Vessels commandeered. As though some unknown threshold had been surpassed there was a flicker or a flash and the seam-scene changed. The hangar bay was no longer dark, the Were’s attack had not (yet) taken place. Their lupine tree nowhere to be seen. The two pilots of Shay and Woid’s shuttle were now very alive from the dust they had been, both puffing out their cigars in a panic. The small two-seated command centre was so clean that Shay and Woid could see themselves murderous in its panels. Its walls and floor sparkling-dark, showing the stars their age. The pilots’ discussion was cut short as each found a blade at their neck. Shay’s Amneshaic dagger was now long a sword again, and she was left without opportunity to question it; the blade Gargarensyr had shortened in their duel.

“Pull those shutters down and keep it steady, will you kindly?” Woid gave the pilot against his dagger little option.

Shay waited anxiously struggling for a moment with the pilot under her sword. Blood flowed slowly down the length of it as the pilot foolishly strained and soon gave up their bravery. The shutters closed their eyes intended to fend off the glare of hotter stars over the windows, and a voice crackled then clearer from the monitors:

“Come in Shuttle Eight. Why’re your shutters down?”

∞

Woid muttered inaudibly to his hostage:

“It’s been a long shift.”

The pilot complied, and the crackling voice agreed:

“Heh, I hear that.”

Gravity churned as the vessel turned around, reversing rear-first into land. Once the shuttle had docked mechanical scrapes and thuds began, and it was not certain to Shay if these sounds were safe routines or if soon the command centre door would open with rifles firing first. At least they would have plenty of shadows to step into. The communications crackled off, and Shay asked:

“Any cameras for the outside?”

∞

A monitor clicked wider, commanded so by her careful hostage trying not to die. She saw The Ersecutor leaving their shuttle, followed by a limping Gargarensyr. Shay wondered if he was limping from her paralyzing poison.

“They were both in the other room?” Woid laughed. “I wonder if one of them nodded off, as well.”

“Hopefully the troops or whatever they were, stay gone.” The shuttle a veteran of many journeys, a piece moved around in Timelessness.

Having strode some distance, Argus stopped and turned back to the shuttle. Both pilots gasped as the keyboards spoke for themselves on different screens, in colours they had not seen the software achieve before, Lay’d Payn scratching everywhere:

“I have changed a few details that he is familiar with, too familiar from the woven book he has read with all his eyes over and over. Though still he remembers a chapter - this one - when you two are hiding in here. Oh, but the colours are all wrong and Gargarensyr was not limping in then… and now Argus’ll walk off, ignoring instinct, trusting only what he can see, believing blind for all his eyes. Constants the same and variables rearranged. Oh! And jolly work with that paralytic, my Amneshay. It is best if Gargarensyr does not die just yet.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Argus indeed on the camera faced again away from the shuttle and continued further into the artificially bright facility. Gargarensyr limped less with each step though into a different direction, followed by a bow of many monks.

“A fine constitution, that one.” The keys clacked and monitors collected as the pilots breathed heavily. “It is likely his trained body will resist your poisons now. Be wary.”

∞

“What changes in age can we expect?” Woid asked, unsure exactly who or what he spoke to, and what exactly he was asking, the gist being inexplicable. “Once we’re through the command centre doors and again leaving the shuttle, what will happen? It’s changed at least twice since leaving the station, right?”

Listening to Woid and reading Lay’d Payn’s words the two pilots with blades to their throats thought they were going mad.

“Only I know the rhymes and reasons. I’ll do what I can to hold these pages together against Fate’s strings, that your movements may be freer. I can feel the eyes of My Enemy glancing, and best it is if I do not reveal.”

The guards’ throats were open not long after that, gasping out only rasps of pain or warning, bleeding over each other. Covering the screens with desperate smears.

“You revealed back in the station?” Woid objected at Lay’d Payn as Shay set her clean sword upon her back. Her short cloak a bloody cloth as well.

“We have a job to do.” She watched the camera feed vigilantly for patterns in patrols or similar.

Lay’d Payn uttered not another word, long as Woid was waiting for an answer.

∞

“You have a job to do, with your weird tri-signed contract.” Woid threw one of the dying souls to the ground so that he could have his seat back.

“I’ll have to do the rest on my own, then.” Shay’s mask hid her smile.

“I’m not saying that…” Woid set his heels up on the controls, his fine ball or dress shoes shining against the blood-splattered keyboard lights. “…normally we know more about what we’re getting into.”

“We always manage.” Shay thumbed through the options in her mind.

“Oh, definitely.”

“And whatever Lay’d Payn is, her adversary has an equal… ‘reach’ to hers. She has to be careful what she gives away to us.”

‘Internecine.’ One of the dying pilots scribbled grinning in blood on the steel floor. Waves of it spreading-spilt to Shay’s boots.

“Yeah, that. Will you give it a rest?” Woid stopped reclining and finished for the pilot what was dragging on slowly. “Going to have to change again…”

∞

“I think we can step through this, right?” Shay tapped on the screen with her prosthetic finger-bones. “To surprise them.”

Visible on the screen were a large group of monks meditating across the hangar bay, unaware the shadows of their foes were so close.

“I haven’t ever needed to - umbra-step through a screen, I mean. Capital idea, though.” Woid shook a stunned look off his face. “Reflections are fine, captures and camera feeds like this should be. Do you remember Yohtyr?”

Shay did not, and shrugged as she prepared herself.

“He umbra-stepped into a photograph. Wonder where he vanished off to.”

With that, Shay and Woid spent a while too long bickering over whether Yohtyr The Shadow really had umbra-stepped into a photograph, and watched the camera feed waiting for their opportunity.