074: Drifted Dimension – Five
The scrape of pavement beneath her boots was almost as loud as her laboured breathing as Malakh bolted down an alleyway, rundown buildings on either side of her. The steady tread of Thalatte soldiers marching in formation somewhere behind her drove her on, every fibre of her being rebelling at the thought of being captured by them again.
"Not getting slow in your old age, are ya?!"
The voice nearly had Malakh stumbling, heart leaping in her throat from more than just the exertion of her dead sprint. Keeping pace at her side was a a calico deorviran, her eyes - one blue, the other green - twinkling mischievously as she shot Malakh a grin.
Sarar’floremdistaef, her best friend, whose lifeless body she'd held until the Thalatte dragged her away and bolted a bomb to her skull.
"Talk later, run now!" Sarar gasped, pushing herself harder, and it was all Malakh could do to keep pace with her as she ran.
Doubly so when shadows began swarming around her, wispy things that crashed against her legs like waves. But they didn't slow her down. If anything they seemed to be urging her on, the memory of laughter echoing through her mind.
And that's when she realized she knew knew them too. Somehow, these were the shadows of all her friends she had lost here on Emerl, the landmarks around her sharpening into clarity once she realized where she was. She'd spent her entire childhood sneaking through these alleyways, so much so that she could navigate them with her eyes closed.
Vital knowledge to have now, as her vision was clouded by tears.
Their hideout had been in one of the upper floors of a ruined building, half collapsed on the edge of where a sizeable chunk of the deorviran population in that part of the world had barricaded a stronghold together, the Thalatte invaders pushing in closer every year. Judging by the brief glimpse she got of Sarar, Malakh figured this couldn't be too far off from their ill fated escape attempt that would result in their death and capture respectively. Older, taller as she was, decades of military training and years of regular meals had Malakh scrambling up the broken wall that was their entrance, hauling herself in through the empty socket of a window, and wedging herself into a corner before Sarar had gotten even so much as a handhold on the exposed bricks they'd used to climb into the building.
When Sarar finally did manage to climb into the building, it was to find Malakh curled up as small as she could get, face pressed into her knees while her arms were thrown over her head as she was wracked with choking sobs, swarmed by shadows that had no way to comfort her. Catching her own breath, Sarar sat down beside her, leaning against Malakh's shoulder as she shed tears of her own.
"What kind of sick fucking joke is this?!" Malakh growled out once she'd reined herself in somewhat, "Did I die? Is that what happened? Is this where I've gotta spend eternity!?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Sarar said against her side, looping an arm around Malakh's middle, "I don't think we've been here that much longer than you. We were somewhere else? Scattered. But something needed an interpreter, and that's how it found me, brought me to you. But when these idiots caught wind of who I was off to see, they just had to tag along."
Sarar's voice was warm with affection as she half assedly kicked a leg out at the shadows gambolling around them, "They missed you almost as much as I did."
Malakh tilted her head enough to stare at Sarar from beneath her arm for a moment before she unfolded herself, looping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her into an awkward hug, sat side by side on the floor as they were. Sarar didn't complain, a sob catching in her throat as she clung to Malakh just as tightly.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," Malakh whispered against Sarar's mane, her eyes darting to the shadows that were now drifting around them, melancholy muddying their movements, "Any of you. Out of all the ones who made it off this world from our little group, all of us thrown into Thalatte captivity, I was the only one who managed to survive this long. And I tried for years - years - to find some way of getting out from their control, but it wasn't enough. By the time I did have the means to escape, everyone else was dead."
Sarar pulled away enough to hold Malakh at arms length as she said, "Did you have the rest of our friends rigged up with bombs? Send them off to fight someone else's battles? Conscript them in the first place, or kill them if they wouldn't go along with it? Raid their worlds and harvest their people just because you think you're better than them!? Of course you didn't! All of this is the Thalatte's fault, so don't do anything to take the burden of blame away from them!"
That shook a sob of a laugh out of Malakh, and she scrubbed a hand across her eyes as she said, "I'm still sorry I couldn't do more than just mourn you."
"A slight that doesn't require forgiveness," Sarar told her with a sad smile, the shadows closing in around them both in a tight ring of sympathy, "We live in your heart, so our memory won't die. But that won't be the case if you kick it too, and you're dangerously close to doing that right now."
"How? Is it something to do with all this?" Malakh asked as she waved a hand out at the memory around them.
"Yeah, especially that." Sarar told her, nodding out at the window they'd climbed in.
Malakh turned to follow her gaze, and through the perpetual smog that choked the air, a byproduct of the Thalatte's occupation of Emerl, she could make out twin white suns hanging beyond the haze, instead of the single red sun she'd grown up under.
More than that, she swore she could see the outline of some massive shape, a body, and those suns were its eyes.
"I've got no idea what that thing is, but I think it's friendly?" Sarar said, her voice quiet with awe, "It didn't like that the others followed along, but it didn't do anything to stop them. I don't think that it could, however. It's… not as capable as it wants to be, I think. It feels really far gone, like an echo of an echo of an echo, or something."
"If that's it diminished, then I don't want to know what it was like at the height of its power." Malakh murmured, the sensation of it staring at her unsettling in a way she couldn't articulate.
"Whatever it was, it left behind unfinished business, and you've been inadvertently finishing it." Sarar told her, her eyes unfocused like she was listening in to something Malakh couldn't hear, "But your pale friend, what her people did to her? That's a wound deeper than what the Thalatte did to us. She's been bleeding out her entire life. The… dregil? Even if they didn't die doing whatever dangerous stuff their masters made them do, they'd usually die a lot younger than their race should. Living with a chunk of yourself just out there in someone else's hand isn't really great for your health. And with the way you're all bound up in this mech situation now, she's a break in your water main, so if she goes, she's emptying out your water tanks too."
With the way the shadows had settled around them, still for the most part, Malakh was struck by the bittersweet memory of all the times they'd spent their nights huddled up like this, the younger cubs clinging to the older ones to keep the scary things away while they slept. Only now it felt like they were trying to comfort her, and she had to blink back fresh tears.
"If she goes," she repeated, swallowing the heartbreak of nostalgia that being here like this had filled her with, "You say that like there's a way to fix it."
"There is," Sarar told her, nodding back out at the twin suns, "It found a way. Or it had a way? It's kinda hard to understand… it's like trying to listen to someone talking to you at a normal volume, only they're on the other side of a crowded room and everyone else in it is talking too. But from what I can make out, they'd finished all the pieces to their plan, but ran out of time to assemble them, so now that you've found the bulk of what they made, they can give you the last piece."
A breath was punched out of Malakh as the realization struck her. "The compulsion. So that means…"
Turning away from the twin suns, Sarar breathed, "Yeah. And the last piece, it's a lot, but it's small enough to carry. They've sent your purple friend to get it, because it's also a tool you can use to fix the leak. Showing you how to use it, that's what it brought me here to do."
It was all Malakh could do to keep her tears at bay as she asked, "When you aren't here, when you go back to wherever it was it took you from, is it at least better than what you had here?"
"I'm pretty sure it is," Sarar frowned, "I can't really see the details of it… it's like trying to remember everything that happened in a dream? It feels like a nice dream, though. Wherever I am now - wherever the rest of us are - it feels like a safer life than the one we had here."
"Good. You deserve something kinder than this." Malakh told her, eyes bright with unshed tears.
"And you deserve all the happiness that you're forging for yourself now," Sarar grinned, flicking a finger against Malakh's vedja pendant, "Didn't think any of us would live long enough to have more than quick hookups in back alleys, and here you are with a vedja wife! You always did have a thing for dark furred tall women. Wild that this bond works with humans."
"You're telling me!" Malakh said, her smile going soft as she brought a hand up to touch her necklace, "Her name's Rhea, and I think you would have liked her."
"With how happy she's made you, I already do." Sarar said, squeezing Malakh by the shoulders, "But we've gotta move now. Time's ticking, and I've still gotta show you the ropes, so up off your butt, we're going to the body shop."
Sarar stood, tugging Malakh up with her, and her heart clenched as she took her friend in. The last time they were together, they'd been the same height, but now Malakh was a full head taller than Sarar. And she looked so young. The shadows now swirling gently around them, none of them got the chance to grow up. It was an injustice Malakh was never going to be able to do anything about, and the reminder of that hurt.
Now that she was aware of it, Malakh could feel the grains of sand trickling through their hourglass, but that didn't stop her from pulling Sarar into a hug and holding her as tightly as she could, Sarar's grip against her back was just as hard, her head tucked under Malakh's chin as she told her, "I love you, idiot, but we've gotta go."
"Idiot yourself. I love you too. Now show me what I need to do."
Back outside, now that she was aware of the facsimile of it, the tromp of Thalatte boots was just background noise, and the white of those two suns was cutting through the smog in a way her own sun never did, bleaching colour from their surroundings. But the route to the body shop was still the same, still littered with the graffiti they'd put up, half blasted off by the Thalatte who did not appreciate the crude caricatures and less than kind words directed at them.
Their destination was a wrecked mechanic's garage, the owner of which had been forced to abandon it when the Thalatte had made a push through the district before Malakh and Sarar had hit a double digit age, leaving behind all of their assorted equipment. Malakh's little group had taken full advantage of the shop to break down whatever Thalatte machines they could get their hands on, cobbling together all kinds of traps and distractions to make the Thalatte's occupation of their little corner of Emerl as inconvenient as possible.
Slipping inside was as easy as she remembered, the mess left behind exactly as she last saw it. The chassis of a Thalatte transport stripped of almost everything except its frame, half finished shrapnel bombs just waiting for the explosives they had yet to scrounge, tools in various states of disrepair.
And a tarp covered something that she didn't remember being there.
"Like I said, your pal's been sent off to get the tool you'll all need to get out of here," Sarar said as she tossed a wrench to Malakh, "So we'll have to make do with this for now. And the actual thing you're going to have to disassemble is going to look a lot worse than this."
She pulled the tarp away, revealing something that could have been an art piece made from recycled junk, if it weren't for the way it was undulating subtly, almost like it was alive. It sort of looked like a skeletal hand, or two rather, sprouting from the same wrist, fingers fanning out like a grasping starburst, too many of them, with too many joints. Something about it had Malakh's stomach roiling, the sickly silver colour of the thing somewhere between metal and sinew.
"If this is what it's supposed to look like when it isn't worse…" Malakh said, idly twirling the wrench as she stepped up to the thing, "Show me how this thing is meant to come apart."
Sarar moved in to show her where to start unbolting first, and the pair of them fell into an easy rhythm. They'd done this often enough growing up, puzzling out Thalatte machines together, seeing how they ticked, and seeing what they could use to their own advantage. But unlike the static machines that the Thalatte built, this contraption, this artistic nightmare, it did not take kindly to being broken down. Malakh was forced to wrestle against it, pinning down a joint with one hand while unbolting it with another, nausea ratcheting through her every time she had to touch this thing. The more she peeled off of it, the more violent its twitching grew, lashing out to strike her now and again, a bolt of pain lancing through her chest each time.
"You have to push through this," Sarar said, a hand against her back as Malakh focused on the task at hand, "It's going to be worse when you work on the real thing, and you can't let it get the better of you."
"Not looking forward to that." Malakh grunted, wiping her hands against the legs of her pants, having broken out in a cold sweat the moment she'd touched the monstrous sculpture. It was only through her years of practice that she was able to keep the trembling of her hands from affecting her work, the thing she was disassembling so unsettling that it had every instinct in her trying to pull away from it.
More and more of it fell away, and more and more the thing fought back. Teeth grit against the pain lancing through her with every successful strike it made, Sarar's encouragement ringing in her ears, the shadows leaping in support around them, Malakh felt herself falling into a fugue state as she powered through this vile task.
Until, at last, as one last bolt came loose, the strange double palm of this wretched conjoined hand fell away, and the whole thing disintegrated into dust at their feet.
"Exactly like that!" Sarar cheered, shaking her by the shoulder, "You've just gotta do that one more time, and you're gonna be alright!"
Malakh heaved a sigh, looping an arm around Sarar's shoulders to pull her into her side as she said, "And the real deal's gonna be worse? Odds are good we're gonna find out what my puke in the astral realm or whatever this is is going to look like."
"Probably rainbows or something," Sarar joked, though she shot Malakh a knowing glance as she said, "Though knowing you, it's probably gonna be a dark brown hairball."
"WOW." Malakh drawled, shoving Sarar away, all mock offence, "That's rude."
Smacking her in the side, Sarar asked, "But is it wrong?"
Malakh could only laugh in response, Sarar joining in soon after. It had been so long since they'd been able to be together like this, and Malakh knew their time together was rapidly coming to an end. Tossing the wrench to the side, she pulled Sarar against her, tucking the girl into her arms, because she was never going to get the chance to do this ever again. Around them, the shadows lapped at their shins, their love echoing up like mist off of waves.
"Hey, no crying again," Sarar said, her own arms squeezing around her ribs, voice thick, "I don't wanna go back to wherever I'm bound with a face full of snot."
That got a watery laugh out of Malakh, and she ran a hand through Sarar's mane as she said, "Well maybe I do, hm? Some memento to remember this moment."
"Like you'll ever let yourself forget this," Sarar told her, pulling away to look her in the eyes, "I don't want you carrying my memory like a stone in your heart. I wanna be the chain that winches you up instead."
"You will be," Malakh told her, cupping Sarar's face, "Any time I get too in my head, I'll just imagine you getting pissy at me about it."
"You better!" Sarar laughed, "An annoyance in life, an annoyance in death! Now get out of here, you've got stuff to do, and not a lot of time to do it in."
"I love you, idiot, and thank you." Malakh told her, smiling through her tears.
"Idiot yourself, and I love you too," Sarar replied, placing a hand against Malakh's sternum, "And you can thank my by getting you and your friends out of this mess."
And with that, Sarar shoved her back, and Malakh fell, her vision burning white as the shadows fell away.