Chapter Text
Vvvvhhh...
The iterators. Godlike biomechanical structures created as a gift for the lowly creatures whose minds are too small to yearn for ascension.
Click!
Slugcats. Smarter than the average. Smart enough to separate their conscience from their instincts. Mobile, too. The perfect messengers, if trained correctly.
SQUISH!
Even more perfect if the messenger was wholly created by such a godly construct as an iterator. Stomach and throat sacrificed for brain matter and weapons created from their own body.
Click. Squish. Vvvvhhh...
Yes, Spearmaster is perhaps the greatest slugcat this world has ever seen. He knows his purpose, a necessary intermediary for two mechanical titans. The pearl within him holds information more important than the mediocre cycle of eating and sleeping that most other slugcats are stuck in!
Squish squish!
The thrill of the hunt comes not only from a need to survive, but for the noble purpose of doing the gods’ work. The prospect of doing something the iterators cannot, why, it nearly makes him feel like a god!
Spearmaster looks at the red lizard in front of him, watching the limp body for a couple of seconds before calling it dead. You never know with these lizards; their heads can be pitch black and then light up for a split second to bite your leg off.
Now, why in the world did he drag a red lizard all the way above the clouds and into the gate room of an iterator? Simple, really. Seven Red Suns implanted a dark red pearl into his chest and sent him off to Five Pebbles, as he’s done many times before. As Spearmaster traveled across the fallen terrain of the facility grounds, he reflected on those many times. He’s repeated this exact path, gone through this exact cycle, so many times that the route to Five Pebbles and back has been burned into his memory. How much of Pebbles’ facility has he truly seen? Outskirts, Industrial Complex, Chimney Canopy, The Wall, and Five Pebbles! How long has he been a mindless messenger for? Every time he felt the urge to wander past his destination, he would stop and remind himself of the godly mission he was entrusted with. But not this time!
At last, he gave into his desires. He wandered the flooded tunnels of Drainage System, ran for his life over the acid in Garbage Wastes, marveled at the dark beauty of Waterfront Facility, and traveled up the broken bridge leading to the iterator Looks To The Moon. She was quite the surprise for him. He’d known about the existence of an iterator close to Pebbles, but certainly didn’t think it was this close! It didn’t matter how many times he’d drowned, fallen in green acid, got electrocuted to death, bitten, snipped, knocked into the abyss below him. It was all worth it for the prospect of coming into contact with another biomechanical puppet.
The red lizard had been a result of his antics across many cycles. It followed him to the ends of the earth, and made for a grand meal when he found out he was some karma short of entering the gate. Poor Mitchell, but it was rather stupid to trust a walking weapon generator no matter how many dropwigs it fed you. Nonetheless, Spearmaster can’t complain about being intellectually superior to this beast, especially with it bridging the final gap between Spearmaster and the god within his reach.
Yes, just one more period of restless hibernation and he’ll meet another iterator! The struggles he’d gone through will all be given meaning. Excitedly, he pulls a spear out of his tail, intent on scratching a drawing into the floor of the shelter, when the tail of the lizard moves again. Between the shelter closing and the gravity shifting, the lizard is likely still dead. But it doesn’t stop Spearmaster from panicking into a slide, throwing a spear at the lightless head of the lizard.
Almost instantly, he feels himself slipping underneath the lizard and into the ground ?! The last thing he feels is the lack of air as he suffocates within the walls of the shelter.
XXXXXXXXXX
...
...
He awakes to the faint noise of a gate closing. His breathing is deep, nose working overtime to find air in whatever small pocket he’s in. His body feels stuck in water, if the water were solid metal. But he can move. Slowly, he inches downwards, closer to where he heard the gate, and...
“Ow!” Spearmaster yowls through his tail as he lands on his face. He takes in air rapidly, head shaking while he stands up and looks around. This... This is not the gate he came from.
The karma requirements on each side are different. Before it was five on the left and one on the right. Now after passing through the gate, he is on the side with five, and the other side displays an unrelated two. But he swears he just- Is he going crazy? Has the toil of his countless failed cycles finally gotten to his head and caused him to hallucinate the entire iterator can? No, the Precipice is too vivid in his mind, as is his former excitement at the adventure. He can’t have imagined it.
Nonetheless, this current situation is no daydream, either. Here he is, at an unfamiliar gate, a dull blue hue tinting the air. Despite his current karma he can’t pass back through. So, still in a slight daze, Spearmaster crawls through the pipe in the ground in search of another shelter before the rain inevitably comes.
The first thought that strikes his mind is that something feels familiar. The general architecture of the tube-structured metal, and the half-waterlogged rooms all seem vaguely similar to Waterfront Facility. Adding on to this, snails and jetfish litter the place. He saw a shelter, but passed by it, caught in his curiosity about the odd parallels to Waterfront Facility.
Rather quickly, he comes across another shelter. A very, very familiar shelter. In fact, he’d hibernated in this exact room in Waterfront Facility, did he not? The ladder-like pole formation outside of the pipe, the three other pipes in the ceiling on the other side of the room, and the shelter at the top of the ladder. Even the same three inedible unpopped bubble fruits are here! The only thing different is the grayish hue and green-blue coloration of the water, in contrast to Waterfront’s bolder tint.
Spearmaster can’t stop to mull on the implications of this, as he feels the ground shake underneath him. Ah, he didn’t realize how slowly he’d truly gone through those few areas. Swiftly, he climbs the poles to the shelter and crawls into the entrance.
What isn’t expected is a glowing yellow slugcat curled up on one side of the downwards-facing shelter.
What? He didn’t think it possible that a normal slugcat from beyond the retaining walls could survive in the harsh ecosystem Spearmaster has traversed countless times. But then again, he isn’t quite sure where he actually is. Is he inside of Moon’s can, somehow? It can’t be – between the similarities to Waterfront Facility, the strange gate, and the exposure to the sky in a room he passed through. Furthermore, he saw hints of slight decay in the walls of each room he’s been in. Fallen metal, scratches, dents and the like. What if he’d slept for cycles and cycles, so many that the mighty iterator had fallen, as he’d observed to be possible from the many images Seven Red Suns had shown him?
That’s ridiculous. Still, having no clue what could have happened to his dream is making him feel morbidly powerless. The purposed slugcat, skinnier, faster, perfectly crafted to kill, made to be superior to its distant kin, can’t solve a mystery as strange as this.
Perhaps he’ll ask this specimen next to him. It appears to be slightly larger than him, only due to Spearmaster’s own skinniness. A distracting bright yellow glow surrounds it, as if the slugcat itself is a lantern. A small square hovers above its head, the latter being forcefully tucked into the tip of its tail held by its hands. It sleeps peacefully, something Spearmaster is unable to do.
At the sound of the shelter closing, he pulls a spear out of his tail and draws what he thinks Looks To The Moon’s puppet looks like to pass the time.
XXXXXXXXXX
“AH! Oh, goodness! I’m sorry, you startled me!”
After the grinding sound of the shelter opening, those words ring through Spearmaster’s ears. High pitched, presumably female. Or a fairly whiny male. Spearmaster decides to go with the first one.
“My, what a strange tail you have,” the stranger breathes airily, as if she were talking to some other slugcat and to herself at the same time. Considering how he’s still curled up in the corner (a position he took after getting bored of doodling), she probably thinks he is still sleeping. At this realization, Spearmaster shifts to sit upright, drawing a shocked gasp from the stranger.
“Great cycles! You’ve- You’ve got no mouth! That’s- That’s indeed strange. And what... interesting spear you’ve got there. And you’re so thin! Are you starving? Oh dear, could you not eat because of your lack of a mouth?! How are you even alive?!”
Spearmaster, growing quite bored of this conversation, picks up the ‘interesting spear’ on his side of the shelter. “I am not starving-”
Before he can finish his sentence, the annoying stranger is already stammering again. “You can speak?! How, how ?!”
“I vocalize through my tail.”
“Your tail?! What a wonder! I would say you’re something from a pup tale, but I once said that about the tentacle monsters, so nothing surprises me anymore!”
You sure seemed surprised at my appearance, Spearmaster refrains from retorting. “I eat through my tail as well, to answer your other suspicions.”
The yellow slugcat stares wondrously at Spearmaster with its wide, pitch black eyes. “Wow! I can’t say I’ve ever met a slugcat with evolutions as unique as yours! Where can I find slugcats with such extreme adaptations?!”
He briefly considers explaining his involvement with the affairs of the gods, but assumes the slugcat in front of him... probably does not have a large enough brain capacity to understand. Plus, the cycle has already begun, and time is ticking towards the oncoming downpour. So instead, he says, “Far away. I have a question for you, and please do not mind if I sound ignorant when I ask this, but... what is the name of the region we’re currently in?”
The slugcat tilts her head in thought, bringing a finger underneath her chin to scratch it lightly. “Hmm, I do believe this region is named Shoreline.”
“Shoreline? Are you sure?”
“Yes, quite. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve never heard of ‘Shoreline’ before. And it looks very similar to another region I have been to.” Spearmaster pauses before adding, “In fact, some rooms look nearly identical in structure.”
The stranger doesn’t respond for a moment, simply looking with her giant stupid eyes. Eventually, she laughs. “Why, my friend, many regions look similar to each other if you get close enough to the gate! Where did you-” She cuts herself off, jeering into a hysterical voice so abruptly that Spearmaster flinches. “Oh great cycles, what am I doing ?! I am a rude, rude slugcat! Meeting someone as kind as you and never once thinking to ask your name!”
Spearmaster shifts a bit closer to the wall. “It’s Spearmaster. How-“
The other slugcat reaches across the gap in the middle of the shelter to shake his hand so rapidly that he nearly falls over. “Monk! It’s a pleasure to meet you, good Spearmaster!”
Monk stops flailing her hands about, but keeps them tightly clasped around Spearmaster’s. The purple slugcat tries to pull them away, sending Monk into the tunnel below them. She’s surprisingly light, and weak, it seems. After a couple of seconds she pokes her head back into the square room. “A-Ah, Spearmaster, it’s alright! I’m not hurt. Maybe a bit startled but not hurt.”
He briefly considers extending a hand to help Monk out of the tunnel but decides not to. “Good to know, I suppose. Say, do you happen to be familiar with the iterator Looks To The Moon?”
“Looks To The...” Monk thinks for a moment before perking up. “Yes, yes I do! In fact, I just came from visiting her! Would you like me to bring you to her?”
Spearmaster, not keen on pushing his luck with any questions about the other slugcat’s state of mind, nods. “Yes, I would.”
Monk smiles and ducks her head back down into the tunnel. “Alright. Follow me, Spearmaster! She’s not too far away.”
At the sound of the yellow slugcat entering the pipe, Spearmaster focuses to sense how much time is left in the cycle. It’s a shorter one, with about two-thirds of the day left before the rain comes. If he can’t find anything to eat, it will be fine, as he still has enough food from the red lizard last cycle to last him. Not long after Monk, Spearmaster descends into the pipe at the bottom of the shelter.
XXXXXXXXXX
“... almost there, so watch your step, or you’ll go plunging into the water!”
Monk had been “conversing” with Spearmaster since they exited the shelter. It was really just her sharing facts and anecdotes about herself and her travels while Spearmaster half-listened. Truthfully, he was far more caught up in the strange sense of unease he’d been feeling at the sight of basically every room. Half of them he could have sworn he’d been through before in Waterfront Facility. And some of them seemed like fallen, ruined versions of themselves. Earlier they were swimming through a very large stretch of water, and while Monk babbled endlessly about a leviathan she’d encountered, Spearmaster couldn’t stop looking at the strange structures in the distance that jutted out from the ocean. They were all seemingly mechanical, and he could have sworn he’d seen the same patterns in iterator cans.
Absolutely none of his dread had gone away when they entered what Monk called Looks To The Moon. What it really was was the fallen ruins of a portion of a superstructure. Spearmaster can no longer deny it and write it off as some other sort of machine. As they walk along a long horizontal pole leading into the next pipe, all he can ask himself is, where’s Moon?
“We’re so close, so very close Spearmaster!” Monk chirps ahead of him, crawling painfully slowly through a web of tight tunnels. “I must warn you, though, that she’s a bit... quiet. You don’t have the Mark of Communication, do you?”
Spearmaster responds, still distant in his thoughts, “No, it would be a security risk.”
“How unfortunate! Well, I must confess to you, my dear friend, that I am not exactly the saint I’ve made myself out to be...”
“You have not made yourself out to be much of anything.”
Monk finally finds the exit pipe and crawls through it, continuing after Spearmaster does the same. “I apologize if my first impression on you was unsavory! I promise I am a very good slugcat these days, though I will admit my first few cycles here I did some truly despicable acts...” Her voice strains, and Spearmaster can tell it is not only from diving into the water. She genuinely sounds distressed when she continues, “Why, I’d wandered all the way over here and... Oh, I can hardly go on! I was hungry, so hungry! And, unknowingly, I’d consumed all but one of her precious neurons!”
Spearmaster crawls down to the water’s surface and begins to swim as well, while Monk has already crept up onto a tiny island in the large pool. “You ate all of her neurons except for one? I do not believe you. Your stomach capacity can’t be large enough to-”
His voice cuts itself short when he shuffles to stand next to Monk and see what she means. The construct before them is the destroyed remnants of an iterator’s chamber. In the center, a platform surrounded by water, and on that platform, a blue puppet, held hostage by its umbilical still attached to the wall. Of what was once hundreds, thousands, millions of neuron flies are four, floating above the naked iterator they’re formatted to.
Every thought processing through Spearmaster’s head is abruptly stopped when he sees the iterator. This cannot be Looks To The Moon, can it? But it must. The fallen superstructure and the puppet itself is undeniable proof that he was too late. Too late to see the iterator in all its glory. Bright coloration washed away with rain, it sits nearly unmoving on the rubble island. She speaks, but it only comes out as distorted gibberish due to Spearmaster’s lack of the Mark. It did not bother him before; looking at the brain of a mighty titan was enough for him. But not this... this washed-up fallen god he’s been given!
“I came all this way,” he mutters, “for this ?”
Monk seems to take the comment as a personal attack, turning to defend herself with panicked speech. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I apologize for my former, younger self’s misdeeds! It was not my intention to-”
“Shut up!” Spearmaster finally snaps at her before looking back at Moon. “Why did I pass through all of those regions just to be given something so... lame! I worked for cycles and cycles and cycles on end, delivering messages for the gods. I may as well be called a god at this point! And the one time, the one time I ask for my due reward, it’s, it’s... stripped away from me at the last second because of some faulty gate!”
Monk is shivering, backing away from the purple slugcat in fear. Spearmaster whips his head back around at her. “I don’t know what’s going on right now. I do not know why I’m here, or why she’s in this state, but I am demanding answers!”
“I-I don’t know! I truly don’t know! I’m sorry!” Monk wimpers, repeating the last phrase like a mantra. Spearmaster feels a bit bad, as he didn’t direct that statement towards her, but he’s too annoyed to care.
“Not you, idiot! I’m going back to my creator. He will give me the Mark, and I will learn what happened to Moon!”
The three stand in silence. Looks To The Moon does not speak, clearly unable to understand them as he is unable to understand her. Hm, wait, doesn’t Monk have the Mark? Why not ask-
“Wh-Why not visit Five Pebbles?” She squeaks. “He was the one who g-gave me the Mark of Communication in the first p-place. Moon won’t talk to me even though I gave her more neurons, b-but maybe she’ll...”
Spearmaster finally allows himself to relax a bit, moving past Monk to begin wading through the water again. “Five Pebbles has been told not to give me the Mark. But I can communicate with Seven Red Suns, another iterator from beyond this land.”
After some hesitation, Monk goes to follow him. She seems to have recovered somewhat from Spearmaster’s outburst. “Another iterator? Why, I’d love to meet them!”
“Are you certain? It’s a long and dangerous journey; quite frankly, I do not think you’d survive.”
Monk huffs, “Oh come on! I’m not a green lizard – I know our cycles will meet again if one of us were to die! Come on, the world is safer when you travel in a group.”
A quick sensing of the cycle timer tells him that he’ll have to navigate to the shelter in this system of tunnels. “It’s also a greater liability to find food for yourself.”
He enters the shelter far before Monk, but this detail does not save him from hearing her response once she does. “I’ll have you know I have a low metabolism! It hardly takes many blue fruits or bats to fill my stomach. And I may not be as strong as my brother, but I’m perfectly capable of saving you from a lizard’s jaws.”
Admittedly, Spearmaster had sort of forgotten not all slugcats have to eat large prey, or suck the life out of them with their biological spears. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a hassle to bring her, after all. Worse case scenario, he uses her dead body as lizard bait. “Very well then. I suppose you may come with me.”
Monk’s eyes immediately light up and her face bursts into a wide smile. “Really?! Oh, thank you, thank you sir! I won’t let you down, I promise!”
“We’ll see,” Spearmaster grumbles, just quiet enough not to be heard over the grinding sound of the shelter closing. Since there’s no tunnel splitting the room in half, Monk curls up close to him after he flops down onto the floor. He shifts a bit closer to the wall. “Personal space, please.”
“Sorry.” Monk’s apology is muffled by her tail. As the violent patter of rain fills the air, Spearmaster goes to draw his rendition of Looks To The Moon in her former glory.
...
...
He has to push Monk to the very corner of the shelter at some point, as she snuggled closer to him in her sleep. Luckily, she doesn’t wake up.