Aetheral Space

The ship was coming down.

It had been obvious from the moment they'd been struck by the first strike of lightning. Amantha had tried to hack into the comms to warn them, but unfortunately their security had been too good. That was kinda ironic, she guessed, given that it had guaranteed their deaths.

Their ten seconds of leeway had come and gone in blissful ignorance.

The starship -- cylindrical, like a long cigar flying through space -- crashed down in the middle of the city, burying itself in the landscape like a new skyscraper. Already, she could see blue electricity zipping and zapping around the hull. The Weapon had come for them.

Given the size of the vessel, it probably had a crew of thirty or so. Nothing to scoff at, but still…

Amantha lifted the scope from her eye and raised her script to her mouth. "Ah, shucks," she sighed. "Yep, they're goners."

Sam's voice came back. "Already?"

"Yep," Amantha repeated. "They came down pretty hard, so they'll be disoriented, and the Weapon is already trying to -- oh, no, she's already broken in. Yeah, they're super dead."

"Damnit," Sam muttered. "Keep an eye on her, if you can. Let us know if she comes after us."

"You think she will? From what I've seen, she doesn't go underground at all."

"That could change if we find something we're not supposed to. Keep me posted."

"Okie-dokie," Amantha shrugged, raising her rifle Demon Core once again to resume her vigil. For a Watchwoman of Rathbone, sitting and waiting wasn't much of a labour…

But still, she yawned, it's pretty darn boring.

Erica del Sed emerged.

LYCHGATE's squeals of pain faded as she emerged from its wound, and immediately Erica left it behind, striding through the tunnels beneath the Sed. In the distance, she could hear screaming -- Morgan Nacht, probably, using that healing ability of his. So long as she kept away from that sound, she would be able to steer clear of being spotted.

She passed INTERLOPER on the way out. It might have looked at her. It was difficult to tell.

"█̴̞̬̱̓͒̓̀̕█̴̧̪̟͂͗́̃͊͒͛̓̾̆̎̿̕͝█̴̭͈̠̪̰̪̖̹͓̝͈̥̰͍͗̓͂̋̓͗̽̅͑̍̎̆̈͝͝█̶̝̠̝̥̻̯̫̏̌̀̋͌̾͆͗̉͘͜ ̷̧̨̠͇̹̼̜͕̳͖̿͌̀̅͗̆̓̈͋͌̕█̶̜̖̻̻̲̲̦͚̲̮͓̭̎̈́̈́█̶͕̣͔̥͓̘͙̬̹͖̀́͆̉͐̒̾̓̅̎̈́̓͘͝ͅ█̸̧͔̼̮̠̘̜̼̣͑̆̕͜█̶̧̡̭͍̲͈̺͓͉̬͍͋̈́͌̒ ̴̬͓̞̳͎͍̞̟͇͂͒̓̃͒̎̑̾̔̈̈͑̾̚̚█̷̮̠̼̎█̶̜͛͌̈́█̶̢̢̘̜͙̫̰̤̤̩̻͇͑̀͌̈́̀́̍̕█̵̳̗̖͔̈́̀͐̾͋̓͑," it said.

The words were like so many flies smashing themselves against the glass of Erica's mind. If anyone else had looked at the black blur INTERLOPER, or listened to its speech, no doubt they'd have been on the ground twitching as their thoughts disintegrated. Not Erica.

Erica was different. She calmly walked past it and into the web of tunnels proper.

Within the Sed, there had been three branches of subjects -- Splitters, Maskers, and Controllers. Even among them, there had been those who excelled. The foremost Splitter had been Cottian, and the finest Masker was Annatrice -- with Penelope just a step behind.

Erica was the perfect Controller.

She had complete and utter control over every aspect of her own consciousness. She'd heard of martial artists with unparalleled control over their own body -- able to control the beating of their own heart and the flowing of their own blood. It was like that, but with thought. If Erica didn't want to be afraid, she simply decided not to be. If Erica wanted to be confident in her decisions, she simply decided she was.

And if something like INTERLOPER tried to tear that mind apart? Well, that was nothing. She just had to hold her mind together between two fingers.

It was nothing special.

Nestled in the darkness, Wolfram breathed as loudly as he dared -- and that wasn't very loud at all.

Part of him couldn't believe he was alive, with where he'd ended up landing. When he'd shrunk himself to his minimum during the battle with the Weapon, he'd expected to land on the ground -- the reduced size and sound of his heartbeat concealing him from the Weapon -- but it hadn't worked out that way. Through coincidence -- through sheer, cruel coincidence -- the Weapon had rushed for the Widow, crossing right where he was falling.

And so he'd found himself here -- lodged right inside her armour.

Undoing the ability wasn't an option at this point, of course. The moment his heartbeat became audible again, a new ten-second countdown would begin. He severely doubted his ability to get away from the Weapon and back underground before those ten seconds were up.

At least, he doubted it when they were going this fast.

Wolfram clung on to an inner strap for dear life as the Weapon rushed through the air, moving with such speed that the world outside was nothing but a blur of bright blue. There were the briefest noises -- cut-off screams -- and the briefest flashes of colour -- sprays of blood -- but the Weapon didn't pause for either of them. Unlike them, these poor morons hadn't been prepared to take on an enemy of this level at all. It was making mincemeat of them.

How long did it take the Weapon to clear the field of life? A minute, two minutes? More time than it had taken it to defeat him and the Widow, anyway. Was that something he should take pride in?

No. There was no room for his pride next to his terror, and so he sat and shivered unseen as the Weapon skidded to a halt.

Victory.

With its task clearly done, the Weapon stopped moving entirely, staring into space like an inactive automatic. Wolfram wasn't 100% sure, but it looked like they were up on top of the starship's wreckage -- could this be his chance? The crash was sure to have opened up a path into the underground. Could he jump out of the Weapon's armour, drop from this height, and make his way into the tunnels before those ten seconds passed?

Maybe not, but he couldn't stay here, either. Wolfram braced his body and his courage, slowly climbing up the rung of straps, ready to --

"Aubrisher."

Wolfram stopped. Someone new had appeared, but that wasn't what had stopped him, not really. What had stopped him…

…was that name.

Humanoid Weapon AUBRISHER didn't turn to look in Erica's direction, but she knew she had been heard all the same. It had known about her presence the moment she'd stepped outside. All calling out to it had done was register its attention.

With her hands still in the pockets of her tracksuit, Erica sauntered over, moving with languid grace along the uneven hull of the pirate starship. This thing wouldn't remain in place for long. Even just a few minutes after striking the ground, it had already begun to assume a steep incline. Before long, it would crash into the city once more, crushing anything beneath it.

But that was fine. The incline made it easy for Erica to walk upon. In that way, the starship had fulfilled its purpose as an extant thing.

As Erica approached, AUBRISHER raised a limp finger, pointing to the pile of bodies and parts it had gathered before it. Erica decided not to feel disgust at the sight. There would be no advantage in it. Instead, she just grunted, squatted down next to the gruesome heap -- and planted her hand against a relatively intact head.

Jaws of God.

There was no fanfare to the ability. Erica had decided there didn't need to be any, and therefore that was the correct decision. In an instant, the last hours of the unfortunate pirate's life flowed into Erica's mind, safely sequestered away to preserve her sovereign identity.

Most of it -- everything until the actual crash -- was worthless… but the final few minutes would be most instructive for the Prince-Regent.

Look, she wanted to tell it, right there and then. Look. This is what people look like. This is desperation. This is struggle. This is the fight to survive.

This is what 'humanity' looks like.

She sampled the other deaths one after another. Some had perished in the crash, others by the hands of AUBRISHER, but all their ends had been ugly and brief. She allowed herself to feel a measure of disgust as she rose up, wiping the blood off her hands with a handkerchief.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Return to default position," she commanded. "I -- oh."

There. Down on one of the streets below, past AUBRISHER's shoulder. Erica could see someone: a lone male figure, limping away from the wreckage. He'd gone undetected? Perhaps he had some implant or ability that prevented his life signs from being registered.

Erica considered letting him go for a time… but no. Someone who could move around the experiment site with impunity was nothing but trouble. She raised a finger and pointed lazily at the distant figure.

Claw of God.

What Erica did was nothing special.

She simply used her Controller ability to generate a sudden torrent of suicidal thoughts inside her mind, channeled them into her Aether, and transmitted them out from her finger. Control over her own mind was the basis of Erica's Aether techniques, too. It was the sort of attack that moved at the speed of thought… mainly because it was a thought.

Needless to say, the unfortunate man didn't dodge.

Erica watched with mild interest as he came to a halt, dropped to his knees… and began smashing his head against the road below. It wasn't that he was weak-minded or anything. It was just that very few people in this world could withstand the kind of raw despair Erica was capable of producing.

Still… Erica thought as the man turned his face into a ruin. This could be educational, too.

And so she hopped off the building, proceeding leisurely to the man who was turning himself into a corpse, just for her.

"She awake?" asked a voice.

Not Erica's voice. This was a human's voice. A boy's voice, too. Annatrice slowly opened her eyes. A low groan trickled out from her throat.

Another unfamiliar ceiling.

This wasn't the same place she'd woken up in before. It was a much larger room -- not a sterile laboratory, but more like a communal sleeping quarters. Bunk-beds like the one Annatrice was lying in lined the walls… and all around the room, there were people.

People with faces Annatrice recognised.

It was difficult to remember names from the Sed, but Annatrice knew these faces. She knew the faces of the people playing a board game on the floor, she knew the faces of the guys looking out the window into space, and she knew the faces of the boy and girl looking at her.

"She's awake," the boy, auburn-haired and dour, answered his own question. He was sitting on a stool next to the bed -- and he'd clearly been watching Annatrice. A shudder went down her spine.

The girl standing next to him blinked. She had pale blonde hair tied back into a pair of pigtails, and -- oddly enough -- what looked like a ventriloquist dummy of herself sitting on her shoulder.

"Yep," she said sweetly.

"I CAN SEE THAT, MORON!" the puppet barked, wooden jaw slamming up and down ferociously.

Annatrice backed up in her bed, pulling the sheet with her, and the blonde girl raised a hand to try and calm her.

"Ah, sorry, sorry!" the girl apologised. "That's just -- it's just a thing I've got, I didn't mean to frighten you!"

The puppet's glass eyes spun in their sockets. "Y," it croaked. "ANOTHER IDIOT I NEED TO EXPLAIN THIS TO! JUST MY LUCK!"

"Shut up," the girl hissed, planting a hand over the puppet's mouth to muffle its next insults. "Ah, my name's Marianne. Marianne del Sed. How about you?"

Annatrice's eyes flicked between Marianne and her flailing puppet for just a few seconds before she answered. "Annatrice… I'm Annatrice."

"Did Erica grab you too?" the boy asked, almost bored, hand resting on his chin.

"Don't be rude!" Marianne -- and her puppet -- barked in unison.

The boy rolled his eyes. "Harry del Sed," he said, offering a limp hand. "You don't talk much, huh?"

Annatrice went to accept the handshake, but Harry had already given up on it. "Well…" she mumbled. "I mean… I don't get what's really going on. Erica brought you here too?"

Harry raised an unamused eyebrow. "That's what I just asked you."

"Don't be mean," Marianne said. "She's just confused."

"UGH," the puppet snarled. "I CAN'T STAND THIS GUY! CAN'T HE JUST FUCK OFF AND LEAVE US ALONE?"

"Nice to hear how you really feel," Harry said, deadpan.

As Marianne wrestled with her puppet, trying -- in vain -- to stop it from getting its words out, Annatrice took the opportunity to get her bearings. Judging from the situation… and from what Erica had said back in that room… they must still be on the Thinker's Comet. She'd said she'd been gathering the survivors of the Sed. That was what Annatrice was looking at right now.

"I'm telling her the truth, and showing her the last chapter of humanity. Just as I did for all the rest."

A thought occurred. Like an idiot, Annatrice had let herself fall unconscious before Erica's explanation of everything was even finished. But maybe these guys…

"Hey," she spoke up, cutting off the three way argument. "I-I've got a question."

Marianne turned to look at her. "Yeah?" she asked kindly.

"WHAT?" the puppet spat.

Annatrice took a deep breath. "When Erica brought you here… and she took you to that room, with the vat and the red thing… do you remember what it was she…"

Her words trailed off as she saw the obvious confusion on the two faces before her.

"What room?" Harry asked.

Huh?

"You're sure this is the way?" Set asked, blue eyes flicking around warily as they descended through the tunnels.

"No," Serena replied. "But this is the way down to the deepest part. If they're hiding something, I bet it'll be down here."

The four of them -- Serena, Sam, Alcera and Morgan -- were slowly stalking their way through the web of tunnels that ran beneath the Sed's testing site. For the most part, they'd found nothing. Just the skittering of unseen legs, and the gleaming of distant eyes. Once, Morgan had had to cut down a diminutive Aether Awakening, but that had been it.

Alcera tapped Set's shoulder and whispered something in his ear.

"Alcera wants to be sure," he said a moment later. "You really don't want to wait for Blaine?"

"She can find her way back," Serena said simply.

"You understand that's only if she's ali --"

"She can find her way back," Serena insisted.

Besides, Serena knew Ruth. That headstrong girl wouldn't forgive herself if she thought the others had put themselves in danger just to wait for her. No. She'd be happiest jumping into the fray at the last minute, tearing the scene to shreds with those reckless claws of hers.

Right, Bruno?

There was no response… Bruno was still buried deep. Serena could have kicked herself: how could she not have noticed him hiding himself away like that? What had she expected, dragging him back to the Sed like this, back to the blackest days of their childhoods?

Don't worry, Bruno, Serena clenched her fists. If you can hear me… I'm getting us out of here.

Suddenly, Sam skidded to a stop, throwing his arm out to block the others. Serena nearly walked right into him, stumbling as she regained her balance on the steep incline.

"Hey!" she complained, turning to him. "Watch what you're…"

Her voice trailed off as soon as she saw the look on the precognitive's face. He was as pale as a ghost and soaked with sudden sweat, his eyes bulging in their sockets, his breath shaking as it barely escaped his mouth. Slowly, jerkily -- as if the knowledge of how to do so had temporarily been lost to him -- he shook his head.

"We can't go this way," he breathed through chattering teeth.

"What?" asked Morgan, catching up at the rear. "Why?"

"We can't…" Set mumbled, taking a step back. "We can't go this way. There's not… we can't."

Alcera reached out and grabbed Set by the shoulders, spinning him around and staring him in the face. She didn't say anything, but the questioning expression on her face was enough to pull him at least partially back into his senses.

"There's something down there," he said weakly. "If we go near it, it'll be worse than dying… even if we just see it."

Serena's heart nearly stopped. Slowly, she turned her head to look into the darkness of the tunnel. Now that she listened, she could hear something.

Footsteps. The worst footsteps in the world. Footsteps that felt like they were a brand against your brain.

Serena let out a shaky breath of her own.

Oh, she dreaded. This is familiar.

It made sense, she guessed. Who else would have access to so many Aether Awakenings? Who else would conduct an experiment on this scale? Who else would have that lurking around?

Because that was what this was, wasn't it? That feeling. This was what she'd felt when Yakob was torn apart. This was what she'd felt when she and Bruno were left alone. This was what she'd felt when their world had ended for the first time.

This was the despair the Black Blur weaved.

"Okay," said Morgan behind her. "We turn around and try to find another route. Serena?"

"You guys go," Serena said firmly.

Set, already mid-escape, whipped his head around. "Are you crazy?!" he cried. "Were you not listening?"

"It's fine," Serena said calmly, planting a hand against the rocky wall. "I heard you. It's just…"

Violet Aether crackled, and she pulled free a sword of solid stone.

"...we and this thing have unfinished business."