18755 Meduna, Tangled Shore, Vesta Cluster, Main Asteroid Belt, Sol System.

This is the last known location of a sect of former members of House Devils known as the Weavers. They were led by an Eliksni known as Herrah, the Beast, a weaver of great renown, recognised for her work.

This asteroid served as their base of operations. I had come to ask if they might share their history or spare their secrets, but it appears I have arrived too late.

Ketras looked up from hastily written notes to the carnage around him. Something horrible had happened here, some sort of fight if he had to guess. Many of the looms surrounding him had been left broken. Weavings were left torn, tossed aside or unfinished, furniture and light fixtures had been turned over, all of these were clear signs of a struggle. A fairly normal sight all things considered, except for one key observation.

There were no corpses.

It was as if all of the Eliksni present had disappeared into thin air, leaving only their things and signs of the lives they led behind. The den was eerily quiet and the smell of putrid, rotten ether hung in the air.

Something had gone very wrong.

Ketras needed to leave immediately.

He also needed to find out what exactly had happened. For his records, of course. He needed to stay calm, objective. The worry that was building in his gut for the fate of an acquaintance could not cloud his judgement. 

And yet, against that better judgement, he continued further into the den, noting down his findings whenever he encountered something relevant. A toppled over, extinguished lantern just a few feet from a doorway, a broken shock spear with the blade embedded into a wall. He needed to secure a concrete idea of what had happened here. He needed to know if there were any survivors.

Or, if there weren’t, where the corpses had gone.

Investigating the entryway and main workshop further had provided little information beyond what he had already gathered. Something horrible happened here, yet the den hidden away on this asteroid was suspiciously empty. A paradox with no clear answer. Further rooms shed little light on the subject.

Corridor after corridor, room after room, Ketras found nothing. Storage rooms, full of thread and extra looms. Living quarters with nests left unattended. Rooms with ether tanks, still full and waiting for someone to secure their next ration. A secondary workshop besides the main one he had nearly immediately found upon entering the den. All of them had been empty, with either signs of a struggle or signs of someone having dropped whatever it was they had been doing.

Yet still no corpses, or even blood.

Ketras sighed. It really was as if every Eliksni who had lived here had simply vanished into ether, though that was surely insane. That couldn't just happen.

Surely there was an answer here somewhere. Someone with a reputation like Herrah, someone with a title like hers, and company like the one she kept, they would not go so easily.

There were only a few rooms left. Realistically, he knew the chances of finding any further clues as to what happened in them were steadily decreasing with each one explored. Conversely, the chances of him getting hurt by whatever caused this or the damage left behind only increased as he lingered. Not just because whatever did this might still occupy one of those rooms, or that structural damage might have occurred, but the way the traces of ether in the air here smelled was starting to give him a headache and he began to worry it might make him sick.

He started to wonder if his search would be better off postponed until the air cleared. If he should give up and get out of there before something happened to him. He needed to return home safely, or the fact that he had left bedrest would be obvious and his partners would worry over him more than they already had been recently. As much as he loved them, their insistence that he rest had left him feeling stir-crazy. He absentmindedly rubbed at his bandaged chest, mindful of the cracked carapace underneath.

A dull ache bloomed in his chest as a result of the pressure. It dawned on him that he would be in serious trouble if he got into a fight.

Leaving now was the wiser choice. He could return with Skorrheks, Rhyme, or Dante later.

Ketras tried to navigate his way over overturned crates and spindles, back towards the open doorway he'd gone through only minutes earlier. The room he'd been searching had been yet another storage room, one that held a disappointing last of secrets for it to keep.

As he walked, he gave one last cursory look into each crate he passed, hoping that perhaps one might hold something, anything, that might give him an answer. Instead, he missed an overturned loom on the floor and stumbled, bumping into a tower of stacked crates, causing it to fall over. The resulting cascade of weaving materials lasted mere seconds that felt like hours as it fell. He winced as the boxes made contact with the floor, the noise echoing and becoming something much louder than he would have liked it to be.

He sat in the silence following the crash and listened, waiting in the odd, vain hope for the sounds of someone running to check what the commotion was about. Instead, he sat alone in the silence.

Wait.

Not silence. There was a faint… buzzing noise? Something that had not been there before. He sat nearly perfectly still, hesitating to even take a breath from his re-breather as he listened intently. At first he had feared it to be the hiss of a gas, or even ether leak, but the longer he listened the more vocal it sounded. The buzzing was a voice.

That was an Eliksni making that noise.

He quietly and carefully followed the noise across the room to find a crate messily stuffed with threads, unfinished weavings, and... something else. The source of the noise. Finally— A lead. Something out of the ordinary that might give him an idea of what had happened here—

He shifted the threads carefully, not wanting to disturb whatever was making the noise in case it stopped.

Inside the crate, under a brilliant red cloth and burrowed into the threads, he found four luminous eyes peering back at him. A hatchling , making a noise that sounded not unlike something buzzing, though it stopped once it seemed to notice him.

As he stared in dumbfounded shock, Ketras heard a second noise that sounded eerily familiar, though he could not place it— He had other, much more pressing concerns at the moment. This was a hatchling , alone, in an abandoned Weaver's den. He couldn’t just leave them here, they were defenseless. Not to mention, the air quality could make them sick much quicker than it might make him and he had no idea how long they'd been here for. He didn’t even know how old this hatchling was, or who they belonged to. Only that they were the only living Eliksni he’d encountered so far.

“...Velask, little one.” He spoke, unsure of how else to proceed. He offered one of his primary hands to the hatchling, but pulled back rather hastily once the hatchling made a clear attempt to bite him and began their buzzing once again.

As he waited for the hatchling to stop, he watched them retreat back under the red woven cloth they had been hiding under. It was as they made themself comfortable, curling up under the soft fabric, that he noticed their carapace, or rather, their lack thereof.

The hatchling was newly hatched, Ketras realised. Still white and translucent with their egg-molt. They could not have hatched more than a few days ago. He watched the hatchling attempt to burrow further into the threads, only to become tangled in them. There was… little chance a hatchling this young could survive this long without care or ether.

It was then, with a dawning sense of horror, that Ketras finally remembered the sound he had heard earlier. He knew now why he recognized it and just what it was. It had been the tell-tale noise of a Ghost de-compiling. This hatchling could not have survived this long on their own, and the presence of a Ghost nearby indicated that it might be theirs.

The Ghost alone was not what bothered him, of course. He was no stranger to the concept of a Ghost reviving an Eliksni, years spent with Skorrheks had gotten him used to the idea. No, what truly bothered him was could— No. Would a Ghost choose to revive someone so young?

Shoving down his horror as an idea of what had happened to this hatchling in the earliest hours of their life began to fully develop, he tried pulling the threads to free them from their self-made prison. He spoke to them softly, making sure to keep his tone calm and even. This was the tone he often used to read to hatchlings who wanted to hear stories of Riis or the Long Drift, before their or sometimes even their parents' time. He wanted to soothe the hatchling, to show that he was not a threat so that they might come with him easier, but…

Watching how the hatchling buzzed as he worked to free them from the threads, they did not seem convinced. Not by the sound of his voice alone, at least.

However,

If there really was a Ghost here, perhaps they could help him earn the hatchling’s trust. Speaking just a little louder, he kept his tone the same, only now addressing the empty room rather than the hatchling.

“I am not going to hurt you.”
“It is questionable if you understand me, but I am only trying to help you. I wish to make sure you and the child's needs are met.”
“We do not want them dying, now do we?

After another pause that felt like it added a significant number of years to his lifespan, he heard a Ghost recompile, clear as day, and watched them appear from the threads. It made eye contact with him, or at least he thought it did. He had seen many Ghosts since arriving in the Sol system, but he had never seen one with a broken optic before. Their iris was blank, completely black, contrasted against a hauntingly pale white shell.

Ketras nodded towards them as the Ghost seemed to look him over. He was not going to hurt them. He absolutely was not going to hurt the hatchling.

The Ghost disappeared again before reappearing behind the hatchling, pushing them out of the little burrow they had made for themself, freeing them from the little strings that remained tangled around them. This, to Ketras, finally confirmed what he had been hoping was not the case, that the Ghost belonged to the hatchling. As the Ghost pushed them, the hatchling started buzzing again, though this time not at Ketras. If he had to guess at what was wrong, he would say they were uncomfortable with being pushed towards a stranger. He did not necessarily blame them for that. He was glad the hatchling seemed to already know to be wary of strangers.

Ketras extended a hand out to the hatchling once again, this time offering his prosthetic hand, open-palmed for the hatchling to investigate, should they choose to come closer. Unsurprisingly, the hatchling bit him. With their tiny, barely hardened teeth, they latched on to the metal of his prosthetic with a surprising grip.

Ketras wondered if it was the possibility of the Light or if all hatchlings were this strong. He'd never had any of his own to test this theory and none of the hatchlings he'd watched over briefly had ever tried to bite him.

He waited patiently to see if the hatchling would relax their jaw once they realised he was not here to attack them.

A few minutes passed. They didn’t.

Sensing that they would both be here forever if he didn’t change his approach, Ketras dug around in his bag with one of his remaining free hands, eventually producing a small toy he had picked up in a previous room. It was a small teething toy, designed to release ether. An alternate method of ensuring hatchlings received the ether they needed. He had initially grabbed it to give to a hatchling in the City the next time he wound up with one in his care, but this seemed a far more appropriate use.

He messed with the toy for a moment, before taking the rebreather from his mouth to fill the toy with ether he knew was safe.

If he could entice the hatchling into biting the toy instead of his hand, it would keep them occupied long enough for him to be able to grab them with all four of his hands and bring them somewhere considerably more safe, while also giving them what was surely a much needed supply of ether for them. With a fondness, he remembered Rhyme describing a human term to him earlier in the week, one for when an agreement benefited both parties equally. A 'win-win'. The hatchling would receive vitally important ether, and he would regain the use of his left primary hand.

He offered them the toy.

The hatchling, seemingly offended by the sudden object in their space, let go of Ketras’ hand to bite the perceived new intruder. They bit down hard, presumably as hard as their little body could manage, a few times. Ketras couldn't help but laugh, wondering if they were trying to kill it like that. Eventually, it did seem to occur to them that every time they did so, a small puff of ether was released into their mouth. He watched confusion, then joy spread across their little face as they trilled happily at the new substance and bit down again. And again. And again. The hatchling let out a small, delighted laugh.

Absent-mindedly, Ketras wondered if this was the first time they had ever been given Ether.

With as young as they looked, and the presence of a Ghost, things were not promising to the contrary.

Now that the hatchling had been thoroughly distracted by the ether toy, Ketras tried once again to reach for them, relieved to find that his plan had worked. He was also aided by the Ghost gently pushing the hatchling into his hands, making the process of moving the hatchling just a little bit easier. The hatchling, thankfully, seemed mostly content with this, only starting to buzz again when Ketras accidentally bumped the toy in his attempt to properly support them.

Ketras was unprepared for just how horrified he was to feel how soft they still were. He already knew they couldn’t be more than a few days old, but… In all honesty, if this hatchling was more than even a day or two old, he would be genuinely surprised. Next in the list of Ketras’ ever-increasing concerning observations was that they were cold . It was never good for hatchlings to be this cold, in fact it was actively dangerous. He needed to bundle them up.

He began to look around the storage room for something big enough to wrap them in and soft enough it wouldn’t irritate their still-soft shell, and it was with some annoyance that he realised everything was… all thread. The storage room only held thread. He'd been so caught up in being concerned over this surprise hatchling that he'd forgotten he was in a Weaver's storage room.

It was only as he turned to leave, to search another room with the hatchling, that the Ghost reappeared in front of him, forcing him to pause in his strides. He stopped, about to ask what the Ghost wanted from him when it transmatted something incredibly soft into his secondary arms.

It was the red cloth from the crate. Yet again, in his concern for the hatchling, he had also forgotten about it.

“...Thank you.” He addressed the Ghost with a nod, trying to ignore the creep of embarrassment crawling up his neck. He inspected the cloth, trying to distract himself from his embarrassment. It was a brilliant red, soft, and very finely woven. Only now that he was able to hold the cloth in his hands did he finally recognize exactly what it was. Eggcloth.

He could not help the wave of relief that hit him as he realized just how much this worked out in his favour. Though, he also wondered if perhaps that was the reason the hatchling was burrowing with it in the first place. Did this Ghost know of the significance of eggcloth?

Ketras tentatively began to wrap the hatchling in the cloth, unsure if they would choose to fight back and bite him again. He was incredibly relieved to find that the hatchling seemed to be fond of the cloth, only being about as wiggly as any other hatchling.

…Or perhaps they were still distracted with the ether toy.

As long as it let him properly bundle them up, he didn’t care. He needed to get them both out of there before whatever happened to the rest of the Eliksni in this den happened to them, or before the stagnant ether in the air made either of them too sick. He could think about what he was going to do with this hatchling, whether he would manage to find someone to care for them or if he would do it himself, later.

Right now, they only needed to return home safely.