“Now, what is this important piece of information that you keep yammering on about?” said Bedivere.
“I will only speak to Fiel.”
“You’re speaking now.”
“And only after you give immunity to myself and my kin. If you can’t give me that, at the very least give my daughter and her family your protection. They had nothing to do with any of this. They blindly followed me into a foolish endeavor.”
“You destroyed us, Ical. Millions of lives were lost at your hands. Not Leif’s, not the Eliites, by your hands. Now tell us what you and the Eliite were planning and what you were doing out there in space.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop the shit, the stars are disappearing at an accelerated rate and the light bearer is missing. I know you had something to do with them, you and Leif.”
“You ask a lot of questions for a man who claims to know everything.”
“Dammit Ical! There will be no negotiations until you tell us Leif’s plans and what part you had in it! Until then, these talks are done. We should let you rot in here for the rest of eternity.”
“You claim that I’m weak. That I’m far from my peak, but do you really think you could keep me in here like an animal? If you don’t give me what I want, I will break out of here and rain down hell on your world once again. I will only speak to Fiel!”
Bedivere rose from his seat. A knock sounded at the door. He paused and looked back.
A voice said from beyond the door, “Councilwoman Raisa would like to speak to the prisoner, she claims your time is up.”
Bedivere glared at Ical. “This isn’t finished.” He left with a grimace.
Ical let out a long held breath. Could he really do what he claimed? He felt weak but he could still feel the stars out there and in particular the star they orbited.
The council members were fools. To think they could keep someone as powerful as himself chained up.
A Jour woman walked in.
“Sorry about him, he’s new to this,” she said.
She sat in the chair in front of him and crossed her legs.
“Councilman Mairi Raisa,” Ical said.
“El Ical.”
Ical stared at her in silence.
“What? Did you expect me to be angry, furious, that you came back to us after killing millions? No, I’m not angry. I’m leaning on the side of curiosity, really. What made you come back to the Citadel? If whatever it was is a great enough threat for you to cower back to the home you destroyed, then it must be worth knowing.”
Ical glanced at a pendant hanging around her neck, shaped like a small pillar made of serpents.
“Don’t worry about Councilman Bedivere, your family is in good hands, because the information you have might be worth a lot more than vengeance.” She leaned back in her chair, staring at the red sun that gave them its embrace.
Ical couldn’t mutter a word. The real traitor sat right in front of him.
“It’s an incredible feat, to live past a million years old. It means that you’ve cheated death. You broke past the point that most other beings would never live long enough to see. You’re the .0001 percent who survived through millions of years of incident and intent, through sickness and injury, through the amnesty of luck and the random nature of our universe. There is a reason most beings don’t live past a sliver of a million, the universe gets to them, if they don’t kill themselves. Personally…”
Raisa relaxed in her seat. “I would never want to live that long. It must get boring, having experienced all that life could give you. If nothing else, I would’ve killed myself.”
“It’s not so bad.”
Raisa looked down as she chuckled. “I’m only 32,758 years old and already…my days feel empty and short, every hour feels like seconds. I don’t even have full control of my limiter. One second, I’m holding my child in my hands and the next, he’s a fully grown man. The memories are still there, I experienced his love, his growth to manhood and yet, it felt as though it never happened. But it did. I did live, I did experience those years. But I…didn’t.”
Her back stiffened. “To you, my rise to ascension must have been a flicker. My birth and growth into what I am now, my whole life must have been a speck in your life. Every single blink for you means hundreds of years must pass. Your betrayal, your act of cowardice, everything that I’ve been through must have been nothing to you. Because here you are, the coward, the traitor who destroyed everything I’ve built, betraying my better sense. You could have turned off your limiter and let the years take you, you could have lived in peaceful isolation. At your age, your death would come quickly. The stars growing and burning out would have felt like seconds, the growth of the blackness would have felt like minutes and then, you would die. A peaceful but an unfitting end for a traitor.”
Raisa rose.
“And yet here you are, sitting in front of me, expecting to be greeted with open arms. Ical -- A once powerful figure, betrayer of Jahum, crawling back to us on his knees. Why should we listen to what you have to say when you destroyed the legacy that so many of us helped build?” She hovered only inches from Ical’s face.
Ical finally spoke, “What do you want me to say? Sorry? I’m not sorry for the frame of mind I was in when I betrayed the council. I’m not sorry for believing what I believed in back then. Because, I still somewhat believe in it now. No one can truly be sorry for their past actions. If I was really sorry, I would never have done those things. I’m not so great of a fool to not think on what my actions would bring. But…” He stared directly into Raisa’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for the people I killed, for the people who had nothing to do with my cause. That’s the only thing I regret. That and believing in El Leif and driving Jahum away,” Ical stated.
Raisa looked at the red sun one last time before turning to leave. She paused at the door. “I’m not angry you drove him away, I’m angry that you broke my trust…we have agreed to your terms, it will be a couple of hours before we’ll have a room ready.”
“Room? I need to speak to Fiel this instant.”
“He’s away on diplomatic duties, so we will provide you with a supervised room until his arrival.”
With that she was gone, leaving Ical alone with his own musings.
…
A distraction, that was what Leif told him he needed, big enough to fluster Jahum.
Ical floated just above Glion’s atmosphere, in front of the Citadel when it was still pristine, flawless. Then Leif would trap Jahum in the infinity prison so they could do what they needed to do. Millions of energy spheres appeared around Ical and eclipsed the skies. All he needed to do was to cause a distraction, one that would distract the most powerful beings in the universe. The spheres rained down on the planet below, and then Ical sent blinding beams of light into the Citadel. The screams of millions echoed out as the heavens caught fire. They would try to stop him. And they would fail.
…
Ical didn’t know how long he waited. His stomach growled, every inch of his skin itched as sweat rolled down his body. It must have been weeks, years, since he’d been locked away in the infinity prison.
It would explain the creaks of his bones, the feeling of his skin tearing, inch by inch. His tongue barren of moisture. They trapped him here without food or water. They lied to him; they said they would consider his offer. But instead they locked him away for years. Savages. Every second for him felt like years, every minute like eons. He was going mad. He needed to escape, he needed to break out.
He reached out for the stars. He could still feel them, mocking him with their power. It was the one closest that answered. He felt the power tingling in his fingertips. Just a little more. His bones stopped creaking, the itching subsided. He could feel his hearts beating once more, he was almost whole again. Did they really think they could trap him? Just a little bit more and—
Raisa walked in.
“Why! Why did
you leave me here to rot?” Ical yelled.
“What?”
“Why are you just now seeing me after all these years?”
“Oh! It must be the prison. I was only gone for thirty minutes.”
“Impossible!”
She rubbed the rock-like wall.
“This suppresses and absorbs the powers of the stars. It’s the perfect prison for people like you.”
“But you’re an ascended too, why are you unharmed?”
“You’re having a stronger reaction to the effect as your connection to the stars is far more tenacious than mine. A curse of your age. Essentially, your body is reverting back to the age it would have been without your powers to keep you eternally young. Basically, without your powers you would be dead. So your body is reverting to the closest point to death. As the material never really fully suppresses your power, it won’t kill you.”
“You must have it all figured out,” Ical stated. If worst came to worst he would be forced to escape.
“It’s amazing what my people are capable of building. It’s a symbol of what we could have been without Jahum.”
Ical stared at her. “Are you saying that his ways were wrong?”
“I never said that, now come.” Ical’s cuffs unlocked and he rubbed his wrist. “I’m here to take you to your accommodations.”
…
Ical stood in front of a window, staring out into space. He was in his new room, smaller than his room on the Skyeater, but accommodating enough. It had a full-sized bed, a small table, a vid-display in the wall and a bathroom. He’d just finished taking a shower, washing away the filth he obtained in the infinity prison. Clean again, he was glad that the ordeal was over.
He stared at the red sun in the distance. He could feel its embrace once more; he never wanted to be cut off again. The hopelessness he felt, the fear, he rubbed his hands together. There was a beep behind him.
He turned toward the table. A hologram of Fiel popped up on it. He was an identical image of his brother, Leif, except for the claw marks on the right side of his face.
Light bounced off of the millions of nanomachines in the air, trillions of nanomachines filled the Citadel. They were safe to breathe and the size of a cell. With only a single chip implant and a thought, he could form them into displays, communications receivers or almost any design he wanted. But it always felt unnatural to Ical, breathing in machines.
“General El Ical, imagine my surprise when I was told you wanted to speak to me,” said Fiel.
“It’s an insult that you won’t speak to me in person. Your people keep underestimating the importance of the information I have.”
“It will be a few weeks before I can make it back. I’m in a no-light travel zone, I can’t chance it. The Citadel’s relationship with the Sandersi is strained as it is.”
“I won’t tell you over the air, that is also a chance I won’t take.” Ical turned back to the window and stared at the sun again. With his connection with the stars, the stars stares never burned him.
Fiel’s calm expression didn’t change. “I’ve read the reports of what you and Leif’s people were doing on the Caelacis. Murder for entertainment, pagan worship, eating other races as if they didn’t matter. I’m ashamed that you had a hand in that.”
“I never took part in any of those things. The Eliite, my people needed an escape, they knew the universe was ending, that they might see the end of reality itself. They knew what they did was wrong. But none of that matters.”
His people knew how bleak their future was. They wanted to have fun. Worshipping Leif as if he was the pallbearer, killing innocent species for sport, the materialistic nature of their society. He never condoned any of it. But he never stepped up to stop them. He was just as bad as the Eliite and Leif.
He’d just learned that a species had been able to fight back and defeat them, that Leif was still out there. Somewhere.
“Do you ever have any regrets, for what you’ve done?” Fiel asked.
Ical placed his hands behind his back. “Of course I have regrets, we all have regrets. The matter is on how we choose to ignore them.”
“Then don’t give yourself a chance to regret anything by telling me what you have.”
Ical could tell him now. It might be his only chance. A lot could happen in a few weeks, but their communications could be monitored. Telling him might be better than nothing at all.
Ical could be killed, however unlikely that was, as he was confident enough in his power to prevent that from happening. At least for the next few weeks. Fiel was the only one he could trust, plus being one of the most powerful beings in the universe, Fiel would do what was right, and he couldn’t be stopped.
Ical would tell him. Tell him that the Jour they all knew and trusted were gone. That there was a civil war between a faction of Jour who followed the ways of Jahum and the Citadel called the loyalist. And a faction called the separatist, who believed that Jahum was the reason for the chaos in the stars and wanted to annihilate him and everything he created.
The separatists won the war and exterminated the remaining loyalists. The Jour alignment had changed. If he told Fiel, it would again cause billions of people to die at his hands. It would create an intergalactic war. But he must tell him.
“Ical,” Fiel called for him.
He must cause chaos once again. He wished it could all be over. He was tired. Tired of the betrayals, the wars, the chaos, the lies and the blissful hope. He itched to use his powers again, to become one with the source. With only one blink, he closed his eyes for what he wished was the last time.
…
Only sixty seconds had passed when his eyes bulged out of his face. A glowing hand stuck out of his chest. It pulled out and he started to fall to the ground. As he fell, his memories of the last sixty seconds rushed in. But as his body turned into ash, as his eyes misted out of the sockets, and as his breath turned into wisps. He didn’t have time to recollect what had happened, and his eyelids closed for one final time.
Part 2 – The eyeless, dreams of turquoise things
Jaylen’s eyes opened. He walked through a Citadel hallway, his skin the telling blue tint of a Jour man. But as he walked through the halls, he moved like a ghost. All the people he passed barely gave him a glance.
As he stopped in front of Ical’s room, the two archangel guards in front of the door had no chance to move before their eyes misted out and they fell dead in a heap of dust and uniforms. Jaylen went into the room.
“Fiel?” General El Ical was looking out of the window. His communication with Fiel was cut off.
“Fiel?” He turned and saw Jaylen. To Ical, all he saw was a man with no eyes, no hands, and blue, glowing mist coming out of his mouth, eye holes, and wrist.
“Do you think you can stop me? Do you think your secrets won’t get out!?”
Jaylen didn’t answer. As Ical powered up, Jaylen flew for him in a flash, his hands a blaze of motion, and touched Ical’s chest.
Ical’s eyes exploded into mist and wisp of fog exhaled out of his mouth as he fell dead. Ical turned into a pile of blue ash, with his clothes collapsed on top of it.
“It’s done,” Jaylen muttered. Good, get out of there. The nanomachines will be back soon. So said a woman’s voice in his head.
As he left the room, his body repaired itself. His eyes reformed back into their normal shade of white with blue pupils, the mist subsided, and his hands were whole once again. In the hallway, he stepped over the dust piles that were once the guards.
Once again, Jaylen looked like a normal young Jour man.
The voice came on again in his head. The nanomachines are in the air. Return to your room until we have verified everything. Then you will be released
He always hated hearing her voice; it made him feel as though he was going mad.
It was a communicator, the size of a speck of dust, installed by nanomachines. Almost everyone on the Citadel had one; it helped with the language barriers
of the thousands of races on the Citadel and acted as a personal computer with a limited A.I. system on it. It understood idioms and various language quirks of thousands of races, converting them to words and phrases the wearier could understand. It could learn from a person’s day to day interactions and communication, making it a perfect planner and companion.
Jaylen’s was handicapped. Its A.I. was turned off and it was only capable of sending encrypted messages.
He arrived at his room a few moments later. The voice came on again. Stay inside until I give the clear.
“Yes ma’am,” he answered mentally. All it took was a thought and an idea of where he wanted to send the message and the woman on the other end got a reply.
He let out a bated breath. One he held for every mission. In his bathroom mirror he stared at his eyes; the whites were cracked.
“Crap,” he muttered.
He’d never get used to that, it hurt every time. He focused on his eyes. Slowly, the cracks filled. They still ached, but felt better. It was something an eyeless had to get used to.
He blinked a couple times and washed his face in warm water. His internal com beeped. Ical is dead. the killer was never found. You are released.
“Good, thanks,” Jaylen projected. We’re lucky you got to Ical in time, if what we were doing was revealed, then there would’ve been an unwinnable war. She had a habit of reminding Jaylen about his mission, and why he did what he did, and killed who he killed. He was thankful for that.
“What’s next?” Ical’s next of kin will need to be taken care of.
“Time frame?” One week.
“One week? Doesn’t that give them time to run? They must know by now that we’re after them.” No. Only a few people knew of Ical’s arrival and even fewer will know of his death, they will keep it under wraps until Fiel arrives. His kin doesn’t know he’s dead, plus Serephin labor is long and strenuous, so they will be under close surveillance. His granddaughter’s will prevent them from running. We’ll have to wait until Ical’s great grandson is born. But if you find an opportunity before then, take action.
Chaos in the Starless Nights (In A Universe Without Stars book 1.5) Page 2