Goblin guy: "Urghurhg....URHGURH!!"
Goblin man let out an ear deafening howl, his mouth still regenerating, with only about half of his mouth restored from the gruesome wound Fyor inflicted. The room was dark, the only source of lighting was from the hallways outside the room.
The room was a small, and empty space with nothing but me, Fyor, and the leprechaun guy. His voice echoed throughout the dark room we were in. Chains wrapped around his entire body, binding him into place with ridiculous restraint, disabling his ability to move and even just breathing seemed to be difficult.
His howl barely coherent, but I could still tell what he was saying, though I could be wrong. It was already difficult enough to make out what he was saying, and to make it worse, he spoke in his own mother tongue, a language I barely remember anything about.
Goblin guy: "Rtyioghush-s. R-r-rtyioghush-s!!"
William: "....Yeah no, I can't make up what he's saying."
Fyor: "I THINK, that means...'DIE'? I don't know?"
Goblin guy: "RTYUSHI-K-K-KICHIR!!"
Fyor: "That one meant: 'Burn a-l-l-ive void worshippers.'"
William: "Was you stuttering really necessary?"
Fyor: "Hey, I mean, he stuttered so I'm just making it accurate."
Goblin guy: "TYUKISHAR-One day! MARK MY WORDS HOLLOW PUPPETS!! You-ALL OF YOU! Rotting corpses squirming around, you'll BURN! ALL OF YO- "
William: " Yeah, yeah, whatever buddy. Let's get out of here Fyor."
I turned to walk towards the door of the room, Fyor followed soon after. As I stepped closer towards the exit, I could still hear the goblin's irritated murmurs from behind me. I exited the room, locking the large steel vault of the room ensuring the leprechaun man won't escape again.
William: "We sure he won't get out from that?"
Fyor: "Those chains are tough enough to survive a supernova. Yeah, I think that'll hold."
The hallways was the color white, but nothing close to pristine. The lights were broken and flickered on and off, cracks on the walls could be seen from everywhere. Metal vaults embedded on the walls, arranged in irregular distances from one another. We walked through the long hallway, it seemed to extend endlessly.
William: "Void worshippers huh? Does he think we're a cult?"
Yes, William. We very much are a cult. We've burned down planets because some higher beings told us to.
Fyor: "...Don't...Think about it much."
Of course you'd never acknowledge that. She'd never. Feeling moral guilt breeds defiance, the council thrives on control. To think, is to defy, and to defy, is to heresy. 101 of cult building. Thinking about it, maybe goblin guy was right. Maybe we are hollow puppets. Maybe we are rotting corpses.
Don't listen to her, William. She's just appearing friendly. Your banter with her is useless, it's a tool to manipulate you. Don-
Fyor: "William?"
William: "Hk! Oh, Fyor?...What the..."
I was somewhere different without realizing, again. Weird, just a few seconds ago I could've sworn I was jus-
Fyor: "Did you blank out again?"
STOP INTERRUPTING MY NARRATION WOMA-
William: "Yeah I think."
Fyor: "Seriously dude, don't do that again."
William: "SO, where are we this time?"
Fyor: "...I can't with you, you are so demented."
...Ok, since queen antisocial over here won't give me the context, I'll just have to go with the flow. I can do this, I'll just piece it together like I always do.
William: "How long has it been?"
I muttered those words under my breath, as I looked up at the distorted sky. The sun bearing the color of crimson blood, twisting, and moving in irregular patterns. Stars were yet again, nowhere to be seen. Spatial fissures filled the dark colored sky.
William: "How long has it been?"
Fyor: "...What?"
I repeated. I scanned the area, my eyes were met with the sight of dead bodies, from inhuman creatures. Earth's soil's original color of red sand replaced with black, unknown substances.
William: "How long has it been?"
I repeated. A few of the dead bodies from unknown beasts crawled, as if to hide from the blinding light of the sun. They hid in the shadows, they hid beneath crevices, they threw themselves into ravines, some engulfed in flames.
William: "How long has it been?"
Will you stop repeating yourself? Why can't I do that? Why am I repeating myself?
William: "How long has-"
Fyor: "William."
William: "O-oh. Sorry, what?"
What do you mean, "What?"?
Fyor: "...You've been talking to yourself."
William: "Sorry, sorry. Just...Ignore that."
She can't just ignore that you stupid idiot. It's her job to monitor you. It's her job to keep you in line, can't you see that? Are you stupid William?
William: "We're in...Planet Ulgrath right? World 43 as the ACE would call it?"
Fyor: "Yes...You've been acting strange lately. I mean, you ALWAYS act weird, but right now you're weirder than usual."
William: "...Oh, nothing."
Don't mention the Goblin. Don't mention the gob-
William: "It was just what that goblin said to me."
You moron.
William: "Something about 'mark my words you'll burn void worshippers!' you know?..."
Fyor tensed up upon hearing my words, her expression more serious compared to her usual unerasable smugness plastered over her face. Her eyes shooting an intense glare, as if scanning my very soul.
Fyor: "What?" She asked, her voice serious.
William: "What?"
Fyor: "...That was decades ago, William."
Great, Lidenberge. Exquisite-MARVELOUS EVEN! Now you raised her suspicions, she now thinks you're unstable. Just wonderful. How do you think the council's gonna feel about this?
William: "...I-uhh. Oh, right. It's nothing, forget it. I was just reminiscing."
Fyor: "...Uh-huh."
She's not gonna buy that, make up a better lie. Change the topic, NOW.
William: "Yeah, anyways. What are we looking for here? SAS-68, right?"
Fyor: "Side-angle-side?"
Not funny.
William: "Stack-aware-subject. You know well what I'm talking about stop playing around."
Fyor: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. SAS-68, the yeti. Hundreds of CSTF—the ice-burn team to be specific—Was sent here. Those...things you're seeing in front of you? That's them now. "
She says, gesturing at the crawling creatures before us.
Containment Special Task Forces, or the CSTF for short are the walking meatbags for the ACE, trained for handling anomalies, and containment breaches. The CSTF comprises
William: "They should've sent snake skin instead of ice-burn. Ice-burn is a team full of amateurs."
Fyor: "The yeti isn't a major threat, why waste good personnel when you can just use the expendables?"
William: "I thought all of us were expendables."
Fyor: "Yeah, but different purposes."
William: "Hmm...Hey, I'm gonna check over there to see if there's any surviving personnel we could use. You notify the ACE to send more people, we might need it."
I said, pointing at a cave several meters away from us.
Fyor: "On it."
Fyor compliantly accepted.
If I remember correctly, this is stack-t45 we're on. Entire realities are stacked on top of each other in an endless hierarchy, where the reality above the other views the other as fiction. And in a single reality, there's endless universes, with a single universe alone being infinitely expanding, and unscalable in size.
What a ridiculously big world this is, and being forced to memorize all of the number codes for each individual reality just....Sucks man.
Truthfully, I don't remember much about the yeti or his records. But from what I can remember, the Yeti was an ancient manifest of nightmares and folklores told by parents to their children on planet Ulgrath.
Billions of years ago, although it wasn't exactly a paradise, Ulgrath had people. It wasn't exactly the desolate barren land it currently is today, but it wasn't livable either. Endless wars, plagues, curses, calamities, it was squirming of nightmares. The yeti is just a manifestation of the nightmares those people had.
There's cases where beings from lower realities transcend into higher realities. Those beings become aware of the stacked hierarchies, and can interact and disrupt it. Those beings are what we call stack aware subjects, or SAS. And the ACE, short for Anomaly Containment Enforcers, are the ones who deal with their mess.
And the people of Ulgrath? Well, they accidentally manifested an SAS.
William: "Hello?" I said, scavenging the deep dark cave for any survivors with a flashlight in hand.
My voice echoed throughout the cave, but heard no response. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's stupid how I just came in here without a plan. What if the yeti was here?...Doesn't really matter.
William: "Anyone there?"
???: I-I'm over here! P-please HELP!!" A voice echoed back the second time, he sounded like he was in agony, stuttering and hyperventilating as he replies.
Judging from the volume of the replied, it sounded like he was near. But, there's something I need to check before I blindly pushed forward.
William: "How do I know you're NOT the yeti? I heard he can impersonate anyone."
???: "Wh-I-uhh-I'm c-captain Leopold Himmselson of Ice-burn! CSTF-547895436! Y-you remember the code number for all personnel right? "
William: "Of course I remember, I'm not stupid, I memorized it. Thing is you waivered! A real CSTF captain doesn't stutter when naming his code-number, it's imperative, you guys are elites you're supposed to push through the pain!"
Leopold(?): Alright, alright. I'm captain Leopold Himmselson of Ice-burn! CSTF-547895436. I'm...Sorry, I just cracked for a second there."
The man in the dark, supposedly Leopold, now effortlessly spoke his personnel number out loud.
William: "...Hah!"
Leopold(?): "....What's so funny?"
William: "Thing is, Ice-burn is full of amateurs. It's no wonder for one of them to stutter under immense pain, you managed to regain composure perfectly after I told you to."
Leopold(?):....
William: "What? Staying silent now? Come on, just cuz you fell for my trap you're not even trying to recover from that anymore?"
Leopold(?): "Screw this."
The ground shook, the whole cave tremored. Large debris fell down over me, I narrowly side-step and weave away from the large rocks that fell.
I hurriedly bolted off towards the exit, but as fate would have it, it collapsed.
Loud thudding could be heard approaching me in dangerous speed.
William: "Oh no."
I immediately ran off to find another exit in the cave if there was any. I dashed, narrowly evading the falling rocks boulders, and weaving through the rocky terrain.
The loud thudding— which I can almost certainly assume are footsteps—grew closer and closer.
Alright, ok. Thorough assessment first. What's the situation? Well, I'm getting chased by a bloodthirsty yet, while trapped in a cave, with no exit. Great.
First of all, why am I not dead right now if the yeti is this transcendent apocalyptic beast? Well, the yeti only has power if they have someone who fears them.
Do I fear him? No.
Does Fyor fear him? No.
Meaning? There's still other remaining Ice-burn personnel in this cave the yeti is keeping alive, if I can kill them I'll be able to weaken the Yeti.
I need to shake him off first, the light coming from this flashlight is giving me away...
I smashed the flashlight into a wall.
Now you might be thinking, "bUt WilLiaM you'Re stUPid, NoW you DoN't hAvE aNytHinG tO naVIgATe tHE DArK CaVe WIth." shut up. I'm a genius.
William: "Tsk."
I click my tongue, the noise echoing all throughout the cave.
William: "Tsk."
I click again.
I manage to effortlessly weave past the rocks and falling debris.
How? You brainless monkeys could never comprehend. I used echolocation, search it up.