by Clara Woods
Lenah and Persia exchanged a glance, and Lenah read the same confusion she felt. She had no clue what to do with this piece of information.
“Uz, let’s continue. We don’t know how much time Cassius can buy us.” Lenah hoped he was doing fine. The sounds of the cyborgs fighting were still audible, but she couldn’t see what was going on through the darkness. At least fighting meant that Cassius was alive and well enough.
They walked back to the center of the room, and Doctor Lund started to investigate the little door. Coming closer, it indeed turned out to be an elevator, but its top barely reached Lenah’s chest, suggesting that it was built for someone a lot smaller than their human and Cassidian sizes. Like someone of the same build as those stone statues out in the hall.
Persia wanted to press the button, but Lenah held her back.
“Let’s not call extra attention to ourselves,” she said, then turned toward the stairs. They wound up in a circle, and just like the elevator, were built for someone with the stature of a child. They were less than a meter wide with small steps, looking awkwardly narrow for her leg size. Progress was slow because Lenah had to duck and crouch, while trying to walk silently and pointing her knife.
Whatever was up there, it better be worth finding. The drone, which had been silently trailing them all this time, zipped past her and glided up ahead. It chattered some hisses and Lenah stopped in her steps, listening hard. A few long seconds of silence passed, then she heard a thump. Someone hitting stone with something heavy? More hisses followed. Panicked hisses?
Slowly Lenah turned the next corner and, instead of more stairs, a room came into view. And Corinna Cheung. Her idol, and her father’s ally. Lenah stared at her in confusion.
“Ah, Lenah Callo. I was hoping you’d come by and help me out with my — business problem.”
Under any other circumstances, this comment would have made Lenah the happiest person on Astur, but if she hadn’t expected to see someone here, it was Corinna. Then again, the coincidences had started to pile up. It had been strange to see Corinna sneaking in her father’s corridors. Then Kahoot had shown up right there as well. Did that mean she was the Queen? The woman Lenah aspired to be?
“Come.” Corinna waved a hand, and Lenah had made two steps into the room before catching herself. When she stopped, Persia bumped into her from behind. Apparently Lenah hadn’t been the only one following the instruction without thinking.
Another funny coincidence. Lenah now remembered how, back in the Callo mansion’s hall, she’d suddenly agreed to let Corinna go without pestering her with any of her questions.
“Where is Kahoot?” Corinna asked as Lenah took her first good glance at the room. It was a small place, maybe five by five meters, but its domed ceiling stretched up high. Given how many stairs they had already climbed, they might be in the tallest dome of the temple. In the center of the room was some kind of altar or stand.
“He was ill-disposed,” Lenah answered. “What are you doing here, Miss Cheung?”
“Please, call me Corinna. After all, you’re about to make me a great gift.”
“A great gift of what?” Lenah asked.
“Of knowledge,” Corinna said, smiling grimly.
“What? You have us hunted down and accept killing people to know something?”
“Not something. The truth needed to save the galaxy,” Corinna said. “Why else would I move heaven and earth for this?”
Lena curled her brow in confusion. “Save the galaxy? From what?”
“Them, of course.” Corinna waved her hand through the room. The empty room. “Oh, but of course you can’t know. Not even your Cassidian knows?” She looked at their silent expressions. “I guess that’s a no.” Corinna shook her head. “No wonder you didn’t want to hand over the stone. You don’t know about the threat that might be coming for humanity. That’s what happens if something of utmost importance ends up in incompetent hands. And it’s exactly why someone with my traits and resources needs to handle this.”
“What’s coming? Are you saying these angels, the Cava Dara, are going to attack?” Lenah asked.
“That’s what I’m here to verify. You see, the Cassidians aren’t what they appear to be. They’ve been keeping secrets, even though it’s not what was depicted down there.”
Lenah shook her head in confusion, but Corinna continued.
“A few months ago, a Cassidian priest, tall, regal-looking in his yellow robes, approached me.”
“Yellow robes? The High Priest?” Uz said. Lenah didn’t know much about the power structure of the Cassidians, but wasn’t the High Priest their most important political and religious power?
Corinna didn’t acknowledge, but continued. “He showed me this ancient black scroll as proof, which obviously I couldn’t read. Then he told me that I have to stop the farms. That there is this immortal army that gets released into the galaxy every 6,000 years to make sure no one race is ‘developing’.”
“Developing?” Lenah echoed in confusion.
“Yes. ‘Unnaturally enhanced,’ I believe, were the precise words he used. Advance technologically, you could say. The last thing he said before he left was that I could go see for myself on Masis III if I didn’t believe him. A planet that doesn’t exist outside of legends, as I quickly found out.”
“That’s why you wanted the stone? The exhibition, all these criminals you sent after us? Because it’s the only map to find this place? No, wait a moment. Since you were here first today, this wasn’t the only way…”
“It’s been my top priority to find this place, through multiple channels of investigation. Or do you think I’d just stop investing in the mage farms because some Cassidian High Priest tells me to?”
Lenah could agree to that. “Why did you even believe him at all?”
Corinna paused, looked at Lenah for a few intense seconds, and finally said, “I probed, and could sense only honesty in his mind. And I’m never wrong with what I sense.”
What a peculiar way of putting it, Lenah thought, almost like…but could that be true?
“If it’s really a cycle, the mage farms triggered them on humanity?” Uz asked quietly. “It could be… You’re taking power from mages and making something else. Enhancing yourself. Just like Cassidians did 18,000 years ago, and just like it’s passed on about the Syrr. That’s what the High Priest was referring to?”
“Rules from an eternity ago. If this is true, then your race, your God Mage, truly did a number on the galaxy. Holding us back forever. That cycle must be broken.”
“If our High Priests couldn’t break the cycle in 18,000 years, then you can’t either,” Uz said.
“Oh yes?” Corinna asked. “And what have Cassidians done about it, exactly? Apart from sticking to their famous Old Ways so that these monsters, their own creation, wouldn’t turn on them again?”
Uz shook her head, but didn’t answer. Because she agreed?
Corinna paused, then looked at them. “Which one of you has the stone?”
“I have it,” Persia answered immediately, without the slightest hesitation.
“Great. Bring it.”
Persia moved toward the center of the room, and suddenly Lenah’s urge to stop her was replaced with the wish to stand still.
“My Queen.” A man Lenah hadn’t seen before stepped out of the shadow. The drone flew up with a high-pitched hiss as he let it go. “I get it for you. It’s too dangerous to let an enemy come close.”
“Hush. Don’t you see that we’re friends now?” Corinna smiled as Persia’s hand went into her pocket. That triggered something for Lenah. What was the reason she wasn’t preventing this? Why the urge to see Corinna – the Queen, her friend – no, the person who sent criminals to get her killed – with the stone, when they’d spent weeks evading her clutches? It almost felt like she was the recipient of one of her own suggestions. Her brain rocked with sluggish slowness at this conclusion. But once it did, Lenah bolted forward, catching Persia’s outst
retched hand and snatching the stone from her.
“Noo,” Persia yelled as she turned toward her with an angry snarl. Lenah stepped back hastily when she saw Persia lifting her hammer.
Oh, not good.
“Persia, Corinna’s mind-controlling you. Think about it. Why would you want to give her the stone?”
But her words didn’t have any effect. Persia still came at her. Lenah evaded, glimpsing a look at Corinna’s concentrated face. Then she felt it again, the suggestion to let Persia attack her. She staggered and toppled to the side when something – someone – pushed her out of the way of Persia’s hammer. Uz had ducked over and thrown herself onto her. Lenah landed hard under Uz’s weight, but a safe distance away from the weapon. Lenah nodded her thanks to the Cassidian, and was rewarded with a curt smile back.
They both scrambled up, and Lenah turned toward Persia, while Uz faced the guard who seemed to have decided that his Queen wasn’t so safe after all and had joined the fight. Lenah still had her knife, but hurting Persia wasn’t an option. That left her with one other weapon. As hard as it was to concentrate, especially here in the middle of a fight, she gathered her focus, determination guiding her. Reaching toward Persia’s mind, she encountered a hardness there, instead of the silky cloud she usually felt when touching minds. She tried to poke it with her own suggestion to stand down, and the reminder that she and Persia were friends, but nothing happened. At the same time, she had to duck Persia’s next blows, and was slowly being pushed closer and closer to the wall. Soon, she’d be left with nowhere to go. Lenah caught a glimpse of Corinna. The look of concentration on her face was still there.
That one-second look at Corinna cost Lenah. Persia caught up with her, and she had to jump back, her spine hitting the wall. She dove down, catching herself with her injured arm. Pain struck up her shoulder, and she lost her concentration. Lenah scrambled while focusing on Persia’s mind again. This time, however, she didn’t send any suggestions toward her friend; instead, she concentrated on the barrier and targeted the area about one arm’s length in front of Persia, where it was a thick band instead of a solid wall. She threw all her force against it, willing it to go back into Corinna’s mind.
Lenah turned, getting ready to evade the next hammer blow, but Persia had stopped with a look of confusion on her face. Lenah kept pouring into her invisible wall, not letting her feeling of triumph take over until Persia dropped her hammer and staggered backward.
“No,” Corinna growled, and suddenly whatever had been directed toward Persia vanished. Lenah, who was still pouring all her strength into pushing her barrier forward, almost slammed her face into the ground from the impact. Then she felt it. Like lightning, a power swept into her, squashing her conscious thought with an iron grip. She staggered up, taking several steps toward Corinna.
Lenah still had the stone. She wasn’t supposed to. Why had she snatched it from Persia? She had to bring it to Corinna. Her hand stretched out, but she hesitated. Something about this wasn’t right.
“Give me the stone,” Corinna pleaded in a friendly tone. Why didn’t Lenah want to give it to her? She was, after all, a trusted business partner of Lenah’s father.
“Yes.” Corinna’s hand stretched out as the words that Lenah heard were both spoken out loud and into her mind.
No, no, no. This was so wrong. Wasn’t she supposed to—? Lenah slammed her barrier up again, this time in front of her own mind. A headache started to form behind her temples from the pressure building between their two powers, but her mind unfogged. With her still-outstretched hand holding the stone, she closed the final distance toward Corinna and slammed the stone into her skull. Instantly, the pressure lifted. Corinna went down and stayed on the ground, unmoving. Lenah sank to her knees. She was trembling and sweating and felt as if she’d run a marathon. Weakly, she remembered the guard and turned around, but to her relief, Uz and Persia had already taken care of him. Next, she checked on Corinna. How hard had she hit her? At least the woman was breathing and didn’t seem to be bleeding.
That’s when they heard it: the sound of scratching metal against stone coming up the stairs. Adrenaline gave her the strength to get up and pick up the knife she’d dropped. Uz and Persia also lifted their weapons, and together they positioned themselves at the entrance. Doctor Lund stayed back, but even he picked up a knife.
Lenah struggled to gather her concentration again. If this was the enemy cyborg, they wouldn’t stand a chance. He was military grade, surely enhanced beyond the visible, and might even withstand laser fire. She pushed her worry about Cassius aside and fully concentrated on their situation. She could see the mind before the person walked around the last corner.
Instantly, Lenah pushed the feeling of intense dizziness and the need to vomit away with all her strength. It was pretty close to how she felt in her exhaustion, and forming the convincing idea wasn’t difficult.
“Ah!” They heard someone yell and stumble before Cassius turned the corner, holding his hand in front of his mouth and struggling for balance on the tight stairs. Lenah immediately let go of his mind. Cassius, who’d been compensating for some perceived imbalance, almost fell backward. Probably the only thing keeping him from tumbling down dozens of stairs were his broad shoulders catching him.
“Oh shit.” Lenah lurched forward to help him up. Now that she got a good look at him, she noticed several cuts on his arm and on his swollen face.
“Are you all right?” She reached him, hands outstretched awkwardly, and almost stumbled into him on her weak legs. He had already found his balance and was climbing the final steps to them.
“Doing better than the other one,” was all he mumbled. He caught Lenah by the shoulders, steadying her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded in answer, but was grateful to lean into his grip. Her legs were really wobbly.
Uz let out a quiet shriek of excitement behind Lenah. “That’s an old computer.”
Lenah turned toward her, then toward the stand in the center of the small room. She’d seen things like this before: physical screens that wouldn’t project a holoimage, but instead played the content right on the screen itself. Stepping closer, she noticed that it was made of the same lava stone that they saw all around them, and that the Mapstone was made of.
Persia reached out a hand to touch the computer, but nothing happened. She frowned at it. “How does this thing activate?”
“Maybe there’s a button somewhere.” Doctor Lund started a thorough investigation of the terminal. After a few moments, he excitedly pointed to a round, fist-sized opening at the side. “Persia, try to see if the stone fits.”
Persia did so, and Lenah watched in amazement as the screen lit up. They all crouched around it. Like everything else, it was too low for them.
A friendly female voice, soft but intense, was talking in the same hissing language they had heard the drone use before. Then a video started to play.
There was a man sitting on a throne, a living recreation of the statues they’d seen downstairs. He was a Syrr, but the first one dressed in something else other than the short dress. His face was large in relation to his body, and his skin had a purple tint to it. He looked more like a child than a man.
The video then turned to show a tall Cassidian dressed in yellow robes. He was talking intensely to the king, towering over him at more than double his height, and finally pulled out a black scroll, gesturing at the king.
Lenah held her breath, wondering if Corinna had somehow already seen this video and taken her tale from it. But that didn’t make any sense. Why would she involve half the criminal underground to get the stone if she already knew what the message showed? And how would she have activated this computer without the stone?
The video changed to a different scene, showing a brightly-lit corridor. It was empty but for the invisible person holding the camera, and two doors at the end that marked its only discernible exits. They walked through the right door, which led into an antechamber with a g
lass wall giving a view into the room beyond. The king was there, lying on a cot. It was made of the same shimmering black material as the temple around them. At his head, he was connected to a cable leading to a display full of stones. Three round ones were shimmering in many colors as the light fell upon them, stones that now looked very familiar to Lenah.
Suddenly, brightness shone out of them, illuminating both the chamber and the king. His body jerked, his eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets, and the light passed from the stones and through the cable toward him, inside of him. Then it went out.
In the semi-darkness, Lenah realized that all of the stones were gone. She blinked to check again, but the scene had already changed.
They were outside, in a city full of domed buildings, with a huge black temple in the middle. More Syrr walked everywhere, some carrying shovels or picks, others baskets full of fruit. The place was surrounded by lush forests and tall volcano peaks, and Lenah had no doubt that she was looking at Masis III.
Then the sky changed. Black clouds gathered before the sun and the turquoise sky. They grew bigger and bigger, and she realized that they weren’t clouds after all, but flying creatures. They pulled in closer, and to Lenah’s amazement, she recognized the features of Bartoc, like the scorpion creature that had almost killed her on her ship in Oscuris. But there were thousands of them, and they looked gray, mere shadows of themselves with purple eyes.
People came running out of the buildings. Some were armed, trying to protect the others from the Bartoc descending down on them. Bartoc couldn’t naturally fly, at least not the ones Lenah knew of, so seeing them come swarming down on the much smaller inhabitants of Masis III raised goosebumps on her skin. They didn’t kill, though; instead, they touched. And everyone that had been touched faded to a gray shell of themselves within seconds, and joined the purple-eyed army. Finally, large-winged beings followed, identical to the ones lining the entry in the temple: Cava Dara, the Winged Frost. They were humanoid in shape, apart from having white or blue wings, and their purple eyes seemed to be missing any pupil in the center. Long hair floated behind them like white smoke. Where they went, they seemed to leave frost behind, or maybe that was an understatement. The buildings first froze over; then some of them even crumpled to pieces.