[...]
Sanae was nervous. It was mostly the usual feeling of anticipation of the unknown, but something else mixed to that, something cold and empty, a feeling Sanae fruitlessly tried to fight for the last hour or so.
There was no more room for doubt, though. The alien leader had been contacted, the meeting had been arranged, and now all that was left to do was to cross the barren field, enter the shadow of the looming ship and enter it, to be instantly torn apart by the mechanical limbs, dismembered by circular saws, impaled on telescopic spears...
Sanae shook her head. The imagery of horrendous fate she constructed in her mind didn't help, and it refused to go away, looping and growing in intensity. Something was wrong about the ship and the whole situation she put herself into, and she couldn't find the cause.
After all, there was no real danger involved. The aliens would not kill her, on sight or otherwise, in Gensokyo things didn't work like that. The worst that could happen would be another misunderstanding, a danmaku fight, maybe a loss at danmaku fight. Still, the cold feeling grew, and Sanae realized that to get rid of it she would have to finally take a step and go towards the ship.
"Sanae."
Ah, great, she stood on the edge of the village for too long and Keine sneaked up on her. Sanae turned, and sure enough, Keine was there, along with Reimu, who once again looked sleepy and bored out of her mind.
"Keine. Reimu. What a surprise."
The words came out woodenly, and the atmosphere was strained and unnatural. Then Reimu yawned.
"So, you're really going to do it," she said half-questioningly. "Sanae, no offense, but this is a trap, and I have no desire to pull you out when you get captured."
"I am not going to get captured. I am going there to forge alliance with the aliens."
"You should have apologized to them right away," Keine said. "And you should have come with me when-"
"I know what I'm doing," Sanae interrupted. "If you want to stop me, let's settle this with spell cards. I can take on both of you at once, no problem."
Keine sighed and shook her head. Reimu chuckled, but quickly regained her neutral demeanor.
"Just don't overreach," Reimu said. "And don't even think of doing something stupid, like blowing up the ship from the inside."
Blood rushed to Sanae's cheeks and she quickly turned away. Was she really that easy to read? True, she did expect something to go wrong, but she would be close to the alien power source, and destroying it would surely make her a hero.
"In any case, we'll be here to back you up, so send us a message if you are going to spend the night inside of that thing. Otherwise, I and Yukari will bust you out, once she finishes her current urgent business at the border."
"You mean "wakes up"," Sanae scoffed without turning. "I am a big girl, I can take care of myself. Go home and clean the shrine."
Reimu yawned instead of responding, and Sanae started walking, clenching and unclenching her fists. Condescending, that was how they acted, Keine and Reimu. Fools and unbelievers, all of them.
She would show them all.
Sanae walked towards the colossal structure. Walked, not flew, exactly as Kanako told her. The instructions were simple, to make emphasis on human side, agree to little things, take a stand for important ones. Show a few minor miracles, impress the aliens, feign being impressed by the aliens, invite them to the shrine. Simple and easy.
The shadow of the ship fell on her. Up close, it was even more intimidating, the facade being almost the size of an apartment building in height. It sprouted spikes, pyramids and layered armor plates, some damaged, some engraved, some smooth and reflective.
Her presence was felt, and one of the plates slid up with unpleasant grating sound. Emerald light poured out, outlining a lone figure in the massive doorway. It was still a long way to go, at least one hundred paces, but Sanae forced a smile and waved anyway. She tried to fight the sinking feeling, but with every step it only grew stronger, and when Sanae reached the ship entrance she finally understood what she was feeling – dread.
The alien leader was there, backlit by emerald energies. He seemed much taller than the first time Sanae saw him, but she blamed the angle, the ship ramp and his long flanged staff for it. Size alone was no indication of power, Suwako served as a living proof of that.
Suppressing the urge to hold her breath, Sanae walked up the ramp. The light became unpleasant, then piercing, but she didn't shield her eyes. It was all for show, they would probably do a similar thing if they wanted to impress someone at the shrine. Bright lights, strong sounds and smells, all to hide the imperfections or minor mistakes.
Sanae stopped in front of the alien. Up close, he looked even more imposing, almost two feet taller than her, but even through the intense light it was possible to see numerous scratches and metallic latticed patchwork on his damaged legs. His upper torso and strange canopy that extended from the ribcage over his head were covered in irregular blackish green stains, and the annoyance from this sight vented some of Sanae's fear away. Who did he think he was, coming to such an important meeting like this?
Sanae bowed silently. It was important to allow the aliens to have initiative at first, stop thinking of them in a general manner of "aliens" and treat Khalid as she would treat any outsider Kanako would tell her to impress and convert.
Khalid didn't return her bow. It was incredibly difficult to read his facial expression, as his face, or rather an armored stylized faceplate was locked in permanent judging scowl, the only indication of emotion was in the shape and intensity of eye glow. Right now, it was hateful and narrow.
Khalid lifted his arm, and a series of green displays appeared above his open palm. They were transparent, and Sanae clearly saw herself being scanned through, layer by layer. She stayed silent when the process repeated.
"What is this, some kind of a joke?" Khalid asked and flicked his wrist, dismissing the displays. "No weapons, no bombs, no recording devices, you are not a look-alike or a clone. If I knew you would be so stupid to show up in person, I wouldn't have bothered with the assassins."
Sanae swallowed. When spoken with a frozen face and in an echoing, mechanical voice it was very hard to tell if this was meant to be a joke or not. However, the meeting started not the way she expected anyway, so Sanae decided to go all out.
"I am not stupid or unarmed. I am a living goddess, I can destroy your whole ship with a single miracle. Any attempt on my life will end in disaster, any assassin will miss, any poison will fail."
Khalid started laughing, a very unnerving sight since his posture didn't change. His eyes did dim a little, and Sanae took it for a good sign.
"You are no goddess," Khalid said in a while. "There are no "gods". The closest to true gods were the C'tan, the beings capable of swallowing stars, and even that didn't save them from the wrath of Necrontyr. "Aeon Apex" can not be destroyed. Miracles do not exist."
Sanae frowned. Her fear almost drained away, lurking somewhere at the back of her mind. In front of her was not a superior being, it was just another closed-minded unbeliever, inferior to even Reimu.
Sanae crossed her arms. "Are you going to keep me here? Invite me inside, show me your ship, and I will show you the power of miracles if you manage to impress me enough."
Khalid started laughing again, and this time it was a real laugh, his rigid metal form shaking as much as the armor allowed it. He mockingly bowed then.
"But of course, lady Sanae. Come with me, bear witness to the glory of our empire. Don't hesitate to ask anything on the way, I'd be happy to oblige."
He stepped back and turned, gesturing with his staff for Sanae to follow. The emerald light dimmed, and Sanae got a good look on the entryway, a dirty and cluttered corridor, cables jutting out of the walls and ceiling.
Khalid started walking, and Sanae followed, trying her best to hide her disdain and dodge the falling drops of oil. A few of them landed on the fringe of her dress regardless, the fabric being immediately discolored and corroded where the drops hit.
They made a turn, then another one. The light from the outside was gone, replaced with dim flickering of green, coming from pulsating cables and single eyes of metallic insects that slowly crawled around.
They stopped at an intersection and Khalid turned. "Liking the tour so far, Sanae? You are being unexpectedly silent."
"The ship is a mess. You should be ashamed you didn't tidy up for a guest," Sanae said plainly. Kanako told her to not be confrontational, but in view of everything around, she couldn't help it.
Khalid's eyes blazed for a second. "It's the reflection of the whole Necrontyr. I can't tidy up vast, galaxy-spanning empire for a visitor, no matter how important the visitor is."
"Stop hiding behind flowery words, there can't be an excuse for tardiness. I'm sure you have automated supersonic vacuum cleaners or something."
Khalid made a sound that closely resembled a sharp breath intake and quickly turned, pointing at one of the corridors that led away from the intersection.
"Your attempts at angering me are futile," he said. "Follow me, and I will show you the whole extent of our technological advancement."
"I'd rather have a nice open room with windows, couches and refreshments as our destination."
Khalid didn't respond, making his way through the tangled cables. Sanae winced, but followed nevertheless. This place stopped being scary for her, there was nothing scary in dirty maintenance corridors, and the metal insects were disgusting more than anything. Really, if she knew it would turn out this way, she would've left this whole incident to Reimu without a second thought.
They reached a vertical downward shaft, and Khalid jumped down, the green protrusions around his spinal canopy lighting up and slowing his fall. Sanae floated after him, and landed in a much wider, cleaner and better lit corridor, an armored door next to their landing spot.
Coffins lined the walls, dozens of vertical gleaming coffins. The lids were semi-transparent and stained, and behind them Sanae could clearly see the features of emaciated iron skeletons, their eyes dark and lifeless. The sight caused her to shudder in disgust.
"This is your idea of a pleasant location? A crypt?"
"This is the main stasis chamber," Khalid said, gesturing around. "These warriors slept for almost sixty million years, and yet they are only hours away from awakening and destroying your world. This is the extent of our military power."
Sanae scoffed. There were no more than fifty coffins here, they would be stopped long before they would even cross the field between the ship and the village.
"But this is not what I wanted to show you."
Khalid stepped to the armored door and activated the glowing panel beside it. The door slid up, revealing a small octagonal chamber, a chamber filled with light, haze and screams.
There were seven coffins in the room. Three were empty, open and steaming, two pulsated with emerald light, the indiscernible figures inside silently twitching. In the middle, the largest dark coffin, the motionless skeleton inside covered in plates of solid gold.
And to the side, a smaller one was laying smashed open on the ground, the screaming creature inside no more than a misshapen mass of metal scarabs, limbs and wires.
"This is the lord of "Aeon Apex"," Khalid said, pointing at the central coffin, and his voice this time showed definite emotion, cold cruelty. "He is asleep and unaware, frozen in time, just like the rest of the empire is. He is sleeping, while everything around crumbles and decays."
"And this is his advisor, the cryptek, the one responsible for the safekeeping of technology," he continued, gesturing to the writhing misshapen pile. "As you can see, he suffered a malfunction. I'd say it would require a miracle to restore him."
The broken mass released another scream, and Sanae cringed. True, she was often asked for miracles to ease the pain of sick and suffering villagers, but no one ever asked for a miracle in such aggressive and hateful manner.
"Miracles aren't free," Sanae said. "A miracle won't happen if you are not willing to believe in my success. You have to lend me all your hope, all your faith. You have to open your soul to me."
Khalid gave her an empty laugh. "Miracles do not exist. What you do is nothing but conversion of energy, and you are nothing but a lucky amateur psyker, fated to die or go insane in a few years anyway."
"I've had enough," Sanae hammered. "I don't know what you are implying, but I've had enough of all this. Your attitude is unacceptable. This all is un-"
Sanae barely noticed the motion. She never expected such speed from such a large opponent, and only raw reflexes saved her when Khalid thrust his now blazing staff towards her head.
He rotated the weapon, going for a low sweep, but Sanae took flight and dashed out of reach. Khalid turned, something akin of surprise registering in his eyes.
"Oh, you are much better than I expected," he said. "No matter, it is impossible for you to escape. The empire might be broken and asleep, but the praetorians will forever ensure the rightful place of sentient organics in the universal order of things. Give up and die."
He jumped, swinging again, and Sanae again dodged, countering with a star-shaped spread of danmaku, a storm of energy orbs that bounced harmlessly against the armored bones of her opponent. Khalid fired a focused blast of energy from the tip of his staff, and Sanae once again only barely managed to evade.
She still didn't feel any fear, only deep frustration with the whole situation. It unfolded exactly like any another "incident" in the history of Gensokyo – she would have to beat this alien senseless, draw him out to the sun, pour tea on his stupid head, and then spend the rest of the afternoon explaining basics of spell card combat.
Sanae clenched her teeth. What was the point, then? What was the point in worrying, crawling around the filthy ship, seeing all this? She could have sat back and let Reimu do it next week.
"No. I am better than her! I am better than her, you hear?" Sanae shouted, sidestepping the staff swing and lunging forward. She reached out and grabbed the green symbol embedded into Khalid's chest armor.
"What are-"
"I will prove it, prove it with a miracle! And if you won't lend me your faith, I will take it by force! By the power of Moriya gods, let your faith be mine!"
Time never stopped. It kept on going as always, it was the perception of time that changed for Sanae. A long, extended moment, a moment of the miracle.
For Sanae, it all was on the level of feelings. No matter how much disgust she felt, that broken screaming creature was still suffering, it needed help. A moment of resistance, a moment of connection with the soul, and she would channel the faith, shape it, direct it where needed.
Not this time.
What was in front of her, the thing she was touching, it was not alive. It was an object, something inanimate, an illusion of life given to it by intricate webbing of symbols, protocols, flowing strings of ancient memories and emotions. Her faith resonated with it, and the strings started snapping, burning up, a spreading consuming fire of destruction.
Sanae screamed and pulled her hand away. Her hand left an imprint on the symbol, the metal bending in and cracking, mirroring the spreading spiritual damage. Khalid roared and grabbed her other arm.
"You are nothing but a walking corpse!" he shouted, his voice distorting along with his armor.
Sanae kicked forward and managed to break free, to her horror noticing that she pulled Khalid's hand away from the socket, the metal bubbling, screeching and crumbling. There was no stopping the decay, it was way too similar to what happened to the dragon statue, when a failed miracle couldn't hold the shape of the melting stone.
"I'm... I'm sorry, I didn't know..."
Sanae stumbled back, and Khalid screamed incoherently, mirroring the screams of the thrashing creature in the broken stasis chamber. His whole body was now distorting and steaming, and he fell heavily on door control panel, punching a sequence of symbols with melting fingers.
Sanae kept backing away, muttering apologies, and Khalid managed to turn, his head now lacking a face and quickly losing shape.
"You will not escape," he said, and then collapsed into a steaming heap of bubbling rust.
The chamber around Sanae came to life, emerald light funneling past the coffins of warriors and into the pod of the wailing thing, the metal flowing, mending it, pulling it into upright position. Beside it, a chamber broke open, and a skeletal warrior with an unusually long and cumbersome rifle stepped forward, scanning the corridor with bright, slitted eyes. He barked something and raised the rifle, and this action tore Sanae from her frozen state.
She ran past the chambers, and felt a wave of unnatural cold when a transparent energy shot missed her, impacting the metal wall with no visible effect. There was another maintenance shaft at the corner of the room, and Sanae took flight, using a blast of air to knock some of loose wires out of the way. She reached the maintenance area and hurried towards where the exit was supposed to be.
Sanae's eyes and throat burned. She overreached again, did something forbidden, and now had to somehow find her way back, return to the shrine, ask Kanako and Suwako for help, find a way to rationalize her failure, find a way to escape the shame. It was not her fault the miracle failed.
It was not her fault the necrons didn't have souls.
"I did everything right," Sanae muttered. "They are the enemy. I didn't make a single mistake."
She stepped on a metallic scarab and slipped, falling and bruising a knee. The insect wasn't crushed, it hissed and scuttled away, into yet another identical corridor. Sanae pulled herself up and hobbled forward, crossing an intersection, then another, a familiar one, now occupied by a large bladed and coiling creature. It regarded Sanae with indifference, moving only slightly when she circled it.
She continued towards the exit, trying to fight a rising wave of panic. The ship noticed her, identified her as an anomaly, started to retaliate. Stray scarabs started detaching from walls, taking interest. Sanae pushed or swatted them away, but they were reluctant to let go, collecting and shuffling behind, a whisper of hungering unintelligent swarm. Cables reached towards her, blindly searching for a foreign energy source, something to grab, assimilate and devour, not to satiate the hunger but to vent away and destroy.
Then it all stopped, as if by an unseen command, and everything plunged into silence. Sanae broke into a run, and unnatural emerald lighting mixed with the pale sunlight. She rounded the last corner and saw Reimu and Keine right outside the landing ramp, arguing over something.
Sanae blinked at the light, and tears filled her eyes. Yes, she would tell Reimu it was all because of light. Reimu would try to befriend the aliens, find a place for them in Gensokyo, invite them to parties afterwards. Reimu would not see the threat, she would be lured into false sense of security and killed. She was better than Reimu, and there were no reasons to cry.
Sanae walked down the ramp, trying her best to look somewhat presentable. The moment she was noticed, Reimu and Keine broke their quarrel and rushed to her.
"Are you alright? What did they do to you?" Keine immediately asked, grabbing Sanae's shoulders.
Sanae shook her head and pushed Keine away. "I'm fine. Just a bit tired, I'm really-"
"We have to get out of here," Reimu interrupted. "There is something here I can't-"
Her vision was a bit blurred, but Sanae still noticed it. A blink of light, and the next moment three figures appeared on the empty field, appeared as if they were always there, three armored figures with oversized, impractical rifles.
A ghostly halo of green lit up over Sanae's head, a halo of whispers and symbols. They formed a structured pattern, a clear single intelligible line: {you are marked for death}, the figures raised their rifles in odd coherency and fired.
Sanae was pushed to the side, Reimu somehow managed to push her to side with such force Sanae came down tumbling, and all three shots missed, only cold and wobbling air left in their passing. The assassins didn't get a second chance, as a wave of charms, orbs and bullets Reimu fired in return crashed upon them and they vanished in explosions of green haze.
"They can't kill me," Sanae muttered. "I have to believe that they can't-"
"Sanae, run!"
The shout came from Keine, and Sanae turned, crawling to her feet. Another similar figure stood at the ship entrance, another sniper, the one that silently followed her from the stasis chambers. He was already aiming at her, the rifle powering up, a captivating, mesmerizing sight, Sanae couldn't tear her eyes away, even as Keine's defensive spell unfolded and lasers pierced the figure, even as it managed to fire anyway, a shot that went straight through Sanae's heart.
She expected pain, but felt nothing but spreading cold as she fell and everything faded.
[...]
