#talsa

The corridor ahead was empty, and looked just like the previous sections, with slightly rusting, riveted metal floors and walls. The mana lamps were still working, and a few doors could be seen in the distance, opening to the sides, though all closed. But the far end was lost in darkness.

The group moved onwards, weapons at the ready. Although nothing could be seen or heard in the corridor, living or otherwise, Istharnax could feel the apprehension and dread of the soldiers like tiny trickles of icy water down her back. A few minutes went by, as they passed the shut doors, arriving closer to the darkened end. Yet, the darkness there appeared just as pitch black as earlier.

It now filled their entire field of view, blacker than anything they had seen before. Looking at it this close was giving Istharnax a headache. She slowed down and stood at about a hundred feet from the edge of the darkness, where the light of the last lamp seemed to simply cut off. Even as she looked, the void appeared to be creeping slowly closer along the walls.

"Give me the light," she ordered, and one of the soldiers handed her the portable high-power mana beam they'd brought along. She switched it on, directing it right into the blackness in front. Even the powerful instrument seemed unable to penetrate it much. The inspector moved the beam to the side, where the wall of the corridor should have continued into the darkness, but there was just... nothing beyond the threshold.

Tilting her head slightly and uttering a small "Hmm" to herself, she directed the light back towards the middle. Where it fell upon a misshapen mass, floating midair.

It looked like a large cluster of oversized eyeballs, that turned in place towards the contingent in response to the bright light, pupils narrowing. Then it lurched forward, making a noise like a fog horn. As it flew out into the normal part of the corridor, it could be seen trailing a stem of thick veins, which now whirled forward to form something like a clawed appendage. And many other things poured out into the light along with it.

There was a massive hulk that seemed to consist of human teeth and gums, emitting a muffled noise of pain non-stop. There was a black, spiny, crawling thing that reminded Istharnax of the outer shell of a horse-chestnut crossed with a slug. There was a worm-shaped thing that seemed to be made of flesh-coloured bismuth, flowing along as if invisible hands were constantly drawing one end of it and erasing the other. There was a disembodied, floating mouth surrounded by clawed palms, cartwheeling through the air as it uttered random but entirely coherent sentences in Xadaganian. There was something that looked just like a liquefied human, rushing like a stream along the metal wall. And these were only the ones that were relatively easy to describe.

As this parade of horrors emerged from the blackness, one of the soldiers wordlessly turned around and ran. Istharnax momentarily considered liquefying his brain with a motion of her hand, but she couldn't actually blame him that much – and there were better targets to focus her power on. She thrust out an arm, purple energy crackling around her palm, and the toothy thing exploded, scattering teeth like shrapnel. Its screaming went on a little longer after its demise than Istharnax would have liked. On cue, the soldiers took up position in front of and next to the inspector, and opened fire, cutting swathes through the abominations.

Reinforcements were in no short supply, though, and the distance between them and the contingent was getting shorter. Still, the attack seemed to be going well – right until the first casualty.

A bouncing, milky blob ricocheted between the walls and floor towards them, evading the bolts and spells hurled at it, and lurched at one of the soldiers up front, engulfing him immediately. His screaming only stopped a few moments later, when a bright red orb of flesh burst out of the goop, and began jetting flames at its former comrades from the orifices on its surface.

Seeing this, two more soldiers turned tail immediately. The others held, although they appeared more than a bit shaky now. The only person able to muster a comment was Istharnax, in the form of an exasperated "Oh, fuck me."

Despite the contingent's considerable firepower, it was starting to look more and more like a battle they might be able to sustain for a while, but not win. Istharnax grit her teeth behind her mask. There was no point in sacrificing people for this.

"Sergeant. Retreat with your men. I will cover you," she spoke up. "Are ya bloody cra- I mean. Comrade Inspector, is that wise?" responded the Orc, while not letting go of his crossbow trigger for a second. "I said, go! I will repel them. Do not worry." "But, Inspe-" "Go!" The sergeant did not dare argue any further, and signaled retreat to his soldiers.

As they fled towards the other end of the corridor, not needing to be told twice, Istharnax doubled down on her attacks, although her head was already throbbing with the effort. Her core whined in protest, working at maximum capacity to provide cooling and endorphine to her overstressed brain. Yet, again and again she thrust her arms out, one after the other, sending crushing waves of telekinetic force to mow down the abominations pouring towards her. Their incomprehensible forms disintegrated without fail, splattering the floor with repulsive slurry that would, thankfully, rapidly dissolve into nothingness, with no unnatural cohesion left to hold it in this world.

But there just seemed no end to them. Istharnax was expecting her ungainly, not at all combat-appropriate inspectorial garments to straight up catch fire at this point from the heat of her strained systems underneath, artificial sweat trickling down in little streams over her unliving flesh. The edges of her vision were starting to blur ever so slightly, and she let out a hoarse groan of frustration, as she slowly began backing away down the corridor herself. It wasn't the pain that bothered her – her brain felt like a glob of lava in her skull by now – it was the possibility that she would not be able to hold out for much longer. She could not stop attacking, as they would overrun her quickly. If she falls here, the rest of the base may be promptly lost. That could not be allowed.

And what had the supervisor said? They don't die. The people that these things had once been... had not died, according to him. Of course, you don't need to be alive in the normal sense to be an unspeakable abomination that ignores most laws of nature... but no one seemed to have resurrected, have they. They were either stuck in Purgatory, or...

Istharnax had had a pretty long life, or rather, existence. Certain things, such as the emotion of actual fear, had not factored in it for so long that she was certain they only ever happened to other people anymore. But now she had to slap herself mentally so as to not continue down that road of thought, because it would have led towards a bottomless ocean of terror – an extremely inconvenient mental place to be in such a delicate situation. Her hands only trembled slightly as she began to take longer steps towards the reinforced steel door, still about three hundred feet behind her. She could not allow the installation to fall... but the lives of its personnel took priority. Though, at this rate...

She found that her groans had turned into screeches of anger and increasing desperation, accompanying every attack, making her vocabulator crackle with distortion, as the unceasing torrent of faceless, headless, formless, senseless creatures grew steadily more fuzzy before her. It wasn't them changing, because the floor and walls seemed to slightly wobble now, too. Still they poured from the pitch darkness at the far end of the corridor.

Istharnax briefly glanced to her left, where a steel sliding door similar to the one behind her connected another corridor into this one. It was firmly shut, but as she retreated past it she thought she heard, over the din of the assaulting monsters and the storm in her mind, faint, rapid beeps from the other side.

Several things happened all in the next few seconds. The noises she thought she heard drew the Arisen's glance towards the door again, and as a result she tripped. She managed not to fall over, but her concentration was broken, forcing her to stop the attack. That couple of seconds of a gap was enough to allow the tide of searing pain which she had been holding off to crash into her brain, and it took all of her power to stop herself from blacking out. At the same time, pneumatics hissed to her left, and the sliding door shot open. A squad of soldiers immediately rushed out, with a tall Xadaganian commissar up front, followed closely by a bulky Orcish woman, and at a little distance, a couple of soldiers escorting three more, who were clearly wounded.

The commissar quickly assessed the situation, and yelled, "Bring 'em, towards your three! Corporal–" What he tried to say next was drowned in the deafening battle cry promptly issuing from the Orc's throat as she charged towards the tide of monsters, which was rapidly closing in with no attacks from the inspector to hold it off. Istharnax found herself falling to her knees, and she fought against the urge to surrender to unconsciousness, watching the Orc. She barely registered the commissar descending on one knee next to her to help her.

The corporal was brandishing a hammer in each hand, and both seemed to glow with a fiery aura as she ran, eventually cannoning into the army of abominations. She then began a dance of death, pulverising a creature with each blow, the strikes of the likely enchanted weapons making them promptly explode as the hits connected. The Orc seemed to move with impossible speed, and Istharnax wondered how she was not tripping over her own feet.

The Arisen slowed down her perception of time, observing her saviour. The corporal's most prominent feature was a gorgeous mane of copper-red hair, restrained in a thick ponytail and flying behind her as she fought. She was wearing standard, military green Vanquisher armour, but with a few alterations – she had no helmet, but there was a traditional, checkered Orcish scarf loosely draped around her neck, and the chainmail and plates that normally should have been covering her upper arms and thighs had been removed. Istharnax found her photoreceptors zooming in on her exposed, amazing muscles, and her green skin, glistening with sweat. What a lovely shade of green, too, she thought, even as someone rudely interrupted her reverie of observing this armoured assault vehicle of a woman in action.

The commissar was yelling into where he assumed her audioreceptors should be, to try and get her back on her feet. Throwing him a brief, indignant look, she rose ponderously, flexing her hands with newfound combat readiness.

"Splendid timing. Retreat through the door behind me. The Corporal and I will cover you, and join you soon. Go," she commanded. The man nodded, and shouted "Carry on, Corporal!", before jogging after the rest of his squad.

Istharnax walked forward, raising her right arm slowly to resume her attack. Her telepathic voice entered the Orc's mind, telling her, "Take the left flank, I'll take the right. Steady retreat," with a little more purr to it than she had originally intended. The other woman made no response, but began to draw back towards the exit, and Istharnax fell in line behind and to the right of her, unleashing her mind's destructive power once again. This doubled their efficiency, and the distance between them and the attackers' reinforcements grew, so eventually less and less of them reached melee range. In response, the Orc stowed her hammers and unhooked her repeating crossbow from her back.

Istharnax saw light from the corner of her eye, and turned her glance to see the Orc running her hand over the length of the weapon, her fingers trailing fiery glowing streaks. Then she raised it, aimed, and began pumping bolts into their enemies, each hit resulting in an explosion. The inspector shifted her gaze back to their targets, muttering "Well, well" to herself.

They progressed like this for a few minutes, until they eventually approached the door at the end of the corridor. Whatever unnatural womb had been birthing these horrors seemed to have finally been tired out for the moment, as only singular creatures ran, flew or crawled towards them from the darkness at the other end every now and then, as opposed to a neverending army. The corporal turned and went to bang her fist thunderously on the door behind them as they reached it.

It opened immediately, and the two women hurried through. The door slammed to as soon as they were in, and the two squads greeted them with anxious looks. The corporal stowed her crossbow, spat on the floor, and declared, "Son of a fucking bitch." Istharnax leaned on the door with her back to it, her photoreceptors going dark for a moment, before eventually commenting with "Agreed," in a quiet, cracking voice.

She gathered her composure, stood up straight, and addressed the soldiers, speaking up. "Well done, Comrades, considering the circumstances. We repelled them for the moment. And now, we must evacuate the installation." Murmuring went up at this, and without further explanation, she turned to the Orc and added, "Thanks for the save, Corporal...?"

Then she found herself toppling over like a felled tree, right towards the Orc, who caught her. The collision of her cybernetic limbs on the armour resulted in a noise not completely unlike a metal coat rack falling over. With effort, the inspector looked up into the corporal's face, which showed an expression of mild concern as she responded, "Talsa".