I quickly checked my interface to make sure that the main building’s effects still reached us in the trawler, saw that they did, and closed it. We wouldn’t be finding any fights in this place, no matter how scared Jun was of the huge slyk in the middle of the room. I patted her on the shoulder before I started walking down the oil-coated staircase to the strange lair of the slyk below.

“Whatever you’re scared of is being pacified by the same thing as the slyk up above.” I said over my shoulder, looking back to see that Jun hadn’t budged an inch. “You can stay there if you want; I’m going to see if I can find any more doors.”

Jun shivered and let out a shuddering breath. She walked to the edge of the safe room and looked down at the first step below, half-covered in oil, and tried to press her foot down on it.

“You’re right. What’s the point of all this armor if I don’t use it?” Jun said with forced confidence, her slow descent on unsteady legs clashing with her words. “Trawlers don’t usually have too many doors. There’s gotta be hallways behind all of this oil.”

My eyes were drawn to two of the larger symbols on the walls; a spiral with jagged edges and a triangle with so many circles punched out of it that I could barely make out that it was a triangle. Compared to all the other markings they seemed to float in the oil, shifting in and out as oil covered parts while revealing others. As if there wasn’t a solid wall behind those specific places. I was fairly confident that I’d found two hallways, but there was one problem.

I had no idea how I was supposed to get through all that oil. Maybe killing the big slyk was supposed to bring one or both of them down, but neither of us had the raw power to do that. I glanced up at the rocky spears and oily trees, the possibility of their involvement in this puzzle gliding over my mind without finding any real purchase. There wasn’t really anything we could do while the slyk was incapacitated, but we’d be in serious trouble if it was. Maybe this was all pointless.

{Can you analyze that big slyk, or is it just the same as the one up top?}

//ANALYSIS ALREADY COMPLETE.

//WHAT YOU SEE BEFORE YOU IS OF THE SAME SPECIES, BUT NOT THE SAME DESIGNATION.

The End’s words slid off my interface, replaced by this slyk’s information.

//CORE BEARING SPECIMEN: SLYK LONESWARM.

//CURRENTLY UNDER THE EFFECTS OF ‘SWITCHPORT’S STILLING’: ALL THOUGHTS FROZEN IN TIME.

//An evolved and far more dangerous mutation of a slyk. This specific specimen has made this trawler its home, and has spread itself through its entirety. Can no longer change which rock it is using, as it has traded that ability for the raw power that comes with a permanent host.

Core Mastery: 28.

Hazard: 19.

Core: Bituminous Core, Loneswarm Variation.

Core Function: Oil Manipulation, Mind Division.

Battery: 56 Speed: 22 Power: 63 Resilience: 87 Recovery: 10

I blinked at the description from ‘Switchport’s Stilling’. It had said that the other slyk’s stats had been reduced to zero, but this one was just frozen in time. Were its higher stats making it resistant to the main building’s effects? And what the hell did ‘Loneswarm’ mean?

“That’s one strong oil-rock.” I whistled, suddenly a lot more apprehensive about strolling down into the slyk’s domain. I really didn’t want to accidentally unfreeze its thoughts. “Why’s it even in here in the first place? Hazards aren’t supposed to have bosses that are this much stronger than they are.”

“How should I know?” Jun said quickly, swiveling around at the sound of a dropping mass of oil. “We should ask Okeria. He cleared this place before. We can leave right now and never see this thing again.”

There was a desperate hopeful undertone in Jun’s voice, and the closer I got to the massive slyk, the more I agreed with it. We were not meant to be down here right now; hell, maybe we weren’t meant to be down here at all. If the trawler suddenly decided to up and leave while we were still down here, and we got out of the main platform’s protective aura…

It wasn’t even a decision. “Yeah, we’re leaving.”

Jun nodded and sprinted back to the airlock in one swift motion. I followed just as quickly, and as I reached the top step, I felt a weak electric shock travel through my body. I looked back at the slyk in anticipation, but nothing seemed to have changed. The massive rock was still there, the oil wasn’t moving any more than it already had been, and the electrical pulses were just as lazy as before. I shuddered at the feeling of a million eyes on my back, but chalked it up to my own paranoia as I joined Jun in the relative safety of the entry room.

“Let me get this straight; ya saw a massive slyk in the trawler, and it scared ya enough ta send ya running back here?” Okeria asked. We’d just finished telling him what had happened, and now we were all sitting at a silver table on silver stools that he’d pulled out of nowhere. I was pretty sure that the legs were all gun barrels, and that thought was not comforting.

Jun nodded vigorously. “I know you had to have a floating camera in there with us, so you should know how terrifying that thing was. It looked like a crushripper, but with the head and legs under all that oil.”

“Mmh. I can’t say that you’re wrong there, miss. The slyk ya find inside trawlers range from weak as a fresh sprout to what ya saw with your own eyes, and there are a few that’re even scarier than that. Ya made the right choice not antagonizing that slyk, and that gives me a little more comfort that ya two won’t up and die on me if I leave ya alone for ten minutes.”

“We survived in the Floodforest for a long time. We know what we’re doing.” I cut in. “So what was the point of all that? Did you want to see if we’d kill ourselves on that massive slyk so you could pop in and save us?”

“No.” Okeria answered suspiciously fast. “Anyway, I’ll move that last bit of the slyk off the trawler so ya can kill it when Keratily comes ‘round. But since we have time, I think I should clear up some things before either of ya get the wrong idea about this place. And about me, though I wish I didn’t have ta do that part.”

I raised an eyebrow and leaned forward, pressing an elbow down into the table as Okeria cleared his throat and reached up to grab his helmet on both sides. He lifted it off in one swift motion, revealing to Jun and I a face that I really hadn’t expected.

Two of Okeria’s eyes were stitched shut with thick silver cord, and the other two were simply missing. A mass of pale green scars overtook the man’s entire forehead, almost like he’d been scalped and had skin grafted onto his head from another part of his body. But those other two eyes… there was something off about them. The rest of his head was a pale green with splotches of extremely pale blue, but the skin around his eyes was so dark that it didn’t look like it was his.

“What the hell happened?” I asked incredulously, leaning in closer to get a better look. It wasn’t very polite, but I was curious. “Did you sew your own eyes shut?”

“Why do ya think I did that?” Okeria asked.

I reached out to gesture at the man’s eyes, but pulled my hand back before I could get too insensitive. “That cord looks the same as the table and chairs under us. So it's either part of your core, and you sewed them on yourself, or you got them sewn shut before you got your armor. One leaves you with your sight, and the other means you’re completely blind.”

“An interesting theory, but not quite. Juniper, do ya care ta enlighten mister human on what the cord in my eyes means?”

“I really don’t want to.” Jun said with a thinly veiled veneer of disgust. She had moved back a little from Okeria, and now seemed to look at him completely differently. I saw disgust, of course, but there was something else in there too. It almost looked like pity. “Tell him your lies. I’ll give Seb the truth when you’re not looking.”

Okay, so there was a history there. Jun and Okeria sat silently across from each other for a dozen seconds without moving, then Okeria sighed and crossed his arms. “As you two obviously know, cores heal pretty much any injury that ya sustain as long as ya have battery and you’re inside your armor. They’ll even heal things like gouged-out eyes if ya put on your armor after it happened, but not if ya didn’t have your armor when it happened. That’s how people like me came ta be.”

Okeria set a silver barrel on the table. But this one didn’t glow whatsoever. “Before I came ta this world, I was what ya’d call a zealot. I tried ta get people ta give up praying to their own gods ta come pray ta Thraiv, since water was so obviously the most precious resource our world had. Ta me, everything else was completely pointless. Why pray ta innocence, or light, or whatever else if they can’t exist without water?”

“Because people are different.” Jun muttered.

“Past tense there, miss. I’m not that person any more, as should be obvious by the fact that I’m missing a set of peepers.” Okeria gestured at his mass of scars for emphasis. “As I was saying, I was a zealot. And I pissed off quite a few people with that. They hunted me down and scarred my two good eyes, leaving me blind and bleeding on the streets that I thought loved me. And nobody helped. I heard them. I smelled them. Abyss below, I even felt a good few of them kick me as they went by. And I just couldn’t understand why it was happening.”

I went to speak, but Okeria wasn’t done. “If you’re thinking that I changed my tune after that, you’re wrong. I just started singing louder. I thought they’d hurt me because they knew I was right. That I scared them, destabilized their little worlds with the revelation that their gods weren’t anywhere near as important as mine. And that never changed. I preached for a good half-dozen years after that, then forced myself into a trip ta this place ta keep spreading the gospel of Thraiv.”

Okeria turned his head skyward, and his tone fell to a near whisper. “Thraiv came ta see me off. I didn’t see her, but I could feel her. She never said a single word to me, and I took that as her telling me that I didn’t need ta change anything I was doing. So I didn’t. I got my armor, artificially replaced my sight with these here gadgets, and did what I’d done for so long back home.”

“But this time… people listened.”

Jun sat bolt upright at that, and now there was no pity in her eyes. There was only hatred. “You…”

“Please. This isn’t easy for me ta say, and I know it isn’t easy for ya ta hear. But please listen until the end.” Okeria pleaded. “It don’t end good for me, I promise that, and I’ve been working ta try and help Rainbow Basin and her people as much as I can.”