Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2: River of Memories
Chapter 5: Out
By: AVM516

Cold, bright, wet, spinning, falling… These were the things that rang through her head. The last thing she could remember was that she was standing on the pipe. A crack and formed under her. She looked at Tom… Then everything seemed to rise above her… then.. then…

She was in the pipe!

Her mind finally snapped to awareness. She was in the pipe, being carried through the currents down below. No control, nothing to hang on to, she could only keeping riding the currents.

Then, she remembered something. Something someone said.

“Whatever this stuff is, it effects the brain if enough of it gets into your body. So treat this stuff like poison.”

She was in it. She was surrounded by it!! She was going to be drowned by it!!!

Panic drew her in. She had to get out. GET OUT! GET OUT!! GET OUT!!!
She desperately reached for the survival knife at her thigh. She swung it wildly around, trying to hit something. Anything.

TANG!

She hit something. Desperate, she hit it again, harder.

TANG!!

And this time it stuck.
Holding onto the knife with one hand, she banged the surface next to it. Desperately trying to shatter the surface.

Bang! Bang! Ba—SKRASH!!

She felt herself falling again. I lasted only about a second before she hit something hard and metallic. She had fallen on her chest with a thud.. Though she gave no time to even register the pain, she immediately began to cough up liquid that entered through her lungs that nearly drowned her.

Then her eyes widened. The liquid was in her lungs. She swallowed some of it. She had practically swam in it!

Scrambling to her feet, breathing heavily in a panic, she looked her palms. She then held her head, then felt her chest.

She felt. She felt…

Nothing.

She was fine. She was normal. Totally soaked and freezing from the liquid, but she was fine.

“How… How am I still alive?” She said to herself, looking at her palms soaked in the liquid.

Was the Lieutenant wrong? Did he lie? No. Why would he lie about this…?

She remembered him saying that a priory member got a simple spray of it, and they died shortly afterwards.

She frowned. Maybe this stuff had no effect on Sylvaris? Or maybe it affected people differently? Or maybe its because that she was.. She was a…

She shook her head, and casting away THAT idea.

“No, no! There’s no time to think about that now, Lilyia” She said to herself. “Just figure out where you are and get to that la—!”

She immediately cut herself off as she noticed what she was standing next to…

“…Oh you got to be kidding me.”

===
“The operation proceeds, Thompson. Hook up with the rest of the unit and move out. We blow this place up in 20 minutes.”

“Sir, there’s got to be something we can do! We can’t just—”

“I told you private, this stuff is poison!” The officer injected. “And she literally took a dive in it. She was dead the moment she touched it. And even if she miraculously survives it, how the heck do we get her out? Toss a line in that hole, hope she bites, and fish her out?”

Tom glanced at the hole where Lilyia had sunk into. Liquid still poured out of it like a water spring in the ground. He closed his eyes tightly, trying desperately to come up with something. Some way they could—

“The teleporter!” He suddenly said. “If she’s still alive and she got out, it’s possible she could be down at the center where all these pipes go, so we could just—“

“Private!” The officer sighed. “Even if she somehow survived that river of poison, not drown, and got out of that pipe… NONE of the priory members could get that teleporter working. Besides, according to them, for some odd reason, it’s designed to be ONE-WAY from the bottom up. So even if we could get that thing working, you wouldn’t be able to get down there. ”

“We still have to try, sir!” Thompson exclaimed in desperation. “Maybe if we rerouted it somehow? Or at least waited a bit, maybe she can activate it from her end and—“

“Okay, Private, now you’re just hopelessly dreaming.” The officer rolled his eyes.

“20 minutes then, sir!” Thompson pressed. “Since we’ll be done with the operation in 20 minutes, just let me tinker with the teleporter… If nothing happens.. then… then…” He yelled in anguish. “Sir, what would you do if your friend was down there!?”

The charr officer just looked at him stunned for a moment. Then gave a rather defeated sigh said. “Alright, Thompson, you know what? It doesn’t matter. You have 20 minutes. If you can’t do anything, and nothing happens, then you clear out with the rest. Understood?”

Thompson stood up straight, giving him a serious face, and placed a fist to his chest. “Yes, sir, understood.” He immediately bolted past the officer, toward the teleporter.

—
Lilyia’s eyebrow twitched as she just stared.

She stared at an enormous, glowing, cylindrical tank. It was what all these pipes at the surface were connected to. What all these pipes were feeding into. What the psychopathic genius Scarlet left before her death. What the Lionguard was sent to prevent from ‘waking up.’
Like a glass tree growing upside-down, the tank was connected like roots to the transparent pipes that webbed from the ceiling.

And she was standing right next to it…

“Why is this always getting worse?” Lilyia murmured to herself.

She looked around the ‘lab’ she was in. It was dome shaped, like the area above, but not nearly as large. Packed and crude was the best way to describe it. There were various consoles the size and shape of bookshelves, various screens on the rock-lined walls that showed digits and lines she didn’t understand, magic powered lamps that dotted the walls and glowed through the metal grating on the ground, and…

Lilyia’s heart jumped and eyes widened as she noticed one familiar device along the side of the lab.

The teleporter!

Without a second thought she dashed across the lab and approached the device. Looking at it, it looked definitely like the one above. White lights blinked within its inner frame, and a cylindrical ‘mist’ of energy seemed to be pulsating it’s center area. It definitely looked functional.

Cautiously, she walked into its center and stood straight, hoping it worked automatically. Immediately, a plethora of red lasers seemed to scan her body from head to toe…
…then there was a red light and loud BZZZ!! A robotic, female voice followed:

ACCESS DENIED

Her jaw dropped.

“What!? No, No please! Just, just—“

She immediately climbed out and reentered the enormous metal shower. And the lasers scanned her again and there was another BZZZ!!

ACCESS DENIED

Lilyia drooped her head and arms in defeat.“…Are you kidding me?” She said sadly.

She then slowly walked out of the teleporter. Turning around she seemed to stare at it blankly for a few seconds… before giving it a ferocious kick.

BANG!

“OWW!” She hopped on one foot and she held the other in pain. Afterwards she gripped her head and shouted to herself sternely.

“Oh, stop it! Stop it, Lilyia! You’re acting like a bent-out sapling, just calm down and think…”

After taking a few breathers to calm herself, she gave one big breath and started pacing in front of the teleporter.

”Okay, okay…. Let’s straighten everything out.” She told herself. “Let’s think of what happens from here on … On a good scenario, I get this teleporter working and I get back up there before this thing wakes and they blow up the facility…. On a bad case scenario, I don’t get the teleporter working in time, and I get blown up along with this monster . On another bad scenario, this thing wakes up and eats me like a celery stick. On an even worse case scenario: I don’t get the teleporter working in time, the facility blows up, I’m then trapped down in here and slowly die of starvatio—”

She stopped pacing, “Wait a minute!! WHY ARE THERE MORE BAD SCENARIOS THAN GOOD ONES!?!” She brought her hands to the air and yelled at the ceiling, “Who am I kidding? I am TOTALLY screwed!!!”

Before another wave of despair could set in, the robotic female voice echoed within the chamber along with flashing red lights.

WARNING—WARNING—
LEYLINE PRESSURE BELOW THRESHOLD- –
SUPPRESION COMPROMISED—
ENGAGING EMERGENCY INJECTION PROCEDURE—
ACCELERATING REMAINING LEYLINE ENERGY FROM POCKET SOURCE

Lilyia frowned. “The pressure?”

She looked at the pipe in which she emerged from in the ceiling. The glowing liquid flowing from that glass pipe she emerged from never stopped since. Was that one breach, among all the pipes converging in the ceiling, causing such a problem? And what did it mean by the suppression being compromi—?”

“SCRYEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!”

====
“BY-PYRE’S-TEETH…!!”

“WHAT IN THE GODS IS THAT SOUND?!?” Tom gritted.

Tom, the Lieutenant and every lion guard soldier suddenly found themselves on their knees, covering their ears in pain as a piercing, metallic cry suddenly erupted in the room.

As the officer gritted his teeth and squinted, he saw that pulsating light from the pipes grew brighter, and rushing faster, like rapid a river.

“Why… is… everything… flowing faster!?”

The shrilling sound didn’t seem to end, and all the troops could do was kneel at its mercy. After what seemed like an agonizing 10 seconds, the Charr officer noticed that some of the pipes were being stripped of their glow.

They were going empty.

Like a clear straw sucking the last of the liquid, the white glow from the pipes slithered down toward the center.

Then before he knew it, the screaming topped, and all the pipes had now gone dark.

===

Lilyia clutched her head as the metallic like scream echoed within the facility It was so intense it made her teeth rattle and her eyes roll back in her head.

What what’s going on!? What’s happening? Her thought scrambled with the noise.

Then as the ‘scream’ suddenly began, it had suddenly stopped in an instant. All the pipes that used to glow bright white now went dark. The only light remained was the tank, pulsating brighter.

Small cracks began to form around the glass exterior…

SUPRRESION REENGAGED…
Analyzing….
ALERT-
CHAMBER INTEGRITY DAMAGED—-
SUBJECT SUSTAINABILITY COMPROMISED—
CURRENT PHASE AT 50 PERCENT
REMAINING PHASES ABORTED—
ENGAGING EMERGENCY EJECTION

Lilyia’s eyes widened. “E-Ejection?” On her knees she, looked up at the chamber. “Wait, wait, wait! No, no,no!!”

Her pleas of course changed nothing as she saw the large pipes that connected atop the cylindrical chamber pop off and spew like water hoses. Then, the glass cylinder seemed to slide up into the ceiling, it’s liquid contents immediately cascading out, draining into the grated floor. There must have been something hot under the floor for as soon as the liquid drained below, an enormous cloud of steam erupted from below, immediately blocking her view of the opened tank and nearby surroundings.

In slight panic, Lilyia immediately hid behind one of the massive consoles. Desperately looking around, she searched for a weapon of some kind she could use… And to her luck, she saw her bow a few arrows practically right next to her. She figured they must fallen out of the pipe she fell above her… Wasting no time, she gathered what arrows there were, stored them on her back and immediately knocked one into the bow.

Weapon in hand, she peeked around the corner of her console, at the exposed tank. The cloud of steam didn’t allow her an immediate view of what was inside. Though she could see an silhouette of.. ..something.

For about 30 more seconds, she continued to peer. But to her surprised, the thing in the tank hadn’t moved at all. This didn’t ease her at all, however, as the anticipation made her shiver and her breathing shake .

Geez… If you’re gonna kill me, then just hurry up and move already! She thought hysterically. Don’t make me come to you…!

Still, the figure didn’t move one bit. Hesitant, Lilyia figured she would have to make the first move after all. Even though she thought it would be a crappy gamble, there was a chance that thing in there was not fully conscious and she would have the chance of a first strike.

“Okay, then,’ she whispered. “Ready or not, here I come….”

Slowly, Lilyia approached the tank, her bow still knocked with an arrow and its head shaking nervously as she slowly approached.

She had never been more scared in her life.

She had saw the pictures and heard the stories in texts. Toxic hybrids, clockwork creatures, massive jungle wurms… countless monstrosities Scarlet Briar either manipulated or created.

And now she was going to see the last thing that psychopath made. ..

…All alone, with nothing but a bow and arrow.

HSSSS!!

“EEEEK!”

A sudden hiss of air from the metal grating blow gave a short gust of air, shrieking Lilyia. Quickly, and unexpectedly, it unveiled the cloud of steam covering the monster.

And she saw it…

Her blue eyes widened as they connected with a set of glowing crimson red.