Closing her eyes to enter the dream-state, she coaxed her mind to slip into his dream. The images she could receive this way was not the clarity she'd experienced when She-who-is had sent her the vision, for her father had refused to teach her to discipline her mind to see, but her recent adventure with the sacred beverage had allowed her to peek into forbidden realms. His mind was closed to her as though somebody had sealed it shut, but she found a crack where she could peek at what was happening inside.
"Máthair! Máthair! Tá siad mharaigh tú!"
Terror! Blood splashed upon her cheek. Crushing darkness and the scent of burning flesh! Ninsianna cried out in horror, unable to put herself into his dream. All around her, she could feel a darkness so powerful it felt as though it would crush the universe within its maw. No! She could not do this! Not even for She-who-is!!!
'Ninsianna … please... Don't be afraid of the dark.'
Ninsianna trembled. She didn't want to touch this evil. She didn't want to see the evil which pursued the boy she'd caught a glimpse of in his dream!
'This memory causes him great pain. He won't allow me to erase it as he feels it is part of who he is, but he placed his fate into your hands when you saved his life. Perhaps he will allow -you- to alleviate his suffering?'
Ninsianna felt the thread of She-who-is' mind grow stronger, whispering what she must do. The light throb of his temple pulsated against her fingers as she moved her lips with exhortations to trust her. He thought she was a spirit come to guide him into the dreamtime and was not yet convinced his continued existence was anything but a dream. Invoking the goddess for protection, she slipped into his nightmare.
Inside, a boy filled with a dark force was kept at bay by a slender eggshell of blue light. A howling, black emptiness spilled forth from his heart like blood, causing her to shudder as a terrible hunger clutched at her and threatened to annihilate her very existence. She-who-is instructed her how to wipe the accursed child from Mikhail's memory so he would be plagued with nightmares nevermore.
Ninsianna then placed her hand over his chest and sang songs of happy times to come with her and her people; songs of belonging, songs of never being alone. His hand moved up to cover hers, clutching her hand to the wound above his heart.
"Ní hamháin," he whispered. Not alone. She could sense he wanted this more than anything in the world. The child trying to force his way through the block She-who-is had put on his memories faded and receded behind that cold, blue eggshell of light she sensed protected him from the evil child.
Mikhail's breathing deepened into the rhythm of a restful sleep. Once she'd reassured herself the spell would hold, she kissed his cheek and went back to her own side of the chamber.
Exceptionally proud of herself for exorcising her very first demon, Ninsianna fell back asleep.
Chapter 12
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323 AE
Command Carrier: 'Light Emerging'
Border between Zulu and Tango sector
Colonel Raphael Israfa
Raphael
The Light Emerging was smaller and sleeker than other command carriers in the Angelic Air Force, built for stealth and deep-space intelligence gathering. Colonel Raphael Israfa was her commander, and also the de facto leader of the 42nd Intelligence Division even though, technically, that job should have gone to a general. It was his job to figure out what the old dragon was up to in Zulu Sector, or that's the excuse their Supreme Commander-General had given when she'd given him this command and then banished him into the uncharted territories. With nothing better to occupy his time, Raphael had spent the past nine months tracking a pattern of suspicious shipping activity.
“Where did Mikhail's distress call originate from? Raphael asked his second-in-command, a Mantoid by the name of Major Glicki.
“All we received was a truncated data burst, Sir,” Glicki touched her voice modulation box which helped her enunciate the non-insectoid sounds. “I didn't receive enough data to triangulate the signal."
“Narrow down the search parameters,” Raphael frowned. "This is my best friend who's just gone missing!"
With golden hair, cobalt eyes, and buff-gold feathers the color of a phoenix, what set Raphael apart was not just his golden plumage which, in a species prone to inbreeding, even the slightest variation from white was a cause for celebration, but the rare dimple which marred his otherwise perfectly engineered Angelic features. That dimple flashed now, but it was not because he smiled, but grimaced. When Mikhail had gone to the ground two weeks ago, he'd been running his scout-ship black-ops. He could be anywhere in the galaxy right now. Anywhere!
“According to Mikhail's last report, he tracked a Sata'anic merchant vessel somewhere up into the Orion-Cygnus spur." Glicki's green, heart-shaped head tilted to regard him with her compound eyes. “Other than that, we have no way to narrow down his location. The signal was extremely degraded."
Raphael rose and paced over to the vast, spinning hologram of the galaxy which blinked at them in varied, multi-colored lights. Each light represented a red giant, brown dwarf, yellow sun or other stellar body; all teeming with planets, all teeming with moons and asteroids where a ship could go down and never be heard from again. The Orion-Cygnus spur was the remnant of a dead galaxy swallowed up by the Milky Way so far in the past that even Emperor Shay'tan was fuzzy about when it had happened. While tiny compared to the major spiral arms, the area it encompassed was still vast in mortal terms.
“Damantia!” Raphael ruffled his reddish under-feathers. “Even if we launch an armada, it will take a hundred years to search that spiral arm. Orion-Cygnus is almost completely uncharted!"
“Two hundred twenty-seven years, Sir,” Glicki tapped her command module as she calculated the odds. “Based upon the number of known stars multiplied by the likely percentage we don't know about in an area this size. That’s how long I estimate it would take to search all habitable planets, not including asteroids and moons." Glicki paused her tapping and met his gaze. "Unless Mikhail rigs a homing beacon, Sir, we shall never find him.”
Raphael's golden eyebrows came together in worry. “Play me the distress call again?"
Glicki slid her prayer-like tibia slid across the console which served as the Light Emerging's nerve center with its dozens of communication feeds, her gossamer under-wings humming with concern. With the click of an armored fingertip, she boosted the audio signal, ran it through a series of data sequencers to enhance the audio quality, and then replayed it loudly enough for the entire bridge to hear.
---“Raphael … I’ve been hit! Shay’tan has found the godsdamned Holy Grail!!! This planet is crawling with enough Sata’an to…”---
“I'm afraid that’s all we received, Sir,” Glicki said. “I boosted the signal and traced the source as best as I can.”
Raphael's wings drooped. “Do you think Mikhail survived?”
Glicki enlarged the hologram to focus only on the likely search area, silently running calculations to narrow it down to where a scout ship could travel in the amount of time since Mikhail had last given them his position. Large swaths of the known scans of that sector bore black, spotty static. Glicki tilted her heart-shaped green head with worry as the Light Emerging's long-range sensors pulled up the most obvious stellar bodies, but the tags which marked those stars were only labeled 'unexplored.'
“Mikhail is tough as hell, Sir,” Glicki finally said. “Shay’tan's too cheap to terraform an entire planet. If it's crawling with Sata'an, we can assume the world is probably marginally habitable." Glicki flared her hard outer wings and fluttered her softer, gossamer under-wings to make a light ‘whirring’ noise, the Mantoid equivalent of a nervous sigh. Colonel Mannuki’ili was her friend as well.
“What do you think he meant by Holy Grail?" Raphael pondered the message. “I can hear the surprise in his voice, and Mikhail doesn't surprise easily. If Shay’tan stationed a substantial military presence around it, it must be valuable.”
“It could mea
n almost anything, Sir,” Glicki said. “All we can do is keep doing what we were sent here to do. Monitor shipping traffic, communications signals and energy signatures and hope we can get another scout ship in to track whatever Shay’tan is up to.”
“Nobody is as good at stalking prey as Mikhail,” Raphael said. “He can stalk a Leonid stalking a cat stalking a mouse. That’s why Jophiel sent him in to investigate in the first place.”
“He was trained by the Cherubim themselves," Glicki said. "If he could survive … you know…." Glicki didn't finish what she hinted at because the information was classified and there were other ears about, but Raphael knew what she referred to.
“Anybody who could survive that could survive anything," Raphael agreed.
He thought back to their journey together through Basic Training. Mikhail had always been a man possessed by tightly leashed internal demons, and as they had honed their fighting skills, Mikhail fought ferociously like a demon made of ice. He had fought, and won, as if he possessed no emotion at all.
It was an illusion Raphael knew to be false…
It wasn’t until he'd made the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel that he'd been granted access to view his friend's pre-academy history. Mikhail was the sole survivor of the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide. The then nine-year-old boy had been found clinging to the bodies of his parents in the ruins of their home, buried alive for days before a rescue crew had found him. The report claimed he'd survived by pulling a Sata’an sword from his dying mother's body and killing the three pirates who'd murdered his entire family.
Mikhail kept that sword at his side. Always. A silent, chilling reminder of a past he refused to discuss.
“We'll keep looking for him, Sir,” Glicki said. “Shall I put out an informational bulletin to other ships that we are looking for suspicious shipping activity into this sector? If Shay'tan has a base, at some point he'll need to resupply.”
“Please do that,” Raphael said. “And put in a request to Major Klik'rr that we are interested in any intelligence reports that may come in related to the shipment of any goods that might be used to roll out Sata’anic Rule. Supreme Commander-General Jophiel needs to know about this.”
Chapter 13
February - 3,390 BC
Earth: Crash site
Ninsianna
Ninsianna sat alongside her quiet, watchful patient, sharing a meager lunch of dried meat, sour berries and water. Mama had schooled her to never scrutinize a patient directly, but to gaze sideways at them through lowered eyelashes, a behavior Jamin had always accused her of being flirtatious, but which she simply regarded as being polite enough not to stare. Mikhail wore an inscrutable expression, quiet, watchful, and direct; studying everything she did as though it fascinated him. She was in the process of watching him pretend not to grimace each time he bit into the sour berries when a sound filtered in from outside the great sky canoe.
'Ninsianna?' She recognized her father's voice calling her name. 'Ninsianna? Are you in there?'
Ninsianna stiffened. Mikhail's wings jutted outwards as he moved his hand to grab the handle of his firestick.
“Who … Papa." Ninsianna put her hand on his knee to reassure him they weren't in any danger. “It's okay. Papa … Immanu. My father.”
She knew he didn't understand what she'd just said, but they'd reached an understanding that “who” meant something along the lines of “I am” or “it is." She gestured for him to remain seated in the tiny room he called a 'galley.' Studying her face for signs of fear or distress, he decided to trust her while she went outside to speak to her father.
Her mind raced as she stood just inside the crack they'd been using as an entrance and exit. Had her father come to drag her back to Assur? Ninsianna listened for other voices and, when she heard none, stepped cautiously through the exit.
As she'd hoped, her Papa was alone. Well-built and muscular, with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair that jutted out at odd angles, if not for his tawny-beige eyes, it would have been difficult to tell that Immanu was her Papa. His tawny-beige eyes were round with wonder as he ran his hand along the shell of the silver sky canoe.
"Papa," Ninsianna gave him an insincere smile. “Why have you traveled all the way out here?"
Papa pulled her into his embrace, his grip too tight as unwept tears caused his chest to shudder.
“Jamin said you were captured by a demon!"
“Jamin is the only demon!" Ninsianna's voice dripped scorn. “I'm fine, no thanks to him!"
She jabbed her finger at her father's bulbous nose as no other daughter of Assur would have dared to do.
"Or you! Now please leave! Because I will not marry Jamin, not even if it means I have to spend the rest of my life banished from the village!”
Ninsianna turned to escape back into the safety of the sky canoe before Papa could prevail upon her to do something foolish, like trust he would not entice her back to the village only to turn her over to the chief. Her father grabbed her hand.
“Ninsianna, is it true?" Papa shook with an almost religious fervor. “Has one of the winged demi-gods returned to grace our village?”
Ninsianna glanced back at the crack which now served as an entrance.
“I have never heard you speak of such a thing,” Ninsianna half-lied. It was only a half-lie because she didn't deny she'd seen a winged man, only questioned the fact that Papa had never spoken of them before.
“You must tell me the truth!" Papa said. "We have legends about a time the winged ones shall return.”
Ninsianna neatly side-stepped the question. “You have never told me such tales before?”
“You must show him to me." Papa pointed at the crack where she'd emerged. From past experience, Papa wouldn't leave until he'd done what he'd come here to do.
“Alright," Ninsianna sighed. "But first let me tell him you're coming.”
Ninsianna ducked back into the crack, explaining with sign language that someone wished to meet him. Mikhail agreed … she thought. She wasn't really certain as they didn't speak the same language, but he seemed to trust her. Going back out through the crack, she led her father inside.
“Gods be praised, it's true!" Papa exclaimed. He fell to his knees and bowed his face all the way down to Mikhail's feet.
Mikhail shot Ninsianna a look that communicated 'why has this man thrown himself on the floor in front of me?'
“Up, suas, le dol thoil,” Mikhail said in the pidgin language they'd been using to communicate. Although Mikhail was not prone to displays of emotion, he appeared uncomfortable at being apotheosized.
“Papa, you're embarrassing him! He bid you to get up!”
Still kneeling, Papa began to recite in a sing-song fashion a shamanic song she'd never heard before. It was sung not in her language, but what she recognized to be the language spoken by Mikhail.
In Ki’s most sorrowful, desperate hour,
When all was lost to blight,
She sang her Song of Creation,
And enticed Darkness to protect the Light.
Primordial Light, the architect,
Ki’s daughter, She-who-is,
Spun the darkness of He-who’s-not,
To create life, All-That-Is
But then one day, the sickness returned.
Moloch. Enemy of Ki.
The Evil One. The ex-husband spurned.
Collapse. Entropy.
He spread his evil, throughout the worlds,
Undoing all in his path.
Devouring his own children,
To make Ki feel his wrath.
But He-who’s-not, the Guardian.
Lord Chaos. The Dark Lord.
Sang the Song of Destruction,
To protect the Light he adored.
She-who-is wept bitter tears,
To see her playthings broken,
The Dark Lord couldn't bear her grief,
And offered his mate a token.
To keep the balance so he could protect her,
; They would play a game of chess.
She-who-is would create new pieces.
He-who’s-not would reclaim the rest.
But both must remain ever-vigilant,
Against Moloch’s eventual return,
He sends forth Agents to pave the way,
To escape the hell whence he burns.
When Moloch gains a foothold,
And desires to be fed,
She-who-is shall appoint a Chosen One
To warn of Moloch’s spread.
SHE shall send a winged Champion
A demi-god fair and just,
A Sword of the Gods to defend the people,
And raise armies from the dust.
As Moloch corrupts Agents to do his work,
So shall Ki appoint Watchmen to do HERS,
From the ashes of despair,
When all appears lost,
Hidden Agents shall choose to serve HER.
True love will inspire the Other One,
To pierce her heart upon a thorn,
And bring back hope where there is none.
For agape can access Ki’s Song.
When all the players have made their moves,
And the Morning Star shines bright,
He shall light the way through the darkest hour,
And restore the path of Light…
And if these measures should someday fail,
And Ki’s protections fall,
The Dark Lord shall seize his vessel,
And protect the Light by destroying them all.
“An féidir leat tuiscint a fháil dom?” Mikhail asked in his own language, one eyebrow raised in surprise.
“Roinnt,” Papa replied.
“Cár fhoghlaim tú a labhairt mo theanga?" Mikhail used his hands to accentuate his words. He leaned forward in his chair, anxious to hear what Papa had to say.
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 7
