Work Text:
It was late at night. The smell of body odour in the room was so strong one could almost taste it. The hunched figure in the low light had been worrying at an odd machine for the entire day, as well as the night before – he hadn't slept for almost two days, but he had to make the machine perfect, or risk the lives of himself and his beloved. The contraption was almost done; he could feel it.
He jammed one of his long, ragged nails into the electrical input on the machine. The bow-legged table wobbled precariously at the shift in weight, but the machine was heavy enough that there was a minimal risk of it actually falling. It buzzed and flickered on for a split second, then hissed and fell into lifelessness once more. This had been going on and on for hours, no matter what was changed inside it. The craftsman sighed and earthed himself, opened the machine up for what seemed like the millionth time, swapping a couple of wires around and trying the input again. Still nothing. Giving up and throwing in the towel the Tyrants was starting to seem like a more attractive outcome than... this.
Then it finally hit him- how could he have forgotten about that? Perhaps it was the programming and not the hardware that was to blame. The wheels of his rickety office chair let out a shrill screech as he slid over to his computer desk. He spent another age dry-running the boot program, noting down errors and fixing them as he found them. Most of the problems were in the weird syntax he sometimes came out with if he hadn't had an energy boost in a few hours. He'd been using everything he could get his hands on to keep his mind running, but it had to be rationed. Some of it had questionable side effects, but other parts had made him feel very nice indeed…
But that didn't matter. He was leaving soon, and most likely never coming back.
As he wheeled himself back over to the machine, he rubbed his calloused feet on the floor to pick up static. That was one of his few talents: electricity would bend to his will. When he was in front of his creation once more, he shut his eyes, grimaced, and dropped a charged digit into the power input. He heard the buzzing again, but after what only felt like an hour the machine screamed and lit up with an intense white light. It had been built as an almost-perfect circular ring – there’s always room for natural error – and the inside of the ring was where the light came from. It hurt the cave-dweller's sensitive eyes to look at for any length of time; to him, it wasn’t unlike a human watching magnesium burn, or looking directly at the Sun through a telescope. However, if a human being had been in the room at this time, they would have seen that everything behind the ring twisted and warped as if it were underwater. The darkness of the workshop was swallowed entirely.
This is it...! I’ve done it!
He whirled about and bolted up the tunnel to his bedroom. His other half was fast asleep, snoring grossly (how could she
do
that, when they were in such danger?), so he padded to the bed and wordlessly shook her awake. The figure in front of him raised her head groggily, but her eyes widened suddenly as she realised what was going on. She carefully retrieved the large egg from the incubator next to the bed and darted out of the bedroom to the workshop, with the craftsman on her heels.
As the pair emerged from the tunnel, both were temporarily blinded by the sheer brightness of the portal sitting on the wonky desk. After a quick check of the computer, the craftsman beckoned his wife towards the portal, wide-eyed, tapping his wrist to indicate they didn't have much time. He tugged the machine towards the edge of the table- he needed it to fall and break after the two of them entered it. Clutching the egg tightly (but gently) in her enormous maw, the other creature wriggled her serpentine body into the portal. Her life was being prioritised over the craftsman's– she had the egg, and she could take care of it just fine on her own. He also loved her more than he loved himself, but he wouldn’t admit that to anyone.
Suddenly, the earth around them shuddered as a gargantuan form tried to wrestle itself into an entrance that was too small to fit it. The door – or what sorry excuse they had for a door – had caved in instantly under the sheer weight of the invading aberration. He froze. (It's always an odd feeling when predator becomes prey.)
Snapping out of his trance, he skittered towards the portal and heaved his long, lithe body into the ring tail-first. He had to make sure he knocked it off the table before they got to him, or he'd never be safe. He felt a sense of power with the light of the portal illuminating his purple body; his stripes; his shining gold spines; his macabre, reptilian head with its blank white eyes and mass of pointed teeth. But he had to ignore those thoughts and get out of there, quickly. No member of his species could take down one Tyrant alone, let alone a whole pack of them who were given the singular goal of ending his life...
...But he
could
put up a little bit of a fight before he fled. The craftsman gathered his remaining static charge to form a ball of pure energy in the front of his mouth. He could hear the monster trashing the bedroom, and he shuddered violently in fear.
No.
Breathe.
If you don’t put up at least a little bit of a fight, the rebellion will brand you a coward, if you ever see them again.
He resisted the urge to pull his head back and leave the planet for a little longer, and focussed on pouring as much of his body’s energy as he could into the ball.
Seconds later, the first of the Tyrants effortlessly blasted out the tunnel between the workshop and the bedroom. It lowered its grotesque head into the workshop and snarled at the craftsman, entirely unfazed by the brightness of the contraption that only his head and hands were poking out from. The fiend opened its cavernous jaw wide to launch a long, sticky tongue at the portal, but at the last moment the craftsman let go of his energy ball and filled the chamber with lightning. The intruder shrieked as the smaller reptilian snapped his head into the portal mere milliseconds before it fell on the floor and exploded violently; killing the closest Tyrant instantly, blinding a second, and exposing the decimated burrow to the soft light of the moons.