Unlike the Form of Good

"Unlike the Form of Good" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread started on [IRL DATE] and finished on [IRL DATE].
==Summary==
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==Full Text==
With an echoing thud, the weighty safe-like door slammed shut behind Cervon, and he fumbled in the dark for a bar or lock, and instead found a spoked steel wheel, with which he gratefully secured the door. With shaking legs, the inlet nix slid to sit heavily on the floor, waving a hand over his forehead and siphoning his own sweat into the barrel of his gun, which was almost out of water. The inside of the glass barrel was stained with dry, white, calcified rings from where liquid of varying mineralities was immediately boiled off.
He had held his own against the guards down here for the most part--that is, until he spotted another one of those things. A person, but only in arrangement of limbs, for it drooled black, sticky oil and the upper half of its face was embedded with machinery that obscured its eyes. Its perceptions were magical; its searching could be literally felt with a sense that the nix didn't know he had. Even now, he couldn't stop goosebumps from racing up and down his arms and back. Not only was it unnerving being in the skeleton of the city he once called home, it seemed to be haunted by ghosts that never even belonged to its body.
Cervon rested the back of his head against the door, welcoming its chill against his sweaty white hair, when he cracked his eyes and realized that he wasn't in pitch darkness. A very faint light was shimmering against a wall far in front of him, a dark silver across even darker obsidian, rippling stone. The movement of the light suggested water, so he wasted little time. He pushed himself to his feet, and only the light sound of his boots broke the stillness of the newly discovered passageway.
The room that greeted him was wholly unexpected. It was like the grand hall of a king in dimension, large enough to harbor multiple ships, but rather primitively created and shaped, without a hard edge or sculpted corner to be found. It instead seemed like the rock had been scraped at with a wide, shallow, curved tool, in strokes twice as tall as Cervon himself. There was light, in the form of dim white tracks of glowing crystal in the floor, similar to the light that had framed the now-broken window of the lab they'd approached in High Central's moat. They threw fuzzy shadows halfway up the imposing dimensions of the room. The grooves ran several hundred meters forward, far enough that he could not quite make out where the room ended. He heard and tasted water, though he couldn't see it yet. Periodic pillars towered over piles of manmade equipment--desks, crates, chairs, lamps. It was too dark to read any of the various papers scattered across them, but they seemed like they might have been diagrams and instructions. As Cervon moved slowly through the hall, he was startled several times by shapes that looked like hulking creatures. On further inspection, he saw that he was right, but the bodies held no spark of life in them. They were mechanical, elegantly clockwork and animalistic in nature, slumped against walls and tables and surrounded by all manner of strange tools that the nix had no name for. Containers of pungent liquid also lay scattered across the stone ground. He could not manipulate their innards; they held no water content. One of these constructs was easily larger than a Scauldron. A pit formed in his stomach.
Cervon was distracted enough that he found water lapping at his boots before realizing it. He pulled at it in relief, filling his weapons and a large canteen at his side, and curiously tried to determine what he'd nearly walked into. There was still ground to walk on, but it was flooded with a thin layer of water, which dripped around his boots as he slowly skated through it, making less noise than he did when he was walking. It was even darker now, and the man squinted through his glasses, trying to think of a way to light his path. He swept his hands out to either side, the water parting obediently, and then gathered each swirling stream on top of the lights carved into the ground. He then raised both hands above his head, palms perpendicular to the ground and facing outwards, and the water rushed upwards, the glow refracting through the squirming, wet walls and suddenly lighting the rest of the room in front of him.
He stuttered over a loud curse and bit his lip to stop himself, tasting blood, feeling utterly clammy and faint. Once more, he had been jumpscared by a gigantic sleeping beast. But this was not artificial--it was weirdly biological. And it was incomprehensible. Rolling mounds of strangely splayed limbs and a twisting body or bodies, the size of huge hills, all with an eerie transparent cast through them. What on earth was he staring at? Neither of them moved.
Suddenly it clicked. This animal did not stir, not because it was dead, but because it was a husk, a shell. It reminded him of the shed of crustaceans, although far more slimy; he noticed several jointed legs with an exoskeleton, thick and tough but spindly and fleshless. These limbs were countless, and they all ended in a rough, opaque point. Shivering, Cervon continued through the massive skins. Where there was water, there had to be a way out. The luminous makeshift walls followed alongside him in a rolling pattern, gently shifting the skins as the curtains of clear liquid parted around them.
A loud rattle sounded at his feet and he jumped, almost losing concentration. Bones, rolling to rest in the water from where he'd kicked them. The top half of a canine skull...attached to an upright spine, with the first ribs and clavicle still clinging to the vertebrae. He choked down his sick and edged around the half-breed remains, but there were more, though most not so whole as his first discovery. The water grew deeper, allowing him to pace on top of the surface and not disturb the grim leftovers underneath. Occasionally he spotted absurdly sized and shaped teeth, as long as his arm and as thick as a tree trunk. Soon, the floor dropped off into complete darkness below him, depth unknown. He wouldn't have been surprised if the water he walked on reached all the way back down to the moat.
The end of the hall finally approached, and Cervon gladly stepped up onto stone again, still surrounded by the creature's shed floating on water, but the size of each shed had diminished with each step he took. Now the legs were a few feet long, and the bodies could hardly encircle a house. The air was mustier, older, less disturbed. He felt like he'd traveled almost a mile. There was an alcove set into the final wall, fairly deep and also illuminated with white. A pedestal sat like the tabernacle of a church, with something curled up on it. A final skin, this one barely the size of a small cat. Its legs looked feeble, its tail short and stubby, and only now could he get a good look at its face. It was seemingly eyeless, only a round mouth with which to feed. The placement of it in comparison to the others could only mean that this had been the beast's first molt.
Cervon only had a minute to consider it before a hum distracted him. His head snapped to the right. Another hallway bending around the corner, this one much more strongly lit than before. He edged forward with trepidation, water floating around him in undulating arcs.
The passage curled all the way around the back of the alcove wall, and quickly broadened into a somewhat semicircle room, the shape of a waxing moon, ghastly underlit like the room before it, only stronger. The walls were covered in shelves that were stuffed with rows of books, more piles and packets of papers, some strange devices and bottles of materials. At the apex of its curve, the room boasted a polished, long, low table with no seating, only four pylons at each corner, nearly reaching the ceiling. Each softly radiated energy, creating an odd visual in the center of the structure: it appeared to be an insubstantial three-dimensional recreation of High Central itself, including the layout of a gargantuan cavern underneath it, and many enormous tunnels leading out from it. It seemed like it could be the model of an animal's burrow, were it not for the obvious shape of High Central's three towers giving the entire diagram scale. The map was being lit by tiny projections from the four poles, and it almost looked like it was being woven in real time by a thousand fine threads. Cervon's pistol slowly lowered to his side in awe. His glasses suddenly flashed as a cluster of red motes burst in the outer city buildings, followed by sparks of bright platinum, deep gray, and occasional threads of blue and gold. The longer he looked, the more detail he could observe, seeing soft blooms of sea green and bronze nearer to the inner city. The colors meant little to him, but he wondered if the scarlet flickers tracked the movements of the Warden as the Rebellion entered the city. He wasn't familiar with her, but he'd seen her essence before.
At the floor of the cavern, a strong golden glow held steady, looking like a permanent sunburst as thick lines of the same color radiated outward from a bright central point. Cervon bent over to study it. If he squinted, he could make out the small figure of a woman at its center. She appeared to have magnificent wings folded behind her back, and her position was awkward, like she was bound upright. Another irregular strobe drew his attention--on the eastmost side of the city wall, a pulse of teal that raced upwards on a fixed trail like the spark of a lit fuse, disappearing up into the "sky," and then returning again again on the same path a few seconds later. His mind raced, trying to comprehend what he was seeing, committing as many details to memory as he could.
A ragged, freezing blade tore his thoughts clean in half, and his body locked with his chin raised to the ceiling before letting him collapse, unable to tell if the pain was purely mental or if he had indeed been stabbed through the head. He neither smelled nor felt any blood, but the agony was no less blistering. The water around him splashed to the floor. His gun clattered against the ground beside him as he curled into a fetal position, gasping and clutching his temples. Through the haze of pain, he heard footsteps approaching, clawtips against a hard floor, and saw a tall, dark silhouette drawing nearer.
"An infiltrator, sent to discover my secrets?" The voice dragged through his bleeding mind like filthy fingers over weeping wounds, making him cry out involuntarily. His hand jerkily extended towards his fallen weapon and through the folds of a robe or dress, a twisted, malformed leg with bruised, blackened skin and digitigrade joints extended and crushed the entire gun under its unnatural sole and slid back into concealment. "The pride of the Rebellion reaches new heights by the minute."
He knew that voice. Everyone here did. It was impossible, she had been killed. Everyone knew that. She was dead. He had watched the explosion...the funeral procession in the streets...the enforced public mourning, the secret illegal celebrations...
Squinting upwards through cracked glasses, Cervon saw only up to the person--woman's?--shoulders. In one hand, she easily cradled a complex egg-shaped stone, still with a band of leather and metal rings strapped around it. One of the beacons, resting in her palm with little effort like a small trinket. The other hand quickly moved in, and sharp, unkempt nails cut into the skin of his neck as he was lifted rapidly off the ground by his throat, making his vision swim and darken. The blades of thought returned, further mutilating his own mind, muddling any plan of escape he had tried to formulate. He reached weakly for the beacon to touch it, maybe to try and send out some cry for help, and with a flick, her consciousness severed his ability to speak. 
"None of that," she chided. "You'll ruin the process."
His train of thought dissolved from words and sentences into images, colors and emotions. The nix's arm trembled and then dropped to his side. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind, but between your unwelcome intrusion and my ex-coworker's stubbornness..." Her grip constricted impossibly tight, and the world rapidly began to fade out, pulse beating heavily in his ears while she began to pry through his mind.
"I think this Commander would be willing to consider a reasonable trade. Wouldn't you?"