Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 18:00:46 GMT
Somepoint Not The Present, the world once known as Orellas…
The waters were falling up. It was that simple. Every ocean, every river, every drop; it was all falling up, up into the clouds, and even the clouds were receding. It was an awesome sight, watching the ships steal away the lifeblood of this world…
No one asked him if this was his first time as his helmet leaned back to allow him the best view of the spectacle. It was a pointless question. Everything might as well be anyone’s first time doing this, or doing that, or watching worlds burn or being the man with the torch. First was relative, and only a matter of perspective.
“The Third communicates her desires to expedite your withdrawl. Temporal extraction will be occurring imminently.” A voice inside his helmet advised passively, and the two other men with him turned towards each other. One-a higher functioning child of the unwell-gestured upwards with her weapon’s formidable bayonette. She made a strange series of gargling noises as liquids from some form of synthetic vocalizer ran through his exposed vocal chords, before a computerized approximation of a female voice spoke in her place.
“We best not keep her waiting then.” She said as an audible swishing noise came from around her mutilated neck. The massive blade was lowered towards the horizon, and she gestured towards a growing group of suited figures, waiting for the mass evacuation. Her legs-slightly longer than they should have been, he suspected, if her stride was any indication of it-carried her swiftly over the dying grass, which earlier-how much so was irrelevant- had been green and verdant, but it was all changing so rapidly now. The blades of grass were fading to yellow and brown.
He was young, comparatively speaking, though here again the term was pointless. The Flux Ascendancy oddly enough didn’t have an understanding of the concept of time, not in a conventional sense at least. There was no yesterday or tomorrow, only not the present, and future present, and the immediate future? It was imminent. That was all. No clocks, no historians, no days of the week, and for a comparatively young member of the Ascendancy, youth was a strangely meaningless term. But some amount of his lack of experiences remained, and he marveled as the grass slowly withered besides them. The ship was removing the nutrients and minerals from the soil when it was not the present, and as not the present slowly caught up with the present, the landscape was changing. The soil was drying out, and the plants were dying, and the animals which watched with peculiar disinterest were growing visibly thinner around them-
And then the spear came out of nowhere. It struck him in the back, right below the shoulder blades, and the shock sent him stumbling over into the rapidly drying dirt. It was embedded in its armour, but the force with which it had been thrown had surprised him. He could hear the sound of an energy rifle rapidly firing off, and the scream of one of the Orellans as the rounds found their mark.
“You fool Jaleth! The Khamood-Urr does not need the useless…” the child of the unwell murmured crossly as she grasped the spear and pulled it out of his armour. He raised himself out of the dirt with shame, and glanced over at the Orellan’s massive corpse. It was wearing a strange mixmatch of armour, some space age, some medieval, and some entirely unarmoured. It was one of the strange side effects of folding time like this; invading at multiple points in the timeline all at once, and watching the not present and the present warp and buckle around them. With a kick, he fired another burst of fire into the smoldering four armed corpse, and trotted back up towards the evacuation site.
There would never be a war between the Flux Ascendency and the Orellan Star Empire, for the Orellan Star Empire would never rise. Their ships would never stumble across the Ascendancy’s outposts. In this one instant, across space and time, Orellas was being raped and ravaged and made to have never been. Any survivors would perish in as they found themselves living in a world that never should have supported life. Time wasn’t just on the side of the Flux Ascendancy. Time WAS their side. And they would leave their drawings and their stone tools and nothing more.
The waters were falling up. It was that simple. Every ocean, every river, every drop; it was all falling up, up into the clouds, and even the clouds were receding. It was an awesome sight, watching the ships steal away the lifeblood of this world…
No one asked him if this was his first time as his helmet leaned back to allow him the best view of the spectacle. It was a pointless question. Everything might as well be anyone’s first time doing this, or doing that, or watching worlds burn or being the man with the torch. First was relative, and only a matter of perspective.
“The Third communicates her desires to expedite your withdrawl. Temporal extraction will be occurring imminently.” A voice inside his helmet advised passively, and the two other men with him turned towards each other. One-a higher functioning child of the unwell-gestured upwards with her weapon’s formidable bayonette. She made a strange series of gargling noises as liquids from some form of synthetic vocalizer ran through his exposed vocal chords, before a computerized approximation of a female voice spoke in her place.
“We best not keep her waiting then.” She said as an audible swishing noise came from around her mutilated neck. The massive blade was lowered towards the horizon, and she gestured towards a growing group of suited figures, waiting for the mass evacuation. Her legs-slightly longer than they should have been, he suspected, if her stride was any indication of it-carried her swiftly over the dying grass, which earlier-how much so was irrelevant- had been green and verdant, but it was all changing so rapidly now. The blades of grass were fading to yellow and brown.
He was young, comparatively speaking, though here again the term was pointless. The Flux Ascendancy oddly enough didn’t have an understanding of the concept of time, not in a conventional sense at least. There was no yesterday or tomorrow, only not the present, and future present, and the immediate future? It was imminent. That was all. No clocks, no historians, no days of the week, and for a comparatively young member of the Ascendancy, youth was a strangely meaningless term. But some amount of his lack of experiences remained, and he marveled as the grass slowly withered besides them. The ship was removing the nutrients and minerals from the soil when it was not the present, and as not the present slowly caught up with the present, the landscape was changing. The soil was drying out, and the plants were dying, and the animals which watched with peculiar disinterest were growing visibly thinner around them-
And then the spear came out of nowhere. It struck him in the back, right below the shoulder blades, and the shock sent him stumbling over into the rapidly drying dirt. It was embedded in its armour, but the force with which it had been thrown had surprised him. He could hear the sound of an energy rifle rapidly firing off, and the scream of one of the Orellans as the rounds found their mark.
“You fool Jaleth! The Khamood-Urr does not need the useless…” the child of the unwell murmured crossly as she grasped the spear and pulled it out of his armour. He raised himself out of the dirt with shame, and glanced over at the Orellan’s massive corpse. It was wearing a strange mixmatch of armour, some space age, some medieval, and some entirely unarmoured. It was one of the strange side effects of folding time like this; invading at multiple points in the timeline all at once, and watching the not present and the present warp and buckle around them. With a kick, he fired another burst of fire into the smoldering four armed corpse, and trotted back up towards the evacuation site.
There would never be a war between the Flux Ascendency and the Orellan Star Empire, for the Orellan Star Empire would never rise. Their ships would never stumble across the Ascendancy’s outposts. In this one instant, across space and time, Orellas was being raped and ravaged and made to have never been. Any survivors would perish in as they found themselves living in a world that never should have supported life. Time wasn’t just on the side of the Flux Ascendancy. Time WAS their side. And they would leave their drawings and their stone tools and nothing more.