Grinding, grating thoughts adrift,

A trillion minds writhe in one,

The skies and void so are bereft,

But for those that take, and those that run ...

There was a brilliant sun setting before him, so close that he could reach out and touch it. Its radiance called to him—he knew not what it was, only that he had to reach it. He ran to it, but his limbs felt heavy and slow, as though time had slowed to a crawl, and he saw that he was no closer to the sun than before.

Of mind and soul and algorithmic mold,

Of blood and bone and fibrous sinew,

Hidden truths must now unfold,

The hunt awakened, begun anew.

He heard whispers, quiet at first, from somewhere behind him. As he turned his head to get a look at who was speaking, they intensified tenfold. Like serpents slithering in his mind, they grew louder and louder until they drowned out all other noise. And when he finally saw what was behind him, he found that he gazed upon a cold, black abyss that swallowed all the light it touched—and from it, a voice screamed to him.

"... Valentine!"

Crying out involuntarily, he began gasping for air at the sensation of there being none in his lungs. He was being taken! Taken to be turned into one of ... one of ...

What?

He'd felt them, he'd felt them, flashes of recognition and familiarity within his head, the barest glimpses of memories that must have once occupied his mind. Who had been screaming? And what were those chants, those rhymes he'd heard just know? He needed to know ... he needed to know ...

Where was he?

His surroundings differed greatly from those that he last remembered—one moment, he'd been cornered and charged by a bio-mechanical monster within the claustrophobic confines of a ship's bridge, and now ... he was lying on a couch.

Looking around, he strangely seemed to be in a living room. The walls were painted a pleasant garden-sage, and a simple fireplace and mantle added to its rather homey appearance. The left side of the room opened into a modest kitchen and dining room, and to the right was a wooden staircase that led up to a second story.

He analyzed himself quickly. It seemed like he'd sustained a great deal of injuries, though none of them were life-threatening. Much of his arms and legs had been bloodied, cuts and bruises covering nearly every inch of his body, but they'd been wrapped in some kind of gauze, carefully bandaged and left to heal. Who had done that?

A sudden noise caught his attention, and he quickly looked towards the stairs as the sound of nimble footsteps could be heard from above.

"Is it awake? I told you, we should have been—"

His eyes widened in shock as he saw who—or what—came down the stairs. It froze once it laid eyes on him, noticing that his own were staring directly at them.

"—watching it."

It was bipedal in stature, its legs muscular and digitigrade, angling forward and backward and forward again. Its skin was a light shade of lilac that was nearing selago, and completely hairless. Growing from the sides of its torso were four arms; two where one would expect at the shoulder joints, and two more that seemed to sprout from directly beneath them, though they were slightly thinner and shorter in length. Upon each hand were four digits, two opposable thumbs situated on opposite sides of the hand, and two fingers sandwiched between them.

It wore simple clothes that were dirty and smudged, but not tattered; a loose grey shirt and bisque-colored shorts that ended at its knees. They looked cared for, and in reasonable condition. The dirt at least seemed not to come from a lack of cleanliness, but from something that had just happened recently.

Its head was slightly larger than his own and appeared somewhat draconic, tapering toward its nose where angled ridges became more pronounced on its jawline and brow. It had six pointed fin-like appendages adorning its crown, closest to the back of its head; two small ones on each side and on top, and two much longer ones in between the other sets, reminiscent of an axolotl's gills, though these looked smooth to the touch.

But what stunned him most were its eyes—they were large, almond shaped, and startlingly intelligent. Within them were brilliant emerald irises that covered the entirety of the eye, and slit-shaped pupils that glimmered with curiosity—and from what else he could see, fear.

"Stay right there! Don't go anywhere near it until I say otherwise—"

Another creature descended the stairs as well, stopping once it reached its companion. There, it followed the other's gaze to where he was lying on the couch in a stupor, too bewildered to react in any other manner. It was similar in appearance, though its skin was a burnt orange rather than the soft purplish tint of the first. He saw with some trepidation that it was also larger than the first by a generous margin, and far stockier. He could see toned muscle on both of them, but the first one's were less defined, and its limbs and body outline were curvier compared to the somewhat boxy appearance of the newcomer.

It narrowed its lime-colored eyes at him, and he noted the same mixture of great curiosity and wariness in its stare.

"Right. So, let's get to business."

Stepping past the smaller one, it approached the couch he laid upon and came to a stop a few feet in front of him. It wore no shoes, but it didn't seem like it needed any. Attached to its legs were powerful-looking feet with clawed toes, two large ones on the front of the foot, and two smaller ones on either side for balance.

"Do you understand me?"

Finally, his gaze traveled upwards to rest on the creature's face. With it standing at a bit over six feet tall, he was feeling rather diminutive. Its mouth was wider than his, and had no discernible lips. Within it, he could see small pointed teeth that lined its gums—

"Can you understand me?"

The being repeated its question more emphatically, its voice deep and throaty. Silently, he gave a single shaky nod as it finally snapped him out of his daze.

"Okay, that's good." It turned to the lilac one. "Means we can communicate with it, whatever it is—unless maybe a nod means 'no' to this thing ..."

He shook his head slightly, and said in a small voice, "I can u-understand you."

It looked back at him with surprise. "I'll be damned, it's got a voice. Better question then—does it have an explanation?"

"An explanation for what?"

"For that."

Raising one of its lower arms, it pointed past him and to his left. Turning his head, he saw that the couch was situated next to a window, one that overlooked a vast range of fields and hills under a minty sky. The hills were covered in turquoise grass that shivered in the outside breeze while the flatter fields contained rows of crops that he didn't recognize, scarlet stalks that ended in soft, splayed petals.

There was one exception—a single field where a massive ship had crashed and scraped along the ground, tearing up everything in its way and marring the otherwise beautiful landscape. Smoke still billowed from its scorched exterior, and metallic debris could be seen randomly strewn about in the many piles of disturbed soil.

"That mess came spiraling out of the sky, and decided to dig its own grave in the middle of my okinlas!" the creature exclaimed. "We weren't sure that anyone could have survived, but lo and behold—seems the Architects were lookin' out for you. You're lucky we found you when we did, a lot of the ship was on fire from the crash. Had to smash our way in through the glass on the bridge to reach you before the flames did."

He thought back to those last few moments aboard the ship and shuddered. "What about the monsters?"

The being exhaled deeply, and crossed its smaller arms over one another. With its larger arms, it placed its hands on its hips. "While you somehow managed to escape practically unscathed, they weren't so fortunate. You'd have to scrape whatever's left of those Cell off the walls."

"Cell?"

The creature shook its head. "Never mind that now, I'll get to it in a moment. I think we've gathered that you're not an immediate threat, so maybe it's time to properly introduce ourselves."

It raised one of its smaller arms and pointed at its chest. "My name is Pragley, Pragley Rok. And this is my niece, Tenov—"

"Ten," the lilac one suddenly said, cutting the orange one off. It stepped away from the staircase now, and joined the other in front of the couch. "Just 'Ten'. Ten Rok."

'Pragley' sighed. "Right, this is Ten. The two of us run the okinla farms in this region, best ones on all of Jantii—at least, they were until your ship destroyed half my stock."

The last part was said somewhat reproachfully, though the farmer couldn't exactly be blamed for harboring such feelings. Pragley tilted his head, focusing in on him.

"So, now that you know who we are ... who are you?"

He opened his mouth slightly, wishing desperately to be able to answer. "I ... I don't know."

The two of them gave him rather skeptical expressions, or at least he thought their expressions were skeptical. He couldn't really tell, having never seen any creature that looked like them before today.

"How do you not know?" Ten asked. Her voice was much softer and lighter than Pragley's. If her uncle's voice was akin to a rough, stormy gale, hers was a calm, soothing breeze.

"I don't know," he repeated, trying to keep his voice steady in spite of his recollection of the horrible ordeal. "I woke up alone on that ship. I didn't know where I was, how I got there—I couldn't remember anything. I just wanted to get out."

Pragley's smaller arms crossed over each other once more. "Nothin'? No memories at all? A name, perhaps?"

He was about to affirm his ignorance when something stopped him. He thought back to that nightmare he'd just had, the voice that had cried out to him before he'd woken up on the couch. He was ... he was ...

"... Valentine."

The word escaped his lips with his next breath, spoken as a whisper. His eyes widening, he looked back at Pragley and Ten.

"My ... my name is Valentine."

Pragley gave a hearty chuckle, and turned to Ten while jabbing a finger in his direction. "Heh, three syllables. Must be a pretty important guy."

Valentine had no idea what the syllables in his name had to do with anything, but apparently Ten did. She rolled her eyes, ignoring her uncle and eliciting a shrug from him. The orange alien returned his attention to Valentine. "In any case, I'm glad there's at least somethin' you remember, but we still need to figure out how you ended up on a Cell ship."

Valentine furrowed his brow. "You've said that word before. What do you mean by 'Cell'?"

Pragley growled at the mention of it. "They're bad news, kid. Nothin' more than a race of ugly abominations that ought to just keep to 'emselves, and most of the time, they do. But when they don't ..." He trailed off, leaving the vague threat left unsaid. Shaking his head, he locked gazes with Valentine.

"So, here's the question of the day—what would the Cell want with you?"

Valentine told them of his awakening from the mysterious pod, how he had evaded detection from the several Cell that roamed the ship, and how he'd slowly made his way through its cramped corridors as he looked for a way to escape.

At that, Pragley cocked his head to one side. "And somehow that all ended with you commandeering their ship and piloting it here? No offense, kid, but you don't seem to be in the best state of mind to be hacking ship mainframes."

"There was this device I had," he said slowly, remembering the mysterious voice from the pod he'd woken up in. "A small diamond-shaped chip—it was able to access the doors and other systems to help me escape. It was the only reason I survived."

Pragley and Ten looked at each other for a moment, their faces alight with recognition. Then Ten reached into one of her pockets and pulled something out of it.

"You were clutching this when we found you ... there wasn't much we could do."

Extending her hand forward, she unfurled her fingers and revealed the matrix lying in her palm—or rather, what remained of it. A crack ran down its middle, and one end of it had been crushed, flattened to the width of a coin. Where before its light had glowed a vibrant rose, it now laid dark and dead.

With a tightening sensation in his throat, he reached forward and grasped it gingerly, taking it and cradling it as one would a dying comrade.

"What was it?" she asked tentatively, noticing the crestfallen expression on his face.

He stared at it in despondence. "A friend, I think."

He hadn't known the voice within the matrix, or he didn't believe he did. He supposed maybe he had before he'd lost his memories. But in spite of his lack of recollection, he couldn't help but feel sorrow for their apparent demise. The voice had been with him in the pod, and had offered reassurance to him when he'd awoken, frightened and alone. It was no small sense of loss that he felt upon seeing that, whoever it had been, was gone.

Ten's eyes softened at his tone. "I'm sorry."

He nodded appreciatively, though her sympathies didn't erase the sting of his grief.

Pragley coughed slightly, trying to steer the conversation into lighter territory. "Forgive me for askin', but what exactly are you?"

Valentine looked the farmer up and down. "I was just thinking the same about you."

The alien gave a slight chuckle. "Fair's fair." Using his larger arm for once, he gestured at himself and his niece. "We're Irvagaleni, but you can just call us 'irvas'. Lot less of a mouthful." Pragley nodded towards him. "How about you?"

Valentine eyed him warily. "Human."

"Never heard of it."

"And I've no idea what an 'irvagaleni' is—"

"Just say 'irva', kid. Trust me, it'll save us both some time."

"Alright, fine—I have no idea what an irva is."

Pragley exhaled deeply, evidently frustrated by the situation. "I can understand you not knowin' what we are, especially if you've got some kind of amnesia or the like. But what I don't understand is not knowin' what you are."

"What does that mean?"

The gruff alien gave a thoughtful hum. "Could mean any number of things if I'm honest. All I know for certain is that the Cell wouldn't have taken you if you weren't worth somethin' to them."

Valentine was taken aback by the wording. "Worth something to them? What do you mean?"

At this, both Pragley and Ten visibly shuddered, their involuntary movements telling him all he needed to know. "Let's just say that you had a better chance of surviving that crash than you did with whatever they might have had planned for you."

He felt like something similar to a bag of sand had suddenly materialized in his stomach.

Ten noticed his reaction, and tried to change the conversation once more. "In any matter, the Sentinels around here are sure to come and investigate the crash. When they do, we can have one take a look at you. You'll have answers soon, I'm sure of it."

Her words had a far more soothing effect than he would have expected, helping him to slow his breathing and calm himself. When he felt in control of his emotions and fears once more, he gave her a grateful nod.

Pragley grinned, and held out one of his hands to Valentine. After a moment of deliberation, he accepted the gesture, and the two shook firmly.

"Welcome to Jantii, kid. Just don't go killin' any more of my okinlas."