The Breach

Chapter 2: The Carnivorous Caverns

An endless green sea spread out before Sergei. Every inch of it rippled and swayed with small waves in the wind, and the surface sported a slight curve almost as if it were bending down. The breeze lessened and ended, and the sea followed suite, it’s entire mass straightening out before separating into a thousand tiny blades, each one pointed towards the sky, at least partially. The sun had risen long ago in the east, casting a gentle golden glow upon everything, and the only noises were the monotonous thud of his boots and the gentle drawn-out rasping that came with the occasional breeze.

Boring, that’s what it was, at least to Sergei. any other being of intelligence would have found the scene beautiful and wild, but not Sergei. Mostly because it reminded him to much of his old military days, and that’s how Sergei worked.

Once he had fought on a planet named Sigma. Sigma IV had been mostly covered in flat expanses plains. the only difference between this world and Sigma IV was that Sigma always had a thin layer of gray clouds over the sky, which blocked out the sun. The dreary mood it had often caused had been fitting, as they were fighting in a war.

He had fought on the planet near the end of The Unity war.

What had the Unity War been? Well, Just as humanity was establishing colonies on the last of the reachable stars with habitable planets, the governments and factions of our world had decided that Earth and the colonies would be better off with a single ruling body, rather than multiple countries.

The only thing they couldn't agree on was what kind of government would rule. Many factions believed in Socialism, or Democracy, while others had more violent beliefs like Communism or a Dictatorship. These last two were also some of the first groups to launch terrorist and military based attacks on those who didn’t agree with them.

Hundreds upon thousands were killed in the first wave of attacks, not just on Earth but on the meager number of colonies they had as well. Thousands of miles of ground were scorched to uselessness, and cities were wiped from the Earth, with only the rubble of both human bodies and the structures of their cities remaining as a testament to their existence.

Sergei and his brother hadn’t lost their lives, but they had lost their parents, not to mention most of their family. What little family hadn't been killed in mass bombings that wiped cities of the surfaces of planets and other blatant attacks had died from disease, exposure, and time.

It was a terrible time, and many a soul had been shattered. Quite a few people had never recovered from watching loved ones, friends, and even strangers burn to death in the fires of war, or be crushed by falling debris. Sergei was one of those people who had never recovered, but his brother, whose name was Marx was not, mostly because he had his older brother for support, which had helped the younger human mend.

Sergei’s thoughts turned back to their original topic, his time in the military. He had been fighting for the side that had opposed communism and dictatorship. Democracy. It included countries such as the USA, Canada, and surprisingly, Russia.

Sergei had joined his the American Military as soon as time had pushed the world to his 18th birthday. He remembered the conversation he had with marx before he had set out, who had been 13 at the time.

“You're gonna come back, right?” The young boy said, his incomplete homework, which was scattered across his desk, laid forgotten in the wake of his older brother’s farewell.

Sergei stood in Marx’s room, it was fairly clean. A few articles of dirty clothing set in a pile on the floor, by his desk, set a small book case with a handful of books held in its confines. His walls were painted a red color. But none of that mattered.

Sergei sighed and looked his little brother in the eyes. “Of course I’m coming back. I’m going to go and help stop this war.” Sergei had informed him.

Marx looked away seeming a little angry. “What if you end up like mom and dad? I’ll never see you again! Then I’ll be left all alone!”

At this point in time, they still had a few relatives left other than each other, a Grandmother and a Grandfather to be exact. And the Unity War had been ongoing for about 27 years, and it had cost more lives than any war in the history of mankind.

“You’ve still got Grandma and Grandpa.” Sergei retorted. “Besides, somebody's gotta pay those guys back for what they did to us. They’ve taken most of our family away.”

In reality, that was only a partial truth. Sergei certainly wanted revenge, but it was not the main reason for him joining the the military to fight in this war. He figured that every soldier meant that the war would end that much faster, and the faster the war ended, the less of a chance there was that Marx or any of his other family would end up as casualties of war.

Both brothers were silent for a moment, before Sergei’s eyes softened slightly and he looked at his brother again. “Look, I promise I’ll come back? Alright…”

“You don’t know that! Mom and Dad promised that they’d always be with me! Do you see them here?” Marx snarled back, his eyes hardening in an attempt to hold back his tears,

Smart kid… Sergei thought to himself.

“I don’t need to know anything to promise you that I’m coming back alive!” With that said, Sergei stormed out, leaving his little brother to soak in his own viscous misery.

And come back alive Sergei did, he had a few wounds, either from knife fights or small bits of shrapnel. But he was alive and well, and that was all that mattered. Four years later, the enemy faction fell apart. They had began to bicker, and eventually fight, among themselves, which made them weak. Once that had happened, they quickly took down the alliance that had formed.

Sergei was suddenly jolted out of his thoughts when instead of hearing and feeling his left boot slam into the ground again, he heard and felt absolutely nothing. After that, gravity continued to carry him onwards, despite his attempts to stop.

It could be said, that at that exact moment, things began to go down hill for Sergei in a very literal fashion.

Over and over again, Sergei rolled over, slamming various parts of his body into rocks and bumps in the ground. He tried desperately to grasp onto something, but Sergei’s descent was only stopped when the ground finally evened out. As Sergei stopped rolling,grumbled and looked about for his gun, which had been knocked out of the magnetic groove on his back when he had taken his little tumble. Spotting a glint of steel, he walked towards it, and found his weapon, while falling it had caught on a large rock.

As he picked it up, he felt a slight sting on his back, and something warm and viscous began to ooze down the inside of his suit. He groaned inwardly, knowing that his fall must have opened the puncture wounds on his shoulder again. They weren’t particularly deep, but they were nasty, and could still get infected with some alien disease if he wasn’t careful.

After examining his gun for a few seconds to ensure that it still worked properly, then holstering on the magnetic section of his suit, Sergei readied himself to continue his trek, but stopped when he heard the sound encroaching footsteps. It  Sounded as if there were about ten pairs of them.

That’s a lot of Lost Children…

Sergei quickly ducked behind the rock, making sure that he could not be seen by the horrendous creatures that were nearing him. We waited there, keeping his breathing still and his ears focused.

Within seconds, Sergei could see about five possessed beings. Two of them were nothing more than corpses that had been turned into puppets, while the other three were living beings that likely had corpse fly larvae acting more like a symbiote than a parasite, giving them some intelligence, but still bending them to Oboron’s will.

The first of the three, a red, four legged thing, with a horn sticking out of it’s head and multiple grievous wounds marring it’s body, was speaking to a black four legged thing with wings and a yellow four legged thing, also sporting wings They all appeared to have hair of varying colors, meaning, but Sergei took no notice. The yellow one was obviously the leader, as the more deformed and mutated ones tended to have a higher standing. One of its forelegs had been reduced to a quivering stump, and two chitinous limbs resembling scythes had sprouted from it. Each Lost Child was also dragging a bloodied body along with them in their mouths, legs (Not sure how that works, Sergei thought), or in the case of the red thing, a red aura also glowing around his horn and the corpse it was carrying. Sergei could see bundled cords of intestines dragging behind one of the unpossed corpses, and another's head had been cleaved open so that it’s brain matter slowly dripped on the ground as the other creature dragged the corpse.

What the red alien was doing confused Sergei quite a bit, the fact that Sergei could understand them also confused him, but there would be time to ask questions later.

“...Aye. Have thee given thought to what use we have for so many excess cadavers?” The red one asked squinting at the effort of talking and dragging the corpse with its telekinesis.

“I knoweth but naught. I have heard many whispers of one of the most loyal of Father’s followers rising in the deepest part of the caverns. The mighty chosen, as I hear tis’ called.” The black one said, it’s voice sounded feminine

Despite the odd wording, Sergei got the gist of what they were saying, and this ‘Mighty Chosen’ certainly didn’t sound good to him.

“Stay thy tongues, mine brethren. We must spend our focus on our current goals. I suggest that we not to question our purpose. It would beest unwise to do so.”

The red thing agreed before they continued on. As they had been moving, Sergei had been stalking them through the knee knee-high grass, he had waited for the breeze so that he could crawl after them, using the gentle wind that rustled the grass to mask the sound of the grass rasping against his suit.

Sergei had thought about charging out and killing them all. He had certainly wanted to, it had taken him a moment to clear his head and think logically. Afterwards, Sergei had devised a slightly more sensible plan. He could tail them to these caves they spoke of. If the Lost Children were massing there, there was a good possibility that The Breach was there as well. If he could get to it, he might be able to close it and head back home before anything got too bad.

After a good half an hour or so of moving through the plains, the lead yellow thing stopped and motioned towards a decent sized rock. The two corpses and the rest of the Lost Children’s eyes danced over the plains warily, still not noticing the hidden human. Once they had deemed the area clear, the Lost Children moved around the rock one at a time, each one dragging it’s corpse with it.

Within a few minutes, they had all passed behind the rock. Carefully peeking around it himself, a certain human noticed that their was a massive hole in the ground. Sergei imagined it as a spiraling whirlpool born of the very earth, for he knew in his heart that this was but the beginning of his path, and he could not turn away, even if he wanted too. This duty caused him to drag his feet towards the cavern’s entrance, almost as if it were pulling him forward against his will.

It was for this reason that Sergei decided to name the alien caves the Carnivorous Caverns, for if the living were to enter, most of you would never see the light of day again.

As Sergei climbed down the entrance to the caverns, he used various stones and pieces of wood that had been jammed into the sides to stop gravity from pulling him to the bottom. Within minutes he was at the bottom. He activated the night vision installed in his suit, a little something he had picked up on The Hermes before he had destroyed it.

Sergei nearly reached for his gun, but decided against it, realizing that the gun’s report would be amplified by the smooth, water-worn walls of the cave as it bounced about. Instead, he quietly drew his knife, and turned towards a corridor that looked more promising than the rest, mostly because of the numerous blood trails specifically leading into it.

With that, Sergei Petroski began his descent into a place that was not unlike the darkened Hermes.

A place that held as little hope as it did light.

An unknown amount of time Earlier...

Princess Celestia had been having a fairly nice dream, and while it could have been nicer it was certainly preferable to the dream that came next.

As the first dream faded, it was replaced by an intersection of corridors. They appeared to be in her castle, a strange, warped version. Most of the stone was cracked, and moss vines, and the occasional dried blotch of something red coated the walls, and three out of the four intersection were bathed in shadow. They as if you could wander into them for eternities and always end up back at this intersection.

However, the fourth intersection was flooded with a soft glow. Celestia thought she could hear some miniscule noise from deep within the corridor.

Celestia decided to make her down the hallway, as there appeared to be no other path to take. As the princess of the sun grew closer, the noise becoming louder and in turn disturbing rather than mysterious. It could be said that he noises themselves were deformed.

Up ahead, she could see that the hallway stopped and split off into two additional corridors. One on the left and one on the right.

After a few minutes of walking, Celestia was much closer to the source of the noises, narrowing its location down to somewhere around the hallway.

Celestia cautiously trotted her way up to the turn, and peered curiously around the corner. Instead of finding more stone floors and walls like she had expected, she had found what could have been, at a first glance, the end of reality.

It was not, in fact, the end of reality, just the beginning of another world entirely. Here, the hallway ended abruptly, seemingly eaten by some unknown force. It opened up into an endless expanse reddish cracked stone, and appeared to defy the laws of physics. Pieces of the stone constantly broke off and floated away, while other chunks slammed into the ground and seemed to refuse with it’s original mass upon contact.

It was an unnerving sight, and it reminded Celestia all too much of Discord's chaotic magics.

Taking a cautious step, and moving slowly to avoid the hectic landscape, Celestia began to trek across the seemingly infinite dream world, and walked along the shifting ground for what seemed like an infinity before she saw a massive mountain, and she could make out some sort of eerie tune resounding across the strange landscape. She could only make out the first three lines, the rest was lost to hear ears.

High up above, upon the mountains peak,

The one true god does sit and weep,

For his lost children, he does seek,

Whoever was singing the song, it sounded as if it were originating from the mountain. Celestia decided to move to the mountain and see who was singing.

When she was a few hundred meters from the base of the mountain, Celestia could make out some sort of huge winged creature on the top. Before she could call out to it, the singing stopped.

A booming laugh resounded through the barren wasteland. It wasn’t ominous, nor did it sound evil, but instead had an angelic and delighted sound to it, like a father who had seen his foals for the first time in months.

The huge figure began to descend from the mountains peak. As it moved closer, it’s strange form became clearer.

It was a Moth. A huge, deformed Moth, it was encased in yellow light, and was as grotesque as it was angelic and god-like.

“There you are little godling. I’ve been looking for you every where…” It paused for a moment, it’s musical voice was enticing.

Celestia was nearly ready to reply with a question of her own, when she felt a massive weight press down upon her consciousness. It felt similar to the dark magic's others had once used to try and overwhelm her mind.

At first, she was sure that she could fight it, but the harder she fought, the harder it became to resist the strange force. The massive moth creature spoke again. “Why do you fight me? I bring you nothing but kindness…”

Celestia was reaching her limits. The force was so powerful and ancient, that nothing could fight against it in a normal fashion. Her mental barriers began to crack, and Celestia worried that her consciousness would be shattered. As her defenses began to crack further, she felt an immense pain within her mind, and she began, despite that she continued to fight.

“The pain you feel is nothing compared to the reward…” The figure said again.

The pain became unbearable, and she could no longer stand it, she let out a shrill cry of agony, before the force suddenly retreated.

“There is a disturbance… we will continue this another time…”

And then, just as suddenly as the dream had come, it was gone. Celestia pried her eyes open. She could feel the rapidly fading pain of the creature’s probing conscious, now, it was now more than a memory. Celestia could also hear someone distantly calling out to her.

‘Twas nothing but a dream…

“Celestia, dear sister! Awake from thou troubled slumber!” Her sister, who’s voice she recognized, yelled out. It sounded quite distressed.

Just as Luna’s voice had done seconds ago, the world around Celestia came into focus, the sights became clearer, the noises became louder and more decipherable, She could finally disassemble the textures into the the various items Celestia could feel on her fur.

She shakily sat up in her bed, looking at her sister, fighting an internal battle to recompose herself.

“Celestia, art thee well? We hath heard thee howling like a newborn foal in thy sleep!” Luna asked worriedly.

“We are well sister.” Celestia told her sister, trying to convince Luna as much as she was herself. “‘Twas but a dream that bade me ill. It bothers me no longer.”

“We art glad.” Luna responded, seeming to turn her head away slightly for a moment before continuing with the real reason that she had entered Celestia’s bed chambers so early in the morning. “It is possible that We hath discovered the source of our recent troubles. During the performance of our royal duties, We Hath come across a stranger dream than most.”

“How so?” Celestia inquired softly, a warm smile on her mouth.

At Celestia’s prompting, her sister went to to describe how the aforementioned dream had been inside a giant metal ship. She described its appearance and it’s dark state in great detail, then she described the two-legged figures fighting the strange spider-like entity, and how one of them, the green armored one, had been the dreamer.

“How hath thee gleaned that this entity is the harbinger of the troubles that plague us as of late?”

“We hath said no such thing! Only that I may hath found the source of such ill fated events. We believe that this creature holds intimate knowledge of what is causing such an increase in violence. We hath come to thee because We believe thee would be able to help us locate this entity…”

Celestia thought for a moment, her face neutral and unreadable. Than an idea crossed her mind

“If this creature is capable of using strange magics like you described, then We knoweth of a spell that divine the location such energy signatures. If you will follow Us.” Celestia stretched her wings, before she stood up and headed towards the entrance to her chambers, before trotting off down the hallway, her sister in tow.

They nodded to guards ponies, and the few servants who found themselves awake at this hour, who curtsied in return, not many had awoken from their sleep, as the morning was still young, and only a few of their servants had been trained to work during the ample hours of the night.

Deeper they strode into their domain. Celestai studied the walls thinking of her recent dream. What could it have meant? Was it as much an omen as the dream her sister had located likely was?

Before long, they could ponder no longer, as they had arrived at the royal archives, an area full of scrolls, both ancient and young.

Celestia shifted through the texts, careful to magick any dust clouds away that seemed to appear from the more archaic collections. Luna waiting anxiously nearby, hoping that what they needed could be found sooner rather than later, and in turn, the answers to this rapidly growing puzzle that plagued her.

After quite a few minutes of searching Celestia unraveled a scroll, she quickly refreshed herself on the needed steps of performing the spell, before she turned to her sister, “We cannot guarantee that the being we seek will be within range.”

Luna nodded, “So be it then, Inaction will prove to be the greater evil.”

Celestia deployed the spell to it’s fullest range. Unexpected as it was, she felt could feel something strange and faint, almost as if it were being muffled underneath something. Taking note of the location the spell returned in her mind, somewhere dark, surrounded by ageless stone walls which had been worn into a smoother texture by years of water.

It was a cave.

As Celestia released the magic, she turned to Luna, who was watching her expectantly. “We hath located your creature. It is in some sort of cave, though We could not discover exactly where it resided. We will must study maps to gain the knowledge of it’s true surroundings, but first, we must perform our duties…”

Both trotted towards the entrance to the archives, Luna and Celestia ready to lower the moon and raise the sun respectively.

Before they could do any such thing, a pegasus Guards Pony suddenly burst through the doors, he was panting heavily. He wiped a few fat beads of sweat away with his hoof before he gasped out, “My lieges!” He gave a quick bow before he continued on, his tone urgent, yet respectful. “A terrible series of events hath befallen the city of Roame!”

The gasping pegasus, doing his best to keep his composer in his current state, held out a scroll out a scroll, sealed with wax and all, with a shaking hoof.

“Celestia gently levitated the scroll out of the pegasus’s hoof, before she told him, “Go, rest and refresh thyself.”

“As you wish.” He bowed once more before trotting off at a much slower pace than he had arrived.

At the Guard was leaving, Celestia broke the seal on the scroll, then unraveled the piece of untimely news. Celestia quickly read through the scroll message, then she looked at her sister with a grave expression chiseled onto her face.

“We must take leave of our original intentions, for Roame has sent us a terrible plea for help, and We am afraid that we hath no choice but to respond.”

Sergei grumbled and kicked a rock. If only his old military squad mates could see him now. Wandering through a cave with only a gun, a knife, a below-military grade combat suit, and a half-baked plan. They would laugh at him. Which would drive him forward, of course. He would continue his mission, if only to prove them wrong.

Despite that thought, hopelessness was growing within Sergei at a steady rate. The caves seemed to wind endlessly, and every other tunnel seemed to be a dead end, a drop off, or loop back into the main sections. The worst part was the number of tunnels and caverns branching off of cavern he had managed to wander into. There were more than he could count.

His exhaustion was beginning to overtake him, he would have to rest soon/ It felt like it had been hours, if not days since he had entered this mysterious and endless maze encased in stone. The only thing keeping him awake was his thoughts of how in the hell he was supposed to actually close The Beach, should he find out it was here. He couldn't just collapse The Breach with his bare hands, as appealing as that sounded.

When he had been aboard the Hermes, he had only been able to close the Breach by reversing the effects of the SW-jump drive, which had caused it to reabsorb the energy that had been needed to open The Breach. Afterwards, the Breach had closed, but the Re-absorb of the energy had proven too much for the SW-jump drive, and it had overloaded, creating a super-massive explosion, he had escaped before hand, using a shuttle to move away from the ship and back towards the G-54 mining station after he had overloaded the drives.

Sergei sighed tiredly, doing his best to be cautious. You never know when some yellow freak will pop out of the wall and eviscerate you.

As if on cue, a chittering sound echoed of the smoothed walls of the cave, startling Sergei, and nearly causing him to punch the stalagmite where the noise had ricocheted off of it and into his ear.

He let out a shaky breath as he turned about in circles, looking for the source of the chittering. The darkness would have been disorienting if he hadn't had the night vision enhancements.

Must have been my imagination playing tricks on me… or maybe some of Oboron’s “famous” hallucinations. Sergei thought with a chuckle. Even on an alien world full of, well, aliens, Oboron was still trying to drive him ape shit crazy.

Sergei restarted his trek into the cave. This time, he was even more cautious, continuously checking over his shoulder to make sure nothing was following him.

Within a few more minutes, he heard the noise again. Quickly hiding behind a nearby stalagmite, Sergei could make out the chittering the noise, along with the clicking of chitin against smooth stone, and two pairs of armored foots steps.

Deciding to peek around the edge of the stalagmite, Sergei saw three creatures. The first was a wingless, hornless and armored quadruped. It’s horn was glowing with an unnatural sickly yellow light, and it’s unsteady gait gave away its position as a possessed corpse. The next entity that Sergei easily make out was a corpse fly. It’s scaled wings making a gentle swishing noise through the air. The third and final member of this mismatched party had been nearly impossible to see with at Sergei’s angle. It was a snake-like creature, nearly as thick and as long as a typical human arm. It dragged itself slowly along, it’s body hissing as it’s flesh rubbed against the ground. The things chest had been splayed open, and a few of it’s ribs had been modified to act as hooked limbs, which it was using to drag itself forward.

The quadruped creature seemed to sniff the air for a moment before grunting to the other creatures and turning in Sergei’s direction. Sergei watched as the four-legged creature shambled over to his hiding spot with a lazy sort of slowness that only a possessed corpse could achieve. Once it had reached the stalagmite, it cautiously peaked around it, before letting out the beginnings of a strangled growl, but Sergei reacted quickly and grabbed it’s muzzle, silencing it, before pulling it forwards towards him, with his other hand, Sergei pulled out his combat knife and jammed into the base of the lost child's skull, avoiding it’s oddly shaped helmet, along with a few other places, cutting off the larvas connection to the brain, killing both the lost child and the corpse fly larva instantly.

The corpse fly and the other thing were making there way over to Sergei’s position, and he knew that he would only get one shot at this. As the corpse fly neared Sergei, he leaped out of his hiding place, launching himself after the corpse fly. Sergei managed to grab onto it’s right limb, but fell onto the grooved floor of the cave. The corpse fly screeched in alarm before throwing a few wild blows at the human with ti’s left limb.

Meanwhile, Sergei was working on standing up. The smaller serpent like creature was attempting to hook onto Sergei with its strangely shaped limbs, but his shield was preventing it from doing so. He tried to stomp it, but his struggle to keep his grip on the corpse fly prevented him from doing so. He heard a light crunch as he half stepped on it, before the side of his boot sent the monstrosity flying into the nearby wall. It let out a wet popping noise of sorts before it hit the ground. The blow had opened a ghastly and pale lesion on it’s side, and yellow fluids oozed out. It dragged itself off, leaving a trail of quickly drying fluids behind. Meanwhile, Sergei had managed to pin the corpse fly down with one foot. Two of his hands were looked around it’s head, which was continuously trying to open the chitinous layer around its head, so that it could bite at Sergei, but the human’s grasping hands prevented it from doing that.

With a twisting jerking motion, Sergei pulled up and pressed down with his foot, causing the corpse fly’s head to partially separate from the rest it’s body. Sergei repeated the previous motion, causing it’s head to come the rest of the way off.

The human let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding as he gently dropped the corpse flies head on the cave floor. Meanwhile it’s body writhed violently on the ground. It’s wings flapped to know avail, tearing themselves as the battered the ground, and it’s body dragged itself in every direction, with no purpose. It was only to plant one last larva in in a corpse, only following the instincts Oboron had planted within it. If only it could have gotten it’s body to work right.

The Corpse flies movements slowed and it’s life left it. But Sergei Petroski payed it no heed. He stared at nothing silently. Drinking in one deep breath after another. Not thinking, not wondering. If he thought too much about all these things, he risked losing his mind more so than he already had.

Then, sighing, he looked down at the trail of pale yellow blood, realizing he’d have to follow the other lost child if he were to stop it from warning the rest of its brethren.

Clenching his fists and grunting to himself, Sergei began to sprint after the creature.