SWNOVELS Chapter 6: Incensed Iron
Movement from above had Aodhán breaking into a sprint as the Baalgarog impacted the ground hard, decimating the corpse of the Aberration before tearing its augers into the floor, ploughing through the furried flesh as if it were the topsoil in an unploughed field.
It opened fire on Aodhán with its chaingun and Aodhán returned fire in kind, whipping around the Assault Cannon with one hand and firing a burst of large calibre metal that struck the Devil in an optical eye socket, blinding it in one eye. Another went through the transparent electro-magnetically shielded vortex turbine of the power core; causing some kind of bio-electrical malfunction as the turbine sparked and stalled.
Its being seized up as the power supply became unstable. A grey fluid permeated like sweat from gaps in its armoured body to flow and pooled around the turbine and its eye.
Like beads of sweat that crawled across skin to cover and repair an open wound.
The Devil momentarily stunned, Aodhán took the opportunity from their position in the shadows to press themselves against the the wall, kneel down, aim down sights and open fire at the Chaingun.
The Baalgarog tried to sustain its onslaught, firing from an arm it couldn’t keep steady. The storm of metal ricocheting off the walls and chipping off fragments of bone that broke off like splinters of wood.
The breath was forced out of Aodhán as they felt shards of bone pierce their body. Some going through and through. Others impaling their arms and legs.
But pain had long ago lost its authority over Aodhán. They fought through it, and with enduring spite they kept firing until the chaingun had shattered apart. The 15mm slugs impacting the muzzles and the barrels until the diabolic ammunition were choked in the chamber. Exploding within the barrels and shattering the mechanism of the gun.
Pushing themselves to their feet, Aodhán felt more like a pin cushion with the amount of splintered bone pointing out of their left flank.
They brushed off the shards that were not so deep inside them to have gone further than skin or the upper layers of muscle; they drew their magic from within them once again and launched a firebolt at the Devil. Keeping its attention focused on them and not on the Antechamber behind it.
Time didn’t flow the same in the Astral Realm. The further from Mortalis you got, the slower the flow of time passed by. And in the Labyrinth, the flow may well have become a churn.
It would take time for the Wild Hunters to pass through blue space and exit the other side into the real world. And until they closed it on their end the portal would be open here allowing anything that could fit to pass through.
So Aodhán started off into a jog, fighting through the ache of their wounds as they weaved their way through the side tunnel, venturing deeper into the darkness. Their vision adapting to the lack of light quickly as the world lit up into shades of grey, revealing various winding narrow passages.
They picked a tunnel at random and ran while behind them the Devil smashed and blasted part the bone walls that stopped its advance. Tearing itself and its massive frame through nonsensical like an abominable mole.
Aodhán turned right the first chance they got and navigated through the winding path, down steep slopes and up circular steps, forcing what they convinced themselves was air into their lungs as they pushed themselves to put enough distance between themself and the Baalgarog to pull out a jagged piece of bone that had gone through and through their hip, stifling a cry of agony before putting the bone shard in their maw and biting down on it as they sparked a fireball in their hands, cauterising the wound to stop it bleeding.
Their existence threatened to return to one of rage, pain and exhaustion as the only thing that drove them to keep going was spite. Nothing else mattered except resisting the will of the Devils below and the Gods above.
As Aodhán kept pushing forward they felt their environment change. An exhale of humid and musky air that was followed by an inhale of dry hot air. The aroma of burning wood and charring meat carried within it.
They felt displaced. Like they had passed through thousands of doorways within mere footsteps.
In time their surroundings grew brighter as the glow of heat radiated through the darkness. The walls of bone giving way to volcanic rock, stained red from the rusting iron within it.
Turning one more corner Aodhán found themselves at the bottom of a steep slope within a cavern of burnt red rock.
Not wasting time standing idle they began desperately scrambling up the slope, seeking out the glow of the red skies that seeped through the mouth of the cave.
Upon reaching the top they broke into a sprint- exiting the cave and running up the slope only to stop in their tracks upon reaching the top and looking over it to find themselves teetering on the edge of a sheer drop.
Regaining their balance and steeling their resolve against a feeling of vertigo. They beheld with awe and confusion the Metal Hell. The domain of the Arch-Devil of Augmentation.
Far below the floating island of ferric rock they stood upon were lakes of lava separated by dams and crags that stretched on as far as their eyes could see and even further beyond that.
Jutting out of the terrain were the desolated ruins of buildings. Some were familiar cybergothic fortifications built from granite and sandstone. Domed with fireball copper that even in the depths of hell retained its shine.
Contrasting them were sacral buildings of marble and limestone. Not of the Heavens but of its Halidom trying to emulate it.
Others were brutalistic cubes of concrete and crystal-plastic composite once meant for business, possibly habitation. Around them were the surviving ruins of wooden-plastic boards and sheet metal.
It was like looking out unto a mass grave of cities from long since consumed worlds dragged into the Abyss from forgotten conquests. Sprawling across such a landscape blighted by firestorms of cinder and fire were structures of resistance. Defiance against oncoming doom.
The devastated wreckages of massive planet-glassing voidnaval dreadnoughts half sunken into the pools of lava.
The broken bodies of once gigantic bipedal war mechs of every kind Aodhán knew of. The Jötunn and Leviathans of the Zxenjenta Allied Republic, the overdesigned Vastators of the Halidom, the brutalistic Colossi of the Ultra-Corps; all of them laying like desiccated corpses beside the rusting carcasses of the Abyss’ biosynthetic Zix. Gargantuan cyberdemons with insectoid legs and mantle-like upper bodies that in life would have rose up high into the air like gravity defying skyscrapers.
All had been laid low long ago. Their frames now food and fuel for the Behemoths, their land treading kin. Their mantles lower to the ground supported by legs, like that of a crab or a lobster, their fronts elongated by the drill-headed tentacles that bore into the wreckage of the ships and mechs.
Breaking them down into ore to be stored either within themselves or carried off by the tiny hordes of bio-synthetic and cyberdemonic monsters, themselves like ants feasting upon the carcass of a whale and carrying both meat and metal back to the fellsteel ziggurats scattered throughout the realm.
All of them unique in design, built at different times but Aodhán knew their function.
From the apex of cauldron shaped fortresses spewed forth a never ending flow of smoke, molten rock and metal. Like a Volcano. It overflowed and trickled down channels to be diverted into the lakes.
Shuffling up mile long steps into shadowed gateways were millions of corralled Damned and Doomed, carrying equally as many corpses airdropped in from Zix carriers that flew overhead. Aodhán could just barely make out the far more evolved Abyssals walking up such paths- crushing the lesser demons beneath them as they marched into the ziggurat.
Out the opposite façade- whether shambling along on an unbalanced load of rusting metal joints and bracing or upright on metal feet powered by servos- emerged an army of cyber-augmented monsters dispersing throughout the realm or boarding the smaller Zix carrier ships that floated upwards into the air. Towards the peaks of the other Ziggurats with towers like starscrapers.
Like the spires of the Spear Cities that Aodhán was cursed with the knowledge of yet doomed to never lay their own eyes upon.
At ground level captured mortals were pulled either in chains or in overfilled cages into the slaughter-forge. Where they’d be tortured ceaselessly without pity or mercy. Until their souls fragmented apart and all that remained was the very core of their beings. The essence that was stripped from them taking metaphysical form, collected and concentrated until it took the form of quintessence to be corrupted by the diabolic influence of the Abyss.
The towers didn’t rise infinitely. But from the apex shot out the burning darkness of diabolic plasma, beaming upwards into the churning red skies to the centre of holographic sigils. From there it burned a hole through the vail between the physical and metaphysical into a dimension of Mortalis.
Whether it was their own or another, Aodhán didn’t know. Didn’t care. If they did, it’d drive them the wrong kind of crazy. The kind found in the depths of despair; and despair was the enemy. That much they remembered.
Synaesthesia returned Aodháns awareness to themself and their immediate surroundings.
They felt conflicting inputs. The dry heat of hell engulfing their being, yet also the embrace of warm water. The taste and smell of cinder and ash contrasted by silica and rubber.
The starts of a heart-beat ached within their chest as behind them the Baalgarog smashed through from the Labyrinth, bellowing with rage as it spotted Aodhán and tore its way toward them. The augers ripping apart the rock as it rocketed forward.
Aodhán stood their ground, frustration simmering like a poorly burning candle against the depths of their fatigue. They were not long for this realm, yet neither did they have the strength or will to match the might of an ancient champion of the Abyss.
But they had the spite make it share in their pain.
The Baalgarog burst forth from the cave, blasting chucks of rock debris that Aodhán deftly sidestepped out of the way, flinging a firebolt down at the Baalgarogs skeletal face.
Like before, it only seemed to greatly enrage the mechanical Devil. Charging forth, bellowing in hate and unslaked sadism as it got closer and closer, rising faster and faster, lunging forward to grab them with its giant metallic claw.
Aodhán stood unmoving and numb to their own fear until it was within 10 metres from them. Then they let themselves fall off the cliff.
They felt the spins begin in freefall. A wry smile forming as the Baalgarog launched itself off the ramp-like slope, roaring into the open air as it flew and fell. But Aodhán didn’t care what would become of it.
The churn had opened up once more, the sensation growing stronger and faster and louder until it grew too much to bare.
They closed their eyes… and once more-
TH-THUNK
They were gone.