Curse Of The Lost Ones (Rhy and Brooke)

The library inside the Tardis was, without doubt, Brooke's absolute favorite place to be. So quiet and peaceful. So many books. All of those potential friends, just waiting for her to meet them, were lined up so neatly and beautifully on the bookshelves. She spent quite a lot of time in here, when she wasn't running around trying to keep up with the Doctor or being hunted by some hostile alien thing bent on taking over some planet or other. Brooke had removed quite a bit of dust during the short amount of time she had been on board, but with this many books, and a library this size, it would take a long time to keep it all clean. Time better spent reading. Still, she made sure that the shelves that she had visited looked cleaner, and were better organized when she left than they were when she found them.

The girl sometimes imagined herself a bit like Belle, from Beauty and the Beast, except she considered herself no beauty. And there was no beast, since the Doctor was a really nice guy and she wasn't the least bit afraid of him, as she was of many other men. Really, she figured, her only resemblance to Belle was their shared love of books and that they now both had access to an immense library, after previously only having access to a pathetic one.

She was just finishing with her current task; working on one particular section of a bookshelf, she had spent some time dusting and cleaning off the books, and then organizing them into the proper order, straightening up all of the books, and double-checking that everything was in perfect order. Now she rubbed her eyes and decided, instead of spending the rest of the night reading as she would usually do, to take a break. Maybe she'd see what the Doctor was up to. She wasn't sure if he slept or not, but Brooke didn't feel ready for sleep yet, so she headed for the console room.

Upon arriving, she glanced around. Where was he? She peeked under the console thingy, where he had a tendency to be found, working on some wire thingy or fuse something or other. "Doctor?" She called softly, unsure if maybe 3 or 4 am was in fact a time when he might be off somewhere asleep. Actually, she had no idea what time it might be. She had no watch, and no cell phone, or any other means of telling time. It just had a 'middle of the night' feel about it, to the girl who had spent so many nights awake with a book held to the window using light from the streetlamp outside to read by.

Receiving no answer, Brooke shrugged and fiddled with the zipper on her messenger bag, thinking for a moment. She looked around, unsure what to do now. That was when she noticed the screen showing what was outside. She had expected it to show the passing scenery of the time vortex, but instead, it showed that they were actually landed on some planet. What? She blinked in surprise, looking closer. There was ground outside, and stuff like trees and whatever. They had landed. How did she not even notice that?

'Did he call me and I just didn't hear him?' She wondered, remembering how absorbed in her task she had been earlier. She frowned a bit and glanced at the door. Was the Doctor out there, exploring some cool new planet without her? She bit her lip and thought about it for a moment. It wasn't like him to take off an explore someplace without her, but then again, maybe he'd tried to get her attention and she didn't hear. He might be waiting for her or something, right? But then again, he might have landed, figured she'd be asleep, and be waiting for her to wake up. But then again, he might have landed, figured she'd be asleep, and be waiting for her to wake up. But, he ought to know she didn't sleep much.

Making a decision, Brooke slipped out through the doors of the Tardis. She looked around at the scenery around her. "Where are we? And...when are we?" She mumbled to herself. "Are we on Earth?" The sky looked strange for Earth though, but it could just be because it was, in fact, night time. After seeing the purple sky of Astronia, however, not much seemed strange in the way of skies. She glanced around again and then, realizing she was leaning against the Tardis as if scared to go away from it, she stepped further into the strange territory. "Doctor..?" She called softly, tentative. What if there were hostile aliens lurking? But all seemed silent. She found her hand toying with the charms dangling from her bracelet, and made herself stop.

A distant, bobbing, blue light drew her attention to the left. Someone was there. Might that be the Doctor? It was probably the Sonic Screwdriver, and he was probably over there investigating something. Without her. Feeling a little bit relieved as well as a slight feeling of being left out, she headed toward the light. She thought about calling out to him, but some sense of caution made her refrain. After all, she didn't know that it was him. It could be some enemy. That thought made her pause briefly, but she shook her head. 'You're just being paranoid.' She told herself. She set off into the darkness as quietly as her Converse sneakers would allow. Maybe she would even catch the Doctor by surprise for once, though it seemed unlikely. Anyway, she hoped to find out where they were, soon, and what they were doing here.

(Brooke's outfit)

Rhydian’s days usually didn’t start like this.

Most of the time, a normal day would start off with Rhydian waking up and going to school like any normal seventeen-year-old. School for Rhydian usually consisted of the boring stuff: maths, physics, English - why couldn’t they include subjectslike advanced Quantum Mechanics, maybe throw in a little Temporal History as well? Of course, Rhydian knew the answers to these questions, but either way the point still stood that during school he was bored out of his mind. Unfortunately, while Rhydian was pretty smart, he wasn’t a supergenius, and if he wanted to get a real job in the real world (and more importantly make his mum proud by actually graduating high school), he’d need an actual education. So, for now, school was a necessary evil in his life.

It would be during periods after school when Rhydian would sneak off to some of the places where he’d feel a many number of things: the adrenaline rushing through his veins, the feeling of awe and bewilderment at new encounters and much more, all accessible through the spanner in his jacket pocket (or compressed vortex manipulator to be more precise, but Rhydian just called it his Multi-Spanner or even just a spanner). These places were encompassed by the grander scale of the universe, and even now having travelled the cosmos for over four years, he’d still not gotten his head over how large it actually was.

At the end of a day, depending on how Rhydian felt, he’d either return back to his own time accounting for the number of hours he’d spent travelling, or just return at the same time he left to not arouse any suspicion (the bad thing about that tactic was the more he used it, the more of his lifespan he’d lose with every use of his vortex manipulator). After that, he’d just hit the sack, as visiting different planets really saps the energy out of you. That, in general, was the daily routine for one Rhydian Martis.

Unfortunately for him, this wasn’t a usual day - he didn’t even get out the door before things spiralled out of control.

While Rhydian was having breakfast, his spanner started buzzing quite incessantly in his pocket, to which he responded by excusing himself from the table to go to the toilet. Checking his readings, he found the vortex manipulator was picking up a distant interplanetary distress signal. He wondered who it could have been from.

‘Well, one way to find out’, Rhydian thought as he zapped himself to the coordinates listed.

When he re-emerged once again into space and time with an electric blue flash, Rhydian was met with a forest-like landscape, darkened and alien. He used his Multi-Spanner to scan the surroundings, and to get a better reading, took a step backward to widen his parameters.

His back foot didn’t make contact with ground. In fact, it didn’t make contact with anything, as he’d materialised on the edge of a cliff, said cliff that he was now actively falling off of.

Thinking quick, the boy whipped out a long arm to grab a loose branch sticking out of the rock face, hanging on by one bloody arm, grunting as he did so. Looking down, all he could see was darkness and no apparent source to break his fall.

Oh well, could have been worse.

Getting a grip on himself, Rhydian heaved his arm up to grip the branch his other was holding onto, being careful not to lose his grip. His shuffling dislodged rocks around the cliff-face, making them cascade down the side of the cliff down to the near pitch-black chasm beneath him. He didn’t hear them hit anything, and quickly noted that falling down there would definitely mean death.

His Multi-Spanner was in his pocket. If he could just reach it to zap himself back somewhere, anywhere, he’d be safe from his impending doom looming below. With great care, Rhydian removed another hand, dislodging more bits and pieces from the cliff-face as he moved, and grabbed the Vortex Manipulator/Sonic device hybrid out of his breast pocket.

The branch slipped, causing Rhydian to jump down nearly a meter. He nearly lost his grip. Nearly.

A wave of vertigo washed over him like a wave, except that wave was more like a tsunami which nearly made him fall into that ravine beneath him. Rhydian was forced to grab onto the branch as more debris fell beneath and over him. Now there was no way to safely reach his Multi-Spanner in time to get him to teleport somewhere else, and if he fell, then teleporting somewhere would still keep the same velocity he would be falling at, making the fall equally deadly. The Shime of the Lonlay Poot.

Just as Rhydian thought ‘screw it’, and tried to grab his vortex manipulator again, he saw a flashing light from above, which he discerned was coming from just above the cliff face. A few seconds later, and a face emerged from over the cliff, making eye contact. Rhydian squinted - that looked very, very human, and about his own age by his own estimates. What was a person like her doing on this planet, if she was in fact human? In this particular time, from his readings he took on the Multi-Spanner, there’d been no signs of human activity on the surface. Maybe he read it wrong.

Rhydian was so caught up in the prospect that a human was on this planet that he completely missed the fact that there was a human on this planet - a human that could actually save him. Snapping out of his stupor, he shouted towards the new arrival:

“Hi, hello! Yes, I would quite like some help if you don’t mind! Rope would be excellent right about now, thanks!” Rhydian’s voice was somewhat muffled considering his uncomfortable up-right position. He just hoped that rope would be dropping down soon, as he wouldn’t be able to keep his grip for much longer.

Inch by inch, Rhydian felt gravity winning the battle against his quickly tiring arms, his fingers slipping on the branch through a combination of sweat and weakening, strained muscles. Looking directly upward, Rhydian saw the flashlight turn away, which for a split second made him think that his supposed rescuer had left him in his time of need. Just when he thought he’d lose his grip for good…

A bundle of rope was thrown down to the side of him, with Rhydian narrowly being missed. He immediately grabbed onto the side of the rope but didn’t tug too hard - he had no idea what sort of strength the girl above him possessed, and if he used his full body weight to keep himself upright, he might just tug her down with him as well. Being careful to balance his height and weight in the optimum position of being pulled upward (considering his tall, lanky stature, this was a feat in of itself), he gradually yanked himself up with one arm while the other kept his weight manageable for the other party involved.

One grab after the other, the young time traveller was making his way up the rope’s length. Rhydian had never abseiled or ascended before, which was surprising giving his extended history with gargantuan landmarks on alien planets, but he was pretty sure it was like rock-climbing. Find a suitable place to secure your foot, and push up with your arms. He only had a few feet to go before he reached the top.

A hand appeared from over the top of the cliff-face, and then another. Soon, those hands pulled up a face and torso, one of which belonged to a seventeen-year-old human in vaguely semi-formal clothing, who in all honesty really didn’t have any particular reason to be at this place at the current time. And yet, here he was nearly falling to his death on a faraway world. Heaving, Rhydian lifted himself up off the ledge like one would do getting out of a swimming pool, sprawling out onto the grass mere inches next to the chasm of death he was about to fall in if it weren’t for this girl who saved him.

“Thanks for that… just gimme a minute to… whooh, boy,” Rhydian gave the girl looking down at him a thumbs up as he closed his eyes and took a brief period to catch his breath. Nearly as soon as he did that, his eyes shot back open and he sprang up onto his feet.

“My name’s Rhydian! Nice to meet you!” Rhydian introduced himself with startling enthusiasm, holding a hand out for this stranger to shake. “I can’t help but notice that you don’t look like you’re from around these parts. How’d you end up on this planet, might I ask?”

“So you’re not a native - that’s good, otherwise I’d need to get my spanner fixed.” Rhydian joked, pulling out his Multi-Spanner out of his breast pocket which thankfully hadn’t tumbled to its untimely death when he was hanging from that cliff, scanning the area with it while the girl he just met kept on talking. He furrowed his eyebrows slightly at the fact that she used ‘thingy’ as a suffix for ‘spaceship’, indicating that her knowledge of how she got here might not be as concrete as most people. Rhydian also noticed the fact that she sort of… jumped, when he put his hand out for her to shake. Which, in hindsight was kind of unprecedented thanks to his bouncy nature, but still. Unfortunately, this new mysterious girl was the least of his worries.

Looking at the scanner readings he’d took, he was still receiving the distress call. When he tried to narrow down the search parameters, he found that he couldn’t - it was like the call was emanating from everywhere at once. But that couldn’t be it, as either the entire planet was a giant transducer that broadcasted a whopping signal that could permeate space and time, or something else was in the midst of this mystery. That was always good. Rhydian liked mysteries.

Rhydian turned around to the girl when she asked ‘where she was’, eyeing her with a stare of perplexity and just a slight tad of suspicion. This girl didn’t even know what planet she was on! “Well, how can you not know what planet we’re on? You’re the one who travelled here in the first place! We’re obviously on-...” Oh. Hang on. What planet were they on? That was embarrassing…

Looking at his readings, he found that the planet was orbiting a binary star system with a couple moons in its gravity belt, within a Messier Galaxy a few hundred million light years away from Earth. Not much to go by. “Actually, I’m not quite sure where we are. Sorry about bursting out on you like that, I do it sometimes. I’ve had a few days where I land in whole different star systems and have no clue where I am. Happens to everyone.”

Rhydian took some more readings, and taking in the relatively luscious yet still undergrowth-like plantation brushing his legs. “Oh, and to answer your question, I got here via teleport. Sort of. But I didn’t lock onto coordinates, which is why I can’t tell you where we are at the moment. I tracked a distress signal to this planet, which is weird because the distress signal’s still broadcasting… from everywhere. I can’t seem to narrow it down, it’s like it’s got an origin point 360 degrees around…”

Rhydian, now seeming just confused, rubbed his chin and put his other free hand on his hip. That was enough scanning for today, too much and he would go mad with data analysation. This entire place was an anomaly wrapped in another anomaly sandwiched between a burrito of anomalies. He couldn’t figure it out - but, of course, Rhydian liked a challenge.

“Oh, by the way,” Rhydian added on to his last sentence, “I didn’t catch your name.”

Rhydian perked up when he heard Brooke mention the Star Trek reference. “You know Kirk never actually said the exact line ‘beam me up, Scotty’ throughout all the original series and movies? It’s a misquotation, kinda like ‘Luke, I am your father’ - they’re not quite right, but close and already too cemented in pop culture that it’s pretty much irreversible to get right again. While I do enjoy the original series of Star Trek, by the way, I’m always going to be a Next Generation fan.” Rhydian smiled, realising he could ‘geek out’ in a sense without looking socially inept.

“Nice to meet you, Brooke. It’s not often that I get some company when doing stuff like this, and that’s too bad because, if you didn’t already figure it out, I’m a little bit of a clutz if what happened a few minutes ago was any indication.” Rhydian rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. He was obviously referring to the blunder he’d made when he stupidly tripped over to his near-impending doom. If it weren’t for Brooke being there, he’d have most likely gone splat one way or another.

“Yes, this distress signal is all around us, but… that’s the problem - there is no focal point. I was thinking what you were thinking at first, for a broadcast to be, well, broadcast, it has to come from somewhere. But it’s like it’s coming from all around us, encasing us in a call for help-” Rhydian articulated his words physically by spinning around on his heel with his arms stretched out at his sides, as to gesture towards the signal that was supposedly coming from everywhere at once, “-if my Spanner was just a little more specific in its scans, I might be able to pick up something reminiscent of an epicenter, but at the moment there’s just nothing I can find around here-”

Rhydian’s jacket pocket bleeped. It was his Multi-Spanner indicating it’d gotten a reading.

Rhydian fished his pocket for it, and once he got a hold of it, held it up into the light of the dimming suns in the sky to read what it’d picked up. The look on Rhydian’s face slowly darkened into a face of worried confusion. “That can’t be right... “ Rhydian’s eyes narrowed at the spanner. He started connecting the dots. He turned to Brooke.

“It says here that there’s a low-level psychic field emanating from all around us as well. That would be fine if there was an origin point for that field as well, but there’s not - so now there are two origin points unaccounted for. I’d guess that this distress signal is most likely being held up by this psychic field, that’s why it can travel great distances. But the real kicker here is that this psychic field is registered to be completely natural - produced and sustained by a biological entity. There aren’t any intelligent life-forms around here apart from the plants, and my Spanner has confirmed that it’s not coming from them. So where is the field coming from?…”

A rustling started shake the brush behind the pair. And then in front of them. Soon, the entire forest surrounding the two was shaking with increasing volatility. But it wasn’t thick brush or anything - if someone was in the trees, they’d be able to see them with little trouble. But Rhydian wasn’t seeing anything that looked remotely large enough to shake these trees to the degree they were.

Thinking quick, Rhydian grabbed Brooke’s hand and shouted “Run with me!” and proceeded to tug her along and hoping she’d be quick to catch on and they’d be quicker to get out of here.

When Rhydian ran, he ran as fast as he could and never stopped unless it was for someone else in danger. This time was no exception, not paying much attention to where he was going but rather making sure Brooke kept up with him and making an effort not to lose her in the process of sprinting away from… what were they sprinting away from? Sure, Rhydian had registered a pretty substantial psychic field that seemed to be emanating from everywhere, but that didn’t answer why the trees were shaking in quite an intimidating manner, a way that was most likely dangerous for the two. In fact, Rhydian confirmed this when they started running, and the shaking of trees and shrubs followed them as they sped off in one direction.

Rhydian heard Brooke say something from behind him as they ran, something saying that they’d be safe in her ship. Now that was a possibility of refuge. Since she hadn’t changed direction, he assumed that she was running the right way towards her ship. Bursting through to a clearing in the forest, Rhydian could definitely see a lack of trees around the area - but no ship. The fact that there was no ship was emphasised by Brooke’s distraught reaction when they emerged from the forest into the clearing to find no sort of transportation vehicle in sight.

“It’s gone? Well, has someone stole it? It’s your ship, right?” Rhydian questioned, but quickly realised that there was no point in dwelling on things that you can’t change. “Wait, don’t answer that. Sssh - listen.” Rhydian put his finger up to signal silence, and he heard… nothing. No rustling of trees from whatever was chasing them, no cracking of branches or snapping of tree trunks. Which was a good sign.

Except, Rhydian realised after a few seconds of silence, it wasn’t.

There wasn’t just an absence of the sounds of things chasing them - it was the absence of any sound at all. Listening really, really closely, Rhydian could here absolutely nothing - no wind, no life or fauna, no telltale signs of life of any kind. It was like the air stood still - actually, he should check that out. Sticking his finger in his mouth and putting it back up in the air again, Rhydian felt no wind at all, not even a light breeze. Something was definitely off, Rhydian was sure of it.

Pulling out his Multi-Spanner, Rhydian scanned the area for what felt like the millionth time in the past twenty minutes. Checking his readings, he grimaced. “The psychic field is still surrounding us. Whatever chased us back there had some pretty good means of camouflage - I couldn’t make out whatever was causing the tree-shaking, not even glimpses or blurs. Might be some sort of invisibility field, or maybe even a well-designed perception filter…

“But! Do you know what is really intriguing me about this place?” Rhydian questioned, walking closer to Brooke with his finger still in the air. “The things you can hear. Listen real closely, try and pay attention to the tiniest details in the air currents… and you’ll quickly find that there is nothing to listen to. It’s literally dead silent here, like we’ve been shut in a sound-proof padding room. I don’t need my spanner to scan for that. So that raises the question: what is stopping the noise? There are the obvious answers, such as we’ve entered a noise-cancelling force-field or energy dome, or mabye the lack of noise is inherent to what planet we’re on.”

Rhydian put his hands in his pockets and pointed to a path down the clearing going further into the forest, “But I’m willing to bet that whatever answers we’ll find, we’ll find in that particularly conveniently-placed artificial-looking pathway through the forest there. I can always go for one of those. Besides, I don’t feel comfortable standing still after what just happened.” Rhydian started walking down the path into the darkness of the trees, and called out, “Only if you’re comfortable with this, though! I can always get us out of here if you want!”

Rhydian walked on through the clearing and into the forest, getting denser and denser as he progressed. Luckily, Brooke had chosen to tag along with him, which was always helpful as he never knew whether he’d need an extra hand or not. Despite this fact, he was a little wary of her - more appropriately, he was a little wary of her being another thing to protect. Rhydian never truly got comfortable with travelling with groups or pairs or with any other people in general, because he had a tendency of putting other people's’ lives in front of his own - he can recall many instances of dramatically jumping in front of pulse rifle shots or tanking explosions in actions of self-sacrifice, except with less heroism involved and more chance-taking stupidity, burns, bruises and recovery in some hospital in the 51st century. It wasn’t pretty for him, and there always was the off chance that his efforts to save whoever was in trouble would all be for naught…

Back when Rhydian was still young, still hardened from receiving little to no closure about his father’s death, he didn’t socialise at all during his travels. He avoided anyone coming up to talk to him like the plague, and evaded any social interaction only because, back then, it was hard-wired into his system. When he was put into the situation where he’d have to work together with someone to solve a problem, he either shoved them away and did it himself or put up with it. It was a great strategy at the time, until he learned the hard way that it wasn’t the best way to go around things. It all happened when he met the prince of Pyrovillia himself.

Rhydian had quite a history with the Pyroviles. His father was an avid visitor of the planet even though you usually needed a heavily padded industrial heat-resistant suit to survive on the surface. Luckily, the Pyroviles was a surprisingly civilised race, and accommodated for visitors, more specifically the humanoid kind, by keeping their interior infrastructure at a lower temperature. It happened by chance that he stumbled across the prince of Pyrovillia himself - Kash T’Rall, tall and royal and fit the bill as a prince of an entire planet. His appearance depicted his personality quite well; hot-headed, impulsive and coming off as intimidating and unapproachable. Of course, Rhydian had no business with a member of the royal family such as Kash, but due to a certain predicament they landed themselves in involving a radical Pyrovillian terrorist group, a few quantum pulse charges and a bomb threat, they were forced to reluctantly work together to save the planet from falling into political anarchy.

They succeeded, of course - they made an excellent team - but neither of them wanted to admit that fact. Kash was too stubborn, and Rhydian was too socially introverted, but they developed a weird sort of friendship in which nothing really needed to be said to be conveyed to the other (another issue that made it more annoying than anything was that Kash was at least a few hundred degrees celsius in temperature, meaning he couldn’t take Kash anywhere without him wearing a coolant field, something that Kash found unbelievably uncomfortable. It also made touching him essentially deadly, and Rhydian had to throw out at least three jackets because the oh-so graceful Pyrovillian hier couldn’t keep his bloody balance in 0.3g). Kash kept popping up in more and more of Rhydian’s travels either by chance or by call, and soon he was showing up just for fun. Rhydian would still consider Kash today as probably his best friend, which was weird in of itself excluding the fact that Kash was a seven-and-a-half foot alien lava monster. However, their friendship truly withstood the test of their hardships when Rhydian’s father was involved.

The long story short was that Rhydian’s father was a Time Agent who renounced his position in the force and quit, moving to 21st century Earth where he met Rhydian’s mother. Devastatingly, Rhydian’s father was found dead when Rhydian was only seven years old, which was why his personality the way it was for a long time in his youth - and there weren’t exactly psychiatrists on hand in the middle of Australia. The death was passed off as accidental, even though it sparked wild rumours throughout the town about serial killers… and possibly arson, since the body was found with scorch marks. Rhydian wouldn’t put the two together until many years later when he met the Pyrovillians and realised why his father spent so much time there. Rhydian, revisiting the moment of his father’s death through time, something his father had SPECIFICALLY told him NEVER to do no matter what he learned (it was complicated; Rhydian had received the Multi-Spanner from his father in the past, who knew he was destined to die in the 21st century), and found the same Pyrovillian terrorist group Rhydian had stopped on Pyrovillia with Kash were back again and dead-set on killing not only his father, being a member of the Time Agency, but to take Earth with them in the process.

Planning on stopping them, Rhydian called Kash to help him fight off the terrorist group and stop the explosion. His father came along for the ride (oh, how everything was coming together) and a skirmish was initiated in a cave system near the town where Rhydian grew up in - the location where the bomb would detonate. They stopped the countdown with more than enough time to spare, and took care of the terrorists too. Rhydian, at the very moment he disarmed that bomb, felt a sort of peace with himself. In that very moment…

He remembered what his father said to him. About fixed points in time. And that his death could never be re-written.

His father was shot down by a remaining Pyrovile soldier, who played dead on the floor. Despite any attempt Rhydian made to resuscitate his downed father, it was no use: time had realigned itself with recorded history, and the past was cemented - Rhydian couldn’t do anything about it, not even if he tried. Anger flooded every fibre of his being, an unadulterated ocean of rage undimmed by time and unbound by death - the tempest of a child amplified to the most dangerous degree.

Rhydian had that Pyrovile The Shime of the Lonlay Poot-face at gunpoint, and he could have activated the last plasma charge within his weapon - if he did, it would have been his first ever kill in cold blood. His bloodlust was washing his eyes with red, and he swore the flickering flames of that Pyrovile’s skin were mocking him, dancing in front of him. He squeezed the trigger with almost enough pressure to give Rhydian what he wanted.

But not what he needed. Kash pointed that out almost immediately.

It was Kash who convinced Rhydian not to fire that weapon off, not to kill that terrorist and bring him to justice in front of the Grand Pyrovillian Court. Kash had killed people in the past - he was a trained warrior, and fought many formidable foes such as the Shadowkin, the Gelth, the Skovox and numerous others, and another head on his belt was like another month gone by. If it were anyone else, the Pyrovile prince wouldn’t bat an eye - but his friendship with Rhydian powered him to tell him to stop. Tell him that he shouldn’t, that he was better than this, that he needed to do what was right. It worked, thankfully. But Rhydian’s father was still dead.

Rhydian viewed this event as a cleansing of his soul, not that he believed in souls or anything. He supposed it was like a detox for his brain, because after that fateful day where he saw his father murdered in front of his eyes and gave up the only opportunity to exact revenge for him, he felt like he’d changed. And changed he did. Rather than being an introverted dickwad, Rhydian instead became an outgoing, avant-garde ball of energy that was just waiting to be released from underneath the psychological and emotional torment that had pained him for years because of the death of his father. Rhydian, in all honesty, didn’t exactly know the scientific reason why he’d changed after this event - it could have been the closure he received, or maybe such a mentally damaging experience awakened something deep beneath him, but whatever it was, Rhydian was grateful for it. And he couldn’t have done it without Kash. If anything, Rhydian was a little afraid of what he might have become if Kash wasn’t there and he pulled that trigger anyway…

Pushing stray branches and leaves out of the way of his face as he walked, the time-travelling boy pondered Brooke’s question to him about why they could hear each-other’s voices but couldn’t hear anything else. “That’s actually a pretty good question, Brooke. If I’m being completely frank, I’m not exactly sure. Some sort of targeted soundwave compression field, maybe? Or possibly an illusion of the ears formed by sonic mirrors. Or it could be the psychic field manipulating our minds into some form of audible perception filter? I’m actually glad you brought it up, because I didn’t notice that before in the clearing.”

The further they walked through the forest, the more a gnawing feeling of anxiety clawed at the back of Rhydian’s mind, almost as if it wasn’t quite there. Something didn’t feel right, Rhydian knew that from the start when those things in the trees started chasing them. Still, though… it felt like they were being watched, even though that sounded so cheesy in Rhydian’s head. He was snapped out of his thoughtful stupor, however, when he nearly tripped on something that was hit by his foot. Looking down, he saw… a stone?

“Hold on, Brooke. This looks interesting…” Crouching down on one knee, Rhydian dusted off the stone and found it to be quite large, only the corner of it jutting out to be visible above ground. Dusting off more, he saw the corner was definitely rectangular and edged at 90 degree angles. This was artificially made, he was sure of it. Dusting off more and more of the dirt, he quickly realised he wasn’t going to be able to dig this up any time soon without help from a tool.

“Brooke, look at this. It’s definitely man-made… well, manufactured by a life-form with some semblance of geometrical symmetry which plays to their architectural aesthetic. This is a sign that there was life on this planet before…”

“Uhm… it’s made of stone, so it’s unlikely that it’d be a spaceship. I do know a few granite rock-based escape pods, so it’s not entirely implausible. But I’m more for the possibility that this thing is a piece of a building. Well, just infrastructure in general. A lot of things are made out of stone; bricks, statues, walls…”

Rhydian frowned, pulling out his Multi-Spanner from his jacket pocket and scanning the corner sticking out from the ground, “... gravestones.” he muttered under his breath, as he took his readings.

“Well, this doesn’t look to be too technologically advanced; it’s just treated stone and mischmetal, so it’s been haphazardly harvested from the ground and chopped up with a stone-cutter. Probably just a brick, but…” Rhydian stood up, pocketing the device in his hand, “It does confirm my suspicion that there was life here on this planet. And not too long ago, might I add.”

The boy raised an eyebrow when Brooke said that they should probably move on, and he indeed sensed her unease. He gave her a skeptical look, “Are you sure you’re alright to go on? I can take you wherever you need to be with my vortex manipulator. It’d be a bumpy ride but it can take you wherever you choose. Don’t think of me as someone who’s forcing you into doing something you don’t want to do.”

Rhydian continued, “But, if you really want to keep moving forward, we can, because I’ve got the strange feeling that we’re not exactly safe if we stay still for too long.” Turning around and beginning to walk again, the feeling of uncertainty, what laid before him in the darkened brush before him, dissipated somewhat but still laid pseudo-dormant within the peripherals of his mind. He didn’t like that feeling of uneasiness one bit, as usually whenever he got it, it meant something dangerous was on the rise. It didn’t help that whatever chased them into the clearing beforehand was apparently invisible to the eye as far as he could see.

“So, what’s your story?” Rhydian began with caution, trying to start small-talk but recognising that Brooke was just a little bit shy. “You know, how’d you end up on this planet? You said you didn’t travel alone here, and that the ship that disappeared wasn’t your ship, correct? I’d love to hear about your travels if you have any, because once you get me going about where I’ve been in the universe, I never stop.”

Listening intently to Brooke as he walked, Rhydian started to relax as they made casual conversation. He was still on guard, mind you; anyone would be if the impending threat of invisible monsters that could cause earthquake-like trembles in a forest was right at your metaphorical doorstep, and the atmosphere wasn’t exactly inviting in this progressively darkening bush. But he was still relaxing, even if it was just for a little while, as he trudged through the rough outline of a path made through the dense flora beneath his feet. He nodded along as Brooke spoke, taking in the environment around him with his hands in his pockets.

Rhydian smiled again when he picked up that Harry Potter reference when Brooke was speaking about one of her travels with that man. "If you describe her with ‘Umbridge’ then she really must be bad.” He chuckled at his remark, "The man you met must be pretty cool if he takes you on all of those trips. I get by with my spanner, I don’t have any fancy spaceship to cruise me around the universe. On one hand I guess I’m thankful for it; spaceships get me too comfortable at times, and the places I go are places I need to keep myself on my toes.”

Sighing, Rhydian continued, “You know, I’m glad you chose to stick around. I appreciate the company. Without you, I’d be at the bottom of that crevice beforehand. Thank you again for that, by the way. That wasn’t how I expected my day to go when I woke up this morning, but hey, I expect a lot of things…”

Rhydian kept walking on and on, but steady in his path and in his mindset. He knew if they just kept going for a little bit longer they’d reach something of substantial value, significance or evidence pertaining to their ‘quest’. Side-eyeing Brooke to his side with a flicker, Rhydian read her body posture and gestures to get a better understanding of her… that sounded better in Rhydian’s head. He saw her clutch her elbow with the flashlight held tightly in the other hand, giving the impression that she was trying to make herself as small as possible. She was meek, tense, and most of all, probably afraid. Rhydian didn’t blame her; he was afraid too.

A shimmer of murky gray turned up in the distance, making Rhydian perk up to attention. He could see the faint outline of something square-ish from the beam of light cast by Brooke’s flashlight, and to get a better view at it, he took out his Multi-Spanner and cast his own blue-tinged beam from the emitter tip. As they progressed closer to what now looked very, very artificial, Rhydian got a glimpse of much more. They were stone, like what the pair found previously buried in the dirt of the path they were on. He only noticed now that they were entering another clearing of sorts, or better yet, exiting this forest entirely. The trees became more sparse in their spread, but the surroundings still remained as dark as it was before despite of the removal of canopy coverage.

When Rhydian exited the remaining shrubs of the forest, he got the full picture of what they were seeing: a vast array of monolith-type stones and statues stretching as far as the darkened view of the horizon. The more Rhydian looked, the more he saw of these stone creations - some of them were pillars, some of them were blocks, some were entire houses and mansions. Some were monoliths of great size, stretching to the sky well above five storeys, and others were statues of what looked like humanoid figures depicted and shaped in the crafted granite stone that seemed to make up everything else here.

“Well, now we know why that other stone we found before was there. There must be thousands of these things here…” Upon closer inspection of the view the pair were presented, the boy discovered that many of these stone creations were houses, and the random pieces strewn around seemed to either be unconstructed or pieces of debris or rubble from other existing buildings.

So, this place had been around a while.

“This just got interesting - wanna take a look around?” Rhydian asked, but he knew Brooke would say yes. Probably. If she made it this far, she’d go further, Rhydian was confident of it. Walking into the field of stone houses and infrastructure, he marvelled at the fact that none of them had seams or cut-marks or stitch-marks anywhere; they seemed to be carved entirely from one giant block of stone with a stone cutter or something along the lines of that. Very intriguing…

A rock was knocked over behind Rhydian, the sound of it ringing across the open field of stone buildings. He froze, as still and silent as the stones that surrounded them.

“Brooke…” Rhydian began as softly as he dared, turning around to face her, “Don’t move. Not yet… I think those things that chased us are back…”

Rhydian saw immediately that he was a few meters away from Brooke, and Brooke was only a few meters away from where that rock fell. All in all, that was just under ten meters of distance between him and whatever knocked over that stone, but Brooke was in a worse position. He didn’t dare move, however - he couldn’t see whatever was in front of them.

But Brooke could.

It wasn’t that easy to figure out, but it wasn’t that hard either. Brooke’s gaze was frozen in front of her, unwavering, but it wasn’t at the rock now on the ground; instead, her eyes were locked onto the space in front of her, even though to Rhydian there was nothing there. The cogs in his mind turned until the inevitable realisation occurred to him at the last moment: Brooke could see something that he couldn’t, and he was guessing it was whatever was hunting them on this planet. He didn’t know how or why she could see whatever she saw, but Well, he shouldn’t make assumptions, since he couldn’t see or hear them and only observe what they did to the surroundings, who knows? Maybe these creatures were attempting to give them a gift, or something… Rhydian liked to think optimistically.

“Brooke… what do you see? You can see something, right? Or else you wouldn’t be looking at whatever it is you’re looking at…” The boy really, really hoped he was right here since, ultimately, this was just an assumption. His intuition wasn’t always right. But he was willing to take the risk, since if she COULD see whatever was in front of them then they’d stand a much better chance against them.

“What do you see, Brooke?”

Rhydian's mind was running a thousand miles a minute. Why were these structures of stone here, and who lived - or lives - here? Why didn't Brooke speak up about seeing these supposed aliens in the first place? What were those aliens even doing here in the first place?

Many thoughts passed through the boy's brain which raised some alarm bells, one of them even going something along the lines of that Brooke was actually luring him here for some nefarious reason, and she was in league with these supposed aliens. But that thought quickly dissipated as he dismissed that until he had some more substantial evidence - he could just make assumptions about people like that, as while he wouldn't call himself naive, he wasn't a mean person either. Plus, if she was actually siding with these invisible aliens making a commotion, why would she have saved him back at the cliff-face?

Whatever Brooke was seeing, it must be real, that was all Rhydian knew for sure. Because the chance of her seeing figments of her imagination while some sort of invisible force was ruining every step they took occurring at the same time was so mathematically impossible it'd be more likely to land a jump from a moving train, off a bridge and into a shot glass. Besides, even if Brooke was lying, Rhydian couldn't exactly do any investigation of his own - whatever these things were, they weren't giving off any sort of radiation at all: no heat, no light, no sound, only leaving the destruction they leave from physical movement and contact. If this was a defence mechanism, it was probably the most efficient in history.

It was either that, or Brooke could just see things that other people couldn't. If that was the case, then oh, how Rhydian envied her.

"Brooke," Rhydian started, putting a hand out, "I believe you. Trust me, there are weirder things out there than being able to see invisible creatures. You're not crazy; you're about one of the most grounded people I've met because, oh boy, have I seen some people. This is good, great even: you're able to see these people. I'd bet if it were any other person in your position I'd be having a pretty hard time right now because they'd be not even an inch as capable as you are in this situation. You can see them - that gives us the advantage they never anticipated us having. What does this fella look like? Maybe I can put a finger on the species."

Rhydian did a quick three-sixty of his surroundings, just to make sure they weren't being watched by any unwanted guests (even though, in retrospect, it was a pointless act, as any unwanted guests would probably fall under the 'invisible' category), and said, "Better yet, give me some info on what they're doing. Is it just standing there? How is it moving, if it even is? I need all the help you can give me."

"You shouldn't ever have to apologise for something like that, yeah?" Rhydian countered immediately to Brooke's apology she tacked on to the end of her sentence. "You shouldn't apologise for who you are. I'm guessing people didn't exactly whole-heartedly believe your ability to... well, see ghosts, hah. That's the best way I can put it - but in this situation it's probably more like psychically visualising an invisible life-form. Speaking of..."

Rhydian once again held his Multi-Spanner in front of him and scanned, the device whirring to life. He was cycling through various psychogenic frequencies until... "Ahah!" he shouted which, in retrospect, probably wasn't the best idea when there were invisible creatures about. But still - the eureka moment was hard to pass. "Psychometric energy! There's a lingering psychic field exactly where that creature you saw was standing, and it fades fast - but I managed to snag a reading of it in time. You're right, Brooke: you're not crazy, and you're not seeing things. They must be linked to these objects, in some way or another... too bad I can't any better readings because all of this psychic interference..."

Rhydian rubbed his nose in contemplation while eyeing his surroundings once again, trying to decipher what exactly was going on here. According to Brooke's description this alien, possibly one of many, was a very tall, bipedal humanoid with extra tendril-like limbs as well, along with white hair and horns and war-paint/tattoos. Wow, that was a whole lot to process. They were also completely invisible to someone without an innate ability to detect and visualise psychic energy, or at least be able to see through some sort of psychic perception filter. On top of all this, there were some old stone-henge-esque monoliths in the middle of this clearing as well as a distress signal seemingly emanating from everywhere at once. Rhydian figured that the only way they'd discover the ends of this mystery was contacting the only other possibly sentient beings on this planet. Well, there was only one way to get a 'look' at more of these people...

"C'mon, Brooke," Rhydian perked up in his usual energetic fashion, although he was far deeper in thought than normal. "Let's go hunt some alien-ghost things... and I don't mean hunt as in 'kill', but like, get a better look at them. Sorry, I'm rambling. You know what I mean." He ended that train of thought with a goofy lopsided smile, and proceeded to head further into the plethora of monoliths and granite stone structures.