>>54332073"Dez what the fuck did you get me into this time"
Before them was strewn broken glass and strange liquids staining the lightly snowy ground of the cave entrance that lay ahead of them. The cave stretched far deeper than Vesper could see, and the icicles at the entrance reminded him grimly of a gaping maw, begging him to come forth and be consumed.
"Heh...Vespy ol buddy....it's uh...I mean it can't be that bad, right?"
"Dez, when you told me that one of your clones got out, I figured it would just be peeing dick shapes in the snow or something y'know? Like this is like...like this is like creepy as hell"
"Yeah y'see when I was making this one I thought I would try something different and I pumped it with a little extra mag juice. Heyy what's alchemy without a little experimentation?"
"But Dez, this....thing built a lab rivaling yours and who knows what it's trying to accomplish with it"
"Hah hah well of course it made a lab as good as mine, I mean it is ME that I c-cloned....heh..."
"Dez it's been only THREE DAYS since it escaped and it didn't even steal any of your equipment, but look at this place!"
"Yeah....w-well let's catch this thing"
Magni and Vesper paused briefly to ready themselves mentally before each pulling out a Maglight from their pack. These glowing spheres, a unique invention of Magni's, had come in handy many times before on missions; these softball sized translucent balls looked as if they had a pale blue cloud swirly around them and once shaken, will shine as a bright blue blaze that can illuminate surprisingly large spaces, although a little too dim for unencumbered perception. Dez once joked that he made these by trapping the souls of our enemies inside and burning them, but Vesper had his doubts if that was really a joke.
The two slowly entered the throat of the cave. The whipping winter winds blowing across the entrance left a deep, almost animalistic groaning sound in their ears but in the absence of the wind gusts was a terrifying silence, segmented only by the crunch of their footsteps upon a mixture of slush, gravel, and glass debris.
As their eyes adjusted from the bright sun and blinding snow of the outside world, to the dimmer maglights in the cave, they saw deeper into this hastily put together but advanced looking lab. Large cylinders lined the walls of the cave, filled with a greenish liquid, with bubbles that constantly flitted past amorphous, pulsating lumps of beige flesh. Metal lines were strewn about connecting tanks to various machinery in a sort of hastily assembled nervous system. Glass flasks lay scattered about with various colors of residue left inside.
"By God Ves.....it's making more. I-it's reproducing and they're growing way faster than they should be. Shit, I should have asked the rest of the guild for some help here...this is just, this is just ..."
"Yeah Dez it's pretty fucked, but if we turn back now, these things will have fully formed by the time we get back. This *thing* is way too dangerous alone, I don't know how we could handle an infinitely reproducing army. Come on, let's take care of business"
"Hey Ves, these tubes are a reinforced polycarbonate, I don't think we can just break them. I'll have to start overloading this life support system. Watch out for that hellspawn in case it notices we're here."
"Yeah man, yeah man, I'm one step ahead of you and already on guard duty"
Vesper had unpacked his folding spear, a most precious gift he had received from Magni recently: lightweight and portable, yet made of an absurdly strong metal alloy that Magni had invented and named Mithril, in homage to a story that Vesper often liked to recount to anyone that would join him for a cup of tea and pleasant conversation. But now was no time for the pleasantries afforded by peace, Vesper readied a defensive stance and stood vigilant near Magni. Vesper took another few maglights and started to roll them out into the darkness with underhand tosses. Luckily, it seemed that the cloning chambers stopped at this point in the cave, but deeper within he could begin to see what appeared to be runes crudely drawn on the walls. GN\OMA? OMAGM? These symbols look like letters of the alphabet but they're so numerous and crudely painted that it's hard to interpret a message or word or...
"Oh fuck....", Vesper whispered to himself. In a hushed voice, "Dez, we gotta get the fuck out of here. Do whatever to stall this shit but do it like NOW, we need the rest of the guild here"
"Yeah gimme a second dude, we made it this far without any problems. Heh get ready to be aborted little maglings"
"No dude, Dez, you don't get it, this is-"
Then, as if the cave itself started to bellow out, a deeply unsettling sound came from the darkness just outside their view, "MAAAAAARRRGGGNNNNNMMMM....MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGUUUUUUUUUHHHHH........MAG..MO....."
"Buddy, I don't think we're gonna make it back to the guild in time for our guildiversary..."