Koldan, Sin and the Doomed Ship

(This is a continuation of a previous post: Connection)

  Krof focused on the baleful yellow light that came into view ahead, recognizing it for an elevator control panel. He had been this deep into the reactor level before - once. He peered around the junction to the right with his usual methodical care, then nodded toward the corridor.

  "Keep lookout."

Elevated

  His paw reached out and wiped layers of dirt and what looked like dried blood off the touch panel, then tapped the call button with a gauntleted finger. There was a rumble somewhere far below as unseen motors engaged and the summoned lift ground its way up toward them, grinding metallically from lack of maintenance. The Skoll took up position by the doors and waited, ready to fire into the elevator if anything emerged from it. He plainly did not like the tight confines of elevators, and grew vigilant every time they passed one or, even worse, had to use one.

  "Radiation shielded," he explained. "Usually restricted access. But ship security was...reset. When we tried to rebel."

  He waited some more, occasionally glancing at the bar measuring the elevator's progress.

  "Almost worked."

  Wrath followed the tall creature in the dark, feeling some kind of organic tissue under her hooves; the air was full of nasty smells, but thankfully it was not new to her, she who had spent countless hours wandering in similar places in Hell.

  She jumped when the call button beeped loudly. She was more tense than she wanted to admit, and she tried to calm down by breathing slowly. The progress bar finally reached its completion and the elevator appeared, stopping abruptly at the floor level, inviting the two souls on a creepy ride between confined walls. The demoness started to understand why this mode of transport was particularly dangerous, especially after seeing the jellies floating around.

  "A rebellion? Against what exactly?"

  She followed the Skoll on the elevator, but she peered into the corridor to make sure nothing was following them. She grabbed the wolf's arm, as if she was afraid to loose him on the 9 feet wide platform, her other hand still holding the knife. Krof stepped onto the platform, moving his weapon to rest on his shoulder in order to make room for Wrath. The ride down would require them to be very close, a situation he would probably not have objected to under normal circumstances. But now, he was too hypervigilant to pay much attention to her closeness. He waited for her to take up position with him, finger poised over the downward-pointing arrow that blinked in the haze as if winking at them.

  "Rebellion against ship. We tried to escape, make attack. Shut down reactor."

  He hit the button, and the platform began grinding downward, their vision filling with machinery-strewn shaft walls.

  "Is why there are none of us left anymore."

  He stood motionless, bands of light refelcting off his faceplate at regular itnervals as they descended.

  "When we go to Hell, I will not like it as much as you."

  Wrath pressed herself against the giant's armor, trying to find a comfortable position as the elevator started to move down. She cried as the platform suddenly bumped down a few inches, holding her unexpected companion firmer. Her horns were now tickling the base of the Skoll's helmet, but she didn't notice; she only knew that the space was limited. Her voice sounded like coming from under a pillow.

  "So the ship has a will of its own... And it obviously got worse... when everyone died."

  She wondered if the ship could be considered as a demon itself. It would not be good news if it was the case; a mad demon is definitely more dangerous than a reasoned one. She moved her body a bit, turning her shape against the black protections.

  "You know, you might have a biased vision of Hell... it is not as bad as here. You might even like it."

  But she omitted the fact that she would never allow an alien to follow her there. Krof snorted, venting CO2 through his respirator.

  "If you say so."

  He did not sound convinced. He spent the rest of the lurching descent in silence, the intimacy of their contact lessened by the fact that he was fully armored and could feel nothing. As the elevator slowed, he pushed his way past her, weapon ready to deal with the choke point at the lift's destination. His tail lashed from side to side uneasily - he definitely did not like being squeezed into confined spaces on board the ship. And with his size, he squeezed often.

  He stepped off the platofrm, his heavy boot clunking against the deck, and cautiously advanced ahead of the demon.

  "Your home may be very nice, yes," he says, continuing the earlier conversation. "But visitors it sends? Full of fire and torture."

  Wrath cringed, taking the last words spoken by the Skoll both as a compliment and an insult. She wanted to explain to him that not all demons were necessarily mindless, that he could even find some with whom he would have a wonderful time, understand how the casts were organized... and then she was stunned again by her thoughts. Why was all of this so important to her? Didn't she want, moments ago, to abandon him as soon as she could go back home? Why did the Skoll suddenly have such an importance in her heart?

  She shook  her head from side to side.

  "Zhukov... Please be careful."

  It was stupid. Weak, and stupid. They had been on full alert since they had reached the lower levels of the ship, so it was unnecessary to say these words. The corridor turned left a few dozen feet away.

  "I still can't feel anything..."

  She stepped out of the elevator, closing on the wolf. The  walls were covered in dry blood, the metal was rusty, and her hooves made a very discernible noise at each of her steps. She wished she could avoid this unwelcome sound.

Bond

  If the Skoll had heard her request for caution, he did not show it. instead, he halted at a turn in the corridor, tail still thrashing, and peered around it as if he expected to come under fire at any moment.

  "This is wrong," he states flatly, and takes several seconds to explain himself. "Was not this way before. There was service bay here, for repair drones. That work in radiation zone."

  He shook his head.

  "Has changed. Persephone, she does this sometimes. Changes, traps. Diverts. But never so much of one deck."

  He sounded almost angry, now, out of his element. A large portion of his brain was devoted to the deck plans of every known ship in his home region of space. He could walk through them as if born on them, even those he had never actually been aboard.

  But now, that was all gone.

  "She uses this...to trap."

  He glances back toward the way they came.

  "Elevator is probably not there anymore."

  Wrath looked back, and the Skoll's prediction had indeed happened: the elevator had disappeared, but worse, the call button was not there anymore. The walls surrounding the elevator arrival zone were burning in red fire, a cynical view that reminded her of the Chasm attack earlier. They were now trapped in this corridor, and their only option was to walk deeper in the entrails of the ship, offering themselves to the will of the Persephone.

  "You... didn't mention that."

  She was angry of the situation; maybe it could have been avoided if  she had been warned beforehand? ... She knew it was not the case, but it could not stop her frustration. She stepped heatedly forward, but Zhukov barred her way to keep her safe from the danger further ahead — even if it could come from anywhere.

  But in a fit of passion, she strongly pictured her pushing the Skoll aside to let her pass. She felt a wave of energy flow from her to the wolf (not literally, but she could not explain it otherwise), and his ears flattened against his head as a response. It felt very strange. And powerful, at the same time. Was her wrath still effective here?

  Krof lurched on his feet, Wrath's will funneling through the mental link that he was becoming increasingly aware of. He flattened his bulk against the wall, creating a gap for her to pass through. She had not spoken to him or vocalized her desire in any way — he had just known it, pictured it in his mind.

  "The fuck are you doing to me."

  The enthrallment, the obsession with her, was temporarily gone as his temper flared. For that fleeting moment, she was simply another seducer from Hell, and it nauseated him that he had allowed her to lure him down here, to wander the Persephone's hellishly infinite guts and die down here. Either from her fellow demons or more indirectly, from long and slow starvation.

  He had a string of mental images, which she might be able to receive as well, the bond working both ways. He was beyond caring if she saw. They involved killing her, in vengeance for this betrayal. The sound of her neck snapping as he twisted her head off with his bare hands — he had done it to humans before. Of lunging, bearing her to the ground, smashing her skull in with bare fists to conserve ammo.

  The Skoll's mind could be an ugly place, too. And his clawed hands flexed and clenched with the subconscious desire to act on his rage.

  "I did mention...that we would die down here," he snarled.

  Wrath realized at this moment the link she had with Zhukov was bidirectional.

  So that was it.

  The bond she had created with her own blood gave her control over his mind, but had the disadvantage of letting her thoughts pass through in clear. Thankfully, she hadn't thought about the worse, but they were in an awkward situation right now. Would she go through the gap or excuse herself? Which decision would have the best outcome? She was trying to solve this puzzle when her vision got obscured by an image of her covered in blood, the face barely recognizable by the hits given by the... Skoll that was sitting on her immobile body. She staggered in shock under the violence of the thought. Zhukov had almost seen right in her game, and she had to redouble her efforts to avoid him discovering the truth; she had to make him believe that he would have a chance to leave this place.

  She stepped back, pretending to be more afraid than she really was, raised her hand in front of her face, and spoke:

  "I am sorry, Zhukov. I am far from home... we are both trapped in this place and we already lived terrible moments in the Persephone... and these corridors drive me crazy."

  She pointed at the passageway behind the Skoll.

  "It will be over soon..."

  She didn't lie. She sincerely thought it was going to end soon for both of them. But maybe not in the same way. And she didn't pass the wolf, willing to show him the respect he was maybe looking for.
Krof glared at her through his optics, his battle fury throttling down, his hands ceasing to clutch at his weapon. She had expertly shown just the right behavior to sidestep his anger. The bond between them tensed, relaxed, and returned to the comforting euphoric link that it had been before.



  The mere suggestion that she was innocent, lost, confused...it was enough for him to reconsider. He was a protector, at heart, and she knew how to channel that. He stared at her for a long while, his other senses keeping watch down the corridors, until he raised his weapon again and resumed advancing down the winding maze.

  "*I* have been living moments here," he snapped, but the venom was already drying up in his voice. "You just got here."

At Hell's gate

  Something about their abrupt reconciliation felt wrong. But what didn't feel wrong down here, closer to Hell's open, festering wound.

  "You're right. I am sorry."

  She thought it was a little unfair that the Skoll didn't consider the radical change of environment she had experienced, but she had no right to be demanding at this time. But she felt the bond loosen up a bit. This was all just a game, but deep in her heart, hidden below layers of thick, insensible and bland shells, a sparkle happened, diffusing a heat that very slowly melt them.

  Wrath was attacked at the most private zone of her personality, and she knew nothing about it.

  She looked around her.

"We should probably not stay here."

  As she said that, Zhukov arrived at the end of the corridor, reaching a rusted door also covered in blood.

  "Do you know if there would be any place near the reactor where one would store small objects such as keys?"

  She didn't raise the fact that they might never reach the reactor. But who cared if it was the case. Things would have been over at that point.

(This is a continuation of a previous post: Descent)

  Wrath closed the wrist with rage as she heard Moloch's name. She had been thinking about him since she had set hoof on the ship.

  The bastard... so he had survived.

  And likely hurt in his pride, he had sent these disgusting beasts on the Persephone to take care of her. Thankfully, it was probably impossible to predict where his envoys would appear exactly. It likely saved their lives, as reassuring this thought could be. The demoness looked at the Chasm, and suddenly raised an eyebrow; it was almost a smile that appeared on her face.

Talk

  "Chasm. Are you really here to protect something? Do you even know what you are guarding?"

  She was pretty sure the creature had been given mindless orders, and it could not possibly understand what this place was.

  "Do you even know you are blocked here for the eternity without our help? Did Moloch tell you that?"

A small bluff. But not a lie entirely. She, as a matter of fact, didn't even know what she was looking for exactly.

  "You are going to run out of 'supplies' very quickly."

  They only fed on fresh meat. Pretty disgusting, but it was the truth.

  The demonic grin remained, as the towering demon unfurled its clawed hands at its sides, its talons bursting into momentary flame and cascading up its arms.

  "Not here to treat with you, Exile," it spat, re-using the same moniker that she was given by the child-demon earlier. "Here only to obey."

  Krof had remained disciplined enough not to fire into the demon point-blank, most likely through doubt it would actually accomplish anything. He remained stock-still, moving only enough to keep himself between Wrath and the Chasm. He let the exchange run its course, having nothing to contribute to parley between the denizens of Hell.

  Wrath slowly leaned forward and whispered into the Skoll's ear, summarizing what she had heard and spoken in demonic language.

  "He won't let us pass."

It was not exactly true, but anyway she refused to go back; they were so close. Her anger grew again. This misbeliever... That rotted nobody... She should have taken care of him long ago!

  "Be prepared to fire, Zhukov..." She reached for her knife. "NOW!"

  She yelled her order and jumped to the ceiling in an acrobatic move, propelling her body  down again in another powerful inverted jump. She aimed for the head, which she successfully hit critically, inserting the blade 4 inches in it. Not enough to kill it, but it would be disoriented at the least, blind with a little bit of luck, dead if the Skoll's weapon had any efficiency on this creature. The Demoness was not faster than bullets, but her attack probably took less than 2 seconds. One couldn't tell she could have accomplished this move in such a confined space. The Chasm swung its arms forward, trying to rip Wrath's body opened, but the horned creature was too swift and easily avoided the claws.

  The skoll snapped into action, on high alert and perhaps attuned to Wrath's wishes on more than just a material level. His thumb flicked his fire selector to armor-piercing and he waited the split second necessary for Wrath to be out of his line of fire. He could not miss such a massive enemy at this range, and his first shell hit the Chasm directly under its chin and detonated, spraying fragments of the thing's rocky hide. The chasm reacted by hunching in on itself, as if in preparation for exertion, and burst into a pyre of abyssal flame - the second round of the burst was swept up in the wave of intense heat and flash-melted into liquid metal before it struck. Krof disappeared underneath seething flame, half plasma and half spiritual holocaust, as the Chasm defended itself.

The Doors of Hell

  Wrath restored her balance after avoiding the powerful claw attacks right in time to see the Chasm burst into flames. She rushed forward.

  "NOO!"

  She suddenly had a panic attack at the idea of loosing her only way to get her freedom back. In the slight second where she leaped forward, she inexplicably had Zhukov's blue eyes appear in her mind with a confused feeling attached to it: the fear of its lost. Why? She could not explain it. And really, she didn't have time. She opened her wings and wrapped herself into them. As she did so, their consistence changed and they became almost solid, forming a very efficient barrier to the Chasm's attack. She placed herself between the two beligerents, protecting the wolf by doing so, the fire being redirected to its sides. Soon, the heat dropped and the fire disappeared. Wrath slightly opened her wings, just enough to look at the beast. Its face, already ugly, was now horribly deformed by the knife planted into its skull. Its left eye was collapsed, dark blood was pouring from the wound, which made its grin even more disturbing.

  The Chasm grabbed the knife handle, and slowly pulled it out. The cracks it made were indescribably awful. When it popped out, a bubble of blood formed at its previous location and another wave of dark liquid spilled out of it. It dropped it on the floor, which produced a loud metal sound when the blade hit the grate. The demoness was still looking at the horrid being when it hit again with its large claw, from the side, onto her wings. Surprised, she was lifted in the air and was pushed back several feet backwards and landed behind Zhukov and on the side, sliding for an additional foot. The Chasm had a dark, guttural laugh.

  "You think you're smart."

  It grinned in an even more horrible way.

  "I'm not alone."

  But the creature made a step backwards.

  Even shielded by the wings of Wrath, the Skoll was on fire, fighting to remain conscious as the sheer heat rampaged through the skin of his armor and wreathed him in suffocating air. His suit raised several alarms about the ambient temperature, the displays blurring as the CPU overheated from abyssal fire. Without his boarding armor, he would have been incinerated. Unknown to him, the artifact he wore had also turned aside much of the heat, although it could not fully protect him. He raised his weapon and fired, taking a step backward toward where Wrath had struck the deck. The heavy armor-defeating rounds slammed into the demon, with some effect now that its flame had abated. The chasm raised a clawed hand to protect its eyes and continued slinking back, black ichor erupting out of its hide where the Akula's shells struck it.

  "The Keys are hidden, Exile," it snarled cryptically in parting. "By those who watch and those who guard."

  With that, it disappeared, the angles of the corridor collapsing into jagged visual chaos momentarily as a hole was torn in reality to admit the Chasm back to Hell. Krof sank to his knees as his suit struggled to manage the heat, directing power to thermal shunts.

The Doors of Lust

  Wrath looked at the Chasm disappear with incomprehension; then realized she was the only one that could not phase in Hell anymore. Her earlier threat had probably sounded ridiculous.

  "Zhukov!!"

  She jumped to her feet, her wings back to their normal texture and position.

  "Good. You're alive."

  The fumes raising from his armor didn't look too good though, but Wrath ignored them since she didn't have to care.

  ...

  ...

  Did she?

  As she made two steps forward, she looked at the black protections again and couldn't refrain a feeling of concern, as if the Skoll's current health status did matter more than his ability to walk and fire his weapon.

  She... had an hesitation, opened the mouth, kept it this way for too long to look natural, blushed so slightly that it was invisible in the current lighting, then finally said:

  "Did you ever hear about people that watch the ship's reactor?"

  She leaned forward to retrieve her knife, her garment pulled on the side, highlighting the dark skin of her leg.

  "Yes. Yes, I am."

  The Skoll propped himself up with the butt of his rifle and kept watch down the corridor as he waited for his suit to report his medical condition. Even still smoldering, even after that harrowing encounter, his helmet tilts slightly and his gaze fixates on that one exposed, dusky-skinned leg, the curves inherent in her flesh triggering his mental bond with her and proving very distracting.

  "And...no. Have not heard of this."

  He was silent for a long while, with that tension that bespoke unasked questions, before he continued.

  "It...said something. About keys."

  He was unsure how he knew that, and was looking to her for confirmation. Wrath smiled at first when she noticed the wolf's titled head as she stood back up, not exactly knowing where he was looking but having an idea. If there was one thing that Wrath was appreciated for in Hell, it was her curves. But no one would make the error to mention them to the demoness...

  She was still grinning when Zhukov spoke for the second time, but her expression changed dramatically to a literally shocked face.

  "How do you... have you learned the demonic lang..."

  It was impossible. The way she spoke with her kind was not only involving words. It was partly sound, partly spiritual, partly body language... How could the Skoll know any of it? Then she realized he had overdeveloped senses; and even if it was very unlikely, maybe he had partly understood what the Chasm had told her.

  "Sorry. Yes, it did. It is related to my question. It said that the Keys were hidden by those who watch and those who guard. I think it's pretty easy to guess that the Keys will open the portal, those who guard are probably other Chasms, but those who watch..."

  She plunged into her thoughts, at mid-distance between the two mysteries that were presented to her in the past 2 minutes.

  Krof shook his head, as if to clear it, then ducked as another of the drifting jellies emerged from the wall and sailed over him.

  "Fuck."

  He rose to his feet and advanced a pair of steps down the corridor, as his HUD registered some dehydration and superficial burns where his skin contacted his armor.

  "This is going to get only worse. You know this, yes."

  It was not a plea to turn back - he was far too enthralled with her to refuse her request to visit the reactor. That much was obvious as he turned his head again to lock his gaze on her displayed leg. It was only a statement of fact. He turned his head to the side in his helmet to take a pull from the water tube built into it, found it warm and unrefreshing.

  "What was that? Have never seen anything like it...step through before."

(This is a continuation of a previous post: Feast)

  Wrath and Krof stayed in the refectory for a couple of days, waiting for the Demoness to recover from her wounds. She healed quickly. Meanwhile, the Skoll tried to convince her to stay still as much as she could, but she could not resist the temptation to look at him when he cobbled together some more ammunition. Maybe he was also reluctant to go to their next destination: the reactor. Maybe it was a way for him to push back this moment.

  But they finally went. They stocked some food, Krof took his weapon, and before they knew it, they were going down in the elevator to their destination.

Elevated

  Krof had grown steadily more anxious as the secure elevator descended to the reactor deck, his taloned finger tapping against the trigger guard of his weapon. He had not been idle during his time sleeplessly watching over the demon as she recuperated - the shells he'd assembled for the portable cannon were crude, but serviceable. She'd seen first-hand that he did not seem to know the specifics of the munitions he built - some program in his helmet transmitted the instructions to him visually.

  When the elevator finally ground to a halt and began to open, he dealt with the egress in the way that had proven the most survivable during his time on the ship - he charged out as soon as the doors opened, training the muzzle of his weapon on every corner in quick succession. It was best to exit a lethal choke point like the elevator as soon as possible. Satisfied that the room was clear, he stepped aside to make room for Sin, motioning for her to follow.


  Wrath walked out of the elevator, now aware of the dangers that the ship could host. She was probably a little more confident than the Skoll as she had the knowledge of how most demons operated, but since her last certainty led her to be wounded by a lesser demon, she kept her awareness level high. She kept a small knife she had found on a corpse on their way here close to her hand, ready to use it if necessary. It wasn't a very efficient weapon but that'll do.

  She took the time to appreciate the situation. She was close to her goal: finding this portal and getting the hell out of here. But strangely, the idea was making her a little sad, but she didn't know why. Was this place making her mad?

  "Let's move on."

  Her tone was firm; she was determined. The remains of the bite she took two days ago (were they days on this ship?) could be seen on her hip. It still hurt, but it was manageable.

  "This is active zone," Krof said, dialing at the security panel with one claw, resting his rifle on his shoulder. "Echelon 2-1-1 and kill on contact." He paused as the door whirred and began ratcheting open. "Sorry. Disregard."

  He led the way through the door with the muzzle of his Akula, advancing cautiously down the corridor, snout pointed down the sights of his weapon. After advancing past the lit elevator the surroundings became very dark. Unsure of whether Wrath could see in the blackness or not, he detached a flare from his harness and knocked the striker against his armored leg, not taking his eyes from his sight picture as he tossed the sputtering light source into their path. He fell silent as he simply observed, watching for movement.


  Wrath was blinded by the shadows at first, her eyes capable to see in very low lighting but not in complete darkness. She looked at the Skoll with curiosity as he threw the flare forward in the darkness. She had discovered two things in less than 20 seconds. First, that the creatures here could talk to security panels to open them. Second, that they could generate light with little tubes. She listened as the tube bounced on the floor, the sound resonating loudly in the corridor. No sign of a living creature. She was starting to mistrust her ability to sense other demons in this ship. What happened to her? At least, the presence of the Skoll made her more comfortable. He knew what could happen here. And she would be back home soon enough. What could happen to the wolf-looking creature was... unimportant.

Jellyfish

  Krof pulled his weapon up to a closer lock with his sights as something translucent emerged from the armored wall of the corridor as if it was made of smoke. An amorphous blob of matter, shot through with pinpoints of luminescence, pulsing and throbbing as if to the tune of a heart. It drifted slowly from right to left, as if borne on a current, trailing a tangled mass of tentacles behind it. A pair of the tendrils detached from the main mass to gingerly meet the opposite wall, before it drifted into that too, disappearing.

  And then an entire swarm of them...varying sizes...emerging from one wall and disappearing into the next as if neither existed. If Krof had ever seen a jellyfish, the similarities might have struck him. He backed up a step to shield Wrath with his body, withdrawing out of the path.

  "Do not touch them," he said grimly, probably needlessly.

  Wrath looked at the floating... things... with curiosity. They were almost hypnotizing, but she had seen similar forms in her home world, just not exactly these. The... jellies seemed to be a little more evolved, but still very empty of any consciousness... besides the will to kill. She could have done a fine job of getting rid of them with her sword if she hadn't lost it, but the knife she had was probably going to melt down in their acidic body.

  Better not to capture their attention.

  She unconsciously hold her right hip, as if she suddenly remembered the attack that happened two days before. She muttured.

  "Is it far from here?"

  If they had to go through multiple corridors with these floating things around, it would take forever. Wrath tried to distinguish something in the far but wasn't successful, even now that her eyes had adapted to the darkness. She put her hand on the Skoll's arm, as if it would improve her safety.

  Krof kept his weapon pointed down the corridor, able to keep it steady with one paw. His other turned to come up under Wrath's hand as she touched his arm, swallowing her hand with his larger paw. His arm trailed behind him as he led her onward by the hand, but still kept her behind him. It was probably not the most tactically sound way to proceed, but he found himself not caring. It gave him something to occupy himself with as his mind raced. He was about to literally wade into the mouth of Hell with this demon-woman, and some distant muffled portion of his mind was demanding to know why. And he had no answer.

  "Is far, yes. Most armored part of entire ship. Cooling stations and power nodes. Security stations - When this was running ship, did not want stray crew wandering by."

  He was not entirely sure how the deck was laid out - The persephone was an experimental vessel and not one of the Nastrand ships-of-the-line that he had committed to memory. And the technical schemata stored on board were of a security clearance beyond his.

  "And you are still not sensing these, I am taking it?"

  It was slow going, pausing to stop for another flock of the drifting creatures about fifty meters down.

  Wrath slightly resisted when Krof took her hand, not understanding why the Skoll would reduce both of their protection abilities to move forward. Maybe it was the way to behave when facing those jelly-looking creatures? A smile however appeared on her face, and she quickly erased it after noticing she had it. What was this false sensation of security she was feeling? She had to be careful. She had been surprised once, and it wouldn't happen again. Zhukov's question worried her, though.

  "No. I can't feel them."

  She wondered if they had evolved so much that they could bypass a high-ranked demon ability to detect them. She couldn't see how it was possible. No one in Hell would ever allow that. Especially since it would have compromised the security of all the high authorities.

  "We need to be careful."

  As if the Skoll didn't already know that.

Chasm

  Krof let go of her hand, focusing ahead as he advanced ponderously forward.

  "This is best advice I have heard al-"

  He stopped dead in his tracks, dropping into a crouch, raised his weapon. He was oblivious to whether she managed to stop in time, or collided with his back. As they rounded a bend in the corridor, approaching the thrum of a power capacitor, a figure stood in the corridor to meet them - hooded, face downcast, unnaturally long and taloned hands steepled as if in contemplation. The worst part was that he hadn't *smelled* it. His finger found the trigger and poised against its tension.

  Wrath didn't see the Skoll stop in time, so she stumbled upon him but thankfully not hard enough to fall over.

  "Wha-"

  She paused, immobile, looking at the creature that she immediately recognized. A Chasm. But why the hell would it be hooded? Who would have summoned such a creature here, a creature mostly uncontrollable even by the most powerful demons? They were mostly used for defense, where they would be unleashed on enemies to wreak havoc as the only thing these demons were looking for was blood. There was two possible outcomes from this situation: either the Chasm had not seen them and was not looking for food, and they could be fine; if it was not coming in their direction. Either it was on the lookout... and they needed to be prepared. Hopefully it would not be the second option, but who knows.

  Wrath slowly moved her hand towards her weapon.

  "Do... not... move..."

  She hardly knew if the Skoll's weapon would even hurt the Chasm.


  Krof seemed to share her doubts about being able to harm the being. He only continued to point his weapon at the Chasm because dropping his aim would require moving. He followed the demoness' command literally, standing rock-still. The Chasm, for its part, allowed the awkward silence to continue for many nerve-wracking seconds before opening its fanged skull-grin to, amazingly, speak. It was not a talent many of them displayed.

  "No further," it proclaimed, abyssal fire billowing from its maw as it slowly formed the words, as if it took it great effort. "In the name of Moloch."

  It cocked its misshapen head and peered at Wrath around the Skoll, big enough to tower over Krof. It seemed to be grinning at her, but it seemed to grin at everything.

(This is a continuation of a previous post: From Heaven... to Hell)

  Krof produced a diagnostor, a small device meant to assess a human's medical condition, and placed it on the largest expanse of exposed skin he could find...her belly, just above the navel. He had no idea how it would read her physiology, but it was the logical thing to do. He shook his head as it sought data.

  "You are wounded. This is not time to go to reactor. Also, your command of other demons. This did not work out, yes?"

  The jagged rip in Wrath's hip from the Archeri's jagged mouth parts now stitched closed, he wiped her hip clean, dressed it, and pulled her clothing back into place. Despite first aid being done, he retained his grip on her, holding her against his chest as the small device analyzed her. His head whips back and forth, keeping an eye on his surroundings.

  Wrath grimaced when Zhukov put the device on her body, but didn't say anything. She attentively looked at the Skoll's expression when he announced the wound, not surprised but slightly anxious it could get worse easily. The Archeri did only bite once, but it was a good bite.

  "I really want..."

  The sentence never ended. She quickly evaluated her condition, and it wasn't at its best, obviously. Maybe she could take a short break to recover and visit another place of this ship with Zhukov for now. Even if she really did want to go near that reactor. Her only goal for now.

  "I don't understand what happened. I do leave some independence to my subordinates, but nothing that would allow them to attack me directly. The only thought of what could happen if they did would terrorize most of them."

  She made a pause, biting her lower lip with her pointed teeth.

  "It seemed I had no control whatsoever over this Archeri."

  She gave it a look and stared at it.

  "Have they become wild? I don't know."

  She turned her gray eyes to the Skoll.

  "Where do you want to go?"

  Krof grunted in satisfaction as she listened to him, for once. He did not have to worry much about disease on board the ship, but the filthy conditions made it another story for humans...and she was still human, as far as he could see. He slipped his arms against the small of her back and under her knees, and lifted her up, hunched low to clear the ceiling as he carried her back down the tunnel. She would have to cling to his harness as he climbed back up the ladder. Suddenly face-to-face with her, he smiled, exposing a few fangs in the process.

  "Back to New Arkhangelsk," he answered, with what apparently passed for humor with him. "But for now, will accept crew deck. Food, and rest."

   The demoness exclaimed a short and surprised cry as Zhukov lifted her; she had the feeling she didn't weigh anything in the Skoll's arms. As he walked to the ladder, looking straight ahead, she smiled. She didn't have to be carried, but it would give the Skoll confidence, which she needed. A nice, fellow follower that would help her leave this place... She was still smiling when Zhukov talked to her, but she did not get what he was trying to say. Ar-kan-gelsk? She ignored the word, but her smile was larger.

  "I surely need a little break."

  She sighed.

  "But don't get too excited, we'll eventually have to go there."

  She moved her arms along Zhukov's armor and grabbed the harness to hold herself to it. It didn't seem to cost much in terms of energy.

The refectory

  Krof emerged into the crew refectory and gently lowered the demoness from his arms and into one of the bar's intact stools. Probably much more gently than she required, but as she'd observed to herself, it made him feel better. He propped his weapon up against the bar and detached a satchel from his webbing, settling it on the counter and digging through it. He spread his meager assortment of rations across the surface - most of it appeared to be the foil-wrapped blocks he'd shared with her before. Some dried and stunted-looking vegetables rounded out the assortment. As he handed her one of the ration blocks, he scratched the shaggy mane between his ears, maw opening as he considered how to word the question that came next. Finally, he asked.

  "Did I fire at you?"

  He didn't look at her as he spoke the question, but once done, his eyes flicked over to her, waiting for the answer. Wrath delicately landed on the stool and made herself as comfortable as she could, still grimacing a little.

  "Thank you."

  The sweet attention made her grin again, and she unconsciously held Zhukov's hand to stabilize herself, then she let it go. She was looking around her when the Skoll asked the question. She frowned and looked at the tiles decorating the bar, visually jumping from a light to a dark color and back. The silence was awkward, and you could tell the answer did not come naturally.

  "Not really. Do you remember when I kicked your weapon away so you could not fire it your way?"

  Bluff.

  "Well, your finger slipped on the trigger and the weapon fired."

  She was unsure if she should add more. But she did.

  "Thankfully it didn't hurt me."

  She was feeling slightly bad about what had happened. Why did she want to murder him so much? Was it a tantrum? She tried to deviate the attention on the lost cartridge.

  "Didn't you say you could make more rounds?"

  She passed her hand in her hair, moving some of its white tips over the shoulder.

  "I still don't feel any demon around..."

  Krof grunted noncommittally at her explanation, not seeming entirely convinced. He glanced down at his own trigger finger, as if gauging the probability that he could let it slip. He unwrapped the foil on a ration block of his own and bit down on it, swallowing half of it nearly whole down his cavernous throat.

  "Yes," he answered, between halves. "Not same quality. No variable fuses. But solid slugs that will fire."

  He set a canteen down on the counter, and followed it with a battered metal flask, stamped with the spanner-and-sickle emblem of the NovoSoviet Union. He unscrewed the cap on the flask as he thought.

  "Will need machine shop on Maintenance level and raw materials. To dismantle normal bullets to make round for Akula is...pain in ass."

  He tossed his head back and took a swallow from the flask, sloshing the contents around in his mouth like a newly awakened sleeper gargling with mouthwash.

Feast

  Wrath had her lips touching the foil wrapping her ration when she realized she had missed a step in the preparation process. She tried to remove it delicately but could not find the opening in the sticky wrap. She put it back on the bar, and literally cut through the foil with her nails. She then took one of the two parts, and smashed it in her mouth without class, using the foil to push the ration in it.

  "Filling."

  She raised her head as she heard the sound of the liquid going down the Skoll's throat, realized he was simply drinking, so went back to eating the second half of the ration. This time though, she ate it in two times. But it was still a mess, as if it was the way Duchesses were consuming food in Hell.

  "Where can we find the raw materials? What do you need?", she asked while still chewing on her food.

  Her eyes were curious, looking at all the details of Zhukov's armor, trying to guess what each pocket could contain. Her anger seemed to have disappeared now that she had accepted to rest a bit.

  Krof produced the monomolecular knife he'd brandished at the Acheri earlier and put it to the much more utilitarian task of slicing one of the earth fruits he'd taken out of his ration pack, julienning it with precise knifework atop some now empty foil and sliding it over to her.

  "These are important for you. Without them your gums bleed and teeth fall out."

  He reflexively bares his teeth in subconscious sympathy with the words as he speaks them.

  "On Persephone, small things become big. Things like eating, and not freezing."

  It was warmer here than the rest of the ship, as if some central heating had been brought back to life. But the pair's breath still fogged as they spoke.
  Wrath looked at the fruits with envy, resisting at the tentation to grab them all at once and supercharge her mouth with them. Instead, she displayed the two rows of her teeth with a smile.

  "I'm wondering how much practice you had."

 She smiled even more at the Skoll raising an eyebrow. She took a slice, raised it in front of her eye and aligned it with one of Zhukov's hands.

  "Well if I compare the sizes, I'm actually surprised that you don't crush them when holding them." She swallowed it, still talking. "Well they are eatable."

  It was harsh when considering the situation in which the Skoll had been for a long time, but it was nonetheless true. Fruits seemed to have been impacted by the confined air of the ship.

 "Don't you take any? Is that something you can't eat?"

  Krof shook his head at her, screwing the cap back onto his flask and offering it.

  "Carnivore. Plants not digested, is waste of food. Used to carry these for trade. When there were others."

  As the demoness visually browsed his harness and webbing, with its pouches labeled in Cyrillic, she could see a variety of gear and supplies...rations, medical equipment, spare parts. A sheath for his Skoll-sized knife. A band for attaching grenades, now empty, encircling one thigh. His armor seemed to be designed to hook into some sort of station or troop compartment, equipped with a surplus of eyehooks and rings. The battered surfaces were painted with ranks, numbers, and unit insignia...the most noticeable of which was a stylized three-headed dog on the right shoulder.

  "Is vodka," he said, nodding at the flask. "I fill from stash in armory."

  Wrath finished eating her slice, keeping one near her for the after-flask-tasting. She took the flask in her hand, removed the cap and smelled it.

  "Fiery!"

  She excitedly brought the flask to her lips, drinking it quicker than a fish, top to bottom.

  "Aaaaah..."

  As she opened the mouth, a large foggy cloud of evaporating liquid escaped between the two rows of teeth.

  "Thanks for sharing."

  She didn't look affected by the alcohol, as if it had completely evaporated in the Demoness's mouth. Her eyes glowed slightly. She pointed her finger to the three-headed dog, still holding the flask in the same hand. With the other, she took the last slice of fruit and threw it between her teeth.

  "What is that?" And then, as if she had forgotten a formality. "Oh, and thanks for the fruits."

  She didn't seem to catch how rare these were. Maybe she was assuming there were plenty on board. Krof grinned as she placed the flask to her lips, raising a triumphant fist as she drank it down.

  "Znashu druzhbu," he offered, and glanced over at his right pauldron as she pointed, almost as if he'd forgotten the emblem was there. "Tserber," he explained, his mouth finding the word as if it was half-forgotten. "Old monster from human stories. Guards Hell with his three heads."

 He shrugged, and digged out another of the bars. The one had hardly seemed enough for a creature of his mass.

  "Humans, they like to think of us as dogs. Genome is only eleven percent canine, but the looks."

  He taps the side of his skull, as if his resemblance to a dog needed any emphasis.

  "Is znak...symbol...of Fifth Drop Army."

(This is a continuation of a previous post: A peaceful moment in Heaven)


Krof had been with her up until the finale, concern in his blue eyes as they blinked steadily during her outburst. But when she mentioned the reactor, he flinched, lips peeling back to bare his teeth at the mere mention of the concept.

  "This is not possible," he stated flatly, pronouncing the words carefully around his teeth as he always did when he felt his message urgent. "Has never been done. Last time crew was on reactor level..."

He stopped speaking, the thought cutting off. Made hypervigilant by the memories of whatever did happen that day, his eyes began flicking around the room, roving from wall to wall and then up to the ceiling.

  "You are crazy if you try, demon or not."
  Wrath replied with exasperation. "Why? What are you so afraid of?" She quickly abandoned the idea of trying to think with reason, overtaken by a sentiment of urgency, anger and despair. Her wings flapped almost imperceptibly as she pursued. "Besides emptiness and severe disrepair of this ship, I have not seen, nor felt, any danger. Besides, if it is really demons that you are mentioning, they owe me respect in any case." Her tone was firm. It was the tone of a queen, a character of high rank, someone who had dealt with disrespectful subordinates in the past and was not afraid of hurting people's feeling when she had to. "I am sure we can manage. And I will make sure no one hurts us." She didn't mention she didn't have control over all demons, though.

Krof rolled his eyes, an oddly human gesture. He didn't react to the accusation of fearfulness with anything like wounded pride...more like the familiar tediousness of a question he'd fielded several times in the past and was growing weary of.

  "Has nothing to do with fear. Everything to do with common sense. Afraid of dying? No. But will not die without selling life for high price. Last uprising...took all crew, every weapon. Most still died." He considered her, tilting his head and looking at her sideways as he though. "You hope to find what there, exactly?"

Although he had said nothing on the matter, it seems he didn't consider her assertion of dominance to be very likely.

  Wrath raised an eyebrow, disgust in her eyes."Why are you comparing me with these weaklings?" 

She didn't know who she was talking about, but everything was telling her that they couldn't be otherwise. She also didn't seem to care about the Skoll's feelings at all.

  "Do you doubt of my ability to handle demons?" Or maybe he did not trust her? "It is my only ticket back to where I belong. I do not belong here. Not in a future where no demon exist anymore anyway."

She was still persuaded that no demonic entity was inhabiting the ship. She didn't see any, she didn't feel any, and who knows how much time the Skoll had been wandering here alone. Maybe he had started to loose his reason. Krof snorted through one nostril.

"Are plenty of demons existing here, trust me."

He gestured at the walls with his paws, indicating the ship in general. He turned his gaze back to her, and the conflict was very evident in his eyes. His nostrils flared again, drinking in her scent, his ears flicking when she said "I do not belong here." It seemed to catch his attention, focus him in some way.

  "Why not? Why can you not belong here, now?" He turned to his shed armor and began the long process of donning it again, first stepping into the form-fitting plugsuit that the autosurgeon had cut through, and he'd since stitched back together. Almost inaudibly, he added: "...With me."

Wrath didn't react to his last two words, either not sensible to it or because she didn't hear the Skoll murmuring. But she definitely looked moved by what the Skoll had said in his approximate English. She had not considered it this way. Staying on this ship? She shaked her head in disagreement almost immediately after considering the idea. She could not put her very own lair behind her. She could NOT forgive Moloch. She COULD NOT FORGIVE THE LOSS OF HER TREASURES. THAT SKUNK! She was boiling inside, her mind protected by a wall of wrath.

"I don't care about them. They will bend to my will as every other one did." It was not entirely true that every one of them did, but she was deeply convinced no entity on this ship could do her harm. "Let's go when you're ready."

She watched the wolf looking creature put on his armor, a strange sensation floating in her heart as she was staring at his muscles bend while he was putting on his gear. She had a strange urge to palp them, to push her nails into his fur, to... She realized she'd lost her focus. She looked somewhere else, avoiding the Skoll's eyes until he put on his last piece of equipment.

On the way there...

  Krof armored himself with the methodical motions of long practice, slipping segments onto his limbs, strapping the plastron around his chest, staring off into the middle distance as each new piece performed a function check on itself and sent a report to his entoptics. The process illustrated that either Skolls were designed to mesh with their armor, or vice versa. He seemed more at ease, more complete with it in place. Several minutes later he clamped his helmet down over his ears and engaged the neck seals.

  "First, back to Deck Three. I will need weapon."

His voice resonated slightly through his helmet speakers, and then he paused. Did he just agree to go? How did that happen? He grounded his fangs together with dull anger. He did not seem to notice, or correctly interpret, her appreciation for his form while he had been unarmored.

  Wrath: "Hum..." She seemed hesitant for a while, lost in her thoughts. She shrugged. "I guess it won't harm if we are armed indeed." She raised her hand to her left shoulder, grabbing an invisible weapon a first time, then a second time, until she realized she didn't have it anymore. "Darn. Seems I'll have to go without a way to defend myself." She looked around, trying to find something, but failed at it. She pointed at the door leading to the exit with resignation. "Shall we? I don't remember the way."

She could finally put back her eyes on the Skoll, a little embarrassed by what just happened. What had been this sudden sensation she had? Especially at that moment? She followed the armored creature out, a little bit confused.

Krof led the minor expedition with another weapon drawn - some serrated blade of black metal sized for his bulk. Technology had placed some sort of enhanced cutting edge of it. Leave it to humans and their pets to always fall back on the old standbys of their primitive, bloodletting past. The trip was uneventful until the moment the Skoll, dropping into the four-legged stance he had used in their first encounter, rounded the corner in the confines of the tunnel where he had met the demoness. And stopped in his tracks. Seated on the cold, freezing metal of the ship's arteries was a small, human-seeming girl, wearing a tattered and smudged white dress, seated crosslegged as she toyed with the Skoll's abandoned weapon. Its considerable weight sat across her lap. She hummed to herself as she scratched writings into the rifle's scope housing with a long and rusty nail, long shavings of paint corkscrewing off the metal.

Encounter

Wrath saw the little girl from afar, her vision obstructed by the Skoll's gigantic body; she could only see the head of the creature. Curious, but also suspicious, she careful approached Zhukov's  back and slowly put her hand on his shoulder. She could now see the whole picture. A creepy situation, most would say. Not a weird one for the demoness, just a little more than unusual.

  "An Archeri. But how...?"

She could not understand why she had not felt it way before entering the ventilation shaft. Did her feelings abandoned her for some reason? She focused on her senses for a moment. No. Nothing around her. But she could see the little girl straight in front of her and she could tell it was a demon. A sneaky one moreover. And due to its abilities, its distance of detection was covering probably the whole ship. So why couldn't the demoness feel its presence? And why in hell was an Archeri holding a weapon that could contain iron? Wrath assumed it was made in another futuristic material.

  Wrath: "I'm surprised such a being is haunting these confined spaces", she whispered. "Maybe I can try to get rid of it." She didn't move though, waiting for the Skoll's answer.

The girl let the pair sit there motionless for an uneasily long time before she finished her work on the Skoll's weapon and tossed the nail aside. A whisp of smoke trailed from her hand to the flung piece of iron as it rattled away, and she looked curiously at her own hand, a charred black weal slashing across her palm where the nail had rested. Abruptly, her eyes flicked upward to the Skoll, and she smiled brightly at him. Her expression widened...and split. Lips went rubbery and peeled back impossibly wide from a circular mass of needle-fangs, pointing inward like a lamprey's maw. Her teeth flexed in a yawn, settled to point back down her throat once again, and her mouth closed. A little girl again, the sawtooth horror of her throat no longer visible.

  "The Exile and the Survivor," she gurbles wetly, her voice tinged like a small child's, but as if that small child was swallowing a gulletful of raw meat. "What an entertaining little Tarot deck you're putting together for yourselves."

The Archeri, by Maldoror2112

Krof did not take his eyes off the 'child' to look back at the demon at his back, but he replied.

  "Yes. I think you had better." The fingers of his gauntleted paw flexed around the hilt of his frac-knife, the rest of him remaining still.

Wrath tightened her grasp, holding Zhukov's shoulder firmly. This Archeri didn't look like the ones she used to know. And they surely didn't speak to a duchess this way. What was even more odd was that self-inflicted wound the demon just had made to itself. What kind of craziness was going through its head at the moment?

  "Move along, Archeri. You are blocking our path."

She didn't attack the demon, trying to avoid a fight if she could; especially without a weapon. How the little thing knew she was exiled was another problem, but she didn't want to tackle it now. Her goal: the reactor. The Archeri cackled in an atrocious way.

  "You have no power here, demon."

As it said that, it suddenly disappeared. Half a second later, it reappeared on Wrath's side, violently biting on her hip. The demoness yelled in pain, both surprised and horrified, as she grabbed the demon with both hands, pushing her away with an extraordinary force. It bounced on the wall, then used it to propel itself back on the black winged creature.

The whole thing happened in less than 2 seconds. Wrath had been caught on the wrong foot; she was defenseless as the Archeri attacked again.

Krof abandoned his decision to let Wrath handle the situation as soon as the child-thing reappeared in their midst. As soon as the Archeri slamed itself free from the wall to hurl itself at the off-balance demoness, he planted one paw on the floor for stability and lashed out with one foot, intercepting the not-girl with an armored deck boot. The snarling form flied backward yet again, and he lunged after it. His armored forearm crashed down to pin the Archeri's throat to the hull, keeping its fangs at bay, while his other paw arched high to bring the blade down...there was a sickening, gory belch as the pinned Archeri vomited a fountain of black blood onto his faceplate.

The child's neck contorted to the side, vertebrae snapping with the effort, and the point of the knife slammed into the metal where her head was, throwing sparks. Countering, Krof pitched his soiled helmet forward and slammed his visor into the small demon's face, eliciting a crunch of broken teeth and facial bone.

Wrath did a step backwards, hardly recovering her balance, but when she did, her eyes were no more of that faded gray-ich color. They were of an intense dark blue. The tattoos on her body were glowing slightly, as if they had mythical powers. But she didn't use them or they didn't grant her anything. Rather, she plunged forward at an inhuman speed, her arm passing above the Skoll's own, her nails ripping the Archeri's body apart. Her hand penetrated the demon's body where the heart was and the demoness closed the fist on it, ruthlessly and fatally crushing the entrails. The body squirted black blood all over her face and body, and the Archeri soon stopped moving with a fainted moaning. An instant passed, and the demoness pulled her arm out of the dead body. She rested her head on the Skoll's arm, her right hand on the hip.

  "I.... I knew this demon..."

She was breathing heavily, trying to absorb everything that had just happened. She had felt a connection when she had slain the demon; it was formerly part of her own army, back in Hell.

  "What happened here?" She felt helplessness. "Did everyone go crazy? ....aaaaaarrr...." Red blood was pouring out of her wound. She didn't know if it was serious. But it did hurt.

Heal

Krof kicked the savaged body away after Wrath removed its heart, the corpse rolling to a halt in the corner in its gauzy white dress, left to leak inhuman organs onto the deck. There was a hiss of vented oxygen as Krof broke the seals on his helmet and lifted it off, dropping it on the ground to fume and sizzle, attacked by the archeri's caustic blood. He subconsciously leaned into her touch, reaching out to cradle her in the crook of his arm, his free paw digging through his harness for his trauma kit. He had one for himself and one he carried for humans - he hoped, in this case, that the latter would work for her as well. As he teared open a sterilization packet and sprinkled antibacterials onto her wound, he hooked his boot under his discarded weapon and pulled it in close, propping it up against the wall.

  "Let me see."

He reached down with his claws to pull aside her ornate loincloth, exposing her hip, gently probing through the blood and Archeri spittle looking for the extent of the wound. As he did so, he glanced to the side, noting that his ammunition counter was flashing '000'. The significance was stored for later. For now, he moved quickly, wiping away blood with sterile pads and applying wound glue to her hip. He worked quickly, trained in primary battelfield medicine, but also sped by an underlying urgency. His own blood surged with the desire to keep her safe, with a primal alarm that she had been wounded. His own hip burnt with a sympathetic mirror of her injury, a pain that was not entirely in his imagination.

Wrath let out a sigh of relief as Zhukov cleaned the wound and bandaged it. She surprisingly felt reassured by the presence of the Skoll. Her mind was hurt, her body was hurt, even if the latter was less concerning. She was slowly realizing her loneliness on this ship, suddenly put apart from her "beloved" ones. She had a strong mind, but it had been affected by the environment a lot quicker than she had expected. Or was it by something else than that? She didn't have an answer. What she knew though, was that she felt awkwardly safe in the Skoll's arms... She winced in pain as Zhukov was finishing the first aid process.

  "Did you get your weapon back?"

She was confused by the mix of feelings that was bouncing in her heart at that moment. Hate. Anger. Relief. Comfort. Despair. Sadness of loosing one of her kind. Lo... No, the word that came in her mind couldn't be right. She discarded it and looked for Zhukov's weapon, and found it.

  "We should head down to the reactor." She realized she had only been talking about the reactor, and the weapon, and had a sad and confused laugh. "I'm sorry. Thank you, Zhukov. I'm fine."

She looked at the wall on her left, staring at some uninteresting metal plate detail. The Skoll could not see it in the darkness of the corridor, but she was blushing.

(This is a continuation of a previous post: Embrace)

Wrath and Zhukov soon exited the medical room, the latter being dressed up back in his armor; the demoness looked pretty tired.

Krof led the demoness, at her behest, through a maze of corridors winding beneath the crew deck. The pair passed through many strongpoints that he had prepared ahead of time...defensive positions to fall back to, graced with improvised explosives. None of them were necessary to use...perhaps the ship's inhabitants sensed her presence and gave her a wide berth. Long after the demon grew impatient, he finally stopped before a reinforced hatch, marked ARM-B07, and dialed an access code, carefully with his thick clawed fingers on the pad meant for humans. It slipped open, revealing weapons racks, crates, and even a briefing table...a marshaling area for the humans' warriors, such as they were. Krof paused to take a pair of tactical cameras out of his harness and set them outside the door with their magnets, to keep watch down the corridor, as he ducked low to clear the ceiling of the small chamber.

Wrath clumsily followed the Skoll in the armory, barely noticing where she was going, her eyes closing by themselves. She ran her hand against the wall to make sure she did not tip over.

  "Zakov..." Her brain didn't seem to follow very well anymore. "I think I'm going to lie down here on the floor..." She looked miserable, as if her life force had been sucked out by something. She was dreaming of her bed, back in Anhetas... but knew it was now far away. "May I...?" She began to fall backwards, still awake but without enough force to stand. It looked like her strength had weakened even more since they left the medical section of the Persephone.

Slumber

Krof darted out one thick arm to catch her as she toppled over. He moved much more quickly than he had during their first meeting, when he was busy dying... and he seemed to have recovered remarkably quickly with just the minimal medical care he'd received one deck above. He gripped her under her arms with both paws, lowering her gently to the floor, propping her back up against a stack of crates. Taking a moment to look down quizzically as he loomed over her, he arched a thick brow and answered.

  "...Of course you may." Leaving her to rest for a bit, he hunched over as he turned, avoiding the ceiling as he digged through various crates. Thick thermal sleeping bags. Heat-reflecting microfoil blankets. He gathered them up and began unfolding them, laying them out neatly on the floor. "We brought these with us," he explained, nodding down at the sleep rolls, which were oddly lined with synthetic fur. "Last assignment was arctic...no time to trade in gear."
  Wrath smiled weakly at no one, her sight lost on whatever horizon she was imaging. She put her hand on the blanket lying on the floor next to her. "Nice......" Her words were barely correctly pronounced. Then her eyes closed without warning, her head plunged, and the Skoll immediately understood she had fallen asleep, still sitting against the crates. Her fingers were still pinching the blanket, but they released it a few seconds later as her body relaxed. Her wings were deployed in an irregular way on the metal behind her, her back resting on them.

Krof blinked at her, feeling her weariness in some way he could not explain...it's as if her exhaustion was something he could smell, driving him to do what he could to soothe it. Once he convinced himself that she had indeed fallen asleep, he walked over to her as quietly as he could while fully armored, reached down...and positioned one of the sleeping bags in front of her hoofed legs. Holding the bag open with one paw, he used the other arm to cradle her... fitting her into the crook of his elbow... and gently slipped her into its warm embrace, careful not to wake her. It was very cold on the Persephone, now that power was minimal and waste heat was no longer radiating through the ship's hull. He wasn't sure how it would affect her, laying on cold metal. Her wings presented a momentary problem, as she was halfway snug in the bag, but he leaned her forward against his chestplate... and, with probing fingers, folded her wings up safely close to her shoulder blades. With that riddle solved, she was entirely inside and warm. He zipped up the sleeping gear, leaving only her horns and a stray lock of midnight-black hair visible through the top.

More or less 7 hours and 6 minutes passed.

Nightmare

Wrath suddenly waked up, her eyes wide open, screaming. She tried to sit up straight, realized she was tied up, panicked, screamed again, ripped apart the blanket with her formidable force, finally got up blazingly fast, reached for her weapon... and stopped. She looked around her. A few seconds passed; her heavy breathing was the only thing that could be heard besides the wind-broken sound of the ventilation and a disturbing humming coming deep below them. Her arm still above her shoulder, she looked at her hooves, saw the Skoll, and finally remembered where she was. She stayed silent, not sure what to do. She slowly put her arm back to her side, useless to be up there since her weapon was gone.

Krof had been sitting directly across from her, diligently brushing his fangs with a well-worn toothbrush and spitting into the empty wrapping of a ration pack. During the night, he had not disturbed her, other than to unzip the sleeping bag by the smallest of margins and keep her face visible. He found that he did not wish to lose sight of her, for reasons unknown to him, and he found himself glancing sideways over at her throughout the night. As soon as she waked screaming he flinched, dropped the toothbrush, and rose onto the balls of his feet to scramble to her side. There was a data cable visibly plugged into the cybernetic device protruding from his spine between his shoulder blades, attached to some sort of portable computer resting on the deck. He reached out to touch her in what he thought was reassurance. Huge, strong fingers pat her shoulder, claws sheathed.

  "Is fine...you are safe."

Wrath slightly cringed when the Skoll approached his hand, still under the effect of her nightmare and destabilized by the creature's size. His paw looked enormous on her shoulder, almost making her look like a toy.

  "I... I had a nightmare. Not a pleasant one." Her eyes were dark. The Skoll could see... *feel* her mind was troubled, but not why. "Did... erm, did you sleep well?" It was weird to ask this question, as she was used to be alone during her slumber. And she didn't really care about her subordinates sleep. She pointed at the cable connecting the creature's spine to the computer. "Do you affect your dreams with this?"

Krof looked directly and unflinchingly into her eyes, saw the truth that she was physically fine, and gave her one last pat with the paw on her shoulder before withdrawing it. At the mention of the data cable, he reached back behind himself, disconnecting it, letting it reel back into the machine on the floor.

  "RIG has been having problems. Needs many diagnostics. No maintenance, here in this place." He waved a paw vaguely upward at the ceiling, indicating the ship as a whole. Then, as an afterthought, he glanced up at the ceiling as well. Almost as if he thought the ship might overhear. Turning, he hunched over another crate, rummaging. "You are hungry?" He wasn't sure if she did that. But it seemed logical, if she needed sleep as well.

Recovery

Wrath looked a little confused at first, wondering what the RIG could be. But she finally decided it was some kind of required apparel that the Skoll had to wear to survive. Might be a problem, but... She smiled as the creature searched the crates with his big paws.

  "Sure, Zhukov." Her memory seemed to be restored. "I need to get my energy back." She didn't know she could even eat anything from this ship, but she'd have to try to find out. "Where does your accent come from?"

Krof seemed to consider whatever the contents of the crate were, then produced a foil-wrapped rectangle, perhaps four inches by five, and passed it over.

  "There is not much stored here. But later, we visit hydroponics. I cannot eat food there, but maybe you can." His ear angled toward her as he considered her question. "I learned English while here. I am from NovoSoviet Collective. Ruskaya is standard there." He found another, similar rectangle, only this one had been partially eaten and re-wrapped. He sniffed at it experimentally. "Language from Old Earth."

Wrath listened attentively to the Skoll while she inspected the rectangle, amused at its shiny color. Gray. Her favorite. As Zhukov -- as she called him -- faced her again with his finding, she bit into the food, not aware that the foil was not meant to be eaten. She frowned, disliking the taste at first, but breathed a sigh of relief when she tasted the actual food.

  "Old Earth? ...NovoSoviet Collective? In what year are we?" She had an eyebrow raised, her eyes were sparkling with curiosity. She bit in the foil again.

Krof unwrapped the foil and removed the block of protein inside - it had the appearance of some sort of meat, shredded and pressed together into a congealed mass, and was identical to hers. Rather than chewing he simply swallowed it whole.

  "You, ah..." He nodded at her own food. "Metal is for storage, not eating." He shrugged mentally. Maybe her kind did eat minerals. There was no telling, despite the fact that he'd lived among demons for years. They had not exactly been on speaking terms with him. "Do not know year here...nobody can agree. Was year 2618 in my time, when we came on board." He scratched at an ear and smoothed down the mane between his ears, which was suffering from a bad case of helmet-fur. "But here is different."

Wrath swallowed the piece of food she was eating, then looked at her meat-looking meal.

  "Oh. That's why it felt a little crunchy."

She removed the remaining wrap, admiring the patience of the people wrapping that thing around the food. When it fell on the floor, it displayed two rows of pointed teeth shapes.

  "Wait?! You said year 2618?!" She was now motionless, holding her protein block in her right hand. She jumped forward, grabbing the Skoll's right wrist with her free hand.  "Did the demonic forces win over the Heavens?" She wanted to know more. "What is the current state of things on Earth?"

Krof noticed the impressions of her teeth, and spent an inordinate amount of time looking at her mouth as she grasped his arm and spoke. He had begun suppressing his defensive reactions when it came to her. Somehow, it seemed to him that he knew she was not threatening as she reached out and seized his arm. He rather enjoyed the contact, he found. He blinked exactly once as she posed her excited question, and when he was sure that she had finished, he opened his maw to answer.

  "Earth? Is in Core Worlds. Not part of SOVVOY space. I do not know." He cast his glance to the side, sorting through mental information he'd read and not learned firsthand. "Tongyi owns Earth. Am sure I would have heard of demons and angels. Nothing like that."
  Wrath looked at you with shock. "It can't be..."

Her eyes were wide opened, and you could feel her fear. Her fear that everything was lost, that she was the only demon left, that everything she knew had disappeared. Not only Moloch had banished her from her very home, but he had locked her up in a different period, literally not in the same time continuum. And she had discovered the future was the nothingness for her kind. She stepped backwards, letting her last piece of food drop on the floor, her hand on the heart.

  "It can't be!! I have to make sure! I need to see another demon!!" She lowered both arms to the ground, her palms opened, remembering what the Skoll had said when they were in the ventilation shaft: "We need to go to the ship's reactor, Zhukov!"

(This is a continuation of a previous post: Arrival)

Ascension

Wrath climbed the ladder, leaving the unconscious creature in the corridor, looking for something that would help her lift its enormous mass up the vent. She was obviously not aware of the dangers of this place...

A few long minutes passed, where nothing happened. One could only hear the nearest fans turning painfully, giving the place a creepy atmosphere. The walls quietly cracked from time to time, as if they were in movement. Then, after a time that would be considered irresponsible by any doctor, the end of a rope fell on the floor, after bouncing on the wolf's head. Wrath reappeared after a long descent. She had enough rope to solidly attach the creature to it, so she made sure it would not strangle it, even if at this point... it would have probably not changed anything.

  "I didn't see anyone up there. Are you the only survivor?" She talked, knowing the wolf would not respond. "Besides the Surgeons, obviously."

She quickly finished making the last knots.

Krof lolled his shaggy head to the side as he was slowly and painstakingly winched up the shaft, blood still pouring from his snout. He coughed and choked occasionally, clearing his breathing passage, as his head seemed to strike every pipe and protrusion on the way up. He barely responded to the impacts, and certainly did not answer the questioning verbally. She did see his ears twitch and pivot weakly in her direction as she speaked, however.

Wrath climbed the ladder for the second time, her hooves marking each step she made towards the top with a thump. The sound faded out progressively from the corridor, until it couldn't be heard anymore, back to the sad blowing of the ventilation. Even if she was largely capable of transporting such a weight, she did not seem to care too much about the well being of her shipment. The poor creature's head made funny noises as it hit the pipes running along the wall. After reaching the top, she put the wolf on the floor, loosening the knots and then grabbing him by the hands, as she did downstairs, pulling him out of the dark room towards the interior of the strange stronghold.


Krof would have been impressed by the demon's strength, were he awake to see it, his bulk scraping across the deck as she pulled him by the arms. His nose dragged along the floor and was caught in the gaps in the deck repeatedly, making a comical thump as his head bobbled around. But despite her abuse he was still clinging to life. Whoever his designers were, they built him to endure. He left a minor trail of blood that marked the spot where she brought him to rest, dropping his arms in front of him as if he'd been reaching out to her in supplication. Wrath made a pause, catching her breath. She took the time to look around her, trying to find a sign that would help her figure out where the next destination was. She looked back at the thin trail of blood.

Wrath: "May I be damned! He is so empty he is not even spilling blood anymore. Where can I find some of it?!" She looked almost desperately at the end of the only other corridor connecting this room, lost. Then she saw the map. Obvious, in the middle of the room, glowing in a yellow color, detailing the main parts of the... "Persephone. What a poor choice for a name." She squinted, trying to find a medical room or something similar.

The medical room

Krof stubbornly refused to fit onto the medical bench, instead draping half off of it, arms and legs splayed awkwardly and dragging on the floor. When activated, the spider-limbed autosurgeon above him diligently started its diagnosis, paused, and flashed a stream of errors to the controller station. "Species recognized: Type 73 Bioform, "Skoll". Manufactured by Sikarsky-Balanchine Laboratories. Minimal template found - please update software for optimal care."

  Wrath looked at the... spider (that's the only thing she could think about) with incredulity.
  "Update soft ware? What does it mean?!"
  She walked angrily around the operation table.
  "All of this to be blocked by a FREAKING ROBOT?!!"
  She got even madder, her very personality resonating in an obvious manner.
  "It can't BE!"
  She slammed her fist on the table with rage, not noticing she validated the start of the operation, but shattering the glass of the controller at the same time. The machine emitted three long beeps.
  "Please step aside until the surgery is complete."
  Wrath moved back, looking at the mechanical arms doing their job.
  "Will this work... ?" Her eyes glowed of a stronger gray.
  "You are really lucky, Skoll." She repeated what she had just heard. "Lucky that I need you."

The autosurgeon unfurled a laser burner and moved it to the collar of the Skoll's armor. Nothing happened for a long pause, and then the atonal voice of the program controlling it stated: "Insufficient solid fuel for extraction cutter. Remove patient's protective armature manually." While waiting for compliance, it deployed syringes from other limbs and began injecting anti-shock drugs directly into the bioform's neck. The ones it had verified as being compatible with his metabolism, at any rate.

  Wrath facepalmed. "Why is it always so complicated with non-demonic beings?"

She approached the Skoll, trying to open his armor, not finding how at first, removing the protective shoulders, the belt, the boots, the knee protectors, the box-that-looked-like-a-watch, failed at removing his left arm protection, so simply opened up the military grade cloth, revealing the Skoll's godly built body. Her eyes lit up again, but this time she said nothing, instead she smiled. Then removed his pants, leaving him in his underwear. As she passed behind the creature's head, his moving ears tingled her belly and she couldn't refrain from giggling a little. As the armor bounced on the lower part of the table, she heard a little beep. Investigating it, she saw a little device with a red screen. She pressed it.

  "Personnel File - SbSGT Zhukov" "What is this...?"

Before she moved back to read it, she pressed on the other controller, activating the sequence, and she carelessly leaned against the wall to read her new finding.

Zhukov

In the personnel file, she found out several things about the creature's past and present. Wrath didn't have knowledge of some notions written in it, so she tried to picture in her own words what each of them could be.

First, his name was seemingly Zhukov. He was a transgenic creature of class (or race, as she interpreted it) "Skoll". He had been bred inside the Sikarsky-Balanchine Laboratories in a land called NeoSoviet. He was made to have a superior strength and endurance, have an incredible capacity to survive (his heart was rerouteable with redundant chambers; he could stay awaken 96 hours straight) and he had a high developed olfactory sense, too.

Skolls genes were a mix of Creodonta (extinct order of pre-history Earth fauna), as well as canine, human and synthetic DNA (she ignored that last acronym). They were made to not be able to survive on their own without an enzyme that was provided by their human handlers. If not provided with this enzyme, they would die in a short time. They also had few personal rights.

Zhukov was part of a team designed for hazardous armed boarding and narcotics interdiction (whatever that could mean).

He was basically a soldier, and it would perfectly fit her needs.

A well trained soldier

The experience was similar to undressing a corpse at this point, even his previous sluggish movement had stilled due to the sedatives the machine had injected into his carotid. His jaws hinged open and his tongue lolled free, streaming saliva, before the autosurgeon produced a set of blunt clamps and closed his maw again. Muzzling him, treating him like a potentially dangerous animal. It cut through his remaining clothing with a rotary scalpel and began its search. Sensors roved over the bulky body, red telltales showing up on the x-ray as they detected trauma. "Left lung, punctured and collapsed due to stab wound. Fracture, ribs nine, ten, eleven. Concussion. Hydrostatic brain trauma consistent with fall." An analysis completed. "Unidentified toxin complex. Initiating toxicology." A large-bore needle plunged into his forearm and his remaining blood supply was siphoned out, routing through filters.

Wrath's ear slightly moved as the machine started speaking. She listened closely to the enumeration of the wounds, getting more worried at each new announcement. At least, the Skoll was being taken care of, but she had no idea how much time it would take. She thought about the wounds... and realized the Skoll may actually have fallen from the top of the shaft she had brought him back up from. She gave another look at the tubes connecting the creature's arm to the machines. The stream of blood was very, very thin. Thin enough she was starting to think he would not make it, even with the metabolism he had. Surely she had an idea, but...

As if on cue, Krof's eye nearest the demon snapped open, the pupil dilating wide and adjusting as it darted about seekingly. It settled on her, and his eye narrowed suspiciously. With a speed that echoed the quickness she displayed when kicking his rifle aside earlier, his arm flinged out to the side, paw wrapping around her thigh and gripping it. Retractable claws slid out and poised at her dark flesh, ready to plunge in and draw blood. The sedatives apparently wore off with alarming speed. And now that the venom was being strained from his blood, his strength was returning. He kept his viselike grip on her leg as he spared a glance around the room, taking in his surroundings. His brow furrowed in confusion.

Awakening

  Wrath gasped as the Skoll grabed her thigh, surprised by its swiftness, dropping the device she was holding. She didn't expect the creature to recover so quickly. "I'm not here to hurt you." She didn't mention her attempt to slay him less than an hour ago. "Be at rest. You're being healed as I speak." She slowly moved her hand down, gently attempting to lay it down on the furry arm. "You are very weak. Almost dead."
  Krof moved his eye to see the robotic spider-limbs tending to him, jaws still locked in the surgeon's clamps and possibly too weak to turn his head now after that one explosive movement of his arm. Recognizing where he was, he gritted his fangs and, slurred by his immobile jaws, growled out to the computer: "Zhivyye korrektsii . Udalit eto dermo ." The machine apparently understood, the clambs retracting and releasing his muzzle. His grip loosened and he let his arm drop, releasing her leg without so much as a single puncture. He had never seen her threaten him. And he now found himself in the one place where he could recover. Keeping his head straight, as if afraid he could not move his head again if he looked at her, he continued in the language again: "Zachem ty menya syuda?" It seemed to take him a moment to realize she did not understand, so he changed tongues. "Why did you bring me here?"
 Wrath let her arm fall along her body, not able to catch the Skoll's wrist. "I found you in a vent, far from here. There was blood everywhere." She said these words calmly, as if she was reading a shopping list. "I thought you were going to die, but then I realized there was maybe a way to save you. And, as strange as it sounds, I need someone to guide me in the Persephone." She gave a third look at the blood still moving in the tubes connected to the Skoll's body. "But I fear you might not go far. You likely lost more blood than the reason would allow you to."

  Krof stared at the ceiling as she explained, awake but far too weak to move again. He still had only one eye open, and that fluttered as she watched. "Who are you?" he asked, finally, pronouncing the words carefully. Whatever other language was native to him only provided half his accent, the rest was due to speaking around a maw full of fangs. The bridge of his nose wrinkled as he drew in air through his nostrils, taking in her scent. She wasn't trying to hide her nature, that was obvious. "I know *what* you are. Why do you need me for anything? Your kind are..." He coughed, webs of red-tinged spittle dangling from the fur under his chin. "...all over the ship."
  Wrath raised one eyebrow, curious as what the Skoll had just said. "All over the ship? I have seen none on the way here." She assumed that the Skoll was conscious of the long walk from the ventilation shaft to the medical lab. "You mentioned Surgeons... and I have seen none." Her senses were also capable of detecting demons around her pretty precisely, so she knew none was around. She made one step towards the surgery table. "I am Wrath. Duchess of Anhetas. In Hell." She felt the need to precise the location, as if it was not obvious. "And I need you. As much as you need me now." She wasn't sure he would inevitably die at this point, but it felt very likely. So she bluffed. A little bit.
  Krof laughed, deep in his throat, which seemed to cause him pain. He grimaced and gritted his teeth. "Is big ship." He looked back at her, now a presence in his peripheral vision, staring at her upside-down. "Maybe they are afraid of you." As if suddenly thinking of something, he began looking around the room as best he could, seeking something. "Is not first time I have spoken to one of you. Does not end well. And what is it you need from me, hnnn?"
  Wrath slowly raised the hand in a reassuring way. "You don't have to worry. There is no one here besides you and me." She came closer, her head taking more place in the wolf's reversed vision. "If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead a long time ago, Zhukov." She wrongly called him by his last name, thinking it was his first. She put her hand on his forehead, looking at him, sincerely worried, not scared at his potential reaction. He could feel her at a couple inches from the top of his head. "How do you feel?"

Bond

Krof closed his eyes as she patted him on his thick forehead, letting his head fall back and rest against her stomach for a moment. Then he flinched away, as if realizing what he was doing. With visible effort, he rolled over, slowly sitting upright on the side of the surgical bench. He reached up and placed a paw against the trunk of the autosurgeon, shoving it aside on its overhead track. He faced her, and even sitting down he still towered over her. His head sagged, looking at the floor.

  "Hell. So humans, they were right. It is a place." He raised his head, looking at her almost eye to eye. "I do not feel good at all. But is better than before." His punctured lung did not seem to be slowing him down as much as it should. Despite his obvious distrust of her, his voice had calmed, and become almost conversational. Maybe despite his best efforts.

Wrath smiled at the Skoll, impressed by his size now that he was sitting. She was glad she had not gotten rid of him. He looked like a formidable adversary against any danger on this ship.

  "You didn't figure out it was after seeing all the demons you mentioned?" She asked this question with a little bit of suspicion, unclear if he was pulling her leg or if he was a bit... naive. She opened her arms, surprisingly offering herself at the stranger; in contrast with the ship, she looked like a wonderful option, a peace haven, a soft and comfortable reward for someone who had almost died. "Not all of us have a lust to kill." A dark shadow passed in her eyes. "Not me, at least." She smiled again at the Skoll. "I am unarmed. Don't you want some comfort?"

Krof stared down at her, swaying slightly on his taloned feet, looking at the offered embrace as if it was full of snakes. So many seducers, corrupters, and slayers on board this ship. So many dead allies. So many days and months and years of nightmare, horrors that the demons had tried and refined and retried until they could claw at even his sanity. But stronger than that, stronger than Hell's serrated gifts, was the loneliness. His team long gone. The humans he had known and survived with gone after that. Year after year of mind-numbing routine and little sleep and little food. Until he met her, he could not recall when the last time he'd spoken to another being was. He was a pack creature, bred to work cooperatively with others of his kind. And he had been without any of that for a very long time. His nostrils fileld with the scent of her, very female despite her otherworldly smell. With the same explosiveness with which he had seized her leg, he now hunched forward, tossing arms about her and drawing her close to his furred chest. His nose snuffled at her hair, reveling in her smell. It might be from another place, one called Hell, but she was still...someone else. Someone to speak with. He held her closely, and felt strange relief.

Wrath hold the Skoll by the hips, pressing her body against his fur, breathing his... strong smell --- he obviously did spend quite some time in these clothes --- but that wasn't a concern for the demoness. While burying her head in his fur, she discretely bit her own tongue. Hard enough to make it bleed significantly; but the furry creature could not see it. She reached out for his neck, as a vampire would, but she wasn't one so she kissed him tenderly. At least, that's how it felt. She acted this whole diversion to be able to bite into his skin with her pointed teeth; he could not possible notice, so soft it was. The demoness transfered some of her own blood into the Skoll's body. She would move her lips regularly on the creature's body, to avoid bringing the attention on the process, but she would find the excuse of another kiss to bite in the flesh again. This had a double advantage: first, it would guarantee the creature not to die. Second, it would give her some powers on the Skoll, even if she couldn't determine exactly which ones. He would never know about it, obviously. Was it also important to mention that her demonic blood could be mixed with any other? ... As she stopped the embrace, she almost fainted, falling backwards, feeling weak, a drop of blood flowing down her chin.

Embrace

The looming bioform was solid as she pressed against him, not yielding to her weight, in fact he leaned in closer to meet her. Large paws cupped her shoulder blades, massaging her musculature with surprisingly gentle hands, the claws he had used on her thigh earlier now nowhere to be seen. He had expected to find the cold of the grave when he touched her, but she was warm. He actually shuddered when she parted his fur with her tongue and bit into his hide, a paw slipping to the back of her head and pulling her face in closer, enjoying the sensation...the pain was minimal, to him, and the sensation thrilling. When she bit him a second time, he welcomed it. His eyes snapped open when she stopped, and he caught her, rubbing at the trickle of blood with his thumb. As something warm and unyielding pressed into her leg, it became obvious that he was responding to her femininity...he made no apolgies for the prodigious erection tenting the front of the underclothes she had left on him, pulsing with a life of its own. He moved to pursue her touch, to let their intimacy descend into lust, but picked up on her decision to break the embrace. He found himself sensitive to her will, almost smelling it, and wishing to obey despite his attraction to her.

  "What is wrong?" he asked, meaning both her mood and  her sudden swooning. He reached behind her, cradling her by her bottom, tail draping over his forearm as he turned to sit her down upon the bench.
  Wrath recovered slowly from her almost black out, knowing what just happened as it was not the first time, but somewhat surprised of the intensity of it. Maybe she did not measure well how much the Skoll would take from her. "Nothing..." She was lost in her thoughts. "I had a rough day too, actually... Some treason in my hierarchy. I lost everything I had, even my... land." She had almost mentioned the sword. "I guess it's the sum of all of it. This... you... the confusion..." She looked at Zhukov with sleepy eyes, sincerely tired but also very certain that she had the upper hand in the situation. "I think I could use some rest."