Hyperpunk Virgo 1: Dreams of Oblivion

In the deepest realms of the Abyss, in the burnt light of stars stolen by the Devils themselves, a lone Gealt trudged through the blood-stained sands of the Scorched Plateau.

They had walked for what felt like months across the sea of black sands until their boots had been flayed and their feet scalded by the mud that oozed out from under their every step.

Whatever garb they wore to shield their pale form had long since disintegrated- torn by the tooth and claw of the roaming Damned and eroded away under the elements that raged between the humid, heavy air of the Morbid Swamps and the firestorms that raged eternally across the Burning Steppes.

In such a place between realms the sandstorms carried a wind so deliberately violent it seemed like the storm itself was a living being that could think, feel and express complex emotions… such as a hatred for all that yet still lived in such a violent place.

Not even the Gealt could be saved from this malice. No matter how steadfast they stood, how deep a hole they would scald and cut their hands digging, they would be picked up and thrown like a ragdoll through the air only to be brought down hard on to the earth again. Their bones all but breaking on impact.

All the Gealt could do was try to endure as the glass-like sand washed over their body, shredding their skin, choking their lungs and blinding their eyes. Their body thrown across the desert with the same casual malevolence of a rock being dragged across a riverbed and it would end in much the same way.

With howling cries in blistering agony and soul-crushing despair. Until their throat and lungs were clogged by the sand, awaiting either the maddening pain to cease or for them to finally cease entirely.

Then it would end.

The storm would lift almost instantly, passing on like a freight train speeding off to some distant location, fading off into the horizon until it had vanished entirely. Like it had never occurred at all.

And the Gealt would open their eyes again. Their struggle continuing as they arose to their feet with every movement stinging, every breath a fresh hell, every cough producing the disappointing gift of bile, black sand and blood; only to steel themselves and be once more ready to run, fight and kill within an instant.

For as soon as they arose from the dunes so too would the skinless, charred and sandblasted husks of the Damned. The lost spirits claimed by the Abyss, emulsifying into lesser demons by its influence.

Whatever they once were no longer remained. Only the decrepit form of what may have once been a sentient being. Not that such a questions mattered in such a place.

It certainly didn’t matter to the Gealt, who did not know for certain if the Damned were actively pursuing them; spurred on by the will of some distant Arch-Devil or Greater Demon seeking a worthy quarry. Or if they merely sensed the presence of a nearby being that still had life in them and were driven to feed on it.

In moments of weakness, when exhaustion or thirst or pain slowed the Gealt’s walk to the point a desecrated hand could reach out to strike them down and feed on their innards - they would break the arm, smash what might have been a knee and rip out the throat of the fiend with their own maw.

The taste of foul blood bitter against their tongue as they drank what little fluid could be taken from the polluted being, memories and echoes of its former lives barely making sense to them as drank and feed upon them; only to cast it aside to be claimed by the desert as they continued their march anew.

At the very least no longer thirsty until the rising swells in the sand in the corners of their eyes had them sprinting to escape the feeding frenzy of the annelids that roamed the sands looking for something to eat. Even if only scraps remained.

The Gealt didn’t remember how many sandstorms had risen and fallen before them, how many Damned wretches they had exsanguinated, how many times despair had found some new deep dark part of the Gealt’s hearts to violate.

But despair was the enemy. They remembered so little of anything else yet this truth endured.

No matter how many times they would get put down, they got back up and would keep going, even as the little voices whispered to them, telling them to ‘Give up, Give yourself unto us, offer yourself to the Rot, embrace your end and begin again, die and be reborn and the pain will stop’.

The Gealt didn’t know what the feeling under all the fear and pain was. The white-hot burning that had them force air into their lungs, forced their hearts to keep beating as shock permeated their body, their mind to maintain a cold focus on the only thing that still mattered.

But they held unto it and kept going. On and forever on over the blood-stained sands. Whatever it took to reach the Edge of Reality. To an Island of Iridescent rock, Obsidian Pillars and calm reflective waters.

To Oblivion.

-

It was impossible to tell how long it took the Gealt to reach the edge of the Plateau. The constants of time having seemingly fled the Abyss when it still had a chance in the early days of reality.

Back before any form of life existed to create souls and minds, and through them, spirits with which the Astral Realm could be formed.

Eternity and immediately had since become strange bedfellows, where the one most confused in that arrangement was most likely the bed. But soon, they could see in the horizon the looming shadow of the steppes and with pointed ears that had nearly forgotten the sound of anything other than their own suffering and the wind- they heard the sound of massive waterfalls of blood, marrow and filth flowing into and out of desert.

The Bloodfalls and the Shadowed Plunge, that’s what they called it.

Not the Gealt themselves but the denizens of the Abyss. Even Demons needed a means of orientation.

It was from the Burning Steppes a never-ending sea of blood flowed into and out of the Morbid Swamps. The raging rivers of blood flowing thunderously down in most places yet in sections it flowed in reverse- rising back up to feed into the Plateau.

The Gealt had supposed- not hoped, never hoped- that such a place was a crossroads. They could brave through the river of blood and climb the great wall of rock upwards onto the Burning Steppes. The domain of Hozetyres. The Arch-Devil of Violence.

They could follow the river until they reached either the deepest realms of the Abyss- the Penumbral Plains of Silence- or some distant edge from which they could climb up and reach above into the Underworld.

The familiar Hell appealed to the Gealt. At least in the Underworld beyond the reach of the Arch-Devils and their hordes, there was civilisation. Fortress Cities populated by Demons who had freed themselves of the Abyss’ influence, Fallen Angels who had dared to love something, anything, other than the High-Father.

All of them struggling to regain a semblance of whatever they once were, enduring on to become something new and just as worthy of living.

It was an existence that the Gealt envied.

But indecision, like daydreams, were things that they could not retain in the Abyss, for as they reached the shores of the Shadowed Plunge they felt the presence of malice.

One did not endure the Abyss without becoming psychic to a degree; it was simply the nature of the Astral Realm. It bleeds into you as easily as you can bleed into it, and the Gealt had given it pints.

Their senses extended beyond the physical and they felt the eyes that were resting upon them. Not the sunken sockets of the Damned nor the gaze of mere Abyss Demons but the glare of an ancient malevolent force.

They knew that they were not followed from the depths of the Morbid Swamps. Had they have been, they would have been intercepted already by some bloated mutated plague carrier, or perhaps some larger annelid that burrowed beneath the blood-stained sands.

More than once had they felt the earth shudder beneath them as the storms overwhelmed them, and just as many times had they seen titanic shadows hidden within the storms arise from the dunes.

No Demon lurked in the shallow lagoons of the plunge, though experience had taught them to assume nothing. In an unfamiliar realm such as this, anything was possible, anything was dangerous, anything could and would kill them.

The only place they figured a threat would truly lie was across the river, watching them from above the edge of the steppe. It seemed more plausible than something hiding in an overhang behind the Bloodfalls.

But the universe has a funny habit of making the most likely of unlikely things happen; and it was from behind the distant thunderous waterfall of blood that a beam of burned light shot out from. Blazing to the right and sweeping across to the left, trailing hellfire across the dunes- burning them into glass.

As it approached the Gealt, they leaped up with all their strength and threw their body over the beam of accelerated diabolic plasma, just barely avoiding a painful death as the beam radiated such heat and force they felt what was left of their ragged garb tear off of them as it was caught in the beam- and as they landed with their back to the sands they were painfully aware of the burning sensation that rose from their right flank and along their right leg.

Standing back up- their pale torso was plastered by the flash-boiled sands that clung to the fresh wounds on their hip and thigh- they reached deep within to the well of power inside themself.

Feeling a hot chill spread from their chest their veins glowed a volcanic red, the aether in their blood reacting to their will and forming a dense ball of flames in their hands.

Like a fool, they believed that the flames burned with the same rage they felt and they launched it towards the Bloodfall. Not directly at the spot where the beam had been fired from but far above it.

The firebolt zipped through the air and through the vail of sanguine liquid to somewhere beyond the Gealt’s sight, where it collided with rock and exploded.

Mere seconds later the overhang of the Bloodfall collapsed, making the infinitely retreating steppe continue its journey ever on to nowhere; but the Gealt’s wit was unrewarded.

Their eyes remained focused on the plunge pools, awaiting another assault upon them. As the explosion rang out overhead, the Gealt’s slitted blue eyes widened, seeing with horrific clarity the fell being emerging from the depths to avoid being crushed.

First came the sight of spinning augers tearing through the blood, pulling forth what looked like a large screw-propelled tank built from blacked fellsteel, decorated with the skulls and entrails of slain enemies, but where there may have been a turret was now what resembled the torso of a once anthropoidal beast turned into a sort of a cyberdemonic monster.

It no longer had any skin or muscle, only a metallic endoskeleton resembling a ribcage with a power core in the centre of its chest, a sub-structure of bio-mechanical organs, a horned skull of metal and an arsenal of weaponry; on the right arm a large spiked flail bellowed smoke and fire from within itself like a malicious lantern, and on its right an under-arm mounted chaingun. On its shoulders appeared to be what looked like a missile launcher and a railgun.

It screamed of the handiwork of the Metal Hell. Of the demonic engineers and digital devils whose machinations ran deep, and the horrific creativity of the Arch-Devil Iamshodos running so much deeper; but the Gealt recognised the Demon for what it was under the metaphysical metal.

A Baalgarog. One of the lords of the Abyss, the praetorians of the Arch-Devils.

They were once Greater Demons; forced to endure a pilgrimage of perpetual pain until they had adapted to the realms they journeyed through, transcending through diabolic descension to became wicked beings of power and might.

This Gealt deduced that this being was a servant of the Arch-Devil of Plagues- turned into an amphibious main battle tank. Maybe it was a punishment for disobedience? Maybe it was done to make it a better swamp hunter? The Gealt didn’t know or care.

“Eligitur!”; the Demon hissed through a grim rictus, its voice robotic yet saturated with rage, “You have been marked!… You have been chosen!… The Silence will not claim you! The Lady of Plagues desires you! You will become what she desires!”

On declaring this, a metallic bellowing roar exploded from the demons jagged mouth, booster rockets crackling to life on the rear of the sled as the augers began increasing their revs and pulled the giant monster at speed across the river of blood. Charging towards the Gealt with violent intent.

A growl escaped from the Gealt’s throat as fire erupted in their hands and they stood firm, ready to fight; for they knew there would be no point in retreat, no means of escape in a way that mattered.

It had marked them and one way or another it would just keep coming, no matter where in the astral realm they treaded the Baalgarog would be hunting them. So why run? Why Hide? Why hope for an end to a madness they can’t even remember the beginnings of.

It was irrelevant to them that this Demon was something so far beyond the Damned- so far beyond the Gealt in fact- that death was almost certain. They were tired and angry and that’s all they could afford to be.

They recall having to be courageous once, then having to be brave nonstop for ages and ages without cease. And at some point they no longer needed to be brave. All they had left was the fear that washed over them, numbed them to everything; and the will to move and fight on anyway.

It was this idle thought that crossed their mind before they let loose firebolt after firebolt from their hands, zipping through the air to strike the chest of the Demon Lord. Exploding fruitlessly against the metallic ribcage but at the least throwing off its aim as it fired wildly with its chaingun and missile launchers.

The beast hissed in frustration before it strafed hard to the left and swung itself around, loosening its flail and spinning it overhead, the rattle of fellsteel chains gnashing under the strain as it was flung into the air and snapped it downward upon the Gealt’s position.

The Gealt calmly side-stepped and endured the burst of sand that swept past them as the giant column of flaming metal impacted the beach hard, ignoring the flames that licked their torso.

While intending to emerge from cover and launch a giant undulating ball of fire right into the Baalgarog faceplate- within a split second their feet gave out from under them. Weakness overcame them as something echoed within from elsewhere. From the desert of the real came an aftershock of a pulse, running through them from there to the desert of the damned.

Escape didn’t seem so out of reach after all… but the Gealt wasn’t going to go quietly.

Raging against their weakness, they lifted their right arm up and grabbed a hold of a spike on the giant flail, grimacing in pain as the scalding hot metal seared their hand but holding on in spite of the nerve-blighting sensation as the blackened chains clanked taut, the flail retracting back to the stump of the borged up demon at speed.

Jumping up on the scorched column, they rode the flail towards the Baalgarog, resisting the agony of the spikes and flames that bit and burned them as they planted their withering boots down on the weapon.

Forming a firebolt in their hand they balled it into a fist, their arm consumed by flame as the flail snapped back into the stump and the sudden stop launched them off right into the Baalgarog’s face.

With a brutal fist they struck the Demon Lord with a powerful blow that was followed by a massive blast of smoking flames that rattled the bones of the Gealt as much as it sent the Demon Lord recoiling backwards.

The Gealt had practically vaulted over the giant metallic demon, flying through the air with all the finesse and control of a drunken cat but in such a way that they could see the Augers of the Demons lower body rising into the air as the force of the blow unbalanced it.

The Gealt wouldn’t be around long enough to see if they had toppled the old cyberdemon over. The pain in their chest growing and growing until-

Thu-THUNK

A heartbeat.

And they were gone. One moment being thrown through the air, the next being displaced. For a split second being something other than dead but not near enough being alive. It was enough to lift them out of the Abyss and into the Vail again.

One moment they felt the gut-ache feeling of forward acceleration, the next they felt it from everywhere. Like they were spinning and twisting and falling and rising in all directions.

Like a fool they hoped maybe, just maybe, it would be the last thing they would ever feel.

That finally it would all stop. That they’d hit the jackpot and land at Oblivion’s gate. At the edge of creation itself. At the place souls go to end.

Where they could finally end.

But hope was a mistake in the Abyss and when the spins stopped, only the feeling of falling remained.

Opening their eyes for but a split second, they returned to awareness looking up at gigantic pearlescent white tress with vermillion green leaves.

No, Red, Vermillion Red!

A string of curses very nearly exploded from their mouth at the sight and the realisation of where they were, killed in their throat as they splashed down hard into crystalline waters… and simply because they couldn’t remember the words.