!!!
The machine raced up to be at eye-level with Jinju. However it didn't appear to have any eyes or sensors to approximate his location. He couldn't see if it had any weapons enabled on it either.
This machine! I thought it was stuck. How did it… That pebble! It might have noticed my presence by the noise it caused.
What was the machine's purpose? Was it a camera? A turret to fight off intruders? The agency who hired him hadn't provided any intel about this object staring at him.
Curse the agency! Why didn't they mention anything about this earlier? Or maybe… They did. Did they? I don't know. I don't remember…. Ugh!
He winced as he pulled on his hair to stabilize the rush of negative emotions running wild and free inside his body.
His eyes took note of a rotating pyramidal structure fixed at the center of the levitating automation device.
It's spinning! Is it… dangerous?
Jinju thought it was better to leave the machine alone and see if it did so for him, too.
To his relief, the machine didn't notice a thing as he climbed up some more steps. Looking back at it, a fresh idea bloomed out of the ground of his mental theatre.
Hmm… Sharp edges and cyclic motion. I wonder if it will work. But I could give it a try, I guess.
He walked back to the machine, careful not to step too close in case he slipped off the edge of the stair step and fell down several meters of altitude. The pyramidal section of the robotic (he assumed it to be one) device was still continuously busy rotating at a frequency slow enough to figure out its shape but fast enough to know that it resembled some kind of engine torque dissipation mechanism.
He reluctantly closed his hands into fists and brought the twins close to the surgical needle for separation.
The magnetic discs and the surface of the drill-like peripheral made contact. A loud cling occurred.
"Yes, it's—"
Jinju's body got flung up high into the air before he could even finish his smiling moment.
"—worki—AAAAAH!"
At the end of the parabolic wingless flight, Jinju landed back on the stairs – hundreds of meters higher than he was previously located a few heartbeats ago.
Thankfully, his acrobatic skills could be used by his legs, allowing him to land back on his feet by performing a somersault midair. If it were any other regular civilian who had gone through the same experience, their failed landing itself could have cost them a pair of broken ankles and knees.
He panted and glanced back down to see if the machine was still following him.
Alright. Got my answer. Gargonian technology has its levels. Whoever made these magnetic shackles must be superior to the engineer behind whatever weird machine or robot that thing is! *Sigh*
Looking ahead, his excitement hormone levels sank again.
The stairs had kept him busy with the illusion that he was progressing towards someplace, something. But now, the stairs faded back into solid ground with a pair of metallic doors ahead of him.
Is this it? The way out of here? Well, I don't have much of a choice. Don't wanna see what more surprises that machine down below has for me.
The double-doors were littered with mystical runes, glowing a shade of off-white around the perimeter of its surface. No handle bar was in sight, nor any keyholes or any kind of hinge or crack except for the vertical slit that gave the double-door its definition.
A small deck of stairs led up to the doors themselves, making the doors seem too important to be positioned at ground-level.
How do I open this? Do I simply knock?
Tap. Tap.
Using both his hands at the same time made it difficult to knock properly.
He made his hands hug each other into a fisty blob of braided fingers before he applied his second attempt.
Thump. Thump.
No answers came from the other side. Not that he anticipated anyone to.
The silence irritated Jinju more than the fear of any other sources of unexpected sound.
"HEY!" he raised his voice, calculating the risk and willing to accept it. "OPEN THE DOOR! I'M STUCK HERE. ANYONE! CAN YOU HEAR ME???"
He searched around the surroundings for any clues about how to make those two sheets of metal move. Nothing except for a few pillars and a light blanket of the now-familiar mist.
Also familiar was another sound accelerating with a higher pitch than he last heard it.
He knew exactly where the sound was coming from.
Jinju swung his gaze behind him and just as he had expected, his loud voice had attracted the machine again.
"What? You're back here? Throwing me off wasn't enough for you?" he taunted at the non-living collection of material, the pyramidal central instrument still alive with energy. "Okay then… Let's put you to good use."
He walked back to the ending of the stairs, stopping right in front of the intimidating blind organism operating without a soul.
I know I cannot move this thing towards the doors. But I know who can.
He knew, but he didn't like the thought of it.
Repeating the same steps as he had done in his last meeting with this giant fidget spinner here, Jinju volunteered to become a human missile headed towards the double-doors, remembering to shift his body around to keep his wrists pointed toward the materialistic enemy.
Except….
The angle of impact had been miscalculated, causing him to fly up towards the hard rock ceiling instead of the horizontal deflection Jinju estimated.
Thunk!
Ugh! Ahh!
The whole cavern interior began rotating around Jinju, from his perspective, as his helpless body fell back downwards and rested upon the floor. On it, he panted and let his head recover from the mild skull injury he just faced. His body lay down flat on the ground-level of the current floor.
BLANG! SMASH!
An explosive blast of sound shook the very bones in Jinju's weakened frail body. Looking up and towards his feet while he stayed fallen, the sight made him want to scream out. Controlling his shock, he let out a whispered phrase of exclamation.
"By the name of—!"
He felt fortunate to be flung by the machine to be lying down right now. Because right now, the machine stood in crumbs littered around the area nearby, with some metallic entrails still stuck to the oblong block of metal that had erupted out of the double-doors.
If he had been standing there, he could've been the target instead of the dead living organism, now further dead dead.
Upon a few more seconds of observing the new object, Jinju's intuition informed him that this single block of metal was the 'double-door' itself, disguised to resemble doors.
Without thinking clearly, Jinju saw an opening in the body of the piston hammerhead from below as it slowly retracted itself back into the initial formation and shape of the doors that he had found them as. Inside the hollow space of the piston, darkness ruled.
No lights. Just the creaking noise of gears and metal scraping against rock as the piston crawled back to its original state. Then even that stopped. No movement.
What now?
Did he just trap himself on his own? There was no guarantee if there was a way ahead, just because of an open hatch existing on the bottom of this hollow piston.
He began walking, into the hands of fate. Into the lair of darkness.
His only companion were his own footsteps.
No light, no sound, no smell.
How deep and wide is this cave network? Where am I even going? Why am I even involved in this? I was just following my instructions…
"Really? This one was just following instructions?" an unknown voice answered from somewhere in the dark.
The suddenness of the voice made Jinju ignore the fact that someone or something just read his mind.
"Huh? Who? Who's there?" his vocal cords, jaws and tongue moved before he could control them. A human? No… No sane person can remain calm in a dark space like this. Is it a Gargonian? Oh no… My hands are still tied. I cannot fight back. I must try to keep things calm. No aggression.
"Ofcourse this one wants to play the pacifist when the cards are not right in its favor" the hidden voice commented. Strangely, Jinju couldn't determine the direction of the voice. It felt as if the voice was not even appearing from any direction but rather being generated inside his own head. "What does this one want? We prescribed a peaceful ending to this one's pathetic puny life. But look at the arrogance and persistence! Truly, this one deserves something else."
He still couldn't see anything nor hear any physical entities or objects around him. Only the blackness of death and frightful feelings. No, it cannot be a Gargonian. They didn't speak in our languages.
"Who are you? Where are you? Coward, show yourself," the demon hunter looked around for even the faintest hint of the position of the creature talking to him.
"Oh, so this one wants to communicate with our physical embodiment?" the disembodied voice. "Is this one strong enough to withstand our beauty? Arrogant little thing who wishes to be humbled. Humble it, we shall."
One moment it was all dark.
Another moment, the entire space and the horizon itself became filled with a monstrous higher dimensional entity covering up the horizon and all the directions of space that Jinju could observe. A size of several orders of magnitude that seemed far too big to fit inside the galaxy, forget the Earth. Billions of eyes and organs and unnamed things looked back at Jinju Wan.
His own two eyes burned.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! NOOO! STOPP! STOPPPPP!"
ns216.73.216.39da2
and then Add to home screen.