Soul: Tales of the Black Lotus

Chapter Eight: Conscience

The body was lying down inside of the escape pod and the waters rushed over it with its exterior over heating due to the water's temperature being so hot. The nuclear explosion left behind high levels of radiation and overheated its waters. Once my eyes opened, I sensed an overwhelming and icy cold feeling. I sensed as if there was a great disturbance, a strange overwhelming feeling of pressure over my body. It was Nilofar and her soul that affected us both. She raised her hands to the door of the escape pod and took notice as water was starting to breach the many cracks caused by the crash landing. She banged on the door with her hands several times in frustration and rage before finally pushing it upward only for the force of water to push the entire weight of the door down towards her as it rushed into the compartment. Nilofar kept pushing the door and then managed to move it away as she stood up. She could tell the very surface of water was above her head and when she looked to her right she saw a large hole along with the corpses of humans that had their flesh melted off, some of it even still melting due to the heat of the water. She knew then that she shouldn't stay any longer and reached over a bone that remained from Abalus before emerging from the water only to spot a small landmass that she stood upon. The first thing she gazed at longingly was the destruction of the twisting maelstrom with objects and bodies of deceased individuals just floating around and around until the vortex sucked them in. She sensed the very ground beneath her quake and looked across the delta to see that the entire forest had become a large river that would be from then on out known as the Natura River. She looked up to the skies only to see it covered with smoke that she could not see the mountains of Bladespire or the ruins of the Ironbound Dam in the distance. All that remained of the bones of Abalus were the four tendrils that were still buried in the earth. Everything from the head and above of the great body were shattered into fragments while the rest of the remains turned to ash. She could hear nothing more but the rushing waters as she witnessed the landmass close to the delta break and being dragged by its mighty vortex. This landmass was bigger than the one she stood on and she had a hunch that it would break. She sensed the earth quake beneath her feet again and suddenly the earth cracked in the center underneath her feet. She looked to the four tendrils that remained of Abalus to see two of them drowned under the tide while two others remained above the surface of the water itself. She always thought that the tendrils were made out of octopus-like skin or flesh that would surely deteriorate over time, but Abalus was so large and ancient in age that his tendrils grew bones before he died. She saw a tunnel inside each of the tendrils, fully being aware that there is something unusual about them. She looked to the shore across the delta and accessed our body's data to see how much power she had only to discover that the jetpack and rocket boosters were fully dysfunctional. She looked back to the escape pod and lowered her right hand as the blade of the Black Lotus erupted from the water only for its handle to fight herself once more in the grip of her hand. She looked across the delta one last time helplessly and then the earth cracked as quickly as it split apart in half. The chunk off the landmass moved to the left and fell over as she leaped from it onto the other that had already began moving on its own as well with one of the right tendrils falling over along with it. She immediately rushed to the last tendril remaining above the surface of water for she knew that the temperatures beneath her would surely be her end. She leaped over the final chunks of landmass that were carried away by the currents and leaped inside of the tunnel that also began to collapse into the water. She slid down into the large tendril like tunnel as if on a slide with her head first and luckily for her the tendril did not fully fall into the water. She didn't slide too far at all before she came to a sudden stop and gazed forth with her night vision eyes only to see bodies of human legionnaires lying down on the ground. It is then that her soul felt as if it was being ripped apart before she would fall down on her knees and for a brief moment see a field torn asunder by a great cataclysm with burning fields and burning forests with the skies covered in smoke. There were human bodies in the vision lying on the ground that were melting in the flame. The vision would end abruptly as it had begun. She looked down the tunnel path to see the bodies scattered throughout. The bodies were thrown around in the tunnel, no doubt about it that the explosion was responsible, and even in death their bodies were hot due to the extreme temperatures that warmed the tendrils. Nilofar then heard the tunnel behind her collapse as the tendril fell into the water and turned to see water rushing towards her. She then ran as quickly as our feet could carry us deep along the entire tunnel seemingly with no end. No matter how far she ran from it the water would catch up to us eventually and so it did as it pushed us down before it carried us away. The scanners immediately began to warn the entire body of the extreme heat temperatures that the waters caused. As we were being carried away, Nilofar gained yet another vision of large tidal waves rising above metropolitan-like cities whose structures surely resembled that human architecture. She saw gushing winds in the vision that ripped both trees and structure alike from the earth that they were deeply rooted within. She then appeared standing on top of a building from which she witnessed everything around her burning as the cities around her drowned beneath the tides. She panicked as she did not know what to make off it before the tides went over her head and overwhelmed her that returned her present world where she was still carried away by the tides of Lemuria's waters deep beneath the tendrils of Abalus.