[Foxyre] The Forest of St. Arcadia (story,fantasy,scifi)

[InKeyedFantasy]

The Forest of St. Arcadia

A forbidden land, The Forest, a dark place only the bravest warriors can venture.

The barrier, located near the guild keeps anyone from venturing deeper into the ever changing paths the Forest creates day by day.

That however did not stop a few who dare go beyond the barrier and it's safety.

Any who goes beyond may in fact find great rewards that even dreams cannot fulfill and some would even find the most rarest sizes of common ore used in their armor and blades, others would find rare minerals and unknown yet strong metals as well.

Within the Forest lies great opportunity and great mysteries, ruined lands to flourishing edens.

However, the paths beyond the barrier houses great dangers that even the strongest adventurers may perish, the deeper they go, the more powerful the threat.

Some have reached a place called Schwarze Tor-Fabrik, an ancient gate with towers of machine that keeps the monsters away from the holy garden.

None have ever gone through the gate, The Keeper of the gate said that only with a key, the gate shall open and the numerous ruins within the Forest may contain a key needed to open the Sarze Tor Gate.

Though the ruins themselves have dangers of their own.

The Forest, a forbidden land filled with adventure and great dangers, a place where the holy garden of the goddess St. Arcadia lies behind the Gate.

[Redacted]: This was a lie told 14,000 years ago. We've reached our maximum storage capacity, it's time to expand.  

[InKeyedFantasy]

Summons Pg. 1

[ System emergency reboot initiated, starting up system manager A.V.I.D. ]

- Start up successful, initializing worker headcount -

[ 1 of 5000 accounted for, contacting regional station for additional workers ]

{ Error connection failed, Plan B enabled }

[ worker CJ-032 pod hibernation sequence online, defrost stage initialized, performing wake-up call ]

- Wake-up call successful, beginning vital scan -

"I'm fine, I'm fine, just need to stretch a little." Worker CJ-032 mumbled as he stretched out
after a long hibernation, rubbing his eyes he looks around the chamber filled with empty stasis pods and a peering monitor camera hovering over him.

"Good morning CJ, sorry to wake you up so late." System Manager gleefully said as the monitor camera rock up and down.

"No need to apologize Avi, where are the others?" CJ asked as he looks up at the monitor.

"The remaining 4,999 workers have not been accounted for and my data log have no information of their whereabouts or their disappearance. I'm also having troubles with the Door's protocol so chances of contacting the regional station is a no go." System Manager Avi stated as the monitor camera is moved away by CJ due to its close proximity to his face.

CJ sits down on a bench adjacent to his stasis pod and opening the cold storage cabinet beneath the bench pulling out a vaporizer and taking a short breath before puffing a long vapor. Reaching back down the cabinet he pulled out his Personal Assistant Device pushing the power button twice to start it up. As the screen slowly lights up a vixen character wakes up from her virtual bed rubbing the back of her head looking up at CJ before laying her head down on the pillow.

"Carmine, now's not the time to go back to sleep." CJ said before taking a breath of vaporizer.

"Just a few minutes *yawn* I'll be right with you." Carmine replied as she lazily goes back to sleep.

"No more scones if you can't help me figure out what's wrong with the Door back to regional." CJ said putting Carmine down on a P.A.D. stand puffing vapor at the screen.

"Fine." Carmine said with a pout and slowly stands up brushing her night gown and changing to her day clothes ready for work.

After seeing CJ and his personal assistant ready Avi changed to a larger screen. "Well now that everyone is ready I'd like the two of you to check with rift to see if there's a problem with dimensional connection with the Door." said Avi after opening a map to the facility, highlighting the Spatial Tunneling section. "I'll send in a few drones to check out the Door and have them see if there are any issues with the Doorframe." Avi later applied.

CJ dotted down notes for Carmine to keep track of while they're their, "If there is damage on the connector send some spatial repair bots to the S.T. section and have a few drones look for any external damage to the section." CJ said as he finished one last note for Carmine and looking at both the map and Avi as he too takes notes for reminders and nodded.

"Well while you're out there, take the rover out, I've enabled the control panel for the garage and when you get a view of the outside, you'd find it hard to believe that this place was once a barren planet." Avi noted as CJ gives a nod.

With Carmine at hand CJ heads out the cryo chamber walking towards the garage but later taking a detour heading to the barracks and stopped at the foot of the cafeteria door as it opens up to reveal an almost lifeless room. "Feels uneasy being the only person alive in this facility, even if I have to see if there's anyone else that's alive, I'd only lose hope." CJ woefully said as he continues onward to one of the living quarters where his room is located. After reaching his room and putting away his vaporizer he entered seeing a room that hasn't been touched for a long, long time with no dust or rusted interior.

Having a look around the room via device cam, Carmine looks at CJ, "Well it may feel like we just left if after a day but insulated rooms with filtered vent system keeps everything looking like time hasn't touched it." She said as the device cam returns to it's socket.

With a short nod CJ grabs his coat and goggles then heads out to the garage located nearby the barracks.

Shortly after arriving, the automated lights haven't activated and later after finding the breaker box for the lighting system, the slow glow of the backup lights fills the heavy two story garage with a few vehicles parked near the blast doors and a few others still in maintenance. Walking towards the control station and grabbing a control panel for a standard light lift rover, CJ walks up to the blast door's master terminal and after hooking it up with the control panel he had and enabling the doors, heavy gears grind and slowly rotate opening the large heavy doors as the bright light outside peers into the dark room flourishing overgrowth of trees and flora creates a beautiful scene of nature.

"Well this ain't so bad, time to get to work." With a breathe of fresh air and with Carmine on the rover stand, CJ walks back to one of the rovers and takes it out for a spin.  

[InKeyedFantasy]

Summons pg. 2

"Not to complain but shouldn't the facility start it's maintanence cycle? I know having this much overgrowth is good for the environment but it'll be hard to navigate through it." CJ stated as he tries driving through the moss covered road which gives the rover some difficulty gripping.

Carmine only raised her shoulders, "well looks like most of the facility is still rebooting, I guess the system takes a while to react to the emergency protocol." she says while sitting horizontally on her virtual armchair with her legs rocking back and forth while reading a magazine.

"You know we've got clearance to enact an override since we're in the senior staff. It might help so we can get things done faster." CJ mentioned though Carmine only looked at him with a lazy look on her face then goes back to flipping pages. With a slight look of defeat the road ahead is clear enough for the auto-nav to take the wheel. While the rover drives itself towards the spatial tunneling section, CJ scoots over to the passenger seat and grabbing Carmine off the dashboard.

CJ opened up a window on his P.A.D. and started to see how much of the facility is still rebooting.

The rover begins to come to a halt as their path was blocked by a barricade.
"Why'd we stop?" Carmine asked as she uses the P.A.D.s cam to see what's in the way.

Stuck at a blocked path and surrounded by dense forest the young engineer and his A.I. assistant gaze around their surroundings.

Stepping out of the rover with Carmine at one hand CJ takes a look at the map as they're within the area the ST section resides. Attempts at bringing down the barricade via PAD. fails as he gets Carmine to bypass the security protocol but with little success.

"Keep trying Carmine, I'll try to see if there's a terminal closeby to get the barricade down." CJ says as he puts Carmine back in the rover and begun looking around for a maintenance terminal.

"Usually I just sit by munching on snacks but oh well." Carmine says with her arms raised and shaking her head as if she didn't had a choice as she attempts to do what she was asked to do.

Choosing not to listen, CJ continues his search. After a while later CJ discovers a fully decomposed body only the corpse doesn't look like a worker or employee of the facility as it wore medieval armor. Kneeling down he searched the body finding a tier 4 security card in the fallen footsoldier's hand and picked it up but found no ID on the dead corpse.

"Hmm maybe someone must've had a costume party a long time ago, though it feels heavier than a fake one, oh well, now there should be a terminal right around, there you are." after finding a terminal he used I.D. card to open the panel and seeing that the emergency lockdown was the reason why the barricade was up. Lifting the lockdown, he returns back to the rover and with the road ahead is clear and with a slightly unattentive assistant watching a re-run of a tv series.

Looking through the leaves and focusing his gaze at the center of the facility, CJ watches a large crate hauler moving large containers along the skyrails from the supply section to robotics. "Wonder if she's still up there, maybe I should pay him a visit one of these days." he thought to himself.

Continuing onward to the ST section and sitting in the passenger seat looking at the scenery, Carmine gets a message as she takes a look at who's sending it.

"Hey CJ, I'm getting a strange text coming from outside the gate." Carmine states as she gets up on her feet and looking at the text more thouroughly.
Looking at Carmine he leans forward, " What does it say?" he asked before picking up his PAD.

After showing him the strange message, he seemed curious but figured it must've been from a long time. But Carmine was able to pull an image from the main gate of who's sending it as CJ's curiosity piqued. "Well would you look at that." he commented, "a person wearing medieval armor which doesn't look fake." he stated as the person appears to be hitting the gate doors and pleading for help.

"Should we take a detour?"  

[InKeyedFantasy]

Summons pg. 3

Resuming their course to Spatial Tunneling, CJ kept looking over the image of the knight in distress, looking in the background he spots at least a dozen unknown life forms which must've pursued the fleeting knight but noticed that they aren't moving any closer. Looking at Carmine who seems preoccupied, CJ rocks the PAD a little to get her attention which worked somewhat.

With an annoyed look on her face and nail polish all over her paws Carmine looks at CJ raising her arms, "Can I help you with something? I'm sorry if I was busy with my nails since we're not "actually" busy working on stuff at the moment." she said while trying to use a towel to wipe off the nail polish.

"I need you to work this time, we're trying to get the facility up and running again and I also need you to contact AVI for me and ask him about the status of the defenses in the outer walls." CJ calmly says as he keeps his cool before putting the PAD down on the dashboard.

"Fine, I'll see what AVI got to say, so next time you try to get someone's attention. Just swipe left." Carmine says as she opens a linkup.

Looking back at the image taken by the gate's security camera, CJ scans the creatures.

"Hmm these creatures are mainly local fauna frequently found outside the wall." he stated but looked at a few folder pages back and noticed something different about their appearance.
Taking a closer look and comparing both images of the ones taken by the gate's camera and the images in the folder, Carmine looks at CJ and trying to get CJ's attention but since anytime he's focused on something, it's hard to break his concentration.

Bumping up the volume on the PAD's speaker Carmine opens up an audio file and plays it. A flock of birds flies away as a couple logistics robots turn to where the loud noise was coming from before returning to their duties.

After an inaudible scream loud as a revved up motor engine and a shocked look on his face CJ catches his breath grasping his chest, later on glaring at the mischievous virtual vixen.

"Sorry to break your investigation habit and stuff, but I just finished talking to Avi and he says we could but right after we're done with Spatial Tunneling because he's picking up bizarre readings there and the siphons have become highly active." Carmine says covering a smirk on her face after seeing CJ's reaction.

"That's good to know." was all CJ could say as he gets back into the driver's seat taking over the wheel.

"Oh and another thing, Avi said he'll get a few units to take care of whatever is going on at the gate." Carmine stopped which CJ looks at her.

"Is there something else?" CJ commented while driving

"Yeah, he said that perimeter lookout have found a few corpses within the facility, they're not employees though." Carmine added before pulling up images of the corpses found by perimeter units.

"Let me guess, they've got medieval armor on same as our guest outside the gate correct?" CJ said as he pulls up an image he took of the corpse he found.

Confused and baffled, Carmine wonders what happened after the entire facility went tonic.

"I've also noticed something odd about the local fauna outside the wall when I pulled up a list of the animals observed outside." CJ mentioned after passing the image to Carmine which she also takes a look.

"What's with their eyes?" she said as she moves it to the rover's HUD. "They look like their eyes were clawed out but then again they still have eyes only it's not there." she stops there.
With nothing but clues on what's happened to the facility both in and out they reached Spatial Tunneling but right before entering the section's motor pool they get a call from Avi. With expectations of the news from the gate CJ answers Avi's call only to see that the signal was being disrupted.

"Guys once you've... careful... scans show... near the mess... you're not... [inaudible]... security room... [inaudible]... for safety"

With the rest of the audio starting to come out unclear the signal cut the call.

"It's only atmospheric disturbance since the siphons are online." Carmine said before coming up with a suggestion. "We should go check out why the siphons are online and maybe find a way to clear up the atmosphere a little so we can call Avi again just in case." she finishes after CJ picks her up.

"Yeah maybe we should but we can check the status on the siphons from the hadron chamber so it'll be quicker to do two things at once." he stated as he walks into the glass corridor leading into the ST section.

Finding what looked like a place that's been occupied by someone or something else and with rooms having torch stands and makeshift furniture coupled with old fashioned nails they continued onward to where the hadron chamber is but stopped at every room as more questions comes to mind until they've found one room that appeared all burnt up and few remaining ashes covering up piles of human and domesticated animal bones. Picking up a skull with odd features, CJ blew some of the ashes off and noticed cuts around the eye sockets and begun to see that almost every skull has the same wounds around the eyes. Putting the skull back down he continues walking towards the hadron chamber only to find that it's been closed off by emergency containment door.

Using the security card CJ got earlier on the door's panel and lifting the locks, the corridor behind looked nothing like the other rooms as he continues onward.

Opening another containment door for the hadron chamber itself, the interior looked way more different than both the corridor and the rest of the section. Filled with strange writings, numbers, formulas, and odd circles, CJ focuses his gaze at the highly active hadron sphere as the exterior appeared to have the same decals as the chamber itself and with a cloaked skeleton standing with out stretched arms facing the sphere.

Carmine replied, "Well this is beyond strange, Doctor  

[InKeyedFantasy]

Summons Pg. 4

"I'm so glad I won't end up like that guy." Carmine said as she give a jab gesture to CJ before she was put on a stand then after using the PADs camera to scan the room CJ went ahead to put the cloaked skeleton away before putting his full attention towards the hadron sphere. With periods of emergency polarity inversion to cool the 1st inner ring, CJ walks over to a console to check the system status.

Looking at the screen, the sphere was activated a 45 years ago but it's hibernation was dated on the same year the entire facility went tonic. Looking at the output gauge, the sphere is emitting high levels of B-F particles, tachyon ions, and proto-wave ions; though one is mainly responsible for the siphons' excess response. Working on dialing down the sphere's activity CJ moves to another console to pull up the security recording within the chamber.

"You sure there might be something we can find with those recordings? Doesn't security also shut down when the facility goes tonic?" Carmine asked as she gets the stand to move up to where CJ is at.

Opening a recording of when the chamber was first activated CJ looks at Carmine.

"Every high profile chambers are built as an individual grid within the facility, so each chamber has it's own power, security, air filter, etc. So incase the entire facility experience a blackout, each chamber won't be affected and the poindexters can continue their studies while we work." CJ stopped as the recording he pulled up was out of focus.

Carmine looked at CJ and asked, "but if the facility went tonic."

"Then every chamber would respond and go tonic as well, but since this chamber was opened by this cult looking guy and perhaps his friends, the chamber went back online so every system within the chamber woke up; except for the lights which might've died out." CJ responded while running a program to render the video recording of when the chamber came back online.

Watching the video with him, Carmine remained quiet as she sees the same cloaked figure followed by 4 others as they walk into the chamber.

as the figures in the video walk up to the console, the heavily armored figure picks up a security card from his knapsack then used it to activate the console as the hadron sphere came back to life. Somewhere along the line the cloaked figure started to act strange as roaming particles siphoned between him and the sphere.

As for the rest of his party, only a few particles were replaced.

CJ switched on a filter for the video and after doing so the cloaked figure and his party were giving off a strange high energy reading with a few excess output emanating around them. One of them began to cast something and used it against the other party members which immobilized them and cast something else on the sphere itself as if he's siphoning energy from it until an overload sequence activated causing a chamber blackout which the recording ended.

"Seems like the concept of magic actually exist in this world." CJ stated as he tries to open up another video.

"Well I don't everyone in the facility are mages or anything like that, most of you guys are just extraordinary people from a 24th century civilization. And related to monkeys." Carmine replied as she looks over at the corpse of the cloaked figure. "Buddy I don't know what mushroom you've eaten but you guys needed some serious reality check." She looks at CJ as he pulls up a video a year later after the first.

With the video on display it showed the same party as before except for the one that betrayed them but they weren't alone. The others that came looked more elite and their armor shows that they're in a high ranking position in a church of sort whereas one of them wore a white gilded robe as he approaches the sphere.

He turns to the party that found it and praises them though the audio was inaudible due to uncontrolled buildup in ions.

A couple minutes later as they try to remove the sphere an unknown event occurred as the sphere's polarity pulled into a sudden reverse as a strange cloud emerged from it striking the individuals trying to pry it off it's foundation and tearing down a mechanism used to pull it out.

"Hey CJ, something's up with the sphere." Carmine insisted that CJ takes a look as it starts a sudden polarity shift as the strange cloud started to emerge but instead of appendages the cloud simply focused into one area around itself.

"Has the King finally come for power?" A dark yet calm voice erupts from the sphere filling the room. "You have no business within this chamber," it paused while scanning the room before the cloud mass focuses in CJ's direction.

Carmine performs a scan of the sphere as she looked dumbfounded but also amused in a way. "Hey CJ, the sphere is... Alive..."