Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  While continuing to explore the Spheres of reality and possibilities in the Outward Expanse, Naero stumbled onto the Dimension of Space-Time Records quite by accident.

  Prior to this accident, she didn’t even know that such a dimension existed.

  Often she would explore at random while her Prime Material form slept and regenerated; she was very well protected during such sessions. She and all of her family were always under constant heavy guard at all times on board her flagship.

  Searching while she slept was simply efficient; doing so gave her astral energy form more time to search the Expanse.

  Yet on one occasion in particular, she came under heavy Cosmic Psyonic attack from the Dark Emperor himself, and the entire host of dire G’lothc spirits flourishing within the corrupted vessel of Nahaxrathrax.

  The sudden force and weight of the assault threatened to crush her with its agonizing impetus.

  She reeled from the surprise assault directly on her mind and attempted to flee. She and the Dark Emperor dueled with each other within their minds on a semi-regular basis, ever since their great clash over Shetharra.

  As usual, Nahaxrathrax bent all of his considerable psyonic might on overwhelming, shattering her mind, and rending her from within.

  Naero had a force of will like Ur-metal itself, the strongest, most indestructible substance in all the universes possible.

  But she was not invulnerable, especially when caught off guard.

  She continued to flee and evade, but the Dark Emperor and his cohorts somehow locked onto her consciousness and pursued her, hard upon her heels.

  Naero tried all of her tricks to ditch her assailants.

  She switched spheres at will, expanding and contracting the size of her Cosmic energy being form.

  She passed through the spheres and dimensions that were the most disorienting, spheres that did damage to both of them.

  Every time that she thought she might break free, Nahaxrathrax emerged and came charging at her once again.

  Somehow her assailants had a lock on her either her energies or spirit form.

  She finally dove into the Expanse rush of tangents, limitless spheres, and bubbles of possibilities that exploded all around them.

  The great risk for any entity was getting lost within them all.

  Even as she struggled with the maelstrom of madness all around her, she did feel the psyonic claws that the Dark Emperor had hooked into her mind begin to falter and slip free.

  Her foe got hammered and battered by all of those chaotic forces as well.

  Nahaxrathrax used the Cosmic voice against her. WE SHALL DESTROY YOU WITH THE INHERENT FLAWS AND WEAKNESS BUILT INTO YOU OWN MIND, SPACK BITCH! YOUR OWN MENTAL DEFECTS WILL SET THE TRAP AND USE YOUR CHERISHED FEEBLE EMOTIONS AND MEMORIES TO TORMENT AND CRUSH YOU. WHAT YOU WISH TO WITNESS AND EXPERIENCE MOST IN THE SPACETIME RECORD SPHERES WILL ONLY DESTROY YOU!

  Record Spheres?

  A tremendous Cosmic energy blast raced toward her.

  Naero did her best to shield herself, sensing too late that this attack was also charged with strange levels of temporal force.

  This was something new–a temporal attack component.

  The Dark Emperor’s bizarre assault slammed into her like a Spacer dreadnaught overloading its jump drives and blasting through its Prime Material plane targets.

  She quickly discovered that the attack had blasted her into an all new dimension, a possibility where SpaceTime energies held sway, and permeated everything around her like an aether unto itself.

  She floated through Cosmic Time in all of its varieties, forcing her way through the infinite layers of temporal realities. It very quickly grew incredibly disorienting, and depleted her energies at an astonishing rate.

  Was she glimpsing pasts, presents, or futures?

  At first she could not tell.

  Her only points of reference, the things that saved her in the end were her fledgling experiences in exploring the Expanse and the KDM.

  Temporal Cosmic energy was still a form of Cosmic energy.

  Then she realized.

  These infinite layers of these spheres were all temporal spheres.

  The Dark Emperor himself had even called them SpaceTime Record Spheres. He apparently hoped that they would somehow destroy or trap her, by using her own emotions and memories. How could any part of her past hurt her or be used as weapons against her?

  They were certainly a part of her own SpaceTime. But again, how could they harm her? The past was the past. No one could go back and change it. That wasn’t even possible, even in theory. That was one of the first precepts of Temporal Cosmology.

  Back to her current conundrum, everything about all of the realities possible seemed to be organized into spheres.

  On a practical level, there were far too many spheres to manage or fully comprehend, all at once.

  Naero tried to focus, doing her best to link back up with her own temporal reality.

  But how? Accomplishing that feat was going to be the main problem.

  She had lost her connection, her anchor, in all of the chaos of the attack itself and her flight. Technically, she was adrift, lost in SpaceTime.

  Naero didn’t even know where to look now for her way back, or out, or whatever it was. Was this what the enemy had meant by trapping her here?

  She no longer knew when she was or whence she had come from. How then could she find her way back?

  What did she have left?

  She still knew who she was.

  And she was, or at least had been, or had taken up a fixed amount of SpaceTime with her own existence. She had her own time stream that she was tied to.

  Yep. Now all that she had to do was locate a sliver of time stream in the extensive annals of nearly fourteen billion years of SpaceTime for everything in her universe alone.

  And that was just her universe, just a sliver itself in an infinite sea of possible universes.

  Now that was a humongous mystery all in itself.

  But she digressed, and she still needed to get her skinny butt home somehow.

  If she could just re-connect with her personal time stream, she could find her own temporal niche once again, and return to it near the instant that she had departed from it.

  As if all of that was somehow going to be easy.

  Where did she begin? Could she even find that key point?

  What if she discovered where she ended in all the webs of time?

  What if she learned where she eventually died, and in what context and facets of the multiverses?

  After what seemed hours, she was still no closer to finding any way out of the trap. She was effectively marooned, and thus far, it had nothing to do with her emotions or memories.

  Emotions and memories.

  Perhaps that was it. But how could her memories harm her, other than emotional pain? They certainly couldn’t be used to destroy her.

  At the present, her inability to connect wither her own SpaceTime through her memories was the actual problem.

  She needed to begin somewhere.

  She tried focusing on one of her earliest memories. The beginning was always a good place to start, if nothing else.

  When she was very young, less than two years old, she worked with her grandfather Amashin, practicing sword arts. He was paradox of love and toughness, from early on. And one of the things she recalled most, were the beautiful, natural scenic vistas that her ‘grandy’ would put up on the Maeris Clan vid walls of the sword rooms. They were always amazing.

  As Naero grew up, those vistas made her want to go everywhere, and see everything that was amazing across the entire galaxy.

  As a swordmaster and an instructor, Grandy Amashin proved a harsh taskmaster. His lessons were many times painful, but important.

  There was no way around harsh reality. Learning sword mastery entailed being beaten with sticks and practice swords. Students had to accept that fact. Pain was a vital part of such lessons, discipline, and train
ing.

  She realized now that her Grandy never struck her or hurt her one bit more than he had to. And he always explained to her what it was that she needed to learn and why.

  The temporal layers of spheres parted before the razor-like scalpel of her memories, slicing through the walls and veils.

  Naero suddenly saw herself back with Grandy, practicing sword arts, viewing this vision as if through a screen of water, not unlike a waterfall.

  First it was a shifting vision.

  Then it was a hyper-resolution vid–no, a holo.

  Naero simply knew that she could walk right through that barrier and be right back there in that fragment of SpaceTime.

  She could be there, in the experience of that moment.

  But as what? Was she there as a ghost? An Astral projection?

  Whatever she was, no one could change time, once it had occurred.

  She could only observe that part of her time stream again.

  She would not be able to touch anything, or affect anything in any way.

  Glowing patches of what she could only describe as nets of Cosmic force descended upon her out of nowhere, and from what seemed like all directions.

  They jolted her with raw Cosmic force, causing her to shriek and convulse.

  They were also apparently sentient in some way, and ordered her repeatedly via psyonics to:

  Enter a time stream or depart!

  Enter a time stream or begone!

  There was no debate with these entities.

  All of them continued to zap her to the point of death.

  She tried to communicate with them the same way. Stop! I’m trying to find my way out. I am the Cosmic Guardian of Enlightened Change. I am part of the Cosmic Prophecies!

  These creatures or whatever they were attacked her relentlessly.

  Enter a time stream or depart!

  Enter a time stream or begone!

  Naero tried to resist, but there were far too many of them, and here in this place, this realm of theirs, their power reigned supreme.

  They nailed her with their energy attacks and pummeled her into submission.

  The next instant she felt the multitude of them pull back, but ready to assail her again as they had just done.

  Naero floated, curled up within the temporal aether, and trying to regain her wits.

  She was now within some kind of temporal pocket sphere.

  At least she could detect that much.

  Another psyonic voice, an extremely powerful one directed itself at her via a strong mindlink. We are the Ois. We faithfully serve the Mysteries without fail. I was appointed to lead and guide the Ois. I am called SZaphennar. The Ois guard and protect SpaceTime and help record the unfolding of the Cosmic Prophecies. You are indeed the Cosmic Guardian of Change for your universe. Yet know this: even one such as you cannot come here without dire consequence. Explain to me why you should not be destroyed? Some of the other Cosmic players have tried to breach our defenses, in an attempt to learn or change the outcomes of certain things. We fight them off, as is our purpose, and we nearly destroyed them as well.

  What others? Naero asked.

  What do you mean? The being calling itself SZaphennar said.

  Who else has attempted to breach the barriers of SpaceTime?

  Just recently? Your great foes. The Ois play no favorites. Not even for the Three themselves. Nor even for the Six. The Dark Emperor, Nahaxrathrax, first came against the Ois and was repulsed, and severely damaged. Then came Xath the Hidden and even the fell might of Khemathrykul, the mightiest of the Three with his Darkforce hyper beam. What folly. No power shall avail any of you, were you all a thousand times greater than you have been made. The walls of SpaceTime can never be breached by any direct force, no matter its source. They have been made sure of while SpaceTime itself exists within this universe.

  Fellow guardian, SZaphennar. With respect, I but stumbled upon this dimension by accident, while being attacked and pursued by the Dark Emperor himself. Search your own records if you are able; you will see that I speak true. The only reason that I have not returned to my own time stream already is that I do not know how. I have never been to this sphere before, and I don’t know how to get out!

  The SpaceTime Guardian held back, silent for several long moments.

  I see that what you say is true, Change Guardian. But even that is no excuse for your presence, and you must be treated as any other intruder. Know this much: the Ois are the appointed guardians of all SpaceTime. They cannot be resisted or destroyed. In this, their power is absolute. They confront all advanced Cosmic beings and intellects who attempt to enter the very core of the Temporal Dimension. All who do so must enter their time stream and depart or be attacked and driven off, if not slain. Now that I have explained these realities to you, your time here grows short!

  Wait! I want to depart. I’m willing to do so this instant. Do you not understand me? I don’t know how to leave. I don’t know how to return to my own time stream. I don’t know how to do it! For example, what if I jump into the wrong time stream, one not my own?”

  Those who do not return to their proper time stream shall suffer great agony and damage from the heavy effects of temporal displacement, which will threaten to tear them a part. The further off they are from their time stream, the greater the negative effects. Those alone might destroy you.

  How do I locate my proper time stream?

  Focus on the events of your life as you recall them.

  My memories.

  Follow them to the point you came to this place. Try to rejoin your time stream at that juncture and begin to follow it once more. Now. You must do so now, or we shall renew our attacks to destroy you, or drive you off!

  What if I end up in my future or my past, by mistake?

  You are barred by the Mysteries from the future. If you got too far back, you will suffer intensely until you overtake your present once more. But you cannot affect the past in any way. It is fixed. You can only observe it.

  How will I know?

  You will know. Now. Depart. Your time here has ended!

  The Ois came at her once more, in all of their fury.

  Naero struggled to recall the moment she slipped out of her time stream, with the Dark Emperor on her heels.

  She had raced through the spheres of reality without thought, heedless to where she was going in her efforts to escape destruction.

  Then she saw a sliver of SpaceTime crease open at random. Through it she spotted The Dromon and The Slipper, moving through the black with The Shinai. That had been Aunt Sleak’s fleet, a decade or more ago.

  The burning bolts of the Ois raked her.

  Naero shot forward and entered that fragment of her past time stream.

  She located herself in her quarters on board The Slipper, back when she was eighteen, almost nineteen.

  Then it struck her.

  This was before her parents had been killed.

  Naero felt the knife in her heart and soul at that moment.

  This was indeed the pain of memory and loss.

  She was back in the past, but there was no way to warn her parents.

  No way to change anything.

  No way to save them from being murdered and stripped away from her all over again.

  Naero sobbed and struggled to claw her way forward from that horrible time, through her time stream, and back to her present.

  Then she stopped and calmed down, and cooled down.

  This at the very least gave her a chance to see them some more again…while they had been still alive.

  She reached the point in her time stream when she was both arguing with her parents, and saying goodbye to them.

  She hadn’t known it back then.

  But she would never see them alive again, after those last few moments.

  Now she could.

  Naero finally figured it out.

  Traveling within her own time stream would be very similar to the splitting technique that
she already used, just on a slightly larger scale, through different spheres of SpaceTime.

  Yet it was still her own time stream, so the damage to her system would be minimal—nothing that a Cosmic Guardian could not regen.

  First, before leaving The Omaria exploration flagship for the final time when she was eighteen, she would leave a fragment of herself, a replicant of her Cosmic energy being form behind her. It could lie dormant in her own, unused quarters on the flagship, waiting for her to link back up with it.

  That energy rep would be her anchor in those spheres, just as they were on smaller scales of other spheres when she went back and forth from one quadrant to the next through that rep. All of that would be SpaceTime travel within the parameters of her exact time stream as well.

  Now she was a temporal stowaway on board her parent’s doomed final voyage.

  Naero left her rep behind in that past, and slid forward along her time stream until she caught up to her own present and rejoined it.

  Afterwards, she escaped back to her fleet and was forced to rest for the better part of three standard days. The process and the recovery took more out of her than she expected.

  But the vital question remained.

  When would she be ready to go back and explore that dark part of her past?

  In general she knew what had happened to her parents when they died.

  But was she ready to witness their deaths firsthand, without being able to alter the bitter outcome, just to see what it was that they saw?

  Would anyone ever be ready to witness such a thing?

  Perhaps the Dark Emperor had been right after all.

  5

  Naero gathered Khai, Baeven, and any of her other friends and family that were available to one of her flagship’s conference nanorooms. These programmable chambers were approximately ten meters high and wide, and twenty meters long. They could be pweaked in any number of ways for meetings of shipboard events. Each was lightly decorated, but being on a top of the line flagship, they were normally kept Spartan and austere.

  The standard chamber look was light blue-gray with the standard sleek lines and accent motifs that matched the overall design of the warship itself.

  There were three long, rounded viewports, with their blast screens currently open on the outer wall of the starboard side. The inset lighting panels in the raised ceiling provided ample light and could be adjusted with teknomancy or even psyonics. The current floor was still set to level and flat, with a hard, easy clean surface that still had a bit of cushion to it.