The approach to Lukthu-hem is made like like a mouse scurrying from cover to cover, although Kaa used an unfamiliar fish metaphor. There is plenty of debris to hide behind the closer in they get. In each one, Kaa brings them to a stop while Katie and Yue scan for activity. Neither Sam nor Amuntaton off any further insights however, and their Galactic passengers are clearly unsure of what to make of the recent revelations.
At least the coffee was good.
Currently, the Dark Horse hides in a debris field that consists largely of wood. The notion of a battleship or fleet of spacecraft made of wood is certainly novel. There isn't another hiding spot in range, however: from here it's straight on to the central mass, which is still too far off to really get a reading on. But at least for now there aren't any giant monster corpses to skirt around.
"Still no activity that we can detect," Katie informs everyone, and Yue likewise just shakes her head. Her limited psychic awareness doesn't work very well at any sort of distance, especially not with a bridge full of anxious sapients.
Tasha remains where she is, sitting with Hakeber's hand in her's and studying the scene before her as if she could pick out the answer admist the floating ruins. She hasn't felt anything either, at least not since she heard the song -- if it could even be called a song -- some time ago when she had been sitting beside Tatha-hem while hiding from the others. Her gut says something is here, Tatha-hem's reaction alone would have suggested it, as would the song, but the presence of so many powers aboard hints at something to come. Something they're looking for, perhaps, or looking to remove. Something is out there, she's sure of it, and not just some ancient bodies and sunken ships.
It's time to make a decision. Tasha stands up and takes Hakeber up with her. "Captain, why don't we advance carefully?" She glances back, brows raising as if just notiticing how on edge everyone is. "You look like you're all about to jump. Go gets some coffee, try to relax. Nothing has happened yet and nothing may happen. You can panic when it does, at least the non-crew can. Lacci? Could you get me a coffee? You and Shojo can get something for our guests."
"Sure.. the Lapi are probably bored in the galley.." the Vartan historian mutters, which sounds a bit like someone softly signaling in Morse code. She and Shojo leave, and Modo goes with them. "Can't get a proper nap out here," he claims.
Hera is at her own borrowed workstation, monitoring the detection equipment she brought along. "None of my readings make sense. Which is pretty exciting!" she admits.
That takes care of Lacci and Shojo. And Modo, though he hardly needed taking care of. I've got Hake ... Who else. She turns to follow the outburst, deciding Hera is enjoying herself and therefore also not a problem. Her head continues to scan people, and she's immediately reminded of a concern when she spots the good doctor. He's been on edge about the whole expedition, and Tasha knows the signs of someone's whose belief in the world is fracturing -- she's experienced it herself several times. Perhaps, even now. "Doctor, would you join me over here? I'm curious as to how you might interpret this finding." She isn't exactly curious, but she needs to hear him speak the words.
"What?" Stanislav says, almost jerking to attention. He comes over, clutching his empty coffee mug. "Oh, of course, yes."
"This is very interesting, and very, very old. Sam thinks we might be seeing some of the very oldest forms of sentient life here. Don't you think that carries at least a possible connection to the Star Seeds? If they spread out and distributed life, then these ancient beings might have been aware of it. Probably, were aware of it. Perhaps were even ... involved?" Tasha watches the man's face. Part of her wants to laugh, or maybe cry, at his reaction. She's still dealing with her own 'inner demons' and the blur of self that's causing, but having something to focus on is sharpening her mind. She can clamp down on the urges, at least as long as she's needed. "Perhaps you're not wrong to think this is connected?"
"We don't know where they come from, or how they reproduce," the man says, starting to feel a bit firmer. "That was the reason for the expedition. The idea that they breed outside of the galactic disc. It's all because of the Confederate hyperdrive, you see. The Star Seeds travel via solar sail, but the Confederates have shown that an organic, living hyperdrive is possible, maybe something they use in a larval stage.."
"So any assumptions about their nature would be misguided. Yes, I see. We should keep an open mind here. The truth may not be what we hoped, but that would only be because we believed before knowing. You're right, Doctor." Tasha nods, trying to get the man to see it as all his idea. Unlike Dr. Stanislav, Tasha's preconceptions didn't begin with an idea of an inclusive, unifying force of life, but with warnings and hints that there was indeed a force creating life, yet as a farmer sews wheat and not to foster civilization. And, she knows that if the Star Seeds are the farmers, the Ogdru-hem the tools, then the Ogdoad are the consumers of the harvets to come. "Well, we won't learn anything hiding behind some wood, nice as it is to find wood out here. Lets get closer."
"We're starting our approach, still about a million klicks out," Gabriel warns everyone. "No monster corpse in this wreckage worries me, but maybe that's just because the people in wooden spaceships couldn't kill it."
"Since we've got the Horse anyway, can I switch to active scan?" Katie asks. "I mean if there's someone listening, she's probably talking to them anyway."
"Or scuttled, maybe. That fleet really took a beating. But, it's been so long, why wans't the damage repaired or the wreakage cleaned up? There's so little mass out here, even something like this must see a use in this salvage." Tasha wonders aloud, giving Katie a considering look as she strongly suggests to the outsiders the ship might be involved with whatever's here. The cerw hasn't gone in for a full reveal, but as things are going it may be impossible for them to hide what they know and keep secret the uniqueness of the vessel. "I haven't heard anything either, but like Yue there's too much noise for me here."
"Passive it is for now then," Katie says. And Hakeber squeezes Tasha's hand as if something bad just occurred to her.
"This.. creature.. you think is out there?" Stanislav asks Tasha. "It could be the origin of the Star Seeds?"
Tasha makes a show of studying the navigation seat's screen as she leans her head towards Hakeber and listens. The Doctor interupts, however, and so she straightens again. "That's a very real possibility. You said yourself there's some evidence they like to remain outside the concentrations of mass, but we also know they need to remain near galaxies. We don't know who or what they are or resembles, so there's no reason to believe this being or beings like it are responsible. They do look organic, do the Star Seeds sew non-organic life?"
"DNA-based organics only, from the trails we've discovered," the professor says, and even produces his data slate with a very grainy greyscale image of something that looks like a pale square with a very tiny dot at the center. "Infrared image at extreme range.. about a hundred lightyears. It was moving away from the star so we got the reflection off the sail. It's very big, of course, but thinner than spider-silk. The dot is the actual body."
"A solar sail. Very efficent, and I see why you call them Star Seeds, they do remind me of some types of seeds." Sinai has a few such aerial seeds, it was great fun for her to try and catch them as a child. All Vartan children love trying to catch things that flit about the sky. "No information on the body itself, then? I find it interetsing that they would switch to such a slow, low-energy mode of transit if they had access to hyperspace. Maybe they're not in a hurry, of course, but maybe they also don't want to be found?"
"It may have to do with energy requirements," Stanislav speculates. "We think they're organic, so would need to feed on comets and such, but if they used hyperspace they would exhaust themselves quickly. If they burned up all of their 'baby fat' getting from here to the disc, they'd unfurl their sails and go on their merry way."
"And then return, or maybe go somewhere else?" Tasha pulls out her datapad and punches something in, then hands it to Hakeber. "Could you review this for me Hake?" There's nothing to review, only, "Tell me," written in Standard in an otherwise blank window ready for entry.
Hakeber taps away at the pad. "Well, there's no evidence that they leave the galaxy once they get here," Stanislav says. "He know.. for the most part.. their migration routes. That's why we're so hopeful that following them will yield a trove of inhabited planets. Also, it may be that the Outsiders follow them as well. Nobody has encountered them in.. well, since before Terrans even developed space flight."
"And how are the Outsiders related to the Star Seeds, then? What era of Galactic life did they develope in, and where did they come from? And for that matter what form of life are they?" Tasha looks to the doctor, then turns to Samael and the second doctor -- though Tasha now wonders if the being actually attended a Galactic institute -- Amuntaton. "Do you two know anything baout them or about the Seeds? Or, is this a 'see for yourself and decide' sort of thing?"
"Not my field of study," Amuntaton claims. Sam just shrugs, and says, "Outsiders were supposedly the very first.. uh.. 'life'.. in these parts. If so they may have engineered the Star Seeds and Ogdru-hem."
"Oh, then they're ... Oh." Tasha blinks at that piece of information; she had thought the makers were all trapped in or near the galactic core. That there may be a few, or some lesser version, wandering free is an unsettling turn of events. Overseers, maybe? Engineers? Agents of the Ogdoad? Ogdoad themselves? Her head shakes. She turns to Dr. Stanislov. "Well. Um. It should be interesting, either way. Uh. Hake. How's that, um, review coming?"
Hakeber passes back the pad, which just says: If black can call to black, what about yellow?
Tasha nods her head slowly, as if assessing. "Yes, but if we use the 'yellow line', who would come? Isn't it a bit early to try that?"
"What if it's already being used?" Hakeber asks.
"Then we might have a problem," Tasha replies, frowning at the idea. "And then things will get really exciting, I'd think."
And so Tasha looks up. "Maybe we should start that active scan," she suggests. She licks her lips and adds, "Just in case."
"Okay," Katie says, and starts the resonance scans: 'tapping' the quantum field for combinations of particles that equate to atoms and molecules, to see what sort of response there is. "Big surprise, readings are messy," she reports. "There's definitely some sort of physical matter ahead though."
"From what I understand the central core of this region will be a planet-sized mass." Tasha does not say what sort of mass, largely because if some of the crew are to panic she'd prefer it be over something real and not what she's been told. They could, after all, be wrong. "We may as well proceed in then, we won't learn anything sitting here."
Since there's nothing to hide in the shadow of anyway, they've been going straight towards it (or as straight as anything can go when approaching a gravity well). Eventually, Katie's lidar begins to detect a surface. There's no light out here to illuminate it other than what they themselves provide. "It looks like a crumpled wad of paper," Katie notes. They're too far out to get any detail though. But it's definitely not the nice sphere that something that big should be.
"That does very much suggest an unusual construction, composition, or ... Or shifting, I suppose." Dark hybrid beings are made of some mix of here and there, as Tasha understands it. Matter and energy, the rules of this universe, overlap elements such as gravition common to both realities, and elements and rules purely of the reality from which the Dark beings come from, which is D-Space or some dimension or universe beyond those sholes. Interuniveral and interdimensional physics and xenophysics aren't something she grasps very well, but she thinks she has the basics and more importantly, hasn't been driven mad by them. "Any size of movement in the mass? Elements relocating? Any emissions?"
"Nothing, unless things appearing and disappearing counts," Katie says. "Something's off about the mass and density too. Maybe it really is crumpled.. like it's collapsing."
"It might be. What sort of gravitic environment are we looking at, how strong is its well? If it's damaged or dying, it may be in the process of collapsing like a star." Tasha licks her lips. The oldest. She wonders what it's like, what it had been like if it still lives, if they're too late. There's a hunger to know about it, even to speak to it, even as it sends a chill down her spine. Macro structures aren't new to her, but they're very rarely alive and so old and alien as this.
"That's just it, it fluctuates," Katie says, and then casts a worried glance back at Tasha. "Do you think it might be sinking into hyperspace?"
"It ... might. I'm not sure why it would be, the biology and physics of something like this is a little beyond me. I know they're not composed entirely of mass and energy native to our reality, so their method of collapse might introduce unusual elements and cause collapsing states that are very unusual as concentrations of native and foreign elements compress at one point. I've no idea what happens when something this large and with so much mixed element compresses beyond ... whatever their version of a Schwarzchild radius is." Tasha looks up, frowning deeper. "It might pull this region of space in with it, shunt everything to a higher dimension or farther. Maybe we should hold the ship here, and send a team to investigate. If the entity collapses, the ship may be able to escape."
"Maybe it's just deflating," Sam suggests.
"Well, that too, but if it is where's the ejection mass? I guess it'd be in to ... elsewhere. Not here, anyway?" Tasha inquires, turning to Samael for a moment, then to Gabriel. "If it's safe then, I'd like to get closer. I'd like to attempt contact."
"Getting better resolution now," Katie says, as Kaa brings them within a thousand kilometers of the surface. The images are grey, but very detailed. It takes several scans to build up a hologram, however. The surface is.. convoluted. There are massive craters.. or pores.. some of them look like actual blisters. They are scattered everywhere, between structures that look like they should be on the inside of a living creature. Things that should be quivering, or squelching, or pumping.. something. But there's only stillness.
"Each of those blisters would be a womb, I think," Amuntaton notes without emotion.
"Looks like a chum-ball," Moka clicks.
The others are beginning to filter back in now that there's something to gawk at.
"I ... I thought that might be it," Tasha agrees with the peculiar doctor, nodding slowly. She heard the story of this Ogdru-hem some time ago, and its description, so she was ready for what they might find even if she has to fight to keep her hackles down from the sheer body horror of it all. Still, the body horror is also a familiar experience, an itch at the back of her head, an old voice of fear, since overcome. "So they mostly came from here, didn't they? But it looks like we might be too late." Despite obstentesibly being the enemy of the Ogdru-hem, she can't help but feel a bit sad seeing this. A dying mother, whatever the source, tugs at something in her as does the now still source of life. "No sign of movement or anything else from the ... wombs?"
"No, and I'm afraid to use the radar to try and see into them," Katie admits. "We may need to use the deep-radar though to get any sort of idea of this thing's interior.."
"It looks like the interior is on the outside," Aaron notes.
"If this thing reacts to neutrinos but not to laser light, I wouldn't be surprised," Gabriel admits.
"Afraid of waking something up, or afraid of seeing what's inside?" Tasha asks, needing clarifications as her next choice depends on the distinction. She then turns to Aaron and nods. "These beings often seem that way, but I assume they have a reason for being like this. This is probably its exterior." What she doesn't add is that they also may well be made of an elemental form of pain and suffering somehow used as a building block of their form of life, which may explain why they manifest as horror.
"I'm not sensing anything yet," Yue offers.
"I haven't heard anything either," Tasha adds, chipping in on the 'unusual senses' spectrum report. "I'm fine with a deep scan. If it still lives, I think it knows we're here but I'm not sure at all about how functional it is."
"Alright, light her up Kate," Gabriel says. There's intense moment of nothing much happening as the neutrino pulse passes through and reflects off only the densest materials. But the image isn't very clear. "So.. it's almost hollow, with something at the center.." Katie interprets. "Uh, not in a way that make sense though. Kaa.. can you bring us around to the other side of it?"
"Go ahead, Kaa," Gabriel confirms. "It can't be any uglier."
Aaron whispers to Tasha, "You really shouldn't let him say things like that. It's always possible to get uglier."
"If it's role is production, then it might not need excessive mass in the first place. Just a lot of surface area and storage. Like a, uh, brain?" Tasha blinks at the whisper, then turns to grin ruefully at Aaron, "I know," she whispers back, " ... but I have to keep my finger on the pulse of the crew. Maybe I'm used to these things, but not everyone else is. Bravado's fine if it keeps people together."
It takes less time than expected to orbit around to the backside of the blob.. because it's missing. It looks as if over half of Lukthu-hem's body was just scooped out. "I'm picking up movement in the.. pit.." Katie blurts.
Tasha's muzzle scrunches up as she sees the missing -- or not, as she has no idea what Lukthu-hem originally resembled -- area. She straightens when movement is discovered. "Show me?"
The lidar is refocused, and displays a loose tangle of what might be intestines, except they seem to go translucent and insubstantial from moment to moment, revealing something else deeper in. "Wow!" Hera pipes up, looking at her own feed instead of the lidar image. "Something's really exotic in there! Can we get closer?"
Half of the people not at stations turn to look at the Belter woman as if she were made out of eels.
"I do like the exotic, I'd like to see what's inside," the hybrid woman notes, not looking away from the screen. There's something consuming about a mystery, she decides, like a hunger. Not quite like a hunt, but similiar, and maybe more dangerous. Whatever is in there, she knows she's going to find out one way or another even if she has to take a shuttle or even a space suit.
"Going in c-c-carefully," Kaa says. "Don't like k-kelp forests."
"More like an octopus's garden," Yue says, and rubs her head. "Ow.."
Tasha does look away when Yue winces, peering at the woman before cocking her head to the side. "Is that a yes vote on psionic activity, Yue?"
"It's not from out there, it's from in here," Yue says. "It's the tadpole." In the absence of any other name, this designation was somehow given to the toddler hypership riding inside Dark Horse. Nobody has admitted to coming up with it though.
"Grrr," Katie growls, still trying to latch on to the ephemeral readings of her instruments.
"I think I may have detected a tachyon, or possibly an strange neutrino," Hera says.
"I'd wondered if the little ship could sense any of this. What a scary place to bring it on its first trip out." Tasha turns back to the screen. Too late now. I'm really going to feel bad if something happens to it. It's not the first time on the journey she's had the thought, about it and the others, and even about bringing them all out here in the first place. That perhaps she hadn't taken this quite seriously enough. Now, it's quite a bit too late to change plans. "Tachyons?" She knows almost nothing about tachyons, save that they're associated with time. "I'd heard they may not see time as we do, maybe we're looking at an exposed mind or brain, and the elements that make it up?"
There's a little flash of light in the corner of Tasha's console. It's from a flashing brain icon: the Niss's way of trying to get her attention. "The little ship is excited, but not scared," Yue claims.
"Well that's good, this is ... uh ... very exciting," Tasha remarks distractedly. She turns her attention towards the console and steps to block the screen, appearing to be getting comfortable to read. Then, she taps the icon.
A single word, in Vartan, appears on Tasha's display: Ar'el.
"Well that's vague," the hybrid mutters, not that the Niss are ever verbose. She suspects it's because they're so far beyond her as a form ofe life, but then she also thinks they ought to know she thinks this would be vague. The word doesn't mean anything to her, so she punches it in to her datapad for a database lookup.
The display fills up with a flood of references, some mythological, others religious.. but most of them are proper names. There are even the Silent Sign gestures for it: a popular girl's name given to those who join the clergy.
"And that's even vaguer," says, again a mutter. The Niss often speak in layers of meaning, abstracting complex concepts or even simple ones in wyats that are often very efficentbut so compact that Tasha has difficulty understanding their meaning. She taps her chin. Is the Niss trying to suggest that the Ogdru-hem before her has somehow joined another affiliation? Is it the entity's chosen name? Or is she ways off, and the answer is in the mythologies and religious contexts? She continues digging deeper, but perhaps the name is just that: a name. She knows the Niss is always observing, it just isn't interested most of the time. She mentioned contact; perhaps this is the way?
Clearing her mind, Tasha steadies herself against the sounds and commotion of the Bridge, to that place that Tatha-hem speaks to. Unlike Tatha-hem, this Ogdru-hem is not bound, though it does appear injured. Perhaps it won't need the steadiness Tatha-hem requires. She projects: "Ar'el?"
That gets her another wince from Yue, but otherwise no reply. The lidar image still shows the disturbing mass of guts they're maneuvering through as they approach the exposed.. core? Whatever is at the center of it all. "Can't you turn on an actual light?" Hakeber asks. "It would be nice to see what's there with our eyes."
Katie slaps herself on the forehead, and a moment later the Dark Horse is lighting up the space around it. The 'tube' a few kilometers away is pink and red and green, and covered in either slime or blood.
Tasha cracks an eye open. Nothing. She shakes her head and begins punching through mythologies and religious associations of the name, splitting her attention between that and the screen. At once point she taps the brain icon and types in: Vartan common priesthood girl's name, religious connection, mythological connection, clarify? She doesn't like bothering the Niss excessively, but if things are interesting enough for them to actually contact her she decides the situation warrants it.
To this, Tasha gets the reply: Arelim. "You can turn the light off now, thanks," Hakeber says, and Amuntaton asks Tasha, "You look a bit off, Miss Argentine. Is something wrong?"
"I, uh, got a message from the ... ship's computer. It's doing its own analysis. Usually it doesn't involve itself but, um, this is unusual. It contacted me." Tasha rubs the side of her head, amassing so much concentration makes her a little dizzy sometimes. She turns to look up in to the mask-like face. "It can be vague. Do the words Ar'el and Arelim mean anything to you in this context? Vartan language."
Amuntaton's reaction to the word is to immediately turn and strike at Samael! "You will stand still, Evil Day. You will stay silent. You will not be allowed in Heaven. You will not be allowed on Earth. Nor in the Underworld. Nor in the stream. Nor as a ghost. You will not escape. You will not hide. My hand is His light. My seal is His protection," he shouts at the stunned demon, there is indeed a light coming from his hand. Vril. "To the North. To the South. To the East. To the West. I call for protection. So that I may contain you." And just like that.. Samael appears to have turned to stone.
"Nope," Aaron says as he picks up Liza and bolts from the bridge. Stanislav falls onto his rear in shock, and Hakeber poofs out like a poodle. Yue also faints away.
So stunned by this sudden turn of events is Tasha that she could only stare, transfixed, at the outward and gregarious display of power. The result is as shocking as seeing it at all; beings like some of those gathered on her ship simply don't react that way. It's a gregarious display of power and identity for them, which implies a great emergency and itself infers a being of such age and ability has determined the situation to be such an emergency. Processing these layers of implication along side the very obvious impact is more than Tasha's experience can handle. By the time she's done gawking, looking between Amumtaton, what's left of Samael, and the half fled-or-fainted remainder of her bridge compliment it's done.
It takes a further second for Tasha to even speak. "W-what was that all about?" She exclaims, stepping forward and then halting immediately as common sense kicks in and decides not to aggressively approach the Thoth, not wanting to be a statue herself. "What did those words mean, why is Sam a statue?" She pauses, edges back slightly, and adds, "Um, please. Thoth."
"There is a hierarchy to things," Thoth claims. "And names have been given to those hierarchies, across many civilizations and many galactic ages. Among the Vril-ya, there is no name for what I am, but among several galactic cultures I do have a designation: Bene Elohim. The Vril-ya were also known as Elohim. The Arelim, however, are a bit higher up the ladder. The agents of earthly justice, third ranked of angels below God. Ar'el, Arelim.." He pauses to points to the lidar display now, which everyone had forgotten about in the sudden, brief struggle. There, half-seen behind an ephemeral tangle of appendages or organs is something that looks like a shark, or a whale, or an armored combination of both. "Stelya'rhyan. The Waybuilders."
"A Waybuilder ... " Tasha steps towards the real and leans forward, as if those few feet of distance could make a difference. "I've never seen one out here before. I wonder if it was part of the Fleet? It makes sense if there was a stalemate, no repairs, no cleanup, no resolution because there wasn't one." She chews on her lip again, everything else having been forgotten in this new revelation. The why of Samael's imprisonment nags at her, but to find a Waybuilder here of all places is an even greater surprise than what came before. She didn't think they allowed themselves to be detected here, and then something else occurs to her. "Isn't it too soon? Oh, of course! Tachyons!"
"Too young to take on a fight like this," Thoth says, looking on the projection with an inscrutable expression. "Just a child."
"What are you both babbling about?" Katie demands. "That thing out there is over thirty-two kilometers long. How is that a child?"
"Oh, poor Sam," Hakeber mutters.
"I can sympathize," Tasha says quite before she can stop herself. Her ears flatten and she determinedly does not look back, not wanting to see the doubt or make the embarassment sting any harder. Instead she carries on with the idea behind the thought and continues, adding, "We should study the situation and see if we can provide aid. It shouldn't be here, here especially. I'm not sure how the chronodynamics work with this situation, but it might know who I am. It should know you too, Thoth, if indirectly."
"Unlikely," Thoth says. "The gates to the Way are closed to me. This Waybuilder is young, but ancient by our reckoning. Lukthu-hem has not released it, which means it did not succeed in killing her. They're still fighting. Their battle could have been million years ago or a billion or two days before we got here. It would not have been a part of the fleet we saw the wreckage of. They just don't interact with others like that."
"I was wondering about that, I thought maybe in another time and place with a more senior Galactic civilization they might have. I've only seen one of them before, and we didn't speak. Or maybe we did, but it was one way." Tasha pushes off, rubbing her arms against an unseen cold. It really is a battle beyond; as Thoth put it, a battle between orders far above her own, and even his. "This is a complicated situation. I want to speak to Lukthu-hem and to the Waybuilder, and to get more information. We need to resolve this somehow, but we also need to avoid doing more harm than good. Uh, and we have powers in play beyond those two, you, annnd ... " The young woman turns and spots Samael again, then frowns, head jerking to the side slightly.
What's coming next requires a deep breath. Tasha inhales, then exhales, then turns back to Thoth. "Before we continue, I am demanding to know why you ... er ... petrified a member of my crew without confering with me. I know who and what you are, but that doesn't permit you to go about attacking my crew without good reason." She straightens, and that little movement feels like it takes all her strength in the face of Thoth's stare. "I am here by request of Atum. Please account for yourself, Thoth."
Stanislav scoots back, and Hera actually seems to be paying attention.. although she's got some sort of hand scanner pointed at Sam. Gabriel is also turned around to glare at Thoth, and Hakeber is still rooted to her spot. "Did you think I would allow the Dagger of Eibon to have any chance of being activated in the presence of one of the pantheon of beings that created the Vril?" Thoth replies. "Or give his master an opportunity to learn some secrets, or extract some favors, from a Waybuilder?"
The answer sends a chill down Tasha's spine, because some element of Thoth's fears could well be pointed at Hakeber -- and herself. Atum may have entrusted her with a mission, but so have other beings, even ones on par with Samael's master. Ones she still owes. Suddenly being the neutral party, the go-between, reveals the ugly side she'd been feraing might come to pass: what happens when all the beings she works for differ on a single point?
And here Tasha is, with little to defend herself except words. Perhaps more than words. She is not alone.
"And if you decide some of the rest of us represent that sort of possibility, will you attack the rest of us too?" Better to decide now, here on the ship where I'm strongest. I can't have him come after Hakeber or I or anyone else when we're focusing on the mission, even down there. She steps infront of Hakeber and closes her hands. Open, close. Relax, or fight. As much good as it might do her. "What about me, then?"
"You aren't a demon puppet of Thotep," Thoth points out. "Besides, it isn't as if he's dead. Only sealed. For now."
Tasha eyes Thoth for a long moment. "I don't like it. This is my ship, and this is my crew. I know what you're afraid of and I know what you think he can be made to do because I fear the same things myself. I, however, haven't made him in to a statue." She lifts a hand and points to at the demon. "If not for Sam this crew would have a very serious problem. You can seal him if he suddenly starts up the Dagger without our go-ahead, but not now. And definitely not because you decided what happens on my ship. I appreciate your love for the Waybuilders and your desire to protect them but I, also, have things to protect. Sam has my trust until he doesn't."
"And if he turns on you, could you stop him in time?" Thoth asks. "I had the element of surprise, and even then it cost me quite a bit to seal him. I may not be able to do it again."
Tasha turns her gaze skyward for a long moment. She really hopes she isn't making a mistake here, Thoth may well be right and the cost could be enormous. Then again, she grew up on a ship, and this ship is her family, can she really allow these godlike beings to run roughshod over it whenever they feel threatened? There is no easy answer. In a situation like this, she just decides as she always does: family first. She sighs, and drops her gaze. "Release him. If he tries to fire the weapon I'll do ... something. I'm only the enemy of demons when I must be, not out of convienience. That goes for Tatha-hem and Lukthu-hem as well."
"I have a condition," Thoth says.
Tasha's brows arch. "A condition to not harming my crew?" She's really going to need a drink after this, maybe two. Maybe all of them. That's if she survives the next few seconds, and coming hours If she isn't a statue. She can already feel repercussions piling up that don't even include personal destruction. "Yes?"
"Pharol Xexanoth is to have no contact with the Stelya'rhyan OR Lukthu-hem," Thoth says. "Or I will find a way to leave him here."
"You two can remain on the ship, then." Tasha nods, that sounds very fair without selling out Samael too much. he ought to understand she can't have the both of them having it out on board and it's her business to negotiate. If not, she'll have to apologize later, if there is oen for either of them. "That's fair, yes? I'll speak to them."
"And the other item stays here as well," Thoth says.
"Other item? Did you turn an ... item to stone as well?" There were no alerts, though Tasha wouldn't be surprised if she missed something in all the commotion. The commotion hasn't even stopped yet.
"I know it's here somewhere, I can smell the color of it," Thoth replies.
"Oh that. We don't exactly carry that around on a whim," Tasha insists, knowing exactly which yellow Thoth is speaking of. She doesn't even like being around it herself, even if it's owner hasn't done anything to her. Well, nothing much worse than what the others have, and there was benefit provided that balances things in the entity's favor. That favor worries now, because she doesn't want to sell out the Waybuilder. Even if she did, she'd then have to contend with the combined wrath of Thoth, Horus, and possibly even the entire Waybuilders and the Null itself. On the other hand, she may be about to make enemies of two demon gods. She tries very much not to wince as she smiles.
"Are you certain you wouldn't rather just wait until we're outbound to unseal Samael?" Thoth asks again.
Tasha doesn't bother to hide the pained expression any further. She just looks stressed, and more than a bit strained. "If I do that then he and everyone on this crew will understand I'm willing to let the powers I deal with do whatever they want to my crew whenever it's convienent for them, and beings like you will know I allow it. Then I'd be your puppet."
"I don't sit on a throne of skulls in a castle of bone," Thoth points out. "In any case, I need to rest before I can unseal him."
"It's the principle," Tasha insists, trying to smile understandingly and looking more like she just got over being strangled. "I know how concerned you are and frankly I am too, it has occured to me all these gathered powers came along for something and I know time isn't much of a hinderance to their sight. Your concern is valid, and I really do think we may have to oppose one or more of a powers' wishes, but I'd prefer if they made that first move themselves."