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Avoider leered from the corner of the room, crouched in a shadow.
She was beautiful.
Dead quiet, she swayed slightly, her eye closed and her head tilted down in deep thought. The low lantern light glistened off of her golden body, reflecting the softest, strangest glow he had ever seen. He could not name what she was made of. The steps she took seemed to stop in the air with how they wouldn't make a sound, gracefully pulling her forwards. Her feet always seemed to take her in the opposite direction of all the loudest, worst things, which was exactly where he wanted to be as well.
He kept his steps intensely quiet as he inched closer, staying within a certain proximity of her. Avoidance came natural, and something told him to keep his distance, but something else told him to draw closer, go bath in that radiant gold.
She perked up. Avoider stopped, holding completely still, his breath stopping. His eyes were wide, and he knelt down a couple of feet away from her, his head held low.
As she tilted her head to listen, part of her body shifted. It was her shoulder, a chipped segment rising to suspend in the air. The inside of the chip was orange, catching the light before it slid across the spot where it had disconnected from, making a long, melodic note, still hushed in nature.
Avoider knew despite her closed eye, she had picked up on him. Despite how much she seemed to hate the others, going so far as to attempt to hurt them, she didn't seem angry now. Only…curious. Her hand had hovered in midair, the disconnected fingers rotating around the cube of her palm.
Avoider lowered his head, staying quiet for a long moment, before he gently scraped his claws against the floor, barely audible to him. She immediately heard it, her head nodding slightly in recognition. She made a couple of indistinct sounds, that shimmering note playing again as her leg stuck out, disconnecting and floating just an inch off from the bottom angle of her torso to scrape against it in a soft, gentle sound. Her fingers clicked together, and the noises strung together sounded like a language past his capability.
Avoider took an unsteady step back, on his hands and feet now. He brushed his palm over the fur of his arm, before tapping his claws against the ground once forward, and then again once he had gotten further away.
She paused to listen, her body tilting to the side. She remained still as a little sound resembling a hmm? played from her head, her eye tensing before it slowly started to open.
Avoider’s hairs raised, and he immediately turned around, running away.
-
Avoider still liked to stay closer to her.
He didn't know why. He had seen her rip people apart, spear them and reel them into her arms to die.
He wanted to be in her arms, he thinks.
It would be a while before the match started. He was hidden beneath a desk, a chair pulled in against him. He was curled up into a ball, listening to her as she deftly moved throughout the HQ. There was a tone to the sounds that she made, lilting into something upwards, like the sound of a question.
Avoider stayed quiet. He traced his finger against the leg of the chair, eyes narrowing when she stopped. Her footsteps were drawing closer.
Abruptly the chair was pulled away from him. He hissed, his fur standing up as he huddled further beneath the desk.
She jolted, her form going rigid, anything that loosely floated off of her clicking sharply back into place. Her eye opened, glancing around the room quickly.
Her eye was gorgeous, a soft green that glowed lightly in the dim HQ. Her pupil settled on him, filling him with both terror and anxiety, as well as anticipation. Someone was looking at him. He felt the nagging urge to go invisible to pry her eye away, to escape her intense and threatening focus. It felt like hatred, her facing towards him, her noticing his presence, even by mistake. His fur raised against his back.
Her eye remained open for a long, quiet moment, before it closed. Her body relaxed, and there was the quiet sound of a granite-like surface scraping against itself, resembling a soft sigh of relief. She did not return the cap to his hiding place, his chair, but she slowly turned away, her eye squinting open as she glanced around the room.
Avoider reached out cautiously, grabbing the chair again. He lifted it from the floor so as to not make an awful scraping sound, setting it down not entirely in front of him, but close enough to hide while still being able to see her.
She rifled through the desks in silence, testing some of the computers. Her fingers floated above the keys, pushing it down, flinching when it made a clicking sound. The dim lighting curved around her sharp angels, making her look almost softer, more approachable.
He still wouldn't, but it was a nice thought.
Eventually, she came back. In one hand, she unsteadily grasped a pencil, blocky fingers digging into the sides like it was going to slip away from her, and in the other, she set down a piece of paper, kneeling to the floor. She was only a meter away from him, her eye lidded as low as it could get as her pupil glanced through what she was attempting to write. It seemed like she was struggling slightly, standing on her knees at times to peek at the keyboards on the desks around them, before she set down the pencil, two of her fingers gripping the paper and moving several feet away from her to set it down in front of Avoider without reaching into his space.
‘Yøu`r nøt sø løud,,~
sweet yøu sêem,~
what is yøu`r ~søund~—?.
Avoider squinted at the note. He already wasn't very good with his English reading skills, and this seemed like a special challenge, each letter struggling to come off of the page and into his mind. It was English, kind of, but the way it was written was very strange, each letter extending like an elegant line, some letters missing, some hardly recognisable.
What did she mean by a sound?
Avoider picked up the pencil, holding it in his fist. He pressed it to the ground, clumsily circling the word “sound”, adding a very rudimentary question mark.
She took it in for a moment, before she pointed to herself. The disconnected shoulder joint raised, making a noise of a sharp sting mellowing out into a drawn-out soft note, and then a simple guitar strumming sound to end it.
He tilted his head to the side. This strange language could not help him to understand in the way that she wanted to communicate. He desperately wanted to find a way to communicate, but it seemed like they were too far separated to do such a thing.
She didn't seem frustrated or upset. She crept slightly closer into his space, now just a foot away, taking the pencil and writing something quickly, before turning the paper towards him.
‘Hãr~ken.’ With a small, crude drawing of a square with an eye, segments on the sides where hers were.
It came to him quickly, a sound that represented her, pointed at her and written above her. She was trying to communicate her name. Furthermore, she was trying to ask for his.
Avoider glanced around, leaning slightly closer. He hesitated for a moment, trying to speak as quietly as he possibly could, quieter than her so as not to disturb or distress her. “Har…ken?”
Her eye closed the rest of the way, a pleased hum emitting from her head as her body repeated the sound, very similar to what she had written down, just without access to vocal cords.
“Harken,” He whispered, confirming the name once more. It…it felt nice, to see the way her hands set together, intertwining with delight. Her head tilted to the side, before nodding once, twice. Then, she straightened, her finger unfurling to point insistently at him.
He glanced around nervously, straining his ears to make sure nobody was listening. Nobody knew this. Nobody spoke to him for so long. Or communicated at all. Or looked at him. It usually made him uncomfortable to even be in their range of sight, like he was intruding and in danger of being caught.
She felt like an object he would exist around. She wasn't looking. Her eye was closed, only opening to peer at paper to better speak. She was so surprisingly considerate, and insistent, it made his chest churn with warmth, his heart fluttering. He wanted to curl up and become completely unnoticeable at her side. It would be easy to disappear, anybody would be too distracted by how bright and pretty she was, how striking her sharp edges and green eye looked. They'd be too scared to look at him.
Harken was such a distinct name, too. It would stand out in a lineup. He curled over himself, bringing his knees up to his chest.
“Avoider,” He rasped in a quiet tone, looking away from her.
She was still for a moment, taking in the response. She seemed intensely focused, head tilted down as she tested out her limited range of sound, before she seemed to land on the translation. A short melodic swing, like an intake of breath, before a looming chord, sharp like a consonant before softening out towards the end, and for the last syllable, another brief harp strum. “Ahm~foyh~dhrr~” She hummed, her fingers idly spinning on her hand as she processed it.
His sound. That was his sound. She had a sound for him, made it so easily, sang it so sweetly. A special prompt, just for him, something to beckon and to call on. It felt like suffocating pressure, but his heart was racing in his chest as he still heard it ringing in his head.
“Say again?” Avoider whispered, hugging his knees to his chest as he stared at her eyelid.
She immediately complied, and it rolled off of her limbs even easier this time, brief and special, something she could replicate without any difficulty. It struck him now that the pressure only felt so heavy because he knew that if he had ever heard it again, his heart and mind would force him to listen to it, and despite anything he thought or felt, he would crawl towards it again like a siren’s cry. Spoken in that voice with that tone—
A sound, just for him.
-
Harken perked up abruptly, listening to the sound around her. There was a brief, quiet countdown, before footsteps sounded out all around.
Her companion, Avoider, lingered on the ground, before slowly slinking out from under the desk. His subtle breaths sounded low to the ground, so she assumed he was crouched, coming a couple feet away from her side. She could still feel his warmth just barely, radiating off of his skin, expressing where he was.
One of the first definitive sounds she heard was a gunshot. Something deafening to her ears, whizzing just past her head, an explosion from their hand.
No way that didn't draw the attention of something larger. Not only was this the perfect hiding spot, but she was now lugging around a companion, who seemed too organic to move like she did. Running away was a risky option, it'd be better to wait for the construct to pass over them.
But the civilians still made noise. They fiddled with the hammer of their gun, a harsh click, some people far away had started laying into the ground with a hammer like they were erecting a house.
Harken bursted into a sprint. Before it came, she thought, she would take care of the noise. All of them were organic, lumbering, breathing, and speaking. Harken didn't care to hear their words, she knew she wouldn't be offered the same courtesy in return. At least her companion had attempted it, nearly grasped it. That was a kindness that she had not been afforded in so long…
The humans that populated scattered like pollen, breaking into packs and spilling away from her. They made frantic sounds, one of them throwing their arms above their head and yelping. One of the gunners lagged behind slightly, glancing back at her, contemplating something with their hand on their firing implement. They glanced back at their group, before they skirted to a halt, raising their gun.
Their fire missed as Harken swept to the side, raising her spear to dig it into her chest. She felt that sharp pain washing over her torso, her eye screwing shut tight as she sped up dramatically, throwing out her spear moments later.
She successfully tangled them, yanking them back in violently before stomping down on them. Somehow, this only made them louder as they scrambled to their feet, running away.
Hopelessly, they were no match at all for Harken. She was too fast, dodging a second shot from the crowd ahead of them to quiet them once and for all. They fell so quick, crumpling to quietness and lifelessness. A wheeze fluttered out to a peaceful lack of noise.
She did not stop, though. There were more, still making sounds, hammering into the ground for a second time. It felt like hours to cut through them all, taking a couple of injuries in the process.
By the time that she had finished with the group of four, she was badly injured. Despite this, she was fairly confident that's where the brunt of the damagers were, the ones with the pistols at least. The rest sounded as if they were on the other side of the map.
As she limped towards them, she heard the lightest shuffle, a startled breath. Immediately, she reeled back, throwing her spear down harshly to find them.
It made contact with nothing, empty as she pulled it back, but it elicited a sharp, bestial hiss, although quiet. Her eye cracked open slightly, seeing blurry white topped by black, and then sharp red that cut through the shape, peering up at her.
“So sorry, apologies,” She hummed, closing her eye. “I didn't see you.” She took a step closer, which provoked another abrupt hiss. “Are you injured?”
He was silent. Another peek revealed that he was staring up at her body, gaze lingering along the chips and cracks, the wounds that she had endured.
“Avoider.”
He immediately perked up, his head tilting to the side. Perhaps he didn't understand much else from her language. It was a quick learn for only an hour or two of knowing, however, and it showed great promise.
“Hurt?” A small, low voice, still relatively deep but almost hesitant to speak. It did not sting to hear, to listen.
“Yes. Much worse will happen if we do not team up to quell the noise. I am weakened in this place, it takes longer to fell the organic beings.” … “No offense, you happen to be an organic being yourself. I hope you are aware that I do not intend to bring harm to you, I refer to the faun, brown, and pale hairless entities that escape my grasp.”
Avoider blinked slowly.
Oh, she was wasting words. “Avoider.” He was listening, leaning forwards on his haunches, similar to an animal with a dissimilar build. “Harken.”
“Har—ken?”
“Yes,” She nodded. “Kill.” She raised her spear, swinging it sharply, mocking a violent action, before pointing it to the spot where the sounds came from. “Noise.” She then turned her head back to him. “For safety.”
Avoider nodded quickly, his head turning towards the glass, looking at the slight motion that you could see over there.
“Avoider. Help?” She hummed, extending her hand, her spear set firmly in the other to ensure that he knew what he was agreeing to.
Avoider backed away slightly, his expression twisting into ugly uncertainty, hesitance, regret. She knew immediately that despite their closeness, perhaps he was too timid and cowardly to assist her.
“Hide,” She insisted, pointing underneath the cubicle that he was hiding in before.
He nodded quickly, crawling back under.
To expect help so early? It was irrational, they had just recently met. Despite it all, she still wished that he had came along. She wished that he would help. She wished that he would be by her side, especially considering that it was only them against everybody else. But despite being organic, he could only ever be as cowardly as his size. He would hide as an immature construct, and perhaps she would assist as a slightly larger, more responsible one, averting his innocent red eyes from the bloodshed of the world.
And did she have to. There was so much gore that spilled around them, the organics were grotesquely wet and filthy, staining her skin as she cut them. Her blood came slower and fewer, thicker so as not to leave a trail. Theirs begged to be followed, hunted, and killed.
She found where the bulk of the four hid, springing into action. They stepped on a pressure plate, speeding up dramatically as they ran by her, but she managed to hit one of them.
There was the sound of a cannon, ridiculously loud, and then a soft slap like something had landed on the ground. Regardless, she avoided that spot, cutting around the corner of the divider before a fist collided with her open wound.
She was trying to stay quiet, but blood wept from her injuries, leaking down her body slowly, tracing the cracks and patterns of stone in her torso. Her head was beginning to ache from the constant, oppressive noise, and she could hear them all escaping and clamouring together as she recovered.
She trembled for a moment, before her eye opened, wide as it searched around her. She moved faster than ever before, sprinting towards the crowd, digging her fingers into the first noisemaker. Their flesh was soft, pliant under her sharp fingers, making it easy to dig into. She threw her spear out, reeling them in before they could get away from her, before hitting them again.
A gun cocked back, and before she could move, it broke off a chunk of her arm, the piece suspending in the air as she bled. “It’s so dark…” She was struggling to move now, only managing to kill the one that was previously chained to her before she felt as if she was going to collapse.
She limped down the steps towards the outdoor area. She knew she couldn't take anything more. This was bad. There was somebody following her, but their steps were more careful, more quiet, their vague breaths low to the ground.
It would be nice to die in the company of a companion. Her limbs were slowing down, liquid life force draining from her body. She managed to step behind cover before she collapsed to the floor, fragments of herself hugging in as if losing their levitation.
“Harken?”
“It is simple.” She opened her eye halfway to observe him crouched at her side. His widened expression could not betray anything, but his shrunken pupils flicked around her form, a betrayal of panic. Worry. Concern? “You should have stayed hidden. You are so quiet, nearly as much as I. Maybe you would have survived it. How foolish of you.” She leaned back against the wall, her strums slurring against the harmony in her shoulder. Her pronunciation was imperfect, but something such as that could not hope to matter before this beast.
Even still, as she laid there, the corner of his lips turned down, his head tilting to the side. His claws hovered helplessly above her torso, which threatened to collapse against her hips like any normal object would without the levitation of a life force. This was the closest he had ever been, spiting his own nature.
“I’m…” His eyes widened. His frown deepened as he leaned in closer, the warmth of his body curling against her side, over her arm. “Sorry.”
“…” Harken glanced up at the sky. Any moment now, that pleasant golden light would abate with shadow as it would loom over the building, swallowing the sun whole. Perhaps she was fortunate not to see it. “I…I’m selfish in that I am glad that you were here. Here to warm me until I die. Your sensitivities prevent you from killing, but you have still come forward to offer what little you can.” She hummed softly, her gaze tilting downwards. She had to encourage him to go into hiding now, to give him a chance for survival. She nudged her shoulder, pushing against him gently. “Better not to stain your snow white fur. It makes you stand out so harshly among us all, lathered in red and pain.”
He flinched, shifting away to lean off of her, but he did not move from his spot. His tail curled curiously behind him as he inspected her. “Harken,” He said in a low voice, his tone nearly sounding like a complaint. His hand moved to her head, gently resting along the bottom of it to hold it up to where it was supposed to be, not slumped down like the beginnings of a dead construct. “I’m, I am, sorry, please,” He continued in broken, raspy English.
“What a useless gesture.” Her fingers gently brushed against the back of his hand. “Why won't you leave? The noises will come back for you. My corpse will not look any better with yours laid down beside it.” Her grip tightened around her spear. She was taking longer to die than she expected she would, and he would not leave her side, like something complacent in death. “Escape me,” She insisted, her spear raising to his chin, her eye narrowing. “Hide from me. Avoid.”
He stiffened, moving away from her, crouching to his feet. “Avoid?” His eyes were wide, his hands were shaking at his sides, and his tail drooped behind him. Despite it, he looked like he was waiting for something. Maybe it was the rest of the word, what he had hoped for or expected to come later.
She paused for a moment, closing her eye. The sounds were distant, and she didn't have the strength to lift her spear anymore as it clattered uselessly to the ground, the loud sound the final seal in their coffin. But he didn't have to get in it, he wouldn’t have to. Her shoulder chip raised to speak with the last bit of effort she could muster, her eye squeezing shut as she stiffened against the wall.
“Avoid me.”
-
It was nothing as gruesome as a human death, or as an animal death, but it still made his heart wrench harder than it ever had before for someone other than himself.
It was the last word, not his name, but identifiably close to it. Avoid what? Was she trying to help him? Was she trying to hurt him? In the moment after she spoke those words, he couldn't comprehend it or even begin to ask what that meant before the pieces that comprised her raised, shuddering unsteadily before they all collapsed to the floor, a useless pile of lifeless bricks. When she was decompiled and limp like this, she looked far less ethereal. What looked like softly glowing moonstone was now simply sandstone, sharp but harmless.
“Harken? Harken?” He beckoned, his palm resting on the side of her head. “Harken?”
She didn't respond, or tilt her head, or nod. She was longer her, she was it, a heap of blocks on the ground. The blood that didn't seem to be coming out heavily enough to die had ceased, taking on a black tint. When any human would die, their eyes remained open, muscles failing to stay closed.
Her eye was naturally closed, though, refusing to betray even an ounce of the life that existed prior.
Avoider rose to his feet slowly. Immediately, he felt off-balance and exposed, but he stayed up, taking one step, then two. The sounds were coming from inside the glass building. His face was warm, thick blood was still soaking into his fur from where he had laid against her cold form.
He came up the steps quietly, blending into the background of the building. He allowed his body to become translucent, creeping towards the group inside.
It was three people, one with a gun, one with gloves, and another with a cape on their back. They were speaking in uneasy tones, quieter than they had been before she died. They were still completely oblivious.
He didn't understand what she was so afraid of. Why she tried to push him off after a moment, why she was tearing through these wretched humans with such urgency, why she had put him into hiding like a child in a warzone. He couldn't possibly understand, she could barely enunciate English and the only sound he could comprehend in her lilting, eerie voice was his own name.
Even so, he understood that she died to protect herself and him. He didn't know what from, but he didn't need to know. These humans picked a fight with them, shooting at her after they arrived, beating her until she bled. Now, they believed they were safe, just as he did underneath that cubicle desk before she received her last blow. Now, just as he was, they would be disturbed from their rest.
As soon as he came into view, they all jumped, one of them immediately pulling back the hammer to their gun. Avoider quickly sidestepped it, pulling out his sword and plunging it into their chest before swiping his claws into the side of their face, causing them to cry out. He didn't stop for even a moment, bounding towards the next person.
His teeth weren't sharp, but that didn't stop him from biting down into their forearm, grabbing their shoulder. The flat grooves allowed him to hold on tighter without tearing the skin, jerking his head to the side to rip their forearm from the joint with a sickening pop. He tasted a sickening hint of blood, spitting it up immediately as he heard a shriek.
A fist crashed solidly into his jaw, and even still he recovered, pouncing on them to embed his nails in their sternum. Their torso spit up blood, warm and sticky and soaking slowly into his fur. Maybe this was how she felt as she got her spirit broken down. Maybe the way they went limp, their eyes screwing shut was what she did when she accepted that she was going to die.
“Harken,” Avoider gasped, his vision growing blurry with tears as he squeezed their throat, his body trembling. They were all staring at him, judgement and hatred and fear thick in their eyes. There were so many on him, suffocating him in their weight. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn't, do it—” He sobbed, his eyes narrowing before he raised their head up, smashing it back into the ground repeatedly until they stopped whining and breathing and crying.
She was so gentle, so sweet and quiet. Even her threats were graceful and hesitant. Eventually, glowstone would dull to sandstone, and her eye would close for the last time. Her body would form his name one last time, and he wouldn't have even known it'd be the last time.
“I’m sorry. I’ll…” He shuddered, standing up from the corpse, before running up to the human reloading their gun. Just as they finished, his sword ran through their shoulder. “I’ll be better, next time,” He rasped, clawing at their throat, trying to get it open as they struggled. He barely knew how to do this, but they didn't manage to live long underneath his full attention.
“I promise.”
The last one took a step back, before they fully sprinted away, their torn arm hanging uselessly at their side. They had a white hat, no way to fix themself.
Avoider ran after them on two legs, chasing them through the hall. He was gaining on them rapidly, before they turned a sharp corner, causing him to stumble and drift out past the wall. He recovered quickly, his palm steadying against the wall at the next turn to catch up at the corner, his claws making a deep mark in their back. They immediately broke away from the obstacle, their legs carrying them down the stairs.
Avoider launched himself from the precipice of the stairs, landing sharply onto their body. There was a sharp crack as their back hit the ground, but their eyes were still glancing around, open wide. They were trying to speak, but their words never came out, just desperate noises as they fumbled and squirmed beneath him, trying to get away.
Avoider glanced away from them as he dipped his claws into their neck, severing their jugular vein. They seized once, before going completely limp, their heavy and frantic breathing turning quiet.
He stood to his feet slowly, taking a couple of steps back. He didn't realise how loud his own breathing was. His hands were trembling, his body coated in red. Their eyes were still open, but they turned up at the sky, dull and glazed over.
Avoider retreated, running towards the office cubicles on all fours. He slammed into the empty underside of the desk, skittering and readjusting quickly to fit his large body underneath it, pulling in the chair that he had knocked aside.
He pulled his knees up to his chest, fingers curled around the legs of the chair. He remained there for minutes, glancing around, like he was waiting for somebody to come back, to threaten him.
But nothing happened, and as his breathing abated, he realised how quiet it was. Even the faint sound of birds and wind rustling trees outside had ceased, leaving a thick layer of silence over the building.
She would've enjoyed this.