Staura blood decorated the walls of the unlit cavern like a modern art exhibit. I moved from guard to guard, blocking and intercepting whatever attacks they tried to muster as Jun and Acasiana dealt quick and deadly attacks. Bullets whizzed by my head and blossomed into explosions of flesh far beyond what their payload should’ve delivered. Shards transformed into all-consuming spheres that left behind nothing but warnings for the reinforcements that poured out of the tunnels like mindless ants.

{So much blood! It’s on my face! Ew, ew, ew, it’s on my face!} Viri squealed and vigorously wiped her tiny hands against her visor.

I did my best to ignore her constant commentary on how violent the encounter was, since I really didn’t need someone else telling me the exact same fucking thing I was seeing. My blade swept through both knees of a huge Staura raising two gauntlets of stone they’d ripped out of the walls to try and crush Mortician, then shifted it into two daggers and cut the necks of two invisible Staura that had tried to sneak by in the chaos.

Their bodies slammed to the floor uselessly, and I stomped my foot to call my hydra in a swamp of petal-scales. She flowed down the scales that coated my armor and manifested by shifting the rocks below, then dragged both corpses down into the stone itself. I gave her a command to check for parasites, then another to either kill or incapacitate them based on if they were infected or not.

It was a longshot, I know, but I had to keep at it. Since a single person without parasites in them could talk. Annette would make sure of it.

Mortician slammed a Staura whose armor looked more like a skintight jumpsuit into a wall with one hand dripping green-tinted oil, then viciously dug into their stomach with the other. They pulled out a handful of flesh writhing with parasites, then delivered a blow to the head with that same hand that looked like something out of a splatterhouse film. That power up was no joke.

Their book dangled from its chain, and they deftly grabbed it with their clean hand before slightly raising it and speaking clearly into my ears.

“Verdant abyss, deep and mournful, let our hymn be heard by all.”

A green aura spilled forth from them, coating the walls, ceiling, and floor in a dark colour that gave off an overwhelming sensation of life. Something swelled up from deep inside me, making my very being seem more… real.

//BUFF GAINED: Hymn of the Verdant Abyss. As long as the source of this buff perpetuates it, their allies within range of a green aura have their base stats increased up to a maximum of the source’s.

Base Stats Granted: 2.

Base stats. I had to assume that meant my actual body’s stats, not those of my armor, and that it had to have some kind of multiplicative effect on everything else. There was no other explanation for how two stat points made me feel this stronger.

{That’s… strangely nice.} Acasiana mused as she removed three Staura’s torsos from existence. {I don’t think a buff has actually had a noticeable effect on me since long before I trapped myself in that horrible hazard.}

Mortician nodded and pulped another Staura’s skull. {We specifically tuned this one so that it would have an effect no matter how greatly our stats differ. Our body’s base stats are absurdly high, so we decided that that would be a good avenue for empowerment.}

Human and Staura base stats were pretty low, so it was definitely a huge increase. It also got me wondering what kind of effect it would have when they combined it with another one of their buffs and empowered both of them. I’d have to wait for the real fight for that.

A multicoloured barrier popped into being a few feet down the tunnel. Jun stepped in a little closer and decimated the rest of the Staura with a peppering of absurdly empowered shots. She kicked a straggler into the wall and promptly dismantled them with a pair of bullets, then lowered her gun when I didn’t call that reinforcements were coming.

{That can’t be all of them, right?} She asked cautiously. {This should be their main base. There should be more than just fodder waiting for us.}

I nodded in agreement and pointed down the tunnel. {There’s plenty more, but that’s because we haven’t even gotten into the facility yet. We’ve got about a mile to go before we get to where they broke in, then an indeterminate amount further until we actually reach their base. Don’t blow too many cooldowns on the people they can spare to watch the far reaches.}

She recalled her barrier and stood straighter. {Gotcha. Are we still keeping the same formation?}

{Same formation, same roles. Just pretend Viri isn’t here.} I shifted my weapon again and gestured at Mortician as I slowly started walking. {Can other people see the aura, or just us?}

{Only those I designate as allies. Which does not currently include Viri as of this moment.} They said as their aura held strong. {Our book produces a visible glow if we open it to the proper page, but as long as we keep it clasped shut, no light will escape. We tested it in strenuous conditions for situations such as this.}

{Good call. Keep moving, and be ready to switch over to your shield at any moment.}

My oil gave me a clear-ish picture of all the strangeness that permeated the tunnel as we walked. What had started out as a cleanly tunneled piece of work that could’ve been done by heavy machinery degraded into something that looked like it had been clawed out by desperate hands. The width shifted from wide enough for more than ten people down to barely enough for two, then back again without any obvious indications as to why.

We took out a few waves of Scalovera’s people through the trek, but most of them didn’t seem adjusted to the tunnels either. People crushed through chokepoints like mindless animals, fell to Jun’s gunfire and Acasiana’s erasure, and the few that actually got through were massacred by Mortician. Our formation naturally shifted, with Acasiana at the far back, Jun and me in the middle, and Mortician up front soaking up any attacks that even came close. It happened so naturally I didn’t even notice in the moment, which was a testament to how well it functioned.

The tunnel grew even less uniform as we approached the end of Viri’s beacon trail. The height had stayed pretty much the same up until that point, but the roof suddenly dipped so low that we had to crouch down to get under it. And a moment after that, the floor rose and we had to crawl to squeeze through a passageway that just barely didn’t fit our armored forms. I carved it out a little more with petal-scales, but as I pulled Jun through with a grunt, a thought stuck in my mind.

How did Scalovera bring people through that tunnel? As far as I was aware, he didn’t have access to any kind of teleportation. And making people small, like Viri could, was so much more inefficient than just getting rid of all the obstructions.

I voiced my thoughts to the group, hoping that at least Viri would have some kind of explanation.

{I have no idea. The terrain shouldn’t be hard to cut through until we get to the facility, and they managed to get into that somehow.} Acasiana said with a shrug. {There are signs of people struggling through the little gaps, so maybe you’re just overthinking this.}

{Signs? Like what?} Jun asked and leaned down next to the wall I’d destroyed. She ran her hands along the stone, then made a noise from deep in her throat. {Fingermarks and scrapings. Yeah, people definitely dragged themselves through here. But isn’t this for people that need to be healed? How’d they fit through here?}

{Corpses are much more pliable.} Mortician offered. We all turned to look at them. {Why are you looking at us like that? We’re right.}

{Yeah, and we hate that you’re right.} I sighed. {I never even thought that they might not be bringing full bodies in here, but now it’s all I’m going to think about. Thanks for that.}

Mortician nodded, and if they didn’t have their helmet on, I bet I would’ve seen a shit-eating grin splitting their face. {You’re quite welcome.}

Viri stayed quiet through all the discussion. I wanted to ask her what she’d actually seen, since she claimed it was a medical base, but it looked like she was second-guessing herself something fierce. Honestly, we were probably thinking very similar things, if I had to guess.

There was a chance Endra had some way to revive her puppets after they’d been completely killed. It’d make sense–she’d repurposed Nia’s body into her own, after all. And I had to hope–even if it was just a little–that it didn’t involve her parasites. Since if it did… maybe I wouldn’t have to tell anyone we no longer had a way to save their loved ones.

I recomposed myself with a calming breath and soldiered on. Mortician’s green glow lit the way like a constant torch in the darkness, exposing everything that my oil-based vision didn’t. All the deep gouges, dried liquids, and rotting things that grew more and more common the closer we got to Scalovera’s base and Acasiana’s facility. Now I didn’t know much about Staura biology, but I didn’t think flesh could rot that quickly–we’d only been fighting for less than a day.

So that beggared the question; how long had Scalovera holed himself up in here? He wasn’t in his mansion when Okeria destroyed it, and the only time I’d actually seen him was in a memory. Had he been down here all this time, infecting people with Endra’s parasites and building up an army for her?

It was the most likely option. And it most likely meant that Viri hadn’t seen anything close to the main force.

Stone slowly gave way to metal. A thick, seamless mass of swirled brass and steel that was pressed so closely to the rock itself that I couldn’t imagine anyone actually building it. I gently traced my hand along it, and I felt the clearance Acasiana had given me spark to life. A swirl shivered and spun, then unwound itself into two perfect slabs of brass and steel that pushed back into the wall with a soft hiss.

They slid open to reveal a pitch-black void that gave off a horrible sense of decay. I gestured for everyone to hold up, then carefully set foot through the opening. The sensation didn’t let up, but it didn’t increase in any way either. A quick scan as far as my helmet could detect confirmed we were alone, but that there was another huge batch of reinforcements on the way from down the tunnel.

{Into the facility as quietly as possible.} I ordered and stepped further inside.

My foot squelched on something that burst into a chunky, wet mess. It splattered across the floor with a soft hiss, then lit up like a glowstick. I clenched my teeth and hurried Jun and Acasiana along, then slid the wall shut once again and turned the ground into petal-scales. A command to my hydra to keep the army occupied was the last thing I sent, and one of her heads emerging from the pool was the last thing I saw of the stony tunnel.

Jun and Mortician looked around worriedly. Acasiana took a deep breath, then let it out in a contented exhale. Viri just squeaked at the chunky glowing plant I’d burst underfoot.

“Ah, the greenhouses. We bred so many different kinds of plants here, and to see some of them thriving even after so long…” Acasiana trailed off, her voice full of emotion. “It brings a tear to my eyes.”

{Communicators.} I reminded her as I tried to take the strange place in. The light of the glowstick-plant seemed to stick to the walls and floor like fluorescent paint, and my helmet didn’t hesitate to show me a multitude of core-bearing things that hadn’t been there a second ago.

I shifted my weapon into a spear and held it at the ready. Jun and Mortician noticed a second later and joined me, but Acasiana just walked forward with a kind of confidence that only came from the powerful or the deranged.

One of the oil-outlined shapes split open lengthwise, and long venus flytrap-like teeth emerged from the split. Something spilled out from the opening, and that something had a core. It looked strikingly similar to a torso without arms, legs, or a head.

{Carnivorous plants. Amazing.} I muttered as the shape turned towards us. {Should’ve stuck with the cannon fodder outside.}