38 Overseer (1/2)
I glanced at Torix who met my eye. Torix shrugged, so I turned back towards the overseer,
”Uh, it's good to meet you too, overseer.”
The overseer turned towards Kessiah, ”You have a remnant among your ranks as well? You have quite the collection of tools at your disposal then Torix. Breaking the areas down shouldn't be a problem.”
Althea unformed her rifle as she pursed her lips, ”What is it doing here?”
Torix turned a palm towards us, ”The overseer and I have constructed a deal of sorts. You, Daniel, and Kessiah shall clear out infected areas. The steel legion will then go behind you and move up the quarantine zone past the cleansed areas.”
I raised an eyebrow, ”How the fuck are we going to cleanse the infected areas?”
Kessiah leaned onto my head, ”That aura of yours kills the plants. You can just walk past assigned sections everyday, letting the steel legion walk behind us.”
I glanced up at her, ”Don't you think that's a bit risky to rely on my power like that?”
Kessiah rolled her eyes, ”You guys are killing any living zombies and I don't know, like 99% of all the infected stuff. It's about as good an opportunity for the legion as they can get.”
The overseer turned back towards me, ”I will organize the legion's efforts for cleaning up behind you team.” The overseer lifted a massive arm and pointed a finger at us, ”You three will act as a vanguard. Torix will support you at a distance. Simple enough?”
I nodded, ”Hell yeah. Not that different from what we had planned anyway. What're we getting from the steel legion in return?”
The overseer lowered its hand, ”Torix and I discussed an exchange of several goods, including several technologies and books. It should be a suitable compensation for the deed.”
As it stood, I identified it,
Overseer(lvl 20,000) - An enforcer of the monolith system within sector C-137. Invincible, powerful, but most of all, loyal to Schema. Do not disobey or else face elimination.
It was pretty damn obvious there was some bias in the voice, though levels didn't lie. The overseer turned towards Torix and mouthed,
”If all parties agree, then we shouldn't waste anymore time here.”
I frowned as Torix stood and spread his arms, ”We would be delighted to leave.”
One of the arms of the overseer glowed, and he rose one of his arms. Arcs of blue lightning shot out of his palm before the giant clicked his fingers. Nothing changed. If I'd been in the other room, I wouldn't have even noticed anything unusual. Besides all the sound of course.
There was drilling, engines revving, even gunshots off in the distance. As I glanced around, Althea looked just as confused as I was. Torix and Kessiah seemed at ease though, so I mimicked them. I turned towards Torix,
”Uh, are we there now?”
He nodded, ”Indeed we are. Overseers have many of the same rights as Schema, being his most loyal paragons of destruction.”
I turned towards the overseer, ”Were you made by Schema then?”
”No. I earned my own strength, climbed through his system, and was rewarded for my own accomplishments. Schema did reward me with my own cybernetic enhancements.” The overseer raised his hand, energy rippling the air like a rock tossed into a pond, ”They are very potent.”
I nodded my head before Althea turned towards Kessiah, ”How did Yawm ever kill a sentinel with someone like this walking around?”
The overseer waved his hand, dematerializing the ground above us. He revealed the inside of a warehouse I remember from running outside of the steel legion's base. The only reason I could was because of the weird, red roof. It made the whole building stick out like a sore thumb.
The overseer clicked his other hand, creating a hologram of stars above us. The overseer raised a hand towards it,
”I do relish in an opportunity to teach a little history.”
The hologram honed onto a dense cluster of asteroids floating near a red dwarf. They looked like dirty metal. The overseer sighed,
”This was Woak, a planet that sustained a population of sentient life much like earth.”
The overseer waved its hand, reversing the flow of time in the hologram. The bits of planet came together into a monumental detonation. The very tiniest blip of a glowing spec flowed out of the planet.
”Interesting, isn't it? A chunk of iron lobbed at high enough speeds will crack a planet with ease. Most planets are like giant, molten marbles floating in space. Yours happens to be covered in dirt. If you send a large block of iron at it, the molten metal that composes the planet will split in all directions. I digress-”
He opened his hand, moving us closer towards the planet, ”This is where Yawm was born. This is also where he should have died. He had left his planet and served Etorhma before coming back. It was only after he had been touched by Etorhma that be began spewing nonsense.”
A mountain scape came into view, revealing giant beings. Things writhing without a shape or any sense to them. The overseer continued,
”It's amazing how close Yawm came to creating what he wanted on Woak. The vitality of the eldritch on this fringe world helped sustain his experiments. It was a unique world in that regard. You see, the species of the planet was actually a plant based set of lifeforms.”
The view of the hologram closed in on a wooden, hunched thing that walked on all fours. Flowing strips of wood acted as skin, and a thick layer of large, fanning leaves covered its back. Several tubes composed the mouth of the creature as it sucked up some water from a nearby pool. With no eyes and no mouth, the thing felt around with thick, elephant feet with hundreds of roots for toes.
”This is a poryte, the plant species that Yawm hails from. They had several subclasses of species, this one being a collector. Yawm was a member of the warrior species.”
The overseer twisted his finger, sending the viewpoint of the hologram onto a much different creature. A creature with the same flowing strips of wood for skin, this one stood upright. It had wooden goat legs, the whole limbs bent so that it could jump at any moment. The long, wiry arms latched onto branches, letting the lean creature carry itself on trees.
Falling from its back was a main of leaves that looked like hair. The two glowing, green eyes on its face pulsed on it, sending light through several cracks in its body.
”This is what Yawm looked like before he changed himself, though not him exactly. It's just a member of his species. Lithe and agile, they can use their own hard skin for killing any predators or herbivores trying to kill the collectors of their tribes.”
The hologram moved outwards, back to a view of the entire galaxy.
”Yawm had seen the horrors in this universe. Imagine what paper must have looked like to him as he went to other worlds. Other species would be writing on the processed bodies of his brothers. I can imagine that led to his own warped views.”
The space hologram disappeared before a picture of two armies clashing came into view, one made of flesh and the other of leaves and wood.
”Yawm believed that his species would never be able to compromise with any other species. They were too different in his eyes. Over the next few hundred years, a hostile species, known as thebracken, attempted taking over his homeworld. This further entrenched his polarizing beliefs. During this war, Yawm was the poryte's mightiest warrior.”
An image of a single poryte hunched over a pile of torn bodies was shown. The glowing green of the creature's eyes webbed down its face and onto its chest. The shining lines ran down its shoulders and arms and back, ending at its hands. Every part of the creature these lines ran over was enlarged, hard and muscled. They linked together like a chain, keeping the creature's upper body heavy and in control. The curved legs looked more like a platform than the primary movers of the poryte.
”This is the image used to strike fear into the poryte's enemies. This was Yawm before his change. He was their symbol. The porytes won the war, destroying the bracken and enslaving them. Their species wore the bones of the bracken. They used the bracken's skin as their own paper. They ground up their teeth, and used the powder as an abrasive.”
Althea shook her head, pointing at the old Yawm, ”So I'm guessing he was one of those guys who wanted that to happen?”
”Indeed he was. He wanted to show other species the horror of what had been done to them. A hundred years of this passed before Etorhma reached out to him. It was then that Yawm realized that there was more missing than just plant and those of flesh.”
An image of Etorhma appeared, causing gasps throughout the room. Kessiah spread her arms, ”Don't you think you're telling them a bit too much?”
The overseer waved her question away, ”The harbinger has been chosen as an avatar of Etorhma. You cannot tell me he has not already seen him. What matters about this image is how different Etorhma is from you mortals. He is an immortal being who can move through space and time. Yawm saw him as a god and demon all in one.”
On the hologram, a wave of white flashed over everything. Etorhma disappeared and the planet's surface came back as the overseer continued,
”Schema assimilated their world and warned them of the eldritch as well. Now Yawm knew of many different beings. He knew that he couldn't kill them all, no matter how strong he became. In the end, he went into hiding as he struggled to find a way to solve the problem he saw in existence.”
The overseer spread his arms, ”How can things that are different coexist? Yawm found his answer in his new name, Yawm of Flesh.”
The overseer closed the hologram with the wave of his hand, ”He found a way of bonding plants and creatures of flesh. He turned himself into the new abomination he created. His entire world burned and his species was torn asunder by his twisted vision.”
One of the overseer's hands clamped shut, ”And during the very apex of his power, he assaulted one of the sentinels with an army of corrupted porytians. They warred for weeks until Yawm slayed the sentinel and stole his spear of the monolith. Now he may travel between worlds at his own leisure, bending them until they break.”
The bolts on the overseer glowed bright blue. ”We will crush him here, before he destroys yet another world to support his own delusions. We will crush him before he completes his goal.”