The plan was simple, but suicidal. Tohn would drench everything in range while Ruben would electrify the water. In theory, that would distract the many Harvesters surrounding the anomaly, allowing Zantzi to jump in, power up his Fragor with a Void Key and breach the barrier. Simple, but hopefully effective. Tohn was already in position, as was Ruben. Zantzi was poised to make the jump to the barrier.
"Now."
Tentacles of water rose beneath the Harvesters, reaching their full height before collapsing into spray that swept around the barrier. Ruben took his chance and began firing bolts of lightning, while Tohn sent barrages against the Harvesters. Zantzi turned invisible and jumped, hammer crackling with golden energy. He began swinging at the barrier, Void energy slowing down the rate at which it regenerated. He fell through the hole he created, shards of black crystal rising up to plug the breach. Zantzi grimaced. The plan had accounted for the fact that Tohn and Ruben might not make it through, but it was still disappointing. He would have to rendezvous with them later. Standing up as the air was pumped out and replaced, he realised he was stood on well-kept grass in front of a mansion. Judging by the number of footprints, there had been a large crowd there recently.
Wait, I've been here before...
He approached the mansion slowly, constantly scanning the area for any Harvesters. He did not see the figure ducking away from one of the windows.
Zantzi carefully opened the door, pointing the four barrels of his Hek inside first before entering himself. Inside was completely spotless and sparsely decorated, the occasional painting hanging from the wall. The staircase going up appeared normal, but the flight going down clearly wasn't part of the building's original structure. The steps were of a slightly different size to the ones going up, but the most telling part was the fact that they were made out of black crystal. Once again, he failed to notice the Inkling watching him from down the corridor. They sank into the ground as Zantzi turned to look down the corridor.
The Tenno soon found the room where he had been imprisoned by the girl with the knives. He unconsciously ran his fingers over the backs of his hands when recalling what had happened as he teleported. Shuddering at the memory, he continued to search the mansion.
"What?"
"Zantzi, the alien, is here. He's searching the mansion."
"Then we must pull everyone down here, before he finds anyone. He'll undoubtedly interrogate anyone he comes across to try and find us. Come on. Let's start moving people."
Zantzi searched each room in order, finding most of them empty. Some of the rooms had a few personal effects on them, some marked as if they'd been held over an open fire. Others were inside evacuated containers, including a book, opened to the last page with every name written in the book highlighted.
"Ordis, can you translate the label here?" He pointed to it.
"House Ledger, year of the Giant."
"Do they not number their years?"
"Apparently not, Operator."
"Have you been able to locate the other four?"
"Negative, Operator. Something is interfering, and I cannot detect their transponders."
"Hmm. Well, we may as well keep searching."
The first floor was the much the same as the ground floor- mostly empty rooms save for a few with personal items inside, some with identifiable information on them, others not. In one room, there was another evacuated container with a book inside.
"Ordis?"
"One moment." Ordis said. "News reports pertaining to recent disappearances, year of the Missing."
"Are you still connected to their Internet? I have a theory."
"Yes. What would you like me to do?"
"Search "Year of the Giant" and tell me what comes up."
"Certainly. Year of the Giant, succeeding the Year of Octavio and preceding the Year of the Missing. So named after Misha, the giant who appeared suddenly in this world and helped fight of the threat posed by the Blue Ring, an extreme group of Octolings."
"Tell me about the Year of the Missing."
"The Year of the Missing, succeeding the year of the Giant and preceding the decade lull. So named after the string of strange disappearances and murders that took place in this year. There is an image here Operator, with a content warning on it. Would you like to see it?"
"Show me."
The image that appeared in his vision was so extreme that despite having seen many horrors in his battles through the Origin System, Zantzi retched.
For all its colour there appears to be some highly deranged people in this world.
Ordis removed the picture.
"That was real?"
"As far as I can tell, yes."
"The bodies were..."
"Impaled- LIKE TROPHIES. Yes. Shall I continue reading?"
"Yes."
"This year marked the horrific murders of many citizens, and also the disappearance of teenage pop sensation Marie Cuttlefish."
"So my theory is correct. They name years after the major events that transpire in them. Tell me more about this Marie."
"I'll give you the quick version. Marie Cuttlefish is one half of the pop sensation known as the Squid Sisters, along with her cousin Callie Cuttlefish. Most of their personal lives is not known, apart from the fact that Marie went missing following a brief stay in a mental institution. There is an image gallery, Operator, would you like to see?"
"Show me."
Images of a teenage girl with pale tentacles on stage with another with dark tentacles appeared, amongst others. Another showed her in a straitjacket, in a rather risqué pose.
"She seems quite the character."
"After some more searching, there is an image of her you may find interesting."
"Show me."
"This is CCTV footage, and it shows a girl the same height as Marie wearing a mask. The style of tentacles is also the same. This matches the description of the girl who stabbed you."
"So that was Marie... Something isn't right. Go back to the image gallery of Marie."
Ordis quickly brought up the relevant page.
"Show the dates of the pictures, when were they taken?"
"IMPOSSIBLE- over a decade ago."
"She clearly isn't normal, and I'd wager that she has a major role in this situation. The top floor can wait, that's a part of the structure. That staircase going down, however, that's where we'll find answers."
Heading back to the stairs, Zantzi descended to the ground floor. He stood before the black stairs leading into a seemingly impenetrable darkness.
"Operator, I'm detecting massive interference in there. It's likely we will not be able to contact the outside once we go in. I advise you leave- YOUR WILL- your memoirs here. I can leave a fragment for you, as well as a backup in the Dojo's systems."
"Good idea."
Zantzi spent the next hour speaking to Ordis, recounting his name, clan and purpose, as well as his circumstances leading up to and including him standing at the top of the stairs. A glowing mass of cubes appeared in his hands when he finished talking, and he carefully placed it in the middle of the foyer, along with the Noggles he had been carrying.
No use in risking them down there.
Steadying himself and checking his weapons, he stepped forward, slowly making his way beneath the mansion. The stairs travelled down in a spiral, and Zantzi stuck to the outside edge, his weapon pointed in front of him at all times.
"Radio contact lost with the outside."
"Watch my back, Ordis. I don't imagine whoever did this will go-" The stairs began to dissolve. Zantzi groaned. "Easy on us."
The stairs gave way beneath him, the inner and outer walls dissolving too, leaving him out of reach of the true edge of the shaft. He fell straight down into the dark, his Warframe's sensors detecting the rapidly approaching ground. He landed hard, his shields breaking from the force and the rocks of the cavern floor buckling as his fall ended. He grimaced. Standing and looking around, he saw he was in a narrow shaft where presumably the stairs once were. The lights of the mansion above were almost imperceptible. Black crystal grew over the aperture, blocking out the light. Before him was a door leading into a much larger chamber- his guess was that it was around twenty metres in diameter. Seeing no other way through, he stepped into the room and whirled as the passage was blocked again by black crystal.
They're preventing me from retreating.
He realised that the floor was covered in a viscous tar, and that it was sapping his energy. He watched the number fall rapidly, draining him in around twelve seconds.
Great. No energy and no idea what I'm up against.
He spotted a break in the uniform blackness of the tar; a metallic object in the dead centre of the room. As he approached, it grew upwards, tar forming a body for it. He saw that it was a mask, made of metal and heavily corroded. It growled lowly at him, and with barely a moment's hesitation it charged, claws raised. Zantzi dodged, emptying his Hek into it- it didn't even flinch, its body regenerating far too quickly for the shotgun to do any damage. He dodged the next strike, and the third raked off his shields, almost breaking them. He switched his strategy and targeted the mask, the first round from his Hek staggering the creature while the other three dislodged the mask. The creature liquefied, screams of rage filling the room. Crystal blocking the four exits of the room fell away, and Zantzi pressed on, stepping into another circular chamber into which he was immediately sealed. Seeing another metallic object in the centre again, he opted to skirt around it, sticking to the walls as his energy drained. Despite keeping his distance, it still rose up, taking on an identical form as the previous mask and attacking. This time, Zantzi wasted no time in aiming for the mask, using an energy restore as the tar vanished, taking him back up to two hundred energy. Again, the four exits appeared, and he pressed on, watching his energy drain down from six hundred as he stepped into the tar.
"What...?"
His confusion at his situation almost cost him his life as the mask in the room attacked, Zantzi taking an almost lethal amount of time to get away and destroy the creature again. As the exits appeared, he watched carefully, his energy jumping from zero up to six hundred as he stepped through the doorway.
"What the hell is this?"
He stopped the creature in the room and went back the way he came, and was immediately attacked by a mask. Two shells blasted the mask off, causing the creature to dissolve. He approached the object, picking it up and inspecting it. In its current state it appeared to be nothing more than a metal mask with a downright animalistic expression. Throwing it across the room, he carried on into the next, utterly confused as to how his energy was reappearing each time he stepped into a room. He wasn't staying in each room long enough for his Zenurik Focus to be restoring his energy. The situation he was in made his head hurt. Stepping into the next room, he realised that no matter which direction he came into the room, the door he appeared in was always the door that the mask's chin pointed at. He found that odd. Surely there was no conceivable way that the rooms were being created as he stepped into them. Frowning, when he killed the creature in his current room, he picked up its mask and carried it to the next, regretting it when both masks came to life and attacked in unison, coming close to killing him. After dealing with the two of them, Zantzi sat down, resting his head against the chamber walls.
What the hell is this place? He thought. Just how big are these caves?
He rested for a short while, watching the two masks like a hawk as he did so. Standing up again about five minutes later, he picked one of the masks up and attempted to snap it, the metal resisting far more than its thickness should allow. Placing it down, he took aim and emptied his Hek into it, the metal buckling with the force of each shot before it sheared down the middle, splitting into two pieces and exploding into a darkness that quickly faded. Nodding, he headed into the next room.
"What?!"
He was attacked by two masks again, and after fending both off, he collapsed onto his knees, mind racing.
Think... These circumstances are characteristic of something, I feel like something like this has happened before...
He remembered- the Juggernaut, being armed only with his fists and the message from the Lotus that followed.
This is a nightmare?
Reviewing his experience so far, he thought of every aspect of the caves.
Feeling of falling, check. Trapped in one place, check. Put in a difficult situation, check. Attacked by strange creatures, check.
"This is a nightmare!"
As the words left his mouth, his vision darkened, as if he was blinking slowly or falling asleep. When he opened his eyes again, he was in a different cave, submerged in a pool of tar. As he surfaced, he realised that firstly, the tar had broken his shields and armour, and secondly that there was a young woman in a mask standing over him.
"You made it out. That's... Not entirely unexpected, actually."
She held out a hand to Zantzi, and he took it. She pulled him out of the tar, allowing him to stand up on his own.
"You put me in a dream?"
"Yes. Your soul was inside the armour, so it was if I was putting a normal person under."
"When? When did you do that?"
"Let me ask you this instead- how far would you say you fell to get down here?"
"Uh..." Zantzi thought back. "I'd say a couple of hundred meters."
"There's the stairs. See for yourself."
She was pointing over his shoulder. He turned around, seeing a spiral staircase in the wall. He looked into the stairwell, ascending and completing two revolutions before appearing in the foyer.
"Impossible..."
"No, quite possible." The woman called. Zantzi went back down to face her. "The truth is when you stepped onto the stairs, they remained normal before collapsing, pulling you into the tar and therefor into the dream. What you experienced was falling as that took place."
Zantzi felt like he knew the woman from somewhere. The mask and pale tentacles were all screaming at him. He suddenly realised.
"You're Marie, aren't you?"
She looked shocked for a second before smiling.
"I should have known you'd work that out. I saw the imprint left by your computer and figured when you saw me you'd put two and two together. Yes, I am Marie Cuttlefish, former news reporter and pop star, Culus survivor, the person who threw several knives at you and the saviour of most of the population of Inkopolis and the mountain. You do know how many have died as a direct result of your actions, don't you?"
Zantzi found himself unable to meet her gaze. Her expression hardened.
"Look at this from an outside perspective. Aliens drop out of the sky and were warned that if they tried to go home they would destroy the world. They don't listen and they destroy the world. Suddenly, people aren't going to be quite so fond of you."
"Where are my friends?"
"They're further into the caverns. Not one of them have woken up because they were still outside when my Harvesters, as you seem to be calling them, captured them. This allowed me to make a much more convincing scenario with far fewer flaws than the dream you were in. As a result, they have not found those flaws and therefore remained asleep. And while I can wake them manually, it can be incredibly dangerous to do so. Heart attacks and catatonia are apparently common when people are woken forcibly. Or so I'm told."
Zantzi saw someone looking into the room- an Inkling. It wasn't Raaz, but a total stranger. They were old, Zantzi could tell that much.
"Hmm? Who's this?"
The man approached with a speed that surprised the Tenno, pulling a tape measure from seemingly nowhere and took his height.
"Don't tell me... You're the first one that fell?"
"He is. He's the one I interrogated."
"Oh, is that so? Well, I think you owe him an apology for throwing a knife at him."
"That knife pinned my hands together, I'll have you know." Zantzi added.
"O-oh." Marie stuttered. "That was never my intention. Sorry, that must have hurt."
"Them what was your intention, Marie?"
"Shast, I, uh... I was aiming for the suit, to pin it to the wall. The space under the arms was slightly slacker, but he moved unexpectedly. Hey, this is the wrong way around; he caused the end of the world!"
"Hmm, that is true." Shast said. "Well, I'll let you deal with him then."
Shast walked away while Zantzi watched, bemused.
"Just how many people are down here?"
"Too many." Marie said. "Follow me."
Marie walked into the next chamber, and Zantzi tensed up when he saw the two masks in the middle of the room. She picked up on his unease.
"They're to stop anything that somehow makes it out of the dream. They won't attack you as long as you stay right behind me."
The wall disappeared when Marie approached, creating a clear path around the thin layer of tar that covered the floor. Zantzi stayed well away from the dark substance- he swore he could see it coiling. The next chamber caught him off-guard. There were people, around a hundred of them at the very least, living in shelters made of crystal. It wasn't the black crystal that Zantzi had gotten so used to seeing, but enormous shafts of what Zantzi assumed was Quartz. All conversation stopped when the population realised the Tenno was there, and he felt far too tall and exposed. Marie quickly pulled him down to whisper to him.
"They know you did this. Don't expect a warm welcome."
She pulled him into the next room, and he saw that it was far larger than the last. Again, it was circular, but it travelled downwards almost further than Zantzi could see, even with his sensors.
"What is this?"
"This is where I keep the dreamers, the ones who didn't want to live in a bubble. Instead they will live in a dream world that is drawn from the collective memories of all the dreamers here, to live a mostly normal life."
"How have you been able to do this?"
"I've been collecting more souls. This Infestation still has them, and the ones that are not cooked for food I use to create things like this."
"You cooked the Infested for food?!" He yelled, incredulously.
"Yes. The fire inactivates the infectious part and boils off any toxins. They actually taste pretty good."
"So you're sat here keeping around one hundred thousand people living in the past and eating creatures from the future." Zantzi stopped thinking about it. "What about the Harvesters? How do they work?"
"Oh, they're just golems made from terrestrial crystal and possessed by a soul, which turns them black for some reason. They're incredibly useful for things like capturing Infested for food or recovering personal belongings. They're not affected by the plague, but they're only really effective with sneak attacks, otherwise they use more energy than they gain."
"I'm guessing some of these people live in the house above?"
"Yes." And that was all Marie said for a few moments. "I'll take you to your friends."
Before Zantzi could react she had taken hold of him and dragged him down, travelling down the wall of the shaft, right to the bottom. The temperature rose perceptibly as they descended. At the very bottom, four swellings in the tar marked the location where the rest of the Crimson Hammer slept.
"What are they dreaming about?"
"At the moment... They're dreaming they're in their Dojo, discussing how they're going to get back at... Hunhow? Am I saying that right?"
"Yes." Zantzi growled.
"Oh, and you're there too, think of it like an NPC in a video game."
"Hmm."
Zantzi looked at his sleeping friends.
"So all they have to do to wake up is find a flaw in the dream?"
"Yes. It's what I did. Given the flaw in mine was a monster masquerading as my at-that-time girlfriend. Theirs is far less obvious."
"Would I be able to help them?"
"You could, but there's a few things you need to know about the dream. First, if you die in the dream, you die here due to your soul becoming a part of me. That's just how it is, I can't change that. Second, theirs it not like the others here. There's no back door, so you'll be trapped there with them until all five of you escape. Third, the NPC that has been acting as you will transfer its memories to you as you enter. Fourth, you will not be able to leave the area drawn by the limits of the dreamers' memories. That is to say, if someone has never been to Inkopolis, it will not be there in the dream and the land will instead be covered in impenetrable fog. Any attempt to walk through will put you back the way you came and remove your memories of it. The closer you get, the less you will want to go into the fog. That last bit is a precaution. On an added note, since you're entering voluntarily, I'll be able to talk to you without waking you up. Do you understand and accept these conditions?"
"Yes." Was Zantzi's reply, with no hesitation. Even Marie was shocked. She used her sight, and saw the conviction and selflessness in the Tenno's soul. She smiled.
"Take all the time you need. You'll be sustained by the tar while you sleep. Hold still."