Excerpt 1: "We stood before a broad cylinder capped with a shattered dome, blown up and out like a ragged crown. Part of the wall had collapsed, and we were able to enter the interior of the cylinder through that breach.
We picked through the rubble -what seemed to be both human and Precursor walls and thick containment structurs- until we came to a staircase rising to a circular walkway five meters wide, the far side about fifty meters away. This had appaently once served as a gallery designed to look down upon something contained below, within the core of the cylinder. The inner parapet consisted of angeled panes of transparent material, hazed and starred by impacts from some long-ago explosion. Little more than the walkway and the inner cylinder below were intact.
Overhead, the shattered crown of the dome allowed the last blue daylight and a few unwinking stars to light our path. The Didact approched the inner parapet, his armour actually glowing at his inner turmoil -as if preparing to deflect major damage. This was what he must have looked like going into battle. . . .
Below, half-hidden in the shadows, an inticately shaped mold filled most of the pit. The mold had once snugly encapsulated something about fifteen meters tall, ten or eleven meters broad and almost as thick -far too large to be any veriaty of human or any rate of Forerunner.
The armour's ancilla made no comment, supplied no information.
I thought I discerned what might have been cushions or braces for a number of long, multiply joined arms, ending in shackles or gloves designed to grip hands bigger than my own body. Hands with three thick digits and central clasping thumb . . . or claw.
Two pairs. Four arms, four hand claws.
Pushed up and asside, three meters wide, like a huge hat tossed on a table, was a restraining headpiece. A ridged conduit flowed down one side, presumably the back. Apperently, the head confined by that helmet had once trailed a thick sinuous, articulated tail.
A cage. A prison.
Empty."
Excerpt 2: "The Didact's actual memories -parts of them- finally blossomed within me.
The arena was equiped with walkways- I saw vividly, from his point of view, the Didact exploring the walkway around the intact, sealed cylinder below. Ten thousand years ago.
The Didact walked alone around the dome-shaped cap, contemplating whether or not he should activate a human device . . . something small, designed for a human hand and fitting like a toy in his own palm: a way of communicating directly with the creature within the cell.
Something manufactured by humans . . . pushing through Precursor technology. How was that possible . . . ?
Many questions flashed through the Didact's mind, and with difficulty I separated them from my own. Was this actually a Precursor, as the humans had first believed? Or was it something manufactured by the Precursors -possibly a strange, distorted sibling to both Forerunner and (the Didact was reluctant to consider this) humans?
Precursor, sibling, or ancestor to . . . what?
The Didact manipulated the device. The cap over the cylinder became transparent to his eyes, and he saw what lay within.
The cell contained, in temporal suspension, a genuine monster: a large creature with an overall anatomy like a grossly misshapen human, though possessed of four upper limbs, two degenerate legs, and an almost indescribably ugly head -a head shaped remarcably like that of an ancient arthropod seeded long ago on a number of planets, presumably by the Precursors, and known to some as a europterid. A sea scorpion.
Oval, faceted, slanted eyes bumped up from the front of its low, flat "face". And from the rear of the head, a long, segmented tail descended the spine, ending in a wicked barb two meters in length."
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