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Ordinarily, Eresh would be spending the rare moments of downtime either performing basic maintenance on the Strix-12, taking care of his armor in a similar fashion- he and Snowhawk had been gradually working through the details of a particular modification that had been on his mind for a long time now- but the past few days he had felt.. listless. No, there was more to it than that. The events on Auriga had weighed on his thoughts for weeks, months now. He had tried to move on, but something was keeping him from doing so: The despair in Dri-maka's eyes, the nightmarish hybridization attempts by the Kromus and the callous, tacit approval on the part of Faro.. the horrific, malformed fruit of the tribes' attempt to free themselves of the blight that stole their future away from them. All of it was nothing but subatomic particles now, obliterated by the dead star.. and yet.
The ghosts of the travesty gave Eresh no peace. The screaming spirits were quiet it seemed, but now and again he could still hear whispers when none were present, shapes occasionally darted beyond the corners of his vision: always just out of his direct line of sight... but present enough that they were impossible to ignore. And then there were the dreams.. they were the most preturbing part. At first they were nothing too unusual: Dreams of battles not fought, confrontations one could easily fabricate in one's own unwaking mind. But then he began to see things that were.. disturbingly vivid, that felt real.. and were far too coherent to be merely dreams. What unnerved Eresh most about them, was that they seemed to be trying to tell him something. What, he had no idea.. but it was happening more frequently as time went on. It was as if something on Auriga had left its mark on the Mawkin; a stain that he could not wash away..and it wore on him. Could he have been tainted by the very dark powers that doomed Dri-maka's people? Was he now cursed as they were?
No.
No, this was something far more natural, it had to be. It was guilt, shame that he couldn't do more for those Chozo. The Mawkin were warriors who brought peace and order to those their spears aided, they fought to not just preserve life, but help it flourish. It was the responsibility of the Tribe to raise up those who had fallen... and Eresh failed to do so. That was why he was so morose lately, yes, it was the only true answer. Power Was Everything, and his lack of Power cost the Chozo of Auriga Everything. Moreover.. he knew that to continue to let this fester would only hurt him, wither away at his confidence and warrior spirit worse than any poison or contagion. It would kill his soul. But he couldn't just talk to anyone.. even those who experienced the ordeal. They didn't understand what it meant to be a Chozo Warrior, they couldn't truly empathize with what was happening to him.
But there was one who did.
After what felt like hours of indecision he would send a message to Samus Aran:
[ I would like to speak with you about something, Ha'chidari. Please come to my Hangar two hours from now, I do not feel right about discussing what I wish to say in a public place. I will prepare a meal if that will help incentivize you. I am sorry for asking on such short notice, but I do not think I can put this off for much longer. Hadar Sen Olmen]
I CAN'T HEAR THE STARS ANYMORE... BUT THE VOICE SPEAKS TO ME IN THE DARK…
A finger tapped at her desk, eyes marked with her narrowing brow. What was the big crow going on about, she had to wonder as she read his message. He’d been acting strange as of late, stranger than his usual self anyway. And what was he “putting off”? Gods, it didn't have to do with that Lockheed lady, did it? It wasn't really her business who Eresh was seeing in a romantic fashion, but something about the white haired woman just gave Samus a creepy vibe.
Still, the mawkin had many times made it clear he considered Samus like his sibling. Considering no Thó'ha remained that were even close to his age equivalent, it wasn't surprising.
But…Hadar sen olmen. Power is everything. Her father had often recited a variant of that phrase, but the context was far different. To her understanding, it was a very core ideology to the Mawkin, even after their exile from their greater branch of the ancient Chozo that lived in the satellite galaxy that was apparently called “Ym'k'ru” by its denizens.
No, this wasn't about the Lockheed woman. Samus realized that something had to be bothering him to use such a rooted Mawkin sentiment just as “power is everything”. She sent an affirmative reply, then began to get herself attired for her meeting. Paralyzer charged and ready just in case of any problems along the way, her wrist comp beeping as she make the request for a taxi, and she was heading down and out from her apartment.
Seeing her affirmation, Eresh would spend the rest of time he had before her arrival tidying up his living space a bit and preparing an evening meal for the two of them. It wasn’t anything particularly complicated on his part- a quick search of simple recipes later and he would begin preparing a seafood dish- Samus seemed to have a taste for it and he wasn’t overly picky to begin with. He was grateful for the distraction, it helped him organize his thoughts while he worked.. kept him from dwelling on his issues.
By the time Eresh had finished with everything, he was drawn away from his thoughts by the sound of a bell; it seemed that Samus had arrived just on time- a little earlier than he expected as he looked at the holographic clock above his work station and saw she was actually ten minutes ahead of schedule. Taking a moment to wash his hands the Mawkin would stroll to the door, lightly hitting the “unlock” button and allowing the automated door to slide open.
“Ah.. well you’re early Ha’chidari.” He said warmly as he stepped aside so she would have room to step inside . “I had just finished getting dinner ready, if I didn’t know better I’d say you had a sixth sense for food.”
I CAN'T HEAR THE STARS ANYMORE... BUT THE VOICE SPEAKS TO ME IN THE DARK…
She could smell shellfish, eel…not like Eresh to go so much for a meal between friends. What was on his mind, Samus wondered.
“The taxi I caught was pretty reckless for an automated VI, someone must have hacked and modded the protocols of the damned thing.”
As she made her way in, the blonde hunter gave thought to what it must be that seemed to have Eresh so on edge. “So, what is this whole thing that's got your plumage all twisted up? Its not that Lockheed lady with DAW is it?”
It didn't hurt to be able to ask an Admiral about certain agencies involved with people, even if it wasn't a lot. Knowing that little association had been enough to tell Samus why said Lockheed had such keen interests in Chozo and Chozo adjacent individuals.
He gave a small smile at her greeting, returning to his “dining room”, which was little more than a table and a few chairs a few meters down from the door. “I always thought that sort of thing was something you enjoyed: the rush of a belligerent cab driver on a crowded airway. Tastes change all the time, no?”
He had just seated himself when she mentioned Eliza, and a chuffing laugh left his beak after only a moment of silence. “No, no she isn’t a problem. If anything I’d say she has been nothing but accommodating with me. Intimately so on more than one occasion; suspicious as that may seem.” He said as he motioned towards the work bench that held one of his boots. “She’s been invaluable on a certain little modification to my hardsuit that I’ve been tinkering with for awhile now.” He said lightly, seemingly unconcerned with how his words might be construed.
“No, the matter I wanted to discuss involves you. Or.. it involves something that I’ve been meaning to speak to you about, but haven’t found the time.” He then paused.. and shook his head.
“My apologies.. I wasn’t being truthful just now. It isn’t that I haven’t found the time.. it is because I.. haven’t had the courage to speak of it.”
I CAN'T HEAR THE STARS ANYMORE... BUT THE VOICE SPEAKS TO ME IN THE DARK…
The down feathers on the back of her neck started to prickle, sticking up from where they were interspersed with blonde hairs. Something felt very off about this, but she wasn't sure how. How was she specifically involved? Did it have to do with the last couple of jobs they had shared?
What was bothering him? Eresh had been a bit on the somber side ever since Agár and the entire aftermath with the erris parasite, but Samus has assumed that he'd been unnerved at the time by her very close brush with death. To be fair, she had been too. Her entire nervous and circulatory systems had shut down for nearly a minute during her treatment at Beta-Five, a long with experiencing a cardiac arrest. She had been clinically dead for half a minute during that, and then her heart had jump-started itself while the operation room had lost power for a brief moment.
Like something had defibrillated her with all of the power in that room.
“What’s eating at you, Eresh?” Something was seriously bothering him, that she could tell now. “You were getting a little more quiet and serious since Agár, but that, I could understand considering what happened. You've been becoming more withdrawn since that job you met Tycho on, and I'm going to be bluntly honest…it's bothering me. And I'm supposed to be the antisocial one.”
Despite her attempt at levity, however, Samus realized even she wasn't smiling.
Eresh’s beak clicked in discomfort at that admission, though an insincere smile tugged at the corners of his beak. “It bothers you that much? Now I know that I have either made the correct choice, or made a colossal mistake,” he gave a raspy laugh that was quite humorless as he idly glanced at Samus, and then at the toolbox that stood a few yards away behind her. To a human the blue metal would only have a sheen of light bouncing off its surface and not much else.. but to the Mawkin’s eyes he could discern a coherent reflection of himself and Samus.
They appeared nothing alike, and yet so similar at the same time, two Chozo warriors sitting together and sharing a hearts-to-heart discussion. He blinked for a moment and he then went rigid like a piece of rebar as he beheld the image on the mildly scuffed metal box. Beside him wasn’t Aran.. but the withered and malnourished figure of Dri-maka, her expression as he remembered it: mournful, yet resigned… despairing and hopeful in equal measure.
Eresh didn’t realize when he had gotten to his feet but when he regarded his friend again, then the toolbox, the reflected image was once more as it should be. Realizing how he must’ve looked to the Hunter at that moment, he let out a slow breath to calm himself.
“You’re right to not like it, Ha’chidari, that mission did something to me. I have been .. seeing things as of late. Not just seeing things, sometimes I hear whispers just loud enough to notice.. but impossible to interpret. My dreams have been.. strange. Vivid. They feel like memories of your childhood that you occasionally gain flashes of recollection of rather than simple fabrications of a restless mind.. but they are of things.. people I do no know; yet I feel like I should. It feels like my mind is trying to tell me something- warn me.. yet I cannot make sense of it.” He looked down at his hand, his talons folded against the palm of his fist.
“Then there is the guilt that hounds me, and had done so ever since I have returned. I have no doubt that you’ve read into the mission debriefing.. but there’s more to it. The report claims that Faro and the Pirates were experimenting with Chozo technology and genetic samples for hybridization experiments- that is true. But what the public debriefing leaves out that it wasn’t just samples..” another breath. A shakier one.
“There were Chozo there, Samus. Living, breathing Chozo. And those monsters were using them as test subjects.”
I CAN'T HEAR THE STARS ANYMORE... BUT THE VOICE SPEAKS TO ME IN THE DARK…
Her blood froze. Auriga had been a Chozo planet? A Thó'ha nest? And the Pirates had been experimenting with not just salvaged technologies and genetic samples…but with live Chozo?
And a human corporation had been involved as well? She recognized the name Faro as a mid-level technologies firm that operated outside of Sol Sector borders, working primarily in drone technologies and autonomous platforms, though there had been rumors of biological enhancement endeavors, most involving cybernetic enhancement research. But if they were examining DNA splicing, artificial genetic hybridization, with Chozo blood no less…
And they had been working with the Pirates. That alone gave her enough redflags, but the thought of the Pirates and a human corporation trying to effectively recreate her was even more frightening.
But could they? And what advantage would it give? Yes, she was over five times stronger, more durable, and enduring as a comparable human in peak physical condition, her reflexes scaling the same, but that was in relation to her own mass and size. Humanity had long ago made super soldiers that could surpass her due to those factors. And even if it wasn't just to replicate her own abilities…why? What did the Kromus get out of it? Eresh had informed her about the gene hybrid abominations they had encountered, but would those have been enough for the Kromus to recruit humans to help them?
And why would humans be willing to work like that with Pirates? More so, to be willing to torment and experiment on living Chozo…
“Fewer and fewer of the Thó'ha tribes are surviving these days,” she softly said, her expression one of resignation. “I'm starting to wonder if the survivors of Zebes are truly all that's left anymore.”
One in particular, whom she was more than grateful for having survived the nightmare three years ago. But she was distracting herself now. “What happened on that planet, Eresh? It was more than just a tribe that you couldn't save…something happened, and you haven't been feeling the same since you got back.”
The look on her face cut into Eresh as deeply as his father’s catalyst blade. The look of pained acceptance was so uncannily like Dri-maka he felt a twinge of pain in his chest, causing him to give a chirp of discomfort as he then glanced down at his food.
“I..do not blame you for feeling that way. It is easy to feel alone and surrounded by enemies, especially when those foes hide in the guise of allies. But I truly mean it when I say this: you aren’t alone. We may be of different blood and come from different ends of the universe.. but we are kindred all the same. You have but one heart, but within it burns the soul of a Chozo Warrior just as brightly as any I’ve met. You may be Tho’ha, but you are also Mawkin- if not by blood then absolutely through your spirit. At least in my eyes that is.”
He returned his gaze upon her, and whatever optimism he had as he reassured her quietly darkened as she asked him what exactly happened to him. It was clear that she didn’t believe he was simply plagued by guilt.. and that brought up memories of what both Dri-maka and the abomination had both told him- of how they harnessed not the power of Light.. but the black promise of Darkness. Suddenly the worry that he had been infected by that Darkness re-surfaced, now that he was forced to dwell on it without even protection of the lies he told himself to soften the realization.
“..Like I told you, something is haunting me. The Chozo of Auriga, they had been delving into things the Tho’ha had long forsaken in their quest to free themselves of whatever is blighting your people, forces that they were too desperate and arrogant to leave alone…” he took a breath.
“They drew on the power of Darkness, Samus. And I.. think that it’s somehow left it’s mark on me.”
I CAN'T HEAR THE STARS ANYMORE... BUT THE VOICE SPEAKS TO ME IN THE DARK…
Her eyes flickered for a moment, worry reflected as Samus listened to what the Mawkin said. While it was not exactly subtle that he saw her as a sister by adoption, for him to vocalize that was different. But then, the talk of a darkness that he could feel, ancient forces that these Chozo on Aurigae had dug into in their desperation to help their species. And a crawling sense in her mind that this “darkness” he spoke of was…not something that should be trifled with. Even being a young woman raised for over two decades now in the understanding of sciences, Samus knew for fact that such otherworldly forces and eldritch powers were not easily dismissed or brushed off as simple “superstitions”.
There was an abandoned city on Zebes that more than proved such.
“What do you mean, 'left its mark'?” she asked with caution in her voice. “The only ‘darkness’ I know about that sounds like what you're talking about is what the ancient tribes called the ‘Void’, but that's supposed to be a place between dimensional levels, like a gap between planes.”
Eresh softly ran a taloned finger along his beak as he pondered how to answer. “What I fear that may have happened is that somehow, some way this ‘darkness’ might have touched my spirit. I told you I have been hearing things; seeing things ever since I came back from Auriga…I actually think this dark force was drawn to me as soon as I ventured into the depths of the world- no- the moment we entered Faro’s facility. I don’t know what’s happening to me.. but these visions have slowly, yet steadily, been growing more frequent. More intrusive. More vivid..”
He glanced down at his talons, a frown forming. “Ha’chidari, I am afraid that something is very wrong with me.” He then met her gaze, his eyes unwavering, but there was an expression on his face that he almost never displayed in front of her:
Fear.
“I know not if this is something from the Void.. the Chozo of Auriga were very precise in their vocabulary.. as did the Abomination that they spawned. They called this force they tapped into the Darkness.. and it seemed to be something that very much should be feared. Perhaps it is just the Void by a different name.. but that doesn’t exactly bring much relief either way.”
I CAN'T HEAR THE STARS ANYMORE... BUT THE VOICE SPEAKS TO ME IN THE DARK…
Her brow narrowed in concern. Samus was feeling a suspicion that something else was at play with whatever was haunting Eresh. Light and darkness as she had read the concepts in old Chozo cosmology were part of abstracts, with little reference to anything that the ancients considered to be literal good and evil. They had viewed the universe through the lense of seeing Constructive and Deconstructive forces, the natural flow of birth and death that all things cycled in.
The Void was, as she had said, the closest thing she was aware of that the ancients considered as a ‘darkness’. A place of unformed chaos, a gap between stable dimensions. And even then, she had never seen what little existed of any planar texts left by the ancients to present the Void as an evil. What Eresh sounded like he was describing was some kind of malevolence, an active force of malice.
Which was enough to have her very worried for whatever had happened on Aurigae.
“The Void, as far as what little I've ever read on it, is just unformed chaos. Not really good or evil…light or dark. It just is. This sounds more direct, a formed force with some kind of intent behind it.”
Whatever had happened, it was clearly taking a toll on the Mawkin.