Nari stood in front of the irva with her arms crossed.
He'd managed to sit up with her assistance. He was much less shaky now and clearer to understand. She supposed it probably didn't hurt that she was no longer pointing a gun at his head.
"Tell me your story again," Nari requested. "The full thing."
"I woke up in a strange pod with…with no memory of who I was," he stammered, still somewhat panicked from their altercation. "The pod looked similar to the architecture here. A robotic voice from the pod asked me to take a teal capsule with me, and then I got chased by some weird swarm, and then I got trapped in a basement, and then the capsule exploded, but I was able to somehow access the doors, and they lit up with a similar teal light as they opened. Then I made my way up here, found some gear in a room, and ran into you."
As he listed out the various adventures he'd had, the irva counted them up on his fingers, as if he was struggling to keep track of all of them.
"So you're telling me that you awoke here with no memories, and just so happened to find your way to exactly where I was able to enter this place."
"Yeah."
Nari scoffed. "Bullshit. I heard rumors that the Empire was sending out Vaulters behind our backs but I didn't think I'd run into one myself."
"Wait, what's the Empire?"
Nari normally would have dismissed that statement as an act, an attempt to convince her of the irva's incompetence. But, to her surprise, he had a genuine look of confusion on his face. She'd dealt with irvas before, been friends with some, even; his expression was definitely not an act.
He actually has no clue what the Empire is. He's telling the truth.
A look of amazement fell upon her face as she debated what to do next. She normally didn't chat much with strangers, but this guy was clearly very confused, and she didn't want to just leave him hanging there, with no idea what was going on.
"What's wrong?" the irva asked, concerned.
Nari internally scrambled to make a decision. She was stuck here anyway, so she might as well accept all the help she could get.
She sighed. "Alright, well, sorry for the hostility earlier. I've heard rumors about some members of my profession, and I mistook you for something that you clearly aren't. I should probably explain some things."
"Okay, first of all, introductions. I'm Nari. I'm a Vaulter, which means I explore ancient Architect ruins and salvage technology from them. Given your story earlier, I suppose you don't have much to mention here?"
"Nope," the irva said, still a little shaken from Nari's accusations earlier.
"Alright. If you don't know anything about the galaxy at large, there's probably several words I've thrown around that you don't understand. So I'll give you a refresher on the basic state of the galaxy real quick."
"It all starts with the Architects. They were the first species in this galaxy, Spectra, and they were super technologically advanced. They ended up building a lot of crazy shit, including the structure we're in right now, and they ruled over the galaxy alone for an unknown duration."
"Then, some time around forty thousand years ago, they vanished."
"What do you mean by 'vanished' here?" the irva asked. "They just suddenly disappeared? No bodies or anything?"
"Exactly. We haven't been able to find any buried skeletons of them, any remnants of their biology. Nothing was left behind besides the technology and structures they built. And most notable of all those structures were the Planes."
The irva's eyes lit up in a brief moment of almost-recollection, before he winced and held his free hand against his head, laying his head down for a moment before giving it a scratch.
"The Planes?"
"Five giant artificial disk-worlds, built to grow and nurture sapient species and equip them to go to space. The Architects picked four Chosen Races to place on the Planes. There might've been a fifth at some point, but nobody knows what happened to them, since the Alpha Plane is a barren desert wasteland."
"I won't go into too much detail over all the species and what they are, since I figure this is probably a lot to take in already, but I think it's worth mentioning two of the Chosen Races to better explain my aggression earlier."
"Kugraws are quilled, scaly folk from the Gamma Plane. Around three thousand years ago, they formed the Kugraw Hegemony, which has become one of the dominant forces of the galaxy, comprised of nearly a dozen different species."
"Meanwhile, from the Beta Plane come the Irvagaleni, or irvas for short, your species. Their Empire has been around for over four millennia, and its relations with the Hegemony have been…inconsistent, to say the least."
"So are you a kugraw?" the irva interjected. "I don't see any quills on you."
"Nope," Nari admitted. "I'm a dahmak. We're a different species that evolved outside of the Planes, on good old-fashioned spherical planets. We're part of the Hegemony though, hence why I was a little apprehensive about running into an irva in the middle of nowhere."
"That clears things up, I suppose," replied the irva. "So that leaves the questions: where are we, and who am I?"
Nari looked up and thought for a moment, before looking back at the irva. "Not sure, and not sure. I arrived here while exploring a vault - an Architect ruin - on the planet Genli. I discovered some sort of teleporter, walked through, and next thing I know I'm over here, on this planet which is clearly not Genli."
"And before you ask, the portal closed itself behind me. So I'm stuck here with you."
"As with the other question, I have as little of a clue as to your identity as you do. Can't say I've run into you before. So if you've got any leads, I'm all ears," she said, flicking her ears to demonstrate. "I know I've kind of been monologuing at this point so feel free to ask me if you have any questions."
The irva's fins drooped for a moment, then shot back up. "I think we might have some luck if we return to my pod. I didn't have much time to give it a look before I was chased out."
Nari nodded. She knew irva body language, though, and she could tell that this guy was not the most joyous irva she'd met by any means.
"You okay?" she asked. "I don't mean to pry or anything, it just looks like something's bothering you."
His fins drooped down again. "Yeah, I'm just a bit overwhelmed and lost, I guess. You're the first actual person I've talked to since I woke up. I don't know who I am, I don't know where to go, and hell, I don't even have a name."
"I could change that if you want."
The irva stared at Nari blankly for a moment. "So you're offering to give me a name?"
"Yeah. We're in the middle of nowhere; it's not like anyone's gonna care if I call you something other than your birth name. I don't know if you have any ideas for one but I can come up with one and see what you think of it."
The irva thought for a moment. "Sounds good to me. I suppose it'd be convenient to have something to refer to me as."
He shuffled around for a moment. "Follow me. I'll lead you out of here, I remember how I got in. You can think on a name while we walk."
The two moved in a line, Nari keeping close behind the irva and marveling at the scenery. The sun was low and the walls around these gardens cast a dim shadow over everything. The red trees waved gently in the wind, the cool breeze of a summer afternoon softly stroking their leaves.
Eventually, they went through a short tunnel and came to a ledge before a massive chasm with no apparent way to cross. The irva held out his upper arm with the gauntlet on it, then paused and looked back at Nari. "I'm gonna need to ask something very stupid of you."
Nari looked him in the eyes and stared at him inquisitively.
"I know my…'demonstration' of the grappling hook earlier was far from ideal, and you probably don't trust me to cross that gap and survive. For the record, I've crossed it and survived before, so I'm going to ask you to trust me and I'm gonna do it again."
The dahmak looked appalled, realizing what he was suggesting. "Nuh-uh, no way. I saw you fall off that thing earlier, and that time you were only 10 feet above the ground. If we do that here, we both die."
The irva shook his head. "No, I see what went wrong there. My grip slipped on the grapple controls and I stopped reeling myself in. Then I accidentally deactivated the clasp that attached it to the wall and it came snapping back towards me. That's how I fell."
"To ensure that doesn't happen again, I'm gonna use both my upper arms to handle the grip, and you're going to hop on my back, hold on tight, and use your tail to hold onto my hand and make sure it doesn't slip. Got it?"
She sighed. "There's got to be another way, right? Something that doesn't involve us risking our lives to cross this stupid chasm?"
"Not that I'm aware of. You're free to look yourself but I'm going to be crossing this chasm regardless. You want on?"
Nari looked down at the floor, then with a resigned expression, grabbed onto the irva's shoulders and swished her tail over towards his hand.
"Alright, 3, 2, 1, and we have liftoff."
She felt almost sick for a moment as she was jerked off the floor and into the air above the chasm. The grappling hook lett out a dull rattling sound as if a winch was reeling up, and she tightly grasped onto the irva so as to not fall off.
After a harrowing fifteen seconds or so, the two arrived at the opposite wall, suspended a couple feet off the ground. The irva released the grapple's grip and they both landed on the floor, Nari stumbling backwards clumsily for a moment as she regained her balance.
"Told 'ya I knew how it worked," the irva snickered. "Be careful around that ledge. It's a bit of a fall."
Nari turned around and noticed she was scarily close to a steep drop off into the chasm. She quickly leaped backwards into safety, nearly jumping into the irva in the process.
"Alright, follow me again," he laughed. "We've still got a bit of a ways to go."
The pair were walking down a long hallway when Nari spoke up.
"I came up with a name."
The irva's fins perked up. He stopped and glanced backwards at her. "Yeah?"
Nari's eyes lit up as she spoke. "Visken. It's an old word from my native language that means 'ghost.' Figured it was fitting since you managed to sneak up on me earlier."
"I like it," the irva replied. "I suppose it fits in more ways than one. I…kinda feel like a ghost sometimes, searching around for clues about my former life."
"I can't imagine how it must feel."
The irva shook his head. "It's not fun. I don't know if I'll ever out who I was, but hopefully I can figure out how to…be me, if that makes any sense. Exist in the present instead of the past."
Nari glanced at him. "It makes more sense than you'd think."
"Well, I guess that settles it," he said. "Visken it is then. You can call me Visk if you'd like - it's a bit less of a mouthful."
"Spoken like a true irva," Nari remarked as the two continued onwards.
"Huh?"
"Irva culture signifies social status by the number of syllables in your name. Everyone's born with one syllable, and they earn the second one by helping out the Empire in some way. It's rare to not have two syllables as an adult irva but rarer still are prestigious three-syllable names - those are usually the higher-class government folks. Still, irvas are usually called their first syllable by their friends and family."
"Are we friends yet?"
"I don't know," Nari admitted. "I've been a loner most of my life so I suppose it can't hurt to call it that, even if I barely know you."
"Well, I certainly haven't helped the Empire and I'm not sure I want to if they're opposed to folks like you," Visk remarked, "so I'm not sure I'm even deserving of a second syllable here."
"It is a dahmak name," she reminded him, "so it doesn't really follow the same conventions. Sounds kinda like an irva name though."
"Yeah, I suppose I'll trust you on that. It'll probably help me reintegrate into irva society if I so choose anyway, so thanks for that," he laughed.
As the adventurers continued on, the dark ground suddenly became weaved with teal lines, the same kind Nari had noticed earlier around the portal. They both came to a stop.
"I know this," Visk stated. "I've seen it before, it's what helped me open doors."
The teal lights sloshed around, flickering in and out in a chaotic mess, as if they were slowly dying like Visk's capsule earlier. "You ever see them like this?" Nari asked.
"Kinda. Not really exactly like this though. But it doesn't look goo-"
A slightly metallic, female voice interrupted him overhead. "Hello, world."
Visk and Nari both looked up at the ceiling. Visk recognized the voice - it was very similar to the one he'd heard at his pod. "Hello?"
Lights grew in intensity in a circle above the pair. They flickered for a moment, and then the voice returned.
"I am Spark. As far as I'm aware, I'm…I'm an artificial intelligence currently stuck in Monolith systems. I've been searching for you for a while, Visk. Pleased to meet you."
Visk nodded. "Likewise. Also how do you know my name-"
Spark cut him off. "As much as I'd like to introduce myself properly, there are a few…issues. Entities are approaching this area right now, opposing forces of nature that will turn this monolith into a warzone. I would advise leaving as quickly as possible."
"Meet me in the underground chamber you were in earlier. We can talk there, you should be safe from intruders."
A little confused and concerned by this information, Visk and Nari stared at each other in silence for a few moments. Then Visk grabbed Nari's hand and pulled her along as he started darting back towards the elevators.
As they crossed the porch, they looked up to the sky to see thousands, perhaps millions of metallic…things descending from the sky. They were spherical, and silver in color, with polygonal metallic wings. The front of each sphere was decorated with four diamond-shaped lights, glowing a blood red. And as the adventurers watched, they were getting closer.
Nari swallowed, a grim look of recognition on her face. "The Sentinels are here."
