RE: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 2: Krei'kii'kelriz]
01-05-2017, 08:31 AM
Krei'kii'kelriz, the great riddled riddle of a wreck. What long-dead denizens sieved you to and fro, bored you capillary-mad and left you to drift, a rotting maze? And how long could one wander your wormwood halls without ever encountering another living being?
On this night, not very long at all.
=+=+=
All Robin wanted was a place to hole up where she could bother the local ghosts without being bothered herself. The former research station proved accommodating to both those needs. Set my computer up, get to work on recruitment. Violent deaths were always so confused, but what can you do.
“Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when.”
“Hello, Sonora.” Well, this won't make things any easier. But at least she might ward off anyone combing the halls and picking off stragglers. She examined the bodies. Eenie, meenie, mynie, mo. “Why're you hanging around here? It's pretty quiet.”
“Why is it so quiet? It—just a second ago there were birds, and, and now--”
“Ah.”
“--Delta, do you read, I repeat, do you read? *cough* Code midnight, the church has, the church--”
Robin looked over at the corpse hunched by the communications relay. “I'll start there, I suppose.”
“When you walk you'll leave black dirt in the street.”
She popped her briefcase, began rummaging. “Tell me about it. Hey, don't suppose I can rely on you to hand me equipment, eh?”
“...You're a funny one, aren't you? We're alike, in a way. Monsters, always in the darkness. Declaring us the nicest of the damned. Ain't nobody gonna love me like the devil do.”
“Uhh-huh.” Robin concentrated on the part with the scalpel that was always rather fiddly.
=+=+=
Amaranth was adrift in a cloud. Another land where all the sounds were distant and everyone slept but her. A dream world where she was lost and no one would ever find her, where she was alone and traveling forever. Mary is so heavy. I should wake Mary up. The thought circled her head, met its answer, and circled back again, choosing easy inaction every time. The tunnels were hazy, hazy, the thing that damns me saves me, no guidance without the loss of safety, no safety without being lost.
I just need somewhere to stop.
One tunnel led into a larger hallway. Too large. But she could hear voices echo softly, calm voices among them. Dim light from a doorway shone on inky pools of blood and still forms but—I have very low standards now.
Cracked screens and damaged equipment, the carnage of technology did its best to illuminate the carnage of flesh.
I suppose the cultists came in by— Amaranth began to think, and then realized she did not care. She accepted the scene as it was, a moment without history, each corpse placed for effect. An illustration torn from a storybook, a perfect tableaux ruined only by one—two—still living figures in the center of the room.
“I'll be with you in a moment, this one's a bit flighty, needs extra attention.” The woman with a calm voice bent back towards the man she was seeing to. Even silhouetted by a blue light, her clothes...looked different from any Amaranth had seen on the station.
The man murmured, too low for her to hear. “Now, can you remember your name? What day it is? Good.” A head injury, it seemed. A voice sighed from nowhere. From over the radio? “...know you, I walked with you once upon a dream...” The woman hmmd, but in response to her patient or the voice, Amaranth couldn't tell.
Uneasy, she laid Mary into the spot least taken by other bodies. The door was...open, with no visible way to close it. Sliding handle-less panels stuck partway. But the sleep had to stop. She pulled off her mask, rubbed her eyes. It felt like the shadows were pulsating.
“...that gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...”
The woman was still murmuring with the man, further obscured by the flickering voice of the radio. “No, it doesn't work that way. … I'm sorry … time to hold your hand … simple but important … … can count on you.” Unconventional phrases, even if it was palliative care. Amaranth approached slowly.
“I'm experienced in first aid...there might be something I can do for him.”
“He's a bit past all that.” Offhanded, dry sardonic.
“...What?”
“Please, please help me...I don't want to die...” The man moaned softly. He was in worse shape than Amaranth had realized. Holes in...
“Past what I can do for him, too...with an hour, of course, I'd get somewhere, but we might not have an hour.” She started tapping at her computer.
“Please...”
“What a lovely epitaph, oh. How—how can you be so cruel?!”
“Spare me the witty commentary.”
That was definitely in response to the radio. “I-”
The woman tched and tapped a button. The man stopped.
A bit silly. “H-he...he...” A bit silly, not to notice the hole in the side of his head. “He-” But he had been talking, after all. “He's-”
“Out with it, tell me! Is he alive or is he dead? And I don't know if the dead can talk to anyone. I. I want to hear you say it.”
That's not the radio.
Amaranth curled in on herself, nightmare placed upon nightmare and that fever pitch of a voice. I, I need to...I can't her face was hot and wet.
“Talk to me! Sing, sing, sing, sing unto me.”
Amaranth whimpered.
“Shut up for one second.” The woman came towards her. Hands reached gingerly—awkwardly—around her shoulders. “There...there. It'll uh, it'll all be ok.” And Amaranth leaned into it, wrapping her arms around the woman, burying a sob into the green wool. “Uh. Ok. Shh, shh.” A hand brushed her hair experimentally. Everything that had been building up, everything smoothed over with more and more forced calmness, all of it, broken dam flowing downriver over everything in the way. It was all coming out.
Catharsis poured out of Amaranth, literally infectious. Robin felt sympathetic tears well in her eyes. Well, that's never happened when a grad student broke down before. “Hey, you're uh-” No, no point asking right now. She held her breath experimentally, felt she felt a little less sappy. No good just doing that, probably gets in through other ways. I'm right next to the source, after all.......didn't see you in the last world, damn near forgot you existed. And now you're getting snot on my coat. Drops rolled down her face and her heart twisted with sourceless emotion. Fuck.
Sonora was hissing. “...they'll time your every breath poison, it's poison I tell you echo, echo, echo”
“...Huh. You...don't like this?” Neither do I, but it's good to know I have options besides plasma fire for getting you off my back. She felt a surge of togetherness, squeezed Amaranth's shoulders. There are worse trips, I suppose.
Robin heard a shuffling. So that person Amaranth carried in was alive. She blinked quickly, saw in the bad light a capable-looking woman. “Ah...hey.”
The woman took in the scene, approached and kneeled worriedly. “Amaranth...is she alright? Are you alright? What happened? Where's Arokht?” Arokht, bell ringing. “Don't worry about me, I'm...a sympathetic crier, I guess.”
Amaranth snuffled, took deep breaths, you can only cry so many tears at once after all, the bulk of the tension wrung out of her like a rag. “Mary...”
“What happened, Amaranth? I remember the cultists, and then...I must have fainted. Where's Arokht?”
She stared for a moment, shook her head. “They...they weren't any match for him. Not really. I don't think anything is. They fell—they were knocked out. But Arokht—he—that wasn't enough. He. Started killing them.” Her face was in her hands. “Crushing...I had to get away. I got you away. But he's angry. So, so angry.”
Mary let out a long breath, swore. “I realized he was a soldier, but...I thought he was reliable. Damn!” She got up, agitated. Controlled panic. Went to examine the equipment. “I'm going to try to raise Ak on the comms. Can I at least trust the intel he gave us about your...people?”
Amaranth shook her head. “I'm sorry. I haven't met most of them. I don't think he's a liar...I don't think he even really knows what a lie is. He's simple. He thinks killing a helpless enemy is just what you do to win.” The emotional tone was fading, replaced by something more distant. Robin could almost feel the ebb in the air. So could Sonora.
“that tread across the sky you like that, huh? You like that? Haven't I suffered enough already? I remember when a million was a million. Shadows dance around the room, I know their names. They're, they're all going to die- So near to me, so far from me now.”
Mary glanced around, looking for a source.
“She has a point.” Robin raised a hand, smiled sheepishly. “We're, ah, 'one of the gang,' so to speak.”
Mary stared at the unassuming figure. “She- We?”
“Well, me and--”
“Nice to meet you, hope you've guessed my name.”
“don't interrupt me and Sonora.”
They stiffened.
Robin held up a hand. “Look, whatever Arokht told you—well, it's probably true—but she's not going to just pop off and eat you. She's no more dangerous than—well, honestly, she seems less dangerous than Arokht right now.” Robin was suddenly acutely aware of how ridiculous “hey, let's just hang out with this carnivorous shadow, what's the worst that could happen” sounded out loud. She could hear Sonora lapping at the furniture, impatient waves about to chew up a goddamn corpse or something similarly alienating. Just keep talking. “I get that you're uncomfortable. But she's stubborn as hell to get rid of, and frankly we have more important things to worry about right now.”
“I could be so winning, so absolutely winning. You don't have to explain yourself to me. And we'd have fun, fun, fun.”
If only I could elbow you in the ribs. “Shh.”
The two stared, shared looks, looked back. Began to speak at the same time, stopped.
“I'm Robin Pearson, by the way.” Mary opened her mouth. “PhD.” She added stupidly, as if that title even means anything to either of them, much less gives me authority to decide whether a b-movie monster is cool to hang out with.
“Pearson...Arokht didn't mention you.”
“I'm not very flashy. And we never met.”
“Do you know anything that Arokht doesn't know?” Florica. Florica.
“I know the devil on a first name basis. The tiniest atom that learned what it was for. And he never sees the writing on the wall. She's broken but she's fun.”
“Unless you're looking for a different perspective on personalities (from me), or free verse found poetry on the subject (from Sonora), I doubt we can tell you anything useful about the others. As to what's going down on this station...that's what I was trying to find out before Amaranth showed up.”
Mary nodded. “We've been attempting to scan for any news of people matching Arokht's descriptions. We've also taken some readings from sensors we set up...Ak—that's my shipmate—was running a diagnostic on them, trying to triangulate the origin of the power surge.”
That's where she'll be. It has to be her. “I've been getting some news of my own. There's a sort of flux on the astral plane, something kicking up dust that's been settled for centuries. It's hard to pinpoint—the massacres adding to the foot traffic aren't helping, and that's aside from the weird residual energy signature that's all over the place, I've never seen anything like it, but--” Caught up in technobabble, she paused, realized. “Hhhh. Ok, listen. What I do—it's a sort of merger of magic and science—probably sounds like hokum to you, but can I ask you to just add something else to the trust tab I have running because again I am not totally sure how many minutes we're away from midnight--” Mary was laughing.
“Sorry, hah, I just—lord, I wanted to be a space explorer because I thought it'd be all fun and adventure, and then I realized it was mostly hard work. But now, hey, whaddaya know, turns out all the pulp fiction plots are real!” She laughed harder.
Please don't crack up on me. “I haven't even told you about how I talk to the dead.” She smiled weakly. Mary laughed, sighed.
“Alright. You do whatever it is you need to do to pinpoint your anomaly, and I'll try to contact Ak. I'm betting...our charts will match right up.” She walked over to the least-broken console, started tapping keys.
Robin looked over at Amaranth. She was kneeling by the corpse, examining him.
“So you were really talking to him...”
Robin scoonched closer, shooed away a black tendril experimentally tasting the edge of Amaranth's robe. Don't screw this up for me. “Yeah.”
“Ghosts.” She shuddered. “Lost souls who never found peace...trapped out in the cold. There are a lot of them right now, aren't there?”
“Yeah.” I hope it's just the contemplation of mortality that's making her sound so churchy. “Listen, Amaranth—that thing earlier? Where you made me start crying too?” Amaranth flinched. “I get that you weren't in control, but don't pull that again.”
“I-I'm sorry. Where I come from, it's normal to......I won't lose control like that again. I've gone back to emitting a simple calm feeling.”
“You, uh--” I hadn't caught that! “You really shouldn't--”
“Do you really think Mary would have just accepted all this by herself?” Mild tone, but sharp. She's got a point.
“Ok.” Ok, let's put cultural mores aside. For now. “Your...stuff...”
“The pollen.” Good thing I don't have allergies.
“What can you—would you be able to elicit a specific sort of emotion? And how stably are you able to control it?”
“Which emotion, and for what?”
“Well, a kind of trance state. Ecstasy in the original ex stasis sense of the word. There's a necrology hypothesis a guy named Hartwell developed, an idea for boosting weak signals using a group séance. Like minds aligned for a single purpose. It was theoretically solid. Only problem was, all the ol' shamanistic drugs are a bit of a gamble in what trip they'll take you on. Some uh, things happened...anyways. I need answers.”
Amaranth considered. “So, you...I don't understand what it is you're trying to do. But I think I can do what you're asking.”
“Ok, cool. It should make things...smoother.”
“In the meantime, is there anything I can do? I noticed you're wou--”
“Ah, well, actually, there is something you can do.” Robin wiggled her finger in the general direction of the shadows. “Talk to Sonora.”
“I'm sorry...?”
“Sonora...” She sighed. “Needs attention. I think she's sulking a bit because of whatever you did, but she'll probably want to talk again soon enough.” Robin shrugged. “Seems silly, but if you keep her occupied she won't eat anyone.”
“...Oh.” Sonora slid down a console, a lazy shadow, some kind of awful approximation of helpful emphasis. Amaranth was tense again. Keep talking, keep talking.
“You know some songs, right? Hymns? I'm a lousy singer, so I haven't tried it, but I think she likes learning new tunes.” Robin got up, started examining the other corpses. Back to business. She can handle it. I've got my own job to do.
I guess the conversation's over. Amaranth looked down at her hands, fiddling with the light armor. Robin was nothing like anyone she had ever met, nothing like anyone she had ever expected to meet. Amaranth's mind shifted away from the horror of what Robin had been--was--doing. She wanted to trust Robin. Robin was...confident, not in an overbearing paper-thin way like Arokht, but deep down. She was smart, experienced. Caring. Amaranth could go along with her plan, do what Robin said to do. It felt safe.
What kind of songs does a shadow like? It sounded like an absurd riddle. And the answer was equally absurd.
Well, why don't you ask it?
On this night, not very long at all.
=+=+=
All Robin wanted was a place to hole up where she could bother the local ghosts without being bothered herself. The former research station proved accommodating to both those needs. Set my computer up, get to work on recruitment. Violent deaths were always so confused, but what can you do.
“Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when.”
“Hello, Sonora.” Well, this won't make things any easier. But at least she might ward off anyone combing the halls and picking off stragglers. She examined the bodies. Eenie, meenie, mynie, mo. “Why're you hanging around here? It's pretty quiet.”
“Why is it so quiet? It—just a second ago there were birds, and, and now--”
“Ah.”
“--Delta, do you read, I repeat, do you read? *cough* Code midnight, the church has, the church--”
Robin looked over at the corpse hunched by the communications relay. “I'll start there, I suppose.”
“When you walk you'll leave black dirt in the street.”
She popped her briefcase, began rummaging. “Tell me about it. Hey, don't suppose I can rely on you to hand me equipment, eh?”
“...You're a funny one, aren't you? We're alike, in a way. Monsters, always in the darkness. Declaring us the nicest of the damned. Ain't nobody gonna love me like the devil do.”
“Uhh-huh.” Robin concentrated on the part with the scalpel that was always rather fiddly.
=+=+=
Amaranth was adrift in a cloud. Another land where all the sounds were distant and everyone slept but her. A dream world where she was lost and no one would ever find her, where she was alone and traveling forever. Mary is so heavy. I should wake Mary up. The thought circled her head, met its answer, and circled back again, choosing easy inaction every time. The tunnels were hazy, hazy, the thing that damns me saves me, no guidance without the loss of safety, no safety without being lost.
I just need somewhere to stop.
One tunnel led into a larger hallway. Too large. But she could hear voices echo softly, calm voices among them. Dim light from a doorway shone on inky pools of blood and still forms but—I have very low standards now.
Cracked screens and damaged equipment, the carnage of technology did its best to illuminate the carnage of flesh.
I suppose the cultists came in by— Amaranth began to think, and then realized she did not care. She accepted the scene as it was, a moment without history, each corpse placed for effect. An illustration torn from a storybook, a perfect tableaux ruined only by one—two—still living figures in the center of the room.
“I'll be with you in a moment, this one's a bit flighty, needs extra attention.” The woman with a calm voice bent back towards the man she was seeing to. Even silhouetted by a blue light, her clothes...looked different from any Amaranth had seen on the station.
The man murmured, too low for her to hear. “Now, can you remember your name? What day it is? Good.” A head injury, it seemed. A voice sighed from nowhere. From over the radio? “...know you, I walked with you once upon a dream...” The woman hmmd, but in response to her patient or the voice, Amaranth couldn't tell.
Uneasy, she laid Mary into the spot least taken by other bodies. The door was...open, with no visible way to close it. Sliding handle-less panels stuck partway. But the sleep had to stop. She pulled off her mask, rubbed her eyes. It felt like the shadows were pulsating.
“...that gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...”
The woman was still murmuring with the man, further obscured by the flickering voice of the radio. “No, it doesn't work that way. … I'm sorry … time to hold your hand … simple but important … … can count on you.” Unconventional phrases, even if it was palliative care. Amaranth approached slowly.
“I'm experienced in first aid...there might be something I can do for him.”
“He's a bit past all that.” Offhanded, dry sardonic.
“...What?”
“Please, please help me...I don't want to die...” The man moaned softly. He was in worse shape than Amaranth had realized. Holes in...
“Past what I can do for him, too...with an hour, of course, I'd get somewhere, but we might not have an hour.” She started tapping at her computer.
“Please...”
“What a lovely epitaph, oh. How—how can you be so cruel?!”
“Spare me the witty commentary.”
That was definitely in response to the radio. “I-”
The woman tched and tapped a button. The man stopped.
A bit silly. “H-he...he...” A bit silly, not to notice the hole in the side of his head. “He-” But he had been talking, after all. “He's-”
“Out with it, tell me! Is he alive or is he dead? And I don't know if the dead can talk to anyone. I. I want to hear you say it.”
That's not the radio.
Amaranth curled in on herself, nightmare placed upon nightmare and that fever pitch of a voice. I, I need to...I can't her face was hot and wet.
“Talk to me! Sing, sing, sing, sing unto me.”
Amaranth whimpered.
“Shut up for one second.” The woman came towards her. Hands reached gingerly—awkwardly—around her shoulders. “There...there. It'll uh, it'll all be ok.” And Amaranth leaned into it, wrapping her arms around the woman, burying a sob into the green wool. “Uh. Ok. Shh, shh.” A hand brushed her hair experimentally. Everything that had been building up, everything smoothed over with more and more forced calmness, all of it, broken dam flowing downriver over everything in the way. It was all coming out.
Catharsis poured out of Amaranth, literally infectious. Robin felt sympathetic tears well in her eyes. Well, that's never happened when a grad student broke down before. “Hey, you're uh-” No, no point asking right now. She held her breath experimentally, felt she felt a little less sappy. No good just doing that, probably gets in through other ways. I'm right next to the source, after all.......didn't see you in the last world, damn near forgot you existed. And now you're getting snot on my coat. Drops rolled down her face and her heart twisted with sourceless emotion. Fuck.
Sonora was hissing. “...they'll time your every breath poison, it's poison I tell you echo, echo, echo”
“...Huh. You...don't like this?” Neither do I, but it's good to know I have options besides plasma fire for getting you off my back. She felt a surge of togetherness, squeezed Amaranth's shoulders. There are worse trips, I suppose.
Robin heard a shuffling. So that person Amaranth carried in was alive. She blinked quickly, saw in the bad light a capable-looking woman. “Ah...hey.”
The woman took in the scene, approached and kneeled worriedly. “Amaranth...is she alright? Are you alright? What happened? Where's Arokht?” Arokht, bell ringing. “Don't worry about me, I'm...a sympathetic crier, I guess.”
Amaranth snuffled, took deep breaths, you can only cry so many tears at once after all, the bulk of the tension wrung out of her like a rag. “Mary...”
“What happened, Amaranth? I remember the cultists, and then...I must have fainted. Where's Arokht?”
She stared for a moment, shook her head. “They...they weren't any match for him. Not really. I don't think anything is. They fell—they were knocked out. But Arokht—he—that wasn't enough. He. Started killing them.” Her face was in her hands. “Crushing...I had to get away. I got you away. But he's angry. So, so angry.”
Mary let out a long breath, swore. “I realized he was a soldier, but...I thought he was reliable. Damn!” She got up, agitated. Controlled panic. Went to examine the equipment. “I'm going to try to raise Ak on the comms. Can I at least trust the intel he gave us about your...people?”
Amaranth shook her head. “I'm sorry. I haven't met most of them. I don't think he's a liar...I don't think he even really knows what a lie is. He's simple. He thinks killing a helpless enemy is just what you do to win.” The emotional tone was fading, replaced by something more distant. Robin could almost feel the ebb in the air. So could Sonora.
“that tread across the sky you like that, huh? You like that? Haven't I suffered enough already? I remember when a million was a million. Shadows dance around the room, I know their names. They're, they're all going to die- So near to me, so far from me now.”
Mary glanced around, looking for a source.
“She has a point.” Robin raised a hand, smiled sheepishly. “We're, ah, 'one of the gang,' so to speak.”
Mary stared at the unassuming figure. “She- We?”
“Well, me and--”
“Nice to meet you, hope you've guessed my name.”
“don't interrupt me and Sonora.”
They stiffened.
Robin held up a hand. “Look, whatever Arokht told you—well, it's probably true—but she's not going to just pop off and eat you. She's no more dangerous than—well, honestly, she seems less dangerous than Arokht right now.” Robin was suddenly acutely aware of how ridiculous “hey, let's just hang out with this carnivorous shadow, what's the worst that could happen” sounded out loud. She could hear Sonora lapping at the furniture, impatient waves about to chew up a goddamn corpse or something similarly alienating. Just keep talking. “I get that you're uncomfortable. But she's stubborn as hell to get rid of, and frankly we have more important things to worry about right now.”
“I could be so winning, so absolutely winning. You don't have to explain yourself to me. And we'd have fun, fun, fun.”
If only I could elbow you in the ribs. “Shh.”
The two stared, shared looks, looked back. Began to speak at the same time, stopped.
“I'm Robin Pearson, by the way.” Mary opened her mouth. “PhD.” She added stupidly, as if that title even means anything to either of them, much less gives me authority to decide whether a b-movie monster is cool to hang out with.
“Pearson...Arokht didn't mention you.”
“I'm not very flashy. And we never met.”
“Do you know anything that Arokht doesn't know?” Florica. Florica.
“I know the devil on a first name basis. The tiniest atom that learned what it was for. And he never sees the writing on the wall. She's broken but she's fun.”
“Unless you're looking for a different perspective on personalities (from me), or free verse found poetry on the subject (from Sonora), I doubt we can tell you anything useful about the others. As to what's going down on this station...that's what I was trying to find out before Amaranth showed up.”
Mary nodded. “We've been attempting to scan for any news of people matching Arokht's descriptions. We've also taken some readings from sensors we set up...Ak—that's my shipmate—was running a diagnostic on them, trying to triangulate the origin of the power surge.”
That's where she'll be. It has to be her. “I've been getting some news of my own. There's a sort of flux on the astral plane, something kicking up dust that's been settled for centuries. It's hard to pinpoint—the massacres adding to the foot traffic aren't helping, and that's aside from the weird residual energy signature that's all over the place, I've never seen anything like it, but--” Caught up in technobabble, she paused, realized. “Hhhh. Ok, listen. What I do—it's a sort of merger of magic and science—probably sounds like hokum to you, but can I ask you to just add something else to the trust tab I have running because again I am not totally sure how many minutes we're away from midnight--” Mary was laughing.
“Sorry, hah, I just—lord, I wanted to be a space explorer because I thought it'd be all fun and adventure, and then I realized it was mostly hard work. But now, hey, whaddaya know, turns out all the pulp fiction plots are real!” She laughed harder.
Please don't crack up on me. “I haven't even told you about how I talk to the dead.” She smiled weakly. Mary laughed, sighed.
“Alright. You do whatever it is you need to do to pinpoint your anomaly, and I'll try to contact Ak. I'm betting...our charts will match right up.” She walked over to the least-broken console, started tapping keys.
Robin looked over at Amaranth. She was kneeling by the corpse, examining him.
“So you were really talking to him...”
Robin scoonched closer, shooed away a black tendril experimentally tasting the edge of Amaranth's robe. Don't screw this up for me. “Yeah.”
“Ghosts.” She shuddered. “Lost souls who never found peace...trapped out in the cold. There are a lot of them right now, aren't there?”
“Yeah.” I hope it's just the contemplation of mortality that's making her sound so churchy. “Listen, Amaranth—that thing earlier? Where you made me start crying too?” Amaranth flinched. “I get that you weren't in control, but don't pull that again.”
“I-I'm sorry. Where I come from, it's normal to......I won't lose control like that again. I've gone back to emitting a simple calm feeling.”
“You, uh--” I hadn't caught that! “You really shouldn't--”
“Do you really think Mary would have just accepted all this by herself?” Mild tone, but sharp. She's got a point.
“Ok.” Ok, let's put cultural mores aside. For now. “Your...stuff...”
“The pollen.” Good thing I don't have allergies.
“What can you—would you be able to elicit a specific sort of emotion? And how stably are you able to control it?”
“Which emotion, and for what?”
“Well, a kind of trance state. Ecstasy in the original ex stasis sense of the word. There's a necrology hypothesis a guy named Hartwell developed, an idea for boosting weak signals using a group séance. Like minds aligned for a single purpose. It was theoretically solid. Only problem was, all the ol' shamanistic drugs are a bit of a gamble in what trip they'll take you on. Some uh, things happened...anyways. I need answers.”
Amaranth considered. “So, you...I don't understand what it is you're trying to do. But I think I can do what you're asking.”
“Ok, cool. It should make things...smoother.”
“In the meantime, is there anything I can do? I noticed you're wou--”
“Ah, well, actually, there is something you can do.” Robin wiggled her finger in the general direction of the shadows. “Talk to Sonora.”
“I'm sorry...?”
“Sonora...” She sighed. “Needs attention. I think she's sulking a bit because of whatever you did, but she'll probably want to talk again soon enough.” Robin shrugged. “Seems silly, but if you keep her occupied she won't eat anyone.”
“...Oh.” Sonora slid down a console, a lazy shadow, some kind of awful approximation of helpful emphasis. Amaranth was tense again. Keep talking, keep talking.
“You know some songs, right? Hymns? I'm a lousy singer, so I haven't tried it, but I think she likes learning new tunes.” Robin got up, started examining the other corpses. Back to business. She can handle it. I've got my own job to do.
I guess the conversation's over. Amaranth looked down at her hands, fiddling with the light armor. Robin was nothing like anyone she had ever met, nothing like anyone she had ever expected to meet. Amaranth's mind shifted away from the horror of what Robin had been--was--doing. She wanted to trust Robin. Robin was...confident, not in an overbearing paper-thin way like Arokht, but deep down. She was smart, experienced. Caring. Amaranth could go along with her plan, do what Robin said to do. It felt safe.
What kind of songs does a shadow like? It sounded like an absurd riddle. And the answer was equally absurd.
Well, why don't you ask it?