Star Chaser- The Traveler

by Reiter

  “What?!” the blind man asked, sounding apologetic. “I could only do so much! You see what I had to work with here.” With a gesture, Freund caused the discarded robes to lift from the floor and wrap around the shoulders of his automaton.

  “Unfortunately I do. What of the Chevalierra?” the automaton asked, looking at Shuronne.

  “That is a decision I will leave to her,” Freund replied. “And she shall be given time to make that decision,” he added, softening the tone of his voice. “She has been walking by faith for some time, and now the strides she has taken by sight have called many things into question. I do not envy your position, my dear. But if it helps, trust that there is nothing wrong with believing. You have fallen into a great struggle. One, it would appear, that I am having with your goddess. Though I must say I did not receive the memorandum announcing our conflict.”

  “The mail these days!” Isse remarked.

  “Simply atrocious,” Freund agreed. “Of course we are talking about a relatively new congregation here. Perhaps the overage in the Building Fund has yet to be applied to postage.”

  “You took first action, my lord,” Shuronne returned. “When you tried to keep the Neve-Stone!”

  “The Neve-Stone?” Isse repeated, looking at her father who had staggered backward a step. Something had shaken him and though he was always quick to recover, Freund was a player who seldom showed his cards. Something had gone terribly awry! “What does this mean?”

  “That we have indeed fallen for a tender trap,” Freund quickly concluded. “We were meant to see Neve… see her, engage her, and catch her. While attention was focused upon her, by me and the well-intending Olasson, the rest of what was Baron Nomed has been allowed to move through humanity.”

  Isse shuddered at the most immediate conclusion her mind could make. “But that would mean…”

  “Yes, my daughter, this game actually started centuries ago!” Freund said softly. “Nothing has changed. This has only given us confirmation of our fears. And Neve has seen to it that the one thing which was missing in Nomed’s defeat could not be called into play here.”

  “What was that?” Isse asked.

  Freund walked over to the fireplace and started it with a gesture. A chair moved under him as he sat down and sighed. “For all of his incredible ability, Nomed was still playing in someone else’s backyard. It was nearly impossible for him to make a move without the Maior Nathu seeing or feeling it. This of course gave them a serious advantage.”

  “Apparently not enough of one,” Isse remarked.

  “Do not look at the actions of the Maior Nathu as a loss, daughter,” Freund said as the fire grew. “Rest assured, Baron Nomed will not! After all, without that loss, humans would still be at Sol, unaware of their cousins here in the Rims. They would still be slowly killing their assumed homeworld, and each other. If anything, the Maior Nathu succeeded in delivering the Human Race to a better place. What they make of it is entirely up to them. Or, at least, it should be. Neve, it seems, wants a strong say in the matter.

  “Very clever, Baron,” Freund muttered, drawing the ire of his daughter. “Well, it was… quite clever actually. You’re dying, and you know you’re dying, but you have enough power and foresight to separate yourself into a number of sections. For the most powerful piece, you remove any semblance of memory and allow it to take possession of a young boy, knowing it will, or should, set off all sorts of alarms. After all, many are looking for you and you are dealing with the Olasson!

  “So you arrange to be caught” Freund concluded, closing his eyes. “Or, more precisely, that piece of you. While the so-called protectors of man work on that fragment, you have infiltrated the creatures you hate and have promised to destroy. You approach only the most powerful or disenfranchised persons, you show them what real power is all about and they flock to you.”

  “Xaythra?!” Isse said.

  “No, daughter, she is just another piece on the board!” Freund said, disgusted. “Given the level of elemental influence in their last endeavor, Nomed sought to cut everything off at the pass, so to speak. Xaythra is a means to that end. With gravity and elemental water at his disposal, there is little chance of repetition in the coming campaign.”

  Against all his hopes and stratagems, Freund had failed in his endeavor. He had hoped to keep the pieces in the realm of the simple… or at least mortal. He had questioned before whether he was a piece or a player, but that answer no longer mattered. An entity to which he had even bowed was being fashioned into a piece in the chess game for humanity. True Power was at play in the game, and had been at play for some time… Freund was just getting the memorandum!

  “There is much to do,” Freund announced, getting up to his feet. “I’m afraid, dear Chevalierra, the time I wanted to give you to make a decision has grown short.”

  “Then I decide to stand with you,” Shuronne said. With a wave of his hand, Freund put both women into stasis.

  “You certainly have to give her credit for trying,” Isse said as she started cleaning up the room.

  “Indeed you do,” Freund agreed, turning to face his automaton. “The likelihood for success in this gambit is incredibly thin.”

  “Then change my name to Longshot when I return,” the automaton replied.

  “I shall call you Longshot now, thank you very much,” Freund replied, patting his creation on the back. “And recognize that once you are with them, there is a good chance I will not be able to hear your thoughts.”

  “I’m looking forward to the privacy,” Gregoran ‘Longshot’ Killington said with a smile. He turned and walked out on the balcony. Again, a small pinhole of light formed and grew larger and brighter, blocking the view of Gregoran. When the light faded, the High Priest of Xaythra was gone.

  “Let the shell game continue,” Freund said before facing his daughter. “I am afraid this is as far as you will go in this.”

  “The stress of this is beginning to show on you, Father,” Isse started.

  Freund closed his eyes and invoked his talent on two subjects in his castle. Instantly, both Isse and Zerrell were aboard a luxury cruise-liner called the Wavecrest which was en route from the Terran Triangle bound for the Inner Rim. Mother and son were both dressed in the finest of clothes, but their entry still brought the conversation atop the Crystal Deck to a stop. Ignoring the Captain and the security guards taking to their practiced formations, Isse looked in the direction where the castle should have been and engaged her sight.

  “Old fool!” she hissed through clenched teeth. “The castle is gone.” Isse started to pace, trying her best to contain her rage. “What is he thinking?!”

  “Given his age, it is difficult to say,” a young man said as he made his way, effortlessly, through the crowd. He was dressed in dark blue robes, adorned with rich blue sapphires, and he was not alone. However, the others that appeared with him wore vestments more suited for combat. None of them walked with anything less than an affirmed perspective and a severe training regimen. “Especially for him to assume that simply because you were no longer with him in person, my masters would leave you and your son out of the game.

  “Please!” the man said, holding up his hand as Isse summoned her battle staff. It was glowing with power, but the flat palm facing her gave Isse reason to hesitate. “I realize you are a worthy combatant, Isse. The wife of Zeu Rex should never be considered weak. But take a good look at me as my colleagues take their places… do you think you can contend with me so quickly as to keep all of us from reaching your son?”

  “I suppose there is only one way to find out,” Isse sneered. “You ready, son?”

  Zerrell made no verbal response to his mother’s inquiry as a man dressed in black and blue armour strode in front of him. A slight jerk of Zerrell’s head moved his long, white hair out of his face and he peered through sky blue eyes, looking the man over. He was over six feet tall and easily weighed two hundred and fifty pounds… without the armour. Zerrell smirked up at
the man and nodded.

  “Yeah, you’ll do!” A forward lunge took Zerrell to and past the formidable man. There was spark of light and the soft song of an evening breeze. Zerrell stood motionless, holding his finishing pose for every bit of the dramatic effect he could draw. He was leaning forward with his right arm fully extended and slightly across his chest. There was a slight bend in his left arm as it crossed under his right. His right fist was above and to the left of his clenched southpaw, a very slight gap between the two, as a single-edged bladed shimmered into the visible spectrum. The blade trembled ever so slightly and had passed through the chest and back plate of the armour without clanking or making a sound above a soft whisper. Blood poured from the front and back of the man and he fell to his knees and then his face. “Remind me to thank Uncle Chiaro for the loan of his blade,” Zerrell said, standing straight up and twirling the blade with such speed that it whispered a soft song of death.

  “Oh, and for you… Arminium!” the young boy leveled his hand at the man who had been speaking to his mother and fired a MystiK Bolt. The man extended his hand to catch the bolt and when his fingers closed around it, the bolt expanded to close about him. He screamed, albeit briefly, as the light overwhelmed him and faded away, taking the man with it.

  “Well what the devil was that?” Isse asked, having seen MystiK before and knowing a bolt did not react in that fashion.

  “Teleportation,” Zerrell said as he leaned back to avoid a high-intensity laser blast. It missed him and struck the ship, cutting through a bulkhead and the outside plating. Using his telekinesis, Zerrell picked up the man who had taken the shot and hurled his body into the hole his gun had made. It was, at best, a temporary fix, but it was all he could afford to do at the moment. “I took a gamble he knew of MystiK and made an illusion of a bolt. I just borrowed the power he summoned to block the bolt and used it for–”

  “A teleportation,” Isse smiled, using her staff to deflect an ion pulse into the chest of another opponent. “So where did you send him?”

  “Inside that dead moon off the starboard bow,” Zerrell replied, taking a single leg off two men in one swing. “Let me guess, ‘you’re getting more like your father every day’, right?”

  “Actually, that one was like your father and my father,” Isse informed. “There’s a reason why they get along so well!

  “And enough of this!” Isse said as her eyes flared brightly with orange light. Twin beams left her eyes and struck the woman in front of her. The beams continued, both ricocheting to hit another man and then another until she had struck all eighteen targets.

  “I was wondering when you were going to get flustered,” Zerrell ribbed as he turned to look at the moon where he had sent his opponent. The man was no longer there, but he could feel massive amounts of pain and anguish left behind. “Well, wherever he is, he’s got a stinger on him. What do we do now?”

  “We find a place to lay low,” Isse answered. “Your grandfather is handling this one. The only thing he wanted to prove with this, dare I say demonstration, is that it would be best to keep matters to the chessboard and not make things personal.”

  “That’s kind of hypocritical, isn’t it?” Zerrell suggested as he and his mother walked through the hull of the ship. Isse repaired the hole that had been made, killing the gunman in the process. “I mean, it can’t get much more personal when you put someone in stasis for hundreds of years.

  “And was that last bit necessary?!” Zerrell asked, gesturing toward the last man delivered from the Living Realm. “That guy wasn’t going anywhere!”

  “No one shoots at my kid and gets away with it!” Isse declared. “And as for the hypocrisy thing… sweetheart, we’re entities, not gods. People don’t pray to us for guidance, or power, or even good fortune. And they certainly don’t pray to us for wisdom or perfection!” Isse wrapped her arm around her son’s shoulders as they continued to walk. “And even if they do, we don’t answer. Cheating time and being a True Immortal are two different things. In all my time, I’ve only ever seen one True Immortal.”

  “Dad?” Zerrell guessed.

  “Gracious, no!” Isse scoffed. “Your father is the biggest time-cheater there is! No, the only immortal I’ve ever seen is Cosmos! The rest of us are just here waiting our turn to face the next unanswered question.”

  Isse would not mention it, but she had already received a telepathic message from her father, telling her she had played her part well. The notification gave her little relief. Her father had been pressed enough to use family in his series of shell games. She hoped that this statement had been strong enough for her father’s opponent to come to the conclusion that doing anything other than playing the game could prove to be devastating, if it had not already been so. She held her son close and trusted in her father the way Zerrell trusted in her. She just hoped she could justify her end of the comparison.

  The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.

  Satyajit Ray

  After absorbing the collected memories from the Shadow Corps, the training from the more recent versions of the Mal-Vin, gallivanting about on the outside of Gavis Station, and his own perspective on Pax’Dulah, Dungias was more than ready for his transition from the collected pocket dimension of The Campus to his own realm of existence. His body was relaxed as if he had traveled in such a fashion a thousand times before. If anything, it was slower and easier on his body. He came up and out of the aperture at a trajectory that was not straight up and down. He flew up at an angle and he could see the orbiting portals of the Radients. Flavicia’s portal still looked different to him in comparison to the one he assumed belonged to…

  “Sai-Eg,” Dungias called out as he shifted his center of gravity and forced his body to climb a little higher. He needed the height to give the orbiting portal time to pass by without touching him. The higher elevation meant a longer fall, but Dungias threw out his arms and legs to slow his descent rate as much as possible. The effect it had was greater than he had intended, and he could hear the flutter of wind about his body, forcing his body to slow in its descent. His body reached out to accept the flooring which was his landing point. They seemed to meld together and the force of his drop passed through his body as he rolled along the ground.

  “How did I do that?” he thought, looking at his body as he stood up with very little effort. The momentum of his roll had been gauged perfectly so that when his feet touched the ground, all he had to do was straighten his legs. He had made no sound at all, just the slight flutter on the air.

  “Dungias?” Sai-Eg called out as he emerged from the other orbiting portal. The white-light form flew from the orbiting aperture and whisked its way quickly to Dungias. It landed hard against the floor, instantly becoming formless but only for a moment, and then moving toward Dungias on two legs as the rest of the body took hold.

  “I should have known to start with the simple,” Dungias thought. “When a device is not working, make sure it has power. When you want an inter-dimensional being to know you are present, try calling his name.

  “How are you, my friend?” Dungias asked, looking over Sai-Eg. He looked different somehow, but the exact reason was beyond Dungias and he merely took note that the body of Sai-Eg was brighter and no longer translucent. His form was solid and there was an aura of light surrounding his iro-form body; a soft golden, glowing shell that seemed to react to Dungias noticing it. The young Malgovi also suspected that it was not his friend who had changed at all.

  “I am well, and somewhat surprised to see you would come back here,” Sai-Eg said, looking around. “While it has been some time since your last visitation, the others–”

  “We will contend with them if we must,” Dungias assured his friend. “I am just glad to see you are all right. When last I saw you, a red Radient had passed through you.”

  “I merely lost my form for a moment,” Sai-Eg explained. “No real harm was done.” Sai-Eg took a long look over
his latest acquaintance. He stepped back and started to walk around Dungias. “Something is different about you.”

  “Something,” Dungias muttered, amused at the word choice that implied it was a single change that had occurred since last they spoke.

  “What has happened?”

  “A great deal,” the young Malgovi replied, looking up; he could hear the crackle of iro-forms generating. Their time alone had come to a close. “But it would seem the details will have to wait for a moment or two.

  “And did you say it has been some time since I was last here?” Dungias noticed.

  “Several hundred of your star-terms. I was–”

  “Blasphemer!” Flavicia cried out as she exploded from the aperture, no less than fifty of her Radients following behind her. She was still yellow, but her appearance also seemed different to Dungias. She did not have an aura around her, but her body was also quite solid. She flew up and out of her portal and made a wide turn, giving her Radients time to assemble around her. He would not be leaping out of the way of all of them again. She had planned to resolve that blunder.

  “You dare to call one who has been to The Campus a blasphemer?!” Dungias shouted and the speed with which the Radients moved slowed tremendously. Even Flavicia was stalled at the mentioning of the pocket dimension. Seeing that he had their attention, Dungias decided to continue with his plan. “Whatever would Beta-Elder say?”

  “You have seen our Master?” she asked, settling down to the floor.

  “Use your eyes,” Dungias said, lifting his arms away from his side. “Can you not see the residuals of his light?”

  “I can see it,” one of the Radients commented and Dungias’ brow furrowed. He could understand them! Before, their communication had been nothing but sonic patterns his scanner had to interpret.

  “Am I dreaming again?” Dungias wondered, but only for a moment. His mind focused on a young-appearing Beta Form.