[Warpworld] Ch 36 – Ants in the Playground of Titans

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            It was clearly an artificial construct, but it loomed to the height of a mountain, dwarfing the greatest skyscraper that I’d ever seen as it did so. The metals and crystals it was made of played widely and wildly in the spectra, what they were Energized to twisted and uncertain after so much exposure to the Warp.

            And yet, the very fact it stood apart, that it stood at all, showed that whatever energies and powers were within it had defied the Warp for a very long time, and continued to do so.

            “Impressive, even if unintended.”

            The elves and saurids were mute, staring up at the miles-tall thing of impossible artifice, energies still seething upon it as the vivus swirled about it, finding little to feast on that wasn’t cleansed off rapidly, almost as if wiping a sheen of slick corruption from the face of the thing.

            “The Creators were indeed real...” breathed Artlis, staring at the thing in wonder.

            “Your makers, yes. Both of your peoples have ties to this technology, as I’m sure you realize.” That there was that connection between the two races was probably something they ignored or had forgotten.

            “What… what did it do?” Master Sethanon asked, staring up at the thing, parts of it melted, torn away, ripped open, gashed, gouged, or ruptured.

            “As an informed guess, I’m guessing it’s a spatial funnel array node, part of the complex that sustained an open hole to higher spaces and drew the Warp Gods here in the first place. No longer functional, of course, and its self-repair systems are clearly incapable of fixing the damage at this point. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to fix if they returned, once the corruption of the Warp is dealt with, but that’s all in relative terms.

            “At this point, you’re not the races they left behind, and they probably consider the chance you are NOT infected with some manner of Warp mutations to be totally unacceptable. I believe a significant number of your people have fallen to worship of the Warp gods, while your species has actually managed to develop a god of your own?” I asked them in turn.

            There was uneasy shuffling and blinking eyes as elves and saurids realized that they had grown beyond what their Creators had intended, and as such their Creators would probably wipe them away, rather than embrace what they had become!

            “The return of our Creators would be absolute slavery and service to them once more, without exception,” Master Artlis murmured, but all could hear his words. “And they… would not accept our service. They would wipe us away as flawed and mutated beyond their design, and start anew and afresh, with a clean slate.”

            I concurred. “All that you have fought for and attained, gone and wiped away as irrelevant, even if you were the ones responsible for bringing them back. This was a race of Titanic beings, their cares beyond the desires or the likes of you or I. They will be as heartless in their own way, firmly convinced their way and will is the highest and best of all wills or ways, as the Warp Gods are in theirs.

            “I guess that I should politely ask that you put any thoughts of bringing back the Creators out of your minds. We are opening the future to you and yours. Wiping away that future and your past seems to be self-defeating,” I mentioned, and earned some grim smiles and snorts from those listening.

            “We will not attempt to bring back our own doom,” Rixugor boomed out, the saurid general’s voice firmly declared. “We are here to mete out doom, not inflict it upon ourselves!”

            “Well spoken!” I returned cheerfully. “Also, this should be a clear sign that we are near our goal, as more structures like this should ring our destination, and we move towards the more important buildings and control centers towards the middle, and likely the crater that birthed the Warped Moon.”

            “And as always, we will have a substantial amount of time to study such things as we pass them by,” Master Artlis noted with a twinkle in his eye.

            “I would call them fighting words and challenge you to a race, but only if you walk on your hands!” I retorted promptly, shaking my fist in his direction for daring such mockery.

            “I think I would get better at walking on my hands fast enough to defeat you!” he replied after a moment of pondering, drawing guffaws from all those about.

            The saurids seemed to find that challenge an interesting idea. Within minutes there were a score of the scaled warriors down on the flanks, endeavoring to move only on their hands and seeing if they could keep up with the Pyramid’s slow and steady progress, hissing and running about excitedly in the refreshingly cool vivic mists that now filled the landscape around us.

            I noticed that the smaller nitzls soon figured out the trick of running upside down, and yes, they could easily keep ahead of the Pyramid, to the applause of those watching.

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            “What do you imagine that we will find ahead of us, Master Aelryinth?” Master Artlis asked as the hours sped by at three kph, and the landscape with them.

            “You are talking about a society of ascended beings, with minds beyond the mortal and mastery of technology and energies that could bend time and space, easily design entire races and creatures from nothing, and actually thought themselves powerful enough that they could maintain open Portals into, and travel to and fro and use the Warp itself as a communication tool and power source!

            “Their power and genius are irrefutable. However, so is their arrogance. Creating servant races is a hallmark of pride, leaving the minor tasks to beings literally created to do so for you. They utterly ignored the possibility that their studies and work with the Warp would bring forth disaster upon them, and thus had no way to truly fight what was done to them.

            “I think we will see things that we won’t understand, because they are made to that higher tier of thought and capacity, but in the end are just like those of us lesser races: places to live, places to work and make things, places to relax and enjoy, places to learn, and places to administrate and guide by whatever means of government they used.

            “Even at the highest tiers, those are basic necessities of a working society, and nothing says society like momentous public works, right?”

            “You speak as if the Warp Gods themselves would have such things?” Master Sethanon broke in, his voice carefully neutral.

            “Those below them, sure. It’ll be very simplistic, but they basically run feudalistic governments built on fascist ideals of strength. We’re probably traipsing through areas that demons have been using as training grounds or amusement parks for millennia, for example. I’m sure they all have their forgeworks for gear of war, areas to desport themselves in casual violence or drinking or orgies or whatever, areas to develop new technologies, drugs, plagues, magic, or the like, and areas where the elite gather to plot against one another or foes outside, managing the uncounted multitudes under them in service to their gods.

            “That such things might be repugnant as heck, or totally beyond our scope of thought as to how and what they do, is totally possible, and I don’t deny that. We’re walking in the realm of titans, after all. We just happen to be the tip of the spear of an even bigger titan, the whole Mortal Realm coming to take back this little sore on its skin.”

            I guess they didn’t like feeling so small, so they were quiet for a time. When the first of what looked like massive sensory dishes a couple miles across slowly appeared out of the mists and fogs ahead of us, they watched silently with me as the vivus blew over it. Things Burned off of them… and then, as we passed it by, acres at a time gave way with the creaks and groans of ages of release, and then fell heavily to the ground in crashing, final relief.

            What looked to be fine wire from a distance ended up being ten feet thick crystallized flowmetal when it slammed to the ground, too.

            “Either a sensory system or a communications tool,” I theorized to those watching as we carefully avoided going under any part of the collapsing device. “The vivus is getting into the resonant crystals which both tracked the Warp and were infected by it. As they burn out, the latticework fractures from within.” We watched another Burning section give way with a belated screech of protesting crysmetal and fall, a good mile away from us. Who knew how many millions of tons it represented, although the vibrations through the ground were visible as they passed beneath us, and sent some nitzls who were running around us flying a couple dozen feet into the air. “The stuff is probably incredibly useful for channeling magic, like making good staves or wands, but I imagine just finding the way to shape it is going to be power-intensive as a result.” I wasn’t even sure Shape Stone at X would do it easily.

            Other saurids hurried down to bring the injured nitzls back aboard and get some Healing attention from me.

            Such light duties didn’t mean I wasn’t snaffling up fragments and parts that had fallen from the things over the ages and been purged with vivus very, very thoroughly. Study samples were things, after all, and I had the equivalent of a vivic blast furnace here to get rid of anything lingering from the Warp.

            Also, a huge amount of raw material was being Burned constantly below, helping fuel the growth and empowerment of the Pyramid with some nice permanent Wondrous Machinery uber-powered stuff, the Warp providing plenty of energy to help the procedure along. The fact the Warp was helping empower its own undoing was one of those principles I loved turning against demonic creatures the most, as there wasn’t much they could do about the appetite of the Land.

            A collection of smaller buildings moved past in the stillness, rather startling with how they existed in a land that seemed made for beings a hundred times our size. These were still overly large, and even in their ruins, they had doors and halls and windows yawning wide open, made for beings at least thirty feet tall.

            “Giants?” Master Artlis asked thoughtfully. “There are legends that the giants of long, long ago were as mighty in intellect as they were in strength. If so, they have fallen far from what they were...”

            “Encouraged by the Warp and conflict to do so, doubtless. There are… difficulties in lifeforms being that large, and such things are often preyed upon for it.” It wasn’t the tallest humanoid being I’d seen, as true Titans could reach sixty feet high. “I would guess menial labor and construction workers? They would need to be geniuses by our standards to work on edifices like those we have seen at even the most basic level.

            “I admit I find one thing interesting that we have seen no sign of, although perhaps it exists below and is filled in. There is no sign of vehicles to move around a population, nor are there humanoid constructs of metal, like golems or the like. Perhaps they used point-to-point teleportation to get around readily, and perhaps they did not trust the programming of robotic technology or other automatons.”

            “Is that a common thing among higher cultures?” Master Artlis followed up on that.

            “Yes. The Creators seem to have preferred living creatures, such as yourselves, to be the lowest support force. Most advanced societies make the attempt to move more and more menial duties onto the backs of artificial creations, leaving them free for higher pursuits. It is somewhat strange, as programmed constructs are efficient, untiring, and perfectly obedient.”

            “Until the influence of the Warp begins to arrive, and corrupt them?” Master Sethanon hazarded.

            “Mmm. Perhaps the existence of the Portal meant they could not rely on such. A good thought, and something to note for your own future, are you to rise to the heights you are capable of.”

            Master Sethanon looked away again, possibly embarrassed. I was saying he could reach great heights, and looking about… those heights were higher then he had ever imagined!

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