Samira

“What? Why five hours?” I asked. “We could just leave now.” Sora and I were gathered around a terminal in their room at the captain’s request.

“Thea asked me to buy her some alone time with Bryce,” Sora explained. “Besides, I have a mani-pedi scheduled in about an hour, and there’s no way I’m missing it.”

“Isn’t that like your third one this week?”

“I don’t like the color they used.” Sora held up their hand to show off their perfectly manicured nails. “It washes out my skin. Makes me look pale.”

“Never going outside makes you look pale, not your nails.” I let myself fall backwards onto their overly fluffy bed. “What am I supposed to do while you’re busy getting pampered?”

“You could come with me?” Sora asked, and I shot them an annoyed glare. “I never said you had to come, just that you could.”

“Not interested,” I answered, but then furrowed my brow at a sudden realization. “Why didn’t you argue with the captain when she said you weren’t going to the lower planes?”

“I told her I didn’t like not going. Was that not enough of an argument?”

“Not from you, it’s not. Sora, what aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s complicated.” They crossed their arms, and I narrowed my eyes before sitting up.

“Saying ‘it’s complicated’ isn’t an answer, or an explanation, or an excuse. Sora, if you had another one of your feelings, then you have to tell me.”

“Something bad is going to happen while Thea and Bryce are in the lower planes.” I was about to say something, but they held up a hand to stop me. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just know that if I went with them, then it would be much worse.”

“Then we need to stop them from going.” I stood up from the bed and tried to get to the console, but Sora blocked me.

“That’s where it gets complicated,” Sora cringed. “I know that their mission is important the same way I know that something is going to happen while they’re in the lower planes.”

“We should at least warn them,” I argued. “Thea is powerful, but from what the captain said, Esme is a lot weaker now. If something is going to happen in the lower planes, it could be really bad, especially if it’s so dangerous that you’re willing to sit it out.”

“We’ll warn them when we’re back on the ship, but that probably means explaining how we know that something is going to happen.”

“Oh, right, I forgot about that.” I sat back down on the bed. “Are you okay with telling them about your instincts? The captain won’t be satisfied with just ‘it works, trust us’. She’s going to want to know everything.”

“You think she’s going to experiment on me?” Sora asked with a smile.

“Absolutely, she is, and it won’t be the type of ‘experimenting’ you like either.”

“Well, that conversation is probably long overdue, anyway.” Sora stood from where they were sitting and wiped imaginary dirt off their pants. “I’m going to go get pampered before I’m stuck on a ship for the foreseeable future. The offer is still open if you want to come with me.”

“Still not interested. But I did just realize that Thea won’t be around to cook for us, so I’m going to try tracking down some pre-made meals or something that we don’t have to cook.”

“I hadn’t even considered that.” Sora just blinked at me. “I guess being obsessed with food pays off sometimes.”

~~~~

“No offense, Softie, but wouldn’t it be more surprising if something didn’t happen while we were in Hades?” Thea asked.

We were all gathered in the room that was once the observatory, but was now set up as the captain’s personal spell testing room. And true to form, she was in the middle of working on some sort of overly complicated ritual with Esme’s help.

“Thea, I explained the plan to you. Are you telling me you don’t remember any of it?” the captain asked.

“In my defense, you weren’t wearing any clothes, so I can’t be held responsible for anything that was said.”

“Okay, I can see how I might be partially to blame for that one,” the captain conceded, before turning to address Sora. “Did you have any specific concerns, or is it just a general sense of unease?”

“Well, now I’m mostly just worried about you two using a plan to assault the hells as foreplay.”

“Sora, this is serious.” I stepped forward to explain. “Something bad is going to happen while you’re in the lower planes. Bad enough that Sora wouldn’t survive if they went with you.”

That caught everybody’s attention, and the room went silent as they all stared at me. The captain looked to Thea to confirm I wasn’t lying, and it was only once she got confirmation that she addressed me. “How do you know something bad is going to happen?”

I hesitated. Sora’s instincts were kind of just an accepted part of our life, and we didn’t exactly know how they worked. Which meant that I couldn’t explain how they worked.

“I sometimes get a feeling or an instinct that pulls me in a direction when I’m about to make a decision,” Sora said. “It can range from a gentle nudge to a hard shove, and on very rare occasions, it’ll be accompanied with a hint of the consequences if I choose to ignore my instincts.”

“And you had one of these feelings that said you’d die if you went with us?” The captain asked. “Is that why you didn’t argue when I asked you to stay with the ship?”

“Not exactly,” Sora explained. “My instincts told me that something bad was going to happen, and that it’d be much worse if I went with you.”

“How accurate are these feelings and how often do you usually get them?” The captain seemed to have switched into full on researcher mode. Which probably meant she believed us and would hopefully take the warning seriously.

“They’ve never been wrong,” Sora explained. “The last time was when I was meeting with Thea at the Garden back on New Eden. Before that there was a girl I worked with who accepted a job she wouldn’t have survived, and then again when Teolix replaced the crew we were working with.”

“It sounds like you might have oracle blood,” Esme commented. “Maybe one of your parents or an ancestor?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sora replied. “I was picked up by raiders when I was barely old enough to walk and traded around for years until eventually a group of pirates gave me to Mother in order to be allowed to hunt in her territory.”

“We could probably kill those pirates for you,” Thea replied. “If they’re still around.”

“Those pirates gave me chocolate and my own room. They weren’t that bad. Besides, you still need to kill Mother for me.”

“I’m just saying that we could do both.”

“Thea, let’s try to focus on what’s in front of us,” Esme interjected. “Primarily, what we’re going to do with Sora’s premonition.”

“Is it possible you misinterpreted the feeling?” The captain asked. “You said something bad would happen, and it would be worse if you came. Does that actually mean something is going to happen in the Hells?”

“Where else could it happen?” I asked.

“Up here, probably on the ship,” Esme said. “If something bad is going to happen here and Sora went with us, then it would be much worse.”

“Which would mean Sami was the one in danger, and not any of us,” Thea pointed out. “Were you planning on blowing up the ship or something?”

“The repairs I have planned aren’t anything dangerous,” I argued. “At least, nowhere near as dangerous as confronting a demon in the hells.”

“I doubt Sami would accidentally blow up the ship, and even if she did, me being here wouldn’t change that,” Sora said. “Besides, It’s not like our bounties have gone anywhere. If something bad is going to happen on the mortal plane, then it’s probably related to that.”

“You’re probably right,” the captain agreed. “But I don’t see that as any reason to get complacent. Go ahead and shift us to the Aether now and see if there’s a safe place to hide the ship. Ideally, somewhere that will interfere with scanners.”

Sora nodded, and I immediately felt the familiar lurch as we shifted to the Aether. They shuddered as the shift finished, and I thanked the gods for the upgraded implants that the captain had bought for us.

Shifting used to be debilitatingly painful for Sora, but now they described it as a chilling pleasurable sensation. Okay, they didn’t use those words exactly, but that’s how I understood it.

“Is there anything around that would work to hide you while we’re gone?” The captain asked.

“Well, let’s see.” Sora smiled as they activated the observatory and the entire room went transparent, making it felt like we were floating freely through the Aether.

“There’s an uncommonly dense auroral formation about a dozen AU to the starboard.” They pointed to their right, and the room appeared to shoot through space until we were floating in the middle of a massive light-show. The usual purple and blues of the Aether were replaced by lazily drifting greens. It was beautiful. And very problematic.

“Is there some sort of landmass we could land on?” I asked. “This would definitely interfere with the upgrades I was planning on making to the shields. But if we’re able to land and shut off the engines, then we’d be virtually undetectable.”

“There are a few islands further away.” Sora waved to their right again, and the scene shifted to us floating above about a dozen vegetation covered islands orbiting around a water-covered moon. “It might be difficult to find a place to land here, but we’d be pretty well hidden.”

“How far is this place?” The captain asked.

“We could get here in about an hour and a half,” Sora said.

“Alright, set a course,” she commanded. “We’re not going to wait to leave, but I’m planning on reevaluating things when we get to the hells. There’s no reason to risk misinterpreting your premonition. Not while we have other options.”

“Sounds good,” Sora agreed. “But captain, this is exactly the sort of place you described mage’s bane growing. I might try to find some after we land.”

“Just be careful if you decide to,” the captain warned. “There’s no way to know what sort of creatures are living on those islands.”

“Captain, you know me.” Sora smiled. “I’m always careful.”