by Eva Brandt
“I believe that, in her heart, your female already understood the situation she was in. People don’t change overnight. I don’t know much about relationships between humans, but any respect they might have been able to give her would be limited. To top things off, she’s stronger than they are, and it’s not a situation a human male is prepared to accept.
“The Helix has shown me many things, Jar’yd. The Grand Judiciary is trying to usurp the gods, and that won’t end well, for anyone. Now that you have your female, the best thing to do would be to distance yourself, at least for a little while.”
I stared at her in surprise. “But Great Mother, the mission… You said we had to make the Terrans pay for everything they did.”
“And I haven’t’ forgotten about that, Jar’yd. But as much as I revel in the heat, vengeance is a dish best served cold. The Terrans will destroy themselves if we’re patient, just like they did centuries ago. When that happens, there will be no convenient god or metallic monsters willing to give them a last chance. There will be no more compromises, deals, and undeserved gifts. We’ll step in, as we always should have, and we’ll take that world for ourselves.”
For the first time since my arrival, the light around her dimmed a little and I could catch a better glimpse of her. Her eyes held more warmth and kindness than Gaia’s embrace did. “It will be a world that will protect your children, Jar’yd, the children of our whole nation. Never again will we be taken advantage of and turned into fuel. Never again will we suffer at the hands of faithless men. Terra will be razed to the ground for the crimes of The Grand Judiciary, but it will be reborn from its own ashes—for you, for all of us.”
She glided up to us and knelt by our side. For a few seconds, her hand hovered over Selene’s cheek. Selene twitched, but didn’t stir. “This woman will be important,” the Great Mother finished. “So take her and breed her. Make her yours. Show her the truth of where she belongs. Burn away all the connections she has to her past. She belongs to you now.”
The Great Mother’s light traveled over Selene’s body and her abdomen started to glow. My heart did a funny flip when I realized what my leader had just done. The substance The Grand Judiciary used to make Terran women sterile had just been burnt out of Selene’s body.
It was so easy to imagine her swelling with my child, her flesh eagerly parting to receive my cock. Helios help me, she was so beautiful. Until now, I’d held back because I was still in the Great Mother’s presence, but it was getting harder and harder to not indulge myself in touching and caressing all the naked skin within my reach.
As convenient as photon transportation could be, it sucked that we always ended up naked whenever we used it. I’d gotten over my shyness a long time ago, but today, Selene was in the same situation. I had a great view of her beautiful, full breasts, her flawless skin, her rosy nipples, her taut abdomen and her bare pussy.
I tried not to let my desires get to me. It didn’t work and my ruler let out a sharp chuckle when she noticed the very visible effect those thoughts had on me. “Go, Jar’yd. You’re dismissed. Come back to see me when you’ve succeeded in impregnating your chosen mate.”
“Yes, Great Mother,” I replied, getting up at last.
My weakness had completely disappeared, and the only thing it had left behind was determination. Holding Selene in my arms, I turned away from the Great Mother and left her chamber. Convincing Selene to become a Heliad would be a challenge, but I could do it. And once I succeeded, I’d finally have the family I’d always wanted, a real life better than the one I’d been robbed of when I’d died—when The Grand Judiciary had killed me.
* * *
Knox
She was gone. She was dead. She was ash.
In the wake of Selene’s disappearance, I stood on top of Cerberus, feeling like my chest had been carved into and someone had scooped out my insides. I couldn’t focus. My mind kept running through the same thought process, revisiting the nightmarish experience I’d just endured.
“Stop!” she had screamed. But we hadn’t stopped, not in time, and now, she was gone. She was dead. She was ash.
A grief-stricken, blood-curling scream echoed through the sudden silence. A disheveled woman stumbled through the ruins of the village, ignoring us. She dropped to her knees over the charred ground where Selene had been and started clawing at it, as if she was trying to pull Selene out.
Green sparks emanated from her fingertips and fat tears trailed down her cheeks. “Please, Gaia, please. No, not like this. Please. Please.”
She was incoherent with pain and loss. Her gift trickled into the ground, but the strands of green were falling apart.
“Selene… No, please.”
It was Tanya Renard, the High Priestess of New Washington. She must’ve been the one who’d brought Selene here. Under different circumstances, I’d have gotten mad at her for endangering my lover like this. Selene should have never set foot in this ridiculous village. She should have never spoken to a single rebel, no matter how harmless or non-violent.
Tanya Renard had put Selene in a horrible position, because for good or ill, Selene had been an official of The Grand Judiciary. If The Grand Judiciary hadn’t sent us here—or had not known about this place—Selene would have been forced to keep a pretty terrible secret and maybe commit a grave crime in the process.
But that didn’t matter anymore, because Selene was dead, and it certainly hadn’t been Tanya Renard who’d done it.
As if hearing my thoughts, the High Priestess abandoned her futile quest and stood up. Still shaking, she turned toward Brendan and shouted, “You killed her! You killed my daughter! I’ll tear you all to pieces!”
Seated above the Typhon, Brendan was like an emotionless statue. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice utterly and completely dead, “yes, I did. She died by my hand.”
I wasn’t sure that was technically true, but it was close enough. Typhon’s fumes had been the ones that had harmed Selene. The fire wouldn’t have hurt her otherwise, but Typhon’s venomous breath could kill almost anything.
It had all but disappeared now, Selene’s final defiance, her attempt to fix what we’d broken.
“No, hatchling,” Typhon said mournfully. “It wasn’t you. It was me.”
He was trying to comfort Brendan, but I knew it wouldn’t work. Brendan would never be able to separate his own actions from Typhon’s, and he’d been the one to guide his chimera. At most, it was a shared blame, but Brendan would never see it that way.
I didn’t resent him for it. He’d never liked the idea of this plan and had even warned me in the shuttle to keep an eye out, to be careful just in case something went wrong. But I’d let my bloodlust get the better of me. I hadn’t cared about any of these people. As far as I was concerned, they’d just been a means to an end, and I’d reveled in the dark rush Cerberus got when he hunted them down.
If I’d paid attention, I might have seen her sooner. I might have been able to sense her. I might have managed to stop her before she rushed into the cloud of toxic smoke. I hadn’t done any of those things.
By now, most of the remaining people in the village had scattered. The only ones who lingered were some men who looked like guards and a few robed women, the local servants of Gaia. One of them hesitantly went to Tanya’s side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Your Holiness—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, Sister Anya, don’t,” Tanya cut her off. “You will never understand the pain in my heart.”
As the two women spoke, the Scylla flew up to us, carrying August. I had a pretty good idea what must have happened to Sphinx. If she’d been caught in the backlash of Selene’s death, she’d doubtlessly gone dormant and wouldn’t wake up anytime soon.
Scylla set August down, at which point I noted he looked almost as bad as he had the day he’d taken a bath in solar radiation. “I won’t deny this was our fault, but aren’t you all forgetting something? There was an apsid here. He’s th
e one who stepped in at the end there.”
He was right. I’d been so lost in my grief that the thought had completely slipped my mind. It hadn’t been Selene’s fire that had vaporized her, but something the apsid had done.
“That means nothing,” Tanya sneered. “The Sun-Dweller was likely trying to suppress her powers, to keep her from affecting whatever interests his people have in this area. But that doesn’t change the fact that she died because of you.”
“I don’t know about that. I think… I think I recognized that creature. I’ve seen him before. Don’t you think he looked familiar, Knox?”
Familiar. Think, Knox. Come on. August recognized him. August… August looked ill, but his spark wasn’t extinguished.
Think. Did August know something we didn’t? Did he believe Selene was still alive? It couldn’t be. Or could it? Selene had survived the mirror trial and we already knew that her gifts went beyond anything we’d seen before.
Thankfully, Cerberus was there to give me a paw. “That was the same apsid we saw on Mercury, the one we ran into when we went after Charybdis. You remember, don’t you, pup?”
A jolt of shock erupted through me. Of course I remembered. How could I forget? The creature had paralyzed Cerberus and Sphinx. He’d then told Selene to come out of her chimera and she’d been forced to comply.
I’d thought she was doomed, but for some reason, the void of space and the sun’s rays hadn’t left a scratch on her. “He protected her when we were on Mercury. He might have been able to do the same just now.”
“Are you insane?” Tanya hissed. “What kind of Sun-Dweller would want to do something like that for a chimera tamer?”
“Selene isn’t just a random chimera tamer, Your Holiness,” Brendan replied. I was gratified to note that he sounded a little more upbeat, as if the life had returned into his body. “Her gifts are so remarkable even my father has been forced to acknowledge them. You know that. He might not respect you or Terrans in general very much, but he’d have never allowed any other woman to be the possible mother of my child.”
Brendan had used present tense when referring to Selene. Like August, he must think that she was still alive. Could it be?
“I think you’re fooling yourselves and you have to accept the consequences of your actions,” Sister Anya said. Her voice held a dose of peaceful, vicious satisfaction. “You came here to bring death. You reap what you sow. Gaia inflicted punishment—”
Tanya tore herself away from her fellow priestess. “Gaia would never be so cruel, and it’s not my daughter’s fault for any of this. She only ever wanted to help.”
I didn’t have the same faith in the gods. In my experience, deities weren’t all that kind. But Gaia had granted Selene a blessing, the gift that had allowed her to rescue August, so I could be wrong.
“There’s one way to know for sure,” Brendan said. “Sphinx will be able to tell us. We have to wake her up.”
“And how in Tartarus’s name are we supposed to do that, if she’s gone dormant?” Pollux asked.
I returned to my cockpit and reconnected with Cerberus. He listened to my plea before I even touched the controls. Within seconds, we were back in the air and scanning the ruins for any sign of Selene’s chimera.
She was easy to find and the moment Cerberus saw her, the spark of hope inside me bloomed into a bright star. Sphinx wasn’t online, but she wasn’t dormant either. Her Tartarus core was still working. Cerberus detected tachyon currents streaming through her metallic frame, which meant that she’d undoubtedly recover.
That didn’t necessarily mean Selene was alive too, but it did improve our chances.
Cerberus landed next to Sphinx and the others joined us. “All right,” Brendan said over the coms. “I think that between the three of us, we can kick-start her with some tachyon manipulation. Typhon? Cerberus? Scylla?”
“Understood, hatchling,” Typhon replied.
“I’m here,” Scylla offered.
Cerberus rumbled in agreement. “I’m ready.”
It was my chimera who started the process of bringing Sphinx back. He opened his snouts and blew four powerful gusts of flame over Sphinx’s metallic body. Scylla’s tentacles reached into the inferno and clutched Sphinx’s limbs, helping her channel the onslaught of raw energy. When Typhon’s draconic head mimicked Cerberus, the heat around us increased so much I could’ve sworn I felt it even through the protective shields around Cerberus. My displays began to protest, no longer able to see much of Sphinx.
It was only for a moment, and then, the fire started to dissipate. The figure of Selene’s chimera became visible once again, and this time, she was glowing.
All of a sudden, her eyes shot open and she jerked away from Scylla so quickly she almost clawed off a tentacle. Scylla let her go at the last moment and jumped back, putting a little distance between them.
Sphinx launched herself into the air, but was too woozy to do any scouting. She also seemed to be favoring a wing. Typhon caught her before she could hit the ground and do more damage to herself. “Sphinx, don’t panic. Tell us what happened. Where is Selene?”
His sibilant voice was as steady as Brendan’s had always been and just like that, Sphinx calmed down. “She’s still alive, but I can’t reach her. I can’t hear her at all.”
It was great news, a real improvement considering what we’d believed mere minutes earlier. Still, Sphinx sounded genuinely disheartened by the issues of communication she was having, and I got the feeling it wasn’t something normal.
“I take it that means you also can’t find her?” I asked.
Sphinx shook her massive head. “She was so angry with me for coming with you, for everything we all did. The bond between our souls… It crumbled.”
I felt Cerberus recoil in shock and horror. “No. That is… Poor Sphinx.”
Cerberus wasn’t the most empathetic chimera in the world. He and Sphinx didn’t always get along, although their grumbling never verged into dangerous territory. The fact that he showed such regret over something that had happened to Sphinx spoke volumes of how bad her situation really was.
Cerberus’s mental presence wrapped itself around me, as if he was trying to pull me closer, to trap me. “I won’t ever let that happen to us. I’ll protect our pack.”
“Don’t worry, Cerberus,” I told him. “We’re all aware of the importance of the bond between a chimera and a tamer. Selene knows it too, and she treasures Sphinx. She’ll come around.” Using the coms, I added, “We have to find her, before that apsid hurts her. I’m sorry for rushing you, Sphinx, but in this, every second counts. Where do you suppose they went?”
“It’s not that difficult to figure out, Flight Lieutenant Alexander. Where else could she be except in the Apsid Quasar?”
Truth of the Sun-Dwellers
Selene
Apsid Quasar
The first thing I became aware of when I woke up was the smell. The heat didn’t startle me, because I’d grown accustomed to the temperatures induced by tachyon manipulation. But the scent was so different. It was floral, and yet, sulphurous, a perfume that had two contrasting layers and couldn’t quite decide what to be.
I cracked my eyes open, only to find myself facing the familiar figure of Jared Glass.
He sat at my bedside, observing me in silence. He looked different than the day I’d last seen him, at the tournament. His skin was a little darker, and his hair had gone completely white, as if he’d exposed it to some kind of noxious chemical. His eyes were lighter blue and seemed to glow from within. He was still wearing his uniform, but beyond that, he could have been an entirely different person.
Even so, I recognized him with ease. The way he was looking at me reminded me of the conversation we’d had during the tournament. At that moment, I felt like I was back in the labyrinth, listening to an apology and a cryptic warning about a mysterious mission. “J-Jared?” I stammered. “Is that you?”
“You could say that, yes,” he answered wit
h a nod. “Although it’s Jar’yd now.”
He pronounced his name as if ‘yd’ was a separate syllable. If we’d been back at the academy, I might have made a stupid joke about jars and their contents. But when I took a quick look around, I realized we weren’t at Tartarus Base. In fact, we might not be in my galaxy at all.
The room I was in didn’t look like anything I’d seen in my life. More than a room, it was a massive sphere. I was lying on a round bed, covered in a crimson blanket with a mild, metallic sheen. The bed itself was floating mid-air, although I couldn’t identify the technology it used. Jared’s seat was similar. It also didn’t look like any chair I’d seen. It seemed like a set of round pillows instead on an actual seat, and I couldn’t understand how anyone could use something like that to float around. Still, a lot of equipment at Tartarus Base used hover technology and I hadn’t discovered every single thing. The floating furniture didn’t take me aback that much. The plants on the walls did.
Bright golden flowers bloomed around us in an explosion of life and color I’d never seen anywhere else, not even on Terra. The roots and stems pulsed in a myriad of shades of red, ranging from a deep burgundy, to a bright orange. The petals even had the occasional sprinkles of cheerful pink.
I extended my hand past the surface of the bed and one of the leaves reached back, brushing against me. It felt warm and alive against my skin.
For the first time, I became aware that I was no longer wearing my uniform, but a strange loose dress that showed as much skin as it covered. I quickly withdrew my hand, suppressing the urge to cover myself better with the material. I’d gotten over my shyness at the academy. I was more concerned with the unfamiliarity of the plant than I was with my clothing.
“We call these Phaeton Hearts,” Jared explained when he noticed my interest. “Do you like them? I’ve never really had time to cultivate plants, neither here, nor at Tartarus Base. But Phaeton Hearts grow naturally and I thought you might enjoy seeing them.”
