Young Writers Society

Now that they were all prepared for the inevitable fight - because Codix and Nadira were both growing more certain that they were about to deal with a foe and not a friend - they began to make their way to the location of the mysterious red dot. They tried to engage in some small talk, but the conversation died down the closer they came to whatever was lurking there.

But just as they were about to head down the hallway that would open into the room with the source of the red dot, Codix came to a sudden stop.

"Does anyone actually know what a Wraith looks like?" he asked.

Nadira turned to stare at him.

"I know it sounds stupid," he said, his voice dropping down to a whisper, "but what if we accidentally attack something that isn't a Wraith? Or, alternatively, think we're dealing with a perfectly good person and then it turns out to be a Wraith?"

''I saw an illustration in the library. Trust me, there is no mistaking a Wraith.''
I told Codix, keeping my voice low in turn.
''Look for colourless skin, sharp hairless brows, strange indents in the cheeks...You will know them when you see them.''

While the description helped slightly, Raiden was still unsure of what the Wraiths looked like. He shook his head.
"Hey, Jarvis," he said in a low voice, so that the others wouldn't hear him.
Yes, sir?
"Tell me when there's a wraith around, yeah?" he said, hanging near the back of the group. He crouched near the wall, and he left a gun on the ground.
Will do, sir.
He was now down to the pistol and the assault rifle, and the pouches around his waist.

Aegeas walked to the front of the group, pulling out a sword and gripping it in his available hand. "Well," he said, "If it tries to kill us, it's a wraith, or something about as friendly. If it doesn't, it probably isn't. We're armed and prepared; even if it turns out to be a misunderstanding, we can make sure nobody dies." He knew he probably should've said something more comforting, but he wasn't good at that, especially since he could be a few seconds from a fight.

Bo stood just behind Aegeas. "I mean, we're as prepared as we can be. And we'll all be looking out for each other. So we'll be alright." Bo smiles, still keeping his voice down to a whisper like the others. "So... ready to keep going?"

Codix listened to all of this and then gave a little nod, hoping that things would be as alright as Bo was convinced they would be. He slipped his hand into Nadira's and gave it a tight squeeze. As long as he had her by his side, he would be okay. Probably not safe, and probably not uninjured, but he would get out of whatever was ahead of them. He took a deep breath and tried to ignore his shaking hands as he joined Aegeas at the front of the group. Nadira fell into place beside Bo.

They walked down the hallway.

It finally opened out into a room.

Codix gasped at the sight. He knew that he was supposed to say silent to hide their approach, but how could he not when he saw something like this? What looked like stasis pods lined the walls. He lost count after the first couple of them. The ones closest to the door were empty. But as he continued looking down the rows, he began to make out things inside the pods. They weren't human. They weren't sixen. They weren't even Wraith. They were small and looked absolutely disgusting-

"Th-those are human fetuses," Nadira suddenly whispered.

Oh.

"But I don't understand why they would be here in the first place," she added. They both looked down the row at the same time. In the very far back, there were three pods set aside from the rest - one had another one of the fetuses, one was empty and the third had a man. Who, if Codix looked closely at, shared a striking resemblance to a certain god of souls.

But that didn't make sense! None of this did. Why would the people who had built this place even use this sort of room in the first place? And if they were gone, who had been using it inside?

"Codix?" Nadira said, standing in front of another one of the pods. "You need to see this."

He joined her.

She was looking at a sixen embryo.

One that had a birthmark on the nape of its neck, a strange little blotty pattern that Codix recognized all too well. He raised a hand and hesitantly touched the back of his own neck, running his fingers over the same exact one.

"That-that's me?"

(I am so sorry, I'm new to this site and have no idea how the comm works. But your rp sounds really good and I would love to join. Is that okay?)

Bo blinked a few times, letting his grip on his gun loosen as he took in the image before him. It was........ so weird. But he knew what was in the pods before Nadira said anything. They were little humans - and what he would've expected to never actually see outside of a mother's womb was displayed in a collection of artificial wombs.

More and more he was beginning to feel like he woke up in a Sci-Fi movie.

At closer inspection, some of the tiny humanesque growing babies seemed to have a strange resemblance... to some of the...

Bo had to swallow a bit of baby vomit in his mouth. He cleared his throat.

"Is anyone else getting the feeling that Kartiel is cloning all of us?"

Aegeas walked around the room, tapping the glass surface of each of the containers. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking at. The creatures floating in fluid looked like babies, but more deformed. Smaller, weaker, frailer. As though they hadn't been born yet.

That's about when he realized what "fetus" meant.

It felt like the blood was draining from his head. He staggered forward, vision blurring. His sight refocused just in time for him to see the next container. The fetus within looked vastly different from the ones he had seen before, with its longer tailbone, smaller frame, larger teeth, and even traces of fur starting to appear on the hands and stomach.

It didn't take a genius to know who that was supposed to be. Aegeas tried to move, tried to say something, but it came out as mumbled nonsense. He pitched back, falling onto the ground. His vision went black, his ears caught a surprised cry from someone, and then he passed out.

Raiden, lagging behind due to him placing his gun down, caught only the last bit of Bo's sentence.
"...Kartiel is cloning us?"
W H A T ?
He ran around the corner, sliding to a halt. He first saw Aegeas on the floor, unconscious. Then he looked up. His eyes went wide as he slowly took off his helmet.
"What the..."

His eye twitched, and he reached for his assault rifle.
"There can only be one..." he whispered, looking down the sights at the glass cylinders.

The barrel was unsteady.

Bo was not there in time to catch Aegeas as he fell. As soon as he rushed over to the passed out otter guy Raiden came in and began to panic.

“Woah, woah! Raiden. Put the gun down. There’s no one here. We don’t know for sure that he’s cloning us. That was just my first thought. We’ll do our best to figure out what’s going on just like everything else, but let’s not jump to violence unless absolutely necessary.”

Nothing under the earth could have prepared me for the sight. Great jars with pink grotesqueries resembling unformed human babes floated silently in some vile arcane liquid. These things were not alive yet, they could not be.
There had only been one dot on the screen.

My eyes were led down the line to the man at the end of the row. It was hard to tell through the glass, but I thought that he fit the description of the blue-haired Kartiel. Were these all bodies created for the purpose of his possession?
I thought about it longer, and caught on to my companions usage of strange new words, like 'fetus' and 'cloning'. I had heard the word 'fetus' before, in its old Latin usage, but not in this new context. Along with this, it became apparent that one of these 'fetuses' strongly resembled Codix, and to the great shock of Aegeas, another resembled him.

It was only with these new contexts that I formed a hypothesis of what 'cloning' might mean. I did not like what I came to. I was strongly opposed to the idea of sharing my face with anyone, especially with some immortal knave who would surely disgrace my form. The sheer gall of this man was boundless.
I wished then that I could know which of these wretched little creatures was my double, that I could dispose of it there and then.

That was when Raiden shared my sentiment, or was about to before Bo defused the situation.

He was right. It was unwise to apply violence to every problem without regard for intricacies. It would be especially unwise to earn the ire of the one person who had the power to send us home without a bloody good reason.
I decided to join Bo in his sensibility, and attempt to further defuse young Raiden's excitement.
I calmly strolled up beside him, and placed my hand on his firearm, gently lowering the barrel.

''I am unfamiliar with the etiquette of dealing with... clonings? But there's no way to identify which one was taken from you, and I feel as though destroying somebody elses' on their behalf would be... improper.''

It was at that moment that a distant, fuzzy memory came back to him, and as he picked up Aegeas’s shoulders from the floor, trying to wake him, his eyes lit up. He looked over at Raiden.

“Raiden. Think of the lake house. The... the smell of flowers. Your happy place.”

Raiden slowly turned to Bo. His eyes were still wide and frantic, but they held a look of surprise and fear. He nodded slowly.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes.
The lake-house. The smell of the flowers. You remember it clearly, don't you?
His shaky breath seemed to calm down as he thought about it. When he opened his eyes again, he was calm; his eyes were not frantic anymore. They were relaxed, almost happy.
"Thanks, Bo. I don't know why you know about that place," he gave a small smile, "but thank you."

Aegeas's hearing came back first. He caught the words "lake house" and "flowers" before dots of color took shape in front of him. They reformed into the tubes and metallic walls that he had remembered, complete with the abominations that had caused him to pass out. Aegeas groaned; this really wasn't a dream, was it? Still, he blinked a few times. No luck.

Something clicked in his head. Realizing that he was being held up by Bo, he gently pushed Bo's hands off his shoulders and stood on his own, unsteadily at first. "You," Aegeas said, turning to face Raiden. Raiden had lowered his weapon and slumped his shoulders, now smiling. "You're the kid Taber talked about. I thought he'd been dreaming again. And he" - gesturing to Bo - "must be your friend. Taber mentioned him too."