The Switchboard

by NewKerbalEmpire

Introduction

The Encyclopedia was one of the most advanced wonders that any race on the planet had ever created. Stretching across several large rooms, each data bank within it was filled with everything its creators had ever learned, experienced, remembered, felt, or thought. Everything that went through the minds of any one of them, from the wonder of the youngest baby to the inexplicable light seen by the elders in the final moments before dismantling was chronicled in one of the hexagonal receptacles in one of the rooms of this great marvel. This was the final destination for any small bit of information that passed through the Great Mind, where it would sit for eternity in stagnation, waiting to be studied and maintained by the Apex Forms.

The Apex forms themselves were not much to behold, resembling long millipedes covered in a black exoskeleton. Their beady green eyes seemed to always glance upward, no matter the actual angle in which their sight was focused. At first glance, these Forms would not appear in any way significant, nor would they seem to fit any sort of function within or without their Home, as the other Forms do. However, the physical forms of these creatures were nearly unrelated to the function they served. These were not workers of the body, but workers of the mind. Whenever the Great Mind, the master and amalgam of their civilization, directed them to seek out information that could only be found within the Encyclopedia, they would scurry as fast as they could with their little legs to whatever receptacle within which that information was stored, use their oddly shaped jaws to interface with it, and immediately relay whatever information they found back into the Great Mind. Then, the use of the information, as well as how well the mind who requested it proceeded with the implementation of its contents, was relayed back and stored in the Encyclopedia, like everything else.

It was ironic, then, that the entire race of the Encyclopedia’s creators had followed the same path as what was logged into it. They had come from all over the world, or at least those parts which were known to them. They had not come of volition, and one could argue that they had not come of necessity either. No, they had come from instinct, triggered by one, single purpose, relayed to them from the very heart of the Great Mind. The Great Usurper, the Sole Deserter, the one who would bring down their civilization and transform their noble race into puerile slaves for his masters, had established a foothold within their very Home, the vast complex that held not only the Encyclopedia, but everything this race held dear. Ergo, there was a call not unlike the call for information just before any interval of transfer into the Encyclopedia. Every Form outside the Home, no matter what type, had to enter in. There was no question. The Home had to be defended.

At first, the beckoned had come hoping to fight. The Usurper had only the forces of a few dozen, surely? But they could not. Any of them that wandered into the Home was walking into a death trap, for the Slave had brought his Masters. Hordes of gold would rush and overwhelm any glimmer of hope in minutes, or even seconds, and the survivors would be taken and tortured in some way so horrible and twisted that they would turn into abominable, mutilated facsimiles of their former selves, slaves to the Great Usurper, and therefore to his masters.

Few ever actually made it to safety, and that safety was found in the rooms of the Encyclopedia. It was fortified with the best defenses their race could have ever created, even despite the destruction of the superstructure necessary for the Great Mind that supplied it with information. The defenses were indeed great, so much so that the Usurper could not breach it before the remaining members of his former race had managed to reach safety within.

There, like the thoughts stored within, they entered stagnation. They had come prepared for a swift battle, not the long guerrilla campaign which they found themselves forced into. Forced to stick to the alleys and backstreets of their own once-great city, they had found the stores of food either substantially finite or destroyed by their enemy, and so they scavenged on scraps or, if they could, the minds of whichever of the Usurper’s masters they managed to bring down in battle.

One would think the survivors would be culled and enslaved within days, but they did have three distinct advantages. First of all, many of the remaining survivors were either Elite or Rasa Forms, who could easily adopt the appearance of the forces of their enemy. Extensive precautions by both sides had prevented any major espionage, but this ability could be put to use in such a way that the enemy could not tell friend from foe before approaching them and engaging in conversation.

Their second advantage was their leader. Although their Queen, as fearless as she was ruthless, had abandoned them shortly before the destruction of the Great Mind prevented any further communication with her, a member of her Military Advisory by the name of Uncommon Mobility had taken up the mantle of leadership. Uncommon Mobility had led their scavengers personally and with great success, gathering countless resources in the name of survival, and putting many of his former brethren out of their torment. This was not nearly enough to win back the Home, nor was it enough to even cause permanent damage to his enemies. However, it was enough to buy time.

The final advantage was the Home itself. This was not a simple matter of “home field advantage,” though that certainly came into play during the early days of the conflict, but instead it is a matter of the mind within the Home, a sentient intelligence that would qualify as a Form were it not for its method of creation. This intelligence was capable of altering the internal passages of the Home at will, and it was no secret that it did everything it could to support the survivors, from opening convenient escape routes to occasionally even crushing the Usurper’s forces, as well as their masters, within closing corridors. Eventually, the invaders had resorted to using mining equipment to make their own passages, which undoubtedly caused the mind a great amount of pain, but it never surrendered or changed allegiances. In such a way, the center of this once-great race’s power was also one of its most admirable members, never giving way to constant stabbing or hacking from within its very body.

But now, that would matter no more. After almost a year of fighting for their very survival, this race was about to lose. There was never any question that the Encyclopedia could only hold out the invaders for so long, especially after their mining equipment was turned on the gate.

If one were to watch the events just outside that gate from a perspective within it, one would see a great tunnel with an inside coated in the clotting blood of the Home, with a line of green and gold shapes stretching infinitely into the corner of one’s eyes. One would also see two shapes directly ahead.

The one on the right could seem diminutive at first, but make no mistake, this was a great entity, come for the sake of an obsessive compulsion to plunder as much knowledge as she could. And at this very moment, the only thing on her mind was the riches of the Encyclopedia. This was, indeed, one of the goddesses before which the Usurper prostrated himself, and all she cared about was getting through that door.

At her right side was a shape much larger than she, a shape that, at first, would seem quite elegant, until it stepped into the light of the excavation beams.

Were you to gaze upon the face of this figure, you would see an abnormally long, distorted snout on a raw, seemingly peeled face covered in a green pus that had formed after the figure’s exoskeleton had been torn off. To gaze into the eyes would be to gaze into throbbing sacs filled with purple blood that jiggled with the movement of the legs, which had been swollen and bent as if a drunk surgeon had thought he was another species and was willing to twist and swell and break until the legs looked similar. Gazing upon the long neck, one would see three chunks of protruding bone, remnants of a skeleton far too solid to fully pry into shape. There was also a much bigger chunk of bone just below them, likely remnants of the ribcage, but this did not protrude through the pus-covered skin, instead applying just enough pressure to generate a huge red sore, mostly covered up by the more easily hardening pus on the figure’s underbelly. The back of the figure was covered in a sac of purple blood akin to the ones which the eyes had become, both likely being the result of internal bleeding. One would be hard-pressed to gaze upon this particular bruise and find the swollen slits from which the wings would emerge. The wings themselves were abnormally large, as if spurred on in their growth by another twisted surgeon with no regard for collateral damage. The green film had rotted away, leaving only small chunks of cartilage connected by thin, transparent veins so numerous as to generate a sort of woven film. The most sickening part about the wings, though, was that there was a third one growing in place of the tail. The most prominent feature of the figure, despite all this, would be the horn. Or rather, horns. The original horn was strangely intact, albeit with the outer layer rotted away, but still in sharp contrast to the rest of the distorted body. Behind this horn were two other inexplicable, bony growths that resembled antlers. There was no ready explanation behind them, but their resemblance to the sore at the bottom of the neck indicated that these were protrusions from the skull itself, and that they, despite their apparently sharp edges, had not in fact breached the skin.

So then, one would see that this is a monster. But do not attribute his presence to chance, or his previous effects on the situation at hand to be nil. This was no ordinary beast. This was the Great Usurper, the Sole Deserter, the Tyrant Slave. This was a former Changeling, with an interesting former name.

That name was Thorax.

Author's Note:

Here we go! Please give feedback, I at least want to know this story has been read!

Comments

[Ultimate Ramen]

This was a challenging read, as it is right now. Pretty cool near the end, though! I never thought Thorax could be made out to be so horrifying.