Descent of Nightmare (Chapter Thirty-One)
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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 Thirty-One
Icefire
Mountains around Akrar, Kaldriel. November 13, 2277. Time instance 842N.
Hitedramon.
Hite. Dramon.
Shawn and Tanadin.
Emma looked closely at Sylondra, noting the shape of her face, the color of her eyes, and the icy claws on her fingers. She noted the flame burning deep within and the way she held herself, as well as the aura of don’t touch me that hummed around her.
No doubt remained in Emma’s mind that Sylondra was indeed the daughter of Shawn and Tanadin. But…?
“A-team?” Annihilation questioned immediately. Kallen continued to translate quietly for Cataclysm and Emma, although his eyes were wide. “What do you mean by A-team?”
“There were two groups created,” Sylondra told her. “We were the first. My guess is that you’re part of the second.”
“If she’s part of the B-team, then who are they?” the man asked, gesturing at Emma and Cataclysm.
“Some of our parents,” Annihilation replied, raising an eyebrow. “They’re where Zatar got the DNA.”
That made them pause. They exchanged glances and the man shuffled his wings nervously.
“Shatter, do you think-”
“Probably.” Shatter’s eyes locked on Cataclysm, looking him over. “They have the same wings as me,” he said softly. “No one’s ever had the same wings as me.”
“My name is Cataclysm Calyon,” Cataclysm said slowly, “and I recently discovered that I’m Annihilation’s father. It… wouldn’t surprise me to know I’m yours as well.”
Shatter frowned slightly at the translation offered by Kallen. He lowered his wings slightly, to a less threatening position, but didn’t fold them entirely. “I’m Shatter Igneregnatus. You can’t hurt me.” He bared his teeth. “And if you hurt Sylondra, I will kill you.”
“And if you hurt Emma, I’ll kill you,” Cataclysm responded pleasantly. “So that’s fair.”
Shatter snorted in satisfaction and slowly lowered his wings further, only folding them when Cataclysm did.
Sylondra’s eyes passed over them, pausing only for a moment on each before slowly returning to Annihilation. “What’s your name?”
“Annihilation Calyon.”
“And yours?”
“Kallen Avilena.” He motioned vaguely at Emma. “Her name is Emma Nossur.”
“Avilena, Nossur…” Sylondra mumbled, crossing her arms. “Those are two names I never thought I’d hear again.”
“They’re dead,” Shatter explained at the curious look they got. “The whole team is dead.”
“Kaldra’s not dead,” Sylondra argued. “And if Avery’s with her, he’s fine.”
“Unless she killed him.”
“Unless she killed him,” Sylondra conceded. “I know I would have by now. It’s hard enough not to kill you.”
“It’s an honor knowing you, too,” Shatter grumbled.
“Bite me.”
“What happened to your arms?” Kallen interrupted, pointing with his good hand.
Emma followed the motion and her eyes landed on Sylondra’s exposed forearms. Both were laced with scars, one of which seemed to be a cut only a month or two old, haphazardly slashed across her skin. The others, though, were straight and even, nearly uniform in their placement, length, and number.
Those had been no accidents.
“Marks of status,” Sylondra replied. A waver of doubt appeared in her eyes, and she added, “Well, they...used to be.”
A sick feeling rose in Emma’s stomach and she shut her eyes. Her fists clenched tightly, knuckles turning white and fingernails biting into her skin.
There was a reason that she and Cataclysm wore long sleeves.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and opened her eyes to Cataclysm, who gave her a reassuring look before focusing back on Sylondra. She looked bothered, glancing down at her arms uncertainty, then crossed them, as if trying to hide it.
Annihilation cleared her throat, wings twitching. “How did you get out of the Timewarp?”
“Timewarp?”
“The desert.”
Sylondra and Shatter exchanged glances. “Why do you call it a timewarp?”
“Well, that’s what M called it. It’s some kind of raptor technology that makes time go faster inside than it does on the outside. It’s only been five years, but it’s been sixteen for us.”
“Twenty.”
“What?”
“It’s been twenty years.” The ice claws disappeared from Sylondra’s fingers, melting into puddles on the floor. “You’re just younger, is all.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, when everything went to shit, Shatter and I took our chances and left the oasis to wander the dunes. We eventually found another oasis, along with an abandoned base in the hillside that looked awfully similar to ours. The teleporter already had coordinates plugged in, and we didn’t have anywhere else to go, so.” Sylondra made a helpless gesture with her hands. “Here we are. Wherever the fuck here is. It’s cold.”
“It’s snowy,” Cataclysm explained. “You’ve probably never seen snow.”
“Is it that cold white shit all over the ground? Because it sucks. It’s why we were staying inside.” Shatter rubbed his arms. “So I’m going back in.”
“That building doesn’t have any central heating. It would be better to follow us back.”
“I don’t want to walk in this temperature.”
“You can fly, can’t you?”
“Sylondra can’t.”
“You could carry her.”
Shatter raised an eyebrow and looked at Sylondra, as if this had never occurred to him before. She scrambled back and held up her hands in a position to push him back.
“Oh, no. You are never picking me up again. That first time was bad enough.”
“Do you propose to grow wings?”
“Fuck you.”
“Not interested.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You said you wanted to.” Shatter stepped towards her. “I want to get the hell out of this cold.”
“I don’t want you touching m- SHATTER YOU DICKMANTIS GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF OF ME!” It took Kallen a few tries to translate this, as he was too busy laughing and leaning on Emma for support.
Shatter rolled his eyes and scooped her up, ignoring her snarling and hitting. “Lead the way.”
Cataclysm raised an eyebrow. “You’re awful trusting.”
“You can’t hurt me,” Shatter repeated. “And Syl can kiss my ass.”
Cataclysm and Annihilation picked up their respective passengers and took off. Shatter wasn’t far behind, face set in a neutral expression as he followed behind them. Sylondra had stopped struggling so much, not wanting to fall, but she still looked seriously displeased.
~~~
Sylondra’s day did not get any less weird when she met her father and sister. It really, really did not.
First off, the whole finding-another-oasis-and-learning-that-Avery’s-theory-was-true thing had been pretty weird. The place they had ended up in hadn’t been much better. Then a goddamn Shatter clone carrying someone who looked like Kaldra along with Shatter’s half-sister carrying some dude that looked way too similar to Jera and Avery for comfort had landed and double-confirmed the whole B-team thing.
The fact that Annihilation also looked kinda like Kaldra was not helping Sylondra’s scattered brain any.
Where they had eventually landed had been a ‘city’, as Kallen had termed it, and it was full of people. They beat on Sylondra’s consciousness and she pulled closer in to herself, hating it already and finding herself wishing for the emptiness of the dunes. Sure, it had been dangerous, but at least it wasn’t crowded.
Then, of course, Emma had sent someone a message and then he had come barreling into the building they were in with a similar-looking girl who did not look familiar except for a few features that she had in common with Sylondra herself, shouting about more goddamn kids.
All in all, it was getting pretty damn stupid.
Sylondra crossed her arms as the man- who Kallen had identified as her father- jabbered on and on with Emma and Cataclysm, occasionally dragging Annihilation or the other girl into the conversation. The other girl kept looking at Sylondra curiously, though, and finally said- in Dranonic, thankfully-, “You look like some weird combination of Twelve and I.”
“Twelve?”
“Our leader.”
“What a coincidence. I’m our leader.” Sylondra stood up straighter, then hesitated. “Well. Through process of elimination.” She crossed her arms. “Our previous leader got shot in the head and there’s only three to five of us left, depending on whether or not Avery found Kaldra and if Kaldra found Tera.”
The girl paled. “Got shot- what shot them?”
“We’re not sure. That’s what made us all start killing each other.” Sylondra gritted her teeth, remembering damn clearly what had happened. “I’d think it was Tera, but she didn’t have a gun. Jera did, but she probably wouldn’t have done it. The others…” She trailed off, thinking. This was a well-worn path in her mind, checking and clearing each and every one of her team of complete guilt and never finding a concrete answer. Kaldra, no, doesn’t use a gun and wouldn’t. Avery, maybe, but he’d have no reason. Tera, probably, but doesn’t use a gun. Castra-
Her train of thought was derailed and she was yanked back into the conversation by the girl’s horrified gasp. “You… you killed each other?”
“The A-team fell apart,” Shatter grumbled, “and most of us died.”
“We were falling apart before that,” Sylondra bit out. Anger sparked behind her eyes and her heart flickered to life with it. “You saw what we were like.”
“We were fine-”
“We rated ourselves on how much pain we’d been through, Shatter!” Sylondra’s voice rose without her really noticing, interrupting the other conversations and drawing attention to her. She tugged at her ice powers and reformed her claws on her fingers, sharp and gleaming. “On how many scars laced our bodies! We’d been falling apart for years but most of you were too damn fucking blind to see it!”
Shatter snarled and spread his wings, sharpening his feathers. “We held it together for twenty years!”
“Eldran held it together for twenty years!” Sylondra corrected, baring her teeth. Flames flickered in her eyes and she felt the familiar twist of fire within come to the forefront. “He was given a handful of sand and told to keep a tower together without setting it down! I’m not surprised someone offed him considering how fucked up we are!”
Shatter’s eyes glowed dangerously. “You do not talk about him that way!”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s going to stop me? You? You wouldn’t hurt me!”
“Do not test me!”
“Bring it, chicken boy!”
The girl shoved herself between them, pushing both of them back and glaring at them with brilliant blue eyes. “Enough! I’m not going to listen to this any longer!”
“She-”
“Is coming with me,” the girl said firmly. “Shawn and I are going to take a walk with her while you go with Cataclysm and Annihilation. You can’t seem to get along.”
Kallen stepped forward, pincer hand whirring and clicking anxiously. “Lucy-”
Lucy ignored him, turning to glare at Sylondra specifically as Shatter reluctantly unsharpened his feathers and folded his wings. “I don’t know what went down in your group but I’m sorry about whatever it was. Fighting about it won’t bring back your dead friends or solve anything. Okay?”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Sylondra muttered, crossing her arms and letting the ice claws dissipate.
“You’re acting like a child,” Lucy hissed, “so I’ll treat you like one.”
“Shatter-”
“Shut up and come with me.” She grabbed Sylondra’s arm and pulled, but Sylondra remained stubbornly in place.
“No.”
“Sylondra.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“...Why?”
“Because I want to talk to you and that’s not going to happen when you and Shatter want to rip each other’s throats out.”
Sylondra considered that and finally nodded, the fire in her chest dying down to a smolder. “Fine. But you’d better make this worth it.”
~~~
Back up in the mountains, another member of the A-team warped onto Kaldriel, falling to her knees from the disorientation of being pulled out of the Timewarp. She blinked several times, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, before getting to her feet.
Biting cold nipped at her flesh and sank into her bones. She shivered, wrapping her wings around her and leaving the room to find the source of the biting wind. She found an open door, leading outside into a landscape unlike any she’d ever seen before. She stepped outside, bare feet protesting at the freezing white substance on the ground. She spread her wings, feeling the marvelous wind pull at her and bite into her veins all the same.
She could get used to this, in time. She grinned, touching where her missing tooth once sat with her tongue and noting the weakness it provided in her attacks. A missing tooth ruined the razor image, but she’d have to make do. Her tail lashed behind her as she crouched, raising her wings upwards.
She’d find Sylondra and Shatter. She just wasn’t quite sure how.
Tera Frost took off from the mountain ledge, letting the frigid air hold her up and guide her down into the valley of Akrar.
She had prey to hunt.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-17 10:01 pm (UTC)“You can fly, can’t you?”
“Sylondra can’t.”
“You could carry her.”
Shatter raised an eyebrow and looked at Sylondra, as if this had never occurred to him before. She scrambled back and held up her hands in a position to push him back.
“Oh, no. You are never picking me up again. That first time was bad enough.”
“Do you propose to grow wings?”
“Fuck you.”
“Not interested.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You said you wanted to.” Shatter stepped towards her. “I want to get the hell out of this cold.”
“I don’t want you touching m- SHATTER YOU DICKMANTIS GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF OF ME!” It took Kallen a few tries to translate this, as he was too busy laughing and leaning on Emma for support.
Shatter rolled his eyes and scooped her up, ignoring her snarling and hitting. “Lead the way.”
Cataclysm raised an eyebrow. “You’re awful trusting.”
“You can’t hurt me,” Shatter repeated. “And Syl can kiss my ass.”
Cataclysm and Annihilation picked up their respective passengers and took off. Shatter wasn’t far behind, face set in a neutral expression as he followed behind them. Sylondra had stopped struggling so much, not wanting to fall, but she still looked seriously displeased.
I love Shatter and Sylondra *hugs them both*
Tera Frost took off from the mountain ledge, letting the frigid air hold her up and guide her down into the valley of Akrar.
She had prey to hunt.
So not only does Anni have a sibling but so does Deathclaw? Sweet I'm sure he'll be happy to learn about her.
Also congrats to Sadie to having a second child.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-17 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-17 11:02 pm (UTC)-Observing Anon
no subject
Date: 2017-02-18 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-18 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-18 09:03 pm (UTC)THESE CRAWLS THEY NEVER CRAWL
(I'm a terrible person.)