Stage 1: Faith
Tallon IV receded into a tiny brown orb beyond the edge of the view screen. From this vantage point, her entire adventure there hardly seemed of any importance. The vastness of space had a way of forcing perspective. Within the cramped confines of the Phazon choked crater, the wider universe hardly seemed to exist. All of reality was condensed into one small point. The length between her brain and her muscles became the expanse between galaxies. Her nerves were the interstellar ships and her weapons took on the power of suns. In the focus on battle, nothing mattered outside of Samus and her enemy.
It was disorienting to expand outward from such proximate concerns to grapple with the sheer scope of space. Samus was not a bounty hunter out here. She was not a hero, or anyone of particular note. Out in space, she was merely a speck floating amongst endless specks.
Samus massaged her shoulder and winced as she felt the bruises beneath her polymer suit. Tallon IV had left her with a new collection of bruises and scars, not all of which could be absorbed by her power suit. From the Space Pirates, to the unwelcome reacquaintance with Metroids, the entire ordeal had felt as if she had stumbled into a nightmare.
Now that it was over, Samus felt completely exhausted. She had removed her gravity suit and placed it in stasis before setting the computer to run a complete diagnostic. Her Chozo armor had always been sturdy, but it had really outdone itself back on the surface. Samus had seen how the Phazon had slowly corrupted and devastated all of Tallon IV. When that same substance infected her suit, Samus had been shocked when, instead of falling under its influence, her suit had taken its power. That synthesis between her suit and the Phazon had allowed her to penetrate the impact crater and destroy the Metroid mutant within.
The battle had tested Samus to her limit. It had taken her full arsenal of weapons, and every bit of her battle instincts in order to stay alive. In the end, Samus had become so desperate she resorted to using her corrupted Phazon suit to absorb the malicious energy and fire it as a weapon. When the battle seemed over, the creature had desperately attempted to kill Samus by absorbing her suit. In a fortunate stroke of luck, this only managed to separate the Phazon from her own suit, freeing her from its corruption.
The unstable Metroid exploded in a blast of energy which overloaded the Phazon core and triggered an imminent catastrophe. Samus however, narrowly escaped to her gunship in time. The subsequent explosion buried the crater and purged all the Phazon out of Tallon IV. It should have been a triumphant moment, but Samus did not feel as if she had won anything. Instead, a darkness fell upon her heart and she felt a cold tremor trace down her spine.
Samus could not shake the feeling that she had not truly escaped the nightmare. Even as she sat in the cockpit of her ship, she continued to feel a foreboding presence looming behind her. She turned in her seat and gazed at her armor. The computer was still running its diagnostic, checking her gravity suit for even the faintest trace of Phazon. Samus' eyes roamed over to her helmet. It had never struck her just how threatening her helmet actually was.
Samus exhaled slowly and turned away. I'm being foolish. She inclined her chair and set the controls to autopilot. Her eyes were heavy but for some reason she was hesitant to close them. Living images of her recent battles flashed before her in rapid sequence. Each image was blurred and unfocused. Slowly her eyes began to droop. She was back in the impact crater. There was a puddle of dark pulsing liquid on the floor. Samus was sitting in her ship. She shook her head trying to push away her wayward thoughts. I just need to sleep a little bit. However, some instinct warned her against that. If I sleep..it will come.
She tried to move her chair back in the upright position, but Samus couldn't move her arm. A blanket of paralysis seemed to have been laid over her. She couldn't move anything but her eyes. The roof of her ship vanished. She was brought back to the crater. The black liquid continued to pulse and move. No…Samus shut her eyes. Immediately, she felt a rush of fatigue sweep over her. Sleep…just need…Her hands dropped at her sides, and Samus fell asleep.
Samus woke with a dim white light shining down on top of her. She stirred and moved a hand to block the light. To her surprise, she saw the metal gloves of her orange Varia Suit. Samus blinked and when she opened her eyes, her heads-up-display flickered to life. Her combat visor dimmed the harsh white light, and a world of greystone materialized in front of her. Samus was laying at the bottom of a deep cylinder which burrowed into the surface like a dry well.
She picked herself up and brushed off the copious amount of white dust that covered her suit. The bottom of the well (for she couldn't think of a better way to describe it) branched off into three directions. One of these routes was barred with thick iron bars, the second buried beneath collapsed rubble. The third bars were so rusted that the metal had started to fall apart. It bent easily in Samus' hands and she quickly forced an opening.
This passage continued ahead for a dozen feet or so before rounding a dark corner. Samus hesitated. How the hell did I get here? The last thing she remembered was falling asleep inside her ship. Had someone captured her, and marooned her in this place? Samus switched to her scan visor and searched for some kind of clue that would help identify her whereabouts. To her displeasure, nothing in the vicinity registered in her logbook. Samus' database was updated with the latest and best information centers in the galaxy. For nothing to pop up meant that she had to be somewhere far off the beaten path.
Samus flipped back to her combat visor and strode down the open passageway. When she reached the turn she found herself staring down a wall of deep darkness. Samus was no stranger to the dark, except for some reason she found herself hesitant to take the plunge. A foreboding presence seemed to hover about the darkness, and in the gripping silence of the well, Samus heard…whispers?
I can't afford to get jumpy. Scolding her childish fears, Samus switched to her X-ray visor. Immediately, the darkness was replaced by a monochromatic world of harshly edged shapes. Samus followed a winding decline which took her down to what appeared to be a kind of cell block. There were a dozen cells on either side of the room. A few tables and broken chairs provided the only furniture. Samus crept forward cautiously. The loudest sound was that of her own breathing echoing loudly inside her helmet. Samus passed the first set of cells and looked inside. The prisoners were long since dead. All that remained was white bone that was steadily eroding into powder. With a jolt, Samus realized that the powder that had covered her when she first arrived was actually bone.
She turned away and delved further into the room. Crunch. Samus exhaled slowly before looking down. Sure enough, she had just stomped onto a human skull. Samus lifted her foot, and the skull dissolved into puffs of white sand. What was that? Samus whipped around with her power beam already charging for an attack. There was nothing there. Samus' heart continued to race. She could have sworn she heard a voice behind her.
Samus kept her charge beam ready and stood silent for several minutes. Only when she was sure that she had imagined the voice did she relax. Disturbed and eager to leave this creepy place, Samus rushed to the end of the cell block. There she found what appeared to be a prison guard. The skeleton was not human, but it was too eroded for Samus to decipher what species it was. Scratch marks were cut deep into the stone behind it. They were written in a strange language that Samus did not recognize.
She went to switch to her scan visor, but stopped short. Samus did not want to lose the ability to see the rest of her surroundings. You're being stupid. There is nothing here. Refusing to let fear get the better of her, Samus switched to her scan visor. Her HUD located the scribbled writing and made an attempt at translating it. The language was not a match for anything in her database, but her visor made an approximate guess as to what the writing said; The righteous walk by faith, not by sight.
Samus flipped back to her X-Ray visor. She didn't have a clue what that phrase was supposed to mean. It seemed that the creatures here had been locked up and left to die. But why had the guards shared the same fate as the prisoners? If the guards had been abandoned as well, why had this guard left such a cryptic message?
Samus filed these questions away as she approached the door. She assumed it was locked, but to her astonishment, it opened with ease. Samus checked the latch and saw that it had not rusted at all. The door had never been locked. Either that, or someone already went through here. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
Beyond the cell block was a narrow spiral staircase. Samus' shoulders were pressed against either wall as she made the surprisingly grueling trek. When she finally reached the end she stopped short. The door ahead was made entirely out of fused skeletons. The dead were all crawling over one another. Despite having no faces, Samus could still feel the fear that had consumed them in their final moments. A strange, milky substance glued the many bodies into one disordered mass that now served as a barrier.
Samus' stomach turned as she got closer. Some of the skulls were very small, no doubt belonging to children. Behind the door, Samus could hear a faint scuttling sound. She paused to listen. Something was definitely moving behind the door of bones. It was faint, like the edge of a boney finger tracing against a carved stone. Samus stepped back in preparation to kick the door down. What the- The whispering voice was right behind her. Samus made to turn around, but the staircase was too narrow. Her broad shoulders got caught, trapping Samus in place. The eerie whispering grew louder and, though she could not turn her head, she knew that something was racing up the spiral staircase.
Samus jabbed her arm cannon into the nearest wall and fired a charge shot. The resulting blow back knocked her forward, scraping her metal armor against the stone walls. Without hesitation, she shoulder charged right through the door of bones. It collapsed so easily that Samus nearly followed her momentum to the floor. She staggered and caught herself just as the whispering reached a feverish crescendo. She whipped around ready to fire a super missile, but suddenly the whispering was gone. Samus slowly lowered her gun. The door of bones that she had just smashed through had reformed itself.
Fuck…Samus composed herself with a deep breath. The room she was now in was more open and spacious. There was a large open window that looked back out into the deep well. Light streaked through the opening, and Samus switched back to her combat visor. This room, like all the rest, was coated in bone powder. Skeletons were piled into the corners of the room and something swayed from a rope on the ceiling. Samus grimaced as the thing slowly spun to face her. The spine and skull were the only parts of the body that had yet to fall off the hanging body. Globs of that milky substance had been stuffed into the eye sockets with such force the bone around it was fractured.
Samus struggled to keep her eyes off the skull as she moved toward the edge of the open window. She looked down and saw where she had started from. Samus had moved up about fifty feet, but she was still only a third of the way up the well. Across the gap, there was another open window and a courtyard that mirrored the one she was in. Beyond it, Samus saw a second spiral staircase which continued up.
Samus inched closer to the edge. The gap was almost twenty feet across. She looked for something she could grapple too, but there was nothing between her and the other side except empty air. The distance was too much even for her space jump. Samus considered retracting her steps when an idea struck her. The righteous walk by faith, not by sight.
Samus switched to her X-Ray visor. Sure enough, where there had been nothing but empty space a second before, Samus now saw two floating platforms. The righteous may have been forced to make the jump blind, but Samus had more faith in her own resourcefulness than cryptic messages carved on walls. Using the platforms, Samus easily passed the gap and landed on the far window.
She switched back to her combat visor as she made across the room towards the spiral staircase. This time, Samus made sure to take the stairs at a shuffle, that way nothing could sneak up behind her. No bone door awaited her at the top of this passage, instead Samus' way was blocked by a smooth arched mirror. The arch was made of a strange metal that seemed to warble slightly as if it were shifting between states of matter.
Samus quickly switched to her X-Ray Visor. Behind the mirror, she saw an identical hallway and another open window. She placed her hand against the mirror and felt the cold glass ripple. The distortion of the plane let loose a faint echoing whisper that made Samus' heart skip a beat. Her visor told her that the mirror was a simple plane of glass, and that the path ahead was clear. Yet somehow, Samus felt that there was an immeasurable expanse just beyond the veil of the mirror. Was this another test?
Samus turned back and ensured that nothing was coming up the stairs. I suppose I could test it. She retreated a few steps and fired a few beams at the mirror. Samus watched as her projectiles passed straight through the mirror and vanished. Unsatisfied, Samus charged up her power beam and fired. This stronger blast also passed straight through the mirror without appearing on the other side. More out of frustration than anything, Samus fired a missile and sighed as it also disappeared.
Samus decided right then that whoever built this place was some kind of sadist. However, she was determined not to allow its eerie presentation to halt her escape. Samus switched back to her combat visor. While facing the seemingly solid mirror, she walked straight through it. Samus felt as if she had just passed through a cold shower. Her HUD flashed a bright white, went completely dark and then reactivated.
Samus crouched into a defensive stance as the world reformed around her. The mirror had brought her into a mutated twin of the open windowed room. All the muted grays and dull stone had transformed into sinister blacks with venomous purple walls which dripped a hissing white ooze. The bones which had littered the previous rooms had been transmuted into a boiling white paste. Samus watched in stunned amazement as the white paste slowly formed into an abominable facsimile of a skeleton.
Within the dark depths of their empty eye sockets, a sudden white light illuminated the bones and vivified them with life. There was a loud crunch, as the skeleton split apart into multiple copies. All the necks snapped as they turned their gaze onto Samus. It was well that she had already prepared herself, because the undead moved far faster than she had expected. Her Ice Beam managed to subdue the first three, but a dozen more were ready to take their place. Samus darted to the side as she fired a round of missiles. The explosives detonated on their targets spraying bone and vile liquid in every direction.
Samus did not wait to see if her weapons had been effective. She raced across the room towards another wide gap across the well. Boney hands erupted out of the white liquid at her feet and seized her around the ankles. Samus stumbled and reacted instinctively by rolling into a morph ball. The white paste started to pull her in, but Samus had been expecting that. As the hands and muck converged over her she unloaded a bomb. With a silent burst, the white paste exploded and the skeletal hands vaporized into mist. Samus was launched into the air and she charged up a boost which she activated as soon as she hit the floor. Her momentum carried her across the room and as she reached the gap she uncurled.
Samus skidded to a halt just before the edge of the window. It seemed obvious somehow that there would be a second set of invisible platforms to carry her upward as before. However, Samus was not willing to take such a risk without confirmation. She switched to her X-Ray visor, and sure enough, she saw two hovering platforms hovering in the air between herself and the open window across from her.
Curiosity made Samus turn back just before she jumped. More skeletons had emerged out of the white liquid and were stumbling towards her. Their jaws hung open at the hinges and an otherworldly speech came drifting towards her. The sound seemed to hit Samus like a physical blow. She felt an icy chill slip through her armor and send goosebumps down her legs.
Samus charged up her power beam and back flipped onto the floating platform. Once she was safely away, she fired off a super missile into the cluster of bones. Just before impact, the shapes changed. For one single moment, Samus saw not a host of the dead, but a group of living prisoners shuffling towards her. Chains were clasped around their ankles and necks, hindering their movement. Their arms were held out, not in threat of attack, but in desperate pleading. The super missile exploded on impact and the prisoners were blasted apart in a puff of white powder.
Samus did not understand. The open windowed room was now exactly the same as the first. The plain gray stone had returned and instead of the white paste, Samus saw only the powder of dried bone. Fuck this place…She turned aside and quickly jumped across the next platform and through the next window.
Assuring herself that the phantoms were only a trick of the prison, Samus moved ahead cautiously. A third winding stair brought her up to a new chamber. This one was in similar construction to the first cell block, but this one was more like a booking area. There was a kind of reception area guarded by a heavy plane of thick glass and receptacles where the prisoner's personal effects were taken.
There were more bodies here as well. Samus' gaze was drawn to a duo that was situated in the corner. Based on how they were crumpled together, it looked as if it had been a mother and child. Samus wandered over to the receptacles. She wondered if the prisoner's possessions would give her any clue as to who they had been.
Samus paused a few steps away from the nearest bin. Something large and ribbed hung out of the barrel. On closer inspection it turned out to be the fossilized remains of some kind of worm-like insect. Samus turned off her X-Ray visor and looked down into the bowl. She grimaced as she saw a thick, pungent black mass. Little legs, pincers and wings protruded out of the tar. It looked as if a collection of bugs had been drowned in oil and left to rot.
Samus turned away and quickly confirmed that the other receptacles had the same contents. At the end of the booking area, Samus located what had to have been another guard. The bones were dried and flaking away, but there were definitely the remains of some kind of uniform still clinging to the body. Furthermore, a kind of baton-like weapon lay at his feet. Samus crouched down and tried to identify the species. The remains were far too eroded for her scan visor.
The torse almost looks human. Whatever it had been, the species had what seemed to be a rib cage and a spinal cord. However, none of the limbs that were attached were anything close to human. The legs and arms were spindly and crooked and bent at odd angles. It had a bulbous segmented head with huge compounded eyes. Samus bent closer. There was something…wrong about the head. She turned nervously and glanced at the bit of insect that was spilling out of the barrel. Samus got up and walked towards it with a sick twisting in her gut. She picked up the skeleton and held it up. Something had cut the head off the insect. She could see where the blade had left its mark. Samus turned back to the dead guard. At the middle of his neck she saw an excess of a clear white liquid.
Samus nearly gagged. Someone had switched the guard's head for that of the insect. But why? She circled around the room searching for the guard's true head. Samus had a strange feeling that if she could find the head, she might be able to confirm who these ill fated people were. However, neither her scan or X-Ray visors could locate the head. She had to accept that it was probably just the action of a prisoner who had gone insane.
At the end of the booking room, Samus found a final spiral staircase. This one was far longer than the others and once Samus reached the top, she felt assured she had ascended to the top of the well. Samus stepped out of the staircase and found herself at the upper cusp of a deep bowl. To her right, the bowl flattened out at the top edge of the well. Ahead of her, a huge gateway led to a set of bronze stairs which led up and out of her sight.
Set between Samus and the gateway was a huge bestial effigy. The wooden carving rose to a height of almost a dozen feet and casted a cold black shadow across the white floor of the bowl. The effigy was shaped like a gigantic version of the insect Samus had seen in the cubical. Its spine rose and curved as if to envelop whomever stood before the effigy. Crooked appendages extended out of the thorax. Each limb was sharpened to a sheer point, the edge of which looked sharp enough to cut through bone.
Samus approached the effigy slowly. She felt simultaneously drawn and repelled by it. In all her adventures she had never seen anything quite so, perverted. There was something wrong about how the insect was shaped. It was violent, but also indecent in a way that Samus could not explain. She felt dirty for even looking at it, as if she were seeing something that was best left hidden. It was the sensation of upturning a rock and seeing the pale bugs that lay beneath.
At the same time, Samus felt as if the effigy could see her. The thing had no discernible head, so it had no eyes to speak of. However, Samus felt a palpable sense of vigilance emanating from the carving. Samus' heart started to beat faster and at a strange rhythm. She felt as if she wanted to stand directly beneath the monster. An overwhelming curiosity flooded her with such force that Samus took three bold steps right up the platform it was on. The shadow of the appendages covered her suit. Samus knew that if she took one more step she would be in the perfect position. Whoever had placed this thing here had meant for her to come here, it had meant for her to stand at this exact spot.
Samus raised her leg before her rational mind finally seized back control. She lurched backward as she both tried to move forward and jumped back at the same time. Samus shook her head. A buzzing sound was echoing out of her helmet. Get control of yourself. Samus closed her eyes, forcing herself to not look at the effigy until she had regained her composure.
Once she had, she switched to her scan visor. However, as she tried to scan the effigy something odd happened. Static erupted over her HUD and the buzzing raised in pitch until it actually hurt. Samus yelped and quickly switched visors. What the fuck? She aimed her weapon at the statue and took another step backward. Doing so allowed Samus to look down and see what she had missed before. The effigy was actually set upside down. The creature's head was located at its base. The skull was also in reverse and melded crudely to the effigy. It was the skull of the guard she had seen before. The skull was huge with a wide opening at its upon the forehead was a single word; FAITH.
Samus shivered. A blooming understanding took root inside her head, but Samus resisted it. No. I won't do that. She turned away from the effigy and focused her attention on the gateway. The arches were made of wood, but the gate itself was made of thousands of tiny aliens with interlocked pinsers. However, it was not just any aliens. Samus drew forward and realized that the creatures were Wavers. She had encountered the species during her adventure on Zebes and remembered with vivid detail how they had attempted to hinder her progress.
Samus assumed that the Wavers were dead, but then she saw them start to squirm. A horrible scuttling sound filled the room as all the Wavers started to move. Their attachment to one another as a part of the gate did not seem to be voluntary. They cried feebly as they tried to move and escape their prison. Though Samus loathed these creatures, she could not help but pity them.
Against her better judgment, Samus fired a missile at the gate. The projectile hit its target but left no lasting damage. Fuck…Frustration boiled over and Samus fired a rapid round of missiles and spammed all of her different beams. Nothing worked. Samus checked her HUD and saw that she only had fifty missiles left. I can't waste them throwing a fit.
With an intense feeling of trepidation, Samus returned to the effigy. She stared at the skull and the word written on it. The righteous walk by faith not by sight. Samus repeated the words to herself, but they took on a whole new meaning. Her conscience recoiled at the very pretense of the thought. Willing to try anything other than what her mind was telling her to do, Samus switched to her X-Ray Visor.
She was immediately assaulted by a parade of movement. Something moved inside the effigy. A worm-like thing writhed and twisted inside the trunk. However, that was the least of Samus' worries. The entire bowl was suddenly filled with spectral-like entities. Like the Chozo ghosts she had encountered on Tallon IV, these specters left behind an ethereal glow as they moved. The ghosts had seemed oblivious to Samus, but one by one, they were turning in her direction. It was as if her seeing them suddenly gave the ghosts the ability to see her. They drew nearer, their eyes burning an icy blue.
Samus fired a plasma bolt which passed directly through the nearest ghost. She followed up with a charge shot and when that didn't work attempted a Wave Beam. None of her weapons were of any use. Samus retreated to the far wall as the ghosts converged. Samus heard them whisper and understood this to be the source of the whispering she had heard earlier. When nothing halted the advancement of the spirits, Samus resorted to turning off her X-Ray visor. Immediately, the ghosts vanished. The nearest one had only been a few feet away. Samus cringed and waited to see if the ghost would attack her. Nothing happened.
Not by sight. Samus repeated. She glanced back at the effigy. Now Samus knew that there was no other way. Slowly, Samus removed her helmet and tucked it under her arm. Then she walked over to the insect. She pulled on the skull and it detached from the effigy without effort. Her skin prickled as she raised the skull up and gently lowered it over her head. Samus exhaled slowly as every muscle in her body tensed up, ready to act in case something went wrong. However, nothing did. In fact, nothing seemed to have happened. The skull fit over her head, and she could see through the empty eye sockets, but it brought no sudden revelations.
Samus deflated slightly until she looked back at the effigy. The place where she had removed the skull had shifted slightly. It was now shaped in the exact dimensions of her own helmet. Samus' fingers danced against the exterior of her helmet. Parting with any piece of her power suit was equitable to parting with her real limbs. The sacrifice was almost too much. Fuck this place…She thought bitterly.
Samus waited a few minutes as she considered her options. She could return down the flight of stairs and look for another way out. Yet somehow, Samus knew that all roads would eventually bring her back here. With a heavy heart, Samus placed her own helmet in the groove. At that moment the skull she was wearing suddenly shrunk. Samus collapsed to her knees as the bones pressed against her head. The eye sockets squeezed down on her face, smothering her eyes and nose. Samus gasped for breath and tried feebly to pry the mask off of her. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the skull mutated until it fit just as snuggly as her own helmet. The pressure receded and Samus was able to breathe normally again.
She opened her eyes. A thin film of foggy glass covered her eyes like a visor. However, there was no HUD, and Samus had no visors to utilize. She stood up and felt her head. The bone was gone, and she felt the cold touch of the Chozo metal. Somehow the skull had transmuted into a helmet. The foggy glass covered everything in a bluish hue. Samus instinctively turned towards the gateway. Among the hoard of forcibly connected Wavers, she saw seven of them that were pulsing a deep neon orange.
Samus knew what to do next. She approached the gateway and fired at the indicated orange Wavers. They let out a loud piercing cry and died. Once the last had fallen, the gate collapsed. Samus turned around to retrieve her helmet. However, it was no longer there. Instead, the skull with the words: FAITH: carved onto it had returned. Hoping to never see this place again, Samus rushed through the gateway.