#verica

Pule and Vince winced, hard. Their telepathic bond was unbroken, so they still felt what she felt, in addition to her auditory assault.

"It's like she's going through all the stages of grief at the same time," Pule said to Vince.

"Verica, can you still hear us?" Vince tried.

A mental howl so loud it caused them to stagger was the only answer.

"Guess she can," Pule groaned when he recovered. "That's gonna make this a bit harder."

"Yeah, we're not going to cut her off," Vince agreed.

Kelth and Sufford, standing next to the now-two, weren't entirely in on all the nonverbal communication they enjoyed, but they still got the gist of why exactly that would be such a bad idea, and wisely kept their obviously conflicted feelings about it to themselves. Instead, Kelth got curious.

"So how do we fight her?" they asked.

Vince winced a bit, again, at the thought of having to fight Verica, both because she was his wife and because she was already a right terror without being a wyrm. But, if this was going to go like the other Duviri-residents-turned-Orowyrms, it wasn't going to be much harder, surely, with no different solutions or outcomes. Surely.

Pule was equally conflicted, but at least verbalised his answer somewhere Kelth could also hear it. "I think it's just the same as the others, just… Fight her until she's exhausted."

A low growl rumbled through their bond, and was accompanied by some impressions. A slightly leaky cave she was in, with the wind that sheared by sucking any warmth out of it was the main one she wanted them to see, but there was a desperate undercurrent to it - she wanted them to help her, but the nature of her predicament made her feel horrible about it. She didn't want to have to ask for help, just be able to do it herself, because the cost of it was that Pule and Vince would feel obliged to help her, and that in her current state of mind was immediately tantamount to manipulation. Vince hissed back over the bond, that she knew it wasn't like that, that he knew that she knew that, and that they would've come for her anyway, ask or not. They were a team, dammit. Verica just curled up tighter, miserable, stuck in her own spiral.

Vince resisted the urge to pinch his nose in frustration - he didn't really have one anymore - and focused outward again, finally nodding to Sufford's tilted head.

"How is she doing?" Kelth asked. Perceptive kid.

"Worse than she's been in a long time," Vince said. "But she's pulled through, always, so now with our help she'll be back in no time." He hoped. Pule was nodding encouragingly.

Well. Off they went.

---

They eventually found the little cave she had hidden away in. They went up without guns drawn, and at the mouth of the cave, Pule and Vince went in alone.

"You've come to put me out of my misery?" Verica's voice, wyrm-size-amplified, boomed through the cave, and both men grimaced internally - that was loud, and the echo was bad. She could feel that, and laughed - cold, mirthless, cruel on purpose.

Pule recovered first and pushed closer, speaking over their bond. "Verica, what's up? What's got you like this?"

She hesitated for a moment, walls briefly let down. They could feel her turmoil and self-torment briefly shaken, and then her walls were up again, painted with fake bravado. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never been better. Look at how I shine, look at the power I've got! I could've wiped out the Orokin on my own with one roar like this."

"Yes, you absolutely could have," Vince said, "but that's a foe you've already beat."

For a moment, Verica glowed with satisfaction at the memory - literally, her lights were much more powerful at this size than they were normally - and then she suddenly shut down again. "But I didn't do that on my own," she said, softly, "and at what cost."

Pule and Vince couldn't come up with anything to say in time before her emotions seemed to surge up and combust. With a wail of anguish that left their auditory processors in white snow hell for a minute afterwards, she exploded out of the cave and vanished to another part of the islands.

Pule and Vince stumbled out of the cave and met an alarmed Sufford-and-Kelth halfway down the slope. They agreed on regrouping for a minute before they would canvas the area to find her again and make another attempt. Verica had closed herself off for them, so no hints this time.

---

It wasn't long before she opened up again, but this time, it wasn't to be helpful. She just lazily laid out all the ways in which wherever they were searching wasn't even near the correct direction. However, even those were clues, and Pule and Vince knew her well enough to read them clearly.

While following the frustrating trail of her taunts, Vince was brewing up a plan. The conversation last time went bad because she had control, and the state of her mind made her use it to be useless and spiral further. They would have to be curter this time, if she would let them.

Pule agreed with him. She was usually the leader of their triad, coming up with harebrained nonsense for them to pull, so the first encounter could've been predicted. Instead, Pule asked, how did you deal with rowdy students back when you taught? Was there anything there that could help?

A few unbidden memories, incomplete and moth-eaten, resurfaced. The classic back row noise-makers, protesting at being sent to the hallway since they hadn't been paying attention anyway. The girl who had been quietly bullying another student, that he had pulled to the front row and isolated once he had noticed it. The pangs whenever anyone called his subject useless, because we have all the Cephalons to do our maths for us now, haven't we? And every time he would explain that no, we still need to know the laws to understand and innovate further. At the time it was such a tired conversation that it never sparked more than annoyance and boredom in him, but now the memories made him want to punch something again.

"Nothing useful," Vince drily said to a cringing Pule, who had been party to the slideshow and accompanying emotions. Vince could tell he just barely suppressed an apology, which amused him and caused the irritation to evaporate, so he mentally waved it off.

"What about you?" Vince asked. "Any relevant experience?"

"Entirely not," Pule said. "I don't know how she does it."

"Because we let her," Vince answered. "Maybe that's the key. If we just don't let her take control, maybe that'll unsettle her enough for her to not try."

"That also needs the component of us taking charge, though, else there's a vacuum."

"Yes, well."

"Well?"

"That's step two."

"No, it isn't." Pule was amused. "Needs to happen at the same time or we lose her again. We should talk about that instead of fighting about if it's necessary."

Vince shut up, miffed at having been caught stalling. So, Pule continued.

"I don't like the thought, but what if we were just a bit mean to her. Her Orowyrminess is because she feels she manipulates everyone around her, so what if we show her what that actually is like, and hopefully break her out of her spiral like that?"

"I hate the thought, but it might work."

Pule grinned over their bond, and then, Sufford was on comms, telling them he'd found a black feather looking like it came from her just outside a cave, and to hurry and join him so they could try again.

---

The attempt to blackmail her into just coming back home with them ended with Vince's hat scorched and Pule with several little friends less. They could tell she felt bad about it over their bond, and it was just driving her to spiral harder.

Pule nudged Vince and made a pinching gesture next to his head. Vince tried his best to close his mind off to Verica without her noticing. Once he managed, he fixed Pule with a mentally-drawn eyebrow.

Pule laughed. "At some point you need to teach me how you keep doing that." There was no trace of Verica in his mind anymore, either. It was weird.

"I'm not doing anything," Vince lied, amused.

"New idea," Pule said, getting to the point immediately, because they didn't have much time before she noticed. "I gaslight the shit out of you."

Vince was baffled quiet for a second. "How will that ever help Verica?" he asked.

"She has a sense of justice the size of Mars," Pule said, and Vince could sense the workings of his plan in Pule's mind.

"Okay, alright," Vince said, painfully aware of the lack of time they had to discuss this, "I see. Go as easy on me as you can. We need to let her back in before she notices."

Pule agreed. They reopened their connection and let their third back to their consciousness. From the wallowing, she hadn't noticed anything. Good.

And now not to think about the horrors Pule was about to unleash on Vince.

---

Unsurprisingly, Sufford and Kelth were harder to convince. And when Pule said they had one more thing to try, the only reason Verica didn't immediately pick up on the intrigue as he closed himself off to her again was that Vince was distracting her by petting a krubie and being very skittish about it - he just really preferred kavats, or kexats or whatever, and she was entertained by the way he pulled his hand back quick as a bird every time the animal so much as twitched unexpectedly, so he was bearing it. For her.

Not that it was a huge hardship. It felt almost like normal times, her hanging out with him like that and idly commenting on whatever it was they were doing. It made his heart ache a bit. When she noticed, she withdrew a bit, only making it worse.

He stood up and shook out his hand while taking a few steps back, rejoining the others.

Or he wanted to, at least. Instead, he heard rustling from behind him, accompanied by some muffled clanks, and then the world went dark.

---

Sufford and Kelth didn't like the plan, but at least they agreed on its likelihood to work and get Verica back without bloodshed or risk.

So, relieved that that was done, Pule opened himself up again to his partners. Initially, he didn't notice any difference. Which wasn't right.

He turned his head around to where Vince had gotten himself and Verica distracted by a krubie, and… Didn't see anything. He was gone. Not even the krubie remained.

He cast out his mind for Vince in the wider immediate area. Nothing. He had simply vanished.

Pressing down the sickening panic, he also tried to ping Verica, and while he could then still detect her presence, she was hiding from him. Okay, fine, then. Panic time.

He turned back to Kelth and Sufford. "I know we literally just agreed on a plan," he said, kind of hysterically, "but we need a new one: Vince is gone."

---

She could tell that the way Vince had been cut from her consciousness hadn't been voluntary on his part. She was suspecting some kind of ruse, with the way her boys had been temporarily cutting her out of their mind, but had been content to see where it went, and secretly hopeful that whatever they were cooking up would work. But this wasn't part of any plan, she was sure.

Vince was in danger. So, she was going to rescue him. All alone.

The part of her mind that wanted her to compartmentalise and keep her cool was musing about she would never let him live down being her damsel in distress. The rest of her was already shooting out of the little cave, her head-tendrils shooting out any which way as soon as they had the space, trying to detect anything of use to her.

There. A flicker of light reflecting off a suspicious hue of blue, on a neighbouring island - whatever form she had, she would always have the eyes of a magpie. She coiled towards it as fast as she could, but before she reached it, he had vanished again.

She howled in rage, and reached the location a few moments later. She looked, smelled, analysed with all her sensors for traces of him and his captors.

Residue. Thrax.

Thrax.

Releasing a piercing scream, she turned around and sped towards the citadel.

---

Vince's sensors came back online slowly, sluggishly. His vision was blurry, which was strange and hadn't happened since he had last forgotten to put on his glasses. He mulled it over for a second before the realisation hit.

Panic sparked, and he reached out with his mind, to Pule and Verica or anyone else of their squad or even just nearby. But he felt nothing.

His auditory processors stopped feeding him white noise - he hadn't noticed they had been doing that, he cursed himself for being so slow to wake back up from whatever this was - and he could hear a voice, full of cold mirth, but also metallic and strangely boyish, with an accent both foreign and familiar -

Dominus Thrax, the boy-king-abomination of the Duviri Paradox. Shit.

The boy was speeching at his troops, something about adding a new member to his court. Vince wondered who it would be. Surely not him? He was by no means fit for anything like court life, all the stressful intrigue, and-

"Once we capture her, using this pathetic idiot as bait, we will subjugate her, and we will never again be subjected to indignity by the Drifters and their ilk!"

Vince's whatever-he-had-for-blood-now ran cold as the assembled soldiers cheered. It sounded like when Pule had found a loose piece of plastic pipe and had been making stupid noises through it, only about a hundred times more and also with much more blood-thirst than his friend had ever had.

His visuals were fully back online at last. He was laying in - oh come on - some sort of cage. He tried to quietly engage the Rift, to see what he could do with it in this unpredictable realm, but nothing responded.

Except for the boy-king snapping his head in Vince's direction. "You're awake," he sneered. Vince managed to sit up from the crumpled heap he had been laying in, but didn't respond. "Fine," Dominus said. The mask didn't show any emotion, but Vince had a good enough imagination to see the vindictiveness on his face when he continued. "You can't escape. You can't attack. You can't reach out. You can't do anything. Just sit there and be the bait for my newest courtier!"

Vince stared as the crowd of soldiers jeered and hooted. The cage didn't seem tall enough for him to stand up in, so he didn't bother with the indignity. True to Thrax's words, he couldn't reach anyone, no matter how much he tried to cast out his mind.

He had a sinking feeling that this hadn't been part of Pule's plan.

---

Verica reached the plaza, hissing and jetting steam, wreathed in her own fury. The army was gathered there, hooting and hollering and swinging their weapons around like hooligans. Thrax was standing at their head, next to a - a fucking cage, oh she was never letting him live this down if they lived at all - and so she came close but not within archer's reach. And then she found out she could move no further.

She focused on the small figure standing in front of the assembled crowd of soldiers.

"You," the boy-king said gleefully, "are to be my newest courtier!"

Verica snorted, throwing her head back in disdain. "I am going to be no such thing, child." Usually, she liked kids. Usually, they weren't the all-powerful god of a fairy-tale dimension made up mostly of nightmares. Usually, she hadn't made friends with a Drifter with powerfully traumatic memories of the place terrorised by the child she's interacting with.

"And yet, you came when summoned," Dominus Thrax said.

"I came to take back what is mine, and to give you what is yours - a royal ass-kicking!"

She tried to lunge forwards, but again, it was like she was frozen, hovering in mid-air. Her body coiled in restless stress.

The assembled soldiers boo'ed her. She snarled and then remembered that she didn't need to move closer to them to scream their ears off. Sorry, Vince, she thought, before opening her mighty jaws - except nothing came out. Her jaws wouldn't even open.

On closer inspection, Vince looked awake and alert, now holding one of the bars at the front of his cage. And yet, he didn't seem like he'd tried anything - no seeking contact with her, no using the Rift. She cast out her mind and he didn't even register.

"Don't make me repeat myself," Thrax said, lethally quiet and yet projecting across the entire square. The soldiers started up a chant of Thrax, Thrax, Thrax.

Verica could feel herself going into a panic. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She had nothing left that she could-

Pule pinged her. He also felt frantic. He was worried - about her, and about Vince. She still kept her mind closed off, convinced that she should be able to handle this.

Stay away, she howled at him. He's too powerful.

Bullshit, said Pule.

Vince is trapped and I can't move. He's going to make me another Courtier.

Fuck, said Pule.

Thrax was now coaxing whatever magic was binding her to make her land on the square, in a space the soldiers were quickly clearing out of. She could fight it, but not entirely. She was slowly sinking. There was nothing that she could do. Absolutely nothing. She couldn't handle this. Not alone.

She broke and did the one thing she had sworn to herself she wouldn't.

Please help me- help us, she said. She let Pule back into her mind, and bombarded him with all the information she had. Location, amount of soldiers, whatever Thrax was doing.

On our way, he said, and through his eyes she could see him and Sufford sprinting towards the nearest pair of kaithe.

Thank you, she said.

And then, Thrax wasn't pulling her downwards anymore.

She didn't feel alone anymore. She was part of a team. A team that she could rely on, that was going to help her out, no matter what. And she would do all the same things for them that they would for her.

They knew her better than she did herself, and so Pule knew before she that she had broken Thrax's hold on her. Kick his fucking ass, he said, as he mentally yelled at the kaithe to take off.

Thrax was now radiating a vile aura of dismay. His soldiers had more sense of self-preservation than the slighted king, and so were hustling to get out of range. In vain.

A beat kicked up in the distance, accompanied by pulsing bands of energy suddenly demarcating the edges of the square - impassable bounds, corralling all her victims close to her. She raised her head tall and slowly flared out her head-crest. "You made a grave mistake, Dominus Thrax," she said, dramatically, enjoying the fear and panic of the soldiers below. Storm-clouds gathered at her command and thunder rolled in, all setting up the beat for the beautiful melody she was about to make out of their screams. "And now, you will pay."

---

The massacre was over fast, especially because not a second after she'd dived to make her first pass through the scared-shitless troops, Pule and Sufford rode in on their kaithes, adding to the chaos. Dominus Thrax did manage to escape in the pandemonium, but honestly, if she never saw the kid again, it would be too soon.

Once freed from the cage, Vince looked no worse for wear. A bit rumpled, and with a minor headache, but nothing that wouldn't be solved after a day back in the Orbiter and perhaps a quick visit to the Helminth for that scorch-mark on his hat that Verica did feel a bit bad about.

After the final soldiers had been cleaned up, she released her beat, the energy-fencing, and her shape. Being humanoid again was an immense relief. Orowyrms didn't have arms to hug their partners with.

Once she'd released her idiots, the door of the Citadel was already open, swirling vortex behind it exposed. It seemed that Thrax was also fine with them leaving whenever they wanted now. Good.

And so, they did.

--------

Author's Notes:

the deimos triad can never fully close themselves off from each other. they've got a very low-grade transference loop going on between the three of them, making them a very light hivemind, hence the very mixed media communication they use. however, to be polite when they're in other company, they do usually use comms channels where available.

how fun it is that duviri kind of exists on self-actualization rules. you believe something hard enough, it becomes real.

like eleanor said, no matter what, a child is still a child. however, that doesn't mean you need to like the child or let them boss you around like they're a god-king and you a worm at their feet.

Not many of the glittering, bug-like populace ventured this far down, for fear of meeting some of the more vicious of Reach’s local populace. But not Ico, oh not the young explorer, Ico prided himself on being one of the few, one of the only to brave the twisting tunnels, and even though his mother constantly warned him of the metal behemoths that arrived day in and day out aboard great spacefaring vessels, he had not yet seen one for himself. But today, that would all change.

He steeled himself, tugging on the golden sash slung around his chest, tightening it and subsequently, ensuring the twin blades would not fall. The crystalline knives, carved from the pure blue stone that the Enall inhabited and built their very livelihood around, were a powerful mix of gadgetry and Enall ingenuity, able to take whatever shape the wielder desired. Wrapped in the same golden cloth, they sat securely on his back as he gazed down the darkest pit he had come across.

Once he descended the depths, This would have been the deepest he had travelled, and while the very prospect of such a fall should have terrified the young Enall, it instead filled him with bravery and the very essence of adventure and desire.

After he returned with treasures from the very heart of the metal giants citadel, Mother would never be able to tell him he was too young to explore with the older adventurers. His sisters would never be able to tell him he was too little to help.

He may have been born on the last day of the solstice, and he may be much smaller than other young his age, but he had something all those others didn’t. Bravery, and the soul of the great adventurer Elienallsis, the one who, with her great starship, led her people to the planet, where they could start anew! And mother would never again be able to tell him that Elienallsis was just a children’s story.

But there was no time to dwell on that, he had an expedition to embark on.

With a deep breath, he puffed out his chest and dropped into the depths of the planet.

——————

Ico awoke, cold and alone on the dried-up remnants of what used to be a riverbank. It was dark, and the foul red air stung to breathe in. The world outside the great cavern was nothing like mother or the explorers described. There was no green trees, no soft, brown earth, no blue oceans or blue sky. Just twisted, red growths that tainted the outside world and a sea of stalagmites and stalactites. And the heat! Oh, the heat was unbearable, like the very earth itself was bleeding with magma and fire.

Surely they wouldn’t have lied to him! Surely this was a trick! Surely if he called for mother or his sisters, they would come out laughing and tell him that he looked silly when scared.

But nobody came. Not when he called, not when he screamed, and not when he sat down and cried. Mother should have come by now, she wouldn’t be this mean to him, would she? Sure he disobeyed her when he took her tools, and when he went out to explore the caves. But she wouldn’t be this mean! Would she?

No!

No, she wouldn’t!

She wouldn’t leave him!

But what if she did?

No! There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this! Perhaps it was a new place? Yes. That’s it! The reason he had never heard of it before, was that no adventurer had found it! And he was the first!

Well, if he was the first to find this place, this mean landscape that looked so ugly and burned his chest and dirtied his blue feathers brown, he should get to name it. Yes. He should get to name it whatever he wanted, and no grown-up could tell him what to do.

And he will name it Aroda! After the mean old teacher that never let him skip class for adventures, which were much more important than history. Besides, he was the lost grandson of Elienallsis, he didn’t need history. He had everything he needed right in his chest.

With newfound determination, the little Enall struck out, seeking to map the landscape in his little blue book. With careful lines, he jotted his steps. Over the scarred land he travelled, clambering over great mounds with his blades, and rounding twisting corners until he found himself in the shadow of a great and shiny obelisk, dark light shining on its rough surface from somewhere far beyond.

Was this one of the metal giants cities! So deep in this new and strange world. Was this where they lived? Was this why no adventurer could find their cites, because they lived here, in Aroda? Well, now that he had found one, he should be allowed to claim it, right?

Yes. He should.

Flipping the blades from his back, he stepped closer to the black metal structure, assessing the best way to get up and onto its strange roof. Why would these strange people make buildings so round and complex? A silly choice. But he’ll make sure to tell them that once he meets one.

Climbing the building proved to be much easier than he had anticipated, with his blades finding purchase on many of the scratches and deep gouges in the dark metal, and even some of the softer groves that beaded red with every cut. But then he was at the top, sitting proudly on the curved surface. And how cold it was, unnatural so against the sweltering heat. Enough to make the young boy flop none too gently against the metal and sigh.

But his relief was short-lived, as, with an almighty jolt, the building moved with unnatural speed, a great big appendage swinging barely inches above his head. Except, he could see now, that it was no building, and instead, one of the great metal titans his other would tell stories off. So high, so dizzyingly high above was its featureless head, swirling around to spot what had most likely woken it. And, Ico realised with sickening dread, that thing was him.

A cold chill raced down his spine as he lifted his head, meeting the giants gaze as the hand came down on him once more.

——————

Noble-6 woke like one of action would. Quickly and ready. So when he heard the little sigh, he was ready to start swinging. But what he hadn’t accounted for was just how small the strange creature was.

Six knew he was big, standing at almost seven feet, but compared to the tiny creature, he felt almost monstrous.

No. Why was he even entertaining these thoughts? Surely it was the result of a concussion that had him seeing the little blue alien laying on his leg. But then he looked again, and there they were, looking up at him with wide, terrified white eyes, long ears like a rabbit flattened against a round head while three-fingered hands clutched at the edges of scratches. No. They couldn’t be here, there was no alien on his leg and this was all a covenant trick.

Without meaning to, he let his hand fall, completely covering the little creature. Their warmth against his palm, even through the thick Mjolnir under-suite, cemented their existence, and the Spartan was no stronger against the tangible evidence of truth than a rabbit to a wolf.

With the tiny creature wriggling around under his palm, but otherwise immobile, Six let himself fall silent once more, gazing out at the glassed planet that was once the birthplace of the Spartan program. To any outside force that saw the stationary war machine, it would look as if he was dead, mobile forever. Lost in Action like so many more of his fallen brethren. But they would be wrong, for Six was quite alive, and though he sat so impossibly still, his mind was a flurry of activity, going over the facts and information with a fine-toothed comb.

‘Spartan-B312’, The AI in his head was not something he would get used to any time soon, and that was a fact. But still…it was nice. After so long as a freelancer, a lone wolf, a hyper lethal vector, it was nice to have someone unafraid of him, even if it was a broken fragment of a human mind.

“What is it, Ve?”, Six could feel the little creature shaking, and what was intended to be a quick glance, turned into a heart-wrenching gaze. Its little eyes were rimmed with black, glittering tears falling in an endless wave as it wailed in a singsong dialect if it even was truly words.

‘What will we do with them?’, Them. The little life pinned under his hand, pinned, and unable to move until the Spartan permits it.

“I don’t know”, he says after a moment, running a finger so carefully against the fuzz that made up their skin. But oh how the little one cried even more, the Spartans very presence frightening them beyond any reasonable hope.

‘They are alive. Intelligent’

“I know, Ve”, being so impossibly careful, a concept so foreign to him, Six managed to flip the alien over, cradling their burning body in a palm so much bigger than them. One stained red with all the blood dripping from his hands. But there they sat, chest heaving as they perched on his palm, gazing at him like a monster come to life. They were probably right. Six was a monster, the boogeyman under the bed. The hunter among lions.

‘We cannot leave them here. They will not survive on a glassed planet’