Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Paradoxical

He very much did not want to do this, he would rather spend a weak in the thorn-tail Glorg pit, but no, as a clerk to the Galactic Assembly, he had to do THIS..... it was almost worth it to think about quitting, but he supposed this job didn't stack up to spending the rest of his life working in the Glorg pit, so he sighed picked up his Info-board, and headed out into in the crisp early-morning air. Ardus (the alabaster moon) was just beginning to sink towards the horizon. Tan'nas (Their blue moon still stood high in the sky. Their distant star was just beginning turn the sky a pale pink.

With trudging steps he made his way towards the distant edge of the city where the.... creatures had made their camp..... camp..... They were spending their time OUTSIDE, in.... in CLOTH houses like heathens... barbarians. WHO MADE HOUSES OUT OF CLOTH!

He took the last few steps slowly and with great caution, but heard nothing. With caution, he peeked into the cloth houses, and found them completely abandoned. He felt his circulation drop.... Not even 1/10 of a cycle, and he had already failed his job. It was the Glorg pit for sure now!

That's when he heard the noises

In curiosity, and with a slight measure of hope, He turned following the distant thrumming through the ground. It was oddly.... Regular, almost mechanically regular beat.

Coming over the rise he nearly yipped in fear and fell back.

The humans were preparing for war.... Oh it was horrible, they walked beside each other in two terribly synchronized columns moving at the exact same timing and speed, a single beast with ten pairs of legs and ten pairs of arms.... And so, so many eyes. Their shadows marched beside them, long black cords of horribly perfect movement. He had no idea that humans had hive minds..... Oh, but they must being able to move like that. He had to tell the assembly. The humans began to move even faster now, keeping impossible step the rhythm of their feet jarring through the ground with a terrible power.

He couldn't move, and while he was frozen, he finally noticed..... speech? It was barely recognizable as such spoken with that a sort of eerie rhythm.

"When my Granny was 91 she did PT just for fun!" The phrase repeated back, completely nonsensical as the humans jogged around the open field single body trampling delicate purple spindle-root. He had absolutely no idea what a PT, or a Granny was: ninety one of what?

"When my Granny was 95, she did PT to stay alive." The mesmeric way they moved was almost to hypnotic to bare, and he scooted just a little bit closer.

"When my Granny was 97, she up and died and went to heaven. " He was watching them from behind a rock now hoping they wouldn't notice him in the high contrast landscape of morning.

"She met St. Peter at the pearly gate.... Said 'St. Peter, hope I'm not late.... St. Peter said with a big ol' grin.... 'Get down Granny and knock out ten." Together the column took another perfect lap chanting the whole wile.

"ON YOUR FACES!" He jumped nearly braining himself on a rock as the entire group of humans just fell to the ground onto all fours bodies stiff and ridged as they used their arms to push themselves away from the ground repeatedly, it didn't really make sense.

They did many rounds of this before eventually leaping to their feet in perfectly aligned rows.

The human who had been calling instructions stood in front of the group, "LIEUTENANT VIR, wipe that idiot grin off your face!"

There was a pause, "Sgt. Can you tell him to do that?" One of the men wondered. The other human glowered at him.

"You're damn right I can. Captain told me to keep an eye on his crazy ass self because he's a reckless man child with a kink for being probed by aliens." All the humans let of an odd repeated revving noise. He hunkered back into the rock.