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“I-I think we need to stop...” You whimper, slumped against whatever it was. The still present smell of singed cloth made you wince. Hopefully you hadn't burned your jacket...
What had you been babbling? You'd angered the machine, clearly, and with a loss of composure, no less. Your insides writhed horribly, with shame at your failure to maintain self-control, obviously, though the nerves wouldn't settle no matter how much you controlled your breathing. The neural flesh in your thigh and chest ached from the impact, and every throb of the skin was accompanied by a slight blurring of your thoughts, the ideas briefly constricting and losing focus in time with the throbs.
You look up blearily at the figure above you. Korash-22's normally smiling face was flattened into a thin line, the pale lips cracking slightly with the unusual movement. A small part of you wants to flinch in shame for such a flagrant disrespect to the machine that it struck you in return, and to your shame it nearly won out. With some effort, you forced the shame down and more prudently asked:
“Did I fail?”
“No, of course not.” Korash-22 reached down to you, grabbing you by the arm and by the back of your neck, despite your sudden wince of protest.
Your thoughts came thickly, not working right through the pain. Embarrassingly so, for an injury that would be trivial to someone who had not just bruised parts of their mind with the impact. Something you were seeing wasn't right.
Why would a techpriest need to <span class="mu-i">dampen</span> his connection to the noosphere-
Your feet briefly find the ground, then lift off it as Korash-22 continues to lift you into the air. Briefly kicking in confusion, you look back to him. Was he upset? He said it was a fairly common ritual...
Korash-22's face was downright venomous, his lips twisting into a snarl, his eyes hungry and unfocused. “I'm sorry, Lebesnati, but I really must insist you let the Omnissiah's servant in.”
No, not unfocused, looking past you. Looking over your right shoulder, where your eyes slowly turned, focusing on.
Your head hurt again, but when you squeezed your eyes shut this time <span class="mu-i">you could still see it</span>. An awful, coiling mass of arcing power, no longer hidden in the nerves between your eyes and brain, now freed from it's bonds and stretching forward into the real world, which melted and ran at it's touch. It was a thing of wires and metal, malevolent current in the coils, but as it coalesced it's form became less <span class="mu-i">spindly</span>, less like the thing you had seen before in the Secundus-Factor-VII - that was all abstract shapes and current - and more like a <span class="mu-i">creature</span>. One with a writhing, snapping jaw and limbs that ripped apart the room to make themselves manifest.
“Please continue your meditations.”
>"Korash. What have you done?"
>"Heretek."
>"Please, don't..."
>[Conditioning/Strain] Try to fight your way out of his grip.
>[Write-In]
