[MISSION: HYRYPIA] And through that cordage threading with its call one arc synoptic of all tides

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: Everyone
WHERE: Station 72; Naerstone House
WHEN: DAY :001
SUMMARY: Makeovers, wining, dining and...dead bodies??? The first night on Hyrypia.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary.

CASTING OFF
     I. MAKEOVER, MAKEOVER
[It's less than one full day after the briefing that the hosts once again have a voice interrupt their thoughts. It is familiar this time: the curt, low sound of Siva’co in their mind without warning.]

( There is- ) [the passage of time pressed into their minds like a flower into a book- one hour-] ( until departure. All hosts will report to the Hangar Deck for supply and outfitting. ) [He does not say precisely when they should report, but something about the weight of the words says sooner rather than later.

When the hosts arrive there is a strangely antiquated looking ship waiting for them, its rivets and steel in bizarre contrast with the seamless white flow of the Station’s walls. Its gangplank is already lowered, but before they can pass into the interior there is a raised platform manned by Rhan and Siva’co. Once again clad they're clad in the layered robes that Misato and Aloy had seen them in. On the platform there are stacks of similarly lush and contrasting fabrics, one for each host, each one a neat pile topped with a pair of odd boots that give the impression of heels.]

There will be no space on the ship to kit up. You will need to outfit yourself before we depart. If you cannot figure out how to dress yourselves, get assistance.

[His voice is clipped, sharp and precise. It does not invite conversation. The slightest survey of the deck reveals that there is no kind of privacy provided, which may explain the crooked grin on Rhan’s face.]


     II. IN FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
[Once aboard the ship there is little time before the deck of Station 72 drops out beneath them, lowering them down and out and into the still darkness of the in between.

They stay there, frozen for a second before the engines kick on - a low efficient hum, no apparent feeling of motion to accompany it. After a moment another much louder noise begins. It's a gurgling, creaking sound that seems more suited to the ship’s exterior appearance.

Siva’co remains where he has been since they boarded, poised beside a panel just to the left of the hatch to the exterior where he's checking a number of crisp readouts. They're digital black and white like the databanks held by all hosts and are completely out of place in the ship's leather and wood interior. After a moment, seemingly satisfied, he reaches down and snaps the display shut - holding his hand there as a glow spreads around the edge of the panel the fades into a seamless fusing into the interior walls, just another section of brass and pipe and spinning dials. He moves through the cabin then, down the rows of seats and towards the cockpit, nodding to Rhan as he passes her.

She seems to take it as a sign, standing up as he disappears with a dip of his head under the low bulkhead of the hatchway. She drags a heavy bag out from under her seat and drops it with a thunk.]

Well my dears, we've a few hours ahead of travel ahead of us. I hope everyone brought along something to read. If you're feeling bored, might I suggest swapping notes on the mission briefing? You've brought your highlighters along, right?

[She grins, flashing an encouraging wink.] --Oh! And before I forget, I've a little present for you all from myself and Siva'co.

[Rhan reaches into the bag, producing a series of ancient looking books.] Take one and pass it down. [She hands one to the nearest Host. The books are shockingly light... because they've been hollowed out into the perfect shape to conceal a databank.] This way you can keep your cheat sheets with you at all times. I've decided we're all very religious -- or at least that we have the pretense of it.

[As promised, the trip in is indeed long. It takes them through vast reaches of real space. It's quiet and still - the perfect atmosphere to get some last minute studying in.]


HYRYPIA
     [At a distance, Hyrypia is a world made of gold and brass banded with iron. As the Host ship pierces down through the atmosphere, the colors morph and curve into hard stone, bitter scrub, black seas, and beautiful - but barren - golden waves of long valley grasses. White stones and squat farmhouses speck the landscape which slants as if inevitable toward the glittering pastel household acting as sentinel at the landmass's edge where today a hundred brilliantly colored banners and flags fly from every tower and gate, are wound through every garden and adorning every tent on the grounds surrounding it.

Naerstone House sits at the eye of a veritable flock of ships of every design and taste. They range from delicate as a rapier to solid as a stone, from as slight as this small ship the Hosts have used for their transport to large enough to cast a shadow across the entire structure of the compound. The yellowed grasses bend and shake in the shadow of them as they drop from the sky and the Hyrypians stuffed on the gray road leading to Naerstone from the valley hold their clothes against the energy dispersal from the engines. The host ship touches down in the fields in a place marked out with blue and yellow flags, just one of scores.

Welcome to the corner of Hyrypia where hundreds upon hundreds of varied Rabadoceans have met under a flag of peace for perhaps the first time in two centuries. As the gangway to the platform is lowered, it becomes immediately apparent that Rhan and Siva'co's companions have come to meet you. Completely obscured from head to toe, there's no telling what they look like, but surely they must be familiar to the agents, as no one asks questions when one of them hurries aboard.]

[Lyr's mind is cool like a river stone, though in this moment the river is being chopped by rainfall:]

( Half of you - the ones who know how to speak - follow me in the procession to the Veranda. The other half - take everyone's things and go with Collector. )


SPLIT THE PARTY
     III. THE PROCESSION AND VERANDA
[Lyr leads the hosts in his company to join the long, winding procession making its way up they gray road to Naerstone. They are all recognizably Rabadocean, though their styling and some mutations of their biology separates them into clear subsets. Here is a group with elaborate cloaks of liquid silver billowing as flags in the acrid sea wind; there is a group dressed in thick rich furs, huddled close for warmth and trying not to look it as they make their way. Everyone travels on foot through the field of ships, the village of brilliantly colored silken tents, and everywhere one looks is another strange collection of people to stare at. --And some of them may be staring back.

The grand procession winds its way through the main entrance of the sky blue compound, through brilliant open breezeways painted with frescos of four legged animals, lush vegetation, and threads of light. Eventually this train of people reaches a vast garden at the center of which is a massive shallow pool with a path leading to the covered structure at its middle. THE GARDEN has clearly been decorated for a party. On one side is an apparent series of games and common entertainment, and on the other are a series of low tables and long benches dressed for an inevitable dinner studding the space between low flowering shrubs and beds of golden grass punctuated with winding stone paths.

But they bypass this all in favor of THE VERANDA itself, draped in gauzy silks and furnished with a series of low couches and delicate wood chairs with elaborately embroidered cushions. It's clear that the Veranda is where the ranking officials and their aides will start the evening. There's easy conversation to be had or overhead. Two musicians skillfully play large string instruments balanced on their knees and a series of mute servants make their way through the gathering with trays of fine finger foods and small cups of rich black wines. They're so silent and unaffected by the hosts of company that they might as well be dead.

--Which is because, on closer inspection, they apparently are. Or close to it. They've an ashen pallor and milky eyes; one or two of the re-animated dead servants wears conspicuous articles of clothing to cover the thing which killed them - a cracked skull, a terrible wound.]

( Act naturally, ) [says Lyr's voice in the mind] ( If you find yourself drowning, call for me. )

[Enjoy the appetizers and polite company, everyone! Strangely enough, it seems perfectly simple to understand the rough, low shared language of the Rabadoceans and as equally easy to mimic it.]


     IV. THE APARTMENTS AND GARDEN
[Those who remain after Lyr has departed are greeted by the second stranger. Much like Lyr, she speaks into their minds, but unlike him her voice is soft and sweet and melodic, ringing pleasantly as a bell, accenting somehow the sound of crowds and distant pulsing beat of some kind of music. She is taller than the rest, and the process of elimination says that this must be Collector.]

( Welcome to Hyrypia. I hope you will tell me your stories, when there is time. For now, please follow. )

[She turns, heading in the opposite direction as Lyr and his batch, weaving her way effortlessly through the crowds towards the largest collection of buildings on the castle grounds. Each building is connected to the rest by plain walkways through simple stone gardens with the occasional gently sloped awning. It's a longer walk then it seems like it should be, but after they pass some of the more grand rooms - most of them at least partly open to the air - they come across another low stone patio. This one Collector steps on to, passing through the wide open entry and into the half shadowed space beyond.]

( There are a number of rooms, please, take your pick. I would suggest keeping your most valuable possessions with you, but there are lockers beneath each bed. They have tales here of lovers being secreted away in them, but these should not be occupied. )

[With that thought - the bubbling cheerful ring of it - she passses through the living area, sidestepping the low piles of cushions and disappearing into one of the rooms.]

( We should join the festivities soon- ) [Her voice is as near as it would be directly into their ears, despite her absence-] ( And please, feel free to speak. Silence is only my virtue.)

[It is only a short time later that she again emerges from the room, pausing in the center of the space and pulling a bell from her sleeve, ringing it once with her gloved hands - a sharp peal that interrupts even the low background hum of the surrounding apartments.]

( We must now venture out. There are stories waiting to be made. )

[She leads the hosts out the same way they came and then further into the heat of the festivities. Here the crowd grow thicker - a myriad of Rabadoceans, some wearing intricate costumes, some in elegant garments or wearing very little. All head towards the same space - a great GARDEN at the center of which is a shallow pool and VERANDA. Clever eyes may spot the other hosts there even though the obscuring gauze. They're hard to miss in all that heavy layered cloth. It draws attention even from strangers here, some of which shoot them glances with their sharp dark eyes. Others Rabadoceans whisper as the hosts pass, but the exact words are hard to hear.

The garden itself is as sprawling as the apartments and is mainly composed of a low shrubs with pale flowers and the same amber grass that covers so much of the planet only broken by the occasional rug and twisting stone path. The largest open areas are home to what appear to be games: balls and hoops and poles. Some look like they're to be struck or thrown, others which appear to be a part of some elaborate strategy game involving the placement of people around a central pole. The Rabadoceans laugh - low coughing sounds - but you recognize them for what they are. Just as you become aware that their words - thick and mealy as they seemed at first, now sound perfectly natural. It would be easy to mimic, easy to speak. Collector smiles through her mind.]

( Go on now. You may be shy, but you must be sharp. Life waits for no soul. )


     V. A COMMON PURPOSE
[When both sides have completed their tasks - picking their rooms and playing alongside the common folk, or eating appetizers and rubbing palms with the elite - all are summoned at once to gather in the gardens together by the signal of a deep resounding horn. The two parties merge on their short trek across the garden to the long low benches. Each set of benches has an equally long table with a narrow walking path through the center of it, and as guests sort themselves into their correct places - each distinct party collected with itself - food begins to be brought out. They're sumptuous and heavily spiced dishes. Although you cannot immediately see her, Collector’s voice joins the procession-]

( You can process all of the food without risk of death, however humans may wish to avoid the eel. It will cause indigestion. They are scooped up from the shallow streams that flow out of the highest mountains, and they dine only on the passings of the cave rodents that surround such places. )

[Lively string instruments play through dinner and talk is encouraged on the fringes of each envoy. Dishes are passed from hand to hand down the length of the long table and re-animated servants pour long streams of dark wine and faintly bitter water from long necked pitchers to wide, intricately inlaid cups. And while you are clustered in with the rest of your “delegation”, there are other Rabadoceans sitting across from you- strangers with strange smiles. Food does not seem to prevent conversation. Anything you want to say without being overheard is better left in your mind- and the minds of others.]


     VI. EVENING'S END
[Evening falls. The braziers are lit. Eventually, the music of the uncanny reverberating string instruments wanes to a tinny pervasive whine that stretches long enough to rouse suspicion. Ting, comes the chime of a small metal bell. Ting, ting, ting - the sound of the metal adoring the robes and elaborate headdresses of the small group of four Hyrypians which passes now down the long path from the Veranda and into the middle of the feasting.

They come to a halt there in the burnished grass. Quiet falls, save for that pervasive buzzing whine. Finally the Hyrypian at the front lifts her hand in the dark, revealing from her belled sleeves the rows and rows of brass and gold and glass scales adorning her gloves. She breathes across her glove and for a moment it's as if the air has turned to gold. It slips glittering between her fingers, then the scales peel themselves from her hands and flitter away to reveal themselves as wings of thin intricately beaten metal with glowing glass bodies: insects with watch-gear small mechanisms powering the rapid beating of their wings. They take flight, swirling and dancing through the thin breeze. As they do, the acolytes behind her raise their own hands to reveal larger insect-lights within each palm. They toss them lightly as jugglers. At their highest peak they too take flight, elegantly pirouetting to hover over the tables and casting a warm glow over the guests who applaud, each according to their own custom. This group cheers with a low whooping sounds from one corner, that one with stomping feet, another with lightly chiming bells. The smaller lights come to land along the edges of cups, on the high peaks of guest’s hats, and on knobby wrists. The machines are small, twinkling lights held on wire fine legs and they hum with a comfortable, welcoming heat.

The leading technomancer then goes swiftly to one knee, her hand pressing into a barely visible stripe of copper that runs down the main walkway. With that, the Veranda behind them lights up suddenly and brightly like a catching flame. The light races along the branching pathways of of the garden led by similarly fine wires, and not long after the lit garden is joined by the entire castle: every castle and balcony shining brilliantly in the darkness by this lone technomancer's hand.

From one of the long central tables, an elder Hyrypian in an elaborately draped tunic and cloak picked with gold rises. She raises a mottled hand before her, palm to the summer night sky.]

Friends. [Ysiddia Cabrielle's voice is low and thick, requiring attention without demanding it. She speaks with all the ease of a Major House of Hyrypian's head - which is appropriate, for that is what she is.] Welcome to our Hyrpyria and this Naerstone House. You've done my family an honor that will persist for generations. Tonight, we know each other as strangers-- [Some measure of her smoothed facade shifts; Ysiddia has a wry smile, as if she's telling a small secret to a cherished second daughter.] --or as enemies. Tonight, we are separate peoples divided by the places we came from and the things which those places required we be. But in the weeks that follow, it's my wish - and the wish of all Hyrypians - that we remember we are all Rabadocean and that the prosperity of one is the prosperity of all. We look forward to reaching the end of this great pilgrimage not in the company of friends, but with honored family.

We hope that this journey will do for you what it has done for our people. That it brings you understanding and renewed respect for The First and all those who have followed down their path. We hope you will come to see our people’s true destiny and true strength. But for tonight and the two days that follow, we invite you to enjoy yourselves as yourselves.

[Ysiddia bows her head to the assemblage, then to the techomancer who rises. The light fades as she does - first form the distant apartment, then to these gardens, to the veranda and finally where she and her acolytes stand.

The music resumes. Ysiddia takes her seat once more and the Seconds retire into the darkened garden.]

---

((OOC NOTES: This is the log for the first day on Hyrypia. For events beyond this evening, feel free to make additional logs/posts occurring on DAY :002 and :003 as the assemblage will be at their liberty in Naerstone and beyond for those two days. What follows after? Who can say.

'Wait, can I NPC this character?' If they don't have a name, go wild. Should you desire mod input or for us to bounce into a thread, feel free to reach out to us and we'll be happy to accommodate. We may also be threadjacking some of these threads, however don't feel compelled to wait for us to do so. Have fun and don't blow your cover!))

MISSION HYRYPIA OVERVIEW • NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[wrackful]

( Depends on how much sense it makes. )

[He's long past the days of belligerence for belligerence's sake, even if Lexa's general attitude pushes him close to it. But it isn't Lexa that Seviilia's anger is directed towards (and he shoves aside the temptation to redirect it that way). Bellamy is still the problem, unexplained.

There's a sense of taking a breath. A deep inhale, preparation to push past all his various reluctances and venture:]

( That's how it started out, you know. Bellamy talked sense, so I did what he told me to do. )

[He leaves it hanging there, like an offer. Does she even want to hear any of it?]

[miscreant]

[Her response is slightly chilly at first, a natural reflex that she doesn't even seem to notice. But her curiosity eventually wins over her pride, and her ears flick toward him while her shoulders relax.]

( Go on. )

[She knows some things, pieces of what she has gotten from Murphy's interactions with Bellamy, memories she had picked up inadvertently through various other encounters. Bits and pieces of ideas that had no glue. And as far as she could tell, Bellamy acted every bit guilty as she had believed him to be.]

cw: hanging, suicide

[wrackful]

[It'd be easier just to show her. To open up his memories, let her watch the whole thing play out. But something about that feels more vulnerable than telling it - that she'd be seeing everything he saw, feeling everything he felt. And he can't give her the space to misinterpret any of it. He lets his head tip back to rest on the back of his seat, stares up at the cabin's ceiling as he starts telling it.]

( We grew up in space. A station called The Ark. There was a war on our planet, a ton of bombs were dropped, and it meant nothing could live down there. ) [An impression, like a whisper, that this hadn't been the truth. But it was what they'd believed.] ( So we were going to stay up in space until we could.

But it turned out we didn't have enough air for that. So they loaded up the hundred expendable criminal kids they had in the Skybox, and dropped them down on the ground to see if it was survivable. Bellamy wasn't one of us. His sister was, so I guess he talked his way on board or something. )

[Something stupid, like Bellamy always did. Probably always would do. Especially for Octavia, Clarke, the people he cared about. It's jarring to reconcile that knowledge of him with how they'd both been, back then, but the pieces fit. Murphy just hadn't known them before.]

( We were assholes. ) [Blunt, feeling no need to soften the edges on how they'd been, how they'd acted.] ( We'd never been like that, no adults around, no laws. Bellamy took charge, but it was still just... ) [A wry pull of amusement.] ( whatever the hell we wanted to do. )

[A beat, and any of the warmth of that amusement dissipates. His tone goes dry. Matter-of-fact.]

( And then this kid, Charlotte, she kills the Chancellor's son. With my knife. I'd been a dick to him just like I was a dick to everyone else, so they string me up, Bellamy kicks the box out from under me, and I'm dead until Charlotte pipes up that actually, it was her. Bellamy doesn't want to hang a little girl, so he runs into the woods with her, and I go after them. )

[He'd been so angry. Betrayed and hurt, furious at the injustice of it, and maybe some of that had been right. But he thinks of himself hunting them down, the flame of torches held high overhead, holding a knife to Clarke's throat, and it curdles cold in his middle like razor wire. She was just a kid.]

( She jumped off a cliff, in the end. She killed herself and they exiled me, left me there. That's how the grounders found me. The first time, anyway. )

[Because that isn't the end of the story. Not the pieces Seviilia needs. But he waits, either wanting her reaction or just needing a moment to swallow some of the churn of regret and pain and self-hatred back down.]

[miscreant]

[In this, Seviilia is patient. Her thoughts are quiet, absorbing with ever narrowing eyes. Much of it would have been beyond her scope a few weeks before, but now she understands. The vision she sees of the Ark, day to day life, she can almost remember as if she lived it herself. The danger of losing air, the journey to the ground, the replay of Murphy's hanging. His betrayal echoes back to her, and her confusion only escalates.

There is a moment, she was just a kid that Seviilia vehemently rejects. Her penance in turn to live with her crime was served twice over in turn through her own death, taken by her own hand -- something in the death knight finds justice in it. There is little satisfaction in it, and the stormcloud of her thoughts returns to Bellamy.

The context doesn't help, and her spine straightens for it. She wants to ask why they sent their offspring, why the adults hadn't sacrificed someone more capable of making decisions, to ensure their survival. But ultimately, she isn't sure that Murphy would know, and it isn't relevant to the answers she really wants.]

( You deserved your vengeance. )

[If not against the child, then against all who assisted in putting that rope around his neck. She would still see it given to him -- that he shouldn't find himself swimming in his sick emotions that she can feel eating at her stomach.]

cw: murder, hanging again

[wrackful]

[There's a flicker of something else, out of time in this telling, rising up against the hardest piece of rejection in Seviilia's mind. A man crouched over a grave, grief on his face, asking why?. Murphy, tone cold with irreverence for the pain in front of him (hatred, steady and deep for this man alone), his words instead ringing with understanding for a dead girl: Because she couldn't kill you.

Bitterness rises. It's an easy, old friend.]

( Deserved. Right. )

[And who decided who deserved what? Life was never that simple. Just one crap thing after another, a relentless press onwards.]

( I took it, anyway. The grounders cut me up until I told them everything I knew, then they made me sick and sent me back in. Walking bioweapon. )

[It's clear this was not his vengeance. He was ignorant of it, angry at it, if anything, being used again. So many kids had died from that fever.]

( I killed Connor. ) [A bloody cloth pressed down over a boy's mouth until he suffocates.] ( Then I killed Myles. ) [Plastic, clear, stretched over a boy's head until he falls slack. Vengeance is hot and cruel and satisfying, until the moment it's interrupted.]

( But I got caught, so I had to improvise. Worked out just me and Bellamy, locked in the ship. I made him tie a noose, I made him put it around his neck and I watched him hang. )

[The memory ripples through that it hadn't been that simple, that quick. It had stretched out. The closed door of the dropship had let Murphy finally confront Bellamy, unleash the pain of being abandoned, turned against, the cold moment in the centre of the mob where he'd looked to Bellamy and known he wasn't going to back him up. That he didn't believe him. Bellamy with his head in the noose, apologising, eyes cracked with something that looked a hell of a lot more like guilt than anger. The apology that a part of Murphy wanted, but it was too late, he'd come too far already.

And then the cold, sadistic satisfaction at kicking the stool out from under Bellamy's feet. Watching him jerk and shudder and twitch, choking the way Murphy had choked, desperate and dying.]

cw: gore

[miscreant]

[So many children, so much death. Something familiar, but distance, pings Seviilia's muddy memory. A gutteral sound, inhuman, a lash of pain and a consciousness rising, met with a deserted town full of bodies. Women, children, torn and scattered across the ground, some of them still begging for release. Her mind pushes it back, easily taking Murphy's memory instead. The memory of being used, the memories of revenge, of fighting back.

From their position presses back against her skull, Seviilia's blackened ears slowly raise in interest. She almost smiles, watching him kill. It's easy to share the satisfaction he gets, the reflex to lick her lips kept in check only thanks to the appearance of Bellamy in their shared mindscape. How he returns to favor to him, every detail down to the way he kicks the stool out from under him.

It wasn't that she didn't believe Murphy when he had told her that he had paid him back, but seeing it, doing it -- that was different. It still doesn't explain his loyalty, why he had forgiven him or have a rat's ass about his well-being over her own.

(Bitterness, it comes and seethes in her belly again like a faithful hound.)]

( But he lived. )

[wrackful]

( He had some help. Same as me. )

[An implication, heavy, that if Seviilia wanted to talk eye for an eye, then he and Bellamy were equal at that point. But also this: Jasper, side by side with Bellamy as Murphy flees from the dropship. Finn and Clarke cutting the rope after Charlotte had declared him innocent. Some kind of bond evident in each, as dark and fractured as the circumstances had been.]

( See, the thing was it turned out the whole world was coming for us. The grounders wanted to kill us, Mount Weather wanted our blood, and ALIE wanted to stick computer chips in our brains. )

[The last strikes a note, rings out something familiar to when he's talked about the symbiote.]

( The only people who really gave a damn about us was us, even after the rest of The Ark came down. ) [There's a bitterness there that this was expected. They'd been expendable before. Just because they'd survived long enough to call the rest of The Ark down hadn't changed that.] ( And I'd learned pretty fast that the ground wasn't survivable, if you were on your own. )

[He didn't like being on his own, and he didn't want to die alone.

The whole thing is the best he can do to articulate it. That as outcast and outsider as he'd been, there was always that line there, stringing him back to them. He was one of the 100. These were his people. They hadn't even needed the grounders and their clans to teach that to them.]

[miscreant]

[As the faces tick by, as Murphy explains to her the nature of his world: grounders, the rest of the Sky people, and everything else, she starts to understand. They had fought against each other, until they realized that they wouldn't survive without each other's help. The source of conflict, that is less clear -- but she supposes it doesn't matter. The rest of the 100, criminals who were meant to be a sacrifice in service to a larger people -- that was what mattered.

Just as Murphy could not survive the ground alone, she could not survive Azeroth's eventual purge by fire without the other Knights. And even if she could, there had been no purpose in it. For too many years, she had pressed onward and protected herself from further pain, further rejection from the world around her.

She understands not wanting to be alone.

The wall of ice melts slowly, and her jealousy begins to ebb away. Bellamy, whatever he was before in that vision she'd seen so many times, was now an ally to him. Whether or not she agrees with his assessment of 'an eye for an eye' doesn't matter -- Murphy had considered them square, and it is impressed upon her beyond the point of argument. He was her's to keep, until he sought to betray them again.

And though she and her world had known nothing but war for centuries, she can feel his terror, his concern, and his bitterness. Some emotions totally foreign to her. From across the dropship, she almost looks physically uncomfortable.]

( You have endured much, for a child. )

[Is this empathy?]

[wrackful]

[Child would be an insult, and in part it still is. That was what the rest of Skaikru had done, writing them off as children, that none of what they'd done mattered anymore. The adults had arrived. Time to sit down and do what you were told, again.

But he can feel Seviilia doesn't wholly mean it like that. This is her understanding what he's told her. He looks at her across the ship, some small surprise, because it's more than he'd expected. Maybe more than she wanted.

It leaves him uncertain, with a measure of vulnerability in that. Her remaining angry, or giving some cool acceptance, those would've been easier to know how to respond to. He doesn't always know how to handle anything softer. But he knows not to push it away, and it's more acknowledgement than dismissal when he finally manages:]

( Yeah, well, what else was I going to do? )

[Give up. Die. It wasn't an option. Somehow something even further than that, like he simply wasn't capable of it. She'd seen that memory too, the one time he'd truly considered it, the gun shaking in his hand. How he just hadn't been able to go through with it.]

( Guess I should make that present tense. )

[Because it wasn't like waking up in the Nest, tangled up in another war, was all that different.]

[miscreant]

[He was not wrong. The war they fought here might have been less grueling, less immediately dire, but it was a war nonetheless. Seviilia sits up straighter and folds her arms, leveling her state across the ship.]

( You have greater powers at your disposal, now. )

[It was not as if she had anything left to live for, beyond the leading the charge against the Burning Legion. And if history was anything to go by, another would take her place if it became necessary.

We press on was their mantra for a reason.]

[wrackful]

[He thinks, immediately, that she means the symbiote, and his usual cynical amusement rises, swirling over the edges of his mind.]

( Did you see them? Before you were picked up for the brain bug. "The Enemy." )

[The question is genuine, despite his tone. His curiosity curls against her mind, wanting to know, wanting to see what she'd seen.]

[miscreant]

[She sobers a little when she feels his curiosity brush against her mind. Considering all that he had shared with her, she supposes that sharing this was a simple courtesy.

She sits on horseback, a grotesque creature with hooves cradled in coldflame. Behind her stands an army of death knights , several on similar armored horses and some on foot. There are races of all sorts -- elves, orcs, minotaur-esque people, even dwarves and humans. She is holding them steady on a landscape scorched with green fire.]

( We were already fighting when they came for Azeroth. )

[The battle looks like something out of a fantasy epic -- huge demonic entities raining fire from the sky, aggressively charging at groups of knights. Both armies seem nearly endless.

Seviilia comes to the aid of an overwhelmed knight, and they are quickly surrounded by what appear to be hounds. Something pings in their shared mindscape. A realization that these are larger than they should be.]

( They hid among our enemies. Maybe even in my own army. I do not know for certain. )

[There is an overwhelming pain that blossoms at the space between their shoulders, something that likely would have had her wheezing if she still needed to breathe. Its source is a knife, unseen and unfamiliar.]

( Given what I have been told, I believe they may perhaps be shapeshifters. )

[wrackful]

[Seviilia's world is like something familiar carved into something alien. Like she is - human enough in shape, in features, but then very much not human. The horse she rides, the people she stands alongside, he has enough flexibility in his understanding of the multiverse now to accept those.

It's the battle which makes him baulk. The sheer size of it is nothing he's ever seen before - he doesn't think there were even that many people alive, in his world. Add giant beings, magic scorching in the air, and he's overwhelmed, pulling back, tugging away from her--

It quiets. Like how her presence had soothed him before, the moments after the loss of Remus and Kate. Any panic he feels eases away, held steady by the places where they fit. Together.

Their disquiet at the appearance of the hounds. Their pain at the blow to their back. He's slow to respond to her for a moment, still watching, feeling.]

( Or they're like us. )

[Recruited from different worlds, selected for being suitable, developing further abilities along the way. It'd be just like home for him, two sides of the same race, convinced wiping out the other was necessary for survival.

A single point unfurls in the centre of Seviilia's remembered battlefield. Spreading outwards, sweeping it slowly away, the Commander's throne room high in the tower in Polis taking shape in its place.

Here, the battle had just ended, ALIE's freshly freed soldiers scattered across the floor in pain and grief. Bellamy and Clarke stand nearby, and Murphy's hands are covered in black blood, a woman's corpse cracked open at the chest laid out in front of him. He turns to look at a woman--

(Relief. Joy. Love. He pushes this aside.)

An impact rocks the tower. Shakes it under their feet twice over, sends pieces falling from the ceiling, the walls, what little glass remained in any windows shattering. It bursts through from behind them, coalesces, filling the air above, swirling and turning as if searching for something. A great swarm of black, a deafening chittering sound filling the room, thousands upon thousands of teeth passing over one another again and again.

Then it finds them. The maelstrom of it centred, direct, unerring. And there is nothing but fear.]

[miscreant]

[(Relief, Joy, Love -- three emotions she knows from example, another to feel them so keenly from a boy. She herself finds some relief when he pushes them away.)

She is quiet in the shared space of their memories. Yes, yet another form, all consuming and bewildering to behold. She almost regrets choosing a space on the ship so far away from her broodmate. At least closer, her skin itched less. Murphy's fear(?) was less keen and strange-feeling on her tongue. The shadow of. the enemy he saw appeared like something out of her cursed subconscious.

That demon lurks in the back of her skull, in her belly where the blood hunger suddenly begins to stir in remembrance. She pulls from Murphy to clamp down, to contain it.]

( I suppose we shall find out soon enough. )

[Maybe she would even get to feed off of them. She can't help thinking it -- an easy meal, a meal that for once didn't compromise the Nest.]

[wrackful]

[Seviilia pulling back feels abrupt, painful. For a second the memory of fear ripples into loss, the empty spaces of Mara, Remus, Kate and Peter. Then further, deeper--

(a weight of a fear darker and heavier than any he's ever known. filling a room, pressing him back, pushing against him with grief and warning--)

He draws into himself, breathing in hard, one hand rubbing over his mouth as if it's nausea he's holding back.]

( Something tells me if we get that close, it'll be too late. )

[He hasn't seen any greater powers since he woke up in the Nest that he could imagine taking down the thing that had come for him. Even the ability his brainbug had granted him, as useful as it was, seemed more like some kind of safety valve than a weapon.

But he can feel what she's thinking (can feel her hunger, always). There's a pulse of true regret for what he'd had to do. Robbing her of a meal, as necessary as it was.]

( I'll find you something. You just need a fight, right? )

[For something, at the least. If there was one thing left in him from his days in the dropship camp, it was the ability to find - or start - a fight.]

[miscreant]

( I would prefer to kill. )

[He covers his mouth, she bows her head and holds her neck. She was often coy about her needs when it came to the living, but there was no hiding it from Murphy. It had been so long since she had gotten to finish the job, or cause any real harm. But she knows the state of the mission like everyone else. Hunting in the open would compromise them.

But that doesn't stop her ache for it, the threat of hallucination and nightmare that she knows to be hanging over their heads.]

( It would last longer. )

[wrackful]

[There's a pulse of disquiet for that, the part of him that would prefer not to kill. But he knows it's often necessary. Will more than likely be necessary, on this mission, if Cathaway's warning and experience rang true.

But he knows Seviilia's hunger can't wait for circumstance to fall into place.]

( Guess we'd better hope the locals aren't as all about talking as our new friends have been saying. )

[Room for them to get a fight, or a kill, without compromising their cover.]