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But then he calmed down. First things first, they had to get off this planet. Their pod was most likely sabotaged, though they should check it out... The others would better search for the intruders transport.
"Liv, Xander..." he whispered, "Will you go locate the intruder's shuttle?" he waited for them to nod and then continued, "The rest of us will see if ours is still operational."
From that moment he closed his mouth and put one finger on it. Enough said. Mechs pointed in one direction and then into another, looking unsure. Xander shrugged and started walking in one direction, followed by Liv.

Travelling by Telp was a strange sensation for Ilandra. She was rather sure no-one of the group had ever done it, maybe Raven, but apparently you couldn't be sure of anything the man did. Had she been such a bad judge of character that she had overseen his tendency for the illegal? He hadn't had it before. Where was it coming from now?
As her body raced through space in tiny pieces of energy and information she had almost a full 2 hours to think about what was wrong. Something had changed, and it wasn'tbecause of Ivana, tough she knew Raven had never even felt pity for her... 

"Bring the prototype!" Cerces said smiling. 
Ivana brought the felted bag that held the prototype. Carefully she lifted it out, only to have it ripped out of her fingers by Cerces.
"Don't be so slow dear, this was built to last." she said as she examined it.
"I don't want it to go off in my hands..." Ivana said thinking of the mess it could make of her manicured hands.
"The safety is on." Cerces remarked dryly.
"Now... If I push the green button it will work. If I set the controls to danger it will do what I want it to." 
"Does it really say Danger on there?" Mormont asked smiling.
"It does."
Cerces placed the device on the ground and watched as it appeared to do nothing. Everyone in the circle was quiet. A feeling of expectation grew tense as still nothing happened. Finally a small red lamp started blinking.
"Is that it?" Ivana asked.
She was thrown to the ground by a violent earthquake  for answer. The ground rocked, trees fell over and clouds of dust flew up.  For minutes they were all blind, searching the ground for cover.
Finally the earth calmed down and the dust settled. Ivana got up and saw Cerces sitting on the ground laughing.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Cerces pointed to the horizon and said: "It has begun."
Ivana looked and saw the most unnatural sight she had ever seen. The sun raced by, long enough to leave a faint light before it disappeared. Only minutes later it appeared again... and again, and again.
"It has accelerated the rotation!" Trevor said.
"You know, for someone who is nicknamed IQ, you are pretty stupid at stating the obvious." Ivana said ticked off because she was scared.
"Mistress, it is not safe to hang around here." Mormont suddenly said, "Let us watch the spectacle from a distance."
"Alright." Cerces said and got up. "Let's get the hostages."
Mormont paced away to get Figaro and the hostages. On one side he would have loved to leave the songbird behind to sing his last song on the exploding planet.., but then Cerces did have a purpose for him. Maybe she would hire him to finish off the others. 
"Let her try." he whispered.
When he got to the patch of trees where they had left Figaro to guard the hostages, Mormont had even more reason to smile. All he found was Figaro, knocked down with a piece of wood, tied with the hostages' ropes.
Mormont shook the young man until he was awake, knowing he had hurt him.
"Where are they?" he yelled, more to see how the boy reacted to loud noises than to intimidate. Mormont, or rather Shadow as he preferred being called, didn't need to intimidate. It came natural to him. Figaro was too dazed to answer at first, shocked by the hit on his head and the rattling he had gotten from Shadow.
"I... don't know." he managed to say.
Shadow dragged the boy back to Cerces, not showing any mercy. He had never wanted to show mercy with any of them, but sometimes you just had to keep your distance and work with people. When the pressure to kill became to much you could always go out and kill some hitchhiker or security guard... like he had done the night before. It had been a quick kill, not fulfilling his need, only quieting it.
"Tonight." he said to himself, "Tonight I'll have them all."

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Lantessama Isle
Cy DragonStake  -   Darkling Dawn

Credits:
Backgrounds compiled with images found on Google