Sigma/Star

Chapter 140: A Blinding Light Part 2

Porter stepped down into small pool of liquid, hearing the splash echo throughout the tunnel. He imagined if he wasn't in his towering machine, that puddle might have felt like a small pond, but he still seemed to believe he was the one stepping in it either way. All of the training he had gone through had always been built on the foundation that his battlesuit was an extension of his body, and that the two would always move in the same fashion.

The pair had descended much further into the depths of the Jahari's networks, and they hadn't come across anything for quite some time now. It had created a very eerie feeling when held against the surge of bodies they had previously been travelling through. There had been a few times since encountering the worm that a similar rush of Bahari had come by, but the two of them had eviscerated them with relative ease.

Marian was putting on a show to say the least, and he seemed quite capable of taking on these small clusters of Bahari in tight spaces. They couldn't avoid the effects of his concentrated chi, and any who escaped around the edges were quickly dispatched by the White Storm's blades.

But as the enemy numbers had faded away, Porter's level of alertness had only risen. Something had to be going on, somewhere. It was hard to imagine going from hundreds of Bahari swarming everywhere to absolute silence. And yet, that was how it had gone now for quite some time.

All of Porter's paranoia was amplified by the encroaching darkness. Once they had turned into the tunnels, all the sunlight had disappeared, and the only consistent source of light now was Marian's shining body and wings. But if Marian rounded a corner first, Porter was left in momentary darkness, with only a few flickers of light coming off his own machine. Those were the most terrifying times, the spots where sound and light vanished entirely.

The viewscreen in the White Storm shifted, playing new images of the theoretical space around them. Porter had kept one eye on it at all times, as it was usually a consistent way of getting the general shape of an area, but it couldn't pick out any finer details, and if a Bahari was sitting against a wall, it would just merge them together on its screen. The last thing Porter wanted was to be killed by something that he believed to be a tunnel.

Marian's light ahead suddenly expanded. No longer contained by the tight tunnel, it now spread around an enormous cavern. Porter stepped down into the space behind the general, finally able to stand beside him instead of trailing behind. They both took in the space, searching for the next pathway that would connect them to their destination. But there were no other tunnels anywhere that Porter could see. It was a dead end.

"Well that sucks," Porter sighed. "I'm surprised you didn't hit more dead ends along the way, but I guess we just got lucky."

"No, Marian answered, sternly, instantly. "This isn't an ending."

"And what are you, master of the mole people?"

Marian pointed across to the far wall of the cavern. "Maybe if your affinity for sensing chi was as great as mine, you too would be able to locate the mass ahead of us." Porter grumbled but didn't interject. "This is the pathway to reach it, of that I'm sure. But somebody has hidden the entrance to trick others."

"So we have to dig a little?" Porter asked, staring down at his two swords. Not the best for carving through rock, but he could if he had to.

"We just need to move a little dirt, that's all. But only if he lets us." Marian gestured to a corner of the cavern, a space still coated in shadows where the general's light could not quite reach. Porter squinted at the spot Marian pointed at, but couldn't make out anything. His viewscreen equally showed more wall, but it wasn't entirely trustworthy.

"You will not make it further," a voice grumbled. It was a low growl, a bizarre scratching sound created by something not entirely biological, but it was also clearly not generated by a machine. The wall shifted slightly on Porter's screen before a large Bahari stepped out into Marian's light. It was taller than Porter's warmachine, sitting between the White Storm and the Archangel in its height and size.