Chapter 9: The Aparoid Sentinel
A year ago…
The Aparoid Wilds on Skallis's moon Zharon held their name for a reason, along with their status as an exclusion zone. Manned and unmanned fortifications surrounded the 30,000 square kilometer expanse of mountainous forests, ready and willing to fire upon anything that approached them. To allow them to live was too dangerous.
The origin of the Wilds's namesake was never determined—all the locals knew was that at some point, giant insects with mechanized overtones emerged from the heart of the forest and began ravaging the nearby areas. The local armed forces engaged the creatures in an attempt at holding them back and stamping them out, but they found it impossible. Outgunned and outnumbered, the military relayed their plight to the local prefecture's leadership; and the moon's governing body authorized the construction of a vast security network encircling the most ravaged areas, effectively cordoning off the zone from the rest of the moon.
The complete absence of sapient life made the Aparoid Wilds an appealing place for one Voltimure Reige to build a shelter, for the simple reason that no one would dare intrude upon him and his studies. A true loner, he lacked the need for interpersonal companionship for the most part. He had landed his aging personal spacecraft inside the exclusion zone and constructed his underground dwelling place over fifty years ago, and he had no intention of leaving anytime soon. Not as if he could—his personal transport had long since deteriorated to the point of no longer being spaceworthy, and obtaining replacement parts in the exclusion zone was impossible.
Today, however, none of that occupied Dr. Reige's mind. He had more important things to be concerned about. He knew, as did many on Zharon, that in the center of the exclusion zone was the wreckage of a colossal capital ship. Reconnaissance crews had repeatedly tried to reach the crash site and investigate, but all had perished. Drones were sent in to scope out the area, only to be destroyed by the ravenous Aparoids. The totality of knowledge surrounding the crash site was a distant picture of a black warship with a crystalline structure. Seven miles long and many stories tall, its armored hull peeked above the tree canopy, inviting any would-be adventurers to seek it out.
Which is exactly what Voltimure planned to do. Everyone who had tried before had ended up dead or turned into an insectoid husk, but those unfortunate souls did not have armored exosuits equipped with a vast array of ranged and close quarters weaponry specifically engineered for obliterating mechanized insects. On the other hand, Voltimure did.
Climbing into the exosuit's pilot harness with the help of a small ladder, he clipped himself into the suit, then pressed the button to power it up. Electric motors quietly whined into life, the exosuit's control suite activating the HUD built into Voltimure's glasses. Inside his darkened bunker's interior room, he cycled through all the weapons at his disposal to verify their operation. He had fastidiously tested every one of them beforehand, but he needed all of them to be at full functionality today.
He started with the first and probably most crucial weapon: the shotgun—not a typical 12-gauge pellet launcher or a short-range plasma scattergun, but a veritable cannon equipped with explosive slugs. Checking it over, he examined the flamethrower, fueled by an armored tank on the exosuit's back. Satisfied with it, he cycled the minigun built into the suit's left arm and tested the comically large chainsaw built into the right. He then extended and retracted the enormous blade built into the other arm. Finally, he powered up and cycled the coilgun built into the top of the suit's right arm.
Verifying the status of the suit's onboard batteries, he stomped towards the bunker's back wall and pressed a nondescript gray button off to the side of a vertical crack in the wall. The wall split in two with a loud rumble, light streaming in from the outside. With that in mind, however, it was a distinctly dark and stormy day and it only seemed light when compared to the bunker's interior. Rain poured from dark gray clouds, lightning striking in the distance every so often.
Voltimure stepped forward. He cursed himself for not bothering to engineer a canopy or cockpit for his suit, even though all of its electronics were sealed and weatherproof. He simply hated the sensation of wet fur. On the plus side, the storms would keep the flying Aparoids grounded and would reduce the number of times he needed to use his coilgun. The amount of power it required had been his biggest concern during the planning stage of his operation, and the less he used it, the more battery power he would have left to handle everything else that came his way. As it was, getting in and out without running out of battery would be at the forefront of his mind from start to finish.
Rain drenching him from the first second, he set off into the forest outside the ruins where he maintained his underground shelter. The root systems of the colossal trees towering over the land choked out smaller plant growth, meaning that even with his exosuit, he had room to maneuver and explore the undergrowth. No trails existed in the woods apart from the ones he had made himself over the years, and those did not go far. The danger of the Aparoids kept him holed up in his bunker for the most part; and although he had shot, crushed, and incinerated a tremendous number of them over the years, he knew to respect their power and armor—especially when it came to the larger ones.
Focused on maintaining his limited power supplies, he moved at a brisk but not rapid pace through the forest, climbing over fallen trees and cutting aside vines and branches with his suit's longblade. All the while, he kept his sensitive lupine ears attuned to his surroundings. The Aparoids had a distinctive sound, and he knew how to listen for it. Even as he stomped between the giant trees whose canopies blocked the distant light from above, he heard the telltale chattering and clicking of Aparoids nearby.
He recognized the sound as belonging to the Crawler subtype, the most common and least dangerous variety. However, calling them harmless would have been categorically untrue. One normal person with a conventional ballistic small caliber weapon or a compact plasma or laser emitter would struggle in a confrontation with one—and the crawlers tended to hunt in packs.
Through the trees to his left, he spotted four of them, chittering and clicking as their beady insectoid eyes locked onto him. The creatures skittered towards him, but knowing what he knew about the behavior of the insects, he increased his pace and checked behind him every few seconds to make sure none were about to leap onto the back of his exosuit. He knew better than anyone else that if he stopped to kill them, more would appear—and in greater numbers, from multiple directions. The forest seemed quiet enough to the untrained ear, but Voltimure knew from experience that Aparoids had the potential to lurk under any piece of foliage large enough to conceal them.
Suddenly, two crawlers skidded onto the cramped pathway ahead of him. As he barreled towards them, he glanced to his left and right and saw a small horde of the same type heading towards him from the side and to the front. Still hesitating to use his weapons, he ran faster and stomped on the crawler to the right, shattering its thorax and reducing it to a purple and red stain on the forest floor.
He had escaped the ambush without going loud, but he knew that the time for silence was doomed to end at some point. And at that point, the noise would attract every Aparoid in the vicinity, both small and large. He glanced at the tiny GPS readout in the HUD built into his glasses and noted that he had descended nearly a mile into the heart of the forest.
The wreck of the ancient warship was estimated to be three and a half miles from the ruins where he resided.
Voltimure feared that he may have made a terrible miscalculation. He knew how thick on the ground the Aparoids would be, but with only a third of the distance covered between him and the wreckage, he realized how daunting the remaining expedition was. He glanced at his battery gauge.
96%
The number seemed reassuring—but only if the movement of the exosuit was accounted for, and nothing else. Heavy weapon use, sprinting, grappling, or jumping would deplete it far more rapidly. In his testing, the use of his coilgun alone sapped the total battery capacity by 15% every time he fired it. For that reason, he considered it his "break glass in case of emergency" weapon only to be used if he found himself threatened by Aparoid rollers or moths.
The sunk cost fallacy related to his endeavor was difficult to overcome. After all, he'd spent months putting together the exosuit and planning as best he could for his single best shot at reaching the ship. To turn back now would have been an insult to those plans. But to continue? He feared that he had already signed his death warrant. Yet he continued.
Another mile passed with only brushes with the "small" crawler Aparoids—but at various points, he spotted the considerably larger and more heavily armored purple guardian Aparoids. It seemed that the farther into the forest he went, the stronger and more concentrated in number the Aparoids became, almost as if the wrecked warship functioned as their central focal point.
"I might not be able to get into the ship," Voltimure thought to himself. "These infernal insects may be using it as a hive of sorts."
Another mile passed. As he drew closer to the wreckage, he noticed an unnerving trait endemic to the landscape—the color of the underbrush, the forest floor, and the trees themselves shifted from a healthy palate to a sickly, warped texture with purple splotches. Almost as if a purple filter had been applied to the landscape, the visual virus corrupted the surroundings, twisting and bending the natural into something more grotesque. The forest grew darker, and the sound of nearby Aparoids became harder to ignore.
As Voltimure pressed on, a phenomenon presented itself—the tree canopy began thinning out, yet the forest became even darker to the point where he considered switching on his low light vision. The realization occurred to him that no one had ever ventured this close to the wreckage and lived to tell about it. As the light fell, he noticed something: a vaguely familiar mental sensation.
From his time spent with Neron, he became acquainted with a quirk shared by the more mentally powerful Cerinians. Namely, that if one was to spend enough time with them, they would eventually be able to feel their presence simply by being in their vicinity. That distinct feeling presented itself in a similar way as Voltimure moved within a half mile of the wrecked warship. He knew that it emanated from the wreckage; and despite the immense danger of it, he became determined to find the source.
He glanced at his battery meter.
88%
The instant he looked back up at the broken, twisted path before him, he skidded to a stop and shuddered. Four enormous purple guardian Aparoids stood atop a knoll in a clearing ahead of him, flanked by a score of crawlers and a rolling tank Aparoid. He glanced over his shoulder, only to see a small army of crawlers doggedly pursuing him. There was no time to stop. Forward was the only option.
"I suppose it can't be helped."
He armed his slug cannon, targeting the larger Aparoids on top of the hill ahead. Taking aim with the help of a reticle in his HUD, he squeezed the trigger. The explosion shattered the tense calm in the heart of the forest the instant it resounded, sending every Aparoid in the vicinity into a frenzy.
Voltimure fired repeatedly, switching between targets. Thanks to the insects' considerable size, every shot hit home, shredding the purple guardian Aparoids to a pulp. However, the rolling tank Aparoid was made of something more durable, because when he stopped firing, he realized that despite being injured, it was still very much alive.
Very much alive, and very much angry.
"Oh curses."
He darted to the right, behind an enormous tree just as the Aparoid tank fired a volley of green biological missiles into the forest with absurd speed, lighting up the ground where he had been standing one second earlier. The frenzied insectoid screams of the surrounding Aparoids grew louder—and he recognized some of them as belonging to the types far more intimidating and dangerous than the crawlers. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the smaller Aparoids skittering through the underbrush towards him and realized that he had a grand total of five seconds to react before they reached him. Once again, the only way out was through the clearing ahead.
"I suppose there's nothing else for it."
He took the quickest glance possible at his battery meter, then switched to his coilgun. Pre-aiming the weapon in the direction of the Aparoid tank, he stepped left from behind the giant tree, placed the light blue targeting circle on the lower part of the round creature's mass where he assumed its head was, and pulled the trigger.
The electromagnetic rifle fired with a ferocious crack, its tungsten projectile shredding a hole clean through the Aparoid. The visibly mobile pieces of the gargantuan insect fell limp, confirming its demise—which was good for Voltimure, because the crawlers were upon him. Kicking two of them off his exosuit's heels, he threw his concerns about battery life out the window and broke into a full sprint.
Cresting the hill ahead of him, he finally laid eyes on it—the massive, anthracite hull of the wrecked warship that loomed over everything surrounding it. The tree canopy faded, with the sickly purple coloration becoming even more prominent than before and consuming everything in its path. The wrecked vessel stretched as far as the eye could see, the hull standing more than twenty stories tall. Blue Cerinian glyphic print and lines reminiscent of conduits covered the side of the ship, along with hundreds upon hundreds of silent point defense weapons that hadn't seen action in centuries, at the very least. Perhaps due to the sickening influence of whatever was causing the world to turn to purple around Voltimure, the conduits and glyphic print both pulsed blue, allowing him to read what he assumed to be the name of the vessel.
"Malika."
He had no time to admire the ship, though. The crawlers barreled towards him from behind, and in every direction to the front and to the side, he spotted Aparoids of all shapes and sizes lurking in the corrupted forest underbrush—or whatever was left of it. Then he heard it—a hollow, ear-piercing insectoid scream, along with the distant sound of flapping wings. In the distance, four Aparoid moths ascended into the rainy sky.
"Oh blazes. I was afraid this would happen."
The wall of small Aparoids behind him sapped any enthusiasm he had for turning around and fleeing. At the same time, the previously mentioned sunk cost fallacy was becoming an increasing problem for him. Having gotten this far, was he really about to turn tail and run now, when the center of the Aparoid disturbance was right before his eyes?
But he knew that he lacked the battery power to take down all four moth Aparoids before they inevitably wiped him from existence. That particular subtype of Aparoid had the capability to take on full-fledged warships single-handedly. Dispatching a single misguided adventurer in a mech suit would be beyond trivial for them. Voltimure's coilgun packed a considerable punch, but if he was honest with himself, its inclusion in his armament was more of a ploy to slow down the most dangerous flying Aparoids as opposed to actually taking them down.
In the center of the ship's hull, above the glyphic print, he noticed a hole in the armor. From where he stood, it looked tiny, but he knew it was more than large enough for his exosuit to fit through. He took a quick glance behind him. Hordes of crawlers bore down on him, ravenously clicking and screeching at their unwanted guest. He looked at the gap in the hull ahead of him once again.
He knew what he needed to do.
Breaking into a sprint, he thundered over the decaying, mottled grass, dodging rocks and deceased trees while preparing to deal with any Aparoids that had the idea to ambush him. However, none did, although their collective noise continued to increase. At this point, every one of them in the vicinity had been roused from whatever slumber they had previously been in.
As he reached the ship, its sheer size became clear to him. The hole he intended to enter through was over seventy feet above him, requiring a vertical climb across the Malika's armor plating. However, he had engineered that capability into his exosuit. Leaping forward and as far into the air as possible, he slammed into the hull, using his armor suit's magnetic hands and feet to cling onto the metallic armor plating. The fear of the approaching Aparoid moths filled him with determination as he scurried up the side of the ship, metal limbs clanging against the side of the wrecked vessel like hammers striking an anvil. He dared not look down, partially due to his height above the ground and partially so he would not have to look at the Aparoid hordes below.
The hole in the side of the ship looked much larger from up close. Upon reaching it, he pulled himself through the armor plating and set foot inside what seemed like one of the ship's main corridors. As with the outside, blue conduits on the walls pulsed with a rhythmic cadence, almost like a heartbeat. He listened for the telltale scratching and clicking of approaching Aparoids, but heard nothing. If he was honest with himself, he anticipated crashing into a teeming Aparoid hive, but the eerie silence inside the ship sent shivers down his spine. Somehow, this was worse than dealing with the bugs.
Activating his low light vision, he stepped forward into the darkened hallway. Curiously—and perhaps forebodingly—the powerful mental sensation from early redoubled, all but pulling him in the direction of the ship's aft end. At the same time, another sensation materialized in his mind—the gnawing sensation that he was being watched, either by something…or someone.
As he moved farther into the hallway, the sounds from outside became inaudible. The only noise that reached his ears was the repetitive metal clanging of his exosuit's legs on the hard floor and the drive motors responsible for moving its limbs. Along the darkened corridor, he could make out glyphic writing above the seemingly endless number of doors and walkways inside the vessel. To his amazement, each of them corresponded to modern Cerinian writing. And as such, he had the ability to read most of the font.
However, he felt the mental pull towards whatever lay further down the hallway. It called to him with a ghostly, unearthly mental aura. As he ventured deeper and deeper into the heart of the wrecked vessel, he swore he heard a distant, disembodied choir chanting something. Then, he looked to his right. The hallway narrowed, and its right wall became an open overlook to the floor below.
Voltimure stopped dead in his tracks. Before his eyes, a grand auditorium lay spread out. From above, he saw the rows upon rows of empty seats, descending towards a half-circular stage with a massive, anthracite throne positioned atop it. As he stared at it, a realization dawned on him—he had yet to see a single lighting fixture anywhere inside the vessel. The only things that passed as illumination were the pulsating blue conduits that snaked up and down seemingly every major hallway and corridor inside the warship.
"Is it possible that whoever crewed this behemoth lived in near-total darkness?" Voltimure wondered to himself.
The closer he moved to the omnipresent mental prompting, the greater his fear became. The fact that he had not seen a single Aparoid inside the ship did nothing to assuage it.
"Could they be…protecting whatever is inside this ship while remaining outside, perhaps viewing the interior as sacrosanct? This vessel is clearly their origin, yet I have not encountered a single one inside."
Taking one last look at the grand auditorium below, Voltimure continued down the massive, seemingly interminable hallway, somehow even darker than before. Although he dreaded it, he took a quick glance at his battery gauge.
52%
He let out a tense breath, knowing that he probably had just enough power left to make it back to his bunker…if all went well. At the same time, he held to the unshakable feeling that whatever he was looking for was close at hand. Following the now all-consuming force, he turned into a hallway to the left. Inside the entryway, the conduits on the walls changed to rows upon rows of glyphic font. Voltimure read them, feeling the fur on the back of his neck stand on end as he scanned each line.
"Through whom all was created, and for all was born; the living embodiment of the Demiurge, of whom all reverence and servitude is due."
A distinct set of footsteps scraped against the floor behind him. Spinning on his heels, Voltimure stared into the hallway outside with ice in his veins. At this point, he wanted to encounter the Aparoids again. But this did not sound like one of them. And as he expected, he saw nothing in the hallway. Part of him wondered if he had hallucinated the footsteps. He at least figured it was a possibility.
Looking over his shoulder with every step, he pressed further into the hallway before coming face to face with a pair of massive dark blue metal doors that pulsed with the same rhythmic cadence as seemingly every other "light" aboard the ship.
The omnipresent mental sensation radiated from the area with an intensity that he had not experienced before.
"This has to be it—whatever 'it' is."
He took a deep, nervous breath, fearing what lay behind the doors but unwilling to turn back after having already gone this far. Once again looking over his shoulder, he approached the twin doors, looking for any sort of button to open them but seeing none. Frowning, he reached his exosuit's hands between the crack in the two panels and gave it a test pull.
The doors inched open.
Mentally prepared to encounter something too horrifying for most mortal minds to withstand, he repositioned his hands and heaved the doors open. He expected to find some sort of eldritch horror inside, but the chamber was uncannily dark and empty. The lack of light inside the room made sight almost impossible except in the direction of the back wall. Thirty meters ahead, a mysterious crystal pulsed with a haunting blue aura.
Voltimure crept towards it, fearing that making any excessive noises would unleash an unspeakable horror upon himself. As he neared the crystal, he noticed two Aparoid crawlers—one on each side of the crystal. Every few seconds, the massive insects shifted to breathe, but made no other motion. They did not react to him in any way and seemed oblivious to his presence. He looked more closely and noticed several cables extending from their thoraxes into the back wall. In turn, a separate set of cables ran from the wall into the back of the crystal.
"They're sacrificing themselves to power this…relic. But why? Is it alive? Why would such a thing need a power source?"
As he pondered his own question, he noticed a display behind the crystal. It suddenly became clear to him what the purpose of this place was.
"By Jove, this is a sarcophagus."
The display contained multiple items—the first of them being a set of black garments with iridescent orange accents overlaid with glyphic font, which Voltimure quickly translated.
"Ranakka Agur-Dhalva Veikhod. Most intriguing—that roughly translates to 'Fourteenth Avatar of the Demiurge.' I don't recall Neron mentioning anything about this when he was with me. I'm unsure what to make of this, but the purpose of this room is becoming increasingly obvious."
As if to assure himself of his hypothesis, he looked around the room with his night vision and noticed more details—a massive bed in the left corner of the cavernous chamber, a royal bath near it, an abandoned desk with a silent, dark electronic array built into the wall behind it, various pieces of black pottery, and a giant tapestry hanging from one of the 20-foot-tall walls. It looked unmistakably like a national or planetary flag—in this case a black spread with an orange perimeter and an orange sun icon in the center.
Yet another chill rifled down his spine. Despite the only two living beings around him being the two silent Aparoids, he felt the same immense, immaterial presence as before, except this time elevated to a terrifying degree.
He took a second look at the display behind the crystal. Next to the set of clothes, he noticed a small, nondescript wooden box with a latch and a strange glass container next to it, filled with a purple substance. Looking more closely, he noticed a finger suspended in it.
"Ye gods—that's unsettling."
He looked at the glowing crystal again, noticing the singular glyphic character at its center. It matched nothing in the Cerinian alphabet and caused him to suspect that it was runic in nature.
Having solved the mystery of what was at the center of the Aparoid infestation at great personal risk, Voltimure felt both jubilation and despair. The findings in the inner chamber seemed to pose even more questions—questions that he did not see being answered any time soon, if ever. He scanned the room, then turned his attention back to the crystal. For a second, he swore he heard a faint, otherworldly echo emanating from it; but he also wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him.
However, a second sound struck him as being definitely tangible and real. Turning towards the two open chamber doors, he watched as a haunting bipedal creature crept into the chamber. In terms of height, it stood roughly two meters tall. It resembled a canid of some sort, but one completely corrupted and possessed by the Aparoids. Purple flesh and metal comprised its body, although notably, it wore a long black loincloth and a triangular garment that covered its torso. Both had iridescent orange trim. Voltimure made the immediate connection with the apparition's attire and the clothes behind the crystal.
Holding a black staff with a two-pronged tip, the creature moved towards Voltimure, the size of the lupine's exosuit and his mobile armament doing absolutely nothing to deter it. Staring at Voltimure with a pair of piercing orange eyes, the apparition spoke in a menacing, garbled voice that sounded like the disembodied souls of the damned.
In the Cerinian tongue, it said, "You are not worthy to enter this place, interloper."
The creature's appearance caused Voltimure to fear for his life. But then he remembered that he was at the controls of a metallic golem equipped with an automatic shotgun with exploding slugs, a minigun, a coilgun, a chainsaw, a flamethrower, and a comedically large blade. That made him feel significantly more confident.
"Well, I have managed to enter it, so make of that what you will," Voltimure replied.
"Like a child, you play with the toys left to you by your predecessors, never understanding the meaning of them as you smash them together to create cacophonous noises that only an infant would find appealing."
"Well, I would like to understand," Voltimure snapped. "Don't presume that I'm incapable of comprehending these surroundings. I don't even know who, or should I say what you are."
"I am the Sentinel," the figure hissed, "The bodyguard of the Demiurge's daughter, assigned to her at birth."
"Ah, so that's who this place belongs to," Voltimure observed. "Sadly, I'm not familiar with this 'Demiurge' you speak of. Perhaps they are not as relevant as you presume them to be." He cracked a sly grin, knowing that it would infuriate the so-called Sentinel.
"Perhaps I should have tried to be more obeisant, but this 'Sentinel' fellow certainly seems to have his head shoved squarely up his own posterior."
As he predicted, his taunting response set the Aparoid-infested creature into a rage. "You fail to understand who you have the misfortune of angering. I have been entrusted to serve and protect Her Highness, the Princess of Revnus, with my life. My entire life has been dedicated to the practice of combat. You will not stand a chance against me in battle. I suggest that you start showing me the respect my goddess and I demand."
"This person's rank seems to keep increasing by the second!" Voltimure commented. "First, she was the daughter of some defunct religion's leader, then she was the heir to the throne of a planet I've never heard of, and now she's a bona fide deity! Now that's a character arc!"
The sentinel snarled and bared its teeth. "Listen, you whelp. I will not be mocked. We will not be mocked. We are the caretakers of the greatest empire ever to have existed. By our grace, you are allowed to exist. Without us, you would be mere animals, dumb and mute—unable to comprehend anything greater than eating, sleeping, and reproducing. Out of the darkness from which we came, we bring light to the universe. All things were created for us, and in turn, we create anew."
"I would like to know more about this place and especially that crystal, but I don't think this fellow is interested in holding any kind of conversation which doesn't involve him bloviating about his alleged connection to some sort of divine figure of which I've never heard and am not inclined to believe in. Unless the crystal is somehow related to this…"
"Well then, good sir," said Voltimure, "Being so illuminated, would you perchance be able to shed some light on a nincompoop such as myself and explain what the purpose of this mysterious glowing crystal is?"
The half-hearted, sarcastic attempt at flattery served to make the Sentinel even more furious than before. Nearly snarling, it spat, "I know your heart, 'Doctor'—you would only see it as a toy to experiment with or a trinket to collect. Its knowledge will not be imparted to you, and I will accept no further questions. Leave now, or I will destroy you."
Although Voltimure often struggled with eye contact, he had no such problem this time. Glaring straight into the Sentinel's orange eyes, he lowered his head in a threatening display and bared his teeth. "Make me."
So sooner had the words left his mouth than the creature lunged forward, sprinting towards him before leaping into the air on an arc aimed straight at Voltimure's head. The Sentinel armed its staff while leaping, charging an orange energy sphere in the process.
Reflexively, Voltimure swung his exosuit's right arm towards the leaping Sentinel with its hand open. He snatched the Aparoid-infested creature out of the air and squeezed it with his mechanical fist, causing the apparition to drop its staff on the floor below.
Staring into his incapacitated enemy's eyes, Voltimure growled, "If you truly are the emissary of the 'greatest empire ever to exist,' then why has no one heard of it? Why is this entire vessel's existence a mystery? Why should anyone fear or respect you?"
Trapped by the wolf's mechanized fist, the Sentinel hissed, "We are the first of our master's creation. By us, all will be made whole. From darkness we arose, and into darkness we tread until all has been brought into our light. If you destroy me and the Demiurge-to-come, the Architect will come for you, and you will suffer in ways you never thought possible. The flames of eternal agony will consume you—your flesh will burn, and there will be no end. Darkness will be your abode, bound in the abyss created for those who have chosen to defy the will of the Architect—the abyss from which we came."
Voltimure maintained an unamused, flat expression. "I see no reason to fear a god who does not exist. They certainly weren't real enough to preserve your supposed 'empire.' And if your god truly did exist, they could not have picked a more worthless emissary than you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be leaving—and I'm taking that crystal with me."
The Sentinel's rage turned into barely-decipherable shrieks. "No! You can't! You'll destroy her! May the curse of the abyss be upon you and your wretched bloodline!"
Frowning, Voltimure replied, "With all due respect—which is none—I kindly beseech you: shut the fuck up."
Without another word, he grabbed the Sentinel with both of his exosuit's hands; and in one rapid motion, ripped the creature in half. The Aparoid-infested canid let out an ear-rending shriek before Voltimure hurled its noise-making half to the floor and stomped it into silence with a violent, wet crunch.
Deciding that subtlety and caution no longer had a purpose, he stabbed the two Aparoids powering the crystal, yanked its cables out of the wall behind it, gathered up the contents on the shelf, and placed all of it inside his exosuit's shell by his feet before scooping the Sentinel's staff off the floor.
"Time to get out of here."