The dust settled in the hidden chamber of the purple ruins. With the Bio-Balrog defeated and Viper put to a tactical, if temporary, retreat, me and Felicity turned our attention back to the amethyst city. The Hand, now armed with the X-Buster, stood sentinel as we began to explore. Tucked into a recess near the balcony where Viper had made his stand, I spotted something unexpected: a chest, crudely carved from the same brilliant amethyst as the rest of the ruin. "Bingo," Felicity murmured, her eyes wide with curiosity. "Looks like we get to claim the spoils."
I approached, the sashay of herjas hips was an intoxicating rythme. The chest and easily pried the petrified lid off. Inside, nestled on a bed of shimmering purple dust, was a single, plain object. It wasn't a sword or armor, but a strange ring forged from a dark, smooth metal.
I picked up the ring. It was surprisingly light, and when I slipped it onto my finger, it felt instantly comfortable, as if it had been made for me. Felicity had a confused look. "Just... a ring?" Felicity questioned.
I focused a sliver of psychic energy into the metal. The ring gave a soft, internal hum in response. Instinctively, I reached out and touched a discarded piece of the Bio-Balrog's chitinous armor. The moment my finger made contact, the armor piece vanished, dissolving into a faint sparkle of light that was immediately drawn into the ring. Felicity gasped. "Where did it go?"
I focused again, thinking of the armor piece. With a faint pop, the chitin reappeared, hovering above my palm. "It's storage," I realized, a wide grin spreading across my face. "This thing is an inventory storage space. I can just... put stuff in it."
I immediately tested it, focusing hard and making a dozen small scraps of amethyst and metal disappear into the ring. The ring never felt heavier, nor did its internal space seem to diminish. Their days of hauling salvaged parts were officially over. They had found their first true relic of the Amethyst City. After the intense fight with Viper and the bal-rog I knew we couldn't linger. We had The Hand, new loot, and a mission that had just gotten a lot more dangerous.
I climbed atop The Hand, looking back at the crystalline palace ruins. "Time to go," I said, turning to Felicity. "These other ''Zohar Lords'' could know of our approximate location now." I looked at Felicity, a serious expression settling on my face. "Can you open us up a portal? we need to get The Hand to the Gutter Nest base and secure these artifacts. Let's use that Queen of the Hollows 'Fast travel' ability you picked up." Felicity nodded, her tech eye already glowing with the familiar, mesmerizing violet energy. The adrenaline from the fight was fading, replaced by a cold, sharp focus. "Stand clear," she instructed.
She raised both hands, and the air before them began to distort, shimmering and folding like a pane of glass breaking apart in slow motion. The distortion stabilized into a swirling maw of violet and green energy—a gateway straight back to the safety of our base. "Portal is open," she confirmed. "Let's move, before the depths sends something bigger than a snake man."
I gave The Hand a mental command. The colossal guardian stepped toward the shimmering gateway, its heavy form dissolving into the swirling portal as it carried me and Felicity home. The portal snapped shut behind me, Felicity and The Hand's immense form, leaving them back in the familiar, cavernous sanctuary of the Gutter Nest. The Hand immediately took up a defensive position, its X-Buster digit glowing faintly.
"I need to go, now," I stated, I need to get toposide again, I got a life and responsibilities still, I can't just forget about my human life. "Felicity, hold down the fort and start analyzing that Zohar Fragment. I have to secure my other identity. If CENO is targeting me personally, they'll check the surface world."
Felicity nodded, already pulling the glowing crystal fragment from the Inventory Ring. "Go. Be careful. And if you run into anything green and snake-headed, you call me immediately."
I returned to the surface world using a secondary, stealthy exit—a disused sewage pipe that fed into the city's underbelly. I quickly navigated the shadowed streets and scaled the outside walls up to my apartment floor. It was still dark out. The transition from the terrifying, vibrant world of the Vein to the mundane, beige hallways of my building was always jarring. I reached my door, Apartment C14, and was just reaching for my key fob.
"Excuse me, miss," a cool, smooth voice said from behind me. "Could I have a moment?"
I froze. The casual greeting was a razor's edge. "Miss." CENO was not only hunting me, they knew my place of residence. I slowly turned, and the blood ran cold in my veins. Standing just three feet away was a figure of absolute, terrifying beauty. It was Marla, but warped and weaponized. Her skin was a ghastly cross of sickly green and bruised blue, accented by dark, iridescent scales. Her eyes burned with a malevolent viridian light. And atop her head, arranged in a chilling, writhing bun, were the Vipers, their forked tongues tasting the air, their tiny hisses a promise of death.
Beneath the surface of his own consciousness, Herja screamed a warning in a single, primal thought: "Medusa Core."
Marla didn't waste time on a villain's speech. Her crimson eyes locked onto me, and with a silent, powerful movement, her leathery bat wings snapped open. They didn't beat; they generated an instant, high-pressure wind gust—a concentrated physical force that slammed into me! The windows lining the apartment hallway shattered inward with a deafening crash, showering glass onto the pristine carpet. The force pinned my disguised body violently against the door of Apartment C14, momentarily knocking the wind out of me.
I fought against the psychic pressure wave, mind racing through tactical options. My approach failed, and I was completely exposed. "Damnit!" I snarled, the thought burning into Herja's consciousness. "I can't use my plasma tail in a civilian apartment complex! I'll have to run!"
I had to get out of this fragile human environment before Herja and her power destroyed everything and everyone around me. Escape was the only immediate priority.
I cycled through my options, the immense pressure from Marla's wings keeping me flattened against the apartment door. Run, fight, summon—each choice seemed impossible in the fragile hallway.
It was then that one of the vipers in Marla's hair moved. It didn't strike like a snake; it locked its gaze onto my shoulder, and a thin, sickly green beam of energy lanced out. The beam was lightning-fast, and I barely had time to flinch before the cold fire of petrification tagged me.
The feeling was horrifying. The skin and muscle on my shoulder instantly turned to a brittle, rough gray crystal. The cold spread, agonizingly quick, paralyzing my shoulder, moving down my arm!
The sheer terror of being permanently encased was a primal shock that ripped through my consciousness.
"Circulate your orgone!" came Herjas voice.
I felt twelve points on my body open, and i could feel a rush of orgone energy pulsing through my body. A disruptive field of pure energy erupted, an outward burst of Herja's raw power that shattered the small patch of crystallized skin. The explosion of fine, crystalline shrapnel peppered the air.
I was shielded, the petrification halted, but the damage was a painful warning. Marla smiled, a chilling expression of triumph. She knew she had me cornered.
The paralysis was broken, but the desperate need to escape remained. Marla, seizing the initiative, lunged forward. She used her new, immensely powerful body as a weapon, the air hissing around her as her bat wings whipped out, threatening to cleave me in half. Simultaneously, the vipers in her hair sprang to life, becoming writhing, lethal tendrils. They struck with incredible speed, not with the petrifying gaze, but with blunt force and razor-sharp fangs, aiming to bind and crush. I was forced to drop my escape plan and fight. With no room to maneuver my plasma tail, I relied on Herja's coiled muscles and my own martial prowess.
It became a brutal, close-quarters brawl. I used acrobatic evasions, twisting my body to slip beneath the sweeping arc of Marla's wings. I parried the striking vipers with forearm blocks, the bone-jarring impacts echoing in the narrow space.
I thought about a chicken wing suplex, but the thought of coming up right by her nest of vipers made me do a double think. Instead I would try to shoot in for one of her legs, make this a ground fight. I dove in, a blur of muscle and desperate speed. The movement was pure Herja, honed by instinct and years of brutal combat. I shot low for a single-leg takedown, slipping neatly beneath the deadly arc of Marla's wings. I found what I came for, a single leg boston crab, hoping to knock her off balance and take her right leg.
I slid in with pure power and speed and I wrestled up her right leg, while sweeping under her wings and twisting! The grapple broke Marla's poise. She flipped onto the carpet with a jarring thud, her back to me, the flow of her attack violently interrupted. I didn't hesitate. I immediately straddled her right leg between my crotch, applying intense, focused pressure on her femur and knee joint. It was a classic wrestling pin, locking her dominant lower half down.
"Who the hell are you and who sent you!"
The air was thick with the scent of , the apartment hallway utterly wrecked. I was fighting to keep my power contained, while Marla was fighting to unleash hers, and in this tight, civilian space, that made her the far more dangerous opponent. Every moment I spent fighting was a moment she spent tightening the noose.
Marla didn't struggle against the pin with brute force. Instead, a cold, mocking laugh escaped her ruby-red lips. "You dare try to restrain a Medusa Core?"
Marla's mocking laugh was cut short by a sudden, terrifying shift in power. Before I could tighten my hold or extract an answer, all twelve of the vipers in her hair came alive. Their tiny eyes flared, not with the faint petrifying light, but with a vivid, pulsing green orgone energy.
"Release the hold! Aerial evasive maneuvers!" Herja's warning screamed through my mind, pure instinct overriding conscious thought. I didn't question it. I exploded upward, releasing the powerful pin and leaping backward with every ounce of coiled muscle Herja possessed. I soared just as the vipers struck. A dozen jagged arcs of seething green plasma sliced through the air where he had been only a moment before, ripping through the hallway's structure. The energy bolts didn't just pierce the wall; they carved the floor and the door of C14 into smoking, useless shreds.
The display of raw, concentrated power was the final, undeniable proof I needed. Marla was not some She-beast to be pinned; she was a CENO superweapon. I had to run.
I ascended the stair well in a blink before slamming through the glass of the fourth-floor window. The window exploded outward in a shower of glittering fragments as I launched myself into the open air, landing with a jarring impact on the building's rooftop across the alley. The situation had transformed to a hot pursuit. I was now running across the uneven, gravel-and-tar surface of the rooftops, my bare feet pounding out a desperate rhythm. The environment was no longer a civilian hallway; it was my terrain. I began a frantic parkour routine, leaping over ventilation units, scrambling across satellite dishes, and vaulting security barriers. Dashing off of walls, performing spinning leaps from horizontal flag poles embedded along the city skyline.
However above me, Marla emerged from the shattered window, her form now completely airborne. Her massive bat wings beat with powerful, chilling efficiency, keeping her perfectly centered over her target. She was not running; she was hunting. The vipers in her hair pulsed with a continuous glow. They fired thin, focused green lasers that sizzled and vaporized the roof surface inches behind my heels. I twisted, ducked, and dodged, using every obstacle as a split-second shield against the relentless, murderous hail of energy. The chase was on, a high-octane battle of agility against aerial, focused firepower.
I didn't just run; I transitioned into a primal, four-limbed sprint, bounding across the jagged rooftops. As I vaulted over an HVAC unit, I twisted Herjas body and unleashed a rapid volley of Plasma Tail bursts. The blue bolts of energy streaked toward Marla.
Marla reacted with lethal grace. She performed a tight, aerodynamic barrel roll, tucking her massive bat wings in close to her body, the blue plasma streaking past her armored form. Critically, the vipers in her hair remained active and oriented. She spun like a deadly drill, her vipers continuously firing jagged green energy. She opened her wings and snapped out of the roll on the opposite side of the volley, having successfully evaded my attack without losing a second of offensive pressure.
The chase was now a deadly dance, forcing me to move and shoot simultaneously against an aerial predator who was both faster and better protected. I knew I couldn't outrun an aerial hunter forever. I needed to flood the zone and force Marla to divert her attack. As I cleared a low brick parapet, I slammed my Brood mother's Palm onto the gravel-covered roof.
Orgone energy pulsed outward, and with a series of sickening snaps and cracks, the roof surface ruptured. Dozens of glowing, ethereal Spine Weasels erupted from the tar and stone, their tiny, razor-sharp spines twitching with aggressive energy. They darted across the rooftop, their chaotic movement designed to be a blinding, mobile swarm. More dramatically, a monstrous Snapping Polyander Plant burst forth, fully fifteen feet tall. Its thick, fleshy maw was lined with dagger-like teeth, and its vine-like tendrils lashed out, immediately aiming for the high-flying target. The roof was instantly transformed into a chaotic jungle of summoned beasts. The wave of creatures forced Marla to break off her straight pursuit, giving me the critical cover I desperately needed.
Marla instantly registered the battlefield transformation. The swarm of Spine Weasels and the towering Snapping Polyander Plant were a dangerous distraction, designed to bog her down. She wouldn't fall for it.
Instead of engaging the swarm directly, Marla performed a rapid, tactical ascent, flapping her bat wings to gain altitude and put distance between herself and the ground forces. The Polyander's hungry maw snapped wildly below her, its reach falling short.
From her new, superior vantage point, Marla focused her power. Her vipers, glowing a furious green, unleashed a wide-area burst of petrifying energy. This wasn't the focused beam she used on Ash, but a sweeping, generalized wave. The energy washed over the dozens of spectral Spine Weasels, which instantly crystallized mid-dart, shattering into non-existent dust as the spell wore off their ethereal forms.
The massive Snapping Polyander Plant was a harder target, but the broad wave still hit it. Its massive maw and outer tendrils instantly began to turn to stone, locking the plant in a state of gruesome paralysis. It could no longer snap or lash out.
With her immediate threats neutralized or disabled, Marla immediately returned her focus to the main target. She folded her wings slightly to increase her dive speed, sending a new barrage of focused green lasers screaming toward my position, relentlessly forcing me to keep moving. The distraction had cost her only seconds, and now she was closing the gap again.
Marla's rapid counter-attack had forced me to focus entirely on defense, but the real threat was not aerial. With a deafening roar of concrete and twisted rebar, Agent Kobba—a massive, biomechanical War Beetle borg—smashed up through the rooftop directly behind me!
I didn't have time to react. The powerful beetle-borg lunged, its massive, armored pincers snapping up and seizing both of my arms. Kobba was an anti-bio-weapon specialist, and he was completely impervious to the petrifying wave or hostile debuffs. He hoisted me off the ground, restraining me in a crushing, unyielding under-the-armpit, behind-the-head hold. I was pinned, helpless.
Marla descended swiftly, a look of cold, clinical triumph on her face. "Game over, Subject Herja," she hissed. She commanded her vipers to unleash a single, highly focused petrifying blast. The green energy slammed into my exposed body. The petrification was instant and complete this time. From the tips of my toes to the pincers now gripping me, Herja's body turned to solid stone.
Marla didn't pause. She dove headfirst, her taloned fist raised and delivered a devastating blow to the center of Herja's stone chest. The impact was pinpoint accurate, aimed at the source of the transformation. Her fist slammed through the brittle stone, and she gripped the glowing, shimmering Bismuth Transformation Crystal that was bonded to Ash.
With a brutal yank, Marla tore the crystal free. The removal was catastrophic. Without the crystal to anchor her, the rigid stone form of Herja shattered into thousands of gray, inert pieces, falling to the rooftop in a lifeless heap
Marla held the pulsing crystal aloft, a trophy of CENO's success. She activated her suit's comms.
"Doctor Syn," she reported, her voice calm and professional. "Medusa Marla here. I have retrieved the 'Herja Core.'"