Chapter 1: Getting hard to see the sun coming through
"There's only one way out of this mess. You know it as well as I do. Don't bother; you're only going to drag out the bad."
"So you're staying?"
"Hell no."
- Last recorded VanNet transmission between Titan Norovoi Farso and Grayris, the Time-Stalker
Norovoi blinked. Twice, because once didn't feel like anywhere near enough. She stared up at the featureless ceiling of her quarters and tried, so very hard, to summon the effort to get up. All she managed was to shuffle herself a few inches closer to the edge of her bed, but... no. Not enough. Nowhere near enough.
Someone else should have woken with her. Someone else should have feigned a yawn, floated into the air and told her to hurry up, daylight's burning, we got work to do.
But there was no one.
And still the work piled on.
Or so she thought; there wasn't much she imagined she could actually do, was there? Not unless a certain someone swallowed their pride and allowed others to help.
Not much she felt like doing, either.
Norovoi pressed the back of her head into her pillow, groaned, pulled herself up and looked around the room. It was... bare. Spartan. Nothing - no keepsake or relic - for her to store away, to remember something. Nothing left to be remembered by. Its previous occupants... well, they were long gone. They didn't matter much anyways; dead was dead, best move on.
She pulled her legs around, swung them over the edge of the raised mattress and grunted as she stood up. Her stance was good, strong - even if she felt anything but.
Her communicator, nestled on the bedside counter she'd dragged in a couple of days ago, bleeped and coughed static. Norovoi reached over and flicked it on. "What?" she rasped, voice still rough with sleep.
The other voice was just as bad, but that was more to do with their base genetic makeup - or lack thereof - rather than anything else. "Baroness tried reaching you earlier. We're about to hit some turbulence."
"Turbulence?" Norovoi frowned. "From what?"
"From-"
The room shook. Everything shook - like an earthquake had shuddered into fruition just below her feet. Norovoi's hand shot out to the edge of her mattress for balance.
"From that," the communicator buzzed. The rumbling slowly, slowly, faded away.
Norovoi closed her eyes. A part of her, a small part of her, tried to imagine a better place. It wasn't hard - but the real world was a selfish, greedy thing and all too quickly forced her back. "Give me a damage report. Is this because of Vesta?"
"Ceres, more like. Look, I dunno, go ask the Lady. She's trying to fix it as we speak." The voice paused. "Could lend a hand, y'know."
"I know." Norovoi deactivated the device. She looked around the room, grabbed her discarded biosuit and pulled it on. After that came the underlying armourweave, and then the silver plating and golden-scaled mail. She avoided her helmet - avoided what was tidied up beneath - and heaved a heavy breath before keying open the door. The hallway outside was just as poorly lit as her room - which was to say, cast in a dim orange light and left at that.
At least it wasn't as bad as things were near the prow...
Norovoi turned right and headed for the ladders. She clambered up, pushed open the thin hatch at the top and peeked around. A couple of voices distantly rebounded down the corridor - voices she recognized. Norovoi vaulted up, grimaced and forced a neutral expression, then marched down. She saw the hound first, red-scaled and laid out across the steel floor, only raising its head up from its paws as she closed in. Its small black eyes traced her every movement with startling intensity.
"Castus," Norovoi murmured.
The warbeast let out a throaty huff and went back to reclining in the middle of the hallway. Norovoi stepped over the animal and walked on. The door to Gaelin's room was open, the voices having grown louder. He was talking. Vynriis too. Tensely. Hesitating for all of a moment, Norovoi rapped her knuckles against the plasteel doorframe. "Hey?"
Gaelin-4 peeked his head around the corner of the mini-hall. Their room was so much nicer than her own - but then, they'd actively been renovating and decorating while she mulled and basked in the absence of all feeling. "Hey yourself. That shake wake you?"
"Was already getting up," Norovoi replied with a shrug. She leaned against the wall, just outside the threshold of the room. "You?"
"Me? Naw. Clip's got it in his head that the... what was it? Something about a bird?"
His Ghost rounded the corner, eye narrowed. "'The early bird gets the worm.' It's a human saying. You should know this."
"Yeah, well..." Gaelin made a noncommittal sound. "Worm's not in my interests. Sleep is where it's at, ain't that right, Nor?" He stepped around fully, struggling with a shirt and finally pulling it over his gleaming grey-metal torso.
Again, she shrugged. "So Vynriis is here?"
"Eia." A four-eyed head momentarily hovered around the edge of the corner and glanced her way. "Am supping."
"Excuse me then. Any idea what's got us..." Norovoi motioned to the walls around them, "having issues?"
Vynriis disappeared, but she answered soon enough - though reluctantly at that. "I... do not know. Was not Ketch-born. Or Wolfborn."
"Gray's on it, isn't she?" Gaelin asked.
Norovoi slowly nodded. "Was headed her way."
"Same. Or planning to be, anyways. It was probably just some debris."
"That's what I'm worried about." Norovoi pushed away from the wall and retreated back into the corridor, Gaelin-4 and his Clip following her out.
"Hey, Castus." The Exo dropped to his knees as the warbeast lumbered forward. He reached out and grasped the thing's toothy head, affectionately shaking it from side to side. "Stay here, watch Vyn, behave."
Castus pushed its head into Gaelin's chest and rumbled lovingly.
"Thataboy." Gaelin stood with one final pat against the hound's neck and nodded past Norovoi. "Shall we?"
The engineering deck was depressingly quiet. Well, except for the low chatter of two sorta-normal sized folk - Therin and Nivviks - standing by where someone (a big someone at that) had torn up the paneling in the floor to get at the power cables and emergency controls just beneath. That same someone was up to their lower shoulders in the newly 'dug' up hole, pulling and prodding at a dozen likely essential systems - but what did Norovoi know? She wasn't a mechanic.
"Therin," she tiredly greeted, summoning the barest shred of friendliness she did not feel. "Nivs."
Therin Vai afforded her a strained smile. Nivviks grumbled crankily.
"What we looking at, Gray?" Gaelin asked.
The giant in the room huffed deeply, mandibles clicking, and craned her neck around. Her biosuit had been folded down to her waste, leaving her front chitin-plates to bear the scorch and soot marks of working with piping-hot electricals barehanded. "A number of minor thrusters have given out," Grayris growled - though that was her normal tone of voice, being as big as she was. Norovoi tried not to take it to heart. "The powerlines here are old. Riis-old."
"So..."
"The designs are simple; familiar. We have the materials to repair it."
"I'm sensing a 'but' hanging around..."
"Eia." Grayris's four eyes twinkled, outer pair narrowing. "We need more... more. More tools, more hands, more minds, more fuel, more-"
"What's the most immediately pressing?" Norovoi cut in, impatient.
Grayris hunkered back down, claws at work. One of her upper arms snaked out to rifle through an Eliksni-styled toolbox, eventually tugging something that looked like a wrench with tusks. "The fuel."
"What can we do about that?"
"Plenty, but if we sacrifice another Servitor's Void charge then..." Grayris trailed off. "Then some may grow hungry. I would not appreciate an ether-cut if avoiding one is possible."
"We're drifting by Haumea," Therin added. "Could empty out a Skiff or Jumpship, string them up with some mining equipment and head out to harvest for Glimmer and raw materials."
Grayris hummed. "Yes, but Haumea-"
"Is a hellhole, I know."
"Rotational periods are erratic, quick. Winds are dangerous and gravitational pull will be... difficult to account for. The moons are more promising."
"Got it."
"We'll have to bring the Ketch close," Gaelin added, nodding along. "Just in case... you know. Something's there ahead of us. Can't lose another ship."
Or a life, Norovoi thought, but that went unsaid. They were running with less than a dozen sets of hands as it was; another couple of crewmates dead or lost was a hit they could not afford. "How far out are we?" she questioned.
"We're leaving the system," Therin breathed, sighing sadly. "We're on Sol's outer edge. Couple more jumps, 'nother few Terran solar cycles and we'll hit the Kuiper Belt. Why? Want to say a few words?"
Norovoi scowled. "Yeah, sure; good riddance. That suit?"
Therin winced and looked away. Because of course he would. His heart was still on Earth. Soon enough, though, he'd have to realize that all they'd left behind was gone or as good as. Just like she had - so long ago.
"Well," Gaelin drawled. "Anyways... What about the rest?"
"Your Dunraven is ensuring our heading is level," Grayris muttered, still at work. "And the Senator has agreed to sweep ahead as far as she is able. We will keep to our chartered course, Lightbearers - you need not fret."
"That charter's going to run out as soon as we hit the Cloud," Therin ruefully mused. "What then?"
Grayris paused, stilled, froze in place. She drew in a heavy breath, filling lungs that were likely larger than Norovoi's entire torso. "We move on."
That was their motto, wasn't it? Move on.
It was all the guidelines they had to live by. No one was going to tell them otherwise. And no one - no one - was coming to help them.
Because there was no one else left.
Norovoi headed down to the hanger just as Therin and Nivviks were heading off in a Skiff, watched them depart out into the deep black. They were aiming for Hi'iaka, given its twin Namaka's rather wild orbital trajectory, and were saddled with the unfortunate task of gathering first water from the pure ice on the moon's surface, then digging beneath with what laser cutters could be spared for the more valuable elements beneath - and for biomolecules too, if they could find any. Whatever they could use to convert into more ether, to preserve for their exodus-to-come.
She met the Senator therein, standing by the open port and swaddled in ceremonial robes tattered towards the edges, just thrown over her old scratched uniform - black armour glinting like a beetle's shell in the hanger's eerie red light. Her guard, the Gladiator Ueru'uxo, grunted at Norovoi's approach, meaty hands tightening on the pommel of his one remaining cleaver - but the Senator raised a hand.
"Norovoi," she droned, inhuman voice echoing within itself, as if spoken from a dozen different throats.
Norovoi stopped about ten paces away. "You agreed to help?"
"It is in all our interests that we avoid further confrontations."
"Suppose."
"You disagree?"
Norovoi didn't reply.
"No. You simply don't care."
"Likely."
"Or mayhaps you do. But not as strongly as you think you shou-"
"Keep out of my head."
The Senator turned around, her eye sheening with orange glow. Her humming took on an amused note. "I do not need to peek inside your primitive cranium to see that."
Norovoi exhaled fitfully. "As long as we understand each other."
"We do."
Good. Norovoi swiveled about and marched away. Then we're done here.
Grayris eventually gave into the prospect of allowing others to help out - a holdover from her solitary days after the Taken War's toll, Norovoi reasoned - and had them, or at least the Lightbearers still handy, ferrying heavy equipment to and fro between the engineering deck, the hanger and the bridge. The last destination gave her a chance to check in with Dunraven, who was still, still, entranced with the Eliksni machinery set before him.
"Don't put us at risk," she gruffly informed him.
Dunraven-9 scoffed goodnaturedly. "You're such a worrier."
"I don't care."
"Never thought to see this side of you, honestly."
"Still don't care."
"About the impression you impart?" he asked, teasingly, "Or about the people on this ship? Because, sometimes, I just... can't tell." His smile disappeared, quickly. Everything was quick about him - except for flying. Only there did he display any form of patience. "Can never tell with you."
Norovoi set down the crate of... somethings Grayris had tasked her to carry up, and she gave him a look. "I don't care."
"And some days," Dunraven said, more quietly, "I actually believe you. And I don't know what's scarier - that either you're pretending or you're being honest."
She turned away and took the elevator back down to the engineering deck. Grayris would have more work for her. Grayris she could handle; Grayris she could live with. The others? Not so much.
The Baroness was seated by the edge of the hole she'd made when Norovoi returned, gnawing on a haunch of until-recently frozen venison. The last they'd been able to pick up, straight from one of the Reef's wild asteroid-forests. They'd poached all they could before hightailing it out. She looked Norovoi's way, then went back to her meal, raising a hand in lazy welcome.
Then she stopped, strands of meat still in the midst of being shredded by her mandibles and fangs, and stared off at nothing. She was thinking - and Norovoi had a fair guess as to what.
"Do..." Norovoi walked over, stopping before she entered the engineering deck in truth. "The whispers still…?"
"Only when I go back," Grayris muttered. She looked down at her hands. To her room, Norovoi realized she'd meant.
"We could jettison it out..."
"Would you?"
"I... no. No. We have too little as is." Norovoi swayed on her feet. "We need every edge we can get."
Grayris glanced at her, both eyes - burning blue - darting her way. "Perhaps." She sighed, heavily - and then some, what with her size and proportions. "When will you-"
"I won't."
"You should. It is not healthy to drag grief out."
"I won't," Norovoi repeated.
Grayris, unlike Dunraven, knew to take a hint when she got it, so despite the pointed look that said You're not listening to me, but I know better than you and soon you'll have to realize that, she shut up real quick. Then motioned to a box-shaped machine, all wires and soldered casing. "Bring that to the portside power generator, third deck."
"Just leave it there?"
"Eia. I will deal with it later."
"You're the Baroness." Norovoi hefted the alien device onto her shoulder. It weighed enough to break bones - but then, she'd never cared about that, had she?
Grayris grunted wordlessly and set back to work on the bloodied limb, fangs slicing through half-thawed flesh with frightening ease. Norovoi heard the femur crack just as she turned around to leave.
Everything was going subpar for a while. Grayris drifted around the ship, dutiful Vynriis or clever Klyfiks accompanying her. They rigged the Ketch up with tech both Eliksni and alien, filling in the parts where system failures were commonplace and in general keeping the engines running. The one thing they couldn't help was the prow - where the temperature had dropped to dangerous levels, even for the Eliksni, and the air thinned out. Grayris inevitably made the decision to lock down the frontal section of the ship, indefinitely - or at least until they could treat the scrap of asteroid locked in the side of the Ketch's knife-shaped prow. For that they needed a Ketch-sized dock in a local spaceport - or at least more supplies to even begin to afford dislodging the debris and repairing the hull-breaches from the outside.
Or at least the Baroness said as much. Norovoi wasn't all that clear on how to work with a damaged Jumpship's systems, let alone an alien Ketch - which was why her Crypt Hammer was left to gather dust in the hanger. She didn't dare make use of it; not with one of its thrusters shot and a wing just about to snap apart, and with the Eliksni busy trying to keep their frigate in one piece it was looking like a while before her own bird was going to receive treatment of any sort.
Therin's Bandwagon, though, was still operational. It was to that ship she instinctively marched to when Therin and Nivviks sent back a message consisting of "Uh, guys? We, uh... we found something."
Dunraven, quite predictably, tried to raise them back up on comms, "Found what? Therin?", but the line was dead. All they heard next was a wall of static.
"Sensors indicate the ship and mining-lander are still operational," Grayris noted, casting her eyes over the terminals dotting the bridge's lower level. "They have not been attacked."
"At least, not by something big," Gaelin surmised. "Right. Any life-signs?"
"Perhaps. Heat sensors are useless; they're wearing thermal biosuits, which hide their heat-signatures. The moon is rife with radiation-"
"They've suited up against that, right?"
"Eia."
"What about visuals?"
"The laser-drill has kicked up clouds of ice shards and steam," Dunraven replied. "It's... yeah, we're not going to see past that. If you want a visual, you'll have to get closer."
"We are not bringing the Kaliks-Fel closer," Grayris warned. No one argued.
"We'll take the Bandwagon," Norovoi announced. Vynriis chittered and affirmative, running past for the elevators to ready the Minerva-class Jumpship. Gaelin went with her. Grayris nodded to them, grim-faced.
No one wanted more trouble - but they needed that Glimmer miner, Nivviks and Therin notwithstanding.
Gaelin flew, Vynriis manned the comms to keep Grayris and Dunraven alerted, and Norovoi strapped on a Captain-strength Arc shield generator, then pulled her fusion rifle over her shoulder and loaded it up with a fresh battery. The Mythoclast hummed, almost hungry for action.
A part of her hoped it was going to stay that way: unsated.
"What are we thinking?" Gaelin-4 asked. "Danger close?"
Norovoi sheathed her sword over her back, exulting in the familiar weight of it. "Something like that. Hold fire; we don't know what we're dealing with."
"If it has three eyes?"
"Just shoot."
"Noted. Right... I see the Skiff, it's still in one piece."
"Position?"
"On-planet, docking clamps engaged. No sign of a fight."
"The miner?"
"Still at work. I... right, Nivviks is there, he's with it."
"Therin?"
"I don't... I don't know. I can't see him." Gaelin pushed away from the controls, ushered Vynriis into the pilot's seat and joined Norovoi in the hold. He grabbed his rifle, his Transfiguration, out of transmat and slapped in a magazine full of high-calibre rounds. "Ready!" he called over his shoulder.
The rear hatch yawned open. Gaelin, Voidsmoke rising around him, leapt out first and disappeared in the mesh of displaced ice-crystals and water vapour. Norovoi double checked that her suit and helmet were secure before following him out, only flinching slightly as the contained, normalized gravity of the Bandwagon was exchanged for the light, weak version surrounding Hi'iaka. She descended, gradually, and bent her knees as her boots crunched down on solid ice. The steamy smog filled her visor, kept her from seeing even as far as the end of her Mythoclast's barrel, so she quickly switched to thermal - as near-useless as it was. The mining lander kicked up enough heat for her HUD to pick up on, so it was to that she trudged towards, almost skipping in the weak gravitational pull.
The fog cleared away just as she neared it, the lander's inbuilt fans cutting a swathe of empty air around the device. Nivviks twirled in her direction, shock rifle powering up, but at the sight of her relaxed. He raised a lower hand in recognition, then motioned to his helmet. Norovoi checked her radio and finally found a channel to connect with the Vandal. "What's the trouble?"
"Movement," the Eliksni clicked, gesturing to their left - away from the ships. "Lightbearer went to investigate, yes?"
"Could have been the wind."
Nivviks shook his head. "Was alive," he retorted. "A little large. Like human."
"Then..." Norovoi trailed off and switched channels. "Gaelin, you there? Found Nivviks - alive, miner functional, and..." she glanced at the rumbling machine, "we're almost through, I think. What's your status? Over."
"Trailing Therin," the Exo replied, almost breathlessly. "There's... I see him, half a klik out. Armed. Over."
"Need backup? Over."
"Maybe. Load up the miner first, over."
"Wilco, over and out." Norovoi returned to Nivviks' channel and motioned to the mining lander. "Let's load this up. No point hanging around if there's trouble coming."
Nivviks nodded and deactivated the miner wirelessly through a datapad. He trudged back to the Skiff, bounding across the surface with ease. Norovoi watched as the vessel lifted up, flew back over and magnetically collected the Glimmer-miner, then rose up into the sky. She waved him away, barking, "Get back to the Kaliks-Fel."
The Skiff cloaked and ascended - headed straight for the shrunken sword-shaped vessel nestled between the stars. The Bandwagon followed it halfway, just high enough to avoid most close-quarters arms fire, but close enough to descend and pick her up in case of an emergency. Norovoi hopped across the lunar surface to where Gaelin's - and now Therin's - markers were highlighted on her HUD's radar.
She stopped fifty paces out, spotting the problem. The Hunters weren't alone. Therin had his cannon out and aimed at a... man. A man. Just... standing there, on the icy surface of Hi'iaka, without a biosuit. Without a rebreather. Without any covering of any sort. An Awoken man in basic Corsair uniform.
Standing.
In the cold gulf of space.
He wasn't dead either. Just standing there, ice-crystals forming in his iridescent navy-and-dusk-black hair but otherwise alive. Grinning softly. Hands clasped behind his back. Eyes, pitch black, darting between Gaelin-4 and Therin Vai... and finally her.
Oh.
So that was it.
"That's a dragon," Norovoi murmured into their shared comms.
A pause. Silence. Deafening. Yawning on and on.
Then...
"I know," Therin breathed shakily. He was so tense, so still for a moment Norovoi feared his suit had torn and the trans-Neptunian moon's chill had snuck inside, but no. He was alive. He was alive.
The real question, the better question, was for how long?
"Back away," Gaelin whispered. "Slowly."
"I'm in biting range."
"It hasn't shown its teeth," Norovoi informed him. The yet went unsaid.
"I... I thought they were all dead."
Obviously not, she thought, but didn't dare say as much.
The dragon heard, though. It stared at her, soft smile ever present. It even raised a black-gloved hand to say hi. It opened its mouth - and its voice cut into their secured comms, just like that, tearing past the Ghost-encrypted firewalls like they were nothing. "Lightbearers," it greeted in a sing-song voice. A nice voice, too. One so inherently suited to song.
"Back off," Norovoi growled warningly, "now."
"Please, good lady, I bear you no ill intentions."
Therin's head moved - glancing down at the ice. "Nor," he hissed, "keep talking."
What was he-? Oh. Oh, right.
"What the hell do you want?" Norovoi demanded.
The not-Corsair took a single graceful step forward. "Fair lady, I have come only to lend your compatriots - and yourself - what assistance I can offer. Your cause is an innocent, worthwhile one - and how could I live with myself if I let you fly by without offering help of any sort?
Norovoi waited with bated breath. "Ther-"
"Reflection's solid," Therin murmured. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there. Not that she could blame him. Could anyone?
"Stay back," Norovoi snapped. "Stay where you are." She increased her radio's bandwidth, tearing through the radiation-rife atmosphere right to the Bandwagon above. "Vyn, we need an emergency pick-up. Watch your thoughts; it's a dragon." Without waiting for the Vandal's reply, Norovoi continued, "Erratz, give me-"
And then she froze, like Therin had - and for all the wrong reasons.
Erratz...
Erratz was go-
"Nor!" Gaelin snapped, on the verge of panic, voice unsteady. "Don't."
He'd heard. Noticed her slip-up. Then the dragon must have as well; had listened, had waited...
She couldn't think. Her life depended on it. Let the grief and horror and anger pass her by, don't- don't make a wish, don't make a wish, don't make a wish...
"You need not fear, my lady," the dragon purred. "I mean you no harm."
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Norovoi snarled. "Gaelin, aim at that thing's head. If it moves a fucking muscle, shoot its brains out."
Gaelin-4 hesitated. "It won't be-"
"I don't care!"
"You don't care about anything," Therin whispered.
Norovoi flinched. Then shook her head; they didn't have time for this. "Back away from it, now."
"Nor-"
"Do as I say. Vynriis?!"
"No, Vyn, stay out!" Therin shouted over the line. The Bandwagon hung above, two hundred to three hundred metres above - Norovoi wasn't sure, she hadn't taken her eyes off the dragon. "We can settle this ourselves."
"Therin, don't-"
"What do you want?" Therin demanded.
The dragon glanced at him, eyes glittering. "To offer aid," it hummed in its honey-sweet voice, head tilted and shark-eyes half-lidded.
Therin shuffled. "There's... there's no distortions."
"You aren't..." Norovoi trailed off, realization hitting her like a punch to the gut. "A dragon?! Are you out of your mind?! We're trying to survive, not... not self-sabotage!"
"This-"
"We'll need to prep a muzzle," Gaelin-4 grunted. "Do we have anything else like that, Vyn?"
The Vandal took a short time to answer. "Eh... eia. Some. Tech-witch manacles."
"Oh yeah. Ask the Senator; she might know how to work them."
"You're serious," Norovoi sighed. "Both of you."
Gaelin-4 said nothing, did nothing. Therin nodded in the distance, still staring at the ice by the dragon's feet.
"Idiots... You'll get us all killed." She grimaced. "You understand that, right? This goes wrong, everyone's dead."
"Nor-"
"Not like I have anything left to live for anyways." Norovoi doubled down on her thoughts, forced herself to keep all the burgeoning emotion at bay. She couldn't - she couldn't... not with a dragon lingering by. She heaved a tired, weathered sigh. "Hell..."
The dragon laughed - slowly, softly, just on the edge of her mind. It was... awful. And strangely familiar - like a home she'd once known intimately, left behind long ago in another life.
The Baroness threw a fit the moment they returned to the Kaliks-Fel. Grayris roared, she bellowed, she cursed in a half-dozen languages (only one of which was human) and she stomped towards the dragon, shrapnel launcher spitting embers. Therin stepped in between, just a little - because even Norovoi found the sight of the twelve-foot Eliksni noble a tad intimidating, what with the massive ornamental horns/antlers adorning her ivory helmet and the dark chips of Stasis Splinters strapped to various parts of her armour. The sharpened Hive teeth too, on her helmet just under the spider-like visual receptors to resemble a skeletal, bestial underbite, were sign enough that she was not to be fucked with.
And then there were the medals of dimmed blood-red Minotaur eyes dangling from her belt, too...
"That should not be here!" Grayris snarled gutturally. Near-transparent crystals gathered in her empty lower hands, energy crackling in the air around her helmet. She was pissed. "What were you thinking?!"
"They weren't," Norovoi muttered. Therin threw her a bitter look; Gaelin ignored her. "Look, let's just lock this thing up before there's any trouble."
"No. No, I will not-"
"We need all the edges we can get," Therin reasoned. "Gray, think about this."
"I am the only one doing that!" the Baroness shouted. Her launcher leveled with the dragon's skull.
"We don't have the hands, you said! We don't have the foreknowledge either, and if..." Therin's voice faded to a low whisper. "If what we'd heard in Vesta is true, if War left 'moons in the Cloud... We need a way past them. We need to be able to see ahead."
"The Senator-"
"Can only work so far, and against Witches? Hive Wizards? Taken? We can't... we can't chance that. Can't chance losing her. One whiff of her metaconcert and they'll come screaming for blood. Our blood. We..." Therin looked back at the dragon. "Can you get us out of here?"
The dragon smiled, seemingly unaware of the Baroness only one misstep away from burning it away to oblivion, or of the hissing Vandal - Vynriis - who stood nearby and poised to finish the job with shock blades in the event Grayris failed. Even Gaelin was turned towards the beast with his rifle drawn, Void burning between his fingers. "Do you wish it?"
Therin groaned. "We'll... get around to that. Look, Gray-"
"Silence it," she growled. "Silence it now."
"That's... I'll try," Therin promised. "I'll try. Gaelin, uh... you said you have a muzzle?"
"Might do," Gaelin muttered. "Nor, help me-"
"No." Norovoi briefly dropped a hand on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. "This is all you two. I bid you all goodnight, farewell, good luck."
"Nor-"
She offered Therin nothing short of the blankest, coldest look she could muster. "This is your mess - your dragon." Norovoi suppressed the urge to sneer; it would have been unseemly, acting on whimful frustration before a dragon of all things. "You're on your own."
"But-"
"If it acts out, we die." Norovoi pointed at him. "This is all you, Therin. All you." And with that, she marched away.
Dragons. Honestly. What did they want from her? To strongarm it into subservience? As if. There was little else she could offer in taming a desire-drake besides basic brawn. Wyrms and Worms were subjects for someone else; she'd just as sooner jump out into the cold vacuum of space, biosuit and rebreather forgotten.
Fatal for the Lightless, that.
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for valiantly editing!
This fic is self-indulgent. I'm saying that right off the bat; it's first and foremost written because I want to have fun. That said, I'm still going to hold myself to my own standard of basic writing, but beyond that... it may perhaps get a little chaotic and a little dicey. I'm going to venture into themes and circumstances and all sorts of things that I don't usually write, on the basis that this was formed of a dozen different prompts and a whole lot of whims.
Also, multi-crossover. Not usually my cup of tea given how chaotic they can go if handled in any way less than with the utmost vigilance, but hey, I'm a hypocrite, so here you are. I know this messes with my usual writing schedule too (which is bordering on swamped), but I don't care. I seriously don't care. Last few weeks have been... rattling for want of a better term, so I'm just happy to sink my teeth into something.
Oh, and speaking of those themes - warnings and all that, things can get dark, philosophically depressing, religion (mostly of the fictional kind) is mentioned and addressed, bad words are used frequently (some might say too frequently), some scenarios can get detailed and uncomfortable (violence- or lemon-wise), and characters are flawed - with an emphasis on the F-L-A-W-E-D. Seriously, these guys have issues. Trauma, depression, anger, the whole shtick.
With that out of the day... thanks for reading!
