Star-Born Mage

by David Estes

  Vee tried to suspend her disbelief, truly thinking about what it would’ve been like to be an omniscient being with an infinite store of power at her disposal. If she knew this part of the universe could be changed forever to save an innumerable number of other lifeforms, would she have been willing to die for such a cause?

  And she instantly knew the answer, because she didn’t need the lives of trillions to hang in the balance for her to make the ultimate sacrifice. She only needed one. Her daughter. “Yes,” she said. “They would.”

  “Right. But not all the gods. Some were against the plan, which, of course, played right into the hands of those willing to make the sacrifice. The Third Godstar War began, and it ended with the formation of the Godstar Galaxy.”

  “And the sprinkling of gods’ blood,” Vee said, the only part of the histories she was intimately familiar with since it involved magic. It was said that liquid aura was the blood of the gods that had died during the war, their final gift to those with the ability to wield it.

  “Correct,” Minnow said.

  “So all the gods died.”

  Minnow shrugged just as McGee vanished into the space beyond the rocky hallway. “The historians disagree on that point. Some say there must’ve been more than seven gods fighting in the war. And since when does a war have no survivors?”

  It was a fair question, but only led to a bigger one. “Then where are the surviving gods?”

  “There is a theory. Two of the most powerful gods were locked in a magical struggle, their spells colliding in such a way that the energy combined, creating an explosion unlike anything in history, save perhaps the original forming of the universe. Seven gods chose to be destroyed instantly by the explosion, except for their immortal hearts, which were cast into seven different locations, thus creating the Godstar Galaxy, while the others allowed themselves to be flung into the far reaches of the universe to survive the blast. There are those who believe the surviving gods will one day return for their vengeance.”

  Vee had heard of such people, cultish folks who worshipped moonrocks and wore metal on their heads to protect their minds from being read. She was about to express exactly what she thought of such fools but stopped when they stepped into the next area.

  “Target located,” she said, smiling.

  Minnow rubbed his hands together and they got to work collecting any items that resembled what the A.I. had shown them they needed. Gods or not, they needed to fix their starship before Dacre and the Jackals created their own magical explosion that changed the galaxy forever.

  ~~~

  Several hours later, they’d managed to locate and transport many of the spare parts needed to repair the ship. Even McGee had pitched in and helped, though twice Vee had caught him staring at his own reflection in a shiny piece of metal and muttering to himself.

  Now, Al the A.I. was coordinating the repairs with his usual bravado.

  I said the green port, you half-brained sea-dog! Al hollered at Minnow as he fumbled to replace a blown fuse in the main control panel. One more fool mistake and it’ll be the brig for ye!

  Minnow, clutching a rather large wrench in one hand, looked tempted to smash it into the panel, but then thought better of it and reconnected the scavenged fuse. “What’s a ‘brig’ anyway?” he wondered aloud.

  “Make one more fool mistake and find out,” Frank said, grinning. The cat was busily charting a course for Urkusk in the event they were ever able to get the starship up and running. Terry, unfortunately, was still out cold, though his breathing was even and normal, exactly what you would expect from someone in a deep sleep.

  Minnow was instructed to haul a large and expensive-looking piece of equipment to the “rear galley, ye useless saltlick!” while Vee was told to finish up with the control panel. She followed each order carefully, and not once was she called a “deckslug” or “roasted maggot,” which she considered to be a small victory. Then again, Al treated her with more deference than the others, always using the honorific “Cap’n” when addressing her. Still, his personality programming was grating on her nerves by the time she finished, a splitting headache beginning to form in the center of her forehead.

  Wait, she realized. It’s not the A.I.’s fault. At least not entirely. She was overdue for her next shot of aura. She gritted her teeth in frustration. Was this what the rest of her life would look like? Always counting the hours to her next swig? As soon as this was over, she was determined to check into the most expensive magical rehab facility she could afford and get clean. After that, she had no idea.

  Al was now running through a system restart, various lights flashing as the holoscreens cycled off and on.

  “Hey, Frank, is it time for that story yet?” Vee asked, hoping to pass the time.

  “It’s rather embarrassing,” the cat said.

  “We’re all friends here. What’s a little secret amongst those who survived an attack by a powerful Grem mage specializing in large boulders and pointy shrapnel?”

  “Funny,” Frank said. “Fine. If you must know, I was once an arrogant clot who thought I could harness magic for my every whim.”

  “No,” Vee said, feigning astonishment. “I’m rather shocked.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you are. Anyway, unlike some of us”—he fired a pointed look in her direction—“I wasn’t blessed by the godstars with the genetic disposition to process aura, so I took it upon myself to study the works of Ronald Alspice and Kermit Pathfinder.”

  “These are used hovercar salesmen?” Vee said, trying to keep a straight face but failing.

  “You should be a holocomedian,” Frank said. “Do you want to hear the rest of my story or not?”

  “Sorry. Yes,” Vee said, though she wasn’t certain she’d be able to stop now that she’d gotten started.

  “Ronald and Kermit were visionaries,” Frank said, narrowing his eyes and daring her to contradict him. Vee said nothing, though she’d heard the two men were half-cracked and had almost blown themselves up several times in their pursuit of ‘magical innovation.’

  “Go on,” she said calmly.

  “I followed in their footsteps, learning from their accomplishments and mistakes.”

  “Is that why you’re now a cat?” Vee asked, unable to hold her tongue.

  “I made my own mistakes, okay?” Frank said. “But I also learned the basics. How to train my body to process aura.”

  “That’s impossible,” Vee blurted out. “If you don’t have the genetics, the game is over.”

  “So this must be the afterlife and we are really ghosts after being crushed by a certain Grem’s massive boulders.”

  Vee raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

  “Har-har. Can you really sit there and deny the fact that I used magic to save your skin?”

  Vee cocked her head to the side. “Is that what that weird smoke thing was? Magic? I thought it was a particularly potent act of flatulence.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “So I’ve been told. But you’re still going to tell me the rest of the story, because you like to hear the sound of your own meow.”

  The cat licked its chops, scowling. “Yes. Yes, I am. And yes I do. Anyway, the ‘flatulence’ as you called it, was a Class 3 spell I mastered several months ago.”

  “I’ve never heard of a Class 3 spell that could kill so…effectively.”

  The cat raised a claw in the air triumphantly. “That’s the benefit of not being genetically predisposed to magic,” he said. “I’m not bound by the same rules that you are. I have no magical specialty. I can harness any type of magic with practice and trial and—”

  “Error?”

  “Of course. All science relies on errors as heavily as successes. You can’t learn if you don’t try.”

  “You should put that on a t-shirt, or coffee mug. You’ll make millions from people who enjoy cliché inspirational quotes.”

  “You’re in an interesting mood,” the cat said.

  Vee re
alized she was overcompensating for something she was trying to block out. “Sorry. I’m worried about my friend.”

  “The Chameleot? He’ll be okay, I think. Give him time to recover.”

  “I brought him here. Coerced, you could say.”

  “We all make our own decisions. Well, generally.”

  Vee remembered what Frank had said before they’d gone to scavenge for spare parts, about not being able to leave the ship. “What happened to you?”

  Frank sighed, his small feline body seeming to sag a bit before straightening once more. “Well, back when I was still human…”

  Vee interrupted. “I was wondering about your race. Human? Really?”

  “Indeed. I was a rather handsome man, I must say, which explains my feline beauty now. Have you ever seen such a luscious coat?” As if to illustrate his point, he rolled over onto his back and showed his underbelly.

  “Luscious is the only word for it,” Vee admitted. “So you mastered the fart attack and then what went wrong?”

  “Like I said, I was an overconfident—”

  “You said ‘arrogant clot’ actually.”

  “Thank you. My mistake. Well, this arrogant clot began to dabble in Class 4 and 5 spells. Twice I almost lost a limb, but I was determined. In particular, I wanted to learn to turn things into other things. The mouse was supposed to become a cat, not me.”

  Vee tried not to laugh. “That’s just mean. Turning a creature into its greatest nightmare?”

  “I was trying to empower it. What better way to defeat one’s enemy than to become them?”

  Vee was pretty sure that didn’t make as much sense as the cat thought, but she was curious about something else. “And the whole pilot thing?”

  “That was my day job. Magic didn’t exactly keep the holoscreens on and fund my experiments. I was flying commercial routes between godstar systems most of the time.”

  “And then you became a cat.”

  “Right. What starline would trust a cat to pilot their billion-dollar commercial starships through hyperspace? I tried to turn myself back and almost burned half my fur off. Penniless and without any other options, I turned to the underworld to find a job.”

  “Which is where Miranda Petros found you.”

  The cat’s fur seemed to bristle at the name. “That evil woman tricked me. She offered me a job, which, desperate, I gladly accepted. The moment I stepped onto this starship, she pounced.”

  Vee had heard of binding spells before, but they were usually temporary. It would take a powerful Class of magic to force someone to permanently stay within a confined area like a starship. If it had happened to her, she knew, she’d have already gone half-mad from boredom.

  “The effectiveness of binding spells are directly related to a person’s physical strength,” Frank continued. “And because I’m so small now, breaking the magical chains is a task that feels impossible.”

  “Even a Class 5 spell wouldn’t be permanent,” Vee pointed out.

  “This is no Class 5 spell,” Frank said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What could be more powerful?”

  “Class 6. Class 7.”

  “There’s no such thing. I learned that at the Academy.”

  “I bet you did. Back in The Age of Shadows, there was also no magic at all. Until there was.”

  Vee stewed on that for a while, wondering if Frank knew what he was talking about. While she considered it, Minnow returned. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “The cat’s been telling tall tales,” she said.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Depends whether they’re true.”

  “Cats can’t lie,” Frank noted, which felt like another lie. Or if it was true, Vee didn’t think it would apply to humans who had accidentally turned themselves into cats.

  Before she could further consider the ramifications of the Alliance lying to all the mage cadets about the true limits of magic, Terry sat up and said, “Whozit? Whatza? WherezamI?”

  Vee’s heart soared, and she was about to rush to her friend’s side.

  Before she could, however, the control panel lights stopped flashing and the viewscreens brightened, displaying a 360-degree panorama of the dark void of space surrounding the starship and the wreckage colony. The A.I.’s voice arose through the speakers, but with a completely different voice and accent, this one with a female lilting drawl like those who lived on the outskirts of godstar III. Reboot complete, y’all. Wanna git offa this wreck?

  Vee was about to check on Terry first, and then make plans for their next move, when something caught her eye in the viewscreen. A slight ripple in the hyperspace portal.

  A familiar vessel emerged from hyperspace. Not flashy, but practical in its design. An iron brick meant to haul entire platoons of Alliance soldiers across great distances. And now, Vee knew, it had been stolen from the Alliance by one Miranda Petros. Once an Academy graduate and mage warrior, now a fugitive from those who’d trained her.

  They’d been found.

  “Al,” Vee said.

  No response from the ship.

  “A.I.?” she tried.

  Call me Layla. What can I do ya for? Iced tea? A piece of my famous cherry pie?

  Vee didn’t have time to ask what the moonrocks she was talking about. “Get us off this wreck, now. Frank, lock in the coordinates and flight plan.”

  “Done and done,” the cat said, jabbing a claw into the ship’s interface. He reassumed his position between the control ropes just as the starship engines began to cycle, the vessel rumbling slightly.

  Terry, now fully awake, said, “You fixed the ship without me?”

  Minnow cracked his knuckles and said, “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  The Chameleot rubbed his head, cringing. “Good. So I’m assuming you’ve also deactivated the docking arms that have us clamped to this old wreck?”

  “Umm…what?” Vee said.

  The ship shuddered and there was a horrific shrieking sound and then the groan of heavy machinery as the vessel began to move, jerking and juddering.

  Lift-off, Layla said, as half the wreckage colony was torn away, still attached to the side of the powerful starship by twin magnetic clamping arms.

  “Full speed ahead,” Vee said, watching the leaner, faster transport vessel already gaining on them.

  It seemed Miranda Petros, the bane of her existence, still had a few tricks up her sleeve.

  Bring it, Vee thought as they raced toward the enormous red planet that was home to the Grems. Urkusk.

  Chapter 20

  Gone for good

  Tramone, one of several hundred tech-heads manning the universal observation post, Space Station Delta, was deeply perturbed.

  Several blips in the segment of the universe he was assigned to monitor were gone. At first, he’d thought they were just glitches, like his supervisor had suggested previously, but now he was certain that was wrong. Because they hadn’t reappeared, at least not permanently. For a while some of them had, shimmering in that ethereal manner that made his spine tingle all the way down to his seat, but then they’d vanished completely.

  Simply gone.

  He’d stared at the dark, empty spaces on his screen where they were supposed to be. Stared for a good, long time, his leg bouncing up and down nervously.

  Should he call his supervisor over again? She wouldn’t be happy to be disturbed a second time, not if it turned out to be another false alarm. So he waited. And waited, his eyes burning as he stared at the void where his friends had once been. Sparkles, Chub, Boomer, Sheila… Tramone could name them all. Often, he made up stories about them in his head, using his imagination to create an entire history of the faraway planets he would never set foot on. Hole, most of them were probably uninhabitable balls of gas that would melt his bones or boil his blood or something worse. But in his mind, they were beautiful, peaceful places where he could stretch out and watch the pale, pink clouds drift pass, providing the perfec
t amount of shade on a day that would’ve otherwise been slightly too hot.

  Stuck on this godstars-forsaken station for a year at a time, Tramone’s imagination, and his “friends” in the stars, were his only semblance of joy.

  And now four of them were gone, as if they’d never existed in the first place.

  He frowned, studying the screen even harder. Because there was something worse, something that hadn’t struck him before.

  There was a pattern of sorts emerging. At least he thought there was. He would require more data to confirm it, but the stars that had been…disappeared? Removed? Vaporized? Eaten?…were arranged in a sort of zigzag pattern. Almost like there was something out there hunting them, purposefully moving in one direction and then the other to be sure not to miss any of them.

  Tramone was about to raise his hand and summon his supervisor when he realized his own foolishness, a light laugh slipping from his lips. If there was really something out there eating planets, or stars, or whatever, it had already missed a ton of them. The area was practically surrounded by them. Yes, each was millions of lightyears away from each other, but the invisible thing had already shown it could travel great distances quickly.

  Which left him back where he started. A glitch—has to be, he thought, wiping sweat from his palm onto his pant leg.

  This time, however, he didn’t go back to playing his game, even though his mage character was only 50,000 MAG/EXP points from reaching Class 5. Instead, he continued to stare at his monitor, watching as a fifth star—Larry, he liked to call it—disappeared into the void. This one was a zig away from the fourth, which had been a zag away from the third.

  Tramone’s spine tingled and his leg bounced up and down. His palms grew even sweatier, despite his efforts to dry them on his pants.

  Because he’d realized the zigzagging pattern would eventually bring whatever was out there all the way to the Godstar Galaxy.

  Chapter 21

  Revelations

  “Why do you want to go to Urkusk?” Dacre asked Clay as they hustled along the magium-plated corridor.