Chapter 298 – A Cry For Help

A week out from the coordinates of the main fleet, Emily finally decides to give in and listen to the nagging instinct pulling on the edge of her awareness and willing her towards sleep. She’d been ignoring the call of unconsciousness since her first prophetic dream, more interested in devoting her valuable time to expanding her knowledge with the help of The Net and the hundreds of fascinating creations surrounding her at every waking moment, but the faint whisper telling her it’s a good idea to give in has slowly grown to a blaring siren she can no longer block out.

She closes the open entrance to her Factory in her quarters, leaving Harriet outside as the only one able to reach her, and takes to one of the beds within Elisime. It’s no surprise to her that, the moment she relaxes and lets sleep take her, she blinks back to awareness in a hazy scene far removed from the safety of her ship.

She’s standing in a dark alley with dense fog swimming around her legs, the sky above near black. Emily wades through the fog, searching for anything of note in the narrow gap between towering buildings, but she doesn’t see anything more than bare metal walls. Eventually, the alley opens up into a clearing full of people. None of them notices her. Their heads are all turned towards the sky, and Emily glances up to see it still dark, before focusing on the figures surrounding her. They’re all hazy, their features indistinct and forgettable, and the more she tries to focus on them to work out who they are, the more her eyes seem to slide off them.

A quick look over her shoulder finds the alley she entered through gone.

Emily frowns and pushes through the crowd, searching for any signs of someone she recognises. She walks for what feels like hours, her mind somewhere between the clarity of wakefulness and the indistinct blur of sleep, before noticing that she can see every figure around her without any artificial light, despite the sky suggesting night.

She turns her head skyward again and squints, forcing her eyes to focus. It takes a while for her to realise she’s not looking at the sky at all. Where there should be stars shining back, she instead catches the glint of metal. Where there should be a black, uniform expanse, she spots curves and uneven facets. Where there should be a moon, she catches a glimpse of burning thrusters.

It’s a ship.

The dark object seems to clarify at once, her eyes adjusting to clearly show black-tinted metal and a painted-on symbol: four swirls of colour, red, blue, green, and brown, spiralling together towards a black dot in the centre and ringed with white. The symbol burns itself into her mind, though she can’t quite reach for what it means as she turns her gaze back down to the street. The fog at her heels nudges her towards awareness, and a glimpse of steam rising from one of the buildings nearby slams realisation into place.

Chroni.

The scene shifts around her, and she finds herself standing on the city’s familiar wall, a pair of cushions sitting empty beside her blanketed in shadow. She’s facing into the city, and she can see a colossal ship at least twice the size of The Mothership looming over the palace, blotting out the sun. There are no signs of weaponry on the ship’s belly, only colossal burning thrusters keeping it in place, but Emily knows the threat it implies hanging so low, past the boundary of the city’s barrier without a care.

She turns her back on the city, expecting to find a desert expanse, but instead she finds an ocean waiting just below the wall. The water is anything but calm, with large waves crashing against the edge of the city’s walls and threatening to pour over into the streets below.

There are three more ships in the distance.

One matches the spacecraft above Chroni in scale, and below it sits the tiered city of Liberte, with its towering Wellspring Palace reaching up to nearly touch the belly of the ship. The lower levels of the city are swallowed by waves.

One of the smaller ships is looming over a city Emily doesn’t recognise and can’t quite make out the details of. It’s ringed with mountains that give her a pretty good idea of where it’s meant to represent, but the water touching the rock forms is disconcertingly still, and there are writhing shadows reaching up from the hazy city to cling to the bottom of the ship. A chill runs down Emily’s spine as she turns her attention away.

The final ship hangs low over a grassy plain, but while Emily expects to find the tented city of Ilysvar, she instead sees chaos. The ocean is raging against the land, giant tsunamis washing over the shore and attempting to reach the ship above, while the earth roils with motion, hills and jagged shards rising and falling to clash against the sea. There’s fire and magma spewing from the cracks in the land, and violent winds only stoke the other fighting elements. Beneath it all, Emily can make out indistinct, beastly forms that hurt her mind to look at, sometimes forcing the elements to bend into their shape before they lose coherence and break against each other.

Emily tries to focus on the distant maelstrom of violence and unrest, but she notices darkness encroaching on the edges of her vision. She looks to the other cities and finds nothing there, and when she looks back to Ilsyvar, it’s gone as well. A wall of blackness rushes towards her, and the last thing she sees before everything fades is the lonely cushions at her feet.

***

Emily jolts up with a gasp, her heart hammering in her chest as her mana and machina race through her like thunder. Several things that seemed distant in sleep start to click into place, and she finds herself pulling out her Terminal without really thinking.

“Why hello, my darling Vice,” Silvia purrs as a call connects, the video feed showing the vampire floating in the vacuum of space with The Blade not far behind her. “To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing from you early? I thought you were immersing yourself in your craft until you reach us.”

“I was.” Emily shifts to lean back against the bed’s headboard. “But I… decided to sleep for a bit.”

“Mmm, I can tell.” Silvia’s gaze starts to wander, and Emily pulls up the sheets to cover herself. “What a novel idea.”

Emily fixes her with an unamused glare, but the vampire’s grin only stretches wider.

“Can you have Lethia secure your end of the call, please?” Emily asks.

“Wow, I know sleep’s rare among mechanics, but your reputation wouldn’t suffer if it got out!”

Emily can’t help a half-amused scoff, and some of the tension from her intense dream bleeds out of her shoulders.

“I take it from that the call’s already secure?”

“From the moment I saw it was you,” Silvia agrees. “I assume there was something about your rest that disturbed you, beyond the fact that you don’t get enough.”

“You speak as if you sleep often.”

“Compared to you, I’m practically lazy.”

Emily rolls her eyes and bites her lip, considering exactly what to share.

“You’re… aware I dabble in time,” she starts. Silvia nods and silently waits for her to elaborate. “Well, my… heightened exposure to the element has led to a few lasting effects. The first, which you’ve likely noticed, is my hyper-sensitive instincts. The second are my dreams. When I first joined the crew, I had a vision of Yorn and several of his loyalists’ heads on pikes calling me a traitor. And, well…”

“That’s exactly what you became,” Silvia finishes with understanding. “You know, one would think you’d eventually run out of ways to surprise me, but it certainly doesn’t seem like that day is coming any time soon. You’re a True Seer on top of everything else? That’s simply unfair.”

“A True Seer?”

“One who glimpses possible futures as part of their nature. It’s a rare trait, though less so than being dual awakened, and highly sought after. The most common known use of time magic is prediction, but those like you who do so naturally without need for a specialised spell are recognised as the most accurate. The manifestations of True Sight vary, and you’re better off asking Elwaine than me if you want real insight, but I know The Big Three all have at least one prophet in their higher ranks who’ve helped them grow to the scale they’ve reached.”

“I’ll have to bring it up when I next speak to them.”

“Good. Now, what about your most recent vision has bothered you?”

“All of it?” Emily says in a questioning tone before letting out a sigh. “And none of it. The visions aren’t exactly clear in their meaning, and they seem to mix my memories with their predictions. Yorn was never decapitated, but my sister was, and that’s the form my dream took to suggest his coming demise.”

Silvia’s brow furrows, but she doesn’t say anything as Emily continues.

“This recent dream… well, it showed Federation ships hanging over several important cities on Ulea. All of them were surrounded by the ocean, despite none of them being coastal cities, and the water was in varying states of unrest. One of the cities, one I’ve never visited myself, was wrapped in shadows, while the elements seemed to be at war in another.”

“The Federation ships that were chasing us likely diverted course to check out the planet after we left,” Silvia adds as Emily tails off. “They will have started the process to integrate the planet into their territory proper, but they were a combat unit, not diplomats, so they won’t have stayed.”

“Right, I may have been seeing that group, or the diplomats that will come later. The ocean was likely more metaphorical than literal, since I can’t see any reason The Federation would benefit from flooding the world’s landmasses. Did that combat unit have awakened strong enough to face you and Yorn?”

“Yes and no. They were clearly primed to deal with our crew pre my recent ascension, since they only had two seventh circle mages and half a dozen sixth level awakened. It would have been annoying to face them, but they didn’t have the forces to stop us decisively.”

“But they did have the forces to completely shatter my old home’s worldview. The city where the elements fought was a supplicant tribe who were already struggling with the idea of me matching their gods, so it fits in that sense.”

“That’s interesting to know, but I can’t see why it’s bothered you so much?” Silvia says, tilting her head in confusion. “Are you that concerned about your home planet?”

“Not really.” Emily shrugs. “Although I’m surprised they’ve made contact so soon given that it would usually take a decade at least for them to start integration for a planet in such a remote location.”

“That’s likely thanks to our involvement. We were being pursued when we picked you up, and when they lost us, they probably decided to turn their attention to the planet.”

“Well, unless they decide to fight the Federation, they’ll be fine, and even if they do, I left my factories running and enough weapons and metal soldiers to topple a small army, so they’ll at least put up a good fight. I think what’s really unsettled me is that I ended the vision standing in the same place I took my first girlfriend on our last date. I… don’t like the idea that The Federation’s arrival has heavily impacted her. She wanted to live a quiet life without pursuing power, so for her to be involved…”

“It’s likely a worse case than a simple ascended planet’s integration.” Silvia nods in understanding, her gaze softening at Emily’s surprisingly human concern. “Well, we’ll have to keep an ear out then, darling. We still have a contract to fulfil, but afterwards we can look at taking a job that leads us back into Federation space if you’re that concerned.”

“We’ll see. It may not even be important; this is only the second vision I’ve had.”

“You gained this ability upon your recent ascension?” Silvia questions, receiving a confirming nod as Emily relaxes and starts preparing herself tea. “Fascinating. You know, if sleeping is likely to help you predict danger or important events for our crew, I’ll have to make sure you do it more often.”

“Oh, really now? And how do you plan to track my sleeping habits so closely?”

“I’m not sure… but it would make it easier for me if you agreed to use my bed.”

“Ha,” Emily chuckles, matching Silvia’s playful grin. “We’ll see.”

***

An insistent urge has Emily periodically checking the fleet’s quantum relays through the rest of their trip back to the main fleet. She doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary, but when they finally reach the main fleet, floating in the vacuum a short distance from a mining planet without any sign of enemies around, she follows her instincts and Blinks out into the vacuum.

“Emily?” Silvia says with a hint of concern in her voice as Emily appears a short distance away from her with her gaze fixed intently on The Blade. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Emily responds, shaking off the unseen pull and glancing towards the vampire with a furrowed brow. “I just feel like I’m missing something, and I don’t like it.”

She approaches the ship with the strongest scanners in the fleet and sets her hand against its hull, flooding it with machina and telling Harriet to join her. She’s hit with a flood of expected data. However, as she tunes the scanner to an odd frequency, the same used by her Universal Transmitter, she finally finds a strange message that quiets her mind:

Auntie Annie has finished your robes. They are ready for collection.

“I think,” Emily says, turning to Silvia as the vampire sets a hand in the small of her back and looks over her new body armour: a scaled, skin-tight black suit with thickened metal plating over her vitals and several sleek, reinforced injectors near important veins and arteries. “My friends on Ulea are trying to call me back.”