Chapter 40
"Final Intervention"
"Welcome to my Lure," Savathûn whispered, insidiously, from the very moment the Wizards ushered her into the lush throne room. A ship, Hawkmoon distantly identified. A capital Hive ship, shaped like an ancient Celtic torc - an almost complete ring of green-black chitin. No hulking Dreadnaught, no swarm of warmoons - just an elegant ring-ship. It didn't come as a surprise, somehow. That the God of secrets and cunning preferred a more delicate approach, even in the subject of one's own flagship.
Hawkmoon didn't look up at Her. Didn't look around. Didn't have eyes for anything that wasn't Cyberwarp's faceplates - that wasn't her empty optics, absent of all the flickers of life she loved. That she loved.
"It's dead, dear," Savathûn gently chided. "Carrying it around won't change that."
Barbed words, thrown out to cause a reaction. Hawkmoon's pride - or what was left of it - flared up in affront. But she refused to meet Her eyes. That would have given Her victory, a little one, one She didn't deserve.
"You did this," Hawkmoon muttered.
"Not with any ill intention, I assure you."
A hook, complete with a line and sinker. It almost caught her. Almost.
"I have some things to ask you," Savathûn sighed. "It would be easier on both of us if you would simply answer them. Duress is an… ugly thing."
Hawkmoon refrained from speaking even a single word.
"Dear. Look at me."
No. No, she wouldn't-
"Daughter."
A Wizard slowly floated over to her, larger than the rest of her ilk present - barring only her Mother. She grasped Hawkmoon's chin and-
"Sister."
Hawkmoon pulled away, turning around, glaring.
Oryx stood there, at the foot of the throne room and flanked only by Balwûr. He stared at her - then past her. "This is-"
"Mine," Savathûn crooned.
"I will take it."
"If you dare."
Oryx grinned. "Do you know what we have done?"
"Tell me," Savathûn drily asked. "What have we done, o Brother mine?"
"We have conquered our way to the edge of the Deep. It whispers to me when I call on it, and it guides my flight. It says that we are at its threshold and that I should come inside. I will go and speak to it."
"The Deep?" Savathûn repeated with a touch more seriousness. "It... is here?"
"Yes."
"How-"
Oryx stepped aside and indicated with Willbreaker out the doors of the throne room, to the window carved in the likeness of an ancient rune. To the open space beyond the threshold of the warship. "They approach."
Hawkmoon forced herself to tear her gaze from the God-King to the sky absent of stars. Something was... wrong. Deeply, cosmically wrong. An ache made itself known in her chest, coming right from her spark. Her device, her mod, the stolen piece of tech, that accursed Aperture Scrambler, it shook against the confines of her chassis. The Dark around her - rolling in her gut and snaking around her neck - intensified tenfold. It coiled around her, around everyone and everything, so thickly it was almost a physical thing
"I will prepare a sacrifice for the Deep's attentions," Oryx exhaled, ecstatic. His eyes glimmered with a cold glee. "An altar upon which to lay all the tribute I owe."
Hawkmoon heard a rustling behind her; Savathûn roused Herself and shook out Her wings. "I see."
"Do you?" Oryx challenged. He twirled back around. "I will speak with it."
"Of course you will," Savathûn scoffed. "Go, then. You need not dally any longer with the likes of me."
Oryx both laughed and growled all at once before stepping through a rip in reality. It closed behind him with a lingering scream.
"It appears I must have words with my dearest Sister," Savathûn murmured. She marched past Hawkmoon - Her claws passing over her pauldron. "I won't be long. Wait for me, would you?"
She did the same as Oryx - left through a portal drawn out with a flick of Her talons and a whispered word.
Leaving Hawkmoon with Her attendants. In the middle of Her flagship.
Not much better odds.
"The Deep itself?" the Wizard beside Hawkmoon whispered. Unlike her sister Balwûr, who was red of armour and tan of flesh, she was white of chitin and midnight black of bone. Larger too; an elder Daughter of Savathûn. Hawkmoon didn't know her, either. Not in the slightest.
"The Deep itself," Balwûr confirmed with a laugh. "Look! Look, sister, it's here! We've done it! We've drawn its eye!"
"Show me."
Claws closed around Hawkmoon's arm and tugged mercilessly. The white-and-black Wizard dragged her with her. Balwûr led the way out of the throne room, an entourage of Knights and other Wizards in tow - even a pair of lumbering Ogres. Hawkmoon grimaced as the Hive's claws bit into her protoform and drew energon, helpless to do anything but follow.
She didn't have the fight in her.
Not-
The Aperture Scrambler trembled. Urgently.
A space-bridge was being opened.
"There!" Balwûr crowed, pointing from the balcony at the centre of the Lure's near-complete ring. "There, sister! Look!"
The light of the sun was being blotted out. Great scars in the fabric of reality were being drawn open, full of bottomless black. Out of it jutted a series of prows shaped like arrowheads - not Taishibethi, not Eecharik, not even Hive. Something else entirely.
Hawkmoon, with a fit of realization, knew with an ultimate certainty that she remembered it. No, not her exactly - one of the versions of her that had come before.
The mission burned to the ground. Time was a one-direction river - and it rippled. Space was a still-surfaced lake - and it rippled. Neither were supposed to ripple. It was scientifically impossible, as all the great geniuses of mankind's three million year existence attested to.
The extrasolar entity didn't care.
Crown Seven braced against a wall as all her atoms were stretched almost to their breaking point... and let go. Then again. And again. And again. She came to the conclusion that there were hidden, incorporeal fingers and talons and tongues poking at all the little parts that made her up. Evaluating, prodding, tasting. It wasn't cruel: it simply didn't understand the human concept of morality. Or maybe it didn't care to understand.
That was what gods did, right? She remembered the old fascinating mythos, particularly the grim Greek ones. It was a god, the thing grasping at the molecules of her being. She didn't know which one - maybe none of them. Maybe all of them. The only thing she knew was that it was a god - and to it she wasn't even an insect. She just... was.
Seven had no lungs and still she felt like she was drowning. There was an all-consuming panic and a hopeless desperation. She clawed at the walls, at the floors, at herself, but nothing dislodged the smothering sensation out of her chest.
She felt more than saw the signs of the methane-covered moon upon which she found herself being forced out in two different directions, becoming egg-shaped, as if grasped by a giant tightening fist. Gravity screamed as it was forced to change according to the entity's whims. And then, just as suddenly, it let go - like it had done with her.
Crown Seven didn't even have time to scream as gravity crashed down and the tidal waves hit.
Extrasolar entity. They all were, in truth, every alien around, but-
It had been burned into the recesses of her brain. A pyramid-shaped shadow, cutting against the glow of Saturn. That had been one. What she saw presently before her was a whole fleet; five, she counted, six, seven, eight, with a ninth space-bridge-but-not unfolding behind. Gravity - the Lure's artificial gravity - tensed. Pulsed. Like a heartbeat. It plucked at her, at every part of her, grabbing each little microscopic piece that made her up and tugging them out - in a testing fashion.
She remembered this feeling.
She remembered how it had pulled a moon almost to the breaking point.
She remembered how it had killed her.
She'd never forgotten what it had felt like to drown in a sea of liquid methane and shattered gravity. It had been the one thing to stick with her all her immortal and mortal life - the inability to breathe.
It was the Darkness. It was the thing responsible for the Collapse - humanity's Collapse, the Eliksni's Whirlwind, the birth of the Awoken. The same thing responsible for murdering Lennox-2 and billions of others, humans and transhumans both. For strangling the Traveler. For raking its fingers across the Solar System and leaving great swathes of suffocating Darkness Zones in its wake.
Her Aperture Scrambler felt their arrival most keenly. She felt the systems onboard the inconceivable ships, ancient and entirely unlike that used by Cybertron or the Taishibethi. Something stronger. More effective, more immediate, more direct. Tyrannical - tossing a collar over common cause-and-effect and reeling it in to be wielded as a mere toy.
It was the Deep. The thing behind the Hive's rise, their crusade, their blatant disregard for the sanctity of intelligent life. It was the reason they killed. It was the reason for... everything. Everything. Every single thing that had happened to her - was because of it.
The anger was already there within her, at the Hive, at Oryx, at Savathûn, at Xivu Arath, at Xol dead and alive and the rest of His kin, at all the Dark's supplicants - and then the Dark itself.
She hated it.
She hated it.
That rage welled up, bubbling, threatening to break the seams of her slackening control and burst out as-
Hawkmoon took hold of the Aperture Scrambler's systems, locked onto the last portal being opened, waited for the pyramid to soar halfway through - and she shut it down. The mod's electronic signals shot out, grabbed the edge of the rift and pinched them together, slicing right through the shadow-dark hull.
The pyramid split apart.
It died.
A wave of near-coherent living Dark rippled forth as a tidal wave of sensation, buffeting everything, almost managing to knock her down. Hawkmoon resisted - but only for so long, and fell to her knees when her resolve ran out. She barked a mirthless, hollow laugh.
Balwûr looked at her; her sister too.
"You... dare..." the red witch gasped with horrified disbelief.
The remaining pyramids, all eight, flashed - veins of gold running along their hulls. As one they turned to the Lure - slim shadows in the dying light of the despondent Sun, cutting above the world-sized pyre that used to be Tai Prime.
Hawkmoon was left hollow. She heard the disquieted Hive shifting and working themselves into a frenzy around her. The Wizard sisters looked at each other and then back at her, their claws flexing, fangs chattering, eyes glowing. They didn't know what to do, but they knew she was at the core of it.
And they suspected what had to be done.
Hawkmoon wished it had gone differently. She glanced down at what remained of Cyberwarp.
She wished.
The flames of Tai Prime flickered.
Balwûr was screaming. Her claws lashed at Hawkmoon, aiming for her neck. They only just broke the surface-plating when-
-it all flickered into a new shape. Dark. Windy. The shocking taste of bitter ash in the air. Sooty earth under her knees. Leafless trees all around. An icy feeling in her core - the Aperture Scrambler switching off. Cyberwarp was gone - along with the Hive, the Lure, the pyramids and even the Sun itself.
Everything was so... dark.
"Am I dead?" Hawkmoon asked aloud. Her servo grazed the front of her chassis, over her spark. She looked around. It... wasn't the Vex architecture of her last false-afterlife. It looked... a little like the Trostland forest in the EDZ, around the Shard of the Traveler. But... only if that forest had been bombed to oblivion and plunged into the Ascendant plane. Everything was different. The air composition, the gales that howled in from every direction, the very gravity holding her down. It was wrong.
Something else took form before her. A half-skeleton, stumbling ahead, pulling sharpened mechanical tendrils out of its spine, its ribcage, its skull. It looked like a Tai - until it fell on all fours and seemingly decided no, I am a Tai no longer, I assume another shape, a different shape, a shape to correspond with the idea of what I am in the mind of she whose desire breathed new life into me.
Flesh, living flesh, crawled along the surface of ivory bones - red and white and purple and blue, threading new muscles, blooming with new blood vessels, bearing new organs within the safety of the ribs like fruit hanging from a tree, and swathing it all in a protective sheath of iridescent jade scales.
A dragon stood before her, four-eyed - standing on four powerful legs like a wildcat and spreading out two massive leathery wings shaped like those of a bat. It had a face like a reptilian predator, some parts crocodile and some parts snake. A forked tongue flicked out between its glistening fangs. A single horn jutted up from the top of its snout, and another down beneath its chin - both at the end of its long, powerful jaws. Claws sunk into the ashen ground below, and a muscle-packed tail swung behind the beast, swishing to and fro over the forest floor.
Úthaessel's mother, Hawkmoon knew. The only Ahamkara within whispering distance - even a world away.
"Frag," was all she said, tensing up. "Frag."
The dragon did not laugh. Did not whisper. Did not leap at her, hoping to draw out another terrified wish. It stood there, reborn, and stared.
"She's dead," Hawkmoon told her, exhausted and still on edge - because it was a dragon, it was a damned dragon. Shapeshifter. Trickster. Destroyer of lives. Mother to one - lost. Now mother to none. "She's gone. Úthaessel's gone."
"Blade," the dragon said.
Blade.
Nullblade.
Hawkmoon didn't have it. The Hive had taken it from her. She couldn't-
She could.
She called it back, falling onto the transmat beacon Nacelle had installed in her arm's subspace storage - and there it was, materializing right in her servo. A hilt, beautifully ornate and muddied by the filth of Hive hands. Hawkmoon wiped it down. "Here," she croaked, offering it up. She waited. For the bite.
It never came.
The dragon looked at the Nullblade, back up at her faceplates, then turned around and loped between the trees until she disappeared - out of sight.
Gone.
She was gone.
"This wasn't what I wished," Hawkmoon weakly protested. "I just wanted-"
A roar answered her. It came from a completely different direction - and it sounded furious.
She rose up on shaky legs, pedes finding a grip in all the ash, all the soot, all the nuclear waste of a planet lost to war and the clutches of another plane of existence entirely - and being ripped apart as a result. She could feel it, the quakes far beneath, of rock scraping rock. The wind came from every direction because that was just the way of things outside realspace. The forsaken world had been broken long ago, she concluded. It wore its age in the howling silence. Nothing left to speak. Nothing to-
Another roar. Closer.
Coming for her.
Someone had her scent, the one drenched in blood and blame. Hive or otherwise - it wanted her.
Hawkmoon ran.
She jumped.
She soared.
A blast of something like fire shot out from the dark forest below and clawed her out of the air, dragging her back down. Hawkmoon stumbled on landing, bit down a curse and scrabbled to keep going, keep moving, forget the pain of molten plating on your back, damn your desolation, you're just moving to move, living to live - back to the way things were supposed to be.
Love and loss didn't have a place on the frontier. In war. Dragging them after her had been a mistake. Her mistake. The frontier and war were her lot - and it had been foolish to think otherwise. The wilds didn't care for her any more than it cared for anything; so what if the femme she'd-
A third roar. Closer, much closer, and accompanied by the slick weighty shrieks of something sharp and metallic hurtling through the air. The thumping chops of that same weapon axing through trees behind her. Closer. Closer. Closer.
It leapt and lanced at her with a spear-that-wasn't - a helix-patterned weapon, like a double-sided halberd glowing with yellow heat and Dark power. Hawkmoon thrusted to the side, tumbling as she hit the ground, and rolled around as the creature approached - snarling. Both of them.
It wasn't Hive. It wasn't like anything she'd ever seen before; another alien species entirely. Tall, though. Slender. Obsidian black glassy-stone skin with red, flesh-like armour, and a spiked, flanged mantle of dirtied white light infused into a malleable metal about its shoulders. It had two long thin arms tipped with four clawed fingers - bearing two thumbs on either side of the hand, like a Taishibethi. It had clawed toes too, but they were short and rigid. No tail. No wings. Humanoid, perfectly - and the head was snoutless, just like a human. A taller skull, though. Rigid, no flesh or muscle. With six small eyes like a Tenerjiin's stacked up on the front of its face in pairs, bearing strange symbol-shaped irises.
It was as tall as her. Thinner in form, but clearly powerful. Athletic. Bearing the stance of a killer, a predator. It trembled with an incandescent rage, glaring at her. And it was Dark. So, so Dark. It radiated a foul power from every section of its body, clad in the energies of the Deep. Something... closer to the Dark than even Hive. Something monstrous.
"You," it growled - voice a sweet-smoke rasp, thick with anger. Affront. A scalded pride rivaling her own. It raised its halberd and struck down at her. Hawkmoon drew her Nullblade and deflected the blow - Void purple clashing with swirling Dark. The spear hit the ground. Her off-servo, clenched, clipped the side of the creature's shoulder as it attempted to dance away. It took the blow and spun on its heel, like a ballerina. She stumbled forward, momentum dragging her after the desperate blow, and she pulled her sword around to block the next sweeping strike.
The creature kicked her shin. Metal buckled. Hawkmoon hissed, slashed out to give herself some room to limp away, but the stranger caught the blow on their halberd's haft, spun their weapon with enough strength to almost tug the sword from her grasp and-
A shape, dark and shadowy, launched itself at the creature's face. The stranger rocked back, cursing, grabbed the thing and tossed it her way. It hit Hawkmoon's chest, hard enough to almost knock her over, and it rebounded, rolling across to the ground back to its feet. A three-tailed fox, likely as large as a bear or lion on Earth but in comparison to her current size it may as well have been a housecat.
Not alone, either. There were others around them, skulking between the trees, stalking among the ossified roots and over mounds of irradiated soot.
"Flee," it barked - not only to the stranger, but... to her.
Flee. Run. Live another day.
Hawkmoon didn't flee. She settled for staring instead.
"... Augur?"
The fox gnashed its fangs - lower jaw unfolding, both toothed mandibles splaying out in a frightening display. It raised its hackles, hissing. Or rather - he raised his hackles.
It was Augur Seven-One. It had his voice. It had his form, even down to the twinkling shadowpit eyes. The others were likewise Verunlix, a whole pack of them. No orbs, just... them. Their true selves, or what remained. Their souls.
She wasn't in realspace. That was her only certainty in concern to her whereabouts.
"Pestssss," the stranger spat. Their halberd swung through the air, slick with illicit power, dripping with paracausal potential. It glanced at her, six eyes locking with her two. "Desecrator. You. Will. Pay."
Hawkmoon flashed it the bird - then she turned around and booked it.
Augur ran after her, all but nipping at her heels. The other Verunlix swarmed the stranger, stalling it - and dying. Dying for her.
Hawkmoon wanted to breathe. She wanted to hyperventilate. She wanted to pant, to feel the burn of her lungs, to know that running was doing something other than moving. That she still had something left to save: herself. It was hard to convince herself to keep going, to keep running, to keep her thrusters blasting even as the molten remains of their protective casings began to seep into her flight-systems. The pain, at least, anchored her.
"Faster!" Augur urged. He darted ahead of her, to where the forest gave way to a meadow devoid of vegetation, and a causeway formed of floating islands, leading to where a bright beacon sheltered within the ruins of an ancient temple beckoned to them. Hawkmoon took off, flew to it, almost lost herself in the veritable hurricane filling the dimensional-plane and resorted back to pede-work if only to avoid being smashed down against the ground. Augur, deceptively fast, reached it before she did.
Same for the Dark stranger. Almost.
The alien creature had only just reached the start of the causeway, but apparently that was close enough, because the spear was leveled and fired. It took Hawkmoon in the back, under her thrusters and searing through her abdomen. She cried out, stumbled, almost fell. Augur darted towards her, jaws closing on her servo and teeth sinking in, tugging her towards the beacon. Hawkmoon shoved her retracted Nullblade into storage, transformed a carbine and shot behind her, spraying wildly.
"Quick," Augur snapped, letting go and hopping around the strange, alien construct. It looked like an egg of marble and glass clasped within the blossoming petals of an artificial flower.
Hawkmoon dragged herself behind it. The stranger fired a couple more times, but they impacted harmlessly against the device. She peeked around and spotted them starting to make their way up the rocks, striding across with singleminded purpose. "What now?"
"Bleed," Augur exclaimed.
His jaws closed on her servo again, a fang catching on the steel surface of her palm and laying it open. Energon bubbled out, dangerously hot.
"Ah, you fuc-" Hawkmoon started to say, tugging her arm away.
"Press!" Augur demanded.
Press.
Press?
"What?! Like... this?" Hawkmoon pressed her leaking servo against the device. It lit up. "What the frag is that going t-"
Energy coalesced around it, protective plating folding away from the strange crystal clasped within. The stranger paused, halfway up, shouted and aimed their halberd again.
"No!" Augur yelled angrily.
The stranger fired.
The crystal exploded. Shards of glass and glowing fragments of metal caught on Hawkmoon's front, sinking deep. Her optics shuttered and failed.
/warning: massive frame damage detected/
/entering stasis-lock/
/exiting stasis-lock/
/warning: massive frame damage detected/
/warning: major energon leak detected/
/warning: flight-sensors damaged/
/warning: unauthorized incision-
Hawkmoon onlined her optics to a dull red light overhead, with dark shapes crowding above her. A shadowy fox nestled next to her, head laying across her neck. She tried to gasp. Tried. Convulsed in a vain attempt to draw on a diaphragm that wasn't there.
Drowned.
"-imary patient is awake!" someone shouted. In... was that... Cybertronian? A dialect similar enough anyways, and familiar while at it. "Firewalls are surging. I'm applying medical stasis-lock. Hello? Seeker, if you can hear me-"
/entering stasis-lock/
Her 'childhood' home on Mars. Some ways out of the Freehold polity, suburban habitat-town. Flowers on the table, that she'd brought at Vaudren's urgings. To mend bridges, maybe. Bridges long since burned. Mother - there, at her favourite chair, head of the table. Father - gone.
She missed him.
But she wouldn't miss HER.
Her mother sat there. Judging. Watching in that stern way she had mastered, drill-serjeant style. The military mom who was never home, never took the time to understand, never tried to look at things from the other side, never changed her stance.
It was a wonder she let Vaudren inside at all.
"This is good," Vaudren said, tapping away at her own meal. Sparse thing, essentials and that was it. Little better than emergency rations; charred rabbit and peas took up most of the plate, with a helping of thin gravy.
Fine Martian dining - SOLSECCENT edition.
Theris Lennox said nothing. No "thank yous" or "that's good to hear". Nothing. She wouldn't deign something she saw as lesser with a response. Manners ended where oddities and misfits began.
Never mind that society had long since moved past that issue, leaving her to be a relic of the past.
"We're having a kid," Adria announced, straight to the point. Just how her mother liked it. Just how it had been drilled into her.
Theris Lennox quietly put down her knife and fork, folded her hands and said, "You are?"
"Yeah."
"I see."
There was a looong stretch of silence after that. Vaudren shot her a searching look. A hope of seeing some sort of reconciliation, maybe. There was no hope of that, Adria knew. She wouldn't let there be. Maybe that wasn't fair, but - neither was withholding someone's childhood.
Neither was driving them from home for loving someone else.
"And we're moving to Titan," Adria continued. "New Pacific Arcology."
"Why?"
There it was. The question, shot out sharp as a combat blade, left to hang in the air. Her mother hadn't changed one bit.
"Because Mars is no place for a kid," Adria explained. Didn't say: because you're here and I don't want my son anywhere near you. But they all heard it.
She was glad they did.
And her mother, predictably, chose to ignore it.
"Mars has a breathable atmosphere," Theris pointed out. "The Traveler terraformed it. Titan is-"
"Better."
"The Traveler-"
"I don't CARE about the Traveler," Adria shot back. "It's on Io, now. Could hit Titan soon. Even if it doesn't - the Arcologies are just as good."
"There's opportunity there," Vaudren muttered. "I've been offered a job. Adria too. There's family benefits; our son will-"
"You're staying," Theris said. Softly.
Adria smiled. She wondered if she was being cruel. "No. We're not."
"The Traveler-"
"I don't care. I don't care about your Traveler. I'm one good argument away from signing us up onto the Exodus-programme; that ship, the Yang Liwei, only departs in a couple of years. What do you think about that?"
"Get out," Theris snarled. "Get OUT!"
Adria shot to her feet. "Gladly."
They left.
Adria never looked back.
/exiting stasis-lock/
Hawkmoon onlined.
She woke up.
And every part of her hurt, inside and out.
She blinked and- yes, there, a red light above. Softly illuminating a small room. She was... on a berth. A Cybertronian-built berth - just not designed for Seekers, given the uncomfortable crick in her wings. She sat up, slowly. The door was closed. There weren't any cameras, as far as she could see. Wasn't much of anything, actually. A bedside dresser with a deactivated datapad and a dozing fox, and beyond the berth that was it, that was all.
Hold on-
"Augur?" Hawkmoon whispered, still caught on the disbelief - because the Verunlix was there, orb-less, and tiredly lifting his head from his paws, lower jaws folded together.
"I see you," he said, yawning - revealing a series of dark teeth. Hawkmoon pulled her servos back on instinct; she remembered the feel of them, tearing through her plating with surprising ease. Augur roused himself, stood up and stretched, just like a cat would. "You see me?"
"You're... you're alive?"
He gave her a strange look. One coupled with a sly smile - in so far as a fox could smile. "Are you?"
Ah. Now. That wasn't nice.
Hawkmoon curled her lip. "Frag you."
Augur laughed. Mockingly. At her. "My life persists only so far as yours does - through a will to live beyond the beat of a tireless heart."
"Great, yeah, good to know." Hawkmoon bristled. She shot back, "So Narkasa didn't kill you?"
"She plucked my eye," Augur said, though not without a hint of something... bitter. "My eye into the world of matter and physics."
"That's it?"
"That is indeed all."
"Why?"
"I suspect the lord of Crux did not intend for me to listen to whatever ill-intended advice he parted with on your behalf." Augur snickered. At her expense. At his own. "The Arch-Fiend - hidden from us by a veneer of awkward civility. The irony."
"Úthaessel's dead," Hawkmoon blurted. She didn't want to hear anything else about Kharad-Tan. Not for a million years. The bastard could have rotted in hell for all she cared. "Oryx killed her."
"Not claimed," Augur nonchalantly pointed out.
"... No. I suppose... no, not Taken." Hawkmoon dropped her helm in her servos. "No, that was Nacelle instead. And he killed Cyberwarp afterwards."
There was a pause. An imaginary beat - of, as Augur said, a heart that wasn't there anymore.
"I suspected as much," Augur said, carefully.
It was the most diplomatic thing he'd ever said.
Still pissed her off.
"Fuck you," Hawkmoon snarled. "Fuck you, fuck your people, fuck your visions, fuck your vendetta, fuck... YOU!"
Almost threw something at him. Refrained only because there was nothing to throw.
She was angry. She was so angry she could've burned the whole universe down - just to make things even, to match the outside with the in. She was so angry it was as if she was made of wrath, from head to toe, just a thing of living rage.
That rage was quick to leave her, though, as everything else caught up.
"Fuck," Hawkmoon gasped. "Fuck. Frag."
She was alone.
Again.
Those she'd cared about had been torn away from her. Murdered.
Again.
It was enough to drop her. Enough to drive her back onto the berth, out of breath forevermore, and keep her there. Motionless. Forlorn. Forsaken.
"Where are we?" she whispered at last.
Augur yawned. "With your kin."
"Swiftsear? Northwind?"
"No."
"Then-"
The door opened. "-ought I heard..." someone was saying. Hawkmoon levered herself up on one elbow. A mech was peeking in. Not a Seeker.
Not even close.
The mech's plating had organic curves - the impression of nurtured shell and flesh petrified into steel. Four glossy wings hung from his back like rotors, but they resembled the wings of a dragonfly rather than the blades of a helicopter. His denta were sharpened like fangs and he bore tusks - not entirely unlike a female Cabal, but rather than just a single pair he had two, with one above his mouth and the other below. His optics were red, and his frame painted green and red, with the latter positively lathered over his many claws - both those acting as servo-linked digits or as leftover kibble from his alt-mode.
He blinked at her. "You're online."
Hawkmoon wordlessly nodded - and even then only dipping her chin ever so slightly.
"You... wait here. I need to get Thunderhowl," the beastformer muttered. He backed away and closed the door after him, disappearing from her sight altogether.
Thunderhowl.
Hawkmoon straightened up.
The wolf-mech from the Krensha Holdfast. The beastformer clan. Longhorn's people.
Hawkmoon schooled her faceplates into something approaching… calm, maybe. A mask - to hide the mess she'd become. "What happened?"
Augur looked over at her. "We made our escape."
"Did you... plan this?"
"Does the metal-wrought wish for me to say yes?" Augur politely inquired.
Hawkmoon gritted her denta so hard they started to spark. "I want a real answer."
"My answer is no. You've tossed smoke into my eyes; I cannot see the road ahead of me. An opportunity, unexpected, was taken. That is all. But if you have anger to spare, vent it as you see fit. I will not stand in your way."
"Fuck you."
The door opened again. The mech from before was there - and he stepped aside as Thunderhowl entered, appearing just as she remembered, save the suspicious lack of a greatsword. Black and blue plating, a wolf-head on the front of his chassis, a cape of red-scaled leather falling from his shoulders. He was large, physically, and had the presence of someone like Lord Shaxx or Lord Saladin - old, strong, brutal when pressed and still more than a little imposing when not. The Cybertronian equivalent of an Iron Lord. Or a Warlord; the jury was still out in that respect.
"Seeker," Thunderhowl intoned.
Hawkmoon said nothing.
"I hope you realize how lucky you are. It's a miracle you're still functional."
"I get that a lot."
Thunderhowl frowned. "What happened to you?"
"Where are we?" Hawkmoon challenged.
"Aboard the Axalon - a Krenshen warship."
"But where-"
"We're still in the Cyst Stars," Thunderhowl elaborated. "We have not yet quit the local system."
Hawkmoon blinked. "We're still... in Tai Prime? We need to get-"
"Not yet," Thunderhowl retorted. "Not until we… receive word of your companions."
She stalled. Something cold and sickly began to settle in her fuel-tanks. "You... haven't found them?"
"No."
"Swiftsear, Northwind, Quell, the... the Dartwings? Surely you-"
"We haven't," Thunderhowl interrupted. "The Axalon is a hunter-killer frigate from the Quintesson Wars. It has systems custom-built to latch onto life-signals entire star-systems away and pursue. It found you. No other."
"They..." Hawkmoon hesitated. "They've probably moved onto the next system. Or the one after that."
Thunderhowl eyed her - strangely. "It's possible."
"Then why are we still-"
"In case they returned. For you."
Hawkmoon winced. "I... don't think they would."
"... I see." Thunderhowl slowly nodded. "Can I inquire as to the... happenings leading to this?"
"We were... we were attacked," Hawkmoon rambled. "There was a local species, intelligent, part of a greater collective. They sheltered us, but... there was another force, alien, hellbent on committing genocide. Xenocide, even. We, ah, run afoul of them. A couple of times."
"This system is a ruin," the other mech by the door murmured. "Someone waged a war here."
"Yeah," Hawkmoon nodded. She gestured to Augur. "He can tell you more."
Thunderhowl slowly looked over at the fox.
And stared through him.
"Who?" the wolf-mech questioned.
Hawkmoon's mouth felt dry. Drier than normal, anyways. "Him." She pointed. "Him. That fragging-"
Thunderhowl looked back at her with a guarded expression. "There's nothing there," he deadpanned.
Wait...
"What's she talking about?" the other mech asked.
"Just that fragger." Hawkmoon shook her head and weakly indicated towards Augur. "That pest."
The mech looked to the side.
Blinked.
Said nothing for a little while.
Then, "Just... what?"
Hawkmoon frowned. Pointed aggressively. "Him."
The mechs looked at each other.
"Jetstorm?"
"Yeah?"
"Fetch Seawing," Thunderhowl ordered. "Possible processor-damage."
"Right, uh, yeah." The other beastformer retreated out of the room. He reached for the door, muttering something about "processor damage?", and left them be.
Hawkmoon glanced back at Augur. "What's going on?"
"My seeing glass appears to be amiss," Augur drily remarked. "My, ah, megaphone has malfunctioned. I cannot be heard, I cannot be seen. What am I?"
She offlined her optics and hung her head forward, venting a sigh. "Annoying."
"I need another vessel." Augur jumped - from dresser to berth, then onto her shoulders, settling on her pauldron. He weighed nothing. "Sea-worthy. Automated. Prow turned towards north - the truest of destinations, where hidden power resides. This one will do."
"What's annoying?" Thunderhowl asked sharply.
Hawkmoon resisted the urge to flick Augur off and looked at the mech. "I'm not crazy. I'm not glitched."
"I never said you were."
"We don't have time for this. The Hive could find you. We need to move; if the others hopped the system, they won't be coming back here. We need to find-"
Thunderhowl hesitated. Hawkmoon saw it flashing across his faceplates. An expression that didn't fit.
"You're lying," she whispered. "You... you found someone?"
Thunderhowl straightened up. "Get some rest."
"No, don't!" Hawkmoon shot to her pedes, darting for the door and pressing a servo against it - lest he try to leave. "Who? Who did you find?!"
Thunderhowl gave her a look. "You don't want to know."
"I can't ignore it, now, can I?"
"A Seeker. We found another Seeker, before you."
"Where-"
"Not functional," Thunderhowl muttered.
Hawkmoon stilled. Her arm fell to her side. "Who?" she asked in a faint voice.
"A femme. Like you. Left adrift."
A femme.
Out of the thirteen to leave Cybertron, there had only been four femmes among the formation: herself, Cyberwarp, Vale and Ampitude. Vale was gone - nothing left. They'd all seen to that in one last collaborative effort. Ampitude was a Dartwing, hardly anything 'like her'.
Which left...
"Cyberwarp," Hawkmoon realized.
Her spark ached.
Thunderhowl said nothing.
"She's dead. She..." she died in my arms.
Hawkmoon fell back against the wall and slid down. Not crying. Not making a sound. Just... staring into space. Remembering.
And wishing she couldn't.
"You were close?" Thunderhowl asked, carefully. He dropped to a knee in front of her.
"Very," Hawkmoon whispered. "It's... It's my fault they were here in the fi-"
The door opened. The mech from earlier, Jetstorm, was back with a friend. Seawing, Hawkmoon presumed. A mech of a blue-and-purple, with small winglets on his back. Still no Seeker, though. Not a proper one in any case. They looked at her, concerned.
"I heard something about... possible processor damage?" Seawing hesitantly asked.
"No," Hawkmoon sharply retorted. "I'm fine."
Jetstorm stepped towards her. "You're not-"
"I'm fine."
"We pulled you out of open space, lacerated from pede to helm," Thunderhowl told her. "There was shrapnel embedded all over your frame."
Hawkmoon shrugged. "I feel alright."
"Your system was given three decaorns to recover under our care. You still have scars in your plating. In your protoform," Seawing revealed. "I can show you the surgical scans, if you want. The damage report logs."
Hawkmoon glanced at him. "I'm fine," she insisted. "The only thing we should be doing is running! The Hive-"
"The Hive?" Thunderhowl echoed.
"They're... they're the ones who did this. To me. To... to 'Warp." Hawkmoon paused. "I... want to see her."
"Sir, I wouldn't advise-" Seawing started to say, but Thunderhowl raised a servo for silence.
"Tell me about this... 'Hive'," Thunderhowl ordered, optics narrowing.
"I want to see her first," Hawkmoon repeated. "She's... my trinemate. I have a right-"
"Take her there," Thunderhowl sighed. "Take her to the morgue. I'll speak with her afterwards."
Seawing frowned. "But sir-"
"Take. Her."
"... Yes sir." Seawing glanced at her. "If you would please follow me."
"Follow him," Augur whispered into her audioreceptor. "Follow."
Hawkmoon rolled her shoulders - giving into the blessed distraction of irritation. The fox remained where he was, claws digging into her pauldron.
"Ass," she muttered.
The Axalon was a sizable ship, it turned out. It took them two entire breems of walking to reach the morgue. Seawing keyed in the passcodes, the doors slid open and-
Hawkmoon spotted the bodies inside.
There was a Hive Knight, charred and old - flesh mummified beneath its armoured shell. A hole had been bored into its chest, and out on the steel berth beside it lay the slick form of a dead Worm. The next berth over was occupied by the remains of what had once been a Myod, disfigured by soulfire burn. The next...
'Warp.
Hawkmoon stumbled over. Fell by her side, servos finding the other femme's arm.
She wept. Keened. Barely held back from screaming. Punched the floor. Raked her talons down her front, then pulled them in tightly enough to prick open her palms. A couple of rivulets of energon dripped down and pooled below her.
"Leave her be," she distantly heard Thunderhowl murmur from somewhere behind
She was angry.
She wished that was all she could be.
Everything else felt so much worse.
All she wanted to do was scorch the universe down to its final atom.
All she wanted to do was sit there and wallow in misery and self-pity, thinking why, why, why.
Why did I let her get dragged into this?
Why did I try to love her in the first place?
Why am I even here?
Why?
The heat of the energon welling up and running between her digits was... comforting. Grounding. An escape - found through pain. Though sensation. It would've been so easy to sink into it, exult in the senses just to take her mind off things - but that was a path that ended in ugliness. She'd seen it before; older Risen broken down by the Dark Age she'd only narrowly missed, giving up on hope and life, and strung along only by the dogged determination of Ghosts who wouldn't let them end. Giving into chemicals pick-ups and acts of physical repetition.
That could've been her. So easily.
It was hard trying to resist that urge, jaded as she was.
"You are a warrior," Augur barked. "Fight, timelost. Fight."
Hawkmoon raised her helm. The Verunlix was perched by the edge of the berth.
She hated him.
She really, really hated him in that single moment.
"I..." have to see her off," Hawkmoon tried to say. She deserves more than I could ever give her.
She gathered the body up, struggled up to her pedes and turned around.
"What are you doing?" Thunderhowl questioned - softly. Softer than she ever suspected a mech of his size and frame capable of.
"She deserves better," Hawkmoon said. "She deserves..." A proper send-off, but I... don't have the heart.
She knew what she had to do. A Seeker funeral was out of the question; she couldn't fire on 'Warp. Pathologically couldn't. But-
The Tai.
The Tai who'd suffered defeat. Who'd lost it all.
She didn't know how they treated their dead, but... they'd loved their Sun, hadn't they?
"Can we set a course closer to the local star?" Hawkmoon asked.
Thunderhowl looked at her, then nodded. "We can."
"Thank you. Thank you."
She kicked out into space, holding Cyberwarp. Flew ahead, away from the silver length of the Axalon. Gathered momentum.
Let go.
Cyberwarp carried on. Hawkmoon didn't - though the temptation was there. She watched until the other femme disappeared from view before turning around and heading back to the frigate, slipping into the hangar and dropping to her knees.
::Did you see?:: Hawkmoon asked over local comms, near-desperate for an answer. For another voice ready to engage her.
::See... what?:: someone on the bridge said.
::Scan for dark matter.::
::Scanning.::
::Do you SEE?::
There was a pause.
::Scanners are empty,:: the bridge reported. ::We're not picking up on dark matter. Is there something in particular you want-::
Hawkmoon switched her comms off.
"The Seeing Thing is dead," Augur intoned. He sat in front of her, head cocked to the side, all three tails waving through the air behind him. "You search for a silent companion - a fellow survivor, beyond myself. You will only find a corpse locked in eternal metamorphosis."
"You're implying the Sun is building towards something," Hawkmoon shot back. She looked around, but no one was nearby to eavesdrop - however well that would've worked anyways. "That it's evolving."
"Yes. Towards its end. With nothing to heed its voice, it sees little reason to continue as it has. With no little life to bounce thoughts into the forever-loop, its own sentience will fade. All it will ever be now is a well of crushing gravity and searing heat. So it always is with gods - reduced to cosmic detritus."
"But the Star-Web-"
"The Star-Web is dead, Seeker," Augur firmly told her. "The Sun-Daughter is dead. Her people are lost. Their vassals have been rendered extinct."
"But we still have time. it's only been... I don't know, a couple-"
"Has it?" Augur challenged.
Hawkmoon blinked. "It has."
"Time is not so kind, when trespassing the divide between reality-as-is and reality-as-desired."
"You're saying that wish-"
"Not alone. But yes."
"How long?"
Augur flicked one ear, indicating behind him. "Ask."
She... didn't like that. Hawkmoon blinked. "You're saying-"
"I say many things."
"Don't I know it," Hawkmoon grumbled. "You owe me answers."
"Do I?"
"You had me bleed on that..."
"Later," Augur said, sounding strangely tired. "Go ask, Seeker. Go."
Hawkmoon stiffly looked behind her.
At the Sun.
At-
No.
She was gone.
Hawkmoon raised a servo. A paltry goodbye, but... it was all she could offer.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. You've..."
Her voice trailed off, fading away.
"I'm sorry," Hawkmoon said again, voice thick. "I'm so... You liked this place. This system. You liked the people who used to live here. I'm... sorry I couldn't save them. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm-... Fuck."
Hawkmoon averted her optics, servos shaking.
"I'm sorry."
"She can't hear you anymore," Thunderhowl said suddenly, gently. He strolled beside her. Offered her a servo. Hawkmoon studied it for a long minute because grasping it. The wolf-mech pulled her to her pedes.
"What happens now?" she asked in a small voice.
"We're taking you home."
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!