The Forgotten Sky

by R. M. Schultz

  “Should we confront him as a group?” Nadiri asks. “Tell him we know what he’s done?”

  “He won’t admit to any of it.” Rynn’s guts twine into a ball of tension while picturing confronting Prabel.

  Maybe Rynn should just let it go. Let Prabel go. She could still search for her mom with the help of the Frontiersmen. Or will Prabel come for her again?

  “He must feel fairly certain that he can defend himself,” Rynn says, “or he would’ve at least attempted to escape while we were on Pseidoblane.”

  “Is there any reason he needs you?” Jaycken’s eyes narrow, questioning and sympathetic all at once.

  Rynn shakes her head.

  “There’s too much evil in this galaxy,” Jaycken says. “We must catch Prabel, but also learn the secrets of this beating sun, remedy it, punish the Northrite for planetary destruction, and vanquish the Ruin. Not even the Northrite could control a sun, not by any means known to man. Not make it shift its entire elemental mass.”

  Silence follows, flooding the chamber with overwhelming doubt.

  “I’ll help you, Frontiersman,” Rynn says.

  Jaycken grins. His gaze lingers on hers.

  Warmth rises in Rynn’s neck and face.

  Jaycken steps up beside her, before the mural, not close enough to touch her, but the space between their bodies seems to shift, to carry a tension she hasn’t noticed before. Rynn wonders if he feels it too. She wants to lean over just enough so that their hands brush together. To touch.

  He’s only a few years older.

  “First, then,” Jaycken says, “how do we prove that Prabel locked you in those granite boxes?”

  The feeling of the charged air between her body and Jaycken’s balloons to the point of discomfort.

  Rynn whirls about, not wanting to think about touching Jaycken or confronting Prabel or discussing any of it any longer. “I guess I’ll offer myself as bait.”

  She hurries out of the tower.

  That night, Rynn lies in a grotto in the cliff face near Prabel’s accommodations.

  Jaycken—as a full-fledged Frontiersman in gray and royal blue—made a show outside Prabel’s tower. He shouted at Rynn and told her she had no place with the Frontiersmen, not with a missing eye. Said she had to leave this place when the merchant did.

  Rynn pretends to sleep, rolls onto her side, and pulls blankets over her head. It’s cold inside the small grotto despite a heat shield at the entrance. Would Prabel come tonight, to do whatever it is he does to her to make her weaker each day?

  When she sees something suspicious, she will alert the others through her v-rim, so that they can all come running from the closest barracks. They would freeze to death waiting outside for hours at night.

  Rynn lies still for hours, her eyelid growing heavy before it settles closed.

  She dreams.

  Step. Jump. Land.

  A gentle breeze rises.

  The shadowless creature leads her across miniature planets to a final mirror doorway in the blackness of space.

  Maybe Rynn should run from Forgeron and try to locate her mom by using the make-believe. But she’s tried to run from the creature before, and she doesn’t know how finding someone in a dream will relate to locating them in the real galaxy.

  Is Forgeron actually trying to help her? The creature warned her of the flying beast in the mist on Pseidoblane just before it arrived and encouraged her to leave Prabel.

  Emotions pour through the mirror door like waves of heat: hate, rage, greed, sorrow. All at once. Emotions in waves, like how Jaycken assisted her after saving her from the sarcophagus.

  Are these emotions coming from the one who rules the Northrite?

  The Northrite’s real leader is a Beguiler of incredible power, evil. No one else knows it, not even the other members …

  Rynn knows the mask she should see inside the mirror, a mask of forest green scales. Who is the person underneath?

  She enters the portal. Three towering pyramids hover in space in the distance, pristine but composed of ancient stones, recently erected. Before them stands a figure in a mask of scales, the Herald.

  The Beguiler.

  Their back is to Rynn as they scratch their neck.

  Rynn gasps, steps back onto a miniature planet, and turns to flee, but the portal she came through is gone. She glances over her shoulder. The pyramids are now ancient, in ruins, torn apart, crumbled stone blocks, sanded over.

  The Herald faces her. Tiny bubbles of light swarm out of the Herald’s hand like twinkling fairies.

  Rynn grabs one as it draws near and inspects it like a jeweler with a gem. An image of a red sun beats inside the bubble.

  She studies the millions of floating dots and grabs another. Another beating sun, and another and another.

  One light of pale blue hovers amongst so many yellow. Rynn waits until it swirls near and snatches it. Inspects it. Sees a floating, armless hand scratching words into rock.

  She looks up as fear runs icy slush through her veins.

  The pyramids appear in their initial building stages now, only their bases and scaffolding apparent. The Herald extends a palm, sucking all of the memory drops back.

  The dream world rips into tatters, streaming away.

  Rynn is wide awake, a stinging in her shoulder.

  Something is there, black against the dim light seeping into the grotto. The silhouette is hunched and scuttles for her.

  Rynn actually fell asleep … Is this the shadowless creature? What did it want with her now?

  Rynn cannot talk, cannot send a message through her v-rim, doesn’t even feel her v-rim on her forehead.

  She attempts to scream, draws in a full breath, and forces her ribs to rebound against her lungs. Her body does not comply. Only a faint whisper of air drags past her throat and lips, a flicker of the thought in her mind, along with a spark in her brain.

  The black form sidles closer. Prods her. Removes a dart from her shoulder, holsters a firearm, and rolls up her sleeve. A sharp poke and a tugging sensation follow; some kind of cannula slides through the skin of her arm.

  Rynn cannot move, cannot cry out, can only lie there … watching.

  The creature attaches tubing to the cannula, placing the other end into a beaker. Dark liquid drips and then flows into the beaker. Her blood.

  Light appears and wavers outside the grotto. Muted conversations.

  The creature stiffens and glances about. It sidles for the entrance.

  Light engulfs the area outside, drawing closer.

  Ethanial enters, carrying a pulser with a blinding light. Two Frontiersmen with pulsers flank him as well as Jaycken, Nadiri, and Bruan.

  “We heard your Whisper,” Ethanial says.

  A Whisper? Disbelief hovers around Rynn’s thoughts. When she tried to send out her v-rim message and saw a spark in her mind? It was a cry for help, a wish to tell someone she was in the grotto and something had come for her.

  The creature huddles and presses against the wall beside Rynn.

  It’s not the creature. It’s Prabel, but different: hunched like a troll in children’s tales, his sharply angled beard white and patchy, his eyes and fingernails as black as space.

  “What is that?” Jaycken shouts.

  “Prabel?” Ethanial lowers his pulser and falls silent for several moments. “That’s why you hang around us so often, making great deals. You’re a Feeder.”

  “A Feeder!” Jaycken says, as if he understands.

  Prabel’s voice cracks, a raspy, throaty tone seeming to come from something dry and dead. “I must have a drink or I’ll die.”

  “At some point we should all die.” Jaycken kicks the beaker over, spilling Rynn’s blood. A wave of black liquid rolls over rock and dirt, gathering in small pools and sinking into the earth.

  Prabel screams and falls to his knees, his black nails reaching and clawing desperately at the bloodied ground.

  “Help the girl,” Ethanial says. “She’s incap
acitated.”

  Jaycken lunges over and scoops Rynn up, her body limp.

  Ethanial continues, “Don’t worry, Rynn. This filthy excuse of a man will die in a few days’ time. We won’t harm him, will just lock him up so he can’t feed off concentrated elemental power—the blood of other Elemiscists and Frontiersmen. Age will take him quickly now. He’s likely been making you ill since he hired you. Some Feeders even force their blood children to face horrendous memories and emotions, to concentrate the power in their blood, something fear does to our kind. Do you recall any emotional trauma he may have put you through? It may affect his sentencing.”

  Rynn can’t nod but realizes why Prabel purchased her. She showed some control of the elements back with Nelm and Gritchon. They noticed she wasn’t shackled with a linkchain—like the one Jaycken now wears—and Prabel confirmed it for himself. She did not belong to anyone, did not escape from Elemiscist servitude, was a free person with power to be fed off of without anyone knowing, a rare find indeed. Prabel paid for her so he wouldn’t have to buy sustenance from the black-side, as Gritchon hinted during their conversation.

  Jaycken carries her back a few steps and sets her beside Nadiri, who pokes her with another needle. Feeling begins to return to her fingers, her toes and feet. Her lips move.

  “Rynn,” Ethanial says as Jaycken removes the cannula from her arm and bandages a gaping hole streaming with blood. “What punishment do you see fit for this vile creature? If you wish for a harsher sentence than jailing, speak now.”

  Rynn lies in Jaycken’s arms and rolls her head over. She studies Prabel, his dancing feathers, aquamarine and pink clothing.

  Prabel glares back, hatred and anger brimming from the recesses of his soul.

  Fear thrums through Rynn. She glances away. If she condemns him, he will retaliate.

  “Give me a sac of the Tibiriun aliens,” Prabel begs from his knees.

  Ethanial smiles. “You can purchase as many from us as you want, at ten times your price. They won’t save you. They only ease the pain the elements create within the body.”

  Prabel moans.

  Feeling returns to Rynn’s torso. She sits up. “Please, Officer Ethanial, let me speak to him a moment.”

  Ethanial studies her, then steps around her and joins the others at the grotto’s entrance.

  Rynn eases the bandage from her arm and holds out the fresh stains of blood in a trembling hand. More blood gushes from her wound. “Prabel, I won’t testify against you, and I’ll willingly give you a liter of my blood if you can Whisper to my mom and tell her that her daughter is searching for her.”

  “Rynn, no!” Jaycken attempts to take the bandage from her.

  Prabel is silent for a moment, staring at the bloodstains. “I’m not a Whisperer, but even if I were, I don’t know who your mother is or how to reach her.”

  Damn. That would have been easy. If he feeds off the elements, he must have some power. Rynn’s voice shakes, revealing her fear. “Then, I’ll continue to feed you as long as you Stride us across the galaxy in search of her.”

  “I can’t Stride.”

  No, of course not. He needed a Strider to reach the drifter and Jasilix. And I originally felt wary around him, not comfortable. So not a Beguiler. Rynn slaps the bandage back over her arm. “Then you have nothing to offer me in return for my continued weakness.”

  “You should appreciate the sacrifices I made to feed and take care of you,” Prabel says. “You should be thankful for the opportunities I’ve given you! Otherwise, you wouldn’t even be here.”

  “I’ll give testimony about my suffering inside the sarcophagus.”

  Prabel shrieks, rises on bowed legs, and reaches out. He holds a handle of blackness. “No, you won’t, because you fear me. You fear that I’ll find ways to get to you wherever you are.”

  A Paladin. Rynn’s entire body quakes in terror. “I w-will.”

  Prabel rushes forward. A spiked mace head forms above the hilt in his hand.

  Rynn scoots back against Jaycken, who reaches for his own hilt.

  Ethanial shouts. “Don’t use more of the elements’ power or—”

  Prabel almost reaches Rynn and Jaycken before falling to his knees, screaming in pain. Prabel’s spine bends, curling up on itself like a defensive worm or shelled insect. Teeth fall from his mouth with small pings, bouncing off rock, his gums as black as his eyes.

  Prabel collapses, twitches for a moment, and lies still.

  “Or it will kill you sooner.” Ethanial steps up beside Rynn, and scrutinizes her, probably questioning if she predicted and lured Prabel to his demise.

  Seeva

  Seeva sits amidst blackness, except for the bands of starlight.

  Her body feels almost weightless, with the exception of pain that feels like a crushing, swollen skin ravaging her body. Gravity is only a minor force. The outer titanium sphere of the Pearl is at her feet, but its rotational spin almost negates this gravity, threatening to fling her out into the vastness of space.

  Seeva sits in a cell, a space cell, as the Pearl refers to them. Five sides of this cube are transparent, giving her the feeling of hovering, as if there’s nothing stopping her from just floating up and away into the greatest emptiness known to man, a sky that is far too expansive. Too inhospitable.

  Her stomach rolls. Her mind disorients and clouds, her vision spinning. Now she’s on top of the vastness, looking down into an abyss, an endless black. She could fall forever and never hit bottom. There’s no horizon, no up or down.

  Seeva’s lost, unsure if she can ever hope to escape.

  Back in Drumeth’s room, Rettinger stopped his black suits from beating her to death, and as they dragged her incapacitated body away, she overheard something about keeping her alive for interrogation, to find out who she worked for. So far, she held out during her torture sessions in the space cell, claiming she acted alone, a victim seeking a reprisal.

  If Seeva gave in and talked, would they hang her by the filament, eviscerate her heart, and make war with her home planet, the people of Silvergarden?

  Or would they leave her out here to go mad?

  No matter what happened, Seeva accomplished her objective. She killed the vicious financial backer behind the slaughter of the hermadore herd, the kingpin. A vile consumer of women. A vile consumer of the poor and of people and planets everywhere.

  The only way she could have gotten to him.

  Seeva assisted future generations of animals in ways she could probably not comprehend. The hermadore herd could not be replaced … they were taken from the galaxy forever for an ancient medicinal therapy that probably didn’t even work.

  An aphrodisiac.

  So one man could attempt to have more sex. Something Drumeth could barely accomplish. No wonder he ran through so many women and hated them. He probably kept searching for one who could excite him enough for the act and then blamed them when he couldn’t respond.

  Seeva’s relentless rage slowly cooled over the past weeks in this cell without day or night, her rage becoming something glacial.

  Now a glow of pride shines through her numbness, her depression, a pulsing star inside her heart.

  Seeva says a silent prayer for the dead animals and the sympathetic souls cast throughout all those stars around her. May the galaxy be all the more peaceful and experience less death, less suffering, less taking by force, and less oppression by those in power.

  She sits, her mind awash with triumph, a quiet energy. She breathes, she exhales. Moments flow and pass all around her. She is content, proud, and happy. She can die now and find peace.

  Time rolls on.

  Hours later, in the mindlessness of mirth and questions, a hiss sounds and a grate at the corner of Seeva’s cell slides inward. Her gaoler rises into her cell with a platter of food floating in the nearly absent gravity, a shudder gun in their hand. This has been the routine.

  Seeva attempts to keep her eyes shut much of the time out here and forces herself t
o eat and drink.

  Maybe she should just let herself go.

  “Hello,” the gaoler says. Saysana is carrying her platter of food this time.

  Seeva twitches in astonishment, her feet hovering in the air for a moment before settling back down. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, with Drumeth dead, I’m no longer required to guard him. And Rettinger’s hesitant to take over the Pearl. It seems he very much preferred to be the guy watching the man in power. I want to help, so I volunteered to be transferred to this jailer position. No one else wanted it, to come out here.”

  Seeva folds her arms. She hates herself for the elation she feels at seeing Saysana, the elation for hearing what Saysana did to visit her, to care for her.

  “I can’t stay long.” Anxiety darkens Saysana’s eyes. “They will be watching me closely … at first.”

  Seeva takes the mealy fruit and hard bread. “Thank you.”

  “There have been uprisings from developing factions who are attempting to obtain control of specific quarters, or of the entire Pearl itself. You may have felt the quakes of several explosions. Even a squadron of Moonriders landed and raided a district. With a little luck, the black suits will be so distracted maintaining order they won’t find time to interrogate you.”

  Saysana forces a smile before exiting through the grate.

  Seeva eats with her eyes closed.

  She sings a song from her childhood, one she remembers singing with her field partner in the convent, of the love of the gods of the seasons. When she was taught that love was as harsh an emotion as the bitterness of hate.

  The night was old, when we were young

  And I sure thought you’d never come

  Then you took my ha-a-and

  The mid of life when silky dark

  And our vows to never part

  The world became o-o-ours

  The night was young, when we were old

  And you left my hand to hold

  Then I only felt your so-o-oul

  And it’s all turned so co-o-old

  ***

  Seeva screams as she wakes.