And it clawed
Back in the world again
Here for a new revenge
An enemy I can't condemn
Oh my God
Is this where the liar ends?
Dark where the light had been
Lost at the war within
.
.
.
The day before he was to enter the Pale Heart was spent as any other: with him roaming restlessly between worlds before finally settling at Misraaks’s house. There were final goodbyes to be made, patrols to stalk, people to check in with- but he found himself tingling with aimless anxiety after the fourth demand for him to return safe and triumphant. He didn’t- couldn’t- promise them a victory, and it ached in his teeth and itched under his skin like a parasite he couldn’t burn out.
So he sought the one thing that he knew he could depend on: the familiarity of the Botza district, and the quiet understanding of a people who knew that survival was often simply the luck of the draw.
Marcie was already there when he came in, as was Ikora: she was hunched over a mug of tea, eyes red like she’d been crying. Ikora looked up at him as he closed the window behind him, nodding like she’d been expecting him, her face just as tired as Misraaks’s was as he stared down at his own claws. His splicer gauntlet was spread out in pieces on the table- it looked like he had taken it off before tea, but the marks on his arm between the carapace plates was still flushed an angry dark blue.
“Guardian. I was just saying my farewells to Misraaks. I will not impede you if you wish to do the same.” She stood, an elegant motion that masked her exhaustion, and touched her fingertips lightly to Misraaks’s shoulder before she strode towards him. Aeris followed the motion, and frowned; that was a placating gesture among the Eliksni, and seeing it done to the Lightkell sent a forboding tingle down his spine. But he didn’t have time to think about it, as Ikora came before him to tip her head in respect. “I will meet you when it’s time.”
He inclined his head in return, not saying anything. He couldn’t- the words were stuck in his throat, used up after an exhausting morning of speaking to others. Not that Ikora seemed to expect such a thing from him anyways, as all she did was smile tiredly back before she left, the sound of the morning birdsong filtering in through the doorway for a brief moment as she exited.
Aeris looked back at Marcie and Misraaks, and forced his tongue to unstick from his throat. “Where’s Eido?”
“She studies ancient databanks in her room, looking for last minute hints to weaknesses in the Witness. I have not been able to persuade her otherwise.” Misraaks rubbed at his inner eyes with his non-splicer hand, looking as if he had not slept all night. And perhaps he hadn’t. It would not surprise Aeris if that was the case. “It is kind of you to come to bid farewell.”
“No. I wish to teach her survival skills.” The words fell out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. He stopped for a second, vaguely surprised by what just came out of his mouth, but it was something that he had been meaning to propose for a long while, so he continued on without backpedaling. “I want her to know how to fight as a guardian would. How to kill a Lightbearer…should she ever need it.”
Marcelline looked up, frowning. She’d definitely been crying, and the sight of his sister’s face twisted in pain sent a pang of grief through him in turn. It dredged up a part of him that he hated to encounter, a bone-deep grief that felt like a sickness he hadn’t been able to shake before he’d been risen. “You want to teach her Crucible tricks? Aeris, that isn’t going to help. She’d need to be a Lightbearer for those to work- and you’d need to be proficient in the Crucible in order for them to work.”
Her jest, weak as it was, did lift some of the leaden weight from his heart. He felt his lips twitch in the ghost of a smile, more out of reflex than actual amusem*nt, then shook his head. “No. I want her to be able to defend herself well enough to escape if necessary. Not that I think Misraakskel hasn’t taught her-” a quick glance at Misraaks revealed him watching him over his clasped hands, expression neutral “-but because I want her to be able to train on a real Lightbearer. I don’t want her- I would feel better if she learned with me than in theory alone.”
The implications were enough. He did not think that he had to press further for Misraaks to see the same thing in his mind’s eye that he did- a Hive Knight awash with the purple glow of the Void, bearing down on her with a sword licking with hungry flame. Eramis, wild-eyed and snarling, her arms and swords a bloody whirlwind as she drove it away from Eido with all the skills she’d cultivated from fighting Guardians, Eido herself quailing in the background as she watched in horrified disbelief. Himself, frozen in place with an explosive-headed arrow knocked and at the ready, his body screaming at him to act while his mind fought to remind himself of just what would happen if two Lightbearers clashed so close to mortal beings.
He didn’t want her to come face-to-face with a Hive Lightbearer ever again. He held no illusions about Eido actually being able to kill one, but…Eramis’s whereabouts were unknown, and he and Misraaks couldn’t watch over her forever. In the unlikely event that one crossed paths with her in the future, he at least wanted to give her a chance at survival.
Misraaks rumbled. He took a sip of his tea, then placed the mug back onto the table, mandibles sliding over each other to catch the lingering droplets. His eyes met Aeris’s own, electrically alien and yet so familiar in their exhaustion. “...I see. No darkness.”
His tone made it clear that he would not tolerate any disagreement. Aeris nodded, and cast the thought of using Stasis crystals to mimic ghosts aside. He then glanced to his sister, and then back to Misraaks, only just now realizing that a check-in would have been prudent. “...Is everything alright?”
Marcie opened her mouth to say something, but Misraaks laid a hand over her wrist, silencing her. His voice, when he spoke, was stronger than it had before- he was using his kell-speaker tone. Aeris was painfully aware that his social skills were lacking, but that was never a good sign. “We were discussing the continuation of her Splicer training. It cannot be continued until we stop the Witness, but in the case that anything happens, contingency plans are a must. She is a skilled Splicer. It would not do to have her training end in the event of my demise.”
Marcelline’s lips formed a thin line, clearly disapproving of something that Misraaks said. Aeris raised an eyebrow at her, and she shook her head, mouthing ‘I’ll tell you later’ at him. Misraaks shot her a suspicious look, but he wasn’t proficient enough yet in subtle human mannerisms to understand it- a confusion that Aeris empathized with. “I will be resting to prepare for the incursion into the Pale Heart. Train my daughter well, Guardian.”
Aeris bowed. Misraaks inclined his head, then pushed back from his seat, heading upstairs to his bedroom. Aeris waited until he heard the door click before heading over to his half-sister, lightly touching her shoulder in the same way that Ikora had done to Misraaks. “Is now ‘later?’”
Marcelline laughed, despite herself, and Aeris felt a little bit of the tension strung through him ease. “No, not quite. It’s….it’s a lot.”
She exhaled, then closed her eyes, tipping her head back. With her eyes bruised from her tears and her skin pale from fitful sleep, she looked even more like him than she usually did. Aeris placed his palm against her cheek, and marveled at the similarities between them- two half-siblings, risen together by twin Ghosts. Two people thrown together into chaos from the moment they uncurled themselves from the rigor of death and shook off the dirt and rust of Old Russia. The chances of their creation were so small that they might have been infinitesimal, and yet here they were- together at the very end. He loved her more than he loved the stars, and knew in his heart of hearts that the man before him had felt the same. His little sister. His sunlight. “I’ll be okay. I’m just tired. When- if- we have time, I’ll be sure to tell you everything, if Misraaks doesn’t first. It’s his secret to tell more than mine, after all.”
That didn’t make Aeris feel any better about the situation. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
Marcie huffed out a mirthless laugh, then plucked his hand off her cheek to press a kiss to the back of his palm. Her fingers were warm and calloused compared to his, which were long-boned, ghost-pale, and as cold as the dead. “I’m as okay as I’ll ever be at the end of the world. Go teach Eido how to hunt. You’ll help me out by easing my mind about her safety, and by making sure she’s okay while I make my rounds. She’ll forget to say goodbye if you don’t go to her now, and that’s not something I want weighing on her.”
Aeris nodded at that- Marcelline was much more social than he was, and arguably much more well-loved. It would take her a long time to say her last farewells- time that he did not want to waste fussing over her. She could handle herself. He could console her later, when both of them faced the edge of eternity together. “I will. See you later.”
That sorted, he pulled his hand from hers, and began to head up the stairs. Marcie called one last warning after him- ‘don’t scare her, Aeris!’ (whatever that meant)- and then he was nudging a dismantled shank aside with a foot and rapping on Eido’s door with the back of his knuckles, his other hand idly tracing circles over the butt of his new Midnight Coup. He hadn’t been meaning to teach her how to use a hand cannon- they were poorly suited for Eliksni fingers- but the Coup handled smoothly enough that he didn’t think its kick would cause her any pain if the trigger guard impacted her knuckles. But then again, if Misraaks was trying to sleep…then maybe not.
He heard her chirp in surprise, and the squeak-shuffle of her chair as she scrambled to answer the door. He waited patiently as something on her desk fell to the floor, startling a much more organic squeak from her in turn, and then, with another click and the creak of well-worn hinges, Eido was blinking back at him from the doorway.
“Aeris!” Her face brightened, nictitating membranes half-flickering over her eyes in an Eliksni smile as she chittered with delight. Compared to her father, she was far more well-rested, though the quick, slightly jerky way that she was moving was hardly any better than Misraaks’s quiet tiredness. ‘Oh, I’m so glad that you came by. I thought I might have missed you- have you come to say goodbye?”
She spoke in the human tongue, but he could hear the faint sorrowful buzz that underlaid her words, a subvocalization just barely at the edge of his range of hearing. Aeris tipped his head up at her and smiled in turn, the gesture coming easier than it would if he were doing it to another human, then tapped a fingertip to a sheathed shock dagger on his hip as he replied in Eliksni, stretching his mouth around the foreign vowels as best as he could. “No. I’ve come to teach you a few lessons on how to fight like a hunter before I have to go. I want you to be ready to face a battle on the field if it comes down to it- even if it means killing a lightbearer.”
Eido let out another surprised chirp, blinking rapidly, then moved out of the doorway. “Oh! I did not expect that. Does my father-”
“Misraakskel knows.” He slipped past her, looking around the room. As expected, there were no hazards in sight, though the stack of dismembered shank parts precariously stacked on a box full of old datapads seemed to threaten to become a hazard if pushed any further. It looked like Eido had taken to tinkering with engineering again, though from the way her tools were strewn about, it seemed to be a project that she had been working on during bouts of datamining. ‘Organized chaos’ was a subjective phrase, he supposed. “He’s given me the go-ahead. This may take the rest of the day, however. It depends on how much you want to learn.”
“I don’t mind. I wanted to see if I could find anything else I could give the Vanguard before you all entered the Pale Heart, but- nothing.” A frustrated huff. Out of the corner of his eye, Aeris saw the loose fabric of her household robes puff out as all her spiracles vented the air from her lungs, a forceful movement that betrayed her frustration where her subvocalizations fell on deaf ears. “We just don’t have enough data, or enough time for me to decrypt what’s left. If there was anything about how it merged, then maybe I could have given you some information on how to take it all apart, but-”
“It’s alright, Eido,” he said softly. He pulled a plush blanket from the stack of clean, folded items near her nest, then spread it out on the floor and patted a hand next to himself to get her to sit. She locked the door, then came over with another huff, her mandibles shivering over her front teeth in the Eliksni equivalent of chewing one’s lip. She almost reminded him of a jumping spider in that moment, if a jumping spider was an awkward teenage girl with only six limbs to use, and a face more reminiscent of a python than any spider that he could think of. Perhaps the comparison wasn’t perfectly analogous after all. “You’ve done enough. We can only work with what we have now, and the chances of you finding something so critical to its creation is terribly small to begin with. We will endure.”
She averted her eyes from his. Her laugh, when it came, sounded forced. “Yes. I should place more faith in you. You will fix this, like you always have, and you will come back safe, as you always will.”
A twist in his gut, sudden and painful. He would take a knife wound over whatever it was he was feeling right now- a horrible emotion somewhere between fear and guilt and misery. He did not want to disappoint her. He did not have the choice to do anything else. “I will try.”
She looked at him then, but he did not look at her, not wanting to see in her face if his voice betrayed him. He did not want to let her know what it was that he truly thought- that if he were to succeed, it would be at the cost of himself. Not because he wanted it. But because now more than ever, it felt like he was racing towards the end, and that all the luck in the world wouldn’t save him from what was to come.
“To be a hunter is to be fast and fleet. Osiris told me a line from a pre-Golden Age storybook that always stuck with me, though I can’t remember it in its entirety. It went something like this: ‘all the world is your enemy, prince with a thousand enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you. Be cunning and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed’. It’s the core principle of what it feels like to be a hunter, and understanding how your enemy works is how you win a battle where all the odds are stacked against you. So if you want to kill a Lightbearer, then first you must know how to act like one. So I will show you.”
He took her to the backyard, then taught her what he could, channeling Osiris when he needed it and cutting out whatever she either already knew, or that sounded stupid and pointless once the words made it from the assembly line inside his head out into the real world. He taught her how to set snare traps and tripwires, how to make a knife out of flint and scrapmetal and everything in between. He taught her how to throw a knife- a skill that she struggled at- and then how to use it. He had her practice on him, with Ghost standing by to rez and whisper encouragements, and even though she warbled with distress the first time she put a blade through his heart, he saw that burning hunger for blood set in soon after her fourth kill, that predatory Eliksni battle-mania shadowing her curiosity and focus. She learned well, and learned quickly- it was not long before she had perfected the art of wounding him, where to stab and where to cripple. It was a messy affair, as well as an expensive one- the costs to repairing his armour was going to set him back a few thousand glimmer- but it was worth it.
After showing her how to kill a man, he taught her how to kill a guardian. He tamped his Light down as far as he could manage, quenched the Darkness lurking in his heart, and then sparred with her as gently as he could, teaching her all the tricks he could think of from both field work and the scant Iron Banner matches that Marcie dragged him to. She could not keep up with him- he did not expect that she could- but Eido was a scholar by trade and a predator by nature, and even with his augmented strength, she was able to adapt quick enough. She soon caught on when it was the right time to dodge or strafe, how quickly a grenade charged when it was full of Arc energy instead of Stasis crystals, what it meant when a hunter bounded out of cover or slipped out of sight. She learned how to cripple him, how to corner and wound him- but most importantly, she learned how to run. And he had her run often, forcing her to flee him in that tight little room on twos and fours and sixes with all manner of weaponry he pulled from his pocket, until she was panting with exhaustion and he was confident that she could outpace him- or, at the very least, slip away for cover before an enemy Lightbearer set its sights on her.
And at the end of it all- just after the drone of the cicadas had died down and Misraaks had stuck his muzzle outside to rumble tiredly at them to be done- he taught her how to kill a ghost. How to catch them, how to hold them in place so that they couldn't break free, how much pressure their core could take before it burst apart into Light. It shook her deeply- but it was necessary.
After it was done, and Eido had gone to rest in her nest (thoroughly exhausted by all the work he'd put her through), Aeris leapt onto a windowsill and shimmied his way onto the roof, where he lay down to watch the night sky. It was a warm, balmy night, the air sweet from the morning rains; he breathed in deep, savoring the silence, and let his thoughts drift as he lazily tried picking out the planets from the faint haze of the Milky Way, relying on gut instinct rather than memory. Ghost flashed out of his spot in the backpack to come to rest on Aeris's chest, and he stroked the back of two knuckles over the curve of his shell before putting his arms back behind his head, comfortably tired and content for the first time in a long, long while.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aeris saw the stars shift.
He was up and on the back of the marauder before they could take more than a single step forward, throwing all of his weight and momentum into the tackle. They were bigger than he was, but they clearly weren't expecting him to notice their approach, and so could not right their balance in time to save themselves; Aeris felt the electric crackle of their cloaking shield dissociating as he wrapped his arms around their neck, heard their panicked chatter near his throat, and then the both of them were tumbling off the roof into the void of empty space, falling three stories to the ground below.
There was hardly any time to react- but Aeris was a hunter, and had the reflexes to match. With a twist of his body, he flipped the foreign Eliksni under him, and just barely managed to leap again in time to halt the brunt of their fall. He still heard a painful crack as they impacted the ground, but the capacity to recognize if it was carapace breaking or his own bones was beyond him; his pulse was a dull roar in his ears, his thoughts narrowed down to the pinpoint focus of eliminating the threat. His neural link with Ghost hummed with urgency- this too he ignored, throwing all of his focus into grappling with the Eliksni underneath him.
He'd landed them with the marauder back-first against the pavement, his body straddling their chest, but even with the disadvantage, they were still fighting to get him off of them. He elbowed them in the throat, knocking the wind right back out of them, and they reeled back in shock, gasping for breath; he wasted no time in drawing upon the darkness between them to bind their limbs together, eerie green light illuminating the shadow as incorporeal filaments wove themselves around each other under his fingers. The Eliksni hissed and spat with fear, writhing under him with inhuman strength- but Aeris wasn't human, and it was laughably easy to jerk them up and spin them around, his hands jerking both sets of arms to their back as a well-placed kick sent them to their knees.
They bucked against his hold, spitting profanities in City Common with hissing syllables that made whatever words they were saying nearly impossible to distinguish from one another. He cut them off with another blow to their back, then planted a foot between their shoulderblades and used that as leverage to push them down, pulling on their bound arms as he leaned over them, pulling until their cursing cut off with a soft squeak of pain. Then he knelt down further, putting his mouth right near where their auditory tympanum would be, and began to speak.
"I would stop wriggling if I were you," he said mildly, in the clearest Eliksni he could manage- they flinched with shock, and he increased his grip strength by just a fraction, feeling their carapace groan beneath his hands. His heartbeat was still a racing roar in his ears, but it was starting to fade into something more cold and calculating, and he let that part of him take over the half still reeling with shock at the sudden change. "I could tear all four of your arms off with barely any effort if you decide to move again. Think of how humiliating it would be to be double-docked...and by a guardian, no less."
They chittered with fear, and went stock-still; he waited a moment, letting them sit with the pain, then relaxed his grip enough for them to ease back up into a kneeling posture as he bound their legs with another twist of Strand. His quarry now restrained, he walked casually around to crouch down before them, leaning in and looking them dead in the eyes as he did so. The gesture was uncomfortable- but the way they flinched again and dropped their gaze was enough to tell him that they were too scared of him to try fighting back, and that alone was enough to satisfy him. "Now. Tell me your name, your house, and why you were on Misraakskell's rooftop in a cloaking device. If you fail to give me any of these designations, I will dock you anyways, and send you off to find your way back to your kell without any weapons- or the means to use them."
That was sufficient, apparently. They shivered, wide-eyed and terrified, and spoke with a distinct squeak in their voice once they had caught enough air to get it started up again. "I am Kiksis, of what remains of House Salvation. Eramiskel sent me forth with a message to deliver to Scribe Eido. She ordered me to stay out of sight- no harm was to be given, to either the scribe or the Lightkell."
Aeris sat back on his heels, studying Kiksis. What they had said seemed to be true- they did not possess any weapons on them other than a pair of shock daggers and their cloaking device, and they were dressed in light leather armour, made for stealth rather than combat. They didn't wear the furs that House Salvation typically did, but on a warm, humid night like this one, he wasn't surprised. "You offered no iirilis. Can I trust you to speak the truth?"
A misstep. Kiksis's eyes narrowed in offense, though they were clearly still terrified. "You did not allow me to make ireliis, Lightbearer. And Eramiskel has not tainted your honour in the past. You would offend her by doubting otherwise?"
...That was true. Aeris thought of Ana's little 'stunt' on the Seraph Station, and his stomach twisted uncomfortably. He climbed off of Kiksis entirely and bowed, crossing his arms over his chest in the closest configuration he could make to a ritualized apologetic gesture. Ghost flashed out of the backpack to hover over his shoulder as an added bonus to his vulnerability, spinning suspiciously. Kiksis scrambled to their feet, watching him warily, then reluctantly bowed in return- an acceptance of his apology, though it was still not a proper ireliis. "Very well. You may send the message to my ghost. We will transmit it to Scribe Eido as soon as she awakens.”
The insult in Kiksis’s tone grew deeper, their mandibles snapping with every word they spoke. “The message is for the Scribe alone. You would insult my kell by intercepting it?”
“No. We will not read it. He will merely ensure that it gets to her without outside interference.” He glanced over to Ghost, then back to Kiksis, inclining his head in a show of submission. Once again, he was glad that Misraaks had taken the pains to drill proper Eliksni etiquette into him (and that the Eliksni were a ritualistic people to begin with), because he was deeply aware of just how much he was f*cking this up otherwise. “We live in dark times, where enemies beyond our sight watch our words. Eramiskel would understand. She is honourable, but others are not.”
“And besides,” he added, despite Ghost’s hissed ‘don’t give them any ideas, Guardian!’ across their neural link, “I’m trusting her to have not encrypted it with anything that would blow up the machine that receives it. If I take it into my Ghost first, then that is a greater show of respect for her than if I were to take it into Eido’s datapad, is it not?”
That appeared to placate Kiksis, if only slightly. With an unhappy chitter, he (at least, Aeris thought he was a he, now that he was standing up and he could get a good look at his belly scutes) transmitted the message to Ghost, who scanned it over and reported that it was clear of malware, though his tone made it very clear that he was unhappy about his role as an intermediary. Aeris thanked him aloud, and then pulled a couple of knives out of his belt to give Kiksis a true ireliis bow, holding it longer than was needed to hopefully help soothe some of the offense he created. He had no regrets for what he did, but the tension was uncomfortable. “We will transmit Eramiskel’s message to Scribe Eido as soon as she awakens. Many thanks for your patience.”
Kiksis watched him warily. He did not repeat the bow back at him, but there was less fear in his eyes than there was before, and a little less of that bone-deep weary hatred. He stood tall, towering over Aeris even with his lanky Awoken-given height, and twitched his claws like he yearned to reach for the hilt of a shock blade. “And what shall I tell my kell, should she ask for the Scribe’s response? Shall I tell her that one of the Great Machine’s pawns ruined my mission, and that I failed the duty she entrusted to me? The shame would wound worse than any docking.”
He thought for a moment, running his tongue over his teeth as he did so. The words would be hard to translate to the Eliksni language- but he could try. And he smiled with no humour as he formulated his response, for he knew that Eramis would know what it meant either way. “Tell her that the Vanguard’s Hound intercepted you, and that he carried the message to her himself. It will be enough.”
Kiksis studied him quietly- then inclined his head. Acceptance. Given reluctantly, yes- but it was enough. “Then it is done. You will not read the message. You will give it to the scribe, and nothing else.”
His tone held a warning, though given how this whole altercation went for him, Aeris had no idea how he planned to follow up on that warning. He swallowed the urge to point that out, and sheathed his knives once more, crossing his arms over his chest to prevent himself from fiddling with the myriad of weapons decorating his form.
“I promise. A Wolf has no need for dabbling in Eliksni politics, extinct House names aside.” He breathed in deep, the humid summer air filling his lungs. It had cooled significantly since sunset, and the rich sweetness of the moist earth and sunkissed grass reminded him once again that he was alive. It was the end of all things- but he was alive. Distracted by the sudden lump in his throat, he spoke out of reflexive habit, addressing Kiksis as he would any other denizen of House Light with a farewell that he’d practiced long before he’d grown fluent in Eliksni. “May the Light guide you.”
A misstep, once again. His words were met with a hiss, and the sight of Kiksis straightening his spine, standing as tall as he could despite the injuries Aeris inflicted upon him in their fight. He was still proud, even defeated, and there was no longer any fear in his face when he looked down upon the human before him- Aeris had touched some deep, angry hurt within him, as he was wont to do when he was clumsy with his words. “The light has abandoned us, Wolf. We are no longer mewling hatchlings, looking to it with blind adoration. We of House Salvation seek no refuge in its lies, for we make our own fate.”
Aeris blinked. Frustration welled in his chest, bitter and hot, but he knew that no matter what he said, it would not make a difference. It never would, no matter how much he wished otherwise- he was a weapon, not a diplomat, and it was not his place to pretend to be anything else. This altercation proved that truth well enough. Still, he could not quite keep the sharpness out of his tone when he said “Then may the Darkness not lead you down a path of ruin, as the Enemy did so for your House and Kell.”
Kiksis growled at him, but he turned and ran off without another word, dropping down to all sixes as his cloaking shield reactivated with a crackle of Arc energy. Aeris watched the ripple of his form as he went, then stood vigil for a minute longer to ensure that he was really gone before heading back towards the renovated apartment building, Ghost bobbing over his shoulder.
“That was a bit much. Do you really think that Eramis has something that important to give to Eido? I know she saved her, but sending a shielded marauder to deliver a message is pretty suspicious.” Ghost spun his shell, the pearlescent serpent coiled around his core rotating slowly. “I mean, there’s nothing in the message encryption that screams ‘danger’, no Darkness or malware or anything, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t hurt her with something else. Do you really think that we should do this?”
“Eramis is lost, but she’s not Fallen. She still clings to old Eliksni values.” Aeris jiggled the lock on the back door, then began fishing for the spare key that Misraaks had given him among the various pouches and pockets lining his armour, not wanting to go for the more comfortable route of entering through a window with the potential of enemy eyes watching. The last thing he needed was for House Salvation to learn how to unlatch them from the outside, though assassinations weren’t really their style, all things considered. Tonight was the first night he’d had to deal with anything close to something approaching a political assassination, and Kiksis’s affront at Aeris blundering all over his honour had been genuine enough for him to believe that he really had just been there for an over-the-top discrete message delivery. “Besides, she wouldn’t have saved Misraaks if the incident with Eido had been just a fluke. I don’t think that she wants either of them dead.”
Ghost hummed, sounding skeptical. Aeris found the spare key, but gritted his teeth in frustration as he tried to fish them out of the tiny pocket he kept them in; his stupid gauntlets were in the way, the dexterity he lost from his silver-tipped Ahamkara claws reminding him once again why he preferred to simply go in through the windows. But then he heard the familiar rattle of the lock disengaging, the squeak of the hinges as it was pulled open, and he looked up just in time to come face-to-face with Misraaks’s thorax, his heart leaping into his throat for a moment at the expanse of scarred chitin before he met Misraaks’s narrowed eyes.
“Guardian. I’m going to assume that you have a reason for falling off of the roof at this time of the night, and that the lack of gunfire means that the problem was resolved peacefully, without need for my assistance.” Misraaks’s voice was a low rumble, just barely threatening to edge into a growl. He looked past Aeris into the garden, mouth opening slightly to scent the air, and then moved aside to let him into the house, his upper left hand still resting on the doorknob. It looked like he had just gotten out of the shower- he was bare except for a sash slung loosely around his hips, his crest of deep-red setae sticking to the carapace plates on his neck rather than curling up into a stiff mane like it normally did. In his right primary, he held a shock pistol- in his right, he had a towel. The left secondary was currently holding the sash in place over his hips, claws pinching the fabric together where it was meant to be tied down. Aeris had to force himself not to stare, suddenly reminded of the last time that he saw the kell of House Light in such a state. “I do not recognize the scent in the garden.”
He still sounded deeply tired. That more than anything was what snapped Aeris back into focus, banishing the memory of phantom touch and phantom pleasure from his mind. Now was not the time to reminisce on that. Nor was it time to think about how well he’d slept with a Captain-sized Eliksni curled up on his back, crushing him comfortably among the silken sheets and soft old quilts that lined his nest. “You would not. House Salvation sent a messenger, one that I intercepted en route to Eido’s room. Eramiskel has a message that she wishes to give to her- one that cannot be given over com lines, apparently.”
Misraaks’s eyes widened. His rumbling growl bloomed into a rattling snarl, before he managed to cut it off and swallow it down with a world-weary sigh. “...Of course she has. Come. I will wake Eido.”
Aeris blinked, then followed him into the house proper. Ghost bumped against his cheek, both a warning and a condolence, then darted ahead to hover over the chitinous spike on Misraaks’s shoulder blade, fitting neatly between its slope and the thick, muscular curve of his neck. “Wait! Didn’t she just go to sleep? Is it really so important to wake her up for something like that? Aeris and I worked her hard this afternoon, I’m sure that she’s going to be tired from all of that training.”
“If Eramis sent a messenger, then yes, it is urgent. I am as reluctant as you are, but it must be done.” Misraaks cupped his hand around Ghost’s shell, cradling him gently, then bowed his head to towel off the rest of his head and neck as he rounded the corner to the stairs. He’d tied on his sash properly as they walked, which was a bit of a bother in some ways and somewhat of a blessing in others. Even so, it didn’t obscure too much as Aeris followed up the stairs behind him, which he was grateful for- especially since Misraaks had to hunch to fit into the stairwell to begin with. “I do not trust her, but she would not have done such a thing if she did not think it necessary.”
Misraaks tossed the used towel into his room, then knocked on Eido’s door, rumbling gently with both his vocals and subvocals. Aeris’s teeth buzzed with the vibration, but it did its job- he heard an answering cheep from within, thick with exhaustion, and then Eido was opening the door, rubbing the side of her face with one hand as she peered sleepily between the two of them, her eyes narrowed to mere slits.
“Father? Guardian? What’s wrong?” She yawned, mandibles flaring, and blinked out-of-synch at her father’s shock pistol before frowning down at him. Aeris didn’t think he’d ever seen her actually exhausted at this hour, and he felt a brief pang of guilt for being the cause of it- one that vanished as soon as he remembered why he did it. “Aeris, why do you have grass in your hair? I thought you had gone home.”
…Oh. He did, didn’t he. Aeris scrubbed a hand through his hair to dislodge the blades, feeling sheepish, while Misraaks dipped his head and rumbled, “Eramis sent a messenger, one told to visit you. The Guardian intercepted them. I believe that Ghost is in possession of it currently.”
Eido stood up straight, eyes widening in shock, as Ghost bobbed out from behind them with a quick “Yep, I got it. It’s encrypted, too. Eido, where’s your datapad?”
“I- Oh! It’s on the desk. Hold on, let me get it.” Eido scrambled away from the door, snatching up her tablet from the mess of papers and wires on her desk, then scrambled right back, fumbling to click it on and enter her passcode with a chitter of frustration. “Why would she…? I thought that she wasn’t receiving my messages!”
“The messenger didn’t say. He just got angry at me for having Ghost scan it for malware,” Aeris said (in the background, Misraaks rumbled ‘what messages?’ in a dangerous tone of voice, though Eido didn’t seem to hear it). “It’s clear, by the way. No Darkness or code-tampering. We made sure of that.”
Misraaks muttered something about that being the least that Eramis could do. Ghost transmitted the information, Eido’s datapad chimed softly as she received it, and she got to work decrypting it with frightening speed, her fingers flying over the keypad as she muttered to herself intelligibly in her native tongue. It took less than a minute for her to crack the code, and she tilted her screen so that everyone could see what lay upon it- a string of numbers in the ancient numeral system of High Speak, and nothing else.
“...A set of coordinates. Why?” Misraaks’s voice sounded just as confused as Aeris felt. Eido’s breath hitched in her chest, but she said nothing, staring wide-eyed at the numbers in shock. “Why send a messenger for something so small?”
“I don’t recognize that location. It leads outside of the Sol system for sure,” Ghost said, scanning them as he would scan a piece of tech in the field. He sounded perplexed, but also mildly frustrated, his shell spinning as he concluded his scan and bobbed back up to Aeris’s shoulder. “Nor do I know where they lead, even accounting for the differences between Eliksni and Human navigation. It’s a far way out, but that’s all I can tell you. I’m not sure if anything but a Ketch or a Tombship could make that jump.”
“...Riis. They’re the coordinates to Riis.” Eido breathed. She touched her claws to the screen with a reverence that Aeris had only seen her give to the oldest of artifacts, as if it were something fragile and ancient that could crumble away with the slightest of pressure. Her eyes were blown wide enough for him to see the faint outline of her pupils, mere slits in an ocean of electric blue. “She sent me the coordinates to Riis. But why-”
No sooner had she said those words than her face crumpled, her shoulders slumping. Misraaks looked at her in alarm, shaken out of his confused silence at her distress, but Eido didn’t seem to notice him as he reached out to her, her hands clenching tight around her datapad. “I told her to come home! I told her to come home, but I meant living with other Eliksni again, not- not this! Oh Eramis, why?”
“She took your advice. She knows that she has no place here, no matter what we may believe. You did what you could, Eido.” Misraaks tapped her on one of her wrists, purring soothingly. He then passed the shock pistol to Aeris (who took it on reflex, automatically holding it at the ready before realizing what he was doing), and placed both his primaries on her shoulders, one of his secondaries tilting her chin up to look at him. “You offered her peace where no one else would, and she took it- but what she makes of that peace is for her to choose, not you. You were a better Eliksni than I, who could not offer her the same. I am proud of you, even if this was not what you wanted. It is easy to offer death to those who deserve it, but not so easy to grant mercy.”
Eido clenched her mandibles like she wanted to argue, then sagged into her father’s touch. She looked once again at the coordinates on the datapad, and tapped them away to a folder labeled TOP SECRET: IMPORTANT in Uluran, which Aeris didn’t have the heart to tell her was a common enough phrase among the members of the Consensus for it to not work very well on anyone who really mattered. “I guess. But if we talk to her again, then I am going to make it very clear that I am not happy she did not return my calls. She’s better than this. I know it- even if you don’t believe so, Father.”
Now it was Misraaks’s turn to swallow his protests, but he just gave a long, slow blink and let out a placating rumble instead, pulling her under his chin. Eido sighed, tucking her cheek against his collarbone, and then she looked over at Aeris and Ghost, a spark of hope twinkling in her eyes despite it all. “Maybe when you two return, we can go together. I’m not like Eramis, the Last City is my home now, but I- I would like to see Riis. Even in its ruin.”
“Eido…” Misraaks sighed- then stopped. Clicked his mandibles. And closed his eyes. “...Yes. If we succeed, then perhaps we shall see Riis again. I do not wish to chase Eramis to a foolish death, but Great Machine permitting, perhaps we will have a chance to reclaim what the Witness has taken from us. The Coalition would back us, I am sure.”
“And if not the Vanguard, then Empress Caiatl certainly would,” Eido mumbled, nuzzling against her father’s chest. She blinked slowly, and looked expectantly at Aeris and Ghost, her eyes bright with the hope of youth. “After all this is over…will you come back with us?”
Ghost gave him an uneasy glance. Aeris looked at him, then back to Eido, the words he wished to say like ash in his mouth.
I don’t think that I’ll come back from this. I don’t think I will survive. And if I do…I don’t know if I will be unchanged.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want this to be the end. I want to promise you that I will return, but I can’t. I can’t.
I’m sorry.
“At the end of everything,” he said, and nothing more.
It would have to be enough.
.
.
.
And all of the horses
And all of the men
Won't put it back in place
Or bury it where it had been
When all of the forces
Have been overrun
You'll whisper, serpent tongue
What you fear you have become
Something wicked this way comes
Something wicked this way comes
-Something Wicked, Starset
