#you see them chipping at the foot of the cliffs and it irritates you

[nellygwyn]

At first, I thought I might talk about fossils with Henry Hoste Henley, lord of Colway Manor and Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis. He lived in a large house, set back at the end of an avenue of trees on the outskirts of Lyme, about a mile from Morley Cottage. Lord Henley had a large extended family. Apart from his wife and many children, there were also Henleys in Chard, several miles inland, and Colway Manor brimmed with guests. We were occasionally invited too, to a dinner, to their Christmas ball, to watch the start of the hunt where Lord Henley handed out port and whiskey before the hunters rode out. The Henleys were the closest to gentry that Lyme had, but Lord Henley still had mud on his boots and dirt under his nails. He had a collection of fossils, too. And when he found out I was interested, he sat me to his side at dinner so that we could talk about them. Thrilled at first, I discovered that Lord Henley knew nothing about fossils, other than that they were collectable and made him appear worldly and intelligent. He was the kind of man who led with his feet, rather than his head.

I tried to draw him out by asking what he thought an ammonite was. Lord Henley chuckled and sucked in a great slug of wine.

'Has no one told you, Miss Philpot? They are worms!'

He banged his glass onto the table, a signal for a servant to refill it. I considered his reply.

'Why, then, are they always coiled? I have never seen a live worm take such a shape, or a snake, which some suggest is what they are.'

Lord Henley shuffled his feet under his chair.

'I expect you haven't seen many people lying on their back with their hands crossed on their chest, have you now, Miss Philpot? Yet, that is how we bury them. The worms are coiled in death.'

I held back a snort, for I had a vision of worms gathered around to roll one of their dead into a coil, as we prepare our own in death. It was clearly a ridiculous idea and yet, Lord Henley did not think to question it. I did not probe further however, for down the table, Margaret was shaking her head at me, and the man sitting across from me had raised his eyebrows at our indelicate talk.

Now I know that ammonites were sea creatures, rather like our modern nautilus, with protective shells and squid-like tentacles. I wish I could have told Lord Henley so at that dinner, with his assured talk of coiled worms, but at that time, I had neither the knowledge nor the confidence to correct him.

Later, when he showed me his collection, Lord Henley revealed more ignorance, not being able to distinguish one ammonite from another. When I pointed out one marked with straight, even suture lines crossing its spiral, while on another, each line had two knobs picking out the spiral shape, he patted my hand.

'What a clever little lady you are!' he said, shaking his head at the same time and undercutting the compliment. I sensed then that he and I would not puzzle over fossils together.

~ Remarkable Creatures // Tracy Chevalier

[capricornus-rex]

The Haunt of Redemption (8)

Sequel to: A Path I Can’t Follow

Chapter 8: Same Link, Different Mettle | Cal Kestis x Reader

Summary: It has been months since your last encounter with Cal, at that time he was a fledgling Inquisitor. In an ironic twist of fate, you cross paths and blades with him once again, and he’s keen on turning you into an Inquisitor as well—unless you bring him back to the light first.

Tags: Dark Side! Cal Kestis, Inquisitor! Cal Kestis, Redemption Arc! Cal Kestis

Also posted in AO3

Chapters: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 | Previous: Chapter 7 | Next: Chapter 9 | Masterlist

8 of ?

Alyon greeted you with black cliffs topped with green patches of grass that rose to the skies, seafoam that’s whiter than bone striped the deep blue seas, and golden patches of sand mingled with the lush green jungles resting at the foot of the mountains.

The Mantis found a nice spot to land on—by the mesa that overlooks the seaside town not bigger than the one in Hoga.

“This place is mesmerizing, [y/n],” Merrin commented.

“It’s not every day we get to beautiful places in the galaxy without the Empire chasing us,” Cere added.

“Yeah, well, hopefully this time—they won���t,” you abruptly stood up from the seat. “I’m gonna take a look around,”

You darted towards the room and got dressed, donning Cal’s Bracca scrapper poncho for the first time. With the Holocron gone, it felt like a load has been lifted from your shoulders—literally and figuratively—as you wore the straps of your bag. BD-1 hopped onto your shoulder as you leave the room.

“I don’t have to tell you again, [y/n],”

“Yes, Cere, I know. Don’t die. Or was it be careful?”

“Both, actually.”

“Gotcha,” she smiled.

It’s a perpetual question in Cere’s mind how you’re able to smile in the midst of all this predicament. Perhaps, it was an indication of your strength. After all that torment you’ve endured in Cal’s absence, you weren’t just back to normal—you’ve changed but for the better.

Compared to your pit stop earlier, trekking through the terrain was a breeze. The sight of the ocean lifted your spirits, the blades of grass tickled your calves, and the sun mildly shone above your head. Along the way, you frolicked in the wild plains—spinning and sprinting around with a child-like innocence—the flaps of your poncho felt like wings as the untamed winds blew to your direction.

There was no sign of the Empire in that seaside town, diverse peoples inhabit the settlement. Yet, the population seemed sparse for a sizable settlement. Your arrival was met with curious stares and vendors’ hollers. There’s no team of armed men marching to your general direction for the welcome wagon—nevertheless, you remained vigilant.

“Stay close, BD,” you muttered.

You approached a fruit stall and browsed; an animal penned inside a stable right next to the stall bleated to get your attention. Ever the curious friend, BD-1 perched onto the fence post and scanned the animal that was chewing on a stalk of hay.

“I knew you’d take a scan of it!” you teased.

BD-1 chirped, you translated it to him saying the animal’s name.

“That, my dear, is a Dimal,”

The fruit stall owner pointed at the tall, woolly animal, its jowls flopped and its rounded upright ears twitched with every chew of the hay stalk. You treated it to a Meiloorun fruit. You brought it close to the Dimal’s mouth, sniffing it first before gobbling it up in its mouth.

“You’re welcome,” you chuckled.

Even with its mouth full, it replied with a muffled grunt and continued gnawing on the large fruit in its seemingly narrow mouth.

“Haven’t seen you in these parts,” the same shop owner blurted, his native dialect was thick.

“I’m a traveler, I just got here,”

After shopping, you headed back to the ship, the old man was kind enough to slip in a few extra berries for the road. You expressed your thanks and went around the town some more—and there was a lively sound coming from up ahead.

Music.

“Do you hear that, BD?”

“Booo!”

“Come on, let’s go take a look,”

You followed the music, colorful notes emitted from the various instruments. A group of dancers performed in perfect synchronization in the middle of the square, their footwork followed the speed of the fifes, the bystanders that circled them clapped to the beat of the drum, and for the finale they cheered once the abrupt strum of all strings of the lute signals the climax of the song.

The dance concluded by a round of applause from the crowd, which you’ve included yourself, you try not to stand out so you immediately vanished from the scene—though it was such a nice sight. You can’t remember the last time you’ve seen a street performance or festival.

—–

Three days of refuge in Alyon.

For once, things are seeming fine. But you know perfectly well this wouldn’t last, you’re still gripped with the anticipation of the Inquisitor’s arrival now that you’ve engaged with them—Cal, in particular.

You decided to tell your encounter with Cal through the Force with Cere, and you made sure you speak to her about it in great confidence.

“Cere, something strange happened on the day we left Tatooine and headed to Alyon,”

“And what’s that?”

You don’t even know where to begin explaining it.

“Well, it’s… how do I put it? I sort of saw Cal, here in the ship,”

“You mean, in meditation?”

You shake your head, “I wasn’t even meditating! I was doing something on the workbench and then I heard a voice call me, there was like a feeling that I can’t explain. At first, when I turned around there was nothing, so I thought I was just hearing things; but the second time around, I… I find Cal standing inside my bedroom!”

Cere’s head angled to the side, something about her expression alarmed you the same way you alarmed her with your story.

“Could it be…?” she muttered under your breath, though it was still within your earshot.

“Cere, what is it?”

Cere gradually stood up from the couch, “Hold on, I think I have something!”

She retreated to her own quarters where she rummaged through her rucksack. Shortly after, she reappears with a tome with a maroon leather cover, the metal accents along the corners and spines have tarnished, and the edges of the yellowed papers have chipped away due to age. She flipped through the pages looking for one specific section.

“Cordova learned about this phenomenon with the Force many years ago, while I was still his Padawan. Whatever he could find that pertains to it—he wrote it down, drew figures and diagrams, and added his own insights of his research!”

“What’s it called?”

“It’s a Force-Link. Look here,” she scooted closer beside you, pointing at the written paragraph on the page, her finger following the words as she read it out loud. “It’s said a phenomenon when the Force connects two Force-sensitive individuals, regardless of the distance in between, who have forged a dyad.”

In her excitement, Cere beat you to it—though, it felt like she sensed you’d ask about the last word in the paragraph—and flipped over the pages in search of the entry about Force dyads.

“Here,” she pointed at the first paragraph written underneath the header word, and read out loud word-for-word. “A connection that is forged with the Force between two Force-sensitive individuals.”

Cere skipped the longer metaphors and the personal diary entries that Cordova has written. More pages unraveled its mysteries and the woman impulsively read out loud—mostly for her own indulgence.

“Those who are out of the dyad could not see, feel, or hear the other side of the occurrence,”

This explains why the crew couldn’t hear Cal’s voice as you spoke to him during the first Force-Link encounter. Unfortunately, the explanation about manipulating it to either wielder’s whim—such as when will the connection start and when it’ll be severed—appear to be vague.

“Do Force dyads and Force-Links really seldom happen?”

“Yes, it’s quite rare. When I was a Padawan, I never met another Jedi who shared a dyad with another. But now, coming from you, I truly think Cordova was onto something back then. The bond you’ve shared with Cal factored the Force in allowing you to communicate.”

“I wonder if it’s another sign that he can be turned back to the light,” you thought out loud.

Apart from skimming Cordova’s manifests, strolling along the shoreline in barefoot, skimming rocks, seashells, and coral fragments that beached along the sand became a new pastime for you.

You enjoyed this new breed of solitude, but you’re still haunted by that mirage encounter of Cal back inside the Mantis. You find yourself secretly hoping that it would happen again.

On the other side of the galaxy, Cal has been poring page after page for any result about your Force-induced encounter. There were few resources found in his chambers in the command ship, there weren’t any valuable information found in the holotable’s databank either. The whole ordeal irritated him.

“How is it possible not a single manuscript was written about this!?” Cal roared, his mask did little in muffling out the sound, he punched the rim of the holotable in fury.

The last thing he thought of was retracing his steps, but the problem is: where does he even begin?

After all, it only happened abruptly and he had no control over it, because it felt like it came to him naturally. Cal theorized that it might be your own doing, but in reality, it wasn’t. He immediately dismissed that theory and went back to pinning down the Force as the primary culprit—frankly, it was the only logical culprit.

“Deep breaths,” he chanted to himself, doing exactly what he tells himself as he paced back and forth inside his room.

In the most uncanny of timings, that very same sensation returned to him—as if someone tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention—he abruptly turned around, he was surprised to see you standing inside the chambers with him.

“You’re quite elusive,” he initiated.

Your reaction to his appearance was understandable, your shoulders flinched while gaping at him. This is also the first time you saw him wearing a mask which muffled his voice, yet still coherent. Although the first time was docile, you can’t always count on him to be the same in the next.

You didn’t reply. You secretly fiddled the small seashell you’ve hid inside your fist while you conversed.

“I still don’t understand how and why this is happening to us. Can they see me?” he added.

“I don’t know…”

There was a stale air looming between you and the Eleventh Brother; the crashing waves of the sea and the machine hum spoke on each other’s behalf. You pursed your lips and your fist clenched tighter, the thin edge of the seashell dug into the flesh of your palm.

“You seem confident. Confident that I’ll never find you after you fled Cameegon like a coward.”

“I’m no coward! I’m not the one who gave in so easily!” you snarled.

“I take it that you’re not coming in quietly,” when he got the silent treatment from you, he continued. “Alright, then you’ll have to watch another innocent town be reduced into rubble like Cameegon. You wouldn’t want, would you? That’ll be a lot of blood in your hands.”

The Inquisitor noticed you flinch and he took pride in provoking you. He takes one step forward and you ignite your saber, having him at swordpoint.

“Ooh, feisty aren’t we?”

“You’ll never find me,” you hissed softly, although it was still within Cal’s earshot. “You’ll never turn me into what you’ve become!”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. We always find our way to each other, don’t we?”

He spoke the exact same words from his secret projection, a line that you knew too well and caught you off guard; a great thunderclap coming from the horizon startled you—the saber fumbled in your hand and the seashell fell from the other—and he disappeared from where he stood when you looked again.

The same went for the Eleventh Brother. The vibrant apricot seashell clattered on the polished black floor of his chambers. He took the delicate object into his hand and examined it. You unintentionally have given him a clue.

The boy Inquisitor rushed to the command ship’s bridge as fast as he can. His entrance alerted the attending officers; he approached the admiral and held up the shell to his face.

“I want this scanned. Trace its origin planet.”

The officer didn’t have the luxury to ask why and simply obeyed. The admiral took the shell from the young man’s hands and handed it over to one of the computer operators. In less than two minutes, the operator returned the shell along with a small datapad containing the findings.

“Sir, analysis traces it back to Alyon, a tropical planet in the Enca Sector, Ganiv System—it’s in the Outer Rim,” the admiral reported.

“Transmit the coordinates to my ship. Two TIE Fighters and an escort shuttle will come with me.”

“Right away, sir!”

The Eleventh Brother leaves the bridge on the way to the hangar.

“I have you now, [y/n].”

A storm was brewing that evening in Alyon. The thunderclouds have loomed closer to the shore in a dramatic speed. The winds have already picked up, the rain flew in like tiny knives pricking your skin, and the downpour caused the tide to rise earlier than usual. You hurried to getting on higher ground before the water has fully covered the shore.

You pushed through the raging winds, sheltering BD under the flap of your poncho. You blamed yourself for strolling farther from the ship, nightfall has reached you as a consequence, additionally, the town wasn’t any nearer either so it’s not an option.

“No…!” you gasped when the sky had gotten much darker, it doesn’t help with the storm joining in the problem.

The surroundings were all gray and visibility has dropped to zero. You barely see anything in this smokescreen of hail and fog. BD-1’s lights paled in the darkness. You stamped through the damp fields, the harsh winds swayed you farther with every step, but you fought it.

“Almost there, BD-1, hold on!”

Neither you nor BD-1 are safe, not until you’ve set foot into the Mantis. The growing sound of the TIE Fighters’ engine growls signaled their approach and a TIE Interceptor landed at a close distance from you. The hatch opened and out comes Cal, the Eleventh Brother. He stood upright in the midst of the storm, the bright red beam of his lightsaber lit up in the deep grayness.

You’re not going down without a fight.

Cal darted the air towards you, lightsaber at the ready, he found your block weak—it seems the storm has taken its toll on your body. However, he gave credit where it’s due—he admired your fighting spirit. You remained more on the defensive for the greater portion of the fight. The lightning afforded you short bursts of light to see your opponent better—rather, his next attack position.

“There! I see them!” Cere cried, peering through her binoculars and spotting two streaks of light dancing in the fog.

A TIE Fighter sends twin projectiles flying towards the Mantis, barely missing the dorsal fin of the ship but close enough to give it a rumble. Greez started the engine in a panic, Cere ordered him to stay low so they can still pick you up; although, that plan didn’t go so well.

The bitter cold of the wind disoriented you, the angry waves muted the hisses of lightsabers colliding with each other, your head was swirling, the veins on your temple throbbed, and your body had a battle of its own from within. Your lungs struggled as it sucked in cold air, fog wafted through your teeth as you dueled Cal.

The Eleventh Brother watched you charge towards him, ready for a dashed strike, and he prepared himself to time it just right.

Close enough!

You feel your entire body freezing up again, as if an icy gust blew throughout your entire being. The last thing you remember is a hearing a thunderclap mingle with the crash of the ocean, a flash of lightning glowed brightly in your puffy, heavy eyes and then suddenly darkness.

The Eleventh Brother caught you in his arms, carrying you bridal-style, and marched to the escort shuttle that he ordered to be included in his convoy.

“NO!!” Cere cried, a crack of lightning flashed as she witnessed him carry your unconscious body.

Your eyelids blinked the dancing lights away until your eyesight has adjusted to the brightness of the room. You gasped upon waking up, you weren’t sure how long you’ve been, but it felt like a long time. Your arms and legs had limited movement, later discovering that you’re strapped into an interrogation machine. Your heartbeat sped up tenfold, you surveyed across the room starting from the ceiling and then the middle part until you found a Stormtrooper standing beside silhouette across the room.

“Good, you’re awake,” the silhouette spoke, arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Do you have any other orders, Eleventh Brother?”

“No, I’ll handle this myself. Leave us and wait for my orders,”

“Yes, Eleventh Brother.”

The Stormtrooper departs, leaving you and the Inquisitor in full privacy.

The red glowing accents of his mask lit up in the shadows, he blended perfect well in the darkness. You don’t know what to say back first, frankly, you don’t know what’s happening and how it came to this.

“Is that what they call you now: Eleventh Brother?”

Your snarky question got no reply from him. He removed his mask and placed it on the nearby podium. With that accessory gone, he massaged his jaw and craned his neck until you heard some bones popping.

“Yeah well, you can still call me Cal,” His roguish grin played along his face.

“Where are Cere and the others?”

“No idea,”

“You lie!”

“I never lie—especially to you,” he calmly said.

The young Inquisitor stepped into the light, revealing himself to you once more. There were a few inches dividing you from him. The white light shone over his hair, revealing the faint redness of his hair past the darker tints. You find that there was no terminal like the one in Nur; it was only him and you strapped into the contraption. Surely, this confused you, at the same time it relieved you that you’re spared of the electrifying torment—for now. No wonder the Stormtrooper was suggesting a better chamber.

“Where am I?”

“In an escort shuttle, en route to Koboth,”

“What is it that you really want, Cal?”

He clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes to the side, and then grinned as he spoke.

“Oh, I think you and I both know that already.”

For every word he said, he took one step closer, “I want the Holocron.”

You smirked, even chuckled, in retaliation. You teased him, inching your face closer just so he’ll hear better.

“I don’t have it.”

The small yet sadistic smile that painted his face melted away. Part of him doesn’t want to believe you, and the other does. With your natural talent for theatrics, it’s hard to decipher you—even for him.

Your smug face and arrogant sniggering was beginning to bother him. So much so that he was starting to think you’re not playing around.

“You’re wasting your time and energy, you know,”

“Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” he sighed. He starts to remove his glove.

Preemptively, you know what he’s about to do to you. Your heart pounded in the wildest pace; suddenly, his Force-ability that once fascinated you, now terrifies you. Cal ignored your desperate scrambling in the contraption, but it somewhat satisfied him.

“That’s my poncho,” he cooed and an evil smirked curled at the corner of his lip.

He reached for you, avoiding his touch is futile. His bare hand is now at a fingertip’s reach from the fabric, sinking away into the contraption wasn’t much help for you either. His grip clutched a portion in the middle—your shirt underneath it was caught in his hold as well—and sharp pangs of light jabbed his vision, a hollow rippling warm drummed in his ears.

“Good night, Cal…”

Your memories have ingrained into every thread, a vision plays out in his mind: he sees you snuggling up to the poncho in bed, keeping it close to your face as you slept, the nightly sobbing rung in his ears, and the warmth that the poncho gave you during cold, sleepless nights wrapped over his shoulders.

“This isn’t who you are!”

“All this time… and we never even got a look.”

That sudden shift of emotions startled him, but he kept his grip—physically and mentally. The Inquisitor wanted to extract as much as he can to exploit you. To him, it was a game; for you, it was a mental war. He witnessed your recent memories—he now knows that you opened the Holocron and took a glance of the contents, he heard the festival music from the town in Alyon, and then he saw the waves tugging away from the shoreline.

“You saw what’s inside the Holocron!” he exclaimed. He pushed further into you using his Psychometry. “What did you do with it?”

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!”

The boy Inquisitor was surprised to find that you’re able to fight him off—at least, his grip on your mind. When his influence is now absent in your body, your head hung low as you gasp for breath and fight off the throbbing pain in your head. His mischievous grin stretched from ear-to-ear.

“Interesting…”

He nestled your chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting you upwards so you face him, your head bobbed slightly as you’re weakened by the infliction of his Psychometry. He inched closer to your face, the tips of your noses touched.

“My darling, you never cease to amaze me.” He teased you, the bottom of his lip softly brushed across yours while keeping an open grin, his stubble scratched your chin. Your indifferent expression met his roguish smirk as he pulled back inches away from you. A sadistic snicker hummed from his throat and he gently releases his hold on your face before leaving you in your cell.

[buffster]

The Yoko Factor (BTVS 4.20)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

All I remembered about the Scooby fight was that it happened. I had forgotten how, and I actually do think it makes more sense now. It wasn’t about their friendship, it was about attacking each of their insecurities and making them feel that everyone else in the group had noticed them too. This was possible because the friendship has been so fractured that no one feels supported or even seen. They have no reason not to think they’re being judged. 

Unfortunately, the resolution to all this never really comes around. There is a ton of good stuff here--Buffy’s increased reliance on herself, Willow’s moving away from her computer skills and into witchcraft as a solution to everything, Xander not feeling respected and seeing Anya as an extension of that, Giles losing his sense of leadership and importance--but we never really get an acknowledgement of any of that until much later. And the real problem that Spike landed on--that the Scoobies aren’t paying a bit of attention to one another--gets a quick patch over but continues to be a problem. Yes, Buffy isn’t judging Willow, but is that a good thing or just a symptom of her ignoring her entirely?  

Spike is the one who comes up with this plan to incite drama, which I do feel makes sense for his character. He’s insightful and incredibly good at stuff like this. It’s also fun to see his perspective on Buffy and how fascinated/afraid of her he is. He keeps insisting to Adam that he needs to consider her a bigger threat. You can sense the admiration beneath the irritation. 

Adam: You feel smothered. Trapped like an animal, pure in its ferocity, unable to actualize the urges within… Clinging to one truth like a flame struggling to burn within an enclosed glass… That a beast this powerful cannot be contained. Inevitably it will break free and savage the land again… I will make you whole again. Make you savage.

This is the episode in which Forrest is killed. He claims his problem with Buffy is that Riley is willing to commit treason over her and turn against their “family”. I would have loved to see some more backstory on Forrest: either have him be an orphan who found his family through Riley and now he feels abandoned or have him have a romantic interest in him. Then you could even have had him join Adam willingly as a way to get his family back. 

Angel’s return also doesn’t fit into the story well. I covered over in Sanctuary why his coming here made no sense, and his drama with Riley was nothing but fan-baiting. It also felt like a bit of a step back for Angel’s character; he always seems less mature over on Buffy. On Angel he seems sad but resigned to the fact that he can’t have Buffy and she comes off as wanting more than he can give. But here he seems like a petty, jealous ex. I don’t see a scenario where he would like Riley, but beating him up, refusing to explain he’s not evil, and insinuating he might have slept with Buffy is ridiculous. The end scene where he says “I don’t like him” in a tone of resigned sadness makes more sense than everything before it.  

Buffy: Look, I… you weren't entirely wrong, what you said in L.A. We don't live in each other's worlds anymore. I can't just barge in on yours and make judgments.

Angel: I'm still sorry.

Buffy: Thank you.

Xander is the one who gives Riley the information on what turned Angel evil. Why does he have this habit of venting inappropriately when it comes to Buffy’s boyfriends (here, and when he tells Dawn Spike tried to rape Buffy)? In the script Xander decides to tell Riley even though it’s clear Buffy doesn’t want him to know, but in the episode it plays like Xander accidentally spilled the beans. 

As far as Buffy’s decision on this, I get it. It’s a bit easier for Willow, for example, to be totally honest with Tara about her past with Oz. She loved him, the wolf thing became a problem, he left. Angel will always hold power over Buffy and she will always have feelings for him, and basically the only reason they’re not together is because they can’t be. How do you tell a boyfriend that if your ex suddenly became human you’d be tempted to run right back into his arms? It’s unresolved and messy. 

Riley: I went a little nuts, you know? I mean, on the one hand, I should believe in us. But, on the other, sometimes things just happen between ex's and then I saw he was bad

Buffy: He wasn't bad.

Riley: Seriously? That's a "good" day? Well there you go. Even when he's good he's all Mr. Billowy Coat King of Pain and girls really-

After their talk they say I love you to each other and then Buffy has to tell him about Forrest. He abruptly leaves, and the cliff-hanger is that he goes to Adam.

Let’s get in to the Scooby drama. It’s clear Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles haven’t been paying much attention to each other lately, but you know who has been paying attention? Spike. 

Spike: Think you're neglecting the past tense there, Rupert. Besides, she barely listened when you were in charge. I've seen the way she treats you.

We’ve seen a few hints that Giles is insecure about losing his job as librarian and, more importantly, Watcher. He was fired way back in season three, but when Buffy belonged to the Council she continued to look to him for guidance and ignored the replacements. When she decided to drop the Council and stop taking orders she also stopped looking to him. She’s the leader now. 

Xander: This is so like them lately. It's all about them and the college life. You know what college is? It's high school without the actual going to class. Well, high school was sort of like that too but the point is, I'm the one working hard to earn a living and it's a huge joke to them.

Anya: They look down on you.

Xander: And they hate you…

Anya: But they don't look down on me.

Xander is struggling to find his footing post-high school, which we actually have seen hints of throughout. The ironic part is Buffy and Willow will be in the same place after college, but by then Xander is finding a place in construction and doing a bit better. Spike suggests they mentioned him going to the military, which was a strange choice. It would be fairly easy for them to shut down having ever said that if it came up. Spike only gets away with it because the fight is so chaotic. 

Willow: I am a whiz!

Tara: She is a whiz.

Willow’s insecurity is about her new relationship with Tara and her friend’s feelings about it. Spike slips up here; he says Xander said she was being trendy but Xander doesn’t even know about the relationship at this point. Spike points out something interesting here--Willow isn’t as focused on her computer skills lately. But that’s not something she or anyone else will be concerned about for awhile. 

Spike doesn’t say anything to Buffy, which makes sense because she’s sort of the center of this whole universe. Buffy has a lot of concerns, but her friends not liking or needing her isn’t one of them. The interesting thing about all this drama is that none of the friends care a bit about what the others are going through; they’re too focused on their own drama. Buffy and Willow don’t think about Xander’s employment issues, Buffy and Xander don’t think about Willow’s sexual preferences or her obsession with wicca, and Buffy, Xander, and Willow don’t think about Giles’ lack of employment in any real way.

Tensions escalate when they all convene at Giles’ house because everyone is overly sensitive (Buffy is totally lost). 

Giles: You never train with me anymore. Adam's gonna kick your ass.

Buffy: Giles?!

Giles: Sorry! Didn't mean to be so honest. Terribly sorry.

After seeing Forrest die, Buffy isn’t eager for anyone to come along with her. And that just further taps into their feelings of inadequacy. 

Xander: And if I did join the army I'd be great. You know why? Because maybe they'd give me a job that couldn't be done by any well-trained Border Collie.

Willow: Sure, you'd be wonderful in the army -- you think the umbilical cord between you and Anya would stretch that far?

Xander: I knew it. I knew you hated her.

Willow: Hey, I'm not the one being judgmental, here. I'll leave that territory to you and Buffy.

Buffy: Judgmental? If I was any more open minded about the choices you two make my whole brain would fall out.

Xander: Oh. And superior. Don't forget that. Just because you're better than us doesn't mean you can be all superior.

Buffy: Guys, stop this. What happened to you today?

Willow: It's not today. Buffy, everything's been wrong for a while. Don't you see that?

Buffy: Willow, what do you mean things have been wrong? Things don't have to be wrong, do they?

A major problem with the Scooby friendship is that Buffy is the leader--and she is both too distracted and too inclined to ignore emotional issues to lead effectively. Buffy is an avoidance type and so the entire group avoids talking or working through their feelings with each other. This is something Giles noticed in Once More With Feeling but it never gets fixed. The group is missing someone like Faith or Spike...someone who would be more willing to call out issues and bring them out in the open. Buffy hates that, but sometimes it’s necessary. Just look what happened to everyone in season six...

Character Notes:

The Initiative: They want Riley back. They (correctly) realize they can’t harm Buffy if they ever want to bring him back into the fold. When the relationship between them ends they do eventually lure him back, so good call there.

Spike: We learn he can’t even point a useless gun with the chip in his head. It appears to be activated by intent to harm rather than ability, which makes sense. He lists his past fun night outs as deflowering a virgin princess, killing a minister mid-sermon, and seeing the Sex Pistols in ‘76. 

Adam: His favorite Beatles song is ‘Helter Skelter’. 

[mitjo-deactivated]

Can you do one of scratch being a good (terrible?) wingman? Either way she trys her best and has fun and thats all that matters and its not about winning or loosing.

Another one down!!! Thank you for your prompt have some wingman Scratch!! Or… Scratch trying to be a wingman that is.

(I don’t know how wingmans work)

Mitch grumbles incessantly, picking at the cuts still fresh and open on his knuckles out of irritation alone. He’s not saying anything intelligible, however it all comes out quick and angry like some sort of death mantra.

Introducing Jonas to his garbage group may have been a bad idea after all.

Shame is not in Mitch’s vocabulary. He’d like to say he never half asses anything, instead, he whole asses everything. Complete mediocrity at one hundred percent and only ever doing the bare minimum. With this motto in his life he doesn’t care much for being “shameful” or whatever the fuck.

He knows his friends are fucking batshit, and just cause he’s a solid six foot tall menace doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about what his crush thinks about him.

The thought of Jonas slipping out of his grasp a second time is enough to break the skin off the knuckle he’s been scratching.

Right now their little makeshift mess of a group decided to crash a 7/11 and currently stocking up on snacks. He’s not one to get hungry but he’s just a little high off his ass and doritos are really sounding good right about now.

Jonas usually sticks by him, mostly because he’s only close to Mitch but another silent saying of “I like being around you” doesn’t go dismissed. However, one second he has his hopeless crush nearby and the second he’s disappeared from his sight. Mitch nearly knocked over the entire chip stand when he realized his little nerd wasn’t by his side and promptly smacked into several freezer doors trying to find him.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Javier deadpans, watching Mitch catching himself on a shelf so he doesn’t go scattering over the floor.

“Where the- where the fuck is Joey?” He asks, and Jesus, maybe he shouldn’t have had a beer with his last hit.

“He’s…. In the ice cream aisle? He’s been with Scratch for like three minutes now, how did you miss that?” Javier asks, concerned with his friends health. It isn’t fair that Javier is a more composed high, only getting chill while Mitch turns into a puddle of uncoordinated soup.

“Why the fuck… Is he with Scratch?”

“I dunno! Did you get your doritos yet or do I have to get them for you?”

Mitch wants to curse him out and demand he stop patronizing him but he’s way too high to know how to say the word “patronize” so he just shrugs and gives a nod. “Yah get… The blue bag.” He stumbles forward, trying to guide his high drunk ass into the ice cream aisle.

He finds them after what feels like an eternity later. Scratch is practically vibrating besides Jonas who snorts and laughs behind his hand, it’s a beautiful sight. Jonas that is, Mitch can give less of a shit about Scratch. He walks with purpose over to them when he hears wind of their conversation that makes warning alarms start going off in his head.

“So he jumps out the freaking window and he’s still holding the sandwich but it’s all fuckin’ drippy by now-”

“Isn’t he still naked?!”

“Yeah!!”

They break down into another round of laughter and the story is much too familiar that Mitch ends up walking faster. When they finally see Mitch coming over they exchange glances, grinning and trying to conceal their mischief.

“Hey,” Mitch says as if he’s not screaming on the inside, “This nutjob botherin’ you, Joey?”

Before Jonas can answer Scratch interrupts, “I was just telling him about the time you outran the cops using sand and half a sandwich.”

Ah yes, one of the many low points in his life. “And why are you telling him that old story you freak?” He asks through gritted teeth.

“Because it’s awesome!! Duh!” Scratch shouts like it’s obvious, rolling her eyes. She makes some kind of motion with her eyes, almost as if she’s trying to say ‘I’m trying to work something out here.’

Jonas snorts, “Yeah… Totally awesome.”

Despite not being a man of shame, Mitch feels every nerve in his body start to shake because, as much as he hates to admit, he’s only human and knowing his crush now knows a humiliating event in his life is kind of a low blow. “We gotta fuckin’ head out before they start houndin’ us,” he says as a last ditch effort to get the hell out of this place.

It works surprisingly. They all make their way out and the lanky teenager at the counter is stuttering nervously because they’re all leaving without paying but he doesn’t make a move to stop them so they keep going.

“… Did you really throw sand in a cop’s eyes?” Jonas asks while they’re walking back to the car and Mitch groans immediately.

He rubs at his eyes annoyed, “Um, yeah. I was off my fuckin’ rockers so it’s not like I was thinkin’ clearly.”

Jonas makes a “pfft” sound and he watches as he gazes up at him like he’s untouchable, “Look at you Mr. Baller. Throwing sand at cops and breaking windows with your bare fists.”

“Baller? The fucks that supposed to mean? It was a dumb last ditch effort to not get arrested… Again.” He shrugs like it’s nothing and Jonas only scoffs.

“You’re insane. In that situation I would just start crying and hope they’d go easy on me.”

“I slapped a foot long on a cop car.”

“That has to be some kind of strategy out there.”

They both dissolve into giggles, not knowing they’ve been standing outside the car the entire time with very little distance between them.

Javier looks exhausted while Cliff pretends not to see anything. Scratch stares at them through window, giving Mitch the smuggiest fucking look in the world. He doesn’t know what game she’s playing at but…

Maybe Jonas meeting his friends isn’t all that bad.

[phthalology]

Destiny: Formless and Form

“He poisoned himself?” Two times Eris and Toland needed to talk about the weapons they built together. Eris/Toland hurt/comfort, ~5k. 

   Every morning, she remembered Crota. The Hive were her second or third thought, and the first were all impressions: the cold coming in through her woven blanket, the yellow light and blue sky outside the Tower. Eris Morn did not want to move, but she heard a Ghost buzz around her, and turned over to press her face against the cot.

    “What?” she muttered.     “You’re needed in the City,” the Ghost said with concern.     “Why?”’     “Please. It is important. Please attend.”     Eris dragged her arm from underneath herself and rubbed at her bleary eyes while she reached her other hand toward the Ghost. She found it just as she sat up, her fingers fitting comfortably around the flanges. The Ghost buzzed slightly as she held it, in the same kind of mock affront she had seen cats perform. She swung her legs off the cot and held the Ghost to her chest, grounding herself with its buzzing for a moment before opening her eyes.     The Ghost was pale green, with a chipped flange, and her own Ghost was sitting on her low bedside table with its light lit.     “Ampilyne,” Eris whispered, and let go. The Ghost darted out of her hands almost as fast as she had moved her fingers. “Sorry. Sorry!”

    “Some people would have screamed,” said Toland’s Ghost.     “Then they would not have had as much composure as you,” Eris’ Ghost said to the other, then turned to Eris. “We should probably go. If one of your teammates calls, it’s important.”         If Toland calls, it’s probably a puzzle difficult to work out. As she stared at her Ghost in tired disbelief, though, she couldn’t help but feel that the small, glowing eye saw through her skepticism to her intrigue. Ampilyne hovered, making occasional nervous jumps. Toland had been with her team for long enough now that he felt like a part of it, if one who balanced his usefulness with the burdensome fact of his cryptic and irritable personality. She had spent a lot of time scoffing privately about him - about his words, about the strange machinery he carried, about the blind grace of his always-gloved hands.

  She raised an incredulous eyebrow at her Ghost.     “It is Ampilyne, though. You know how it is.” The Ghost did not sound certain. Although she would have had to hunt for years to find the reason for such a hunch, she was also almost certain it was gently mocking her.     Eris threw the blanket over her shoulder and went toe-to-nonexistent-toe with Ampilyne, who buzzed slightly away. As soon as she thought about holding Ampilyne she felt her cheeks heat up. Toland was known for recording his own frenzied studies, Eriana’s more measured research, and the team’s idle conversation. For what reason of pique or posterity, Eris did not know.         Maybe he had scried this.         Ampilyne said again, “You’re needed in the city.”     Eris shut her eyes, shook her head and wondered what Eriana would be working on right now, and what could possibly have gone wrong. Corrupted weapons? Thrall in the City? The fear was more familiar than Toland’s Ghost.     She shooed Ampilyne out the door and began to dress, trying to soothe her mind of the ever-present idea of Crota.

                                           ______________________

   Eriana was pacing in the book-crowded flat when Eris arrived, her guns and her Ghost hidden under her moss-green cloak. The energy of the Sun moved gently around her, stirred up but not aflame. Ampilyne had taken his own path, and Eriana reacted to him first.     She watched the Ghost buzz around the front room, her eye lights bright and narrow. Her voice was clipped, stressed, and Eris drew herself up under her cloak, unsure whether Eriana needed a staunch soldier or a sympathetic friend.     “I’m glad the Ghost found you,” Eriana said. “Toland has poisoned himself with some smithing ritual and needs the antidote.”     “His Ghost can’t …”     Eriana and Ampilyne dimmed their lights at the same time. Eriana moved toward the door, one hand hovering, calm, near her sidearm. “It needs to be a Warlock who undoes the wards at his hangar, and I know the instructions.”     Eris wanted to ask why she of all people had been called, but she thought she knew - she was not as competitive as Omar or impatient as Tarlowe or as suspicious of Toland as Sai. A bit suspicious, yes, but she was good at hiding her distrust. Naked distrust wasn’t a useful thing to display in front of its object in this particular case.     Eris nodded. “What else do I need to know?”     “Toland will keep to himself. Make sure no one we don't know comes in while he’s … like this.”     “He poisoned himself?”     Eriana ran her hand over her forehead. “That’s how he explained it, anyway, with that condescending tone like he’s telling a half-truth for the sake of simplicity.”     Behind Eriana, Ampilyne disappeared through the closed door in the back wall. Maybe Eris would just sit in the front room until Eriana came back.     For the first time, Eriana focused and met Eris’s eyes. She gripped the Hunter’s shoulder, the Sun stirring Eris’s hair. “You’ll be okay, right?”     “Yes,” Eris said, and meant it. She had half-expected to be flying to the moon right now, unprepared and half-armored, so staying in the flat felt like a pleasant if momentary respite.     Eriana swept out the door, radiating.     Eris sat on the sagging couch.     How many times had she sat here, with her fireteam surrounding her? On some days, the place felt like a mustering hall, or like a target. If Crota attacked the City, Eris’s most horrible and most selfish fears said, he would rain green fire down on this spot first. The Vanguard, too, would turn a bright and dangerous eye on the fireteam if they knew that Eriana planned to breach the Hive-pit. Now, though, the flat felt more like a shelter than a bull’s-eye. Although she knew that it was a fickle thought, part of her mind was telling her still-groggy body that Crota couldn’t get her here.     She spent a few minutes looking at her feet, then pulling books off the shelves with unnecessary violence. Scraps of words on dusty pages seemed hugely significant to her life at this very moment, even if they had nothing to do with it: Brown lichen grows on the sunward facing side of cliffs in the taiga. Another book: The universe’s way of pursuing equilibrium. Another: In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing / Over the tumbled graves, around the chapel.

Maybe it was because of these, or because of the faint traces of the Sun-Light which had not left when Eriana did, that she went to the door in the back and didn’t knock. Instead she pushed the door open the width of her foot and said “Hmm?”     The room spelled like potting soil. Eris remembered, from the last time that Toland had sat in there and shouted out instead of joining the team around the couch, that the exile had commandeered a desk and the bed, which was allegedly available to any member of the team who wanted to stay the night and was willing to remove Toland to the couch in order to do it.     In the days since she had last seen him, Toland must have moved more of his belongings into the room. Bundles of plants, some dry and brown and some alive and looping around twine, hung from rusting loops of metal screwed into the ceiling. A potted plant on the desk had climbed up the twine to the ceiling, crawling half way across the ceiling of the narrow room.     There had always been books and maps piled in the shelves on the desk. Now there was a gun, too, a rifle with garish purple paint and workmanlike lines. There were vertebra and cords scattered around it, and now Eris noticed that there were bones threaded into the makeshift arbor too, bird skulls and what might be keel bones.         Toland said “Hmm?” back at her, trailing off in exaggerated despair, and Eris opened the door the rest of the way out of irritation. She had to see what had merited such self-pity.     Toland was covered in both of the apartment’s woven quilts. He still wore his black cloak; Eris could tell because he had kicked one leg out from under the blankets at some point, showing a corner of the cloak and a bare, bony foot. She stood with her back to the desk as if it was a bunker she could retreat to.     Physically, Toland did not look more ill than usual. Pale and high-cheeked, he was always a bit of a death’s head. The dark bruises under heavy-lidded green eyes were not unusual either. The Light, though.         His presence usually felt strange, threaded through with some withheld rottenness, but now his Light was dim, as if he was hardly in the room at all. She had to blink her eyes to be sure. Would he have a pulse, now? Ampilyne materialized near his right shoulder.     “You did this to yourself,” Eris muttered, certain.     Toland leaned back to show her his throat, and she could not tell whether he was in pain or luxuriating in the attention. Her own ambivalence to the difference disgusted and unsettled her. “Such experiments have been conducted before. Light-sickness.”     “No wonder.” She looked at the hanging plants, the picked-clean bones. “What will cure you?”     “At the hangar I have herbs and artifacts. The noble Eriana has gone questing for them.”     Eris appreciated that Toland hadn’t implied that he’d ordered Eriana to go.     The Light flowed around him in thin rivulets, from the cot to the desk to the hanging plants. Toland pulled his foot back under the blankets. Eris knew Arc light best, and felt Toland’s Sun as a power less refined than Eriana’s. Instead of warming, it burned and gathered in strange coronae.     He must have felt her inquiry, or wanted to fill the silence that had grown while she had kept her eyes on the desk while her mind explored. “My Light isn’t gone. You’re walking all around it.”     She flinched, a bodily reaction she had not expected and immediately wanted to separate herself from. She’d never felt Light like this before, though, and the idea of walking within its strange orbit was like an unexplored road - there might be danger there, but she was prepared for it. Would there be any value in telling him that she was curious about it?     “Were you using it for that project?”     “Yes.”     “A scout rifle?”     “A pulse rifle, although the body is not as important as …” He coughed in thick, dry barks. When he spoke next it was in a quiet rasp. Eris moved closer to hear. Her own legs felt weak, so that it was comforting to sit with her legs crossed, her knees brushing the mattress, while Toland turned his back to her.     “The Light,” he said.     “So that’s what wounded you.” As soon as she knew, the lines of Light became more vivid. The gun was still pulling at him. He had brought the plants in to serve as a smoke screen, or as an unwitting sacrifice, to distract whatever black hole of Light he had concocted from the life around it. They would die for his plans. She sent her own Light sliding along the lines, mapping the frayed connections. At the gun it weakened, sparking against Darkness and a small, dense core of potential and hope. There at the core of the half-made gun was something like a perpetual motion machine, a knot of precariously balanced Light in Darkness. Her vision gently blurred as she focused on the ribbons of Light, on the small plants, on what she could do to mend the frayed lines.     Toland turned onto his back and looked at her. “The antidote will restore that energy,” he muttered, but he was also only paying attention to his Light-sense, his eyes and his voice unfocused.     The dark knot was drawing more and more of Eris’s attention. There were paths to walk there, caves unexplored, dark, smooth places like nests in which to sleep.     “I do not need … ” Toland was saying, but Eris had already figured out where she could string Light between his tattered web and heal some of the troubled air of the room. Ampilyne and her Ghost floated in curious, concerned orbits around the desk, but she did not heed them.     Toland sat up, got his legs under him and crouched as if to stand and move toward the desk. His presence in the web only increased Eris’ understanding of it, so that when she gestured him down her perception of the world moved even further away, the Tower and the City and the hanging vines all equally distant and equally intimate, all part of the web of the Light. She kept putting puzzle pieces together, shocking life into the tiny ash-lines of his dying Light. A breeze rustled the hanging vines and sparked.     The Light eddied more carefully around the gun now, more willing to look into its skull-eyes. Healthier, Eris thought, although she too had contributed to pulling life from a living thing to a dead thing.     “You could have brought me some water,” he said, “instead of interfering in the delicate machinery of this web that I have woven.”     Exhausted but happy, Eris gestured disinterest.     Toland tried to stand. Either his knees were weak or he was dizzy; either one felt like the natural state of the world right now, as if Eris was surrounded by the fog of the sickness herself. Toland sank back sideways on the cot and Eris reached out to touch his shoulders, so that it was natural for him to lean back against her and rest his head on the field-cloth just above her armored knee. The two Ghosts circled.     “This isn’t for your records,” Eris muttered, some memory of the reality of her team’s foibles coming back.       Toland scratched uselessly at the pillow a few times before finally grasping the top and plopping it in front of Ampilyne. The Ghost chirped a few times, then alighted and sat still. If Toland was concerned for Eris’ Ghost, he didn’t say it.     Instead, he shut his eyes and swept his weak and aging Light toward the gun. “The gun drives itself. I have placed a bit of living Darkness inside, and when it is complete it will not fail its wielder even in the darkest of places. I sacrifice this Light for that alone, Eris.”     “For that alone?”     “And because the weapons of the Darkness have things to teach us. Do you expend yourself for this task as well? It is honorable work with a dishonorable mask. How sharp are Hunter eyes, to see through it!”     Was that what she had done? Seen brightness in the core of the dark? No. “You can’t help us when you’re this weak.”     “No. But this is a temporary strife.” He sat up again and scratched at the back of his neck, then lay down again on the bare cot next to the Ghost. “Eriana will return. And that …” A shake of his head toward the bones lashed to the gun on the desk. “Is ours. We have built something together now, no matter how … accidental your contributions.”     “Will they be able to tell?”     “Will Eriana suss out your interference? I don’t think so. She knows exactly what I do here. I do not think she’ll bend close enough to smell you on it.”     She didn’t regret giving him her Light, she thought with thrilling terror. She could quicker imagine him owing her than him betraying the team. She could quicker imagine him thanking her, and reaching out to touch her hair. Maybe there would be other projects, other twinings of Light and Light in the miasma of Darkness which she was now beginning to feel again was not in all the City but just in this room, piled like blankets.     Eris stood and fled.     Until Eriana returned she sat on the couch with her legs under her and read a history of the City, reminding herself of the many things people had survived in the dark times before her dark times, interrogating the City’s biases, watching its business-owners squabble in the pages over maps and boundary lines.

                                               ___________________

   Years later, Eris and Toland had both given more in the service of the Light and more to the loyalty of one another. Years later she would not hesitate to help him, but it was a more confident and more measured help. He was a ghost and she was dying, scarred by her own hands and by the pit from which they both escaped. He was a ghost and he knew, through some other sense, that some other Ghost was working on Bad Juju without a by-your-leave.     “Ornaments?"     “A new invention. Drawn from the Iron Lords, I believe, and their legacy of snow and skins."     Toland tisked, a sound which Eris found unaccountably funny when it came from the incorporeal pillar of fog standing in her room.    Toland had gotten his wish, had fallen and torn himself open on the sharp edge of the universe and survived with the burn-blast scars of it. He was ghostly when the Light burned and more comprehensible at night, when the Guardians' own burning was dulled by sleep or distance. Toland was the antithesis of a moth to a flame, despite his admiration for the Hive’s dusty and scaled majesty.     And so he visited, pretending with exaggerated dignity not to concern himself with whether Eris was there or not.     Tonight she had retired early, and tonight she had retired angry - hurt by the mutterings of Guardians who had not visited her, who scoffed with ignorance. (Toland scoffed with knowledge, and was there a difference in the tone, the sibilance? People in the Tower still were warm to her - she spoke to Amanda or Ikora or the several Guardians with whom she had gained a rapport. Almost three years from the Hellmouth, though, and people forgot. People imagined that she tore at her own skin so as not to forget her wounds, so as not to come unawares again upon the same terror that had first made them. An insistence on progress, though, did not always include a denial of history, and the Guardians had begun to forget that the Hive were more than crowds of thralls with which to collect on small-coin bounties.     So when she asked, “What do you want?” of the pillar of Darkness, she only half needed an answer.     Toland’s face was a mess: now eyes, now dark fog like scribbles on a map, now skin like he had worn in the safe house. “Only time.”     Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, like a word floating in the Dark with its own weight. All of them had wanted more time. Eriana especially had clawed for it, had dragged until the dirt of it clotted thick between the joints of her fingers. Eriana had demanded that Crota give the Earth more time, and then that the very flow of time in his world change.     “We never had enough time,” Eris said. “Now, I cast my mind to space more often.”     Toland gave a small nod. The little bit of clarity showed on his face, made him a creature corporeal enough to have to step across the white floor. “That is an answer almost as true as the other. Consider the throne worlds. Each is connected to each by a portal, but each is ascendent in the same way, the same energy flowing to them, the same … sit down. There. There.”     She crossed her legs in the middle of the floor.     She thought that he might have been going to use her as the centerpiece of a diagram, as the gravitational center of some strange system, but instead he took up the rest of the room and seemed to ignore her physical presence, ranging around her in widening circles.     “Savathûn, queen of spaces, watches each to each with eyes that flay the language she witnesses.”     “She cannot hear you here.”     “No. No.” His voice had gone soft, like the dripping of water in a far-away cave. The fervor of his  call bled off him like the smoke, leaving him human-shaped and cold, with Eris’ eyes. “The courts turn their backs, sometimes, and have learned to armor their soft places.”     So, he felt that he was being ignored.     “Come here,” Eris said.     His silence was full of questions; she could tell from the way he tipped his head, from the brightening of one bulbous eye. After a requisite moment of consideration he circled her again, his feet clicking softly as if his smoking boots were real gear instead of some strange mix of Darkness and manifested flesh.     He crouched in front of her, skeptical, bending close enough that she felt her heart jump. “What do you want, my dearest Eris?”

She reached for his collar. The tattered facsimile of a Warlock cloak was fibrous and solid, or at least deigned to be that way while she pulled a handful toward her. He lurched closer but did not fall and did not touch her. No breath, no movement of his chest under the thick fabric, no smell from his scornful mouth.     “Do you remember the day you were sick?” Eris said. “Do you remember what you put yourself through for that gun?”     He drew away, keeping his gaze locked to her even while he turned over and suddenly lay down on her skirt, snugging the top of his head against her stomach. She looked down on him in awe and startlement. Her vision almost blurred as he moved, but she drew herself back, her skin prickling, while he grinned.     “I thought you wanted me to be a the gaps in your lost Light,” she whispered, and touched his shoulder while he sighed in her lap.     Lazily he swatted at her hand, then reached up and with some clumsiness drew his fingers across her lips and jaw, his thumb catching between lip and teeth. The void-stuff prickled in her mouth like poison. “Would you like to be? It is such a critical gravity.”     She slid her hands into his hair while he brushed the back of his hand against her wet cheek.       He said, “I would speak your name to the worlds at the top of the world, were its speaking not anathema.”     “Move, Toland.” She got her hands under his shoulders and pushed. With a wounded look he let himself slide onto the floor while she turned and stretched her legs out, trying to stop them from prickling. She leaned over and kissed him. Instead of protesting he dragged her arm across his chest, bracing her against him so that she leaned into the kiss, catching her breath against skin that felt real, now warm, now intangible like fog.     “Anathema or anthem,” he whispered, and then the world was her name for a while, her name against her mouth, against her ear, against her throat, until she was surrounded by the whole dark universe of him and he was flickering, bled out by the light of her. He eased back and licked his lips and she followed him, took another kiss that made him keen and squirm. He turned, pressing his cheek against the floor as he flinched away from her.     She looked down at him, and let the silence sit for a moment. “Would you rather I were Savathûn?”     He was silent, heaving now with breath that she still could not feel on her face. Then, the words clear but laborious between breaths: “Would you rather I were the stark and truthful Deep, with all its blade-sharp honesty?” The truth of that sank into her like a stone into deep water. The Guardians did whisper. She would tell Toland her own truth now.

   “It was not the Deep that saved us,” she said. “Just you and I.”     “Not the Light, either.”     “You and I,” she hissed, and was surprised at the fury of it. She heaved him up by the shoulders again so that his head lolled against her legs. He looked at her with the patient expression he had given his concoctions. She had expected his fury to match hers, and so there was some impression of instability in his calmness, or else a balance, as if they siphoned energy from one another and could not both be furious at once. Toland’s sometimes-fanaticism had slackened into quiescent concern. The difference seemed as unexpected as his madness.       “Let me tell you of the great love of the Deep.”     “I think I know it.” Her lips curled in disdain.     He resettled himself more comfortably in her lap. With his long legs stretched out on the floor he looked like a narrow shadow, his right boot bumping up against the wooden leg of her bed. “I have flown between the black stars. I have walked on silver threads and touched the bones of things not yet dead. And all along the Deep, the embrace of a universe too full of truth for empty praise. The Deep does not lie, Eris, and if you belong to it you are armored against lies and whispers. Each word is proven against this truth and that, that is why the Worm names ring out as they do.”

“Do not speak of Worms.”     “Of embraces, then? Of worlds wrapped ‘round one another, of the burn behind the black of the universe? Behind everything there is that heat and there is that song.”     He sang of darkness speckled with stars. He sang of Hive conquests that ripped nebulas apart, that fed greedy black holes with entire fleets. The blue-black sky outside her bedroom window snagged and held her gaze as he spoke of the warm comfort of greater darkness. She drifted, almost asleep, while his voice rose and fell in ugly cracks and poetry.     When she felt that she had heard enough, she muttered, “You think you know so much.”     He brushed his hand against her cheek. “Yes, I do.”     “What action would you have us take? Is there anything useful in this poetry?”     “We have already made so much. The gun was just the first. But we have made opportunities and treaties and schemes since then, have we not?”     “It is all still there,” Eris said. “Remember that place? Fuzzy, like a smudged painting, but the place ... must be there? The flat in the city.”     “I know of no reason why it wouldn’t be.”     “Eriana’s things. The library …”     “Can you get there?” He asked.     “Yes.” She answered immediately. She had gone to the City before, on small quests and pilgrimages, on the journey where she had met the Exo spacer.     He shook himself, then curled his lip. Wistfulness and revulsion moved over his face fast, chasing one another. “And our weapon?”     “The Guardian has it.”     “The Guardian!” He crowd. The sudden loudness surprised her, and she flinched. Toland took his weight from her legs and sat beside her, running one hand from her hip to her knee as if to ground her.    “Murmur is mine as well, given away.” She shifted over to sit on his lap, the floor becoming uncomfortable now that she had spent so much time there. Both of them were used to stone, though. With his arms around her waist and the prickle of his skin - little warmth, little texture, no heartbeat - she could have been back in the pit, clarified and terrified and held.     “Such generous gifts. Ornamented also?” A buzz against her neck might be her own gooseflesh, might be his lips, might be the night breeze through the open window. The floor was uncomfortable against her hipbones and so she rose to her feet, alone for a moment. Had he left her? Had the Light flowed in just such a way as to tuck him under?     She spoke to the plane where she could always find him, unconcerned for whether he could hear. “No. That one is purified, but otherwise unchanged.”     A chill breeze like a disdainful kiss swept up from behind her, stirring her hair and her clothes. The Dark whispered of focused approval, and just a tinge of disappointment. That last was, like everything and his death had been, for show.     “Your disappointment is an afterthought,” she whispered. "Still putting on a face to impress."     The specter of Toland agreed, not a whisper but a confession. Hands made of smoke clasped hers and disappeared.     Eris Morn sat on hard ground and felt at home.

[404botnotfound]

The Line [4]

...and where to draw it

SERIES: Destiny WORD COUNT: 6,516 SHIP: Quinn/Drifter CHARACTERS: quinn leonis (AU), glyph, ash, finn, adebole, the drifter

iv. gambit

n. a device, action, or opening remark, especially one entailing a high degree of risk, that is calculated to gain an advantage.

Her boots hit solid ground with a crunch of dirt and her senses rush back with dizzying speed. Blinking away the disorientation of being in one place and then another massively distant one in the next instant, she thinks—not for the first time—that long-distance transmats never stopped being unpleasant.

They’ve been dropped into a small cave littered with arches and levels, and ahead of them sunlight peeks through a set of openings out into what must have been their arena. Everything around them is painted in deep browns and unnaturally vibrant reds and earthy greens, the usual for Nessus scenery.

Quinn realizes then that none of them had discussed any sort of strategy.

Ash lets out a cheer and charges forward before she can even consider gathering one. “C’mon! Last one to bank buys drinks!”

I’m not drinking with you, she thinks to herself as Glyph drops her auto rifle into her hands. Stepping forward and hopping down from the high ledge they’d been transmatted onto, her knees bend with the landing and she starts forward with the rest of her team hopping across the higher level rock formations above her.

“Get ready for a firefight, and drop those motes in the bank!” The Drifter’s voice crackles in through her helmet comms and a waypoint appears in her heads-up display directly ahead. “Enemies inbound at the base.”

She wonders what that’s supposed to mean as they all exit the caves.

Their arena is laid out in a semi-circle ahead of them, penned in by a towering cliff that stretches around on either side like arms until it drops off at a sharp horizon and blue sky with the hazy backdrop of Nessus fading into the distance far below them.

A series of caves consumed by Vex machine architecture sits high in the left hand side of the cliff, and to the right is a small copse of red-leafed trees. The ground shudders under her feet with a teeth-rattling grinding noise filling the air as a massive Cabal resource drill drops into the ground somewhere behind those trees.

Immediately in front of her on a light incline sits one of the Drifter’s mote banks, already filled with twisting Taken power, and next to the cave entrance they’d just exited is a circular gate made of Vex tech. It looks altered, somehow, but she doesn’t waste time examining it further—it was likely the portal to the other arena they’d been told about.

Her teammates continue on ahead and she follows, all of them winding around a rock formation and finding the familiar industrial, rigid engineering of the militaristic Cabal stretched out across carved white stone.

A pair of Cabal legionnaires jump jet into sight ahead of a group of their fellows, all of them seven feet tall and massive in bulk compared to the four of them.

Here we go.

Ash and Finn reach the two legionnaires first. One well-placed hand cannon bullet pops a legionnaire’s head from its shoulders with a hissing geyser of organofluid and a crackling, electricity-fueled shoulder charge turns the other into a three-hundred pound, charred pancake against a base wall.

Sparkling, opaque motes like the one Drifter had shown them pop upwards from the felled bodies and are picked up by one or both of their ghosts, dematting them out of sight.

At the top of her HUD, a bar she hadn’t noticed until now fills slightly with gray.

‘The Drifter’s ghost sent the rest of us details on what to track and send back to her,’ Glyph explains. It’s a tracker bar for how many motes they held, then—and divided into halves, the other side ticking up slightly.

A way to keep the pressure on for them, letting them know where the opposite team was at in progress.

Adebole nearly runs her over in his haste to reach more enemies approaching them, forcing her to hop back and fight the immediate, irritated urge to take aim at the back of his head.

It’d definitely be one way to let loose steam, and she has no issue with knocking New Monarchy supporters down a few pegs—unfortunately, she does want to win, and that meant tolerating Adebole’s arrogant behavior for the time being and hoping all four of them have enough semblance of coordination to make this work, strategy or no.

Charging forward and jumping up she plants her foot on a rock face and pushes off of it, two pulses of light letting her hop through the air as though she were on stepping stones, heading away from her teammates towards enemies they’d overlooked.

Her boot lands directly on the face of a legionnaire’s helmet and her momentum knocks it off balance. It makes an angry, unintelligible roar in an alien language before she unloads her auto rifle into its head and silences it, then she turns her fire on another.

Like with Ash and Finn’s victims, two more glowing motes appear. She collects them both with Glyph’s help and then moves ahead into the base on the hunt for more, aware of the alien weapons fire filling the air around her.

Adebole curses her whenever she grabs the motes that drop near her from his gunfire, but she’s seen several of the motes vanish and fade after being left in the open air for too long, so he can kiss her ass.

After picking up several more Glyph starts to mutter something about them. A Cabal centurion, meanwhile, larger and with hellishly nastier weapons than its lesser-ranked peers, turns its attention on her.

Its heavier weapon knocks down half of her overshield before she manages to duck into cover. “Glyph, later, please.”

‘Sorry!’

Bracing a knee on the ground, she spins out of cover and takes aim, squeezing the trigger and gritting her teeth while the rapidfire bullets chip away at the centurion’s shields—which pop and shatter after a full magazine.

She reloads quickly and then cuts it down with another hail of bullets. Unlike the lower-ranked legionnaires, it drops a handful of motes rather than a single one.

She darts forward and they all disappear as Glyph grabs them for her.

‘That’s it, I can’t carry anymore without them doing damage to me and to you,’ it says, sounding uncomfortable. What the hell are these things? Nothing in the field she’d picked up had ever caused damage while in Glyph’s inventory.

It’s all well and good either way, she supposes. Not like she plans to hold onto them for long.

She twists around, her knees bending with the abrupt shift in direction and her boots and greaves scraping the stone underneath them as her momentum halts; ahead of her she can see all three of her teammates already running for the mote bank.

A new waypoint appears in her HUD, directing them to the network of Vex caves dug into the cliffs with waterfalls of crackling white liquid flanking its entrances.

Her teammates drop their held motes in the bank, and on her HUD the gray-filled portion on their side of the tracker bar fills halfway with the color blue. Two bloated orbs of glowing Taken energy burst up through the steady stream of it piercing the sky above the bank.

Her stomach twists. She’d completely missed seeing that earlier.

Keep it together.

Just as she reaches the bank the other team’s bar fills with red and a roar of power explodes from the bank. It retracts into the base dug into the ground, and the quiet plea with herself flies out the metaphorical window as a Taken knight materializes in her path.

Its twisted, unnaturally twitching body swathed in glowing, oily darkness drips black ichor that poisons the air and ground around, and it sends a flood of terrified adrenaline through her veins.

The white orb that serves as the creature’s face, floating amidst the mass of what had once been a Hive knight’s head, twitches sickeningly to settle on her and her heart leaps into her throat. A roar leaves its mouthless face and its arm lifts above her.

She skids to a halt, nearly crashing right into it, and her skin starts crawling immediately with the sucking sensation of otherworldly power and the scent of ozone washing over her.

The ground shakes with the force of a downward swing that she barely dives out of the way of in time.

Before she can even think about turning around to fire on the knight, the same swelling roar of energy crashes through the air twice, and two grotesque caricatures of Cabal phalanxes with their massive arm-mounted shields join the knight.

Both are far too close for comfort.

“Guys, guys, we’ve got Taken blocking the bank!” She yells over the comms, trying and likely failing to keep the panic from her voice.

“So take care of ‘em, miss ‘trial-by-fire’!” Ash calls back mockingly.

She glances towards the new waypoint where her teammates’ friend-or-foe tags are shown. Not a single one of them turns back to the center of the arena. She’s on her own with her worst nightmares right in front of her.

The split-second glance away is a mistake.

A rush of ionized air tasting like ozone strikes her in the chest and throws her off her feet back into the thick roots of one of the trees in the arena, knocking the breath out of her and sending a wash of stars across her vision that she hurriedly blinks away.

Her shields are gone and her back aches from the blow, and one of the two phalanxes is rushing her with its shield held out before it—it’s going to crush her against the tree.

Forcing her lungs to cooperate, she sucks in a gasp of pained air and taps into her light, vanishing in a flash of blue sparks and light and reappearing a few feet to the side just as the phalanx and its shield slam into the tree.

The bark cracks and splinters under its force.

Unphased, the phalanx turns for her again.

Dropping her rifle to the ground at her side, she pulls her hand cannon from the holster on her thigh and takes aim, firing a handful of rounds into its glowing eye.

It stumbles back with every heavy round until it vanishes as though sucked through a vortex, the remains of its corrupt energy seeping into and poisoning the grassy ground it had stood on.

The knight chooses then to remind her of its existence, roaring in a way that sends a ripple of gooseflesh over her skin, dredging up horrible memories of similar howls stalking her in a dark, lightless place.

Her aim follows her line of sight as she looks at the enemy—it’s stooped over with its arms wide, and she knows immediately what’s coming next.

Liquid fire erupts from the knight, spat from a mouth that isn’t there, and it arcs through the air in her direction.

Grabbing hold of her discarded rifle, she dives to the side with flame licking at her coattails and boots. Earth-shaking booms strike the ground from the knight’s massive, alien weapon as she darts under the lifted roots of a tree and around to the other side.

She has Glyph demat her rifle. She needs these things gone fast, and the rifle’s lighter bullets did fuck all against an enemy that was half-incorporeal and soaked them up like a sponge.

‘Your shields are back up,’ Glyph tells her as she reloads.

When she leaves the cover of the tree’s roots, the remaining phalanx is waiting for her with its shield raised and ready to slam down on her. Her first instinct is to turn and run away, her throat tight with terror—instead she puts on a burst of speed and jumps forward, throwing her shoulder into the center of the Taken’s massive form, knocking it back.

She would’ve hoped to knock the shield from its hand, but it was fused to the damn thing’s arm by whatever atemporal bullshit the Taken were made of.

It doesn’t need time to recover, and she wouldn’t have given it time to even if it did, her gun lifting. She shoves it into what counts for its face—one, two, three shots, and then like the first its form melts and vanishes.

Unlike the Taken, she needs time to recover, but she doesn’t have it. Before the phalanx’s form has fully dissolved, she sidesteps it and breaks into a run towards the knight that had appeared first. It roars at her, stooping in what she can only interpret as rage-filled challenge.

Fire erupts from it again and streaks towards her; she leaps from the ground, a pulse of light propelling her above the arc of flame and directly for the knight.

Her free hand closes around her hand cannon as she takes aim in midair, her legs outstretched and boots landing on the abhorrent creature’s chest. It falls under her weight and momentum and she unloads the rest of her clip into its head, the send of weightlessness from the fall nothing but an afterthought.

By the time her feet hit the ground again the knight has dissolved just like the phalanxes.

Her hands are shaking with adrenaline as she reloads her gun, dropping the empty cartridge and replacing it with one that Glyph transmats into her palm. She barely notices the sound of beeping and the hiss of the bank reopening behind her.

Right in the middle of an intense competition isn’t the best place to have a complete meltdown, but she can feel her vision narrowing and breathing growing shallow with the sudden panic overwhelming her now that it has nothing to push it back.

Her eyes well up with tears.

The Deathsong is a horrible roar in her ears, and massive claws reach through the blank emptiness between planes for everything she is.

Behind her the bank beeps and then retracts once more.

‘Quinn,’ Glyph trills at her in alarm, and it has to repeat itself twice before she even registers her own name, ‘Quinn! More Taken inbound!’

A pathetic whine accompanies her sharp intake of breath and she stumbles, spinning around as more booms reach her ears. Two more phalanxes appear. She lifts her gun in shaking hands, but before she can fire off any panicked shots a void light grenade erupts between the two Taken and melts them.

The bank beeps as though mocking her and reemerges. She exhales, lowering her gun and noting Ash and Adebole dropping down into the center of the arena from the Vex caves. Ash is laughing at her, and Quinn swallows down a wave of shame.

“So much for ‘preferring trial-by-fire’, huh, blondie?” Ash mocks, hopping up to the bank cheerily and dropping her motes into it.

She hopes her flinch at the rush of energy that lifts into the sky isn’t noticeable.

Adebole moves wordlessly to a different mote node and does the same, and eager for a distraction from the mortification Quinn notes that when he does so another swell of power doesn’t follow Ash’s.

Before anything else can be said the Drifter cuts in, “Invader on the field! Find ‘em before they find you!”

Through everything else she had completely forgotten about the second goal the Drifter had explained to them. Invading. Portal to the other arena and kill the opposing team, depriving them of the motes they needed to win.

A gunshot cracks across the arena, an expert sniper round catching Finn through the helm in midair and killing them as they drift down from the caves on a stream of their light. Their body drops to the ground limply and their ghost appears, frantically trying to revive them.

“That came from behind the drill!” Adebole calls out. He and Ash rush into motion, moving around her and disappearing into the trees.

She, on the other hand, darts around to the side of the bank opposite where they’d gone and ducks down, her panic vanishing once more under the weight of pure, cold survival instinct.

Another pair of shots ring out. Glyph grays out her teammates’ FOF tags in her HUD.

This guy was good.

Her hands are white-knuckled around the grip of her gun as she waits, kneeling behind the bank and alternately watching her radar and surroundings. Her radar lights up with red and she braces herself, lifting the weapon in her hands.

A titan, broad-chested and wearing dark red armor and a black mark clipped to his belt, crosses into her line of sight with a wicked-looking shotgun held in his hands.

She adjusts her aim.

He notices her right as she fires off a trio of shots, the first two knocking out his shields and the third piercing his helm. His body drops, and his ghost appears and glowers at her. Before it can revive him both disappear in a flash, transmatted back to the other side.

Her breathing hitches when the Drifter’s laughter crackles on her comm. “You didn’t start that fight but you did end it. Good job.” Somehow, his voice being right in her ear was worse than just hearing it aloud, and she still can’t decide why it affects her that way.

The rest of her team reappears from back in the cave they’d arrived in initially and she finally drops the damn motes she’s been carrying into the bank. Maybe she was imagining it, but the wave of energy that blooms from it and surges upwards seems bigger than the ones her teammates had caused.

As though to spite her, the bank retracts again and the portal that appears erupts into a form that makes the first handful look like dust particles in comparison.

Oh, fuck is the only thing she can manage to think as the lumbering, hunchbacked form of a Taken ogre with its bulbous head and wicked teeth towers over her. Its presence alone is enough to warp the air and space around it with power, making her feel ill, and the roar it lets out rattles in the cage of her chest.

She’s sure she’s white as a sheet under her helmet.

It occurs to her, then, that the Drifter had said that the nastier the Taken that appeared in the arena, the more motes they had to bank—if she was carrying the most motes possible, had she dropped one of these behemoths on the enemy team?

This was a terrible idea. She should have left the Drifter’s ship the moment she had found out this competition involved the Taken.

She can’t do this.

‘Guardian, move!’ Glyph’s terrified voice snaps her out of her daze and she blinks, her heart leaping into her throat at the sight of the ogre’s massive arms raised and ready to crash down upon her.

Swearing a blue streak, she dives out of the way. The pressure of a clawed fist almost three times her size displaces the air she had been standing in only seconds before, and it slams into the ground hard enough to make it quake.

The shockwave sends her flying and she rolls to a stop fifteen feet away, her back slamming into the hard surface of her team’s gate.

She had to do this.

She’d already made the choice—stupid or not—to come here, to participate, and damn her but she can’t stay paralyzed with fear of the Taken forever.

Gritting her teeth and gripping her hand cannon tighter, she forces herself to her feet.

Her teammates open fire on the ogre and draw its attention from her, ducking in and around the Nessus trees as the creature’s powerful eye blasts are aimed at them.

She joins them in the gunfire, popping off shot after shot and diving out of sight whenever its attention returns to her; she could handle a handful of shots from lesser Taken, but an ogre’s eye blasts would vaporize her with ease, overshield or not.

Over the comms the Drifter tells them their invasion portal has opened up for use and she barely notes it. They have better things to worry about—

—or do they?

She glances at her HUD and notices two things: the first being her team is leaps and bounds behind the other, and the second is that judging by the large gray section on the other team’s bar, they were holding onto a lot of motes.

When the other team’s invader had killed Finn, they had lost the motes they’d been heading to bank—and if the other team was holding onto their own motes and not banking them in order to send bigger, badder enemies their way…

‘Gambit’. A calculated and intentional, but risky, move.

She gets it, now.

The ogre bursts with a few more well-placed shots, its form losing cohesion and being pulled back into the Ascendant realm it came from. None of them have any time to celebrate—immediately after it vanishes, a knight and another ogre take its place.

Son of a bitch.

All of them take aim and lay in, but after a few potshots Adebole lets out a noise of frustration and then changes direction, running past her and nearly knocking her over again on his way for the bastardized Vex tech holding a Taken portal.

She stops firing long enough to attempt and fail to reach out and grab him. “We need your help, Ade!”

“If you were competent you would not.” He snaps back at her and then vanishes through the portal. It closes behind him.

Provided the Taken don’t succeed in sending her into a complete meltdown by the time this match is over—and provided she doesn’t get herself killed—she’s absolutely going to kick his ass. Lips pulling back in a snarl, she latches onto her anger and uses it to push aside her lingering fear at having Taken close by.

Fifteen seconds later the Drifter announces to them that their ally was being sent back without a single kill on the board.

The ogre and knight are gone by the time Adebole reappears from the cave, and while Ash and Finn dart off to the newest set of enemies, Quinn stands there and glares at him for a long, heated moment.

He’s radiating the same kind of absolute loathing she knows she is, and as she finally runs off for more motes she wonders if they’re even going to make it to the end of the match before one of them attempts to strangle the other.

Focus.

It’s easy to say when she isn’t facing down her worst fears.

Try as they might, they can’t catch up to the lead the other team built. Quinn finds herself missing the cohesion of her own team; no one on this team seems to want to pay attention to strategy, only caring about collecting as many motes as possible and ignoring their allies and other aspects of the competition.

If they wanted to win, they needed a strategy. Adebole was too arrogant to care about the rest of them, but maybe if she can come up with an idea, Finn and Ash would play ball.

They suffer through another invasion and one more phalanx blocker, and by the time the other team’s bar has been completely filled and their red is replaced with yellow, they’re frantic. They bank as fast as they’re able to pick motes up, the yellow bar on the enemy’s side slowly being chipped away as they go.

Was that the part of the competition the Drifter had opted not to explain to them?

Adebole tries invading twice more and only manages to knock out one of the opposing four in both attempts. Curiously—and concerningly, to be honest—she notes that the one kill he does manage drives the yellow bar on the opponent’s tracker back up slightly.

Best efforts still get them nowhere, and they haven’t even filled their bank by the time the Drifter announces the opposite team has won the round.

If feels really fucking bad, almost on par with how awful her first encounter with the Taken in years was. Both are mortifying, and as she feels the transmat pulling them back up to the Drifter’s ship she braces herself to deal with more mockery.

Shockingly, none is forthcoming after four sets of boots settle back on the transmat deck.

Ash, Finn, and Adebole are all as silent as she is. The last of the three is simmering in a quiet that speaks of rage rather than frustration, and it’s almost doubtless that he’s blaming the rest of them for their round loss.

“I like your team,” the Drifter calls out, drawing everyone’s attention up to him on the podium; he’s gesturing to her team, but the praise is immediately followed by, “do better.”

To add insult to injury, he then turns to the other team and says: “Other team looks great, keep it up!”

Yeah, there was the humiliation she’d been waiting for.

She steps off her transmat pad and waves up to get the Drifter’s attention. “Hey, coach, time out?”

He must be able to hear the weariness in her voice. Between the energy expenditure and the adrenaline rushes, the emotional turbulence from the last few weeks, and the lack of decent sleep she felt wholesale terrible—and he can tell, a shrewd smile on his face as he kneels down on his podium and nods at her. “Two minutes.”

He sounds amused. She scowls.

Muttering a weak thank you, she steps over to her teammates. Both Finn and Ash gather up without protest, but Adebole remains apart, apparently unwilling to swallow his pride long enough to figure out how to work together and win.

“Look, guys,” she says, keeping her words on the closed team channel rather than the open air of he bay, “I get we’re all strangers and none of us are particularly happy we got matched up together, but if you want to win we can’t just run off and do whatever we want. There’s too much involved in this for it. We need a strategy.”

“And I assume you have one?” Adebole sneers at her, crossing his arms and looking blatantly unimpressed even behind a concealing helmet.

“Actually, I—” she blinks, surprised to find that she does, in fact. The beginnings of one, anyway. “I do.”

Ash’s hands settle on her hips and her head cocks to the side, skeptical. “Right, sure, we’re gonna leave strategy to someone that nearly pissed themselves because of a few little Taken.”

Quinn starts to snap back that she’s got a damn good reason for being so afraid of them, but she bites it down and instead lets out a soft exhale. “How many motes did you guys bank after that first wave?” She asks, instead.

Whether the question confuses them or they just don’t know how to answer, she grits her teeth past the aggravation and waits, acutely aware that they’ve only got a few minutes to figure out how the fuck to turn this around.

“My ghost says I had twelve.” Ash says.

“Nine.”

She, Ash, and Finn all look at Adebole, who suddenly seems hesitant to speak. He shifts in what Quinn thinks might be bare discomfort. “...Four.”

A beat of thick silence. “How many did you bank total?”

“...Seven.”

Quinn balks at him. All that hotshot talk of not being a rookie and the haughty arrogance, and he had the smallest haul? Is he serious?

Up on the podium the Drifter starts laughing uproariously. Yep, he was definitely tapped into their team comms.

Inhaling through her nose and counting to five, she forces the building wave of incredulous fury out of her mind. Later. Focus on the ups.

Maybe he had grabbed the smallest amount of motes, but she had grabbed a significant number from enemies he had felled. “Okay, so out of the four of us, Ash and I managed to grab the most during a single wave. Finn and Adebole, you guys are good at clearing the enemies out.”

Finn picks up on where her mind is going without further explanation. “We steamroll, you gather. Bank fast, rinse-wash-repeat?”

Quinn nods.

“Aww, but I like killing the bad guys.” Ash pouts.

“I don’t think the ‘bad guys’ are planning on taking it lying down, Ash. You’ll still be able to kill them, but we need those motes to win and you and I seem like the fastest on the team.” Quinn replies, pausing for a moment to consider how sleep deprivation was going to start rearing its ugly head soon. That little fact likely wasn’t going to last for much longer. “There’s a max to how many we can carry, though, so Ade and Finn will have to run in and collect anything we leave behind.”

“I like it.” Finn says. “What about the invaders?”

Her mouth opens but the Drifter interrupts her. “Time’s up! Get ready for transmat.”

‘What about the invaders?’ is a damn good question that she doesn't have an answer for. They’re like the Taken, she supposes—deal with them as they become a problem.

By invading they can deprive the team of motes to fill the bank, putting them ahead, and if she hadn’t just been hallucinating—which was a whole possibility considering how tired she was and how far she was pushing her endurance—then when the opposing team had filled their bank, killing them would drive that inexplicable gauge back up.

It made little sense to her, yet, but she has disturbing suspicion as to the reason. They were dealing with the Taken, after all.

Damnit, she hates the Taken.

‘I’m not so sure volunteering to carry as many of these mote things as possible is a good idea,’ Glyph mutters to her unhappily as she steps back onto her transmat pad.

“Maybe the more we hold onto, the faster we’ll get used to them.” She offers, weakly.

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, either.’

Before she can respond, she’s pulled through space once more and lands on the red, grassy ground of Nessus. Instead, something else occurs to her when she catches sight of the bank outside the cave. “Guys, one more thing: we need to work together to clear out the blockers. These things hit hard and take a lot of punishment.”

“Got it!”

“Woohoo!”

Well, it wasn’t exactly an acknowledgement, but with Ash, she’ll take it. “Ade?”

“Yes, yes! If you’re so sure this will work, just go!” He snaps back. Still pissy, but at least he realizes that running off half-cocked hadn’t done them any favors last round.

Her and Ash move ahead of the other two, following their waypoint to the giant drill, and Finn and Adebole both hang back once they get close enough to start picking enemies off from afar.

Glyph warns her they’ve picked up the maximum safe amount to carry far faster than in the first round as her and Ash dodge and weave in and out of enemies and under flying weapons fire. When she glances over at Ash, the hunter gives her a cheery thumbs up—followed immediately by her jabbing one of her knives into the throat of a legionnaire that had been trying to catch her off guard.

The opposing team hasn’t even banked before she and Ash do, the sickening rush of Taken energy exploding upwards from the bank. Both of them turn and head for the next waypoint up in the Vex caves without pause.

On comms the Drifter lets out a cheer. “You just dropped two Taken ogres on the other side! Let ‘em chew on that for a while.”

His response—far too excited given the nature of it—is both validating and terrifying. It confirms her worry from last round and also makes her fear how many of those things they were going to have to face again.

If the opposing team was feeling petty, the fact that they’d just air dropped two ogres at once to deal with from the offset of the round meant they may do their damndest to return the favor.

Knights and lesser Taken are already bad enough. Ogres are the powerhouses, short only of—

She dashes that line of thought, an involuntary shiver nearly giving an ordinary phalanx the chance to crush her skull against the walls of the cave with its shield. She’s been struck by those things one too many times today as it is, thank-you-very-much.

“I am invading!” Adebole calls. Hundreds of feet away, she can hear the burst of the Taken portal as it activates and then shuts down behind him.

Even down one person, the Cabal in the Vex caves go down quickly and in droves. Quinn isn’t vain enough to assume it’s because her threadbare plan is that good, but she’ll at least allow herself to believe that her sense for people was still a high point on her list of skills.

On her HUD, the enemy team’s partially-filled gray bar is dashed in half.

‘They lost collected motes,’ Glyph remarks. ‘This is...beginning to make sense.’

Beginning to make sense, and, ignoring her unknowingly forcing herself to confront her fears, beginning to feel like fun. Glyph isn’t going to like that. “How many?”

‘Judging by how much our gauge fills with how many we collect, thirteen. Best guess. Oh—eighteen, maybe. Drifter’s ghost isn’t sharing details.’

With the Vex caves clear, Quinn and Ash head back for the bank again. Finn trails behind to collect what they’d left behind.

A pair of phalanxes wait for them; they fall quickly under the thankfully coordinated effort of her, Finn, and Ash. All three of them drop their motes in the bank and run for the next wave, a freshly returning Adebole with two kills under his belt following after he exits the transmat cave.

He seems pleased, now, offering her a nod of grudging approval when she passes by him on her way back to the bank. She returns it and allows herself a small smile, and the four of them set to work clearing out more waves in between clearing blockers and banking.

Her smile vanishes when the Drifter alerts them to another invader; her and Ash are both carrying fifteen motes apiece, and if the opposing team’s bar is any indication, they were getting close to catching up. If this invader takes out three of them as he did last round, it’s all but a certainty.

“Base!” Finn shouts moments before the first long-distance round echos off the cliff walls of the arena, coming from the area they’d indicated.

Quinn winces. Twice now. Poor Finn.

Glyph makes an equally unhappy noise as it grays out their FOF tag on her HUD. Eight motes down.

Ash darts past her in a flash, a quick, rolling dive tearing her through reality into the light of the void and rendering her invisible to the naked eye, hiding from bullets she knows have preemptively marked the two of them as priority targets.

Quinn swears under her breath, bursting through the Nessus trees into the center of the arena—only to turn right back around and make a break for some kind of hiding place, wishing she had spent more time with Nyx trying to learn the trick Ash had just pulled out of her sleeve.

Another shot echoes.

Fire blossoms in her midsection, a white-hot lance from a heavy round that cuts through her shields and armor like a hot knife through butter. Her vision goes white for a split second from the severity of the pain and she knows right away that the round hadn’t just pierced flesh.

Ribs, she thinks, sucking in a gasp of air and unpleasantly confirming her first guess, had to have nicked the bone.

She forces herself to keep moving, every movement leaving her in agony. “Glyph?” She coughs out hoarsely, diving back into the reaching roots of the trees and ducking out of the open before the invader’s next shot can go through her skull.

‘I can’t! You have to be healing yourself or I can’t isolate the material from your light!’ It replies, sounding like it was trying very hard not to panic and failing miserably.

She already knew Glyph couldn’t heal her itself—she’s not sure why the idea that it can’t just grab a bullet lodged within her energy field and transmat it out had caught her by surprise.

Not even the Cabal use hard, solid slugs like guardians do. She’s never had to deal with an injury like this before.

Well, now she knows why Shaxx won’t let her in the Crucible.

Another sniper round cracks out. Ash’s FOF tag is grayed out as well.

Both teams are now neck and neck.

Heavy footsteps approach her from behind as she leaves the safety of the trees, trying to reach the cover of the jagged rock formations within the caves. She braces herself to spin and throw up one of her bubble shields.

Before she can, a shotgun blast booms behind her and her stomach drops, a sense of vertigo hitting her as she waits for the inevitable pain to arrive.

None does.

Adebole breaks the startled spell she’d fallen under with a harsh bark and the cocking of a shotgun’s slide. “Gather yourself!”

She inhales sharply, the pain of the round lodged in her torso throwing everything back into stark clarity. Everything hits her at once, then. The fire in her midsection from the injury, her fear of the Taken and the stress of facing them again, the bone-deep and pervasive exhaustion she hasn’t been able to chase away with sleep since returning from the reef.

The cold sting of loss, and the frustration of not knowing how to deal with it.

Frustration gives way for cold, rather than boiling, rage. Her head feels clear for the first time in months.

Her eyes flick up just in time to see the opposing team’s gray collection bar tick up and surpass their own. Not banked, but they’d have one serious problem if it was.

“Portal’s open!” Drifter calls out. “Go give ‘em hell!”

Teeth grinding, Quinn makes one doozy of a stupid fucking decision and spins, sprinting back to the center of the arena—and then she turns and heads for the portal rather than the bank, completely ignoring the fact she was still carrying a full group of motes.

Fuck it.

Glyph lets out a tinny series of fearful noises. ‘What are you doing?’

Hell if she knows, at this point.

She doesn’t answer it. “I’m invading!” She tells her team, similar protestations from her teammates following after her as the swirling portal in her eyes grows larger and the sucking sensation from another realm grips at her.

Ash, on the other hand, lets out a whoop and a, “Get ‘em, girl!”

Without any of the hesitation she knows she should be feeling, Quinn leaps through the portal.

[planarchaosproject]

Planar Chaos: Chapter Twenty-Five

 A Kind of Understanding

Brock finally returned to Lisandra's lonely archives with Kyari's hydra in tow. The elf from Shandalar was waiting for him, tapping her foot in irritation which caused the end of her long, brown braid to swish like the tail of an angry cat. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Brock asked, dismounting the large spider construct that made his expedition possible. "Like what?" Kyari replied. "You look like my mo..." he trailed off, catching himself. "Like Tamiyo when she's disappointed." The Soratami planeswalker may have helped to take care of him, but she couldn't ever be considered a mother. "Just go." Kyari rolled her eyes. "You could thank me, at least," Brock said indignantly. He planted his feet squarely on the ground and stood there waiting for an apology or expression of gratitude. "Why?" Kyari barked. "You're the one who lost it in the first place. I didn't ask to get captured. It was your responsibility, after all, to take care of the hydra if anything happened to me. You promised. But I see just how seriously you take your promises. I see what care means to you." "I kept my promise, Kyari. I got it back for you. Why can't anything ever be simple with you?" "The world is not black and white, Brock," she said, brushing past him. The speed of her passing caused his yellow and blue robes to rustle. "It seems to me that all your mentors understood that, so why can't you?" How could he tell her? How could he explain the feelings he got about certain things, certain people? It was nothing so simple as being able to judge a man's soul. They were vague premonitions about things to come. Everything was so muddy that all he wanted was some clarity. What were these obfuscated catastrophes, was there a way he could avert them? Brock didn't know. He never really knew. He heaved a sigh. It was becoming more and more apparent that he would have to seek out Master Narset, his foster mother, or both. But would Tamiyo even want to see him after the way he'd treated her? What if she had too many children to have any time for him anymore? When he'd first planeswalked, he remembered she finally had an infant of her own and was expecting another. Her husband, Genku, had been so happy. Brock shook his head. He'd cross that bridge when he arrived. For now, he decided to wander through the archives in search of Marthel. He understood Kyari in a way Brock never really could. He might be able to help. After several minutes wandering, he heard the sound of uncontrollable sobbing. Worried that it might be Kyari or Sa'Raah, he rushed towards the noise only to stop dead in his tracks. The Voidcaller was sitting in what appeared to be a half-completed book fort, not unlike the ones small children would make in Ojutai's monasteries. The dragonlord had long been fascinated with this aspect of humanity. Dragons on Tarkir did not have anything resembling play, nor did they have a youth. Brock took note of the miniature spider automatons scattered around the fort. Seven littered the ground. The eighth was lifeless in the Voidcaller's shaking hands. Her focus seemed to be entirely on this one. "No," she gasped between sobs. "Come back. Please. I'm not bad. I didn't mean to..." Brock had never seen her so vulnerable, not even when her chest was split open. Part of him realized that if he wanted to avert untold suffering, this was his chance. They were alone, certainly nobody was anywhere close or they would have heard the sobbing. The other part of him, the part he typically tended to disregard, told him that violence might not be the way to prevent disaster. She was obviously upset over the broken spider in her hands, and could she really be upset over something so minuscule if she were truly evil? Well of course she could, Brock told himself. The Voidcaller was unpredictable, unstable, and always the wrong trigger away from destroying the world she happened to be on at the time. Whether she actually had that power or not had never occurred to him, and likely never would. The sobbing began to subside when Ashleigh realized she was being watched. Between sniffles, she managed to croak out "Are you here to kill me for breaking the spider? Even you have to admit that's overkill." Brock just blinked in confusion by way of a response. "I didn't mean to do it. A little bit of static, and it must have fried the little guy's circuits. I can't fix it. Can you?" She held out the spider to Brock, a pleading look on her face. From this angle she almost looked like a child, all big, green eyes and quivering lips. "I'm afraid none of us here are any good at artifice, except maybe Marthel. But he's not very good at anything in particular." "He's good at learning," Ashleigh replied, turning her gaze back to the spider. She stroked the gem implanted in its head. "He can learn to do anything. I'm stuck stealing other people's knowledge. What good is all this power if I can't use it to do anything useful?" "Tell me about it," Brock said, unaware the words had left his mouth. "You probably get it, right?" Ashleigh began. "You were raised with a completely different race, never fitting in or anything. You always knew you were different." Brock felt a twinge in his chest at the accuracy of her assessment. "And it's like, when I was just a random cultist, I at least belonged somewhere. But now, knowing what I know and doing what I can do, I can't really go anywhere. And the voices don't help. They just yell and scream and chatter and whisper all at once and it drives me insane. I don't want to be crazy. I want to be normal so I can go and do things with everyone else but I just can't without it pushing me out of the crazy tree, onto the crazy carriage, and over the crazy cliff. Do you know what it's like never being able to get a moment's peace and quiet? Of course not. You're a monk. I've tried all that meditation stuff and trust me, whatever happened to me when Maralen reversed the Great Aurora, it's permanent. No amount of deep breaths or chanting works. Abby kind of works, but I can't be with it all the time, because what about when I have to sleep? I'm not a vampire like Lissy or Vilhelm and I can't subsist on the dew of a single ginko leaf and the energy of the universe like you can. And then everyone thinks I'm bad because I get a little overexcited and forget about things like safety and private property and the value of sapient life." "See, that doesn't make people think you're evil. It just makes you evil," Brock replied. This caused Ashleigh to burst into tears again. "I know," she sobbed. "And I want to fix it but I can't." Did she really? Could Brock even trust this display? He searched his feelings and they hadn't changed. Untold destruction would come at the hands of the Voidcaller and her pet abomination. He needed to find a way to ensure that it never came to pass. "Why am I not surprised that you're making my girlfriend cry?" Brock turned to see Odom leaning against a tower of books behind him. "C'mon, man, I thought we'd sat down and talked about this." "Your judgment is clouded by emotion, Odom," Brock responded. "Oh, like yours isn't? You go all Johnny Storm and flame on whenever you get upset. The only person I've never seen you get hostile with is Kyari." "That's a blatant lie." "You're right. The whole library heard your little exchange earlier." Odom strode past Brock and knelt down in front of the book fort. "Let me see it, Ash." She reluctantly handed over the broken spider. "I'm not very good at artifice, but creating life forms is something I have experience in. Maybe I can apply those same principles to get this little guy working again." Odom scrutinized the limp metal joints and popped open the head to look inside. "Fair warning, I might explode again." This comment elicited a giggle from Ashleigh. After a few tweaks, the eight spiders whizzed back to life and Odom wiped a disproportionate amount of sweat from his brow for the amount of time that had passed. "For the record, both of you have no idea how stressful that was." Brock merely rolled his eyes and walked away. He still couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he was being too harsh on the Voidcaller, though.

0000000

"Listen, Rhyne, you and I need to come to an understanding." Vilhelm crouched in front of the wild man's cage. "Why is that?" Rhyne absentmindedly picked at his fingernails, a favorite pastime of his when bored. "In order to continue on this expedition and have a shot of getting out of here, you need to come out of that cage. In order to do that, you need to prove you aren't dangerous. That means no more cannibalism talk." "So I can't kill and eat those delicious looking morsels out there?" He waggled his eyebrows and grinned menacingly at Lisandra and Sa'Raah. Both of them cringed visibly. "I want the dragon-girl dead too, as does Rinok, but now is not the best time. There is a time for your appetites to be satiated, but that isn't now. You need patience." Rhyne scoffed at the vampire. "Have you seen what patience has done to the wilds of Jund? I have many fond memories of that plane, and the irrevocable disruption of the food chain isn't something I'm happy with. There's not enough ferocity. You can't really achieve the levels of fitness that existed before." "And I'm sure all your women and wine and devouring of humanoid flesh is going to keep you fit as a fiddle. But we need these people right now. We need them so we can continue with the plan." "Never been a fan of plans. I let the chips fall where they may and if I'm infinitely rewarded, then so be it." Vilhelm pressed on the bridge of his nose. "I need you to work with us, here. I promise it'll be worth your while." Rhyne spit a piece of fingernail out of his mouth. "I've never eaten death-drinker before, so for your sake it had better be."