Location: The Endless Frontier
Time: Unknown
Her feet crunched the glistening sands of the strange, benevolent space that she and Ana had found themselves flung to only a day or so ago. A place that perfectly matched her memories of her childhood home, Cape Town, right down to the smallest grain of dust. She almost wished they could stay there together, in this peaceful plateau of solitude and safety, forever.
Even so... When the sky had split, tearing itself asunder, and the ground shook with the crushing weight of a new arrival, the two had hastened back to the beach, her behind the wheel of a bright yellow Jeep that had belonged to her neighbor. She raised a hand to its door to steady herself, eyes wide as saucer plates, in abject disbelief at what was before her.
...
The water which had once kissed the sands, so clear and pure... was now muddied and dark, its surface rich and thick, as though a millenia's worth of rust had been scraped into its depths all at once. Chunks of metal bobbed across its uneven surface about what could best be described as a miniature mountain of sparking, rotting parts. Yet... the uneven light rolled over its form, a certain shape began to render itself familiar to the eye.
Cruel, hooked tusks bursting from a ragged torso, spine-riddled shoulders that terminated in a single, long, thin arm gnarled into a wicked claw, its opposite seemingly having drooped away, leaving only oozing, oily strands of artificial muscle. Its head was smooth and sunken into the body, its one remaining eye black and unresponsive, underneath the corroded remains of an almost halo-like structure that had stood on its back.
Arrayed about it were the remains of... faces, almost - leering, mechanical things that were somewhere between monsters and demons - a yawning lion's maw, a pair of blackened goat's horns, the smooth, splatted scales of a metallic serpent - all piled up among the refuse, little more than garbage.
It was as if it had been aged a thousand years in a few moments, on the very verge of crumbling away into carbonized dust... yet its form, even in this reduced state, was one she could never forget.
"It... can't be..." Murmured Eliza, shaking her head slowly in denial. It was... wrong, all wrong.
But... who, if anyone, would know that form better than she?
Time: Unknown
"...Impossible..."
Eliza Kruger's eyes refused to believe what they saw.
Her feet crunched the glistening sands of the strange, benevolent space that she and Ana had found themselves flung to only a day or so ago. A place that perfectly matched her memories of her childhood home, Cape Town, right down to the smallest grain of dust. She almost wished they could stay there together, in this peaceful plateau of solitude and safety, forever.
Even so... When the sky had split, tearing itself asunder, and the ground shook with the crushing weight of a new arrival, the two had hastened back to the beach, her behind the wheel of a bright yellow Jeep that had belonged to her neighbor. She raised a hand to its door to steady herself, eyes wide as saucer plates, in abject disbelief at what was before her.
...
The water which had once kissed the sands, so clear and pure... was now muddied and dark, its surface rich and thick, as though a millenia's worth of rust had been scraped into its depths all at once. Chunks of metal bobbed across its uneven surface about what could best be described as a miniature mountain of sparking, rotting parts. Yet... the uneven light rolled over its form, a certain shape began to render itself familiar to the eye.
Cruel, hooked tusks bursting from a ragged torso, spine-riddled shoulders that terminated in a single, long, thin arm gnarled into a wicked claw, its opposite seemingly having drooped away, leaving only oozing, oily strands of artificial muscle. Its head was smooth and sunken into the body, its one remaining eye black and unresponsive, underneath the corroded remains of an almost halo-like structure that had stood on its back.
Arrayed about it were the remains of... faces, almost - leering, mechanical things that were somewhere between monsters and demons - a yawning lion's maw, a pair of blackened goat's horns, the smooth, splatted scales of a metallic serpent - all piled up among the refuse, little more than garbage.
It was as if it had been aged a thousand years in a few moments, on the very verge of crumbling away into carbonized dust... yet its form, even in this reduced state, was one she could never forget.
"It... can't be..." Murmured Eliza, shaking her head slowly in denial. It was... wrong, all wrong.
But... who, if anyone, would know that form better than she?
"...Lemures...?"