Children of a Lesser God

Laz searched through the information in his head about 'Heaven's Gaze,' and immediately understood what he had to do to use this ability. Training his eyes was something he had never thought of before, but it made perfect sense now that he had the means to do so. It wasn't going to be a fast process, but the end results would be worth the investment.

Laz didn't know how to thank his master for this gift and could only give a final salute towards where his master's body once was.

Then, without looking back, Laz went off to find Ruby.

He ended up finding her sitting before an empty chamber that was still wet with liquid. Whatever was inside of it was long gone. Ruby looked like she was in the middle of something, but as soon as Laz approached, her eyes opened.

Laz was given a shock. Compared to her changing before, when her body would acquire scales and her eyes became snake like, it looked like her change was far more visible now, with the scales covering almost all of her body that Laz could see including her neck. It rested around her hair as though forming a helmet with her face still being scale free. It really appeared to be like a skin tight body suit of scale armor.

Laz felt like it was strangely enticing, until he felt uncomfortable enough to fight back. It only occurred for a few breaths of time, but Laz felt like he had been bewitched. After clearing his eyes, Laz looked at Ruby again, only to find her smiling back at him.

"That was mean you know..."

"How was it mean? All I did was look at you," Ruby said with a knowing smile. Her strength, like Laz's, had increased exponentially so even with Laz's strong spiritual sense, he had been distracted by her. He could only imagine the effect it would have had on someone less powerful.

"So what happened to you?" Laz asked, interested in the situation.

"Something... walk with me and talk with me while I work," Ruby said, getting up. Laz, curious, followed.

Ruby walked at a quick pace, knowing where she was going while Laz kept her company. As for what happened to her, Laz quickly understood it was something similar to what happened to him. She ended up finding a distant blood ancestor within the lab who was bale to communicate with her on a biological level and as opposed to wasting away to nothing, decided that it would give all it could to her in hopes that she could carry it's will to the future.

But that wasn't the end of it. After having communicated with the rainbow colored snake in the first tank and taken it's legacy, Ruby also learned of other's who were willing to part with their legacy's since the seemed to understand that death was coming. Therefore, the final will of the rainbow snake was that she help them as well.

And that's what she was doing right now.

The first tank Ruby approached was that of a rather strange looking cat. It had three tails, each with what looked like some sort of razor sharp piece of metal attacked to it. It's entire coat was pitch black without a hint of color while it's ears seemed to point strait up with some extended bits of fur coming off of it, making it looked similar but different to any feline on earth.

As Ruby approached the tank, the cat opened it's eyes and growled at her, but seemed to quickly quiet down. Ruby put her hand on the tank and closed her eyes before gently resting her head against the tank as well. The creature seemed confused at first, but then ended up resting it's head against the tank as well, right where Ruby's was.

Right before Laz's eyes, the creature within the tank disappeared after only a moments time. The part that Laz couldn't believe was that it seemed to disappear into Ruby's head, at the space where there foreheads touched the tank, like it had been sucked in.

Laz had no idea what was going on, but it looked kind of cool.

Of course he would ask.

"You're absorbing them?" Laz asked, wondering if that's what he saw.

"No. I'm holding on to them for their descendants," Ruby replied while moving on to the next tank.

"How is that possible? Isn't bring in something like multiple wills going to impact your own mind?" It's not as though Laz knew this for certain, but if movies and television shows had even an ounce of truth to them, then this is what would happen..

"Baby. Trust me. Ok?" Ruby obviously knew something that Laz didn't but considering the circumstances and the timetable they were under, she couldn't explain it to him to convince him otherwise. Therefore, she took the next best step, asking for his trust.

And she knew she had it. Laz didn't say anything after that and instead just followed her without asking any more questions.

She made two more stops before she was finished, each time taking a moment to speak to the ones behind the glass. The second stop she made was to a rather strange looking creature. It kind of resembled a miniature deer with antlers and on it's body there looked to be a layer of glitter that reflected the light from the tube. Although it looked like a baby, not larger than a small dog, it's head perked up when Ruby came close and Laz could see the intelligence in it's eyes.

Unlike the last one that looked to take a bit of convincing, this one seemed to have expected Ruby and was sucked away, just like that.

The final creature that Ruby found was a small fox with white, puffy fur and two tails. Unlike the others, it didn't open it's eyes when Ruby approached, but it still seemed to sense her all the same.

As Ruby began talking to it though, Laz noticed the sorrow on her face and even a few tears escape her. Just as Laz wanted to ask what was wrong, the small fox came close enough to the glass to be able to set it's head against it, but it was still a ways away from where Ruby was. It was actually floating closer to Laz. As such, Laz could clearly see that the reason it didn't open it's eyes was not because it didn't want to, but because it couldn't. It's eyelids had been stitched shut.

Ruby, seeing that the creature couldn't tell where she was, walked over in front of Laz and put her head in line with the fox, finally taking it in like the others.

With that, he mission was complete.

"Time to go?" Ruby asked Laz, snapping his out of his thoughts.

"Yeah. And we have to be quick. We have around two days to get the hell out of here before the entire outpost is destroyed," Laz responded back making his way back towards the door.

"Outpost?" Ruby caught on to his wording which didn't seem to fit what had been mentioned before.

"This place, you didn't learn anything?" Laz asked, somewhat surprised.

"No. When I... We merged, I found out that the tanks limit the range of sensing outside. So..."

"So they were basically all alone for the past... how ever long?"

"They don't even know how long it's been. In truth, the only thing that kept any of them sane was a voice from a creature who called himself Rok. He's the only one that was able to speak to them over the years. He was also the one to spread messages among them, fed them news, entertained them... through his voice he provided the entire whole of their social existence. Even then, it was always a sad day when he had to announce a death to everyone. In the end, very few were awake enough to even communicate with me, let alone come with me. The Rainbow Devourer told me that the voice of Rok was coming less and less and many of them had started to give up hope." Ruby shared some of the things she had learned from the creature she had combined with.

To her, it was simply the little bit of info she had from the small space the snake had lived in for the past how ever many years. But Laz immediately understood that it was actually his master, Rak'Sha who had been the voice to them.

Maybe he did it for himself. Maybe he did it for them. But either way, the reason his voice had stopped speaking as much was because he was dying himself and knew that he couldn't keep it up. But he must have realized as well that as soon as he stopped speaking all together, the few remaining living creatures would give up hope as well. So instead, he timed it to allow himself to last as long as possible.

Laz couldn't help but feel more respect for his late master while at the same time vowing to himself to one day let the last of his family know his fate, even if it meant leaving Earth one day.

Laz had a complicated look on his face, but noticing Ruby looking at him, he shook his head. There would be time for discussion later.

For now, they needed to get clear of the lab and the biggest problem was the hallway that they had come in from had been blown up, effectively blocking the door and locking them inside.

"Why only two days baby?" Ruby finally asked, following up on his earlier statement.

"The creators of this place, some sort of technical race... collected species from all over the near universe and brought them here to study them. They wanted to increase their strength by bringing in a biological aspect, something that their race had long discarded but only realized how much that had hurt them down the line. One of the things they brought in... I don't even know how to describe it but I can tell you that it's locked underground and it wants to be free and get revenge. Getting free will destroy this outpost, but at the cost of it's life. But it no longer cares about that."

"What about the owners of this place?"

"From what I can tell it's been long abandoned and is basically running on auto pilot."

"You seem to know a lot more than I do."

"I met a blood ancestor of my own while we've been here..."

"It was still alive? I thought the only ones still breathing were the ones I rescued?"

"My blood ancestor was the voice that was helping them survive..."

"That... that is a very noble creature..." Ruby didn't have words, but if she could, she would have expressed her thanks to it.

"Yes. He was."

"OK. Well then baby. Enough of this for now. You're damsel is in distress and needs rescuing. So how about figuring out how to get me out of here?"

"Just like that and it's all on me?"

"Well. I am a damsel. I am in distress and you are my... "white knight." So yes. It's like that..." Ruby laughed as she poked fun at Laz.

Laz pouted, but in a playful way. He was also scanning the huge room to see if there was another way out. But he found very little that could be helpful.

He finally worked his way back to the wall where his master had been strung up, traces of dried, dead blood still splashed the wall while the spikes were still jutting out from the wall.

"What happened here?" Ruby asked in horror.

"The final resting place of my ancestor."

Looking around, Laz noticed something he hadn't seen before. Underneath where his master had been kept, there was what looked to be a drain cover that was hard to separate from the floor thanks to the layers of dust and rubble. It would make sense that Laz's master had probably bled a lot from the area where the spikes impaled him or even thanks to his missing lower half. It seemed like the drain was there to collect the resulting fluids.

Laz had an idea... but he didn't like it.

Looking at Laz and then turning to look at the drain he found, Ruby knew what he was thinking.

"You thinking this is a problem? Darling, I once crawled through and hid in a septic tank to escape some foreign gentlemen who were mad that I offed their boss. This is like a nice walk through the woods compared to that...."

"Ruby?"

"Yes Laz?"

"That's... kind of hot..."

"Shut up and get the lid open...."