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| − | [ST] Summer races through the half-darkened halls of the inappropriately named Sunlight, leaving a trail of blood on the glossy floors. Behind him, the shrieking of the creatures he so recently escaped echoes wildly.
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| − | [Summer] He keeps a hand to the nearest wall to keep himself upright, the other brandishing his axe. He was exhausted, and it seemed to weigh more in his hand than it ever had on his back, but he would rather die holding it.
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| − | [ST] Summer leaves a streak of blood behind him as he moves. Creatures howl behind him, and he hears the rapid pattering of their claws on the floor, the ceiling, within the walls. Ahead of him, a wall rises at the end of the hall, set with a single door. There are no stairs.
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| − | [Summer] He lurches forward, hunched over the wounds in his midsection. He keeps his head up, scanning the hall in front of him, especially the air duct openings, and ignoring the increasingly burning pain in his neck. He would have stood straight if he could, but his neck would have to do what his back couldn't. He needed to watch, to be able to meet whatever came for him properly.
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| − | [ST] Summer can't read the symbol on the door, but it has a panel alongside like all the others. The creatures continue to advance, shrieking in their bubbling voices.
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| − | [Summer] The door then. He laughs, telling himself that he is glad the others weren't there to whinge and moan over no choice at all.
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| − | [ST] (There is some sickness in you) Snowshine cautions as the door hisses open. (These creatures have a fierce sting)
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| − | [ST] The room beyond is well-lit by a series of glowpanels sunken into the ceiling. The ceiling is much taller here than elsewhere, and the room rises a good twenty or thirty feet into the air, with a set of stairs leading to another deck above. Consoles covered with screens and projections like the one from the refuge line the walls and form islands throughout the room.
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| − | [ST] The front wall of the room is vast and featureless. An image shimmers there, showing nothing but clouded ice. Behind Summer, a rack that reminds him a little of where deer are hung to bleed out rises halfway to the ceiling. A number of small structures like barrels of amnethyst about the size of a man's torso rest on the rack, and another rests on its side nearby.
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| − | [ST] The wall near where Summer entered is blackened as with fire. What appears to be a slightly bent spear of First-Age manufacture lies on the floor, forgotten.
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| − | [ST] Behind Summer, the door closes with a faint hiss, cutting off the moans and cries from outside.
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| − | [Summer] He sags against the door, gifting himself with a moments rest. Or two moments, perhaps. He wakes when his jaw hits his chest, and shoulders off the door in a sudden burst of panic. They were still after him, and if he slept, he couldn't stop them. His ear burned with cold. Snowshine must have been calling for him, but he had not been there to answer to him.
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| − | [Summer] Guilt lapped at the edges of the fear, but he would have to repay that respectlessness later. First, he had to barricade the door, or lock it, or something.
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| − | [Summer] The glowing symbols that had seemed harmless and annoying when Iscal was there to translate them seemed threatening now, somehow, leering with knowledge he needed and couldn't have, taunting.
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| − | [Summer] He knew enough about the door panels to know how to open the door, so he avoided that mechanism, trying out others, to see if anything seemed to do anything useful.
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| − | [ST] As Summer presses the buttons on the consoles, a klaxon begins to blare sharply from overhead. The tranquil orange text shifts, blazing a poisonous red. A feminine voice speaks calmly in a language he does not recognize.
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| − | [Summer] Good. it seemed to understand it was an emergency. Hopefully it was locking the room down, hopefully it wasn't just screeching and making the place even more interesting to the things outside. He glances around above the door, looking for air vents, or other entry points he would have to defend.
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| − | [ST] Summer spots a few vents, but they're extremely small. It's unlikely even one of these creatures could force their way through. He's reminded, perhaps, of the arrow slits in a Guild fortress-wagon. This room is obviously intended to be extremely secure. The scorch marks on the wall would indicate that whatever battle occurred in here previously occurred near the door.
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| − | [ST] (Your courage is dripping on the floor) Snowshine indicates cooly.
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| − | [Summer] He glances down. Snowshine was right, as he ever was. There was blood everywhere, and he hadn't been standing there very long, or at least he thought he hadn't. He needed to staunch the bleeding. Quickly, he was already feeling woozy, had already almost fallen asleep to die.
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| − | [ST] (I cannot bind it) the god says (Such is not my power. You cannot bind it, or you would have. Fire, then."
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| − | [Summer] He unwinds a scarf, a blazing yellow only slightly stained with blood, and shoves it into the deepest wound, the one weeping most steadily. He gasps at the pain, but perhaps it would help.
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| − | [Summer] He nods, making some sort of grunt in agreement, or acceptance. He had matches, that he had been saving for offerings to his god, but nothing to burn with them beyond scraps of cloth and silk. He glances around him. Something had burned hot around the door, a weapon obviously. He glances at the room behind to see if anything that seemed likely was still pointing that way.
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| − | [Summer] Or perhaps the spear-thing that was lying in the char, he picks it up, turning it about to see if there were any controls around it, or it it was just a spear. He keeps the tip pointed awahy from him cautiously as he does it.
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| − | [ST] (I am older than the Split-Striped Moose, little one) Snowshine says quietly. (This thing is known to me, from the ancient age. The fire spear.)
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| − | [ST] Quietly and imperiously, Snowshine instructs Summer on the device and its uses.
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| − | [Summer] He grins fiercely. "It will burn for you, enemies and offerings, and first my flesh." He slides his finger through the groove controlling the flames, and watches the tip glow a cherry red, then brighten to a white appropriate to a weapon sworn to Snowshine, small flames licking from the head. This would hurt.
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| − | [Summer] He sits against the wall, and bites down on a packstrap, as the doctors had always told him to do. He guides the spear in carefully as he could, not wanting to harm himself any farther than he had to, the heat of the tip already almost unbearable. As it sizzled into his wound, he screamed, the strap falling uselessly out of his mouth.
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| − | [ST] Eventually, his heart hammering wildly, Summer drifts back to himself. The searing pain on his back is no pleasant sensation, but the bleeding stops. As the ringing fades from his ears, he realizes that something is pounding on the door outside. Guttural moaning drifts from the room's small ventilation grilles.
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| − | [Summer] He managed to keep his hand steady, willpower stopping him from disemboweling himself by twitching.
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| − | [Summer] He levers himself to his feet with the spear. He would have to defend himself if they broke through, and so had to be awake for at least a few minutes yet. The spear was still hot, almost scaldingly so, but he needed to lean on something to stay upright, so he chose pain rather than being a helpless heap on the floor. He paced back from the door a few steps, and waited, watching it.
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| − | [ST] It was only a matter of time until it happened - eventually, one of the things' uncoordinated flailing strikes the panel near the door - it opens with a hiss to the bride and groom from before, and behind them, the skulking form of the child thing.
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| − | [Summer] He smiles to himself, and to Snowshine. He would get to die fighting at least. "I will kill you, all three of you," he quietly promises the young lovers and the child they had brought with them, as they wail horribly and rush for him.
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| − | [Summer] He moves back as fast as he can, trying to ready the spear and unfamiliar with it. He wastes another moment making sure his finger was over the correct control. He wouldn't have time for a second try after they overran him.
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| − | [ST] The child chitters in frustration as the couple fill the door before it. The silken tie holding them together is snapped, but a webbing of flesh and cartilage has formed between them, joining them tightly together. They advance on Summer, tentacles poised to strike.
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| − | [ST] The bridge lurches forward, a bone-tipped weapon arcing directly for Summer's heart. Even as he sees death flashing before his eyes, however, the groom stumbles, staggering, and the bride falls with him, causing the deadly attack to miss by the briefest of margins.
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| − | [Summer] This would be his only chance. He levels the spear, and flicks his finger through the 'fan' groove, hoping that the flames would always come from the spearhead.
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| − | [Summer] Their words, and designs, thoughts and bedroom amusements might be unintelligible, but whoever had built the ship had understood the simplicity necessary for weapons. Flame burst from the tip, bright, beautiful, and deadly. He grins as he plays the spear over the howling creatures.
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| − | [ST] Flames lick over the creatures, which give a sudden, keening wail. The groom is largely free of the flames, but the bride catches and begins to burn, giving off a terrible smell. The child is similarly doused. All of them begin to retreat slightly, howling.
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| − | [Summer] They shrink back, the outer skin crisping nicely, but the spear coughs out too soon, and tendrils of growth spear nthrough the charred top-skin fast enough to make it obvious that none of the things was severely hurt. He back up again, playing for time.
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| − | [ST] As the couple burns, the child-creature skitters past them, intent on striking Summer down.
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| − | [ST] The tentacle hammers him, but his armor holds, blunting the strike that would have claimed his life once more. Still burning, the bride and groom advance, lashing out in tandem towards the gravely wounded Summer.
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| − | [Summer] He could hardly move, his strength and speed having flowed from him with all the blood
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| − | [Summer] He was waddling backwards as fast as he could without tipping onto his back, but it was hardly enough. The bride's tentacle caught him in the side of the neck, not a grievous wound, but one that bled fast.
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| − | [ST] (Get up) Snowshine demands, his voice haughty and uncaring. (Fight! Smite them! Strike them down! You are a killer with flame touched hands! You...) His voice seems to be growing fainter.
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| − | [Summer] He could feel himself bleeding, the room slowly closing around him, except that nothing was moving as it happened. He must be collapsing in moments, or the things would be on him already. He was grinning still, although his eyes were pained. It was a better way to die than some, better than becoming one of them, but he would have to ensure that he wouldn't. He wouldn't let them defile his corpse, or lock his spirit in this metal coffin.
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| − | [Summer] With his last strength he clamps his finger tight over the fire-groove, pulling the spear to him as he fell, nuzzling to it. The flames blasted out under his chin, taking thought with them, as his body fell onto the bride-groom flesh bridge, tangling them with him, and burning them all.
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| − | [ST] Summer hears the screams of the children once more as the flames settle over them. The night air hot with flames, Lynx's cries, the tents flaming up, and then, a growing darkness.
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| − | [Summer] They hit the ground heavily, spear trapped under him, and on top of writhing flesh, with its controls firmly help on. Flames roasted them, shot from gaps in their bodies as the bridegroom jerked under his dad weight, licking everything in the vicinity, until the spear, too, died, coughing to an end.
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| − | -----
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| − | [ST] Within the farms, the trickling sound of the nutrient water system is omnipresent. Soldas has dozed off, slumbering more out of exhaustion than peace. Rashalla and Leaping Stag look to Iscal, their eyes questioning.
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| − | [ST] "Well," Stag asks at last. "What now?"
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal looks back at them, his shoulders hunched defensively. "Now..." He shrugs. "The others got out after they entered an emergency override to the bridge. To end the quarantine, we'll need more power- that means messing about with one of the broken engines. Just to get out..maybe we can perform another emergency override."
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| − | [ST] "He's in no fit state to make it to the bridge," Stag says, nodding at Soldas. "The kid shouldn't go either."
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| − | [ST] "I ain't a fucking wet nurse, Blondie," Rashalla cuts in, blowing a puff of air over her lip. "So you can forget me staying here with 'em."
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| − | [Iscal] He wouldn't leave Soldas with her in any case. "They'll be safe enough in here," Iscal hopes. If they could turn off the poison gas, they might last longer.
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| − | [Iscal] He looks at Soldas, who was less sleeping than unconscious. "Stag should watch them."
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| − | [ST] "Fine," he nods. "The two of you are going to the bridge, then?"
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| − | [Iscal] He could keep the red woman beween him and the monsters, but three weren't much more effective against a horde of them than two, as he and SUmmer had demonstrated.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal nods hollowly.
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| − | [ST] "The gas down there has been getting worse," Stag says. "It's not going to be easy to breathe."
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| − | [Iscal] "Is the gas flammable?"
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| − | [ST] "More of those things down there than almost anywhere else," Rashalla adds. "They love it."
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| − | [ST] "No," Stag says. "It won't smother a flame, but it doesn't take to it any better than air does."
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| − | [Iscal] "Know where it's coming from?"
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| − | [ST] "They make it," Miro, the boy says, entering the conversation. "From bodies. They b-build them on the wall like w-wasp's nests..."
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| − | [Iscal] "How grotesque," Iscal says mildly, sounding for a moment like the scholar from Forks he is.
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| − | [ST] "It's completely overwhelmed the lower levels, which they have heavily infested." Stag is interrupted by a loud, wet pounding on the door outside. "Not that we don't have enough up here," he finishes with a grim smile.
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| − | [Iscal] He supposed they couldn't vent it all to a sealed room and lock the door after them. "Know any special ways to the bridge?"
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| − | [Iscal] He purses his lips in annoyance at the sound of the door. "Perhaps you should get that."
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal flinches at the pounding on the door. "Or ways out of here, for that matter?"
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| − | [ST] "If it's all the same, I'll pass," Stag says. "As for ways to the bridge... well, it's one deck down and straight ahead, but you won't be alone down there. You might meet less of the creatures in the ventilation system, but the ones you do meet you will meet... intimately."
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| − | [Iscal] "Rashalla can go first." He grins at her, but the grin does not reach his eyes. He did not forget how she had looked at him, or forgive.
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| − | [ST] "I guess that's why they call you the coward, eh?" She smiles back, equally cold.
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| − | [Iscal] "Guess so. I'll guard your back, of course."
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| − | [ST] Stag glances between the two, not liking the interplay. Outside, the pounding and snarling continues. Miro curls up in the corner, trembling.
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| − | [Iscal] If she were what he thought she was, she would pick up on the implied threat. If not...well. "We'd better go."
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| − | [ST] "They'll give up, eventually," Stag says. "If you can't wait, you can go through the vents over there. The farms operate on a closed system, with only one shaft leading out. You might have to crawl through the fire."
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| − | [Iscal] "That's what winter gear is for." Iscal improvises a breathing mask by ripping off a bit of his shirt that's cleaner than the rest and dampening it.
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| − | [ST] "Not a bad idea," Rashalla acknowledges, doing the same. There's plenty of nutrient rich-water available. She leads the way over to a conspicuous black hole in the wall, the entrance to the ventilation system.
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| − | [Iscal] "Ladies first," Iscal says courteously.
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| − | [ST] "Seen any around here?" Rashalla says, resting a hand on his shoulder in a manner that is not quite companionable. "Got a light?"
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| − | [Iscal] His shoulder twitches under hand. He looks away so she won't see his eyes and digs out the bit of glow solution. "Smear this on something, and it will glow," he says quietly.
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| − | [ST] A short sword nestles at her hip, but she chooses a knife instead, smearing it with the photo-resonant gel until it gleams. "Pretty stuff," She says. "Hope it works."
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| − | [ST] The tall woman has to contort herself to fit into the small gap leading into the vents, but once within she seems to crawl easily enough. Soon, Iscal is watching the scuffed soles of her boots vanish into the darkness.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal follows her, his own cudgel glowing eerily in the darkness behind him. There was no need to crawl backwards yet, though he would when they entered a vent from which a monster might attack from behind.
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| − | [ST] The photo-resonant gel casts odd, blue-tinged fairylight, throwing odd shadows across the wall. Iscal is aware of passing open tunnels to either side, but Stag said that this was a closed system. The smell of smoke is heavy and choking in the air, and his improvised mask turns out to be useful sooner than he had perhaps expected.
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| − | [ST] The passage begins to climb slightly. Ahead, Rashalla is barely visible as a pair of moving boots and a rounded rump.
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| − | [ST] "Like what you see?" She calls back. "We're getting close to the fire."
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| − | [ST] Ahead, flickering orange light wars with the blue-green of the gel. Rashalla stops suddenly.
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| − | [Iscal] "What?"
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| − | [ST] "Hey, I don't make a habit of crawling through fire, all right. Give me a second."
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| − | [ST] Smoke wafts back, stinging the eyes. If it wasn't for the fact that most of it was flowing in other directions, it would be very easy to suffocate here.
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| − | [ST] "Now!" Rashalla grunts, crawling forward rapidly. Heat licks back as she moves forward past flickering flames.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal pulls his leather coat up around this face, tucks his hands in his pockets, and surges after her. Fire licks tauntingly at shielded arms and face, like tendrils of Red's hair.
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| − | [Iscal] He pushes through the searing heat of the flames on a heady mix of adrenaline and fear. At least Rashalla had pushed aside the burning logs that lay directly in their path; he knocks them further away with his elbow. At the other end, he collapses for a few seconds, panting harshly.
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| − | [ST] "Fuck goddammit piss fuck FUCK!" Rashalla moans ahead of Iscal as she bats at a few flames that caught on her jacket. Iscal can smell her hair burning.
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| − | [Iscal] Bits of his face are hot and pink. He grins, almost a rictus. Maybe now he wasn't so pretty. He squirms forward to lay next to her and extinguishes the fire in her hair with one of his gloves.
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| − | [Iscal] "Ready to go on?" he asks her after they lay there together a few moments, uncomfortably close.
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| − | [ST] "Thanks," she grunts out, like it's a curse. She rests for a moment before continuing onward. "Let's go. We'll head forward one of the main shafts and then head down. Be sure to watch my back like you said."
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| − | [ST] With another grunt, she squeezes past him and moves further down the passage.
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| − | [Iscal] He follows her, twisting around at the next intersection so that he crawled backwards, one hand on his truncheon. At least they wouldn't be able to come up unnoticed from behind.
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| − | [ST] The tunnels echo with the sound of far off screams and shuffling, and glottal, wet sounds unlike anything Iscal has heard before. Behind him, he can hear Rashalla's labored breathing. Passages pass by on either side, occasionally rattling with motion.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal shudders and keeps his sweaty grip on his truncheon. The screams were louder, awfuler, when they echoed through the vents, he decided. He wondered if Summer was one of the screamers.
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| − | [ST] Iscal sees it just before he moves far back enough that it would be outside the light. From one of the side passages, a slithering thing emerges, a slender man made grotesque in death, his arms and legs broken and warped back into his body mass so that he slithers, limbless, like an eel. Iscal watches him come. He had dark hair, dark eyes. Like Soldas.
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| − | [ST] The thing's head splits in half horizontally, revealing a maw lined hundreds of jagged teeth. It moans softly as it advances towards Iscal.
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| − | [Iscal] It wasn't Soldas. It didn't come from the right direction, and he had treated Soldas's wounds. He bares his teeth at it, though they were less impressive by far than the ..thing's. "One is coming," he says softly to Rashella.
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| − | [ST] "Got one on this end too," she says, backing up slightly. Their heels touch. "You can take care of yours?"
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| − | [Iscal] "Sure," he says, his face white. He superimposes Ragged Red's face on it as it comes close, but it's no good - it keeps slipping back to look like Soldas again. He clutches his truncheon and braces himself against the wall.
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| − | [ST] The thing advances on Iscal, snapping its mandibles. Blackish ichor slops over its steeth and onto the metallic floor of the vent as it lunges, trying to bite off his face.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal fends it off with his truncheon and jabs awkwardly forward, sweeping his truncheon more as a spiked saber than a club- there was no room to use it properly. There is a hollow crashing noise as he misses his first swing and hits the vent.
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| − | [Iscal] His second connects, but not solidly. Still, he hears a grunt that might have indicated pain in a person.
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| − | [ST] The thing lunges over the top of Iscal's truncheon, mouth opening wide. A barbed tongue emerges, darting at Iscal's eyes hungrily.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal ducks his head, a special spike of horror mixing with his fear. He couldn't bear the touch of its tongue. Would not.
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| − | [Iscal] He smashes his club forward again, driving the spike between the thing's rows of teeth.
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| − | [ST] The teeth go skittering across the vent. The thing's tongue curls around the truncheon as it moans, a strangled, glottal sound. Behind him, Iscal is jarred by the desperate movements of Rashalla's body. She's fighting hard, and if her swearing is any indication, not particularly successfully.
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| − | [Iscal] A gout of toxic fluid follows when he draws his truncheon back from the blow. Iscal grimaces.
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| − | [ST] Rashalla lunges back, her booted heel catching Iscal in the back of the thigh. As he pitches forward, the creature surges, almost on top of him in the reeking confines of the tunnel. Ichor drips from its fangs to splash on his face.
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| − | [Iscal] Close enough to kiss. Iscal thrusts upward with his truncheon, operating now not on the basis of any training or skill, but sheer, raw panic.
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| − | [ST] "Fuck! OFF!" Rashalla shouts, stabbing wildly at the thing in front of her. Its screams grow increasingly faint.
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| − | [Iscal] He screams when the head sags against him, and then...rolls away. In his mindless, crazed fear, he had torn it from its body.
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| − | [ST] "Mine's... done..." Rashalla says, exhaling raggedly. She continues to stab the mass in front of her.
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| − | [Iscal] With a taste of vomit in his throat, Iscal kicks at the pulped body into until's some ways down the corridor again.
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| − | [Iscal] "Mine too," he gasps. He follows her example, crushing his into finer bits of pulp.
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| − | [Iscal] "You get hurt?"
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| − | [ST] "No." There's a moment of silence. "You?"
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| − | [Iscal] "No." He wasn't lying, but no way to tell if she was. "Lets go."
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| − | [ST] "Good. We're gonna have to crawl past it." She kicks back, only half playfully, catching him in the ass. "Don't get any in your mouth, pretty."
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| − | [ST] Before he can reply, she is moving forward past the creature she slew.
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| − | [Iscal] Iscal is conscious of a savage wish that she had been wounded. Watching her turn it one of them could only be a pleasure.
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| − | [Iscal] He continues his crawl backward, turning his head to wriggle past the thing she had killed.
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| − | [ST] Blood and ichor coat the entirety of the vent where Rashalla had her brief knife fight with the thing. There's not much of it left, but Iscal can tell from the rapidly reforming face that it was a woman. Some of the gelatinous worm stuff flexes briefly against his face.
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| − | [Iscal] He flinches away and covers his face with a bit of his jacket.
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| − | [ST] Behind him, he feels a sudden rush of air, and is aware of a space opening up. Rashalla places a hand on his buttock as he emerges to stop him from crawling backwards off a ledge. Or so she says.
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| − | [ST] The pair stand on a small ledge within a cylindrical shaft several yards across. The shaft rises above their heads and extends below them, and both above and below Iscal can spot other ledges.
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| − | [ST] "Looks like someone got here before us," Rashalla comments. A pair of severed legs lie nearby, dressed in woolen trousers and rugged boots. The cloying scent of peppermint rises from them.
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| − | [Iscal] He eyes first her, then the shaft. "This is how we came in. The ice opened ..way up there. It shut and- you see the result."
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| − | [Iscal] He gestures to the remains of his comrade.
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| − | [Iscal] "They don't like the cold. Maybe..maybe we could bring Soldas and the kid here. If we could find a good source of heat, we could carve a tunnel up..."
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| − | [Iscal] It would take too long. The gas would get them.
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| − | [ST] "Up there, huh?" Rashalla looks upwards, wistfully. "Seems close, doesn't it? Maybe we should go bang on the door. Think they'd let us out?"
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| − | [Iscal] Why had the ice opened?
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| − | [Iscal] "Doubt it."
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| − | [Iscal] Who had opened it? And where had the bastard gone?
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| − | [ST] "Yeah, well. I've never met anyone from the Fourth Scale I liked anyway. Except you." Her smile is an ugly thing.
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