Reforging the Blade

[Heuschrecke]

The Drydock. Fafnir sat proud, despite her hull ruptures and decimated starboard engine structure. Damage dealt by Jaegerin Two. Her own escort ship marking her hull, bringing the Bustard-class and ultimately its crew to their knees. Nothing could shake the feeling of her poised at the cockpit from outside, the pain in her whimpers, fingers on the trigger as she stared them down. It didn't matter anymore. They were on the same side again. Something he didn't need to see to know.

Heimirich had been following his 'guide', as he had come to call him. There were no features he could really discern except for the lack of hair on his head and the mask he seemed to permanently wear. There was not a name he had ever been given but the fellow had taken him around as and when needed, without so much as a single word being shared in distress. He never got an answer to a question he had asked aside from the day he arrived, simply had every one of his needs taken care of. Though now he wasn't really following, his body still being in the control of whatever it was that had decided to take command of him. He felt a puppet, made to move at another's leisure, until both he and 'The Guide' stopped.

His arms and legs finally returned to him, and he rubbed his temples. A sharp, searing pain bloomed and waned almost as quickly as it had come. He looked up at the vessel, around at the fallen, at the rest of his crew who he hadn't noticed until now. Each of them were stood next to a figure he didn't know, a guide almost identical to his own. Every face he could see had the same expression of brief pain, as if each of them had awoken from a dream. As though each of them had arrived in the same way as before. Every face he could discern in the dim purple glow that seemed to have no origin, every name a whisper on his tongue. No words were shared, but each of them were as in good health as he was. The Prophet's words had rung true. They had been spared.

In silence they stood there, glancing around but not moving until a voice in his mind called out, instructing him to take up position towards the far side of the area. Heimirich noticed that everyone began to move apart and spread themselves almost equally outward, almost as if they'd all heard the same and had carried it out without question. The heavy shuffle of boots on hard flooring filled the room with an echo that deafened, each footstep overlapping into the next, before they stopped in unison. Everyone turned towards the opposite end, waiting.

First one moment, then another. Each one bled into the next, only eyes darting around. Silence. Until there wasn't. Slowly, each of them opened their mouths to speak, letting out words of some unknown language shatter the quiet. Words that none of them understood before, simply spoke them out. A shift in tone and the words began to be chanted, echoing off the walls, building in volume, overlapping with a peculiar harmony unlike anything they had heard before. Heimirich could not understand how he knew what to say and when, nor how he knew what to project. The very language was foreign to his tongue, and yet the meaning seemed to cause a shimmer of resonance within. He couldn't explain it.

Each word rolled out to accompany his crews' voices, the dull creaking of heavy plating joining into the chant. He looked up, to see the underplate above his head bend before his eyes. In the middle of the open space. barely visible in the light, something reached up and outward towards the hull. It formed what looked to be like an umbilical cord, spiralling into one of the many openings in the belly of the beast. The plates above seemed to become even more malleable, almost to the point where Heimirich thought he would be able to press his fingers into the metal and feel it mould to his fingers. He refrained from it though, more out of uncertainty than anything.

Moments stretched into minutes, into an hour, into several. Tiredness began to grip him, head sinking slowly as each word became a chore. His voice was hoarse, the echo slowed down to almost nothing while everyone stopped chanting, the walls seemingly carrying on what they had started together. Still Fafnir moved, incomplete it seemed, but there was little knowing in what was missing. From his position, Heimirich could see next to no difference to the outer hull, the dim purple glow seemed to only slightly be reflected more by her curved sides. He shook his head, blaming the change on tiredness.

With a sigh, he began to make his way back towards his cell, craving the solitary comfort he thought he had. Everyone else did the same, departing unguided to their rooms.