“I do not think they are coming…”
The three Decaylings had been waiting for a while now. They were supposed to have been picked up by their bosses about two hours ago, but there they were, still waiting like fools.
“Nope, doesn’t seem like it.”
“I hope they do come, I cannot stand these voices any more!”
Out of the three of them, Litvir was suffering the most. His mind had been bombarded with chittering voices, all of them screaming at him to join them. Normally, the voices would be somewhat easy to ignore, but Litvir’s telepathic and empathic abilities were making a bad situation worse.
“Is there anything we can do to help you?” Retvik asked. He and Arkadin had been hearing the voices too, but they were far more adept at ignoring and deflecting them.
“No! There is nothing you can do! They will not shut up! I just… I cannot stand it!”
It was clear that Litvir was struggling. Arkadin got up and sat down next to Litvir, holding his hand in the hopes that physical contact would help at least distract the shadowy Decayling a little. To his surprise though, as soon as he touched Litvir’s hand, Litvir jumped up, reacting quite violently.
“NO! No touching!”
Arkadin immediately moved away. “I thought maybe the contact would-”
“It is all touching me!” Litvir began to panic. Clearly some of the voices had wormed in deeper into his mind. As fear set in, Litvir attempted to claw at himself, forgetting that he was wearing a force field device around himself “I do not want to! But they want me to! I just-”
Before Litvir could do anything else, he slumped to the ground, unconscious, a bruise forming on his cheek. Retvik tutted, not enjoying what he had just done. At least his blow had been swift and somewhat painless.
“Oh. Good call…” Arkadin muttered. “Was definitely worried he’d try and take off his suit.”
“That is why I knocked him out…” Retvik grunted. “We need to get out of here though. They are clearly not coming for us.”
Arkadin glanced down at Litvir, then back at Retvik. “While carrying him? And surely we ought to stay here? That’s where they’ll expect to find us!”
“We are wearing the extraction beacons, surely they will find us wherever we are in this Light-forsaken corpse hole. Getting out of here, at least to the surface of this lump, is our best bet.”
The littlest Decayling tutted, then pulled out a map. “Alright, alright. Let me just orientate us. Make sure we’re going in the right direction…”
“I assume up?”
“Yes, up. At an angle. Gonna have to burn our way out though. And it’s gonna be tiring.”
Retvik frowned as he stared at the wall ahead of him. The walls of flesh seemed to almost anticipate what Retvik was about to do to them. With a sigh, Retvik began to concentrate as heat rose across his body. He focused on the ceiling above him, watching as the muscles and pus swiftly boiled away.
“How long is it going to take you to burn out our exit?”
“A while. Do you need help carrying Litvir?”
Arkadin grunted as he awkwardly threw Litvir’s arms over his shoulders. Admittedly, he was more dragging Litvir than carrying him. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just get going… I don’t want to be stuck here any longer…”