God….This Thing Can Eat!

I have been known to have a few dreams here and there that relate to parts of video games that I surprisingly enjoyed the most.

That one particular part, no matter how disturbing it can get, sometimes I end up liking it depending on what it is and what happens. Like with Gears of War, I enjoyed the gameplay in the third game, but I liked the story more in the second game.

The idea of the Locust sinking cities to bring down the human race, I like that idea, the whole use of the Riftworm and killing it from the inside.

The Locust are the denizens of the underground and the whole concept of being in the heart of the enemy in that game is enjoyable for me. However, the first time you go into their territory is what really struck my interest the most, even though going in the second time to locate the stronghold and escaping had more epic moments.

Act 2: Denizens has a bit of foreshadowing up to learning when the Riftworm is revealed to be responsible for the seismic activity and sinking of cities.

Being swallowed up by it at the very end, and having to brave the hazardous and digestive obstacles so you can kill it by cutting off its ability to pump blood throughout its body…no wonder it has three hearts!

So, this dream, I was a survivor of the sinking of Ilima city and was hiding inside my house that collapsed into the ground after the worm sank the city. The Locust were swarming the sunken city searching for survivors and I didn’t want to come out until they were gone.

Then I heard the sound of gunfire and witnessed several C.O.G soldiers clearing out the Locust in the area. They were instructed by Delta squad to do so, and I offered to join them. We regrouped with Delta and I met Marcus, Dom, Cole, Baird and Ben Carmine. They asked me if there were any survivors that I knew of but unfortunately my answer was no.

We made it to the LZ and boarded the Raven until the Riftworm came out of no where and swallowed us up.

Yummy Raven!

I found myself lying in a pool of worm saliva, and Marcus and the others were walking by and asked me if I was coming or not. They told me they were going to kill the worm and cut their way out. I grabbed his arm and told him “Wait, if you’re going to cut out the worm’s heart, let me lead you there!”

At first Marcus was reluctant, and with his stubborn attitude he was like: “Look miss, where’s your experience?”

That’s when I said: “I’m a straight A biology student, I know what dangers lie ahead here,” So then he gave in and picked up a spare Lancer. “You better know what you’re doing,” He said, as if he didn’t trust me. 

I would have been hurt by that at first since Marcus is, after all, one of my fictional crushes.

Anyway, when I played this level, the highest difficulty I beat it on was Normal, (you know I’m not really big into challenges, doesn’t mean I’m chicken, I just am more interested in the story)

We got past the digestive teeth without any issues, but they were smashing down a lot faster, and I know that is more likely to happen in the game if you’re playing on Insane difficulty. But then as you might have expected, Cole started shooting the uvula until the worm gagged and a giant ball of debris started rolling towards us down the throat.

The thing about these dreams is that, sometimes when there’s danger nearby, I cannot run from it as fast as I want to. My body was stiffening as if I was close to frozen solid and Marcus kept running back to pull me along so I wouldn’t fall behind. The whole time I felt like that the rolling debris was hot on our six until we made it through that valve into the stomach.

Instead jets of HCl there was a single thin bridge over a pool of acid instead. We had to go across it single file. The intestines were still stinky and toxic as ever.

On the sternum Baird kept pestering me when we were going to get there. I shut him up, and personally I never really liked him that much in the games to be honest.

But when we reached the first heart that all changed. He looked at me and said: “Hey are you sure you didn’t fail biology? You know arteries carry blood to the heart right?”

The truth is that he’ll say that in the game if you stare at the Riftworm heart for a minute or two without cutting the arteries. Actually Baird, that’s incorrect: The arteries carry the blood away from the heart, then around the body until they lose oxygen, come back to the heart, then go to the lungs, and then back to the heart again to repeat the cycle. Maybe you failed biology!

Don’t worry, I don’t hate Baird. He’s just not interesting enough to me.

I ignored him that time and cut through the arteries with the Lancer Marcus gave me. We cut through the other two hearts and that’s when the trouble started.

We were running down a passage cutting our way through membranes trying to find an outer one to get through the flesh back outside, We were swimming in worm blood and the level just kept rising until I got separated from the others. Marcus reached out to me, I grabbed his hand as the blood was up to our necks, and we started cutting our way through another wall. Then there was a bright light.

I assumed it was daylight and we made it outside, but I never found out because that’s when I woke up from that dream.

I can tell you one thing that if the dream continued, I would have enlisted in the C.O.G and help fight the Locust! But I think for now, I’m glad to be back outside than stuck in a giant worm!

-Emily