FSE

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The bunker doors rumble open, their sound almost entirely lost against the howling from both the heavy wind and the skinless amalgamations clamoring around the hovercraft. They form piles of themselves, smaller individuals scaling the larger, and forming scaffolds of each other from arms outstretched towards the humming vehicle.

A cobra sits at the wheel, swaying it just out of reach as she concentrates deeply on finding an opening, the chaos of the rest of the crew little more than background noise. At least, until her small compatriot drops into view, hovering in front of her face and already wearing his full hazmat.

"We need to get in there before the Agony get curious, Melissa!" he exclaims, and is only seconds after ensnared by her grip, his flotation halo vibrating in protest.

"I'm working on it," the cobra assures, agitation clear in her tone. With a gentle flick of her wrist, she throws him aside, the halo auto-adjusting and helping him upright. "I think they're more interested in us than the bunker, don't you?"

"Yeah, but..." the floating Benthic stares out the nearby window as Melissa sways the hovercraft away again, the crimson swarm outside dangerously close.

A thump sounds out from the other side of the compartment, followed by scrambling claws; one of them took a leap and made it. Others quickly follow the example, most of them plummeting, but enough to be a cause for alarm add themselves to the noise. One peers in through the window, vascular tissue swollen where eyes had once been; this one had been turned recently. But it doesn't get to look for long, as all are repelled as the exterior of the ship rapidly heats itself, causing them to recoil instinctively and fall away, plummeting to the desert's surface.

"Viktor is almost ready to go!" a dark-haired seal calls from the back. As the Benthic takes his eyes off the window to look to the back, the rest of the crew is affixing an enormous helmet to a similarly enormous badger, who appears to be eager to spring into action.

"Worry not, Rada, I will break their numbers as I have always!" he assures the Benthic loudly, his voice heavy with an accent from the frigid islands of the far north of Yalashtei.

"Your confidence is a comfort," one of the jackals says. She has notes of a foreign accent as well, though her time in exile here on Kuyjir has allowed it to combine with one more common here. Her clean, symmetrical yellow and black fur pattern hints at artifice of some sort in its design. She herself was manufactured in a laboratory as one of many vessels, as was her counterpart. The original had long since been lost.

The other jackal, nearly identical in appearance but for his presented gender, speaks up to finish their collective thought. "I do hope you won't underestimate them." In tandem, their large, spiral-patterned tails swish placidly.

"What is there to underestimate, my small-but-numerous friend?" Viktor asks, addressing the two as one. "That lump of offal that once directed them has long been plucked from the sky by Soma herself!"

"We know that, we just don't want to see you getting hurt," the seal says, performing a final check. "Looks like you're all good." As she finishes checking him up, she dons a helmet of her own, her multitude of long curls still visible through the visor at the edges of her face.

"Excellent," the badger says through a hearty laugh, getting to his feet in a low slouch to accommodate for lack of clearance. "Sofia, Merion, I shall meet you inside."

He enters the airlock and is sealed in the lift beyond. To the sound of popping joints and quiet bossa nova, the platform takes him under the hovercraft, and he leaps without hesitation, pulling a lance from his back and readying the first strike. His ivory-white armor shimmers overwhelmingly in the light of a sun that nearly fills the sky; if only his foes had eyes to blind.

Even Melissa, under such pressure, cannot help but swear quietly as the climbing horde teetering beyond the windshield collapses like so many poorly-stacked cards at the merest introduction of a freight train. She takes her eyes off the scene for just a moment to look to Rada.

"Feeling more at ease yet?" she asks.

Rada responds with a quivering thumbs up, an expression of awe painted over his shark-like face, his four conical sensory bones drooping their sockets like folding ears. No matter how many times they did this, Viktor would always impress. Nobody knew where he developed such a knack for battle, but the administration didn't question it if it was used in their favor.

The badger twirls the lance in his hands as the Agony titan reels back, thrusting into the air to impale a smaller one in mid-fall, then turning about quickly and brandishing the weapon behind his head, and finally bringing it forward with a mighty swing to sling the still-flailing creature into the face of another large one. The tall creature's abnormally long, exposed spine bows in the wrong direction, and that lance parts the muscle below its ribcage with an adrenaline-propelled thrust. The pull of a trigger fills its chest cavity with gas and ignites, inflicting wounds that even its rapid regeneration will be unable to tend in time to save it. It drops to its knees, its smooth lapine face coming level with Viktor's own. Its finger-like teeth click and flex furiously, smaller bodies rain around them both; the experience is entirely unpleasant for all parties involved, and yet, even as the badger is pelted with juicy horrors intent on scraping through his armor, his resolve is unbreaking. His spear sticks in another large foe, followed by a twist and a brutal, wrenching motion.

Another tower of meat and pointy things collapses under the continued assault, giving Melissa the opportunity she needs to come down from maximum altitude, swooping into the hangar. As expected, some of the Agony follow, but Viktor breaks through the horde, his speed shedding them off one by one as he moves to catch up, harpooning those he overtakes from behind and flinging them off at those beyond his reach. Still yet to feel the effects of exhaustion in the least, he breaks through from behind the front line of the Agony. With a theatrical grunt, he leaps, placing his arms onto the ledge of the elevated entrance and hoisting himself up.

"Gonna need you to run that sequence again, Rada," Melissa instructs, before delegating to the other three, debatably two, busy peering outside. "Sofia, give us a once-over on the equipment, and Merion, I know breathing isn't a concern for you but at least put some protection on. How are those doses you prepared; not too strong this time?"

"Oh, there's a perfect amount of me in them as always," The jackals reply together with a salute, perhaps with some undertone of derision. They head into the back again, with Sofia close behind.

Rada mutters a passphrase, activating the pedestal behind the pilot's chair as he lands, sliding into the molded seat and running a slightly-altered program to seal the doors again. Viktor stands guard as they speed towards one another, his presence alone being more than enough to deter the smaller Agony, but one or two around his size prove themselves in need of a sucking chest wound or two. In little more than a minute, the bunker is sealed once more, and aside from the engines of the hovercraft powering down, not a sound is heard from within the dark interior.

Shortly after touching down, the rest of the crew disembarks, clad in sealed armor, save for the pair of Merions who have neglected the use of a helmet. Careless and prideful, at a glance, and while that assessment would not be inaccurate, there was always more to it than that, as would become apparent to anyone around them lacking immunization or respiratory equipment.

Despite that oversight, they are otherwise well-equipped, as are the others. Sofia looks out of place as she often does, high-end weapons clashing aesthetically with the assortment of charms and rune-inscribed scrolls bound to herself by straps and rope.

A few vehicles of various make and purpose rest in this hangar, untouched for some time, painting a picture of stillness in the open darkness beneath the support girders arching overhead. The crew that kept this place barely-operational did not survive long after the breach. A breach that meant that more Agony of a stranger variety would likely be found below, for which only a portion of the task force was truly equipped for. Merion and Sofia boasted little inclination for combat with non-ethereal quarries, and Rada's expertise rested firmly in the realm of the technical, but this was an unusual assignment for them all, even the former soldier of fortune and the colossal enigmatic warrior.

"Alright, Merion," Melissa prompts, causing both to perk up. "You hid out in a place like this for a long time, didn't you?"

"I did indeed," one begins, and the other finishes the thought. "Admittedly, I'm feeling nostalgic."

"Do you have any guess as to where they might keep their soul-jar module then?"

The collective pair pause, chins resting in the crook of a thumb and index finger. Glances are exchanged and dissolved with great frequency in only a few moments as they simultaneously conceive and poke holes in what might have been a lead.

"Well no," the more masculine admits.

"But if I'm near it I should be able to sense it," says the feminine.

"But the inverse is also true, you know," the former adds.

"Not that it's ever been a problem!" Sofia chimes in, not a hint of worry in her voice. She has proven in the past that such confidence is not unfounded; even during her time as a freelancer she made a name for herself as one of the most gifted exorcists in this system.

"Let us hope not," Melissa says, turning and moving forward towards the airlock gate leading into the base. "Viktor and I are putting a lot at stake for you so I'm hoping you three... four?"

"Let's say three," the jackals suggest.

"Hoping you three know what you're doing," the cobra finishes. She observes the airlock, hoping to teleport through and unlock it from the other side, but it's warded, preventing any sort of magical breach. With a sigh, she steps back to allow her team to take a poke at it.

Having once been at odds with the law, she finds herself in an odd situation now, but serving as the muscle for an exorcism division has proven for many to be a fast track to a cushier security position. On the flip side, Viktor cared little for that. The only perk he needed was getting to smash opponents of his size.

There is something to be admired in that. Of anyone here, the badger had the least uncertainty in the life he had made for himself. Guts, glory, and a bottomless abundance of morale. His mind having been mostly absent for this conversation, he sits by the airlock and continues to hum as Rada deals with it.

It could only be considered a small part of what the Benthic did for the team, but bypassing security was something he excelled at.

"Let's see here..." he starts to mutter to himself as he cuts into the panel with a precise beam from a thin, shoulder-mounted arm. "Still using biological circuitry? This thing is ancient..." He powers his flotation halo down, and it clasps gently onto the neck plating of his custom-made suit as he climbs in.

"Oh, it's starved too," he grumbles, moments later poking his head out. "Do any of you have any nutrient broth on you, by any chance?"

"Give me a vial and I'll do you one better," a Merion offers. Rada hesitates a moment before handing her a cylindrical container, and she takes the small object delicately before gingerly spitting into it, but not so gingerly that it doesn't overfill or even miss entirely. "Here you go."

Rada hesitates even more yet as he takes the container back, regarding the tinted, quickly-evaporating saliva with an expression of something like astonishment. In contrast, the jackals exhibit identical smug grins.

"I hope it's not reminding you too much of o--" but she doesn't get to finish.

"No no, it's fine!" the Benthic snaps, ducking back into the hole to apply it to the desiccated tissue. "Comparatively there's not even that much here..."

"Must you tease him about that like this?" Sofia asks, but she can hardly manage a scolding tone, her amusement betraying her.

"At every opportunity," the other jackal affirms as his double continues to peer through the hole into the panel.

"Well, it didn't really make the circuits live, per se, but whatever it did worked," Rada reports, hopping out of the opening as his halo deploys. A short fall at first, but then he floats nimbly in the field emitted beneath it.

"See? It served a purpose."

"What was that then? Possession of some kind?"

"Close!" Merion seems pleased with the guess. "Necroharmonic trick. Instead of giving it the whole ghost, I just supplied a few directives."

"Good thing, too," Rada chuckles. "I wouldn't trust you to take over a system in full, but I have to admit, that's a handy trick." Floating up to level with the panel again, he leans into the confirm key, and the doors begin to open as if credentials had been provided. "I might even start asking for saliva samples now and again."

"Plenty where that came from."

"As you're well aware," the other adds.

The team continues inside, the airlock necessitating that Viktor crawls in, the others having to cluster beneath him, but the facility beyond has mercifully high ceilings, allowing him to stand upright again. The others fan out ahead of him; at his size and with his choice of weapon, his reach won't be compromised.

"I am glad this place was constructed at such a scale," the badger muses. "But one imagines it would let the Agony thrive just as much."

"Good thinking," Melissa returns, "even if only little ones got in, they might not be so little anymore."

"Shades are what we're here for, though," Sofia reminds the others. "Now would be a good time to use those doses that Merion prepared." As she advises so, she is already slotting the canister into a port near the collar of her suit, prompting the others to do the same.

Melissa turns to look at Merion for a moment, and then the other one as both flank her. "No funny business, right?"

"Whatever makes you think there will be funny business?" the one her eyes have landed on asks coyly.

"Because I've done my studying on you," the cobra informs. All the same, she takes her dose, slotting it in and letting it add to her air supply. "If I start thinking in your voice, we're gonna have a problem."

"I assure you," says the jackal behind her, "even if you were to reach the point that you think in my voice, you wouldn't have a problem with it anymore. No danger of that, lucky for you."

"Yeah, yeah..." she says with a chuckle despite herself. Her crew is interesting even if not particularly easy to trust. She had worked with the jackal before, a ghost imitating the living with a body built of ectoplasm, cybernetics and all, and they had often been complicit in shadier things on behalf of the administration.

The doses take effect quickly, as made evident by a sideways smirk from either of the jackals, again aimed towards Melissa.

"You're thinking of that song," one of them says. "The one you said you didn't like."

"There's a difference between something being catchy, and being actually good," the snake reasons.

The party eventually makes their way down the main hall, checking the offices and closets along the way for survivors, or even remains, of which there are neither, until they set foot in the main concourse, a large, open area made from the same drably-painted metal as the rest of it all, but the addition of decorative plants including imported trees peeking up through an opening in the middle does add a splash of coziness to it. Or rather, what would be coziness if not for what had apparently transpired here.

"No remains in sight," Viktor observes. "The Agony have been ravenous."

"Or something has, anyway. Could be ghouls," Sofia points out. "I'm not sure which would be worse."

"It'll do us no good to speculate, just be ready for anything," Melissa says, walking forward. She risks a peek down to the lower floors, no movement there either. Signs of struggle for sure, but nothing left behind, not even blood. "If we don't have any other information to go on as to where the soul-jar is hooked up, we'd better just slowly work our way down."

"At least until I get in range of it," Merion offers, "and we'll have no trouble after that."

Moving as a unit, the five of them begin to slowly investigate the upper floor. Offices, mostly, as well as an opulent lounge spanning three floors. Water flows across a granite face bearing the Kuareb Industries logo in mocking tranquility, the gentle, constant trickling alone filling the silence.

Then something else joins it.

"Aniiiiish?" comes a croaking voice. "Aaaaare you still here?"

The team freezes instinctively, Viktor demonstrating magnificent core strength for his physique as he holds himself motionless in halfway vaulting over the guardrails to the floor below. Everyone exchanges uneasy glances; even Merion seems to have spontaneously regained the ability to take the situation seriously.

"Aniiiiish?" it says again, from some indiscernible place below. Its tone is more fearful this time.

There comes a quiet crackle as Rada switches his communicator to transmit sound through external speakers, and all eyes fall on him.

"Hel--"

Merion stops him in her own special way, lunging forward and snapping her jaws shut over him, muffling his call, and subsequently, his terrified shriek. The little shark fits easily in her mouth, as demonstrated in the past, and her broad tongue serves well to immobilize him.

The other Merion approaches his double before she forgets the gravity of the situation in favor of enjoying herself, separating her lips as one might in trying to retrieve a mystery object from a guiltily-nibbling puppy.

"What are you thinking?" he hisses quietly. "We don't know who that is."

That quiet crackle sounds out again as Rada switches back. "You could have just shushed me!" the Benthic hisses in reply, on the verge of panic.

"I had to act quickly, and apparently this is the best I could come up with." Merion's eyes pivot up to look at his other self, meant to provide some introspection in second-person, but her expression easily sways him, and they are of single mind once again. "And it wasn't that bad of an idea. I should just swallow you if you're going to be calling out to every spooky sound in here."

"Now, now, nobody's swallowing anybody," Sofia transmits, resting a hand on each of the jackals' shoulders. "It's not like you can taste him anyway."

Rolling her eyes, Merion spits the Benthic out, his armor saliva-slick and his halo vibrating urgently as it recombobulates itself to keep him in the air.

"I've barely been able to taste a thing for centuries as it is," she mutters. "The struggling is all I have."

"Oh, whatever!" Melissa whispers loudly, making no effort to contain her ire. "We've gotten way off track here. Merion, how long until you can stop making noise?"

"Who knows?" he answers with a shrug. "A few minutes more, maybe longer. Depends on how willing you are to let me in."

"This is why you should have brought a helmet," she scolds, cautiously leading the way down the stairs.

The jackals look to each other while her back is turned. That would have made it a lot harder to take care of Rada and then they might have been in an entirely new mess. After having their moment, they follow with the rest. Viktor, having held still and quiet with equal parts catlike serenity and catlike lack-thereof continues to lower himself to the next floor from the overlook, touching down with barely a sound and crouching for a bit of extra clearance with the ceiling as he goes under.

The Agony haven't been choosy; even the long bar has been raided in its entirety, the smell of strong liquor and flavored syrups rising like perfume from the stained Ulgeng carpet. One could continue to the next floor from here, but instead the task force passes through the lobby back into the concourse. Inventory and laboratories here, mostly.

As they continue their search, one of the rooms in particular brings them to a collective halt as they look in through the destroyed window. Bulletproof and guarded with antimagical runes, not that it stopped whatever smashed through it. On the lab table beyond, the restraints have been left intact, but what once was strapped there has been snatched from them, the remaining extremities of the carcass in the process of slow regeneration. They don't get time to ponder the implications before they're interrupted again by that grating voice hailing the likely-deceased.

"Aniiiish. Mikhaaail. I'm still heeeeere..."

It echoes from below. Softly, the group moves over on padded soles, or in Rada's case, frictionless hovering, to peer surreptitiously at the source of the sound. Their reactions are mixed, ranging from fascination to horror. Rada, unable to behold it for more than a few moments, rushes for the badger's hands which cup to shelter him without missing a beat.

Countless pointed legs move in slow waves, carrying a long body through a swishing pattern as it combs the floor several levels below. The creature's immense body culminates in a carapace reminiscent of a horseshoe crab attached to a centipede, but it does not visibly enjoy the protection of a shell, the surface of its body instead smooth and glistening like cardiac muscle.

Melissa turns to Sofia, her nearest, visibly shaken to the point that even her visor's tint can't hide it. "What the fuck is this?" she whispers. Despite being on closed transmission, she seems to fear being heard by it. "Why are we still here when this thing is skulking around?"

"We're here to do our job," the seal answers calmly. If she is afraid, she hides it flawlessly.

"Well, we figured out what happened, haven't we? Agony came in, ate everyone, and then this one ate all the others! Look at the size of it..."

"Mimicking speech," Viktor adds. "That's a butcher tactic, but this one is clearly many stages beyond that. I have never seen anything like this."

And he truly had not. Among Agony, chimerism was par for the course; older ones would absorb features from their victims, and their victims, if any part of them remained, would contract an assortment of attributes from all involved at the feast. But this thing, it was a rarity. Purely bestial in its bodily structure, as if its stolen anatomies had been meticulously cultivated and combined with clarity of purpose.

"It will be a worthy adversary, if our paths should cross," the badger continues after much thought.

"They should not!" Rada argues, launching out of the titan's hands and landing on the sloping face of his helmet. "We're staying clear of it no matter what."

"If we can," Melissa sighs. "What if it never leaves the bottom floor? I have this sinking feeling that's the only place the soul-jar can be."

"Not to confirm your worst fears or anything," Merion speaks up sheepishly, "but I've started to pick up the scent, so to speak, and it's definitely below us."

An uncomfortable period passes in which neither of them say anything, after which Melissa unholsters her bulky sidearm and begins to move again with a groan. "I don't get paid enough for this shit..."

"Does anyone?" both jackals sympathize.

As a group they proceed back into the lounge, having found nothing on their current floor but a newfound feeling of dread, one enough to elicit a cringe from each of them whenever the creature below wails for its invariably-deceased company.

The lower levels received little more than cursory sweeps for the most part, until on their way into one of the rampwells, both Merions froze up.

"Wait," one transmits.

"There's a shade here," adds the other. "I need to get it."

"How do you want to do this?" Viktor asks. "Want us all to go with you?"

"Just Sofia should be fine," the feminine of the two says. "The quicker we determine how secure this place is, the better."

The badger nods in understanding, before heading for the ramp and crouching, shimmying his feet forward cautiously so as not to slip. Sofia diverges from the other three to approach the jackals.

"Lead the way, I'll be ready for it," she assures.

The trio, debatably a duo, treads softly through, cautious not to bump anything, though most of the glassware had already been tipped off of its carts and shattered, their extracts left to vaporize long since. This area seems to have been dedicated entirely to utilizing the materials stripped from Agony; constructed arms of withered tissue fidgeted aimlessly as the contents of the open vials they had once been performing dilutions on had evaporated to nothing.

Merion slows several paces away from an open door, the lights beyond having gone out.

"Well, it couldn't have made its hiding place any more obvious or foreboding, could it have?" Sofia chuckles, walking past her compatriots. She plucks a glass orb encased in a wrought-iron cage from her bandolier, swirling it in her hand as one might a wine glass, coaxing lime-green embers to life. "Let's see who it is."

Her face becomes obscured as she dials up the burners mounted on her back, filling her suit and visor with thick mind-expanding incense fumes, catching the bright green lights that now project from her helmet. To her, the world becomes something of a haze, but she can clearly visualize the form of something vibrating softly in the room beyond.

"They're in front of the open refrigerator," she relays. "I think they tried hiding inside and it didn't end well."

"I lost a proxy that way once," Merion sighs. "Refrigerator never ends well."

It could have been the beginning of quite the tangent, but it would have to wait. Sofia is already moving forward to the doorway, and the fur of the jackals stands on end as they feel some primal emotion rise in the ghost hiding there.

Two opposing tensions race to build, but Sofia wins out; she smashes the globe on the ground just as something barely-clinging to its alpaca facade rushes her, trailing vapor as its growl starts to become a howl. The sound is cut short, before it can become loud enough to draw attention, as those flames wreathe its body like glowing tendrils to hold it fast.

The seal continues her advance, standing at the edge of its range even as it thrashes, snarling and whimpering like a feral carnivore; it's all it can do as the tongues of fire close its muzzle. Despite its display, the exorcist's composure goes uncompromised, her veiled expression still quite tranquil, even excluding the lulling fumes filling her helmet. She looks into the holes of the shade's eyes, close enough that it could have snapped at her.

"This one is Anish," she relays to Merion. "He was new here when the Agony breached, but he's still shaken by his death; I can't feel him very clearly."

"Then let's give him some comfort," one of the jackals says, stepping forward. Sofia moves slightly aside for him, allowing him to place a palm on what would be Anish's forehead. All at once, the snarling stops as the shade relaxes, slowly losing its form and compacting into a tight ball of vapor and fluids resembling runny tar.

He turns the coalesced orb over in his hands a couple of times with a sigh of anticipation; he isn't looking forward to this one as much as most. Gingerly, he lifts it, jaws parting to let his long, black tongue protrude, curling about the orb before reeling it in. It's malleable and cold, squishing easily in the space behind his teeth, but provides some resistance to being swallowed. It takes several focused gulps, but Merion eventually manages to suck it down, shivering as it comes to rest.

"Ugh, that one wasn't ripe at all," he mutters. The urge to spit is strong, but even the little residue left coating every surface of his mouth is valuable. Lose that, and Anish might be left with a few gaps in his memory.

"He'll settle before long," Sofia assures. "Let's catch up with the others. I can hear that thing below us getting restless over something."

At the same time, some similarly-ravaged levels below, Melissa holds up a hand in a signal to stop. Necessary or not, Viktor drops into a crouch, readying his spear and already picturing the possibility of another battle. He creeps forward, his padded boots muffling his sound, but Melissa motions more sharply for him to stop as she leers ahead.

A shadow has caught her eye in the dim lights of one of the side rooms, at the end of the corridor that would lead them into the central area. Sure enough, a smaller Agony emerges, long fingers on the doorframe followed by that eyeless face with its permanently freshly-skinned look. The tendons in its neck flex as it peers around, looking for something. Melissa backs up as it turns in her direction; an unnecessary precaution. It wasn't looking for her.

"Aniiish..."

She backs up even more, hiding herself around the side of the massive door frame as she anticipates the arrival of the hunter. Peeking out, she watches from cover as the comparatively little Agony snaps its head back in the direction of the larger, just in time for its carapace to crash through the door and its adjacent walls like they were nothing at all.

"Anish! I'm sooo glad to see youuu..." it practically moans with what sounds like relief. Whatever fight its prey is putting up is entirely out of view, but its piercing shriek carries just fine, until suddenly, it's cut off with a crunch that would haunt even Viktor's dreams for some time to come.

"...Aniiiiish?"

The hunter backs out from the rubble, mandibles within mandibles grazing against each other as it idly laps up any remaining viscera. By its tone, if it's even a reliable metric for anything, it seems to have completely forgotten what just transpired.

The midsagittal ridge of its body rises in a high arch as the sides contract, allowing it to squeeze down the hallway, its countless legs each landing with an uncomfortable squish, like a wet sponge compressing, more than the chitinous click one might expect from it.

Rada buries himself in the cobra's hands as she ducks out of view. She holds him close to herself out of instinct; her boxy armor lends to both of them the impression of a small doll longing for a simpler time back inside the claw machine. Viktor has since pressed his back to the wall perpendicular to them, his spear brandished across his chest. It would be hard to discern whether his grip on it is tighter than his jaw, locking in uncharacteristic fear.

The Agony's heavy, shuddering breath lends meter to a drawn-out moment that would have otherwise felt removed from time, broken by paired chelicerae clamping the sides of the entrance to the rampwell. Fight or flight signals fire back and forth in the heads of the task force; if they don't act, that mistake of nature may end them with a machine-precise lunge each. Even for the badger in his heavy armor, he knows that.

The tip of his spear begins to lower. Melissa dares to slowly raise her pistol, but dares not breathe. The extended jaws of their quarry extend from just beyond the door, and then, almost imperceptibly, it stops still.

"Anish?" Its utterance is so much more collected now, so much more urgent. And with only so many seconds of deliberation, its claws release from the dented frame, and it skitters back the other way, calling out that name once more.

The trio, four hearts still racing between the three of them, exchange wide-eyed glances with each other before taking deep, grateful breaths.

"That was too close!" Rada squeaks, his dignity of little importance. "We could have died!"

"We could have taken it if it came down to it," Viktor sighs.

"Spare me that," Melissa snaps. "You were just as petrified as the rest of us and it would have killed you first."

"Then I hope my life would have bought yours," the badger responds, his stoic air having returned as if nothing had happened. If courage is simply the act of pretending not to be terrified, he is unmatched in it.

Rada wriggles out of Melissa's hold, hazarding a peek around the dented door frame. "I don't see it anymore, do you think maybe it's gone for now?"

"It's stuck down here too, where would it go?" Melissa asks.

"No, I know that," he says, sensing some derision. "But gone like... we could sneak out."

"Well, maybe." She approaches to look down the corridor. "Whatever got its attention just then really seemed to interest it."

Sofia clears her throat from up the ramp. "Did you get to see it up close? I'm sorry I missed it."

The two by the door turn suddenly, startled by her arrival, but Viktor simply looks to her and the jackals with an arched brow.

"Could you hear nothing?" he asks, tapping the side of his helmet to indicate internal speakers.

She responds by doing the same. "Well, we found a shade. You know my comms don't work at range while the smoke is going."

"True enough," he concedes.

"If only all of us had been wearing our helmets," Rada says with a squinting glare, one that Melissa matches crease for crease.

The jackals give a slow, cheeky shrug. "Oops."

"Merion, if you live through this, you won't," Melissa asserts through an exasperation-saturated groan. She turns again, still dreading the space beyond the doorway, but remaining here will only let the anxiety build and dull her edge. She takes the first step through, and the others follow at her signal.

Viktor is last to follow, to his great chagrin; in the interest of stealth, they told him, but stealth had never been his preferred tactic. Charging in solved nearly every problem he had ever encountered, regardless of its context, but regardless of his certainty in whether or not he could lay the Agony low, doubt now eats at the periphery of his thoughts. His own safety is not a concern; it never is. His comrades are another story. His pulse quickens as Sofia nears the corner leading into the lower concourse, but in contrast, she is calm, as she often is.

She stares into the space beyond; lights flicker on and off at an unpredictable smattering of intervals, damaged either in direct struggle, or simply brushed by the arch of the hunter. The hunter in question has tangled around a number of support pillars, set up like a forest of rebar and concrete at this level, centered around an open clearing. To one side of it, slightly off-center with one of the supports, is a sealed hatch leading down into a maintenance area.

"It's in there," Merion says, finally telepathically.

"Right in plain view, naturally..." Rada sighs. "What's the plan now?"

"You and Melissa are the stealthiest of us," Sofia begins. "She should keep you covered while you work on getting it open. After that, you and a Merion should proceed under. The rest of us will..."

She pauses, playing out scenarios in her head. "The rest of us will keep that thing distracted."

"We can't meet it head-on, Sofia," the other Merion protests. "Well, maybe Viktor can but the rest of us ar--"

"I will lay my body on the line," the badger vows. "If I lose an arm, my compensation will be monumental; I can buy a new one. You are not so replaceable."

"Aww, Viktor, that's almost touching, sort of?" one of the jackals thinks to him with a wry smile. "Company policy requires me to mention that I am frequently replaced, though."

"I do not know of this. Under my watch, you are like grandmother's collectible porcelain spooky babies that are nonetheless cherished."

Merion doesn't know what to say to that, instead opting to place an arm around one another's shoulders and exchange glances with themselves. After some moment of deliberation, they look up again and broadcast in unison, "This is agreeable, I think."

"We've wasted enough time, there's nothing left to assess here," Melissa says, inviting Rada onto her shoulder. "Do your thing."

With that, she soundlessly approaches the space, staying one pillar deep away from the center, skirting around it in a low stance and listening for that soggy one-monster parade somewhere out there. The name Anish echoes softly in the space again; chilling, but they've all grown used to it at this point. What comes as startling enough to cause Rada to lift off again, however, is the sudden crunch followed by new screeches.

Melissa's hand dives to her hip, grasping her living gun and raising it in anticipation, but even as movement becomes apparent, she holds her fire. Nothing is coming for her, but there is plenty trying to get away. Crimson tangles of teeth and sinew sprint by, frantically making for side rooms and getting into short spats with other Agony already hiding there.

"So this place is still infested..." she transmits to the others. "I don't think they'll be a problem, but stay on gua--"

She stops in mid-sentence as the hunter wails out for the lost friend of a victim, and a few of the Agony around the periphery simply stop, as if caught in a trance, turning and shambling back towards it. Melissa understands the implications and doesn't suffer watching what might come next, instead continuing to move for that hatch with her tiny cohort in tow.

The creature's rasping carries on, interrupted only when it crunches down on a transfixed victim; the unpleasant ambience of Rada's work as he sands off protective runes and laser-cuts through the metal to expose wires. It's a simple design, no indication where the circuitry should be hidden under the thick sheet but it's a model he's familiar with. He would be fascinating to watch if only Melissa's eyes weren't scanning from here to there. Occasionally, she catches a coil of the hunter's long body, partially-camouflaged and releasing itself from a pylon. It gathers at the far side of the room in relation to where they had entered from, so she looks back to her team and waves them on in.

Staunching the hesitation that comes with the instincts of self-preservation, the trio at the edge of the hallway enters. The pylons are spaced enough that Viktor can slip in between, but fighting with a polearm would prove difficult here. Despite all that, it seems almost like they might find a decent position for themselves.

But, ash-flavored and chilling-cold, "almost" wins out in the end.

There comes an abrupt silence; Rada silences his tools a split-second later to avoid detection. Then, a series of rapid thuds as the hunter lets the remains of an Agony drop from its mouth. And then,

"Aniiiiiish." Not a hint of question in its voice. "You've been hiding from meee."

The entire task force feels a collective drop in the pits of their stomachs, the impending danger now seeming that much more impending, but it holds especially true and literal for Merion.

"Sofia..." he transmits, but does not get to expand on whatever thought he might have had before the static of fear invades.

Skittering echoes throughout the space as the hunter moves, its coils slipping away from around the pillars and receding into the blackness beyond like a countdown of sorts, until finally it vanishes. Deadly silence follows; everyone knows that it will pounce at any second. Gritting his pointed teeth, Rada makes the final cut, unlocking the hatch, which begins to swivel open slowly.

In horrific contrast, the hunter lashes out as a blur, its chittering mouth having abandoned names in favor of a drawn out hiss.

Viktor steps forward in front of Sofia with a shout; one part to intimidate, one part to work himself up. He needs it; the fear he felt before is still tangling in his chest, but it's not enough to stop him.

The point of his spear embeds in the creature's mantle with a crack, and for a second it seems like its momentum is broken, but in moments it begins to press against the weapon, seemingly undeterred by the spike that failed to puncture all the way through.

"Merion, come on!" Melissa shouts, already running to trade places with her. The jackal passes without a glance, dropping into a grating slide and vanishing into the hatch, with Rada flying in quickly after her.

Viktor pulls briefly on the trigger, spraying the hunter down with chlorine trifluoride; it sizzles on contact, igniting into a coat of flame, but it's no less deterred. A sudden lunge causes the point of the blasting spear to slip off its carapace, scraping across its subdermal plate and slicing the smooth muscle, and it leaps, seemingly ignoring Viktor, the side of its body slamming into him as it fixes on the remaining Merion.

He did eat Anish, after all. It makes sense, or it would, if Agony had any affinity for shades. There's no apparent reason it should know that, but there's no time for him to rationalize that. It just feels like an inevitable turnabout. His hand goes for the black crystal-edged macana at his side, but he knows he won't be quick enough.

Melissa is, however. She skids into his path, gun coming to bear. Her finger no less than slams the trigger, causing her boxy weapon's side panels to fan out on cartilage and sinew, releasing steam from its gills as it vomits a hailstorm of bone shards from its barrel. It's not enough to stop the beast, but the foul payload fractures the complex parts of its maw and strikes the soft flesh beyond, causing it to rear back even as its momentum carries it. It smacks into Melissa's armor, forcing her back to crash against Merion, crushing the air out of him against a pillar.

A couple of lashes below the concrete, Rada and the other Merion navigate through dimly-lit crawl spaces, following pulsing conduits of light in reverse. The soul-jar module isn't so hard to find; it has its own larger chamber that the Benthic floats easily into, but Merion has to twist herself in a cumbersome manner before backing into it to drop into a standing position. Even then, there isn't much headroom; these tunnels were clearly made for Humans and smaller.

The module takes up most of the chamber, a large, primarily-cylindrical machine with sheer edges that give the impression of a tiered vase, albeit packed with expensive hardware, and hopefully, the souls of the staff here. Merion takes the one step forward she has clearance for, fidgeting with the small terminal for a few moments before expelling a groan.

"Password locked," she mutters, and it's all Rada needs to spring into action, hovering to an access panel and beginning to cut through it with his rune-etched tools. It doesn't take long, but every second spent is filled with anxiety set to the tune of the commotion above.

The moment the locks are cut, he slips inside, deactivating his halo and letting its rings compact and fold up around his neck like a heavy collar, navigating the interior manually, sliding down bundles of cable and crossing access scaffolds set up by those of his size. Following cables from the backside of the panel to its nexus, he sets out and unrolls a kit of what some might take for calligraphy tools; the estimate wouldn't be far off, either.

The majority of this system is far more up to date than the hangar lock; runes and inorganic circuitry sprawling in every direction, just as Rada likes it. Retrieving a device somewhere between a pen and a blowtorch, he starts to edit the inscriptions, searing off old phrases and adding in his own in an identical shimmering golden hue. Between major edits, he turns to a small logbook, making note of his changes. It's not sabotage if you write it down.

Hooking up a new handheld device, large by his standards, he begins to input his own commands, as fast as he can process, hardly even registering the information until it's all done with. Back outside, the screen changes, allowing Merion to progress through a somewhat unergonomic UI as she scans through names. Most of them accounted for, good, but an alarming number are missing. A mix of Humans, Xeeok, even a Vex and a Benthic, Anish among them, but she knows where he is, at least.

"Rada, are you seeing any obvious problems with the hardware in there?" she calls through the open panel.

"Other than the ones I'm making, no," he transmits back.

"It should have caught everyone then... where did they go?"

Not so far above them, Viktor wrestles with the hunter's main body to pull it away from his comrades, hefting it out into the open with a growl and attempting another strike at its underbelly, but it's quick to roll the other way. The rest of its long body lashes about as it rolls, uprighting itself all the way down and backing up to size up its targets. Sofia rushes to his side, her visor filled with green smoke once again.

"Aniiish..." it moans again. "What are you doing over there? You're supposed to be with me..."

Merion limply slides from between the concrete and a dazed Melissa, slipping off to the side with a grunt and getting to his feet. It wasn't just his mind then; somehow it knows. He jolts a bit as a heavy hand comes down on his shoulder; the cobra takes a beat to stabilize herself, but keeps her gun raised.

"Bastard cracked my armor..." she snarls. It was an observation anyone could have made, of course, the damage truly was terrible. The enameled panel, made to withstand intense pressure, had suffered a number of cracks when faced with the hunter's finger-teeth.

"I want those teeth..."

By now, it should have lunged again; that was the expectation as it bunched its coils behind itself, but even now it holds fast, its intentions imperceptible to all but Sofia.

"Everybody back up," she begins, "it's--" No time to finish.

The hunter howls, black fire pouring from its maw, the crack in its shell, and vents along every segment. Inky black fluid spills from these openings, bubbling on contact with the ground, and from them, several shapes begin to rise; twisted shades of the people they once were, lifting into the air, and scattering on tendrils of smoke, weaving through the pillars before closing in on their prey.

"I'm getting back up there!" the Merion below shouts to Rada, abandoning the terminal.

"Wait, what about the... oh, she's gone," he murmurs. His mic still picks it up nonetheless, transcribed into a medium she can pick up, receiving an apologetic noise in response.

The Merion above runs a hand across the wooden flat of his weapon, burnished markings lighting up red and the crystals following suit. It's not a glow he can safely be around for long, but it's even more dangerous to an incorporeal shade. The first one comes in hot, and he meets it with a forceful slice. Its own velocity proves terminal, and its shape dissipates into wispy, supernatural darkness.

Not an ideal way to neutralize them, but nothing about this situation is ideal. He tangles it in his fingers, preparing to eat it, but catches the hunter in the corner of his eye and leaps behind another pillar as it charges. Melissa is on a warpath all her own now, standing her ground and even leaping towards it, letting it grab her with its chelicerae. They squeeze tight, their points more like blunt objects nonetheless digging for her kidneys through the padded parts of her armor, but she turns her anguished cry into an enraged roar, gauntlet and gun jamming through the Agony's mouthparts and firing the few rounds it's managed to regenerate.

It staggers about, giving Viktor a chance to leap onto it and pin it, trying to pry its chelicerae off of Melissa, perhaps even off of it altogether if he can. Its teeth mince uselessly; the cobra has found a spot right between some where it can barely do more than scrape.

Merion hastily stuffs what he can of the shade into his mouth, slurping clumsily at its erratically flickery tendril-based form like a helping of particularly aggressive noodles, hoping it would play well with Anish despite having not been properly pacified. It's the least of his worries right now; two minds working in tandem puzzle over the nature of the hunter as both jackals approach, weapons drawn.

There were eight names absent from the module, and, counting those already consumed, only seven present. At least, at first glance.

"This thing is a shade too!" Sofia announces, beating the Merions to the conclusion. It makes sense she would; she's standing dangerously close to it in full attunement. She takes Melissa by an arm and starts to pull her away as she ejects the last volley her gun has in it for the moment.

"What are you doing?" the cobra demands, not taking her eyes off the hunter.

"It's a shade, we can't kill it!"

Not "can't" in the sense that they are unable to, but in the sense that if they do, the ball would be more than dropped. The proverbial ball would be dunked into the fleshy center of the planet.

"How is it a shade?" Viktor manages to grunt, trying to lock the pincer-tipped tail end under an arm so it stops scrabbling at him. At this juncture, it has already left several indentations in his armor. "Feels like meat to me!"

If she has an answer, and she does, it's forced to wait as the badger finally locks down the tail, but a mighty flex pulls him from the Agony's carapace, sufficient to lift him to the next floor up and discard him along with a foreign expletive cut off by the impact.

It shakes itself off like a hunting dog might; it's a motion that doesn't play well with its body at all, and it's even disconcerting to watch. Not as disconcerting as when it skitters forward, which follows immediately.

"The same way I am," Merion concludes, even as the hunter advances. "It's a Blackheart. It came back for its body after it was already infected."

It's said mostly to themselves as the realization sets in, but it's transmitted nonetheless. Being able to rely on their spells for such an opponent would make this situation much easier, but nothing grabs a shade's attention like expenditure of ARC.

Melissa knows this, but she doesn't care. Void concentrates in her off hand, lightless rifts forming claws out of intricately-weaving straight paths; it looks a lot more painstaking than it really is. An upwards swipe with a giant rake of shadows carves into the concrete floor and embeds in the underbelly of the Agony; if it's really a shade, she'll carve off every bit of it that doesn't fit the description.

Or she would, if she had gotten her way. Sofia turns, mouth agape, as the claws impact, lifting their massive quarry at the instant of it, but she's too slow to help Melissa. A shade collides with the cracked glass, sifting itself through and flooding the space within. Melissa staggers back, thrashing and clawing at the glass, visibly in pain, but any sound she might have made is rendered completely silent by the wreath of blackness. As it finally dissipates, having forced itself into her lungs, she collapses.

The Merion behind cover springs out to drag her to safety; if not for the metal frame for added protection around the boxy main body, there wouldn't be a lot to grab onto.

"Melissa, can you hear me?" he asks, his double coming to his side. Her chest rises and falls dramatically, her spine stuck in an arched position and her dilated eyes never blinking.

"I know you'd object to this if you could, but I'm going to increase your dosage," she continues. "We need to get you to expel that, right?"

She retrieves another capsule from her bandolier, popping the old, empty one out of its socket and replacing it. The hiss of compressed vapors releasing is audible through the cracks in Melissa's armor but all that matters is that she's breathing it in.

She slackens for several moments; that could be very good or very bad. Having no option but to wait on her, Merion props her against the pillar and keeps out watch for any other incoming shades. They lurk at a safe distance, understanding that his weapon is sufficient to end their little rampage.

The hunter shakily gets back on its legs, many of them are shattered or even severed through, pink syrupy fluids dripping from them, to say nothing of the quintet of gashes across the front of its carapace. Thin as paper cuts, deep enough to go from the underside of its jaw to the roof of its mouth. It circles the clearing a couple of times, obscuring what it's doing there, but Viktor can see from his vantage point that it's clawing at the concrete, picking at a circular seam.

"Rada, incoming!" he shouts, backing up. Digging his heel in, he breaks into a charge and leaps, elbow out.

"What, what's incoming?!" Rada returns, wit's end creeping ever closer. It encroaches with a bang as dust rains from the ceiling; the Agony's attempt to dig for the soul jar is foiled as several tons of badger bear down on it with meteoric impact.

"Merion, can you keep the other shades distracted while I pacify this one?" Sofia asks, already hurrying towards it.

"Yes," comes three voices. There is a pause, as the jackals turn to Melissa, who freezes mid-way through sitting up.

"What did I say," the cobra begins, "about hearing things in your voice?"

One of them shrugs as the other takes the current crisis as an excuse to slink off, macana at the ready. "It... did work out to your advantage though, right? You'll be coughing that shade up soon..."

"I can still be upset!" she retorts, springing to her feet. She registers her tone, eyes shifting in bewilderment. "I'm... feeling a lot. Why am I feeling a lot?"

"Yeah, that's me, sorry!" the masculine in the distance calls, deflecting a dive-bombing shade. "I have a lot of those!"

"It'll wear off in a bit, we've got bigger things to worry about," the feminine nearby asserts. She reaches out to help Melissa to her feet, only to find her hand batted away as the security expert stands up on her own.

"Then let's get down to it."

In the center of the room, Sofia approaches the hunter. Her helmet fills with green smoke once again, allowing her to visualize the shade concealed behind that mound of hybridized viscera.

It's hard to get a clear vision of, with the constant clamoring of her comrades behind her, but she begins to focus in on it even as so many crimson points clatter ineffectively in her direction.

"Hello, Yirimog," she whispers. "Your friend Mikhail is safe, and we've helped Anish. Let us help you. It's no good for a Vex to remain in a changed form for long."

She doesn't risk taking her eyes off of it, instead holding it in this moment, arms outstretched, letting smoke pour out from her and surround them both as she waits for either Merion to free up.

Regrettably, they've encountered some difficulty with the remaining three, soon to be four. Melissa drops to her knees as she begins to expel the shade that entered her, succumbing to a hacking, rattling cough. She tries reflexively to bring a hand to her face, but her palm only weakly streaks down the cracked glass.

A Merion rushes to her side to attend, but keeps his distance, well aware of her aversion to direct assistance.

"You've got this, it's equal parts physical and mental here. Deep breaths and--"

"I know, I--" she cuts him off and gags, ink spilling out onto the interior of her protective screen as she expunges the shade. "Fuck, I wish I didn't hate you!"

Both jackals wince at her words; for the sake of their own confidence, they'll chalk it up to the intense strain she's feeling in trying to wrest control back from partial possession, both from them and her assailant.

"You're gonna hate this, too," he forewarns. He swings the macana, burying one of its crystal edges in the cracks and immediately eliciting a reaction from the shade. It phases from a liquid to a vapor once again, which begins to steam up rapidly. Pulling his weapon free, his lips seal against the gap, simply inhaling it in one go.

"Get some sealant on that, you'll be alright," he says.

His counterpart slices through another shade, raveling it into a ball and pitching it to him. They exchange a nod even as he starts to scoop this one up on his tongue, and she sprints for Sofia.

She ducks an incoming ghost, which is stalled by a smattering of arcane bone loosed by Melissa's weapon long enough for the other Merion to come finish it off. Sliding under the resulting burst of darkness, she tumbles prone in the smoke at Sofia's side. Initially, she begins to build toward a reasonable level of fear at being vulnerable just beyond reach of the most dangerous thing here, but it was in something like a trance. Well, maybe. It was difficult to tell what that low, lethargic chittering could mean but it was a welcome change from the constant wailing of earlier.

Merion stands slowly, cautious not to make any sudden movement as she approaches. Those terrible chelicerae extend towards her, the pincers at the end snapping feebly, not quite reaching her arm as it extends in kind, palm flat towards the general center of the mass. Thick, foaming inky darkness made physical floats into her grasp, almost effervescent to the touch. For the first time in a while, she actually has some reservations about consuming a shade, but she shuts her eyes tight, lifts it up, and allows it to spill in as a viscous blob, conquered with a single, difficult gulp.

The moment it hits her stomach, she doubles over, and Sofia rushes to her to catch her before she can fall.

"This one's gonna take some work..." Merion murmurs, eyelids fluttering shut. In moments, she is unconscious.

The area around them finally goes quiet as the last of the surrounding Shades is also captured, and despite their exhaustion, Melissa and the other Merion hurry to the middle of the room.

"Is this normal?" Melissa asks, catching her breath.

"No," the Merion by her side replies, "but it'll be fine, if we give it time." He kneels in front of Sofia, mimicking her position, to take his double from her, cradling her close. "Our new friend here has been through a lot, after all."

"Rada, how is work on the module coming?" Sofia transmits.

"About to come up! Clear the center!" Rada announces.

Viktor springs into action, or more accurately rolls into it, tumbling sideways off the Agony remains and putting his shoulder to it, shoving it off the circular cut-out. Moments later, the entire chamber housing the module begins to rise out, its lights turn out, and Rada exits the machine, floating back into the air.

"It should be safe to remove now," he says, moving to perch on top of Melissa's armor, on the glass overhead.

"I shall, but first..." Viktor collects his spear, driving it through the weakened point in the corpse's subdermal shell, finally injecting and igniting it from the inside out. Soul or no, there's no reason to risk revitalization.

The badger collapses his weapon and slings it over his back , then crouches to lift the soul-jar module, carefully taking it onto his shoulder.

"We're done here," Melissa says. She can't help but look at those prized teeth once more, only to realize she wants nothing more to do with the creature by any means. "We'll clear out any of those stray Agony if they're in our way, otherwise they're someone else's problem. Let's go."

The trek back to the hangar goes as uneventfully as one can, in a place where straggling monsters still lurk, but the tension that built here doesn't dissipate until everyone is back aboard the hovercraft, where they all share a collective sigh.

"I'll get that sequence going," Rada says, slipping back into his molded seat. "Let's get out of here."

There's a muttering of everybody agreeing at once, as Melissa slouches into the pilot's seat and gets the engines going. Merion, Sofia, and Viktor exchange relieved glances as they lift off and the shutters open again. Sure enough, the Agony begin to congregate at the sound alone, but the source of their ire speeds beyond their reach, and the barely-opened hangar seals again before it can grab their attention, either.

The great distance back to the city notwithstanding, the task force has escaped back into relative safety. In truth, they won't be entirely safe until they've slipped back out of the sunlit overworld, but it's enough for them to at least start to feel a willingness to relax.

Merion looks to the others, beginning to make some kind of light-hearted quip but stops when Melissa clears her throat.

"Merion, can I speak with you?"

The jackal's ears fold, his eyes shift from the cockpit to his companions. Sofia gives him a slow nod, and takes the other Merion from him. Drawing a deep breath, he approaches the pilot seat.

"...Yes?" he manages, fully expecting to be reprimanded for the remainder of the trip.

But instead, Melissa only stares at him for several moments, until her gaze softens. It's barely perceptible, but it makes all the difference. "About earlier... hate is a bit of a strong word, isn't it?"

Merion forces his way through a nervous gulp, but his lips eventually form a smile that shows more relief than he initially wants to admit. "Yeah, I reckon it is."

The cobra waves a hand to dismiss him as she turns to face the horizon again, and, with the last little bit of his adrenaline gone up in smoke, Merion hurries back to his seat in the back, draping himself longways across the entirety of it.

"So it went well?" Sofia asks.

"I think so," he replies. "I really think so."

Meanwhile, in what seems far away, a different sun casts its evening glow on the faces of the brick buildings of a rustic village, cozy in every way save for the black ocean in which the island it sits upon rests in.

The lighting and the color of the ocean matter none to Yirimog, of course; being a Vex, they have no eyes. What does catch their attention and cause their batlike ears to perk up is the sound of footsteps coming onto the pier on which they stand, with nothing to hide their slender form than a beach towel, which thankfully proves more than large enough.

"Look at you, you've made so much progress already." As the owner of the voice speaks, her sonic image becomes clearer to them; canine, over twice as tall as them, with a coil of long tails swaying behind her.

She comes to just a few steps in front of them, and extends her hand.

"Where?..." is the only word they can rasp out. Their own voice sounds upsettingly unfamiliar. Despite themself, they extend their hand as well, pads of their palms squeezing together.

"Somewhere safe. Come with me," she invites, gently pulling them along. "We've got some healing to do."