ValentineDavis21

Aethan wasn’t sure how long they remained like this, his head pillowed on the thick bush of the felid’s chest hair, his heart kicking powerfully against his cheek. He didn’t want the moment to end. He wanted to believe that as long as they stayed like this, there was nothing that could touch them. Nothing that could harm them. It was a silly idea, utterly preposterous, but it was a feeling that had nothing to do with the brain or rationale. He wasn’t the only one who felt this way. He could feel

The world spun in dizzying circles, the ground lurching up to meet him. There was a buzzing in his ears as if he were surrounded by the vellum, the pesky desert moths that the sandstorm had kicked up on the way to the ship oh so long ago. He was in a mindless panic, pursued by phantoms without face or name, adrenaline pumping madly through his veins, his breath coming out in whistling shrieks. He did not stop until he ran face first into the door, slamming into the clear window to send him flyin

Thank you, that means a lot.

Aethan's blood buzzed in his ear. The voices of a thousand strangers screamed in his mind; but in a way they were also familiar for they were very much a part of him now. In the minds of those who now existed within his subconscious it was the fear of being forced to endure the nightmare that had brought their ruin yet again. Aethan’s fears at the moment were more personal than existential. A fresh wave of adrenaline pumped through his veins, throwing everything into sharp focus: the crunch of s

By the time Aethan reached the command tent, his face was still wet with tears. He stopped outside the entrance and wiped at his face, sniffling, feeling exhausted, ridiculous. Trembling, a phantom crackle in the back of his throat. For the first time in weeks he found himself craving Estristatmer as never before, his mouth watering, his tongue rolling around an imaginary lozenge. At least then he would feel numb for a time. At least then he wouldn't feel like he was caught in a neverending danc

At first Aethan felt as cold and stiff as a statue, unsure if he wanted to draw away or if he wanted to let Ghor keep touching him. This is no different than on the night when you slept in the same tent together - in the same bed, he told himself sternly. But of course he knew better. Sure the nights they had slept together had been intimate and comforting but they had also been about survival. Survival in the face of something alien, familiarity in a space that did not play by the same rules, t

Close. Close to the end now. Close enough that he could see the end of the track. What will happen after the track ends is a mystery. Without his own true body, his existence and that of the priest and the other souls stored within this mind was tied to the survival of the host. Through his eyes they would continue to learn and experience. He gradually became aware of other things, one thing in particular: the host’s brain. Inside was a reservoir of knowledge, a vast catalog of thoughts, memorie

I'm finally glad someone is able to sympathize with Aethan a little bit. You will see that tension between them continues to ebb and flow throughout Arc 3 and leads into some dark/difficult territory. As the writer I didn't want Aethan to just be a victim of abuse or Ghor the abuser. It's a lot more nuanced than that. There have been some comments where Aethan has been accused of being morally superior or cruel when really he is the first person to ever stand up to Ghor and become the catalyst for change. But in the end they are really just chemically reacting to their environment which changes and is as unpredictable as the planet itself. Thank you for reading and for your comments.

Ghor’s ears twitched as the fans inside the Halo began to spin into life, the device switching on with a low hum. Characters and shapes materialized, but they might as well have been from a different language since the felid could not make out what they were. He took assurance in the fact that Xera seemed to have relaxed now that the Kaldari was back in his element; if there was reason to be nervous the horned alien would have been more tense. The Kaldari leaned forward, his narrow frame blockin

Aethan slept heavily through the next seventy-two hours but it was in no way a restful sleep. He moaned and rocked in his sleep, kicking the blankets off, sometimes clawing at the air. When he did this he remained completely unaware, lost in the memories of the child who had begun to materialize more and more in his mind. These experiences did not manifest instantly, but grew in stages in peaks the same way a fever did, with occasional pauses and plateaus. The images that fueled this fits were g

It only escalates from here...

Aethan's first thought upon seeing the camp was that they were still on the ship. And why not? It didn't seem entirely unreasonable to think so. In the eight hours it had taken Ghor and he to travel to the command deck and back they had seen the ship commit many terrifying but awe-inspiring acts of creation: the aberrations, the shifting of walls and ceiling, countless alterations, breaches in reality. With these facts in mind it did not seem entirely impossible that the ship could have fabricat

His skin crawled, breaking out into hives that trailed up his arms; the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. A cold finger traced its way teasingly down his spine. He could sense the things watching him in the dark like predators hiding out of sight, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. These were not the mindless creations of the dark gods he and Ghor had encountered earlier throughout the ship…they were more cautious, more calculated. Like a supercomputer that learns as it is fed m

"I know you will…Illyrion…” Aethan's reaction to these words was immediate and startling: He stepped back with a small gasp, seeming to sway for a moment. Ghor tensed, ready to intercept, sure that he would fall. When Aethan straightened, Ghor halted, pausing at his side, one paw tucked close to his side, the other unfurled, claws ready to strike at the first sign of danger from the Vrevil. All this was done before he had fully, consciously made the decision to do so, his instinct

Every step was a private testament of will, strength, and determination made greater by the fact that his mind was no longer his own. In their terror the voices in his head had grown into a panicked clamor, reminding him during the press conferences back on Cathesan, when he'd glimpsed the seemingly random outbursts of violence, his own people pushing and shoving and trampling over each other while Vash and the security detail ushered him away. Only this was happening in his mind. The time dilat

Lol, I'm glad that you enjoy it

Crowe backed away instinctively from the aberration, his blood turning to ice. For a moment he was back in the aberrant corridor with the last horrific construction Bhal-Ghor and he had encountered, only this..this was far worse. Because he now recognized the face of the creature that was staggering drunkenly towards him, its long arms swinging awkwardly, its bare two pronged feet scraping against the floor, its mouth gaping open, moaning in misery. It had the bulbous head and lithe build of a V

Illyrion. There was that name again. It was a mistake. It had to be. Every time he heard it, it seemed that every cell in his body cried out in superstitious terror, as if it were the name of the creature that hid under his bed. And every child, no matter their age, race, or religion had one of those. But the souls stored inside his mind did not balk in terror. He could see them as they had been right before death, their heads bowed in prayer, their hands raised in the air as they began to chant

For a moment he stopped, one foot placed in the command deck, the other set firmly on the floor of the secret chamber. He looked back over his shoulder at the chair and for an instant that made his head hurt, Aethan was seeing the room as he’d viewed it in the video. The shades who congregated together were no longer made of shadow, but wore the same strange bio-material that Hiernymus’s robes were made of, their heads bent in solemn prayer. Not for the first time Aethan had the sense that he wa

Aethan felt as if all his limbs weighed a ton, so heavy they were impossible to lift. The mere task of lifting his foot and setting it back down was monumental, a simple impulse turned into a life-or-death battle. A powerful wind had picked up, blowing through this section of the command deck, stinking of rot and black poison. It rustled his hair, blowing it back from his sweaty straining face, his jaw clenched, his eyes focused not on the hole between realities but on Ghor who was in more dange

Spasms of fear wracked up and down Ghor's spine, making it impossible to relax. No matter how much he told himself he needed to be alert for the little lordling, the fear hung around him like a toxic black cloud, made blacker by the gloom around them. The shadows seemed to creep around them, closing in, wanting to spill over them and bury them under a tide of doom, held only at bay by the dome of Aethan's light and the glow of his skin and hair. Just when Ghor would start to relax, he woul

Aethan could feel another presence taking root in his mind, another passenger completely different from Hiernymus. The cleric was still there, the Cathesan could sense him as well, but he had been curiously quiet, a watcher biding his time. This presence was different, smaller, younger, with a voice that rang with both fear and innocence, searching the shadowed corners for the monsters it might contain. The eyes and voice of a child. That child had just used his mouth to speak, to warn Bhal-Ghor

As they entered the stygian darkness of the ship, it occurred to Aethan that he was being manipulated. While this thought had passed through his mind before, this time it landed with weight and stuck. He knew that when it came to the interest of the ship, there were two parties who seemed to have a hand in its discovery. There were the Vrevil who had left the message as both a warning and a calling, a calling that seemed to be specifically for him so that the ship could be discovered in th

I would also like to say there might be a little bit of projecting on my part. I've been in these types of relationships and I think anyone with enough common sense would read this and say these two have a very toxic dynamic. In my past experiences any time I tried to speak up for myself only made the situation worse and was met with understandable resistance. But it's also frustrating when you try to fend for yourself and it just blows up in your face or leads to consequences you regret in the future. Maybe it's quite self indulgent, but with fiction you can strip that away and say "well Aethan gets to make a jab and it actually has an impact on their relationship" or something stupid like that. Maybe that says more about me as a person, but it also brings a sense of empowerment when there's little power to be found at least in the current setting of this story.

As always thank you for the comment. When I wrote this scene I was coming at it from the perspective that for Ghor he has had a week of time to think about things and reflect where for Aethan only a few hours have passed so for him it is very raw. Maybe I didn't state that and might go back and add a sentence or two to convey that if it is necessary. They definitely have barriers that they put up in front of each other and I feel that they are in the beginning stages of taking those barriers down but there's a lot of setbacks and regressions that happen with that. Not trying to fend for myself or be one of those people who can't take feedback, just trying to get the most out of this conversation that I can if that makes sense.