"There is one of LCs limbs literally laying right over there! Doing nothing! Why is it even-"

Omega tuned out the conversation happening between Quarti and Aleph. Well it was mostly Aleph complaining at the universe at large via Quarti as a convenient sounding board.

Poor kid did not appreciate being cooped up with the Prophet all the time. Omega probably should point out some of the ‘fiction’ that Quarti had written about historical figures in the past.

Aleph would be mortified when this inevitably ended up in a book read by billions in a few centuries. Which Quarti had done several times through human history on terra.

Still it was for the best.

Omega was having difficulty with playing ‘bait’ as it was. She had to actually focus on not focusing. Arrest the eye flicker, avoid paying attention.

That was the plan for her end of it. Instigate a reaction from the wraiths, get them to spend themselves trying to provoke or entice her attention.

Meanwhile Pylo or Elsie would sweep through in her wake after she lured them out and ‘poison’ the things that tried to feed on them.

Quarti was sticking with Aleph because the youngest terran was not trained well enough in resonance or self control to manage being bait effectively. And if a wraith tried to go after Aleph Quarti was the best suited to being able to actively murder the things without causing another population explosion.

Or permanently injuring Aleph’s soul.

When Pylo and Elsie had explained how either of them normally would deal with this sort of thing she had been horrified.

The kind of effect they suggested would have qualified as a war crime on terra.

It was the kind of weapon that was relegated to horror and science fiction. Theoretical at best. So nightmarish that many would not believe a human being could ever condone such an instrument of destruction.

A soul scouring bomb!

And apparently any properly trained Siren could enact that. It was considered a cleaning technique!

Apparently Elsie knew how to build one out of the materials available to them. Like it was only a tricky chemistry problem instead of a paradox wrapped inside itself!

Omega huffed and gave the gathering swarms of wraiths a glance. Just enough to tease them and lure others out of the bulkheads of the ship. Instigating a profusion of forms to sweep and dance and leap through one another. Trying to bring their own chosen targets into clearer and more complete apparition to her wandering eye.

Trying to tease her mind to focus on their particular disorienting horror out of the multitude.

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Trains danced with faces of leering tooth.

Trees trundled and roared silently.

Circles of children’s toys danced and sang with tones of metal on glass.

Mirrors cavorted and reflected ghostly images of her own face leering back at her.

Forms of food, lovers and all the more flashed and flickered and practically begged her to pay attention. To focus, to feed the creatures.

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But she turned her thoughts inward again. She stopped focusing in front of her as Pylo took her role, settling into view and ‘looking’ without seeing. Smiling and flickering with expressions and half starts of reaction. Teasing.

It drew brighter more desperate flares from the wraiths.

Which when she focused on suddenly fattened, grew more distinct and assured. She turned her attention back to Elsie and forcefully stopped letting her eyes see.

The other in their trio had a different way to purge the Wraiths. Pylo was always seeming on the verge of actually responding to them. But drifted smoothly out of it again and again. Attention never fully settling and always slipping away from the desperately displaying wraiths.

Pylo teased and lured and always seemed on the verge of giving in and finally satisfying the hungry phantasms even as they starved and withered. Weakening them in great swarms

Elsie on the other hand always focused intently on one at a time. Slowly causing the spirit to engage with them, mirror and reflect and project to the cameras.

Dancing in ever tighter and more repetitious loops until the thing flared out in a burst of exhaustion and died.

Omega had given a peak to what that felt like over resonance and quickly retreated from the stinging pain. Inside of Elsie was a threshing maelstrom. Like a sadistic monster had tried to engineer a choral crystal network with lethal intent for its user experience. Even the glance, the slightest brush had hurt Omega’s spirit.

What it must be doing to the... Wraiths who latched onto them made her skin crawl.

“I think they're intrigued enough. Hold on luring anymore Omega. after we finish clearing this pack we all need to rest.”

Elsie was puffing short jets of steam periodically now.

Pylo echoed it with her own billowing gasps. Clouds of silvery white sweeping up into the ephemeral lights that Omega was focusing intently in not paying attention too.

It was giving the apparitions something more to play with. Giving them material and surfaces that could fake far more precise forms.

It also was proving to exhaust them to death by the dozen trying to hold her focus or finally draw a full fledged reaction out of Pylo.

Elsie did not seem to be particularly more effective though.

That thresher of an abomination in the spirit is why Omega did not simply discount the idea that Elsie genuinely knew how to build a soul scouring bomb. Against every tradition or basis of Resonance and the science of song she was already flaunting a paradox.

A dead spiral of spirit.

Resonance without life.

An inverted story which to even touch as a living thing would require one’s very soul and flesh to curdle and twist into chaos and dissolution.

Her job here was done though.

If there was no need to draw more wisps to the slaughter she could and probably should stop focusing on the here and now.

Her attention drifted and she started to catch up on the log of the last few minutes of conversation between Aleph and Quarti.