She dropped the headgear on the ground next to her, the sound vibrating jarringly through the space. She ran a hand through her hair, the movement one he hadn’t seen before. Yeah, she was remembering. Even the way she stood had changed.
“It feels so long since we talked. What have you been up to?” Odon asked, that taunting note still there.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said.
The bug’s head came up. “Nothing to tell? You’ve been out there.” One leg moved, presumably to indicate “out there.”
She shrugged. “Even getting shot at gets boring when there’s no plot or character growth.”
Halliwell frowned because the bug wasn’t paying attention to him anyway. He looked at Riina, but she appeared as baffled as he was.
Odon’s head reared up. Or back. Halliwell wasn’t sure which.
“Boring?” The bug made no effort to keep the shrill out now. He’d gone full on bug.
“There were huge problems with the narrative flow, but you already knew that.” She paused.
What the heck? Her tone brought back some unpleasant echoes of his high school English teacher.
The Big Bad bug hissed. That was the only word for it. It wasn’t easy, but Halliwell stood his ground. Riina shifted to the side, probably to let Tim move into position. He just wished he knew what she’d said to piss it off. Was she threatening to give it a bad grade?
“So, you remember.” Odon’s legs moved in almost an uneasy way, but his voice suggested satisfaction. It had wanted her to remember.
“Yes.” Naxe’s voice didn’t change.
Interesting that Tim had given Naxe her weapons back before they came here, but it was her voice that might be her best weapon. He had to stop his feet from shuffling.
“I am the most interesting thing to happen to you since the war ended,” it hissed.
“I remember you saying that.” Naxe’s tone was dry enough to take some of the humidity out of the room. She managed to say, without saying it, that the bug was wrong.
The dragonfly seemed to quiver. Halliwell couldn’t see its expression, but he went with not happy.
“It’s a typical beginner error to cling to the dead wood in your material.”
Halliwell wished she hadn’t use the word dead.
“Yes,” it said, with sinister emphasis. “One must eventually get rid of the dead wood.”
Yeah, using dead had been a bad idea. It rose in the air, even the sound of its wings not friendly. He could clearly see all five legs and their mandibles.
He was starting to really hate mandibles.
“You have to learn how to let go and move forward.” Naxe’s tone had softened some. “To be teachable.”
And bugs who couldn’t learn from their mistakes.
“It’s not even your story,” Naxe said. “You stole it, just like you stole my life.”
“I was your biggest fan, your most devoted listener. I was there from the beginning, Tale Speaker. We were meant to do this together!”
Odon’s voice got more shrill with each word until it ended on a sort of shriek that sent all the bugs scurrying for cover in the shadows. Halliwell kind of wanted to join them. But Naxe stood there with her back straight, her body in the relaxed stance of a fighter.
Tale Speaker? She might be some kind of storyteller, if he was following this, but she had the soul of a warrior.
“Being my fan didn’t give you rights to me or my life. You need to find and tell your own stories and then let those who read or hear them decide if they liked them or not.” Her tone had softened again, but her stance had not. “Stories are a pact between the giver and the receiver. They are offered without strings to the readers but for those who tell the tales, there is more. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should never accept less than our best.” She waited for several seconds, then added, “You can’t own my stories no matter how deep you get into my brain. I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve tried to tell your own and failed. So you tried to tell mine.” She stopped again. “And you failed at that, too.”
“No one even knows you’re gone!”
There was a crackle, as a comm was opened.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with the Tale Speaker. Maybe she’s sick.”
“People lose their skills as they age. And she’s been a Tale Speaker a long time.”
“I think she’s sick or someone’s pretending to be her.”
“Someone should stop her, tell her it’s over, it’s sad…”
Blooban. It had to be the frog. Tim said it was a good hacker.
The comm closed and then only the sound was of Odon’s food source flying around.
Naxe shifted and then spoke again, the voice inexorable.
“You can stop hearing the reviews, but you can’t change them. The listeners get to decide how they feel about the story, not the one who tells it. The offering is accepted—or rejected.”
She was some kind of storyteller? I am an explorer, a researcher, and tale teller, he’d said, but that was Naxe’s story, not the bug’s. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but knew it was her real story, not this thing’s.
“It is the way of stories, always has been and always will be. You failed to understand and you broke the pact. But…” There was an inexorable quality to her voice. The power of it growing stronger with each thing she said. “You didn’t just steal my stories and my life, you stole my creativity. You stripped my mind of my stories. You took my heart. You are not a Tale Taller and you never will be. Stories don’t live in you.”
It sounded like she’d pronounced a sentence on the bug.
Odon crouched back down, his rear end twitching. Halliwell had a feeling this was not good. He shifted, hiding the movement of his hand down to where it clasped the handle of his weapon.
“Then the stories will cease,” it said with a deadly hiss.
It wasn’t trying to sound like Naxe anymore. The buzzing had been building in the background, he realized, and the noise suddenly went into overdrive. From out of the darkness, black beetle-like creatures—no, drones, he decided—came at them. He yanked out his weapon and fired. His shot hit one and it careened off course, caught itself, and headed back into the fray. Yeah, drones.
If they hadn’t had Tim, they’d have been in a crap ton of trouble, instead of just a half a crap ton of trouble.
Naxe pulled her weapon, too, and fired at the big bug, but it was already not there. It launched into the air, as shots came out of the darkness from Tim. The drones spun away from the accuracy of his shots, but there were so many in this crazy funhouse the bug had created that it didn’t seem to make any difference.
Halliwell couldn’t see where it had gone, which was bad, but there was plenty to keep his attention.
Riina was firing, too, from a crouching position, her back to Naxe’s. That seemed like a good idea, so he joined their little group.
Tim strode out of the dark and formed a fourth, though there was no denying he was more effective.
The drones realized it, or Odon did, because they began to concentrate their attacks on Tim.
Halliwell looked around, trying to think of a distraction or a way to cause damage. His eyes lighted on the facets around the chamber. He pointed his weapon at one and fired. The glass, or whatever it was, shattered, letting light leak in from what had to be the real ship. Some of the drones went for the light. Interesting. The funhouse could be broken.