Breach

She must've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Scylla swam slower and looked around the sandy bottom, her tracks the only thing visibly different- well, different since she'd first seen the roof of the ocean. It was beautiful, she'd never seen anything that shimmered like it did as it slowly moved above her. Sometimes light burned from it, and she couldn't look up for a few hours, but otherwise it had stopped her in her tracks when she'd realized what it was.

She'd met new animals- fish she'd never seen before, a big one with pointed teeth that called itself a shark, and two whales who didn't have pointy teeth at all. The closer she got to the surface world, the weirder things were getting... As the coral had bloomed more and more into color, and she'd found a few whales made of a light bone on the bottom, she'd begun to feel out of her depth. There was a great deal more life around, and the higher up she'd gone, the lighter and more disjointed she'd started to become. Everything was so light, like she couldn't feel her limbs.

She'd crawled, panting, into a cave, tentacles fluttering in her wake, trying to sleep. Eventually her swim bladder had fully adjusted her internal pressure- here the water couldn't suffuse her equally from all sides, and it had gone from eight tons of force to less than two- and when she'd woken up, she'd felt better. Better still after hunting down and devouring a big Grouper.

Now she'd ended up here, closer to the ceiling then she'd ever come before. It roiled and waved above her, painfully bright. Up here light was total sometimes, and her eyes hurt. Hiding helped when the light was out, like now. Something was wrong with the horizon- behind her was ocean and water, but in front of her the ground rose like a ramp. At it's edge, something was happening to the water- it was shattering and reforming, shattering and reforming for a line miles and miles long.

She rose from the depths, higher and higher off the ground, still shielding her eyes with her arms while her tentacles pushed her up. She had to see the edge of the world better, maybe there was something around here-

Her head broke the surface.

She knew the water had felt lighter; above and around her, it looked so light that it wasn't there. Instead there was another ocean above her, with big, fluffy white rocks floating on it's surface. A moment later she hissed and regretted looking up; there was an explosion happening up there, a big fiery ball that seared her eyes with white and red spikes. That explained why the light stopped sometimes...

Her eyes and limbs flashed yellow in alarm as she looked to where the Ocean was shattering into pieces, seeing the bone towers and the tongues spread out along the sand of the Surface. Things were sitting in them, pink and brown and red things. They looked like her, but not like her. They were shouting and yelling and coughing with their mouths while smiling. The spawnlings dug holes in the sand and threw water at each other, and as she bobbed in the wake of the waves, her tentacles twitched. Surface dwellers looked alien and unnatural, they didn't even have tentacles. The sounds and the still-present light were making her keep looking around, to see everything around her at once.

Something roared by her, and she shrieked in alarm, dropping down and releasing her cloud of ink. Scylla didn't quite see what it was- a squat, growling thing with a surface worlder on it's back, shooting a trail of water behind it- but she knew a predator when she saw one. Light stroked wildly in the cloud, almost at random as she swam and scrabbled quickly away through the blue.

A fair distance away, she watched whales swim up on top of the surface, sending out sounds from their heads. She knew they were looking for something, and it might've been her. She wondered, horrified, what the people up there ate. Even speaking the same language, she hadn't thought about what she'd do to bring her own food back- only that she had to.

Scylla hugged herself and sadly watched the waves from the bottom, waiting forlornly for the dark to come so she could hunt.

Corva

It taken awhile to set this up, but after working at the pieces, they'd fallen into her lap.

When she was waitressing at the Denny's off the highway, she was Grace Holberry. It wasn't hard to get into the role- Grace was a short, skinny blonde with blue eyes who always seemed to be vaguely smiling and cheery. She did her job well, and didn't keep to herself. Making up a life wasn't hard when you had information. Information like that the escaped felon in her corner booth loved the eggs here. That hauling him in alive would net her enough money to-

Well, keep watching. Hidden in plain sight. No one suspected she wasn't who she said she was, and everyone said more than they thought they did when she refilled coffee or dropped off a check. Who was working, who was unemployed, who was drunk and who never touched the stuff. Information and gewgaws, she collected them both. Value was secondary to presentation.

Here in this Podunk town, things were boring, but from what she'd discovered, in a few months things on Earth were going to get very interesting. She'd need to move on soon, to secure a front row seat in the Kobber's shadows. The things they knew... The junk that fell like dandruff in their wake...

That was the future. As she dropped off the man's change and thanked him, she walked to the back and took her apron off. As she passed the schedules on the wall, she trailed a finger along in.

"David? I'm leaving, I'll see you tomorrow." She said to the manager in his office. He checked her schedule, and it said she was off. It must've been a mistake, could she- but she was already gone, only pausing to scoop up her dollar tip on her way out.

In the back by the dumpsters, she first took off the wig and clenched her hand; it rolled up like a tap measure and disappeared in her grip. When that was done, she removed her false face. It wafted away like mist as she blinked. Her real hair was a black pixie cut, short and a little spiky, and her eyes were green. Quickly lunging inside the dumpster, she slipped on the extra-large black hoodie she'd buried in a box. From in here, she could see the street, and a bus was pulling up-

When her target got off the bus, she followed him in the air. A crow flying this late at night would've been odd, if he could've seen her, but instead she watched him walk to his trailer and close the door. She landed behind a tree and looked out from behind it before she turned back into a girl.

Eva the Crow put the hood of her jacket up and smirked; she reached into it's pocket and drew a sword from somewhere inside, the blade dull in the dark. Whispering some fancy words, she trailed her fingers along it's length; three crows hopped off it's point and looked up at her expectantly.

"Good night. I'm going to snatch the man in that home- please keep the watch?"

One the crows warbled, like a grumble.

"Of course! As many cheetah toes as you want when it's done and said." She supplied, putting her hands on her hips and looking frankly down at the bird. The three bobbed and then fluttered softly to trees and power lines, as she crept closer. She almost wanted to kick in the door, but she knew she'd just hurt her foot.

So instead, she silently opened the bathroom window and rubbed her hands together; she made no sound at all as she jumped and wriggled up into the tiny shower. She held her hand outside as her sword leapt up to her grip, and she got ready to open the door. This would be an almost surgical strike, over in a moment and easy to mess up. Her blade shook a little before she open the door and leaned out. Her bounty was sitting and watching Tv...

She poked her hand out and wiggled her fingers before the lights turned out; When he stood up in surprise, she ran over and wapped him hard in the back of the head with the flat of her sword.

"OW! What the fuck-"

"There's more! More where that started, Villian! Rogue! Jerk! Get on the floor!" She said happily, before whacking him again. "The floor! The floor! Quick and now!" WHAP. "Whaaha-haw-haa-"

"Alright, alright! Just stop hitting me, Jesus..."

After hurriedly securing her next paycheck, she sheathed her sword and shimmied in satisfaction. It looked like she was one step closer to Kobberhari island, and now she got to move to a whole new town and do this all over again!

She couldn't wait to get started.

Under the Sea

She walked and swam alone in the ocean wasteland, only pausing to sleep every day and a half or so. She was very hungry, but it didn't stop her silent journey. She passed glowing magma vents and tube worms clustered like flowers, ancient metal whales that had died Above before sinking to their final rest, and rock formations that loomed cliff-like above her. She was dimly excited- she'd never been this far south before- but watchful and almost on pins and needles in her quick pace.

She'd named herself Scylla, after one of the books(?) she'd found inside 396, her metal whale. Some of the guts and brains had still worked and glowed, enough that she'd picked up surface common from their stored knowledge, over time. Part of the draw had been all the treasure it had swallowed- big, cone-headed fish made of metal that exploded of they hit something, flat pieces of water that reflected everything in front of them, a little bone that had other bones on it's ends. One was a knife, one was a saw, and she'd been delighted to find out one let her take screws out of things. The Above was weird, but fascinating.

The water here, for example. She felt lighter, like she was floating on her feet, and it had another quality, like the glow of 396's bones. She could also see further and better through the water than she ever had before, for some reason. Good enough to see movement further off. She crouched down and moved slowly, her tentacles trailing out lazily behind her. It looked like a group of fish, maybe a school of Tuna.

And they were singing.

"The seeweed is always greener, in someone else's lake-"

She crept closer, her lights dimmed and ghostly. It was a stalk, and she gripped her metal stick tightly as she flowed closer to her prey.

"You dream about going up there, but that is a big mistake-"

She just needed to be able to spring-

"Just look at the world around you, right here on the ocean floor- hey, wait, what's that? Frank, you see that?!"

"It's a squid! It's a squid! Let's get outta here!"

"Verdammt!" She burbled, before the tentacles over her head surged, and hard. She shot forward with a cloud of silt in her wake, the mass of fish twisting away from her before she hit their edge. The maw over her head opened wide as black ink poured out of it, diffusing through the water in moments
in a solid cloud. Tuna were scattering, and she surged forward again. She could see in the dark, but the other fish weren't able to, only panicking.

Her own mouth split open, fanged and alien as she gulped down all the fish she could, from direct passes to grabbing them and swallowing them whole. Her throat was ringed with teeth, to prevent their escape and to actually chew her food, and she gorged herself now. It had been a long time since she'd had anything to eat...

Some of the fish broke for a corner of the dark, before lights began glimmering there, in the shape of her tentacles. They changed direction- right into her waiting jaws. The lights were an illusion, something she knew how to do almost instinctively. They broke apart and bobbed upward, shifting from purple to blue to purple to yellow as made herself float downward, back to the ground.

"Das war sehr gut!" She chirped.

The cloud of ink was beginning to disappear, but she was content. She patted her bulging stomach and sighed happily in a brief pop of bubbles, taking a second to look around at the grey and brown coral flocks. If the rocks were alive, she had to be going the right way. When she started her trek again, she wasn't as nervous or hesitant, not after she'd finally gotten to snack.

Unburied?

The ZFS had sat in the junkyard for awhile now, and it was a much different vessel then the one that had been lain to rest here. Pieces and parts were missing wholesale, and entire sections of the skeleton were open to bare air. Eventually, all the power had gone out, and the dark wreck creaked every now and then in the wind. Deep, deep inside the ship, in a room that smelled like old apples, the closet door banged open and a woman tumbled out.

She landed on her face and just breathed for a solid minute, flopping over and looking up at the ceiling. Her white hair was still in a simple long bob cut, and the loose black clothes she wore were ripped and torn. Her knuckles and shins were bleeding and skinned.

"I can't believe I'm alive." Draugr said to the empty silence, sitting up and groaning as she cracked her back. The last thing she'd known, the door to Aevar's dungeon had been splintering under axe blows, and the Graveknight had picked her up and thrown her into a closet- -except she'd gone through it, and flown in the empty blackness for hours. Maybe days. She'd finally emerged here, but she had no idea where here was. Only that it looked familiar.

"...No, this could not be..." Her eyes widened as it clicked, before she shakily got to her feet. After opening the door with a creak, the evil monk set off quietly and nervously, in case she wasn't the only thing roaming the halls. She'd guessed the ship was dead in Space, and punching through the walls certainly wasn't an option. After wandering for awhile, she reached a break room and stared in silence at the desert outside, before noticing the bottom of the glass cracked and missing. When she found a way out, at least she'd be able to breath.

The First Rider.

As the covered wagon trundled away from her home, she turned around to look at it one last time. It didn't really hit her until she saw soe of her siblings crying and waving, before her stomach sank and she realized she'd never return to the collection of shabby houses off to the side of the road, bordered by fields. She bit her lip and watched it disappear into the distance.

Turning back around, she glanced back at the man who'd bought her. He'd said it wasn't that, for the war effort, a valuable resource for the state, so forth and so on... But her parent's had three years of wages in their pockets, and she was leaving to a new city. A bigger city, made of stone. She'd heard the houses had two levels, that the streets were made or red brick and filled with different and exciting characters. For his part, the wizard kept reading his book, every now and then quietly turning a page. He'd called himself Guildstern, and had drained the fields of fallow water sitting in the post-harvest rains free of charge. It had taken him moments before the small lake had bubbled and evaporated into nothing, people gasping and hitting the ground on their knees, stunned.

She smiled at him; he glanced up and smiled back. His short beard was greying.

Some time later, she thought back to that trip. He'd been nice, and explained that she had powers similar to his. She'd never noticed, because she hadn't used them. But the Evian bloc had need of her, and they'd sent him to find her and train her. Whatever it took.

Laying on the operating table after yet another surgery, surrounded by white-robes in masks, her own blood, and pain, she wondered if it had been easy for him to take her here. Some castle... She'd been unconcious and it had been dark. For two years afterward, her training had been in their military, and her almost-holy fire had burned scores of men to ash. She wasn't bad with her sword, either... Damned artillery. She'd felt her shattered legs after the barrage had cratered the earth and passed out on the battlefield, blood leaking out of her blown eardrums.

When she'd woken up some time ago- she'd stopped bothering to keep count- they'd started operating on her, with scalpels and magic. No one would respond to any of her questions. As soon as she was whole again, they'd begun doing... other things. They'd strapped her to a stretcher and put her inside some machine, some great white empty thing that burned her. It was so loud it was almost silent in there, and all she could see was white. She'd screamed at first, but she couldn't hear that in the defeaning quiet. When they let her out, she usually vomited before they injected her with something and dragged her back to her room.

She was turning white... And her hair was purple now. The cycle repeated over and over. When she was awake, sometimes she punched her walls. More and more, they cracked under her bleeding stony skin. Even then, her escape attempts didn't work...

They'd cut into her and measure the cuts, charting the growth of her outer shell, spending extra attention on her back. It hurt badly every time, but eventually the pain was like the sound and sight of the machine- something that was in the background. She never forgot the first time she saw the wings.

Once, she saw Guildstern again. She broke her restraints and killed three men in the ensuing scrabble, one dead wing flopping across her back, her arms covered in red up to the elbow. As doors banged open and the operating theater began to fill, she knelt down in the pile of gore, staring right up at his neutral face and starting to laugh.

She laughed and laughed hard, up to the ceiling as she was surrounded and took down. She didn't resist, just continued to laugh, because it didn't matter. The damage had been done, there wasn't anything she could do to warn that little peasant girl about what happened to people like her in cities like this; horrible things. Things that broke you as a person, not from horror, but banality. When what you couldn't fix or stop just became the white that painted the walls.

Guildstern didn't care. She could see how little her suffering meant to him.

When it was said and done, she'd been given to a Cardinal, an Ivory angel wreathed in fire. Guildstern had been Amioch's friend from a time long before, and wanted his tithe to be a little excessive. She'd strode in with her sword at her side and looked down at the owl-like robed man, her eyes dull.

She'd annihilated a village soon, in short order. A test run. She'd been excessive. It was the first time since her reforging that she'd been free to fight and destroy. The houses burned around her with white flames in the night as she slammed her sword tip into the ground and knelt, her wings gathering up around her. She was wreathed in blood and viscera, and pools of red glinted like molten metal in the firelight as she picked up the doll. Just a small, straw-headed little girl's toy, like the one she'd had, once, so long ago, except this one was dripping with blood like most everything else. Ash blew around her in the dead wind.

It hurt to be human now. Her hand shook as she realized she wasn't anything like who she'd once been. That now, she was something else, given the power to Destroy. She clenched her teeth and bowed her head, tears cleaning trails down her face as she let it go and accepted it. Her humanity was no more, and it had to be given leave to die. Behind her, her Aura slowly burned back into life, the circle of fire connecting over her head and lighting the devastated marketplace around her.

When she'd looked back up, her eyes were hard as stone, and she determinedly got back to her feet. Even with all the wreckage around her, pieces of everything not burning scattered throughout the dirt field, all she could see was the white.