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Eternal X Tour of Duty Lost Episode 3 Part 2
Posted By: Lion O CyborgDate: 12/1/20 6:42 a.m.

*Continued from Part 1*

Act 4: Crisis City

Marcus Jones

Crisis City

Occupied City Centre

6 hours after drop

Ugh…Solaris? I didn’t train to be a pilot. Please tell me I don’t have anymore flying to do today?

So, is that a yes or a no?

Amen.

Heh, Cute.

I’m in an office building in the same part of the city. Judging by their occupants, these must be the executive elevators.

Look at this! I turned those things into beef tartare salad!

Like Eddy Buck and his squad before me in Africa on Third Earth centuries ago, maybe I can escape via the Central City Metro. It looks like the escalators and lights still run, so the trains must too.

Hold on tight. The ride might get a little…bloody. It looks like I have a smooth ride to the main city centre at Prince’s Street. The overland trams are a no-no with the city torn up and flooded with magma, as seen earlier. Wait, what was that?

I should have known those eldritch bastards booby trapped this subway.

This whole area is destroyed. I need to climb over the fence nearby.

Sections of the city nearby are flooded with lava so this way is where I need to go. Something tells me that was planned… Good thing is I found a Thundertank nearby!

Sweet Iblis’s smoky todger why are there 6 pedals when there are only 4 directions?!

I don’t like the look of…

OH HELL NO! IS THAT TORNADO FLINGING CARS?! DON’T GO TOO SLOW AND LET IT GET TOO CLOSE! IT WILL INCINERATE YOU! Aw crap, here comes a billboard!

HELP! WE’RE BEING SUCKED IN!

That…was too close.

Parts of the what used to be Princes’ Street and the park down below are flooded with lava, others with neck deep blood, which is boiling in the heat of Sekhment's flames like the deep fat fryer in Club Lux’s fish & chips shop. I climb, jump and scramble my way across the buildings and cars floating in the blood fissures. The collapsed and burning buildings like the monument tower above the mall lead me into the lava lake fissure that used to be Princes’ Park, while the city castle looms on the hills overhead, its windows aflame and streaming with molten rock in the form of glass, like Sekhmet’s tears, the real goddess or the former human Flames of Disaster that share her name.

The ruined hills and seating above the ex park give me a good view of the fire whirl that threw me here. A little too good a view as I soon find out.

Not again. I wonder how far these flames in the fire whirl go to?

At least it was nice enough to throw me through the windows of the Waverley Mall. I’m directly above where the metro I was riding would have come out, but now it’s flooded with lava and filled with Ayakashi. In the non flooded but burning section of the atrium, I get some rather big ones to kill each other.

Anyone got any popcorn?

I can’t resist a glass elevator ride, OK? Nice fountains.

OK, for real this time.

So, Hathor is fighting me herself in a new form huh? Today, you will be finished for all you put me through!

Now all Hathor needs is to make a thumbs up as she sinks back into her flaming pool of glowing hot jelly as a reference to both Doom Eternal and Terminator 2. That would make my day.

Like this:

Act 5: Clear and Present Dangers

OK, my trip to the lava filled lake that used to be Prince’s Park where I just fought Hathor wasn’t all a waste: I found out in one of the shops in the mall’s flooded and burning areas that there’s a second cybernetic junction signal up ahead, but…It’s coming from the city castle on top of what used to be an extinct volcano. Now it’s very much active and adding even more lava to the flooded city. I mean I gotta go through there, up the volcano and into the castle yes, but the signal is deep underground in the recesses of its lava chamber.

I could just stay here, but then I’d just be yet another piece of garbage for Hathor to incinerate when she comes back: she’s immortal now, so I can only defeat her for a short time. No doubt she’s sleeping inside the magma chamber. Waiting for me…

The run up the slopes to the castle is even more dangerous than the city not counting Hathor taking the form of that fire whirl before our fight, as I’m right next to the lava. Then again, considering the fabric of spacetime itself is burning, all hazards are more or less equal now.

The burn of lava is carrying those basalt floes downstream back over the lavafalls I just climbed up. I try to power through the stuff, but the fire has gotten strong enough that my shields don’t matter so jumping into flowing glass lava does what you’d expect. Heh, Burn. Lava, Scottish name for creek. Get it?

https://youtu.be/OAuJEi2MovM?t=150

https://youtu.be/OAuJEi2MovM?t=61

Take 2!

There’s the castle wall! The crust’s energy is out of control from the flames of disaster reaching inside all planets, moons etc. too. The rock may well be boiling and condensing from gas form as it gets closer to the surface, coming out like an artesian well.

The volcano’s crater is filled with blood and magma lava as well as glass. Hmm. The castle looks a little less detailed by the entrance here.

The lava is coming from somewhere inside the castle. The main shaft must have formed a new exit fissure under it.

Oh crap! Remember back on Inti Station the sun had grown bigger than the other levels? Well, it’s a red giant now and Earth is falling into it! With that in mind I quickly run into the castle, following the walkways between the turrets.

Remind me never to try the castle kitchen’s soup. There are acid or heat resistant enzymes in those blood pools. After scrambling through collapsed, burning hallways and navigating flagstone steps with lava oozing around them like stairs in a waterfall, I find what appears to be an inner great hall with what used to be stairs and balconies, but they’ve now broken up and slid about the room, at least those that haven’t melted.

This is because there’s a giant fuck-off hole in the middle of the room and what lava hasn’t gone far enough uphill in this room is flowing back into it. At regular intervals the hole shoots out lava and flames as the volcano erupts, flooding the room. Good thing it hasn’t reached this doorway yet, though I need to wait a few seconds for the lava to drain from the stepping stones in the great hall.

The sun has almost reached the surface! There’s no more time! I have to get inside the volcano now!

Now, I don’t advocate doing this under any circumstances for obvious reasons but after the 7th eruption, I leave the doorway and hop over the blackish grey stair and walkway debris stepping stones before diving down the crater’s lava shaft before it erupts again. After a long fall, I end up in one of many lava chambers in the volcano.

I continue on through the basalt and obsidian walls and tunnels, looking for tubes leading down: the lava chambers up here are full of glass. The lava I’m looking for is magma, whose difference is not “it’s underground”, but more that it has a lot more minerals and elements mixed in, it’s much hotter and more runny than glass, though it’s hard to tell given all lava is thicker than water anyway. Magma deposits a lot of its stuff on the way up, leaving glass once it gets to either the magma chamber or the surface. That’s where the confusion comes in as only naturally occurring magma can be found underground, but it can be made artificially by simply melting a bunch of rocks to suicidal levels and throwing a bunch of stuff in it, especially metals and crystals.

Anyway, the Junction signal is coming from a lava chamber with actual magma in it, which is of course deeper underground. I shudder to think how some of the lava I saw topside was turned into magma while others remained glass.

Man, there’s more cracks down here than a catholic priest’s trojan filled CP collection. Dunno why they’d choose to download copies of Civil Protection from anywhere other than youtube or the Accursed Farms website in the first place though.

There’s a lava tube curving down up ahead. Lava shoots out of fissures in the walls and floor in bursts. Yes, Hathor’s flames are still going, literally burning the air and the toxic lava fumes around me. There’s no escaping Honou no Saiyaku.

Good! Just a bit further on.

What the hell? It’s all gone dark! Even the magma isn’t showing much light either.

Those glowing purple balls down in here seem to light the way ahead. The magma further in even has just barely enough light to see, by way of the rocks’ silhouettes.

Whew! Out at last!

There’s the other junction! It appears to be from a different being to Hathor. No sooner do I touch it than…

Back for more? Let’s go, Hathor! This is the end!

After defeating Hathor as the flames of disaster a second time, I quickly use the junction and teleport back to the Inti Station.

Act 6: The Ensurance Trap Redux

I’m back on Inti Station at last but I made sure to teleport into the pattern buffer room. Now I quickly head for the umbilical switch near the hanger as I did so often before. The way to the hanger via the T-junction to Hathor’s terminal is locked. I’ll have to get in via the other hanger. Someone opens the right hanger door when I arrive and the Bobs explosively decompress, surviving for a short time before the vacuum fully gets them, just like in real life, believe it or not. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/survival-in-space-unprotected-possible/

I go and close the door using the switch on the balcony after opening the umbilical and saving. But the door just reopens automatically as soon as it completely shuts. While the flames of disaster can penetrate metal and burn it too, flammable or not, Hathor seems to want to keep the door open so I asphyxiate while on fire. Maybe the flames wouldn’t so much consume me as they burn as they do steal my oxygen. Then again, vacuum. Of course, this fire is just the flames i.e. plasma as opposed to actual combustion, and all matter or lack thereof is her fuel anyway.

Closing the bulkhead when I leave keeps the air in and my breath returns. Good thing the other hanger at the end doesn’t have a vacuum. The door reopens later, but I’m behind a couple of other vacuum sealed doors so I’m safe.

Hathor’s terminal displays the same message but this time she doesn’t teleport me into the future, back to Earth and to 2 other games, (one just as criminally underrated as Marathon itself, sharing plot elements with Infinity and even parts of Eternal) probably because I’m already in that future and she’s partly out cold back on Fourth Earth.

I continue through to Durandal and see what he has to say.

What. That’s a ridicules oxymoron. That’s like saying that cats bark, or Donald Trump is benevolent.

I’ve nothing meaningful to add here, though it could be Hathor/Sekhmet's fire searing my brain. With Thoth finishing Durandal’s words for him, I warp back to Mighty Philanthropy during Dread Not. Be sure to check out the main tour entry for this stage too.

http://forums.bungie.org/story/?noframes;read=73093

Tune in next time for when I succeed in destroying the ship’s Electric Sheep and the aftermath in Stage 3: Revelation. Don’t miss it!

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Replies:

Eternal X Tour of Duty Lost Episode 3 Part 2Lion O Cyborg 12/1/20 6:42 a.m.
     Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Lost Episode 3 Part 2VikingBoyBilly 12/4/20 10:12 a.m.
           Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Lost Episode 3 Part 2Lion O Cyborg 12/5/20 7:31 a.m.
                 Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Lost Episode 3 Part 2VikingBoyBilly 12/5/20 8:44 a.m.
                 Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Lost Episode 3 Part 2General-RADIX 12/5/20 2:27 p.m.

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