082: Darkness, Peering – Four
Fear was something V'tala was well versed in pushing aside. Even before she'd pledged her dlegh, ceded control of herself to another, she had been drilled to suppress anything about herself that could interfere with her duties: self preservation, curiosity, fear, all of these and more were hindrances for a dregil.
But none of the training she went through could have prepared her to face down monstrous entities that seemed to defy what should be evolutionarily possible.
The first, the Delta, had been bad enough. Larger than the Storlayacas, larger than the Pelekys, its form a confusing mass of too many limbs, being in its presence was terrifying, a sensation that was as new to her as it was unwelcome. She was ashamed to admit it, even to herself, but the moment V'tala had registered the scope of the thing baring down on them, she froze. Just for a moment, a heartbeat, but long enough that, even now, she burned with shame. It was only Rhea's in character bravado as Chancellor Bathory that snapped her back into action, and after that, fear would have no hold on her.
Not even after four more Leviathan emerged from the darkness to slaughter them.
The battlefield had dissolved into organized chaos then, Zaanlaa and Lianshae dematting in to join the fray, the Epsilon Leviathan unfurling around them.
Each of them larger than the Delta, they had the appearance of crumpled balls of sky blue and black banded ribbons. But then those "ribbons" had unfurled, fanning out rows of spines that made them look more like monstrous feathers glowing against the black of space, reflecting the blue green light of the nearby nebula. A faint distortion could be seen between each spine, between each limb, the sensors of their Storlayacas reporting that some type of energy field was stretched between each appendage like a membrane, like an umbrella with far too many spokes. And even though Malakh had earlier informed her that she'd installed psychic dampeners in Enaruli's cockpit, V'tala could still feel the hate blasting out of these things like solar radiation.
She didn't remember if any of them had spoken after they'd engaged that monstrous quartet, either in character or out of it. It wasn't until the last Epsilon was curled in on itself in its death throes that V'tala came out of the fugue state of combat she'd slipped into, Elytra's unsteady voice informing them that she'd ended the broadcast, and Nevara saying that she wasn't picking up anything else on her sensors.
Now the six of them were in the medbay, Rhea finishing checkups on them all after their unexpectedly extended encounter, her concern understandable given the everything of everything over the past month.
"We're definitely going to need to find some way to boost the psychic dampening within the Storlayacas," she said as she leaned against the bed she had Elytra sitting on the edge of, "I don't know if it's the fact that they were a higher Threat Level, or if it was because there were multiple of them, but those Epsilon Leviathan were psychically loud. Bad enough for the rest of us, but it did a number on these two."
It took V'tala a moment to realize that Rhea was pointing at her as well as Elytra, the other woman in question pale and trembling where she sat, through she looked more annoyed than terrified, her hood pulled back and helmet off while still in her Augury outfit.
"It feels like there's something wrong with my nervous system," Elytra grit out, "Like I've been wired up to some kind of electric current. I can't seem to stop shaking."
V'tala glanced down at her own hands, and they were twitching uncontrollably as well. She'd been so occupied with recalling every tactic the Leviathan had used against them, in order to be better prepared the next time those monsters crossed their path, that she hadn't realized she'd been shaking this badly, as she'd just sat on the bed Rhea had directed her to so the woman go do her scans.
Letting out a thoughtful hum, V'tala said, "This doesn't feel like fear. It doesn't feel like this is caused by an emotion at all."
"Usgaisjans and koleopterans have psionic capabilities, and the Leviathan seem to be able to target that," Rhea explained, crossing her arms as she shrugged, "I don't know if it's deliberate or a byproduct of how their own psionic systems are built - believe it or not, there hasn't been a lot of research in the field of Leviathan biology - but Elytra's right, your own psionic systems have been fried."
"I'll see what I can do to boost dampening," Malakh said, shooting the seated pair of them an apologetic look as she turned to leave the medbay, "Trapped as we are in this Leviathan heavy corner of the galaxy, I don't want either of you to be affected worse than you already have been."
And with a parting nod, she was out the door.
"Our shifts are to be adjusted in light of this," Pryseia said as she turned to Rhea, "What will be necessary for these two to recover?"
"A nap wouldn't hurt, as well as a psionic cleanse," Rhea said, holding up a hand to stop Pryseia before she could ask her question, "I'm oversimplifying it, but it's basically them getting blasted with a wavelength of energy in order to realign their psionic systems. It's something their races and the zymeth all developed independently well before any of their races made it out to space. Think of it as physical therapy, but for psychics. A couple hours and you two will be right as rain."
Elytra returned the smile Rhea gave her, saying, "It's been a while since I've had a cleanse. Well, I mean a while even before I was abducted and everything. So I think I'm due."
"Likewise," V'tala added, "It was another facet of my well being that was neglected while I was in and out of stasis."
"We're definitely going to rectify that, then," Rhea said as she kicked off from the bed so she could face them both, "Get changed, grab something to eat, then head back here. I'll have things set up by the time you're done."
"Splendid," Pryseia said, her relief evident, "Rhea, would you also be able to monitor for further signs of Leviathan? I'd like to wrangle the remains of the ones we dealt with before they drift further afield, and will require Nevara's assistance for that."
"You got it," Rhea replied with a lazy salute, "Luckily those fuckers don't rot in space, because I'd hate to have their corpses chumming the proverbial waters."
"Especially when the whole reason we're here is to harvest them," Nevara said as she moved to leave, "I'd hate to have nothing to show for our ordeals."
Pryseia turned to V'tala and Elytra as she said, "Rest, recover, for until we're restored the ability to flee, we'll doubtlessly need to face the Leviathan sooner than we would like. I've no doubt in Malakh's abilities, and that it will only be a matter of time before she strengthens the psionic shielding needed to face these things without such ill effects, but I'd like the both of you returned to health in the interim, in the event the Leviathan return before Malakh finishes her work."
V'tala just nodded while Elytra said, "Here's hoping they don't. Vibrating like this sucks!"
Elytra was already in the mess hall by the time V'tala arrived, stirring a dish of something that smelled enticing enough for V'tala's stomach to audibly growl at the thought of getting to taste it.
"Could you grab some bowls?" Elytra asked when V'tala walked up to her, "This is just about done."
She'd lifted her hand to point at one of the cupboards and accidentally knocked a container of some type of herb off the counter instead. The both of them reached down to grab at it, but the container stopped in midair well before it hit the ground, with all the stillness as if it were nothing more than a movie clip that had been paused.
"Good thing you're telekinetic!" Elytra breathed as she leaned back, and with her hand still extended, V'tala willed the container into her palm.
Turning it over, feeling the weight of it, V'tala said, "I haven't been. The dlegh is a reversal of that ability, more or less. While bound, this was lost to me."
Fury bloomed across Elytra's expression, not directed at her, but at something - someone - that had died long, long ago. Huffing out a sigh, she told V'tala, "Then I'm glad you got it back."
V'tala opened her hand, and willed the container to rise. After decades of atrophy, lifting the small bottle was more of a strain than it should have been, though she had a feeling that her rattled system after the Leviathan fight was a contributing factor as well. Nevertheless, she managed to place the bottle back on the counter with nothing but her will, and pushed it further from the edge for good measure.
"I will need to exercise that ability." She said simply, picking up the bowls with her hands. She didn't relish the thought of cleaning the mess should she fumble them telekinetically.
The meal, a hearty koleopteran stew, would not last long between the two of them as they quietly ploughed through it. V'tala had, in the company of other dregil, always ate in silence, but there had always been an undercurrent of isolation to it. To speak was to disobey, and so they were forbidden from doing so at every turn. But this silence with Elytra felt entirely different. Comfortable, even. Like shattering it wouldn't matter.
Eager to test this theory, V'tala said, "Thank you for this. It's delicious."
Elytra beamed in return, saying, "It's my older sister's recipe. She'd make this whenever any of us were feeling under the weather."
"I can see why." V'tala nodded, taking another spoonful, and Elytra followed suit, a gentle silence falling over them once again.
It was nice. Simple. Something the creators of the dregil caste had clearly taken for granted.
Now that she was surrounded by people who actually treated her like a person, V'tala wouldn't be doing the same.
Once, when Malakh was young enough to still have both parents alive, the threat of the Thalatte a distant storm cloud beyond the horizon, they'd taken her to a museum. She'd been too young to really appreciate the art on display, barely old enough to understand the beauty of what she was seeing, but one memory stood out from that trip. A sculpture - a replica of a piece tucked safely away in a vault back on the Deorviran homeworld of Zoion - a towering piece of green veined marble depicting an woman with her hand reaching forward beseechingly. The original had apparently stood at the base of a lighthouse in antiquity, a plea for sailors to return home safely made manifest, but Malakh wouldn't learn that until years later, when the memory had her researching what she'd been too young to understand.
The sensation of being in the presence of something so massive that it seemed to have a life of its own was a feeling that had stuck with her, though it wasn't a sensation she would feel again until she stood before the unresponsive Zaanlaa so many years ago, and then with each subsequent Storlayacas they found thereafter. Each of them had an undeniable presence that commanded the attention of anyone they shared a space with, but it was the same passive awe of sharing a space with a monumental work of art.
The sensation she felt now, sat in Castore's open cockpit with a portable workstation on her lap? That was something's undivided attention focused squarely on her.
It was eerily similar to what it felt like to be caught under the gaze of those two white suns in wherever they'd gone to undo the damage done to Pryseia and V'tala, but different at the same time. Hackles raised, Malakh quietly asked, "Castore?"
A foreign sense of relief washed over her, like someone who had been frantically calling her name finally managed to catch her attention. That was not the passive presence of the Storlayacas she had come to expect. This was something new.
"You're actually listening to me, aren't you?" She asked, and she felt a wave of confirmation wash over her.
For a moment, Malakh was too overwhelmed to know what to do. It wasn't proper speech, but Castore was communicating with her. Beyond the compulsion that had taken them all, the Storlayacas hadn't shown any signs of being anything more than machines. As with all Hyttan tech, they'd been inscrutable in almost every regard, but they'd behaved the same as any Odazaen she'd encountered.
And now it was speaking to her.
"Is this something new, or something you could always do?" She said aloud, hands gripping the armrests of her seat.
She felt Castore pause, like a lull between gusts of wind. Something like a memory washed over her a moment later - sunrise, flowers turning toward the light, birds calling out their morning song.
"You woke up?" Malakh guessed, and she felt something like a sigh of confirmation surround her.
She let out a shaky breath at that, leaning back in her seat as she breathed, "Holy shit…"
This was met with a burble of amusement.
Frantic energy filled her at that, and she stood up, still clutching her workstation as she paced a short path across the open hatch of the cockpit. "Okay okay okay, this changes things. This changes a lot."
She felt a slow rolling fog of patience billow from Castore, like it was waiting for her to get her act together so they could get down to business. And that had her even more wired than before. Her mind racing, Malakh didn't think she could function without being sedated.
And that's when she realized she could be. Kind of.
"If I'm in you, plugged in like I'm going to pilot you, would that make communication easier?"
Another pause, shorter this time, followed by an excitement that lit her up from the inside. Not wasting any more time, she practically threw herself into the pilot's seat, carefully placing her workstation down as the hatch shut, and the restraints and control apparatus settled across her.
And a moment later, she was gone.
It wasn't like piloting Castore, and not quite like the dreamscape where she'd encountered Sarar or those twin white suns, but the place that Malakh found herself pulled to now was definitely somewhere else.
She had no form in this space, just thought. Just sensation. Colours swirled around her, and it took her a moment to realize that they were thoughts.
Her own? Castore's? In this place, she didn't think there was a distinction.
A gentle urging of welcome swirled around her. Curiosity. The question of what had brought her to Castore's cockpit in the first place.
She let her memories flow though her - the fight with their first Leviathan, Pryseia and Elytra rattled from the loathsome presence of that horror from the depths of space. Her own efforts to dampen this psychic onslaught, and the success of that. Finally the most recent fight with four Leviathan at once, stronger ones, and the uncertainty on whether it was the quantity or quality of these four that had overwhelmed the dampeners to the point where V'tala and Elytra had been left quivering messes.
As the image of the pair of them sitting and shaking in the medbay faded from her mind, Malakh felt something thoughtful take its place. A sense of a question bloomed, no words, but the sentiment was clear: why didn't they just ignore it?
Incredulity flashed through Malakh like lightning. Ignore it? She may as well ignore a tidal wave surging up to swallow her, or the tornado set to tear her apart. The Leviathan may as well be forces of nature with how ineffectual anything beyond excessive artillery seemed to be against them.
Alarm, then. Disbelief. What do you mean you can't? Like a gentle hand carding through her mane, Malakh felt something brush through her mind, before it suddenly recoiled in horror.
Grief. Sympathy. Castore had found something. Or rather, it hadn't. Something was missing from her, something vital, something that had been present within all living things at one point in time. Vertigo gripped her then as she fell down a well of memories. Not hers. Not Castore's. The collective genetic memory of every living thing that had contributed to her DNA.
She was awash in sensation, images and shapes flying past too quickly to see the details of, but she had a sense of flying backwards, of being rewound. Down and down the line of her ancestors, reducing in complexity until she felt herself thrown back to the dawn of her species.
Simple. Primitive. Barely more than tadpoles in a pond. Nothing even remotely similar to what they would one day evolve to be, generations and eons down the line.
Something dark moved across the face of her world. Like the shadow from some great hand, a presence fell across primordial Zoion, and from every living thing that would ever spring from that world, it plucked something out.
Rage. Despair. Understanding. This was why warnings were left unheeded, why instructions left unread. They couldn't be understood.
In her mind's eye, Malakh could see it - a gap, a chasm, wider than the galaxy itself. On one side stood everything that had come before this shadow, and on the other stood everything that had come after. Too wide to bridge, the past and future could only shout to one another, but distance made it all but impossible to hear.
It was a sorrow deep enough to drown her.
The tide was lapping at her knees, but Malakh pushed through the surf. She could swim. She refused to drown. After everything she'd endured to get to this point in her life, she wasn't about to give up now. They couldn't communicate directly? Fine. They'd find another way. After all, wasn't that what this space was?
Another pause. A realization. It was. Imperfect, obtuse, lacking in the detail that either of them would like to convey, but it was a form of communication none the lest. Making due. And they would have to make due, because they had a job to do.
The shadow of that great hand was inching closer to the horizon.
Malakh could feel Castore drifting, uncertainty gripping it, and so she once again pictured V'tala and Elytra sitting wrecked in the medbay, Rhea saying how being in the presence of the Leviathan had psychically wounded them, and a repetition of Malakh's efforts to dampen that damage. All of that followed by a question: can you help?
Nothing alive in this day and age could ignore the Leviathan. Something had been stolen from them, an eye left lidless. With nothing to shield it from the hate of that shadow, they would burn. They would have to provide shade.
Resolution swept past Malakh, but it was gilded in sorrow. Castore had so much to say, so much to share, but this method was inadequate, costly. Something like exhaustion was nipping at its heels already, even after so brief an encounter. Screaming across the gap that had been forced between them, its throat was torn bloody from how loud it had been forced to shout. This was not something that they could do often, because there was no telling how damaging it would be, to either of them.
It wasn't grief that filled Malakh at that revelation, but it was close enough. The loss of something she never even knew had been taken from her. But determination filled her as well. Even if they couldn't speak, they could still be there for one another, and that wasn't nothing. Whatever that shadow was, it hadn't taken everything from them.
Something as deep and bittersweet as the ocean cradled Malakh then, and she felt the gentle riptide of it pull her back to shore. She caught a glimpse of a lighthouse as she passed through whatever this space was, and at its base was a marble statue veined in green, its hand raised not in welcome, but to halt something that threatened to come to shore.
It would not allow the darkness to swallow them again.
As the restraints and control apparatus pulled away, Castore's cockpit swinging wide, Malakh felt herself struck by a wave of exhaustion so potent that it nearly had her blacking out.
She pushed herself out of the seat, managed a single step forward, but her knee collapsed under her own weight, and it was all she could do to brace herself against the ground so she didn't smash her face into the hatch she fell towards.
She tried to call out, activate the comms, but her voice died in her throat. She was unconscious before she could try again, fully collapsing onto the open hatch of Castore, and that was how Pryseia and Nevara found her almost an hour later.