The Exegetic Episodes of the Bloodtrailed Bashtok and the Emergent Matriarch

[Aver Brand]

[SIZE=11pt]It was the invisible knife edge that glinted in response. Killing had always been easy for Aver; just another way to get what she wanted. It just so happened that what she wanted could be contained neither by words nor thought.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]So she resorted to action, always.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“I’ve dreamed for others before,”[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] Aver rumbled as the golden dust unraveled and left them swimming in the expanse of red and blue and black that comprised most of her mental landscape.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]For all the changes brought on by her ventures beyond egoism, she was an artist still at maintaining that distance. From others, from herself – it didn’t matter.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Ygdris Val suffered none among her thoughts that she did not condone.[/SIZE]

 

[Quietus]

[SIZE=11pt]“I don’t know what you’ll see…”[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] in just the way that most could not predict what their dreams would bring. The subconscious had a strange way of shifting between thoughts and memories, tying in emotions and energy like a crystal took in light and shed it in an effect of shattered color. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Qui’s body slowly began to sink into the expanse as she drifted off, the tide of exhaustion having caught up to her yet again. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The realm began to shift beyond Aver’s control, the fathoms of black and red and blue solidifying into sand again. Red sand. A rolling sea of crimson dunes and merciless heat. Korriban. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Fire touched her skin, searing into it an unrelenting burn. Looking down Aver would find she was not herself, but a smaller woman of slighter build, younger, wearing the torn and tattered robes of a Sith Acolyte. The material was stiff and coarse with dried blood and sweat, bandages and cloth wrappings bound her arms and hands. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]She could feel pain. Immense and radiating pain. Not just from the injuries she could surely feel on her body, but from exhaustion of the heat, dehydration, exposure, and starvation. Her skin was a miserable red, peeling layer by layer. The bones in her left forearm were broken and she knew she had entertained the idea of cutting it off with her lightsaber at least three times by now. Long, black hair clung to her face, escaping from a single, thick and unruly braid that hung over her shoulder. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]But it wasn’t just pain, it was anger. Boiling hatred towards a person she couldn’t quite picture in her mind simply because her body hadn’t the energy to conjure the image. It was determination and a vague awareness of direction. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It was the skull-splitting pounding in her head brought on by the voice at her back she thought she’d escaped days ago. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“You can’t run from this, Desdemona.”[/SIZE]

 

[Aver Brand]

[SIZE=11pt]Ygdris was spoiled for pain.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]That is, she was spoiled for the wealth of forms it could take; the shape and sharpness and pulse of it. She was spoiled for the pain she could endure; for the pain she enjoyed; for the pain she would deliver unto others until they shattered beyond repair.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Certainly none of the aches and agonies plaguing the young Desdemona were alien to her. But in this unique cocktail, they seemed to exist solely to wreak havoc upon the young woman dragging a red trail through a redder desert.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Briefly, Aver wondered how many dead acolytes it took to color the sand that shade in the first place.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]With the weight of a millennium behind her (borrowed, but nonetheless), the mercenary gently shed the broken bones and peeling skin and boiling anger, and left them all atop the dune like last season’s fashion.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Who is that?[/SIZE]

 

[Quietus]

[SIZE=11pt]Those shed layers, figurative or otherwise, were caught in an uproarious wind having arrived with the silhouette of a tall and lean man. For several moments Aver waited, frozen to the spot, before another gust of wind clapped into her back like the swinging fist of a bull rancor. She sailed off her feet and down the dune, the pain and anger she thought she’d sloughed off suddenly returning ten-fold. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]This may have been Aver’s mind, but this was Desdemona’s dream - not an entity Aver could control. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Sand filled her mouth and nose, making her teeth scream as she ground them together, right hand desperately seeking out solid ground to push herself up. The man’s voice followed her, speaking with the cutting edge of a blade meant to inflict the greatest amount of pain, efficiently. Strangely, though, his words were muffled on the winds, she could feel herself responding but even her own words, telepathic as they were, could not be understood. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Quietus could not remember the exact words to this exchange, but she did remember the fury and the agony. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]She remembered that they fought, but the instances in between the first blow and the moment the man ran her through with a vehement crimson blade were blurs at best. Mostly she remembered his face: pale and blistered and gaunt - the man had suffered and endured - framed by long wheaten blond hair the likes of which she’d only come to realize she’d somehow managed to inherit in her new body centuries later. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Eyes of corrupted red. The youngest Dark Lord of the Sith to grace the histories of the Darkside for as long as anyone could remember. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“I knew from the start you were not worthy to be my heir.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Somehow that hurt more than everything else. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It lingered long after he left her there. For years, if she was honest with herself. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Des … Des … wake up please. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Please wake up.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]You can’t let him win.[/SIZE]

 

[Aver Brand]

[SIZE=11pt]The answer to her question came reflected between the episodic flashes of centuries long past. Flutters of realization, almost amusing for their detachment from the scenes below.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]And it wasn’t only the mental commentary of her mate that happened at a comfortable distance; Aver, too, stood somewhere off to the side and above, viewing the dream like a stowaway in the backstage of a theatre.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It was, after all, appropriately dramatic.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Like you[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] would give a shet about what some Sith nerf herder said like five hundred years ago.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]A chord of incredulousness ran through the thought. Quietus, who suffered nothing she didn’t care about, who chucked her own kids off cliffs to teach them discipline.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Actually the thing about kids and cliffs makes a lot more sense now.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]With a furrowed brow spared for the gentler voice now soaring through the dream, Aver leaned forward and plucked the wilting girl from the ravenous sands, brought her on through the black, towards the source of the plea and into its warm embrace.[/SIZE]

 

[Quietus]

[SIZE=11pt]The desert shifted around Aver, walls of red sand swirling up in a growing maelstrom around her. Red faded to grey, granules becoming raindrops becoming a full blown gale. Green peeked in through gusts of winds, the rain slicking sideways through the air, moving so fast it stung the skin like thousands of hornets. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]A flash of flame-orange through the sheets of grey. Aver was a flyer now upon the back of a bold and blaze-colored beast sporting pieces of leather and metal armor as it flew in formation with the war party. Battles between clans before the time of Beastia Blackthorne had been common as the various groups vied for ultimate supremacy. Onderon had seen peace under the rule of Daritha, but his tenure had ended years ago with his death. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Blackthorne moved on her final opponent: Chieftain Faora who had won the loyalties of the southern edgeclans by taming a drexl for his mount. Blackthorne had known for some time that Onderon hosted other tamers like herself, but Daritha had always warned not to flaunt her powers.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It drew too much attention - like Zarem Nar who was now on the radar of the The Sith Council’s oversight. If he couldn’t be bent to serve, well … as Sith were want to do, then he would be killed. Best she took care of the job herself before some other upstart Knight decided to chew in on her turf. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The war party sailed in through the cover of rain and clouds, formation close as they broke the line of the stormfront, wings slicing across dark grey before banking towards the rise of mountainous spires. With the storm at their backs, Blackthorne turned her gaze outwards to the stone peaks, looking for the drift of an ominous shadow. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]There came a booming echo that sounded like thunder but they knew better. It was the same sound that preceeded the Beastia at the harvest festival: the call of the mighty drexl. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO-” a man called out, Aver would recognize him as Volden, and turned to the rest of the party as they glided along the windcurrents, “TAKE DOWN THE BEAST AT ANY COST. LEAVE FAORA TO BEASTIA.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]A war cry sounded as the behemoth finally came into view, sailing between the mountains with a wingspan that would have reached between the peaks. [/SIZE]

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver enjoyed the view. That’s more like it.

 

[Quietus]

The winds blurred the scene, the roar of the beasts and warriors churning into thunder. There came a bloody impact between opposing tribes as from beneath the behemoth’s wings their enemy emerged from the shadow. Arrows flew from both sides, blood spraying across the skies, bodies and beasts flailing, plummeting.

Quietus dropped to the drexl’s back behind her adversary, two arrows plunged through her chest and shoulder. Something about the arrowheads was different - they’d smashed clear through her armor. Lungs burning, eyes darkening, the woman ignited the white blade of a lightsaber and cut away the protruding pieces.

Volden sailed past her to the far right, yelling something into the winds; it sounded like a warning but his voice was muffled. A sickly, acidic green haze fell over the lands, the sun above shining like putrid napalm. Quietus pushed herself to her feet and met her enemy blade for blade.

As the battle raged the saturation darkened, the haze of the scene growing heavier. Sounds blended, colors grew muddled. Quietus took three more arrows to the back and thigh before going down, but not without first cleaving her enemy’s head clean from his shoulders. The Beastia rolled from the back of the massive beast as it slowly changed course, now free from its Master, and dropped through the skies into a sprawling lake in the jungle. Down, down, down she sank.

…

"You are dancing on a cliff's edge."
I'm a good dancer, I'm not worried about it.
"It's not your dancing that concerns me, it's the gusting winds and the crumbling stone. One of these days you're going trip."
Don't smirk at me when you say things like that.

Onderon was blanketed by deep black skies and a warm summer's eve. Quietus sat in her nest being tended to by various caretakers of the Clan as they applied poultice and soothing salves to her wounds, wrapping those that marred her extremities. Today the Bali Clan had lost their leader, Chief Faroa, to the unrelenting Beastia. Wounds and venoms that should have killed her six hours ago had left her in a weakened state. Weakened but with new motivation.

You did manage to get those arrows, right?

Her associate, Darth Volden, busy with stitching shut the gash on her back left shoulder, tugged a bit more sharply on the sewing line than was necessary, "An entire quiver, M'Lady."

Send them to the Citadel to be analyzed.

"As you say. I'll have them develop an antibody. Shall I round up the warriors?" the man took the blade of a dagger to cut loose the extra string.

Put them on alert. The Bali will be disoriented without Faroa, they’re likely putting his heir into place. We need to be ready.

"I'll inform Zekel Kahn not to expect you at Council tonight. Just as well, you look like *+$*."

Quietus eyed Volden with a flash of irritation before waving off her attendants and rising from the chair. She downed a tankard of water before turning and stiffly limping off, disappearing through a pelt curtain into the next room.

 

[Aver Brand]

Darth Volden, was it?

Aver’s mind contorted into a reflection of a grin, such as there could be on the turbulent winds they currently rode.

I thought we despised Darths.

But her amusement is a fleeting thing, banished swiftly by the burning sensation that takes over every corner of the memory. Her vision, or the window into her vision, is consumed at the edges like a piece of paper set aflame.

Poof and it’s gone.

It was the conversation, after, that settled it for Aver. Qui’s mentioned it before, in fleeting bits of memory and remembrance. On Onderon, Kings and Queens aren’t handed their title on a gilded platter – they earn it with sweat and blood.

And she was seeing both in spades.

Her manifested emotions curl with curiosity, and Ygdris follows the aspirant Beastia like a malformed shadow.

 

[Quietus]

Aver walked through the feeling of a black veil, stepping across a vast expanse of the galaxy without the discomfort of traveling by Bloodcard. When she arrived it was to the planet Wayland, within an ancient sith fortress that likely no longer stood today. A long hall greeted her lined by rows upon rows of carbonite chambers each containing a person. It stretched for as far as the eye could see.

"The chambers of the damned," a man approached from behind, young and strong and cut from the cloth of a Sith. A Master of his trade.

Hm, how very creative of you. Quietus was walking at his side, eyeing the chambers with a fair amount of curiosity and a hint of amusement. It was evident, even in her previous body, that she was not taking this seriously. Aver knew that look on her face, even if it wasn't the face Aver really knew. There would be some I would not lament seeing in such a place.

And would you put me in a tin can as well, knowing my nature and position?

"All who stand opposed pose a thread to the Order," the man answered, "you won't find yourself in here if that's what you're wondering. No one you know is in here. Some had to die. Most were already dead. This is in the far future," Aver was witnessing a ...dream within a dream? A memory of a dream within a dream? "beyond me, beyond you. Though you may find someone you're related to within."

I would face death before submitting to such an existence. I have a very healthy, vicious desire to stay alive and very much in control of myself and my own life. Nothing is beyond me. Quietus looked on at him with a cold, confident gaze, You seem so sure I'll have relatives to survive me.

"I expect you not to surrender. I, personally, wouldn't want you to. You will have relatives to survive you. Consider that a prophecy."

Quietus scowled, That is not a prophecy, that is a terribly generalized gesture of foreseeable odds. She turned, bristling, and began to walk away.

"No one lives forever, but you will have people to survive you when you do move on," the man reached to catch her by the arm, stopping her, "I will speak no more about such things if you wish, Qui. I do not wish to upset you, nor would I wish any pain upon you."

"I'm not implying I think you weak or anything of the sort. You will far outlast me. You will far out last many people in this galaxy. You're already stronger than anyone alive."

He moved to put a hand to her face and was briskly denied the opportunity with a strong hand at his wrist.

Let's not get carried away.

"It's not getting carried away. It's the truth. Your greatest strength is that you don't pander to others. You maintain yourself as who you are and are not swayed by the desires of others, only the desires of yourself. That is why you are stronger than everyone else."

If being selfish and surviving makes me powerful then I'll conceed to the title.

She released his arm and stepped away, leaving through another doorway filled with fire. When Aver stepped out after her into the flames she was standing upon the precipice of Halcyon Citadel again, only it wasn't overlooking Onderon. Surrounding them, instead, was Coruscant and the entire city was on fire beneath the onslaught of a Sith Invasion. Not an invasion Aver had been alive for.

The tower shuddered beneath them, a giant groaning roar as the building split down the spine and began to slowly crumble under their feet.

Someone's coming, a Rebel I believe. We can't stay here, the building's collapsing.

Quietus was looking right at Aver ... or through her was perhaps a better description. She was dressed in what appeared to be Jedi Robes.

"Right behind you," another man, a different one this time of more cutting and intelligent appearance. His gaze was calculating and struck a chord of emotion over an unseen connection with the silent woman. A chord so strong Aver would feel a sudden pang of hurt over her own connection with Des. Grief. The same she felt before that night on Nadir before the Galla. He looked to another man seating in a meditative pose beside him, "Chester, it's time."

Wait for me on the landing pad. I'll come back for you.

The building groaned again, but with the strangeness of a creature roar ... not the sound of crumbling foundations. It gave a sudden rumbling jolt as a spire nearby crashed into it.

Quietus walked to the edge and looked down into the smoldering scene below, pulling off her outer robes to reveal the black and green robes of the Pillar of Knowledge beneath.

Back in the waking realm Treehome gave a tremendous shudder. Shai paced at the base of the tree, alert and agitated, attempting to draw Aver's attention with repeated chirrups.

 

[Aver Brand]

From grin to tongue-in-cheek, the colors of amusement flitted manifold through her mind. Besides anger, mirth was her best-developed emotion. And it seemed to her, as she watched the spirit of her mate stride through memories in the wrong skin, smirking with the wrong face— it seemed to Aver that Quietus was much the same.

Because you remind me of… me. A much younger me.

How much younger was much younger, the firrerreo idly wondered, picking the mental threads apart as the landscape around them morphed again.

Her brow furrowed.

This… she yanked at another memory (hers), extracted it gently from the jumble Nadir nights. Multiple triggers in one place, as luck would have it.

Ignoring the ache in a tethered chest, she let the exchange flow past her, and peered instead over the lip of the spire. The scene tingled with borrowed familiarity.

Did I ever tell you about the time I jumped off the top of the Spire of Tranquility during a Sith invasion of Jedi-occupied Coruscant? Well, I— nevermind, too long. The point was that I would rather do that again than be subjected to your driving.

Her grin was nipped in the bud by an incessant pressure at the back of her skull.

Quietus was the hunter; Aver was the killer.

And while Desdemona dreamt, Ygdris kept watch.

It was a curious thing, to split one’s attention halfway between slumber and waking. But then killers and hunters both slept lightly, attuned to the rumble of nature, to the patter of feet, to the whisper of breath.

Instinct curled her fingers around the blade tucked between the pelts. Its alchemized weight was warm in her hand as she propped up on an elbow.

Someone else might’ve spliced unpleasantly from the mental gymnastics Aver was currently performing. But most people hadn’t had her levels of practice in sharing her head with others.

The thought would’ve amused her, in that distinctly pure shade of orange she reserved for genuine joy.

Unfortunately, the world was coming undone underneath their feet.

“And piss on the timing.”

 

[Quietus]

One moment young Quietus was standing at the edge of the spire, the next she was gone. A moment later and the remainder of the spire had begun to heave, to lean, to tumble through the burning, smoke filled sky. It collapsed within the endless domain of skysteel that was Coruscant, coelascing into a twisted motley of burning memories. Onderon ablaze, jungles peeking out between the slivers of air that divided the skytowers.

People screamed. The fire roared. The sky turned a haunting shade of smoldering amber. Speeders and skreev streaked past, a flury and frenzy of chaos ensued.

Another roar echoed across the realms, shattering the peaceful skies with an echo that splintered trees and cracked teeth.

Shai, for all her casual bravado, shivered into a alerting snarl before launching herself bodily into the tree. Aver wasn't answering and, gorramnit, she needed to.

In the dream realm she knew she had to find Des, and not the dream version. In following her connection over the bloodtrail she found the woman dozing at the foot of a tree whose branches sat alight with fire. A layer of ash covered her. Sa Sevai cut quickly and deeply and Quietus awoke on the bed of pelts with a wheeze before tumbling off to the side as the entire ground beneath the tree suddenly gave a great, uproarious heave. Treehome toppled as from the foundations of the plateau a mountain rose from its slumber.

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver had never been one to appreciate rough awakenings. Doubly so when she was otherwise occupied.

Thral, it appeared, didn’t give a kark.

The whole tree whined and groaned as it listed to the side like a drunk. The mercenary cursed, tumbled out of bed, and sank her blade deeply into the floorboards that were rapidly becoming the wall.

Her left arm smarted from wrist to shoulder, yanked sharply from lazing to very nearly dislocated in a matter of seconds. Quietus hung on the other end, no doubt even less excited by the sudden wake-up call.

Well, tough shet.

Whatever was happening was happening slowly, and it was happening in pulses. Not an earthquake, then.

With some gnashing of teeth, Aver swung them on the walkway. They climbed down the rail as the tree swayed with the trembling mountain. Great wings of birds circled above the jungle, filling the heavy air with panicked screeching.

She didn’t ask what was going on. First things first.

The hearth had tumbled over itself, and she was quietly thankful they’d taken care to douse the embers before heading up to the Nest. Within a few steps across the tilted floor, the whole of Ygdris clung to Ygdris. Only Dhaladii was perched on her shoulder instead of her face.

Bastards?

Didn’t seem like a great time to stick to solid ground. Then her mouth curled sour. Shai?

 

[Quietus]

Quietus battled lingering visions that presently continued to play through her mind. Distracting beyond belief, her keen sense of awareness to her surroundings was the driving force that enabled her to take hold of Aver's hand at the last second. Feet dangling mid air, she leapt down to the nearest foothold and climbed down through her quaking home to the lower level.

Aver's armor actively dressed itself but Des was not so fortunate. Quickly taking to her nearby chest, she threw it open and began pulling on layers, leaving the lashes and buckles undone in her haste to be ready.

Bastards?

They're gone, Des replied as she dressed, pulling on greaves and leg trappings and anything else within reach.

Shai?

She's...here... the last few pieces to add to her wardrobe was a Marauder's bag hung from the rafters, a set of twin daggers, her bow and quiver full of arrows.

RRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMM

Treehome shivered as another massive quake shook the foundations of the plateau jungle. Quietus quickly grabbed hold of the table carved from the trunk as the home shifted once more, tilting further still in extreme. The last thing in her grasp was the Book of Shamalain, its aged and weathered binding dissipating into thin air, leaving behind a pale wisp of dust. A moment later and the tree gave a violent buck as it was torn, fully, from the ground by the sudden upheaval of earth.

Shai could be heard snarling as she tumbled through the air tangled by branches and vines to land in a heap not far from them.

The ships, Quietus pushed herself back to her feet, get to the ships.

If they didn't then they were liable to get caught in the destruction of whatever was happening.

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver leapt the small distance now separating them from the ground and hit the dirt at full tilt. The spines of a growling tuk’ata that stuck out of the underbrush were easy enough to find despite the settling cloud of earth at the foot of the uprooted home.

You’re one ornery hedgehog.

Shai rumbled her discontent as the mercenary pulled her out of the tangled brambles and shrubbery. She set down half a tonne of angry muscle and teeth like a parent might a small child.

The ships, then.

Between the three of them, it was hard to tell who arrived first. Soon as the door of her shuttle hissed open, the merc was already kicking it into gear and off the planet roaring all around them. The engines roared back, and they pierced the trembling canopy.

At a decent height she slammed on the autopilot and turned to Qui with a questioning eyebrow.

“The hills are alive with the sound of the frakking music, are they?”

 

[Quietus]

She had made to split from Aver and Shai, banking to the right to take route to her own ship only to find her path suddenly barred by a surge of earth, stone, and trees. Sliding to a halt, green eyes wide and looking for a route only to watch the current of debris swallow her ship whole. Feet backpedaling as the earth beneath them began to move and the roar of engines sounded behind her, Quietus sprinted to catch up. She caught hold of the loading ramp just as Aver lifted the ship from the ground, watching the stone crumble around them as they lifted, up up up above the toppling trees.

Something's not right...

Joining Aver in the cockpit, Quietus leaned to watch out the viewports, eyes honing in on the plateau that once harbored her home in what she'd thought had been a safe zone of the planet.

That's... her eyes screwed shut, mind searching the invisible realm of the Force, that's a living creature.

 

[Aver Brand]

A lesser woman would’ve gotten whiplash from how fast Aver turned her head around.

“You’re fucking with me,” came out on a voice that had already resigned to the truth, but liked to put up a fight just for the show of it.

The lake that had swallowed so many sunsets in her evenings here was draining away like tepid water from a spent bath. The forests shuddered, shedding their leaves far before their time. The rocks cracked and hissed, rearranging the air currents in one fell swoop. Boulders the size of Gramuteks tumbled from their antediluvian perches like mere pebbles on a riverbank.

And then the glistening mud split open with a great big smacking sound (like Aver after Taungsday steak), and a great big eye gave a great, big, lazy blink.

Qui, a soft mental touch on the shoulder. An urge for her mate to open her eyes as well, to confirm that she wasn’t only half-awake still and hallucinating the hunter’s wet dream.

Her breath came out shallow. From excitement or awe, Aver couldn’t tell.

What is that.

 

[Quietus]

When her eyes opened they took in the sight of a creature she might never, even in her wildest dreams, imagine. It rose from a bed of boulder, the massive stones rolling off it like water off the pelt of a skreev. A head the shape of a shovel reared upwards to gulp in the sky, sucking clouds into flaring nostrils before loosing a most tremendous, bone-shattering roar.

The ship gave a harried shudder in the shockwave and the pair of them watched as the surrounding jungles below burst into a fervor of frantic chaos. All manner of flying beasts took to the skies in panic while the grounds rumbled with the terrified footbeats of fleeing creatures.

By the Force... Quietus gripped the back of the pilot seat, eyes wide and mouth gaping as the largest beast she'd ever witnessed in her long, long life shook free of its sleeping bed and stretched limbs the size of small mountains to take its first earth-shattering step, I do not know.

Her mind could recall seeing the gradiose event of a Leviathan loosed upon a world and nothing of that day could even compare to this.

Open the hatch. She turned and headed back down the short hall, hands feverishly working the ties and buckles of her armor into place.

 

[Aver Brand]

The hatch stayed decidedly shut. There was the hydraulic hiss of an additional lock sliding in place.

Aver swiveled around in her chair, hands steepled in her lap.

“Nope.”

She popped the ‘p’.

 

[Quietus]

Aver.

Green rounded on blue, reflecting the wild nature they were now witness to.

Open the hatch.

Please.