Seeker Chapter 49: New age problems, a Transformers/Beast Wars + Destiny Crossover fanfic

Chapter 49

"Mantle me some new age problems"

"Why wouldn't you let me fly?" Hawkmoon idly asked. They were still walking, and Elim had, true to veir word, recovered relatively quickly after veir 'episode'.

Elulim grunted. Ve'd been irritable since the lung serpent encounter. Or red shadow encounter. Hawkmoon wasn't sure what to think of it altogether. "It was too dangerous."

"That's why I'm asking. Flying usually negates these sorts of… things. Lung serpents can't fly, can they?"

"Red shadows can."

"Red shadows?" Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "You mentioned them before. Spore-induced phenomena. Hallucinations."

"Hallucinations with weight. Hallucinations with presence."

"Sounds like superstition."

"Did it feel like superstition?" Elulim challenged.

The pressure. The whispers. The noise of it all. "No," Hawkmoon admitted at length. "I suppose it didn't."

"Be thankful that the shadow inherited the lung serpent's poor sight, Seeker. We were exceedingly lucky to have escaped undetected - and relatively unscathed."

"What about the others? Was there no way to warn them?"

"Was there? Our communications only reach so far as our voices will allow - and that carries its own risks. Would you have willingly drawn the serpent's ire in the vain hope that they would hear? Would you have chanced waking the trees as well?"

"I would've done something. I would've tried." Hawkmoon grimaced. "I should've tried."

Elulim harrumphed. "I was under the impression you despised Rampage."

"He might be a bastard, but that doesn't mean I'm going to leave everyone with him to die. What about you? Where's your concern? For your own people, no less."

Elulim didn't immediately reply. "You severely overestimate the value Akildn place on relationships," ve said at length.

"Yeah no, I don't believe that for a second," Hawkmoon retorted.

"And why is that?"

"Because you're all like..." me before the Traveler started pulling on my corpse's strings, Hawkmoon almost said. "A younger version of me - cynical to a fault and all too eager to throw yourselves at fleeting thrills. Doesn't mean you're hollow to the core. Not the way you're trying to pass yourself off as."

"Oh really," Elulim drawled.

"Yes, really," Hawkmoon said, growing exasperated. "I know life felt cheap back then. My own and everyone else's. In every aspect."

"I'm not your species, Seeker."

"I know, frag it, but recently I've begun to realize that doesn't matter," Hawkmoon evenly replied. "Not really. Not in the grand scheme of things. People are universally good and universally bad and everyone's future is universally fucked so what's the point in pretending the finer details of evolution matter when we're all still cognitive enough to realize we share the same sinking ship?"

"... And you call us cynical," Elulim snorted.

"At least I'm still trying to figure out if there's any way to keep us afloat in the immediate future. Anyways, my point is," Hawkmoon continued, "that you're pulling at any excuse you can because at the core of it you're afraid of being seen for what you are."

"And what's that?"

"Self-destructive."

Elulim didn't reply. Hawkmoon didn't elaborate. She didn't feel like she needed to. Their morning trek from that point on was carried out in silence - and it was made all the more tense with Augur's strange absence.

They stopped before midday struck and settled down in a cramped little glade. Elulim set out a couple of motion-detectors, all ve had left with ver, and the two of them settled down in the middle of it all back-to-back. The forest around them quickly stirred to life, revivified by the glaring heat of the suns above, and chaos all but descended over the Undergrowth. Animals scattered out of cover and the trees - they began their contest for light and food. Drooping branches snapped up centipedes, plucked snakes, snatched shelled birds right out of the air. Mantoid-leopards prowled in between the leaves of the canopies, perched unmoving on the bark with stilt-like needle-tipped feet.

Hawkmoon didn't like it. The woodlands of Earth could be loud and quiet, but they never instilled the same kind of fear in her as this. It was as if the very land she had considered home was out to get her. When did trees get carnivorous? They were her cover, her saving grace for many a mission gone awry, but this? This was a perversion of everything she'd once taken for granted.

"Any luck?" she asked, just to give her something else to contemplate.

Elulim prodded at the Nymphite's skull a couple moments longer. "It's no mere tracker," ve sighed. "I believe it delivers a shock to the beast's system."

"So forced-compliance?"

"Exactly. To instil obedience. Someone has been importing Nymphites, drilling these devices into their skulls and training them - though to what end, I do not know."

"And why set them upon the Undergrowth?" Hawkmoon questioned. "No one lives here. Well, apart from..."

Elulim stiffened behind her. "Perhaps," ve started to say, "that is the precise reason they're here."

"To keep the locals out?"

"Exactly."

"Is this place we're going to of value to your feral Eimin-Tin?"

"It's a sacred site," Elulim admitted. "But they are forbidden from approaching it. I can't see why someone would go to such lengths to keep them at bay when they are not even a risk."

"What if they are? What if someone's counting on them interceding? You said its sacred to them. How sacred?"

"Very. The red shadow is strong here."

"They worship red shadows?" Hawkmoon inquired.

Elulim exhaled slowly. "Yes. Partially. Their faith is a... a dark one. With brutal practices and even more brutal gods. In theory, anyways. The Rise only came to pass because the ancestors of plateau Eimin-Tin could not stomach the savage ways of the forest-dwellers any longer. The removal of the Iiraca was merely another enticement."

"Iiraca?"

"Another species. Sapient, like you and I," Elulim explained. "Arthropods at odds with my own people since time immemorial. They're gone, now. Have been long before even we Akildn came to be."

"How'd that happen?" Hawkmoon warily asked.

"We devoured them."

"... Fragging Pit." Hawkmoon briefly offlined her optics and shook her head. "This world..."

Elulim cackled. "What were you expecting?"

"Plague or something."

"Only if you consider some thousands of hungry Eimin-Tin to be a plague."

Hawkmoon frowned. "Thousands? How high do your people number now?"

"A couple hundreds of thousands, feral Eimin-Tin notwithstanding."

"Dunno why I expected more... What about Akildn?"

"Nine hundred and ninety-nine."

Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge, though Elulim couldn't see it. "You sound real certain of that."

"That is how it has always been," Elulim explained. "Nine hundred and ninety-nine for all the Eimin-Tin territories. One more and we are too many. One less and we are too few. Nine hundred and ninety-nine - that is just right."

"Why's that?"

"The Stratocracy's analysts reported as much. One less and the Stratocracy is weak. One more and the Stratocracy is overburdened."

"Seems a little bit of a stretch, buuuut… I'm not going to ask. Not my job."

"No. It isn't."

Hawkmoon set her mouth in a thin line. "Let's get back to the Nymphite," she decided. "Are we sure this is a local problem? What if it's happening all over Penchant and we're just getting a taster?"

"That would insinuate a prelude to invasion," Elulim pointed out. "Or, at least, a seizure of pre-Rise Eimin-Tini ritual sites and other places of interest across the globe. But why would anyone seed a foreign predator in our forest? Here the Nymphites are neither the largest nor cleverest of carnivores - and certainly not the most dangerous. Lung serpents, lockjaws and all manner of native fauna will outcompete and actively hunt them."

"Then they're not meant for anything long-term."

"What makes you so certain there is more than one?"

"Unless that thing was designed to hunt us personally, I don't see why not. And besides - didn't do its job very well, did it?" Hawkmoon looked herself over. "Only a couple of scratches. But it attacked us anyways, even with those trilobites close by. Us. Big, broody us. Me thinks, and I'm going out on a limb here, it was looking for people to trouble. People. Two-legged people, silk-serpent or otherwise."

"Say that again," Elulim purred.

"What, silk-serpent?"

Elulim made a crooning sound. "Yesss..."

"You're weird." Hawkmoon rolled her optics. "'Lulim."

"Yes?"

"The Nymphite?"

Elulim went back to work. Eventually ve elbowed Hawkmoon and said, "Crack this open for me, please," as ve handed the arthropod's head over. Hawkmoon stalled in place, optics growing wide.

"Excuse me?" she asked, hoping she'd misheard.

"Break it open. I can't pull the implant out."

"Why me?"

"You're stronger than I am. You're Cybertronian."

"Get a rock or-"

"I don't want to risk damaging the impant."

Hawkmoon looked down at the Nymphite's head. "Ew," she whispered. Hawkmoon tenderly held it between her servos like a coconut, dug her claws in and... rendered it into more pieces than one. She tried not to gag, all the while shoving it back into Elulim's grasp. "Yeck. Never tell me to do that again."

"If you say so." Elulim started ruffling through the... Hawkmoon didn't want to even think about it. Bugs and heads and bug-heads were just hard nope. "Ah," Elulim said suddenly, "here we are... Yes, a compliance-device. But the make is..." Ve trailed off.

"'Lulim?" Hawkmoon questioned. She refused to turn around. Her servos already felt dirty enough; no need to scar her optics any further.

"This is... this is handiwork of Coppermen."

"Those things we saw-"

"Accursed Drezhari!" Elulim furiously snarled. Hawkmoon heard ver throw something brittle and hard away, followed by heavy, frantic breathing. "Corpse-constructs!"

The nearest trees groaned with irritation. Hawkmoon would have told ver to be quiet, but her processor had all but stalled. Drezhari, she thought, mulling the word over. Drezhari? It sounded familiar. Recently familiar. What...

"Observation: the Hellsong, the Drezhar Acquiestical, their great angel, terminated."

Then it all clicked. "Drezhari?" Hawkmoon suspiciously repeated. "What does that mean?"

"Tech-thieving, flesh-burning, thought-warped skin-tearers," Elulim seethed. Veir tail lashed against the ground. "I'll break them, I'll shatter them, I'll tear them apart!"

"'Lulim."

"What?!"

"Shut up. Trees."

Elulim hissed. "I know. Damn it all, I know."

They both quietened and waited it out. The trees rumbled and roared, blindly smashing the ground with loose roots. They took their sweet time about it too. At long last, after a whole five breems, the forest finally let it go and returned to its prior semi-active state.

"Really not appreciating living so close to the edge," Hawkmoon muttered. She looked around - to double-check that the tree roots were still in place, to ensure nothing was sneaking up on them... and maybe to keep an eye out for Augur, whenever he decided to pop back up. If he was going to pop back up. His absence was throwing her for a loop and Hawkmoon really wasn't appreciating it. "Definitely feeling like a case of 'act as I say, not as I do'," she continued.

"Well, I'm sorry," Elulim growled, "that my rightful indignation got the better of me."

"It's our lives on the line, 'Lulim," Hawkmoon retorted. "Watch the volume."

"I know. I..." Elulim kicked at the ground. "Drezhari scum..."

"Care to walk me through this?"

"The implant is of Drezhari make."

"Drezhari," Hawkmoon echoed. "But you just said Coppermen."

"They are one and the same," Elulim impatiently elaborated. "What, you don't know that?"

"Let's just say I've been outta the loop for a while."

"And the Drezhari have been around longer."

"A long while."

"Not longer than the Drezhari, surely."

"Walk. Me. Through. This. And stop with the sass. You're angry with them. Not me. Point your anger elsewhere."

"Seeker-"

"I have a fragging name, Elulim."

There was a long pause. "Of course," Elulim said slowly, audibly struggling to control veir breathing. "Hawkmoon."

"Good," Hawkmoon said more cordially. "Thank you. So - Drezhari? Quietly now. What are they?"

"Cold flesh-hating mechanoforms," Elulim darkly muttered. "Spawned by biological life and driven to parricide by mechanical ambition and slave-envy. They're scavengers, Hawkmoon, scavengers who hunger for your people's lost technology as a carrion bird hungers for bloody flesh."

"Like everyone," Hawkmoon pointed out.

"No, not like everyone. They are the worst of all offenders."

"I've seen just about every species in lodge-space make a grab for Cyber tech."

"Of course!" Elulim exclaimed. "Is it at all our fault that your empire left an abundance of dead colonies within our newly-formed territories? The edge of the Brachian Divide is littered with desolate worlds, full of buried tech-troves. Penchant itself was a capital colony of this very sector; where do you think our technology stemmed from? But the Drezhari live elsewhere, closer to your own homeworld, where the competition is fiercer and the pickings fewer. They've long since exhausted their own reservoirs and mined their worlds clean. Now all they want is to steal and ruin at everyone else's expense."

"So these... Drezhari," Hawkmoon tried the word out. It wasn't an Irinum word, that was for sure. It wasn't over-the-top hissy enough. "They're here. On Penchant. And they've not confined themselves to your cities."

"A number of minor archaeo-tech survey teams had shipped into Stratocracy space some time ago," Elulim elaborated. "Mostly they've been bothering other Eimin-Tin worlds, those on the borders of the Stratocracy's hold, but only recently have they bothered Penchant - and the Stratocracy has been denying them mining-rights at every turn. I can't understand how they think this won't have consequences. We'll hurt them."

"Still doesn't feel right," Hawkmoon admitted.

Elulim paused. "Why?"

"Because of exactly what you said. They're risking provocation with your Stratocracy and, look, I'm not a great tactician, but that seems like a bad idea. You're hardly helpless. And your homeworld no less. That's... big. There's gotta be something they see worth that risk. 'Sides, only thing we know for sure is they're outfitting carnivorous animals from your moon with little shock-nodes intended to taser them into compliance. And shipping them down to Penchant. What does that tell us for sure?"

"That the Drezhari landed close by. A Nymphite would not survive for long in the Undergrowth, so it must have been released recently - and close by."

"Anything other than the reliquary worth checking out?"

Elulim sighed. "No."

"So?"

"They want it."

"Why? You said there might be Cybertronian tech before we set out. Is that-"

"A possibility, but no certainty."

"Then..."

"It's the reliquary itself, alone. That is all. And they're using Nymphites to ward others away."

"Full circle, right? But that's where I start to get confused." Hawkmoon vented a sigh that was maybe a tad overdramatic. "What about this reliquary is so valuable to them? Rampage said there was nothing of any commercial worth, you left me with much the same impression, and yet I was still a little dubious. Doubly so now. What's so interesting that it would tempt a team of mechanoform tech-hunters to illegally trespass on the Eimin-Tin homeworld?"

Elulim had gone quiet, gone still. Almost... damningly so.

"You're a bad liar," Hawkmoon told ver. "No worse than Rampage, but he plays a repugnant air well enough to drive me away. You, on the other hand, are unfortunately likeable - despite your... vices and faults, but none of them are total red flags so they were easy to overlook. Something about this job stank right from the beginning, but I was willing to play along. Now, though, I think I'll have to change the terms of my employment."

"Rampage hired you," Elulim said. Ve was choosing veir words carefully. "You will have to take it up with him."

"Eh, I still think you have a vested interest in keeping me on your side. Your side, 'Lulim. Not the team's in general, just you."

"And why's that?"

"Because I'm of the disposition to getting both of us out of this alive," Hawkmoon firmly promised. "I don't care to make a profit, not really. Oh, I need the money, I definitely do, but I also like living. And doing the right thing. The last part in particular is a vice of my own. You're bordering on dangerous for yourself and everyone around you, but you're no lost cause."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Take it however you want to take it. You're playing a dangerous game, 'Lulim. Rampage is going to get you killed. He doesn't care about anyone and you know it. Everyone knows it. Why we're even humouring him in the first place is beyond me, but here we are."

"What are you proposing?" Elulim quietly asked.

"Let's make a deal of our own."

"What kind of deal?"

"The kind where we keep each other alive, through thick or thin - for however long this job lasts."

"A bold thing to petition for," Elulim coolly murmured. "An Akildn's loyalty doesn't come easily."

"But you're going to give it."

"What makes you so sure?" Elulim challenged.

"That arm of yours. It's too injured to swing a needle-blade, too tender to bear a rifle's weight, too sensitive to even so much as claw something's eyes out. I've still got all four limbs - and wings to boot. And we're still alone, if you hadn't realized. It's me or no one."

"You sprained my arm."

"And I'm still so broken up over it, but that's besides the point." Hawkmoon waited for a retort, a retaliation of any sort. None came. "I want to get through this and you - you want to live. You're imploding slow and the like, but you're still at that stage where self-preservation is important. Or am I wrong?"

Another pause. "I..." Elulim hesitated. "I... will watch your back. If you will watch mine."

"Of course I will, 'Lulim," Hawkmoon happily replied. "Of course I will."

"For someone who despises Rampage so, you're beginning to sound remarkably like him."

"We're in a bad business, you and I, and manipulation's unfortunately par for the course. But at least I'm nice about it. Noble-hearted and all."

"At least," Elulim dubiously echoed.

"So we're settled?"

Elulim sighed. "We're settled."

Hawkmoon felt the slightest bit guilty. "Believe it or not I do have our best interests at heart. Like staying alive"

"I hear you, but I still do not like it."

"And I didn't like coming on this expedition in the first place, so I guess we're even."

Elulim huffed. "No one forced you," ve muttered.

Hawkmoon grimaced. "Rampage did. Thunderhowl beside him."

"What now?"

"Tell me what this reliquary is really about. And be honest."

Elulim took veir time to respond. "It's an idol for the feral Eimin-Tin," ve explained. "I've told you that much. They worship it and everything it touches. It's... not natural."

"I guessed that much. Cybertronian?"

"No," Elulim said, exhaling hard. "Other. What studies have been carried out on the site and the... the structures, if they can be called as much, indicate it is nearly as old as the Cybertronian ruins we've unearthed elsewhere, but the material make-up is of a distinctly alien design. It's not steel, nor any known alloy to our knowledge; it's more like... stone. Living stone. I cannot describe it accurately. The space is sentient. As sentient as the forest. And it's normally hostile to interlopers, just as the trees are."

"So it's-"

"It's wary. That is all I can say. We are not encouraged to approach it, you must understand. The Stratocracy is of the belief that it was left by those who laid waste to Penchant's Cybertronian colony."

Hawkmoon frowned. "But... wait. Someone attacked this colony?"

"Yes."

"But the empire fell because of-"

"It was no rust plague," Elulim said carefully. "Nor was it due to infighting. Not here, not as it was elsewhere. None of the ruins nor the Cybertronian remains bear marks of battle. We believe that a superweapon of unknown make was discharged, killing the colony's occupants. We don't know how. We don't know why. All we know is that the reliquary, Site Reus, is what remains."

"Listening station, maybe?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe it's-"

"Hawkmoon, I don't know. It's alien, it's old, it's dangerous and Rampage believes he has the key to opening the inner chambers - to bribe it, as he put it."

"Elulim," Hawkmoon murmured, "what's he looking for?"

"Rampage?"

"Yeah."

Elulim hesitated. "I think," ve started to say, "he's looking for a flight-recorder."

"A black box."

"Yes. He believes that the reliquary was once part of a ship. That it sloughed a piece of itself off as a lesser serpent would its old skin."

"And the Drezhari?"

"They must be after the same. Or maybe they're looking to find traces of the superweapon. Either or."

"Okay," Hawkmoon said slowly, nodding to herself. "Okay."

"Are we?" Elulim asked incredulously.

"Almost. I've got two more things to ask you."

"Then ask."

"On the subject of Drezhari, does the word Hellsong mean anything to you?"

Elulim stiffened. "Are you joking?" ve snapped.

"Just answer the question."

"Of course it does!"

"And?"

"The Hellsong is the Drezhari High Regent - their golden muse, their foul Helioplite," Elulim all but spat..

"I see. And what about a 'great angel?" Hawkmoon pressed.

"Are you…" Elulim grumbled something under veir breath. "The angel? Simply the other half of their duotheistic faith - their Sybarite, a divine foil to the 'once-mortal' Hellsong. Their High Grace, as they refer to it. A fictional body invented by mechoforms jealous of organic dreams. It's simply a grand sham they've tricked themselves into, worth no more thought than any other warped creation of the machines' making."

Hawkmoon wasn't so sure, though she refrained from giving voice to her doubts. She had her suspicions, though, and what nerve-wracking suspicions they were. "Thank you," she said.

"What kind of questions were those?"

"Cryptic ones I imagine. Really, though, thank you. You've been an extraordinary help."

"I just can't begin to understand you, Seeker," Elulim grumbled. Ve shifted and glanced up. "The suns have passed their zenith. We need to move."

They walked and walked and walked, cutting through the forest in cautious silence. Not once did they catch a glimpse of Rampage or the other Akildn. Not once did they stumble upon tracks belonging to their erstwhile companions. Not once did they hear the hissing of oversized Eimin-Tin or the clanking footsteps of a lumbering Cybertronian. A pit had settled in Hawkmoon's fuel tanks, already filling up with the sinking feeling that maybe - maybe - the others hadn't been so fortunate.

What they did find, though, as dusk began to settle was a body. Or at least part of one. Not Akildn, thankfully, but that was the only good thing Hawkmoon had to say about it. A pair of hands, Eimin-Tin for certain, had been carefully laid out on a flat mossy stone, neatly cut off at the wrist. A bloody mark had been painted over the stone below, staining the green-purple moss an ugly wet black. It looked like a trio of intersecting rings, though what it stood for exactly escaped Hawkmoon.

Elulim knelt by the stone, willed veir armour to flow back from veir head and breathed it in. "You were right," ve murmured only a couple of moments later. "The feral Eimin-Tin have been roused."

"Really?"

"They've never come so close before."

Hawkmoon eyed the hands uncertainty. "This their work?"

"Yes. An offering."

"Traveler above, they're savage fraggers. For what?"

"Passage." Elulim slowly looked up. "Hawkmoon."

Hawkmoon craned her helm upwards. She sorely wished she hadn't. What little of the sky she could see through the canopy above was pockmarked with what appeared to be figures, formed out of nothing but a refractive red mist. Curling tendrils of faded black framed them high above, and they hung up there on invisible gallows. Some were Eimin-Tin. Others were decidedly not. They swayed and swung on feeble winds, seemingly dead but for the crimson glows in their lifeless eyes.

"Something has disturbed the shadows," Elulim softly murmured. "They are agitated."

"I'm guessing the hallucinations aren't the products of fungal emissions," Hawkmoon whispered.

"I wouldn't be so sure. Oh, just wait until you see the things that grow around the reliquary. You're going to hate it."

"Joy." Hawkmoon tilted her helm. "They're... are they talking? They are. They're talking."

"Don't pay them any mind," Elulim told her. "Those shadows are harmless. It's the ones that move that you need to look out for."

"What the frag is wrong with this world..."

Elulim shot her an unimpressed look. "Nothing's wrong. It's just not holding your hand. Can we move on?"

"Yeah yeah." Hawkmoon motioned ver onwards. "I'm with you. Should we find somewhere to-"

Something small and fragile hit the side of her helm and bounced off. Hawkmoon flinched and turned her helm, watching the small arrow clatter down to the ground, and she glanced back up in search of a shooter. She found the archer responsible hunkered down amidst the forest brush, only visible by the glint of light hitting their reflective eyes.

"Uh, 'Lulim," Hawkmoon began warningly. "We have company."

Elulim straightened up, veir armour flowing back over veir head. Ve barked something quick and sharp, something that wasn't quite the same language Hawkmoon was used to. "Jjjssavarika," ve growled. "Harrrvvvussa."

"Ssssssleryk," someone hissed back, from a totally different direction than the archer. Hawkmoon scanned their surroundings, switching to thermal, and caught glimpses of body-heat flickering between the ferns and bushes. Eimin-Tin, of the feral inclination. They were cooler than their city-cousins. Shorter too. They carried themselves closer to the ground, like genuine serpents, and they fluttered their diaphanous wings sporadically. Those were different too - longer and wider than those of the plateau-cities and essentially of size with Elulim's own, despite veir greatly enhanced stature.

Another archer fired. The arrow hit Hawkmoon between the optics and snapped in two. She raised an optical ridge and, just in case they were packing anything stronger, activated her Tai shield generator. Orange Solar energy flowed over her frame, momentarily bathing her wings in a protective sheen of rippling amber radiance before fading away into subtle translucence. The hidden Eimin-Tin stirred and shuffled and grew agitated as a result, peeking more bravely out of cover to gnash their teeth her way. One even stepped out of hiding completely - a chiselled specimen resplendent with hard muscle and flowing body paints. The serpent was dressed in nothing save a sash packed with knives and bone charms. It bared its teeth and loudly snapped closed its inner jaws, all the while staring daggers at her. "Ussssakavvvvvvo!" it roared.

"They're getting loud," Hawkmoon observed.

Elulim gestured for her keep quiet. "I know, I know, let me handle this. Ssssirpha! Harrrssssszzzzana!"

"Berehzzzzzzirrrrrr!" the lead Eimin-Tin snarled back.

Elulim lowered veir head. "Akildniii-vara! Mzohosssssss. Skavaasssss-pherotrisssss. Lekmezzzz. Nara Girsssanava-vara."

Hawkmoon furrowed her brow. Girssanava. That was Seeker in Irinum. Vara, though, and nara and just about everything else - none of it made any sense to her. All the same, though, it was clear they were talking about her.

"Yirsssava!" the Eimin-Tin leader furiously retorted. Spittle flew from its mouth. It reached back and one of its kin handed it a spear carved from something's rib. "Hiirzzza!" The serpent threw the spear. Hawkmoon had her Fire-Spitter drawn in an instant, shooting the primitive missile right out of the air and reducing it to glowing embers on the spot. Only cinders and ash hit the ground. A sudden quiet fell over the immediate forest.

"Hawkmoon..." Elulim warned. "Careful."

Hawkmoon ignored ver and, with her other servo, drew her Nullblade. The sword unfolded in the blink of an eye, wicked Void energy running along its length, and she twisted it through the air - neatly bisecting the hand-rock in the process. The grim little pedestal fell apart. The Eimin-Tin stared at the hands and the broken blood-marker in dumbstruck silence. "They don't want to screw with me," Hawkmoon declared. "They really don't. Tell them that."

"I can't just-"

"I don't like them trying to kill me, 'Lulim. Tell them my patience has its limits."

Elulim exhaled through gritted teeth. "As does theirs - and they, right now, are less than fond of Cybertronians."

"Did Rampage come through here?"

"I'm in the process of asking that."

"Ask now," Hawkmoon instructed ver.

Elulim reluctantly said something to the Eimin-Tin in their own tongue. There was a long pause before the leader raised its chin at ver and gnashed something back.

"... Maybe," Elulim reported. Ve stood straighter. "They've certainly encountered mechanoforms."

"Drezhari?"

"They won't know, Hawkmoon. They've never met Coppermen before; they won't be able to tell the difference."

"What about other Akildn?"

Elulim hesitated. "They haven't been forthcoming."

"Why's that?"

"This is a holy site to them. If the answer is no and we leave them with the impression that there are Akildn further ahead, then it could make things... difficult."

"For us?"

"For the Stratocracy at large. Our relationship with the tribes is tenable at best; if we are seen trespassing blatantly, then that relationship will suffer. And..." Elulim hesitated. "Ye-es, I suppose it may make things difficult for us too."

"Okay, so now what?" Hawkmoon questioned. "Do we just wait around until they aren't looking?"

"I don't know."

"If the others are in a bad way, ahead of us, then we need to get them help."

"I realize that-"

"And we need to be there before Rampage does anything irreversible," Hawkmoon announced. "I don't trust he's not just-"

"I get that, Hawkmoon. I get that we have to..." Elulim trailed off and looked behind Hawkmoon. The other Eimin-Tin turned in the same direction. Hawkmoon glanced over her shoulder but saw nothing save forest, forest, and a little more forest. Everything was quieter, though. Quieter than usual.

"What's there?" she whispered.

"Lung serpent," Elulim breathed. "It's coming. Go. Go!"

The feral Eimin-Tin scattered and scurried back into the brush. Hawkmoon didn't spare them any more thought; she retracted her Nullblade and shoved it back into storage as she ran. The urge to fly was strong. Her wings itched for it, ached for it. The only thing keeping her grounded was the sheer press of the canopy above - and the living, grasping branches arching within the blanket of so many leaves. They'd only been on the run for a few seconds when Elulim suddenly tackled her, throwing them both to the ground and rolling them across the forest floor - right into a nest of ferns and fronds. Hawkmoon yelped as Elulim landed on her wing, made to shove her off but paused at the sight of the Akildn coiled over veirself, cradling veir own arm.

She heard a deep hissing.

She heard the rasp of sandpaper-slithering.

She heard the deep, laboured breathing of something big, something alive, something sick.

Hawkmoon grabbed Elulim by veir shoulders and dragged ver further into the brush. She only paused when a shadow fell over the game trail they'd left behind - and when the breathing became too loud to ignore. Hawkmoon dialled down the glow of her optics and squinted tightly, torn between closing them completely and losing her ability to see or keeping an eye out lest the beast got too close. There was still light out, besides. Maybe enough that her dulled optic-light wouldn't be too obvious; she needed to see. There just wasn't any way around that. She tapped Elulim's snout and, when veir eyes darted up to her faceplates, she pressed a digit to her lips. Quiet.

The lung serpent slithered closer. The first thing Hawkmoon saw was a forelimb thump down on the game trail, like a mantis' spiked raptorial pincer if much larger. The sharpened tip of it sunk into the earth and pulled - dragging the rest of the beast's necrotic body into open view. The thing was a monster, all bloated and oil-slick, with a brackish black-brown mucus lathered wetly over pale, sickly-tender flesh. The serpent was swollen and distended, more like a disfigured newt than any true snake, and its head was easily the most hideous part about it. The lung serpent had massive jaws with cracked yellowed teeth protruding from the lower jaws. A limp Eimin-Tin arm hung between its puckered, bloodied lips. Its clouded toad-like eyes stuck up from the top of its head, lazily blinking away the buzzing swarm of carrion flies hovering close by. The serpent opened its mouth and a three-pronged purple tongue snaked out, pulling the arm inside. It munched for a moment longer before swallowing explosively - and then lowered its wide head down to the ground, breathing in deeply.

Hawkmoon didn't dare move. She didn't know if she could; her world had suddenly, inexplicably fallen away to the din of a thousand whispering voices and the suffocating pressure of something other. The lung serpent itself was cast in a sheen of crawling crimson, not unlike the figures high above, but something was different about it. Something was more alive about it. It had agency. It had weight. It had impact and effect and consequence- as the poor Eimin-Tin had discovered. It blinked blindly in Hawkmoon's direction with its bland, sightless left eye and licked the air. Searching for a scent. Their scent.

It took all her resolve not to shoot into the air and bolt there and then. The trees were no kinder a fate, sure, but at least they were prettier to look at it. She didn't know if fighting would work either - because the lung serpent was massive. Three times her own size at least, and the red shadow framing its rippling form... Something was terribly wrong with it. Beyond even the creature itself; something was deeply, cosmically wrong with the entity standing before them. Something beyond physical, beyond material, beyond causal.

It felt like the Dark.

The lung serpent lifted its head and bared its chipped, rotten teeth. Hawkmoon's spark stalled in her chest - but instead of turning their way, as she'd feared, it lumbered on with a low hissing growl that rose to a sibilant roar. The nearby trees shivered and twisted at the sound of it, their branches grasping at empty air high above like so many skeletal fingers. Another roar answered the serpent, full of fire and rage. It sounded equally unnatural; it sounded powerful. And it sounded artificial - like another mechanoform. The lung serpent followed it, disappearing from view entirely. Hawkmoon didn't so much as twitch until the noise of its rough slithering finally faded away.

"What was that?" she whispered softly. "Drezhari?"

No answer.

Hawkmoon craned helm around. Elulim glanced up at her and shook veir head. "I don't know," ve exhaustedly admitted. "I... I don't."

"It's moved ahead of us," Hawkmoon told ver. "Do we try to circumvent it or-"

"What..." Elulim panted. With a start Hawkmoon understood that ve was having another red shadow-induced episode. The uniformity of it was growing disturbing. "What... do you... propose?"

Hawkmoon looked around. She listened - and swore she could hear the din of distant howls. "It's preoccupied with something. We can run past. How far until the reliquary?"

"Another... another day o-... or so at our usual... p-pace," Elulim muttered. Ve propped veirself up on veir good elbow.

"Do you need to sleep or-"

"I can..." Elulim groaned. "I can carry on... Hawkmoon. Same... as you. Just..." Elulim looked in the direction the lung serpent had gone. "The shadows... will only grow... stronger the closer we... get - and... if... there are Drezhari there... then we need to... to kill them."

Hawkmoon paused. "I haven't signed up for that, 'Lulim."

"They d-deserve it."

"And I'm sure your Stratocracy will punish them accordingly, but I'm not about to slaughter people who've never personally done me harm."

Elulim scowled. "We'll... we'll see," ve hissed. "They'll... change your mind... for you, Hawkmoon. They... have everything... to lose... and they won't easily... give it up. Not willingly."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Now - lung serpent."

"We..." Elulim winced. "We have to circle around... to some degree, even if... even if you think we... sh-should risk a run. We... we can't take the same trails - not now that it... it has coated everything in its wake."

Hawkmoon nodded, relieved they'd reached a decision. "I'll follow your lead."

"So... so be it." Elulim tried shoving veirself up and faltered, wincing hard. Ve clutched veir arm closely. "I... help me up."

Hawkmoon straighted up and offered ver a servo. Elulim took it and levered veirself up. Ve nodded a quick thanks and raised veir head, armour pulling back from veir snout. "The scents here... are growing muddled," ve muttered. "But... this way. I think it's... it's clear. Or clearer than the rest." Elulim started walking in a designated direction, Hawkmoon close behind-

And then the bush to their right flared with sudden fire.

"Primus, frag, move!" Hawkmoon half-ordered, half-cursed. She all but shoved Elulim out of the way, instinctually putting herself between ver and the bright scarlet flames; her frame was heat-resistant, designed to withstand the drastically-shifting temperatures of open space. In her processor it just made sense that she be the shield. They didn't make it far before roots tore out of the ground ahead of them, around them, lashing through the air with frantic fury. The trunk of the tree bowed down, collapsing over - but in a different direction to their own. Hawkmoon heard the snap of colossal jaws, the explosive seething hiss of more flames sparking to life, and the groan of the tree as something hit it, something ravaged it, something struggled within its grasp as it painstakingly straightened up. Then it splintered apart, branches falling away, and something tumbled from the canopy above amidst a shower of burning leaves. It hit the ground with a metallic thud, closer to the trail they'd left behind than them, and struggled to its pedes. It dragged itself up onto steel claws, bleeding fire from brutal incisions along its flank, and more flames dripped from between its curved teeth.

It was a dragon.

But a Cybertronian one.

"Oh scrap," Hawkmoon swore. She vented hard - and all the little, overshadowed joys about being free, being outside, it all melted away.

The dragon abruptly looked up and locked optics with her, its brutish yellow-and-green skull contorting into a snarl. "Seeker," it said. Then the tree smashed it back into the ground with a swing of its trunk, rising back up for another hit. The dragon weakly tried to raise its massive wings, sheets of metallic weave stretched between steel frame, only for the tree to pummel it down into the crater of its own making a second time. It bellowed weakly, embers sputtering out between curved steel fangs.

Hawkmoon almost left it be. She'd taken one look at the dragon and decided no, I'm not party to that, I don't care for it, but being in the know was just as much a curse. With all the reluctance she could afford, Hawkmoon activated her thrusters and shot ahead. She had her handcannon drawn and fired haphazardly at the tree, scorching its bark. The tree, for its part, brayed and shrieked with indignation and switched targets. It tried blindly swatting for her, raking a massive thorny limb through the air, and Hawkmoon only just managed to dart under the blow. She slapped her Fire-Spitter against its holster, locking it in, and drew her Nullblade. A single arc of the sword cut away a slower branch aimed for her wings and forced the tree to flinch with pain. There was nothing quite like the burn of Void, Hawkmoon knew. Nothing at all.

"Get out of range!" Hawkmoon shouted - which, in hindsight, was probably not the best idea. Below and behind her, though, Elulim got the idea and dashed away from the roving claws of vengeful trees.

Hawkmoon bisected another grasping branch, then dove low to the dragon's side. "Get up," she growled. "Get a move on."

The dragon gnashed its teeth. "You're," it painfully hacked out through a fritzy vocalizer, "coming... with... me."

"And you're half-dead," Hawkmoon retorted. "Some high-ground you got there, Ser'Ket. Can you still fly?"

"Who... do you... think I-"

"The moron who just woke up half the forest. I said MOVE!" Hawkmoon kicked back at Ser'ket, trying to force her up, while swiping at a lesser branch whipping their way. The Nullblade ripped right through the living wood, but the part that was separated still slapped strongly against Hawkmoon's overshield, leaving cracks across the orange barrier. It would have likely caved in her helm had she been bereft of protection. As it was, she still staggered beneath the force of it.

At her back, Ser'ket audibly dragged herself out of her crater and exhaustedly shook loose earth off of her frame. It was a hair-raising feeling (or would've been, had Hawkmoon still had hair), to have a dragon in her blindspot, and she wasn't keen on letting it continue. The tree must have heard her silent plea, though, and answered it by bringing its mass to bear - evidently fed up with their little game of chicken. "Fly!" Hawkmoon cried out, already in the midst of rocketing herself out of the way. With a tremendous beat of her wings Ser'ket took after her, clearing out of the way as a huge portion of the canopy above smashed down where they'd just been standing. Hawkmoon landed out what she judged to be the tree's range, eyed the other nearby trees with suspicion but, as they could only hear and smell, they hadn't lunged for her just yet. She had time. To collect herself, to look at her options and make a quick decision.

"Serpent!" Elulim exclaimed. Hawkmoon looked around - nothing yet, but then she heard the dull, echoing roar past the din of rumbling trees. Elulim hurriedly limped over to Hawkmoon, panic in veir eyes, and ve frantically tugged her arm. "We... n-need to... to run!"

Where? Hawkmoon grimly mused. The fires were spreading. The trees were shaking. "Scrap," she vented. "Oh you fragging- Scrap."

Ser'ket, standing next to them, glanced in the direction of the roars with optics full of disgust and not a little trepidation. "Fire didn't kill it," she murmured. Hawkmoon barely heard her.

She turned to Elulim. "Can you shoot?"

Elulim hesitated.

"'Lulim, I'm going to need you to shoot for me. I'll keep it distracted; I can dance a merry waltz around it, but if that's not enough..."

"I can try."

"Rifle?"

Elulim raised one of veir needle-blades. "This. Short-range p-projection."

"Nothing bigger?"

"Bigger?!" Elulim exclaimed incredulously. "Nothing short... of a gunship... may bring down a lung... a lung serpent, let... alone one animated... by red shadow!"

"You're not helping my confidence, 'Lulim."

Ser'ket groaned beside them. She shook out her wings, then thought better of it and folded them tightly against her frame. Dual plasma-turrets formed on each of her shoulders, and a heavy cannon sprouted between the grasping curved spikes at the end of her tail. Her alt-form was draconic, that was certain, but it bore some arthropodic and, more accurately, scorpion-esque characteristics. The mandibles were a big giveaway in that regard. She glanced at Hawkmoon with narrowed optics and her bestial snarl deepened.

"Primus you're horrific," Hawkmoon muttered. Ser'ket growled and looked back ahead.

"Lung serpent, Seeker!" Elulim reminded her, stealing Hawkmoon's attention.

"Name, 'Lulim." Hawkmoon tried to smile. The roaring was getting closer. The feeling of pressure around her neck, coiling around her wings and limbs increased manifold. "I don't fancy our chances of getting away. Maybe if we held you between us, then-"

"Hawkmoon," Elulim snapped. "It is red... shadow. It won't... stay... grounded. It won't die... just like that."

"Good thing I have experience in that field, eh?" Hawkmoon turned to Ser'ket. "You hear that?"

Ser'ket stared at her. "You're coming back with me," she stubbornly declared.

"You're funny." Hawkmoon extended her shoulder cannon and transformed her off-servo into a shard carbine. "Can't say it's been a pleasure."

"Think carefully about your next actions, Seeker."

"Have done, am doing, will do. With regret in regards to the latter, I imagine, but that's neither here nor there just yet." Hawkmoon didn't wait around. Open-hearted talk like that wasn't easy to stomach, especially with something a whole lot more worthy of attention bearing down on them. She shot into the air, swivelled to face the direction in which the lung serpent was making its racket and waited.

There. Movement. Behind the wounded tree. Something big and red-tinged. Pale flesh sliding over rank muck. Oil-black spiked forelimbs stamping into the ground to lever a slug-like body over the forest floor, weaving between roving roots. The moment Hawkmoon spied the creature's misshapen head she opened fire - shards and nucleon charge-rounds both. Neither were loud enough to upset the trees any more than they already had been, but they caught the serpent's attention well enough. Crystalline shards lashed and tore at the lung serpent's skin, flaying lines of mucus from its hide and drawing beads of black blood. The nucleon charge needled a miniscule hole through its lumpy skull.

The serpent just looked at her and hissed with ravenous fury, injuries all but forgotten. It wasn't like a Trizu bull either, healing in an instant; the serpent carried on with an open tunnel in its head as if everything were fine and dandy. Because of course it did - when was the last time mortal wounds were just that?

She didn't even want to finish that line of thought. It led somewhere bad.

"Scrap," Hawkmoon said for the umpteenth time as the lung serpent burst into motion. The whispering voices that accompanied grew louder, stronger, angrier. They filled Hawkmoon's audioreceptors with words known and unknown - in the languages of human, Cybertronian, Eimin-Tin, Taishibethi and many, many more.

Fall, they said.

Lower your wings.

Embrace it.

Fight.

Kill.

Die.

End.

Be everything.

Be not.

"HAWKMOON!" Elulim screamed. Hawkmoon blinked - and there she was, stood on the forest floor with her guns lowered, the lung serpent right there. Standing there. Looking at her with its half-blind toad eyes. It blinked sluggishly, torn secondary eyelids pulling across pale cataracts. She struck out without thinking, slashing across its face with her Nullblade and firing back. She tried flying. The pressure - pressure all around, grasping at her entire frame, coiling around her like an anaconda, squeezing tight - forced her back down. The air crackled and rippled and shattered with all sorts of wrong power.

Gravity broke.

Crown Seven braced against a wall as all her atoms were stretched almost to 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.

It was the end. It was the Dark. The voice filled her processor with defeat, despair, with the inevitability of time's end and the last shape's rise. It was futile; it was needless. No more. No more struggling. No more fighting. It wasn't her place to decide if she fit that shape - she was weak and mortal where once she hadn't been, and it was for something older, something wiser to decide if there was any salvaging-

Ser'ket took the serpent from the side, slamming into it with a ugly crunch. Her talons rose, her fangs flashed, her fire flew. The lung serpent retaliated with equal amounts savagery and methodical efficiency. They ripped at each other, they bit and they tussled and they rolled, caught in a blanket of heat and red-hued mist. The lung serpent ended up on top, catching one of Ser'ket's limbs in its jaws and crushing it into scrap with pitiful ease. She screamed.

Hawkmoon made to help, made to step in, but a force hit her then - and she gasped for a breath that would not come. She staggered back, balance forgotten, and fired blindly. The lung serpent hissed with frustration somewhere out of view; stop stop stop, you know it's useless, why-

"FUCK OFF!" Hawkmoon yelled. The forest answered her, trembling with provocation. It hated noise. It hated the violence of littler, lesser things. It hated her. And she hated it. She hated - and she basked in it, the red-hot fires of anger, of indignation, instilling in her a strength to banish the red shadow's enticing ministrations and throw all she had at the beast before it. It contorted once, the crimson glow wreathing it briefly falling apart, but the lung serpent reconsolidated - somehow more real, more natural. It flashed forward, throwing its decrepit heft her way, and Hawkmoon didn't have the energy to get out of the way. Her thrusters wouldn't fire. Her wings wouldn't lift. Even her spark wasn't really in the game - filled with doubt and self-ridicule.

Why try? it seemed to ask.

Why not?! her processor roared back. At least a part of her still felt like it was on her side.

The lung serpent hit her hard. She tipped back far enough from the closing of its massive jaws, shoved the Nullblade up under its chin as she'd done to Aiakos mere days past, and punched up through the roof of its skull. The serpent shook free and bellowed, still alive, still fighting, still living. In so far as it could live.

Another spike planted in its neck. One of Elulim's needle-blades. Void-venom pulsed down the pale blade's length, pumping straight into the lung serpent. Hawkmoon spotted ver close by, plucking the needle-blade of veir free arm and planting it by hand in the lung serpent's back. The beast roiled and shrieked, filling the area with dangerous noise, and it swung its body for ver. Elulim scuttered away, hissing in return, and pulled veir sidearm up and out to fire into the monster's flank. Ser'ket rose up on its other side, up on her hind legs, and brought her entire weight down on the serpent's spine.

It didn't take it lying down. The serpent rolled, dislodging Ser'ket quick, and closed its mouth on the end of one of her wings - snapping the frame apart. She screamed, again, and tore at the beast, thrashing to get away. Fire engulfed the two, flowing like a river from her own mouth, but the serpent wasn't phased in the slightest. The mucus covering it kept the flames at bay, long enough for it to snag her tail as she moved to get away. It swung her about, tossed her behind itself and then rolled again to smother the fires out. The motion flung globs of burning mucus in most every direction. Hawkmoon raised an arm to cover her faceplates as she closed in. She trudged towards it with all the intent to rip its fragging head off, to see if that stopped it.

The serpent froze, raised its head and looked straight at her. Hawkmoon flared her plating, raised her wings, sneered at the beast. It bared its own teeth in return. A hail of energy fire shattered the moment, blinding the serpent, and Hawkmoon closed the distance between them as fast as she could. She swung her Nullblade wide, catching the serpent as it raised its disgorged head to roar at Elulim, and chopped into its neck. The serpent went momentarily rigid before exploding into violence. It bucked and headbutted her away. Hawkmoon let go of her sword, stumbled away and summoned it back into internal storage. She ejected it, quick as she could, but just as the blade unfolded the serpent swung back her way and leapt at her.

Her overshield held. That was the only thing that saved her then. It held as the lung serpent crushed her to the forest floor - and shattered as it then brought its spiked forelimbs to bear. One punched a hole in the arm holding her Nullblade, pinning it to the ground before she could behead the damned beast in full, and the other ripped through her shoulder. Her pain receptors spiked with activity before her combat inhibitors could entirely muffle them, forcing a shocked flinch. Hawkmoon gritted her denta against the yell that threatened to escape her vocalizer. The lung serpent holding her down had no such inhibitions, freely howling its triumph. The forest around them, above them, shook with thinly-veiled ire.

Wait a damn second.

Hawkmoon grabbed her Fire-Spitter and aimed it away. She fired at the closest trunk and held down the trigger until the battery-mag ran empty. The lung serpent quizzically looked down at her, though it was quickly replaced with twisted craving. It opened its foul jaws-

And shrieked with surprise as a clawed branch closed around its midsection. The serpent jerked wildly, pulling its legs free of Hawkmoon's frame, and she had to drop her Fire-Spitter to catch the limb rushing towards her faceplates. It stopped mere inches away. Then, finally, the whole lung serpent pulled away as more branches rushed down. The tree ripped the beast up from the ground, held it tight, and when the struggling became too much it rumbled to its neighbour - who reached over and took hold of the serpent's head. They ripped it apart between them. Crimson essence rained down on her from the canopy above, followed by dissipating chunks of serpent as the trees tore and tore and tore, all too eager to finally put the racket to rest. Hawkmoon watched, unable to divert her optics, and it was only when Elulim darted into view that her reverie broke.

"C'mon!" Elulim urged. Ve tugged at Hawkmoon's servo. She was up in an instant, fleeting damage reports dotting her HUD, but her only directive was to get away - get away fast. In case the trees weren't yet satisfied.

Or in case the serpent wasn't done.

She grabbed her Fire-Spitter, shoved her Nullblade back into storage, and stumbled after Elulim. The fires still smouldered, still barricaded much of the forest off to them, but they didn't care. Just that they had somewhere to go.

They didn't stop running until the forest quietened and all they could was the sound of their own breathing. Or Elulim's breathing, rather. Hawkmoon and Ser'ket could only vent - which had none of the predictable routine and was nowhere near as satisfying. At last they slid onto another game trail, clear of living red shadows and feral Eimin-Tin and Nymphites and everything that made Penchant a living hellscape. Everything but trees, trees, and oh, would you look at that, more trees.

"Frag," Hawkmoon uttered. It didn't feel like enough, so she followed up with a low, "Fuck."

Elulim fell to veir knees. "We're alive," ve gasped. "We're alive."

"Told you I'd watch your back."

"Watch my..." Elulim turned on her. "Watch my back?! We almost died for... for... for that!" Ve pointed an accusing finger at Ser'ket - who took one at ver and transformed on the spot. It was a slow process, probably just for that extra level of caution regarding any damaged parts, but in the end Ser'ket stood up on her own two legs in one piece. Exactly as Hawkmoon had remembered her. She groaned and rolled her shoulders, then drew a folded spear from her back and guardedly settled her optics on Hawkmoon.

"I will shoot you," Hawkmoon warned her. "I will."

"Seeker-"

"Dragonling."

Ser'ket's faceplates tightened. "You have a mouth," she growled. "Watch it."

"Watch yours. I'm not your lackey, Ser'ket. Why the frag are you here?"

"You."

"Yeah, no, I got that, but why the frag is this so important? How'd you even find us?"

Ser'ket ignored her and made a show of inspecting their surroundings. Hawkmoon didn't believe it for a bit. "Where's Rampage?"

"Dunno. Dead, maybe. Or alive. I don't much care. How did you find us?"

"What is he planning, Seeker?"

"Hey, remember that game we played before? An answer for an answer? You're due."

Ser'ket looked back at her with narrowed optics. "You don't want to test me, Seeker."

"Why not?" Hawkmoon challenged. "I just saw you get swatted around by that lung serpent. You're in no state to make me do anything."

"You're in no state to resist." Ser'ket nodded pointedly to Hawkmoon's arm. To her shoulder. "You're in a worse state than I am."

Hawkmoon pulled her Fire-Spitter. "You want to throw, then, huh? That it?" She aimed - not at Ser'ket, but at the nearest tree. "You want to see what happens?"

Ser'ket scowled. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

The tense silence that ensued stretched into seeming eternity - until Elulim warily waded in, veir eyes trained on Ser'ket. "Hawkmoon..." ve warned.

"What?"

"We can kill her together," Elulim told her. Ve drew a curved knife longer than veir forearm. "No need to involve the forest."

Hawkmoon considered it. "We could," she reasoned - and as a result switched targets. More for show than not; she reckoned a shot-out leg would dissuade Ser'ket from anything overly rash, should it come to it. What with a broken wing that was still damning enough. "Happy to keep pressing things, dragonling?"

Ser'ket looked between them. She no longer seemed quite so confident. "Akildn," she snarled. "You wouldn't dare... Neither of you would dare..."

"We just saved your hide. We can just as easily un-save it, if that's how you want this to play out."

Elulim snorted. "Un-save. Very good."

Hawkmoon cracked a hollow grin. "Thanks. Just thought of it there."

Ser'ket not-so-discreetly took a step back. "You have no idea what you're doing."

"Yeah I do," Hawkmoon snapped. "I'm giving you the incentive to leave me the frag alone. Aiakos is dead; let me be. There's no harm in it, to you or I or anyone else."

"That's what I'm trying to confirm."

"You destroyed her bones. There's nothing left for her to cling to."

Ser'ket didn't say anything. She just looked at Hawkmoon.

"No." Hawkmoon shook her helm. "Dragons don't do that."

"We have no idea where their limits sta-"

"They don't live in thoughts. Aiakos is dead." Hawkmoon's lips set in a thin line. "My wish was protection enough, besides."

"We don't know that for sure."

"And what about Rampage? You going to try to break his processor open too?"

Ser'ket's gaze didn't falter. "I don't know what he's trying to do," she said slowly, "leading you astray and cutting comms, but I don't approve of it. I won't allow it. You would do well to avoid heeding his advice, Seeker. He's a scoundrel. A savage. A liar and a cheat and a sadist. Whatever he's offered you-"

"Money."

"What?"

"Money. In the form of rhenium slates," Hawkmoon clarified. "And the chance to get away from you. I don't care about these notions of yours; I will kill to protect myself. You're not getting in my mind, dragonling. Never. I advise you to turn around, fly back to the city and the Krenshans and all that and forget all about me. I'm not going with you."

"This affects more lives than your own, Seeker."

"I've got it covered."

"Do you?" Ser'ket shook her helm. "This gets us nowhere. We need to return."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you that. Not with..." Ser'ket shot Elulim a suspicious look, "others in a position to overhear."

"Ser'ket," Hawkmoon snapped. "You're not getting into my mind."

"Then I won't!" Ser'ket growled. "There are other tests I can perform, to ensure the dragon is gone."

"Like?"

"Understanding the extent of your wish."

Hawkmoon wanted to say no. She almost said no. Augur might've told her to say no too, if he'd been there to hear it. That would have confirmed her decision. But Augur was nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard - and Hawkmoon wasn't entirely sure she was comfortable making that choice without him there to advise her of the wisdom of it. He was annoying, he lacked personal boundaries, he was cryptic and snarky and a know-it-all but she'd grown to trust his judgement - and she knew he at least took her best interests into consideration.

But where was he, then? Where had he gone?

"We'll see," Hawkmoon said at length. Non-committal.

"So we're not killing her," Elulim whispered.

"Primus no." Hawkmoon glanced at ver. "That's fucked up."

Elulim blinked. "You're too tender-hearted," ve accused.

Hawkmoon sagely nodded. "True."

Elulim snorted and turned about. "What now?"

"We keep going, I suppose."

Ser'ket looked between them. "Go where?"

Hawkmoon jutted a thumb over her should. "There's this old pre-Eimin-Tin ruin Rampage was planning to ransack-"

"Wrong direction," Elulim told her.

Hawkmoon frowned and pointed a different way. "There?"

"No." Elulim pointed straight perpendicular from the game trail.

"Right. So yeah, Rampage's robbing a place."

Ser'ket opened her mouth and then closed it. "It's not Eimin-Tin," she said slowly.

"Nor Cybertronian," Elulim coolly added. Ve shot Ser'ket an icy look. "Though knowing your kind, I suspect you'd prefer to change that."

"Are you insinuating something, Akildn?"

"Oi." Hawkmoon clicked her digits. Both of them glanced at her - though she was looking solely at Ser'ket. "Leave it be. Leave ver be."

"Where is your pride as a Cybertronian?" Ser'ket challenged.

"In the dirt. With Aiakos. Look, you want Rampage? I couldn't presume to know why, but we'll bring you to him - and then our business here is done. We clear?"

Ser'ket raised her helm. "I can't agree to that."

"Then that's your prerogative, 'cause I don't give a scrap. We don't need you - but you sure as Pit need us."

"How do you reckon that?"

"Your wing's bust." Hawkmoon smiled coldly. "I hear it's a long walk back to the city."

Ser'ket narrowed her optics. "There are outposts to wait for transport."

"Then I wish you the best of luck finding them without an Akildn to guide you." Hawkmoon looked to Elulim. "We good?"

"... We're good," Elulim purred. Ve shot Ser'ket a final warning look. "Dragon-morph," ve spat.

Ser'ket had the decency to look stunned. She stood there, struck wordless, as Hawkmoon shrugged with one shoulder and followed after Elulim.

"Do you think...?" Elulim whispered the moment they were out of earshot.

Hawkmoon harrumphed. "Yeah. Not like she's got options."

"There is that."

"Gotta chafe, though. But it'll be good for her." Hawkmoon lifted her chin. "Imperious bitch."

"How's your arm?"

"Bleeding like a sonova. Yours?"

Elulim shrugged with veir good shoulder. "I don't have a Cybertronian repair kit for you. Do you?"

"Some spare sheet metal," Hawkmoon grimly reported. She rummaged around in her internal storage and pulled a sheet of scrap metal out. She stopped in place to press it against the hole in her shoulder. "No torch to solder, though. You?"

"No."

"What about that pistol of yours? That plasma-based?"

"Yes...?"

"Could I have a go?"

Elulim reluctantly unclipped it and handed it over. "Why?"

"Because," Hawkmoon muttered. She fired it down at the ground, glazing earth into glass. Elulim flinched beside her. "It roars quieter than my 'cannon." She pressed it against the sheet metal - long enough for her to feel the burn. Hawkmoon gritted her denta and held it there until it became too much, but by then the scrap was well-soldered onto her frame. She garbled out a wordless curse, her shoulder shaking. "Fuck..."

"Hawkmoon?"

"Here." Hawkmoon handed the sidearm back. "Would you do my arm for me?"

Elulim tilted veir head. "If you want."

Hawkmoon pressed another length of scrap over her wounded forearm, clotting the slow leak of bright blue energon. Elulim discharged the pistol and pressed its glowing barrel against the field dressing, searing the metal onto the surrounding plate. It burned.

"Okay!" Hawkmoon gasped. Elulim pulled back. "Okay, okay, fraaaaag..."

"What will that do?" Elulim questioned. "Stop the bleeding?"

Hawkmoon tiredly nodded.

"And what if the damage beneath is more serious?"

"Then I'm screwed."

"Are you okay to walk?" Elulim inquired.

Hawkmoon nodded again. "We'll see how far we get," she vented. "'Sides, not like you can take my weight."

Elulim straightened with affront. "You underestimate me."

"'Lulim, sweetheart, I'm made of pure fucking metal."

They walked on through the night. Ser'ket followed at a distance for a time, but she inevitably decided that that wasn't good enough and picked up the pace to join them proper. Hawkmoon kept her on the corner of her vision the whole while, and Elulim even took to making veirself a physical boundary between herself and Ser'ket. It was very sweet. Definitely had nothing to do with how blatantly Elulim sneered at the very sight of the beastformer, how ve seemed ready to throw everything down and shoot her the moment she made a wrong move. Certainly not.

Hawkmoon's concerns regarding her dissipated soon, though - and not for anything so mundane as a level of trust being built up between them, oh no, but for the rising tension to do with the world around them. The forest may have settled in for the night, but the red shadows up above had no such inclinations. Their numbers increased the farther they trekked, filling the heavens above and watching them from their vaunted positions. Hawkmoon was as unnerved by them as she was envious; oh to fly free, to fly forever. If only there wasn't such a damningly dangerous forest to mind - where the trees were liable to block her from ever landing again the moment she rose above the canopy.

"They are like the serpent," Ser'ket said after a while.

Hawkmoon found herself humming along. "Little less alive, though."

"How long will that last?"

Hawkmoon looked to Elulim. Elulim tasted the air, tongue flicking out. "There's no definitive way to know," ve said. "The red shadows grow stronger the closer we get - but if one is destroyed, then it may take them some time to reconsolidate their power. Make no mistake, however; this is a near-living body, this tormen-system. Provocation will give it a reason to retaliate."

"And if the Drezhari are hammering at the reliquary's doors..." Hawkmoon trailed off. Elulim glumly dipped veir head.

Ser'ket looked between the two of them with a troubled frown. "Drezhari?"

Hawkmoon hesitated. "We think..." she began to explain, "that there are Coppermen in town. We found an imported carnivore with a Drezhari implant."

"And what makes you-"

"It's not the kind of predator that survives long. Elulim said so, anyways."

"Nymphites are the apex of their environment," Elulim gruffly explained, "but Penchant is another arena entirely. It faces the same dangers as we: red shadows, lockjaws, lung serpents, and feral Eimin-Tin."

"Locals," Ser'ket muttered. Not quietly enough by half; Elulim spared her an irritated glare. "Will they be an issue?"

"An ineffective one," Hawkmoon replied. "We encountered some. Before you and that slug barreled our way, anyways."

"Which means that they judge the threat of interlopers serious enough to break the sanctity of the reliquary site," Elulim clarified. "They are not necessarily our foes in this dilemma, but they will not be our allies."

"This land is sacred to them," Ser'ket noted. "To their gods, I presume?"

Elulim begrudgingly nodded. "To their gods," ve echoed. "Hollow figments that they are."

"Which gods are these?" Hawkmoon inquired - purely out of idle curiosity. "Red shadow-forms?"

Elulim hesitated. "To some degree," ve said. "The tribes worship the incarnations of life's myriad identities. They have it separated into active life and worldly life - and, when times grow dark, the other life beyond the reach of natural existence. Un-life, one might say. That which does not live and yet grows, yet moves, yet thinks and dreams and eats and destroys."

"So..."

"Spirits and phantoms. On this side, the side of life, they believe in the dual spirits of the world - Touka the World-Maker and Eyasrava the Forest-Mother - and the lone spirit of blooded life - Irifn the Venerer."

"And the phantoms?"

"If you want those, simply look up," Elulim grunted.

Hawkmoon took her point. "Fair. Should've expected that. But you don't believe in these other spirits?"

"I... believe they existed, though not in the form the tribes fantasise for them. Touka was an alien construct, a timelost treasure of a people long dead. It passed by Penchant before even the Cybertronians settled this soil, took the raw mantle of the world and plucked out moons, disturbing the earth enough to scatter your energon and many other minerals across the surface. Life propagated soon after. All the life you see around you. Including," Elulim grew quieter, "mine. Or my people's, in any case."

"But you... don't believe?"

"I don't believe Touka was a god. I do believe Touka partook in shepherding our planet into the shape you see it now. Don't you Cybertronians know it by another name?"

"The Envoy," Ser'ket softly replied. She looked at Hawkmoon guardedly, optical ridges furrowed. "And… I've heard that there are those civilizations across the Divide who refer to it as the Wayfarer Moon. They knew it better."

Hawkmoon's spark skipped a thrumming beat. "I bet they did," she muttered. She looked around at the forest in a new light - and for some reason it just didn't make sense. The Traveler! she thought. The Traveler! Here!

But the life she saw was ruthless, brutal, selfish. The trees did not actively hunt one another, maybe - but they starved most budding saplings around them of sunlight, hefting their canopies in wide circumferences. The animals... Hawkmoon thought of the lung serpents and thought they were so much worse. And the people? She snuck a glance at Elulim. A person, yes. Likeable, yes. But had ve not admitted to veir own people's acts of genocide against another sapient race? Cold. Violent. Not the Light's inherent traits. And they hadn't been weaponized to fight against a stalking cosmic threat like humanity had - so this was all natural to them.

Or at least Hawkmoon thought it was.

"What about the other spirits?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from quavering. The Light, she mused, so close and yet so, so far.

Elulim hardly noticed. "Eyasrava left Penchant before, during, or after the Cybertronian colony here was reduced to a grave. The current theory is afterwards - long enough that early Eimin-Tin, or perhaps even our duller ancestor-serpents, knew of her. She was a cold thing, the penultimate tree-form, and she grew beyond the bounds of this planet. She taught the trees to hunt at some point before her departure, taught them to feed and listen perhaps in hope that it would produce another like her. When none manifested, she left. A tree of higher-thought was all she was, but what a cold cunning she bore. Enough to secure passage off-world for better pickings elsewhere - or perhaps to sate the vast loneliness that troubled her on Penchant."

"And Irifn?"

"It left with Eyasrava. The Venerer was more a force of nature than an individual soul; the tribes believed it to be a great lung serpent, hungry enough to devour every living thing in sight. We, the city-folk of the Stratocracy, believe it was merely a rampant defense AI of Cybertronian design activated during the colony's fall. Whatever it was, it stood to destroy everything and its removal was a blessing unto all the Eimin-Tin of Penchant, for if it had remained planetside it would have rendered us extinct long ago."

"So... Eyasrava took it?"

"According to the feral Eimin-Tini myths. The tribes say that Eyasrava was unusually fond of it, as one would care for a pet. Some older, more outlandish records say that Irifn was not even a physical thing, more of an ideology, a cause for Eyasrava to champion. All the same Irifn took and devoured to grow, and Eyasrava fed it as a sturdy feeds a spearhead's edge - whetting its appetite for more."

Hawkmoon nodded slowly. "Where does this fit with the reliquary?"

Elulim paused. "I don't know. They believe that the red shadows are un-living spirits, and perhaps then that this may be their nest as nowhere else on Penchant do they manifest and congregate so strongly, but beyond that I don't know. They don't interest me, the feral Eimin-Tin. I never had cause to research them personally."

"You regretting that now?"

"Not really."

Hawkmoon snorted. "Fair."

"What of the trees?" Ser'ket questioned.

Elulim begrudgingly looked her way. "What about them?"

"Where do they stand in all this?"

"Whichever way they want. They are the forest; they are the Undergrowth. This is their land. Even the feral Eimin-Tin exist only by their reluctant volition."

"Will they oppose us?"

"If we draw their attention, yes. They are predators - and to them we are prey."

Ser'ket grumbled something Hawkmoon couldn't hear. "But why?" she asked. "Why do the trees kill and eat? Is sunlight not enough?"

"The competition to survive on Penchant is extreme," Elulim replied. "Why not?"

"Because surely they have the means to persist already - without attacking other lifeforms. Surely the energon deposits below the soil must be sufficient enough."

Hawkmoon tilted her helm. "Where does the energon fit in all this?"

"The trees feed from it," Elulim told her, cutting off Ser'ket's explanation before it could even begin. The beastformer eyed ver irritably. Elulim ignored her and continued, "They siphon the potential energy within via complex chemical processes over vast stretches of time. Where your kind burn through energon in a matter of days, they nurse it over the course of decades, even centuries."

Hawkmoon made a face. "Lotta energy for a biological system. What's to stop them from exploding? Or drawing toxins into their roots?"

"Nothing and nothing. Hence why they feed slowly, meticulously, to better identify the purity of the energy they absorb." Elulim hesitated. "We'd tried to replicate those same systems to avoid ending up like the Drezhari - or your own empire's fractured core - to preserve what energon reserves and tech troves we have left. It's... come with mixed results. Mostly we emulate you, just to get the job done."

"'Least you do it better than Cybertron," Hawkmoon muttered. She looked around. "Nothing there but stretches of nothing and industrialized pits. Only the upper levels of the city-states are anything approaching pretty. You've still got life here. You'll still got biodiversity."

"It's easy when you leave well enough alone," Elulim agreed. "But that might not last - not if the Drezhari are making changes. They're the worst. They scar the land and drain the stars. There's nothing safe from them. Nothing they won't foul. They need to go."

"We'll see what happens when we get there," Hawkmoon said, pursing her lips. "'Kay? I'm not opening fire at the first sign of Coppermen."

"And when they fire back?"

"If they fire back, then it's open season."

They stopped to make camp when midnight struck. Heater, motion sensors - the usual protocol. Elulim pulled veir sidearm and said, "I'll keep-"

"I'll keep watch," Hawkmoon softly told ver. She put a servo on veir shoulder and lightly pushed ver back. "You sleep."

But Elulim was stubborn. "You haven't slept since we set out," ve quietly challenged.

Hawkmoon shrugged. She could feel the need for a recharge hanging on her shoulders, but it was an easy weight to shrug off. All she needed was something to take her mind off it. "Don't need it," she lied. "Sleep, 'Lulim. Grab some shut-eye. I need you on your feet tomorrow. To watch my back, yeah?"

Elulim's features softened. "So long as you watch mine," ve murmured, feigning a curt tone. Hawkmoon saw right through it.

She dipped her helm. "You've got it. I'll wake you up if there's trouble."

Elulim tiredly nodded and gathered up loose leaf litter around a heater. Ve laid down and coiled around it, still wearing veir armour. Ready to fight. Ready to run. For her part, Hawkmoon sat down close by and absentmindedly gazed out into the forest. She kept Ser'ket in view, though tried not to make it obvious. The beastformer just hunkered down and tended to her broken wing. Nasty work, that.

Whatever. As far as Hawkmoon was concerned, it was her own fault; even if she'd never seen a lung serpent before, it was pretty obvious even at a glance that those things were to be avoided. Who in their right mind decided that tackling toad-snake-shrimps the size of lesser gunships was a good idea? Oh, a beastformer of course, but surely self-preservation served some purpose in the lodge-lifestyle. Better that I'm out, Hawkmoon thought to herself. There was such a thing as living too risky and she just wasn't for it. Everything was better in semi-moderation. Leave the thrillseekers to their suicidal ends and keep on chugging along.

Her mind strayed after that. She studied the forest. Watched the nearby tree roots shift minutely, as if trying to find that more comfortable position. She spied the life that existed around and on the trees; she watched the creeping mosses, the crawling lichens, the mantids and the snakes and the centipedes. Plants and arthropods and reptiles - but altered versions, entirely unlike those of Earth. Eimin-Tin, Hawkmoon supposed, were about as much snakes as a Fallen was a crab. The terms still stuck, though. And this world - it was full of shelled bugs and soft-scaled dinosaurs.

Along with horrors cast in crimson light. Hawkmoon glanced up, squinting through what moonlight managed to break through the blanket of leaves above. Red shadows drifted in the sky, in every form imaginable. They floated hunched over with all the liveliness of hanged corpses. Some hovered out of sight. Others-

"Seeker," Ser'ket warned in a small, quiet voice.

Others were curious. One drifted down at a leisurely, painstakingly slow pace, dissolving into a formless mass of dull energy that phased through the tree branches and leaves. It stopped there, some distance from the ground, and waited for a couple of silent, unnerving seconds. Then it consolidated, took a shape, and fell the rest of the way only to stop a little over the forest floor. It was the size of the thing that confused her for a couple of moments, that gave her pause; humans... were tiny.

And, to be fair, her old human body hadn't exactly been breaking records in terms of height.

"Shortstuff," Ikharos chuckled.

Lennox-2 groaned and elbowed him. "Beanpole."

His soft laughter, rough with disuse, pinned a smile to her face.

"I just can't understand why you'd think there's anything left fighting for," Adria Lennox muttered darkly. She was wearing her old SOLSECCENT uniform, helmet tucked under one arm. It looked good, even in scabbed red. She'd spoken in the English-Kurmanji blend dialect of Freehold, with the hint of a Martian accent too; now those brought back memories. Lennox-2 had lost the accent some time after hitting up the Last City. Mixing-pot settlements were good for making something new - but sometimes, sometimes, some of the old got lost in the process.

Hawkmoon stared at her. She wanted to be unnerved. She wanted to be disorientated. She wanted to be afraid, to be angry, to be horrified. In truth all she felt was a grim sense of reluctant acceptance. "If they make a lung serpent," she darkly mused in the same tongue, "why not a human? Why not a little me from that time before I got cool?"

"You think this is cool?" Adria seethed incredulously. Her voice echoed in a way Hawkmoon couldn't really understand. It reverberated against nothing and bounced right back.

Hawkmoon leaned back and offlined her optics, lifting her faceplates to the sky. "You might have a point there."

"I died to make-"

"You died to make someone else. She died too. Now I'm here." Every word she spoke - that they both spoke - was in English-Kurmanji. Hawkmoon could hear Ser'ket getting up, she could sense Elulim stirring at her back, but she wasn't concerned about them listening in. Not unless Adria wanted to get difficult. "But... yeah. Costly upgrades, am I right? Should have read the fine print..."

"You've learned nothing. I died and you ignored it."

"Well, I couldn't remember being you. Not in any way that counted."

"You dreamed-"

"I did. I know what happened to you." Hawkmoon onlined her optics and looked down at Adria. "You hurt."

"I should have died," Adria snapped. "And now, here I am, you dragging me back - to watch your mistakes. You're not me anymore, but here you are, making all the same mistakes."

"But I'm still living. You lost and you gave up. I lost and I'm still trying."

"That's the problem..." Adria groaned. "Why?"

Hawkmoon blinked. "What do you mean, why?"

"You could have broken this brutal cycle. Let it end. Please. For all our sakes - before you damn the next one to come and we're all going to be broken up into little bits and forced to watch."

Hawkmoon tried to be angry. It was easy; there was so much of it inside her. What took more effort was letting go. "You ran from everything in your life," she quietly said. "You lost your son; that's rough. I don't blame you for grieving. I don't blame you for acting out. I should probably blame you for hurting everyone else by cutting it short, but I do blame you for committing yourself to the Deep Stone Crypt."

"It's my fault, is it?"

"You know it is. You started the cycle. I never asked for this, any of this - but fuck it, I'll make do with what I have left."

"Oh, so you're decided, now, are you?" Adria sneered. Bloody tears dripped down her crimson-hued cheeks. Angry tears. "I made a mistake. You're never going to let me live it down."

"If I do what you did," Hawkmoon said slowly, "then what the fuck happens to these two?" She motioned first to Elulim - who was by then awake and looking for all the world utterly bewildered with the world ve'd returned to - and then to Ser'ket - who just looked grumpily suspicious.

"What does it matter? You don't even like one of them." Adria shot both of them contemptuous looks before refocusing on Hawkmoon. "They'll die. Tonight, tomorrow, the next year, next century, next millennia - so what? Bound to happen at some point; leave them to it. Not your business to get involved."

"You're a hypocrite."

"And you're insufferable."

Hawkmoon cracked a smile. "Fucking hell, I really was an angry little shit, wasn't I? You are a hypocrite, Adria. You're SOLSECCENT, for fuck sake. SOLSECCENT!"

"I know what I was," Adria growled. "So what?"

"SOLSECCENT. At the ripe young age of twenty-two. That's a record-breaker, surely. And to commit so early; you must have been sure those were the oaths you wanted to live by for the rest of your Light-prolonged life."

Adria glowered - but she said nothing.

"We were born late into that Age. Or you were," Hawkmoon corrected. "Definitely after the demilitarisation period. SOLSECCENT were the last military sector to use warm bodies - and with good reason. I might not remember it, but I read about it. You took oaths to protect and serve."

"At the Warmind's directive."

"At... yeah, sure, but you had protocols in place when comms got iffy and orders fell apart. Temporary martial authority was there. Emergency command. Responsibilities directed by your own moral compasses. You lived by those orders; you were the ruling warrior class and you subjected yourselves to the strictest codes of conduct ever passed in all human history. All for the preservation of human life, human welfare. You set that precedent. I have to live with that, same as with all..." Hawkmoon gestured to herself, "this. So don't go telling me I've fucked up. I'm trying to live up to the code and even if it's so fucking hard, I still gotta do it."

Adria raised an eyebrow. "You done?" she questioned.

Hawkmoon hesitated, then tiredly nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much all I had in me. Your go."

"What does it even matter? This cycle whittles us down; there's no room for these… sentimentalities. What are you going to leave the next woman to dream about us?"

"There's not going to be another woman."

"And yet you haven't broken the cycle." Adria's shoulders bunched up. "I made you. I made you - with my sacrifice."

"You made me to be better than you."

"You don't believe that. No one believes that."

"... You..." Hawkmoon sighed. "You made me just so you could die. To give back to humanity by giving up on yourself."

"Try again."

"To... to give Vaudren someone better?"

"Wrong," Adria sternly reprimanded. "Again."

"I don't know!"

"No. You don't." Adria began to float away, her eyes alight with bright red energy. "Think on it."

"What do you mean think on it?!" Hawkmoon shot to her pedes. Elulim grabbed her elbow; that was the only thing that kept her from rushing forth and snatching her little undead out of the air.

Adria stopped, some distance up. "You lost, same as I did. Accept that. Take your due. You either end proper or you end slow. Only difference is what comes walking out of your dead husk. You can keep this cycle going or you can give us rest."

"I'm not suicidal!" Hawkmoon snarled. "I'm not! I'm going to live! I'm going to fight and kill the bastards who did this to us-"

"No one did this to us. It's just how it is."

"The fuck do you mean that's just- Cyberwarp was murdered!"

"Then go on, avenge her!" Adria snapped. Red mist suddenly filled the forest and began to pulse, to grow out with faint dark tendrils and coalesce around a point in the air. "If you can."

The red shadow rippled and took a new form. Hawkmoon staggered back, her spark burning. "Nacelle," she gasped, falling to her knees.

But it wasn't him. Not as she knew him. Malignant essence flowed over his frame, coating his chassis in the deepest dark and the glimmer of exiled stars. His eye was a pale supernova, whirling over his shadowed faceplates. His servos were weapons; his claws crackled with Arc. Each was as a Fallen Captain's shock blade; each was curved and tipped and sharpened to the keenest edge. Liquid murk ran along his wings and dribbled down, pooling on the dry forest floor below.

He was Taken.

A crimson silhouette framed him, though. It was as much him as Hawkmoon was Adria. Less so - but in that moment it hardly mattered. Hawkmoon drew her Nullblade with her good servo and, trembling, got to her pedes. "Please," she whispered. "Don't."

Nacelle rushed her, thrusters screaming unnaturally shrill. Hawkmoon half-turned, shoved Elulim out of the way and darted back herself. She took to the air and flew - up, up, crashing through the canopy much to the surprised fury of the trees and then she was in the sky, surrounded by more red shadows, more bloodied facsimiles of once-living things. Nacelle chased after her, his flight-systems shrieking like a banshee, and shot up from below. Hawkmoon twirled away, the dawning horror giving way to pure terror.

"Nacelle!" she shouted, afraid. "Stop!"

He wordlessly swung for her, lashing out with splayed talons. They shone like genuine glimmer, his claws. They were the brightest thing in the night, brighter even than the many moons in orbit above. He went for her neck; Hawkmoon ducked, deactivating her thrusters to briefly fall away before steadying out into a controlled glide. He followed right behind her, faster, merciless, cold - a killer.

"Nacelle, please!" she begged.

But he didn't stop. He didn't let up, he didn't even hesitate. Nacelle swooped after her, lashing at her with glowing claws, and she fled at every turn. The other red shadows dissipated the closer she flew, but each of them morphed into a defined shape in their last moments - bearing Adria's scornful features, glaring with scarlet eyes, watching her the whole way.

"Well?" they said. "What are you waiting for? Still running from your problems?"

She was. Hawkmoon flew up and up and up, at top speed. Nacelle followed, catching up - but, at some point Hawkmoon couldn't locate, he began to... slow down. Grow fainter, lighter, transparent.

"You're doing it again," Adria groaned. "You're running. All you ever do is run - from one life to the next, from one timeline to the other, from war to war and cataclysm to cataclysm. From friend to friend, family to family, lover to lover. Road has to run out at some point - and you'll fall there, tired and alone, too exhausted to get back to your feet, stripped down to your bones and withered away 'til you're nothing but a shell of what I used to be.

"But here," Adria continued. Below, Nacelle gave up and fell away. Dove. Down towards the forest. "Look at that. You run, they die, you live. Setting a new precedent. At least I had the dignity to follow Benni, wherever he went. But you - you're too weak. Too insignificant. You'll carry these scars and they'll bury you deep. Drag you down to the ocean floor until the feeling of air in your lungs is nothing but a half-forgotten memory. Or have we reached that part already?"

She couldn't. She...

Hawkmoon didn't need to breathe. She had to remind herself of that every time her chest wanted to contract, to expand, to channel oxygen in and out. She didn't need it. She was beyond it.

"Exiled from it, more like," Adria reminded her, seeming to read her mind. Hawkmoon slowed down. "You're never going to be human again. I made sure of that. Wonder what favours I'll pull for our next sister-in-soul..."

Nacelle, diving. The forest, parting. It knew something was wrong; even with him high above, hurtling down, it could sense the otherness of him. The red shadow was good for that much.

"So what now?" Adria asked, floating beside her. "You move on to the next world? Maybe I should stick around. After all, with that little fox gone, you'll have no one left to talk to in the interim."

Nacelle plummeted like an eagle having found its prey. Elulim. Ser'ket. Exposed. Flightless. Grounded. Stranded.

"Take a bow, Hawkmoon. At least you gave it all you could. I won't deny you that."

Hawkmoon looked at Adria and said, "Sweet Traveler above I fucking hate you."

She dove.

Down, down, down she flew - wings tucked back, thruster burning, Nullblade held tight. Down she swept and - landed with a thud where the forest fearfully gave way. Ser'ket was roaring, in her dragon-mode, and Elulim was dancing back from Nacelle with a guttural hiss. They circled around him, flighty and nervous, and they flared their wings in primal threat displays. Nacelle didn't care; he just lunged and lashed and shrieked.

Hawkmoon closed the distance between them, a cold steely feeling falling over her mind, and as he swept around with talons outstretched she met it with her sword. Neither broke; claws closed around the Nullblade's edge, both Void-energy and Taken essence sizzling where they touched. Nacelle looked at it, puzzled in the only way a will-less thing could be, then looked to her with his twitching, one-eyed shadow-clasped helm. His other servo shot for her helm; Hawkmoon ducked back, wrapped her arm around the offending limb and locked in place. Nacelle bellowed - until her knee slammed into his lower chassis.

He disappeared.

Reappeared behind her.

Hawkmoon was already on the move. The teleportation took her by surprise - but her reaction to it was instinctive, instilled through painstaking experience. She'd tussled with too many Vex and Fallen Captains and Crucible-enthusiastic Voidwalkers to fall for it. He went for her wings and thrusters and Hawkmoon boosted away on a jet of plasma-fire. She turned to face him - just as he closed the distance, teleporting again. His starlit servos flashed for her throat. Hawkmoon batted them away - and he disappeared again. She had already whirled around, pulling her Nullblade around in a grand, savage arc before she'd realized what she'd done. Nacelle flinched, claws mere inches away from her faceplates, and looked down at himself. He fell apart in two and those separate chunks dissipated into nothing, melting from reality entirely. Nacelle was gone. Or his red shadow was.

The only sound she could hear in the aftermath was the nervous groan of the forest, the frantic breathing of Elulim and the pounding rumble of her own overheated engine. Hawkmoon vented the heat out as steam, her rigid stance shattering. She stumbled back, her balance and grace a mere relic of the past, and struggled to keep standing. Elulim caught her, helped keep her up.

"Are you..." Hawkmoon frantically looked all around. Nothing jumped out at her. "Are you hurt?" she gasped.

"No." Elulim held tight to her arm. "What... That shadow was a Seeker, but it was wrong."

Ser'ket transformed. She gave Hawkmoon an indecipherable look and said, "We need to leave. This is becoming too much."

"Oh, get fragged," Hawkmoo swore. "I'm not going with-"

"Still angry," Adria whispered. She stood there, in front of them. Or floated, rather, dark and red and ruddy with hallucinatory essence. "Still grieving, still full of pride. You're pride incarnate."

"No." Hawkmoon summoned the dregs of her resolve, forced herself to shake Elulim off and step forward. Her faceplates contorted into a snarl. "That's you."

"It was. Now you are. You're inheriting my tools of trade, working them into the same craft," Adria spat. "You're no different. You think that by slapping steel plate over yourself you're a new person? You're just the same. Only difference is you haven't got the self-understanding to know when you're done."

"I'm not done," Hawkmoon retorted. "I'm not. I've got a world's worth of work ahead of me. I'm not quitting just because it gets hard. I've learned my lesson, but unlike you I'm willing to move past my mistakes and fill them in."

"Scars never go away."

"They don't usually kill you either. If you're alive enough for a wound to scar over, you're alive enough to keep on going. Keep on fighting."

Adria sneered. "Then by all means keep going! You'll see what this life means for those who think they can simply beat death back - beat the end back. It's coming for you sooner or later and all this means nothing but a thinner tether for whoever comes next."

She disappeared. Dissipated. Fell apart into a dissolving red mist.

Left them alone.

"What was that?" Elulim whispered. "Hawkmoon?"

Hawkmoon flinched. "It..." she trailed off. "Just a bad memory."

"Never seen anything like it. So..." Elulim hesitated. "It was so small for something so spirited. You knew its language?"

"I do," Hawkmoon replied. She felt cold instead, but the steel element of it had disappeared. All that remained was a frosty feeling in her energon lines. "I knew its people."

"And? Who are they?"

"It doesn't matter anymore." Hawkmoon sighed. "They're not... alive right now."

Elulim paused. "The red shadows seldom take shapes without meaning. If the lung serpent was for I, my kin and the feral Eimin-Tin, then these two were for you."

"As I said," Hawkmoon said sharply, her tone a warning one, "it doesn't matter anymore."

"Hawkmoon-"

"Did you know they can see your memories?!" Hawkmoon twirled around, optics bright. "How the frag did it know about... about them?!"

"Hush!" Ser'ket snapped.

Hawkmoon flinched. The trees were rumbling. Inching back to recover lost ground. "Scrap," she cursed. "I… I guess that's all the rest we're getting. Can we move?"

Elulim slowly looked around. "We can move," ve reluctantly agreed. "Help me grab the sensors."

They didn't walk through the forest so much as they hurried. The red shadows above were growing more and more abundant with every step. Hawkmoon could hear the whispers and feel the pressure on her frame even without a hallucinatory monster bearing down on her; it was crushing, like wearing the weight of an ocean on her shoulders. At times, when she occasionally glanced up, she swore she could even spy Adria up in the sky among all the rest.

Adria. The initial surprise had settled into uncanny shock. Adria. Her own self. Make a human? Sure, maybe that was possible to stomach - but in hindsight it was unnerving and disorientating to see the red shadows wear the face of her own first life. Her life, or the life of her own first permutation. Her first living instance. And Nacelle...

Oh Nacelle.

Hawkmoon clawed at her palms. They were scarring fiercely, that was for sure.

What was almost worse was that the forest around them, even when slumbering, still bore unspeakable dangers. More shadows, living shadows, danced between the trunks and boughs of almost-oaks and near-maples and false-elms. The very ground was riveted with lines of solidifying red mist, becoming something else. The trees were molded inside pillars and as parts of great dark walls weeping crimson smoke. Gradually their surroundings began to alter and change into a new environment entirely.

Beside them, on the newest game trail to lead them on towards the reliquary, a new shadow manifested. It did not have the mass of the lung serpent or the terrifying realism of Nacelle, but it stood and walked like a mech all the same - closer to whatever weaker shadow Adria had been. The dark red energy that consolidated within the bounds of a steel frame muddied the Cybteronian's features; it was the lack of extra limbs and extensive weapon modifications that initially threw Hawkmoon for a loop.

"Rampage," Ser'ket murmured.

The mech staggered and lurched away from something, clutching his side. It was Rampage - but smaller and lesser. His jaws weren't right; he had a less frightening array of mouthparts. And his optics... Maybe the shadows lent them a red glow unintentionally, but they weren't the same sickly green. He was... younger. Wounded. Scared and frantically looking back over his shoulder.

"No," he said - and the shadow shifted. Still Rampage. Repaired, marching towards something with all the drained confidence of a soldier sent to die. Their surroundings darkened and enclosed. They were somewhere else. A building. Or a ship. Something built and maintained. A figure stepped out of the dark ahead. Hawkmoon blinked, but there was no mistaking the grand skull crest or the dual sets of arms fused to the same shoulders, or even the long tail packed with muscle and armoured in black shell. Tenerjiin - but wrong, somehow. It bore not the fiery features of Triipotes, Narkasa or even Kharad-Tan, nor any of their subjects as Hawkmoon had seen them. It was... colder. Where all the other Tenerjiin had seemed to be built of hot coals and volcanic obsidian, with pits of fire for eyes, the shadow was different. Its six eyes were black pits, like those of a white shark, and its shell was a cooler blue-black. Rime and hoarfrost sparkled over its shoulders like a great shroud.

Out of the gloom another alien appeared - straight-backed where the cold Tenerjiin was hunched, elegant where it was brutal. It wasn't as large but nearly as tall. It had two arms, two legs, no tail. And it was cloaked and masked and veiled. It looked like a vastly oversized human hidden beneath its covering, and a woman at that - but its arms were bared and they were crafted seemingly of midnight glass, with supple and natural musculature and yet other. Lines of silk-like red string wove over its fingers and around its wrists and streamed out into the air. It was slim and lean and powerful and subtly feminine. Pure dark essence trailed after its hands and arms with every motion they took.

Rampage fell to his knees before them. Both were taller than he was, more powerful if not in form then certainly by other, less natural means. "Xhafi," he whispered reverently. "Invicta."

The Tenerjiin raised its head, bared its teeth. The other alien twisted her hand in a foreign if flowingly sophisticated gesture.

"I've come," Rampage said. "As requested. I've seen the message in the bodies, the script in spilt energon. I'm here. I've come." He paused, his faceplates scrunching - was that disgust? Or desperation? "Help me."

The Tenerjiin rumbled, slowly dipped its head and, with a slow flourish stepped to the side and indicated onwards. The other alien, the not-human, peered down at him through her mask and after a couple of moments hummed to herself. She moved out of the way, offering him passage much like her compatriot had done. "Go," she bade him. Her voice resonated as if spoken in the deepest, longest of cave systems ever found - or beneath the greatest of bells ever constructed.

Between them, beyond them, another lurked. Another alien, red and black and six-eyed and tall. It bore a spear in the shape of a sharp, swirling helix.

The shadows fell away. The whispers faded, the pressure abated.

And Hawkmoon came to the conclusion they'd been had.

"How far?"

"Close! But why are we running?" Elulim frantically asked. Ve was at Hawkmoon's side, all too capable of going so much faster but too confused to bother.

"It's not just the Drezhari!" Hawkmoon blurted. "It's Rampage!"

"I saw, but I don't understand why that changes-"

"He was speaking with a..." How was she to explain it? Hawkmoon wasn't sure if the Dark was a known element to the Eimin-Tin or the beastformers - or its practitioners. Of which, she was now sure, Rampage was one. "I know one of them. They're war criminals. 'Lulim, they're a bad sort. We need to get there before he does."

"You don't like Rampage, I understand that, but I don't get why you think-"

The night lit up with an explosion. Hawkmoon skidded to a stop, but it was a distant thing. The noise of it was almost as destructive, stirring the forest all around them. Another sound followed it - the continuous pop-pop-pop of gunfire and steady hum of energy weapons discharging.

"Scrap," Hawkmoon swore. "That's plasma. Cybertronian."

"Rampage," Ser'ket finished. "And... Drezhari matter-flayers. You were right."

"What does that mean for us?"

"That we will have to carve our way into the reliquary," Elulim growled. "If we make it inside, we may bar the way."

"And wait for them to starve us out?"

"She's right," Ser'ket said. "The Drezhari will be quick to entrench themselves, besides. But if this is a combat-function company, even in part, then it stands to reason there may be an aristo-tech present."

"We kill it, the rest will crumple," Elulim muttered. Ve raised veir voice. "But it will be guarded. And armed."

"Possibly with a death-wand."

"Yesss."

Ser'ket looked at Hawkmoon. "How quiet can you be, Seeker?"

Hawkmoon frowned. "As much as needs be. The frag is an aristo-tech? A death-wand?"

"An aristo-tech is a Drezhari command-cluster and a death-wand is the illegal weaponry their caste commonly employs. Anti-life in a staff, in the hands of tyrant prophets."

"So..."

"Best to terminate them unawares," Elulim whispered, "before they turn their wand on you."

"... Oh frag." Hawkmoon grimaced. "Are we really doing this?"

"They are trespassing. They are stealing. Are we not within our rights?"

"'Lulim, I'm not Eimin-Tin."

Elulim shook out veir wings with irritation. "Then you can help as a favour to the Stratocray. Surely even Cybertron would recognize the injustice of allowing the Drezhari to continue as they have."

"Look, I get that - just that I'm a little wary about running in and pissing off another interstellar empire."

"Another?" Elulim questioned sharply. Ve searched Hawkmoon's faceplates. "If there's a story in there you'll have to promise to tell me later."

Hawkmoon rolled her optics. "That's your priority? Really?"

Ser'ket transformed beside them, slamming down on all four paws. "Akildn, stay focused."

Elulim was slow to break veir stare at Hawkmoon. "If I want your input, skin-changer, then I'll ask for it."

"She's right," Hawkmoon murmured.

Elulim nodded. "Still don't feel like she deserves that satisfaction. But I digress; Drezhari..." Veir teeth glinted in the low light of the early morning. "Turn to your fractal shroud, Hawkmoon. Do us a favour and cut the aristo-tech short if one shows."

"I'll… think about it," Hawkmoon noncommittally replied.

"Do." Without another word Elulim turned about and padded ahead, with Ser'ket quick to follow. Hawkmoon vented one last time, stretched the wrist of the arm she'd injured and mentally prepared as best she could. The sound of gunfire persisted, distant and foreboding.

"Scrap," she muttered.

The forest gave way for the reliquary - or at least grew sparser. There was more natural light falling on the forest floor, enough to pick out things like scorch marks and footprints. The sky above was full of hanging red shadows, enough to field an army, and they were all looking down on those below with slack faces and dead red eyes. Some hung low, some floated in the spaces once occupied by the forest canopy and some hovered half-phased within trees and ferns and bushes and rocks. Others skittered across the open ground, in the shapes of beasts and people, and scampered out of view the moment Hawkmoon fully turned to face them. It left her with the impression that they were being watched - if not by any one entity then perhaps a hivemind construct or an automatic surveillance system of ancient design.

The Drezhari themselves only initially revealed themselves in the distance, flitting and darting through the air like squids - and then, when she and the others got closer, through metallic shrieks and the flare of energy weapons firing through the air. Not at them, but in Hawkmoon's mind that left few other candidates - and odds were good that it was an Akildn rather than Rampage taking those shots.

"I'm going up," Hawkmoon announced. Elulim flicked veir tail in acknowledgement and Ser'ket ignored her. Hawkmoon inwardly shrugged, activated her fractal shroud and leapt into the air. Even just a little higher revealed nearly enough of the skirmish to tell her what was going on. She spied some extra clusters of Drezhari squids, like those she'd encountered back at Hula-Fer-Teriin, though most were preoccupied. They were quick little drones, shifting through the air in unpredictable zig-zags and firing down at... someone. Who was definitely shooting back, if the arcs of Void-rounds tearing through the air were anything to judge.

Hawkmoon closed in, circled around and transformed a servo into a carbine. The situation on the ground was much like she'd expected, with an Akildn ducking and weaving behind the cover of a couple of furious trees while a number of mechanoforms tried to pin ver down. It... it looked like Aspheri, but she could have been mistaken. Besides the squids, there were a number of ground-based automatons - like the corpse-construct from before, though they came with skeletal limbs and wicked-looking weapons. Their helms were nothing but silver skulls, featureless save for sunken eyesockets with sharp optics installed within. Hawkmoon counted five, each trudging after Aspheri with a slow mechanical certainty. Like common Vex platforms but bigger - and meaner. Nymphites stalked after them, soft orange lights pulsing from nodes drilled into their skulls. There were more of them than of the soldiers. One raced ahead of the others, weaving between the killing bursts of energy beams, and it pounced on Aspheri's back - only for the Akildn to whirl around, catch it between veir hands and wrench its head sideways. The Nymphite went limp and its cranial node went dark; the other flinched and clacked their mandibles and cowered between the line of Drezhari footsoldiers.

No commanders. No... what was it Ser'ket had said? No 'aristo-techs'. Nothing but-

Aspheri yelled below. A beam had grazed veir leg. Ve answered it with a brutal clamouring roar of veir rifle, claiming two of the footsoldiers and some of the Nymphites behind them in quick succession. A hail of return fire forced ver to scramble back out of sight, into cover behind the shaking mass of a flailing tree.

Elulim tore out of cover behind the shooters, rippling out of the cover of foliage and closing the distance in no time. The Drezhari turned to face ver, but a bout of covering fire from Aspheri caught them with their backs exposed. Another collapsed to the ground, missing most of its neck, and Elulim set upon the Nymphites left in its wake. They were large creatures, altogether, and powerful - but in broad light and away from bodies of murky water Hawkmoon imagined they would have been easier to handle. Either that or Elulim was simply better at dismantling them than she was. Ve tore through each beast, one by one, with savage grappling twists and blows that left them stunned if not crippled altogether. A couple of discharges of veir sidearm finished them after that.

Hawkmoon moved on. The squids in the air with her dove down after the Akildn, but Ser'ket fired upon from the cover of the treeline - dragging them out of the air low enough that she could afford to leave her cover and tear at them with her claws and teeth. All handled. There was more gunfire further afield - towards the dark monolithic structure that cut through the forest ahead. At a glance Hawkmoon would have called it a bunker, but there was something more to it - more to the architecture. It was a construct of dark stone or metal with plenty of sharp edges and perfect lines. Red shadows congregated above, like a swarm of living illusions. They made no move to attack anyone around or below; they simply watched.

As Hawkmoon flew closer she took note of the brighter, cleaner structures arrayed in front of the reliquary, the machines that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Cabal excavation site. A couple of hard tents had been set up, but more than half of them were, at that moment, aflame. She spotted movement around the still-intact ones - Drezhari drones frantically trying to ferry out all the valuables still inside. It made for an enticing target, one the warrior in her wanted to take. It was the Lightbearer, though, that won out, and for once it took her down a different route. To the reliquary itself.

The entrance was massive; rectangular in shape, though narrower at the top than at the bottom. A number of barricades had been dragged up to it, upon which many more Drezhari were firing. There were squids, footsoldiers, a couple more Nymphites and some other, more advanced living unit-platforms. Three of them resembled the limbless corpse construct from the waist up - save that a number of the ribs had been processed into longer, malleable tendrils with sharpened edges - and below it were great serpentine bodies outfitted with rows and rows of stilted legs like a centipede. Red light glowed from the creatures' eyesockets, between their ribs and along the plates of their locomotory-systems. They each hefted rotating turrets on their lower backs, and each chipped away at the structure of the reliquary's entrance - or, at least, they tried to. From what Hawkmoon could see the black stone-metal wasn't really taking much damage.

A shadow fell over her and she flinched as a ship exited warp right above, close enough to drive her back down. The vessel passed by without noticing, quickly swooping down below. It was scarab-shaped and built of silver steel and orange light. Its cannons quickly targeted the entrance but refrained from firing; its belly unfolded and a grav-lift fed out a steady supply of reinforcements. Footsoldiers but larger, stronger, of higher quality and heavier weaponry. The last to follow out was quite unlike all the rest; where they were rigid machines it was almost organic in how well-developed it appeared. All-in-all it looked like a near-human specimen with black-and-silver plating molded in an entirely biological fashion. It reminded Hawkmoon of a classical sculpture, androgynous and devoid of a face but entirely keeping with the noble, graceful gaite of a Renaissance statue depicting some ancient romanticized deity. It wore a grey toga with sharp corners and made of some weighted water-resistant material, even if it only covered from one shoulder down to the hips, covering half the creature's torso. Its head was the most alien thing about it - because it had no mouth, no nose, no ears or eyes and its skull, while from the neck up to the brow in the shape of a human one, above that the plating began to part and swirl outwards like a living crown of horns. A dizzying hologram danced between those crests, sparkling with stars and seeming to display their very own galaxy miniaturised.

It landed softly and padded barefoot between the cold, comparatively lifeless frames of its retinue of guards. In one hand it held a black metal staff with a signal-transmitter at one end and a smooth spike at the other. Its other hand was empty, fingers splaying out and curling into its palm at irregular intervals. They were absent of nails and claws, but wisps of something danced between each slender finger.

Definitely the aristo-tech.

Someone fired from within the reliquary's entrance. The Void-filled dart slammed into a translucent barrier surrounding the aristo-tech and stopped there, trembling and drilling against the surface of the shield. One of the Drezhari guards reached up and swatted it out of the air. It landed harmlessly on the earthy floor, falling among blades of red grass. Hawkmoon tried activating her comms, to report she had optics on the aristo-tech - but everything spat static back at her. Even in the open the trees and rocks were playing havoc on local signals. She tried local first, nothing, and then expanded her range to include satellite systems and city-based transceivers - and still she couldn't reach anyone.

Scrap.

A brief burst of gunfire roared behind them all, in the direction of the Elulim and Ser'ket. Not aimed at the Drezhari surrounding the entrance, but it caused a commotion all the same. The footsoldiers were torn between watching the open doorway and turning to face the new threat, but the heavier constructs and the aristo-tech barely reacted at all. The latter merely turned its head to the side, as if listening, then looked up at the gunship above and nodded. The gunship dipped back and pulled up, briefly hanging in one spot before firing off via a silenced warp-jump.

Hawkmoon counted the Drezhari left below; there were twelve of the normal-sized footsoldiers, six heavy soldiers, three centipede-constructs the aristo-tech and four stationary squids, along with a pair of limbless corpse-constructs. Twenty-eight overall. Not fantastic odds. Worse without Light - but Hawkmoon reckoned their inability to see her largely canceled out that disadvantage. All it meant was she needed to play it slower. Smarter. Though that death-wand thing was a definite problem. It needed disabling. Which was a nightmare, because the aristo-tech was flanked by too many warbots to pick off without getting gunned down. And then there was that overshield barrier to account for. Her Nullblade could take care of that, but knowing the commotion that would cause and if the Drezhari had reaction times anywhere close to the Cybertronian norm, then it was going to be a problem.

And that was even if she was prepared to kill - which Hawkmoon really wasn't sure she was okay with.

The aristo-tech walked onwards, past the front line of soldiers and boldly closed the distance between it and the reliquary's dark entrance, with all six heavy warbots following close behind. Another Void-dart hit its barrier and the aristo-tech casually knocked it away with a swing of its staff, unbothered and narrowly focused. It raised its staff up towards the doorway, seemingly in retaliation, and light pulsed along its length.

Hawkmoon dropped without any further thought, Nullblade extended, and crashed down on the aristo-tech's barrier. The Void-wreathed blade sliced right through, clattered against the staff and knocked its signal transmitter down to the ground. The rest of the shield shattered the moment she brought her knees down on it - bringing to bear all the weight of a jumpship down on the field of projected Arc. It ripped at the energized shroud covering her frame, causing parts of it to fritz out and fall away. She landed before the 'bot, pulled her Fire-Spitter free and shoved the barrel up under the aristo-tech's delicate chin.

"I'm going to ask you to freeze," Hawkmoon said. "Let's not try anything dangerous, now."

The other Drezhari stirred with shock, but they saw her 'cannon, saw where it was pointed, and to Hawkmoon's good fortune they refrained from firing upon her. Even the aristo-tech was startled into inaction, having flinched at the feel of cold steel pressed under its head, and it stared. Or stared as much as something without eyes or optics could.

"A Seeker," it said in Cybertronian, though she wasn't sure how. The voice, paradoxically both deep- and high-pitched as it was, seemed to emanate from every part of the mechanoform. It had no definitive mouth with a vocabulator installed; it was a different sort of creature entirely. It had the supple curve and sculpted musculature to pass off as organic at a glance, but it lacked all the features that would have made it alive. She couldn't even spy any obvious speaker systems on its strange, strange body.

Hawkmoon's hard-pressed fractal shroud finally gave up, melting from her plate in little sparks of blinding light. It dissipated into the air with the rest of the aristo-tech's shattered barrier, banished through the crash of interfering systems never designed to merge. At that distance, so close as they were, Hawkmoon could feel the very edges of an EM-field in the Drezhar in front of her. It was a nauseating feeling, moreso even than with another Cybertronian - it was cold and malignant and rife with affront. It slithered against the borders of her own like a nest of angry snakes, completely other and yet still recognizable as its own living system. Alien. It was alien.

"This is Eimin-Tin territory," Hawkmoon heard herself say. She forced the disorienting thoughts from her mind and refocused. "From what I hear you're trespassing. Does the Stratocracy know you're here?"

The holographic galaxy slowly spinning between its whorled horns condensed into another shape - a burning orange iris swimming amongst blue energy; a singular eye built of trillions of stars. "We see you, Seeker," the aristo-tech whispered. The red shadows above them whispered with it, taking its words and warping them to nauseating lengths. "We-"

The Drezhar's head disappeared. No, not disappeared - it was removed. A massive plasma round had fired over Hawkmoon's shoulder so closely she felt the heat of it on her wing, and it disintegrated the aristo-tech's crowned skull, leaving only molten slag in its wake. Hawkmoon recoiled; the aristo-tech's body stiffened, shuddered, then finally fell limply to the ground. Oh, she thought. Scrap.

A moment passed - then the other Drezhari raised their weapons on her. Hawkmoon fired up her thrusters, reactivated her fractal shroud and rocketed away. Energy fire raked the ground where she'd just been standing. She whirled and rolled and darted out of the way, activating her own Tai-built overshield and spinning out of the crossfire lanes - though she largely didn't need to worry. The moment she'd disappeared most of the Drezhari gunners had switched over to the shooter by the reliquary entrance. To Rampage. Who simply stood there, simply activated a blue energy shield installed on the back of one forearm and took aim with the other, which had converted into the shape of a Cybertronian riot cannon. His other limbs, be they pincers or sharpened insectoid legs, folded tight against his back. He fired once, twice, ripping the Drezhari apart with every pulse of his cannon - and then began his bold march towards them. The heavy footsoldiers attempted to spread out, to flank him, but he shepherded them back into a tight press with each booming discharge. The plasma scarred the very ground with soot and left it glazed with rough glass.

Hawkmoon landed behind him, drew her Nullblade and pressed it against the side of his neck. "That's enough," she growled. "I had this control."

Rampage paused. "There you are, Winglet. I was starting to get worried."

"You fragger, you liar! Enough! You Pit-spawned scrap-built waste of-"

His extra limbs shot out. One struck her sword, which the blade passed right through and left it as a clean stump, but the others smacked into Hawkmoon. Her shield took the brunt of the damage, but the momentum still knocked her back. She tried to behead him, though only managed to leave a shallow if long incision in her wake. Rampage shrugged the pain away and turned around, still holding his shield towards the Drezhari. He blinked, then, and tried to find her but her shroud was still holding up. A slow smile spread across his faceplates.

"What game are we playing now?" he wondered in a hushed voice, knowing she could hear. "Have we really given up on the last one so quickly?"

One of the heavy Drezhari dove for the aristo-tech's body. It snatched up the headless frame by the waist and lifted the death-wand - and aimed it directly at Rampage. Hawkmoon fired back up into the air just as the signal transmitter pulsed. Rampage, already in the midst of turning back, stiffened and dropped to the ground. His optics darkened; his energised kite shield faded.

Another Void-dart flashed out of the reliquary's doorway, but whereas before the aristo-tech's shield generator had stopped it in its tracks, there was now nothing to prevent it from snapping the wand-bearer's helm back and injecting its payload. The heavy Drezhari stumbled, dropping all it held, and released a mechanical shriek as the Void venom ate away at it. It died within moments, the anti-matter having reached its processor, and keeled over. A second dart took the next Drezhari to reach for the death-wand in the chest; it died slower, but no less graphically. The others got the idea and, with their armour half-slagged from Rampage's riot cannon where it had splashed them with blazing heat, they trampled back to the line of lesser footsoldiers for cover. They fired at the reliquary all the while in a frenzy Hawkmoon would have called desperate if not for their sheer silence and total expressionlessness. Dead things playing at life, she thought. Machines without any real dignity and only the barest hints of souls.

Rampage's body moved. The Drezhari stopped firing; instead they stared as his optics reactivated and he sat back up, shaking his helm as if to clear away the grogginess of sleep. "Now that wasn't nice," he complained.

One of the heavy soldiers fired, the energy bolt taking Rampage's left mandibles and half his faceplates, melting it to slag. He barely flinched.

"Naw ni a' aw," Rampage slurred. His optics narrowed and levered himself onto a knee. Another dart whizzed past, claiming one of the smaller Drezhari footsoldiers. They panicked. They panicked hard. Fired at the door, at Rampage - but whoever was hiding behind the former had ample cover and the latter raised his shield up. He advanced, making it to the first of the heavy Drezhari corpses, and knelt down over the closest one - reaching into its chassis, ripping out plate and paneling and circuity and brought the fistful up the side of his slagged face and pressed it there. His nanites surged - grafting the new parts on and whittling them down into proper shape. It was graphic; it was disgusting. Hawkmoon could do little but force down the oh so human urge to wretch and was glad that he did not linger long before pushing for the living Drezhari again - tireless and grinning with sadistic glee.

He'd left the death-wand behind, though. The very thing that had killed him. Should have killed him. And... didn't. Not permanently.

Hawkmoon holstered her 'cannon, dove down and grabbed it - and she was sure Rampage had heard if the sudden tilt of his helm was anything to judge. She dashed backwards, away, and shot for the reliquary's door. He carried on ahead, marching into the Drezhari's midst and opening up with a whirlwind of sudden violence, his entire weaponized frame at work with sharpened limbs scything through the air and body-cannons firing at will. She turned away, faced the door, and dodged down as the glint of a rifle peeked around. The Void-dart sung overhead, probably took out another Drezhari construct. Hawkmoon de-cloaked, just to spare herself another shave with Void-venom, and hissed, "Hold!"

The Akildn beyond paused. "Hawkmoon?"

"Shut up, get inside!" she snapped back. Hawkmoon re-activated her shroud and dove inside. The hallway beyond was colossal - easily tall enough for someone three times her own size and then some. The walls and ceiling within were of the same dark stone-metal material as the outside, and on closer inspection appeared to have been inscribed on everyr surface with countless geometrically straight scratch marks. The interior was illuminated by a series of dull red glowing lights emanating from the base of the walls where it met the floor. Another doorway loomed within, half-opened, and some brighter light pulsed from beyond. Phorus was the Akildn shooter, hiding behind the left side of the doorframe, and ve had clearly been through the wars. Ve bled from a dozen injuries, one of veir legs wasn't in a good way, and half veir face had been painted over in soot. Veir body armour was a wreck, torn and ripped all over.

Yrsfa was there too. Dead. Lying on the ground in a pool of veir own blood, some ways into the hall. A silver blade had been lodged in veir throat. The orange light flickering on the blade's pommel looked like Drezhari-make.

Hawkmoon de-cloaked again and looked back to Phorus. "Are your comms working?"

Ve hesitated. "No," ve admitted. "Why? Where is-"

"Elulim's coming. Ser'ket too."

"Ser...'ket? The beastformer?"

"The same. How do we close this place up?" She searched their side of the doorway for a terminal, a locking bar, anything to shut it from the inside.

Phorus blinked. "Close? We've only just opened it!"

"Phorus-"

"Seeker, there are Drezhari outside!"

"Not for long," Hawkmoon retorted. The shrill shriek of metal tearing punctuated her claim. "We need to close this place now. Before he gets back."

"Before... Rampage?!" Phorus questioned. Ve looked back outside, then to her again. "I don't... What?!"

"How'd you open this place?! Now, Phorus!"

"A key, we had a key, Rampage used it to-"

"Where is it now?!"

"Rampage has it." Phorus looked back outside. "He's finishing up now. You can ask him now. That was a fair job you pulled with the aristo-tech; they're never usually so quick to die. How did- Seeker?"

Hawkmoon was already moving, deeper inside.

"Seeker!" Phorus called after her - with panic in veir voice. "What are you... Stop!"

She ran on. Rampage was with them. And this place... the red shadows crowded it. There was power inside, she reckoned. Or forbidden knowledge. Maybe the Drezhari really were looking for a blackbox - or maybe something more. Maybe even the means to direct the red shadows. All the more reason to keep Rampage out, at least until Ser'ket and Elulim caught up. If there were doors she could close on him, good. If there was something he needed that she could break or sabotage, better. If there was a terminal with which she could bring the whole place crashing down - incredible.

"Seeker, hold!" Phorus roared behind her. Ve gave chase; she heard him. Hawkmoon activated her thrusters and took off. The next hallway down was a stairwell, straight below the earth. A couple of half-pillars ran alongside the steps, and near the bottom were a pair of squat squared monuments topped with golden glass receptacles from which bled glorious bright light. The walls and floors seemed to almost greedily drink it up, it was all so dark, but all the same the lanterns continued glowing for them without end. The doorway at the other end had the appearance of the same one behind her and the one before that, with another set of stairs and another one beyond that. Hawkmoon flew down them all, not even touching the ground, and she heard more than saw Phorus race down after her - the steady clack-clack-clack of claws on stone.

The last stairwell was lined with urns of the same dark material. Hawkmoon ground to a halt, tapped one with a claw and it rang hollow. She picked one up, found it was heavier than it looked, but it had no apparent lid or opening. She tried throwing it to the ground, to shatter it, but it just bounced and rolled down the stairs. She moved on without a second though - breaking out into the next room, which was much, much wider and on each side bore a pedestal resplendent with strange architecture. Slabs of smooth glassy obsidian had been carved into the shape of anchors and hooks, and each rippled with an orange essence not dissimilar to how light played over the skin of Awoken. Each pedestal was crowned with cubes of green glass, within which little creatures had been frozen. The one on the left contained a Worm. The one on the right - a serpent with bony plates and an eel-like face, not entirely unlike the Eimin-Tin. A distant relative, maybe.

Or an ancestor, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. Hawkmoon ignored it.

Phorus skidded to a stop behind her. "What are you doing?!" ve hissed, wildly glancing around with wide eyes. "This is dangerous."

"Any more than what we just walked away from?" Hawkmoon snapped back. She frantically looked around, but found nothing more than another set of doors leading onwards. She could feel... wind coming from it. A soft breeze, though she could not taste if it were fresh air or stale. Another human quality stolen from her. She marched through and found... a dead end. The chamber ended in a sharp corner, but before that there was a circular dais of gold built into the ground. A platform. And the curious breeze that she felt on her keen wing-panels and flight sensor emanated from the wall just behind it, though it was closed tight. Hawkmoon felt it, pressed a servo against it, but it was completely solid..

"Must have missed something," Hawkmoon muttered. "There's nothing here. Phorus, was there another hall we passe-"

Hawkmoon turned around. A servo clamped around her neck, lifted her into the air and smashed her against the wall, holding her there. Her thrusters roared - but the servo held tight and a fist crashed into her chest, cracking her glass canopy. Hawkmoon almost buckled over with the pain of it. Her optics landed on the leering visage of Rampage, with his plating scorched and his frame painted in spilt oil, and she tried to pry him off.

"Rampage?! Let her go!" Phorus snapped. Ve reached for Rampage's arm - and the mech's fist smashed veir head into the wall beside Hawkmoon. Phorus collapsed.

Hawkmoon bit a wordless roar and shoved the spiked end of the death-wand up the underside of Rampage's chin. His optics flickered and he staggered back, releasing her. Hawkmoon tugged the staff back, twirled it around and aimed it at him, just as he fell to his knees while clutching his ruptured throat. Rampage smiled.

"Fight in you," he croaked.

Hawkmoon felt up and down the death-wand, found something suspiciously like a trigger and pulled it. It discharged once, with a whistling bang. Rampage fell over with a weighty clang. She waited a moment, waited for him to move, but when his optics didn't light back up she dashed to Phorus' side - but even at a glance she knew ve was dead. Fractured skull, crushed even. Ve didn't even have a heartbeat.

"Scrap," Hawkmoon gasped. "Scrap, no, fucking, no."

Dead. Dead dead dead.

"You... you fragger!" She turned on Rampage - but he was already stirring, already groaning as he reactivated. Hawkmoon pulled back on the trigger, charged up the death-wand again, but Rampage noticed and he lunged, grabbing it by its head and crushing the signal transmitter between his heavy digits. The energy pulsed outward in a bubble, harmlessly passing over both of them and leaving Hawkmoon with tingling sensors. She tugged it back, tugged it free, and turned it back around to run him through. She lanced him through the abdomen with all the strength she could bring to bear, ripping right through his reinforced frame, and shoved him back. Rampage fell with another laboured groan.

"Oh Winglet," he gasped, "where's all this coming from?" Rampage struggled to prop himself up on one elbow and sneered. "Didn't take you for a glory hog."

"You... you fragging bastard!" Hawkmoon shouted. She went for his neck, aimed for it with the tip of her Nullblade, but Rampage extended his kibble-limbs and scuttled back. He wrapped his servos around the staff, tugged it out with a growl and tossed it aside.

"Can't say I understand why you've come back so upset," he said, nonplussed, "but Pit does it make things easier. I assume, then, they've told you about me?"

Hawkmoon held her blade at the ready. "I saw you. I saw you for what you are."

Rampage smiled. Energon dripped from his mandibles. "And what's that, Winglet?"

Murderer, liar, actor, creep, monster, traitor, psychopath.

"I'm going to take you apart," Hawkmoon promised in a low voice. "I'm going to dismantle you piece by piece until you stay down. Until you realize the Pit is where you belong, where you will stay."

Rampage's smile widened. "I love your fire," he whispered. "He always knows how to pick 'em - and you're no disappointment, Winglet. Just too young is all. Nothing kills like youthful pride, eh?"

Hawkmoon held her glossa. She ignored the hook, avoided the bait. She had nothing to prove. Not to him.

Rampage transformed a servo into a riot cannon. Hawkmoon surged forth; she hadn't the room to manoeuvre, so instead she powered through it. The shot splashed across her overshield and left it so cracked it was like her vision was criss-crossed with spiderwebs. It was the only thing that preserved her, then, and the only thing that got her close enough that could bring her Nullblade down on the riot cannon and cut it off at the elbow. Rampage recoiled with a horrific snarl, then grabbed her wing with his remaining servo and threw her against another wall. Hawkmoon felt something inside her chassis creak, but there was no time to stop; she activated her thrusters, tackled Rampage and smashed him against the opposite wall. One of his pincers went for her neck, but she chopped the limb away with mere milliseconds to spare. The other pincer clamped down on her other wing. Rampage headbutted her then, dazing her, and he tossed her back down the room. She clattered against the golden dais, pulled herself back to her pedes and dampened her pain receptors as best she could. Her combat protocols took over, taking command of her transformation sequences and sensory input, but it was her mind and the instinct ingrained into it that guided her from that point on.

Hawkmoon drew her Fire-Spitter and put six whole fusion rounds in Rampage's steel belly, but he came after her anyways, bellowing with fury and pain. She tried to fly up over him, but his extra legs dug into the walls and levered him up high enough to catch her pede as she made to dart overhead. He pulled her down, despite her thrusters firing as much as she dared allow them, and slammed her back down on the dais. Hawkmoon's processor swam. It was the pain of another fist crashing against her cockpit that broke her out of it - and shattered the glass canopy with it. Even a second time around it was almost the most agonizing thing she'd ever been through. The broken shards clattered down inside the cockpit, scattered within the more sensitive internals within, and she was helpless to stop it. Rampage grabbed the top of it, his own claws bending her plating and drawing yet more energon, and pulled her up to his own faceplates. His mandibles splayed open, as if to bite her. Hawkmoon drew her helm back and headbutted him before he could react, dazing him long enough to shove her Nullblade into his chest and ripping it down. Rampage fell back with a ragged howl. Hawkmoon sat up, aimed, and put a hole in his helm - giving him a third eye.

"Now you even look like them," she hoarsely spat.

Rampage's optics shuttered. "Wha yo me'hn?" he garbled through a dying vocabulator. His strength soon left him, and he fell down to his knees with a crash. Rampage glanced back down at the sword piercing his core and weakly tapped the pommel. "Oh," he said. "Ha."

He died, optics turning grey.

And the very next moment they lit back up with cruel, cruel green. Rampage grasped the Nullblade, ripped it out with a spurt of energon and tossed it aside. "Almost got me," he gasped. The vent soon turned into a mirthless laugh. "Almost had me, Winglet. Almost had me. But they're fickle with their gifts, aren't they? Just doesn't seem fair."

Hawkmoon didn't get a chance to ask who 'they' were, because he was on her once again. She raised her Fire-Spitter and burned five more holes in him before he closed the distance, but he lifted what was left of his dismembered arm to cover his helm. She would have switched for his spark if she'd had time, but alas - he was quick when he wanted to be.

The back of his servo slapped her handcannon away. Hawkoom extended her wrist-blades in its stead and thrust them for his neck, intending to cut his entire head off, but one was intercepted and other he caught in his jaws. The blade tore through the contours of his mouth, but his mandibles found where it met her own servo and ripped it right out of its socket. Hawkmoon pulled her servo back with a hiss through gritted denta and lashed at his optics with her talons. She raked right down his faceplates, drawing rivers of energon, and he responded in kind by locking her other arm in the grip of a pincer and smashing his remaining servo against her helm. Her vision flickered and her strength slackened; Hawkmoon was left stunned. The second blow took one of her optics' input and left the whole half of her faceplates worryingly cold.

"How's that Winglet?" Rampage snarled down at her. "Have you had enough yet?"

Hawkmoon spat energon at him.

"Guess not." Rampage grabbed her helm and straightened up. She tried to pull away, but he brought his knee against her broken canopy. That banished the fight from her. "You know, I'd planned to lead you on a little further, but you've caught me out. At least this way..." He held her up. Something behind her shifted. "... we get to the bottom of things."

Rampage walked forward. Hawkmoon expected her back to hit a wall - but they kept on going. And going. And going. They entered a new passageway, one with strange floral growths lining the way: black oily stalks reaching up into the air, lifting buds of bruise purple and scabby red. Hawkmoon struggled, batted weakly at the servo dragging her along - and feigned that weakness for a couple moments longer while she gathered her strength. Then she grabbed Rampage's wrist, pressed her claws in and ripped it open. Energon, broken cabling and scrap metal came with it; Rampage barked a pained cry and let go. Hawkmoon fell into a pile, tremblingly rose back to her pedes and turned to face him.

The hallway beyond opened up into the largest chamber so far - a garden room of sorts. There was another monument at the far end, built of obsidian again but in the shape of a shrouded woman. It hummed and supped of the ambient light supplied by another series of red and golden glass-lanterns.

Hawkmoon refocused on Rampage with her remaining optic, who looked down at his wrist with a wince. "Ouch," he muttered, then raised his optics back at her. "Oh you."

She pulled her resummoned Nullblade out of storage and flicked the blades panels out.

"Oh wow," Rampage murmured. His grimace lifted. "Now that's nifty."

Hawkmoon trudged towards him, sliced away the insectoid limb that lanced for her helm, and leaned back as the remaining pincer swung for her. It came back, again for her neck, and she ducked under it, getting close enough to run her Nullblade up against Rampage's chassis and reopen the wound she'd given him only moments before. He staggered back with a fresh cry, his servo cupped over the ugly gash, and glared at her. Then - he folded in on himself, transforming. The process was quick if troubled, and Rampage emerged from it with a fresh cry, but in the shape of something quite different.

Something with three green optics, a thick, vaguely serpentine body and the heavy mandibles fit to tear a Cybertronian in two. It stood on six insectoid legs and bore two pincer-tipped arms near its front - though only one of which had any claws to speak of. It looked, to her, remarkably like an oversized Worm given over some new mutations. Or maybe it was just an older morph.

He glared at her, huffing from a series of vents along his back. Hawkmoon pointed her sword at it, daring it to make its move. Rampage was not one to disappoint; he barreled towards her with more speed than she would have anticipated, racing for her with all the mass of a freight train. Hawkmoon, rather than take flight, instead reactivated her overshield-generator and then her fractal shroud, stepping back into a cloak of invisibility. Rampage slid to a stop, turned his monstrous head about with confusion and lashed at empty air with his tail and arms in vain.

"Enough!" he roared. "This isn't fair, Winglet! You're just wasting our time! You know as well as I do this only ends one way, so why draw it o-"

Hawkmoon cut at him, taking one of his legs. Rampage yelled with pain and nearly collapsed on his side, staggering on what limbs he had remaining. He swung his entire body towards her, or at least where he'd suspected her of being, and instead found nothing but empty space and stray reeds.

She next came at him from the other side, running her Nullblade along his flank and flaying his plated shell open. He vented horribly and flailed wildly, but he didn't come so much as a Sparrow-length close to striking her. After that Hawkmoon settled for disarming him for good, and as he swung his body around she grabbed the back of his pincher to hold it steady and took from him most of his shoulder. Rampage roared and lunged; this time she did not move. Hawkmoon instead swung her Nullblade out in a broad horizontal stroke and laid his alt form's head open. The Worm-thing gargled and scampered back on failing legs, transforming rapidly back into the mech she so hated. Rampage fell onto his servo and knees and listlessly looked up.

"You got m-" he started to say, but Hawkmoon brought her Nullblade down on him and bisected him in two, from helm to groin. Each half of Rampage neatly separated from the other and fell on their sides with dual clangs.

And even that didn't stop him.

Strands of dark, shifting yellow-and-black energy fizzled in the air between both parts, emanating from the very spark she'd split in two. They grasped at each other half and began to pull. So Hawkmoon cut them down the middle a second time. They tried again - no. She wouldn't allow it. She could NOT allow it. He had to stay dead.

He should have stayed dead.

"You don't need to keep going."

Hawkmoon's helm snapped upwards. There, at the base of the veiled statue, stood Augur. He was... a terrible sight; so haggard, so thin, so... pitiful. His eyes were dim and his cheeks were damp with what looked like droplets of sparkling diamonds.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Hawkmoon hotly demanded.

Augur weakly shrugged in his own way, flicking his tails. "Confused," he replied in a small, hollow voice. "Lost. Lamenting wounds I long thought closed. I imagine the same for you?"

Hawkmoon didn't reply in words, just angrily cut at the essence building up between the chunks of Rampage for a third time.

"You don't need to do that," Augur barked.

"He won't die."

"Does he need to?"

Hawkmoon glowered. "He's with them," she shot back. "I saw. I saw everything."

"No, not everything. If you had seen everything then you would be raving mad. But I suppose you must have seen something to be driven to this." Augur padded from the statue to her side and sniffed at Rampage's remains. "A foul thing, here. But even you aren't of the grade of soul to cut something down for the mere virtue of being foul. What did you see?"

"That beast from before. The Dark's student, you called it."

"The adherent. The servant. The Subjugator."

"Whatever it was, I saw it in..." Hawkmoon dashed her Nullblade across Rampage's chassis the other way, quartering him. "In the shadows. The red shadows."

"Phantoms and Nightmares," Augur recited. "Bundles of stolen trauma, samples of emotion warped to outrageous degrees, molded into the shape of the familiar and unfamiliar and set upon vulnerable minds. A psychological weapon."

"Was it wrong?"

"No. But to the shadow, wherein lies the risk to it when it can drive enemy against enemy through a stolen secret lacking context?"

"What are you getting at?"

"Does this mech deserve to die? Can you say that with any certainty?"

"The fuck kind of question is that?! Of course-"

"Answer me honestly," Augur snapped with a vehemence she was not expecting.

Hawkmoon narrowed her still-functional optic. "He just killed Phorus. He killed Drezhari outside, while I was dealing with them."

"And this bothers you?"

"YES!"

"I didn't come this way to kill anyone," Hawkmoon snapped. "I didn't want anyone to die!"

"One side says 'everyone must die'," Augur remarked, turning away, "and the other says 'everyone must live'. Extinction for all or eternal torment; is there any true side to take in this most violent debate?"

"You saying we're on the wrong side?!" Hawkmoon questioned incredulously.

"No. I know we aren't. You know we aren't. But you must explain it to me - because there is a marked difference between knowing it and understanding it."

"This is not the place for a lesson, Augur."

"Humour me."

Hawkmoon glared down at him. She cut Rampage apart for the umpteenth time. "I really shouldn't. Not after you abandoned me."

"You say that like either of us have any choice," Augur growled. He sighed and stalked away. "This mech should die, you say?"

"He's a murderer."

"And what gives you - gives anyone - the right to pass this sentence?"

"Just tell me how to fucking kill him, Augur."

Augur instead made a show of looking around. "This was his little garden," he said. "He fed these fungal growths. It was his treasure, his sin. It has been whispered to me that he hasn't been back here in millennia - driven away by the needs of a new purpose. A better one. These doors-"

"Augur, enough." Hawkmoon marched over to him. "He needs to die."

Augur calmly looked up at her. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Then let him up one last time."

She could hear Rampage pulling himself back together behind her, piece by piece. "And then?"

Augur looked back over to the statue, his lip pulling back. "And give him back over to her."

Hawkmoon glanced at the statue and gave it a searching look. Finding nothing of note, she turned on her heel, trudged back to Rampage just as his two halves reattached, and began the task of removing his extraneous limbs. Rampage returned to the land of the living with a pained cry - just as she sawed off the last of his Worm legs and tossed it away. Hawkmoon checked that her fractal shroud was still active and walked around his other side.

"I can... see you... leaking," Rampage weakly vented. He turned his helm up and smiled, though his optics refused to settle on anything. "Oh Winglet-"

Hawkmoon grabbed him by the neck, claws sinking in deep, and she began dragging him over to the statue. He tried pulling her away and lost his last servo for his troubles. Rampage watched her cut it away with a low groan that sounded almost like a sigh. "What do-"

His helm lolled back and he finally saw the statue. Rampage's optics brightened. His struggles picked up. "No, Winglet, that's not-"

Hawkmoon threw him by the foot of the dark sculpture and glanced Augur's way.

"Give them back the gift they had once given him," he said, "but only if you're sure they deserve its return."

"What else would you have me do?" Hawkmoon growled.

"No no no, Winglet," Rampage stammered weakly. "No no, this is a bad idea, Winglet, trust me, even for you it's bad it's bad it's bad- Don't-"

Hawkmoon opened him up all over again and cut his sparkchamber free, cutting him off for good. She tugged it out, released it of cabling and ethereal strands and held it aloft. It pulsed with more of the orange-black energy, thrummed with the bright brilliance of it. It shone with a most unnatural luster, even for a spark of all things, and Hawkmoon would have found herself entranced with it if not for what it was - and who it belonged to.

"Are you willing to go through with this?" Augur questioned.

"What the actual frag are you even getting at?" Hawkmoon clenched her jaw tightly. "Look at me. Look at Phorus back there. I don't know what the frag is happening anymore, but he needs to go."

"Hawkmoon, what am I here for?"

"Mostly to annoy me."

"To give you perspective. This is the duty Úthaessel charged me wi-"

"Úthaessel's dead," Hawkmoon stressed. "She's dead, Augur. Everyone's dead. You're always telling me to get past that."

"And will doing this help you?"

"Probably not, but it's definitely going to spare a whole lot more people."

"And what if you take him away as he is? Broken down, harmless, all but dead to the world?"

"I'd call that a hollow justice."

"But I would call it resourcefulness," Augur countered. "We can use him. His worth carries leverage."

"Augur, he's one of them. The Dark's sycophants. Its followers."

"Once."

"What do you mean, 'once'? I saw-"

"Exactly what they needed to incite you towards destroying him."

Hawkmoon grimaced. "That doesn't change what he did. He's a monster. And I've killed him."

"Not yet," a familiar voice whispered into her audioreceptor. Hawkmoon didn't even need to look to know who it was. Augur bared his teeth and raised his hackles at the sight of Adria, but she only had eyes for Hawkmoon. "You're a scoundrel for never seeing these things through, but right here, right now, you could end another cycle. One just as broken and destructive as ours."

"No no," Hawkmoon grumbled, "no, you can fuck right off. Yeah? Fuck off."

"And miss this?" Adria leaned close, all but sitting on Hawkmoon's shoulder "Never."

"You're the memory of a dead thing. I'm not listening to you."

"I'm the memory of the woman who once stood where you did. You can't help but listen to me."

"A proxy voicebox," Augur declared. "Don't heed it."

"A lying rat," Adria spat back. "You've only ever instructed her to do that which benefited you."

"Benefitted us all."

"As you say - but you also complain about her right to carry out justice. How can you say that she doesn't have what it takes but you do?"

"I have lived-"

"A long life full of poor choices," Adria interrupted. "If you were as right as you pretended to be, then why is the universe still falling apart?"

"Because of you!" Augur snapped. "You're no memory; you're the inclination of violence, a temptress to ruin and hate. Nothing more. You are a manifestation of dark appeal, of brutal comforts and a cold, empty universe. You would drive us all to the arms of death - or death's herald, as it pleases you."

"Pleases me?!" Adria shouted. "I should be dead. By my choice I should have ended. Instead I'm left watching her make a mockery of-"

"Shut up!" Hawkmoon yelled. They both fell silent. "Shut the fuck up. Not another word." She took a moment to vent. "Augur. What do you mean 'once'?"

Augur growled and indicated with his snout to the statue. "Ask her."

Hawkmoon looked upon the statue's blank visage with a frown. "You're telling me this thing is alive."

"Had she the ability to speak, I doubt she would refer to her current state as 'living'."

"Who-"

"Ask, Hawkmoon. Ask and be done with it."

Hawkmoon settled her gaze on the statue's head. It was taller than her but not by much, and though it resembled a human woman she had some serious doubts as to the validity of that assumption. "What is Rampage?"

At first nothing happened, but an unnatural fugue soon swept over Hawkmoon, clouding what remained of her vision. She irritaly swept at it - and it was as if a light had been switched on. The room filled with drab grey and blood red-

A mech, standing before an alien structure in a young jungle.

A mech, entering.

A mech, standing before the veiled statue.

A mech, kneeling before the bearer of the helix spear - and many others, each strong and tall and unbowed.

A mech, watching other Cybertronians struggle and fall.

A mech, witnessing the seeding of similar structures across each world the silent tide touched.

A mech, gathering each of those afflicted by the unseen plague.

A mech, watching the spores fill the empty husks left behind and the fungal system grow.

A mech, sleeping to the lullaby of a great Worm.

A mech, scanning the contents of a dissected Worm-beast captured in amber glass.

A mech, standing before the spear-bearer, the un-molten Tenerjiin, the woman of black porcelain and obsidian mask and midnight shawl - and behind them a predatory tree, an angel, an insect of every moult, a living horror bathed in misted red, a blind creature thirsting for the life that crawled beneath young stars. The spear-bearer approached and he said: "I name thee Rampage - for the ruin you will carry out in the name of grand annihilation, for that ultimate end."

A mech, tearing his own chassis open so that the spear-bearer could gift him - could say: "Unto you I gift this grand Luster. Unto you I give undying perseverance, the means by which to weather every storm and see this purpose through."

A mech, standing to attention as all others left him but the shawled woman who bent down to whisper: "Be free."

A mech, stirring as if from a nightmare.

A mech, shucking off the weight of barbed chains.

A mech, fleeing into the night.

A mech, turning his back on a dark fleet, on the shadow of the spear-bearer.

A mech, running.

A mech, fighting.

A mech, despairing.

He hunted all others to fall under their banner, all initiates within reach and all prodigies they hoped to poach from his own divided people. Many sought him out first - for there was only one favoured token for all the champions of their kind to claim and they hoped to steal it for themselves. Not one took it from him, mortal-bound as they were.

...

A femme, winged and scarred and afforded the shape of an alien craft - stinking of their magic and their touch and their foul brand.

A femme, lost rudderless in a sea of beasts.

A femme, piercing through the realms of un-space to stalk a dragon, the ultimate catalyst of self-advancement.

A femme, prey.

A femme, to be baited with the promise of escape.

A femme, to be slaughtered with impunity

A femme, to be paraded before their shackled icon, to lift up lifeless and say: "Here is your champion now. You will never have her. You will never have us."

A femme, just as driven to live.

A femme, unphased with the predicament of an undying foe.

A femme, outfitted with all the weapons she needed to fight him, to nullify his advantages.

A femme, all but victorious.

A femme, murderer.

A mech, wishing he'd had the chance to tell [First Traitor|First's Daughter|First Instigator] he'd failed.

A mech, his life in the hand of his would-be killer, his once-prey.

A mech-

-violently shook her helm, to rid herself of the vivid imagery and deep-psyche seeded metaphors. She stumbled back, feeling a pit open up inside her, an empty abyss not unlike biological hunger, and cradled her free servo over where her heart would have been - should have been.

"She answered," Augur said. It wasn't a question.

Hawkmoon nodded anyway, staring ahead, staring at nothing, staring into space. It was worse. It was so much worse.

"She speaks to those who listen. To those who ask."

"He's not alone," Hawkmoon whispered. In her mind she pictured the spear-toting killer who'd come for her on that other plane. Who'd nearly claimed her had Augur not led her out. "He's not… There's so many… Who are they?"

"Last, lost, searching for higher purpose," Augur grimly informed her. "They embrace the totality of nothing for they have nothing else to savour. They are at their own ends - and thus seek to deprive all else of theirs. To those beneath the Black Fleet's shadow there is no sanctity, no sanctuary, no law and no code above their own fatalistic desires. They are hunters, bloodhounds set to chase down those who would take up arms against them and oppose their twisted purpose. And they may well have your scent already."

"And her?" Hawkmoon croaked, looking back up at the statue - half-alive as it seemingly was.

Augur paused. "A dreamcatcher for purposes larger than herself."

"... She's the Speaker you talked about, isn't she?"

"Yes," Augur quietly admitted. "But it wouldn't be safe to speak of her past in her presence."

"She's... this is her? Actually her?"

"As much her as any and every effigy of her image is. But she is no longer as she once was." Augur padded back by Hawkmoon's side. "What will you do?"

"Kill it," Adria quickly ordered. Hawkmoon startled; she had almost forgotten the red shadow was there at all, so caught up as she was. "Crush its heart in your hand and feed what's left to your gracious host. Do it - now. Now!"

"No," Hawkmoon said - and no one was more surprised than she was.

"No?!" Adria cried out. "What do you mean no?!"

"I mean..." Hawkmoon turned her optic upon Rampage's spark and felt her own harden with steely resolve. "He needs to die. He will die. I'll kill him or I'll make sure someone else does. But not here." Hawkmoon looked back to the statue, then to the fungal growths. "Not here..."

"Very good," Augur whispered. He looked behind them. "Now we should begin to run."

"Why-" Hawkmoon turned around and saw that the hallway had begun to narrow and close. She didn't even think; she powered up her thrusters and fired through, just as the space filling the passage began to condense and re-materialize. She skidded across the floor, her wings giving out, and dragged her claws across the floor to bring herself to a stop. Hawkmoon laid there for a moment, her spark racing, before pushing herself up.

She still held Rampage's own lashing spark. And beside her-

"This Ziggurat will doubtless take kindly to us outstaying our welcome," Augur said, calm and self-assured as ever before. "We should vacate the premises."

Hawkmoon didn't reply. She double-checked that she still had her Nullblade, then trudged over and scooped up her Fire-Spitter from where it had fallen. Lastly she turned to Phorus, vented deeply and muttered, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She hooked her arm under veir chest, slowly lifted ver up and threw ver over her shoulder. Ve was heavier than she had anticipated. Not as much as any Cybertronian, maybe, but twenty-something feet tall of pure muscle and bone was still a burden and a half. Hawkmoon groaned. "Augur?"

"Yes?"

"Where the hell were you?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes. What could be important enough that you'd abandon me?"

Augur didn't answer for a time. Hawkmoon didn't wait; she marched onwards, trying to ignore the sting of pain receptors reactivating. They coming back to her slowly, and she could feel the crash at the end of it all, but she reckoned she had herself a couple breems longer before it incapacitated her.

"I saw her," Augur whispered, catching up.

"Who? That-"

"My mate," Augur answered. "The vixen with whom I shared a territory, a den, kits. I saw her - clasped in the locked jaws of red light. It... played her like a puppet, but it did so very convincingly. I... I lost myself, for a time. In hope and... grief." Augur paused. "Old wounds. They ache every other moon - but I had forgotten what it felt like to feel them freshly laid open. Perhaps," he hesitated, "perhaps I have been too hard on you."

"Frag yes," Hawkmoon grunted. "Yeah you have. But this really isn't the time and place to make up. Save this for when we're not so tired and beat up, yeah?"

"If that is what you wi-" Augur choked off. He yipped unhappily. Hawkmoon glanced down at him, but he was looking away. "If that is what you think appropriate," he corrected.

"Mhm," Hawkmoon hummed. "Just don't run off on me again."

"I would never."

AN: Huge thanks to Nomad Blue for editing this monster of a chapter!

I gotta get out of this new habit - which should be easier, what with this arc almost through.