World Tree MUSH

It all comes down to this.

    #-1 FUNCTION (ANSI,HW) NOT FOUND

    You deposit yourself in a hollow chamber which we vaugely managed to squeeze into from the Kaguyahime outside. The floor is hard and glasslike, and the entire structure seems to be a crystalline mass in nature made entirely from reclaimed materials of every sort- the pulverised remains of countless towns and natural resources made into a gigantic tower. But why?

    Alty is suffering, no less from the nanomachines damaging her body but also from the voices which have been tormenting her for the scant hours since arriving here.

    There appear to me multiple tunnels leading out of here but one large tunnel, others of varying size although some of them have sharp, jutting pieces of glass along their edges that would make walking through there like a casual stroll through a blender. Oddly enough light appears to come from generic striplights and long-lasting halogen bulbs which have been preserved and fused into the walls, as if the nanoprobes somehow expected someone human to come here.

    It all adds up to something, but what?

    Iron Lotus desends to the floor with a klinking sound and quickly begins to prepare herself, making sure her internal subcutaneous armor is ready and preparing small buckler shields on both hands in order to protect against the sharp edges around here.

    "Alright, sound off," she says to the group.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp9eRncVbcY
    Luna Ascension - Asciisoft
    Tower of Heaven - 2009

    blah blah call my pose too short will you? I'll show you a ... well... I'll show you.

Astra carefully lowers into the chamber being careful not to fall. This was all so impressive but they could look around later, right now they need to get help for Alty. Of course the question was which way to go. "I'm here! I don't suppose anyone knows which way to go?" She adjust her glasses as she tries to find clues in what might be the best direction to head in.

"I'm here." Emily has taken the form of an auburn-haired woman with glowing purple eyes and four arms, wearing a midnight-blue combat-jumpsuit and a large falchion sword. She released capacitor seals 1 and 2 before they even got here. "As for where to go, your guess is as good as mine."

She pauses. "Also, I checked my logs, and the nanoprobes tried to get me, too, but my proverbial immune system disabled them."

    "This is new to me," Vanileth supplies. "I am here." He has been doing much better of late, but today he is in top form, far more focused and less uncertain than in times past. Must be a good day, or he recently got some worship.

    Whichever way, he still maintains his winged human form. Brushing a hand over the wall, the god nods. "I do not know which way, but deeper in would seem the obvious guess?"

    "We are here," Nort confirms, helping Scar navigate the passage. Scar is nimble, but still pretty huge, so a bit of help makes things easier. The armored man glances over his shoulder. "Strange that they'd make a place that we can get into here. Are the nanomachines following a corrupted program intended for use by humans or... similar creatures, you think?"

    Voices. Now there are voices. If it were possible for a one foot tall little robot to look haggard... Alty looks it.

    WARNING: Viral infection detected. Current systems damage at 54.77% and climbing.

    That's what the little holoscreen that pops up in front of her face says, making the shinki's lips tug into a frown as she dismisses the screen with a wave of her hand.
    "I'm fine. Really." She says. But it's painfully obvious she's putting on a brave face.
    "They're followin a program. But what for I can't make heads or tails of it." She mutters, sullenly, at Nort.

    "Maybe that's the point," Lotus suggests. "Maybe the program's broken, and we need to find a way to fix it."

    Deeper inside seems to be the only way to go, and nobody is willing or able to take the path of thorns, so we're going to head down the broadest path to get deeper in.

    We make our way through and find a large chamber, with what seems like stalagtites hanging from above and slippery rocks which are apparently being marked by condensation. There are drips of water from above and loose footing, so watch your step. Lotus, weighing as much as she does, finds this particularly difficult and has to step very gingerly.

    As you reach the top of an incline, you'll spot what seems to be a crude nanomachine rendition of Alty, which hesitates before drifting away from the group. Do you choose to attack it, or something else? It begins to disappear into the darkness, so it could be leading you into a trap, but on the other hand it's /Alty/ so maybe that could mean something? If nothing else it shows how quickly they're evolving now...

Emily nods to Vanileth in agreement. "Statistically, it was probably humans," she remarks in response to Nort. "I mean, just going by what I've seen on the World Tree. The vast majority of people who qualify as 'anyone who is anyone' are humans or human-adjacent."

She looks sharply at Alty in response to that 'I'm fine really'. "No you're not," she says simply. "I ... huh." She frowns at the sight of the Copy-Alty. Perhaps somewhat recklessly, she draws her sword, materializes a second sword in her other upper hand, and strides forward after it!

Astra is careful herself as they approach the incline, she's not the most graceful after all. "Wait, don't attack! Maybe it can lead us to where we need to go!" After all, if it hurts Alty it could lead to further problems. Plus it might be linked to her in some way also.

    Nort looks at Alty uncertainly. The man feels little pity for robotic life, but she's giving all the signs of being 'ill' right now, which is also making him twitch. It's not really pity, but she's lifelike enough to cause a reaction even in the hardened Ancient.

    Seeing the figure of Alty is something he suspects. "That seems like a trap," he says with conviction, readying his rifle. Scar growls deeply, but stays lingering in the back while Nort stalks toward where the copy vanished.

    Alty follows along. It's not easy going, being on foot, meaning she has to hustle and nearly run to keep up with the others even if they take a cautious pace. And then...
    Then there is a nanite copy of her.
    The sight of it makes her pause in her tracks as she stares after it and it flits away.
    "That... That's bait." She says, entirely untrusting, a small flare of white light summoning a tiny red blade into her hand, to at least be at the ready.

    "Come now, we've come this far!" Vanileth says with... not exactly joviality. He looks serious, when his face is examined. "It is likely we are as much a mystery to this being as it is to us. And I am confident the allies we have here can extract us from any trap!"

It might be a trap! But you choose not to attack after all, staying Nort's hand.

    The clone leads you on a bit of a merry chase for a moment until just about when you start to worry, at which point the path opens up into another large room. This one... is eerie.

    What appears in this room seem to be half-made copies of various objects, but all of them reproduced imperfectly or out of the wrong materials. Here, you'll find what looks to be a humanoid shape entirely made out of plant matter and fiber. There, there's a stunted tree made from masonry. Further along there appears to be the shell of a building, with its lumber and brickwork sections entirely intact, but nothing else inside. 

    There's all sorts of strange things here and they appear to be the result of a rather scrambled brain, but it's the first really interesting thing you have found so far.

    "Looks like they're... trying to make things, but they're not getting it all quite right," Lotus surmises. At least you've been rewarded for not fighting it.

Emily stares for a moment, then carefully holds her swords at the ready. "Interesting," she says. "... this reminds me of the time I visited this one world, and ..." She grimaces. "... we ran into a bunch of Machine Lifeforms -- killer robots, basically -- who were also cargo-culting stuff, but through their behavior instead of trying to create things."

She looks around, lower hands behind her back. "But they did successfully reverse-engineer the androids of that world, and the result then proceeded to kick our asses."

"Are they trying to rebuild the world?!" Astra looks at the humanoid shape. Is that why they were trying to copy everything? This was certainly strange. "I wonder if we can use this technology to repair everything? Wait, does that mean everyone was swallowed by the nanoswarm in some kind of system as well?" Maybe they could still save everyone before it was too late.

Inside the cave made of reclaimed materials and nanomachine crystals, there are all sorts of weird things. Even small items such as books and candlesticks have been reproduced, but some of them are made out of the wrong things, some are much too small, and some of them even seem to be made out of what was once living material or solid skin cells or something. 

    "The system must be... broken," Lotus says, looking up at the strip lights again. There they are, just hanging from the crystal ceiling like it's the most normal thing in the world. "Does anyone here know advanced nanomachine physics?"

    "We can fix things maybe, if we could only find a way to do something to the nanomachines..."

    Just then, there's a bit of a commotion from within the empty house. Something can be heard knocking something over and descending the staircase. Is it a trap?!

    Well, no, nope, not really. In fact it's... a man. He looks middle-aged and rather reedy, like he hasn't eaten anything in quite a few days, and he seems to be quite agitated as he looks at them all.

    Also, he's naked.

    "What? What is this? What's going on here?" he asks, hands out. "Who are you? Do you know where I am? Do you know what's going on? Please!"

    "They're trying to build something." Alty murmurs at the sight of the hald-finished objects. But then she spies the house. "That sounds horrifying." She asides to Emily raising the topic of Machine Lifeforms creating Adam and Eve. But the motion from the house then grabs her attenion, making the shinki whirl that way, blade in hand.
    "Uweh?" Only to sputter and cover her eyes with a hand and flailing the other. "P-put some shorts on please?!"

Emily whirls around, swords raised!

...

Wordlessly, she strides over to the man and puts her lower hand on his shoulder. In a swirl of what appears to be silvery glitter, a flawless three-piece suit materializes on him.

    Behind the helmet, Nort's expression can't be seen, but his voice is grumbling, "They don't understand the difference. Good at destroying, but not creating. Just..." He manages to bite back further complaints, perhaps taking some measure of pity on Alty.

    Then someone else shows up. Nort and Scar don't pay much heed to the lack of clothing, but they both stare warily. Finally Scar growls, "Tie him up until we know what's going on. We should find the source of this."

Astra looks at Emily as Lotus says that. Then she clutches her head as she suddenly remembers, "I've been here before...it was before the accident." That would explain why it's taken her a while to remember this place. "They did experiments here to reverse engineer technology..."

    "Yah!" Lotus says, jumping in surprise at the sight of a /person/ of all things standing here in the middle of all this weirdness. ...and now he's a person in a suit. OK, a little less weird.

    "Oh, thank you, I haven't been able to find any clothes here in days," he says. "Um... do you have any food? Water?"

    "Hi, um, who are you?" Lotus asks. She's rather confused by this whole shocker and is sorta blushing a bit too!

    "I don't remember," the man says, sadly. "But I've been here for a few days now. I just remember waking up here with a start. I can... try to answer any questions you have, if you want me to."

    "It doesn't look like any the nanoprobes have come to find us so far," Lotus says, looking around again. "I guess we could afford a few minutes. Does anyone have anything they wanna ask this guy?"

    She also listens to Astra. "Reverse engineer the nanoprobes?"

    "Reverse engineer!?" Vanileth pipes up, having been quiet despite the appearance of a new person without any clue. "Hmm. They don't seem to know what they are doing, unless this was an 'experiment' like you said." He gestures at the stump.

Emily notices Astra's look, and shakes her head. "I know how to use machinery for manipulating them, but the actual principles are beyond me. Do you have an advanced understanding of how flesh and bone work just because you're made out of them?"

She more-or-less ignores Nort's order to tie him up, but she regards the man curiously. "Interesting," she says. "Y'know what, if I had to guess, I'd say you were 'created' in this place."

... She says this so matter-of-factly.

    And now the man is in a suit.
    That's better than before. Though it also looks like no one is going to tie him up either. Alty holds her hands up, displaying a distinct lack of thread anyway.
    "Mn." Though the shinki does glance to Astra, she spends the moment just trying to put puzzle pieces together in her head. Right up until Emily ventures her theory.
    "But if they can only take things apart and half-build, how could they have made him?"
    Alty presses X to doubt.

"Sorry, but you can change your shape...I can't do such a thing." Astra does her best to aplogize. "I'm assuming he's from somewhere else and they brought him here, but he's still intact?" That was a bit confusing. "Wait, does this mean that these objects are made out of the people that got swallowed by the nanostorm..." She suddenly realize and looks a bit disgusted as she says that.

    Now Nort is really eying the human with suspicion. "No memory, no name..." He almost says something more, but then shakes his head. "Created." And he doesn't state the other thought he has, even is Scar rumbles something.

    "Think about why they'd make him." The wolverine wanders toward one of the other things.

    Vanileth considers. "Like us gods, perhaps these experiments were merely steps along the way. We did not create humans, but even the great Primordials tried different versions of Creation before getting one right." He gestures toward the human. "Perhaps this is the most refined attempt."

    Turning to the man, he asks in a serious tone, "What do you think of airships?"

    There seems to be a split of opinion here between the idea that this guy was created here or brought here. The man himself, who is more than a little perturbed by all of this, can't offer much in the way of feedback. "I can't remember anything beyond a few days ago. I've just been going through the things in this room and trying to find something to eat ever since," he says, voice trembling a bit. "Was I created here? I feel as if I belong somewhere out there, I know there's an outside world all of these things come from..."

    "No, don't you see, this is excellent," Lotus tries to explain to the others. "This proves that the nanoprobes can create or... re-create people after all. If we could just find something to control them and stop them from destroying everything, we could bring back the people who have died! All of them!"

    It's at this point that some commotion begins near the entrance- one large spherical nanoprobe has entered the room, along with several of the humanoid and Alty types.

    "Uh oh. We should probably get going," Lotus says, bringing one of her shields up. "Uh, hey guy, you don't mind coming with us, do you? Come on, let's try and find out what's right in the middle of this place!"

Emily shrugs. "I admit it's kind of a long shot, and biology is really tough to get right," she says, "but if they succeeded ... then yes, Nort, the result would have no past." She places her hand on the man's shoulder again, in order to reset the timer before the nanomachines he's wearing return to her.

<<Also,>> she radios to Nort with a cheerful voice, <<if he does start to cause trouble, I have some convenient nanomachines wrapped around him right this moment!>>

She nods briefly in response to Astra's apology. And then she giggles uncontrollably in response to Vanileth's shenanigans.

But then they have company. "Right, then!" she says, turning away and raising her swords. And then instead of using the swords right away, she fires several golden bolts of light at the spherical unit.

    "I'm not seeing how this is excellent. I'd rather not need to be rebuilt." Alty points out, to Lotus summoning a holoscreen to show her infection level very pointedly.
    But then there are nanoprobe constructs coming in. "Ah... This would be time to go ri-...ght...?" She says, trailing off. For a beat, she wobbles in place, hands rising to cover her ears. 
    "Sh... Shut up! Shut up already!"

    Sigh. Nort takes pity on the man, barely. "I suppose if there's a chance you're innocent in all this... it would be against my training to ignore you." The man in power armor reaches for his bag, tugging loose a small drink pouch and what looks like a protein bar, though it isn't manufactured. Must be homemade. He hands these to the man, "Eat slowly."

    He doesn't have time for more, because then they have 'company' as is said. Scar growls, immediately leaping forward, laser beams lancing from his eyes. Nort... readies his rifle, but then stares at Alty, "What are you hearing?"

"...I like the idea of airships but I've never been in one," the man replies. "I'd kind of prefer some food right now, though. Why, do you have one? Does it have food on it?"

    Be reasonable with the guy, the nanoprobes haven't figured out how to replicate cheese yet.

    That's a rare sentence.

    "Emily wait! What if there's some kind of big guardian right at the end of all this?" Lotus says, trying to pull her away a little. "Put down some suppressing fire, sure, but don't uh, get carried away!"

    "Don't worry," she says to Alty as she tries to move the group along through the cave. "We won't let you get disassembled."

    The next room that the group faces is altogether a complete difference from the previous one. This room is full of only one thing: crystals.

    Big ones line the entire room, some of them intersecting the cave floor and walls entirely, others taking the form of stalagmites that rise up from the floor. All of them are razor-edged though and look like they could cut up a normal person (like Astra and our new NPC) as much as touch him, so you will need to tread carefully as you make your way through here. If that wasn't bad enough, some of the crystals seem to be shedding nanoprobes, creating small clouds that hang around them- be careful not to get infected like Alty is...

    Vanileth glowers at the interruption, but the others are already on top of it, enough that they can quickly move to the next area while exploring. He grumbles at the man not having any interest, and sulks until they encounter the next room.

    Good thing this is something he can actually help with. Gesturing, a small funnel of wind begins to blow, winding through the room and gusting past any clouds. "Stick to the wind and it should be much safer, but don't assume anything."

Astra does as Vanileth suggests, not wanting to get impaled. She figures that should take the man with them, since she doesn't remember that place all that well. It's been 10 years after all and she suffered a traumatic head injury. She nods in agreement with Lotus, they need to find out more about this place and fast.

    It takes the shinki a beat or so to shake her sudden attack, though she still winces. "Voices." She grunts back at Nort. "Whispers, signals." She says. "I can hardly think around them. "S-sometimes I hear smaller voices. They say 'make' and 'fix', but everything else drowns them out so badly."
    Being already infected, she could probably just wade through the smaller crystals, but waits a beat for Vanileth's winds before she starts scrambling through the sharp maze.

Emily looks at Alty with an expression of ... actual concern!? But then Iron Lotus gets her attention, and she frowns. "... Okay, but, uh ... what is the advantage of not dusting mooks?"

She does lower her swords, though, and rises off the ground as she floats through the room, remaining in Vanileth's funnel; she moves with perfect poise, avoiding the sharp bits with ease.

She frowns down at Alty. "Need a lift?"

    "I see," Nort replies with some concern. Most of it is for what will happen if Alty turns on them, but he can think over it some and realize more. "... keep fighting it. It's a terrible thing to lose yourself." He grumbles, "I'm not a roboticist, and Harlann and I aren't on speaking terms."

    Speaking of his nemesis, Nort climbs atop Scar and threads through the path very carefully, letting Scar's superior balance pick the path. He doesn't want to risk his cybernetics getting infected.

    "...well, you do have a power supply you could run out of, right?" Lotus asks Emily. She does, at least. She assumes that in a situation like this then one should conserve their energy supplies just in case something dangerous comes up, or you need to expend your resources on more important things like keeping yourself alive. Even without her memories she has a keen awareness of the amount of essence in her internal tanks and the amount of energy using her charms expends.

    There's little more she can do for Alty at this point, but the danger of anyone else being infected is nonpresent when Vanileth uses his powers to make sure they can pass safely- and carefully- through the forest of spikes. Their tagalong comes along too, moving gingerly, and noting "It's actually kind of beautiful if it wasn't so dangerous."

    And at the end of it we come to... ugh.

    You're not gonna like this. Heck, I don't like describing it.

    What we have here is a long drop. The wall at your feet is craggy, but sharp crystal blades jut out like the wall was pretty much made of razors, which is a good way to describe it overall. The walls are also very close, with smaller spikes and hooks, meaning that hovering down would need to be done very gingerly. The only way seems to be to climb down, for those of us that can't take the easy route and just fly, unless you can express your individual talents in creative ways to get down here.

    Lotus, for example, is going to have to tough it out. She channels essence under her skin to create a protective subcutaneous barrier, preventing anything that would cut or scratch her from penetrating too deeply, and she climbs down taking the odd slash or scratch as it comes. 

    You may have a better approach.

    "Yes please." Is Alty's reply to Emily through the crystal chamber. Though she purses her lips. "I'm trying to fight it... Who's Harlann?"
    That aside though, the crystal precipice is going to be a problem.
    There's another soft flash of white light, and in an instant, Alty is armored from head to toe in dark spiked plating and razor armor. It's a really sinister look for the little shinki as she tugs up a skull-faced visor and sighs. "That doesn't look like it's going to be easy to get down.
    She could just fly. But she also doesn't want to get too far ahead of the others if she does, so she sticks with Emily.

Emily shakes her head. "My lasers are magical," she says. "So's half of the way my power-supply works. It's very different from the low-tech non-magical ones everywhere else in the World Tree, running out of power just doesn't happen to us Eudaemons."

A pained expression crosses her face as she regards the drop. "Damn, this is too narrow for me to just turn into a hovercraft so people could ride me," she says, holding out a hand for Alty. "Maybe if I ... elongated myself, or made a harness ... but I'd have to be really careful about swinging it around ..." She laughs weakly. "Wow this is gonna be obnoxious to get through."

Astra gulps as she sees the long way down that's covered in spikes, she's going to have trouble not getting impaled. The spikes meaning trying to rapple down isn't really an option here. "Maybe if you turned yourself into a pole we could slide down?" She suggests to Emily.

    "Nature is like that," Nort says to the man. "Beautiful and dangerous. In some ways, that's what makes it wonderful." A more poetic statement has... never been uttered by Nort with any of these people in earshot though.

    Then the obstacle. "Hmm..."

    Scar speaks up, "The force field won't help here. Your armor might, but we'll have to split up so I can climb down. I can't do it with you on my back."

    Nort nods, then turns to the man, "You, climb up on Scar. He'll get you down safely."

Emily considers Astra's comment, and puts a hand on the nameless man's shoulder to reset the timer once again. "Mmm ..."

She floats over into the center, and transforms into what appears to be a multi-stage elevator with a narrow platform and harnesses that ... don't seem to have any kind of buckles. With Emily's head at the top. "Okay, this'll be tough," she says, "but the short of it is that I can probably hold three people."

    While Vanileth should have no trouble floating down, carrying someone else isn't really going to be easy. He can scout ahead, that's about it. "Hmm. This is why you need a jetpack. Wouldn't that be handy? Jetpacks for everyone."

    Yes, we get it Vanileth. Every problem can be solved by wings or a jetpack, right?

"You never seize to amaze me Emily!" Astra isn't that large thankfully so there should be plenty of room for others in the Emilavator. She certainly doesn't want to risk the wall, "A jetpack would be useful, but it would have to be refueled often."

    One way or another, you make your way down the shaft. Thankfully, there are no crows or venus flytraps here (ha ha! Battletoads reference!).

    At the bottom of the shaft it's rather dark. There is one, rather large room. What you find inside may be disturbing for those of you with a nervous disposition.

    All around the room, magnificently intact and undamaged computer terminals seem to be fused into the walls, along with a rather large mainframe computer. All of them seem to be relatively high-tech and they all seem to be in perfect working order, albeit rather askew at an angle with their keyboards merged into the wall and trackballs and touchpads sticking out at weird angles. 

    The central screen seems to be dominated by a constant scroll of data, but there is, inexplicably, a chat window which will open the moment someone approaches the screen. 

    The message is timestamped to right now. It reads just "Are you there?"

    'Are you there?' are the exact same words that are echoing in Alty's head right now, too.

    "This all feels familiar, somehow," the man in the nice suit says. "If only I could remember..."

    Astra should definitely feel the same way.

"This is what's left of the lab where the first nanomachine experiments took place!" Astra remembers as she apparoaches the computer terminals doing her best to remember how to operate them. "Yes, I'm here, have we met before?" She types into the chat window and waits for a respnse. She turns towards the others to make sure everyone made it safely down.

    Down the shaft and Alty is looking queasy by the time the group reaches the computer room. In an instant her eyes are on the chat window.
    "Mnnnn..." Is someone going to respond to that?" Asked just as Astra goes for it.
    "This is driving me up a wall."

Emily nods to Vanileth and Astra. "Or semi-magical hovering-magic," she says cheerfully, changing back into her humanoid form with four arms. ... She's wearing her trademark midnight-blue business suit this time, though. "And yeah, thanks! Sometimes I amaze even myself!" A pause. "Not very often, though."

She considers the room they're in, and breaks into a wide grin. "Now this is really interesting!" she says. She takes one step forward ...

... and pauses, eyebrows raised as Astra speaks up and replies. She puts her upper hands on her hips and crosses her lower arms, regarding her with curiosity and faint suspicion. That, too, is evidently interesting. One hand briefly reaches over to pat Alty on the head.

    For once, Nort and Scar are completely in agreement with Emily and Alty. The armored man helps guide Scar and his passenger downward, and then looks over his shoulder. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

    Seems a little late though, doesn't it?

    Scar, meanwhile, is grumbling at the formerly-naked man atop his back. "I'm not a horse, you know. Why don't we call this one 'Jeremiah?' I think that works."

    Nort points out, "Won't that name be a little cumbersome? Why don't we name him Spot."

"We have been here for a long time," the voice in the chatbox replies. "You all gave us a voice..."

    Just then there's a rumble.

    Something suddenly seems as if it is slithering around, as a sinuous shape seems to move through the walls. It moves around the entire room, circling, then disappearing downwards...

    And the crystalline floor cracks as something huge erupts from the floors below! Strewn with cables and reclaimed materials, the being has a sinuous body and a massive swept-back head, with a lamprey-like mouth containing dozens of jagged crystal and metal teeth. Spines run down its back and small lights flash on its body off and on in square patterns.

    "Called it!" Lotus says, swapping her shield out for a chisel. "Really big guardian at the end!"

    "SEEK. LOCATE. CONSUME."

    "This is wrong! We have learned this is wrong!"

Astra hears the rumble and turns away from the computer screen and screams in terror. The creature could devour them all in one gulp and she's completely helpless against it. She backs up against the wall as she tries to keep far away from as possible given the close quarters.

Emily raises her eyebrows and breaks into a wide grin. "Ah, something to smash," she says, floating up higher and materializing her swords again. "For some reason, I'm enjoying that sort of thing more and more. My creators, as always, would be horrified!"

She positions herself directly between the monster and Astra. Once again, rather than using her swords, she summons golden bolts of light instead. Five of them, to be precise, and they all experimentally rock towards the monster!

    Sigh, a big guardian at the end. Of course. Nort and Scar go into battle position, but they don't use the tactics they've been using against the probes. They stick together, with Nort leaping atop Scar and blasting a few bolts of energy at the giant creature, while Scar immediately begins circling around, keeping the target moving and harrassing. A crackle of power surrounds him with a shield of flame, wreathing both him and Scar in it.

    "Be careful not to damage the computer, we may need it!" Nort calls out.

    "A giant WORM?!" Vanileth shouts out that indignantly, leaping to the side and away. He sputters, sending out a few blades of sharp air, but he's much weaker than the ones already engaged in combat. "You do realize that birds eat worms, right? And birds are what the greatest technology is modelled after!"

    He pauses mid-attack. "Though I suppose the most popular flying vehicles in the First Age were more like flying mantas..."

    That slithering can't be good.
    But there's little to be done for it as the crystal floor breaks and the serpentine nanite monster bursts from beneath.
    "I wish you didn't call it." Alty mutters to Lotus as her armor spreads its arms and summons a second, larger sword than the one in her hand already.
    "Seek, locate consume? That's... That's not what you were made for! That is very wrong!"