The|MULTIVERSE

EPISODE 12: Mechanova: The Incredible Bastard!

"I'm glad you're here," Adiva said to Ricven. Their audience with Shiathari concluded and they now casually strolled back into Crown Royal's docking plaza where the others waited.

Ricven tickled a quip. "Of course, you are."

"We came as soon as we heard," Fae spoke out as she fluttered around the two. "Would've been sooner, you know... If Ricven learns to wear his damn communicator like he's SUPPOSED to."

"Honest mistake," said Ricven justifying the issue. "It's called cleaning my ears."

Fae palmed her hips and tightened her silvery face. "Yeah... Right."

"Especially when it comes to niggling little crabby ass naggle-nats like you."

"Somebody has to don that mantle," she crossed her arms and looked away and snorted cutely...but annoyed. "Mother Myra's not here. So, now I bear the torch to your self-destructive ass."

Ricven sighed to the mirthful Adiva, hiding her smile and muffling her laugh. Fae's little rebuke was something else. "See how spitfire she's gotten?"

Adiva let the remains of her giggle expose. Ricven and Fae's burst dispute a legendary experience. Like two warring siblings with no end. "Even in such a time of unrest, Ricven, you continue to sustain your facetious behavior."

"Facetious is just another title," he said smooth. His slick steps never skipped a beat and Adiva's face never ceased its glowing mirth. "The Crystallian faith has been shaken. Your religionists crew-folk simmered down at least. I could barely hear you with them losing their shit earlier."

"They are...a delicate communion," Adiva said. "You know that Crystallian faith is one of the first and foremost of creeds. Part of Faevalen origin. Sosha's shrine is the genesis of Faevale. Where life began, there, in the wilderness of Sosha. Its wilds are sacred, its sands rich, but when that thing appeared..." She paused. Memories of Sosha's chaos gripped her guts cold. "Its deviance ravaged my every bone."

"I'm sorry..." Fae grieved.

"Mhm. Looks like a job well suited for me indeed," Ricven said, and that forced a miffed little frown on Fae, who seemed to show no sight of remorse from what befallen Sosha.

"It's always all about you, isn't it, Ricven?!" Fae chirped with resentment. Ricven thinned his eyes.

"Can you not sense the pure deflation in my voice?" he said. "Humor's the cure to all problems. Any-who, you're deep in the spirit of the planet, eh, Adiva? When Borros rise and shine'd, did you feel anything a bit off-beat?"

"A strange, bizarre feeling," she tried—reluctantly—to evoke that uncanny moment. "We all felt it, but we were unable to determine what it was, other than its impure danger."

"That's an eldritch fragment for ya'," Fae said. "Its presence's unfathomable...and very manipulating."

"A...eldritch fragment?"

"The thing I told you and the queen about. It's also what we've been hunting since the beginning. I've fought one of them when I was a young buck. Yach. Freaky spaghetti-looking fucker with many eyes that distorted reality the moment you dropped eye on 'em. What you saw was no ancient scriptural beast. We're dealing with a remnant of a horror far beyond your view of the cosmos. Cryptic terrors aside, the one you call Borros is a weak shit. But fuck around and it gains full power; kiss all ass goodbye. We ain't gonna that scenario happen. And THAT'S why we're here to kill it."

"I...see," Adiva said, lost in the face as she attempted to make sense of it. As simple as Ricven made it, she still found herself perplexed to the voids. All of this strange talk about remnants, cosmic horrors, some entity called Yach—just what did it all mean?