Upon entering the underground tunnels of Ionis 9, Lyn, Alfaic, Ardine, and Claire were met with a slight uprising of shallow water that greeted them below an iron ladder. As the four navigated through the narrow tunnels, they came across several metal crates piled upon one another, labeled with red and yellow bold ink: QLIPHOS CENTER. They settled down nearby the stacks, catching multiple exits to the underground maze they dove themselves into.
"What are in these crates?" Lyn asked.
Ardine moved toward the front of the crate, slipping a wettened and broken wooden plank on the hinges of the metal crate. "Only one way to find out." He said, wedging it between a small slit on its opening. With enough force from his muscles, he pushed down the plank to pry it open, making a satisfying click upon doing so.
The four peeked inside, catching a variety of weapons carefully stored inside. Among the pile of weapons were silver-colored smooth metal balls that lined up along the edges of the crate. On the front of them were a button that indicated a priming and detonating device stored within them. Ardine took one from the crate and examined it much closer.
"Some kind of... grenade?" Ardine idealized. "Why would military equipment like this be underground?"
Claire ejected her head out of the crate with an unusual finding. "Hey, someone's been taking some of those weapons out," She said. "I found an uneven amount."
"There's someone or something down here that's aware of this then," Ardine conjectured, placing the grenade beside his leather holster. "Hope we don't pay the one responsible a visit."
"Hey, over here." Alfaic called, floating beside the left most entrance to the tunnel.
Lyn, Ardine, and Claire brushed by after closing the crate entirely. As Claire brushed past Alfaic, she did not care to even acknowledge him, nor look in his direction. Her eyes rolled away, still bitter about the decision from Alfaic that haunted her past. Alfaic did not respond; he only sighed at the complicated circumstances.
The four walked through a much larger tunnel with a girder-like ceiling, revealing several areas of light snow that patched through the slippery terrain. The icy floors and light shallow water made it much more difficult to tread, making them drag their feet through the slog. All was well, until a quick snap behind Claire's foot seized control of her, cutting off her balance.
"Holy shit!" Ardine shouted.
As the group watched her splash through the shallow water, a glowing yellow eye revealed its origin of danger; the severed upper carcass of a battle droid with broken claws had nearly snapped Claire's fibula, had it been completely intact. Sparks flew from its mouth area as Lyn ignited the sawblade attached to her wrist, pushing down against its eye to execute it immediately.
"You okay?!" Ardine called, pulling Claire out of the water.
"I didn't see that!" Alfaic commented.
Claire spat the ice cold water out from her nostrils and mouth, shivering upon instantly coming out of it. Her brown hair was drenched, and her tightened leather clothes failed to help as well. "That was... close," She struggled to speak, thanking Lyn with a quick nod. "Fuck, I'm freezing."
"Should we turn back?" Ardine asked.
"N-no," Claire tried to brave it through, but failed miserably. "I'm- I'm f-fine," She continued. "R-Really, I'm f-fine."
Ardine was embarrassed for her, finding her tough facade humorously false. "Yeah, you're the worst liar," He said, taking point through the water. "Let's find some place to shelter and warm up. We have to watch out for those droids."
The four began navigating at a more sluggish pace, defending Claire from the opposing threats that lurked underneath the water. More droid carcasses were spread out through a long and well-lit length of the tunnel. Lyn and Alfaic approached them before they had a chance to awaken, executing them on the spot. Ardine and Claire took point, with Claire still shivering through the bitter cold.
After approaching the end of the tunnel, the light from above Ionis 9 had faded entirely, leaving the tunnels in pure darkness. Only Alfaic, whose glowing golden aura only lit up his surroundings partially, took point with the only source of light to guide them. The shallow water had also vanished, for there were no girders with snow falling inside.
"Hey, look," Alfaic whispered. "I think the way out of the tunnels is ahead."
Lyn began slowly covering the edges of the wall, examining it in further detail. Most of the dark walls of the tunnel were riddled with minor scratches and chips in paint, but she could see old dried blood painted across from potential past visitors. No doubt, the brutality of the droids were present, but the reason why the droids were so hostile was still an absolute mystery to her.
The end of the tunnels led to a massive room where Alfaic's light could barely cover the edges of it all. The pitch black setting made the three's silent footsteps the loudest sounds mankind had ever heard. As they circled around to check for their surroundings, a faint light source brimmed from further away, piquing the group's curiosity further. With the amount of darkness shrouding their vision, it was impossible to tell what it was, but they had assumed it was a droid carcass blockading their way.
When they had finally reached it, Lyn prepared to execute it on sight. Only, the yellow light on the droid's lens began to flash between bright orange and red, playing an unnerving corrupted alarm sound that garbled on the cusp of dead or alive.
It was a trap.
Before they knew it, among the far distance with what seemed to be almost a mile away in the darkness, another yellow lens flared up, followed by one after another. In mere seconds, the firefly-like lights had evolved into an entire army of droid carcasses, swarming the four in a wave of bloodthirst.
"Get out, now!" Ardine yelled, pulling Claire close and rushing through the center with her.
Lyn and Alfaic tried to cut through the droids near their feet, but the sheer number of them proved ineffective. A droid snatched Lyn's calf and pulled her down, piling on top of her as the others began doing the same.
"Lyn!" Alfaic shouted.
Ardine and Claire, who failed to get any further than them, also began dragging themselves down beside them. One of the droids, however, in the ensuing chaos, snatched Ardine's pillaged grenade and accidentally activated it by pushing the center button. In a matter of seconds before the entire group would have been suffocated by the number of droids, the grenade detonated, sending an ear-splitting sound that blasted the darkened environment with a sonic boom.
In response to the grenade's loud shrill, the droids began to pacify themselves, retreating from the sound's origin. Parts of their battle armor chipped off entirely, littering beside them to reveal their flesh red skin beneath their decomposed bodies. After the four had been freed, they covered their ears and immediately took the opportunity to search for an exit.
Lyn, who rushed forward, found a metal emergency lockdown gate with a rusted red metal wheel handle attached to the door. She began twisting the wheel with her superhuman strength, opening the bunker door with only one hand.
"In here!" Lyn shouted at her allies.
The grenade's shrill sound had effectively worn off, leaving the flesh-peeled droids now conscious of the four's escape. As they made their way toward them once more, Alfaic, Ardine, and Claire dashed inside the bunker, leaving Lyn to shut the door behind them to seal them shut.
Before they could even register the newly well-lit environment, Ardine and Claire pressed their backs against the metal walls, exhausted out of their minds.
"Well, there we go again," Ardine commented. "Lyn, saving our backs, as always."
"It was you this time, old man," Claire replied, seemingly numb to the cold now. "If you hadn't picked up that weapon, it would have been over for us."
Ardine obtained his composure, astonished by the weapon's result. "They're weak against sonics," He said, piecing together the puzzle. "None of this makes sense. Why would Qliphos build grenades that could weaken their droids? They built the one thing that would make them ineffective, and stored them inside containers. Literally anyone could have used them and could prevail."
"Such untapped power needed to be contained, I guess," Alfaic said. "Not even the higher-ups could stop that."
"The Council..." Claire whispered.
"What?" Ardine asked.
"The Council of Seven," Claire emphasized. "They're the ones responsible for making the weapons. If we wanted to find out the truth about all this, we'd need to find them. Though... I doubt they're still alive at this point."
Lyn, who was intrigued by the new area they had entered, walked forward while examining her surroundings. Numerous solar string lightbulbs decked a high-rise ceiling, bringing plenty of light across the large bunker.
Lyn stepped across the dull chalk-written floors where washed out drawings of child-like flowers had dissipated. Old dusty furniture, such as the abundance of cabinets, drawers, and even a leather sofa nestled itself in an overarching girder-flooring. Crushed cans of beer, crushed bottles of water, and empty food tins littered the ground like a forgotten dumpster. Her eyes were set, however, on the somewhat comforting atmosphere she obtained from the rest of the cursed Ionis 9.
"A bunker?" Lyn voiced out. "In a place like this?"
Claire stepped forward until she appeared beside Lyn. She did not seem to have the same expressive and curious face as Lyn did; instead, it was replaced with an anguished appearance. "I know this place," She confessed, holding her wettened clothes tightly. "I was here when I was young. Maybe... two, or three. This used to be a playground, before the city built Qliphos on top of it and transformed it into a bunker."
Ardine and Alfaic moved beside them, examining the finer details of the establishment. Children's toys were also scattered across the floors, buried by the age of the bunker. The walls were scribbled with incoherent babble and drawings of the youth.
"This place... is proof that the world can't change," Claire continued, holding her breath. "All of the children who were here with me... are probably dead now. And as you can see now, there's nothing but dead survivors here."
She was right. After pointing it out, fresh bodies of men were also visible, leaning against the blood-soaked walls across the bunker.
"Oh, god..." Claire could barely voice out her anxiety.
Ardine came behind her and placed his palm on her shoulder. "It's okay, it's okay," He tried to calm her. "Look, I see an exit to our right, thankfully. But it looks like it needs a key to open." He looked at both Lyn and Alfaic to signal for their support. "You should sit down and dry yourself off. I think we're safe here."
"Okay." Claire agreed, moving toward the side away from the dead.
Lyn approached the left side of the bunker, finding a small office where a dead man laid face-up on an office chair. The lightbulbs flickered above him. She found numerous empty papers, along with some written journals containing files of military transportation and good shipments, all of which was irrelevant and unnecessary. She approached the deceased man and examined his face carefully.
The man's eyes were gouged out, and blood seeped from the cracks of his dried lips. His skin had become pale and blue, with veins on the sides of his eyes revealed to be from a slow suffocation. His left hand clutched a visible wound, revealing a penetrated blow that soaked his lungs with churning blood. Upon closer examination, Lyn found a small journal nestled within his right arm, which she took to read closer.
The pages, although stained with blood, were still legible with several faded entries:
This city is done for. The Council betrayed us all. My men and I have been housed in this bunker for the past few weeks, and we're all starving to death. We can't go outside. We can't stop hearing the sounds of the droids patrolling past us. Where did they even come from? Why did the Council create them?
Sevens knows why. He chants the name, and he turns into one of them, just like the men of the past. We had to kill him but he managed to break free. They chant a song, almost like a sermon, calling for this God.
The Council may play us for fools, but we know the truth. Lionel and Davis have turned into them. I've trapped myself in here. They're coming in. They're coming in. I miss my mo
The entry ended there. Lyn, who examined the surroundings, saw no sign of the ones who killed the man. She placed the journal down on the desk and moved out of the office.
She ascended a flight of stairs to reach the girders above, examining more of the surroundings. She found more papers detailing information from the previous survivors that inhabited the bunker. Lyn bent down and took another journal from the corpse of a decaying man who was infected with Rot. His puss-filled face was popped with fungal-infested blood. Dead maggots were sprawled across his chin.
Lyn continued reading the entry.
I've been bitten by one of them I can hear their voices in the wall they're calling for her crying for her begging for her they want to be free i want to be free mother mother mother please come and save us all please come please come please come please come please come please come
Lyn dropped the journal. It had to be a coincidence, she thought. The same "Mother" figure that Seth and the Krins had repeatedly mentioned began to confuse her. Now that she was desperately searching for the answers, she rushed through the same floor, searching for more information, but there were no more journals left to find.
She held the last journal close, resting as she continued to ponder the truth of the Rot.
Claire ascended the stairs. Her leather tunic was removed, revealing an inside shirt below. She began to warm up from the bunker's tight environment. Her face was blank as she looked into Lyn's eyes.
"Hey," She called, approaching her. "Did you find something?"
"Yes," Lyn said, eyeing the bloodied journal in her hands. "The people here... they turned into those rotten creatures. They... turned. That means, this whole time..."
"I know," Claire interrupted, sitting beside her against the metal wall. "They used to be people."
"But... how?" Lyn asked, puzzled by the crazed development. She then had remembered the once instance that a Rot had resembled a human in some way; the Stalker Rot from Llafiella, who haunted Elaina's life with the intent to make her his.
Yet, more instances began to arise out of pure memory. The monster from the fire station who wanted the affection of his maiden. The worm in the forest clearing.
Even Krin.
Was Krin a Rot?
"How did this even happen?" Lyn spoke to herself, dropping the journal on the floor. "I have to know the truth. There has to be more information here somewhere. These people knew the truth of it all."
Claire nodded, approaching a part of the metal walls that seemed different among further inspection. The wall in front of her seemed hollow and weak, and a single faded scribble of chalk lined up perfectly against a portion of it. "I think I know where..." She voiced out, pressing against the chalked section.
A hidden mechanism opened a section of the metal wall, revealing a secret door that lifted itself above. Dead flowers and grass adorned the sides of the small room, revealing the main attraction; an iron bust of an unknown woman with god-like features, such as a slim waist, beautiful and flawless face, and smooth material. Dead Rot tendrils decked the ceiling, dripping with old blood. A single light source from a candle lifted the atmosphere beside the bust.
"Who is that?" Lyn asked.
"I don't know." Claire replied.
The two approached the bust and examined it more carefully. The distinction was unable to be made, but Lyn had a guess.
"Is this... the Mother?" She said, referencing the most recent journal. It didn't make any sense, She thought. "If the Mother of the Rot truly exists, would it be in the form of a human or a monster?"
"The Mother of Rot...?" Claire asked, stunned by the question. "I never thought about it that way," She said, approaching the bust. Her eyes were glistened with regret from the past, still wanting to destroy all those that had reminded her of its instances. She took a long breath before coming to a final conclusion about it all. "If this statue does represent the Mother of Rot... I want to destroy it."
Lyn understood why. The establishment was once of peace and harmony, filled to the brim with innocent children roaming around with not a care of the harshness of reality. They didn't know about the wars between the nations, nor the troublesome Rot that ruined METIS. All they wanted was to live, and now, the deathly nature of reality had run its course, sweeping it with plague.
A bust worshipping of death deserved nothing but ruin.
"I see," Lyn said, crossing her arms to Claire's response. "But... destroying it will be difficult."
Claire blinked once before her mouth began to beam up slowly into a light smile. She glanced over at Lyn and blinked rapidly, desperately wanting to unveil something more.
"There's a way." She coldly stated before turning to face the iron bust.
In a slow, yet haunting movement, Claire raised her left palm out toward the head of the beautiful goddess depicted in the bust. She closed her eyes firmly until wrinkle slits began forming across her forehead. After summoning an invisible amount of aethereal energy from her palm, Claire opened her eyes and touched the head of the bust with her index finger.
Lyn watched as the bust turned into utter ash, dissolving in a matter of seconds upon the wooden table. Its solid matter had completely collapsed upon itself, decimating all life void from within its creation to restore purity once more.
"How..." Lyn began. "How did you do that?"
Claire's eyes trailed away from Lyn's, purposefully avoiding her gaze. She remembered Lyn's words, echoed from Alfaic, to speak her worries to heal herself. "It is a power that belongs to Erpha," She began. "To the droids... I am called Erpha. To that man... who killed my friends and family... I am Erpha."
"Your real name... is Erpha?" Lyn asked.
"The name means nothing," Claire continued, shunning it away. "I know nothing of it. All I know is that it is of importance to THAT man. He's the reason why everyone's dead. He's the reason why Qliphos is all gone," She said, approaching Lyn face to face with an attitude built on unkempt rage. "And your so called "Blade..." is hiding the truth from me, and preventing me from getting to him. And I can't stand it anymore."
Lyn knew the reason why. For the first time, she contemplated on revealing the truth to lessen Claire's anxiety.
"Why?" Claire sobbed, placing her hands on her palms. She sniffled before looking back at Lyn with a reddened gaze. "Why won't he tell me the truth? After all this time?"
Lyn remained silent before pulling Claire close, ignoring her left hand's powers. "It's complicated." She said.
"No, it isn't!" Claire retorted, shoving Lyn away. "I thought he was on our side. I thought he cared about you and us. There doesn't need to be any complications, none whatsoever. The world is already complicated, so what the fuck is the point!?"
"That man... is Alfaic's father." Lyn confessed, breaking the promise between her and Alfaic.
Claire's feet were rooted to the ground as her eyes were fixed upon Lyn's. Her slow and shallow breaths shuddered at the sudden confession, unable to grasp the concept and nature of everything beyond it. A rush of blood entered her mind, giving her an immediate headache as a surge of questions circled through; all unending and impossible to seek an answer towards.
"What...?" Claire's voice trailed off at the mere thought of the possibility.