Cyan Falling

Snake in the Grass

Cyan stood immobile behind Belvarrian Callus' desk, the papers still clutched in his hands, crinkling at the sides where his fingers dug into the pages. He tried desperately to school his breathing, to reel himself back in before he unravelled.

He had to go back upstairs, he had to tell Jaesong about what he had found, about the danger that loomed over them with the knowledge that Callus was in possession of such a catastrophic weapon. He knew he needed to move, needed to get into action, to chase after Callus before e could slip through their fingers again.

But he was frozen.

He didn't know how long he had been frozen for. It felt like a few seconds and like hours at the same time. Everything was too slow and too fast and the room smelled weird like mildew and perfume and mothballs and there was white noise in his ears fuzzing and humming like tinnitus, barely casting a foggy screen, like frosted glass over the horrified gasps of his USF friends, of Savannah crying when she thought no one could hear her and the flashing behind his eyes, the burning, and his grip on the papers was starting to make his fingers ache and it was far, far too much.

It was all too much.

"Cyan? Cyan are you okay?" Cyan vaguely registered that someone was talking to him, but it sounded far away, distant.

"Cyan? Hey, what did you find?" The voice asked, closer than before. "Oh no." The voice gasped quietly.

"I'm going to take the papers now, okay? I'm going to put them down and then I'm going to hug you, alright?" Cyan finally clicked that it was Jaesong who was trying to talk to him, but he found that he didn't know how to respond to the questions.

Jaesong took a hold of his hands and gently eased the pages from his grasp to place them on top of the desk. He held on to Cyan's hands for a moment, attempting to ground him and ease away some of the rigidness. After a beat of silence, Jaesong circled his arms around Cyan's midsection and it only took a moment for the tension to begin melting away from him, his shoulders sagging as he lent into the embrace.

"I'm so sorry, Cyan, I'm so sorry. You'll be okay, I promise I'll help you find him, we'll stop him from ever using that weapon again." Jaesong said, quiet and serious.

They stood there for a moment, and with the help of Jaesong's comfort, Cyan was able to calm himself down and clear his head, and to collect his thoughts. They didn't have much time, they needed to keep moving. He couldn't do this yet, he needed to focus on catching up with Callus and his men before it was too late. They already managed to get a sizeable head start. He could grieve and mourn for his people when everything else was over.

"We need to get after them." He said, voice catching against his will.

"And we will. Are you going to be okay to leave? It's okay to take a moment to process." Jaesong replied.

"I'll be okay. We need to get after them before they get too far." Cyan reiterated and pulled back from the hug, straightening himself up.

"Okay, let's go then. We can look around the outside of the building and see if they left anything behind. I have all the data that I could salvage uploaded to a shared private network that only the two of us have access to." Jaesong agreed and made to shove the information about the weapon into his backpack.

The two of them went back up the steps with haste, and exited out onto the docks. There wasn't much left near the building, just some loose ropes and a couple of tools lying strewn across one of the rickety wooden pathways. To their luck though, there was an airboat left in the docking area to the far right of the building's entrance.

It looked a little run-down, probably why it had been left behind. The propellers were dented and dinged up, the cage for the blades littered with scratches and the body of the boat was in an equal state of damage. On the upside, other than some dirt and grime, the inside of the airboat looked relatively fine.

Jaesong took the initiative and hopped on board the boat to look over the inside. There was a lever for the speed and a joystick steering mechanism next to the main seat up by the propeller. The engine at the front could only be turned on with a key, which they didn't have.

"You didn't happen to pick up a key back inside that place did you?" He asked. "If not, we may have to hotwire it."

"Nope, no keys here. I can hotwire it though if it's anything like the airboats I would have seen back on Earth." Cyan replied, hopping onto the boat to look over the encasing.

Without too much care, Cyan opened up a compartment under the lock to have a look through the mess of wires within. All he needed to do was to connect the right wires.

After a moment of work, the engine sparked to life and Cyan quickly leapt up into the driver's seat.

"There are some tracks leading off into the swamp, I say we follow them and hope they haven't put too much ground between us and them yet." Cyan said.

Jaesong nodded. "I can see it too. We can follow the broken branches and some of the shredded up reeds."

Without wasting any more time, he unhooked the rope that had been tying the boat to the dock and hopped into the seat next to Cyan's. There was a little bit of a wobble to start off and then they were on their way, hightailing it through the swamp in an attempt to follow the trail.

There wasn't much to follow and the further they went into the swamp the harder it was to judge the right direction to go in. The water was thick with algae, reeds and tangled weeds. The trees were thinning though there were still many of them. The canopy was getting thinner and thinner the further they went until it was obvious that it was, in fact, daytime.

The trees stretching up from the water's surface were tall, but they had much skinnier trunks than the ones in the jungle. The frogs seemed to be more common outside the garden, though in the light, most of them appeared to be dark green with pale red dotted lines running down their backs. Some of them may have even been bigger than the ones in Persephone's Garden.

"Fascinating aren't they?" Jaesong asked, noticing Cyan's interest in the frogs. "Don't touch them though, their skin secretes a gel-like substance that is highly toxic. It's caused by the poisonous insects and plants that they eat. They use it to deter predators."

"I feel like every time you have fun facts to share, it's about something that could kill us." Cyan joked, despite the tenseness of the task at hand. "Are their predators something that we'll need to worry about?" He asked.

"There's not many creatures out there than can eat one of those frogs without dying. So no. There are plenty of other things that live in the swamps that pose more of a threat though." Jaesong answered.

Then, as if to punctuate the young tech mechanic's point, something slapped against the underside of the airboat with a force strong enough to cause it to wobble from side to side as it kept moving through the murky waters of the swamp. Cyan sent Jaesong a small accusatory glare that said not to jinx them, like just talking about another threat would inadvertently invite it to materialise in their immediate vicinity.

They continued for a while, following he trail of broken twigs, scuffed tree trunks and pulverised plant life that had obviously been damaged by some careless steering on the part of Callus' men. The damage to the surrounding flora could only have been dealt by the sides of metal boats and propeller blades.

As they travelled forth through the swamp, following what they could of the trail that had been left for them, Cyan couldn't help but notice the shadows wiggling and writhing around under the airboat, towards the rear side by the propellers. Whatever they were, they were now slapping and thwacking their bodies against the underside of the airboat, as though testing its resistance to their physical attacks.

Cyan sped the boat up a bit, gradually increasing the speed in an attempt to distance them from the creatures without disturbing them or further gaining their unwanted interest. He mentally side-eyed Jaesong for his earlier comments. The place they were in was fascinating, as were all of the creatures that inhabited this dimension, this planet that they were on, but that didn't mean that he wanted to encounter them all while he was there and it certainly wasn't ideal having the vast majority of them attacking him at every opportune moment.

Unfortunately, Cyan was not so lucky to simply drive away from them without event. As he pulled away, something clunked heavily and whirred from behind them. A large eel had latched itself onto the back of the cage that protected the propeller blades. Its long, needle-like teeth closed down around the metal bars as the creature wriggled its slimy body as forcefully as it could until it came away with a chunk of the cage in its mouth.

This was bad.

This was very bad.

Jaesong sat still for a moment before taking the initiative to push the accelerator lever down as far as it would go. If he was in a panic over these things then they must be a serious threat. Cyan chanced a look behind them and it was less a collection of them and more of a swarm. The one that had bitten a hole out of the propeller cage had seemingly got the metal stuck in its teeth and couldn't let go of it and had several lacerations around the front of it's face and neck from the jagged edges of the hole that it had created.

Then all of a sudden, they were in a frenzy. The eels wriggled over each other, hissing and splashing as they tangled and lunged after the airboat. Their only hope was getting to dry land again before the creatures could catch up and do enough damage to capsize them. If that happened, then they were done for. The eels would rip them both to shreds before they could even make an attempt at swimming away.

"We have to get to dry land!" Jaesong yelled over the loud whirring of the propeller, a panicked look in his eyes.

"I know, but this thing can't go any faster!" Cyan yelled back.

He had to think fast. He couldn't shoot at them, he lost his guns in the crash when he first came through the Vortex Gate. He couldn't throw his moonblades either, he couldn't risk losing them. They were running low on options and the eels were quickly gaining on them. It would only be a few more seconds before they were right up behind the boat again.

They veered off to follow the trail of Callus' men, which took a couple of sharp turns up ahead through the reeds. That didn't help them lose the eels though, which were still tailing after them with a vigorous viciousness. As they headed into the thickening reeds, the eels managed to catch up with them. One of them leapt out of the water with bloodthirsty intent and managed to rip another chunk off of the back of the propeller cage.

They were long in body, and thick. They were a lot like the electric eels back on Earth, only much longer and much angrier. They coiled and sprung out towards the airboat, through the water, using their own bodies to create momentum. The longest had to have been somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet long, like water-bound reticulated pythons but far less cute.

Cyan thought briefly back to when he had wanted a ball python for a pet back when he was living on Earth, back before he had thought about joining the USF or going into space. He wondered if any of them had been picked up by off-world breeders or if they, too, had become extinct along with the rest of the planet's life forms.

They came to an area where there was a clear path through the reeds, it lead off into a thick patch of trees that looked to have a bank just on the other side of it, though it was hard to see over the tops of the reeds. They stood almost too tall to get an unobscured view of where they were going.

The airboat, still going at maximum speed was whirring intensely, but as the eels continued to attack it, a clicking, rattling sort of sound had joined the cacophony. Cyan had a dreaded feeling of what was about to happen and as he looked over at Jaesong, he could see that the other was occupied with a similar set of thoughts.

Just as they both feared, as a couple of eels slammed into the underbelly of the airboat, the engine cut out. The boat came to a stuttering halt. Jaesong whispering "no no no no" under his breath as he leapt out of his seat towards the exposed engine that was attached to the front end of the boat. He looked over the area where Cyan had hotwired it earlier and couldn't seem to make much sense of the wiring or what he needed to do to get it running again.

"Cyan! I don't know how to fix this, what do we do?" Jaesong asked frantically as an eel circled to the front of the boat and slammed into it with all of its might.

"First of all, calm down! Panicking isn't going to save us, we need to think! You're a tech mechanic and a damn good one, Jae, you just need to stop and think of a solution. It's not smoking so that's a good sign, that means we should be able to get it running again." Cyan replied, getting ready to fight.

"I'm a tech mechanic, Cyan, not a vehicle mechanic, I don't know how to fix a busted airboat engine. The most I've had to fix before on a vehicle is the tech installations, stuff like navigation software and booster configuration." Jaesong said, full of worry.

"Okay, okay, we can figure this out." Cyan paused to cut the head off of one of the eels with a moonblade as it attempted to throw itself onto the deck. "You need to find the tripped switch on the console and flip it back on, then, from there, you need to pull the accelerator all the way off and let it sit for a couple of seconds, then disconnect and reconnect the wires I tripped earlier to hotwire it again and hope it sparks the ignition. Just like when a car stalls but with extra steps, no key and no clutch pedal, okay?"

"I think I can do that! Just keep the eels off of the boat, use your powers if you have to, just don't let them sink the airboat." Jaesong agreed and started the process.

Then it began, they were both frantic, no talking, just drowning in the sounds of mayhem around them: the splashing of swamp water onto the boat from the eels as they violently flung themselves into attack, the battering and scratching of metal as the eels bashed into the sides of the boat and attempted to bite into it at every angle, the slashing of Cyan's moonblades as he fought back, the sputtering noises of the engine as Jaesong attempted to turn the key in the ignition.

"It's not working! Cyan! There's too many of them!" Jaesong shouted as the engine continued to stall.

"s**t!" Cyan cussed and tried to focus without pausing for too long. He knew that he would have no choice but to use the energy.

Jaesong let out a quick burst of yellow, aimed behind himself towards the eels as he continued to tinker frantically, hoping that the next attempt would be the one that would work. Meanwhile, Cyan focused, concentrating on the feeling of the energy within him and moving it through his body towards his the palms of his hands.

He could feel it, the sizzling beneath the surface of his skin, he could feel it travelling down his arms, through his veins, he could feel the energy humming and buzzing round his bones. It felt electric, like he was alight with it, as though his blood was fizzing with power. Then, in a flash of bright orange light, a cylindrical tunnel bore its way through the heap of hissing eels, disintegrating them wherever they were touched by the body of the beam.

The beam shot into the water, creating a massive dent in its surface, the liquid sizzling and evaporating away in huge clouds of steam until the beam stopped and the water sloshed back into place, still lightly bubbling where it had been displaced.

Cyan's ears were ringing as the orange light subsided. Several of the eels dropped lifelessly into the water and were quickly cannibalised by those remaining, the water staining red as they tore through each other without discrimination.

Quickly, while they were distracted, he darted into action to help Jaesong with the engine. He leapt to his seat at the helm and moved the lever back to its resting position. Jaesong sat for a moment by the front console of the engine and waited for Cyan's signal. The seconds seemed to pass in slow motion as the eels splashed and flailed beneath them, sending occasional sprays of water up into the air and flicking over the sides of the boat.

"Now!" Cyan exclaimed and Jaesong reconnected the wires quickly while Cyan pushed the lever forward again gradually and the engine kicked back to life with a sputtering hum.

The blades of the propeller started spinning again and quickly picked up speed. Before they knew it the boat was once again moving, pulling away from their attackers. Jaesong stumbled as he moved to sit once again on the space beside Cyan's, holding onto the sides of his seat to keep himself in place.

As they got further and further away from the eels, it became easier for them to follow the trail that they had been on, finally able to get a better grasp of where they were headed. The watery paths were lined, still, by the tall reeds, although the trees were becoming more sparse between the main part of the jungle and the banks that they were headed towards, through a thinner section of woodland.

Cyan slowed them a bit as they were forced to make some sharp turns and perform some more careful manoeuvres through the shallows. They didn't want to end up bumping into the reed banks where the path grew thinner and accidentally end up with the airboat stalling again.

Before too long, they were approaching the treeline and aiming straight for the banks. When they got up closer they could see some of the other airboats had been pulled up the banks, leaving deep indentations in the soil. Despite being by a huge body of water, the ground looked dry, parched. It was bizarre.

" I don't like this..." Cyan said quietly.

"There must be a good reason for it, some explanation." Jaesong muttered, frowning as he looked towards the dirt banks.

"I guess we'll be able to tell more about the area once we get out of the boat." Cyan replied.

They slowed down more towards the edge of the bank, trees hanging overhead, and turned the boat to pull up sideways. The airboat tapped against the edge of the bank, causing some dirt to fall away into the water as they came to a stop. At least it wasn't slippery with mud, like it could have been. At least this way it would be easier to climb out of the boat. The bank was slightly raised out of the water, rather than being sloped. It was a wonder how Callus' men managed to drag their airboats out and onto dry land.

Cyan stood and made to haul himself onto the bank, while Jaesong used what was left of the rope to tie the airboat to one of the nearest trees that was jutting out of the water.

"Is that really necessary?" Cyan asked, looking back.

"Probably not, but you never know." Jaesong replied.

When the airboat had been secured, Jaesong walked over to the side of the boat and Cyan offered his hand, pulling him up securely, to a stand. Looking to the sides, it was confusing how the others before them had managed to drag the boats so far inland before dumping them. The tracks from the rudders and the boat's undersides had left deep indents into the dirt, indents that must have been at least a hand's length deep.

At least it was obvious that Callus didn't have many humans under his employment. No human could have lifted and dragged a boat like that. However, the downside of that, was that it meant that there was a big question mark over what species or race of people had the strength to do such a thing... and how many of them he and Jaesong may have to fight through in order to get to Callus himself. He didn't know what kinds of weapons or other strengths and abilities these people would have and it was a dangerous thing to be so in the dark about.

But, first thing's first, they needed to figure out where they headed. The boats were abandoned a few metres away from the bank of the swamp and the tracks looked fairly new, meaning that they weren't that far behind Callus and his men. Upon closer inspection, there seemed to be some footprints trailing off towards the trees on the left.

The trees were vastly different from the ones they had come across in the jungle or in the swamp. It astounded him how many different biomes seemed to greet each other in such small spaces, especially considering the vast differences in their weather conditions. He would never have expected all of this to be on the other side of such an enormous desert. The trees here were tall, but nowhere near as tall as the ones from the jungle.

They consisted of innumerable twisting branches, covered in sparse collections of leaves that sprung from the ends of various twigs, jutting out at weird and obscure angles. The bark was a deep, rich purple-ish brown that was almost black and the foliage was an intense shade that lay somewhere on the borders between violet and indigo. The patches of grass that sprung from the soil around their bases was a saturated, cold green that was close to turquoise.

It, like so much else that he had encountered on Yandraven, was deliriously beautiful, breath-taking in the most bizarre way. It was the kind of thing that made you never want to look away once you caught sight of it.

Cyan walked forward into the trees, following the trail of footprints and trodden grass and Jaesong followed behind him cautiously. He made a priority of reminding Cyan not to ouch anything if he could avoid it. The trees themselves wee harmless, but the blossoms did a lot of the work in making the planet's atmosphere so toxic and unbreathable for anyone that wasn't a native creature or inhabitant.

The fungi, too, was toxic and dangerous. Jaesong informed Cyan that some Yandravenians could use them to make a soup that was considered a delicacy, but anyone that wasn't of the planet and was merely visiting would die very quickly from being anywhere near it. It was rather inconspicuous in comparison to the other plants and life that grew on Yandraven, its appearance not too dissimilar to fungi that Cyan could recall seeing on his travels before, perhaps even from when he was on Earth.

As they made their way through the forested area, Cyan was able to take more notice of the creatures that subtly existed within. There were all manner of miniscule insects crawling over the forest floor and birdsong could be heard from the branches overhead. He could even spot some of their nests perched atop the tangles of branches that stretched up into the sky. He imagined that the tree looked pretty much the same on top as it did underneath, where the roots were hidden and twisting down into the ground.

For a brief moment, Cyan caught sight of one of the birds. It was blue and purple, blending in with the leaves of the trees, but standing out starkly against the rest of the environment. Its feathers seemed to shimmer in the light as it passed by, humming an eerie sort of tune, one that resounded around them hauntingly.

Up ahead, Cyan could just about make out another break in the trees, but something about the sight struck him as wrong. The branches seemed to twist inward and outward around the opening, as though the trees were trying to swallow the empty space but had been repelled by some invisible force. The shape of them was strange and some of the roots and trunks had been scuffed up and cut into, splintered. Some of the branches had been snapped clean off of them and lay scattered across the ground in a violent and careless manner.

"Careful, it looks like the guys who got here first were not in a very good mood when they arrived." Cyan said as they approached.

"There's something beyond those trees and I think I know what it is..." Jaesong answered uneasily.

"Well? What is it?" Cyan asked, looking back at his companion.

"Well.." Jaesong trailed off, looking to the side.

"What? What is it? It's not another one of those terrifying and deadly monsters ready to kill and eat us whole at any moment is it?" Cyan half-joked.

"No... it's not that, it's just.. something that you're really going to hate." Jaesong replied with a grimace.

"Well it can't be all that bad if it's not actively trying to kill us." Cyan started and then stopped abruptly as they crossed the threshold of the trees and the thing that Jaesong had been talking about came into full view.

It was another Vortex Gate, one that was hidden and clearly wasn't set up legally like the one that he had gone through to arrive on Yandraven. This one must have been assembled purely for Callus' operations on this planet. It was just far enough away from Persephone's garden that if anyone were to somehow stumble across it from either side, they wouldn't know its purpose or where it was supposed to be leading to. Most of them usually came out nearby cities or space stations, but this one was smack bang in the middle of nowhere, hidden in a cluster of trees.

It was safe to say that Cyan knew exactly what Jaesong had meant when he said that he wasn't going to like this.

Cyan walked up to the Vortex Gate and sighed heavily. He knew what they had to do and he wasn't looking forward to it. He tapped the side of his gear with this index finger and got up the wireless connection. Maybe this time he would at least be able to tell what he was getting himself into, what he was signing up for on the other side once he decided to do what was needed and jump through.

After a few moments, he cursed. His gear couldn't connect to the gate's locations. He should have figured that something like that would happen. Either way, they needed to pass through. From what he could tell, Callus and his men hadn't had access to a vehicle, so whatever was on the other side was likely safe for them to land on their own.

"We have to go through." Cyan said.

"Yeah." Jaesong replied.

"I really don't want to go through."

"I know."

"But we have to."

"Yes."

"Well..." Cyan breathed another heavy sigh and reached out to clasp Jaesong's hand in his. "Looks like we're going through then... you ready?" He asked, looking over.

"Nope." Jaesong replied, squeezing Cyan's hand back in return.

"Me neither."

With that, they moved forward into the shadow of the swirling of the vortex and with one final breath of courage, they jumped inside.