Chapter Text
Part Three
Natasha slowly came round and opened her eyes. Only to find that, initially at least, her vision was almost as dark as when she’d been unconscious. It took a while for her eyes to get used to the dank interior she found herself in.
She felt the pain in the back of her head from where she had been struck, and gently shook her head to test for signs of concussion. She didn’t know exactly how long she had been out, but it had clearly been some time.
Slowly, the darkness around her began to resolve, aided by a few streaks of sunlight permeating through the thatch of the roof. She could make out a modest, open plan rectangular room, with a series of stout pillars dotted around, which helped to support the roof itself. The ground underneath her feet was made of soft grass, though she could see that it wasn’t a vibrant green, but a sickly brown.
She tried to stand up, but found that particular task was impossible, thanks to her being so tightly shackled to the wooden column behind her with some sort of woven rope material. She noticed that her tricorder was still attached to her belt, as was her communicator. As if her captors had no interest in them.
As she started to struggle against her bonds, she was caught off guard by the sound of an unmistakably female voice from somewhere behind her.
“Brother Falor ties them tight,” the voice said.
Surprised, and suddenly on edge, Natasha managed to awkwardly slide her way around the pillar as best she could until she found the source of the voice. There was a weak-looking Makalite similarly trussed to another of the wooden columns.
“I did not mean to alarm you,” the woman offered with an apologetic tone, “Good wishes to you. I am Sister Lyca.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Natasha replied with a distinct hint of sarcasm.
Recognising that the restrained woman wasn’t a threat, she turned her attention back to her bonds, as Sister Lyca watched on with some curiosity.
“You came with the spotted man?”
Natasha resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at this and continued to work. Given how she was feeling after the blow to the head, she could have really done without another discussion with a local about the famous ‘spotted man’.
“Let me guess,” she grimaced, “You’ve been waiting for him to lead you to salvation?”
She did her best to hide the undertone of derision from her comment, and as she glanced back up at the other woman.
And then she saw, through the gloom, that there was no sense of wonder or delight on her face, as there had been with the other Makalites as soon as Jirel had been mentioned.
“No,” Sister Lyca replied, with an edge of defeat, “I didn’t—I don’t believe in the prophecy. That is why I am in here.”
Her comments caused Natasha to stop her attempts to extricate herself from her bonds for a moment, and immediately sparked up her old Starfleet curiosity over again. “Why don’t you believe it?” she asked.
Inside, Sister Lyca felt more troubled than ever, discussing her disregard for The Seer’s prophecy with someone who was apparently one of the spotted man’s travelling companions. For all she knew, this might be some sort of trap, designed to further punish her.
But during her solitary incarceration, she had continued to debate her stance on the prophecy in her mind, especially now the skyship had indeed appeared. And after her last visit from The Seer, she was still convinced that her own beliefs were correct. Especially now that Brother Falor and Brother Makan had dragged the Bastille’s latest occupant inside.
“I don’t believe The Seer’s words,” she cautiously explained, “And I don’t think that the spotted man will take us to our utopia. I believe that The Seer brought the sickness to us, and that he cannot cure us. And now you are here, I believe it more.”
“Why?” Natasha pressed again, pulling at the thread of information in front of her like a good ex-Starfleet officer should.
“Because if the spotted man truly has come to save us, then why has one of his companions been locked away inside here with me?”
Natasha couldn’t help but nod and smile, seeing the signs of some genuine critical thinking from one of the villagers. “Sister Lyca,” she offered back to the apparently more level-headed Makalite, “Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?”
The blue-skinned woman still looked a little tentative, but she eventually nodded.
“You mentioned the disease,” Natasha began, “I’ve already examined some of the other villagers, but I need to know more. One of the other Sisters said it started several weeks ago?”
Sister Lyca’s eyes widened slightly at this line of questioning. Natasha stifled a sigh.
“I’m…a healer,” she added reluctantly, “Where I’m from.”
“And where are you from?”
Natasha found herself biting her tongue at that question again. For a moment, she desperately racked her brain to try and remember if this planet had a Southern continent. Or were they already on the Southern continent?
In the end, she decided that Sister Lyca at least deserved the partial truth. “I’m from a place far away,” she offered, “And we’ve come here in our…skyship. But you’re right, The Seer didn’t bring us here. As a matter of fact, I’ve never even met him.”
The Makalite woman nodded in apparent understanding.
“But,” Natasha continued, with a firmer tone, “Weirdly enough, I might actually be able to help your sickness. If you can tell me more about it.”
“I see,” Sister Lyca replied after a pause, “It is true what you’ve been told. The sickness began some weeks ago. When The Seer had been with us for some time. And for all of his visions and prophecies, it always got worse.”
She paused and stifled a grimace, craning her head back to try and look at her arm. It was a look that Natasha’s medical training immediately recognised, regardless of the species.
“Is the pain getting worse?”
Sister Lyca’s head snapped back up to look at her, a little surprised at the instant diagnosis. But again, after a moment, she nodded. “It grows worse by the hour,” she admitted with another wince, “I fear that it will not be long before I sing my song for the Beast of the Great Hereafter.”
“The…what?”
The Makalite woman blinked across in confusion, as if that question was ridiculous.
“The Beast comes for you when it is your time to pass. It guards the entrance to the Great Hereafter, and only if your song is considered worthy by the beast will you be allowed to pass on.”
Natasha stifled a grimace, reminding herself that, no matter how credulous Sister Lyca may appear on some topics, she was still from a very primitive culture. “Ok,” she managed, “Well, I don’t think it’ll come to that, Sister Lyca. So long as we can get out of here.”
She looked around the confines of the dark enclosure as best she could, a little confused.
“Where exactly are we? Are we still in the village?”
“Yes,” Sister Lyca explained, “The Bastille is where the Brothers take those that have moved against the prophecy. I myself have spent many cycles here.”
The name of the structure rang some alarm bells with Natasha, not to mention the apparent reason for its use. She looked around again and saw that while the columns they were secured to were simple wooden structures, the walls looked to be a similar metal to that she had seen outside. A few more connections started to fuse together in her mind as she pieced everything together.
“So,” she queried, “The Seer built this place?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “The Seer has changed a lot about our village. He oversaw construction of the Bastille, and the temple in the square. Both buildings were supposed to help with the prophecy. He would go off into the forest to gather the shiny material.”
“Huh,” Natasha mused as she glanced at the metal again, “Must have some funny trees growing around here. And the other villagers used this…material to help support their huts?”
“Yes. Many of the villagers had their huts improved as a reward by The Seer for the extent of their donations to the cause.”
Natasha remembered what Sister Tula had mentioned earlier about the ‘offerings’ that her family had made. A few more alarm bells went off in her head.
“You see,” Sister Lyca continued, “The Seer asks everyone to make regular donations at the temple. Treasures, jewels, whatever can be spared, or found out in the forest. He claims that only through such generosity will the prophecy come true.”
“Yeah,” Natasha couldn’t help but mutter, “I bet he does.”
She recalled plenty of historical cases that she had been taught about back at the Academy, where certain groups or individuals had, on occasion, sought to infiltrate and take advantage of less developed societies or cultures. Ekos, Planet 892-IV, Garrian VII, the list went on.
She had even been involved in some hands-on work to deal with some minor pieces of cultural contamination while she had served in Starfleet. It was a perpetual issue for any organisation with a sense of morals in a galaxy where so many species at different stages of development coexisted.
And there were plenty of red flags in what Sister Lyca was telling her. Without even having met The Seer, Natasha was seeing some fairly clear signs of exploitation.
But they weren’t the telltale signs that seemed the most pressing as she looked back at Sister Lyca, and was able to discern through the gloom of the Bastille that she was looking increasingly pale, and seemed to be sweating.
On cue, Sister Lyca coughed loudly, the sound echoing around the hut. “I fear,” she managed, “The Beast will be here soon.”
“You’re sweating,” Natasha noted, “And pale. Are you also feeling sick? Nauseous? And it’s got a lot worse since you were tied up in here?”
Sister Lyca looked over and nodded, confirming Natasha’s earlier prognosis. Natasha studied her latest patient from a distance, and then looked at the walls again, shaking her head defiantly as her prognosis clicked into place. She also absently wondered how long the hyronalin compound she’d administered to herself some hours earlier would last for.
“Ok, Sister Lyca, the good news is I can help keep the Beast away from you,” she said, “I think I know what’s wrong here. And I think I can heal you.”
“You can?”
“I can,” she affirmed, “Although, the bad news is that, unless we get out of here soon, everyone in the village is going to die.”
With that ominous statement, she redoubled her efforts to break her bonds.
Seconds later, a thoroughly shocked Sister Lyca joined in.