-Jack Knight’s P.O.V.-

There were a lot of things that I’d found incredibly bizarre ever since the obelisks had touched down. How were they brought to us? Why now? With all of the things that we were able to buy, why was it that we got any kind of resource at all from biotics?

Did we somehow used to just have that energy… float out into the world before the obelisks were around? I’d only killed a few wolves before the obelisks came down, and at the time I didn’t feel any differently, so I’m guessing I didn’t actually absorb any kind of weird energy stuff. Maybe I had been, maybe everyone was and they were just used to all of the extra energy in the air.

I brought my attention back to the lesson, “So, that’s how and why you cook food. Not that you really… uh… need to eat?” I scratched the back of my head, my impromptu lesson about the meat over the fire and why I was heating it up complete.

The being before me, one that looked something between what I would imagine a mushroom-shaped man and a skeleton would look like.

It had only been a few days since we’d been abducted, primarily by accident it seemed. These things were operating at a child’s level of intellect, touching everything, learning by copying, hardly capable of harming us.

That last thought drew a scoff from me, the pseudo-biotic beings looking up at me with a tilt to its head. “Ah, not you, I was thinking about something else.” I lied, not wanting to deal with another pouting Villager.

I’d already watched a couple Villager’s tear some wolves apart limb from limb yesterday. That was surreal to watch, considering how close in proximity I was willing to be now. They were intimidating at first, but something about them was disarming. For as long as we've been here, we hadn’t been harmed, and had been treated with something that approached respect, if they knew what that even was.

The only issue was that the head had claimed our radios from us and we were far too out of range for obelisk communication to work. And, by that same reason, the Head still didn’t allow us out of the village unsupervised. Though, he did allow us to keep our side-arms, mostly out of concern that we might be eaten by wolves. I still entertained the notion that we could have shot our way out of here on the first day with that.

As I watched the Villager stare at the fire and the cooking meat with a level of fascination that seemed far too alike to a child, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to shoot them. Not for my own freedom, not when they didn’t harm us. If they attacked me, sure, I could do it then. But that was just it, ‘If’ they attacked me. So far, even when Louis forcibly marched out of the encampment, the most they’d do is pick us up over the shoulder or drag us back to their walled village. Joseph had even begun to teach the Villagers how to fist fight, which of course since they were a lot stronger ended up teaching them how to shadow box after he got the first right hook that knocked him out.

That’d been funny.

Suddenly the Villager stood up, head cocked to the side before turning in the direction that I knew would be the highest point in the village.

The Head was calling.

These past few days, the village had been busy, beyond learning from us. There were dozens of them, carrying out tasks with a level of exuberance that frankly impressed me. They were like organic robots, but just like a robot, they had a specific kind of pattern. Every night, most of them would go to the amphitheatre in front of the Head’s tower. Judging by the harmonics that we could hear for the next hour or so, I think there was a chance it was a ritual of some sort, a kind of primitive thing.

Or there was an actual reason behind it, I have no idea, I’m no scientist.

I picked up my kabob, regrettably without any spices to use on it, and started nibbling at it as it cooled.

A hand rested on my shoulder, startling me.

“Jack, Louis is calling a meeting for us.” Benjamin spoke, the stockily built man grinned, clearly amused that he snuck up on me.

I nodded, “Alright, Joey here is about to - ah, yup, there he goes.” I gestured after the Villager as it got up and left without preamble. They were a lot like machines when they had a goal, pursuing it relentlessly.

“You too, huh?” Ben snickered, “Ashley named hers too. Anyways, we’re talking about what we’re gonna do.”

I nodded, though internally I winced at that. Louis had been gnawing at the bit ever since we got here, although I certainly didn’t hold it against him. This was big news, and we needed to make sure that HQ didn’t treat these biotics as hostiles as soon as possible. We knew that if we came in en masse, we could clear out this place easily if it were any normal biotics.

If they were normal, though, we would have annihilated them on the way here. We could have stopped them from bringing us, but Louis had been the one who realized that they were doing nothing to harm us, even after Ben put a bullet through the head of the one that had been carrying him. It died, and another one came and took its place, completely unbothered by the fact that it might be next, and did nothing in conflict to Ben.

We walked through the village, houses made of a blend between clay and wood, not terribly done at that. Many of them I would consider livable, in a third-world country kind of sense. They weren’t going to collapse anytime soon, and I wondered who taught them that.

As we passed by the houses I noted the general state of emptiness that the village had at the moment. These buildings would satisfy a humans living requirement, but these biotics were a parody of that, filing into these buildings and standing up in every available space like storage containers, packed in tight. I felt a general unease as I looked at that, wondering if they were uncomfortable with the arrangement.

Yet, time and again they seemed to have no complaints about their living conditions. They were utterly unbothered by rain, heat, cold, the elements that would inconvenience a human little more than background for them. If one fell, a nearby companion would immediately assist it to its feet.

More than once, I’d watched them bring wolves back into the camp, holding them upside down with four Villagers clamping its limbs so tightly it couldn’t move an inch. They’d taken them into the amphitheatre where we’d witnessed the larger variants of the Villagers, the Guardians, press a hand into their foreheads, a pulsing and rhythmic sound pulsing the air as a dozen such sights could be seen all around. The Guardians would do so every night, trying to perform some arcane task that I couldn’t fathom. Whatever it was, it seemed to fail every night, and the wolves would go into special restraints and pens until they would try again the next night.

The sessions lasted longer each time, not sure what that meant, perhaps it was flexing a muscle of some sort for them?

“You listening?” Benjamin looked back to me as I was lost in thought.

I winced, “Sorry, what was that?”

He sighed, “I was saying how it was a lot emptier than usual.” And then he shook his head, grumbling. Annoyed briefly, I decided to let him be, turning my attention to the village. To my surprise, it was a great deal emptier, in fact, it was completely empty.

I couldn’t see a single individual around.

“What the hell?” I murmured, not even seeing the standard Guardian at the end of each block of houses.

“Right? Something’s going down. That’s why Louis… well, we should go talk to him.” Benjamin shook his head, warily eyeing the surroundings in case there were any unwelcome ears listening in.

It only took a half minutes to get to the building that had been allocated to us, larger and more ergonomic for humans to a degree, not conforming to the norm of the rest of the village. Each of the buildings compared to this one had been blocky, organized into uniform units of six buildings long and two buildings wide, forming a spider web of walkable paths that had been tamped down by Villagers over several weeks. The wall was apparent even from here, the downhill incline giving us sight over the hill and forest around, it was the highest point in the area, and featured a cliffside drop on three sides, perfect for defensibility.

Something that a being with no intelligence would never have done.

We entered the building, pulling aside woven thread made of plant fiber as the makeshift door.

The other four stiffened when we entered, before relaxing a moment later at the sight of us.

“Right on time, we were just discussing-” Louis began, interrupted quickly by Joseph.

“-Getting the hell out of here.” He grinned, “We’ve got a golden opportunity. Ash already checked, the front gates not even manned.”

My hackles rose at that, ‘why would they leave the gate unmanned?’ I wanted to say. The words caught in my throat, though, I was the least experienced of the people here, surely that would have been considered.

“Aside from the possibility that this is a trap,” Liam sighed, “It would be the best time to go.”

“We’ve already got all of our things, except our rifles, but those can be replaced. We have our sidearms, more than enough to deal with a few wolves. We can get back to the city if we go on foot, we’ll have to run for a while to get into safer territory, but it can be done.” Louis’ resoluteness told everyone that he’d already made up his mind about this.

I frowned, finding the situation strange. I doubted it’d be any kind of trap, the Bonemen, as we called them, weren’t particularly drawn to such tricks. No, there was something else.

Ashley frowned, “Look, I don’t mind going back right now, but I don’t think we should do that without our weapons. Most of our gear, too,” she reflexively touched her temple, missing the visor that she’d had there sorely. It definitely hadn’t been cheap.

I opened my mouth to speak, and then found myself closing it again. Then I redoubled my effort, ‘Speak, damnit.’

“I think we should see what the Head is doing right now.” After I spoke, I felt Louis’ eyes settle on me with a mixture of shock and disbelief.

“We want them to get away from them, you realize?” Louis blinked, “Why in the world would we want to go into the middle of the lot of them?”

Benjamin laughed, “Well, if we want our gear back, the Head’s the one we have to go through anyways.”

“I definitely see the merit in getting our stuff back, but why talk to that one again?” Liam grumbled, “He gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that the entire time we’ve been here, there hasn’t been any reason for the gates to be undefended. I don’t think it’s a trap, but I don’t think that makes whatever is happening any safer. I think we should see if…” I paused, knowing that this was going to sound ridiculous no matter how I said it, “...If Yaga would give us any information, maybe even convince him to let us go and come back?”

The others processed that for a few seconds, in their own thoughts. None of us were exactly sure what to feel about the Head, who called itself Yaga. We weren’t even sure if the Obelisk system would categorize Yaga as a Unique. If anything was, thought, it’d definitely be him. The progenitor of the Bonemen wasn’t an especially large specimen, but he did look a great deal more human, and seemed to look more so every day after interacting with us. It was unnerving, on the first day he could barely speak broken english, but on the second he was able to speak clearly. Today, who knew? Maybe he’d be singing ballads.

Jokes aside, Yaga’s learning capacity was insane. We’d taught his ‘children’ a few things and Yaga seemed to know them too. Maybe there was some kind of hive-mind thing going on there.

“It might be a good idea, I saw a hunting party return earlier. They were down a few members, unusual losses for a few wolves.” Benjamin frowned, “Not sure if that has anything to do with what’s going on out there, but if there’s something excessively dangerous out there, I guess it wouldn’t do us any good to get eaten on the way back to base.”

Louis’ eyebrow drew down furiously as he thought, all eyes on him. He was the team leader here, and while Benjamin was his second, we all agreed that the final decision should rest on Louis, for better or worse.

He looked at each of us one by one, considering the options carefully. We all knew he wanted to get back to base, but there was a reason why we decided to make him our leader.

“Alright, we’ll talk with Yaga,” his face said he absolutely hated the idea, “I’d rather not walk into some crazy biotics teeth out there in the middle of the night, anyways.”

There was a definite air of nervousness at that. While we were fairly certain that Yaga wasn’t going to harm us, we didn’t exactly want to strain our tenuous position with him either. We couldn’t stay here forever, though, we’d have to go back to Gilramore sooner rather than later.

We were as packed as we could be, and we decided it would be best to keep our belongings on hand. That way, if we did have to fight our way out, then at the very least we’d have a chance to succeed. Granted, the fact that a Guardian was a seven foot tall humanoid hunk of fungaloid tissue with a growth coming from its back like a bazooka didn’t attest to much success if we did need to fight our way out. They were a mean shot at anything less than three hundred feet.

“Alright, everyone fall in, let's get this over with.” Louis groaned audibly as we approached the dug-out amphitheatre. A circular podium protruded from our side of the amphitheatre, unoccupied as of yet. Around it were stairs, filled with the seated bodies of over a hundred Bonemen, each of them emitting harmonics that reverberated off of the packed dirt, vibrating my clenched teeth. This was the first time I’d been so close to them as they did this, and they showed no notice of us.

I looked across to the other side, the podium showing a simple chair, nothing so much to be called a throne, currently occupied by a humanoid, whose hands were in front of him, fingers linked together in deep thought, listening to the congregation before him with serenity plain on the few flexible features his face bore.

From afar, I’d seen this before, he would maintain this posture and calmness the entire duration of their meeting.

But right now, I could see that expression warp from that genteel expression to concern, and then anger, bared teeth as sharp as knives easily viewable. All at once, the harmonics picked up to a fever pitch as he reached out his hands, the noise deafening.

“What’s happening?” Joseph shouted, gritting his teeth and clamping his hands over his ears.

None of us had an answer for him, and after a few impossibly loud seconds, I watched Yaga rise from his seat, standing at the edge of the podium and reaching out to the distance to the east. Strain was evident on his face, and I felt a throb against my mind that I immediately struggled to understand.

Sound bled into me, touching my consciousness as my eyes widened.

Something inside my head snapped, and all at once the sound was no longer deafening. It was a pure thing, filled with experiences, emotions.

With strong hands I’d beaten down a wolf, celebrating with my song to the others of my cluster, we’d defeated nearly six wolves with six of my sisters, one on one fighting that we won. The Humans might be impressed if they could see us, perhaps fist-man would give us more learning. Some of the other lessons were less interesting, but still very important. We’d learned that we were called Bonemen, which First of Us said was a good thing, we weren’t being called biotics, which meant that differentiating us from them was going well. Good for the future.

I turned my attention to the sounds of trees falling in sun-rise direction, East, the First of Us had said that was. We came to attention, and our song grew. No, we could not fight this.

As one, we turned and fled. Whatever was pursuing us seemed to slow for a moment as it encountered the site of our kill. Through the woods, another of my cluster could see it, and shared the sight with a strange emotion.

It filled us with an energy, not quite elation, though it got us moving quicker, our pourous bodies took in air faster, our limbs pumped harder. What was this? It was exhilirating, much like the first wolf hunt I’d been on. But… it was different, there was no happiness, just a gnawing dread. Why?

Suddenly the forest behind us exploded into a surge of motion and howls, discordant and terrible.

‘I fear it.’ Was the simple answer, ‘It fills me with terror. What is terro-’ The thoughts in my head seized as it approached rapidly, two of my cluster closest to it splitting off in one direction away from us. Their song was pure as they intended to give of themselves for the cluster so that the First of Us would know of this threat. We accepted their song with gladness and sorrow. Losing one of Us was not forever, their song would be reborn, but they would be new, not the one they were before. But they would return, nevertheless, still a part them them.

That was how it always had been.

The beast, a horror of riven flesh and viscera, paraded around on ravenous legs and fangs of the very wolves we’d hunted, turned in pursuit of the two, faster than it should have been. It dragged the rest of its body, rolling forward on it’s massing scrabbling with desperate vigor after the two of our cluster.

Later, we felt their song warp in pain, muted as it was for us in the first place. We knew the song would end soon with death, as was the way with everything.

But then it didn’t. And then it grew strange, distorted. Suddenly, the Us was not a part of us, no part of our cycle, but it was ever present, still seeking, and we knew then that this enemy was the worst. They were the worst. Awful. Disgusting.

Hate. Hate them. Hate them!

The chorus of voices joined in the congregation, and I felt my own mouth forming the words, the Bonemen had found the creature.

“Wolven.” I spoke.

All at once the congregation sharpened to a razor point, the word drifting through the amphitheater in wordless air.

‘Wolven. Hate. Hate the Wolven!’ Recognition sparked in my mind, the image of wolven as I’d seen it from the Reaper’s surged in my mind. I looked up, feeling small and weak, tears streaming from my eyes from the pureness of the emotions I was feeling that weren’t my own.

Yaga looked at me, into me, feeling a connection, the song finding a kindred soul.

And then unbidden I felt my thoughts turn to Wolven, the suffering that the creatures it wove into its form went through. The man that had painted a target on Wolven’s back, burned it down and nearly killed it.

‘Reaper. Matthew…’ I felt a spark in my mind as Yaga decided on something, like a shift in mindset. To me, it felt like the land under my feet shifted, my knees hitting dirt to keep from sprawling out.

Yaga reached out across distance, feeling the discordant songs of those consumed by Wolven.

And I felt his mind push against Wolven, the congregation massed against the beast and its mindless thralls.

Like two waves of water, they crashed together, churned, then like living mountains they crashed into each other again. I winced as I felt that pain, and I realized that they were too evenly matched.

After a few seconds, though, I realized that Wolven would win. It didn’t care if it burned out a few minds in its body, it would simply dispose of them. Yaga couldn’t, not like Wolven could, not even something that he would do. I could feel it now, the human mind, fragmented and floating in the consciousness of the biotic that Yaga was.

‘This is a bad idea…’ I grit my teeth. With all the grace of a sledgehammer, I hit Wolven with images that Matthew had showed where they’d drilled it down with mortar fire, filling that canyon with burning heat and molten slag. For a second, its defenses faltered, and in that moment, Yaga worked.

I pushed away, disengaging as I felt Wolvens many snapping jaws around me. I evaded, but at the last moment, a long, sinous hand grabbed me around the throat. Cold, glistening eyes glared into my own.

It poured through my mind, for a mere half second. Long enough for disgust to roil through me, long enough that I dreaded losing myself amidst the wrapping, invasive tendrils that I felt sought to dig deep into my insides.

Then, like a gasoline powered fire, Wolven’s mind was alight in suffering and pain. Two incandescent beings, singing a song of self-sacrifice and purity, burned apart within it, deep in its confines. Still, I felt the knowledge it wanted, I felt the trailing claw in my mind like a needle in my eye.

‘Gilramore. Reaper. Nemesis.’ I felt those thoughts, all encompassing and full of viciousness.

I collapsed back into my flesh, blood dripping from one eye and from my nose, the mother of all headaches brewing in my mind as blessed unconsciousness evaded my grasp.

The song had stopped, the congregation back to normal. I could feel Benjamin’s hands on my shoulders as he asked if I was okay.

Shortly thereafter, I felt a much heavier hand on my head, banishing a fragment of the headache that made me want for death.

“He will recover.” Yaga said, “We must leave immediately. This one joined our song, I have learned much.”

“The hell are you saying? You did this to him?” Louis hand snapped to his pistol, but he managed to keep from drawing it, “You better find some words to explain what the actual fuck is going on right now.”

Yaga gestured out to the waiting Bonemen, who immediately set about dismembering the wolves that remained in the camp with frenzy. Louis fidgeted slightly at the sight, before Yaga began to explain.

“The one called Wolven has been found. We leave for Gilramore now while it is stunned from its mind-fire. You will communicate with the Reaper and inform him that we will assist in destroying the Enemy.”

“That sounded like an order.” Louis smiled with bared teeth.

“It was.” Yaga met his gaze unflinchingly, “Take your weapons so we may leave now.”

At that moment, several Bonemen Guardians arrived with weaponry in hand. Louis took his weapon and pack, shouldering it and staring at Yaga. For a few tense seconds, he said nothing, and his grimace only losing some of its edge as he spoke, “Fine, but don’t blame me if you guys get shot at when we get close to the city.”

Yaga gestured and I watched as the Bonemen fell into formation around us, abandoning the settlement on the mountaintop without delay. I felt my eyelids grow heavy as I was placed on a cot, carried between two of the villagers out of a place that had been the source of such great confusion these last few days.

And as I slept, I felt the song still present in the back of my mind, giving me treasured rest that I hadn’t realized I so dearly needed.