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Lore:The Once-Shipstealer: Difference between revisions
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Eramiskel does not know how to lose. | Eramiskel does not know how to lose. | ||
==II. The Wolf== | |||
The neighboring cell holds a Wolf. | |||
She ignores him at first. He's too greedy for her acknowledgement. Sometimes, he reminds her of the needy Dregs that followed her old Kell like carrion birds, squawking for attention and squabbling over his kills. | |||
What the Eliksni have lost, more than anything else, is dignity. | |||
Eventually, the Wolf learns to intrigue her. He calls himself Praksis, and he has ideas. But he's young. He thinks every idea he conceives of is the first and best of its kind. She suspects he's never had to report directly to a Kell. | |||
He likes to talk about machines—building them and bending them to his will. He has a mad idea about recapturing the Great Machine, binding it in Arc wire, and making it give them its power. He's been listening to the stories about Ghaul. | |||
She lets him talk, and she asks him questions. Every question is a whetstone. Every conversation is a test, and it will only take one failure to lose her interest. | |||
"The Great Machine made the Eliksni great," she says. "Until it left us. When it did, we were weaker than when it arrived. Why do you seek its touch again?" | |||
"To return us to that strength," he says. His voice is muffled through the wall between them, but the arrogance comes through clear. | |||
"How can you build strength on a foundation of weakness?" she asks. Each word is a needle. Each word should sting him with revelation. | |||
He remains silent. | |||
"Did the Great Machine make the Eliksni strong, or did it draw out the strength within us?" she asks. | |||
Again, silence. | |||
She tilts her head back, looking at the dark ceiling of her cell. "Reliance is the greatest weakness. Remember that. You are playing with a child's stacking spheres." | |||
He's silent so long that she begins to wonder if he was worth her time. Then, he says, "I will create new spheres." | |||
She closes her eyes and smiles. | |||
==III. The Traitor== | |||
On the day of the prison break, Eramis is nursing a gut wound. | |||
It's not fatal, or at least she doesn't think so. She won the match in the arena, but not before an arrogant Captain drove a Sword into her side. It cut through her Devil robes and left a bloom of blood that reminds her of the water flowers on Riis. Athrys loved water flowers. | |||
She's dozing when Variks arrives at her cell. | |||
"Eramis." | |||
She opens her eyes and then narrows them immediately. Despite the wound, she stands—too quick, she gets dizzy—and steps toward the cell door. | |||
"Traitor," she says in greeting. | |||
Variks flinches. He shakes his head, lowers his eyes. Even with the door between them, she can see his fear. It buoys her. | |||
"There is change to come," he says quietly in Eliksni and then looks over his shoulder. His eyes dart back and forth, fearful, suspicious. He switches suddenly to the clumsy common language of the Guardians. | |||
"Change Variks will make, yes? Change Variks will lead. But Variks, too, will need a leader…" | |||
Eramis laughs. "You wish to make me your prisoner-Kell?" | |||
"No," Variks cringes. "Variks wishes—" | |||
"I do not care what you wish, Variks the 'loyal'," she says. There are Eliksni who change in the shadow of prison bars. They fall. They shrink. But Eramis has grown. She must show Variks that even with this steel between them, he is smaller. He is still a Dreg pretending to be a vandal. "If there is justice in this world, one day, I will dock your last two arms and leave you for dead." | |||
Something in Variks's eyes hardens. They share a tense silence. Finally, he says, in a voice as cold as Ether, "Do not say that Variks did not try to help." | |||
He leaves, and Eramis settles herself again on the floor of her cell. | |||
Later that day, an alarm sounds. The warden projects a message in Variks's voice. The doors of her cell open, unprompted, as frenzied Eliksni and Cabal charge through the prison, thirsting for freedom. | |||