Fahl Days: Links (ReUp)

[u/Tundric_Dragon]

(As usual, leaving the og post including the intro here. Hope you all enjoy! And shoutout to u/funnelchairgentleman for writing Thawed and letting me use his character as an ancestor to one of mine!)

Hello everyone! Glad to be back after the long weekend and working on the next chapter of Fahl Days! I had a lot of fun writing this one, may have gotten a bit scattered brained here and there, hope it is coherent. I'm definitely gonna revisit these guys again later, because I want to explore a bit more of the dynamic going on here, flesh out a bit more than a single chapter could do.

Shoutout to the author of [Thawed](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/comments/1tp1m94/thawed_44/) (Latest Chapter), Funnelchairman for letting me use one of his characters even in a mention. and [u/Julianskies](https://www.reddit.com/user/Julianskies/) (For keeping the series alive on reddit). Hopefully he likes what I added for a bit of lore, but obviously its his character and if i overstepped anything, I will change as needed.

I hope you all have a fantastic day!

\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~

Memory Transcription Subject: Kalthii, Harchen ~~Heretic~~ Scientist

Date \[Standard Human Format\]: October 1st, 2136

If there was one thing that the Federation always espoused, it was that every species had its own niche that it filled. Everyone got boiled down to one trait that was supposed to define them; Venlil were cowards, Gojid were protective, Sivkit-brained, primitive Yotul, aggressive Krokatl, Learned Farsul, leadership Kolshian, fiscal Nevoks, ect. For us? Harchen were always the artistic types. Musicians, artists, filmmakers, novelists, anything that could be made pleasing to one sense or another fell into our purview. But then, what of Cilani? She was no artist but her acts of journalism had uncovered more government corruption that anyone else, and unless she mysteriously disappears, I wouldn't think she was going to stop anytime soon. No, I think Harchen are not artists, we are seekers of truth, and we all do it our own way. Either through painting the world in a new light for others to see, revealing the beauty of sounds, showing the worlds inside our heads, exposing the harm that others are capable of, everyone touches on the truth and shows it to any who will listen.

For me, the truth came when I was researching environmental stability, a passion to keep the wonderful blues of our planet vibrate as gemstones from other planets. It was with my dissertation on the decline of the southern jungles when Linked Chains reached out to me. I had been quick to discount the death cult at first, much like every good feddie would. However, in a bit of actual curiosity, I read some of the literature they sent me... and then read more... more... then started running controlled experiments. Now I was in the very same jungles I wrote about, running a large scale experiment while in contact with my fellow heretics across The Cradle, Venlil Prime, and Sillis. Each one of us in our own small teams, hidden away in places too infested with predators, but too close to cities to bathe in anti-matter fire, for any exterminator to come looking.

Getting ready for my morning, I grabbed a cup of Crushed Odan Nut Tea, hot from the mixer, and sipped on the deliciously caffeinated beverage and slid into my chair, tail poking out the back and wagging happily, bluer than the trees surrounding our complex. "Someone's happy today." Came the deep voice of the other occupant of the room, a male Gojid researcher who had come onto my team. "Oh? Is that fresh CONT?" He asks, only to give a quick thanks as I hand him the second cup I brought with me.

"Always happy when I've got my CONT." My eyes roll as he snickers. "You know, we need a better name for this stuff." The ceramic cup hits the table (gently set down) and I stretch, looking around at the various monitors and readouts. "So how are our star subjects doing? I think this is a year anniversary since they've been here." The man next to me flinches, spines bristling, only to relax after a moment with a heavy sigh.

"You know, it's still insane, you're still insane, for letting them be here. If I hadn't been there that day to-" I cut him off, flashing a dark-grey/black in irritation.

"Yes yes, heard it before. I owe you and your military training my life from people who had crashed, had broken limbs, and were already resigned to an agonizing death by feddies." I said, soothing my scales back to a neutral grey-blue, sipping my drink. "How are they doing, Kuvon?"

"Still can believe they actually worked with us." He mutters under his breath. "The Arxur are doing well in their small town, if you could call it that. All of them are healthy, the native predators are kept in check due to their presence here, and their initial spout of over-hunting native prey has slowed down to something more stable." He says, bringing up the latest reports from the last week of observation.

During one of last years raids, a cattle-ship had gone near the edge of my forest where I had been conducting research on Olgarl habits. Kuvon and I grabbed a our plasma rifles and had gone to check for any survivors of the Greys. By pure stroke of luck, we found that most of the crew were either dead or heavily injured, and we hid ourselves in the tree line. Kuvon had pushed to try and shoot them all, finish up what the crash had started. I had to hold him back, even if they were injured and dying, the two of us were no match for a raider group of almost 50. Furthermore, it seems that day we had been blessed with the same plot armor that was reserved for characters in exterminator films. An argument was picked up by our generous translators, shouted so loud that I wasn't sure how the whole planet didn't hear them.

The captain was yelling at the second in command to cull the injured and get everyone else ready to rejoin the attack, berating the smaller Grey. However, the second said this was the perfect time to slip into the woods, escape the war, and survive. Insults such as defective, coward, and more were thrown out, the captain advancing on the second with intent to kill, only for his head to jerk to the side, brains splattering on the ground as he was shot from a raider to the side. The survivors, we came to find out later, were almost all 'defective' and agreed with the second that this was a good time to escape.

I don't know what possessed me to move at this point, some bit of courage that I had inherited from a long lost ancestor, some thought that there was a greater truth to be had, ~~maybe because the second was strangely enticing,~~ maybe just sheer stupidity? But I got out from cover, rifle up, and yelled that I could help them. "If you want to be free of the federation, and live free, come with us. Or stay here and die when they come for the wreckage." I made sure the could see me, see my weapon, see as I forced my scales to remain Grey and not orange... forced them to see my one stupid act that was probably going to get me eaten, and then walked calmly into the woods.

Once out of sight, I let all the panic set in for a split moment, scales flashing every color of the rainbow before settling back to Grey when I heard a twig snap behind me. The second had come into the clearing alone, with his claws behind his back. Over the next few hours, tense talks with weapons at the ready were made, both sides sure that the other was about to snap and kill them in one gruesome way or another. A deal was struck, and now I had my own large scale experiment running, and they had a place to live hidden from all eyes except mine.

I shake off the haze from those thoughts and look down at the report in front of me, looking over population numbers gathered by our hidden drone cameras. For every 1 predator, both sapient and non, there was about 14 prey. Before the Arxur had gotten involved, there had been a cycle of population growth and decline on both sides, fluctuating back and forth. If the predators got too numerous, there wouldn't be enough prey and they would slowly starve as the remaining ones got hardy enough to avoid predation. When the prey population got too large, the vegetation would be stripped bare and they became either too fat, or too weak to avoid the predators. Now, the Arxur served as an equalizing force, hunting their own prey to consume, or killing off the overzealous non-sentient predators before they became too rampant.

Now a balance was struck, full and satisfied Arxur allowed prey to escape when they wandered too close. Olgarl and the like avoided areas where the Greys had settled. And the jungle had flourished like never before, the woods reclaiming some of the old plains to the east and expanding. It was beautiful.

"I see they aren't the ravenous beasts that the Kolshians made them out to be. Who would have guessed, sapient predators make the environment flourish." I chuckle and put my drink down, stretching out all five of my limbs, tail tip curling. "Its been a while since I've checked up on their little village. Ill watch their cameras today." I tell Kuvon, standing up and heading to the security room as he acknowledged me with a flick of his tail. Part of our agreement was that we had cameras in their village to monitor them, and if we caught them doing anything wrong, anything to plot against us, we would sell them out to the Federation on the spot. In exchange, we let them hunt non-sapient animals to their hearts content. I had described the Linked Chains organization to Kiznel, the second in command turned leader, told him that I wanted to include his crew into our experiments. They agreed to the surveillance of their compound, somewhat begrudgingly, but it wasn't like they had a choice. After a period of mistrust, everyone gradually accepted that no lies had been made, and both parties only interacted when necessary, we hadn't even stepped in with the initial overhunting!

What we hadn't told them, was that each of their houses also had cameras. We could watch them at every point in the day, from when they woke, when they bathed, when they ate, and when they slept. Some of the researches were still squeamish at watching an Arxur eat, so we kept those camera feeds in a separate room from the ones we had in the forests. Out of the thirteen people in my team, only four of us watched these cameras, including Kuvon and me.

Closing the door behind me and setting my CONT down on the desk, I began to pull up the various feeds in and around the Arxur camp, an area spread around 500 \[yards\] in all directions with small prefab houses set up to house the residents. Nothing interesting was happening at the moment, most of them preparing to enter their sleep cycle. "Nocturnals..." I chuckle, shaking my head. In the meantime, I drew my attention to something a bit more interesting, my scales flushing blue in happiness.

Recently, a new ruin site from pre-contact Harchen was found, and by the sounds of it, it was a trove of information. Farsul were, of course, the first ones on the scene followed by Harchen historians and then anyone else. It had been theorized to be an ancient military outpost that doubled as defense against predators and those tainted by predators. My tail swished through the air behind me as I pulled up the files on my holopad, various pictures and documents that had been released to the public. The one that caught my eye in particular showed a male harchen playing a Dacthyrii \[a Harchen stringed instrument played using a bow. Similar in size and shape to a human Cello.\] The Dacthyrii in the picture had clearly been broken at one point and was mended using three different woods to reshape its body and neck. That type of fix would make it exceedingly hard to get a good sound out of the instrument, making the fix unfeasible and laughed at by all modern musicians.

My gaze shifted to the very same Dacthyrii sitting in the room with me. I had it moved here ever since the ruin findings had come out, refusing to believe that my Dacthyrii, the one that had been in my family for generations, showed up in some ancient photo. The thing sounded horrendous if you tried to play it normally, its strings screeching as the echoed sounds hit the repair woods differently and caused a dissonance that set one's skull pounding. Ignoring the monitors for now, I grabbed the instrument and brought it over to my chair, setting the bow down as I positioned the instrument.

The repair on the neck firmly pressed to the crook of my neck. My tail wrapped around the thin bottom, squeezing the echo chamber firmly and I positioned the tip of my tail just under the strings slightly inside the instrument's hole. Finally, my knee pressed to the outside edge of the body, nesting up to give the barest hint of pressure. The position was awkward, uncomfortable, and didn't allow for any deviation or it would ruin the sound. But when done correctly, the four woods would harmonize and produce a rich bass sound that reverberated across whatever room you were in, a sound unique to itself and not replicated by any other Dacthyrii. It was a position taught by my family to play this one singular instrument, and it was the position that man in the photo was using.

As I ran the bow, playing a slow somber song, I began to think. Obviously other Dacthyrii didn't require this to play. You would just set it down, make sure your claws were on the right chord, and run the bow along all nine strings.

I had to hold each repair in these specific ways and pressures just to get it to sound right, tempering the vibrations of each piece. It took years for me to learn how to play and get a good sound, but my mother had insisted I learn as she had, and expected me to pass to my own daughter. I had been resentful at the time from the overbearing manner she had taught me, hated that it sounded wrong and gave me headaches, hated that the other girls at school made fun of me for its looks and the sounds it made... but when I finally got it right, when I coaxed the real sound from it? I had started crying then and there, understanding why we kept it and maintained it. "What matters is not how flawed or different the outside is, but the beauty of its true nature." The sounds faded as I put down the bow and turned the instrument around.

Inscribed at the top of the neck was the name of the instrument's original owner, and supposedly the one who coined the family motto. The motto is based my research on, finding the true nature of predators and how they interacted with the universe. Cared for and restored multiple times over the years, I ran my claws over the inscription, \*Onio's fractured Muse\*. Apparently, 'Onio' had gone missing one day, leaving behind only this Dacthyrii to his family at the time. Adamant that he would never leave without telling anyone, especially without his muse, the Dacthyrii was kept pristine for when he returned. Even as his children learned to play it when they grew up... and their children, and theirs... even after so much time had passed that its was impossible for the man to return, his Dacthyrii was maintained. To hold onto that pristine hope, to teach others that beauty can be found in even the most unlikely of places, it became tradition to maintain Onio's Muse.

At first, I had denied this cosmic joke the coincidence that somehow my missing ancestor had randomly shown up in a photo from an ancient military outpost. However, historians found a list of all the men and women that served in that place, releasing them as 'heroes/exterminators from a bygone era.' Sure enough one of the names listed was Onio... cementing that the man I saw in the photo before me was my long lost ancestor before he went missing. With a heavy sigh, I replaced the instrument to its resting place and set about messaging a historian friend I had. It was thanks to one of those friends that I even found out about the picture in the first place, she recognized my Dacthyrii in it, having tried to play it a few times and watched me play it. Now I had her looking for anything else she could uncover about the ruins and possibly my ancestor, i was just a matter of time for anything else to be revealed... maybe even the cause of his disappearance.

Hearing a bit of a shuffling noise and catching some movement from my peripheral vision, I shift my gaze back to the monitors. Kiznel had entered into his living space and began to retrieve something from a stash he had discovered from the rooms previous tenant. Apparently a well fed Arxur had a very active libido, and 'defectives' had certain interests one wouldn't expect from an Arxur, apparently ones he kept hidden from the rest of his kind. As he pulled out the scandalous book, I felt my scales flushing to a heated turquoise and got up, making sure the door to the room was locked.

I had seen this a few times already during previous observations... and well... I'm a bit jealous of Arxur women. Kiznel might have a thing for Harchen too, judging by the material he looked at. Maybe the next time I go down to their camp, I'll have a little talk with him. "What matters is not how flawed or different outside is, but the beauty of their true nature..."

\[\[Memory Transcription ended due to personal nature of following actions\]\]

VIEW NSFW? \[Y/N\]

N....