by Chris Fox
Eleven of those ships ringed the planet’s umbral shadow, with a quartet of massive black stations that disappeared against the night sky. Dozens of Wyrms flitted between them, but I noticed a huge difference from the skies over Virkon, or at least as holos portrayed them. I’d never been. The Wyrms here were all young, like Briff. Not a single one approached Visala’s age. What had happened to all the older dragons?
“Sir,” a young woman from one of the terminals called. “We’re being hailed by a Kahotep. Should I accept the missive?”
“Yes, and put him up.” I straightened and tried to look captain-like, whatever that meant.
The screen filled with a mostly human face, though thousands of tiny scales appeared where pores should be. Where Inura’s had been an ivory white, this Wyrm’s shifted form had brown earthy tones. He stood as a human, but with wings and a draconic tail. His eyes were also quite clearly inhuman, the same slits you’d find on his dragon form.
“Welcome to Nebiat, Word of Xal.” Kahotep inclined his head. “This represents an historic occasion. Never has a confederate vessel reached our skies, and had they, it would have been an act of war. Today I formally invite you to our world. You may bring Briff, the Wyrm who I’m told was instrumental in helping my wife reclaim the Flame of Knowledge. Sadly, our laws do not permit anyone else to come. Your vessel will need to remain here, under guard.”
“May we take the Remora down to the planet?” Jerek couldn’t think of another way to get down there, unless they offered it. “It’s a small cruiser. Little more than a transport.”
“I’m afraid not.” Kahotep shifted uncomfortably, and fluffed his wings behind him. “I cannot alter our laws. I am sure you must suffer similar constraints. I realize how inhospitable this must sound.”
“I understand and we don’t take any offense.” I ducked out of the matrix, since we wouldn’t be moving, and approached the screen. “I’m happy to comply with whatever protocol you’d like us to follow. I’ll be leaving my first officer, Commander Bortel, in charge in my absence. Your people can inform him of whatever requirements or procedures you might have. In the meantime how should I reach the surface?”
“Can you not fly?” Kahotep raised the patch of dark scales meant to represent an eyebrow.
I considered that. My armor insulated me from space, and had already safely seen me through planetary re-entry. Briff could fly in space, and wouldn’t care about entering an atmosphere.
“Sure, we’ll fly down. To where exactly?”
“You’ve been accorded a great honor.” His slender tail rose as he delivered the news. “Frit’s Kamiza, the Ghoran, is reserved for our very best candidates. You will report to our western continent, and I am forwarding coordinates now. It is a small, well fortified temple in our mountains, well away from those who might seek to hurt you.”
“Hurt him?” Bortel stepped forward. The words hadn’t been delivered with any particular hostility, but the challenge was there. “Is there a security risk we should be apprised of?”
“Not that I am aware of, but, Commander, you must understand the violent history between our peoples.” He half turned and gestured at the bridge of the vessel behind him. “Every person here fought against the Confederacy, a year ago, not decades. These people remember losing friends, as your people no doubt also remember. I fear retaliation from terrorists, but we will do everything in our power to ensure that Jerek is free to focus on his training with no distractions.”
I had a name now, the Ghoran. It meant spirit watch, or something very close. An odd choice of name. Watching a spirit? Or observing your own spirit?
“Briff and I will head down shortly.” I offered the best bow I could, probably a terrible insult, but that’s what you get when you send me. “Thank you for this opportunity. I’m hoping it’s the first visit of many from our peoples. We need each other. I’ve seen what Necrotis can do. No planet is safe.”
“On that we agree. Best of luck with your training, young eradicator-elect.” He returned my bow. “Fly safely.”
Interlude II - Tormentory
Necrotis arrived in the tormentory’s grisly receiving chamber precisely at eight AM ship time. She’d instructed Kurz to be here, so that he could learn the basic rudiments of their technology. Give a child a sword, and they became a warrior. A book and they became a scholar. She would give him soulcrafting.
Boots thumped against the deck, heralding the boy’s arrival. He came around the corner a moment later, his shock of red hair announcing him. He’d donned the soulcatcher’s garb she’d left in his quarters, and the dark silk fit him. It framed the angry hair, and lent him a more savage appearance.
“Good morning, Kurz.” She turned and offered him a smile. He’d not come to her bedchamber, which told her something important. Power tempted him. The flesh did not. “Are you ready to begin?”
Agreements, even small agreements, became stones upon the path to corruption. He’d get used to agreeing with her, and eventually he’d do it without thinking. He’d become the perfect advisor and assistant without ever realizing he’d been molded into that role.
Kurz stepped forward and licked his lips as he glanced over her shoulder into the tormentory. “I can feel the pain in there. The agony. The suffering. What is this place exactly, and what do you want to teach me?”
“Soulcrafting,” she explained as she breezed past him into the antechamber. She paused at the railing overlooking stacks of souls, and the apparatus to manipulate them, and waited for him to join her before continuing. “Look down there. See the glass tubes? Each contains a soul, and each soul is being molded. We call it the tormentory, and the name is quite descriptive.”
“Why?” Kurz recoiled and clutched his hands to his chest as if to keep them from being stained by the sight of the suffering below.
Necrotis could stand it no longer, the naivety. She once again threw her head back and laughed. “Come. Walk with me and I’ll show you why. You can decide if this place is a terrible blight, and you must run back to your friends to tell them how to destroy it. Or, perhaps, you can see the necessity of what we do.”
She glided down the stairs, her dress training behind her. Necrotis resisted the urge to glance at him, but after a moment heard his boots on the steps. They descended into the first row of tubes, each small enough to hold in a palm. “Your uniform included a bandolier, which I see you did not bring. As a soulcatcher you typically wear one, do you not?”
The boy had no souls with him. Whatever small power he possessed, whatever souls he’d gathered or been given, were out of his reach. He’d made himself powerless.
“I didn’t think I’d have need of it here.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Do you want me to run and fetch it?”
“If you wish.” She shrugged idly, then turned back to the souls. “When you next don it you’ll note that it will perfectly fit these vials. Why do you think that is? Because these are weapons, Kurz. This is a factory like any other. And the souls we forge? They are a sort of…grenade, if you will. Take this fellow here.” She reached down and plucked a dark green vial from a cluster. “He is being tormented into an anger, because that is all he could ever hope to be. He lacks the potential to become a full wraith, or even a spite. We allow his anger to build, and fester. We show him visions of his loved ones doing terrible things, true things. His wife remarried. His children have all but forgotten him. Of course…I do not show him the yearly visits to his grave. Or the nights that all of them have spent weeping. Do you see? I am turning him into a weapon.”
“That’s awful.” The boy’s tone couldn’t be more scandalized, yet he leaned closer to the tube. “And what happens to him after he’s destroyed? We killed a bunch of your angers, and a couple of spites. Where did they go?”
“They are free.” She reached up, and tore reality to reveal the spirit realm. A low whispering came through as they peered into the dead reflection of the Wrath’s bridge. “An anger released into the spirit realm will have
no purpose but to end its existence. Watch.”
She hurled the vial through the tear, and it shattered in a puff of green smoke. That smoke coalesced into a Yantharan man with an unfocused gaze. He stumbled forward placidly, away from them, toward a white wall at the edge of the mists.
“What is he doing?” Kurz moved to the border of the tear, but didn’t go through.
“He is marching to oblivion.” She closed the tear with a flourish. “His soul will be churned back into raw consciousness, and he will be recycled into new beings, born into the dream realm. All of his pain and all of his loss will be shed. What will remain are typically the good things. The happier memories. The connections to other souls, or to fragments of your own soul. The torment we inflict has no lasting harm. We delay a soul from being recycled, but we never prevent it. We honor the Great Cycle. We are, in fact, its caretakers. It is our duty to see that no one overstays their time within this reality.”
Of course it was she who decided who’d had their proper allotment, and who hadn’t. Her enemies had overstayed their welcome, while her own calling to move on would never come. Not until her work had been done, and that would take an age of ages.
“I see.” Kurz’s expression showed conflict, and she welcomed the troubled gaze as he turned back to the rest of the vials.
“A final reminder, as everyone is squeamish when they first begin working with souls.” She plucked up another vial, this one a dark red. Nearly ready. “Each of these souls came to us because they lacked the protection of a god. If they’d prayed, and made covenant, then they’d have gone to whatever afterlife they’d been promised, to tarry there until they bored and moved on to the cycle. These souls had no god. No place in this sector. Perhaps they will make different choices in their next lives.”
“Why are you showing me this?” Kurz’s upper lip curled upward, a near snarl. “I will not work for you.”
“You are my son’s ward, and thus my responsibility to educate. I merely offer knowledge.” She gave another shrug. “Use it or not. For now I have other matters to be about. Come or do not.”
She glided up the corridor, and had made it a good thirty meters before he started after her. She led him up and around the tormentory, into the first of the large hangar bays where her fleets were being constructed. This one had been filled with the fighters her son had designed.
“This brand of necrotech might be more palatable.” She approached the first fighter, its sleek bone carapace glowing spectrally from the soul trapped within. “Our fighters simply consume the souls. Once consumed the waste is sent to the spirit realm, and they are reclaimed. So you see we are inflicting no permanent damage.”
A few figures moved among the fleet, some of the more capable pilots she’d allowed to survive. They began boarding vessels, precisely as she’d instructed them to. A dozen in total.
“Where are they going?” Kurz approached the first fighter and ran a hand along the hull, the curiosity overpowering caution once more.
“I have access to star charts over a hundred millennia old.” She gestured and a map of the sector appeared over their heads, complete with markers. “They are going to these worlds. Each is either locked behind a hazard that prevents them from leaving their world, such as the Razor Belt, or has chosen to isolate themselves because they do not wish the notice of the Confederacy. I believe they are probably only aware of about a third of the inhabited systems, colonies, and stations in this sector.”
“I’m afraid to ask why you’re approaching them.” Kurz backed away from the fighter and turned his attention to the map. “Somehow I doubt it’s to offer them a trade arrangement.”
“I might do that very thing.” Laughter bubbled up once more. Keeping this boy alive had been a wise move indeed. What an impertinent delight. “Each world will have a chance to worship me. If they agree, then they will be left in relative peace. If, however, they refuse? We have a pressing need to replenish our soul reservoir. I’ve expended millions of souls, and your friends and the Confederacy will be coming for me. I must be ready.”
She turned and strode away from the fighters, back toward the tormentory. Kurz followed like an obedient puppy, and never saw her vicious smile.
7
Departures
My friends gathered in one of the Word’s smaller cargo bays, a hangar on the outer edge of the pyramid that overlooked the planet Nebiat’s blue-green splendor below us. She didn’t look all that different than my home world had, really.
Miri, Vee, and Seket had all stopped what they were doing to see Briff and me off on my grand adventure. No one from the vessel itself needed to come. Both Visala and Bortel had duties of their own. This was a battleship, and we were readying for war. I did note my sister’s absence, but she hated goodbyes almost as much as she did being anywhere on a schedule, so I wasn’t concerned.
So three people stood across from Briff and me, our backs to the membrane looking out on Nebiat. In a moment we’d pass through, and I’d be going into a complete unknown, one that all my scrounging for data had turned up nothing about. Not a single account of life on the planet had reached the confederacy.
“Well, this is it.” Briff leaned a wing forward and nudged Vee. “You guys get to stay up here, and relax, while Jerek and I have to do, like…obstacle courses. Or sit under waterfalls or whatever. I guess they have a dragon trainer, so while Jerek blows things up I’m going to try to figure out how to master shifting. I want to look all cool with those little scales, like Inura.”
“I’m sure you’ll master it quickly.” Vee hugged Briff’s wing and pressed her cheek against him. “We’re going to miss you.”
“You will do well there, as will you, Captain.” Seket offered me a bro-nod. He’d worn his spellarmor, and carried both the spellshield and his blade. Full regalia even if no one but him cared. “During your training we will be here defending the ship, and preparing for the day when you lead us into battle. I will hone my piloting skills. This ship is no different than the Remora, if I can learn to understand him well enough.”
“You’ll do us proud when the time comes.” I clapped my friend on the shoulder, and realized he was that. I was going to miss the too-handsome paladin.
Vee surged forward and threw her arms around me in a fierce hug. “Please be careful down there. Every time you go out someone else doesn’t come back. You and Briff…we need you guys. You’re family. You especially, Jerek. I know we didn’t get time to talk, but we will.”
“I know.” I hugged her just as fiercely. “Briff and I will be fine. We’re here to get powered up. They’re going to give us a training montage. It will be great. We’ll bring back a souvenir holo of Nebiat getting stomped by Voria and Frit. I bet they have a gift shop at the Tomb of Nebiat.”
That lightened the mood, and everyone laughed, but no one could see my tension under my helmet. They didn’t know that assassins were an issue, and that Kaho had seemed pretty concerned that I’d be targeted down there.
Miri approached last and shocked me by brazenly stepping up and kissing my helmet over the mouth. She backed away before the PDA got too awkward, and gave me a suddenly shy half smile. “I’m going to miss you. I just wanted to do that in case I don’t get another chance.”
Vee pointedly glanced away, and gave us a moment. I ordered the helmet to slither into my armor, and I forced a little steel into my tone. “Hey. Everyone. We are not going to die. Briff and I will be fine, and we’ll be back before you know it. We’re counting on you guys to get this place ready to fight. Work with Bortel. Do the things he can’t do. Be my eyes and ears. Please.”
There were more serious nods now. I knew I’d need to force our departure, though.
“Come on, Briff. They’re expecting us.” I turned away from the group and slithered my helmet back on, then kicked off the deck and floated through the membrane, into frigid space outside the ship.
Briff followed a moment later and winged alongside me so I could grab onto his ba
ck. “This sub-dermal mic Vee installed is amazing. I can talk over comms while flying in space. It feels like a story. We’re going to train at the mountain. The mountain! Like…this is so badass, Jer. Remember when we first met? That campaign your roommate ran? You were an Outrider, and I played an Air Wyrm. We’re basically living that game.”
I gave into the enthusiasm in spite of myself. He wasn’t wrong. As kids we’d never expected to amount to anything, and spent our time gaming. Arena was popular, but roleplaying games were much more so as they required no equipment to play, just imagination and dice we carved ourselves.
“I’ll never forget that game.” I gave an easy laugh into the comm, and something finally relaxed inside of me, a fist I’d been clenching for weeks. “I miss those days, but the real thing is so much better.”
Briff winged us closer to the world below, and began to pick up speed. I clung tightly to his back as we accelerated away from the Word of Xal. Only then, gazing at the Great Ship through my HUD without the shelter of a ship, did I truly appreciate just how large my ship was.
We winged past the Krox Worldkillers, which didn’t stir as we drifted under their watchful guns. My skin prickled as we passed their orbital stations, and I realized their fire mages must be scrying us. Apparently they found nothing of concern as we passed them and finally reached the planet’s upper atmosphere.
Briff’s scales heated as he skimmed the atmosphere, and we didn’t speak, just enjoyed the ride. The last time I’d entered an atmosphere wearing nothing but my armor my planet had literally been disintegrating and I hadn’t properly enjoyed the view.