Risen: Shatterverse

Echo Whisperer

With a quick look at Korisahnt, Vask stepped into the space we were directly occupying, moving smoothly despite the increase in gravity. I guess taking up residence in a juggernaut's cosmically enhanced body did have its advantages, as she didn't appear to be affected by the higher G.

She then closed her eyes, apparently to let her focus on extending her senses beyond the compressed light making up most of the type 4's hull. Thankfully it didn't take long before:

"Yes," she said without opening her eyes. "I sense a number of essences beyond the ship. Big ones, and small ones. Essences of all kinds. They feel ... familiar."

"A good start," Hannibal indicated. "Now, can you tell if any are ... angry?"

Vask shook her head.

"More scared than angry," she reported. "Some very, very scared. But some are curious about the ship."

Hannibal looked at me and we simultaneously said:

"Sentients." The Cathaginian then turned back to Vask. "Can you draw the curious ones closer?"

Vask's expression tightened with effort for a brief moment before:

"Yes," she said. "Some are already close by but I can feel up to several kilometers away. I have a large number that I can feel at that distance and more in between." Her eyes fluttered open and, for the briefest of moments, she had the slit pupils of an Earth-style reptile.

"So you want me to draw them all in?"

"Not yet," Hannibal said, his face thoughtful. "We need shells first. And we need to prep to embed at the same time."

"We should get echoes into shells before Vask is embedded," Naveaia pointed out. "Or we might lose her capability to communicate and sense intent."

Hannibal frowned.

"We should've asked Trin if she could still communicate before we left her new home," he said, a rueful tint coloring his words. Then the frown was being pushed aside in favor of a more resolved expression.

"Okay, let's see if we can craft us some shells, yes?"

I cleared my throat.

"Before we do that, sir, maybe we should find out how many legs those sentients used to have."

"Legs?" Hannibal repeated, momentarily not understanding what I was driving at.

"Legs," Naveaia repeated with a nod in my direction. "The clone makes another good point. We can't just assume the sentients on this world are bipedal, as they are on Earth. Not even in the Avatar Alliance are all sentient species bipedal. Some have no definite form, while others have ..."

"Four legs," Hannibal interjected to say, understanding finally washing across his face. "Right. Lady Vask?"

As it turned out, we got lucky with the leg count. The sentients on this world were indeed bipedal and humanoid in appearance. Any further details we'd have to wait for until we could actually stuff one into a shell and see what they could do with it. Thankfully we didn't have to wait for long.

My eyes narrowed as the rather thin-looking column of motion and faint motes of light moved towards where Vask stood at the loading ramp's foot. Her posture was about as non-threatening as a world entity could make it, arms at her sides and relaxed. We had hoped that adopting a fairly passive and non-threatening pose, we wouldn't trigger any latent anger buried deep in the rather ancient ghosts' core.

Well, at least that's what our resident ghost expert, Hannibal, said. Not being a ghost because I was more like a splinter of a Risen consciousness, I deferred to him. Still, that didn't keep me from having my weapon ready in case I needed to bring it up quickly to defend Vask from attack. I just needed to look like I wasn't. In case the echo gave me the once over before coming in close.