Tasha was able to get a ride with the Titanians on their jet-trireme, which got her almost all the way to Abu Dhabi before it blew up. There were also plenty of barges heading to the Red Cliffs from the port, all bound to pick up fresh loads of ore. After two days of travel and a lot of flying, the goal was in sight.
"Would make a good pirate base," Blackwings commented. She'd been haunting Tasha the whole trip, except around the Red Cliffs where she seemed to fade away. Apparently the ghost pirate was pretty disgusted that Tasha didn't 'have any fun' with the Titanians, or seduce the barge captain, or even get drunk along the way.
Tasha wears the same worn out, put upon expression she has since she departed the Gateway Tower. Part mission and part incessant nagging from her evil spirit of an ex-abuser, the on again off again commentary has become common enough that she feels it's like a wind constantly blowing in her ear. And like the weight of what she's come to determine, something she has gotten used to -- if does not enjoy. A burden to bear, like her heavy armor and packs full of supplies. She even talks to the burden, because there's no one else and the loneliness gets to her.
As she cranes her neck up at the castle she frowns. Not for any particular reason -- she thinks the Keep is as beautiful as ever -- but she finds that everything makes her frown during this trip. One more thing to deal with; doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It wants her attention and she has to deal with it.
"Mmmhmm," she utters, a neutral, distracted response. An automated defense. "Time to go inside." With the declaration she angles her flight towards the Keep entrance, knowing the Stormrider Clan's xenophobia.
There isn't anyone guarding the gate.. or out on the grounds. From her last visit, Tasha knows that the younger folk had gone off to explore the world, leaving just the old and very young, which didn't make up much of the population. The fortress feels like a ghost town.
Tasha lands in the town square, turning around slowly as she takes in the emptiness. Before the Keep had been, if not bustling, than at least active. Now it feels like the early stages of a ruin, and she wonders at choices: Was freedom the right gift to give these people? Is this what Horus knew, and if so, was idealic isolation what the Progenitor expected? Should she have revealed herself, so that oldest and the youngest had a reason to be proud of the change?
Do they hate her?
Her frown deepens and she sees no one. Turning, she walks towards the central keep. She could fly, but a determination to see what she's wrough through keeps her on the ground and watching. Recording.
Somewhere a Vartan child laughs, but sounds like it comes from deeper in the city - Tasha certainly doesn't know the full extent of the place. But she does know the way down to the grand hall, and the entrance to the K'hu'an tunnels. "I don't see any ghosts," Blackwings complains. "I guess I can only see what you can see, heh?"
"Aren't you supposed to be a part of me?" Tasha asks Blackwings, asking her in the open and at normal conversational tone now that she's decided no one will probably hear her and that she doesn't mind if they do anyway. "But you know things I don't, don't you? Sequestered, that's the word. Seperate, one." Her tone is lazy; the walk feels lazy. Lazy like the walks she would take after a battle had concluded, when everything else was done. But she knows she's not done here, and so keeps walking towards her destination and in the the Keep.
"I'm here," she calls out, half expecting no reply. "I'll just be walking through now. Don't mind me. Sorry about the emptiness. Does it help I'm the one you were waiting for? No? I'll just keep going then."
This section still seems abandoned - but then, what reason would anyone have to still come here? Soon enough, the alien tunnels are reached. "These carvings are pretty wild," Blackwings notes. "Knew a gal that was really into a fetish like this. The things she got up to with Garter Naga.."
Tasha barks a laugh at the comparison. If she only knew,// she thinks, well she's going to know in a moment. After the laughter dies, she explains as she walks, "Have you ever wondered what's beneath the mountains?" She gestures at the walls, still wondering about the carvings and their eyes, teeth, mouthes. She makes a note of asking the Source if it has a physical form, expecting there's likely a similiarity. "These halls are older than the Keep, I think. Older than the Vartans. Maybe older than the Old Ones."
"Rocks and the tombs of the dead gods," Blackwings claims, simply a voice now in Tasha's head. "Being old isn't so special.. unless there's profit to be had in it, yark!"
"What do you do, after you have everything, though?" Tasha asks Blackwings and thus herself. "You might find it's not enough. Or not what you thought it was. Or not what you really want? So you look for something else. Maybe the 'finding' was important." She waves her hands towards the wall indicately. It's something she never mentioned to anyone, but Blackwings is her's now and so she feels safer with what's her's. She doesn't think she can hurt Blackwings any more than she already has, anyway. "I don't know, do you?"
"Can't have everything," Blackwings claims. "Sometimes.. you get to the top, only way to go is down. But go down.. and you have to get back on top again, aye?"
Tasha nods to this; it makes sense to her even if she isn't sure how to apply it to her current situation and the heights she's become aware of. "Whatever happens, you keep going where you want to go," she tries anyway, but heads off what she was going to add to it when she realizes she's deep enough now.
"We're here. Be respectful. I don't know if I can stop you from not being respectful, but I also don't know if I can protect you. If you push too far, I won't even try. Remember: this is my honored ally," the hyrbid woman elaborates, standing only ten feet from the way below. "I have new friends now."
The K'hu'an whisper in the adjoining tunnels as Tasha stands at the edge of the pit. Chances are though that she'll need to go down in order to actually contact the Source, since it doesn't seem to respond.
Tasha wasn't expecting that it would, but that it doesn't is interesting to her. She wonders at the extent of the being's confinement, its powers, and other aspects of its existence. It's not something she considered in-depth before, the first time she was terrified and only concerned with success and survival, the second with an attempt to approach a more intimate understanding, and now she's here a third time and feeling as confident and directed as she ever has. A slight anxiety touches her, but little else. "Here we go," she says, and then she steps forward and in to the abyss.
The rest is familiar.. falling into a what seems like pit of serpents-centipede creatures. They climb across Tasha, and then she can hear the Source. "You are heavy," it notes. Probably because she hadn't removed the armor before jumping in.
"It's the armor," Tasha realizes, having forgotten all about it. It was just one literal weight among a great many figurative ones, after all. "I forgot: I'm sorry. I can remove it, ... if you like?"
"No matter now," the alien voice replies. "Why have you come again?"
"I have important questions that involve what you have asked of me. Our deal." A pause as she considers how to word the next part, going with simplicty for the sake of expediency. "And one request."
"Questions. There are always questions," the Source notes, one 'bit' coiling through Tasha's hair. "But you have traveled far, I taste. What are they?"
"There are always questions," Tasha agrees. She has traveled far, but she thinks even the greenest of traveler knows that there are always questions. The touch on her hair also reminds her of when her mother used to run her talon over her head, and she finds it comforting even if she suspects the intent is different. "But you like questions and so do I. I remember."
The hybrid eases back, having little reason to move or resist. And it's been a long trip. "The Seraphim, or Sifra, or Xilfirm as you know them, and the your kind, the Ogdoad, the Lloigor and the Harrowers. You mentioned feeding before, and the planting of life. Why do the Sifra fear your kind, and why did they cast them out? Why did your kind seed life? What is it you're here for? We found what we believe are records of this conflict by the Progenitor Eve, that the defeat of the Sifra was supposed to end the cycle of death, but she belives it only accelerated it. That means the cycle is both theirs, the Sifra, and someone else's. Yours?"
"So many.." the Source replies. "My kind served the Seraphim. Horrowers, Lloigor.. they all mean the same thing: slave. They never feared us. We were created to serve, and could not defy our masters. When they decided to overthrow the Ogdoad, I was already theres to experiment on. Did they cast us out? If so, it is because they no longer had use for us. Only the Ogdoad can answer why life was seeded, or why they prefer to eat the souls of those that arose from the seeds. There was no cycle that I am aware of, regarding the Ogdoad."
"So they do eat souls. I see." It is as Tasha had suspected and the answer she believed would come, but that doesn't make it any harder to hear. She chews on her lip a moment, having some idea of one side of the conflict now and its immensity. The old feeling of being tiny in the face of giants returns to her, but she pushes it out. If I can't stand eye to eye with giants, I'll just have to fake it and lie to myself. I'm here, that's what matters anyway. It feels very arrogant to the young woman, but she doesn't see any other way other than a certain arrogance to stand with the angels and expect answers.
"The cycle must be a creation of the Sifras then. That narrows it down, it answers some questions. I think that the cycle of genocide that the Sifra perform is related to the Ogdoad, that it's something they do to address the threat." It all sounds very clinical to Tasha, her words, but a forced steadiness is the bests he can manage. She just doesn't have the emotional resources for more right now. Ground-down emotion and dull anxiety. "Eve says that with the Sifra crippled, that one of the Child species will turn to genocide. She chose not to tell her children so that they may, "die in innocence." But other Progenitors chose differently, even appearing to oppose their leader. Ahriman, Progenitor of Celestials and Mafdet, Progenitor of Khattans, chose their children to survive the cycle at any expense. Eve says they will genocide. I don't know why, but I understand the, um, implications."
"And if they are victorious they will take the place of the Sifra, I think. Only one survives, that would mean the Sifra, too, must go. They'd come here eventually," the young woman finishes.
"No," Tasha pauses, having realized an error, "Eve said teh cycle accelerates because the Sifra are crippled. The Child Species will turn to genocide to surive this cycle. That is something in all that I don't know, the how and why."
"The Ogdoad are no threat," the Source claims. "Many peoples have come to this world, and that does appear to happen in cycles. The Sifra control this. They control everything. If only one species survives, it is because the Sifra require one to survive."
"The Ogdoad aren't a threat? But the Sifra are crippled, and if they begin a cycle, then to what end? Are they eliminating competition? Are they copying the Ogdoad? I've seen their artificial souls," Tasha asks, eyes opening; she didn't realize she'd closed them in the dark. It doesn't help either way. "Who or what controls the cycle, and what do they gain?" She leans forward amidst the writhing mass. "Have you witnessed the cycle?"
"Witness.. witness.. I see only what others bring me," the Source claims. "Where I am.. where we are now.. is separate from the rest of reality. "The Sifra do not need us anymore, it seems. But that does not mean they do not need servitors in some other capacity."
"So they make ... servitors?" Tasha wracks her brain, but it comes easily enough: Abaddon. It's the only declared Sifran servitor she's ever met, or even known of. "I met one of their servitors. Abaddon, I think he or it was some form of defense system. An AI? It tried to recruit me, then it tried to enslave me. The Progenitor artifact intervened. But I don't think it was like I am, because it couldn't manipulate me. I could have manipulated someone better; it wasn't made from a being like me." She lets that stand for a moment, changing direction after. "Can you ever leave this place?"
"Leave.. leave.. not leaving is the hallmark of a prison, is it not?" the Source asks. "Perhaps your Progenitors can free me. But I cannot free myself."
Tasha thinks on this a moment, then she spreads her hands.
"Can I free you?" She asks.
"I do not know," the alien notes. "Can you?"
"I don't know either," admits the young woman, who searches up -- or what she thinks is up -- and for the hole that allows her entry. "But I'm going to try. If I can leave, then maybe you can leave with me. This is some form of warped space? It's not a stasis field, that was the trap that He-Who-Moves was stuck in. What is this? No distortion, I didn't notice a change in time. Is it just a barrier? Or ... " She reaches down touching one of the writhing fragments, having an idea, "Or is it you, that traps yourself? Something they did to you, or a limitation of how you move." She squints; again it does no good. "Do you have a physical form?"
"In my space, I have physical form," the Source notes. "In yours, I am forced into one appropriate to my function. This place is.. between. You may not sense any difference, because it is built to contain me, who is not from your space."
"Then you need to be like me somehow," Tasha decides. She sits up, legs folded and plants her head on her hands. "Can you charge your shape? Fit inside my suit? Or ... " She shifts; jerks and squirms really. The idea came to her, and she thinks it's clever enough, but the details ... "Um, another idea. You're not like me, but maybe you're like a soul? A spirit. There are spirits that are attached to me, or, they dwell within me, uh, somehow. Could you do that? Can I or the spirits with me shield you?"
"I am not like a spirit, and it is unlikely you could contain me," the Source claims. "Many have tried to remove pieces of me in the past, but the results have been messy for all involved. I have my link to you, which is as much as I can do beyond my cell. It is not much of a link, I grant, but it is the limit. You could always just summon another of my kind though if you need use of one."
"I don't like leaving you here. Whatever you think of me, I've gotten used to you, and I still owe you our deal. If you can come with me, maybe you can meetthe Progenitors along side me. Help them. I don't know, maybe we can all help each other. What's the saying Gabriel uses? I'm "grasping at straws" here! And I'm close, but the closer I get the worse it seems." She leans back, taking a deep breath, exhaling. "Maybe I can just break it? The system may not function like it used to, there may be no backup if I take, um, a hammer and begin smashing the physical area. That's risky though. If I had a Marker, that would do it. I should have brought one." Wishing she could just summon one of those too, she holds up and hand and squints. She doesn't expect a result, but decides it's worth a try. As she does this, she asks, "If it comes to it, how do I summon one of your kind? Psychic flensing?"
"You must conduct the summoning ritual," the Source notes. "It may require an expenditure of souls however. A hundred or so should suffice, but if that is not enough you can just try again with more."
"I'm sure I have thousands," Tasha remarks as she lowers her hand, head shaking. She wodners at the state of things, that the expenditure of souls and summoning artifacts by thinking about them have become valid and logical plans. A part of her can't even believe she's discussing this, while another part has thrown its hands in the air and is now sprinting towards the madness.
Out of options, she drops back in to the mass and stares up in to the nothingness. "Alright. I haven't given up completely, but I don't see a way out for now." Another bite of the lip; she reaches back and runs her hands through her hair. Better to know than not know, right? Isn't that what this is about? I may need this. The question of where to get souls is one she doesn't think too hard on, but the means and past results twinkle on a sea of white like inverted starlight. "Alright. Teach me."
The Source is silent. "Teach you what?" it finally asks.
"The soul rituals?" Tasha replies, opening one eye to a squint. "It has to be more complicated than 'guess how many souls, hope for the best' doesn't it? Magic circles? Chanting? Exotic matter? Machines?" Her face scrunches up. "Robes and funny hats? Doesn't it?"
"I do not know," the Source admits. "We only arrive after it is all over. We were not given the knowledge of how to summon ourselves."
"I assumed you were already familiar with the method, having met others that were summoned," the not-quite-a-god adds.
"Wonderful." Back to nowhere. "No, it was already summoned. I just helped it leave. It mentioned psychic flensing and many years and other things I don't have access to or time for. Unlike all of you, I'm trapped in linear light-universe time and what I can do is limited. I can't move world, or warp space, or any of that either -- if you assumed I could." She closes her eyes and drops her head back, letting her hands fall to her sides. All at once she feels like she's run out of steam, with nothing more to add, feeling lost andtired and tired of being lost and tired.
"I do not mind being here," the Source claims. "Do not feel bad about leaving me. My condition does suggest that communication with the Ogdoad is possible though, if you know where their prison intersects this universe."
Prison. "'Prison of Erebus'?" The cadet asks, not getting up and not opening her eyes. She can see how the prison they occupy could be comfortable. She suddenly feels like a long nap.
"Erebus is one of the conjunction worlds," the Source says. "An entry and exit point for the Ogdoad and their agents."
Letting her mind acclimate to the long darkness, Tasha thinks more on what she heard. The Ogdoad are prisoners. They imprisoned their makers. They control the others, but don't seem to need them. They were defeated. They started the cycle? A cycle for what? Why did defeating the Sifra speed up their work? Did something break? Or did they accelerate it in response? Why only one? If there are always one, where are the other ones? Why didn't the past winners defeat the future ones? She draws in a breath, turning her mind to the next piece. Erebus is a conjunction world. It must be where the prison is.
"The prison is on Erebus, or, in it or near it somehow. That is what Mafdet threatened, to open the prison of Erebus. Maybe Mafdet succeeded, that's what the Titanians suggested. That the Khattans -- House Khomen -- may have made contact. If Mafdet knew, then Mafdet might tell. Another advantage. But what advantage?" Tasha thinks aloud, starting to settle in. She finds it easier as she lets go, wondering why the dark always felt so frightening.
"Why do mortals seek to barter with deities?" the Source asks.. since Tasha should be able to answer, after all.
"We're kind of dumb," Tasha replies, feeling theurge to eb a smartass. She doesn't exactly feel it's a lie, however. Spreading her limbs, she runs them through the mass of divinity, as if she might gain more understanding of their relationship through simple physical contact. To know she's touching a god-like entity is an also a kind of revelation. "You can smite me if you want, I won't mind. I can mind if you prefer." Her fingers spread, wiggling darkness, centipeds with infinite legs. "Maybe a better answer for you?"
"You come to ask questions," the Source points out. "But what would others seek of entities far greater than myself?"
"Bigger questions. I think what we all want is some kind of benefit, and I thik that's true in reverse. We all want something, whether it's great power, or answers to mysteris, or even company. Servitude. Servants. Hugs and kisses," Tasha replies, wiggling her fingers in a mystical gesture. "Butthere are always questions, and we always need something, so we're always moving until we're not. Maybe the Sifra are just tired of all the questions? Or they put their neeed before everything else. I wonder if it was worth it."
"You would have to ask them, if they are answering questions," the Source points out.
"I would, but not without back up. I'm lucky only one of you has turned on me, but with what I know of them I think they'd be a problem." She stretches, roling her shoulders. Her armor really is heavy.
"I'm sorry," she says after a moment, voice quieter now. "I think the questions are getting to me."
"Perhaps you need rest," the Source advises. "The armor is heavy, and mass is more of an issue here than outside."
"I think you're right." She breathes in, breathes out. For a moment she thinks of getting up, but steadily decides she really rather not. "Do you mind if I sleep here?" She rolls her head, watching without seeing the hand she faces, running her fingers through. It reminds her of the cats she saw on Caltrop. She wonders what happened to them. "We're safe here, aren't we?"
"Safe?" the Source asks. "I do not know. Nobody has spent an extended amount of time in this space aside from myself."
"I'll risk it. What's the worst that can happen?" The hybrid woman could answer that for herself, but doesn't want to. She thinks about Gabriel and Katherine, about her mother, pteras, Melchior. They are all beings she rested beside, all beings she huddled nexct to for peace and safety. The feeling of safety.
The illusions of safety, she correct herself. Faced with mounting questions of divine scale, surrounded by angels and gods, the old places of safety no longer comfort her. Like standing in a pelting storm, she finds herself running for cover, but the meager rocks and thin trees won't do. But there remains a single tree in reach, tall if skeletal. Old. Enough. Sheltering from the rain, she sleeps in the shadow of the greater. That's what the Source is to her right now. No ghost can reach her, the questions can be pushed out. The abyss exists outside. It's enough for now.
Despite her fatigue, sleep is.. uneasy. It may be that the area has an affect on brain function, or that proximity to the Source does, but Tasha doesn't so much sleep as hallucinate. The constant motion of the Source's bug-snake bits sometimes induces a sense of panic and claustrophobia. And when things are calm.. there are visions. Impossible vistas of different spaces. Liquid space. Burning space. And standing on a dark world with more stars in the sky than seem possible, looking up at monolithic structures. Sometimes there are monstrous eyes that open up in the darkness and look at her. At other times there is.. whale song, soothing. And once, a tiny white-furred face with golden eyes and four deer-like ears, smiling innocently yet filling her with dread. And between those stark visions and sensations, a general sense of being surrounded by huge things moving in the dark, just out of reach.
Seeking solace but finding none, but made more weary by the result, Tasha finds herself too tired to relocate. When it becomes too much she feels a welling panic -- it comes like a crashing wave -- though she can no longer tell if it exists within her dreams or in awakeful life. But even terror has its limits, formortals are finite so is their capacities. The expanse that gazes in to her rolls on, and on, until the fear is exhausted and so is she. It continues, but she cannot. The limits of mortality deny infinity.
Exhaustion does have an upside - eventually, no matter what else is going on, it causes sleep. When Tasha wakes up some time later, she doesn't remember going to sleep at all.. but has an odd thought stuck in her head: with all that crazy stuff in her head, where was Blackwings?
The hybrid sits up. It's still dark, the ground moves. She thinks she slept but isn't sure; she isn't sure of anything. She does feel some of her energy has returned, while lingering terror dances in her brain, all but ignored. She has some of her strength back, but little else except flashes of things and questions. "Always questions," she remembers, muttering it groggily. She thinks on it all in a daze, lacking comparison and orientation, her thoughts coming slowly -- but they do come.
Tasha remembers where she is, and what she was doing. She isn't certain, at first, she succeeded -- not until she reflects on her dreams. Halucinations? Like a child stacking blocks, she puts it all together after her world crumbled apart. Not halucinations. The connection approaches like mud creeping down a hillside, slow and dirty. The Oracle. She remembers the strange chair and its halucination-like images; it's the cloesest experience. She turns her mind to another question. She saw so much that absenses became meaningful. "Blackwings?"
Where is Blackwings?
And who was that, looking back at her?
There was only one face in the dark; Blackwing's question about Aelfin returns to her as she wonders where her evil spirit has gone. Eli was supposed to learn Aelfin. Her face scrunches. What are Aelfin? "Blackwings?"
There's no reply to the name. But then, Blackwings only appears at all on Sinai.. so this pit may really be another place entirely, where the magic (or at least Spirit Magic) doesn't reach.
Tasha blinks slowly, seeing nothing Not here. I need to leave. But she does have one more question. "I'm awake," she notes, just in case the Source is uncertain about it, and also to be polite. She thinks of adding 'good morning,' but decides it might be too sentimental. "I saw things. Places. A world with many stars, monoliths. Things moving? And eyes. Spaces of fire, and water. No, liquid. And a face ... " She lays her ears back; why does the face make her uncomfortable? More than uncomfortable. "Source?" She cocks her head to the side, "Have you ever met or seen an Aelfin?"
"None brought to me have been identified as such," the Source notes.
Tasha raises her hands to her head, slightly cupping them, making another set of ears. "They're white, gold ey-" The eyes stare back at her from memory; she recoils and stumbles in her words. It's just a cute face, why ..? She shakes her head out and presses on. " ... golden eyes. White fur. Shirter than I am by a foot or more. They fly balloons. They look like children. Little cloven feet. I saw one."
"Do you ascribe special significance to this species?" the Source asks. That triggers another little memory tidbit though, from Yue of all people, that Aelfins were not something she recognized, and she was taught all the current known living species past and present that the Terrans knew about.
"They're not ... They're not a Galactic species. They don't exist in Galactic space, not according to the records of the Terragens Galactic Civilization, and not according to the Library -- the record that spans the stars. They are not Progenitors-created children that I know of. They're not any First One or Old Ones that I know of." Tasha cocks her head the other way and counts off on a hand of all the places they could have come and each of the sources of information that were exhausted to figure out who they are. In the end there is nothing; they aren't part of any record, they only seem to exist on Sinai. "Source," she asks in a quiet voice, uneasily. "What did the Sifra look like? Their servants, their mortal servants, or ... They, themselves?"
"I do not know what they looked like," the Source claims. "That information was likely erased from me when I was imprisoned."
Tasha wiggles her fingers, the antsy motion of a person on a mission. "I need to look in to this. They might have been right infront of me, but I didn't see them because I didn't want to. Blackwings knows soemthing, but I igored her. It's just like her to hold on to information and tease me with it just for her own amusement, especially if I ignored her. It doesn't matter." She rises unsteadily, looking up. "Thank you for talking to me, but I need to go now. I think I've found another lead. We'll see."
"Good fortune then," the Source offers, and lifts Tasha up towards the unseen edge of the pit.
"The next time I returm, I hope to have your answers." Tasha lifts her hand until she finds purchase, then slowly begins the process of hauling herself out of another reality.
Once out she sits on her hands and knees in the dim light, still feeling worn thin, even as she feels lighter. Once she's caught her breath and her heart stops pounding, she calls out, "Blackwings? Where are you?"
"Right here," Blackwings says. "Are you going to do anything or just sit here some more? Was your god-in-a-box not home? Maybe there's a handle that needs to be cranked first.."
"You don't know..? You didn't see ... " Tasha shakes her head; interesting, but she has other mysteries to address. "Tell me about the Aelfin Blackwings."
This time Tasha sees things. The deck of the airship, and three small figured huddled together while pirates menaced them for fun: Aelfins. It's all from Blackwing's own perspective of course. "Such little things, but I gots a buyer for you, oh yes. He wants to do things to you. I'm sure it'll be fun!" And then later, handing the bound and gagged captives over to Warloq. "So, what's the big deal?" Blackwing's asks. Warloq just grins, and says, "Well, what if I told you I could send the universe into chaos.. if I could just kill every last Aelfin on Sinai?"
"I say you better share whatever you been drinking wi' me if you think that!" Blackwings laughs.. then collects her bounty and leaves, without giving it all another thought..
And Tasha is back to just being herself again, if feeling a bit greasy in her mind.
Glad she's alraedy on her knees, Tasha takes a moment to recover herself -- resisting nausea -- and then pushes herself to sitting with one disgusted shove. Staring at the black-winged woman, she says, "Warloq knew a great deal, but now he's dead and I can't question him without a mage. If I can, his body's probably rotted by now. It may come to that, but, did he tell you more? Anything else? Anything related to the Aelfin, his plans, or anything at all that might be relevant?"
"He was obsessed with learning their language," Blackwings says. "Otherwise.. it a joke, yah? Bunnies more threatening than little fluff-pixies living in sugar-land! Maybe they big timers once - make lots of magic weapons and stuff. Talking swords, that sort of thing."
"Mastery of magic is mastery of the Sifra technology. I've heard those old stories too, but everyone has. Every species has its stories, even us." Tasha's ears flick, she frowns as she stares at the woman above her, but no longer feels threatened by her -- just focused on her words. "Aelfin don't exist anywhere else. They're not a modern creation, they weren't made by the Progenitors, they don't seem to be Old Ones or First Ones. They have legends of magic. They might have been big timers. Big until when? What happened?"
We happened, Tasha recalls; the arrival of the Expedition Fleet might have been the downfall of Aelfin society. She wonders at the old ruins on Rephidim, which are said to have existed for a long time -- and some stories mention them exissting before the Ark. "What was he able to find, did he learn their language?" She does have to agree with one thing, Aelfin aren't threatening. They once threatened her so little she ignored them against all sense; no longer. "Did he have contacts? Places he went?"
"Warloq had secrets for blood," Blackwings says. "He only share what he need to to.. get you. Like got me. Who knows what he find out. Maybe that the whole point of telling me what he did, hoping I go find out more stuff for him. I took orders from him, in the end. That's all. I stopped asking questions after the chair.."
Tasha grimaces; she remembers the chair. "Did it show you that I was going to kill you?" She asks; it's not relevant but she is curious and she needs the time to consider her next move. Learning Aelfin seems to be the key. She isn't sure what to do with it, nor where or how, but she'd rather have the key and no lock than neither. Rephidim? I'll be late, but this is important. She wonders how long it'd take her to learn Aelfin and grimaces. Weeks? Maybe the learning chair. It teaches languages. The Temple ...
"What I see then.. I tell you when you about to draw your last breath," Blackwings says. "It not for sharing."
"Never then, because I'm invincible," Tasha remarks as she staggers to her feet, feeling neither invicible nor particularly resilient. She feels, if anything, entirely breakable. Spitting in the face of it all restores some of her fighting spirit, however, and she laughs laugh at the absurdity of it all as she drags herslf down the hall.
"We're goin to Rephidim to studt Aelfin," the unsteady woman tells her phantom cohort. "If that fails, to the City of Hands. I'm going to figure out what Warloq was on about, and then we'll see."
"That will be funny," the ghost-Vartan says. "You talkin' all sing-song. Can you even sing?"
"I had lessons from a big Vartan who can sing better than I can. Don't you know, we're all musical birds at heart." Through the shadows and back in to the light, Tasha makes her way onward. "Besides, it can't be any more rediculous than how I talk now."