A Ghost
In an instant, she was back there. That old room, the door opening - them, chasing after her parents, then turning to look at her. Then in a moment of icy stillness, four hands around her side. And she turned left and...
Nari's eyes blinked open again to find herself rushing upwards. She glanced up at her assailant but only caught a glimpse of their grappling hook before she crashed atop a grate suspended from the ceiling, slightly knocking the wind out of her.
She rolled onto her side, staring the attacker dead in the eyes. They didn't look too dissimilar from herself - a bipedal reptile, with four limbs and a prehensile tail. The notable difference was a lack of wings, with the upper pair of limbs being a second set of normal arms instead.
A liralen, because of course it was.
The liralen was a cobalt color, with scales that glittered away to a lighter cyan near their extremities. They were masculine in appearance, and looked right back at her with glowing teal eyes.
"Who are you and what do you want with me?" Nari hissed.
The liralen furrowed his brow. "Quiet or we both die," he grunted.
This whole encounter was profoundly odd, but the liralen sounded deadly serious. Skeptically, Nari glanced down through the grate to see what he was so gruff about.
Before she saw it, she heard it. It was that metallic rattle she'd noticed earlier; it sounded faint at first, but slowly got louder and louder, until it was almost a roar, an all-encompassing noise with a few resonant frequencies peeking through.
Then, it arrived.
It took all her restraint not to flinch as a gust of something crashed into the room. Squinting, she could barely make out the individual forms of nanobots of some sort, connected to each other through crackling arcs of electricity. The bots were so small and numerous that they acted more like a fluid than individual objects, and what happened here was a flash flood, a river of electric carnage blasting through where she'd been standing just a minute before.
Just as quickly as it had arrived, the swarm vanished, rushing out the other end of the room, and leaving behind an eerie stillness for a moment before the dust settled.
"Alright, down we go," announced the liralen after a few seconds, grasping Nari again. A little shaken, she didn’t quite have the energy to avoid him this time.
With a zing the liralen's grapple fired off again, and the two adventurers effortlessly glided back down to the floor.
Down here, Nari could get a better view of the liralen. Predictably, his biolights were teal - they usually matched the skin to some extent. The scutes on his head were spikier than hers, and the scales on his tail layered on top of each other smoothly, rather than jutting up in spines like her own.
Perhaps most confusing was his attire. It didn't fit him great, and clearly wasn't tailored with liralens in mind - the pants bent tightly around his digitigrade legs, and his shirt only had two sleeves, with his lower arms emerging from holes that definitely weren't there initially.
Nari blinked at him. "Who are you and-"
"We're not safe yet," he interrupted, already skittering towards a hallway. "Follow me."
Nari didn't feel particularly comfortable going back off into the facility on her own - visions of that swarm replayed in her mind - so she'd followed the mysterious liralen. He seemed to know where he was going, at least, confidently navigating the twisting hallways of the ruin. Plus, she figured having a companion here couldn't hurt.
"So, who are you exactly?" Nari piped up as she caught up with him.
The liralen huffed, continuing forward. "A wanderer of sorts. Why do you need to know?"
Nari scowled and scratched her chin. "Well, for one, I need to know you're not going to kill me?"
The liralen stopped in his tracks, and turned back to look at her, his eyes icy. "If I wanted you dead, the swarm would've torn you up already."
"Do you control them? The swarms?"
"No. That's why I had to rescue you from them. I could've not."
With a resigned sigh, Nari headed onward once more, tailing the liralen as he crossed an onyx-black bridge through an enclosed room of red grasses. A part of the bridge had collapsed, but the gap was small enough that both adventurers were able to make it across with a short hop.
Nari twitched her ears. After the metallic creak of the bridge supporting their weight had subsided, she could just barely make out a trickle of flowing water in the distance.
"So, where are we going?" Nari asked as the liralen rounded another corner.
He didn't look back this time, coldly replying as he focused on the halls ahead of him. "Base of operations. It's not much, but the swarms don't come up there, so it's safer than down here at least."
"And how unsafe is it down here?"
"Very," the liralen warned. "The swarms'll eat you up if they catch you. They electrocute you and tear you to shreds."
"And you know this how?" Nari questioned concernedly.
"Threw a bird at it."
Nari did her best to avoid glaring at the guy, instead focusing on her surroundings. They'd made it out of the room with the bridge and were now in an imposing hallway. The usual jet-black ruin walls were reinforced here, extra diagonal strips of Precursor alloy bridging the room's length.
By now, the sound of running water had become quite easily noticeable. As she stepped through the open door at the end of the hallway, it became clear why.
She found herself on a catwalk along the side of a terraced wall. Atop one of the terraces, the twisted trunk of a tree bent above the walkway, crimson leaves soaking up the green glow of sunlight filtering in from overhead. A vent in the wall let water flow down in the form of a small waterfall, disappearing into a small canal below.
Glancing in the other direction, Nari saw an unmistakable sight - the chasm that had greeted her when she first entered this place. She was a little closer to the gap in the wall now, and a stream of sunlight shimmered into this part of the facility. Grasses sprouted from the sides of the canal as it flowed into the pit and down to the forest below, like an artificial recreation of a mountain brook.
Her jaw practically on the floor, she could only muster an amazed gasp.
The liralen ahead noticed her lagging and grunted at her. "Hey, you want to get to my base or are you just going to keep gawking at the walls?"
"Do you really not know how...different this place is? What a find it is?" Nari asked.
The liralen gulped. "No?"
Nari scratched her ear, then turned to face him. "Aren't you a scav? This is the biggest Precursor ruin I've ever even heard of."
The liralen scrunched his face in quiet confusion. "The hell are those?"
Though Nari was more than ready to explain to the liralen what both scaving and the Precursors were, the liralen had insisted they could talk more later, once they'd made it to his home. Once he'd sprinted off, she didn't have much of an option but to follow him, so she'd found herself tailing him as he sped through grandiose Precursor hallways and slid through an old vent.
That vent had led to a long-abandoned vertical shaft. Over the years, it had crumbled a fair bit; its once-sheer metal surface had twisted more into a spiky upwards tunnel. With debris lining the walls, and some parts of the structure caved in, it wasn't a straight shot up like most vents. That meant the liralen's grappling hook and Nari's scaving gear wouldn't work well here - they'd just have to climb.
"Okay, up we go," announced the liralen as he gave a thumbs-up with his upper left hand. "Let me know if you need any backup."
"I'll manage fine on my own, thanks," Nari insisted.
With that, the liralen began the arduous climb up, glancing down every so often to check that Nari was just below him. She seemed to be doing fine; she was going a little slower than him, but overall she definitely knew what she was doing.
"So...why...do you live...up here?" Nari asked, exhaustedly fitting the words between grunts as she hoisted herself up the metal surface.
"Told you already," the liralen muttered, climbing up the shaft with comparative ease. "The swarm can't make it up the shaft. Plus, there's lots of room up here."
Nari continued to climb, trying to put on a brave face. Realistically, her body wasn't built for this - each additional heave felt like agony, and each grip felt less and less secure. How was this so easy for the liralen?
Right. Liralens. Their arms evolved for gripping ledges. Nerians were designed for flying. Different skill set.
After a few more minutes of this torturous ascent, Nari felt her strength wane and her pace eventually slowed to a crawl. "Ugh...how much farther?" she hollered.
The liralen glanced upwards and back down, significantly farther up than she was. "We're about two-thirds of the way up. Or, well, I am. You need help?"
"No, no...I've got it...I'm good," she replied, still sounding very much like she wasn't. "I do this stuff for…a living."
"Okay, if you say so," the liralen grumbled, his tone of voice implying he didn't quite believe her. "I'm staying put until you catch up, though."
Nari continued upwards at a snail's pace. Embarrassingly, she'd slowed down enough that the liralen had started to climb back down to spot her. Come on, you're a professional scav, this should be easy for you...
She lifted an arm once more, and her foot slipped; the stumble was all that was needed for her traction to fall apart completely, her other hand scraping off the side of the ledge as she began to fall.
In an instant, an arm was out for her. "GRAB ME!" the liralen shouted, concern in his eyes as his words echoed through the shaft.
After a moment, she held her wings up, clasping his hand in two of hers. She began to swing a little in the middle of the shaft, her tail swaying about to try to stabilize her against a wall.
"You alright?" the liralen asked. Nari was able to muster a weak nod.
"I'll take us the rest of the way," he announced. With his other lower arm, he grasped onto one of her wing-hands, and used his upper pair to continue the climb up through the shaft.
"Home sweet home," announced the liralen as he gestured towards the haphazardly-adapted fan he lived in.
After being saved by the liralen once again, Nari was more than happy to be back on solid ground. This "home" didn't feel particularly comfortable, but to the liralen's credit, there was a lot of space here, and the ceiling opened to sunlight above. The fan was inactive too, so there wasn't any danger of getting chopped up by it; maybe this guy did know a thing or two about Precursor facilities.
The living space was lodged within the enormous drum of the fan. The ceiling was fairly low, and though Nari could fit in it standing up, fan blades loomed imposingly a few feet above her head. A piece of rugged cloth hung across the opening atop the blades, guarding the drum from the elements outside, though its coverage was fairly spotty and she could make out sunlight streaming through its edges.
On the wall was another patch of fabric, inflated like a sail; it was slightly transparent, and behind it she could vaguely make out the shape of a smaller fan that was spinning, blowing some fresh air into the room.
The liralen glanced to the left. Nari turned to see what he was looking at: a small burner off to the side, with a pot placed above it. She could glimpse some sort of cooked meat within, cut into cubes and slightly burnt.
"I've been living off of this stuff for the most part, unfortunately," he lamented. "They're those birds I mentioned; only animals I've been able to find here. I don't think the swarms can get to them."
"Doesn’t taste great," he added with a faint smile. "But it is edible. Help yourself."
Nari's eyes narrowed as she glanced at the meat's crunchy, dried skin. "I think I'm good."
There was a torn rug in the center of the room, clearly of Precursor design, with flat colors and geometric patterns. Nari took a seat on the rug, and after grabbing a couple pieces of meat from the pot, the liralen joined her.
"I never caught your name, by the way," the liralen remarked, raising an eyebrow at Nari. "Who are you?"
"I'm Nari," she nodded. "Thanks for saving my ass back there."
The liralen chuckled. "No worries. I've never had a guest before. I don't think it'd be a good look if my first one fell to their death."
Nari half-smiled in agreement. "Fair enough. And you are?"
The liralen's expression suddenly shifted to a frown, and he crossed his lower arms. "Well, uh...I don't really know how to say this, but...I don't know."
Huh?
Nari stared at the liralen incredulously. "You've gotta try harder on your excuses, dude. You're clearly of sound mind and yet you're trying to convince me you don't know your own name."
"No, no, I'm genuine!" he insisted, scrambling back. "Closest thing I've got is some...something calling me Visken. So if you really need a name, Visken. 'Visk' for short, maybe."
Visken. Ghost. Smells like a codename.
Nari reached for her pistol and glared at 'Visken'. "Ghost, huh? You have 30 seconds to convince me you're not an LLF agent scouting these ruins for Party resources."
The liralen's eyes widened. "Woah! No, I'm serious! I woke up in a pod here a month ago with nothing and I genuinely have no idea who I am and-"
Nari could see it in his eyes. Either this guy's a really good liar, or he's telling the truth.
She holstered the gun. "What do you want to know?"
"First of all, what's a scav?"
Nari sat on the question for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to answer. It was pretty straightforward as a job, but there were a lot of reasons why it was a viable career in the first place, which might be necessary context.
After a few seconds, her eyes lit up. "It's my job. Short for 'scavenger.' We dive into Precursor ruins, grab the valuable stuff, and leave. It's dangerous work, but it pays decently enough, and at least you get to see the galaxy."
Visk glanced down at the ground. "So that's why you're here, right? To grab stuff?"
"Sort of," Nari answered, scratching her chin. "I was on a scaving expedition on another planet. Walked through a portal and ended up here. Portal closed behind me. I've been trying to get out."
"Then it sounds like we're on the same side," Visk observed, eliciting a nod from Nari.
The two sat in silence for a moment, locking eyes in quiet acknowledgement of their mutual mission. It seemed to Nari that Visk wasn't too dissimilar from her - another wayward traveler stuck on this planet, trying to find a way home.
"What do you remember?" Nari thought, noticing too late that the words had left her mouth.
Visk sat in silence for a minute, and Nari almost wasn't sure if he had heard her. Then, he closed his eyes and replied.
"There's pretty much two main components to memory, right? Knowledge and experience. Skills versus actual memories."
"As far as personal memories go, I'm blank. I woke up about a month ago in an escape pod of some kind. No memory of who I was, what I was doing, any of that. All I had was myself, and a panicked recording of whoever I was before. Ended with a phrase. 'Go forth, my ghost.'"
He popped the last one of his meat chunks into his mouth and sat back a little, supporting himself with his newly free upper arms. After a moment, he sat back up and continued.
"So the drop pod crashed into this structure, I made it out alive, and I've been trying to keep it that way ever since."
Nari looked the liralen up and down, contemplating his story. Her silence was all the indication he needed to continue.
"As for the knowledge, it's a mixed bag. Obviously I'm able to speak both this language and this language," he noted, shifting to the same language as his name. "But I have no idea what anything is called. I don't know what language I'm speaking right now, or right now. I don't know what species either of us is. And I sure as hell don't know what the Taro Corporation is."
Nari crossed her arms and leaned forward, before shifting back and finally speaking. "Okay, first of all, this language is Wayspeak, this language is Lir, I’m a nerian, and you’re a liralen."
She was silent for a moment, then glared at him, her face suddenly taking a far more serious demeanor as she leaned forward again. "Where the hell did you hear about Taro Corp?"
Visk jumped back a little, his face shifting to a startled frown. "What? Why?"
Nari continued to stare at the liralen, her face an inscrutable expression somewhere between bewilderment, excitement, and concern. She shivered slightly as if trying to conceal something, then glanced down and answered.
"I work for them."