Chapter 17 - Duty Colliding With Chaos

Evander's visor flashed with data as he approached the coordinates he had given the pair. Something was wrong. The energy readings were fluctuating in patterns he'd never seen before. They weren't anything like the last creature that had interrupted their mission.

"Attention squad - prepare for anything."

He ordered somewhat unhelpfully. His voice remained steady despite the growing unease over not having all of the information. As the group crested the rocky glass outcropping... the scene before him defied all his tactical analysis.

A massive, writhing entity registering as pure chaos dominated the landscape. Theia stood underneath of it and her gloved hands pulsed with that interesting orange energy. Naia was on her knees nearby... struggling to maintain a harmonic barrier that flickered dangerously. For a split second, Evander felt himself freeze. His tactical mind raced through scenarios and each was more dire than the last.

He needed to order them to act, now.

"Concentrate fire!"

He shouted while unleashing a barrage from his own weapon. The creature's form seemed to shudder under the assault, but it clearly wasn't doing enough. Evander watched on in awe as Theia unleashed even more power. The very fabric of reality seemed to warp around her as his eyes glowed with red, tactical analysis.

One moment the creature was there, and the next there was nothing but shards of dark glass floating and colliding up above. Evander saw the woman collapse as the chaos coming out of her arm intensified rather than dissipating. The name escaped his lips and coursed through the comms before he could stop it.

"Theia!" 

He turned to Naia struggling to her feet, somehow launched dozens of meters in their direction. Her Caribbean blue eyes fixed on Theia's prone form inside the ridiculously powerful energies. The moments before she... swore she saw-

"Navigator, stabilize it, now!"

Naia's eyes widened at his order - the uncertainty clear on her face.

"I don't think I can. The interference is too strong, I—"

"I don't care if you think you can't. Just do it. That's an order."

Evander cut her off with a sharp voice. As Naia moved started to hum and pick up her staff, Evander caught a flicker of hurt in her eyes. He pushed the observation aside. He could explain himself later. They couldn't afford to lose Theia. She was too valuable, too important, too-

He stopped that train of thought. Now wasn't the time for personal feelings. They had a mission to complete and a teammate to save. As he watched his Navigator struggle greatly against the chaotic energies that surrounded the woman he first felt any kind of emotional longing towards, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered a troubling question.

What cost would be an acceptable push for this?

The readings from his terminal were warning of the imminent collapse and he'd already requested an emergency escape transit pod to be pushed to their location with another Harmonic Navigator on board. Part of him even considered that if she can't save her, they could at least get as much data as possible about the energies she was emitting.

"No. That would be useless without her."

He muttered to himself. Naia straining voice rang out clearly from a few meters away.

"Ev, I don't... I'm not sure this will-"

"Just try harder. She's too important."

Naia knew he meant toward Vanguard Operations in general, but couldn't help the other thought. Wondering if there was an alternate meaning there in his heart. Despicably, she thought maybe it would be better to fail. To just let this woman-

"F-fine. Then I'll do my best or..."

The stubborn side of her wanted to say she would die trying, but the words scared her. They really might all die if she didn't succeed and if they weren't going to retreat immediately. If the ship's transit pod couldn't even materialize near enough to here due to this chaos then they wouldn't be able to leave quickly enough either.

Cerulean nets of her power tried to harmonize the chaotic energies swirling around her into a more cohesive form and Naia felt a sudden, fleeting sense of clarity. The pattern of energy she'd seen in those gloves. The complex restrictive feeling in its rhythm. She sang out louder and stronger, and calming tendrils of her power grasped and locked into the underlying patterns of the 'chaos'.

She'd realized that like that artifact they'd found, there was no way it made sense for a being to wield something truly unbound by the rules of the universe. The energies were too powerful for reality to withstand, so how could a person? The thought was like a shining light of brilliance illuminating their situation. It wasn't impossible. It wasn't.

Naia held onto that tightly as her song became the only thing she knew. Evander's watched the energies slowly subside and Theia's form come into view. He should have ordered the other members, but ran ahead on his own - and only their training and trust made them fall in line behind him. Reality in the zone locked into an intense stability as he passed by the form of his lover.

He passed by and instead checked on Theia, not even noticing that two of the other members had to catch the woman with black hair whose eyes rolled back into her head. His terminal took readings of the blonde and he turned toward the other man who had reached and knelt.

"She's alive."

The medic of their squad answered with a flat response.

"Assemble the stretcher. Let's get out of here."

"We need to assemble two, sir."

The medic responded with a slight shake of his head. He didn't want to get in the middle of anything, but their squad leader was acting a little pre-occupied.

"What do you mean? Why two?"

Evander asked with a frown. His mind had been focused on what was in front of him during the matter. Had one of the other members been hit by glass shrapnel or an errant ripple of chaos?

"Our Navigator collapsed. She needs one too."

The squad leader looked past the kneeling soldier-medic to the unconscious form of Naia. Her hands were still clasped tightly around her staff which she must have embedded in the ground. Two soldiers supported her from either side, clearly hesitant to try and force her to a different position until the medic said something to them.

"Tend to her and tell them what to do. I trust you."

Evander responded with a dismissive wave of his hand before looking back at the blonde. His eyes glowed red with calculations and the updating information on the mil-net. The transport would be here in less than a minute... and they couldn't waste time. The medic opened his mouth as if to say something, but instead just nodded and set to work.

He really didn't want to get in the middle of it.