Übermensch (3rd Edition)

Day 058, 06:00:01

(Darkness.)

I am standing upon a dim-floating walkway lined by pale runner lights, while chemical vapors continue rising white all around me...

Deep Storage is the only underground Level of the Tower. Originally held aboveground, a significant breach in the last century necessitated a more secure location where certain additional precautions could be taken in safety. Within it: many inert, organic, and inorganic curios of The Master's vast history were held in safest keeping. Although...

I had never been called down here before.

Possibly auspicious? (Inauspicious.)

Shorn of my Advanced Cyclic Veneer by its orders, only my precociously advanced post-human intelligence, determination, and limited life experience stood in the way of a terrible discovery: I had changed...

Yes.

And waited in the cold...

(Exposed.)

I shiver, then begin to sense something behind me and turn around...

Waiting: it is tall, grey-skinned, has bright eyes and wears a glimmering crown upon its bald head. "Shall we?" Master Gabriel asks me.

I step forward, and kneel. "If it please you, Master Gabriel." Waiting...

"Attend."

I stand.

It strides away.

I follow.

We travel down the dim walkway in silence for a time, before it branched into three fork passing through a field of floating great crystals holding shadowed forms within, and wreathed by rising white vapors...

"How shall we go?" I ask.

A grey smile. "By my will." Turning, it unerringly takes the center branch, striding off...

I follow.

It slows soon enough, passing a first floating crystal before stopping by the next.

I join it.

We gaze upon the crystal, interior holding a slender form with a generic biosynthetic face, its eyes closed.

"My first Attendant," it whispers, "roughly treated for what it could never replace. This serves as a reminder."

But a reminder of what?

Silence.

After a moment, it moves on.

I follow.

We pass another crystal, and another, then –

Something catches my eye. I slow, glancing aside at the previous crystal, within which is a dark, squat form with five limbs and multi-faceted black eyes...

The runt. I regret... (Go.) Oh!

I hurry after my leader again.

We pass a few last crystals, then a floating golden sarcophagi shines through the vapors ahead of us.

"The Sphinx," it hisses, slowing.

I join it.

We gaze upon the sarcaphogi, its clear viewing pane showing a creature lying within it that has the body of a great-lion and the head of a human female, her eyes closed and her mouth in a slight smile...