[Story] Echoes of Half-Life 3: Citadel

A segment for my creative works

Minted at 57° - - part of the Imperial Blockade

The Advisors arose in a heart of clouds and shadows. Their time travel devices saw every moment, and every moment streamed into their minds. At their current context, their minds were highly separated from their neurological matter.

The darkness surrounding the heart winded around them, lines of color streaming in a wide spiral, flat like plastic, grinding around to be molded in a machine. Their life was unrealized, as was part of the designs of Freeman. The future was almost nothing, disconnected, but that did not salve their feelings.

A giant time machine of their design, an artifact of the future, the lines of its exterior extending like a graphic design. Massive like their Armada which lied in wait in their heart.

They were returning to find the world of the Freeman. Chattering in Great Gray Towers, an extension of their technology of their past which the Freeman knew. They did not have much time to worry for Aesthetics before the future was lost.

Suddenly there was a massive sound, as if giant bats were flying around a furnace, but they were in a universe. The creatures ignored them completely of incomprehensible size, entirely focused on the creation which they knew.

They seem to become less advanced as they squirmed in their living pods. There's only so much to be done to remain compatible with this world. And yet they, their special machine, and their Armada remained beyond the wildest fantasies of the world they confronted.

Advancing into the world spiritually, they constructed a spirit Citadel on Earth Uni. They alighted on to the edge of the Freeman's world, more realized than all others. Slowly they Advanced into the darkness, as stars arose like pinpricks. He lived behind a massive Fortress, a Cosmic construction which inspired their own.

It was not done. They continued further. As they did, a great screen arose in the panoramic sky. In the blackness, the evil one arced across the surface with someone else. Cracks broke into the surface, driving them both into the areas that were whole, part of the plan of the Freeman.

They Dove through one of the cracks.

They saw him then. Their psychic Minds were especially attuned to him, to every structure and aspect of his own to the most minute detail. What they saw was not literal in any sense of the word. It was their own vision, which expressed their desire to wage war against the Freeman.

He sat at a table pouring tea. He was talking to a girl child, gently informing her of his plans. In such a form as spread throughout their collectivevision, he was genteel, refined, civilized in the best sense of the term. And yet he was a destroyer. He had cost them the future of their world. Towering cities lost in a shrinking aperture, as of the one who had cast them to dust was taking one last panoramic photo of what had been in a future they were once able to see.

They portaled into his world, through the cascading layers. In blackness, they were safe. But no one was safe from the Freeman. The most casual flinging of his hand sent up his machines, making their demonic screeching. They needed to match his machines with their own. His mind was comprehensive, enjoying playing a game about their war in the timeline. It was no insult, he took it seriously, and yet the fun remained of a man who knew not fear.

As they got close, everything became more massive. The Freeman was satisfied with only the most enormous canvases. In the aftermath of his destruction, he loved to build throughout the Stars. In the past, this was realized too, and if anything it seemed more massive than his spatial designs of the present.

They began to invade. Their Combine spread throughout the Stars, their manufactured creatures needed to match the armies of the Freeman's own, merging, blending to be invulnerable to Conventional arms of the present.

The Freeman had counter strikes for every wrong that had ever been done to him, and the defense of his kingdom extended into ancient times. His teams would be confused as peasants, if it was not for the fact that only the advisors could understand his perspective upon them, again in the present.

They circled to continue constructing the Citadel. As they got closer to the stronghold, rings buffeted

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Ate my first peanut butter and banana sandwich, with touches of honey, grilled, at 5:15pm

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Their giant craft, halos coming into existence and dissipating in the distance. Music entered into the candela of Freeman's mind, and they began to resonate.

He taunted them. “Your armor's so tough, but you're just not strong enough.” Strength never reaches its maximum when it threatens the designs of Freeman. He could destroy their craft, but that is not something that would happen. They knew the Freeman, and the Freeman knew them.

The pawn of the G-Man, scourge of the future, testing and finding wanting every design besides the Freeman's own. “The memory of being you I take my whole life through,” thought the Freeman, about himself. The G-MAN an inestimable mystery, only the Beginning of their conflict had any promise for engagement.

He had no concern for their Citadel, only his own in another place, a special place that ruinated the stars. With sad eyes, he saw the vista of his kingdom as it exists there, in that form.

“You don't have to change a single thing” thought the Freeman. Despite his sadness, he did not want them to fix his misfortunes. He would resolve them someday, under his own power.

The mind of the Freeman anticipated everything, aided by neurological perfection beyond comprehension, and to match it they Combined their individually powerful minds to see equally the solitary one there of the solitary Freeman. His machinery ground on from his unmatched sight.

“Between the lines of there and back,” thought the Freeman. Extending throughout outer space, the only thing to do was to match him with an Empire of Their Own. They assembled the Doomsday Clock and calibrated it to begin the 17-hour war against Earth Uni, matching the timeline, events, and areas of the Earth to be in line with the passage of time. “Can't even see it coming,” thought the Freeman, his designs anticipated this regardless.

Freeman aimed to spread throughout the Fifth Dimension, no one safe from his campaign of violence. Time, space and more things too Blended into the road which the Freeman politely and calmly traveled. His Striders walked with him, and his Underlords of his own design manifested in his path, constructing the underhanging shell.

His minions arose by the thousands of types, even robotic animals turned from the dead, the most exotic combinations of natural traits to form a new nature in which he aimed to live. Master scientist, sometime ago he entered science, a beauty he knows from his own perception, the advisors knowing what he thought of it, but not what he saw. No one could any longer find the Freeman except in the movements of his definite plan, adjourning to meet him in a meeting he has already anticipated.

To see the Freeman is to not see his design, and to see his design is to not see Freeman. He lurks and waits, waiting to travel across the vast bulk of his artificing, the bellows grinding and faintly shrieking warning that everything he has crafted serves him most of all.

The Citadel towers into existence into a World already planned for demolition. They have only a little time until the freeman, and the next movements of his plan, depart.

The only thing to do is to Follow Freeman.

Through the African Coast, the Freeman's designs transcend his world, ignoring the surrounding dangers, focused on his plans, on that moment lost to history, if it ever existed, where it began. Refining his science, refining his mastered skills, as the G-Man carefully watches, giving continual guidance.

His plan is to enter The 5th Dimension, setting forth a flood, in a sort of gaseous form. Much like the blight the Combine knew at the beginning of their War. His machines destroying worlds for a plan that could be seen by no one, the context of all events turning to ashes.

It has the same energy, the same structure, the same individual signature he puts into everything he does. His machines are extensions of himself, and before you come it has already been answered, the reason why you came.

War against the Freeman is impossible, and so they turn to the Past. They are not like the disreputable and dishonorable Types, such as the evil one. Into the whirling vortex of his testing area in the small space of his Workshop, they carefully analyze strategy with their many Minds to make a successful move.

As they already know, the times change. The future they once knew broke away, a whole life flying into the blackness. Fully gone after that moment so long ago when it seemed they had already lost everything. The Freeman who is there is innocent, the resonance sliding through things he cannot see. The form which the greater Freeman is above, and yet he returns after a point long ago when he woke up to smell the ashes.

Until they return to the Past, in perfect synchronization, neither the present nor the future can be fully real. Unwinding down the path neither of their minds know, answers will come to why they have sent forth destruction after disaster, the actions of the Freeman ricocheting out of nowhere, and meanwhile the Combine find species after species and Machinery after machinery to make their campaign more and more effective to proceed down into the past to reclaim their homeland.

Among the things they see is the loneliness of the Freeman, having lost his love in that Kingdom of his own. As he examines the game he has made of their War, he examines another which is the game of his kingdom. One exists, the other does not. Split into two different worlds, he must combine them to know peace.

His kingdom expands into The Fifth Dimension past the point where he enters, fighting crimes of a world Beyond his own. The G-Man comes onto the scene and makes a wry smile. Many alien species already Follow the Freeman, and as their initial conflict begins shots ring out in an Immaculate invisible sky. His orange stronghold holds many mysteries which will be useful, but they must find how. They cannot invade it.

Freeman is above those Below in a living death, amongst his initial self but not able to see him. When he is gone they will disappear, when he reappears he will be among them, Whispering endlessly into their minds without any source or sight to see. Into a Grand Vista he seeks to climb so they and everything may make sense again.

Shifting in the sky, the Combine become visible to a few. Pausing to remember the cataclysm that took their world, their Armada dispenses. Towering far above, the Citadel sends out its constructions. They seek and search paltry Minds for hints of the keys of the past they already know. Shockwaves emerge, and the Citadel comes alive. And to answer it, the Freeman's AIs define the boundaries they must go just beside.

Overlooking his world, they slide across the Stars, camouflaged in gases, bleeding through a terminal existence, already marked for demolition by the Freeman. He greets their usefulness for this task, and somewhere far away the G-Man makes a beautiful smile.

When the Freeman enters the Fifth Dimension there will be many worlds chase the Freeman, following behind him with many others. In the wake of his initial plan ruination will come in his wake, the first knowings of what they already know. Remaining behind is no option, as the foolish ones who languish in a death beyond deaths know behind the combine. One day the shell hiding their War in the sky day by day will crack, like the screen far above in the blackness. A cosmic screech sounds among them from a kind of distance besides distance. As the combine gas seeps into the sky, the ingredients of what made the plasticky sky they flew into the past through begins to seep into their world. Freeman is blue, and they will be red. As the Freeman lives beyond lives in sadness, they will follow the clues of the keys in Fury.

Their war is also a war against their own biology. Developing a super adult form, as enough time passes it will become their normal adult form.

// Redux 0/0