Luminal Lore

The lore account for Luminal Genesis/Universe. Nothing but lore/story will be posted here!

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

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[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

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[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

She had to help. Her spare breathing gear could mean the difference between life and death for someone. Slowly, a few inches at a time, Naia began to work her way up the needle, knowing the attack would be over long before she reached the top. The first attack, at least.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

The automated transmission calmly informed her of an attack, instructing her to take any breathing equipment she might own and head for open water. Of course, she thought, her brain catching up through the fog of shock. There wouldn’t be just one needle.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Injured though she was, Naia knew she was in a better position than anyone left in the living quarters. She had been hit by a stray needle; right now, thousands of rods would be falling on their intended target, breaching the sealed compartments and flooding them with seawater.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

She didn’t even need to call for backup at this point. To escape, all she needed to do was work her way to the top of the needle. So long as it ended under the surface, she would be able to free herself and swim home. Then the voice in her earpiece jolted her back to reality.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

One moment she was swimming freely, the next she was pinned to the spot by the narrow rod that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere and passed through her thigh into the seabed below. She felt no pain, only a kind of detached shock, until it dawned on her what had happened.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Naia was not immediately concerned. The tech she wore meant she could breathe indefinitely under water, switching from her main air supply to the gill units she’d had implanted if necessary. The damage was not serious, and the wound did not pose any immediate danger.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Nothing. She paused, uncertain of what to do next. The furs weren’t necessary for her to complete her task, and they would find their way back home when they needed to, but it wasn’t like them to desert her. A second later, she found she couldn’t move.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Naia ran her fingers up the needle, its alien alloy frictionless and cold. She tagged the spot with a GPS; the material was valuable, and she would come back with specialist equipment to salvage it. Dive knives and tools made from repurposed Draal metal sold for a fortune.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Turning to begin her patrol of the kelp forest, she suddenly felt alone. Glancing around, she realised the two furs she had brought with her had vanished. Naia pushed the clicker on her belt to call them. The sound carried effectively underwater, and they couldn’t have gone far.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

The thinnest needles would embed themselves deep in any surface they hit, while the larger ones had enough force to destroy whole settlements, even those hundreds of feet below the sea. For the submarine colonies of an ocean world like Nirox, they were a terrifying weapon.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

The Draal were savage in face-to-face battle, but also remarkable engineers and problem solvers. Like their other weapons, needles were pragmatic, efficient, brilliant in their simplicity. They were lethal in their effect and almost impossible to see coming, let alone stop.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Needles were nothing more than a bundle of thin rods, made from a tough, dense alloy, and varying in diameter from the finest, like this one, up to an inch thick. Fired at a target from space, they would accelerate under the planet’s own gravity and impact with immense energy.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

The weapon shone a dull grey in the blue-green light that filtered down from the surface and the soft glow of the forest’s spotlights. Although less than a quarter-millimetre thick, she knew she could not bend it with her hands. It would extend upwards for a hundred feet or more.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

Reaching the vast kelp forest, which supplied a large proportion of the food required by Nirox’s million-strong undersea settlements, Naia began her patrol, checking for any signs of disease or damage by the plethora of aquatic insects and herbivores looking for an easy meal.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

She wouldn’t have seen the needle if it hadn’t stood out, incongruously motionless, against the rippling fronds of kelp. It must have been there for decades, one of many relics the Aquan settlers missed when they cleared the seabed after the last attack by the Draal.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

They were gentle, loyal, intelligent, and equally at home on land or water – the perfect companion and working animal for Aqua families and farmers alike. More than once they had seen off threats to Naia from some of Nirox’s more aggressive fauna.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

It was two clicks from the living quarters to the kelp beds, but Naia was happy to swim. Nirox’s undersea beauty never failed to delight her, with its myriad brightly-coloured fish, coral formations, and waving tendrils of plant life.

[Luminal Lore @LuminalLore]

The two furs glided along beside her. Looking something like a large aquatic dog, the creatures owed much of their DNA to Phocidae, the seal family of the Former Earth. Their formal name had been shortened to Phos, and then almost inevitably to Furs by Nirox’s children.