The shady fugitive hideaway quakes with unwelcome change.
The Underground was carved inside a para-tunnel between portals, a formless yet solid energetic lodge the size of a small town. A lawless chill there slithers into your bones, constricting your every move. The taming of fear is necessary to survive in that hungry cage.
You can only ever see a couple of feet in front of you, no matter where you stand. You can hear others muffled by the thick dark when not in plain view. You must be prepared for anything, every second, sleep with both eyes open.
There are more than broken parahunters and fugitives here. There is a plasmatic hate that breeds, spiders that spin webs of tar. Life finds a way, even in a lightless, loveless vacuum.
The atmosphere now meets decline, something I never thought possible. My last run through, I felt something different there. A breeze like an ominous hot breath pressing against my skin.
New faces are constantly arriving, whispering, scuttling like noisy little crabs, purveying out from under paranoid shells, with their glory-seeking counterparts, entering in droves, greedy for the enchantments of power. Someone directed them to the Multiverse’s formerly best-kept secret.
The sought whispers grow louder in the endless night.
Word is, you can become invincible. There are tales of a King Toss any layman can use. A precision Horsecart. A Crow that not only eats your energetic breadcrumbs but spreads some down a false path. A Binwiggi that projects an integrative holographic state, so those with divided consciousness can’t see the real you. The Binwiggi allows you to blend in and mirror those around you, technology once exclusive to reptilians.
This isn’t the work of one conveniently timed lab raid. A well-funded, ambitious puppeteer has been working overtime. The injection of attainable state-of-the-art technology into the Multiverse is undoubtedly meant to cause chaos. The uncontained Underground is more dangerous as a booming and easily accessible marketplace than it ever was as an oppressive hideout.
Amplifying the impact is the resulting exodus of fugitives and parahunters. Many reside there by a single thread of repentance, others as a deterrent from the cuffs of Interpara Border Enforcement. The parallels are in danger as these monsters’ are pushed out.
None of this has the natural scent of coincidence. It’s the odor of something that long festered beneath the surface.
As an ungodly womb, the Underground is birthing something terrible to behold that so far, no one is trying to stop.
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