Disclaimer: I'm sorry guys. After 6 months straight of writing Catalyst, I'm just burned out. I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm afraid I have to cancel the story. If anyone wants to adopt it, let me know.
Also let me know if I should have saved this joke for April fools, because JK I'M GOING ALL THE WAY TO THE END. FOR ANOTHER 6 MONTHS! FOR SCIENCE! FOR THE SWARM! Also, don't own it.
(Has anyone ever noticed that if you rearrange the letters in transition, you get "Iran, tits on"? Just a thought.)
I'm going to be honest, I hadn't noticed that. Also, I just want to say that most of the people reading already noticed that this chapter is way too long to be a cancellation notice. So you probably didn't fool very many of them. ~f
Catalyst
"Bane, what you suggest is nothing less than suicide," Firenze said. "We have already lost many brave warriors to their fangs, and you propose to send more?"
"We must answer fire with fire, Firenze! The acromantulas must pay for what they have done, and there is no time like the present!" Bane replied. The two centaurs stood in a middle of a crowd. The survivors of the initial attack huddled together.
"You have seen the results of trying to fight those monstrosities with your own eyes. Those are not the acromantulas we are used to dealing with," Firenze countered. "We cannot afford another loss like that."
"Would you rather let the acromantulas have free reign? Yes, I saw what the acromantulas, I saw the bodies. We all did. We need to prevent them from growing stronger, now, while they're weakened," Bane continued to argue. "Can you not see that Firenze, or have the humans infected you with their blindness?"
"Blindness? Look around you, Bane," Firenze gestured at the injured and shell shocked survivors clustered around them. They had hollow expressions. Families huddled together, futilely attempting to comfort each other. "Do you really think they are ready to attack them head on?"
"Attacking is better than leaving them to their own devices," Bane maintained. "At this very moment, they could be taking advantage of our lack of action to expand, to-"
"They aren't going to be expanding," A voice from the crowd interrupted Bane mid-sentence.
"He won't go a centimeter past his borders until every last one of us is dead," Milano said. The last few words were said in a disturbingly cheerful tone, as if he was reciting a children's poem.
"How do you know that?" Bane asked. "They have already attacked us, what's the next-"
"I know because he said so. He didn't lie to us at all," Milano said in the same cheerful time.
"Who didn't lie?" Firenze asked, eyes narrowed.
"Why, the leader of the acromantulas of course. Who else?" Milano answered with a giggle. "He said he wouldn't expand while we forbid it."
"And look how that turned out! He has already broken his word, and even now, he is likely weaving his webs across the entire forest," Bane interrupted.
"No!" Milano shouted, hysterical. Every eye was on him in an instant. "We're still living! He won't do that. Not while even a single centaur lives. He's keeping his word."
"How can you say that, while we hide from his colonies gaze even now?" Firenze said. "Have you gone mad?"
"I say this because I know! We banned him from expanding, and we're certainly not going to change our minds. So the Mind's going to kill us all, just to make sure we can never oppose it!"
"The Mind?" Firenze asked, puzzled.
"We're just ants, pests, obstacles, resources, stressors. Barely worth noticing, small things that burrow underneath the skin and modify all they find..." Milano trailed off, stopping his rant. He stared at his hands as if he had never seen them before. "Oh. So that's what happened. A shame. For a moment, it was all so clear."
Milano suddenly drew his blade. The other centaurs, already on a short fuse, drew and nocked their own bows. Milano found himself staring down a bristling wall of arrows. He stood still, looking carefully over the bows and the faces of the centaurs holding them. He burst out into laughter.
"You can't kill me anymore. What's a few extra pokes to a walking corpse?" Milano addressed his audience. Then he stabbed his knife straight into his forehead. Milano's last sight was his friends, his family, watching him bleed out. Their shock was plain to see, despite everything.
Abathur found this development incredibly disappointing. A few minutes more, and Milano's mind would have been fully converted.
(Transition)
As he waited for his appointment, Dumbledore notice that his purple and green robes looked incredibly out of place in the marble halls of Gringotts. Dumbledore was well aware of this, of course, but he liked the contrasting colors. They were ever so eye-catching.
Dumbledore continued pondering the interactions of clothing and room design until a goblin came to collect him.
"Albus Dumbledore," the goblin said, "curse-breaker Byhumorn is available. You will come with me." The goblin walked off down a hallway without bothering to make sure that Dumbledore was following. Ignoring the slight, Dumbledore politely followed in the goblin's footsteps. They stopped before a large door, adorned only with a plate reading 'A. Byhumorn'. The whole room beyond was covered with a worrying number of privacy wards. What could require so much protection?
The goblin rapped its knuckles on the door. There was the sound of cloth rustling and muffled cursing before the door opened, and the privacy wards fell back. A man, or what Dumbledore assumed was a man under all the wrappings, stood on the other side. "What do you want?" he asked gruffly.
"Your appointment, Curse-breaker," The goblin stated, before walking away. The covered man watched the diminutive banker retreat into the background, before turning back to Dumbledore.
"So. What does the Chief Warlock want with me?" asked Adeviar Byhumorn.
He was not what Dumbledore had expected. Looking at his bulk, Dumbledore had to wonder if the curse-breaker was related to Hagrid. Byhumorn's face was almost entirely covered, save for one vividly colored yellow eye. His voice was odd. There was an echo, as if he had two voices that were slightly out of sync with each other. The effect was disconcerting. He took a moment to look past Adeviar into the room he had emerged from. It was much larger than he had expected. There was practically enough room for a person to live in there full time.
"Did Ollivander not tell you?" Dumbledore asked.
"He tried his best, but didn't give much detail. Better to check the source than regret it later," Adeviar replied, still speaking in that doubled voice. Was he using a spell?
"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed, "I wanted to ask about the effects of a ritual you helped with some 14 years ago."
Adeviar's visible eye narrowed, and his body tensed. In a low growl, he told Dumbledore, "I told you then, and I'll tell you now: I'm not participating in a single one of your Merlin-damned experiments."
Whatever Dumbledore was expecting to hear, that wasn't it. "I assure you, Mr. Byhumorn, no one will be experimenting on you, not now, nor in the future. I just want to know what happened."
Adeviar glared suspiciously at Dumbledore. Dumbledore did his best to project a grandfatherly presence. Eventually, Adeviar relented and silently beckoned Dumbledore into his office.
The first thing Dumbledore noticed was how little the room resembled a workplace. A small bed was shoved into the corner, a kitchen counter ran along one wall, and a closet and pantry were set into another. Did Adeviar live here? Why? Before Dumbledore could ponder any further, Adeviar spoke up.
"So. I assume you've done your research. You've talked to Garrick. You show up, the goblins probably made you wait for hours, and you're still here. What's eating you up so much?" Adeviar asked.
"Ah, there's a question I could spend days answering. Unfortunately, I only have so much time, so please forgive my bluntness. How exactly did the ritual change you?" Dumbledore asked.
"Cutting straight to the chase, eh?" Adeviar said. "Better than the last Ministry bootlicker." Adeviar went over to the pantry, and pulled out a packet of beef jerky. He grabbed a strip with one hand and removed some of his coverings with the other. He took a bite before responding. Then he stared straight into Dumbledore's eyes. "So, why should I bother to tell you that?"
"Are you aware that Vivira Jaren had a child after that night?"
Adeviar's visible eye narrowed. "Yes, I knew. What about it?"
"Were you aware that the child was born 9 months after the ritual?"
Adeviar flinched as if he'd been struck, before very slowly making his way over to a seat across from Dumbledore. There was a long pause as Adeviar gathered his thoughts. "I suppose you probably should know then, just so that you don't toss him out. Did Garrick tell you about the ritual itself?"
"He provided me with the purpose, but was rather vague on the details of the process," Dumbledore said.
Adeviar nodded. "It was very complex, even if its purpose wasn't," Adeviar took another bite of the beef jerky. Dumbledore could've sworn he saw something else under the mask. "The ritual had a lot more steps than normal, but it was a hell of a lot more powerful. Garrick left the details to me and Jedelis, our arithmancy expert. Simply put, it takes the soul first, then the 'information' of the body, and uses that to construct a new vessel. It takes much less power than making a portal, and offers quite a bit more range."
"How clever," Dumbledore commented. "I wouldn't have considered that."
"It was new to all of us, but all that means is that there were plenty of chances for mistakes. It didn't help that we were working second-handed and off of incredibly ancient texts. Should've seen it coming," Adeviar said.
"You should seen what coming?" Dumbledore asked.
"It was going to fail. Somewhere in the second step, the whole process fell to pieces. The containment failed, the information and the soul scattered, the vessel never even started to form. They went into the only things they could," Adeviar chuckled grimly. "And that was us."
"If they went into you, what happened to them?" Dumbledore asked.
Adeviar paused, fiddling with bits of his mask. "How's your stomach?"
"It is quite durable, I assure you," Dumbledore said.
"I hope so, because this is easier to show than explain," Adeviar said, and pulled off his mask.
Whatever Dumbledore had been expecting, the reality was far worse. Half of Adeviar's face was covered with purple scales, and a small tendril grew out of his cheek. Lines of light spread from the eye he'd kept hidden, and the eye itself was actually glowing with a soft light. When Adeviar pulled off his gloves, he revealed clawed hands which were covered with a rough carapace.
"If you think I look bad, you should have seen the others," Adeviar said when he saw Dumbledore's expression. "They didn't survive their changes."
"This is what would have been summoned?" Dumbledore asked, shocked.
"Of course not. This is just bits and pieces of it, pushed onto me. Considering what the rest of us looked like, the full thing would have been much, much worse. I'm almost glad it failed, considering," Adeviar responded. "The kid doesn't have any of this?"
"He has nothing like that," Dumbledore said.
Adeviar visibly relaxed. "Good. He avoided the worst effects then. I've pretty much been living here when I'm not out of the country. Can't exactly go out like this, can I?"
There was a brief silence, before Dumbledore asked another question. "What happened to the soul of the creature?" he said.
"Scattered, just like the rest of it. Not gone, but Occlumency keeps the worst of the whispers away," Adeviar said.
"And what exactly are the whispers?"
"Just that, little snippets of words. There's bits about something called an Overmind, lots of glimpses of creatures like this," Adeviar pointed to his face. "But recently, they're mostly ranting about perfection."
Dumbledore's blood ran cold. With a quick wave of his wand, he crafted an illusion of Thenabar's Boggart. "Were the summons successful, would the result possibly look like this?"
Adeviar studied the image. "Could be, certainly. It's ugly enough."
"What effect would these whispers have on a newborn child, one that didn't have any way to defend against it?" Dumbledore asked in a low tone.
Adeviar froze, struck by the horrors that thought presented. Then he grabbed Dumbledore's shoulder, squeezing with a surprising amount of strength. "Teach the kid Occlumency," he said. "Now."
Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak, but Adeviar pushed him out the door. With alarm in his eyes, he shut Dumbledore out, only saying, "Now old man! Now!" and shoving him on his way. Worriedly, Dumbledore made his way out of Gringotts. He could only hope it wasn't too late.
Aberration: The majority of the infested terrans in the Zerg Swarm are essentially cannon fodder. Pieces of disconnected flesh held together by armor and spitballs that fall apart at the slightest breeze. Or, if they've been around too long, a bullet through their own skull. The aberrations, created by then broodmother Zagara from infested terrans, are the exception. Towering, pustule covered, centaur-like creatures, aberrations provide a strong, albeit uncommon, front line for zerg forces. Aberrations attack with their clawed forearms, slashing at anything in their path. Due to their great height, aberrations provide makeshift cover on the battlefield, giving armor to anything underneath them. With their own rather high durability, aberrations make any force, especially one with relatively weak units, an unstoppable wave of death.