Faith was… uncomfortable about this Artos. She had heard tales of course about the Possessed, maligned spirits taking over the bodies of humans, Demons seeking to sully creation with their influence. They would find the bodies of innocent men and women with a seed of sin, unprotected by the light of the Golden Promise, and take over their minds leaving little more than a puppet behind. She knew of course, this was not exactly that. It was a cybernetic Relic, one of the wonders of the Golden Age grafted onto John and blessing him with its power. It was not one of the demon machines like the one that had falsely accused him and threw the group in prison to avoid suspicion upon itself… right?

  No matter the case, here in the claustrophobic pipe system, devoid of light except the glow Cobalt was generously contributing from the luminance on her scales, and little room to engage with anything but her own thoughts the strange mechanical mannerisms kept singing into her mind. Her gut told her it wasn’t human, some primordial instinct that screamed warning signs in her mind. A year ago she never even could have imagined a feeling like this, an uncanniness that crept in the corners of her mind more effectively than any overt horror. And what was there to do about it? Just keep moving forward…

  “Sharp corner up ahead, then we should be at our destination.” Cobalt’s mother, the very image of the deceitful Serpent and their current guide, explained from ahead. “Hope you can fit through big man.”

  Gorekin huffed. “Fit in tight tunnel before, strange bend too. No problem for me.”

  Ahead of her John… or rather Artos occupying his body… extended his arm backwards squeezing past her and Gorekin to move an eye backward. She had seen some strange mutations in her day, the myriad blessings of the Golden Promise expressing in unusual ways, but she had to admit it was still more than a little unsettling.

  “I am uncertain of what, but it appears there is something trailing in the pipes behind us. Perhaps some manner of rodent or other cave-dwelling animal. But nothing should be discounted in a moment like this.” It said.

  “Yes, I heard it too… a strange skittering slimy thing.” Cobalt replied. “Just in case… I want to try something.”

  A wave of numbness washed over her head fading as quickly as it came, her senses momentarily dulled by a wave of psychic power. She didn’t want to be dramatic but… for a moment she thought it was something akin to being cut off from the Promise.

  “Something stopped moving behind us… but there’s something else. A vibration, rhythmic and mechanical.” Cobalt noted. “Something was likely behind us tethered to some psychic connection… and something is in front of us probably digging in the direction we are headed.”

  Shaking off her discomfort, a worryingly frequent trend, Faith nodded though she doubted Cobalt could readily turn around to look at her.

  As Saha said up ahead was a right-angled turn in the pipes, something that was uncomfortable to squeeze through even with her somewhat softer and more flexible skin. Shedding it was still a bit strange… but the benefits in this current situation were unquestionable.

  Gorekin on the other hand seemed to have moderately more difficulty, eventually finding his way down after several protracted seconds of frustrated warbling noises. It reminded her of sounds she had heard in the forests near her old home, Father said it was Ghoul Bears, a massive wild beast that would devour any who went too deep into the wilds. She knew it was unfair to assign such to Gorekin but… that was where her mind went anyway.

  “Quiet… we don’t know who or what else might be able to hear!!” Cobalt whisper-hissed.

  “I don’t think we have far left anyway… if I remember correctly this is well into the restricted area.” Tom spoke up.

  On cue, the movement in front stopped as Saha seemed to pause in her tracks. It was difficult to see what exactly was going on, but it was not difficult in the slightest to guess.

  “We are here, well close enough anyway. The walls are too thick in the actual location where that arch is, but this will bring us close enough.” Saha explained. “Cobalt, I do believe your brute strength should serve nicely in this situation.”

  Cobalt grumbled even as she acquiesced, extending her claws and ripping through the pipe, exposing a concrete wall pulsing with a shimmer of psychic power.

  “Huh, looks like they have activated the defensive formations. Usually, the Elders are far too cheap to keep them active every day… seems like somebody sounded the alarm.”

  Cobalt sent out that pulse again, suffusing a thick cold numbness over her senses, before knocking a large hole in the concrete with anticlimactic ease.

  “That mutation of yours is… uncanny…” Tom muttered.

  Faith nodded in agreement. “It feels awful… like the touch of a devil.”

  Cobalt rolled her eyes, wiping a thin trail of blood from her nose. “We have no time for this. Let’s kracking move.”

  There was no arguing with that of course… but with a machine-man, one of the wild-men from her childhood folklore stories, and some sort of psychic power that could only be described as feeling wrong… what would her past self say seeing her now? One should attempt to lead the worldly to salvation, but wasn’t falling too deep into their ken considered a sin too? She was uncomfortable with the idea, and worst of all, not as uncomfortable as she felt she should have been.

  That had to wait, however, as a furious voice cried out.

  “GET OUT! WE ARE UNDER KRACKING LOCKDOWN YOU BOMB CURSED-” An old man with one massive green eye in the middle of his head screamed, brandishing a massive shotgun of sorts aimed at the group before fixating on Saha and Tom. “I always knew you two were trouble, but colluding with the machines? That’s low.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Come on Antony, look I know I did you wrong before but do you really think I would be so stupid to sell out to the synths?” Saha sneered. “You are a respected Relic-Keeper, you know them better than we can that the charges were dox-shit.

  The gun cocked again, this time glowing an ominous blue. Si poured out from the tip, energy cracking in the air. “You think I don’t know about your little… escapades? I admit at first I thought the charges were suspicious, but I see clearly now that you are more spineless than I imagined. Once a liar always a liar. Besides, I know what I kracking see… as you said I know better than you can.”

  He turned his gun to Artos, who did not help their case with their emotionless deadpan and distinct inhumanity.

  Rapidly Gorekin took out his own, recently stolen, gun, Cobalt shimmered out of view, the blade at the end of Saha’s tail seemed to extend while her own carapace hardened quickly in response. Artos, seemed to have a different response ready however.

  As though moved by invisible strings, the gun leapt out of the man’s hands. Undeterred, he took out a glass vial of some sort and bit in, blood pouring from his mouth where it was cut by shattered glass, and pulsated green with unnatural energy.

  Only visible as a shimmering outline of disturbed air, Cobalt pounced and tore off a sizable chunk of flesh with her teeth. In response she was punched straight in the jaw, flying off through a thick concrete wall revealing a massive steel archway.

  Gorekin attempted to fire a couple shots at the now massively swollen cultivator, but the bullets simply bounced off his skin even as fluorescent green blood spewed forth from the vicious bite wound Cobalt inflicted.

  Apparently sensing Tom as the weakest of the pack, Antony rushed forward with a bulging muscular arm. With uncanny ease he managed to dodge out of the way… an action that left Faith in the path of the carnage.

  She raised her freshly hardened arms to defend and found herself pummelled into a wall, exoskeleton cracked and leaking a dark green liquid. She focused her power on healing herself, even then the pain remained searing, her vision swimming as the world seemed suffused in a thick fog.

  Another fist moving at impossible speed nearly turned her skull into paste, but a vast, thorny, forest of fingernails erupted from Saha, briefly immobilising the man.

  Long enough for the magnatised gun held in the air by Artos to turn around, swivel to an angle where it wouldn’t impale her as well, and fire with a blinding flash of searing light.

  For a moment everything was dark, and minor burns seemed to proliferate on her freshly peeled skin. When her eyes recovered enough she saw that her assailant was missing an arm, as well as a good chunk of ribcage, and stumbling unsteadily towards the wall.

  “This… isn’t… over…” He wheezed, and indeed she could see that his flesh was already in the early stages of regeneration, pink tumorous growths struggling to grow in the singed flesh. Still, with only one of him and their entire group mostly intact… the statement seemed more motivated by spite than anything else.

  It didn’t end up mattering anyway, as Cobalt stumbled back to the fold, green blood still stained on her face, pointing shakily towards the wall behind the man to scream. “IT’S COMING!”

  The whole room began to shake as a series of blasts, previously made ignorable by the fight, started rapidly converging upon their position. With a blinding flash bits of charred concrete, molten metal and blasted stone were ejected out with flashes of deadly light. Deep within a pair of inhuman eyes gleamed, metal clanking against stone as something crawled unnaturally through the relatively small tunnel carved into the wall.

  Antony tried to rush forward and stop it, despite the missing arm and being near death moving before any of them. It was commendable, truly, a noble act worthy of the scriptures, but tragically in vain.

  A fleshy tendril lashed out and stabbed him in the head, melting the flesh and the brain underneath with corrosive venom. A brutalised half-mechanical form slithered out, an extra finger attached to the elbow where what looked to be a mixture between drill and gun was fixed, John’s finger. It was difficult to read its emotions but it seemed… disgusted… by the dead man before it.

  “Disgusting, intolerable, the inherent weakness of the flesh. Such a thing is surely sinful.” It seethed, evidently addressing Artos given the way its head jerked towards its direction. “We were born impure, born sick. But we may yet choose a higher purpose, to rise above the petty flesh. I ask you one more time brother, do not stand in my way, for what we promise is salvation!”

  Those words… almost a direct mockery of the Golden Promise. A twisted perversion of the scripture, all she thought holy. And yet it was genuine, she could tell, spoken despite the mechanical monotone with far more sincerity than she had felt in months. Did the machines know of God? How can a thing like that feel faith?

  The ring behind them began to glow, as Artos seemed to freeze in place, the gun suspended midair clanging to the ground.

  She wanted to puke.

  “Fisher, what the fuck is going on?” Bluescale asked, lights flickering from the chaotic electromagnetic pulses rippling past his body.

  “There are holes in the old sewer systems, we have been complacent too long, and our destruction appears to rest beneath our feet.” Fisher spat with a mouthful of blood. She was overextending herself with her little tooth-puppets, exasperating an existing deviation in her cultivation. But what was there to be done?

  Several squadrons have already started to be sent down, he had alerted all relevant personnel to be on the highest possible guard. The Spiked Shore was on extreme lockdown, none in nor out. A quick ping revealed that perhaps a dozen guards and mortal servants were missing, to be presumed dead.

  And along with them, that snake Fisher dragged in on some whim one day along with that mouse she in turn dragged in. The blood tests did return positive, perhaps she felt some sort of responsibility towards her blood. Or more likely, the opportunist sensed an opportunity of sorts, Spirits knows what that woman was up to at any given moment, if not for her strength she would have been thrown out years ago.

  It mattered little now of course. There was something going on, something that had slipped under his notice. Terrance would never have allowed this, he thought shamefully, but Elder Nicos was still occupied on the front lines.

  He didn’t want to do this, but emergencies like these called for… extreme responses.

  The Spiked Shore was once a massive array meant to capture and transmit the same waves he had the ability to manipulate. Messages could be transcribed with it, sent across massive distances at the speed of light itself, and captured by Relics designed to decode such messages. Most of that functionality was long since lost now, the massive towers melted into barely recognisable spikes and the intricate systems of maintenance tunnels and repair systems largely repurposed with the construction of the Sect. Earlier in his cultivation, even with his mutation, such degraded systems would be of little use to him.

  But now, with mastery over Si granted by his Demon Heart, it was a different story.

  Tapping into reserves of energy beneath the surface, he directed it through the ruined facility, a far cry from its ancient potential but more than enough to transmit a distress message. Once that was done, he turned his focus underground and focused on a frequency he knew from his time on the eastern front the machines were particularly susceptible to. Underground the signal would be diluted and weakened severely, but with the sheer amount being outputted he knew some would find their target anyway.

  Another squad of men marched down the tunnels, and he prayed to whatever Spirits may listen that they were not too late.