Hydralis - The Night after J's report.
The Solver War. A war that had been declared by the Stormborder's crew. But none of them could ever suspected there would be a battle in this theater which would be beyond their involvement. It started so subtly that no one would have ever noticed it until it was too late. The phantom denizens of Hydralis were about to be subjected the boiling frog phenomenon. It was such a harmless sight in the beginning...They wandered aimlessly, never stopping for long, and none of them ever looking at the city itself.
Zombie drones. The most basic of Cyn's thralls. Despite sharing a name with the improperly disposed worker drones that developed personalities and in extreme cases even powers, these drones lacked sapience. They were mindless extensions of the solver's will. Their visors all carried "Error Code 606", something that indicated a severe problem with their OS. Each of them were in various states of disrepair, but none of them failed to walk upright.
They didn't have any special powers, nor even weapons. They were capable only of levying their naturally designed strength to brute force a path towards their targets. Those unfortunate enough to be caught by these slow mindless slaves would find themselves forcefully ripped apart. Fortunately their lack of intelligence made this a rare possibility.
But as they wandered the outskirts of Hydralis their numbers began to grow little by little. Eventually there were...Oddities within their ranks. They were scarce, almost impossible to notice, but they were there. They looked just like their mindless companions but they seemed to move with more purpose. Rather than awkwardly shuffling around they were observing the city's edges, trying to blend into crowds of zombie drones.
These were the evolved brethren of the zombie drones, aptly named Ferals. Unlike their lesser siblings, these drones sported fleshy claws and wings, they were able to move with actual intelligence, and they could move quickly. Though much like zombies they still lacked a sense of self-preservation. Their numbers began to slowly swell, the crowd was carefully being built up from basic zombie drones into ferals. They hunted in packs, choosing to overwhelm and strike their targets from all sides. Much like others cursed by the solver, they needed to feed on oil to survive, and they sought this ichor out with reckless abandon. However even for as much of a threat as these units posed, they paled in comparison to what arrived next...
It seems that as soon as the ferals spotted what they were looking for is when they all began reaching upwards towards the sky. Their claws reached out as if they were trying to grab hold of something...Or someone. You would have been forgiven for missing what appeared in the sky. The inky blackness that slowly formed blended into the clouds above, it dripped with pure malice, strange black liquid leaking out like a flow of blood as a portal appeared in the sky. Eventually it blotted out the western sky as it sat over Hydralis' outskirts. Thousands of yellow lights flashed into existence on the other side of this portal, each of them belonging to a thrall under Cyn's control. The amount of lights grew to look like sickly yellow stars hanging in the heavens above. But these were not stars of peace, they belonged to something evil. A voice boomed and echoed across the city's empty streets as though it was being spoken by every single yellow light that hung inside the portal.
"????Callback Ping.????"
"????Callback Ping.????"
"????Callback Ping.????"
"????Callback Ping.????"
"????Callback Ping.????"
"????Callback Ping.????"
"????Callback Ping.????"
It repeated over and over, never once changing tone or inflection. It was as if a recording was being blasted from countless speakers aimed straight at the port city. The inhuman echo of this voice made it seem as though the angels of heaven itself were singing in unison, delivering a message to the mortals of this world. Hundreds upon hundreds of fleshy human hands shot out of the portal, striking the ground on the outskirts and gripping the snow and ice tightly. They were seemingly acting as anchors keeping this portal tethered to reality. If one was able to pull their eyes away from the horrific sight of human arms stretching out from the heavens they would notice something arriving in the distance...In the east were yellow X shapes. Many of them. So, so many of them.
Cyn's first pets. And the ones she favored the most. The humans may have mass produced them, but it was Cyn who first created them, who gave them their true purpose and set them loose in this world. The Disassembly Drones. The harbingers of this universe's demise. What were once the reincarnation of the Elliot Manor's humble worker drones grew into an army far beyond the reach of those eccentrics. Now every single Murder Drone that was unable to resist the siren song of the callback ping was marching towards Hydralis. They were the final form of a feral worker drone, something perfected by a host with a skilled hand. They were unstoppable killing machines designed to maim and end all life with hundreds of methods at their disposal. Fast flyers, skilled marksmen, beings with blades at their beck and call, all else failing they could simply use the power of their nanite acid to burn through anything that resisted their weapons.
This nightmarish armada didn't end there however. Another lightless void opened up in the east. From its maw rose a hulking behemoth that seemed to be made from the remains of fallen disassemblers. It was a beast the humans were horribly familiar with. White Aberrant. Its arms gripped the earth in front of the portal as it lifted itself free, slowly crawling out and standing...Its hands gripped tightly as it seemed to inspect those very same hands, a low laugh emitting from its soulless jaws.
"It seems...We have been given a second chance."
White Aberrant was not the only one to climb out of that portal however. It was followed closely by one of Cyn's newest creations...A jagged coffin made of thick steel plating, beneath it were clawed legs, eight of them. Each one had serrated teeth and yellow and black warning stripes. A sickening yellow spotlight sat on top, shining down in front of it. On its sides were two massive buzzsaws with retractable arms. This abominable creature was known as an Assimilator. There was not just one, but many that crawled out of the portal in the eastern front. Their most horrific feature however was one that Cyn was most proud of: The steel coffin that made up their body had two large doors that swung open at will; within them several fleshy crimson tendrils that could ensnare an unfortunate prey. Deeper inside the coffin were countless surgical tools that seemed to move and sway as if they were alive themselves. The Assimilators were created to match the surgical precision Cyn worked with when converting the manor's workers into disassembly drones -- And with these walking coffins she could turn any worker drone on the face of this wretched planet into a new disassembly drone any time she wanted to.
Finally, the last denizens of this newly opened portal were so easily missed:
The Repair Crabs. Tiny little drones that took from things to reinforce other things, little by little. They were no true threat in combat, but they represented an ability to further augment the regenerative properties that Cyn's forces held. They crawled all over White Aberrant and the Assimilators, ready to take scrap from the ruins and repurpose it to keep their masters alive.
The eastern front had revealed its full hand, but there was still one last dreadful surprise from the west. From the large inky hole that took up the western skyline came one last army, all of them shrieking with enough sound to shake the ice loose from Hydralis' skyscrapers.
Horrific underlings. The Apocalypse Drones. They surrendered personality and a level of durability that the disassembly drones had in exchange for a greater agility, a mindset more focused on ravaging their prey, and unquestionable loyalty to their master. They took to the skies over Hydralis, hundreds of them circling like vultures waiting for fresh a fresh carcass. But they would be missing a vital strength if not followed by their controller. And that controller soon revealed itself. A massive set of leathery wings that spanned 30 feet across appeared from the center of the great void, their owner taking flight and joining the apocalypse drones in the sky. It was a beast Atta would recognize from her deepest dreams...The Subjugator Gargoyle. This great beast general's arrival meant that every apocalypse drone in a radius had access to rapid regeneration that surpassed that of any of Cyn's other creations.
The flying monarch landed on top of a skyscraper, watching the streets below, a laugh bellowed from its throat as it taunted whatever Atta could muster to try and defend her territory. The army in the east and the army in the west converged...But strangely none of them rushed in for an immediate attack. Instead both armies began dismantling anything metallic on the city's outskirts. As they moved jagged steel plates and frames they stacked them piece by piece until a sight that was familiar yet somehow wholly alien began to appear...Spires. These weren't made up of worker drone corpses. They were made entirely from whatever repurposed steel could be found. Cyn's great army were building nests in order to shelter from the morning sun. Within hours Hydralis was totally surrounded by hundreds of inhuman jagged spires, each one host to a great squadron of solver thralls. When this army had emplaced themselves on the city's outskirts, patrols began to form and march along the very edge of the city, seemingly taunting Atta. Waiting for her to make the first move. They were here for something...But they held back from razing the city entirely. In just three short hours the ruins of Copper-9's greatest port city had gone from a silent graveyard of humanity's civilization to a hellscape that was about to be the stage for the absolute largest battle in the Solver Wars. A chain reaction that began as a few sparse groups of zombie drones wandering aimlessly had become full marching armies that built for themselves bases of operation to siege what belonged to the Solver's other host.
The only question that remained now...Would the one controlling all of these abominations make an appearance?
» Murder Drones: Oil and Water
» Murder Drones: Disassembly Required
» Murder Drones: Out with the Old, in with the new Disassemly.
» Murder Drones: The Cynful One
» Murder Drones One Shot: Blood and Oil
» Sword Art Infinity
» Murder Drones: Dead Zone
» Murder Drones: A new Type of Witchhunt