Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
“You shouldn’t have that,” growled Janottka, staring at the knife in the martial artist’s hand. Triezal felt like growling as well, bearing possessive thoughts for the item that had been stolen from him. Still, he respected Cyrus’s move. For a Seiyal to use a weapon like this was an incredibly dangerous play, but also one, it seemed, that was beyond Janottka’s predictions. She liked to act as if she knew everything, but in reality, Triezal knew well that she had her limitations, as certainly as anyone else did. Even the so-called gods were not omniscient by any means.
He wasn’t sure whether it benefited him to continue restraining the Reth who was locked into a stalemate with him, or to try and help the Redwater forces to destroy her. Even if he did, and they succeeded, what would he even do? Would the Heirs of Ottrien even survive? It was impossible to guess.
Triezal glanced over once more, seeing Janottka’s figure dripping chunks of what almost looked like metallic sand from the arm that the martial artist had lopped off of her body. The arm morphed into a snake, and squirmed over to merge with her leg, but the area had been painted in silvery dust that was not rejoining her body.
It had been rumored between the Magisters that Janottka’s current form was not in fact the product of her Epon Celan creators. She had been purely a program during the fall, a machine mind without a true corporeal form. Janottka, they said, had created it for herself, after she found both her purpose and function decayed and obsolete. Regardless of its origin, it had been improved over time, but even the most advanced technology could not handle a lesion forming inside of it.
Even more so than Janottka, however, it was clear that Cyrus was badly wounded. From scattered glances, Triezal could see what was happening to the man. The skin of his arm peeled off like unraveling twine. The smell was disgusting, similar to that of putrified flesh, and Triezal had to imagine the experience to be incredibly painful. He had killed using lesions more than once, and it was always this disturbing. The poisoner he fought weeks before had been extremely fortunate, though he felt little pity for her, or for the man before him.
Janottka backed up from the man, wisely cautious of the weapon he held. It had been rumored among the Epon that her body might be able to survive the heat of a nuclear explosion, and physical force alone would take quite a long time to wear her down. A lesion, however, was almost impossible to defend against. After all, it could hardly be considered an attack on the body. Naeratanh attacked the universe itself.
Between the two, the jagged tear of the lesion still hung in the air, dripping its rainbow of heavy mist onto the floor, which was already beginning to swirl and warp under the chaotic energies of the lesion. Over time, the influence would only grow greater, until a tumor formed. If he survived this battle, Triezal felt that it might be time to go back and check on the other lesion he had created, back at the spacedock. As the thought crossed his mind, Triezal chuckled, firing another volley of bullets towards the location where he thought the Reth might be hiding. He had already decided to leave the station, so what did it matter what the consequences of the lesions were?
“You shouldn’t have that,” said Janottka again. Her voice was even, and she spoke calmly, as if the outcome was somehow expected. Triezal got the impression, however, that she had been surprised by its appearance. One never truly could know what a Shade was thinking, nor how they felt, if they could even feel anything at all. But an eye opened on the side of her head, allowing her to take in Triezal’s appearance.
“I’m disappointed in you, Triezal,” she said. “When did you steal that? And you even allowed him to take it from you.”
It did not surprise him that she had correctly guessed the blade’s origin. Naeratanh could not be produced in this region, and as far as he was aware, only the Epon grasped the material’s production method in the first place. There were only so many people that the man might have obtained it from on the station, and Triezal would have been the most likely source.
He didn’t bother to respond to her provocation. It seemed that even when they were working together, she couldn’t help but play the villain towards everyone around her. She hadn’t changed at all, he thought. But that was to be expected, of course. A millennia old machine was not one to change at the time scales of a mortal life.
Suddenly, Triezal sensed a rush of air heading towards him and he ducked low in advance, feeling the hem of the Reth warrior’s sleeve slide across his back as she collided with him, sending the two sprawling to the ground in a field of black and orange mist.
Triezal cursed, and attempted to clamber his way out of the pile of limbs. He knew that she was much stronger than him, physically, and he would either be captured or dead in moments, if she managed to grip onto him. He squirmed his way past, nearly making it out, but before he could take the last step, Triezal felt claws close around his ankle, prompting him to kick backwards. His foot slammed into the woman’s face, the ablative energies of his boots tearing several layers of skin from her cheeks as she shouted something in a language he did not recognize. Her claws dug in tighter, and he winced as he felt them touch the metallic sheath of his tibia bone.
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He fired towards her, the bullets tearing into her neck grazing the side of her head. In the woman’s red eyes was a clear look of pain, but even more apparent was the look of determination. Just what was driving this fanatic, he wondered?
It was then that Triezla heard the whisper. A whisper at the very edge of his perception, so faint that he could barely comprehend it, filled Triezal’s ear, and he could not help but listen. It was the voice of a woman, and one that he knew all too well from his time in captivity. The voice of the Shade Rachel. But unlike before, her voice was uneven, distorted as if she were speaking through a wall of water. Was the presence of so much miasma in the room somehow distorting her communication method, or was it the lesions? Either way, he supposed it didn’t matter.
“I’m curious,” she said. “Just what did Janottka offer you?”
Triezal glanced back, pausing his fusillade of gunfire. If he wasted much more ammunition, he would begin to run low, and out of respect for the woman’s grit, he paused, so long as she made no further movements. But the Reth did not even shift, merely tightened her grip on his limb and watched him. Those eyes of hers tore into him, making Triezal feel extremely uncomfortable. Even if he killed her, he thought, he would likely do so at the cost of that foot. He supposed he could spare a few moments for parley.
“What else?” he muttered, almost speaking to himself. “She offered me my life.”
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The Brink, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
Rachel was surrounded, the servitors waiting on both sides of her. Perhaps she would be able to flee if she moved now, but she would not be able to take the conduit with her. It remained here, next to Cyrus’s soul, and she would have to sail the long way back to the Pleiades, accepting the centuries of travel time. That was an option Rachel would not accept without
She would have constructed a second conduit to store in the sect if such a thing were possible, but unfortunately the station’s manufacturing capabilities were lacking. Several of the materials required had yet to even be theorized, much less invented by the local races. Perhaps if she made the effort to build up the production capability herself, it would be possible, but if she did not want the government to find out, that would be a multi-decade undertaking. Something she did not have the time for, in her current predicament.
“I’m impressed,” Rachel said, speaking honestly. “Just where did you get these, and how did you smuggle them in without my notice?”
The image of Janottka in their video call shrugged, a smile on her face.
“You don’t think I built them after discovering your true nature?” she asked.
Rachel snorted. For a moment after seeing them, she had believed that, but she had quickly realized the truth. She recognized this design.
“I don’t believe you have the capacity to construct servitors this fine even if you wanted to,” she said. “These are of Osine make. Of Tellati manufacture specifically, I would wager, which is odd around this part of the galaxy.” Rachel frowned. “You must have scavenged these back when you were escaping from the incursion.”
“As expected of you,” smiled Janottka. “I’ll admit it, we scavenged them, and these are my bodyguards, though they could never fight off an Osine. I brought them along as scouts, not expecting that they would be useful. I am not one to deny fortune when I receive it.”
The servitors slowly began to close in, and Rachel gritted her teeth. She had no way to deal with them. An ashatic machine could be optimized when it was created, and the Terrans had been optimized for processing power, desperately wishing to retain their minds and to gain the ability to develop ways to escape their attackers. Servitors could be optimized for anything its creator wished, but these were servitors of war, created to fight as the Osine’s vanguard against the Khalak’Ora. Rachel’s defenses would be enough to keep her alive, perhaps, but certainly insufficient to escape capture.
But like Janottka, she thought, she too had her own fortune, and she still had an ally who could affect her situation. A rush filled Rachel’s body, something that the technicians who had turned her into this had programmed in. Something that they had felt was crucial to maintaining humanity. The feeling of simulated adrenaline and endorphins entered Rachel as she prepared to fight for the first time in centuries.
A smile covered her face as she watched the world like a tactician glancing at their board, and she sent messages out to her pawns. Janottka had played a good hand, and it was time to reveal her own.
The Incursion War: If the Incursion’s origin is known, it has not been spread to the wider society, but it is rumored to be a fragment of another dimension, populated by the Khalak-Ora, who have long fought any Osine or Ascendants who wished to enter their territory. Over time, the Incursion has been slowly growing deeper into the galactic spiral, at a rapid rate of almost four light years a decade, prompting an invasion by the neighboring Osine nations of Shalthen-Qatath and the Tellati Confederacy. They were rebuffed, and the attack prompted retribution by the Khalak-Ora, who promptly began an invasion in return, resulting in a war which has lasted for centuries now, and only continues to grow in intensity and scope. The presence of humanoid beings originating within the Incursion were a surprise, but the Celans brought valuable information about the enemy with them when they fled into Osine space, and were accepted as refugees in return.]