FSE

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I wake up screaming, my own screams joining the chorus of the other eleven victims. My head feels like it's been punctured which only fuels my howling. The only thing that silences the wailing damned is the need to breathe. My lungs eventually give out and I'm forced to drink the air by the gallon. The pain in my head a central point between the eyes. I move my arm up to touch my misshapen head, and I can't tell the difference. The pain doesn't increase. Slowing my breathing down and sitting up I see the other eleven members lying on the ground around me, each in one of the wedges of the circle. The carved stone is frigid and slick with the rain coming down in massive quantities from above through the open hole in the ring.

_ I was shot, I think. But in that case how am I still here? Was it non-lethal? Whatever it was it couldn't have been long because it's still raining and I . . . _

I'm brought back to reality by a large hand wrapping around my torso, lifting me out of the circle. I follow the tan hand up to a four armed three hazel eyed Triclops woman. She sets me down outside of the circle and continues to move others outside of the ring with the help of a Beast with gold fur.

_ Why move us by force if you're just going to sit us down a few feet away? _

My question is answered when I catch slight movement along the ground. Where I had been laying, thin strands of ink start rising from the ground, they swim through the rain unhindered and slowly intertwine, the shape of a figure starts to form, ill defined at first but quickly becoming more intricate. Going from skeletal to dermal the black strands work rapidly, laying themselves out in a pattern, then engulfing the entire creation, before disappearing completely back into the stone and figure starts gasping for air and sits up, his gray fur quickly becoming saturated in the rain. _ King!? What happened to him?! How exactly did he do that?! Is that what we did?! _

"Crispy!!" King howls. "Crispy I swear I am going to kill you!" King jumps up with the practiced grace of a fighter and looks around the circle. King stalks around the circle, "Smith!" King calls out to the tanned giant of a woman. "Where's Crispy?" He lets out a growl.

"King, you really should relax. You just got to share a MIND BLOWING experience with the Fourth Wave." Smith starts laughing. The world around me goes white, and my ears ring. The air reeks of clean and tastes of purity. The constant of the rain is the first sound to return, followed by King's arrogance.

"See, even this Aether forsaken weather has had it with your jokes!" King yells at Smith.

"Your gear is in the barracks." Smith says

"That wasn't the question."

"Well I don't help out those who insult my jokes, so if you still want a blacksmith I suggest you get a sense of humor."

"I'm not the one who needs a sense of humor." King snorts as he walks off towards a stone building carved with intricate flames.

"Sorry about that Fourth Wave, that's just King being King. But you've gotta admit that welcoming ceremony ended with a BANG!" Smith smiles and looks at everyone. I stare at her along with everyone else. King may have been on to something here. "It looks like everyone here needs to learn some humor." She says smiling. "I'll teach you some other time, anyway Backfire you take half to the Third's barracks and I'll take the other to the Second's." Smith shouts over to the golden beast.

"Got it, you want to do Hide first or should I?" Backfire asks.

"We'll hit Hide first." Smith gets six of us in a group, me, the two amphibians, and the winged ones. "And keep your EXPLOSIVE personality to a minimum." Smith starts laughing.

"No promises!" Backfire gives a small laugh back. _ Is that out of pity or did she actually find that funny? _

"Seriously though, don't blow anyone up." Smith's tone changes drastically.

"I'll try." Backfire says with a smile and begins encouraging her group to walk, all of which had frozen upon hearing Smith's comment. My group picked up our awkward pace to get out of the potential blast radius. Maybe the jokes aren't so bad. Smith leads us out of the inner ring and down the incline, taking the path to the right this time.

"Were we shot last night?" The winged female in our group asks Smith.

"Nope, that was five days ago." Smith looks over her shoulder with a calm smile.

"Wait, what?" she stops moving, along with the rest of the group.

"When we die, we pop back to our original death point five days later as good as new." Smith says.

_ Five days!? It's been Five days!? _

"But how? Why!?" She starts panicking.

"I don't know, none of us do." Smith shrugs.

"What do you mean you don't know how can you not know!?" She starts yelling. _ *How can she talk so easily yet I can only manage to bite my tongue!? * _

"We just don't. That's why we have the Scout Corp serving as a recon/intelligence/cartographers etc."

"So are there other Corps besides the Scout Corp?" The turquoise male amphibian asks.

"Yeah, we have the Guard, Home and SEDER Corps." Smithy says. "But we can go over those at a later date."

The path curves around with the walls, another lightning rod guards the path and another large stone building with books, pages and quills carved into it stands to one side, all of it's windows and doors sealed shut against the storm.

"That's the Archive, it's where we store all the information the Scout Corp brings back. As well as any other useful information someone may discover. Crash runs the Archive, if you want to take a look at any of the records you'll have to check with him first. He doesn't take kindly to those who mess with his system." Smith explains cheerfully.

"Ya morons! I'll send ya to the Aether if ya pull another boneheaded move like that!" Quarry's voice carries through the rain from on top of stacked stone bricks, where he's yelling down at a Beast with massive horns and a pale Triclops with black hair.

"That's Quarry." Smith sighs, "He has a bit of temper, especially when it comes to his work. That half-finished building to your left is actually going to be your barracks. And the two he's yelling at are Imp and Traitor." She points at the Beast and triclops.

Smith eventually stops us in front of another carved stone building, this one decorated with carvings of heads, pelts, and armor. In the open doorway I see an amphibian darker than an ocean trench leaning against the door to another stone building. She has long crimson hair tied behind her into a ponytail with a piece of leather cord. She's sporting a sleeveless leather tunic and leather pants with padding at the knees. _ Was she one of the ones who shot at us? But then again I know I saw Smith and that Backfire woman and here we are following them. _

'BANG!' My ears perk up as I hear a gunshot reach out from over the distance. But I have no idea where from.! The rest of the group is cowering now and huddling closer together. I take cover behind Smith. All of us terrified by what happened last time. _ *Huddling together like that out in the open only makes them easier targets, especially if they have guns. Don't they know about target rich environments? * _

"King you hot-headed idiot!" Smith stops smiling completely and yells out.

"You think that was King?" The woman asks, not even bothering to move from her relaxed position at the doorway.

"I know it was King. He was out for blood the second he came back from the Aether." Smith puts her head into two of her hands, while the other two massage the back of her neck.

"If we don't stop that feud soon we'll be even more shorthanded when the Daemons rear their heads again." The blue woman shakes her head.

"I know Hide, I know. We don't have enough guards as is without those two shooting at each other." Smith straightens back up and puts her smile back on. "Well enough HIDEing it's ti. . ." Smith gets cut off by the slam of the stone door, with Hide on the other side. "Why did you do that?" Smith now yells at the door.

"You know full well why I slammed that door." Hide replies calmly, muffled by the door.

"My jokes are great!" Smith complains, yelling.

"They really aren't."

"You have to let us in, the Fourth Wave still has to get measured!"

"You're absolutely right, they can come in one at a time, you will stay out there." Hide opens the door again and points at the winged male with crimson feathers, accented by bands of orange, yellow, and green. "Bird, you're first." Hide says. And when he doesn't move she physically walks out and grabs him, forcing him through the door. The rest of us stand outside in the rain, the winged, Birds, shivering while the amphibians and I are doing fine.

Think, what do you know about this place. I try to ground myself to reality with whatever scattered facts I have. We can't die apparently. Or more accurately when we die we come back five days later. There seem to be four main types of species here. Beasts, Birds, those amphibians and the triclops. I'm a Beast apparently and also the shortest person here, great. The storms here are insane, the people here are insane, and I know absolutely nothing! My body tenses and my breath catches as I feel a sharp pain in my hands, I look down and see I punctured the palms of my hands with my nails. . .claws, again. I take a few deep breaths and force myself to focus. If you don't have the information you can get the information. Alright, in order to learn anything I need to be able to communicate, which makes speaking without killing myself top priority. The tension starts to fade as I focus on the goal in my mind.

I carefully attempt speech again, starting with the vowels just like last time. Not moving on to the next vowel until I've mastered the previous. It's not long before I'm comfortable with the vowels and can switch between them easily. I decide to push my luck and move on to the consonants. I start with one of the easiest sounds I can make, 'd'. Gently resting my tongue against my top front teeth, I slowly increase the pressure then bounce my tongue off slowly. I repeat this motion faster, and faster once again. I continue through this process until I can reliably produce the sound at a normal pace. I try throwing in some vowels, "dee, doo, da, doh."

My practice is cut short by Smith's praise "Look at you! It hasn't even been a full day for you and you're already on your way to talking! That's a new record!" Smith walks over, picks me up, and grips me tight, and crushes me, nearly killing me.

I start screaming and Smith immediately puts me down, guilt stuck to her face.

"I am so sorry. I thought that would be okay, but you're even smaller." Smith covers her face with one of her many hands.

"You wouldn't have been the first person she killed that way." Hide's gruff voice says. I lift my coughing head up from my prone position and see Hide pointing at me. "Your turn." Hide walks back into the workshop without even waiting for me.

I drag myself off the ground and walk into the building, pulling the door shut behind me, adding a barrier between me and Smith. I'm surprised when I walk into the workshop. Instead of seeing stone walls and floors, I see leather coating the walls and furs covering the floors. I feel myself being dragged somewhere and realize I stopped and was staring in fascination at the interior. Hide leads me through a maze of leathers, hides and furs stacked haphazardly around the room. Containers of sinew and bone slivers are the only things carefully sealed on shelves. A large cabinet in the back remains locked tightly hiding it's contents. Hide eventually places me in an open area with stairs surrounding the outside of the perimeter, presumably so she can measure the taller people. She takes a strand of leather with numbers written on it and begins quickly measuring me without saying a word. Within a few moments she writing her measurements down in a book and stuffing it in a trunk. She points out to indicate that she's done but instead I just move to the wall to get a closer look. I run my hand along the wall slowly and feel tiny holes in the leather. I'm faintly aware of Hide standing over me.

"So, you're interested in the walls? Well you're the only one." Hide sounds something between impressed and depressed. "I came up with this design. It helps with insulation to keep the buildings warmer, and it also works as soundproofing. I'm sure you heard that lightning strike earlier, if you didn't you'll hear more. This is by far the worst storm I've seen, it hasn't stopped for eleven days. Luckily I designed this a few months ago so I could actually get some sleep." Hide explains leaning against the wall next to me, looking down at me.

Breaking eye contact with the wall I look up at the three foot amphibian, triple my size, and see a smile just barely there. I guess not many people notice the small details, or they're just afraid of what they'll find if they look.

Hide moves away from the wall and gestures to the door. "I have work to do. You going to leave on your own or do I have to haul you out by force?" She wears a bigger smile this time, obviously leaning towards the latter option. I scurry out of the room, working my way out of the maze of clutter, my head only just poking above it.

Immediately upon exiting I am once again in the storm. The door slams shut behind me and I'm left outside with the rest of the naked miserable crowd and one clothed Smith. "Well let's get everyone out of the storm and to your temporary sleeping arrangements." Smith smiles and leads the group further down the flagstone road. During the long walk I hone my linguistic skills further, getting the consonants 't, l, n,' into a barely workable state before we stop.

We're stopped at an open paved plaza, with a field of mud lying next to it. The place we all woke up. "This is where every Wave appears. We don't know why it's here but it's always at this spot. Most of the time we use this area is our training yard, with just that small section deemed off limits so we don't accidentally kill someone too soon." Smith explains. Smith gestures to that building I saw covered with leather last, five nights ago. "That's Backfire's workshop. She's has a rather EXPLOSIVE personality!" Smith pauses and looks at us expectantly. "Right, I already told that one today." She smacks her forehead with the heel of her upper left hand. "She's the one who designed and manufactures all of our firearms. I would be careful around her workshop, things tend to blow up around there frequently." We all give the workshop a wider berth.

Smith eventually stops at that first long stone building I saw my first night here. Large creatures with heads covered in eyes cover the surface. All of the creatures look animated and vicious in their fights with the carved warriors on the stone. The creatures seem to be screaming. "And this is the Second Wave's barracks, where you will be taking up temporary residence until Quarry finishes your barracks." Smith doesn't even wait for us to walk in, she just forcibly pushes us into the building.

The barracks interior is cramped but cozy. The floors are covered in the same fur as Hide's workshop and the walls and ceiling the same leather. Bone frames filled with furs line some of the walls, while a few fur hammocks dangle from the ceiling. Chests and bone racks occupy the wall closest to the door. A glaive made of shining bone rests on one of those racks. Severed heads and limbs from horrifying monstrosities occupy the rest of the wallspace. One of the heads being three times as large as me with twenty eyes and another as large as me with no eyes whatsoever, and another head only half my size which seems all teeth. I fixate on the one with twenty eyes, This is what was carved outside. _ What exactly are you? _

"You guys must be the Fourth Wave." A monotone female voice says from somewhere inside the barracks. I jump and land against a frame of bone. "You're going to have to be a lot braver than that if you want to make it here." The female voice says. I look around and see a set of white wings rising out of one of the bone frames filled with fur. She's a Bird covered completely in white, the only color anywhere is the black of her cropped hair and green of her eyes.

"Did I scare you that badly little beastie?" The Bird looks down at me.

_ *Scare me?! You came out of nowhere while I was face to face with the severed head of a demonic entity! * _

I stare back up at her and get a mangled word out of my maw, "No." Awkward, garbled, and in need of a lot of work, but still understandable.

"Well alright then. My name is Bolt, and on behalf of the Second Wave welcome to your temporary living quarters." Bolt moves on without blinking. Inside a little part of me dies. _ Isn't she going to say anything? I just managed to get something out of this contorted mouth!? Is it contorted? It could be completely normal for all I know. But that's not the point, what I just did was impressive! Everyone has been astonished by me just making random sounds and here I go making an actual word and she just ignores me?! What's her problem!? _

"This is where you will all be sleeping." Bolt's voice snaps me out of my inner rant and back to reality. I look to where she's directing our attention, some spots at the end of the building have been cleared out and a massive amount of furs have been piled over there. "Besides me there are seven other people in the Second Wave. I'm not sure when you'll be seeing them though. A lot of us tend to go out on expeditions and are gone for days on end. Cliff and Hunter are gone now, while Imp and Traitor are helping Quarry build your permanent residence. I would be helping them as well but I'm here to get you all settled in and to make sure you don't break anything. And Crispy should be getting off of her guard duty anytime."

The male Bird coated in crimson feathers speaks up. "Smith said Crispy was dead."

"King?" Bolt asks.

The entire group just nods.

"Fantastic. Well you won't be seeing Crispy then because your barracks should be done before the five days are up. That is if Quarry doesn't kill the construction crew" Bolt looks at everyone, face nor tone having changed in the slightest, "I recommend you all go to sleep, you've had it easy so far, it only gets tougher from here." Bolt turns back towards the frame filled with furs she came from and falls in face first. The group moves over to their designated floor spot and takes positions in the furs. Some of them sleeping the instant the hit they ground. I start to walk over but hesitate, I turn back around and go over to the severed heads and examine them again . The smallest one looks flayed open, ten flaps like a flower peeled back, and each petal covered in teeth** . What does the body of this thing look like? Maybe the Archive has some information. I move my examination over to the second one. This one's head is as large as me, something that does not bode well for me in the slightest . Smooth green and brown mottle skin, elongated mouth like. . .mine. Three sets of teeth. No discernible ears, eyes, or nostrils anywhere on the head. The only defining features are the lack of, the mouth, and. . . I look closer and notice two small holes in the head . These holes, what they're for remains a mystery. I am relatively certain I can say it isn't sight, but that leaves hearing and smell. They could also find their way around using the vibrations in the ground or air. Once again a trip to the Archives is in order. Moving on to the last head, the one in the carvings. This one is roughly three times my size, it is covered in fur, the same fur I'm seeing on the floors of these buildings. I look around comparing the fur of the head to that of the floor . The most notable feature is the disturbing amount of eyes this creature possesses. Given the placement of the eyes this creature would have a near perfect 360 degree field of view. However the one unavoidable blind spot is directly beneath it where its neck is normally attached. I look at the neck and find a small slit. This is too small to contain teeth like the other mouths I've seen, so this isn't for attack. And it looks to natural to be a wound. I look at it and think for a while without any worthwhile revelation hitting me. Once again I guess I need to go to the Archive to make any real progress.** Knowing I'm not going to get anywhere without being able to communicate, and still hurting from my earlier interaction I begin to practice speaking, quietly, alone, and in the dark, watching the severed heads of foes I've never met while the storm attacks Home.