Prologue 4: Anywhere But Here

	Empty. All of it.

	The city, the terminal, all of it was empty. Scattered, messy and desolate, there was little movement throughout a city that would have once been almost deafeningly abuzz mere days ago. At the peak of Euleisat, a launching point for hundreds of thousands of vessels every day and the main terminal through which the evacuations were occurring, was Candor.

	Their pack dangled from their fingers, their eyes practically glazed over as they examined the smooth, barren halls. Extempore checkpoints had been raised to help control the flow of evacuees, but they now laid completely vacant, the only noise being the chilly, thin air whistling through the open-structured terminal and Candor’s footsteps echoing forlornly off the cold, smooth metal and glass.

	“Hey, buddy,” called a voice. Candor whipped around, hand reaching briefly for a weapon they didn’t actually have to hand at the moment. They met eyes with a tall creature in full combat plate, a Hyvenkh wielding Oracle colors. They cleared their throat, their stance softening as they awkwardly strode over, laying their pack on the ground and stuffing their hands into their pockets.

	“Uh… hey. Were you late too?” they asked.

	“Yup. They shut down Omni too, ain’t that fun.” she grimly intoned, a pair of bright blue eyes behind her visor in a somber expression.

	“Wh—they did? When?” Oh no, they thought. That’s not good.

	“Probably when the last people stumbled on-board the ark. Didn’t you get the memo? C’mon, that was like hours ago. Only reason I was so slow was ‘cuz I was otherwise occupied. Of-fucking-course.”

	“I— was indisposed, let’s say.” Candor held up a finger, taking a moment to rifle through their Oracle messages, and sure enough, in bold text and marked ‘URGENT’ was the warning that signaled the last round of evacuations. It warned that all Void-based transmissions would conclude at the terminus of the evacuation in approximately… thirty minutes ago, from current time. Candor’s expression fell sour, and the woman across from them laughed, pushing herself off the wall.

	“Yup. Guessing you saw it, huh?”

	“Mhm. Lovely situation we’ve found ourselves in, miss…?”

	“Akhena, thank you. Oracle commander. Well, Oracle doesn’t exist in this galaxy anymore I guess, so now I’m just some idiot lugging around some purple plate armor,” she shrugged, sauntering past them with a little shove. “You got a ship, pal?”

	“I… do, but it was a Void ship, like pretty much everyone’s. Doubt it works now… Are we just stranded now?”

	“Unless we find a warp ship, yup. Right on the money. Probably didn’t want to leave anything behind that would allow the Argent to follow them. Smart, but pretty brutal,” she spoke. There was a tone of reverence for the decision; she clearly appreciated their pragmatic brutality. Candor understood it, on some level, but understanding and acceptance were worlds apart.

	The two of them meandered out onto one of the terminal’s balconies, a contemplative silence having manifested but for a moment. The peak of the tower overlooked the entire city, which stretched for some miles away. The air was thin and cold, and the wind was buffeting as it ever was on Kasunn, even if the sun did grace the city, peeking between two moons, on this rare summer day.

	“No clue how, but I bet we can find a warp ship somewhere. It’s a big city, right? Maybe some paranoid weirdo had one because they didn’t like the ol’ government tracking ‘em, or maybe there’s a factory somewhere in that… metal jungle a mile or two off that churns ‘em out,” she mused, motioning broadly to the evident, and more angular and harsh, industrial sector across from the terminal.

	“It might take a while, but what’s our alternative?” asked Candor. “Just settling down here?

	“Not a great alternative, no. The Argent will be all over this place in a day or two, probably, if they’re not already bee-lining for it now. They’re probably eager to pick at the corpse as it were, catch any little stragglers like us that had the misfortune of being a little too slow. So, y’know, no time to waste.” She once again shoved off of the railing, and started a brisk pace; Candor was short behind her.

	…

	As night fell, and the air only grew colder, they had spent hours navigating the winding and twisting corridors of the city, made more difficult by the lack of normally accessible maps. The place was quite a maze; accounting for Omniscience and the elaborate maps most had direct access to, the city could be laid bare as tightly engineered and well planned, but without such maps, it was a confusing mess. Still, they’d managed to make it down the mountain that was the Vezkha terminal, and had stopped at several other landing pads in search of warp-capable ships to no avail.

	Although the two tried to make conversation, it had grown somewhat difficult. For Akhena, the truth of matters was beginning to settle upon her, and she didn’t seem pleased about it; Candor fared better, if only just, managing to push it out of their mind to get things done. With one mentally preoccupied and the other focused ahead, the majority of the night was spent in awkward, tense silence broken only by utilitarian communication and dead-on-arrival attempts at levity.

	The two approached one of the landing points in the center of the city, just as the cobalt-blue moon of Vux crowned between the turbulent clouds, so close that the webbing of lights that sprawled its surface could be seen. The knowledge that those brightly lit colonies laid empty and abandoned seemed to unsettle Akhena deeply, a concern she voiced:

	“God, that’s creepy. Y’know, it looks no different, with or without anyone up there.”

	“I wouldn’t know,” Candor replied, “Didn’t live around here.”

	“Where’d you come from, huh? You look like the city type.”

	“Say’rn.”

	The response elicited an incredulous laugh from Akhena, “What, that shithole? Why? Nobody who can get outta’ there chooses to live there. Seems like all the trash just kinda’ filters down there. Maybe the blue eye didn’t like to look at it or something.”

	Candor chuckled, rolling their eyes. “Yeah, maybe. But it’s convenient. Let’s just say it was close to my work.”

	The two stepped foot into the terminal; this one much smaller, though still rather large. The open interior consisted of all sorts of shops, dotted with neon signs vying for the attention of people that no longer existed towards products that had surely been swept off the shelves on their overseer’s way to be evacuated. Most of the shops had closed down several days in advance, when the evacuations were already underway and expected to spread to Euleisat. A miniature park took up the center of the plaza, one of the many nature displays of which Vigil architects were fond, with willowy, glowing trees and even little fireflies contained therein, all offering dim mood lighting that seemed more ominous than calming in the chilly dead of night.

	“Hey! There's a Manari ship in there," Candor called out, peering down into one of the docking bays.

	As the two began hurrying towards one of the docking facilities that circled the outside of the plaza, they both came to a halt as they heard the brushing of leaves behind them. Candor turned around quickly, scanning for the source of the noise as they reached into their bag for their pistol. Akhena was more than on edge as well, but with no weapon, seemed keen to just square up with the source of the noise. Plate armor’s tough, she could take a couple rounds, right?

	“Who’s there?” called out Akhena.

	A lurching, dark form emerged from the trees, a terrifying white, zig-zagging line drooling with toxic glowing drool marking its face. Its pair of solid, blaring white eyes like floodlights locked with theirs, ivory-tipped claws flexing. A Somnolent Maw, snarling uncharacteristically and keeping a distance from them. Candor slipped their pistol out of their bag and let it slide off their shoulder, using both hands to take aim.

	“What the hell… what’s a maw doin’ all the way in here?”

	“I don’t—”

	“Rhetorical question, buddy.” Akhena slammed her fist into her palm, taking an aggressive stance and trying her best to make herself seem big, a tactic that she usually found to work against wild animals. The Somnolent creature lurched forward briefly, slipping down onto its hands and craning its head at them. However, after a tense moment, the Maw began to back away… before a buzz of autocannon fire reduced it to a white and mottled black splatter.

	“What the hell?!” the two of them seemed to call out in unison, both recoiling back against one of the walls of the terminal. A moment passed spent frozen, before Candor began inching towards the docking bay, and Akhena followed behind them.

	The bay was a massive ring around the outside of the terminal’s plaza, with reinforced windows looking out over the city. The two of them balked at thousands of little white glimmers spanning it, witnessing swarming Maws just below the terminal at the city’s ground level maintenance channels. The silence of the night was broken with mournful screeching and alien Somnolent calls, a frenzy of movement overtaking the city as the baleful silvers and shimmering dawns of an Argent fleet descended upon it, arriving fashionably early.

	“What… the fuck.” Akhena gawked; just moments ago, things seemed so calm. Candor managed to snap her out of it, maintaining that laser-focus they’d held throughout this journey, motioning her towards the dropship they’d spotted. Akhena skidded to a halt near the ship and Candor halted by its cockpit, going to work on trying to pry it open. A holographic interface spread over the outer windshield of the vehicle; breaking into vehicles was a relatively common part of their work, after all.

	As furious, confused Somnolent sought refuge in the docking bay and other buildings, the room had begun to overflow with hulking black forms in shifting, confusing crowds, not helped by the poor lighting. Akhena tried to keep them away from the vessel with her previous gambit of 'act big', but slowly they began to converge on the pair.

	"Any day now?!" Akhena called out, her back pressed flush to the vehicle by the snarling, unstable creatures. Most of them paid no mind to the group, but what did pose an issue were the hails of autocannon fire and even missiles striking their, and nearby buildings that threatened to frenzy them. Within minutes, the landscape of the city had transformed from a shining capital to a beleaguered warzone underneath the might of the Argent fleet.

	"I am going as fast as I—" Candor was cut off as a missile struck the bay directly; the waves of Somnolent bowed away from the point of impact, and the doors before them were blown open. Candor had quickly sought cover beneath the vessel to some success, but having been standing rather tall and facing away from the door, shrapnel had caught Akhena and done rather significant damage to her armor. She snarled in pain, managing to remain standing even with the force of the explosion, but she was soon slinking back towards Candor.

	"Fuck's sake! Nearly tore my arm off!"

	"It's just a… erh, yikes, nevermind. You Hyvenkh are tough. Let me just—" Candor began digging into their bag; lucky the sturdy commander had been paired with a field medic of sorts. Rifling through a rudimentary—but functional—field medicine kit, they withdrew a salve and hastily applied it to Akhena's lacerations, the solution hardening over the wounds and sealing them. With the quick application of a makeshift splint to hold the broken arm in place, Akhena was about as good as she was going to get with the tools at hand.

	"Ugh... primitive, but it'll do! Get back to working on the ship, I'll be fine!"

	Candor sighed, dragging themselves to their feet on the ship. With time growing ever shorter, they took a more brute-force approach; their hands surged with crackling electricity, rippling across the cockpit of the small passenger dropship and causing it to pop open with a hiss of decompression… just as another mortar impacted further down the bay, rattling the room. "Got it! Are you a good pilot, Akhena!? Because I'm not!"

	"I'll do my fucking best! Good thing you can pilot these fuckers with your brain!" With that, Candor vaulted into the passenger seat and Akhena shortly joined them in the pilot's seat, pulling down the glass cockpit cover, connecting with the vessel and putting the pedal to the metal, so to speak. The barriers had been blown out of their way, allowing their newly commandeered escape-ship to zip out into the city.

	"You can't just go straight up there, they'll see us! I can see transit tunnels—try to get around those ships!" Candor cautioned.

	"Aye aye!" Akhena replied.

	Buzzes of autocannon fire wiped out crowds of maws, but there were more of them swarming below than either had ever heard of being in one place. Akhena proving a skilled but daring pilot, pulling off feats that would have been impossible without Candor’s assistance, even as they devolved into fits of terrified cackling. Their little dropship zipped between buildings and through transit tunnels intended for slow, plodding vessels.

	Akhena’s expression was grimly serious and unflinching as she maneuvered the vessel. It ground its metal exterior against the side of a tunnel as it slid out of it and into the outskirts of the city, rocketing straight upwards towards the night sky as the Argent reclamation occurred behind them.

	And the situation only became worse. The massive black diamond in the distance, the Citadel of Slumber, the center of the Somnolent hivemind that seemed to loom ominously over the western horizon of the city at all times of year, retaliated. Mortars of immense white energy spewed from it, a flurry of energy colliding with the Argent ships and hurtling past their vessel. The spearhead of the reclamation fleet, a sub-dreadnought of sorts, took the brunt of it, and its burning, smoldering debris filled the sky in a blaze that lit up the entire city, small meteors of shredded steel hurtling into its every corner while the bulk of the ship crumbled on its course for the center.

	Dodging debris, using the conflict as cover, and hurtling out of the atmosphere, their ship finally vanished in a streak of red light towards their destination: anywhere but here.