by Eva Brandt
For the most part, it worked, but Sphinx was still having a little trouble. She remained behind me, and the effects of Selene’s absence were truly starting to show. I slowed down a little, having already decided how to help her. “Grab my tail,” Cerberus told her.
She complied without hesitation, using me to compensate for her inability to keep up. She’d have normally found such a thing stupid or humiliating, but right now, none of us cared about such trivialities.
I didn’t know how long it took us to penetrate the external defenses of the apsids. Every second extended into an age and I felt like I was suffocating or dying, even if I didn’t experience any pain. It was when we finally emerged into the core of the black hole that we ran into the most serious obstacle.
Our hopes of trying to be inconspicuous had been for naught because the apsids did indeed have patrols. There were already fifteen crystallized apsid units waiting for us, a miniature army we couldn’t hope to beat with five chimeras.
I’d fought apsids before, but those teams hadn’t been as large, and we’d been on our own turf, not theirs. Still, some experience was better than nothing and it helped me remain calm.
Unlike us Chimera Warriors, apsids didn’t resort to metal to build their army units. When together, several apsids had the ability to concentrate pure photonic energy to create massive organisms that mimicked our strongest war machines. Crystallized apsid units didn’t have a set shape. They could look like humanoid beings, animals, or even amorphous space clouds. But one thing they all had in common was that they were large accumulations of energy with three or more cores of mass—the ‘pilots’.
Originally, this had made them unbeatable, since the old-fashioned weaponry ancient Terrans had used couldn’t fight off such things. But chimeras fed on energy and fire, so they could disrupt the currents of tachyons and photons that allowed apsids to fight together.
The problem was that the strategy didn’t really work here in the Apsid Quasar. We were surrounded by energy they could use to feed, and no matter how much power Cerberus and the others consumed, the apsids could still reinforce themselves with more.
Between that and the high number of units, we were vastly outnumbered. That was why I was so surprised when, instead of attacking outright, one of the units flew up to us and spoke out. “You don’t belong here, tamer. Leave now and your life may still be spared.”
The unit looked a little like a drone, perfectly circular in shape, limbless and headless. It did have eyes and a mouth, but they were located in its midsection. Wondering if those areas could be considered weak points, I prepared myself for the unavoidable moment when we’d have to launch ourselves into battle.
“I’m afraid we can’t comply,” Brendan said, just like I’d expected. “You’ve taken a member of our unit, and until you’ve returned her, we can’t ever go back.”
“Selene Renard belongs here now,” the apsid replied. “She has accepted it. You have no other choice but to do the same thing.”
“Never,” I snarled.
The Cerberus’s claws lit up with tachyon fire, responding to my anguish and fury. In front of me, Brendan, August and Pollux were already in motion, each of them targeting different groups of apsids. With a savage cry, Sphinx freed herself from my tail and joined in.
The twisted reality of the black hole flared with the potency of clashing energy particles. The Tartarus diamond core of my chimera reached into me, threatening to drain me dry, to turn me into a shell of my former self, to consume me just like we’d consumed the lives of the Terrans in the rebel settlement.
But if we’d been willing to sacrifice those innocents to save Charybdis, we were willing to go even further for Selene. As the wolf emerged more and more from inside me and I felt my mind start to crack, I hoped and prayed that I got to Selene before I forgot who and what I was.
* * *
August
If pressed, I’d have admitted that I hadn’t originally believed that I was an apsid. When Penelope had first mentioned it, I’d thought she was full of shit. All my life, I’d been human, an integral part of Terra’s armies. I’d fought deadly battles against apsids. How could I suddenly accept I was one of them?
It had been Charybdis who’d convinced me there might be something to Penelope’s claims. According to her, she’d always suspected there was something not quite human about me. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” she had said. “It’s a weapon, August, one you can wield against your enemies, to save your broodmate.”
After I’d heard that, it hadn’t taken me long to accept Penelope’s claims. Maybe it was a little crazy and maybe under different circumstances, I’d have seriously freaked out. But like Charybdis had said, the abilities of an apsid could only help us, now that they’d stolen Selene.
Arriving in the quasar proved this theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. The others did very well in handling the energies of the accretion disk, but in the end, chimeras weren’t built to handle this kind of power output. I took the lead and did my best to absorb more, to force us all through.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. Oh, we emerged on the other side safely enough, but we also ran straight into an army of apsids.
Truth be told, this didn’t surprise me very much. Brendan might have said he wanted to sneak onto the alien home world of our foes, but I suspected he’d always guessed it was a long shot. We all had, and we’d been prepared for what it would mean.
Maybe this had always been a suicidal mission, a way to pay our dues for failing Selene. But just the same, we refused to give up without a fight, and the apsid’s request that we do so only made us all angrier.
Knox lunged at one of the crystallized units and his savagery made me think he might be throwing aside some of his humanity. Pollux mimicked him, Scylla’s tentacles and wolf heads moving around with a speed I knew would not be sustainable. Typhon sacrificed three of his snake heads to distract the units closest to him while he engaged two others in combat.
I could do no less. In fact, I could do more, because once again, being an apsid gave me an edge over the rest of my team.
Despite my lovers’ efforts, the crystallized apsid units surrounded us from every direction. Charybdis’s sensors started screaming, alerting me to imminent attacks. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, lying back down against the piloting seat in a more comfortable position.
This would take everything I had and possibly even kill me. But it might also earn the others the opening they needed to pass through and save Selene.
The neural link between me and Charybdis exploded with power and pain. I jerked against the seat belts, but didn’t try to escape. This was it. This was the moment when I’d have to make a stand.
Every chimera had a unique ability that went beyond their tachyon manipulation skills. For Medusa, it had been her ability to petrify people. For Typhon, it was the toxic fumes. Sphinx appeared to have some kind of mind-reading skill, although I’d yet to figure out exactly how it worked.
Charybdis could create black holes. Granted, hers were small compared to the one we were in, but they worked very well as weapons.
Unfortunately, the skill wasn’t easy to use even when we were in our own galaxy. It required an almost prohibitive degree of concentration and effort. I was far better at tachyon manipulation and technopathy, so I preferred to not use this option.
I didn’t have that luxury now.
Creating a black hole inside a black hole was a paradox, since by its nature, this anomaly we were in exerted a huge amount of force on every single entity inside it. But making our way into a quasar and surviving the crushing force of the event horizon had also seemed an impossibility, so why not break this law too?
“Because it could break you,” Charybdis muttered.
“And yet, we’re going to do it anyway,” I replied. “Just do it, Charybdis, but tell the others to fall back.”
She mentally sighed, but followed my commands. A few seconds later, my lo
vers stopped their vicious assault on the crystallized units and retreated, granting me the opening I needed. The apsids seemed confused by this approach, and didn’t follow them. Charybdis took advantage of the opportunity to use her skill.
Even with my eyes closed, I could see her opening her massive mouth and starting to suck. A whirlpool of utter nothingness opened in front of us and our reality started to swirl, protesting the addition of the secondary black hole. The quasar itself shook, fighting the assault to its structure.
Naturally, Charybdis’s power wouldn’t be able to unbalance something like a supermassive black hole. She just didn’t have enough juice and even a Grand Chimera had her limits. But we could affect the area closest to us.
I had to be very careful, though. Charybdis’s black holes were localized and she could control the exact amount of suction she used. But in this space, it wasn’t out of the question that she’d lose control of her power. That could have devastating side-effects on the other members of my team.
Because of that apprehension, I was forced to feed more power into the core of the Charybdis. It helped shield us from my risky attack, but it also made my organs feel like they were being pulled out of my body.
Charybdis still pushed, because I forced her too. She pushed until she couldn’t push any longer. “I’m not going to kill you for this, August,” she told me. “You’ve done enough.”
I would have protested, but I tasted blood in my mouth and my skin felt flaky, as if it had been scorched off all over again. Besides, Charybdis’s skill had already done what it was meant to. At least half of the crystallized apsid units had been taken out by the instability in the quasar. That gave us a real chance to break through in a way we hadn’t had before.
As Charybdis closed her mouth, Brendan rallied our whole unit behind him. “Now! Take them out! Don’t let them recover!”
Even weakened by my use of Charybdis’s skill, I obeyed. This time, I resorted to more classical methods, manipulating the currents of energy my enemies controlled. Caught off guard, the apsids had trouble regrouping.
Two crystallized units tried to lunge at me, both of them shaped like some kind of unrecognizable animal. One of them opened its snout, trying to bite off portions of Charybdis’s tail. In response, I forced the currents of energy around us to dislodge its jaw.
The pilot hidden behind the creature’s head bellowed at me. “You! You’re the changeling! We should have killed you when we had the chance.”
They’d been obviously aware of my apsid nature and had deemed me a threat even before this incident. That was interesting, but useless. Even if they hadn’t known about it, they’d have definitely noticed me just because I’d dared to launch such an uncommon, risky attack. “Maybe you should have, but you didn’t. And now, it’s too late.”
“I don’t think it is. You have no idea what you’re up against, fool. You’re taunting forces greater than you can ever imagine.”
Yes, I was. I’d been aware of that when I’d asked Charybdis to use her skill. Manipulating black holes was insane even for a chimera pilot turned apsid. But I had a feeling my opponent wasn’t referring to that, and my guess was confirmed when all of a sudden, the systems of the Cerberus froze.
Another crystallized unit rushed up to us. It looked humanoid, but it was also even more dangerous than all the others put together. The tachyon shields screamed in protest as an unseen force tried to wriggle its way into the core of the Cerberus, threatening to shut him down.
I managed to force the power away, but it was a close call and I didn’t think I’d win the battle a second time. The newly arrived apsids didn’t seem affected by the clash at all.
“How unpleasant,” one of the pilots—a male—said. “You’re forcing us to resort to methods we would have preferred not to use.”
“We didn’t much like the idea of coming here either,” Pollux replied, “but here we are.”
“At the risk of sounding childish,” I added, “you started it.”
“We really didn’t, but I suppose you can be excused for thinking that. With minor exceptions, chimera pilots tend to be very foolish.”
The light around the crystallized unit faded, allowing me to see its pilots. Several of them were unrecognizable and didn’t look human at all. I had no idea how a reptilian biped, a rocky giant, a mass of tentacles, and something that looked like one of The Grand Judiciary’s experiments gone wrong could form part of the same species.
But the other two pilots were even stranger because I recognized them. They looked different from the last time I’d seen them, but not enough to make me miss their true identities.
The man who’d spoken was none other than the pilot of the Zephyrus, Jared Glass, the same person who’d supposedly died in the Grand Tartarus Tournament. A familiar woman floated to his right, wreathed in flame. It was Stella Donadieu.
The Sister and the Mother
Selene
Earlier
After everything Jared had told me about the fabled ruler of the apsids, I’d expected it to take forever for him to arrange a meeting with her. I’d expected another power play, something along the line of what King Philip, General Rhodes, and other such leaders liked to do.
I should have known better. Clearly, apsids did things very differently, and their political system was nothing like ours.
After our ‘mating’, Jared summoned one of the sun spirits to bring me something to eat and drink. By the time I finished the meal, he was already back with the news that the Great Mother had agreed to see me. “So soon?” I asked him.
“In truth, she wanted to meet you before,” he admitted, “but I believe she thought it wouldn’t be appropriate, since we hadn’t mated yet. It’s traditional to welcome a new Heliad here on Nexus. You might not be one of us yet, but you’re close enough.”
He didn’t say it, but he obviously hoped to fix that in the future, to fully turn me into a Heliad like he was. The thought stirred mixed feelings inside me, much like Jared himself did. On one hand, he’d saved my life and he’d been honest and pretty straightforward with me, even when I hadn’t wanted to hear what he had to say. On the other, he’d forced me into a relationship I was nowhere near ready for and had presumably gotten me pregnant.
Because of all that, I couldn’t come up with an answer for him. And so I thanked him with a silent nod and left the bed. As if acknowledging how strange and alien this felt for me, he produced an outfit that looked almost identical to the uniform I’d worn at Chimera Academy.
He’d given me plenty of clothes to wear in the past, but they were all apsid fashion, loose and flowing, just like the dress I’d first woken up in. Today, he’d picked something Terran, and it surprised me, for more than one reason.
For the first time since my arrival here, I remembered I’d seen him wearing his chimera tamer uniform once or twice. I doubted it had survived the way he’d died, so how had he gotten it here? And how had he procured something similar for me?
Jared must have noticed my confusion, because he proceeded to explain. “Heliads tend to be very good at blending in. To ensure we complete our undercover missions as efficiently as possible, the tailors on Nexus manage to create outfits identical to those of the species we infiltrate.”
“I’m pretty sure I should find that alarming, but right now, I’m just happy it’s convenient,” I replied with a sigh. “Thank you.”
He shot me a quick smile and left the room, giving me space and privacy to change. It was a little pointless, now that we’d had sex, but I still appreciated the attempt to make me feel more comfortable. Paradoxically, it also irritated me. It would have been so much easier to reject him and everything he’d done if he’d acted like an asshole and had not cared about my opinions and beliefs at all. But nothing in my life had ever been easy, so I had to live with this too.
Getting dressed involved the same process I’d grown accustomed to at the academy. It only took me a couple of minutes to get ready, although I di
d struggle with my hair. The Phaeton Heart finally approached me and provided me with a vine to tie it back. After our earlier interaction, I was a little reluctant to accept its aid, but in the end, I decided to go with it.
In an insane world, one had to be just as crazy to survive.
When I was satisfied with my look, I left the mating den. The doors opened without me trying to force them into compliance, like I had during my ill-fated escape attempt.
Jared was waiting for me, and I assumed the mechanism had responded to him. “Ready?”
“Always,” I replied, although that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
In the past month, I’d grown a little more accustomed to Eos and to the apsid way of life. The capital city of the Heliad Empire—as they called it—was truly a beautiful place. I’d only seen the lower levels of the settlement, but I was constantly surprised by the graceful way the apsids had managed to entwine the intense power of flame with various life forms. Wherever I looked, flickers of light danced through the air, fragments of starlight that reminded me a lot of Sphinx. The people tended to cluster together in groups according to their respective units, and while they kept their distance, they’d never been unfriendly. The buildings defied all sense of gravity and reality, with a lot of them orbiting around the main plazas like asteroids.
The end result was a labyrinth of interconnecting floating roads that could occasionally end in nothing at all. Jared was very good at anticipating where a building was supposed to be at any given moment, but it was still easy to get lost.
In the middle of it all there was a spire. According to Jared, it was the one point in Eos that always remained stationary, the singularity around which the settlement had been built. Most people called it the Helix, and it was the Great Mother’s throne room and temple. Hopefully, I’d be able to find my answers there, with the leader of my captors.
