Verdant Song

by Mixolydian Grey

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. II

Lennox tightened his grip on the upper level’s railing. A glance at the pilot’s display showed that half of the maneuvering thrusters were malfunctioning. The remainder were frantically attempting to compensate for the ship no longer being shaped the way it was supposed to be.

Stars panned and twisted across the overhead windows. The twisting rotation had not been intentional. With so many massive sections not just damaged, but missing, all of the maneuvering calibrations from the start of the voyage were hopelessly inaccurate.

The blinking screen next to him flashed calculations and trajectory predictions, numbers scrolling across as it determined and implemented corrections. Lennox watched and waited, with little else to do but hope.

The bridge shifted as the thrusters fired at a different angle, trying to correct the maneuver.

Pangs echoed from deep within the ship, metal straining against metal. He squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn’t even the actual acceleration; this was just a turn to face the right direction.

A jarring vibration nearly shook Lennox off the railing, and the bridge promptly went silent and weightless. He sucked in a breath. If the central axis were to snap in half, it would probably feel something like that.

Lennox released his grip, fingers throbbing. The stars drifted by, now translating without any rotation. The pilot’s display was optimistic. He breathed again. The computers had managed to compensate, and the ship was rotating as intended. When the ship was close to pointing in the correct direction, the thrusters would hopefully come back online to cancel the angular velocity. Then they could accelerate in that direction and begin the journey home.

He drifted back to the computer. Most of the reaction control thrusters towards the rear of the ship were unresponsive. They showed on the screen as blinking red points across the back half of the ship’s vaguely dumbbell-like shape.

A mess of warnings populated the screen, as well as the promise that future attitude control would be more precise. So long as nothing else broke off, exploded, or depressurized, or—

“How does it look?” Solstice floated over next to him.

“It looks about as good as it sounds.” Lennox tapped the screen, scrolling to another page of reports and skimming through them. There wasn’t any actual damage yet, but things bent and creaked that were not designed to bend and creak. The coupling between the axis and the engineering module was weakened.

“The lurching means it’s working!”

“That wasn’t lurching; that was shearing. Metallic shearing is not the sound of success.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of sarcasm?”

“No, Solstice, I have never heard of sarcasm.” Lennox scanned over the status reports again, as if looking them over again might change what they said. “Diagnostic on the Alcubierre drive encountered an unexpected error.”

“Error with the diagnostic or with the drive?”

“Diagnostic.”

Solstice hummed. “Can you feel it?”

“What, the magnetic field?”

“I can’t. My sister’s the only unicorn in the family.” And the rest were all earth ponies, as Lennox had heard several times. Earth pony magic didn’t interact with EM fields directly. Only the unicorns and pegasi manipulated it. Griffons could only sense it.

The Alcubierre drive never truly shut off. When it wasn’t warping, it projected a subtle magnetosphere around the ship to mimic that of Equus. It allowed ponies to use their magic and prevented griffons from experiencing deep space disorientation.

Lennox could feel the magnetic field the way one might feel the temperature of the air. It was only noticeable when something was wrong.

“The passive field is there,” Lennox said. “It feels like it always has.”

Solstice shrugged. “Okay then. It’s working.”

“Griffon magnetoreception isn’t exactly on par with an EMF probe.” They would just have to hope for the best. Lennox glanced down the line of computer stations. His eyes caught SecCom, the security station.

A dozen screens scrolled through the endless eyes watching the ship. Nothing moved in the command module, but that would change soon enough. Hopefully they’d be done and gone by then. “We need to hurry,” he muttered. The motion of the ship would have alerted anyone on board… They’d have a dozen or so angry griffons on them in about fifteen minutes or so.

A short electronic ping echoed in the room.

“Thrusters again, hang on.” Solstice wrapped a front leg around the railing.

Lennox latched onto the railing as well, glancing back at NavCom to see a colorful diagram of the reaction control thrusters, the ones about to fire in bright green.

The groan of the ship’s structure was more of a screech this time as the thrusters fired and twisted the weakened metal. The rail shifted in his grasp, pushing against his inertia.

After a moment, the computer shut off the thrusters and sent out another audio notification, this one a chirrup at a different pitch.

Lennox glanced up. The stars above were still. He looked at NavCom’s reports. “NavCom says we’re lined up,” he said, skimming the data. Solstice gave no reply. “We can fire the main drives.”

“Lennox.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Something on the cameras.”

Lennox’s eyes darted to security. A kaleidoscope of changing video feeds showed a sequence of near-identical hallways interspersed with larger rooms. Two of the feeds flickered but showed no movement. “I don’t see it.”

“I’ll check.” Solstice went over to SecCom and began scrolling through the feeds, looking more closely.

“Diarchs,” Solstice said, not more than a few moments later. “He was following.”

Lennox glanced over the stallion’s shoulder and saw.

Kelantos wasn’t a particularly large griffon, and his feathers were an unremarkable pattern of different shades of brown. The spear he carried had a much more imposing presence. It was his hunting spear, an ornately designed weapon of wood, a rare material on the Song. The tip was as much a small sword as it was a spear head.

He glided through the halls almost aimlessly. He didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular.

“The doors are locked,” Lennox said. Solstice already knew, but it felt comforting to say the words.

“For how long?”

“Until we open them. The bridge doors are a solid thirty centimeters of lunar basalt, same as the hull.”

Had the hull not suffered numerous breaches, that might have been comforting.

Solstice shook his head. “I’m not worried about him getting in.”

Lennox gave a small growl as he realized what the stallion meant.

Their escape route was cut off. The windows sealed, impossible to open or break. They’d have to go back through the command module, somehow slip past the griffons. The terrible thing about a spacecraft was that no matter where you went, you were cornered.

There were no supplies on the bridge. It was just this one room: the first floor and an upper ring. Only computers and seating, plus a few desks retracted into the walls and floor. They might find some little gadgets stuffed into desk drawers, some calculators and communicators, the oxygen masks that were at every workstation in case of atmospheric issues, but nothing substantial. The command module’s hydroponics bay was decks below.

If the griffons got there before they could leave… A handful just had to keep watch outside the bridge; Lennox and Solstice would die of dehydration before the Song was halfway home.

“See how close the other griffons are,” Lennox said. They would have been alerted to the ship’s motion already, when it rotated to face the intended direction.

Solstice switched to the cameras in the engineering module, searching for the hunting party.

Engineering was dark, but the cameras could compensate, giving a slightly blurred black and white image. One feed clearly showed a mare running through the halls, their victim for this hunt.

Lennox saw the stallion’s eyes go wide. He saw the stallion’s abrupt gasp, and the sudden arrest of all conscious motion. Solstice froze in place, staring at the screen. He had found his sister.

“The drives,” Lennox said. “Now.” The sooner they finished on the bridge, the sooner they could try to help Holly. We’ve never stopped a hunt, he remembered, and he knew Solstice was thinking the same thing. “We’ve never piloted a three hundred thousand tonne spacecraft before, either,” he mumbled.

Solstice produced a chip from a pocket on his suit, pushing it toward Lennox. “Listen, I—” He seemed to change his mind mid-sentence, as Lennox caught the security chip.

Solstice unsealed the front of his suit and pulled his foreleg out, his snow-white coat almost the same color as the suit. He wore an old analog wristwatch — or at least, what races with wrists would call a wristwatch.

Lennox scowled. “What are you doing?”

Solstice slipped the watch off and nudged it. It touched Lennox’s chest and lost most of its momentum, hovering in the air just in front of him.

“I’m giving it to you for safekeeping,” Solstice said. “I’m about to do something stupid and I don’t want it broken.”

“If it’s so valuable, how about you keep it, so you have good reason not to do anything stupid?”

Solstice shook his head. “If we both stay here, we’ll be able to finish the maneuver but end up trapped on the bridge. If I go and you stay, I can engage Kelantos. You’ll still be able to finish on the bridge just as well by yourself. If I can take him out, we’ll have a better chance of escape. If I fail… you’ll be trapped on the bridge just like option one.” He put his forelegs back in the suit as he was talking.

Lennox glanced up at the ceiling, making one last futile effort to see some kind of weakness. They couldn’t break the sapphire panes. Not unless someone on the bridge had hidden an impact rifle under their seat cushion.

He growled a concession. There was no other good option. Solstice would go. Even if there was a better option, Lennox probably couldn’t have talked him out of it, anyway.

“So, now that you know what I’m doing, please take care of my watch,” Solstice said, taking the pistol from his belt and securing the band around his fetlock. He adjusted it so his hoof rested comfortably above the button trigger. “Consider it a gift. You might need it.”

A gift. The significance of the word struck him. He would have explained griffon gift giving customs if they had the time. Gifts were expected to be useful. Gifts could never be denied. Something useless was a burden and an insult. Griffons took things too seriously and there wasn’t time for that at the moment.

Solstice turned just slightly, glancing at Lennox. “Promise me that you’ll look for Holly.”

Lennox opened his beak to respond, but it seemed to catch in his throat. A thought arose, an urge to just say yes, just do whatever could help. It was hasty and impulsive. A second thought, like a warning scrawled in blood, reminded Lennox that it was only a feeling, only a sensation, that going out of his way for one individual might endanger the rest.

But he had listened to a great many stories about Holly, and somehow, that made it different. Kin selection, he told himself. A psychological drive to protect those who are familiar. He wanted to explain it away as some known phenomenon… But that wasn’t a good explanation at all. Kin selection applied to relatives, not interracial acquaintances.

He couldn’t explain the logic behind the urge to help, he could only describe the experience.

A tingle in the abdomen, a lightness like flying. The dragons used to call it einfühlung; the griffons used to call it empatheia. It was just a hormonal cocktail of cortisol, oxytocin, and others. It was only a chemical reaction, and it shouldn’t have mattered.

Lennox reached out a hand and took the watch. “I promise you, Winter Solstice, by—”

“Don’t call me Winter,” Solstice said, forcing a smirk. His request had been answered, he didn’t need to hear the rest. He grabbed the railing and flung himself to the lower level.

Lennox started again, speaking softly into the comm, “I promise you, Solstice, by Gryphus and the Ascended, I will find Holly and ensure her safety or knowledge of her fate.” He stuffed the watch into a pocket and turned back to NavCom.

“The ship takes priority over individuals,” Solstice said as he left the bridge, “And if it comes down to it, Holly over me.”

Lennox jammed the security chip into its port at the navigational station. It was essentially a one-time use captain’s authorization. The virtual clearances were processed and recognized. The main drive controls were unlocked and ready to receive input. He typed in a command and let NavCom run its calculations.

NavCom chirped, presenting the results of its math. Lennox flexed his hands, trying to release the tension. Tension impaired efficiency.

— — —

It was all vaguely familiar, like waking from a vivid dream, needing a moment to recognize the surroundings and remember where one had been sleeping. Holly passed through the ship, not entirely sure if it was dream or reality. Rooms, doorways, hallways, lights and noises, the forces of push and pull. Voices spoke around her, voices spoke within her, the dreams and reality blending together into a hallucination of half-truths.

She remembered the stallion, one of the other hostages. At some point, he had told her something very important. Either when they were first captured, or in the brief moments of consciousness where they were allowed to eat… The coma, she remembered. The griffons used the fabricators in Chemlab to produce some kind of tranquilizer or anesthetic or something. She’d been asleep for a long time.

She couldn't remember when or where she had talked to the stallion, but she remembered what he said. She needed to remember. The griffons didn't know. They hadn't heard. They couldn't be allowed to know. She had to tell somepony who could help, somepony who could stop the griffons and save the ship. The stallion had not had time to give her any specifics… she wasn't even sure there was anypony out there left alive. She'd been asleep for so long, unaware…

Thoughts and memories bubbled up from her unconscious mind, replaying the ship's fate in reverse. She remembered the mutiny and the fighting and being captured. Before that, the arguments and the accident that couldn't have been an accident. Sabotage. There was— No. She needed to focus.

That stallion gave her the captain's authorization code. No explanation of how he knew, but he did. Somepony must have told him; it was impossible to figure out. It wasn't a password, it was an algorithm, a simple linear function based on time, so the valid password changed by the minute. Three digits of Shor's constant times the minutes in the MET, plus a constant, a large integer. The integer was probably random, but Holly tried to pretend it was somepony’s birthday. That made it easier to remember.

She had to find somepony who could help. She had to wake up and fight through this blur.

Through blurry vision, she caught sight of orange marks on the wall. Engineering module. The walls moved past her. She was peripherally aware of forces acting to move her.

Griffons, she realized, as a stray claw scratched her skin. She tried to run. She struggled as hard as she could, forcing muscles to contract and expand with all of the willpower she could muster, but the only results were small twitches.

Sleep paralysis, she thought. That was a small comfort — it wasn't uncommon to hallucinate strange images and sensations. It wasn’t uncommon to struggle to distinguish dreams from reality during an episode of sleep paralysis. The scratch, the ship… they could be explained as hallucinations. The alternative was too terrifying.

But usually, in her experience, sleep paralysis rarely lasted more than a minute or so. And yet, this continued for a time that felt like ten or fifteen. She perceived hall after hall passing by. The universe was a dull blur, from beginning to end.

She felt a pinprick, not a claw but more like a needle. Something that poked deep, then withdrew.

Over the next minute, the haze lifted. The thudding pulse in her skull was like a metronome beating out a reference point to which all things could be compared.

Engineering. Griffons. Stimulant. This was a hunt.

The griffons faded away, disappeared. The halls became dark. But not a blurry dark… a precise dark, defined by clear angles in the orange glow of emergency lights too dim to illuminate the room, only bright enough to give you a reference to orient yourself and avoid running into the walls. Her vision was coming back, but it was too dark to be of use.

Holly tried to run, but there was no force to hold her hooves to the floor. She floated just close enough to touch a wall, and pushed off of it, coasting down the hall. If not for her frantic breathing, she would have been silent.

The griffons were gone, waiting, not far. The words came to her… “You have fifteen minutes before we start,” she remembered a griffon saying. A large one, with huge gray wings. “If you avoid us for twenty-four hours, we will call off the hunt.”

How much time had she lost in the time it took her to actually become alert?

“No,” she mouthed to herself, throat too dry to make a sound. The word kept repeating in her mind. No, no. This couldn't be happening.

But here she was, alone in this dark maze, the crew quarters for the engineers, a few decks above the reactor. It was abandoned. The other hostage ponies had explained the state of things. The moments of consciousness between episodes of drug induced catatonic sleep were brief, but they were enough to give feverish glimpses of reality.

She was in the hunting grounds. This is a hunt. This can't be happening. It repeated, as if part of her mind was trying to figure out a solution while the rest struggled just to accept the reality of her situation. You are being hunted. This has to be a nightmare.

They had given her a knife. She tasted blood from where that gray griffon had shoved the handle into her mouth. He could have slit her throat with it, but instead, he gave it to her to make things interesting, to make a game of it.

But the knife was gone. She must have dropped it in her panic at some point.

She needed to hide. The ones who hide survive the longest. Twenty-four hours. She had to survive for twenty-four hours. That wasn't forever. It could be done. But no pony had ever done it.

She looked around, fighting hard to not hyperventilate. Her eyes strained in the dark. She tried a small light spell, the only thing she really had the concentration for, but it brought only a few useless sparks from her horn and a strange numbness.

The magnetic field was there, though. She could feel it. The Alcubierre drive's passive mode projected a miniature version of a planetary magnetosphere. It was right there, and she could feel it, but couldn’t seem to reach out and touch it.

The griffons weren't stupid and they had access to at least five or six medlabs full of pharmaceuticals, plus the chemlabs. She must have been given some kind of magic inhibitors.

Only a few emergency lights were working, mostly just lighting the corners where hallways intersected. Holes were torn in the walls in places, carved out by the chunks of debris that had plunged through the hull. The outermost portions of the hull had been patched up, sealing in the atmosphere and blocking the stars, but the internal damage remained.

Engineering took the most damage from the impact, but almost everyone had been evacuated… Solstice worked in engineering. She could try to find him. He'd help. He'd know what to do, if he was still here. She had lost track of him for a while before being captured, and hadn't heard anything from anypony since then. Of the hostages that knew him, none could say what had happened to him.

She came to another wall, frantically scraped her hooves against it, thrust off in a new direction.

Was there any way to survive? The griffons could be anywhere. A spear could materialize out of nothingness, impale her on the spot. She looked around, trying to be observant, trying to be cautious and aware, but every corner looked like an ambush and she couldn't know for sure until she was only meters away.

It was easy to restrain from screaming. With her throat so dry; her vocal cords probably couldn't produce anything more than a rasp. Her throat was so tightly constricted with tension and fear, she probably couldn’t have choked out any noise at all.

Shor’s constant. The mission time. Somepony needed to know. Somepony had to help. She couldn't be alone.

There were thumps and rumbles behind her. She turned; the hallway was empty. If there was anything in her stomach, she would have vomited from the terror.

Then she felt a jolt of vertigo. Her mind playing tricks? She grabbed one of the railings and felt its tug.

The ship was moving.

Were the griffons taking the ship somewhere? Or had some ponies fixed it?

There were thumps and rumbles in the other direction that froze her in place. She heard a voice in the distance, but couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined. But if it was real, they weren’t far off, and she had been heading towards them.

She flailed her hooves without thinking. Her hoof on the railing propelled her back the way she'd come.

More thumps, more rumbling, but this time it was different… omnipresent. The whole ship rumbled.

Then the floor started moving upwards.

A dream. It had to be a dream. She almost sighed. It was just a nightmare. One that would end and be over. She'd wake up and the hunt would never have been anything more than a night terror. The ship couldn't be moving, not at this point. The engineering module was ruined. The engines couldn't propel it. They were still stuck on the edge of the Verdence system, trying to figure out what to do.

But the floor continued, unhindered by her logic. It suddenly gained speed and slammed into her hooves, knocking her off balance.

The distinctive clack of hoof on metal was loud enough to be heard over the rumbling all around. She heard curses in the distance… griffon voices. For sure, this time, not just her imagination.

She froze, lying on the floor. Maybe they wouldn't see her in the dark… no, they were griffons, their vision was enough. She was the one who couldn't see.

That was it. She'd made a noise, loud enough for them to hear, much louder than the rumbling all around. They'd be on her in moments with spears and talons.

It was dark and she couldn't see where to go. Everything looked the same, and there was probably a griffon in every direction.

She laid on the floor, tucking in her limbs into a feeble curl, and waited.

Just as she was reconsidering her plan to give up, she heard the click of claws on metal. This can't be happening, this has to be a nightmare, please let this be a nightmare. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, turning her reeling thoughts into a prayer, an incantation to ward off the evil spirits bearing down on her. If she was quiet, he might not notice…

Her mind raced with all the possible ways she might die in the next few moments. Her suicidal heart thumped so loudly she could hear it. The universe was fear.

— — —

“Seal the bridge,” Solstice whispered as soon as he was in the hall. Lennox did so without a word. The doors sealed shut behind Solstice, locking him and his prey out of the bridge.

Kelantos may have been the leader of the mutiny, may have been an intellectual force that could rival the greatest chess masters, but he was alone at the moment. He was vulnerable.

At one time, that might have bothered Solstice. Days ago, weeks ago… he would have been too suspicious to do anything. He and Lennox would have talked about it and speculated. Lennox would have been too wrapped up in recursive consideration of plots within plots to actually act, for fear of doing something imperfect, for fear of the slightest mistake, as if anything less than perfection would be a gap in the armor wide enough to ensure their defeat.

Maybe there were other griffons, hiding. Maybe Kelantos had some kind of trap set, or a new weapon or something.

At one time, Solstice might have wondered about that before acting, found a satisfactory answer before making a move to counter it. He might have thought to lay low and wait, to plan an ambush or just wait to see what Kelantos would do. Solstice would have scanned the chess board, not making a move until he saw every possible plan his opponent could have.

But this was an opportunity for an early checkmate. The risk was worth it.

Solstice grit his teeth and pulled himself down the hallway, pistol strapped around his fetlock, hoof poised over the trigger. The griffon responsible for the mutiny was right around the corner. The griffon who murdered the captain and the command staff, the griffon who started the hunts which even now threatened Holly… That sociopath was right there within Solstice’s reach. It would be just the two of them. No untouchable hunting party, no security systems, no traps… just Solstice and Kelantos, alone.

Given that opportunity, how could he not take it?

His heart beat faster in anticipation. He had been emotionally ready to do this for six months. Now he had the chance. Maybe Kelantos was plotting something, creating some kind of trap, but it didn’t even matter. If that was the case, Solstice would fight his way through it. No more waiting. No more watching ponies die.

A meter back from a sharp turn in the hallway, he grabbed a railing and stopped himself. He peeked around, carefully.

Kelantos had his back turned. Quiet wingbeats propelled the griffon away from Solstice, to the other end of the hall. His feathers fluttered like pale brown leaves, obvious against the ship’s sterile white. The blade of his spear glinted.

Why carry a hunting spear and not some more effective weapon? The question popped up in Solstice’s mind, unbidden. It was a habit to question everything Kelantos did.

Solstice reached his gun forward, but stopped himself and pulled back. It was a clear shot, but too far away. He only had a hoof-ful of rounds to use. He couldn’t afford to waste any on shots that were likely to miss.

Kelantos reached the end of the hall and turned a corner. Solstice followed.

There wasn’t much cover in the halls. Solstice felt exposed, gliding in a straight line in the open air. The only things to duck behind were the corners where other halls intersected. In a firefight, almost the whole deck would be a no-pony’s land where there was nothing to hide behind.

He would just have to use that to his advantage.

If Kelantos had a spear, Kelantos had either a melee weapon or a one-shot ranged weapon with a very obvious motion preceding its launch. If Kelantos kept it close for melee, Solstice just had to stay back. If Kelantos threw it, all Solstice had to do was watch for and avoid that one strike.

It would feel like a hunt, but with Kelantos as the prey. Like the end of a hunt, when the prey looks upon the predator and realizes there isn’t anywhere to run, that instant where the prey knows that they are going to die and only a divine miracle could save them. He wanted Kelantos to feel fear.

Solstice grabbed a railing to stop himself at the next corner. Even through the padded suit, his hoof clinked against the metal. His other hoof held his gun at the ready, the band around his fetlock bracing it while the tip of his hoof hovered over a button trigger. He almost hoped that Kelantos had heard him, almost hoped that the griffon would come around the corner so Solstice would have a clear point-blank shot at him.

He counted to ten, waiting and listening. There was a faint bump farther down the hall. Kelantos might have turned down another hallway. Solstice leaned his head around the corner.

There was a thud, an impact, one felt as much as it was heard. Kaleidoscopic patterns of random colors ebbed and flowed around his vision. For a moment, he was blind and deaf except for hallucinated colors and the ringing in his ears, and he was numb except for the pressure in his skull.

He felt distantly aware, as if watching his body take action without him. Shock, he thought, hoping that recognizing it would make it easier to handle. Adrenaline.

Kelantos appeared like the avatar of a deity manifesting suddenly. Solstice fired.

The recoil left a numbness in his foreleg and pushed him back a few centimeters. His vision was blurry. An eye stung… he reflexively reached up a hoof, but it met the helmet… and the edge of a gaping hole in the helmet.

Kelantos batted his other hoof, using some blunt object to knock the pistol off and away from him. The blow cracked against his foreleg and spun Solstice around.

Solstice reached out and grabbed for one of the railings, wrapping his foreleg around it and stopping his spin, but sending a jolt of pain up his leg with every movement. A bone must have broken. He sucked in a breath, grinding his teeth.

Blood collected over his left eye, the surface tension forming a tumorous globule in zero-g. It lost a few drops every time he moved. He squeezed that eye shut and squinted through the other.

Kelantos hovered in front of him, apparently uninjured. The gunshot had missed, and Solstice couldn’t see his gun anywhere in his peripheral vision. He couldn’t see anything well enough. He swung his good hoof, not reaching far enough for the blow to connect.

The momentum of his swing carried the rest of his body, shifting his broken leg. He winced in pain, grunting curses, glancing at Kelantos so he could anticipate and brace for the impending blow.

Kelantos released one of his weapons, a solid metal maintenance wrench. It tumbled away. He brought the other weapon, his hunting spear, closer.

He must’ve picked up that wrench just for the initial blow… Because stabbing wouldn’t cause that kind of disorientation, because Solstice could have gotten off a shot. Stabbing wouldn’t have broken the helmet…

Solstice glanced upwards. His helmet gaped where the wrench had come through, and cracks stretched away from the hole like threads of lightning.

That’s why he broke the helmet. Kelantos didn’t have a suit. Lennox or Solstice could have gone to an airlock, evacuated the atmosphere, and… Diarchs damn it all. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. He had been so angry, he had just wanted a fight… Well, here was his fight.

The ship rumbled around them. It had been rumbling, Solstice realized. On a low throttle, almost unnoticeable. Lennox testing things.

The rumbling intensified. The floor shot upwards, as if gravity had been flicked on with a switch. Solstice cried out as his injured foreleg caught on the railing. He crumpled to the floor, the injured leg splaying out to his side at an unnatural angle.

Kelantos stumbled, flapping his wings. He landed upright, standing bipedal, trying to use his wings and spear to keep balance.

Solstice glanced down at the communicator in his helmet. “Lennox,” he said, not even sure what to ask for, just hoping that Lennox would find something. Lennox always found something, some clever software exploit or a secret in the ship’s design, a distraction, a maintenance robot…. There had to be something nearby.

Lennox must have heard. The communicator was still on. There was background noise from the other end. Solstice was about to say something else when Lennox responded. “I see,” he said. A simple declarative statement.

Solstice squeezed his eyes shut. If he thought he had the time, he might have apologized to Lennox for anything he might’ve done to offend the griffon… He might have taken some time to say how much he appreciated Lennox’s help. Something, anything, just to get some kind of reaction so he wouldn’t be alone. Some part of Lennox enjoyed Solstice’s company; Lennox couldn’t have gone through all this struggle just because it was mathematically a good decision.

If he had the energy to speak, Solstice would have said that it was okay, that he wasn’t angry, that he didn’t feel betrayed or abandoned. But it was too late for that.

Comments

[Axan Zenith]

Uh. Are the paragraphs supposed to be formatted like that?

[Walabio]

6037942

This is how one should format paragraphs.

[Walabio]

¡Kelantos and his band of scum need to die a slow painful death!

[TheGrandNil]

I wish there were a griffin working with the "good guys"

Right now it feels like a "all griffins are evil and they have no free will" type vibe :(