The communication was cut and Jaylen was left to his own devices. In order to preserve their order, he would have to end Ical’s legacy.
…
Jaylen went to meet a friend for lunch. Anu waited for him in the hallway. She was beautiful, stunning even by human standards, short brunette hair that covered her extremely pale blue head.
Yet under that beauty, she was just like him. An eyeless.
“So, how’d it go?” She joined his side as they walked down the hall.
“How did what go?”
She looked him in the eyes, her left eye was cracking.
“You know what.”
“Your left eye.”
“Oh!” She put her hand over it and it was gone. Nobody noticed a thing. An advantage to being an eyeless, they had the ability to suppress their presence. They moved like ghost.
“Of course, I know what you’re talking about. Is the mission all you think about?”
“No! I think about a lot of things.”
“Then what else have you thought about in the last week.”
“Umm…I…” she hesitated.
“We’ve been here two months Anu, if you don’t think of something besides the mission then you will go mad.”
“What else is there to think about? When we have a mission as great as ours?”
He never liked when she got all preachy.
“Well.” He took her hand. “We could talk about how beautifully your eyes reflect in the Glion sun.”
He kissed her. As he released, Anu chuckled. “How about we talk about how bad that line was.”
“How about no. Let’s get a transport.”
Jaylen and Anu walked down the hall. It seemed endless. There were doors on both sides of the hall, living quarters for the millions who call the Citadel home. There were multiple common areas in the tube that stretched around the planet, but the long halls that bridged them together were long enough to make it seem like they never ended.
Jaylen and Anu walked to an opening in the hallway and into a small room with a glass door in the wall with a panel next to it. Jaylen tapped on the screen and said, “Commissary, Main Hall.”
The device spoke, “Estimated departure – forty-three seconds.”
…
Jaylen and Anu exited the transport and walked into the main hall of the Citadel. Blue crystal covered the ten-story high ceiling and floors.
There, hundreds of people went about their day, people of all different races, big, small, purple, and blue. The Citadel was a true cultural melting pot.
In front of them, on the opposite wall, was an oversized arch window that watched over Glion. With the window’s crystal-like material shading the space it looked over a slight shade of blue. On the sides of the halls were ten open floors of various offices, buildings and consumer stores. The food was on the second floor.
Jaylen and Anu walked up, found their favorite place, Edor’s Fried Things, ordered and found a table by a balcony overlooking the large main hall foyer.
On the lowest level, a Serephin man towered up to the second floor, surrounded by yelling Citadel guards.
Jaylen only heard a few bits and pieces of the confrontation. The Serephin man’s shape-shifting watch broke. It was always funny to Jaylen when that happened. The watch kept Serephin’s to a manageable size. The Serephins stood at an average of eighteen feet tall, compared to the citadel average of seven. They were mandated to wear a watch that put them closer to the Citadel average after a few unfortunate accidents.
As Jaylen and Anu ate, they spoke of their plans for the day. Jaylen’s was already eventful but there was more ahead of him.
“A friend of mine is ascending today,” Jaylen said.
“Farak?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to go see him while he ascends?”
“I have an appointment with my ascension doctor around the same time. It’s ironic.”
“Why?”
“Because even though he is older, he was always angry that you and I were ascending at a faster pace than him.”
“I’m coming with.”
“Why?”
“Why? So you can have someone to talk too.”
“Don’t lie, you just want to see someone fail.”
A grotesque look hit Anu’s face. “Oh god no! That would be horrible. To see someone get torn apart like that. I just want to see the process, what really happens. They always showed us videos of ascensions in school but to see it live is something else entirely. I now have an excuse to go see one. Have you ever seen someone ascend live?”
“No.”
“Then you must be curious.”
“I’m not really interested.”
“But you’re going to watch anyway.”
“So?”
“You could always say no to his invite, mister yes man.”
She had him there, so he didn’t answer her back. A low pitched ding went off in his head. He held out his hand and with only a thought, the nanomachines pooled into it in a rectangular shape and formed into a display. Nothing into something in two seconds. He got a reminder for his appointment, having lost track of time.
He closed his hand and looked out of the window of the main hall. The sun peeked over the crest of the planet.
…
An hour later Jaylen sat in a small checkup room. He sat on a bed. His body bare to his black stretch underwear, his legs freezing against the cold plastic sides of the bed.
The doctor handed Jaylen a device.
“Hold the handle and pour all the energy you can into it. I’ll tell you when to stop,” the doctor said. The device looked like a vertical tube with a thermometer stuck in its side. Jaylen grabbed it and slowly focused his mind on the device. A blue glow emitted from his skin, his hands became hot as he poured his energy into the device.
“Stop.”
Jaylen’s glow faded as the doctor grabbed the device. The handle melted into the shape of his hand.
“Sorry about that,” Jaylen said.
“Don’t worry, it’s replaceable.”
The doctor twisted the handle off and threw it away. A number appeared on the small thermometer like display.
“Hmm,” the doctor muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” The doctor wrote a few notes in his ledger.
“Your star clock says you’re approaching ascension at a faster rate than you were before.”
“What?”
“A star clock is a method of measuring when someone will ascend, it uses equations and certain variables like—“
“No, no, I mean what do you mean I’m ascending faster?”
“You were already outpacing others, but now I believe we have a special case on our hands.”
Jaylen looked at his hands.
“You must consistently stay in the company of some powerful people or have perfected your training, but whatever you’re doing, keep at it, as the average age of ascension is 3900 years old, and you’re only 168.”
“I’m not sure what exactly I’m doing,” Jaylen said.
It must be because of his mission and his unfavorable occupation.
“Well, just make sure what you’re doing is within the Citadel rules. If you’re using an excessive amount of star power, it can be in the grounds of expulsion.”
“I’m not using excessive anything.”
“That’s the only other way to explain this. If your star clock equation is right then you’ll ascend at four hundred years old. You might just be the next pall-bearer.”
Jaylen stared at the doctor.
“I believe you’re okay, our session is over, but I want you to check in with me twice as frequently, okay?”
“Okay.”
As Jaylen exited the doctor’s office, Anu stood outside waiting for him.
“Anything eventful?” she asked.
“No, he was just excited about my progress,” Jaylen lied. With that they walked through the ascens
ion hall.
Both sides of the hall were filled with giant windows, beyond them were large white rooms. Most had a single person inside, with each person’s skin glowing at varying brightness. Out of twenty rooms, only two had people with small glowing blue feathers covering their bodies. As Jaylen and Anu walked down the hall, Jaylen heard a voice behind them.
“Hey, Jaylen.” Farak walked up, his skin a shimmering blue glow. “I’m glad you came,” his voice vibrated in the air.
“Are you okay to be out here?” Jaylen asked.
“No, not really. I just wanted to see who’d come.”
Someone waved at Farak from the distance, his family.
“Hey, I got to go. Thanks for coming.” He ran off.
Outside of Farak’s window, Jaylen and Anu stood waiting for his ascension, among them was a sizable crowd. Farak’s mother and father, his wife, and multiple generations’ worth of family and friends. They all watched, watching Farak sit alone in a single chair in the stark white room.
“This is taking forever,” Anu whined.
“We can get the timing of an ascension down to two hours,” Jaylen said. Anu sighed.
“Hey, you were the one who wanted to come.”
“I’m not complaining. Just bored.”
An overlay appeared over the window. It stated Farak’s info. Farak Nebil, Homeworld: Caract in the Cos Galaxy, Race: Jour, Class: Lenk the III, Stage of Ascension: 1, Age: 3437 years old.
It seemed as though Farak had beaten the average.
Inside the room, Farak peered into his hands. The window was a one way, everybody could see in, but Farak couldn’t see out.
“I wonder why everyone wants to publicly ascend? With a rate of failure so high that it could happen to anyone,” Anu said.
“Fifty/fifty,” Jaylen said.
“I wouldn’t want anybody to see me fail.”
“I could have sworn that you told me you got better grades in galactic politics than me.”
“Color my interest.”
“Well, before, this area was closed off and anyone who ascended was watched over carefully by Jahum himself. But as Jahum brought the galaxies together, tensions were at their highest. Many believed that Jahum was doing something to the people who came here to help with their ascension, this is the end result of their concerns. A place where you can publicly ascend. There are still private rooms but most people take ascensions as a moment of pride, a moment of arising to something greater.”
“And when the ego gets the best of them, their families can watch them die,” Anu said.
A woman next to them shushed them. Farak stood, his skin grew even brighter. He started to pace around the room, rubbing his hands on his head.
A loud flash and bang went off next to Jaylen. He glanced at the source: the room next to them. Anu pulled him over. The crowd cheered as Anu and Jaylen pushed their way through.
In the room, a man knelt on the floor, his chest pushing fast in and out, sweat covering his pale green skin. Two long orange bird-like energy wings floated off his back; they were blinding. They were what kept him in this world. Without them, his power would have torn him from existence.
“He just transcended reality itself,” Jaylen muttered.
“Amazing,” Anu replied.
The overlay on the window changed his name from Kleop Aiolos to El Aiolos. El was a designation for someone who transcended reality itself and had awesome power. An archangel, they called them.
There were only three stages of those with the power of the stars, the first was the simple use of the power. The second was regular ascension into a powerful being, and the next was ascending to a power so great, that they could tear apart reality itself, an archangel. There weren’t many of them.
“It’s happening,” someone yelled at Farak’s window. Jaylen and Anu ran back to see.
Farak paced faster in the room, his skin glowing too bright for normal eyes to bear. He mumbled under his breath, with sudden bursts of shouting laced in.
“Is he going to be all right?” Anu asked.
Jaylen didn’t answer, he didn’t know.
Farak’s skin grew even brighter, shining like a beacon. As everyone shielded their eyes, only Anu and Jaylen were able to look on. Jaylen could have sworn he felt the heat.
As Farak let out one final scream, he exploded in a flash of light. Everyone blinked the light out of their eyes.
Farak held out his hands, staring at the twenty-three sun-like orbs that spun around him. He didn’t notice that his skin wasn’t glowing anymore, as it had been for the last two weeks.
Everyone around Jaylen clapped. The overlay on the window simply changed to Ascension successful.
Jaylen let out a sigh of relief. He had not wanted to see his friend fail; he’d seen enough death for the day.
Someone screamed behind him. It was the window across from them. Jaylen turned. Anu ran into the crowd before the window.
“Wait!” Jaylen ran after her. She stopped.
“Oh no…” Jaylen looked into the room. A woman knelt on the floor, her screams echoing throughout the entire hall. Small blue feathers covered her Avalourian skin. She glowed bright blue. She screamed again. Black cracks rippled through the walls of the white room.
“Help!” she screamed. She stared at her hands, she had all this power but it had nowhere to go. She had no way to control it. The black cracks turned into fissures as she continued screaming, her glow becoming unbearable even for Jaylen.
Jaylen looked at the overlay, she was transcending to an archangel. A feat that had a 96% failure rate. She was about to become a statistic.
A crackling snap echoed through the hall, the tears arose in the air. Jaylen could see into them, there was nothingness in the tears. Nonexistence. She was tearing apart reality.
A man banged on the window. “Where’s her wings!” the man yelled. With so much power, the wings that archangels were able to summon prevented their disturbing amounts of power from tearing apart themselves and reality.
They were stabilizers. If your power grew too much without being able to summon them, then—
Her screams pierced the air, the cracks enlarged, as her body grew hot, bright enough to make her features undefinable. The cracks rippled through her, tearing into her very being.
The nothingness in the cracks became clearer to Jaylen, a vast ocean of emptiness, but as Jaylen stared into it, he saw something.
“What’s…” he trailed off. Out in the black, it seemed as though there was single speck of light. The air around the crowd suddenly grew hot.
“Get down!” Jaylen yelled. As the crowd cowered, the woman let out a final scream and erupted. The coming explosion blew out the sound, the eruption shaking the Citadel.
But as Jaylen opened his eyes, he was fine and so was everyone else. In the room, there was nothing left except for stardust and a single blue feather floating down to the floor. The cracks were gone and the nothingness was something once again.
An alarm sounded and a shutter closed over the window. Crying erupted in a corner of the crowd, the woman’s family, Jaylen supposed. Guessing by the looks of them, they were a prestigious family, with more than a few archangels. More than half of them wore a pair of metallic orange wings on their shirts, a symbol given to those who succeeded in ascending to that level. It must have been hard, watching one of their blood go supernova.
“She’s gone, just like that,” Anu whispered. A curse of this universe. The cost of trying to become a god. These rooms were never for show, it was so that the ascending couldn’t harm anyone. Entire planets were lost because someone faltered under their ascension. The room could hold in a supernova.
“We all have to go through it when we come of age,” Anu laughed a sad laugh. It was that, kill yourself or die of unnatural causes. “I’m not looking forward to it.”
…
It was some days later, Anu and Jaylen lay in Jaylen’s bed under the covers. Anu slept on the far edge of the
bed. Jaylen stared at the ceiling.
Some nights, he dreamed of turquoise seas and—
A dull beeping interrupted his thought. He sat up as a voice came on in his head. Information incoming, you have two hours to complete your current assignment. Apologies for the significant revision in the time frame. Dosia, Shir’s daughter and Ical’s granddaughter, has just given birth in the medical ward in the patient recovery section, ALC 247. When you enter within a thousand foot radius of the targets, the nanomachines will be removed from the air and their surveillance will be down. From that point, you will have ten minutes to complete your assignment. Are your instructions clear?
“Yes,” Jaylen replied.
Kill Ical’s entire family in an efficient manner, got it.
He got up from the bed and put on his working clothes: a pair of nondescript pants and shirt. But with a single thought, they turned into a Citadel nurse’s uniform. It was only a visual illusion, but if he did it right, nobody would notice.
As he turned to leave, he stopped and stared at Anu who still slept. He decided against waking her, she’d get an alert to leave soon enough. The people they worked for didn’t like it when agents were at places associated with other agents when a mission was in motion. She’d be angry that he didn’t say goodbye, but he’d deal with that later.
…
It took him a full hour to arrive at the medical ward. Dosia was in the part of the Citadel on other side of the planet. He was lucky that he left right away, if he hadn’t then he would’ve missed his chance.
He got word that the nanomachines were gone as he walked into the medical center. Nobody paid him any mind as he slipped past security or when he used a stolen security pass to get into the recovery ward. In a short stroll, he stopped in front of Dosia Ical’s room.
The room had her deceased husband’s last name. Spouses in the Serephin culture would often take the last name of the family who were the most powerful. Which meant it should have been Ical.
Chaos in the Starless Nights (In A Universe Without Stars book 1.5) Page 3