“Damn, Retty’s having fun!” Elksia beamed as a torrent of fire exploded from a nearby hallway. “Ain’t seen him enjoying combat so much in a looooong time! Not since our DBA days!”
“See, I used to watch those old exhibition matches from a tiny screen in the cave I spent years hiding in, and, thinking back, it kinda disturbs me now that Retvik would pick Arkay up and throw him at people, considering Arkay was the god of death…” Akah sighed to himself. That hallway had been sealed off with a wall of ice and Retvik’s inferno meant Akah needed to redo not just that hallway but several other nearby hallways. The walls of ice meant that the Voidborn enemy wouldn’t be able to flank the team of Phantai soldiers currently killing everyone on board.
Elksia shrugged, briefly vanished but then came back. “Sorry, had to fix some threads. But yeah, uh, like, Dessaron Arkay was a fully fledged mortal being. Death god put himself in a coma to make a new body for himself and essentially be as mortal as you and I… uh, as we used to be.”
Another fiery explosion just undid the effort Akah had put into sealing off the hallway. Akah would have been more annoyed, but he did secretly like doing these patrol missions. He got to put his abilities to a good and tactical use, he got to prove he wasn’t a Voidborn by murdering Voidborns and he was always paired up with Elksia, who was always full of energy, crazy stories and answers to many questions Akah had secretly had over the years. After all, Elksia was one of the Dessaron, one of the four heroes of modern times, who had slapped down a time god. Sure, people later found out that one of the Dessaron (ironically, the dead one) had been the God of Death, but most people kinda didn’t seem to care. Thanks to those four lunatics, entire races were saved from slavery and an entire new union formed between a myriad of races, making pretty much everyone’s life better.
Well, maybe not Akah’s life. He’d been on the wrong side of the War against the Whenvern. But as Elksia constantly tried to reassure him, that wasn’t Akah’s fault. And, admittedly, he did get his own freedom later on, even if that freedom was mostly Akah escaping into neutral territories after years on the run.
A third burst of flames was making Akah worried. He needed to keep these passages sealed so they couldn’t be jumped. But since Retvik was clearly keeping the Voidborns down that hallway busy, maybe Akah didn’t need to reseal it.
“Can I ask a new question, Elksia?”
“Sure!”
“Why does Retvik not use a traditional gunstaff? I know he has one, I have seen that massive, gold, ornate one Retvik keeps sealed up on our ship. But now he uses a sword and shield and seems to have a summoned weapon as well that isn’t a gunstaff.”
Elksia paused. “I mean, who said summoned weapons had to be specific? What’s yours?”
Akah tutted. “A shield made of hardened ice, of course.”
“Can I see it?”
Akah put his own weapons down to one side, then waved his left arm. As he did so, a glistening crystalline shield formed, nearly as tall as Akah himself was. Akah then glanced down a nearby hallway, looking for a target. He quickly found one, a Voidborn that thought it was trying to be sneaky, and lobbed the ice shield in its direction. The shield exploded mid-flight and turned into a wave of icy spears, all of which skewered the unlucky Voidborn, who had expected to have been hit with a single, solid object.
Elksia put her hands on her hips. “That’s neat!”
“Do you have a summoned weapon?”
“Nah!” Elksia chirped. “Honestly kinda just seems to be a thing the Phantai have, and that more… elemental folks have. Like, you and Teekay have summoned weapons but Tahvra and Tenuk don’t.”
“Still, I find it weird that Retvik doesn’t-” Akah paused. The room was suddenly very, very hot.
“I do not what?” Retvik asked.
“Uh…” Akah couldn’t help but feel nervous in Retvik’s presence. He wasn’t scared of many things, heck, most of the Phantai didn’t bother him, but Akah was definitely slightly scared of the colossal, shimmering, red and gold Rethavok standing before him. “I was just wondering why you do not use that ornate golden gunstaff of yours. Since you are a Rethan and it IS a Rethan’s normal weapon of choice.”
Retvik didn’t seem annoyed at all. “A fair question. But that gunstaff is simply too nice to waste on a bunch of errant Voidborns like this. Akah, may I ask a favour of you?”
“Uh, sure?”
“I need to… be a little more discreet. Can you seal up the path behind me?”
Akah nodded. “I can, but you might have to stop all the giant fire explosions because they keep on melting my walls of ice. As fire tends to do.”
Retvik nodded back. “Understandable. I will try not to be too destructive.” He then turned to Elksia and patted her on the shoulder. “Keep up the good work, dear.”
Elksia grinned. “To be fair, I ain’t had to alter any threads for you yet.”
“Still…” Retvik trailed off, glanced down the main corridor where most of the Phantai were fighting, then tutted. “I must go.”
“Be quick!”
“I will.”
Retvik sighed, then made his way down a separate corridor, disappearing from view. In all honesty, Retvik wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, but since the Voidborns he had stumbled across seemed more defensive than the others, that had to be a good sign.
This particularly dark hallway opened up into what Retvik assumed was a navigation room. Voidborn ships made almost no sense, and consisted of all sorts of criss-crossing hallways. And because the ships themselves were generally just floating pyramids, cubes or spheres, that meant that important rooms like engine bays, navigation rooms and cockpits could have been pretty much anywhere. Retvik considered himself lucky that he had accidentally found this room.
There were three Voidborns, two of whom hadn’t noticed Retvik, one which had. After a quick flash of flame, there were now only two Voidborns, and, somehow, they still hadn’t noticed Retvik. That was fine. Retvik didn’t need them dead yet.
Instead, Retvik opened up a small pouch on his belt and pulled out four items. The first was his communicator, which had a camera on it. The other three items though were all data-siphon sticks. Back in the old Thantir territories, any Voidborn ships they’d found had been mostly abandoned, but Galyn had regularly instructed his underlings to install these data-siphon sticks on said abandoned ships, mostly as trackers but also as secondary radar positions, to detect other, nearby Voidborn ships. Retvik was certain that the Phantai planned to blow up this ship once everyone was dead, but if he could install these three sticks, there was a small chance Retvik could get SOME information from them.
Much to Retvik’s annoyance though, as he inspected the consoles around him, being careful not to trigger the two oblivious Voidborns (did they even know their ship was under attack?), there didn’t seem to be any access points what so ever. Retvik did find some sort of port on the underside of the navigation table, but none of the data sticks fit, even with the handful of (apparently) omniversal adapters Retvik had on him. He shoved one data stick into the port anyway, mostly out of annoyance, then stepped back and started taking pictures of everything, most importantly the large map on the navigation table.
Really, all of this was completely foreign to Retvik. He couldn’t read the Voidborn language, but the whole reason why Retvik had volunteered for what was apparently a routine patrol mission was because he wanted information. Retvik was mostly just unaware that the Phantai seemed to have a different definition of the word ‘patrol’, and patrols almost always ended with the boarding and blowing up of any Voidborn ships they came across. To the point that they would specifically find and destroy a Voidborn ship, should they not find one while on patrol.
The pictures would come in useful though. At the very least, with a copy of a Voidborn map, Retvik could compare this to what the Thantir already knew. Unfortunately, before Retvik could grab any more data, someone decided to shout down the hallway behind him, immediately alerting the two previously oblivious Voidborn drones. They both got up from their seats and span around, weapons drawn, but Retvik calmly tucked his camera away and quickly incinerated them. He also accidentally incinerated the consoles they had been working at too.
“FLAMEBEARER?”
Retvik took a deep breath, then turned around. Standing behind him was Lightblade, one of the three leaders of the Phantai.
“Flamebearer, little one, I have been looking for you! Where have you been?”
Retvik gestured at the frazzled remains of the three Voidborns. “I got carried away. And lost. These ships make no sense.”
Lightblade slapped Retvik across the back. “Hah! Apparently so! Understandable though, coming from such a ferocious elemental warrior like yourself! The battle is over and my soldiers are currently planting explosives to blow up this ship. I did not wish for you to get caught up in the process. I mean, being a powerful Flame, you would probably be fine, but still.”
“I, uh, appreciate the concern…” Retvik muttered, vaguely annoyed that he could no longer get any more information. “Would you mind taking me to the exit? I am, after all, a tad lost.”
Lightblade threw his arm over Retvik’s shoulder and led him away. “No worries, darling! Maybe we can discuss something more… fun along the way?”
Retvik rolled his eyes. “Phos, I have told you repeatedly, I am not interested, Litvir is not interested and Elkay almost certainly is not interested as he has a partner already.”
Lightblade shrugged, not at all undeterred. “That is fine. Still, we can talk about more than just the slaughter of Voidborns, yes?”
“I guess…” Retvik sighed, knowing he was about to spend five minutes having his earholes talked off.