Spaceships and Magic, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

"I don't know where your sensory organs are, but if you can taste my foot, I'm sorry," The voice of Lara drew Akash out of his unconsciousness. "Well, I would say sorry, but that would be quite funny." 

Akash's body was so wracked with pain that he could barely make sense of what the woman was saying. 

"Whargh thaying?" Akash tried to speak, but all that came out were garbled words that didn't make sense even to him. "Whargh do tho megh?" 

He couldn't see properly, it was like one of his vision bulbs had been damaged or removed, with the other only showing a blurred and dim view of the world around him. Like shadows. 

"Oh, you seem to be having a little bit of trouble speaking there sweetie, but I think I get what you're saying. You want to know what I've done to you, right?" She went on.

Akash was starting to get tired of her grating voice. Nevertheless, he did want to know why he was in so much pain. Why he could now barely see. 

"Yehth," he grunted out. 

"Oh sweetie, you see, after I trounced you in our little… I don't even want to call it a fight… I took you back to my laboratory and well… I've been harvesting you bit by bit," She said cheerfully. 

Akash would have recoiled if he could, but it was at that moment that he realised he couldn't feel his arms or his legs. Or one side of his face. In fact, the only things he really could feel were the left side of his face and half of his torso. Had she… harvested… all of that? 

"Here, I know you can't see much right now what with only having one eye and all, but maybe this will help illustrate what I mean," Lara said, and in an instant brought up a holo-mirror. 

She was right, he could barely see, but what he could see made him feel physically sick. His body was in tatters. His arms, legs and half of his head were gone completely, with jagged spurs of his wooden form seeping with the yellow resin that served as blood for his biology. Cables were plugged directly into each of the holes that had been made, whether they were sucking his vital fluids from him or keeping him stable and alive he had no idea. 

All he knew was that, by looks alone, he should be dead. 

But that death would never come. Not while there were thin spikes of fresh wood being pushed into him by a series of clamps. Not enough for him to regenerate into his battle form, but more than enough to keep him regenerating at a pace equal to what they were harvesting. 

"Pahx?" He asked, hoping that she would get what he was asking, and also would find it in herself to tell him what had happened to the Lyrin. The last thing he remembered was telling Pax to get behind him before she unleashed her beam attack. If he had been caught up in that, there was no way the Lyrin would have survived. 

"Oh, you want to know about your little Lyrin friend… well… he's doing a sight worse than you are my old wooden friend, I can tell you that much," She boasted. "Did a little digging in his head, literally. Found the bit that gives him those freaky hive mind powers, scooped it out with my brain scooper, and tossed him back in the cell. You might grow all your missing bits and bobs back, but he certainly won't." 

That was the last straw for Akash. She was worse than any human he had ever met, worse even than that cocky Jacob Lyre by far, and he wasn't going to stand for it anymore. He had one hand left, and he was going to use it. 

He whipped the vine-like tendrils of his free hand out and whacked into the only other figure in the room. But he didn't feel the impact he was expecting, his vine sailed right through what he had thought was Lara with no resistance at all. 

"Oh come on," Lara cackled, "You actually thought I'd let you attack me like that? Please. That's just my Shade. No, you're only conscious because I've got what I needed from you. It's bye-bye time now."

The familiar white glow of a teleportation rune blazed into life below him. She was going to send him somewhere else, tossed away like a used up piece of rubbish. Like he was absolutely nothing to her. That was going to be her biggest mistake, her biggest mistake by far. Because, somehow, he was going to survive this, and he was going to come back at her with the rage of his entire species howling at his back. 

Lara would pay for everything she had done, as would the humans that she was working with. 

The light reached its crescendo, and then fell away to reveal a dark room. He could see figures moving in the darkness, but he couldn't make out who they were. 

"Fal, it's Pax, Lara just sent him to us!" called out a voice, one that he would recognise anywhere, the voice of the human Jacob Lyre. 

He felt a touch on his shoulder and lashed out with his one good arm, but the blow was weak and half hearse. The Human was able to evade it with ease. 

"Human?" Akash wheezed, barely able to form the words. His face had begun to heal now that the constant harvesting had stopped. "So… you were behind this… after all."

"Not quite buddy," Jacob said. "Lara set you free. We're at the bottom of the ocean right now with no way to get back up to the surface, I'm pretty sure she's planning to kill us all down here somehow." 

"She… Is a dangerous one… Moreso than any human," Akash groaned, before seemingly falling unconscious once again.