071: Drifted Dimension – Two
"Something's happened," Elytra's panicked voice cracked over the comms, "Pryseia, V'tala, respond!"
Dead air met her call.
The others swung their mechs around, only to find Zaanlaa and Enaruli floating lifeless before them.
Springing into action, the other four grabbed these two mechs before they could drift further away, Nevara calling out, "Vi, demat us back to the cargo hold!"
Viatrix did so without question, and Rhea was out of Yarula a moment later, the thrusters of her spacesuit flinging her towards Enaruli's cockpit.
Inside, she found V'tala slumped over in her restraints, the control apparatus still in place around her head.
A scan from her Longan showed that the woman's vital signs were fading.
"No no no no no, come on V'tala, not like this," Rhea said as she lifted the woman's head, "You were stuck a thousand Cycles in stasis, you can't die now."
"Pryseia's unconscious, life signs dropping," Malakh called out from where she was crouched in Zaanlaa's cockpit, "The control apparatus isn't disengaging, and my scans don't show a release for it!"
Coming in over the comms, Viatrix said, "Let me bring them back outside! If I link up with them, I might be able to override the systems from the inside."
"Do it. I'll get the cable." Malakh shouted, leaping down and scrambling for the demat zone to get her back into the Pelekys, while Viatrix dematted the others back into space. As clumped together as they'd been, propping Enaruli and Zaanlaa up between them, the other four mechs were dragged out alongside the rest, Elytra grabbing hold of Castore and Yarula with Malakh and Rhea otherwise occupied.
The starboard personnel ramp opened up shortly after, a cable spool attached to Malakh's suit as she came flying out, and another length of cable in her hands.
"Here, plug this into her seat," Malakh shouted as she tossed one end of the cable she was holding to Rhea, "I'll get this into Pryseia's, see if we can get them out at the same time."
Rhea did as she was bid, Malakh flying off to do the same, then patching Viatrix's connecting cable into the impromptu splitter she hastily jury rigged.
"I'm in! I feel them! Oh-" Viatrix suddenly cut off, and the lights across the Pelekys dimmed.
"What happened?!" Nevara demanded, "Vi! Please respond!"
The lights of the Pelekys flickered once more, and Viatrix's voice came out strained, garbled as she ordered, "Get in your mechs. Now."
They'd never heard that tone out of her before, panic laced authority. Shooting each other a glance, Rhea and Malakh returned to their Storlayacas without question.
"What is it?" Elytra asked, her voice sharp with worry, "What did you find?"
"Everything." Viatrix said.
And then everything went dark.
There was a steady whirring sound coming from somewhere. Familiar. A white noise hum because she needed something to drown out the sounds around her when she was trying to sleep.
Consistent as a metronome, a slight, cool breeze against her arm. Familiar. The way the building had been constructed, it clung greedily to heat. Even in winter she found herself overheating, and so more than just for the white noise, she kept her fan on year round.
Her fan?
Elytra opened her eyes, and was met by the familiar sight of her bedroom. A small space, room enough for her glorified cot of a bed, and the dresser where she kept the clothes that wouldn't fit in her closet, on top of which was perched the oscillating fan she kept on year round. Windowless, it had artificial lighting she'd programmed to dim and brighten to match the time of day outside, and was now filling the room with the grey light of pre-dawn.
What had she been dreaming about? She wasn't one to wake up so early. Tugging her slipped blanket up over her shoulder, she snuggled back into bed. She worked afternoon shifts, so she didn't need to be awake for hours yet. She could get a few more hours of sleep before she was back behind the wheel.
At least she could, if her heart wasn't pounding like she was in a panic.
What had she been dreaming about!?
A surge of adrenaline had her shaking, overheating, and she shoved her blankets away, scrambling out of bed, trembling as she braced a hand against the wall.
Something had gone wrong.
This wasn't where she was supposed to be.
She was wrenching open her bedroom door a moment later, only instead of the cramped, open concept kitchen and living room of her apartment, she was greeted by the sight of two suns hanging in the sky, so bright that no colour beyond white could exist under their light. The trees, the buildings, the roads, all of it was burned white under their glare.
Their glare?
Peeking through the gaps in her fingers as she shielded herself from the blinding light, she saw that what she'd mistaken for two suns were actually two massive eyes.
And they were looking directly at her.
Their edges gilded from the light streaming from those eyes, Elytra then noticed the contours of a face, of shoulders and a torso, arms stretching down past the horizon because this thing that was looking at her was larger that all the worlds in her system combined. All smooth lines and organic shapes, it was familiar and alien all at once, the echo of Lianshae coming off this thing, but reverberating into something else, something larger.
Something reaching out a hand for her.
Massive fingers, the size of continents. They flared brightly as they entered the atmosphere of this world, the roar of them growing as they descended to engulf her.
Fear, somehow, had no place in Elytra's heart. All she felt was a bone deep relief.
The blinding white light of those twin suns faded away to the distant glow of starlight in deep space as the hand settled around her, and Elytra had to close her eyes against the wave of vertigo that crashed through her. She didn't stumble, but it was close, the only thing keeping her upright being the pillar she'd found to her left.
Only it wasn't just a pillar, it was a thumb. Lianshae's thumb, as she was standing in its palm.
The pair of them were in space, but Elytra was still just in her pyjamas, the gravity of her world keeping her from floating out of her Storlayacas' hand. It was staring at her, expressionless but expectant, like it was waiting for her to acknowledge that she understood what it had said.
Because it had been saying something.
The lightspeed howl of solar winds, the grinding churn of rocks scraped across the shore by a storm lashed sea, the burble of magma as it flowed through the veins of a world. Language on a scale she couldn't comprehend.
Regret filled her, unable to understand what was being offered out, and Lianshae echoed this regret back.
But then, the spark of epiphany.
Gently, carefully, those massive fingers curled up around her, and she was enveloped by a welcoming darkness.
She wasn't sure how long she floated there, suspended not in a harsh void, but a pocket of something protective, a presence slowly drawing near. Familiar.
She felt them before she heard them, turning before the sound of footsteps striking against whatever ephemeral force was acting as the ground in this liminal space reached her ears.
Lavender carapace over plum flesh, her eldest sister, Aristate.
Elytra was rushing towards her before she could form the thought to do so, her last memory of her flashing across the space around them - Baithaiz ship fire vaporizing the building Aristate had been standing in the doorway of, an arm outstretched as she'd reached out to try and pull her sister to safety.
"I watched you die, I watched you die!" The words were sobbed against her sister's shoulder as Elytra held her, Aristate's grip just as tight.
"I know, I'm sorry," Aristate was whispering against her, "If it's of any comfort, I didn't feel it happen."
"It is, it isn't," Elytra choked, shoving herself away enough to actually look at her sister, "I don't want you to be dead!"
Holding her by the shoulders, Aristate took her in, a fond, sad smile on her face as she said, "I don't think I am anymore. But I don't think I'm me anymore."
"What's that supposed to mean?!"
Aristate stared off into the distance for a moment, brow pinched as she tried to wrangle her thoughts.
"I think I'm dreaming. Or an echo of me is. I'm not sure, but it doesn't feel like I'm wholly myself anymore."
A rattling breath shook through Elytra as she felt the truth of that. Her sister's emotions had always felt like petals on the breeze, but with Aristate standing here directly in front of her, it was more like she was seeing a recording of flowers falling than she was witnessing it in real time.
"I miss you so much." Elytra choked out, guilt catching in her throat because while that was the truth, with the whirlwind her life had become after her escape from Iromay, she'd barely thought of the family that had been torn from her.
"Hey, none of that," Aristate said, feeling Elytra's guilt as keenly as Elytra could herself, "You've been subjected to so much in so brief a time. A life I never could have imagined for you. But you're happier now than I've ever felt you."
"I really am," Elytra admitted as a watery laugh escaped her, "It doesn't feel like I'm sleepwalking through my own life anymore."
"I'm so glad to hear that," Aristate told her, holding Elytra's face in her hands, "You were such a bright spark as a child, but it always felt like the path you were meant to tread was nowhere even close to our corner of the galaxy. I think you were always meant to be out here, among the stars."
As she said that, the emptiness around them bloomed to life, pinpricks of light blinking on all around, the distant watercolour of a red and blue nebula curving off into the distance beside them.
"I wish you could have gotten out here too," Elytra whispered, "I think you would have loved it out here."
Pulling her down enough to place a kiss upon her forehead plate, Aristate said, "This time around, I think I am."
Pressing her forehead against her sister's, Elytra stood there holding her for as long as she was allowed. Wherever this was, whatever this was, she knew she was on borrowed time.
Sighing as she pulled away, Aristate said, "Something bigger than us pulled me here. A career I never gave a thought about before. A translator."
Like the warmth of sunlight against her back, Elytra could feel the presence of Lianshae shining on her.
Scrubbing a hand across her eyes, Elytra took a steadying breath as she asked, "Okay, what's it saying?"
Aristate sighed, a slight frown tugging at her lip as she gazed off into the distance. She seemed to become less substantial then, a memory fading, and Elytra couldn't help it as she tightened her grip on her sister's arms.
"That's what it is," Aristate smiled at her, blinking back into focus as she squeezed Elytra's shoulders in return, "Connection."
Placing her hand on the centre of Elytra's chest, she shoved her away slightly, enough so that they were an arm's length apart. Between them, scintillating like the energy of subspace, was a strand of opalescent light.
"Connection," Aristate repeated, "Our people feel it deeper than most, the strands of the web all life is a caught up in."
Around them, the stars grew brighter, light spreading and branching out like frost across a window pane, connecting stars.
Connecting worlds.
Connecting people.
"Connecting you." Aristate corrected, nodding to something behind Elytra.
The six Storlayacas towered behind her, like moons in orbit around a gas giant. Between them all, those twin white suns - eyes - burning the darkness away.
But even under this unrelenting onslaught of light, the Storlayacas themselves cast in shadow, she could make out sparks of colour from deep within them, set like precious stones.
The gold flecked blue of lapis lazuli.
The pink mottled purple of lepidolite.
The cream banded reddish orange of carnelian.
The brown and bronze lustre of tiger's eye.
The grey crackling through the teal of amazonite.
The ash rivers that flowed through the white of howlite.
All of them connected by the rainbow iridescence of bismuth. All of them leading back to her.
"They're dying." Aristate said as she came to stand by her side, nodding down at the rainbow tethers in Elytra's chest. One, bluer than the rest, was a wavering, shimmering cord next to the undulating rope of the others, but even that blue light was more robust than the pale string she could barely make out in the tangle, a firm tug being all the effort it would take to sever it. "You have to find them before they do."
"What if I don't?" Elytra had to ask, her hands coming up to cradle the two diminished strands.
Aristate sighed, her gaze catching on the Storlayacas dominating the space before them. "I don't know if any of you would survive it. Any of you."
Compared to the heavy thrum of the other tethers in her hand, the blue and white ones were as faint as a butterfly's wing beats. She didn't have much time.
She turned to Aristate, already beginning to fade away, her smile bittersweet.
"I love you. I'm never going to stop missing you." Elytra told her, not bothering to try and stop her tears.
Raising a hand to wipe them away herself, Aristate said, "I love you too, and I'm so glad you're where you were always meant to be. Now go. They need you."
Elytra was moving before she realized it, floating away towards the source of her tethers, turning so she could watch her sister as she waved goodbye, tears streaming down her face, catching on the corners of her smile before she vanished like smoke on a breeze.
Elytra turned towards the light of the twin suns, and willed herself to be where she was needed most.
Burning heat. Blinding light. Elytra knew that if she were actually, physically here in wherever this dreamscape was supposed to be taking place, she would have been blasted to atoms by the solar winds that were tearing past her. As it was, wading against the force of it like this, it was more akin to trudging through a blizzard. Spooling forth from her chest, the tethers were her guide, leading her through this cosmic storm to the people who had come to mean as much to her as family.
She held Pryseia and V'tala's tethers tightly in her hand, and though she lacked a zymeth's telepathy, she tried to will her strength to them, her love, her hope, her fear, and her promise that she was on her way.
The sensation of speed was jarring. Every step forward was an effort, but she knew she was crossing lightyears with every stride. And she needed to go faster.
She had no idea where in the galaxy she was - no idea where in the universe she was - but she knew that she was getting closer. The pulse through the tether was growing stronger.
And then the pulse through the tether was pulling her down.
Free fall between those twin suns, caught in a corridor of noise. She was spinning end over end. She was descending as smoothly as if on an elevator. If she had been physically here, she would have thrown up her breakfast by now.
She stopped.
She stood on a world now, white on white on white. It felt ancient.
Buildings towered above her, looking more like they'd been grown than built, and a startling realization settled heavy in the pit of her stomach.
These buildings looked Hyttan. Wherever in the galaxy this was, some part of her was on the Hyttan homeworld.
Elytra had no time to dwell on this thought, as the tethers pulsed in her grip once again, and she felt them pull her to the right. She followed, breaking into a sprint, the fragment of her here not needing to pull air into her lungs to push herself as fast as she could go.
Down an empty street, devoid of any sign of life. Through the doors of a building she couldn't even guess the purpose of. Stairs next, round and round and round, deep under the earth in this Hyttan metropolis. Whatever this place was for, whatever she was running towards, its creators wanted it difficult to get to. Doors were in place to bar entry, dense, heavy thing, but she passed through them as easily as if they weren't there at all. No alarms sounded, no lights flashed. Instead, an alien sense of anxiousness urged her on.
She needed to reach her destination, she needed to reach it fast, and she needed to get out of here even faster. More than their own lives were hanging in the balance.
A final door, and she entered out into an open room. A laboratory. An amphitheatre. A tomb. Whatever this place actually was, the three sides of its triangular floor plan stepped down to a plinth in the middle of the space, on which a blinding light burned.
Leaping down the steps in a single bound, the light before her, she felt her vision begin to swim. The glowing object was a scalpel, then a hammer, a drill, a needle, a saw all at once, shifting in front of her too fast for her mind to comprehend it for more than a moment at a time. But the intend of it was clear.
It was a tool, and she needed to get it to the others.
Wrapping one hand protectively around the tether back to the rest, Elytra reached out her other hand, closing her fist around the the thing she had been sent to find.
And the moment she did, she was gone.