Unfortunately for Spheron, just as he had tracked Netherlord to a world being established by humans and Axalans, he had witnessed the death of the one Phasia had asked him to watch over.
Fortunately for Spheron, he wasn’t facing the Lore and the Surge. He was free to intervene as he could not with Lord Aeon. He cycled back on his route through phase space, found the temporal juncture which split off into backtime—the past—and prepared himself to either kill Netherlord and/or save Zane. But just as he entered the new temporal trajectory, an astonishing site greeted him: Zane.
She stood in the temporalscape, her body totally transformed into white energy. She was looking at herself, her arms and body; touching the energy-form she had become.
“What am I?” she asked herself, her voice sounding harmonic and ethereal.
Before Spheron could deal with her, he could feel temporal spools bouncing off his energy. He could see Aristedes again and again trying to change time, his face stretched in agony across the timelines. But Zane's energy repelled him and he failed time and time again. Spheron felt for him. He would not save his sister today. He turned his attention to Zane. She was indeed different; special.
Spheron approached her.
Zane looked up sensing his energy. “Go away,” she screamed, not recognising the once Celestian Knight who had raised her.
Undaunted, Spheron hovered closer to her. He wanted to console her, tell her about what she was.
“No!” she screamed. She raised her hands and an uncontrolled torrent of white energy blasted Spheron blinding him, burning him.
The energy suddenly ceased. The light cleared. And when Spheron could see again, Zane was gone. Spheron knew he had to find Zane again. He now knew what Phasia had meant. Zane was special.
Zane was a Loremaiden.
Earth. AD 2011
The dogs wouldn’t stop barking.
“What the hell's wrong with these mutts?” Fred Jameson yelled through gritted teeth. Sweat played across his graying brow.
“Something's got them riled up!” his younger cousin, Steve, added needlessly. His voice was a pitch higher than was necessary even at the best of times.
Fred and Steve were practically dragged along through the trees. Steve fretted having to leave his nine-year-old son, Patrick, back in the pick-up with the deer carcasses, but he didn’t want either of them stolen. Plus Patrick had a shotgun and a cell phone to call him if there was any trouble with local do-gooder rangers patrolling for unlicensed hunters.
The duo had just finished tying up the last deer to return to the truck when a bright light had exploded a couple of miles to the north. It had spooked the dogs. Then the canines had started running hell for leather toward the spot, towing their owners behind them.
Fred had his automatic rifle with him and had already flipped down the night vision goggles as the twilight quickly turned to night in the dense forest. Steve wasn’t as flash as his cousin and the beam from his hand-held flashlight waggled everywhere, shadows looming out of the forest, causing his heart to jump at every single one of them.
“Whoa, whoa!” Steve cried every few minutes as Rocky, a large black and brown mongrel, lopped along ever faster. “Damned crazy mutt!” he huffed.
They sped along for a good twenty minutes, panting away as the landscape undulated through encroaching undergrowth and exposed roots. The strange light had now subsided and they were working from memory and their dogs’ lead.
Finally they reached the area from where they thought the light had emanated.
“Where the hell's that light?” Fred asked himself, scanning the area.
His black Labrador, Poncho, yelped and tried to carry on. Rocky also scraped the ground in eagerness. But Fred held his arm out, his fist signalling ‘hold’; something he had seen actors do on TV. He was a keen wannabe-soldier with his green and brown camouflage hunting gear, while Steve stuck out in his usual lucky hunting denims.
Steve looked over to Fred who thrust his arm forward with outstretched palm; ‘forward’. Steve rolled his eyes. The former had seen something. They moved at an easy pace until Poncho began barking again, straining at the leash. There was something in the woods to their right, just visible through the undergrowth; something wrapped in a colourful cloth.
Fred inched closer. He stood over the object and poked it with the barrel of his rifle. He jumped and almost tripped backward when the object rolled over. And looked at him.
“It’s a girl,” he shouted, alarmed. “Some Goddamn girl in a costume.” He looked at her clothes, what looked like a purple and pink jumpsuit.
“Christ!” Steve dialled 911. “Hey, Police . . . anyone! We’ve found a girl out in the woods. Yeah, that’s right, you heard me. Yeah, course she’s alive! She looks hurt. Get the cops and docs out here!” He continued to give directions.
Steve tromped around in the immediate vicinity looking for anyone or anything else, finding nothing. The girl had remained in and out of consciousness. She didn't speak a word. It unsettled the two men.
A quarter hour later, Steve and Fred heard the whirring of a chopper on the way, which circled them. They could see search beams intermittently penetrating the canopy, but it couldn't land in the dense forest. It was almost an hour before a four-team police unit with two medics found their way on foot.
The lead officer took one look at the hunters, saw their scared faces and state of the girl. After a half hour of grilling they were cleared of any suspicion, but told to report to the police station for further statements regarding the killed deer and their absence of hunting licenses. Fred and Steve were glad of that charge rather than a more serious charge.
The medics tried to recover the girl, who upon fully awakening fought them off, until an almost overdose-level amount of drugs had been administered. The unconscious girl was carried on a stretcher, Fred and Steve also taking turns, through the woods for almost a mile before they reached a clearing. She was then air-lifted by the waiting helicopter to a psychiatric hospital near Blue Mountain.
When she fully regained her senses in hospital two months later, she had forgotten much of what had happened immediately before her arrival. Her near-death experience had been just that, an experience she had been lucky to escape.
She had been diagnosed with retrograde amnesia due to an unknown cause. The doctors were hopeful she would remember more soon, enough help the police with their inquiries and to be discharged. For now, Zane just needed to rest.
Deep space
Spheron was late. He found it infuriatingly embarrassing as a time traveller.
Although time travel seemed an easy feat, timing was everything. Going back in time to prevent or to cause an event or venturing into the future to cause or to prevent an event was not always straight forward. Portals and temporal streams and rifts were temperamental entities, which liked to flow to their own rhyme and reason, and going against the tide was sometimes unpredictable.
But it is what Spheron had to do in order to reach Millennius at the appointed time and place.
Spheron cursed himself.
His encounter with Zane had left him somewhat off-kilter, even lost, and Spheron took a few wrong temporal turns and ruptured unintended timestreams. In return he ended up late for his appointed rendezvous. Millennius was not there.
Millennius had already departed for the fortress. But Spheron was not alone. Alarmingly, he found himself at the head of a large Lore contingent backed up by a Helstar.
However, it wasn’t only the rendezvous he was late for. The gathering darkness which was enveloping Earth told Spheron they were all too late.
The Storm of Stars were awakening.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Destinia. Now.
“You are too late, brother. Welcome to the Celestian Reformation!” Destina cried out to Millennius, as he landed in the fortress’ main chamber. “The Storm of Stars have heard my pleas. They come!” she gloated with open arms.
“Sister, you have much to answer
for,” Millennius growled back. “Stop this madness now or I will destroy you and your kin as you have mine.” The crackling energy made his voice growl even lower.
“Spearhead.” She ordered the Surge to absorb their powers.
But just as Destina tasted victory, another vast portal opened over the fortress. Three billion Zater Jen led by Cosmogod, Phasia, and the Time Empress poured out from the two-mile-wide brightly-yawning tear in the sky, dropping to the ground, like huge crystal snowflakes. The main Zater Jen population surrounded the fortress, while their leader and his court shot through and landed within the open dome.
Spearhead and several other Surge tromped forward to surround Destina in a protective ring. They in turn were surrounded by Arcanaut, Areigna, Geomega, and Queen Celesophia.
>You are our prisoner, Destina< Celesophia announced to all; her voice a commanding tenorous tone. Then turning to Spearhead: >Surge, stand down<
>We cannot< Spearhead answered.
>Surge, we the People of Time, the People of Energy, and the People of Psyche are united against the Storm of Stars. Why are the People of Matter in league with this errant Celestian Knight and the Storm of Stars?<
>We will be remade as we were and the First Peoples will be equal once again<
>No, Surge, this will not occur. The Storm of Stars will destroy us all and create a new universe without us. We have to stop them. Then we Peoples will create our own and just universe<
Spearhead hesitated, caught between believing Destina or the crystal being in front of him. But one look at all the forces arrayed against them told him that logically, he was on the wrong side. He gave an order.
With dread dismay, Destina felt her energy drain way as it was absorbed by the metal warriors. Her Celestian self emerged, weakened, her sharp-angled face more haggard than before.
“Nooo!” Destina screamed in anguish. She sank to the ground in heaving sobs.
The Zater Jen leaders turned their attention to Archron, who belligerently cast down his voidspear in defeat. Even Decion, who sheathed his lancesword, and a dispirited Valtare took on an air of surrender. The fortress was secure from within, at least.
Across the large metal chamber, Phasia, Cosmogod, and the Time Empress flew over to Millennius. The Celestian Knight Lore embracing each other, their bodies, coalescing, their kisses lighting up the chamber as flares and rays emanated from their beings.
“You make a handsome Lore,” Phasia joked, stroking Millennius fiery mane.
“I’ve never felt freer,” Millennius replied in a happy growl. “But we must talk later. First we have to stop the Storm of Stars.”
“Yes, but first, you have to meet someone.” Phasia turned and behind her, standing next to a young girl was a tall, golden crystal-armour-clad man, with familiar looks. “Millennius, meet our son, Hellennius, Cosmogod of the Zater Jen.” Phasia beamed proudly, literally, her whole Loreself glowed.
Millennius was dumbfounded. The shame washed over him. “My son,” he hesitantly started. “While it is almost beyond impossible we finally meet, I am saddened it is under these circumstances and that you see me as I am; a Lore, not worthy of your presence.” He wondered if his rasping Lorevoice conveyed the sadness he felt.
He needn’t have worried. “Father, if it’s good enough for mother then it is good enough for me.” Hellennius embraced his father, energy flaring off his crystal armour.
Millennius remembered what it was like to cry, but his Loreself couldn’t. But he felt a coldness wash through his body. He then spied the little girl.
“And who is this?” He approached the girl, who showed no fear. She was dressed in an all-white uniform with blue trim—a short armoured tunic over matching trews, her pale skin and hair almost disappearing in the glow of her inner energy.
“This is the Time Empress,” Phasia introduced her.
“An Astral?” Millennius was intrigued.
“Yes,” the girl said, swaying from side to side with childish innocence.
“You know of the Astrals?” Phasia asked.
“I know of many things, my love. Spheron told me. He is on his way to meet me here and my Lore horde above us.”
“Your Lore horde? So?”
“Yes, Synther is dead! I slew him in combat under the Chronopolis. The Astrals are safe.” Millennius couldn't bear to tell the rest about his second-born son and Spheron the younger.
Phasia grieved little for her brother, but smiled warmly at Spheron the elder keeping his word to find Millennius and for trusting her. She wondered then at the time period Zane had visited the Chronopolis to find it abandoned.
Their brief reunion was interrupted.
“Grandfather?” came a voice from behind him.
Millennius’ body reversed itself; his front shifting to his back, to peer at the young woman who stood before him.
She stepped forth. “I am Zane, daughter of Xathanius, Lord Aeon of the Astrals,” she said proudly.
Millennius' heart both soared and sank or rather his energy knotted within his chest with mixed emotions. “I would know you as my kin anywhere. I can see my mother in you, Zane,” Millennius complimented her. “She was a great warrior and beauty. It is an honour to meet you. Your father would have been proud of you.” He had blurted it out without thinking.
“Would have?” Zane and Phasia spoke together.
With a heavy heart Millennius forced himself to relate the tragic news regarding Aeon’s death at the hands of Destina and the Traitor Synther. He shot his sister a grave look across the hall.
“I buried him on the Surge world,” Millennius confessed.
“The Surge world?” Zane plunged her head despairingly into her hands. “We were almost there,” she whispered in realisation. She and Aristedes had been so close to their father. His final trail had indeed led them to the right time, but they couldn’t locate the right place; the war had seen to that.
Zane's eyes blazed across the fortress. “Destina and Synther will pay for their sins, Grandfather.”
Millennius nodded grimly. “The Traitor Synther has already paid. I defeated him in combat. He is no more,” Millennius stated with satisfaction. He turned to Phasia. “Sorry, no matter what he was, he was your kin.”
Phasia shook her head, unperturbed. “All my kin are here now.” They embraced again, their son looking on with pride.
“I hate to break this up,” Sceptre spoke up from the periphery with the rest of the Starguards. “But something’s happening.” He pointed up into the sky.
From the open dome they could see the sky rapidly darkening. Archron summoned his voidspear back into his hands, before he could be stopped, commanding the whole roof of the fortress to retract. They now stood under the sky in the cracked-walled chamber. Above them the heavens darkened with unnatural speed and purpose. It grew noticeably colder, the wind whipping in carelessly around them.
The Starguards, the Knights Destina, the Surge, the Zater Jen, and high above them, the Lore looked upwards and out into space as twelve vast, magnificent, phantom-like orbs of energy began to warp into view. The fantastical super-giant stars: six bright blue-white super giants on the eastern horizon and six black stars on the western front gradually solidified. They surrounded the Earth, so far away, yet as if they were upon Earth’s doorstep.
No one seemed to care that such objects should not have been able to occupy such a small sphere of space without destroying Earth, themselves, and local space-time. But these were no ordinary stars.
They were the Storm of Stars: Gods of the Celestians.
Looking at the Storm of Stars in their full glory would have sent even the most ardent Celestian Knight mad. But the overpowering energies radiated away through hyper-dimensional routes. Even the black-hole-like Shadow Stars remained like dormant singularity portals staring into unfathomable depths.
Destina laughed hysterically as the Storm of Stars, mythical no more, circled the Earth; her captors forming a tighter ring around her. The energy of the Go
ds rippled around the world buffeting all gathered at the fortress with their generated solar winds.
An ominous voice reverberated within everyone’s head:
≠How dare you bring us from our slumber. How dare you act above yourselves, you who we made and can destroy!≠
“We wish an audience your benevolences,” called out Destina in a shrieking pitch. “We wish to ask your forgiveness for our transgressions.”
“Speak for yourself,” Millennius fired back.
≠Silence! We will destroy to create; bring death from life; sing chaos over order≠ sang the Shadow Stars.
=The new past will be as the future. This will be the new centre= chimed the bright Prime Stars.
As they watched, the Shadow Stars grew even darker, black upon black heaving as their inner energies stirred to life. As if some cosmic engine had ignited, the Stars began to rotate on their axises, light bending in their foreground, space twisting as the ground began to shake around the gathered mortal forces.
“Yes,” shouted Destina, her arms outstretched to embrace the killing Stars. “Take us! Take us!”
“Oh, universe, they’re merging into a super black hole!” Millennius shouted, as the noise from their transformation boomed through their heads. “The Shadow Stars will suck in and devour the entire universe from this point!”
“Yes! And the Prime Stars will align as a super white hole in order to release the energy required to rebirth a new universe!” Destina finished in exultation.
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