The desk doesn’t actually connect with Will. He drops to his side at the last second—the table collides with another, its individual pieces sent scattering across the floor. But it's enough of an opening for Avett to pounce straight for him, his blaster outstretched and ready to do some damage.
Lili's never been in a fight before, not a proper one anyway. Violence is something she's learned to avoid, not to use. Avett, however, is all too eager to face off with the larger man. He swings the barrel of his blaster at Will's head. A miss—Will counters with a heavy-set jab aimed for Avett's stomach.
Which leaves his side open.
Ducking to the left, Avett prepares his own counterattack, which Will avoids by skirting to the side. They scuffle like this for a bit, two bodies dancing in out of each other's reach, moving with the other's blows. Lili could never move like this, she thinks. There has to be something she can do to help. And yet here she is—helpless.
Will is the first to break off. He circles Avett slowly, his hands balled into fists and raised to his face. Not wanting to lose momentum either, Avett follows suit, holding his blaster at his side.
"Kitty's got claws." Will's breath comes evenly, as opposed to his opponent's.
"Monkey's got shit to fling.”
"Humans make do with what they've got. But I digress." Will keeps his eyes on Avett, shifting his feet every so often as he passes through another line of tables. Avett follows, equally focused. "I didn't amass the contents of this warehouse by flinging shit, and I certainly won't be slacking today."
He launches himself at Avett, fist outstretched, his side hopelessly open again, only this time Avett's cornered. Tables flank their sides, leaving Avett with one option: blocking.
Her colleague does so with a grimace, his blaster raised into the air as Will whirls and throws his entire weight into a punch.
No. Not a punch. His palm is open, his fingers splayed—a grab. Will swerves and reaches for Avett's head; by the time the latter's realised, he's already been slammed against the table twice and tossed to the floor.
But Will isn't done there. While Avett takes his sweet time recovering from his beating, Will takes the closest thing to him—a garbage can made of tin—and throws it over Avett's head. It rattles loudly when he does, like someone's waving a sheet of iron over his head.
It seems that Will’s plan is working as intended, because when he drives his foot into the bin, Avett lets out a muffled groan and stays down. It must be like an aural flashbang in there, the sounds exacerbated by his sensory advantages.
"Loud, isn't it? I can only imagine how rancid it must smell down there for an alien like you." Will's voice sends chills down Lili's spine. "Don't worry though—not for long."
And then he slides the gun from his hip and points it at the can.
Lili wastes no time scrambling forward and getting in the way, caging her arms over Avett like he's a volatile explosive so that it's her on the receiving end of his shot. If she looks down the barrel, she'll just catch the azure glow of the battery chamber. She's not scared; she's too angry, too full of reckless righteousness to cower away from the cold glint of the barrel.
Will only raises an eyebrow. "Always the sympathiser. Get off, Lili."
"No."
"He's an off-lander. An off-lander, Lili. They don't give a shit about the quality of your character, only where your ears are." The gun stays put. "They'll pillage your Human settlements without a second thought. They know no mercy, Lili. So get off."
Her eyes narrow; her fists clench into the ground. She stays right where she is, forever glaring into Will's bored, yet flickering gaze.
"I'm not moving." Lili feels Avett shift from underneath her. She needs time—and a distraction. "I don't know why those off-landers decided to do what they did, but Avett isn't like that. He's a good guy." As good as they come, anyway, she thinks, but she keeps that tidbit to herself.
There it is; Lili recognises that look from anywhere. When Will's eyes soften, she almost wants to throw up. He knows all of Ava's tricks, and like a seasoned dog owner, he's training her. Offering her a treat—respite and approval—at her most vulnerable, and expecting her to kneel for it. It wouldn't be so bad if he actually cared.
"Lili, come now." He actually lowers the barrel. "We've obviously gotten off on the wrong foot. Why don't you step away from the can? I could save you a seat in the elder's council—you'd like it quite a bit. You'd be a highly respected individual within the village, and you'd be surrounded by Humans." Will steps forward, his chest swelling. "Your kind, Lili. Your people. Be a good girl and do the right thing."
Unusual. Will bargaining with her is unusual. Gritting her teeth, she checks on Avett out of the corner of her eye—he's shuffling inside the bin, and from the way he's trying to keep his movements restrained, he must have some sort of plan.
Will continues, "We've got humanity's last stronghold, just waiting for you, right here." He flips the gun around so that he's holding it by the barrel. "All you have to do is say yes."
Disgust swarms through Lili like a hive of bees, and her upper lip curls. She doesn't know why registered mercenaries would attack such an unseeming village, and she doesn't stop to wonder why either. She's just a girl standing in front of a gun that'll go off at any second for someone who won't even thank her for it later. Powerless to stop Will physically—yet powerful enough to stop him entirely.
Her ether pounds through her at the thought, new and unbidden.
"Go fuck yourself, Will."
Lili propels herself backwards, away from the can. Avett shakes free, his hands cupped together, his body bent low to the floor. In his hands is the standard battery chamber. The casing has been cut open, revealing its innards to the air.
Then—Lili doesn't even know what happens then. One minute, she's watching Will fumble with his blaster; the next, she's seeing red. Literal red—there's a bright, brief flash of hot-blue light, leaving Lili to hopelessly fumble around in this new, dark world.
She hears the sound of skin colliding with bone, then a grunt. The low pitch suggests that it's Will's grunt. Something heavy falls to the floor—another grunt, from Avett this time, as he presumably swings the hard end of his blaster into Will's cheekbone. Two clicks—one light rattle. Then the scuffling of cloth against skin stops altogether, and Avett stands back up, victorious, panting.
She still can't see jack—everything further than two steps away is a faint silhouette at best—but she can sure as hell smell him from where she is. The garbage can hadn't been empty at all. She's proven right when she hears the sound of hands slapping against a mouth, two tenuous steps taken backwards, then unceremonious retching a few moments after.
Oh, what she'd give to see Avett's cocky demeanor destroyed in mere seconds. "Wish I could've seen that," she offers. Hot bile splatters against the floor in response.
Will groans. "Trust me, you don't want to see it. I'd rather see a cat hurl up hairballs than this guy."
"Fuck both of you." Avett's voice is hoarse and absolutely dripping in vocal fry. By now, Lili's vision has returned to her, to an extent at least. Her partner is limping around, scrubbing at his face and hair to no avail, then doubling back into himself silently.
It's a sorry sight to behold, that's for sure. Sucks to be Kattish sometimes.
Lili turns her attention to Will, her gaze cold. The two clicks she'd heard earlier were handcuffs—and indeed, Will is handcuffed and face-down on the ground, his face the very picture of reluctant resignation.
Step by step, she makes her way towards him. She kneels down to meet his gaze, but stops just shy of a metre from him.
“Where’s Avett’s GlassLink?” she asks.
Will shrugs. “Not on me.”
It takes all of Lili’s willpower not to just step back and give up. She doesn’t like the way she’s got all of the leverage now—it’s too unfamiliar. All she wants to do is to sink back into the passive complacency that she’s known well and worn throughout her entire life.
So she prods again. “Liar.”
He shrugs again. “I’m telling you, not on me.”
Avett drops his blaster to the ground and kicks it over to Lili before coughing into whatever corner he’s managed to meander over to this time. She doesn’t pick it up. She doesn’t need it.
Gulping down an uncomfortable ball of air, she asks, “Then where is it?”
“The elders’ve got it now.” Will’s eyes are fixed on the blaster. “I never touched it, I swear. I took all of his weaponry, but I left his GlassLink for someone else to fiddle around with. Couldn’t give two shits about alien communication even if I tried.”
“Do you know which elder?”
“Fuck all of that.” Avett’s footsteps echo through the hall, staunch and heavy against the hollow silence of the warehouse. “What the fuck is wrong with this village?”
Lili’s back straightens. Here it is; the moment she’s been waiting for. She’s either wrong or hopelessly wrong, no two ways about it, because Will’s giving Avett an actually sincere look of pure innocence before it degrades into a scowl.
“Finding Human life a bit prehistoric for your tastes?”
“Hardly.” Avett folds his arms. “I was gonna say, I was actually starting to like it a bit before my ears just fell off mid-hallucination. That really turned me off.”
Will looks completely lost. Avett’s ears give an impatient twitch.
Deciding that awkward encounters are a beast best left for another day, Lili pitches in. “Will, the Equaliser has never attacked the village nor the villagers, am I right?"
He shrugs. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you call old gumboots. Hasn't happened in the six years we've been here. Your point?"
"Our point," Avett says, his gaze furnace-hot as he stares Will down, "is that you're a fucking menace. Someone's feeding herbs to the villagers, someone's keeping everyone complacent—someone's using this village to feed life to the Equaliser."
That's not quite what Lili had wanted to go for, but it's not like she can take back his words. It does seem plausible that there's a bug in the village—that there's a Human who's co-ordinated everything just to keep everyone else in check to create the perfect feeding ground. It's just that Will's expression right now screams anything but "criminal mastermind."
Case in point: he throws them both a look of incredulity. "Excuse me? What the hell?"
"You heard me. Fuck you." Avett plants a foot into his back, forcing an airy grunt out of him. "Don't play dumb with us."
"I don't play dumb, I—"
"We know your game."
"—look, I'll be real for a second, I've got no idea what you're—"
"Spit it out already, Human, throw us a bone. Tell us how we're going to free the goddamn village."
As a last resort, Will turns to Lili, his voice strained, yet controlled. "You really had to go and get romantically involved with patient #84, huh?"
Lili looks back at Avett. "He doesn't know."
Her partner tosses up his arms and walks to the other side of the room, defeated. She follows him, her voice low as she asks, “What now?”
“It doesn’t matter if the villagers don’t know.” Avett is hunched over in thought, his arms folded once again. “We need Auren, and to get Auren, we need a damn phone.”
“It might be in the elder’s house.”
“It better be in the fucking elder’s house, else I’m going to throw a fit.”
Lili stops in the entrance, watching Avett stomp off by himself. He takes at least ten steps before deciding to turn around, gaze weary, yet abrasively confused.
He asks, “Going?”
She’s at a loss for words. Finally, after some silent seconds of popping her lips and sealing them shut, she settles on saying, “You wouldn’t just leave Will handcuffed there, right?”
He looks at her like she’s just spat on his shoes. “Yes, I would. He’d kill me if I didn’t, Lilith.”
And then, as if he wholly expected her to pad along behind him, he turns and continues on his merry way.
Asshole. But Lili ends up trailing him anyway. She just makes sure to keep her distance, knowing what’s good for her and all.
—
All initial intentions of keeping the house as they found it had gone out the window the moment Avett found himself face to face with a keyhole, as little as it mattered. But with the addition of each smashed nightstand, each punched-in cupboard—courtesy of Lili—all they managed to do was waste time. It’d taken the better half of the hour, but they’d ended up finding his phone in the infirmary cabinet, tucked between a bottle of expired pills and a pile of handmade bandages. No punching required, as Lili had soon realised. Her hands would be sore for days after anyway.
They’d been staring at the blank screen for far too long, expectant and nervous, when Avett brought up another problem; that it had to be charged.
Lili tries to hide the disappointment in her tone. It’s hard to even for her, with her flat tone and all. She poses one simple question: “How.”
“Bioelectricity conversion or something, I don’t know. Not my field of expertise. It’s why they advise you to sleep with it, as much of a privacy concern as it sounds.” Avett shakes his phone—sure enough, the screen goes from transparent to a matte black. “Look, it’s getting there. Give it a few minutes.”
“Minutes,” she echoes. “Surely it’ll charge faster if I hold it as well.”
He jerks it out of her reach, and for once, genuine fear flashes across his face. He composes himself a second later. “You’re not touching this.”
“Why not?”
Standing up, he pats down his thighs and makes for the exit. “A man guards his GlassLink with his pride and life, Lilith. You wouldn’t get it. You haven’t had a phone in years.”
“I’m trying my best.” She steps over a stray wood chip.
“We’re getting you one of these,” he says, waving the piece of foreign technology in the air like it’s a flag, “the moment we’re done with this job.”
Lili snorts. If it’ll help her to understand exactly why Avett’s so antsy about his phone, then sure.
The trek to the village’s gates is—unsurprisingly—uneventful, attributed to the fact that the majority of the villagers are still enjoying their dinners, or at least partaking in the activities that come attached to every evening meal. For the odd outlier that they find patrolling around in the light, Avett and Lili duck into the safety of the shadows.
The gates aren’t far. They’re pressed against the wall of the outmost hut, waiting for that last villager to meander by with bated breath. Only a few more seconds now until he turns the corner, out of sight, out of mind. Between them and freedom lies a dusty dirty path, a hut, and—
Avett leans ever so slightly to the left, pressing his cheek into the bend of the hut. He could’ve sworn that he’d seen something in the corner of his eye in front of him—a wisp, a dark silhouette in the night.
Whoever it was, they’d been fast. The villager at last is nowhere to be seen, and with that Lili starts forward, her eyes scanning the immediate area.
Avett grabs her wrist. It’s too late; behind him, grass blades rustle against each other, disturbed. Someone else is hunting them, and it seems that they’re not too far off. But distance is distance—and knowing Avett, he’ll take any chance he gets.
Lili steals a glance at his GlassLink. There’s a white icon on his screen; a canister with one, bright red, blinking bar. Maybe minutes had been an understatement.
An arrow of pure energy whizzes past Lili’s ear, heating her skin as it goes. It strikes the hut, fizzles into a speck. She looks up and sees a familiar figure. Large enough to protect, but not large enough to intimidate. Mari.
“You elders always have to shoot on sight?” Avett growls.
Lili can’t see her expression in this lighting, but she catches the slightest bob in Mari’s head when she regards the two.
With a swallow, she says, “You know.”
Lili can’t help but straighten her back at that.
“Ok, thank fuck. Maybe we can talk this one out instead.” Avett steps forward—and stops short when Mari points a finger at him, her nails glistening with that ethereal glow.
“You have two options,” she continues, her voice shaky. “You either stay, give into the dragon—or we fight.”
Avett finds himself thumbing the globe at his side. Realisation settles in as Lili watches Mari shift her gaze to hers. Her, the outlier. The one who had remained defiant against the wrath of the storm. Fear and apprehension at the gear that ticked the wrong way.
They can talk her out of this. Lili holds both of her hands in the air. Mari wobbles backwards at the sudden movement, but keeps her breath steady.
"We're not fighting," Lili says. A knot of nausea tangles itself in her stomach, but she wills it down, smooths it out. "Mari, you need to explain exactly what you've done here."
"Only what I've been doing for the past six years," she spits.
"This village is a feeding ground for the Equaliser," Lili continues. "You've been nurturing it for years, and if you don't stop, you'll—"
"We have no other fucking choice!" She slams her fist into the wall. "You think we want to be here, feeding the enemy, so far removed from the world we used to know? I know what I've done. I know that I've fucked up, I know, I know."
Lili falters. Then she holds her head a little higher. "You're the ringleader. You're the one behind all of…" She gestures behind her. "This."
Mari sighs, letting her hand drop from the wall. "It's… it's not that simple. I spent ages trying on my own time, trying to amend the ways I'd messed up, but it's no use. We're powerless without it—and it's powerless without us. Pretty soon, I'd forgotten all about it. Accepted it, in a way."
Avett shakes his head. "This isn't your fault. You're a victim."
A hoarse laugh. The figure holds the sides of her arms. "Do victims kill their parents?"
The words knock the breath out of their lungs. For a second, no one knows what to say.
Killed on a Saturday, not a Friday.
She continues, facing away from the two. "I told you earlier that their bodies had been buried under rubble. I lied. Their bodies are right here, and yes." Mari fixes Lili with a stone-cold stare. "They died on a Saturday. When I bought them here, when I first struck my deal with the Equaliser out of fear, I came back to two bodies. An initial tithe I was forced to pay—two half-lives to sate its hunger. A gorging to predate the slow feast it would have to itself soon enough.
"I couldn't stand being alone, and I knew it would kill me soon if I didn't bring more cattle to feed from. So I lured the lost with lanterns, kept them fed, taught them how to use the dragon's magic as it taught me. The villagers had no reason to leave—I don't know if you know this already, Lili, but there isn't a world for us out there anymore. But here, we're Humans. Not refugees, not survivors—Humans. We could fight back if we wanted to. Even if we could, why would we leave?"
Lili's hands shake at her sides. "Because the Equaliser gets stronger by the day, and soon, it'll be a problem for all of us."
"You think I don't know that? With the increase in mercenaries over the past months, they've all said the same thing. They come to eliminate the problem at the root, to free us from the dragon without killing us—" She takes in a shuddering breath. "—and then Will makes it violent."
Mari doubles over, practically coiling herself in a tight ball. She looks like a woman who's already imploded a thousand times before this night. Lili gets it; it's hard to seperate the catalyst from the cause sometimes, even harder to look upon your failures without loathing yourself.
With clear, steady affirmation, she says, "We're hunting down the Equaliser tonight."
Mari chokes. "You can't. So long as it feeds from us, you can't."
"Then sever your bond with the dragon." Lili keeps looking up, her chin tilted towards the stars. "You're a Human. You're strong enough on your own. So act like it."
“I—we can’t.”
“Please.”
The two don't move, don't flinch as they stare each other down, eyes meeting eyes, Human meeting Human. For a second, she thinks she might actually be getting through to her.
Until Mari yells, lunges, and swings her fist straight into Lili's face.
Her back hits the ground, the skin on her shoulders burning as fabric and dirt rubs her body raw. She lands face down, her bones aching, her jaw stiff with the bitter sting of iron and pain. When she pulls herself up again, she sees Avett standing in front of her. As she had done for him back in the warehouse.
However, unlike Will, it seems that Mari is entirely prepared to fight past Avett to get to Lili.
“You don’t understand,” she whispers. “We would be nothing without this power—nothing.”
Desperation flickers in Avett’s stance, and he pulls up his blaster. The chamber is dull, unlit—empty. He curses before flipping his grip over to the barrel, brandishing it like a makeshift club again.
Fighting back a groan, Lili squints up at their adversary, calling her name, calling it over and over like it's a two-syllable mantra. She has to get through to her. If she can’t, who will? If she can’t, what would that make her? Where would this all leave her?
Mari only bares her teeth, her hands blazing with black fire. “Avett. Move.”
Her partner’s response is muffled. They’re no match for Mari, not together, certainly not apart, and most definitely not in the current state that Avett is in. Mari whirls, her fists coated in an inky darkness that would burn through even the lightest of days. Her flame licks up Avett’s side, and he screams, frozen—before she drives her fist into his stomach and sends him careening into the wall. The globe tumbles from his pocket as he slides to the earth, hardly conscious.
Then she’s in front of her, her eyes unblinking, stoic. Fire crawls through and up and over her limbs, but it doesn’t burn her.
Lili finds that her mouth is dry. So, so dry. Her tongue moves slowly, as if she’s holding a wad of cotton between her teeth and she has to speak around it. But when she tries, she finds that she’s stuck between begging for her life and begging for Mari to regain her senses. Neither proposal makes it out of her mouth.
Mari takes fistfuls of her collar, lifting her to her knees. Her hands are unbearably hot. She doesn’t say anything—her glassy orbs regard Lili in earnest curiosity instead. Watching. Waiting. A mountain god observing an anthill.
The globe prods into her thigh. It pulsates like a torn-out heart. Ideas and possibilities expand and contract in the blink of an eye, her inspiration unbridled, her vision becoming undone like a gift unwrapped on the brink of Christmas Eve. All she has to do is grab it.
Mustering the rest of her strength, she scrabbles over her attacker’s hands, her wrists. Her fingers claw into Mari’s skin, but it’s no use; the Equaliser’s power proves to be far too strong for her to handle, and her ether just isn’t enough—she isn’t enough.
And then she falls onto her side.
Lili blinks. The grass spears into her cheeks, the dust settles like fine film against her skin. It takes a moment for her to realise that she’s still alive. It takes another for her to realise that Mari is screeching and clawing at her face, holding her palms to her bones like she’s been hit with a cold front. When she moves out of the way, Lili’s face nearly lights up at the sight of him.
Auren stands in the forest, his arms pointed at Mari like he’s drawing back a bowstring. How he'd found them, and why he was here, she has no idea. Lili takes this sweet opportunity to reach for the globe. She savours the hot touch of skin on soul and the cool bite of glass against her cheek.
Then she places it down, holds its base against the earth.
One dragon for another. Another aura for another.
The globe's light blossoms upwards, unfolding itself like an umbrella over the village. When Lili cranes her neck to see the spectacle, she catches a glimmer of blue streak across the sky, its line tracing along the edges of various geometrical shapes. Snow falls from the skies and fades before it hits the ground.
She's freed them, but not for long. The globe quivers in the ground, as if it might explode at any given moment. Mari lies against the earth, her fire extinguished, her grunts becoming feral.
Lili picks herself up. The snow is whirling, whirling—demanding her to leave, to act. She grits her teeth. Mari is dragging herself towards her, her nails stabbing into the dirt.
“Please don’t take it away,” she pleads. “Please—it’s our only leverage against this bitch of a world, please, please—”
Throwing Avett over her shoulder, Lili swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. She could teach them, show them how to harness ether, but Auren is rushing to her side and taking Avett’s other arm already. The Equaliser has been primed for the kill. She has to take this opportunity before it passes for good.
So she does what she does best. She apologises.
Over and over. Over and over.
Until the words crumble like dried spice in her hands.