067: The Rock, Rolled – Four
In the medbay, Rhea was inducing zoastasis in V'tala, an extensive procedure that would take the better part of the day, especially given V'tala's less than peak condition.
On the bridge, Nevara was guiding them through subspace to their next destination, a Kith station on the fringes of Usgaisjan space, as they were badly in need of supplies and repairs after their stint through Bernetigan space and firefight with the Briddbragnan.
In the confines of the ship's circuitry, cut off from the information network of the rest of the galaxy for the time being and unable to continue her research into Usgaisjan mysteries, Viatrix was assisting Elytra in the rec room as she brainstormed narrative ideas they could potentially go for in the coming days, their audience eager for on an update on the Knight of the Tomb.
Malakh, meanwhile, was keeping herself busy by making her way through the interior of the ship in order to carry out whatever internal repairs she could. Anything to keep her mind off the nervous energy that had saturated the ship.
That left Pryseia to her own devices, and so she had sequestered herself off in the cargo hold.
Her intent had been to hop into one of the training sims, engage the full immersion mode and lose herself to practice until they reached their destination, but she'd shut it down and gotten out within minutes. Even though she'd had the sim running at its highest difficulty, the experience hadn't had enough bite to get her out of her head, and she'd been "killed" by a move that she should have parried. Frustration piling onto her distracted state as it was, she knew she wouldn't be able to focus, and so there she sat in the open door to the sim chamber, head in her hands, full of too much rage with nowhere to go.
I am a dregil, a weapon. Your weapon.
The same phrase running through her mind, again and again and again, the implications of all V'tala had revealed without actually saying anything concrete.
Then you need to find some other way to leash me.
Pryseia couldn't stop the humourless laugh that barked out at her at that recollection, and she leaned against the edge of the sim chamber's door, roughly pushing her hair back. It was long enough to reach past her shoulder blades now, a far cry from the close cropped style she'd been forced to wear while under the Thalatte's control. Her horns, too, were no longer the filed down nubs she'd been forced to maintain as per military decorum, and now instead were about the length of her hand, tapering up to sharp points beyond where they jutted from her forehead. And her tail was free to swing out behind her, no longer having to be tucked away at all times, as the Thalatte had abhorred the sight of it.
At the time, she had chafed at having to alter these parts of herself while a prisoner in their military, but she now knew these slights were nothing in comparison to whatever it was that V'tala's own people had done to her.
I should not be capable of this level of autonomy.
Before she could think better of it, Pryseia shoved herself up, heading straight for the access walkway that led to the Storlayacas. Zaanlaa's cockpit automatically opened as she approached, but she passed it by, intent on the last Storlayacas in the lineup.
Enaruli.
Hidden behind the seam of the cockpit's hatch, in a gap only big enough for a few fingers to wriggle into, Pryseia found the emergency release, and one firm press was all it took for Enaruli's cockpit to open before her. She threw herself into the pilot's seat without hesitation, gripping the armrests as she stared out into the cargo hold. The hatch didn't close, the restraints didn't drop, and the control apparatus didn't engage, but she felt the focus of this ancient machine fall upon her.
"She's muted to you as well, is she not?" Pryseia spoke aloud, "You called out to her, but this dlegh muffles the bond, poisons it, prevents the compulsion you've instilled within us from being satisfied."
Nothing moved, no sound rang out, but she could feel the attention of things older than her species settle upon her like a physical weight.
"We have to get this sorted," under this scrutiny, her voice came out as a whisper, "None of us can live like this. None of us."
Salaparas Station was a relatively small Kith outpost - just a single dry dock and a smattering of shops - but it thankfully wasn't a busy one. The dry dock had been unoccupied, allowing them to get repairs started straight away, Malakh overseeing the effort as she stayed behind with the ship. Rhea, too, remained on the Pelekys in order to keep an eye on V'tala, still unconscious after the zoastasis procedure. And with full access to the network now that they were out of subspace, Viatrix had redoubled her efforts in piercing Usgaisjan security measures.
This left Pryseia, Nevara, and Elytra to venture onto Salaparas in order to get their supplies, though that was clearly not the main intent of some of them.
"Are koleopterans able to project their emotions as well as sense them in others?" Pryseia asked, shooting Elytra a sly look as they exited one of the shops, heading off to their next stop.
"Some can, but I'm not one of them," Elytra grumbled at being caught out with her concern, arms crossed and fingers tapping against the plates that ran along her biceps, "I'm just being really blatant with my worry, is all."
"And I apologize for being the source of that. I've never... lost myself to my emotions quite like that before." Pryseia told her.
Elytra shot her a withering look at that. "You had an incredibly valid reason for it. The thing V'tala did, that dlegh, I've never felt anything like it before."
"What did it feel like?" Nevara asked.
A deep sigh was the only thing that came out of Elytra for a while, but she finally said, "It felt like an open wound. Like something had speared you through V'tala. And it felt like that's not what it's supposed to be like at all."
"She said it's supposed to be a leash," Pryseia said quietly, "And from what I gather, due to the fact that I haven't the usgaisjan's psionic abilities, this bond has not become the thing it's supposed to be."
"A lance to be caught, not pierced by, then?" Elytra mused, "I know usgaisjans are telekinetic, but that's really all I know, so I've got no idea how her abilities actually work. In any case, it had you bleeding out, psychically at least."
Pryseia hummed at that. "That is a most apt description of the sensation. Tell me, what could you get from V'tala's emotional state? She schools herself quickly into unreadability."
"Emotionally it's a different story," Elytra admitted, sounding heartbroken, "She feels, deeply, but it's behind a wall? Her emotions feel like they're a separate program running in the background so they won't affect her performance, but also a caged animal howling and thrashing, only it's done so for so long that she can easily ignore the noise of it. She's a mess, regardless, and doing her best to ignore it. She's clearly had a lot of practice in that regard."
Her mandibles clicking together in displeasure, Nevara growled, "Is it her own will that keeps her emotions in check, or the dlegh?"
Elytra could only shrug helplessly. "I can't say for certain. I haven't been around many usgaisjan so I don't know what 'normal' looks like for them. I just know that she's been horrified a lot. Her worries feel like she'd been handed a live grenade, and if she lets it go it'll destroy everything around her except for her."
"She called herself a weapon," Pryseia muttered darkly, "Implored me to subjugate her will with my own, that this is what a dlegh was meant to do."
Elytra was silently aghast, but a rattling hiss broke out of Nevara.
"May Viatrix's search bear fruit." Was the only thing she could choke out after that, "That is not a chain anyone should be forced to wear."
The upset that V'tala's arrival in their lives caused notwithstanding, the crew of the Pelekys were running a production, and in order to keep the funds needed to maintain their lifestyle rolling in, they needed to make content, and so they needed to figure out how they were going to move forward narratively.
"I was honestly thinking of having us step back," Rhea said from her spot on one of the couches in the rec room, "Do some flashback type recordings, go a bit more into our characters backstories. At least until we figure out if V'tala wants to be part of this and everything."
"How's she doing after all that?" Elytra asked.
"No hiccups with the procedure," Rhea said, "She's sleeping still, which isn't surprising given all she's been through in the last while, a millennia in stasis included. She's not really the talkative sort, but I could tell that she was pissed that her stamina isn't where she wants it to be. She also said some real cryptic shit about how zoastasis will make her 'a blade that never dulls', which isn't something that fills me with delight."
"She called herself 'my sword', so I am dismayed but unsurprised she continues to refer to herself as little more than an object." Pryseia sighed.
"Every piece of info we get about this dregil situation just makes it worse and worse and worse!" Malakh growled from where she was pacing beyond the ring of their seats, "Vi, how's the search going on your end?"
"I think I'm onto something," she said as her avatar appeared on the screen of the low table, "But it's snarled up tight in all kinds of digital protections. I'm taking it slow and steady so I don't trip any alarms."
"Please be as cautious as you can," Pryseia told her, "We needn't add another trouble to our pile by angering an entire government for sifting through their classified information."
"Don't worry, I'm being extra sneaky," Viatrix assured her, "They'll never know I was there!"
V'tala awoke by the time dinner rolled around, and Rhea made sure she got a proper meal before she joined the others for her own supper in the mess hall.
"I don't know if it's an usgaisjan thing, or just her, but she's bouncing back quickly after the amount of shit she's been through in the last while," Rhea told them around a mouthful of the stew Nevara had been simmering for the better part of the day, "The language download, zoastasis, plus I had her on a vaccine regiment because she's a thousand years out of date for her inoculations, and there's all kinds of fun new illnesses her people have encountered since then. She's started to put on weight even with the scant handful of meals she's had since we found her, so it shouldn't take hellishly long for her to get to a healthy weight, which is good because she's dangerously underweight as is."
"At least that's one wrong we can right for her." Malakh sighed, "Vi, you digging still going alright?"
Uncharacteristically, Viatrix did not respond to her name being called. Those in the mess hall shot each other worried looks.
"I'm gonna check on the main server." Malakh said, hastily finishing off her meal before bolting from the room.
Supper was a quick and quiet affair after that, and the after dinner peace didn't last long.
"Rec room. Now."
Viatrix's unusually terse command had the four of them up and out from whatever they'd been in the middle of, Malakh waiting for them inside the rec room, ears pinned back and her mane flaring with how high her hackles were raised. Elytra felt the wrath rattling off her well before she made it into the room.
"So this whole dregil thing is worse than we fucking thought!" Malakh snapped the second they all burst into the room, her tail slashing violently through the air behind her as she paced. She paused long enough to gesture towards the low table, Viatrix's avatar small and muted on the screen, twitching sadly. Filling the display with her were a series of documents, some fully digital, others scans of paper copies. The others crammed themselves onto the couch to read, and all of them were horrified by what they found.
Usgaisjan were telekinetic, able to manipulate the physical world with the power of their minds alone. It was a talent that varied from person to person, some struggling to slide a coin across a smooth surface, while others could tear buildings from their foundations. As with any ability possessed by a race, there were those among the usgaisjan who sought to use their telekinesis to subjugate others, and this was how the dregil caste came to be.
Born and bred for servitude, dregil were taught from birth not to reach out to the world with their telekinetic powers, but to turn their abilities back on themselves in order to create metaphysical marionette strings that others, dryhten, could use to control them. This was what the dlegh truly was.
Primarily used as tools of courtly intrigue during the Usgaisjan medieval period, they were assassins, spies, bodyguards, concubines, and chattel. Whatever their dryhten wanted, a dregil would have to provide.
A dregil wasn't a person.
A dregil was a thing.
The practice, barbaric as it was, eventually fell out of favour, civil outcry having all but eradicated it before the Usgaisjan reached the stars. But as the Usgaisjan spread to other worlds, bad habits went with them, and the practice of creating dregil had something of a renaissance when those on the outer colonies needed total loyalty from the agents they were sending off to spy for them back on the homeworld. This resurgence of the dregil caste lasted centuries, and it was into this era that V'tala must have been born.
But with the destruction of the secessionist forces who had revived this practice, and the discovery that the usgaisjan were not alone in the universe, the dregil became a liability instead of a tool.
Telekinesis was an intrinsic part of life for the usgaisjan, to the point where they couldn't imagine a universe in which they were the only people to possess such a gift, so it came as a huge shock when they learned that only two other races out there had psionic capabilities, even more so when they discovered how differently zymeth telepathy and koleopteran empathy worked in comparison to their own telekinesis. As dissimilar as they were, what was to stop these other races from finding a way to forcefully convert all usgaisjan into dregil, and subjugate their entire race? They saw how the Enlightened operated, treating anyone they deemed their inferiors like animals to be domesticated, and thus they went to great effort to bury the exploit that was the dregil caste.
So it was that, in the modern day an age, the average usgaisjan would only know of the dregil from what their sanitized history and pop culture told them - a caste of second class citizens that was abolished by civil rights movements, a black mark on their history to never be repeated. Only in carefully guarded historic archives was this truth kept dead and buried, never to see the light of day again.
On finishing reading this documentation, Rhea had joined Malakh in her circuit of the room, a furious energy bubbling off of her with every loop she made. Elytra sat on the couch, stunned, tears in her eyes and head in her hands, while Nevara was silent and still next to her, hands and mandibles clenched so tight that a faint creaking sound, like trees in a windstorm, was coming from her form. Next to them Pryseia was leaning back against the couch, staring up in the general direction of the ceiling, chest heaving with every enraged breath.
"In these records, was there any mention of how to undo this insult to a person's sovereignty?" She asked quietly, teeth clenched.
"Only how a dryhten could do so when they grew bored of a dregil," Viatrix's voice was a mournful whisper, "And the procedure would result in their dregil's death. A dregil is incapable of severing this connection on their own."
"Just as V'tala already informed me." Pryseia whispered, closing her eyes.
There was nothing lighthearted about the dark laugh that cracked out of Rhea as she said, "Historical records won't help us? Fine. Making our own solution it is. Vi, can you forward me what you have on the actual mechanics of how becoming a dregil worked? I'm going to crunch some numbers, run some simulations, see if I can backwards engineer something to get her out of this fuckery."
"I'll have it collated in minutes." Viatrix told her, and with a nod Rhea was out the door.
Nevara stood after her, eyes hard as she informed them, "I'm going to check Avvisi to see what Leviathan bounties are closest. We could do with a worthwhile target to vent our spleen."
She left a moment later, Malakh wordlessly following after her, on the hunt for something constructive to do with the energy coursing through her in the meantime.
Elytra leaned back against the couch with a sigh before pressing in shoulder to shoulder against Pryseia. For her part, the deupazing welcomed the contact, Elytra a grounding presence against the emotions rising within her.
"It's just another form of enslavement, right?" Elytra said quietly, "And we've all managed to get free from the things that held us captive in one way or another. We're gonna do the same for V'tala."
"We will," Pryseia swore, shifting enough so she could loop an arm around Elytra's shoulders, "No one on this crew will be chained ever again."