At Last 16-11 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Things were even worse, if that was possible. It turned out there were protection spells that the Whisper-possessed Seosten ghosts had put up around the Slide-Drive core. Which, of course, we didn’t have time to break through so we could disable the jamming. Not with Puriel already about to be taken over by those bastards. Every second we spent down here was too long. 

In the end, we only had one choice. My dad, despite his worry about his parents, agreed to stay behind and use the spells that he knew (and what Apollo and Aletheia showed him) to break through that protection so he could disable the jamming. It wasn’t perfect, but he had Mercury’s power. Which meant he could both speed up his own magic and make the protection spells run through their own duration much faster. He just had to do so carefully to avoid setting off any bad reactions. 

Tabbris was staying with him too. That was harder, but I convinced her that if I couldn’t stay and protect our dad from any of those Whispers that might come back, she needed to. She had her wings and knew all the ghost control magic I did, even if she didn’t have the same Necromancy power. I was trusting her to keep our father safe right now, and once they were done getting through the protections and were able to shut down the jamming, she would be able to recall back to me. 

Obviously, she felt guilty about leaving me ‘on my own,’ but I was able to convince her that it was for the best. We embraced briefly before separating so the rest of us could start running. 

Through my connection to Grover, I was able to describe exactly where Puriel and the others were both in appearance and in relation to our current location. Using that, Apollo and Aletheia figured out that they were in one of the special cargo holds. It was separate from the regular hold, intended to keep sensitive cargo that the Seosten didn’t want just anyone on the ship to have access to. The place was sealed behind high-level protections, which would have been a real problem if we hadn’t run into Aletheia already. Because she had actually been traveling on the Olympus already, and was trusted implicitly by Puriel, the Seosten woman already had access to the place. If it wasn’t for her, we probably would have had to spend way too much time finding a way to get through the security defenses. More time than we had right then, judging from how many of the Whispers I had seen doing their level best to get into Puriel’s head. 

As we raced back through the engine deck toward the elevator, Avalon complained, “This Puriel guy is supposed to be one of the strongest Seosten out there. I believe the exact words were ‘master of all energy, including magic.’ Shouldn’t he be able to wave his hand and blow these things away? It should be him saving us.” 

Aletheia’s voice was flat. “Ever since the… incident with the banishment orb, his mind has not been the same. Between that and the trauma he experienced at the orphanage when the Fomorians attacked, he has moments where he zones out and is incapable of reacting to the outside world. Spark is normally good at pulling him back from those moments, or simply taking over. But it seems that these Whispers are interfering with that.”

I gave a quick nod. “That’s what it looked like to me. I mean, from the outside.” Grimacing a bit, I added, “Whatever the reason, I’m pretty sure we don’t have much time. Things were looking pretty desperate up there.”

Thankfully, we wouldn’t be alone once we got there. Hopefully, at least. First, Miranda had already jumped back to her original body (it was with Athena and Dare) and was going to give them a detailed explanation straight up. As for the other two groups, I sent several of my ghosts back out to let them know what was going on as well. Between all that, it would hopefully make them meet us on the right deck so we could all do this together. That was the plan, anyway. 

By that point, we had reached the elevator, and I scrambled on before shifting my focus so I could look through Grover’s eyes once more to check what was going on. Things aren’t any better. It looked like Uncle Al, a Native American man, and my grandparents were all surrounding Puriel and the kids, protecting them from the ghosts that the Whispers kept summoning. Worse, I could see Invidia there, already in a duel with Uncle Al. Needless to say, he was holding his own. After all, he was Hercules. 

Even my grandparents were… doing something useful. It looked like Grandpartie was using a console to direct internal security weapons to fire on the ghosts, which were actually doing some damage to them. Probably shouldn’t have been surprising, considering how much experience Seosten would have with ghosts and other intangible beings, but still. And Grandmaria was… uhh, as best as I could tell at a glance, using magic to create a forcefield to hold the majority of the Whispers and ghosts off. 

I wasn’t sure which was more surprising and impressive to me, my grandfather being able to manipulate the ship controls like that, or my grandmother having a strong enough grasp over magic to create that forcefield. Or–wait, was she using magic or some power? Had she bonded to something? And come to think of it, Popser was barely touching the controls. It was more like his hands were resting on it, fingers twitching now and then. What–

Shaking that off, I focused on what was important right then. Namely, the fact that they were sort of holding off the attack. But still, things weren’t great. More Whispers kept getting through to add to the pile that were doing their level best to get into Puriel’s head, and the man himself still wasn’t moving or reacting to anything. He was just standing there with his head cocked to the side. There was clearly an internal struggle going on, and if we didn’t hurry up and get there, we were going to end up having to fight a Whisper-controlled Puriel. Which basically sounded like the exact opposite of anything approaching a good time. None of us were ready to deal with something like that. Hell, we weren’t enough even if we all joined together. This was Zeus, for fucks sake. We had nothing that could challenge him if he went after us. Especially on his own ship. Between that and all the other Whispers, including the Whisper-Possessed Charmeine, we would be completely fucked, in no uncertain terms.

Instructing Grover to tell my grandparents that we were on the way, I jumped back into my own mind in time to feel the elevator rising. It was going pretty quick too, and I could see Apollo messing with an open computer panel to one side. Apparently he had disabled the safeties or something and sped the thing up. Now we were flying toward the right deck. I just hoped we would make it in time. And, of course, cursed the fact that the Whispers’ jamming included blocking transportation powers. We had to do this whole thing the long way rather than just teleporting up there. Because, of course, this had to be as hard as possible. 

One day for a party to celebrate a victory. That was all I’d asked for. But did we get that? Of course not. And we still didn’t understand why the Whispers were here trying to pilot the ship into Tartarus to begin with. What did they think they could gain from that? Hell, what even were they? There were so many questions around this entire situation, and the only creatures with answers didn’t seem inclined to explain. But hey, maybe we could beat it out of them. 

Or maybe I was just looking forward to beating them in general. It was possible that I was slightly annoyed by this entire situation. Terrified too, of course. But also annoyed. 

The elevator finally stopped at the right deck, and the rest of us exchanged quick glances before stepping off together. The room beyond was shaped like a half-circle, with a line of elevators, including the one we had been on, along the flat line part. To the left and right were corridors, with several open doors along the curve part of the half-circle ahead of us. The main doors, straight across, apparently led to the primary cargo bay. But that wasn’t where we were supposed to go. Our destination lay to the left, down that hall. 

We were cautious, even as we stepped out of the elevator, weapons at the ready considering we had no idea what sort of traps or problems the Whispers might have left to slow us down so they would have time to take over Puriel. There could be anything waiting for us up here. 

And yet, despite having that thought, I still wasn’t prepared for what I immediately saw. Coming off the elevator, my eyes immediately fell on a single, lone figure standing with their back to us, staring through the doorway toward the main cargo hold. They showed no reaction to our arrival, and I took a quick second to size them up. They were solid, not a ghost, and seemed either human or Seosten from this angle. Probably the latter. A man, several inches under six feet, though pretty well-built. His brown hair fell to just above his shoulders, and he wore gray cloth pants and a simple white shirt, his feet bare. 

Even as I took that in, the man turned to look at me. Now I could see his face. He had a neatly trimmed beard and his eyes were a brownish-green. He looked, on paper, like a completely average guy of no particular power or importance. And yet, when I met his gaze, I felt myself shrink back reflexively. A lump had formed in my throat, as an inexplicable sense of danger and power filled me. He had made no threatening move, said no threatening words, had done nothing other than turn to look at me, but I still felt his power like a crushing weight. 

Abruptly, Apollo spoke up. “I’m not picking up any surprises.” He was holding a stone in one hand, enchanted to detect traps. “Doesn’t seem right.” 

“No surprises?” I found myself blurting. “What about–” Then my eyes flicked from Apollo, back to the strangely terrifying man by the cargo bay. But he wasn’t there. In that time, in that brief instant where my eyes had moved off him, he had vanished. “Wha–what?” I stammered, completely thrown off. I shouldn’t have been, given all the incredible powers I had seen. Yet something about that guy, something about… yeah. It threw me off, to say the least.

The others were all looking at me uncertainly, and I raised a hand to point to where the man had been, quickly explaining what I had seen. But none of them had caught a glimpse of the man. Even though he had been standing in plain view as far as I was concerned, they had not seen anything. A quick check with Seth and Rahanvael, each standing beside me, revealed the same answer. I was the only person who had seen him, or sensed anything at all. None of Mom’s powers, and none of Aletheia or Apollo’s magic, had picked up the man’s presence. 

And, come to think of it, I had not sensed him with my item-detection power either. He had definitely been in range of it, but I hadn’t sensed his clothes or anything. He had looked completely solid, but wasn’t detected by anything. Except by my own eyes, and only my eyes. No one else had picked up any sense of him at all. This was… weird. And it certainly wasn’t doing anything to make me feel better about the situation we were walking into. 

Mom and the two Seosten spent a tense moment focusing on that spot, but even after I pointed out exactly where the man had been, they couldn’t pick up anything at all. It was like he’d never been there in the first place. Which, again, was more than a little worrying. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to focus on any implications of that. Not with the problems we already had to deal with. We still had to get into the other room before the Whispers got through to Puriel, so any thoughts and worries about the man I had seen were just going to have to wait. All I could really do in that moment was hope that it wasn’t something that would come back and bite us in the ass before we were done with this specific problem. Hell, for all I knew, that figure was working with the Whispers. 

On the plus side, there didn’t seem to be any defenses here blocking our way. Which in and of itself was a bit surprising, but we weren’t going to dwell on that too much either. Especially not when two of the nearby elevators arrived in the next moment, with Larissa, Haiden, and Mercury emerging from one, and Sariel, Theia, and Pace from the other. With their respective Mirandas, of course. The ghosts I had sent to get them rejoined me, fading from view for the moment (though ready to be summoned back as soon as I needed them). 

“You guys okay?” I asked, thoughts of the man I had seen fresh in my mind. Much as I tried to set that aside, I couldn’t entirely dismiss his face. The way he had stared right through me, the power I had felt, it was too much to ignore. 

Theia waved. “We killed ghosts. And fuzzy-ghosts.” 

“Whispers, she means,” Pace put in, voice tense as she glanced around as though expecting to be ambushed at any second. “And we didn’t kill them so much as… make them go away for the moment.” 

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure we know where they went to,” Avalon muttered, eyes on the left-hand corridor leading toward the special, extra-secure cargo hold. “They’re throwing everything they have into taking control of Puriel. Or at least turning him against the rest of us. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t fancy our odds if that happens.”

“Which is why we need to get in there right now.” That was Athena, speaking as she and Dare came off another elevator. Her attention was laser-focused ahead, a silvery-gold sword in one hand that was still glowing from ghost-fire. “Worry about specifics later,” she instructed while still walking. “Right now, all that matters is driving these creatures away and giving Puriel time to collect himself.” After a brief verbal pause, she added, “And hope that Lincoln and Tabbris break those protection spells so they can stop this ship before it’s too late to matter.” 

Oh, right, of course. We had that problem to worry about too. Even if we did manage to get the Whispers away from Puriel and the others before they turned him into a monster who would annihilate us all, it would all be for naught if this damn ship managed to take us straight into Tartarus. But, you know, it wasn’t like we were under any pressure or anything. 

Pushing aside those thoughts we started to move, I told Athena and the others what I had seen, and the fact that no one else had sensed anything. She and Sariel exchanged brief glances, before the latter spoke. “When this is over, if it is alright with you, I would like to take a look at that memory and see this man for myself. It would be better than a description.” 

I agreed easily, hoping it would lead to an actual answer. Then I pushed the thought as far from my mind as possible, focusing on the here and now. As we ran, Dare gave me a quick look, silently asking if I was all right. I gave her a thumbs up, but made it waiver a little. Between that and the look on my face, I was pretty sure she understood just how uncertain I was about the whole thing. She, in turn, took a moment to touch my shoulder in mid-run, squeezing it firmly to let me know she was there. Which was nice, but also reminded me yet again that she still couldn’t tell my mother, her own daughter, who she really was and why she cared so much.   

It was just another thing I had to push out of my head so I could focus on the problem at hand. A problem that was right in front of us, as we reached the door leading to the special cargo bay. Aletheia had already input the code, the door sliding open to reveal the same room I had seen through Grover’s eyes. And a situation that had not gotten any better in the time since I had last checked. The kids were still huddled into an even tighter circle, though Spark wasn’t visible. My guess was that she was inside Puriel, trying to keep as much control as possible away from the Whispers, who were basically flooding over his body so much that there were constant distortion waves all around him. The rest of the Whispers, and the ghosts, were being desperately held back by Uncle Al, my grandparents, and that Native American man. But they were, unfortunately, fighting a losing battle, constantly having to pull back closer to the others as the attackers continued to flood into the room. There were so many Whispers. Obviously there weren’t as many ghosts for them to control, given–well, there weren’t an unlimited number of Seosten on the Olympus who had died, even counting ‘ordinary’ crew members. Still, they were all here, and they were making a huge push. Probably because this was as much a do-or-die moment for them as it was for us. 

Seeing us enter, Grandmaria raised a hand, the other held out to reinforce the shield she had erected around them. “Good to see you, kiddo! Wish I had time to have cookies ready.” 

“Later, Maria,” Uncle Al cheerfully replied even as his fist slammed into a ghost. It shouldn’t have done anything, yet the incorporeal figure still blew apart from that single blow. “There’ll be time for cookies once we remind these bastards they’re supposed to stay gone when they die!” 

“Hurtful,” Seth remarked beside me. “But considering the situation, fair.” 

Before I could respond to that, Sariel had taken a step that way, her eyes on the huddled children trying to make themselves even smaller. Specifically, on a small boy who was peeking up to stare right back at her. Omni. He was right there. 

Unfortunately, that single step was as much as she was able to take, before a familiar form coalesced right in front of us. Charmeine. No, Invidia. Her colored-in ghost form appeared, already smirking. “Oh, you people got through those traps even faster than we thought you would. That’s surprising. And annoying. But I think that’s about far enough.” Pausing, her head tilted before she raised both eyebrows. “Ah. It seems my host here has complicated feelings about seeing you, Artemis. How interesting.” 

Traps? What traps was she talking about? There hadn’t been any traps. Huh? A moment of confusion passed through me, as I exchanged a quick glance with the others. They looked just as uncertain. 

Sariel, on the other hand, manifested her bow and drew back an energy arrow before pointing it that way. Her voice was tight. “You and the rest of your kind need to get out of here right now. Why do you even want to take this ship into Tartarus in the first place? What could you possibly hope to get out of that?” 

“A fine question,” Athena put in, stepping beside the other Seosten woman, sword at the ready. 

Invidia, in turn, glanced between them before giving a slow, audible chuckle. “Taking this ship into Tartarus?” She echoed the words as though they were the silliest thing she had ever heard, shaking her head. “Oh dear. I believe you’ve made a very dangerous assumption. We have no intention of taking this ship, or anyone on it, into Tartarus. You see, in moments we will have control of one of the most powerful and instinctive magic users in this entire universe. But even more importantly, he has a direct connection to Tartarus itself. After all, it is the source of his power.

“Once we have him in hand, we will use that power to open the portal into Tartarus. Of that, you are correct. But we will not be going inside. No, quite the opposite. When the portal is open, we will be releasing the creatures which dwell within that universe into this one. Then our people will fulfill our destiny by taking the creatures for our own use. 

“And together, we will erase everything in existence.” 

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At Last 16-08 And Patreon Snippets 23 Concluded (Heretical Edge 2)

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Okay, something really fucked-up was going on around here. First we had found the Olympus seemingly abandoned when Puriel, my grandparents, and the others were supposed to be on it. Not to mention the fact that recall wasn’t working the way it should, cutting us off from getting any information from them at all. And now, shortly after we had transported over here to check things out in person, the ship was suddenly moving again? Someone else was in control, and they were sending the ship… somewhere. We had no idea who, and no idea where they were directing the ship. 

Apollo was already using his communication spell to call up to where Mercury, Haiden, and Larissa were. They answered immediately. Unfortunately, they didn’t know anything more than we did about what was going on. According to Mercury, he was totally locked out of the controls. They weren’t responding at all. He was going to try to get to the bottom of that, but it would take awhile. 

Worse, the connection was really faint. We could barely hear them. Mercury said something about interference, and that we should try to find the source of it because it was coming from somewhere on our level. 

Then the communication cut out entirely. We tried again, but got no more response from Mercury, or the other two. Nor did any of the other groups respond when Mom tried for herself, using multiple powers. Finally, she grimaced and looked to the rest of us. “It’s like he said, they’re being jammed somehow. Not just communication, but transport-type powers too. At least, within the ship. I really don’t like this. I hate to say the obvious, but this seriously feels like a trap of some sort. A trap that we just walked right into.”

“We can’t use the escape spells yet,” I immediately insisted. “We don’t know what happened to the others. If we transport off the ship, we might never find it, or them, again.” 

Dad’s hand found my shoulder, squeezing it. “If my parents and the others are on this ship, we’ll find them. And figure out what’s going on around here.”  

Mom sighed softly, nodding once. “Yes, we will. But if this gets to be too dangerous, I want both of you to use the escape spells. You too, Avalon. And–I know you’re not the original Miranda, but I want you to jump back to your original self and tell everyone there to get off the ship too, if it comes down to it. I mean it. If we have to, Apollo and I can keep the search going without you.” With that, she drew Clarent from its place at her hip, the black blade giving off that strange light in the process. 

Valley and I exchanged glances, but didn’t argue. It wouldn’t have accomplished anything right then. But I knew for certain that the last thing I was going to do was run away and leave my mother on a ship that was going who the hell knew where, controlled by who the hell knew who. Or what.

“So, we find the source of that jamming?” I finally asked. “Mercury said it was coming from somewhere on this floor. Uh, deck, I mean. That’s the ship term, right? Anyway, it’s coming from somewhere around here. And if the jamming is coming from around here, I bet we could find answers about the rest of what’s going on.” I made a show of turning in a circle with my hands out. “There’s gotta be something helpful around–” 

In my head, Tabbris piped up, Flick! Look to your right, over there in the corner next to the elevator doors. I–I just saw… There was something there, but I need to see it better. Not the A&M, something else. It’s down low.

Confused, but trusting her, I pivoted promptly and took a step that way before leaning down. At first, I couldn’t see what she was talking about. Then my eyes found it. A symbol etched into the metal, almost invisible. I was surprised she had noticed it at all as I had spun in a circle. But now that I had a closer look, it was immediately familiar.  

“Uhh, guys?” I spoke up, raising a hand. “Look at this thing. It’s the same sort of rune they used to drive away the Whispers back on the Quietus. And on Doug’s colony world.” 

Clearly taken aback by those words, Apollo moved closer and leaned down to look for himself. Frowning immediately, he ran a finger along them and murmured, “These are fresh. Someone put them here recently. I’d say at least within the past day. Probably less.”

Dad shook his head, having stepped over to look for himself. “Okay, but who would have put them there? Puriel?” 

“Him or Aletheia, maybe,” I pointed out. “Or maybe Uncle Al. They said he’s pretty good at magic, I think. But I don’t know if any of them know these spells. Wait, does that mean that it’s those Whisper things that are controlling the ship right now? Maybe they showed up and whoever knew these spells used them to try to protect Grandmaria and Popser, and the kids.” 

“That doesn’t explain where any of them are now,” Avalon pointed out. “Unless they’re holed up somewhere else in the ship and that jamming stuff, whatever it is, is stopping them from reaching out or responding. Or even knowing anyone’s here.” 

Apollo’s voice was grim. “I don’t want to think about what these things could be capable of if they’re enough to make Puriel hole up instead of blasting them off his ship. But that sounds like the best explanation we’ve got so far.” He pivoted. “We need to find the source of that jamming. And keep an eye out for more of those protection runes. They might lead us to answers too.” 

Mom gave a short nod, glancing around once more. “You take the lead. You know the ship. I’ll stay at the back, just in case.” Giving Dad, Avalon, Miranda, and me a brief look, she gestured. “Like Apollo said, you guys watch for more of those runes. I don’t know who put that one there, but I doubt it’s the only one.” 

“Yeah,” Miranda agreed, leaning in close to stare at it. “I just wish I could communicate with the other me’s to share information without poofing out of existence here entirely. It’s a one-way trip, and I can’t jump right back here to tell you guys anything they know.” 

With that, we started to move once more. It was basically the same as before, when we were searching each engine-connected compartment, only now we were moving faster, and we had specific jobs to do. Dad, Avalon, and I were checking each square inch of surface we passed, looking for more of those runes. Mom and Apollo were watching for threats and using various spells to scan for the source of that jamming. 

On the way, I spoke up. “So hold on. If those Whisper things are here, do you think we can’t hear them because of Liesje’s spell? I mean, the anti-Whisper stuff on Doug’s hat sort of protected against Seosten. Okay, not completely, but it let Pace and Theia both control her body at the same time. So if it works one direction, maybe it works the other way. The spell protects us from possession and might be shielding us from the Whispers too.” Even as I finished saying that, I found myself blanching. “Which means–” 

“Which means they might be somewhere around us,” Apollo finished, voice grim. “Possible. I don’t think so, but possible. I’ve got detection spells going and they haven’t picked up anything. Then again, I don’t want to stake anyone’s life on the idea that they’d be able to pick up these Whisper things.” Pausing briefly, he sighed. “Just keep your eyes open, I guess. For those marks, for any sign of these Whispers, or… anything else.”

So, we continued on like that through the engine deck, watching for anything that stood out. If there were Whispers around, we didn’t see any sign of them specifically. Nor did we find my grandparents or anyone else. On the other hand, we did find more of those runes. Hidden as they were, I was pretty sure we didn’t see all of them. But we found enough to let us know that they were all over the place. We checked a few more and all of them were quite fresh. This was definitely something new. And it made me even more intensely curious to find out what had actually happened here. Not to mention what was happening now. Why had the ship suddenly turned on? Where the hell was it taking us? How had whatever was responsible locked Mercury out of the system like that? And on and on the questions went. They kept replaying through my head while we walked, even as I forced myself to focus on watching for anyone.

On the other hand, maybe it was that slight distraction that ended up helping in the end. My thoughts were drifting slightly as I leaned around the edge of yet another doorway to scan it for any runes, when I felt something. It was very faint, but made my head tilt as the rest of me froze.

Avalon noticed immediately, stepping over to put a hand on my arm. “What is it?”

Everyone else had stopped to look at us, and I held up a hand for them to wait before closing my eyes so I could focus. That sensation had been at the very edge of my perception, almost too faint to catch. But it was there, barely. With my eyes still closed, I tried to stretch my senses that way to pick up more of it. Or even pull it closer. But it was like trying to grab liquid soap with splayed fingers. I felt a bit of its remains, even as the rest simply slipped away. And what little I had managed to grab faded before I could pull it back to us. It wasn’t the best metaphor, but close enough. The point was, I couldn’t keep hold of it. 

Did you… I started, needing someone else to verify what I felt. 

It was there, Tabbris assured me. She sounded just as frustrated as I felt. But I couldn’t get anything else. It was right there, like… like seeing something out of the corner of your eye.

With silent agreement, I looked to the others as they watched me expectantly. Taking a breath, I explained, “Ghosts. Or something like them, I’m not sure. I can sense something, just… sort of on the edge. I can’t get hold of it. Like… like it’s only partially here or something. It keeps fading out whenever I reach for it. But there’s definitely something. It’s just… faint.” 

Mom’s voice was flat, as she glanced around us with that black-bladed sword held out, its glow illuminating the nearby walls. “Does it feel like Kushiel did?” 

I hesitated slightly before offering a helpless shrug. “Not exactly, but similar I guess? I need to get closer, but I can’t even tell exactly where it’s coming from. I can’t sense a direction, just that it’s barely there at all. I just…” Heaving a sigh, I muttered, “I’m sorry, it’s not really helpful.” 

“Yes, it is,” Dad assured me. His hand found my back, squeezing it. “Just knowing there’s something out there is helpful, isn’t it?” 

“Something,” I agreed, “but we still don’t know what. Maybe the–I don’t know.” Something about that feeling was bugging me. Which wasn’t exactly a useful feeling, considering I had been feeling bugged about this whole situation from the start. Still, even that faint, fleeting sensation of something at least ghost-adjacent was enough to send a shiver up my back. 

Pausing, I murmured, “Hold on a second.” Then I reached out, stretching my power toward not the feeling I’d just had, but to someone else.

It took a few seconds, but I felt the response just before Seth coalesced in front of me. His ghost form appeared, the man immediately speaking. “Right, this better be important. We have parties too, and I was right in the middle of teaching–” He stopped, blinking a bit while looking around to take in where we were and who was around. “I ahh, I haven’t been everywhere on the station, but… this isn’t the station, is it?” Focusing on me once more, his eyes narrowed. “Let me guess, you couldn’t even take one damn day off without–” 

Mom spoke up. “Seth, it’s Lincoln’s parents. And the others.” He looked to her and she gave him a quick rundown of what was going on. Only a few sentences worth, but enough that he immediately muttered a curse. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” I agreed. “I need you to come with us, and if we do find any ghosts, or anything like them… well, use a ghost to fight a ghost.” 

He regarded me for a moment, before giving a short nod. “You’re worried that they’ll be like Kushiel, that you won’t be able to control them yourself.” 

Shrugging, I replied, “It’s a possibility. And if I can’t affect them, maybe I can at least boost you enough to punch them in the face really hard.” 

“I do enjoy punching,” he agreed. “Okay, fine. I’m with you. But we better get back before the party’s totally over. I don’t know about you living people, but the haunted mansion is hopping.” 

“I don’t think it’s ending anytime in the next couple days,” I pointed out flatly. “Now come on, we’ve still got a lot to search.” 

So, we kept going. If I had been by myself, I would have had to try to split my attention between watching for more Whisper runes, and stretching out my senses to check for any sign of that ghost sensation. But I wasn’t alone. Tabbris was here, so we split the duties. She took control of my body, making me walk after the others while looking for the runes, and I devoted everything I had toward trying to detect anything I could as far as spirits went. Or anything else that tripped my Necro-senses. I was barely paying any attention to the world around us, trusting Tabbris to navigate and let me know if anything stood out. I had to put everything toward the single task of sensing for ghosts. 

In the end, it was a good thing I did so, otherwise I would have missed the tickle at the very back of my mind several minutes into our search. Even focused as I was, I still barely picked it up, almost dismissing it before stopping myself. I strained even more, like stretching up on my tiptoes to reach for something on a high shelf that I could barely brush with my fingers. Almost… almost… there. There it was. I could feel it, and that time when the presence withdrew, I was able to make my senses follow it. 

And with that, as soon as I kept my grip on that faint sensation long enough, I was finally able to figure out what was going on, what was really happening. As soon as I did, I stopped short, grabbing control of my body once more before holding my hands out for the others. “Wait, stop. Hold on.” 

Tabbris, who could already read my mind and had realized the truth right alongside me as soon as I had, gasped inwardly and immediately muttered a couple words in my head that she probably wouldn’t have said aloud. 

Everyone else was looking at us expectantly, and I took a breath before raising my hand and turning to point. “We need to go that way.” 

Without actually looking, my mother simply replied, “Honey, there’s a wall there.” The others gave assorted nods of agreement. Again, without looking. 

“Is there?” I insisted. “Mom, you trust me, right?” 

“With my life, and everything,” she confirmed without hesitation, meeting my gaze. 

“I know it’s going to be hard,” I informed her, my gaze laser-focused on my mother. I had to break through to her. “But that’s okay. You’re accustomed to doing hard things. You do them all the time. You survived everything this universe could throw at you. You did what you had to do. You won every time, no matter what it was. You saw what you had to do and you did it. Nothing else could have stopped you, and neither will this. So, please, I need you to do one more thing for me. For me, Mom. No matter how hard it is, no matter how much you don’t want to. You have to do this. Please. For me, for Dad, for the rest of your family. You have to do this one thing.” Letting out a breath, I finished with a firm, “Turn around and look at where I’m pointing.”  

She almost didn’t. The effect was that strong and that difficult to push past. But in the end, after several long moments of silence, Mom finally, with great mental effort, turned her head. She followed the sight of my finger first, every muscle within her clearly fighting the effort. Her eyes were downcast, one last effort not to see. And then… oh so slowly… they rose. 

That was enough. With a gasp, Mom jerked as though something that had been holding her was abruptly broken. “Door!” Her voice sounded like someone who had been deep underwater for too long and finally broke the surface, that almost violent exhale, that gasp. “There’s a door!” 

With effort, the others did the same, helped by Mom’s reaction as it broke through the effect. Everyone finally turned to look and saw the door there. When his own eyes found it, Seth cursed out loud, much more colorfully than Tabbris’s silent mutterings a few moments earlier. Finally, he ended with, “–the chocolate-coated fuck?” 

“It’s the Whispers, I think,” I quickly put in. “The anti-possession spell helps, but it doesn’t completely keep them out. They’ve been able to do a little bit, like stop us from noticing this door. Or the fact that we keep going in circles in this small area. We’ve barely gone anywhere on this floor. We keep turning around. Probably because you need to go through this door to get anywhere else.” 

Apollo, who seemed as shaken as anyone by the realization that something had been affecting his mind like that, spoke up. “Yes. We can’t get anywhere else on this deck without passing through that hatch. They’ve been running us in circles. I… I didn’t even notice.” 

“Fuck, dude, I didn’t notice either.” Miranda was clearly reeling, pivoting in place as she pointed one way, then the other. “We must’ve gone through this area… God damn it, how many times?” 

“None of us noticed,” Dad pointed out, his voice proud as he looked at me. “Except Flick.” 

Flushing a little bit despite myself, I waved that off. “I would have missed it too. I did miss it, repeatedly. Every time we passed this spot, I felt that little brush on my mind, but it wasn’t enough to figure out what was going on. Not until I really focused on it and let Tabbris control me. I just–even then I almost missed it. I almost ignored it, because it told me to ignore it.” 

Avalon gave a little shudder, head shaking. “If they can make all of us completely ignore a door and walk in circles for ten minutes, even with Liesje’s protection, what could they make people do without it?” 

“Very bad things,” Mom answered, already striding that way. “And now I, for one, want to find out why they were trying so hard to stop us from going in here.” 

“Mom, wait,” I interrupted, holding out a hand before looking toward Seth. “Could you…?” 

He gave a short nod before floating that way with a casual, “Sure, what’s the worst they could do, kill me?” Pausing briefly by the metal hatch, he looked back to me. “Seriously, they better not be able to erase me, I’m just getting the hang of this ghost thing.” 

With that, he pushed through the hatch, and I sent my senses into him, watching through his eyes as he came out the other side to a narrow corridor. There was nothing there aside from a second hatch about ten feet onward, so he kept going, passing through the next one. 

Now there was something. An octagonal-shaped room with doors on every side, including the one Seth had just passed through. In the middle of that room was a smallish black woman in a dark red suit, who stood in the middle of a circle of those Whisper runes. All around her were… distortions in the air, even as the woman herself seemed calm and collected, almost like she was ignoring them. But I could feel the runes around her starting to lose power. They wouldn’t last much longer.

“We have to get in there,” I blurted immediately as I snapped my focus back to myself, moving to the door while explaining in a rush what I had seen. 

We could all feel the Whispers trying one more time to divert our attention away from the door, but now that we knew what their influence felt like, it was much easier to shrug off. No doubt largely thanks to Liesje’s spell. If we hadn’t just finished that before doing this, I had no idea how this whole thing would have gone. Poorly, no doubt. 

As it was, we pushed through the effect and made it into the other room. The moment we did, I could feel the Whispers all around us. They weren’t exactly ghosts. Well, maybe they were. They were something akin to them, at least. Either way, I could feel a lot of them filling up the room. Immediately, I shoved hard with all my power while snapping, “Get out!” 

They vanished promptly. I wasn’t sure how much of that was from my power, and how much was because they chose to. But the point was, they were gone. Which gave us time to look at the woman standing in the rune circle. 

“Aletheia?” Apollo immediately put in, stepping that way. 

“Hello, Apollo,” she greeted him simply, turning to face us. “I’m glad you’re here. We have to find the others and stop this ship. 

“Before the Whispers finish piloting us straight into Tartarus.” 

*********

Patreon Snippets 23 – Concluded

A Short Time Earlier

“We’re here!” The excited cry came from the small, six-year-old dark-skinned girl with bright green eyes as she bounced up and down, hands tightly clutching Maria and Arthur Chambers’ hands. She’d had no name in the facility she had been kept within before being rescued alongside her fellow… experiments, but had since been dubbed Zahd by one of Puriel’s household staff. It was the word for laugh within the language of the woman who had named her. “We’re here, we’re here!” 

Her cry heralded much more excited chattering from the rest of the assorted children, all of whom were staring intently at the viewscreen, which showed the planet Earth directly ahead, taking up much of the view. It was zoomed in, of course. They weren’t that close to the planet. Still, they were close enough that it would not be long at all before they would finally truly be there. After all this time and all the close calls they’d had, the Olympus was finally at Earth. And everyone on board who had family waiting for them were about to have their reunions. 

Needless to say, Maria and Arthur were just as excited as the children around them. They even did a bit of their own bouncing, though theirs was considerably more restrained. Still, they exchanged smiles with one another, before Maria turned fully to look at Puriel by the captain’s chair. He wasn’t sitting in it at the moment. That honor, in this case, had been reserved for Spark. Which, yes technically she wasn’t actually sitting there. She was still inside Puriel’s body, using a tiny portion of his power to manifest a solid-light image of herself. An enchanted stone kept within the ‘head’ of the magical hologram provided all the sight, hearing, and other senses she needed, and allowed her to speak. It was as close as they could get to giving the girl her own body, so long as she was trapped within Puriel’s thanks to her own condition. 

“How long until we can contact them? And… and how long until we can be there?” Maria asked the man himself, unable to keep the anxiousness out of her voice. She wanted to talk to her son and granddaughter. And, now that she knew the whole story, even her daughter-in-law. There were many things she needed to say to that woman, most of them apologies for the things she had thought and said over the past decade. But she wanted to do it in person. After everything, she owed her son’s wife that much. 

Puriel glanced over from the screen, meeting her gaze with a soft smile that told her he knew what she was thinking, and how badly she wanted to be with her family. His eyes, meanwhile, showed that he had his own assortment of apologies to give. “Technically, we could contact them over coms now,” he replied. “But we are still far enough away that they would likely be picked up by other Seosten forces around the planet, including the outpost on the moon.” 

“There’s a Seosten outpost on the moon?” Arthur turned that way, suddenly interested. “What are they doing, spying on the planet with telescopes or something? Can we see them from here?” He turned his attention back to the monitor, squinting toward the small speck where the moon was, as though attempting to pick out the outpost for himself with his naked eyes. 

Chuckling softly, Puriel shook his head. “No, you would not be able to see them. They are very well-hidden. Particularly since your people began to truly study the place with their technology. And they are not spying on the planet. My people have agents down there to do that. They are standing guard over–” 

Before the man could finish what he had been saying, there was a whooshing sound as Alcaeus entered at a jog. “Did I miss it? Did we call them already to let them know we’re here? Tell me I didn’t miss it!” He was looking around rapidly, arms full of various colorfully-wrapped packages. 

“You didn’t miss it,” Maria assured him with a small smile before nodding to his packages. “What do you have there?” 

“This?” The large man smiled broadly, his attention centering on the assortment of children surrounding Maria and Arthur. “These are just a few gifts I wanted to hand out before we get there.” When there was no response from the kids, he cleared his throat. “Ahem, time to come get your presents!” 

That did the trick. The children, who had been entirely unaccustomed to receiving anything throughout their time as what amounted to medical experiments, had learned what ‘presents’ were throughout their time on Puriel’s island and then this ship. Arthur and Maria had made certain of that. Hearing the magic word made their eyes light up, as they stampeded that way. 

Laughing cheerfully, Alcaeus handed out the presents and watched as the children began to unwrap them to reveal various jeans, skirts, shirts, jackets, and shoes. 

Seeing that, Maria’s eyes widened. “Al, what did you do?” 

The man’s voice was fond. “If we’re going to be on Earth, I thought it would be a good idea for the kids to have some Earth clothing. Just used a little magic to turn the designs I drew from memory into the real deal.” 

“That is…” Maria shook her head before stepping over that way to embrace him. “You are a good man.” With that, she turned back to the kids, starting to address them, before her eyes fell on Spark, still seated on the captain’s chair. One other person hadn’t approached the gift opening either. Omni. He was standing by his sister, both silent. 

Before Maria could say anything else, Al was already stepping past her. He held two more gift packages, one of which he handed to Omni, before pointedly setting the other in Spark’s lap. “You should both open these together,” he informed them in a low voice. 

The siblings did just that, opening the gifts together. Both contained more clothing, similar to what the others had received. 

“I know you can manifest your… hologram to look like anything you want,” Al informed Spark. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve real clothes that you can put on, just like everyone else. And when we get you into your own body, you’re going to need them.” 

For a moment, it looked as though the girl was trying to find the right words to respond to that. Her mouth opened and shut, staring up at the man from the seat. In the end, she simply managed a soft, “Thank you.” 

Before Al could respond to that, Maria spoke up. “Puriel? What is it?” 

Turning, Al saw the man in question moving to the doorway leading out of the bridge. His voice was distracted. “Do you all hear that? Who– Aletheia?” 

Arthur, Maria, and Alcaeus exchanged looks. Whatever Puriel had heard, it wasn’t the woman in question. She was on the far side of the ship, taking care of a few extra things before they arrived. 

The three followed after him as he stepped out into the room beyond the bridge. They were trailed by Spark, Omni, and the rest of the children. Maria thought about telling them to remain there, but decided it was better for everyone to stick together. 

Spark had already transported herself to appear next to Puriel, as the man stood in that trapezoid-shaped room outside the bridge. He turned one way, then the other. “Someone was talking,” the man murmured. “Someone was whispering right outside the bridge. No, more than one. People. They were whispering. I… heard them. It was just on the…” He trailed off, a frown finding its way to his face as his head slowly turned to the side, as though listening once more. 

Abruptly, Spark did something none of them would ever, in a millennium, have expected her to do. She pivoted, lashing out with a hand to smack across Puriel’s face with as much force as she could muster. His head snapped to the side while everyone else gasped. 

“Spark!” Maria blurted. “What are you doing?!”

Puriel, however, held up a hand. “Stop, she was right. I was… losing myself. Those whispers, they were telling me to… oh.” His gaze snapped up. “Whispers.” 

“Whispers?” Arthur echoed. “Who’s whisp–” 

“Whispers!” That was Kutattca, the Native American man approaching from one of the elevators. His face was covered in sweat and a bit of blood. “You’re right, it’s those creatures. They’re here on the ship. I don’t know how, but they are.” 

“What creatures?” Arthur demanded. “What are you–” 

“We need to find a safe place to defend,” Puriel announced abruptly. “We’ll use the protective runes and block them out, before they have a chance to affect the others.” Even as he spoke, the man focused, using his power to cast a spell that would give him a communication line with Aletheia. “Whispers are on the ship,” he informed her. “We do not know how many, but… enough that I have been affected. I’m contacting Aur–Athena now.” 

“Oh, no, I don’t think you are,” came another response. This was from the doorway leading into the bridge crew conference room, across from the bridge. And it was more than a whisper. It came as a full voice, along with a figure who moved into view, visible to everyone. 

“What–” Puriel started, before his eyes widened. His communication with Aletheia had stopped, cut off from his distraction. “How are…

“You.”  

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Patreon Snippets 22 (Heretical Edge 2)

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The following is the 22nd edition of Patreon Snippets. Each month, every Patreon supporter who donates at least ten dollars per month is able to request at least five hundred words toward any subject they would like to see written about (within reason), join their idea to others to make it longer, or hold it for future installments. Thanks go to them, as well as to all supporters, and to all readers. Remember, as little as 5 dollars per month gets you every single chapter one day early. In addition, donators get to vote on end-of-arc interludes, non-canon chapters, and have discounts for commissions.

Finally leaving the chaotic rush of yet another school day behind her, Abigail Fellows said goodnight to Miss Handsy before heading out of the office, satchel full of files over one shoulder and a cup of steaming hot coffee in the other hand. She was walking briskly down the hall when a voice spoke up from behind, calling her name. Abigail slowed and turned to see the dark-haired Athena approaching. Waiting for the Seosten woman, she asked, “Didn’t you have something going on over with the… what was the name of that group again? The ones who want to build an elevator to the moon.” 

“The Kalsteren,” Athena reminded her. “And not yet. They want me there for a special holiday, but it doesn’t start for two more days. They’re still setting things up. Also, the elevator thing is a bit of a misnomer. What they actually want is a stable, permanent portal to the moon. Which is a phenomenally bad idea, given… well, you know. But try telling them that.” Pausing, she murmured, “Right, I’m going to have to actually try to tell them that. We’ll see how it goes.” 

Curious, Abigail asked, “Actually, I don’t know. Why would a portal to the moon be a bad idea, exactly?” 

Athena’s mouth opened to answer, but they were interrupted as a new voice called out, “Abigail!” It was Theia, popping out of a nearby doorway. She was giving the wide smile that only ever seemed to appear that genuinely when she was talking to very few people, including Douglas Frey, Pace, Koren, Miranda, and most of all Abigail herself. 

“Hello, Theia,” Abigail greeted the girl with a smile of her own. “What can we do for you?” She didn’t outright chide her for not acknowledging Athena at all, simply choosing to point the other woman out by very slightly stressing the ‘we’ part of the sentence.

“Oh, hello, Athena,” Theia promptly greeted the other woman, voice making it clear that she hadn’t actually noticed her at all. That done, she promptly turned her attention right back to Abigail once more. “I found this.” Raising her hand, she showed both women the large, blue-and-violet seashell that took up most of her palm. “It’s lucky. You should have it on your desk.” 

“Aww, why thank you, Theia.” Accepting the seashell, Abigail nodded. “It’s very pretty.”

“It’s lucky,” the Seosten girl reiterated. “You can’t lose it. It has to go on your desk. You have to keep it safe.” Her voice was oddly urgent as she stared at the woman intently, as though expecting her to walk right back with it at that very moment. 

And that was exactly what Abigail did. With a glance toward the woman next to her, she gave a short nod. “Well then, I wouldn’t want it to accidentally get put somewhere else. Why don’t you show me the best place for it? Athena, you’re good with tactics, perhaps you’ll have a thought or two.” She gestured, inviting both of them to follow as she pivoted and walked right back to the other room, passing Miss Handsy once more with a pleasant greeting. 

Theia followed, of course, with Athena behind. Though the Olympian gave no real input on the placement of the shell, she did watch with curiosity while the other two positioned it just so. Only once she was satisfied that the shell was in its proper place, did Theia nod with satisfaction. “Good, you will have luck now,” she announced. “You need it. The job you have taken on is very difficult, and you will probably fail without a lot of luck.” With that blunt pronouncement, she offered another smile. “And now you have it, so I will leave.” Abruptly, she spun on her heel and began to walk away. 

“Oh, Theia, you’ll be over for dinner tonight?” Abigail quickly put in. “Koren wanted your help with some sort of vegetable dish she looked up. Apparently she thinks you’re better with a knife then she is.” 

“It’s true,” Theia agreed, “I have cut many things. And many people. And many things off many people.” With a bright, cheerful smile, she added, “I will be there to help cut more things.” 

And just like that, she was gone again, exiting through the door with only a belated, “Goodbye, Athena!” 

Only once she was sure the girl had left through the outer office, did Athena close the door and step over to where Abigail was. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do about that?” she asked while nodding toward the sea shell. 

Abigail, in turn, blinked. “The shell? Well, unless you’re about to tell me that it’s actually a monster that will eat me the first chance it gets, I was planning on leaving it right there. I mean, she’s not wrong about us needing luck to pull this whole thing off without ending up in a full-scale war against your people. Though I like to think our odds aren’t quite that bad.” 

Shaking her head, Athena looked to the shell briefly before turning back to Abigail. “That is the shell of a Kaula Mehyian. They are an incredibly rare creature, whose shell only turns that color once the animal itself has passed away of old age. Which only happens after ten thousand years. The same general life span as a normal Seosten. It’s part of why our people came to see them as lucky. The shell itself is proof that the Kaula Mehyian lived a full life and died naturally. If the shell is taken early, it doesn’t turn that color. Once the animal dies, the shell falls away and changes to what you see there. For Theia to have one means she either paid… an enormous fortune for it, or experienced what for almost anyone would be a once-in-a-lifetime find, and was able to pick up one of those shells on her own. That shell by itself would be considered…” She shook her head, trying to find some sort of comparison. “Your people have your four-leaf-clovers and horseshoes and such. But you have nothing like this. There is nothing even remotely similar. A Seosten with a Kaula Mehyian shell would never give it away, save for a true fortune, or… to someone incredibly important to them.” 

“Someone incredibly important…” Abigail echoed, glancing toward the shell itself once more with new understanding. 

“Yes,” Athena confirmed. “That’s what it means. Do you see the way she smiles at you? She does not smile at others that way. When she smiles at most people, it’s… awkward. Something closer to predatory. It doesn’t look quite right. And yet, with you, she’s perfectly natural about it. And one other thing, did you notice that she left without saying goodbye to you? Twice, in fact. First she announced that she was leaving and began to walk out. The second time, she specifically said goodbye to me. Not once did she say it to you.” 

“Well, I wasn’t going to bring it up,” Abigail murmured, “but I assumed she was just in a hurry. Or didn’t think it was worth saying, considering she’ll be around to help with dinner in just another hour or so. Hardly worth reprimanding her for, or even talking about, really.” 

“That’s not my point,” Athena informed her. “She isn’t saying goodbye because she doesn’t want that level of separation. It’s a… subconscious thing. If she never says goodbye to you, then you’ll never be apart from her.” She paused, then gestured with a sigh. “Sit down, please, Abigail. I think we should talk a bit more about this.” 

Her words made the school principal pause before nodding as she sat down. “You’re not about to tell me not to get so close to one of your people, are you?” Her tone was mostly light, but there was something more behind it. She would not have reacted well if the other woman actually pulled anything like that, no matter how unlikely it was. Theia meant too much to her. 

Taking the seat across from the desk, Athena shook her head. “No, Abigail, of course not. What I want is to ask you precisely how close you’re planning on being. You know how badly that girl’s mother treated her, how… rejected she was. Now I’m fairly certain she has latched onto you as… a replacement. You named her. You treated her like a real person. You… you are much more than a friend for her, and if that’s not… if that’s something you don’t want, we should find a way to take care of it before it goes too far.” 

Abigail leaned back a bit in her seat, watching the woman intently. “You mean if I don’t want Theia to see me as a mother, we should stop being so close.” 

“What I mean,” Athena clarified, “is that I think it would do her a lot of good if she didn’t have to tiptoe around the situation because part of her is afraid you will reject her if she brings it up any more directly than she already has. She needs to be accepted, fully accepted, if she’s going to move completely beyond the person her mother and our society turned her into. I think you can help with that–I think you have helped with it, more than anyone could have asked. But here I am, asking you for more. I know that’s incredibly unfair.” 

“What’s unfair,” Abigail retorted, “is what that girl went through for so long.” She exhaled, dropping her gaze to look at an unrelated folder on the desk while various thoughts ran through her mind. “She deserves a stable home, and people she can count on to be there for her. She’s had that, around here, to an extent. But you’re right, she needs more. She deserves more.” 

Both women went quiet for a moment then before Athena spoke. “As I said, I believe she has come to see you as a mother. But that leaves the question of whether you can see her as a daughter. But I think I had my answer to that when I watched your expression when you thought there was even a chance that I was going to say you shouldn’t be so close to her.” 

With a small, self-deprecating smile, Abigail admitted, “If you did try to tell me to stay away from her, I might have been thinking of throwing myself over this desk at you. You know, as effective as that would have been.” 

“Hey, you certainly would have had the element of surprise,” Athena pointed out with a smile before chuckling softly. She glanced away for a moment, seeming to think about what was next before turning back to the other woman. “My point is that what Theia needs is something more official. Something that can feel… firm to her. Something tangible, so she doesn’t need to wonder anymore about just how far your acceptance goes.” 

“Kushiel.” Abigail spoke the name with a harsh, spitting tone before shaking her head. “That woman treated her daughter like…” She trailed off, exhaling long and slow as she collected herself. “Whenever I think about how Theia was treated, it just… I want to… It makes me want to hurt people the way I’ve only ever wanted to hurt them when my… when Koren was hurt. I want… I want to be everything Theia needs. I want to be a better everything for her than her… than Kushiel was. I suppose I was just afraid that pushing on that too hard would make her think I was trying to replace her actual mother.” 

“Good,” Athena pointed out. “Kushiel should be replaced. An overfull lint trap would be a better mother than she was to that girl. The sort of upgrade you would be is just…” She coughed. “Abigail, she needs you to make it official. She needs you to be her mother. That means more than just hanging out. That means treating her the way you would Koren. It means making her part of your family, in every way. But only if you’re up for that. You can’t go halfway on it. Not with this, not with that girl. If you accept her, you have to accept all of her. Which means you’ll have to be ready to help her through some tough times. She’s been through more than either of us know, and I think there’s a fair bit she still has bottled up from the time she spent under Kushiel’s experiments.”

“And I want to be there to help her through that,” Abigail confirmed, in a soft, yet certain tone. “I want… I want to give her everything she never had the chance to have when she was with your people.” Pausing, she gave a very slight grimace. “I’d say no offense, but you know.” 

“You wouldn’t mean it,” Athena replied. “And it’s deserved. My people have a long way to go on a great many things.” With another sigh, she straightened, extending a hand. “I know there’s no real… court system for adoption up here. But I think it should be more than randomly telling her how you feel. She deserves something bigger than that.” 

Abigail accepted the hand, rising from her own seat. “Oh, don’t you worry, one word to Koren and she’ll help plan a party the likes of which you have never seen. And as for the official part, I think I can make up some papers and a certificate just fine. After all, I was a lawyer in a previous life.” 

“Well, here’s to previous lives,” Athena noted with a thoughtful gaze. 

“And the lessons we take from them.” 

*********

“You remember when we took Lincoln on that road trip across the country?” Arthur Chambers asked his wife while the two of them stood atop a hill overlooking a wide valley between a pair of silvery-red mountains whose peaks rose clear out of sight into the purple-clouded sky. The grass beneath their feet was a faint orange color, tinged with white on the tips. Before the pair, the field itself was full of enormous herd animals that looked like a cross between elephants and giraffes, with incredibly long, thick necks, tusks, and big floppy ears. They stood ten feet tall at the shoulders, the necks extending the heights of their head at full extension to nearly double that. It allowed them to reach their favorite food as it grew within crevices in the surrounding mountains. Their tusks were used to break open smaller holes to reach the moss that filled intricate cave networks throughout those mountains. And the sound whenever one of those creatures reared its head back and slammed forward to break into those caves, or simply to break apart boulders to get at the moss growing within, echoed like thunder across the field. 

“You’re thinking about the buffalo, aren’t you?” Maria replied. Her own gaze was focused on the Seosten children, who were running through the field, laughing and playing with one another. She could see Omni, pulling his sister’s hard-light form right along with them. From what Puriel had said, the two had quickly become close as soon as they met. And by now, they were all-but inseparable. 

“I’m thinking about the buffalo,” Arthur confirmed with a small chuckle at the memory. “Do you think he’d chase these big fellas?” 

“I think he learned his lesson with the buffalo,” Maria murmured before glancing that way. “You always did like going on trips. This whole thing must be your dream come true.” 

Arthur, in turn, offered a slight nod. “Hey, in more ways than one.” Tugging his wife closer by the hand, he squeezed it before putting his arm around her. “Having you here for my Star Trek adventure makes it so much better than my boyhood dreams. If Linc and Felicity were here, that’d make everything perfect.” Belatedly, he added, “And Joselyn.” That was still new, getting accustomed to the fact that the woman who had apparently broken his son’s heart and abandoned her family wasn’t the horrible person she had appeared to be. He owed that woman a lot of apologies for the thoughts he’d had over the years. 

“And Joselyn,” Maria confirmed, clearly having the same thought. Reaching out then, she pointed toward the spot where the children were running in circles. A moment of focus created a small, red ball of energy in the middle of them. The ball floated there until they had all noticed it, before abruptly zipping away from them. With a collection of squeals, the children suddenly started to chase the ball, laughing with delight as it led them on a run through the field. 

From behind the pair, Puriel spoke up as he approached. “I notice your little game there happened to lead them away from that nursing Ceurth.” He nodded toward a pair of the large animals lying together near where the kids had been moving their game. 

“No reason to interrupt a busy mother,” Maria noted without looking at him. Her attention remained on making the glowing ball lead the children on a chase. “How are the others doing with the hunting?” Alcaeus and Kutattca had gone off to get food to restock the ship’s stores. That being the main reason for this stop, aside from allowing everyone to stretch their legs. They were all down here except for Aletheia, who was still up on the ship itself as it waited for them in orbit around this unoccupied moon. 

“You think this’ll be the last stop we need to make before Earth?” Arthur added. They were far past the barrier by that point, in an area of space where livable worlds were even fewer and farther between than usual. It was Aletheia who had remembered this particular moon and ensured it would be part of their trip. 

Puriel stepped up beside the pair, watching the children below. “Yes,” he confirmed. “This is the last one. Soon, we’ll be at your home. And you can rejoin your family.” Belatedly, he added, “You are becoming quite proficient with your gift, Maria.” 

A small smile played over the elderly woman’s face as she made the ball fly straight up in the air, then down again. “It’s nothing compared to the sort of things you can do with it. Making a glowing ball of energy isn’t exactly helpful in a fight.” 

“You can be far more helpful than you realize,” Puriel informed her. “And not everything needs to be about being useful in war.”

Maria and Arthur exchanged glances then, before the latter spoke up. “From everything we’ve learned about your people, they’d really take that as a sign that you’ve lost your mind.” 

Puriel was silent for a few long moments, his gaze staring down at the children while his mind was elsewhere. “Yes, well, perhaps I have, at that.” 

Arthur cleared his throat. “He’s right about one thing, you are getting better. Almost makes me jealous that you took that gift.” 

“Don’t you start,” Maria teasingly chided. “You made your choice and have your own powers. And, the last time I checked, you were having a grand old time playing with the children with them.”  

“Yes,” Puriel agreed, “and yours have been quite useful already, even if they are still in their infancy stages. You will get better with them. But we will need to pay careful attention to that growth, and ensure there are no unwanted side effects. The DNA of that particular creature has always been a bit… unique in many ways.

“I, for one, am very interested to know whether the Djehuti gift will remain, as it is now, solely the same manipulation of technology as the woman who calls herself Gaia, or if you will eventually also manifest the same biological expertise as the man who now calls himself Seller.”

******

The house where Vanessa and Tristan lived with Sands, Sarah, and several others was dark as the blonde twins approached with Theia between them. The three were chatting about ways that they could potentially find out more about the Whispers and that whole situation, if Cahethal refused to play ball. Theia, of course, had her own ideas about good sources of information, and was just in the middle of explaining a plan that involved rigorous use of Flick’s ability to summon dead people and talk to them, when they reached the front entrance. 

As he unlocked the door, Tristan pointed out, “Hey, at least we don’t have to worry about being quiet. Even if everyone’s asleep in here, they’d all be in their soundproof roo–” 

That was as far as the boy got. Because in that moment, as he turned the knob and pushed the door open, his words were interrupted by a loud squeal. Or rather, several loud squeals, as a handful of party horns were blown all at once, to varying effectiveness. On top of that, the entryway just beyond the door was filled with people, all of them shouting something. 

Theia reacted instantly. Shoving the other two off to either side, she threw herself through the doorway and caught hold of the nearest ‘attacker’ by the arms. Her head slammed forward to crash into the person’s face, turning what had been a shout into a yelp of pain. In the next moment, she pivoted, hurling the dazed figure past the group before snatching two knives from her belt. One flew in the direction of the person she had headbutted and shoved, even as she pivoted to choose her next target with the other. 

All of that took place in what would have been a blink for most people. At her full boost, in fight or flight mode, Theia had done all of that before the average person could have even started to react. 

Which also meant it was only then that she actually took the time to see what she had thrown herself into. The people here were… Sands, Sarah, Koren, Ejji, Felix and her sister Triss, Columbus, and several more people from their classes. None were holding the weapons she had expected to see. Instead, they held balloons, whistles, and other party favors. 

“… what?” Theia finally managed, stopping short just before she would have thrown herself at the next person, blade in hand. 

“Hey!” Vanessa, poking her head in from one side of the door where she had been shoved, blurted. “What’s going on?” 

“Yeah.” Tristan joined his sister, head poking in from the other side of the door. “What gives?” 

“Uhhhhh…” The groan came from a low, wheeled table that had been brought into the hall behind the group. Jazz lay there, one hand holding her face where Theia had headbutted her. In her other hand was the blade that had been thrown, snatched out of the air before it could do any damage. Less spared, unfortunately, was the large cake that had been sitting on that table. A cake that was entirely destroyed by Jazz landing in it. 

“Happy birthday, you two?” the cake-covered, groaning girl managed, focusing somewhat bleary eyes on the twins in question. 

“And whoever’s job it was to tell Theia about the surprise, I’m gonna kick your ass.” 

********

“Fick, Fick!” The excited cries from the tiny, four-year-old Sahveniah filled the hallway. Within an instant of laying eyes on the older blonde girl, the dark-skinned blur raced across the distance separating them and hurled herself that way. 

Reacting quickly, Flick caught the girl in mid-leap and straightened, pulling her into a hug. “Hey, Savvy. Long time no see.” 

Holding on as tight as her little form was capable of (which was a surprising amount, given how quickly Seosten developed their physical prowess), Savvy didn’t respond at first. She simply clung to the older girl for several long moments before finally murmuring, “You were gone for a long time. They said you had to fight the bad guys. But you shouldna gone by yourself. You coulda beat the bad guys more easy if you wasn’t all alone.”  

Swallowing hard, Flick held the girl tighter against herself. “You’re right,” she murmured, “I shouldn’t have gone by myself. I’ll remember that. But hey, I brought my mom back.” 

“Yay!” After that initial cheer, Savvy leaned back to squint at the girl. Held up in this position, they were eye to eye. “I didna know you had a mama.” 

Flick gave a small chuckle at that before lowering herself down. She set Savvy on the floor in front of her while taking a knee right there in the Starstation corridor. “Oh yes, I definitely have a mama. You should meet her. I think she’ll like you.” 

“I’m a pirate,” Sahveniah informed her solemnly. “Does your mama like pirates?” 

“I think she’ll like one as adorable–” Flick started before amending, “Ahem, I mean as fierce and adventurous as you.” 

Her words made the younger girl give a brilliant smile, the entire hall around them seeming to light up. “When I get bigger, I’mma go on a ship, an’ take the ship, an’ go fight the bad guys, an’ steal all the bad guys’ booty. Fick? What’s a booty?” 

Coughing, Flick leaned back to sit on the floor with her back to the nearby wall, tugging the girl over. “Ah, in this case, it means their treasure.” 

Savvy cooed happily while climbing into her lap, nuzzling up against her shoulder. “What about other booties? Is there other kinds o’ booty?” 

Flick, in turn, simply hugged the girl tighter to herself. “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll find out all about every kind of booty. I’m sure you’ll grow up to be the most successful and dangerous pirate queen the universe has ever seen. Entire worlds will quake at the sound of your name.” 

“Only the bad guys,” Savvy insisted pointedly. 

“Only the bad guy worlds,” Flick agreed, moving her hand to gently stroke the girl’s hair. “You’ll steal all their treasure and make them walk the airlock. And your crew will sing all sorts of songs about the dreaded and beautiful pirate captain Savvy.” 

Giggling, Sahveniah gave a nod of confirmation, still leaning against her shoulder while making soft noises of contentment in her position. Eventually, she murmured, “Fick? I missed you.” 

“I missed you too, Savvy,” came the soft, gentle response. 

“I missed all of you.” 

*******

“Alright, all of you line up!” The order came from Larian Mondo, a two-hundred year old Heretic who had been brought in to take up the position at Crossroads that Virginia Dare had so loudly vacated when she left with the rest of the traitors. He was a deceptively small-looking man, barely five-foot-seven, with wire-rimmed sunglasses and long dark hair. He wore a dark blue suit, and carried a construction mace in one hand similar to the one used by Sands Mason. 

Sands. Thinking of the girl, Zeke Leven felt a sharp pang run through him. Fuck. He liked that girl. He’d liked her for years. Then that Chambers bitch had to show up and totally screw their whole society over, and confuse Sands and her sister so much they and their mother ran off with her. Just because her mom was a crazy, deranged traitor. 

And now here Zeke was, on another student hunt just a few days before Christmas, because almost nobody was allowed to leave the school to go on holidays thanks to this war draining all their resources. 

There were two teams assembled in front of Larian in this narrow alley in the outside world. Zeke, of course, along with Malcolm Harkess, Summer Banning, Freya Sullivan, and Laila Kassab (their sixth member, Erin Redcliffe, had disappeared during their previous hunt) for one team, and Gavin Rish, Stephen Kinder, Russell Bailey, a tall Latino boy named Martin Gutierrez, and two girls named Noelle Starson (a dark-haired, light-skinned girl with light green eyes and a wide mouth) and Tracy Faulk (a deeply-tanned blonde who was almost always laughing at inappropriate jokes) for the other.

The eleven students stood in front of Larian, while three other adult Heretics were lined up behind them, along with both team’s older student mentors. Crossroads was taking no more chances with their student hunts. Not after Erin’s disappearance. The two teams would each be accompanied by two of the adults and their student mentor.

Larian looked the group over. “Okay. Behind me and through that alley, there’s a hotel. Our info says it’s infested with some real nasty pieces of shit. The leader’s a Marakeya, so don’t let him get his hands on you or you’ll regret it. We’ll be right there with you. We start at the bottom and work our way up. One team at the front entrance, one at the back. They’re all monsters in there, so don’t let anyone escape.” He paused before adding, “And yeah, I know you’d all rather be hanging out for the holidays. Three days before Christmas and all. So thanks for coming along on this. Sometimes saving humanity means not getting a full vacation.” 

With that, he split the groups up with a few muttered words and waved hands, then pivoted, taking Zeke’s team along with their mentor (the Native American girl Namid) toward the front. One of the other Heretic adults brought up the rear, while the remaining two would escort the other team to the back of the hotel.  

Unfortunately, even as the group approached the hotel, they found their way blocked by a figure standing at the end of the alley. A figure who, by that point, was familiar to everyone. To Zeke, especially, despite never seeing her in person. He had the memory of her appearance seared into his brain from the research he’d done to find out exactly who was responsible for the society he had grown up in being torn apart not once, but twice. Seeing her, he felt a sudden rush of anger. Worse than what he felt whenever he thought of Chambers herself. 

“Joselyn Atherby,” Larian snapped, snapping his mace down before giving it a flicking motion that made a handful of steel spikes rise out of the ground, angled that way. 

The other Heretic adult abruptly disappeared from behind the group and reappeared next to Larian. Where he had disappeared from, a water-shaped version of himself was left behind before splashing to the ground, and where he appeared, a burst of flame shaped like him filled the air, then dissolved into the man’s physical form. He was holding his own weapon, a long claymore sword that could shift into a musket-like gun. “You shouldn’t be here, Atherby.” 

“Someday, I’ll tell enough of you that my last name is Chambers now, that it’ll actually stick.” After muttering those words, the blonde woman focused. “I need you to back off for a few minutes. We’re… busy. A girl’s life depends on it.”

Larian snorted, shaking his head. “I knew you were stupid enough to defend these monsters, but I thought you had some standards. Defending the things in that hotel, that’s a new low, even for you. But hey, why don’t you try your lies on someone else, like say…” He trailed off, pausing before his eyes narrowed. “You’re blocking communication back to Crossroads.”  

Joselyn, in turn, flatly informed him. “Of course I am. I’ve done this rebellion thing before, remember? And I’m not defending any of the people who willingly live in that hotel. But as I said, we’re in the middle of something. The life of a girl who is not in that hotel depends on us getting information out of the ones who are. So back off for a few minutes, then we can both… go about our jobs.” 

Larian and his partner seemed to consider that for a moment, before the first man’s eyes narrowed. “No. You know what? I think you’re stalling for something. Giving them time to get out.” With that, he waved a hand back toward the students. “Get in there, wipe out everything in your path. We’ll deal with her ourselves.” 

The next thing Zeke and the others knew, they were enveloped in a rush of energy, before finding themselves deposited in one of the side parking lots with the hotel itself visible in the distance. 

“What–what do we do?” Freya demanded. The tall, red-haired girl was looking around in confusion while holding her warhammer in one hand and shield in the other. She turned toward Namid for help. 

Rather than wait for their mentor to speak, however, Zeke was already pivoting, stalking toward the hotel. “We do what the man said. Get in there and kill everything in our way.” 

“Gonna need you to stop right there, dude.” The new voice came from a figure who rose from behind a nearby car and moved to block their path. 

“Koren?” Summer blurted. The black girl was staring that way, mouth agape. “Wha-what the hell are you guys doing? You can’t seriously think this is right. Those are bad guys in there!” 

Rebecca Jameson, moving up beside Koren, gave a short nod. “Yeah, you’re right. Those are bad guys. But we’re trying to help a girl who isn’t a bad guy. And the only way to do that is to find her in there before you guys kill them all or make them run away. Or at least find out where they took her. Mrs. Chambers told your teacher guy that, but he wouldn’t listen.” 

Malcolm, enormous sledgehammer in hand, took a step closer while tapping the head of the weapon against the ground a couple times. “You guys really need a better excuse. Now either get out of the way and let us do our jobs, or we’ll go through you. Neither of you could match me in training last year, you really think you can do it together? Let alone all six of us.”  

Heaving a heavy sigh, Namid finally spoke up. “He’s right, you two need to get out of the way. Believe me, I really don’t want to hurt either of you. This whole situation is fucked beyond belief, but we’ve got a job to do. So move.” 

The two girls exchanged glances, before turning back to the six Crossroads students. Koren spoke first. “Sorry. We can’t do that.” 

Rebecca added, “I guess you’ll just have to go through us.” 

There was a brief pause before Namid gestured. “No killing, just make them stay down.” 

Immediately, Malcolm lunged that way, already swinging his hammer. He moved so quickly, his form was a blur. Koren, however, smoothly twisted aside, pivoting on one foot like a ballet dancer as the hammer swung past her to slam into the ground. As soon as the head of the weapon hit the cement, three blunt concrete ‘spikes’ erupted from the ground right where the girl was. But Koren had already flipped up and over, landing behind the boy. She lashed out with a kick, which collided with his back, knocking him forward into the concrete slabs he had raised. Except they weren’t concrete anymore. In that moment, with a quick look, she had transformed them into a gooey, sticky, tar-like substance that gripped the boy tightly. 

Malcolm immediately used his hammer’s ability to send himself back to any of the last ten spots he had hit with it in order to teleport to where he had been standing a moment earlier. But he was still covered in tar. Tar that was rapidly solidifying, even as he blurted, “The hell is this?!” 

“Just get rid of it and focus!” Zeke snapped. The boy was already going at Koren from the side, lashing out to bash her with his shield while simultaneously creating three glass-like balls behind her, which exploded with concussive force meant to throw the girl forward into his swinging shield. 

Koren, however, wasn’t there. She had already tossed one of her Hunga Munga throwing axes into the air, teleporting herself up to it before pivoting in midair to face the boy below. A moment of focus made a wave of concussive force slam into the back of Zeke’s legs, knocking him slightly off-balance. 

He, of course, reacted by snapping his gaze up to where she was. The front of his shield shifted, producing two gun-like barrels from the middle, which fired twin bolts of electricity, powerful enough to put a bear on the ground. 

But Koren wasn’t there anymore either. Just before teleporting herself up to the first Hunga Munga, she had dropped the other one. In the instant where Zeke was shooting his electricity at her, she teleported herself down to that one, appearing in a kneeling position right next to the boy while he was facing upward. Before he could adjust, Koren lashed out with her fist, which collided with the boy’s stomach with enough force to double him over. 

Malcolm, by that point, had gotten enough of the tar off himself to come lunging to help his friend. But Koren had already torn the shield from Zeke’s grasp and pivoted, Captain America-ing the shield that way to take the charging boy’s legs out from under him. He turned the fall into a roll, coming up nearby while swinging his hammer. 

At the same time, Zeke had recovered from the punch, and swung around to clap his hands together, creating a focused sonic blast that would have burst the girl’s eardrums, staggering her just long enough for Malcolm’s attack to put her on the ground.

Would have, that was, if Koren hadn’t already made a wall of earth rise out of the ground behind herself in a semicircle. The wall caught the sonic blast, shielding her from its effects. Which allowed the girl to thrust both hands forward, hitting the charging Malcolm with a telekinetic shove that halted his forward momentum and sent him flying backward to crash into a nearby wall. 

Zeke, stumbling backward from the wall, shot a look toward Malcolm, then over to where Summer, Freya, and Laila were clearly having their own problems with the tiny waif Rebecca. “The fuck?!” He blurted the words in confusion. “You two weren’t this good last year.” 

“Things change,” Koren informed him flatly, flipping her Hunga Munga around in both hands before facing him. “You’ve been in class. We’ve been in a war. So, you guys gonna walk away?” 

In answer, Zeke made a growling noise deep in his throat, glaring at her. “You know what?” he snarled, already readying himself. “I think it’s time to shut you up.” 

“By all means,” Koren replied. 

“You’re welcome to try.” 

Wanna see more of this conflict and how it all resolves? Check out the end of arc interlude coming up in a few more chapters!

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Patreon Snippets 21 (Heretical Edge 2)

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The following is the 21st edition of Patreon Snippets. Each month, every Patreon supporter who donates at least ten dollars per month is able to request at least five hundred words toward any subject they would like to see written about (within reason), join their idea to others to make it longer, or hold it for future installments. Thanks go to them, as well as to all supporters, and to all readers.

Virginia Dare

1943

The sound of a woman’s terrified scream filled the night air, cutting through the quiet noise of various nocturnal animals. It was a night brightly lit by a full moon and millions of twinkling stars, which shone over the narrow dirt road. It ran between two enormous fields of corn that seemed to stretch on for miles in either direction. Down that dirt road ran the woman in question, the source of the scream. Her face was covered in dirt and spots of blood from various scratches she had picked up by running through the nearby woods that had led to the road itself. The woman was barely out of her teens, a small, frail-looking thing with dark brown hair worn in a long braid. Her name was Vera Anderlie, and she was dressed in overalls and a checkered shirt, with muddy boots. 

Although Vera’s scream was loud, it was nothing compared to the deafening cacophony of half a dozen wolves howling. Large wolves, who at that very moment were tearing up the dirt slightly behind the fleeing woman. She heard them, not only the howls, but the pants, the yips, the excited, horrifyingly eager snarls. Right behind her, they were right behind her, barely a few steps back. Close enough to pounce if they had so chosen. As they had been throughout this entire chase, ever since she made the mistake of trying to walk through the woods at night. 

That was almost the worst of it, really. They were playing with her, torturing Vera by making her think she could escape while still staying right on her tail. They could jump her any time, take her to the ground and rip her throat out on this step, or the next one, or the next. Just one wolf by itself could have caught and killed her long before she even got this far, let alone all six. It was a game to them, a game with her own life. They loved hearing her whimpers, smelling her terror, the tears running down her face, the sound of her heart pounding out of her chest. 

Soon, they would end it. Any moment now, they would tire of the game. Then they would bring her to the ground with a single leap, and she would feel their teeth tearing into her. It would be the last thing she felt. The last feeling she ever had would be horrific agony, the last thought would be a desperate wish that she could go back and choose not to take a walk that night. Her last moments would be filled with nothing but terror, regret, and agony. Any second now, any step, any breath, any beat of her heart, and they would finish this the only way it could end. 

Then, a different sound pierced the air, one born not of the woman, nor her pursuers. It was a sharp, almost painfully loud whistle. Both Vera herself, and the wolves hot on her heels, stumbled to a stop and looked toward the source. 

A figure, another woman, stepped into view from where she had been hidden in the shadows of the corn. An aristocratically beautiful, blonde figure who appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties, with long blonde hair worn in a single braid similar to the girl who had been chased this far, though her own was dark compared to this woman’s quite-light locks. She wore black suit pants with a crisp white shirt that was tucked in, her entire outfit and look making the woman appear to be more at home working in an office. That was, if women could ever do such a thing without being laughed out of the building. It looked as though she had taken her husband’s work-attire and dressed in it for fun, yet the clothes fit her perfectly. 

And, of course, there was the sword hanging from a sheathe at her hip. 

“Having fun?” the blonde woman asked with a raised eyebrow. “Truly, you have my apologies. Had I but known the desperate plight of your pack, I would have extended a hand of help sooner.” Her head shook as she lamented, “To be so hard-up for food that you must hunt humans, and so pathetically weak to choose such a small, helpless woman as your target, your pack must be truly pitiful. I would suggest hunting the rats in the field behind me, but I would not wish to subject your people to such terror.”

Her words earned a low, dangerous growl from the wolves themselves. They… they understood her, Vera realized, eyes darting back and forth between the assembled monsters and the woman who stood there so casually. The wolves seemed to have forgotten her for the moment, but Vera didn’t dare move and draw their attention once more. They were slowly spreading out to arrange themselves in a half-circle around the newcomer, snarling dangerously. Clearly, they had both understood the insult, and taken offense to it. 

If she was worried by their reaction and threatening posture, the blonde didn’t show it. She simply stood there, not even so much as reaching for the sword at her hip. As the wolves gave their threatening snarls and bared their teeth, she offered them a very faint, humorless smile while making absolutely no move to prepare any sort of defense. “I would offer food of my own, but perhaps it would be better to remove a few of the mouths who need it.” 

They understood the threat just as well as they had understood the insult. As soon as the woman said that, the wolves braced themselves to lunge that way and tear her apart. However, at the last possible second, the blonde called out, “You’re some pretty big wolves, aren’t you? 

“Do you want to see a bigger one?” 

*******

The werewolves were dead. They wouldn’t bother anyone else again. Certainly not Vera Anderlie, who had fainted shortly after Virginia had grown to her full-sized gigantic amarok form. Virginia had woken the woman up once it was over and she had disposed of the corpses, telling her that she had apparently been taking a hike and passed out from dehydration. She made sure the woman got back to her farmhouse before checking the woods around the area to be absolutely certain there were no remaining members of that pack hiding around. 

Now, she was leaving the woods surrounding the farmhouse behind and heading back to the dirt road. In mid-step, she paused, head tilting a little before she spoke up. “How long have you been watching?” 

Gaia Sinclaire stepped into view, curiously asking, “In general, or tonight?” 

Seeing her mentor standing there, the woman who had been a mother to her for so long, brought a rush of very powerful feelings to Virginia. Everything she had given up and walked away from in order to protect the world from the Fomorians had always been in the back of her mind throughout the intervening decades. But now it all came flooding to the forefront, almost making her physically stagger. Seeing Gaia reminded her of her husband… and her daughter. Her daughter, Joselyn…  It took everything she had not to visibly react. 

“Is something wrong?” she finally managed to get out, keeping her voice as steady as possible. Why was Gaia here? Staying away from everyone had already been hard enough as it was, but standing here face-to-face with the woman she cared about so much? It made things exponentially worse. Everything, all of those feelings of loss, separation, the terror and horrific guilt of walking away from her only child right after the death of her husband, it… it was too much. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t be here, couldn’t see Gaia right now. She couldn’t–

And then Gaia was there. Not only in sight, but right in front of her. The woman’s arms closed around Virginia, holding her close as the blonde felt all the strength leave her. She slumped against the woman who had been so important to her for so long. It was wrong. She couldn’t do this. She had to leave, had to walk away. Please, she needed an excuse to leave right now, before–

“Yes,” Gaia was saying quietly, her grip around the other woman tightening very slightly. “Something is certainly wrong. Sadly, I don’t know what that is. You see, I had thought for quite some time that keeping you away from me was for the best, so that your reputation among our people would not be drawn into the gutters after my decision to… sacrifice Desoto. There was no reason for you to bear any measure of the reactions from those who believe they know better, who believe they could have done better. I believed that leaving you out of my life in these years was for your own good.” 

There was a brief, poignant pause then. A pause during which everything inside Virginia screamed for her to make an excuse and flee. That would be for the best, the way to protect her secret and thus protect the world. She couldn’t risk Gaia realizing the truth, couldn’t… shouldn’t… And yet, no matter what her brain told her body, her heart had taken over and refused to relinquish control. For decades, she had been alone, wandering the same world she had sacrificed everything to protect. Right now, after all those years of being apart from anyone who knew her, the idea of walking away from Gaia was too much. She was just… tired. She was so very tired. 

Gaia’s voice continued softly while she held Virginia close. “And yet, the other day, an odd fact came to mind. You have not joined this new rebellion. You certainly have not worked against it. I know that there have been offers from both sides, people attempting to recruit you. But you refuse to be involved in any of it. I know you, Virginia. I know your opinions, and I certainly know that you would be at the forefront of such a conflict. Be it on the side of Crossroads if you believed their propaganda, or on the side of the rebellion if they were who you sympathized with. But staying out of it entirely? That is not the Virginia I know. And it gave me the realization that I was not staying away from you for your protection. You have been staying away from me, from everyone. That is the mystery I have been trying to solve. Why is my student, my girl, my… Virginia staying away from everyone who could possibly care about her?” 

No. No, no, she couldn’t… Voice cracking, Virginia managed a weak, “You need to walk away, Gaia. You need to go back to Crossroads and… help them. You need to go.” 

“Virginia,” came Gaia’s quiet yet firm response, “you know me better than that. Just as I know you. The only thing that could possibly make either of us walk away from…” She trailed off. 

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, Virginia couldn’t let this happen. She had to leave, had to disappear before–

“You.” Gaia’s voice was filled with sudden realization. “It was you. Of course. How could it be anyone else? The magic made it so hard to make that connection, but–” 

Her words were interrupted by a sound. A sound that nearly tore Virginia Dare’s heart from her chest. It was the sound of an earthquake, yet not anything that simple. It was far more than simply the ground shaking. The air itself practically tore itself apart as the banishment spell surrounding the planet, the spell that kept the Earth safe from Fomorian invasion, was shaken at its very foundation. Virginia sacrificing her identity, her connections to her family, was one of the main pillars keeping that spell going. And now, with Gaia’s realization, that pillar was being violently jostled. If it fell, if that pillar collapsed and the protective spell was broken…

Both Virginia and Gaia felt the spell wavering, like a stack of plates that had been jostled and was teetering back and forth. Looking up, they could see the night sky turn a deep, blood-like red, with thick clouds that were more solid than they should be. Yellow-orange lightning lanced through those thick clouds, as something began to reach through… 

And then it was gone. The sky went back to normal, and the air around them stopped trying to crack itself apart. The magic had been damaged, but held firm. Dangerous and terrifying as that had been, the spell wasn’t broken. 

Gaia, who had released Virginia through that, turned to face her once more. “That…” she said quietly, “was quite close.” 

Swallowing hard, the pain of what she was about to say nearly making it impossible to speak, Virginia replied, “Now you know why I have to walk away again. Please, don’t make this even harder, Gaia. You have to understand why I can’t be around anyone.” 

To her surprise, however, Gaia shook her head. “Don’t you see, my dear? You may have been right at one point. But now? The damage has been done. I know the truth, and the spell has stood firm. Be that a matter of luck or not, the fact remains that it is still holding steady. I know you the most, dearest Virginia. Of those who are here in the world now, I know you better than any. And others know that. They know that you have been my student. That much was not erased. Which do you truly believe would keep those others from putting too much thought to where you are and what you have been doing all these years, being entirely on your own, apart from everyone as a hermit in the wild who interacts with none of our people… or working for your old teacher, in a school where she was recently promoted to the position of headmistress and finally given the authority to hire any staff she prefers?” 

That brought Virginia’s gaze around to stare at the other woman. “You want me to come to Crossroads? You want me to help–I can’t–my daughter. My daughter is running a reb–” 

“I know,” Gaia gently assured her. “And yet, you cannot go to her. Horrible and painful as it may be, we both know that you cannot join that rebellion. Being that close to Joselyn is too much of a risk. But you can join me at Crossroads, and start to more… subtly help those who need it. There are students who are ready to switch sides, who are the right people to point toward Joselyn’s camp. But I need help to identify them. You cannot help your daughter directly, Virginia. This is something you can do. If you choose. Come in from the cold. Hide in plain sight.” 

There was a brief pause as everything that could possibly go wrong with this idea raced through Virginia’s head. It was dangerous, wrong, she had to flee, she had to walk away and be on her own again. She had to… had to… Tired. Gods, she was so tired of being alone. So tired of having no one to confide in, no one to talk about her beautiful daughter and lost husband with. So… utterly exhausted and lonely. 

Her eyes closed, and Virginia let out a long breath, pushing all those doubts and worries out. What else might come from this… they would deal with. Because at this moment, for the first time in decades… she wasn’t alone anymore. Finally, her eyes opened and she met Gaia’s gaze once more. 

“What sort of job is it?” 

*******

Shortly after the Calendar Trio first arrived at the Fusion School 

“We know you. You’re Kushiel and Puriel’s child.” 

The announcement came from May, as she, April, and December sat together on a couch in a small waiting room outside the Fusion School principal’s office. The three were perched side by side, exactly where they had been told to wait while Abigail Fellows disappeared into the office to have had what had appeared to be the start of an intense conversation with the Olympian Athena and several others. They had been waiting for ten minutes before they were joined in the waiting room by a new, clearly familiar figure. One they had met before. 

“Theia,” the brunette girl informed them while folding her arms. Her gaze moved over the three with a look of intense scrutiny. “My name is Theia.” 

The three of them exchanged glances before looking back. December had already popped to her feet, unable to hold herself back any more. “Theywererightyoudohaveanamelikearealnamethat’sseriouslycoolhowdidyougetanameanddidyoureallykillKushielcuzsomeonesaidyoudidbutthenothersaidthat–” 

“December,” April gently interrupted, rising to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder without taking her gaze off of the subject of her wild rush of words. “She wants to know if you–” 

“I heard,” came the casual reply. “I’m a good listener.” Her eyes remained narrowed at them. “And an even better watcher. I watch and listen for bad things.” Taking a small step closer then, she added, “I like to watch and listen for bad things that might hurt my friends.” 

“We’renotgonnahurtanyonecuzwegettostayandseewhatthisplaceis–” 

May stepped forward, putting her hand on December’s other shoulder while speaking up. “She’s right. We’re not here to hurt anyone. There’s a truce, as you know. We’re just here to observe this school and inform Cahethal about how the work here is proceeding so that she can decide if she believes it should continue when the time comes.” 

Meeting her gaze, Theia retorted, “That is not up for her to decide.” 

“And yet,” April carefully put in before May could say anything, “the Seraphs will look to her for an opinion and advice when the time comes. That is what we are here to help provide, simply by informing her of what we see. That is all. We have no ill-intent, and have been up-front with our intentions. Even with the fact that we are here in the first place.” 

“You’ve changed.” That was May, her gaze scrutinizing Theia. “Last year, you didn’t have a name. You thought it was strange that we didn’t use the L word amongst ourselves, that we used other names. And now you have your own. And you killed your mother.” The last bit, though it could have been an accusation, came off more… curious, as though she still couldn’t believe that part was real. 

“Yes,” Theia confirmed. “I killed my mother, because she tried to hurt my friends. She tried to kill my friends. She…” Her gaze dropped to the floor briefly as the girl took a breath before looking up once more. “She did very bad things and did not deserve to live.” 

Her attention moved back to May, their gazes locking before she added, “And yes, I have changed. Many things have changed. Most of them, for me, because of Abigail Fellows. She is… important. So, whatever your eventual intentions, remember what you just said. I killed my mother, Kushiel. I killed her because she was a threat to my friends. Remember that, as you follow any instructions Cahethal gives you.” 

“We will remember,” April carefully agreed. “As we said, we have no ill-intentions. And we do not believe Cahethal will request any of us. Not with the amount of attention, including your own, that will be on us here.” 

A long, silent moment passed as Theia seemed to examine them each thoroughly before she abruptly straightened and smiled. “Good. Then I will tell Abigail that you should be allowed to stay.” Her voice lowered a bit conspiratorially. “She asked me to come talk to you and tell her what I thought.” 

“You truly have changed… Theia,” May noted, clearly thinking about their previous meeting. 

“Yes, I have,” came the chirped response. “And do you know what? 

“I think you will too.” 

********

Approximately Present Day

Being on the bridge of the Olympus brought back so many memories for Puriel. Some good, some very much not. But all of them, the positive and the negative, were incredibly strong and powerful memories, even after all these years. Some of that was due to the Seosten inability to forget anything without magical assistance. But most of it was far more… emotional than that. 

He stood at what had been his original station, the captain’s chair, staring through the forward viewport as his mind was cast back through images from far off centuries. Lost in those thoughts, he didn’t notice as the rest of his motley assortment of… ‘crew’ (in a manner of speaking) filed into the room and waited for him. 

Eventually, he felt a gentle, yet firm poke in the back of his mind by Spark, and looked up to see them all lined up there. Spark herself had appeared in her hardlight form, next to her brother Omni and the other seven Seosten children who had been rescued from the research facility. Behind that group stood Maria and Arthur Chambers, beside their old friend (and Puriel’s protege) Alcaeus, Kutattca, and Aletheia, the woman whom Puriel had shared nearly as much with as his wife. 

This was his crew for this ship. The old Puriel would have been horrified by that fact. Now… now the only horror he felt was at the thought of anything happening to these people. Any of them. 

But getting them back to Earth was how he would make sure that didn’t happen. And the next step of that was happening today, right now. 

“Thank you all for coming here,” he abruptly spoke, pushing all those thoughts and memories aside. “This is important enough that we felt that we should have everyone present on the bridge to witness the first test. After all, each of you helped build the system. If it works, it will be thanks to everyone here.” His gaze moved to the assortment of Seosten children who had helped carry things back and forth through long, winding corridors as he firmly reiterated, “Everyone.” 

Maria spoke up then. “This is the doohickey that’s supposed to get this spaceship past the defenses your people use to stop people from getting close to Earth, yes? The Berlin Wall of space.” 

Pausing as he realized that he truly had no idea what she was speaking of, Puriel coughed. “Ah, I assume that is an accurate comparison, yes. Ideally, we would have used the instantaneous transport system Spark designed over a year ago, but the materials needed for that are… out of our reach. Bringing the prototype vessel that is already on Earth is also not a good idea, considering we believe our people may have developed the ability to track its movements within our space, and its arrival would create… issues. Not to mention we would either be forced to abandon the Olympus or spend days or even weeks transferring the jump system and modifying it to work on a much larger scale. Neither of those options is appropriate. Thus, we find ourselves needing another way of bypassing those defenses. One that does not involve starting a war.” 

“Much as I’d like a good scrap,” Alcaeus noted, “that’s probably a good idea. So we’ve been putting this whole thing together, but I’m still not sure… exactly what it is.” 

“Brilliant,” Aletheia put in, her gaze locked on the magical holographic image of Spark. “That is what it is. Utterly brilliant.” 

“It is certainly that,” Puriel agreed, “but as for details, perhaps it would be best if Spark herself showed everyone with this test.” 

The girl in question hesitated, looking a bit uncomfortable with the attention from everyone. In the end, however, she stepped out of the group and moved over to where the pilot and navigator stations were. Her gaze passed over their seats and controls briefly before she pivoted to face everyone else. “Um… so… many ships have the ability to cloak, to turn invisible both magically and through technology. But the Seosten know how to detect that, and have lined their border with those detectors. One of their uhh, main defenses against that are what you might think of as motion detectors. They blanket an area with an extremely low-level magic field, almost imperceptible. Like a sheet of paper so thin you can see through it. Thin, but present. The moment anything disturbs that magical field, it alerts their system and the intrusion is identified. The field exists both in real-space and the pocket universe our slide-drives use.” 

“Well, that sounds like it’d be hard to get past,” Arthur noted before raising an eyebrow. “So how are we getting past it?” 

“Like this,” Spark announced before turning to touch a finger against one of the controls there. As she did so, the ship abruptly began to shudder. It rocked back and forth a few times, while an alert began to sound. That was accompanied by a distinct and prolonged sinking sensation that made everyone’s stomachs seem to rise up toward their throats. 

The others jolted a bit and looked nervous, but Puriel stayed calm and raised a hand for them to be at ease. He could sense the power through the ship, and knew things were proceeding properly. Well, as properly as a first full-scale test could, at least. If anything had gone wrong, he was fully prepared to take the energy away from the system so it wouldn’t hurt anyone. But things were going, if not perfectly, at least within reason. 

Then it was done. The alert stopped, and the sinking sensation went away. As soon as it did, Spark gave a broad smile, raising both hands above her head. “It worked!” 

“Uhh… what worked?” Arthur asked, looking around. “What happened?” 

“Computer,” Puriel announced, “bring up the view of the exterior of the ship and surrounding space, then begin panning out.” 

The computer did just that, as a hologram appeared in the middle of the room. It showed the Olympus itself as they expected to see, with its main orb surrounded by three thruster-like gunships. As soon as they recognized that, the view pulled back. Immediately, everyone saw something… unexpected. An enormous metal thing, like another ship, a much larger one.  The whole thing was twice the size of the Olympus, and they had no idea how it could possibly have gotten that close. It was shaped like two crisscrossing blades spread slightly apart, leading back to a pair of slightly thicker, circular structures at the far end that were orange rather than the gleaming silver metal. Those parts could have been the living part of the ship or station.

Then the confusing shape slowly drifted in their view, allowing them to see a word printed across the top of one of the metal blade-like parts. 

“Fiskars?” Maria blurted, eyes widening. “Are those my fabric scissors?! Did you gigantasize my fabric scissors?!” 

“The opposite,” Alcaeus realized. “The ship shrank. They shrank us down so much your scissors are twice as big as this ship.” 

Puriel gave a short nod. “Precisely. And ahh, have no fear, Maria. We will retrieve your tool. You have my word. I merely required something you would be familiar with as a demonstration.” Clearing his throat a bit uncomfortably as she squinted at him for daring to endanger something as important as those scissors, he pressed on. “As we said, whenever something passes through the field blocking off entrance to your world, it is identified. However, there are many small asteroids and comets which repeatedly pass through the field. These are identified and heavily scanned every time they pass through, looking for people attempting to hide within them. But with the ship in this small state, we can simply stop it within one of the smaller asteroids just before it passes through the field, and we will be too small to pick up in their scans. They will detect the materials of the ship, but their system will register those as microscopic amounts, not worth pursuing. Trace minerals within the asteroid itself.” 

“Well, that sounds… terrifying,” Maria noted. “But if it works and gets us back to Earth and the rest of my family, that’s good enough for me. How soon can we do that?” 

“We need to thoroughly test the system,” Spark quickly announced. “Just to make sure it won’t suddenly fail in the middle of the trip. And then wait for the right asteroid to be close. There is a good candidate about three weeks out. We… we will have to work hard to make sure everything is ready before then.” 

Arthur gave a firm nod. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do. You tell us how to make sure this system of yours is ship-shape. Put us to work. But uhh, can we go back to being full-sized again? This is making me nervous.” 

“Being this small?” Puriel asked. 

“No,” the man replied, “having Maria’s fabric scissors floating out there in space. We need to go back to full size and pull them in. 

“If anything happened to those things, I think she’d finish manifesting your Olympian powers from the bond you made with her and kill us all.” 

******* 

Millions of years ago

“It’s coming! It’s coming, we have to hurry!” Accompanying the frantic voice was the almost deafening sound of the planet seeming to shake itself apart. Buildings were crashing throughout the city, the cacophonous screams of the dying forming a terrible chorus alongside the unending quakes and explosions triggered by untold damage to vehicles and power sources. 

The long corridor filled by the shout was triangular, rising to a point fifteen feet in height. Which made it plenty high enough for the assortment of ten-foot-tall beings who were rushing through it at that very moment. They were of humanoid-avian appearance, though with two full sets of wings attached to their backs, one at the shoulders and one around the lower-middle of their backs. The higher wing-set tucked downward, while the lower tucked upward so that both sets interlocked with one another when not in use. When extended, the lower wings would invert themselves to point downward. They possessed two lightly feathered arms, separate from the wings, a beak-like mouth, and three eyes equidistant across the front of their face, two toward the sides and capable of turning to look in opposite directions, while the third was centered. They were capable of seeing and processing the view from three entirely separate directions at once. The six beings all possessed feathers of different colors, normally one solid shade across most of the body, fading into a different color toward the head, the hands, and the ends of the wings. Their taloned feet were black, though that was impossible to see as the avian-figures were clad in gleaming metallic blue armor, which included heavy boots. Each carried a grayish-green box about a foot across.  

The beings were known as the Kelensians, and there was a very good reason these six in particular were in such a rush. Even more so than everyone else in this rapidly shattering city, as the sounds of destruction, heralding the very real end of the world, grew louder with each passing second. 

Five of the beings continued to run toward a waiting elevator, but one had stopped. His main body and feathers were a dark, burgundy red, fading to a bright, gleaming white at his fingers, across his head, and at the tips of his wings. He froze in mid-step, looking through a nearby window at the world-ending monster who was approaching. He could see very little of it from this small window, only an indistinct shape as tall as a building. One of four different creatures who had appeared in the universe decades earlier and proceeded to wreak havoc, destroying and killing everything in their paths on every world they found. And now one of them was here, in this city. It would destroy the capital, and then move on to kill the rest of the Kelsensia across the world.

“Zien!” one of the other Kelensians shouted, shifting the weight of the box she carried. “Move your tail feathers! We didn’t do all this for the past year just to fuck up now, come on!” 

“I… I…” Zien stammered, staring through the window. “What if it doesn’t work? What if–what if–” 

Cursing him, a different Kelensian stormed that way. “Forget it, you know we can’t count on him. He’s a coward. Good old Coward Zien.” Reaching out, he snatched the box away from Zien and held that along with his own before turning to rush toward the elevator once more while snapping for the others to follow. They gave one last look back toward their companion, still-petrified from terror, before regretfully leaving him there. 

They were right, he… he had to keep moving. He had to help them. It was the only chance their people had of surviving this attack. If the stranger who had come to their world was telling the truth, the spell that Zien and almost a thousand others had spent the past year inscribing all across the planet, a world-wide rune, would banish the monsters who had carved such a path of destruction across the universe. 

But if it didn’t work, they would be at the very top of the tallest structure in the city, with no time to escape. Survival right now wasn’t likely at any stretch. But if he ran away, if he fled out of the building and hid in the forests, there was the slightest chance the monster might move to a new world before finishing with this one. It had happened before, on other planets. He might survive. He might escape and hide. But if he went up to the tower with the others and the stranger’s plan didn’t work, he would be dead the moment the monster reached them. 

But… but the others, his friends. If they… he couldn’t just… They were right, he was a coward. For almost five minutes, he stood there, frozen by indecision while the monster drew closer and closer. He could run. He could escape. He could try to survive. 

Before he knew it, Zien was moving toward the elevator. Frightened as he was, he couldn’t abandon his friends. He reached the shaft, only to find it unresponsive. The forcefield that should have lifted him toward the next floor had been shut down. So, he spread both sets of wings as much as he could and flapped down hard to send himself soaring upward. It was a long, arduous, and terrifying flight, trying to rise as rapidly as he could from the bottom of the building, all the way to the tip of the tower thousands of feet up. 

Finally, he made it, landing at the entrance to the tower control room where the spell was meant to be triggered. The doors were closed, so he had to pry them open. Eventually, Zien managed to squeeze through the space, emerging into the control room. He expected to see his friends all waiting to chide him for taking so long. 

Instead, what Zien walked into at that moment was a nightmare beyond any he could have imagined. 

His companions, his friends, were dead. But more than that, they had each been nailed to the walls by all four wings, with a series of eight-inch-wide metal spikes. Their faces had been burned so thoroughly that all three eyes in their heads had burst. Their throats had been slit, and their blood used to scrawl more spell runes across the floor and walls. Worse, their torsos had been cut across the middle, allowing several organs to be removed and deliberately set at various parts of the intricate spell lines. 

And standing in the middle of all that, just as he finished carefully arranging one of the hearts, was the stranger who had come to the Kelensian homeworld and claimed he could save them, the man Zien and the others had helped for the past year. 

The man who had just finished murdering all of Zien’s friends, and arranging their blood and organs across his spell.

Now, the man looked up to stare at Zien. He looked far different than any Kelensian. He was several feet shorter, at only seven feet. He had no feathers, his skin gray and tough, with black spots and lines scattered across it. His form was very sturdily built, like a boulder, and he had four arms, two eyes in the center of his head, and a thin mouth rather than a beak. That mouth was stretched wide in a smile. “Zien, so glad you came after all.” He spoke in his own language, words that he had used magic to teach the Kelansians he interacted with the meaning of. 

Reeling from shock, Zien felt both of his stomachs twist in on themselves. A scream tore its way through his beak as he used both wings to launch himself at the monster. The one in the room, rather than the one tearing its way closer and closer to this tower with every second that passed. He wasn’t thinking about that, wasn’t thinking about the fact that he would die any second now. No, he was only thinking of tearing apart the man who had massacred his friends. 

And yet, in mid-lunge, the stranger simply spoke a word and Zien found himself bodily yanked to the ground. An invisible force held him there, while the man spoke casually. “I’m surprised you bothered trying something like that instead of just running away. After all, what was it your friends called you? Coward Zien? What was that in your words? Coward, Gala? Coward Zien. Gala Zien, that was it.” 

An inarticulate scream of anger, frustration, terror, and grief ripped its way out of Zien as he struggled helplessly against the force pinning him to the ground. 

“Sure, good luck with that, Gala Zien,” the stranger idly remarked. “I’m sure you’ll summon up the twenty tons of force needed to break that hold any second now. In the meantime, I’m just going to finish becoming immortal, if you don’t mind.” 

Head snapping that way as much as possible, Zien blurted, “Th-that will kill you!” His eyes were focused on the window where they could hear the creature steadily approaching. 

“That?” the stranger laughed. “That won’t be a problem for much longer. Why else would I come to this… primitive, backwater hole and convince all you sad, pathetic beings to create a sacrifice spell across your entire planet? You see, all spells require power. The strongest ones require a lot of power. Becoming immortal, truly immortal? That requires more power than you can even begin to imagine. The sort of power that sacrificing millions can’t come close to getting. But billions? Hell, trillions once we get into every living being on this world who isn’t actually a Kelansian. Every insect, every bird, every mammal, every living creature. Now that kind of sacrifice could fuel one hell of a spell.” 

Even as he said that, the tower violently shook. In mere seconds, the creature outside would be on top of them. So, the stranger grimaced. “Ah, sounds like The Next is almost here. Yeah, that’s what the civilized universe calls that thing. Now if you don’t mind… I need to finish this.” He reached toward a spot on the wall with just enough space between runes for his hand, already chanting words in some strange language. That spot began to glow brightly, and the man let out a cheerful, triumphant laugh while his hand reached for it. 

Then it happened. The tower shook violently once more, and a small chunk of debris from the ceiling fell. It collided with the stranger’s wrist, making him recoil with a yelp and curse. And in that instant, Zien felt the power holding him fade. He took immediate advantage, lunging to his feet and throwing himself that way. The stranger saw him coming and turned, but it was too late. Zien may not have been much of a fighter, but he had three feet on his opponent and a lot of anger fueling him. He collided with the man with enough force to throw him back against the wall, the sound of several bones cracking filling the room. 

“Won’t… take.. my… destiny!” the stranger bellowed, twisting to slap his hand out toward the still-glowing spot on the wall. 

Still bellowing mindlessly, Zien lunged to grab his hand, refusing to let him complete this spell. If he was going to die, if his world was going to die, so was this monster. However, he missed the man’s wrist. Instead, his flailing hand slapped against the glowing spot, while the stranger gave his own enraged scream. 

And then? Then there was silence. Silence, darkness, and a white-hot, agonizing pain that burned Zien up from the inside. 

It lasted for an instant.

It lasted for an eternity. 

And when it was over… he was remade. 

*******

Earth – Fifteen Years Ago

“Well, that’s certainly an ambitious story so far,” the publishing agent by the name of Edwin Marls noted as he looked up from the papers he had been reading through. “And you say that’s only the start of the book, Miss…” 

“Holt,” the dark-haired young woman reminded him as she sat cross-legged in the guest chair across the desk from him. “Vanessa Holt. And yes, that is… definitely only the start.” 

“But what happens next?” Edwin demanded to know. “Is this… alien really immortal? What about the Godzilla thing that was tearing apart the city?” 

“Oh yes,” Vanessa Holt confirmed. “He truly is immortal, in every sense of the word. Nothing can kill him. And as it turns out, the ‘Godzilla thing’ was… well, you see, when the stranger created the spell to sacrifice everything on the planet aside from the person touching that glowing spot, somehow it… actually included the monster itself. Well, not enough to actually kill it. But it did enough damage to make the thing retreat back to where it came from. Which dragged the other three monsters with it, from wherever they were. The universe was saved. Sort of, whatever was left of it. And our dear Zien, he had so much power welling up inside him, power taken from every living being on that planet, plus enough from the monster to make it retreat.” 

“And then?” Edwin prompted. “You said at the start that this… guy in your story was supposed to be some sort of intergalactic warlord, a conquering monster trying to break into our reality and destroy or enslave all of us. Something like that.”  

Vanessa offered the man a smile. “Actually, what I said was that people see him that way. They think he’s a monster. The truth… that’s a lot more complicated. 

“And if you really want to know the whole story, you’re gonna have to buy the book.”

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Commissioned Interlude 12 – Maria, Arthur, And Company (Heretical Edge 2)

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Wearing stained coveralls, a backwards cap, and goggles, with a face that was as grease-stained as the clothes themselves, Maria Chambers whistled cheerfully while focusing intently on her work. The work, in this case, involved making very specific adjustments to a series of very complicated-looking pipes and valves behind a section of wall about fifty feet forward and one floor down from the Olympus’s main engine. A very small metal ball floated in the air just to the side, its single lens projecting a holographic display of exactly where this section was, what it should look like, and what Spark needed to be done to it. A box lay nearby with the assortment of parts that the young girl wanted to be used to replace specific pieces. 

“Well, you seem to be in a pretty good mood.” The voice that interrupted Maria’s whistling came from the elderly-looking Native American man who strolled casually down the rounded corridor toward her. Though over a thousand years old (and technically believed by everyone back on Earth to be deceased thanks to an attack from his own sister, Litonya), Kutattca had a strong spring in his step and an easy smile. “Having that much fun working as a mechanic?” 

Carefully using what amounted to an incredibly fancy wrench to adjust the long, metallic green tube to the exact position Spark’s instructions specified, Maria finally turned to the man. She waggled the wrench at him pointedly. “A space mechanic, thank you very much.” With a cheerful wink, she added, “And yes, it’s quite exhilarating, honestly. And ahh, processing all these instructions, learning what these different tools do, all of it helps with the umm…” 

“With your new gifts,” Kutattca finished for her, chuckling a little while he nodded. “Yeah, believe me, I know exactly what it’s like when you start out. Actually, Boscher Heretics get that a lot. Getting new powers, figuring out how they work, slotting them into your normal rotation, all that. Especially when you make a new power work alongside something you already had. There’s just a… a really satisfying feeling when you make something new work with something old.” 

Watching him for a moment, Maria gave a very slight nod. When he spoke of being a Boscher, the same thing her granddaughter was, the man’s voice held an inescapable tone of guilt. The things he had done, the people he had killed, the ignorant hate that he had taught to others over so many years, the man clearly had a lot of feelings about all of it. Not that such things were entirely his fault, of course. The Seosten had established things, had set things up intentionally to make Earth some kind of Boscher Heretic training ground so they would be combat-capable before being sent out to the front lines of this war against the Fomorians. Still, it was obviously one thing to know that he had been manipulated into being the way he was and doing the things he did, and emotionally accepting it. The thoughts of all those likely-innocent creatures he had murdered out of a mistaken assumption of guilt had to weigh heavily on the man at times. 

While she was still focused on that, Kutattca turned his dark-eyed gaze to her and offered a very faint smile. “Then again, you have another reason to be happy right now.” 

With that thought, Maria’s own smile grew, a warmth filling her. “Yes,” she agreed. “Seeing my son and my granddaughter–well, feeling and hearing them, anyway. It was…” Trailing off, the woman swallowed. “It was very nice. I can’t wait to see them all again. Without any lies,” she added pointedly. “Not that I blame them, but… well, yes, without any lies.” Her eyes shone with delight and relief then. “And my daughter-in-law, they saved her. They truly saved her from that… monster.” Simply from what she had heard and read about the evil Necromancer, Maria knew that his death had been a long time coming. She shuddered to think of what sort of things poor Joselyn had been through over the years. And shuddered almost as much when remembering the horrible things she herself had thought about that poor woman. 

In a kind, gentle voice, Kutattca quietly replied, “I’m glad your family is safe. And you’ll get the chance to see them in person. Just as soon as we get this ship put back together and ready to go.” Turning a bit, he looked up and down the corridors, head shaking with obvious wonder. “Live over a thousand years, think you’ve seen everything, and it turns out you’re completely clueless about the real universe out there. Until my… until Litonya played her little betrayal game, I had no idea there were things like this out there. They don’t let us know about this. As far as most Boschers are concerned, so-called ‘aliens’ all come through portals or things like that. The majority of us don’t have any idea that there’s literally space empires out there, with all these fancy starships. We… we spend so long thinking they’re demons and monsters, I don’t think we could ever truly process the idea that they could put something like this together.” 

“They don’t want you to process that,” Maria gently pointed out. “The Seosten, they need you to see every other species a certain way for their little training ground to work.” With a shrug, she added, “Besides, if you don’t know anything about spaceships, it’s easier for them to hide their own. They’ve built that entire society to work one specific way for them. Leaving all those blindspots for them to manipulate and get around with, it’s not exactly surprising.” 

“Yes…” Looking back to the woman thoughtfully, Kutattca murmured, “I’ve never met him, of course, but I believe I can see why someone like Joselyn would be so attracted to your son. And any child they produced…” Trailing off once more, the man gave a very low whistle. “Well, now I truly do want to get back to Earth. This is something I have to see for myself.”

With a whoosh noise, the nearby elevator doors opened, before Arthur Chambers stepped off. He took in the sight of the two talking before shaking his head as he teased, “Oh good, you found another audience to show off for. Guess you don’t need me around then.” With that, the man did an about-face and acted as though he was about to walk right back onto the elevator.

Shaking her wrench-thing at him, Maria primly countered, “You march your little butt over here and hold this nozzle so it doesn’t turn when I start moving the pipe here. And honestly, as though you haven’t been the one showing off what you can do for days now. Don’t think I haven’t heard all about it from the children, young man.” 

“Young man?” Raising an eyebrow as he did just that, Arthur pointed out (with no small amount of obvious amusement in the words), “You do remember that I’m older than you, right?” 

A broad, knowing smile crossed his wife’s face as she confirmed, “Caught that, did you? Besides, we are young, compared to all these people we keep meeting and learning about. You and I, we’re practically infants.” She looked over her shoulder. “Kutty, how old are you, again?” 

The Native American man gave a very soft cough before simply replying, “A hell of a lot older than most and far younger than many. My sister and I were born around three hundred AD. Which doesn’t exactly make us spring chickens, but there are a lot of people older and stronger than us.” After a pause, he added, “Litonya might have an edge over them in hypocrisy.” 

“I dunno,” Arthur objected thoughtfully, “From everything we’ve heard since we got here, she has some pretty stiff competition in that field. There’s a lot of hypocrites out there.” 

Acquiescing to that with a bow of his head, Kutattca agreed, “I suppose you have a point. I’m just a little…. the situation with my sister is a lot more personal. The two of us have a long history, and I ignored far too many of the warning signs about her for far too long. To the detriment of myself, those I care about, and many others. And the world itself.” 

“You were close once, weren’t you?” Maria quietly prompted, fully facing the man by that point. Her work could wait for the moment. This was more directly important. She’d heard so much pain in the man’s voice whenever he brought up either his sister in general, or what she had done in attempting to kill him. It was obvious that Litonya’s betrayal, and her actions in general, hurt him a lot. A part of her wondered if he had ever really talked about it with anyone else, if he had ever unloaded those feelings rather than bottling them up and allowing them to fester. 

At first, Kutattca was silent, before giving a very slow, faint nod that was barely visible. “Once,” he confirmed in a soft voice. “We were inseparable, best friends. We hunted for our village, brought back food together even as children. When we were teenagers, we started hunting whales. Not by ourselves, of course. We were part of a whole hunting party, out in these long canoes. It was during one of those trips out on the boat when we saw the Thunderbird and the Haietlik.” His gaze had moved away from them by then, looking off into the distance as though staring into his own memory of that long-ago, far more innocent time. Before everything changed, before his life became something far bigger than simply hunting whales. 

After a moment, Arthur spoke up. “Haietlik, that’s what you were a Natural of, right? And Litonya was a Thunderbird Heretic. What uh, what are those, exactly? If you don’t mind me asking.” 

Shaking his head, Kutattca replied, “Not at all. The Thunderbird is ahh, well it’s a giant bird.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Puriel announced, as he approached from the opposite end of the corridor than the one Kutattca himself had come from. He was accompanied by Aletheia on one side, while Spark and Omni walked together on the other. Three of the four were covered in the same sort of grease and various other liquid stains that coated Maria. Spark, being a holographic projection, was as clean as ever. Maria had once asked the girl if she regretted not being able to get dirty, and Spark had stared at her as though she was being utterly absurd. Apparently, despite being a child, the girl had little to no interest in being messy. She was always very well collected, presenting herself in pristine clothes and skin, with hair that was immaculate and perfectly split between being blonde and black.

As soon as she saw both children, Maria took a knee and opened her arms. Omni immediately came running, throwing himself into a hug. It was a far cry from the way the boy had been not-so-long ago, convinced that he couldn’t touch anyone without using his power to shift into a younger version of who they were. Because those idiot scientists who had been working with him were more interested in testing what it could do and how they could use it than they were in teaching him to control it. Now, after enough training with Puriel and Aletheia, he only used it when he chose to. Well, for the most part. If he was overly emotional, scared, and whatnot, it tended to happen anyway. But it certainly wasn’t the uncontrollable, automatic reaction those cretins had apparently acted like it was. 

Of course, the woman embraced not only Omni, but also Spark (hard-light holograms could be hugged too, as she had made perfectly clear). With both of the kids held close, she asked, “Are the other children with Uncle Al?” 

Omni gave a quick nod, his shaggy mop of brown hair going wild. “Making pictures,” the five-year-old announced before reaching into his pocket to produce a folded up piece of paper. He proudly held it up, displaying an enthusiastic, if not incredibly skilled, drawing of Sariel herself using a bow and arrow to hunt giant scorpions.

While Maria gushed over that drawing, and the one he produced that had apparently been drawn by Spark, Kutattca glanced toward Puriel. He arched an eyebrow at what the man had said before. “Yeah, I suppose you’ve probably run into plenty of those yourself. Maybe even wherever they come from. I’ve always wondered, the Thunderbirds and Haietliks, do they and those Nemean Lions and the Amarok wolves–” 

“They come from the same planet,” Aletheia confirmed. The dark-skinned woman glanced toward the older Seosten beside her briefly before adding, “Several other ordinary animals on Earth, and derivatives of those animals, are smaller versions of those found on that other world. We are not precisely certain why, but our best guess is that they are the descendants of the remnants of other Fomorian experiments. They made humans look like us, and some of their other creations look like species from across the universe. Perhaps for eventual infiltration purposes.” 

Curious as ever, Arthur asked, “Is there a, ahhh, commanding species on that world? You know, actual advanced civilization. Cuz, you know, any species that could thrive in a place with so many of those things around…” 

“Yes,” Puriel confirmed with a slight grunt. “There is a ruling species… of a sort. They’re called the Jotunn, and they–” 

“Jotunn!” Arthur blurted, “That’s like… Odin. Are you telling me Odin really existed?” 

In response to that, Maria gave her husband a long-suffering look. “You do understand that you’re asking that of the man who was Zeus, yes? Why on Earth would that surprise you?” 

While Arthur huffed a bit, exaggeratedly, Puriel gave a very soft chuckle. “Well, yes, Odin exists. The Jotunn are actually artificial creations, created by a… well, he’s known as Ymir, and he is apparently the only surviving member of a species who lived there long before even we as the Seosten existed. They lived before the great calamity that destroyed almost their entire population, and that of most of the universe. Ymir was the only survivor of his species, and he cloned himself into several more Ymir. Together, the multiple Ymir attempted to restart their species, but were only able to create what they consider the imperfect replicas known as Jotunn. Eventually they shifted away from creating versions that looked like them and simply tried to make incredibly different Jotunn, as many they could, to see which they preferred to be the inheritors of their world.” 

“So Odin, he’s one of these Jotunn?” Arthur carefully asked, trying to think of what he could remember about the mythology. 

Aletheia, however, shook her head. “Odin was a human who somehow found his way to that world. He became close enough to one of the Ymir clones that they… bonded. Odin is the only known Ymir Heretic. Which makes him one of the only Heretics of a species that existed before the arrival of the Four.” 

Maria swallowed as a chill ran through her. “You mentioned them before. They were the giant, world-destroying monsters that almost wiped out the Suelesk before they created the first dragon eggs and fled through their portal to some other universe. Your people found one of their crashed ships on your world and it accelerated your technology.” 

“Yes.” Puriel was frowning thoughtfully, his gaze intent on the nearby wall. “Unfortunately, we don’t know much more about those creatures. Including why they disappeared. We don’t know if they were defeated and destroyed, if they followed the Suelesk elsewhere, or…” 

“Couldn’t you ask him?” Arthur pointed out. “Ymir I mean. Or one of him. If he was there at the time and survived–”

“Ymir does not speak to people very often,” Puriel flatly replied. “And he–or they, don’t speak about what they call the ‘before-times’ at all. Believe me, more powerful and more diplomatic Seosten than I have tried to get information about those creatures and what happened. The most they’ve ever managed is a single name, but we haven’t been able to get any details.” 

Standing next to Maria, both hands clutching her leg, Omni solemnly piped up, “What if they come back?” As everyone’s eyes moved to the young boy, he added, “The bad things that killed all of Ymir’s friends and family. What if they come back and kill more people?” 

“Oh, dear, now see we shouldn’t be talking about all that.” Maria stooped, picking the boy up and holding him close. “It’s not something we need to worry about now, sweetheart.” 

Clearing his throat, Kutattca nodded. “Yes, well, the point is that Thunderbirds and Haietliks are giant birds and giant snakes. The Thunderbirds–some call them Rocs, are incredibly strong. Some say they tear apart mountains. They also control lightning and storms. Hence the name. The Haietliks manipulate electricity too. They’re better at that than the Thunderbirds are, but they don’t fly on their own and they don’t control weather the way their winged partners can.” 

“Partners?” Maria asked curiously. “The giant snakes and the giant birds are partners?” 

“Oh yes,” Kutattca murmured, his attention clearly back into his own memories. “The Thunderbirds use the Haietliks as, ahhh, javelins. They carry two of them on either side under their wings, close to their bodies. When they’re hunting and spot a whale, or any other animal big enough to be food, they use their wings to project the Haietlik ‘javelins’ down to strike the target, stunning or killing it outright between the impact and the electricity from the Thunderbirds and the Haietliks.” 

He was quiet again for several long moments, once more lost in the past. Finally, the man murmured, “I’d rather not get into it right now. But… to put it simply, Litonya and I found several of those things. We were foolish children who wanted to go and see them up close, but the older hunters in the canoe forced us not to. They took the boat back to our village, saying it was too dangerous. But Litonya and I… we snuck out again, in one of the smaller canoes. We wanted to see the giant birds and snakes.” 

“Why did you remember them?” Maria put in abruptly. “Wouldn’t the Bystander Effect–you said this was around 300 AD, yes? That was a long time after it was established.” 

Puriel was the one who answered that. “It took hundreds of years for the Bystander Effect to spread across the world and grow to its full strength. Think of its original form as a virus. From where we targeted it, the spell had to be spread by people who were affected by it, to people who were not. In remote areas, such as where this tribe lived, it probably took hundreds of more years past this point before it existed in full strength.” 

As the others processed that, Kutattca continued. “We took a smaller canoe out there. We watched the Thunderbirds and the Haietliks. When they left, we saw there was still plenty of whale left. So we harvested from it. We thought… we thought we could prove to the other hunters that they were cowards to run away in the first place, by bringing back meat for the village. We took as much meat as our canoe could carry, and went back. But… but one of the Thunderbirds saw. And it was angry about us stealing their food. So it brought its flock and they all followed us back to the village. Then they, the Thunderbirds and the Haietliks, destroyed our home. They killed everyone we knew. Everyone we loved. Our warriors managed to bring down one of the birds and a couple of the snakes, but that was… they killed everyone we had ever known. But they left us alive. I still don’t know why. Punishment, maybe? Killing everyone we knew, but letting us live so we’d know what our theft cost us. Litonya and I, we ate from the bodies of dead Thunderbird and the Haietliks. It felt like some minor form of vengeance. We ate their meat raw and drank their blood. Each of us drank from both. Litonya formed a bond with the Thunderbird blood, and I with the Haietlik.” 

“And then it was just the two of you,” Maria murmured. “Alone out there, with the bodies and… and no one else.” 

“And no one else,” he confirmed. “We found others, of course, eventually. But for years, it was just the two of us. And for centuries after that, we could always count on each other. We had different opinions, but we loved each other, and we were there whenever one of us needed the other.

“I… thought my sister, for all her problems, would be there for me when I trusted her with what Joselyn Atherby had told me. I was wrong. She betrayed and attempted to murder me.” 

“And how did you survive that?” Arthur asked. 

Kutattca’s response was a very faint smile. “That, I’m afraid, is a story for another time.”

Understanding that it was hard for the man to talk about all that, Maria turned back to Puriel. “Before, you mentioned that your people managed to get some sort of name out of this Ymir when they were asking him about what happened to the world-ending monsters? What name?”  

Puriel was silent at first, before answering quietly. “We don’t know what the name means, exactly. Only that it is the name of someone connected to the end of those monsters. A survivor, their destroyer, their creator, we have no idea. Ymir offered nothing more than this single name, and title. 

“Galazien the Iron-Souled.”

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Long Awaited 12-03 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Out of everyone involved in our little Choo maneuver to connect my dad to my grandmother, the only one whom I had been completely confident was safe from any kind of emotional explosion during the whole thing was Sariel. After all, she might have issues with Puriel, but she knew how to handle those and she knew just how dangerous he was. She also had the most experience, by a magnitude of like a million, with possessing people and using recall. There was no reason to think she would have any trouble at all keeping things calm. Hell, she was the one who was supposed to remind the rest of us not to lose it. She was the main stabilizing factor. 

Except all of those assumptions were from before. Before those words came out of my grandmother’s mouth. Before she said what was, if not the very last thing I had ever expected to hear (the bar for that was set pretty damn high by now), at least really far up there. 

Her children. The girl with half-black and half-blonde hair, and the brown-haired boy. They were Sariel’s children. More of her children. Two more kids whom she very clearly hadn’t known about at all, and was now being smacked right in the face (and heart) by the existence of.  

If she lost it now, if she pushed to physically be where these brand new, previously unknown children were, what could we do about it? Would Tabbris, Dad, and me be enough to hold us back, even with the added help from the spell that Dare and Mom were doing? That whole thing was never intended to keep the ancient Seosten woman from recalling, it was supposed to help her stop the rest of us from doing so. 

I felt… the burst of emotion from the woman. Considering the situation, it wasn’t as much as most would have shown, of course. Her control was too good for that. But the fact that I could pick up anything from her was pretty telling. And while the reaction was somewhat muted, there were still a lot of different parts to it. I sensed confusion, hope, joy, loss, anger, love, disbelief, and more. Tiny fractions of those emotions, just what bled out. But again, feeling anything was a lot.

Mama. Tabbris was the first to find her voice after that, even as I realized that my grandmother and the kids had continued talking in the background. Mama, are you okay? Are you–

Yes. Despite the rush of emotions, Sariel’s actual voice (or thought-voice) was fairly steady. I was pretty sure that hearing from one of her other children was exactly what she had needed. Tabbris being here, being able to speak to her mother and draw her attention, probably saved us in the end. It’s alright. I just… I don’t… how? There was wonder in her voice, and I could tell she was drinking in every detail she could while Grandmaria was talking to the two kids. 

We can ask, Dad reminded her gently. We’re here to get details. We can ask what happened. 

Just like that, my father had switched from his own issues in needing to know about what was happening to his parents, to helping Sariel with hers. Or rather, accepting hers with his, I supposed. Either way, it was an immediate shift. This was about both of them now. And, I realized, they were both helping to keep the other centered. 

Ask… Sariel echoed that single word, trailing off before seeming to collect herself for a moment. The emotions I was feeling from her didn’t exactly disappear, though they did dampen a bit, replaced by determination. She was going to find out how two of her children were here. And, more importantly, she was going to get them the hell away from Puriel, whatever it took. 

By that point, Grandmaria had called the rest of the assortment of kids over and was showing them how to form the vegetable and meat mixture she had been putting together into some kind of patty, which was apparently going to be cooked like a veggie-beef burger. She made them all wash their hands one at a time before being able to form their own patties they would eat. It was–it was Grandmaria. It was just the way I remembered her, though with different ingredients and in a very different kitchen. But beyond those specifics, I could remember essentially this exact same scene playing out with my grandmother and me. It made me oddly nostalgic in that moment. Almost painfully so. Boy, were those incredibly and far simpler times, before I had any worries about–well no, I wouldn’t trade those days for these because now I had my mother back. Still, I missed my grandmother so much right then, it was an almost physical ache. 

“Oh, I miss you too, sweetie.” The words were spoken aloud by Grandmaria seemingly before she even knew that she had said them. Immediately, I sensed a sudden spike of confusion and a bit of worry. We were keeping ourselves separated from her enough that we weren’t picking up her thoughts directly, in an attempt to avoid being physically transported. But I could still feel an echo of her concern that she had started to lose it, imagining her granddaughter’s voice. Meanwhile, the other kids were looking at her, also confused. One of the group who apparently weren’t Sariel’s spoke up slowly to ask if she was okay. He sounded genuinely worried at the prospect that something could be wrong. Actually, they all looked worried. 

Mom. My father’s voice was urgent, yet clearly as calm as he could make it. He was doing his best not to freak her out. I had the strangest feeling that might be a bit of a lost cause. Listen, it’s Lincoln. Lincoln and Felicity, with… with a couple friends. You’re not hearing things, you’re not imagining it. I know this is probably impossible to understand but–

“Oh, Lincoln!” My grandmother’s voice was both cheerful and decidedly not confused. “There you are. Are you using magic or one of those Seosten possession-mind transfer thingamaroos?” Without missing a beat, she waved one hand to calm the kids down while pointing to her head with the other. “It’s okay, it’s my son and granddaughter in my head. Spark, sweetie, would you be a dear and tell Puriel that–” 

No! That, of course, was Sariel. Her blurted word came quickly and with such force that it made Grandmaria stagger back a step. Immediately, all of the kids came rushing up asking if she was okay, and I felt a pop in the air, even through Grandma’s senses. Teleportation. It was a sudden burst of magic, as an older guy with gray hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and bushy eyebrows appeared right where the pop in the air had been. He was already turning our way. “Maria?” 

Boy, now I really felt it. Sariel was angry.  She had missed out on getting her own justice against Kushiel, had lost that chance to Theia, who was probably the only person we knew who had a better claim for it. That woman, who had tortured her for so long, who had taken so much away from her, was dead already. And good riddance. 

But Puriel was alive. And Puriel was the one who had created the situation that led to Sariel losing her family for over a decade. Puriel was the one whose actions resulted in her being tortured, imprisoned, becoming a lab experiment repeatedly, being forced to be pregnant over and over again, losing gods only knew how many of those in the process and having any who might have survived taken away from her save for the one she had managed to sneak out. It was Puriel who had come to take her away from Haiden and her first two children. 

And yet, it was those very actions that had led to Tabbris even existing. That realization, that thought, was what I could feel Sariel cling to in order to stop herself from doing anything too bad. She held to that, held to the sense of Tabbris right there with her, to stay anchored and not yank us all the way out into Seosten space just to attack the man in front of us the way a large part of her desperately wanted to. She knew it was futile, knew how much stronger than her the man was. But that didn’t matter. She wanted to take a chunk out of him. But, again, she stopped herself, albeit barely. 

“Oh dear,” Grandmaria murmured under her breath while glancing toward Puriel. “This woman with my son and granddaughter, she truly does not like you.” 

I saw the man absorb those words, processing them even as the door slid open and Popser came rushing in. “Maria, is everything–” 

“Sariel.” Puriel interrupted. There was… emotion in his voice. It cracked slightly, his gaze locked on my grandmother. But, of course, he wasn’t really looking at her. He was looking through her, to the woman whose family he had torn apart. “It’s really you, isn’t it?” 

I need…. a minute. Speak to your mother, Lincoln. Sariel’s voice was tight, clearly taking everything she had not to do something we would all regret. 

Mom, it’s us. Dad was clearly shaken and uncertain, but he spoke up. I don’t know how you–tell him if he hurts you–

“My dear boy, he’s not going to hurt us.” There was a mixture of gentle understanding and almost playful reprimand in my grandmother’s voice. She looked to Puriel again, adding, “Yes, she’s there too. But I feel that… it may take her a moment to be ready to talk again.” 

Grandmaria! The word escaped me in a blurted rush. You’re okay! You and Grandpartie, how–where did–how did you–what happened?! 

“There she is. There’s my granddaughter.” Those proud words from Grandmaria sent a tingle through me. And that tingle got even stronger when Grandpartie came forward to stare intently into his wife’s eyes, the same eyes we were seeing through. 

“Lincoln and lil’ Flick’s in there?” he asked with a broad smile. “Well, what took you so long? We were starting to think we wouldn’t hear from you until we trotted our butts right back there to Earth ourselves.” 

I… I don’t… I can’t–what? Dad sounded just as flabbergasted as I felt. This whole thing was not at all how I had expected this to go. Seriously, we had anticipated finding my grandparents locked in a cell or something, where we could quietly communicate with them to let them know we were going to save them. But this? This was something totally different and strange. This was like… like… 

Are you friends?! The blurted question came before I could even think about it. Are you friends with Zeus?! 

Of all the reactions she could possibly have, Grandmaria chuckled softly. “I’ve missed you, Felicity my dear, so very much. You always did know how to get right to the important questions. Now, I think we all need to take a minute to go back and forth and explain a few things, don’t you all agree?” She was addressing not only those of us inside her head, but Puriel and Popser too. And the kids, who had all remained silent through this whole thing. “That’s what I thought. Let’s sit down, take turns, and get all of us on the same page.” 

Okay, well, I could say one thing for sure at least. Okay, two things. First, this was still not going at all the way I had expected.  

And second, even Zeus himself couldn’t stop Grandmaria from taking charge of things. 

*******

So, while Sariel collected herself and pulled it together, Dad and I went back and forth quickly with Grandmaria and Grandpartie, with a few interjections from Puriel when needed. They explained everything that had happened to get them out there, and what had happened next. We heard about the attack by Antaeus, about being teleported all the way to Puriel’s own home island on the Seosten capital world, meeting the man himself along with these kids, finding out just who their long-time friend Al really was, all of it. A lot we had put together already as far as what happened at the cabin went. But it was still good to get it from their point of view. Plus I just loved listening to my grandparents explain things. It was like getting them to tell me a story. 

For Grandmaria and the others’ part, they wanted to know everything that had happened to all of us in the past year. But that would have taken way too long. So, we just gave them a quick set of highlights and promised to say more later. Apparently they’d gotten some of the details already from Puriel, which helped. 

And yet, it also led to a few very obvious questions. The most pressing of which was finally voiced by Sariel after she and Tabbris had collected themselves through all of that. 

Why, the Seosten woman put in. Her voice was still tight from emotion, but she had control of it.  Why is he doing this? What does he get out of it? What does he want from you? And who are these children? With that final question, her voice finally cracked just a little, as Grandmaria’s eyes moved briefly to where those kids were standing in a huddled group with the two who had been singled out as hers standing at the front as they all stared at her. At us. 

“Puriel,” my grandmother spoke gently to draw the man’s attention. “She’s ready to hear from you.” 

I saw what I swore were a rush of emotions play out across the man’s face. He hesitated before stepping over carefully. Putting himself directly in front of my grandmother, the old Seosten spoke carefully. “Sariel. I have made more mistakes in my long life than I could begin to count. And yet, perhaps one of my largest failings was in how I treated you. You and your family. I was obsessed with the idea that our people were better than all others, that every other species was inferior. An inescapable pitfall of how our people operate in this universe, perhaps. It is hard to be a species that enslaves all others for what they call the greater good if you do not see yourselves as ultimately more important, stronger, better. When I saw you, as I believed at the time, lowering yourself by marrying a human, having children with him, it…” He sighed, clearly taking a moment to put his words together properly. “It made me believe that you were soiling our species. Physical intimacy was one thing, some of our people do that, even if it’s not spoken of very much. But you–you were being romantic with him. You were treating him as your equal. And that… At that time, I did not see it as raising the humans or any other species to our own perceived level. I didn’t see it as meeting in the middle. I didn’t even see it as being equal at all. I saw it as you lowering yourself to wallow in the mud, as you putting yourself even lower than the humans. I saw it as dirty and wrong, not for the physical pleasures, but for the fact that assuming our species deserved to be equal with the humans would mean that we were as low and inferior as I believed they were. That is why I could not accept your relationship, your family, any of it.” 

There was a brief pause then, during which Sariel spoke up. He keeps talking as though this is past tense. What would have changed? Why would he feel differently now? Again, there was a tightness to her voice that made it clear she was barely keeping herself in check, and that it was taking a lot to avoid transporting us there.

Grandmaria passed that along, and I saw Puriel wince. From the expression on his face, it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it. But he did. Meeting our gaze, the man carefully explained what had happened to him after being hit by the shattered banishment orb. His mind and memories had been broken, making him incapable of remembering anything about who he was. He had ended up on some other world far away, and had been taken in by some sort of Alter orphanage. An orphanage full of innocent children and their caretakers from all manner of species. There, he’d had a good life for awhile. He got along with everyone, as they helped him try to remember who he was. The children and staff had all become his friends. 

Then the Fomorians had come. Somehow, they had learned about his presence, and about how important he was. They came for him, and the people of the orphanage suffered and died for it. They hid him away and refused to surrender him. 

It was that trauma, hearing the suffering and dying of those he had grown to care about, that finally unlocked Puriel’s memories… for the most part. Remembering who he was at that moment, he had destroyed the Fomorians who were attacking. But it had been too late to save the people of the orphanage. 

Puriel had apparently returned to his own people then. But his mind still wasn’t fixed. The damage the shattered banishment orb had done to it was too thorough. He constantly lost track of where he was, what he was doing, even when he was in his own memories and thoughts. 

I felt something else then, a new rush of emotion from the woman but I didn’t quite understand. Hearing that had made her feel something important. As soon as Puriel mentioned losing himself in his memories, something in her impression of him softened.   

“And then… she came.” Reaching one hand out, Puriel beckoned until the black-and-blonde haired girl moved closer. The smaller boy was right with her. 

“Sariel,” the man continued, “this… this is your daughter. Kushiel–she brought her to my medical room as a–I don’t know. A prize? She is… she is what our people call a Mendacia. Kushiel referred to her as–never mind. It doesn’t matter. But she would have done very terrible things to the girl. It made me remember how I treated you and your family on Earth. So I did the only thing I could in that moment, the only thing that came to mind to protect the one child of yours I still could. I allowed her to possess me, and she has been doing so ever since. What you see here, she is using magic to project an image.” 

I had no idea what Sariel was feeling right then. She had closed off entirely through his explanation of who the girl was. 

Sister? That, of course, was Tabbris, her voice trembling. She’s really a sister? 

“I–what?” Grandmaria was clearly taken by surprise. “A sister?” 

That made Puriel’s gaze snap up. “Your other daughter–wait, which…” 

Stop, Sariel immediately demanded. Just stop. Maria, please, just… look at her. Look at them.

My grandmother did so, holding a hand out for Puriel and the others to be quiet. She got closer, staring directly at the girl and boy. I could feel Sariel drinking in their appearances, seeing herself in them. Mine… they are my children. There was wonder and awe in her voice then. Puriel… saved my… children.  

Once it was clear what was happening, Puriel quietly spoke. “Her name–I have called her Spark. She saved my life, Sariel. She has saved me in more ways than I could ever explain. She is brilliant and perfect. And your son–we only met him recently, but he is so very curious about everything. We call him Omni.” 

For their part, both kids stared right up through Grandmaria’s eyes and into the gaze of their mother. The boy found his voice first, quietly murmuring, “Mater?” He was reaching up as though to touch her face before seeming to catch himself. The boy looked… oddly ashamed before quickly lowering his hand, and I felt a pang of shame from Sariel that she couldn’t pick him up. 

So, Grandmaria did just that. She reached out and picked the boy off the ground. Which was surprising, given I didn’t remember her being strong enough to do something like that before. Sure, he was only a little kid, but still. She plucked him off the floor and held him up easily, before reaching out. Her hand brushed slightly over Spark’s face. Apparently her image had been created out of a solid-light hologram. 

“Mater,” Spark quietly spoke, “he did bad things. He knows that. But he helps now. He saved me. We saved Omni, and… and the others.” She raised her hand to gesture to the other children. “They were experimenting on them, and we saved them. He didn’t have to. But he did. We did.” 

At that moment, I felt a decision come over Sariel. The confusion and uncertainty melted away, along with most of the emotions when it came to Puriel. It was clear that the woman had decided only one thing mattered. She spoke in her own voice, and Grandmaria translated aloud. 

How do we bring you all to Earth?

Puriel’s voice actually almost sounded amused. “Actually, we’re working on that ourselves. Do you recognize this kitchen?” He gestured around them, and Sariel finally seemed to pay attention to the place after being distracted for so long. 

…. The Olympus. This… this is your own personal kitchen on the Olympus. 

After Grandmaria translated that, Puriel gave a short nod. “Exactly. We–ahh, liberated it from storage, thanks to a little advice from Arthur there. It’s not quite ready to go yet, but with some more work, we’ll get underway eventually. And with Spark’s improvements, it won’t take long to get to Earth once we do.” 

Wait, Tabbris immediately put in uncertainly, Spark’s improvements? 

Once that message was passed along, Puriel smiled proudly. “Oh yes. Sariel, I told you, your daughter is brilliant. She is, to put it simply, the best ship and weapon designer I’ve seen since Radueriel himself, and she does it with no extra powers or inherited gifts. Believe me, I checked. As a matter of fact, she designed something I hear you’re acquainted with. A ship capable of instantly jumping from one universe to another, from planet to planet in no time at all.” 

The prototype ship?! Spark–this kid–was the one who designed the prototype ship?!

Just as we were all reeling from that, I felt a tug, followed by a rush of emotion from Sariel. We can’t maintain the connection for long. We’re being pulled back. We’ll come again, we’ll talk again. Please, tell them. 

So Grandmaria did. And for the next few seconds, she embraced Omni before putting him down to do the same with Spark’s solid-light holographic form. She hugged them for Sariel. And for Tabbris, who was clearly overwhelmed by all this but still introduced herself. She introduced herself to her brother and sister, through my grandmother’s words as the older woman acted as a go-between. It was rushed, and it was awkward, but it was also perfect in its own way. Tabbris met her Seosten brother and sister for the first time. 

Then Sariel and Tabbris both focused on doing all she could to hold us there while Dad and I had a moment with my grandparents. A moment where there was so much more all of us wanted to say, yet so little time to do so. Instead, we mostly focused on saying how glad we were that they were okay, and in promising to visit soon to see how they were coming along. With each passing moment, I felt our grip slipping. We were going to be pulled away any second. 

“Sariel.” It was Puriel, speaking up once more even as we started to be pulled away. “I will bring your children to you. I will bring Maria and Arthur to the Chambers. Whatever it takes, I promise you that. I will bring them safely to Earth. You have my life oath on it. Whatever else happens, I will get them to Earth.” 

Those were the last words we were able to hear. Because an instant later, our grip on my grandmother failed entirely, as we were sent rebounding back to our physical bodies on Earth like a rubber band had snapped.  

We literally popped apart once we hit our physical bodies, all of us separating from our combined possession form to fall apart from each other and collapse to the floor. As we lay there on our backs, Mom appeared standing over us. “So? 

“How did it go?”

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Long Awaited 12-02 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Yeah, bringing up the Godfather thing for Dare and Aylen could definitely wait. Especially since the only thing I could think about right then was what the hell someone like Puriel was doing with my grandparents. And why he’d taken them to begin with. That just didn’t make sense at all. He had to grab them from clear across the universe right at that moment, and why would he? He didn’t even know my grandparents. I mean, sure, there was that whole connection between Hercules and Zeus, but if it was just that, wouldn’t he have only grabbed Uncle Al? Also, at some point I was going to have to actually process the fact that Uncle Al was goddamn Hercules. Seriously, the fact that that whole revelation was basically a minor footnote said a hell of a lot about my life, didn’t it? 

Anyway, Puriel hadn’t only picked up Al. He took my grandparents too, and why? Why would his spell have taken them? Why would he care? It couldn’t have been to save them. He wouldn’t have cared if they were taken or killed. He couldn’t have cared. Really, everything I’d heard about the man made that impossible. 

Well, except maybe what Sachael had said. According to that man, Puriel had sent his SPS daughter to Manakel not to punish her or whatever, but to save her from Kushiel. Supposedly he’d wanted to give her a chance at a better life and hadn’t realized just how much his old friend had changed over the years. Which, well, I was taking that claim with a grain of salt for now, considering the possibly biased source. Plus, just because he might’ve cared about his own daughter enough to make his wife stop torturing her and send the girl to someone he thought would help her didn’t mean he gave a rat’s ass about what happened to a couple humans he didn’t even know. He was the one who had broken up Vanessa and Tristan’s family, after all. He didn’t care about them. According to Vanessa, he’d called her and Tristan ‘lies’, equating them with SPS Seosten. He’d wanted to drag Sariel back to her own people, forcing her to abandon her husband and children. Which, if you knew anything about Sariel, you would’ve known just how stupid and evil that was. So I definitely didn’t believe that a man who had done that would suddenly care about what happened to my totally-human grandparents. 

In any case, Sean and Aylen eventually stepped out of the room, the latter letting me know she was going to see how Avalon was, while Sean was heading for Roxa. Watching them go, I smiled faintly despite myself. For a moment, I was distracted from focusing so much on what was going on with Puriel. Was it weird that I was glad Aylen cared about Avalon so much? I mean, obviously I had Shiori and Avalon, so it made sense that both of them could have someone else. And it was okay. I liked Aylen. Not like that, really. But I did like her. And I was glad Aylen and Avalon had a thing together. Some part of me, probably the part raised in normal Bystander society for almost seventeen years, thought I should have some kind of issue with this entire situation. Err, the romantic one. But I just… didn’t. I had Avalon and Shiori. Avalon had me and Aylen. Shiori had me and… well if she found someone else she liked being with in that way, that would be fine too.

It sounded weird in my head when I actually thought about it. But in practice, I was fine with it. Which, some part of me briefly wondered if that had anything to do with the whole Heretic thing. Did being connected to the Edge sort of… make us more okay with this kind of relationship, either from a Reaper thing or from the Seosten wanting their Heretics to have lots of children and interconnected relationships like that? I–huh. Well that was a terrifying rabbit hole to peer into. 

Whatever, I’d think about that more later. Or not. Or I’d just ignore the thought entirely and–fuck. Well, right now I was going to focus on this situation. My eyes focused on Mom and Dad even as Tabbris was urgently giving them advice about safely projecting without going that way. She had also insisted that Dad not do anything until her mother made it here to give her own advice and to be present just in case something went wrong. Which, yeah, that was completely fair. 

We didn’t have to wait long for Sariel to show up, either. Apparently when her daughter called for urgent help about a family situation, she didn’t waste any time. Before we even had to start worrying about Dad asking more questions about how our mission had gone, the woman had arrived at the door. She and my mother exchanged brief glances, Mom bowing her head slightly as if in acknowledgment and adding a quiet murmur of thanks. It was met by a very faint smile and nod from the Seosten woman. 

That done, she closed the distance from the entrance and asked what exactly was going on. So, we told her the full situation. Dare filled in most of it, giving Dad time to just sit with Mom while Tabbris perched on his lap. And wow, Sariel had an even bigger reaction than the rest of us had to the reveal about Puriel. She reached down to cover Tabbris’s ears before speaking a few choice words in a mixture of English, Latin, and some other language I didn’t even know. But none of the words were polite. 

Tabbris, of course, squirmed her way free and squinted that way. “Mama, I’ve heard bad words before.” 

“Of course you have, my brave girl,” Sariel agreed, running a hand through her hair. “But there’s bad words and then there’s the words that come to mind when that man is involved. Different levels.” 

With that, the woman straightened. “Okay. You’re right, the easiest way to find out what’s going on would be to project yourself to your mother. But over that distance, with you having so little experience, and everything Puriel might have put in the way to shield himself, I don’t think you should do it alone.” 

Her words made Tabbris gasp. “Dad! You can still be possessed, so they can help you do the projecting thing!” 

Oh, right. Yeah, that hadn’t occurred to any of us. Wow, we really were worn out from everything. Sariel and Tabbris had a point. Dad didn’t have much experience with this stuff beyond a little bit of practice with Mercury, but someone who did, or just had more power, could possess him and help. Hell, that would probably even be a good way of pulling him back if he started to be physically yanked there. Someone else being connected to him could act as a sort of anchor. And even if it didn’t, if worse came to worst and he was pulled that way, at least he wouldn’t be completely alone. 

That, naturally, led to a bit of a discussion about who should do the possessing. And we realized something else. It didn’t have to be just one person. Sariel, Tabbris, and I could all form a Choo-maneuver stack. With three of us it would be even better. Tabbris and I could help anchor Dad because of who we were, because of our connection to him. And Sariel had the power and expertise to help direct the projection in the first place. 

Unfortunately, Mom couldn’t be a part of that. Which I was pretty sure she wasn’t happy about. But she kept it quiet, obviously not wanting to make the situation harder or more complicated. That said, I was pretty sure that if any bad Seosten had presented themselves as a target right then for Mom to take a gamble on getting their possession power, she wouldn’t have hesitated. 

Then Sariel, after a slight pause, turned toward Mom. Her voice was quiet. “Joselyn, if you like, I can help you with a spell that will allow you and Virginia here to serve as… anchors of a sort. Think of the spell that you will maintain as a bright beacon to help guide us back here across the long distance. Your husband’s body will be here the entire time, but our minds will be there, and this spell will help him, and the rest of us, find our way back to this spot.” 

Mom didn’t hesitate. No matter how she might have felt about Sariel herself, the instant the woman made that suggestion, she nodded. “Yes. Whatever we have to do. If you say it’ll help…” Only then did she pause very, very briefly before repeating. “If you say it’ll help, then yes.” 

Dare nodded in agreement. “Of course. Anything to help make certain this goes well.” While Sariel and Mom were focused on each other, she gave me a brief glance. We locked gazes, and I nodded in understanding. This… this would be the first time Dare did a spell with Mom, considering my mother had been a tiny child the last time she knew who Dare really was. It would be the first time that Dare did a spell with her daughter. It was such a big moment… and we couldn’t actually tell Mom what that meant. Damn it, we couldn’t even tell her how important it was, or that it was important at all. Dare had to play this whole thing completely cool, had to not give away how much the situation meant to her or how–

Fuck. This wasn’t fair. Not one single part of my grandmother’s situation was fair. Why couldn’t we find a way to just stabilize the banishment spell so that she didn’t have to live like this all the time? How long was this going to go on? How long was she going to have to pretend her own daughter, my mother, wasn’t basically the most important person in the world to her? It couldn’t be forever, could it? There had to eventually be a way to fix this, a way to make it so Virginia Dare could be known for who she really was. Right? God, I hoped so. I really, truly hoped so. 

In any case, that led to Sariel giving Mom and Dare a bit of a crash course in how to create the spell she’d been talking about. It was complicated, but both of them understood magic well enough for Sariel to feel comfortable with letting them do it with minimal guidance. Though it wasn’t like we had a lot of choice unless we wanted to wait an extra two or three weeks for a full battery of lessons. 

Yeah, that might’ve been smart. But we were working with what we had. We needed to get to the bottom of what Puriel was doing with my grandparents, and that couldn’t wait weeks. We had to find out right now. 

Once that was done, and I managed to tear my attention away from the fact that Mom and Dare  were working together (and everything that meant), I found myself facing Sariel, Tabbris, and my father. “I guess we need blood now.” 

Tabbris, of course, wanted to use her blood, but her mother’s was stronger, especially as far as possession went. She’d had a lot longer for her possession power to grow. So, it made more sense to use her blood. And she already had some prepared in a small curved glass dish, holding it out for Dad to put his finger into. He did so, and a moment later he was, temporarily at least, a Natural Sariel Heretic. Suddenly, I kind of wanted to see how good he was at playing darts. But that would have to wait. This was a lot more important. Seriously though, we needed to check on that at some point. 

With that in mind, I cleared my throat before hesitantly speaking up with,  “We’re ready for this, then?” 

Tabbris grabbed my hand while nodding. “Uh huh! We’ll find out what that jerk’s up to and get your grandparents back! Right, Mama?” 

A very faint, yet clearly worried smile, Sariel looked to her daughter. “Yes. First, I need you all to know, digging through this woman’s mind would be a very bad idea. I know it will be tempting to search her memories to see what exactly is going on. But you have to resist that. The more you try to look into her mind, the more of a chance you will lose your grasp back here and end up physically transporting everyone. Stay out of her mind as much as possible.” 

She waited for everyone to nod and agree before adding, “Also, speaking of transporting, no transporting. Period. No matter what happens, we will come back here. Do you understand?” She was looking to me and then to my dad. “Even if something bad is happening, I promise you that we do not stand a chance against Puriel. Whatever it is, whatever he’s doing with them, we come back here and get the reinforcements we need to do something about it. This is just a reconnaissance check.” Her voice was firm, eyes staring intently at Dad, almost looking through him. “No matter what.” 

My father’s reply was quiet, yet firm. “Yes. I understand the stakes. They’re my parents, but these are our girls. I’m not not risking my daughters just to make a pointless stab at hurting the man who played the king of the gods. But I still have to know. I need to know what’s going on.”

There was a brief pause while Dad, Mom, Dare, and Sariel all exchanged glances and what seemed to be silent communication. Finally, Sariel gave a nod of satisfaction. “Good. Let’s do this then. Remember, if something goes wrong, focus on the anchors here. You’ll feel the spell that Virginia and Joselyn are performing. Let that pull you back to this spot.” 

With that, Tabbris gave me a tight hug before disappearing as she possessed me. Comforted by her familiar presence, I turned toward Sariel, who was holding a hand out to me. I repressed the nerves that left me tingling before taking the offered hand. A second and a bit of focus later, and I disappeared into her. Not that I had any chance of controlling the woman, of course. Tabbris and I were both just along for the ride while Sariel turned to put a hand on our dad’s shoulder.

Like that, we were inside him. I could feel my father’s worry about his parents, and his anxiousness as far as this whole situation went. I also felt his relief that both of us were home and safe, along with a certainty he felt that there was something about what happened while we were gone that we hadn’t told him yet. But it was clouded over and distracted by his focus on his own mother and father. 

Sariel didn’t waste any time. Lincoln, focus on your parents. Think about them, what they look like, what they sound like, what they feel like. Girls, you do the same. You both met them, you know them. All three of you. Focus on everything you know about those two. I’ll direct the recall power, but you have to focus on them to help guide it. 

So, I did just that. My thoughts focused on all the times I’d spoken to Popser and Grandmaria. I thought of sitting in our kitchen when they visited, of helping my grandmother make dinner (those were basically the only times our oven got used correctly), of being in the backyard with my grandfather to watch the stars. I thought of running and squealing before he picked me up. I thought of hugging them both at night. I thought of talking to them on the phone, of every moment I’d interacted with them. I thought of how much I cared about my grandparents. Distantly, I could sense Tabbris doing the same, though her thoughts and memories were all tinted by a sadness that they’d had no idea she was there. As well as a worry about how they would react if they did. 

Before I could focus too much on that, I felt a sort of whooshing sensation. It was working. We were being mentally (our physical bodies stayed firmly planted in the Starstation) projected far, far away. It was all a jumble rush of motion and light that almost made me feel sick. 

Then we were there. We were right there. I felt my grandmother’s presence even as I was staring through her eyes to see… a kitchen? Yeah, it was definitely a kitchen. Not an Earth-based one, of course. This was the same sort of high-tech, sci-fi kitchen I’d seen while out in Seosten space. Full of weird gizmos I still couldn’t even begin to understand the function of. Again, that wasn’t saying much, considering I didn’t understand the function of a lot of Earth-based kitchen gadgets.

Still, we were definitely seeing through my grandmother’s eyes. I could see her hands as she carefully mixed what looked like some vegetables and meat together in a bowl. She didn’t… seem to be a prisoner. She was humming a song to herself as she worked, before turning a bit toward the other side of the kitchen. There, we could all see a collection of Seosten children lining a table as they worked on chopping more vegetables and meats, filling bowls with them, or otherwise clearly helping to prepare whatever meal this was. 

One of those children, a girl with hair that was half-black and half-blonde, was standing next to the table, beside a much-younger boy with brown hair. The two seemed to be talking quietly before the boy got up. Together, they stepped over to where my grandmother was. 

“Does our mother cook?” the boy asked, sounding curious. The girl, his sister apparently, was watching silently from just behind him. 

“Oh, sweetie, I’m afraid I don’t know your mother enough to say how much cooking she does,” Grandmaria answered. “But I’ll tell you what, if she doesn’t, you can show her what we learned here, okay? 

“I may not know much about this Sariel, but from what I’ve heard, she’ll adore learning from her children.”

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Commissioned Interlude 8 – Maria and Arthur Chambers (Heretical Edge 2)

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The following is a commissioned chapter. Many thanks should go to the commissioner.

One Day After Maria and Arthur Chambers and Alcaeus Arrived In Seosten Space. 

On a small corner of the island that held Puriel’s private residence, a simple rectangular metal table had been magicked into existence, complete with chairs that looked as stiff and hard as the table itself, but were actually quite comfortable and soft to sit in. In those chairs were three men, who sat facing the water of the strange, alien (to two of the men at least) ocean. 

The sole ordinary human among the trio, Arthur Chambers, spoke up in a gruff, yet also somewhat dazed voice. “Let me go ahead and see if I’ve got this all straight in my head between everything you people’ve said since we got here. Feel like I’ve been getting the recap of that…” He paused before turning a bit to glance down the beach a bit, where his wife of over fifty years was staring intently at the ocean water. “Maria! What’s that show you like with the man who has that thing with his eye and the limping sailor? You know, the silly soap opera you watch right after lunch that puts me to sleep.”

“You only pretend to sleep, dear,” his wife primly retorted without turning away from her intense examination of the water. It was as though she was trying to spot some difference, only by eye, between the water of this world and that of Earth. “And it’s called Crescent Falls. Which you know darn well if you weren’t trying to save face about enjoying a soap opera in front of Hercules and the alien wizard. Which is quite frankly silly.” 

Clearing his throat, Arthur waved that latter part off. “Ahem, as I was saying, feels like I’ve been getting a recap of about thirty years worth of plots in that Crescent Falls spaced into about ten minutes. Only while my wonderful, beautiful wife is giving me that summary in one ear, my granddaughter’s in my other ear telling me the plot of every single comic book movie in existence in chronological, not release, order. And while all that’s going on, I’m trying to watch a history documentary.” He paused to consider how he had phrased that. “Yup, soap opera in one ear, superheroes in the other, trying to watch history.” 

“That… is not a bad comparison,” came Al’s (Alcaeus, apparently) thoughtful response. In the time since they had arrived here, the nearly seven-foot-tall man had wiped away the mixture of magic and make-up that made it look as though he had actually aged at least somewhat in the decades that they had known him. His hair was now deep black without any gray or white to it, and his face lacked even the hint of wrinkles. He had used trickery to appear to age so that he could spend more time with his friends before he would inevitably have to disappear from their lives. Or… would have had to, before all this happened. Before he had chosen to tell his friends the truth about the situation they were in, only to be interrupted by a quick burst of events that had led to them being here, on the Seosten homeworld, about as far from Earth as possible.

Arthur continued after giving Al a brief glance. “So, if I’ve got all this right, you lot…” He gestured vaguely with one hand toward the seated and silent Puriel, “have been at this space war for about three hundred thousand years now, give or take. A space war with a bunch of genocidal monsters created by some medical experiment gone wrong. Wait, pardon me, the medical experiment ran away after accidentally giving all your people the power to bodysnatchers anyone you want to. He made his own damn species of monsters, then you all went to war. You’ve been fighting it for all this time and ‘for the Greater Good’, you’ve been enslaving every God damn species you come across to use as foot soldiers cuz you are fucking outnumbered as shit. And somehow every time someone thought to bring up the thought that playing nicely with people to stop the big bad monsters might be a good idea, they… I dunno, mumbled?” 

“We tried to make allies at first.” As he said that, Puriel’s gaze flickered over to watch the water himself. “At least, that’s what the histories tell us. In those days, we didn’t live nearly as long as our people do now. Longer than humans, but not the ten thousand Earth-year lifespan of a… ahhh, modern Seosten. And we still had the same problem with birthing live children that we’ve had since the moment we gained the ability to possess people. Shorter lifespan, less children, of course we tried to partner up with other worlds, other species against this threat. The Fomorians want to wipe out everything in every universe that isn’t them or their creations. Obviously, we would do everything possible, including ally with others. But… it didn’t work out.” 

His voice turned quieter then. “Our people were betrayed. Three different species we allied with, three species we tried to stand with as friends against the Fomorians. All three betrayed us, led our people into an ambush by the Fomorians. It turned out they had made a deal to be spared if we were destroyed. The Fomorians convinced them that all they wanted was us. So they threw us away. Three hundred and thirty-seven thousand Seosten were killed in three hours.” 

After letting that sit for a few silent moments, Puriel finally went on. “Our military was devastated. In more ways than one. With those forces gone, we would have been wiped out. It was the opportunity the Fomorians needed. They would have washed over us. So… our ancestors did the only thing they could do at the time. They infiltrated the fleets and political leadership of those three species who betrayed us and forced them to come to our aid. It was a desperate move of a people who were on the very brink of being wiped from all existence.” 

By that point, Maria had abandoned her ocean vigil and moved to stand next to her husband. Laying a hand on his shoulder, she watched Puriel for a moment. “That sounds quite horrible for your people, sir. Quite horrible indeed. I know humans have never been through anything… exactly like that. But we’ve had our moments in history, our betrayals and wars. That kind of thing can set the tone between two peoples for… well, forever.” 

“Indeed,” the former captain of the Olympus agreed, watching the woman with renewed interest. “And so it set the course of my own people up to this day. Our ancestors realized… or believed that they could never rely on anyone other than ourselves. Between the initial ambush and the subsequent attacks, our military was heavily damaged. It took over a generation to fully recover to the levels it was at before. In the meantime, we relied on taking over our neighbor species and forcing them to work together. More than once, our infiltrators discovered plans for truces with the Fomorians. These other species did not understand that they were being fooled, that the monsters would never truly leave them alone. Once we were destroyed, they would turn their attention to our betrayers and wipe them out as well, no matter what ‘deals’ they had.” 

It was Arthur who found his voice next. “Sounds like a real tough time for your people.” Where some would have had no small amount of sarcasm in that sentence, he was genuine. He thought of how a place like America would have reacted to something even vaguely like that in the Cold War. If the Soviets were trying to wipe them out entirely, literally trying to kill all of them, and kept making deals with all of America’s allies to betray them? Or worse, World War 2. What if, during D-Day, the American soldiers storming Normandy had been led into a trap by their supposed allies that nearly crippled the military entirely? How would America then react to outsiders? How easy was it to see the United States, given the same ability to possess their neighbors and finding even more potential betrayal, to entirely give up on any idea of cooperation-by-choice? Look at what the country did after terrorist attacks decades in the past. Arthur Chambers had been alive for a long time, enough to see a lot of changes throughout the world and his home. He could see, all too easily, what would happen if anything remotely similar to what had gone on with the Seosten  were to happen there. 

“It was quite some time ago,” Puriel noted quietly. “But yes. As I said, it set the course for my people. It convinced us that no one could be trusted, that we were alone in this war. And yet, we could not be alone, because we would be destroyed. Our only choice, they believed, was to force all non-Fomorians in the universe to follow our commands. There were, I believe, some noble intentions to release them once the war was over. But… no one expected it to go on this long. How could they? This system has been in place for hundreds of thousands of years, and the war has no particular end in sight. We have been at what amounts to a brittle stalemate for longer than human civilization has existed. I truly do not know what a galactic society without my people in control would even look like. I can’t imagine it, much as I have recently tried.” 

“And you,” Arthur pushed on, “or your people in general, you came to Earth and you… you took human’s ability to, what was it you said…. bond? You took humanity’s ability to bond with other creatures and created a whole school out of turning kids into soldiers for your war.” 

There was a brief pause before Puriel gave a slight nod. “It took some time to get to that point, but yes. There is… perhaps some context you should hear to understand everything that has happened.” 

Maria took a seat by her husband. “By all means, let’s hear the context for everything that has happened to humanity since the Seosten arrived. 

“But something tells me you better have alcohol somewhere on this island.” 

*******

Two Weeks Later

 

“Avia?” The small, hesitant voice spoke up in the fancy Seosten kitchen. It was accompanied by the sight of a very small, very young face trying to peer up over the far side of the metal counter that filled the middle of the room. All that was visible, however, was a mop of brownish-red hair and a pair of inquisitive green eyes. The boy who was speaking was not quite three years old, small enough that he’d had to climb onto a chair just to see partway over the countertop. 

Maria Chambers looked up from the mixing bowl she had been busily stirring the contents of. A smile touched the elderly woman’s face as she saw the child peering at her. “Why, hello there, Stavin,” she greeted him while dipping the wooden spoon into the cookie batter. “Would you like to help me over here?” When the boy gave a quick nod, she set the bowl down before walking around the counter to put herself beside the chair he was perched on. “Touch okay?” 

Eagerly, Stavin bobbed his head while staring at the nearby mixing bowl. “Touch okay.” 

Only then did Maria reach down to pick the boy up and set him up on the counter. Because it was important that these Seosten children understand that they had the right to choose when and how they were touched just as much as others had the right to choose when and how the Seosten children themselves touched them. Yes, it was proper that children (or people in general) with their conditions ensure that they had permission to touch people before doing so. But it was just as proper that they themselves be given the same courtesy. 

The idea that so many within the Seosten society were treated as outcasts, as… as less than slaves, appalled Maria to an extent that she hadn’t known she was capable of being appalled. ‘Lies?’ She refused to think of them that way, let alone call them that. Nor Mendacia, considering that was only the Seosten (or Latin) way of saying the same thing. It was positive poppycock. 

After some thought on the subject, Maria had settled on referring to them as Gummies (for gum, because they were hard to get out of things if you weren’t careful). The children seemed to like the term, especially when Maria explained both what gum and gummy candy was. They were fascinated by the concept of each.

“Thank you, Avia!” the tiny boy crowed while sitting cross-legged on the table. Avia, which apparently meant grandmother, was a term the children had taken to calling Maria over these past two weeks. Arthur, meanwhile, was Avus. 

With his gaze laser-focused on the large bowl, Stavin asked, “I can help?” Belatedly, he added, “What’s poppycock?” 

Right, she’d been thinking that word when she picked him up, Maria realized after a moment of brief confusion. Because like his fellow… test subjects from the prison lab, Stavin wasn’t exactly normal even by Gummy standards. Instead of being stuck in bodies he possessed, the boy was incapable of possessing people. Rather, he would immediately hear the thoughts and feelings of anyone he touched. If he touched them long enough, he could project his own thoughts and feelings into them, making the person believe those thoughts were their own. The belief was that he would eventually be able to essentially hypnotize people this way. 

With a slight chuckle, Maria explained, “Oh, it just means nonsense, dear. And yes, you certainly can. Here.” She held the spoon out to him, waiting for the boy to take it. “Now you stir everything in that bowl up real good, okay? Then we’ll scoop them out onto the pan.” 

Tongue sticking out one side of his mouth, the tiny boy set to work stirring with both hands. The bowl moved against his efforts, until Maria reached out to hold one side so it would stay in place. With a chimed, “Thank you!” Stavis began stirring once more. 

While he was doing that, the doorway into the kitchen opened, as four more figures entered, one notably taller than the other three. The larger figure was still fairly small for being an adult, a dark-skinned woman only an inch or two over five feet, who wore a dark red Seosten bodysuit with black piping. The other three figures were more of the Seosten children. First, the tiny six-year-old (also black) Zahd, a Gummy girl who was permanently stuck in her ‘boosted’ state without Puriel’s help in draining her excess energy. Then there was the brown-haired young boy called Omni together with his sister, Spark, a girl with hair that was half blonde on one side and half black on the other. 

Maria wasn’t… fully aware of exactly what the situation with Spark was, though she had the basic idea. She was a full Gummy, not a medical experiment like the other children, and she had possessed Puriel himself so that he could hide her from the rest of the Seosten who would have hurt her. Now she was… magic. That was about as much of it as Maria understood. The girl was magic, a hologram like in those space movies. She was still physically possessing Puriel, but his own powers were enough to allow the girl to create this hologram around the house and island. A hologram that was also somehow solid. 

“Hello, Avia,” Spark politely greeted her, standing up straight with both hands interlocked behind her back. She gave a single nod. “Zahd, my brother, and I wished to offer our assistance.” 

Zahd bobbed her head up and down quickly. “Uh huh, uh huh! And not just to eat gams, even though they’re really good and stuff. But also buhcuz helping is good too and it’s good to be good.” It was very clear that she was reciting a speech she’d been told. Or at least, reciting the general gist of it. And from the way the girl looked toward Spark for approval, it was also fairly clear who the source of the speech was. 

It didn’t take long for Maria to hand out two more mixing bowls, one for Zahd and the other for Spark and Omni to use together. Which would be a lot of dough, but at least that meant plenty of cookies could be made, enough to feed almost ten hungry children. While they stirred, Omni himself piped up. The boy, as always, had dozens of questions. He was curious about every little thing, positively famished for information. The things he asked often followed no particular order or category, simply being whatever popped into his head at any given time. Maria loved that, she loved his enthusiasm for learning. 

She loved all these children, and could not fathom how their own people could abuse and mistreat them so much. 

While the kids were working on stirring up the dough, she focused on the woman who had accompanied them. “I’m sorry, it’s Aletheia, right?” Maria extended a hand to the woman after brushing it off on the apron she’d asked Puriel’s housekeeper, Olan, for. 

Accepting the offered hand, the other woman nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry I’ve been away. It’s been… difficult to prepare a way for Puriel to bring these children to Earth. Things have been very tense at the border between those who wish to leave the humans alone for good, those who wish to ally with you, and those who wish to openly invade the very moment the truce is over.”

Maria winced at that. “Yes, Puriel was explaining that. Apparently my granddaughter had something to do with the situation.” She didn’t bother keeping the proud smile from her face. Everything she’d heard from that man about what Felicity had been up to, even if, by his own admission, he only had a very small part of the story, made her love her granddaughter even more. 

The smile faded as she thought of the other things he had told her. The things about Joselyn, the truth about why that dear woman had truly disappeared. Thoughts of what she had to have been through, of what… of just what she had repeatedly sacrificed, still felt like a hand clutching Maria’s own heart. 

She owed that poor woman an apology for everything she’d thought about her. And the things she had said to her husband, even if said in error and in private, they were still wrong. And awful. 

“She was indeed,” Aletheia confirmed. “Your family has a habit of being involved in dangerous situations.”

“Why do you think I like them?” That was Alcaeus, the enormous man chuckling as he came into the room. “And that was before I even knew who the rest of the family was.” 

“Doesn’t that detract from your point?” Maria pointed out, giving him a raised eyebrow. “You never knew we were related to that Joselyn or that our granddaughter was going to this… Crossroads until recently.” 

“Semantics,” he insisted with a wink before focusing on the Seosten woman. “Puriel said you had news.” 

“Yes,” Aletheia replied. “Although it is less news and more of an… ally. An ally Chayyiel has spent quite some time procuring.” 

“You say that so dramatically,” a new voice teased as another figure entered the room. “Makes me feel like I should be a lot more help than I’m gonna be. After all, I’m not part of the Committee anymore.” 

With those words, the elderly, yet still-spry Native American man straightened to look at Maria. “Morning, Mrs. Chambers. Believe me, it is such a pleasure to meet another native Earther out here. I hear you’d like to know more about Joselyn Atherby.” 

“The name’s Kutattca, and despite my sister Litonya’s best efforts, I can tell you plenty.” 

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Interlude 4B – Puriel and the Seosten Children (Heretical Edge 2)

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Like Earth, Elohim, the Seosten homeworld, was almost entirely covered by oceans and lakes. Seventy-five percent of its surface was water. Yet unlike that far-away world, Elohim had little in the way of full sized continents. Most of its land surface consisted of thousands of islands of varying sizes. Some were as large as Earth’s Texas or even slightly bigger. But the majority were considerably smaller bodies of land. Some were tiny enough to jump from one side to the other, barely more than large rocks there in the vast, unending ocean.  

One island in particular was roughly three-quarters of a mile wide and a mile long, shaped somewhat like a teardrop. Near the center of that island was a single, very large house. A mansion, really, with a dense yet fairly small forest behind it (on the fat end of the teardrop) and a sandy beach in front (on the pointed end of the teardrop). 

A metal landing pad rose up from part of that beach to settle into place moments before a raindrop-shaped ship came in for a gentle, if somewhat slow, landing. The pilot of the ship seemed overly cautious and vaguely unsure of themselves, yet sufficiently skilled to land safely on the barely-large enough platform with only the slightest bump. 

Once it was down, the ship went still, mostly powering off. The engines were so quiet in that idling state that the only audible sound, even for one standing directly next to it, would be the lapping of the nearby waves against the shore, and the chirping of a few birds or other animals in the slightly more distant forest. With the successful landing of the ship, all was peaceful. 

Inside the main cockpit of the ship, the elderly-looking man at the pilot’s seat remained motionless. He stared at nothing, gazing off into the distance. He appeared to be daydreaming, his mind drifting and lost for a moment, his hands unnaturally tight against the control yoke. 

Finally, after several long seconds of that, Puriel jerked a bit. His nostrils flared as his eyes widened briefly, looking around the cockpit with a gasp before coming back to himself. 

It happened again, he directed inwardly, a pained wince crossing his face to match the regret in his thought-voice as he began to unstrap himself from the seat. How long was I out this time? Ever since the incident with the banishment orb back at… at Sariel and Haiden Moon’s home, Puriel had had issues with his own mind and memory. At random times, he would simply zone out, lost in the past. Things had gotten somewhat better over the years, but it still happened. Yet now he had help, help that could take over in those times and either pull him back to himself, or pose as him long enough to make others believe there was nothing wrong.

The answer came promptly from his passenger. Or, more accurately (especially right now), his co-pilot. Only a few minutes, Spark assured him. I landed the ship. There was clear pride in her voice, despite the young (she was only eleven years old) girl’s attempt to sound nonchalant. 

Excellent work, we’re not dead, was his response. That was a joke between them. A joke… and yet more than that. ‘Excellent work, we’re not dead’ was what he said to the girl whenever she took control in any situation, no matter how inconsequential or truly important. The true meaning and intent behind the words, for the two of them, went far deeper than simple surface level. 

After saying those very important words, Puriel continued. Soon I won’t have to fly at all. You’ll be able to do all of it yourself. Perhaps I should take up a hobby to keep myself busy. Even as he gently teased the girl that way, the man who had once been known as Zeus rose from his seat and turned to face a nearby door. He stood there, watching the door in silence briefly. This time, however, it wasn’t because he had zoned out. He was entirely aware of his surroundings and situation. And certainly aware of what waited beyond that door. It is a frightening thing. 

Spark promptly corrected him with, There’s more than one. And I don’t think you’re supposed to refer to children as things. Belatedly, she added in a thoughtful voice, Or as frightening. 

Children are terrifying, Puriel insisted. But that is not quite what I meant. The responsibility, that is the frightening thing. They are here. What happens to them next is my… our responsibility. Whether they live or die, succeed or fail, rise or fall, that can all be influenced by what I do now.

Spark’s reply was curious. You’ve had a child before. And a crew.

Yes, Puriel confirmed. And I have failed each. My crew was sundered, split into two sides of a war. They loathe one another. My own actions against your mother led to… He paused, shaking his head. Because it was complicated. Spark, his… his Spark only existed because of those actions. Yet they had also been terrible, loathsome actions leading to a reprehensible situation. How did one come to terms with that? He cared for Spark as much as he had ever cared for any living being, yet he felt deep shame for the very same situation that had caused her birth. 

It was a level of complication that he couldn’t even begin to pick his way through. For the moment, he simply continued with, And my daughter… I have thoroughly failed her as well. I was not there when she needed me. I was not the person she needed me to be, to protect her from… From her own mother. He had failed to protect his unnamed daughter, who had ended up being tortured by his wife, by her mother, for years in a failed attempt to ‘fix’ her condition. 

Now his wife was dead. After all the harm she had caused, she was gone forever. And his daughter was… who even knew? He’d gotten very conflicting reports on that front. 

You are not alone, Spark reminded him. As always, there was deeper meaning behind her simple words. He was not alone as in she was there for him, and as in he had help within the house itself. He would not be solely responsible for the care of the group they had rescued. 

Still, he had reservations. But Puriel set those aside and moved to the door. A hand against the control panel made it slide open, revealing an assortment of cots, toys, books, and games that littered the floor on the other side. All eight of the Seosten children the two of them had liberated from the secret medical facility were also there. They stood together, on the far side of the room, facing the now-open door with expressions of uncertainty. None truly understood exactly what was going on, or that they had been freed from their previous lives. 

They did, at least, now have clothing. Puriel had made certain of that. Each of the eight children were clad in yellow versions of the normal Seosten bodysuits. They seemed generally uncertain as to why they were given clothing, but wore it without complaint. They complained about nothing, actually. As far as Puriel had been able to put together, the children didn’t understand the basic concept of complaining. It hadn’t so much been beaten out of them as it had never been allowed to exist in the first place. Freedom, choices, those things were foreign concepts. The children had had games and books in their cell back in the station, yet they played and read when and what they were told to. They ate what and when the scientists ordered them to, and slept when the lights were turned out. Every moment of their lives was rigidly structured. 

There was a lot of damage that needed to be fixed. Unfortunately, Puriel was far from any sort of what the humans would call a therapist. He had no idea what to do for these children. But he did have an idea of who would know what to do. For the moment, he simply announced, “We’re home. Come–” Belatedly, the man stopped himself. He’d been trying to make a point throughout this trip to not give orders. He was trying to teach the children that they did have choices. And while it was true that staying here on the ship or going out to see the house wasn’t that much of an actual choice, he still wanted them to make it for themselves. That simply felt… important, somehow. 

So, he amended his aborted words into, “Would you like to come and see the house?” 

His words were met with silent stares from all eight children. They ranged in age from a couple who were barely three or four, up to one who seemed to be as old as Spark. Each of the eight remained silent, looked to one another, then began to file toward the door and out of the room as Puriel stepped aside. 

This is going to take time, he silently informed Spark. 

Yes, she agreed with her usual economic use of words. That single syllable packed more thought and meaning than it should have been able to. 

Following the group of children out of the ship and down the ramp to the waiting beach, Puriel found a single figure waiting for them. She was an older woman, with skin that was green and lined with age. She had long black hair streaked through with dark red, a sign of the elderly in her people. 

Her name was Olan, and she was one of very few whom Puriel trusted with this. She and her husband were the only living members of his household staff whom he had not dismissed. 

“Take the children for food, please,” he requested with a look to Olan. She was already well aware of the situation thanks to multiple messages that had been sent ahead. “And has she sent any word?” He added the latter while giving a look toward the children. They were showing the first real signs of curiosity now, slowly turning in circles to take in the sky, the sand, the water. The two youngest had dropped to their hands and knees and were digging in the sand with their fingers. The eldest was staring at the nearby ocean, his hands clenching and unclenching. 

Giving a crisp nod, Olan replied, “Very good, sir. And your guest was held up. She will be here as soon as possible, but it may take some time.” She stepped over, stopping in front of the two youngest, who were still digging curiously at the sand. With a snap of her fingers, the woman summoned a pair of plastic buckets. Under the curious gaze of the two toddlers, she then scooped sand into each before straightening to hold the buckets out. Soon, they were taken by the smallest children, each of whom held a bucket of sand in one hand and dug curiously into it with the other. 

With that settled and the small ones content, Olan pivoted smartly before walking toward the nearby mansion. “Come, children. It’s lunchtime.” 

Even as the group began to obediently follow, however, Puriel spoke up. “Omni.” When the small brown-haired boy turned to face the man, he gestured. “Wait here, please. I promise you’ll eat soon too.” 

The boy did so, stepping away from the group while the other seven followed Olan inside, where they would all be well-cared for. Between Olan and Rufe, her husband, the children would be as fine as they could be, under their circumstances. 

Which left Puriel standing there on the beach with the boy who had been named Omniscereon. In the old language, the name essentially translated to ‘All Above Myself.’ Even the name that he had been given was meant to drive into the boy that he was supposed to be worthless and that every other Seosten was more important. 

Kushiel had been quite a piece of work by the end, that much was certain. 

But Puriel didn’t use that full name. Instead, he called the boy by his nickname. Omni, or ‘all.’ 

“Omni,” the man carefully spoke while taking a knee in front of him. He met the eight-year-old’s curious gaze. “Do you remember my name?” 

After a brief pause, the boy quietly answered, “Trierarch Puriel.” 

“Just Puriel,” he corrected. “Tell me, what do you know of your mother?” The question came hesitantly. He had wanted to talk to the boy more over the trip, yet he didn’t want to separate him from the group until there was someone else who could help them. With Olan and Rufe to care for the other seven children, Puriel had a chance now to have this conversation. 

“My mother’s name is Sariel,” Omni recited dutifully. “She’s a traitor who deser–” 

“No,” Puriel interrupted. Of course. Of course Kushiel wouldn’t have been content to simply leave the boy with no knowledge of his mother. She would have to rub salt in the wound. Sighing, he looked to the boy, who had fallen silent and was now simply staring at him once more with his hands linked behind his back. Most of the experiment children who were old enough to understand stood like that, the man had noticed. They stood with their hands out of the way, as though making it clear that they would not try to touch anyone. An act that, he was sure, had been drilled into them. 

“Your mother is a lot of things,” he informed the boy quietly. “She is… she is a brilliant researcher, an incredible soldier, a fine…” His voice choked itself off, and Puriel looked away. Everything he was trying to say, everything he wanted to make the boy understand, was all jumbled. He didn’t know how to put it into words. Everything just sounded wrong, in a way that it hadn’t since he was a young officer reciting his first duty chart. 

Finally, he settled on looking back to the boy with a firm, “Your mother is one of the finest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. She is a good person. A good soldier. A good mother. You deserve to have a chance to know her. And if it is the last thing I do, I will ensure that you both have that chance.” 

“Both?” The boy echoed his word, head tilting slightly. He turned, looking to his left, then to his right as though trying to find out who else Puriel was referring to. 

They had planned for this, had rehearsed it, in a way. But this was still quite new and tense. Puriel’s gaze looked to one side, as Spark borrowed his power and focused on pulling and shaping energy into light, which soon became a hologram of sorts. A hologram of Spark herself, or the way she chose to make herself look in any case. But this wasn’t just any old hologram. It also functioned as a forcefield, giving the projected body a physical presence. 

Soon, the hologram was complete, and the solid-light hologram Spark stood in front of Omni, the two facing one another. “Hello, brother,” she greeted him. 

“I’m very glad to meet you.” 

*******

Two Months Later

“Yelly?” 

Hearing the soft, plaintive voice, Puriel’s eyes opened. He had been resting in a chair on the beach. Ahead of him, the eight rescued children were scattered around. Several were up near the waves, playing in the water. The two youngest were digging in the sand to create some kind of tunnel that only they knew the purpose of. A few more were throwing a ball back and forth. 

Spark was there too, in her holographic body. They were able to essentially cheat and allow the girl to act in the real world by enchanting a stone with a spell that allowed Puriel to see and hear through it as if the stone was a camera. The stone was then placed inside the head of Spark’s hologram and pointed in the same direction as her eyes. After that, Spark simply paid attention to the information coming back through the spell while Puriel ignored it, and the girl remote piloted the hologram accordingly. It was, he supposed, somewhat similar to creating a Theriangelos and having the possessor control it while the host tuned it out. 

Spark’s hologram was with Omni, standing out by the water. The two were almost always together, having become all-but inseparable over these past days. Omni had hundreds, if not thousands of questions. He asked them constantly, for everything from deep historical questions all the way down to what various bugs tasted like. No matter the question, Spark always answered, though she drew the line at requesting that Puriel taste the bugs himself so that she could give an appropriate answer. And strongly discouraged Omni from tasting such himself. 

The boy was curious about everything, even more so than the rest of the former prisoners/experiments. They were all curious, but Omni took it to another level. He questioned everything. But he wasn’t really the sort, at least so far, to look for the answer in a book. If the person he was talking to didn’t know, Omni seemed far more likely to go and find out himself. Often through personal experimentation. He wanted to know what something tasted like, so he tasted it. He wanted to know how an engine worked, so he took it apart. He wanted to know how to bake a cake, so he experimented in the kitchen (under Rufe’s supervision). The boy was curious about everything, and solved that curiosity by acting. 

Taking a brief look around the beach to ensure everything was in order and that no one was in danger, Puriel focused then on the figure right next to his chair. It was the six-year-old girl, a dark-skinned child with bright green eyes and short black hair. She’d been given no name in the facility aside from her number, but Olan had since dubbed the child Zahd, which was apparently the word for ‘laugh’ in the language of her and her husband’s people. 

When he looked to her, Zahd bounced up and down, hands clutching the chair. “More please. Too slow, too slow. More please.” 

Zahd was the one Niekal back at the lab had mentioned who had trouble coming out of her boost. For a long time, she had functioned almost entirely in that sped-up state where everything and everyone around her was far too slow. Puriel, however, had found that he could drain energy from the girl. This slowed her boost dramatically, allowing her to function normally as long as he did that a few times a day.

He did so now, reaching out to drain the extra energy from the girl, as she let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Yelly.” 

Yelly. That was what the children called him. Somehow ‘Puriel’ had become Yel, and then ‘Yelly.’ There were members of his old crew who would have been amused by that, given his… reputation for anger back on Earth. 

Once it was done, the girl bit her lip, staring at him while hesitantly asking, “Touch please?” 

“Touch yes,” Puriel assured her. He opened his arms, and the girl stepped up to embrace him. They were trying to teach all of the children that it was okay to touch if they had permission and wanted to, if the other person was aware of their condition and accepted it. Some, like Zahd, took to it more readily than others. 

Through that short hug, Puriel heard the sound of an approaching shuttle. Which meant it was time. Releasing Zahd, he looked over to one side, finding Spark and Omni already approaching. The rest of the children gathered as well, standing in an assorted group around Puriel while they all watched the shuttle come in for a landing on a second pad that rose into place behind the ship they had come on. 

Eventually, the shuttle settled into place. A moment later, the ramp opened, and a figure appeared. She was fairly small, a dark-haired and dark-skinned Seosten woman wearing a dark red suit with black piping. For a few seconds, her gaze passed over the assembled group, before she descended the ramp. “You have been busy, Puriel.” 

“As have you, Aletheia,” Puriel replied. “But I’m glad you’re here now.” 

“We have a lot to talk about.”   

Author’s Note: As a reminder for anyone who has forgotten, an explanation of who Aletheia is was given by Sariel in 38-06, which can be found right here. Check roughly 20 paragraphs down in the first section, or do a search of that page for Aletheia. 

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