Bonds.
Galena had been to the Rift so often, seeking her youma, that she had all of her favored routes mapped out in her head now. The frequent expeditions had demystified the feeling of dread and unknown and fear that used to grip her spine when she first began.
Failure after failure. Either she was too afraid to test her will against theirs or she simply passed them over as being weak. None of them felt right. Often, if they bent to her, she seemed to instantly label them as unworthy. She seemed to want what she wasn’t getting. If they were too challenging, they weren’t right. If they bent, they weren’t right.
None of this was right.
The thing that stuck out to her most, as she sat perched on a dark mass of stone and sulking, was the way this one was breathing. A struggling, loud rasp beating through bared teeth. It reminded her of Pastiche, but larger.
Much larger.
Skin and sinew seemed to strain the structure it was bound to as the monster moved into view, while leathery ears hung from its skull in tatters. Scars from fights fought and fights won.
Split nostrils on its snout flared and exhaled hissing noises of hatred and steamy breath before it unleashed a screech that reverberated off of the caves. Limbs flexed like it intended to charge, but it didn’t. For a long moment, Galena only stared, making eye contact with the sunken pits in its skull that housed round and bloodshot eyes. It remained almost on the wrong side of human, as veins pulsed against white. Most youma she had seen had more animal eyes or black sclera, unless they retained majorly recognizable and human traits. The white was unsettling, especially since it seemed to overtake the image, until it didn’t. Tensed, pin point pupils giving the creature’s face a sense of panic and fervor once they were noticed.
The way its eyes darted, it seemed to almost perceive. Even with snarling and snapping, and saliva dripping down the long and elegant teeth protruding from its muzzle, it was the glimmer of intelligence that made Galena jump down and approach anyway.
Did they think? Did they feel?
If she lost her soul for real, shattered it and absorbed nothing but Chaos, would she know what happened to her? Would she be alive enough to feel sorry for herself? To know what had happened to her?
Did this thing know what it was? Did it know enough to care?
Galena had always found fascination in the irony that if your starseed shattered, you became a youma, doomed to a lifetime of hunting the thing you lost for sustenance. They had no souls, but they craved them for consumption. Hunted the things they didn’t have.
“I’ll bet you’re the king down here,” She said softly, unexpectedly speaking in her softest, motherly tone. She imposed herself on it, gently held its abomination of a skull as the darting eyes started to calm. She examined all of the key traits of a predator. The teeth, the claws, the muscle, the skeletal structure. This youma could crush a basic senshi’s skull in its jaws with little effort, she was sure, and she might have relished the opportunity to see if she could command it to do so.
It still didn’t feel right.
She wondered if it ever would.
Maybe they were right, maybe she was meant to be a knight. Maybe fate and luck and fortune were real forces outside of what the very lucky or very unlucky told themselves to shift blame. Maybe she was meant to be a knight, and what she needed couldn’t be found here. Maybe Chaos wasn’t all knowing.
But that was too many maybes, and she hadn’t ‘maybe’ seen a traitor strapped to a chair in a torture room. That was real, that happened, and it would happen again.
And maybe Antiope would corrupt. But then she definitely saw Antiope die in that future.
Every road seemed to lead to execution. Her envy for youma grew, and her fear of their possible perception crystallized. If they knew, then there was no zen. There wasn’t an end. Life was a series of cruel tricks leading you into the inevitable, awful fate that awaited at the end of every choice.
It would never feel right.
“You’re lovely,” She crooned as she stroked the muzzle while it relaxed in her hands. “But you’re not for me.”
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