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1. |
Moonbelt Immolator
25:56
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DETACHED FROM THE XENOVERSE
Dawn breaks upon my bewildered soul...
Sleep count: Unknown
Shrouded in nostalgic fog; a dripping beacon module de-lulls me from a colossal dream-state as I stir from a cockpit seat.
From the viewglass:
Elongated stars enshrouded twist amongst amorphous loops of ghastly effervescence synchrotronatedly emitting from a cylindrical smog of pulsar winds.
SKIRMISH ABOVE HD 10180 h
Dials scrambled realign as a battle unfolds before my eyes.
The colossal fluctuations of rippling epochs relinquished in my wake.
A skirmish seethes between two factions above a glowing gas giant.
I regain control just as I am in scope but tracking grids are on me.
Comms hailed in an acoustic package transmitted from a Zoergoric flagship.
CIPHER-TRANSLATOR... //ACTIVE:
"Unknown craft: Please identify. You are in quarantined void-space of the Sagittarius-Carina galactic corps. Comply immediately or we will blast you!"
| "Unworldly fog clearing from exhaust tubes" - A. Bradley |
With no knowledge of the controls, I beam back nothing.
Their last fuzzed warning of alien vibrons sparks from auditory ducts.
With haste I configure the overhead systems as my craft zooms towards the turmoil.
And non-Euclidian structural fighters drop from their landing bay.
I maneuver towards the asteroid field and the slimy voice croaks through the verbirators.
CT:
"Dispatch: Target unknown craft. Quadrant E [Triangulation grid active] Sector V-XB982"
| "Spherical alignment" - Riley |
Swerving in and out of asteroids - Plasma gun fires blasts.
Squadron of spinning terror coordinate - Infrared targeting.
Fighters closing fast through the abyssal glow - Target locked on.
| "Slipstream through crevasses in the lithospheric nimbus smog" - J. Bradley |
| "A celestial dance through the gas giant's spewing ichor" - A. Bradley |
| "Sputtering exhaust fumes clinging to the engine nexus spark" - J. Bradley |
Missiles strike the craft - Computations malfunction.
Hyperdrive in effect - Scramble syntax to disengage.
Steam hisses out from the scorched bow - Systems lose control.
INTERSTELLAR LANDS
| "Secluded howling of a synchronous awakening" - Riley |
| "Rolling hills of nebula" - J. Bradley |
| "Manifested through the shores of time" - A. Bradley |
| "A ceremony of churning gravity-flux in the spatio-temporal continuum" - A. Bradley |
Drifting sepulchre of iron. Cosmic steel tomb - Adrift.
BLACK ORE
Now absent from infrared gaze; ice has exteriorized around the controls and static on the horizon punishes my sanity.
Drifting for months, air system leaking; dripping, soaked - it reeks; coreating a stench of rotting metal.
Trapped and cornered in the walls of my own cruiser.
No sign of celestial gait to latch gravitory sensors.
Blank visuals on the display, auxiliary power routing failed.
Compelled to glide the cresting outerstellar dunes of ages.
Spheres drip by in the distance, frozen and battered dregs glide by the hull. The remnants of a long passed merauder redoubt?
Blips from the radar wail at the presence of an incoming object: A ravaged planet emblazoned with it's own lunar debris.
Ensnared by a gravity well.
My craft flails through tectonic abortions to land at the edge of a lunar crevasse.
There, clinging to the brink: An industrial complex littered in impacts.
Catwalk traversed, blast doors breached, the purple glow of outside dims.
LAIR OF THE TIME-GHOULS
Personnel ascender mounting the pale crust.
Ahead, arcing Polaris within the tomb's sepulchral nucleus.
Gleaming lunar magma spills through gashes in the lofty cantilever.
But skulking shadows dominate the pitch canvas.
| "Scoured mutation seekers" - A. Bradley |
| "Altered colliding parallels" - J. Bradley |
| "Illumined in Cimmerian shade / The mirror" - A. Bradley |
Progeny potential: Eroded by time.
Mutations beyond all form. Time sickness shows.
Irradiated cortex: Inharmonious.
Clinging to human perception.
Enduring echoes flow.
Ensconced into the vestibule, refuge found in the nuclear sanctum; behind mangled console wires and an ogling life-starved corpse.
Uranium levels pushed to maximum and the surging throng of twitching figures are swathed in chemical spew as I make my fleeing retreat.
Weeping lanterns.
Evac procedure.
Forms innumerable.
Airlock to airlock.
Half-life levels close to zero.
Bursting through chambers depressurized...
| "Flung Into A Vacuous Vacuum" - Riley |
PROGENY ECHOES
Regaining secure footing onto pressurized auras and into an eerie docking bay. Black ore steams off the diggers, any suitable craft derelict.
On weird gait I glimpse upon an aquatic insectoid.
Hissing vapor ridges twinge; a shadow of Enceladus.
Escape pod in bay 4, automatic guiding path blocked. Manual disintegration required to reach escape vectors.
Smoke bills from the towering abyss as the overreaction reaches critical levels.
Vapor ions of haze disperse from the geological spill.
Draped over the continuum, destiny pulsating doom's lyre.
Time is a circle without beginning or end, moonbelt immolator.
The pod clears from the Lunar Maria and I meander between the two spheres.
POD SYS:
"Course plotted, charge boosters active, countdown initiated: T-minus 0.024 kiloseconds"
| "Distortional labyrinth traversal" - J. Bradley |
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2. |
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| "Orbital Debris" - A. Bradley |
Blast off from the lunar settlement, orbiting moonbase looms overhead.
Nuclear core ignites and consumes; blighted dwellers hover lifeless in stasis.
Internal atmosphere is spewing out, yet the targeting course is unaffected.
Bludgeoned escape pod drowns in moisture from the oxygen rich composition.
Towering spires reach for the thermosphere on the bleak horizon plagued in black ore.
Old Earth laments in dismic woe; lingering throes of this alien world.
Glide over foliage and into the soil, leaping quadrupeds scatter the land.
Outer seal of the capsule released as tempestuous utterances spew from beneath the ground…
...In a scoured, beyond alien tongue.
Speaking inoculated truth of a perennial quest.
Tribal clans tell of a chthonous terror where ancient structures ooze beneath miles of mud.
They lead me deep into the heaving earth, where an age old bas-relief is sculpted inevitable:
A grand triptych of a celestial emissary unleashed from it's hypogean gaol.
| "Hovering undescribable thing" - Riley |
Enraged in translucid stimulus through divine emanation. Petrified embryotic dormancy.
ADAR KAIMANU AG-KIA-ZI
(Translation: Satur - Fire to the Earth spirit!)
| "Spurned immortality mythos I" - Riley |
| "A riposte of crepsculated lunar presence" - A. Bradley |
| "Tumultuous meridian occurence" - J. Bradley |
Upon pensive waters the beast is defeated in cacophonous splendor.
Vanquished by moonbase cannons quantized for moonshot blitz.
It flees through a tremendous portal: An astral conjuration.
Plasma trails arcing from garroted ancient spoils.
As cystic marrow falls, it's cortexial cruor visibly spills from the frontal lobe.
Miasma of dying titan flesh. Its molten corpse, a harbinguous cenotaph.
| "Spurned immortality mythos II" - Riley |
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3. |
The Arctic Chasm
07:46
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-Beneath the crawling abysms-
Relinquished obelisk of Rasskhazu beacons my voyage through the time wound, as a bloated sun splinters my hourglass.
Built from the black ore of Enceladus: The temple of Ostyx impales the bubbling sky, and waters of the Apzŭ crest upon ancient sands.
Upshukkinakku deserted for aeons; council chamber of the ancient ones smothered in wither, as crepuscular ash collects upon callipygian reliefs.
Subterranean pathways traversed.
Molten sap transfused to stone vessels of Orācc.
-Return to the frosted ablation-
Stygian auras trail to my Arctic ziggurat; now entrenched by mimesis cretin. Those pestilent imps; dispatched from the very estuaries of uncreation.
Incantations configured with drastic haste, quantum remnants dissolve in corporeal synthesis as photonic beams are cast upon iced stone.
Bounty of Upshuk levitates in cryoseism blasts, trailing processions from the ancient antechamber as petrochemical smogs close in around my chasm.
Re-summoned gateway ripped through time; through quantum zones.
Adversarial atronachs mystified.
| "Pinging astrolabes quantizing approach vectors" - A. Bradley |
| "Analogue displays flicker in the cryptical beams of another dimension" - A. Bradley |
| “At The Passageways Of Asa'llŭahi” - J. Riley |
| "Spherulites and regmaglypts form upon the urns as they become unstable in the presence of non-Stygian construct" - J. Bradley |
Pillars of golden ivory hang in the lunar tomb's basaltic vomit.
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4. |
Planetary Hypnosis
05:30
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Protruding from the void: An inter-dimensional warp-gate. Gravity displacement actuates; matter absorbed, time itself skewered.
The cosmic expanse unfolds before me, as a zonohedric maelstrom oscillates through my consciousness.
Glitch into the event horizon.
A legion of obscure behemoths lay cocooned beyond the flow of time, awaiting awakening from their aeonic lullaby.
I have escaped from the inner dimensions, unbound from their isolation. Like pillars to a grand hallway nested in nebulic fluid of Asa'llŭahi
| “Astronomical die-mensionominal phenomenon” - J. Bradley |
Wretched giants encrusted in golden husks: Humongous, crystallized
The astral beasts thrash at the walls of their chambers; the Orācc urns begin to overflow
The slobbering convulsions palpitate before my power, unlocked spectral cavities dripping dimensional sludge.
Paradigm tornadoes of infinite's bounty. I leap into the abyss and confront the ancients
| "Leeching space-time from black-holes" / "Tethered sepulchres collapsing in digital" - A. Bradley / Riley |
Galactic mesmerisement, universal helotry. Boring beneath quantum thresholds.
He who flees with waning vitality. Iłus coughs, time spewing from it's respiratory tracts.
Parallel resurrection.
Obscured velitation.
Planetary hypnosis.
Obfuscated subsistence.
Traversing the mountainous cadaver of Æ'os the divinator. Ancient ones flee beneath the 9th astral plane.
I am the ascended master, unbound from the scorched dimensions. Peaks of Mumhumaya merge with the oceans of Capathine.
A gargantuous time wound eats the spheres, remain callous and sane to the hideous end.
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Cryptic Shift Leeds, UK
Phenomenal Technicological Astrodeath
Sequel to Visitations From Enceladus coming soon on Metal Blade Records!
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