"This place sucks" Mercury lamented, sitting on one of the bent over man and woman with red skin and acid green eyes, who seemed to eb straining under her, she gave him a light kick with her heel "Stop groaning dammit, you're messing with my concentration, you don't want to be like those guys do you?".
She pointed at the now motionless body of a guard, his body shimmered in the planets pale moonlight reflecting off his armour, the fur on his face standing on end like needles and a smile that didn't reach his eyes frozen on his face.
The scientists immediately went silent and mercury nodded, they were currently surrounded by an increasing number of dark sludge-like humanoid and bestial monsters that was attempting to absorb them.
From the energy coming of them, they were obviously abyss beasts, but they seemed artificial somehow, and to add insult to injury, her father was out of the fight for now, she cast a glance sideways at the vast squirming mass of shadows and kissed her teeth "This is a bad time dad"
When they had arrived on this planet to investigate the so-called contamination zone, they had found Rose operatives where already on site and where investigating and while she would have loved to knock heads it was a government request so they would behave.
That said they had decided to head deeper into the distortion Zone with all the necessary rules in place, no one would answer their names from a voice they didn't recognize, go through sudden doors and always check their belongings if something was added or taken and most importantly never say The great mad-man's name.
Saying his name in a contamination Zone would bring strange and regrettable results if you survived that is, her father had initially not wanted to go, but there were no grandmasters on site, therefore he was the highest ranked.
Mercury had found it odd, her father had always taken contamination unnaturally seriously, even with his memory being like swiss cheese sometimes he never forgot, she found out very quickly why that had been the case.
They encountered something underground, it appeared to be a clay doll made of the planets dark mud, it had ten heads the head of different creatures of unknown origins and misshapen body parts.
The mere sight of it unsettled them, but it was what happened next that felt strange, the walls around them had started to melt, creatures started to emerge from the ground killing two people or at least Mercury assumed them dead, they turned into dark pools of sludge and started screaming and chanting in words she couldn't make sense off.
She turned to her father to see if he was faring any better only to find his eyes glazed over, the width of his shadow expanding, like their words where drilling into his consciousness, "Urgh fuck".
He groaned before jamming his finger in his own ears, blood dripped out of his now damaged ears while his gaze locked with the doll for a few seconds before he pulled them all into his shadow and spat them out on the surface.
"Dad what's happening?" The agents quickly tackled her away from her father as the ground below them exploded and a large clawed hand with ten fingers hand appeared, it slowly pulled the rest of its body out, absorbing the soil.
The ugly doll had followed them to the surface, it's ten heads chanting strange words that formed squirming black lines that stabbed into people and converting them into dark sludge beasts.
Her father had once again been rendered immobile by the strange chants and had this time bitten off his fingers and began a chant of his own before turning into a mass of shadows that pulled and tore at the beast attempting to pull the creature into their embrace.
Each of the beasts severed limbs turned into beasts of their own and continued their master's evil chants the task of destroying them had fallen to the rest, while she was currently protecting the scientists on site.
"This is why I hate taking missions in contamination zones, what in the name of the gods is that?".
Her threads where currently shredding the beasts as best they could and she was picking up the corpses to make into viable puppets but couldn't control those who had become sludge Zombies.
"niru avaek tem, varbak kiltoh". One of the heads started to chant before it was torn from the beast's body by a shadow which the seemed to separate and disintegrate as though cast away from the main host.
She had no fear of her father running out of stamina or psionic energy, but she could see that his attacks where becoming more erratic with each appendage he discarded, with that number growing eerily quick.
"Hey, you. Green eyes" The man remained silent while the woman grumbled before reluctantly responding .
"What?".
"Your race usually had analytical abilities, right? Tell me how to stop that thing" The lady rolled her eyes, which looked like glowing green liquid being turned over in a transparent barrel and then nudged the man next to her.
"You heard the little tyrant". The man gave her a sideways glance and then looked at Mercury.
"You trying to kill me? That thing is obviously a distorted artefact or some warped abyss beast, that's like telling me to gaze into deep-space". Mercury looked around at the increasing number of sludge beasts and then back at him.
"Because dying like this is so much better right?". The man growled and Mercury got off him while he rose to his feet and gazed deeply at the beast.
"Hmm I found the core, it's some kind of ugly doll with a bead in it, it's In the creatures midsection it—" The researcher had slumped and fallen to the ground, his body convulsing as black feathered maggots poured out of his mouth, his acid green eyes becoming infested with squirming black worms as his body gradually became emancipated.
He had made a terrible mistake, he had gazed too long, the doll had noticed his gaze and its ten heads continued to mouth something mirroring the larger head, the meaning of the words instantly entering his head, each sentence causing his mind to throb.
"Save me"
"Save them"
"Oh apostles, grant me strength"
"The evil beast must be destroyed"
"I must save the world"
"I must save the world from [!@#$%^#W$]"
Those last words had distorted but given the word placement he assumed it was a name one but alas the sound of that distorted name was the last things he heard before he started to feel a buzzing in his skull and his vision