Chapter XX: The Solidity of the Serpents

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

I put some of my own worldbuilding in here - tying in a few older Shadowrun features and references, particularly from the Earthdawn linkages. Tried to make it a little vague and mythical, so hopefully it comes off okay. A nice balance between fact and self-fiction.

Also, two part update today, this is one of two.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

As we were flying over, something rocked the plane. I quickly poked my head into the cockpit. "What's going on?"

"I have no idea! Something is hitting us, but nothing is coming up on sensors." The pilot was desperately trying to keep control of the joysticks. And he was right - even as we were hit again, none of the sensors showed anything. As far as they were concerned, we were shaking for no reason at all.

I really should be more panicked about an invisible threat, but honestly, I didn't spare it a moment's worry. Instead, I strode forward and leaned in to look at the navigation display. "How far are we from the coordinates Nathan gave?" I asked.

"Very close." The pilot said, "Maybe five minutes." Another strike - I had to grab onto something to stay upright.

I thought for a moment, then nodded to myself. "Get us as close as you can. If we have to drop early, we can take the walk."

"Yes ma'am." The pilot responded, focusing on the ride. His hands practically flew themselves, flashing out to press keys and switches before making adjustments to the steering apparatus.

I stumbled back into the cabin and plonked back down into my seat, next to Rachel and Nathan who were both chatting happily. "And then she took on friggin' Renraku vampires. It was freaking awesome."

Rachel chuckled. "That sounds like her. Lucky she was never armed in the boardroom - it'd be a bloodbath!"

"Is this really the time?" I hissed. They were gossiping. Gossiping.

Both of them looked at each other, then back to me. Nathan gave a gruff snort, and Rachel gently shrugged one elegant shoulder in a motion that would've made teenage me seethe with envy. But I had risen above.

"Yes." - "Yeah, pretty much."

I took a deep breath. Risen above. Yes. Now I only wanted to murder them for purely mercenary, pragmatic considerations.

"Great. Well, shut up. We're landing." One of the engines exploded. "We're crashing." I amended, just before we hit and everything went dark.

—

I patted out another spot of charred crap on my jacket. "That was a spectacularly annoying walk. I really, really hope the pilot can have it repaired." I looked up. "This place is even more isolated than you described, Nathan."

Nathan just shrugged. "It's a dragon lair, not the New York Promenade. Of course it's out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere."

"Wait. A lair? This is a Dragon Lair?" An actual real lair? How in the hell did he..?

"Lofwyr's lair, actually." He smirked. And that just made it worse. Even the others were looking at him with shock now.

Chloe's voice trailed off into an unsteady warble, and when it resolved into a question, I let her take the lead. "How in the- wasn't that, y'know, buried in magma?"

Nathan nodded. "It was, yeah. I found it, uncovered it, and looted it. Then, apparently, I locked the door." He shrugged. "It seemed like a good enough idea at the time."

"You couldn't have found an easier to access place? If it's locked enough to fuck with a dragon, it'd be that locked regardless of where you put it." I shook my head, sighed. Not important. Freaking out over nothing. I made my bed, time to lie in it. "At least we're here now. Do you know how to get in?" I pointed up at the gate. "I'm assuming your lock needs some trick only you know?"

Nathan snorted. "You haven't worked it out? Vic, I'm surprised at you." At my scowl, he chuckled and added simply, "The ring. How else?"

"Seriously?"

He grinned. "Seriously. It's a Dragon Lair. Who but the craziest motherfuckers would dare? And it's not like you'd ever let that thing out of your sight, so I knew the key and the lock would both be secure as hell. Like having my very own dragon."

"Fuck you, Nate."

"Love you too, Vic."

I pushed through him and up to the door, ignoring his follow-up taunts and laughter. "Come on, help me with this." The others joined me and we shoved open the door, easing in to a surprisingly rough-hewn cavern. It almost looked natural. I couldn't believe Lofwyr would willingly fit through this place.

The cavern narrowed into a corridor, still rough-hewn and - at least mostly - natural. The walls, however, held old-canvas paintings. Something seemed to be preserving them, or at least protecting them from the moisture and dust that adorned the walls themselves. Each one was of high quality, genuine masterpieces that any gallery owner would kill to put on their walls.

The first one that caught my eye was a starscape, little lights in a pitch black sky. As I examined it, I noticed shapes beginning to appear in the shadows between the points as my eyes adjusted. They… the only word I can think for it is 'undulated'. The title, carved into the frame, was 'Tenebrated'.

There was also a signature. I think. It was not a language I recognised, but the pattern of it fit the signatures I'd seen on artwork before.

The next was a rainbow rainfall. A barren waste with falling beams of light and colour colliding. The light seemed to hit something, but whatever it was was buried in the colour to the point it was all but obscured. The title, 'Affianced'. The signature was the same.

The third was those same colours stretching out from a single point, diffracting throughout the image. The painting itself also stretched, going down the corridor for nearly a full half mile. As we walked along, the colours combined and morphed and separated and grew, an odd sense of playfulness to the whole thing. This was entitled 'Devolved'.

The fourth and final painting in the tunnel was that same starscape as the first, only with blobs of colour in place of the stars. The shadows still warped and slithered between them, but the border between was more gradiated. The title read 'Solidified'.

There was a story here, but I hadn't the information to make sense of it. "Nathan? Do you know what this is?"

He didn't stop walking. "No. But I think it's an origin of dragons."

"An origin?" Max asked, voice dripping with curiosity.

"Yep." He didn't elaborate. I wasn't sure if I was grateful.

We pushed on. Hurriedly. This was… a weird place to be.

—

We walked into a large cavern, barely lit with faint sunlight reflected down through cracks in the rock. I had to squint to get even the faintest traces of the platforms dominating the centre - which was what distracted me enough to not notice the floor.

The traps were loud, bright, and disorienting, ending with a few glass walls snapping into place around us, containing us completely. Several Prescott agents leaned half out of the shadows, a variety of wicked-looking weapons pointed in our direction.

And then a voice called out of the dark, "Seriously? That? You fell for that?" Mad, familiar laughter drifted out towards me, followed by a mad, familiar face. Sean goddamn Prescott. He was in some high-tech looking body-armour and lugging a rifle with some skill. "You've torn apart my business, kicked in the door of my office, and killed my chief enforcer - and you fell for that?" He shook his head. "It almost makes me wonder how competent any of them were. I should probably be thanking you for taking them out before I had to waste the time filling in the paperwork to fire them all!"

"Wow, Dad." Nathan stepped out of nothing, pacing toward his father. "You really have gotten to be way more of an asshole in your old age. Big sis was right. Who'd've thunk it?"

"Na- Nathan?" Sean breathed, barely audible.

"In the flesh." He looked down, then back up. Quirked a grin. "Heh."

One of the agents shook a little, clearly chuckling inside his muted helmet.

"How are you here?" He looked around. "There's no-" He looked at me. "Ah. She was a decker, wasn't she?"

Nathan shrugged. "You always taught me to get into people's heads, especially if they were the people closest to me. Thanks to you, I can do it a bit more literally than most."

"And you haven't completely taken her over?" He snorted. "You couldn't tame her when you were married, what makes you think you can do anything now? Utter disappointment that you are."

I was tempted to step in, to ask how the hell they were here, how they'd beaten us down to a place we only unlocked moments before, but it didn't really matter. There was only one thing that was important now - a low voice murmuring in my head, secrets, stories, sins. Instructions.

I let my hand drift slowly down to the deck at my side, tapping keys as I tried to access whatever he was using. The bastard began to pace, ranting and raving again - Nathan fighting back against whatever he was saying. I wasn't really paying attention, focused on my hack.

Then, suddenly, two of Max's drones flew out and rammed into points on the wall, exploding into shards of stone and metal. The glass walls dropped immediately.

I grinned, and raised my gun.

Nathan vanished, and Max, Chloe, Rachel, and I all split off just as several goons stepped out of the dark and blasted at us. I had to give Prescott credit - he wasn't as stupid as he seemed. I caught a bullet to the shoulder as I ran, but luckily it knocked me back into cover and the rest plinked off the rockface. Whatever the stone in here was, it was bulletproof.

I pulled myself back up against the rock, cursing lightly as pain burst in my shoulder. I quickly checked it out - the bullet had gone through. It was excruciating, but at least I had that. Without really thinking too hard, I pulled a set of foam from the medkit and jammed it into the wound. The stuff quickly burst in, stopping the bleed and filling the wound. I could feel it bulging. I'd pay for it later, but…

Fuck it.

I stood up, put a bullet in the head of one of the agents, and got back to the fight just in time to see Sean actually take a swing at Nathan. When the hit went right through him, Nathan just laughed and called him a dumbass.

So, Nathan was handling him okay.

Chloe was fist-fighting an orc, clearly having torn parts off his armour as she jammed claws and swung fists into his sides, blood dripping from the scratches.

Max was amusedly smirking at the three agents she was dealing with, her drones flying about blasting away and shielding her from strikes. It was impressive, even with all I'd seen from the little hipster. But she wasn't anywhere close to taking any of them out. Bullets bounced off their top-quality armour, but also were deflected by the shields carried by her drones.

I didn't have a hope of helping Chloe - and honestly, she seemed to be having fun - so instead I went to help Max. If Max's guns were richocheting off armor, then my little handgun wouldn't do shit. At least, not from this range.

So, I crept through the shadows, darting from stalagmite to stalagmite, from rock to rock. When I reached one of the goons, I found a handy rock. One good swing and I had a hole in the armour to jam the barrel of my gun into. Can't richochet off armor if you don't shoot the armor.

The sound was oddly… meaty.

The other two took their eyes off Max for just a moment. Long enough for her to send one of the shield drones careening into one and for Chloe to throw her punching buddy into the other. We quickly finished them off.

The rest of the agents were all already down, dead, or disposed of for the time being. Just Sean left.

So I pulled back my gun, took aim, and blasted him. Asshole. Luck somehow was on my side, and his leg went out from under him and he hit the floor. Chloe quickly strode over and kicked his gun away.

There was a quiet moment, only broken by Sean's hitched breathing.

Nathan went down on one knee next to him. For a moment, he and his father just stared at each other. Sean gave a cough, his voice coming out weak and fluttery. "I failed. As your father. When I heard you did something so monumentally stupid, I knew I had."

"Fuck you." Nathan drawled, "But yeah, you were a shitty dad."

"I tried to make you strong!"

"No, you really didn't. Whenever I tried to do anything, you threatened and shouted me down until I fell in line and did what you said." He shook his head. "You think that's strength? Just buckling down and doing what you're told?"

Every word of that last sentence hit Sean worse than my bullet. It was a joy to see.

"If you'd've stuck with the plan, you'd've been successful! Powerful! But you never had any respect, any will. You could've been great!"

"But I could've been normal." He looked back to me with an open, empty, sad little expression. "I should have listened to my sister." Nathan shuddered. "You made me agree with my sister, Dad." The two of them share a look of empathy, born of years of preachy moralising and contrary behaviour. I'd only met his sister the once, before she went out to join the Peace Corps and travel the world. The only person I'd ever met who was more morally forthright than Kate and Max were - and more of a bitch than me. "Is she…"

"I don't know. I haven't heard from her in years."

"So, she doesn't even know I died?" I'd never heard that tone from Nathan before, not even in the recordings from the Lab. It broke the shards of my cold, dead heart.

Sean stared at his son for a long moment, then shrugged as best he could, injured and prone. It clearly pained him to do it. "I don't know." He said simply.

And then the man who had haunted my ex-husband for so long, who had always believed himself right and righteous, who had bulldozed the world to match his whims without a doubt in his head, let out his last breath. His body slumped, and Nathan stood up.

"I'm sorry, Nate." I reached out to comfort him, but remembered at the last moment, letting my hand drop away.

He just scowled, shook his head. I could see his shoulders firming with determination. "Yeah, yeah. Lets keep moving. We're almost there."