The three made their way to the APC. Inside, Cox located them on the map and showed Lucy what settlements would likely be either inhabited by normal folk and which would be key looting spots if not. He also pointed out through one of the windows where they kept their fuel.
They emptied the fuel towers that stood on an elevated mound beside the communications trailer. Cox joked about his jealousy that he did not own a vehicle like the APC any sooner as it would've saved him much stress in his earlier adventures. Lucy asked if he'd encountered enemies like this before. He denied it, but said he was eager to fight. "Nothing like a life-threatening challenge to keep the adrenaline flowing!" he said.
Not long after his statement did the three feel the ground shake. She closed the fuel hatch and he jumped inside and manned the turret. Following the adventurer and Demmel, she hopped into the driver's seat. Behind them, through the turret sights, Cox sighted something moving in the distance. Zooming in with the telescopic lens he noticed it was a convoy. Yet the convoy was unusual with how close the vehicles were driving to each other, it as if they were cells in an organism. To this he raised his eyebrow.
"Friends of yours?" He said.
Lucy came over and looked through the turret sights. "No."
"Whoever they are, they're drawing a horde of Turned behind them."
"I see."
"By the looks of it, they'll be here in-"
"Fifteen minutes."
"You've been in the military? Otherwise those are some good guessing skills you have there, miss."
She dismounted from the turret. "You could say."
He looked to Demmel. "Keep an eye on him, I'll grab some artifacts." Cox leapt out the back, leaving Lucy on the turret.
Cox returned a couple of minutes later pushing a flatbed trolley loaded with unmarked crates. "Help me load these in the back. There's some equipment in there as well, and personal effects of mine and his." The Inquisitor rushed to help him load the crates in the back of the APC. As she raised the back drop door, Cox went into the turret and scouted. "Here they come." He let her take a look. At the edge of the forest surrounding the camp came a thick cloud of smoke. Out of the woods burst the convoy of armored vehicles. She looked to Cox. "They are driving close to each other, aren't they?"
The convoy plowed through the tents and over corpses. It stopped in front of the fuel tower, and the shambling army of Turned behind it - former humans, wildlife, even birds - piled their bodies on the convoy.
Cox and Lucy moved to the door, rifles in hand. Before they reached for the locks, Demmel said, "There's too many. You'll help no one."
The two looked back in shook as Demmel stood before them unbound.
"How did you-" the two said.
"When your a minor leader in a cult, you learn how to get yourself out of bondage."
The Inquisitor raised her brow.
"Its experience that comes from encounters with authorities, paranoid villagers, and everyone else that wants to tie you down or to a burning stake. But that's beside my point. I suggest we leave. Now."
She didn't have time before to take a good look at the short bald Demmel, but now that she had the chance she noticed his robes were just like the cultists in the city. And he did proudly admit to being part of one. "What do you know about the Turned?"
"More than what could be said in this fleeting moment." He moved toward the controls. "We need to leave. Now."
The two stared at him.
He looked back in the driver's seat. "I'll drive. You two look through the turret sights if you want explanation."
They did as they were told. They clung to the turret frame as the APC jolted downhill and past the Turned piling on the convoy. It speed up the climbing road, and Demmel stopped it on the mountainside. "Better view and hard to reach. Also, we'll drive through the structure in the mountain. There's an entrance in the cave we were in a while ago. We just need to blast the rock away from it."
"And how do you know this?" Cox asked. "I'm supposed to be the one informed about the archeological business around here."
"You are also the one who dismissed my visions as magical non-sense," Demmel said with a nasty grin. "But now you see."
"This is what you were worried about?" Cox said. "You could've been clearer."
"This catastrophe was in the background, and the vision hid in the fog that clouds memory after having one." The ground shook. "Look through the sights now, children, and you'll see something that will never leave your memory."
The two looked through the turret sights, and with dropped jaws watched the convoy covered in the bodies of the Turned swell up. The corpses melted as well as the vehicles under them, fusing and twisting. Smoke billowed from the heaping mound. Chunks split off and reconnected in the form of limbs. The mound slammed back on the ground, sending more shockwaves. It rose again, not as a mound, but as a being of melted flesh and machine standing up, towering above all.
Demmel looked out the window and realized they were within reach of the gigantic golem. He shifted gears and turned the wheel, preparing for a quick escape.
Its figure was bulky, with massive shoulders reaching for the clouds. Six strong arms were at its sides, as well as eight thick, long tentacles twitching out of its back.
"I don't recall Chaos titans being made like this."
Demmel grinned. "This is not the work of Chaos-"
The Inquisitor glared at him. He knew of Chaos? A cult leader, of all people on this ignorant world, knew of Chaos.
"But rather," he continued. "The work of a far more ancient power. Or so I've been told."
The beast howled and slung a tentacle their way. Demmel lifted his foot off the break and sped away before the large appendage crashed through their side of the mountain, sending ten-story chunks hurtling toward the encampment below.
"I'll shoot!" The Inquisitor shoved Cox out of the turret and unloaded into the shambling mutant titan.
The titan belched, and vomited a horde of Turned on the road before them. These turned had forms neither of man or beast, but of nightmares. Tentacles, wings unformed, webbed limbs, glowing spots and pulsing veins. . . Demmel put all his weight on the breaks and turned into the cave. The mountain growled as the titan slammed another appendage against the side.
The shambling horde chased after the APC, their movements twitching and unpredictable. Cox looked at them, and the sight made him think of a zombie flick, except the scene where the shambling dead chase after the survivors was four times the speed. The Turned were following at incredible speeds: no normal life form could chase with such twitchy shambling. Their eyes, sometimes scattered all over their bodies, glowed with a bright pink. However, the APC was gaining distance in the cave, as Demmel slammed the breaks, twisted the wheel, and stressed the gearshift with brisk adjustments. Cox's arms flung around, trying to grab onto something as the APC's sudden movements threw him against floor, wall, and ceiling. The adventurer swore he had already broken all his ribs.
The Inquisitor kept firing into the horde.
"Ahead!" Demmel shouted. "Shoot the wall ahead of us!"
The turret swiveled around and unloaded into the rocky target. The wall collapsed and on the other side was an entrance into the mountain complex.
"Hold on!"
The APC crashed through the debris. Demmel steered the vehicle into the supports on one side of the grand hall, sending the roof caving in behind them. The horde shrieked as the mountain fell on them and sealed off the passage behind the fleeing vehicle.
The armored vehicle crashed through another set of doors and flipped over, tossing Cox around the cabin once more. The APC continued to roll over several more times before smashing against a massive fountain and rolling back. It came to rest on its side.
Demmel unfastened his seatbelt and the Inquisitor climbed out of the turret. The back door burst open and Cox stumbled out, collapsed, and vomited all over the floor. The two climbed out behind him.
"You're welcome," said Demmel. "Also, before you begin steaming off, Cox, take a look around you."
Vomit dropped from his 'stache when he looked up. But the beauty of the room distracted him from his mess. "Oh. My. God." Glowing glyphs covered the walls and ceiling. He estimated that ten thousand millennia of recorded history covered the walls. The walls and floors were the same dark material. It felt like a strange alloy that could be only be described as of rock and metal. The ceiling was decorated with what looked like stars, and with how lofty the chamber was it could be easily mistaken for the night sky. The stars and glyphs cast a dim cyan glow.
"I'll grab a towel," said the Inquisitor.