Mordion got into the habit of curling up in Vierran's mind, breathing slowly, whenever he was stressed.
As soon as they got off Earth, Vierran discovered, to her absolute relief, that the mental link between the five of them had not actually been dissolved. She supposed they could have made do with the general sort of mind-speaking that anyone with enough power could handle, but their linkage had been something... different, and special, and she'd thought it entirely unfair that they'd have to lose it.
She could see it was going to be difficult, though, dealing with them in person. It was much more easy to get annoyed with them, when they were so immediately present. When it was just their souls she couldn't help but love them, that was the way it worked, but once they were there in person things got clouded. It was so much easier to get into a screaming argument.
And it was immediately obvious to her that they couldn't spend their time communicating soul-to-soul, either. There was no way they'd stay sane. Everyone needed some space. Before they'd had literal space (and time, as well) but now they'd have to deal with some metaphorical space, as well.
This did not stop Mordion from settling into her thoughts whenever the stress began to get to him. She thought this was very one-sided of him and she made sure to tell him so. He never let her into his thoughts. But Mordion would just smile sheepishly- She was going to be thoroughly sick of that smile, as soon as her knees stopped melting- and curl up, like a cat. At least he didn't poke around.
And she couldn't blame him for being stressed. She felt the weight of it, too- Her and Mordion and Martellian had the brunt of it, only because they actually had some inkling of what was going on. But even Arthur could tell that they were headed in for a real storm, and Fitela was trying to cheer them up in a way that distinctly showed he was worried on their behalves. This stress was getting to all of them, really, but of course Mordion had it the worst, being First and all that.
They had wanted to stay on Earth, for a while, just to get their bearings at least. And Bedford had of course been more than happy to be accommodating, but the Bannus-
Now, that was no good. She'd switched to all their real names now- it helped, that they all looked different, otherwise she'd have had some real difficulties with Hume- but calling it the Bannus felt wrong. It still looked like Yam, and more than that it behaved like Yam. Well, mostly. Yam but trickier.
Anyway, Yam had strongly advised that they leave as quickly as possible. "Advised" was a polite way of putting it. That had only made Fitela and Martellian dig in their heels- and she'd felt Arthur being stubborn, too, although he did like pretending to be accommodating- because they were all still a little prickly about having been played around by the Bannus so very much. And they were all of them a bit contrary, besides.
But Mordion had agreed. Mordion had insisted. And so they'd been cramped into this undersized transport to Runcorn- and that of course was yet another entry on their long list of problems- and the entire time he and Martellian had been glaring daggers at each other. They looked just about set to get into another fight when Vierran stepped in.
"Stop it, both of you, you are being ridiculous!" She said, and banged their heads against each other.
Martellian opened his mouth to protest and Mordion just blinked, but Verrian was having none of it. She crossed her arms and stared them both down.
"The universe is a seething pit of chaos right now," she said, "and Earth is too much of a backwater for us to handle it effectively there. We had to go."
This, Mordion said petulantly inside her head, was what he had been trying to convince them of the entire time.
Well, you were being a blithering idiot over it, she snapped back. Then of course she felt guilty. It wasn't his fault he'd been broken into being so subservient, but it was something that would have to be resolved, anyway. He couldn't be First and act like a perpetual apology to the universe as a whole.
Well, there too she supposed she was being unfair. Mordion had clearly changed. His voice inside her head showed it clearest. It was just that the body's habits always changed a bit slower than the mind's. He still had that air to him. And when he spoke he was too deferential. She'd have to train him out of it, at least a little. Otherwise everyone would trod right over him.
As if you'd let us, Martellian said dryly. He was only a little bit sore over being chided. He was handling it by reminding himself that he was much older than any of them, so there. Anyway he was coming to realize that Vierran- of course- had been right. Things must be absolutely hellish in the universe right now.
Things were absolutely hellish in the universe right now. This was probably the state of things in general, but as far as the five of them were concerned the symptom they were most immediately confronted with was the hours-long delay in the Runcorn station. They hadn't been able to transfer directly to Albion from Earth, because no one was available to open the stupid portal. Borasus's key had apparently not been fine-tuned to the portal's new location and anyway the man was a soppy mess. They'd left him to recover for a while in some nice Earth town because it was clear there was precious little else he could do.
The problem was that Runcorn should, in theory, have been much more accessible to Albion- less security measures meant the portal required less overt clearance- but there were some difficulties over on the Albion side of things. Vierran knew why- Vierran still remembered, too vividly, why- but that didn't help resolve the situation.
"Can't you do anything?" she'd appealed, to the rest of them as a whole, but Fitela and Arthur were, again, useless with this sort of stuff, and while Martellian remembered that in his day Reigners could just stride through portals he could only tell her that clearly some changes had been made.
"Of course I can't do anything," Mordion said, "The entire system was designed as a precaution against me."
So it had been up to Vierran, then. She'd tried convincing the people she kept contacting over the comm unit that she was traveling with a whole hand of Reigners and that it was absolutely vital that they be transferred, immediately, but no one had believed her- no one had actually stayed long enough to get to the believing stage, because they kept being called off to deal with a crisis. And she was sick and tired of them answering her with the vaguest answers security protocols could possibly provide.
So this time, when a hassled blond man answered her communications request, she let loose.
"I am Vierran from the House of Guaranty and if you do not get me off this forsaken outpost shuttle immediately my father will tie you up in legal proceedings that will take miserable decades, over a complete dereliction of duty, and when those are over you will not only be a bitter old man but you will be guaranteed to no longer have a job!" she said.
As soon as she said it she realized that it had been entirely the wrong thing to do. More than that, the other four had stopped their bickering and were staring at her, with the same complete knowledge that she had just done the exact wrong thing.
She felt her face burning and rather wished she could swallow herself up. Why, at this rate she'd turn out just like bitchy, nasty Reigner Three with no difficulty at all.
"Please," she added, limply.
On their way- at last!- to Albion, Arthur pointed out that seeing as Hugon of Guaranty was supposedly under arrest, her name-dropping had run rather a high risk of being worse than effective.
"Well, apparently he hadn't gotten the news yet," she said. She felt cranky, mostly at herself for feeling cranky.
Martin- Fitela- draped a comforting arm around her shoulder.
"Everyone gets upset sometimes," he said. "It doesn't make you a bad person."
"But it's a start," she said, still crabby.
"Not if you don't let it be," he reassured her.
"I supposed I could have announced myself as Reigner's servant," Mordion said, slowly. "That would have gotten us through."
They flinched in unison.
"Absolutely not," Vierran said, fiercely.
"They shall simply have to get used to you being First Reigner, that is all," Arthur said. "They'll have to accept all of us, eventually, they just haven't had the time yet."
"And we'll have to think of where we want to be based," Martellian said, grimly. "I want to destroy the House of Balance."
Vierran nodded. Mordion, she noticed, did not. But his jaw set.
She reached for his hand and squeezed. He glanced at her, gratefully.
It was worse than they expected.
Well, it was as bad as they'd expected, at least. Once they were actually physically in Albion they took control with unexpected ease. That the servicemen were desperate for someone in charge seemed to help. That they had Arthur, being his usual charismatic self, probably helped as well. And once they did they flooded themselves with information from all the comm ports, breakign all the clearance barriers. They had to wait another hour for the portal to be ready but at least this hour could be a productive one.
They didn't bother speaking physically, beyond an occasional meaningful grumble. They didn't have time, so they opened the mental connection between them and let all the information they were gathering flow into a sort of space, between them. Their own private theta-space, maybe, but Vierran suspected it was something entirely different. Mordion was feeding into it as much as the rest of them but he was still blocked from accessing it himself. Vierran had to feed it all to him. She didn't mind, but it still made her white-hot with fury against Reigner One for daring to close off Mordion's mind the way he had. Mordion had been entirely too nice about killing him. Vierran would have stripped him apart slowly.
Which was why Yam had made sure not to let her, of course. And he'd been right, damn him, just sometimes Vierran didn't care, She was all white-hot with righteous indignation with each bucket of information she poured into Mordion's brain.
Then on the transport to Ixxsa he curled up in her mind for the first time and she forgot to be angry. She focused instead on being very loving because she thought he deserved that much.
A/n: This isn't a story with much of a purpose. But Hexwood is my favorite DWJ book and it has such fascinating characters considering that some of them you only see for about three seconds. It deserved more fic, but this is just me getting my craving handled.