Ullr and Artemis - Arctic Rangers [15]
Thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for the universe and thanks to the other fanfic writers for giving me the inspiration for this little masterpiece of nonsense I have cooked up. And a big thank you to u/Mysteriou85 for the Artaya goober! I also got a redrawing of a famous meme now featuring Artaya by u/droughtier ! Additional thanks to u/rookamillion , u/Win_Some_Game , and u/Inside_Judge5855 for proofreading this chapter!
I’m also proud of the title card for the series commissioned by u/rookamillion and drawn by Kennedy Oz !
Also can't forget the comic commissioned by u/rookamillion and drawn by u/YellowSkar ! ❤️
And an entire ficnap crossover with Little Big Problems written by u/rookamillion and an accompanying piece of fanart drawn by u/VeryUnluckyDice !
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I also have a full fanart gallery for this series!
And a space on the NoP discord server where you can ask me questions or watch me go insane.
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Intro: They could only stave off hibernation for so long. Though a standard occurrence for Artaya, this is Ullr's first experience watching Jaslip undergo hibernation stasis, and then it will be just him.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Ullr Hoback, Human KC Military Captain
Date: [Standardized Human Time]: October 10, 2160
In the brief moment I had my head turned away while removing the meat from the freezer and starting preparations for dinner, I look back to find that she is gone. Not even with her vest on and her visor left right on the floor, she has gone off somewhere… again.
I calm my racing heart and step out of the camper and look up and down the street for any sign of her wandering mind and body. A quick glimpse of a white tail slips into a building, and I quickly jog after it to catch up. Inside the old hardware store, I find her walking aimlessly, almost circling like a dog ready for bed.
“Hey, Artaya.”
She looks up at me with horrifically tired eyes, her eyelids fighting every moment to stay open. She flicks something with her ears and tails, and it takes a long moment for her to remember that I can’t understand a single thing said with that language.
“U…Ullr?”
“Yep, me, come on back; dinner will be ready soon.”
Her ears pin back in thought, but still no sign shows itself that she will follow me back for our meal. I take the flask off my hip and offer it to her in an attempt to get a little more life into her.
“Here ya go ‘Taya, a swig of kelai to keep you going for at least today.”
She makes a hesitant sip and then gulp of the bitter energy drink, and I can watch as it works its way down her neck and down all her limbs and tails with a pulse of energy.
“Ullr, where… am I?”
“The hardware store.”
“Where?”
“Not at dinner; come on, let’s go back.”
She stretches out and slowly paces behind me as I lead her back down the street, around the corner, and then into our camper in front of the mansion. She slinks inside and somehow doesn’t even make it into her seat at the table. Swallowing a painful lump in my throat, I make her meal and sit it by her on the floor as I eat my own food in silence. I struggle for each bite and swallow, and looking down at her on the floor, her appetite doesn’t seem to be doing much better.
“Artaya, when you checked the radio today, did you hear anything more about the Consortium strikes on the Federation or the Fighter’s Rebellion preparations?”
Her eyes are pulled up towards me at a snail's pace before finally locking with mine as her nose twitches in slow motion.
“The… no… no… thing new.”
“Oh, well… I guess no news is good news in this case.”
She nods her ears forwards and lets her legs slump to the ground, pushing her plate away in the process. My own stomach fights against the thought of even taking a single more bite, so I do the same.
“Alright, l-let’s get to bed. It’s been a long day.”
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Memory Transcription Subject: Ullr Hoback, Human KC Military Captain
Date: [Standardized Human Time]: October 18, 2160
I’ve lost track of her again… S-She’s not in the house or the camper or any of the food stores or supply closets… I-I don’t know, I don’t know…
Slumping down onto the curb outside the clan mansion, I fight the tears back at first before giving in and letting them fall as they please. I try to keep it quiet, but understanding the lack of anyone or anything to hear and be bothered by my childish sobbing, I let it loose and bawl for the first time in decades. With my head buried in my hands, I almost hear the sound of footsteps, but even if I did lift my eyes up to look, I wouldn’t be able to see through the tears.
Suddenly, a large warmth starts to surround me, first at my back, then my side, then the fluff is wrapped all around my entire body as a wiggly, heavy mass is shoved into my lap. Pulling my hands down, I cradle her head on my lap and give her big ears my best rendition of my famous Jaslip massage. Dabbing my eyes dry on my shoulders, I find myself as the filling inside an Artaya-wrap sushi roll, tails and body constricted in a full circle.
I lean down and let my lips touch the top of her head, which gives enough of a boost to her mind for her eyes to pop open, more open than they have been in weeks.
“Ullr… kiss… hehe…”
Releasing her head, she sits up and uses a tail to make a grab for the flask on her vest. Her nose and body twitch in disgust as she is about to take another meaningless swig, so I do the only thing I can do aside from watch: the right thing to do. Before any liquid can leave the flask, I pull it from her, much to her confusion as she looks at me.
“I-It’s alright, Artaya; y-you can rest now. I-I got it from here, okay?”
The confusion drains from her eyes and is replaced by deep pools of understanding and calm as her head falls back to rest on my lap. While she’s still pliable, I move her head off of me and get back to my own feet. Lifting the heavy lady up, I cradle her in my arms and carry her inside the mansion, across the entry hall, and right back into the room we have been preparing.
Large pillows and scattered totems of safe hibernation decorate the room, but her resting place is more than obvious in the frigid room. I bring her to the largest pillow in the center and lay her gently onto the fabric. Sitting cross-legged at her side, I hold her hand as her breaths come slower and slower, finally fading to a point that I can no longer detect them. The world nearly distorts in my vision; memories of bright lights and buzzing machines replace the calm chamber. A nearly identical, but single-tailed, figure takes the place of Artaya before me as the breaths stop in just the same way.
I love you, Artaya; I love you so much. I’m going to miss you until we meet again…
Leaving her be, I drag myself to my feet and shuffle out of the room, closing the heavy door behind me. The dim lights of the mansion greet me as I exit the home and go back out into the street. The old wrought-iron lightposts hum with their newly returned electricity as steam pipes hiss and creak in the walls and ceiling up and down the stone streets.
When you wake up, this place is going to sparkle and breathe like it was always meant to. I will make this our home.
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Sore and beaten, I let the dishes from my solo dinner clang and bang into the camper sink, not even bothering to rinse and wash them. I take the briefest shower, just enough to warm my bones and wash the dust from my growing hair and tired hands. Slipping into bed, the lack of weight to hold me down makes me feel like an astronaut untethered and floating away from their ship. A single drop of moisture falls from my eye to the pillow below, making it even more comfortable to fall asleep.
Fuck. This… this is… well, welcome back, night terrors my old friend; it’s been a while…
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Memory Transcription Subject: Artaya, Jaslip KC Military Colonel
Date: [Standardized Human Time]: October XX, 2160
The nose awakes first. Smells are slightly different and faded, but it's certainly still the place I last remember. Chamber, mansion, Brother’s Gate… Ullr… Sight is next; one eye opens to near-complete darkness. Just enough light flickers from the gas lamp to see that the room is the same as it was—well, almost the same, as there is now a bedroll right next to me. A deep smell tells me exactly who has been lying beside me. Finally hearing is the last to return. Steam gurgles and groans in the pipes, fans whir for ventilation, and somewhere far away a power tool grinds and screeches.
He’s… fine… he’s working… p-poor… Ullr…
In reverse order, the world fades back to nothingness as the familiar stiffness returns to my limbs and tails. Stasis takes me again.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Artaya, Jaslip KC Military Colonel
Date: [Standardized Human Time]: November 1X, 2160
I come to again. The same slow wake-up, presumably prematurely again, as the chamber air is probably too warm for a full hibernation. The room is mostly the same aside from a small brush at my side with a few strands of white fur on the teeth.
My fur… He’s… so sweet…
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Memory Transcription Subject: Artaya, Jaslip KC Military Colonel
Date: [Standardized Human Time]: December X, 2160
The same frustratingly slow and uncomfortable process of hibernation waking pulls me back into the real world from the slow, dreamless slumber. This time, something remarkable greets me as my eyes flutter open, but my head remains firmly on the floor. A few paces away, Ullr is sitting cross-legged on the floor, a plate of food in his lap as he pokes and eats. Right in front of me, a plate full of food is nearly right up to my nose, waiting for me to somehow awake and eat.
Despite my eyes being barely opened, he somehow notices the change and squeaks in joy, scooting closer to me. He begins to speak excitedly with tender care in his tone, but it’s so hard to make the words and meaning out through the language difference filtering complex words into my brain through the damn translator.
Even if I could understand the conversation, one thing above all stands out to me as I stare up at him. His face is sharp and gaunt, like a starving old dog. My stomach churns in worry, but my body betrays me once more, pulling me towards stasis again. I catch just a few words as it all fades.
“-starting the Fighter’s rebellion on Omnol and-”
Sorry Ullr… I’ll… I’ll help when I’m able…
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Memory Transcription Subject: Artaya, Jaslip KC Military Colonel
Date: [Standardized Human Time]: January 15, 2161
As opposed to the normal, crawling pace of post-hibernation reanimation, the feeling that rips through my body is sickening and forceful. Decades of reanimation would be a preferable process compared to the churning through my stomach and skull as the very world around me is distorted and shifted in an incredibly obvious phenomenon: subspace jumping.
Is this… death? Am I traveling to the next world? What of Ullr? What will happen to him? What’s already happened to him?
As the jump is completed and we must be hurtling between worlds on a subspace course, my eyes finally listen to my commands and rip open to blindingly bright lights and a gaudy, stark-white room. The time to contemplate how, why, and where I might be traveling on an interstellar journey is interrupted by sharp and sickly chemical smells filling my nose with my first deep breath.
The bright lights and horrid smells prove to be too strong a combination for a subspace-rattled body as the tiny bit of remaining bile in my belly forces its way up and out of my throat onto the white bedsheet I lie on. Across the room, a fuzzy-outlined figure pops up like a kerr from a burrow and races towards me. I feel my head lifted up and the mess in front of my face cleaned away. The cool lips of a flask are brought to my lips, and I greedily chug a nostalgically familiar kelai solution.
The stimulant beats the fatigue in my being into submission, and I can at last find the strength to roll onto my belly and really return to the world of the living. The moment my brain is clear enough to hear and command my voice to speak, I start to bark in worry at the figure whose hands stroke my head, the only figure who could scratch at my ears like this.
“U-Ullr! W-Where are we? Why are we in subspace travel?!”
“Shhh, Artaya, we’re fine, we’re safe.”
“W-Where… where are we going?”
“Believe it or not, Tellus, again. Yep, right from the coldest cold to the hottest hot.”
Haha, funny, why though!? AGH, need to be nice, need to be nice; he’s been alone…
“Okay, Tellus, why? Wait, what day is it? How long have I been out?”
An increasingly clearer Ullr looks back down at me as he twirls his very long beard hair around his finger while he thinks. As he does, I study his face and breathe a sigh of relief to see it much more filled out and healthy than it had been the last time I had seen him.
“So, it’s mid-January, and you’ve been out since mid-October, so like ninety days or so? Oh, Tellus! So, I got really bored and sick of sweeping rubble, so I did something really stupid and climbed up one of the unused smokestacks and reattached the commlink up there for best access. Took me a week or two to figure out how to actually use and then translate the messages, but I found out that Esquo’s Fighters started their rebellion on Omnol, which I think I almost said to you when you woke up that one time.”
“Rebellion… actually wait, yeah, I think I do remember that. How’s that going?”
“Okay-ish, not exactly great, but the Rebellion forces are lucky that the Consortium is very busy right now. Get this, an entire fleet of ships arrived at Tellus, but they weren’t Federation! They were these roaming Sivkit people, kinda look like kers now that I think about it, but the Consortium destroyed them all.”
“So… the Consortium is in a second war against these Sivkit people?”
“Yes, but also no. A fleet of droneships then shows up to avenge the Sivkit fleet, drone ships identical to-”
“The ships we saw on Esquo!?”
“Correct.”
“So it was the Federation the whole time?!”
“Oh hoho, hold on to your tails while you hear this part. So the drone fleet is defeated by the Consortium drone fleet, and the Consortium starts a preemptive decapitation strike on the Federation core worlds, but the Consortium drones get their asses kicked this time around. Then, then, this time the enemy drone fleet’s owners make contact with Tellus. Guess, guess who?”
“Who, Ullr?! Just tell me!”
“No, you gotta guess. Use some context clues.”
Context clues?
Peeling my focus away from Ullr, I actually take in my surroundings. The beds in this med-bay are long and thin, a non-standard make for common-use Consortium vessels. The room and door controls are all at around my bipedal-standing height, both taller than normal for anyone aside from Jaslip but still too short for Resket.
“We’re saved by one of the Enclaves?”
Ullr’s hand flys up to his face and smacks hard against his forehead, and I cringe at his self-injury and my obvious wrong answer.
“Artaya, try reading.”
Reading? What like the text on the… Oh, that’s human text like Ullr reads…
"Oh, I get it, we’re on a human ship?”
“Which means…”
Which means that-
“Oh Sweet Esquo! You found more humans!? Another Ark?”
Ullr lunges forward and grips his arms as tight around my neck as possible as he pulls me into a vice-like hug.
“No, not another Ark, Earth! Earth Artaya. It survived; it somehow survived! Something to do with Federation allies and then the Arxur. Anyhow, we then beat down on the Federation with support from half of the Arxur and a bunch of former Federation allies. We started a new Federation with all of them and won the war against the Federation!”
I manage to wiggle out of his hug, and I try to bounce into the air in celebration for Ullr and his people, but he again holds me down before I can even prance on my paws.
“Whoa now, you’re still waking up; stay chill for a bit.”
Reluctantly accepting my declined celebration, I sink back into my cot and return to probing him.
“Then what about the, uh, ‘Sivkit’ fleet at Tellus?”
“Oof, that one is still a big issue, but it turns out that it was a civilian fleet and that Tellus is actually 'Tinsas,' their long-lost homeworld, but they’re allowing Tellus City to remain human-controlled, and that’s where we’re going. See, Tellus and Tellus City are in a very weird position of being ‘owned’ by like three different interplanetary governments, and all three of those governments are at war, not against each other for now.”
“So it’s like a weird Smigli outlaw city where no one cares about diplomatic problems but also can’t risk making another government upset."
“Exactly, we’re Rebellion-aligned, but at the same time, we can be in Tellus City, and no one in Sivkits or the UN will care, and the Consortium is in too shitty of a position to do anything about it. The Rebellion is upset that we can’t be of assistance on Omnol, but they were kind enough to set up a commlink with the UN to send a ship to come and snag us.”
“And what of our families?”
“I… I don’t have much information on them, but I do know that my parents are still on Tellus and a whole lot of your clan is there as well, though reportedly not happy about it.”
“Agh, well, it sounds like that is still the safest place for all of us. Oh fuck! Ullr, our parents! We have to tell them about…”
“Us? Yeah, that’s going to be an interesting one.”
“What if they don’t…”
“Ah, just threaten to go to Omnol and fight or back to Esquo. They’ll balk.”
A sharp knock at the door rattles me out of my family worries, and I turn to see a human-like silhouette shadow at the door. Ullr looks to me for permission, and I manage to bark back to the knock.
“Ah, come in.”
The door slides open to a stockier human, data pad in hand as they awkwardly lean in through the doorframe.
“Very nice to see you awake Artaya, do you need any medical attention?”
“No, well, I feel terrible, but nothing that can’t be fixed by chugging kelai and water.”
"That’s wonderful! Oh! I’m sorry, my name is Dr. Salem. I'm not a medical doctor, for what it’s worth, but I am an ecologist and hobbyist anthropologist. Ullr here told me that you might be interested in talking about Jaslip culture and the current state of Esquo when you feel better."
Jaslip culture? Current state of Esquo? Oh missy, you don’t know what you just got yourself into; I was born for this.
“When I’m better? Dr. Salem, if you have the time, feel free to come over and sit here right now. I have so much I can talk about to a willing audience. Uh, on second thought, maybe after a bathroom break.”
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Posted Jul 8, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC