Chapter 47: 50. The Festival Approaches Part 3

As the days passed, it’s almost time for the special horror festival that Shaula was looking forward to. In the past few days, Angelidis, Sigvor and Dzantemir had provided a lot of context about it.

The festival is dedicated to the sighting of a crawler usurper who was known to have lived 600 years ago. His title was God King Gwasila and through some odd circumstances, the Federation discovered what he looked like.

The method of discovery was actually the result of betrayal. Gwasila was once incapacitated due to an assassination attempt from outside the hive. The crawler usurper second-in-line to hive supremacy, Greiss, had used that opportunity to escape Gwasila’s command field.

He formed an aberrant hive, rather, a competing hive against Gwasila. Within that hive, he had spread the image of Gwasila to supposedly humiliate the old God King. The Federation worked with Gwasila’s hive to destroy Greiss’s hive as Osva had a long held treaty with Gwasila, not Greiss.

But, the Federation’s reconnaissance had captured Gwasila’s image in left behind sketches and drawings from the aberrant crawlers.

By deciphering the crawler’s written language, the Federation confirmed that it was Gwasila’s representation, not Greiss’s. The church had later spread the image as an example of what the crawler usurpers looked like. But, it wasn’t something that was taught in history books, it was more like an announcement.

The funny thing was that Greiss had escaped prior to the Federation’s invasion and extermination campaign. Nobody ever learned exactly what he looked like.

“So, what does Gwasila look like then?” Ajax asks. He and Shaula are once again in their inn room. It is the evening prior to the festival.

Shaula hands over a flyer for the festival. The festival started as a yearly tradition 63 years ago. The people who supposedly discovered the usurper lurking around the Mega forest made their discovery about 81 years ago.

Ajax examines the image of Gwasila printed on the festival flyer. Its oval shaped head is dark gray with two quarter-oval black eyes. It has no visible nose, mouth or ears, and two antennae at its temples. Its torso is exoskeletal, but humanoid shaped. The reason it’s called a crawler seems to be its closeness to arthropod-like creatures.

Its lower body is covered in light-gray bandages from its waist down. It had two arms with five fingers each, segmented and thick. Its arms are covered in armor like an insect’s exoskeleton.

On its back are three pairs of long, dark gray, branch-like appendages. One pair was raised over its head, one pair extended out past its sides, and the last pair extended downwards.

It honestly looked pretty cool on a flyer. The experience might be different running into it at night in the wild.

“The festival also has attractions, games, food stalls… there’s even a raffle where you get a chance to be one of the people to set the effigy on fire.”

“Effigy?” Ajax asks.

“Oh, didn’t I mention? At the end of the festival, the attendees take a torch and set a statue of Gwasila on fire. Sigvor told me it was her favorite part.” Shaula takes back the Festival flyer with a wide smile on her face thinking about tomorrow.

“Wow, a whole statue and everything. Reminds me of something, burning man maybe?”

“Honestly, yeah, but I think the vibe is better. They have some exhibits of crawler artifacts as well, including the throne that Greiss had sat on!”

“How the hell did they get that?”

“I have no fucking idea, I’m guessing it’s probably fake. Either way, it feels like it’ll be a fun time tomorrow.” Shaula smiles.

“I think so too.”

“Come on though, let’s go train, I don’t want to be cooped up tonight.” Shaula says, as she goes to the bathroom to change her clothes.

The two of them make their way out of the inn, and head to the slums full of empty buildings. At the entrance to the slums, there are a lot of homeless people walking around. They’re all fully jacketed and near fires to keep warm. Although Ajax and Shaula haven’t noticed it, the nights are getting colder.

They moved past the slum residents towards the buildings closer to the city wall. They head into one of the gravel courtyards where three empty buildings stand in the surroundings. They carefully listen for any human heartbeats or voices, finding nothing. Shaula feels like showing Ajax something today that she’s been thinking about.

“Ajax, look at this.” Shaula takes out something from her backpack. It is a silvery ball, something she had fashioned by melting various metal scraps together. She demonstrates to him something that she has discovered recently.

Over the past several days, they both trained to handle their strength and agility. Today, she wishes to do a bit more testing on her heat powers. Wanting to keep a low profile after their various robberies, they decided to not get involved with crimes too much.

At least, they wouldn’t go looking for them. But, if they heard any nearby, they’d deal with them.

“Oh, wait, you might want to hold your breath for this.” Ajax complies with Shaula’s request.

She holds the metal ball in her right hand. Right now their clothing is throwaway shirts and shorts. No need to hold back.

Shaula feeds an immense amount of heat directly into the ball. The ball starts to glow very quickly. The solid metal melts within a few seconds. Shaula holds the brightly glowing molten iron in both hands. But, as the seconds go by, there is a visible gaseous presence in the air, the metal.

She applies even more heat and the metal starts glowing a lot brighter. Ajax carefully watches the process. After about thirty seconds, he notices a smoke lingering in the air. Nothing remains within Shaula’s palms.

However, soon, even the smoke disappears. He was careful not to breathe it in.

“So, how was that?”

“To be able to generate heat powerful enough to turn iron from solid to gas… Wow. How do you feel though? Doing something like that must take some energy out of you, right?”

“That’s the thing, Ajax. You’ve already told me that when you freeze objects, you feel more vitality coursing through your body, right? Well, it’s the exact opposite for me. When I turn things from solid to liquid, I feel a sudden burst of energy. When I turn things from liquid to gas, I feel another burst of energy. It… It doesn’t make sense honestly. Like, it feels like it shouldn’t be physically possible.”

“Far above my level to figure any of this shit out.”

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“Yeah, yeah… Well, just so long as it works I’m fine with it.” Shaula decides to keep the thought in the back of her mind, and move on. All she can tell for now is that her power is different from what should be ‘physically’ possible.

The night continues as Ajax and Shaula try to do different things with their powers. Ajax shows off something he’s also figured out.

“Look at this.”

Ajax first takes a deep breath in. Shaula notices him concentrate for a moment as he brings his right hand to his mouth. He breathes out. As he breathes out, the air that he breathes out condenses onto his hand. All of it. The water vapor. The oxygen and nitrogen.

It all forms a thin layer of frost on his palm. Ajax keeps the layer of solid air frost on his hands from dissipating. He keeps absorbing heat from the frost on his hands. The frost gets thicker as the air in his surroundings also condenses onto his palm.

“I can keep absorbing heat, even from this cold frost. I can get it colder and colder, I think. But, at a certain point, it starts to get harder. I’m guessing I could approach much lower temperatures than even this. Think I could reach absolute zero?”

“You might as well try…”

Ajax and Shaula practice various things. Ajax tries to make a full suit of frozen armor on his body. He does this by condensing air onto his bare skin and continuously keeping the cold up. It is a bit bulkier than he would like. He decides to figure out where to thin the armor so he can still maintain mobility. He makes some progress.

Meanwhile, Shaula tries to scale the side of a building by superheating her feet and walking upwards. Her advanced strength and coordination makes it not impossible. She just needs more practice to get used to it.

Shaula also tries an experiment that Ajax would rather she not do. But, she is curious.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Ajax asks, nervously.

“Honestly, we know the answer already, but, come on, let’s see!” Shaula holds a sharp knife in her hand. She looks at the pinky finger on her left hand. She raises her knife, and in one quick, fluid motion…

“Fuck! Ah, that’s… that’s… Hah! I told you!”

Shaula cuts off her pinky fingertip. Rather than cut off her whole finger, she decided to be prudent in case this doesn’t work. But, within seconds, her pinky stops bleeding and her fingertip regrows. Her hand is fully functional with no residual pain.

With that being the case, Shaula takes out a meat cleaver.

“W-Wait!!”

Before Ajax can tell her to stop, she cuts off her left hand completely.

“Ow, shit!! That hurt way more, holy shit… But, there, you see?”

***

They do just a bit more practice and return home a couple hours before dawn. They bring in some food cart items into their hotel room and continue just talking.

“Why are you so into horror, anyways?” Ajax asks, with curiosity.

“I fucking hate horror, what are you talking about?”

“Wh–”

“You thought I was into horror? Grow up. Horror movies give me nightmares.”

“Then why do you–”

“Cryptid festivals are different, dumbass. It’s not like you have to go into haunted houses or anything… It feels like a nice slice of local culture too. Like the Mothman festival.”

“Yeah, that one did sound kinda fun honestly.”

“It’s like the lore of the area, you know? Plus, with those guys there to lead us around, I think it’ll be a good time. At least, Jelli, Sigvor and Dzan appreciate the art of it all.”

“Well, you’re not wrong… I was honestly surprised they were like that. Well, it’ll be nice to keep hanging out with them.”

“Hah, yeah… I wonder if we’ll be able to keep this up though.” Shaula looks down with a slight smile. She has been thinking about her relationship with this new group of people.

“Why do you think of it like that? It’s just nice to hang out with them, you know? They’re way more interesting friends than anyone I knew on Earth…”

“No, they’re still acquaintances…”

“Come on, Shaula, they’re our friends. No need to complicate things. When I was a kid, I’d make friends with kids just because they lived nearby… Why are you hesitating? I’ve noticed that before too. You’re keeping your distance from them. Are you doing that consciously?”

“N-No, that’s just how I am. You should know that by now, right?” Ajax looks at Shaula with suspicion. He’s right though.

Shaula has been distancing herself from her new friends. She’s had very little positive contact on Earth. She’s unsure whether she should be dragged into friendships through Ajax’s inertia. She does feel happy though that he’s thinking more about them and less about his family back on Earth.

He still thinks that they’ll get to go home sooner rather than later. So long as he can focus more on what he has here rather than what he lost, he’ll be less likely to break down. She just wonders how long that is going to last. How long he’ll be able to keep this up.

Eventually they’ll have to leave Omicron. Would they rather break their ties when they figure out how to return home? Or, would they be better off keeping people at a distance to prevent themselves from being hurt eventually?

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