6: the truth about Avett

"We were in the region—Eighth Quarter—when it happened." Avett stares at the captain's seat. He runs his fingers over the felted material before snatching his hand away. "We were just about to return from a successful relic retrieval mission when we ran into a C10. A Keeper. Something was off about it. The moment the two other frontliners and I came within proximity of the ship, it came pouncing at us."

"Was it not meant to?" Lili asks.

"We like to call them Keepers 'cause they 'keep to themselves.' If you don't bother them, they don't bother you." He snorts and paces forward slowly, letting the warm glow of the outside world cast a harsh shadow upon the rest of his body. "This one… clearly didn't. We got the first one, and we were fine then. We could've just left and—"

Avett wobbles on his feet and looks away at the navigation panel. He continues, his voice rough like tree bark. "I kept chasing the others. Easily got overwhelmed. Got reckless. And by the time my teammates bailed me out of my fine little mess, it was already too late. I don't even know what happened  after that. I do remember feeling incredibly angry, like the world had offended me somehow, and all I needed was an outlet—but when I came back, all I saw was Freu's face… and the nice little exhibit on the wall."

He holds his arms and stops pacing. Takes a shaky breath.

"For a moment, just for a moment, I thought I was a fucking killer. Freu consoled me. Comforted me. He said he finished him off, so I shouldn't worry about it. I saw the pilot lunge at him from behind, so I raised my blaster, but he—he—"

Lili looks at him, her gaze hard, yet yielding. You can stop here, if you'd like. She’s heard enough to fill in the unspoken blanks herself. Freu, the white haired caster, pushed down Avett’s blaster and finished off the pilot himself, but the encounter had been lethal both ways. Her mind wanders back to that particular apparition. The still figure, bleeding out in his own blood. He’d looked like a lone lotus bud in a sea of crimson.

Avett lets out two barks of laughter, though they sound more like sobs to her. His hand grooms through his hair as he turns his attention towards the ground. "I… fuck—I kind of wanted to get through all of this without crying, you know? What a shitty first mission.”

She stuffs a hand into her pocket and brings out a scrunched up napkin that she probably stole from the noodle restaurant. “Who was Freu?”

He takes it—doesn’t use it just yet, just keeps it balled up in his fist. “Classmate and senior,” he finally settles on saying. “I was an accelerated student. I just kept getting As upon As and I guess they thought it was grounds to boost me up two years into the gifted class. Put me on the field earlier than everyone else. That’s how I met him. He was seventeen—I was fifteen. And a smartass.”

A curse wearing the clothes of a blessing. She’s heard of grade skipping, of academic acceleration for students deemed too able in comparison to their peers. It seems hardly right to have such an arrangement in an institution centered around training combatants for field work. It’d worked against him that time. Avett, the inherently gifted, golden child. Thrust onto the field and into the midst of violence far, far too early.

“I’m starting to feel a little bit of pity from you.”

Or maybe she’s wrong, and she’d been putting feelings in his mouth this entire time. She shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ve probably gotten it all backwards.”

“Whatever you were thinking, you’re probably right. I wasn’t ready for the field—and Freu knew it. He was leagues above me in skill, as a person, even. Fuck.” A stupid grin plasters itself on his face as he toys with the napkin in his fingers. “A Kattish backline caster; those are rarer than Gallian arms specialists. I don’t know why he didn’t choose to go to some off-realm, prestigious, Gallian founded caster’s academy instead of an IRC funded merc school. Stupidly studious, kind of a nerd l guess, but everyone liked him. Respected him. He actually worked for his place in the gifted class, I kind of just floated in there. Freu was… an incredible person. Until the very end."

Lili’s pocket lurches downwards all of a sudden. She pats her side, and sure enough, she feels a round, smooth protrusion. Even if the relic enjoys what Avett is saying, she finds herself feeling a tinge of envy before she can help it. They are not so similar after all—Avett had been surrounded by warm presences, of respectable, honorable people. Lili can’t remember the last time she’d told someone that she loved them. Can’t remember if she was ever allowed to say such vulnerable things.

Her eyes flit back towards Avett. She recalls the sensations the relic had taken her through: sickening, nauseating regret—and stomach-gnawing yearning. The very same set of emotions she’d experienced on that harrowing day. "You regret it, don’t you. How that day played out.”

“Everyday. When I first came back from a grueling week of questioning from the IRC dispatch team, I promised to my father that I would never go back onto the field. I worked tirelessly into the early mornings with him at his friend's motor store, just fixing, fixing. False pretenses and productivity felt better than mulling over it.” He clenches his hand over the napkin. “Everyday I’d work until dinnertime, thinking I’d moved past all of it, then I’d go to bed and cry myself to sleep. Whether it was in my dreams or if I was consciously thinking about it, I kept replaying that day over and over. If I hadn’t chased those Keepers, if we’d just gone back to the ship early and left the area—”

A breath. He stops, his shoulders shaking. His cheeks are wet. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Freu hadn’t stopped me from killing our pilot first.”

And that intense yearning, that desire to do something right, Lili guesses, had brought him back onto the field not even a year later.

Before she can speak again, he continues, “I—I won’t lie. I hated you from the moment we fought together. I think I might still. Everything you did, every choice you made on the battlefield just reeked of my old, stupid, seventeen-year-old self. The fact that you were still alive, still damn functional—I envied you. You were clean. So damn naive.”

Another shaky breath.

“Then I screamed at you. In genuine anger. I’ve faced shallow pity, I’ve been on the receiving end of all of those superficial stock phrases people think to use all the time. It was so easy to. You’re like a wall, and you still are. Never giving, always receiving everything I threw at you.”

“Ah.” Lili shuffles around, her boots tapping against the faux-wood flooring. He’s still looking at her. Those endless pools of eternal sunlight, fixed right onto her plain-jane irises.

“But then you hit back.” The sunlight from the window graces his back as he turns towards her, forming a golden halo around his shadowed figure. ”Screamed back. You’re just as fucked as me—and now I just feel like garbage.”

Her reply comes hastily. "I'm sorry you feel like garbage. I guess I have that effect on people."

Lili doesn’t even get to react before Avett pounces on her, his arms wrapping around her body like she's one of those teddybears you'd win from one of those rigged carnival games. She's never been hugged like this before. What should she be doing with her hands? Her mind is blanking out, like he's melting down her carefully constructed walls of ice just by being there. He smells like a mix of sweat and male-marketed deodorant.

Then her mind finally decides to let it all click into place. Avett is hugging her.

Oh, god.

"Don't say that. Talking to you made me feel way better. You're someone who gets it—someone who gets it and who doesn't also happen to be a stone-faced bastard looking to diagnose me." He breathes in, his head nestled between her head and her good shoulder. "So that's got to count for something, right?"

She stands, limp and at the mercy of his hold. A compliment. Not a backhanded comment, not a scathing response to something she'd done, not even an empty word of praise. A compliment. From Avett. To her.

The ship's interior wobbles in and out of sight, making Lili feel like she's even more dizzy than she already is. They've done it—they've appeased the demands of the relic, and now they're allowed to leave. A scalding presence at her side reminds her of what she's here for, and so, she takes it out of her pocket.

Confusion flickers across her features.

A small, wood-carved doll. The sunlight streaming in from the collapsed roof of the mall strikes at every knife-nicked groove on the figure in her palm.

She pushes away from Avett. He opens his mouth to scold her for ending the embrace far too early for his liking, but then his eyes fall upon her new acquisition.

"...What is that."

Judging by how it seems to be faintly pulsing against her hand, it must be a relic. But that… can't be right. Where is the globe? Her hands turn to jelly. Something is very wrong. Her stomach feels like it's going to sink right down to her toes.

"It’s… another relic." Avett has his GlassLink out, no doubt scanning away at the new object.

“It’s not the same one.” She wobbles on her feet. The globe had called out to her, had made its existence painfully clear to the both of them. This little doll is so small that she could wrap her entire hand over it and still have room to dig her nails into her palm. And it’s not just physically small either; Lili can hardly sense its presence at all. In comparison to the globe—a goliath created from the fulmination of Avett’s emotional distress—this is just a tiny weed in the asphalt.   

She watches Avett’s face light up as he swipes at his phone. He's so blissfully unaware. “Wait, comms might be up again—”

No sooner do the words leave his lips does the resounding crack of dread echo in Lili's bones again. She crumples to the floor, her head in her hands, her teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her cheeks. She looks for Avett, but all she can see is a bluish haze all around her, like she's in the midst of a snowstorm. She can't feel anything other than the roar of uncertainty, can't hear anything except for the solid beat of her own heart. Charcoal burns inside her core, responding to the powerful reservoir of energy, screaming against the howl of snow and trepidation.

But she hampers it down again, like she's holding in a retch. Recognition blooms in her like an unopened bud in the early days of spring.

When the ceiling was collapsing, the relic had only called out for her. And some strange, smouldering part of her had continued to recognise its reply, over and over again. It had never wanted Avett; instead, it had mistaken her for him, taken his regret and yearning and sorrow and translated it into a false projection of what it had deemed to be Lili.

She squints against the raging storm, holds out a splayed hand in front of her face. The worst part is that she'd known—or at the very least, had some inkling of an idea as to what it had been doing to her—and she did nothing in response. She hid herself. Had let Avett take the brunt of the relic's whimsies. And now it's mad that it didn't get what it wanted.

She takes one, wobbly step forward. She's sorry for being such a coward. For being a terrible person.

Another step forward. The relic is right there, a distant glow of warmth amidst all of the garbage. She holds out her hands. They feel like they could freeze off at any moment.

Another step forward. The scent of charred wood fills her nostrils. She latches onto the glass dome, its surface hot as fuck to the touch, even through her gloves.

Rage splinters through her. "Fucking shut up, you piece of shit!"

There—a lull in the deepest part of the globe. It recognises her.

It blinks once. Twice. Both times in acceptance. Lili holds her breath.

Then it flickers into a dim hum, satiated in being in the hands of Lilith Wang-Rosales.

The storm halts to a grating pause. Lili teeters forward. Regains her balance in a single step. She takes both relics, gives them one last glance over, and shoves them back into her pockets.

Soon she's stumbling over the rocks and trying her damndest not to roll her ankles. "Avett!" she calls out.

She hears a low, delirious grumble from somewhere underneath her. Avett is on the ground, and he's hardly moving at all. It doesn't take long for Lili to hoist him up and throw his arm over her bad shoulder. Her knees buckle, her mouth lets out a sharp hiss as a throbbing pain beats like a wardrum throughout her entire body. Her ether rolls through her body in response.

"Gotta get outta here…" Avett rasps. "Everything stinks of ether. Especially you… you smell like fucking trash, I dunno."

"You can walk, right?"

He lets out an unsure moan before totally slumping against her shoulders.

Cool. He's out. If only she'd been brave enough to introduce herself to the relic before Avett did. She's wracked with guilt for a brief moment before she's interrupted by a distinct vibration coming from his pocket. She reaches in and pulls out his Glasslink. Hope blooms in her chest as she swipes across the screen. His call had gone through after all.

Ysh'vanna's voice immediately pierces Lili's eardrums. The device is already on some sort of speaker mode, and she'd held it right up to her ear. "Avett? Avett, you're there, you're finally calling us again so that means you're safe, right? When you stopped sending us voice mail, we got so worried. We thought we'd lost you for good. Where are you? Can you even hear us?"

Lili thinks back to his comment about Kattish dicks, oral sex, and pruning. Unfortunate. They'd heard it all—but that's Avett's problem. Her problem is getting out of the mall and onboard the Winnow. "Ysh'vanna, Avett's unconscious and I don’t think I can carry him out. I have the relic. We're still in the mall, but there's a huge hole in the ceiling that you might be able to use to land."

Lili almost expects Ysh'vanna to squeal in delight and derail the topic, and for a second it seems like she might when she pauses for the briefest of seconds. But then she replies, "Understood, Lili. We'll catch up when you're on the ship. Don't hang up."

She stares at the unrelenting, cloudless sky. She could use a change of clothes.

—

When she’s onboard with the rest of the crew, Auren is immediately onto Avett, his hands working down his back as he guides the two of them to the infirmary. Lili works her hardest to unstrap every weapon and body bag from his body, leaving a trail of blasters and battery packs down the corridor. The moment she finishes easing his body onto the bed, the taller Gallian shoves her back.

“He—” she starts, not really knowing where to begin. “We were hit by a snow storm, I think it was ethereal—”

“I am aware.” His voice isn’t cold, but it isn’t warm either. “Would you be so kind as to leave the room?”

The doors slam shut behind her. She picks up Avett’s gear, piece by piece, until all she’s left with is his larger-than-life crossbow in front of the ship’s entrance.

“Don’t bother picking that up,” Ysh’vanna says from the navigation room. “It’s a bitch to carry.”

“I’ll manage.” Ether rolls through her body as she throws it over her shoulder. It’s still quite heavy. This is Avett’s base strength, she realises. She sends his crossbow careening into the walls of the armory a little too violently at the thought of that. A resounding metallic clang vibrates throughout the entire ship.

“Told you,” Ysh’vanna says when Lili comes back in.

“I just lost focus for a bit, that’s all.”

The view outside the window lowers. Lili feels her stomach lurch as Ysh’vanna takes two of her fingers and slides upwards on a panel. She has a feeling that, like the initial drop of an elevator, she’s never going to get used to this.

Finally, when they’re several metres above the mall, Ysh’vanna turns back towards Lili, her features feral. Itching for an explanation. Lili doesn’t have to be asked twice, if asked at all.

Lili says, “The relic trapped us inside the mall.” Simple and easy. She slips a hand into her pocket, expecting the globe’s cool kiss.

She feels nothing of the sort. Feeling awkward, she takes out the wooden doll instead and places it on the dining table.

Ysh’vanna’s reaction is incredulous. “This lil’ thing? I can barely smell it.”

The exhaustion she’s feeling right now is incredible. She’d definitely put the globe back into her pocket, but from the way it had escaped her notice earlier, she’s willing to accept anything at this point. “Not really. There were two relics. The one that gave us the most trouble… kept vanishing. I swear I put it in my pocket but now it’s gone again.”

Her eyes fall upon the doll. It’s a young girl, and her arms are crossed over her chest. Like she’s been laid to rest. Ysh’vanna shrugs. “No big deal. We got what the IRC wanted, so here’s a formal congratulations from me to you, as your captain. Good work out there.”

Euphoria blooms in Lili’s chest as she watches Ysh’vanna lean against the table to give her the biggest smile anyone’s ever given her. Maybe she’s fit for this job after all. Maybe all of those years she’d spent alone in the wilds have finally given fruition to something worth cultivating.

Something catches in the corner of her eye. At first, she thinks it’s just an artifact in her eye, but as the tell-tale wave of ether washes over her, she knows exactly what it is.

Ysh’vanna catches Lili’s slight change in mood and whirls around. When her body stills, Lili knows that it’s not just a trick of the eye in the harsh sunlight. She throws herself into her captain’s chair and glares at the radar.

Nothing. Not even a blip.

“Ugh, shit!” Ysh’vanna slams a fist into her armrest. “What a time for the radar to crap out on us. There’s no way it hasn’t spotted us yet, I’ll turn arou—”

The ship lurches again. Lili glances towards Ysh’vanna, only to find that same look of shock on her features. She slaps a palm against the navigation panel, and a live feed of the Winnow’s rear slides out and upwards. It’s a shot from the perspective of the thrusters. The flames are guttering out, hardly clinging on to life, and tailing them is a dark, undulating mist—

Not mist. If Lili looks close enough, she can just spot out hundreds of glowy, blue membranes. A swarm. Of tiny, voracious dragons.

Ysh’vanna grits her teeth. Clenches her hands—unclenches them in the same second. Steeling herself. “D3s, but if they’re here then—” She shakes her head and fixes her eyes on the horizon. “I think they’re in our engine, we’re not outrunning this thing like this.”

“I supposed as much.” Auren is behind them in seconds, having felt the ship’s abnormal movements from earlier. “Your commands, captain?”

She narrows her eyes. Kicks at an invisible flap underneath all the panels and buttons and cuts out the power before tugging a lever above her head. The navigation interface briefly flickers in and out of life. “Backup battery array is on. Stuff ‘em out.”

He nods, then as smoothly as he had arrived, he leaves for the engine room.

“Fire?” Lili asks. She’s not as well acquainted with the Winnow as Ysh’vanna is, but thermal warfare in the engine room sounds like a surefire way to quickly render their thrusters useless.

“No, suffocation. You couldn't burn out an entire swarm of these guys even if you wanted to—that's how they got into our thrusters.” Ysh’vanna keeps her eyes glued to the dragon on the horizon. Uncertainty floats in her lime-green eyes for the briefest of seconds. “Auren is extremely proficient in what he does, but if he gets too carried away in there, we’ve got Avett on hand.”

Lili looks at the dot on the horizon. It's getting closer with every second, even with Ysh'vanna putting the ship into a full reverse. "Wait. Carried away?"

Another explosion rocks the ship. Lili hardly manages to grab at the kitchen counter before Auren steps out of the engine room, his hair loosely hanging from his head in limp strands. He's got a gas mask on.

"You get them?" Ysh'vanna asks as she poses to kick the hidden panel next to her foot again.

"Ysh'vanna," he starts. "We seem to have run out of fuel."

The tiny captain pushes away from her seat and storms into the corridor, grabbing a mask from a cabinet as she does. Lili follows, but doesn't enter the engine room, just stands outside as Ysh'vanna rips open one of the metallic boxes and swears. It's a mess of sparks and gnarled wires. The five—supposedly replaceable, Lili isn't sure—fuel tanks have been chewed clean through. Each and every one of them is empty.

"It's fucked. They got into our machinery. Lili, get Avett."

Something pushes Lili aside before she can even respond. Avett stumbles into the room, his tail swerving all over the place as he tries his damndest to fight against his own bodily weakness.

"Auren, we can’t avoid an encounter at this rate. I need you outside." Ysh'vanna ushers him out of the room and motions to Lili to do the same before disappearing around the corner.

She doesn't leave. She keeps watching Avett's hands as he makes his way around the wires like they're a part of him. Every movement is precise, a calculation made minutes in advance before he actually executes them. He isn't just some part-time mechanic who picked up his trade during a year off—he's the ship's only lifeline.

But then he shudders, slams a gloved hand into the side of the box, and groans.

"Stop watching me," he says. His breathing is labored.

He shouldn't be up, Lili realises. Shouldn't even be awake, let alone moving around. But he has to; it is necessary. He's aware of it all too well.

"Good luck," she offers quietly.

She expects a cocky 'don't need it.' Instead, Avett returns a wobbly smile and says, "Thanks."

As soon as she turns the corner to meet with Ysh'vanna in the navigation room, she feels the ship's altitude lower, just for a heartbeat—before returning to normal. She looks outside. She wishes she hadn't.

On the deck, Auren is standing in front of the dragon, his gauzy wards floating around him and the ship in multiple layers. The dragon itself… isn’t a dragon at all, not in the traditional sense. Like the swarm Auren had disposed of earlier, its skin is more membranous than scaled. Instead of two, powerful wings, its body is a flat disk that undulates with the wind, expanding and contracting with ease when it needs to. When it moves to blot out the sun, the light passes right through it, creating strands of ocean-blue beams into the navigation. Occasionally, it lashes out with a tendril formed from its main body.

Then she realises that they aren’t close to it at all. It’s still rapidly approaching, even though she can clearly spot out each of its golden-yellow organs, floating around like sunken treasures at the bottom of the ocean. It has to be at least ten times larger than their ship. They’re ants standing before a mountain god.

“B3.” Ysh’vanna grips the counter. “A Butterfly Matriarch.”

Auren’s efforts to fend it off are a practice in futility. Every projectile he musters, every lick of pure ethereal flame is swallowed up by the Butterfly Matriarch’s fleshy body. That’s when she realises, exactly, where the limits of his abilities are. He doesn’t have the mental power to ward the ship against attacks while simultaneously performing counterattacks with sufficient power.

They aren’t going fast enough. Lili guesses that it has something to do with how the ship is using the backup batteries instead of actual fuel. Avett is in no shape to repair the ship at all, let alone at the rate the situation demands of him. Real panic flutters through her body. She imagines the Matriarch's body, wrapping around the ship, slowly oozing into every crack until—

Lili blots out the image and fixes her eyes on Auren. Calm, dependable Auren—stone-faced until the day he died. She shakes her head. She can't think like that. Even though he’s hardly functioning at his full power, the ship seems to jerk backward with every pin-pricked blast. Of course he’s capable of such a demanding task. He’s a true Gallian caster, leagues and worlds above Lili.

And yet, at the rate things are going, she’s not sure if they’ll even be making it out of here alive.

She storms into the engine room. Keeps that image of Auren fighting on the frontline cemented in her head. If ether can propel the ship, then maybe there's something she can do to help. She doesn't have to be deadweight.

Avett is still hard at work, and when she sees just how much he’s gotten done, her worst fears are confirmed. The wires are still frayed, the remainders of the chewed-up fuel tanks discarded and left to rattle around on the floor. Lili doesn’t have to be a mechanic to know just how fucked they are.

She moves closer to the engine. Stands over his heaving, scrunched over body. “Avett, move,” she says. Not a request. A statement.

“Over my dead body,” he grits out. His hands are shaking like dead twigs in the wind.

And maybe it makes her an asshole, but if it means saving the rest of the ship, then she doesn’t care that pushing Avett aside and onto his ass makes her as mean as him.

He lies there, his breath coming in shallow beats. “What are you doing?”

Lili grips both sides of the fuel tank cabinet. It’s cool to the touch, and not unbearable to work with. She can do this. All she has to do is throw her power out into the ship. Like extending a hand. Like assimilating herself into the iron and supplying—no, becoming the fuel—that the Winnow would run on.  

Her eyes squeeze shut. She feels her wings unfurl behind her.

“I have a feeling that I know exactly what you’re trying to do.” She hears the squeak of rubber-soled boots against metal, then a faint bump as he falls to the floor again. “Fuck. Fuck. Please stop. You don’t want to do that.”

Avett’s delirious ramblings are a blur against the sudden rush of emptiness she’s exposed to once she enters the ship’s inner workings. It’s dangerous. It's like if she's not careful, it'll grab her head by the hairful and plunge her underneath the surface of the water.  

She inhales sharply and opens her eyes again. The sheer amount of ether she needs in order to power the ship for even a second is enough to strengthen her entire body for at least an hour straight. It's a deep, never-ending well down there.

Another tendril manages to find its way through all of Auren's wards and rocks the ship with a slow swat. None of his wards are going to matter when the dragon ends up engulfing them anyway. She lets a pebble of her ether drip down into the void.

If it hit the bottom at all, it makes no indication of it.

The abyss is staring right at her, and she finds that she can't quite look at it in the eyes. If she takes the plunge, embraces it entirely—there's no telling if she'll ever see the surface again.

She looks back towards Avett. Sees his wide-eyed, pleading face. Silently bargaining with her, exchanging emotions like currency and receiving nothing in return. But why? He shouldn't give a rat's ass what happens to her. He shouldn't be caring at all. Avett hates her because she's everything his seventeen-year-old self was. He can't bear to be around her; that's the narrative that he's painted out for himself.

She asks, "Am I doing something you would have done three years ago?"

He doesn't say anything at first. Then, with a tired voice that could leave wood smouldering, he answers, "Yeah. You are."

"Good." Her hands tighten against the box. "It'll be easier if you still hate me."

Then she dives into the engine and welcomes the chill embrace of the void.

5: the detention room

Avett is at a loss and a standstill.

A loss, because he isn’t sure whether he should back down and apologise to Lilith for lumping his shortcomings with her own poor decision making—he shouldn’t have shot the floor. She shouldn’t have pounced at him either. A standstill, because he’s genuinely mad. The only reason she’s even allowed to be considered as a viable crew candidate—and he’s sure of this—is because she’s a Human, and the IRC kisses the lips of any off-realm ship blessed with a Human crew member onboard. Put simply, it’s not an offer to pass up. Not even for Lilith.

But something tells Avett that, no matter what he’d chosen to do all those hours ago, the relic would’ve found another way to trap them inside the mall. He knows nothing about all of this airy, floaty, ethereal nonsense, but he knows the relic wants one thing and one thing only; Lilith. Now he’s not trained like her, nor is he ethereally inclined like Auren. But he does have experience working with relics, and even though retrieval missions are supposed to be easy—which they are—he’s heard enough disaster stories to know that when shit hits the fan, it hits the fan hard. He just didn’t expect it to happen to him. 

Avett just sighs, throws his head back, and narrows his eyes. Lilith should be discussing her childhood traumas in a therapist’s office, what with all of this constant apologising and weak posture—but instead, she’s on the field, and she’s gobbling down traumatic experiences like a starved kid at a buffet. It’s a surprise she hasn’t collapsed from the stress of it all. Which is good. 

He looks back at Lilith. Relic engagement protocol: if the relic goes rogue during retrieval, start off by introducing yourself and building a rapport with it. Since she seems to know the relic so well, he’s kindly allowed her to give it a few shots. Her eyes—blank, dark, rounded things, like a Gallian’s stare without the occasional flicker of light—are fixed to the relic. Her gloved hands tremble ever so slightly. 

“Feel anything, princess?” he asks. He likes the name he’s given her. In another world, the name would’ve been a romantic pet name, but in his hands, it’s a weaponised insult. The way Lilith hovers around instead of standing like a normal person, the way she’s simply afraid to do anything without asking a billion times if she’s doing it right—he’s seen her stutter like a teen on her first date before, except she’s far from being a teen, and that she was talking to a damn cashier. If she’s not some otherworldly princess from a higher plane of existence, then at the very least she’s sheltered. 

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

“Looks like this relic and I might have a lot of things in common.” 

Lilith visibly bristles. Her cheeks pink for the briefest of seconds before she forces her features behind a grey slate. “Good. That’s good. Wouldn’t want—” She cuts herself off with a discontent sound from the back of her throat. 

He raises his eyebrows and folds his arms. “I’m glad you share the sentiment.”

She falls silent. The snow inside the globe settles on the plastic lawn. It’s a cute, antique thing; the snowglobes in Therius are infinitely cooler with their tiny string lights and moving parts.

“It’s gone cold,” she says.

“Then bring it back.”

“I’ve been trying. It doesn’t like me.”

Ugh, what a hassle. Avett grabs the globe from Lilith and sits down on a nearby chunk of concrete. Fuck the protocol, and fuck the pleasantries. “Hey, shit head. We fucking need you to stop your weirdo fairy spell-glamour-magic or whatever so we can leave and trade you in for fifty-hundred currencies. Please.”

Surprisingly, the globe starts to glow again. It’s a nice, lukewarm feeling—despite the fact that he’s wearing gloves, he can still feel the heat of the glass against the pads of his fingers. It’s kind of like being pressed against someone’s body.  

Until it isn’t.

A hot wave zips through his fingers and up his spine like a feverish chill. The sensation isn’t unpleasant, but it isn’t entirely friendly either. Like a love tap two old friends might give each other upon meeting again, there’s a feeling of separation that he can’t quite place his finger on. It’s an awkward gesture; one meant for him, yet also meant for someone else. 

And then the feeling stops. No—it hasn’t stopped, rather it’s gone. Distant. Beckoning Avett elsewhere, down further into the shifting shadows of the department store with tendrils of fragrant mists. Lilith’s head jerks towards the same direction, and it becomes apparent that she’s having the same experience as himself. He blinks, tosses the globe into the air, and catches it again. A smirk graces his features. 

“Think it likes me,” he says. “Try not to be too jealous.”

“That’s not exactly a blessing…” She shuffles from foot to foot, her hands hidden behind her. “I—I feel like it could be a trap. I don’t trust this thing at all.”

“Look, just because you’ve had a bad experience with this thing doesn’t mean I won’t.” The globe pulses warmly at that, as if encouraging him to go on. Avett obliges. “Besides, we’re not getting out of here without interacting with it—so what if it is a trap? You’d rather aimlessly wander around this old mall? Be my guest, Lilith.”

The person in front of him shakes—out of pure anger or hesitation, he’s not sure, nor does he care—but the frontliner stands her ground, her eyebrows crashing down onto her eyes. “No. We’re staying.”

“No, we’re going.”

“Staying.”

Avett leans in. “Going.”

“Avett—please.” Lilith takes a step back.

“Beg more, princess.”

She looks like she’s ready to throw herself to the ground and kiss his shoes until they’re squeaky-clean. And she probably would have.

Were it not for the solid thump of something hard and sharp piercing the concrete next to Avett’s feet. He looks down—there’s a small, see-through thorn embedded into the rock, about as long as his forearm and as wide as the bones inside of him. It’s hardly visible against the terrain. He looks up at the source, sees nothing—but manages to catch the blur of another arrow wizz past his face. Something of that size, of that shape, should have made some form of sound when it was travelling through the air. Avett shakes his head. He’s slipping. 

Another thing. Just standing around the thorns makes him dizzy, as if it’s actively sucking out the air and replacing it with carbon dioxide. Or like being in ammonium fumes for too long. His chest squeezes, his head gives a lurch like he’s losing air, but he isn’t—in fact, he’s fully able to breathe. He’s not sticking around to find out why though. He slings his crossbow over his shoulder and yells, “Move it, princess!”

“Always feels like we’re running.” Lilith is already way ahead of him. 

— 

It’s definitely been a while since they’ve last stopped running. The blue thorns—or arrows, considering their flared ends and tapered arrowheads—have been a constant pelting downpour. It’s safe to assume that it’s not someone that’s firing at them from behind, but something; Lili is willing to bet that it’s another extension of the relic’s reality-altering powers. 

She’s proven right when she realises just where the arrows are luring them—forward, into the yawning abyss of the mall. At least they won’t be ending up cornered anytime soon, but that’s about the least of their worries. The floor’s starting to get crumbly again, the ceramic tiles dislodging from their slots like someone’s slammed a fist onto a scrabble board, and there aren’t even any store fronts to hide in. No counters to crouch under either. 

Lili doesn’t want to slip, but at this rate she might as well be running on ice—everything her feet finds purchase on gives way immediately— 

The floor comes reeling in fast. Her forearm hits the ground first, followed by her thigh. It’s supposed to hurt—her disorientated head can figure that much out—but all she can think about are the arrows. And how there’s going to be rips in the gear that Auren’s just bought for her.

Mum’s voice floats through her head. “Of course you would waste such a nice gift.”

Grit embeds itself in her hands as she braces herself against the floor and rolls onto her front. A grunt comes up out of her throat. At least the pain’s finally catching up to her. 

“Fuck, Lilith—” 

Something strong hoists her up by the arm, nearly pulling it out of her shoulder socket. The only thing keeping her from teetering over again is Avett Ironsturm’s firm, Kattish grip. Disgust settles in her stomach, followed by shame, followed by the acute realisation that they’re still being chased from behind, and that there’s a blue spark of an arrow that’s aimed right for his back.

There’s not enough time to call out. Her ether roils through her arm, her core. It’s not enough to simply pull down on his mass, she soon realises—he’s far too strong, a testament to his hard-headedness, probably. But she’s seeing everything in slow motion right now, so with all of her pent up anger, she yanks his arm to the side, kicks his ankle— 

Avett’s eyes flash with anger, then knowing. The arrow whistles as it sails over him.

Then he faceplants into the ground next to her. He stays there, eating ceramic shavings for a hot second before rolling over, a light groan on his lips as he gives Lili one of the worst glares she’s ever had the pleasure of receiving.

“S-sorry.”

He scoffs. “Sure.”

She waits for the second arrow to go flying above their heads. Nothing comes. She doesn’t need to feel her pocket to know that the relic is burning away. Probably laughing at them while it’s at it. “What now?” she asks. 

“That relic,” he starts, “is the fucking bane of our existence right now. And I’m willing to bet that it’s because of you.”

Alright. Lili slumps back to the ground. “So we split up?”

“As much as I’d love to leave you in the dust, I’d hate to be the cause of your passing. Get up.”

She nibbles the inside of her cheeks with her molars. With her now stiffening muscles, she leaps to her feet and stays at a low crouch. She doesn’t dare breathe.

Nothing. No arrows, no sparks of blue in the distance. Maybe the relic’s given up. Even when she decides to fully stand up, there’s no sign of them. 

Avett still takes his sweet time getting back on his feet, dusting off his pants when he does. “Now that that’s out of the relic’s system…”

Lili flicks her hand, forming a small shield in front of her. Then she steps to the side, behind Avett— 

Her shield dissipates. The arrow sails right through. 

Sharp, blinding pain pulses through her shoulder. The arrow feels cold. She’s always read that the sensation of cold metal meeting hot blood was akin to a kiss—but now she knows that particular passage had been a large romanticisation. This shit stings. She’s been bitten, mauled, even singed, and for some reason nothing compares to this. It’s like she’s being eaten alive from the inside, her body being the catalyst to her own demise.

At least, it seems, that the arrows have stopped for good.

By the time Avett’s pushed her off and half-carried, half-dragged her elsewhere, Lili’s not quite there anymore. One minute she’s wobbling over the same tiles that had sent her flying a moment earlier, the next she’s slumped against an upturned chunk of painted asphalt. She finds that she has to lean on one side more than the other, because, well, she’s just realised that the arrow’s pierced all the way through. And even though she wants to stay awake, wants to just get this mission over and done with, she finds that each blink of her eyes sends her closer to that delectable release of unconsciousness. 

“No, no. Come on.” Avett is in front of her in seconds. “Don’t fucking close your eyes.”

Lili is… so tired. This is the perfect place to nap. Just for five seconds— 

A bright sting of pain on her cheek brings Avett’s face back into focus. His hand is red and outstretched. “Shove some ether into your body to keep yourself awake. Do literally anything that isn’t shutting your eyes while I bandage you up.”

She’d love to. But when she dives deep into that pool of personal ether, her arms outstretched as she readies herself for the resultant explosion of consciousness, she finds that it’s not there. Her wings aren’t responding to her either. It’s like she’s reaching out and grabbing at the air. And to top it all off—the suffocating air of dread is back. 

“I’ll have to wrap the bandage around the arrow, okay?” His voice is calm, soothing—a far cry from the aggressive asshole he enjoys painting himself out as on the daily. “Try not to move—FUCK me!”

It’s Avett that snatches his hand back, a hiss leaving his clenched teeth as he cradles his fingers. Lili can’t quite piece together what’s happened until Avett slips on his leather gloves again and gingerly reaches for the now vaguely glowing arrow.

“So that’s what they were. Ethereal weapons.” He narrows his eyes. “Saps your ether and severs your signal between the soul and the environment. Cruel and slow.” He glares at Lili. He doesn’t need words to ask, in no uncertain terms, what the fuck was she thinking when she took that arrow?

Lili’s breath comes in shuttered, broken parts. “You’re not trained. If you took the arrow,” she croaks, “you would have probably died. Before you hit the ground.”

Avett’s ears wiggle in obvious distaste.

“Bad decision on your part, but… thanks.”

Lili lets loose a breath. She squeezes her eyes shut until white flecks explode behind her eyelids. Anything is better than the dread. “You’ll take the arrow out though, right?” 

“I guess. I owe you now or something. Ugh.” He shakes his head, reaches down, and rips open a velcroed pocket on Lili’s leg. He looks like he’s about to throw up, or pass out. When he takes out one of her BluEther packets instead and knocks the entire bag back like a shot, she realises that it’s not the grotesquery of her wound that’s making him queasy—but rather, the thing that’s in it.  

With clenched teeth, Avett reaches then behind into his back pocket and pulls out a utility knife. He’s going to saw it off, bit by bit, then slide the rest out of her. Assuming that his knife can cut whatever material this is. It seems more crystalline than wood. 

The knife sinks into the arrow all the same. 

The first cut makes Lili groan. She’d thought herself numb to any further external pain by now, but the motion of Avett’s knife has her re-experiencing the whole initial injury. The arrow is a living, breathing, pulsing thing. It doesn’t want to leave her. It has to. It’ll eat her up if she does, and she’ll lose her mind in that swallowing, ever-empty pit of— 

“You know,” Avett starts, his eyes not leaving the arrow for a second, “I used to be a pretty rebellious kid back in middle school.”

Not surprising. Lili manages a weak laugh. Something at the back of her mind slips away, like she’s standing on soft sand and the wind’s just blowing it out from underneath her feet. 

“Alright, smartass. I got into trouble with the teachers all the time—stellar grades though, so they never really had the option of expelling me. They did however—” he draws in a shaky breath and exhales hard enough to blow his hair out of his face, as if fighting back another wave of nausea, “—put me into the detention room on multiple occasions. I don’t know what kind of detention rooms you had on Earth, but we had this singular, one-by-one room for the worst of the worst. Like solitary confinement, but for shithead children instead of felons. It had one chair, one desk, and a shitty light that sometimes didn’t turn on. No windows. Really drove home the idea that school was pretty much prison for kids whose parents wanted them to learn long division.

“So I’m in the detention room for the fourth time that week for calling Ms Goldsbury a ‘morbidly overweight manticore’ for giving us way too much homework. I was thirteen, I was a shithead kid, and I wore detentions on my sleeve like badges of honor. Four times a week? That was like winning the fucking lottery. Naturally, I had a, uh, victory lap. In the detention room.”

The tip of the arrow comes off. She’s not sure if she’s finally getting used to having someone jostle around an arrow in her shoulder, or if Avett’s story is actually taking the edge off her mind, but the dread’s gone. Lifted, like a streak of sunlight breaking through a cover of mist. Lili gives Avett a curious glance. “Victory lap?”

He flattens his lips. With one hand on her uninjured shoulder, the other gripping the flared end of the arrow, he pulls it out in one, fluid motion. Then he stands up and throws them far over the asphalt chunk. Lili's hand rises to meet her wound, her teeth clacking down as the pain flares again. It's white-hot, it's like nothing she's ever felt—

Avett pries her hand away, his roll of bandages hovering at the ready. He leans in close, and then Lili feels the weight of his confession pounding against her head.

Her reaction is so violent that he has to hold her down. What a thing to admit. She can’t tell if she’s bucking because of the pain or because she’s in possession of a new fun fact about her partner.

“No fucking way,” she says. This isn't something she should know about at all.

“I was thirteen—alright?” He unbuttons her caster’s cape and tunic until she’s left in the standard military black tank. In her delirium, she finds it all exceedingly ironic that he’s discussing such a tasteless topic while undressing her, but she doesn’t bring it up. “Stars, I’m starting to regret telling you this story. Apparently thirteen-year-old me thought it was so great that he just did it again. And again. I was pretty much the only kid that ever got detention that often, so it wasn’t super weird for the other kids.”

“No, that’s… still just really weird,” Lili corrects him. She can feel her personal ether pumping through her body now so she sends a healthy amount of it up to her wound. It won’t accelerate her healing, but it will help staunch the blood if the bandages aren’t enough.

“…So anyway, I graduated top of my year and left for my specialist school of choice with plenty of scholarship money to fund my eventual downfall into alcohol and gold diggers. But I digress. Midway through my second year, they asked me to come back to the middle school to give a talk. They were holding some sort of top graduates session, though that shit never really matters in the long run. So I went in and filled this room full of early overachievers with hope that their future would yield riches and decadent mansions and hot chicks if they kept up their studies.”

He’s forming loops around her arm now after having fastened the bandage across her chest. Lili raises an eyebrow.

“…Heavily paraphrased. Out of curiosity, I visited the detention room, just to relive the good old days. After school, I snuck in, opened the door, and lo and behold—the same fucking singular chair, singular desk, shitty lamp. I don’t know why I even bothered. But I spent a good few minutes pacing around the room, wallowing in—”

“Wallowing,” she repeats.

“—In nostalgia, dick-for-brains,” he says, giving her bandages a particularly rough tug. “Was pretty good—until I turned to leave. Until I saw something above the door.”

Lili looks up at him. “What was it?”

For a second, Avett seems to pause, as if merely recalling the conclusion of his story unleashed an immense, indescribable deluge of regret. “A fucking camera.”

“Oh, god.”

“If I hadn’t deliberately looked upwards at that specific spot, I would’ve missed it. I don’t know if it was there back when I attended. The absolute sense of helpless dread I felt upon leaving that room…” He secures the bandage. “I did not sleep well that night.”

Lili has to sit there for a bit; she can feel her ether sputtering to life inside of her. It’s circulating, and it’s there, but she’ll need a moment for it to start adjusting again.

“Jesus,” is all she can say to his story. “That’s…”

She looks up at Avett. And then she collapses into chest heaving guffaws.

“Okay, it’s meant to get a chuckle out of you, not be the funniest thing you’ve heard.” He folds his arms. “Can you walk? Or consult the relic again, see if anything’s changed after we did what it—can you stop laughing?”

She can’t. Every laugh is wheezing through her like she’s coughing up her insides. With her limbs feeling like lead, she latches onto the upturned concrete, stumbles over to the other side, and throws up on the asphalt. Her hair sticks to her mouth in strands afterwards, but all she does is hold her hand out when Avett steps forward to help her. When she straightens back out, her face is perfectly still. 

“Lilith?” Avett quirks his head as he peeks over the chunk of asphalt. 

She slaps the other pocket on her pants with a hand, and her worst fears are confirmed.

“Relic must’ve fallen out.”

— 

“Wow. Wow! Relic must’ve fallen out.” Avett throws his hand out into the void. “Relic fell out! Where? How fucking far back did you drop it?” 

“Don’t worry,” Lili mumbles, “I’ll just wait for the dread to settle in.” 

“Fuck!” A fist-sized rock shoots past her ear, hits the wall ten metres in front of her, and smashes into a million pieces. “Incompetent. Literally useless! How do you do this—you do something impressive, you disappoint me, you compromise the mission, then you somehow impress me again. We’re supposed to get to know each other on the field, princess. Not go through every fucking stage of post marital counselling, dammit!”

Lili flinches at that. Marital. It takes all of her mental power to not recall that particularly pleasant dream. She knows she should be feeling a hot cloud of shame right now for dropping the relic, but the truth is she doesn’t care what he has to say at all. Her pockets were sealed—and are still sealed—shut. There is no physically feasible way that the relic could’ve even left her pocket. It had, quite literally, vanished into thin fucking air. But she digresses. Avett’s voice is a low buzz of white noise against the constant hum of—no, not dread, not anymore. The constant thrum of indignation. Of wanting to do something, anything, so badly that it starts to gnaw at your insides.  

She locks up her discomfort. Locks it all away into a tight, iron-padded box and swallows the key. She needs to focus on the relic, not what it wants her to feel. 

Maybe the key to getting out of the mall is figuring out exactly what the relic wants from them.

She glances back at Avett. He’s red faced, panting, clearly enraged despite Lili’s disengagement from the conversation. Precisely because of Lili’s disengagement. This is the same kid who whacked off in the detention room seven years ago. Who somehow got into enough trouble everyday to practically live in said room for an entire year. And now look at him—a hardass, unforgiving egotist. 

She liked the story. It pulled her out of that dark spot, made her experience actually bearable. Hell, she’s even willing to bet that the relic liked it, considering it immediately released its hold on her upon hearing the first part of his… 

Hm. 

Lili glances back at her own hands. The relic hates her. Or, at least, in comparison to its relationship with Avett. She remembers the immense disappointment it had felt when she broke out of her dream. How it had expected her to not only experience the euphoria of starting a family, but also to see its dream to its end. 

How it had flashed in Avett’s hands not a moment after, as if it had found a home and a long lost friend all at once. 

“I can’t believe it.” Avett grabs her shoulder, digs his fingers into her bones like he’s a grave robber and she’s a corpse. “That went in one ear and out the other, huh? You really just don’t give a—”

“Did you, by any chance, know any A or S rank dragons?”

Stunned into silence, it’s all Avett can do to keep his mouth from gaping like a dumb fish. It’s enough for Lili to wrench his hand off her shoulder and say, “Friend, interest, romantic intrigue—it doesn’t matter what type of relationship it was.”

He doubles down on the violence instead, gripping fistfuls of her cape in anger. “What, suggesting I fuck dragons now? Is that what we’re doing? Because I could deliver a whole damn cargo bay full of targeted insults before you even get one out.”

“The relic. It knows you. By extension, the dragon knows you as well.” 

She watches with bated breath as his hands ball tighter in her cape before he lets her go and paces back a few steps.

Then he immediately whirls on her again. “Let me get this straight. I’m a merc. We don’t talk to dragons—we kill them. I don’t know what you did out in the field for six years—mighta’ fucked with your head a little—but you don’t talk to dragons. That’s not a thing that happens.”   

Even then, there’s doubt in his eyes. The pieces are all falling into place, and it’s starting to make sense why the relic had given him such a knowing flash when he’d taken it in his hands. 

She’s not so eager about this next part, but she powers through all the same.

“Tell me another story about yourself,” Lili asks. “We might not be able to find the relic—maybe we can entice it back.” 

For a second, Lili worries that he’ll brush her off again. That he’ll call her idea rubbish and start walking off, relic scanner in one hand, the Therian equivalent of a middle finger in the other. 

But then he looks behind and below him, throws down his crossbow, and sits.

“Couldn’t hurt to try, I guess.”

Lili takes her spot next to him on the ground. He shuffles slightly to the side, gives her a scowl that wrinkles the markings at his eyes.

“I have had at least six exes,” he finally settles on saying. 

A solid beat of silence wafts through the air.

“No reaction. Ok.” He starts counting on his fingers. “First I had Eri. Middle school. Forgot why we broke up. Then right after I had Aoife. Broke up with her because she had the same name as my sister. Then I had Bel—forgot her full name, but we dated in merc school—pretty much a specialised high school for mercenaries—she broke up with me over… something. Had something to do with grades. She came out the next year.”

The list goes on and on. Lili has always thought that relationships—romantic and otherwise—were a heavy investment of emotion, a grand opening of one’s true person to the other. Avett burns through women like kindling. He’s forgotten the presence they’ve had in his life already. Or maybe it’s just easier to say you’ve forgotten.

“…And then there’s Jasmina.” Avett toys with the relic scanner in his hands. “My father and her mother were good friends; naturally, we got arranged together. I was nineteen—already two years into bounty hunting. We broke up because… I’m a merc. And I only ever got to visit home for a month every year.”

He rubs his mouth with a hand. 

Then he catches himself and shoots a glance at Lili. “That enough for you?”

She shrugs. “I dunno, never been in a relationship.”

He chokes. “The relic, smartass.”

Right. Right. She shuts her eyes, searching for that thread of injustice. At this point, it’s hardly there anymore—faded into an insignificant blip, a wisp of carefully bottled rage. Disappointment weighs down her stomach before molding itself into shame. She’d been wrong after all.

But when she turns to meet Avett’s no doubtedly smug gaze, she’s met with something else.

A hot, powerful surge of energy, similar to the relic’s own—and entirely different. To compare these two would be like putting a tsunami against a wave at low tide. Same concept, same idea, different magnitudes. They had been lured here, all for this. She clutches her head. It’s going to overwhelm her. What should she do about it?

Something stirs inside of Lili. Don’t let it find me, don’t let it find me, it whispers. It’s dark, sinister, burns like charcoal and warms her soul from the inside out.

For the second time that day, she’s hiding. She grabs at everything and anything she knows about herself and swirls it all behind a curtain, away from the relic, away from the world like she’s always done. 

And it works. The energy passes over her like a hawk that’s missed its prey. She’s safe.

Then she snaps her eyes open again. What about Avett? She scrambles over the rubble, trips over the ground on those same damn tiles. Where is he? If he’s not trained, he can’t hide his soul, and if he can’t hide himself then— 

A groan, and then the slow crunch of ceramic material against concrete. Lili whips around. He’s behind her, crumpled up and twitching in pain, but he’s there. She heaves a sigh of relief.

“Avett?” Lili leans down and touches his shoulder. He shifts, then bats her away like a fly.

“I’m fine, don’t touch me.” He rolls onto his back, hand massaging his forehead. “Wait, where…”

“Huh?”

It’s then that Lili realises that their surroundings have changed. Instead of dull, paint-faded storefronts, they’re surrounded by shelves and crates of weaponry and ammunition. The walls are a shiny, metallic grey, and they’re close enough to make merely being in this room an unpleasant squeeze. A ship’s storage room. 

Avett jumps to his feet and immediately stumbles into the nearest cluster of boxes. Lili reaches out to steady him before he turns this entire area inside out, but he pounds a fist into the wall before he trips over himself again. The fluorescent lights flicker to life above them. When he lets his arm fall to his side, Lili can’t see any indication of a button there. For all she knows, he’s just slammed a wall and hoped for the best.

“Have you…” Lili trails off. She wants to ask if Avett’s been here before, in this specific room, except he’s already tripping over himself towards the door, his breath quickening as he fumbles with the handle. 

“We can’t be here,” he mumbles. His voice is a low drone, as if he’s reciting a mantra to himself. “We can’t be here—fucking—open!” 

The door gives a few adamant clicks before swinging outwards and slamming against the other side of the wall. 

This time, it’s Lili’s turn to stagger backwards.

On the wall in front of them, in no uncertain terms, is a bright splatter of blood.

“Holy shit,” she ends up saying.

Avett crumples to his knees, his eyes wholly trained on the sight in front of him. She wonders if he can smell the lingering tang of iron because of his Kattish nose. Or if he’s too shellshocked to even perceive anything other than the sight of… even Lili has to look away. She can't even begin to quantify the amount of violence that had to have taken place for blood to be spilled like that.

She steps past Avett. He doesn’t need her support right now—he just needs a moment to himself. Besides, he’s been swatting her away all day. What’s he going to get out of her comfort?

When she enters the corridor, she finds that the location of each room is similar to the Winnow’s. None of the lights are on, but the navigation room is lit up. A low, warm glow against the dim walls. 

She gives one last glance to Avett.

“Look if you want, I guess.” He’s curled himself into a ball against the wall, his knees tucked into his chest. “Whatever… gets us out of here.”

She’s not sure what she’ll be looking at all, but she makes her way down the corridor anyway. Slumped against the walls are two bodies, though thankfully, their faces have been blurred into obscurity. There’s a man mumbling something, and strangely enough, the closer she gets to it the further he seems to go. Like he’s fading. Time is just not on his side anymore.

Then there’s a familiar, soft yet harsh-toned voice. “Please! I’ll do everything right next time, I-I’ll stay on the ship, just—fucking stay with me, I’m begging you—”

Lili whirls around, expecting Avett to be there, sobbing his eyes out and acting weirdly out-of-character. No, the sound came from in front of her. In navigation.

She sneaks up to the entrance and peeks around the corner.

Avett is kneeling over a bloodied figure. He’s wearing the full arms specialist uniform; a bright splash of yellow against the cold bite of steel. The whole scene, in fact, seems far too saturated for the scene that’s unfolding right in front of her. 

The man below him is wearing the backline caster’s uniform. The blood blends in perfectly with his tunic, making it look like his clothes have simply pooled around him. He’s got a shock of white, cropped hair, and he’s also got a pair of mobile, animalistic ears upon his head. Kattish. Might have graduated with Avett. They’re both so young, Lili thinks. She can’t look away. She’s clearly infringing on Avett’s privacy here, and yet the scene is so deeply tragic that she can’t help but stand and remember her own tragedies. 

“It’s ironic, isn’t it.” The man touches a bloody hand to Avett’s cheek, leaving three red strokes. “You compromised the entire mission. You are incompetent—useless, even. But you’re alive. You’re the last one standing on this bitching merc ship.”

Avett doesn’t say a word, only takes his hand in a shaky grip.

“Don’t look at me like that.” The caster manages a grin. “Don’t look at me like I haven't just slaughtered two of our crew members.”

The bloodstain on the walls. The bodies she’d found on her way here.

Lili feels her stomach drop as she watches Avett shake the stilled figure over and over, his shrill cries blending and fading into each other until the room is dark once more. 

The figures have vanished. 

Lili turns, and sees that another part of the ship is lit up. The small room in front of the ship’s entrance. Avett is sitting down on a bench, still wearing his yellow jumpsuit, the three lines of blood on his cheek having dried into a deep brown a while ago. When she turns the corner, she sees two masked figures in long cloaks. Judging from their heights, both are Gallian. New Order Gallians, from the way they’re talking.

“There’s just a kid on this ship,” one mumbles to the other. “One traumatised, scared kid. Looks like the majority of his crew died fighting each other over A4’s aura.”

“Talk like he’s actually in the room, alright?” The slightly taller Gallian leans down, his large hands gripping Avett’s shoulders easily. “You’re lucky you got out alive. You and your crew are C rankers—pitted against an A rank. One that’s been stumping the IRC’s dispatch team for a good damn year now precisely because of what happened here.” He gestures to the bloodstain. The sheets of cloth thrown over the lumps of dead bodies.

Avett doesn’t follow his gaze. The first Gallian sighs like he’s got a warm bed and a cold dinner waiting from him at home. “Need your name, age, race, specialisation…”

“My ID’s here,” Avett says, a hand in his pocket already.

“Nope. It’s protocol. State your details.”

He pauses for a second before responding with, “Avett Ironsturm, seventeen, Kattish, arms specialist and mechanic onboard the Steelian.”

Lili’s hands stiffen against her sides. He was nineteen when he first arrived on Earth, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it was also his first day working as a merc. This is something even Ysh’vanna, someone who seems far too aware of her crew’s private affairs, doesn’t know. 

“In what region did your crew encounter A4?”

“Eighth Quarter.” 

“Stars,” the taller Gallian says. “A4 overloaded the navigation panel the moment the Steelian came within a kilometre of it. He piloted this junker all the way to Central Therius manually.”

The shorter Gallian shoots him a glance. “What was that about talking to the kid, not at him?”

Further exchanges are made, words passed but nothing seems to budge Avett. He just sits, head down, hands curled lightly on his knees, and answers every question they throw at him. Lili doesn’t even realise that the scene has faded entirely until she’s left standing in the dark hulls of the ship again, the figures—and bodies, thankfully—now blinked out of existence. 

She doesn’t know what to say. 

“Now you know,” a voice behind her croaks. “My dirty little secret.”

“I don’t understand.” Lili doesn’t turn to meet him, her eyes fixed to the ground. “Your crew… just collectively all lost it? Started murdering each other out of nowhere?”

She hears the awkward shifting of clothes, the all too attentive tug at the hem of his jacket. “That particular A rank… A04, had a particularly potent aura that reduced the inhibitions of every biological lifeform within a kilometre of it. Made us violent.” 

Hot blood splatters across the walls of her mind. “Did… did you?”

A sigh. Avett pushes past Lili and seats himself on the bench. “Could’ve approached the subject a little more tactfully, but no. I didn’t kill any of my crewmates. Figured out how to leave this place yet, princess? Because I’m really not interested in having you rifle through my memories like this.”

She falters. “I… this is all—” 

Something terrible snaps in Avett. Like a rubber band that’s been stretched for far, far too long.

“All what, princess?” He storms up to her, grabs her shoulders so tightly that she can feel his fingers stabbing into her skin. Her wound throbs. “You’re sorry this happened to me? You’re fucking giving me pity? You wouldn’t be the first—nor the last—fucker to do it.”

Lili blinks. Avett’s using her as an outlet for his rage again, and she’s doing fuck all about it. She’d always believed that being someone who existed, someone who swam with the current rather than against it, was easier than fighting back and making a place for yourself. But now she’s up against Avett, and she’s done everything to please him—but he’s still angry. It’s like he can tear right through all of those disinterested facades and guards and walls, and see her for who she really is. A nobody. A girl too afraid to care. 

Avett simply continues. "Know why it’s a secret? Know why this memory’s down here, instead of up here?” He stabs a finger into his head. ”To keep people like you, people who’d never fucking understand, from telling me just how sorry they are that something like this happened to poor old me, and how terrible everything is that I didn’t do anything to deserve it—”

She can’t stand it. Can’t stand being his punching bag. How had she endured eighteen years of all of this wall hugging? 

Avett is sent stumbling backwards until he hits the wall on the other side. Lili looks down at her hand.

It’s faintly stinging of ether and indignation. 

"You think I don't get it?" she shrills. Her hand splays against the wall, between his head and neck. "Everyone I knew is gone. Either they're dead, or I'll never see them again. My entire life before all of this—gone, gone, fucking gone."

He tries to push her back, but the pure, instinctual rage that's been boiling away at her insides ever since she met him is far, far too potent. Her ether flares as she holds him there. Forcing him to listen.

"That's not all, cunt—I spent three fucking years wallowing in my own filth after Ava died, and I watched it all happen in front of me. I was useless. She berated me every fucking minute she was struggling to stay awake, then after that she begged me to just end her sorry life. My childhood friend of eighteen years, someone who molded me into their perfect little bitch—and she's in a pool of her own blood, begging for a sweeter death while I'm trying in vain to save her. Everyday I ask myself if I care that I've lost her, and everyday I come up with another, totally different answer. I don't want to hear that, 'but you don't understand!' garbage. Because I do. More than you know."

For once, Avett is at a loss for words. Finally, he asks, “Did… you?”

Lili narrows her eyes and steels her jaw. Her arm falls to her side.

“S-stars.” He looks to the floor. “I’m… sorry that happened to you.”

Despite herself, she chuckles and folds her arms. 

Avett blushes. Hard. Even his tail starts wiggling out of discomfort. “Eating my own words, huh.”

“I was isolated for four years following Ava’s death, so nobody was around to ‘console’ me—but I don’t think there are words big enough to express sympathy at that level. But there are actions.” She folds her arms and leans against the wall next to him. “I’ll listen to you.”

Avett hesitates for the briefest of seconds, but it’s enough to make Lili’s breath catch in her throat. Maybe she’d been too hard on him, maybe what she’d said was absolutely irredeemable, and now he’s never, ever going to want anything to do with her again.

But then he bumps his shoulder against hers and whispers, “Thanks.” It’s a small gesture, and she almost mistakes it for something less than friendly. The mere brush of skin to skin contact, something she’d never taken as a necessity even in her isolated years, ripples through her body—makes her feel like she’s basking in the warmth of the sun in autumn.

And then he starts to talk.

4: the mall

Lili’s not sure if she’s ready to see the visceral mess of bygone cities and desolate roads she assumes that the Hive will be, but when she tries looking out of the ship she’s actually pleasantly surprised. The roads leading to the Hive are completely intact. Instead, it’s a factory that’s been taken down and repurposed into three sky-scraping spires. The two leftmost spires look like they’ve seen better days—exposed beams of steel spike out in haphazard directions up along the shaft like an agitated hedgehog. The third tower has clearly had more maintenance done to it. 

What really interests her is the initial lack of a real hangar. As the ship swerves around towards the third spire, it's only then does she spot exactly where Ysh'vanna is supposed to dock: a small, jutting platform that leads into a domed alcove.

“The way the Hive works,” Avett says as he slides on his leather gloves, “is that the third spire’s for off-landers. The first and second… ” He gives Lili a wary look before casting his vision aside again. 

“Full of humans?” she finishes. 

Avett doesn’t say anything. “They don’t like off-landers. We do our business in the third spire, they do their ‘best’ to stay out of it. I just stay onboard.”

“The Hive’s third spire is safer than what Avett,” Auren says as he shoots a passing glance over to his frontliner, “would make it out to be. I invite you to disembark the ship and draw your own conclusions.”

Lili has a feeling that her own conclusion won’t exactly be the most informed, so she doesn’t answer. Instead, she turns her attention to Ysh’vanna’s flurry of hands as she lurches the ship into a stomach-dropping dip. She plays chicken with the shifting view for a bit before she forces herself to leave the room. 

A few minutes later and she’s down in the Hive along with Ysh’vanna in a room that barely has any air ventilation; the only mercy is that the place is completely devoid of anyone else. They’re observing a mission board that flashes—presumably refreshing itself—every minute. It’s about as wide as the wall that it’s mounted on. Multiple text boxes litter the board. When Lili taps on one of them, the box expands and a short descriptor of the mission displays itself alongside a prompt for the ship’s card to be placed on the screen.

“We’ll pick something easy for now, hm?” Ysh’vanna has a hand on her hip as she walks across to the other side of the board. “B rank… how about this?”

She flicks her wrist, and the box slides its way across to Lili. Her eyes immediately lock on to the reward money that’s being offered. “Relic recovery?” 

“Don’t let the recompense money fool you. This stuff is painfully easy. Normally these types of missions are snatched up the moment the Inter-Realm Concern uploads them, but since it’s the Hive…” Ysh’vanna folds her arms. “Pretty easy to grab whatever when the only other ship operating in the Hive wilds only has a C rank authorisation.”

Lili turns her attention back to the text box. That ship would have easily been them, had the test not played out the way it had. “What exactly is a Relic?” 

“S ranked targets passively create a reality altering field around them. A ranked too—though to a lesser degree. You have to have special clearance to even be in the same area as one, and that’s only after they’ve done extensive research through the relics that they leave behind. Similarly, it’s why we also hunt certain B and C ranked dragons who look like they have the aptitude to become A ranks.” Ysh’vanna shrugs. “It’ll be around forty years, maybe even more from now—but the moment the IRC elites eliminate the last S or A ranked dragon, we win. The realms go back to normal, the IRC gets to assimilate Earth into the family of discovered realms, and they get to rename themselves to The 5th Consortium or something.”

This sounds like a recipe for disaster to Lili. She’s about to voice her concerns when Ysh’vanna strolls right back over to her and slaps her back. “Chill out, hm? We wouldn’t even be allowed to enter if it hadn’t left a long time ago.” She slaps her card onto the screen, and a circular bar quickly wraps itself around it. “All we have to do is dive into some ruins, get the relic, then we leave. Very small chance of encounter. You wanna grab a snack before we head off?”

Somehow, Lili has a feeling that the Hive is going to have a very small selection of food compared to that of the Afflatus’ smorgasbord of cultures. Maybe Avett’s influence is finally serving it’s toll, or maybe she’s just not a big fan of how this place feels like an undersea tuna can despite being elevated one hundred metres in the air, but she refuses Ysh’vanna’s offer. They’ve just had lunch anyway.

When the two of them arrive back on the Winnow, Lili heads for the bathroom to refresh herself. She spots Avett lying against the floor in the sleeping quarters on her way there. He’s holding what looks to be a transparent phone screen above his head, and there’s a slight grin on his face.

She splashes water onto her face from the sink. Her first mission. Maybe it won’t go as badly as her last encounter. Or maybe it will. Because she’s not actually that great at making informed decisions in the heat of the moment, and when it comes to dealing with larger-than-life dragons, it seems that everything she knows about defending herself is only secondary to her ability to determine the best course of action in any given moment. 

The water drips down her chin. She wipes at it desperately with her sleeve. A wet sleeve, she thinks, is far better than a soaked collar. Then she looks at herself in the mirror.

Never had she ever envisioned herself wearing the same casters’ gear as Auren. However, instead of her tunic being burgundy-red, her attire is a dull teal. It’s a perfect fit on her, but somehow, she just can’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that it’s on her body. Or that it’s even meant to be on her body. The cloth seems too new, too unworn—though that’s a descriptor she knows is going to change pretty soon.  

“You know you don’t have to wear the whole thing. Most people don’t.” 

Lili spots Avett leaning against the doorway. He’s in an unbuttoned jacket and a black tank top. Definitely not the usual mechanic jumpsuit that he’s in. “Auren does,” she replies.

“Auren’s a prude.”

She winces. “I don’t have anything that’s field-appropriate.” Besides, she’s not sure what’s wrong with her gear, aside from the weird shade of teal. It’s comfortable, it doesn’t scratch her when she bends her elbows, and it has way too many pockets running down the side of her pants. 

“Fine, fine. You win.” 

She braces her arms against the sink counter. It’s obvious that he’s not just here to bash on her fashion senses. “Is… is there anything else you want to say?” she tests. 

Avett brings himself upright again. “I really don’t know what Ysh’ told you, but you should probably relax. Relic recovery’s one the easiest jobs we could’ve gotten. You literally walk in, grab the thing, walk out, get paid.”

Something catches in her throat. “Walk into what?”

Thirty minutes later, and she’s standing outside in front of what used to be the Baywaters shopping mall. She has been here at least once or twice, back when she considered store-bought Pak’n Save chicken roasts to be the pinnacle of western dining. She was fifteen. Now she’s back, and all that’s left for her as she stands in the carpark are half-rusted signs and crumbling walls of concrete. 

“Ruins, princess.” Avett straps into his messenger bag. “We’re going ruin diving.”

Lili presses her lips together into a grimace. She eyes the glint of the exposed iron framework as it pierces through the pillars like a broken bone. Someone could impale themselves on that if they fell directly onto it from ten metres up. The thought of that happening doesn’t help the roiling wave of dread that’s settling over her body like a fine coating of dust. 

“Great,” she mumbles. It’s in her best interests to streamline this job as much as possible, so she adds, “How do we know what the relic looks like?”

“Beats me. You’ll probably feel it before it shows up on my GlassLink.” He waves his phone in the air briefly. “The real, organic deal’s way better than this cheap old thing.”

She can see his hand vaguely through the glass, which is a deep shade of grey. There’s no way that that’s what’s considered cheap and old in Therius, but if it is, it doesn’t surprise her. The guy in front of her is holding two state-of-the-art blasters—capable of taking down dragons, allegedly. Though now that she’s gotten a better look at them and seen what his crossbow is capable of, they seem more suited to giving mild headaches rather than inflicting skull-blasting finishers. 

The crumbling exterior of the mall gives way to—unsurprisingly—an open air roof. The once stalwart pillars that held the ceiling have long since toppled here, and if Lili walks over all of the chunks and leftovers of what used to be flooring, she can see ugly, blackened welts—scarred into the concrete like a brand. Burn marks. 

Unease drips into her like a broken tap. Maybe she shouldn’t be looking at this so soon.

Avett occasionally checks in on his GlassLink as the two of them traverse deeper into the abandoned mall. The odd, uncovered spike of metal here and there keeps Lili on her toes. She just hopes that she’ll start feeling whatever Avett wants her to feel when they approach the relic. It’s a silly comparison, but the whole thing makes her feel like she’s a TV receptor. At least she’s useful to him.

Soon, the roof starts coming back together, kind of like icicles freezing over a pane of glass in winter, but she’s not quite feeling safe yet; there’s a crack that’s running down the length of the ceiling, and she’s worried that the glass dome that’s directly above them might rain down on them if they aren’t careful. The whole place is giving her just a terrible time, and the deeper they go, the worse her dread gets. It’s awful. She looks over to Avett, and he just seems to be having a swell old time. Relic recovery beats hunting dragons anyday, of course. It’s just a shame that they’re in a mall that Lili recognises and knows all too well. She can see the old doughnut store that she used to eye up constantly until her mum caved and bought her a takeaway box of six tiny, cream-filled, doughy balls. 

She fixes her eyes in front of her.

“So.” Avett holds up his GlassLink for Lili to see—there’s nothing on his radar. Not even a hint of where the relic might be. “You feeling anything yet, princess?”

“Not really.” She shuffles from foot to foot. “This place—something’s off. You’re sure that nothing’s here?”

Her line of sight falls onto his blasters and crossbow. He covers them with a hand. “Look, I’m sure it looks like I came prepared for a fight, but the toughest thing that could possibly fit in here probably’s a baby—hardly worth your time, but still need a few blasts to put them down. B ranks prefer the outdoors.” 

“You’d shoot a baby?”

Avett narrows his eyes, draws his blaster, and fires a round into the ground near Lili’s foot. A jolt of pure adrenaline shoots right up her leg and into her head as she jerks herself away. 

The shot leaves the ground vaguely smoking. And the report of that one, presumably innocuous shot’s just echoing, echoing away into the rest of the mall. 

“Only big babies,” he answers. 

Lili can still hear the gunshot. And it’s not just her imagination. The echo really does just go on for way too long. She’s so busy focusing on the sound that she almost misses something else—the sound of rocks cracking under the pressure of one another. 

“Avett—” she starts. The cracking is loudest directly above them. Whatever Lili has to do, she has to do it now. Her legs scream to life as she pumps ether through every single one of her limbs before throwing herself into Avett.

A shot goes off. It hits another part of the broken ceiling—Lili watches the bright blue spark pop against the concrete, watches another crack form, its reach spreading like a web. As they tumble to the floor, the torso-sized chunk thuds to the ground behind them. The crater that it makes upon landing is enough to make Lili immediately grip Avett’s—strangely limber—shoulders. He has a blaster in one hand. 

She looks back just in time to catch another chunk thudding to the ground behind them, sending microscopic flecks of asphalt up into the air. The ceiling is collapsing fast. She’s thankful for the rubbery soles of her combat boots as she pulls Avett upright, her adrenaline bursting into her anew—but even then, the ground seems like a shitfest to sprint across. 

“You useless—” Avett’s tail wavers behind him, no doubt correcting his balance. He spares a glance behind him. “Fuck. Talk later. Fuck. Fuck!”

Every step she takes feels like she’s skidding on ice, even though she knows it’s just the copious amounts of rubble. As the two of them vault over the old shop counters and slip by glass displays, it occurs to Lili that the sensation of crushing dread is just getting worse by the minute. Adrenaline is a potent drug, but whatever this is… it’s weighing her legs down, making her lungs wheeze like an overheated kettle. Her muscles have been replaced with lead.

“Lilith—Lilith, no,” Avett manages to pull her forward. She must’ve faltered a bit. “Come on. We’re almost out. Fuck—how long is this ceiling going to—?”

He’s right. The ceiling’s been falling on them for way too long. But she can hardly think, hardly follow any line of thought to its conclusion—it’s all a faint pulse against the voracious heat of dread, now sinking and clawing into her skull like it’s a parasite inside of her, itching and worming its way through her head. All of this, just to survive.

Lili bites down on the insides of her cheeks. Hard. The sharp bolt of pain is enough for her own thoughts to come slamming back into her. She grabs Avett’s arm and pulls him to the side into a small shop that she’s not sure she’s seen before. It must be new.

The ceiling continues to rain down outside. But the store stays intact. 

It’s not over yet. She has to do something. If she stays still, stays complicit for even a second too long, she’ll start feeling it again—the sensation of being gnawed alive. It feels like it’s right next to her. Like if she turns back slowly, she’ll see the gaping, salivating maw of a certain dragon from a few days ago.

Lili groans and clutches her head. It’s here. She kneels over and starts clawing at the rubble beneath her feet. She doesn’t care that her fingernails are chipping or that she looks like a maniac. She just needs to free it. Every second she spends in close proximity to this thing is an eternity spent in damnation. 

Her hands close around something. Something scalding to the touch. It’s a glassy sphere, probably an ornament of some sort. She wrenches it free from the rocks. As soon as she does, her mind rams into that sweet, ecstatic pause of thought, and for a minute she actually considers embracing this silence wholly. It’s a sweet mercy compared to the whirlwind of emotion she had subjected herself to for the past hour. Why shouldn’t she?

Her eyelids start fluttering against her will. The glass now only feels mildly warm, as if someone’s been lovingly embracing it with their body. 

“Fuck—Lilith.”

Something—someone, actually—strong pinches her cheeks and stretches them apart. And then Lili is awake again. Far too awake. 

She splutters and nearly drops the damn thing. 

“Uh.” Avett plucks the object from her hands. “Maybe I should hold that. You alright, by the way, princess?”

“Yeah, but ceilings,” she says, a pant wrenching through her body mid-sentence, “they’re not supposed to fall like that.”

“Relic might’ve been sending this entire place into overdrive. They’ve got a mind of their own—though never to this extent.” Avett turns on his phone and peers at the bauble through its transparent screen. Lili almost wants to strangle him for even daring to check that yes—this is the thing that drove her crazy, and that it is in fact the relic that they’ve been looking for. “Never really sure what they’ll do, but they don’t usually try to kill you.”

She gulps down air and slumps onto her back, rubble and dirt be damned. “You didn’t feel it? Not a thing?”

He shoves his phone back into his front pocket. “Nope. Didn’t even scratch my balls. Seemed to be turning you inside out though. Kind of glad I’m an arms specialist now.”

She looks back at the relic. Wet flakes of glittery snow swirl around inside the dome and come to rest atop a plastic cabin. A tiny pine tree stands next to it, and underneath that’s a poorly-built snowman. His carrot’s been stuck in the wrong way.

Before she can pick her—now stiffening—body up off the ground, Avett pins her right back down with a dirty look. “You know, I had the situation under control. You were the one who knocked me over and set the whole ceiling off.” 

Lili thinks back to the stray shot that started this whole mess in the first place. Had it hit its mark—the initial boulder—none of this would have happened. Her cheeks pink in embarrassment. “Sorry.”

Something ticks in his jaw. He opens his mouth to say something, closes it, then turns his attention to the entrance. Despite the fact that he’s not facing her, Lili can tell something is amiss—he’s gone completely still. Even his tail isn’t moving. When she stands and pats down her thighs, she can immediately see why.

The ceiling is completely intact, as if it had never collapsed at all. And all she can see is the darkness of the abandoned mall, its seemingly infinite hallways beckoning them like a stranger in the moonlight.

— 

“Captain O-Raal, this is frontliner Ironsturm radioing in to perform a status update. I’d just like to say, if you two just aren’t picking up because you’re off canoodling somewhere, you can suck my Kattish dick until it prunes.” 

For every off-brand ice cream stall that they’ve passed, Lili is sure that Avett has left at least a hundred more voice messages on his GlassLink for their cheery captain, though if any of those messages actually end up going through, she probably won’t be cheery for long. Nevermind the fact that dicks can’t prune. It’s not her place to correct him, though. His rage is secondary to the mess they’re in; the mall stretches on for eons, its corridors blurring into a fine mist of shadow when Lili tries to look any further from the dimly lit area that they’re in now. They’re not in the Baywaters department store anymore, but everything inside—from the layout to the actual stalls—seem almost the same, keeping their resemblance to the original mall in broad strokes, like a poorly filled out stencil.

As far as they’re concerned, there’s no exit. 

The sensation of entrapment in such a foreign, yet familiar world only plays second fiddle to the soul-crushing dread Lili had experienced earlier. She doesn’t know how Avett is holding up. Maybe he’s the same, in a different sense. He's got his rage to fill in the gaps that his fear has left for him, like a pot that’s been broken and remade with gold far too many times. Or maybe he’s just used to having his life threatened. Lili’s too tired to feel anything other than a gentle defeat; she’d be lying down and halfway off to slumberland if it weren't for the insistence of this uppity catboy. He’d made her use a vast majority of her ether in an attempt to escape already, leaving her in a barely conscious state. She hadn’t even left a mark.

Five minutes later and they pass yet another off-brand ice cream stall. It’s got the same baby blue and muted white colour scheme, and on the side there’s a round, pudgy mascot hugging a waffle cone. It’s the same design. But it’s not the same stand. Lili knows because Avett has kicked over every mascot out of pure frustration, and each time they happen upon another off-brand ice cream stall, the mascot is standing upright again.

Speaking of, Avett strides up to the counter and rears his leg back before sending it careening towards the mascot’s round head. Either he’s finally ready to kiss his last, sane brain cell behind, or he’s actually bothering to use his full strength now—but the moment his foot makes contact with the head, it cracks and gives way. Enough to stop his momentum and to keep him trapped in the hollowed-out head by the ankle.

Lili doesn't bother with helping Avett as he hops around on one foot. He doesn't need it, right? He can handle himself.

“Fuck—piece of shit, I swear.” With conviction, he whirls his leg into the counter, and the mascot’s skull shatters into a million white shards. She doesn’t point out that, where the mascot had latched onto his ankle, are several wounds that look like they need attention. In fact, she’s keeping herself several metres away from this man. Avett winces the moment he tries to walk away from the scene of the crime.

“Maybe we could take a break,” she offers.

He shoots her a death glare, his jaw muscles clenched in a grimace. 

Lili shrinks back. “Sorry.”

After what seems to be an eternity, Avett finally decides that it’s in his best interests to sit down and tend to himself. It seems that he’s also interested in keeping his distance from Lili, because he chooses to seat himself next to the statue. 

“I don’t give a damn how sorry you are,” he replies.

Here it comes, Lili thinks. She forces her mind into a sea of obsidian, wills her emotions into a dull grey as she sits down and prepares herself for the verbal beating she knows he’s been holding in this entire time.

Avett strips out of all his equipment—automatic crossbow, blasters, messenger bags—and tosses them unceremoniously to the floor. “We’re fucked. We’re tits-deep in shit, Lilith, and sorry doesn’t cut it. I don’t know how we got here, but I know we wouldn’t be if you weren’t on this fucking crew.”

Lili is far enough to not be in his immediate vision, but close enough to watch him dress up the scrapes on his leg with his first aid kit. She’s nibbling at her hardtack like she’s a Victorian-era orphan that’s just been offered a roll of bread by the local mafia. Like their situation can’t get anymore depressing than that. “I’m sorry,” she blurts out again.

Avett is mid-way through a wonky loop of bandaging, but he stops tending to his leg and lets out a noisy sigh all the same. “Again, stop that. Stop fucking saying sorry. Please.”

“I’m sorry for—” She stops herself, then bites into her hardtack. Not with the intention of eating it; she just wants something to hold on to as she adds, “You can hit me if you want.”

He actually stops to think about her offer—actually steps over all of the rubble and stray metal foundations to stand in front of her with his hands balled into angry fists. He kneels, draws his arm back. Lili tenses her body.

Smack. 

His fist slams into the wall next to her head, where he holds it there as he leans over her. “You may have blown this entire mission, but it is not fucking worth it.” Rage—wholly controlled, contained rage—eddies in his eyes, like smoke from a smouldering wick. “Don’t ever ask someone to punch you ever again.”  

Then he gets up, flexes his fingers, and goes back to his corner of the abandoned mall. The drunken confession that she’d drawn out of him only a few days ago now seems like a distant dream. 

She sighs, and then shoves the rest of the hardtack into her mouth. 

— 

“Captain O-Raal, this is frontliner Ironsturm radioing in to perform a status update. I’d just like to say, if you two just aren’t picking up because you’re off canoodling somewhere, you can suck my Kattish dick until it prunes.”

Click. Ysh’vanna leans into the ship’s microphone.

“Captain O-Raal to frontliner Ironsturm,” she says, making sure to punctuate every consonant with a sharp tap of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Not cool. I’m gonna be deducting this from your share.”

This back and forth exchange has happened at least ten times over the course of an hour. Ysh’vanna and Auren are both fully aware that, while they can hear Avett’s charming little messages, he cannot receive any of theirs, rendering their communications unusable. Something has happened to their frontliners, and yet all Auren can do is sit back and do nothing.

“Startin’ to feel useless.” His captain drums against the counter. Her eyes do not leave the message interface for a second. Perhaps she believes that to look away would be to seal their fates within the ruins. 

Auren changes the subject. “It has been a while since our last airborne encounter, no?”

“Don’t jinx it.” 

The silence before the next notification is deafening. Ysh’vanna taps on the screen immediately. Avett’s voice rolls in as a hushed whisper.

“Why’d we have to hire Little Miss Sheltered-and-Naive again? I can’t work with her without wanting to commit several felonies. Fuck. I’m going to lose it. I shouldn’t. I’m too hard on her. I’m pretty sure the relic had some sort of allergic reaction to her, and that’s why we’re trapped in this hellhole. This never happens when I’m on the field by myself. Some fucky things, yeah, but this? Give me a second.”

Auren winces as he hears Avett grunt in exertion. The hollow thunk of plastic against wood follows not soon after. The message ends.

Ysh’vanna presses her lips together. 

—

Something is wrong with this dream.

Lili can feel every breath that she takes in from her lungs. She feels heavy. She’s in a room that she doesn’t recognise, and there’s a sense of impending dread—or excitement, she can’t tell—that’s settled in her chest like dust on an abandoned piano.

The thing that she’s lying against seems to engulf her. Everything feels terrible. If this is how it feels to die, then she might not mind it. She’d always assumed that it’d be a horrific experience, one involving a sensation not unlike sleep paralysis as her lungs slowly fill with water, or catch on fire, or whatever it is that’s happening to her.

Then it dawns on her. She is dying. She can’t breathe, and this will be her final minute of being alive. She’s had plenty of dreams like this, of being lulled into a violent rest by a feral dragon, but never like this. This feels like she might be bleeding out.

Disastrous. Lili looks to the sky. It’s offensively sunny today, and when she tries to turn her head she feels thousands of grass blades scratch against her cheek. It occurs to her that her brain might be remembering that time she’d defected from Ava and laid in the field, somewhere between a slab of cement and a weatherboarded house.

“Lilith.”

She blinks. A familiar voice—but it isn’t Ava's, nor is it from any of her old friends. Lili racks her head for who it might be, but she’s always been terrible with voices. It’s soft, but it’s not like it’s weak. Gentle, yet defiant.

Why the hell would Avett, of all people, be in her dream about dying?

Before she can even attempt to choke herself back into consciousness, Avett’s face comes into her line of sight. He’s been crying—Lili can tell from the way his lower eyelid shines in the sunlight.

He cups his hand against her cheek, and all of a sudden, Lili feels like she’s wasted her entire life.

“You should’ve let me love you.”

She inhales. Consciousness smacks into her like someone’s introduced a baseball bat to her face. Sweat stains the back of her casters’ tunic. When had she fallen asleep? She reaches over and grasps the relic shakily, like she’s holding a wasp’s nest. The glass dome feels hot underneath her fingers. Disproportionately hot, as if such an object could blush out of shame.

This object simply should not be allowed to exist.

Lili leaps to her feet and poises to smash it against the floor, her face flushed in embarrassment as her mind recalls the world this—deranged relic had so carefully crafted for her. “Fuck!” she spits. “Fucking fuck—fucked up, this thing is fucked—”

“Don’t fucking throw that!” Avett grabs her wrist. His touch feels like hot embers at her skin. She jerks her hand back. He’s right. They have to bring this damnable thing all the way back to the Hive, or this mission—their current circumstances—will all have been for nothing. 

Lili breathes. Her shock and disgust ebbs away to a slow, hollow feeling in her chest. She slumps back against the wall and hands the relic over to Avett, making sure to intentionally miss any attempt at eye contact.

He takes it. “Never heard you sing like that, princess. Feels like you used up your entire year’s allotment of swears the moment you woke up.”

She buries her head in her hands. At least he’s calling her ‘princess’ again, instead of her full name. “Circumstances called for it. I… think I’ve slept enough.”

“In case you missed it,” he says, his voice testing, yet firm, “that was your chance to start talking about your nightmare.” 

Lili’s mind sputters. She thinks back to events of last night, how he’d slammed his fist into the wall behind her, how his rage had swirled like molten copper. Well, maybe it’s time she straightened her back and gave him a little piece of how she feels about him.

“Don’t pretend that you still care about me,” she answers.

The hurt that briefly flashes across his eyes brings about a sense of guilt-laced satisfaction in her. No, she shouldn’t feel bad. Not after that deluge of verbal abuse he’d thrown at her. Besides, Avett is the last person she wants to be talking to right now. She runs a hand through her hair and prepares herself for the trip ahead. 

The snowglobe faintly pulsates in Avett’s hand, as if shaking its head in disappointment.

Yuck. Moving on.