Silence, thick and suffocating, fell over the pump station. From the darkness of the collapsed tunnel entrance, the scrape of metal and the viscous drip… drip… drip grew louder, closer, a macabre drumbeat against taut nerves.
"Contact imminent!" Lena's voice cut the silence, her runic pistol snapping towards the sound, its core humming with charged energy. Fenrir's growl was a continuous rumble, a living bulwark at the front, alloy claws gleaming. Hawk gripped his sonic emitter, thumb on the trigger. Selena's runic shield flared brighter blue, even as she strained to maintain her probing field near the bronze hatch's runic lock. Alan's heart pounded, his suppressor cuff burning with tension and the palpable malice radiating from the dark tunnel.
The scraping halted at the rubble pile edge of the collapsed tunnel. Then, a twisted, hunched figure slowly dragged itself into the overlapping beams of their headlamps!
The thing… retained a grotesque parody of human shape. Its body looked like melted wax, a sickly, translucent grey-green covered in pulsating, oozing pustules leaking viscous, sulfur-and-ozone reeking black-purple slime—the same lethal blood from the corner! Its limbs were hideously deformed. One arm ended in a jagged, rusted metal pipe that scraped the ground. The other arm was swollen, terminating in flailing, insectoid bone spurs! Its head hung low, shrouded in a thick, dripping mass of fungoid matter, obscuring its face. Only two pinpricks of malevolent crimson light glowed within the slime-shroud!
Drip… drip… The black-purple ooze fell steadily, sizzling and pitting the concrete floor. Tattered rags clung to its form—scraps of Warden tactical gear and fragments of dark crimson, vampiric finery.
"RrraaAAGH… ugh…" The abomination lifted its head. The slime-shroud split, revealing rotten muscle and slime-coated teeth. An inhuman screech, blending agony, hunger, and pure annihilation, tore from its ruined throat!
"Corrupted!" Selena's voice was horror-stricken. "Deeply transformed by that black blood! Fused with construct debris and… corpse remnants! Energy readings chaotic, violent! Extreme threat!"
Before she finished, the creature shrieked! Its swollen, bone-spurred arm smashed down like a wrecking ball!
CRUNCH!
Concrete shattered! A visible shockwave of debris, black-purple slime, and chaotic negative energy blasted outwards in a fan!
"Scatter!" Lena yelled!
The team reacted instantly, diving for cover! Fenrir roared, weathering part of the blast, his claws whistling as he lunged at the monstrosity! Lena and Hawk fired while dodging, energy bolts and sonic pulses targeting its distorted joints!
Selena's shield buckled violently under the barrage of slime and shrapnel! She paled, the strain of holding against such chaotic force immense.
Alan rolled behind a massive fallen pipe as the shockwave hit. Debris clanged against the metal. He pressed against the cold surface, gasping. The suppressed Harmonizing energy within him, goaded by the creature's violent negativity, churned like a storm-tossed sea! His suppressor cuff whined, overload lights flashing.
In the chaos, Alan's gaze flickered to the astrolabes and druidic stone Selena had placed near the bronze hatch's runic lock. Distracted by the fight, her control over them had weakened. One silver disc, depicting a specific star chart, rested near the edge of the blazing crucible sigil.
As the abomination screeched again, Fenrir's claws tearing a gushing wound in its side, another wave of foul, chaotic energy washed over the area—sweeping over the hatch and Selena's instruments.
HUM—!
The astrolabe near the crucible sigil suddenly vibrated violently! Its engraved stars blazed with unstable, crimson light! Then—CRACK! The silver disc fractured like glass! It had absorbed some of the creature's chaotic energy, triggering a violent conflict with the lock's inherent inertia and Selena's arcane probe!
"The astrolabe! It's overloading!" Selena cried, trying to retract it, but too late!
The shattering disc acted like a detonator! The dormant alchemical sigils and Celtic Ogham on the lock flared to life—not with gentle ripples, but with blinding, warning crimson! The entire bronze hatch emitted a deep, resonant groan. The brass gears around its rim began turning, slow and grinding. A powerful repulsion field erupted from the hatch!
"Lock backlash! Full defense!" Selena's face drained of color. She abandoned shielding against the creature, focusing her staff entirely on the hatch, trying to quell the surging energy!
The repulsion field hit like an invisible hammer! Fenrir, locked in combat, Lena, and Hawk, near the hatch, were thrown back several steps, gasping! Selena's shield flickered wildly, near collapse!
The creature, momentarily stunned by the energy surge, hesitated, its slime pustules bursting faster.
The repulsion wave slammed into Alan, driving the breath from his lungs. But worse was the internal maelstrom—the hatch's crimson energy, the creature's chaotic negativity, Selena's blue arcane power—needles of fire searing his insides! His suppressor cuff shrieked, runes flashing madly at maximum load.
"Ungh!" Alan curled in agony, hands clutching his head. Amidst the torment, an instinct screamed: Don't fight! Channel! Harmonize!
Survival instinct overrode pain. He stopped trying to crush the raging energy within. Instead, with a final shred of focus, he stopped resisting the repulsion field's crushing force. He tried to guide the torrent of conflicting energies flooding him, like diverting a flood, along the natural "channels" of his Harmonizing ability.
As his will resonated with this desperate maneuver, his right hand, braced against the cold floor in pain, inadvertently touched a bare patch of the bronze hatch's frame—unadorned metal near its base.
HUM—!
A surge of energy—weak yet profoundly pure, ancient, and ordered, like the heart of a slumbering volcano—flowed from deep within the bronze hatch, through the metal frame, into Alan's fingertips!
This energy was utterly different from the lock's crimson fury! More profound, more enduring, radiating unimaginable age and structure. It seemed to find a resonance point, weakly answering the unique frequency of Alan's Harmony.
A miracle unfolded.
Around the small patch of metal Alan touched, the complex runic lattice flared—not crimson, but with a soft, pure silver-white ripple! This ripple didn't damage the runes; it momentarily "smoothed" the raging currents within them, clearly illuminating an incredibly intricate energy pathway! Like a living thing, the path snaked through the vast runic lock—connecting a specific alchemical node, a precise astral phase point, and the core resonance nexus of the Celtic soul-lock! Its endpoint: the blazing crucible at the heart of the triple rings!
This silver path blazed like lightning in the dark, searing into Selena's perception! As a rune master, she grasped its meaning instantly!
"The Path! Activate the Path!" Selena's voice was shrill with urgency! "Lena! Hawk! My mark! Energy injection coordinates: Fire at Kan-Li, Sound at Zhen-Greedy Wolf, Life at Dui-Birth Gate! NOW! Path is fading!"
Lena and Hawk, though baffled, obeyed without hesitation. Channeling their Anima into pistol and emitter, they aimed at three specific nodes on the runic lattice, now briefly marked by the silver path. Three distinct energy beams lanced out—searing fire, concussive sound, and stabilizing life force!
The beams struck true, like surgical strikes!
HUM—!
The crimson warning light on the hatch died instantly! Replaced by a gentle, moon-white radiance suffusing the entire runic network! The chaotic energies were forced into alignment, harmonized! The runic lines glowed like illuminated circuitry, power flowing smoothly along Alan's revealed path! The eight brass gears spun with a chorus of crisp clicks and clacks, faster than ever! The gems at their hubs ignited in sequence—scarlet, amber, emerald, azure… culminating in pure white light flooding the triple rings!
CLUNK… GRIND… THUD…
Massive internal mechanisms unlocked! With a grinding roar of metal, the immense bronze hatch began to sink inwards and slide aside!
A wave of air, infinitely more potent and primal than the pump station's stench, rolled out—thick with decay, sulfur, scorched metal vapor, and a nauseatingly sweet, cloying stench of rotting flesh mixed with alchemical reagents! Beyond lay not darkness, but a thick, ominous emerald-green glow, like the belly of a decaying leviathan!
"It's open!" Hawk breathed, voice thick with awe.
"Alan!" Lena rushed to the youth slumped by the hatch. He was ghostly pale, drenched in sweat inside his suit, his right hand trembling where it had touched the metal. His suppressor cuff was dim. He was spent, but conscious, giving a weak nod.
The corrupted creature, driven into a frenzy by the opened hatch and the emerald glow, shrieked with renewed madness! Ignoring its wounds, it dragged itself forward again, lunging towards the opening!
Fenrir met it with a furious roar, claws and bone spurs clashing, black-purple slime flying before the gaping maw of the entrance!
Then, a voice. Distorted, laced with static and boundless, chilling fervor, rose from the emerald-green depths beyond the hatch, cutting through the sounds of combat and echoing in their comms and minds:
"…Welcome… my honored… sacrifices… At last… you step… into… the Crucible's… sanctum…"
Viktor Kovach's voice! From the heart of Mimir's Forge!