19 Xaronzul I

20.04.2024

Rebuilding a part of oneself was one of the most mind bogglingly boring things in the known multiverse and beyond. That was a purely objective and scientific fact. At least as far as Xaronzul was concerned.

He never liked the quiet. It left his weirdly wired brain to do whatever the heck it was it did with nothing to distract him from it. The out of place sensation, a smell that didn’t belong, a sound that nobody had made, sometimes even words spoken where nobody was. The worst were the small touches where nobody touched him. He preferred the small sensation of fluctuating temperature, even the little stings of pain. It all never really bothered him anymore, he wasn’t afraid of it anymore. He was no longer living in fear of what would happen if anyone would notice, because he no longer had to hide it now surrounded by those he trusted most and who knew and appreciated him just as he was, all technical flaws included. — However — if these sensations were the only things that happened around him, it was frankly massively-mildly annoying.

To fight the silence he had leaned over, reaching only barely over to the consoles without tearing his hand from the panel it was wrapped to and which was currently reading and interpreting his memories and core values to be remade into his now missing part. Once successful in reaching the panel he threw on some music that now blasted through the lab. He hummed along even though it really wasn’t hummable music.

The sitting still part was worse than the quiet.

His feet and free hand were constantly bouncing and twitching around, his eyes jumped from this point to another and then further and back again, as if he was expecting anything to change in the high roofed laboratory. It wouldn’t, he knew that. He was chained to this place for the next few weeks, no way around that. He planned to sleep for a good while of it — but currently sleep was the last thing on his restless mind.

He hated not being on the Dawnbreak right now. Not when all the others were putting their lives on the line basically for him to even get his missing part back. They had to work together to give each other that safety. A way to assure they were whole. He should be there, helping and making sure the others would have that same assurance.

His hum turned off-tune to the music, but against the industrial clashing of notes some would be hard pressed to even call music, it was barely noticeable.

He kicked the static pool of nanites in which his missing Part would be rebuilt in. He had no reason to do so, but he followed the impulse nevertheless. Just a second of something to do.

Suddenly the music turned off and Zenozarax’ voice appeared behind him. His body became still at once — he forced it to.

“Do I have to remind you to not interact with anything magical while the scan is going?”

“Sorry,” Xaronzul mumbled.

Zenozarax checked the panels with a light frown on his face. “Seems to be fine. Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t!” he promised and was utterly genuine about it. “Can you turn it back on though? When you leave again.”

“Sure. I should have considered it to begin with. I can get you something to read too if you want?” Zenozarax sat down to work through the queries that had come up in the scanning process.

“Nahh, I’m good.”

Xaronzul knew near nothing about what went into the process of rebuilding a part besides that it was, as mentioned, horribly boring but also that it was a bad idea to interrupt the Soulturner overseeing the process when they looked like this. Focused and busy.

So he went back to entertain himself with nothing but looking around. The overwhelming almost sweet smell of flash welding filled his nose for a moment, and he breathed out hard through his nose even though that didn’t help. He then successfully fought the sudden urge to reach into the nanite pool (for no good reason). He considered that a win on his part. Sensation after sensation assaulted his mind, but he didn’t let any of it show.

“Any news from the ships?” Dammit. That was a failure. No interruptions!

“I try not to think about it.”

“Yeah. Of course.” That was pretty normal. Any wizard with a warrior knew that sensation of forcefully ignoring the tension that could come with high pressure situations. Not paying much attention to it in the first place was one way of dealing with it. Especially if one had other important things to do too.

“They will make the jump in less than five minutes,” Zenozarax added despite his previous statement. “Did you notice any problems with the ship manifest on the Twilight in the past?”

“Huh? No, non. Why?”

“There seems to be an error in it. Nothing major. Just displaying entries double or thrice in some cases.”

“That’s odd.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t really make sense. Sukatar didn’t touch those systems.”

Xaronzul shrugged. “Might just be some splinter of the explosion wedged in a sensor.” He didn’t know much about most fine mechanical or magical tasks that required a steady hand so nobody ever expected him to fix these things in the first place.

Zenozarax scoffed amused, for a moment the tension was broken, “Crude, but actually possible.”

Then there was silence, and Xaronzul knew they were only two minutes away from making the jump, so Zenozarax would need to focus. Or at least to not provide any distraction to his Warrior.

Quietly he tapped the fingers of his free hand on his bouncing leg and quickly found the beat of the music again, humming almost inaudible along as if it was still playing. A low crawling sensation crept up his stationary arm, like something slimy with too many tentacles dragging itself up to his elbow. He ignored it.

He watched Zenozarax carefully, quietly looking out for any reaction to what was happening on the ship. It was dreadful, the moment of tension, waiting, not knowing and not being able to do anything about it either. Something whispered in his ears,

From hell’s heart he rises… to hell he returns,

and wailing in regret.  

He hummed along.

Then he stopped. As he saw Zenozarax froze in his movement, for a moment still as cast from stone, his expression faltered, a sense of profound shock, unmistakable in the bright lights.

And Xaronzul already knew things had gone horribly wrong.

“What happened?” He asked almost breathlessly, leaning forward as much as he could with the restraints on his left arm.

“He’s dead.”

Zenozarax looked up at him.

Xaronzul felt his own heart drop.

Somewhere to his right was a shrill wailing that made his face twitch, but he knew there was nothing there.

“How?”

“I don’t know.” Zenozarax rose up, but froze. “Fuck. God dammit!” He hit the rim of the pool so hard that it dented under the force and sparks of his own magic crackled from his fist.

“What about the others?”

“I don’t know!” Desperately Zenozarax turned back to him — the urge to do something clashing with the sudden fact of danger of being the only living Part left. He couldn’t go there.

“I’ll find them. Find out what happened,” Xaronzul said quickly.

*

Xaronzul, the Engineer, appeared through a portal on the Edge of the Universe — his arrival triggered an unscheduled portal alarm but it was lost in the already flashing amber alerts of an equally unannounced ship having ported to the station. It was only the Twilight, and no Order ships, which was an instant relief but the fact that the Dawnbreak wasn’t there and nobody had yet bothered to turn the alert off told him enough to raise the tension he felt to new levels.

Assuming the medical facilities to be pretty hectic right now he didn’t teleport there directly but quickly ran down the corridor, through two port doors and — indeed arrived into a very worldly kind of chaos.

Shouting of people greeted him, rolling tables were pushed here and there with medical supplies that were needed everywhere all at once. He saw people with burns, a few missing libs even. Others seemingly unconscious. Hopefully unconscious. The overwhelming scent of burned fabric, flesh, and hair mixed unwell with the familiar sweet scent of ozone and welded metal that clung to their bodies.

He spotted Moakatar in the hectic and quickly went over to her. Before he spoke he spotted Sukatar — or at least who had been a Part of Sukatar. He could already see that she was dead.

“What happened?”

Moakatar noticed him first as he spoke and turned to him. She held a datatab in her hands — the expression in her face void of any emotion. She always went like this when she was under pressure.

“We were ambushed. The Leviathan was there. The Dawnbreak—” she halted, maybe realising finally to whom she was talking “We lost her. Had to destroy her. Zenozarax didn’t make it onto the Twilight, we don’t know if—“

“He’s dead. He knows.” Xaronzul swallowed hard. Through a static portal that led to the docks more people came in.

“Once everyone is here I want all soldiers to gather in G3 unless you are needed to assist here!” Sukatar’s firm voice cut through the loud voices and wailing as she appeared through the portal carrying Jennax Fen whose skin was scorched by heavy plasma burns. He was still alive, at least he was breathing — that’s one lucky goblin. Or maybe a very unlucky one.

“Xaronzul,” Sukatar acknowledge him briskly as she put Jennax one one of the last free medical stretchers.

“Can I help?”

“Give me those!” She pointed over to one medical cabinet table and he quickly pulled it over. “Get him out of the overalls.” She rummaged through the supply as Xaronzul grabbed a pair of medical scissors and cut open the overalls, carefully peeling the fabric from burned flesh.

Jennax was barely conscious, which was probably a good thing. Sukatar arose from the cabinet and in quick succession injected the small body with three different vials, an oxygen booster, painkillers and paradoxically enough an immune suppressor. The latter would assure they had enough time to actually fix the damage before his overenthusiastic goblin physics would heal the damage too quickly or worse, adapt to something not desirable.

“Hold him up here, like this. I need to get the fabric out before he starts to heal over.”

“I need to know what happened. He needs to know.” Xaronzul held Jennax while Sukatar treated the burns.

“The Leviathan was there. Waiting for us.”

“What do you mean?“

“They knew, Tash, they fucking knew exactly where we would be! They almost sliced directly through the CC!!“

“No, no, no, what do you mean, they knew? How?”

Anger glared in her eyes as she squinted at him. For a moment Xaronzul almost feared she suspected him to have betrayed them.

“By North— do you need help here?” A third voice drew both their attention. Pelagius stood in the doorway to the medbay. Ravalor behind him. Both entered but while Pelagius came straight to them, Ravalor stopped one, two steps into the room looking wildly out of place as he watched the misery.

“You!”

A shrill sense of alarm flared up in the back of Xaronzul’s mind as he heard Sukatar hiss that one word. Pelagius abruptly stopped but then realised Sukatar hadn’t even meant him.

Ravalor was the last to notice.

“Did you do this?” Sukatar snapped at Ravalor who twitched back as Sukatar came directly towards him.

“What are you talking about?” Alarm filled Ravalor’s voice too, his hands were only halfway raised, undecided unsure, confused as to what was going on.

“Did you tell Mezchinhar of our plan?!”

“Of course not!’

Sukatar had almost reached Ravalor, anger sizzling in the magic of her hands, Ravalor now completely on the defensive, hands raised, and if she had made one more step the situation would have escalated, but before that could have happened, Xaronzul had grabbed Sukatar hard by the arm and pulled her back.

Sukatar stumbled, catching herself — glaring at Xaronzul who now stood between her and Ravalor. The shrieking wailing in the room had grown almost deafening in that moment. But he finally realised that it wasn’t even real. Beyond some low sobs and groaning, the room had to be dead silent. The wailing was just in his head.

“You have to stop that right now,” he said, actually raising his own hands, ready to defend Ravalor from Sukatar if he had to.

“The hell are you doing, Tash?” Sukatar hissed. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense! He knew.”

“He wasn’t the only one,” Xaronzul countered calmly, watching her closely. “You’re stressed out, you want to blame someone, but this ain’t it, brother.”

She twitched, her hand sparked. “Don’t you patronise me!” She almost spat. “You have no reason to trust that wizard!”

“I do.” When Xaronzul spoke again, his words were slow but deliberate, steady even though he felt a trembling within his body. “I trust Zenozarax. And Zenozarax trusts him. So trust him as well. I trust you too — but I need you to step back right now.” And his tone left no room to doubt that it was a threat.

“Su.”

Sukatar winced as Moakatar’s soft voice tore her out of the stare down. Almost desperately she looked at Moakatar who now stood beside her and then, pushed her hands down.

“Jennax,” Moakatar said softly, nodding over to the medical stretchers.

A frustrated grimace drew Sukatar’s brows down. But then with a hearty “Curse all of you!” She hurried back to Jennax to continue to help him — with Moakatar’s help.

“Thank you…”

Xaronzul heard Ravalor mumble behind him and he turned around. For a moment he mustered the young but exhausted face. Yes, he didn’t know this wizard, he could make no judgement of his character. But he believed, with every fibre of his being, that Zenozarax would not risk all their lives like this, his own included, if he even only for a second would believe him to turn on them.

He’s important. A voice whispered and a strange scent tickled in his nose. His hand started to twitch.

“Yes,” he agreed quietly.

Ravalor looked at him for a moment, unsure of what to make of him or his answer. Then he asked, “What happened?“

“They were ambushed by the Leviathan. We lost the Dawnbreak. Zenozarax’ Warrior is dead. Su’s Engineer as well and lords know how many of the crew.” His crew. He gritted his teeth. He could name everyone still missing in the room. Too many — and he had to assume the worst.

Ravalor’s expression seemed nonexistent. There was no shock, not even a frown really. But there was something in his eyes. The way his gaze left Xaronzul, overlooking the medback, looking at Sukatar and Moakatar, the soldiers that still helped the wounded, doctors and nurses hurrying along, even the dead Part of Sukatar.

It was fascinating to watch him. The silent way he took in the situation, the thoughts it seemed to evoke. Xaronzul could see it in his eyes that Ravalor understood suddenly with absolute clarity the severity of the situation and how bad it was for them. And he saw, just the slightest change in his brows, a sign of sadness. Empathy.

“I’m sorry.” Ravalor said quietly.

Xaronzul rose his brows. “So you did do it?“

“What?” Ravalor’s attention snapped back at him, the stoic composure briefly broken by the sudden fear of being thrust right back into the same situation they had barely managed to divert. “Of course not.“

“Then what are you sorry for?“

Ravalor looked at him for a moment, and there was so much in his eyes, so much emotion that simply didn’t show in the rest of his face. Xaronzul found himself almost enchanted by it. Eventually Ravalor shook his head, keeping the thoughts unspoken, instead he said,

“Tell me what I can do to help.“

 

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