Chapter Two: Punishment
Total darkness.
Not mostly dark with a little starlight thrown in. Not dark-because-you've-been-out-in-the-sun-and-your-eyes-have-to-adjust. This was absolute darkness, the kind of darkness that makes you think you went blind in your sleep and will never see another shade of red or rolling hilltop or pretty face ever again.
Beyond the twitching aches in his back and the stale odor engulfing his nose, this was Nestor's main observation upon waking up. This all-encompassing darkness instilled a primeval impulse in him, driving him to stand up even with his leg muscles cramping painfully. In his line of work, total darkness was never a place you wanted to be. Total darkness hid all the bad things… like low-lying ceilings.
That was the first thing he encountered as he stood up, his head banging hard against said low-lying ceiling a scant three feet above him. His trusty barrier field flashed and saved him from an embarrassing head wound, but the surprise impact caused him to halt further movement. Using his embarrassment to force himself calm, he took in a few deep breaths full of stagnant air and sat back down. Sitting was safer while he thought out his situation. The terrain was clearly not friendly.
The brief orange-tinged flash generated by his head meeting rock had lit up the cave much like an failed attempt at lighting a torch with flint and steel could illuminate your surroundings for a split-second. A terribly obvious idea came to Nestor, and despite already receiving a big blow seconds earlier, he gave his forehead a good smack anyway. He did have his own supernatural light source to draw upon. He might have tried that first.
He channeled some of his barrier field to his left hand and held it out like he was carrying a oil lamp. Soft light dispelled the deep darkness and outlined the closest features of his unknown location. It was a cave for sure, hard bumpy stone all around him, and he was at the bottom of a steep incline, cradled in the dip between the incline and the cavern wall. The ground felt coarse under his exploring hands, but not jagged or sharp. Perfectly climbable, even to those poor souls not gifted with magic. However, rock climbing was not the first thing that came to Nestor's mind. That honor went to the unhappy observation that he appeared to be absent one metal-footed friend and one Night Fury.
"HICCUP?" His yell came back at him almost immediately. He stopped to listen for a moment, hoping to detect any sound other than his own breathing. Dripping water, whistling air currents, the scraping of bug legs from a beetle or roach – anything that suggested a sign of life other than his. He'd been in enough caves during his not-quite-glorious career as Arc's warrior protégée to know that cavern life generally endured where there was air and water and egress.
His ears didn't give him any hope. He could hear nothing beyond his fading echo.
"TOOTHLESS?" Same result as before. He yelled out both their names over and over, pausing to give time for a reply. None ever came.
They weren't here. There were also no signs of Hiccup or the black dragon, no loose scales scattered on the ground or fallen equipment from Hiccup's saddle. Nestor's thoughts went to Qiao's cautionary instructions on the T-Node, how using it was like an archer launching an arrow into the air with a rope tied to its end, the other part of the rope anchored to a stake on the ground. The arrow would land somewhere around the tethered location, but that's as accurate as it got.
The ceiling above him, a curved wall with knots of bulging rock sticking out in unattractive ways, rose with the inclined floor in a parallel manner. The cavern climbed for dozens of feet until it leveled off to a flat spot beyond Nestor's sight. He must have slid or fallen down the incline while he was unconscious, saved from a fatal plunge by his barrier field. It was possible that Hiccup and Toothless were up in the higher sections of the cave. It was also possible they weren't even in the cave.
It was also also possible they had teleported into the very rock itself.
Nestor pushed away the dire thought. He couldn't afford to get pessimistic right now. He didn't know how long he'd been out, but the prickliness of his throat and the emptiness of his stomach gnawed at him. There was also a heaviness in the air that bothered him, like he had invaded a place untouched by any living thing in a very long time.
There was only one direction to go – up the incline. He might as well get started.
On his hands and knees, Nestor clung to the abrasive incline and slowly crawled up its surface, using his barrier field to dig his hands and feet into the rock face wherever the stone grew slick or smooth. There was no wetness in the cave – even the air felt waterless, leeched of every drop of moisture – but the cave had to have seen its share of rain or waterfalls in the past because the rock had been worn down by something.
Nestor had to inch his way up at times, pushing his hands hard against the rock when no handhold manifested, using his enhanced strength to carrying himself up one hand at a time. A quarter of the way up, he encountered an extremely smooth spot that allow him no purchase whatsoever, his boots slipping when he tried to move to the side to find a better path. He failed to catch himself and went bumping and thumping back down to the bottom, crashing into the wall and brightening up the cave with his field once again. Nestor groaned in frustration but kept the lamentations brief before returning to the incline.
The second time he slipped was at the three-quarters mark. Having found a rockier section of the incline that granted more handholds, Nestor thought he had gotten past the worst of the climb and made the mistake of rushing his movements. He overextended his right arm and found another slippery spot, mistaking it for a firmer hold in the poor light. His boots lost their footing and he began to slide down. This time, he planted both hands and both feet firmly on the stone and pressed against it with every jolt of power his field could furnish. He skidded to a halt after a dozen feet, right next to a helpful set of handholds. After that, he paid more attention to the nuances of climbing stone and avoided further sliding episodes.
He gained the top of the incline not long after, carefully pulling his sore body unto the level ground and promising himself that he would never take up spelunking as a hobby. He briefly rolled onto his back to catch his breath, relieved to see that the ceiling had risen past the three-foot limit of the incline, allowing him to stand upright. Upon doing so, Nestor cast his arm around and took in the ominous contours of the cavern. It wasn't what he saw, but rather what he didn't see, that filled him with dread.
There was a level path that went on another thirty feet at best, flanked by steep inclines on the right and left, inclines that promised fast rides and quick stops for any missteps. The path had some semblance of human engineering, with stepping-stones chiseled out of the cavern floor that resembled crude ovals. Time had wrecked most of them, but the impression of ancient habitation was there. The end of the path went right up to the cavern wall, the makings of a carved exit ruined by a serious cave-in. Tons of rock had fallen across the exit in great heaping piles, utterly blocking off escape as well as any air flow.
As before, no signs of Hiccup or Toothless. For their sakes, he was starting to be thankful. For his sake, not so much.
The ceiling rose to a decent height of thirty feet and had the barest definition of stalactites, more like dumpy upside-down hills than pointy protrusions you feared might drop down on your head. Nestor hoped for a hole or a crack in the ceiling, desired to feel a drop of water on his forehead or hear a tinny whistle that indicated a minute breeze had breached the cave. But as he checked and rechecked the solemn confines of his prison, his hopes rapidly diminished.
Two protuberances on the ceiling caught his attention. They were situated above the long-destroyed entrance, flanking it on both sides. They looked like bulges in the cavern wall except for the fact that the rock that composed them was a hodgepodge of different types. A puzzle of limestone and granite and sandstone and darker minerals like coal and lava rock. They had a real jigsaw appearance, the rocks melded together at the seams like two varieties of jam merging with each other on a dinner plate. They appeared cobbled together from whatever remains could be found in the cave, almost as if someone, or something, had been cut off from access to better materials and had been forced to improvise. But to what end? Were they some kind of decoration, or were they protective shells around something built into the wall?
Whatever their purpose was, it was a mean feat that put them there. The protuberances were a good twenty feet across and stuck out halfway up the wall. A lot of effort for a weird aesthetic.
The final discovery awaited right above Nestor's head. In the dim light of his field, he had missed it the first three times he inspected the ceiling. What he had mistaken for another dumpy stalactite was in fact far sharper than the rock around it, stuck half into the ceiling with its top on the bottom. A few of the decorative symbols on its surface somehow reflected, or reacted to, the light of Nestor's field, allowing Nestor to make it out better the longer he stared at it.
A T-Node. Most likely the one that had deposited him in the cavern.
Even though he knew his time was limited, that events outside the cave had to be moving fast and that his own lifespan might last no longer than the amount of breathable air within the cave, Nestor sat down cross-legged and let his field power down, encasing his surroundings in darkness. He became lost in thought for a time, putting together the facts of his situation as best he could despite the Monolith-sized holes in his knowledge.
It was either this or give into the ton of emotional weight pressing down on him, and he was pretty sure it would crush him if he let it.
He didn't remember any sensation of falling, so he must have passed out during the teleport. His last memory was of swirling lights beckoning to him, dragging him away from Hiccup and Toothless and out into the ether of existence. Even with his barrier field, he would have felt a fall from that high up, so either he'd been really out of it or he had rematerialized close to the ground.
It didn't explain anything about where Hiccup and Toothless had gone. He could only hope that they had found someplace safer to reappear. He desperately shut out the despairing idea that they might not have reappeared anywhere.
There was no way he could reach the T-Node from here. Too far away from the walls and almost nothing to grasp near it, and he couldn't jump that high. A dragon would've been very useful right about now.
Some aspects of the cave had similarities to various Shadow Halls Nestor had visited during his time in Arc's company, particularly the carved path he currently sat upon, but most Shadows Halls didn't have high ceilings and wide open areas. They were designed to guard the last secrets of the Artisan Empire during the End War, designed to be covert and nondescript and practical, nothing more than holes dug out of mountains that they stuck Guardians into as sentries. This place didn't seem to be hiding any Guardians, and the one valuable thing in the whole chamber was affixed to the ceiling where only the absurdly tall could get at.
Nestor turned on his field and looked straight up, studying the T-Node and the layout of the cave. He got the impression that the layout was done on purpose, that someone had built the T-Node into the ceiling as a means to drop visitors teleporting into the cave on their heads. Either that, or only those individuals with the power to fly or hover were supposed to use it.
Or maybe he was over-thinking this. There might have been other equipment around for travelers to use, like stairs or floating platforms. Perhaps the Artisans took everything with them and sealed up the cave to protect the T-Node. But then why not take the T-Node? Wouldn't that be like miners abandoning a diamond mine by taking all their tools but leaving all the valuable rocks behind?
The absolute weirdest part was how the cave was just too neat, too nice and preserved from the elements. There should be a lot more debris lying around after so many eons.
In this lightless place, he was surprised not to be freezing his fanny off. Brisk, yes, but not uncomfortable. Almost like someone had locked in the heat, or something in the cave was generating it.
Salo krebit, did any of this analysis matter? He was utterly alone in some Fate-abandoned corner of the world, with no chance of rescue coming. The one exit out of here had tons of rock blocking it up. It was possible that, with enough time, he might move it away with the aid of his barrier field, but that assumed that the cave entrance led outside, or that the entire mountain hadn't caved in over the course of eons, or that he had enough air to last.
What is the alternative, my boy?
That was the problem with having a practical mind for a dragon mentor. Even when Arc wasn't around, his voice always lingered, playing the devil's advocate or scolding him for a new instance of stupidity. This time out, it was almost welcome.
I'll give you a hint: the alternative is to return to your sleeping spot and wait for the air to turn sour. Does that appeal to you?
"I'm not in the mood for this, Old Man." He knew he was speaking to himself. He wasn't that far gone. But he didn't exactly have anyone else to talk to at the moment.
Get in the mood, Nestor. You have one direction to go and one way to get there, and very little time left.
Hopelessly practical, even in his imagination, and the voice would undoubtedly pester him until he got a move-on. Exertion would make his air supply run out quicker, but there was no point in waiting. No one was going to dig him out, and if he was going to die in here, he might as well die standing.
Getting to his feet, Nestor diverted power to his arms as he approached the cave-in. The jumbled pile of boulders and slabs was higher than his head, the average rock weighing several hundred pounds by the looks of them. Even with his field, it was going to take a long time.
He put his arms around the nearest boulder and heaved it away from the pile. The rock tumbled down one of the nearby slopes, crunching into the cavern wall and filling the air with the noise of grinding collisions. Other echoes joined it as more rocks flew throughout the cave, Nestor grunting and sweating with the effort. Large swirls of dust, at home amongst the boulders and undisturbed for millennia, leaped and flowed around Nestor as he methodically picked apart the cave-in.
An hour into the dig, Nestor was beginning to feel slightly light-headed and had to stop to regain his breath. His arms felt chewed up, his muscles not used to this kind of heavy work. He'd spent too long relying on his field to do the work for him, and the field couldn't block out everything. Especially the gray dust, or what he assumed was gray dust in the light of his field. It coated him from head to toe and he breathed it in with every inhale.
Leaning on a boulder for support, he checked out his progress. Not much to cheer about, really. He'd gotten rid of the forward section of the pile and could now make out a cobbled archway sculpted from the cavern wall, but the actual entrance remained crammed with stones. And when he said crammed, he meant it. Someone had gone to the trouble to jam every hole up with debris. Some of the rocks were cracked and fragmented, as if broken apart from bigger rocks for the purpose of being wedged into every potential nook and cranny.
This was not a natural cave-in, or at least some parts of it weren't natural.
Selecting one of the bigger rocks filling up the entrance, Nestor channeled more strength to his arms and shoved it hard, hoping there was empty space on the other side. The rock groaned under his strength, a little shifting here and there along the wall, but the rock refused to budge outward. There were more rocks on the other side for sure.
There was a weird component to all this. The way the rocks were wedged, with the pile formed on top of it – such effort could have only come from someone doing it from this side of the cave-in. Someone had trapped themselves inside the cave to ensure no one got in or out. Perhaps they used the T-Node to escape, as there were no skeletal remains littering the floor. Then again, any remains would be reduced to dust after a few millennia.
Dust.
Nestor blanched at the stuff clinging to his shirt and pants. Why oh why did he have to go there? Didn't he have enough terrible things to contemplate already?
Nestor took to yanking out rocks like one might yank burs from cat fur, with much difficulty and not without a bit of fight from the cat. The stones were well wedged in and it took careful selection to take one without causing the wall to collapse right on top of him. His field was weakening as he exerted, and while a rockslide wouldn't kill him outright it could deplete his field to the point of rendering it useless. Then he'd have to wait for the field to recharge, and he probably wouldn't survive the wait.
He pulled at each rock with the hope that this one or that one would lead to a whiff of fresh air or a sudden gap in the collapse. He hoped continuously for the many hours he worked at the cave-in, sweat staining his clothes, his muscles aching with each new grab, throw, or pull, his throat growing scratchy and his breathing labored. He was saved from injury on numerous occasions, rocks bouncing off his head from a bad pull or his knees colliding with the ground after he tripped on loose pebbles, but the mistakes were adding up.
The archway morphed into a twenty-foot wide tunnel with the same cobbled pattern, the ceiling low enough for him to touch on tippy-toe. It went on for quite a ways, boringly straight. Nestor dug through the middle section, doing his best to minimize the path through the cave-in to man-sized dimensions. But the rocks had a tendency to fall into the empty space he created, and he spent as much time clearing debris out of his way as he did digging it out.
Time was hard to measure in lightless places, and Nestor could only guess at how long he'd been digging when he stopped to catch his breath… and realized he couldn't catch it again. It was like sprinting while standing still, and the feeling terrified him. He stopped amidst the lifeless piles of stone and desperately tried to get his lungs to slow down. It took far too long to do, and even then he knew it was only a short matter of time before it happened again, this time with death stopping his lungs permanently.
As he brought his breathing under control, his eyes wandered over the progress he'd made so far. He'd gotten maybe a hundred feet into the tunnel. Maybe two hundred. Hard to judge in the dark. His barrier field shown at less than a tenth of its standard illumination; he could barely see the start of the tunnel behind him, much less the cavern beyond. He'd done what would have taken twenty men a full day to do, but it was not going to be enough. He knew that now.
Worn out, his determination falling quickly towards despair, he gave the rocks ahead of him one last desperate, angry shove. The rock wall felt as solid as when he started – only the dust stirred at his touch. He tried to yank out another boulder and found his strength wanting, the boulder falling from his grasp and landing with a heavy thud, an inch from flattening his toes. A thick cloud of dust arose, surrounding Nestor in its throat-clogging embrace. He covered his mouth and retreated out of the tunnel. The dust followed him like a ghostly wrath, daring him to breathe it in, and he moved further down the cobbled path to escape it.
By the time he'd moved far enough away to escape the floating choking hazard, he felt winded all over again. He sat down and struggled to relax his breathing, but his body fought him hard this time. It needed more air, better air, but there was none to be had. He could feel the acute and not-so-acute strains in his muscles now, signaling that his field close to collapsing. The unpleasant side-effect of having a barrier field was that the weaker it got, the more mortal you felt, and he'd start to feel many of the pains his field had protected him from until now. Too bad it offered no help against the pain of suffocation.
"This is it, then," he spoke to the cave and to any wandering spirits that might still inhabit it. His defeated tone matched his defeated face. "There is where I die."
He didn't have the energy or the desire to face death on his feet. Taking a lie-down felt like the better option. He lowered himself to the rough stone and laid on his back, letting his field collapse entirely so that the darkness could take away the grim reminders of his soon-to-be tomb. His breathing relaxed as he gave in to inevitability, his eyes closed and his arms at his side.
"Must be punishment," he spoke aloud, his voice now little more than a whisper. "Failing to save Astrid. Failing to save Hiccup and Toothless. The Fates sent me here to die like I should've years ago, alone and slowly."
Do you still think the world is out to punish you, my boy?
A faint image hovered in front of Nestor, a translucent form with green scales and a long body and a scrutinizing gaze. In the utter darkness of the cave, Arc's form was as bright as a bonfire. His one beacon of light through the years when his life was at its worse. Now he would be the beacon that ushered Nestor out of this life.
Part of him knew this was his mind collapsing on itself. The rest of him didn't care. A hallucination beat a lonely end every time.
"Why wouldn't I think that? I cheated the Fates, thanks to you. I was supposed to die back then. We both know that. A meaningless death for a meaningless life."
You're not supposed to judge yourself so harshly. That's my job. Arc's mouth didn't move with the words, but his voice was as clear as a summer sky.
"But it's the truth. I was a castoff, a child of a dead family. The village didn't want me. They had their own problems to think about, their own children. They were more than thrilled to kick me out when I survived the plague, like they were looking for an excuse. I was nothing to them… I was meaningless."
And I suppose they had the market cornered on truth and purpose, correct?
"Don't get me wrong, Arc. I don't want or care for their approval. But… I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to be alive for a reason, a good reason. I wanted to prove that you were right to keep me alive, that you didn't screw up in giving me this… this gift. So the only reason concerning why I should end up here, the reason that makes sense, is that I screwed up. This is punishment."
That's the lack of air to your brain talking, Fictional Arc scolded. I taught you better than this. The universe does not single us out, not for gain or for misery. Events happen to us, but we also make events happen. You are here because you took action, nothing more. Even the best of actions often fail to achieve beneficial consequences.
"You know, even in my mind, you suck at this kind of stuff," commented Nestor dryly. "You can't even tell me my life's had meaning."
Why do you think it hasn't?
It was no longer Arc's voice, nor was the image before him a serious-looking dragon. The switch had been so subtle it hadn't registered on Nestor, and like in the craziest of dreams it somehow made perfect sense. The woman before him was far more comforting to look at, though no less transparent or fake.
Saga now hovered before him, clad in her traditional red-and-black battle garb but wearing a peaceful expression on her beautiful face. Like Arc, her lips did not match her voice, but she had her arms crossed, looking at him as if he was lying down on the job.
There is a dragon that you rescued from his path of self-destruction. There is a village in the north that still stands, in no small part because of you. There are lives all through the land that you've touched, in big ways and small. And I am here, fighting the good fight, because of you.
"I can't take credit for that," said Nestor. "Astrid was your friend before I came along. She did more than I did. Besides, you were always set on your path. You're a Seer, after all."
There are no set paths, Outlander. Only possibilities. Astrid was my friend, and she showed me a different road to walk. But you… in my darkest hour, you gave me the reason I needed to walk it. Now I will repay the favor before you give up entirely.
"Saga… it's not like I didn't try." He felt wetness rimming his eyes. What he wouldn't give to see her alive and okay, to see her in the flesh one final time... "I honestly don't want to go like this."
Then do two things for me, Outlander. She smiled for him, that rare expression on her face that made him feel like he could take on a hundred axe-crazy Vikings all over again. Turn on your field one more time… and look up.
Saga was silent now, giving him the stern face she made when he needed to do something important rather immediately. Not wanting to disappoint even a fictional Saga, and not having anything better to do, he raised his right arm and shunted his field into his hand, channeling the last of his power into his fingers. Since he was on his back already, looking up wasn't a problem.
The ceiling loomed over him in the flickering orange glow, no different than before. The T-Node hung from its roost, taunting him with an exit just out of reach. No changes to the scenery that he could make out. That's what he got for listening to a figment of his…
No, there was something different, over by the tunnel entrance.
One of the bulges in the wall, the multi-mineral outcropping on the left, had a few holes in it. Holes that hadn't existed the last time he'd checked. His light couldn't extend into the holes, but it looked like several sections of the bulge had come unglued, like the sealant that had bound the various minerals together was weakening. Nestor sat up and saw the debris on the ground below the cracking bulge, recognizing a few of the pieces that had fallen. He had walked right by them without noticing. The bulge must have cracked while he was digging out the tunnel, his noisy efforts masking the sound of the bulge's growing disintegration.
Did he accidentally hit it with a rock during his reverse-excavation attempt? He didn't remember anything like that. No earthquake in recent memory, either. Perhaps the vibrations of his digging knocked it loose. The reason didn't really matter, though. A bulge in the wall wasn't going to change his fate at this…
Something flashed within the bulge. Orange, like his barrier field. It was there and gone in an eye blink. Something reflecting field light from within, unless his brain was playing tricks on him again…
A violent lurch from the bulge sent Nestor's heart racing, battle instincts mobilizing him to get back to his feet as he watched a long, shiny, tentacle-like limb punch out from within the mineral shell, and shell was the right word now because something was hatching from it.
Three more limbs shot out soon after, the ends of the limbs forming four-clawed appendages that began to whip around and pull at the shell, rending chunks of rock away and tossing them outward.
Woozy and demoralized, Nestor still managed to muster up some horror as the thing spent half-a-minute taking apart the rocky shell that had encircled it for who knows how long, freeing itself from its captivity and showering the cavern floor with more debris. Its fours limbs forcefully attached themselves to the wall and walked the… thing down like a four-legged spider. It reached the cobbled ground and jumped down to stand before Nestor, showing off its alien contours and reflective hide.
Nestor had seen plenty of crazy over his short life, yet he was fairly certain he'd never seen anything like this. The creature… no, the thing… no, the Guardian's torso was a lump of shapeless metal with four limbs sticking out of it at odd angles. The best comparison he could come up with was a hermit crab's shell if it was completely smooth and had no entrance for any vagrant crabs. It looked like no one had bothered to sculpt the Guardian into a coherent shape. The Artisans had a thing for statues and skeletal forms, designs based on living things and not random rocks you might pick up in a gravel pit.
To add to the horror, a fifth limb erupted from the front of the Guardian, extending half as long as the four primary limbs and forming three cylindrical protuberances at the very tip. Nestor didn't get the purpose of this newest limb until the cylinders suddenly lit up, three circles of yellow light staring right at him. The eyes of the Guardian, apparently, which didn't make much sense as Guardians had never needed eyes before.
Nestor's fear was blunted by his complete confusion. This design reminded him of the Monolith, a very basic form designed for transformation rather than aesthetics. This Guardian had to be one of the newer designs in the Artisan arsenal, completed before the End War came to its fiery conclusion. Considering how easily it punched through stone, it might be the thing responsible for filling in the tunnel. But Guardians only had one purpose in life – guarding. What was the point in placing a stone shell around itself? Every other Guardian Nestor had faced off with had been patiently waiting in their Shadow Halls, standing around like steel idols until someone disturbed their guard zone.
I wish you'd given me more to go on, Imaginary Saga, Nestor thought. Even his idolized version of her made her predictions way too vague, and if this thing was going to help him it sure wasn't rushing to do so. Worse, should it prove hostile, he was in no shape to fight. His field was only good for illumination now, and he was getting drowsier by the second. If it wanted him, it would have him.
But why hadn't it attacked already? He had to be well into the Guardian's guard zone…
Nestor jumped in shock when an ear-piercing noise assailed him, forcing him to cover his ears and retreat a few steps from the Guardian. The wail was coming from the Guardian, a chorus of different sounds that might have been part blaring horn, part lion-like animal roar, part crashing ocean wave, and maybe a babbling human voice here and there. The Guardian stood there as it emitted the discordant noise, the "head" staring at him as if expecting an answer to its nonsense.
One more mystery to chew on in the brief time he had left. Guardians didn't make noise… ever.
The wail mercifully cut out after a few seconds, but Nestor barely had time to lower his hands from his ears when the Guardian abruptly rushed at him. Its right-forward limb launched out and snared Nestor around his right hand, yanking him off his feet. Nestor cried out in fear and pain and struggled in the Guardian's iron grip, but he was back to plain Nestor and his muscles were useless against the machine.
Then he felt a sucking sensation coursing through his right hand, as if a part of him was being drawn out of his body. He watched with renewed horror as the glow of his field began to transfer from his imprisoned hand to the metallic limb holding it. Light flowed into the ageless myssteel, tiny veins of energy popping up along the tentacle. Nestor had the horrid realization that the Guardian was feeding off his barrier field like a parasite draining blood. He prayed to the Fates that it would stop with just his field and not drain anything else.
Stop it did, and only after a few seconds of draining. The transfer faded as the cavern began to dip into shadow once more. The Guardian froze in what might have passed for bafflement, staring at Nestor in the dark with its cold tri-eyes. The Guardian was now the only light source in the cave, its metal skin alive with little glowing blood vessels.
"Too bad, you overgrown gardening spade," said Nestor. "You should've come for a feeding hours ago." Despite his flippant tongue, he now felt twice as weary as before. His barrier field did a lot to prop up his physique, and without it he was feeling a day's worth of hard labor catch up to him. Given time it would recharge, as the Hyperion essence Arc had bequeathed to him was part of his very soul, and only death could rob him of his power. That said…
The Guardian let out a quick burst of its discordant, garbled speech and dropped Nestor like a sack of potatoes, his knees giving out as he hit the floor. He crumpled on impact, his body feeling like all life had escaped it already. He clung to consciousness out of fear that he would never wake up again if he passed out. The air must be pretty bad now; his chest felt like a herd of cattle was standing on it.
The Guardian now ignored Nestor completely, moving back to the wall and climbing it with ease, quickly advancing all the way up the wall on its alternating tentacle-legs. It met the ceiling and transferred over, hanging upside down like a steel spider that was missing half its normal complement of legs. It had no trouble clinging to the rocky surface as it made its way to the center of the ceiling, stopping next to the T-Node and watching it cautiously, as if the artifact might try to escape. The Guardian's garble-cry erupted again for a moment, and then the machine suddenly grew a foot longer as its limbs lengthened right on the spot. It settled below the T-Node like a self-correcting chandelier, blocking off Nestor's sight of the device, and then hard crunching sounds began to ring out above Nestor, stone giving way to myssteel as the Guardian's limbs dug into the stone. Pebbles, dust, and bigger fragments fell away into the darkness, though Nestor could hear the pattering and thumping of the bigger chunks several feet away.
His chest grew heavier as time ticked by, each breath slightly more strained than the last. He didn't have the energy to waste on moving, so he didn't try. There was no point to it now. He was spent, in every sense of the word. His last act in life had been to fuel an ancient war machine that was now tearing up the cave for no reason.
What little light projected by the Guardian grew ever dimmer, and he knew it was his vision clouding over. Nestor lost track of time, unable to place the weird sounds of crunching and digging, sounds that grew more and more distant as the world grew further away. He stopped caring about the world around him after a time, thoughts of the people he cared about swimming in his head. They didn't appear to him as visions this time, but they were there with him. Hiccup and Astrid and Toothless, Arc and Saga, Qiao and Linebreaker. The ones he had called friend in his life; the ones he had loved.
He had met the blackness of his mind before on many occasions, but the blackness heading toward him now was different this time. Far more substantial, far deeper… and far more final…
And then he breathed.
His body drew in the needed air as if he was a newborn taking his first breath. He coughed and sputtered as he sucked in precious life, expelling the gathered dust in his mouth and throat for what felt like forever, the final blackness of oblivion fleeing again as it always had in the past.
Nestor rolled onto his stomach as he coughed his life away, using gravity to help force more of that misbegotten dust from his body. It didn't help that his throat was bone dry, nor did the continuing darkness of the cave make things easier. But after an eternity of retching he managed to bring his coughing fit to a close. He didn't move for several minutes while he greedily took in the delightfully fresh air now present in the cave.
He couldn't feel a draft, but he swore he could hear a faint air current in the distance. Cave systems had a tendency to carry sound a long ways, so he didn't think it was within the cavern he was in. But this was a welcome change, for there was good air to breathe, and where there was air there was an exit.
Besides having good air again, he was feeling loads better in general, the major soreness and cramps in his muscles reduced to minor strains. Some time must have gone by while he laid in the darkness. Enough time to get back some of his barrier field.
He sat up again and studied the dark chamber for any illuminating signs of the Guardian. He didn't see any. If it was still here, it had gone dark. The Guardian must have been doing a lot of digging while he was passed out. It might not even be in the chamber, having dug an escape route for reasons known only to the machine. Then again, it might be preparing an ambush for him, waiting for his field to recharge so it could feed on him again. At this point, he expected anything from this enigmatic Guardian.
He couldn't stay here forever in the dark. The machine was probably gone. Probably.
Nestor tapped into his reserves and found some to use. Not a lot – he was at a third of his strength. That meant he'd been out for an hour or so. He was very lucky to be alive. Fates' Luck was still with him, more or less.
His left hand became a mystical, heatless torch as renewed light flowed over his flesh. The cavern quickly grew substance, and much had changed since he'd last seen it.
For one thing, the cobbled path was covered in debris, far more than previously. The Guardian had not been particularly neat in its excavating, but it was clear that it had picked up where Nestor had stopped. Nestor couldn't see down the tunnel, but he could feel air flowing from that direction. That was the route out of here.
For another thing, the ceiling had lost its T-Node, the rock chewed up where the T-Node used to be. The Guardian must have taken the artifact – it had been very deliberate about its actions. But what does a Guardian need with a T-Node?
Finally, and most importantly, there was a metal statue standing in front of Nestor.
Of course, it wasn't actually a metal statue. Salo krebit, he really wished it was. His heart's brief flirtation with hope had a quick rebuff as soon as he made out the four tentacle-legs situated in front of the entrance to the tunnel. As if triggered by his field's light, a tentacle-head quickly sprang out of its shell-like torso and formed a head of sorts, staring at Nestor with its lidless glowing eyes of three, blue as the deep ocean.
Blue, not orange.
The distinct change in the Guardian's physicality caused Nestor to freeze in place. Why blue eyes now? Why did it dig a hole and not leave? If it was after more barrier field energy, why did it wait for him to wake up? None of this machine's actions made any sense.
Then he noticed the shell-body of the machine. It had the same shape, or at least close enough to be mistaken as the same, but a few of the body's ridges weren't matching Nestor's memory. The legs were spouting from different locations as well. Guardians were made of fluid metal, capable of flexing like organic skin and muscle, and they even could morph their bodies on occasion, but they usually reverted back to their original design. The Guardian's body just wasn't the same, just like you'd notice a tiger's shifted stripes even if it looked like the same hungry tiger that had attacked you earlier.
Not daring to move an inch otherwise, he glanced up at the rightmost rock-bulge and found it missing from the wall. It had fallen apart, just like its companion on the left. Rubble filled the ground below it, providing further evidence that the thing inside it had "hatched" while Nestor was unconscious.
Nestor groaned as he completed his logic processing. This was not the Guardian from earlier. This one had recently emerged from its cozy hiding spot to greet him. This one had taken longer to wake up, for whatever reason, and was now standing in Nestor's way.
This one was probably just as hungry as its companion, and Nestor was the only thing around to feed on.