Even the High Masters were at a loss.
The situation grew worse all the time, and there was no apparent connection yet to me, or my rapidly maturing abilities. I was assisting Master Vane with retrieving the bodies of two such casualties, when I somehow grew disoriented and dizzy.
I somehow touched the artifact to steady myself.
My transport powers went out of control. I thought I was going to explode. I started popping all over the planet, so rapidly that I could not stop or control it.
Then, even more frightening, the statue came to life and came after me, transporting right behind me. Even worse, it was disrupting all of the energy flows of Janosha, causing fierce Cosmic storms and dangerous energy vortices. If the process continued, the entire planet might be torn apart.
Next thing I knew, I ended up out in space, far beyond the planet itself. I barely had enough air to survive. One of the Intel naval vessels guarding Janosha rescued me in time.
Down on Janosha, the artifact statue went inert again, and appeared back in its original place and position. It was around that time that the High Masters determined that it was comprised completely of pure Ur-metal–the very material needed to forge the Cosmic Swords of Legend.
After my strange incident, I was strictly forbidden to go near the artifact again. Vane said that I was clearly the catalyst causing it to malfunction. He said that it was caused by some growing evil within me.
The High Masters built a fortress around the artifact in an attempt to isolate and contain it. That seemed to work. More years passed.
When I came of age at twenty, your mother, my beloved little sister, Lythe Ivala Maeris was almost seventeen. She had just completed her two years of naval service training, and elected to join the Mystics. She did Change Wisdom first, and then Order Wisdom, leaving her training in Chaos Wisdom for the last. My training was nearly finished, but I was so unique, that I was kept on as a prime adept while she went through her final training.
Things quickly seemed to go wrong near the end of that time.
First, the time dilation protection that the High Masters had worked so hard to put into place, suddenly collapsed and went down without warning.
Then one day, the protective fortress around the artifact imploded. All of the careful defenses completely shattered or dissolved.
Vane rushed to me and told me that the artifact statue was starting to melt down or do something very strange. It was feared that if the thing dropped through the planet to the core, it might even become a singularity and engulf all of Janosha.
The artifact had come to life somehow, and was suffused with Darkforce and Chaos energy. Tendrils and tentacles of Darkforce had slain many of the guards, and even destroyed several warships sent to attack it.
If the artifact reached critical mass, it might destroy the planet in a variety of ways.
High Master Vane ordered me to depart from Janosha. He gave me direct orders to do so.
I said that I would not–not until I found Lythe and made sure that she was safe. I couldn’t find her. Vane would not tell me where she was. He kept lying. First he said she could not be found. Then he tried to tell me that she had been slain–that she was already dead.
I didn’t believe any of it. I knew in my heart that my little sister still lived, even though she must be in great peril.
There was something Vane was hiding–something involving Lythe that he wasn’t telling me.
I went to the site of the implosion, a scene of tremendous devastation.
Lythe was there. I could see her, floating unconscious in the air, trapped within some kind of Cosmic energy sphere.
Tendrils or tentacles from the artifact were holding onto her sphere, trying to drag it in through the rubble of the destroyed fortress.
“She’s still alive. I have to save her!” I said.
Vane interposed himself between myself and Lythe.
“You can’t help her, you fool. She’s as good as dead. You’ll be drawn in as well, adding your power to the artifact. It will reach critical mass and destroy us all!”
“Get out of my way!”
I fought Master Vane to a desperate standstill over the next few seconds. He held me off, our battle drew us closer and closer to the artifact. It dragged and the sphere holding my sister nearer and nearer to itself.
When I sensed that the artifact was trying to zap me, I transported at the last instant. It nailed Master Vane, instead, captured him, and began drawing him in also.
I thought to use Cosmic energy absorption against the artifact. I had become an expert in that technique, but this was a level of power beyond anything I had ever encountered.
I transported around the artifact statue to a different point at random, each second, taunting it.
“You don’t want them. You want me,” I told it. “Let them go. Fight me. I’m the one you want!”
The thing warped and shifted shape. It stopped drawing the others in toward it.
In an instant, it transformed and looked just like me. It even started turning from Ur-metal into flesh. It looked at me with my own eyes and spoke to me with my own voice.
“You are correct,” it told me. “You are the proper match.
It focused all of its attention on me. The energy spheres containing Lythe and Vane rolled away downhill.
It charged me and we locked together. It tried to overwhelm me. I tried to drain away its energies. The fight escalated, beginning to melt and break down the wreckage all around us.
It was reaching critical mass, just as Vane warned.
A Cosmic detonation like what was coming could destroy the entire continent. It would definitely kill us all.
Then I sensed it. The Darkforce monster lurking within my mind and soul. It was ravenous for power.
Instantly, I funneled those great quantities of Cosmic energy into my dark monster in an effort to avoid the approaching blast. But that only made my monster stronger. It struggled to break free. I began to transform into an energy creature, bent only on destruction.
If that hyper-violent thing broke free, it would be just as devastating as the blast itself.
I grappled with the artifact statue again. It redoubled its efforts to overwhelm me, fighting against the dark thing trying to emerge from me. Both powers tried to overwhelm my force of will. I struggled to pit their might against each other, but I was still between them. They were tearing me and each other apart.
It wasn’t enough. I felt the detonation coming, and did the only thing I could think of. I let the monster within me engulf the artifact statue, swallowing it whole. It gulped it down, biting off the arms that fell away.
Then I took my monster back within me and trapped it within my mind, in the prison where it had been locked away.
When the blast came, I tried to direct it out from me. I funneled it straight up into the sky and out into space. I became not just an energy being, but some kind of conduit for Cosmic power.
I remembered screaming and doubling over, curling up in a knot.
The force of the blast ripped through the artifact, my monster, and myself, fusing us all together as one.
The shock wave and blast effects damaged and disrupted everything within six hundred kilometers. It knocked out all electronics, and all the Mystics within range suffered psyonic blast trauma, and bled psyonic ichor from their mouths, noses, eyes, and ears.
I came to and at first I was deaf. I was still smoking and the upper portions of my body were badly scorched and burned. I felt half-dead. I hurt everywhere, especially when I tried to move.
When I did look up, I blinked at the circle of blazing sky far above me. I was in a steaming hot, black-glass, crystalline tube that appeared to have been bored nearly forty meters into solid bedrock. The diameter was about half that.
When my senses returned, I realized that I wasn’t alone.
Somehow I had found my little sister Lythe, and curled myself around her protectively. She was so small and I was a
lways so big.
Somehow, my last act, my last thought before I thought we were all about to die–was to find her and protect her–to shield her, even with my own body if I must.
And she seemed to be fine. Except for some vapor rising off her, she was unharmed, not even burned like I was. Her breathing, heart rate–all strong. She was merely stunned.
I was so glad that I ignored my own pain, and picked her up in my arms and wept.
When I had it together enough, I transported us up out of the tube.
The devastation around us was…incredible. Everyone within the Mystic compound was injured and in shock. All tek was disrupted. I found Master Vane in some rubble, barely alive, burned worse than I was. I did my best to stabilize both of our injuries. Then I carried him and Lythe to the nearest structure still partially standing–the nearby starport.
All the ships there were tossed about and disrupted as well.
I was injured and growing weaker. I couldn’t transport any longer. I barely made it to the starport. Some Intel guards and several adepts recovered enough to start doing triage. Then the naval ships on patrol in orbit came down to assist. Their tek still worked, and a naval cruiser was set up as an emergency field hospital.
I know it was only minutes, but it seemed like hours before someone came by to help us.
With proper treatment, I regenerated rapidly over the next few hours. But I didn’t feel right inside. Something was still very wrong, deep within me. I was sick somehow. I could feel it. I didn’t know what to do. At times I would experience these spikes of intense agony, and for an instant, it felt as I was going to explode all over again.
I feared what I had seen within myself. I could never let that thing out, ever again.
And then there was something like a voice, trying to speak to me from deep within, yet it was too far away for me to hear what it was trying to tell me. None of it made sense. Half of the time, I thought I was going insane.
So did others. Most thought me mad.
Master Vane recovered quickly also, and immediately began his campaign with the other High Masters to have me executed.
The only good thing was that Lythe came back around. She was the only one who seemed healthy and unhurt, and she hardly left my side from that moment. She grew worried, and had the other adepts keep us informed on what was going on around us.
All three of the High Masters studied me and came to the same conclusion. From my ordeal of interacting with the artifact, I had contracted some kind of rare, ancient Cosmic sickness. The energies surging through me were unlike anything that anyone had ever seen before. I was clearly going to waste away or explode at some point, and no one knew exactly when–within a standard year, or the next few seconds.
That was all part of the problem that demanded an urgent decision to be made.
In that climate of fear, terror, and ignorance after the incident, no one knew anything. And therefore, they did not know what to think.
The artifact was no more. Completely destroyed, except for the arms, that has twisted and frozen into two indefinite shapes of precious Ur-metal. Yet compared to the artifact, they now seemed completely inert by comparison.
The artifact had affected the High Masters as well, and burned out part of their memories concerning the event. all they knew was the little I chose to tell them.
Regardless, Vane insisted that I had grossly disobeyed him by saving my sister Lythe. If I had listened to him, and left the planet, the incident would not have occurred. Even if something did happen–Lythe might have lived or died in any case–but that did not matter to Vane. He claimed that he was trying to protect everyone, and could not fail to do so, at the cost of the life of one adept.
I knew I had made the right choice.
I did make the mistake of trusting the other two High Masters. I told them about the monster I had within myself, how it had emerged during the struggle, and how it nearly escaped during the incident.
All three High Masters seemed to grow incredibly paranoid about this information. It seemed to go along with one of the old Cosmic prophecies somehow. Vane started ranting that I was clearly revealed to be a Destroyer, a legendary force of destruction feared by many astral and interdimensional beings that the Mystics had congress with.
Destroyers were doomed to grow mad, and could be consumed by the Darkforce. Ancient legends said that they could devour entire galaxies–even collapse and disrupt entire universes–if that could be believed. But the legends insisted that such events had all happened before in the past, and could very well happen again at some point in the future of every possible universe.
These Destroyers could only be checked or stopped by other legends, such as Cosmic Tricksters, various types of Champions–even other Destroyers like themselves–whether they slew each other or canceled each other out somehow. Many times, the Destroyers could not be stopped, and that universe ceased to exist–completely negated.
All three of the High Masters quickly turned against me.
The fact remained that I had disobeyed them and went against their will in several serious instances. They said they had no choice when they sentenced me to death. I could perish it any moment, and take half the planet with me. For the good of all, my life needed to end.
They made me swear to them, on my honor as a Spacer and a prime adept, that I would not resist, and accept my punishment willingly.
My sister Lythe was my only defender.
She alone stood up for me before all of them, utterly fearless, and pleaded my case with all of her passion and devotion.
Her pleas for me fell upon deaf ears–even when she insisted that I could be exiled somewhere, on a world where I could not hurt anyone else but myself. They would not listen. They were still afraid.
So in the end, I did not fight. I calmly gave them my word.
But from that moment forward, I never had any intention of keeping it.
Lythe offered to go with me–willingly into lawlessness. I could not allow her to do so. I swore a promise to her, and made her swear a promise to me, that she would pursue her own life of honor, and forget me if need be. I did all of that for her sake.
She could not be a part of what I was going to become–what I already was. And I did not want her to see that. Her Mystic training was nearly complete any way. She could move on to better things. I had no wish to poison her life, the way mine was going to be.
Two days before my execution, I broke out and made good my escape in a fast Intel courier. I injured many, but I strove not to kill anyone. I was slightly wounded initially, but I would recover.
From that point I was an outlaw–a renegade–with a high price and a death sentence on my head. Anyone could kill me, no questions asked. I became one of the most sought after criminals in known space.
Every hand was against me, and many sought my life.
I survived under many names and guises. I used every ounce of skill and power to survive and remain free, descending into the criminal elements everywhere.
I learned that everywhere there were secrets, and secrets meant power and wealth to those who could manipulate and control them. I became a rogue agent, dealing in the direct commodity of information and secrets, playing all sides against each other.
Our universe remained a dangerous place. I exposed plots and things that even cost many Spacers their lives. But had I let them go on unexposed, they would have cost far more. Everyone on both sides just assumed I was a traitor, so I used that to my advantage. Even when it appeared that I was betraying my own people, I made sure that in the long run, things worked out to benefit them.
I hid out a lot on the fringes, and in the Unknown Regions. They became my havens. I had several specialized ships I used. When things got too hot for me, I would go exploring for a while into the Unknown. I strove to have the latest tek. I always tried to have a way out set up–or several if I could manage them. I had aliases and disguises in many places.
But it wasn’t enoug
h. The Mystics and Intel sent a special ten person kill team after me. They tracked me down relentlessly through the Astral Plane. They came not to capture–but to slay me outright. I barely escaped, badly wounded.
Yet during our battle, I had been forced to kill three of the ten adepts on that kill team. Your friend, Admiral Klyne, was one of those who survived. All of them had been former friends and comrades of mine.
Several Intel fleets closed in on me. My ship was damaged. My jump drive crapped out just as I made it to the Gytoran Wormhole. My ship was being cut to pieces, even as I plunged into the vortex.
And, as everyone knows, the Gytoran Wormhole is completely unstable. It can spit you out anywhere in the galaxy–three quarters of which is unexplored. No one had ever come back from it yet–although a few like me have managed to do so since that time. But back then, for me it was either a one-way trip–or death.
When I emerged from the other end of the wormhole, completely at random, I had no idea where I was. I still don’t know where I came out exactly to this day. I couldn’t get back there if I tried.
My ship was severely damaged, I was badly wounded–dying really. My Cosmic disease had grown so bad that I was close to exploding again, or unleashing the monster inside of me.
I barely managed to crash land on a strange world that seemed to be the nearest earthlike. Boy, was I both wrong and fortunate at the same time.
I was on Zoa, Jia’s gateway world to Ur-Jahal, the secret Driathan homeworld hidden by their masters, the ancient Drians. Jia still won’t tell me or anyone else what quadrant of our galaxy Ur-Jahal is hidden in.
Jia extracted my broken, diseased body from the wreck of my ship, took pity on and saved me. To this day, I do not know what it was that she could possibly see in me.
She healed me–and from what she says, that was no simple task. In order to do so, she had to become part of me, and I had to become part of her, in ways that I still do not understand. But it was as if the two of us became, in fact, part of each other.
We also we fell in deeply love with each other, in so many ways too marvelous and fantastic to imagine or explain–the most magnificent thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. I am devoted to her, and she to me–for all time. We are everything to one another.
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 33
