The Book of Abbadon

The Tarragon

“ What happened? “

Tom asks Pads as you both look around the dimly lit warehouse.

“ They know I'm in their system and they're trying to hack me out of it! It looks like they activated a fail-safe in the facility that's labeled for use only in the event of a desperate emergen-“

Pads voice glitches in a distressed tone. Tom responds, asking him a question.

“ Pads? You alright? “

“ I'm fine! These cocksuckers can't hack for shit compared to what I can do! I'll get the lights back on here in a bit! I gotta keep their connection to the surface severed while I lock them out of their system! “

You immediately hear a loud banging sound above you as if something large is moving around inside the ceiling. You and Tom both look up, but before you switch your vision to your Trap Sight, you see a hatch in the ceiling open and a giant machine falls down, slamming and clanging loudly on the ground in the dark warehouse. You can barely make out the shape of it, observing its silhouette as some kind of mechanical creature with four legs and several tendrils coming out of its neck. You then see the cracks between the jagged plates on the creature’s body glow a bright purple and it begins to illuminate the warehouse as it gets brighter and brighter. Then, a set of eight glowing purple eyes turn on on the creature's long face and the creature stands up, staring down at you and Tom with a mechanical purr before roaring a monstrous robotic roar that causes a sonic boom, shattering all of the glass throughout the warehouse and pushing you and Tom backwards.

“ IS THAT A DRAGON?! “

You ask in disbelief as the colossal machine comes charging at you, trying to crush you with its tendrils. The glowing purple tendrils melt everything it touches as you and Tom both evade its strikes with a jump to opposite sides of the room and Pads answers your question in the earpiece.

“ I just scanned their data archives and I found it! It's called the Tarragon Project, and it's apparently a prototype weapon of Voldoor that was intended for use in the war against Moriarch! “

The Tarragon goes to step on Tom with its sharp colossal claws and Tom meets its strike with his fist, obliterating half of the Tarragon's arm and knocking it over onto its side.

“ We can't let it bury this place before we find Ryen! “

Tom says as he starts to fly into the air. The Tarragon then immediately purrs as it gets up, and you hear a humming sound emanating from its damaged arm. The shards of metal from the Tarragon's broken arm then magnetically reform on the damaged limb as a jagged blade with a glowing purple edge where its arm used to be. The Tarragon then roars again as it stabs the blade into the ground aggressively, causing a shockwave of antimatter to explode in a large radius around where the blade meets the ground. The floor around the Tarragon dissolves into a crater and several pillars that hold up the integrity of the warehouse begin crumbling into it as the ceiling caves in, but you and Tom both hold the structure together telekinetically to prevent it from falling apart as you both attack the Tarragon from opposite sides.

Tom flies into the Tarragon's face and headbutts it causing the entire face of the beast to shatter while you fly into its body, delivering a punch that shatters its stomach area into pieces. The Tarragon quickly recovers, immediately putting itself back together as it spins and hits Tom with its tail, knocking him into the wall. The Tarragon then stands up on its hind legs and goes to stab you with its bladed arm, but you quickly fly away to avoid the second antimatter shockwave that makes the crater in the ground even larger. Without wasting any time, the Tarragon lunges at you but Tom comes flying out of the wall at an incredible speed.