Spoiler:
Basalt Deltas; The Nether
Violet light flashed from the rip between dimensions, casting a gigantic form unto the fields of basalt and ash with a deafening THUD! Eyes like fire snapped open as the creature uttered a guttural bellow like a giant alligator, flipping herself onto her stomach as she pushed off with two strong legs. Plated osteoderms dotted the top of the dinosaurian’s powerful body; iridescent periwinkle stripes lined her steely-black scales; long quill-lined arms ended in hands tipped with the most vicious meat hooks biology had ever sculpted. Quilled feathers crowned the black saurian’s head and neck, making her look all the more regal as she stood to her full immense height. A mighty theropod, she most definitely resembled—but a true theropod, she was not entirely. Part Tyrannosaurus, part “raptor”, a chimeric mix of several animals designed into what many considered to be the ultimate killing machine; desired to be a living weapon by some, and a theme park attraction by others.
But such prowess would have to be put to the test, for the environment the Indominus rex found herself in was unlike anything she had ever seen before.
Particles of ash fell slowly from above in a silent rain, from a solid wall of rock that took the place of a sky. Archipelagoes and cliffs of basalt and Blackstone stretched out for as far as the Indominus’ incredible eyes could see, suspended above boiling seas of lava that glowed menacingly below. The air was thick with sulfurous fumes, a smell the saurian chimaera was not fond of to say the least. And every now and then, the hybrid’s snake-like eyes spotted strange shapes moving about in the distance; bizarre creatures the likes of which she could not fathom.
Genetically engineered hybrid or no, it was impossible for even a creature such as herself to not feel nervous; she was still an animal, and she still bore animal instincts and emotions. And a twinge of unease coursed through the Indominus as she looked this way and that, sniffing the sulfurous air as to try and make sense of her surroundings. One moment she had been prowling the lush jungles of Isla Tacano, wild and free from the restraints of a fallen theme park—and the next, a flash of light had brought her here. How or why, she knew not; she only knew that the obsidian portal behind her was still glowing with that same purple light.
If she went through it, maybe she could…
KA-BOOM!
A fireball just narrowly missed the saurian hybrid—but its mark was devastating, nonetheless. Half the obsidian detonated in a burst of fire and smoke—and the violet light vanished, no longer brimming with power.
Her only gateway to the world she knew was gone.
A savage growl rippled through the Indominus’ throat as she whirled around, flaming eyes locked onto the perpetrator. Floating close to the barren ground some several meters away, a strange creature hovered. Gigantic and white as deathly ash, trailing ghostly tentacles behind it, with eyes held tightly shut that seemed to leak incessantly with sorrowful tears. Eyes suddenly flashing open to reveal red orbs of fury, the giant ghost fired another sphere of searing flame at the reptile. Ducking low to avoid the projectile, the Indominus rex got down on all fours and roared with a fury more sweltering than the lava below; a sound so loud it rattled the infinite caverns of the strange land. This transgressor had just made a colossal mistake, and would now pay for its sin in blood.
Barking a woeful sob, the Ghast spat another fireball, but the Indominus banked safely out of its path. The tentacled spirit could only weep as the reptilian chimaera charged towards it on two strong legs, roaring with the craving to tear flesh with tooth and claw.
She was ready to taste blood.
*****
Six-fingered hands gripped the edges of the vast mouth of a cave, pulling a grinning, eyeless face into view. A gigantic body treaded smoothly out of the shadows, revealing its hauntingly beautiful aesthetic to all that could see. Even in the moody, ashen landscape of the Basalt Deltas, the metallic hue of her blue exoskeleton could be seen. Her body, just as beautiful as it was downright macabre, looked equal parts skeletal as it did mechanical. As if her entire form were crafted out of twisted machinery fused with the bones of the dead.
Her shape was very dinosaurian, with a skeletal tail stretching more than half her length behind her to end in a viciously curved spike, like the tail of a mythical dragon. No muscle adorned her, yet she looked every bit as powerful as she truly was. Biomechanical pillars for legs carried her forward with perfectly measured steps befitting a monarch, incredibly making little to no sound as she stalked about. Her arms looked almost human, long and bony with traces of mechanical visuals. From her ribbed chest extended a much smaller pair of arms, like forelimbs of the great Tyrannosaurus. And from her head, a massive crest extended backwards like a tri-pronged crown; adorning her like the antlers of a proud elk.
The Alien Queen lumbered stealthily out of the cave she had been traveling through, uttering no sound as she prowled the seemingly infinite caverns of this strange land. Beside her, three other eyeless life forms followed her steps. Equally alien in nature as the Queen, sharing the same biomechanical disposition—but humanoid in design and stature, with eerily sexual overtones. Twin pairs of pipes extended from their backs, ending in suggestive openings. Rather than dragon-like blades, their tails ended in barbed hooks that shared the industrial aesthetic as their bodies.
They were walking perversions of human shape and sexuality, primal and fierce—but superior in every way. To humans, they would be giants—but compared to their Queen, their mother, they looked almost diminutive. Like their mother, they too moved without so much as a trace of noise. Like demented mimes, they seemed almost to dance through the ashen reaches of the Basalt Deltas; moving so fluidly and perfectly that it was hard to tell exactly how they were moving at all. Looked at from the wrong angle, and one might mistake their walking for floating.
The Aliens stared ahead with huge, banana-shaped heads topped with transparent carapaces, underneath which their almost-human skulls could be seen if looked at closely enough. Like their mother who lumbered next to them, their motives could not be placed; they were genuine mysteries, inside and out. No one knew where they were from nor how they came to be, even in the world they knew. All that did matter, however, was that they were here, and the Nether now bore the presence of killers unlike anything it had ever seen.
Near the edge of a cliff the great Queen stopped, her dark children following suit. Gangly arms hanging down eerily past the knees, the biomechanical humanoids turned their heads slowly as they began to scope out the landscape around them, their mother copying their motion. Eye sockets looking through a face that bore no eyes, the middle Alien at last made a sound, and it was a spooky one. Like a series of wet slurring, akin to the running of a washing machine. The Xenomorph to its right turned its head to look at it, uttering the same noise. The Alien to its left uttered a different noise, a wordless assortment of ghostly breaths so soft, they were barely audible. No movement did their drooling mouths make, yet the living surrealist paintings almost seemed to converse in a way impossible for humans to understand. A series of repetitive, hissing breaths emanated from the Queen’s throat as she seemed to join in the possible conversation—and then, almost as quickly as it began, all four Aliens fell silent. They only continued to stand there; looking out over the glowing sea of lava that broiled far below, and the eye-opening expanses of salt and stone that forged this strange land.
The Queen, without turning her toothy head once, uttered a single whispering hiss. And but a second later, her children turned fluidly about face and split up as they began to stalk away. Like predatory mimes with the grace of dark ghosts, the Aliens disappeared into the shadowy reaches of the rocky landscape. Gone like the wind in but a breath.
With the same measured steps as before, the Alien Queen turned away from the viewpoint. Shunning the open, opting to stick to the more shadowy seclusions as she began to navigate her way through the rugged, mountainous terrain.
Her trail focused on the dinosaurian shape moving in the distance…
Violet light flashed from the rip between dimensions, casting a gigantic form unto the fields of basalt and ash with a deafening THUD! Eyes like fire snapped open as the creature uttered a guttural bellow like a giant alligator, flipping herself onto her stomach as she pushed off with two strong legs. Plated osteoderms dotted the top of the dinosaurian’s powerful body; iridescent periwinkle stripes lined her steely-black scales; long quill-lined arms ended in hands tipped with the most vicious meat hooks biology had ever sculpted. Quilled feathers crowned the black saurian’s head and neck, making her look all the more regal as she stood to her full immense height. A mighty theropod, she most definitely resembled—but a true theropod, she was not entirely. Part Tyrannosaurus, part “raptor”, a chimeric mix of several animals designed into what many considered to be the ultimate killing machine; desired to be a living weapon by some, and a theme park attraction by others.
But such prowess would have to be put to the test, for the environment the Indominus rex found herself in was unlike anything she had ever seen before.
Particles of ash fell slowly from above in a silent rain, from a solid wall of rock that took the place of a sky. Archipelagoes and cliffs of basalt and Blackstone stretched out for as far as the Indominus’ incredible eyes could see, suspended above boiling seas of lava that glowed menacingly below. The air was thick with sulfurous fumes, a smell the saurian chimaera was not fond of to say the least. And every now and then, the hybrid’s snake-like eyes spotted strange shapes moving about in the distance; bizarre creatures the likes of which she could not fathom.
Genetically engineered hybrid or no, it was impossible for even a creature such as herself to not feel nervous; she was still an animal, and she still bore animal instincts and emotions. And a twinge of unease coursed through the Indominus as she looked this way and that, sniffing the sulfurous air as to try and make sense of her surroundings. One moment she had been prowling the lush jungles of Isla Tacano, wild and free from the restraints of a fallen theme park—and the next, a flash of light had brought her here. How or why, she knew not; she only knew that the obsidian portal behind her was still glowing with that same purple light.
If she went through it, maybe she could…
KA-BOOM!
A fireball just narrowly missed the saurian hybrid—but its mark was devastating, nonetheless. Half the obsidian detonated in a burst of fire and smoke—and the violet light vanished, no longer brimming with power.
Her only gateway to the world she knew was gone.
A savage growl rippled through the Indominus’ throat as she whirled around, flaming eyes locked onto the perpetrator. Floating close to the barren ground some several meters away, a strange creature hovered. Gigantic and white as deathly ash, trailing ghostly tentacles behind it, with eyes held tightly shut that seemed to leak incessantly with sorrowful tears. Eyes suddenly flashing open to reveal red orbs of fury, the giant ghost fired another sphere of searing flame at the reptile. Ducking low to avoid the projectile, the Indominus rex got down on all fours and roared with a fury more sweltering than the lava below; a sound so loud it rattled the infinite caverns of the strange land. This transgressor had just made a colossal mistake, and would now pay for its sin in blood.
Barking a woeful sob, the Ghast spat another fireball, but the Indominus banked safely out of its path. The tentacled spirit could only weep as the reptilian chimaera charged towards it on two strong legs, roaring with the craving to tear flesh with tooth and claw.
She was ready to taste blood.
*****
Six-fingered hands gripped the edges of the vast mouth of a cave, pulling a grinning, eyeless face into view. A gigantic body treaded smoothly out of the shadows, revealing its hauntingly beautiful aesthetic to all that could see. Even in the moody, ashen landscape of the Basalt Deltas, the metallic hue of her blue exoskeleton could be seen. Her body, just as beautiful as it was downright macabre, looked equal parts skeletal as it did mechanical. As if her entire form were crafted out of twisted machinery fused with the bones of the dead.
Her shape was very dinosaurian, with a skeletal tail stretching more than half her length behind her to end in a viciously curved spike, like the tail of a mythical dragon. No muscle adorned her, yet she looked every bit as powerful as she truly was. Biomechanical pillars for legs carried her forward with perfectly measured steps befitting a monarch, incredibly making little to no sound as she stalked about. Her arms looked almost human, long and bony with traces of mechanical visuals. From her ribbed chest extended a much smaller pair of arms, like forelimbs of the great Tyrannosaurus. And from her head, a massive crest extended backwards like a tri-pronged crown; adorning her like the antlers of a proud elk.
The Alien Queen lumbered stealthily out of the cave she had been traveling through, uttering no sound as she prowled the seemingly infinite caverns of this strange land. Beside her, three other eyeless life forms followed her steps. Equally alien in nature as the Queen, sharing the same biomechanical disposition—but humanoid in design and stature, with eerily sexual overtones. Twin pairs of pipes extended from their backs, ending in suggestive openings. Rather than dragon-like blades, their tails ended in barbed hooks that shared the industrial aesthetic as their bodies.
They were walking perversions of human shape and sexuality, primal and fierce—but superior in every way. To humans, they would be giants—but compared to their Queen, their mother, they looked almost diminutive. Like their mother, they too moved without so much as a trace of noise. Like demented mimes, they seemed almost to dance through the ashen reaches of the Basalt Deltas; moving so fluidly and perfectly that it was hard to tell exactly how they were moving at all. Looked at from the wrong angle, and one might mistake their walking for floating.
The Aliens stared ahead with huge, banana-shaped heads topped with transparent carapaces, underneath which their almost-human skulls could be seen if looked at closely enough. Like their mother who lumbered next to them, their motives could not be placed; they were genuine mysteries, inside and out. No one knew where they were from nor how they came to be, even in the world they knew. All that did matter, however, was that they were here, and the Nether now bore the presence of killers unlike anything it had ever seen.
Near the edge of a cliff the great Queen stopped, her dark children following suit. Gangly arms hanging down eerily past the knees, the biomechanical humanoids turned their heads slowly as they began to scope out the landscape around them, their mother copying their motion. Eye sockets looking through a face that bore no eyes, the middle Alien at last made a sound, and it was a spooky one. Like a series of wet slurring, akin to the running of a washing machine. The Xenomorph to its right turned its head to look at it, uttering the same noise. The Alien to its left uttered a different noise, a wordless assortment of ghostly breaths so soft, they were barely audible. No movement did their drooling mouths make, yet the living surrealist paintings almost seemed to converse in a way impossible for humans to understand. A series of repetitive, hissing breaths emanated from the Queen’s throat as she seemed to join in the possible conversation—and then, almost as quickly as it began, all four Aliens fell silent. They only continued to stand there; looking out over the glowing sea of lava that broiled far below, and the eye-opening expanses of salt and stone that forged this strange land.
The Queen, without turning her toothy head once, uttered a single whispering hiss. And but a second later, her children turned fluidly about face and split up as they began to stalk away. Like predatory mimes with the grace of dark ghosts, the Aliens disappeared into the shadowy reaches of the rocky landscape. Gone like the wind in but a breath.
With the same measured steps as before, the Alien Queen turned away from the viewpoint. Shunning the open, opting to stick to the more shadowy seclusions as she began to navigate her way through the rugged, mountainous terrain.
Her trail focused on the dinosaurian shape moving in the distance…
