RE: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 2: Krei'kii'kelriz]
01-31-2016, 05:49 AM
Space. Real space, not the Outsider's fake world—she was weightless, falling—it didn't work! Chaete died but she would still die among the stars!
A metal claw grabbed her from behind and pulled her backwards. She hit it, clawed at it, sobbing uselessly. From the corners of her vision came dingy once-white walls, until they enclosed her and the final wall shut the box with a hiss.
Weightless. But no stars. And, she realized stupidly, air. She was in a room now and she had been in a room before. More windows than substance, and a terrifying vista of stars, but...she had been safe. Maybe not so now...she breathed deeply, willing the calmness of the plant. Grief and terror could come later. Looking around, the walls were all plastic and metal...manufactured, but the design and shapes were alien to her. She resisted the urge to struggle in the mute grip of the claw. The sudden crackle of speakers almost broke that.
“Hello? Hey! D'you understand me?”
“Y...yes.” She didn't feel right.
“Okaaay...”
“Ask her if she knows where she is.” A different voice. “Scans of her are reading a low tech level, and she seems pretty lost, so she's probably one of those hippy-dippy cultists that come here.”
“Not to mention whatever she's been smoking that's pinging the sensors. And lookit those robes.”
...They must be using a different language than before. But whatever made an alien child speak fluent Laden is still translating.
“Okay. Um.” The first voice turned back towards the speaker. “Do you know where you are?”
“Kray...Kraykee...” Amaranth struggled.
“Yes, ok, good job. Krei'kii'kelriz. That's where you are.” The voice continued in this humilating fashion. “Could you, uh...tell us who's responsible for—er—who you came in with?”
Amaranth contrived to look as blank as possible. I take it back. I should be grateful they think I'm too stupid to know facts any normal person here would know.
“Yeahhhh. Okay.” The voice swiveled away again. “Look, auntie, the standard questionnaire is a no go. Let's just shepherd her back to her flock and get on with things. She's no threat.”
“Ok. Ok. But you have to do it. And tell me if anything funny happens.”
“Fine, you paranoid old hag.” Swivel. “Ok, miss, we're going to take you through the lock now. Be prepared for a switch to low-gee.”
I'm probably supposed to know what those words mean, Amaranth mused as the claw pulled her back. The plant was a dim calm overlaying the blueblack exhaustion of the last few hours. How funny. The wall behind her hissed open and suddenly she wasn't being pulled back anymore but up
She vomited into a quickly proffered tube that vacuumed the matter away. “Don't try and move your head.” advised the second voice. The wall that had been behind her was now solidly under her. She fought back more nausea. Her inner ear reeled.
Glancing around the room (with a minimum of head turning) she guessed it to be a slightly disorganized command center of a small organization. They seemed to repurpose everything, and there were personal touches in all corners.
The two voices—now embodied—looked at her with expectant suspicion. They were both stout, presumably human, and their jumpsuits carried the same feeling as the room. Their black hair was cut short.
“Th...thank you for your help. I am deeply grateful. My name is Amaranth Benedicta.”
The elder one laughed. “What a mouthful! I'm Han Mi-yeon and this is Han Jae-geun. He'll be taking you back to your people.”
Amaranth struggled to her feet. “Pleased to meet you,” grinned the younger one, and held out his hand. The second she grasped it, he set off, tugging her towards a hatch on the far wall. “Bye auntie, I'll be back before you know it!”
The switch from the unfamiliar yet comfortable command center into the starkly alien architecture of Krei'kii'kelriz might have been shocking. Amaranth was too removed for that. Even the solid stone of the curved floor—so blatantly meant for something not human—seemed dreamlike beneath her feet. Tunnels split off from all sides, at every angle possible. Jae-geun set off down one tilted downwards, and Amaranth followed. The ceiling, in contrast to the half-circle the walls and floor made, was flat. It brushed the top of her head with every step. The rabbit's-warren felt both tightly enclosing and horribly open. Even more tunnels split off from the smaller ones. This dark maze...it's worse than the caves in Godsworn Valley. If I got lost.... She could see her instinctual terror from very far away, as if she stood on a precipice looking down. She shook her head quickly.
I need to mimic Jae-geun. Everyone here must be used to this place the way he is...and that on top of the hundred other things that I don't know. I'm like the village hunter who comes to the metropolis. One wrong turn and I'll get killed because I didn't know not to stand on the tracks. At least the Valley's forests were familiar...I won't be able to run so easily here.
I wonder if it's hard for the others. I wonder if their worlds are like mine, or like this one. Are they shrugging it off while I act the poor fool?
Not that them having trouble would help me. They're supposed to be threats, but...how can they be more dangerous than an organized military, or whatever else I might find here? They have reason to kill me, and they could. But they aren't the ones who tried to. I have to focus on the bigger dangers. Even with her strange powers, Chaete was barely a threat to a single armed human. And a single armed human from the valley is what killed her. Not any of the people captured by the Outsider.
I should remember more about them. I should but I don't. That place, the Outsider...being thrust into a different world...it's all a blur. I thought I could run. They weren't...important. And the second time—a bloody mess, broken and dangling against the still stars—I. I wasn't thinking about them.
A few deep breaths, concentrating on the dim grime of aeons that covered the floor.
Well, I'm paying for it now. I think...I know some of them weren't human. One was inky, shapeless maybe, and one was...large, and armored? Maybe some have impossible powers like Chaete's. Or. Or something like mine, I suppose.
Jae-geun interrupted her thoughts with sudden silence. He had been whistling a tune in octaves Amaranth didn't recognize, and she found the way it echoed through the tunnels to be jarring. But it still carried the stamp of humanity, and the swarming silence it left was...
Does he hope I'll need to fill up the emptiness with words and give away more about myself? Well, it's working. I can't take this right now. After a pause, she managed something suitably empty. “You're very good at that. I wish I could whistle so well.” I feel silly. I shouldn't. I need him to believe this cover.
Jae-geun seemed disappointed by her comment, but maybe he had just hoped for worthwhile conversation. “You have a lot of time to practice on jobs like mine. Stretches of boredom punctuated by flurries of panicked scrambling.” He grinned.
All the questions I could ask and can't risk. She hazarded a shot in the dark. “It seems terribly interesting.”
Jae-geun laughed and continued walking. “I'm sure it seems that way to you. And yes, journeying through space, trading with other planets, seeing the galaxy...I wouldn't trade it for the world. But the sheer mind-numbing quality of the journeys themselves—we're only a small ship, so it's not like on the huge liners with their habitats and all the qualities of a small city. If you get sick of one person, well...”
He continued on in this vein, safely expounding on a pet topic like he no doubt had many times before.
“...and if you have to stay at some hellhole of a station to fuel up or make a trade, you have to do it. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Take this place, for example--”
He doesn't like it?—of course he doesn't. Who could love this lonely wreck? It seems remote...it must be thousands of miles from real civilization. Like traveling from a safe home in the base of the continent to the tip of the Northern Colonies. And just as wild and unkind of a place to live. An earthless, cold place... She thumbed the seed-box. Not a world for this. Even if there was the right person. Jae-geun's a trader. I don't think I'll like the real residents.
“-crawling with weirdos and down-on-their-luck amateurs who sold their lives to come out here and hope they'll stumble on some salvage that's worth it. Not that much of anything's worth it. Only reason I'm out here is 'cause I'm getting paid well by my own personal rich weirdo.” He laughed. “You'll see if we run into him. He'd be all over a real live cultist separated from the herd.
“He's a writerly type, from a branch of this megafamily. Fancies that—Ah!” He broke off with a pleased exclamation, and sped up down the hall towards a distinctly un-alien ladder, which Amaranth hoped was the way out.
It led up into a small room. Jae-geun waited for her to finish climbing before swinging the door open with a theatrical flourish.
“Now—here's the Grand Hall!”
Amaranth stepped through and froze in awe.
The Grand Hall was to other halls as mountains are to molehills. Here the alien architecture stretched into contrast expansive with the nightmare cloisters of the tunnels. It was night and day, it was chiaroscuro, as if the builders had refused to ruin the high drama of their work with mediums and in-betweens. It was horrifyingly large.
It was as dark as the tunnels, like them lit only by the efforts of the outsiders come to it. All the lights money had bought dwindled before they reached the primeval gloom in the vaulted heights of the ceiling. In the corners, pathetically, scuttled the bric-a-brac of impermanent human installations. Some were professional-looking, clean with multiple stories and undoubtedly the work of the government Jae-geun had mentioned. At the other end of the spectrum were tiny shacks, mostly formed of scavenged mismatched shapes from Krei'kii'kelriz's boundless interiors. They looked like an infection on its skin.
The people themselves ran a much more varied spectrum of upkeep than their dwellings. Evidently equipment was the priority here. They were mostly human, but not only, and many wore armor that obscured identification. There looked to be trade, and gossip, and overall it resembled a rundown town that had fallen on hard times decades ago and never recovered.
Evidently something important had happened, because a large and noisy crowd had gathered. Jae-geun strode excitedly towards it, pulling Amaranth along. And then it parted just enough and there was the creature from the Outsider's world and she wrenched her arm away to run but that only made it notice her faster. And where was she going to run to, anyways.
Its head shifted and flicked and she could see its mind working and remembering in the small movements of its gaze. She wished she had her mask and then realized why would a thing like that be able to read my face.
It stepped forward, controlled and powerful. Amaranth tried not to cower.
“You. You are one of the other contestants. What is your name?”
A man's voice. This was no innocent child in a monster's body like Chaete had been.
“I—my name is Amaranth Benedicta.”
“I did not see you once in the last world. Where were you? Hiding?”
“I...was with Chaete.”
“Chaete?”
“The...” How to describe her? Well, there's one thing you know he remembers, Amaranth. You're just avoiding it. “The one who died.”
He thought this over. “...Did you kill her?”
“No! Who—why do you care?!”
“If you have killed another contestant, I want to know. I would think this is obvious.”
How dare he! How dare- The flare of anger blazed through the fear. Amaranth took back control. It's clear he's not about to kill me. I have to... There will be worse creatures than this. This is my life now.
“Who are you?”
“Arokht. I am an Iceworlder. I am trying to regroup with the others. Have you seen them?”
Military, said a flash of intuition, and little details of Arokht's bearing and manner clicked into place. She noticed now the recent scars cobbled over with hasty patching that ran across his armor. She remembered the limp she had been too terrified to notice. Hm. She shook her head.
For a moment, Arokht looked tense. He's...worried? Then the military posture reasserted itself.
“Disappointing. Nevertheless, you will stay with me.”
Can't have me running off. Or maybe he charitably assumes I might be of some use.
A human woman approached. “Hi, Amaranth. I'm Mary Santos.” Her approach was the false kindness of people who are very worried about what you might do next, but, well, I really am visibly falling apart, aren't I. “And this is Ak.” She indicated a 4-legged horror behind her. “Arokht's told us a few things about your situation.” A tight-lipped glance back at him indicated that Arokht worked on a need-to-know basis, hadn't bothered with a cover story, and had left Mary with a million unanswered questions about what the hell was going on. Not a natural liar. Hmm. Mary smiled again. “We're going to compile data from the various feeds in Krei'kii'kelriz as well as recent gossip to try and get a rough guess of where your people might be. In the meantime, I'm sure you'd like a cup of-” There was a distant rumble and lights high in the ceiling flickered on. Everyone but Amaranth and Arokht reacted as if the world had flipped upside down.
“How-”
“I thought the systems were dead!”
“-and see what the sensors are saying!”
The spectacle of the anomalous strangers that had riveted the crowd was swept under as they ran in all directions. The Grand Hall echoed with uproar from all corners as its denizens reacted to an event they never thought would happen.
The insect with Mary was skittering to and fro, mad with excitement. “Mary! Must get we to M-type rooms! If awakened this the machinery-” She stilled him, and turned to Arokht.
“Arokht! Could one of you have done this?”
He shifted. “...The coincidence cannot be dismissed.”
“Ak, we need to focus. Whatever did this is more important. It'll be the real key to your questions, not some machines starting up. And since we know we're looking for a lost individual, someone who seems not from this world...we have a leg up on everyone else.”
He calmed somewhat. “Yes, yes. But must take I readings, and-” She paused another flurry of scientific fervor. “Yes. Of course. We'll get everything we can out of our computers before setting out. Come on.” She took off quickly, as did Ak, and Arokht, despite his wounds easily pacing Mary's jog with his huge measured strides.
Amaranth looked around for Jae-geun, but he had disappeared. Probably spreading the news as fast as possible. Arokht glanced back in annoyance. She sighed and ran after.
I need a rest. Instead I've been press-ganged into helping an autocratic alien gather everyone who's most likely to want me dead on a hellish wreck where the lights coming on is a big deal. And I still haven't found the time to curl up in a corner and break down crying!
Amaranth felt the mania creeping in at the edges of her extended forced coping. Great. This is going to be just great.
A metal claw grabbed her from behind and pulled her backwards. She hit it, clawed at it, sobbing uselessly. From the corners of her vision came dingy once-white walls, until they enclosed her and the final wall shut the box with a hiss.
Weightless. But no stars. And, she realized stupidly, air. She was in a room now and she had been in a room before. More windows than substance, and a terrifying vista of stars, but...she had been safe. Maybe not so now...she breathed deeply, willing the calmness of the plant. Grief and terror could come later. Looking around, the walls were all plastic and metal...manufactured, but the design and shapes were alien to her. She resisted the urge to struggle in the mute grip of the claw. The sudden crackle of speakers almost broke that.
“Hello? Hey! D'you understand me?”
“Y...yes.” She didn't feel right.
“Okaaay...”
“Ask her if she knows where she is.” A different voice. “Scans of her are reading a low tech level, and she seems pretty lost, so she's probably one of those hippy-dippy cultists that come here.”
“Not to mention whatever she's been smoking that's pinging the sensors. And lookit those robes.”
...They must be using a different language than before. But whatever made an alien child speak fluent Laden is still translating.
“Okay. Um.” The first voice turned back towards the speaker. “Do you know where you are?”
“Kray...Kraykee...” Amaranth struggled.
“Yes, ok, good job. Krei'kii'kelriz. That's where you are.” The voice continued in this humilating fashion. “Could you, uh...tell us who's responsible for—er—who you came in with?”
Amaranth contrived to look as blank as possible. I take it back. I should be grateful they think I'm too stupid to know facts any normal person here would know.
“Yeahhhh. Okay.” The voice swiveled away again. “Look, auntie, the standard questionnaire is a no go. Let's just shepherd her back to her flock and get on with things. She's no threat.”
“Ok. Ok. But you have to do it. And tell me if anything funny happens.”
“Fine, you paranoid old hag.” Swivel. “Ok, miss, we're going to take you through the lock now. Be prepared for a switch to low-gee.”
I'm probably supposed to know what those words mean, Amaranth mused as the claw pulled her back. The plant was a dim calm overlaying the blueblack exhaustion of the last few hours. How funny. The wall behind her hissed open and suddenly she wasn't being pulled back anymore but up
She vomited into a quickly proffered tube that vacuumed the matter away. “Don't try and move your head.” advised the second voice. The wall that had been behind her was now solidly under her. She fought back more nausea. Her inner ear reeled.
Glancing around the room (with a minimum of head turning) she guessed it to be a slightly disorganized command center of a small organization. They seemed to repurpose everything, and there were personal touches in all corners.
The two voices—now embodied—looked at her with expectant suspicion. They were both stout, presumably human, and their jumpsuits carried the same feeling as the room. Their black hair was cut short.
“Th...thank you for your help. I am deeply grateful. My name is Amaranth Benedicta.”
The elder one laughed. “What a mouthful! I'm Han Mi-yeon and this is Han Jae-geun. He'll be taking you back to your people.”
Amaranth struggled to her feet. “Pleased to meet you,” grinned the younger one, and held out his hand. The second she grasped it, he set off, tugging her towards a hatch on the far wall. “Bye auntie, I'll be back before you know it!”
The switch from the unfamiliar yet comfortable command center into the starkly alien architecture of Krei'kii'kelriz might have been shocking. Amaranth was too removed for that. Even the solid stone of the curved floor—so blatantly meant for something not human—seemed dreamlike beneath her feet. Tunnels split off from all sides, at every angle possible. Jae-geun set off down one tilted downwards, and Amaranth followed. The ceiling, in contrast to the half-circle the walls and floor made, was flat. It brushed the top of her head with every step. The rabbit's-warren felt both tightly enclosing and horribly open. Even more tunnels split off from the smaller ones. This dark maze...it's worse than the caves in Godsworn Valley. If I got lost.... She could see her instinctual terror from very far away, as if she stood on a precipice looking down. She shook her head quickly.
I need to mimic Jae-geun. Everyone here must be used to this place the way he is...and that on top of the hundred other things that I don't know. I'm like the village hunter who comes to the metropolis. One wrong turn and I'll get killed because I didn't know not to stand on the tracks. At least the Valley's forests were familiar...I won't be able to run so easily here.
I wonder if it's hard for the others. I wonder if their worlds are like mine, or like this one. Are they shrugging it off while I act the poor fool?
Not that them having trouble would help me. They're supposed to be threats, but...how can they be more dangerous than an organized military, or whatever else I might find here? They have reason to kill me, and they could. But they aren't the ones who tried to. I have to focus on the bigger dangers. Even with her strange powers, Chaete was barely a threat to a single armed human. And a single armed human from the valley is what killed her. Not any of the people captured by the Outsider.
I should remember more about them. I should but I don't. That place, the Outsider...being thrust into a different world...it's all a blur. I thought I could run. They weren't...important. And the second time—a bloody mess, broken and dangling against the still stars—I. I wasn't thinking about them.
A few deep breaths, concentrating on the dim grime of aeons that covered the floor.
Well, I'm paying for it now. I think...I know some of them weren't human. One was inky, shapeless maybe, and one was...large, and armored? Maybe some have impossible powers like Chaete's. Or. Or something like mine, I suppose.
Jae-geun interrupted her thoughts with sudden silence. He had been whistling a tune in octaves Amaranth didn't recognize, and she found the way it echoed through the tunnels to be jarring. But it still carried the stamp of humanity, and the swarming silence it left was...
Does he hope I'll need to fill up the emptiness with words and give away more about myself? Well, it's working. I can't take this right now. After a pause, she managed something suitably empty. “You're very good at that. I wish I could whistle so well.” I feel silly. I shouldn't. I need him to believe this cover.
Jae-geun seemed disappointed by her comment, but maybe he had just hoped for worthwhile conversation. “You have a lot of time to practice on jobs like mine. Stretches of boredom punctuated by flurries of panicked scrambling.” He grinned.
All the questions I could ask and can't risk. She hazarded a shot in the dark. “It seems terribly interesting.”
Jae-geun laughed and continued walking. “I'm sure it seems that way to you. And yes, journeying through space, trading with other planets, seeing the galaxy...I wouldn't trade it for the world. But the sheer mind-numbing quality of the journeys themselves—we're only a small ship, so it's not like on the huge liners with their habitats and all the qualities of a small city. If you get sick of one person, well...”
He continued on in this vein, safely expounding on a pet topic like he no doubt had many times before.
“...and if you have to stay at some hellhole of a station to fuel up or make a trade, you have to do it. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Take this place, for example--”
He doesn't like it?—of course he doesn't. Who could love this lonely wreck? It seems remote...it must be thousands of miles from real civilization. Like traveling from a safe home in the base of the continent to the tip of the Northern Colonies. And just as wild and unkind of a place to live. An earthless, cold place... She thumbed the seed-box. Not a world for this. Even if there was the right person. Jae-geun's a trader. I don't think I'll like the real residents.
“-crawling with weirdos and down-on-their-luck amateurs who sold their lives to come out here and hope they'll stumble on some salvage that's worth it. Not that much of anything's worth it. Only reason I'm out here is 'cause I'm getting paid well by my own personal rich weirdo.” He laughed. “You'll see if we run into him. He'd be all over a real live cultist separated from the herd.
“He's a writerly type, from a branch of this megafamily. Fancies that—Ah!” He broke off with a pleased exclamation, and sped up down the hall towards a distinctly un-alien ladder, which Amaranth hoped was the way out.
It led up into a small room. Jae-geun waited for her to finish climbing before swinging the door open with a theatrical flourish.
“Now—here's the Grand Hall!”
Amaranth stepped through and froze in awe.
The Grand Hall was to other halls as mountains are to molehills. Here the alien architecture stretched into contrast expansive with the nightmare cloisters of the tunnels. It was night and day, it was chiaroscuro, as if the builders had refused to ruin the high drama of their work with mediums and in-betweens. It was horrifyingly large.
It was as dark as the tunnels, like them lit only by the efforts of the outsiders come to it. All the lights money had bought dwindled before they reached the primeval gloom in the vaulted heights of the ceiling. In the corners, pathetically, scuttled the bric-a-brac of impermanent human installations. Some were professional-looking, clean with multiple stories and undoubtedly the work of the government Jae-geun had mentioned. At the other end of the spectrum were tiny shacks, mostly formed of scavenged mismatched shapes from Krei'kii'kelriz's boundless interiors. They looked like an infection on its skin.
The people themselves ran a much more varied spectrum of upkeep than their dwellings. Evidently equipment was the priority here. They were mostly human, but not only, and many wore armor that obscured identification. There looked to be trade, and gossip, and overall it resembled a rundown town that had fallen on hard times decades ago and never recovered.
Evidently something important had happened, because a large and noisy crowd had gathered. Jae-geun strode excitedly towards it, pulling Amaranth along. And then it parted just enough and there was the creature from the Outsider's world and she wrenched her arm away to run but that only made it notice her faster. And where was she going to run to, anyways.
Its head shifted and flicked and she could see its mind working and remembering in the small movements of its gaze. She wished she had her mask and then realized why would a thing like that be able to read my face.
It stepped forward, controlled and powerful. Amaranth tried not to cower.
“You. You are one of the other contestants. What is your name?”
A man's voice. This was no innocent child in a monster's body like Chaete had been.
“I—my name is Amaranth Benedicta.”
“I did not see you once in the last world. Where were you? Hiding?”
“I...was with Chaete.”
“Chaete?”
“The...” How to describe her? Well, there's one thing you know he remembers, Amaranth. You're just avoiding it. “The one who died.”
He thought this over. “...Did you kill her?”
“No! Who—why do you care?!”
“If you have killed another contestant, I want to know. I would think this is obvious.”
How dare he! How dare- The flare of anger blazed through the fear. Amaranth took back control. It's clear he's not about to kill me. I have to... There will be worse creatures than this. This is my life now.
“Who are you?”
“Arokht. I am an Iceworlder. I am trying to regroup with the others. Have you seen them?”
Military, said a flash of intuition, and little details of Arokht's bearing and manner clicked into place. She noticed now the recent scars cobbled over with hasty patching that ran across his armor. She remembered the limp she had been too terrified to notice. Hm. She shook her head.
For a moment, Arokht looked tense. He's...worried? Then the military posture reasserted itself.
“Disappointing. Nevertheless, you will stay with me.”
Can't have me running off. Or maybe he charitably assumes I might be of some use.
A human woman approached. “Hi, Amaranth. I'm Mary Santos.” Her approach was the false kindness of people who are very worried about what you might do next, but, well, I really am visibly falling apart, aren't I. “And this is Ak.” She indicated a 4-legged horror behind her. “Arokht's told us a few things about your situation.” A tight-lipped glance back at him indicated that Arokht worked on a need-to-know basis, hadn't bothered with a cover story, and had left Mary with a million unanswered questions about what the hell was going on. Not a natural liar. Hmm. Mary smiled again. “We're going to compile data from the various feeds in Krei'kii'kelriz as well as recent gossip to try and get a rough guess of where your people might be. In the meantime, I'm sure you'd like a cup of-” There was a distant rumble and lights high in the ceiling flickered on. Everyone but Amaranth and Arokht reacted as if the world had flipped upside down.
“How-”
“I thought the systems were dead!”
“-and see what the sensors are saying!”
The spectacle of the anomalous strangers that had riveted the crowd was swept under as they ran in all directions. The Grand Hall echoed with uproar from all corners as its denizens reacted to an event they never thought would happen.
The insect with Mary was skittering to and fro, mad with excitement. “Mary! Must get we to M-type rooms! If awakened this the machinery-” She stilled him, and turned to Arokht.
“Arokht! Could one of you have done this?”
He shifted. “...The coincidence cannot be dismissed.”
“Ak, we need to focus. Whatever did this is more important. It'll be the real key to your questions, not some machines starting up. And since we know we're looking for a lost individual, someone who seems not from this world...we have a leg up on everyone else.”
He calmed somewhat. “Yes, yes. But must take I readings, and-” She paused another flurry of scientific fervor. “Yes. Of course. We'll get everything we can out of our computers before setting out. Come on.” She took off quickly, as did Ak, and Arokht, despite his wounds easily pacing Mary's jog with his huge measured strides.
Amaranth looked around for Jae-geun, but he had disappeared. Probably spreading the news as fast as possible. Arokht glanced back in annoyance. She sighed and ran after.
I need a rest. Instead I've been press-ganged into helping an autocratic alien gather everyone who's most likely to want me dead on a hellish wreck where the lights coming on is a big deal. And I still haven't found the time to curl up in a corner and break down crying!
Amaranth felt the mania creeping in at the edges of her extended forced coping. Great. This is going to be just great.