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As both transports descend out of view, you keep your sensor pod trained on the entity. A steady two-tone growl in your earpiece once you uncage the AGS-12, shifting to a whining shrill after its thermo-optical seeker head acquires a positive track. Your finger hovers over the release stud. In a worst-case scenario, you hoped that could hit the thing hard enough to ground it.
A moment later, you almost do precisely that. Motes of light coalesce around the entity, forming a bright line of squirming sigils. The language is incomprehensible to you. And yet…you blink once.
Twice.
Then, the shifting lines snap into place. Alien knowledge begins to seep into your mind.
++I HAVE AIDED YOUR TRESPASS, FOR I AM A TRESPASSER MYSELF++
++I AM THE HETEROTYPIC COUNTESS, AN EXILE OF THE QUEEN’S INNER COURT++
++WE ARE INTRUDING UPON THE TERRITORY OF ππ π«, HER MOST FAVORED CONSORT++
There is a pause. It gives you a few moments to fight back the nausea bubbling up from your stomach. Vomiting in a cockpit of any kind was bad. But vomiting in a pressurized gel-cockpit was incalculably worse.
The entity resumes, displaying a second line of sigils below the first.
++I PROPOSE AN ACCORD++
++I WILL MASK YOU FROM THE MANY EYES OF ππ π« AND THE OTHER COURT-NOBLES FOR AS LONG AS I AM ABLE++
++IN RETURN I MAY REQUEST A SMALL MEASURE OF YOUR SUPPORT ONCE I SEEK HER THRONE++
++THINK AND I WILL KNOW++
>Accept.
>Do not accept.
