Chapter 17: Fural
Fural ran. The things chased him. He glanced back as he rushed through the looping grey hallways. The closest Flood monster to him looked like it had been a Sangheili, but it didn't have anything left of its combat harness. Claws extended from both of its arms instead of just one of them.
Fural raised his plasma rifle and fired. The heat from the plasma rounds caused the once-Sangheili's bulbous flesh to explode. Its body fell, and the other pursuing Flood forms tripped over it.
He primed a grenade and dropped it behind him to take care of the Flood. He didn't have time to line up a throw. It exploded, and he kept running without turning around to see if it had killed all of them.
Since he was in constant contact with Dom, he heard fighting over comms. Dom shouted unintelligible orders that were drowned out by the constant fire of plasma weapons. Fural glanced at his map which had Dom and his group highlighted. They were moving fast as well.
More things jumped out at Fural. Somehow they had gotten ahead of him. Or maybe they had been there for a while. Another once-Sangheili with claws on both of its arms jumped up to the platform he was on and leapt at him. Fural fired three shots into its chest, but it was still moving.
The thing tackled Fural to the floor and pinned him there. It raised one of its claws to stab him, but he wasn't going to let it. An energy dagger shot out from his gauntlet, and he stabbed it through the tendrils that protruded from its chest repeatedly until the thing fell limp on top of him. He pushed it aside and stood up, quietly thanking his shields for saving him from having that mess actually touch him.
A screech sounded from behind him, and he turned around the instant he heard it. Two more Flood monsters were there, but these ones were smaller. These ones looked like they had been humans. So the humans are here…
One of them held a weapon, and it raised it. The bullets that it shot seemed to be too powerful for the little gun that it was, they caused Fural to stumble back with each hit. The other Flood launched toward him, and he stabbed his energy dagger through its abdomen. He fired his plasma rifle with his other hand at the Flood that was shooting him until the thing exploded, and all that was left was a pair of legs.
But the one he stabbed was still moving. The thing's limbs flailed around, and it tried to claw at him. He thrust his arm forward, and it slid off the blade of the energy dagger and onto the floor. It tried to get up, but Fural put two plasma rounds into it, and it stopped moving.
"Fural! Are you alright?" Dom asked. The fighting on his side seemed to have calmed down enough for him to hear what was happening to Fural.
"Yes, you?" Fural asked. He wasted no time in continuing on his way to the elevator room.
"I'm fine. We lost the our Unggoy, we ran into Flood using human weapons. I think they might have been humans previously as well."
"I encountered some as well. It seems the humans made it down here after us."
"And if they made it all the way to one of the containment rooms…"
"Then a lot more Flood have been released."
Fural was almost to the elevator room. The weapons facility wasn't really a maze, but it sure wasn't easy to navigate either. There were too many rooms connected to each other, and too many of them were exactly the same. Every time he ran into some Flood form he had gotten disoriented, and he needed to use Dom's map to find his way around.
He breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he heard the sound of plasma fire behind a door. When it opened it brought him into a light bridge chamber, and across from him he saw Dom and the last Kig-Yar fighting side by side. A horde of the small balloon-like Flood poured in from the other side of the chamber. The light bridge had been deactivated, but the things were crawling across the walls.
The Kig-Yar jumped and turned to Fural when the door opened, he could tell it was about to shoot him. It shook its head and turned back to the swarm.
"Dom!" Fural called. He ran to him and joined him in shooting the balloons down. The once pristine room was covered in the slime that came out of the Flood, and the shredded and burned remains of each balloon that had exploded.
"The elevator is behind us!" Dom shouted. "Let's move!"
The three of them moved through the door to the elevator room, and Dom immediately began the process of locking the door down. None of the remaining balloon creatures were able to make it to the door before it slammed shut.
The Sangheili brothers jogged out to the elevator, but it wasn't there. Dom accessed the controls and sent it down.
"The Flood must have escaped," Dom said, "they'll be ravaging the ring above us."
"If those things are up there they'll be untraceable," said Fural, "a lot of people are going to be dead soon."
"Not dead. Worse."
Fural flinched when he heard a screeching sound above him. It wasn't the screech of a Flood monster, but it was the screech of metal against metal. He could see the elevator coming down the shaft way faster than it should have been. The sides of it were on fire.
"Move!" Dom pushed Fural hard and both of them sprinted back to the door. Fural glanced behind him and saw the elevator fly past. It seemed to crack in half before it disappeared from sight.
"Now what?" Fural asked between deep breaths.
The Kig-Yar guarding the door tilted its head toward it and chirped.
"We find another elevator," Dom said. He brought his special door-unlocking device back out, and unlocked the door that he had locked before.
Things were getting progressively worse. They hadn't encountered too many more Flood forms, but the facility around them was changing. Whole swathes of chambers were losing power, some of the chambers had been completely ravaged by battle. The one they were in now was littered with pieces of bodies. Arms, legs, piles of flesh and blood. There wasn't a single whole body in sight. The walls and floors were scorched with impacts from plasma rifles and grenades. Bullet holes had been sunk deep into the walls from either carbines or human weapons.
There hadn't been that many teams that went down there. Each of them were about the size of the one Fural and Dom had entered with. But he had no idea how many humans were down there either.
Another thing he thought about was what he would do if he found humans alive down there. Would he kill them? Would they try to kill him? Or would they be able to set aside their differences in the face of this crisis and find a way to escape?
Fural recalled a conversation he had with Dom, when he was asked if he would spare a human's life if they held faith in the Forerunners, or something along the lines of that. It wasn't actually that long ago when the conversation had happened, but it seemed like it had been a lifetime because of everything that had happened after.
The Kig-Yar behind them barked. They heard movement.
"Run," Dom said, his voice was calmer than Fural thought it should've been.
The three of them sprinted. They moved into the next chamber, and the next. They were stopped when one of the chambers had more Flood monsters in it. Combat forms, Dom had been calling them. All of these ones were human. Well, they had been human, but now they were something else.
One of them raised a rifle. Dom and Fural dove for cover, the Kig-Yar used its point defence gauntlet for cover and crouched. The rattling of the human weapons echoed around the walls of the chamber, and the blasting of the Kig-Yar's plasma pistol followed.
One of the gunners fell to the floor, its leg had completely detached from its body. Fural looked at the heat gauge on his plasma rifle as he heard Dom firing. He was going to run out of shots in his plasma rifle soon, but it was good at taking these things down. He opted to save the remaining shots for a more dire situation, and he switched to the carbine on his back.
The once-human gunners hobbled forward. They walked like it was their first time doing it. Fural aimed for the head of one, its face was frozen in a pained expression. He fired his carbine straight through its brain, and the top of its head flew off. But it wasn't dead. It was barely even fazed. It let out a shriek and tossed its rifle aside before charging towards Fural.
He frantically fired his carbine at the thing. One of the shots caused a lump in the thing's chest to explode, and it fell limp onto the floor. A few more bursts came from Dom and the Kig-Yar, and the room started to seem clear.
Fural kicked the dead once-human combat form, and turned it onto its back. Each of the things that attacked him had tendrils sticking out of their lumpy chests, but he noticed that the dead ones on the floor did not. He remembered the one he stabbed, the way it was still alive while it was attached to his arm. Hm. Aim for the chest, then.
Dom walked toward the centre of the room, and Fural followed him. The Kig-Yar turned and watched the direction they had come from.
The chamber they were in now was like the ones that had the tanks of green liquid in them. But there wasn't a tank in this one. A bright green light shone from the ceiling, illuminating the middle of the room. The rest of the lights in there had lost power, the green light was the only one. It gave Fural a bad feeling.
Fural looked down at the floor. He hadn't noticed the shattered glass before, but he definitely did now.
"The glass tanks in these rooms," Fural said, kicking what looked like the shattered edge of the bottom of the tank that used to be there, "they were holding things in them. They were holding more Flood."
"The combat forms must have been going through these chambers," Dom said, "they must have been tearing the tanks down. Whatever kind of Flood they keep in those, they're out now."
The Kig-Yar behind them screeched, and the brothers turned around. As if on queue, the Flood had entered. A combat form was holding the Kig-Yar up. Unlike the others that had claws on the ends of their arms, this one's arm was more of a long and thin tentacle that ended in a razor-sharp blade. The thing looked like it had been a Sangheili, but it was so much more deformed than the other Flood Fural had seen that he wasn't entirely sure about that.
The nightmarish creature had stabbed the Kig-Yar straight through the chest. Blood gushed out of the wound and seeped along the tentacle. Dom didn't wait a second more before firing his plasma rifle at the thing.
The monstrosity roared, Fural could see the mandibles on its deformed head flop around like they were broken as the thing pushed the sound out of its throat. It slammed the dead Kig-Yar hard onto the ground and lumbered towards them. Fural aimed for the tendrils in its chest and fired.
The bullets from Fural's carbine seemed to dig into the flesh around the tendrils, but not punch through and kill the thing that was driving it. The thing took a swing at Dom, but he was able to shear its tentacle arm off. The arm landed with a thud, and the thing roared again.
Fural had to reload his carbine, but he watched the monstrosity move as he did. The flesh around the tendrils in its chest had been weakened, even if the bullets weren't able to punch all the way through. He finished reloading, took aim, and fired. The first three shots dug into the flesh once more, but the third shot pushed through.
The monstrosity's chest exploded, and it fell forward onto the ground. Dom and Fural looked at each other. Dom nodded, and Fural nodded back. Fural reloaded his carbine and stowed it on his back.
He heard shrills all around him, more Flood were coming, and they were surrounded. The two brothers reached to their sides, clasped the hilts of their swords, and stood to each other's backs.
