"So we're in orbit," Cassie said, looking down on a golden planet whose twisting storms were like a variety of venomous snakes.

"Great observation. We have been in orbit for half a day. We are going to attempt the descent in a moment. Are you and Tabai prepared?" asked Dusty, who, too, seemed to be enjoying the view... well, he would be, but Cassie was pretty sure Dusty was physically incapable of enjoying anything. On top of that... was that her tone of voice he was mimicking? She definitely didn't approve of that.

Coolly, Cassie said, "Of course. Now, before we make our descent, can you please tell us you did the calibration I asked you to do regarding the next known location of the seraph?"

"I don't know, can I?" asked Dusty. Recoiling under the look Cassie was giving him, he snapped, "I did the calibration! Who died and put you in charge, anyways?"

"G'ana," said Alexa, coolly.

"What? I thought you were on my side," Dusty snapped.

"Just because we're friends doesn't mean I have to come to your aid all the time," Alexa said, lazily turning the ship. "Now get out, and take Pechi with you."

"G-good luck. Y-you're going to do fine," Pechi said. "H-hopefully. It's an auspicious day for those born under Caghiati, Cassie! T-take big risks, b-but... p-potentially try to keep that suggestion in scale?"

Cassie tried to smile. "Naturally!" It was really nice to know the harvester who would, supposedly, be taking her mind to the next world if she managed not to die before she got home. Cassie sighed as Pechi and Dusty disappeared within the elevator, leaving her with a deeply disinterested Alexa and Tabai. "So," she asked, hearing the elevators begin to click away (how did they manage it all so quickly?), "We do have a plan for this, don't we?"

"That's your job, isn't it?" asked Alexa.

"Well!" Cassie started, pawing the ground with one hoof. "I mean... well..."

"Forget it, think of something on the way down there while you're in the pods. It's going to be a turbulent trip down, and then I'll need to adjust the ship and all before we go out, just so it doesn't float away." Alexa rolled her eyes. "In any other pilot's paws, you could start counting your hours now. We're talking hundreds of miles per hour in some places. In others? Maybe a dozen miles, but it seems like it fluctuates quickly."

"And we have a way to deal with this, right?" asked Cassie, already picking up on the reeking answer.

"We have magnetized pads, special suits, a little magic, and a lot of skill," Alexa said, "When I said strap in, by the way, that wasn't a suggestion. It was an order."

"You don't really hold the authority to order us around," Tabai said, coolly, and Alexa responded by jerking the center ship out of its position. Cassie's hooves clattered against the ground, and upon trying to get into the pod for protection, almost fell into its cushioned embrace. Tabai, who was a little more steady on her paws, gave Alexa a glare and maneuvered across the swiftly shaking floor into her own pod. The seatbelts pulled up around them, binding them tight, and leaving Cassie in an awkward position where she was neither truly sitting or standing, surrounded on several sides by cushion so that she was packed in.

No sooner did she find herself in this position than was she eternally grateful for it, because at this point the ship began to plummet downwards. Alexa's protection in the cockpit didn't look like enough to hold her, but that was just as well, because she steered with her whole body and her magic besides, thrashing with the ship. The entire shell was beseeched by a dull wailing as the worst of the wind hit them. As she looked up at the atmosphere they'd just penetrated, Cassie saw blue fire and moving trails of golden air. Her entire body shook as violently as the ship, which she thought she might burn up with-- and then everything got so much worse. The ship corkscrewed downwards into a dive before pulling up near the surface, howling angrily as death all the while. Cassie's vision went black and flickered, weakly, back into vision only when all of the calamity had stopped.

The ship itself let out a gasping sigh, as if it had been mortally wounded, and Alexa stood up from the cockpit, undeterred. The ruff of fur around her neck bristled with static energy. She looked to her companions, as if warning them, and idly tapped a button, releasing their restraints. Tabai and Cassie collapsed out of their pods, and the room itself looked no better. The tapestry was upright, miraculously, but anything that hadn't been pinned down beforehand had been thrown across the room, including breakfast, leaving stains across the ceiling. One of the chairs had come free and broken its legs against the cockpit barrier, which had since receded. Fortunately, Pechi had had the sense to bring Benn up to her room before the mission. No one was eager to find out how resistant the statues were to the elements.

Alexa jerked her head forwards. "Stuff's in the airlock. Let's go."

"You can't spare us a second?" asked Tabai.

Alexa said, "I'll go it alone, but you won't like how I handle things."

Tabai dragged herself onto her paws, scowling furiously. She almost met Alexa's pace as the two entered the airlock. "Wait!" cried Cassie, scrambling to her hooves before falling again. Cassie choked on her own sick, forcing it down, and tried to get up again. "Can the two of you hold up for a second? The floor is so slick, and I can't--" The world spun frantically around her. Was that the airlock gate closing without her? They couldn't possibly...

Tabai put her back leg in the door. "Come fast, or the bitch will leave you behind."

"The queen of the bitches," Alexa responded, already zipping up her suit. "You two'll need assistance, won't you?"

"Are you sure this'll help us?" asked Cassie.

"I don't know if you'll be able to exert enough force to get your hooves off the ground, but it will keep us from blowing away," said Alexa. "Fully magnetized, like the dust on this planet. Dusty did the tests. Now put a leg up, so I can get the suit under it."
It was like wearing a large blanket, if blankets were half as comfortable and twice as heavy. Cassie felt even more uncomfortable under the suit than she felt the rest of the time, which was saying something. If she had wanted to suffocate to death, there had to be a thousand more convenient ways to smother herself. Still, she stood perfectly in place as Alexa adjusted the zippers, unflinching even as Alexa got her fur caught in the nasty little teeth.

"They couldn't have provided more agreeable wear, I take it?" asked Tabai. "They certainly have better than these devils back home."

"Don't have these at home for a reason. No planet we'd reasonably be on has conditions like these," Alexa said. Her vision monitor was obscured slightly by all the fur that had found itself clumped up around her face, so that only her angry eyes and half of her snout were visible. "It's just those of us on the mission who were brave enough to die."

There was that word again.

"The suits'll filter existing oxygen in the atmosphere through those 'gills', so we don't need to worry about oxygen deprivation, this time. We do need to stick close and stay careful with the trackers. Got one on the ship. The other signal's the seraph, but it's more of a warmer-colder deal. Understood?" Alexa asked.

No answer.

"Wonderful." Alexa opened the airlock on the other side, sending in a barrage of wind. Everything on the racks, which was secured to death and back, clamored violently. Outside, the winds seemed to pierce from every direction, oxygen flooding through the suits and bloating Cassie's uniform. The Fauna tried to stumble out, but she managed to fall on her side and into the dirt, causing the uniform to deflate, slightly. The other side held off her, the bubble trying to free itself from her, and she sighed softly.

Alexa walked out, her suit somehow untouched, although it was affected somewhat by her massive mane and those giant horns of hers, which made her head look even bigger than usual. Tabai's horns weren't much better, seeing as they extended all the way off the side of her head, and Cassie's antlers jolted straight up, skinny as they were. These caused laughable contortions of the suit, but it seemed to be holding regardless, as they had at least been fitted for them.

"We chose the three worst Sentients for this mission, didn't we?" Cassie asked, playfully.

Alexa and Tabai remained unresponsive. The airlock shut behind them, unsettled by the amount of debris it was taking in, and the three of them stood in the dust, looking out over another world where it seemed nigh impossible for anything to live. Dark forms lurked amongst the dust, shooting by like stars, in heartbeats, before disappearing again. The inimitable murk seemed to heave above them and bluster around them, a constant maze of seething, churning golds, and Alexa began walking through it.

Cassie took a quick step, almost falling as she dragged her hoof up from the ground and felt it click back to the magnetic soil underneath (that must be how anything stayed down, here, given that there were no planets). She brushed it all way to reveal how barren the rounded gray head of the ground was beneath them. The dirt they were churning had to be nothing more than a small layer. "Do you think anything lives here?" Cassie asked.

"Couldn't possibly--" Tabai began.

"Absolutely," Alexa said. "Look up."

The trio noted a singular buzzing animal fly by in such a hurry that it was almost missed. Another passed by moments later, and this time Cassie was able to catch bits of the body-- the coloring was bright and refractive, and it seemed to have an utterly massive open mouth. Another bypasser confirmed both of these facts, just before the sky darkened before them. A swarm of the creatures careened towards them at high velocity, one of which hit Cassie square in the face. She shook it off, trying not to harm the delicate looking wings (but it had been flying! With those membranes? Strange.), and found Alexa pinning one against the ground with one paw. The others had long since departed, as if the Sentient party had only imagined them, leaving solely the singular, writhing batlike creature, still shrieking its heart out.

"What are you doing?" cried Tabai, almost pushing her over. "It's screaming in pain!"

"It could communicate like this. You have no idea," Alexa said. "How else am I supposed to get in contact with anything here?"

"It could be a dumb animal," Cassie suggested. "In which case, you're going to look pretty stupid interrogating it for information."

Tabai lifted her head. "There's a good chance that any civilized creatures have been carted off to the last planet. Why would you keep so many denizens? Seems ineffective."

"You're wrong," said Alexa, pressing it further into the dirt.

"Can you substantiate that?" asked Tabai.

Out, cried a voice in all three of their minds. Away.

Tabai and Cassie flinched violently.

"Where's the seraph," Alexa said, though her thoughts were so intense that it manifested in Cassie and Tabai's minds less as a set of words and more as an image of blinding light.

They could all sense the creature's beating heart, the utter fear of being unbound from the currents and strangely enough, worse... the very sensation of having to approach other beings. Though it clearly had some channel for communication, its memories (which gushed out into their minds like Cassie's paint tubes onto a palette) revealed that there had been, apparently, no use of such a channel at all its entire lifetime. Amongst these memories was a light from up on a mountain, the likes of which was nowhere in the hazy vicinity.

Tabai rammed Alexa to the side, causing the Canis to capsize for long enough for the creature to shoot skywards. Alexa writhed against her own uniform as its magnetism stuck her against the dirt, but she at last got a grip and managed to shake herself out, dust still stuck tight to her sides. She spared the both of them a glance of unrefined fury.

Cassie quivered.

"We need to have a talk," Tabai said, evenly.

"Do we?" Alexa asked. "You're aware that when we take away the seraph, there's a good chance a lot of these creatures will perish. Worlds are given seraphs for their protection, so the chance of a seraph-dependent world being just as happy to give it up... is very, very slim. Yet you made no hesitation to come here and pilfer it. What bothers you is any kind of intimidation on a micro-level, while you remain unflinching in the face of the calamity you will someday cause. It's a perverse kind of sentimentality, but it's almost amusing how frantically you'll defend it. You can hit me a few times for being a bully and feel better about yourself. It won't change a thing when we tear the core of this land out and leave."

Tabai said, "I wish to assist in any means in which I am capable."

"With what?" asked Cassie. "Do we even have a right to tell them what they need help with?"

Tabai shook her head. "I know I'm not making much sense now, but didn't you all feel how empty that signal was? They wouldn't have something sophisticated as telepathy unless they communicated often, and yet it didn't know what thoughts to guard or even how to speak with us, even though we were using the same mechanism. They can't get to each other because of the winds. They must have been highly social creatures, and it was stolen from them, and they don't even know what they're missing. Maybe the seraph doesn't help them at all."

Alexa said, "Will that help you hurry up?"

"What, a legitimate cause?" asked Tabai. "Naturally."

"Then we'll go with that. Do we know which way the mountain is?"

"Saw it on the way down here. You're going to love this," Alexa said. "The winds get so much worse."

The plains billowed out for miles around them. This world, somehow, had a different sense of desolation from the last, less of a spiritual emptiness and more of a physical one. Cassie felt like stone being ground down beneath the raw force of a waterfall. Every blow of wind felt like a blunt force, and as the mountain began to appear, miragelike, on the horizons, Cassie found herself tucking her neck towards her side. The winds began to gust, pushing back against the group, and Cassie stepped forwards through the sands, trying to lean into it. No successive burst of creatures flew through, but there was the occasional whiplash of something in the mind that wasn't hers, a spilling of color flashed before her eyes. She could see it strike Tabai, too, if not Alexa, and the nebulous yet violent sensation revealed itself to her in a moment of clarity.

Cassie knew what need felt like.

Oxygen seethed through the suit as if to calm her, provide for her, but even the filtered air had an alien aftertaste. Cassie coughed under her breath, thankful the roaring wind blocked out all but telepathic communication, and watched as her heftier companions few further away up the gradually sloping land.

"Alexa?" asked Cassie.

No response.

"Tabai?"

They seemed much too small. Already, they looked like little more than indistinct shapes on the horizon, and Cassie's heart began to beat so hard she could feel it in her neck. She stumbled forwards, each step feeling somehow harder to take than the last, and the pressure applied by the landscape around her only grew stronger. The dust clung to her suit viciously, including the parts which were not magnetically bound to the dirt, and she felt the land itself trying to drag her down.

Was there some kind of magic that was causing them to forget she was there? Had they co-conspired on this? She couldn't have done anything wrong... oh yes she could. She had irritated them. "It's not funny," Cassie pleaded. "I'm sorry if I did something wrong but please, please don't leave me here..."

One of her legs gave out in a sudden, furious burst of wind and attached itself to the ground. Cassie tried to pull herself up, but the wind was so strong now that she could barely even get level. Her limbs were too spindly to continue dealing with the onslaughts of wind. Cassie caught another glimpse of the sky, which was angrily swirling around her now, and her vision blurred out. Cassie was definitely hyperventilating now.

Look into the future, she told herself.

No no. Don't do it. You know exactly what you'll see.

Cassie stilled herself. Futures bloomed out before her, trailing into faint, disparate pathways, but she already knew that everything which lay ahead bundled back into the worst of times. She could already feel her consciousness rushing up to meet the end of ends, and so she drew it back, like rolling her eyes back into her head. She shook her head slightly, trying to get back into the frame of beats or even just days instead of millenia, but she could hardly manage that.

Her desperate hyperventilation stilled as a figure emerged overhead. "I have you," Alexa promised, and even with all the fur clumped up in the thin slit of face allowed through her mask, she looked profoundly heroic. She helped situate the Fauna between herself and Tabai. "What did you wander off for?"
"It had to be some harrowing task. How could we not have noticed her departure? I sensed a figure behind me, all the while, at about your height and size, following faithfully behind, and yet memory would dictate I never went close enough to check. It seems a ridiculous oversight, yet I was compelled by some incredible calm..." Tabai trailed into nothingness.

The seraph, thought Cassie, teasing us.

That was not what she told them.

"Alexa," asked Cassie, her voice whining through both their heads. "Why did you choose to come along on this mission?"

Alexa looked at Cassie as if she was going mad. "You're delirious, I take it," Alexa said. The gusts blew over the three of them again, this time with an even greater insistence. "Listen. Tabai, that wasn't our fault. Cassie, sending you back is going to be a terrible waste of resources, and I think I have a way around it, but it will only work now that we're closer to the mountain itself, and we don't have long to go. All I'll need is your cooperation, and for you to try to breathe as shallowly as possible."

Tabai lifted her head. "Telekinesis?"

"You're free to help," Alexa said, and the world went silent around the three of them, quieting into a hush as space diverted and a bubble of perfect calm rose in the middle of the storm.