Valiant: Tales From The Archive

[CURSEd #27: The Lies We Wear]

Log Date: 12/9/12764

Data Sources: Darrow Bennion, Ilyana Kemaim

Event Log: Darrow Bennion

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“More sweet tea?”

I pull a sharp breath, looking up to find a slim lady leaning down near me, with a teapot in hand. She has a kindly smile, and wavy blue hair down to her midback; she’s in a bright yellow sundress, and her skin is tanned by the summer rays. She looks like a young housewife, or something like that.

I blink a couple times, then look down and see that I do in fact have a teacup and saucer in my hands. Simple ceramic design, monocolor, none of that gaudy floral stuff. And it is empty, with little traces of sugar and tea left in the bottom. “Oh… I guess I must’ve… drank it all.” I mumble.

“Indeed you did.” she says, tilting the teapot to pour more of the honeygold tea into my cup. “Seems you enjoy it almost as much as your friends do.”

“I could go for some more if you’re pouring, ‘Rina.” Kwyn says brightly, raising her cup. She’s sitting on the recliner that’s caddycorner to the couch I’m currently on, and it looks like she’s happy and enjoying herself. “I’m normally not one for tea, but this is really good!”

“Of course, darling.” Rina says, moving over to pour Kwyn some more tea. “Have you found anything you’d like to try out?”

“Oh yeah! There’s some outfits in here I’d really like to try, if you’ve got them.” Kwyn says, glancing at the data slate in her hand.

“Everything in the catalogue should be available in the dressing room.” Rina says, nodding across the living room to an open door and a room that looks like it’s got lots of mirrors and racks. “Go on, don’t be shy! You can try on whatever you want, darling. Be whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy.”

Kwyn beams, carefully holding her tea as she stands, so it doesn’t slosh. “Thank you so much!” She glances at me. “You should find something to wear too, Dare! I can help you pick something out if you don’t know what to settle on.” She bobs her head towards the data slate that’s sitting on the coffee table in front of me.

“Oh, yeah, yeah. I guess I… should, shouldn’t I.” I say slowly, staring at the data slate, which looks like it’s got a catalogue of clothes I can pick from. Everything from the conventional to casual to skimpy to formal to fancy.

“You should! If you don’t pick something, I’ll pick something for you!” she says as she prances off towards the dressing room, somehow without spilling her tea.

“Ilyana dear, how about you?” Rina calls towards the balcony along the far side of the living room. I turn on the couch to see that there’s a hammock strung across the railing of the balcony and one of the branches that crosses over it. “More tea, or is the sunbasking good enough for you?”

A hand rises from the hammock, one I recognize as Whisper’s, and gives a thumbs-up, before dropping back down again.

“Seems like the sunbasking is good enough for her. No surprises there; cats like to soak in the sun.” Rina says, before turning to me. “You okay, love? You seem a little out of sorts.”

I glance up at her and give a quick smile. “Sorry, I… I guess I feel a little foggy. Not sure why.” I look back down at the data slate, rubbing my neck. “Not sure why.”

Rina sets down the teapot and sits beside me. “Maybe you’re tired, or just aren’t hydrated enough. Why don’t you drink your tea, take it easy for a bit.” She nods to the data slate. “Take a look through the catalogue, see if there’s something you like in there. Maybe you’ll find something to wear that’ll impress Kwyn.”

“You think so?” I say, reaching out to pick up the data slate.

“I think Kwyn likes you more than she realizes. She just needs a reason to see it.” Rina says, patting me on the shoulder before standing. “Pick something to wear. If you can’t settle on anything, let me know, and I can point you to something that I know she’ll like on you.”

With that, she stands and makes her way back around the couch, heading to the adjoined kitchen. Left to my own devices, I look at the data slate and some of the costumes on it. As my eyes stray across the screen, for a second I think I see a sturdy, muscled man with tribal tattoos in one of the islander outfits, waving both hands at me. There's a sudden, sharp pain in my head, and I wince, blinking a couple times; when I look again, the screen is back to normal. Just outfits displayed on mannequins.

Furrowing my brow, I glance down at the teacup in my hand, then take a sip from it. The lingering pain in my head starts to ease up, and after a moment to savor the golden taste, I take another sip, letting out a relieved sigh as the pain recedes further.

Resting the data slate on my knee, I start swiping through the outfits, occasionally sipping from my tea as I look for one that Kwyn might like.

Event Log: Ilyana Kemaim

Avvikerene: The Decadent Forest

12/4/12764 11:54am SGT

“Did we really have to kill him?”

Even though Kwyn is the one asking the question, I know Dare is thinking the same thing as I use a large, droopy leave to wipe the blood off my sword. Once it’s clean, I turn around to face the pair of them. “What part of ‘paralytic darts’ do you not understand?”

Kwyn shrugs uneasily, avoiding direct eye contact. “I mean yeah, it’s not great, but it wasn’t like he was trying to kill us.”

“Death is not the worst thing that can happen to you here. It’s actually considered a mercy next to some of the other things that can happen to you.” I say, checking the blade for any blood streaks I missed. “Besides, he was one of Sundew’s thralls. If we let him live, he would’ve given away our location.”

“But unless she was close by, it would’ve taken him a while to report back to her, right?” Dare asks. “We would’ve been long gone from this part of the forest by then.”

“No. Siren sylvans are linked to their thralls.” I say, using the booted foot of my suit to flip over the corpse. I use the tip of my sword to tap the large blue flower in his hair. “That’s a sylvan siren flower. It’s always nestled in the hair just above the ear. The petals are so large that you can’t see the roots.” I use the flat of the blade to fold back the petal just above his ear, revealing a tight, formfitting set of smooth, thin roots tucked behind it, coming over the top and bottom of his ear and winding neatly into his ear canal, with enough open space left to still allow sound in. “They put a seed in your ear, and it grows over the course of a month. Once the seed germinates, it produces a local anesthetic allows the roots to bore through your tympanic membrane over time without too much discomfort. The roots grow further down your ear canal, and eventually into your brain, while the stem grows outward, curls up over top your ear, and blooms into a flower over the end of the month. The flower grows a second root system to anchor itself in your hair, and uses nutrients from the host to sustain itself. All the while, the roots produce chemicals that go straight to your brain to make sure you remain compliant with the sylvan, and that bigass flower acts like a magical radar dish that facilitates psychic communication between a sylvan and their thralls. Most siren sylvans can issue orders to thralls up to ten, twenty miles away. The most powerful have a communication range of hundreds of miles.”

Kwyn’s wrapped her arms around herself, growing visibly uncomfortable as I explain how sylvans seed their thralls. “That’s… oh. Ugh. That makes my skin crawl. Having a seed grow into your ear and spread roots into your brain? That’s just all sorts of… ugh.”

“Well, at least he’s dead and he can’t report back to Sundew.” Dare says heavily.

“With thralls, it’s not over until you kill the flower.” I say, letting the petal flop back into place. “The host might be dead, but the flower’s still alive. It can consume the body to root itself and form a corpse rose, or if Sundew wants, she can have the roots extend into the central nervous system, so she can get the body up and moving again, and use it for god only knows what.”

“Like a flower zombie.” Kwyn says, staring at me in disbelief.

“You’re the one that said it, not me.” I say, getting a grip on my sword and jabbing it into the center of the blue flower on the corpse’s head. “Zoha.” Flames race along the blade, and soon the fleshy blue petals start to blacken and char as the smell of burning hair and skin rises into the air. I don’t pull my blade away until the flower’s been reduced to a blackened scorch mark, and the roots connecting it to the ear have been reduced to charcoal. “With any thrall we encounter, we’ll need to cut off and kill the flowers. Burn them if possible. It’s not enough to just kill the thrall.”

“Is it possible to remove the flower without killing the host?” Dare asks, circling around the partially burned host. With his helm deployed, we can’t see his face, so we have to take our cues from the tone of his voice.

“Technically? Yes. Are we equipped to do that? No.” I answer, putting out the flames on my sword and sheathing it again. “Removing a siren flower requires literal brain surgery because you have roots, in your brain, that need to be extracted. Plus you need an ear doctor to make sure the brain surgeon isn’t doing permanent damage to the ear canal while the flower’s being removed. It’s a messy surgery, it’s expensive, and it should only be done by experts. If we try it, we’ll just end up giving the thralls brain damage, or hearing loss, or both.”

“So we just have to kill the thralls we come across? There’s no saving them?” Kwyn asks.

“Even if we could, a fair number of them wouldn’t want to be saved. Some of them chose this.” I say, turning and starting to march through the knee-high ferns again. “So yes. If we come across any of Sundew’s thralls and they try to capture, harm, or impede us, we kill them. Leaving them alive to report back to her would be a mistake, and saving them from their condition is not something we’re equipped to do.”

“I feel like I’m in a zombie movie that got stuck in a greenhouse for too long.” Dare mutters, the whirring of his suit’s servos picking up speed as moves to follow me. “So how many thralls does Sundew have in the forest? If you had to take a wild guess.”

“Hundreds. Possibly thousands.” I reply without hesitation. “She will seed anyone that wanders too deep into her territory that is interesting, or even vaguely useful. Siren sylvans are usually picky about their thralls, but Sundew is an Avvikerene sylvan. She has an extensive capacity to reshape the bodies and minds of her thralls, moreso than sylvans from other worlds. You have less reason to be picky when you can just turn a person into whatever you want them to be.” I look over my shoulder at this point. “Keep up, Kwyn. You’re supposed to be in the middle.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” she says, picking up the pace to trot past Dare and fall into place behind me. There’s been an unspoken agreement between Dare and myself that we’d keep Kwyn where she’d be the safest. Out loud, we’d reasoned that I could trailblaze the front since I was familiar with the environment, Dare could bring up the rear since attacking such a tanky suit of power armor was unwise, and Kwyn could remain in the middle as the mapholder and navigator.

As expected, she was okay with it, probably because we’d given her something to do and she felt like she was being helpful. That was the key to satiating her, I’d found; so long as she felt like she was contributing in a meaningful way, she was a happy camper. Letting her be involved and useful got you a lot of mileage with Kwyn; after Dare had told me she was mad at us for not letting her know that Dare had the Spark, I’d realized that being part of the group and feeling included was important to her. The feeling of belonging and peer validation mattered a lot more to her than she would’ve admitted.

“So I suppose if we’re coming across her thralls, we’re getting close to her territory, or we’re already in it?” Dare asks as we wind our way through the trees and ferns.

“We’re already in it. The entire forest is her territory, all the way up to the walls of the outpost.” I say, batting aside a fern that arches at about head height. “She just doesn’t usually come within a few miles of the outpost, though she could if she wanted to. That’s the tacit agreement — the first few miles around the outpost are safe-ish for the harvesters to do their work, and beyond that, it gets steadily more dangerous as you get deeper and deeper into her territory.”

“Why would anyone go beyond the first few miles, then?” Dare asks.

“Because that’s where the rare plants, exotic animals, and larger deposits of valuable stuff are. More risk, more reward.” I explain. “It’s a game to her. Tempting adventurers and harvesters to go a little deeper to grab what they want. Lure them in so she and her thralls can get a good look at them, and if they see something they like, try to either seduce them further into the forest, or capture them outright.”

“But aren’t the thralls under her control?” Kwyn asks. “Why would it matter what they like?”

“They may be under her control, but they’re still individuals.” I say, pausing and taking a roundabout path around a stretch of forest that’s too open for my liking. “They’re cognizant; have their own likes, dislikes, personality, preferences, desires, though their bodies and minds have often been reshaped and tweaked by Sundew to make them more to her liking. Only the dead ones are flower zombies; the living ones are capable of independent action, adaptive thinking, socializing, trickery, and manipulation. Just because they’ve got a flower in their hair doesn’t mean you should underestimate them — they are far from mindless drones, and Sundew does try to keep them happy and satiated.”

“So it’s like a… brainwashed cult.” Dare says. “A bunch of people, all answering to one person, living under the influence of that person’s beliefs and philosophy.”

“She’d bristle at that description, but essentially yes.”

“How do you know so much about Sundew?” Kwyn asks.

“It’s none of your business, Kwyn.”

The conversation dies with that; I have a suspicion that Kwyn might be glancing back at Dare, and Dare might be silently signaling her to drop it, but I don’t look back. I’m putting it from my mind, keeping our mission front and center; now wasn’t the time to get bothered about what people thought about me. I could worry about my ego once we’d grabbed the artifact and gotten out of here.

Until then, all that mattered was surviving Avvikerene.

Event Log: Darrow Bennion

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“Can’t settle on anything?”

I look up as Rina sits down beside me. Her hands are still slightly damp from washing dishes in the kitchen, but her demeanor is pleasant and relaxed. She’s been a good host — remarkably patient and attentive, ensuring that we’re comfortable and at ease.

I give an apologetic shrug. “I suppose not.” I say, tilting the data slate a little. “I mean, I really don’t… dress up very often, I suppose. A few formal outfits for work and solemn occasions, and then my dress uniform for work and dignitary events, but outside of that I just suppose I’ve… never really give much thought to what I wear on my own time, besides a t-shirt and jeans. I don’t even know what I’d look good in. Probably wouldn’t even know how to wear some of it.”

“The archetypal male, then?” Rina says, smiling somewhat. “Not much for clothes, that’s a girls’ thing?”

“Well, I mean— not really, or not intentionally, you know?” I say, trying to scram together words to express something I’d never really thought about. “Like, clothes just never really… like, they’re not really my thing?”

“Oh?” Rina says, raising her eyebrows in amusement. “So you’re a nudist, then.”

“No! No no no! That’s not what I meant! Not how I meant it!” I say quickly. “Like, what I meant is that I don’t think about what I wear. I just wear what I wear, and that’s all there is to it. So long as the clothes are comfortable and they can handle whatever I’m doing, I don’t really look for much more than that.”

“You’ve never spent time ruminating on whether your clothes will make you look desirable?” Rina asks, folding one hand over the other.

“Not really? For formal events, I suppose I pay attention to that, but as an everyday thing, no, I don’t really think about whether my clothes will make me look good.” I admit. “I suppose that is kind of the archetypal male, isn’t it. Focused on practical things instead of appearance.”

“Nothing wrong with that. We don’t get to choose what we’re born as. Or how we’re raised.” Rina says mildly. “If you had the choice, would you change what you are?”

I glance at her, then back at the data slate, then back at her again, trying to figure out if I’m reading her question correctly. “…are you asking if I would change my sex if I could?”

She shrugs. “Sex. Or your species, or maybe your height, or body type, or eye color, or anything, really. Would you change any of it, if you had the opportunity to do so?”

I don’t answer that right away, pondering it now that I know how open-ended the question is. “I… well, I’d never really thought about that, I suppose. I mean, I’ve thought about it, I’m sure everyone has, but never seriously, because it’s not really possible in a lot of cases, you know? It’s not something you really give serious thought to.”

Rina tilts her head to one side, studying me with ocean eyes. “Why not give serious thought to it now? As a conversation piece, or a thought experiment. If you were able to change anything about yourself, would you do so?”

I set the data slate down properly, taking a sip from my teacup as I mull Rina’s question over. “Anything, hmm? That’s a big question.” I look down at myself, taking in my arms, my legs, my body, all of it generally well-exercised, fit and trim, which was mostly a result of staying in shape for my job as a Peacekeeper. And the same physical fitness largely held true of other Peacekeepers as well, if the beach party had been any indication. I suppose there wasn’t anything altogether objectionable about my body, but something wriggled at the back of my mind, a reminder of something that had always bothered me when I looked at CURSE’s roster and ranks.

“I suppose…” I begin slowly, a little hesitant to admit it.

Rina gives me a moment to answer, and when I don’t say anything, she speaks. “That you’ve always felt you’re a little boring as a human?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” I say, surprised.

She shrugs. “I can sense these kinds of things. But I understand; humans are the most common race in the galaxy, besides the Collective. And humans don’t really have anything to set them apart, aside from their short lives and their rate of reproduction, so I can understand feeling a little bit disappointed by being human.”

“I mean, I know I shouldn’t feel disappointed about being a human.” I say quickly. “Since we’re the most common race in the galaxy, we’ve got a lot of privileges. There’s a lot of doors that are open to us, a lot of opportunities that other races don’t get as often as we do. But at the same time, like…”

“You just feel so plain?” Rina guesses.

“Yeah.” I sigh. “Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? One of the most privileged species in the galaxy, but I don’t appreciate it because I feel plain. Uninteresting. I must sound like a spoiled brat.”

“I think it’s understandable.” Rina offers. “You want to be more than just the default. Nobody likes feeling like they’re the most common denominator. You want a distinct identity, rather than being part of the faceless crowd.”

“Yeah, I think that is part of it.” I say, working through her words, and finding they do describe large parts of what I feel. “It doesn’t come up often, but when it does, I find myself wishing I could have something… well, something to set me apart from everyone else that says ‘this is what I am, this is what I can do differently that nobody else can do’. Hell, I wouldn’t mind being human so long as it was a different type of human, one that could actually do something. Kwyn’s human, but she can use magic; Headache’s human, but she’s a psion; Surge is human, but he’s got powers. Me, though? I’m just the most boring, basic variety of human there is. No powers, just straight up, boring human.”

“So what would you choose to be, then? What do you want to be?” Rina asks, leaning forward by resting her forearms on her knees.

I cup my free hand around my teacup as I think about that. “That’s… well, I don’t know, really. I’ve always known that I wanted to be something more, to feel unique, but I hadn’t really thought about what I would be if I could be whatever I wanted. Mostly because I couldn’t be whatever I wanted, so there was no use fantasizing over something I couldn’t have.”

“Well, I’m giving you permission to fantasize now.” Rina says with a smile. “Dream away, to your heart’s wildest desire. What would you be, if you could be whatever you wanted to be?”

“Hmm. Well…” I say as I start mulling it over. I don’t feel rushed to answer, and so I don’t answer right away as consider the scale of the question. “…it really isn’t as easy a question as it seems, is it? You can be whatever you want… but you have to know what you want first. You have to know yourself, and know what you desire.” I go quiet for a bit more, then: “I suppose… I would be interested in experiencing life differently. So perhaps I’d want to be a wereckanan, like Whisper. Able to morph into a different creature, to experience life in a different form, but to be able to shift back and appear human for the times when I need to. Plus, wereckanan live a long time.”

“They do.” Rina agrees. “So wereckanan, then. What kind? Do you know the different types?”

“Oh, that’s a good point. There are lots of different morph types, aren’t there?” I say, sipping from my tea. “So many to pick from. There really are a lot of different options.”

Rina hooks an arm over the back of the couch, smiling at that. “How about Dalayu? You could be a wolf. I think it suits a brave, dutiful young man like yourself, and it would give you something in common with Kwyn.”

“A wolf, huh?” I say, likewise leaning back on the couch. “I didn’t want to say it because it felt a little vanilla, but if you think so, I guess it isn’t so bad.” I glance towards the dressing room. “And yeah, it would give me something in common with Kwyn.”

Rina notices the look. “You desire her.” she observes.

I shift a little uncomfortably at that. I’d been expecting Rina to take a different tack, a more teasing you like her, but her choice of words feels more direct. It gets at an underlying, unspoken truth that goes unsaid, even though we all know about it. “Well, yeah, I mean… I imagine many people do. She’s attractive.”

“Very.” Rina agrees. “But you don’t act on it.”

“She’s interested in someone else.” I answer. It’s become my go-to deflection at this point, an unexpected defense that I find myself using pretty often.

“I know.” Rina says mildly. “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t interested in you.”

I blink a couple times. “What do you… what do you mean by that?”

Rina cocks her head to the side. “You know it’s possible to be interested in multiple people at once, right?”

“I— well, yeah, but you can’t pursue multiple interests simultaneously.” I reason.

“Why not?” Rina asks without hesitation.

“Well, it’s, it’s… most people are monogamous.” I stammer.

“Most. Not all.” Rina says. “And there’s nothing wrong with trying out new things, is there?”

“I mean— theoretically speaking, no, but— I don’t think Kwyn’s the type of person to pursue multiple relationships at once…” I say, fumbling through my words.

Rina’s head remains tilted to one side. “Why don’t we ask her?”

A chill shoots up my back. “Oh no, no, I could never. She’d look at me weird until the end of time.”

There’s that smile again. “That’s okay. You don’t have to. I can ask her for you.”

I sit forward a little. “Oh no, you really don’t have to—”

“It’s okay. I want to know too.” Rina says easily. “And I think her answer will not be what you expect it is.” She leans in a little, as if she was sharing a secret with me. “You are not the only one that has desires unspoken, Darrow. Your friends are just as shy about their secret longings as you are.”

I’m too stunned to have an immediate reply to that, and Rina stands up while I’m speechless. “I should go spend some time with Ilyana, and then Kwyn. They deserve a little company and conversation as well, and I think that should give you a bit of space to think about things.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s fai— ah…” I wince as I feel a sharp twinge at the front of my head. For a moment, the well-lit room full of late-afternoon sunbeams seems to darken and become more dusky, before lightening again.

“Something the matter?” Rina says, leaning down to me a little.

“No, it’s… I’ve had a headache that’s been going in and out all day.” I say, shaking my head. “It’s gone for the most part, but then it’ll come back suddenly.”

“Hmm. Maybe it’s a stress headache. You do have a lot on your shoulders, after all.” she says, patting the hand that I’m using to hold my teacup. “Finish up your tea, and why don’t you go draw yourself a hot bath afterwards? I’ve got a cucumber-scented bubble mix that I think you’d enjoy, and you can just soak and relax for a while as I’m catching up with Ilyana and Kwyn. That’ll give you time to think over everything we’ve talked about.”

“Yeah, I suppose that does sound nice.” I admit, taking a sip of the honeygold tea and finding the headache recedes a little. “I suppose I’ll finish my tea and go do that.”

“Excellent. Just let me know if you need anything.” Rina says, straightening up and heading for the balcony, where Whisper is still lazing in the hammock. As she goes, I take another look around the sunlit living room, soaking in the warm hues of the pale wooden floors, and the slightly darker hue of the walls, which seem to be made up of the tree that this house is built on. It’s all very cozy and homey, a place that feels very safe and easy to relax in.

And a hot bath sounds like it would be nice.

Event Log: Ilyana Kemaim

Avvikerene: The Decadent Forest

12/5/12764 10:55pm SGT

“Seen anything?”

Dare’s helm turns towards me as I approach the stump he’s sitting on. A moment later, it splits apart and folds back, revealing his head. “You’re early for your watch.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Figured I’d come out and make sure you weren’t stealing my z’s.” I say, coming to a stop beside him. A ring of idle fire encircles the small clearing where we’d set up for the night, and in the center of it is my sword, which has been stabbed into the ground and is also on fire, acting on a central camp light. The ground of Avvikerene is so flush with magical energy that just stabbing the sword into the dirt gives it enough juice to keep it burning all night long. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’ve seen things moving out there.” he says, turning his gaze back out towards the fireline. “They stay at the edges of sensor range. I can never quite make them out. I’m guessing they do that on purpose.”

“They do, yes.” I say, looking out to where the light of the fireline fades, and the shadows of the forest take over. “So long as they stay at the edge of sensor range, we should be fine. If they start moving towards us and into visible range, then I’m concerned. You remember what I told you?”

“Trust nothing.” he says, glancing down at the handheld sensor he has in one hand. The other hand is hanging on his battle axe, which he’s planted headfirst on the ground before him. “If it’s outside the fireline, it’s an enemy.”

“Good.” I say, folding my arms. “How are you holding up?”

“It’s not been hard, not physically.” he answers. “It’s basically just a long hike out in the woods. My suit’s done most of the lifting; the only thing I’m tired of at the end of the day is being in it. But mentally, it’s been a bit of a trip.”

I glance at him. “You talking about that arachne glade we passed today?”

He shakes his head. “I still think we should’ve stopped and helped the people in there.”

“I already told you why we couldn’t do that, Dare.”

“You told us what happens in those glades. You really want to leave people to that?”

“This is Avvikerene, Dare. This is how things are. This is how people want this world to be. You cannot change things, and if you try—”

“Yeah, I know. They’ll turn on me and kill me.” he puffs.

It’s a concession, but it’s not enough for me. “No Dare, they won’t kill you. For all its deviances, Avvikerene is not fond of killing people. Killing is not its preferred method of getting a message across. What will happen is that the powers that be will come after you; they will capture you, convert you, and make you a missionary of Avvikerene’s message and beliefs. Avvikerene doesn’t want to stamp out the people that oppose it. It wants to make them understand.”

He’s quiet for a moment, absorbing that. “Is that what Avvikerene did to you?”

My temper flares, but I keep it in check. “No. But I’ve seen it happen to too many other people. I know how it goes when you try to stand against the way things are here. I’ve seen a lot of people broken down and brought around to see things the way Avvikerene does. Sometimes it was quick and only took a week; sometimes it took months, but they always broke in the end. If you come to Avvikerene thinking you can change it, you’ll find out very soon that the only thing that needs to be changed is you.” I give that a moment to sink in, then go on. “So even if you don’t agree with what you see here, you keep your head down. No heroics; no stands on principle; we don’t do anything that would draw attention or make the locals think we need to be reeducated.”

“Oh no, please.” a soft voice cuts in, coming from the darkness beyond the fireline. “Do misbehave. We would love for you to give us a reason to have a long, passionate conversation with all of you. About the differences between your principles and ours.”

Our attention immediately snaps towards darkness, where something is moving in the shadows. Dare’s attention goes down to the scanner to show that one of the contacts has come away from the edge of sensor range, wandering a little closer to us. My hand goes down to my pistol, while Dare moves up his grip on the handle of his battle axe. And there, just at the edge of the shadows cast by the fireline, a sleek outline prowls into view, leaning against one of the trees and folding its arms. The long tail and the pale hair, tipped in black, is familiar.

It’s Miari, the cheetah vashy that tried to pull the moves on Dare back in the outpost.

My lips peel back on reflex as I part my teeth, letting out a feline hiss. If I had hackles they’d be raised; if I was in my cat morph, I’d be fully puffed out and arching my back. I didn’t know much about this bitch, but I didn’t need to know much about her. All that mattered is that she’d been trying to horn in on my territory.

“Aw, tsk tsk. Isn’t that poor sportsmanship, being possessive over something you haven’t claimed.” Miari chides, her tail lazily lashing back and forth. “That’s just rude all around.”

“What do you want?” Dare demands.

“Oh, handsome. I know I like ‘em cute and dumb, but you’re makin’ it too easy.” Miari murrs. “I already told you what I want. Misbehave. Try to do something noble and misguided. Give us a reason to hunt you all down and pull you aside for a heated discussion about our differences. We love heroes here; they’re so… fun to debate.”

“Hard pass. We’re here to do a job. Once it’s done, we leave.” Dare replies flatly.

“Oh, so you’re the duty-bound sort. Loyal soldier.” Miari says, biting her lower lip as her eyes remain fixed on Dare. I can see the hunger there. The desire. “Mmm… those types are the most fun to corrupt.”

“Leave.” I growl at her. “You’ll have no luck here. We’re not like the deluded adventurers you usually prey on.”

“Oh, you aren’t, are you?” she says softly, her orange eyes turning to me. “If that’s true, you know that it only makes it all the more tempting. The hard-earned pleasure is one of the sweetest to taste.”

“Is there a reason you can’t just shoot her?” Dare murmurs aside to me.

“Trust me, it’s not for lack of wanting.” I mutter back. “But she’d probably go crying back to Sundew like the little bitch she is.”

“You’re a few inches short of calling anyone here little, Calyri’ashka.” Miari smirks. “Clever thing you’ve done with your fire fence. Degrades the soporifics and aphrodisiacs in the air so you can actually take your helmets off. Why don’t you take off the rest of your suits? They don’t look all that comfortable.”

“I dunno. Why don’t you go step in a meat grinder?” I retort. “You ask stupid questions, you’ll get stupid answers.”

Miari examines her nails. “Well, I haven’t stepped a meat grinder before, but I have been called the Meat Grinder. ‘Cause I’m good at grinding other people’s—”

“Okay, thank you, that’s enough. We don’t need to know.” Dare says quickly. “Are you done taunting us, or do you have nothing better to do?”

“I do have something better to do, actually.” she says, tilting a finger towards Dare. “I could be doing you, and I think that’d be time well spent. But if that’s not an option, there’s a grand ol’ shindig a little ways south of here. Food, drinks, plenty of lovely types you can take out for a roll in the hay. We might even be able to find someone that can handle the spitfire.”

“We’ll pass, thank you very much.” I growl. “We’ve got better things to be doing than partying with a bunch of brainjacked sycophants. I recommend you get on out of here before I decide to burn you a new one.” To reinforce my point, I loosen my plasma pistol in its holster, resting my thumb on the power switch.

“Shame. Well, there’s always other parties in the future.” Miari says, pushing off the tree she was leaning against. “If you change your mind, just head south of here. You’ll stumble upon it eventually. And the party usually goes well past midnight.”

With that she turns and saunters back into the darkness, fading from view within seconds. Neither Dare nor I move until her contact has disappeared past the edge of the scanner’s range, and once it does, I seat my pistol back in its holster, while Dare loosens his tightfisted grip on his axe.

“Did she really think we’d be that easy?” he mutters, relaxing a little.

“Perhaps. She was testing the waters, seeing whether we’d be easy targets.” I reply, turning to glance around the rest of our camp and make sure there aren’t any other opportunists lingering in the shadows beyond the fireline. “She wasn’t trying very hard. She would’ve been taking a different approach if she really wanted to push the issue.”

He glances at me. “She wasn’t being serious, was she? When she said she wanted to ‘do me’. That was just flirting right?”

“No Dare, she wanted to have sex with you.” I answer, turning to go check on my sword.

That confounds him. “But she barely knows me! We’ve only met twice and never for more than ten minutes! That’s basically getting down and dirty with a stranger!”

“That’s how things go on Avvikerene. You see something you like, you go for it. And she saw something she liked.” I say, warming my hands by the pillar of smokeless fire coming off my sword. “She will try again on other nights. And if not her, then her cousin, or other thralls in Sundew’s service. I can trust you to send them packing every time, right?”

Dare snorts. “Are you kidding me? Like I’d fall for any of that siren nonsense.”

“They won’t always be so upfront with it.” I warn him. “Some of them may feign distress to try and get you to leave the fireline, or pretend to be lost travelers that need aid, guidance, or protection. Or they may pretend like they have what we’re looking for, or pretend to know where it’s located. They have many ways of trying to lure people away from safety.”

“But if it’s outside the fireline, it’s an enemy.” he reiterates.

“Good.” I nod approvingly, turning back towards him. “Why don’t you go ahead and turn in for the night. There’s less than an hour left on your watch; I can take over from here.”

“I won’t argue with more sleep.” he says, standing up and handing the scanner over to me. “I don’t have to worry about you being seduced by the temptations of the forest, do I?”

“Avvikerene has nothing I want. I’m only here because the mission requires it.” I say, taking a seat on the stump he was sitting on. “Go on and get your sleep. We’ve got a lot of distance to cover tomorrow.”

He trundles off to his tent, and I hear his power armor disengaging and allowing him to step out of it. I pull my plasma pistol out and power it into standby mode, and it’s warmed up by the time the flap of Dare’s tent zips closed again. Checking the scanner in one hand, I settle in to keep watch for the next several hours, relieved that Dare hadn’t challenged my half-truth. He probably hadn’t even realized it was a half-truth.

I was, in fact, here because the mission required it.

But I was lying through my teeth when I’d said Avvikerene had nothing I wanted.

Event Log: Darrow Bennion

???

12/?/12764 ????? SGT

I can’t remember the last time I’d had a bath.

It was a practicality thing. Showers were quicker, and it’s what I was accustomed to. A bath was usually a luxury — it was a lot of hot water, and you had to wait a while for it, and you spent a long time in it. Time that I usually didn’t have.

But now, drifting in a warm tub of water beneath a carpet of bubbles, I was remembering how enjoyable a bath could be.

Perhaps the thing that I enjoyed the most about it is that you were simply allowed to do nothing. To let your cares slip away and simply lay there in the water, cradled by the soft, ubiquitous warmth. Honestly, I feel I could drift off to sleep like this. I’m tempted to.

But I don’t. It seems like it would bad form to do that in someone else’s house. Instead, I simply lie here, basking in the warmth, probably in much the same manner that Whisper was basking in the sun out on the balcony. Lazily stirring my fingers through the bubbles, forming little islands and channels, and… noticing there’s an orange glow at the other end of the tub, seemingly brimming from beneath the water.

Still, nothing can prepare me for when a woman comes bursting through the bubbles between my legs, planting her hands on either side of the tub as she braces above me. “Dare!” she hisses. “Wake up! You’re in danger!”

I jerk backwards in the tub with a startled shout, scrambling to put as much room between me and the bathtub invader as possible. She’s got brown hair and red eyes, meaning she’s a vampire, but she’s also wearing nothing but bubbles and I have no idea why she knows my name. “WWWHHAAAT the HELL how did you GET in my BATHTUB how LONG have you been HIDING DOWN THERE?!”

“Stop shouting, you idiot!” she seethes at me. “They can’t find out we’re here, or—”

The sound of footsteps cuts her off; she looks over her shoulder towards the door, before exploding in a burst of bubbles just as Rina opens the door. “Is everything alright in here?” she asks, peering in. “I heard shouting.”

My heart is still racing from the unexpected bathtub invasion, and I’m still scrunched up against the far end of the tub. I don’t have any words for what just happened, and besides, the proof literally exploded into bubbles just seconds ago. “I… I uh… there was something… in the bathtub…”

Rina’s brows furrow. “Something besides you?”

I struggle with words for a moment before finding my tongue. “You know I, I probably just imagined it.” I say weakly. “Maybe I started to doze off and had a waking dream or something.”

“If you want, I can check the tub.” Rina says, stepping in and leaving the door ajar behind her.

“No, no I’m good.” I decline quickly. “It’s probably nothing.”

“If you say so.” she says, going over to the closet and pulling out the towels. “How’s your headache doing?”

“It’s gotten better, thanks.” I say, slowly starting to relax again.

“That’s good to hear.” she says, setting the towels on the counter near the bathtub. “Have you given any thought to what we were talking about earlier?”

“Earlier?” I repeat, looking over my shoulder at her.

“About what you want to be, if not human.” she says, grabbing a low stool and pulling it over beside the bathtub. “Does wereckanan still sound good to you?”

“Oh, that.” I say, thumbing at one of the islands of bubbles floating on the surface of the water. “I’m still not really sure. I’ve been wondering a little bit if I really want to be something else, or if I just crave being different for the sake of being different. If it’s really sincere, or if it’s just a vanity thing.”

“Would you be scared to be something else?” Rina says, sitting down on the stool and leaning against the side of the tub.

“I think most people would? Like, you spent so many years being what you are, getting used to the body you have, and then to suddenly change all that would be… jarring.” I say, lifting one of my hands out of the water to look at it. “To change into something else means getting used to a new body, learning its quirks, figuring out how to live life as something other than what you’ve been up to that point.”

“And you’re scared of that?” she guesses.

“Well… not scared, per se, but it’s a daunting proposition. It’s a change, and change usually comes with discomfort. It’s not as simple as becoming what you’ve wanted to be; you also have to take on all the hard parts, in addition to the parts that you wanted.” I muse. “I suppose you really have to want it. You have to be willing to accept the hard parts along with the parts that you want. It’s a whole package. Or at least that’s what it would be in theory, if people could just change their bodies on the turn of a coin.”

“So would you change, if you could?” she asks, resting an arm along the rim of the tub.

“If I found something worth being, I suppose.” I say. “If becoming that thing meant living a fuller, more authentic life, then yeah, I would change for that.”

“Does that mean you’re comfortable with what you are?”

“No, not really.” I say, shaking my head. “I’d still like to be something other than just a plain old human. But I don’t know what I’d want to turn into if I could. I feel like I’m stuck somewhere in between, not entirely sure of what I want to be.”

Rina’s quiet for a moment, as if she was mulling over my answers. She eventually asks another question. “Do you want to be something else because you feel you’re not equal to your peers?”

I glance at her. “How do you mean?”

She shrugs. “Well, you pointed out one of your human coworkers was a psion, and that Kwyn is human and she has magic, but then compared yourself to them and pointed out you have no such talents. To me, it feels like you feel… insufficient next to others that may have natural talents or abilities. And because you lack those, as a normal human, you’re tempted to want to be something else, to feel more like you’re equal to your peers. That you are special in some way, like they are.”

I sink down in the tub a little, up to my chin, as I consider that. “Yeah. That does make sense. All the other Peacekeepers, and a lot of the operatives, it seems like they each have their own little things that make them special. When we’re doing the rounds on introductions, everyone’s got something. Ironfist can claim he’s strong; Whisper can turn into a cat and sneak around; Kwyn can summon spirit wolves; Headache can read minds; and me, I’m just… a really good soldier, I guess. Feels kinda lame, doesn’t it?”

She smiles a little. “It does. But integrity, bravery, loyalty, and determination count for something, don’t they?”

“I dunno. Just feels like a weak attempt to compensate. ‘He doesn’t have any powers, but he’s got a good heart’ or something like that.” I say, blowing one of the islands of bubbles and watching it drift across the water. “I guess that is part of the reason I want to be something more than just human. I want to be able to contribute more than just a ‘good heart’.”

“Powers and abilities are nothing without a good heart to guide their use. But I see no reason why you can’t have both.” Rina says, standing up. “Why don’t you do some more thinking on it. Figure out what you would want to be. And be creative with it. You don’t have to stick to the species you know exist. Make up hybrids, or new species altogether. No one said you had to stick to the catalogue of common races in the galaxy.”

“Alright.” I say, rubbing a hand along the back of my neck. “I’ll give it some thought.”

“Perfect.” Rina says, brushing her sundress down as she heads for the door. “And if it helps, I asked Kwyn too. She envies the wings that the lepidopterans have. And she desires you, almost as much as you desire her, and almost as much as Ilyana desires you.”

That startles me. “Wait, you didn’t—”

“Of course I told both of them. Just the same as I’m telling you.” Rina says mildly. “They weren’t surprised, although you should’ve seen Kwyn blush; it was adorable. It’s no secret, Darrow; they both know. All three of you know how each of you desire each other. You’ve just chosen to play dumb with each other, and not talk about it.” She smiles as she closes the door. “It’s cute.”

And with that, I’m left alone in the bathroom, stunned by that casual reveal, and not entirely sure what to do with that information.

Event Log: Ilyana Kemaim

Avvikerene: The Decadent Forest

12/6/12764 12:04pm SGT

“Did you get them all?” Dare shouts through the speakers on his suit.

“A couple got away.” I shout back as I plant a foot on the charred corpse of a floran that I’d run through, and shove it off my sword, then bring it up and chop off the head for good measure. After that I stab the flaming blade into the siren flower on the head, torching the bloom. “How’s the kid doing?”

“I gotta get out of my suit to get the medkit out, the gauntlets are too thick to handle precision stuff and sticking leaves on the gash isn’t gonna cut it.” he calls.

“No! Stay in your suit!” I shout, turning and starting to lope back through the ferns towards him. “You’re vulnerable without it and I can’t have you exposed in the middle of the day without the fireline set up. Wait for me, I can handle the medkit.”

“We’re going to need to break for the day anyhow, we can’t keep going with Kwyn in this condition.” he replies as I come over a berm to where Dare’s hunched over Kwyn, who’s sprawled out on the ground. We’d been ambushed by a group of florans as we were coming over the berm, and one of them had let go of a tree bough they’d been holding. I’d seen it coming and had ducked, but Kwyn, who had been behind me and talking over her shoulder to Dare, had walked right into it as it snapped forward. The impact had shattered most of her helm visor and laid her out cold on the forest floor, leaving just Dare and myself to fight off the group. Being outnumbered, we’d resorted to plasma grenades to scorch the ones that were grouped up, and I’d chased down as many of them as I could once they started running.

“We can’t stop moving.” I reply, jabbing my sword into the ground as I move around behind Dare, opening one of the supply modules loaded on his back. “Florans are hunters, they’ll circle back around once they lick their wounds. If they know that their prey is going to remain in place, they’ll just keep coming, and they’ll move to siege tactics to wear us down. Once we get Kwyn patched up, we need to get away from here, fast, and we’ll need to camp dark tonight. No fire, no lights, low footprint, in dense foliage.”

“Well, we can’t just… she’s—” Dare begins.

“Dare, I hear you; I know you’re worried, but this is not up for discussion.” I say, pulling the tube of medical supplies out and twisting out one of the sections, digging out the butterfly stitches. “This is a matter of survival. We have limited supplies; there will be no support or resupply dropping in from orbit. We cannot afford multiple combat engagements out here. We get her triaged, we get away from here, we break for dark camp once the sun sets, and tomorrow is a hard march away from this area and towards the objective. If we can do that, we’ll probably have the florans off our trail. Understand?”

I can hear his sigh through the speakers, but he concedes. “Fine. Are you ready to take care of the wound now?”

“Yes. Stand guard while I’m getting her cleaned up.” I say as I kneel beside her. He takes his hand off the leaf pressed to Kwyn’s face, and I quickly peel it off, cleaning the blood away from the gash above her eyebrow. It probably came as a result of her helm visor shattering; our helms were engineered to take a beating, but it seemed like there was some extra oomph behind the snap-back branch that the florans had ambushed us with. I didn’t see it hit Kwyn since I was ducking, but the way she’s sprawled out on the ground, it looks like it took her clean off her feet.

“What are we going to do about her visor?” Dare says as he rises, taking his battleaxe in hand as he turns and surveys the plasma-scorch craters around us. “Less than half of the right side is intact. Her helm’s going to be wide-open and exposed to all the junk that’s in the air.”

“We’ve got some tube tape in the supplies. We can use that to cover the hole.” I say, getting the butterfly stitches in place to hold the laceration shut.

“Yeah, but it’s not transparent. She’ll only be able to see out of the right side of her helm; she’ll be practically blind.”

“One problem at a time, Dare.”

“Okay.”

I finish cleaning up Kwyn’s wound and bandaging it in uneasy silence, with Dare standing watch over both of us. Once it’s been taken care of, I put the unused parts back in their trays in the medical tube, twisting them back into place before standing and slotting the tube back into the supply module on Dare’s back. “You’ll need to carry her. Your power armor provides more strength assist than mine does.”

“I will.” Two simple words as he slots his axe back into place, then kneels and slides his arms under her. He lifts her up, shifting his arm so that her head can rest against him, instead of lolling around while we’re walking. Even beneath layers of armor, there is a protective tenderness to the way he handles her, and I have no doubt that she’ll be safe with him.

“Her helm is no good anymore.” I say, grabbing my sword and yanking it out of the ground as I turn and start walking. “Taping up the hole will help maintain the filtration, but leave her half-blind, and that’s too dangerous in combat engagements. We can’t have her walking around out here with a gaping hole in her visor, breathing the spores and substances on the air. At best she’ll be distracted and suggestible, and at worst, she’ll be hallucinating if we pass through an area with neurostimulating spores.”

“So what do we do?” Dare asks as he lumbers along behind me.

“I’m thinking out loud. Let me work through it.” I reply, extinguishing the fire on my sword as I start to establish a regular, demanding pace. One that Dare, with his long legs, can easily keep up with. “Of the two options, I’d rather leave her helm open so she has a full range of vision, instead of taping it up and restricting her field of view. But we’d have to keep a close eye on her, and manage her if she starts straying or losing control.”

“Could we do something where we partially cover the broken visor? Try to preserve her field of view while reducing the flow of air through the section left open?”

“No, it wouldn’t really reduce the airborne agents.” I say. “If we have any cloth or fabric among our supplies, we could have her tie that over the lower half of her face as a facemask that can help screen out the larger particulates. Some of the outpost workers do the same thing to reduce their exposure when they’re harvesting outside the walls.” A rustle in the underbrush off to the side has me jerking to a stop, lifting my sword halfway, until I see that it’s just a squirrel running through the leaf litter and up a tree.

“That’s not some kind of secret monster, is it?” Dare asks, watching as the squirrel scampers up the tree.

I almost tell him no, but the squirrel stops about halfway up the tree and looks back at us with beady black eyes. There, lodged just above its ear, is a little blue siren flower.

“Maybe.” I mutter back to him. “Let’s go. We need to get away from here.”

With that we start walking once more, delving deeper and deeper into the Decadent Forest.

Event Log: Darrow Bennion

???

12/?/12764 ???pm SGT

“So you’ve only ever gotten dressed up for big events?”

“Formal dinners. Dignitaries. Heads of state. That sort of thing.” I answer as Rina takes a tape measure around my chest, then across my shoulders. We’re currently in the dressing room, looking for something I can wear, while Kwyn and Whisper have dinner out on the balcony during sunset. “When I was younger — a kid — I’d dress up for church on Sundays. But that was just the standard suit and tie stuff.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I always found a suit and tie boring.” Rina says, measuring around my waist. “Repressive, I suppose. There’s something about all those buttons and tight collars that feels like it’s trying to contain a person, to fit them into a mold. To keep them from expressing themselves. And the tie always felt like a noose.”

“You’ve worn a suit and tie before?” I ask as she pulls the tape measure from around my waist.

“A few times, to try out the style. Didn’t like it, personally, although if you do it right, girls look good in it. Usually if you pop the top couple of buttons and loosen the tie so it hangs like a necklace, instead of a silk noose that’s trying to strangle you.” she says, writing my measurements down on a notepad on the side table. “Guys can look good in it too, but it’s an overused look. Basically the uniform for government, the business class, and clergy. I prefer a guy in a tux or some other formal wear that’s less common.”

I let my arms drop since she’s no longer taking my measurements. “I mean, you’re not wrong. Suit and tie is the go-to for work clothes. It’s so boring, too. White shirt, black jacket and slacks… the only thing you could spice up was the tie.” After a moment of mulling that, I add: “I kinda envied women for that. They could had so much they could do with their dresses. Different styles, different colors, while I was stuck deciding which color of tie I wanted to wear on Sunday.”

“Oh?” Rina says, smiling over her shoulder. “Does that mean I can put you in a dress?”

I chuckle at that. “You don’t want this ugly mug to drag down a perfectly good dress.”

She picks something that looks like a shawl off one of the many racks in the room. “I’m sure we could find a dress that could fit you. But for now, I think you would look good in a varong.” She picks out a silky white shirt with embroidered floral patterns on it, also in white. “It’s Moksan formalwear, but has elegance that a suit and tie lacks. Parts of it are sheer, so that a little bit of your skin tone shows through as well and contrasts with the pure white of the embroidery.” She tilts her head to one side, smiling at the shirt as she holds it up. “Kind of like people, isn’t it? They only let a little bit of themselves show through to everyone else. And the rest gets hidden by the lies they wear. Even when the truth shows through, the colors are a little muted.”

The metaphor catches me off guard; I hadn’t expected her to get so philosophical with a shirt. “Yeah, I… suppose that is true.”

She looks at me. “Why do you think people lie like that? Doesn’t it seem like it would better to be honest about such things? For people to see you as you are, instead of as they think you should be?”

“Well. In a perfect world, I guess.” I say, tucking my hands in my pockets. “But in reality, people will judge you. They’ll look at you differently. They might not like you if they knew what you really were.”

Rina tilts her head to one side. “Do you think Kwyn and Ilyana wouldn’t like you if they knew what you desired? What your hunger was like?”

I squirm a little under the weight of that question. “Well, I… I mean… they’re my friends, but… I think they… wouldn’t…”

“What if I told you what their desires were?” Rina asks, her ocean eyes fixed on me with a laserlike focus. “What they hunger for, what they yearn for, but are reluctant to admit? Would it change how you see them?”

There’s several elements in those questions I want to respond to. The first thing that strikes me is that I shouldn’t go prying, but I can’t help but be curious about what Kwyn and Whisper desire. I want to know, even though I know I shouldn’t.

“Would it change how I see them?” I repeat, thinking it over and trying to imagine that scenario. “I think… it would be… I might see them and treat them differently, but not in a bad way?… like, it’s different when it’s someone you know. You find out about a celebrity’s kinks or a prime minister’s bedroom preferences, and it’s salacious, it’s entertaining, but it’s shock value. It’s all for the news cycle. You don’t actually think about what it means. But when it’s a friend, or someone you know, it feels different. It tells you more about them, helps you understand them, and maybe connect some dots from what they enjoy, to the kind of person they are, and maybe how they ended up that way.” I rock in place a little, shrugging. “At least, that’s how I think it would be if you’re a good friend. You think about what it actually means and use it to help you understand that person, and gain a better appreciation of who they are, instead of mocking them for it.”

Rina smiles. “I think you’ll fit right in here.” Coming over, she hands me the varong, clearly expecting me to try it on; the fabric is thin and silky beneath my fingers. “Ilyana plays feisty, but she likes being pinned down. The struggle is what gets her blood going; she doesn’t want to be treated gently, at least to start with. On top of that, she is, by her own admission, a bit of an exhibitionist; a reverse voyeur, if you will. And Kwyn enjoys praise — receiving affirmation gives her a rush, since she was starved of it when she was younger. That, and she seems to have a bias for hybrids — vashies, wereckanan, Halfies, though she would be embarrassed to admit it. That’s why I think you would be perfect as a Dalayu — being wereckanan, you would have something in common with Ilyana, while simultaneously catering to one of Kwyn’s desires.”

“Oh, whu ah wha— aahh no I din’t meant for you to— I, I, that wasn’t what I, I thought, you meant like— I didn’t think you were actually going to tell me their kinks!” I stammer as the language centers in my brain completely melt down while the heat floods my face. I feel like I’ve just been handed something I’m not supposed to have, and worse yet, I don’t have a way to get rid of it. “I thought you were— this was— it was like, just supposed to be hypothetical! In theory!”

“It’s okay. I told them what your desires and hungers were as well.” Rina says studying the shawl she picked out, and the golden and citrus hues that make up its patterns. “Your desire for dominance, your tendency to be territorial — suppressed at most times, but seeping through in how protective you are of your friends. The beast always finds ways to express itself, no matter how you try to repress it.” She folds the shawl over one arm, smiling up at me. “And you are a beast, aren’t you? Civil on the surface, but feral underneath? Ilyana would like that.”

All of this unsolicited information is leaving me speechless, which is why it takes me a few seconds to muster a flustered response. “Whu-why are you…”

“This is why you are here, Darrow. This is what people come here for: to discover the truth.” Rina replies easily. “The truth of what you are, what you desire, what you hunger for… the truths that you are hiding from, or the truths that you refuse to admit to yourself. The truths you might be scared to admit to yourself. You can’t be a full, complete person without knowing and understanding yourself.” Folding the shawl up, she offers that out to me as well. “You’re here to learn those truths. To find acceptance for yourself, and embrace what you are, and what you could be. And I’m here to guide you through it.”

I hesitate to reach for the shawl she’s offering me. It would be impolite to refuse it, but at the same time, I can sense the massive symbolism in how she made the offer while giving a speech about acceptance and finding yourself. Taking the shawl feels like it would be a tacit acceptance of everything she’s told me so far, of conceding that she is right, at least to some degree. And I feel like I shouldn’t be making that concession, yet at the same time, I cannot say she has lied about anything. She has been honest, and told the truth, even when the truth was clearly uncomfortable for me.

Perhaps that’s what I was struggling with the most: the truth. The unsettling, uncomfortable truth changed the way I looked in the mirror. And probably the way that Kwyn and Whisper looked at me.

In the end, I take the folded shawl, even though I’m hesitant about it. Because to refuse feels like trying to close the door on something that can’t be hidden anymore; it feels like trying to turn a blind eye to something I’ll never be able to ignore. So I might as well face up to it, and do my best to reckon with it, no matter how uncomfortable it is.

“I’m glad you’ve chosen to listen. To have an open mind.” Rina says, smiling as I take the shawl. “It may feel awkward at first, but honesty with yourself and with others is valuable here. It goes a long way in figuring out who you are, and what you could be. Why don’t you get dressed, and then you can come out and see what Ilyana and Kwyn picked for their outfits.”

“Yeah, uh… sure.” I say. Rina nods and heads for the door, and in her absence, I look down at the varong and the shawl in my arms.

Kind of like people, isn’t it? They only let a little bit of themselves show through to everyone else. And the rest gets hidden by the lies they wear.

Taking a deep breath, I step behind one of the folding screens so I can start putting on my lies.

Event Log: Ilyana Kemaim

Avvikerene: The Decadent Forest

12/8/12764 12:26am SGT

“Get the purge potion, it should be in my tent!”

Kwyn gives me a worried look through her broken visor. “Are you sure? He’s—” She grits her teeth as Dare heaves upward again, trying to thrash free with obscene strength. We both lean our weight down on him, pinning his arms and straddling his legs to keep him from getting up. “—goddamn! What did they put in that dart? He’s juiced!”

“It’s neurostim or hallucinogen or something but it doesn’t matter because it’s only going to get worse the longer we wait!” I snap at her, planting my hand on Dare’s forehead and keeping it pinned to the ground. “My tent! Potions are in my suit, it’ll be in the utility pocket on the beltline, grab all of them!”

“Okay, I’m about to let go of him!” she says, starting to lean to the side.

I reposition myself, moving my hand from his head to the arm that Kwyn’s holding down, and straddling his waist as best I can. “I got ‘im, go!”

Kwyn lurches off Dare, diving through the protective dome of white light she set up moments ago. As soon as she passes through it, another feathered dart shoots down from the canopy overhead, but it bounces off the backplate of her power armor. She scrambles into my tent, rooting through my sleeping bag and supplies, and then I have to turn my attention back to Dare when he tries to surge up again.

“Stay down, Dare!” I hiss at him, bearing my weight back down on his wrists, keeping them pinned to the ground. I don’t even know if he can hear me; his pupils are dilated, though to different sizes, and his chest is heaving with fast and shallow breathing. From what Kwyn had told me, he’d been in the middle of handing off the nightwatch to her, and someone up in the canopy had nailed him in the neck with a dart the moment he’d stepped out of his Axiom suit. Things had quickly gone south at that point, with Dare turning incoherent and behaving erratically, and the commotion quickly woke me up and got us to where we were now.

“Mmm, ‘Lyana. What did you bring me? I can taste it on the air; it’s… sweet.”

A chill runs up my spine as the familiar voice slithers through the trees around us, seeming to flow in circles that makes it hard to pin down where it’s coming from. “Shit. Kwyn, I need that potion, and I need it now!”

“I’m working on it, I’m working on it!” she replies, scurrying back out of my tent and under the dome, spilling the five vials out on the ground next to Dare’s head. “Which one was it?”

“It’s the one with the black liquid in it, there should be two of them. You’re going to need to administer it, I—” At this point Dare tries to rear up again, and this is his most forceful attempt yet; as he starts to rise off the ground, I headbutt him, slamming him back to the ground. “STAY DOWN, DARE!”

“Okay, I found it!” Kwyn says, peeling the cap off one of the vials. Grabbing Dare’s head, she quick-dumps the black liquid into Dare’s mouth while he’s still reeling from the headbutt, then holds his mouth closed. “How long will it take to kick in?”

“Potions are magical brews; their effects usually hit within seconds.” I grunt, wincing at the skull pain from the headbutt I gave to Dare. “Should only take him a minute to—”

“Seems you’ve got your hands full. Would you like a little help with that? Although… that seems like a strong young man, and I know you like it rough.”

I twist my head over my shoulder to snarl out at the shadows beyond the fireline. “How about you stop hiding in the dark so I can kick your ass in person!”

“What’s out there?” Kwyn asks, reaching out and grabbing her plasma rifle once Dare swallows. She powers it out of standby mode, twisting around on her knee to scan the forest around us. “Should I shoot on sight, or…?”

“Mmm… fresh young thing, with little traces of… Dreaming within her.” the disembodied voice says, sounding like it’s slowly circling nearer and nearer. “Is this your way of apologizing after running off three centuries ago, ‘Lyana? Trying to buy your way back into my good graces?”

“Like I’d bother buying my way back into your graces.” I spit, letting go of Dare as his thrashing starts to ease off. I collect the remaining four vials next to his head, tucking them away in my pockets. “Shoot on sight, Kwyn. The fireline might not be enough to protect us.”

“It’s cute that you think that ring of fire protects you.” This voice is much closer, and I twist around to see a feline vashy with silvery-blue hair twisting behind a tree just before a bolt of green plasma tears through the spot he was just standing. Beside me, Kwyn hisses with displeasure, keeping her rifle leveled while the vashy laughs out of view. “I thought you’d at least try to put up a more sophisticated barrier.”

“You can’t blame them, Mosha.” This voice is lighter, silky, coming from the other side, and I twist back around to see a familiar face marked with cheetah tears, peeking around one of the trees and withdrawing a second before a plasma bolt scorches the trunk. “Only one of them knew what they were getting into. The other two were adorably clueless.”

“Whisper.” Kwyn murmurs beside me.

“I know, Kwyn.” I mutter, powering on my wrist pistols before turning to Dare, who’s got a hand held to his head as he groans. “You back with us, Dare? Can you hear me?”

He blinks a couple times; his pupils are coming back down to normal size, but they’re still fairly dilated. “Unnnha… I think I just took a trip on a starlight flight…”

“You just got darted.” I say, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him into a sitting position as I get off of him. “Probably a neurostim, but it doesn’t matter right now; we’re being circled and I need you to get back up and back into the Axiom suit. We’re about to be in a fight—” A discharge from Kwyn’s plasma rifle cuts me off, and has Dare flinching. “—fight’s kinda started already, so let’s go, big guy, we need you up and att’em.”

“Why are you even bothering, ‘Lyana?” The lilting voice is closer, and there’s a clear hint of exasperation in the words. I can see a faint outline in the dark, resolving into a familiar silhouette, and then blue hair, ocean eyes, and a lithe sylvan build. “You know the outcome.”

“Get wrecked, Sundew. I’m not your toy anymore.” I growl, nudging Kwyn.

Kwyn pivots on the spot, already pulling the trigger. There’s a rustle as something on the ground behind Sundew moves, whipping up and across — it’s a tail that fans out into a set of broad leaves, blocking the plasma bolts from Kwyn’s rifle. The leaves are waxy, gleaming in the firelight, and they crackle and burn wherever the bolts strike. But they don’t catch fire, and the burnt portions flake off even as new layers of plant cells start to grow over the exposed sections.

“Whispeeeeer…!” Kwyn says, the tension in her voice clearly showing in how she drags out my name.

“Keep shooting, keep her suppressed!” I order, checking the sides and lifting my arms, firing off a shot towards Mosha on one side, and then Miari on the other, to force them to stay behind the trees. “Dare, you need to get suited up NOW!”

“Yeah— I know— working on it.” he grunts, staggering through Kwyn’s dome, which has started to falter as her focus flickers. The moment he leaves the dome, a couple darts whistle down from the canopy above, one thumping into the ground just behind him and the other nailing him in the thigh. He shouts, but quickly grabs it and yanks it out, stepping into his power armor and beginning the interlock sequence.

“Whisper, I’m not gettin’ through!” Kwyn shouts as her plasma rifle hits its limit. The slats along the barrel flick open, venting residual heat that’s built up from taking so many high-power shots in quick succession. The holes in Sundew’s leaf tail are already starting to grow over, and she’s been moving around behind it to avoid any pass-through shots.

“Plasma grenade.” I tell her, then notice Mosha and Miari clawing their way up the trees they were hiding behind. I focus on Mosha and fire a pair of plasma bolts at him; one of them misses, but the other one clips his leg, scorching it and knocking him off balance. He gasps and loses his grip on the trunk, falling back to the ground.

I then turn to Miari, but she’s already jumped off her tree, landing within the fireline as a plasma grenade goes off in the background. Dare, who just finished suiting up, staggers back from her as she lands near him, and he reaches back for his battleaxe. But she’s already placed her fingers to her lips, blowing him a kiss — literally, as a swirl of luminous pink dust that nails him in the face while his helm is still retracted.

“Dare!” I shout, standing and firing off a pair of bolts at Miari. One nicks one of her rounded, fuzzy ears, while the one headed for her chest zips hard to the right, hitting one of the tents as one of the crystals on her necklace pops and shatters. She ducks instinctively, covering her singed ear, then darts close to Dare, using him as a human shield while he staggers dizzily, trying to keep his balance. “Kwyn, she’s charmed Dare! Go around the side and get a bead on her, force her out of cover!”

Kwyn angles to do exactly that, but only manages to dash a couple steps before she falls flat on her front, mid-sprint. Feeling movement beneath my feet, I bounce into the air on instinct, right as smooth roots break through the ground in the spot where my feet had just been. Another set of them are wrapped around one of Kwyn’s legs, and as I come back down, I see the ground near my sword churning. Lunging towards it, I grab it and yank it out of the ground just before roots burst through the ground, curling around the space where it used to be.

Only problem is that without a magical reservoir to keep it powered, the fireline goes out, plunging the campsite into darkness.

It’s not true darkness; Avvikerene’s forests are full of all sorts of natural lights in the form of bioluminescent fungi and moss, and my eyes quickly adjust to the softly-lit gloom. But it’s still not quickly enough; I try to stay ahead of the roots in the dark, but they eventually snare around one of my legs, and the other. Igniting my sword, I take a couple swings at the winding roots, but they’re far too thick, and swords aren’t made for chopping gnarled wood. Extinguishing the blade and sheathing it, I start firing my wrist pistols down into the churning roots below, but it doesn’t do much to slow them, and soon my arms are being ensnared as well.

Realizing that the situation has officially gone from bad to worse, I look around the campsite to see how the others are doing. Kwyn is thoroughly tangled and restrained now, her protective dome having completely collapsed when she faceplanted after her foot was rooted. Dare is still fighting Miari’s charm, but failing, probably because she’s cooing to him and reinforcing it every ten seconds. “DARE! Snap out of it, that spotty yellow slut is messin’ with your head! I need your help! Kwyn needs your help!”

Dare looks in my direction, blinking in befuddlement, and I can tell he’s struggling to break out of it. Miari grabs the neck of his suit, tugging him down towards her. “Your girlfriends are fine. They can have you back once I’ve had my turn with you, yeah?”

The struggle is visible; I can see Dare fighting against the influence of the charm, and how it clouds his mind. After a few seconds, he seems to give in, lowering his head towards Miari, and manages a belabored sentence:

“If you want a turn with me… you’ll have to get in line.”

Then he curls the fingers of one arm into a fist, and jerks it up, nailing Miari right in the midsection with a power-armored uppercut.

The punch folds her over his gauntleted fist like a damp towel, and knocks her into the air about a foot from the impact alone. The look on her face is priceless — you can see her soul leave her body along with her breath, and she lands back on the ground on her hands and knees, as feline vashies usually do. The moment she can breathe again, she starts retching, like her stomach’s trying to do an emergency eject of any and all material that might’ve been in there when she got folded over Dare’s metal fist.

And Dare, he staggers away. Still trying to shake off the effects of the charm, drunkenly slurring his defiance at Miari: “ ’n Kwyn has firs’ dibs hanyways… bish!”

My brief spark of hope is stamped out when he staggers into Sundew, who’s been able to come into the campsite now that the fireline is down. The moment he turns towards her, she gently puffs at him, hitting him with a faceful of silver-blue spores; he rears back on reflex, but it’s too late. There’s only so many times someone can stand up to something like that, and in the last five minutes alone, he’s been hit with two brain-altering darts, a magical charm, and now some sedative spores. He takes a couple of dizzy steps, then says “Shit.” before crumpling to his knees, and toppling facefirst into the ground.

Sundew watches him collapse in front of her, then brushes off her short skirt, which is pleated like yellow leaves. Stepping over him, she straightens out her midriff-baring camisole as she trots over to me; in the background, Miari is still trying to catch her breath between the occasional retch.

“It’s been a while, ‘Lyana.” Sundew says, tilting her head to one side. “Did you miss me?”

I bare my teeth at her. “Go die in a fire, Sundew.”

She smiles. “I missed you too.”

With that, she huffs a cloud of silver-blue spores right at me. I screw up my face and hold my breath for as long as I can, but I’m still winded after the fight, and I’m not able to hold out for as long as I would’ve liked. I eventually have to gasp a breath, and even if it’s just one breath, it’s full of soporific spores. It’s less than a minute before I feel the drowsiness setting in, and by then, she’s already moved on and done the same to Kwyn.

And after that, I don’t remember much of anything at all.

Event Log: Darrow Bennion

???

12/9/12764 ???pm SGT

It’s quiet in the living room.

The sun has gone down, and most of the orange glow has faded from the sky. The stars have started to come out, and the living room is painted in various shades of cool blue. I’m laying here on the end portion of the couch, which doubles as a recliner; I’ve got the footrest kicked up, and the seat reclined. I draped a blanket over myself to stay warm, and Kwyn’s sprawled lengthwise across the couch, a pillow planted in my lap so she can rest her head on it. Whisper’s also laid out across the couch, but along the top of it, where you’d usually drape the blanket, or where you’d find a cat at repose. Which doesn’t really come as a surprise, considering she’s a Calyri.

After getting dressed in the clothes Rina had picked out for me, I’d joined Kwyn and Whisper for dinner. It was pleasant enough, especially by the light of the setting sun; and afterwards, we were full and happy, which easily lent itself to relaxing on the couch. With the night taking over and the light fading away, drowsiness had quickly seeped in, which is how we got to where we were now, all drifting to sleep on the couch.

Or at least the girls were. I was lying here in the deepening dark, staring up at the ceiling and mentally picking through some of the dinner interactions: Whisper sitting in my lap, flirting more than usual; Kwyn feigning cool disinterest when asking me if I’d ever consider being a Dalayu. Myself, admitting that my desire for dominance, though often bridled, was likely a result of feeling like I lacked control over things as one of the younger children in my family. Kwyn, asking Whisper if she’d ever been with girls in the past; Whisper; slyly answering a question with another question: perhaps Kwyn would like to find out what Whisper’d learned about women over the centuries. And all of those conversations, facilitated by Rina, who often asked spurring questions while she was delivering new plates or taking away dishes on her visits to the table.

In those conversations, I had come to understand the delicate threads of hidden desire that had underlined our relationships until now. I realized I was exactly as oblivious as Kent had kept telling me I was; I understood Whisper had subordinated her attraction to me in the interest of maintaining our friendship. I understood that Kwyn’s mystery crush was, in fact, Whisper — and the reason she had kept it so close to her chest was because Whisper was my friend, and Kwyn didn’t want to create friction by turning me down to pursue Whisper.

These were all things we knew, deep down on some level, and yet had refused to acknowledge, because reckoning with them would be difficult and complicated. It would require us to make decisions and choices we didn’t want to make. So to avoid that, we had kept these things buried, and made do with the delicate dance of our friendships. Enjoying the pleasure of being around each other, but not pursuing the things we actually wanted. The people we actually desired.

Yet here with Rina, it felt like revealing that information to each other wasn’t as catastrophic as we thought it’d be. There was a feeling — it was hard to describe it as anything more than that — that there was a solution; that if we could share each other, we didn’t necessarily have to make decisions about who got what and who ended up with who. It was a radical idea, something Rina never brought up outright, but had skillfully hinted at time and time again. And the more the three of us learned about each other, the more it seemed like Rina’s suggestion was reasonable — even preferable, when compared to other outcomes. It’s something I never would’ve considered under any other circumstance, given all the influences and expectations I had grown up with, but here, it felt like a different world of possibilities had been opened to me. A brand new set of ways to see things, to do things — and that I could actually explore it without shame.

So here I lay, staring up at the ceiling while all these thoughts churn through my head. I have too much to think about to consider sleeping, to many new ideas, new perspectives, to reckon with. There are still parts of me — the bits and pieces that were imprinted with a Christling upbringing in my formative years — that say no, this is wrong, this isn’t right. But there is the other part of me that pushes back — the part that has visited many different worlds, seen many different cultures and ways of living — and understands that there is something to be learned in looking beyond the culture I grew up in.

That war in my head ebbs and flows as my eyes trace the glowing grains that make up the ceiling’s wood pattern. At some point, when I tire of chasing the thoughts around and around in circles, I let my mind wander to other things, and find I have time to think about things that I didn’t have the chance to think about during the day; that I was too busy to think about during the day. Turning my head to Whisper, it seems like she’s asleep, so I murmur her name to see if she’s awake. It takes a moment, but she cracks open a single icy-blue eye, swiveling it towards me.

“Didn’t know if you were awake.” I say quietly.

“I am now. What’s up?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking.” I say quietly, returning my attention to the ceiling above. “How did we end up here?”

“We had a good dinner and we all sprawled out here for the food coma.”

“No, like… how did we end up here. At Rina’s house.” I clarify. “Like, when did did we get here?”

Whisper slowly opens her other eye. “Well, we’ve been here all day.”

“Okay, but… what about before that?” I press, racking my mind. “Did we sleep here last night?”

“Figure we must’ve, if we’ve been here all day.” Whisper says. “Seems a little fuzzy.”

“Okay, then what were we doing yesterday?” I ask, realizing that I can’t remember anything from the previous day. There’s just… nothing.

Whisper’s quiet for a moment, then lifts her chin off her folded arms. “I can’t remember.” she says, starting to sound more alert.

“I’m surprised you two are still awake.” Rina’s voice comes from behind the couch, and I tilt my head back to see her dim outline moving through the darkness of the living room. “Sun’s gone down. Would you like a bit of tea to help you settle?”

Oh hell no. No more goddamn tea. This has gone on for long enough.

I grunt as a sudden spike of pain lances through my head, causing me to curl on the couch as a faint orange haze starts to tint the edges of my vision. Kwyn mumbles as she’s jostled out of my lap, and Whisper stares at me. “Dare? Are you okay?”

We tried being discreet about it, but we can’t wait any longer. We’re getting you out of there.

Somewhere in my head, there’s the spark of recognition, and a name that I know from somewhere — Rotenga. Deep voice, burly islander with a tan. I can’t place much more than that, but I know it’s the voice I’m hearing as everything around me starts to vibrate and blur.

“I think he needs some more tea. He told me earlier he’d been having a headache all day.” I hear Rina say in the background. “I’ll start brewing a pot for all three of you. Think I’ll add some spice, make it a bit stronger to help Darrow with his headache and help all three of you sleep…”

It’s time for you to wake up, Dare. Your friends need you, and if you do not get them out of here, no one will be able to.

I’m not sure what he means by that, but I can hear the graveness and urgency in his tone. Around me, everything seems to be vibrating itself out of existence, becoming indistinct colors and shapes that slowly fade towards darkness. I can still hear their voices, but they’re growing more distant now, as if they were being heard from the end of a tunnel, and eventually, the sounds lose definition altogether. The only thing I can feel now is the persisting twinge of pain in my head.

And the sensation of slowly rising…

Event Log: Darrow Bennion

Avvikerene: The Decadent Forest

12/9/12764 6:06pm SGT

I come to all at once.

No gradual awakening, no gentle drift from slumber; my head jerks up, and I gasp a breath. In the seconds immediately after awakening, I still can’t make sense of anything; I’m disoriented, and all I see is gloominess, with spots of light here and there. Orange haze still tints the edges of my vision, and I realize that my Spark must be active.

Listen to us, Dare. You have been captured. Your body is currently flooded with hallucinogens, neurostimulants, soporifics, and aphrodisiacs. We are blocking the effects so you can function, but the air is filled with these agents.

It’s hundreds of voices, all speaking in unison; I blearily realize that it must be all the echoes contained within the Spark. Things are starting to come into focus; I realize that I’m within a great hollow of some sort, made of wood, the irregular walls hosting little outcroppings of glowing flora and fungi. Down below is a dark pool, pleated with lily pads large enough for a person to lie upon. The tree that this hollow is within must be massive; the pool alone must have a diameter of seventy, eighty feet.

Whisper and Kwyn have been captured as well. They are in this hollow with you, but they are still sleeping in the shared mindscape that Sundew created to contain the three of you.

I try to move, and quickly realize that’s not happening — looking down, I can see I’m tightly wrapped in a column of roots that’s ten or fifteen feet above the ground. Casting around, I quickly spot Kwyn and Whisper likewise restrained at other intervals across the hollow, though both of them are inert and unmoving. A long, luminous, green-blue vine drapes down from each of them, its tendrils branching into their hair, and I quickly realized that a similar tether is hanging from my head as well. All three vines curve downwards towards a lily pad at the center of the pool, where a person is starting to stand up. The glowing vines seem to be woven into her blue hair, and as she turns to face me, I recognize the ocean eyes and the tanned skin.

‘Rina, or as the rest of the forest knew her — Sundew Weaver.

You will need to break free and get them out, and far away from here. We will help you, but cannot do so indefinitely — the longer the Spark remains active, the worse your hangover will be.

“Great, so it’s like being drunk.” I rasp, finding out the hard way that my throat is dry and I’m probably dehydrated.

If by drunk, you mean drunk on power, then yes.

“You are just a bundle of trouble, aren’t you?” Sundew says as the lily pads in the water start to rise, and she uses them as a rising staircase as she makes her way over to my root column. “Humans aren’t usually this difficult, but it’s been really hard to keep you under. What’s this ability you’ve been hiding from me?”

“Let us go.” I wheeze at her. My helm’s still retracted, so I can’t see my suit’s status. I start trying to move and wriggle again, seeing if I have any budge room, but the roots binding me seem pretty tight.

“I’ll let you go eventually, once we’ve fixed what’s wrong with you.” Sundew says, still ascending towards me and growing nearer with every lily pad. “You are very repressed. Not as much as the Dreaming girl, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s bad for both of you, and we need to get that taken care of.”

Hearing her tone, I realize what makes Sundew so dangerous. She’s not condescending, or dismissive, or evil in any sense of the word. There is genuine concern in her voice — she thinks we’re damaged, and she wants to help us by removing the social inhibitions she thinks are unhealthy. And there’s no malice in her actions — just a tyrannical, loving benevolence.

“Perhaps I’m a little more repressed than I should be.” I rasp, the servos in my armor whining as they strain against the roots. There’s no give, though — if anything, they seem to be getting tighter in response. “But it’s not your place to change that.”

“Then you have learned nothing about this world, and nothing about me.” Sundew says as she reaches the final lily pad, coming to stand before me. “That is exactly my function and purpose — to free you from the inhibitions which leave you so miserable and unable to express who you truly are, and what you truly desire. This senseless chastity keeps you, and so many others, from deepening the connections that could bring you closer to the ones you care about. You desire those connections, even if you refuse to admit it, and so do your friends, who also refuse to admit it.” She lifts a hand, placing it on my cheek. “But I can fix that, and I know from experience that you will thank me for it later, and so will your friends. Verbally, and perhaps even physically.”

With that she puffs a burst of silver-blue dust into my face, and even though I jerk my head back and try to hold my breath, I know I won’t be able to hold it long enough for the cloud to stop swirling around my head. Blinking rapidly, I whip my head back and forth, trying to clear the air around me, but it’s just desperate flailing at this point.

You have the blessing of Phoenix, Darrow. You have to use it.

In the situation I’m in, I don’t think it would’ve clicked right away. But I hear Ironfist’s words play back in my head, almost as if I listening to a recording: If you find yourself in a situation that you cannot escape through your own power, call her name and the redeeming flames will engulf you. It was one of the last things he told us before we left the outpost, explaining the blessing he had given each of us.

Giving in, I open my mouth, gasp in a deep breath, and immediately use it to belt out a desperate shout.

“ARCADIAAAAAAA!”

Within a second, I can feel a heat within me that rapidly spreads out, moving through my body. As it goes, it purges the agents contaminating my system, burning them out of my body; once it reaches my skin, the heat makes the jump to my suit, quickly spreading through it until it reaches the exterior plates, which start to glow. Sundew notices, and takes a step back, but even she isn’t prepared when I suddenly burst into furious, hungry flames, the fire funneling through the gaps in the roots with a roaring crackle.

“What are youaaaAAAHH!” she shouts, falling backwards onto the next lily pad down as the seething flames start to engulf the root column. Though I’m wrapped in fire from head to toe, none of it is burning me; but it’s clearly very hot, since the roots are already starting to char into flaky ash. Realizing she’s still connected to me by the glowing vine, Sundew quickly grabs her end of it and yanks it out of her hair, detaching it as fire starts to race along its length from my end.

These flames will only last so long. You have, at best, perhaps five minutes of this; at the worst, maybe two minutes. You need to free yourself, get Whisper and Kwyn, and get as far away from here as possible.

I’m already ripping and tearing, yanking and twisting; around me, the charred roots are starting to snap, break, and fall away as cinders that hiss and smoke when they hit the water below. Sundew is scrambling back to her feet, backing down another couple lily pads, and I can feel something burning in my ear as I kick and twist my legs free. Tilting my head to one side, I feel a scattering of ash and a few fragments of something fall out of it and into my hand; looking down, I see the charred remains of something that looks like a large seed that had started to germinate and send out roots.

Even though I’ve never seen one before, I know from the positioning alone that it was a siren seed, which would’ve eventually grown into a siren flower.

My head snaps up, and I lock onto Sundew. Reaching back, I pull my battleaxe off my back, orange plasma flaring over the blades as I turn it on.

Rein in your wrath, Dare. She will have seeded Whisper and Kwyn as well. You need to get to them first, free them, and burn the seeds out of their ears while you still have the purifying flames.

I grind my teeth. “System, deploy helm.” As it folds up out of my suit collar, locks around my head, and the optics come online, I turn my gaze towards the root column where Whisper is being held. “System, turn on jet thrusters.”

As soon as the icon on the HUD turns green, I launch myself off the root column that’s started to crumble beneath me. On my back and on the suit’s legs, jet thrusters roar to life, propelling me clear across the hollow. Even so, it’s quite a distance, and the Axiom suit is full power armor; I start to fall short, and swing my axe out ahead of me, hooking it into one of the gaps in the root column. Using that to arrest my fall, I haul myself up, with my jet thrusters firing to help me scale the column.

You don’t have to worry about burning either of them. Divine fire is discerning fire; it can tell the difference between friends and foes, and will not harm the former. You can handle your friends without harming them.

Reaching where Whisper is, I hook my axe in another one of the gaps, then reach forward and grab the glowing vine that connects her to Sundew. It almost instantly cinders in my flaming grasp, falling apart, and I move that hand to the side of Whisper’s head, tilting it to one side, and then the other, trying to figure out which ear the seed is in.

“What are you— NO!” I hear Sundew shout behind me. “Leave if you want, but you will not take them from me!”

I glance back to see that Sundew is jumping over lily pads, making her way across the hollow towards me, while the pool beneath her is starting to roil and churn. What appear to be submerged roots are starting to move, migrating through the water to the columns that Whisper and Kwyn are trapped in. Turning back to Whisper, I realize that the roots I’m holding onto are starting to char and burn away beneath the fire engulfing me, leaving me scrambling to find new footholds and roots to hang onto.

Just grab her and go. The fire will spread to her and burn the seed out of her ear while you are rescuing Kwyn.

I don’t hesitate, trusting the voices of the Spark implicitly. Grabbing my axe, I start hacking at the remaining roots trapping Whisper, searing them loose or snapping the ones that have already cindered. Once I’ve cleared enough of them, I grab Whisper, still unconscious, and throw her over my shoulder, turning next to Kwyn’s column. The roots moving through the water have reached it, and are weaving around it, working their way upwards to reinforce it and trap Kwyn behind a thicker layer of damp roots.

Gripping my axe, I get a good foothold on the remains of Whisper’s column, then launch myself into the air again, my jet thrusters propelling me most of the way there. But with Whisper’s extra weight, I’m coming up shorter than before, and land short of the column this time. The newer sets of roots are already starting to snake around Kwyn’s place in the column; staggering through the mud surrounding the pool, I jump again, my suit’s thrusters firing enough to get me most of the way up the column. Hooking my axe in the root gaps, I frantically start climbing, determined to reach Kwyn and get her free, while struggling to keep Whisper balanced on my shoulder.

“Darrow! Don’t you touch her! I’m warning you!” Sundew shouts from behind me. Her voice is getting closer, but I don’t turn around, staying focused on reaching Kwyn — at least until I feel something wrap around the ankle of my armor, and I look down to see one of the roots from the pool wrapping around my leg. Because it’s waterlogged, it’s not burning as fast as the root columns do, even though it is venting a lot of steam as the divine fire quickly dries it out. “I caught her fair and square! She belongs to me!”

I ignore Sundew’s angry shouts, hefting my axe and swinging it down, cleaving through the root around my leg. With that obstruction removed, I turn and keep climbing, reaching Kwyn’s spot in the column, but before I can start hacking away at the prison of roots, something slams into my back. As I scrabble to keep from falling off the column, I’m grabbed, flipped around, and hands find my helm and slam it back against the column. Whisper slides off my shoulder, and I’m barely able to catch her by the back of her jacket as she falls; my helm is slammed back against the column again, at that point I realize that Sundew has jumped me, and has her hands around my helm, her legs hooked in the column on either side of me. Her teeth are bared, and her ocean eyes have turned to covetous wildfire, absolutely unhinged and feral.

“The Dreaming creature is MINE! MINE! You can’t have her, you wouldn’t appreciate her, a simple mortal like you has no right to her! I was willing to share her before but I won’t let you keep her all to yourself, do you hear? She’s MINE!”

The maniacal ranting is accompanied by a helm slam that actually cracks my optics this time, and I realize that Sundew must have some ungodly strength to be going toe to toe with someone in a full suit of flaming power armor. With the hand I have free, I reach out and thump her a good one in the midsection, but it barely shifts her. Looking down, I can see that her legs on either side of me have started to divide and grow into the root column like branches or roots of their own, effectively anchoring her in place around me. A jarring headbash brings my attention back up; a dent warning goes off inside my helm, and even though I’m wreathed in Phoenix’s flames, Sundew is refusing to back off. Her skin and clothes are burning and charring, revealing a fibrous underlayer, and bark-like scar tissue is quickly growing over the damaged areas, though the fire is still winning by a slight margin.

You friend is a descendant of an ancient Dreaming spirit. She is a continuous wellspring of power — Sundew would be able to feed on her indefinitely, more than any other thrall currently at her disposal, and Kwyn would likely fuel Sundew’s growth beyond whatever limitations the sylvan currently has. She would rather die than release Kwyn.

“Then she’s gonna hafta die.” I grunt, slugging Sundew another powered, flaming punch with my free hand, and getting another helm slam for my trouble. It’s not doing much damage to me, but I’m not doing very much damage to her either — and if this becomes a battle of attrition, I’m going to lose, because this divine fire is on a timer.

We agree, with some reluctance. Pull the sticky fire potion from Whisper’s jacket; it is in her left pocket. When we tell you to, deploy it.

I swing Whisper around so I’m holding her behind Sundew, and reach around Sundew, digging around in Whisper’s pocket until I come up with the orange potion. The whole time, I’m weathering a pummeling from Sundew, whose limbs have become tougher and more barky, even as that scarring tissue burns at the proximity to me. Her seething rage seems to be carrying her through it, ignoring the pain as she raves at me.

“—know you better than yourself, you ingrate, I showed you the truth that you tried to hide from and gave you a chance to accept it, to learn more about yourself, to learn to love yourself so you could love others, and this is how you repay me? Once I get done with you, you’ll be so gone you won’t even know who or what you were before; I’m going to turn you into a toy for my other thralls to play with to their heart’s content, starting with Miari, and she’ll get to have you for as long as she wants before handi—”

Now.

I bring my hand up, shoving the vial into Sundew’s ranting mouth, then lowering my hand just enough to curl it into a fist and give her a short uppercut to the chin. Her mouth snaps shut as her head jerks back, and I hear the crunch as the sticky fire vial shatters; within a couple seconds, fire is spilling from her mouth, and she starts thrashing and screeching, scattering the fire everywhere. At least some of it made it down her throat, because I can see the glow growing in her chest, her body starting to color a dull red, like a tree burning from the inside out. Patches of fire start breaking out across her naked outline as it eats through her from the inside out, and soon, all of her is on fire, shrieking and thrashing. It only starts to stop when it’s eaten through enough of her neck for her head to snap off and fall to the ground, and the rest of her body follows in bits and pieces, until there’s nothing left but the leg stumps on either side of me.

Taking in a deep breath, I slowly let it out, then start dislodging myself from the remains of Sundew’s legs. “I’m going to be having nightmares about that for weeks.” I shakily mutter to myself as I drape Whisper over my shoulder again.

She will be back. Siren sylvans keep spare bodies in corpse roses that have grown from the bodies of thralls that have died. It will take time, but once the copy of her consciousness travels through the root network to one of the corpse roses, the corpse rose will bloom and she will step back out into the forest with a fresh new body.

“Oh, for crying out loud… seriously? What the hell. What the actual hell. I hate it here. I hate this world with a burning passion.”

For now, focus on reaching Kwyn, and burning the seed out of her ear. The divine fire is starting to fade, so hurry.

I finish hauling myself up to the column to where Kwyn is, grabbing my axe on the way up and frantically using it to cleave away the roots around her. Once I’ve cleared enough of them, I reach in to take hold of her helm, willing the remainder of the fire to travel along my arm and onto her; it does so, much to my relief, though it’s starting to grow weak, as the voices of the Spark noted. Once all of it has transferred over, I tilt her head from one side to the other, and when I see the charred husk of a seed fall out of one of her ears and down into her helm, I let out a hitched breath of relief. With everything that I’ve gone through, I feel like I’m going to break down and cry.

But I rein it back in, grab my axe off the root it’s hooked on, and start carving away the rest of the roots until I’ve sliced away enough of them that I can pull Kwyn out of her wooden prison. Draping her unconscious body over my other shoulder, I turn off the plasma blades on my axe, sling it over my head and clamp it to the back of my suit again. Turning about, I jump off the column, my jet thrusters slowing my fall back to the muddy ground.

Good. Now you need to get out of here. We can show you the way, and after that, guide you to a safe place where the three of you can rest for a night. But our guidance will have to end there, until we are needed again.

I don’t question it, following the sense of direction that’s developing in my head. As I pick up speed through the mud around the edges of the hollow, I zero in on faint slivers of light that are peeking through a curtain of vines where the hollow seems to rise to drier ground. Plowing through them and emerging back into the forest, I make sure that Kwyn and Whisper are secure on my shoulders, and won’t slide off. Once I’m sure of that, I pivot to follow the compass in my head, and start trundling in that direction.

And I don’t look back.