Spirits and Stones

Meneria attempted to foresee the future, now being on planet should help the prediction become clearer. Any attempt she tried resulted in failure, too many psychic disruptions were ripping the images in her head. Perhaps they should annihilate the creatures after all, just to get a clear picture of the future.

She did however manage to track on potential path. Reeling it in like a thread of yarn from ever expanding yarn ball of fate, she observed her catch.

What was foretold made her heart stop and blood freeze. Like the cold grasp of she who thrists touching her soul, she backed out of the prediction in fear of it consuming her mind. She saw the nothingness, the icy embrace of failure and saturated soil filled with the precious blood of her race. Meditation was necessary on this later, perhaps consulting the council of farseers for further guidance.

Arrendil was already busying himself with analysing the landscape, looking for any traps and paced the boarder of the clearing like the caged lion he was. Noticing a purple disruption in the sea of green foliage, he silently signalled one of the scorpions to investigate. Soon enough the scorpion subdued an eavesdropping creature and forced it to walk forward. He quickly returned to Meneria side after finishing his patrol.

Twilight stepped forward, towards the two that looked in charge of them. She could feel the eyes of some of the green aliens watching her closely, ready to strike her down at a moment's notice.

She cleared her throat to begin addressing the aliens and nearly sent one of the aliens flying towards her in a blaze of violence. The two leaders began walking forward in gallant strides, she attempted to move out of their way but instead the more masculine alien forced her to the side. The surprising strength of the alien push sent her tumbling onto her side.

“Can you sense the Craftworld calling?” Arrendil asked, wiping away any germs he got from touching the creature. Meneria closed her eyes once again and trying to focus on the gentle pulsing left by the Craftworld's infinity circuit. Once again, she was completely lost. The choir of countless psychics jolted her off course each time she attempted to reach for the Craftworld and fear of stumbling onto that prediction again kept her treading lightly. Realising that she had as much chance of finding the correct path as attempting to find a needle in a million haystacks, she reverted back to reality.

“No, there is too much interference.” She reported, catching the spiraling runes into her palms. Arrendil huffed, spinning around to face the Striking Scorpions.

“How goes the search for the Craftworld?”

The Striking Scorpion's Exarch moved ahead, giving his chainsabre a few test swings by his side as if he was afraid he was out of practice. “Nothing to report, the rangers may have uncovered something but they have yet to return from the .”

Arrendil grumbled something about the inefficiency of the rangers. With his hands folding behind his back, Twilight saw a chance to intervene.

“Sorry to interrupt,  but are you looking for something?” she asked, both the autarch's and the scorpion's eyes darted to her. The burning stares she was getting made her back up until they stopped.

“Dalrion, make yourself useful and get this creature out of my sights, I need to debrief without its meddling.” Arrendil didn't even cast his eyes on her again as he spoke. Degrading her further.

She felt a tapping on her shoulder. Turning around to see the tapper, she saw that one of the alien had crouched down, nearly making her the same height. The creature was unlike the others, he had no armor nor any weapons on its person, instead it wore some sort of ceremonial robe and had a flute in its other hand.

“Follow me.” he instructed, standing up and moving towards the portal that the aliens original came from. Twilight reluctantly followed, clearly only making matters worse by trying to help the aliens.

Dalrion placed his hands against the smooth wraithbone portal. Running his hand over a small crack that was beyond sight. Letting out a disappointed sigh, he rose the flute to his masked lips and blew. Siphoning physic energy through the flute and onto the portal, summoning wraithbone into existence to fill in the cracks on the portal.

“How do you do that?” Twilight asked, mesmerized by the aliens magic. Expecting some crude comment or verbal discredit as the alien's response. Instead, the alien chuckled and showed her the flute.

“It isn't too difficult, once you know the runes and have a conduit.” Twilight assumed the conduit was the flute and the runes were just spells. Looking at the alien's magic, it felt distant to her own but still familiar in weird ways. She had a feeling the alien's weren't going to let her into their libraries to study some of their magic.

“Can I ask a question?” Twilight asked, Dalrion stopped and focused on her for a brief moment before going back to maintaining the portal.

“Go on...”

“Why are you all here?” When Twilight first saw the aliens, she came up with two conclusions. They were here to invade or to make friends. In the short time she'd been in their presence they have gone against both theories, if they were making friends then they wouldn't hurt her or be mean. If they were invading they would of killed her or imprisoned her, and they hadn't done either yet.

“I suppose there is no harm in telling you.” he finished up with the portal, satisfied with its condition. “We're looking for something. A Craftworld lost to us many millennia ago, it must of crashed on this planet whilst it was in infancy.”

  “What's a Craftworld?” Twilight inquired. Making Dalrion groan slightly as he thought up a way to describe a spacecraft that could be anywhere between the size of a small continent or the largest planets.  Realizing there was no way to explain such a craft to a primitive, he gave a quick summery.

“It is just want we call are homes, like big flying houses only much bigger.”

It made sense to Twilight, that would explain their eagerness to find it and the lack of wanting other species involved in finding it. She was still curious on how big they were, after all those walker came through the portal so it must be pretty huge houses.

“Dalrion, how goes the portal?” Meneria asked, her eyes falling on Twilight for a few short seconds before turning back to the portal.

Dalrion took his place beside her and admire his handywork. “The portal is secure, should be safe to send the rest through.” Meneria nodded, snapping her eyes shut to send a quick physic message to her comrades on the other side. As soon as the message was sent, Meneria and Dalrion moved to the side of the portal and Twilight quickly followed.

Thunder sounded on the other side of the portal. In a blink of an eye a swarm of jetbikes shot out and quickly halted, nearly shaving off the end of Twilight's tail with the jetbike winglike appendages. A few of them stopped in front of the trio, saluting the Warlock. “You called for some windriders?”

  “Indeed, I shall commandeer one for myself and one for the Bonesinger, send the rest out to report autarch Arrendil.” she commanded, the pilot nodded and dismounted the jetbike, followed swiftly by another dismounted pilot as they went to talk to Arrendil.

“Get on your jetbike.” Meneria ordered, sitting down on her own and getting a feel for the raw and wild craft. The art of riding a jetbike was not lost to her, she had served as one of the windriders in a battle long ago and quickly learnt that the jetbike was less of a machine and more of a living creature that required trust of its rider to work efficiently.

“Where is it that we ride?” Dalrion asked, complying with his orders and sitting down on his jetbike with much less skill. He motioned for Twilight to join him. The long sleak craft looked extremely unsafe and didn't look like it complied with having passengers. She rose her hoof to touch the craft, feeling the bike shudder under her touch like a living creature.

“I want to have a discussion with the leaders of these creatures. If they have indeed been on this planet for their whole existence, they will likely know the location of something unusual.” She reasoned, despite having one of the creature in front of her she still never directly addressed Twilight.

“Little one.” Dalrion addressed Twilight, getting her attention. “Do you know where your leaders are?”

“Y-Yes, they're in Canterlot, the city is suspended from the side of Equestria's tallest mountain.” She pointed her purple hoof towards the mountains, both Dalrion and Meneria moved their heads to look. Indeed there was a large shadow being cast from a hanging structure, spiraling ivory towers and pristine structures that wouldn't go amiss inside one of the lesser districts of a Craftworld.

“Very well, let us ride.” Meneria huffed, getting an almost cooing like sound to come from the jetbike.  With a simple movement of her foot, the jetbike purred and shot forth, leaving only turned up dust in its wake.

“Thank you little one for your assistant. Have no fear, nothing will come of your leaders unless they refuse compliance.” Dalrion said before repeating similar actions to the warlock and sending his jetbike soaring across the sky. Watching the two specks disappear into the distance, she realized that she was on her own. The green armoured aliens, the other bikers and the large walkers had all vanished from sight, despite the feeling she was being watched she knew that the aliens were long gone.

Judging by the speed the crafts were travelling, they'd reach Canterlot in a few short minutes. Pooling energy into her horn, she prepared to do one of the longest teleportation spells she could manage. With a simple popping sound, Twilight disappeared in a purple flash.

A few minutes past in eerie silence, the gentle humming from the portal being the only sound for miles. Birds were too startled to return and nopony nor alien was still around to witness if anything was happening. A scratching sound began and continued for a few minutes and the sound of dirt being turned up signaled the end of the scratching.

The new sound of grinding rusty metal and gentle electronic bleeping broke the veil of silence properly. Tiny little metallic creatures surfaced from the ground and approached the portal. The newfound machines spewed bright green energy, it leaked from the two microscopic pincers and dropped onto the soil, draining it of color until it looked more like ash than dirt. Soon more and more rose from the depths until they were able to swarm over the webway portal like flies on a carcass.

The gentle humming turned to a shriek as the webway connection broke. Allowing the metal bugs to harvest the wraithbone and gouge themselves on the sweet energies until nothing was left. They quickly buried themselves back to the underworld, leaving not a single trace of their presence...