Nothing in his training nor combat experience—nothing in life—had prepared him for this.
The first thing he could think to do was go up. Judging from the way the thrusters sputtered and lurched, however, water had already found its way into the Eidolon’s inner machinery. Zelen didn’t even have the time to be frightened by this realization, and he knew only to push on. To safety. To survival.
His singular desire had also translated into a kind of tunnel vision. The HUD continued to throw out a multitude of information, but the only thing he saw was the dark corridor ahead, muddied by a hazy green patina. His only path was forward, back the long twisting way he’d come—through the immense and incomprehensible belly of the beast.
The entire megastructure continued its sequential demise. Walls on either side of the corridors burst open, flooding the quickly narrowing space with more briny and oily water. Zelen didn’t stop to think. Didn’t stop to assess his options. He knew that every second of hesitation only brought him closer to the certainty of death.
Zelen! You can’t make it out on your own! Call for help, now!
He didn’t respond. Partly because his mind had turned to quicksand, and he could barely receive let alone retain information. But also because something within the core of his being rejected the whole notion—the notion that anyone should risk themselves for his sake.
No, this watery prison was his alone. His alone to conquer, and his alone to succumb to, should he fail in the attempt.
Before long, the thrusters stopped working completely. Zelen was forced to move his feet along the disintegrating ground, sprint as though he might be driving for a score in an Arenaball game. The reality of it spelled doom, and yet, there was something bizarrely comforting about the sensation that his Eidolon mirrored his movements exactly—1:1—man and machine both running desperately for their lives.
The green haze became inundated with dark rushing water. Soon he felt it, water pooling at his feet and invading through the crevices on his Nexa-Suit.
It was cold. Shockingly so. And it was then, in the throes of a deadly struggle, that a thought occurred to him: edifying in its simplicity, absurd in its time and place.
This is the first time I’ve ever dipped my feet in the ocean.
His progress slowed, not for a lack of will, but due to simple physics. Water had reached the Eidolon’s central chassis now, and his lower limbs bucked and collapsed under the pressure. Forced into a kneeling position, this only allowed the water to ever more rapidly flood the cockpit. The HUD flashed several times, then shut off completely.
You mustn’t give up. Please, Zelen, you have to keep fighting.
Silon’s words were suddenly clearer than ever before. But by then, they were too late to change anything. The Eidolon was trapped, and Zelen along with it. He sensed that his next words might be his last, and instead of reaching for the radio, he spoke into the Nexus.
“Silon, I—”
Water drowned out his words, along with whatever else still functioned within the cockpit. Zelen’s world was the cold black embrace of death.
~January 21st, 128 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Reiter Garrison, the Gymnasium~
Zelen Athelstan—ten going on eleven—sat alone in a corner of the multi-purpose court, drenched from head to toe in sweat, tears, and god knew what else. It was the end of his first week of proto-Reiter training: the longest week of his young life, a week that was about to repeat itself bright and early the very next morning.
He decided then and there that he didn’t want to wake up tomorrow. Not when the Instructors were so mean. Not when PT was so punishing, on both body and soul. And especially not when the other kids in his class were so alienating, always either ignoring him or making him feel like he’d done something wrong.
Even now, a gaggle of them had formed on the other side of the court, utterly oblivious to his presence. They too had been punished and driven to exhaustion by the latest PT session. Which was just as well, because it meant they didn’t have the energy to do much more than ignore Zelen.
Was it something he’d said or done? Was it because he was an Athelstan? He himself wasn’t quite sure what that even meant. Or was it because—
All of a sudden, Zelen Athelstan—ten going on eleven—missed his family very much. And even he knew this to be strange.
Because he barely knew his family. They fed him, including with his favourite ‘fish’ cake, and they gave him clothes that fit and made him look taller and more important. His father was an old man who walked with a constant limp and looked to be holding in a sigh at all times. His sister was much older than him, and seemed far more interested in anyone who wasn’t in her own family. And his brother—well, there was one good thing about proto-Reiter training, which was that he didn’t have to see his brother very often.
The only one he thought had been nice to him was his mother. But when he tried to picture the family that he so dearly missed, it wasn’t his mother’s face that came to mind.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Instead, all he saw was a kind of hollowed-out space. The shape of it, as dark and fuzzy as it was, made him think there ought to be something there—and perhaps there had been, once upon a time. And yet, try as he might, no faces came to mind, and no voices called to him from beyond the veil of memories.
All he could feel was a kind of lingering warmth. As if someone—a group of someones—had been inside that hollowed-out space, then vacated it not that long ago.
What he missed, he realized, was this faceless warmth. Somehow he knew that, if only he had this warmth to cling to, all this other stuff wouldn’t be so bad. Mean Instructors, painful PT, indifferent classmates. None of it could hurt him, not really, as long as he had this warmth to return to at the end of the day.
In his daydreaming, he hadn’t noticed one boy break off from the rest of the group. This boy trudged toward him now, grimacing with every step, looking just as wrung out as Zelen felt.
Zelen’s heartbeat quickened. What should he do? How should he protect himself? Wasn’t this boy content to let him be? Did he really have to rub salt in his wound?
“Hey. A bunch of us are staying behind to get in a quick game of Arenaball. Wanna join?”
At first, the words meant nothing to Zelen. Was it some kind of trick? The set-up for some sick joke? He said nothing.
“Uh…” The boy’s half-grimace half-smile faltered. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I know we’re all tired. Maybe next time then?”
When Zelen still said nothing, the boy shrugged and turned to go. And only when the boy’s sweat-soaked back was turned to him, did an impulse far stronger than self-preservation move Zelen to action.
“I don’t know the rules.”
The boy stopped and looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“I don’t know the rules to Arenaball. Is that… okay? Would you still want to play with me?”
First the boy’s shoulder then his entire body turned around to face Zelen again. The half-grimace had settled into a full smile.
“Of course! We all had to learn some time. Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Then and only then did Zelen manage to return the boy’s smile with a tentative one of his own.
“I’m… Zelen. Zelen Athelstan.”
“I know who you are. We met before, you know. At one of our parents’ parties.”
“Oh… I’m sorry. I don’t think—I didn’t get—”
“Don’t worry about it!”
The boy first waved a hand in dismissal, then held out the same hand in Zelen’s direction.
“I’m Megha Vakta.”
Zelen took the sweat-slick hand, then let himself be pulled to his feet by its strength. And as he followed his new friend across the court, he felt something shift within him.
There was a hollowed-out space where his family should’ve been, now filled only with lingering warmth. A bit of that warmth had leaked out, and begun to seep through the rest of his body and soul.
~October 30th, 138 AH~
~Sector Aries, inside the Mothership~
—up. Wake up, Zelen!
Zelen’s world was darkness, bubbling water, and a machine that was trying to revive itself. What—
“Are you there, Kingfisher? It’s not too late to engage the purge system, but I can’t help you do it. You gotta do it yourself!”
Glasswing is right, Zelen! If you can hear this, purge! And quickly!
Even in the depths of his confusion, Zelen knew that the two entities he trusted most in this world—his friend and his Spiegel—were trying to save his life. Blindly, sluggishly, he flung his right hand about until it caught against a hefty lever, then pulled.
For one terrifying moment, he felt his entire Nexa-Suit press against him, as though it meant to suffocate if not crush him to death. This was followed by deafening hisses and bone-rattling rumbles that seemed to travel outward, with the Nexa-Suit and everything else within the cockpit as their foci.
Just like that, he could breathe again. Freely and hungrily. The Lungs are the windows through which Spirit soars.
The HUD flickered back to life, though with dead pixels on several parts of the screen. Zelen felt rather than saw that the water all around him had receded. Or was it that he himself had reached higher elevation? But how—
“Fuck yes! You’re back! Alright, bud, you’re still alive and well, but we’re not out of the woods yet. We still need to push on and get the fuck out of this hellhole.”
“Megha…? How did you—”
“Objective Foxtrot. Submersible armour, remember? But no time for that right now. Let’s go go go!”
Zelen willed himself to move, but with great difficulty. The earlier 1:1 synchronization he’d felt with his Eidolon had tilted the other way. The Eidolon wanted to go fast, to keep up with the teammate that ran ahead, but it was Zelen’s fogged-up mind and crumbling muscles that now held them back.
“That’s it, buddy, one step at a time. Don’t think about anything. Just focus on following me. I’ll lead us out of here.”
Silon had gone silent. And even in his muddled state, Zelen thought he understood why. The Spiegel had intuited that, right now, distractions were the last thing her Reiter needed. The only thing he needed, and desperately at that, was his friend’s back—his friend’s voice—to follow.
Zelen struggled against his own weakness, against his limitations and mortality. His legs pushed and his arms flung about wildly, and he made excruciatingly slow but steady progress back up the darkened corridors.
To safety. To survival. To warmth.
And that was when the figure of Glasswing ahead of him disappeared, into a whirlwind of metal, smoke, and blackness.
Zelen froze and stared.
A portion of the wall ahead had burst open again, but not with rushing water. Instead, what had emerged was a sleek obsidian monstrosity.
It wasn’t anything he’d encountered previously. It wasn’t even… anything at all.
There was a central chassis, yes, of a roughly pyramidal and aerodynamic design that strongly evoked a model ES-V. But this chassis was oddly—grotesquely—incomplete, with missing chunks of plating from which hung exposed cables and parts.
Where there should’ve been two legs, there was one, paired with what could only be described as a mangled stump. This gave the synthetic creature a lurching gait, as it was forced to half-limp half-crawl on its lopsided limbs.
And its one arm.
It one arm was svelte yet muscular, an almost exact yet onyx-coloured copy of the upper limbs with which Eidolons dealt destruction upon their foes. At this moment, its forearm and fist surged with unbroken red energy, manifesting the unmistakable shape of a dagger—of [MISERICORDE].
And this dagger was buried deep inside the central chassis of Megha Vakta’s Eidolon.
Unidentified enemy unit ahead, Silon’s voice broke through the white static of Zelen’s mind. Her usual monotone—which wasn’t really monotone, not anymore—shook slightly with the same hopeless terror that gripped her Reiter. Glasswing… is dead. How will you proceed?
Zelen screamed.
He screamed until he tasted blood. He screamed until his entire world was a wall of static and anguish. He screamed until his consciousness began to fade.
Glasswing’s body slid out of the red dagger, then fell limply at the monster’s stump of a leg. Then the deformed mass that passed for the monster’s SPU twitched and spun until a pair of red optics gleamed at Zelen across the darkness.