...Saria was wedged into a small crevice on the side of the cave, her spear was lying heavy in her right hand, folded in to the size of a large knife or short sword...
After the bar they decided to go hunting, to cool off her temper and bring her onto other thoughts than work...
Breath in...
Breath out...
A faint whispering was heard as a line of massive golden eyes with royal blue irises passed by the cave entrance, embedded in skyblue scales the eyes emitted a faint light into the cave until all of them eventually passed...
She stayed in the crevice, Yrdavian Skygazers were horrid but beautiful beasts, they had a long snake-like body, lined with two opposing lines of eyes along both sides of the body which was covered in skyblue scales...
Should even only one of the eyes detect traces of life the beast would try to turn that life inside out with it´s psychic powers, the massive tail of the beast was thick and was usually floatiing upwards into the air, like the tail of a skorpion and from it´s end the beast could fire a massive torrent of psionic destruction which was originally used as siege weapon, six pairs of insect-like legs were carrying the beast across the terrain and through mountains, strong enough to pierce spaceship armor of lower tier civilizations and the skullplates were about two metres thick and coated by even harder scales...
Breath in...
Breath out...
"It has passed and now moves to the engagement point, it will arrive there in approximately 2.5 minutes..." Reias voice came through the comms, she was sitting on one of the peaks with a high-yield hunting fusion-rifle, no military model, as it would vaporize the beast where it stood which would miss the point of "hunting". The beast had been forged by a race long extinct, in a war so long forgotten that it has been lost in the archives after the 'Fractality' it was a total of 250 metres long...
Breath in...
Breath out...
She jumped out of the crevice and started running towards the entrance, a blurry light from the foggy sky threw light upon the steep mountains, she jumped to the other side of the ravine, and started climbing up to the peak of the mountain, tiny pebbles loosening below her feet, falling into a seemingly infinitely deep chasm...
Breath in...
Breath out...
The beast had lost 17 of it´s 20 eyes on the right side already, the hunt was almost at it´s ending... "Engaging."
Three thin traces of light fired through the fog from the opposing side of the valley, with a disguisting sound of exploding boiled meat the remaining three eyes on the right side detonated, the beast let out an unwordly scream, wildly flailing with some of it´s legs, as it turned with it´s still intact side towards the direction of the attack, the blind side to her, she jumped...
Breath in...
Breath out...
A beam of concentrated psionic force fired from the beasts tail towards the mountain tip which Reia left a few moments ago, cutting the tip off clean...
Checkmate.
Her spear extended to full length, she grabbed it with both hands and readied herself for the impact, with the acceleration of someone that just jumped off a high cliff she crashed into the beast, spear first, impaling the massive skullplates followed by an explosion from the spears tip ripping a chunk of the beasts skull of of it´s body, pieces of it´s brain flying off into random directions...
The Legs of the beast gave in, the tail dropped down, it was over.
Breath in...Breath o...
"Saria! The..."
She remembered too late, with an last ditch effort the tail rose up once more and covered the area surrounding the beast in a wave of psionic destruction, before it dropped another time, this time for good...
...
Hunt finished; Rank: C; Casualties 50%; aborting simulation
...
Breath out...
Saria sighed, she really did slack her hunting training due to the work at the outpost.
"I told you." Reias voice came through the comms and she was right. Time to train some more...
...pending tasks:
-Detailed transport inventory lists
-Approximate transport shedules
-Approximate moving shedule of civilian and military personnel
-Detailed shedule of miltary asset relocation
-Detailed shed...
The list went on seemingly endlessly.
The current state of the outpost was perfectly in order, at least on the surface.
There was so much buerocracy behind each of these outpost it was ludicrous.
Ironically, would there have been an emergency, moving the entire outpost would´ve been a matter of pressing a few buttons, giving a few orders and gaining four permissions.
Though currently there seemed to be no civilization in immediate proximity that could warrant such an emergency.
Merwan sighed, there was no way around it, at least in the current state of the Ascendancy, everything had to be recorded and stashed to it´s finest details, imprinted into the storages of Archadia and then re-referenced back to it´s origin. A painstakingly boring work, but considering it would help the recovery process of millenia old wounds it was certainly worth it.
"Open inventory lists. Continue at Reference point ALZ-857-TFD3; Section TA37-TA68; paragraph..."
...
Alarian washed the sweat off his face, his training for today was finished, 8 hours total, the question is...what next? He had met Odwin in the corridors earlier, 'by mere coinicidence' as he said, though considering the size of the station and that there were in fact five of them, that was unlikley, when he heard that Merwan was heading off to train he left again.
The water turned off, he dried himself and put his clothes back on.
With the traveling regulations in action, there was nothing to do for him as of currently, no one to hunt down, nobody to challenge.
Saria was hunting and wasn´t too fond of his dueling and headhunting hobbies anyways.
Doran was busy doing his job, as he always was.
Merwan, who was for someone who spent most of his day at the desk working was a surpisingly good duelist...but had also run out of time recently.
Vulra was working on the TMD station from which most personnel has been removed due to the relocation process.
The relocation likely still take weeks due to all the buerocracy and fine tuned instruments..
Maybe he would get some time off again afterwards, then he could see if there was enough adequate mercenaries now to start his tournament of sorts...
He wandered into the corridors...
...and wandered into Odwin a few minutes later, again, what a 'suprise'...
He still didn´t find out who he actually was to this day, but he didn´t really care too much, he was the one who gave him some of his most interesting jobs so far.
O:"Hey."
A: "Hey."
They looked at each other for a while, he never dueled him either, as he never accepted.
He was about to say something but Odwin was faster...
O: "Things might get rather...interesting once the relocation is finished, you better keep up your training, I have... found a few new 'opportunities'."
Odwin turned right into another corridor and disappeared through one of the teleport gates moments after...
Alarian grinned to himself, this was all the information he needed at the current point, new targets, new entertainment. He would be looking forward to it...
Vulras eyes moved across the line sof data that made up the central processes of the station.
She was alone here.
There it was.
She started editing, it was unlike the elders to order such a questionable interference with the workings of an outpost, but there was nothing to do about that, they wanted an additional safety net after the relocation.
Something they could influence from the outside.
Something nobody would know about.
She saved the edited sequences and the continued further, it had been going like this for days, editing the central workings of a planetary station was indeed quite the process, especially for a single person, go figure.
During her 'vacation' she had been called to the assembly of elders, more than half were even there personally that time, which was even more unlikely than the interference itself.
Something must´ve peaked their interest in this world.
Or even worse, their worry.
As an agent of the Elders one had certain privileges, but also duties, leaks were inacceptable, while certain parts of the contract and basic rights prevented any personal negative repercussions, but the damage done by a mistake would be tremendous. That is why direct orders and interferences were this rare.
She pondered a while on the thoughts...
What was it that, the Elders...
She stopped for a brief moment...
The Herald and the Prophecy.
She sat there staring into the void beyond rather than at the screen...
Lyndve was right, something was off about this world, she had felt it when they came here, that now even two them were here, one even openly, was only proof to their thesis.
Something would happen in this world. Something that...
She stopped her thoughts right there.
It was nothing to think about while editing core-protocols of the station, every distraction was a potential source of danger.
Next line...
She should take a pause to clear her head soon.
