The longer Avett stays inside this pocket dimension, the looser he starts to feel. He's not the tightest guy—nor is he trying to be the tightest guy—around in most circumstances, and by 'tight' he means ironed uniforms, collars that have been buttoned up all the way, and monochrome ties—the nine-to-five kind of tight. He's more like the kind of guy who wears his shirt with two buttons undone and with the tie thrown around his shoulder. He's not tight.
But right now, Avett feels like a total slob, both mentally and emotionally. He's beginning to shed his shell for Lilith, layer by layer, whether he likes it or not.
Waiting for the Palatable's return had proved more arduous than expected. The first day in the Chasm had passed without drama; sure, he'd bitten into her, and she'd poured her ether into his veins, but their relationship had remained right where they left it: stagnant and stale, like a bag of rotting chips underneath his bed frame. On the second day, he'd joked about getting married with her; on the third, he actually proposed.
As a joke, of course. Avett makes sure that each of his bits come off as inhumanely annoying and insincere as possible. Stars forbid if Avett manages to catch feelings for Lilith through his morbid 'jokes.' Stars fucking forbid if he lets even a shred of genuinety through his impenetrable bastion.
The worst part—or best, he's not yet sure—is that Lilith actually believes that he’s just having some fun. He's flirting at her in a 'ha ha, maybe, aha' way, and not in the 'let's say our vows and live the rest of our lives in holy matrimony' kind of way. It's incredibly easy for Lilith to brush his hints off her shoulders as just jokes, or at the very least, noncommittal compliments.
In other words; he's getting sloppy. He's so bored, so craved for attention that he's started flirting with a sheet of cardboard. But whatever keeps the dread of death at bay, he supposes.
The fourth day dawns, and the sun rises over the horizon and sets the sky ablaze in light oranges. The dome above them shimmers, wavers, then fades into the air. Avett watches all of this from the comfort of their makeshift refuge; a slipshod farmhouse with a liberal blanket of dust covering every exposed surface. He rubs at the windows with his sleeve, and the fabric comes away blackened with soot.
"I feel like we're getting nowhere," groans Lilith. She's standing over the fireplace with a ladle and a boiling pot of potatoes and mushrooms. "We're going to atrophy away at this point: we have to do something other than—this."
At 'this,' she gestures vaguely at the pot and their rapidly growing pantry of foraged mushrooms, and sighs, exasperated. Avett slumps onto the windowsill.
"You could do me," he says half-heartedly. "We never have sex anymore, darling, I feel like I'm only good for fixing the car. It's like we're strangers again."
Lilith stirs the pot hard enough for water to spill over the sides and to hiss on the blackened kindles below.
Then she says, "Let's go further than the other road today."
"All the way?" He fans himself with a plastered, giddy smile. "Stars, babe—"
A stifled laugh. “You need a new joke.”
"Bite me."
They leave the farmhouse without locking the front door—as far as they're concerned, Lilith and Avett are the only two living and breathing B rank mammalians in the Chasm—and wander past the trees. They end up on the same road they'd found a few days back, and Avett is both relieved and unnerved to see that it hasn't changed a bit. They're well and truly alone in this desolate dimension.
He glances over to Lilith; her face remains stoic. He tries to imagine a Therian city razed to the ground, a realm void of developed civilisation, but alas, he can't even empty the streets of Aurores in his mind's eye.
Lilith stands on the edge of the road with her eyes squinted against the wind. She's not broken, but to call her unbroken feels like a stretch.
They gaze into the point where the sky meets the road and land. It really does stretch on forever.
"You said nothing could leave or enter the Chasm. So what happens if someone makes contact with the barrier?" asks Lilith.
"You die." Avett shrugs.
Lilith stares at the sky, at the dome. She hums discontentedly.
Avett adds, "I lied. Nobody really knows. We just assume death because of the way dragons destroy entire populations before settling down and making this shithole in their place." He gestures to the world around them with his arms. "But no one's going through a barrier to test that theory. It's either instant death or purgatory in an unknown world. Too great of a risk to go testing."
"So the barrier's not actually real," Lilith finishes. "It's just glorified placebo."
"When did you get so sassy?"
She presses her lips together and looks away. "I'm just saying, we could've walked right through that barrier a long time ago…"
"You're insane."
A fidget. "Um, a little. It's just been sitting at the back of my mind for a while now."
She won't even deny it. Avett exhales through his nose and crosses the road.
"Could we maybe see this barrier?"
He stops and points a finger into the sky.
She coughs. "L-like, closer."
"Wouldn't even dream of crossing this landmass without the Winnow. We don't even know where we are in relation to the barrier's edge."
"If we walked in one direction—"
He's already walking away. "Could be kilometres away, princess. And that's hours and hours better spent waiting for the Palatable to come back to us."
"I don't think…" She trails off. "I mean, dragons don't have to look for us, right? That'd be kind of anti-climatic, they could probably smell us out if they wanted."
"What, you're actually just a dragon now?"
Lilith stills. "Can it find us?"
Despite himself, he swallows. He remembers their encounter—or lack thereof—with the dragon all too well; it's been seared into his waxy brain with a hot stamp and left to set in the cold. If they can't see it, then stars forbid that they actually manage to converse with it.
"They can," Avett continues slowly. "Smell us, I mean. Sorta. It's more ethereal than olfactory. Most can't do it well, but anything with an aura is…exceptionally good at it."
His shoulder aches lightly. He grips it in one hand as he's flooded with memories of five days prior. It aches like he's been gnawed into.
On the other side of the road is a grassy bank that's crawled into the minute cracks in the road. Beyond this bank lies an acre of flat farmland, dotted with toppled fences and iced with singed grass. Not a single living being to observe. Avett leaps over the first fence and offers a hand to Lilith, who gladly refuses it and hops over the obstacle by herself.
"So," he says as he lets his hand float awkwardly back to his side. "Why're we here? What's the occasion?"
Lilith's hands intertwine. She dips her head to the ground and whispers, "Wishful thinking."
"You really thought we were going to see the edge today, huh?"
"No—I just wanted to see if there was anything else to forage, I was getting tired of mushrooms, honestly."
She wants to see the edge. That much is obvious.
He snorts and clamps down on a laugh. “You’re like a sheet of glass. I can see right through you.”
A pause. Then: “So is that a ye—”
"It's a no. We were lucky enough to find shelter in this shithole, we won't be lucky to find shelter again."
Lilith doesn't argue back, but he knows what she's thinking. She could probably take Avett halfway around the globe with nothing but a moth-eaten tarp and a bundle of sticks. She's a survivor, but Avett sure as hell isn't. In this foreign, risk-addled land, he'd rather take the easy way out and sleep under a roof than be exposed to the elements. He's not strong like her.
But he doesn't say that. He touches a hand to his shoulder instead, where his ache has subsided into a faint tingle that's not unlike an itch. A crown of teeth lies on Liliths own shoulder; his teeth. Not the best gift to leave for sure.
They pass a grassy embankment, where several thinly petaled daisies lie in soft beds for eons. Below them is a hastily dug-out trench, where only a trickle of water flows through.
"I wish there was something to do," Lilith says.
It takes an astronomical amount of self-restraint for Avett not to make another joke about sex. He presses his lips together and hops across the trench instead. Lilith follows suit, albeit very clumsily.
He touches a hand to his shoulder again. Avett can’t lie to himself anymore; it’s a sensation he can’t afford to ignore, but he’s not exactly sure as to what it could possibly be aside from—
Avett hides his dread behind a light chuckle. “Excuse me, princess. Duty calls.”
Luckily for him, Lilith catches onto his innuendo almost immediately. "Didn't you just go this morning?"
"I'm a growing boy; I need my pisses."
She says nothing else as he hobbles his way behind a shrub and a tree. With trembling hands, he takes out the tube of ointment from his pocket and presses a finger into his shoulder through his jacket.
It doesn't hurt. It's fine.
He prods at it again. It should be fine then. It shouldn't be anything serious. He whispers these sentences to himself, over and over, like he's reciting a religious mantra to the stars. His fingers tremble as he twists off the cap on the tube.
Avett swallows and resists the urge to pinch his nose. Let the pungent odor wake him; he needs this. Then he slides his arm out of his sleeve and accesses the site of injury.
He blinks. There's something on his shoulder alright, but it's not quite what he expected. He recalls how the dragon's aura had stripped him bare of his identity, had burned his skin until he was nothing but charred bone; the sensation on his shoulder is far from that. It tingles like he's relieving himself of an itch.
He brushes a hand over his skin. On his shoulder is a mark—not a dragon's mark, but a birthmark, though Avett is sure that he's never seen anything like this on his body before. The mark is darker than the skin surrounding it, and it seems to be in the shape of a square with its sides caved in. At the bottom of this square is a small protrusion that resembles a stem.
It takes a moment for Avett to realise what the mark is supposed to be. He peeks around the tree and steals a glance at Lilith. He'd bitten her on the shoulder the week prior during his recovery, had pumped him full of her own ether—her own aura—before holding him in her arms.
He looks back at his own shoulder.
The mark is in the shape of a lily.
—
Lili's started toying with the grass by the time Avett is done pissing. With the tips of her fingers shod in chlorophyll, she waves at the younger man; he scowls back before he catches himself and turns away.
He must be really pee-shy, is the conclusion she's come to. For a guy who talks about sex all the time, he sure is ashamed of his equipment’s secondary purpose. She doesn’t press it any further.
“Artifact,” he says, his eyes trained to the grass. “I think we could meet somewhere in the middle and look around for an artifact.”
“Ysh’vanna said that the dragons weren’t here often,” Lili says. “They wouldn’t drop artifacts in here.”
“Yeah, well, dragons—” He pauses and clasps his hands together before releasing them again. “—They shit out artifacts. Pop pop. Just like that, especially when they’re more comfortable with their surroundings. There’s a good chance there’s one lying around. Pass me your GlassLink.”
She does just that. He sighs. “Unlocked, please.”
“I don’t use passcodes.”
“You show your nice mum your nudes too?”
I hated my mother. "Never took any."
He snorts and taps a few times at her GlassLink. "Here. The artifact locator comes pre installed. Fire away."
Lili's face is blank as she observes the screen. "There's nothing here."
"Double tap to zoom out—"
"I know how to use a phone."
Avett says nothing. There isn't a single spot of interest on her screen, and according to the scale, there's absolutely nothing within five kilometres of their location.
Staying silent, she puts her GlassLink back into her pocket and shuts her eyes. She lets her ether lash out—a coil of tiny, controlled power. It flails against the open void.
She opens them again. "There's no artifact. There's nothing here."
Avett clicks his tongue and looks away. Then he flops onto his back and groans.
Again. She exhales, closes her eyes and drips a golden dewdrop of her ether into the void. It ripples outward, forming waves in the deep, black waters. She opens her eyes again.
"We could walk for a bit," Lili suggests. "Maybe I'll find something then."
"This really is about seeing the barrier, huh."
—
Kashira's never been good with words.
Of course, this is expected of a girl who's been in a coma for the past three years. Socialisation and perpetual sleep don't tend to mix well, and even prior to her sleep had Kashira ever played the elusive role of wallflower. She's not a talker; she's an observer. A passive, iron-headed tool. A world ending weapon pointed at another country, only to be seen as a threat and not a possibility.
Which is why she's feeling like a fish out of water when Alexei asks her, powerful arms crossed and tensed, exactly what and who she is. He'd intercepted her in his study while she was on her way back into the Winnow for lunch.
"Sorry?" she asks.
"Who were you, before your involvement in Project Exodus?"
She presses her lips together. "I—I think that there are more pressing matters at hand than myself. What about the crew of the Winnow?"
Alexei watches the Hive from his floor-to-ceiling glass window. Below, several Humans are beginning to congregate with each other, forming three distinct groups—no, Kashira realises. Each of these groups contain a distinct leader that stands at the head of each group. These aren't groups, but gangs formed out of the necessity of survival.
He begins, "There are always more pressing matters. To wait for an appropriate time would be to waste precious seconds of it."
"Shouldn't you…?" Kashira points to the commotion outside.
He lets loose a soft laugh. "Oh, this? They do this often. It's an intimidation game."
"You should really go down there and stop them."
"There's nothing to stop." Alexei points to the leader of the leftmost group. "Ursula Cheng. Counts her unpaid debts with rolling heads and or crushed fingers. She's vicious and exacting, but I've heard on the grapevine that she has a weak spot; her biological child." He slides his finger over to the next group. "I suppose that it's obvious where the child's allegiances lie. Du Hua Cheng, consigliere of Albert Turmandy's clique. Ursula may be a clinical psychopath, but she draws the line at her child. She wouldn't dare lash out at Turmandy. They have some sort of uneasy alliance between them; any conflict tends to end in a pitiful stalemate before it even begins."
"What about the third group?" Kashira asks, clearly in awe. "Why don't they initiate?"
"The enemy of my enemy," he says, his intonation slow and steady, "is my friend. Would the third group stand a chance fighting against twice their manpower?"
The answer is no. Kashira glances out the window with her breath held, and sure enough, the conflict eventually dissipates into gentle crowds once more.
He asks again, "So who are you, Kashira?"
"Just some kid from Therius," she answers.
"Such a non-answer."
"I was a kid in my first year at the IRCI on an inter-realm school trip to Earth."
"Happy kids from Therius don't promise their lives to strangers and become overseers. I find your story rather difficult to swallow."
Kashira flinches at that. "I'm a happy kid," she tries to say, but the lie snags on the tip of her tongue, and she trips on her words like a left-footed dancer. She tries again: "I was happy."
Alexei tilts his chin, but says nothing more. She doesn't know why he's asking her all of this instead of probing around her head himself. Kashira continues to look outside the window.
Her thoughts are interrupted by someone slamming open the door to Alexei's private study. Ysh'vanna strides up to Alexei, her fists clenched stiffly by her sides.
"Alexei," she says, each word a careful balancing act on a knife's edge, "they just reopened A07's area for retrieval missions."
Kashira inhales quickly. Alexei's features turn stoic. "Did they mention where the dragon might've migrated to?"
"No. The IRC report left that part intentionally blank."
Kashira's learned during her scant time at the IRCI that the reports never skimp out on details, not unless they’ve something to hide… or something they’re not aware of.
In no time at all, they’re recasting the ward around the Winnow and flying back out to the Afflatus landmass. The vista remains as they had left it, a tangle of twisted roads now claimed by red and rusted sand. Ysh’vanna pops open a radar menu and slides it off to her side.
There isn’t a single dragonic reading in sight. Not even an artifact from an obscured building, though there hadn’t been much of those even before the IRC’s announcement. Most of the actions that they’d taken were complimentary of what scant information both Kata’lana’s research and their own observations had provided them with. If they’d known exactly where the artifact was, if the Palatable hadn’t tucked its treasures so deeply into a bygone warehouse, if only—
They crowd around the radar. Kashira’s hands are clammy and her breathing hardly comes naturally at all.
She asks the obvious: “Where did it go?”
Kata’lana adjusts her glasses. “If I had just acquired a hefty rarity, I would want to check on the integrity of it as well.”
“The Chasm,” Ysh’vanna finishes. She scrambles to bring up the ship’s inbuilt communicator. “It wants to meet with Lili and Avett. But couldn't the IRC trace it?”
“I don’t think ‘to meet’ is the right phrase,” mumbles Kashira.
“Or it might be.” Kata’lana turns to the rest of the crew with her back straight and her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. “Who are we to comprehend the will of the dragons?”
“That would be your job, Kata’lana,” says Alexei. "But, yes, she has a point. After all, it's not everyday someone's taken to the Chasm. Or any day, for that matter."
Kata'lana continues, "If the Palatable wanted to consume your friends, it would've done so right there and then in its nesting grounds. Why break tradition now? Why go through the effort of transporting two live mammalians into the Chasm?"
"Dragons can maim without killing us," retorts Ysh'vanna. "Just because it's not death, doesn't mean it's instantly good news. And coming from an A rank—you know, the definitive apex predator—I'd hardly expect anything good. As it stands, they don't exactly have the best track record for being saints."
Kata'lana only props up her glasses again and looks elsewhere. Conflict and debate must not be her forte, muses Kashira. She's seeing a little bit of herself in the prickly scientist, and it's comforting to be among one of her own.
As if her silence was confirmation, Ysh'vanna takes this opportunity in the conversation to call Lili's Glasslink. It takes several tries to get through, but once she does, she relays all that she knows to the two frontliners.
Avett's voice crackles through the speakers first. "So is it a meeting or a dining, because I'm getting mixed signals here, Ysh'."
"Keep your wits about you. Come to your own conclusions. Don't engage if you're unsure of its intentions." She swallows, then adds, "But prepare for a dining first before you prepare for any potential diplomacy."
He sucks a breath in through his teeth. "Riiight."
Kata’lana shifts her balance from one foot to the other. “My previous proposal still stands. It’s far more likely that your encounter will be peaceful.”
Ysh’vanna turns and braces a hand against the back of her seat. Her face is incredulous as she regards the scientist. “You told my frontliners what?”
Kata’lana falters. “I told them that, should they encounter the Palatable, no harm would come out of it.”
“Why would you say that?”
She falters again. The Draconian captain continues to stare her down, but Alexei steps in, his gait as smooth as heated butter.
"We could all use a bit of morale, no?" he says. "And truthfully, you seem more agitated than the rest of us.”
“You do appear to be inflating this far more than what is necessary, Ysh’vanna,” says Auren gently.
“Me?” The captain coughs. “I’m rightly overreacting, thank you! What else are you telling my frontliners, that they’re fucking invincible? They’re made out of skin and bone, not iron!”
“Ysh’vanna, I place my full faith in Lili to do the right thing—” begins Auren.
“That’s Captain O’Raal. I’d better not catch you referring to the captain without her title, Draksparrow.”
Silence befalls the cockpit. In an act of pure desperation, Kashira looks to Alexei for help, only to find that his chin is once again tilted to the side, and that his eyes are as thoughtful as ever. He's seeing her memories, she realises. He sees what makes Ysh'vanna tick the way she does.
Finally, Avett's voice comes through again. "We're professionals, not kids, Ysh'. If A07 looks even the slightest bit hungry, we'll make sure to run."
She sighs, and she smooths a hand over the stitching of her shorts. "Right. Right. Sorry. Good luck, frontliners. Transmission over."
The feed cuts.
Kashira tries to think of something to say, anything, but the captain leaves her seat and heads for the door quickly, her boots echoing into the flooring like clockwork. Kata'lana and Alexei excuse themselves next, and before long it's just her and Auren left in the pilot's chamber.
The Eldrakian scares her a bit, if she's being honest.
She gives him a wry smile to his tight-lipped frown. Then she slips out the entrance and down the front stairs, back into the safety of Alexei's spare sun room.