Descent of Nightmare (Chapter Twenty-Two)
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saladloveChapter list: https://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/650.html
Map of Kaldriel: https://i.gyazo.com/332b0c0172dcc60acb46
Rough map of Hatu: https://i.gyazo.com/ea4f9f51b9dc7b9d8b86
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rival
Mainframe, Kaldriel. November 11, 2277. Time instance 842N.
It was just before dawn when Kyir’s phone buzzed, drawing focused eyes away from their work and to the message he had received. Seven glanced up at him when he noticed him stop working, frowning slightly. “What is it?”
“Jase is back.” Kyir shoved his phone in his pocket. “I’m going to go say hi to her.”
“You can text her. We’re almost done.”
“I’m going to go see her in person.” Kyir crossed his arms.
“Here we go,” Hazon muttered, already used to their arguments.
“Fine. You have two minutes.”
“No, Seven.”
“Why? That should be sufficient to find her, say hello, and return.”
Kyir shook his head. “No. I need an hour. Maybe two. I want to say hello properly.”
“What could you possibly- oh. No.” Seven glared at him. “No. We need to finish this. I need you here.”
“Seveeen!”
“No.”
Hazon groaned. “Oh, come on, Seven. It’s not like the aliens are going to show up in the span of an hour. Humor him or he’ll be a bitching mess until we’re done.”
“They could-”
“It’s unlikely,” Kyir agreed. “I’m going to go.”
Seven glanced between them before throwing his hands up. “Fine! Go! I expect you back in an hour and fifteen minutes or I’m coming to get you.”
Kyir grinned and saluted. “Aye aye, captain.” He bolted out of the room, leaving Hazon and Seven alone.
“I don’t know what to do with that man,” Seven muttered, returning to his work.
~~~
Annihilation’s hands were still shaking from the battle the day before. She hadn’t even slept, instead opting to follow Deathclaw into his room and lean against him, trying to draw comfort from her friend and failing as all she saw was raining blood and screaming angels.
She was no stranger to death- she’d watched Meria die, after all, and they’d killed countless animals and monsters back in the Timewarp. But this- intelligent beings fighting against one another, destroying each other with cold efficiency or burning hatred…
It was different. Annihilation shivered and silently wished that Deathclaw was awake so that she could talk to him, try to draw any kind of comfort from him. Some of the others were bothered too, she knew, but she didn’t talk to them like she did Deathclaw. They were the outcasts, and they knew it.
She reluctantly stood, stepping around the mess that had already started to form in Deathclaw’s room on her way towards the door. She silently left and ghosted down the hallway, not sure what she was looking for and pausing next to a half-open door. She could hear quiet voices within, and slowly peeked around to see who was there.
Korrah was sitting on the floor, leaned against a wall and holding a strange sort of hat that looked to be made from the skin of an animal. Krassor sat in front of her, explaining how and why Tanadin had given him the hat as Korrah’s eyes flickered from brown to purple and magic warped around her as she started to enchant the item that he’d handed her.
Annihilation backed away and turned to walk down to the other end of the hallway. She wasn’t going to intrude on the enchanting of Krassor’s mother’s hat, even if she was long-dead and none of them would ever know her.
She went back into her room, flopping down on her bed and sighing. She needed someone to talk to, and considering how ecstatic Deathclaw had been after the battle, she figured he wasn’t going to help her any. She rolled onto her back, mentally flipping through everyone she knew to try and find someone that might understand.
She quickly ran out of options with the other labkids, but… She hesitated, remembering the friendly black-feathered demon that had spoken to her before, the one that M had insisted was her father. And the human with him, her mother…
She sat up, scanning for a slip of paper and a pencil. She scribbled “Gone to parents’ house. Will be back soon. -Anni” and dropped it off just inside Deathclaw’s room on her way out. She took the elevator down and almost ran into Gyrad when the doors opened.
She raised an eyebrow, surprised. “Where have you been?”
“Out. Just taking a walk. Where are you going?”
“To take a walk.”
“Hm.” Gyrad pushed past her to get into the elevator and waited for her to leave before jamming his finger onto the button for the proper floor.
Annihilation didn’t bother waiting to watch him go.
She had somewhere to be, after all.
~~~
“Oh, shit.”
Seven was getting really tired of Hazon saying that. Every time those words left his mouth, something astoundingly terrible had happened and if anything else went wrong he was tempted to lie down on the floor from an overdose of sheer stupidity as everything seemed to be conspiring to drive him insane lately.
Bracing himself for the worst, Seven turned to look at him. “What?”
“We’re detecting another incoming ship, identical to M’s and Q’s.” As he said this, the report reached Seven as well, indicating that there was nothing that they could do to stop it. He immediately sent a reply asking where it was going, and after a moment whoever was monitoring the systems replied that it seemed to be angled towards Akrar.
Seven growled low in his throat. “Warn Akrar. Contact someone capable. Nine, maybe.”
“Nine’s not there.”
“Tanadin, then, just not Scott!” Seven stormed towards the door, pausing at Hazon’s following question.
“Where are you going?”
“To get Kyir. It’s been thirty minutes and an alien showed up.” With that, Seven left, racing down the halls of the Mainframe to get to where he knew Kyir was probably hiding with Jase.
Seven tried the doorknob and, finding it locked, pounded on the door. “KYIR! We’ve got another alien! We’re finishing this NOW!”
“What? No! I’m kind of busy!”
“Too bad.” Seven unlocked the door and stormed in, grabbing Kyir by the arm. “We’re not letting any more in.”
“ACK! Seven, can I get, like, five minutes? It’s not like another alien-”
“THAT’S WHAT YOU SAID LAST TIME!” Seven roared. “We’re GOING!”
“CAN I GET SOME PANTS ON?!”
“No! Pants are for those that aren’t in a hurry!”
“I’d rather not walk around the Mainframe naked, Seven!”
“You pulled underwear on, you’re fine. Besides, almost every cyborg here has seen security footage of you at one time or another. There are cameras in every room.”
“There are WHAT?”
“Hot,” Jase commented.
“I don’t need your- SEVEN THAT’S MY ARM!”
“Yes. It is.” Seven dragged him out of the room. “We need to finish this now. Before more show up.”
“We’re not even done!”
“That can wait. This can’t.”
Kyir groaned. “I really hate you sometimes.”
“Unfortunate.”
~~~
Tanadin practically kicked open the door of the room M was sleeping in, awakening him instantly and almost triggering his combat instincts. Fortunately for Tanadin, her shout of “M WE HAVE A SITUATION” was enough to awaken his mind before his claws and he got to his feet, shaking off sleep.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got another ship flying in, one identical to yours and Q’s.”
“Mystrex,” he snarled. “So they did come for me.”
“I wasn’t wrong,” Q yawned, getting to her feet and scratching at an itch on her neck. “They did send a Mystrex to kill you.”
“Great. I love being assassinated.”
“Hazon says the ship’s landed in the mountains near here,” Tanadin continued, “and most of our firepower is moving over to the Ruby Gate in anticipation of a potential angel attack through there.”
“We can deal with it,” M said immediately. “I can take almost any of the Mystrex, and if I can’t, well, their mission is almost undoubtedly to kill me. If I lose, they’ll leave.”
“I’m going with you,” Q informed him.
“No. You’re not.”
“I’m not letting you do some dumb macho thing and get yourself killed out there! I’m going with you.”
M glared at her. “It’s not like that and you know it. You technically haven’t committed treason yet. If you attack another Mystrex, they have every reason to want you dead as well. If I lose and they find you here, you can tell them you were trying to convince me to turn myself in or something. You’re a good liar and they would rather not have to replace any more Mystrex than they have to.”
Q hissed at him. “Fine. But I’m still going with.”
“I am too. I’m your babysitter, remember? Seven would throw a fit if I let you meet with another Mystrex without supervision.” Tanadin crossed her arms.
“By ‘meet’ do you mean ‘fight to the death?’ My chances of convincing them to just leave are very, very low.”
“Yes.”
“What a baby,” Q commented. “Won’t let the alien he distrusts run off on his own. How dare he.”
“I might let the other Mystrex win,” M muttered. “It would mean I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Boo.”
M cleared his throat. “Do you have coordinates?”
“Vaguely, yes.”
“Lead us there, then.” M flexed his fingers and tapped his hooked claws on the ground. “Let’s get this over with.”
~~~
Kaldriel’s mountains, M decided, were significantly worse than the rest of the planet. They were somehow even colder than Akrar itself, making him feel slightly sluggish despite the warming effects of his cloak. It took Q complaining to get Tanadin to shift into her kirinax form, which helped considerably and let M focus on keeping his eyes open as they closed in on their target.
“They could be anywhere,” Q mumbled.
“I doubt it. It’s just cold enough that they might be staying near their ship, ready to fight anyone that comes after them until I show up or it gets warmer.”
“Wouldn’t they think we’d think of that and do the opposite?”
M paused. “Don’t do this. I hate it when you do this.”
Q smiled innocently. “Do what?”
“I get enough of this from the cyborgs,” Tanadin muttered. “I don’t need it from you, too.”
“At least someone is on my side. Now we need to be quiet. Keep your ears open.” M sped up, taking the lead as they continued through the mountains. They were close, he could feel it. The pull of the cloaks drew Mystrex towards one another, indicating their location if they were close enough, and a second pull that didn’t belong to Q’s cloak had been growing stronger the closer they got. The other Mystrex could feel them too, M knew, but they seemed content to remain still.
“We’re almost there,” he said eventually. “Stay back.”
They crested a ridge that quickly dipped down into a formation that could hardly be called a valley before spiking upwards back into mountains. At the bottom of the mock-valley, a Mystrex ship was landed, engines switched off and positioned at an angle on the uneven ground. M took a deep breath before leading the way down, the others following. He approached the ship, tense and anxious as the other Mystrex’s presence weighed upon him in a more uncomfortable way than it ever had before.
“I thought you might be here, Q. The council had wondered if you’d left to find M.” The voice, its sound forgotten as soon as it was heard, made M whip around, eyes locking on the cloaked figure that had ghosted up behind them. Bright red eyes burned in the recesses of their shadowed face and M felt his stomach drop as the Mystrex reached up and pulled back their hood.
Anyone but you.
“I’m here to kill you, M, and to bring Q home unless given a reason to kill her as well.” He spoke in the raptors’ native language, prompting them to do the same.
“And good morning to you, too, E,” Q said dryly. “Cheery as always.”
E’s red eyes burned like angry flames, standing out against nearly black scales and red-tinted feathers. His face was drawn in a snarl, as it had been for years, and he held himself aggressively with clawed fingers spread and legs ready to leap. Tanadin looked between E and M and quickly sidestepped closer to Q, knowing that if she got involved she would almost certainly be killed.
“They won’t interfere,” M told him, clicking his claws against the ground. “But it doesn’t have to end this way, E. You don’t want to do this.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“We are both Mystrex. We were both chosen by the cloaks and have worked well in the past. We were friends.”
“We haven’t been friends since we became Mystrex and you know it.” E stood up straighter, hissing. “Let this be our final score, M. Let this be what determines who is better, once and for all. I’ve wondered for years.”
M bared his teeth. “Very well.” He took an aggressive stance, bending his legs and getting ready to run or jump, whatever was required. He raised his killing claws up and bared his teeth, eyes glowing brighter in the dim morning sun. He raised his arms and readied his claws, reluctantly deciding that using magic would only provoke E into doing the same and that it could cause the destruction of the entire area. He drew himself up to his full height and puffed out all of his feathers, making himself look bigger just as E was.
They circled each other, moving in slow steps meant to intimidate their opponent. It was primal, instinctive ritual, one that raptors had observed since their first ancestors readied themselves for battle against their own kind. Yellow eyes met red, patience against impulse, and E broke first.
He screeched, taking several steps forward before jumping, claws up and mouth open. M darted to the side and spun to face him, swinging his tail to counterbalance his fast turn and readying his claws as E landed.
M might have preferred to not fight, but he wasn’t about to do something stupid to honor what was long past. It didn’t matter, not anymore.
Or so he told himself as he threw himself forward, into E as he turned to face him. Their hands locked and fingers scrabbled feebly for something to claw, hissing and pushing against each other in an attempt to overpower their opponent. E suddenly disengaged, stepping back and letting M stumble before moving back into position and bringing a claw down on the side of M’s face, narrowly missing his eye.
M screamed in pain as E’s claw ripped through silver scales just inches away from his eye. He leaped away, breathing heavily as blood welled and flowed down his face, dripping onto the dirt and stone below. A silent, disturbing hum ran through them, ran through every Mystrex, as his blood flowed free and marred E’s claw.
Mystrex had never spilled Mystrex blood. Until now.
M bit back further reactions to the wound, his knowledge that it wasn’t life-threatening doing nothing to dull the pain. He’d never been injured in battle before, and he decided he’d rather avoid it in the future.
E grinned at him, a familiar overconfident expression. He leaped forward, claws slashing at M’s cloak and only getting caught in the fabric. M slammed his shoulder into E, knocking him off balance, and reached to claw his throat. E grabbed his claws in time, stopping him and locking them again in a stalemate.
“You shouldn’t have stood against the first circle!” E roared, ringing a bell in M’s mind that he pushed aside. He had to act, and he had to act now.
He raised one of his feet and, before E could knock him over, dug his killing claw into E’s underbelly and tore a foot-long gash down his body.
E screamed, writhing in M’s grip as blood poured from his body, staining their feet and the dirt brilliant crimson. E’s eyes glowed brighter and he let go of M, trying to throw himself forward and only ending up in M’s claws.
M grabbed E tightly, claws drawing blood as they pierced his scales. E struggled for freedom, still screeching his horrible pained note, and M struck.
His head shot forward, jaws open, and his teeth sank into the flesh of E’s neck. With a shove of his arms and a jerk of his head, he tore E’s throat out and threw his body to the ground. M spat out the chunk of flesh and looked down at E’s thrashing corpse, watching his lifeblood drain away and the glow of his eyes fade to nothing. The twitching in his body subsided, and E was no more.
The iron taste of blood corrupted M’s mouth, and an unidentifiable emotion ran through his heart. He lowered his red-stained claws to the ground and his shoulders slumped. He took three whole breaths before the shrieking pain ran through his core.
M threw back his head and keened, a ringing call that echoed through the mountains. Q joined him, and far away, back on Hatu, the remaining twenty-three Mystrex threw back their heads and did the same.
Mystrex always knew when one of their own had fallen.
When M ran out of air in his lungs, he lowered his head, letting the pain within fade. He knelt down and carefully pulled the cloak off of E’s body, folding it up and hanging it over his left forearm as he stood. He ignored the slowing trickle of blood from the cut near his eye and the feeling of E’s blood drying on his teeth and scales. He didn’t speak, ignoring Tanadin’s horrified stare and Q’s sympathetic look. Something like grief ran through his veins like lead. It wasn’t quite grief, though- it was off, like a slightly wrong note in a song.
He couldn’t identify it. He didn’t try to.
The deafening silence and the iron on his tongue was enough for him.
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Date: 2017-01-14 12:51 am (UTC)M: *rips someone's throat out with his teeth*
Seven: It's fun!
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Date: 2017-01-14 01:27 am (UTC)Their hands locked and fingers scrabbled feebly for something to claw, hissing and pushing against each other in an attempt to overpower their opponent.
I couldn't help but picture two raptors locking little arms and not getting anywhere and then having some kind of slap fight where their arms can't quite reach each other ^^"
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Date: 2017-01-14 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 01:24 am (UTC)“You can text her. We’re almost done.”
“I’m going to go see her in person.” Kyir crossed his arms.
“Here we go,” Hazon muttered, already used to their arguments.
“Fine. You have two minutes.”
“No, Seven.”
“Why? That should be sufficient to find her, say hello, and return.”
Kyir shook his head. “No. I need an hour. Maybe two. I want to say hello properly.”
“What could you possibly- oh. No.” Seven glared at him. “No. We need to finish this. I need you here.”
“Seveeen!”
“No.”
At least Seven understands the subtext here, but only because this situation has likely occurred before and someone had to explain it to him.
“We’re detecting another incoming ship, identical to M’s and Q’s.” As he said this, the report reached Seven as well, indicating that there was nothing that they could do to stop it. He immediately sent a reply asking where it was going, and after a moment whoever was monitoring the systems replied that it seemed to be angled towards Akrar.
Seven growled low in his throat. “Warn Akrar. Contact someone capable. Nine, maybe.”
“Nine’s not there.”
“Tanadin, then, just not Scott!” Seven stormed towards the door, pausing at Hazon’s following question.
I'm sure Scott would argue that he is quite capable to which many of the Black Members would roll their eyes.
Also, looks like that assassin has arrived to take M's head back on a platter....
“Where are you going?”
“To get Kyir. It’s been thirty minutes and an alien showed up.” With that, Seven left, racing down the halls of the Mainframe to get to where he knew Kyir was probably hiding with Jase.
Seven tried the doorknob and, finding it locked, pounded on the door. “KYIR! We’ve got another alien! We’re finishing this NOW!”
“What? No! I’m kind of busy!”
“Too bad.” Seven unlocked the door and stormed in, grabbing Kyir by the arm. “We’re not letting any more in.”
“ACK! Seven, can I get, like, five minutes? It’s not like another alien-”
“THAT’S WHAT YOU SAID LAST TIME!” Seven roared. “We’re GOING!”
“CAN I GET SOME PANTS ON?!”
“No! Pants are for those that aren’t in a hurry!”
Poor Kyir, the victim of dramatic irony XD
“I’d rather not walk around the Mainframe naked, Seven!”
“You pulled underwear on, you’re fine. Besides, almost every cyborg here has seen security footage of you at one time or another. There are cameras in every room.”
“There are WHAT?”
“Hot,” Jase commented.
“I don’t need your- SEVEN THAT’S MY ARM!”
“Yes. It is.” Seven dragged him out of the room. “We need to finish this now. Before more show up.”
“We’re not even done!”
“That can wait. This can’t.”
Kyir groaned. “I really hate you sometimes.”
“Unfortunate.”
Kyir and Jase accidental Kaldriel porn stars, which Jase is fine with while Kyir is not.
Also Kyir as important as a healthy libido and intimacy with your wife are, those are not quite as important as a hostile Raptor ship heading through the planet's atmosphere.
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Date: 2017-01-14 01:28 am (UTC)THE SHIP WAS ALREADY THERE CHANCES OF ANOTHER ONE SHOWING UP IN THE NEXT 5 MINUTES WERE ALMOST ZERO
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Date: 2017-01-14 01:31 am (UTC)SEVEN'S INTERRUPTION KILLED THE MOOD IT'D TAKE MORE THAN 5 MINUTES TO GET THE MOOD GOING AGAIN LET ALONE COMPLETE IT
Also knowing dramatic irony in that 5 minutes the rest of the fleet from Hatu would drop out of the sky and open fire.....
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Date: 2017-01-14 01:33 am (UTC)THEY WEREN'T GONNA FINISH THE DEVICE IN 5 MINUTES ANYWAY
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Date: 2017-01-14 01:36 am (UTC)Nothing satisfactory anyway......XP
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Date: 2017-01-14 04:13 am (UTC)-Observing Anon