#none of the other hive places have the ground layout like that? ...do they?

[bluebudgie]

That announcement trailer is so uncanny because all the places are so familiar but then Tarir looks like this

and what I assume to become ogre lane in the final release is having a dark mode moment

Weird stuff to look at in the year 2023.

[abundantchewtoys]

Hiveswap - Monster Melee + Attic

So, the final(?) stretch of this Episode - the trek into the attic!

But first, let's combine the attic key with everything ever. :P

ATTIC KEY + GRANDFATHER CLOCK > Yyyeah, I suppose clocks were on Joey's mind because of the subtle influence of the other KEY? Cherubs and clocks, Lord English, you know.

ATTIC KEY + DEER > Yes, it *would* be great for Joey to meet an alive deer. :P (*coughDammeksLususcough*

ATTIC KEY + HORUS STATUE > ... Pffff, yeah, I forgot that's what that Egyptian god is called! So, the A1 trolls have two members named after ancient leaders of god assemblies (Horrus and Cronus), that's no coincidence at all!

...

Huh, it appears no other combination is possible with the attic key outside of the trophy room. Huh, guess Joey is REALLY hurried to get up there, huh?

...

D'aah,, we couldn't even walk to the kitchen door, we HAD to go to the living room, and now, BAM!!

Suddenly there are FOUR monsters to fight! Joey got squeezed between them in the battle opening animation.

Jeez, that big one seems like it could even have an EYE??? Closed now, but... Unless it's a second mouth.

So I tried to minimize the toolbar, but it appeared to count as an action, and Joey got knocked out. Let's see if I can do something different after resetting the game.

... Nope! The only thing we can do now is choose to switch to Jude's perspective! He's going to have to give her a hand, remotely. ... Wait, does this mean that, currently, no monsters are outside of the treehouse?

Probably not. I think Jude is going to have to use his flares. Then again, the monsters appear to be blind. Can they be burned from the flares?

Jude saw what happened from the tree house, as I thought he would have, but now, I wonder what he can do from all the way here. Is he REALLY that good an aim?

Okay, the monsters can sense the flare, huh. Three are distracted, does that mean Joey's going to be able to beat the big one one-on-one???

BYERS + TURNED MONSTERS > ... N'aww. Hey, and Byers exited our inventory and re-entered it, he's now first again. TREATS + TURNED MONSTERS > ... WELP!! Definitely a second mouth!!

FLASH LIGHT + TURNED MONSTERS > ...!!! We turned them back, and now one of the monsters is KO! Our cursor changed, like we're charging up, but we can also switch back to Jude???

... Pffffff, none of the other items really did something except funny prompts. But after turning the remaining two monsters around, Joey made the bigger one knock the bat-winged one out. Hah, what a doofus.

Welp, Jude dropped the flare gun. It DID distract the remaining two monsters, but it also lit the pile of leaves beneath his treehouse on fire. So Joey might not know how things turned out for him, when she's swapped!

WELP, if we now wait too long, Joey actually gets eaten by the monsters and it's game ovER8!!!!!

... So we make it to the attic, and Joey drops the key through the floorboard. That... I thought we had this weird prompt when we previously played the game, about the floorboard, huh.

Jude is planning to call his friends for help, and has shown actual tactical prowess, huh, hidden depths!

And... When the walkie connection breaks up, Jude pleads Joey not to investigate the portal. "I CAN'T LOSE YOU TOO" "DON'T GO NEAR THE PORTAL" ... Does that mean Joey and Jude's mom disappeared while investigating the attic/portal??? ... What does Jude know that Joey doesn't?

CHERUB KEY + BROKEN GLOBE > ... Huh. So, what, does the cherub key fit on some sort of globe? OR is it because it's used to activate a portal between worlds? Maybe Joey will assume she got transported to a fantasy land based on one of Grandpa's inaccurate globes?

BYERS + MONKEY PAW > ... PFffffffff. "Joey, you don't have to use me on everything in this house" "Nice try, Byers. Let's see what else is in here." Perfection.

BROKEN WOOD > Huh, so Joey owns a crowbar. Seems like that could come in handy once he has to assist Dammek? BATTERIES + BROKEN WOOD ... Huh, so??? Ooooh! I didn't see it with the inventory active! This is actually the remains of a CRATE! Did the portal come through the mail?? ... If Jude was strong enough to open the crate, it couldn't have been around when his Mom disappeared.

CHERUB KEY + CRATE > Yep, the portal definitely came in the mail. Was it sent to Grandpa by the Condesce, before she herself died/disappeared???

CHERUB KEY + INVOICE > "The KEY! Where is that dadblasted gadzooks KEY?!" ... Wow. So Grandpa was trying to activate the portal, but why??? And yeah, he was so out of touch with his kids, he didn't know his wife had left the key to Joey? ... Unless it ended up with Joey some other way.

Hmm, so I think maybe Condy used a portal like this to travel from Alternia to B1 Earth, and then through to B2 Earth after having given Grandpa his inheritance. But why did Grandpa want to use it? Did he want to find the woman who raised him? Or did he want to find other planets to explore, after having seen so much of Earth?

POGS + SHOTGUN > ... Waaaait, what? Your PA's SISTER gave him this shotgun????? ... Nanna? Did she give it to Grandpa sometime before he left the family home??? Or did Grandpa take it from a storage space belonging to Nanna after her death?? Wait, no, Nanna's still alive in 1995, never mind.

The most normal thing in this attic must be that Christmas tree. And yet, just in front of it, it appears Grandpa stashed a sleigh. Does he picture himself Santa?

MUMMY > ... Yeah, Grandpa indeed had some morbid fascination with death. He came into this world killing his foster dad, so yeah, what you gonna do? SPICE + MUMMY > ... Welp, it leads into a breakdown by Joey about how her Sitter actually doesn't always remember to provide good food. :(

CHERUB KEY + MASKS > The KEY ... likes... masks? What? Masks aren't skulls, though, otherwise I could've seen it as a cherub thing. What does this refer to?

BATTERIES + GLOBES > Heheh, yeah that would be appropriately stupid, that the attic is stuffed with the broken prototypes of the globe-based puzzle used to stock the attic key.

BALLET SHOES + GLOBES > Most of the globes don't have Russia or France or other ballet-leading countries on them. So they are probably of Alternia, but what if Grandpa collected globes from alternate dimensions? Alternate Earths, or alternate Sburb-spawning planets?

All that remains is the portal now.

Oooh boy. I do wonder how the game will end, what the last scene might allude to even. Also, is Dammek going to be shown yet, or just in silhouette?

Would be cool to have a callback to Roxy jumping through the portal and seeing Dream Roxy float out there.

Ooooh, a broken God Tier clock and a broken mirror? How's that for symbolism. The music stopped too, and now all that remains is the flapping of the wind through the portal.

BATTERIES + PORTAL > Confirmed that the wind is coming THROUGH the portal. Guess there's not a lot of air pressure inside the portal? Or at least, there's a pressure difference between the portal and Earth/Alternia.

PET TREATS + PORTAL > The void... It beckons.

TAP SHOES + PORTAL > It's a "the note desolation plays" shoutout. :D

BALLET SHOES + PORTAL > Curtains. Stage. "You have a feeling it's going to be a hell of a show" Hah! Reference double secured.

Then there's nothing left to do now, but to uncover the portal.

Jeez, it's been a long time coming.

...

Wow. Okay, so there's actually a pedestal for Joey to stand on, huh!

Is... Is the portal going to behave like a mirror? That she seems Dammek standing on the other side, and when she touches the surface, they are swapped?

How long did Dammek possess the portal? Was it also stashed out of sight, and what caused him to check on it?

LOOK > ... CREEEEEEPY. Seems like either the portal is calling out to Joey... Or some other presence. Can't be Caliborn, right?

POGS + PORTAL > Yeah, the portal is definitely somehow influencing whoever possesses the keys. To what end? What could swapping them possibly accomplish?

TREATS + PORTAL > Actually, less than snakes, the statues kind of look like seahorses to me, with how they're curled. :P

BALLET SHOES + PORTAL > Wait, what, it'll make music, like an organ? ??? Grandpa did have some broken organs on te attic, was he trying to open the portal by playing the right tune?

Okay, NOW it's time.

CHERUB KEY + PORTAL, here we go, come on!

...

WOooooooww!

THIS WASN'T EVEN THE END!!!! Oh my god. Are we REALLY going to have the train station scene here too??? Or will it end when we exit Dammek's hive???

Wow. The interface layout changed, everything became more Trollish. Cooool. And we left the walkie on Earth, for Dammek to find, while Dammek's communication device is there on the ground.

The timer on the portal is set to 11:11:11:11. Does that mean that Joey has eleven days and a half-ish to return home? There's a forcefield around the portal now, I don't think she can just jump back in.

There's a robot lying on the floor, so Dammek might dabble in robotics. A door is being banged on, perhaps by his lusus? It all depends on what caused Dammek to be here, at the portal, at that time.

The fact that everything we picked up on Earth (even Byers!) came through for the rest... Will the pogs and treats have another use? :D

And so yeah, the music during the cutscene was a remix of English. Fitting that the portal would make that sort of tune. As for music, the BGM is now set to what I presume is the Hauntswitch tune, at least the version for Dammek’s hive.

This seems like a good place to end our playthrough for the day! :D

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Powers of X #1

Well, I did this for the one, might as well do it for t’other...

Well, any thought that this mini-series might be less weird than its companion was completely blown away by the very first page, which revealed that Powers of X (pronounced Powers of Ten) is going to be taking place in four different times:

Year One (X^0)

Year Ten (X^1)

Year One Hundred (X^2)

Year One Thousand (X^3)

...with each segment increasing by a power of ten, because apparently Hickman has decided he’d like to drive us all mad with math puzzles. That first page is a doozy of design, I must say, laying out four key moments (and four or three key players) in the past and future of mutant-kind, with the layout suggesting a parallel between all of these characters (as well as a suggestion that the guy in the Cerebro mask shares Charles’ lower facial features exactly.

Year One

We then get an un-interrupted six page sequence which, on the surface, seems the most normal but is anything but. The first page shows Charles Xavier strolling through a fair and sitting down on a bench to enjoy the weather and his good mood, although the symbolic connection between the dwarf ringmaster and the strongman and Xavier’s dream of mutantkind is quite ominous. Then someone who looks a lot like Moira McTaggart sits down next to Xavier, and this is where x-fan’s expectations all of the sudden get flipped upside-down. On the face of it, Charles meeting Moira around the same time that he first has his Dream of mutant/human co-existence would be quite normal...except that Moira’s tarot cards are depicting people and places in the Year One Hundred (more on this in a bit), and Moira is talking to Charles very familiarly, but he hasn’t actually met her yet. 

This is where a little alarum bell goes off in my mind shouting “TIME-TRAVEL SHENANIGANS!” 

This much-hyped scene turns out to be Charles reading Moira’s mind, but it’s very clear from what we’ve just seen that this is not the Moira we know. And if this Moira is a clone from the future (I’ll get into that in a bit), the publicity tag-line would make sense: after all, time travel to avert a bad future goes way back in X-Men, and often that time travel has involved things happening to Charles Xavier before he could get his X-Men off the ground. 

However, we’ve never see anyone go back just to tell Charles what happens in the future, even though that would profoundly change the timeline just by changing his mind. Is this what turns Charles Xavier into the be-helmeted man in Year Ten with the very different dream? Or would informing him of the future change or prevent the events of Year Ten?

Year Ten

Probably the most straightforward sequence - and the best argument for why HoX and PoX should be viewed as two halves of the same story - this sequence shows us exactly what happened to Mystique after she went through the Krakoa portal in Washington Square Park in HoX #1. 

It turns out that, as much as even Magneto is feeling the “hope-y, change-y” vibes, he, Mystique, and Professor X all have their own agendas regarding the information - note the running theme of the issue - that she pulled out of Damage Control’s servers. 

Further ominous notes: Charles Xavier has never been a telekinetic, and yet here he clearly uses telekinesis to grab Mystique’s thumb drive. That’s very ominous, especially given what we learn about cloned mutants have multiple, spliced-in mutant powers. Also, Professor X’s comment about “everyone who would live in...a better mutant world...owes something” echoes ominously with the interstitial material’s description of Omega class mutants as a natural resource for the state.

Year One Hundred

The most conventionally super-heroic segment, this section shows us an all-too familiar dystopian scenario, with cyborgized humans and cerberus-like sentinels working together to not merely kill mutants but violate their minds and bodies. Further signs of what they’ve been up to comes in the literally black-brained ex-Hound who was genetically designed for infiltration and subversion of her own people. 

A sign that mutants have adapted to this conflict by abandoning moral principles as well comes in the fact that the dead mutant in question is not only programmed to mind-wipe on death, but is repeating Professor X’s speech from Year 10. In a parallel to that era, it turns out that the mutant group who’ve been interecepted were downloading information from the Nexus 

We also meet our two main characters in this epoch - the red-skinned Nightcrawler lookalike Cardinal (whose Tarot card is the Devil, “the red god and the lost cardinal of the last religion” (no idea what that means)) and the metal-skinned Soulsword-slinging Rasputin (whose Tarot card is the Magician, “the metal metapmorph, the great sword, and the girl with one foot in two worlds” (no idea what that means)). As we will learn later, these are not names but clone-types, because war has its own way of getting us to dehumanize ourselves in the pursuit of victory. 

Important Interstitial #1: The Sinister Line

It wouldn’t be a Hickman comic without infographics, and this one was a doozy: at some point after Year 10, a crisis rocked the mutant nation which caused “the almost universal death or disappearance of senior leaders.” This crisis apears to have been engineered by none other than Mister Sinister in order to motivate the remaining mutant leadership into approving “breeding pits” located on Mars, where he could breed and clone mutants for “aggressive, militaristic traits,” to counter-balance the humans’ HOUND program. That’s a hell of a fall from grace.

We then learn that there were four generations of Sinister clones before the whole thing fell apart in a horrific calamity and yet further declension occurred:

First generation: straight-up clones of existing x-men, although the language of “divergent copies of a...pure, uncompromised X-gene” is as disturbing as you might expect from a Victorian eugenicist. (Are these the mass-produced units following from the prototypes we saw emerging from Krakoan cocoons in HoX #1?) Anyway, they all got turned into child soldiers to defend Krakoa until it eventually fell 30 years later. (Keep this date in mind.)

Second generation: combinations of only two x-genes, “mostly predictable.”

Third generation: combinations of up to five x-genes, apparently were wildly successful against the “Man-Machine Supremacy” and about to win the war, when...

Fourth generation: apparently were “produced with a corrupted hive-mind,” went rogue, destroyed 40% of all mutants, destroyed Krakoa, and then killed themselves taking out Mars and the Sinister pits therein.

And now we learn what our protagonists are: Rasputin is (seemingly) a fourth generation mutant with the combined powers of Quentin Quire, Piotr Rasputin, Unus the Untouchable, Kitty Pryde, and Laura Kinney, rather than Kitty and Colossus’ kid as some had feared. Notably, however, Rasputin doesn’t have the same gifts in the same strength as her progenitors: she’s half as strong a telepath as Quire, half as good as phasing as Kitty, half as good at healing as Laura, and about half as good at force-fields as Unus. The only places where she equals them is in turning into organic steel. BTW, if those powers seem somewhat redundant - why would you need to be intangible, made of organic steel, force-fielded, and self-healing all at the same time rather than focusing on just a few of those - well, clearly the intent was to create a tank and a half.

Meanwhile, Cardinal is a (seemingly third-generation) “outlier,” a failure in the breeding program that gradually got worse and worse. All Cardinals - and it’s not clear whether all Cardinals look like Nightcrawler - are pacifists and have “an obsession with creation myths,” and are extreme communitarians who reject individual identity. (Incidentally, Cardinal is where we get the religious through-line of the issue.)  One question: if he’s a pacifist, why is he carrying a rapier? Genetic holdover from Kurt Wagner?

Which raises an important question...given that more than 60% of generation four were pacifists, how exactly did they carry out so thorough a massacre of their own people?

And finally we learn that all of this was Mister Sinister’s plan...which ended with his execution. I remain skeptical, because while I absolutely buy that Mister Sinister would arrange things so that he could run his eugenics programs, I don’t get why he’d self-sabotage in order to defect to such an unrelentingly hostile enemy. 

Year One Hundred, Part 2

Here’s where we see the structure described as “the ower, the axis, the pillar of collapse and rebirth, the monolith of ascension.” (Keep your eye on that word.) Here we meet Nimrod the Lesser and Omega, and see the other side.

And what we find is a society where the machine is clearly beginning to become the dominant part of the Supremacy, despite a formal pretense at equality, a society where Nimrod makes polite noises at decency (”I am embarrassed and ashamed at what we did in the name of both expediency and annihiliation”), but then claps with childlike glee at the thought of getting to turn mutants into biological databanks.

(In a much less important interstitial, we learn that the HOUND program turned out to be a failure, with the scary ones being “ineffective hunters of their own kind,” and the majority of the black brains defecting en masse.)

Finally, we see an old man Wolverine, along with a green-suited Magneto, a very tree-like Black Tom Cassidy, and a Xorn, rendezvousing with the team to receive the data and bring them in touch with “the Old Man.” Which raises all kinds of questions as to when this happened vis-a-vis Mister Sinister’s betrayal.

Important Interstitial #2

In the wake of the fall of Krakoa, we learn that the once-burgeoning mutant population has been reduced to less than 10,000 refugees living in Shiar protected territory, with only 8 mutants left in the solar system...presumably the group we saw in part 2. 

Year One Thousand

And now we find out what happened to our poor Hound, namely that she’s been stuck in a tube for 900 years, a crumbling historical manuscript beyond the ability of the Librarian to preserve.

As we move outside, we learn something critically important: that the “human-machine-mutant war” ended, with humans reduced to zoo animals kept in a nature preserve. Does this mean mutants won? Or did the machines do away with both their enemies and their allies? 

[devilsaurprimal-blog]

That Ant Right

What in the world..

Where am I..?

What.. What is going on?

While he slept, Dro’azi’s teacher, Zez’ni, snuck into his cave, and fed him a potion. After whispering into the Runts ear, the Zandalari began to stir in his deep slumber. Subconsciously, it was about to get very, very weird..

---

Even in this strange hallucination, the world around him was extremely realistic. He was outside of the cave he had claimed as a home. But.. This time, it was very different. The blades of grass that were once nothing to him, now towered above him, nearly blocking out the sky above.

‘WHAT IS HAPPENING!?’ He would try to roar out, but he had no voice. No actual words escaped him. Because he was an ant. Miniscule, vulnerable, and… Alone. Out here? A sense of panic set into his tiny frame, and he began to scatter about. ‘HELLO? HELP ME! I AM LOST!’ He continued his inward shouting, until sudden movement from all around him caused him to freeze entirely.

Suddenly, several other ants, all with -his- tiny little head on their bodies, appeared from the disproportionate greenery that surrounded them. Something wasn’t right, and at this point, Dro’azi was far too lost to truly grasp any of it.

‘Hello, comrade.’

‘You are safe, friend. Come with us.’

‘YOU ARE NOT TRULY LOST!’

These voices all echoed through his head. Why.. Why!? Was all he could manage at this moment. And then, the Dro’ants approached him. Their voices once again ringing into his mind as they tried to reassure him.

‘The mound is not so far, brother. Come along. The queen will be happy to know you are safe.’

‘Yes! Yes, come with us! A great offering is to be made!’

‘IF YOU DON’T START MOVING, WE’LL ALL BE CRUSHED!’

Those same three voices continued to bounce around in his head, and at last, he decided to follow him. He had no perception of whether this was real or not, but at this point, he had little option. And so, the trio of Dro’ants made their way back to the mound. And what a mound it was, especially from this perspective.

Even here, there were more of these disfigured, strange looking ants. They swarmed around the mountain of dirt, some carrying bits of food, while others built their home taller. Dro’azi himself, was in awe. ‘No one is telling me what the -fuck- is going on. HELLO!?’ He called out again. Still, no sound. Simply -hundreds- of other voices responding to his call for help, in his mind.

‘Hello.’

‘Yes, comrade?’

‘Do you need help, brother?’

‘Why are you screaming?’

‘WHY AREN’T YOU WORKING?!’

These overwhelmed the Zantalari, and he began to backtrack, but only far enough to bump into an ant who carried a chunk of fruit several times the size of him - with absolute ease. It was only now, that Dro’azi began to understand. He followed the trio that initially saved him into the mound, surprised to find that he could see perfectly within the tight confines of the thousands of tunnels that constructed the elaborate maze these ants called home.

The group moved through what seemed like an endless flow of other Dro’ants that infested the tunnels, but they moved with unmatched coordination. There were no clusters, just two separate flowing streams of ants. One going deeper into the hole, while the other moved for the surface, probably finding other supplies to bring Her.

‘The queen will be so happy to know you are safe, comrade.’

‘Yes! Yes! We have been looking for you!’

‘WHY DID YOU RUN AWAY FROM US? THIS IS HOME!’

Loa, these voices were all so different, but similar in an eerie way. That’s right. Each one was a different projection, and tone, of Dro’azi’s own voice. Yet, they still continued deeper into the hive. By now, they were drawing close to their queens den. He was growing accustomed to what felt like millions of little echoes in his head. They were just communicating.

Finally, after navigating the many tunnels of the Ant-hill, the Dro’ant squad arrived in quite the massive chamber. There were tons of them in here, all working on enforcing the walls, while others protected hundreds and hundreds of eggs. This was where the Queen was, and there she was.

‘Ah… Dro’azi, it is so nice of you to finally come home~.. We have missed you, darling.’

This voice was different, but still familiar. It took the Runt several moments of processing to finally realize that the Queen herself, a massive ant, had the head of his beloved mate - Vou’doun.

‘I.. Am not sure if I understand.’ Dro’azi responded. This dream just got weirder, and weirder. A distant echo responded.. ‘Just go with it!’

‘The Fire-Ants are preparing to take our home, and destroy our future. We need you, my champion, to save us from their assault.’

The squad of ants that guided Dro’azi to this very point had left him here, off to continue the tasks that they were designated for. Alone, in the presence of the queen, the Zantalari watched as several of the eggs directly beside him began to hatch. As they did, they revealed tiny larvae, each with his own infantile face. They screeched, and cried.

‘I will.. Aid you.. Queen?’ It took him quite a while to respond. None of this was alright. Not a single bit. But still, he couldn’t seem to wake himself up. The unified cheering of all of the other Dro’ants in the chamber flooded his mind, and he nodded, before making his way out of the ant-hill. It was strange, but he memorized its very layout. Each and every twist and turn. It took him some time to finally reach the surface once again.

‘Champion! Hurrah! You have returned!’ The chanting of a thousand ants around him immediately overwhelming his senses. He’d urge them to quiet down, before inwardly speaking to the entirety of the mound.

‘Our home.. Is in danger!’ At first, he almost sounded unsure. He was still trying to figure out why the hell this was all happening in the first place. But it seemed that the only path presented at this very moment, was forward. Into a very strange, very violent war of insects. What a thought.

‘We will defend our Queen.. And.. KILL THEIRS!” This was all it took for the others to swarm around the ant-hill in a wicked circular movement. Thousands of Dro’ants, ready for absolute mayhem.

And mayhem, it would be.

In the distance, a plume of red consumed every blade of grass they marched over. ‘These must be the fire-ants..’ He thought to himself. They were upon the mound in a blink of an eye, and the army of Dro’ants were seemingly overwhelmed. An insane clash of insects pooled below him.

After a brief moment of inspection, the Zantalari would realize that these fire-ants had a likeness to another one of his comrades. Zaka’fon. That’s right, an army of Zaka’fants, all with the tiny head of the Blood Drinker himself. Fon’kaz and all. They were bum-rushing his mound, while all he could do was watch with a befuzzled expression.

‘FIGHT BACK! DEFEND THE QUEEN!’ He communicated to his own army, his antennas wiggling back and forth as he charged down the mound himself, directly into the commotion. He was immediately surrounded by a blur of red and black, as the different ant tribes viciously ripped eachothers heads off with tusk-mandibles far too large for their trollish faces.

The chaos ensued for hours, and hours. Or at least that was what it seemed like in this dream, before thunder rumbled, and heavy raindrops began to fall from the sky. Liquid mortars, that absolutely demolished anything they dropped upon. At this scale, even this slight drizzle seemed like a monsoon, and the ants from both mounds were trapped within tremendous droplets of water. Trapped to drown in an inescapable tomb.

Both sides were losing numbers quickly, and the bodies piled into the sky into disproportionate piles. Everything about it was surreal, as it should’ve been. Even though there was not a single weapon involved, the typical sounds of battle surrounded him. It was confusing as all hell.

And then, it was all over. Millions of dead ants surrounded him. He was left alone again. It was finally silent, and even the rain had stopped ever-so-suddenly. Even the constant humming of Queen Vou’doun was silenced. All that he could hear were the thunderous footsteps of something tremendous.

And, there it was. Over the mountains of bodies, stood an Anteater taller than anything Dro’azi had ever seen. His little eyes would widen, if they could, as he stared up in absolute bewilderment. For once, he was the prey, and the absolute fear of impending doom struck him in the very heart. If ants had those, that is.

This Anteater, however.. Was not ordinary. Oh, no no.. Not at all. Even this beast was distorted, another sick trick played on Dro’azi by his subconscious. With it’s lengthy nose wiggling downwards, he got a glimpse of one last face - JUHI. The last thing he witnessed of this dream was that lengthy tongue snaking from her mouth, and slurping him off the ground.

-----

And then, he woke up. Out of breath, in a cold sweat. His eyes were wide, and he frantically patted himself down. After reassuring himself he was normal, he sat there for a long, long while.

“What the..”