[Trade] Intermission

Dawn came far too quickly for either pachy’s liking, artificial sunlight slowly colouring the inside of the dome once again. It was close to a real sunrise, yet… still wrong. The ambient temperature had grown cooler in the night, the early hours saw the wall and ceiling panels brightly lit and coloured with the pre-dawn colours which transitioned into vibrant pinks and oranges which would later shift to a pure sky blue, yet it felt wrong. The woes of seeing the “sun” rise from the ocean floor.

Deerlegs stirred first, discomfort in her hip and tail bringing her to consciousness more than the faint amount of light refracting through the distant waterfall. She had a massive headache, but it seemed the least of her worries when her entire body seemed to ache as well. Her eyes felt as though they were full of grit. She started to turn her head, to reach up with her hands to try to rub some of the tiredness away, but paused when she realised there was a weight on her shoulder.

Blearily, she tried to focus on the shapes in the receding darkness of the tunnel. It wasn’t just glowing moss in her feathers, but pinpricks of light as well. Embargo was huddled up against her, the tip of his muzzle resting just in the feathers of her shoulder. He was breathing quietly, still sleeping. Though his eyes were closed, the lids weren’t thick enough to totally obscure the glow that his eyes emitted - she could see the light though them, even now. She wondered distantly, not for the first time, if it had any affect on his vision.

She watched him for a while, so completely at peace that she was at risk falling back asleep. Her eyes started to slip closed again, until she and Embargo both awakened suddenly at the quiet sound of creaking metal.

“You’re awake.” Ghostlight’s voice was just as cool and calm as it had been the night before. How she knew that either of them were close to consciousness, they weren’t sure. She continued, despite the tension that both pachys now carried. Embargo was embarrassed as well as tense. He had meant to wake up sooner, to take part of the night’s watch so they weren’t solely relying on the goodwill of the carnivore they shared the tunnel with. The dacen would have scowled at him for being so naively trusting.

“The courtiers will be waking soon as well. You must continue your journey before they find you. Your future lies beyond these walls.”

“I thought we’d just stay here, actually,” Deerlegs muttered. It put her in a poor mood to wake up sharing the same space as a sharptooth, even if it was one that had helped them.

Embargo grunted quietly. Deerlegs had regained enough of herself to have a bit of fire behind her words. That was comforting. It was even more comforting to see her feather crests raise in alert when Ghostlight turned her muzzle to face them directly.

“You will continue your journey without me.” Ghostlight continued as though she hadn’t heard Deerlegs’s comment.

“But…” She tilted her head slightly, as though listening. Neither pachy could hear anything beyond the distant, oddly muffled roar of the waterfall.  “You will not be without a guide.”

Deerlegs wrinkled her muzzle in disgust. If she never saw another courtier again, it would still be too soon. If this cryo thought that they would let an Atlantean lead them again, she had cracked her egg. “We’ll be fine on our own,” Deerlegs snorted.

Ghostlight’s eyes almost seemed to lighten slightly, though her pupils remained just as clouded and blown out as they always had been. “I have little doubt of that,” the cryo replied.

When she started to walk towards the pachys, Deerlegs tensed and tried to get to her feet, only to huff and grumble. Embargo was up quicker, standing at the ready to charge and crash into Ghostlight if she suddenly showed hostility. They watched in silence as the strange, blind cryo instead… walked past them. Deeper into the tunnel, much to their great confusion. The suspicion arose again that perhaps Ghostlight knew more about Atlantis and the courtiers than she let on.

They continued to stare into the dark even after Ghostlight had gone, listening to the quiet creaking of the lantern until the distant sound of the waterfall curiously became louder and swallowed the faint metal squeak. As much as they didn’t trust Ghostlight, both knew her words to be true - they had to get going before the courtiers started to spread out into the jungle to continue their search for stragglers and escapees. Embargo was already up on his feet, which just left helping Deerlegs to hers.

He waited, silent and patient, until she indicated that she would accept his help. Sleep had helped them both, but it hadn’t miraculously cured their wounds, hers least of all. Once she was on her feet she was relatively steady, able to stand without much assistance from him, but her leg trembled. Cold stone made for poor bedding, and she was stiff and sore. But… she nodded. She could travel, with his help.

They drank from the shallow trickle of water that ran through the tunnel, Embargo gathered their bundle of stolen Atlantean items, and they started the long and arduous journey out of the cave and through the jungle.

Deerlegs was unusually quiet as they walked, save for the occasional grunt, huff, or swear when she couldn’t quite lift her claws over a low obstacle. Embargo did his best to guide her around them, but with such dense undergrowth and the increasing frequency of carnivorous plants, it was difficult to find any such safe path. There certainly wasn’t an easy path anymore, not like the one Supernova had lead them along.

Thorns bit at his hide and opened barely-closed scabs when he tried to hold them out of the way for Deerlegs to pass by, and snagged at the bundle held in his jaws like the forest itself was trying to prevent them from stealing from the courtiers. Fortunately, the fabric managed to remain mostly intact, and none of their precious pilfered cargo was lost to the forest floor.

He huffed in acknowledgement when Deerlegs murmured her thanks. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking by now; they couldn’t see the “sun” in the sky through the forest canopy, but he could tell they were starting to reach her limit. She was slowing down again. Her leg and tail would be bothering her, he knew, and she had thus far been putting on a brave face to hide how much it pained her to walk. The facade was starting to slip, though. This amount of strenuous movement pulled on torn muscle that was still raw and open, pinched feathers that had dried together in mats thanks to blood and improper drying once they’d been wetted. Walking with wounds packed with moss wasn’t exactly pleasant, either. Every other step felt like her flesh was on fire, or being grated against-

Deerlegs bleated in angry surprise at the same time that a voice unfamiliar to her sounded out in the jungle - “Hey!”

Embargo looked up, immediately full of fire and ready to drop the bundle of armour components and charge the stranger, only to realise that they’d done the impossible and somehow run into another pachy in the Atlantean jungle. A familiar ewe, faintly golden with warm, dark brown points on her extremities.

“You should watch where you’re - oh.” Berlioz seemed to be hit by the realisation at the same time as Embargo.

“Oh.” She had made another realisation, getting a proper look at both of them. They looked like they’d been through Hell and back. Feathers broken and ruffled, both of them bloodstained and scabbed, both of them looking just on the edge between defensive and hostile. Except Embargo, whose posture had relaxed slightly, shortly after a look of recognition crossed his features. The features that weren’t obscured by the bundle that he was holding in his mouth, anyway.

“Embargo! I thought you’d be with the dacen still.”

Deerlegs blinked, confused and surprised. She knew him? She hadn’t thought that he knew any pachys before running into her on Isla Pera.

Embargo grunted, the sound muffled by the fabric clutched in his teeth, and tilted his head slightly. She looked remarkably unaffected by the bloody banquet. What was she doing out here in the jungle?

The silence between them was a bit uncomfortable. Berlioz shifted her feet. “I’ve… just been exploring the area, mapping it out. This whole place is incredible, even if the plants are a bit more hostile than I’d like,” she laughed lightly. “Did you run into one?” Was that why they looked so rough? Their wounds didn’t exactly look like they’d been inflicted by plants, but the plants here were a bit more fantastic than those on the surface, so there was always the chance -

“Some days ago,” Deerlegs snorted roughly. “We were attacked by a ‘slingshot.’” It felt foul to use the Atlantean’s word for it, but she didn’t have another name for the plant.

Her muzzle wrinkled to bare her teeth, her feather crests flattened. “The Court tried to kill us last night when we didn’t immediately agree to help them, so now we’re leaving.”

“...Oh,” Berlioz said again. But what was there more to say in this sort of situation, really?

“I… I had no idea -” Berlioz shook her head, eyes wide with shock. She was dumbfounded. Their injuries certainly made more sense, in that light, but it was a stunning revelation. She hadn’t had many interactions with the courtiers thus far, sticking mostly to the trails through the jungle that the oviraptors had made so that she could learn them, but when she had interacted with courtiers they’d been quite courteous to her.

Berlioz turned her head, looking around them. “Well… if you’re on your way out, you’re going the wrong way. This path goes back to the Court. It’s fascinating, really, it seems like all the paths that lead out from the Court are like a spiderweb with the city at the heart, all branching out into the jungle and eventually funneling back together to the tunnel to the surface -”

Embargo set the bundle down with a dull clunk. “Can you help us, Berlioz?” he asked, interrupting her monologue about her discoveries. If they were truly running themselves in circles, they wouldn’t make it out of the jungle before nightfall, and he wasn’t fond of the idea of spending the night amongst flora that thirsted for blood.

Deerlegs shot him a curious look. So they did know each other. Embargo wasn’t wrong though, they did need a guide. They’d needed an oviraptor to help them get through the jungle when they first journeyed to Atlantis; they wouldn’t get out without the help of another. Embargo seemed to trust her, so they could only hope that Berlioz really knew what she was doing, and was kind enough to guide them through the labyrinth.

Berlioz looked the two of them over again, eyes soft with concern. It almost seemed inconceivable that the courtiers would attack them wantonly, but they did look pitifully rough, and they were going the wrong way if they wanted to flee Atlantis. “Yeah, yeah I can help. I’ve gotten to know this part of Atlantis pretty well - there’s a relatively safe path not far from here that will lead us to the tunnel that can get you back to the surface.”

She gave the pair a kind look. She’d get them out, but they might stop somewhere along the way. They looked dead on their feet, even if they were still somehow walking.

Embargo dipped his head in quiet thanks, then bent to re-collect the corners of the bundle. He nodded for Deerlegs to go ahead, he’d follow close behind.

Their journey this time was less quiet than it had been - for all of them. While Embargo and Deerlegs didn’t seem keen on speaking much, tired and paranoid of the idea of courtiers hunting them through the jungle as they were, Berlioz was happy for the company and the chance to chat with someone about what she’d discovered.

The paths through the Atlantean jungle were criss-crossed all over the place, with a tendency to overlap one another before they split away again. They changed often though, and were difficult to follow, let alone to map. It wasn’t even that the courtiers themselves seemed to intentionally change the paths, it was that the flora sometimes grew over preestablished routes and the scouts were forced to find alternative paths if they wanted to actually traverse the jungle. There were the more dangerous plants to contend with as well - there had been an… unfortunate circumstance that Berlioz had found herself in earlier in her travels when she’d trod upon a patch of extraordinarily sticky, colourful plants. If she were something smaller or weaker, she imagined that she would have been caught and consumed by the plant, which wasn’t entirely pleasant to think about. It was amazing though, she hadn’t seen such things outside the Alpha lab in Zone B and even the plants that they’d grown up with hadn’t been so ferocious.

Deerlegs flicked a feather crest when Berlioz spoke of her time in the Alpha lab. Embargo had never mentioned her, even though they seemed friendly enough. That being said… he didn’t really talk about his time in the Alpha lab much at all, and Deerlegs couldn’t blame him for that. What little she’d heard about it, it had been a horrific place. Those experiences were better left in the past.

Deerlegs’s eyes snapped open abruptly when she crashed against something - soft, but firm, to her surprise. Berlioz had caught her when she started to fall. Deerlegs mumbled her thanks, feathers fluffed slightly with embarrassment. She hadn’t even noticed that her eyes had been starting to drift shut.

“We’re almost there,” Berlioz promised. “Then we can stop for a while.”

Embargo huffed quietly, a confused look in his eyes as he raised his head. They couldn’t rest while they were still in Atlantis, surely?

Berlioz’s eyes sparkled. “I think you’ll like this place. I came across it earlier when I started exploring the jungle.” Fortunately, it was just the paths that seemed to change occasionally. Landmarks like the koi pond didn’t decide to just get up and move around.

As Berlioz assured them, it took very little time to reach their destination. The point-marked pachy pushed her way through the undergrowth. It was so open in the space that they were stepping into that the difference in light - the tight, shadowy canopy versus the bright, comparatively open clearing - made them squint as their eyes adjusted. Berlioz looked back over her shoulder towards Embargo and Deerlegs with a pleased expression.

“What is this?” Deerlegs asked, wary.

Undaunted, Berlioz’s eyes squinted into a smile. “A little jungle oasis!”

“And it’s safe?” The doubt didn’t leave Deerlegs’s eyes as she looked around, and Embargo looked similarly uncertain. This place looked too… open. What was stopping the jungle from taking over every inch of available ground space, if not courtiers occasionally coming here to cut back the encroaching plants?

Berlioz shrugged lightly. “Safe enough, I think. Look, there’s fish in the water -” Not waiting for an answer, Berlioz stepped into the clearing to the raised stone edge surrounding the large pond. Koi fish with a stunning array of colours swam peacefully just beneath the water’s surface, oranges and whites and even flashes of red, yellow, and black. They approached the edge curiously, but when Berlioz offered them no food, they resumed swimming gently around in lazy patterns.

Embargo snorted quietly, dipping his head in a way that made the armour components clank against one another. They didn’t have to stay for long, but it would be a good idea to at least pause here a while. Outside of almost falling over, Deerlegs was limping badly, and they could both get a drink and get their energy back before they started on the last leg of their journey to the surface.

Somewhat reluctantly, Deerlegs followed Berlioz into the clearing, with Embargo following behind. It was… pretty, for what it was, though only Berlioz seemed to truly be enjoying herself here. There was a turtle in the water that had come to beg for food as well, and was following her as she walked along the human-cut stone border.

Embargo set the bundle of armour on the ground, far enough from the edge of the jungle that it wouldn’t be reclaimed by any wandering toothed vines, and loosened the tightness in his jaw that had come from holding the heavy load for so long. Deerlegs limped over to the water. She was surprised to see that she almost didn’t recognise the face that reflected back up to her. Her reflection’s feathers were ragged and ruffled, her eyes dull with fatigue, and there was a gash yet to fully heal on her dome where she’d clashed with Raya.

She bowed her head and drank deeply, disturbing the reflection so that how this place had changed her wasn’t so clear. Besides that - she hadn’t realised until now, but she was parched. The water was a surprising amount warmer than the river that they’d jumped into. Not uncomfortable for the fish, but not almost freezing as the river had been.

Embargo stepped up to join her, bioluminescence glinting off the surface of the water and sending the fish scattering as he bowed his head to drink. Deerlegs looked towards Berlioz as Embargo drank, curious about the other pachy. Berlioz had laid down on the large, sun-warmed paving stones surrounding the pond, and chewed on an itchy spot on the palm of her hand while she was seemingly lost in thought. In truth, Berlioz was running through a mental map of the area, plotting out the best route to get them to the tunnel that would take them back to the surface. Some of the pathways weren’t completely memorised, metaphorical dead-ends on the map in her memory, but she thought she had a pretty good idea of where to go next.

Berlioz glanced up with a smile. “If you’re hungry, the water lilies are pretty nice. The flowers more so than the leaves.” She had the sneaking suspicion that they hadn’t eaten much of anything, if they’d been on the run since last night. It was still strange to think about - fleeing the Atlanteans.

Embargo murmured that he’d get some for Deerlegs before she could try to step up onto the edge of the pond. With as much walking as they’d been doing, he was sure that her wounds had opened again and the damage was simply concealed by the moss packed into them. Deerlegs looked like she was going to protest, but again, decided against it. Instead, she laid down on the paving stones, near to Berlioz but not close enough for them to be considered familiar with one another.

The heat felt nice on her feathers, and she hadn’t noticed until now that she could feel every beat of her heart like a jolt through her body. She was tired and sore, and now that she was at rest, she didn’t want to get up again. Maybe they could rest here, just for a while.

Berlioz watched silently as Embargo brought Deerlegs some of the water lily - fresh and soft leaves, as well as the sweeter flowers - before inspecting the wounds along her hip and tail. There was no scent of sourness yet, but he would be glad when they made it back to Highcliff and she could let her wounds properly rest and heal.

“Are your parents okay?” Berlioz asked softly. Her question was directed to Embargo, who turned his gaze upwards.

Deerlegs glanced between them, wordless confusion and curiosity alike in her tired eyes.

“... They have each other,” Embargo murmured. Wherever they had gotten to, Njano and Jibi had each other.

Berlioz nestled her hands underneath her chest, loafing comfortably. That was better than the alternative. The world they came from was… not good at keeping families together.

“And what about you? Where are you from?” she prompted, turning her vibrant blue eyes to Deerlegs. She certainly had never come across her in any of the zones in the lab. She didn’t sound like a lab dino, either.

Deerlegs huffed quietly as Embargo settled down beside her, careful not to jostle her too much. “Highcliff, at the far point of Kela on the shore where the sun sets. Many of us live there.” And more than just pachys, as well, had started to join them since the arrival of the Alpha lab dinosaurs to the islands. Herbivores of many kinds helped keep the plateau safe now, but more mouths meant it was harder to keep them all fed, and… Deerlegs sighed deeply.

The Highcliff pachy’s melancholy didn’t go unnoticed by Berlioz, who smiled kindly. “I think I’ve heard of your home. It’s a very large colony, right? Did you drag Embargo across Pera to join you there?” she teased lightly.

Embargo snorted. Yes. She had.

“I almost smashed him into shell fragments when I first saw him,” Deerlegs laughed tiredly. She had never seen a glowing dinosaur until that point, and his jagged silhouette in the fog… well. No one could blame her for being a little defensive. “But he’s shaping up to be a fine cliff-hopper.”

Embargo snorted again, but he was privately pleased that she thought as much. “I still have a lot to learn,” he murmured.

Deerlegs huffed, amused, then immediately winced when the exhale made the very edge of the wound on her hip twinge. Berlioz gave her a sympathetic look. Maybe Deerlegs hadn’t been made in the lab as they had, but she certainly had a lab dino’s spirit to have come this far in the state she was in.

“You should both sleep a while, if you can.” Berlioz got to her feet, sufficiently warmed. “So you’re not sleepwalking by the time you get to the top of the tunnel. It’s not much further, I’ll be able to get you there before dark.”

“Someone should keep watch,” Embargo countered quietly. While Berlioz didn’t seem to fear the Atlanteans, or even have any knowledge of the bloody banquet, they had reason to fear them. They couldn’t afford to be caught sleeping. There was also the fact that they were in a clearing in the middle of a carnivorous jungle. Deerlegs looked similarly concerned, if only because she didn’t know Berlioz and she did know how tenacious and persistent the Atlanteans had been in chasing them down.

“No worries,” Berlioz replied. She hopped up onto the ledge. “Me and my little buddy will keep an eye out for anything suspicious.” The turtle had resurfaced almost immediately when her shadow fell over the water. “I’ll wake you up if something happens.”

Embargo trusted her enough to not argue, and laid out completely on the stone beside Deerlegs. She was a survivor of the Alpha labs - she knew how to watch for danger. Deerlegs looked a bit more skeptical, but it wasn’t long that she felt herself starting to slip away.

It was peaceful here. The faint buzz of insects, the gentle ripple of the pond when it was disturbed by fish moving beneath the surface and the trickle of a waterfall fed by an invisible pump that cycled the water and kept it clean. Embargo’s quiet, rhythmic breathing beside her, which was occasionally punctuated by a frog calling from somewhere around the koi pond or a bird song from deeper within the jungle.

It wasn’t like the ambiance of Highcliff where the waves constantly crashed against the shore and ate away at the base of the cliff. The birds here were different; not seagulls but some kind of songbird that Deerlegs wasn’t familiar with, and sometimes they didn’t even sound real. She was more familiar with rattlesnake tails than the frog songs that she heard here. The crickets, at least, were somewhat familiar to her.

Ultimately it didn’t truly matter how different the ambiance surrounding them was from her home. It served its purpose just the same as it lulled Deerlegs into a shallow, uneasy sleep.