The Way Home

[MP]

Sarkany stepped out into a storm. Blood and black and roiling. The clouds pressed in, crackling and weighted like a vast maw. Above him; below him; hateful and hungry and endless. Something held it back, a glass around his candle flame consciousness. The barrier cracked beneath his feet as he watched, the fury bleeding through in stinging, blissful spurts. The satisfaction there was almost elemental - a relentless, volcanic force. He took this in, observing the play of cracks and rifts in the mindscape. It was better than finding things barren, he supposed. Some of the cracks held images, like glimpses of sky through the storm. He reached out to the nearest, a drifting scrap of thought, to test its stability.

It wasn’t fingers that brushed the wisp. Not exactly. He was inconstant: a shining warmth against the storm, mountain air and warm kitchen scents; a scrawl of foreign fear and desperation, his shape scrawled with characters he couldn’t read but felt as a warning; a withered, contemptible nothing, a mote before the storm.

“All this, Hkoma?” he said, his voice a distant approximation. And that was all. His form seemed to close upon itself, a reflexive movement like a wounded insect. Then he straightened, looking out to the horizon.

There were thorns out there, golden and lovely as they moved. They pried at the glass, tugged at the mindscape, twisting like puppet strings. His candlelight form flickered a frown. At least they weren’t subtle about it.

Seeing no landmarks, no signs of life, Sarkany started for the nearest rift. He needed to find Viktoria - or whatever was left of her. For that, he’d need directions, a reference point, whatever help she could give him. This rift was one of the calmer ones, smooth around the edges and narrowing. He couldn’t say when it would close, or what might happen if the thorns reached it. Such things should be examined first - preserved if he could manage it. He stepped through the first door smoothly, wasting no time. One did not stop in a storm. And somewhere in the distance, snarling and clawed in the dark, something was hunting for him.

[tsukikoko]

The first rift held a familiar mountain scent, scarely 200m from the bunker Marchelute called home. There was the warmth of body heat, the tang of forest air and a cool breeze. Even here, the violence leeched through, though with far less intensity than the centre of the storm. Weighted footsteps. Two pairs of even breath, one with the deep rhythm of a sleeper. Yet all around, in every scent and sound and smell, even the features of the two figures, there was a muted quality. As though witnessed from beneath water, or behind a window. Indistinct features that felt as though they should be clear. But it wasn't malevolence or manipulation that affected the memory, rather it felt like subterfuge, silencing and hiding. Protecting.

As Sarkany's presence breached the edges, there was a stutter, like the briefest skip in a record. A sharp intake of breath.

The figures took a step back. Then, when forward momentum began again, each of Viktoria's steps held a little more colour, sounded just that little bit louder. A trail, scoured into the landscape by a faceless phantom, carrying the limp, pale body of her friend in an incident not all that long ago. She continued towards the bunker, but where the heavy door should have been, instead stood a laboratory door, tiny window opaque.

Two other scars emerged: one beneath the feline's footfalls, straight-edged and regular; the other in the wake of the memory of Sarkany's trailing hand, wispy and delicate. Behind the ever shifting approximation of him, the snarling ceased, the click of claws drawing silent. Something was aware. Something noticed.

An echoing roar, more force than sound, bellowed across Viktoria's mindscape, but nothing came barreling towards Sarkany's location. Rather, it stalked off, slightly misdirected.

[MP]

He stood very still, letting the presence pass. Alert then, and most definitely violent. Well he wouldn’t appreciate someone rooting about in his head either, friend or not.

“Sorry, Hkoma,” he whispered to the faceless figure, falling into step beside her. “But we all need a push now and then, hmm? Skies don’t you need it. Couldn’t even get my nose right.” He nodded at the blurred impression of himself.

Sarkany didn’t really expect an answer. The core consciousness was rarely so easy to find, especially in a jumbled mind. But it was a familiar face to talk to - an approximation of one, at least - and sometimes it roused them, if only a little. Viktoria was still here, he was sure of that now. He only had to find her in time.

He kept pace with the figures up to the bunker, tipping his head at the altered door. Interesting. And likely significant. Sarkany glanced between the two trails, a heartbeat’s debate. Then he simply followed. Later he would review these for what they could tell him, if this wasn’t enough. Only then. The trails weren’t going anywhere just now, and he would not intrude more than was strictly necessary. Light-footed, a flickering presence, he shadowed Viktoria through the door.

[tsukikoko]

The threshold of the door was a jarring shift as much in feeling as it was in location. Barren. Clinical. Far clearer and more intense than the previous memory, though lacking in any of the warmth of that mountain forest walk. The room was sparse but fairly sizeable, with whitewashed walls, overbright, humming lights and a single steel table with a tray upon it. A clipboard, pen, handheld dictaphone and knife lay atop the tray. A lone figure stood in the centre, resolute and at attention, feet together, head high. Military. A trail of liquid along the floor from the door ended at her feet.

She was younger now, devoid of her scars, a fact plain to see on her naked body, covered in the sheen of whatever liquid she had so clearly been drenched in. But it was the same Viktoria. The same gleaming emerald eyes, alert and intelligent, though they held a sharper, harder edge to them. A blade, newly forged, ready and waiting to be utilised. From the door Sarkany had entered came another; a man, tall, incredibly attractive in a synthetic manner that spoke of surgery or genetic engineering. He approached the table, took up the clipboard and dictaphone, then spoke a few words of date and time, his voice American with the strangest Russian twang when he began to speak.
"Asset V-1-K, the knife you see on the tray to your left. You will pick it up, stab yourself in the stomach with it and survive. Now."
The recollection of Viktoria moved without hesitation, reaching the table in only a couple of strides. Grasping the handle, she spun the knife so the blade pointed at her grey skin and plunged. The location matching a distinct scar she bore in present time.

The instant the blade pierced into her flesh the memory shattered, replaced by a similar but most certainly different room. Again white walls, but these ones stained with drying blood not yet cleaned. Overbright lights, but this time directed deliberately to a central point on the far wall. Where a battered, bloodied feline stood, arms unnaturally raised as though bound, a steady drip of blood leaking from between slightly parted fangs. Her head began to lift, one torn ear flickered towards some unspoken sound. As her eyes met Sarkany's the room shuddered, static distorted the images for a half second. When she reappeared in her entirety Viktoria was bound, chained by neck and limbs to the wall behind her, a metallic muzzle pressed against her snarling features. Because she was snarling, straining forward, eyes burning and defiant. A creak, the shriek of tearing metal.

The vision vanished. The room lay empty. White and devoid save for misty figures and garbled voices that may well have been ghosts for all the substance they gave. But on each wall a new door. One the same he had entered, another burnt and barely hanging on charred hinges, the third an airlock or heavy bulkhead and the last, far more faded than the rest as though to overlook it, yet clearly the most recent, an interior door to a house.

[MP]

As the green eyes locked with the gold, Sarkany's expression was perfectly blank. He stood there as the air shivered, pupils narrowed and flat as a python's stare, watching the image distort and resolve itself. All the warmth, the inner smile had gone from his face. Without it, his humanity seemed to fall away, leaving something cold and foreign in its place. He took two steps toward the vision. Stopped where it vanished. Sarkany watched the spot for a long moment.

"I remembered you afterward," he said to the air. "There by the bedside. You hardly left all that time, did you?"

The doors stared back at him, each one a condemnation. He ran dead fingers over charred wood, testing the weight of it. Nothing real. Nothing there. But there was a shadow of her in these reflections - a conscious spark.

"None of us thought to look for you until it was too late. I never thought..."

He shook his head and left the charred door. The bulkhead seemed more promising - closer to her own time. Find the dreamer. Find the damage. If he understood the thorns - how they worked, what they'd grown from - they might be that much closer.

[tsukikoko]

Nothing responded to Sarkany's statement. No words or murmurs of acknowledgement. Even the snarling presence, now eerily quiet but somehow an ever-present force moving just out of sight, did not lift it's head. Yet as his fingers left the charred wood, as Sarkany moved for the bulkhead, there was a pressure against his forehead; the barest hint of warmth, a short, flickering vision of a purring cat. Almost as soon as it appeared the vision faded, leaving Sarkany alone once again, in the silence of the white cell walls.

The bulkhead handle spun easily and what should have been a heavy metal door swung open with barely the smallest provocation. On the other side lay blackness, the void of space, stretching infinite.

When Sarkany stepped through, there was no sound, but images flared abruptly into life. Small scraps of metal floated weightless, illuminated by a silent red alarm that bathed the corridor in an eerie light. Small circular windows provided a view of the outside, where stars and planets swirled and blinked in and out of existence. Mist pooled along the floor, seeped out of the walls, dripped from the ceiling, thrumming and crackling with violence. Should Sarkany look behind himself, he would see that where a bulkhead had been there was now a foreign ramp extending from a metal tube that had pierced the side of the ship's hull like a giant hypodermic needle.

A droplet of red, though it appeared black with each beat of the alarm, shone perfectly round and floated in front of Sarkany's face. Before gently, almost serenely, colliding with a shard of metal and scattering into a thousand equally round droplets that floated along on their gentle course.

Another pass of the red alarm light.

A figure stood at the far end of the corridor, clad head to toe in a heavy spacesuit. Large, broad, wielding a giant, multi-barreled cannon in both hands. Breath misted the inside of the visor. The shredded remains of a man floated past Sarkany, mouth parted in a silent scream. Then another... and another. Until the corridor was filled, littered with body parts and mangled faces. Each one different. Each one armed and armoured.

The mist coalesced, swirled, the intensity building as it wrapped around the figure's legs, curled along their limbs as a snake might. The entire vision pulsed, the thump of a heartbeat, a beating drum that screamed DANGER. Then, from beneath where the black and red had laid along the walls and floor, traces of gold. Not as bright, intense or large as those in the main storm had been, but similar and threaded along every surface, winding their way towards the broad figure stood at the other end of the corridor. They disappeared into vents, through the hinges and edges of doors along the corridor, including one behind the armed, spacesuited vision. Another doorway to the figure's left stood open and the closer Sarkany drew to it the heavier and more explosively savage the air around him became.

[MP]

Sarkany made his way through the hallway on careful, almost delicate steps. He pushed past a drifting corpse, past the momentary warmth, tracking the threads of gold. In the silence of the memory, his voice was eerie, out of place.

“No,” he said. “It’s not. We’re your pack. It was our responsibility to protect you.”

He paused at one of the vents, peering after the thread. A glimpse, not a commitment. Then he walked on. He’d reached the armored figure, reached the door beside her. As Sarkany drew level with the lashing air, his bright shape guttered like a candle flame. There was a shuddering, tattered figure. A mess of desperate scrawls. He straightened again, continuing past to the far door. The one she guarded.

”I know,” he said with a faint chuckle, reaching out to it. “You can look after yourself, of course.”

[tsukikoko]

Sarkany's hand reached for the door, a vicious savagery simmered nearby. The snarl was low, but growing louder, more immediate. As his fingers brushed the airlock, where a blurred image on the other side of the window had been, stark, well-defined figures coalesced. The door disengaged, slid into the walls and sound returned with a sudden loud pop.

Voices. Arguing, tinged with stress and pride. One male, the other female. An occassional third, also male. Yet there were no people yet, just an empty metal room with ghostly, drifting voices and writhing golden tendrils.
"You shut your trap Errol! I am not abandoning MY SHIP." The woman materialised. Short, barely three feet tall, with overly large eyes and grey-tinged skin. But probably most striking, was the good two feet of bright pink hair, peppered with streaks of lightning blue. The tiny woman was animated, head craned up to shout at someone far taller than herself. "You're sneaky, we take 'em by surprise.. we have Tori!"
"You think they don't already know where we are?!" A man now, tall, beautiful in the same way Malthiel could be, with fine features currently contorted by indignant anger. Currently he was stooped over the woman, hands on his hips. Clearly, this was Errol. "I will not waste my Terrine on this- this- fool's errand! Darryl," The handsome man snapped his fingers a couple of times impatiently, drawing the last of the speakers into existence. Similarly tall and slim, attractive in a more rugged way, but absolutely covered in oil, sweat and grime, a large wrench rested across one shoulder. His voice drawled, thick with an accent that may have once derived from Southern America.
"Well naw... I 'ere reckon ah could overload the core on a timer, give 'em a partin' gift like, once we're well clear."
"NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!" The woman shrieked, practically punching at the air. "YOU WILL NOT DESTROY MY SHIP!"
Now, finally, Viktoria emerged. Her form materialised as she pushed away from one of the walls, her arms folded across her chest.
"I hyave id-"
"Silence Viktoria! Not now!"
Errol's voice cut over her like a razor, slicing her vocal chords silent. Instantly the tendrils awoke, wrapping around her mouth and throat. Agony flooded the room as feelings of rebellion and disagreement seeped out of her, each dragging second splitting the walls and ceiling until it threatened to break apart at the seams. Viktoria's resolve faltered and bliss flooded her veins, compelling her to listen. To obey. She remained silent. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Yet still the smallest thread of resolve remained. Beat as steady as her heartbeat. Stubborness. Protectiveness. For these people who did not see her as a friend, but was the closest she had ever come. Beneath it all an urge to fight. The desire to lose oneself in battle. The group returned to arguing, ignorant to the scarred feline in their debate. As the vision began to fade into static the humanoid turned, approaching the airlock Sarkany had entered through. There was a hiss of sliding metal, the heavy thunk of a lock engaging. The tendrils continued to pulse, but in the ensuing silence, no more could join those already around Viktoria.

Where her hand had touched a plate beside the door, presumably what had opened it, there now sat a neat opening, smooth on every side. The golden, thorned threads, still lightly pulsing, threaded their way into the hole. But they also disappeared into the darkness now enveloping the far end of the room. Twisted rivers emerging from the blackness.

[MP]

Sarkany watched it all in folded-arm silence, a shadow at the feline’s shoulder. His eyes tracked the muzzling tendrils, cold and speculative. From the shadows to the panel and back again. The corner of his mouth turned down slightly, whether from disapproval or deliberation, it was impossible to say. He made a low hmm in his throat and followed the feline out to the earlier hall. Later, with Viktoria’s help, they could work on the tendrils. Alone in the here and now, he might as well snap at the wind.

The storm kicked up again as he neared the left hall door, rising like a serpent on its coils to meet him. Again his shifting figure flinched as he approached. Again the subtle tremor. But Sarkany was braced for it this time, and this time there was no break in his stride. If he were to guess, the core of Viktoria would be fighting this - would be at the heart of the struggle. He only needed to find it. Setting his shoulder as if to a gale, he pushed forward into the storm.

[tsukikoko]

The storm raged; hot, dangerous, wild and without relent or remorse. There seemed no end. No break in the raging torrent so violent and familiar. Because, though untamed and deadly as a rampaging fire, each blazing flame, every facet of the roiling force, held a piece of Viktoria. She and it were as intertwined as blood through the veins of a living animal, or waves to the shoreline. She had the potential for unchecked death and destruction, always, and could not deny it.

From within the turbulence of crimson and darkness came images, sounds, scents, even taste. Rapid and as violently unhinged as the storm itself: the metallic tang of blood; the rank stench of fear; a car door ripped from its hinges, sent hurtling through the air; sirens; gunshots; burnt flesh; a whirring of chainsaws as the vision of Viktoria locked in combat materialised, her monoknife a glowing flash as she battled the man who wielded the source of the high-pitched whirring. She wore the same spacesuit from the prior room, only now missing the helmet, torn open front to back and stained with her own blood. By all rights she should be collapsed, near dead, but the rage held her aloft, sparking nerves delivering messages of pain had been smothered. There was only the drive to fight, maim, destroy the enemy before her. A different man, features indistinct, gun in hand, screaming it abject terror. Enemy. The oil and grime-covered Darryl from before, wrench in hand, having just struck the scarred feline on the back of her head. His chest blossomed into streaks of red from her claws. His body crumpled. A puppet without strings. Enemy. Stenson, Aaron and Cassius, battling desperately to force a vial of liquid into her mouth as the world swayed and pitched. Betrayal. The gargoyle's arm wrenched open by her knife, Aaron's throat nearly in her jaws. ENEMY

The chainsaw-wielder returned, weapons destroyed, carved near in half by a blade. He struggled on his back for a half second, before shark teeth found his throat and tore straight through. Her head wrenched back, spraying red. In the arc of blood came a tear, stark white against the bubbling, boiling rage. Others appeared not long after, some only for a second.

A snarl in the storm. Not a memory, more present, the sound echoing in strange directions. Two black orbs. Eyes. Predatory and devoid of reason. A feral approximation of scarred feline, all snapping teeth and wicked claws, muscles bulging. The crackle of static, her posture changed. Straight-backed, gait steady, almost robotic, single-minded and determined. Unfeeling. Two sides of the same coin. The savage and the military trained. Both killers. Both speared by golden thorns, dragging the remnants of chains. Her head swivelled, the black eyes returned.

She charged for Sarkany.

[MP]

For all the battering fury and bloodstained glimpses of his surroundings, it was impossible for Sarkany to miss this new, familiar figure. He’d seen flashes of it in her eyes before, felt its threat in the air, recognized it. Now it stood before him entire, and he on its own ground. He sprang back at once, twisting clear of its first charge with a catlike desperation.

“Fsate, Hkoma, we’ve done this already,” he snapped, retreating before it. The storm winds bit at his flickering shape. “Teeth in the neck, knife in the back, it’s covered. You need to pull yourself together and meet me halfway here, or we’re both finished.”

It wasn’t idle talk. His powers might be borrowed, but the price was all his own. Sarkany was here, body and mind entire, and these projections were a very real threat. An attack could kill him outright, if the storms didn’t take him first. There would be no body left. Not even a soul. He faded back from the soldier, a fox before a hound. He could not retaliate, could not defend himself - not when every feature of this place was a facet of her.

“I mean, really now,” he said, hands raised in false surrender. The fingers of the dead hand curled over themselves like a spider’s husk. “There’s not much left to maul.”

A peripheral flicker. The flash of a passing tear. He saw his chance, and he took it. Sarkany leaped for the doorway, darting through in the very moment it closed. Perhaps it didn’t matter. It was her mind, after all, that part of her always present. She might simply follow him through. Sarkany emerged on the other side prepared for it, light on his feet and alert for pursuing claws.

[tsukikoko]

At his words, there wasn't even the faintest flicker of recognition from the horrifying vision of Viktoria that thrust a clawed hand into the floor to pivot sharply and come back around when Sarkany dodged her charge. Her maw had clacked together over empty air on that first pass, but the force had most certainly been bone shattering. There was no question her attack had not been to subdue him, but to kill him then and there. Her stride did not falter as his hands raised and had Sarkany not chosen to leap through another tear, she would have fallen upon him the next instant.

A bellow of frustration and fury followed him, echoing through the darkness of the house he would soon find himself in. A house currently in ruin. Books, furniture and other pariphenalia stewn about in the wake of the fight currently still taking place. Aaron, caught up in a brawl with the scarred feline, a glint of moonlight shining off the armour she wore. Her grip released on the man's chest, only to slam forcefully into his throat and lift him from the floor as she stood up. The feline roared, smashed him into a bookcase, a ruined sofa, even the ceiling, before she then sent Aaron on a one-way trip towards the nearby window with a violent swing of her arm.

Sarkany had been right to be alert. No sooner had the agent's body collided with the glass, a vision of destruction came hurtling through the shards, mouth agape and fangs bared. Unlike the recollection that had been fighting with Aaron, to the flickering form of Sarkany, this was was very, very real. With a crack of rolling thunder and roaring fire she lunged for him, intent to shred the seraph limb from limb, until nothing but scraps and ash remained.

Yet, whatever the seraph had been planning to save himself, he would soon find the floor beneath him open up. A yawning abyss of nothingness, there one moment to snatch him, gone the next as the murderous humanoid sailed over where his head should have been. A scrabbling of limbs, the scraping of claws through resistance as Sarkany's inconsistent form fell. Then a shriek of nails down a blackboard. Or rather, against a hard, glass-like surface. The pursuit ceased, the roiling, burning weight receded, kept at bay.

The vision Sarkany would find himself deposited was vastly different. Small, cosy even. A well lived-in room covered in books, old wrappers and a single pistol on a nearby table - though certainly not like any pistol found in Wathais, or anywhere from that time should he think on it. Viktoria sat on a beaten up leather sofa, a book in one hand, cheek leant against her other. An older man, face perhaps once attractive but now a touch diminished; weathered by hard living, age and no small amount of worry. Outside, the universe pulsed with a sickly red light, planets and stars bleeding and sparking. But there, in that small, untidy room, all was calm. The scarred feline looked up from her book to glance across at the sleeping figure, translucent features cracking into a smile and an eye roll. The older gentleman stirred briefly then, as though only now becoming aware of another's presence. His eyes cracked open, focused on Viktoria, before he sat bolt upright with a slight floundering of limbs and the uncoordination of one still not fully awake.
"Vikky! By the de- when in blue blazes did you get here? You know you aren't supposed to sneak up on me." The man's voice was deep and gruff, the sound of a long-time smoker. He shook his head, placing the palm of one hand against his eye to rub the sleep away.
"Did not sneak." Viktoria told him as she rose to her feet, "You arrre just not notice. I make enough noise."
"Yeah well, Vikky, your idea of noise and the rest of the world's idea of making noise are two different things."
The feline rolled her eyes again, one ear flickering backwards. Another loud thump, strong enough to shake the foundations. The slightest sound of cracking glass. The two visions continued to take no notice.
"You hyave eat? Vhisky iz not cyount."

Whatever the man might have said in response was smothered by yet another deafening bang from all directions. Then another. The pace quickening, each collision coming harder and faster until the vehemence began to seep through the cracking of whatever force had kept it at bay until now. A snarling undercurrent joined each thump. The vision of Viktoria moved away, laid her book on a nearby coffee table, completely unaware. But both book and the doorway she was about to go through glowed, each a near blinding light. Still the barrage continued. There wasn't much time.

[MP]

The figure’s light seemed uncertain as it dropped into the closed space. It flickered like an old lightbulb as Sarkany took in his surroundings. He stood poised and listening in the quiet. A pounding heartbeat. A second. But the barrier held for the moment. He let out a low breath and straightened from nightstance, the movement slightly stiff.

His first thought was to look for an exit. The soldier couldn’t follow him through the glass it seemed - he supposed that was the only help Viktoria could give him - and he meant to use the time to put distance between them and hope it would lose the scent. He did spare a moment to watch the scene, a faint smile for the fondness he saw there, but there was no time to waste. He checked the barrier walls, the doorways of the phantom home, testing their solidity. When Viktoria rose and the two memories shone to life, he fell into step in an instant and followed her through the door.

[tsukikoko]

The white walled room again. Lights so bright they scorch the retinas like miniature suns. Every surface splattered with blood. Old stains overlain with new, bright crimson fluid. Viktoria was here still. The memory construction of her was more solid, more present than those that had gone before, her features more easily defined. Still confined within these walls.

Yet she had freed herself from the chains. They snaked at her feet and hung from her wrists. Limp and broken, but still very much attached. In her hand, the upper half of a lightly armoured woman, the legs across the far side of the room, a smear of blood marking their trajectory. There were other bodies too; a couple clad in lab coats, the other three dressed similarly to the corpse in the feline's grip. Viktoria remained stood, lightly panting, her own blood oozing from a number of bullet holes torn into her flesh. Slowly, her head turned, looking at the body, before she tossed it aside with a baring of her teeth behind the metal of the muzzle.
"I did not vant zis."
Her voice seemed too loud in the silence, despite how she had said the words beneath her breath and muffled. As she took a step, Viktoria's eyes moved to a door nearby, then to her chains, the ceiling, the walls. Assessing. After a long moment her closed fist smacked lightly against the wall beside her, the one show of frustration the feline would give about her situation, before she returned to her tactical evaluation. Her gaze always returning to that door, wondering when it would next open. Not that her original memory would have included shimmering edges to that door, indicating another tear.

Only, the way was blocked. By the large, beautiful thorny tendrils this time, interlocking themselves, barring the way. They recognised the danger now, the threat this interloper could pose; how his presence had ellicited the most intense reaction from the host they resided within for a long time. While too slow and methodical to damage him as the storm or feline could, they only needed to hold him here or force him back, bide their time until the scarred embodient of violence found him again.

[MP]

Sarkany looked at the bodies. Looked with Viktoria at the closed door and the shining thorns that held it there. Despite his predicament, despite the soldier surely behind him, he only stood there. His shoulders sagged as if weighted down.

"Almost," he said softly. The fingers of the dead hand reached out, tracing, not quite touching the thorns. She'd broken the chains. She'd almost made it. But in the end, a lock was a lock, and the soldiers would come again and again until they dragged her down. He looked to Viktoria, his eyes hawk-like and savage in their sympathy.

“There are no soldiers this time,” he said. “No agents.”

The lines of his face were drawn and pale through the room’s glare, his jaw subtly clenched. He spoke to the memory, to the air around him.

“Are you listening, Hkoma? You’re almost there. I can help you this time. The lock, the thorns - we can work with this.”

He watched the thorns, still not touching them.

“I need you to focus, if you can. Wake up, come out, however it is you see it. One more try, Hkoma. I can make it easier, but I can’t do it for you.”

The seconds ticking. The scrape of distant claws. Sarkany tipped his head to listen.

“Do me a favor - before she rips my face off, hmm?”