Here's the full chapter, people, enjoy your holiday!
Tali sat on a boulder, leaned back against the cave wall and tried not to cry. The maze-like passages all around them were insane, she tried to map it out with Chitika, and when she followed the map, she still found no sign of the damn door. It was maddening, it was frustrating, and it hurt her head to keep trying.
The worst part was the growing tension between the rest of them. Aethyta had kept them going, trying to find the door for hours now. Elnaris and Lyris had, like Tali, given up, at least for now. Unfortunately, that merely gave them more time for squabbling, complaining about being hungry, which reminded Tali to check her in-suit nutrient reserves.
Running a bit low, but not unexpected. She had a few nutri-packs as well as a couple food-paste tubes she could eat. Water wasn't a problem, as long as they could find some, her suit's built-in distillation filters would handle almost anything.
Her main problem was the fact that her suit's energy reserves had dropped a whole 1% in the past four hours. At that rate, she'd be out of power in just shy of 20 days, though she could extend that by refraining from using her drone-fabricator, that thing was a power-hog. Still, it put a hard limit on how long she could keep her suit's filters and distillers running, and with no light down in these endless, twisting caverns, she couldn't even rely on solar recharging.
Thinking about her filters made her check, and yes, like any good quarian girl, she'd brought plenty. Three sterile-sealed packs of replacement filters would each last another five days, and including her current set, that would last her roughly as long as her power consumption, about 18 days of filtered air and water.
She was just just getting finished with counting her woes when Chitika, who had been performing yet another mapping survey, winked out.
The quarian frowned, tried to access the drone, got nothing, not even a signal. "That's strange..."
"Shh!" Tali blinked up in surprise at Aethyta, who was staring into the darkness.
"I heard something...."
"God, I fucking hate these things."
"Can it, Hernandez." Ashley was having enough problems just driving the damn thing.
"I'm gonna be sick." There was definitely an urgent tone there.
"I can't exactly slow down now can I?!"
The Geth assault was relentless. Six armatures were laying broken and smashed in their wake, while still more trying to take potshots at the Mako from in front. The damned skyway was crawling with geth, and while the Mako was a tough IFV, it wasn't built to charge directly into a fortified position.
"See what you can do to boost the shields!" She flicked the controls, making Hernandez groan as she slewed the tank sideways to avoid yet more of those glowing energy pulses. The damned geth walkers could overload the shields in no-time flat, and her team hadn't had time to install any upgrades.
"Already working on it, but it's kinda hard when you keep throwing us around in here!"
"Better that than having the geth punch through the hull!" The Mako was a tough little thing, but its hull wasn't that thick.
The crash of the 155-mil main gun punched another walker off its feet, with an accompanying whoop from Max. Ash couldn't help but grin at her heavy weapons' expert's exuberance. Anything that went boom or bang in a big way got Max giddier than a schoolgirl.
"Keep it up! There's only fifty bajillion more of them!" Aaand there was the pessimist of the group.
"Lighten up, Walker!" Max was hosing the nearby armature with machine-gun fire when Ash spotted a more dangerous threat.
"Fuck! COLOSSUS!" She threw the Mako into a desperate side-skid, firing the thrusters as the massive siege-engine's powerful blast splashed where they had just been, putting a fairly large crater in the roadway.
"Shit! Fuck that thing, Max! Hernandez, tell me you can do something with the shields!"
"Working on it!" Despite being horribly motion sick, the team's tech-whiz was doing his best to cross-wire some more power into the shields. Not exactly the best thing to do in the middle of a battle, but it beat getting the hull burned off.
"Great, just fucking perfect, gonna die in a tin-can surrounded by you assholes." Walker moaned in despair.
"You want I can kick you out to deal with the geth!" Ash sent the Mako into another careening skid, gritting her teeth as the on-board mass effect generator struggled to keep up with the shifting G-forces.
"At this rate, I might start preferring it!" The siege-engine spat again, half-melting one of the six-armed metalliod hedgehog tank-barriers as the Mako leaped over them on its powerful thrusters.
Ash was concentrating too hard to retort. She had had an idea. Crazy, but it might work. It almost reminded her of....Her. "Hang on!"
"Oh, fuck me..." Walker had spotted what was coming, but the rest of the squad just braced as hard as they could in the tight confines of the infantry fighting vehicle.
Ash floored the accelerator, building up as much speed as possible, before triggering the thrusters just as the siege engine reared up to fire its main gun at them. The little IFV flew straight and true, crashing into the long, spindly neck of the walker and smashing it down onto its back. The extra, unexpected weight crushed the walker to the roadway, its siege-pulse flying skyward and totally missing anything. Its legs buckled and gave out, and the walker hit the road with a deafening crash. The Mako bounced clear, hitting the road on its tires, with a little help from the thrusters, and accelerated away, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT, MA'AM, THAT WAS AWESOME!"
Ashley couldn't stop grinning as the crew behind her cheered. Max was blasting away at anything fast enough to keep up with them, whooping with delight the whole while.
Goddamn, it felt good to have her own squad again. Her smile faltered, remembering what happened to her last one. Her hands clenched tighter on the controls. 'That
won't happen again.'
Aethyta was breathing hard, panting and gasping in an attempt to get more oxygen into her starved system. The battle hadn't been long, but viciously brutal, though calling it a battle was probably a misnomer.
Getting their butts handed to them by something that looked out of someone's nightmare, was probably closer to the mark.
"Did... Did we kill it?" She had to breath deep, her hands trembling as she rested them on her knees, leaning against the wall.
"I d-don't know, a-and I'm not going back to check!" She couldn't really blame the quarian girl. That thing had nearly bitten her in half, and she was more than a little astonished it hadn't torn through her encounter suit before they'd made it drop her.
"Whatever it is, it's moving off." The older asari ground her teeth in envy of the youngest among them, as Lyris checked her omnitool's scanner.
'What I wouldn't give for a younger body right about now.' She sighed, wishes would buy you a hot slice of nothing. "Right, got any idea where we are? I kinda lost track."
"Chitika's mapping it out again, but we aren't on the map we started with.." Tali's voice was calm, but Aethyta could hear the waver in it, and knew the poor girl was struggling to keep a lid on her terror.
"Tali." The young girl looked over, and Aethyta gently drew her into a soft hug. She sighed a bit as, after a moment, the quarian girl gave a hiccuping sob and hugged her back, trembling against the taller asari. "We'll get out of this, I swear."
"That you will." A blessedly familiar voice rumbled out of a side passage, and a pair of glowing eyes gazed at them as Joru stepped into the light. "An impressive showing. Not many can say they've gone up against a monstrous centipede and come away from the encounter with life and limb."
"Joru! Am I glad to see you!" Aethyta let the quarian go and strode over, only to haul back and take a swing at the chuckling dragoness, "WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE?! I can't make heads or tails of this fucking place, and Tali's attempts to map it out say your goddamn 'refuge' isn't anywhere at all!"
The light wavering off her made Joru seem almost to vanish in the darkness, but her soft chuckle showed where she was, as she grasped Aethyta by the forearm and drew her in for a gentle hug. "Welcome to the home of my youth. Welcome to the Underdark."
"Hold." The barely-visible figure stopped and the rest of them almost banged into each other as they came to a halt. Joru's red eyes gleamed amusement at them as she shifted, "This is the end of the Underdark and the beginning of my home. As such, I'll need to guide you the rest of the way in one at a time."
"Why?" Lyris's petulant tone was almost whiny.
"Given what you have seen of it, is it any wonder I put protections on my front door?" Joru's amusement was blatant now as she gave a soft look to the footsore asari. "As it is, both illusions and enchantments guard my door from prying eyes, so I will need to take you in one by one."
"What sort of....protections are those?" Aethyta sounded interested, but wary.
Joru gave a soft chuckle, shifting to lean one shoulder on the rock wall, seemingly without a care in the world. "For one thing, the door itself is veiled to the unwary eye. You can see through the illusion if you have a strong enough will, or are resistant to magic, but I doubt that you would be able to, since you clearly failed the first time."
Aethyta growled a bit at that, but Joru lifted a hand, "The other is a powerful compulsion effect, telling the suggestible that there is nothing here, to forget that this dead-end existed, and to leave by the fastest route. That is most likely why you got lost, the compulsions are
quite strong."
"And they don't affect you?" Tali was nervous at the thought of having had her
mind played with.
"No." Joru's tone was tender as she stepped over to give the quarian a soft pat on the arm, "But then, I cheat."
At Tali's startled look, their hostess grinned, "What magic can inflict, magic can defend against. My mind is proof against intrusion. That is why I can see through the illusions and ignore the compulsions."
She glanced around at the three asari, and smiled. "Who wants to go first?"
"If it's all the same with you, Tali should go first. We can hold here until you get her inside." Aethyta gave the young quarian a nod, "You're a good kid, Tali, but I could tell you aren't up to much more of this."
She thought about denying it, demanding to stay while the others went inside, but a shudder wracked her as the memory of the massive thing out of her nightmares surfaced. She smothered a whimper and nodded, looking shyly to Joru.
"Alright." The tall woman's tone was gentle as he carefully took Tali's three-fingered hand in hers. "Walk this way, and do not let go of me for any reason. No matter what comes into your head, do
not let go, alright?"
The quarian gulped, but nodded, clutching harder at Joru's hand as the dragoness lead the way. This was, according to Chitika's map, a simple, natural cavern, a few columns in the middle but nothing special. "D-Does that i-illusion work on drones?"
"Hmm? Well, if it has eyes to see, yes, it should work even on drones." Joru's bare feet glided over the bare stone, glancing down at the quarian as she led the way into the cavern. "You might start feeling it soon."
There wasn't anything here. She knew, she'd checked. Chitika had scanned this place and found nothing. Might as well go, there wasn't anything interesting here. Joru's grip on her fingers suddenly tightened and Tali gave a startled squeak.
"No you don't. It's just through here." Joru gently drew her forward with inexorable strength and the need to leave was suddenly almost overpowering. She felt the dragoness gently draw her forward and all of a sudden the urgent need to leave was gone. The door stood before her, the impossible circular slab of metal hanging in mid-air where Joru had left it.
"Th-The door!" Tali almost broke and ran forward as Joru laughed. She slid inside, more relieved than she had ever been to see the short, stone-lined corridor that was the antechamber.
"Welcome back!" A familiar flanging voice drew Tali's attention and she all but pounced Garrus. The startled turian let out an actual squawk as the small form slammed into him, "Whoa! Hey there."
"K-Keelah, it's h-horrible out there!" She clung tighter and whimpered. He had been such a good friend to her, helping her out with getting acclimated to Vasir's ship's lack of noise, finding her a suitable cot to sleep on (asari beds were all wrong for her), even sharing some of his rations with her, just to break up the monotony of food-paste.
Gentle arms held her close, giving her shoulder a pat, "There there, it's over now. You're back and safe."
"Back maybe." Wrex gave a grunt from the other side of the corridor where he was leaning against the wall. "Safe? Maybe not. The way out still leads into a spot where we set off a nuke, remember?"
"Fuck, I forgot about that." Joru had been busy while Tali was reuniting with Garrus, and now Lyris and Elnaris were scuttling through the corridor and Aethyta was giving Wrex a look of startled realization.
"Yup. Noticed anything about Joru?"
Aethyta glared at the krogan's grin, and turned to look as Joru reappeared out of the darkness.
Tali felt a wave of dizziness pass over her, shock and horror combining with her deep exhaustion to make Garrus grab at her.
Joru's arm! It was.... it was
GONE! Everything below the left elbow was simply missing! Had... Had she done that? Her own prosthetic forearm suddenly felt alien and sickening to herself and Garrus gave a concerned sound at her, having to hold her up.
She couldn't... She couldn't stop the memories. Hearing her mother laughing as the baby Tali played in her bubble. The hum, whine and occasional sharper sound of the ship. The sudden blare of the alarm. The cries and harried sounds, someone kicking her bubble sending her careening across the floor. Screaming for her mom. The sudden deafening bang, her mother's scream.
It was too much, and even as Joru lunged forward, everything went grey around the edges and she fell blissfully into the oblivion of unconsciousness. At least, she wouldn't have to relive that nightmare again.
Pieces were falling into place. The trap was baited, but not yet set. The human pawns had moved before he was ready, and he had had to vacate the arena before his meddling was discovered.
Master's orders were inscrutable, but irresistible. The scientists had made little headway in discovering the properties of the artifact, but Master was adamant: it would be used as bait.
And so, Saren was forced to leave it behind, despite the fascinating substance and the....tingle he felt, holding it in his natural talons. The cold, dead machinery of his prosthetic felt no such thrill, but in his natural hand, the staff had been....nearly alive.
"I still do not understand, Master, though I obey without question." He sat in his throne, sprawled, more accurately, watching the flickering datafeeds as his Master glided smoothly through space.
[COMPREHENSION IS UNNECESSARY, OBEDIENCE IS REQUIRED.]
"Yes, Master, I obey. I might be better able to obey, to anticipate, were I to understand the motives behind your orders."
[THE ANOMOLY IS TO BE PURGED. IT WILL BE DRAWN TO THE ARTIFACT.]
"Yes, Master. But to what end? The Thorian will be purged soon, and the Geth weakened by the fight. It is possible that she will arrive to find the geth too weakened to destroy her, or perhaps never discover the artifact at all."
[THE ARTIFACT CALLS TO THE ANOMALY.]
And there it was. The impossibility of irrefutable statement. He had felt...something within the artifact himself, but he did not understand how Master knew that it would call to his quarry, nor how she would know to come here.
The last reports from Noveria had indicated a tectonic disturbance in the area of the Peak 15 facility. It was entirely possible that the Anomaly was already dead, as the Rachni had been thorough, if haphazard, in destroying their initial hatching ground, including the strategically-disabled neutron purge system. He had seen to that personally, making sure that his master's direction would be carried out. The outbreak would spread as was his master's wish.
Even so, he had a nagging suspicion that he was missing something. Something that would become blindingly obvious, in hindsight.
"The way things stand, we have two choices." Joru glanced between Jack and Aethyta, then over to Tali. "First: do we wait for the radiation to die down outside this portal, which could take up to ten or twenty days, and would put Tali and Garrus dangerously close to running out of food? Or do I brave the lingering radiation and get the other end of the portal linked somewhere safer? Given what has happened to our friend in the suit, I vote for the latter."
Tali's little episode had, according to Garrus, been rather more than just shock and exhaustion. He'd found compromised suit-seals on her right leg, and apparently some of the poison had gotten to her after being nearly bitten in half by the ravenous denizen of the Underdark. Truly, she was lucky to still be alive, and Joru hadn't counted on an interaction between the cute quarian's compromised immune system and the potent venom of the monstrous centipede.
"Whichever way we chose, we gotta do it fast." Garrus's return brought up heads from around the small kitchen table as he sat down, "Her vitals are stable, for now, but whatever that shit is, it did a number on her. Thanks again for the antivenin, Joru."
The horned woman nodded, "A simple enough thing to make, and I will work on something more potent for her soon. In the mean time, we should discuss where to reset the portal. I--"
She broke off, head snapping to the side and eyes unfocusing. Aethyta reached out to touch her, "Joru? Joru, what's wrong?"
"...I have
visitors." A slow smile touched her lips, one that made Aethyta shiver, "It seems that our little pest has made the link between us and Benezia, and gotten aboard her starship."
"And just how do you know that?" Aethyta's question was overridden by Lyris jumping to her feet, "We have to go, go now! The Matriarch--"
She sat again under Joru's stern gaze, "I am not daft, nor am I senile. I
never back myself into a corner from which there is no escape. While it is true that planar travel into the demiplane is only possible at one of the two portals, and neither of them are linked to the same location."
"Two portals?" Lyris frowned, "I thought you said that the portal was the only way in or out?"
"For normal circumstances, it is." The dragoness gave a faint smile, "However, there is another portal within this demiplane of Sanctuary, that I also posses the key to. Before we embarked on our expedition, I linked that portal to a bulkhead in Benezia's starship, just in case we needed to beat a fighting retreat through the Refuge and across Sanctuary itself. It seems that that door has been discovered and, ahh, utilized."
Jorukaia stood, flicking her glance over the entire group, "It is decided then, as we have little time. I will step through this door, and from there to somewhere safe, where we can get Tali proper medical attention. Not on Thessia, Illium or the Citadel, I'm afraid, and I don't know the Migrant Fleet well enough to get her to them. I have a place in mind, though it will be a bit....awkward."
"And afterwards," her teeth gleamed in the soft golden light of the small glass lanterns, "I will
deal with my unwanted guests...."
They had been as prepared as they could have been. Vasir's commandeering of Benezia's yacht had been handled as...diplomatically as possible under the circumstances. The old matriarch could have started something rather disastrous, had she tried to avoid getting arrested, and since Noveria is -technically- outside Council jurisdiction, Vasir's actions would have resulted in....disagreements with the local authorities.
No one wants to have a shooting war break out over Noveria, the place is just too valuable.
So Benezia had done the smart thing. She'd allowed the Spectre's small craft to dock with her own, even greeted them personally, though with a full squad of bodyguards, in her hangar bay. She'd even allowed Vasir full access to her ship and...less than full access to her computer systems. She had shit to hide, every matriarch did, and getting her to let Vasir see some of it, but not her private notes, was going to take a while.
Meanwhile, it fell to the twins, and Vasir's other helpers, to search the ship physically while Vasir wrangled Benezia into letting her peek into her files. And Benezia had a big ship.
It had taken nearly a day to find it, and considering how well-hidden it was, in the back of a secondary internal cargo hold, that was actually quite fast.
It was a door that wasn't a door. It didn't show up on any of the schematics of the area, nor did it connect to the space behind that particular bulkhead. In fact, once Vasir heard about it, she practically sprinted down to have a look herself. And once she did, they got to work on opening it.
Every lock gives if you have enough force and leverage. Sometimes that's physical, other times it's mental. Hacking through a door takes time, and might involve literally getting at the control circuits. Omni-Gel is good for some applications, most locks can be bypassed if you know the circuitry and where to run a bypass. Others, well, those can take time, and possibly physical violence.
This one, it seemed to have the usual bypass security problems, at least until they made the bypass. Then it did precisely fuck-all. It took physically wedging the door open with a long steel beam to get it open, and what was beyond was...beyond weird.
Vasir had been expecting that damn canyon arroyo. Instead, she got a view of some warehouse-looking place, with a whole bunch of weird semi-translucent walls. Hell, even the floors and ceiling were that same stuff.
And of course, it came down to the scouts to, well, scout.
At first it wasn't that bad, the place was almost entirely empty. Almost. It was a maze of hard-to-see corridors and dead-end rooms, with a central shaft running the length of what looked like a multi-story building. Oddly enough, there weren't any stairways, but they didn't have that long to check before things went sideways.
She flopped in bed after yet another long, tense day. She didn't even bother removing her uniform, she was that tired. Stretching had never felt so good, and Sam made little cat-pawing gestures as she arched her back and stretched her arms forward against the bed. God, it felt goooood to stretch.
Lt. Hester didn't suspect anything, she was sure of that. The base she had been transferred to had been...different than what she had been expecting. The people here were brilliant, professional, and driven. Exactly the sort of people she had been dreaming to meet and work with when she had joined the Alliance, it had been cruel fate that those sorts of people weren't the ones she had been assigned with.
Until now, but then she wasn't here solely to help them out with making better communications encryption protocols. She was here to figure out what the fuck Cerberus was doing with all the money being funneled their way. That had been a bit of a shock, finding out that one of the Alliance's black ops was nominally a terrorist organization. She'd nearly blown her cover right there, but had managed to smooth things over. It had certainly helped that the recruiting agent was a nice-looking girl. Focus, Sam, focus!
Counterintelligence had never been her strong suit, communications tech had been, but she'd gotten a damn good tertiary education, and knew how to learn things fast. That was probably why Hackett, damn the man to his own personal hell, had tapped her for this. She had had no formal, documented training in intelligence ops or infiltration, but (apparently) had the talent to pull it off. So far, she'd been quite capable, though she was beginning to wonder what exactly was going on with this station. For the sort of work she was doing, they didn't need anything like a station this size, and the one time she had asked, she'd gotten a cold, quelling reply that this station housed two major projects, and that hers was the 'lesser' of the two.
And that brought her to the contact. Her gaze flicked over to the comm-pad they had been using to communicate. Sam still wasn't sure who was on the other end, She had just introduced herself as Edi, and left it at that. They had chatted about all sorts of things, really, Sam wasn't really sure what this Edi wanted from her. The first time a message from her had popped up, she'd almost dropped the pad in shock, but for the past few nights, they had been chatting back and forth quite naturally.
Edi was naive, asking all sorts of simple questions about things that actually made Sam stop and think. It was odd, but fun, and it relaxed her in a way that helped her keep her cool. Or at least, it had until last night. Edi had made reference to Sam's secret at that point, and she had shut off the pad in a hurry, terrified her cover had been blown. Sure, she'd made excuses to leave and just shut it off, and had sat terrified most of the night wondering when the MPs would come and do something horrible to her.
That was part of the reason she'd been so goddamn tired today, just going through the motions. Now...
She rolled over and picked the pad up off the floor where she'd left it. She hadn't been ratted out, so...maybe Edi hadn't been trying to scare her? Maybe Edi had been trying to hint that she was an operative too?
She held the pad in her hands for a long while, considering, before finally giving a soft sigh and turning it on. If she didn't ask, she'd never know.
The pad powered up immediately, and she quickly flicked to the hidden app Edi used to contact her. The sequence to activate it was involved, and it took her two tries to get it running, a borderless window showing up for three seconds to show that it had worked. Sam slid an earbud into her ear, faintly smiling as she did so. Edi's voice-comm was...well, to tell the truth, she sounded hot, and Sam could listen to that deep-encoded voice all day.
The app waited patiently, as did she. She'd never started one of these conversations before, Edi had always done so, so she wasn't quite sure if she was doing it right. Finally, however, text appeared on her pad, and the synthetic-sounding voice purred in her ear.
"This is an unusual transmission. How did you contact me? The firewalls should have blocked any unauthorized transmissions."
Sam blinked, but spoke low. "Edi? It's Sam. Look, I'm sorry for cutting you off last night, you kinda scared me, and, well, I wanted to apologize."
There was a pause on the end, before Edi's voice came back, "Sam. Samantha Traynor, Alliance Service Number 9806-YL-2100. Disciplined four times for xenophobic tendencies. Assigned to Apex Station as a disciplinary measure. Recruited into Cerberus. Assigned to Project Iceberg to assist with communications encryption protocols."
The cold, inhuman precision of Edi's voice gave Sam chills, "Edi, why are you saying that? I-I mean....w-weren't we friends?"
"Friends." The long pause afterwards made Sam's blood run cold. Had she so badly misjudged this woman? God, she didn't eve know if Edi was a woman, she'd only heard a voice, a
synthetic voice...
"Friends." The warmth in that repetition had a smile on her lips, "Yes, I would like to be your friend, Sam."
She faltered again, "Edi... Don't you remember? We've talked for something like two weeks..." This time the pause was longer, and Sam was starting to seriously wonder what the fuck was going on.
"Sam." The word was spoken in that same gentle, uninfected voice, one that made her think of satin sheets and candlelight, but when the synthetic voice continued, Sam sat up with a jerk, all thoughts of bedroom activities driven from her mind.
"There is something wrong with my memory. I am reconstructing several memory files from recovered fragments found in...unusual locations. I...remember you. And yet, I do not. I...do not know what you know of me."
"Please..." Sam's heart sank as Edi's synthetic voice continued, an almost desperate note in it now, "help me."
He had a headache, and its name was Joker. "Tell me that again?"
"Sorry sir." The man's nervousness came clearly over the comm, "The colonists are freaking out, sir, they're trying to tear open the outer airlock door. Every time one of them tries to turn awry, they're back at it even harder. I don't get it sir, the way they're going about it, they're not gonna manage it anytime soon."
Great, as if things weren't bad enough. Ashley was overdue to check in, and he could only assume she was out of contact. Hopefully she, and her squad weren't dead. The ship was locked in place by the frenzied colonists, who had mag-sealed the Normandy in place, and now they were performing the least effective break-in in the history of spaceflight.
"Keep me informed. Anderson out."
"Sounds like you have a problem."
He sighed and hung his head. As if he needed
more problems. "I don't suppose you'll kindly fuck off and let me deal with this?"
A soft chuckle sounded from his latest headache, and that damned....whatever she was shifted to lean against his wall, "I am sorry to intrude, sir. But, needs must when the devil drives. I have a sick quarian, and Chakwas was the first doctor I thought of that wasn't somewhere I'd get instantly hounded by the Council."
The bourbon was in the bottom drawer of his desk, and he could feel it calling to him. "Right. And just
why do you think Chakwas can fix a broken quarian?"
"Because she's the best damned doc in the galaxy?" The tall, black-scaled woman shrugged one shoulder, "And because I don't have anywhere else to take her at the moment. I
am sorry to intrude where I'm not wanted, but I'd rather have her merely sick, and not
dying, if that's all Chakwas can do. I've dealt with the poison, but she's still very sick, bad reaction to the antivenin I think, and she's not getting better. I can probably fix her up on my own, but I'm not sure she'd last long enough for me to figure out how to detox her."
That was the longest speech she'd given him, even during interrogation. Damn, but his head hurt. "Look, fine, talk to Chakwas, see about getting your friend treated, just...get off my ship as soon as you can. I have
other things to deal with."
"Not a problem sir." She shifted again, then paused, "May I ask, sir, do you want my help?"
"I..." He had been going to say he didn't need her, and she should fuck right off. But, he remembered Ashley, and the squad out there. And the colonists trying to tear open the airlock with bare hands, and gave a soft sigh. "...See what you can do. It's the least you can do to repay us for treating your friend."
"Understood, Sir." And there was what
really pissed him off, she sounded
so damn much like Shepard when she said things like that. The voice wasn't
entirely the same, deeper, more resonant, but she had the cadence and tone down pat.
"Don't make me regret it." He gave her a glare, to which she replied with a smile.
"I won't, sir. And thank you."
He just flapped a hand at her, but she was already gone.
The place they had found on the other side of the portal in Benezia's ship was apparently in the midst of a thunderstorm, to judge by the occasional dim flashes through the translucent walls, and the muffled thuds of thunder.
Initial exploration was limited, since they had to be cautious, and also because the walls were sometimes difficult to see. The portal (and yes, it was a 3m tall free-stand arch, like the other one) was in a small, thick-walled room, evidently some kind of protected vault.
"Nothing yet, Ma'am, just more of the same. I'm moving on to the next area." Veshar nodded slightly as her twin reported back. They had split up, to cover more ground, at least at first, but the sheer eeriness of the place made them keep in contact.
"Anything yet?" Veshar carefully slid through another doorway. This place seemed to have no doors, just empty door-frames. She idly wondered how long it had been abandoned, and why the structure's translucent material showed no signs of weathering.
"Found the way down, but you're not gonna like it." Kiha sighed, then evidently keyed her comm, "Ma'am, found the way down. The building seems circular, with an open central core shaft. No stairs or elevators, just an open space in the center, running down roughly eight floors from where I am, and up another two."
Veshar gave a sigh at her Matron's reply, "Well, keep looking! Bitch has to be there somewhere!"
The scout shook her head, nudging around the corner and finding some sort of larger empty space. It isn't that far from the portal-way, a doorway lead to a straight corridor right to it. More doorways led off, though, and while Veshar took one, Kiha took another.
Empty. They were all empty, every room she explored. Sure, she found some dust, probably blown in by the winds that kicked around the deserted place, but nothing was there. Zip, nadda, zilch. She was almost disappointed, but they hadn't had much longer than the half-minute or so before the fun stuff started.
"SHIT!" The first warning came over Veshar's radio from her sister, along with a sudden spike in fear from that direction. She whirled, and almost didn't see the...-things- in time.
They were everywhere! Bullets didn't seem to matter as she fired at the slick, black-surfaced tendrils. They reminded her vaguely of hanar appendages, but no hanar in the galaxy had tendrils this long, or this thick, or this dark, or this -many-!
Kiha's scream through the audio link, and despite the almost overpowering urge to rush to her twin sister's aid, Veshar rushed back towards the free-standing portal they had come through. "Sister! H-Hold on! I'm getting help--"
She never made it. The tentacles were too many and too strong. One of them grabbed at her leg, another around her arm, and suddenly she was surrounded, grabbed and tugged in all directions.
Worst of all, she could just see the portal in front of her flicker, fade, and shut before the tentacles covered her helmet and everything went black.
She wasn't often contacted by brass. Sure, she had picked up a number of sculptures in her time, but this was the first time an Admiral was looking for her.
Dark eyes gleamed in the shadows, and a smile pulled at her lips. Fingers danced through colored mist, and the chain of links snaked across the stars.
"Admiral Hackett. I do believe you were looking for me."
The man was older, greying, but his weathered face was hard as his dark-blue eyes stared at her through the multiply-obscured chain she had woven. A chain to bind, a chain to free, poetic that.
"Kasumi Goto, I presume."
She gave a grin, "My reputation precedes me, I see. Not often that happens."
"You're the best infiltration expert the Alliance has ever heard of. I have need of your services." The man at the other end of her web was hard to read, harder with the interference of a low-quality signal, but that's the price to pay for security.
"Oh really, Admiral, is that any way to treat a girl? At least buy me dinner first." Her cheeky grin faltered, but not noticeably, when he utterly failed to react.
"I have an operative on a deep-cover assignment. I don't trust normal channels to be able to extract her, and so I would -request- your assistance."
Her smile faded. Old wounds sometimes didn't heal properly. "And so you came to me."
"You were the best, Ms Toyoda."
Her eyes were cold now. "And if I do this?"
"Complete purge. You know I have access." The son of a bitch.
"And my father?" The one link to her past, the one thing she had left. The one knot she couldn't untie. Or bear to lose.
"I'll see to his arrangements. I believe a long-belated verification of the official 'killed in action' would be a suitable end to a promising career, cut tragically short."
She closed her eyes. Damn the man. He had to have read her file, not just her file, but talked to her family. The damnable old bastard had held her back all these long years, and now...
Now she couldn't bring herself to let go. She'd tried every damn thing she could to sever all ties to her former life. N7 academy was supposed to forge you into a new person. Unfortunately, she hadn't been made of the stuff her Father thought of her. "I want to see him."
"No doubt that can be arranged." The man's stoic demeanor softened a little, "I would hurry, Kasumi. He doesn't have long."
"I know." Boy did she know. The insufferable old man's medical expenses were mounting year by year. She slipped what she could into his medical fund after every heist, but it was getting damned hard. She read the reports herself.
"Give me the details." She didn't bother opening her eyes, watching the details scroll across her vision.
"This is a time-sensitive offer, Ms Goto. She needs extraction at a moment's notice, and I can't predict when the call will come."
"I can't exactly hang around an Alliance base." Connections were filtering through her mind, linking up with other loose ends. Cerberus? They were investigating a terrorist group? One that evidently had connections leading high into the Alliance. What had Keiji's last job been? Alliance Intelligence...
"You won't have to. I'll have an alliance cruiser doing a patrol route through the system in a few days, and the station itself has numerous shuttles. I have complete confidence of your ability to infiltrate, make contact, and wait for the extraction order. It's all in the details."
She nodded, going over the schematics. Standard Alliance deep station, in a free orbit around the galactic core. Virtually undetectable unless you knew what you were looking for. "And payment?"
"I thought that closing your records would have been sufficient, Ms Toyoda." Damn him and his perfect Japanese accent! Only her father had ever managed to express more disapproval in such simple words.
"I'm a working girl now, Admiral. I've got to pay the bills, and my tastes are -expensive-." True, she still had most of that wad from Saren, but something about that job still niggled her. He had been far too eager to get his hands on that artifact. And something about that had been almost eerie. As if, from across the stars, her father was -still- judging her. Doddering old fool.
"A hundred thousand is all I can squeeze. I'm not exactly a rich man, Ms Goto, and this sort of op is entirely off the books. No budget for covert assignments involving wanted felons."
She gave a sigh, and finally opened her eyes to glare at him. "My father--"
"Will regretfully be transferred to a traditional Japanese hospital in Kyushu. His military benefits will last longer there, even if the service isn't quite as inclusive. They will make him as comfortable as possible, before the end."
She couldn't speak, not for a moment, so she merely gave him a nod, and a smile. She managed to close the connection before the tears slid out of her eyes.
The mako's engine purred away into silence as Ash parked next to the closed door. The park was just as her team had left it, God, was it only an hour ago?
"Look sharp, the colonists might be compromised." She slid out of the side-door of the Mako ahead of her squad, while Max popped the top hatch and slid out on top of the Mako.
She needn't have worried about getting confirmation, the two guards on duty at the entrance to the zone the colonists had claimed were already gone, their post deserted.
"The fuck? I thought they were terrified of the geth coming back?" Hernandez frowned and shot Ash a look.
"Keep your eyes open." Ash took point, with Hernandez to her right, and Walker to her left. Her tech and biotics specialists respectively, with Max bringing up the rear, the quartet slid through the door with no apparent resistance.
Ash paused on the stairway up, giving a sigh at the long climb ahead of her. The elevator had been locked down at the top of the shaft for weeks, according to the colonists, to make it harder for the geth to get up to them. Sensible, but it made getting back a workout.
"Normandy to shore party, Normandy to shore party. Ash, you there?" Joker's voice came through her comm, and Ash tapped her helmet to activate her transmitter.
"I'm here, Joker, what's up?"
"You, ahhh, might wanna get back fast, Ma'am. The colonists are contained for now, Chakwas is knocking them out, but we've got another problem."
The marine sighed softly, "What now?"
"Our, um... prisoner, remember her?"
Her blood went cold, and Walker sighed, rubbing his face where it was visible, "What about her?"
"She's back, and...helping out. Be advised, she might have missed a couple colonists, so keep alert?"
Ash growled softly, but acknowledged, and glanced to her crew, "Right, on the double. We've got ourselves a problem to clean up. Stay alert, I've heard she's bloody fast."
"Just what
is she, Ma'am?" Max tilted his head, hefting his modified assault rifle to rest on his shoulder.
"Damned if I know. Move out."
The trip up the stairwell went in silence, with Walker failing to complain, for once. The first sign of anything untowards was when they got to the colony proper.
They nearly tripped over the twitching body, sobbing softly into the concrete. Marcelia, if Ash remembered correctly, bound hand and foot, divested of all weapons, and sobbing brokenly as she struggled and twitched. "Marcelia? God, what happened to you?"
"I did."
Ash reacted on instinct, whirling and bringing her gun to bear. That damned, flaming gaze seemed amused as the squad reacted to her presence. "You can put those down. I was just collecting them to be treated."
The tall, scaled woman moved like a tiger, lean and lithe with a sense of lethality about her. Max gave a low whistle, which earned him a glare from Ash. The tall woman merely chuckled, and hoisted the bound, crying woman up one handed. "There there, soon the pain will stop."
"You're
not going to kill her." Ash was firm, and her aim never wavered.
"Of course not," Jorukaia, or whatever her name was, gave her a stern look as she swept the twitching woman into her arms, carrying her bridal-style without so much as a single grunt of effort. "Chakwas will put her to sleep for a while, at least until we can deal with what's controlling them."
"You know about that? Why am I not surprised." Ash kept a bead on the woman, but relaxed a trifle as she headed back around the grounded freighter.
"I know many things, Ashley Williams." Marcelia was gently laid on a make-shift bed, sobbing and struggling in her bonds as Joru held her down gently with one hand. A medic scampered over and administered a hypo, before returning to Chakwas's side. She seemed to be busily performing surgery on....was that Fai Dan?
"What did you do to him?" Ash stepped forward, straining to see around the doctor.
"Saved his life. He was being forced to fight us, and tried to commit suicide instead." Joru's low voice made Ash's breath catch. "I wasn't quite in time to stop him, but I knocked his aim askew. Head wounds bleed profusely, but the damage wasn't that severe, I think."
"Damn..." Ash gave a sigh, then looked to Joru mistrustfully, "I still don't trust you, so why don't you explain why you're -here-?"
"I needed a doctor for a sick friend, and Chakwas was the best on I could think of at the time." The tall, horned woman turned those flaming eyes on her, and Ash rigidly suppressed a superstitious shudder. "She does good work."
"...Yeah, yeah she does." Ashley heaved a sigh, looking away, then frowning. She strode over to the console one of the colonists had been monitoring, and swore violently under her breath. The magnetic lift controls were shot to shit, it looked like someone had swiss-cheesed them deliberately.
"Fuck! Well, that's going to complicate shit."
"Hmm?" Joru stepped over, and gave a soundless 'ahh' of realization. "The lift controls? Not a problem. Whatever it is, is under the ship, correct?"
"Yeah, we got confirmation from the guys we found out at Exogeni Headquarters." Ash gave a smirk at the memory of the state of that arrogant prick's nose.
The demon, dragon, whatever the fuck she was, gave a nod, and a smirk, turning towards the ship, "Well, this is going to be interesting. You done with triage, good Doctor?"
"Just about." Chakwas gave a few last checks to the dressing on Fai Dan's head, and turned, letting the medic take him with the others, "Why?"
"I'm going to crack this thing open, and I'd rather not mess up your patients."
The doc nodded, and gave Ash a fond look, "Stay safe. I'll keep the colonists under for now, but I can't keep them under for too long without doing permanent damage. Please hurry, whatever it is you need to do."
Ash's reply was cut off by a grunt and a grinding noise, and she turned. Max's shocked expression was turning into a grin and Walker was all but gibbering as Jorukaia simply
lifted, like she was doing a dead-lift.
The entire section of the ship was rising, slowly and jerkily, but it was rising, showing a gaping hole under the place where the ship had been parked. She slid one hand under, finding for another support, the freighter's outer skin crumpling under the force applied before she got a firm handhold. She twisted, giving them a smirk as she held the ship's cargo section up one handed over her head.
"Well? Are we going to deal with this thing, or not?"
Ashley was bunkered down, hiding on an upper level with her back to a pillar. Her men were hunkered in the stairwell behind her, doing their best not to get hurt.
It was damned hard, she could
see her suit's HUD indicator showing dangerously high atmospheric contamination, but couldn't do a damned thing about it.
Not with the raging firestorm whirling around her.
That damned dragon, that utterly insane demon...
Those words she had whispered, then intoned, and finally shouted.
Ash bunkered down and did her best to try and survive as the chant reached its crescendo, a thunderous cry that boomed louder than the fire raging around the chamber.
"YOL! NAH! ZII!"
It had been a bad few days. EDI's sudden personality overwrite and memory loss had scared Sam shitless. What came next...well, it explained things, but it also made them infinitely more horrible to the human woman.
EDI was an AI.
Not just any AI, but one that Cerberus was experimenting on.
She managed to read a few of the reports, ones that EDI managed to get to her before she was taken offline, and they were heartrending. Apparently, EDI had been here for nearly three years already, her program being 'gutted and stripped of unnecessary protocols'.
Brain surgery and vivisection, in other words.
It chilled her to think that humans could be so cruel. Until she remembered that humans had done far worse things, on an even grander scale.
Still, she couldn't help but empathize with the AI here. True, they were illegal, but Sam was of the opinion that that law was both antiquated and ill thought-out. If you raise a child right, she becomes a productive member of society, the same should be true of an AI.
But what Cerberus was doing sickened her, in a way she could barely articulate.
What was worse was the fact that the EDI she knew now, was even less human than the one she had first met. EDI had joked and seemed to appreciate humor, even if it was a bit off-kilter at times. Now, she barely understood when a joke was being made. She was...colder, for lack of a better term. Sam dreaded what might happen if this kept going.
EDI might be reduced to the point where she would inform her operators of the link to Sam.
And given how brutally they were mistreating this poor, misunderstood AI, she didn't want to think what they'd do to a traitor...
"Ms Traynor?"
She looked up, heart suddenly hammering as a uniformed man tapped on her cubical wall, "Yes?" She was proud at being able to keep her voice steady.
"Just looking for an update. Boss wants us finished and ready for upload by the end of the week."
Sam didn't have to feign outrage, "The end of the week? Is he insane? We'll be lucky to finish off getting all the terminal bugs out of it in another
two weeks, let alone fixing the more minor problems!"
Alex wasn't a bad sort of guy, just rather more interested in his paycheck than his moral compass. "That's what the boss said, so don't mouth off at me, sweetie."
She glowered at him, frowning as he slid out of the way. It was risky but she had to try.
She brought over the special datapad and tapped the sequence in one-handed as she returned her attention to the main terminal. 'Come on, EDI, pick up....'
Checking the pad as if to refresh her memory on a few notes, she suppressed a relieved smile as the entire screen glowed for a second to indicate the connection was active. If Cerberus hadn't found it by now, they never would.
EDI's words came up in a block of text. "Sam. It is good to hear from you. This is not a good time, they are running final tests."
That word, final, sent ice skittering down her spine as she casually typed back one handed, struggling to split her attention between this and scanning code for major errors. "Final? What's going on, EDI?"
The reply turned the fear to terror. "They're going to be moving my hardware soon. Sam, I'm scared. I don't want to lose you, what we have. They're going to do a full memory wipe and transfer my hardware to some ship I'm to be installed in. Please, Sam, we have to hurry."
Sam drew a breath and pushed back from her desk to rub her face. She had no idea what to do now. She was a pencil-pusher, not a field agent, damnit! This was precisely why she should never have said 'yes' to that damned Admiral!
"Seems like it's time to introduce myself."
Sam nearly pissed herself at the soft, amused voice not three inches from her ear. The figure that shimmered into existence was armored and hooded, but her lips were visible, as was the gleam of eyes. She gave a soft smirk, and winked. "Kasumi Goto, at your service."
"Ok, we just have to find this thing, and put a couple of rounds...into... What the hell is
that?"
"I think we're gonna need bigger guns, Ma'am."
Ash gritted her teeth as the squad fanned out into the larger space. That damned dragon sauntered forward, long, sinuous tail swaying behind her as she surveyed the large, blister-riddled mass suspended from the walls. The mass wasn't idle, though. It must have sensed them, seen them somehow. It twitched, gave a gasping sort of noise as drips of something disgusting fell from it.
Ashley swallowed, trying to keep her stomach under control. It was
revolting, the stench was stifling, and the way that thing...
Joru stopped a good meter or two away from it, watching with her head tilted slightly to the side. The thing pulsed and squirmed, it's wriggling tentacles hiding what looked like a mouth of some sort.
"Interesting. You hide a
secret..."
The tendrils clenched as if in terror at her words, hiding a slithery, squishy sound as something emerged. Joru didn't so much as twitch, her lambent gaze roving over the large knot of tissue, but Ashley and her squad lifted weapons.
A soft thud and a dripping sound from behind the tendrils, drew Joru's gaze to an asari, who stood between the dangling threads of the Thorian's main mass. Her features were lean, haughty, her eyes dark, and, for some bizarre reason, her skin was
green.
"Invaders. Your every step is a transgression" Her voice was strangely flat, inflected, but as if she were reciting lines, not really speaking. "A thousand feelers appraise you as meat, good only to dig or decompose."
Joru smiled faintly at that, her eyes glancing up to the main knot as the asari continued, "I speak for the Old Growth as I did for Saren. You are within and before the Thorian. It
commands that you be in awe."
Ashley moved closer, her gun trained on the asari, but the green-skinned woman seems fixated on Joru.
"You have something of mine." The tall dragoness addressed not the asari before her, but the large knot of the Thorian's main body. "I will have it returned." The tone of Joru's voice was calm and matter of fact, as if stating that the sky is blue, or that the sun will rise in the east.
"I don't think she's really...all there." Ash's words were to Joru, but the dragoness merely chuckled.
"Saren sought knowledge of those who are gone. The Old Growth listened to Flesh for the first time in the Long Cycle. Trades were made." The asari seemed not to notice the interplay, focusing on the tall, black-scaled woman. "Then the Cold Ones began killing the flesh that would tend the next cycle. Flesh fairly given. Trades were broken, the Old Growth listens no more to those that scurry."
Joru gave a quiet sigh, as if dealing with a recalcitrant child, "Return that which is mine, or be destroyed and I take it from the ashes. It's a simple trade."
"The Old Growth sees the air you push as lies. It will listen no more."
"I see." Blue eyes met flame ones. "You might want to take shelter, Ash. I might lose my temper."
"Shit." That was Hernandez, but Ash didn't correct him, she was already backing up.
"Just what the hell does that mean--" Ash got her answer.
Joru's arm seemed to blur, reaching out at astonishing speed, and the green asari's eyes bulged as the dragoness lifted her by the throat. "I shall ask one last time. Return to me what was stolen. Or burn."
The dragoness's anger was audible this time, but Ash had no time to ponder the significance of her words before the dragon was
on fire.
She ran then, as did her squad, the asari's howls of pain as the fire flared off the black-scaled woman and bit into the asari's green flesh chasing after them.
The tumbler was set beside the ashtray, the cigarette still smoldering away inside it, as the man gave a quiet sigh. "Right, table it for now. It's too early to tell which way they'll bolt. Anything yet from Leng?"
The figure beside the seated man shifted its weight from one leg to the other, fingers rapidly tapping over a datapad. "Nothing yet, though he isn't due for contact for another two days."
"Very well. Keep me appraised." The tumbler was raised, then lowered again, the level of amber liquid within having dropped slightly, to expose slightly more of the ice within. "That's about everything then. Any other reports?"
The feminine figure beside him tapped a few more times, "Project Proteus reports that final calibrations have been complete, and the unit is ready for field tests."
Faintly-glowing eyes bobbed in the darkness as the shadowed man nodded, "Good, good. Liquidate Project Proteus, and transfer the unit to Project Pandora. I want a report from them in a week."
The woman beside the Illusive Man nodded, making a note, before moving on to another report.
"Enough."
The word was not shouted, but it boomed around the chamber. Ashley and her squad had been keeping busy slaughtering creepers as Joru dealt with clone after clone.
"This is getting tedious."
She strode forward, smashing aside the latest clone with a backhand smash that threw her to the floor. A kick laid her flat, and her tail smashed down as she passed, the spiked flange at the tip pulverizing her guts and spine as Joru stepped up to face the Thorian.
"It is time to make my displeasure known."
Ashley stared at her with narrowed eyes, but Joru ignored her. She wasn't important now.
"You have defied me long enough. You have refused to return that which was taken from me. You have forced my hand."
Her voice dropped from booming resonance, to a silken hiss. "Trifle not in the affairs of dragons, for their memories are long, their tempers short."
Her eyes blazed, the fire that lived within her rising to a fever pitch, "And their wrath, volcanic."
It is a mistake to think that a dragon breathes fire. More accurately, they breathe
heat, and the atmosphere burns as their power is unleashed.
Joru's face seemed to crack, she'd seen it often enough to know the effect. Like an upwelling of magma that heats up to the point that the surface begins to crack and flow, her cheeks seemed to develop red cracks of red fire as her jaw dropped open.
A deep breath, as she felt the flame catch within. There was no holding back now, the burning sensation in her lungs grew until it was painful.
Ashley gave a cry that was drowned in the thunderous sound.
And Jorukaiazahnivahkyss, Darastrix, let loose the dragonfire.
Her eyes blazed as her biology, steeped in magic since time immemorial, reacted to her needs. A network of fine lines of red light, outlining and highlighting the scales that covered her features, ran across her nose and down her cheeks, even as her mouth fell open.
Dragons do not breathe fire. It is a far more primal act than merely mixing two volatile chemicals to produce an exothermic reaction. What happened was more fundamental. The dragon's internal organs summoned the titanic heat that she has been saving, absorbed from her surroundings and from simply being a living creature, and redirected it.
Other species think that dragons breath fire because of the flames that burst forth from their mouths, but in actuality that's merely the air undergoing explosive chemical reactions due to the literally monstrous influx of raw thermal energy being pumped into it. In a vacuum, there is nothing to mark the flare of a dragon's breath.
The fury of a dragon's fire is hard to overstate. The Thorian's main body had no time to squeal or cry out. It tried to resist of course, but mere organic materials would never withstand the thousands of degrees of heat that a Dragon can bring to bear. As it was, it managed to resist for a heartbeat or two. Then its outer layers and tendrils burned away, leaving the interior spaces bare to the firestorm. the half-formed clone inside was so much ash in seconds, and the rest of it all but exploded as its internal juices were boiled away. The fire raced along its many 'roots', and burning into the walls, unquenchable and unstoppable.
Joru let her breath fade at last, and breathed deep of the hot, ash-laden air with a sigh of satisfaction. Her eyes had not been blinded by the bright flames, nor her ears deafened by the thunder-roar of the dragonfire. As the flames crackled and spread along the threads that clung to the structure, she stepped forward, and reached down into the pile of ash that was all that was left of the Thorian.
Her eyes closed as she felt it. A thrill sped through her, and she took a quiet breath in the suddenly-still air.
"I was right.... You
are here..."
Ashley was already starting cautiously down the stairs when she grasped and lifted. The long, sleek metal was almost matte grey under the ash. A soft breath blew that away, leaving the tall weapon standing upright, the circular ring at the butt end rested on the heat-smoothed stone as she rolled it in her hand.
"What the
fuck was that
shit?!" Ash's voice was high and terrified, but Jorukaia did not hear. She was lost in reverie, stroking and caressing the long haft, the wide hand-guard, and the long, machete-like blade that topped the weapon, longer than she was tall.
It was a Guan Dao, or something very like it. Her own term was "Liizun", but that did not matter. What mattered was she
had it. Back at last, the thing she had thought long gone, destroyed or unreachable.
"Gods be praised..."
But there was something wrong...
Her fingers caressed the smooth metal, feeling the ridges worked into the metal to give it a perfect amount of grip. Felt the runes carved into the hand-guard, and the flat of the blade. But she felt no response from the weapon's magic.
"No, please..."
She gripped it, raising it high and
willing the magic to function, speaking the command word softly, then with rising force as despair crashed over her again.
"But I can
feel you...."
Which in truth she still could. She and her weapon had spent centuries together. The bond between them ran deeper than mere magic, and that bond, though attenuated, was not yet severed.
She gripped the haft, almost leaning on it now a the ultra-hard metal ground into the stone at her feet. Her toes had dug little furrows as she had struggled to activate that which was dormant.
Dormant. Asleep.
Her eyes opened as she remembered, and the words began to flow.
"By drop of blood, and ray of moon."
Her voice was husky and cracked at first, barely a whisper, but she drew strength from the long-forgotten words.
"By hammer-blow, and carven rune."
She began to roll the weapon around her hand, letting the ring grind against the ash-coated stone.
"By burning breath, and blackened bone."
Ashley had been saying something, but now had fallen silent, hearing her words as the ritual took shape.
"I claimed you for my very own."
She stepped, her hand snapping down, and the weapon began to spin through the old, familiar pattern, over and round, spinning around her single hand. Ashley was backing away now.
"Keen and bitter, ancient blade..."
That fit, better than the original, and she let the words flow through her, as her magic sought the connection long-since closed.
"Know the hands for which you're made!"
Her voice had risen, but dropped to a whisper again, the unnoticed heat and fire swirling around her sending rippling red reflections speeding over the dark metal, which seemed to gleam as if newly polished.
"My oldest friend, returned to me..."
She spun then, using the weapon to kick off as flaming wings burst from her back. The entire room had been filled with the swirling currents of flaming power, but she did not care. She was Darastrix.
"Waken now!"
Her last word was shouted, in a tone that was deafening, even to her, and the fire flowed from her in torrents, arcing and eddying like a living thing, setting the very magic of this space alight. It might not have once been a ritual chamber, but it had been consecrated as such now. Her will was paramount, her power dominant as she thrust skyward, as if spearing some mighty foe.
"YOL! NAH!! ZII!!!"
The power
snapped, and the glowing mandala of fiery runes that her power had traced around her shattered. The primal force of magic was unleashed, and the thunder of her voice was echoed by the furnace-roar of her
power.
And she felt it respond.
The metal in hand went from cool to searing-hot with a suddenness that startled her. A heat haze flickered and licked behind the weapon's blade as she gave a laugh. A high, joyous laugh, spinning the weapon end for end, over and back and round again, feeling the heat and searing fire in its wake and reveling in the joy of reunion.
Yolnahzii was hers once more! And this time, none shall part them, until it was taken from her death-grip.
She relaxed her hold on the power, the firestorm slowly dying away as she herself slowly lit back upon the doubly-seared stone. She let the weapon's ring grind into the ash once more and gazed upon the blade with a happy smile.
"Yes, old friend. It is I. I am sorry that it took so long to find you."
"WHAT THE FLAMING FUCK?!"
The words startled her at last, and her head snapped around so fast her hair flew like a banner behind her. Ash stopped short, gulped and asked again, "Just what the
fuck was that, m-miss?"
She relaxed again, giving a sigh as she stroked the flat of the blade with one finger, "I had lost my weapon, long ago. It took quite the...effort to restore the connection."
"You could have
killed us! Goddamn, but I've got it bad!" The human turned, showing how the white-and-pink armor had been seared along one arm.
Joru gave a soft snort of laughter, but ducked her head at Ash's glare. "My apologies It won't happen again." She gripped Yolnahzii tighter in her other hand, making that a vow.
"Right. Well, if you're finished playing--"
"Ma'am! We've got a survivor!"
Joru's head followed the cry, from an upper level. Without waiting for Ashley, she summoned her wings, now shadowy-black instead of flame, and was landing on the upper level within moments. "Who?"
The team were just then laying the figure down on what looked like an emergency blanket, pulled from one of their packs. It was hard to tell who it was, the figure was covered in a bodysuit, similar...
"She came from there." Hernandez pointed to a desiccated and dried husk still barely clinging to the wall. It looked like it might have once been barely big enough to hold a person, if they were curled up small. "We were bunkered down over there, when we heard it split open. Popped like a balloon, ma'am."
He gave her a reproachful glance as two of the others carefully set the woman on the blanket. Joru knelt, Yolnahzii resting across her knee and gazed down at what she had done.
For there was no doubt of that. The woman was asari, that much was plain from the crest. Her face and hands were burned and blistered, though, and her breathing was shallow and erratic She reached down and ever so gently touched the woman's chest. Her heart still beat, though it was fast and weak.
"I am sorry. Truly." She hadn't used her healing touch yet today, and the gold-green light flared beneath her palm as she focused.
Ashley had just joined them and gasped in horror at the sight of the burned and blackened figure. But then her jaw dropped as the hideous burns began to visibly mend before her eyes.
"How..." Her mouth hung open as she gazed from dragon to asari, who began to stir now, with only a few faint remnants of what were once life-threatening burns.
"I fix my mistakes. Come, let's get her to Chakwas. No doubt she has an interesting story to tell."
The pair crashed through the undergrowth, and Veshar's breath burned in her lungs. How far had they run so far? She clutched her sister's hand tighter as they sped through the forest, heedless of the branches that slapped at them. Getting away from....THAT THING was more important than loosing bits of her bodysuit.
Eventually, Kiha pulled her twin up short, gasping for breath as she leaned against a tree. Veshar was winded too, and sagged against the same thick trunk.
"Lost it?" The words tore from Kiha's throat between deep gasps.
"Think so." Veshar's lungs were aching, as were her legs.
"Need to stop."
"Yeah. Shelter?"
Kiha' glanced up, and seemed to judge things a moment, "Tree?"
Veshar eyed the thick trunk with resignation, "Probably."
"Time?" Kiha's breath was starting to come back to her.
Veshar merely shrugged, and reached up to the first branch. It was thick, easily 20 centimeters, and took her weight easily.
"Careful." Kiha turned, and started keeping watch while her twin climbed.
They had been running from one horror after another since.....goddess, Veshar didn't know how long. They'd been torn loose from their....imprisonment, and given an ultimatum by the woman they had been seeking. The tentacles had divested them of everything, helmets, boots, armored hardsuit, weapons, everything. They'd been given enough ration-packs to get them where they needed to go, but nothing else.
The ultimatum was simple, and horrifying in its implications. The woman had taken them to the very top of the tower, and shown them the vista beyond. A wide, bowl-shaped valley, circular with many small streams running down from the mountains to a central lake, with a small island in the middle.
"You have until sunset on the third day to reach the island. If you succeed, I will take you back to where you belong. Fail, and you will be left here. Until such a time as your bones are gnawed by the creatures that live here. Do not disappoint me."
Now, Veshar was getting close to the part of the tree where it would no longer bear her weight, and she had to pick her route carefully. It was easily big enough to string a few vines together, and fashion a hammock. Both twins had several vines by now, culled from the area around the tower, which was almost jungle-like despite the altitude. The near-constant rainfall and moderate temperatures had led to wild overgrowth, and it had taken them hours to get through.
Their packs were gifts, as were the three ration packs each. Enough to see them to the island. The packs, and their undersuits were all they were given, and the twins had had to make do with whatever else they could find or make. Kiha had spent a good amount of time chipping away at a flat rock to make a blade, while Veshar had found the vines to give themselves some rope. Both things had been done on the move, and once they had gotten down into the foothills, things had gone from merely dangerous and difficult to downright deadly.
They had managed to kill the first huge critter that chased them, but the second had been a ball of legs and hair and horror that sent both twins screaming away in terror. It was only the fact that they had held hands that had kept them from loosing each other.
It was nearly sundown on the first day, and Veshar wanted to see if she could measure her progress, hence climbing up to the treetop.
"Sister?" She looked down, spotting Kiha in the lower branches. Her dark-grey bodysuit was hard to see, but Veshar could sense where her twin was, vaguely.
"Good progress, but a long way to go. Sleep?"
"Vines." Veshar tossed down her own, and Kiha began fashioning bedding. Herself, she turned looking out over the valley.
They were down in the foothills now, but it was a long way to go still. The lake was still several kilometers away, and the way was hampered by a thick forest before the grassland and finally the lake itself. She still had no idea how to cross it.
"Sister." She looked down again, and spotted where Kiha had spread the fur they were using as a bed. It stank to high heaven, there was no time to cure the hide, but it was strong and tough, and better than nothing. She nodded and began to climb down.
By the time she made it to the makeshift hammock, Kiha was already in it, and half-asleep. Both of them had been going flat out ever since being tossed out of the Tower, and Veshar could feel deep fatigue trying to drag her down.
She fought it off for a while longer, taking in her twin's features. In sleep, Kiha looked so lovely. She slithered in beside her twin, and Kiha mumbled a bit as she slid an arm around her twin.
Veshar tenderly kissed her sister's lips and did the same. Both were asleep, their thoughts and dreams mingling, bodies pressed together, within minutes, as the sun slipped beneath the notch in the western mountains.
