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Lore:Achilles Weaves a Cocoon: Difference between revisions
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==IV: Scattercape== | ==IV: Scattercape== | ||
Namrask thunders into the warren on all sixes, crying out, "We must go! Death walks the ice!" | |||
Oeriks, Eoriks, and Yriks spread the word. More come than Namrask dared to hope. He warns them, "We must hide close to the Machine-spawn and steal supplies, or radiation and Ether-lack will bring us down." | |||
They leave. But not an hour later, a rifle round punctures Namrask's armor. He barely staggers, but the jet of air and Ether exploding into vacuum thrust him backwards. "A Guardian," he warns. "It will call its kin." Guardians love to gather like carrion eaters over easily slain and looted foes. | |||
Another round hits Namrask's helmet. "Those with scattercloth, give me your capes!" In exchange for the first cape, Namrask shoves his loom into a Vandal's arms. "But this is priceless," she protests. "You cannot give it!" | |||
"I will return for it," he promises. Feverishly, Namrask stitches the capes into a blanket as blood trickles down the inside of his armor. | |||
He fires his shrapnel launcher into the ice to kick up steam: "Like this!" he shouts. "Make a cloud and run!" They shoot into the ice and flee. As the ice storm settles in Europa's low gravity, Namrask crawls towards the Guardian under a blanket of invisibility. Occasionally, he emerges long enough to be seen, so that the Guardian will hunt him instead of the others. | |||
The Guardian comes for him. | |||
Namrask huddles against the ice, slowly freezing. The Humans are such gangly mockeries of the Eliksni form: two arms, two eyes in a smooth, lifeless doll-face, stubby little teeth. He remembers the Guardians he has killed—eight times. He has never revered Ghosts. | |||
He remembers the smell of burning flesh. Ordinary Humans, young and old. Their gardens and structures; their star and world. Forever remembering giving that long-ago order: Burn it. Burn it. Burn it. | |||
The Guardian nears. | |||
Namrask melts a puddle with his armor's radiators. The Guardian uses a sword tip to test the ice at the edge of Namrask's cover. Namrask makes one small sound: I do not want to die yet. | |||
A shock pistol burst scatters off the Guardian's armor. They whirl, sword down, rifle up; sights on Yriks. Foolish, brave Yriks, scurrying on all sixes, like a Drekh. She has saved him. | |||
The Guardian mocks her, saying, "Ooh, bonyenne, tu m'as tiré! Tu voulais mon attention? Ben tu vas l'avwère!" | |||
Their vehicle appears; the Guardian mounts it and pursues Yriks. Namrask never sees her again. | |||
==V: Watercloth== | ==V: Watercloth== | ||
A few members of his group return and find him half-frozen to the ice, his limbs flexing in delirium as he calls for Yriks. As they free him, a ship lifts in the distance, shimmering into stealth, and is gone. They are stranded. | |||
"Why did you come back?" Namrask groans. "Imbeciles. You should have stayed with the others…escaped…" | |||
"I had to give your loom back," the Vandal says. She drops it on his wounded chest. He bellows. | |||
As days pass, the radio shrieks with distant transmissions. Encrypted tactical data between Servitors. Eramis's sermons. The song of the red world overhead. And occasionally, the bray of Human tongues, as a Guardian brags of a new conquest, or curses some obscene glory-trial amusement. | |||
Phylaks is dead; Praksis too. | |||
The Priestess Kridis is dead—Sniksis and Piksis with her—and the Prime Servitor is destroyed. | |||
Eramis is dead, consumed by her own power. One of the old Riis-born. Never will there be another. | |||
Namrask knew it would end this way. He has seen this every time. His fallen people have learned defeat so well that now they defeat themselves. He rages and claws at the ice. | |||
For his band of stranded survivors, he fashions shelters of watercloth: synthetic skin with thick bladders pumped full of ice to block some of the radiation. When his wound pains him, he numbs it on the ice. Turrha sees him but says nothing. He is grateful. | |||
"We must find a transmitter," he says. "We must call for Misraaks to return." | |||
But survivors are still on Europa. They seek out Namrask, bringing their hatchlings but not much Ether. | |||
And if they can find Namrask, so can those who hunt them. | |||
==VI: Superconductor== | ==VI: Superconductor== | ||
"My father will come for you," the voice on the radio promises. "His ship is swift, his navigation sure. He studies the motions of the Light, and that Light travels even to you." | |||
There is not enough Ether. They all agree that the hatchlings should get their full supply. Everyone else receives a thin trickle. | |||
But still, they die. | |||
Namrask clings to the voice on the radio; he makes the others listen. "She is as young as some of you," he says one day. "Not much more than a hatchling." | |||
"My father will return for you," the voice says. | |||
It is idiotic to reply, but he does. "Who is your father? How can he study the Light, when the Light is denied to us?" | |||
She does not answer for a long time, but perhaps this is not her fault. The receiver is damaged, so he stitches a patch for it from superconducting threads. | |||
When she answers, she sounds annoyed. "I am Eido, daughter of Misraaks, Kell of the House of Light. He is close to the Light because he is close to the Lightbearers. My father walks beside the Guardians of the Traveler." | |||
Namrask kneels, frozen in horror. He tears the patch from the radio and stalks away. "I cannot go with them!" he snarls. | |||
Oeriks calls after him, but Namrask is too full of rage and fear. The Guardians surely will recognize him if he stands beneath the Traveler. | |||
==VII: Time Is a Fabric== | ==VII: Time Is a Fabric== | ||