Chương 26: Ouroboros Pendant
It had been about two weeks after Suspiria's visit and nothing 'show-wise' had happened, to my relief. The whole event had left my nerves more than a little frayed because of how useless I had been. If I had been the one out with Janeway instead of Katye, even from the beginning, my gut instinct told me that things would have dissolved into a fight when Suspriria and I met. I was so ready to jump in and protect everyone, but it would have only made things a lot worse.
Sensors had picked up some polyferranide in an uninhabited star system with three planets, so we had diverted our course to collect the rest of what we needed to repair the warp coils. While a few teams were sent out to mine what B'Elanna needed, I got permission from Janeway to take my ship to the asteroid belt to conduct a few more tests on the newest version of Raven's exo-suit. She had been able to cut the propulsion drain by half and the life-support system was a quarter of the cost of what it had been, but most importantly, we wanted to test what would happen if I used my Dusa form while in it.
"Here," Raven said, tossing me a silver ring with a tiny maroon mana crystal inlaid in the metal.
"And I thought I would be the first to propose," I retorted as I caught it.
Raven smirked and replied, "It has the exo-suit in it. You just need to use a bit a mana, and you'll be able to put it on with a thought."
"Nifty," I chuckled and put on the ring.
I channeled some of my mana into the ring and the gem turned gray. Suddenly, my mind was connected to this 'pocket of space' where I could 'see' all the pieces of the exo-suit. When I focused on any one piece for more than a couple of seconds, it would appear on my body, or I could focus on the thought that I wanted that piece on me.
"Nice," I said once I was fully decked out in the gear.
Raven geared up in less than a second and was in a matching exo-suit. "Alright, Katye, we're suited up. Beam us out whenever you're ready."
"Energizing," Katye replied through the comm system built into the helmet.
We were transported out into space, just off the port side of our little ship. Despite the screen hiding her face, I could practically see Raven's broad smile as she slowly turned around looking out at the asteroids and stars out in the distance. She had a love of zero-g, and that was the whole reason why she had been so obsessed with creating a perfect exo-suit.
"So, are you two just going to float out there until the cores run out?" Katye teased.
"Just taking in the view first," I retorted. "Ready, Raven?"
"Yeah," she agreed.
I shifted into my Dusa form, expecting the same draining feeling that I had experienced the first time that I had been thrown into space, but it was no different than when I used the form on a planet. What was really strange was that I could see the HUD read out despite no sign of the gear on my transformed body. I guess that I should not be that surprised since my clothing and artificial fingers would vanish while I was in this form yet was untouched when I changed back.
"How is it?" Raven asked, her voice ringing in my ears.
"Great, actually. HUD is still visible along with the comm system," I replied.
"Then the next test is the propulsion system."
Before I could say anything, she blasted straight into the asteroid field. I could only chuckle since I was not exactly sure how this would work, but with a flap of my wings, I launched forward with incredible speed, far faster than what I would be able to achieve on a planet. Just like the HUD and communication system, the propulsion seemed to be integrated into my Dusa form which meant that I would actually be able to fight in space at this rate.
I chased after Raven with a laugh and the Fae Dragon following behind me. She was able to easily maneuver around the floating rocks while I needed to tilt my wings like I was gliding through the air. Flapping my wings would also increase my speed, so I was able to catch up to Raven for a moment, but then she increased her speed further. I could hear her laughing in my ears as she swooped down close to one of the asteroids. I kept on her tail, but that only spurred her on even more as we raced.
"Watch out!" Katye yelled.
The danger of an asteroid field was that every now and then they would crash into each other. We could not see it from our point of view, but Katye could from the ship and tried to warn us. Unfortunately, we were just too close to the asteroid to be able to dodge, so we activated our shields though mine was different from hers. Unlike her dark maroon dome, a maroon shimmer covered my scales and then the asteroid hit us. Raven seemed to bounce off while I dug a deep, long gorge across the surface of the rock until my momentum was finally stopped and I was nearly half a kilometer buried under the rock, but thankfully, the shielding still protected me.
"Rebecca!" both Raven and Katye called out.
"I'm fine. That did more damage to my pride than my body; I didn't feel a thing," I grumbled as channeled my mana into the rock surrounding me and freed up my body. I could hear both of them chuckling at my misfortune, but I ignored it and asked, "Do you still want a few kilos of mage-steel, Raven?"
"Are you having to dig yourself out?" Raven asked, trying her hardest to suppress her laughter.
"Shut it, or you can do the work to convert the rock into metal," I retorted grumpily.
"Sorry, sorry... yes, about twenty kilograms will save me a lot of replicator work," she replied.
"Alright, I'll call if I need a beam out," I said. I spread out my Earth Domain through the asteroid and, while I could only cover about half of it, I found something that was not rock. "Katye, can you scan this asteroid?"
"Can't find your way out?" Katye teased which made Raven chuckle as well.
"Ha ha," I said, dryly. "There is something that's buried in here besides me. Can you figure out what it is?"
"Hmmm... I'm not sure. Fae's sensors can't pick up anything but you and the rock," Katye replied.
"Now, that makes me curious," I remarked.
Using my Earth mana, I bore a hole downwards to the object that I could vaguely sense. I could only see due to Dark Vision spell incorporated into the HUD, but when I uncovered it, I still could not see what the object was. Yang spells were not my specialty, but I could still cast a spell to brighten up the area which revealed a necklace which had a pendant that looked like a snake that was biting its own tail with a clear crystal on the inside of the circle. Despite the fact that I could sense nothing from it, I had the distinct impression that I should not touch it directly, so I created a stone box around it.
"You guys are going to want to see this. Beam me back to the ship," I said, shifting out of my Dusa form.
Katye beamed Raven and I back to the ship at the same time. The exo-suit vanished from around Raven's body with a thought, and she gave me a smirk since it took me another couple of moments to figure out how to store the suit inside the ring. Katye walked into Engineering while the two of us headed over to a workstation and I placed the stone box on the table. With a bit of mana, I removed the top and they both looked in with curiosity.
"A necklace?" Raven asked with surprise, reaching out to pick it up.
"Don't touch it," I warned as I grabbed her hand. "There is something special about it, even if the sensors don't tell us so."
"Can you identify it, Fae?" Katye asked.
::Please place the item in my scanner.::
I manipulated a bit of the stone to create a hook and used it to bring the necklace over to another bench. I carefully laid it down then sent the hook back over to the stone box. A couple of metallic 'arms' sprang out of the table, and one held up the necklace while another scanned it with a green light.
::An Ouroboros Pendant. It was wise of you not to touch it, Rebecca.::
"What is it?" I asked as the arms placed the necklace down and retracted.
::A powerful artifact that can save a person from death. It binds the moment that a person makes contact with it, but there is a limit to how strong of a person that it can save. If you had touched it, Rebecca, it would have shattered due to the strength of your Soul, as would it for Katye.::
"Then it's meant for Raven or Echo," Katye commented.
::They do have the ability to use it.::
"Do you think that if we destroy the entire asteroid belt that we can find another one?" I asked, knowing the answer anyways.
"That would be too easy," Katye replied.
"What was it doing out here buried in an asteroid?" Raven asked.
"Why was there a labyrinth under Eden?" I retorted. "Tori's specialty is Time, so this whole thing was likely set up by him before we even entered this universe."
::Voyager is hailing us.::
"Of course, they are; open the channel," I sighed.
"Rebecca, we've finished collecting the polyferranide that we need earlier than expected. Have you completed your tests?" Janeway asked.
"Nearly... we still need to collect some ore, but that should not take us more than a half hour," I replied.
"Alright, we'll come to you once the last group returns," Janeway said.
"Thank you, Captain."
With the connection cut, I rubbed my temples and tried to ignore the implications of what the necklace. I grabbed the stone box and used the hook to put the pendant back into it then sealed it. We would have to figure out what to do with it later, but nothing would be decided while Echo was on the Voyager.
I put the exo-suit back on, and Raven teleported me to the nearest asteroid. Thanks to years of practice back in Eden, I could quickly compress stone with my mana until it became what we called mage-steel but forming the twenty kilos that Raven wanted still took some time. The Voyager approached while I was finishing up the conversion and, once I was done, Raven beamed me back onboard while Katye flew us back to the Voyager.
I took the box with the necklace upstairs with Katye behind me. Raven hung back so that she could organize the metal bars and store them away. I placed the box on the coffee table between the couches then dropped onto my usual one with a sigh.
"Tori really is a piece of work by giving this to us. He's basically telling us to pick one of them over the other," I complained.
"Not necessarily," Katye replied, sitting across from me. "He can see the future, so maybe it will be clear which one needs it. It's not like Raven and Echo are identical with their strengths, so it could be a certain situation that one of them will need it."
"Which means that one of them is going to die before the end of this," I said, saying exactly what had been going through my mind since we discovered what the necklace was.
"Possibly," she agreed, "but, it could just be a safety net or even meant for someone on the Voyager. We might even get another one from one of his Pantheon, thanks to Sancu and his 'games'. Still, it's not like we had anything like this back in 'The 100', so quit your bitching."
I smirked and shook my head while chuckling, "Do you ever get tired of always being right?"
"Rarely," she retorted.
Echo came back to the ship an hour later, after her duty-shift was over, and we explained what I had found. She suggested that Raven go ahead and use it since she had almost been killed already in this universe, but Katye was the normal voice of reason and shut down her argument. We agreed that the pendant would remain unbound until we had a second one or a nearly impossible mission presented itself.
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