To Ashes [GUIDE]

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He felt the heat rise to the tips of his ears and cheeks at her last statement.

"Uh...huh..." he said, slightly at a loss for words as they climbed the ladder. It was a long way up and following her up after that short conversation left him staring straight ahead as he climbed, out onto the surface of the planet. "You're sure you can get this thing working before nightfall? I don't want to leave Mags and the others alone to fight those things."

The wind picked up slightly, probably a leftover from the storm. Either way it nearly blew the daydreaming explorer from the ladder. His throat jumped into his throat but he managed to regain his composure and balance and followed Atheema up to the top.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"I have great confidence in my knowledge and abilities, Pathfinder Dashiell," the Liran replied, not stopping as the man's attention and footing strayed, she reached the first platform and carefully pulled herself up onto it, "but nothing in asured, especially not here. I will endeavor to work as efficiently as possible."

~~~~

The room buzzed with the sound of labored breathing and the hum of the orange lamps. Absent the luxury of a pillow, Magda slept with her face pressed into the arm bent beneath it. This time no strange dream plagued her mind's eye - she did not dream at all, but her subconscious could not shake the feeling that she was being watched.

Very, very closely.

So much so that the sensation woke her up.

Blue eyes slowly focused on a shadow slithering across the floor towards her cot, Magda lifted her head to sit up for a better view. The shadow paused some distance off, wary, and then suddenly made a dash at her. Startled and quickly pushing herself up, she looked around the floor surrounding her cot for any sign of the thing. A glance to her left revealed nothing, to her right a short glimpse of a dark wisp. When her gaze panned to her feet at the end of the cot she found the strangest looking creature sitting on the toe of her left boot.

Magda froze and stared.

Its long body coiled like a serpent but strange leaf-like appendages sprouted along its length as it if were a living vine. A small head, more reminiscent of a lizard, gaped back at her curiously. Two beady red eyes blinked.

"What are you..." she found her curiosity overcoming her fright and slowly leaned forward to get a better look.

~~~~

"So what of this brother of yours," Atheema asked gently as she set to work on the control panel wiring, "the one whose footsteps you did not follow in. Tell me about him."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

"My brother..." He trailed off.

His brother was a lot of things. His mentor, his teacher, his partner in crime...Literally. But despite all of these things, it was difficult to talk about him. When he had needed him most he had vanished and Juddy had bailed him out of prison, given him a place to stay, even gave him an education that he squandered and threw away.

"His name is Zeke, and he's...out there somewhere. Probably conning a Neimodian out of his fancy new speeder or something." He chuckled. The world might have been trying to kill them since they arrived, but as the sun began to set he couldn't help but stare into its overwhelming beauty. How romantic. Stranded on a desolate world, watching the sunset from atop a tower with a beautiful blue woman. He had a few ideas of where this would have gone if he was watching a spy holovid, but this was real life and well, to be honest her whole vibe rubbed him the wrong way.

"What about you? Any siblings?"

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Atheema quietly smiled to herself at his answer. Not very direct, this one. She set to work on the console, calmly but quickly assessing the damage from what appeared to be a direct ion bolt strike.

"Not as such," she replied, "not for many lifetimes. My people do not ... reproduce. We do not create new Lirans because we cannot. We are all clones of our original selves from thousands of years ago. We have the technological capability of transmitting our minds from one clone body to the next, essentially living forever. Or for as long as we choose or are able to continue the process."

"I had a sister very long ago. I lost her to what we call The Madness. It is a condition of the mind that degrades to the point of insanity through the transfers. Some of use are more susceptible to it than others."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

That was a surprise.

"You don't...Breed?" He didn't know there was a species out there that had just clones of themselves. "Doesn't that mean you will all die out eventually? From the madness?" He cursed under his breath. "I didn't mean-I'm sorry about your sister." It was just so strange, how did one go on without that primal drive. After several life times didn't they get bored of living? He would hate to die after becoming bored with life. Maybe that was the curse of short lived species, but then again, he wasn't going to be such a short lived species either. Gurlanin lived for hundreds of years.

His thoughts drifted to Magdalena for a moment.

He'd watch her grow old and die before he was even considered a young adult. Why was that what came into his mind just now?

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

She paused for just a moment, taking the time to look at him, blue gaze appreciative.

"Yes, that is what it means. One day all Lirans will be gone, the Madness will claim us all as it did my sister and many others before her. Do not apologize, I have had many lifetimes to contemplate this fate and what it means. It is part of the reason why I became a Companion."

"My people did not want for love or lust even when we could reproduce. Ours is a mentality of selfish pursuit of the mind - we did not place value in things like love, lust, or the carnal desires of the flesh. Many of us looked down on it as savage and unecessary. Our evolution into the process of mind transfer into clone bodies set us on this path of self-destruction. I think about this and I wonder ... what was so bad about those savage things that we brought ourselves to this end? I found them to be quite beautiful, given the chance to explore them in this lifetime."


~~~

"You're...different from the other creatures, aren't you?"

This creature seemed to understand her, or at least it portrayed itself as such. As she spoke it curled and coiled, head tilting one way and the other. It reminded her of the way pets listen to their owners, how they respond. This wasn't her pet, but it seemed as curious about her as she was about it.

"Your friends have caused us a lot of trouble. They've hurt us. We didn't come here to threaten you, we came here to learn about you."

Faint, lopsided frown forming on her face, Magda slowly lifted her hand and offered it to the creature, palm up.

"Was that you in my dream? Telling me to speak? Do you understand me?"

The creature furled at her hand, raising its head to watch her carefully, emitting a soft hiss.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I swear it. If you help us I promise we'll leave as soon as we are able."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He didn't know quite what to say. Their existence was so sad. Would anyone ever find Atheema to reupload her if things went south here? Would she be forever forced to live in a data chit alone? Was she going to be without love for eternity? These things ran through his head as ulterior motives popped in and out of his thoughts.

"How is the transmitter?" Was all he could think of to say in response though. Again he reminded himself that outside in this place with less than an hour until darkness was probably the worst time to initiate any sort of romantic anything.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"It will be properly operational shortly once I have it rewired. However I will need to make adjustments to the power grid to boost the signal. That will take some time."

~~~~

Magda continued to offer her hand for the creature, waiting with patience for it to consider. It had stopped hissing and was now, so far as she could tell, scenting the air with two feather-like leaf antenae on its head.

"Your kind are intelligent and resourceful. The bigger ones hang back while the smaller ones find routes inside the complex. I've seen you communicate with one another, like a pack. Even between different kinds. You're like... insects, sort of. But in plant form? There you go-"

It coiled forward to test her hand with its feelers, sniffing about curiously.

"I don't know how you survive on this planet. That radiation outside is deadly, it's no wonder you don't come out until night. You must live below ground, in tunnels deep below the surface to avoid the poison. What do you subsist on, I wonder..."

~~~

"What of your kind, Pathfinder?" Atheema asked while soddering stripped wires to a circuit board with a handheld tool, "The Gurlanin. You are long-lived as well are you not?"

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He nodded.

"So I've been told. I wasn't raised by Gurlanin though. I was raised as a human. I didn't find out I wasn't human until..." He trailed off, a long forgotten memory rushing to greet him. He shivered at the thought and the hair rose on the back of his neck.

"I don't even known my birth parents and I've never met any other Gurlanin. I heard they're pretty rare off of their homeoworld. At least that's what I've read from the GUIDE archives." She was asking a lot of questions, more than he expected of her. He didn't know if that made him feel better or if he would have preferred a silent trip. Despite the relatively safe trip they had made he couldn't help feeling something was wrong. Maybe because this whole situation was wrong.

"I've taken a lot of forms, I think my growth was me subconciously using my abilities. I was a wolf in sheep's clothing you could say."

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"I find changelings to be fascinating," she offered after a moment's pause when he fell silent, "but I know very little of your kind in particular. There is not a great deal of information available on them. I think you are right," she glanced up, a pensive look on her face, "you are quite rare."

She stood from the control panel, snapping the exterior plates back into place and taking a step back to peer upwards along the tower. There was another access ladder that lead up to the base of the dish and that was where she would find the secondary power grid.

"Two people will make this job faster. The primary grid panel is at the base of the tower, the secondary is up there. I can walk you through the procedure."


~~~

"If you're a plant, shouldn't you seek out the sunlight?"

Magda watched with quiet interest as the creature slowly slid onto the palm of her hand. It was heavier than she expected, like the weight of a large snake. Its skin was rough and covered in microscopic fibers like the stalk of a plant. Curiously enough it wasn't cold to the touch like she was expecting, but slightly warmer than the air around it.

"I wish you could tell me all your secrets, little guy," she sighed and propped her chin in the palm of her other hand, elbow now resting on her knee.

"Don't move Miss Lethe-" a voice from behind her.

"Hm?" she perked, suddenly aware that someone else was awake in the room.

"I can-" the man wheezed, "I can shoot it right there, just hold still."

"Wait-" eyes buldging, Magda froze in place, watching as the creature snapped two red eyes upon the man, "wait, don't, it's ok, it's not a threat it just-"

"No one else is getting hurt by these damn things-" she heard the whine of his blaster charging up.

"Wait, no! OWCH!"

PEW!

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

she glanced up, a pensive look on her face, "you are quite rare."

He felt the heat rise back up to his ears. The way she said that was somewhat flattering, but he couldn't tell if she was over analyzing him or if he was over analyzing their conversation. He had heard Gurlanin puberty was later than humans'. He hoped this wasn't that. Would be the worst time for that.

"No problem. I'll just jet up there then." He stepped up to the ladder, but instead of climbing the ladder he powered up his jets, the small jets situated along his back flared to life sending him on his way up. He landed softly at the platform and pried open the panel with a knife.

"Alright Atheema, I'm-" Something in the Force gripped his heart. His left arm went numb, the kind of numb when you realize something terrible was happening somewhere.

"Mags." He slipped his knife back into its place and looked down the access ladder. "Mags is in trouble," he shouted down to Atheema.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"You shot it!" Mags exclaimed, aghast as she quickly began looking around for the creature, certain she'd find bits of it here and there.

"Did I hit it? I don't see it," the man stepped forward, blaster still hot in his hand, he shoved aside the empty cot next to her and stooped to look around. Others in the room that were still coherent enough to see what was going on were waking up, looking around curious and concerned.

"What's happened?" a woman uttered from the corner.

"One of those things was going after Miss Lethe," said the man.

"They're in here?!"

"It wasn't attacking me-" Magda insisted, moving to stand from her cot and instead rather suddenly crumpling to the ground in a heap.

"Miss Lethe?"

"Founder!"

"You shot it-" Magda cringed, pulling her hand out from beneath her on the floor, "you shot it and it was just sitting there, it was listening, it was-"

The man pointed at her, "Your hand, it bit you. You're bleeding."

"Well you scared it, can you really blame it for that?" Magda gestured to him with her hand and found an excessive amount of blood dripping from the side. She realized, quite suddenly, that her hand wasn't hurting from landing on it, it was hurting from the bite and it was hurting a lot, "I think I need a bandage."

~~~

Atheema was nearly a quarter of the way down the main tower maintenance laddr when Izzy's voice chimed in over the comm. She paused where she stood, several hundred feet up from the ground. Fear of heights wasn't the issue here, no, the issue was time.

Looking to the ground hatch all those dozens of yards away, the Liran could only wonder what had alerted the man to this sudden notion that Magda was in trouble. But, as she had confessed before, she didn't know a lot about his kind and far be it from she to overlook an innate ability inherent to his blood.

"Go," she said after a moment and began to ascend the ladder again, "I'll take care of this. Go help Miss Lethe."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He nodded and jumped from the tower, his jump jets exploding to life. On full blast it could sustain flight for several minutes. He only hoped he would get back to the base in time. The wind and scenery rushed passed him in a blur of reds and yellows. Darkness was just on the horizon as night slowly inched its way across the planet. He cursed under his breath. Should he have left Atheema by herself? He regreted his decision, but he was here now. He tucked into a ball and rolled across the dusty surface, skidding to a stop above the access tunnel they'd used to get onto the surface.

He took a deep breath and opened the hatch.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"Ahh-" her hand didn't just hurt now, it felt like it was on fire. Magda blinked hard several times at the suddenness that the pain came on and tried to flex her hand but couldn't, "I can't....move my fingers..."

"Wake Diedrik up, Marsella," the man from before moved to stoop next to her with a MediKit, pulling one of the orange lamps down with him to get a better look, "it's swelling. Whatever bit you was venomous."

"Haaaaa-" the pain was beginning to travel to her wrist and up her arm, "it's spreading."

Diedrik, one of the team suffering from radiation poisoning, slowly made his way over with the help of Marsella. He took one look at her arm, noting the darkening of the veins, before shaking his head, "tourniquet her arm above the elbow, stop the blood flow. We don't know what kind of creature this is or how deadly the venom is. See what kind of anti-venoms we have in stock ... we must try something or she'll have to lose the arm."

"What? What?!" now she was really sweating, "There's got to be something we can do-" but she couldn't finish her sentence for the painful yell that overwhelmed her words as they moved to prop her back against the cot and pulled her jacket off. Benson, the first man, braced her arm while Marsella quickly wrapped a length of latex tape tightly around the limb just above the elbow joint. The more the pressure built up in her lower arm, the louder Magda began to yell.

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

A commotion was coming from the cots. Whatever had tipped him off, it seemed he was at least part right. Izzy entered the room and removed his helmet and slapped his damp hair back with a gloved hand. He was sweating, partly from the stress, partly from trying to keep a straight path on his flight back. He grabbed someone as they passed by.

"Where's Mags?"

"Something bit her, she's over there!" They pointed to a slight too large gathering of people. His heart jumped into his throat and he took determined steps towards the small crowd.

"Mags!" He pushed and pulled through people before she came into view, propped up on the cot, dark veins slithering up her arm. He grated his teeth, biting back anger, but it was apparent in his voice. "What. Happened." It was less a question and more a threat. He had a feeling whatever was said he wasn't going to like.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"One of those creatures," Benson said over the struggle to hold Magda's arm still, he had to yell over her agonized noises, "got in here while everyone was asleep. It was sitting on her when she woke up, I had a clear shot at it and I missed. It was too damn fast and it bit her."

"Here, here!" Marsella passed over a stim gun with a liquid blue vial in it, "Try this, it's a general anti-venom."

"May stop it, may slow it down some," Diedrik said while slowly going through the MediKit, "might do nothing, we don't know anything about these creatures, we have to be prepared to amputate her arm if it keeps spreading."

"We're not equipped for that here!" Marsella hissed at him, "Maybe if the ship were operable, but not here! She could bleed out and die."

"Or she could also die from the venom, do you want to take that chance?" Diedrik snapped back.

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

A bestial growl slipped from Izzy's lips. He was on Diedrik in a flash, his usual gray-blue eyes slipping into their natural and unsettling orange. Teeth fell out of his mouth and to the floor as his natural teeth came in, his hair shifted and grew to about shoulder length. Strength unnatural for a man as lean as him took Diedrik by the fibers around his collar, lifted him up, and slammed him onto a neighboring cot.

"Fixsss her." Fix her without cutting off her arm he meant, but he was sure the message was clear. Her shouts and cries in pain filled his ears. A few larger GUIDE members attempted to pull the suddenly, slightly larger Dashiell off of the sick man. "Fix. Her," he barked. He had never attempted a partial shift, it always just...Happened. Usually under times of intense stress. Usually when he wasn't wearing armor. His nails pressed against his gloves, pushing awkward points out of his glove. Two sets of arms were attempting to grow, causing an increasingly unnerving writhing motion from his abdomen in his armor.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Diedrik was not a courageous man and it showed when Isaiah made his move. Eyes yellowed from radiation poisoning widened as the younger man grabbed him and tossed him like a spindly sack of potatos. The horrer written across his face was a shared expression by the others witnessing the partial transformation. No one knew what Izzy was, everyone just assumed he was a human. Magda had found it difficult to place people on teams with him when the word Gurlanin appeared in the reports, so she'd started leaving that detail out.

Near-human. That's what she put on the profile. Close enough?

"I'm trying!" Diedrik yelled back at him, voice cracking under physical stress, "I don't know how! We don't have a lot of options!"

"What do I do Diedrik?" Benson waved the stimgun with his free hand.

"In-inject the anti-venom directly into her arm, right into the vein," Diedrik choked out at Benson, "and the second into her neck, the double dose should help slow it down if it doesn't stop it completely."

"Magda, sweetie, you've got to try and stay still so we can help you," Marsella had another stimgun in her hand and was trying to get a clear injection to the vein on Magda's neck, but she was struggling too much, "HELP ME ISAIAH-" Marsella yelled at Izzy, "help me hold her still, I'm not strong enough!"

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

His eyes were focused on Diedrik's intently. Everyone was tired, everyone was frightened, and nobody here wanted anyone else to die. After he realized that and what he had done he took a deep breath in and visibly shrunk in size, closer to his original height. Maybe they were all so tired they would forget the terrifying sight that had been Izzy Dashiel just moments ago. He let go of the sick man and stepped away from the cot. His eyes shifted color back to the gray blue, and his features became more human again.

He exhaled.

"Right. Right." He turned around to face the group. He could see the fear on some of their faces, but he disregarded it and tried to hold down Magdelana, planting his hands on her arms and pressing her against the cot. "Someone grab her legs so she doesn't try to kick. He looked into Mags' pained face and frowned. "You're gonna be okay."

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Fire. Molten steel. Liquified radiation. Magda had no words for the pain saturating her right arm - a limb she was convinced she no longer had. It was just an attachment of agony. She didn't see Izzy for the grimace and the cries. Didn't even feel the injection at her neck and certainly not at her arm.

"It's not helping," Marsella yelled, cradling Mag's head in her arms to keep her from thrashing. Someone else had moved to her legs, holding her with an arm looped around her ankles.

"Anti-venom takes a few minutes, just give it time..." Diedrik replied, brow wrinkled with concern as he continued to dig throught he MediKit for something, anything else that might help. The only thing he could think of was a tranquelizer to slow the bloodflow.

Benson looked up from where he sat with her poisoned arm in his grasp, "It's starting to get past the turniquette, I can't make it any tighter."

"Her heart rate is going up."

"Diedrik what do we do?!"

"I don't know! ... I don't know. I-" Diedrik passed a hand over his head, looking lost and terrified, "where is Atheema? She might be able to help more."

And then as if on cue Atheema's voice chimed through Izzy's comm, "Pathfinder Dashiell, the tower is online and fully operational. What is the status inside the complex?"