Desert Magnificence
A Terracore Story, Part 4 🌠
Shifting curtains of emerald, fading into jade, pulsing bright neon, back to flat emerald. Tayde sat silently, reclined on a dusty rooftop, watching the aurorae snake their way across Terracore’s dark sky.
She’d blacked out fully after the strange echoing vision in Emmax’s transport, and had woken up in Nikurskyy’s modest sickbay. Her companions had teased her about sunstroke and hydration. She herself wanted to believe it had simply been the stress of the battle or something—but she had been well rested and of clear mind when Emmax had come for them.
No, it was something to do with that scanned file. Her suit had been disassembled for cleaning and repair though, and she wasn’t keen to try and access her system again. Thinking about it gave her a small, ice-pick headache every time.
Wrapped in several roughspun layers, and peering through a slit in her makeshift turban, she continued to gaze out across the desert. The wavy dunes seemed to flow, as the light above undulated.
There was a soft noise behind her. A hatch opened, footsteps on rungs. Hatch creaking shut.
Silence. The aurora took on a seafoam hue. How dearly Tayde missed the ocean.
A gust kicked up some beshitted sand, sending cold, gritty scratches across the rooftop. Tayde squeezed her eyes shut until it passed. When she opened them, the atmospheric lightshow was shifting to blue. And there was that undeniable feeling that someone was standing right behind her.
Skulking was not Nikurskyy’s style. If it were Emmax, he’d be yapping.
“Nice view,” she said, without looking around. Relaxation had been banished, and she primed herself for a fast roll out of her plastic recliner.
“Magnificent,” came a throaty reply. Older, female. Sand and sun parched throat. Local, likely.
“You Mirari?” Tayde guessed. Unless Nikurskyy was dead—and there was little reason to murder good Miners on Terracore—Tayde couldn’t imagine any other kind of stranger would be permitted in the base.
“Kentana-Morgana Mirari,” confirmed the visitor. They strode into Tayde’s periphery, standing beside her and to the left. She could make out a flowing robe, cinched in many places with a shiny, flat fabric. The face appeared to be a full hood—no hole at all, with that fabric circling the head at eye level. She couldn’t make out if there were slits or not. Tayde shivered.
“So you’re like a… chieftess or such? Kentana is a new one,” said Tayde.
Her visitor made a snuffling noise, possibly (hopefully?) out of amusement. The sky started back to green again. The light seemed to sparkle off of the Mirari’s fabric.
After a while, the Mirari said, “My Crystalsight reported an incident. Tell me what you experienced.”
Tayde shuffled in her seat, scooting up so she sat straight. She turned to take in the weird robed figure. Indeed, the strip of fabric around the head had narrow slits for the eyes, though her angle was too shallow to see any. The Mirari was quite short, somewhat hunched. Unlikely to be a physical threat… unless…
She glanced around the surrounding area. Nikurskyy’s hideaway was nestled in the crook of some harsh rock outcroppings. The majority of the base was buried underground, but a few structures poked up above the desert, including the decoy entryway hut she was currently perched atop. Jutting blocks of eroded granite enclosed two thirds of the space behind the hut—near infinite hidey-holes for sharpshooters.
“It’s above,” said the Mirari.
Tayde looked up. An ovaloid shape blotted out the starfield. The aurora’s ghostly flicker also betrayed the curve of the ship, tracing a dim green crescent along one side.
“Yeah,” said Tayde.
“Your experience,” said the Mirari. “It is of deep interest to us, and to you, I guarantee. Begin from when your extraction with the Miner commenced.”
Tayde sighed and attempted to relax. She had precisely no leverage in this situation. Doing her best to resurface the memory (the stabbing head pain rushed back immediately), she walked the strange visitor through what happened.
“...Then I puked,” she said. “Woke up in the med bay I guess an hour or so later? Nikurskyy and your fella said I was semi-conscious for a while after collapsing, but I don’t remember any of that. Your boy probably has logs of anything I might’ve said during, I suppose.”
“And why are you out here, now?” asked the Mirari.
“Uh. I guess I just needed some time in a space not so claustrophobic? Been in that suit for near a day, and then underground otherwise for a while too. Fresh air. Try to clear my head.”
“It is your first time having this instinct on Terracore, yes?”
“Well… I haven’t been here that long, and—”
“Tell me what you see out there, along the plaija, the dunes.”
“I, it’s… sand, I…” Tayde blinked, looking out across the shimmering, sky-lit plains.
“Ease your thinking, and see. Look, for at least twenty cycles of breath.”
She blew out a lungful of air, aware of a deep knot of stress and tension in her chest, neck, and face. Retelling the tale of her misadventure had felt simple enough, but apparently it had taken a toll. Deep breathing exercises—not the worst idea. She took long, measured breaths through the roughspun fabric, and allowed the soothing dance of the electromagnetic majesty above to massage her senses.
Breathe in—
Twinkling stars poke through the sheer waves of green-azure-violet.
Breathe out—
It’s almost like an ocean below. Dunes sculpted like waves, shadows rocking gently between them, illusion of soft movement. Calm.
Breathe in—
Horizon blurry, tail ends of the gossamer aurorae caress the line between planet and sky. The sand-ocean below reflects, imperfectly, but still beautifully.
Breathe out—
Headache dulling, imagination allowing the scene to now reflect the twinkling stars in the ocean below. Sky melds with land. It is a distorted mirror below—wavy in its own way, waves running crosswise to the waves in the sky. It feels important, this grid…
Breathe in—
Aurorae shift blue again. Green fading, flare of royal purple, back to deep blue. It really is an ocean now, she can almost smell the wet salt. Star reflection burns bright on the water.
Breathe out—
One star brightens. The headache twinges at it, the vision wavers. No, stay focused, dreamy, relaxed. This is why we’re here. This is why. See, that star is bright blue in the ocean, but not bright anywhere in the sky. It’s a flare? No, what?
Tayde sucked in a sharp breath. As the illusion collapsed, a welding torch flash of light and pain blinded her for a microsecond, and as it cleared she had the strong impression of some kind of skyline, etched on the horizon, something huge once stood here, a city? A civilization?
“What,” she managed, trying to control her breathing. It was back to plain ol’ night time again, with the aurora dancing gracefully overhead.
Except for the blue flare blazing out near the horizon. Her fallen star.
“You see it, then?” asked her visitor.
“I see… it’s a light. A flare,” she said.
“No. You know what it is.”
“I don’t, I don’t know what’s happening,” said Tayde. As she said it, she became aware that there were more flares out there. Smaller, less bright. Speckles, scattered, but often in little clumps. Surrounding her main flare was a riot of them.
“You will stay with the Miner, for now,” said the Mirari. “We will be observing. Test your attunement, gneshna. Sharpen it. Follow it and attempt to uncover its origin, precisely. I believe a clue lies in the EMP event you described, and so too in your visual interface technology.”
“My, my what? Wait, you have to tell me what in the shit is going on.” In her distress, Tayde tore her eyes from the desert, which had seemingly sprouted a billion more specks of glimmering blue. All of the flat belt-like fabric on the mysterious woman was shining blue now too, as strong and consistently as a brand new glo-lamp.
The figure only tilted her head and gestured upward in response.
Tayde looked, and was electrified with a billion goosebumps. The ship above was plainly visible, a giant blue egg, traced through with uncountable blue lines along which surges of white flowed and flitted and pulsed and streamed.
“Gneshna,” said the Mirari. “In the common tongue: Scrap seer.”
| 👥 Character inspiration |
|---|
The following players' Hive names (not their personalities! 😜) were used to inspire some nouns in previous parts:  •  •  •  •  . If you'd like to see your username involved, come by the #📚 lore channel in the Terracore Discord! |
🚀 Publishing schedule
As with many Alpha Games, Terracore has scrapped (see what I did there?) the whole "Community Favor" thing and given folks early access to Oceana and beyond! Thus, the original schedule now must also be scrapped. I will probably just try to write the rest of the tale in one big go, and release it slowlyish over time? Hm!
| Part (working title) | % of Goal | |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1: The Nature of Scrap | N/A | N/A |
| Part 2: A Harsh World | N/A | N/A |
| Part 3: The Guild of Mirages | N/A | N/A |
| Part 4: Desert Magnificence 👈 | N/A | N/A |
| Part 5: Mud, Dust, and Steel | N/A | N/A |
| Part 6: The Heat Never Sleeps | N/A | N/A |
| Part 7: Paths amid the Dunes | N/A | N/A |
| Part 8: Sunspear | N/A | N/A |
| Part 9: With the Light at our Backs | N/A | N/A |
| Part 10: Oceanic Dreams | N/A | N/A |
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