Cataclysm, Pt 11

The ground under your feet shakes with incredible intensity, and the rumbling is almost as deafening as the gunfire. Which makes sense, seeing as there's tens of thousands of insectoid legs out there, all moving with frenzied abandon.

Each of them drum against the concrete into a furious crescendo, causing the world near you to quake. It's enough to cause the buildings all around to start to fall apart, specifically the ones that have already been damaged a great deal.

Huge chunks of them break off and careen to the ground with heavy thuds. They crunch and crush numerous insects on impact. The heavy wet thuds are punctuated by all manner of insectoid screaming and wailing.

Though that hardly slows their advance. Insects push forward from the rear and climb over and around the fallen debris.

Kaja's blade slices cleanly through a number of insects, splashing their gruesome blue-black innards all over the place. She swings it up and around as quickly as she can, then slashes it across the road, cutting down dozens of insects at a time. Then, she swings it back as quickly as she can.

As she sweeps the road, a half dozen soldiers or so fire controlled three-round bursts into whatever makes it past Kaja's reaping. They make simple, slight movements as they bear their aim on insect after insect, and rip into each of them with devastating bursts.

Though you certainly feel a sense of fear emanating from each and every person around you, they don't let that overwhelm them. Each of them exude an overwhelming sense of duty and dedication, and that helps them maintain their deadly focus.

More than that, you can sense just how mentally exhausting it is for them to maintain said focus, and keep firing with extreme precision.

"You two!" cries the officer in charge. "Get over here and outta the way! You're in the middle of everything!"

You and Kaja realize that you are indeed kind of in the way, and head over to his station as fast as you can. It's only a hop, skip, and jump away, and Kaja is very easily able to keep her concentration on swinging the blade around as she moves.

"You're the one making that weapon swing around, right?" he asks Kaja.

"Yeah, trying to anyway," she replies. "Why, you need me to do something else with it?"

"No, you're doing great. Could you move it a bit over to the left? There's a concentration of those bugs incoming."

"No prob."

Kaja adjusts where she's swinging the blade, and moves it further towards the left of the street, as requested. Then she tears through a particularly concentrated area infested with the insects, who have begun to climb over each other as they skitter.

"Also, how far can you swing it out?" the officer asks Kaja.

"No idea," she replies. "I could probably fling it pretty far. But I probably wouldn't be able to get it back. Best I don't try anything crazy right now."

You glance over at Kaja and notice that she's beginning to strain as she swings the huge blade around. Moving it around so violently is clearly taking a toll on her. It dawns on you that it's probably taking a whole lot of her concentration to use it, just like with the soldiers and their weapons.

Except, unlike them, she isn't exactly practiced with her weapon - all she's been doing with it is carry it around thus far. Moving it the way she is currently is clearly taxing her mentally.

As you ponder your predicament, a half dozen soldiers come up from behind and go to relieve the ones up front. All they do is tap their shoulders three times to let them know they're there. Then, one by one, they stop firing and allow their relief to step in their place.

The transition is relatively seamless, and their lethality as a whole barely abates.

As the relief soldiers settle into position, the relieved soldiers back away with relaxed shoulders and stances. Each of them are breathing hard and heavy as they clear their weapons and reload their magazines.

One of them steps up to the commanding officer, even as he's recuperating and checking his equipment.

"Sir, permission to remove body armor," he says.

"Absolutely not," the officer replies.

"Well we ain't exactly getting shot at, so all it's doing is weighing us down."

"Well, regulations say they've gotta stay on during combat operations, no exceptions."

"Pardon me sir, but regulations didn't account for this kinda firefight against this kinda enemy. If we don't-"

Their argument is cut short when the ground shakes with a violent rumble, and almost causes all of you to fall down. It's definitely enough to cause you to stumble, and for Kaja's concentration to slip.

The blade she's controlling slams into the asphalt edge-first, cutting into two or three insects before embedding itself into the ground. At the same time, most of the soldiers at the front line pause their firing just for that moment, in order to keep themselves standing.

There's just enough of a lull in activity that the insects surge forward as a result, and gain precious ground.

Thankfully all of you recover rather quickly, and the slaughter begins anew again.

Kaja picks up the blade as swiftly as she can, and gets back to cutting down swaths of insects. At the same time, the soldiers around you switch to full-auto for only a few seconds, and empty out their magazines. It's as though they're attempting to catch up to that lost moment.

The relieved soldiers immediately hop to their sides to back them up as they reload, to keep the pressure up. But despite all their efforts, it hardly matters. That momentary lapse of defense has allowed the insects to gain a little bit of ground. Far more than any of you like. More than that, they're slowly gaining even more.

You can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stick up as more and more of those bugs get ever closer. They're going to overrun you, slowly but surely.

It dawns on you that you need to help somehow, that you can't just stand there doing nothing. If anything, you should do your best to try to relieve Kaja, so she can rest, if even for a moment.

But again, you don't know what you can do besides maybe use your Telepathy. Your Third Eye certainly won't do much - at least as far as you can tell. Performing a Surge like you earlier would affect everyone around you, not just the bugs.

Still, what would your Telepathy accomplish though? Would you try to reach out and talk to the bugs? And even if you could, how could you possibly talk all of them down? Especially since they all seem to be going absolutely berserk…

You decide to try anyway. It's the very least you could do. Certainly better than doing nothing, right?

You open up your mind and sweep outward with your Telepathy in an attempt to reach out to as many of those insects as you possibly can. As you open up and reach out, the low throbbing at the sides of your head begin to sharpen and take shape. The pain intensifies the more you spread yourself out, seemingly enveloping your mind as the moments pass.

Despite that, you keep going. And you do your best to sense the insects' minds. But unlike human thought patterns, you simply can't quite make out what they're thinking. It's all a mad jumble of signals and gestures and tones and movements that are somehow interrelated to each other.

It's almost as though they're all moving and thinking in unison, but with enough individuality to warrant a repetition of their individual signal. Or, rather, all their individual "speeches" are like all the others around them, just slightly in or out of step from each other.

As though their thoughts travel through every single one in waves, but originating from different points within the swarm itself.

It dawns on you that they have a hive mind, which is why you're having difficulty understanding them at all. But maybe, you can tap into their patterns, somehow. And maybe by doing that you can talk them down. If you can figure out how to talk to them at all.

You try to suss out what they mean by a certain chirp or wail or flicking of antennae or bristling of setae, but find no meaning to any of them. It's simply far too alien for you to comprehend. Certainly not while you're already pressed for time.

Instead of trying to find a way to translate how they communicate, you attempt to focus on their emotional state. A part of you thinks that if they're enraged, maybe you could try to calm them down. Like how you believe your despair had driven away the shadow creature earlier.

Something like that anyway.

You switch your perspective slightly, and focus on their emotions while tuning out their conscious thoughts. Though you're unsure how exactly to do it, you find it relatively easy to actually accomplish. A bit like turning the dial on something. Like a radio, or a volume knob.

And as you do so, you find yourself flooded with the insect's collective mood. It rushes at you with such intensity that you're almost knocked off your feet. It's potent enough that you can feel it wash over you in waves.

Though you open up expecting a great deal of anger and bloodthirstiness coming from them, you instead find yourself awash with fear and dread. And it's a deeply existential kind - run or die.

This surprises you a great deal - you imagine that their charge towards all of you has been their attempt to kill all of you. Because maybe they've got this instinctive need to wipe you out, the same way people tend to wipe out insects in their homes and such.

It only makes sense to you - they find these 'pests' everywhere, and have some deep need to remove them.

But in the end, it turns out they're afraid of something, and they're frantically running away from it with everything they've got. The entire hive is filled with absolute fear and dread - one that's driving them to the point of ruin, right into the tip of a blade, or into a storm of bullets. A fear and dread that far exceeds the amount of fear and dread that any of you are able to apply in return.

They're not here to wipe you all out - you all just happen to be in their highly destructive path as they run from something.

Your heart thumps at the thought of what that something could be. So you reach out further with your Telepathy in an attempt to figure out what. Your mind stretches out past the tens of thousands of insects further down the street - they're practically flooding it as they stream down in your direction.

All those minds, clamoring for escape - it's like a sea of deadly desperation.

And on the other side of it all, right where the insects end and that something begins, you realize why they're so afraid. Why they're running for their collective lives. The blood drains from your face as that familiar presence reaches the very edge of your Telepathic perception.

Its bottomless darkness tells you everything you need to know what's out there.

"The shadow thing's back," you say breathlessly. "And I think it's… it's coming this way. These bugs? All they're doing is trying to get away from it as best they can."

Kaja's eyes go wide the moment you mention the shadow creature. You can feel her heart thump with fear. It perfectly matches the fear that has settled inside you as well.

"It's coming here?" she asks nervously. "To us?

"Yeah, I think," you reply with a shaky voice. "I can sense it getting closer and closer, as it nips at the bugs from the rear. I can feel 'em getting snuffed out a dozen at a time."

A gravely worried sigh escapes Kaja's mouth, even as the ground rumbles more and more violently, as the insects slowly but surely crawl forward further and further.

Though everyone's doing their best to keep the tide back, there's little any of you can do against their eventual encroachment. And with the shadow creature right behind them? It all seems hopeless. Even Kaja's starting to feel that way.

"What do we do?" she asks. "Does it want this blade back? Do we hand it over? Do we fight it? Does it just want to kill everything? What the hell?!"

Outside, the blade wavers as her own control of it weakens, though it still cuts as easily as it always has.

You're unable to answer her - it's not like you know what to do. Between the both of you, Kaja's the one who knows everything, knows what to do, knows all the answers. Then again, who would know what to do at the end of the world?

Part of you wants to grab Kaja, find your Dad, and run away from all this. Why bother with any of it? Who cares what happens to all these people? But once again, the better part of you stops yourself. None of you are gonna get very far if you simply run off.

If you do run, what then? Out to that impossible heat? Into more dangerous chaos? Into the path of other fleeing creatures and insects? At least here, there's plenty who can protect the three of you from most of what's out there. That is, except that shadow creature.

A myriad of questions and thoughts batter your mind, even as the pain begins to become acute.

But how could you beat it? Like you had done last time? You could try again, but you're not sure if you can replicate that feat. And if you do, what would it do to the insects? What about the other telepaths? What would it do to them?

Worst of all, at what point will you stop caring about what would happen to them, and simply lash out due to your own frenzied desperation?