Iota (Part 7)

Iota (Part 7)

“Uh, guys,” said Mardan, “There’s something back here.”

“Is it a bear?”

“No, it’s not an animal. It’s… just come and see.”

Mardan’s voice didn’t have its usual excitement. Instead, she sounded somewhat frightened. Ashiko and Sundara followed her deeper into the cave, until the blue light of her glaive was matched by a strange blue glow from a set of runic patterns on the back wall of the tunnel. The glow didn’t come from Scoria. It looked almost like the phosphorescent glow of a deep-sea jellyfish. The black surface the runes were etched into felt smooth like glass to Ashiko’s touch, but it was completely opaque. It was almost like a massive screen.

“Did you not notice this when you came before?” asked Sundara.

“No, it wasn’t there before!” Mardan said, “I think it was when you used your cell phone.”

“My cell phone?” asked Ashiko.

"When you made your call, suddenly the whole rock wall just turned into this thing.”

“Do either of you read runes?” asked Ashiko.

“Not a bit,” Sundara said.

“I’ve never seen these letters before,” said Mardan, “but I can read this language. It’s not Iotan, but it’s in my brain somehow.”

“What does it say?”

“It doesn’t translate directly, but it’s some type of warning. Almost like police tape. It’s something about detecting a signal.”

“You have police where you come from?” Sundara asked.

“Yeah. We have plumbing, too.”

She reached out to touch it. The temptation was too difficult to resist. Like a bald man’s shiny head, it was ripe for the touching. As her fingertips made contact with the smooth surface of what was once a wall, the black material bristled and boiled around her touch. Her hand passed right through the barrier, her momentum carrying her body through the rest of the way. Ashiko reached out to grab Mardan, and her metal fingertips sunk into the reformed black shell. The strange semi-liquid material pushed her fingers back out and closed itself again.

“Mardan!” Ashiko said, “Mardan, can you hear me!” She slammed her metal fist into the glassy black surface, but that did little more than dent her knuckles. She threw her weight against it, but the wall didn’t move an inch. She looked back at Sundara. “Are you just gonna stand there or are you gonna help?”

“How do we help?” Sundara said, “We should get back from that thing before it swallows one of us!”

“Is that all you care about? Yourself? Survival?”

“Yes, actually. It is.”

“So if you were Mardan right now, you’d want me to leave you in there?”

“No!”

“You!-” Ashiko stopped herself. Her finned ears laid flat against her head. Arguing would get them nothing but wasted time. She rewound her mental tape-player and reviewed what had happened. “Why did Mardan fall right through it, but we couldn’t follow her? Well, I couldn’t follow her. You were over there.”

“Was that a rhetorical question or do you want my two pence?”

“I have a few ideas, but I want to hear yours first.”

“I think we should leave.”

“Shut up and get me a blowtorch! We’re melting her out of there.”

“Where are we going to find a blowtorch around here?”

“I’ll make one!”

“HOW?!”

“I’LL FIGURE IT OUT!”

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I bet if a mushroom could lap water out of your hand with a tongue that a gently drinking mushroom tongue on your hand would be the softest and gentlest thing.

The real questions that deserve answers!

which one of your otp is the one to die and which is the one to sit in the middle of the street, holding their dead body, rocking back and forth, screaming “come back, come back, come back”?

The Big Guns appear to be M101 and M102 howitzers. I’m not an artillery expert, but that’s my best guess!

The convention center had Big Guns™ out front

Does anybody know why half a dozen suspiciously hot women started following me? Is it onlyfans bots, or is the gay juice finally working?

[guy experiencing the first stage of grief voice] damn i got through the five stages of grief pretty quickly 😄