"What do you mean both of them are missing?" Lady Montmorency asked Siesta as she sat behind her desk in her tent.
Siesta looked to Lady Montmorency and nodded. "It's just as I said. Both Kirche Zerbst and Louise Vallière have disappeared. Because they weren't in the kitchen this morning we could not look for them until breakfast ended. We looked and could not find either of them, or their familiars."
Lady Montmorency looked at Siesta and sighed. "I see. Thank you for that information, Siesta. I know you have work to do in the kitchen so I'll let you get back to it. I'll look into their disappearance myself."
Siesta bowed and looked to Lady Montmorency before she left. "Thank you."
Lady Montmorency waited until she could no longer hear Siesta's footsteps outside her tent then took out a small book. In the book was every problem that had happened and who it was related to over the entire expedition. Writing another entry under Vallière's name Lady Montmorency stood up and walked out of her tent. The camp was mostly quiet only a few people wandering around; only once she got to the edge of the actual excavation did she see the majority of the students. In front of the Nightscreamer's corpse many students dug, beginning the excavation.
Lady Montmorency looked out at the excavation and sighed. She'd have to pull people away from it to look for Zerbst and Vallière, but it needed to be done.
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Kirche opened slowly opened her eyes and tried to make out where she was and what was going on. The first thing she could tell was that her arms and legs were bare and wrapped in some kind of strange cold material. She could also tell that she was suspended somewhere, the material around her arms and leg holding her up. She could not see anything around her, not a single bit of light in wherever she was, but she could smell. The air around her smelled acrid and stuffy, telling her she was likely in some sort of closed room, though she did not know why it smelt acrid.
Deciding that she disliked the predicament, Kirche tried pulling her arms and legs free, but doing so brought only pain, whatever held her limbs was not budging in the least. Regardless of the fact Kirche tried again, using her body to try to pull her limbs out, and promptly let out a scream. Pain assaulted her body, coming straight from her stomach, where Louise had stuck her.
Accompanied by a strange whir, the room suddenly began glowing, small purple lights pulsing across the walls around her, giving her a vague idea of how big the room she was in. It was massive from what she could tell, and had many recesses along the walls around her, as well as a large table in the center.
As Kirche continued to struggle, ignoring the pain in her stomach, the wall to her right opened up and bright pale purple light shone through. The light blinded her until a figure stepped into the room, eclipsed by the light behind them. A moment later the door closed, and the ceiling lit up with many small purple lights, illuminating the entire room. The walls were made of a silver and purple material that pulsed with faint light, as was the floor and ceiling, and even the table along the wall opposite her. Looking around there were many small, almost bed like ovals along the edges of the room, and Kirche was in one. Standing in the center of the room, almost perfectly in front of Kirche, was the monstrous naked form of Louise; her clawed purple arm and leg almost shimmering in the light above her.
"Good morning, Kirche. Sleep well?" Louise asked as she stepped toward Kirche, almost as if showing off her now monstrous and sexless form.
Kirche spat at Louise, but the spit disintegrated in a flash merely a foot from Kirche's mouth, shocking her in an instant. "I thought you had said you were going to 'use my body', you monster!"
Louise let out a sort girly giggle that seemed completely out of character. "Oh but I am. I had planned to use you to reactivate the dreadnought, but that changed when I discovered something interesting. I'll be using you as my little test subject for a bit!"
"What in Brimir's name are you taking about, a test subject for what? And what is a dreadnought?"
"This is!" Louise said as she raised her arms and gestured to the room they were in. "This is the inside of what Lady Montmorency was calling the Nightscreamer. It is not a creature or a corpse, but the wreckage of a ship."
"But it looks nothing like a sky ship!"
"Did I say it was a sky ship? It was a scientific study ship that traveled the stars, but crashed for an unknown reason here in what are now called the Wwastes. I needed ichor to reactivate it and begin its repairs. That was what you were going to be for, but now your familiar fills that role."
Kirche's eyes opened wide in terror and worry. "What did you do to Flame!"
Louise smiled, showing that a few of her teeth had now become dark black and pointed. "I see you do actually care for something other than boys, or did he keep you company at night too!" Louise mocked before resuming a normal pose and dropping a small green crystal from seemingly nowhere onto the table beside her. "This is what is left of him."
"w-what?"
"I turned him into a nice large chunk of ichor that I've been using to reactivate the ships systems. The repair systems and some other main systems are active, but there is not enough ichor left to allow the repair systems to fully function, so this ship shall not be moving anytime soon, unless I repair it and reactivate all the rest of its systems. But I shan't be using you for that, at least not yet."
"You turned him into a rock? I'll kill you!"
"I doubt that. You're stuck into the wall, with a shard of ichor stuck in your belly as the only reason you have not bled out. And the only reason it hasn't begun turning you into more ichor is because the pod you're in is equipped with a stasis field. If I turned it off, you turn to crystal."
Kirche glared at Louise and could only writhe in pain at how much she desired a free hand and her wand. "You kill my familiar, and then you threaten me to keep me as a test subject!?"
"I'm not threatening you, Kirche. I have merely explained your predicament. You cannot escape, and it's only a matter of time until I am done with you, so enjoy your time until then." Louise said as she turned around and began walking toward the door of the room.
"Wait, I'm not done with you, Louise. I demand you let me go!" Kirche screamed in a rage.
Louise stopped at the doorway and turned her head to Kirche, her long strange cordlike hair that now took up all of her head swaying around. "I've always wanted to say this. Learn your place! Maybe if I'm nice I'll catch you a few friends to keep you company, I will need more test subjects after all!" Louise said as she left the room, the door closing behind her and returning the room to nearly complete darkness.
As she sat suspended in the darkness Kirche could not help looking toward the small glowing green crystal across from her, and could not help but cry.
