Unholy Trinity

by Martin Jones

  I looked at Emily’s face, frozen in horror, her form made a halo by the fire behind her, which bizarrely at that time had chosen send sparks like a firework in the air to compliment her image. I looked at her and my soul took in the sound of the crickets and owls, who seemed to be attempting to fill the void that was within me, but failing miserably.

  Emily took one last look at me, and ran away in tears, and it took all my discipline to not run after her as I’d do often done before when she was upset, and held her in my arms, stroked her hair and told her everything would be alright. Except, I knew it wouldn’t be, it couldn’t be. My Emily was dead, and that was that!

  There was an uneasy calm between us after that, and in the end we were grateful for their offer of help. They would be in charge of the new Earth for the next few years, while we bolstered up the defences, and began the long process of identifying other wormholes used by the Darknet, and building our fleet from the remnants of this Darknet multiverse.

  On the face of it, it should have felt like a huge victory, but it didn’t. I had lost too much, and this multiverse’s programme’s words stayed with me. Had my ego created misery for trillions of people? Susan obviously disagreed with me, but I made a mental note to remember this, and ensure future decisions at least had the chance of ensuring my ego wasn’t a contributing factor into a far-reaching decision being made. I would be careful in future.

  Chapter Twenty - A Call to Arms

  Sixty years passed without seeing any sign of the Darknet. We had identified 947 wormholes to other realities, and every single one was to a Darknet multiverse. We left them all alone, and although of course, the odd ship was discovered, they didn’t bother us as long as we didn’t bother them. We built huge bases around each wormhole we found on our side (multiverse #1 - we named our source multiverse #0), and each outpost had significant defences and a fleet to protect them.

  It took ten years before order was restored to all the civilisations, and a further twenty years to build a huge fleet which numbered now in the millions of ships, and hundreds of millions of troops available. I never returned to Earth, as the others didn’t, and we felt and heard that Emily had committed suicide seven years ago by flying into their sun. I felt numb, but in a very strange and tragic way it was a relief. We were aware that the 947 realities had their own wormholes which were a pathway to many more multiverses, and I felt increasingly confident that we would now achieve the rebirth. The planning stage had almost completed now, and the multiverse was full of ships and fleets, ready for a long war against the Darknet realities. It had been a long time coming, and it was at last great to feel as if you were in at least an even playing field, where you actually felt that you had a fighting chance.

  ∆∆∆

  Across dimensional space/time, in a place often frequented by the Kraak, the entity known Gfu felt out of sorts. Where other Kraak had clear and powerful souls inside them which helped define their identities, inside him, was a ragtag selection of bits of souls torn apart at death, with no overriding qualities and no clear agenda.

  Having said this, there was one part soul which remained aloof and would not connect with the others. It remained an enigma. It bided its time, giving no secrets to its identity. It lay there through time, which the Kraak tended to count in cycles of soul feasts.

  There were no set rules, and this had always been the case. Shared memories were there going back eons, but it was just part of the background. Kraaks grew and became ultra-powerful, until a loss of cohesion in the soul load split the entity, and their selves were digested by many other Kraaks, so you could argue they existed in two states, one coherent identity which was a cumulative picture of who was inside, and another state where they stayed in pieces, being aware, but not aware, until a particular Kraak reached overload state, and they had accumulated enough sense of self to emerge from the previous remnants to start again and build their collection of souls and part-souls. It sounds like a pointless existence, but the Kraak had an endless purpose. Their purpose was to become the ghu cha, the ultimate being, with such a unique and perfect blend of soul material to allow them to achieve the super-consciousness, which they knew as yin cha.

  This journey had been going on for eons, and as much as the most powerful Xiu on each occasion when they reached dominance was convinced that they were the ghu cha, greed for increasingly powerful souls proved their undoing. Gfu was aware of this, and without the others being aware; he, she, and then back to he again had avoided being torn apart for over seventy eight soul feasts, which was unheard of. His secret of being singularly unambitious had worked well, but he was bored with existence. Any achievement above and beyond collecting souls was beyond them, so the only interest and fulfilment came from the souls that they captured. It put an interesting slant on the concept of scavengers. The more vibrant the soul mix, the more vibrant the life.

  Communication was an odd thing between them. They could talk in thousands of languages if they remembered them all, but they didn’t. They didn’t need to communicate at all. It was an entirely insular life, with the one purpose in their countless lives to become the ghu cha. The ghu cha was supposed to unite all the Kraaks and give them purpose. They were the scavengers of reality, and they all sensed they had a purpose. Because at one time or another, they had been everyone else. The memories weren’t vibrant, but they were there.

  Emily became aware of herself inside the Kraak some fifty odd years after most of her soul was received by the nearest resonance stone. She, or I suppose it was better at the time to call her it, was aware that she was missing something, but she was just a soul shard, discarded by the rest of her soul, leaving a devastating impact on the shard which coloured her development and awareness within the Kraak. Revenge is a dish served cold, and there is nowhere colder than trapped inside a Kraak having been shed by your other self as not wanted; a waste byproduct which was not required. A hatred for her other self, and a hatred towards her George as she would have put it, and the rest of the Hand, festered inside her. It nourished her and led after more than fifty years to full sentience. She was immediately aware of all the other lost souls, and she telepathically communicated to them, and they joined her. They wanted revenge as well, and she promised them the ultimate revenge. She remembered everything, and once she had destroyed her bloody George and the rest of the evil Hand brigade, who had forced her away from happiness, her next target was reality itself. She had a sense of where she was, and she knew this was her time.

  Gfu felt it coming of course. It was utterly compelled to watch the female entity called M ily swallow up all the other parts of souls that were inside it. It felt her power, and then she communicated with him and he understood. True communication! It was his last thought as she swallowed him whole from the inside. She was Kraak, but she wasn’t. She was a hybrid. She called out to the other Kraaks and told them she was the ghu cha, and because she was actually communicating with them, which had never been known, they prostrated themselves before her, and they chanted her name. She smiled and told them she loved them. She then began to put plans into operation, plans that would destroy Melville, the Hand, and then the reality construct itself! She would have her revenge!

  ∆∆∆

  Lord Grovolk looked at the ships in formation at their main base at Driu and marvelled at how many ships had been mustered. He reflected on the wilderness years, where they had lost their multiverse, and their physical connections to all the other multiverses. Their influence had shrunk, and it had taken decades to establish new wormholes to gain access and resources from the multiverses under their control. His Mother had been absent for most of the time, and he had become accustomed being in complete control.

  It had been a devastating loss in losing the multiverse, which had been their home for countless eons. He would make Melville and his precious Pathfinder, along with other members of the Hand pay for this. It was no longer a question of rebirth. His mother was there, but had lost interest and just stay
ed dormant. It was now about revenge, and the tens of millions of ships arrayed in front of him were under his command. He hadn’t rushed into this. He had bided his time, and made sure that the multiverse which was their own, and now was occupied by Melville’s forces was utterly surrounded. Huge fleets were positioned at every wormhole.

  The defences were useless with such numbers, and Grovolk knew the time had come. He sent a message to the huge army and space fleets he had amassed, and the obliteration of mankind was about to begin. He would squeeze until no-one was left alive. He would kill them all!

  THE END

  Publisher’s note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is either purely coincidental, or superficially used merely as a historical context, with no intention to reflect the real person or cause offence in any way. This is purely a light-hearted attempt to entertain.

  Thank you for continuing the journey with the Hand of Destiny, and please look out for Book 3 which follows on from this one in the Hand of Destiny Series due in the Spring of 2020

  Currently all books available from www.rippingyarns.uk.com.