Awakening, Pt 4

The battle between the Watch and the Crazed rages on in front of you, even as you channel your Battle Hymn to greater and greater heights. The Watch fires tighter bursts with relentless dedication while the Crazed launch assaults with unbridled ferocity.

Everyone involved is heated and deadly and focused to their absolute maximum, yourself included.

While the chaos of battle rages, you feel the tides of psionic energy toss and turn all around. Violent energies whip by in every direction as you fight against the unseen Conductor for dominance over the fight.

Both of you empower your team as best you can, you with your Battle Hymn, and the Conductor with their Orchestra. Though the fight began in their favor, your efforts are clearly turning everything around.

But not as fast as any of you want.

The Crazed Telekinetics leap at the Watch from all sides, swipe at them with incredible speed and strength, then retreat almost as quickly as they attack. And although more than half throw their own bodies into the fray, the rest stay further back and instead fling deadly detritus into the defensive lines.

Some use their Telekinetic powers to throw shards of broken glass or chunks of fragmented concrete or slivers of twisted metal. Every piece shatters or slams or digs into the barricades with incredible force - a few slip through the gaps and slash and stab and strike the Watch hiding behind.

Without your Battle Hymn, those wounds would be far more devastating. Instead, the Watch takes them in stride.

And in response, they counterattack with decisiveness. They peek out of cover in between bouts of Telekinetic attacks and fire at whatever Crazed are in their sights. Though few of them are hardened, trained soldiers, their temerity and desire to defend everyone keeps their aim true and their minds sharp.

The fight is fiercest at the furthest barricade - a handful of Crazed flank it from both sides and strike at the two Watch posted there. They swarm the two of them with unrelenting fervor and with such speed that they're completely unbalanced.

One of the Crazed slams into one of the defenders with such strength that both are immediately thrown to the ground. That defender is then swarmed by two more Crazed, while his partner is swiped and swatted over and over by a fourth Crazed.

Though he's doing his best to stay on his feet and block the attacks, they come so fast and so fervently that he's forced to back up and remain completely on the defensive. Not only that, but he's practically overwhelmed - even despite his defensive stance, the Crazed is able to slash his face and lacerate his skin. Blood trickles out of his wounds and down his face.

And because he's completely preoccupied, his partner is brutally savaged by the three other Crazed.

The three of them swipe and slash at the fallen Watch with their bare hands. And they're as vicious as clawed animals - their Temperance is amped to such a degree that they practically have psionic claws at the ends of their fingertips.

They rip and tear at the Watch member's armor and clothing with destructive ease, even more so against his unprotected flesh. His screams echo through the air sharply, and pierce through the gunfire with ease.

What's worse is that his pain echoes back down the Network into you. Every time the Crazed slash at his body, you feel it mirrored on your own body. You double over from the sheer pain, despite the fact that the transference is muted to some degree. You know you're not feeling exactly what he is, but the pain is excruciating nonetheless.

Even though you feel your chest and stomach ripped open, and topped by the pounding in your head, you do your best to maintain the Network.You want desperately to scream aloud, but instead do your best to hold it in, to bear the pain.

Not only that, but you try to prevent his pain from reflecting out to everyone else. But your concentration is already worn thin, and you can't help but allow some of that pain to slip through.

What the both of you are feeling leaks out to the rest of the Watch, and that amount of suffering causes everyone else to feel similar physical pangs. Every member of the Watch feels a fraction of the pain you're feeling and experiencing. It flows out in waves, which causes everyone to involuntarily take pause and grimace every so often.

They're forced to clutch at their chests or stomachs or heads as pain sweeps through them, hindering them for those few moments in time.

Although they share that pain, the rest of the Watch also become more united than ever before. Simply, they feel the suffering of the few, and are energized and motivated to end it. A thought and a feeling ripples out among them - they need to end the fight fast. If they can do that, they can stop the pain, and care for their wounded.

More importantly, they can prevent more suffering in the future.

Out of necessity and camaraderie, the ones closest to the Watch getting mauled turn their weapons on the Crazed that are piled on top of him, and squeeze their triggers. Countless rounds tear into the Crazed, perforating their skin, tearing their muscles, and shattering their bones. Their assault is merciless and vengeful and swift.

Though the three Crazed are ripped to pieces and thrown aside thanks to the hail of gunfire, the Watch member who has been mauled feels little relief. Pain continues to wrack his body in waves as his blood spills out of the countless lacerations on his body.

His chest has been literally shredded to the bone, and parts of his ribcage and sternum are clearly visible past the torn muscle and skin. His stomach is even worse - all can literally see his organs beneath ribbons of ripped flesh.

You can feel his pain acutely, enough to make you want to vomit.

He's quickly dragged to safety, where one of the Watch medics can attend to him. It's only a few seconds later that he's injected with powerful painkillers, straight into the wounds he's suffered. But the pain only barely abates. His wounds are far too grievous for even the most potent opiates to numb.

The medic works frantically to stop the bleeding with numerous sterile pads, but the lacerations are too long, too wide, and too plentiful. Whatever bandages he applies get soaked with red in a matter of seconds, almost uselessly.

It's worse when he attempts to bind and suture the wounds closed - the wounded Watch member flails around so wildly that the others are barely able to hold him down.

"Hold him down!" the medic screams.

But there's little they can do. Even you are way out of your depth in your attempt to help.

Despite the waves of pain that emanate from your body, you do your best to psionically slow your heart rate and relax your muscles. You also consciously increase your testosterone, which helps numb a bit more of the pain. At the same time, you do your best to still the echoes of pain before they reverberate and heighten through psionic feedback.

Of course, the same happens with the Watch. Their bodies subconsciously echo yours, thanks to the Network. It certainly affects the wounded Watch member - his body slows and calms and becomes much more tolerant to the pain he's feeling.

The Network helps in its own way as well - as your thoughts and emotions and energies stream down the psionic links, they echo and reverberate between each of the Watch. It all builds up and swells a great amount, building upon itself more and more as time passes.

But it doesn't ever remove the pain. Worse, the pain itself is intensifying, as though to balance out against whatever you and the medic are doing.

You're struck by the heartbreaking thought that you're simply not powerful enough. You can't undo those wounds, try as you might. You can't close them up with your mind, and you can't make his blood flow back into his body.

With your mind already juggling dozens of thoughts and emotions all rolled into each other, you can't help but allow that thought to slip out.

Everyone feels it as well, and it causes a pang filled with pain and guilt and sorrow and helplessness to strike each and everyone in the Network. It comes even as the wounded Watch member's thoughts and emotions are going wild. All he can think and experience and feel is pain - all of which wavers and spikes and ebbs with each passing moment.

All of you suddenly feel an incredibly brief sense of relief - one that seems to wash all the pain away.

But it's quickly followed up by a blank nothingness, of a sudden void. You automatically pour your thoughts in that direction, as though to fill it. Nothing happens, and nothing echoes back except a hollow emptiness.

That emptiness echoes out across your Network, and reverberates through every member of the Watch.

Each and every one of you is hit with the same gravity - that of the death of your compatriot. You feel his life literally wink out, along with the excruciating pain he had been feeling.

That sudden lack of life fills each of you with a deep melancholy, as though portions of your own selves have been carved out and removed. As though a piece somewhere inside has vanished, never to be seen again.

In a way, it's certainly true.

A couple of memories from the dead defender's friends leak out into the network, which further tightens everyone's hearts. Your shared sadness becomes deep enough to cause your hearts to slow to a crawl as an existential profundity sets in.

It's fractions of a moment later that a layer of fear entwines itself into that sadness. They mix together with such intensity that it morphs into a resolute anger.

What comes out isn't a rage about the death of a friend and comrade - it's a rage borne of a potential shared future, that everyone's fate is the same as his. It's a rage that fights against the promise of some unseen destiny, of a defiance of everything ending to a violent and senseless fate.

It's a rage that fills everyone significantly, yourself included.

All of you are momentarily sharpened by that shared mortality, that shared finality, that shared existential dread. And all feel a surge of energy flow outward as a result. That energy draws all you inward, and fuses your consciousnesses into a single point.

For that moment in time, all of you become a Living Nexus, brimming with raw psionic energy.

You all think and act as one, guided by your combined consciousnesses, bound by your shared losses. When one screams, so do the rest of you in absolute unison. Though your consciousnesses are separate, your thoughts are aligned.

It seems to you that though you all act in your own way individually, all your actions and decisions are also purely cooperative with those around you. It's a sensation you've never felt before in your life.

No, that's only partially true - you've sensed it before. This is exactly how a hive mind operates, just like those Crags. Only this is the human version rather than insectoid.

What happens is absolutely incredible to behold. It feels as though you're living in the past, present, and future all at once. And with everyone's minds woven together, you see this fight as it's occurring, or about to occur, or has already occurred from every angle possible.

Even better, everyone in the Network sees and feels the same thing as you, and intrinsically understands what the battle actually is, beyond their individual experiences. Everyone moves, guided by each other and by the psionic energy you've infused them with.

This new consciousness that you've all created is something truly awe-inspiring. It's a consciousness that understands the disparate parts that make up the whole, that your individuality contributes to what makes you whole.

With your expansive Foresight, and with your bodies powerfully Tempered, you outmaneuver the incoming Crazed with incredible ease. You leap out of cover, or roll out of the way, or sidestep into a flank with superhuman speed and temerity.

You then turn your many weapons not directly at the Crazed, but instead where they will be, and squeeze your triggers.

Your weapons erupt with explosive power in every direction, in tune with your thrumming heartbeats. The rounds strike each of the Crazed squarely, right where you predict they would be, where they were going to be all along.

Every single one of them are thrown aside as their bodies are literally torn apart by your coordinated attack.

To your collective surprise, the fight comes to an end much faster than it had begun. You feel chaotic energies from the Crazed fade and flicker one by one in quick succession, even as you ruthlessly snuff them out. A sense of relief fills you, along with a sliver of vindictive glee at the outcome. Every part of you can't help but feel joy at killing your prey, and you can't help but carve smiles into all your faces.

Even better, that overbearing aura that has been surrounding the Crazed withdraws. The Conductor's presence, or rather the lack of it, lifts. And so too does that psionic haze surrounding the area, which makes you breathe much easier.

All of you sigh collectively as the last of the Crazed falls to the ground dead, and as the Conductor's presence vanishes completely.

Then you let go of your Living Nexus and return you to yourselves.