The Glass Tower

The sky is suffocating.

An endless haze of white clouds that stretches from horizon to horizon. Snow coats the ground and does its best to fool him into thinking the old world is gone but he can see it here and there. A car underneath a couple centuries of ice and mineral deposits. A nearby building preserved in layer after layer of volatile glass and frozen water.

The armored figure grunts in annoyance and taps his shoulders. The steel gauntlet destroys the sheet of ice that's formed on the huge sculpted pauldrons and he moves on. Snow crunches beneath his feet. Every step he takes sounds like a shattering window. His form is enormous, hulking and hunchbacked. Silken ribbons of brilliant cerulean, saffron, and crimson hung down from his pauldrons and great repulsor thrusters. The wind tugs on them and blows them around.

He pauses in front of the building, or what used to be a building. The corruption has taken over it entirely, great sheets of multihued glass rising up to cover its surface. Beneath it he can see a door here, a window there. He has to strain his eyes and for a moment the optic interface mistakes his intent and the night vision flickers on. The world turns neon green, a grunt of annoyance before flicking his eyes in the proper manner. Electric filigree mutates across his vision and the world returns to it's normal state. The oil sheen ugliness of the strange crystal stands tall. Colours of the rainbow usually reserved for toxic poison rendered into glass. He traces stripe of bright red up the crystal wall with his vision, cranks his head back, the anti-ballistic cloth that shrouds his neck creaks, the back of his bassinet clatters against the jump-pack. The HUD flickers a bit but he pays it little mind and squints properly. His vision focuses in on the crystalline branches that jut out from the great crystal trunk. He realizes that it's a tree, an enormous one; four or five stories tall with a great canopy of razor sharp glass.

He takes a step back, adjusts his stance and ignores the metallic crunch as his steel shod boot grinds a mineral deposit to dust. He strikes the repugnant mirror before him. There's a burst of something like wet sand and the enormous tree groans. The branches shudder and dark powder swirls down. A featherlight kaleidoscope of poisonous spores enshrouds him as he draws back his steel clad arm yet again. Combat grade artificial myomer bundles strain and the fist flies forward. Another splintering crunch and sheets of unsightly glass jumble down to the ground in a tiny avalanche. The hole is large enough to allow a man to enter but his armor makes him so much more than that. He reaches forward, grasps the sides of the portal he's created and pushes.

The tree trunk shakes and great splinters of repellent glass rattle downwards. The face of the enormous trunk collapses inwards with a cacophony made all the more disturbing for the silence that follows it. He reaches down for the door in front of him and curses, the PA system picks it up and a tinny German slur drifts across the silence. Hands upwards, fading light catches the treated steel and polished brass. For a moment it looks like the embossed metal is alive, a lion battles a great wyrm on his left arm, a sunburst with flying birds on the right. The moment fades, hands rest near the top and boot meets door. There's a wrenching crunch followed by a metallic smack. He takes hold of the door, the ancient barrier cracks and crumples beneath his steel clad fingers. Its wooden surface crumbles at his touch. Light catches the particulate matter as it falls turning it into a cascade of shimmering rainbow motes. He rips it free of the hinges and layer of mineral deposits. As he pulls it closer the baroque HUD fills his vision.

A readout starts, gothic script scrolls down his field of vision. For a brief moment the cold of the outside world collides with the great heat of the nightmare-tree and steam pours out of the hole he's created in the structure. He throws the wooden door down to the ground and it clatters to a stop with a strange tinkling. He almost turns away but pauses to regard the door. The underside is a mess of dark reds, blacks, and vile greens. There are severed veins extending from it, they weep a thick gloaming fluid that congeals into a sickening mess on the rubble he's created. It resembles nothing so much as a scab ripped free from an infected wound.

He turns to hole he's created and forces himself inside of it, red brick crumbles away like soft clay and a harder layer of black-red minerals grinds to dust underneath his insistent advance. The Radiation spikes, slowly climbing. He keeps forcing himself forward eventually the old structure of the building and the underlying exotic biomass. He knows it's biomass now, he's pushed past the steam and there's no question that he's inside a living thing. If he squints he can figure this place. Some kind of lobby, chairs for people to wait at. A receptionists desk. An unreadable logo with some kind of vaguely soviet propaganda taste to it buried underneath a network of transparent veins busily pushing along dark sludge.

The HUD display is going a little bit nuts, gothic text spelling out contaminants and rad readings and then the HUD starts to glitch, fractal forms and sputtering pixels fill his vision. For a brief moment electric blue fractals dominate his HUD and then the whine of laboring electronics fills his hearing and his vision clears. Now the text scrawl is including electromagnetic phenomena. He reaches down and starts fumbling with his belt. His eyes make the proper motions and his vision turns green. Yes, there's the gnostic scanner. Some fumbling and he threads a wire from it to one of the access ports. It takes a little prep work from there. The antennas need to be extended and positioned, a few switches need to be flicked.

His HUD flickers and changes, a small circle appears down in the right side of his vision. The constellation for Ursa Major blinks into scope and then fades away. Ping. Ping. Ping. Scanning the gnoosphere. A dot flickers into existence on the small disk. Now there’s an interesting wrinkle, it can detect artefacts but not anomalies. He’ll have to pay careful attention to the environment as he moves along. The next step nearly topples him, his foot pushes into something wet and organic and grinds down into a pulpy morass of dark, steaming flesh. The steel clad limb goes shin deep before his foot finally touches something solid. A step backwards onto concrete, time to rethink his advance.

At further examination the floor ahead breaks open into a grotesque panoply of pumping veins, twitching muscle, and now, steaming pools of congealing ichor. His geiger counter jumps a few ticks thanks to the spilled fluids. A pause, consideration, hand to belt, draw the blade. Arming sword, silver steel turns neon green in his augmented vision and the blade slams down into the morass of flesh. Something like blood erupts from the meat but all told the pressure the liquid seems to be under isn’t that impressive.

The testing continues apace for some time, five feet of steel used to sound the depths until he comes to a conclusion. Stance changes and the towering paragon of steel slams through what was once a lobby wall. Sabatons find purchase on the ground beyond, plaster, fossilized wood, and ribbons of skin fall to the ground. Apparently there’s a hole in the foundation, did the hell-tree dig it or merely take advantage of it? A few steps around the cancer pit, continuing onwards.

The only warning is a gentle chittering, then a sound like a steam whistle. He’s spent his life fighting undead, bandits, and plundering ancient ruins. Malformed corpses and men whose souls have been twisted by terrible cruelty but never in all his days has he seen anything like this. An enormous viper’s head, skin like glass, flesh with the consistency of jelly.  Dozens segmented body sections; more like an insect’s than any mammal or reptile. Irregular legs with irregular length and divisions and feet that rarely match. Pincers, grasping claws, agile hands, and hooves. He can see its innards; heart-like organs pumping toxic ichor, lungs heaving, muscles pulling, tendons flexing. It’s almost strange enough to overcome decades of experience. Almost.

The sword swings up in a wild arc, legs are severed, a whistle blows and ichor sprays. The creature withdraws, a strange rattling clumsy dance before it surges forward and snaps at steel clad limbs with its wide jaws. A sword answers, point buried in the soft tissues of its mouth and then hands are pulling apart its jaws. Teeth come loose. Its glass bones crack and he pulls.

Crystalline keratin splits and shreds, oily ichor sprays and a sound like a set of bagpipes being ripped apart slowly during its’ final performance accompanies the abomination’s rending. Steel fingers crush cartilage, glassine bones splinter. After a few moments of shocking violence the corpse falls to the ground, twitching and quietly oozing its poisonous life fluids onto the tumorous mineral speckled floor.

Sword up, wipe clean with a rag, into the sheath. Keep moving, this place is a nightmare made reality it won’t do to linger. The side room is barely large enough for his armored frame but he pays that little mind. Tiles pop and crackle beneath steel shod boots but the floor remains solid. For the moment at least the path ahead can be trusted. The doorway isn’t wide enough, augmented strength changes that. Ripping, wrenching, red sinew giving away, wet sand and ossified building materials crunching together beneath gauntleted hands.



Move through the wound, but the cancerous mass he’s invading won’t take his presence lying down. Oozing, pulsing, fat veins throbbing with dark ichor. Glistening meat writhes and finally pops. The hallway becomes a buzzing hive of insects. None of them look the same, stingers and mandibles and buzzing wings. Tiny transparent bodies full of liquid malice. They simply don’t have what it takes to stop him but an instinctual revulsion forces his hand up and backwards. Steel fingers wrap around a leather bound hilt and pull.

Raise the Dragon Knife high, thumb the switch. Pop! Hiss! Krakakoom! It roars to life, cherenkov blue fire extending upwards in a pyre of screaming plasma. Smoke roils out from the blade and green turns to black. He can’t see anything, he doesn’t need to. Dragonfire melts abberatious insects or ignites them, it turns the flesh to glass and the glass to ash. There’s panic in his motions but training turns panic to purpose and purpose to movement. Seconds turn to minutes and a warning light flashes in his hud. Thumb the switch, stow the hilt. Advance; the locust’s choir is silenced. It’s safe to push forward.

Up the stairs, supports have fleshy veins wrapped around them and the wood crumbles beneath the weight of his armor to reveal a half random messy of bones, cartilage, and blood vessel. Every step crunches the mixture together into liquescent sand but he’s long since stop paying it, or the path of destruction he leaves in this living cancer any mind. Ascending, wrecking guiding rails. The second floor doorway is smashed to pieces and there’s brass cartridges on the ground. They’re full of crystal, 7.62 shells turned into an odd bit of semi-organic jewelry.

A trail of glimmering mineral encrusted metal leading to a corpse surrounded by dead abominations. Nightmares made flesh robbed of their twisted half lives, bullet holes riddling bizarre anatomy. Old russian military surplus, an AKM entombed beneath rainbow glass, a dessicated corpse slowly disappearing beneath clusters of mineral deposits. A gas-mask staring vacantly at the wall ahead. Ping, pingping, pingpingping... Yes that’s the source of the gnostic signature. Move forward, check the pockets. Bullets, tainted food, paper money that crumbles at the touch. Coins that shatter beneath steel fingers. Where...? Lift up the gasmask. Yes there, a necklace strung on copper wire, each bead a holy symbol. The flesh beneath is still healthy and untouched. Lift up the gasmask work his fingers behind it. Find the clasp, a simple thing of bent wire. The necklace goes into the line of pouches at his belt and the gnoosensor stops pinging. No other signatures nearby.

The question hangs in the air, asked by the gasping silence; ‘What now?’ The deadman’s a Stalker, someone creeping through ruins of the old world to find bits of treasure. Most of the ones he knew from his days in Ukraine were upbeat optimists who felt they could shoot or talk their way out of any situation. Kneel down, look for something identifying. An old notebook crumbling to dust as the poison of this place converts the paper into its’ constituent elements. He has the necklace, and that helps but they’re hardly as valuable as an ID card or tattoo. But the man’s flesh is being overtaken by glass and the more his heavy steel hands paw at the body the more cloth tears and leather crumples. So he leaves the man in his impromptu grave. From the looks of things attempting a burial would just inflict this cancerous mess on sanctified ground.

Start walking, the gnostic sensor is useless now, or seems to be anyway. Still he leaves it connected, one foot in front of the other, always with tender care. Occasionally his steel shod boots burst through calcified wood and mash into transparent flesh oily ichor. From the looks of things this...’tree’ has grown up into the spaces between the walls and floor, using it as a support structure of sorts. Check the HUD... The geiger counter is spiking. Follow the lead, downwards, across crumbling stairs and over old floors. All around him he can hear it; the beating of a dozen hearts, the wheezing of twisted lungs, strange ichor flowing through veins and arteries. Keep moving, follow the rads.

Downwards, old concrete coated in raw flesh, transparent save for the filthy liquescent sand flowing through its veins. The Rads spike and something lurches out of the dark, hunches over like a gorilla, a dozen vestigial crablegs wave around on its back and a wet, featureless face suddenly opens as it hawks a gobbet of something viscous at him. Repulser jets flare and his instincts kick in, a leap to the right, through corroded metal railing that explodes into crystalline dust on contact with his suit of armor.

Thick slime splatters across the hide coated steps, acrid smoke rises and the knight draws one of his swords. Step forward, grasp the blade at half length, thrust forward. The tip makes contact with chitinous plating. The mutant lashes out with an arm that looks more like some odd club than a limb, dozens of little crustaceous legs branch off from it and flail pointlessly at the air. Step back, twist the torso, let the creature’s own momentum act against the blow. Thrust the blade forward. Don’t need to find a weakpoint, artificial muscles strain and steel slams through chitin, then fat, then muscle.

Air bursts from the new wound as well as the creature’s mouth, apply force, torque the blade backwards. Step just so, reverse the sword, bring the hilt down and use the guard as a hammer point at one of the massive club like limbs. The Elbow crunches and the creature slumps forward. It turns its head, the molluscoid maw dribbling slime, neck muscles bulge- brace the back leg, lash out with the forward one. Its torso rocks and the sputum goes wide.

Adjust stance, grip the blade at halfway and bring it downwards hilt first. The heavy side of the blade strikes near the neck and there’s a burst of clear fluid followed by hissing and chemical smoke. He sheaths the blade quickly and kicks the beast’s malformed corpse a few times. It twitches but otherwise is harmless.  Keep moving, onwards, downwards. The offal of yesteryear gives way to tunnels bored through ancient infrastructure downwards, further and further. The rads climb and at some point water starts pooling at ankle height. Little glimmering fish things swarm through the murky glowing water.

He travels for what feels like hours, through tributaries created by a strange boring root system, further, onwards, marking his way with the corpses of monsters and markings on the walls. As time passes a pressure builds in his head, it only grows stronger but he can’t turn back now. Before him lies a great chamber full of water that glows cherenkov blue. The walls are covered with transparent veins full of liquescent brilliance. Pillars of flesh and bone hold a cathedral of strange organs up high and a strange mist fills the air.

With every step he takes the pressure in his skull grows greater and greater, nonsensical imagery and sounds assault him. He’s been hallucinating for the past few hours, phantom scents and voices. Nothing comprehensible and that’s the frustrating thing; he expected nightmares and he’s getting mathematical equations and the scent of cardamon. Something like a shark with spider mandibles leaps from the water at him and a heavy metal fist crunches into its nose. It doesn’t so much swim as flop away. The knight stalks the flesh cathedral in a vain attempt to make sense of it. Down below millions of transparent veins full of glowing blue liquid form a strange kaleidoscope up above they do the same. There’s a sense of importance here but he simply doesn’t have the background or equipment to parse it.

So the knight turns around and begins the long journey upwards...

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The next few days pass in a blur, the glass plains are an alien landscape but once you get over the strangeness they become monotonous. The Volgo Glass Miners and the Glass Stalkers make their livings in this harsh land, gasmasks at the ready to fend off miasma and keep shard-lung at bay. Careful questioning lands him an interview with a foreman and a trip back to that blasted tree with some studied official gets him an all access pass to the city proper. Frankly he’s relieved; the terrors of the tree are nothing compared to the Vitria Horrors that stalk the plains.

Enter storied Volgograd, ever besieged by monsters that stalk land, air and river. Glass beasts, swarming, pulsing fungal glass things that clog the harbor. In the dry dock they torch off snapping barnacles with crystalline shells. Swarming squamous vines with glass shard thorns choke ship screws only to burn under focused fire. Off in the glass orchards miners collect branches or dig for root systems and tubers of glassy minerals. In great foundries they refine the crystallized materials into steel and rarer things. The city may be under siege by this strange life but it’s turned a curse into a source of wealth.

In an armory master smiths strip the armor plating from his Engel and reforge it, they add in gilt decorations and carefully recast the bronze reliefs before riveting them in place. The old ribbons are burned, new ones are unboxed. Later he will kneel before an altar and children will tie on sanctified ribbons. The Operating system is touched up by digital monks and lenses are shined and cleaned. His swords are sharpened and the leather of the handle is replaced with freshly finished hide. His mind wanders, not even slightly concerned with the droning of the mining magnate before him.

The Vodka is high quality, the jam for the toast and tea is sweet and their surroundings suitably opulent for one of the greatest families of Volgograd. His wife’s clerk, provided by their family’s local office is quiet, dignified and efficient. He speaks only when required and busily works out a finders fee with the fat, jolly russian before him. Occasionally Helmut says something, but he’s distracted. This is forgiven, his chin was covered with dried blood when the first mining foreman saw him and the region has been abuzz ever since a claim was laid to the Glass Tower. This man will gain significant profits in processed uranium and whatever else that tree has laid claim to. He hardly cares if a Swiss negotiator does all the talking for the knight.

No doubt Celeste would be pleased to hear he’d bring in some measure of profit from this ‘foolish adventure’ but on some level Helmut’s once insurmountable spirit remains troubled. The mutants were nothing, even that many legged vitric horror that nearly killed him and the glass miners on their way to the Tower did not concern him. Monsters had a relatively simple failure/success state. Either you killed them or they killed you. No, it was that great pulsating cathedral of flesh and cherenkov radiation that concerned him. The whispers of hidden voices and strange smells. The lingering pain in his temples.

This was not a problem that valor and grit could solve, and the knowledge that such things existed would trouble him in the days to come.