It has been said that crossing through the weightless vacuum of space is a similar sensation to swimming.
Although she did feel it during her fight with Davon, Nadeden barely had time to register the sensation in the same way that Granix has and continues to as they travel along the stars with Nadeden and Smith inside them.
It has been a long journey.
Nadeden fades in and out of consciousness while her body aches with constant pain, desperately trying to heal from the wounds Davon gave her. It is a stark contrast to Smith, whose body seems to have miraculously healed from every injury it previously sustained.
But he has yet to awaken since being rescued.
“You need medical attention,” Granix tells Nadeden.
“What I need is to get to the Division planet and kill the Emperor. I don’t care what state I’m in when I do it.” Nadeden chokes on the sharp words that leave her body with the same pain as the daggers that pierced her, “I just hope that Smith is awake by then.”
Granix’s face appears before her once she says the words “Then you both might need medical attention.”
“Where would we get it?” Nadeden asks with a frustrated cough, gesturing at the bandana hiding her disfigured face, “I can’t exactly go to any human-inhabited planet without being recognized.”
“How will you kill the Emperor then?”
“Why should we care if he sees us coming?”
Gerry gave Nadeden a concerned look, sighing, “This isn’t about just killing Magnus, Nadeden, and besides, you aren’t doing it.”
Davon nodded in agreement as he carefully helped Shanna carry a large ancient stone container into the dreadnought subbasement. “Gerry’s right, this needs to be public so the message is clear, but covert so no one knows it’s us. The original plan was to have you murder him and take the fall for us, but you’re far too valuable now.”
Nadeden stepped away from the frigid metal wall she was leaning against, scoffing in annoyance, “So that’s how it is, I get knocked up and suddenly I’m useless? I still have a few months till the thing pops out of me, y’know.”
Nadeden’s attitude sent a chill down Gerry, making him sink in on himself.
He had far too many mixed emotions to possibly make any sort of retaliatory statement.
Orson simply laughed as he lit candles on the rickety old table in front of the container. “I’m still surprised it even happened. I always assumed Gerry was more of the male persuasion if you know what I mean.”
Davon gave Orson a menacing glare in the candlelight.
Orson attempted to walk back the comment, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just didn’t think anyone was even attracted to him.”
Davon dropped his end of the container on Orson’s feet, leaving Shanna to set down her end alone as Gerry and Nadeden looked on in oblivious embarrassment.
“I don’t exactly like what you’re implying about the father of my child.” Nadeden coldly commented.
Orson pulled his foot out from under the container, hopping around in pain. “Alright! Alright! Point taken.”
Gerry huffed, quickly changing the subject back to the matter at hand after Orson finished his fit.
“So that container is what you sent Shanna to get?”
“And those head artifacts you told us about are inside of it?” Nadeden added onto Gerry’s question.
Davon traced his hands atop the runes of the container, searching for some way to open it.
“I couldn’t find a way to get it open, so I just got it out of there,” Shanna explained.
Davon drew away from the container in frustration. “That’s fine, Magnus will know what’s inside anyway. That’s how we’ll lure him out.”
“How do you even know these head things work the way you say they do?” Nadeden asked.
Davon shrugged, “Well, there are ancient writings about the heads being used to kill off the dwarves, but if you need further evidence…”
He stepped into the only corner of the subbasement that was untainted by candlelight.
“You all might want to step back. I’ve only been able to do this twice so far.” Davon held his hand out into the darkness.
Only Orson stepped back.
Davon snapped his fingers.
Then he snapped them again and again, until blue sparks ignited from them and a door of flame appeared.
Davon turned back to the others as the portal faded.
“Somehow, the first head made me able to do that. Now, are there any other questions before we talk strategy?”
“Why does it even matter to you if I die, Granix? I thought you just wanted to save Smith.”
“Well, it’s not exactly sanitary to keep a corpse inside my body.”
“Was that a joke?” Nadeden wonders in a flat tone, squinting her eye at Granix.
“Partially,” Granix answers with an odd amount of sincerity.
Nadeden rolls her shoulders, helplessly attempting to grow comfortable with her agony.
A pale arm reaches out beside her with an exhausted voice behind it, “Where am I?”
“Smith!” Nadeden swings herself around Smith, forcefully embracing him in a hug that only strengthens the pain of her injuries as Smith pushes her away.
“We didn’t know if you would ever wake up,” Granix explains to Smith, who stands with a surprising amount of ease for someone who has endured so much.
“How long have I been asleep?” He asks, rubbing the dark eyes of his ghastly white face.
Nadeden presses her palms against her stomach, fighting off the sudden sensation of the wound as she speaks, “About two days, maybe more, it’s hard to keep track.”
Smith looks at Nadeden’s battered body lying against the tree. “What happened to you?”
Nadeden smiles at Smith, happy but curious as to why he is concerned for her well-being, the same way she is for his. “You saw that portal take me away, right? Well, the guy on the other end of it wasn’t exactly friendly.”
The joking and dismissive tone flies over Smith’s head.
He has other questions.
“Were you attacked by a Machinist?”
“What? I thought the other Machinist was supposed to be on that ship?”
“That was a Mystic portal. Only Machinists who are Mystics should be able to summon them.”
Smith clarifies for both Nadeden and Granix, who has now created a more elaborate avatar out of the ground to better participate in the conversation, “Was the Machinist the pirates captured a Mystic?”
“Yes, but they told me they didn’t do it, and with the state they were in, I doubt they could have.”
“So I’m guessing they…” Nadeden chooses not to finish the sentence.
She already knows the answer to her question.
“They died, I only got to talk to them a little bit before the Rusting killed them.” Smith won’t tell Nadeden the full truth. He knows that he’ll come to regret not doing so, but he doesn’t even know how to explain it all, and he doubts she will believe him.
“I’m sorry.” Nadeden consoles him. Something that Smith was not expecting.
“What did they tell you before they died?”
Smith considers Nadeden’s question.
He wonders if he should lie again.
Then he wonders if the Mystic was lying. Of course they were. Smith tells themself.
Everything that happened on that ship was something out of a nightmare. The Mystic went through even worse on board it.
So they lied and told me there was no hope.
The Forge is safe.
It has to be.
“They told me that the Forge, my home planet, it’s fine. Safe. You were wrong, Granix.”
A suspicion worms its way into Granix. “Are you sure? They told me it was gone.”
Smith sighs, feverishly reassuring themself that it has to be alright.
It has to be.
I can’t be around these people forever. I can’t trust them.
The Forge is my only chance.
“Well, given how close they were to death, they could have been delusional or just saying things.”
Nadeden fully buys into the lie. She’s simply grateful Smith is alive, but Granix is still wary.
However, they will let it go for now. “Speaking of close to death, we need to get you help, Nadeden.”
“Get off my back, Granix. I’ve lived through worse. Just drop me off on the central Division planet. Then you can get Smith to this Forge place.” As she rejects any form of help or sympathy, Nadeden spits out her words with bloody coughs and chokes.
The sorry state of her doesn’t exactly help her case.
Why does she not want help, even though she helped me? Smith wonders.
It must be that death wish of hers.
He then recalls what the Mystic said about how their litany and their kindness should only apply to other Machinists.
That only certain lives can be precious.
Smith hates it, but for a moment, they consider that this could possibly be true. The moment soon passes, and Smith comes to a conclusion, “Granix is right, you saved my life plenty of times already. It's time I return the favor.”
“I didn’t ask you to be in debt to me, kid.”
“Then explain to me how someone as uncaring and violent as you would care about me.” Smith’s sudden assertiveness makes Nadeden uneasy, but the demand makes her infinitely more so.
“Why do you all just keep sitting around here asking why you matter to each other? What are you going to do next? Make a friendship circle and sing campfire songs while you slowly bleed to death? Come on, Nadeden, you’re better than this.” Nadeden’s hallucination of Gerry returns to her, as well as her anger towards him.
These people matter to me now. She stabs the thought into her mind, silencing the ghost for now.
“Alright, alright,” She sighs, “You wore me down, you didn’t ask for me to rescue you or to have Hadel transfer your consciousness into that body, so I suppose I’m not in the position to ask you to not help me.”
Smith smiles at her acceptance of the gesture. Nadeden wearily smiles back.
“Finally!” Granix states, “Now I won’t have to worry about having a corpse inside me.”
“Hey, don’t joke about things like that,” Smith calls out Granix, shyly holding their rocky apparition at fingerpoint.
Nadeden laughs through her agony at the exchange.
“What’s so funny?” both ask her simultaneously, unnerved by such an expression from her.
“Nothing.” She chuckles, “I guess you two just remind me of some old friends.”
Did she really just call us her friends?
Nadeden’s comment leaves Smith confused and suspicious.
She’s far less cold and mean than she used to be. Is she plotting something?
Smith is given little time to think as Granix announces that “I’m in orbit over a human planet, they may have medical care. Would you two care to visit it?”
“How do you know it’s a human planet?” Nadeden asks, attempting to stand without falling over.
“See for yourself.” Granix’s eye moves beneath the pair. The glassy, clear pupil opens to show Nadeden and Smith the planet below.
“Are those ships?” Smith points at the minuscule dots entering and exiting the orb like insects picking at a piece of food much larger than them. “Looks like it must be a trade port or something.” Nadeden’s observation leads her down a trail of caution.
“If it is a port, that means it’s gonna be controlled by someone and heavily monitored. It’ll be difficult to get into, but that also means they’re heavily populated, so they definitely have a medical facility. I’ll have to explain away my burns. They might also just know who I am from my face. I’m not sure if it's worth it.” She looks around the room for a decision on what to do.
“But what about when you get down there?” Granix asks with a planned caution equal to Nadeden’s.
“Then it might be worth it.”
Smith sighs at the remark, “We’ll need a plan.”
Nadeden coughs, limping off toward Granix’s head, “Who says I don’t already have one?”
The glow of the streetlamps was snuffed out at Magnus’s turn of the control lever.
He looked out onto the streets of Rome below the plaza balcony as the populace slowly but surely returned to their homes for the night.
“Have the arrangements been made for the celebration tomorrow?” Magnus asked, placing his hands on the metal railing, holding onto it almost as if it provided the same amount of control as the lever.
“They have been made, my lord.”
“Excellent, has Davon returned yet?”
“Yes, my lord, he’s at the spaceport. Should I send for him?” His guard responded, standing at attention.
Magnus turned to the spaceport. The shadow of the dreadnoughts was overtaking the wide metal field.
“No.” He huffed.
“Send for the Scorched Archer, there’s something I wish to discuss with her.”