"You will still die, you know."
The voice shot through me like a bolt, at once inside my mind yet still discernible from without. More than one sense responded to the will it sent to me - telepathy, but on an order of magnitude I'd never experienced before. My arm froze but my eyes darted about the area, seeking the psion at its source.
"You search for treasures to buy you time. Things to exchange for meager resources to sustain your life. I have already seen it. It will make no difference."
I scanned along the mountainside. There had to be something nearby - the glint of metal; any color that stood out. I was standing beside the only wreckage in the vicinity. There were plenty of places they could be hiding, but there should be some tell if they were actively watching me. Then I caught sight of it, staggering backward as realization dawned on me. I’d been looking for something small, but the gleam of light I finally saw was off of a surface the size of a goddamn building. The eye blinked at me.
"Yes, you do seem to have located me. Very good. Now as I was saying, there is no point."
All scavengers carry at least some equipment to defend themselves in the event of an attack from Blighted...or scavengers from a competing settlement. This, though - this was beyond the help of any gear portable enough for a lone scavenger to even humor the thought of fighting. I was half-collapsed beneath the largest Blighted I'd ever seen in-person. Thoughts fought within my mind, devouring each other in a rapid struggle for dominance. Stand. Hide. Run. Fight.
"What the hell difference does it make to you, you freak?!"
It probably says more about me than I care to admit that my response wasn't anything typically useful for survival. I didn't care. I was exhausted from the trip up the mountainside. I was half-starving from months of meager rations. My parents had died in an attack decades ago; I had no surviving attachments. To be told I would die - not killed but politely informed, by this...monstrosity. It was more than my heart could bear.
"Your struggle intrigued me. Part of you also understands this is futile, yet your actions speak of continuing to fight."
"What, you think we're just going to lie down and die? You don't understand a damn thing about us."
"Lie down and die...? No. Our power is strong. Our numbers are overwhelming. Our strategies are effective. Choosing another action would be the wisest action. You have built a bastion for yourselves and chosen to directly defy us. You could have fled. You could have hid. You could have aggressively struck back in a direct assault. Like your resistance, these would all have likely led to your doom, but I can envision some chance of success. Some chance of survival."
"We're still alive now, aren't we?!"
"And our next wave will soon be arriving to change that."
"And that's going to end us? Like the last? Hope's End is still standing. It was standing when I left. It'll be standing after I'm dead. Which might not be very far in the future, I admit. But it's more than just any physical bastion. It's our will. We've chosen to live. Try anything you bastards like. You're never going to break us. Not our heart, not our spirit."
I was a dead man. That was the only sane price for the show of the defiance I'd made. With nothing left to lose, I could at least stand up for us by proxy. I thought back to all the times I'd scorned bookkeepers at the colony. The times I'd spent hungry or alone. The times I'd doubted or despaired over decisions made by leaders. Yeah, things were awful - but we were still together. They were worth standing up for. I knew they'd do the same, even for a scavenger like me.
I wasn't ready for the Blighted's response, though.
"Let us test this theory, then."
The arch above me moved. I'd mistaken it for stone while it was standing still, but it shifted with such a smoothness that there was no chance I could try to put any distance between us now. It was eerie, how slick its flesh seemed. I'd heard of Black Blossoms before - powerful Blighted psions that could shatter entire mountains with their minds. I’d had no idea they could grow so large, though. Seeing this one in person damn near knocked me out from awe alone.
As the motion slowed, I realized that what I’d believed was a shift to crush me seemed to just be an adjustment of posture. I’d almost passed out from the Black Blossom’s equivalent to leaning back in a chair to get more comfortable.
"Return to your bastion. We gather for an attack now as we never have before. Inform your leaders, if you like. Bolster your defenses. Let us see, then, how much the mettle of humanity truly matters. And if you are alive when the dust has settled, I would like it if you returned. If your ideals hold weight, I would be interested in speaking with you again."
That last impression carried a psionic weight to it, and I felt something press into my mind. Like that, I finally found my legs again. I bolted to my feet and started to sprint as fast as my body would carry me. When I finally summoned the courage to look back, there was nothing there. Maybe I lost sight of it among the mountain side. Maybe it was a hallucination brought on by lack of nourishment.
The thought of food alone was enough to shake me further back to reality - I’d failed to pull any resources of significance this trip, too, and that meant I’d be back on meager rations if I was lucky. Maybe, though, what I’d been told actually would be of some value. Maybe I could trade it for food. Something told me that Commander Shaw wouldn’t value such a wild account very highly, but stranger things had happened in the wastelands. Whether I’d be believed or not, a feeling of discomfort took root at the pit of my stomach and didn’t go away the entire journey back.
-Account as told by Azran Finch, Wasteland Scavenger of Hope’s End of an encounter with The Observer