Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Antivoid

The temple of the Oracle was filled with cloyingly sweet smelling smoke, which filtered in through Adam's mask and washed over his face in one unpleasant waft, but the wolf mask he wore was deceptively decorative, and the dark, crystalline eyepieces served to disguise utility.

Inside the mask, fealty, connected to both the mask and the SE system, purred to life from a background idle. Little dials and levels appeared on Adam's HUD bathing his face in a gentle blue light unseen from outside observers. As the sweet smell of cloying smoke permeated the air inside his helmet, a warning appeared at the center of his display morphing the gentle blue light into an angry red.

WARNING TOXINS DETECTED.

It took only a moment of surprise for Adam to react, quickly engaging the respirator function of the mask, which suctioned itself tightly to his skin to create a closed bubble of air. Bad air was vented from his mask, and, with the help of the fealty system, Adam navigated to his Vital's system, and used the console to artificially vent his mechanical lung,

It was an odd sensation, to feel one of his own body parts deflate without him asking it to. In fact it was so disconcerting, that he forced himself to breathe out with it, just so things would feel more natural. His Mask continued to vent air before everything inside was clean. He turned to look at Maverick, and she nodded to him subtly.

Overhead the smoke grew in thickness, filling the room with a heavy fog.

In all their fancy garb, jeweled masks and sequined clothing, the crowd seemed like nothing more than wafting dream or a slow spiral of ghosts trapped in ian endless dance.

Overhead the ceiling of the temple was lost in fog, but he could still see the flickering sconces on the walls, and the smooth, marble floor beneath their feet. The room was very hot and muggy, some steam mixing with the smoke. Hot water bubbled in pools at the sides of the room, while strange alien blossoms sat floating atop the water, their petals in many vibrant shades of orange and purple.

Adam barely recognized the palace, despite having been inside once before.

Then again that had been a very long time ago.

At the far end of the room, just over the heads of the other party goers, Adam could just make out the altar and pedestal on which the oracle might have sat, and it was here were his familiarity with this place fled back out the double doors, and h was left looking upon a scene the likes of which he had not seen before.

He recognized the oracle, a beautiful woman sitting languidly on her pedestal, dark olive skin shining in the flickering candlelight. She lay on her side one hand resting on the gentle curve of her hip as the smoke rose around her emanating from behind the altar itself. Once upon a time, this temple had been dedicated to the Greek god Apollo, master of prophecy. Adam remembered the towering golden statue which had loomed behind her on their first meeting: an olympic fit young man, covered by nothing but a fallen sheet of fabric draped artfully around his hips, with gentle curls rendered in marble, and carrying a lyre.

That effigy was gone, and its corpse lay in rubble at the back of the room, and from that rubble there rose.... A familiar twisting structure of stark white human bone, which branched upward like the limbs of a tree, spreading up the wall and onto the ceiling in a pattern that radiated from behind the Oracle's head. Despite being the relative consistency and appearance of bone, the limbs pulsed and shivered. The fog around them took on a reddish hue. Had this been a videogame Adam almost expected to hear boss music.

At his side, Maverick shifted uneasily.

He heard her engage her comms channel, as they were pushed forward by an eager crowd until they were packed back to front in a crushing herd.