Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

My Sunlight

Krill felt the prongs of Kazna's trident pierce his chest. The pain was exquisitely excruciating, beyond anything he had ever felt before. As a Vrul he had once experienced pain differently, but in human form, the difference was something he simply couldn't describe.

But he knew, this was worse.

All his senses were heightened, all his nerves more acutely tuned to the instinct of survival.

And that instinct told him he was dying.

The prong of her spear had punched through the wall of his thoracic cavity and pierced straight through an atrium of his heart, blood gushed briefly over the facade of his chest as his heart spasmed for life, but it was no use. He felt his extremities go cold as everything around him faded to black.

-

His next moment of awareness came with a sudden sense of cold, like being plunged into a pool of Earth-Arctic water. Krill opened his mouth to gasp but found he could not pull in the air. What followed was immediate panic as he realized he couldn't breathe. All other senses were momentarily blocked from his consciousness as he fought for breath. His respiratory system flatlined, then struggled, but finally, with one great, choking gasp, he began to expel the embryonic mucus that had done its job to protect him during the fight. Air rushed into his body, whose senses seemed surprisingly dull and muted after experiencing death as a human.

Krill gasped limbs flailing as he tried to push himself upright, body thick with the protective slime that had preserved his construct. The armor he had been wearing was now an empty husk without a driver. Slowly, his vision resolved, brain attempted to adjust from the sharp clarity of human sight to the prismatic nature of Vrul vision.

It was the blood he noticed first, so much of it, covering the deck and pooling in great ruby pools.

And then there was Adam.

He lay chest down on the deck, half of his helmet cracked away to reveal his face which glowed ghostly pale with blood loss. Blood loss, because the blood was everywhere else,, coating his body and cracked suit.... And the SE hardware trailing behind him. The spine of the SE exoskeleton had been ripped completely off. The attachments for the arms and chest had either been ripped off or snapped away from the force, and now it was attached by only the bloody cables that still held the suit to his lower body.

The rest dragged on the ground like spilled viscera.

"Krill" He wheezed.

He didn't know what to do.... Not here, not without an immediate surgical suite.

All around them, there was carnage.

Ramirez and, to his surprise, maverick lay in a heap at the far end of the disk, Sunny lay next to them, just beginning to stir, while kazna and lanus battled for dominion, though he was fighting a losing battle.

Every moment another flickering of the architect's light would mark a rise in her power.

And just behind them, a streak of light and energy was headed in their direction.

He looked back at the suit.

Adam had crawled over, and let him out of the suit, it had likely taken the last of what remained in him.

Sunny groaned and began to crawl to her feet.

And that's when krill saw it.

The console.

Kazna had been standing in front of it before, but the fight with Lanus had pulled her away, leaving it open. He was no fighter, even in human form that was true, but he was smart, and that was not up for debate.