266 Processor in the making

As the elder dissolved into a mass of hot goo, Lux fell to her knees while her entire body screamed out in pain. Taking short and shallow breaths Lux's vision darkened from a lack of oxygen reaching her brain, but when the cybernetic implants finally activated her body finally started to recover.

"... What the hell was up with that elder anyway?"

Having recovered enough from the aftereffects of pushing her body way too hard, Lux asked the question that had been on her mind all along. Looking to Dax when she didn't get a response, Lux saw him digging around the elder's remains, fishing out the elder's core which he immediately pried open as his face turned grim.

"What?"

"You don't want to know, trust me."

"Just fucking tell me."

Instead of saying anything Dax just showed the interior of the elder's core containing a mana generator, various cybernetic implants and a distinctly fresh brain, compared to the decayed ones which had been the case before.

"That's…"

"The first remains of the deep recon team we've found so far yeah, which would explain why the elder initially attempted to take me alive."

Examining the remains more closely, Dax found that the cerebrum had been slowly taken over by a curse somewhat similar to the one he had been suffering from after his first contact with the elder's, meaning the conversion process was slow, and there was a possibility that some members of the deep recon team could still be alive.

"We need to save them!"

"Hold that thought."

While Lux was eager to save whoever she could that might still be alive from the recon team, Dax wasn't so eager.

"Really, you're sticking to protocol!? Now of all times!?"

"Yeah I am so calm the fuck down, that's a direct order. Panicking and acting on emotions won't do us anything good."

Getting his subordinates back under control Dax immediately reached out to the central IMI command and tasked the entire surveillance network with one single task: locate any and all traces of the deep recon team, if any of them were still alive it was his responsibility as the commanding officer to rescue them.

-

"Help me…"

(Shut… Up.)

While her awareness had continued to falter for the last while, she was sure she currently was in hell. The slight sliver of light which leaked into the room from time to time illuminated the suffering which surrounded her, decaying flesh left to rot and fester, the smell of rot, piss and combined with weak groans of pain seemed to pick at her mind endlessly, along with some kind of strange drowsiness she didn't know why she didn't just give in and embrace the abyss, feeling nothing would be preferable to the pain of breathing with a collapsed lung, the ever present burning sensation of her festering wounds.

"Help…. Me…"

(Shut... up.)

It seemed when hope faltered in the presence of suffering and pain, rage and madness thrived.

"Somebody…. Save… me…"

(SHUT UP!)

Pain and despair change people when it transforms into pure agony and incomparable suffering. If the saying 'stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at you' was true, then submerging oneself in the abyss would undoubtedly change a person, although there's no way of know what would eventually emerge from that dark pit before one personally took the plunge. While most people simply drowned down in that mass of insanity and suffering, some people adapt to it, their bodies, minds and souls moult inside that crucible, becoming wicked and twisted.

"Please…. H-"

"SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!"

Shouting in spite of the excruciating pain pulsing throughout her body, Terra's eyes shot wide open as she thrashed around, desperately attempting to free herself of the thorn like restraints which priced through her extremities inside the cramped concrete room. Adrenaline pulsed through her body as her muscles tore themself apart in response to her commands, the curse which had been eating away at her ego and sealing her movements could no longer restrain her.

In that dark pit of incomparable suffering and encroaching insanity, Terra had found her salvation.

With Terra's mind now free of its former restraints, mana responded to her like it never had done before, it flared around her with an intensity which was unlike anything ever seen and responded to her commands as her recent memories came flooding back. Getting captured alive by the elders, watching her comrades being experimented on until they eventually died in agony, being force fed those same comrade's remains then finally trapped in this room as a curse slowly eroded her mind until she either died of starvation or was assimilated by the elders.

"AAARG! FUCK!"

Ripping apart her own arm to free it from her restraints impaled trough it, Terra watched in horror as it healed in a matter of seconds. Deciding not to think too deeply about that for the moment, she clenched her regenerated arm to check if it still worked correctly, then she removed the rest of her restraints as the rest of her body healed up in the same creepy manner as her arm had.

(Now, where the fuck am I?)

Looking around the cramped concrete room, Terra quickly counted her surviving comrades before locating a small skylight window which had been blocked off. Exiting through said skylight window, Terra found herself inside an empty skyscraper with a densely packed skyline.

(The imperial capital…)

"Shit."

Finding herself in the centre of hostile territory, Terra realized that her chances of escape were virtually non existant.

(I won't even be able to reach the outer wall before being captured, in that case….)

Climbing to the top floor of the skyscraper, Terra kept out of the sparse moonlight as she looked towards the sky and was greeted with a stary night sky.

(There's a chance Dax has already commenced the operation to retake the continent, in that case, intelligence like updated maps will be of the utmost importance… In that case, I just need one of those eyes in the sky to spot me.)

"OOH, ONE OF THE WORMS REALLY BROKE THE CURSE… FASCINATING."

"!!!"

Before Terra had realized it, an elder had somehow managed to sneak up on her, but there was something different about this one. Standing over 4 metres tall, the elder had an androgynous body without any signs of decay and a completely smooth head with countless eyes which stared trough Terra as countless tentacles writhed around behind it.

"... OR NOT, IT SEEMED YOU ACTUALLY MANAGED TO BEND THE CURSE TO YOUR WILL? IN THAT CASE, YOU'RE ONE OF US, COME WITH ME CHILD."

(What the fuck is going on here!?)

"I would rather not."

Overwhelmed by an intense feeling of disgust from the elder's seemingly friendly attitude, Terra took a half step away from it as her mana started surging.

"THEN DEATH IT IS, SUCH A SHAME. BUT LUCKILY YOU'LL STILL MAKE AN EXCELLENT PROCESSOR."

At the tiniest show of resistance, the elder's attitude turned hostile as its countless tentacles swarmed towards Terra, clearly aiming to screwer her alive, but there was something wrong.

(Have they always been so slow?)

Sidestepping the first tentacle with a relaxed attitude, the world slowed down around Terra as she formed a shortsword out of mana crystals as her eyes went cold. Moving faster than she ever had before, Terra cut every single tentacle closing in on her apart without feeling like she was pushing herself, she even had enough time to spare to weave a second spell with her free hand. Creating a small dagger with a strange spell engraved into it which she flung at the elder, Terra trusted her intuition and backed off, with the rush of adrenaline Terra hadn't yet realized she just used a spell she had no prior knowledge of.

As the dagger reached the elder it detonated, but instead of a normal explosion, it created a gravitational singularity which completely swallowed the elder, compressing it with the power of a few hundred g's, that gravitational disturbance spread out from the source at the speed of light quickly reaching anyone listening. 

[IMI REPORT: UNKNOWN CLASS 4 GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY DETECTED, ESTABLISHING VISUAL CONTACT… CONTACT ESTABLISHED, COMMAND ADVISING FULL STRIKE PACKAGE, DEORBITING ALL QRF TEAMS, TASKING ALL OPERATORS FOR IMMEDIATE DUST OFF.]