TheBipBoop2003
patreon
108. Ascension
🕑 Added 2023-11-19 10:32:13 +0000 UTCBelow the house that was built on the Island of the Heartsong was a strange cavern isolated from all by many shields and mechanisms blocking all possible connection toward Pandora and its biosphere, if even the tiniest of contact were to happen the entire structure would be warped on the icy moon, Naratskxepay.
This cavern was spacious yet relatively small, barely having a dimension equal to a cube with all faces equal to a hectare worth of forest, comparing it to a hollowed-out and oddly shaped spherical object would be more correct but from the inside, it was very close in resemblance to a cave in its layout.
A very alien cave at that, at first looked alive, fleshy in a way and it gave a sense of utter wrongness that would befall the psyche of all who would gaze upon it. It could be compared to a living organism by the loose definition of the term.
Growing from an organic-looking ground and ceiling of smooth metallic black stone were numerous stalagmites, and stalactites of varying size and shape made of wickedly sharp entwined thorny roots of the same material growing.
Glowing blue and purple membranes held by this black metal could be seen adorning the arches the roots formed but also the walls like living pulsating canvas, and from the ground yellowish mushroom-like structure grew emitting a faint light.
But the most peculiar aspect was a pond of light purple liquid at the center of it all, pure liquid Element, from it, the entire cavern grew and rhythmically pulsed bluish violet light like the blood within a creature's veins, and this to the cadence of a heartbeat.
The owner of this heartbeat, Liam, suddenly appeared on an organic metallic platform in a flash of light, he walked past the smaller Tek Teleporter fused to the cave like a tumorous organ that brought him here from the outside.
His massive frame in both size and bulk could not be hidden behind his Tek Armor as he advanced slowly within the Element cave, his breathing pained beginning his helmet and labored, his steps were slow, shaky, and painful accompanied by the metallic echoes from each, while he held a clenched hand over his chest where his heart was.
He stopped walking once he reached the pond of liquid living metal, its eerie purple glow creating a light source far more important than any other within the cave. Placing a hand on one of the roots he felt the dulled touch of his Tek Gauntlet from the surface and the inverse, both part of himself. It was akin to clasping hands together but here none were truly part of his organic body, it was alien at first but he rapidly acclimated to it.
'Fuck does it hurt like a bitch…', Liam thought the very last drops of his dark blood were leaking out of his body as he clenched his jaws to the point of self-harm due to the intense burning pain flaring in his heart that kept on growing and growing.
Each of his heartbeats was agonizing beyond words, the blood flowing was reaching its end as the living metal that made this place had been replacing it permeated his system increasing the pain as it spread to everything.
And that wasn't the only thing to have been changed for Liam, it was only the last few steps of a long change that was going on since his appearance.
His body had always been unstable, he was made to exist in a designed and constantly monitored environment. His never-ending growth spurt first and second his ongoing change that started at his Engramic Matrix, and has progressed outward and was finally going to reach its term.
Breathing out he tried to ignore the pain as much as possible. His implant glowed a bright orange, blue, and purple then his armor twisted and warped away into the expanse of his inventory revealing his naked form to the freezing highly radioactive air.
The sudden disappearance of what was essentially his life support made him fall to one knee, he couldn't lift objects, walk, talk, drink, eat, or even breathe… Any that he would have been able to do was all but impossible in his current state. It was… A horrible experience that mere words could barely describe.
Still, his state of immense weakness did little to change his intimidating and terrifying appearance… The term human to describe him would only be for his general body shape, and even it would be the type of human that existed only under very specific conditions.
Two meters and eighty-one centimeters of height (9ft2) and pure sculpted and prominent muscles, flowing hair, beard, and overall body hair of pure energy filaments, two intense silvery orbs for eyes with an utterly alien mind that once was human working behind.
A skin that was of two types, the one in the minority was of a light golden tan, and the other encroaching on the first, and in the majority was a translucent and of an intense light blue that only very few could even perceive as it obeyed on plane of reality most could not grasp.
Everything behind it could be seen, from veins pulsing blue and violet, to slowly disappearing muscles, bones, and organs as all turned into this exotic energy that slowly dispersed in the ambient air just like the normal skin was slowly freezing and burning on contact with the high radiation.
By all accounts and modern understanding Liam should be dead and it wouldn't be such an incorrect observation, by the current scientific definition and criteria that is. And it would have been if not for the Obelisks, it was just that his current state couldn't exist for an extended period in this plane of reality without support.
Without it, he would have fizzled out of existence or lost everything and become the new tattered and twisted mind of the Element. His body of energy dissipating in the air even with those three towers was due to the fact the transition had not ended, it was a leak more than anything.
Gazing down at his heart through his close to nonexistent ribcage Liam observed for a few brief seconds the rapidly disappearing organ, his heart, and how it finally stopped beating as it became an obsolete piece of flesh, like many of his other organs. The rhythmic heartbeat of the cavern stopped in its entirety.
The feeling was beyond painful, it would be akin to a hypersensitive area being poured in hydrofluoric acid, while serrated needles were stabbed in it and salt mixed with jagged pieces of glass were added then the entire area was deeply and slowly massaged to mix the whole.
This was what was happening simultaneously on the entire side of his fleshy body while the part of energy felt right, great beyond measure, and how it should be like he had been shackled forever and never realized until now.
His only positive thought was that it would be over soon, after this there would be no more pain.
His eyes switched to his specimen implant whose roots could be seen in their totality as they connected to what appeared to be both his equivalents to a vascular and nervous system. It was pulsing the same color as the cavern, the orange from the hologram deeming more and more to be replaced by a mix of those same two color signatures of the Element.
'I can't stop the process any longer… Not like there ever was a going back, to begin with.', he thought with resignation mixed with fear and excitement, it was a day he had prepared himself for more than a decade.
He had built this entire area for this very day, it could be compared to a cocoon or more precisely a chrysalis since it was part of his body.
He had started its construction on almost primal instinct, it just felt right and logical and so that's what he did, it was far more complex than a cave grown out of Element, far more in fact and it was connected to the three Obelisks.
The potential that everything would be a trick of the living metal was ever-present in his paranoid mind but if he didn't Ascend he would die and if he was tricked he would die as well.
He had plans if that were to happen, but ultimately Pandora would be at the mercy of the RDA but also the Harvester without him, or any other threat and that was simply unacceptable.
This entire thing was beyond extreme, but Liam was fond of such methods, they tended to be very, very, very effective with a pinch of softness to mellow it all out. It was such a philosophy he got where he was and even before having been transmigrated, he was always described as rather intense be it by friends, strangers, or family members.
'Family… I want to see how they are doing… Mom, dad, and everyone else… Even if the Liam they knew is no more. Maybe I could potentially meet my own self here if his soul and mind can be grasped to see one of the paths my life would have gone?', the post-human thought wishfully bathing in the memories of his past, a far simpler time but he wouldn't trade his present for the world to go back to it.
As prepared on the technical aspect he found it wasn't so much the case on the mental aspect of things. If the shaking of his ethereal blue hands were any indication, or it was the pain or both, he couldn't truly tell with his current state of mind.
He was both terrified and euphoric about what he was going through but also far more emotions that had no meaning, a strange mix that was for sure. There was no going back, there wasn't one the moment his Engramic Matrix was shifting toward this state of being… One of pure energy, at least on paper, he wasn't in the world of that video game, things here were improvised and on their test run.
Sadly for the post-human, he did not have the gift of time to test them, he could but trust his own capacity to not have messed up.
In any case, he was slightly delirious due to the fact his heart was gone and his brain was not all there anymore, in the literal sense of the terms, his brain was an organ like any other, just flesh, it was not spared by the ongoing change in the slightest. It was 'melting away' so to say. But such a loss for the current time was not even a problem, it was simply a biological processing unit in need of replacement, his real self was within the implant.
Still, it had great impacts on his current mental faculty but the soothing presence of his mate in his mind via their empathetic bond helped him keep him focused even if his brain processing power was now rapidly dwindling to that of a human toddler. It also cut short most of his emotions since they came for the most from the chemistry in his central nervous system though it also reduced his pain greatly for the same reason.
His diminished mental faculty and crippled body were not inconvenient either, Liam was aware it was going to be this way and so he had planned for everything in advance.
From the ceiling a turret burst out, its barrel firing a rectangular beam of blue light that hit him straight in the chest, then he began to defy gravity and moved toward the middle of the liquid Element all while he wriggled without any control over his body in both remnant of pain and the nerves firing up confused messages in his remaining 'human' parts.
From the purplish depth tendril of Tek grew and grasped him delicately by the ankle, wrist, and neck, stopping any movement as his body was held in a position similar to the Vitruvian man.
Then the tendrils dragged inside the liquid Element, his flesh melting and twisting at the contact one tendril pierced his left wrist and his fiery silvery balls that were his eyes became two small suns and a silent scream of agony that outstripped another pain he had ever felt escape his mouth.
Everything that was Tek in nature reacted by their light turning the most intense of silver all at once everywhere no matter their distance to the point of origin. It was Liam's scream that spread through them, it didn't spread through sound waves, not any other that were to humanity, it spread at superluminal speed affecting technology not of Tek in nature even up to Earth and far beyond causing many disruptions.
But the scream was also Psionic affecting the one he was connected to the most, Eywa the most affected of all shared his pain and shielded his tames and all her children while she endured and soothed him.
But it touched more than this. It spread outward, causing every human, from his son Miles in Hell's Gate, to Parker Selfridge aboard one of the ISV Venture Stars, to even people in the Sol System causing them all to gaze at once to look to the epicenter, Liam. The hybrids of humans and Na'vi were not spared either, Eywa protection protecting them only partially.
Yet it didn't do much more than touch their psyches, attracting their attention and causing widespread confusion about the species itself. Some left far more affected than others to vastly varying degrees, some gaining very brief glimpses of what was happening.
The reason for such a scream had been within Liam's calculation, he had made it all after all and so the tendrils that were wriggling inside his left arm and entangling his specimen implant were all out of his machination.
It was to move to his chest, the lack of normal organic matter making it smooth but no less painful and it wasn't the only source of such pain. The specimen implant was shifting, metamorphosing into its final stage. It grew, elongated as the locks that kept the Engramic Matrix within unlocked one after another for it to merge with the body and the Element into one continuity.
The specimen implant shape settled, the intense orange glow was replaced by soft blue and brilliant purple, and every leftover of once organic being evaporated the scream ceased the ethereal veins that had partially shifted to similar root-like structures of the cave but much more organic connecting to the implant in its new resting place.
Then the heartbeat of the cave came back, lighting it in its entirety following the rhythm of the new nonexistent heart, the core of the man of light that beat the same color to emitted as the energy was transferred to him until the last shackle broke and the surrounding world was bathed in a sea of blue light.
