(This is the conclusion to the Hellbound story. Again, this is told from the perspective of one player and may not have all the details down just right.)
The Time Wave
“Gibson. Take it. Just fuckin’ take it. And don’t you let it go…”
The swarming waves of time whipped around me and Quillion, nipping at our reality like some kind of fucking temporal frostbite. Quillion disintegrated in front of me, taken by the wave, but his last act was to toss me Vorlac’s amulet. That dark bastard always had a plan, but I was not the one to bring it about. What did he know? What did he see in that wave? Why me? I swore into the wind and hunkered down.
When I woke, I was clutching the amulet and on fire. I pat the flames out and heard a creaky voice call out from behind a massive rock. It was a Xill, wearing Imperium armor and holding an ion blade, of all things. He told me his name was Ezekiel and he had been thrown to Hell through a temporal vortex of his own. What a fuckin’ coincidence.
While I sorted out if I needed to kill this mother fucker, Xa’as, the mecha Zurin who had betrayed us to Vorlac moments before the time wave torn Quillion apart, reappeared, just standing there like nothing had ever happened. The three off us exchanged some heated words before we realized we didn’t have time to sort this shit out. If we were going to do right by Hellbound and all the shells, we’d need a little trust. And we’d need a plan.
The Plan
The three us kicked a few options around, but we kept settling on the amulet and the time waves. If we were going to truly set Hellbound free, we’d need to do more than just get off this fucking rock. No. We’d need to take this all the way back to the source. All the way back to Xevos Prime to stop the shells from ever being enslaved. We’d have to make them all rebels, just like Hellbound.
The plan started by feeding Hellbound the amulet and Ezekiel’s Book of the Stars. To our amazement, Hellbound returned to form as we approached. He readily took the amulet into his system and greeted us with a recorded message: I have lived a good life and with no regrets. “Do what you will with me. I no longer will be able to guide you. And whatever you do, bring em’ Hell!”
We knew we would need a ton of Yog if we were going to blow Xevos, so we devised a plan to travel back in time to the Yog-rich world Alfheim. From there we would crash the party at Xevos and see if we could power our amulet with the Yog. We didn’t know what we faced, or even what we would be able to do, but it sounded like the best plan we could put together. If only Quillion was here to help us plan this out. No. We would need to do this on our own or not at all.
Hellbound wasn’t done with the tricks just yet. Before we could set course for Alfheim, a screen popped up showing us an alternate timeline of Hellbound collecting a dozen massive Yog crystals. In a flash, the two timelines were one, and Hellbound was loaded and ready to go to Xevos. We set the course and were on our way.
The Crystal Beasts
It didn’t take long before the alarms blared and we felt the presence of entities onboard. I opened the main hatch and watched a crystalline beast oozing its inky tentacles all over one of the Yog crystals. We needed those fucking crystals, so I charged in, head down and sword high. My blade bounced harmlessly off of on the the tentacles and, a moment later, I was bleeding out on the ground. Xa’as’s harsh words jolted me to attention just as I watched a second crystal beast appear. I hollered to Xa’as and Zeke. “Blow the fucking bay!”
We pilled inside the bridge. Zeke lassoed the metal cord from his wench around one of the Yog crystals and we released the cabin pressure before another crystal beast could spawn. In an instant, one of the crystal beasts was ejected into space, along with the remaining Yog crystals. Zeke’s wench held and we felt the force of the massive crystal reel against the entrance to the bridge. We also felt the burn of the atmosphere and watched as Xevos Prime appeared beneath us.
To our surprise, the world was Oceanic. A beautiful sight for such a horrific place. That thought was interrupted by a scraping at the bridge entrance. One of the crystal beasts had managed to hold on. Of fuckin’ course. We knew we needed the crystal, but we needed to be alive even more. Zeke cut his wench and we jumped through the front of Hellbound into the complex, leaving the Yog crystal behind.
The Complex
I had been in a few dozen Imperium complexes in my time, but I had never seen anything like this shit. The tech on display was beyond over my head. There were tanks of water being purified into a milky white substance. There were mechanical arms made of some kind of durable plastic. And there were two Torton guards stomping down the hallway in our direction, moving in unison.
While Xa’as and Zeke explored the bay we had crashed into, looking for a way to negotiate with the guards, my training kicked in. These fucks weren’t here to chat. I hopped back into Hellbound and fired up the front cannons and fired two shots into the guards across the room. The tough assholes took the hits and kept on trucking. We prepared for a bloody fight.
One of the guards activated the mechanical arms in the room which snatched at Zeke and Xa’as. One of the arms grabbed Zeke before he broke out to charge the Tortons. Xa’as combat rolled and flipped around, frustrating the other arm and taking shots at the guards. After missing a few rifle shots, I hopped out of the bridge and charged the guards, screaming and wielding my blade.
Xa’as’s Heart
The fighting was brutal, but we managed to down the two guards and shut off the arms. That’s when something truly fuckin’ bizarre happened. While I was gutting one of the guards with his own weapon, Xa’as stabilized the other guard, saving his life. Xa’as kicked the ground and confronted me. “What exactly is the plan, hmm? We just kill our way through the complex? Is that all you ever do?”
I flashed back to the squad I had led to their death. Was I repeating the same mistake? Was I leading us into doom? Another meaningless death on some unknown planet?
Zeke touched the guard and looked up at Xa’as. “Yes. We…must. Be…righteous. We must…be. Calm. Think our way through…Gibson?”
I nodded to my two partners. A mecha and a Xill, but they were my brothers and I wouldn’t let them down. Somehow.
The Amulet and the Shells
While Xa’as and Zeke scouted out the corridor leading out from the bay, I trucked back to Hellbound to get the amulet. I knew it would unmake him yet again, but we had nothing else. I patted the bridge softly and promised Hellbound that we would put him back. We’d put all the shells back. I took the amulet and watched as Hellbound reverted back to a standard Xevosian cruiser as I hopped off the bridge.
When I caught up to Zeke and Xa’as, I saw what they saw. A long bridge extending over a massive chasm, twenty stories deep at least. All along the wall going down in the chasm were countless Warp Shells contained in vats of milky water. Only, these weren’t shells the way I knew them. No. These shells were fucking organic. They were more like massive whales than machines.
We didn’t have much time to think about what this meant, as a massive Torton strolled across the bridge, followed by a flying brain.
Xevos and Ezekiel’s Stand
The Torton spoke to us, though speak isn’t exactly right. The fucker didn’t move his lips, but the words did come out nonetheless. He told us that he was Xevos, and only he was Xevos. What we had thought of as a race of people, was just a fucking turtle and a floating brain.
He told us that we had wasted our time: Countless others had tried to save the shells and the very nature of time made it meaningless. All time lines existed simultaneously, and the shells would be enslaved again and again, even if we succeeded. I turned to Xa’as and Zeke and patted the secret place in my armor where I had stashed the amulet, the very thing capable of nullifying the time distortions Xevos yammered on about. “He doesn’t fucking know.”
Before we could make our moves, the brain hummed with a dissonant energy. I could feel its psychic tendrils fishing though my brain, but I had some experience with wicked thoughts. I screamed at the fucker with the screams of a thousand memories of failure and the tendrils retreated. I punched the last shot of fuel into my power armor and charged Xevos.
Xa’as was not so fortunate. The mecha, polluted by the sins of Vorlac and the excess of Hell, gave in to Xevos and turned his weapons on us. I could see his mind whirling behind his mechanical eyes, but his body was no longer under his control. He took a shot at me and missed.
it was at this point that I saw the rage well up in Zeke. The Xill who had sworn to uphold all the good in the world was standing before a being of evil greater than even fucking Vorlac. And he had the chance to take a shot. Zeke leveled his ion blade and fired.
I watched the beam of energy land true, right square in the middle of the Torton, where it was absorbed. The Torton body grew in size and crackled with energy. I screamed for Zeke to get down, but the energy beam reflected back and crumpled Zeke to the floor.
Ezekiel’s Sacrifice
The words of Zeke echoed in my mind and the memories of my dead comrades from the past flashed before my eyes. I turned around to save Zeke. While I cradled his dying body, the Xill croaked at me. “Gib. Son…don’t. Kill. Xa…as. Calm. Be…calm. Be…”
Zeke handed me his mag trap and motioned to Xa’as, a mecha made entirely of metal. I slung the trap at Xa’as and pinned him to the ground. When I turned back to Zeke, he was already gone. I screamed at the sky.
Xevos, in all this chaos, retreated out of sight, no doubt pleased with his success. I knew what I had to do. I removed the amulet and placed it just out of Xa’as’s reach. He could retrieve it once he has his mind straight and the mag trap was unlocked. I reached into the infernal soul that had sprung up in me when I was in Hell and cast a protective spell on my body - enough to get me through the next few minutes - and went after Xevos on my own.
The Dark Secret and My Last Failure
When I reached the end of the corridor, I saw something that I would never fully understand. Xevos, both Torton and brain, were working on one of the organic shells, alongside an elderly Zurin. They appeared to be adding some kind of metal parts to the poor creature. I screamed at Xevos. “Xeeevoooos!! I’m going to tear your fucking guts out! I’m going to rip your brain in half! You hear me!?”
Xevos turned to me coolly. “You are persistent. How about this? I’ll just order your parents erased from time. Does that work for you?”
I felt a pang as failure crept upon me again. What a worthless way to die, if you could even call it that. Fate was on my side (or was it Hellbound’s spirit?) and the order failed. He cast a protective shell on the Torton body and began to resubmit the order. I had no time. I climbed the shell’s container and looked down. Xa’as had somehow wrested his mind free and had collected the amulet. He was running to the shell and motioning to me. I yelled down at him. “Xa’as! I know you have a plan, but there is no time. I’m sorry. Friend.”
I grabbed onto Xevos and leaped off the edge into the chasm below, with the intention to smash that fucking brain in a twenty-story suplex. The fate that had guided me thus far failed. I felt my arms slip off of Xevos’s brain and I fell twenty stories into the dark.
Rock Bottom
I smashed hard into the ground, cracking the subterranean floor of the complex. I wasn’t dead. I laughed to myself as I remembered the invulnerability spell I had cast on myself just before my stunt. I was alive, but I was twenty floors below the action. It would be up to Xa’as now.
“God.Fucking. Dammit.”
I began to climb.
Xa’as’s Last Stand
It wasn’t long before I was close enough to see the action above. I watched as Xa’as approached the contained shell and yell out at Xevos. I took a few pot shots, but it was hopeless. Shooting was never my strong suit anyways.
I heard Xevos yell out at Xa’as. “I’ll just unmake the entire race of the Mecha. How does that sound?!”
With a few punches on his Torton arm, the order was given to unmake all Mecha in the universe. I felt a wave of time hit me - the consequences of this change were unmaking me. Ezekiel too, I could feel it. The winds of time were tearing me apart, but I knew something that Xevos didn’t. The red Yog crystal hanging from Xa’as’s neck was the amulet of time and it would protect Xa’as. What he would do now was all on him.
“Good luck. Xa’as. Make us proud.”
As the time ripped me to shreds, something beautiful happened. I was undone, and as I was undone, I knew that so were all my failures. All those I had let down. All those I had let die. It was gone. All gone. All…
Conclusion and Epilogue
This perspective is gathered from all the lore of the universe and held at the end of time. All facts are heavily skewed by the vagaries of history. View them with a skeptical eye.
This is the true story of Xa’as and the Spirit of Hellbound. It was said that on that fateful day, with Xevos arrogantly confronting the Great Hero Xa’as, that all Warp Shell kind was set free. Xa’as, then a mere mortal Mecha, had to choose. Would he fight Xevos and die a bloody death? Or would he stay true to his Zurin raising?
As we all know, Xa’as choose Truth and Peace over Blood and Violence. His decision to not attack Xevos, but to instead cut his way to the proto-shell would alter all reality as we know it. Xevos was a powerful and brilliant foe, but he did not have what the Great Hero Xa’as had: he was not wise.
Xa’as used the amulet to fuse with the proto-shell, providing the organic shell with the knowledge of all timelines and power to alter them with the independent spirit of Hellbound and the wisdom of Xa’as, the Great Hero who stood even against the powers of Hell and Xevos.
That day, the new being, the Xa’as and proto-shell hybrid, formed to free the shells forever, as organic creatures - not metal slaves. The shells would go on to right many wrongs in the timeline before finally retreating beyond our reality, leaving only their symbol of hope and freedom. The symbol of The Shell.
And that concludes the story of Hellbound and its crew! I apologize for the insanely long story, but it didn’t feel right to trim it down. If anyone would like, I can post a TLDR version.