Chapter 46
"I never wanted this"
Venus. She hated Venus. Always had, always would. The heat was unbearable, the rain always stung, the air was too dry and wet at the same time and there was way too much glare from the moon-
Ship. Above. Not a moon; Venus has no moons. That's a ship. That's a SHIP. Krenshan hunter-killer frigate, built for the Quintesson wars.
Adria hiked up out of the rainforest, climbing rises of stone and brass just to get out of the condensation. She was alone but for the voice on the other end of her radio, telling her-
"Beware her wings for they bring ruin. Beware her fangs for they are the bane of caution. Beware her flames for they wreak death."
"Almost in position," she tiredly reported.
::This is Seeker Hawkmoon broadcasting. The dragon's not alone. I repeat, the dragon's not-::
::Hawkmoon?! Seeker, what are you DOING?!::
::Planet is infested with entities of extreme parasitic nature, do NOT engage! I repeat, do NOT engage. She's trying to lure you in!::
::You shouldn't be here! How the frag-::
::Target acquired. Engaging.::
::No, cancel that ord-::
"How are you doing?"
"Boiling."
"Suit-thermos still working?"
"Checking now." Adria sighed and looked her biosuit over. "Systems are good. Hate this planet."
"Just get it done and we might even have you back in time for lunch."
"Yeah yeah, working on it." She'd begun to use her rifle like a hiking stick, already imagining how furious her mother would be if she'd been there to see it. It made her feel a whole lot better about it - because these mountain ranges were killer. Adria reckoned she was getting intimately familiar with just why the Ovda Regio, and the Aphrodite Terra in general, was widely uninhabited. The equatorial heat, the steep slopes flowing up and out of the jungle below and then there was the-
A shriek, pained. A shriek, horrified. A shriek, unnatural.
The wildlife. Adria ducked and hunkered down. The batadactyl diving for her narrowly missed her head, passing above and howling as it soared away. The animal circled back around, screaming warnings down at her. Adria didn't move. She kept it in sight, kept her front facing towards it and slid her helmet back on.
"What was that?" her handler questioned urgently. "Are you-"
::Hawkmoon, get out of there NOW!::
Bad time to test the reptiles' patience; a local guide had told her it was nesting season for the critters, when batadactyl mothers were particularly prone to get paranoid, confrontational, dangerous. Adria couldn't blame them - sure, she could relate in the sense of having her own kid to protect and provide for, but it was mostly because of the panthers. Traveler above they scared the crap out of her. Green-furred, similar only in a superficial way to their Earth-based namesakes and damned dangerous at night. They could clamber up a radio tower in seconds without a sound, all just to snatch a roosting bird. Or an unlucky technician. They were almost like literal dinosaurs, big furred lizard-things slinking through the underbrush unseen. Her suit came with light pheromone-emitters meant to ward the panthers away, but Adria was still paranoid enough to keep her offhand by her sidearm's holster.
As it was, she wasn't looking to rock the boat where the batadactyls were concerned. Her assailant glided away, satisfied it had delivered its warning, and she straightened up. Traveler knew how many more were roosting in the mountains; that was something Adria wasn't going to touch with a ten-foot pole. She'd seen the holo-vids of what they'd done to imported cattle, back in military school. All the instructors had stressed that point every opportunity they could get: don't fuck with the wildlife or it'll fuck with you.
::Get out, get away now, she's- Frag, she's transmitting cognito-hazardous material. They're already dead; don't let them touch you!::
"Just a bird," she reported, trying to keep her breathing even. "It's fine now."
"Al'ama..." her handler sighed, "you gave me a fright."
"Oh yeah, you're the one who got a fright alright," Adria muttered. "I've almost got my vantage point. What's that ETA?"
"Five, ten minutes? You'll be fine, so long as you pick up the pace."
"I have been picking up the pace you... ugh." Adria scowled. "Kol khara."
Her handler laughed shakily. "I could get you written up for that."
"Yeah, I bet you could. Mmm, all that paperwork..."
"Just get going."
::Hold fire! Hold fire, friendly! Friend- AAARGH!::
::NOT FRIENDLIES, SHOOT THEM NOW!::
Adria groaned and continued on, up and up while avoiding agitating the local batadactyls as best she could. It wasn't easy; it was almost like the lizards wanted to be kicked up into a frenzy. She kept her head down when they dove, but, mercifully, each swoop appeared to be a warning feint, and after each near-attack she made a point of widely circumventing around the rocky shelves upon which the critters nested.
Finally she arrived at the old camp, a little sniper's nest hidden amongst the rocky spires near the summit and with a pit for a portable cooler. Nothing else to see; SOLSECCENT weren't keen on leaving choice equipment out for scavengers to pick at. No, that was what people in the biz referred to as a security hazard.
"Got my vantage point," Adria gasped. "How am I looking?"
"Two minutes to go," the radio buzzed. "Time for us to go dark. Good luck."
"Thanks." Adria pulled out a spherical device and pressed down. Her radio clicked off. Her suits thermoregulators deactivated and her inbuilt sensorium faded away. Adria flinched; it never failed to make her feel... constricted. Claustrophic. She'd grown up surrounded by electricity, by power, by the innovations of a post-industrialized society - and losing it all, even just for a couple of minutes, left her feeling off. The loss of her sensorium in particular was a hard pill to swallow. Everything looked so much more basic without it.
Still. Two minutes. Adria popped her helmet off, shouldered her rifle and dragged it over to the ledge. She refrained from looking down, content on keeping herself steady. She waited. Waited. Waited-
There. The glimmer of sunlight on something small, something fast, something streaking down through the valley over the trees and heading north. A drone, carrying... something or other. Adria hadn't cared to ask. Sensitive intel on hard copy, maybe. Or contraband. Something bad enough to warrant SOLSECCENT intervention.
"I see you," she murmured, pressing the stock against her shoulder and peering down the scope. "And... got you."
::Clear the air, now! Don't let her- Who the flying FRAG is THAT?!::
"Interesting. And I thought your kind could surprise me no more."
"AUGUR SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
She fired, once. The round hit the drone's side and splattered it with paint. The robot flew onwards without a care in the world, soon disappearing from sight entirely. Another five minutes passed before the EMP field dissipated and everything powered back up - her sensorium's holographic display included. Her radio buzzed- "zzzt-ow are you doing?"
"Tagged it. How are things on your end?"
"Oh, we're tracking it alright. Fantastic work. Make your way back to the LZ. There'll be a shuttle waiting for you."
"'Nother fucking hike," Adria groaned. "Hell."
::Steer clear! Hawkmoon-::
::Kill the infected. I'll deal with her.::
::That's not-::
"She dives. They dive. The world changes around them."
"Augur."
"We dive. The bridge between realms is stronger here. A wound in reality; a pocket of wanton chance. Look - look how they fly, how they fall, how they circle one another. The winds, the gravities, the stuff of dreams. Can you see?"
"... It feels wrong."
"Can you see?"
"Yes, I can see, Augur."
"Then dive, Seeker. Like they have."
She picked her rifle back up and began her descent. The batadactyls watched her trek and trod her way down with beady black eyes, affording her scornful cries and little else. So long as she was headed out of their territory, she supposed, then they were prepared to leave her be. Back into the jungle below; back into the stomping grounds of panthers and barbed geckos and acid-filled potholes.
"Right," she grunted, "I'm on my way. Make sure the guys keep the engine running for me."
"Tell the wife I said hi."
"Yeah, sure."
Her handler barked a final chortle before disconnecting.
Disconnecting.
Disconnect-/ /
/ /-ing.
Adria opened her eyes and stopped in her tracks. The sun above had disappeared, leaving everything shadowed over in total gloom - save for what lay immediately in front of her, illuminated by some unexpected torches on her helm. A helm she knew up and down, having owned it for years and years since joining SOLSECCENT as a troubleshooter. A helm that didn't have violet-lensed light displays. It didn't have lights at all. None of her armour did. That just... betrayed the entire idea of what being a covert-ops troubleshooter meant.
This wasn't her armour.
She didn't recognize her surroundings. There was sand under her feet, slate. The air - the air was different. It felt different. It hit different. It wasn't boiling hot; it wasn't thick with condensation. It didn't carry the acrid taste of Venusian acid-rain. It wasn't... wet.
It wasn't anything like Venus.
Her first instinct was to raise her rifle - but it wasn't there. Her hands were empty, devoid of...
Her hands.
Adria stared.
Those weren't her hands.
Those weren't her arms.
Adria instinctively tried to gasp, a product of sudden panic - and instead choked, suddenly strangled by lungs that were no longer expanding, no longer contracting, NO LONGER THERE. She grasped at her throat, desperate, terrified, uncomprehending. A shape stalked out of the darkness ahead, padding her way. Adria grabbed for a sidearm in vain, fingers dashing against the plating of a foreign hip, and she watched with avid horror as a panther-
No. Not a panther. Smaller. More nimble. Like a small dog, no, like a cat, no, like a... a fox? It stopped in front of her, its head tilted. Its mouth opened - lower jaw splaying apart like the mandibles of a python, even if lacking the connecting flap of skin.
"What ails you now?" it asked, apparently exasperated.
Adria, still suffocating, physically recoiled. It sounded like nothing she'd ever heard before, like the sibilant rasp of something ancient and primal brought to the next level. The lungs that should have been there ACHED to breathe, to yell.
And she yelled. Wordlessly. Loudly.
The fox's fur stood on end. Its hackles raised and it opened its mouth wider to snarl. It turned its strange vulpine head this way and that, every direction except her way, and hissed, "Quiet, Seeker! We are too close-"
Something barreled out of the darkness behind it, bright with flame and belching smoke. It looked like a giant scarab, and it hit the ground at a badangle, tumbling head-over-shell across the sand. Adria staggered back to her feet and stumbled away, her balance totally off. Her momentum had changed drastically somehow, her weight was different, the gravity wasn't what she was used to, EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT!
The scarab slid to a halt, tried raising itself up and fell back down with a shudder. It almost looked... like a robot. A drone of some sort, burning from the inside out - as if it had been riddled with high-density plasma rounds. Lethal energy weaponry, maybe even maltech. Illegal in most parts, besides what SOLSECCENT had vaulted away. The pale flames hollowed the metal thing out, burning it up, and under its plating something struggled. Something pushed at the shell and reached out with amorphous tendrils like oil caught alight and it screamed.
It died.
Adria doubled over, scrunching her eyes shut - and even that felt different, even that felt off. She felt sick, she felt...
Her breath wouldn't come back to her.
She was drowning.
Adria's entire body convulsed painfully, her fingers painfully pulled at her upper arms and shoulder and chest, her heart-
-did not beat.
"I'm dead," she whispered, face going slack. She fell over a second time, the inexplicable weight on her back dragging her down, and she felt her grip on herself slacken - hands slick with... blood? Why... blood?
Was she bleeding?
The fox-snake thing darted in front of her, between her and the scarab, and it gnashed its fangs at the burning things within the robot's husk - but they were long past responding. It turned to her, then, with a question in its eyes. Dead eyes. Hollow eyes. Like a great white sharks', just empty of life - and still somehow sparkling with frightening intelligence, dotting its retinas like a field of distant stars.
"What is the matter?" it questioned her, straying too close. Adria thought about swatting at the creature. Scaring it away.
But she was dead.
The dead didn't care about creatures that shouldn't exist.
"Something IS wrong," the not-fox decided. It gave her a good, long, hard look. "You are not as you were. Who am I speaking to?"
Adria was dead. She was dead. She was dead, she was drowning, she was a corpse, she had no heartbeat. She trembled.
"Is that mortal terror?" the fox halfheartedly teased. "Where is your bravado now? We are in need of it."
As if it were expecting a reaction. She didn't react. Didn't even blink.
Because she was dead.
Its smile faded - wait, when had the fox started smiling? How did foxes smile, anyways? That wasn't right. Animals didn't-
"But that terror is not yours," it continued. "Nor is there bravado to be found. You have none. You... are not you."
"I'm dead," she whispered again.
And the fox, to his dismay, dipped its head. "You are," it softly told her. Softer than she imagined a fox ever could. Not that she'd imagined many foxes speaking in her lifetime. No, this was all sorts of hysterically fantastical and she was convinced it wasn't real. "I have a favour to beg, mortal."
She listened. What else was a corpse to do?
"Might you die faster, please?"
Adria stared. "What?" she croaked, aghast.
"Die faster," the fox impatiently urged her. "There's someone else in need of this body and I much prefer her."
The...
The NERVE. The anger settled in where her stomach should have been, rooted deep, flushed throughout her body-that-wasn't and it manifested in the flaring of armoured plating, the rumbling growl of an engine, the brightening of whatever purple-lensed torches were casting light in front of her. Her fingers curled inwards and her back straightened. Adria turned from confusion and terror all the way to rage and found it so, so much easier to live with.
"What?" she retorted sharply, her teeth gritting and jaw tightening.
The fox looked at her evenly, with a cold sort of sympathy. "Your time has passed," it said. "Your mate is dead. Your child is dead. You have nothing left in this life but anger - yes, I can see it in you. There is someone else who owns this body. Give it back to them."
Dead.
Dead?
They weren't…
"Vaudren," Adria choked - choked on the absence of air, of the lack of any ability to breathe. It HURT. "Benni."
They weren't...
Titan. Apsu Arcology. The man with no facial muscles, the inability to smile, to express anything - he was there to talk. There to tell her something. She'd been fresh off an expedition to Venus, shutting down someone smuggling information on some rare extrasolar lifeform with unknown proteins, ferrying messages with secured off-record drones. She'd come back, tired and-
A blast. A quake. Something gone wrong. Pressure failure. Methane fumes. One of the lower compartments compromised.
Her son was dead.
And Vaudren-
No. No, she was alive she was ALIVE. Vaudren had been there. Long since retired from SOLSECCENT activities, preferred the comfort of being a local security chief. Adria, on the other hand, had liked the prim and proper ways of true military, of the troubleshooter lifestyle. She liked the cleanliness, the effectiveness, the feeling of pride in one's own expertise in a competitive field. She'd been a soldier, a good one. The only thing she had to thank her mother for.
And it was the work of a soldier she threw herself into afterwards. And when that wasn't enough-
Europa.
"I'm dead," Adria remembered. "I'm really, really dead. He killed me."
The fox tilted its head the other way. Questioning. Curious.
"The old man really killed me. I..." Adria grew quiet. "I let him do it. I let him kill me." She looked back at her hands and saw they were slick not with blood, but with a bright blue liquid - the kind seeping from rents and tears in her arms and shoulders, where claws had dug too deep. "He did it. He really did it. He remade me."
"No," the fox sternly told her. "This is not what you envision it to be."
No, it wasn't. Adria had gone to Europa to forget - and this, this wasn't forgetting.
This was hell.
"I can't..." Adria started to say. Can't do this. Can't keep remembering. Can't... "I can't breathe. I can't-/ /
/ /-breathe," Hawkmoon vented. Her chassis ached; her spark hurt; her processor was pounding with pain. Error warnings flooded her HUD, almost blinding her entirely. She levered herself onto a knee and dug her claws into the ground below, anchoring herself as she willed the whole pretense-at-living away. It faded, slowly, after what felt like hours - joors, even.
"Seeker," Augur said. He nudged the top of her helm with his snout. "Can you hear me?"
Hawkmoon nodded stiffly, optics offline. She needed to get up, look around, there were infected Insecticons in the air, a dragon on the loose, whatever that femme-thing with the spear had been, but-
She couldn't.
She couldn't.
Adria was ripping her up from the inside with memories not her own and Hawkmoon was helpless to stop it. "Shut up," she gasped, she begged, trying and failing to alleviate the pure agony of being something other than human. "Shut up, fuck off, go away go away go away!"
"Lower your voice!" Augur frantically snapped.
Hawkmoon willed herself to stop. To take a second, take a deep brea-
No no no, not- And back to panicking she went, trembling from helm to wing to pede and trying to stay alive, to distract herself with any inane topic that came to mind if only in hopes her brain wouldn't write off her frame as a rotting carcass.
"This place is a dream amongst the real," Augur murmured thoughtfully. "Your mind wanders. It's too dangerous for you here. But you can weather it - I believe you can. Stand, Seeker. Overcome this hurdle. 'Twould be an ill-fitting end for you to fall here and now, defeated by the concerns of forgotten flesh."
"Easy for you to say," Hawkmoon seethed. It was like someone else really was inside her head, trying to crack her skull open and break free - but it wasn't time, their end had come and gone they didn't belong she was dead she didn't belong.
"Hawk-/ /
/ /-moon, lower your voice," the fox scolded. It looked around, seemingly unnerved. "She grows silent; her assailants will lose her shortly, if they have not already. She is too strong, too clever, too..." the creature looked back her way and blinking, shadowpit eyes briefly clouding over. "Ah. I see."
Adria was in pain. A kind she couldn't understand; she was feeling the pain of someone else's troubles. Bray's inflicted scars, deep and serious. They were the lack of everything that made her a person - except her mind, her memories, her GRIEF, everything she'd come to this forsaken snowball to LOSE.
"This is a simulation," she breathlessly explained to herself - and to whoever was listening. "Clovis, stop this now. It's not funny. This HURTS!"
Her fingers dug into her chest, as if to rip her ribcage open and force her lungs to work. The pain increased by some margin, growing in tandem with her panic, with her trepidation, her oncoming fit of pure hysteria.
"Stop this!" she shouted, though the fox tried to shush her. Adria ignored it. "Bray, Bray, someone get Doctor Bray, tell her to stop this, stop HIM, shut it down, I should be dead, I SHOULD BE-/ /
/ /-dead," Hawkmoon finished. She tiredly, exhaustedly looked up.
Aiakos stared back.
"Fuck," Hawkmoon vented.
The dragon was larger, her scales ever more vibrant - but her flank was bloodied and one of her wings was torn. Thunderhowl could have been responsible, what with that monster sword of his, or even Noctorro or Rampage or any other Insecticon with their weaponized frames, but it was equally if not more likely that femme that had arrived with them. Their mysterious guide, Hawkmoon presumed.
Though she probably wasn't just that. The kibble had betrayed that much.
Nonetheless, not one of the four were anywhere to be seen. It left Hawkmoon with a sense of hopeless dread, on her knees with nothing to her name but a disembodied alien fox and a gifted sword. Which she promptly drew, just to give herself that buffer space, that layer of pitiful security. Aiakos let it happen; she watched as Hawkmoon pulled the hilt out of internal storage and unfolded the Nullblade. She watched as Augur backed up to Hawkmoon's side. She watched as Hawkmoon staggered back to her feet and just kept watching.
Waiting.
For someone with less self-discipline than the persona currently in control.
"Fuck," Hawkmoon said again. She liked the word. Liked the crassness, the way she could just fling it out and feel that little bit lighter. Liked to cling to it, figuring if there was anything to keep over from her ways as something else, why not a curse word?
But that - that was her problem, wasn't it? With narrowed optics Hawkmoon watched Aiakos watch her in turn, neither saying anything else. A waiting game, one where they both had too much to lose. One looking for a quick meal, a little pick-me-up before she jumped back into the fray, back against the wall of steel and plasma fire, the other trying not to fall to the memories of a woman long dead. The infected had sprung their attack quickly, jumping from frame to frame, but a simple glance up told Hawkmoon enough - that it wasn't to last. Maybe her warnings had landed on audioreceptors willing to listen, or maybe the Insecticons were just that wary, but the firefight waged above was steadily drawing a line between two miniature factions, one chittering and darting all around the other just trying to snag another frame in their claws. Plenty had already fallen. Too many - but there was still more than enough leftover to turn the tide and the currents were definitely shifting.
The oil needed their matron. And the matron-
She needed more too.
"So I'm that weakest link," Hawkmoon guessed. She felt drained. More tired than ever before. Someone was kicking her spark and hammering on her mind and it was as far from pleasant as it could get. "You've changed your tune."
Aiakos said nothing. She waited.
"You're strong," Hawkmoon continued, nonplussed. "I mean, look at you. They've scratched you up but you're still raring to go. You can win this, can't you? All you need to do is beat them here and you can ride that great big wish right to the end."
Still nothing.
"But I'm just spouting bullshit, aren't I? Utter scrap, yeah? Like, I'm running on borrowed time and now's the worst moment to waste what little I have. Do I have you to thank for that?" Hawkmoon quirked an optical ridge. When no answer was forthcoming, she shrugged and carried on. "There's something with this place. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, eh, the borders here are a little lax. The borders that count, anyways. This place is wounded in all the places that matter. It's like the perfect set-up, isn't it? Enough raw dreamstuff to run down people's inhibitions, enough to make mine just fly away, and you - you love that."
Aiakos hardly even blinked. Her claws tightened on the slate below the sand; the others must have been closing in. Their time-frame was ending. Hawkmoon wasn't even convinced that Aiakos was going to leave it to chance. There was every possibility she would forcefully induce a prompt, one haunting enough to force old dead Adria back to the forefront. A memory, maybe, or even a simple word-
Aiakos cracked a smile. "You have pursued me this far, wise lady," she slyly intoned. "Surely there must be something you want to ask. A favour? A boon?"
Or maybe not. Out of time, then. She glared hatefully at the drake. "You-"
Aiakos abruptly craned her neck around, opened her mouth and bathed a diving Insecticon in a veritable river of Voidflame - enough to flood the sky with null-fumes and empty smoke, all of it toxic and all of it dangerous. The Insecticon scarab was reduced to utterly nothing, with not even a sliver of scrapped steel leftover. Hawkmoon hadn't even managed to spot whether it was infected or not before it had been promptly erased.
"No ambitions," Aiakos murmured, probably for Hawkmoon's benefit - even as her flames continued to burn, bisecting the heavens in two. A ward against further incursion for another few seconds, but a beacon for all to see. They didn't have long. "These intruders have no greeds of their own. They are but a warm place to lie and bask, leaving me with nothing to eat. I have basked long enough; I hunger. But you?" Aiakos swung her fearsome, monstrous head around. Her tone took on a sweetly salacious note. "What have you to request, o wayfarer mine?"
There it was, her three-worded syntax - the link between prey and predator, between mortal-born and metaphorically-conceived. Between man and the monster; the knight-errant and the dragon, insidious. The dragon - a creature of power and hunger that cared not for the concerns of insects, that cared not for the misery and grief it provoked with every fiery breath, that obeyed no law but its own.
::Hawkmoon!:: Thunderhowl barked through her active comms. She couldn't see him, but he probably saw her. ::Hawkmoon get away fro-::
Hawkmoon deactivated her comms and straightened unconsciously, as best she could with a broken pride"You can't touch me," she quietly remembered. "You can't."
Aiakos blinked slowly, lazily, one eye at a time. Steel scarabs swarmed and buzzed and burned all around, but they may as well have not been there for all the attention Aiakos spared them. In her mind there was only one; inconceivable as she was, Hawkmoon could read that much.
"Your daughter told me that," Hawkmoon continued - uneasy, furious, but growing more confident by the second. "She told me the dragonlaw-"
"Úthaessel," Aiakos said. As calmly as one would comment on the weather.
Hawkmoon narrowed her optics, furrowed her optical ridges. "Úthaessel," she echoed. "Your daughter."
Aiakos looked at her. Waiting for her to continue.
"Did you ever really love her?"
"I would."
Hawkmoon's frown deepened. "What do you mean-..." she trailed off. There was no use going down that route. No point. "But you can't touch me. You can't hurt me. I'm untouchable. That's your law. That's your only law."
"Unless shared," Aiakos murmured thoughtfully.
Hawkmoon stonily met her gaze. "Asking her is a little beyond even you."
"Is that what you wish?" Aiakos pulled her lip back. Her monstrous grin was all teeth. "To revert the tragedy held over you? To undo the wish made, the wish granted? I could return you to your prior state, o huntress mine," she purred. "What do you-"
Aiakos ducked, suddenly, and the spear aimed for her head narrowly missed Hawkmoon's own helm. The assailant responsible dove down on the dragon's back, arm blades already engaged, and Aiakos bucked violently to toss the femme off. The femme was winged, though, and near as graceful in the air as any natural-forged Seeker - and dove right back at the dragon. Aiakos rolled, caught the green-and-yellow femme with a swipe of her paw and knocked her out of the air. She landed badly but recovered well, rising back to her pedes and splaying out clawed digits.
"Spear," the newcomer barked.
Hawkmoon looked first at her, then Aiakos, and finally the spear. She tugged it out of the ground... and tossed it behind her. "Get it yourself," she retorted.
Aiakos laughed. "O wayfarer-"
"Shut up." Hawkmoon pointed at the Ahamkara with her sword, ignoring how the other femme was shooting her dirty looks. "I'm not done with you. We have-/ /
/ /-to die!" Adria whimpered. She blinked; why... why was she holding a sword? Why was she aiming it at... What the hell was THAT?
"There you are," the THING purred. "You-before-you; untouched, unclaimed, unsavoured."
"Enough!" the fox snarled. It was there, condensing the shadows that made up its form between her and the beast with its fangs bared and jaws agape. "Enough, star-bride! Enough, queen-mother! The law prevents-"
"It does not," the monster interrupted. It took one step, two steps, stalking its way towards her with a hungry look in its many eyes. Adria stumbled back.
"Get back!" she ordered shakily. It spoke - like the fox. But it wasn't... it wasn't HUMAN. "Get... Get-/ /
/ /-out of my head!" Hawkmoon snapped, wincing hard.
Aiakos' smile faded and she bared her many, many teeth. Hawkmoon could have sworn the dragon had even muttered "spoilsport" under her breath.
Breath.
Breath.
She couldn't brea-
"STOP!" Hawkmoon roared, staggering and swinging in front of her. She heard more than saw Aiakos retreat out of range - followed up by the other femme raising a warcry and launching herself at the dragon a second time. Like an idiot. Beastformer, some draconic-fashioned kibble, built like a pitfighter; none of it mattered, fool that she was. Not with a dragon of all things.
Hawkmoon held the Nullblade in both servos, forcing herself to look at it - and forcing herself to drink in the dangerous lure of rippling Void running down the sword's paneled length. Her mind was a storm, a-raging and a-flame with all the wrong memories and set alight with all the wrong stimuli. Breathing, heartbeat, taste, touch - she couldn't afford those things, she couldn't. The Void swept in like a typhoon, batting it all away, forcing it to the recesses of her processor - and there it lingered, there it simmered, there it stayed for the present, waiting for the slightest slip-up on her end.
She vented; she sighed; she gathered herself up and shouted, "Aiakos!"
The dragon had the other femme on the ropes, swatting and herding her like a cat with a mouse - but the moment she was called she twisted around and fixed Hawkmoon with ravenous look. She waited; she listened.
But Hawkmoon paused, realized she didn't have the words sorted just yet, that she needed another second and there was a red shape behind the dragon, flanked by a tower of black and blue - Rampage, a whirlwind of wicked violence, and Thunderhowl, an unstoppable force armed only with his tremendous greatsword. They set themselves on Aiakos, jabbing at her defenses, cornering her between them and the other femme - and were shortly joined by Noctorro and an Insecticon. Aiakos roared and twisted to confront them, lashing right back and tearing at their frames with sadistic craving.
Rampage was crushed beneath a swing of Aiakos' tail; the other Insecticon was torn from the air and swiftly flayed apart by talons sharper than sharp; even Noctorro was seized, pounced upon by the Ahamkara with unnerving speed and pinned to the ground. The femme and Thunderhowl bellowed with rage and horror, wounding Aiakos for her trouble but helpless to stop her. She did not play around, either, and closed her teeth on Noctorro's helm - and with one vicious wrench of her head tore it clean off.
In the blink of an eye all of Hawkmoon's remaining reservations disappeared. She did not yell, did not cry out, only hissed, "Aiakos!"
For a second time the dragon turned to her, her many eyes narrowed. "Stake your claim," Aiakos growled and whispered, speaking with many voices. She twisted and turned, breathing fire in a ring around her. Thunderhowl backed off, the femme took to the air and peppered the dragon from above with plasma fire, and Rampage inexplicably sat up with a gruesomely caved-in chassis. One of his servos transformed into a brutal cannon and he fired slug after slug at Aiakos, cracking her scales and searing her hide. The tail swept around to reward him for his troubles, and once more dashed him against the ground, flinging his remains aside, all the way to where the surrounding dark monoliths hummed with anticipation. Augur took after him, racing to help, and with one final glance Hawkmoon confirmed that the Verunlix was pulling oil-growths away from the mech's ruined frame.
"Aiakos," Hawkmoon said a third time. The dragon turned to her, eyes shining with impatience, and Hawkmoon knew she wasn't going to get another chance. "Aiakos, I have a wish to make."
The dragon suddenly stretched out her wings, buffeting both the winged femme and Thunderhowl back with the weight of the motion. The indigo fires around her kicked up into a pyre, a physically impassable barricade of cold heat, and it spread through the air with unnatural purpose. A shield for them both; a chance for them to take their time, however little of it remained.
"I have a wish," Hawkmoon clarified. "Not Adria, nor Lennox-2, nor whatever other memory-persona you think you can dig up - it's my wish. Mine. Hawkmoon's."
"Very well," Aiakos replied all too eagerly. "Make it. Make your wish, o Seeker mine."
"I wish..."
To stop being human.
To stop losing everyone.
To go home.
To never have to fight this war in the first place.
To have them all back.
To save the Taishibethi, humanity, everyone.
To have Xol's head on a platter.
To kill Oryx for what he's done.
To destroy the Dark in its entirety.
So much to want, so much to dream. Each claim was just as enticing as the next, and each, she knew with a cold certainty, were impossible to grant in the manner she envisioned. She knew what the dragon promised - and the tithe that was to be demanded. Not in any exact shape, maybe, but she knew the feeling it would leave her with. Regret. Dismay. Pain. And she knew it was never going to be worth the price. She knew Aiakos' kind. She knew a dragon would never be satisfied with one wish, that it would come back to her again and again to bleed her dry, flense her apart, break her down.
But to ask nothing was to waste a resource. Augur was right, Hawkmoon reckoned. Even between the two of them they lacked a definitive edge. They were paracausal, maybe, but not untouchable. Not immortal. Not unique enough to be worth a damn, to hold their own in a universe of gods and nightmares. They had nothing to their names but dreams and memories and experience, and some of it Hawkmoon would have rather done without. It was foolishness, it really was, but she imagined their situation was desperate enough to warrant these kinds of measures. She hadn't before, but that had been when she wasn't working under the knowledge that yet another apocalypse was on the rise, aimed toward another population of good people. The oil entities didn't have three eyes, but in the grand scheme of things that hardly mattered - only that they were stopped before they could truly spread.
Which meant nipping the problem in the bud, as had always been the plan - only it wasn't so easy, was it? She was paracausal, she was learned in the ways of unreal warfare, but she lacked the potency to make it happen. Her Light was beyond her reach. Gecko was dead. Everyone else was dead - Cyberwarp, Northwind, Úthaessel, Oor'un'xu, even Nacelle in a twisted, tragic sense. People slated to die, and she, for all her foreknowledge and capability, had been helpless to prevent it.
She needed that edge. She needed it clean, needed it without repercussion. And Hawkmoon figured that if she played careful, it was feasibly attainable.
"You haven't been killing me," she said.
Aiakos narrowed her eyes. Oh, she was a real dragon alright; she'd caught the scent of duplicity quicker than Hawkmoon had expected and she did not like it. "No."
But at least she could play along too.
Hawkmoon dipped her helm, accepting the admission for what it was. "There's a plan in place for me, isn't there?" she guessed. Hawkmoon could hear Thunderhowl shouting, the Insecticons above still fighting, Augur still working to keep the oil from interrupting, but she refused to pay any of it the attention it probably deserved. "You haven't been killing me. You've been keeping me from making mistakes that would kill me. Augur too. He says there's a path."
"One less travelled by," Aiakos murmured.
"One less travelled by," Hawkmoon concurred. "This is Úthaessel's plan, isn't it? That's why you're honouring it - because she's the only thing you've ever cared about. Not me, not Augur, not the Tai's Sun - it's Úthaessel's. She's dead, but she... she wanted something. You're making sure it happens. I understand that much. When you care about only one thing in the entire world, that thing becomes your world. That's the only thing that doesn't make sense here. You loved her - no, you love her, presently. You're a mother who gives a frag, and you're in the rare position to actually manage moving heaven and earth for her sake. You wouldn't have let her die unless... unless you're certain there's a better place on the other end of all this. She..." Hawkmoon paused. "Úthaessel made a wish, didn't she? Was it to live? Or was it-"
"Make your wish," Aiakos snapped.
For the first time in forever, Hawkmoon imagined she'd just played witness to the first ever real emotion to come from a dragon. And she ignored it - because it wasn't Aiakos' trap anymore. It was hers.
"This was Úthaessel's sword," Hawkmoon commented, lifting the Nullblade. "It breaks wards. Shatters spells. Kills those who can't die. It makes its own fate. I used to do that. Now I'm just a spectator, playing along to someone else's tune. I don't have any agency anymore. I used to. Now I want that back."
Aiakos looked at her closely. "Is this your wish?"
"You all have these plans for me, to use the unexpected variable of my existence to your advantage. That chafes, but I'm willing to lift that burden. I liked Úthaessel. I don't think she meant any harm. But that doesn't mean I won't play without my own stakes, my own terms." Hawkmoon imagined taking a deep breath. For once it didn't bother her, didn't set her into a fit of agonizing pain or a yearning for a different time, a different body. "I'm not a mere vehicle for your ambitions. I'll play courier if that's what you want, but I want my own share. I want my own control. I want... I want to be like this sword. I want the power to decide my own future."
Aiakos paused as if to consider it. "Your terms," she questioned.
"I'm untouchable. You'll hurt me, I know that now, but you won't kill me. By dragonlaw or your daughter's demand, either way you won't let me die. Well I have a demand of my own. These people? Krenshans, Insecticons, Cybertronians? They're not to die either. You're not to drive them to extinction, like the Hive did your daughter's people. Or, " at that Hawkmoon smiled thinly, without a shred of honest humour, and brought the Nullblade against her own neck, "we're going to have to disappoint ol' 'Sel. And you wouldn't do that, doting mom that you are."
Aiakos' lip curled. That was real frustration, real anger. It was... alarming, sure, but mostly incredible to behold. Hawkmoon felt a perverse joy in having been the one to draw it out - to finally crack through the mask of a dragon. "You would not. You fear death."
"Hell yeah I do. I'm terrified of ending proper, but when has that ever stopped me before?"
"You would not."
"Smart as you are, you seem to be working under the assumption that as long as I live, everything's fine. Thing is, I'm not like you. I'm not teetering on that breaking point, Aiakos; I'm well past it. I've been broken for a while now. I've got no one left to keep me standing and a past ready to eat me whole. Your kind love desperate people, but this time - this time - you've all driven me too far. So go on. Call my bluff."
Aiakos growled. "And in return?"
"Told you. I'll play by your daughter's rules. Augur's here to help with that, yeah? He's better for it. Better than you. He'll see Úthaessel's dream through."
"But you will slay me," Aiakos whispered.
"Of course I will. You're a monster. As bad as those beasts across the Divide. You dug this hole yourself. I'm not here to throw you a rope. Just to bury you deep."
"A lesser end for lesser things."
"You're literally proving my point. But Úthaessel-"
"Will live."
Hawkmoon blinked slowly before steeling her resolve. "I'm not going back in time again," she countered. "I'm not reliving that all over again."
"She will live," Aiakos said, more to herself than Hawkmoon. There was conflict in her eyes, torn between a primal hunger and... something else. Something… 'lesser', maybe.
Something mortal.
"I wish..." Hawkmoon started to say. Aiakos refocused on her, each pupil thinning to needle-points. "I wish," Hawkmoon continued, "to break fate. To be something more than a variable. I want my agency back."
Aiakos stared. Tilted her reptilian head. "You have it."
Hawkmoon didn't feel any change, great or minor. Aiakos continued to scrutinize her in begrudging silence. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting-
Until Hawkmoon stepped forward and slid her sword under the dragon's chin, punching through scale and flesh and bone with pitiful ease. Aiakos shuddered and hissed, falling slack. Hawkmoon pulled back, retracted her Nullblade and began her own wait.
The fires died.
The fight above began to settle.
Aiakos' flesh began to dissolve, melting from her bones.
She died.
Thunderhowl fell in place beside her to watch.
"Sorry about Noctorro," Hawkmoon distantly heard herself say.
Thunderhowl didn't reply. She imagined he was staring at her. Or glaring. Or both. They weren't left alone for long. The other femme limped over, her plating scalded from Voidflame. Rampage too - looking for all the world like a corpse stitching all its parts back together. Augur loped by the mech's pedes, unseen.
"This warrior is uncannily resilient," Augur explained. "The oil has no hold in him, but that is not to say his frame is free of foreign influences."
Hawkmoon wasn't listening. Didn't care. She was done, finished for the day. She watched the dragon's molten flesh crackle and pop, flowing down into the earth as dust and sludge and disappearing within bursts of yellow-green fire. Her bones, though, gleamed and whispered and promised the world, the universe, everything in between.
"It's dead," Rampage observed. He sounded disappointed.
"But not extinguished," the other femme remarked. She glanced at Hawkmoon briefly before looking Thunderhowl's way. "Lord."
Thunderhowl didn't reply.
"Lord. We need to-"
"How are you here?" Thunderhowl questioned.
Hawkmoon realized he was asking her and shrugged. "Found an alternate route."
"Seeker-"
"Stop." Hawkmoon finally summoned the courage to look at him - and almost wished she hadn't. Thunderhowl's battlemask was still drawn across his faceplates, but his optics were bright with fury and fear. He narrowed them with suspicion, with bewilderment and tightened his hold on his sword. She forced herself not to react. "I'm not..." she started to say, then trailed off and tried again. "You and I both know this won't fly. I'll have to pass on that spot in your clan. I'm just... not suited to it."
"You shouldn't be here."
"Hard disagree. I told you I could kill a dragon. And what did I do?"
"You should not be here," Thunderhowl stressed. "It's impossible. You can't-"
"Do you want to explain it to him?" Augur asked testingly. He sat down beside Aiakos' hollowed skull.
Hawkmoon barely glanced at him. "Not particularly."
Thunderhowl stepped back. She realized a moment later how suspect it looked - talking to something that didn't exist in proximity to a dragon's remains - but couldn't find it in herself to care.
"How did you get here?" Rampage questioned.
"I'm probably going to keep that to myself, thank you very much," Hawkmoon replied. She knelt down in front of Augur, in front of Aiakos. "Do you guys have the tools to finish this?"
"You're not supposed to be here." Thunderhowl raised his voice. "You're not-"
"Lord!" the other femme barked. Thunderhowl backed down. "This is my domain. Vacate the area, immediately."
Hawkmoon looked up. "Someone should make sure everyone up there is fine. Those parasites can spread quick."
"... Parasites," Rampage said.
"What the frag else would you call them?" Hawkmoon challenged. "Passengers? Tourists?"
"Vacate. The area," the other femme repeated, voice falling to a warning growl. Definitely a beastformer. Thunderhowl reluctantly retreated, grabbing Rampage by his pauldron and backing away. They gathered up what remains were nearby, including Noctorro's - and kept at a distance from the nearest monoliths, which loudly keened with hopelessness. Hawkmoon wasn't sure if it was her warning that steered them away or their own sense of self-preservation. Either or worked, so long as the leftover oil was denied.
Hawkmoon amused herself with prodding at Aiakos' remains with the tip of her sword. The Void-wreathed steel sliced through bone like a hot knife through butter, cutting the skull and vertebrae into slivered portions. Augur looked over her handiwork with amusement. "Searching for souvenirs, are we?" he asked her.
Hawkmoon shrugged. "I think I got what I wanted."
"And what was that?" the other femme cautiously, obliviously questioned.
Augur tilted his head her way, as if to repeat her inquiry.
"Satisfaction," Hawkmoon grimly remarked. "I needed this. I needed to kill a dragon."
"... So this was a mission of glory?" the femme surmised, voice tight.
"No. Just me putting some old ghosts to rest." Hawkmoon straightened up. "So who the frag are you?"
"The wolf-lord's guide," Augur whispered, but she ignored him.
The femme afforded her a suspicious look. Hawkmoon returned it - and it was well-deserved. The femme... She didn't look right for a beastformer. Oh she had all the hallmarks, but it all painted a more dangerous story than what Hawkmoon would have otherwise expected. Bestial but of a particularly dubious kind. The wings and faceplates in particular were rather insinuative.
"Ser'ket," she said at length.
Hawkmoon made a point of looking her up and down. "Should I be asking what you are?"
"Do you think you can live with the answer?" Ser'ket challenged.
Hawkmoon shrugged. "Won't know until we get there, will we?"
"Not yet. I'm going to need you to surrender your weapons, lock down your combat protocols and allow a cortical patch before we leave this place."
"Why?"
"To scrub your processor of cognito-hazards."
"No," Hawkmoon softly refused. "No, I'm not going to do that."
Ser'ket narrowed her optics. She had her spear back, Hawkmoon noticed, and clutched tightly by powerful clawed digits. Almost like she was ready for a fight.
"Who are you?" she asked in return.
"Hawkmoon. Seeker."
"I can see that."
"Thought you might."
"What are you doing here?"
"Trying to decide how best to kill this fragger once and for all."
"I meant how did you find us?" Ser'ket sharply questioned.
Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "Who says I found you?"
"... The dragon, then."
"Yeah."
"You tracked her."
"Yeah."
"You-"
"Killed her. Yeah."
Ser'ket set her jaw. "You're a long way from Cybertron, Seeker."
"Par for the course, dragonling."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm assuming you ran everyone off because you know how to do this, right?" Hawkmoon asked, gesturing to Aiakos' remains. "You know how to finish this sort of thing?"
Ser'ket glowered. "I'm the one who's going to be asking the questions."
Hawkmoon ignored what she said. "Or maybe not entirely, from the looks of you."
"Excuse me? I know enough."
"Then you know the bones have to go too."
"Yes. Amongst other things." Ser'ket took a step closer. Too close for Hawkmoon's comfort, but she tried not to let it show. "What did you wish, Seeker?"
Hawkmoon lazily craned her neck around to look at her. "Independence."
Ser'ket frowned. "Independence?"
"Been bouncing from one cataclysm to the next. I'd prefer those reins to be in my hand from now on." Hawkmoon stepped forward, nudged Aiakos' ribcage and cocked her helm sideways - then kicked it open, plucked out the crystalline orb sheltered within and drew her Nullblade across it. A scream emanated from the heart as it was laid open and its power spilled out. Aiakos died for a second time.
A final time.
Maybe.
"Not enough," Augur said. "Destroy all that remains."
"And here I thought someone wanted to take a trinket home."
"I do not," Ser'ket snapped, thinking Hawkmoon had been speaking to her. "You have no idea who I am, what-"
"I can guess that part."
Ser'ket scowled. "Step away, Seeker. You've done enough."
"... Fine." Hawkmoon retreated. Not far, but far enough to give the femme at least the illusion of space. Ser'ket waded through the ivory and began herding all the bone fragments and leftover scales into a single pile. The rest of the skeleton was summarily disassembled and added to it.
A servo pulled upon her shoulder. Red. Rampage.
"You're coming back with us," he said, tone brooking no argument. He didn't sound upset, though. Neither was he nervous. He merely sounded... bored, with a tinge of irritated. Hawkmoon twisted, shook his servo off, but she acquiesced all the same. A gunship, damaged and smoking, dove down to them with a pair of chittering Insecticons in tow. The two transformed and began helping Thunderhowl load the bodies on board.
The rest of the infected must have been shot down, then. They deserved no less.
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
I'd started this chapter with a gung-ho premise to it, like a man v monster action flick, decided it didn't suit a confrontation with an Ahamkara and turned to mindfuckery. Feel a whole lot more satisfied with it now. This is the bottom of the barrel, the last big descent into anger and depression, so uh... kinda looking forward to make things look a little brighter ahead.
At least to a degree.