"Get the fuck out of my way!"
"AHAHA! IT'S USELESS! THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO!"
"ArchitectOfTheEmptyPleaseGrantYourMercyToYour--"
Chaos.
That was the only thing that Ester could call it.
And for good reason at that.
He let out a vapid laugh as his eyes stared at the sky through cracked yellow visors.
Usually, such an absentminded fool would've had dozens of eyes from all sorts looking to make a quick buck from his pockets.
Usually.
Now, they were all staring up at the sky like everyone else that hadn't ended things in despair and madness.
Ester clicked off his respirator and took in a deep breath of the foul torturous air, his lungs prickling with pain as he picked up a bottle of dubiously made alcohol.
Now was probably the only chance he would get to taste Eva's new concoction.
Ester let out a long sigh as he stared at the sky, the liquid flowing down his throat.
He burped
"Still tastes like shit"
The stars blinked.
---
"Hah!"
Jolting up from his bedroll and slamming his head onto the ceiling, Ester writhed in pain for a brief few moments before finally realizing that he wasn't stuck in a horrible coffin he couldn't escape.
'Ouch.'
Ester rubbed his head where a sizeable bump was forming. 'That weird dreams back again.'
It had plagued him for a couple years now and had appeared some when when the old man bit the bullet? Somewhere around that point in time, as he had said, it had been a couple years.
But the content that it continued to show him over those couple years?
All. The. Same.
A man hollering loudly as they ran as fast as their spliced goat legs could carry them.
A woman crying with madness as their mind crumbled from the foundations up.
A cyborg so heavily modded that they looked more golem than human praying to the Architects. The one governing the empty to be precise.
Then in a body that he couldn't control, Ester looked up at the skies and let out a wild laugh while drinking a wine made by Eva.
If it was just that though, he would've brushed off this recurring nightmare as some sort of undealt trauma.
But that final portion of his nightmare?
'I don't know what the hell that was, but I don't think its something that some undealt with trauma can deal with.'
Ester felt a shiver crawl down the base of his spine like the dozen legs of a crawling spider.
Tasty as their flesh was, the crawling spider left Eva irreversibly afraid after they had scuttled all over her when they snuck in through a breach.
It also gave him the jitters for a few days after, but back to the nightmare that had caused him to unwillingly form a bump on his forehead.
'I thought it was winding down the past few days, but I guess it was just trying to catch me off guard.'
Recalling the sight of the stars blinking, whatever caused the stars themselves to blink also seemed to have the ability to give Ester a killer headache.
'Ack.'
Crawling out of his section of bed with a pounding head bruise and a headache, Ester briefly noted that Eva was gone from her section and had already returned to piloting the driller if the continuous shaking wasn't enough of a sign.
Poking his head out of the block sized vent opening, Ester blinked away the remaining blurriness as the flickering lights messed with his eyesight.
It was a very confusing mix of pain and relief that he just had to tough out.
Eva on the other hand didn't care for his struggle as she pointed at the desk without looking back. [Food is on your desk.]
"...Waking up is torture enough, and now I have to eat what you make?"
[Eat or don't eat, its up to you.] Eva's uncaring voice came from the front with a heavy tint of sarcasm. [You can cook something for yourself- Oh wait, you can't cook]
"...I'll eat your food" Despite how often he would be hearing her uncrackled voice from now on, Ester doubted that he would be getting used to it anytime soon.
Dropping down from above and flinching as his body reminded him how he had torn away the Inner Aether, he also remembered to turn on his arm now that most of his Inner Aether had replenished itself after a short rest.
It wasn't anything special, consisting of Gorcher Eggs and Tic weed, both things that were rather tasteless, but the liquid next to it...
He hadn't seen that before.
Picking it up and raising it up to the flickering light, he asked the legless woman "Hey Eva?"
[Yeah?]
'I'll never get used to how clear she sounds.' Shaking his head briefly, he continued "What's this weird liquid you put next to the boiled Tic weed?"
[Oh that?]
Eva glanced back, a hopeful glint flashing through her eyes.
[Well its alcohol of course.]
Ester paused his observations and quietly asked Eva with a hidden hope that she didn't just say what she just said. "...Where did you find it?"
[Heh. Gaze upon me and praise me mortal.] Eva's head pointed up with barely hidden pride as she returned to piloting the Driller
[You're looking at someone who was able to jury rig our water filtration system to make Alcohol!]
Ester weakly raised his hand in cheer. "Yay..."
Thankfully Eva was preoccupied with driving the Driller past the numerous chunks of metal otherwise she would've heard his insincere cheer.
Staring at Eva's half hidden face which bobbed with sincere joy, Ester could feel no joy as he stared at the miniature bottle of alcohol in his hands.
He tasted alcohol before, sure.
That, was mostly under curiosity however, and his subsequent drinkings were reliant on the fact that Dream him always seemed to drink Eva's alcohol.
Licking his lips, Ester drank the alcohol and grimaced.
Dream him wasn't kidding when he said that it tasted like shit.
It was horrible even to his few remaining taste buds struggling to survive on this trashy rock.
Shaking the lingering memories from his head, Ester glanced back at Eva who still bobbed her head happily right before placing it in the medicine cabinet.
It tasted horrible, but it was Alcohol nonetheless, and Alcohol had good disinfecting properties which was why he was placing it in the medicine cabinet and definitely not because he couldn't stand the taste much longer.
Hurriedly shoveling the Tic Weed which tasted like paper and the Gorcher Eggs which tasted like some very chewy rocks, Ester watered it all down with some actual water before dumping the plate onto another discarded plate.
He should probably get to cleaning that before a host of bacteria found a large enough spot of leftovers to infect.
But for now, finding out what Eva found out while he was fiddling with the Gravitator.
Moving to Eva's side, Ester glanced at her face before looking at the screens depicting several outline objects which Eva steered round.
"So... Why is your voice okay? Did you find out what happened?"
Eva glanced at Ester before returning to her piloting. [...]
"..."
[...]
Feeling an unknown crisis, he raised his hands up in reluctant surrender "I don't know what I did but I'm sorry"
[Its got nothing to do with you Ester. It's just that I was thinking on how to explain this to you.]
Eva steered past a large chunk which Ester vaguely recognized as a car, her mechanical voice smoothly entering his ears.
[You know how Inner Aether works right?]
"Yeah?"
Ester leaned against the wall holding up a set of monitors depicting pockets of liquid much like the other one would for chunks of undrillable obstacles.
"Inner Aether is half the Aether our bodies can naturally produce and half the Aether from the atmosphere melded into every single fibre of our being."
[Great, then you should know that by ripping the Inner Aether from our bodies to fuel that bloody thing you were making, we were essentially trying to pull our blood out of our body.]
"Yeah, I could tell after bleeding from my eyes, nose and mouth. And general common sense" Ester added a beat later.
[Shut it smartass.] The driller jolted slightly as it pressed against a bunch of steel that was to large to go around. [So I started with a simple Runic scan using your collection of batteries]
"Huh?" Ester opened his mouth dumbly as Eva rolled her eyes. [You weren't using them, so I did... Also, you shouldn't try to hide things in the place that we both sleep in.]
[Anyways. After I did the Runic Scan on my mouth, I found out what happened.]
She tapped her mouth. [You know the speaker that you gave me? The one you got from that Trader only to think that you were scammed?]
"...Did I go to far with covering his cloak with beast lure?"
[You did what?]
Suddenly realizing how wonderful the ceiling was, Eva let out a long sigh before continuing.
[Anyways, it turns out that the whole reason for why my voicebox was so glitchy and crackly is actually because of me.]
Ester shot her a confused glance as Eva glanced at another screen right before weaving in between two chunks of broken space plane.
[You know how you said that you connected all the nerves to the correct places and the Speaker still seemed broken?]
"Yeah." Ester grunted with a grimace. "I don't know why I spent so much time on such an ugly face, but I swear to the Architects that I connected all the receptor nodes to the nerves."
[Yeah. See here's the...] Eva shot Ester a glare as the words he had just spoken settled into her head.
Suddenly that one flickering light looked very interesting.
[...Thing]
Despite it being a speaker unit that could only say things in a monotone and vaguely feminine voice, Ester swore that he could here anger in it.
He felt it to when she pinched his fleshy arm when he wasn't looking, leaving behind nothing more than a red welt for her crimes.
"...If you stop pinching me I can stop trying to haggle for my battery collection."
[So anyways, before I was oh so rudely interrupted.] She paused to glare at Ester before remembering the deal and looking away. [I was going to tell you that the nerves you connected the receptor nodes to were actually... broken.]
"What?"
[As it turns out, the accident that took my voice and legs and your arm and heart was also responsible for scrambling the nerves in my mouth.]
She shrugged as if she hadn't just insinuated his lack of heart. [Some of the nerves in there were mixed together and were receiving twice or half the signals that it was supposed to.]
"...So when you ripped out the Inner Aether from your body, it also ripped out the parts binding the nerves together yeah?" Ester realized with a snap of his finger.
[Good boy, want an Aether crystal for that answer?]
"Woof woof"
[Crazy dog.] Eva rolled her eyes before pulling back a lever. [By the way].
The Driller slowed to a halt as Eva pointed at a screen.
[We're here.]
Glancing at the screen that she was pointing at, Ester's smile grew as the monitor connected to the modified Gravitator core showed a bright light.
+++
Tree that may desire decapitation after experiencing an embarrassing moment today