Archive of Our Own ^beta

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File Selected: Entry 1 – 04:30, December 10th, 2136.mp3

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

The recording begins with a series of shuffling noises in the background, shaking the microphone all about before they end in a heavy, muted thud. The movements seem to have drawn some level of effort, with several deep breaths being taken before a voice begins to speak. It is clearly that of a Kolshian female, although it is substantially deeper than normal.

Blasted thing… work dammit!

Something wet hits the microphone several times.

Ah! Computer genius over here! It works!

The microphone booms again. A multitude of loud scraping noises follows as the microphone is presumably dragged across a metal surface.

Oh! Or at least it did… no, wait, it still does! Recording is a go! Uh, first impressions maybe not. How do I restart this thing…?

The audio cuts for five seconds exactly. Notably, it does not begin a new file.

Red button aaand — go! Hi! Hello! Welcome to my first… uh… first entry on this thing! Hopefully it won’t be my last entry too. For context, I’m so far bored out of my mind that I’ve managed to circumnavigate all the way back around and find my way back to it again, and I thought that hopefully doing something all professional and fancy will help me stay that way. ‘S basically a journal, like the kind all the greats kept! Oh, and, uh, I’m Jiyuulia. Thought I should get that out of the way before we go any further. If you couldn’t already tell, I’m not too experienced with this sort of thing. Just trying out a new hobby. Plus, it’s not like I’ve heard a real voice in days now, and I think I might be going just a little bit crazy over here, but there’s nobody else to talk to, so… I’ll be my own conversational partner! That’s not insane at all! You too, anonymous listener from the future. You can’t talk back, but that only makes you a better listener!

But I can already hear you asking questions anyway. Why are you, a piss-poor listener if you can’t stop asking questions even sans a voice or in fact any sort of physical presence whatsoever, my best option?

Well, to make it succinct, I’m sitting in a pile of straw matting in the middle of a cell, and it’s not like I have the opportunity to go out and make some new friends. Or talk to old friends. Or have friends at all, really.

…

Your silence is full of questions again. You truly are the worst listener ever. Lucky you that you’re still my only option, so fiiinne, I’ll tell you why. I was getting to that part anyway!

Unlike what some people might think, I don’t belong in any cell! It’s not my fault I’m here! I already left one place to convince people of that, thank you very much. Even if Sillis wasn’t my favorite place to live, it was a well-thought-out choice that I spent a whole week deciding on after Aafa made it clear I wasn’t welcome anymore.

…

No, and shut up, I’m not finished yet! You’re getting the long explanation!

Ahem, so, Sillis had several things going for it at the time. Maybe not now, but, y’know, at the time, it was great! The gravity was near-identical, so I didn’t have to deal with the classic spacer’s aneurysm after shifting to gees my body wasn’t used to. The climate was unfortunately pretty dry overall, but the wettest region that was still within my budget was moist enough to keep my skin from drying out too badly, even if I had to give up a few choice amenities for it. Even the natives were pretty grand, with the furless, scentless — to me, anyway, their pheromones are apparently plenty pungent to them — citizenry actually capable of not leaving everywhere they frequented smelling like a poorly maintained vacuum cleaner. The hard chitin shells were actually a bonus over back home: there was hardly any dust anywhere!

It also had two more important benefits: the jungle I chose to live in had a ridiculously thick canopy that kept the ground mostly out of the sunlight, and there was a job hiring there that allowed for remote work.

Twisted Telomeres — hilarious, I know — was one of the Tilfish people’s unique birthing centers, specifically one of the ones that catered towards prospective parents willing to drop a few of my annual salaries’ worth of cash on ensuring their child’s genetic makeup was among the best of the best. When I first saw the place was hiring, I applied immediately. After all, the finest genetics required the finest genetic engineers, and nobody does that better than us Kolshians! Even if they weren’t exactly hiring for genetic engineers and were really just paying for bottom-barrel technician jobs. There, I could at least pretend that I was using my degree, and hey! Maybe they’d promote me later after they saw my worth!

Or maybe the hiring guy simply saw all the correct checkboxes get filled by some desperate immigrant worker that he could exploit all he wanted in the hopes of making his department look good. Whatever. Point is, the guy didn’t even bother interviewing me; I just got a start date and a computer software package to install. Worse, it was one of those jobs where you sit around in your chair for hours jiggling your mouse and doing whatever you can to ensure you don’t fall asleep in front of your webcam instead of pretending to do something. In my case, I did exactly that until the computer that was actually doing my job couldn’t determine for sure the best set of genes to isolate in the thousands of prospective eggs and required me to approve its best estimate. In other words, it was both intensely boring and a total waste of my degree, but hey, it paid the bills… even if that meant living paycheck to paycheck in a cold, dark room I couldn’t afford to keep heated while waiting for my computer to make a noise.

At least the cold wasn’t much of a problem for me.

Sure, it was a bit lonely at times, being paid to sit in a room for twelve hours a day, six out of seven days a week, but it wasn’t all bad. Video games on the other half of the monitor and scrolling around on my pad just outside of the webcam’s viewing angle provided enough entertainment to avoid complete insanity, and the underground studio apartment I’d gotten had a really nice heated soaking pond illegally dug into a side wall attached to the bedroom. It had clearly been dug out by a sprier, more DIY type of Kolshian than I, and while I did kind of fear eventually getting caught with it there someday, not having to drag myself out to go jump in a local park’s water feature every day saved a lot of both time and public embarrassment on my part.

Now, normally such a reclusive lifestyle would be grounds for an unwanted visit from the local exterminator guilds back on Aafa, and Sills isn’t much different in that regard, but the thing with exterminators and less-than-legal immigrants — you’ll understand — is that it’s hard to fail some tracker’s social interaction quota if they aren’t tracking you at all. Sure, they almost certainly knew I was there, but actually having to go and do the paperwork to arrest me was more trouble than it was worth so long as I continued to contribute something to society.

Still, though, their mercy only went so far, and so I still needed to be seen outside sometimes. My monthly shopping trips and biweekly excursions were planned not just to avoid my complete descent into insanity, but also to ensure that my neighbors weren’t calling in wellness checks. Even if the Tilfishes’ alien nature and my own funds — or lack thereof — meant there wasn’t much that I could do, the various activities that were available were still more fun than sitting around in my soaking pool all day or scrolling around on my pad even more.

Of course, my being seen led to other reasons for the exterminators to show up, but, aheh, I’m still getting to that.

When the humans so rudely interrupted the galactic scene, the mostly rational Tilfish didn’t fall for their thin veneer of lies. After the humans colluded with the Arxur to destroy the Gojid Cradle, the Tilfish promptly joined an attack force the Kraktol put together to eliminate the threat to their homes and families like any regular prey should. Unpracticed as they were in the art of actually planning such an assault, though, they didn’t really do the best job of it. Despite all expectations that the humans would continue to use fiendishly clever traps and had literally just worked with the Dominion, the Tilfish authorities treated their human opponents as an exterminator force might treat a wild predator. That is, they left immediately with their entire strike force and with no contingency plans whatsoever.

That didn’t exactly go well. Such shortsightedness was taken advantage of quickly and cruelly by the humans, and they leveraged their Arxur allies to both destroy the bombing fleet and run destabilizing heavy cattle raids against Tilfish territories. The few remaining ground teams left on Sillis did everything they could, but the total lack of any orbital defenses when the Arxur came knocking left those of us on the planet taking heavy casualties.

I was out for my monthly grocery trip when it happened. My pantry was only so large, and everyone — yes, myself included — needs food and other consumables to survive. The predictable happened, and one minute I was trying to find an exotic fruit from back home to try and calm my nerves, and the next I was an exotic catch for some excited prepubescent Arxur with a plasma rifle to my back.

It both was and wasn’t my fault. The hiding spot I had chosen was really very good. Any regular Kolshian could have squeezed themselves around the bend in the store’s air intake so well they would have never found me, even with those noses of theirs. It wouldn’t have been all that useful to the Tilfish, with their hard shells pretty much negating any chance they had at getting very far, but that only made it even more unlikely that any Arxur would waste their time poking around in there and therefore made it an even better hiding spot!

Then again, a regular Kolshian could’ve used the several minutes of extended warning time we got from one of the last competent ground teams still left on the planet and fled the scene far before the harvesting zone ever got to where I had been at.

I, in my critical mistake, am not a regular Kolshian.

No, I am just a little under three and a half times the size of the typical model. I don’t even get the gigantism excuse that’s at least understandable to the less panicky races. No, all I have to blame for my condition is a hearty appetite, a series, of rare, species-specific glandular disorders that, due to a fluke of how the Kolshian immune system works, were — and still are — ludicrously expensive to even treat, much less cure, and the whole reason I chose my degree in the first place: one of the worst sets of genetics nature is still dealing. My mind is fine, nothing more than allegations towards any sort of Predator Disease, thankfully, but I didn’t manage to avoid much else. It’s only due to extremely rare and advanced medical technologies and a rigorous neonatal treatment schedule after my hatching that my survival was at all possible, and even then it was a near thing. Unfortunately, that’s where it stopped. As I learned pretty quickly into my education, genetic modification has more to do with still malleable embryos and especially the pre-fertilization stuff than post-birth children and adults, so in most cases you were stuck with what you got. Now, most parents would have tried for some level of gene therapy or even just full-blown abortion before it ever got as bad as it did, but when your birth is the responsibility of parents who didn’t consider the ‘unnecessary effort’ of embryonic screening to be worth the trouble, you get stuck with the black genes.

As for the physical aspects, aside from the need to buy oversized furniture — as everyone totally should anyway, a Mazic-sized bed is a luxury absolutely worth the credits — constant issues with too-thin doorways, seats, you name it, the worst aspect of my grotesque form still has to be the difficulty standing and general lack of mobility suck a form provides. You would think the occasional metabolic health crisis would be higher on the list, but I’ve gotten pretty good at blasting those away with my own custom cocktails of over-the-counter drugs and forgetting they were ever there. My doctors seem to be even more likely than I am to have a heart attack when they see me step into the room, and there was one notable time where one actually did after I showed him what I was taking for the crisis of the month, but I’ve never been given any professional advice I could actually afford to follow and I don’t really feel too bad most of the time, so…

Plus, even if I could find a few spare years and the windfall of cash to get the required surgery and weight loss plans complete — and ignoring the overwhelmingly high mortality risk and how even in the case of a miracle, autoimmune disorders would bind me to a sterilized room for the rest of my life — I’d still be unable to take advantage of my newfound mobility. If you remember my mention of the low-light nature of my home, well, that’s both important as well as inapplicable to most shopping centers, or in fact anywhere else that is all that much fun to visit. Even ignoring the issues my weight put forward, going outside is hard for me.

As you know if you’ve ever seen one of us, the normal variety of us Kolshians come in brilliant hues of purple unlike anything else in the Federation. If you’re particularly lucky, you might get to be a shimmering blue or even a rare and exotic pink instead. I didn’t get that. Instead, my genes decided I needed to have no such pigment at all, and that a stark albino white was in fashion. And while it’s striking and I can’t even honestly say that it looks bad, skin pigmentation is also important for things like ‘not burning near-instantly in UV light’ and other things that apply to life underneath a star rather than an LED, so I can’t say I approve of their choice.

I can still go outside at night, of course, but most places aren’t open at odd hours of the night, and those places that are aren’t quite selling groceries, if you catch my drift. So, instead of having my skin do it for me, I have to make do with thick artificial garments to cover my worthless nuclei. Such things, already a specialty good, aren’t easy to find in the exceptional sizes I need them in to actually cover my entire body as well as in the specially treated fabrics us Kolshians need if we don’t want the cloth to immediately suck all the mucus right out of our skin. They’re actually rather comfortable — and stylish, if my opinion matters — but they escalate my already attention-grabbing, out-of-place appearance into something akin to an undiscovered sapient species deciding to turn up in public. Or, in other words, they are an exceptional way to both get an exterminator escort for the rest of my excursion as well as generate an awkward and unnecessarily hostile discussion over why I can’t show them the permanent resident’s ID that I totally have. You may see why I made my supply runs as infrequently as possible to compensate.

But yeah, getting back to it, uh… bigger pipe, bigger body — it doesn’t work, and I took way too long figuring that one out. You know the drill from here: Arxur preteen comes bursting through the door all prepared for a thorough search of everywhere he could get his Yonfra seed-sized brain to check, only to find a three-foot-wide Kolshian trying and failing to hide behind a one-foot-wide support pillar thirty feet from the door. Crying and screaming loudly in abject terror too, just in case.

I was marched out the door and up the ramp into the waiting ship outside in under two minutes.

Well, marched is perhaps somewhat of a strong word for it; I don’t really have the thigh space for anything much past my usual waddle. This was definitely faster than that, so we’ll call it a fast waddle, as much ‘fast’ applies to anything I do outside of making a fool of myself. It definitely wasn’t fast in comparison to the others being moved up the ramp, but that one is actually a little unfair considering that most of my fellow prey going up the ramp were being carried or dragged up while bound in various bits of cable or rope. My captor actually tried to do that with me for about half a second before thinking better of it, but coupled with the multicolored streams of blood making their way down the ramp as well as the fact that a good chunk of those cables were the only reason the bodies they were attached to could be carried in one package, I had no illusions about what would happen if I tried to take advantage of that ounce of leniency.

Those of us who were (un)fortunate enough to be alive for the process were moved deep into the belly of the cattle ship. Within a minute of my arrival at the big room we stopped in, the lurching of the floor beneath me and the echoing rumble of the retracting ramp behind us confirmed takeoff of the vehicle. We were in space and flying back towards Arxur territory before another two minutes had passed. In retrospect, I must admit that such a rapid turnaround time was actually rather impressive, although I did not have the mental capacity to appreciate it at the time.

Less impressive were the safety features aboard the flight. Between the lack of anything to hold on to and the, ahem, janky maneuvers of the ship’s pilot as they swerved around any remaining ordinance the ground teams were still putting out, all of the prey on board the ship fell over within the first ten seconds, and all but the luckiest of us were being flung about in at least some regard. Even for those few who weren’t suddenly aerial hazards, they had to contend with the flying bodies of the rest of us who were. I saw one particularly unlucky Tilfish who had lodged one of his legs in a groove on the floor in a desperate attempt to get a grip have his whole leg torn off when another one slammed into him from behind after being bumped by a third.

In a sick twist of fate, my physical features actually rendered me one of the safest prey passengers on board, with my ridiculous inertia and soft padding mitigating the worst of any forces trying to harm me. Of course, this only exaggerated the danger I posed to everyone else, like a sea of personal vehicles trying to compete with an out-of-control train. When the ship did a full 90° flip and flung all of us at the walls, my white skin got a new multicolored paint job, the universe’s way of reminding me of what I was just in case I was starting to feel more appreciative of my unique features.

So anonymous listener, before you go getting any ideas about me lying about missing out on Predator Disease earlier with all these little jokes I’m making now, I’d ask that you understand my mental state at the time. I’m drastically underselling my experiences here, but midway through all this I kinda just underwent a half-catatonic state to avoid having to identify the various colors of blood streaked across my body or acknowledge the… physical sensations associated with crushing the latest victims of my inertia. A less tense form and enough brain fog to hide from the world was about the best I could do; plus, Kolshian vocal cords aren’t really rated for screaming at max volume for hours.

It’s a bit of a mixed blessing, to be honest. I can tell you exactly what was on my shopping list earlier that morning, but I can’t tell you the path I took to get into the ship, make a guess at how many people I… most definitely killed, or even tell you how long the journey was before the ship pulled into the farm-station. It makes me feel guilty even saying it, but I don’t really think I could stand knowing. What I do remember of the experience beyond the first few minutes involves a whole lot of screaming and crying in a dozen languages from a thousand alien throats. Not helping the whole matter was the series of Arxur watching us from a long fiberglass window that spanned the length of the room as they buckled themselves into stable positions and spent the flight drooling at the sight of us. Extra not-helping involved the several that were ogling my less-than-svelte form specifically, which strengthened my brain fog from murky swamp to cloud jungle levels.

An undefined stretch of time later, the jolt of the ship docking and the rush of air to fill our quickly rarefying atmosphere with something somehow even less palatable was enough to shock me into something approaching cognition. Immediately ruining that sense of civility were the Arxur guards filing out from the small sliding indents in the walls to our sides and rear. While thinking about it now I can say that the walls must’ve obviously had sliding doors that were designed to do that, at the time it seemed as though the Arxur had eaten through the walls themselves in their impatience to get to us, only held back from taking the final step by the promise of retribution from whatever passed as a base commander amongst the Arxur. I was ‘lucky’ enough to be both close enough to the front and hard enough to move aside or trample that, even with my slow speed, I didn’t lag too far behind in the resulting stampede and end up yet another corpse on the floor.

Stampeding is hard, though, if you don’t have anywhere for the stampede to go. City planners back home knew to funnel stampedes down widening hallways to minimize casualties, and it seemed the Dominion is an expert on the topic as well. Our disorganized group of panicked animals quickly found ourselves boxed in by a new wall to the front, this time made of a huge line of what appeared to be a surprisingly clinical and orderly — if still durable enough to be siege-worthy — set of booths from some dystopian novel’s idea of what a spaceport customs and immigration center was supposed to look like. They were even complete with turnstiles!

I don’t really want to use the word, but our group ‘calmed’ down enough to stop running well before we crashed headlong into the barricade and involved the small army of Arxur manning the tills. By then, while I was still not perfect by any means, I had managed to collect a little more of myself, and as such I can remember this part of the journey fairly well.

The most important feature of the whole place beyond the booths themselves was the series of tunnels lining the walls behind them. As our disorganized huddled mass was processed through the booths, the ones completing their screenings were lead by teams of armed guards down one of the various tunnels. Light observation as I got closer was enough to spot little caricatures of different Federation species above some of the tunnels, with those passing their screenings being walked in groups down them and beyond where I could see. Other tunnels had no markers at all, and the only ones that came in and out of those were more Arxur guards.

The worst tunnel, however, was the one marked with a little red triangle. An ominous heat emanated from deeper within the tunnel, and the sick or otherwise too seriously injured candidates who didn’t pass their screenings were being dragged screaming down the tunnel. Even from my position on the processing floor, I could feel waves of heat flash from the tunnel from time to time on a semi-regular basis, suggesting a destination that I didn’t really want to ponder further. I still refrain from it now.

Owing to my place near the front, it didn’t take long before I reached a booth myself. I prepared myself to be bunched up with the one or two other Kolshians I had caught glimpses of elsewhere on the floor, or even be sent down the fire hall as a result of my worthless genetics, but it was quickly apparent from the little yellow flashing light at the top of the booth and the clearly annoyed and yet slightly awestruck expression on my ‘border guard’s’ face that I was yet again an outlier.

The wait was long enough that the line behind me got redirected over to another booth, but alongside the expected embarrassment that is me existing in public, I was silently grateful for the extended time I got to remain avoidant of my fate as a feast for an Arxur or ten. Even if they couldn’t be half-assed to provide a seat and my legs were really starting to ache at this point, it was still a better fate than being eaten by far.

After about two minutes, an Arxur with a sash over his chest came marching over as my inspector gave a salute before they both retreated deeper inside the booth. I wasn’t privy to the whole thing, but the discussion inside was loud enough between the hissing and gnashing of teeth to get the gist of it. From such lovely sentence fragments as “too heavy for standard meathooks” and “wouldn’t be held responsible for it crushing the other cattle,” it wasn’t hard to infer what they were talking about.

After a few more minutes, the sash-wearing Arxur stepped out of the booth, some consensus obviously having been reached. He approached the line of guards that were standing towards the back wall with the tunnels, and after a moment’s discussion with a group of them, one stepped out towards me. It appeared that I would be getting my own personal tour guide! He took me down a path that had been unused so far, something I would have been okay with had it not been for one small detail — the tunnel’s entrance was topped with a picture of a Mazic.

Body image issues thoroughly reinforced, my tour guide and I turned a thousand or so corners and walked far enough that I was, even after a necessary break or two I was graciously allowed on account of it being easier to wait than forcing me along, more than a little winded and definitely lost by the time we stopped in front of an unusual cell. For one, it was empty of other occupants, though that wasn’t unusual after the mosh pits we had passed at the beginning of our journey. A giant pile of random detritus, mostly hay, sat in the middle of the room to act as some sort of bed. Other various pieces of trash lay about the rest of the cell, as though the last occupant hadn’t had the time to finish packing up before leaving. Numerous indents and holes in the wall were present, clearly intended for more unmentionable activities. The cells most prized feature, however, was the second barred wall it sported in the back, opposite the one from the hallway. Beyond it lay a circular pit, with other cells much like this one encircling it and going up some four stories high. The first floor was smooth steel, with barbed wire lined underneath the second floor cells as though it were to prevent escape. The pit was also full of even more pieces of detritus, though the pervasive stench of rot and waste indicated that it was of a more organic kind than even my new bed. And I got to live right next to it!

I could tell why the neighborhood was abandoned; not even my tour guide found the slum appealing. I know that tasteful bit of information from the way he promptly abandoned any attempt at dignity to tightly hold his mouth closed instantly after we entered the miasma and fiddled as quickly as possible as he could with the electronic lock on the front of the door before he waved me in, sealed the door, and promptly left the place as fast as his feet could carry him.

Counting the number of sleep cycles since then, it’s been nearly a week and I’ve seen nary a soul since. I can’t really say that’s all that surprising, seeing as how I can count the total Mazic population on Sillis, and by extent the whole of Tilfish territories, on a single tentacle — it’s one, the ambassador — but that doesn’t mean that I’m not extremely lonely out here. I’ve got the former denizens of the pit for company, but they haven’t exactly been exciting neighbors.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t wish Arxur hospitality on anyone, and the fewer that have to experience it firsthand, the better. But while I’m used to being unwillingly left alone for long stretches of time and most company doesn’t tend to react all that positively to my presence anyway, that doesn’t change that it would still be nice to have someone to talk to. I’m lucky — there’s that word again — as it is to have had this pad and this nice little wind-up charger stuffed in my coat pocket, and doubly so when you consider that it was neither destroyed on the ride here nor did the Arxur see fit to frisk me of my belongings beforehand. I guess they don’t have very many guests in clothes.

I’d be even luckier if it were something I could actually use to get out of here, but y’know, small victories.

So far the only entertainment I’ve gotten down here has come from either it or whatever the meal of the day is, delivered via the fancy schmancy automated feeding system my hosts didn’t bother informing me of. The blasted thing came shooting out of the wall with no warning while I was standing right in front of it — ironically trying to figure out why there were lines on the wall — and I swear if I were any less padded it would’ve broken bones or just straight up killed me rather than just bruised the snot out of me for the next three days. The food it’s delivered has all been pretty bland, and none of the bruised or otherwise less-than-optimal fruits have been sorted out beforehand, so it’s not great. The only positive things I have to say about it are that the portions have all been Mazic-sized, and that it is something to do rather than sit and stare at walls all day. There’s even enough water in the trough to keep up a healthy skincare soaking routine, so I’m not even drying out! All that entertainment hasn’t helped my waistline any — though my hosts may have a different opinion on that — but that wasn’t going anywhere good beforehand, and with my lifespan measured in weeks if not days without medicine it isn’t like it’ll matter much in the end anyway.

I can feel my mind kinda starting to slip a bit as I wait for my captors to finally haul me off for a feast, but after a week to mull over it, it’s hard to be too depressed about everything finally being over. It’s not like I was having much fun before, after all. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die, but what happens… happens, y’know?

For now, though, all I get to do is plant my posterior on the floor and lie forgotten in some cell while I monologue about my impending death to a recording program on a pad I had to spend three hours with the charger crank just to get to use in what has got to be the most exercise I’ve gotten since they threw me in here. My whole life, mostly uninteresting and uneventful and with no real contributions to anything of note, a twenty-seven year buildup of nothing much, just to culminate in a recording on a pad that will end up destroyed in some flesh processor far before anyone actually gets to listen to it.

I should have bought the long-range model.

It’s for the best, I guess. Such nonchalance towards the end of my own life is probably a sign of Predator Disease, and there’s definitely enough taint in here to infect me several times over. It’s not like the Arxur are going to treat me for it, and it’s been made abundantly clear to me that I don’t have anything else to contribute to my society with either my brains or my loins, so…

I don’t want to face what I’ll become. It’s nice that I won’t have to.

…Yeah.

Jiyuulia hums for a minute. It’s a simple melody, nothing much to it. Purely to pass the time.

If I was back in that store, would I have chosen a different course of action? Maybe grabbed one of the bottles of bleach over in aisle three an— AAAHHH!

A loud crash is heard in the background. A new voice, baritone and gravelly, yells out:

“Rot down there with the rest of the defects, runt!”

A loud slamming sound is heard midway through the sentence. The sound of claws clicking on the floor starts, but fades out after a few seconds as whoever is walking gets too far away to be picked up by the microphone any longer. Jiyuulia breathes heavily into the microphone for about thirty seconds, clutching the device against her chest in a way that muffles most of the rest of the audio. No other sounds are heard.

Aah! Ah. Hah. Well, then. Seems my self-preservation hasn’t given out altogether after all. Sorry about that, listener. I have company.

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

The recording begins with somebody shuffling around on hard tile. After two seconds, the noises stop, and a voice begins to speak. It is the same voice as the one that begun the last entry; the one that identified itself as Jiyuulia.

Hoo, I’m getting faster with these! Aren’t you so proud, listener?

…

Yes, yes, I hear your incessant questioning again. How you manage to do it without any sort of voice or physical presence is beyond me! Anyway, you ask, and quite pertinently if I say so myself: Why am I bothering with you again when there’s a perfectly fine bit of real-world company to act as my captive audience?

Well, simple questions, simple answers: It’s dead!

A short period passes. More shuffling noises are heard. Something is shaking the microphone, causing the surrounding air to rush by and create a sort of whooshing noise.

I know, right?! I’ve had low expectations before, and never lower than before my staying here, but my hosts have managed to disappoint at every turn so far, and they haven’t begun to turn around now. It’s almost exciting to see how they’ll ruin whatever comes next. I’d get out my video camera to show off their latest botched operation, but it’s pretty dark in here and I don’t think you’d be able to see anything. Plus, that mode eats through my battery like my hosts would me, and I’ve already explained that the less cranking I have to do, the better.

Lemme back up. I will admit wholeheartedly that I was excited at the end of my last entry for company that exceeded your own abysmal quality, listener. I might be coming down with a case of Predator Disease for even thinking it, but after a week in here I would’ve taken just about anything that could talk back, predator or not. Maybe he’d have some new insults for me that weren’t about the obvious this time, who knows? Sure, I would still rather they threw down just about anything else other than another Arxur preteen. They should know I don’t have the best history with those; I might still be dealing with unaddressed trauma! Plus, if I take things a tad more seriously, context suggests that whatever that thing did, the Arxur thought it was so bad that he needed to be thrown down a four-story pit surrounded by barbed wire.

So, yeah, not a good sign. No sympathy for Mr. New Neighbor.

My willingness to talk hardly matters anyway. Thing fell four stories… and then landed bad if you ask me. I wasn’t watching the fall so much as I was huddling into myself and praying for survival — you’d know, you were there — but after getting over myself and going over to take a look, I could see its neck was at kind of a weird angle that I haven’t seen on any of the other Arxur, and it certainly doesn’t look healthy. It probably had to have landed on the upper half of its body to produce that result, if not the head itself. However it happened, it’s been at least an hour, and my neighbor has yet to move from being out cold on the floor, or whatever passes as a floor in that cesspit.

…

What’s that, listener? You want a better description? Well, aren’t you greedy! I guess it does kind of fit with the whole ‘documentation’ thing I’m doing, so fine. I already threw up twice looking at its fresh new corpse, but just for you listener, I’ll give it another go.

The microphone starts shaking again. Something peels and tears off the floor as Jiyuulia stands. It is not a silent procedure, either for her or for whatever it is that was beneath her. What exactly the mystery object was is unclear, though it sounds organic in nature. Regardless, Jiyuulia seems all too eager to leave it behind, her steps ringing out on the steel surface beneath her.

Whew. That gets harder every time…

Oh, sorry. Here goes your description, so get your ugly drawing skills out: I’m too far out to see if it’s still breathing, but there’s no visible movement from where I’m at. The neck is still a tthat weird angle I mentioned earlier, looking almost like it’s bent twice. It might be a natural position that the Arxur can assume should they want to, but I certainly haven’t noticed it before now. It’s laying on its side. There is a small piece of bone sticking out of the arm closer to the floor, just below the elbow. It must’ve landed on it during the fall, because it’s a bloody wound, red blood and white pus mixing and pooling on the dried stuff below. Probably fractured instantly. Oh, and the thing’s skinny, too. Like really skinny, not your stereotypical count-my-ribs skinny. It’s as if you took one of those professional body builders, the type of guy who never elaves the gym while rocking pecks larger than my head and a body fat so low I’d guess it were negative, and then peeled all that muscle and tone away until all you’re left with is some poor shrunken husk of a creature. That skinny. And yes, since you won’t shut up about it, I can count his individual ribs and vertebrae from my cell some forty feet from the guy. Yes, some of the ribs are obviously broken, who could have possibly guessed?

…

Okay, so maybe he gets a little sympathy. Not every day I see someone in an even worse state than my own.

Jiyuulia sighs.

Thing’s damn pitiful, okay? It’s a predator, so yeah, I’d pity him way more if it were actually some real kid with real feelings, but it’s kinda like that time you found baby predator pups under your backyard deck. Kinda cute in some messed-up way, but thinking about it isn’t something you wanna do while the Exterminator is pulling the trigger, so you don’t.

…No? That’s just me?

Fine, yeah, a bit of a specific analogy. Sure, twenty-four years ago, little three-year-old me found some cute little fluffy animals under her dad’s deck that she thought might want to be her friends, only to get a huge dressing down after freaking the hell out of her dad when she tried to show him. Predators are deceptive, and I’ve learned better than to just pick up random animals since, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still remember the sounds they made as they were banished back to whatever plane of hell they came from. I don’t dispute that the Exterminators are all admirably brave, and that’s certainly what everyone talks about when they mention what they mention what they like about them, but I know that however bravery plays a role in their daily lives, it pales in comparison to their greatest asset: their sheer willpower. Willpower to fight predator deception, and to pull the trigger when they must, regardless of the consequences. It didn’t click immediately, and it didn’t for years, but I learned that day that I wasn’t just physically unfit to be one.

Whatever the case is with me and little pocket predators, Mr. New Neighbor is even worse. Unlike the fluff-balls under the deck, he wouldn’t just be eating the birds dancing around on the feeder. Any extra meat stuck to those bones would come at the expense of someone else’s. And—

Jiyuulia retches.

OOAAH something just came out of his arm! Nope nope nope, description over! Not looking any longer!

Loud bangs and thuds sound as Jiyuulia stumbles away. A final thud, louder than the rest, caps off the racket. When Jiyuulia’s voice resumes, the microphone is muffled, buried under something soft.

Aalll righty then. Well. I, uh, I need to sit down for a minute. I mean, I’m already sitting down, but— oh, forget it. You don’t mind if I pause this for a short break, do you, listener? I guarantee you that anything I say now isn’t gonna be something you want to hear.

The recording cuts. When it resumes, a new voice is screaming loudly in the background. It is gravelly and deep. Jiyuulia herself has to yell into the microphone to be heard over it. Audio quality is poor as a result, but remains far from unintelligible.

Aaand I’m back. So is the neighbor, as I’m sure you can hear. Apparently he’s less dead than he first appeared. It’s been…. foouuur hours, maybe, since I paused the entry? Assuming that’s right, then about two hours after that, he woke up and started screaming his lungs out. He did that for about ten minutes, then passed out again. Since then, he’s been on a fairly regular interval of about twenty minutes of unconsciousness followed by a ten-minute screaming period. It’s understandable — given his injuries, I’d be screaming too — but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Even though I know it’s coming from an emotionless husk of a soulless predator, it sounds too much like someone screaming their last moments out for the world to hear to be comfortable, y’know?

Of course you do, you can hear it too.

I’m not totally heartless myself, and I’ve little better to do, so I did try to reach out to the guy during one of his screaming sessions earlier, and then again a few times after that. First I just tried speaking normally, then shouting when that didn’t work. Calming tones, anger, fear, none of it pulls any reaction from the guy. He just keeps screaming and screaming. And it’s not like he didn’t hear me over himself, either. Contrary to how it might seem, my chest isn’t all flab — just most of it. Kid may have a real set of lungs on him, but I can still definitely make myself heard when I want to be. It’s pretty obvious something is wrong here, but what? Were he not an Arxur, I’d say it’s probably something related to Predator Disease, if somewhat of a benign version relative to the murder sprees some patients go off on. Since he is, though, I haven no idea what it could be. Can predators get Predator Disease?

But yeah, nothing I’ve said has managed to grab his attention so far, so all I’ve got to go off of is speculation about why he’s here. For starters, it’s more than obvious that he isn’t here by choice. I can judge by the lack of non-Arxur bones on the floor of the pit that it’s used for Arxur prisoners and Arxur prisoners exclusively. It’s also pretty obvious from the solid steel walls and flooring, the barbed wire surrounding the top of the pit, and even the choice to avoid putting cells around the first floor to prevent climbing out that the pit isn’t just a prison of convenience, either; it’s been purpose-built, intentionally on this station’s blueprints from the beginning. From that, I can then reason that the Arxur manning this station must have a regular need to throw other members of their own race into some sort of internment.

But that just opens up more questions! For one, I don’t see any way out of that pit. There’s no lines on the walls to indicate there being any of those blastaway doors like there were elsewhere on the station, either, so if anyone’s coming out then they’d need to be lifted out from the top of the pit. Judging by the number of rotted corpses on the floor and the total lack of infrastructure to lift anything, that doesn’t seem to happen very often. Also, seeing that most of the corpses don’t appear to be those of aged Arxur, they don’t appear to be all that focused on keeping them alive after throwing them in, either. Even so, they are notably not killing them immediately, so they do seem to want something from them. Then again, they are throwing them down a four-story pit onto steel and they haven’t thrown any food down either, so it doesn’t look like they were too invested in keeping them alive, either. Why they aren’t just shooting and eating them, throwing them down the fire hall with the rest of the undesirables, or even just spacing them if the Arxur have sensibilities surrounding cannibalism remains… frustratingly unclear.

Whatever it’s for, I think I do, after some time spent mulling over it, understand the cell placement. Not only is it torture for us occupants of the cells to have to deal with the stench and occupants of the prison pit, but I can imagine the experience for the Arxur prisoners in the pit isn’t good either. Starving while having the largest prey they know of constantly in view but forever out of reach must be horrible. And designing a torture chamber where the occupants torture each other on their own accord without the need for a torturer would both fit with the cruelty of the Arxur and be an efficient way to save both time and effort. It just makes sense.

What doesn’t, though, is why they would go through all this effort to torture an Arxur at all. I get the reasoning behind torturing the Mazics: they’re so big that if any one of them were a soldier or otherwise brave individual, he or she could cause some serious damage before our hosts could subdue him. Broken, obedient prey would be both safer and far easier to deal with. But none of that matters with the prisoners in the pit! While I haven’t heard of any Federation successes in breaking an Arxur down — though current evidence certainly seems to point to it being possible — I can’t think of any reasons the Dominion would want to do it. What use would they have for the Dominion in that state?

I just have to admit that I’m in a position where I can’t really find answers to those questions without information. And since my new neighbor isn’t exactly in the mood to be informative—

The screaming stops. Jiyuulia’s voice returns to a normal volume, though it’s a bit hoarse from having to yell into the microphone.

—especially when he’s passed out like that. Good thing too, I was getting worried he wouldn’t stop for a second there. Gone on much longer and I might’ve started screaming too.

…

Well, listener, you’ve been a great distraction, but I think I’m going to go use my twenty minutes of blissful silence to explore my other entertainment options. That is, I plan on going to go eat for the fifth time this rest cycle. Today’s option is this red grain that isn’t all bruised and rotten like a lot of the other stuff they’ve given me, and I can honestly say it’s actually rather decent. I don’t know what it is, but as long as it’s good for a peaceful meal and twenty minutes to think, who cares what it is? You can wait that long, right listener?

The recording pauses for a whole two days. When it resumes, Jiyuulia’s voice is strained.

Hey, listener. I’d like to apologize for the length of that pause, but I don’t really have the energy to make an proper attempt at it right now. You, if you exist, are probably lounging about on some plush chair in front of the big screen, idling away your time by listening to some waste of space Kolshian’s final notes you somehow came across. I doubt you’re an Arxur, considering how they don’t seem to pay us prey creature’s words any attention when we’re standing right in front of them, so I see no reason one would listen to my recordings. And if you aren’t an Arxur, then you must be Federation. If you’re a Fed, then unless that ship ride was weeks long or you’re another immigrant, then I doubt you’re a Kolshian, either. You’re probably a mammal.

I’ve never felt this way before, but right now? Words can hardly express how jealous I am of that.

Anyways, I left you on hold for a snack break, right? Well, I can assure you that I won’t be leaving for any more of those.

…

Oh, I can hear it already. You’re assuming now that it had something to do with that red grain? Maybe it somehow didn’t agree with me, and I had a bad reaction? Maybe it was literally poisonous? Maybe the Arxur did something to it?

Jiyuulia gasps.

Or maybe, stars forbid, it wasn’t grain at all, and I’ve been soiled by bloodied food, or even eaten flesh itself? That I’ve made another step towards predator-hood, and that I managed to fail yet another basic and easy tenant of being a good person?

…

Well, no. Frankly, I’m hurt that you’d think that. Is your opinion of me so poor that you would think I would fall for any of that? My digestive system, if you somehow missed it, is the one thing about me that is exemplary. I’m not so stupid that I can’t identify flesh or blood before putting it in my mouth either. No, it’s merely that the Arxur’s forgetfulness left me one last nice thing they hadn’t taken away, so of course I just had to get rid of it for them.

I broke the trough.

Let me explain: Mazic-sized troughs are really, really big. The sides of them are too tall for me to reach over, so I shifted around some of the pieces of debris in my cell and took advantage of some cutaways in the side for the railing to make a makeshift stairway. Normally stairs and I don’t get along very well, but I don’t have any other way up there and I do like food, so…

Anyways, the last bit of the stairwell before I reach the top was on the corner of the trough, one of the two furthest from the wall it shoots out of. Attached to it is a long steel cable that the system uses to draw the trough back into the wall at the end of the day. Maybe it’s the weight I’ve gained, maybe it was always bound to happen, but two days ago, when I stepped there, the cable snapped and the whole trough crashed to the floor. I fell too, but I fell forwards into the water with an ungraceful belly flop rather than back down the stairs, so I was fine.

Obviously, when the day ended, the trough did not shoot back into the wall and remained in a heap on the floor. Since I’ve yet to see a technician — or have anyone remember I’m here at all actually — it’s still there, cables running pointlessly along the floor. And without it working, I haven’t gotten any replacement food or water. I suspect there may still be food and water coming out of a pipe above where the trough was supposed to sit at night, but shifting the wreckage aside to get back there is impossible. I may as well be trying to lift a car.

I’m sure you understand what this means. Mazic-sized proportions are huge, larger than even I can eat, but I eat a lot and I had managed to finish over half of it by the time I was going back for fifths. The following day I ate the rest, and while I still have some water I am totally out of food. If you remember my jealousy, well, there’s the reason. If you don’t get what I’m talking about, well, let me enlighten you.

If you’ve ever had a pet fish, listener, you know how difficult aquatic creatures are to keep alive. Regular feeding intervals, water temperatures, pH level, all of it has to remain in careful balance to keep one alive. As a semi-aquatic creature, us Kolshians are still a bit fragile relative to all you land-life. I may not look it, but I will starve in five or so days without food, and dry out in two without water. I still burn fat when running a calorie deficit like everyone else, but my liver isn’t storing nearly the excess glucose yours does. The brain can’t run off of fat like most other organs can, so without at least a little glucose intake a Kolshian will starve far before most Federation races would.

Ironic, then, that out of all the ways I could have gone, it’ll be starvation. Indirectly caused by eating too much, no less. It’s not quite what I would have predicted.

At least I have another thing in common with the neighbor now. Not that I wanted to.

Jiyuulia sighs. The microphone falls further away from the voice. The muffled tone suggests it’s resting on that same soft surface as earlier.

At least he hasn’t been screaming as often lately. He hasn’t gotten any thinner — though I’m not certain such a thing could be possible with how thin he is already — and some of the least rotten corpses are a little gnawed at, so I think he’s been moving around, though I haven’t personally seen him do it. Good for him. It won’t last him of course, those corpses had next to no flesh left on them to begin with, but he’ll probably outlast me now.

…

I don’t want to die like this.

File “Entry 2 – 05:45, December 10th, 2136.mp3” ended.

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

The environmental audio of the recording has been stripped down to its barest essentials. Quieter than before, the only consistent noise is the station’s air ducts circulating in the background. Jiyuulia herself is present, breathing into the microphone on occasion, but her breaths are light and sporadic at best, otherwise totally verbally silent for the first several minutes. A silent competition between herself and an unknown competitor; one that she eventually, finally loses. Her voice has weakened substantially in the time since the last recording, having taken on an airy, strained tone common to war refugees and stampede survivors.

Hey, listener.

I know we haven’t talked for a while. Three whole days, actually.

…

I’m sorry. It’s just… I needed a break, you know? I haven’t really been in the best of moods lately. For as much as I complained otherwise, until about two days ago, I hadn’t really understood what ‘starving to death’ really entailed. But now? I can assure you, I have never known anything less pleasant. There aren’t really words to do the feeling justice, but I can say that I’m simultaneously exploding and imploding, being ripped apart and crushed, and all the while I can hardly think. Even taking this recording is a traumatic struggle — I’m missing words, forgetting things I wanted to say, and this is one of my good moments. I’m only putting forth the effort to record at all because, if things continue as they are, I… I don’t think I’ll get another chance.

To go out without leaving a trace — it scares me.

The whole situation’s just… hit me over the last few days. What’s happened, what it’s really like to starve, what it means to be trapped here, the whole rotten deal. As of right now, I, not someone else, not a storybook character or some unfortunate soul I see on the news, but me, is the one dying on the floor, languishing forgotten in some Arxur cell on some backwater station in a backwater sector with perhaps a day or two left to live — if I’m lucky. The realization hasn’t been the best for my mental stability, so forgive me if I’m not all here. I’m doing the best I can.

…

I haven’t done much since the last recording. There isn’t much to do. Without the distractions of daily life, I’ve been left to my thoughts and naught else. Puzzling myself over what I could’ve done differently, what other choices I could’ve made, whether I could have somehow avoided my fate, sure, but mostly? I’ve been reminiscing about my old life.

I used to hate introspection, you know? All it ever managed was to be depressing. Nothing I was proud of, nothing good to really set me apart from the masses, and everything there was to dislike about myself; introspection wasn’t something I spent time on if I could avoid it. And I could always avoid it. But now? Well, those things weren’t fun, but my problems then kind of pale against the backdrop of literally starving to death.

It’s kinda sad, kinda silly, now that I’m finally thinking about it. I never learned to appreciate anything in my old life until now. I don’t think most people ever really learn what they have, not until it’s taken from them. I certainly didn’t. But looking back now, in the dimness of the end, it wasn’t all that bad. True, it wasn’t much of a life, and certainly not one most would be envious of. Long hours, no offline friends, struggling to pay for necessities… it doesn’t really scream ‘living the dream,’ huh?

But now? There is nothing I wouldn’t do for another day of it all.

Just a single day.

I wouldn’t have to change anything. Long hours at a tedious job? How many video games had I completed on the clock again? A few dozen more than I’ve played in here. Even the lights on the tower were infinitely more entertaining than the slop I’ve brought with me. No offline friends? That’s what the internet was for! I didn’t have any regular buddies, they always wanted to know who I was, but I got enough social interaction to count. And if I was really lonely? That’s what dad was for! I may not have talked to him often, and certainly not as much as I should, nor was he a perfect person in his own right, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love him and appreciate him for what he had done for me, and though I may not understand it, his own love for me. My skin? Unique, striking, and a stylish excuse for pockets all in one! My clothes haven’t been washed since I left, and even so they’ve picked up stains that will never come out, but I still love them. To wear them feels right. I’d have frozen in here long ago without them. My genes? Even they weren’t bad enough to kill me outright! I was ugly, I wasn’t ever going to find love, I wasn’t good enough for Aafa, and I was never going to live very long, but my mind? My mind was fine! I graduated from one of the harshest subjects taught in the seventieth percentile! Look at what my genes were kind enough to give me! Even — hrngh — my most obvious failing?

Something big, wet, and heavy falls with a squelching plop.

BETTER TO HAVE TOO MUCH THAN TOO LITTLE!

Jiyuulia sighs.

I guess the Farsul are right. Nothing is clearer than hindsight.

…

I apologize for yelling at you, listener. It’s not your fault I’m here. I’ve just been… unstable, the last couple of days. Food was kind of my one escape down here.

Some things never change, I guess.

…

Speaking of escape, I have tried a few more things since the last recording, most of it over the course of today and yesterday. Nothing that’s worked, obviously, but without the option of stuffing myself until I was too full to think about my situation, the threat of insanity has loomed too close to hold off by staring at walls all day. It took a day and a half of combing through every little pile of trash in here — something that has helped me appreciate my bathwater plenty, I might add — and inspecting every last wall and bar in here for structural weaknesses, by which I mean slamming myself into just about every piece of exposed metal possible, but I finally have a little bit more info on my situation.

Starting with the bad news: My cell is solidly built. I mean, that’s not really a huge surprise when you consider it’s meant to contain Mazics, but seriously, it’s like an overpaid maintenance team came through after the last occupants vacated the place. Nothing down here is degraded in the slightest, not a speck of rust anywhere. They forgot to hire on a janitor to come with, but my hosts have otherwise been extremely meticulous in ensuring that every metal plate in here was up to code before throwing me in. And while I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about poking myself with a rusty nail and the suggestion that they’ve probably learned from experience is kind of funny, in a dark, horrifying kind of way, it also simultaneously makes it much harder to get out of here, so I do wish they were less thorough on the upkeep. That, or more so, so that somebody would finally come by and fix my trough already.

The worst damage to the whole thing is courtesy of yours truly. Aside from the aforementioned trough, I managed to bend a few pieces of rebar in the wall after slamming it with my wrecking-ball-esque physique for about six hours. Unfortunately, aside from giving myself a nasty bruise, I don’t really have anything to show for it. Call me a disappointment — you’d be right for plenty of reasons — but unlike a Venillian Sprunk mascot, I’m not going to be slamming myself through several feet of steel and concrete any time soon. Life isn’t a commercial.

Of course, the fact that I was able to bend the rebar suggests that the cell bars themselves may have promise. Yeah, no. I did try, there’s precious little I haven’t at this point, but it was never going to happen. While my bout with the rebar was an impressive demonstration of strength and tenacity, my cell bars are massive steel pillars nearly a foot thick in diameter. There is a little over a foot of space between them too, but if I’ve learned anything from the whole experience back in the store, it’s that trying to fit my double-wide self through small holes doesn’t lead to happy outcomes.

The door’s not any better. It’s even thicker than the bars — much to my shoulder’s dismay — and with the electronic lock on the front I don’t even have the opportunity to pick up lockpicking. It uses some sort of biometric reader, and while my tentacles are elastic and dexterous enough to bend in ways that I’m sure they didn’t think of while designing this cell, just because I’m able to reach the lock doesn’t mean that I’ll ever scan as an Arxur’s paws, and there’s no way I’m rewiring a lock that I can’t even see from inside the cell without prior experience. I’d just end up electrocuting myself if I tried, and I don’t need to add nerve damage to my long list of deficiencies. There was a small moment back when he got thrown down where some suicidal idiocy on my part had me considering asking Mr. Neighbor if he was willing to test his luck and see if he was still on the whitelist, but you already know how that’s gone so far.

Maybe if I had a few months, I could rust my way out of here with the water in the trough, but even disregarding how I’d be dead several times over from medical withdrawal by that time, without it working I have neither the water nor the food to sustain myself for that kind of wait. There’s no guarantee I’d remain forgotten here forever, either, and it would really suck to have some guard come through a few days before I was prepared to lacerate my whole body squeezing it through a hole full of sharp, rusty metal. No, I’ve always been on some sort of time limit, it’s just that I’ve accelerated it a bit.

As for the good news, well, that’s a lot shorter of a list: I found a few useful bits and bobs while I was hunting through the garbage, including a shiny bowl, some various electrical components whose purpose I haven’t the foggiest idea of, and a sheet of cloth that isn’t completely ruined. I think it may have originally been a comforter on a bed somewhere. All in all, not exactly prime material for an escape attempt. But what else could you expect? Me being a disappointment is nothing new, I wasted my whole day on a pitiful excuse of an attempt, and all of it only further serves as confirmation that I’m not escaping without help.

I mean, let’s go one step further here. Assume I did make it out of my cell. Then what? I’d still have to find my way through the rest of the station, and it’s not like I caught sight of a map on the way here. No, help is basically necessary. Even if they were as clueless as I am, the extra eyes and ears they could provide as well as the opportunity to bounce ideas off of someone else could be invaluable. Sure, that’s currently your job, listener, but I’m sure you aren’t surprised to hear that your latest performance review wasn’t in what I would call the acceptable bracket.

Really who I need is Neighbor, who would be able to fit through the bars and might even actually be able to accomplish something, but despite him being literally thrown down from above for me to take advantage of, he remains unhelpful. Damned Arxur, not even capable of being good traitors.

…Alright, so if I’m being honest, I do hesitate a bit in placing all the blame on him. Sure, there’s probably something here that’s his fault, but further observation of the pit in hopes he might finally get up failed to reveal a woken and soon-to-be fellow escapee in my most desperate hour, but I did catch sight of a small plastic syringe on the ground next to where he fell in, and I’m starting to put some of the pieces together on why they may have thrown him down here. However it happened, I know two things for sure: Whatever was in that syringe, it’s enough to put an Arxur — admittedly a really small one — out for several days straight, and that there’s not enough credits in the Federation to pay me to participate in the clinical trial.

But while it’s a miracle that his immune system hasn’t collapsed yet with a body that malnourished, he’s still not in any state to be helpful. Since I can’t get out of my cell by myself, I’m left banking my life on hoping an Arxur so sick as to be totally unresponsive and forced to spent ninety-five percent of his time anymore passed out on the floor and the remaining five bugging out will both recover enough to be helpful and actually agree to provide that help to a Kolshian sometime before I starve to death. It’s not a great situation, even if he has stopped screaming his lungs out.

Here’s hoping he’s a little better tomorrow.

The recording pauses. It resumes again approximately 15 hours later. When it does, fabric is rustling in the background, and several odd noises continue to play throughout the segment while Jiyuulia speaks. Her voice is shaky, traumatized, and somehow even weaker, but despite all that, there is something triumphant about it.

Hey, listener! I’ve gone and found myself in somewhat of a situation here. You wouldn’t believe me if I just came out with it, and I wouldn’t blame you; I hardly believe it myself! I’ll start from the beginning.

So this morning, after I woke up and heaved myself out of the trash pile the Arxur call a bed, I went to go check on Neighbor to see if he might be in some state to help me out yet, or if I was doomed.

Well, what I saw wasn’t great. While his mental state may have transitioned from ‘screaming animal’ to ‘coma patient’ over the last few days, it appears that whatever he’s got hadn’t quit with him yet, and he had new symptoms to show. His physical state was atrocious, so bad as to the point I was unsure if he wasn’t about to die as I watched. That he survived the night at all was nothing short of a medical mystery. Overnight, all of his scales had dulled to something that was no longer reflecting light. He bled from various places seemingly at random, wounds opening and closing without following any pattern at all. None of his injuries from when he’d been thrown down had recovered in the slightest, with several bones still snapped in two, his neck still dislocated, all of his original scabs and scars making their own decisions on whether or not to contribute to the pool of blood swirling on the floor. They weren’t absolutely gushing, else he’d have died of exsanguination far before I ever got to look at him, but the parts of him that weren’t covered in scales had paled significantly from the blood loss. Healing takes lots of time, water, and food, so after realizing he’d mostly been missing out on two of those the whole time, it wasn’t much of a surprise that he hadn’t recovered much, but surprise or not that didn’t make it any less horrifyingly lethal.

But aside from his old injuries not getting any better and the rapid breakdown of his flesh into something more permeable, there was a completely new symptom unrelated to before. It’s the first time I’d caught him moving, but his whole body was shivering like a pad on vibrate. It was obvious from first glance that his life was in even graver danger than mine, and that he wasn’t going to last the next few hours without immediate medical care. Since his fellow Arxur weren’t going to provide it and he was my last hope for getting out of here, that left me as prison doctor.

Of course, that left me with several problems. Aside from the fact that approaching Arxur is usually tantamount to suicide, the fact that treating an Arxur at all is surefire proof that my Predator Disease has escalated beyond help, and other things of that nature, there was much more physical issue where he was twenty feet below me and behind a wall of bars I couldn’t cross. To solve that, I either had to somehow get down there, or he needed to come up into my cell. Since the whole reason I wanted him in the first place was to be able to escape my cell, that left option two as the only viable choice. That didn’t mean it was an easy one! While the bars wouldn’t present an obstacle to his stick-figure frame, the twenty-foot climb up smooth steel and the fact that he was totally passed out and probably too weak to climb a set of stairs that high, much less anything tougher definitely did. Since I can’t really blame him for that last bit without being an extra-massive hypocrite, it was apparent that I was going to have to haul him out myself. It was the actual doing of that task that eluded me, and I had to spend time I wasn’t sure he had thinking it over.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the best way to reach him would be with some form of rope or cable. That part was easy enough when it had been spooling all over my floor, taunting me, for the last couple of days. It’s nice when past mistakes turn out to be useful, though it would have been nice to have kept it in its prior position until I needed it.

Just lowering down something to climb wasn’t enough, as I mentioned earlier, so I needed something to scoop him up with. That’s where the bedsheet came in. My knot-tying skills aren’t quite the best in the Commonwealth, but when my entire race has ropes for arms, that’s a pretty high bar! They were more than adequate enough to lift a thirty-pound weight. And from there, all I had to do was fish him out. I spent a few minutes struggling with getting the bedsheet to swing beneath him properly, but claw games were always my second favorite thing to do at the fair, and I got it eventually. Once he was on the sheet, it was trivial to lift him out, and bam! One Arxur child, ready for use in my escape plan! Whatever that is.

Of course, he wasn’t really. Thing was still totally dead to the world and shivering almost spasmodically. Corpses don’t work with bioscanners, and near-corpses aren’t much better, so if I wanted any actual use from him, I had to finish what I started. It wasn’t hard to tear off parts of the bedsheet for bandages and force some water down his throat, and there was enough organic matter scattered about my cell to set him up with the food part too, even if I really, really don’t want to go through it again. But while I was doing that, I had to touch him, and it was apparent from there that food, water, and first-aid weren’t all he needed.

His skin was frozen to the touch. I know, reptile and all, but seriously it was like the kid’s metabolism had just given out sometime last night. Blood loss, if I had to guess. He needed to be warmed, quickly, or he wasn’t going to live. That was a problem, because there was nothing in the cell I had that produced any heat at all, and while I did have most of the bedsheet left between him and the steel floor, those only trap heat, not make it.

So it was then that I went temporarily insane. Maybe permanently. It’s the only explanation I have for the idea I had then, one I’m sure you’re catching on to. But even recognizing the insanity of the plan, I couldn’t come up with anything else, and I had minutes at best, so I made my choice.

…

Listener, if you have a better idea, I would love to hear it. As it was, no amount of tentacle-rubbing alone would have warmed this guy up, and I knew what would…

So, officer, that’s my totally reasonable explanation as to why I’m wrapped in a blanket burrito with an Arxur. Body heat! I’ve got it in excess.

It’s a rather noisy affair, since he keeps moving, but if you think about it, I might actually be safer this way! If he was just on the floor, then he could just attack me the second he woke up. Even as thin and small as he is, trust me as the most knowledgeable prey creature still alive when I say those claws are plenty sharp. I’ve nearly cut myself on them twice in this recording alone! By using the bedsheet to trap him, that cuts off his speed advantage. The surprise of being strapped to a living heating pad should stun him long enough for me to try to explain to him what’s going on before he tries to eat my face. Plus, even if I can’t calm him down, all I have to do is roll over and flatten him. Problem solved!

Somehow, that piece of information fails to make this situation comfortable.

At least he’s mostly stopped shivering by now. When I first laid down next to him, he tried to wrap around my leg, and I think I might have screamed loud enough for the rest of the station to hear. His attempt was successful, by the way, and he’s still there, despite my very clearly stated displeasure with that option. I don’t have time to get a restraining order, and when I tried to remove him the old-fashioned way, instead of letting go like a reasonable person, he just started squeezing harder and damn near cut off circulation. My arteries are under enough threat from cholesterol as it is without involving predators, so we came to the compromise that he can stay so long as he doesn’t move any higher or start maiming my leg; if he does, I’m rolling.

I hope he knows how much he owes me after this. In exchange for my services as doctor, heated stone, and plushie, I’ll be demanding favors of my own. I accept payment in food, guarantees of safety, and assistance in escaping from Arxur cattle stations. Preferably a mixture of all three.

Anyways, I think it’s time I took my own advice and have myself a power nap. It’s getting harder and harder to stay awake for very long now, something I attribute to not having eaten for four freaking days, but whatever. Plus, I’m not moving much here — not that that’s unusual for me — and without something to do I’m getting a little bored — also not unusual. Had you told me two weeks ago I’d be bored while an Arxur was wrapped around my thigh, I’d be a bit skeptical, to put it lightly, and this is still about the most exciting stretch of boredom I’ve ever had, but that doesn’t change the fact that boredom is still boring, and boring makes me sleepy. I’ll see you when I get up, listener.

Something slaps against the pad. The recording does not pause, but Jiyuulia does not say anything further, and pretty soon the microphone is set against the floor. After approximately twenty minutes, Jiyuulia begins to snore. Six more hours pass before someone speaks. It isn’t Jiyuulia.

*Mmm. Squishy.*

…

*Gurk!*

The pad’s battery dies almost immediately afterwards, with the recording indicating this with a sharp beep. Two seconds after the beep, something is whirring next to the microphone, and Jiyuulia is breathing heavily, panting in-between words.

This is… the last time… I forget… to turn… my pad off… Haaah.

Oh. It’s still… recording. Hey… listener… I haven’t invited you yet… give me… a moment.

A tentacle hits the floor immediately. The microphone bounces for a second at the impact before being nestled against something soft. A second tentacle drops quickly afterwards. For the next minute and a half, Jiyuulia doesn’t say anything, too busy trying to catch her breath. When she does speak, it’s breathy and light.

Whew… hah… thanks for waiting, listener. Whichever engineer thought twenty pounds… was a reasonable torque for a charger crank… needs to be fired. I guess that’s why his model was half the price of the other ones.

Hoo…

But enough about my physical fitness — or lack thereof. You wanna know how my new cellmate is doing, right?

Well, I can say I’m not the worst doctor ever. He hasn’t woken up, but he’s looking better now. A little more color has returned to his skin, his breathing’s evened out, and the shivering is completely gone. He was even so kind as to let go of my leg sometime during our eight-hour nap together, something I am very appreciative of. His scales are still dull, and he’s still in terrible physical condition, but so long as he gets food and water I think he’ll probably be fine until he can get real assistance later.

Of course, I don’t have any food, for either of us, but that’s today’s goal. Considering the progress we’ve made recently, I feel the prospect is rather encouraging! Also encouraging is the feeling of my body slowly shutting down, meaning that unless I find food today, the Arxur will have a whole feast tomorrow. That’s plenty of motivation to go around!

To do that, I’ll need out of this cell. There’s nothing left in here for me to use, and frankly I’m a little tired of the décor. The only way I’m doing that is through the front door, so that’s the first step. I may not be able to do it myself, but that’s why I have a new Arxur-shaped door opener!

We’ll try the simple solution first: slam his paw against the door scanner, and pray to any higher powers listening that he’s on the whitelist. There’s a small risk inherent to this plan in that our hosts are extra paranoid and have him on some form of alarm-triggering blacklist instead, but considering they haven’t even posted guards over here I don’t think that’s very likely. And when has risk-free ever been an adjective applied to prison escapes?

In fact, since he’s still out cold and I’m feeling breakfast is in order, I think now’s actually a great time to do it! I can reach the door lock, so just whinging his body around like the galaxy’s most awkward keycard a few times should eventually trigger the reader. Sure, it’s a bit like swinging around a corpse, but my delicate sensibilities have rather decayed as of late and I definitely have the stomach for it. I’m up and I’ve already wasted half an hour cluing you in, listener, so I’m just gonna do it now.

Fabric drags along the floor as Jiyuulia lifts the sleeping Arxur. Either Jiyuulia is very strong or the Arxur is very light, or both, because she swings him over her shoulder without any audible effort at all. After a minute, she’s banging him against the metal surface of the door as his claws screech against the steel frame. Eventually, an electric beep sounds, and a metal bar shifts before the whole door swings out with a whoosh.

YES! Phase one complete! Now all I have to do is find myself some breakfast and a way off this station all without getting caught as the most conspicuous Kolshian alive and carrying a heavily-injured sleeping Arxur wrapped in a dirty blanket. Easy!

*Squishy?*

Something heavy lands on top of the microphone with a thud.

File “Entry 3 – 18:07, December 15th, 2136.mp3” ended.

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

It is evident from even the first few seconds of the recording that much has changed since the earlier entries. Sound quality has improved drastically, and not on account of the microphone. The typical noise made by every drip of water, every groan of a pipe, the omnipresent fans humming away, all of it is still present, but the echoes of those sounds bouncing off the metal walls is all but absent this time, suggesting the location of the recording must be far more spacious than the cramped cell of previous recordings. Jiyuulia herself has changed dramatically as well. She sounds much healthier than she had in her last recording, her voice deeper, stronger than it was then. She’s still speaking quietly, but her whisper sounds intentional this time around, rather than as an effect of starvation-driven weakness. The microphone is being held too far away from her to catch her words optimally, but with the lessened background noise and the marked recovery of her voice, the arrangement is far from unintelligible. In the background, a second voice snores away, most likely the freed Arxur prisoner from the previous entry. It’s making strange noises at random intervals, obviously dreaming intensely. Whether it is a pleasurable dream or a nightmare is unclear.

Hey, listener. Been a while, hasn’t it?

Glad you’re checking in now, though. You’re just in time for second breakfast! We’ve got funky red grain, funky purple grain, and substantially less funky but also probably healthier brown grain, so it’s pretty much a luxury establishment in here as far as I’m concerned. Maybe, if you’re good, I’ll invite you back for second dinner too. Just depends whether or not I’m busy. And whooo, have I been busy!

Lots of things have happened since I last left you off, and— oh, uhm, I guess I should start with an apology for leaving you the way I did. I was, aheh, a little too preoccupied with an Arxur trying to tear my face off to end the recording formally. You understand, of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still sorry about it. This is meant to be a respectable audio journal!

Pff, like anything about me is respectable. You’ll just be glad to know that he didn’t get my face! Our ultimate battle for survival ended kinda anticlimactically, actually. We each only made one move before the whole thing was over. He opened with a startling swipe at my head to disorient me, and I reacted by getting out of the way and kinda hit the ‘End Recording’ button by accident.

Unfortunately, that means you missed my masterclass of a move; the several novel techniques in full-body strangleholds I spontaneously invented all lost to history, but it’s not a huge deal. I feel my newly invented martial art might be a little difficult for the average member of the Federation to pull off anyway.

Ah, who am I kidding? I may not have gotten eviscerated, but that was less due to any actual skill on my part and more due to the fluke where my fall path after I immediately flubbed my footing and fell over may or may not have been directed towards my opponent rather than away from it. It’s not standard doctrine to trip during a freeze or flight situation, but this actually worked out in my favor: I don’t care who you are, between the unyielding steel of the floor below and a few hundred pounds more Kolshian than is typically advisable on top, well, that’s a pretty decent pin right there. In his case, I slammed his skull into the ground with enough force and put enough pressure on it afterwards to both fix the serious chiropractic issue concerning the second bend in his neck as well as convince what little brain matter he had in there that maybe picking a fight with the panicked prey creature who clearly outmassed him more than a dozen times over over wasn’t quite the greatest idea he’d ever had. He started spouting something off about ‘mercy in death’ pretty quickly after that.

It was a good situation I had going! My pocket-sized Arxur was only slightly concussed, I’d just shown him up in battle, no real threat he could pose towards me, it should’ve been easy to strike up some diplomatic bargaining by putting his life on the metaphorical table and funnel him into slaving away at my master plan.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite have one of those. A master plan, I mean. I’d kinda gone into this whole situation with no idea what I was doing. Had I had some time to calmly and rationally figure out what I wanted to say to the thing before I was put on the spot, I’m sure I could’ve delivered something good, used my total control of the situation and leverage over its life to calm the Arxur down and attempt to explain everything, negotiated some sort of deal that spared both our lives, that sort of thing. I didn’t, though, and instead spouted off the first thing I could think of while being faced down by an Arxur who had just attacked me — not exactly the best conditions for being calm and rational. It’s not atypical for a person to lose their head in the face of danger, but I must’ve really spaced mine or something because I still can’t really explain what had to have gone through my mind then. I still feel kinda guilty about it, but it’s worked so far, so I’ll just fill you in on the details and leave you to consider the ramifications of the whole thing on your own.

So instead of saying anything normal, I channeled my inner fantasy and video game nerd and instantly blurted out the first thing that came to mind after all his shouting about ‘merciful death.’ That being something completely insane along the lines of ‘Oh, you’re already dead, this is the afterlife, I’m your spirit guide, please stop attacking me.’

This WORKED.

I guess he really had landed on his head when they threw him in, because against any semblance of reason or logic, he froze. I’d thought I’d broken him.

That’s not to say he didn’t have questions afterwards, but by the time he recovered I was already past my intitial did-I-actually-just-say-that phase and was already scheming harder than I ever have before and pulling out every memory I had of bad online fanfic trash I’ve ever read in a desperate attempt at worldbuilding an Arxur religion to answer any and all the questions he had with pomp and flourish. For example, why was his spiritual guide an unflatteringly obese Kolshian? Why, I was a physical manifestation of the forces of food and the spoils of the hunt themselves! What better form for a Spirit of Bounty to take than as the most perfect possible representation of prey? After all, no normal Kolshian would have such obviously holy radiant white skin or clothe themselves in special robes. Alright, but if that’s true and this was the afterlife, then why are we still in the station, barely fifty feet from the spot he died? Well, you have to make it to heaven yourself, of course! If everyone got to go to heaven without a challenge beforehand, it wouldn’t be nearly so prestigious, would it? Only by proving himself would he earn his place amongst the rest of the greatest hunters. As his guide, I would assist him along the way, but make no mistake: this was his journey.

And no, proving himself did not consist of hunting as many prey as possible; any Arxur could kill a prey creature. No, the true test was getting away with it. His task was to take his prized catch, me, and keep it safe from danger and the other Arxur who would inevitably wish to take his spoils for themselves. If he could escape with me, taking his prey to the stars and beyond against such odds, he would prove himself thoroughly wiser and stronger than they, and worthy of joining the rest of the greatest in the eternal feast. Upon accomplishing such a feat, the scars of his former life would fade as he grew into a state more reflecting of his inner nature, and I, ever-loyal servant of the Great Hunters, would be sent off to assist the next potentiate in his journey to take the final step into the afterlife.

Most importantly, I made sure to stress that this would be a perilous journey, one that he was by no means guaranteed to succeed. While his death had been wrongful and the circumstances surrounding it ensured that it was not a true representation of his inner strength, that did not mean that his slow expiry in the pit had reflected well upon him or his honor. The purpose of the system was to root out the weak, and though he may not have been truly weak, such a preylike death was not exempt from punishment. As a result, both he and I would be subjected to the mortal needs of the flesh for the whole of the already perilous journey before us. We would retain the ability to heal and improve ourselves, operating much the same as we had before, but both he and I had to eat, drink, and partake in other necessary tasks one did while alive in order to keep our forms intact. Furthermore, if either he or I died along the way, then I would dissipate away from this world, and he would cease to exist.

The weak didn’t get an afterlife. After all, why should they?

And that’s how I started my first blood cult. He ate all this up without question, earnestly believing my every word. It seems young children can never resist a good magic and fantasy story, no matter the species. After a drop of drool fell out the end of his mouth and he finally realized his jaws were still spread wide to bite me, he quickly introduced himself as Kyrix, and at his insistence I was to be the sadly descriptive ‘Squishy.’

At least I managed to avoid the neighboring ‘Slimy.’

Poor nicknames aside, I had in but a single move converted a hostile predator into an ally who thought me a just and honorable friend — and given his age and our size difference, inevitably somewhat of a guardian figure — believing whatever inane explanations I had as to the world’s workings and putting his full faith into any plan of action I could put forth. He’s independent enough to have his own opinions and such, but for a prey to have any input at all into an Arxur’s thought processes, let alone a sense of authoritative control over them… it’s unprecedented. The negotiations could not possibly have gone any better.

What could have gone better was how he failed to even start the journey. From his position on the smooth metal floor, he was actually entirely unable to move at all. He’d sat up for my explanation after I got off of him, but a dual combo of two broken legs and extreme blood loss tends to make crawling fairly difficult, let alone walking. I’m not one to brag about my own mobility, but even I can walk on flat ground for a few minutes or up a single flight of stairs before needing to sit down. This guy couldn’t even stand.

It wasn’t long before he actually started tearing up a little. It was kind of fascinating, actually — I didn’t know Arxur could cry — but that didn’t mean that it was optimal. The last thing I wanted was to have to augment my sneaking around with a crying Arxur, so as to avoid the rapidly worsening situation I proposed a simple solution: If my legs could carry some four-hundred-fifty pounds of Kolshian (as of a few years ago… don’t laugh), then another thirty-five or so at most would be no problem. Kyrix approved, and so in a single swing of my mighty arms I became the great spirit-steed Squishy, allowing only the most worthy of riders upon my shoulders. I’ll admit that I was a little leery of putting him there, but he’s been good so far — mostly. Still, though, it’s better than having to carry him.

Situation solved and new ally quite literally secured, it was time to go back to my main task: finding food. Breakfast’s call was getting stronger by the minute, and so after utilizing my status as a sapient being with the ability to reason, I came up with three plans as to how I might go about getting some:

Plan one was to enter another cell and use its trough instead of my broken one. It was relatively safe, required little effort, had no unknown variables, and was absolutely unacceptable. Food was always served early in the morning, and so it was already too late for me to go get a snack from one now if it wasn’t already activated. I may also admit, if pressed, that I didn’t and still don’t really want to enter another cell again for as long as I live.

Option two entailed finding other prey and eating their food. That one was also problematic, and not just because the only other prey I’d seen on this station outside of my other new arrivals had all been in the mosh pits towards the beginning of my tour. Cells with that many prey inside would be sure to have plenty of guards, and I doubted my distinctive appearance would allow me to blend in either with them or the prey. To exacerbate the matter, the Arxur on my shoulders proved that I wasn’t quite thinking straight myself after only a little over two weeks here, and so it only served to reason that others kept in similar conditions for much longer lengths of time in such a tainted environment could be… violently unstable, to put it lightly. I couldn’t trust anyone without somehow first vetting them for the more malicious strains of Predator Disease, however hypocritical that may be at this point. I could maybe do it on an individual basis, ensuring that whoever I was talking to wasn’t about to leap out and claw me, but performing tests on a group of hundreds or even thousands of people without equipment? Completely impractical.

That left option three: finding a storeroom where my hosts kept the food, and making like an Arxur with its contents. Such a plan was riddled with pitfalls and unknowns, like: whether or not the storeroom would be guarded, where such a room would even be, how far away it was, whether or not I would be able to actually get there without getting caught, if I could actually access the room once I got there, and dozens of other such mission critical pieces of information that would’ve probably helped ease my mind had I known them. Alas, I didn’t, and Kyrix was not quite as helpful with his directions as I would have preferred, so it was a risky endeavor at best. It was also the only option of the three that held any merit, though, so off in search of a whole storeroom for breakfast I went.

Initial exploration of my cellblock did not return promising results. A walk around the circular room revealed nothing beyond more trash, featuring no more difficulties in traversal than any other room its size would. The only security it did have after you got out of the cells themselves were six electronically sealed doors spaced semi-equally around the room. With my new friend I could just walk right through any door I wanted, but knowing which doors led where and which ones were best avoided posed a problem. It did not help that the doors were all completely opaque, and all save for a single exception bore no indication of what dangers may lie in wait behind them. But without any other options or tools at my disposal, I eventually accepted the small risk and peeked through, hoping nobody would be directly on the other side.

The first and second doors, both unmarked, led to other cellblocks. The layouts were different from both my own cellblock and each other, meant to hold much smaller creatures than Mazics, but they were cellblocks all the same. The first was a series of walkways suspended over a four-story pit. Lining the walkways were rows and rows of small wire cages, no larger than two or three feet across and suspended on thin wires hanging loosely from the ceiling. Thankfully, all of them were empty, but that didn’t mean that the room was unoccupied. Peering down the pit revealed dozens of Arxur of various professions moving between various doors on the floor far below, each looking around and generally being a massive deterrent to my further progress. I turned and left the room for later.

The second was much the opposite from the first, with cells integrated directly into the floor itself. I recognized the room, having been led through it during my arrival. Small pits lined the floor, each intended as a single cell for a single prey. They were also unoccupied, thankfully, but nevertheless a few Arxur guards were strolling around the pathways between the pits towards the far side of the room, shifting around weapons and doing who knows what else for some indiscernible reason. Preparing the room for new occupants, maybe? Whatever the case, between the number of them and the total lack of cover in the room, their narrow viewing angles were still more than enough to render the room totally impassible while they were there.

The third door was the mentioned exception, marked with a little red triangle and, upon testing, was hot to the touch. It was the sole door of the six I did not open.

The fourth door opened into a small, empty airlock. I filed away its location for later, but without a spaceship in there, it wasn’t of much use to me unless I wanted to try spacewalking home. I didn’t.

The fifth door was, much to my surprise, a simple broom closet. The tools were all in pristine shape and the cleaning chemicals all unopened, suggesting that the janitor position was — as expected — unfilled. The conditions inside my cell had been more than enough to come to that conclusion. I pocketed a small bar of soap and moved on.

The sixth and final door turned out to be covering a heavily insulated secondary door bearing a small snowflake symbol on it, suggesting some kind of freezer. I, of course, upon seeing the good news, barreled through the door without an ounce of stealth or hesitation. This turned out to be a bad move, and not just because the floor was really frosty and made me trip. Nor was it because it was occupied, even though it most certainly was. Not even because the room didn’t turn out to be a food freezer. It was full of food!

Of a type.

…

I did not explore further in that direction.

At least Kyrix got something out of it.

…

Sealing off that room forever left the only option that led anywhere as the one with the walkways. And as bad as this journey had started off, that was where things really started to go wrong.

You see, listener, I’m not really the adventuring type, and not just because I have to sit down every ten to fifteen minutes. Those who go off into the deep, untamed wilderness are the kind of people who can pick and choose their battles; I, to the contrary, tend to draw attention wherever I go, and looking down into the pit was enough to determine that yes, there were still a lot of far less gullible Arxur swarming down there. None of them were looking up (yet), but I am about as far as you can get from a sneaky walker, and heavy wet tentacles peeling off the floor don’t exactly lend themselves to silent movement. While I was not at immediate threat of capture for as long as I didn’t move, the only other exit the room had was on the other side, and all it would take is one curious individual wondering what the regular pounding noises coming from above him were to get me killed.

I was still, y’know, extremely desperate, and that plus the part where I was too hungry anymore to think of any other options even after the freezer debacle meant that after confirming with my rider that there hadn’t been a door that I’d missed somewhere, I chose to cross anyway. I just had to hope that the Arxur were too engrossed with whatever they were doing down there to care about some strange noises and go for it.

Reckless? Completely. Stupid? Absolutely and utterly Sivkit-brained, no doubt about it. Did it work? Well…

Against all expectations, none of the Arxur seemed to care much about the loud footfalls above them, either too distracted with their work or too used to the sound of flesh banging against metal to bother investigating the source and allowing me to cross a whole three-quarters of the room without being noticed. So what better time, then, than for me to fumble everything like an idiot? Never!

I, in an act of incredible stupidity and obliviousness, was so focused on where I put my feet that I failed to spot that one of the cages’ wires had snapped, leaving it hanging awkwardly off to the side and directly in my way until after I had already hip-checked the thing into next week — or at least the cage hanging next to it. That cage swung into a third, the third hit two more, those hit even more, and from there it just became a massive domino effect of cages swinging into each other and making this awful, very attention-grabbing racket.

Don’t you dare look away, because I’m not done yet! Following this blunder, I made the panicked determination that my captors had already seen me and ran — okay, fast waddled — faster than I ever had in my life up until that point across the rest of the walkway. If my steps hadn’t been loud enough to draw attention before, they definitely were then. Furthermore, waddling for my life left me using less caution on where I put my feet than was appropriate for a thin metal walkway, and with the station’s maintenance crew determined to be eternally unhelpful, I managed to find the one spot on the station that hadn’t been quite as well upkept as it should have been. Something snapped, and suddenly I was waddling for two reasons as the entire walkway started to collapse beneath me. And if somehow the sounds of my pounding footsteps and the still-rattling cages hadn’t done it, the heavy steel I-beams careening to the ground and the now-screaming Arxur on my head definitely attracted the attention of everyone in the room.

By some miracle, between the size of my body diving through the exit door, the whitish coloring of my tail trailing behind me, the voice of the screaming Arxur digging his claws into my ear holes, and several more pressing issues involving several half-ton beams threatening their skull integrities, the Arxur below me must’ve mistook me for one of their own, because the only alarm that sounded afterwards warned of a structural failure than of an incompetent escapee who couldn’t even get through one room without having an accident. That didn’t mean, however, that the crashing noises and general confusion of the whole thing wouldn’t bring all sorts of Arxur actually running to the scene, and even the part where I had miraculously avoided falling to my death wasn’t enough to distract me from the fact that I needed to hide. Immediately.

I still haven’t learned enough from my experience back in the grocery store on Sillis, apparently, because the very first place my crazed mind decided to shove myself was the ventilation system. Fortunately that wasn’t all that hard, because there was a giant grate immediately to my right directly after passing the threshold of the door, and it was sealed on with nothing more than two easily accessible giant bolts on the top and bottom. They still would’ve been enough for most people to go and get a wrench, but most people don’t have adjustable-grip tentacles and enough adrenaline coursing through their veins to soak in afterwards. I even had enough time after ripping off the cover to reaffix the grate to the wall after stepping into the vent, so that when the horde of Arxur came flooding past my hiding spot and began yelling all sorts of not-very-nice things, none of them noticed I was hunkered down less than five feet from them with a tentacle wrapped around my own Arxur’s snout.

What did constitute a bit of a problem was the part where they didn’t leave afterwards, preventing me from getting back out and continuing on my way. But in a second stroke of luck, the Dominion standard for their HVAC systems — or what I thought to be their HVAC systems — is completely ridiculous. As I came to learn, there’s a very good reason for that, but at the time it seemed very fortunate that the station’s ventilation shafts were so extremely wide in comparison to the intake pipe I’d tried and failed to shove myself down back in the store that it was basically its own mini hallway. A hallway I brushed against both sides of and couldn’t quite stand up straight in, but a hallway nonetheless. It even went in the general direction I had been heading before I got into this whole mess!

Best of all, though, between the slurs the Arxur were loudly throwing around outside and the fact that the station’s ventilation system was never quiet even at the best of times, nobody was going to come investigating any pounding noises coming from it. So while the Arxur were still generously providing cover from themselves outside, I took advantage of this huge security oversight and began the third phase of my journey through the corrugated metal hallways.

My guide was even less helpful here than he was outside, with him as completely lost as I was, but after getting turned around a few times and a small observation Kyrix made about part numbers on the wall, we managed to get ourselves situated. One hour and only five rest breaks later, I was feeling exhausted and panting heavily, but still feeling pretty confident in myself for my clever escape when the inherent features of the system started to kick in.

You wanna take a guess at what those were, listener?

…

No, I did not stick my head in any moving fan blades.

…

No ideas, then?

Well, there’s a reason the Dominion hadn’t bothered to put any security features into the vents, and it’s not because their fans are sharp and probably difficult to gum up without sacrificing a little more of myself than I was willing. No, they get HOT. In retrospect, I think it’s probably a result of running a literal incinerator and I should’ve seen it coming, but the exact reason for why is not important right now.

At first it was only a little heat. It thought I was just working myself too hard — starving had not exactly been good for my mental acuity — so I just slowed down a little to rest. After three minutes, it was becoming clear that the air was heating up around us, but I assumed we might just be approaching a heater or something and stopped to rest. Another minute passed, and it was becoming clear that the shaft was still heating up and we were in danger. Unfortunately, the last vent cover I’d come across that I could actually fit through was crawling with Arxur, so just turning back and leaving was right out. Plus, it was fifteen minutes in the other direction, and there was no way I was gonna last five at the rate the air was heating up.

Ensue animalistic panic. My rider had the good sense not to scream, but he wasn’t in any condition for more coherent planning than that, and I wasn’t much better as I shuffled through the shaft at maximum speed, hoping against hope that there would be a vent somewhere I could use. Three life-or-death situations in one day, and it wasn’t even noon yet!

My clothes had very nearly caught fire by the time I finally managed to come across a large vent in the floor of the shaft, and both members of our party had sustained more than one first-degree burn from contact with heated metal. I barely managed to ignore the pain and wrench the thing open, and I expended all that effort just to see an Arxur guard staring up at us in confusion. Unluckily for him, though, I was done with today, and so that sight quickly transitioned to the sight of an Arxur guard being hit in the face with a ten-pound vent cover.

While markedly funnier, such a sight still would’ve normally spelled my doom and signified that I should probably go and look for a different vent to escape from, but with the air around me starting to glow a dim red and a distant glare from somewhere ahead rapidly becoming less distant, I did NOT have the time to look for another vent. Without even a moment’s hesitation, I took the twenty-five-foot fall directly into armed resistance as the incinerator shot a fireball through the vent behind me in a scene straight from The Exterminators.

You would be forgiven for thinking this would be my end. I certainly thought so. A prey sapient jumping straight into the claws of a full-grown predator, an Arxur soldier no less, could only ever end one way. The odds of even surviving an Arxur attack are terrible, one in thousands. Even amongst trained soldiers, very, very few have ever taken out an Arxur one-on-one in ground combat. Amongst egregiously unfit Kolshian civilians… well…

The vent grate wasn’t the only thing that fell on him, we’ll put it that way.

For my part though, my neck vertebrae didn’t end up taking anywhere between fifteen thousand to twenty thousand joules of force, and with the relatively compressible landing pad I’d managed to find, I only suffered a few light bruises from the fall. Kyrix was even luckier and landed on an even softer surface, taking no damage at all.

He also hasn’t quite looked at me the same since.

However, continuing my streak of incredible luck, that was the final challenge of the day. Not only were there no other guards in the hall, but our landing zone was actually somewhere he recognized! He was a little busy gasping for air and gawping at me to assist in hiding the body in another conveniently located shaft, but after he regained his words, he was able to direct the ‘leaf-licker’ to a nearby door with a leaf symbol on it.

And hooo, leaf-licker I must be, because behind the door was a room packed with enough food and water to serve as Chief Nikonus’s personal panic shelter! I don’t imagine the quality of the stuff was quite up to his normal preferences, but they say hunger is the best spice, and this Bountiful Spirit was ready to work some miracles and turn a dumpster into a gourmet restaurant if she needed to. I’ll be damned if I don’t say I’ve never enjoyed a meal quite so much as I did then. Not quite worth the five days of starvation I needed to get it… but not as far off as you might think. I don’t remember quite how many bowls of vegetable and grain slurry I went through, but I can tell you that by the end, there was a new packed container in there. All in all, not the safest or the healthiest feast I’ve ever had, but it sure beat any holiday celebration I’d ever been begrudgingly invited to.

…

So, uh, yeah. You’re caught up now. Gave an Arxur some chiropractic care, gaslit him, saw some pretty horrible stuff, reached a new top speed record, hid from the authorities in a ventilation shaft, almost got roasted, straight up flattened a different Arxur, hid a body, and finally had those fifths I wanted. I am, heh, not good at stealth, but apparently it was optional this time around.

We’re still here in the storeroom, and we plan on staying until both Kyrix and I have rested enough to feel a little better. Starvation’s not an easy affliction to come back from, though at least on Kyrix’s part it looks like he’ll be fine for at least a week after our little sidequest. Nobody’s came by to check the room out, though we have been careful to avoid obvious tampering, and I sleep under a pile of vegetable sacks for safety reasons. Kyrix, thoroughly bored after not having the option to eat nonstop for several hours every day, discovered that I had games on my pad and proceeded to meticulously eliminate my high scores in all the AR stuff, the jerk. Although I did get a dedicated crank-turner out of the deal, so it’s been worth it.

That’s not to say that we can stay for very long. Even discounting the part where a guard finally makes his rounds and inevitably stumbles across both of us at the worst possible time, I haven’t quite satisfied all my physical needs yet. And I’m not talking about having run out of my favorite vegetables, either. I’ve got food and water for the next seven or eight days if I pace myself, five if I’m being more realistic about my inhibitions, but no matter how much food I’ve got, Arxur space stations have a distinct lack of pharmaceuticals and access to health care I can actually use, and the stars know I’ll need some sooner or later. It’s not quite as pressing as the food issue was, but I’m still on a time limit here, even if I don’t know how long that limit is. It would really suck if I got this far just to die of a blood-sugar related heart attack or something.

Unfortunately, finding specialized medications isn’t quite as easy as finding food. I don’t think the Dominion provides much in the way of prey-oriented healthcare up here — invasive surgeries being a notable exception — so my best shot at surviving this month’s irregularly scheduled metabolic adventure is back in Federation space. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Kyrix, but I’m certain he’s going to at least try to come with me wherever I go. I’d rather not have to try to smuggle an Arxur through customs, but unless I find somewhere else to put him then I don’t appear to have much of a choice.

Before I worry about the underground predator market, though, actually getting off this station takes precedence. Alas, that seems to be an even harder task than the former, and I’ve got several issues stemming from that big one. Primarily, I’ve got no ship, and no escape pod I’ve ever heard of ever comes with an FTL drive. I don’t need to go and steal a whole cattle ship, but even a single-family sized vehicle hasn’t been something I think I’m likely to come across while on a literal Arxur cattle farm and arms depot. Plus, even the small ships still require more training and piloting experience to fly than my grand total of nada, so unless I want to bank my ability to not get shot down by traffic control on natural talent, I’ll have to come up with something. If it really comes down to it, I’ll try to learn on my own before launching and hope the systems are really intuitive, but learning to pilot a spaceship during a prison escape doesn’t seem like the best idea I’ve ever had, especially if my previous record with stealth proves itself a reoccurring issue.

So that leaves me with one option, then: I need to find a ship, and that ship needs a pilot.

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

It’s clear within the first few seconds that the location has changed again since the last recording. A constant hum emanates from somewhere in the background, the source undoubtedly some form of advanced electronic machine. The sounds of Jiyuulia’s voice bouncing off the metallic walls suggests that the room is once again a cramped one, but the distance she’s allowed the microphone determines that it is not so much so that she has to huddle over her pad. This is particularly notable due to the strain in her voice — she sounds incredibly high-strung, clearly trying and failing to hide the extent of it for the recording.

Hey listener — I did it! I’m in space!

Err, well, I guess I was already on a space station. Perhaps a better way to put it would be to say that I’m on a ship now. It even has a pilot! I know! So clearly everything went well, right?

Jiyuulia laughs. It’s a full belly laugh, rolling with deep, hysterical tones. It lasts for about ten seconds.

Hoooo, that would be one way to describe it — if you were completely, certifiably insane. I, uh, hrm… well… let’s just say that things didn’t quite go the way I had imagined them going and that I am probably going to die soon. Typical consequences of poor planning! Or no planning, in my case.

But, uh, yeah. Whatever it was that I was thinking back at the end of my last entry… this ain’t it, listener.

…

Oho, I can hear your questions already. What did I screw up this time, you’re asking? Did I finally get spotted?

Well, for the first one, a better question would be what I didn’t screw up. As for the second, uh… yes. Several times. It’s kind of a long story.

…

So, uhm, let me tell it.

Sheets rustle under Jiyuulia as she shuffles into a more comfortable position.

So there I was, back in the storage room. Four days of nothing much had passed since my last entry, and through the power of ample sleep and hearty diet, I had managed to recover most of my strength that I’d lost while starving. Not that my normal level of physical ability is anything all that impressive to begin with — though I would like to think that I make up for my lack of stamina in raw physical strength — carrying all this everywhere makes my every move a workout — but at least I didn’t feel like collapsing on the spot and dying the second I ran out of adrenaline anymore. Kyrix had recovered a little bit too. His legs were still broken, not to mention how he was still awfully, unnaturally skinny, but his scales were a bit shinier, and he was at least a little bit more mentally present than he was before. Enough to completely wipe me from the high scores board in every last game I owned. Even Dance Mania. Though that one might be less a testament to his skill and more just damning evidence that I am a clumsy piece of garbage.

I did make sure to ask him if he needed food too, but all I got in response for my generous concern was a confused look and confusing words as he acted as though going multiple days in a row without eating was somehow a normal thing to do.

Aliens, I tell you…

Ahem, so, storeroom. We weren’t going to get much better than we were, and I was still on a time limit with my meds. There was no reason we needed to stay any longer, even though I still didn’t have much of a plan. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but because all I’d managed to get out of four days of attempting to come up with a way out of here was the sobering realization that I just didn’t have enough information on where to find an out-of-the-way ship or pilot to plan any further than the storeroom door. Consulting my resources wasn’t much help — Kyrix did know some stuff, but he also said that there was absolutely no schedule to the matter of ship arrival and departure whatsoever and that it all just ran on the whims of the station’s captain, so that made things kinda difficult. Paired with still no indication of where I might find the most recently captured prisoners, I was eventually driven to the conclusion that I, much like the captain, was just going to have to wing it and see what happened.

Psh, it worked last time, didn’t it? I was totally willing and capable of improvising my way out of a space station. No qualms about it at all! Shoulders squared as best I could and Arxur passenger seated upon them, I started off towards the door in a show of bravado for my predator audience. And with a push of my mighty tentacles, I slammed the door, ready to begin the next set of my adventure!

Unfortunately for me, that ‘plan’ fell apart before we’d even managed to get out the door. And not just because it was a pull door, either; I checked. No, there weren’t any Arxur in the hall, nor some rando trap set and ready to get me the second I left, or anything else silly like that. No, I ran into a far more fundamental issue.

Warehouses and storerooms usually lock from the outside, and ours was no exception.

Yep. I’d managed to go and walk right on into another cell, and I hadn’t even realized it for a whole four days after I’d gone and done it. I’m an idiot; sue me.

It’s ‘just’ humiliating now, but at the time I was less embarrassed about being the galaxy’s biggest idiot and more along the lines of ‘utterly terrified.’

Don’t blame me! Traumatic experiences are proven to be the source of new phobias. My experience just so happened to be being locked in a cell and left for dead. Is it any wonder I developed cleithrophobia? And newly instilled phobia engaged, I kind of lost all trace of thought or reasoning and proceeded with the same set of plans that I had tried to use back in the original cell. Those being slamming myself into things, smashing every bit of exposed metal I could find, and generally just the whole stark-raving-mad act that comes standard with new diagnoses of Predator Disease that I’m really hoping doesn’t end up coming back at an inopportune time later.

Unlike back in the cell, though, my flailing about actually returned results that amounted to more than just a bent piece of rebar. You see, the cell, built with thick steel bars and covered in enough concrete to encase a small house in, had been designed from the ground up to hold an angry rampaging Mazic lashing out with every muscle fiber he had. The storeroom… not so much.

It wasn’t the door that gave out, oh no. That particular hunk of metal was the same kind as my cell’s door; I was never going to get through that. No, I, in my completely unguided fit of fury, managed to strike the water main.

Jiyuulia shifts again. Something falls off a nearby table.

Yeah, oopsie.

…

I got blasted fifteen feet back by the jet of water that shot out of that thing, but my new abrasion was far from the worst part of the whole ordeal. That honor would belong to the way the water just kept gushing. I know, I know, you gotta have a lot of water for a station supporting thousands, but it. Just. Kept. Coming. The pipe totally broke down after the initial gush of water and went from ‘Wow, that’s a high-pressure pipe’ to ‘Excuse me, what the hell is this, engineers?’ almost immediately afterwards. Whatever pressure this thing had been at before had obviously been unsafe. A pipe carrying that much water being exposed at all was a straight-to-jail kind of violation under any set of Federation laws I can think of, but I guess the Dominion has the ‘don’t break it, idiot’ mentality towards its industry. At least, that’s really the only explanation I could come up with as to why there was a freely accessible pipe capable of raising the room’s water level at what was easily a minimum of three feet a minute.

There was a drainage system in the floor of the storage room, but I think it was more for fire suppression than anything else. It definitely wasn’t rated for the thirty thousand something gallons of water a minute this thing was gushing, not to mention that the whole system ended up clogged almost immediately. I think some grain got washed down it.

Back to me, though. The flow rushing out of that pipe like a Paltan on sugar was strong enough that everything in the room that wasn’t literally welded to the floor was swept away and slammed against the opposing wall. That would’ve included me, but I managed to grab a corner of one of the storage shelves that met the welding requirement. That — plus blind panic — was enough to pull myself out of the water before I could lose my legs to a steel table. Kyrix almost certainly would have been swept away and crushed by the torrential current had he not already been on a shelf at the time, laughing his head off while observing me try and fight a door.

We both sat there on our respective shelves for a minute, too stunned to realize we needed to do something about the ongoing catastrophe. After the water started lapping at my heels, though, I snapped out of it and from there was able to helpfully scream various encouraging comments in Kyrix’s general direction. He took a little longer than I did to regain control of his faculties, the clod, but after I swung over and forced him against the nearest important-looking panel with a polite request for him to shut the water off, he hastily went about trying something. I would’ve done it myself, but the Dominion doesn’t employ tentacle-friendly touchscreens.

Unfortunately, trusting a… fooourr? — damn, I really need to ask him — year-old with disaster management went about as well as the description would imply. Rather than shut off the water and save both our lives, all he managed to do was overpressure a different pipe running along the ceiling and burst that one too.

This one wasn’t even a water pipe, because that would have been too easy. Instead, the Arxur must have some strange use cases for the stuff, because the room immediately started flooding with chemical rocket fuel. It floated on top of the water, giving the whole thing this nasty sheen that was indicative of water that you really, really don’t want to bathe in. Just to sweeten the deal, an electrical fault, probably caused by a few thousand gallons of water going somewhere they shouldn’t, sparked. Fuel did what fuel does best, and suddenly the flood was not only a crushing force of death but also on fire. This development immediately set off every emergency alarm the station had. I might have welcomed the Arxur at this point if it meant that they would help out, but alas, none showed.

Enough fuel continued to leak from the pipeline above to somehow keep the whole thing burning, so it wasn’t just one quick flash, either. The floating nature of the fuel meant that it couldn’t be extinguished by the floodwater. Worse, with the extreme heat that the stuff burned at, it wasn't long before pockets of water in the room started to boil. I think the air in the room got to nearly one hundred sixty, maybe one-seventy degrees by the time it really got going. And all the while, the water level just kept rising.

Kyrix and I managed to avoid the worst for a while longer, but eventually we could climb no higher. This wasn’t because the shelves didn’t stretch all the way to the ceiling, oh no, but because the burning fuel had created so much smoke that the air in the upper few feet of the room was completely unbreathable. Not just hard to breathe, not just oh-my-throat-hurts-when-I-breathe, but genuinely I-am-not-receiving-oxygen unbreathable.

My throat is still sore.

Since there was not a thing either of us could do about our situation, I spent the next few minutes on my shelf trying to come to terms with my impending fate of being breaded and deep-fried in oil whilst trying not to become pan-seared in the process. Kyrix was a little luckier in that regard — scales are harder to burn than soft skin — but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t screaming and crying and generally being very unhelpful in my attempt to avoid panicking. But… it’s not like whether I died panicking or not was really all that important in the end anyway. Plus, he did end up being helpful later, so he has since been forgiven.

The water/oil mix was about three feet from reaching my shelf, and by extent, me, when we finally got our lucky break. Literally, as in the floor gave out from under the extreme weight of the water atop it. The swimming pool of burning filth fell down to the room below us, and not a moment too soon. We had some extra time! Maybe we could get out of here!

Except no, because that would have been too much luck. Below us was some form of generator room, and it was apparently important because the second the flaming mix flooded it and caused no small number of explosions, the power gave out. Battery backup systems lasted just long enough to play a message over the PA system kindly informing us that not only was there a massive fire in the area — thank you PA system, I hadn’t noticed — but that fire suppression systems had completely failed on account of the water pressure in the system being mysteriously off, a good portion of the fire not being extinguishable with water anyways, and numerous wiring failures preventing the remote opening of various airlocks. Damage control teams were en-route, but they had so far been delayed by the sheer quantity of fire and water making their way down the halls. As a result, for those not explicitly ordered otherwise, a general evacuation was in effect.

In other words, a solid third of the station was already embroiled in a hopeless inferno, fires could not be separated from the rest of the station on account of wiring failures preventing the sealing of blast doors, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water were rendering rooms impassable within a few seconds of each other, fires were spreading through the insulation in the walls into areas that weren’t flooded, lighting had completely cut, nobody could communicate with anybody else, and everyone was responsible for themselves. All while the station was stuffed full of thousands of people, the vast majority of which would never cooperate with those in charge and would instead be stampeding down the halls whether they started in cages or not. Topping it all off, the last order given before the PA system failed, general evacuation, was impossible. The station was massive, and while the hangar bay I landed in when I got here was a marvel of engineering, it was also the only large hangar bay they had. Out of the thousands of people on board the station, there were maybe a few hundred seats on ships that hadn’t already gone up in flames. To put it plainly, a nightmare scenario of the worst kind, and a very good time to stop being picky about which ship I got on.

Kyrix knew enough about the station’s layout that — after some firm interrogation — he was able to direct us to the nearest ship hangar. Unfortunately, it was on the level below us, the one currently flooded with liquid fire. We were able to get down there by using a fallen steel beam, but the hallways were completely untraversable. There was no way we were making it on foot. Lucky for us, though, a square of insulation floating by happened to give me a genius idea.

Using the insulation as a raft and two pieces of fallen shelving as oars, I suddenly had a boat capable of traversing the river of fire. With Kyrix at the prow to direct us and I rowing like mad in the back, we made our way down the still-intact main hallway towards the hangar bay. We ended up joining a group of multiple adult Arxur doing the same thing we were, but fortunately they were too preoccupied with the vast quantities of liquid fire flowing through the halls at the ground zero of the incident to do anything about the Kolshian river-rafting through hell on a fallen piece of insulation alongside them. That’s not to say I didn’t get weird looks and double-takes aplenty — it’s not every day you see a Kolshian sailor, after all — but my raft had an Arxur on it, and when coupled with the other goings-on and Kyrix’s various explanations he was belting out, that was apparently enough for them.

Red-water rafting isn’t easy, but while it wasn’t your typical morning commute and there was one unfortunate dude who fell off his raft and got boiled alive, our miniature space-based water navy managed to make it to the bay. There was one particularly scary moment — okay, one especially horrifying moment in a generally terrifying experience — where our fleet had to go around a corner with a ledge at the end leading off in a deadly waterfall. Group travel has its advantages, though, and the lead guy at the front of our herd was pretty good — amazing, actually — with a rope he managed to sling around a pole on the opposite end of the corner. When he passed it back through the group, the guy in front of me did pass it over, and I to the guy behind me in what was probably the first instance of willing cooperation between predator and prey the galaxy had ever seen. Sure, they only did it because I had my own Arxur and they needed to get the rope through me to the rest of the group, but it was still awfully nice of them to save my life after ruining it so thoroughly.

Eventually, we washed up at our destination. The hangar bay was at the top of a tall, sloped ramp for the express purpose of surviving flood scenarios. While there was less clearance than I would have liked, our group was able to beach our rafts and run up into the bay. From there, it was a simple, if stressful, matter of shoving the whole group, ‘trained prey’ and all, into the sole ship in the hangar. It was a mid-sized vessel, capable of supporting some forty crew in all, plus maybe one snack for later. More than enough for the twenty-eight we had, and that’s if you counted the snack.

Serendipitously, one of the Arxur that boarded our vessel turned out to be a pilot. Less luckily, after everyone was accounted for and the ramp drawn up, the ship blasted out of the hangar bay with an oddly familiar set of janky maneuvers that were identical to the first time I’d gotten a ride from a Dominion pilot. Seriously, it was so similar that I’m being led to believe that this might just be how their ships fly. Or, stars forbid, it’s the same guy, and the universe is just pulling a massive cosmic joke on me. Which… doesn’t sound too far off from the truth, to be honest.

At least I had something to hold on to this time and didn’t end up plastering my new crewmates to the walls.

The occupants of our vessel remained wordless as we flew, all collectively avoiding the subject of the oversized, chalky-colored Kolshian in the room with them. It goes without saying, but even with the Arxur not being the most sociable of creatures, it was pretty evident that nobody in the common room just outside the bridge was comfortable under what had to have been the most extreme awkward silence I’ve ever not heard.

Such quietude could not, however, last forever. After it had become pretty clear that there weren’t any other ships escaping the burning husk of a station and that I now had the blood of thousands on my tentacles — though that last part was known only to me — we were pretty much alone out there. Far from comforting, that left us with the ever-important question: What now?

The pilot up front was the first to break the silence. “Ships take fuel, damn it!” he yelled, and he wanted to know where he was going before he “wasted it all farting around in space.” He said more than just that, being the loquacious Arxur that he was, but I don’t think it needs repeating.

The topic was eagerly eaten up by the rest of the Arxur. Anything to get around what to do with me. It turned out that we had exactly zero members of Betterment aboard ranked above the basic Hunter, so between the void left by a superior officer giving orders and the total lack of any established protocol on what to do in the event of total loss of a station in a non-war-related accident, the conversation quickly became a lively, heated debate over where to go, who was in charge, who’s mother was a prey, who had the bigger claws, who could gouge out whose eye, and other standard predator stuff. Stuff that was so distracting that even, hmm, let’s say… a particularly large Kolshian with a penchant for failing stealth checks could manage to make their way out the door and to literally anywhere else before anyone noticed.

“Literally anywhere else” ended up being the medbay aboard the ship. It turned out that the Dominion did carry prey-oriented medicine because… oh, who am I kidding? My pad’s text translator spat out some vaguely familiar words I’d heard somewhere, probably, and I took them. I didn’t die afterwards, and the various medical equipment I kinda knew how to use from listening to the complaints of other med students back in college said that my vitals were only enough to get me hospitalized on seven out of eight worlds back in the Federation. So there. Thirty-five, here I come!

Jiyuulia shudders uncomfortably.

Besides, they probably steal all their medicine from us anyway. Can’t be less safe than what I usually do.

By that time, the political discussion up in the common area just outside the bridge was drawing to a close. Not because anyone had come to a consensus on an actual plan of action, but because it had been discovered that many debaters were in fact capable of removing one of their opponent’s eyes if they didn’t care about keeping both their own, and that blinding half the crew was not a productive use of time. Also, somebody had noticed that the snack had gone missing, and that was a problem for some reason despite nobody wanting to address it before. Don’t ask; I don’t know either.

Queue some giant hunt, at least according to Kyrix. I wasn’t exactly paying attention, so that’s where they found me. In the medbay, practicing pharmacy in the corner of the lab like a massive nerd and having got most of the machines to display something convincingly like medicine to people who didn’t know better. That descriptor, of course, ended up applying to all of them, because we had managed to completely miss out on taking a healthcare worker with us in our rush to leave the station. Not that I think the Arxur have all that many of those… moving on!

In all that lively discourse and its following hunt, a whole five of the ‘debaters’ had managed to suffer grievous injuries that required immediate medical attention lest their lives be forfeit. Another fifteen were bearing wounds that would ‘reduce efficiency,’ and so, with us being short on crew as it was, somebody had to fix them. That somebody, of course, being me, the idiot who had gotten caught being competent for once and now had to do something.

Also, to exaggerate the issue, one of the five on the lower end of ‘still alive’ was the pilot who had started the whole thing. Since nobody else had any idea on how to fly the ship, it was kind of prudent to literally any course of action we could take that he didn’t die and leave us all stranded in space. That definitely might have been a factor in the decision.

So that’s how I ended up being promoted from ‘snack’ to ‘chief medical officer with as-of-current undecided snacking potential’ without simultaneously being promoted to “person” in the world’s most intense interview. “Leaf-licking doctor” or not, I managed to not freak out too hard at the claw dug under my third chin and absolutely did not let any of my new, totally willing patients die on the table. There was a small incident where I didn’t have a clue on how to stitch scales, but trust me when I say I learned very quickly.

After successfully inventing a medical procedure, I was feeling pretty confident in myself and even dabbled a little in using the regenerator for limb and eye damage. This garnered much favor amongst the doubters, and I was left in an interesting position of being one of the most important members of the crew whilst simultaneously not being considered a member of the crew at all.

Again, nobody really wanted to deal with it — least of all me — so we just circled back to the same awkward discussion as before, just with even more awkward glances in my direction and substantially less blood coming out of the debaters this time. No, I was not allowed to participate beyond observer status.

Eventually, it was decided that continuing the journey to wherever it was we were going without a medical snack officer to assist with the side effects of Arxurian democracy was not a risk worth taking. The ‘prey animal’ could sleep in the small bedroom next to the medbay — as long as it continued to be useful. The room was small, and nobody really wanted to sleep next to the slimy thing anyways, so it worked fairly well. The little one, not useful for much else yet, could keep an eye on it and ensure that it didn’t do anything stupid if we were anywhere dangerous. He already had experience doing that, and none of the other Arxur wanted to sully themselves with the title of ‘prey-handler,’ so prey-handler Kyrix became. He’d sleep in the dorm with everyone else at night, and maybe they’d make something of him yet, but the skinny runt would have a purpose during battle.

Speaking of Kyrix, I think he still believes what I told him earlier. I’m… uncertain of his plans for his next course of action, because to get me out of here would be difficult to say the least. He might be a little lost, since I didn’t exactly specify where he had to take me other than ‘the stars.’ Other Arxur have definitely stolen his catch, so he’s not going to heaven yet… but they aren’t hostile enemies either, and the story I gave him really isn’t matching up to reality now and oh boy I have dug myself into a pit here.

Jiyuulia lies back against a wall. She clings tightly to something soft against her chest.

I’ll just… not mention it. See how that goes.

As for now, well. I’ve got a small list of ‘rules’ to work with. I’m ‘welcome’ to wander the rest of the ship unsupervised as long as I don’t break anything. A small cache of prey food that was already inside the ship for some reason, maybe the last snack’s secret stash, has been set aside for me to eat from. I think I might be able to grow more with it if I make creative use of the life-support system. I can, on a tentative basis, ask the other crew members small questions when they’re in a good mood. Kyrix continues to both ride on my shoulders and borrow my pad to play games on it, and I do not dare say no to either request, but he’s been careful so far and my pad remains unbroken, so we’re still good on that front.

And… that’s been my shtick so far. Help the crew members with their “work-related minor injuries,” and they turn a blind eye to the whole Kolshian-on-a-Dominion-ship problem. I have to admit it’s nicer than the plan their superiors had for me. Definitely nicer than my first experience with them, whatever the case.

I just have to wonder… where’s this thing going?

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

The wind howls over the microphone as the recording opens. Long, drastic scratches peal out as small particles, most likely sand, scour a nearby metallic surface. As they do, the metal makes a sharp, grating, almost painful sound, which is present throughout the entire recording. The microphone’s owner is hunched over, taking cover behind the solid steel surface as it groans distressingly. Together, they serve to drown out any softer sounds beyond a few feet from the microphone, creating a perfectly private environment for recording, likely sought out on purpose. It’s almost enough to deafen the breathing of the recording Kolshian, but not quite. She’s breathing a little deeper than normal, occasionally dragging a tentacle through the sand beneath her as she fiddles around and gets comfortable, but it’s not the sound of heavy exertion. She’s evidently found a planet to land on, but no known desert-class habitable planets exist within three days’ travel of the station pinpointed as the most likely origin point of the first recordings, and no other known Arxur installations presenting themselves as likely candidates have such a planet either. Coupled with her speech, her voice hoarse and her words difficult, it is clear that something is wrong.

Hey, listener. Long time no see, huh?

I mean, not that we’ve ever seen each other, nor that you’d want to see me right now, or ever, really, but… aheh…

Shining stars above, I’m pathetic.

Jiyuulia shifts. The movement of her body is rough, sticky peeling sounds accompanying her every movement. Their likeness is not present in prior entries.

Oh, that burns! This is worse than that time I got sunburned in third year after falling asleep against the bus window on the ride home! Or that time I got lazy and tried mixing drain cleaner without using the stirring stick! Mistake I only made once, by the way. Seriously.

Aaaannyway, before you get any more of a kick out of my suffering and that grin splits your face in two, I bet you’re wondering where I am, huh?

…

Why, yes, you’re right, listener! It does seem to be a hellish desert. You’re so clever, you know? I don’t know how you could have ever guessed it was a desert. Did the sandstorm give it away? The incredible two percent humidity? The part why my skin’s starting to peel off whenever I touch anything and my blood seeping all over the pad and getting encrusted in the microphone is starting to muddy the audio? A genius, I say! In fact, since you’re so clever, why don’t you go a step further and tell me which desert I’m in?

…

Well? I’m waiting! Where am I?

…

You don’t know?

WELL NEITHER DO I! HAHAAAHAAHA!

Jiyuulia’s laughter lasts nearly three minutes. It starts, stops, and starts again at random intervals, mostly swinging around in the lower, base tones, but occasionally she snorts and the pitch will shoot up to peak the microphone with her shrill cries. Eventually, however, she quiets.

…Yeah, though. It’s a serious problem. I’m taking suggestions if you have any, listener. I don’t think the rest of the crew would be too upset with some either, if they’re easier to reach for you.

Maybe I should back up a bit.

Okay, so, you remember how my last recording ended? Well, when I was asking where this whole thing was headed, I was being metaphorical. I was worried about whether my patients were about to eat me — which remains a valid concern, by the way — and considering how I might explain myself to Dominion authorities when we finally got to wherever we were going. Whether we were headed to just the nearest station or Wriss itself didn’t really matter all that much to me; I was dead in either case, or so I thought. Maybe it sounds callous to you, listener, but frankly I didn’t really have a preference for which specific butcher tore my guts out. What I hadn’t predicted, however, is the possibility that we wouldn’t end up anywhere at all! Apparently, just because you can fly a ship doesn’t mean you can navigate one.

…That’s the pilot’s excuse, anyways.

We must’ve spent a week up there flying around, just visiting various barren planets seemingly at random. I think I counted one hundred and five different worlds through the viewport in my bedroom, and I swear a few of them showed up more than once. None of them had anything useful on them, completely devoid of liquid water as they were, but some of them did have pretty colors. Still, though, and I can’t speak for the rest of the crew, but by the second day it was obvious to me at least that the argument everyone else had had on the first day hadn’t mattered, because even if all of them had unanimously reached a consensus on a destination, the pilot would have never actually managed to get us there anyways.

Needless to say, this, uh, wrinkle in our plans didn’t exactly go over well with the rest of the crew. They weren’t happy with the extended trip time, and since they’re all violent, bloodthirsty predators with viscous streaks a mile wide, they all responded with the corresponding coping mechanisms. Namely, extreme hyperviolence, typical of monsters like them. As a result, retaining five working limbs is now a specialty feature not granted to all Arxur on board. (Though luckily my seven are safe for now.) Flying bodies to the back of the head have become such a common health hazard in certain corridors that I’ve taken to diving for the floor whenever I hear a loud noise, and looking both ways before crossing any thresholds is now common practice amongst everyone on board. Kyrix as of late has refused to willingly leave my side for longer than is absolutely necessary, and to be honest, after resetting his leg casts for a third time, I can’t really blame him.

If I was asked who’s had it the worst, though, I’d put my vote towards the pilot, my proof being the sheer number of times he’s been dragged by the tail into the medbay totally unconscious. Nobody’s made their way across my table as many times as he has, and even the fact that he is absolutely critical to our collective survival does not seem to prevent the other crewmembers from putting him in critical condition every time he opens his mouth. At the peak of it all, he was showing up three, maybe four times a day bleeding enough that the entire hallway leading up to the medbay is permanently stained red. He’s not solely responsible for that, but it certainly feels like it sometimes.

I still don’t actually know the guy’s name — even stoned on generalized anesthesia he still thinks it’s the greatest joke of the century to give me a different one every time I ask — but at this point I’ve just taken to calling him Hothead. Not to his face of course — I do have a self-preservation instinct after all — but it’s the truth. For all that is good and holy, this guy will not. shut. up. Even when it would be in his best interest — no, especially when it would be in his best interest to stop flinging barbs at the people who very, very clearly want him dead. He’s still alive for now — the rest of the crew would like to make it home — but if he keeps pushing it, I can’t say for sure that he’ll stay that way.

I’m still not sure I’m really selling just how much the rest of the crew loathes this guy here, so just for context: On day five, after a particularly heated argument over directions got out of hand again, the rope guy from earlier, two guards, and the ship’s mechanic held him down and… well, emasculated him. At least they were surgical about it, removing the flesh fairly cleanly since he was restrained so thoroughly, and I was able to reattach it after a harrowing three hours of stitch work. It’s just that all my work was for naught, because the rest of the crew thought it so entertaining at what had happened that it was not two hours after he’d gotten it back that he and his manhood were on the table in two separate pieces yet again. Stitching it back on for a second time just made him a target, and the situation quickly devolved into a running gag by the rest of the crew to tear into him and his boys at the slightest opportunity. It only stopped because, well… there are only so many times you can try to patch up a guy’s groin before you just have to tell him he’s not having children.

So yeah. Nobody likes Hothead.

…

It’s not just the drippy bits that really get to me here, either. I don’t know if you’ve noticed in whatever profession you hold, listener, but by the stars do people say some weird things when they’re both high on whatever makeshift chemical cocktail I was able to whip up as anesthesia and don’t consider the increasingly swampy-smelling blob treating them to be a real person. Topics of choice went over the full spectrum of predatory death threats, ranging from ‘mundane’ theorizing on whether mounting decaying heads on spikes was an effective intimidation tactic or a waste of good meat to a more worrying complete and well-thought-out treatise on what “that Kolshian over in the medbay” would taste like in comparison to “the thinner variety,” and whether I thought anyone would notice if he just had, like, one limb.

Jiyuulia sighs.

None of them quite hold a candle to the communications officer, though. When I first began my journey with this motley crew, I picked him out because I thought I might get some actual conversation from him, seeing as how he’d chosen to work in a social profession and as such might have made for a slightly less prickly adult conversation partner relative to everyone else aboard this ship aside from myself and the literal four-year-old.

That was a mistake.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he made conversation — he was all too eager to, and that was the problem. After I made sure he was high enough to actually safely have a conversation, his topic of choice, well… had you been there, you might have mistaken him for a Venlil.

Maybe locking a bored kid in a room for six to eight hours a day with unrestricted internet access and waiting fifteen years for their entire adolescent life to pass by in there isn’t a good idea. I had to start kicking Kyrix out whenever he came in after that, just to maintain what little innocence the little predator might have left.

At least I finally found an Arxur with a use for Federation credits.

…Maybe I shouldn’t default to drugging people I want to have a conversation with.

Jiyuulia shudders, only to quickly let out a cry of pain as more of her skin flakes off after rubbing against the sand. Her voice thickens and slows, though sheer dehydration squanders any attempt to cry. Only on her third attempt to speak is anything intelligible.

W-why’d it have to be a des-ert?

The recording pauses. It resumes after half an hour. The sandstorm has worsened, and Jiyuulia is huddled even closer to the pad. Her voice sounds forced, but despite its hoarseness, it’s clear enough to understand again.

Sorry about that, listener. It’s just… oh, forget it. I went and got a towel to sit on. It won’t happen again. Where was I…?

Oh, yeah.

So it disturbs me a bit to say it, but over the past week I’ve waded my tentacles through so much blood I can’t really say it bothers me much anymore. If by some miracle I hadn’t caught it before, by now I’ve definitely contracted some variant of Predator Disease, and the act of plunging a tentacle through somebody’s internal organs to dig out another shard of bone from their spleen has become such a daily routine that it doesn’t even faze me any longer when I find them in my clothes hours later. I spend sixteen to eighteen hours a day rooting through their guts now, and before I realized it, it just became another chore I do along with all the rest. Does that make me a bad person? I feel it should; prey creatures shouldn’t… shouldn’t be okay with being covered in blood. But I wasn’t ever really given a choice, either. Does that make it okay?

Is there a point too far, even for the most desperate?

…

Oh! My apologies, listener. I was getting a bit introspective for a minute there. Moving on!

After all this time in space, our supplies were running low, and I was getting a bit worried. It’s not like we’d had time to stock the ship beforehand, so it’s not anyone’s fault in particular that my patients were out of food by like the second day, but it was getting bad enough that I caught more than one crewmember licking floors I’d walked on, chairs I’d used, and even door handles I’d touched to drink even a little bit of my blood. Even Kyrix started to salivate whenever I got too close.

I can hear your confusion, so let me explain why there was blood on the door handles.

So you remember, lucky mammal, back when I was explaining that we Kolshians aren’t really meant for long-term survival without some level of food and water intake? At the time, the five days of food was the important metric, but I distinctly recall also telling you about needing to hydrate every two days. And before you go off and say, “But, like, mammals need to hydrate nearly that often too!” I want you to think about what hydrating means to a Kolshian, and the exact word choice I used during my explanation.

Starting to get an idea, hmm?

The ship didn’t leave with much water, with what little we did have being sent three or four times a day through our extremely overworked water reclaimer, so while we still had enough to drink, barely, I haven’t been able to fill a tub and keep up on my skincare routines anytime over the last week. The bathroom sink shuts off after barely thirty seconds of continuous use, and it won’t turn on again for precisely twenty-seven minutes and thirty-eight point six seconds afterwards.

I can’t see or hear you, so I’ll assume that you’re smart enough to get it, but if you weren’t, I need to do more than just drink the water. When I mentioned my soaking pool as the most convenient feature of my old home, I wasn’t being sarcastic or getting caught up in living a life of luxury. Skincare is important when your outermost layer is a squishy, semipermeable membrane devoid of fur or scales, and while I might not be able to get lice or mange, bare skin is fraught with disadvantages. Not the least of which being the lack of access to good dermatologists, the practice being too often overlooked elsewhere in the Federation.

Soaking isn’t just a method of getting clean for us as it might be for you. Without it, that slight bit of ooze you get on your paws after you shake my tentacle and that all you mammals try to wipe off on a wall or something when you think we aren’t looking begins to break down. That’s bad, because it has purposes aside from just claiming my spot on every bench I sit on and requiring me to ask about the ‘specialty’ options when I shop for clothes — not that I didn’t already have to do that for other reasons, but you get the idea.

Drying out happens in three stages. At first, the Kolshian in question will begin to find themselves getting stickier as the result of skin solutes beginning to saturate the solution on their skin, a process as disgusting for us as it is for you. By the end of the first stage, our demo Kolshian will begin to leave trails of slime wherever they go, with strings of ooze resembling mammalian snot in both consistency and color often stringing out several inches before separating themselves from the body.

If the Kolshian still yet refuses to, or, more likely, is unable to find water to soak in for a few hours to restore balance to the mucus solution, the second stage consists of the solute glands hardening up as the water evaporates further, leaving encrusted bits of solute and whatever else had dissolved in solution as buildup on the skin. Not only is this both disgusting and incredibly itchy for the Kolshian, but the decay of chemicals in the solute begins to release a foul odor resembling that of dead fish, with the stench oftentimes fumigating rooms and making it nearly impossible to get within twenty yards or share a room with our demo Kolshian. It’s so bad that it’s actually illegal to reach these levels of dehydration in public settings back on Aafa, not that these laws are often enforced as the dehydratee themselves is by no means immune to smelling themselves either, a fact that I have come to be very familiar with over the last few days.

If the dehydration actually manages to reach the third stage, an extremely rare occurrence in swamps like Aafa or the other steamy wet places the vast majority of Kolshians choose to live, the crusted solute on the skin eventually crumbles off completely, and the skin itself begins to break down without the vital proteins present in the solutes. It starts off as a full-body rash, but then rapidly progresses in a criss-cross pattern as the outer layers of the skin begin to flake off. By the time the process starts, our demo Kolshian typically only has a day or two, sometimes three, to find water before the final layer of skin breaks and they suffer a full-body skin hemorrhage. Nerve cells, directly underneath the skin, are fully aware of the entire process, and as a result, it is widely considered by most Kolshians to be the most painful possible way for a Kolshian to die.

I’m still undecided on that one, myself.

…

In unrelated news, none of the toilet basins have any water left in them anymore, and the remaining painkillers that were in the medicine cabinet have found their way into the legs of the surgical table. There aren’t that many left. I’ve been considering the other medical supply kits for alternative use cases, but all but one of those have proven unhelpful.

…We don’t have any blood bags left, is what I’m trying to say.

I…

I’m sorry.

…

It did work, though. With the proteins in it, it was even more effective than normal water, or so it felt. It wasn’t enough, couldn’t ever be enough for longer than a few minutes of relief, but…

I’d do it again, if there were more. Would that be so bad?

…

I can’t ask you for understanding, listener. I only ask for your forgiveness.

Jiyuulia sighs. She’s silent for thirty seconds, saying nothing as she considers what to say next.

The other stuff in the cabinet isn’t looking much better. The gratuitous overuse of nearly everything in there has us down to our last few bottles on more than a few lifesaving drugs, not to mention my own overuse of the more “specialty” stuff in there is running against the edge too. In particular, the insulin ran out two days ago, and my blood sugar’s been a little finicky since. But I’d like to see you try managing it when your BMI was an eighty-something last time you bothered to calculate it, you’re running on approximately an hour and a half of sleep a night, and the one type of fruit left in your rations bag has enough sugar in it that not only will it hang upside-down if touched to a rough ceiling, but it’s so easy to do that it’s considered odd if the fruit stand you buy the stuff from doesn’t use that feature as a proof of quality.

That segues onto my next topic, actually. There wasn’t so much I could do for my fellow crewmember’s appetites save for things I wasn’t quite willing to do yet, but I felt that things were getting desperate enough that paying a visit to the secondary engineering deck and seeing about abusing the life support system for my own personal gain wasn’t the worst decision in the universe.

Now hold up! Before you berate me for deserving whatever my fate was after that, hear me out! It wasn’t my fault this time, I swear!

…

Sorry, had to get that one out there. Fend off your completely unjust accusations you were building up — and don’t pretend you weren’t!

…

Oh, don’t look so offended, listener; I know what you think of me. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a prime example of what a Kolshian should be. Clumsy? I hip check the medical table almost every time I pass by. Accident-prone? My whole life is an accident. About as athletic as a tub of margarine, and not far off from having the chemical makeup of one either? I can’t really argue with that. But as much as people want to apply the stereotype and label me a big, bumbling idiot, I need you to realize that I’m not stupid. I did not go and jam a wrench into the second-most important system a spaceship can have without thinking. I mean, my brain hasn’t quite been up to its usual standards lately, with me not exactly being what I would call rested or recuperated, but I’ve got some level of basic survival instinct in there somewhere that recognizes bad ideas like that when it sees them. Even if lately I’m starting to wish it weren’t there sometimes. It would be a shame to get this far just to end it all with a drink from under the sink, but it also seems like I’m not going to be enjoying myself for the foreseeable future here, so the option’s not completely off the table yet. For now, I’ve still got painkillers left.

…

Aaanyway, heh heh, when I opened that door, well, it didn’t take an engineer to figure out that something wasn’t quite right. The entire life support system was charred black, covered in soot, and producing enough smoke to get us kicked out of the hotel room and sued for property damage. In hindsight, maybe our running of the water reclaimer at four times the recommended rate had something to do with that. As it was, the stinging in my eyes alone was enough to dash any plans I had to start farming. It also meant I didn’t have to deal with the part where I inevitably get caught dinking around with a very prone-to-sabotage system in a way that I’m sure would have gone over well with the rest of the crew, but if you ignore the part where I end up in multiple pieces for endangering all of our lives over a snack, it’s had the same end result anyway — that being that we were all totally screwed, of course.

I, being totally mentally stable after six days of being dirty, half-starved, parched, overworked, hardly able to breathe, strung out on painkillers, subjected to extreme psychological warfare, and slowly tortured to death for the mere crime of my existence as a semiaquatic being, reacted well to this development and made my way off to the commons to inform my fellow crewmembers of this new convolution in the flaming pile of excrement that was our situation. I did not, as some liars may attest, “yell a string of obscenities, trip over myself twice as I peeled down the hall at a staggering four miles per hour, get stuck in the sole doorframe between the secondary engineering deck and the commons room after trying to wedge myself through it, require an invasive level of assistance in getting unstuck that tore a total of seven inches of skin off my body, realize the doorframe I had just shoved myself through wasn’t actually the right one and that I needed to turn around, get stuck again, break down crying so loudly in front of eleven different Arxur that the rest of the ship heard it too, drew such a level of attention in doing so that even Hothead stopped what he was doing to yell racial slurs over the PA system, and generally take fourteen minutes to traverse a grand total of five rooms just to collapse at the end of it all and witness the rest of the crowd interested in this new and growing source of entertainment stroll easily through the door into the commons room in an effort to decide what to do with the blubbery blubbering Kolshian currently splayed out on the floor.” Anyone who tells you that is trying to slander my good name as an effective and professional crewmember on board the… uh… something something, and should not be trusted.

After managing to make it to the commons completely uneventfully and dragging myself into the bridge to talk with Hothead and anybody he trusted enough to not geld him again — and also not having to wait for two of them to pick themselves up after they’d fallen out of their chairs in laughter at my expense — I relayed my experiences with the status of our life support and suggested that maybe something be done about the oxygen situation before we all asphyxiated in space. I may or may not have also made a completely serious offer that anybody who managed to kick the water reclaimer up enough to run me a bath could have a limb of their choice, if they were snappy about it.

Getting them to take me seriously about this critical issue wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hoped, for numerous reasons, but after taking another three minutes to convince them that no, I wasn’t telling a joke, and that my mere existence wasn’t that funny, thank you very much, I was able to get our sole mechanic on board pulled from the primary engine deck to go and verify my claims about the life support. After his return and subsequent confirmation that the system was totally nonfunctional and that it would not be repairable without replacement parts (meaning I got to keep all seven of my limbs), I was also able to ascertain as to why seemingly nobody had noticed the numerous alarms a system as mission-critical as life support would sound as a fire broke out inside of it. The answer? The ship’s engines haven’t been stable lately, and the mechanic was busy working on them at the time. It’s Dominion policy to shut off all the alarms on the ship during ship repair because otherwise the alarms squeal the whole time the mechanic’s paws are in there, and nobody had thought to set up a system configuration to turn off individual sections of the ship’s alarm system instead of just flipping the switch on the whole darn thing. An answer somehow intensely disappointing, not surprising, consistent with everything I knew about Arxurian safety standards, and despite all that not something I can manage to wrap my head around. That is to say, it was like every other answer I’ve ever gotten concerning the Arxur, and I should probably just give up.

Anyways, after the inevitable fighting broke out and saddled me with even more work to do after dealing with my own seven-inch gash, Hothead finally used his PA system to relay something other than slurs for once, and everyone on board was forced to make the realization that our air supply was best measured in units of time rather than those of volume. Coupled with the supply of food consisting of ‘one unwilling snack’ and the total lack of remaining water on board the ship, the decision was unanimous to land on the next life-bearing world we came across, enough fuel to leave afterwards or not. Fortunately, we didn’t immediately run into a brick wall with our plans because there was already one in the system we were in. Unfortunately, we were still very much somewhere in Dominion space, and life-bearing worlds under the authority of the Prophet-Descendant don’t exactly have the best track records when it comes to supporting all that much of it.

The planet we got stuck with was no different. While the giant cloud of orbital debris undergoing the final stages of Kessler Syndrome around the planet suggested that it was a burgeoning center of life sometime in the distant past, possibly even an original homeworld, that was ancient history. Now, it was a harsh, sun-baked desert of a world, complete with dunes of sand blowing in the background just to complete the apocalyptic look. Wide, blackened scarring from numerous antimatter bombing campaigns was visible from orbit, and the low orbitals were absolutely stuffed with more than just satellite debris. Massive ash storms swirled over nearly a third of the planet, clouding the sky and choking the atmosphere. The only thing the planet had going for it — and I mean the only thing — was that the sensor tech was able to assure us that the atmosphere outside of those roiling clouds was breathable, barely.

The air in the ship by this point was hardly any better, though, so without much of a choice, down we went. Hothead swung us around twice in the highest fringes of the atmosphere, allowing the tech to run a sweep of the planet’s surface to see if there was anywhere in particular we wanted to land, but even an unempathetic predator could tell from the guy’s body language that he wasn’t seeing much of anything. On the second flyover, he just sighed and led the pilot over to a spot about as far away from any antimatter-induced craters as he could find.

We landed without incident, but I don’t think anybody else realized just how screwed we were until after the ramp came down. Twenty-one hunters had prepared themselves to scour the planet for resources, to hunt for both sustenance and glory as they set foot on this tomb of a world. All of them went silent after the ramp hit the sand. Beyond the ship lay a sea of sands, seemingly infinite in their expanse, and there was not a sign of life upon them. The sun bore down from above, baking the surface air into a thick haze and warming the ground to scald the feet of those who stepped upon it. The searing golden rays bounced off of nearly every surface, reflecting in every direction at once, and the scattering made it almost blinding just to open one’s eyes. Even the air we had come down for was as sterile as the sensor readout had suggested, so thin and dry it hurt to breathe and contributed nothing towards raising the oxygen levels aboard the ship.

I won’t be cliché and say that the desert was the embodiment of death like the station had been, because such a claim would imply that the desert looked as though it had ever held anything that was alive in the first place. The desert, nay, the wasteland, was far beyond that. It was oblivion; an infinite, uncaring void that harbored nothing, offered nothing, meant nothing. To enter was to cross into a world devoid of anything, save yourself and whatever sanity you left behind.

The hunters, foolhardy in their stubbornness, left anyway, channeling their pent-up rage into something ‘productive’ rather than furthering my workload. I myself was busy at the time, tending to those who had displayed their reckless natures in battle earlier, but it did not matter. Within hours, all those who had left had given up and returned, even their spirits crushed by the featureless sands’ refusal to surrender any more life-sustaining materiel than the vacuum of space. Of the twenty-one who had left, not one had found so much as a scrap of metal to prove that anyone had ever lived here.

Even Hothead’s infamously pigheaded nature struggled and broke against the sheer disregard for our lives the desert held. He tried again, moving multiple times as we burned through our limited fuel reserves in an in-atmosphere flight around the world, barely half a mile above the ground as we hopped from place to place in hopes of finding a clue, any trace at all of the civilization that had once thrived here. It was a novel experience, atmospheric flight. Swinging around with the breeze as it passed above and below us, soaring through a thickness you never realized was there until you’d been to space. It was a far cry from his usual snappy maneuvers, even considering the section of volcanic turbulence he took us through, a far smoother ride than anything he’d ever flown us on in space. Alas, even chancing the ash-choked wastelands and courting suffocation more closely than any of us felt comfortable with revealed nothing at all of the planet’s former inhabitants, and we were forced to return to the desert with nothing to show for our efforts.

This was, understandably, frustrating to all on board. Abnormally for most crew, however, frustrated Arxur don’t have the typical coping mechanisms a herbivorous race would, so another fight broke out. Unlike previously — and most thankfully so, considering that I do not believe our medicine cabinet could handle another major battle — it wasn’t each other that they were angry at this time. The bombastic idiots, against all reason and common sense, somehow got it in their heads that it was the planet’s fault for being a bombed-out hellscape, and so started unleashing more of exactly the reason it was like that in the first place. This actually ended up being really important later, but I’m getting to that.

Fortunately enough for the bottom of our hull, most skirmisher-size ships don’t come equipped with the city-destroying sizes, but unleashing a barrage of antimatter weaponry against various sand dunes DID seem to bring the Arxur some sort of catharsis, even starting a form of competitive game to play against each other as crewmembers rotated between the two gunnery positions, seeking to land bombs more and more accurately. Our—

A metallic screech rings out, and a burst of sand blows past the microphone. Jiyuulia freezes, her voice silenced as she waits for something to happen. But nothing does.

HELLO?

Jiyuulia stands, grabbing the towel as she gets up. Her plodding step manages to be loud somehow even here, on dry sand. She walks cautiously, hugging the wall of the ship as close as she can without touching it in an effort to stay out of the raging storm. Before long, the surface below her transitions to the metal of the ramp, wind howling as it blasts the wedge of steel. Suddenly, something moves, latching on to Jiyuulia’s thigh.

AAAAAHHHHH!!!

Jiyuulia flinches, hard. She falls over in the confusion, landing on her back. A second voice is delighted to see her.

*Squishy! Where have you been? You’ve been gone for hours!*

Jiyuulia pants ferociously. She makes no deliberate movements.

*It’s pad time! You said we could play Dance Mania again when you finished your work, and that was hours ago! Did you forget?*

Jiyuulia pats herself, her breathing rapid and completely panicked. The microphone, pressed up against her chest, can pick up the rapid thud of a heartbeat somewhere underneath her still-sloshing flab. Once she’s satisfied that she’s not going into shock, she laboriously sits up. She does not stand.

Stars almighty… Kyrix, I told you already, you can NOT keep doing that. I think my heart might explode.

*Ooh, that would be a big mess. But I make no promises. I am a good hunter and can catch prey without even attacking for real! Also, it is very funny.*

Oh… Hah… yeah, I can attest that you would have got me there. But, uh… maybe let me keep any shreds of dignity I have left, next time? I was in the middle of a recording an— and…

*What? What recording?*

Oh! It’s a very important reason! It’s, uhm. Uuuuuhhhhh…

*I know! The recording is proof of my journey, yes? You have to tell the Great Hunters all about the many adventures of Kyrix the Invisible when we get there! Ooh, I like it!*

Uhm… well… yeah, that’s it. But you weren’t supposed to—

*Great! I will assist. I have to make sure you don’t forget anything; the list is very big, like you!*

Eeehhh… yeah. Thanks. I was just getting to the competition you had earlier toda—

*Ooh, yes, let me explain! I promise to tell the truth! I wouldn’t dare lie to the Great Hunters!*

Mmhmm. Yeah, those guys are tough; I wouldn’t lie to them either. And I don’t know; this is kind of supposed to be something I’m meant to do…

*Please! We can do this instead of Dance Mania! You promised we would do something! You promised!*

Instead of Dance Mania, huh? Well, when you put it that way… Look, I have to do the recording, but you can chime in on anything I miss, okay? That way I don’t break the rules and get in trouble, and you can stay here. But when we get to heaven, don’t tell anyone, capiche? Our little secret, just between you and me. That sound like a deal?

*Yes! Deal! Hooray!*

Oookay then. Yay.

A-hem. So, uh, Great Hunters, the crew had decided to engage in a little competition with the remainING — KYRIX my skin is SENSITIVE right now ple-hease let go of my thigh thank you — ahah, remaining explosives in the bombing bay. Our stockpile, even without the city destroyers, was still appropriately sized for bringing about an extinction-level event, as all proper Dominion ships are, so this went on for quite a while, changing the atmosphere on the bridge from its usual oppressive hostility to a chaotic party full of whooping and hollering as gunners both skilled and not went head-to-head in all sorts of deranged categories ranging from a sensible “closest to center” to completely insane “trick shots.” At first, it was just the soldiers getting involved, but before long the mechanic was trying to pull off a Bouncing Betty on sand, and after that it was a free-for-all that included everyone.

*Like us!*

Yes, I was just getting to that. The comms officer, unsatisfied with his fourth place score trailing behind a station guard and two veteran soldiers, thought he could pull an easy victory and summoned Kyrix up to the gunner’s chair. I was going to let Kyrix participate on his own, but the seats were a little too big for him, and the side-to-side was controlled via foot pedals on the bottom of the setup, so I was the logical next choice. Our opponent may have complained a little bit at having to compete against a prey creature, but a tap of my pad and two credits deposited towards his you-know-what later, and he was suddenly quite satisfied with letting me into the gunner’s chair and allowing Kyrix to operate the aiming controls on the armrests.

*Which you had to lift up!*

Which rose to accommodate a girthier figure after some finagling.

*And then I laid across your stomach so I could reach both controls with my paws and feet!*

And then you did that… Actually, how did you manage to operate the stick with your feet? I know your tail was over operating the buttons. You’re still in casts; that shouldn’t be possible!

*Secret! But I’ll tell you if you beat my Dance Mania score!*

Forget I asked. Anyways, after tuning out the rest of the room’s jeering, I knew two things: our opponent had seriously misjudged us, and we were ready to show him how a real Hunter Potentiate and his chosen Spirit of Bounty aim their WMDs. The dune coming up was one with a quintuple peak arranged in a line, and the goal was to get our bomb to roll down the side of one of the peaks, up the next, flip through the air onto the third, roll down that one, up and over the fourth, and land as close to the peak of the fifth as possible. The sensor tech who was moderating the action was calling it the double trouble, and nobody had landed one within fifty meters the whole competition. The comms officer was looking to be the first, hoping to land the nearly impossible shot to shoot him back up into the running for first place.

The challenger went first. His opposition was respectable, making it up the first two hills, but the control was off, and his bomb landed one hundred and ten meters off target. Better than anyone else had done so far, but that’s because we hadn’t gone yet.

The pilot flew us in dead straight, like he had for all the bombing runs so far. But as we approached for the shot—

*Ooh! Let me, let me! So as I, the quick and good-looking Kyrix, was carefully lining up my shot on the dune, I used my good-looking skills to look at it really hard and see if it was hiding any tricks. And it was! Part of the dune was shinier than the rest, harder and more able to take my bomb than the softer sand that would slow it down. In a spin that nobody but me was able to understand, I lined up my bomb to roll down the shiny sand and was ready to push the button. But then, oh no! Right as I was pressing the button to drop the bomb, the wind started blowing really hard, and I didn’t have time to re-aim my shot!*

Wait, there was shinier sand?

*But Squishy deserves some credit. Without me asking her to, her belly rumbled, and I moved the stick in a way that I hadn’t meant to right as I hit the button, swinging the bomb so that it could ignore the wind! It rolled down the hill perfectly, jumped to the next one, and flew off the second ramp with a triple flip just to be extra super cool. But the best part was that the bomb hit the peak exactly! Perfect score! And I couldn’t have done it without her.*

Oh, thank you, Kyrix, but don’t forget to be proud of yourself too. All I did was act as a channel for divine intervention, for it was surely nothing less, straight from the Great Hunters themselves. They intended it as a gift for you! You were the one who actually aimed the shot. And everyone’s been so proud of you since! Have you seen how they look at you now? Not the same, I’ll tell you. There’s a reason that nobody else dared to challenge you. And it wasn’t just because I sat in the chair; it was—

The ship lurches and groans, the ramp raising automatically as the ship’s engines begin to spin up. The sandstorm outside is worsening, and the ship will be buried soon if it doesn’t move. Jiyuulia is forced to stand, her skin peeling and snapping as she does. If she wasn’t on painkillers, the action would likely be so excruciatingly painful that it could very well reach the point of being impossible on one’s own. As she is now, her breathing quickens, and she hisses loudly at the endeavor, but she completes the action.

And that’s time. Sorry, Kyrix, but it seems they’re moving the ship again, and we can’t be in here when they do. Up you go.

Though her physical body is not in prime condition, Jiyuulia’s physical strength remains astoundingly impressive. Swinging the allegedly thirty-five pound Kyrix onto her shoulders does not seem to take any effort out of her. Walking, however, certainly does.

*Aww. But I was having fun! You have to include me in the next recording, pleeease!*

Hmm. I can’t promise that I can include you in every one; the Great Hunters can be finicky sometimes, but I’ll let you in on them sometimes, deal?

*Deal!*

Good. Now, would you like to do the honors?

File “Entry 6 – 08:43, January 6th, 2137.mp3” ended.

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Beginning Playback…

WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

It’s evident from the start of this entry that the setting has once again changed, stepping back from the open world of the surface and returning to the tightly confined environments Jiyuulia favors. Great gusts of wind whoosh over the microphone with regularity, both due to environmental effects as well as the heavyset recorder’s exhausted, wheezy breathing; it is clear that Jiyuulia has yet to learn the optimal distance at which to hold her pad for optimal recording quality. When she isn’t inhaling the microphone, blasts of air still make their way over the piece. They lack any sort of discernible pattern, oddly hollow and heavy in their passage and a far cry from the sandblasted desert of the previous entry. In the background, water roars as it rushes by, booms ringing out as gigantic waves crash against solid terrain and pound the unyielding surfaces with a crushing, lethal force. Occasionally, a wave rises higher than its counterparts, only to slam back down into itself with the resultant spray scattering droplets as far as the stone flooring underneath the microphone. At the same time, a heavy grinding sound further banishes the silence, seemingly stemming from every direction at once. It is fairly loud, but although it sounds almost industrial in nature, the crackling hum has no obvious machine with which to pair. Further dissuading the idea of unnatural phenomena serving as the source of the sound, no other sounds of a similar nature stand out, and no voices other than Jiyuulia’s make themselves known. As for Jiyuulia herself, she sounds better, if wheezier, than before, her speech less slurred, and her enunciation far tighter and smoother, even firm in its return to a healthier state. It still rates two octaves below standard, but the recovery is remarkable regardless. It is almost certain that this marked improvement in listening pleasure is a direct result of the water present in the background, as well as the sharp drop in painkiller dosage such a discovery would allow. Complaints issued in the previous entry and common knowledge of Kolshian physiological and psychological requirements suggest that she should be elated at this opportunity for her continued survival, and yet, despite this seemingly miraculous turn of events, Jiyuulia does not sound at all pleased.

Hello again, listener. I know… Haaah… that it hasn’t been very lo—

Suddenly, the hacking, rumbling cough of a fully-grown Arxur interrupts the scene, the Arxur responsible retching and convulsing, followed by a large quantity of liquid splashing against the floor. The body is not far behind, falling to the ground with a wet thud. Jiyuulia wrenches away from the perpetrator, the microphone pulled back as far as it could go before stilling, the Arxur going silent once more.

WOAH, okay, uhh… he should be fine? Maybe? Hold on, listener, I’ve got more work to do.

Jiyuulia grunts laboriously, then stands. Her feet pop, squish, and suck against the wet, rocky floor.

Hey, can you hear me? Please say you can hear me!

…

Please?

…No? Aren’t feeling up to it?

Jiyuulia gurgles something unintelligible. Whatever it is, it’s not a compliment.

…figures I couldn’t get ten minutes to myself. No, he has to have a medical emergency now; stars forbid I ever breathe easy for once. Think, Jiyuulia, think!

Erm… you are still breathing, right?

Jiyuulia reaches out, one of her tentacles pushing and prodding against the body. It elicits no response.

I… can’t actually tell. That’s not… the greatest sign.

…

No heartbeat, either. Hoooh no. He’s in trouble now! Knots, I’m in trouble now! He’s going to die, and I’m going to be out here all alone, and then they’ll come again, and—

Not the time, me!

I’ve got a dying patient in front of me, his heart isn’t beating, I’m absolutely screwed, nothing’s new! Except this time I don’t have a defibrillator, and— damn it woman, get over yourself already and give the man CPR!

The pad skids to the floor, discarded as Jiyuulia shuffles into position.

Okay, CPR, CPR, it’s been ages since middle school; how did it go again? Uh… thirty compressions at the sternum, hard, b—breaking it is a sign of progress, so don’t worry, then, uh…

Jiyuulia retches, shuddering in disgust. Her sides shake for longer than the rest of her.

…

Up.

Down.

Up.

Down.

…

A sudden, sharp snap. A sharper breath. But the compressions continue.

…

Jiyuulia doesn’t let up for nearly eight minutes. Her frantic, determined attempt blows past the normal limits of her stamina, but nobody lasts forever. Eventually, finally, she slows, then stops, her body falling to the side with a heavy, barely controlled slam, completely and utterly spent. Her wheezing, keening breath comes in great, shuddering gasps and whines, alone. As time passes, it slows, quieting down to a hushed whisper, but Jiyuulia makes no effort to speak, instead dragging herself along the stone as she huddles into herself. The intense background noise renders any quieter sounds impossible to discern from anything else. Over twenty-seven minutes pass this way before she breaks the silence.

Listener? Are you still there?

…

Good, good.

…

Ca-can you make me a promise, listener? It’s kind of a big ask, but you’ve been kind so far, and I have no one else, so…

Don’t leave me, please?

It won’t be for forever, mind you. Just until the end. It shouldn’t be much longer, now.

It won’t… be like this, don’t worry. All you have to do is keep picking up, keep listening to what I have to say. You won’t have to change a thing on your end; our relationship will stay the same way it always has. The entries will continue, we’ll have the same one-sided discussion we always have, and I’ll tether another piece of myself to this universe, away from the dark, indifferent void of whatever comes after.

But one day? One day, you’ll hit the end. I don’t think you’ll get a warning. I mean, I’ll try to leave one if I think there might be a need for one, but… well. Odds are, you’ll be tapping along on this pad, slowly making your way through these little things, and you’ll get to the end of one. It’ll end all normal-like, and after you’ve finished jotting down my stupid jokes so you can tell them to your friends or coworkers, you’ll gleefully hit the next button, eager to hear more… and nothing will play.

It’ll be a bit jarring, I know — it’s not like I’ll have wanted to leave these behind, either. But, if you really think about it, it’s no different from any other person you’ve ever talked to. Everyone you’ve ever met, doesn’t matter if they’re internet buddies, your classmates, maybe coworkers… family members… there’s only a finite number of conversations you’ll ever have with them. No matter how many of them there are, one of them has to be the last. Eventually, that’ll happen with us too. It’ll just be… more obvious than normal.

I don’t know how you found this pad. Stars above, I don’t even know if you actually exist! Probability states that you don’t… but to hell with probability! Either you exist… or I may as well never have.

So, listener? Could I ask you to stay?

…

Thanks, listener. I always could count on you.

I’d still like to have our conversation today, if that’s okay. Just… just let me prepare myself first.

The recording pauses for five hours. When it resumes, the background has quieted, though the same sounds are still audible in their quieted forms. Jiyuulia has evidently changed locations again, but she doesn’t appear to have moved far. Her voice has changed too; it’s calm, collected. To describe it as emotionless would be incorrect — it’s full of emotion, swinging high and low during her pointlessly overcomplicated descriptions. But neither is it her normal voice, despite very clearly being intended to be taken as such. To her credit, it is a very good impression. Yet not a perfect one.

Welcome back, listener.

I know it hasn’t been very long since my last entry, but as you probably guessed from, uh, earlier, a lot has happened since then, and the situation has changed so much from what it was before that I just had to talk to someone about it. You’re… my sole conversational partner again, at least temporarily, so taking that for what it’s worth…

No, Kyrix is still alive. Barely. But I can’t have adult conversations with him even normally, so he doesn’t really count. As for the rest of the crew…

I— I think some of them are still alive. B-but the less I go into that, the better, heh heh.

…

Listener, promise me you won’t shoot me for this, because believe me when I say that whatever I’m feeling is far worse, but… as blasphemous as it feels to say, you would not believe how happy I would be to see a healthy, well-armed, combat-capable Arxur warrior right about now.

Jiyuulia coughs.

And hoo, does it feel even weirder to say out loud. I mean, really, what kind of Kolshian am I to want to see an Arxur of all things? How disease-ridden must I be, to reach that level of depravity?

Jiyuulia shifts. One of her legs pushes against a stone. It plummets, bangs sounding out as the rock bounces and rolls down a cliff face.

I take it back, please shoot me. I’m more of a danger to society than they are at this point.

…

I guess that wouldn’t really solve the conversationalist problem, would it? Admittedly, that shouldn’t really be a primary concern when dealing with the fate of billions, and it would definitely solve other problems I have. Most prominently, I wouldn’t have to be the sole frontline combatant in whatever scenario comes flying out this way next — which, believe me, is not a position I hold by choice. I don’t know what higher powers are having a laugh at my expense up there, but whatever it is they’re getting at, I can’t say I appreciate it.

To be fair, “cosmic joke” kinda sums up my life just in general, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And it’s not even a good joke! Honestly, guys, whenever you finally get bored of making fun of the big girl up there, the heart attack option is right there. Or diabetic shock slash stroking out, or even any one of hundreds of other options I could present if you wanna get creative. I’ve definitely given you plenty of opportunities; you won’t hear me complaining if you take one.

…

Or you can just keep digging a divot in the flower beds with my widening arse. Your choice, I guess.

…

Scum-suckers.

Jiyuulia sighs.

Least you’re still around, listener. They’ve allowed me that much.

…

What?

Oh, yeah, sure, the water thing. Should’ve known you were going to ask about that. Yeah, I guess that’d count as a nice thing too. Or at least, it did before it damn near killed us all. But that’s just the thing: the gods giveth, the gods taketh away. Everything nice they send my way comes with a cost, usually one far higher than anyone would ever be willing to pay. But that’s just part of this whole experience I call my “life.” I’ll finally be rewarded for giving it my all, just barely toughing out a challenge on sheer willpower alone, and just as I lay a tentacle tip on the thing I worked so hard to get, they’ll rip something else of mine away. Sometimes it’ll be something I started with and never got to appreciate before it was gone, like being able to take the stairs without dying, or the days I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted for breakfast. Other times, it’ll be something I found along the way, like all the friends I ever made, or any semblance of respect I ever built up amongst my peers. On not-as-rare-as-I-would-prefer-it-to-be occasion, it’ll be both.

Oh, but you want an example? Just look at my current situation! On one side, I get water, and thus don’t literally disintegrate in the most painful way possible. One the other: I’ll have to leave it behind sometime sooner or later, I’ve lost literally everything I had aside from the stained, tattered remnants of the simple clothes still glued to my back, my beaten old pad, one half-dead Arxur child, and a whole bunch of worse-than-useless corpses. Of the fourteen washed up on shore, all but four are definitely gone, most mangled beyond recognition, and even those four are at least mostly-dead. I mean, by now they could be all-dead — who really knows at this point — but what difference does it make? I’m no miracle worker, and they’ve no pockets.

Jiyuulia snorts.

Speaking of pockets, listener, I’ve had to switch out where I’m storing you. Just because I still have the pad doesn’t mean that the powers that be didn’t try to take it, but apparently they got bored midway through because they settled for shoving it down my throat and damn near choking me with it instead. No, really, after the buckles on the front snapped, the pocket covers came loose and the current whisked away their contents. Not that I had much, only my pad and a bottle of painkillers, but although the painkillers are gone forever now, I got “lucky” and a rogue upwards current swept the pad into my face. My slightly oversized mouth was open at the time — it’s hard to scream in terror with your mouth closed — and the pad got lodged back there pretty good.

After that, the rest of my clothes didn’t quite survive the trip either, for multiple reasons. Normally, I’d be pretty angry about that, but… well, they were a bit on the smaller side to begin with — figuratively, of course — and it’s been freeing in more ways than one, if I’m being honest. Even losing the pockets isn’t that big a deal; I’ve got more than enough natural storage space to not need them all that badly anymore. Even if I did have to learn to turn vibrate off the hard way.

…

Oh, ew! No, I didn’t mean it like that! Stars above, listener, how old are you? Get your head out of the gutter!

Ahem! Moving on.

Out of everything I lost in the river, though, I think the thing I’m most miffed about has to be the painkillers. Admittedly, my skin is fine now — assuming we aren’t counting the two dozen gashes and bruises from rocks and fellow rafters — and I probably shouldn’t use any of them without a medbay to measure the dosage anyway. Especially for what I’ve been using over the last little bit; after running out of opioids and barbiturates, the little medicine bottle became less of a tiny plastic container and more of a half-liter plastic jug of carfentanil that was a little pickier about dosages than I had first imagined. Incorrect assumptions about blood filtration on my part led to my heart almost stopping twice — not that it needs much help doing that — so it’s probably better for me anyway that the stuff is gone now, but it’s the principle of the matter, y’know? Besides, I might’ve felt like knocking myself out right about now and spending my time drooling facedown on the floor rather than facing my current problems, huh?

…

Aaand now I’ve come off as a drug addict and a sexual deviant, all in under forty seconds! Just what I wanted for what’s supposed to be the last instance of myself I present to the world. No wonder the tablet computer fit — my mouth’s more appropriate on a two-ton grazing animal than whatever joke of a Kolshian I’m turning out to be. In retrospect, the part where my voice was two octaves lower than normal really should’ve given it away.

And I used to wonder why my neighbors never talked to me.

…Then again, the whole “sad gluttonous loser” getup probably didn’t help with that either.

…

How’s dad feel when people ask him about his family, and he has to tell them about his last living daughter? Y’know, the one who hasn’t contacted him in weeks and went dark right after the place she was illegally living was attacked by the greatest affront to sapient life in the history of civilization. That one that lets a smaller version of one of those crimes against nature ride around on her shoulders whenever it wants because she accidentally waddled herself into a corner, and the sole time she tried to back out of it, the little monster started bawling until she finally ended up letting it play with her belly folds like a plush toy until it calmed down? That one?

Jiyuulia sighs.

I hope he’s doing alright.

…

The silence stretches, quickly becoming awkward. Jiyuuila pats her thigh in deliberation, presumably trying to figure out where to go from that.

Sooo… I know how much you enjoy it, listener, but how about rather than me continuing to prattle on about how much of a disappointment I am, because that’s a topic that’ll never dry up if there ever was one, I actually get around to talking about what it was I wanted to discuss with you? Plus, I mean, this is supposed to be a professional thing and all, and while we both know that I’ve oh-so-closely held myself to a rigid, purely academic tone throughout my previous entries, talking about which neck fold I plan on shoving the pad into afterwards like a spare toaster pastry is perhaps a bit much, even for me. As sad as it is, listener, we can’t all be perfect storytellers like you.

So, uh, I shouldn’t have to point out that the situation as it is now is not exactly what I would call ideal, but as for why that’s come to be, I’ll have to invoke the format of these things and wind the clock back to shortly after the end of the last entry. I’d just managed to pry Kyrix off my shoulders for bedtime, cleaned up the medbay, and made a total mess of my bedroom floor after gorging myself on what remained of my dried sugar fruit before finally injecting two shots of carfentanil and collapsing into bed for the night. Before you get the wrong idea, I normally would’ve been a little adverse to an example of such healthy living, but bear with me listener when I say that I genuinely didn’t expect to survive waking up the following morning. Even operating under the brain fog of both a food coma and a double dose of large animal tranquilizer, I still felt like my arms were going to fall off any minute. Given that I wasn’t hedging my bets on either figuring out exactly just how little water a Kolshian needed to survive or just how long a group of more than two dozen ravenous predators could hold out on giving into their instincts after not having eaten for a week, little things like diabetic shock and tranquilizer-induced heart attack weren’t really topping the list of concerns I had at the time.

So, of course, that’s when things started happening. The first clue that something was off that I should’ve recognized was all the shouting coming from the commons area. Alas, by this point, not only was I more than a little tired given my full belly and double dose of tranquilizers, but I’d long since ceased to pay any attention to anything the crewmembers were yelling at each other anymore because the sound invariably meant that somewhere on the ship, a fight was breaking out between two prideful, stuck-up idiots with muscles for brains, and I didn’t want any part in it. Instead, making the foggy rationalization that appearing useful wasn’t much of an issue anymore if I didn’t expect to live to see tomorrow anyway, I took the opportunity to lock the door and crawl back into bed before my fading mind gave out completely.

That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two came by about three or four hours later, when instead of the shouting calming down because everyone participating had lost too much blood to remain upright like I would have expected, it was getting closer. Something loud started banging on the other side of my door, and even though I was more than a little out of it, I maintained enough cohesion to startle awake anyway. Unfortunately, before I could do more than blink wearily and begin the daily struggle of hauling myself into a seated position, something rammed into the door hard, and in incredible slapstick fashion, the door came shooting off its hinges and sailed right into the side of my head, instantly rendering all that work I’d done in lifting my bloated torso upright futile as I failed to dodge and was bowled over by a forty-pound flying chunk of hardened steel right to the cranium. This, of course, was effective in accomplishing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever, and only served to ruin my day before it had even started. Complicating matters, further issues arose when three hulking figures trailing not too far behind the door dashed into the room, presumably here to grab me for something, and somehow, the sight of my body sprawled out on the floor as I lay there delirious and groaning in pain didn’t pass inspection. I have to give them credit where it’s due, though: despite the minor changes in plan necessitated by their downing of the medical officer, they thought on their feet, and after some minor troubles with the doorframe, my three very impatient kidnappers were dragging my concussed figure out by the tail. Somewhere during the process, a fourth, smaller figure was dropped unceremoniously onto the newly commissioned sled I’d become. It served the very important purpose of shouting excited word-mash into my earholes at point blank and rifling through my pockets just in case I was carrying any potential new toys.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, this unorthodox method of getting up in the morning lasted quite some time, and my kidnappers had to swap out dragging duty several times with other Arxur as the work quickly became too exhausting. The task only increased in difficulty as time went on, because after they struggled with shoving me through the first few tight spots, the surface beneath their makeshift sled transitioned from the smooth steel floors of the spaceship to the soft sands of the desert outside. Sleds usually work pretty well on sand, but sleds are also usually fairly thin and light. This time around, my captors had to deal with their still largely comatose cargo plowing out a four-foot-wide trench behind them.

Strangely enough, they’d only just managed to pile sand into every crevice I had before the surface changed again, this time becoming a hard, bumpy stone. It was getting dark, too, but how much of that was the sunlight slowly fading away and how much was as a result of the uneven surfaces of rock jutting up to kiss me on the forehead after each major bump remains unclear.

As for why my rapid extraction was necessary, well, that’s a long one. I wouldn’t exactly call myself “aware” for the whole thing, so my information is unfortunately lacking and almost certainly biased in some areas, but the reason behind our speedy excursion was not an impromptu feast day as I had initially assumed upon regaining enough cognition to begin screaming and begging for my life, but instead related to the commotion in the commons a few hours earlier. You see, listener, according to my very reliable sources, the extreme sporting events of earlier had proven themselves such an outlier to the hopelessness of the last week that the more excitable members of the crew were still gushing about it to each other hours later on the bridge. Hothead, no longer important now that escape was impossible, was made to go brood about his extremities somewhere else, and the sensors tech was bringing up scan after scan of recorded bomb trails and their impact sites up for reexamination, mostly to resolve debates in scoring and to determine who had managed to come in land the most impressive shot behind sticks-for-legs and his charge’s gastric activity.

This “afterparty” of sorts came screaming — literally — to a halt midway through, not as a result of some hotheaded idiot starting a fight over the title of victor and the whole thing descending into bloody chaos as a rational prey might assume, but instead because someone — nobody quite remembers who — was attempting to start that fight by sending their opponent tumbling ass-over-teakettle across the nearest instrument panel. The victim rolled over a button combination that nobody’s managed to figure out since, and the viewing angle currently on the display panned downwards and off to the side. Normally, this would have had no significance other than making the impact scene hard to see, except this time when the scene panned downwards and the terrain scanner drew lines to signify where the ground was, a second line for representing the terrain came in drawn underneath the first.

Supposedly, the whole bridge went silent at that, nobody daring to move for nearly a full minute as the screen proudly presented the results of the scan and the implications thereof sank in. The sensor tech was the first to move, panning the scene further downwards, and sure enough, nearly two hundred feet below ground, there was a tunnel trailing downwards off into the rock, eventually leaving sensor range as it dove deeper into the planet’s crust.

…

Oh, I can hear you planning our next course of action already! Were we going to carefully excavate a tunnel? Maybe do a little archaeology on the side while we were at it? Oh, or maybe even perhaps run a few more scans to see if there was a more accessible region to dig into?

Hah! You forget who you’re dealing with. The crew are more than just Arxur, they are also universally violent adult children. The very first thing that popped into all their heads, and the only course of action anyone there even so much as considered was the most violent possible course of action, because of course it was. Why do I even try?

Jiyuulia sighs.

According to my sources, it didn’t matter what it was. Antimatter warheads, makeshift bunker busters, the odd plasma round, anything even mildly explosive we had made its way to the suddenly now glass surface immediately above the tunnel. Miraculously, even though there were literally people leaning out the open doors of the bomb bay and risking horrible death in order to “get a better look” while thousands of supersonic glass shards shattered against the bottom of the hull like a reverse ice storm, it wasn’t until after dropping enough ordinance on top of the thing to rival a full Federation patrol fleet’s worth of munitions that the bombers ran into their first major snag: There was only about five to ten feet left to go before the blasts would breach the roof of the tunnel, and none of the remaining warheads were small enough to successfully tear a hole in the ceiling without risking them collapsing the whole damn thing. Desperation and despair swept the occupants of the bridge, but they had tasted victory and weren’t about to give up now. Each and every one of those two dozen Arxur warriors individually engaged in more critical thinking in five minutes than the whole group had in their collective lives.

Wielding their underutilized minds, one of them came up with a “genius” idea. The mechanic, slightly less mentally deficient than everyone else, came up with the foolproof plan to launch the escape pod downwards using a glob of sticky tape to hold the throttle on full blast. Consulting absolutely no one, he ran off, barred the pod’s door open, and wrenched the throttle down before fleeing back through the door as the pod started up before speeding off into the ground. The Dominion apparently build their pods out of some premium-quality composites, because the pod smashed through the remaining few meters of granite without a problem; the granite beneath us was far too weak to withstand an angry ball of space-grade alloy slamming into it at Mach two. How it didn’t collapse the tunnel, I’ll never know.

Anyways, I’ve prefaced this whole debacle about violent yelling buffoons fascinations over some rocks and stones with a disclaimer about my position as a secondhand source, and that’s because I wasn’t actually present for the main event — none of them decided to wake me up for it. Admittedly, they probably made the rather reasonable assumption that literal bomb blasts showering the outside of the hull should’ve sufficed, but I’ve always been a heavy sleeper in both senses of the term; plus, there’s something to be said about combining controlled substances and thirty-hour shifts. Whatever the case, none of them bothered yelling at me specifically, and so I didn’t get to attend the bomb blast bonanza, nor did I get to pack for the depths-delving afterparty, both useful sources of information I woefully missed out on when it comes to explaining my current situation. What I do know for certain is that once the crew packed everything else, they realized that one of their most important pieces of survival equipment, their violence janitor, A.K.A. me, was yet to be found huddling in the corner trying not to make eye contact with anyone, and as such, an overzealous retrieval team got sent to go and reclaim the thing from “storage,” only to further tear at any remaining shreds of decency I had left.

That changes now. Not the decency thing, that’s still in tatters, but as much as I wish otherwise sometimes, I woke up eventually. I can’t say I did so gracefully, but listener, before we go any further, I have to ask you to put yourself in my position here: I’ve just woken up facedown on a hard steel cart with an aching tail after being violently kidnapped by predators. The only source of illumination stems from flashlights in my captor’s hands, and it’s both too dim to make anything out and swinging around rapidly as they gesture wildly. They’re arguing loudly about whose arms are sorer after being made to drag my sorry posterior, using terminology I shan't repeat, and all of a sudden one growls and begins to step on the cart, their clawed feet digging into my side as they do. Given the circumstances, is it really any wonder that the very first thing that comes to mind was, “This is it, they’re eating me!”

Come on, it was an obvious conclusion. The only reasonable course of action left for me to take was to immediately start panicking! In hindsight, I might’ve done better than screaming as loudly as I could, whinging the smaller figure still bouncing along on my chest at the first guy’s head, and yanking the other guy’s feet to trip him so I could roll over him and up against a nearby wall to hyperventilate before getting blinded by twenty different flashlights. In my defense, I was under pressure.

…Try explaining that to the guy I just rolled over, though. Especially since I still can’t see, more Arxur than I initially thought there were have started to get involved, and I’m too busy freaking out to do anything more than make pathetic squealing noises, all while the small figure distraction tactic was working better-than-expected and creating its own secondary scene.

Yeah. That didn’t go so well.

Luckily, before the situation got too heated and I got some impromptu surgery, the lead scout came running back from ahead of wherever we were with important news. She’d heard the sound of running water echoing from somewhere ahead of us, and was all very excited about it all until she caught sight of the deteriorating situation and decided that we could probably find our own way there.

She was right, by the way. New knowledge for the scientific community if I ever get out of here: Stampedes aren’t unique to prey, apparently. It wasn’t fifteen seconds later before I was left coughing on dust and sitting alone in the dark who knows how far underground.

Seriously. The inability to see without light isn’t unique to prey either, but that didn’t stop them from running off with all of it and stranding me gods know where with no method of defending myself and only a vague idea of where I might find some water. Still, though, if I ever find myself having to choose between being eviscerated or fumbling around in the dark for ten minutes again, I’ll choose life every time.

Embarrassing near-death experiences aside, the rest of the journey wasn’t all bad, even if I did trip over inconveniently placed rocks some seven times. The end of the tunnel opened up into this absolutely massive cavern, almost two-thirds of a mile in length and nearly that in width. Height-wise, it varied depending on where you were standing. The ceiling was more or less flat, so it wasn’t boxing things in or anything like that, but the floor beneath was split into three main layers, the differences between their heights being upwards of thirty feet or more. Several small winding ramps made for natural paths between the layers. They weren’t the safest features, only wide enough for one person at a time, but they were a lot better than the rest of the ridges they jutted out from; those were largely sheer drops straight onto hard stone. Stalagmites and stalactites rose from nearly every part of the floor and ceiling respectively, many even growing so tall as to have joined one another and forming massive pillars dozens of feet tall. Various ledges and other tunnels peppered the walls of the cavern, connecting together an underground world of unimaginable size.

But none of that mattered to me. I only had eyes for one part of the cavern, for on the far end from where I entered, two-thirds of a mile out and nearly seventy feet below where I stood, ran a shallow stream of water about fifty feet wide and spanning the whole width of the cavern. It hugged the opposite wall for most of its length, except for a small outcropping of rock jutting out to form its own miniature island in the middle. High above it all, the water sourced from an opening in the ceiling of the cavern, cascading down in a waterfall nearly two hundred feet in height. From there, water would make its way down the short river before exiting through a semicircular opening in the wall, trailing off into the darkness and beyond where I could see.

It was also where I found those who’d left me behind. The crew was spread out over the whole thing like sprinkles on sherbet, splashing, drinking, and generally having the world’s greatest (and only) pool party. Of course, being Arxur, there were at least three separate instances of someone trying to force someone else’s head under the water, but that’s the crew for you.

And last but not least, I’d be doing a disservice to my race if I didn’t describe the foliage. Peppered about the cavern, but around the water especially, grew this strange, moss-like thing. It didn’t look very healthy, sparsely populated as it was and with pockets of missing moss everywhere. Normally it wouldn’t have been remarkable — the community garden on Sillis had more exotic plants — except it was probably over a thousand feet underground, glowing a dim blue, and working to grind down the rocks behind it with a pulsating, undulating movement as though it wasn’t quite sure what a heartbeat was. Seriously, you should be able to hear the stuff in the background right now. It, uh, wasn’t quite this loud back in the cavern, I should mention. That stuff was quiet most of the time, around here it’s been a bit more enthusiastic with its grinding and doesn’t seem to have labor laws, but it all becomes white noise after a while anyway. I wouldn’t say it was bright by any means, but there was enough of the stuff coating the lower walls of the cavern to light the whole place up at least somewhat — which in hindsight was a miracle in itself, considering how I would have just gone and fallen right off the first ledge and died had it not been there. I almost did that anyway, but that just comes with the territory of not being able to see where your feet are regardless of how well-lit the environment is.

It wasn’t the only plantlife present, either. While nothing else decided to glow in the dark like the moss did, there were vines, mushrooms, bushes, even small trees cloistered in the densest hubs of moss, using its light for their own purposes, like growing fruit!

…

Well excuse me, Dr. Botanist. I’m allowed to have a preference for the practical uses of plantlife. Not everything has to be “pollination method” this or “defense mechanism” that. Some of us can go “Mmm, plant tasty” and move on with our lives.

Also maybe I’m still a bit salty about that one spineback showing me up in Botany 101. I went to elementary school; I know what the difference between a monocot and a eudicot is, Sandul.

…

But yeah. The cavern was a true paradise, a natural hideaway from the hellish surface of this world. It was a place the crew and I could rest and recuperate in safety as we considered our future here as the new denizens of this planet — or so we thought.

I didn’t stop to admire the scenery the first time around, though, beautiful as it was. Much like it had been to the Arxur, the water’s siren call drowned out all else, and while I can’t exactly call anything I do fast, I definitely didn’t spare any time making my way down to the river to join the party.

…

In retrospect, I should’ve expected the water to hurt. After seven days with… minimal… hydration, my skin was in a state, to put it lightly. Cracked, coated in dirt and blood, crusted enzymes and powders lodged in every crevice both new and old, flaking and sloughing as the connective tissue broke down, whole sections having rotted away, the fetid stench of decomposing flesh oozing everywhere…

And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Corpse bile is a fluid, after all.

You learn to take what you can get.

…

The process wasn’t as agonizing as it could have been. The knee-deep water was lukewarm and clear, nothing to complain about. I was loaded on painkillers, and I was definitely totally out of it at the time. But the feeling of my skin rehydrating, swelling up until the dirt and flakes and rot popped and peeled away to reveal the raw flesh beneath… it stung like you wouldn’t believe, listener. Blood welled up from everywhere the old skin came off, running in rivulets all over my body. I had to clean myself slowly, carefully tearing off each layer of rot and filth one by one, deliberately leaving dead and rotten chunks alone as I balanced the risk of infection against blood loss. Even so, the river ran purple behind me, and I could feel more than one set of eyes glancing over me in bewilderment.

I didn’t exactly check the time before I’d started, but I must’ve been there for well over a day, soaking in the shallower parts of the river as my skin floated away. I did my tentacles first, both for mobility and the fine motor control required to do my more sensitive areas, but even after spending at least seven hours on my face and the front of my torso, I still had the rest of my head and back to do, not to mention my sides. And listener? I was tired. After seven hours of it all, I was done. I gave up, trudged over to the shoreline, and laid down with the water lapping at my sides, resolving to let the rest come off as time went by, however long that took. And if for some reason the crew didn’t want me sleeping there? Two words: Bite me.

And that’s how I fell asleep in a predator’s den.

They’re still giving me looks for that whole thing, by the way. Or, well, maybe not now, but you get what I mean.

I’d like to think I’ve earned those.

…

Speaking of the predators, the crew weren’t idling away in the caves themselves either. Given enough space to isolate themselves as they liked and an actual goal to work towards, they were actually rather efficient and reliable. The existence of plantlife down here suggested an ecosystem of sorts, and as the first priority after water, hunting parties were dispatched through the various tunnel entrances in order to return with various foodstuffs. Composed of four Arxur chosen from the crew on a rotating schedule and armed with a single plasma rifle each, the teams would wander off into the darkness with only a few glowsticks to mark their path and a desire to eat well for the first time since the station. There were only enough rifles for two hunting teams to be out at any one time, but with the whole crate of glowsticks somebody had brought down, an additional three lesser-equipped teams went out to scout the most promising caves. They weren’t looking for unfortunate fauna like their well-armed counterparts, but instead were on the hunt for signs of the civilization the orbital debris suggested had once lived here. The scouting teams weren’t armed with anything more than their claws, but with nothing weighing them down beyond a satchel of glowsticks and a small directional pedometer, these two-person teams mapped out a great deal of the caves every time they went out, each contributing their findings to a quickly growing 3D map being compiled on a small laptop computer in the center of camp.

Those staying behind were keeping busy too. Eight crewmembers had become porters, making the harsh five-mile journey back up to the ship to bring more supplies down into what was rapidly developing into the new basecamp. The mechanic was especially invested, making himself out to be the de facto leader of the team as he brought back the badly needed electrical supplies from non-vital systems on board the ship. Together with the other porters, the base-building crew had the entire cavern well-lit with floodlights, extension cables, and a hefty battery bank stolen from the sensor array running the whole show.

That left a final five to nine Arxur to manage home base. Four were asleep at any given point, ensuring that there would always be a well-rested member of the camp awake and alert in case of emergency. Another was working with whatever the hunting teams had procured; by some freak of nature, everything the teams had returned with was covered in extremely hard plates and totally inedible to anyone without further processing. The plates weren’t stopping a plasma bolt, but testing revealed that precious little else managed to penetrate the natural armor, that selection notably not including Arxur enamel. Or claw. Or steel. Or anything else we’ve found, really. I’m not normally an advocate for watching a predator tear its food apart, but watching the woman get progressively more frustrated as she tried to perform surgery with a plasma rifle definitely had an aspect of humor to it — if you could get past the whole “she’s done this before but with people” thing, that is.

The remaining Arxur were special cases. One or two were temporarily out of commission, their turn on the hunting or scouting mission having gone less than spectacularly. Nobody came limping back with serious injuries, but a few picked up enough scrapes while out to get out of another trip on the excuse of staying behind for “tactical planning sessions.” Those, of course, never went anywhere, as until the scouting teams came back with actually actionable information, we were already operating at maximum capacity with the information we had.

The real positions of honor, though, went to Kyrix and Hothead. Kyrix stayed behind for “prey management,” which is to say he spent all day playing mobile games and “assisting” me in whatever task I was doing at the time. It also involved a crash course in botany after one lovely meal of what I can only call vomitberries, but I digress.

As for Hothead, take a guess. He, of course, immediately started a fight within an hour of our arrival to the cavern, and while he didn’t get absolutely mauled like he was getting back on the ship, a sprained ankle and twenty-six dirty looks were still enough to relegate him to a life of pouting on the island in the center of the river where he couldn’t bother anyone. Somebody was kind enough to throw him a leg off of something the hunting parties had picked up after he started having more and more trouble staying awake, but that was about it.

Even I eventually got to contribute, though it took two days before I was able to stand, and another three before I was really up. Aside from managing both health and childcare like always, my lower patient count really opened up my schedule. Predictably, I used my newfound freetime to study the cavern’s plantlife, mostly for food, but also just because it was fascinating to see such an odd ecosystem in-person. I’m no botanist — though like most, I did consider the field for the longest time — but this stuff was really something. Of course, the blue glowing moss was the star of the show — literally, as my sunburned feet might add — but the other plants were nothing to discount either, especially after I found the moss inedible for the same reason the animals had problems for the Arxur: it was full of small, thin rods of that same incredibly hard substance. I only had to pull splinters out of my tongue once to decide that my culinary options were best found elsewhere.

Second place on the list went to this flowering bush covered in little berries. Picking them all took time, but I wasn’t moving much anyway, and with the bush devoid of even so much as thorns to defend itself, the bucket’s worth of berries I collected from just the one me-sized bush covered a whole meal. The berries were tastefully tart too, with just the right texture to pop in the back of your throat like an Aafanian pearl berry. Much to the delight of my assistant, they also served as great ammunition; the bulbous, liquid-filled spheres exploded all over when slung at a target. The only negative thing I have to say about them is that eventually my bucket ran out, and to my great disappointment, the bush made itself out to be a one-of-a-kind for the cavern.

The other plants were okay too, I guess. There isn’t much to say about them food-wise, a few with edible leaves at most. Nutritionally sufficient, sure, but far from satiating. Still, though, they weren’t going to send me into diabetic shock, and some food is a lot better than no food, regardless of whatever protests my stomach put forth about not being allowed to binge on whatever it wanted. It wasn’t the station part two, and that’s what mattered. All together, things were looking hopeful.

Jiyuulia snorts.

Yeah, that alone should’ve been enough to tip me off about the upcoming ripcurrent. Even disregarding the universe’s personal hatred for me, the damaged plantlife and the strange hard material being present in both the moss and the animal life really should’ve been enough for me to connect the dots and realize that there was something seriously wrong with that place. Of course, being the oblivious idiot that I am, I didn’t.

It was our sixth day in the cavern. Base camp was really starting to take off; everyone had eaten at least twice, and the porters had pretty much finished bringing everything down and were hard at work putting it all together. Hunting party two was still out, along with two scouting parties, and it wasn’t expected back for another five hours. The scouting parties were even more irregular, the very nature of their jobs necessitating the erratic schedules. Hunting party one had just returned with a catch, and three of its members were up in arms about who’d contributed the most. The fourth had wisely sauntered off, not looking to get involved in what was sure to be a hell of a fight without the ship’s medbay as a backup. I was off splashing in the river again, Kyrix on my shoulders and in the middle of an attempt at stealing my pad away while I nervously twirled my tentacles and watched the building tensions, worrying about what my status would become if I failed to save a patient even though I didn’t really have the tools to do so.

The shouting match was loud, and that’s why we didn’t hear it at first. Or at least I didn’t, though nobody else gave any indication that they’d heard it either. I’m not sure if it started that way, or if we were just too caught up in the distraction to hear the buildup, but whatever the case, all of a sudden, hoo did we hear it then. Buzzing, absolutely deafening and getting even louder, echoing from at least three different cave entrances. I saw a few Arxur open their mouths, probably to yell something obscene, but I don’t actually know, I couldn’t hear anything over the noise. I hunkered down in the water a bit, the still-armed hunting party raised their weapons in anticipation, and a few others licked their lips and entered their own combat positions, but by and large we all just stood there, waiting for the source of the noise to breach the walls and give the crew something to shoot at. Some poor creature was going to get mauled by nearly two dozen sapient hunters, another small fragment of my soul would fall into the howling abyss as I watched it die, and we would all go about our day. I feel guilty admitting it, but in the back of my mind, I was even kinda thankful for the distraction; the buzzing had prevented the fight, and I wasn’t going to have any new patients to look after that day after all.

Heh. If only.

Tens of thousands of bugs, each about the size of one of my eyeballs, came flying out of two of the tunnels on the middle ridge. Expressions quickly shifted, and the hunting team immediately started blasting, but it was already too late. Predator had become prey, and already prey had become… more prey, I guess? The five Arxur closest to the tunnels were caught in the cloud, gone before they had the chance to scream. The rest of us definitely had the time, though, and any level of cohesion we had fell apart as it was everyone for themselves in the stampede.

I didn’t even have to think about which exit I was going to take. Not that I was doing much thinking at all, mind you, but the river I was already standing in was perfect. I could swim pretty well, I reasoned, and hitting my head on a rock was still leagues better than being stripped to the bone by a swarm of flesh-eating locusts. Besides, all my other options required a land movement speed above four miles per hour, and it was literally right there. No thoughts needed, just take the plunge.

So yeah. All in all, it was a logical process. Jumping down a waterfall of unknown length into a series of underground rapids in total darkness was definitely dangerous, very dangerous even, but given my list of options at the time, it was by far my best choice. I wasn’t expecting to survive or anything crazy like that, but as I know ever too well, sometimes you ought to work with what you’ve got. I didn’t do anything wrong. Just a normal prey, fleeing for her life from some diabolical predator threat. Typical. If I weren’t, y’know, me, I’d go so far as to call it mundane, even.

Unfortunately, I am me, and suddenly I wasn’t the only still-breathing prey creature around anymore. Even worse, for as much experience as the Arxur have with causing stampedes, they really aren’t the best at participating in one. As the first to run, I unwittingly became the trendsetter, and despite there surely being better options available to at least half of those present, a whole fourteen inexperienced prey followed me down the river.

Listener, Arxur don’t float.

They don’t swim at all, really. All that heavy muscle and bone that makes them so fearsome on land just serves to drag them straight to the bottom the second they hit the water. With the sole exception of Kyrix, I don’t think any of them had been in more than knee-deep water before, and Kyrix only counted as an exception because he was so short that the water back in the cavern had come up to his neck instead. As a result, the whole system of odds I’d barely planned out around myself didn’t apply to them at all, becoming less a “survival unlikely” situation and more a “certain death barring a miracle or outside help.”

Guess what that meant, listener? No, go on, guess.

…

Hoo, yeah. Fourteen completely and utterly terrified Arxur, flailing every bit of their sharp anatomies around in the dark, head under water, their bodies being bashed against sharp rocks with every twist and bend we went around, whitewater rafting with neither the raft nor any sort of meaningful swimming experience, terrified out of their wits as they experienced what it’s like for the rest of us for the first time in their lives, and completely without any sort of plan for what was to come next. A grand total of one of them is managing to keep his head above water at any consistent rate, and that’s because his name is Kyrix and he’s a thirty-five pound thing currently lashed under a tentacle larger than he was to the only competent swimmer in the whole herd. Even the swimmer herself isn’t doing too well, having hardly any more control over her position due to the whole “in the dark” thing.

It’s not a recipe for success, let me tell you.

Indulge me in a hypothetical for a moment. Let’s say, due to some unforeseen set of circumstances, a hypothetical Arxur hunter finds itself in a hypothetical set of underground rapids. While it’s hypothetically drowning, our hypothetical Arxur has a hypothetical thought: If there’s an Arxur nearby that isn’t drowning and dying and getting its limbs torn off by rocks as it flails about because it has a floaty, then why not join it? This thought quickly consumes our hypothetical Arxur, and pretty soon it’s all he can think about. What’s he do?

…

Yep. The first chance he gets to join him, he does. Never mind the fact that he’s at a bare minimum a whole ten times the weight of the original floaty Arxur, or that the floaty is absolutely not prepared to take on more passengers, or that he’s got inch-long blades stuck on the ends of his primary manipulators and that his habit of grabbing tightly and refusing to let go may cause unintentional damage to the floaty, or any other number of problems that might come to mind when considering the feasibility of the plan. Just latch onto one of the floaty’s many handles and never let go! It doesn’t matter if the floaty squirms, screams, or otherwise expresses distress at the prospect of being dismembered. If parts of it start tearing open, that’s perfectly normal! Find a new handle, and grab harder this time. If it starts sinking because too many other Arxur had the same idea and also found a handle, start kicking, biting, and doing whatever else our hypothetical Arxur needs to do to shake them off. After all, it was here first; it’s only fair that it gets dibs on the floaty!

…

Fifteen minutes and forty-eight new holes in my shirt later, the river spat us out on a beach. It was not gentle about it, and not all of us quite made it there in one piece — more than one came in multiple separate pieces — but as of my last count, there were fourteen bodies here on this beach. Fifteen, if I count myself.

Of those fourteen, seven were dead from the start, never having found the floaty. They arrived at different times, most of the time multiple times, and the less I say about them, the better. The remaining seven were floaty fighters, though one only made it a few seconds before going much the same way as the no-floaters. And you’ve already been acquainted with number two.

That leaves five left. Two you know, and three you don’t. Let’s get repeat introductions out of the way first. You already know my most devout follower Kyrix, the only approved rider of the raft and the poster child for seatbelt safety lessons. Following him is Hothead, whom I guess I can be a little thankful for as a representation of some modicum of hope that we’ll get out of here someday, even if I’ll probably be eating those words within a minute of him waking up. Dude was almost as close to the river exit as I was, being literally two meters from the river on his little island prison. Given his advantageous position, it’s honestly not all that surprising that he was among the survivors.

As for our new cast members, that would be the butcher, a station guard, and a soldier. No, sadly, not Rope Guy, but hey, the more bodies I can put between me and literally everything else down here, the better. I’m not saying I trust these guys whatsoever, but for as long as we’re here, I think we’ve run at peak awkwardness for long enough that I don’t think they’ll eat me. Probably.

Soo… I did say these were going to be introductions, right? Starting with the first in line, we’ve got Butcher. She’s—

Jiyuulia coughs. It’s a long, hacking cough, echoing off the cave walls.

Ahem. Ah. Excuse me. Flem.

Uhh… So! The Butcher! Hmm… except, well, it sounds like a bad horror flick when I say it like that… She does live up to it, though…

Yeah, well, she’s a case. For starters, I have literally never caught the woman not breathing all hard like she’s trying to whistle through her teeth or something. She hardly ever speaks, and the only sentences I’ve ever heard her say have all been ten words or less, none of them ever complicated. She flies into a rage at the slightest provocation — not unlike a certain someone you already know — and believe me when I say that the fact that her head doesn’t seem to be screwed on right does NOT limit the amount of flesh she can tear off the bone. Fitting for her job, I guess, but by the stars I did not appreciate the level of work this girl gave me back on the ship. Nor do I appreciate the drool she got all over the floor whenever I passed her by, but admittedly I should probably be the last person to complain about someone leaving wet splotches everywhere, so…

Hey, at least it’s normal when I do it!

The station guard is… present, I guess? I don’t have much to say about him, other than that he’s another one of the bloodthirsty monsters I keep for company nowadays. He’s the one who got my shirt down the middle, so you’ve got him to thank for the display if I ever figure out how the camera works on this thing. As for what else, well… uh… I saw him suplex the mechanic into the hazardous waste disposal bin one time, and I had to clean it all up?

…

Yeah, yeah, not much of a description, I hear you. You can’t expect me to know everyone intimately already, listener, jeez. You try approaching an Arxur and striking up a conversation.

Besides, I wasn’t much keen on the average stranger’s eye sizing me up back when they weren’t all evil predators without a moral compass; is it so hard to believe I try to stay out of the public eye up here too?

At least the soldier, or Paintbrush, as I like to call him under my breath, is ever so slightly more interesting. Starting with the nickname, well, its origin is as gory as you’d expect an Arxur nickname to be. Like most predators, the guy has a fascination with sharp objects. Unlike most crazed buffoons, however, this dude’s approach bordered on fetish material.

No, really, I caught him licking random poles he’d sharped down to a tack more than once. Not for long, mind you, I only saw for the fleeting periods of time I wasn’t immediately remembering something important I had to do that just so happened to take me back in the opposite direction of wherever he was making out with inanimate objects.

Paintbrush comes second only to Hothead in number of fights started back on the ship, but rather than because he was an insulting dick — “was” being a keyword there — who deserved whatever came his way or a PD patient with a hair trigger, it was because he was a PD patient with no trigger at all. One second he’d just be walking by people in the halls, and the next he’d be shanking them with the longest, sharpest object he could reasonably find and conceal. Of course, a foot-long pole through the spinal column was usually enough to one-shot whichever poor schmuck just happened to be unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of his attack, but the whole shtick didn’t last half a day before other people started to pick up on it and he ended up being on the receiving end of sticks carried by other crewmembers they’d sharpened up just for him. Insane as he was, though, this didn’t deter him, and he genuinely seemed unbothered the time he came in with a pierced lung, almost visibly restraining himself from giggling with childish glee at the pole rammed through his ribcage.

But the origin of his nickname? Well, the loser in those fights never came in with less than at least one major vein sliced clean through, and the halls back on the ship reflected it. The halls were Paintbrush’s canvas, and both he and his opponents served dual purpose as the artists and the medium. You could tell wherever he’d staged a fight, the blood coating the walls almost tastefully arranged by some disturbed intelligence, forming patterns and splashes that I’m not enough of an art critic to provide proper critique on. To be fair, I can’t imagine there’s an art critic out there capable of properly assessing blood art, but what do I know? I’m a geneticist; those kinds of things just always flew over my head to begin with.

So, uh, yeah. I don’t know how much of the original crew survived, but for now? I’ve got a four-year-old I’ve deluded so far past anything the ethics board back on Aafa would’ve approved of that I’m beginning to think I might not be the most innocent one here, an incessantly bullheaded idiot with no sense of self-preservation when it comes to social conventions, a Venlil-style mouthbreather whose job is to rend flesh from the bones of people like me and can’t easily be reasoned with on account of her total inability to form and put into words any semblance of a cohesive thought, a dude who almost certainly has no redeeming characteristics but I can’t actually say for sure because he could end up being even worse somehow, a guy who’s so down bad for literal sticks that he’s liable to shove a pole through my esophagus the second I leave him unattended, and last but not least myself, of whom I hope I have imprinted enough about upon you to need no further explanation as to why I may have issues.

Sounds to me like quite the adventuring party!

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

The entry begins in an amateurish attempt at a sing-song style, Jiyuulia’s consistently basal tones swinging through her full vocal range over the course of the introduction before stabilizing in a steady, yet almost grandstanding cadence. At some points, the high notes almost reach a normal conversational pitch, though the awkward way the words are stressed ruins the effect. Nevertheless, Jiyuulia’s voice is strong, ostentatious, even, its booming volume echoing off the cavern walls with what one might go so far as to argue to be the smallest drop of pride. Aside from her poor vocals, audio quality has increased drastically in comparison to that of the previous entry, Jiyuulia’s voice clean, crisp, and otherwise without significant flaw beyond its abnormal register and lackluster talent. Much like last time, a constant wind flows in the background, creating a wind tunnel effect that is present throughout the entire entry. Unlike last time, however, the winds have slowed greatly; their previously deleterious effects on audio quality absent as the piercing howl of earlier. Actually, the sound is almost a positive thing, calming in its own way, the white noise helping to mitigate the worst of the echo whilst doing nothing to impede the clarity of the speaker. It is not quite enough, however, to mask the frantic scrabbling and squirming of a smaller creature making its way toward the microphone, almost reaching it before the being is caught and hauled away with a huff.

Greetings, Great Hunters! I, Jiyuuila, Spirit of Bounty, bring to you today the spoils of the ongoing hunt, regaling all with the in-progress tale of Hunter Potentiate Kyrix’s turbulent entry examination and the many chaotic events he encounters in his path to heaven.

*That’s me!*

With danger around every corner, greater and greater challenges presenting themselves with each and every obstacle, and even death itself stalking our brave Potentiate, Kyrix’s adventure has yet to let up! As his faithful guide and trophy, and thus dutybound to recording all of Kyrix’s great endeavors in his quest for ascension, I present to you, Great Hunters, and all those who listen in the lands above, the true tale of Kyrix’s journey through the mortal world. A thrilling adventure jam-packed with action and strife, the journey’s been long, and we’ve been through so much that it’s almost too much for me to keep up!

*Squishy never keeps up with anyone.*

…All that content won’t cover itself, so let’s get started! First off, I—

Jiyuulia pauses. A light shuffling can be heard coming from somewhere atop her.

Settled now?

…

Right, so first off, I should talk about — ow — about the situation Kyrix found himself in after our whitewater rafting trip, and — watch the earholes — the immediate challenges — that’s my eye — that nearly ended the journey — that’s my other eye — before it even — okay, Kyrix, if you can’t stop moving, I’m gonna have to take the entry without you.

*Nooo! I wanna stay! You said I could stay!*

I said you could stay if you could be good.

*I’m being good! No movement, see?*

Uh huh. Starting over. So first off, we — are you done?

A pointed silence passes. Jiyuulia’s exasperated glare is palpable, even through an audio recording.

Ahem. So. First off, we were — alright, that’s it.

A loud thud blasts the microphone as Jiyuulia’s bulk slams against the stony floor. A tentacle shoots out, quickly twisting around a loudly protesting miniature creature and yanking it from its insecure position before forcefully nestling it in a new spot somewhere in front of her. Its desperate struggles do nothing to save it — though not for lack of trying — and the Arxur is quickly restrained against the soft, fatty wall of Jiyuulia’s belly, pinned underneath a limb that individually weighs more than it does. Before its struggles can escalate to violence, two more tentacles digs into its sides, running up and down in a crude form of torture as they slither and poke at any softer bits of tissue.

*EEEEEIIII! Nooo-hehe-oo—mrph!*

Ahh, that’s better. Now, where was I?

Oh yeah, the riverbank. I, er, we, uh…

How do I put this?

…

Hmm. So, uhm, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you listener— ers! Listeners, but the temporary respite at the end of my last entry was short-lived. I only managed to get about half an hour of peace between me signing off and Kyrix beginning to wake up, and the rest of the survivors weren’t far behind him.

Seeing as how we were, y’know, totally lost, lacking any form of equipment whatsoever beyond my pad and torn clothing, and all probably at least slightly injured, I had taken it upon myself to, during my short break, prepare a quick speech detailing our unfortunate predicament to give to the crew while they were temporarily incapacitated.

Knowing my audience, I’d even prepared a nice little presentation out of some smoothed pebbles to act as a visual aid for the Butcher. It wasn’t the most detailed thing out there, and I was totally missing both the pretty lady and the weather segment, but all in all, I was pretty happy with the “highlights” I’d setup. I wasn’t gonna be optimistic with our collective chances of survival anything so ridiculous, but it felt like I was making progress, and I figured I could rely on the recently comatose state of my audience and the near-death experience we’d all recently shared to help temper reactions and allow me to introduce a little group cohesion before somebody could panic and do whatever it is Arxur do when they freak out in confined spaces — e.g., splatter my guts all over the floor.

I needn’t have bothered. The instant everyone had finished expelling the copious amounts of water they’d swallowed and I’d managed to finagle Kyrix into somewhat of a seated position, Hothead started going off about it somehow being everyone’s else’s fault that we were all in this mess, and that all of us (minus me, who was at fault for a litany of other things) were all sorry excuses for Arxur that needed to learn from his example and do their jobs properly — after all, not even he could carry the whole team on his shoulders.

Given the nature of our crew’s fragile egos, it’s honestly a little surprising he managed to get as far as he did. He’d accused us all of being illegitimate bastards, compared our collective intellects to that of a fruit fly, gone on a rather uncomfortably long and heartfelt spiel about mucus stains and public seating, and was halfway through a tirade on property rights relating to improvised emergency flotation devices before the Butcher’s limited cognition finally managed to catch up with what was happening, resulting in her lunging at him with three limbs at once and howling “Island Piñata!”

To his credit, Hothead reacted with a speed befitting his occupation, turning and fleeing the scene before the furious ball of predatory rage that was the Butcher could manage to do anything more than tear open his lower back, but with really only one direction to go that wasn’t back into the river, that “plan” cumulated in him peeling off into the darkness of the tunnels before the Butcher could regain her footing and follow him, screeching something unintelligible about “the DPS” while trying and failing to avoid falling face-first over every larger rock in the way.

To make matters worse, somewhere between the third and fourth stumble, the blood he’d managed to smear over the last three rocks triggered something in our other crazy, and with him joining the chase, it wasn’t thirty seconds before the fading echoes of the three morons were all I had left of half my original audience, their screaming voices slowly dimming from somewhere within the unknown black and leaving us with absolutely no method of tracking them down whatsoever.

As you might imagine, a murder plot breaking out before everyone had managed to stand up straight and shake the fuzz out of their heads was somewhat… demoralizing, for those of us left behind. But if you look on the bright side, at least I wasn’t alone in my suffering this time! My most unpredictable audience member — the one real adult here on this trip aside from myself — was left especially stunned by the near-instantaneous rate at which something I’d been involved in had degraded into an uncontrollable violent chaos that put everyone’s lives at risk. I couldn’t tell you why that is — one must wonder where he’s been all this time to somehow not expect my life to fall apart at the slightest opportunity — but with his eyes bugging out and his jaw hanging half open, coupled with the fervent glances at my less-than-impressed visage… well, it’s no matter. I ought to think I managed an impression somewhere in there.

Ah, well. Whether or not he’s reconsidering his stance on the doughiest Kolshian alive, I still find it hilarious that somehow, even after all this time, he still expects the other crewmembers to need a reason for them to screw everything up.

Is it messed up that I find his naivety an endearing quirk?

Jiyuulia hums, seemingly hesitant about something. It’s fairly loud, and the resultant rumbling of her chest and stomach set off a new peal of screaming laughter from the Arxur, still totally inattentive to her words in its hysteria. Occasionally, a series of wet slapping sounds can be heard, starting and stopping whenever the Arxur begins to quiet, and the position of the Arxur relative to the microphone will shift up and down rapidly, sending it deep into further fits of laughter.

Given all this talk about him, I guess now’s as good a time as any I’ll ever get to introduce him. Listener, meet Orderly, former station guard, full-time hyper-neurotic nervous wreck.

I’ll admit I may have been perhaps a tad harsh on him in my last entry; I didn’t know the guy, and given the regular assortment of literally predatory Predator-Diseased crazies on this trip and my own poor mood at the time, I wasn’t exactly feeling optimistic about my chances of actually getting someone who was even halfway reliable down here. But fortune’s been rather indecisive as of late when it comes to me, and seeing as how I think I’m rather deserving of a chance for some actual, willingly-provided help with how things have gone thus far, I’d like to go out on a bit of a thinner limb here and tentatively say that, given my choices of Arxur, Arxur, and Arxur, he might actually be worth taking with me.

Still, though, what I wouldn’t do for a proper Gojid…

Yeah, though. Unlike every other Arxur I’ve had the pleasure of knowing so far — barring Kyrix, that is, who’s been shockingly obedient for a bloodthirsty monster — Orderly is… well, orderly. Rather than being some bullheaded retard with an inability to understand such nuances as “scheduling” or “regular duties” like I’ve come to expect from such a twisted waste of an attempt at sapience as his race tends to be, Orderly’s probably the most right-angled, waxed-crest, day-planner-in-hand kinda guy I’ve ever met.

If there’s another person on this trip who’s been having as much fun as he and I, I haven’t noticed, because so far, the only emotions I’ve caught from the overly-cortisonal disaster are reminiscent of an all-too-familiar grad student I used to know that, at the time, had been averaging two hours of sleep a night while strung out on — if my memory serves — at least seven different stimulants of varying levels of legality. In particular, she’d been having thoughts during an early-morning binge session that’d left her barely able to stand because it was three hours before her thesis defense, and rather than sleep, she’d spent six hours of the night before on a call with the student disability and accommodations office arguing over the plainly discriminatory size of the showers in Solegnolia Hall, and how it was unfair and unjust of the school to restrict the largest showers to those of certain species rather than by total body volume.

Except that in his case, rather than dealing with his emotions by drowning them in excess sugar and sleeping off the subsequent hormonal crash for two days straight afterwards, Orderly’s just been in that state the whole time I’ve known him, and so far I’ve been given no reason to doubt that he’s been like this the whole trip, his fingers constantly twitching for a stylus of some sort as he levels an incredulous, almost worrisome gaze of simultaneous fascination and envy at me whenever I pull out my exclusively tentacle-friendly pad.

Before you ask, no, I have not offered him the chance to use the calendar app. I’ve only got the one valuable possession left, I’m not just gonna lend it out without some serious incentives.

And yes, getting my “disproportional” arse out of having to play Dance Mania as a Takkan again is considered a “serious incentive.” My pride can only take so much. My cankles, even less.

Either way, from both my own light discussions I’ve managed to hold with the guy and what I’ve managed to pick up from the others, Orderly’s former job… err, more, “specialization,” really, and the other half of where his name comes from? Stampede Suppression Handler.

It might be a throwback, listener, but do you remember, back when we were in the cells on the cattle station, how I suggested that a rampaging Mazic would’ve made for a serious threat to station stability, (not that it would matter now) and that the Arxur were likely using the odd cell layout as a method of breaking their spirits in order to nullify the danger they posed? Well, as it turns out, engineering solutions aren’t the only solutions the Dominion implements when it comes to this “common issue.”

The parallels to Exterminators are a bit uncomfortable, really, but “Incongruity Reduction and Neutralization Officers” like Orderly participated in “optimization” operations related to “inefficient use of resources and manpower.” That is to say, Orderly is a professional problem-puncher, and much like the rest of his kind, he wasn’t made to be too discriminatory on who or what that problem was. Rather than dwell on the rather… unfortunate… implications of that particular phrase, I’ll just use the examples he gave me.

Suppose, for a minute, that a prized Takkan stud has escaped from his cell, deciding that his time is better spent running amok down the halls and putting a fat dent in every flat piece of metal he sees. Admin disagrees, and would like to have him put back in his cell without ruining his capacity for creating further offspring. Orderly’s en route as we speak.

Or, for a more pertinent example, say, oh, I don’t know, there’s a mentally-challenged Arxur causing a scene that you needed to neutralize immediately, but for whatever reason, they’re also somehow important enough that you can’t just slit the guy’s throat and be done with it? Well, try replacing “Arxur” with “Predator Diseased soon-to-be-patient” — because honestly we’re really not losing out on any fidelity with at least two out of the three here — and ask yourself: what would a normal, civilized society do in that situation?

…

Hah! I knew you were smart, listener! You call the Exterminators, and they deal with it. Now just make both your patient and your “Exterminator” evil monsters beyond all bounds of any ethical system ever devised, and you’ve got yourself a solid idea of what was going on here. Were he some real person back home rather than the beast he is, he’d have a solid job with the Exterminators or one of the PD facilities, either capturing those who wouldn’t turn themselves in or handling the high-risk patients undergoing treatment as an — you guessed it — orderly.

See? It fits so well!

And may the stars above forgive me, for I’ve had very few high points to go off of over the course of this whole adventure, and with my sanity where it’s at, I’ve really ought to take the humor where I can find it, but this still continues to send me: How many other prey out there can say they had a problem, and got to call Dominion Law Enforcement to come fix it?

Jiyuulia laughs.

Not many, I can tell you that!

So yeah. No points for guesses on who my favorite down here’s been. Barring Kyrix, of course.

…

Speaking of the little guy, what do you think, Great Hunters? Has it been long enough yet?

Yeah, I think so too.

Fabric rustles as a heavy limb lifts itself from the Arxur. It gasps loudly with the movement, and its breathing is ragged, coming in heavy, rapid bursts.

You gonna behave this time?

…

The limb moves again. The Arxur’s breath hitches.

Well? I need an answer!

There’s a brief flash of movement. The Arxur beings to laugh again, this time without a muffling tentacle cutting off its airway. It’s a high-pitched, chirping note, an odd sound for the conventionally drum-like noise usually associated with Arxur, but according to available materials, not a particularly unusual one for Arxur young. See Reference 46C for further examples and wave models.

*Ye-yes! Squi-shy tickles!*

And don’t you forget it. But while you were fighting for your life, I was getting some of the boring stuff out of the way. We’re doing introductions of the crew now. Did you have anything to say about him?

*About who?*

Oh, right, I’m doing… uhh… y’know… the guy. The guy who was with us. The other non-stabby one, not the pilot.

*Oh! Giznel is nice. He’s really smart, and he knows a lot of secrets! And he lets me do important work! Like, there was this one time he had me sort out the little tasty-looking blocks in the engine bay. They’re not tasty, but I didn’t know that yet, and they’d all fallen off the wall after somebody hit the other side too hard. I had to sort the oily-tasting, burny-tasting, and nothing-tasting ones into different boxes before they melted and burned the floor too much. I was fast, and he said I did a good job!*

…Right. Was this before or after the water filter failed?

*Before! I think. I don’t really remember that day very good. You should ask Giznel. He always knows that stuff.*

Jiyuulia sighs. The audio doesn’t pick it up with any clarity, but she says something as she does. The tone is remarkably disappointed.

Right. Yeah. I’ll just do that the next time I see him. That’ll go well.

*Ooh! Can I be there? I haven’t talked to him in a while. The last time was when he was confused earlier and wanted to know how I controlled you so well, something about you being “almost professional,” whatever that means. I told him it was really easy because you were special and not really a prey at all, so I actually didn’t have to control you because you could control yourself, and were even acting as my guide instead!*

…Ah. And how’d he take that?

*Really weird! Instead of being happy I answered his question, he got really nervous and started warning me about how “those above were always watching, even if it wasn’t obvious,” which I told him was dumb because I already knew you were here to watch for the Great Hunters and you’re the most obvious person I’ve ever seen, and he really should have known that you weren’t normal without having to ask. He left the room after that, and he’s been really busy since then, always needing to do something and never having any more work for me.*

…

A loud boom blasts the microphone as the pad falls to the floor, skittering along the rough stone. Jiyuulia, without a word, gets up, plods off, and crashes to the floor in a heavy thud some distance away. The cave ambiance is too loud to hear much of her after that, but the occasional high-pitched (for Jiyuulia’s unusual vocal register, that is) squeal still reaches the microphone from time to time. Whether it is raucous laughter or muffled crying is hard to tell. It’s very possible that it’s both.

*Squishy?*

The next few squeals are louder, though no less ambiguous. Note the mutterings and odd sloshing noises that occur after the second instance of the sound.

*Huh. I thought she only did this in her room.*

The recording pauses for about half an hour. When it resumes, it does so suddenly, and without any sort of fanfare. Jiyuulia is quieter, more reserved than she was before.

I think I’m good now.

A-hem. So. Disregarding some pertinent recent revelations in the interest of my continued sanity…

Giznel, apparently, was the first one to snap himself out of it, sprinting off in the direction of the soon-to-be-lost crewmembers and the unfortunately still necessary pilot. He did so with flawless grace and form, his single-minded determination evident to all those who saw him… for about thirty feet. The whole effect didn’t really last beyond the part where the predator managed to immediately trip over the same foot-tall rock shelf the pilot had first tumbled over, slamming his head into the ground the instant he’d passed over the boundary between the darkness of the tunnels and the safety of the moss’s light. He wasn’t hurt by the fall, at least not beyond his wounded pride — not that that was ever going to be salvageable to begin with after today — but even as another loud boom echoed from deeper into the tunnel and the then suddenly very audible screaming reached a pitch I hadn’t known Arxur were quite capable of until then, the hunt for the crew was over before it had even began, stalled before it could even truly begin as the lone hunter was forced to stop at the edge of the available light.

Normally, that’s where it would’ve stopped. Unlike the hooligans that had sprinted off into the darkness under the motivations of either insanity, threats of homicide, or both, it was clear to those of us who didn’t have claws wrapped around our throats that it was perhaps not the safest course of action to go barreling down a pitch-black deathtrap of a tunnel filled with an unknowable number of trip hazards and rather inconveniently located chest-high crystalline stalagmites growing out of the walls. The scenario only got worse when the whole purpose of the thing was to find and catch multiple dangerous and combative individuals that were all clearly having some sort of episode, even if the person responsible for the (de?)escalation did have some experience in the matter.

Unfortunately for us, the stakes were far too high for us to ever even consider giving up, and as much as it pains me to say, the pilot’s skillset, though rather limited, is still far too valuable for us to consider him a write off whenever things got bad. Hence, enter me, and more specifically, this pad.

I’m sure you’ve used a pad before, listener. Who hasn’t, really? They’re useful for a huge number of different applications, including but not limited to: day planning, record taking, short-range communications, time-wasting, and projecting games of skill for me to lose at to a four-year-old — along with contacting secretive government intelligence agencies, apparently.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to get at here is that most models nowadays tend to have this little thing on the back called a flashlight, and — despite what you might think — these have a purpose beyond just being something your dad can yell at you for after you fail to bend light around three separate corners while he finagles with something on the underside of the hovercar. The light-creating device came with problems, like the previously stated issue with my personal model’s exclusively tentacle-friendly nature and my status as the sole being within a dozen parsecs blessed with such useful appendages, but all in all, it only took a mere forty-five seconds of intense panicking to figure out which way to point it (not into one’s eyes) and flip it on, allowing resumption of the quickly halted hunt, except this time, extenuating factors required that the party be headed by an egregiously unfit herbivorous noncombatant rather than literally anyone else.

My opinion on being at the front has not changed since the last time I mentioned it, by the way. Alas, neither has an opportunity arisen for me to get out of it.

Oh well.

I know I’m kinda setting this whole thing up to be the start of the next great adventure I got dragged on — thankfully not literally this time — but I’ll have to let you down, listener. I’m not trying to make the story about myself here.

Actually, all things considered, the chase from there on went pretty well. Apart from the part where the dedicated tunnel blocker got stuck in the front, the actual scouting operation for the lost crewmembers was not actually all that exciting.

I mean, it absolutely involved more violence than any prey creature should ever be comfortable with; Giznel broke out some absolutely vile and most definitely illegal headlock maneuvers that I couldn’t even begin to describe, and there were more sharp objects being sent in my direction than I particularly cared for, sure. But while that’s all very well and bad, and perhaps it’s just the massive amount of desensitization and PD I’ve picked up on the way, but honestly? When put into the context of everything else that’s happened so far, watching some idiot predator get bent backwards for the fourth time that day is far from the worst thing I’ve had to witness just within the last twelve hours, and adding a drop of police brutality to the ocean of gratuitous violence this whole thing’s been is not really gonna be bursting any flood barriers here. Nobody ended up with fourteen slashing wounds and two individually fatal counts of arterial bleeding.

Stars, the Butcher didn’t even manage to make it to the fight, having ran face-first into a wall where the tunnel made an abrupt turn halfway to where the real bloodbath was going on and consequently knocking herself out. And without her, it was easy. Orderly was semi-competent, and for all Paintbrush likes his blood art, he has to be the one responsible for its creation for it to be any fun, apparently, and he’d left his tools at home. More natural methods of scattering one’s internal organs across the surrounding environment, like impaling oneself on a stalagmite in utter darkness, for example, just didn’t hold the same appeal. He surrendered without a fight.

Jiyuuila shifts slightly. It’s a careful motion.

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that subtracting the two people trying to actually commit the murder from the murder scene would calm the situation down a little bit. And if those involved were any other species, you’d be right! Maybe even if it weren’t these specific Arxur; the crew has struck me as somewhat “below average” in most things, really. Regardless, Hothead was involved as the “victim” here, and as you may recall, Giznel had to demonstrate his moves on somebody who hadn’t already surrendered or otherwise fallen unconscious, soo…

Same old same old. You already know what happens whenever he gets involved, and it ain’t pretty. Ugh.

At least it was mostly blunt force trauma this time. Mostly.

Jiyuulia exhales loudly through her nose.

At this rate, it’ll be a miracle if there’s enough of him left to remember how to fly the ship straight by the time we make it that far, much less actually make any progress towards getting us home.

Not that any of the rest of us know how to do that either.

…Aaanyways, I sat on the floor and held a light, thinking my happy thoughts while watching an Arxur warrior beat someone to within an inch of their life a few feet in front of me. Kyrix got to sit behind me facing the wall. What more is there to say about our involvement, really?

Soo… yeah. No special glories stolen from Kyrix, here. Things went really pretty well from there on out, except for, y’know, all the times they didn’t, but hey! Such is life. Or unlife — I should really probably get that clear for my little charge here. But after all, it wouldn’t be much of a trial without hardship. They’re kinda all pains by definition.

…

Speaking of the little terror himself, I’m sure you’ve noticed that he’s been absent for this particular section. Stars above, I’m sure you’ve noticed that everyone’s been absent for a while now! And I’m getting to that, don’t worry, but as for the miniature hellspawn himself, the explanation is a little simpler: He’s recuperating after a brief “healing spell” involving a series of circular rubbing motions and a glob of “magic slime” being pressed into his brand new head wound left by the rock shard he’d managed to lodge in his forehead after I left him unsupervised for a grand total of two minutes. Don’t ask me how it happened, either, the boy literally cannot walk on his own and was feet from the nearest sharp object (that wasn’t himself) when I’d left him to deal with an “emergency.”

As it turns out, my future as a masseuse is bright, because my spell was so effective that he almost immediately calmed down and fell asleep. Unfortunately, my future as a mattress is even brighter, and this is the sixth time this week that the devious little predator has decided that I was a good place to take a nap. Safe, soft, warm, and apparently I even “smell really good sometimes,” which is a compliment one always wishes to hear from a member of the race that abducted me for sustenance less than a month ago.

Still, though, as entertaining as having an Arxur ensconced in my fat folds is, the negative effect on my already strained productivity is “not great.” I might have to try making him a blanket out of what remains of my shirt or something later, who knows. He’d probably like that.

Jiyuulia sighs.

…What am I doing with my life?

The recording pauses for another two hours. When it resumes, Jiyuuila and the small Arxur have resumed their trip, as inferenced from the regularly spaced booms of her footsteps echoing off the walls. The microphone shakes more than usual with each one, and poor positioning causes Jiyuulia’s voice to be slightly out of focus. A light mechanical hum comes from somewhere nearby.

Hey! So we’re back, and this time… Haagghhh… we’re making progress!

*Slowly.*

With some caveats. But we are getting somewhere!

…Which… Uugh… I suddenly realize that I’ve yet to specify where somewhere is, exactly.

*Squishy!*

I know, I know. But there was the chase, and the injuries, and — agh, no, that’s getting off into the weeds again when I really should be—

*We’re going to the gear!*

Yeah! That! Thanks, Kyrix.

*You needed it.*

…As my charge has so succinctly put it, Kyrix isn’t randomly directing us through these danger-filled tunnels just for the fun of it.

*Hey!*

The main goal right now is twofold: One, we need to find the rest of the crew and figure out how many survived the initial attack. Two, we left vital equipment and supplies behind when we fled, equipment that we’ll need if we want to survive down here long enough to figure out our next steps. Both problems are best solved if we can find our way back to where we started, before everything went to hell. Even just the mapping tools and the data collected by the scouting teams represent weeks worth of work for one individual to cover by themselves, not to mention any possible weapons, food, medicine, or other miscellaneous gear that might still be there. It’s likely that any of the other surviving crewmembers have had a similar idea, and there was at least one hunting party’s worth of Arxur out at the time that would’ve come back to an empty cavern and are probably still wondering where everyone went. Which I’m yet again realizing is another thing I was supposed to get to…

*And you’re supposed to move faster. Use your magic again!*

Jiyuulia huffs.

Oh, if it was just that simple…

Things would’ve been different, that’s for sure.

…

I believe I’d just finished telling the Great Hunters about how our group had gotten back together after its initial little disaster with the resident crazies, yeah? Kyrix and I being relegated to the front on account of being the ones with the light and all that.

Which, I mean, I did try to get out of — I feel I perform better when I’m in a supporting role myself — but as it turns out, Arxur are taller than Kolshians, even magic ones. The tunnel’s width was usually such that we were kinda forced into a single-file line—

*No we weren’t?*

…correction, forced into a side-by-side formation where I just so happened to count as two separate people, and lighting up someone’s back rather than the tunnel ahead was rather less-than-helpful, so I had to be up there.

*I thought it was because you kept getting stuck.*

Jiyuulia mutters something unintelligible.

Aside from being the optimal position for a variety of reasons, the front came with an important responsibility: Kyrix and I were mostly responsible for deciding which route looked best to take whenever the tunnel forked into multiple paths.

*So mostly the wider ones that went downhill. And you’re leaving me out!*

I was just — ugh, fine.

Alright, so this time around, Kyrix didn’t get out of the difficulties involved in forging new paths through unfamiliar territory with me. In fact, he actually had several special duties that he alone was able to perform, some of which were absolutely vital to our travel plan!

Starting with the most simplistic, and yet still one almost deceptively useful in both its innocuousness and specificity to him, is his newfound title of “Mortal Technology Weakness Alleviator.” Because while as the pad I carry remains both something that I alone can operate and harbors a level of usefulness that’s near-impossible to overstate, the unfortunate nature of the life-saving device is that, at the end of the day, it’s still a lowly common model that’s seen a few too many charge cycles in its lifetime, and that the battery life of the thing is nothing short of dismal.

Sure, Kyrix steals it away from me to play AR games for a few minutes here and then, but there’s a good reason I make him charge it afterwards, and that’s because that’s about all it’s got left in it anymore. And while it’s no game, the ceaseless draw of the flashlight on the back would’ve normally been far too much for the thing to handle; the twenty-minute battery life and similarly lengthy recharging time far too severe of a limitation on our group’s ability to make any sort of reasonable progress into the innermost depths of the tunnels. And in fact it was for a time, halting us almost as often as my own lackluster stamina and generally making the itself a great annoyance in our trip forward, but thankfully it did not take more than two angry sessions in the dark before a solution was drafted and implemented.

In an effort not to go stumbling down one of the many pitfalls of both the literal and metaphorical varieties that our journey presented, Kyrix himself came forward with a powerful idea: Utilizing his unique abilities and numerous qualifications stemming from his many hours of using the thing whilst he was further erasing any hopes I may have had for ever again seeing my initial upon the high scores board of any of my AR games, Kyrix made himself out to be a most unusual, and yet most excellent choice, warranting his immediate promotion to the position of lightbearer.

*All I did was point the light and turn the charger crank.*

Around and around did the charger crank turn, and only further ‘round does it go yet. Unprompted and entirely at the insistence of his own brilliant mind, Kyrix quickly settled himself into a more appropriate position over my left shoulder, and, barring a small number of awkward positional readjustments best left unsaid, the dedicated lever-puller utilized his immense determination and crank-turning prowess to ensure the continued operation of the low-grade mortal construct throughout the grueling fifteen-minute sessions we had between breaks as our party trekked through the foreboding bowels of the underworld. Truly, he was an inspiration to us all.

*At least I always lasted the full fifteen minutes.*

Jiyuulia chokes.

…You’ve got a way with words, you know that?

*You’re the one who’s spent two minutes talking about a crank.*

Fair point. Moving on, then.

More than just a generator, Kyrix’s portable size opened up a litany of other useful tasks he alone could perform. Considering that his locomotive abilities still fall short of even my own, (legs are rather important when it comes to movement, it seems) several of these were limited to theory rather than practice, but there was one in particular that did not require any locomotive abilities at all.

Poison gas detection.

It might not be what first comes to mind, but by far the most insidious trap down here has nothing to do with swarms of killer bugs or suboptimal tunnel width variations. Oxygen on this hellscape of a planet is already poor enough to begin with, and while airflow in these caves is usually more than enough to make up for it, that’s not the case everywhere. In the deeper bends, the stranger corners, and even sometimes in the odd and otherwise unassuming place for what seems to be for no discernible reason at all, airflow will halt for long stretches, leaving pockets of still air that can get to upwards of a mile in length. Worse, these air pockets weren’t just stuffier than an unwashed mammal’s bedroom — they actively facilitated the buildup of noxious and deadly gasses that served to forever silence any who foolishly strayed into their silent chambers.

Now, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We weren’t a ramshackle band of primitive Yotul stoneheads swinging flaming sticks around our heads for light, and our total lack of equipment meant we lacked the clinking, sparking metals required for a more traditional mining accident.

Fiery death aside, there was still the risk of losing consciousness for the last time in some dark, dank tunnel somewhere as our minds were addled beyond the ability to recognize our impending doom, our perfectly-preserved corpses lying facedown in that same tunnel forever, never to be reclaimed by either nature nor fellow sapient…

Jiyuulia shudders. The Arxur yelps, scrabbling to hold on.

Less than appealing, to say the least. Such a fate would not exactly have been considered a warrior’s death under your eyes, Great Hunters, and given the whole nature of this trial thing we’re not really here to die at all if we can help it, so we needed a better option. And we had one! I’ll let him do the honors.

*Hah! Get ready!*

*So the idea was that sometimes the gas pockets were small, like me, so we could go through them if we had to and be okay. But because each trap was of different badness and we didn’t know how long we could spend in each one, we needed something to tell us when the trap was getting too long and we needed to turn around.*

*So, after the first time we nearly all died, Khogue came up with a really good idea! If I’m small, which I am, then my lungs are too, and that means I pass out faster. So if we just turned around whenever I passed out, then we could get out of the gas pocket before anybody else fell asleep too, and then we’d all be okay!*

More or less that way, at least. And the first time was very nearly the last time too, it wasn’t just you we had to haul out, Kyrix. Had it been Giznel or the Pilot on the floor, I don’t think we would’ve all made it out. Also, “Khogue?”

*Squishy! You forgot already? Khogue came up with the idea after he woke up. It wasn’t you, I passed out first and was busy waking up, Giznel was huffing too hard to speak, Kyrix was being mad again, and Selkasthithmerkzalgilnashzim is too dumb to think of good ideas like that.*

…I’m beginning to remember something about carbon monoxide poisoning being cumulative.

*What?*

Exactly.

*That’s not helpful.*

Jiyuulia exhales loudly.

Never mind.

*Squishy—*

Anyway, despite any possible misgivings some people may have had about using a living thing as an indicator valve, it was a “good” idea, one of the few that have arisen so far. Which really says a lot about our situation, most of the discussions I’d overheard from before our little trip down the river didn’t go nearly so well. I guess there’s something to be said about small groups.

That doesn’t mean that there weren’t, like, several dozen times a fight almost broke out between various parties over nothing, and at least five or so of those times something really did happen and I had to sit and watch four Arxur warriors stage a pitched battle maybe ten or so feet from my easily pierced flesh before, after a few minutes, somebody would finally surrender their “argument,” and we could move on.

Thankfully, those five were concentrated towards the beginning. Not because of any flagging sense of comradery, or even practical realizations about how to best allocate our resources, but because as it turns out, I can have ideas too, even if only unintentionally and as a result of exasperation rather than any true planning. Maybe I just have a talent for mediation, but most fights broke up pretty quickly after I just refused to bother stopping for them anymore. Art’s hard to do in the dark, after all.

*Except it only worked when your legs weren’t on break.*

I don’t see you walking on your own.

*I don’t need to. Yours are big enough for two people.*

…Thanks, Kyrix.

*Maybe three! Or four! It’s hard to tell.*

I’m flattered. Moving on.

*Yes, move faster.*

Jiyuulia huffs.

Back to the other crewmembers, I’ve been perhaps a bit too harsh on them. They weren’t all bad, after all. Call me an optimist, but I don’t think the Dominion would’ve kept them around if that were the case. And I’m not just talking about Giznel, either. Each and every one of them served a purpose, even if Kyrix… okay, I admit defeat. Kyrix, is that really his name?

*Kyrix is Kyrix. Also-Kyrix is also Kyrix, Also-Also-Kyrix is also also Kyrix, Also-Also-Also Kyrix is also also also Kyrix. It’s easy.*

FOUR?

*Yeah? I know like fifteen Kyrixes! It’s a good name. Strong leader. Very famous.*

But—

*I don’t really get why you’re confused. Kyrix the pilot. Kyrix the hunter. Kyrix the farmer. Kyrix the me!*

…Of course. How silly of me to expect anything different.

Well then. I kinda had something to say about Also-Kyrix, but whatever. He’s target practice.

Jiyuulia sniffs.

So the Butcher, Selkas… help me out again?

*Selkasthithmerkzalgilnashzim.*

You’re joking.

*No! I would never lie to the Great Hunters!*

But that’s like eight syllables! She never speaks more than ten!

*It’s not a joke!*

Jiyuulia’s breath hitches for just a moment.

Alright, alright, calm down. I believe you. Can you spell her name for me?

*What’s spelling?*

Jiyuulia goes silent, her heavy footfalls ceasing instantly as she comes to a rapid halt. She says nothing, remaining still for just over eleven seconds.

…I see we both have some things to learn later.

*You’re gonna teach me magic?!*

N— you know what, sure, why not? It’s totally magic.

*I’m gonna blow up mountains!*

You’ve already done that, if I recall. But I digress.

So the Butcher, Selkasthithmerkzal…

*Selkasthithmerkzalgilnashzim.*

Ugh, can’t I just call her Selkas? Or maybe Thith?

*Oh no, don’t do that. She doesn’t like people doing that. Lyrylef tried it once, and she stole her tongue!*

Ooof course she did. I should’ve figured.

Jiyuulia shuffles. Her heavy footsteps resume their pounding down the tunnel.

Alright, so with that history lesson out of the way, the Butcher, who is apparently named Selkasthithmerkzalgilnashzim — because of course she is — deserves the most credit after Giznel. For all she lacks in basic dignity, beauty, cognitive ability, geniality, kindness, personality, mental stability, or in fact any other sort of normally redeeming traits at all, actually, she’s still a hulking 7’1” Arxur warrior with the shoulders to match. And while she might not exactly have been capable of being left to her own devices, a hastily shouted order was more than enough to get her to take action.

Take, for instance, the first gas trap. Our resident artist only came back with the rest of us because she dragged his half-dead corpse out at a full walking pace. Which is a bit surprising, considering her mouthbreathing tendencies would’ve had me expect her to be the second out after Kyrix. Then again, drug effects are relative to body mass, and — I’m getting off track again.

Either way, he lived, which was neat. We were pretty sure he wasn’t going to, for a time. I still haven’t heard a thank you for all that CPR I had to give him, but, well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised. I don’t think anyone involved much enjoyed it.

*Don’t forget how she helped you too!*

Ah, right, yeah. Credit’s due where it’s due. The tunnels get a bit thin sometimes, and a bit of assistance through the occasional not-so-tight squeeze was much appreciated. She was certainly… efficient, when needed. There’s something to be said for that, even if it did result in a few more new rips and tears in my clothes than I’m particularly comfortable admitting.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m still not exactly a proponent for the idea of having to get close to, much less touch a creature that’d tear my throat out without shame or remorse in two seconds flat. But when compared to the alternative of being stuck in some small section of the tunnel for the next few days, getting to experience the whole of dehydration all over again… well. I can’t say I didn’t appreciate the assistance.

…I did say thank you, by the way.

…

I probably should cover him too, yeah?

Jiyuulia sighs.

Alright.

The far more reasonably named, yet somehow even less reasonable Khogue wasn’t purely a drag either. While not a one of us had a clue as to where we’d ended up after the whole river debacle, and navigating a 3D underground environment is not exactly on the list of things many people are good at — again, what I wouldn’t do for a Gojid — but he wasn’t as far gone as the rest of us. Khogue’s… taste (literally) for art has left him with quite the perceptive eye, and I hate to say it, but a flair for creativity as well.

Aside from being the “genius” who came up with our new air quality test, he’s always the first to notice things about the environment around us. Striated rocks in the walls turning a slightly different shade of yellow, strange smells at the very edges of Arxurian perception, unusual drops and shifts in air currents… he’s no geologist, but there’s a reason he got sent out on scouting missions with everyone else, despite his proclivities. We’d have gotten even more lost a long time ago if it weren’t for him.

Oh, Kyrix and I still jointly held the navigator position. Somebody’s ought to be the judge of which ones look traversable, and who better than me to decide just how tight we wanted to go? Not to mention we still had the light, which was definitely a deciding factor. But that doesn’t mean his sense of direction didn’t have us soundly beaten when it came to forks with multiple viable options, and hence why the general plan for getting back involved something along the lines of “wander around until he recognizes where we’re at, and then just follow him back to camp.”

*The plan wasn’t that bad!*

Really? Do explain what it was, then.

…

Yeah. Not really all that great.

Besides, it hardly matters now anyway. As mentioned earlier, you guys may have noticed that plan’s become a little hard to follow as of late. While that means the crew isn’t here to hear me berate their existences — which is very good for my expected lifespan — that also means that Kyrix and I are totally alone and lost in some dark tunnel thousands of feet underground with no way out, which has rather the opposite effect. As for where they’ve gone, and why they’re not here with us right now… I, aheh, may have had something to do with that.

Hey hey hey, I had a good reason! Dissolution of the group is still preferable to dismemberment of the group.

*Squishy hit a rock. I helped.*

Mmhmm. I’m sure you remember the swarm of bugs, Great Hunters? That unassailable cloud of death that heralded the coming of yet another change in how we’ve conducted this adventure, and the further threat of which has kept us on high alert ever since?

Well, as I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear, (you are primarily responsible for this whole test, after all) and something that really shouldn’t have surprised us given the intended lesson last time, but we’re not alone down here.

We were taking a break in a more open section of the tunnels at the time, dirtying ourselves in some damp, dirty room, spanning maybe twenty or thirty feet across and about that many wide. The walls around us were beginning to show oddly familiar signs of wear, and Khogue had reasoned that while he may not have seen these exact patterns of chips and cracks before, he had seen something similar enough during his scouting expeditions to warrant checking it out.

I’m not one to complain when people want to take a break, and the foundations were strange and oddly weak-looking, so a quick stop to survey them was far from out of the question, at least to most of us. Also-Kyrix the pilot was off yelling about something again, and suffice it to say I didn’t really care any more by that point, so I can’t exactly tell you what it was all about beyond him having some sort of misgivings over our laziness, but just because I wasn’t paying attention doesn’t mean something else wasn’t.

Such as, for example, a gigantic eyeless beast the size of a large hovercar.

*A true hunt, like in the stories!*

Of course, it had to be covered from head to tail in a solid coat of those same hardened plates everything else down here’s had, so it was already basically invulnerable, but I’m going to assume you added the four-inch claws and rock-crushing maw on as a joke. I don’t know what kind of combat capabilities you expect us to have, Great Hunters, but I’d like to remind you that we’re a duo consisting of a lamed Arxur four-year-old and a supernaturally unfit Kolshian specializing in utility spells. As it stands, we couldn’t take on a regular monster, much less deal with nature’s equivalent of a tank.

That thing came crashing through the wall with a deafening roar, evidently a creature so strong that it had no need for stealth or subtlety. For whatever unknown reason — though I think I may have a compelling guess — it decided to use those same claws it’d just used to burst through stone against us.

It went for the pilot first, obviously. Not even five seconds in, and two tons of an even worse kind of predatory monster came lunging through the middle of the room straight for him. I think it wanted him to shut up just as badly as anyone else. Can’t blame it, really.

And hey! That just means we can pin all the blame on him. Not like anyone (else) will contest it.

“Luckily,” Also-Kyrix managed to dodge at the last moment, barely avoiding evisceration in what was honestly a pretty impressive move. And for all their faults, the team of warriors was able to put aside their bickering pretty quickly once a greater danger presented itself, and the four Arxur were up and roaring to go before it could get another swipe in. Not bad, all things considered. I’d seen far worse from them before.

Unfortunately, however, beyond the initial phase, the battle went about as well as you would expect from pitting four unarmed infantry against an armored vehicle. That is to say, poorly.

If one was being generous, they might raise the argument that the monster this time around gave us the mercy of actually being something somebody could feasibly attempt to defend themselves against, but in all honesty, it really wasn’t. While it wasn’t quite on the same level as the bug swarm, still more of a monster than an environmental hazard — though it was doing its level best to change that — that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a physical incarnation of some dread hellbeast straight from a cheesy Harchen horror film.

Battle strategies came and went, but it was hopeless from the start. With the thing coated in that same strange material as everything else the hunting teams had come across in the caves had, it was no more vulnerable to swinging Arxur claws than your typical concrete bunker. The most damage anyone managed to deal through a traditional attack involved Selkthith— Selkasfifth— the Butcher jamming a claw up its nose and whirling it around up there. And while the strategy certainly punctured its defenses, the gush of reddish black oozing down its face a more-than-inspiring sight to those of us with more violent aptitudes, the new wall decoration that immediately formed thereafter when it charged forward and headbutt her into flying across the room for her achievement probably had somewhat of a mitigating effect. The three sets of spare ribs I heard snap after it swung its tail around into the rest of the crew, even more so.

Before I go on: Kyrix, you have anything to add? You’re kinda silent up there.

*No, you’re doing good. It was very exciting!*

Alright, then.

So, before you go laughing at the crew for their failure, I’d like to dispel any notions you might be getting about their combat prowess. The truth is, the four Arxur fought valiantly, each and every one a true predator. I wouldn’t even call their strategy all that flawed, seeing as how it was all they had. Flight wasn’t an option, and their backs were against the wall. While it might not have been the greatest showing of force — stars, it was a total loss even — they put up enough of a fight to keep the thing distracted enough to avoid having it charging the two least combat-oriented members of the group and instantly snuffing out our non-lives, so there’s certainly not as much to complain about as there could have been. Not that I’m sure how I’d complain if I’d ceased to exist, but you get the picture.

But at the same time, no matter how impressive the Butcher’s rage may be or how thankful I am that the crew managed to buy me a whole fifteen seconds before getting taken out, the reality is that they never stood a chance against the monster. Not with their claws alone.

Good thing those of us still standing — or straddling the shoulders of those still standing — didn’t limit ourselves so tightly, then.

*We used big rocks!*

Kyrix deserves all the credit for the idea. I was, uh, “not in the necessary headspace at the time” to come up with the more, ahem, creative solutions, but luckily, I didn’t have to this time. Sometimes the part where your charge is an actual predator who’s used to watching people being torn apart every day and not thinking anything of it helps!

Other times it gives you extremely dysfunctional ships’ crews and whole civilizations teetering on the brink of collapse, but hey. Us blasphemous herbivores ought to be good at something, huh?

Anyway, you remember how we got off the station, right Great Hunters? Well, call him unoriginal all you want, but given its previous effectiveness and his list of resources starting and ending with that of one half-catatonic Kolshian wrecking ball he could yell at, not to mention that Kyrix classic “I’m-about-to-die” desperation, poking and yelling at me until I ran headlong into the least stable-looking load-bearing wall he could find was really probably the best plan he could’ve made. And, seeing as how we’re both still alive, it was a highly effective one too!

The room we were in was old and unstable to begin with, and the removal of a critical support column instantly collapsed the cavern in a shower of falling debris. A few dozen tons of falling rock proved too much for even the monster’s hardened carapace, and suddenly it was no more.

*It went squish! Or squelch. I don’t know what the difference is.*

So, in other words, I lived up to my name, (again) and we were insanely lucky to survive. While the monster’s your fault, I should probably thank you for your generosity with the miracles as of late; not being flattened into a thin paste as a result of my cleithrophobic tendencies is certainly appreciated.

That being said, I’d also appreciate it if you’d stop setting me up for needing so many. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I’m fully aware of the journey of a Hunter Potentiate and his Spirit of Bounty is a perilous one, the hunter’s worthiness must be without question, but hooo does this seem a bit excessive sometimes.

I mean, the shining blue light stemming from a brand new hole in the wall, tastefully placed on the other side of the new rubble wall that split our group in twain? The fresh opening to a new, healthy moss cavern to the four suddenly ecstatic Arxur warriors who got to go explore a new paradise while we got left behind, those we saved completely unable to do more than wish us well as they strut off to safety? A glimpse of salvation, forever beyond our reach, our souls damned to return to the infinite darkness of the blackest corners of the world in our continued search for an exit to this never-ending labyrinth?

Absolutely, devastatingly, soul-crushingly cruel. Let it not be said that you do not test the Potentiate’s emotional fortitude with even but an ounce less harshness than you do his practicals.

…

As for us now, well, that’s the latest of it. It’s been a few hours since then, us having long since left behind the site of our near-demise and all those who accompanied us. Us, trudging through the bowls of the underworld, darkness only held back by the light of a single pad, almost completely alone and defenseless, all conversation exhausted long ago in favor of saving my breath for progress…

*Hah!*

I am not usually one to criticize the plans of the Great Hunters, but overall? The experience so far has been less what I would call “predatory” and more what I would define as “bleak.” You would know best as to what he needs, but it’s been tough all the same. I even understand the irony of my complaining, especially in the face of your previous generosity, and yet…

Ah, well. It’s only been a few hours, and you did bless us with the knowledge that new moss caves are both extant and accessible using the tactics we have utilized thus far. Our goals need not seem as impossible as they did before, and for that, I thank you. Even if we can’t go the same way as everyone else, you’ve granted us all the power in the world to ensure we may find our own way forward, true to the hunter’s creed. I may not be a hunter, but I have proven myself a weapon, and Kyrix himself has proven a competency and worthiness in wielding me. The time-honored status of a Hunter’s weapon is not one I take lightly, even in the highly unusual circumstances we find ourselves in.

Jiyuulia snickers under her breath. It’s clear she’s having fun with this. The Arxur does not seem to notice.

Admittedly, it has been nice to not have to worry about being shanked in the back by an irate lunatic. Even if that means that I must take extra care with the squeezes, the threat of getting stuck and all but guaranteeing a slow and painful death weighing heavily on my mind every time my sides brush the walls, being allowed to bear the challenge without having to listen to a squabbling horde behind me as I do almost makes up for it. Almost.

…

Really, I guess I’m just asking for something to happen. The whole “defenseless in a featureless cave” thing is kinda starting to drag on a bit. The tunnels are starting to all blend together.

The Kolshian goes mum for about three minutes, the resounding thud of her footsteps and whooshing gusts and grunts of her breathing the only sounds she makes as she continues her way down the tunnel. The Arxur remains quiet as well, apparently having nothing to add. The whirring of the charger crank persists through it all, uninterrupted.

Huh?

Jiyuulia speeds up, huffing madly as she begins to approach her limit. The pace of her steps is faster than it has ever been before during an entry.

You can’t be serious.

Her pace continues to speed up. The Arxur can’t seem to decide whether to breathe or not, switching between overwhelmingly fast hyperventilation to not at all seemingly at random.

It wasn’t even five minutes ago!

Lack of records and Jiyuulia’s unusual physical condition make it difficult to predict the length of her strides, consequentially rendering the act of making any estimates on her exact speed impossible. Whatever their length, the interval between her feet lifting and falling continues to shorten, falling further and further before suddenly, a foot is lifted before the other is allowed to fall, and the thud of her footfalls amplifies exponentially.

WHAHAHAHA!

The run only lasts a few seconds before it breaks down, one penultimate footfall crashing through something brittle before sliding on something that sounds like loose, rough gravel. The rest of the Kolshian comes down shortly thereafter, the deafening slam sending the tiny fragments scattering every which way as her body plows a new trench through the gravel. The Arxur, and consequently the microphone it’s holding, are sent flying through the air, coming down in a much lighter secondary crash that does not seem to harm either it or the device. For whatever reason, despite the abrupt and violent stop, Jiyuulia’s exuberant behavior only heightens further, breaking into an impressive belly laugh that only further serves to disrupt the position of the stones coating the floor. The Arxur joins her in expressing delight. Its laughter is somewhat chittery, clicking at regular intervals as its breath tightens and loosens rapidly.

*You did the magic! You did the magic!*

Lasting nearly two and a half minutes, computer estimates suggest that the raw, animated display of sheer mirth is at least 62% driven by hysteria, with an error margin of 17% given the unusual vocal registers and/or poor reference data available for both subjects. Several times does the laughter begin to calm slightly, only for one of the subjects to break out in a new wave of laughter that inevitably causes the other to collapse into a fit of their own. Even after it finally stops, neither party seems willing to speak, Jiyuulia herself refraining from speech for another thirty-eight seconds. She drags herself into a seated position somewhere around the sixteen second mark, gravel bouncing as she lifts herself up and reaches for the pad. When she finally does speak, her voice is exhausted, but jubilant.

Okay, I might have to convert.

Ahem, I meant, wow! Not quite what I was expecting.

*Thank you thank you thank you thank you—*

Jiyuulia stands. It’s a laborious process, requiring far more effort than such an act ever should, but she stands. Gravel crunches oddly beneath her feet as her feet plow through more of the substance. Eventually, the Arxur finds its way back onto her shoulders, seating itself without pausing in its ceaseless chanting.

Wow. That’s the only word for it.

*Blue light! Moss! A dead glowstick on the ground! We’ve found it!*

Jiyuulia begins walking forwards. She’s faster than usual.

*Go faster, go faster!*

I mean, what are the odds? Us, finding another moss cavern within hours of being separated? And one that’s been inhabited recently? Burn marks everywhere, and an old, used-up glowstick in the middle? We’ve found the lost hunting party!

*Rope! Guns! Meat! Safety!*

It’s perfect! It’s ideal! It’s the best possible outcome!

Still a bit hysteric, Jiyuulia breathes in deeply, letting the breath out slowly. The Arxur continues to spout meaningless drivel.

There are literally no downsides! We can just follow the glowsticks, turn where they say to, and we’ll easily—

The Arxur goes silent.

Oh.

Oh no.

…

T-t-that’s a lot of bodies.

I. I see. See, uh, uhm.

…Wow.

Okay, okay. Calm. Rational. They want a description. A description. Uhh…

Okay, so. Bones scattered everywhere. Everywhere. More skeletons than I can count. Piles of bones taller than I am. All yellowed. Ancient. Arxur and… something else.

Gigantic stone vault door. Forty, maybe fifty feet in diameter. Massive hole in the bottom. Blue light shining through. Free of skeletons, except for one. Arxur. Slumped against the door. One arm missing.

Bullet wound through the skull. Ballistic.

What… what happened here?

Jiyuulia pauses. Neither she nor the Arxur say anything for nearly two minutes. She is not still. Bones clatter. Suddenly, she lets out a gasp, then grunts of exertion. Hard ceramics scrape against rough stone.

They were prey.

The bodies? The ones who aren’t Arxur? Their eye sockets are on the sides.

They were prey, and Listener? This was their final stand.

Jiyuulia fiddles with something she’s holding. It clicks, then begins to hum with a low note.

They did not survive.

Jiyuulia lifts the device to her shoulder. It’s not built for her physiology, slipping a few times in her haste, and even when she does figure it out, the positioning is still awkward. It’s heavy, but she’s stronger. The hum reaches a crescendo.

All… they ever did… was for naught. They… were forgotten.

Time seems to stop with the roar of the plasma rifle. It doesn’t sound like a modern-day Arxur raid rifle, but judging by the popping sounds of sizzling granite in the background, it isn’t supposed to. Jiyuulia flips a switch. The hum stops. The sizzle does not.

I don’t plan on making the same mistake.

File “Entry 8 – 00:57, January 14th, 2137.mp3” ended.

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Beginning Playback…

WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

As expected, playback begins with a massive blast of environmental audio, this time being the tortured groaning of overtaxed furniture. Ancient wooden slats twist and creak under the strain of supporting the burdensome Kolshian, crying out in despair whenever she so much as breathes. The precarious state of her seating arrangement cuts the normal comfort-seeking positional readjustment short, ominous splintering noises accompanying her every move and threatening total structural collapse should she take too long. Despite this dire scenario, Jiyuulia sounds remarkably unconcerned with her seemingly inevitable meeting with the floorboards beneath her, either oblivious to the danger she finds herself in, or, more likely, having already accepted the risks associated with her state of being. Instead, her voice verges more towards something best described as a state of satisfied exhaustion. It’s not the wheeze of heavy manual labor (or at least no more so than is typical of her), but more a slight alteration to her speaking style: a slight slowing in her words, infinitesimally lengthier pauses between words, and a possibly deliberate set of hushed tones. The ever-present tension that’s consistent across all her entries remains as taut as always, impossible to ever truly mask no matter how much she may wish otherwise, but even so, Jiyuulia sounds… relaxed, somehow, like someone who’s just returned home from a long vacation and is determined to enjoy the last few hours of her morning before being forced to head off to work. Whatever the case may be with her, it is certain that she’s found a new setting for her recordings, somewhere only slightly less cramped than normal and yet totally without echo or wind, suggesting some sort of artificial wooden structure. It’s somewhat of an odd departure from the last eight entries, having somewhere to speak that’s even somewhat soundproofed to the outside world without also inducing an echo, but not jarringly so. The absence of foreign interruptions actually lends the recording somewhat of a more personalized feel, the wooden walls creating a more ‘homely’ locale that allows the listener to focus more on her voice without having to strain to understand her. It’s not an unwelcome change.

Greetings, listener.

I know, I know — it hasn’t actually been all that long since we last spoke. Just a little over nineteen hours ago, if the timestamp on my last recording is to be believed. But stars above, listener, doesn’t it feel like it’s been ages since we last had a proper sitdown conversation together? And not only do I actually have a place to sit this time — though how long I’ll get to keep it is another matter altogether — but I actually have a lot to cover! Turns out exploring ancient underground cities makes for decent storytelling material. Go figure.

Plus, the whole reason I started this journal was to make a log of my personal experiences, and lately it’s been rather lacking on that front. Sure, you get to hear about all the stuff that’s been happening, but talking about my true feelings is hard when there’s a particularly gullible Arxur crawling all over my shoulders.

Of course, that’s the way I like my predators, and the journal’s actually serving a useful purpose then by keeping my own little predator loyal to me — and doesn’t that still sound weird when I say it out loud — but just because I’m dealing with matters of life and death on an hourly basis now doesn’t mean that I’ve found that I feel better about myself after making another one of these for the less important purpose of retaining what little sanity I have left, too. Gotta leave the world with something to remember me with after all, aha!

Anyway, my point is: We’re harking back to the ancient days of yore with a nice one-on-one chat today, listener, just me and you. Just like the hallowed scriptures of… well, last month, to be specific.

Stars, has it really only been a month?

Jiyuulia huffs.

Pff. Yeah, whatever. You, me, uninterrupted conversation. I get to unload all my problems by telling some stupid jokes while breathing too hard into the microphone, and you get… uhh…

Suddenly, one of the wooden slats snaps completely. Jiyuulia freezes with a sharp breath, tentacle squeezing a bundle of fabric as she prepares for the worst, but beyond a barrage of complaints from the furniture, nothing new happens. Slowly, the Kolshian breathes out in relief.

‘Museum-worthy artisanal carving’ my triple-wide arse. Y’know, just for once, it’d be nice if designers actually considered the full range of people who might be using their products. I mean honestly, what good’s ‘woven carpentry’ if they won’t even use regular metal supports in—

There’s a hasty rustling of fabric as another slat snaps, this one being louder than the first. It’s only through the craftsmanship of a true master and real, bona fide miracle that the wooden structure remains standing.

…Ah. Right.

…

Oh, aheh, you’re still here! Don’t mind me, I’m just off being a massive hypocrite with unrealistic expectations again. Shouldn’t be a surprise, really; you probably know me better than just about anyone at this point — not that that’s a high bar — but hey, that’s me I guess. Remember kids, do what I say, not what I do.

I mean, that should be fairly obvious and all; I’m not exactly fit to be your standard role model — or much else, actually — normal people don’t go outgrowing furniture like it was their wardrobe… not that normal people wear all that many clothes either…

Ah, well. Much like everything else that has to do with my life, it doesn’t really matter. The sheets on the damn thing were no better than used tissues the instant I made contact anyway. Hothead’s word may be worth less than sand, even here, but he wasn’t exactly wrong to complain about stained public seating. I do tend to have that effect on things.

Jiyuulia hums.

But look at me now getting caught in another sneaker wave of a tangent. That’s twice now, and we’re not even five minutes in! I might have to rethink my decision on making a recording after pulling an all-nighter. Where were we?

…Oh, right, the cultural and archaeological value of some sad loser Kolshian’s lost pad that you probably found in a dumpster somewhere after the real adventurer who found it threw the worthless thing in there. And the comically bad jokes, can’t forget those. Eh? Eh?

…

Oof, tough crowd today. Whatever. They’re still probably the most valuable thing on here.

Y’know, even if you are a humorless killjoy, I actually spent fifteen minutes coming up with some really good ones just for you. I’ve kinda ruined the setup, but I can still tell them! Like… uh…

Huh. Actually, I might keep that one to myself. It sounded a lot better fifteen minutes ago.

…

Ugh. I guess this is what I get for straying from my usual self-deprecation… which, in a sick twist of fate, is exactly what this is, because of course I couldn’t escape embarrassing myself the instant the opportunity presented itself and flubbing the whole introduction plan. Great. Why even bother coming up with my own jokes when I already am one?

Jiyuulia huffs, and the wood cracks again. The fact that it hasn’t fallen in on itself yet is stunning in the extreme.

See what I mean?! Point and laugh, listener! Kyrix isn’t even awake right now, but that’s okay because I don’t need his help to make a fool of myself! The big dumb Kolshian is really big and really dumb! Watch her fail to use a simple bed! Nothing’s fit her in years, and yet she still can’t seem to figure that out! That’s funny, right? Right?!

Introduction OVER!

The recording pauses for three minutes. Upon resuming, Jiyuulia has calmed somewhat, slightly subdued.

Haah…

Sorry about that, listener. Got worked up over stuff I can’t change, again. The world’s just unfair like that sometimes. Deeply, crushingly—

Another snap rings out, cutting Jiyuulia off with a muffled squawk.

Aheheh. Heheheh.

Oooohhhh okay. Okay. I see how it is. You think this is funny, don’t you — no, not you, listener, the gods so clearly invested in ruining my life — but I know better! Don’t think I’m gonna fall twice for that bait! I—

…

Ahem.

I think it’s best we move on now, listener. Wouldn’t you agree?

Wonderful.

Alright. So if I remember correctly, I’d, uh, left you off back in that place near the entrance. I’d found a really big door, shared some intense feelings, and stuck my tentacles through a few too many eye sockets, not necessarily in that order. Overall, probably one of my better exits if I’m being honest. But, like, that was minutes ago for you, right? You’re bingeing these recordings one after the other, probably — and I would know, I’m an expert on the subject — so giving you a recap isn’t really necessary here, right? You were there for it. You’re here for what happened afterwards!

…Okay, yes, and you also want to know what I did with the absolutely enormous gun sitting on the floor ten feet from me. I promise I’ll get to it, okay?

So impatient. I already have to deal with one four-year-old, listener. I don’t need you acting up too.

Anyway, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, but Kyrix and I didn’t spend much longer hanging around the entrance. Predator Disease straight from the source or not, I, uh, I was not keen on staying there longer than I had to. The aftermath of a stampede’s bad enough as it is, adding more crunched skulls does not help.

Jiyuulia begins to shudder, but she quickly catches herself before the aged wood can do more than groan in dissatisfaction. She settles for squeezing a roll of fatty flesh instead.

At least I didn’t spew a slurry of stomach acid and half-digested food everywhere like some people might. I mean, I get how it works and all, but still. Food should go down, not up! But nooo, shooting gastric acid out of your mouth is waaay better than wet skin.

Mammals.

…

Returning to the plot, it was pretty obvious that the way forward involved the forty-plus foot wide glowing blue door. The aircraft-sized hole punched through the bottom had some twenty feet of clearance, so sneaking through wasn’t hard — so long as you were up to pushing a few skeletons out of your way to get there, that is.

Good thing that I’m an expert at that by now.

The rest of the entryway was even less challenging. Behind the door was an equally wide but thankfully rather short tunnel that quickly opened up into exactly what the blue glow had suggested: another moss cavern. But listener, it was so much more than just that.

For starters, the place was huge. I mean, I haven’t explored the whole thing — nor will I be doing that, such a venture would take weeks at best — but it’s at least a few dozen times the size of base camp, just altogether so large as to be entirely and utterly beyond anything a cave would ever naturally reach on its own. But that’s just the thing, listener: by no stretch of the word was anything about the place “natural.”

Oh sure, it almost certainly started out that way. Stars, half the ceiling’s still covered in hanging stalactites some couple hundred feet up, and the ground floor has more elevation change than a backwards mountain dweller’s poverty-stricken village! And this is all while three separate rivers all run, bend, and wind their way through the cavern’s choicest spots, the larger two joining up right before making their way out. But even so, despite the clearly natural origins of the megacavern, it’s more than evident that the whole place used to be a series of several adjacent caves stuck together, and the walls between them had long ago been mined out in an attempt to open up more space. And in place of those walls…

…Have you ever seen what one of those old Gojid cities looked like, listener? All tight rooms and even tighter passageways, underground titans of infrastructure caved from raw stone and stretching for miles and miles in the form of the densest urban neighborhoods imaginable?

Well, whoever they were, these guys seemed to be going for something similar, but in the opposite way. Wooden structures dominated the cavern, forming a multi-layered three dimensional maze that covered most, but not all of the available space. Whole buildings were left floating midair, suspended on more and more over-the-top marvels of drunken civil engineering that are so far beyond anything that has ever been replicated by the Federation either before or since that any attempts to draw a comparison fail on the basis of there simply being no such comparable things to draw a comparison to. Seriously, I’ve heard some negative takes on our more flowing, organic styles before, but I don’t care who you are, even the staunchest detractors of Kolshian architecture would have to concede that this pure navigatory hell was in a class all its own, impossible to map with anything short of a crack team of the Federation’s finest cartographers armed with holoprojectors and probably ten to twenty years off the lives of everyone involved. There were wooden roads suspended hundreds of feet in the air, weaving and winding their way through the mess in seemingly random patterns, covering as much distance vertically as they did horizontally. For support, everything was tied together with a veritable nest of wooden beams, with the occasional lucky section being fortunate enough to get an actual connection to the ground by anchoring onto one of the cavern’s many floor-to-ceiling stone columns. Even those weren’t totally safe, with the largest columns having been hollowed out and inhabited themselves, lined with non-geometric window patterns that only further defied any sense of reason or logic, bound as they were to some alien mishmash of masonry and art that has since been lost to time.

So yeah. “Insane” is putting it mildly. But the most astounding part of it all, listener? The structures were — for the most part — intact.

Don’t get me wrong here; the city’s degraded since its heyday. Multiple spots were particularly bad, the upper layers having collapsed completely and rendering the whole place a crumbling mess of snapped beams and twisted poles that left the ground floor nearly untraversable in the sheer devastation of it all. Battle damage marred the surfaces of the few walls left standing in those spots, and there were several other areas where falling buildings had caused cascading failures in which dozens more had followed them to their doom below. And I haven’t even started on the encroachment of the wildlife in the absence of any sapient population, flora of every kind imaginable coating every scrap of exposed surface it could find on both the natural floors, walls, and ceilings of the cavern and the most ruined of buildings. Vines hundreds of feet long trailed down from above, draping themselves through the wooden superstructure to create the illusion of some sort of natural suspension. It’d even worked in some places, with the thickest clusters of vines having twisted themselves through enough niches and gaps to form completely organic cable networks for sections that had otherwise decayed beyond what would’ve remained standing on their own.

But enough of me complaining, listener! The city is by no means in perfect condition, yes. But for a place that can’t have seen regular maintenance in two, maybe three centuries? Beyond incredible. And while it’s a foregone conclusion that their carpenters put the rest of the galaxy to shame, I’d wager their chemical engineers might’ve been up there too. The sheer quality their paints and wood varnishes must be to have lasted this long without upkeep, and in wet conditions…

Most of the Federation has long since left wood behind, citing the material as primitive and inferior to synthetic counterparts. And just yesterday? I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly with that assessment. But now… I’m thinking we may just not have been trying hard enough, listener. The natural finish and raw appeal of the substance is just…

In a different universe, one without the Arxur, I could see myself living here. Underground, safe from the sun, looking down from my high-rise apartment on one of the galaxy’s finest gardens stretching all around me.

…The world’s an unfair place, sometimes.

I’m not the only one who feels that way about living here, either. The whole cavern has, over time, become an utterly wild jungle, a true oasis hiding underneath the desert above. And although the original sapient inhabitants are long gone, the city is by no means quiet or lifeless. The animal life that lives here still seems to follow some sort of day and night cycle, so you can’t hear it right now — and thank goodness for that, or I’d never get to sleep otherwise — but the sheer number of birds alone that live here are loud, listener. Squawking, tweeting, cawing, it’s just ridiculous how many there are. And they aren’t all the same species either, or even all native to the same planet! As it turns out, the stereotype’s true: Venlilian flowerbirds really do live everywhere. I even think I saw one of those really rare orange ones they have on Talsk. I dunno what those were called, though; I’m no bird expert.

The rest of the wildlife is… around, too. Including the natives, with all the hard shells that entails — which yes, does include the similarly flighted, though how one goes about putting a shell on a bird is certainly an exercise in design. Kind of like an oddly cute-looking bug, except also not a bug? Whatever the case is, I far preferred them to their ground-bound counterparts. I didn’t have to shoot any birds.

Anyway, the whole place was completely beyond anything I could have possibly hoped to find while trekking about down here. The city’s resources are certain to be integral in fixing up the ship and getting us out of here, and we’ll get to prepare it all in relative comfort and beauty too! I’d ascribe all sorts of adjectives to my reaction at the discovery, words like ‘awestruck,’ ‘stunned,’ or even just ‘elated beyond belief,’ but in all honesty, I was kinda still trying to hold it together after wading through a sea of dead bodies not quite five minutes prior, so my true reaction was more along the lines of something like “oh, neat.”

Now that I think about it, I haven’t had the appropriate reactions to a lot of stuff lately. Granted, I can probably blame most of that on the general sense of apathy I hold regarding my own life that I can’t imagine to exactly be too common amongst those with lives worth living, but still. I suppose it could just be bravery (as if), but yeah. Not a good sign.

I guess if I absolutely had to defend myself, I could raise the argument that while the term “beauty” definitely applied to most of the cavern and should’ve uplifted anyone’s spirits, the area just beyond the entryway was definitely not part of that most. Stunningly impressive, mostly intact ancient ruins and gardens are beautiful. The city’s ‘foyer,’ though…

I’ve already told you about the whole buildings falling out of the sky issue the place had, but it was worse than that. As you might expect, the immediate area behind the door opened up into what had been at one point a major causeway into the city. On either side of it was what seemed to have been a fairly standard middle-class suburban neighborhood that stretched around this side of the city’s outskirts, or at least as standard as the three-dimensional noodlebowl architecture of this place gets. Unfortunately, I had to stress the “seemed” here because in truth, I’m not actually sure that’s what it was — the place was devastated beyond recognition. It’s unbelievable, but somehow, the fighting hadn’t ended in a mass stampede after the Arxur broke through the door. While there weren’t layers and layers of bodies piled up in mounds thick enough to get lost in like the battlefield outside, there was so much rubble and other debris scattered about from ancient bomb blasts and fallen structures that there was just no way I was managing to leave the main causeway — just trying to go down any random side street would’ve involved more climbing over twisted concrete rebar and rotted wooden beams than I’ve ever been physically capable of at any point in my entire life, especially while lugging around an underaged Arxur of my own and forty pounds of I-promise-I’m-getting-to-it scuffed ceramic.

And that’s not even the worst part! Even if I, through some bout of Predator Diseased insanity — for it could’ve been nothing less — had decided that I’d suddenly become a high-performance athlete over the last few minutes and that I needed to try to explore some poor sap’s thrice-condemned townhouse for the sheer thrill of it, I still would’ve needed to deal with the actual, literal fortifications lining the streets. I couldn’t tell you about the more rubble-covered streets — I couldn’t exactly see down them — but the ones I could peer a whole dozen yards or so down, I consistently found blocked off with huge barricades constructed out of anything and everything the defenders could find. Wood, obviously, but also corrugated plate metal, irrigation pipes, flattened carts and wheelbarrows, the odd conveniently located boulder, millions upon millions of rusty nails… there were so many bits of sharpened rusty metal that crawling over even the smallest of the blockades in anything sort of stab-proof hardened stampede gear would’ve just been asking to lose a limb or five to the tourniquets I’d need for all the blood loss.

Lucky for me, then — though perhaps less so for the defenders — I hadn’t needed to do that. While the main causeway itself had obviously been a major focus for the defense effort, blocked off several times along my journey corewards, it’d also been the main target for the attackers. Someone else, or more specifically, a bloodthirsty swarm of several someone elses with big guns and specialized breaching charges had come through and cleared those blockages for me, opening up passageways large enough to drive a tank through if one had so desired. Which the raiders absolutely had by the way, based on the number of wrecked ones they’d left behind.

…

I’m still at a bit of a loss about that, actually. Some of those turrets had ended up a quarter or more of a block away from the rest of the tank, and I just can’t imagine how that’s even possible. Like, did they somehow make the whole turret into a giant ejection seat? Did the tanks themselves explode or something? And how utterly brain dead would you have to be to store the munitions in such a way that that was even remotely a possibility?

Oh, right, of course. Dominion ‘safety’ standards.

Jiyuulia sighs.

Pinnacles of Arxurian engineering aside, leaving that mess behind us was hardly a difficult decision on my part. It’s not like there were a plethora of choices on where to go, and I didn’t exactly have the highest expectations of finding anything useful there after everything had either fallen several hundred feet or been crushed under several hundred tons of rubble.

Another wooden snap interrupts the recording, and this time, something big and heavy hits the floor. Yet somehow, beyond any sense of reason or logic, the rest of the structure remains standing. At this point, it is clear that whoever designed this bed included more failsafes into a piece of furniture than we do in typical starships. The structural blueprints for the thing would probably be quite a marvel to behold.

…Still trying, eh?

Moving onward, I made my way through those ruins for maybe three or four blocks before I ran into my first real obstacle. One of the rivers, the smaller one of the two paired rivers to be exact, served as the natural border delineating the end of the neighborhood, and the defenders of that age long past had decided in their (probably valid) infinite wisdom to blow the bridge between the destroyed entryway neighborhood’s much higher ledge and the lower sections of the cavern the causeway led to. About as formidable a natural barrier as open-air barriers got, taking the plunge down the sheer fifty-foot drop into the crashing spray of the rapids below, now accentuated with fallen pieces of bridge and other constructions from above to serve as the stereotypical sharp rocks adorning every such scene in any movie ever, would’ve been suicide.

Not to be disheartened (and not having much choice in the matter), Kyrix and I made our way around the rest of the ledge, only to find it was a similar story pretty much the whole way round, collapsed bridge after collapsed bridge totally cutting traffic between the entryway and the rest of the cave. I was actually getting worried for a minute that I would have to turn around and find another way in when Kyrix’s backseat driving actually made itself useful for once, and he pointed out another path only a short distance above us, a small bridge intended for foot traffic winding its way around a stone pillar that hadn’t completely collapsed yet. For whatever reason, the sappers seemed to have been distracted midway through its demolition, and through a combination of both their sloppy job and the bridge’s superb wooden construction, one of the secondary side beams still crossed the gap in such a way as to be technically passable for those desperate enough. I wouldn’t have bet on it holding up to a normal person jumping on it for two minutes, much less whatever I could do to the poor thing, but it’s not like there were any better options presenting themselves, and I was feeling lucky.

Naturally, the bridge instantly started falling apart the moment I managed to make it to the halfway point. But in the end it wasn’t the first collapsing bridge I’ve run over in a blind panic, and given my track record so far, it probably won’t be the last. The experience was actually a lot better than last time — turns out death-defying stunts are a lot less scary if you know they’re coming beforehand. Still definitely almost gave myself a heart attack anyway, though fortunately it seems that temporarily passing out afterwards from hyperventilation-related oxygen deprivation does wonders for the body’s stress levels. And as for my passenger, Kyrix actually enjoyed it, the vile little thing.

At least this time around didn’t beget any shenanigans involving dodging fireballs shooting down tight corridors and vertically-assisted takedowns of hostile Arxur guards. And it was definitely better than dying lost and alone in the dark after turning around and going back the way we came — at least the fireball would’ve been quick.

Jiyuulia coughs.

Right then. Aside from my blood pressure, the thunderous crash of the falling bridge behind us didn’t really raise any problems other than cutting off our only known escape route, and that was hardly a loss, bridge or no bridge. It even gave me a pretty good excuse to take a well-deserved break or twelve! And wouldn’t you know it, but we’d found ourselves in the perfect place to do so.

Er… well, that’s what I thought at first, anyway.

…

I hadn’t been paying much attention beforehand, more concerned with getting across the chasm than getting to any particular point on the other side, but the bridge had led to what used to have been some sort of hideously expensive-looking midsize ‘public’ park. One of those ‘personal projects’ the neighborhood HOA puts together to shoot up property prices and make it impossible for anyone to live anywhere within the surrounding three or four blocks without giving up a fortune in rent every month after city hall told them they weren’t allowed to put a gate on a public road, you know the type.

I gotta give it to them this time around, though; they’d really done an incredible job getting it all together. The place had obviously been immaculate at one point, and while the lack of maintenance over the last few centuries definitely detracted from the overall look, there was still more than enough of a centralized design left to tie everything all together. Cobbled walkways and paths covered massive sections of the park, passing by ancient flower beds that were still teeming with life. Little metal and stone statues littered the sides; their abstract, meaningless shapes each representing more of an investment than my entire college education. The only part that’d truly failed were the decorative water features, old ponds and streams having dried up after their pumps had failed eons ago.

In short, listener, it was beautiful, despite the obvious price tag. While the park may not have exactly gotten regular maintenance and care over the last few centuries, the land remained as fertile as ever. And with the rest of the cavern already being an overgrown jungle, that was saying something. New natural water features had come in to replace the old artificial ones, cutting curved paths seemingly wherever, each little stream glowing blue with more of that strange moss coating their banks. Plants and hedges, already thick, had grown completely out of control, spreading out of their planters and rendering even the tamest areas of the cobbled paths to boast grasses and ferns that came up to my thighs, to say nothing of the tangled mazes of hedges and trees the worst of the park had grown into. Multi-level leafy structures formed canopies on top of canopies in those, with a good half the park plunged into darkness from both below and above, shielded away from the blue glow of the rivers.

That’s not all, either; I haven’t even touched on the best part yet! Even more impressive than the sheer bounty of it all, the oasis within an oasis, was just how not exotic it was. I may not have gone into botany like I probably should’ve, but I still live up to some parts of the Kolshian stereotype, and when it comes to plants, this place had. Them. All. Aafa, Talsk, Nishtal, the Cradle, Fahl, Mileau, the list just goes on and on. The number of different origin planets I could give for even just half the little flowers poking up between the cracks in the path alone is probably along the lines of two dozen or so, and I could probably stretch it to three or four if I actually knew what I was doing and included the different bits of fungi that coated the surrounding tree bark. The original groundskeeper has to have been a Commonwealth import; I haven’t seen so much plant variety in one place since the university botanical gardens.

Anyway, after getting unreasonably miffed over an incident involving the park benches’ anti-homeless bars and being forced to sit backward at an unfortunate picnic table instead, only to immediately give myself a splinter and have to spend an embarrassing six minutes on my stomach trying to instruct Kyrix on how to perform basic first aid, I was more than rested and ready enough to move on and explore the rest of the park. Most prominently, I was distinctly interested in exploiting the abundant food and water resources of the park to solve the ongoing crisis best described as “not having eaten nor bathed in a little over a day and a half and not at all looking forward to going through the latter stages of either again.” And while that’s hardly a remarkable length of time given the extreme standards of what I’ve been subjected to on my adventure so far, nearly starving to death has done little to make me less of a sugar addict — I’m actually pretty sure it made it worse — and just because I’ve experienced worse does not mean having to smell myself rot while wiping off foot-long trailing strings of yellowy-brown goop that formed every time I so much as brushed my sides was by any means pleasant. Ugh.

Soo… yeah. Water was definitely a top priority, and while I took the opportunity to splash around a bit in the puddles and streams I’d already come across, they weren’t really big enough for a proper soaking, you know? I mean, they were good enough to drink from. Clear and fast-flowing, no real contaminants, delicious mineral taste, more than good enough to put off the latter stages of dehydration, I’m not gonna claim that I didn’t appreciate what I got. But this was an oasis, damn it! I’d just crossed over a literal river not half an hour prior! Six to eight inches of water was good and all, but I was going to treat myself to a real bath or may the powers that be help me. Of course, that left me with the problem of having to go find the right spot for such a thing, but that hardly took five seconds of planning — the streams had to be coming from somewhere!

See? I’m smart!

Unfortunately, the mental half of the problem was more like the mental twelfth. There was still the actual issue of getting there left to do. Factor in the incredibly thick undergrowth and the totally random paths of the streams I was trying to follow, and well…

Jiyuulia sighs.

I miss my clothes.

…

That forty-minute torture session was worth it, though. I might’ve come out of the brush exhausted, covered in mud, and with leaves lodged in every crevasse I had, and Kyrix might’ve gotten a minor concussion after he whacked his head on every branch we went under and tried wiping his snotty nose all over the back of my neck after it turned out he was allergic to something, and I might’ve even scared off a fantasy village’s worth of woodland creatures with my heavy, plodding footsteps by the time I’d finally got there, but it was worth it. It certainly didn’t seem that way at first — the feeling of sheer crestfallen despair I felt upon seeing the little stream I was following running out from a small gap underneath the retaining wall was crushing, listener — but after falling to my knees in anguish and subsequently seeing my entire life flash before my eyes as I fell backwards through the less-impenetrable-than-I’d-thought-it-to-be wall, things took a turn for the better. I didn’t, y’know, demonstrate the normal level of excitement immediately, being sprawled out on my back and gasping for all the air my lungs were worth, but hey! Kyrix had enough ecstatic glee for the both of us.

Behind the ‘retaining wall’ I’d fallen through was this large, previously walled-off clearing that had been sealed away from the rest of the park, maybe two, two and a half acres in size. In the center sat a small, timeless fountain in the middle of a huge, crystal-blue pond, still catching and redirecting the splash of a small but very, very tall waterfall coming from a hole in a major stalactite a few hundred feet above. Clearly the source of the remaining water in the park, several small streams broke off from the sides, streaming off towards more holes in the walls and ground before quickly disappearing from sight. Around those, quite possibly the softest grass I’ve ever felt covered the ground, clean, vibrantly green, and somehow still maintaining itself to a perfect six inches even after all this time. Designed to last, whatever high-end weed liner they’d used for around the streams was apparently still intact, because it was a good several feet before anything else grew, and even then it was not the same as what grew outside. Berry bushes, seed-heavy flowers, and even vegetables of totally unique and unfamiliar varieties just waiting to be sampled grew in tight, equally spaced rows, boasting short irrigation lines stemming from the main pond itself in what appeared to be some sort of automated community garden, all the plants sorted and spaced by type in a fashion seemingly as timeless as the fountain itself.

I was awestruck, listener. Going from dragging my dirty, slime-covered self through the underbrush, barely able to see ten feet in front of me at a time, just to suddenly fall into a scene straight from the very richest suburbs of back home… I almost felt like I was intruding somehow; a disgusting, pathetic, insignificant being unworthy of gazing upon the near-mystical setting that was surely reserved for my betters. Just… enthralling.

Or at least it felt that way before Kyrix started poking at me, yelling in my earholes to ask me if I was going to get up any time soon. It lost a little bit of the magic after that.

It didn’t take much convincing on my part to convince him that I needed a bath, all it really coming down to being a promise that he could roll around in the shallows while he waited for me to wash up. That being said, though, I did have to deal with a splash ambush midway through cleaning out my back folds sometime around the fifteen-minute mark — one that I not only survived but, should it please you to know, left me with the perfect opportunity to counterattack with a tidal wave of my own. Unsurprisingly, he refrained from further warfare after that, instead getting bored only after about twenty minutes of splashing around and instead resorting to a dastardly trap where he shrewdly manipulated me into getting out and teaching him more about his budding interest in botany with the promise of me being allowed to eat everything we looked at while I was explaining it so that I could tell him what it tasted like.

I, uh, may have agreed too quickly to that one. I didn’t quite notice how dangerous that last criterion was until too late, because I kinda stripped the first few bushes and was approaching full by the time the fine print came along and made it clear that I was required to sample at least a little bit of everything there was, and that we were, of course, doing the whole garden because it was just that exciting to finally answer all his questions about why anything would ever resort to “leaf-licking” now that there was a good variety of things to test. Combine my own inability to really back out of it without risking my own hide along with his own assertions that I was “obviously really good at it,” and, well…

I don’t remember making it back to the water after that, but I woke up floating on my back some six hours later, so apparently I did. I’d even soaked for long enough to finish returning to the normal shiny smooth white I’d been going for, and waking up floating on a literal water bed was very, very nice for my overworked muscles. While six hours was a little longer than I would’ve preferred for a nap, I’d clearly needed the rest. And hey! Six hours had been more than enough time to deal with the stomach ache.

…

Okay, I admit it. May the stars forgive me, but six hours was long enough that I actually woke up a little bit hungry again. My digestive system’s efficient. It’s a curse.

…

I didn’t eat anything yesterday, okay? Besides, I only rarely… uncommonly… don’t always indulge in my base desires. Just sometimes. Whenever the opportunity arises.

As if on cue, Jiyuulia’s stomach rumbles loudly. It’s almost louder than the complaints of the strained furniture beneath it.

…Alright, fine, you win. I’m a gluttonous waste of space who likes her food. Shocker. But don’t think I won’t remember this slight against me later.

Jiyuulia huffs, trying to maintain some sense of dignity in an offended silence. She quickly fails after only a few seconds, however, utterly defeated.

In all honesty, I probably would’ve done it anyway.

…

That’s another thing that scares me, listener. Sometimes it feels like I don’t even have control of myself anymore. And the urge to overeat just gets stronger as time goes on.

Do you know how it feels, listener, knowing that every time you see your reflection in the mirror, that that’s the smallest you’ll ever see yourself again? That due to some random whim of the universe beyond your control, there’s nothing you could ever do after the fact that’ll ever change that? I’ll have to live with a little piece of today for the rest of my life.

…I guess that’s a boon in its own twisted way. If I don’t get a choice in the matter and it’s all over anyway, I may as well enjoy the parts about it I do like. I deserve at least that much.

…

Let’s move on, listener.

…

So there I was, having just woken up from a relaxing six hours of unconsciousness, and not even fifteen seconds in that period of calm had been shattered with an urgent problem. Two problems, actually. One we have already discussed, hopeless as it was when it comes to me — but two was much worse: Kyrix was nowhere to be found.

Now, before we go any further, I’m gonna head off your silly little accusations right here and state that no, he’s a predator, I was not worried about him. Not that much, anyway. I had and still have several perfectly good reasons to keep him around, most of them pertaining to being afraid for myself, thank you. It’s just that… We were in wild, dangerous territory! What if there were less gullible predators around, and he’d gotten eaten by something while I was asleep, safe in the water? What if he’d finally figured out that the freakishly ugly genetic abomination who stripped a whole public garden in her sheer gluttonous hedonism was about as far from godly as one could get? What if he’d tried to join me in the lake, only for his dense little body to sink straight to the bottom? What if he’d been more than just allergic to that plant earlier? Was I gonna find him bloated and rotting facedown in the grass, some pathetic little scavenger gnawing at his tiny corpse, never knowing quite how he’d gone out? How far might I have to look? He couldn’t walk; he shouldn’t have managed to move anywhere! And what if he HAD died, what then? Could I handle seeing that? Being totally alone again? How’d I—

Jiyuulia coughs.

Ahem. So, yeah. I might’ve had a bit of an overblown reaction. With perhaps a more urgency than the situation called for, I’d immediately swam out, switched on the gun, and set out on a search for the mischievous little thing, terrified of what I might find — or worse, wouldn’t.

In retrospect, I needn’t have worried. Really, I should’ve figured it out from the get-go. A four-year-old — a hyperactive four-year-old at that — left totally unsupervised in a fresh new environment, foolhardily bold and with no respect for authority in the way all children are, and deeply, fanatically curious about all the new plants I’d pointed out? His new hobby necessitating that I’d left him on an easily dug up dirt floor, and his race ensuring that he had perfectly good not-so-little claws on his two entirely functional, if skinny arms? He’d probably — no, he’d definitely gotten bored within two minutes of me falling asleep. Sprinkle on a little bit of that stubborn determination he had in spades, and it was entirely plausible that he’d managed to drag himself off into the bushes on some grand side adventure under whatever inane reasoning his little head had cooked up. In theory, all I should’ve needed to do was go look for the trail of disturbed dirt and follow it in whatever direction he’d gone galumphing off in.

In practice, though, things worked out a bit differently. For starters, I’d done none of this logical deduction and immediately assumed the worst — i.e, he’d been captured by a wild predator — and immediately tried stealthily stalking my way through the woods with the gun humming on high. You might’ve assumed that with my track record I would’ve learned better than to attempt anything having to do with stealth by now, seeing as how it has literally not once ever gone well, but alas, the instinct to hide is hard to ignore, and the plan seemed logical enough to my panic-crazed brain. The resulting trip, of course, went about as well as you might expect. I snapped more branches than I managed to step over, tripped over some four different roots, got lost twice, fell into another thorny bush, and generally made a massive fool of myself as I crashed through the underbrush while making enough noise to alert anything within a fifty-foot radius to my presence.

Fortunately, however, and thank the stars for it, I have been learning to get over myself. Not quite as fast as I may like, and it may have taken accidentally flipping the safety off on the gun after catching it on something and failing to notice it for who knows how long for me to realize just how pathetic I was being, but I did eventually drop the stealthy approach. Instead, out of options and up against a clock I couldn’t see, I decided on the far more aggressive solution of yelling like a maniac while smashing my own path straight through the underbrush, making as much noise as possible in the hopes that Kyrix would hear me and yell out a response. Sure, it hurt afterwards, and sure, it wasn’t exactly necessary for what’d actually happened, but hey! At least I covered a lot more ground while I was enthusiastic about stomping my way forward!

Maybe too enthusiastic, actually. I don’t know if it was all the stomping I was doing or if it would’ve happened to just anyone, but just as I was circling back in the hopes I’d catch another sign of where he might’ve gone, the ground caved in beneath me.

It happened so fast I hardly had the time to scream. One second I was yelling for Kyrix on my warpath, and the next I’d gone right through a ceiling and was flat on my back again some ten feet below where I’d just been, lying belly-up in some secret underground room hidden away in the middle of some upper-class park. I mean, it was just bizarre!

The best part of it all, though? I hadn’t even managed to catch my breath before Kyrix, without so much as even a glance in my direction, started bombarding my very much still-in-shock self with question after question. My violent method of entry was only worth one quip about “not taking the normal way in” (his words, not mine) before he went off on this huge explanation on how he’d followed his nose to a hole in the ground that “smelled really funny” and that “since I was here now, could I extend the lesson and also tell him about the weird smelly plants?”

And that, listener, is how I found myself explaining the concept of illicit drug use to a four-year-old predator child in an ancient underground drug lab while surrounded on all sides by a huge cache of Red Sugar. I mean really, you can’t make this stuff up.

I’m not exaggerating here when I say the place was a true drug lab, either. Seriously. The hideaway was impressively elaborate, a bona fide organized crime installation. From my own spot sprawled on the floor, it was already clear that I couldn’t see it all, multiple doors on either side of me stretching beyond the main room’s confines. Seemingly originally conceived as some sort of hybrid greenhouse and laboratory, the small series of rooms had received many an extension and add-on as time had passed, a fact made most evident by the drastic shifts in material choice as the room branched out further from the initial farm plots. Upgraded several times over were the hundreds of credits worth of antique chemistry equipment lining the walls, the sepia-toned glass vials and beakers and the dizzyingly complex maze of pipes and tubes connecting them still impressive despite its age. Mechanical cogs and belts were hidden only partially in the wall behind the whole mess, meticulously arranged in an even more complicated setup for some inscrutable purpose only the mechanist behind it all would ever know. Jury-rigged beyond any sort of set of regulations, he’d gone as far as to stuff some sort of riding lawnmower in the corner, belts and tubes running out of the rusted-out old thing in what appeared to be a long-since decayed version of an automated harvesting tool, and if my guess is right, that was only a fraction of the mechanized assistance present in the chamber. Why any of it was necessary was even less clear — Red Sugar production is intensive, but not that intensive — but all in all, the lab had clearly had a lot of genuine thought and effort put into both its construction and layout, even if the ceiling had left a little something to be desired after the centuries.

Whatever the reason for it all was, it certainly made the place fun to explore. Keeping caution at the forefront of my mind — I wouldn’t have put a well-placed booby trap beyond this guy — nothing further collapsed, and I’d managed to poke around the majority of the complex while giving Kyrix my hybrid explanation/admonishing lecture on mind-altering substances and why running off without giving my any indication of where he’d gone was bad when, in the middle of my third tirade on how the size of my nostrils did not, in fact, make me a better sniffer and that my “obvious” ability to find food was more reliant on other things, I immediately invalidated my argument by catching a whiff of something sweet coming from behind one of the doors and suddenly being reminded that there had been two problems I’d woken up with.

Behind the door was a small mountain of edible foodstuffs. Reaching nearly two feet in height, the pile of roots, tubers, seeds, nuts, and other long-lasting plant matter almost made the search for Kyrix worth it. I’d dove in immediately, of course, this time forgoing having to describe the flavors of the stuff was shoving down my throat and instead allowing Kyrix to entertain himself for once with the flickering shadows on the other side of the otherwise empty room.

Now, listener, before I go any further, I’m sure you’ve already seen the problem here. I mean, a whole mountain of still-edible fresh food, just sitting in the middle of a centuries-old abandoned drug lab? It doesn’t really match up with the setting, now does it? But I didn’t see that, okay? I was hungry, and I’d just been brought down from a fifteen-minute panic session after falling through a ceiling; it’s safe to say that I was a little out of sorts at the time. I definitely was not in the mindset to question free food.

Yeah, aheh, as you might’ve guessed… I should’ve.

I thought it was my stomach making the noises at first. Nevermind that there was usually a physical sensation to go along with the rumbling growls that was suspiciously absent this time around, or how the growls just kept going for way longer than any other gustatory soundtrack I’ve ever been subject to. Such details were obviously irrelevant when I had so much better things to be focusing on, like seeing how many different fruits I could fit in my mouth at once, because Kyrix isn’t the only one here who finds entertainment in immature stupidity (seven, by the way). And speaking of him, he was equally distracted too, because there was no way this ever could’ve happened otherwise. The little monster was up against the far wall I’d shoved him up against, making shadow puppets fight each other in the pale light streaming in from the doorway while yelling and screaming and making all sorts of animal noises in his budget reenactment and generally being another really good reason I was trying to ignore my surroundings at the time.

Anyhow, shoving any recollection of that violent display out of my head forever, it wasn’t until I actually tried turning around to let some more light in so I could avoid accidentally eating a second fruit-shaped rock that I realized we weren’t alone.

Jiyuulia breathes in, then out.

Imagine that, listener. You, enjoying yourself, indulging maybe a little too much on a nice meal and feeling all of the associated effects, totally oblivious right up until the point you literally bump into a wild predator! I doubt I have ever screamed quite so loudly in my life.

…

Alright, so in all honesty, it was probably an herbivore. The thing’s eyes were on the sides of its head, what had been its food stash was all stuff I could eat, and altogether the thing was not nearly as bad as, say, the flesh-eating bugs and giant tank monsters from earlier. Actually, I’m pretty sure I was larger than it was. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous, per se; the thing’s teeth (which I got a truly stellar view of) were a little bit sharper than I would’ve liked, and it had this great big razor-sharp horn square in the middle of its forehead for goring pretty much whatever it felt like, and of course I can’t forget to mention that completely cheating set of overlapping armor plates coating its body it had like every other native down here, but that was about it. Sure, I mean, it wanted to kill me, but that’s hardly remarkable by this point, and the four spindly little things it called legs hardly screamed “AHHH NO NO NO NO HELP DANGER RUN AAAHHH!!!” like the four-inch-long claws of boulder-crushing doom I had to deal with earlier, and the rest of its body was so nondescript it’s not even really worth bothering about. I guess if I had to compare it to something, I’d say it maybe resembled a Fissian, if your idea of what a Fissian looks like was completely wrong in every way that mattered but also somehow came together in a way that wasn’t.

But okay, even considering that the thing was probably some poor wild animal who’d been entirely in the right to be unhappy about finding some ugly slimy thing raiding its food stash, I still claim that the thing was far more intimidating than any normal creature ever ought to be, and that it’s an entirely valid thing to suggest that I once again found myself in extreme peril at the forces of some angry armored alien bushmuncher if for no other reason than the fact that this planet is a physical incarnation of hell itself and everything about it wants me dead.

Regardless, whatever the thing was, it didn’t like how my first direct interaction with it was to stumble over myself and plow right into the side of its head. It’d been angry before, probably just trying to intimidate me into leaving, but that really sent it over the edge. The thing started screeching at the top of its lungs and flailing its whole body around like some sort of drunken choreographer, swinging that ever-deadly head horn in great big arcs that edged closer to my arteries than sharp things do on an ideal day, and all while I was trapped at melee range with the thing while the gun I needed so badly sat uselessly out of reach on the floor at least ten feet behind me.

So. I get that the outlook here is looking pretty bleak, and believe me when I say I know all too well how dicey things got towards the beginning there, but by some miracle, things didn’t go nearly as poorly as they could’ve — a real rarity whenever I’m involved — and I actually managed to defend myself before it could kill me. I doubt I could pull it off a second time, but the ridiculous arcs the thing was making with its horn left some pretty big openings… open, so couple that with my rather lessened inhibitions towards violence as of late, and my very first reaction was to immediately throw as much of myself as I could into decking the thing in the jaw.

Well, as it turns out, I’ve got rather a lot to throw, and with a little luck, the maneuver ended up being way more effective than I ever could’ve hoped as my curled tentacle ended up absolutely shattering the thing’s jawbone. It wasn’t falling on my opponent for a third time in a row, and it was definitely cheating with that gods-given substance absorbing half the blow rather than just letting me win outright, but fortunately for me, I can cheat too.

I won’t go as far as saying I dove for the gun — that phrasing implies that there was airtime, and I don’t really jump — but through whatever fancy verbiage you want to use for the panicked waddling I resorted to while the knockoff Fissian was busy figuring out how many teeth it still had left, I made sure that blessed forty-pound hunk of ceramic ended up in my tentacles as fast as was physically possible. And from there, it was over. Sure, it tried to level what remained of its head and gore me in the most violent way possible, and sure, I fumbled with the safety and damn near shot myself in a way I’m sure surprises noone, but no amount of cheating on its part was enough to stop the bolt of plasma I sent flying through its nose the very instant the indicator light turned blue.

Stars, I love technology. It’s just the ultimate cheat.

Anyway, despite the somewhat rocky start, middle, end, whole thing really, I felt pretty good about myself after that encounter — for a whole six seconds, that is, because that was how long it took for the second occupant of the room to ask if he could eat too, and I had to make my own attempt at copying Selkas-freak the Butcher as I expended more of my already limited ammo into dissecting the thing while trying to ignore both the reality of what my already pathetic life’s devolved into and the happy little growls accompanying the enthusiastic tearing of flesh going on next to the ‘done’ pile. That part was decidedly less fun. Still, though, always better than any predators that spend eighty percent or more of their waking hours with ready access to my neck spend that time wiping their noses all over it rather than looking for new victims to fuel their heinous natures.

That doesn’t mean I stuck around for any longer than I had to, though. He’s four, I’d prepared more than enough ‘food’ for him, he could feed himself without my direct supervision. I’d left through the ‘normal way’ to go wait for him in a small clearing near the entrance the second I could; he could yell really loud when he was done and wanted me to come back to pick him up. I’d only just made it there and sat down for a short self-introspection about whether continuing on was really worth it when the next hullabaloo came along.

Two new fun facts for you, listener: One, angry discount Fissians don’t live alone. Two, they are nearly as good at ambushes as their only slightly less horrible counterparts are at swindling people out of everything they own. That encounter went… less well. Turns out it’s harder to shoot something when it’s not standing still, and harder yet when it’s dashing in and out of cover while making running passes at your legs every time you try to focus on a different one. Speaking of, oww.

Jiyuulia huffs, repositioning herself a little to rub at her stated leg injury, only to freeze midway through sitting up as another aged wooden slat snaps in two to remind her of the situation. The constant groaning of the furniture only continues to get louder as she slowly slides back into place, and the incredible durability of the extraordinarily overbuilt furniture remains as distracting as ever.

Oookay, then. Almost forgot. We’re good?

…

We’re good.

I’m afraid my seating isn’t going to last much longer, listener, so I’ll skip past some of the violent bits and just give you a nice, clean, clinical breakdown of it all. You obviously already know that I didn’t die or get grievously injured or anything like that — or, well, you don’t actually, I was just kinda assuming that you’d assume that I wasn’t hurt too badly from my lack of a sense of urgency and — okay, so I’m not dying (more than normal, that is). My legs both still work, my arms and tail are all accounted for, lung function’s nominal — nominal for me, thanks — stomach is as loud as ever, other various bits of musculature move just fine, no eyes gouged out, and I assume my liver’s doing fine, not that I’d know otherwise. You’re free to go and try to find my heartbeat if you want, but personally I haven’t been able to find that one without either a stethoscope or a healthy dose of adrenaline for a while now, so — agh, stop! What am I even doing? How is this supposed to be relevant at all? We were moving on!

Okay, so it was me versus presumably around six evil (even more so than usual) Fissians. I apologize that I can’t be more exact than that, but they were dashing in and out of the bushes at thirty miles an hour, and I was a little more concerned with keeping them from plunging a horn through my gut than I was with trying to differentiate between them. And also everything else that has to do with screaming bloody murder, but that goes without saying.

…Y’know, I’m still not entirely certain why they have those horns. How are they supposed to use them if every other creature they come across down here has armor that’d negate it?

Evolutionary biology is strange sometimes.

Anyhow, for starters: I have no real right to be alive. I mean, not that I’ve ever had that right — even disregarding everything since Sillis, most people don’t survive one black-level defect, let alone several — but ignoring past events for now and just focusing on the fight itself… well, I don’t know what you were expecting, but I was kind of hopelessly incompetent. Go figure. It’s just that my opponents were even worse somehow, and really the whole thing should’ve been over in a minute or two except, uh… I hesitate to blame the gun — most would consider it poor form — but it was the gun.

Now hold up! I’m not gonna go and claim to be some plasma weapons expert here. Nor am I really all that much more knowledgeable than anyone else, really. They shoot a little teardrop-shaped ball of plasma out the end of the barrel, the ball either hits something or dissipates after flying for too long, the gun prepares a new shot, repeat. Something about a gravitron emitter in there somewhere, some sort of gas collection/storage medium depending on whether or not the thing was meant for in-atmo use or not, and of course a battery pack for actually powering the thing lodged wherever the designers could make it fit. Going further than that… I don’t know, I’m not an engineer! My instructors, for whatever reason, didn’t consider the internal workings of a plasma rifle to be important knowledge for budding geneticists, so all I’ve got are the basics: point at thing you want dead, pull trigger.

But alright, so while I might not be a contractor for the defense industry, I can still hear you complaining that I should’ve been able to land something within that timeframe. “It’s a gun!” you say. “How hard can they be to use?”

And you’d be right. Modern guns are easy. But you must understand, listener: my gun is anything but modern.

…I can see you’re still lost. Lucky for you, while I may not be an engineer, I did pass my social studies classes, and describing this is way better than going over the fight, so allow me to explain.

Alright, so as I’m sure you’re aware, the idea of the plasma rifle’s an old one, but like any new invention ever, there’s been a lot of evolution in their exact design over the centuries since their inception. The first true practical plasma weapons came out sometime around three hundred years ago, towards the beginning of the Federation-Arxur War. And much like the ballistics they eventually ended up replacing, the first weapons of their kind were purely support weapons, meant to provide a way for the common foot soldier to shoot through the rapidly advancing ballistic armors and portable shielding technologies that were quickly beginning to cause problems for Federation ground forces at the time.Plasmas only came to replace the old ballistic weapons decades later after models got smaller, manufacturing issues went away, and the weapons themselves became more and more viable for general use, until finally superseding ballistics sometime around a century later. As for the armors, they went the way of twenty-five percent of all sapient species, speed being prioritized over armor after the Dominion finally managed to co-opt the tech being used against them and start coming out with their own plasma weapons. Personal defenses have never really recovered since, as after all, nothing short of half a foot of advanced ceramic will stop a fully charged plasma shot.

…This still isn’t enough for you, is it? I can already hear you complaining. “So they’re big and bulky and hard to build,” you’re saying. “So what? Even if they are stupidly heavy and more than three times larger than any common model used today, those same aspects apply to you! The thing’s still a gun!”

First, thanks for that smart little quip. I’ll be putting another tally on your rapidly filling up ‘slights against me’ tracker for today. And don’t you claim for a moment that it was me who said it and that you were totally innocent, I know you were thinking it. Second, remember that comparison between early plasma weapons and truly ancient ballistics? Well…

Imagine the widest-nozzled flamethrower you’ve ever seen. Just one of those that shoots out a cone of flame in a general direction that’s so wide that the exterminator barely even has to point the thing before pulling the trigger.

Got it?

Now imagine that instead of flames, the thing shot a plasma bolt instead. Not a really big one, not several bolts, just one regularly sized plasma bolt. It comes out of the barrel going somewhere in that cone… and that’s all you know.

Yeah. Now also limit the bolt to maybe about two dozen feet before it dissipates due to primitive gravitic plating tech, adjust your cone to be good for reliably hitting an Arxur-sized target at maybe about half that, strap a battery the size and weight of a lawnmower engine onto wherever it’ll fit, and you have a pretty good idea of what wielding one’s like. As you can probably imagine, they were really only useful as weapons in tight corridors, good for holding a narrow hallway where you already knew where your attacker would be coming from when he showed up. Coincidentally, the exact same places you’d find yourself in if you were a soldier tasked with holding an otherwise highly defensible bunker against Arxur raiders wearing those ballistic armors from earlier.

I can see I’ve gotten through to you now, so let me calm you down just a bit and reassure you that my weapon was slightly newer than that. They weren’t exactly kind enough to scrawl out a date on the side for me to read off, but it ranges out to a whole three dozen feet, and it can even fire again after only five seconds! So cool!

They did not improve the accuracy, by the way. It might actually be worse.

…

So that’s my excuse. I’m not exactly a soldier or an exterminator, nor am I cut out to be one, but you should know by now that I’m not totally incompetent. Hopefully it makes a little more sense to you now as to how I managed to spend eight minutes shooting at stuff and only ended the battle with one casualty. Long enough that I’d managed to land a couple lucky shots on retreating Death Fissians, but only ever in a way that they’d either been out of range or otherwise only glancing hits, and it was only after I managed to hit a rapidly moving target with a gun that I may as well have been using with my eyes closed that I finally managed to kill one and convince the rest to run away. As for how I managed to avoid being gored myself during those eight minutes, that mostly comes down to the part where they really did go charging with their eyes closed and as a result were almost painfully easy to sidestep, even for me. It got harder when multiple came at once, though, and I wasn’t perfect at it, hence the scratch on my leg.

Still though, a victory is a victory, even if it cost me all but the tiniest sliver of charge left in the gun. As outdated as the thing is, it still saved my life. Twice.

Doesn’t mean I wanted to stick around in that damn park any longer, though. Any safety appeal it may have once had was long gone.

Besides, it was getting late, and what was I gonna do, sleep out in the open? Where there might be even more dangerous predators? I’ve done enough of that for one lifetime, thank you very much. Involuntary six-hour naps do not count, before you say it. I was gonna sleep inside an actual house with a bed or die trying.

On a lesser note, Kyrix also started having some sort of allergic reaction to one of the many exotic pollens in the air around the same time, and it generally just became a really good time to leave if I didn’t want to commit to a second coating of mucus.

Jiyuulia rubs herself briefly.

We’ve already discussed how we couldn’t go back the way we came, nor would I have wanted to even had the option been available, so that left us no choice but to forge onward, following the little cobbled paths until leaving the park on the very first proper road we came across, heading away from it and deeper into the city proper.

I should mention, listener, that we have yet to actually get there. The city proper, I mean. All the roads we’ve come across that lead deeper into the city have been trashed, and with the multilayered structure of the cave, navigation has been… difficult, to say the least. Especially once you leave the already chaotic ground level and factor in the sky roads and how the structures suspended above us affected the overall design of the nearby transportation network. Especially especially if you then go and try to factor in how damage and even deliberate sabotage to that network affect the available routes. Even further complicate matters with my own physical state and how long it takes me just to check a single possible route, and it’s safe to say that there’s just plainly no way I’m ever getting up to most of the structures on the upper levels on my own — it’s just too much effort for what it’s worth to go check out some barely accessible random building when there are other things to be looking at.

I’m sure that’ll change if I ever have a good reason to get up there, of course, and there’s probably a route somewhere that’ll take me to most of those buildings that isn’t damaged too badly should I really need it. At the same time, though, I hope you understand where I’m coming from when I say that the less uphill walking I have to do, the happier I’m going to be. Trust me, after the first two false positives, no amount of Kyrix’s moaning about wanting to see what was up there was gonna win out over the complaints of my poor thighs.

That doesn’t mean, though, that I haven’t been looking up there myself sometimes. We might not have made it to the city center yet, but we’ve already passed by a number of interesting buildings and sites that I’ve mentally filed away for later. Particular areas of interest include a small mall on the other side of a ravine with no obvious crossings, some sort of temple suspended four or five levels up, an old mining site near the edges of the cave that was too far out from where the road was at to walk to in a timely manner, a hydroelectric dam near the mouth of the largest river that wasn’t actually all that difficult to reach, but wasn’t immediately useful to me in the short term, an obviously governmental (and very impressive) little building suspended between two stalactites at the highest point of the cavern that I suspect to be city hall, two combined hydroponics farms and grocery stores that I ignored for the same reason as the dam, and several warehouses and other storage sites with no visible entrances that weren’t smothered in barbed wire. I repeat, all of these were outside of the city center and were merely things Kyrix or I pointed out to each other in passing, visible from at least one of the vantage points I’ve stopped at along my walk. I’ve kept my eyes peeled for a medical center of some sort — for several reasons, actually — but nothing like that has stood out so far.

As for our chosen route, it was the most intact road I could find, a ground-level greenbelt that kept us on what seemed to be a grand loop encircling most of the cavern. It didn’t go absolutely everywhere due to the extreme variances in what constituted for ground level, and wear and tear had ensured it’d fallen apart in others, but unlike the wooden structures high above, all but the most intense areas of damage were still traversable, if not necessarily easily so. I ran into a few snags here and there, certain bridges and walkways having definitely fared better than others, but sticking mostly to the stone and asphalt paths avoided the worst of the blockages in the majority of cases.

The next three or four hours of exploring that belt were a bit fun, if exhausting, and fortunately for me, largely uneventful. There’s something to be said about being able to take all the breaks I wanted for once, and just because the route wasn’t fraught with danger doesn’t mean the trip was boring by any stretch of the term — I actually rather prefer not having to fight for my life on an hourly basis. That’s not to say it was boring, though! Just the environment we found ourselves in alone was loud and colorful, and Kyrix was easy enough to keep entertained through a steady series of elementary botany lessons, wildlife sightings, cool pieces of city architecture (apparently this was his first time seeing one), and surprisingly competitive games of I-Spy, all of course accompanied by more bad storytelling on my part. I worry sometimes that he’s beginning to catch on to my more contradictory lies, but so far I’ve been getting a perverse sense of… fun designing a whole predator religion, and I haven’t been able to stop myself from embellishing on some of the finer details. I’m pretty sure I’ve got him more confused than anything on some of the more elaborate details, but so far he hasn’t called me out on anything yet, so nothing’s presented itself as an issue on that front thus far. Hopefully, nothing ever will.

All in all, the trip wasn’t the worst experience I’ve ever had regarding public transportation. I can’t say I’m necessarily up for going again, and those three to four hours of walking — alright, so maybe only about forty-five minutes worth of walking if you factor in all the breaks — took us maybe an eighth or so of the way around the cavern and into our first truly promising section. Crossing over the third and smallest river in the cavern, the road led to a small neighborhood built on the slit of land the river had separated off from the rest of the cavern. It was a rather classy place, the same kind of upper-scale division you always see in the movies, but nobody under the age of seventy actually ever lives in. Multi-story wooden homes lined the branching roads, each and every one of them complete with long-since overgrown lawns and gardens that, rather than detracting from it, somehow only accentuated the sheer poshness that permeated the place through its layers of still-shiny paint and immaculate woodwork; hundreds of years of neglect doing nothing to rob the neighborhood of its raw artistic charm. Even the sidewalks, cracked with age as they were, couldn’t help but add to the totally perfected blend of wild, yet tame nature and civilization blanketing the whole thing, the milder imperfections present throughout hidden almost completely through the tasteful darkness of the streets as the glow of the moss filtered around corners and through the vines and leaves above.

Most of all, though, the most surprising (and endearing) aspect about the place was its serenity. While the rest of the cavern had a sense of sudden interruption to it, a bombed bridge or fallen structure never completely out of sight no matter how beautifully intact the rest of it was; here, there was none of that. None of the hastily put-together blockades covering key roadways, no strangely consistent patterns of destruction surrounding specific piles of rubble, not even a sign of any sort of controlled evacuation. The neighborhood looked as though everyone present had just… vanished, one day, allowing their lawns free rein of the soil while their mastery of chemistry left their homes in the same condition they’d left them in.

To put it plainly, listener, it was odd. Not in a bad, unnerving sort of way, quite the opposite really, but… standing there in those streets, probably the first sapient in ages to see the little raised flag on that mailbox, the many lawn decorations the family at the end of one street had left out for some forgotten holiday, the clay art pieces somebody’d laid outside their front door, and all in lighting not dissimilar to that of a fancy restaurant, just standing there exclusive and alone in a place that should’ve had dozens of little people going about their day… odd. Like I’d come at a bad time, and everyone else was just asleep for the day. Not being an unwelcome disturbance, but being a disturbance all the same.

…

Whatever the case with it was, both the neighborhood’s pristine state and my own fleeting stamina were more than enough to ensure that it was the final stop on at least today’s segment of our aimless journey through the cavern. Just the idea of getting to sleep in an actual house again after finishing up today was overwhelmingly attractive to my aching body, even if there were a few hours left to waste until it was actually time for bed. And it wasn’t like convincing Kyrix about it was any effort, either — the little predator may not be quite as concerned as me when it comes to the creature comforts, but he too was by no means immune to the strangely enthralling calm of the neighborhood, not to mention more than enthused at the prospect of actually getting to go inside the buildings we’d been walking past all day if his howling approval was anything to go by. So of course, fitting, really, that the only two problems the architecture of the neighborhood presented were related to just that.

I still haven’t quite ascertained your species, listener, but going by Federation averages, I’m going to assume you’re somewhere around five feet tall, give or take eight inches or so. I myself am a little on the taller side of that range at five feet four inches (like I needed any excuse to be even bigger than I already am), and I’ve met those much shorter and much taller than that of course, even if only ever as acquaintances — that’s all anyone ever wanted to be — but I’d like to consider myself worldly enough to peg you as something that, if not inside that range, then at least something not too far outside of it. Certainly not at the level of whatever the race of our mysterious and illustrious hosts topped out as.

Jiyuulia’s breath hitches as the bed cracks again, this time with greater intensity than ever before. Then again. Then several more times in rapid succession before stopping… mostly.

…Demonstration relevant.

Anyway, before I get unceremoniously dumped on the floor, it should be obvious that they were not ungodly (or perhaps exceedingly godly, if we go by what I’ve been feeding Kyrix) tall or large. That would’ve been a blessing, and thus too nice for this trip. Instead, and I’m going mostly off of inferences here so I could be entirely wrong, but whoever these people were, they seem to have averaged somewhere around the three-foot-six-inch mark, and that’s if I’m being generous. Kyrix, of course, has loved it so far, the environment being more or less perfectly sized for his three-foot-one stature for what’s almost assuredly the first time in his life. As for myself, though, I’m pretty sure I’m wider in spots than these people were tall, and it’s managed to cause some issues. Not the least of which being the furniture. Observe…

Jiyuulia barely taps one of the planks below her, and it’s all over. The wood cracks louder than ever, then splinters. Boards delaminate, splinter, snap, and more as the wood seems to undergo every type of structural failure at once. It’s so loud that the shrill cries of the masterpiece of the bed finally falling prey to its natural predator almost drown out the sounds of the grossly obese Kolshian struggling to get up before the bed disintegrates beneath her. It’s a race she doesn’t win.

…

It’s silent for about five seconds, or at least as silent as Jiyuulia ever lets it be with all her wheezing, groaning, and stomach rumbling. The microphone’s fallen out of her grasp, lying on the floor next to her as she lies stunned on her back for what’s at least the third time today. But suddenly, out of nowhere and completely unexpectedly given the normally mortifying situation, Jiyuulia laughs.

Y’know listener, I think this was supposed to be a queen. And stars, was it the gaudiest thing I ever did see.

…

Oh, don’t act so surprised! You knew that something like this was gonna happen sooner or later! You just didn’t know that I’d already broken one of the legs before I’d even started recording, or that I’ve been holding that corner up with my right leg and arms hanging off the side of the bed the whole time (not that I could get them on the bed without pushing my left side off). Yep, it’s basically an allegory for my whole life over here: doomed from the start.

…

Hey though, not like it really matters.

Jiyuulia chokes.

B-besides, the mattress was ruined the second I touched it anyway! Who cares if it’s on the floor for one night? Sleep quality on the thing is still gonna be way better than I’ve got in ages now, and it was already a foregone conclusion that Kolshians and carpets don’t mix. Or, well, we do, far too well for our own good. Or the carpet’s. Kinda fun in the short term, though perhaps not so much for the carpet. There’s a reason we’ve never had quite the most thriving of tourism industries. Ah, but there I go with the digressing again, you see?

Gotta stop me when I start doing that.

Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted by me and the consequences of my own actions, we were talking about me and dead people’s houses. And also breaking into them, because of course it wouldn’t be a complete archaeology adventure without at least a little gross violation of property rights. Not that I think anyone particularly cares anymore when it comes to my particular case, but still. Point is, I didn’t necessarily want to damage things, and it felt a little wrong to disrupt such a serene neighborhood, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to shout obscenities (toned down for Kyrix’s sake, I have standards) while breaking and entering through the too-small doorways. Extra emphasis on the breaking part, most burglars try to leave the entryway intact afterward.

Pro tip for all you new and aspiring homebuilders out there: When installing new locks, make sure to keep in mind the resilience of the rest of the door. Arxur preteens apparently think it’s really funny when you forget to do that. ‘Getting my foot in the door’ and all.

…Stars, I’m even worse than a movie archaeologist. Desecrating people’s graves is just a joke now.

What else am I supposed to do, though?

Jiyuulia sighs.

Looting the houses went pretty well, all things considered. Breaking in was several literal pains with all of the splinters involved, and shoving myself through their incredibly closed-off floor plans while having to hunch down underneath their low ceilings was worse, but aside from embarrassing myself while getting around a few tight corners, there weren’t any significant hindrances worth talking about. Maybe I’d be more disappointed if I had something specific in mind I was looking for, but it’s not like I’ve got a shopping list to go off of down here. Mostly I’d just been hoping to pick out anything that looked like it might be useful, maybe muse through a few cultural artifacts if the opportunity presented itself. And well…

First, the physical stuff I found. Owing to the neighborhood’s immaculate state — okay, recently immaculate state — there was no shortage of goodies to take. Not all of it was useful, a pertinent example being every consumer electronic I’ve found so far and their long-dead batteries only serving to make me more thankful than ever my own gun wasn’t reliant on scummy alkalines, but it’s not like I was expecting everything down here to be useful. I may not be able to trust the canned food, but pretty much every kitchen I’ve stumbled into has had more than enough pots, pans, knives, and other cookware bits and bobs to try preparing something actually good for once if I can find myself another stash of food and a steady heat source — not a tall order when you consider that there’s wood everywhere.

Those aren’t the only shiny treasures I’ve found, either. They might’ve been a little small, but one car enthusiast’s garage had more different kinds of stainless steel tools in it than I could even discern the purpose of, much less actually ever use, and his wife’s hobbyist carpentry shop in the corner covered whatever he’d left out. And the very next house over must’ve belonged to some sort of prolific writer type, because he’d had more same-issue calligraphy supplies pinned to the walls in one room than I’ve seen over the course of my entire life. I’ve never seen such tiny little pens!

Of course, taking all that new stuff with me ended up being the harder part of the puzzle. I’ve found myself a tad short on pockets as of late, and as expected, though no less infuriatingly annoyingly so, the vast majority of the fabric I’ve come across has all been useless. Whatever the mammal fascination with absorbent fabrics is I’ll never understand, but every backpack, satchel, and tote I’ve found down here has all been made out of some hopelessly spongy natural fabric that’s so old it crumbles to pieces when it gets wet, i.e., I make contact with it in any way. So far I’ve just dealt with the matter by carrying everything I think I might need on short notice with me in a mid-sized toolbox the car enthusiast guy’d had, but with one tentacle lugging that around, two more permanently affixed to the gun, and the fourth dedicated to opening doors and pushing stuff out of the way, I’m out of storage space for larger stuff unless I wanna try using my more ‘natural’ pockets, and I don’t think I’m quite that desperate yet.

…

Jiyuulia aimlessly drums her tentacles on her belly, but is otherwise as silent as she can be for about twenty seconds. When she speaks again, it’s in a much quieter, more somber tone.

Am I doing this right, listener?

I mean, I’m literally describing graverobbing, and I’m being all jokey and sarcastic about it. Like it’s all just some game. It’s been more than enough time since the station for Predator Disease to finish setting in; I know it’s only going to get worse, but… what kind of monster am I to already be able to disrespect the dead like that? I mean, I know I should be happy to get stuff, and it’s not like I really have any attachments to these people, but…

The third house I broke into had an antique picture wall. Real framed analog film photographs, the kind you see in really, really old movies. The various different settings of the photos themselves were nothing particularly unusual, but there were a lot of them. Some were just personal shots, primitive things taken with an amateurish paw and shaky limbs, no real regard being given to the lighting as they centered on whatever they were about. Others were professionally done, evidently taken using tripods and studio lighting as their subjects shone brilliantlyand inperfect focus. Between the two kinds though, shots of weddings, graduations, promotions, holidays, plain old family photos, heck, even the odd self-portrait or two taken just for the hell of it covered every square inch of that wall. Professional or not, the stories of entire lives had been preserved on that wall, compressed down to image format and displayed proudly for me to see, even faded as they were. The shots obviously of the original homeowners, two parents raising two children, upper middle class. Funny little things, the lot of them, their stout little bodies clad in that same shimmering armor that marked them as natives here. The father seemed to work in business, the mother in something else I couldn’t quite discern. The children, a brother and a sister, were happy, healthy, cheerful little things, dominating most of the shots as they held up report cards, made silly faces, and otherwise lived life as the ideal child should.

The pictures were arranged in chronological order to show them all getting older as time went on. Nothing much happens for the first three quarters or so of the wall, just a successful nuclear family living up to the standard. Vacation photos from faraway lands, one of the children posing with a medal they’d earned after some school event, all part of a normal, if a bit primitive, rendition of regular family life.

It doesn’t last. Somewhere around the three-quarters mark, the backgrounds start to shift drastically. Technology scales at a pace they’ve never seen as the Federation uplifts them and their society. Curiously, the photos themselves remain just as primitively film-based as ever, obviously a purposeful stylistic choice as everything else changes behind them. The family themselves change too. Their happy expressions don’t fade, but there’s a tension somewhere behind the surface. The mother changes jobs, her exact occupation still maddeningly difficult to pin down. Grandparents show up for fleeting moments, hedging both sides whenever they do.

It’s hardly a surprise. Even with the gifts of technology, how else should they feel, being uplifted into a war that rages on their doorstep?

It gets worse. The eldest child, a male if his firm posing and heavyset brow are anything to go by, proudly stands in a shot towards the very end of the wall, bearing a brand-new colorful sash and freshly staunched cap, clearly off to go join some military academy. His sister follows quickly behind him, showing up in the very next frame in her own set of celebratory garb, both parents failing to hide their own fearful, worried expressions behind false masks as they stand beside her. Grandpa and Grandma are hunched in the background, nearly out of the picture as their old, wizened forms converse with a similarly aged Farsul officer in a fancy sash and cap who only barely fits in the shot, towering over their shorter statures.

Nothing follows after that. The sister, standing proud, is the last photograph on the wall. The story just… ends, there. It’s horrible, knowing exactly how these people went out. But worse?

I don’t know.

Listener, I have no idea who these people were.

What these people were.

Jiyuulia shifts again. Her tentacles dig deeper into her malleable flesh with a squeezing, popping noise. It sounds unpleasant, but she must find the action comforting somehow as she settles.

It’d be one thing if I’d gone and found myself on a truly uncontacted alien planet. It’d suck for my hopes of ever getting off, yeah, but not every civilization makes it to space after all. It may not be common with the Federation working harder than ever to uplift species before they can be claimed by the dark, but the Great Filters present a predatory threat to all life, sapient or not. It’d be unfortunate if they’d all died in some massive natural disaster, but not unheard of. If the Dominion had wiped them all out before they could ever meet the greater galactic community, that’d be terrible too, a travesty of the highest order in the loss of yet another established race and culture to the hungry maw of the Arxur before their greatest works could be preserved and enjoyed by all and yet another ugly stain on the Dominion’s bloody legacy, and yet even then it wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing had happened. It’s rare, and made rarer still with how hard it is to do, but the Federation has successfully downed and captured cattle ships in the past, and the unrecognizable corpses left behind afterwards weren’t always rendered that way purely due to the burn wounds.

But neither of those are the case, are they?

Were things different, I might be able to believe that this was just another lost colony. I could close my eyes to the disparities in technology, to the unfamiliar logos, to the too-hostile native wildlife, and pretend that this was all just a silly experiment gone wrong. I could cling to the idea that it was a mismanaged uplift; that somehow things had gone wrong in the early stages — it’d happened before, after all. That these people were somehow at fault for it, or that the Arxur had come too quickly for anyone to be evacuated. That I could pretend that while things were not alright, they were normal, just a part of the type of world I lived in.

Listener, I want to do that. I want to do that like you wouldn’t believe.

It’s the Farsul officer that does it. The one in the last photo. The official regalia adorning his head and sash. He proved it. At some point, sometime before their fall… these people were fully recognized members of the Federation.

…

Forgive me for the tangent here, listener, and I promise I’ll get back to where I was at, but something’s been digging at me for a while now, and it’s never been more relevant than it is now.

Twenty-five percent of all species we’ve ever met are dead, listener. Even more are on the brink of extinction themselves. The last few thousand free Thafki are all that’s left to hold the shattered remnants of their culture. The Takkan Diaspora is only one of several just like it, and we call it the successful one. The fleet tries, and the herd does win some victories here and there, but every passing year only seems to bring another catastrophe with it, and they’re only getting worse as time goes on.

…

Nobody likes to come out and say it, but we… we aren’t winning this war, listener. Not once has there ever been a truly major victory against Dominion forces, our greatest triumphs just being avoidances of a decisive defeat. Most of the Federation anymore lies in constant threat of annihilation, and the borders only shrink as time goes on. The coreworlds are safe for now, but for how long? The Arxur have proven themselves to be more than we could handle, and in a few hundred years? It’s not a stretch to say that they too could find themselves under threat, and shortly after that, the Federation will fall. Maybe sooner than that, even. And this is all going off of trends from before the Humans showed up, taking several worlds in only a few months! They’ve probably taken more since!

Stars, when put into that context… I wouldn’t have before all this, but I think I can say I truly understand the Venlil’s bid for survival. Hiding behind another predator before the bigger one can get you… I’d be one hell of a hypocrite to suggest otherwise. They’re all still traitorous scum, doing it behind our backs like they did, saving their own lives at the cost of ours. Hell, I personally am paying the price for their actions with how Sillis fell! But… for what it counts, I wish them all the best.

Jiyuulia exhales loudly.

They’ll pay too, in time.

…

There. I’ve said it. It needed to be said. I’ll get back to where I was at, but this’ll be relevant, you’ll see.

So I know it’s common knowledge, but it’s worth restating that whether it be for cultural reasons or just a biological quirk of theirs, the Farsul have spent a very, very long time documenting both their history and those of other races. Through either the free will of the subjects of study, coercion, or even the rare application of force, the Gerontocracy gets what they want, and every race in the Federation, including those who are no longer with us, has their place in the Farsulian records. We members of the Commonwealth pride ourselves on consistently scoring the top spots when it comes to education amongst the nations of the Federation, and we rightfully hold that position through sheer force of merit and no small effort of our own… but there’s a reason your history professor in college — should you have gone, that is — was probably a Farsul. We help out where we can, of course, but there’s just something else about them, alien, if you’ll excuse the term, that makes them perfect for the job. There’s a reason they still hold most of the new patents on translator tech even a thousand years after its invention, after all. And if you ask me, that’s a good thing! Their intentions are noble, and their work near-flawless!

Those records are all we have left of some.

…

Oh, come off it, listener! I know the Kolshian stereotype is to be a bit snobbish and dismissive of other races’ societies and cultures. It’s not our fault that nobody else decided to invest so deeply (or at all) into the arts! But just because we actually try to do things with our lives doesn’t mean we don’t care about other cultures. I mean, would we have founded the Federation for the good of all if we didn’t care? Stars, Nikonus even humored the human ‘diplomat’ when it demanded an audience! If anything, we care too much!

The popping sounds stop, Jiyuulia’s tentacles switching back to a drumming beat. The movement is seemingly subconscious, and fairly loud.

Enough to start this whole business with predators in space, at least. Maybe it would’ve been better for everyone if we’d been more like you.

…

I know the translator will do Sphixol. Don’t worry — you have no reason to know who they were. For those of you without a Commonwealth education, they were this really old race — maybe even older than us, even — that just so happened to be hampered with an abysmal aptitude for abstract reasoning. You know, the kind of reasoning that more or less defines the sapient condition, responsible for pretty much all of technological and societal development. Tens of thousands of years of civilization, and they’d barely just finished mapping their world by the time we’d found them. And frankly, if you ever get to see those maps, I think they may have needed to try again. Whole continents were off! Coastlines that didn’t even exist, prominently and proudly displayed! They were terrible!

It follows, then, that their written language was no better. Barely a system of scribbles, really, it hardly even looks like a language to anybody who knows any proper ones — something that makes it very useful if you ever need to cheat extra notes into an exam, by the way. Anyway, even with our help, they were just getting off the ground for the first time when the disastrous Arxur uplift took a turn for the worse, and with their proximity to the Dominion coreworlds… well, they didn’t last long after that. The whole race was gone more or less overnight. A few members escaped with us, of course, but they were nowhere near enough to meet the population bottleneck, and they disappeared within a few decades after that. They didn’t leave behind much, but what little they did is well-preserved.

…

Circling back to the people that lived here, though? There’s been plenty of text left behind. Street signs, logos, physical books even! The calligraphy guy’s house alone had a small library’s worth of paper books to read, and that’s not even bothering to count the calligraphy itself scattered across every other desk in there!

My translator won’t read any of it. It doesn’t even recognize it as a language.

I’ve already tried messing with the settings. After all, not every language translates well. Managing a database of thousands of languages, including several I know aren’t used any more, is hard work, or at least I’d assume it is. But even cheating by setting the thing to Universal Common won’t fix it, and that one always works!

But it doesn’t. Not this time.

For whatever reason, whoever these people were, these people who fought and died for the Federation, these people who were in direct contact with the infamous translator techs themselves for what was clearly an extended length of time… aren’t there.

Gone. Forgotten.

…Why?

File “Entry 9 – 20:12, January 14th, 2137.mp3” ended.

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WARNING: THIS RECORDING IS PRIMARY EVIDENCE IN AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION. UNLAWFUL LISTENING TO, REPRODUCTION OF, OR TAMPERING WITH IN PART OR IN WHOLE OF THIS RECORDING IS A FELONY. IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL OFFICIAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, STOP THIS PLAYBACK IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT YOUR CLOSEST EXTERMINATOR FOR DISPOSAL OF ILLICIT INFORMATION. ENFORCEMENT OF THIS LAW IS REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY HIGH JUDGE HYACIDUS OF THE GLASS GARDEN METROPOLITAN ZONE.

The tenth entry in the series of recovered recordings, as impossible as it may seem given the already amateurish, hastily improvised state of the collection, begins with a scene that manages to fall below even the lowest of standards the narrator has upheld thus far. Going beyond the typical clumsy fumbling of the supposedly ergonomic budget pad, the inappropriate and wildly inconsistent distancing of the cheap and tinny microphone, the ever-frequent and widely variant disruptions that, aside from ruining entire tracts of monologue, continually emphasize how little thought is put towards how environmental background noise may impact audio quality, and the countless other, smaller failings that all have long-since become accepted malefactors, their forced presence a result of the utterly talentless and baritone-voiced narrator’s consistently deteriorating situation and raw ineptitude for communication of, indeed, any sort, the tenth entry manages to descend beyond the realm of inadequacy and into what can only be described as deliberate, malicious sabotage.

The most familiar errors, as quintessential to the raw character of the recordings, are all there, but all have grown to a truly laudable extent: fumbling escalates to all-out dropping, the already consistently breathy, exhausted tone the Kolshian uses when she records immediately after physical activity has somehow combined with the struggling, barely audible whispers she used while on the precipice a whole seven entries ago, and the distancing has become so bad that the pad sounds as though it’s being swung around in circles as she attempts to use it, topped with irregularly spaced instances of her putting either herself or some other indiscernible object between her mouth and the microphone, with each and every such instance near-totally nullifying any ability to interpret her words at all whenever such is the case. It is only after two and a half solid minutes of this abysmal showing that the pad seems to steady itself in a position that is only halfway buried in her side somewhere and Jiyuulia’s voice even begins to reach a level that could be considered adequately conversational, let alone presentational, finally granting the listener with a level of consistency that allows for regular, actually worthwhile interpretation, if only just. Graciously, she seems to realize her shortcomings in delivering adequate listening material from the beginning of the recording up until now, starting over from whatever rambling tangent she’d been on to greet the listener once more. It is during this re-introduction that the reasoning for this sharp dip in quality finally becomes apparent.

Oh, that’s better. Maybe they can… hear me now. Greetings, Great Hunters.

Jiyuulia wheezes.

I… apologize in advance… for my poor showing here; I’m… I’m not really taking… a full entry right now. We’re here because—

Jiyuulia coughs.

—of a slight in… cident, earlier today… con… ing…

Jiyuulia’s voice gives out mid-sentence. There’s silence for a bit, lasting a few seconds before she finally gives up, audibly blowing a huff of air out of her nose as she reaches for the pad in what could either be exertion or annoyance. Considering that it’s her, it could very well be both.

*Squishy?*

There’s a wet plopping noise, then a pained groan. The pad clatters to the floor for what must be the eighth or ninth time just this session as Jiyuulia falls back what little way she’s managed to rise, raggedy gasps coming out of her from just the simple effort of speaking.

*Really?! You want me to do it? So soon?*

Jiyuulia whines.

*Okay! I won’t let you down, I promise! Even if you still haven’t told me what the buttons do. Or how to press them without tentacles. It still doesn’t like my claws.*

…

*Oh, right, I’m speaking! Hi Great Hunters! So, Squishy died.*

Jiyuulia whines for a second time. It’s a bit louder, perhaps too loud judging by the way she chokes midway through and has to cough three or four times just to clear her throat afterwards.

*But it’s okay now! I thought I had failed for a bit and that everything was very bad and I was going to fade away forever, but then she un-died and was alive again! And then she told me how to use this pad so that in case it happened again and she couldn’t “revive” herself that I wouldn’t have to try drawing all my memories on the floor before I disappeared because the pad is special and will remember stuff even if we both aren’t there to anymore.*

The Arxur whispers loudly.

*Is that good?*

…

*So now I get to have the pad for myself now! It’s only temporary, Squishy and I played a game where I asked her questions and she blinked for yes that she would get all better soon, but I get to have it while she does that because coming back from being dead is hard and makes somebody really tired, so that means I can use it better right now anyway, even if I can’t press the buttons. She also said that we have to go find special medicine later, like the kind she had back on the ship, or else she might fall asleep and not wake up for a long time again. And there’s a chance that she might not wake up again ever and I will fail for real, which I wish she told me earlier because then we could have just been looking earlier too and we weren’t because I didn’t know. But luckily she says that the place we’re at sometimes has that kind of stuff, and that even if there isn’t, there might be plants that could help too, so we can just go looking for both of those after she feels good enough to walk again. Which could be a while, she says. We might not move today. But she says she’s sorry and that she’ll teach me magic to make up for it!*

Jiyuulia moans.

*Only once her voice is alive too, though. Right now she kind of just sleeps a lot. And snores. Like really, really loud. And that’s bad for “medicine reasons,” which is another thing she should have told me earlier because that means she’s sleeping bad and might die again and she’s been snoring like that the whole time. So now it’s my job to sit in front of her belly and push back against her if it gets too loud for me to sleep or if it sounds even weirder than normal. I’m also not supposed to let her lie down. She said she might forget to breathe if she does, and that lying down too much along with the “medicine reasons” was why she did this time, which is weird too because I don’t have to think about breathing at all, but squishies were already really weird and Squishy is definitely the weirdest squishy ever just by being a person that’s also a squishy and also really really big, so maybe it’s just a Squishy thing. And this way I get to play with her more! She feels weird and doesn’t move like anything else does, and she doesn’t usually let me touch her when she’s not moving unless it’s an “emergency,” so even if it’s a little boring just sitting here, it’s not all bad.*

The Arxur starts whispering again.

*Squishy! I think I got all the stuff you wanted! How do I stop it? I don’t think the Great Hunters want to listen to your snoring like I have to too. It’s really loud, and they probably want to go do other stuff anyway.*

The recording pauses, resuming around three and a half to four hours later. Strangely, the environment seems to have changed in the interim, no matter that such a movement would be entirely at odds with Jiyuulia’s all-but-incapacitated state not but a few hours ago and the repeated assurances from both parties that she would not be moving again soon. The cacophony of the jungle mars the smaller sounds once more, suggesting a return to an outdoor environment. While the absence of the unfortunately familiar great gusts of air and drawn-out gustatory grumblings that sweep over and jostle the microphone with every breath of the usual narrator’s preposterously overworked lungs as the enormously unfit creature manages to somehow both shove the thing up her nose and deep into her gut at the same time is more than welcome change, albeit a slightly worrisome sign given her last known state, the fact that the pad actually appears to be being held correctly for once can’t possibly make up for all the discordant strata piled up in its place: The splash of a raging river, the boom of a crashing waterfall, the hobbyist mechanic’s worth of rock grinding noises, the howling windstorm, and the screaming cries, chirps, squawks, barks, and yowls of no less than at least thirty-eight different differentiable wild animal and bird species (thirty-two of which, when later painstakingly extracted after hours and cross-referenced with freely available online databases, mapped to at least twelve different origin planets on the lower bound, with some models suggesting as many as eighteen) that, when all put together, ensure that if a potential listener were to still have any lingering doubts towards the legitimacy of the Kolshian’s claims surrounding the vibrancy of the jungle oasis she reportedly had found herself in as of the last entry, the resulting cacophony would completely dispel any notion remaining thereof. The environment is so bad that, even taking into account Jiyuulia’s typical disregard for the effects of background noise on audio quality, one would think that even she would think better of trying to take a recording in such an audiological mess. And then the Arxur begins to speak for a second time, and suddenly it all makes sense.

*Bleugh! Oauugh! Eit woarked!*

The Arxur spits.

*Take that, tentacle-pad! I have a tongue! And slime in my mouth now!*

The Arxur hawks a few more before suddenly realizing what it is doing.

*Oh! Uh, sorry, Great Hunters. Squishy slime is stringy and makes your mouth taste weird. Kind of like the rest of the squishy. I wonder what it feels like to be melting all the time? I think it would make me thirsty. Maybe that’s why—*

The Arxur lets out a small cry as the microphone is suddenly jolted.

*Wha— hey! I was recording!*

Several unfamiliar sounds follow. It’s impossible to tell quite what they represent, especially with the ongoing racket in the background drowning out the finer details, but it’s clear that there’s a scraping noise involved somehow, and that its source doesn’t involve either the pad or the microphone itself.

*Stop! Don’t go further! I almost don’t know how to get back already!*

…

*Oh. You just wanted another plant. Okay. That’s good. You and Squishy will like each other so much!*

There’s a rumbling sound, its source sounding very close by. It’s oddly high-pitched for a rumble, and very clearly biological in origin.

*Uh. So I was gonna show him off later, but I made a friend! No, like twenty friends! A whole pack of these weird hard mat thingies! I met them outside while trying to get a drink after Squishy fell back asleep after we finished the magic lesson, and they were out there getting a drink too! And then when I showed up, they liked me so much that they took me with them! They’re really cool; they’re these big flat rug things, like a fuzzy rug, and they have a bunch of little legs that make them look like they’re flying right on top of the ground whenever there’s moss under them. They can even use them to go right up walls and stuff, and they can also roll up into a tube or around things like a really big blanket! I’ve never seen anything like them before.*

*They let me ride them too. Not like Squishy, they don’t have shoulders or arms or anything like that, so they’re really hard to hold onto normally, but you can lie down on their backs, and so long as you hold onto the fuzz enough, you probably won’t fall off. Oh, and don’t hold onto the face tentacles — they don’t like it when you do that. They’re not like Squishy’s tentacles; I tried it on one, and it threw me off! They’re not very strong or very fast, and the one that likes me the most and didn’t get bored and shake me off after a while like the others all did is even slower — I think he’s old, he’s not shiny in places all the other ones are — but even he can still go places way faster than Squishy could. And up!*

The Arxur hums. The database marks it as “inquisitive,” though it could really be anything.

*Oh! And he’s a really picky eater! That’s how we met in the first place, actually. I was getting a drink outside like I said because Squishy had been sleeping for *hours* and she didn’t let me drink anything while doing magic because Squishy says that drinking the black water in the bottle we found was bad, so I went outside to get some so I could come back in and keep doing what she said was called “homework.” My legs still don’t work yet — Squishy says they’re getting better, but that she can’t really do anything else to fix them until we get to heaven — so I had to drag myself through the grass, and the ground is really soft behind the house, so I had to really use my claws to get a good hold of the ground, and I kept pulling up a lot of grass as I moved. And so while I was getting a drink, I felt something come up behind me, and while it wasn’t like I was scared or anything, I didn’t see it coming, and so I kinda threw more grass that was already in my claws at it in surprise. And then it stopped and stood over the grass, so I threw more at it and it went to go stand over that, and then I saw that part of the grass from earlier was gone and that it must have eaten it, but only the roots of the grass — that’s the part that’s normally under the ground. And so that’s how I figured out what he eats!*

The Arxur makes another non-obvious noise. It’s also marked as “inquisitive,” despite clearly not being the same noise. A ticket was submitted to technical, along with isolated samples of both verbalizations, although the limited data on the nature of the subject is likely to impede any efforts to fix it.

*It’s really strange, though! Like, I don’t think he can dig at all, so why does he only eat that part? But it meant that he liked me when I pulled up food for him, and then when another one from his pack showed up, he made all these noises so they would know I could get them food and was not an enemy. I think I maybe got lucky, because right after that I saw one eat a rock that was lying on the ground. It just crunched it like it wasn’t even hard.*

The rumbling sound comes again, high-pitched like before.

*You want more​? But I just fed you! How fast can you even eat?! Not even Squishy goes that fast! Usually. Sometimes. When she thinks I can see her.*

The rumbling comes again. It is insistent.

*Okay, but I have to say stuff, or else I could forget, and then this part of the adventure wouldn’t count because Squishy isn’t here, and she spends way more time than I ever could saying stuff.*

The pad and microphone are set aside. There’s some quick digging noises as the Arxur rolls off the creature to root through the dirt, seemingly to pull up plants in a manner completely antithetical to its nature. The rumbling quiets — for now. If the creature is truly as voracious as the Arxur claims, it won’t be sated for long on only what the stunted Arxur’s diminutive claws can provide for it in the span of the thirty or so seconds the Arxur spends on the task.

*Done. But we have to play again later before you take me back. You can’t spend all day doing this. And I wanna see what it looks like up high again!*

The Arxur returns to its seating area on top of the creature. It has to finagle a bit to do so, rolling along in what can’t be an easy motion to do without the use of its legs before finally dragging itself the last few decimeters and reclaiming the pad.

*At least he’s easy to stay friends with. It should be even easier for Squishy. Unless she gets mad when he eats her plants instead of her, even though there’s like way more plants than there is meat and it wouldn’t make any sense for prey to fight like that. Squishy obviously didn’t have any trouble finding food before she met me.*

The Arxur makes a third noise, also labeled as “inquisitive.” Analysis of its vocalizations was halted beyond this point due to “inquisitiveness” ranking at a likelihood of 50% or higher in every subsequent noise in the entry. Technical has been provided a sample of every relevant soundbyte.

*I wonder what it’s like to be able to eat whenever you want? I wish I could do that. Then maybe I wouldn’t be so small, ‘bad acid’ or not.*

…

*I should ask Squishy about that. Maybe she can try to fix that too.*

*She definitely knows magic, at least. And I got to learn some! It was a bit hard at first; her voice took forever to come back, and even when it was back she had trouble speaking very loudly and kept stopping in the middle of words, but it was enough for her to start. Even if she did keep stopping to mutter a whole lot of things in the middle of the lesson. I didn’t know magic needed magic to do, but I guess it makes sense because she kept doing it over and over again through the whole lesson. But whatever it was, I didn’t get to learn it, and from looking at her it seemed really hard, so I probably can’t learn it yet anyway.

*The magic I got to learn was what she called “Common,” which was a type of magic where we made symbols on paper that can control people’s minds! She says that it turned whatever it was drawn on into something that could talk directly into people’s heads with whatever words I made it say, and all it took for the magic to trigger is people seeing it! I didn’t even need special equipment if I got really good, though the best stuff for it, she says, is the weird “paper” stuff we took from that one guy’s house, along with the “brushes.” And then she took a little bit of water and a weird flat-but-not-really stone and one of the black sticks that kept bleeding all over whenever she touched it and turned the water into black water by rubbing it against the stone in circles that were a lot like when she healed my head.*

*I think she got confused after that, though. It must have been a long time since she was on an adventure, because she forgot how I was supposed to hold the brush. She must’ve told me how to move the brush around in my fingers to help her think like a hundred times while she tried to remember how people without tentacles are supposed to hold things; picking it up and holding it like a stick was wrong and was bad for me or the magic or something somehow.*

*After that, though, I actually got to start drawing stuff. Squishy would put one of the shapes on the pad, and then I would copy it onto the paper with the brush! The shapes were all dots and lines and stuff, no curves. Squishy said something about that being on purpose, but I didn’t really get it and she didn’t say anything more about it. What I did get, though, was that there were thirty-two different shapes: twenty-four normal ones and eight special ones. The normal ones she called “letters,” and she says that they don’t mean anything on their own, but when they’re put together, they make words! I didn’t get to learn how to do that today, she just made me draw all the shapes a whole lot until I got better because even that is really hard, but she says that we might start those later if I get good. We also didn’t do any of the special shapes, though that’s because she says those are only used for holding the magic together if I want to say lots of things and that I don’t need them for easy stuff so I can just learn those later. Actually—*

The pad jolts as the creature beneath the Arxur suddenly stands to attention; the Arxur holding said pad instantly huddling down on the creature’s back as it jerks again, then freezes. A fairly standard fear response, surely, but nothing else appears out of the ordinary. The jungle is as loud as ever.

*…What?*

The Arxur begins to whisper its words now, only still audible due to how closely it’s holding the microphone to its mouth all of a sudden. Its voice is shaky. Perhaps it finally realizes the perils of its situation, separated who knows how far away from its guardian.

*All the rest are doing it too… I don’t smell anything. What are they seeing that I don’t?*

…

*Wha— hey! At least try not to throw me off! I barely held on that time! What are you so scared of anyway? There’s nothing around… I think.*

…

*Wait, where did the smallest one go—*

A piercing, warbling cry sounds out from somewhere in the distance. The pitch rolls up and down in a regular nested sine wave pattern, helping it stand out against the regular jungle ambiance as it screeches some alien cry of alarm until suddenly, it stops, cutting off mid-warble. And after that, chaos. The Arxur is yelling something, but between the poor angle, the already normally elevated background noise that’s managed to reach even greater heights in the ensuing struggle, the hundreds, possibly even thousands of little legs pummeling the ground in the creature’s — presumably some sort of isopod or other large insectoid-like beast of some nature — version of a gallop, and the wild clicks and cries of what can only be assumed to be other members of its herd that are slowly fading out of range, any words the Arxur says are hopelessly unintelligible. The only mercy is that, after about a minute or so, whatever it’s saying doesn’t matter anymore — the three stark beeps of the old pad’s battery dying after being used all morning are as clear as ever.

…

The entry resumes to the familiar grind of the charger crank, the device making its long-awaited return after having been absent for several entries now. It’s pretty clear that the Arxur is the one going at it, given the lack of any labored breathing to accompany the rapid tick-tick-tick of the shaft as it spins round and round. That’s not to say that the Kolshian isn’t present, or that her lungs aren’t ruining yet another recording backdrop — there’s enough snoring coming from somewhere behind the microphone that it’s clear where the pad, and by extension, the Arxur, find themselves: the classy neighborhood house they left Jiyuulia in. According to the timestamp on the recording, it’s been nearly three hours since the battery died, although it should be noted that the cheap pad uses an inexpensive clock model that is notoriously unreliable whenever battery power is interrupted. The true length of time is unknowable.

*Hey, the rectangle is white again! …and still recording! Oh no!*

The Arxur scrambles to get into position. It finds one against a nearby wall, dragging its mostly limp lower body into a seated position before setting the pad down in front of it.

*Great Hunters! I’m sorry! I didn’t know that I was still talking to you! I thought everything stopped when it went all black instead of white! I didn’t wanna talk to you again until I finished with the spinny stick ‘cuz sometimes it takes a while. And also because Squishy will want to know all about where I went and that means that I have to wait for her to wake up first, and I thought that if I waited then I could just tell everyone what happened after the stampede.*

…

*I still don’t know why we started running. The small one — I think it was the small one — started screaming, and I heard that, but I never got to see why it did that. I tried to see it too, I really did! But there were a whole lot of bushes in the way and we were going up and down and everything was making so much noise and I was trying so hard to not fall off that it was just impossible. It was almost kind of like the river!*

*…A lot like the river. Is that what it’s always like? Being prey?*

The Arxur quiets for a moment. There’s a bit of shuffling as it adjusts a longer limb — likely its tail, though the Kolshian’s roaring snore makes it difficult to properly confirm.

*It’s bad. I’m happy I’m not one of them. I don’t think I’d like it.*

…

*Oh! I almost forgot, but I was right about my friend rug thing being really old. I thought he was before because of how he looked, but I know now because he was really slow compared to the rest of his pack and they left us behind. But it’s okay, I told him he can stay with us until we find his pack again! Squishy will probably get mad, she doesn’t like it when I do things without her, but it’s not my fault she’s prey and always has to be scared of everything. She’ll like him after she gets used to him, I know it! He already likes her back, so she pretty much has to.*

*Like really likes her. He wouldn’t touch her at first because he’s a root-eating prey too, even if he also eats rocks sometimes, and so he has to be scared of everything all the time too. But after he saw me touch her, he came up too, and now he won’t leave her at all! But Squishy wanted a blanket anyway and he’s probably the best one there is so it’s okay. Even if he keeps making weird noises and rumbles a lot… unless that last part is just Squishy.*

The Arxur appears to ponder on the subject of its guardian’s involuntary ambiance for quite some time. Nearly twenty seconds pass before it starts speaking again.

*Oh! But Squishy also said not to waste your time, and that doing that was rude. Which is silly, because if you think about it, she wastes way more time than I do, always sleeping, eating, being really slow, or just talking for forever. And I’ve been gone for hours and she hasn’t moved at all, so it isn’t like she woke up and did stuff. So she can probably get up now for me to tell my story.*

There’s a loud scraping sound as the pad is dragged along the floor, followed by the scratching of claws on wood as the Arxur pulls itself across the wooden floors of the house. It takes a little bit for it to move even just across the room, and even the Arxur’s pride isn’t enough to hide a sharp breath of pain or two as it folds itself over its casts before pushing them off the wall, but given the steady increase in the volume of the snoring as the process goes on, it clearly manages to cross the room unassisted all the same. Before long, it’s dragged itself up against the Kolshian’s side and lobbed the pad somewhere atop her expanse. From there, it only takes a little bit of jostling before the Arxur decides to speed things up a little with what comes across as a muffled yell — undoubtedly one with his mouth shoved up directly against an earhole.

*Wake up Squishy! I made a friend! And the Great Hunters want to see you!*

YAAH! Yeh. Mmup. I jus… mmm…

*Get up, get up, get up! I almost finished charging the pad!*

Urrgh… already? But I’d just got it heated just right… fine, fine, give it here… mmkay. Sentinel, open last note. Now… now take iiii… snrrgghh…

*Woah… you didn’t even have to open your eyes… wait. Squishy! You need to be up!*

Snrk! What! What? It’s over there! I’m just… soaking… it’s nice… warm… sticky… need to get new soap soon; kinda starting to tickle…

*Squishy! The Great Hunters are already listening! Stop taking a dream bath and get up! You have to meet my new friend! I tamed him myself! He’s on top of you, look!*

Hnng… fine… But you owe me seven credits for the catering I won’t be getting… I just wanted the smoothie… ‘n… so expensive here… but… tickles…

Jiyuulia yawns, finally beginning to lift a tentacle.

*STOP! Don’t move! You’re gonna crush him!*

…Hhuuuuh? Oh… okay then… no need to tell me twice…

Jiyuulia yawns again, louder this time. You can actually hear the glob of drool spill out of her mouth and hit the floor as she does so. It’s as fascinating as it is disgusting.

*Squishy!*

Mmm… whhhyyy… what is it that you wanted to sho—OOAAH!

The pad goes flying, sailing through the air in an arc before striking the hard wooden floor. Jiyuulia screams something, and there’s several loud booms and a sharp cracking noise before the recording cuts out again, this time for a short bout of only thirty-three minutes of mostly silence. There’s a blip at around twenty-three minutes in, then a longer one at twenty-eight, but a whole thirty-three minutes pass before anything actually comes through in earnest. When it does, though, there’s clearly been a bit of an overhaul in the setup. The pad has obviously been returned to Jiyuulia, the Arxur off to the side somewhere. To the listener’s detriment, however, also clear is just how much she wishes that it was the only thing she was gifted. Neither her desperate attempt at masking the shrillness in her voice nor the way it always peaks whenever the creature so much as rumbles manage to go completely unnoticed, no matter how fast she stumbles through her hurried words.

Aha! Thank the st— Hunters for screen protectors!

*Thank you Great Hunters for screen protectors!*

No, I— okay, yeah, whatever. Thank you Great Hunters for screen protectors. Sure. And while I’m at it, thanks for all the other interesting stuff you keep dumping on top of me. Like giant undulating blankets of scales to wake up to in the… uh… afternoon, I think? I don’t actually— gah, it doesn’t matter! You guys just love to keep my job interesting.

The Arxur gasps.

*HE’S FROM THE GREAT HUNTERS TOO?! Wow! I knew you guys would get along! This explains everything!*

Wha— uuunngghh…

The entry pauses again, but only for a few minutes.

Aaand we’re back. Er, well, I’m back. Kyrix is off listing every word he knows on a stack of paper I gave him whilst happily commenting about how the room is totally windowless and he can’t see under the door after I finished pushing the dresser in front of it. Never mind that he doesn’t actually know how to string letters together to make words, or that he probably forgot most of the letters that I taught him, or that he only just learned what letters even were this morning. I’m sure he’ll come up with something just amazing regardless. Yep, just you, me, and the blanket of ever-shifting scales glued to my body straight out of The Ghost of Seaside City.

Jiyuulia sighs, trying to throw some faux cheer into her voice.

Ohhh, where to start…

Uaahh… I wouldn’t be allowed to get rid of it, even if I could. It’s a magic creature now, you know. A bonafide blessing from the Great Hunters to use on his quest. And for better or worse, once he starts on that idea, there’s no dissuading him. Not without risking it all!

…Stars, I just love digging myself deeper, huh?

And — ugh — now’s not the time for backing out. He’s about to be more important than ever now.

Jiyuulia hums.

Okay, well, maybe not ever, getting the cell door open was kind of a big deal, but still. Current circumstances show that I am very much dependent on finding a roaming band of idiot predators somewhere in the vastness of the ancient underground ruin we’re all effectively trapped in. Predators that, mind you, probably haven’t eaten anything for days, judging by the aforementioned ubiquitous scales on this godforsaken planet and the probable lack of plasma rifles in their possession for cracking them open. If I don’t have some representative between us, some little mostly harmless predator child of my own to place on my shoulders and remind everyone that we’re all on the same side here… well, best not to consider it. I’ve ought to take my so-called peacemaker, no matter whether he’s the type to drape giant ‘herbivorous’ monsters on my chest and say that they get to stay so long as they play nice or not.

He says it ate rocks, listener. Whole.

Jiyuulia shudders.

Oh, I tried removing it before I opened my big dumb mouth and sanctified the beast. Tried. Do you know how many legs it has? How many little barbed tips it has on the end of each one, wormed and stretched into every crevasse, every fold, every modicum of a foothold it could find buried in my flesh? Hooked onto me in the most literal meaning of the word? How I almost tore myself apart, how I howled as I almost provided the strength to pull the instrument of my own destruction across my sides and bled to death, right then and there?

No. No, you’ll never know. Nobody I ever speak to again on this entire cursed plane of existence will understand what it’s like. You’re the closest I have, all curled up in your fancy chair, cushy fur covering your flesh instead of thousands upon thousands of barbs of writhing chitin. Barbs that move like they’re looking for something in there, constantly raking every surface they can as they test the limits of my sanity in their search for what I can only guess to be a parasite’s attempt at gleaning sustenance.

I wonder what it will do when it realizes that I am not of this world? That whatever it’s searching for isn’t there?

…

We’re not done, either. It gets worse. Try as I might, mustering my strength to push aside the sensation of the points, the squirming, boiling, never-satisfied tongues that hunt through the softness of my flesh in search of some hidden treasure that isn’t there, I fail to detect anything else about it aside from the surprisingly heavy weight of its form. Just… legs. Thousands of them; little barbed tips blowing out whenever I pull and rounding themselves otherwise, their shapes morphing into whatever it determines is needed to hold on at the moment. But that’s it. Only legs. It’s all the same, the same sensation, everywhere. No exceptions.

No mouth, listener.

But every creature must intake sustenance somehow. And it’s not up here, on the surface where I can see, so it must be below. The rock-crusher. And if it’s all the same…

Tongues indeed.

Jiyuulia shudders again. The creature rumbles.

Horror from the deep or not, though, Kyrix does seem to be right about it in some ways. While ascribing any sense of allegiance to it seems foolhardy at first, simple deduction is enough to make one thing clear as glass: it, at least currently, does not want me dead.

Reasoning is as follows: if it did, I wouldn’t be taking this recording right now. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, the thing hasn’t been… deliberately hostile. Its actions, whilst uncomfortable to the extreme, have not once included anything I can realistically categorize as an attack despite it holding a decisive tactical advantage at all times; the most resistance it had displayed being a determined refusal to be removed by force. And for all the screaming and tugging I did, ineffectual as though it might have been, it doesn’t appear to have affected its disposition towards me at all. Stars, it even seems to lean into my tentacles whenever I touch it, rumbling all the while!

So yeah. It doesn’t seem to want me dead. Quite far from it, if I’m being honest. I’m not enthused about the rest of it, to say the least, but it’s sure as ever enthused about me.

I guess that means there’s some truth to Kyrix’s wisdom after all.

Anyway, the thing’s seemed to be pretty content to drape itself across my shoulders and around my torso like some sort of grotesque toga-like cloak thing. A hoodless one, thank the stars, but seeing as how it looks like it will be (literally) sticking around for the next little bit, it’s what I’ve deigned to call the thing after finding out that Kyrix still hadn’t named it: Cloak. Fitting, no?

Jiyuulia actually manages to chuckle at her own poor joke.

And fit he does, impossible as that may seem given the, ahem, obvious reasons. Over the shoulders, little gaps around the tentacles, wrapped as far as it can go around the rest of the torso, and even dangling freely past my hips and overhang, loosely hanging a few inches past the furthest extent of my belly in the front as it just barely avoids brushing the ground in the back with its half-dozen eyes peeking over my left shoulder in what seems to be its favorite position when I’m not bothering it. A… I hesitate to use the word ‘comfortable,’ but certainly the best possible way the thing could have chosen to be ‘worn,’ as it is. It’s not even restrictive! Burdensome, to be sure — the thing must weigh a solid three or four Kyrixes — but… well, I’m used to that.

And hey! Looks like natural fibers were the solution to the clothing problem after all! Just, y’know, the naturally occurring muscle fibers of your average friendly cave monster, constantly moving and adjusting themselves across the whole of my upper body whether I want them there or not. For best fit, of course.

…I’m already fearing what it’ll do next time I try to soak again.

Jiyuulia hums.

Maybe it’ll just let go!

Ha! Yeah, right. As if I’d ever be that lucky. Well, getting speared a thousand times over is faster than dehydration, at least.

…Small mercies, listener. We appreciate those.

Plus, I shouldn’t have to worry about gashes anywhere other than my shins, feet, and arms now! Which, sure, my shins and feet are the most likely place I’d get injured while trampling through the underbrush and I’m probably still going to regret any further bushwhacking, but any trek I don’t have to spend time digging bit of grass and sharp needles out of my side rolls afterwards is a trek that went better than it could have. So really, all in all, not completely terrible!

…No, seriously. Some of the deeper ones get sensitive to that sort of stuff, way more than you think they would given the sheer amount of surface area those nerves have to cover. I’m probably cleaner than I’ve been since Sillis. And certainly more armored than I’ve ever been before. Not that I hope to test it out. And all it took was covering myself in what I’m still not entirely convinced isn’t some sort of parasitic organism to do it!

Jiyuulia blows air out of her nose.

Roots and rocks, he said. Really liked the roots. Rock was in the way, nothing more. Yeah. Roots an—

A loud bang sounds out from somewhere in the background, followed by the wailing sounds of what’s clearly the Arxur in distress.

Oh, for— I really can’t take him anywhere, can I? I’ll see you in a little bit. Somebody can’t be left alone for ten scum-sucking minutes.

Jiyuulia plants a tentacle against a nearby surface, beginning to drag herself up as the recording goes silent. It resumes approximately fourteen minutes later, Jiyuulia predictably having gathered the Arxur to join her or, at the very least, prevent it from getting into further trouble. Her voice is calmer, forcibly shifted back into a somewhat patronizing tone in a clear attempt to present her usual front for the Arxur. The Arxur, as always, appears to fall for it, happily chattering about random nonsense as its ever-beleaguered caretaker attempts to route the conversation.

*So you do put the letters next to each other on the paper!*

Yep, right there on the side as I showed you. Not up, or diagonal, or on the other side of the paper, or on entirely separate sheets of paper, or the wall, or yourself, or anywhere else, actually. Just the side. Preferably the right side, though sometimes it is the left. That’s how you make words!

*But what if I put them—*

Kyrix, Kyrix! I’m glad to see you already have such prowess over the runes I’ve taught you, but it’s recording time! We gotta finish telling the Great Hunters stuff now, and they already know how to do magic.

*Stuff like what?*

Jiyuulia laughs. It could not sound more forced if she tried.

Well, where you met Cloak, for one! I go to sleep for a few hours, and here you are, having gone off on another adventure without me. I think it would be in all our best interests to hear how that happened. Maybe even before you go next time!

*Oh yeah! That’s a really good one! Well, you were asleep for like forever, and I got bored. So I decided I would save some time and go look for some of that magic stuff you said you needed!*

…Magic stuff?

*Remember? It was right after you almost died again? I think it was the fourth time? You said magical people need magic stuff, and since there is nobody more magic than you, you need lots of it. So we were gonna go look for it after you stopped dying and got good enough to go out again. And when I asked what it looked like, you said we’d “know it when we saw it” and that there were multiple kinds of magic stuff and made no sense at all because you still couldn’t talk right and I started to think that you might never talked right again because you always say I have to be nice to myself or else I won’t heal and yet you are never nice to yourself and so that even though you said not to leave by myself again or else bad things might happen I thought it was better to have those things maybe happen then you not speak again and so I went out so that you wouldn’t have to so that you could get better and talk right again and I still don’t know what magic stuff looks like or why you didn’t say you needed it earlier because we could have looked earlier when you could still do stuff but we didn’t because you didn’t say anything and then you wouldn’t have had to get apnea and you’d still be fine and—*

Whoa, whoa! Slow down there. Don’t worry about it! This is a new situation; we haven’t seen this place before, and I’ll be the first to admit it: this adventure is getting way longer than what I’m used to. But I know myself, and I know what I can take. Look at me now! I’m getting better! Sure, we do need to go look for that stuff, and yeah, it’s definitely near the top of my priority list, just after resting until I can stand for more than two minutes at a time. But I promise: I will be fine for a day. No more going off on adventures, no more— Kyrix, where did you hear that word?

*What word?*

The thing I wouldn’t have had to get.

*Apnea? You said it. I don’t know what it means, but you said you had it. I thought it might be magic sickness or something, and I didn’t want to know if I could get it too since I was learning magic or if it was only for magic people like you, but after you didn’t stop snoring again I thought you were probably better and it was safe enough for me to go.*

…

*Can I get apnea, Squishy? Say I can’t get it. I don’t want it! It looks bad.*

…

*Squishy?*

Jiyuulia’s pause here isn’t particularly long, nor does anything else about it specifically stand out as unusual, but despite that, general consensus agrees that somehow, someway, a sense of hysteria permeates the scene, if only just for the few seconds of silence the pause lasts. The sense builds and builds, threatening to crescendo with every passing moment, right up until suddenly, it passes, and the sense fades away as though it were never there.

…No, Kyrix. No, you can’t.

*Oh. That’s good. You have to eat more when you get sick. It hurts.*

The Arxur sniffs.

*I didn’t even know you were sick until I tried to get you and you wouldn’t wake up, though. Are all magic people sicknesses that sneaky? Or just some of them?*

Uhh… no? No. Most are more obvious. But I think we’re getting a little off track here…

*Yeah, but it’s important! Like, I didn’t even know you could get sick because I thought sickness was only for people who didn’t eat enough, and you eat more than anybody else I’ve ever seen! Is it different for magic people?*

What? Thin people get less… well, I guess by your standards of thin they don’t… but… okay, well, Kyrix, I don’t really know how to explain it to you, but I’m always sick.

*Oh. Is that why you’re always eating?*

Jiyuulia sighs.

That’s… part of it.

*Huh. I thought you just really really liked eating. Everyone else likes it too, but you never seem to stop.*

I mean, I do like it, but I also just…

Jiyuulia sighs again, louder this time.

We’ll cover this another time. Kyrix, you had a story to explain to the Great Hunters?

*Oh, right! So I was thinking about magic stuff and where I might get some of it. But I got thirsty while thinking, so I went to the stream outside to go get a drink. And while I was getting it and thinking really hard where to look, Cloak and his pack found me!*

The creature chooses this precise moment to jut in with another — admittedly contented sounding — rumble, much to the Arxur’s excitement. It doesn’t quite blend into Jiyuulia’s louder one.

Urgh. He— Urp. He found you first?

*Yeah! And then he liked the grass I threw at him so he took me on an adventure! We went up a cliff that was like a hundred feet all before his pack all stopped and one of them got eaten or something. Maybe more than one. Then there was a stampede and everyone ran away. But we got separated because he was slow — I think he’s old Squishy, is he old? — but it’s okay because he can just stay with us for a while! And then I panicked for a little bit because I didn’t actually know the way back but then he sniffed the pad and something about it made him remember so it was all good.*

…Huh.

…

*Squishy?*

…

*Are you dying agai—EEE!*

There’s a loud thud just before the recording, rather predictably, cuts out again, making that the third time this entry that the recording has been paused involuntarily. This time around, it doesn’t resume for almost seven hours — far longer than any other pause so far. When the audio finally starts playing again, it’s the Arxur that’s doing all the snoring in the background for a change, albeit much, much more softly than the Kolshian’s usual roar. Even the maybe-parasitic creature it brought back seems to have settled down for the underground ‘night,’ leaving only Jiyuulia’s relaxed but ever-present huff to mix with what’s left of the muted ambiance of the jungle, muffled as it is by the walls of the house. It’s quiet, nothing more than a small sigh from the narrator to set the mood as she sits there, lending the scene a sense of peace despite the energy of the take immediately preceding it. Seemingly recognizing that the world’s become as calm a backdrop as could ever hope to be achieved in her locale, Jiyuulia appears almost reluctant to break the proverbial silence, waiting to gather the breath to speak until she’s nearly a minute into the scene, only to blow it out again, dismissing her words as fast as they were summoned. Another minute passes, then two more before she tries again, successfully this time.

Things are funny sometimes, listener, you know that?

I distinctly remember complaining to you about a situation very similar to this one before. It was sometime, oh, probably a few weeks ago now — though it may as well be prehistory as far as my feelings go — I made some comment or another about keeping the dangerous predator at a safe, healthy distance whenever our necessary acquaintanceship wasn’t forcing me to literally carry him on my shoulders. I listed off all sorts of good reasons for it — stars, I’m pretty sure more of my speech was occupied by poor rationalizations on why it was acceptable at all that I was carrying him around in the first place! Keeping him at a distance helped to preserve some of my mysticism, reduced my likelihood of getting torn open if he got touchy at the wrong moment, helped retain whatever pathetic crumbs of dignity I still had — which was paramount, I’m under no illusion that my sanity wasn’t slipping towards the beginning there — probably another reason why it feels like another lifetime ago now. All very pragmatic arguments for an unusual situation, trying to stay as safe as I could while traveling with an Arxur.

But those rules were never going to last. From the very start I had to break them, warming his frozen corpse with the only heat source I had. And even after that, building trust was more important than anything else, and that involved physical contact and play whether I liked it or not. Just because I wasn’t in any shape to chase him around or fight with him or kill something or lose at Dance Mania for the eighth time in a row or whatever other ghastly things ‘normal’ predator children do to entertain themselves wasn’t enough to get out of having to do something. If anything, it necessitated it, forced me to personify myself, familiarize the highly unusual prey creature before him as not just another authority figure, but as a personable one, with my own litany of thoughts, feelings, and limitations. One he could freely interact with and come to accept, prey creature or not. Because if he wasn’t completely comfortable around me, if my opinions and desires didn’t weigh heavily on his decision-making, then he just couldn’t be counted on, and our unnatural relationship would never last. If that meant sacrificing some of those precious last few scraps of dignity and offering myself as something soft to hold when he most needed it, then so be it. Better I weaken my shields and get an Arxur that would seek me out in a crisis, one that held a blind trust for my words and abilities than to keep those same shields up and have an Arxur that harbored secrets from his impersonal guide, an Arxur whose loyalties I could never be entirely sure of, an Arxur whom I would have to always keep tabs on should he ever find it to be to his benefit to turn on me.

To believe one has power is to give it to them, after all.

…Dad always did love that saying.

Jiyuulia sighs.

Of course, like everything else I’ve ever done, I overdid it. Appeasement was too easy. Displays reserved only for crisis decayed into merely being used for special occasions, then to but needing only permission first, then not even that. He was so important, I thought. The only ally I could ever be sure of, be confident in, somebody I needed to like me. Somebody to navigate the halls I didn’t recognize, somebody to open the doors where I couldn’t, somebody to stand between myself and the crew and open dialogue between us with a face they might recognize to remind them that I was an asset, not food.

Somebody whom I believed had absolute power over my standing, and thus sealed my fate.

Instead of forcing boundaries where warranted, I was malleable, bent— no, squished into his ideal mold. Whatever made me more approachable, more trustworthy, more capable, more… more, I allowed. I acquiesced to games, to touch, to food, to lessons, to attention, to all a predator could ever want and more.

Until I was his, as much as he was mine.

And he knows it.

…Devious little thing.

There’s a short pause. Jiyuulia lifts a tentacle, only to let it settle with a sigh.

…I still can’t bring myself to push him off, though.

It wouldn’t even wake him. And I’d know, he goes all rigid when he’s trying to fake it. No, I’d peel him off and set him aside, watching as he’d just curl into himself that little bit more as his eyes squeezed shut just that much harder, his face became just that much less relaxed. As he felt just that much less safe.

Jiyuulia sighs again.

And it would hurt.

…

I can’t lie to myself any longer, listener. I can’t pretend to you that I don’t care the least bit about him, not when I do, so much so. Certainly not after reacting like an overemotional Venlil while he wasn’t even in danger. Not like I had in the drug lab either, where I’d just come down through a roof after panicking over his safety for twenty minutes. No, this was while we were both safely sitting inside as he told me what he’d done, sitting calmly hours after he’d clearly gotten away totally unscathed from whatever unabashed tomfoolery he’d gone and risked his life over. But it didn’t matter that he’d gotten away, that I should’ve more than understood he was safe. I had to get emotional for an Arxur.

I’d call it embarrassing, but… who’s out there to care? The other Arxur? One of them thinks I’m some sort of undercover secret agent; I sincerely doubt they’re going to judge me by conventional standards. And the others are almost all sick freaks in one way or another.

Just like me, I guess.

…

Oh well. I can’t deny that I’ve long since wanted a child of my own, as ridiculous as it sounds. I guess it’s nice of the universe to grant me that reprieve, even if it did have to twist it into something I can only appreciate due to my deepening insanity.

Although… the ability to slot actual predators into my social retinue has got to be one of the better cases of Predator Disease I’ve ever heard of. Not ‘mild,’ certainly, but a far cry from what I usually hear about. I’m still here. I’m still me. And considering the circumstances… well, it’s honestly probably better this way. Sure, I’ve been emotional once or twice… or three times… or four… or — you know what, maybe it’s better I try to stop poking holes and let my argument hold at least some water — but I’d largely consider myself as level-headed as I’ve ever been. No reactions that wouldn’t make sense if Kyrix weren’t prey too, at least. If that’s all that ends up happening, then this might actually be one of the few times where I can finally skip out on treatment for once. Stars, more compassion is so far from predatorhood that maybe it’s not Predator Disease at all, and I’m just like one of those stampede victims who’s only gone temporarily crazy during the whole event! Maybe I’m totally fine! And even if I’m not, it’s not like I’ll have to worry about infecting anyone else with my contagions any time soon, at least.

Not that I’m at all qualified to be a reliable source for my own mental state anymore. Maybe I am a monster, and I just haven’t been tested yet. It’s impossible to say.

That being said, at least from my own point of view, it’s nice to have a sense of purpose and righteousness in the world again. Even if I know for an objective fact he can’t possibly really be returning the favor, I like having that grounding, having that in-person relationship with someone. It’s not the same as you, listener, I can’t tell him everything, but… it’s good to have something to look forward to that’s not just my next meal. I’ve been deprived of that for too long, now.

Jiyuulia scoffs.

But listen to me sap on, listener. Claiming to be level-headed while in the midst of yet another overemotional speech about rationalizing that very emotion. Hypocrite. Not even dad was ever this bad, prattling on and on over meaningless blather. At least he actually had a point to where he was going sometimes, not to mention an occupational excuse to use all the biggest words he knew. You’re here for what’s happened since I cut you off, and I should really probably get back to that sometime before I drain the battery again and have to crank the charger myself this time, hmm?

Well, for a start, I nearly didn’t wake up today. As you probably put together from my terrible first introduction and Kyrix’s rant over “magic stuff” you heard him going off on earlier, the fact that I’m a solid month behind on my meds is finally starting to catch up to me. The… dubious alternatives on the ship helped, but only in the sense that they were next in what had already become a series of increasingly dubious (and cheaper) alternatives I’ve been forced by circumstance to work with. Better than nothing, but it’s hard to put much of a positive spin on having a heart attack and nearly dying. And for as much as that sucked and left me figuratively scrambling to convince Kyrix that I wasn’t leaving him behind — and we’ll get to that story in a minute — it also left me dreadfully exhausted afterward, which meant it was a great time to double dip and go through a severe bout of sleep apnea at the same time that also nearly killed me. Or, in other words, I nearly died choking on my own fat neck because I fell asleep with my head in the wrong position after being too tired to adjust it, all because I tried sleeping on an actually nice bed for once and failed miserably.

Sometimes I astound even myself, listener.

Aside from setting a new personal low and serving as a living example of why black genes are not a protected category under Commonwealth law, I still managed to accomplish something genuinely interesting with my morning, even if it’s been a good fourteen hours or so since then and I still haven’t quite managed to sit up yet — not that I’ve really felt the urge to for the last ten. Namely, I finally found time to start giving Kyrix lessons on things that aren’t herbology! We’re still in the beginning stages — obviously — but I do remember a particular line about teaching him magic two entries ago, and, well, literacy is basically magic as far as I’m concerned. If he takes it literally because… well, because I explicitly told him so, and even went as far as to craft a whole saga about how mages use it to control people’s minds by planting messages in their brains — hey, this whole ‘predator listening to prey’ thing started because of bad datanet fanfic trash corrupting mine, I’d say that’s proof enough of it holding some level of mythical ability — then that’s his fault for being easily motivated by the idea of ultimate power. So really, I balanced one wrong thing with another, and the whole thing’s probably completely ethical if you think about it. Just, not, too hard.

Teaching disadvantaged children how to read is good, okay? I’m a good person.

…Probably. I hope.

Jiyuulia sighs.

Alas, for as easy as it was to get him enthusiastic about learning, he still wasn’t necessarily the best student I could have hoped for. Not that his behavior was at fault or anything — for as much as he bounces around, he’s never had any issues paying attention to things that interest him — but he is an Arxur, and, well, there are some base physiological differences between me and him that get in the way. And I’m not just talking about the ten minutes I spent frantically trying to remember how aliens with paws are supposed to hold pens. I won’t say you’re smart, listener, but I’ll expect even you to be able to guess what it was.

…No, really, guess. This is something that even you should probably be able to figure out if you actually think about it.

…

Got your answer?

So, not only do I not know the written version of whatever the Arxur call their language, I can’t actually, physically speak Arxur. My mouth and throat just aren’t built for it.

It’s something you forget, living in an age where fully semantic translator implants are so ubiquitous that even starved illiterate Arxur children have them, but interspecies communication hasn’t always been this easy. Sure, the eidetic geeks that are the Farsul have been there since there were two species that wanted to talk to each other in the first place, so it was never the challenge it could have been, but the thing with alien languages that have been entrenched for millennia before the societies that developed them even started thinking of space as an actual place, much less started considering alien needs and desires, is that they weren’t really designed with other races in mind. At all. And even in the one or two fringe cases where they were, you can still tell when it’s a Sulean speaking instead of an Iftali, right? It’s not just a case of one type of voice being deeper than the other or something so trivial like that — I’d be functionally mute if that were all it took — the whole way they form words is different. Stars, even speaking other languages from your own species can be hard if they use sounds you aren’t familiar with, something you’ll continually see Yotul tripping over if you have the misfortune of having to deal with one that hasn’t been out in civilized society for very long. So compound all that across the species barrier, drop any pretense of even remotely similar anatomy — the number of different ways you can structure a throat and vocal cords is really quite staggering — and you have a world where I’d have a better chance of sounding out Arxurian words with a screwdriver and a tin can full of gravel than anything I could actually replicate with my voice. And it doesn’t take an advanced mind to know that trying to use the visual translator on the pad to teach him something in his own language when I didn’t know the simplest things about it, like its name, or how many different alphabets it had (if it had one at all) would’ve been disastrous.

But why does any of that matter, I hear you asking? I just need to teach him how to read, it doesn’t matter what the spoken sounds like. If I don’t know Arxur, just teach him my own language. It’ll probably serve him better anyway.

Two problems with that. Problem one is that teaching Kyrix my own language, Nishiri, falls flat for the exact same reason. It’s not just that he doesn’t know the words, it’s that he has quite literally never once paid attention to the actual sound of my voice for communication purposes at all, meaning he’d have to start from a point below even the most neglected preschooler. You see, what really complicates the matter is that written languages are, as if it were their whole purpose or something, a form of visually representing their related spoken languages. Even in the uncommon instances where the language’s culture never got around to inventing an alphabet and still use old logographic representations rather than more versatile alphabetical (or at least syllabic) formats, the grammatical rules of said languages still usually closely resemble if not outright are the rules followed by the spoken versions — disregarding things that are inherently specific to one or the other, like punctuation or intonation, obviously. Since he’s not just learning a new language, but actually illiterate in his own native tongue, teaching him something in my own language would have necessarily involved going over the very fundamentals of how a language even works as a concept and not just relying on things he already knew by default as a native speaker before we could move on to actually assigning meanings to words in any way that wasn’t just treating the characters themselves as some sort of odd funny picture, sort of like logograms in a language that was — quite thankfully mind you — decidedly fully alphabetic. Drawing little letters without being able to later ascribe meaning to them would not have been a very useful skill.

Clearly to you, however, if you’ve been using their brain, there must be a viable solution to all of these problems, as I spent the morning teaching him something. And you’d be right! Like all good solutions to linguistic issues, it all goes back to the Farsul.

Universal Common is— oh, I can hear any sympathy you had for me pouring out of your mouth like fryer oil leaking out of a fresh bag of ilth rings. Really, could you be any more anti-intellectual? I’m allowed to have my own interests, and with my dad being who he is and the fact that I was kind of a shut-in for the first nine years of my life — and admittedly still am, but I’ll argue that you reach a special level of isolation once the doctors start letting you decorate your own room in the pediatric ward because they expect you to spend more time in it than you do at home — yes, I am one of the ironically rare caste of people who actually know Common. Really, I’d have thought you would have picked up on my language-learning habits when I mentioned I knew Sphixol — what can I say, I have an affinity for the useless ones — but I guess I have to remind you of everything around here.

Anyway, as I was saying, Universal Common is a wonderfully crafted language that, as its name and origin might imply, was an extremely useful tool in covering the linguistic gap between Kyrix and I in a way that didn’t leave him with a substandard education. While I admit that I might very well be the first person in history to get a practical use out of actually sitting down to write the thing aside from First Contact teams and Federation lawmakers, the whole thing is the result of millions of hours of work by mostly Farsul (but a few Kolshians too!) linguists that was originally intended to be the end-all-be-all in cross-species communication. As an artificial conlang, it didn’t have to suffer from the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies that plagued all natural languages, including such things like words with more than one meaning, meanings with more than one word for them, irregularly conjugated words, or indeed much anything at all that could lead to any sort of communicative misunderstanding whatsoever. A sentence written in Common has but one meaning, and one meaning only, with the rules denying any ability for it to ever be interpreted in any other way. Even the characters themselves are simplified, consisting entirely of straight lines and dots that even the most imprecise of limbs could hope to make consistently, leaving no room for illegibility no matter how poorly jotted down it was. And, after many, many years of linguistic research, all of it was put together in such a way that the language starts to make intuitive sense in hours, allowing new learners to sidestep entire sects of nuance they’d have to learn to write anything of actual complexity and instead letting them jump straight into reasonable fluency at record paces, usually after only four or five months of daily practice! Truly, it was a miracle of a language that would surpass all others and bring the galaxy closer in a way that had never been done before! A language that had no oral counterpart to muddy its words and limit its use to certain physiologies!

A language that, in the public eye, never managed to get anywhere other than in a few signs in the capital after being placed there by ‘pretentious diplomats.’ As it turns out, being a language with no way to actually speak it forced it to only appear in written formats, with it, by its own design, almost entirely constrained to various electronic devices that just so happened to also be devices that could translate messages sent in it into the device’s host language at lower error rates than anything else could ever hope to even approach, meaning that nobody in the general public ever had to actually learn the language to be able to read anything that was written in it. A bit of a let-down, that one. But at least it led directly to the translators that came immediately after it, using the language as a common sort of ‘transformer’ to carry meanings between them. And also briefly promised to put an end to loopholes in ambiguously worded law, at least until lawmakers officially decided that rewriting the whole of legal code across the Federation was too much work and unofficially decided that doing so would have ruined all the fun they were having by exploiting said ambiguities.

So… yeah. Exactly the sort of language that would be useful in instantiating a standard First Contact scenario with a four-year-old child I’ve been in direct and nuanced conversation with for the last month now, not to mention also a member of a culture that my own has been in unfortunately regular contact with for the last three and a half centuries. It didn’t let me entirely sidestep the necessary mini-lesson covering some of the simpler linguistic abstractions that would necessarily come up when trying to teach an illiterate what the very concept of a written language even was, much less how to start actually using one, but given all I really needed to start with was to teach him how to draw the thirty-two characters used in the abbreviated package designed for First Contact situations before I could send him off to practice them in the other room and collapse back into whatever semblance of blessed rest I could get for the next several hours (remembering to elevate my head this time), it was more than good enough. Or at least I thought it was; apparently he decided to distract himself with a death-defying side adventure only about an hour or two after starting on his homework. But you’ve already heard all about that from the source itself — as have I, unfortunately.

Jiyuulia sighs.

Stars above, I’ve become one of those negligent parents. A life of wanting a kid, and the very day I’ve come to consciously accept one as my own is the same day I allow him to get into a situation where he’s hanging off stalactites hundreds of feet in the air while clinging to some wild animal he just met. And worse, he’s going to want to do it again, and I’m going to have to let him. Not just because the relationship dynamic we’ve got going between us is excessively permissive by anyone’s standards, but also just because of the sheer fact that having something that lets him climb walls and scale buildings promises to cut down on exploration time so much that it’s too valuable an asset to give up, even if it does require me to allow him — essentially an underage amputee — to ride a totally untrained wild animal whom we’re trusting based entirely off of a few hours of behavioral patterns.

I’m looking forward to finally getting it off me while we’re looking for that pharmacy tomorrow, at least.

…What? I’m being pragmatic. You go on a death-defying adventure with predators and see if you turn out to be any different.

Jiyuulia inhales sharply. A tentacle slaps against part of the pad, but nothing about the recording changes.

What do you mean, “You were like that before?!”

File “Entry 10 – 08:10, January 15th, 2137.mp3” ended.

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