Waterstrider

2nd District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

“What in Shodhre’s name is happening?”

The words came from Gerabe, a chubby Staiven man who had worked with Isidr for a number of years by this point. Isidr shook his head annoyedly at the man.

“Someone blew up a goddamn bomb outside, Gerabe. It’s not complicated.”

Gerabe performed a rude gesture at Isidr, an inverse of the holy symbol of Gys, Goddess of Goodness.

“I know that, dumbass. What shocks me is that I can't figure out who under heaven did this? I thought it was supposed to be some sort of all powerful raid by the Seiyal, or some other force. We've only found one guy, and then he immediately holes himself up? Something’s going on, Isidr. I’m telling you.”

Isidr ignored the other man, turning away with a dismissive wave of his hand. In truth, he was pissed off and secretly uneasy. Gerabe did have a point. Who under the heavens would choose to just blow a goddamn hole in the wall like that? They would have to be insane. At the yields required to tear through, they must have risked taking the whole stack down.

He had heard rumors, of course, that whatever the researchers here were working on was something that might anger the Seiyal. Isidr himself as well as Gerabe and the other guards had been hired to protect against potential raids. It had been an easy job, with his greatest troubles being handling a researcher who had forgotten their authorization pass. Today, it seemed, the Pantheon had seen fit to bestow a greater trial upon him.

He had not expected it to occur so soon, much less with a methodology like this. Isidr wouldn’t say he knew too much about the Station’s underworld, but this didn’t track with what knowledge he did have. Explosives of this power were obviously illegal, but they were the sort of illegal that actually got the government to pay attention. Anything with the capability to take down a stack was subject to the highest level of scrutiny, and to use them like this, so close to the base of a stack- it warranted a life in the mine, at the very least.

At the very least, this couldn’t be the Seiyal. Martial artists were haughty and obsessed with their own techniques- they wouldn’t have debased themselves to use explosives. What’s more, he doubted the Seiyal even had the technology to burst through Staiven metallurgy without significant collateral damage.

Isidr turned his senses down the hallway, within which all of the dust from the explosions had finally settled as a light powder on the walls and floor. Several other guards were cutting into the hatch at the end with vibrating pico-filament knives, while others stood further back, guns aimed towards the hatch, waiting for it to be opened again.

Beside him, Gerabe fiddled with his gun, nervousness causing his skin to flake away in yellowish chips.

“There’s gonna be a gotcha somewhere, just wait. He’s got allies… what if he’s working with insiders, that would explain-”

The ramblings that Isidr was trying hard to ignore were suddenly cut off by a loud burst of sound, nearly identical to the previous explosion except much closer. He sensed a plume of dust and smoke filling the hallway as screams were ripped from the throats of those closest to the door. Shards of metal tore through the air, eviscerating everyone in their path. Some of the fragments even flew far enough to impact Isidr’s own side, though they stuck into his body armor and did not make it very far into his body.

He could hear the thwacking sounds of bullets making impact with the metal of the walls, as well as screams of agony emerging from Staiven voices. The guards had all been trained to resist pain, so if they were screaming, it meant the injuries were certainly severe. Isidr himself grunted in pain at his wounds, but turned back to gain a better understanding of the current situation, only to be immediately faced with the heat of another explosion.

Instinctively, he dove to the ground, barely avoiding another spray of shrapnel. One of the fragments tore across his shoulder, grazing across his body armor rather than digging in. Gerabe was not so lucky.

One of the chunks of flying metal had caught him in his left eye, bursting the fragile organ. Bodily fluids and miasma dripped from the wound in equal portions, rolling down Gerabe’s face and neck like sap down a tree. Light mist drifted up from the mess of liquids, shifting and mixing with the smoky air. Isidr could sense the formless energies dance along the air in ethereal patterns, following no shape or rule except their own.

He cried out in shock as Gerabe fell to the ground beside him, mouth opened in surprise. The man wasn’t yet dead, but his fall impacted some deep part of Isidr. As if on instinct, he found himself yanking his gun forward, fingers depressing the button and letting a hail of slugs shoot out at high speed down the hallway.

The white-hot bullets sizzled as they burned their way through the air, impacting the walls and ceiling with thwacking sounds. Isidr struggled to his feet, still fearful and wary of the intruder. The thick cloud of smoke and dust was slowly clearing, but was still so dense that it occluded his senses, leaving him still unable to fully discern what was happening at the end of the hallway, but what he could sense was movement. He was unsure whether it was his fellow guards or the intruder.

The disorientation turned to horror as he sensed the figure’s eyes. There was no miasma within them. They were the eyes of an alien, void of life and energy. They had always secretly made Isidr uncomfortable, and now they imposed a pressure on him.

The eyes were hidden away behind a featureless mask, blocked off by panes of what seemed to be glass. The figure, seemingly male, was clothed in thick robes of voluminous fabric, and inside, Isidr could sense the outlines of several swords and a bag of odd roughly spherical objects that must have been the bombs. There were more than ten of the devices remaining, a fact which churned Isidr’s glands.

The figure turned and contorted as his swords moved to deflect one of the bullets, surprised to see the superheated metal slug melting right through its surface and passing right above his shoulder. He returned it to its sheath as he began to dodge Isidr's arcs of fire.

As he approached, isidr realized that there was also another bag tied to the man’s side. Instinctively, he inspected it with his senses. At first it seemed to just be an odd oblong object of metal and some crystalline material, but when his senses peered into its interior, his senses were blasted with a momentous force of energy. It was as if he was sensing the totality of existence, the world set ablaze by the sheer presence of the energies behind the veil that was that object. Isidr did not know what it was, but it horrified and entranced him in equal measure.

His eyes cried red tears and mucus dripped from pores in his skin as he fired his gun wildly while backing up. He had forgotten all about Gerabe and the others, his mind still locked onto the world beyond the object. He could feel impossible geometries, trace the souls of everyone on the station. He looked upon himself from an outside view, could trace the conduit within his own eyes back into Telles, and see the world through that lens. He laughed, and it was a beautiful sound, for the world was all in order.

The intruder paused, cocking his masked head at Isidr, as if confused by his actions.

“Shit!” the words were from a feminine voice, and Isidr could sense them rumbling through the void of the brink before emanating in thin, wavy lines from the object. “I didn’t expect a red-eyed to look too deeply into it. You need to kill him quickly, before-.”

The laughter continued to bubble from inside of Isidr’s diaphragm, hurting his chest as burbling skeins of mucus and blood rose up from his mouth. His skin flaked and moistened under the liquid, and liquid continued to pour down from his eyes. His gun clicked incessantly. It had run out of ammunition but Isidr didn't notice, attention still trapped within that beautiful object, that conduit to another realm.

His eyes were open, and for once in his life he could see from them. He saw Telles and he saw the brink, the world of spirits. He could even see past that edge, to the shadow of the City of Gods, where the Pantheon dwelled. His eyes were blood, and it was the blood of the universe, and through it Isidr could sense her gaze as well.

The Mother of all that is Sanguine peered through him, and together they watched as the intruder’s sword flew towards his neck.

He tried to laugh as it tore into him, stopping as his voice box was destroyed by the force of the blow. He continued trying to laugh as the fluids in his body slowly stopped circulating, and his mind slowed. Long before his body finally died, Isidr himself was already gone, his soul lost in the far reaches of that other world.

Red-Eyed Staiven: [Staiven can be born with any of the six colors of eyes regardless of their heritage. Each color of eye is indeed composed of the associated form of miasma, and there are no other physical differences between Staiven of different eye colors. However, Staiven with red eyes live on average a full ten years less than others within the Pantheonic territory and the Frontier. In other parts of the galaxy, they live as long as any other Staiven. A great deal of research has been performed trying to uncover the reason for this. Elder Staiven with red eyes are exceedingly rare, and the older a red-eyed Staiven becomes, the higher their tendency for some form of insanity. For this reason, after reaching eighty years of age, red-eyed Staiven are usually taken into custody by the Pantheonic Government in hopes of finding a way to cure their malady.]