Opening his eyes, Siren realized he was lying on a surface of sand, covered in cobwebs. A cold gust of air made him shiver, finally waking him up. A strong headache and weakness throughout his body pressed on him like tides of waves.
Looking around, he saw that the walls of the room were covered with thin layers of white silk. At the very top he could see a long tunnel ending with a round iron hatch. Siren could not make out any patterns on its surface, but for some reason immediately assumed that this was the very platform he had activated before losing consciousness.
"Damn…" — clutching his head, Siren struggled to get up, looking around the room.
At first glance, the vertical tunnel he found himself in resembled an old cellar filled with cobwebs. All walls and corridors were covered with a huge amount of white nets. In some places they sagged and were full of holes. But the sight of such an amount of cobwebs sent a chill down Siren's spine.
"Where am I?.. Why do I always end up in some wilderness?.." — he cursed softly.
Apparently, he had fallen from a height, luckily landing on several webs before falling onto the soft sand.
"So am I lucky or not..?"
Suddenly his gaze caught on a small object lying nearby. A massive pistol with silver engravings peeked out from beneath the layer of cobwebs.
"That's…!" — Siren couldn't hold back a smile when he noticed the unexpected find. He quickly grabbed the weapon, weighing it in his hands.
Once he had seen something similar in the hands of one of the wardens. Old Kae had said that firearms were considered complicated, not everyone could handle them. The hefty pistol seemed formidable with its long barrel and intricate intertwined engravings.
"If I'm not mistaken, this belonged to that bastard…" — recalling the hated face of the priest, Siren couldn't help but grin with joy.
"I'll consider this payment for my work!"
Turning the pistol once again in his hands, he looked around for anything else. Unfortunately, there was nothing else nearby.
"If I remember correctly… it seems I fell into this place after activating the amulet's charms. Does that mean I managed to open the Gate?.." — hiding the pistol in his bosom, Siren cautiously surveyed his surroundings.
His eyes slid along the walls searching for anyone. If he opened the entrance, it meant someone else could have entered here after him. And he didn't want to be tied on a leash again like a stray dog.
At that moment he suddenly caught a faint mechanical noise. It seemed that something was scraping the floor, approaching him. Quickly darting behind one of the silk nets, Siren cautiously looked toward the source of the sound.
Soon, from the passage sealed with cobwebs, a crack sounded. A thick layer of silk was cut by a sharp blade, behind which followed something covered in iron plates all over its body. The creature stepped on the sand with alarming clicks. Its huge body was as tall as an industrial lift for carrying heavy loads. Eight pairs of bright red eyes emitted an alarming sound as the rest of the torso came out.
In length, it turned out even bigger — supported by many pairs of sharp limbs. Two huge pincers especially stood out against the background of the lower segmented legs. The creature froze for a second, arching its back in a worried stance. Finally, behind the body appeared a long segmented tail ending with a short six-fingered tip.
"What the hell is that?.." — thought Siren, looking at the ominously metallic surface of the unknown creature.
Suddenly, a faint beam of infrared light burst from the tip of the tail — the six fingers began to spin at a certain pace. The laser swept the room for a second, after which a powerful roar of unleashed volleys resounded in the room.
"!"
Six barrels at the end of the tail spewed columns of fire, shooting in random order. The machine gun roared, tearing thin cobwebs on the walls.
Moving deeper into the room, Siren was escaping from flying shrapnel of the uncontrollable fire, avoiding the direct trajectory of shots. Several bullets whistled right over his head, cutting the tips of his hair.
The powerful roar of the shooting continued, forcing Siren to dart from side to side. The sound of gunfire echoed from the walls, merging into one continuous stream of cacophony. Bullets tore through the air nearby, embedding in the floor and walls with a clang, knocking up clouds of sand and scraps of silk.
Siren's brain worked at the limit, catching every trajectory as if intuition merged with instinct. For a moment, time seemed to freeze — everything around slowed down. He saw how the next projectile hit a net on the wall, how a piece of white cobweb, ignited by a discharge, flared up and crumbled to ash.
As if the very ether obeyed his tense consciousness, accelerating his movements. Siren didn't understand how he managed to do this, but he intuitively felt growing weakness in his mind.
"Damn!" — cursing again, he continued to track the trajectory, every tiny detail of the shots in his field of vision became predictable. He saw where the flame would flare next, where the lead death would strike, and even before the next volley tore through the air, his body was already moving, twisting, slipping between streams of destruction.
Siren flipped behind one of the stone walls, visible under torn cobwebs. Bullets pierced him from the side, barely missing his thigh, but he managed to roll over, feeling another wave of heat pass a centimeter from his face.
In the mad dance of death, his body acted faster than thought — hands tore off from support, legs pushed off stones, every jump was a calculation for survival. Even pain from bruises and cuts seemed to dissolve in adrenaline, leaving him only one goal: to overcome this storm.
But the enemy did not give up. The creature stepped forward, tearing the cobwebs with its heavy paws. The eye sensors on its head continued to glow, fixing every movement, giving no chance for a miss.
"I need to run from it… Or blind it. As long as it sees me, I'm dead" — the thought flashed, but there was almost no time left for a plan.
Siren drew the pistol, pressing himself to the wall. His cheek felt the stickiness of old cobwebs. He almost coughed when dust got into his nose. His palm gripped the handle too tightly, almost to numbness. And yet — it was his only chance.
He had no idea how firearms worked, only instinctively directing the raging ether flow into the handle. The engravings on the sides of the pistol flashed silver for a second, quickly replaced by a deathly black shade of ether. It seemed the weapon protested against the uncontrollable flow of corruption, but the enchantments worked. Quickly catching the mechanism of the pistol's operation with his eyes, Siren put his finger on the trigger.
Hiding behind another wall, he waited for the moment when the enemy's weapon lost sight of him and stopped firing.
In this short window, no more than one and a half seconds, Siren jumped out of cover, rolling over the sand, and without aiming, opened fire at the source of the infrared beam.
The pistol roared like an enraged beast, spitting a black charge with such force that it threw Siren backward onto his elbows. The air around the shot flashed with a brief flame, leaving behind a smoky, gloomy trail as if a shadow cutting reality. The black trail of the shot tore the air, sending several more shots.
The upper segment of the tail shuddered. One of the lenses blinked and exploded with an internal short circuit. A flash of sparks burst out, illuminating the cobwebs with a shadow of broken light.
The creature froze for a moment. Its algorithm malfunctioned.
But that was enough.
Siren dove aside again, barely avoiding another volley. His heart pounded wildly, and his lungs seemed to try to burst out.
The shootout continued. Metal scraped, the air trembled under the onslaught of explosions, and cobwebs charred and crumbled to ashes under every shot. Siren's bullets hit the beast's body — most ricocheted to the sides, but he kept shooting, again and again, whenever he could.
He aimed higher — at the joint between tail segments. The next shot hit precisely in the thin zone under the swivel ring, where the control cables converged.
Suddenly a sharp metallic screech sounded — the gun froze. The monster's tail twitched and fluttered as if its nervous system lost control for a moment. Six rotating barrels stopped, hanging in the air as a useless stump. Smoke drifted from inside the mechanism.
Siren exhaled heavily.
"Got it…"
But the joy was short-lived. The creature froze, as if gathering strength — and suddenly lunged forward, crashing on Siren with all its mass.
Siren didn't immediately realize what happened — the mechanical monster stopped shooting, it simply rushed into a frontal attack — like an armored train that decided to crush everything in its path.
Siren didn't have time to fire a second time. He only saw how the front of the torso bent, the body tensed, and eight pairs of limbs dug into the sand, gaining terrifying speed. Every movement was accompanied by a roar, as if a building was collapsing.
"Ram!" — flashed in his mind.
Instantly turning around, Siren ran aside, diving between half-collapsed structures. He felt the ground shake under his feet, dust rising in clouds, choking his lungs. The beast was literally flying at him as a chunk of living metal and fury.
Behind him came a crack: the creature broke through one of the tunnel walls. Sand fell from the ceiling. Quickly shifting aside, Siren slid down the slope, barely avoiding falling into a narrow side crawlspace.
A huge pincer slammed into the ground nearby, scattering fragments of stone and sand, and threw Siren off with a wave of impact. He rolled over, barely holding the pistol. A sharp pain pierced his shoulder from the hard fall. Somewhere nearby, in the darkness, the metal giant slowly turned towards him.