Here's the latest chapter! It's time to start that promised original arc! I'm super looking forward to writing! It should be fun! Hopefully y'all will think so too! As always, thanks for reading, and I'll see you next update!
crimson
chapter four
rire
After the meeting ended, Keith for once found himself following the advice he'd been given- to eat something and take a nap. In spite of the fact that he'd been sleeping for several vargas already, he felt exhausted. He wondered if it was just because of the stress of telling the paladins about Lotor, or if it was just a normal result of being in a cryopod.
Maybe both.
He slept like the dead for five vargas, in his own quarters for once. He couldn't exactly sleep in the red lion while it was being repaired, and he'd been sleeping more in his quarters lately anyways. Now that his senses of smell and hearing were back up to par, he felt a little less wary about being caught off guard, even subconsciously.
It helped that he could trust the paladins.
When he woke, he paused long enough to work out the worst of his bed fur, before he made his way down to the red lion's hangar. Coran, Pidge, and Hunk were still at it, and he had to admit, the red lion didn't look in as bad a shape as he thought it might.
But then, he hadn't exactly seen it right after their arrival on the Castle. He wasn't sure how bad the damage had been, just that it had been bad. Even for a Voltron lion, getting hit by an ion cannon was nothing to sneeze at, if he was to borrow an Earth expression. Actually, he was pretty sure the only reason he'd survived was because it was a Voltron lion.
And then he'd pushed her when she was hurting, until she couldn't move. Some paladin he was.
"Oh, hey Keith." Hunk spotted him, pulling off his goggles. He was wielding something onto the hull of the red lion, or had been, sitting on some hastily thrown together scaffolding. "Come to check out our progress?"
Keith just nodded, shuffling awkwardly on his feet. Part of him was almost glad to have his past with Lotor out in the open, but the rest of him just felt anxious about it. They seemed to have taken it well, but what if they were just putting on an act?
No. He could trust the paladins, he reminded himself. If knowing his past had created any kind of rift between him and them, they would have said so.
Probably.
"Well she's coming along great, if you're wondering." Hunk said. "Which you probably are, seeing as you're here. Unless you wanted some alone time with her. Do you?"
Keith shook his head, managing to find his voice this time. "No. Just... just wanted to see how the repairs were going, like you said."
"Please, you have two tech geniuses working on it." Pidge rolled her eyes, not even looking up from the coding she was working on, her laptop balanced neatly in her lap. "Of course it's going well."
"And Coran." Hunk hastily added. "Don't forget about Coran."
"Thank you, Number Two." Coran said, frowning slightly at Pidge. She appeared unapologetic, but it could just be that she was too distracted to notice his look of disapproval. "But Number Five is right. It should only take another quintant or two to get her back up and running."
Keith frowned, tilting his head. "That seems like a long time."
"Oh, the repairs should be done in the next few vargas, that much is true." Coran admitted. "But the red lion's energy core was severely drained in that last fight. It'll take awhile before it's fully recharged."
"Oh." Keith said, not knowing what else to say. He had only thought about the physical damage- he hadn't thought about how much energy he had used up. Using the railgun took a lot of power out of the red lion, and he'd used it twice, at max power. Even putting aside the hit from the ion cannon, that still would have been enough to disable the red lion on its own.
He had to do better, he thought, looking up at the red lion. Right now he didn't feel worthy to even be in her presence, much less be her paladin.
He could only just barely feel her. While it was an improvement from when he couldn't feel her at all, it was still cause for concern. They had just found a new paladin for the black lion, and now because of him, they wouldn't be able to form Voltron for another two days, if Coran's estimation was right- and it probably was.
They didn't even know if they could yet.
Ducking his head, he missed the shared look between Hunk and Pidge. The yellow paladin cleared his throat, catching his attention, offering him what felt like a nervous smile. "So... you want to help?"
Keith blinked. "I don't know that much about mechanics."
"Seriously?" Pidge asked. "You grew up in space, and you don't know anything about mechanics?"
Keith frowned. "I didn't say I didn't know anything."
"Just not anything useful." Pidge said.
Keith opened his mouth to retort, but quickly shut it, realizing that she was right. Everything he knew in relation to mechanics involved either quick fixes to common issues, which this definitely wasn't, or bypassing security. He could also rig up bombs, but he wasn't certain if that counted as mechanics, per say.
"We could still use some help with the heavy lifting." Hunk assured him.
"Or you could bring us snacks!" Pidge said.
"Nope, nun-uh." Hunk shook his head. "No offense, but I do not trust Keith's choice in snacks."
Keith frowned, his brows furrowing. "What's wrong with my taste in snacks?"
"The last time you bought yourself a snack, you got a shake made out of meat." Hunk stated flatly.
"And various organs." Pidge added.
"Yes, thank you Pidge. Meat and various organs." Hunk said. "Which, by the way, is still disgusting even though I now know you're Galra."
There was no animosity in the statement, just disgust, and even that was directed at his taste in food, not towards him. The combination of feeling relieved and taking offense was an odd one, but that was where Keith found himself, at the crossroads between those two very contrasting emotions.
"Cibum is a delicacy." Keith said. "If you just tried it-"
"Nope, not doing that." Hunk said. "There is no way I am ever trying cibum, delicacy or not."
Keith huffed in protest, but he strangely felt more at ease than he had been when he first entered the hangar. Maybe things really would be okay, even though they knew about the truth about his past now.
"So... heavy lifting?" Keith asked. He'd get Hunk to try cibum eventually. He knew he'd like it if he just tried it. "What do you need me to-"
"Paladins, sorry to interrupt," Allura's voice cut in over the intercom, "-but we are picking up a distress call from planet Caligo. Please gather on the bridge."
Exchanging a glance with Hunk and Pidge, Keith frowned. He guessed it had actually been nearly half a day since the distress signal had been sent from Puig, but it still felt like this one was a little too soon. Still, just because they were down a lion, it didn't mean the Galra Empire would take a break- especially not if they were getting their footing back underneath the command of Lotor.
Lotor. His eyes narrowed at the thought of the Galran prince. He still didn't have the answers to the questions his sudden appearance had left him with- namely, why he had been called out of exile after so long. If Zarkon was dead, shouldn't there be a Kral Zera? That was how things were done, right?
Then again, it had been over ten thousand years since the last one. But that had been the tradition. They didn't have a line of succession like Altea, or even Earth once had. So what was Lotor doing sitting on the throne, even temporarily?
Unless... maybe Zarkon wasn't dead.
"Guess we'll have to take a rain check on those repairs." Hunk frowned.
"No worries." Coran said. "I think I can just about finish up what we're working on right now. You three run along, go see what Allura wants. We can't keep the Caligians waiting!"
"Let's just hope it's not a trap this time." Pidge remarked, shutting her laptop and setting it aside. "We barely got out of the last one."
Keith flinched, staring hard at the ground. He knew Pidge hadn't meant anything by that, but he knew she had a point. He wasn't sure if he was prepared to face Lotor again so soon.
"Hey," Hunk said, patting him on the shoulder, "-don't worry about it. I fall for traps all the time too."
"I haven't." Pidge said.
"Well not all of us can be you, Pidge." Hunk said, but there was no true edge to his words. "Anyways, don't sweat it. We're a team, remember? That means we have your back."
"Besides, we don't even know if it's Lotor yet." Pidge pointed out. "Even if it is, at least you'll be more prepared for him this time. I mean, how much more anger can you possibly have left in you after all that?"
"Probably more than you'd think." Keith cracked, half-uncertain if that was an attempt at a joke, or a confession. Talking about Lotor had helped, sure, but he still felt angry. It wasn't the blinding, all encompassing rage from before, but he was pretty sure he still had plenty of anger left in him.
He trailed behind Pidge and Hunk, trying not to think too much about it. It must have worked, because they got to the bridge sooner than he expected. Lance and Allura were already there, and he had to wonder if Lance had just been closer when she'd called everyone to the bridge, or if they had been in here together. He was wearing his casual clothes, just like everyone else was- everyone save for the princess, that was.
This time, she was wearing paladin armor. Pink paladin armor.
She caught him looking at, giving him a faint smile. "I didn't want to use black. Pink seemed more appropriate."
Keith blinked, but any questions he might have had about the supposed appropriateness of pink died in his throat when Allura's expression turned more serious. Bringing up a holoscreen, Allura turned her full attention towards it- and after a tick, so did he.
"I was running a scan, looking for any signs of Lotor when I picked up on a distress beacon coming from the planet of Caligo." Allura said. "While I wasn't able to pick up on any Galra activity in the area, I still do not think that this is something we should ignore."
"Any ships?" Pidge asked. "I mean, it doesn't have to be the Galra. Lance and Hunk's encounter with the Baku proved that there are other threats out there than just the Empire."
"None." Allura said. "Or at least, none that our deep space scanners have picked up."
"So what?" Keith asked. "We just go in blind?"
"Hardly." Allura said. "We will wormhole in close enough so that we can send a few drones to monitor the situation, but far away enough to avoid attracting attention."
Oh, right. Drones. He'd nearly forgotten they had those. They had lost two of them during their frantic attempts to escape Zarkon's pursuit what felt like ages ago, but Pidge and Hunk had since worked with the Olkari to build some new ones. Pidge had even installed cloaking in a few.
"Sounds like a plan." Keith said.
"Who knows, maybe it's just some kind of local skirmish." Lance said with a shrug.
"Even if it is, we should still see if there is anyone who needs our help." Allura said. "Though I am loathe to get involved in local conflicts when I know so little about the universe in its current form. I don't suppose you have any experience with Caligo...?"
The question was directed towards him, but all Keith could do was shake his head. "No. I've never even been in that sector of space before."
Allura huffed slightly. "I suppose we will just have to make do."
"Gee, Keith," Lance said, "-and here I thought you were supposed to be the useful one."
Keith narrowed his eyes, biting back a response. It wasn't like it was his fault that he hadn't stepped foot outside the main base until he was ten cycles old. Add that to the nearly three deca-phoebs he'd spent on Earth, and he hadn't exactly had a lot of time explore the universe.
But it wasn't like Lance knew that. He'd told them a lot of things, just not about his childhood illness. It was bad enough that they knew his own father had poisoned him, they didn't need to know that it had wrecked havoc on his immune system so badly that it had taken deca-phoebs to get it up and running again. He didn't want to make it sound like he was looking for pity, or anything like that.
Allura frowned, narrowing her eyes slightly. "I'm sorry. Does that mean you think I'm useless?"
"What?" Lance stammered, his eyes going wide, visibly panicking at the unintended backfire of his quip. "No! No, I would never think that, of course not. I'm just saying Keith is more familiar with recent space events. That's all."
Allura's frown deepened, clearly not buying it. "Are you sure? Because it sounded a lot like-"
"I'm sure!" Lance said quickly. "Anyways, how about those Caligians? Don't we have to like, save them or something?"
Allura kept her gaze fixed on Lance for a tick longer, before turning sharply on her heel. "So long as there are no protests."
The paladins exchanged glances, before finally, they all shook their heads one by one.
"Good." Allura said. "Now let's go see what all this fuss is about."
The fuss turned out to be the Empire after all.
Although Allura's initial assessment that there weren't any ships in the immediate vicinity proved correct, there were still several squadrons of imperial sentries on the planet itself. They had arrived without warning around two vargas ago, and by now had managed to round up most of the population of the planet, which consisted of a single tribe living around the jungle that took up the bulk of the planet's single continent. They weren't very technologically advanced, and had been subdued in short order.
Consequently, the battle to free the planet wasn't one that required the lions. He was almost grateful for it- since it didn't seem like Lotor was the one behind this, it would give him something to take his lingering anger out on, all without risking losing himself to it again. It wasn't like he could stay behind anyways. With Shiro gone, the only actual trained combatants they had left were himself and Allura.
(Which reminded him- he should probably try to rope Lance, Hunk, and Pidge into another training session again. Their hand to hand skills desperately needed work.)
Still, fighting sentries was easy enough, and all three had ranged weapons, so they didn't even need to get up close to them in the first place. Allura had opted to bring her staff and not the black bayard- the same one that Shiro had recovered from Zarkon, but had never gotten the chance to use. He made a mental note to ask about it later, though he almost wasn't sure if he should. Shiro's disappearance was still a touchy issue for all of them.
Not that he was excluded from that. He was just trying not to dwell on it. Focusing on both Shiro's disappearance and Lotor's appearance just sounded too stressful, and Lotor was the imminent threat. It just made more sense to focus on him. Not that it made him any less guilty. It was like Shiro was just something he could put aside.
"Hunk and I have our sector just about wrapped up." Allura's voice broke through his thoughts, coming in over the coms. "How are things where you are?"
"Pidge, Lance, and I have just about finished wrapping things up here too." Keith said. "It doesn't look like the Empire had any forces here other than those sentries."
All things considered, it hadn't been a tough battle. It hadn't exactly been an easy one- fighting the Empire was never easy- but it was far from their roughest battle. They'd been forced to split up into teams of two, since the bridge that connected the two sections of the village had been destroyed, likely on purpose. He'd gone with Lance and Pidge, and Hunk had gone with Allura.
He couldn't help but think that they would have had more even numbers if Shiro were here. They could have wrapped things up even sooner then.
"Good." Allura said. "We should find the leader of the Caligians. I would like to speak with them."
"To see if they want to join the Voltron Coalition?" Pidge asked.
"That too, yes." Allura admitted. "But it is also important that we leave them with a means to contact us directly in case something like this ever happens again. It is fortunate that we managed to pick up on their distress call when we did, otherwise we might have gotten here far too late."
"We'll ask around." Lance said. "See if there's anyone here who could be their leader, or who could direct us to them."
"We'll do the same here." Hunk said. "We'll let you know if we find anything."
"Got it." Lance said, before glancing back towards them. "So, who's up for having a chat with the local population?"
"They don't exactly look like they're all that big on talking." Pidge observed.
Keith grimaced. He definitely hadn't failed to pick up the wary way the Caligians were watching them, he just didn't know that anyone else had picked up on it. He wasn't sure if it was just because of him, or if they were just wary of outsiders period- it wasn't like there had been any actual Galra among the invasion force, just sentries.
Which was... actually kind of odd, now that he thought about it. There wasn't anything in the planet's atmosphere that would have been toxic to Galra- he was breathing the air with no problems, and all scans for any potential toxins had turned up negative. So why would they just use sentries?
Actually, come to think of it... how had a planet this primitive even managed to send a distress signal in the first place?
Something didn't feel right here, he suddenly realized.
"Pidge," Keith said lowly, leaning down a bit so he could whisper in the green paladin's ear, "-do you think you could do a scan for the source of the distress signal?"
Pidge blinked, a slight frown gracing her features. "Sure, but why?"
"It's just... this place is even more primitive than Earth." Keith said.
"Wow, thanks." Pidge said dryly. "I hadn't noticed."
"No, it's-" Keith huffed. "How did they even manage to send a distress signal in the first place?"
"I mean, Queen Luxia's people aren't exactly technologically advanced, and they still managed to send out a beacon." Lance pointed out. "Maybe it's the same thing."
"Maybe." Keith admitted. "But something about this feels weird to me."
Pidge's frown deepened, before she shrugged. "I guess it wouldn't hurt. Even if your hunch is wrong, maybe we can find their leader near the beacon."
Keith just nodded, waiting anxiously for the results of Pidge's scan. In the meantime, he kept a close eye on his surroundings, and a tight grip on his bayard. Maybe Lance was right, and they did have some other method of sending out a distress signal, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this was some kind of a trap.
His hunches usually weren't wrong.
"Huh, that's odd." Pidge frowned. "According to this, the source of the distress signal is somewhere in the ocean. But that can't be right."
"Maybe there's a technologically advanced population of merpeople living in the ocean?" Lance suggested, but it was obvious that he was starting to feel a bit nervous too, his finger hovering over the trigger of his rifle.
Pidge shook her head. "Other than the distress signal, our bayards, and the weapons the Galra brought with them, I'm not picking up any other signs of technology at all on this planet."
"Actually," Pidge corrected herself, "-wait. I am picking up on something else."
"Paladins," Allura's voice cut in again before he had the chance to ask anything, "-Hunk and I managed to locate the leader, but there's a complication. Apparently the Galra have taken their chief's daughter hostage and have transported her to another location. Hunk and I are on our way to rescue her now."
Keith felt his hair stand on end. "Allura, I don't think-"
He didn't get to finish that sentence, a loud burst of static cutting off anything that he might have said. He yanked his helmet off with a jerk, surprised to find that Lance and Pidge had done the same thing.
"What the heck was that?" Lance asked.
"That," Pidge said, "-was interference. It's what I was trying to tell you about."
Rubbing his ears, Keith tried to get the ringing to subside. "Can you pinpoint its location?"
Pidge just scoffed. "Who exactly do you think you're asking here? Of course I can."
"Good." Keith said, leaving his ears alone for now. "Because I need you to lead me to it."
"Shouldn't be hard." Pidge said. "It's nearby."
Keith frowned, looking across the series of sturdy mud huts that dotted the landscape. The Caligians were watching them warily from inside, but didn't make any moves to attack. Assuming that what Allura had said was true, and their chief's daughter had really been kidnapped, then there was a high probability that they had been forced into cooperating.
Taking hostages wasn't exactly uncommon, but the chief's daughter? Usually the Empire would just take the chief. Why the daughter?
Sharing a look of mutual understanding, he and Lance flanked either side of Pidge, shields raised as they made their way through the network of mud huts. The static had died down in their helmets, though their coms were still offline, so they had put them back on, with only Pidge still carrying hers tucked underneath her arm, keeping her attention focused on the readout her gauntlet computer was giving her.
The mud hut they arrived at looked like any other, but there were no wary Caligians peeking outside. Exchanging a look with Lance and Pidge, Keith nodded his head. Slowly edging towards the wooden door, he carefully grasped the handle, his grip on his bayard tight. He couldn't hear anything inside, but the ringing hadn't entirely faded from his ears yet.
Pidge silently mouthed a countdown, and on the count of three, he flung the door open.
"Don't shoot!"
Lance lowered his bayard with a frown, exchanging another glance with him and Pidge. Pidge gestured at him with her head, and after a moment of silent protest, Keith huffed, entering the mud hut. The Caligian inside froze at the sight of him, growing paler as he scrambled backwards.
"Please," he said, "-I have done everything that you asked."
Glancing back towards Pidge, Keith arched a brow. That was as good a confirmation as any that there was at least one actual Galra on this planet aside from himself.
"We're not here to hurt you." Pidge said, stepping into the hut behind him. "We're the paladins of Voltron."
"Yeah, we're here to help." Lance echoed. "Even if mullet here does look a little on the scary side."
He probably didn't help his image any by glaring at Lance.
The Caligian peered at him cautiously, then looked towards Lance and Pidge, confusion vivid on his features. "You are the ones of legend?"
"That's us!" Lance boasted. "The paladins of Voltron, at your service."
Pidge, meanwhile, just rolled her eyes before frowning. "If you didn't know we were the paladins, how did you know to jam our communications?"
The Caligian blinked, staring at her in confusion. "All I was told to do was to press the button when the light started to flash. I was told that if I didn't..."
He swallowed, staring down at the device in his hands miserably. "Educating the chief's daughter is my responsibility. When they took her, they told me they would feed her to the rire if I didn't listen."
"The rire?" Pidge asked.
"The life-drainer." The Caligian whispered, as if that explained everything. "It lives in the jungle."
"Okay, so I'm no expert, but anything called the life-drainer sounds like, super bad." Lance said.
"Unfortunately, it's probably also where Allura and Hunk are headed." Keith said. Whoever was behind this must have been monitoring their communications, and had remotely signaled the device when their trap was sprung. It had to be short range- otherwise they could have just cut out communications on a much wider scale. "Where can we find this rire?"
"Go straight on the river path." The Caligian said. "It will lead you to a great pond, where we collect water from. Follow the river that feeds into it, and you will find the rire. That is all I know. We do not go there."
"Should we warn Allura and Hunk?" Pidge asked. "If we switch off the jammer-"
Keith shook his head. "If we switch off that jammer, whoever kidnapped the chief's daughter might just kill her. We can't let that happen."
The Caligian flinched, scrambling away from the three of them, holding the jamming device protectively to his chest. Looking between themselves, the paladins heaved a slight sigh, realizing that definitely wasn't among the options that they had.
"I'll try and cut them off." Keith said. "With any luck, maybe I can get there before Allura and Hunk do."
"I'll come with you." Lance said.
Keith just shook his head. "Stay here with Pidge. If this life-drainer is as dangerous as it sounds, then we need at least a few people to stay behind."
In case we don't make it back, he didn't say. But after what happened to Shiro, he didn't have to.
"Be careful." Pidge told him.
Keith managed a faint smile. "When have I ever not been careful?"
"The druid." Pidge replied.
"Central Command." Lance added. "Twice."
"A few hours ago, with Lotor." Pidge said.
Grumbling, Keith narrowed his eyes. "Okay, I get it. But I'll be careful this time, I promise."
"You'd better be." Pidge told him. "Because if you get yourself killed doing something stupid, I'll kill you myself."
Opening his mouth to ask how that would even work, Keith quickly shut it. It wasn't worth it. If there was one thing he knew about humans, it was that they were odd.
Wiping sweat from her brow as she hurried down the jungle path, Allura paused for a tick to get her bearings. The humid tropical climate of Caligo was a distant cry from the far more temperate one that she was used to on Altea, causing her hair to stick to her face and her tiara feel uncomfortable on her brow. She would have thought that getting out of the sun would have helped, but it felt like the jungle was even warmer and more cloying than the village surrounding it.
Hunk looked slightly better off when he finally caught up with her, in spite of being somewhat out of breath. Taking a tick to catch it, he looked up at her with a slight frown. "Are you sure we're headed the right way?"
"I'm positive." Allura said. "He said to follow the path, and then the river."
They had found the pond that the path lead to, and had been able to find the river in short order afterwards. Looking ahead, she could see that the path continued for a few more feet, before it disappeared, too overgrown to make it out clearly from this distance. It had been well tended up until they reached the pond, but once they had moved past it and had started to follow the river, it had become less and less so. Perhaps the Caligians simply didn't come this way often enough to warrant it.
"Okay," Hunk said, "-just making sure."
"You could have stayed behind." Allura told him. "Regrouped with the other paladins."
"And let you go off into some creepy jungle alone?" Hunk asked, shaking his head. "No way."
A fond smile crept its way onto her features. She had grown to care deeply about the paladins over these past few phoebs, and though she hardly needed it to, it was still nice to hear that the sentiment was apparently returned.
"Thank you, Hunk." Allura said. "Have you had any luck getting in touch with the others?"
"No." Hunk told her. "I think this jungle is blocking our communications. Dense foliage, or something."
Allura frowned. She didn't like not being able to contact the others. She was grateful that she had at least been able to inform them of the hostage before they cut out, but she really would have rather been able to keep in constant communication with them. She didn't like the idea that the Galra were holding someone hostage- it almost sounded like they were waiting for someone to come along and free the Caligians.
But perhaps she was simply overthinking things, after what happened with Lotor. Taking hostages to force compliance was something the Galra had been known to do. Though it had turned out to be a lie, it was very much what they had done on Olkarion, and they had done it on the Balmera as well. Granted, that had been a trap, but...
Either way, she couldn't ignore a kidnapping, least of all that of a child. She had to do something.
"I suppose our only option then is to proceed." Allura said. "Just cautiously."
Not that they had much of a choice in the matter. Whoever had come through here before had already cleared a path through the overgrowth, and though she was loathe to use it, they didn't have much of a choice. It would have taken a lot longer to cut through it themselves, and neither of them had anything bladed on them anyways.
The black bayard, perhaps... but no. She didn't feel right using it yet.
Off in the distance, she picked up on the sound of a scream. Allura's blood froze, throwing all caution to the wind as she raced forward, gripped by the fear that she might be too late. Bursting out into the small clearing, she frantically scanned the area for any sign of the chief's daughter, or the one who had taken her.
They spotted her first.
"Thought I told that stupid chief to send me the black paladin." The Galra commander said, glowering at her. His eyes glowed in the dim light of the jungle, the tree canopy above them so thick that it nearly blocked out all light. Only a few faint traces of sunlight reached the jungle floor- the only other sources of light came from her own paladin armor, and the bright flash of Hunk's bayard as he summoned it, having just barely managed to catch up with her.
Send the black paladin, though? Allura's thoughts flashed back to how anxious the chief had seemed as she spoke to him. At first, she had thought it was just due to how worried he was about his daughter, but now she suspected that it was that and more.
So this was a trap.
"I am the black paladin." Allura stated, trying to sound resolute. Now that her eyes had adapted, she could see the small Caligian girl being held firmly by the Commander.
Said Commander's brows shot up. "I was told the black paladin was the Champion."
"Told?" Allura asked. "Told by whom?"
"Our new Emperor." The Galra said, with a toothy grin. "Said he'd promise me a position at Central Command if I lured the black paladin out to this stupid tree."
Allura frowned, briefly glancing towards the tree in question. It was massive, the trunk alone twice the size of the other trees they had passed. It was responsible for both the lack of sunlight and the lack of other trees, for there weren't any others that grew around it. For that matter, there was no plant life at all around the tree, a realization which sat uneasily with her.
It wasn't just plant life, either. She also couldn't hear any birds.
"He means Prince Lotor, right?" Hunk whispered. "Why would Prince Lotor want to lure you- or well, Shiro, I guess- out to a tree?"
"I think..." Allura said cautiously, keeping her voice at a whisper. "I think this tree is more than just a tree."
The Commander didn't seem to realize it, but the chief's daughter certainly did. At first she had taken her lack of struggling to be that of fear, but while she was certainly afraid, it wasn't the Commander she was afraid of. No, what her gaze was fixed on was the tree, watching it in the wary way prey would watch a distant predator.
"Oh well," the Commander shrugged, heedless of their hushed conversation, "-reckon you'll do just as well."
Before Allura could say anything, he scooped up the chief's daughter, holding her close this chest. Now she did squirm, because the Commander was moving closer towards the tree, unaware of its dangers. Lotor was using him like a chess piece, she realized, though she had no idea what type of chess he was even playing.
"No!" The girl cried out, kicking and squirming with all her might to little avail. "If you go any closer, you will wake the rire!"
The Commander opened his mouth to respond- likely to mock- but his words died in his throat, as the ground around them began to rumble. Next to her, Hunk yelped, and she nearly felt a cry escape her own throat as the tree- the rire, Allura realized- did exactly what the chief's daughter said it would do.
It woke up.
The first thing to appear was the beast's eye, a massive, sideways eye just where the tree's branches began. It instantly fixed on the Commander, who stared back at it, so stunned that he dropped his hostage. She wasted no time in scrambling away and into the jungle. She must have ordered Hunk to go after her, because she felt herself say something, and saw a flash of yellow and white go after her, but if pressed, she honestly couldn't remember doing so.
The Commander turned as if to run, the Galra's credo of victory or death forgotten, but he didn't even take two steps before the tree's roots erupted from out of the ground, tangling him up. She could only watch helplessly as the Galra's life was drained before her eyes, leaving the Commander as nothing more than a withered husk, and a pile of now rusted armor. It turned to dust as the rire released it from its grasp, nothing left to even hit the jungle floor.
Then it looked towards her.
Panic blossomed in her mind as she realized this wasn't something she could fight. She turned on her heel, her staff forgotten as she broke into a run. She didn't get far before something grabbed at her ankle, sending her face first into the dirt. Groaning, she recovered quickly, realizing that she was being dragged towards the rire by one of its branches. Swearing, she contorted her body in an attempt to grab at it, but it was just barely out of her reach.
"Allura!"
The flash of purple light was almost blinding in the near dark, and a tick later, she found the pressure around her ankle gone. Scrambling to her feet, she confirmed her rescuer was who she thought it was. His eyes glowed in the dim light of the jungle, the glow of his Marmoran blade casting a strange light over his paladin armor.
"You okay?" Kyix asked.
"I'm fine." Allura said. "But we need to get out of here. This isn't something we can fight."
"Don't have to tell me twice." Kyix muttered. His expression was contorted, his blade trembling in his hands. If the tree-creature felt ominous to her, she could only imagine how it felt to someone as quintessence sensitive as Kyix, all raw talent and no actual training.
Luckily, the creature seemed wary of his Marmoran blade. Its branches, including the one he had sliced off, coiled back towards it, what appeared to be some kind of mouth opening up in the middle of its trunk seemingly for the sole purpose of screaming. With it came its breath, and with that came the stench of decay, causing Allura's noise to curl.
Kyix, who was even more sensitive to smell than she, nearly vomited.
She wasted no time in switching her helmet to enclosed mode, scrambling to do the same for Kyix. Not a second too soon- for no sooner than had she switched her helmet over, it indicated that the rire had released some kind of toxic compound- perhaps some kind of defensive measure.
"Run!" Allura urged, and for once, Kyix didn't protest. He sheathed his blade, having transformed it back into a knife, and hurried after her. They didn't even bother finding the cleared path, just plunging headlong through the jungle. Somehow they still managed to make it back to the clearing with the pond, the rire's ungodly shriek penetrating even the dense jungle foliage.
Allura paused to catch her breath, hoping that Hunk had been able to catch up with the chief's daughter and had made it out of the jungle okay. She would need to ask Kyix about Lance and Pidge-
The dull thud of something hitting the dirt caught her attention. Behind her, Kyix had collapsed, but rather than fainting as he had after the Balmera and the robeast, he seemed to almost be writhing in pain. Panic rose in her again as she crouched by his side, turning him over so that he lay on his back. Had he breathed in some of the toxin?
"Kyix-"
She stopped short, all words lost as she watched Kyix almost seem to dissolve. It was only when his armor caught up to him that she realized he wasn't dissolving, he was shrinking. No, that wasn't it either- he wasn't shrinking, rather, he almost seemed to be growing younger, the exact opposite of the Commander from before. She could only watch, open-mouthed as he grew smaller, before panic kicked back in and she was seized with the fear that he might just phase out of existence.
Placing her hands on his chest, she focused all of her energy into stopping the process. It surged through the red paladin, enveloping him in a pale blue glow- and slowly, both the pained writhing and the shrinking seemed to come to a halt.
What she was left with was a much younger, much tinier version of the red paladin- not to mention a whole slew of questions that she couldn't even begin to come up with the answers to.
The least of which was how in the world she could possibly fix this.
