[ literally me outloud like "well that's great, dice." jostles your bone, jostles your bone, jostles your bone. shoma and charles are bludgeoned and land in a pile together. their fountains are crumbling however, the beast having smashed its own careless mitt into them! but as it turns towards the remainder that have not been knocked away, it turns its back to you... slowly oozing downwards, tentacles snapping less frantically now. this thing is expending too much energy now. you're not the only things that wither in this wretched autumn season here on this wretch wretched planet, after all.
luminescence shines brightly, like a firefly clutched in a child's hand, and the creature SCREEEEEEEEES with an awful wail, a cacophonous noise of thousands suffering under the weight of its meat. its fingers rip outwards in shock from the burn, from his leg. to the point where it actually just
takes it. that's its leg right now... actually. but the hand? the hand shrivels back, and as it races for the fountain you just stole sp from it... it doesn't heal. you really did just cuck it. but at what cost?
keith calls it ugly and frankly how very fucking dare you. it doesn't. keith's top energy is too much for it. he is just hucking sharp shit at this thing while two pistol blasts fire into this thing's ugly mug too. its head snaps back angrily, arm 1 flailing around and proceeding to just
start to melt, the muscle, the fat, the bone... melting down in large splashes of organic material.
[ow! charles is getting very tired of this blunt force trauma. momentarily, he loses his grip on his sword as it lands a foot or so away from him. wincing as he detangles himself from shoma, he reaches up to touch where his head is bleeding right now, but. he'll take care of that later.
temenos sure loses a leg, and while unfortunately the monster is now claiming possession of leggie, charles will take this moment to take out his heal gun and shoot temenos with it. don't die?
with his other, more mangled arm, he holds out a hand to blast lightning at the monster again. PLEASE DIE ALREADY.]
[ okay, well, there's a pained, sharp noise from the other side of the room of the bludgeoning duo, a gritted, cut off yell, but the good news is it does not skewer his brain into the floor. his angelic cherub baby face remains unharmed also which is less relevant.
there's no time for anything but adrenaline at this point. so! he logically knows he needs to heal so he doesn't bleed to death and charles saves the day with the heal gun!!!!! thank you charles!!!! but that thing is so fucking close to death that he just casts another holy light spell. bp x 4, with as much juice as he can put into it, aiming in the general direction of the monster. he'd divine effulgence if he wasn't entirely sure they could all just fucking die and he kind of needs the last of his magic juice.
[ you know at this rate he's. too tired to scream. he lands in a pile on the ground with charles, slammed into the dirt and there's a pitiful whine as he tries to crawl away and sit up. charles is busy healing temenos and shoma's remaining eye is rapidly blinking away dust and blood from the sudden cut he's accumulated from hitting the floor but he has enough vision left to assess the situation.
he doesn't have magic and his gun's out of bullets, but he does still have a shovel which means those tentacles are still trying to move and he just swings to cleave down on the fucking things. ]
[ can't believe keith casted vicious mockery and landed a critical hit. bard keith real.... terrifying.
he stops for a moment, looking towards the source of the pistol blasts. thank god for their cow. :amen: and it's then that he sees temenos just whole ass missing a leg now. fuck. fuck. fuck.
a glance at charles and shoma... how are they fairing. they're all beat to shit. keith's bum arm hanging uselessly, his good eye having trouble focusing, which... once the rumbling starts he really can't focus. ]
I have a bad feeling about this-!
[ famous last words, i'm sure. not that this stops him from throwing one last sharp thing at the melting goo. STAY DEAD GDI. ]
she hates being bastardized, ruthlessly cut into, she hates the work that has been done here - dug down deep into her confines. it's a sin to cut her, like it's a sin to cut others if you are no butcher. so she rumbles, and she rumbles harder. she hates that her name has been used by this creature, she hates that the butchers have thought themselves worshipful when in fact they have been, with eyes clouded, feeding tainted meat to the earth that wants nothing to do with it. all for a bloated parasite, all for a beast that has no end to its greed.
if it had more time... it could devour this whole planet... it so righteously would, this carnivorous worm of many faces.
charles and temenos rally themselves for one last fatal blast toward the monster, and it is so fucking furious at how demeaning this all is - how dare its food fight back? It is used to the mindlessness of its sung-to victims (but that's what happens - you can't sing if your mouth is full of food.)
the electricity has begun to do what it does best - travel, and the meat of the monster twitches not unlike the gelatinous substance of a brain. the holy light is thrust forward from temenos' prone body and punches into the pulsating mass. the last of the bloody liquid from the fountains seeps into this awful soil the beast has so tightly tethered itself to, bloating itself on the people of this town, bloating itself on the unwilling prisoners, cattle themselves for its own bottomless hunger.
shoma and keith are applying their own desperate last attempts at bludgeoning damage. the tentacles are weakened, falling to each blow with shrieks and squeals, the faces on its body shuffling - some you know, some you don't, all of them dying, all of them melting.
somewhere, having been fighting tentacles on his own, teeth and jowls bloodied, a glitching kosmo darts forward and snaps at more weakly writhing tentacles, preventing you all from being flanked. he banks towards shoma and keith, howling at charles as though to signal him closer. he's glitching and growing in size, like he's trying to sentinel, to offer them something strong to hold onto as the ground shifts. io will just limp forward in to grab up temenos quickly as the earth starts to shake, lifting, pushing.
the beast meanwhile is just a shapeless mass of ooze now, out of food, wasting its time trying to catch the stubborn flies flying about it so stubbornly... stubborn flies, rotten meat. it cries out, the faces of its prisoners bulge outwards and cry too... before they become nothing but meat again, nothing but blood and parts. food.
and the earth rumbles again.
as the loam and earth surges upwards, lifts you from this bottomless pit, like a platform that's shifting underfoot, soft so it might catch your ankle, soft so it might sink you to your hips, beginning to lift you shakily upwards at a terrifyingly fast pace.
you ever tried to swim through soft earth before? ]
[ the joy of having an icon for a specific situation is unmatched actually
temenos barely has enough energy to watch his spell go off. he drops back, flat on his back, and puts his faith in his companions to finish off the rest of this, vision blurred and head swimming from the sheer pain and bloodloss as the monster gobbles up its leg snack. the light is brilliant and bright, and all he can do at this point is feel a little bit of relief.
he loses consciousness after that, because the next thing that happens is the realization that he's been lifted off the ground. the pain from being moved jolts him back awake. blurrily, he looks around, gripping his staff for dear life, somewhere between realization and wanting to pass out, fight or flight lever broken due to lack of blood. the monster seems like its dead. maybe? probably. blugh. okay.
however, with the last of his magic, temenos casts another heal wounds on the gang from where he's being carried, followed immediately by a pray for plenty on himself so he doesn't bleed to death and so he's conscious for the world's worst anti vore elevator. hopefully no one needs a revive now goodbye ]
[yikes. everything hurts right now but thank god for high hp and def stats as charles is really doing his best to use the last of his adrenaline to dash over to kosmos. sentinel away, pseudo-doggo.
he will add swimming through soft earth onto his list of new experiences...]
[ at this point, the weight of everything that's gone on fully hits him, and shoma's weakly grabbing onto kosmo's fur with his less burned hand as the ground rumbles and shakes and they begin to rise. he finds himself sinking a little, and he attempts to shake it off but eventually gives up to cling to kosmo instead. he's well-aware his eye is just gone now, and with his remaining one he looks around and back down into the pit, watching the monster ooze and writhe and become meat once more.
disgusting, really. he's just going to faceplant into kosmo's fur and try not to bleed on him too much. ]
[ in the case of fight or flight, keith will always choose fight. even if it means sustaining any and all kinds of injuries. it's fine. he's full of spite and rage. even as the faces worm their way around it's body, some of people he's met aboard the eudora and others of loved ones back home... his face scrunches. they're not real. they're not real. they're not real.
kosmo is moving, blipping, phasing around the room. keith is so thankful for him, as always. saving them all from near death, getting them back together. he moves closer to shoma, before they blip away with charles in tow. it's time to get tf out of here.
the earth is moving, mother earth has had enough of this shit. she's hurt. he feels terribly for her... the earth feels. she speaks. why does that sound so familiar... hm.
as they rise he leans against kosmo, on the otherside of where shoma clings. eyes looking over to the other three. god they've been through it. good hand holding his acid burned, limp, arm and fuzzy eye looking upward. ]
[ the earth must purge what's been done to her - and while maybe if the earth were anything else but what she is, she would thank you. but instead, she can only act in the way wild animals act in the face of desecration - violently.
you are all being taken upwards in a geyser of moldering earth and flesh. there's no more fighting to be done as the earth fills the plant, as it surges looking for an opening for purchase. you rise up from the hole, can vaguely see the shapes of the slaughterhouse room before it all. no one is here but the beast's lurid corpse now being absorbed by the earth itself. rushing. rushing. rushing.
you're about to hit the concrete door, about to be crushed by thousands of pounds of force—
and then there's the sensation of being plucked out of space and thrown into soft grass. kosmo hunches on the ground because he's absolutely exhausted as you all are blipped one last time out onto the dry grasses, drooling and panting hard. he still leans in to keep shoma steady, doesn't dare shake him off. io just keeps hold of temenos and takes the brunt of the landing, though his metal leg does finally splinter further with the weight of having to be landed upon, he buckles off kilter a little. charles and keith, tanks that they are, but battered, bruised, beaten up, bleeding - spat out from the blip to take their own crash landing.
it's imperfect. but it's a save. it's a... success... maybe. (maybe not.)
the plant behind you creaks with the sound of the earth pressing against the stone, pushing outwards in its own tomb of concrete. it groans, moans (with a thousand voices.)
the ship in the distance glows with its soft standby mode.
that's really all he's got. just sort of a pathetic noise when they hit the ground or... he hits into io... thanks for taking the brunt of that one sweet io you are truly a lifesaver today. io and keith are the mvps. temenos grunts in pain at the impact, rattling the gory remains of his thigh, and very nearly passes out again.
he blinks open his eyes after a long moment with them closed to recalibrate himself, and once it feels like he's not going to pass back out again, sweeps a look out across the others, exhaling slowly through his teeth. at kosmo who is also a blipping lifesaver.... telepaths to him that he is a good boy
jesus fantasy christ. temenos pats io's chest with one weak hand. thanks man. ]
That...doesn't sound promising. [ all the grumbling and groaning ]
[hits the grass... he just lies there for a moment. this bone is probably still sticking out of him and this crash landing is not helping with it. ow. anyway, after a moment, he pushes himself up with his good hand and checks that his weapons are still on him and sheathed.]
... Well, we all up to run for the ship? This would be a terrible time for someone to accidentally turn me into a sheep again.
[he will help whoever needs it because out of this group it might only be him, keith, and kosmo who are (... relatively...) unimpeded? TEMENOS AND IO'S LEGS. SHOMA'S [GESTURES]]
[ similarly to kosmo, shoma is also kind of panting and trying not to drool, lungs still burning and throat bobbing to keep from gagging into the baby's fur. he's busy clinging to kosmo and keeping himself still, turned so he's not actively bleeding onto him. his suit's in tatters, the acid wearing away most of it and burning his everything. the arm that isn't holding kosmo is completely blistered and raw and there's blood and burns and a general mess in the vicinity of his left eye as his chest oozes slowly.
but. they're alive? they're alive, and he's taking a few deep breaths to try and prepare himself for at least getting back to the ship. ]
Not the sheep. [ it's a protesting whine because in spite of everything he'd be so pissed. ] We're sure we did it...?
[ yeah he's with temenos on this one, the grumbling and groaning sounds bad. ]
[ oofa doofa. he hits the ground much harder than he would have liked, but after all the shit they went through, physically and mentally? combined with all the weird status effects they were put under?? that tracks. ]
Good riddance... [ goodbye cursed meat prison. even if the thousands of voices are hateful. he's just going to choose to ignore that. let mother earth do her thing. ]
I think she'll take care of the rest. Let's get the hell out of here.
[ getting to his feet, slowly, but surely. at least he can still walk, even with the acid damage. he looks to io, who's leg just fucking splinters, tem who is whole ass missing a leg, and shoma who is just doing bad:tm: all around. kosmo is 100000% carrying the baby back to the ship. charles and himself really are doing the best, some how??? charles your bone... ]
— MISSION COMPLETE (bidding farewell to a terminal patient)
[ there's a long moment where io glances over his shoulder at the plant, and then he turns and begins to limp towards the ship. ]
Gut feeling.
[ a breath. ]
Come on... [ a very tired, crooked smile. ] Everyone's waiting.
[ the penal colony located on the tiny planet of khalka is... empty now, a town of ghosts united by the puppeteering appendages of the hydra. each one sung a song to soothe the shaking meat, each person as much of a prisoner of the town as they are a prisoner of their own minds, caged in bliss. with one last reading sweep of the area as the shuttle primes for take-off, those still conscious enough can see... the strange energy signature is gone, and the storm is quickly receding. it's time to get the hell out of dodge.
you leave on your shuttle, and it lifts off with a cloud of black motes. as it travels through the atmosphere, if you're conscious, you can see them burning up, burning, cleansing fire, burning... up up and away.
🌾 in being puked up by the earth, your heal guns, plasma blades, and plasma pistols are broken, they are moist and wet and crammed with bloody-earthy gunk. there will be no fixing them.
🌾 from time to time (as you find appropriate for your threads) in reflective surfaces, you may catch yourself reflected back, whispering your truest thoughts about yourself, your regrets, your open wounds clawed wide. only you will be able to see or hear them. sometimes they will recite words that you yourself have said, as though rereading them from a script book, practicing their... lines? this lasts until just before trial.
🌾 you are all super gross. covered in however much blood, guts, offal, and... other stuff. for any injuries healed during this, you may absolutely have them reopen upon your arrival thread, acid damage, bludgeoning damage, piercing damage, etc. you also might all feel a bit feverish and unwell until you hit the medbay pods or get some healing via your returning abilities back on the eudora. play with this as you like.
in any case: you have slayed the false hydra, and the earth will absorb it, cleanse it, and will once again become whole. in time, perhaps this place might become something better than this.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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luminescence shines brightly, like a firefly clutched in a child's hand, and the creature SCREEEEEEEEES with an awful wail, a cacophonous noise of thousands suffering under the weight of its meat. its fingers rip outwards in shock from the burn, from his leg. to the point where it actually just
takes it. that's its leg right now... actually. but the hand? the hand shrivels back, and as it races for the fountain you just stole sp from it... it doesn't heal. you really did just cuck it. but at what cost?
keith calls it ugly and frankly how very fucking dare you. it doesn't. keith's top energy is too much for it. he is just hucking sharp shit at this thing while two pistol blasts fire into this thing's ugly mug too. its head snaps back angrily, arm 1 flailing around and proceeding to just
start to melt, the muscle, the fat, the bone... melting down in large splashes of organic material.
the earth rumbles beneath your feet. ]
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temenos sure loses a leg, and while unfortunately the monster is now claiming possession of leggie, charles will take this moment to take out his heal gun and shoot temenos with it. don't die?
with his other, more mangled arm, he holds out a hand to blast lightning at the monster again. PLEASE DIE ALREADY.]
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there's no time for anything but adrenaline at this point. so! he logically knows he needs to heal so he doesn't bleed to death and charles saves the day with the heal gun!!!!! thank you charles!!!! but that thing is so fucking close to death that he just casts another holy light spell. bp x 4, with as much juice as he can put into it, aiming in the general direction of the monster. he'd divine effulgence if he wasn't entirely sure they could all just fucking die and he kind of needs the last of his magic juice.
anyway eat holy shotgun ]
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he doesn't have magic and his gun's out of bullets, but he does still have a shovel which means those tentacles are still trying to move and he just swings to cleave down on the fucking things. ]
Back off already!
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he stops for a moment, looking towards the source of the pistol blasts. thank god for their cow. :amen: and it's then that he sees temenos just whole ass missing a leg now. fuck. fuck. fuck.
a glance at charles and shoma... how are they fairing. they're all beat to shit. keith's bum arm hanging uselessly, his good eye having trouble focusing, which... once the rumbling starts he really can't focus. ]
I have a bad feeling about this-!
[ famous last words, i'm sure. not that this stops him from throwing one last sharp thing at the melting goo. STAY DEAD GDI. ]
EXEUNT: FROM THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH
she hates being bastardized, ruthlessly cut into, she hates the work that has been done here - dug down deep into her confines. it's a sin to cut her, like it's a sin to cut others if you are no butcher. so she rumbles, and she rumbles harder. she hates that her name has been used by this creature, she hates that the butchers have thought themselves worshipful when in fact they have been, with eyes clouded, feeding tainted meat to the earth that wants nothing to do with it. all for a bloated parasite, all for a beast that has no end to its greed.
if it had more time... it could devour this whole planet... it so righteously would, this carnivorous worm of many faces.
charles and temenos rally themselves for one last fatal blast toward the monster, and it is so fucking furious at how demeaning this all is - how dare its food fight back? It is used to the mindlessness of its sung-to victims (but that's what happens - you can't sing if your mouth is full of food.)
the electricity has begun to do what it does best - travel, and the meat of the monster twitches not unlike the gelatinous substance of a brain. the holy light is thrust forward from temenos' prone body and punches into the pulsating mass. the last of the bloody liquid from the fountains seeps into this awful soil the beast has so tightly tethered itself to, bloating itself on the people of this town, bloating itself on the unwilling prisoners, cattle themselves for its own bottomless hunger.
shoma and keith are applying their own desperate last attempts at bludgeoning damage. the tentacles are weakened, falling to each blow with shrieks and squeals, the faces on its body shuffling - some you know, some you don't, all of them dying, all of them melting.
somewhere, having been fighting tentacles on his own, teeth and jowls bloodied, a glitching kosmo darts forward and snaps at more weakly writhing tentacles, preventing you all from being flanked. he banks towards shoma and keith, howling at charles as though to signal him closer. he's glitching and growing in size, like he's trying to sentinel, to offer them something strong to hold onto as the ground shifts. io will just limp forward in to grab up temenos quickly as the earth starts to shake, lifting, pushing.
the beast meanwhile is just a shapeless mass of ooze now, out of food, wasting its time trying to catch the stubborn flies flying about it so stubbornly... stubborn flies, rotten meat. it cries out, the faces of its prisoners bulge outwards and cry too... before they become nothing but meat again, nothing but blood and parts. food.
and the earth rumbles again.
as the loam and earth surges upwards, lifts you from this bottomless pit, like a platform that's shifting underfoot, soft so it might catch your ankle, soft so it might sink you to your hips, beginning to lift you shakily upwards at a terrifyingly fast pace.
you ever tried to swim through soft earth before? ]
no subject
temenos barely has enough energy to watch his spell go off. he drops back, flat on his back, and puts his faith in his companions to finish off the rest of this, vision blurred and head swimming from the sheer pain and bloodloss as the monster gobbles up its leg snack. the light is brilliant and bright, and all he can do at this point is feel a little bit of relief.
he loses consciousness after that, because the next thing that happens is the realization that he's been lifted off the ground. the pain from being moved jolts him back awake. blurrily, he looks around, gripping his staff for dear life, somewhere between realization and wanting to pass out, fight or flight lever broken due to lack of blood. the monster seems like its dead. maybe? probably. blugh. okay.
however, with the last of his magic, temenos casts another heal wounds on the gang from where he's being carried, followed immediately by a pray for plenty on himself so he doesn't bleed to death and so he's conscious for the world's worst anti vore elevator. hopefully no one needs a revive now goodbye ]
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he will add swimming through soft earth onto his list of new experiences...]
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disgusting, really. he's just going to faceplant into kosmo's fur and try not to bleed on him too much. ]
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kosmo is moving, blipping, phasing around the room. keith is so thankful for him, as always. saving them all from near death, getting them back together. he moves closer to shoma, before they blip away with charles in tow. it's time to get tf out of here.
the earth is moving, mother earth has had enough of this shit. she's hurt. he feels terribly for her... the earth feels. she speaks. why does that sound so familiar... hm.
as they rise he leans against kosmo, on the otherside of where shoma clings. eyes looking over to the other three. god they've been through it. good hand holding his acid burned, limp, arm and fuzzy eye looking upward. ]
no subject
you are all being taken upwards in a geyser of moldering earth and flesh. there's no more fighting to be done as the earth fills the plant, as it surges looking for an opening for purchase. you rise up from the hole, can vaguely see the shapes of the slaughterhouse room before it all. no one is here but the beast's lurid corpse now being absorbed by the earth itself. rushing. rushing. rushing.
you're about to hit the concrete door, about to be crushed by thousands of pounds of force—
and then there's the sensation of being plucked out of space and thrown into soft grass. kosmo hunches on the ground because he's absolutely exhausted as you all are blipped one last time out onto the dry grasses, drooling and panting hard. he still leans in to keep shoma steady, doesn't dare shake him off. io just keeps hold of temenos and takes the brunt of the landing, though his metal leg does finally splinter further with the weight of having to be landed upon, he buckles off kilter a little. charles and keith, tanks that they are, but battered, bruised, beaten up, bleeding - spat out from the blip to take their own crash landing.
it's imperfect. but it's a save. it's a... success... maybe. (maybe not.)
the plant behind you creaks with the sound of the earth pressing against the stone, pushing outwards in its own tomb of concrete. it groans, moans (with a thousand voices.)
the ship in the distance glows with its soft standby mode.
the town is silent. truly silent. ]
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that's really all he's got. just sort of a pathetic noise when they hit the ground or... he hits into io... thanks for taking the brunt of that one sweet io you are truly a lifesaver today. io and keith are the mvps. temenos grunts in pain at the impact, rattling the gory remains of his thigh, and very nearly passes out again.
he blinks open his eyes after a long moment with them closed to recalibrate himself, and once it feels like he's not going to pass back out again, sweeps a look out across the others, exhaling slowly through his teeth. at kosmo who is also a blipping lifesaver.... telepaths to him that he is a good boy
jesus fantasy christ. temenos pats io's chest with one weak hand. thanks man. ]
That...doesn't sound promising. [ all the grumbling and groaning ]
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[hits the grass... he just lies there for a moment. this bone is probably still sticking out of him and this crash landing is not helping with it. ow. anyway, after a moment, he pushes himself up with his good hand and checks that his weapons are still on him and sheathed.]
... Well, we all up to run for the ship? This would be a terrible time for someone to accidentally turn me into a sheep again.
[he will help whoever needs it because out of this group it might only be him, keith, and kosmo who are (... relatively...) unimpeded? TEMENOS AND IO'S LEGS. SHOMA'S [GESTURES]]
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but. they're alive? they're alive, and he's taking a few deep breaths to try and prepare himself for at least getting back to the ship. ]
Not the sheep. [ it's a protesting whine because in spite of everything he'd be so pissed. ] We're sure we did it...?
[ yeah he's with temenos on this one, the grumbling and groaning sounds bad. ]
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Good riddance... [ goodbye cursed meat prison. even if the thousands of voices are hateful. he's just going to choose to ignore that. let mother earth do her thing. ]
I think she'll take care of the rest. Let's get the hell out of here.
[ getting to his feet, slowly, but surely. at least he can still walk, even with the acid damage. he looks to io, who's leg just fucking splinters, tem who is whole ass missing a leg, and shoma who is just doing bad:tm: all around. kosmo is 100000% carrying the baby back to the ship. charles and himself really are doing the best, some how??? charles your bone... ]
— MISSION COMPLETE (bidding farewell to a terminal patient)
Gut feeling.
[ a breath. ]
Come on... [ a very tired, crooked smile. ] Everyone's waiting.
[ the penal colony located on the tiny planet of khalka is... empty now, a town of ghosts united by the puppeteering appendages of the hydra. each one sung a song to soothe the shaking meat, each person as much of a prisoner of the town as they are a prisoner of their own minds, caged in bliss. with one last reading sweep of the area as the shuttle primes for take-off, those still conscious enough can see... the strange energy signature is gone, and the storm is quickly receding. it's time to get the hell out of dodge.
you leave on your shuttle, and it lifts off with a cloud of black motes. as it travels through the atmosphere, if you're conscious, you can see them burning up, burning, cleansing fire, burning... up up and away.
in any case: you have slayed the false hydra, and the earth will absorb it, cleanse it, and will once again become whole. in time, perhaps this place might become something better than this.
mission success. ]