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“Korash.” You struggle to breathe with Korash's hand clenched around your neck. Even squeezing your fingers around his arm, you can only lift yourself up just enough to breathe. “What have you <span class="mu-i">done</span>?”
“Watch years of preparation crumble due to my own haste.” Korash replied softly. “It's a shame- Alpha is fond of you. I wish there was enough time to enlighten you.” He sighed, then tilted his head as if listening to something. “They're escaping. Sooner than I planned, but this temple would have had to crumble in the end. Now, I must insist you submit gently. The extraction will be less painful if you don't fight it.”
His gaze turned beyond you, and you looked back to the altar. Your gaze blurred and your eyes swam with tears, but you force yourself to squint, somehow able to see the creature in full for the first time. It was a writhing mass of nerves and sparks, the outline blending into the room behind it, but you could still perceive the faint outline of it's form. It was a tangled mass of limbs, a dozen arms quivering and leaping onto the walls and cabling, sucking the motive force from them, looking to burrow in and scrape through the data-crypts it could get it's limbs into. It was constrained by the circle for now, but you couldn't help but notice how the cabling around it bowed, the pipes swelling, tiny hairs of metal springing up along it before the pressure forced the contents down and deeper into the temple. The light was slowly draining from the noospheric dampeners in the room- an acrid scent you couldn't quite place building.
He lifted his arm back, pulling you backward as you scrabbled to hold yourself up.
“Please, don't...” You gasp out, just before Korash pulls his arm back and bodily throws you towards it.
Your stomach lurches as you flip backwards, the ceiling shooting away from you and Korash's grim face coming into view just before you back slams into the ground, sliding to a stop as you get caught up in the cabling, your bodyglove scuffing as the cabling scrapes along it. You head smacks into something soft and lumpy- cabling, maybe.
Head swimming, you struggle to sit up, only to come face with a single eye of glowing hatred and nerves. That's what it was- <span class="mu-i">hatred</span>. This thing wasn't just an aggressive creature, it was animate malice, filled with a complete and utter loathing for all life, all knowledge, all machines. And slowly, it was crawling it's way over you, it's grasping limbs trying to find purchase on your body.
