Chapter Text
The Foundry did not want to cooperate. Shienn was not pleased. AI precepts or not, stuff should at least work on his damned ship!
But it did not want to make life easy for him today. As if the mission wasn’t hard enough, as if it hadn’t gone completely off rails, forcing Margulis to tell him to just wipe everything out about 10 solid seconds from when he himself had noticed that the mission had, in fact, gone to complete shit.
“Nekros. Prime. Stop pretending you can’t understand and build him already!”
Alright. Deep breaths. He’s patient. Unairu are patient. He can handle this.
“Perhaps the Operator would like to review the other findings first?” Ordis asked, helpful as ever.
If only he could remember what other findings he meant… oh. Oh, that.
He has found these blueprints and a mangled chassis that was perched up next to the Foundry now, in a room he hasn’t seen before on any of the Towers.
But after a quake (Voidquake? Are there quakes in the Void?) a part of the wall has been broken down, revealing a medium-sized room, full of light from nowhere in particular, housing these blueprints, some dead plants, torn papers, a few ayatans, and a skeleton that seemed to have been hugging the chassis when they were not yet a skeleton.
It seemed these particular personal quarters had been either very well-hidden or sealed. Shienn didn’t want to know which.
(Of course he did. And if it was someone innocent – which, knowing the Orokin Empire, it probably was – he wanted to bring back that bastard who’d sealed it and kill them again. Just as they left this poor person to starve, or suffocate, or both.)
He took the ayatans with him, along with the chassis. He tried to take the skeleton with him too, but the bones felt so fragile that they would probably start disintegrating as soon as he exited the Void. So he would need to figure that part out later.
“Ordis, can you look at the Foundry? I want to… see this”, he said absentmindedly, his eyes tracing the flickering light from the stars.
“Of course,” his Cephalon had replied, probably, but he didn’t quite hear him by then.
He breathed out, breathed in, and looked.
***
In every Archimedean’s life, there comes a point when they start regretting ever having agreed to this path. Well, if they are me, at least.
Because I was chosen to make a presentation to the Council.
And a grimace of pain that my (mostly former) mentor tried his best to conceal was no consolation. “It should be alright, you know the subject well”, he said. I nodded, and that was it.
And it’s not even that I did something extraordinary, or made a breakthrough that would make me noticed. But what could I even do anyway? Say no to the Council? Yeah, I don’t think so, either.
“And thus the answer to your question, esteemed Councillor Nihil, would be that the Cephalon’s crystals can indeed shatter, if they are given enough pressure, be it physical or, allow me this thought, mental”, I finished, swallowing hard.
Well, if looks could kill, I would be murdered seven times over by now.
Or perhaps not, I realize as I glance to my left. The one I dreaded meeting the most when I walked in seemed to shoot dirty glances just like the rest of the Councillors, but not at me – at Councillor Nihil.
If you judge by the tales, he was the scariest of them all. With time, you get used to the usual murders and executions, my mentor even warned me explicitly that the moment he (or I) so much as breathes in the Council’s general direction wrong, we’re both as good as gone. But what to make of someone who has gall enough to oppose all six of them?
A man descending from a known line of revered warriors and innovators, directly related to the family that was fully occupying Deimos. A man of markedly larger stature than other Councillors, who could, in theory, pick me up with his right hand only without breaking a sweat. A man with beads and strange animal bones in his hair, flaring the nostrils of his huge nose and glaring daggers at Nihil from under his unusually full brows.
Nihil didn’t seem fazed in the slightest.
“I find your research to be of dubious quality. They are objects, is that understandable for you? They are things. What kind of mental pressure can you put on things?” he hissed.
I couldn’t help but take a step back, even as I tried my best to compose myself. The line of fire felt almost physical.
“With all due respect, oh Golden one, we know by now that they respond to intellectual stimuli, seeing as you made them in this way, Councillor”, I tried. “The simulations suggested that, despite the implied initial inten…”
“Oh shut the Void up”, Nihil spat, and then he made a sound.
Of course, my mentor told me that Councillor Vidar was prone to making sounds. All sorts of sounds, mostly nasal and loud, intended to convey different emotions with their mere intonations. He couldn’t have possibly described, however, how this sound makes the fuzz all over your body stand on end.
Plus- How could I ever forget that once upon a time I dreamt of being a language expert?
This was even better than just a language! This was speech, albeit without words.
“What is it?” another, more soft-spoken Councillor inquired. I couldn’t recall his name no matter how hard I tried.
“I’m through with this load of scrap”, Councillor Vidar stated abruptly. “You can give her your esteemed suggestions in writing, and maybe the next time they will have an answer that will finally satisfy you. Leave the poor girl alone, you’ve scared the shit out of her already”.
I was. Not that it made it any nicer to know that I was so bad at hiding it that he noticed.
Councillor Nihil tried to object but was met with the sound again.
“I said you can write it and pass on to her. That way she won’t forget, so it’s reasonable, no?”
And then the miracle happened. Councillor Nihil went silent and got to writing.
“Thank you, esteemed Councillor”, I tried meekly, but was cut off by a gesture that I chose to interpret as “don’t mention it”.
“We will get in touch in a few hours. Thank you for the presentation”, he said instead.
I nodded and slipped out of the hall as quietly as I could.
The way he looked at me, though, stuck with me. Even though he was staring at me from the podium high above the floor, it still felt like his eyes were directly in front of mine.
Like we were standing on equal grounds.
***
“Valasi, what in the Void do you think you’re doing?!”
As soon as the “mere mortal” has left, Nihil practically exploded. Of course he wasn’t pleased. Of course it was Vidar and his unusual behaviour again.
Valasi just snorted in return and made a face that uncannily resembled a bestial grin.
“You’re right, I should start doing more right away. It is really so important to deny knowledge that common, Glassmaker? Or you’ll burst if you publicly admit where do our little crystal friends come from? She likely knows everything anyway.”
He shot up, resting his hands on the long table they were all seated at, directly opposing the whole world embodied in Nihil, as always.
His long braids flew up, aglets pattered down his shoulders and back.
“It’s foolish to ignore. As foolish as every Void-blasted thing you do, in fact.”
“Oh, seems that I forgot to ask this particular savage how to carry myself today.”
“Not only today,” Vidar helpfully supplied. “But I’m forgiving, so that’s fine.”
The usual give-and-take and a short exchange of sharp gazes. Ever since Vidar has taken the Council seat of his great-grandfather Vlad, this has been an almost mandatory part of each meeting. For over a thousand years now.
They hated each other, of course, and then there was the fact that Vidar seemed to be ever youthful, with his black or white thinking and the raging hot temper he inherited from his family. Quick to judge, to punish, and to act, as it turned out - with everyone seemingly already in the know.
His politics, going against everything the Orokin society stood for. His humanistic view on those who weren’t even seen as people. His brilliant engineering speeding ahead of his time. And the unthinkable concentration of both wealth and influence he held in most industries. Especially the military sector.
Nothing could really be done with him. He was to be merely endured. At least for now.
Nihil did not sign up for enduring silently, however.
“You are behaving like an animal - which would be expected since you and your whole family didn’t venture from them that far. Just look at yourself. The bones, the teeth, the beads… And these sounds of yours. You are a barbarian, Valasi. Soon you shall forget civilized speech and start crawling on all fours, like your ancestors. Pathetic! Just a savage beast.”
The effect was somewhat marred by Nihil’s hissing and gesturing - betraying his powerlessness that was binding his anger.
“Maybe. But better be a savage beast than a yapping lap dog, Nihil. I will survive the wilderness of war and mutiny, should the need arise. But your kind has only one way. You know which one it is.” Grinning, Vidar swiped the thumbclaw of his right hand across his throat. “You’re all pretending to be something worthwhile at this fascinating hubris circus. Now that’s pathetic. So, if we don’t have anything truly important on today’s agenda - and I don’t mean some scrap that would scratch your overly inflated ego with a gilded comb, - I am taking my leave.”