The air inside the hive was heavy with the stench of rotting flesh and ozone, a sticky mixture that clung to Ha-eun's throat like melting syrup. She barely held on to her throw-off. The walls pulsed with a sickly, bioluminescent glow, veins of violet light threading through the organic matter like poisoned rivers. The floor beneath her boots was spongy and warm, coated in a glowing slime that hissed faintly where it met the blood still oozing from her wounds. Above them, the ceiling wriggled with Voidborn sacs, the transparent sacs throbbing like infected hearts, each one holding a half-formed humanoid figure. Their distorted faces pressed against the membranes, mouths gaping in silent screams, eyes milky and unseeing.
Ha-eun's breath hitched as she stared at the creature that had burst from its sac, an outrageous mimicry of her face stretched over a skeletal frame. It feels like she saw her face in horror movies.
Ha Eun cursed at it."Don't look at them," Vega started to reloading her rifle with cartridges that glowed an eerie blue. "Focus on the exits. There's always a weak point in these f*cking hives."
"Easy for you to say," Ha-eun muttered while pressing a hand to her thigh where the wound still hurt. Her blood glistened in black, stardust clotting the wound in a crude, temporary fix. "They're wearing my face."
She looked at Vega properly this time. After going through life and a dead situation. She appeared to be nearly thirteen, wearing a ragged hood and holding an old rifle from 1836. Her long hair contrasted sharply with her upsetting white skin, as if someone had painted her for a joke. One of her eyes sparkled like a small golden sun, illuminating her gaze.
Vega's golden eyes flicked to her, cold and measuring. "Get used to it. The Architect loves its little jokes."
"That was such a funny joke that my head nearly flew off just a minute ago," she muttered.
A sac ruptured with a wet pop, and another larva slumped to the floor, limbs twitching. Its head swiveled toward them, jaw disturbing to release a guttural screech that echoed through the chamber.
Ha-eun moved on instinct, her body moved on adrenaline and pain. The larva attacked, nails slashing the air where she'd stood a moment before. She rolled with her infected arm while holding the knife in her hand and swung it at the creature. The creature's torso split open, vomiting a spray of acidic saliva that melted her jacket.
"Behind you!" Vega barked.
Ha-eun turned. Two more larvae skittered across the ceiling, their movements irregular and insectile. Vega fired, her rifle's rounds exploding into crackling nets of blue energy that pinned the creatures to the wall. They thrashed, hissing, as the nets sizzled through their flesh.
"Aim for the cores!" Vega tossed her a pistol, its grip warm and humming. "They're weaker than the adults!"
Ha-eun caught it. She fired at a larva's chest, the shot pierced through its core in a burst of violet sparks. It collapsed, twitching, as the others swarmed.
The larvae moved in the cycle now, herding Ha-eun and Vega toward the hive's pulsing center. One spat a glob of acid that grazed Ha-eun's shoulder, melting through fabric and flesh alike. She bit her lip to stop her screaming.
"Vega! We're cornered!". She warned at Vega.
"Then un-corner us!" Vega slammed a cartridge into the floor, the blast ripping a hole in the hive's skin. Cold, void air rushed in, carrying the stench of rot and ozone.
"There! Go! Now get inside". Vega hurried after Ha Eun.
They fled through the hive's routes, walls vibrating as the Architect's rage echoed through the structure. Ha-eun's infected arm trembled, the obsidian shards grafted to her skin peeling back to reveal raw.. Each step sent pain up her leg, her body protesting the abuse from physical strain.
How much longer can I last? She thought while she was running with throbbing pain around her body.
Vega glanced back, her mutations spreading across her neck, golden eyes dimming. "Keep up, kid. If you die here, I'm not carrying your corpse."
"Great," Ha-eun hissed, firing blindly at the larvae breaking at their formation.
They entered a cavernous chamber, its ceiling lost in shadow. Below, a pit of wriggling larvae stretched endlessly with their collective screeches merging into a loud buzz. At the center loomed a nexus, a pulsating orb of flesh and light, vines rooting it to the hive.
"The hive's heart," Vega said in her grim voice. "Destroy it, and this whole place goes down."
"You first," Ha-eun muttered, eyeing the larvae crawling up the walls.
Vega put her face on a tinny smirk. "Together."
They fought their way to the nexus, the larvae's attacks growing frenzied. Ha-eun's pistol overheated, its barrel melting into slag. She discarded it, her infected arm shifting into a whip of starlight that cleaved through three larvae at once. Vega's rifle sounded like it was empty. She swung it like a club, crushing skulls with brutal efficiency.
The nexus pulsed as they neared, its light blinding. Ha-eun's blood boiled, the hive's energy resonating with her own.
"Now!" Vega shoved her forward.
Ha-eun charged her arm into the nexus. Pain exploded into a white-hot fire that scorched her nerves and blurred her vision. The hive boomed, the larvae dissolving into ash.
"Move!" Vega pulled her back as the chamber collapsed and the hive crumbled around them.
They stumbled into the open void, the hive's remnants disintegrating behind them. Ha-eun collapsed, her infected arm smoking and charred. Vega crouched beside her, breathing raggedly.
"Not bad," she said, tossing her a canteen of sticky, glowing fluid. "Drink. It'll stabilize the mutations."
Ha-eun gulped it, the liquid burning like a mix of soda and whiskey. "What now?"
Vega pointed.
The void ahead continues to ripple, peeling back to reveal the Architect's true form. It resembled a machine, but it was alive; it pulsed like a heartbeat, trembling her feet to make her stand firm.
"YOU THINK THIS A VICTORY?" it boomed, voice shattering the silence. "YOU ARE A DISEASE. AND DISEASE MUST BE BURNED."
The void shook. From the chaos emerged a Revenant Prime, a titan stitched from the corpses of a thousand Voidborn, its crown made from an obsidian shard of the hive's core.
Ha-eun staggered to her feet, her body trembling but resolute. "Then let's start a f*cking wildfire."