by Chris Fox
The extra gravity was absent inside the Talon, a fact that was less evident in his spellarmor since it insulated him from the stresses. He set Tharn against the far wall, and took a step back so Bord could take a look at her.
Bord knelt and pressed two fingers to Tharn’s throat. Tears streamed down his face, and he gave a tiny shake of his head as he looked up at Aran.
Aran stared hard at Tharn, and realized that her chest was no longer rising and falling. Tharn was dead. He compartmentalized the pain. He hadn’t known the reporter well, but he’d liked her, and seeing her die so suddenly was…he didn’t have words for it. It showed that any of them could go, at any time, even when they thought they were safe. “Bord, Kez, get Tharn’s body down to medical and see that she’s cared for. Then help Kerr and the governor to the bridge.”
Aran tried not to think about it as he zipped up to the bridge, and found Crewes already entering one of the three matrices. Aran slid wordlessly into the central one, and quickly stabbed all three void sigils as the rings rotated around him. “Tharn didn’t make it.”
The sergeant’s face fell. “Ain’t right, for her or any of the others. I hope all them zeroes ain’t been skipping leg day, ‘cause they’re gonna need everything they got.” The words might have been harsh, but the tone was as sympathetic as Aran had ever heard. Crewes’s eyes shone as he stared at the scry-screen. The sergeant punched a fire sigil, and the scry-screen sprang to magical life. It showed the world below, with much more clarity than the Ternus device.
Several moments later Bord and Kezia hurried onto the bridge. Each deposited their charge atop a bench on the far wall. Both Kerr and Governor Austin seemed to be recovering, physically at least. Austin’s gaze was unfocused, and he was muttering to himself under his breath.
“Hold on to something,” Aran instructed as he linked to the Talon and observed the situation outside through its senses.
The situation was pretty damned grim.
The station was doomed, and looked as if it would take the continent with it. The whole structure had already begun to list, and while stabilizing thrusters were continuously firing, they weren’t doing anything to deter the process.
“This thing is about to trigger an extinction-level event,” he said, “We can’t be here when it does.”
Metal paneling along the space elevator’s umbilical cord began to buckle, and the whole station was jerked violently downward. If not for the Talon’s inertial dampeners, they’d have been hurled to the deck.
“Sir.” Crewes tapped another fire sigil, then a dream. “Looks like the station clamp is inoperable, and we ain’t going anywhere until it’s removed.”
Aran cocked his head and saw through the Talon once more. A large arm with a magnetic clamp had been affixed to the upper hull. “Kerr, is there a quick way to get this dealt with?”
The fleet admiral’s forehead shone with sweat, and all he could manage was a quick shake of his head. The governor was in even worse shape, though surprisingly, Kheross had moved to his side. He bent to check the man’s pulse, then turned to Aran. “He lives. For now.”
“I’m going to try to keep it that way.” Aran tapped an air sigil on the silver ring, then another on the gold. He poured a healthy mix of blue-white magic into the matrix, and willed the spell into existence.
Lightning streaked from the spellcannon, arcing up into the clamp. It played across the chrome surface, grounding into the dense metal. A moment later there was an echoing thunk, and then the clamp released them.
“What did you do?” Bord blinked at him from the third matrix.
“Their clamps use magnets, and they require power. I shorted them out,” Aran explained as he cautiously guided the Talon around the clamp and toward the hangar door. Aran tapped void on the bronze, then the silver, then the gold ring.
The cannon fired again, this time a simple level three void bolt. The spell slammed into the hangar door, and a Talon-sized hunk disintegrated, exposing them to the vacuum of space. Explosive decompression ripped loose cargo, debris, and anything else that hadn’t been strapped down.
Aran waited for the turbulence to subside, then smoothly guided the Talon through the hole and into orbit over the world. Below him the space elevator’s momentum had increased, and the gigantic cable slowly toppled toward the planet below.
They shot away from the doomed planet, but Aran kept the scry-screen focused on the station. It was impossible to look away as it slowly slammed into the continent beneath it. They were insulated from the horror at this distance, but Aran knew that anything on that continent that hadn’t died in the initial impact was unlikely to survive the nuclear winter it would bring.
All around them stations burned like embers as their orbits decayed and they too fell toward the world below. A few large ships blasted off from the surface, but none of the small seemed able to escape the planet’s newly increased gravity. They were trapped in a nightmare.
Aran flipped the Talon around, and scanned for Krox. A brilliant white star still hovered in the sky, but only for an instant. He didn’t blink, or look away, but Krox simply vanished.
He turned wearily to Crewes. “Get a missive to Davidson, and tell him to turn around. The governor’s ship went down with that station. We’re going to need the Hunter.”
4
Hope
Voria knew she was dreaming, but also knew that what she witnessed was no ordinary dream. It had plagued her every night for weeks, in one variation or another. Each time, she appeared in the sky over Shaya in the midst of the largest orbital battle she’d ever participated in.
Shayan ships, backed by a Ternus fleet, which included the Wyrm Hunter, had formed a protective screen over the shield protecting the great tree and the cities clustered at her feet. There were many vessels in their ranks that Voria didn’t recognize, including dark, menacing ships that she knew must have been created by the Inurans.
Voria never spent much time examining the ships, because a far more dangerous threat filled the skies over Shaya. A god had come, and while she’d never seen the four-armed deity, she knew it must be Krox.
The god smashed the shield protecting Shaya, and wrenched the great tree from the world, its roots tearing out the farms and settlements as the home she’d known her entire life ripped free of the planet. Krox tore that tree apart, and withdrew an ancient black spear, many kilometers long, from the corpse.
At the same time a lady of light, Shaya herself, appeared in the sky to oppose Krox. Krox swung his mighty spear, and the lady of light answered with a double-bladed staff comprised of pure light. She parried desperately, but it was clear that she was not nearly as strong as the god who’d come to devour their world.
Voria’s eyes opened, and she stared at the ceiling to her quarters, aboard the Spellship. Her heart thundered in her chest, and she forced several calming breaths. Dread permeated every part of her body and her mind. She never saw how the battle ended, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume the lady of light would be overwhelmed by Krox.
She rose from her luxurious bed, and began pulling on her uniform. She needed to be in the Chamber of the First shortly, to help conduct the restoration ritual that would stabilize the planet in the wake of the most egregious theft of magic she’d ever heard of.
Teodros had drained the pool, leaving them without the magical strength to keep the shield in place. If there was one silver lining in her recurring nightmare, it was that the shield existed when Krox arrived, so it must mean that the ritual she’d be conducting today would be successful.
Small comfort.
Voria tied her hair into a tight bun, and then began sketching her teleportation spell.
She appeared in the Chamber of the First, vertigo washing over her as she adjusted to her new surroundings. The wooden ceiling vaulted high above them, the natural whorls of the grain making beautiful patterns. Except where it had been marred with battle damage, from Eros’s last stand.
She smoothed he
r uniform, freshly washed with a little water magic before she’d gone to bed. She didn’t clean up very well, but if today’s ritual was a success, that would hardly matter to these people.
Seven men and women, the finest surviving mages, were already gathered around the Pool of Shaya, or what remained of it. Each wore their ceremonial white robes, but while the clothing was the same, the people who wore it were most certainly not. Ducius’s face, normally twisted into a permanent smirk, was somber, his eyes haunted. The others all wore variations of the same expression, and why not? Their entire way of life had just been violated.
“Caretakers,” she called in a clear voice. They turned as one to face her, and she fixed her attention on Ducius, then gave him a respectful nod. “Tender.”
“Tender over what?” Ducius barked a bitter laugh.
She half expected Ikadra to comment on that, but the staff said nothing, though the sapphire pulsed thoughtfully.
“Of this.” Voria extended a hand and a swirling ball of liquid light appeared in the air above her, golden and potent. It was the stuff of life itself, hundreds of liters undulating in the air, bound by the magic she’d wrapped around it. “Eros’s legacy isn’t much. A remnant of the vast pool that once lay here, but it is a beginning. It is enough to conduct the ritual we’ve come together to enact, and it buys you time to refill the pool enough for a similar ritual in a year’s time. Eros served us well, in the end, and salvaged our future.”
“Our future?” Ducius asked suspiciously. He snorted, and for just a moment he resembled his old self. “Does that mean you count yourselves among us? That would be a first.”
Ikadra clicked rhythmically on the floor as she approached the pool. “It does. It means that I am staying on Shaya, and that I will be overseeing her defense.” She stopped a meter away from Ducius, and from the pool. “Make no mistake, Caretakers. Krox has risen, and he is coming. He will be upon us soon, and in nearly every possibility our world is destroyed. But in a few, we survive. What we do in the next few weeks will determine which possibility comes to pass.”
She hadn’t seen their survival, but telling these people there was no hope would only hasten their destruction. They needed hope more than they needed the truth.
Voria raised Ikadra and gestured at the roiling ball of liquid light, slowly pulsing over the center of the room. She maneuvered it over the pool, and gently lowered it to the very bottom. A soft, muted gold shone as she allowed the liquid to flow into the pool. A glimmer of what it had once contained, but vastly better than the cold darkness that had existed until a moment ago.
“What comes now?” Ducius whispered, his gaze fixed on the pool.
“Now I show you the power of the Spellship, gentlemen.” Voria raised a hand and began to sketch. She sketched as she’d never sketched before, sigil after sigil. “Among other things, my vessel is a magical amplifier.”
The latticework of glowing sigils grew, mostly life, but many water as well. Voria deftly wove them into a framework that would allow the other mages in the room to add their own magic.
“What is it we’re doing, exactly?” Ducius asked. None of the others seemed brave enough to speak to her, and their shell-shocked expressions worried her.
“We’re going to refill the pool, as much as it can be.” Voria placed Ikadra at the center of the spell, and released him. He hovered there, bathed in the magical energies. “Ikadra will channel the magic of every life mage aboard the Spellship, and thankfully we possess many. In short, they are returning a portion of their own strength. Each will be slightly lessened, but it will buy the time we so badly need.”
She turned to the lot of them. “I expect the same contribution from each of you, and will offer it myself.”
“Of course.” Ducius turned to the spell and began sketching life sigils. A warm, golden glow snaked up his arm, then left him in a burst of light. It flew into Ikadra’s sapphire, and was almost immediately joined by one from another Caretaker, and another.
Voria extended an arm as well, and her arm began to glow. She felt a portion of her power—a small, but not inconsiderable portion of her life magic—returned to the spell. It wouldn’t prevent her from casting her magic, but it would mean she could cast fewer spells before needing to rest.
She lowered her trembling arm, and nodded to Ikadra. “The rest is up to you.”
“It’s a good thing I am the sector’s most amazing staff,” Ikadra glowed. “You guys want to see something really cool? Watch this.”
Ikadra’s tip began to glow intensely, and the glow worked its way slowly down the staff until it reached the base. A beam of pure, white brilliance shot out of Ikadra into the pool. Wave after wave of golden energy flowed from the staff, all the power they’d lent amplified repeatedly by what might be the strongest eldimagus in the sector’s history.
The pulses only went on for a dozen heartbeats, then they stopped and the glow slowly faded. The sigils comprising the spell fused, then disappeared. Ikadra hovered over the pool, which glowed far more brightly than it had after she’d deposited the reservoir Eros had saved.
She leaned over the lip of the pool and looked down. The golden energy barely covered the bottom, but it covered it completely. Voria’s face slid into a wide smile. “We’ve done it.”
Ducius sketched a fire sigil, then a dream. He cocked his head, as if listening, then gave a satisfied nod. “The barrier has been stabilized. We’ve been losing a meter or two each day, and the rate seems to be accelerating. If this holds, we shouldn’t lose any more habitable surface. You’ve really done it.”
Voria nodded. “It will hold, for long enough anyway. If we cannot find a way to stop Krox, then it will hardly matter.”
She could feel the elder god’s approach, crowding out every other possibility. Krox would arrive within a few weeks time, and by then if she didn’t have a way to stop a god they were all as good as dead.
5
Torpor
Nebiat arrived in a familiar system, one she’d last seen when she’d rendezvoused with Frit and her sisters. The Blazing Heart of Krox, possibly the most powerful fire Catalyst in the sector, smoldered angrily in an empty solar system, untroubled by planets or other orbiting objects.
The only other circumstance of note was invisible to the naked eye, though not to hers. Countless primal Ifrit flitted across the star’s surface, frolicking and basking in the glow of their god. They would be nearly as useful as the Heart itself, if she could find a way to bend them to her will, as she had the drakes.
I am the finest binder that has ever lived, Krox rumbled. Enslaving them is trivial. The simple act of absorbing the Heart will see to that. These creatures know you are their god. They worship us, thus increasing our power.
The implications of that single statement, so casually delivered, were staggering. Explain. How does worship increase our power?
Krox pulsed with amusement. All life, all consciousness, exerts will on the universe around it. This will can be harnessed, and used to achieve desired possibilities. In short, the greater your influence, the greater your ability to shape reality to your will.
Nebiat considered that. So if the entire sector worshiped us, what would it allow us to do, in practical terms?
Very nearly anything, Krox rumbled. We would have the freedom to devour every Catalyst, and could use the power, and that of the surviving mortals, to reshape the galaxy as we see fit.
That presented some very tantalizing possibilities. Nebiat could undo the damage to her race that her father had wronged over the previous several decades. She could find a way to restore her people. I assume that simply believing in us doesn’t constitute worship. How do I secure these worshippers?
Krox’s mind showed her images of a vast swirling sea of stars bordering a super-massive black hole. She recognized it as the center of the galaxy that the humans had so amusingly termed the Milky Way. Primals will be drawn from the galactic core automatically as we grow stronger. They come from the G
reat Cycle, created originally by Reevanthara, perhaps the greatest elder god to have ever lived. Simply existing will increase your power, but for the rest you must convince them to consciously accept you as their deity. In most cases this involves founding a religion that requires them to perform daily rites. These rites force concentration, the touchstone of all worship.
Nebiat was fairly certain she understood the basics, and was eager to test it. Thankfully, she didn’t lack for subjects. She eyed the Blazing Heart, glowing with near limitless fire. How do I consume the Heart?
Simply approach and allow me to merge with it, Krox instructed.
Nebiat flew closer, basking in the magical power. The Heart pulsed a greeting, evidently recognizing the Mind of Krox.
Indeed, Krox rumbled. The Heart remembers our unity, and longs to be restored.
She seized direct control of Krox, a feat she’d not yet attempted. The feeling of power was heady, and she was the Mind. She reached out with a sea of grasping, white tendrils, each plunging into the body of the smoldering, red star.
Deep pulses of scarlet fire magic flowed up each appendage, and every pulse dramatically increased her strength. The entire process took long minutes, but when it was complete the Heart had faded to a dull, crimson husk. It floated there, a dead star, bereft of power.
Power that now belonged to Nebiat. It surged through her in a vast tide. Yet there was more than just power. There was consciousness. Memory. The Heart had been a god in its own right, at some point in the distant past. That god, she now saw, had been bested eons ago, and was one of the oldest parts of Krox’s power.
Oceans of flame rolled through Nebiat, granting enough magic to burn the universe, if she wanted. She’d never felt so alive, not even when she’d merged with Krox originally. The process was invigorating, and continued to accelerate as she adjusted to the new power.
