Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  “Love you, Mom and Dad.”

  Naero would go accompany her, like a sprite, taking a small replicant energy form, merely to observe—to witness what was going to take place.

  Everyone, even her parents, told Shetharra not to hold back.

  Everything and everyone on Sologene-1 that she would be pitted against would only be Cosmic energy constructs. These Remos weren’t real, and they could not die or be killed or injured.

  It would in fact be the ultimate simulation, stepped up by degrees to test Shetharra’s limits.

  Nothing even close to this process had ever been made possible or attempted on this scale.

  Shetharra would be fully testing these fantastic new systems as much as they would be testing her.

  Naero’s little duck smiled slyly, a patented smile she had learned from her mother, and gave her parents long hugs.

  Then she put her hands on her tiny hips and simply said, “Dad, Mom…I’m ready. Haisha, let’s do this!”

  24

  Like Shetharra, Sologene was a miracle in itself.

  A synthetic star. A star created within its own pocket existence with its own unique aether.

  The sun was small as stars went, according to its size, mass, and magnitude. But even the smallest stars were still stars.

  With the Songs of Making, sufficient materials and Cosmic energies had been collected, allowed to collapse, and reach critical density and mass in order to ignite into a star. Many energy beings had also been crucial in making Sologene a reality.

  It only had the one construct planet, established within the optimal range of its star’s habitable zone. The entire planet was technically a Remo. Everyone on and around the planet was a Remo but the two of them.

  By the time Shetharra transported down to the surface of the synthezoid construct world of Sologene-1, Naero had already advised her daughter to initially avoid the appointed landing site.

  Shetharra was probably going to be attacked the instant that she revealed her presence.

  Intense combat challenges awaited her at every step, every one of them designed to test the limits of Naero’s oldest daughter’s powers and capabilities.

  That was the last advice that Naero was allowed to offer.

  In her role as observer, Naero was not supposed to act as a parent, advisor, or to partner with her girl in any way. Mom had a tough little energy form merged with one of her advanced reps that was only about 30 mm tall.

  She still retained most of her abilities, and like Shetharra, she moved about in full on stealth mode, both cloaked and immaterial.

  They flew in slowly, circling around and over the dense construct feathery frond forests of gigantic size. These multi-colored fronds served mostly the same function as trees in the fully-designed, synthetic ecosystem of Sologene-1.

  True biomechanical plants from the Prime Material Plane could not exist properly within rarified, Interdimensional aether, although a few mutant varieties were the exception in the actual Astral Plane. Some of those had been modified with biomancy and brought here to thrive. This Remo planet was like one big aether-centric greenhouse in many ways.

  Many sentients thought that stars and planets could not exist in the latter, or in pocket dimensions. They did, in fact, but there were far fewer of them and their compositions were very different.

  Such celestial bodies were a rare occurrence in these realms, unlike those that formed naturally in normal universes and realities in such infinite numbers.

  There should also be many construct fleets somewhere out in the aether as well, but Shetharra guess rightly that they were most likely cloaked, waiting for their turn to go up against the Dreamer later on.

  Mellozt was the Mystic construct compound on the planet that Shetharra was supposed to pop down to first.

  As they searched the small construct settlement, Shetharra noted that no one was there to greet her in any way. She couldn’t even detect any other presence but her own.

  That had to be deceptive. It certainly wasn’t a ghost town.

  First Shetharra created a lifelike holo of herself, and sent it exploring the compound. When that did not trigger any reaction, she created several more and sent them flitting about.

  Finally she gave them all mass, energy, and substance.

  Cosmic blasts, explosions, and beams converged on Shetharra’s real form, passing right through her, along with dozens of other Mystic and high tek attacks.

  Her tricky opponents had triangulated her actual location somehow from the fractal position of the holos, possibly from residual Cosmic flow signatures. Very clever.

  Yet these attacks exposed the attackers as well.

  Naero registered thirty-six of them.

  Shetharra attacked over fifty Mystics who were in heavy Cosmic construct armor, focusing their attacks on what they thought was her position or area.

  Their concentrated attacks chewed up the compound and did cause considerable damage and destruction.

  Shetharra responded, as fast as she flashed away, and cut them all down in less that an instant in a wave of blinding light.

  Her power seemed to strike everywhere all at the same time with devastating effect.

  The Remos of the very best masters and prodigies of the Alliance and Spacer Mystics, all swept away by a ten-year-old spacechild.

  Shetharra uncloaked, revealing herself completely, and fearlessly floated over the devastation all around her.

  Even Naero knew that this was far too easy.

  A dozen construct Spacer Marine Divisions with the latest Kexxian based tek and weaponry suddenly phazed in, surrounding the target area with Shetharra at the center.

  They opened fire, and pulverized ten square kilometers of the construct planet surface down to a depth of forty meters. Interlocking combined arms, direct fire from meks and gravtanks, and indirect fire from huge artillery battery concentrations devastated everything within that kill zone.

  The most powerful military in the known universe unleashed their fury.

  Before the flames, ash, dust, and smoke could clear away, Shetharra launched her near immediate response.

  Entire sheets, walls, and waves of impossible Cosmic energy wheeled and fanned out from the starchild in all directions, slicing deep into the planet–let alone the attacking forces.

  She stood at the center of an expanding tempest of annihilation that whirled out rapidly, and wiped out twelve divisions of the finest ground forces in the galaxy within seconds.

  These Remo forces had never experienced such a crushing defeat.

  Even the battlegroups that tried to cloak and dematerialize to defend themselves were eradicated all the same.

  All that remained were smears of dark stains and shadows where they had been flash-blasted into oblivion.

  Shetharra stood smoldering and defiant, ready for the next test, the next attack.

  There seemed to be no limit to her power.

  Cloaked atomics suddenly rained down on her location and region by the thousands, allowing no time to neutralize or repulse them.

  Most likely launched from orbit, the sudden bombardment proceeded to vaporize the construct planet surface and pock-marked that continent with glowing, fused-glass craters.

  Within a matter of minutes, Shetharra absorbed and transmuted most of that energy, transmuting it into Cosmic power that she could use.

  She was already transporting up into the black to engage the construct fleets waiting to duke it out with her there.

  Their sheer numbers were daunting.

  Shetharra took on a hundred such fleets single-handed without hesitation

  At first she merely shot forward, punching through the warships one after the next, leaving them destroyed or severely damaged in her wake.

  But that would clearly take too long, with her up against five thousand warships, all focusing their considerable coordinated attacks right on her from multiple attack vectors.

  She emitted entire spheres of blinding Cosmic p
ower that pulsed out from her at hyper speed. These spheres, arcs, and waves of shining might struck the fleets arrayed against her and converted their mass to energy in violent bursts of destruction and disintegration.

  Within the space of a few standard minutes, over half of those attacking fleets were not only destroyed—they no longer existed. Not even wreckage was left behind.

  Three thousand of the most advanced warships.

  Completely and utterly annihilated.

  By a child.

  The remaining construct warships pulled way back and scattered so that she could not so easily decimate the rest.

  Shetharra suddenly found herself under direct attack by a thousand of Naero’s own most powerful replicants in full on Shetanna battle armor mode, complete with Cosmic energy katanas.

  They closed in on her from every angle, hemming her in, and attempting to immobilize her within a suffocating sphere of Cosmic attacks, and crushing mass.

  Time and time again the layered sphere of hyper replicants would flex and expand rapidly from within as Shetharra tried to fight free of their cunning trap.

  A trap that her own mother had devised.

  The daughter blasted reps away from herself dozens at a time. She struggled to maintain room to keep fighting. But the reps continued to close in about her, restricting her actions with their sheer mass.

  All the while they buffeted Shetharra with every trick and combination that Naero herself kept in her arsenal.

  The reps might not have Naero Prime’s power levels, but they still knew everything that she knew, and that made them incredibly formidable in such large numbers.

  Naero briefly discussed with Om how they might use such a strategy against more of the Six, should they appear.

  Unfortunately, N, they’ll probably do what your little duck is about to do.

  Shetharra detonated every rep still on her, completely disrupting their flows. Then she imploded them and absorbed most of their Cosmic energies for good measure.

  At least the rep trap had stymied her for a couple of minutes.

  Finally, the construct versions of the Six G’lothc Darkforce Champions were unleashed upon her.

  These were the most powerful Cosmic constructs ever created.

  Naero and the Alliance Champion Remos fought many heavy duty simulations against them in various combinations, often losing quite badly.

  Naero watched in amazement as once more, Shetharra did not hesitate.

  She threw herself against the faux Six and tore into them like a whirlwind of shining flame, driving all six of them back at once, despite their most powerful attacks.

  As she drove them on, straight into the nearby star at incredible speed, she reached hyperspace velocity. They passed deep within, into the star furnace itself.

  All the while, they kept fighting.

  Then Naero witnessed the impossible.

  The light became so blinding that even Naero found it hard to see.

  Seven small golden stars encircled Shetharra’s head.

  Then they transformed into seven minute dragons, racing around her brow like electrons around a nucleus.

  Shetharra sang.

  Spheres of raw Cosmic force shot out from her and shattered reality itself.

  She sang in a voice that was free, and pure, and whose words were might and power themselves.

  She blasted her six attackers within the very core of the star itself and incinerated them into broken and shattered atoms.

  This triggered an immediate destructive chain reaction with the synthetic star.

  Whether in seconds or minutes, this synthezoid star was going to detonate, and go nova.

  Her ten-year-old daughter wielded the might equal to that of a Starkiller, and perhaps far more.

  She was still so young.

  How much further would her incredible powers increase?

  Om already had them ready to transport out of that pocket universe.

  To stay was death, even for Naero herself.

  Perhaps only Shetharra could survive such the devastation of such powers unleashed.

  Naero cried out to her and then transported away at the last instant.

  When she came to, Naero floated, still smoldering and smoking, Cosmic vapor roiled off of her out in the black. Her own flows were still near critical, just from being in proximity to a detonation of such might.

  Sologene and its planet were gone. Completely obliterated.

  Then Shetharra was with her, in her arms.

  All flows instantly stabilized to their normal levels.

  “Did I do well, Momma?” Shetharra asked, yawning. “I beat them all. I won every contest. Did I do enough? That’s what they wanted me to do, wasn’t it? I’m so tired now, Momma.”

  Tired?

  Naero smiled and wept. “You were spectacular, my little duck. Everyone will be very impressed. You just rest now. I have you.”

  But who had who? Her child had completely healed and regenerated her own mother just by touching her.

  Softly, first Naero and then her child of light began to gently sing together while they floated there.

  That was how Khai found them.

  But the situation did not end there. Shetharra suddenly convulsed.

  Something was wrong with their girl.

  Shetharra’s condition slowly worsened as they looked on and studied her with biomancy.

  They tried to heal her, tried to get her to regen.

  Soon she wouldn’t be able to Cosmic tap into energies.

  Naero and Khai quickly summoned and brought in Shalaen.

  They brought in all of the most powerful Alliance healers, even from among the other energy beings.

  This wasn’t like any Cosmic sickness that anyone had encountered before. Nor was it some old ploy of the enemy by any means.

  For one thing, no Darkforce was present or at work in any way.

  Nevertheless, Shetharra continued to slowly lose all of her life force energies.

  She was clearly dying, and no one had any clue about how to stop it.

  25

  Iahk and Orean took Shetharra’s spirit form with them into the depths of the KDM, while her physical body was still slowly dying on a medbed in the infirmary on board The Star Angel.

  They went before the Cosmic monoliths of the Seven Kexxian Dreamers where they stood on guard, protecting the perilous secrets concerning their mighty implacable enemies, the G’lothc.

  Each colossal guardian stood thousands of meters high in the expanse of the KDM’s limitless reach.

  Their very names a mighty song.

  Orean called to them as she wept. “I call upon the Seven Dragons of the Eternal Fire for aid. I beseech you all. Our beloved Shetharra is dying. Help us. Aid us! We do not know what to do. Help us save her! I have witnessed the deep and powerful love that all of you have for her. Tell us what we can do. Help us save her life. She is young, and beautiful, and as kind as she is brave and strong. Her heart is pure. She is the embodiment of love itself. She is light. She is goodness itself. This child does not deserve such a fate as this. I call upon you and upon every power that there is!”

  Iahk pleaded before them on his knees, the great sword Yii placed before him. He also wept. “Take our energies if they will save her; take anything you need from us. Tell us what we must do to save our child. Take our lives if that is the price we must pay. Do not let her perish!”

  Orean went so far as to swell up into the same sphere with them, growing to their size. In desperation she shook her fists at them and challenged them. “Speak! Answer us. I will fight you. I will do battle with all of you if I must. Fight me. Answer me! I cannot believe that you have loved her as you have done, only to let her wither away and die like this! Speak. Do something. Say anything. I know you speak to her very soul. Reveal to us how to save her!”

  When the spirit of Hiil, The Gentle answered them, the sheer force of her incredible voice struck them like a wall of force and blasted them across
the expanse, nearly straight out of the KDM itself.

  Her very words were the music of the universe.

  Each word of her song was a mighty, resounding word of power.

  Orean and Iahk shot back to that location to hear the words of the Seven.

  Hiil modulated her devastating voice, and the gigantic forms of the Seven Guardians shrank down to the same size as Orean and Iahk. “Know this, fledgling Guardians. The secret fire burns far too brightly in this beloved one for the constraints of her limited form, as mighty as she is. If you mean to keep the light child among you, you must follow our instructions to the letter.”

  Iahk and Orean nodded, in complete awe.

  In a flash they stood before Adae, The Wise.

  “A gateway shall be opened upon your return that will take you to the first star Alat, within the first galaxy at the core of our universe, where all things began and also where they shall end, hopefully many billions of years hence. Take the light child into the heart of Alat. Immerse her in the star’s core in the very source of the Flame Eternal. First, you must stabilize her energies and halt the decay of her Prime Material Plane form.”

  The Seven shifted position once more, flashing faster than an instant. Next they faced Vez, The Enlightened. “Then you both must utilize the secret Song of Making known as Sa’ ha Lae Neetharella. The Song of Great Healing.”

  Orean panicked. “How can we use it? We don’t know it. We did not even know that such a song existed, until now!”

  Orith, the Adamant blinked in. “Remain calm, Guardian. We shall teach you the 22nd Song of Power while you travel to the heart of our universe. It can only be activated within the depths of Alat–a very unique and eternal place. Use this song to stabilize and heal the light child. This is her only hope.”

  Heno, The Compassionate took up her place before them. “Understand, the unlimited power within the light child has grown too great. So strong that no form she can assume, physical or otherwise shall be able contain this great and fearsome light and energy that now blazes within her. And know this: that same power will only continue to grow for as long as she exists within this reality. By its very nature, her might shall defy all limits.”