Trying to keep a low profile as the Vice Eidolon of the Fourth Wing – looking as ridiculously obvious as he did – was a challenge. Though it was easy enough to just shut his cloak off, he himself still stuck out like a sore thumb.
Ren came back with her coffee, and offered a second, “If you’re that worried about it, why not just augment the color?” She wondered.
Gabriel had to take a moment to realize that she was holding out his drink – and the weight of it – solely with her left hand and arm. Her fingers could actually manage a light grip around the base of that tapered cup, but he took it before it could slip from her grasp anyway, “…Thanks.”
“So?” She asked again, and the duo turned to walk along the curated paths of a large inner-city park.
“It doesn’t work.” He answered, “The red just comes right through.”
“…Seriously?”
Gabriel made the effort to show her, and sure enough, no matter what he did, the red tips would not yield.
“Damn. Limitless tells are weird.”
“I’d just match it if I didn’t think having bright red hair would make me even more of an eyesore.” He commented, and took a calming sip from the little mouthpiece. The warmth was a balm to his sore throat, but he cleared it anyway after swallowing. He’d already manifested a simple long-coat over his frame to go overtop of his ponytail, but it did nothing for his bangs or solitary red eye, “And I would’ve covered it all up a long time ago if I could. The number of dirty looks I’ve gotten from people who think I’m doing it deliberately to stick-out…”
“I saw the P.O.V. footage from the excursion to the Exclusion Zone.” Ren noted quietly, “Back when we were fresh from Kitez, and Furion had just restored my rank to the Sixth, so I could see the archival footage from my misbegotten last mission.” She glanced over to see if Gabriel was paying attention, but those wing-like bangs covered too much of his face to see his eyes, so she just continued, “I wanted to know exactly what it was that happened to you, back when Furion’s father was Captain, and how the Fafnir found you out there… Your hair and eye weren’t red back then.”
“No.”
“It was a little strange to look at. The idea of you with all-blonde hair and both eyes blue seems like such a foreign concept to me, after all these years of knowing you for otherwise.” She said carefully, “I’ve never seen anything linger on someone when their eyes aren’t glowing though.”
“Lucky me.” He sighed.
“…I suppose I’m letting my work speak for me.” Ren smiled meekly, “I think I meant to say something like…you were a cute kid.”
“If you get around the whole fact of why you were able to see me back then, anyway.”
Ren was baffled, and held her cup with both hands as she tried to navigate that quagmire. She looked up and over the tops of those randomly-spaced trees, able to see the Dreadnought moored by its island in the distance, and the Fulcrum much closer, looming in the sky. She turned her eyes back to the dour figure walking beside her, “Are you okay?”
He pursed his lips and grumbled a sigh.
“I know you don’t want to talk about your diplomatic mission, but…that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me about how you’re doing after it.” She suggested, “I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“…It went really badly.” Gabriel managed, “Like, catastrophically badly. And it’s all because of me. I fumbled that ball like I didn’t know what field I was supposed to be in. Xanarken is upset at me, and Rylen was scolding me, too…basically said everything shy of calling me a damned idiot.”
“…It’s unfair the way they’re treating you.”
Gabriel finally turned to look at her, brow crinkled slightly.
“You’ve been eyeballs-deep in Sargonian affairs, but other than our ill-fated mission, you haven’t set foot into Kitez at all.” She explained, “Lord Xanarken must really want to wash his hands of the place, if he’s just dropping you into it like a kitten in a tank of carnivorous fish.”
“…It certainly feels that way.”
“To have the nerve to beat you down after you’ve basically been set up to fail…” Ren continued, only to pause and put a hand over her mouth, “…Now I’m talking shit about the Eidolon. I’m-“
“Why did you kiss me?”
Her left eye twitched nervously, “…Heh!?” Was all she could manage for a moment as her head felt as if it had spun around on her shoulders several times. She looked around to regain her bearings, then looked at the man squarely, “…Surprising question considering you kissed me back. Is it really such a concept that…I…”
Gabriel stared in confusion, “…That…you…?”
The perplexed look on her face betrayed her prior thought, and she could only lift her right arm to point into the distance, “The Fulcrum just turned on its emergency departure lights.” She turned to look at the Dreadnought, “…They both did.”
The Vice Eidolon felt every muscle in his body seize as he turned to see it, “…Shit…is it Kitez…?”
“Gabe?”
“I gotta go!” He said hurriedly, dropped his coffee, and quickly swapped his costume for his uniform as he took off running, trying desperately to reach out to either of the Eidolon.
“Gabe! You can’t just half-way put the blame on me and then leave!” Ren called out helplessly, abandoned there in the middle of the park with nothing but a foamy latté-puddle to remind her she’d once had company. She grumbled and bent down to pick up the forgotten cup, but as she rose back upright again, she saw an unexpected call from Seth coming through. She thought nothing of it, and accepted it, staring at the wasted empty cup rather than looking at the image of the teen on her overlay, “Hey Seth, this probably isn’t a great t-“
“Miss Ren! Help!”
“Seth?” Her ears perked-up then, and she was laser-focused on that unexpectedly-tumultuous image. The teen was cringing in a hall somewhere, red lights flashing all around him…and everything shook repeatedly as the sound of violence carried-on in the distance, “What’s going on?” She asked, deadly serious.
“I don’t know! There was suddenly a really bad shaking and what felt like an explosion! I-” He attempted to explain, only for the area to shudder again, this time with bits of the ceiling collapsing around him. Seth covered his head, and cried out in fear.
The pit in Ren’s stomach bottomed-out, and she, too, suddenly found herself abandoning the drinks. Emergency protocols were activated, and Ren made her way to the highest spot she could easily get to, leaping with inhuman strength until she was on top of a nearby building, “Why are you calling me!? You’ve got the entire Fafnir contingent right there! I’m in the city!”
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“They’ve already been scrambled; I can’t get a personal call through anymore!”
“Scrambled?” She repeated, “But that would mean-”
“Young Sir, we have to evacuate…!” A voice spoke off-screen, and Ren watched as Seth was suddenly collected by an unknown pair of arms. By the uniform, she could tell it was a Myrmidon, “It’s not safe here!”
“Miss Ren!”
The link was cut, and the window closed.
Green eyes stared ahead in shock, “Seth?” She asked quietly; the scramble order had just come to her as well, and shut her down to unofficial outside contact. She blinked hard to shake the nauseating feeling, and quickly kicked her boots off, and dissolved her blues. Her gaze went up, and she saw the distinct image of her armor coming blazing through the sky straight towards her like a red missile. She had mere seconds to throw the clip from her hair and tie those long black strands into a messy bun, and just as she finished, the armor landed beside her with the back of its chassis open and ready. She snatched the helmet with one hand, stepped into the armor, swapped the helm to her other hand, and allowed the shell to close around her. The helmet was clicked into place as her wings flashed on, and she lifted off in a hurry.
Some distance to the east, Gabriel had finally gotten through to Xanarken, and had subsequently stopped running for the docking tower, “…What do you mean, it’s not Kitez? What else could possibly rise to the occasion?”
“Not sure right now.” The Fourth answered, “I’ll keep trying to get through to Rylen. Given he’s not responding - and he’s locked his mantle down, so I can’t just go to wherever he is - I’m guessing it’s something to do with him.”
Gabriel looked up then, just as a flash of red went by; a familiar flash of red, with big volcanic-colored wings, “Ren…?” He said skeptically, “…I’ll get back to you.” He disconnected the comm.-window, and sent a new request to the Fafnir who’d just blazed by, and for a mercy, she answered, “What’s happening? Did you find out?”
“Something’s wrong at the place the Aegis is docked. I’m going there now. Once I’m clear of the city, I’m going hypersonic, so-”
“Do what you have to. I’ll follow behind on Maeve.”
“There’s no reason for you to come.” She said dismissively, “Just stay back and out of the way this time.”
Gabriel felt the knife go in - and twist for good measure, “…I wasn’t blaming you for why I messed up.”
“Well, it sure sounded like it.”
“…Like you said, I kissed you back, didn’t I?”
She went uncomfortably quiet, but she was outside of the city-center by then and was rising high into the sky; her armor was starting to shift its composition in preparation for the sonic-boom. She wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed still or flattered, so she went with neither, “…If you decide to follow anyway, keep a safe distance until you’re cleared to approach.”
.
The research facility was a labyrinth of halls and chambers, each receding further into the cliff. Half of the Fafnir had already gone inside to try and keep escape-paths clear for those stuck inside. Sixth Wing soldiers who’d been stationed there for security were pulling up the rear. Confusion was rife, and grumblings of the ignorant wafted into the air like a stinking smoke.
Four thick walls had been broken through from the exterior before the shaking stopped. Dust whirled through the gaping holes, and broken glass and metal littered the floor. Undulating whorls of semi-translucent filament writhed as they filled the shattered cryo-pods that once secured the defeated Warp Magi. Despite their grievous head-trauma, both of them had risen from their confinement with their arms outstretched through the mangled glass lids. Between them, Scyrexianori had collapsed to its knees, its massive wings limp at its sides, head cocked unnaturally backward as the black-red oily ichor billowed from its eyes. The aqueous residue wended down about its shoulders and arms, sliding across the floor until it entered into the eyes of the Magi on each side.
There were already victims of the onslaught scattered around the room. Bodies and parts of bodies were littered like leaves, splattered against the walls and instruments or just torn apart where they stood. One unfortunate Myrmidon was trapped in the room, just beyond sight, eyes flaring out of control just by proximity to the entity. The longer the transference seemed to go, the brighter that golden light shone, and the hapless man could only clench his eyes shut and press gloved hands to his face to try and keep it in.
The unmasked Myrmidon who had ushered Seth out of his open hiding-spot found her own eyes bursting unbidden with light as well, but she continued to shuffle the teen forward. She wouldn’t stop until they were both fully outside and on that lip of a terrace overlooking the river. She waved and hollered at the nearest Fafnir, and signaled them to come down. The Knight who landed was Sammy, sporting blue and seafoam armor with long, skinny, fin-like wings, and he quickly hoisted the panicked teen to lift him to safety, along with the woman who’d escorted him…and her light faded the farther up they went.
Furion got the notice of Seth’s return to the Aegis soon after, and a significant worry was lifted from his shoulders.
Rylen was nearby, a hand over the lower half of his face and his brow furrowed deeply as he watched a few of the different P.O.V.s up on the bridge’s main screen, “…What the Hell even was it?”
“There’s no video footage of whatever it was, sir. It’s as if it knew the ship’s blind-spots and had slipped straight through them.” The SkyFortress’ navigator explained cautiously, “We only know that it…came from directly above us.”
“And it went straight for the Magi containment room…” The Eidolon finished, and pulled his hand down to set both against his hips, “I need eyes inside. …How is the evacuation going? I haven’t seen a single hutch open.”
Furion checked a separate screen on his overlay, “It’s proceeding apace. They’re primarily leaving through the rear underground tram, sir. Roughly half the facility has vacated.”
“Commander Parker, get me a visual.” Rylen ordered, and he made Donivan’s P.O.V. the primary on the main-screen. Wing Commander Two hovered closer to the gaping hole in the side of the cliff, about 20ft off the ground where the river spilled out between the crevasse. The smoke wasn’t so dense as to not be able to see through, but the demolition hadn’t been in a straight line, so there were buffer-walls in the way. Rylen watched with unblinking eyes as Donivan set a careful foot on the debris-laden floor, and started creeping through the hollows.
They could hear it before they saw it, and the unsettling quiet that made it possible to hear was even worse. Two voices synchronized, moaning in guttural agony, but they were off by just-slightly-enough that it made it disconcerting to listen to. The sound of bone snapping and rearticulating, flesh ripping, entrails sloshing as they hit the floor…it was as if some massive beast had crawled its way into the secret places in the earth and had started to feast on the people it found there. It wasn’t far off. There was a beast…but it wasn’t eating.
It was reshaping.
Ianori’s body suddenly collapsed forward; wings, horns, and chitinous armor alike all broke apart and fell from him like dried mud. What loomed above him was the twisted Gemini of the Warp Magi, fused together in a way that defied nature. Its shadow against the broken and dimly-lit room was chilling, and Donivan kept a safe distance as he zoomed-in on the figure from two walls back.
But then an Eldritch nimbus appeared behind it. Red, like the outline of the sun during an eclipse, it manifested its light like a double-ended fuse, circling its perimeter from above the entity’s head until it vanished behind, giving it a dark emanating glow. The two skulls of the Magi had been twisted around, their shattered skulls open below like a gaping, blood-soaked mouth, while their jaws opened freakishly wide above it, and vomited-forth that sickly black-red miasma from its new ‘eyes.’ Within them, set into the recesses at the back of those throats, two orbs of golden hue were lodged like pearls inside an oyster’s shell. One set of shoulders were perched close to either side of the entity’s new ‘head,’ slumped forward with skinny arms dangling before its chest, while the other was set beneath the entire disgusting display, twitching and retracted against its torso. That exoskeleton of organic shell-like armor protruded in interlocking plates all along its body and back, more of those strange golden orbs embedded within it. If it still retained the legs of the Magi, they were hidden within the sinewy lengths of skin that rippled beneath it, in its mockery of a representation of cloth. Claws grew from fingertips, twisting horns rose from the new ‘head,’ neck, and back, and in place of what were once the leathery wings of a Fafnir-inspired body, now sat the multitudes of wriggling tendrils that arced out behind it like the arms of a horrific squid. The finality of that repulsive transformation were the spikes of light that grew out from the circle – shorter at the bottom and longer towards the arc above it – until its ultimate shape was that of a halo. Bent slightly forward, and sinister…it the very image of what contempt for the divine might look like.
And Ianori – weakened and near-death - had the temerity to grab at one of the skeletal ankles hovering above him, “…D-don’t…”
Two voices, depraved and distorted by the fusion, roared impatiently at him…only for that screaming groan to reverberate into itself as a mocking laugh instead.
The killing was about to begin.