Jeurridam Ch. 13: The Acid Swamps

You could see the low pressure field spreading, further and further. It seemed the bigger it got, the more power it had. Soon the surrounding desert side was cracking open! The earth qaucked violently, spreading more and more! What was causing this?
"I think someone has made Zanir angry!" Beth said as she saw the cracks outpacing even the insane pace of the buggy. The ground behind her was ripped into the air being pulled towards the epicenter of the low density field. June's buggy was far enough ahead to outpace the quaking but Beth's buggy soon rose off the ground, "Oh nooooo!!!!"

I swooped in, grabbing the hood of the buggy. Under my own power, I propelled the buggy out of the low density field. It hit the ground with a big thud. Now out of the density field's radius, we all stood to watch the spectacle.

Huge chunks of debris, from canyon side to buildings hundreds of meters away, were pulled from the area of low density to high density near the epicenter of the field. Everything in the high density core of the field was pulverized under an immense amount of pressure! This showed some serious, serious power, celestial level power! Then, as soon as it started, the density field dissipated, dropping everything it had picked up. The debris now looked unrecognizable, mangled terribly...

"I seriously hope no people were in that..." Beth said, shaking her head.

"If they were," June began, "They're mush..."

"Okay, it's obvious that Zanir was responsible for this but do you think he was caught in that?" Beth asked. It was a question we all needed to know, one that pulled on me hard!

Without wasting time, I took off heading back toward the wreckage. I had to find any traces of the boy. I scoured the valley side, trying to find him but couldn't... Everything was destroyed. If Zanir was in the density field, he had been obliterated. His vital pings weren't transmitting any longer. It must had meant he was dead...

Then I saw something shimmering in the river. Rushing over, a shiny piece of metal was stuck under some rocks. I pushed the rocks out the way, surprised to see it was one of Zanir's gravity blades. It had a weak charge, probably why it couldn't free itself from the rocks. The blade then rose from the water, it's solenoids rotating swiftly building charge. It then began to float southward.

This thing had a mind of it's own! Where was it heading? It seemed like it was going to Sloan Wall! I followed only to realize that more and more blades were heading to this area. Soon all thirty of the blades were all traveling towards Sloan! They stopped at the entrance of a maintenance tunnel, a mechanical hand gripping the doors from within. Zanir's ping was incredibly strong here. What the hell was going on?

I began to pry open the door, it requiring every ounce of my mechanical strength. Suddenly, the manticore climbed out from the the inside of the tunnel, walking on three of its powerful four limbs. It must had gotten injured trying to escape the density field. It sure as hell ran a long damn way! It then did something mind numbing, something relieving! It placed the tiny build of Zanir on the ground, the boy utterly unscathed with that forever mystified look on his face.

He looked at me with those big brown eyes, seemingly short of words. Those eyes began to dart around wildly before slowly falling upon me.

"Hi..." He said with a smile.

"Hi." I waved back, unsure what the hell just happened.