartilage-splitting bite and bloody gulp.

The c’thon took its time eating and Cian waited for his end to come soon after, but a question came instead.

“Tell me where Brood King Nha’thubo is hiding,” said the terrible beast. It didn’t stop eating to speak. Its voice came from everywhere even as it mangled flesh.

Cian’s mind caught up to the c’thon’s question.

“I–” He swallowed hard. “I do not know. The Stonelord t-took Nha’thubo into his service s-six months ago,” Cian managed to stutter out. His teeth were chattering, and a terrible chill invaded his muscles.

He felt a feather brush against the back of his neck.

“Then your Stonelord is a mind-slave,” said the c’thon. “No matter. Nha’thubo will not be far from such a valuable host.”

A tentacle curled around Cian’s throat, and he felt the heat of fetid breath on the top of his head. The creature’s terrible, bone-crushing maw was inches away.

“So, tell me… where is this Stonelord?”

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