In some ways, Cris felt bad for Lora, but the special attention he was getting – and all the efforts the aliens had put in to make him feel at home and comfortable – often meant that he completely forgot about her presence at the village. He found himself thinking about her less and less, being drawn deeper into the web of deceit he was spinning around the Sirkhari Elders. Posing as this god, this ‘damarret’, was giving him an air of power and prestige that he found highly addictive. By using his connection to the All, he was able to heal almost any Sirkharin illness, repair grievous injuries, and even revive the recently dead, convincing the tribal Elders beyond all former doubt that he was indeed the saviour of their people. They worshipped him regularly now, and it was having a deleterious effect on his mind.
On the eve of the fifth month since Cris’ arrival, Irnal and Sai’bot decided it was time to finally take him to the Holy Teilhard tree – the focus of the Majka, a point of extreme spiritual significance to the tribe, more so than any other point on the entire planet.
“It will be a great honour to visit the tree,” Cris told them. “It pleases me that you consider me worthy.”
“You will be the first outsider to ever set eyes upon our most Holy connection to the Majka,” Irnal said. “It can show you things. Events in the past… events of the present… or even events still to come.”
They set out early that morning; Cris was led over a mountain range to the west, and after a day of travelling, they reached a deep basin roughly sixty meters in diameter, shielded by an unusual formation of rock arches that gave the impression of a shell encasing it, increasing its sense of security and protection. The tree was difficult to find due to its location right at the heart of a large group of towering fungi which appeared to be guarding it, growing inward like an arched cage.
Cris stepped closer to the tree, with Irnal and Sai’bot following a few paces behind. It appeared to be a crystalline plant, with blue, glassy bark and black leaves. As he approached, he could sense a vast intelligence emanating from the thing, and a sense of unity like nothing he had experienced before. Truly, this was some kind of focal point for the energy of the entire planet. It wasn’t hard to understand why the tribe had considered it a Holy place. He put his hands on it, its surface feeling smooth and clean to the touch. It was warm.
“O Mighty Teilhard,” Sai’bot boomed, raising his arms toward the tree’s branches. “Behold the damarret, the One who will slay the Asterite and save our world. We seek the guidance of the Majka, so that She might show him a vision.”
Cris closed his eyes and concentrated. After a few moments, something started to happen. The glassy bark beneath his hands began to grow hot to the point of being uncomfortable, and when he opened his eyes instinctively, he gasped in shock.
Fire was everywhere. A burning, all-encompassing inferno raged across his field of vision, completely engulfing the tree and the basin around him with light and heat. Irnal and Sai’bot were nowhere to be seen, and a violent earthquake thundered the ground beneath his feet. The sky was filled with ash, and he couldn’t tell whether it was day or night anymore. Where had this come from? It was like some kind of Hellish, parallel dimension – absolute chaos. Straining against the hot winds and the crashing earth, Cris peered through the roiling ash, shouting toward the tree, which appeared to be sinking slowly away from him. Was this some kind of dream? “What’s going on?” he roared.
Demonic laughter seemed to echo from horizon to horizon, vast curtains of amber flame licking up around him from fissures opening in the cracked and scorched ground. The heat was unbearable. Then a disembodied voice spoke: “Burn. Burn! It’s the only way we’ll die. It’s the only way this curse will end. Burn. Burn!”
Tears scorched his face.
He gasped, and a moment later the vision faded. He blinked and he was standing, like before, with his hands on the warm glassy bark of the Teilhard tree, with Irnal and Sai’bot standing behind him. He yelped in fright and threw himself away from the tree, collapsing to the ground.
“What did you see, O Great damarret?” Irnal asked, reaching down to take his hand and help him to his feet.
Cris was visibly shaken. “I… I don’t know. I think I saw the future.”
Sai’bot nodded. “The visions shown to us by the Teilhard tree are often difficult to interpret at first. In time, personal reflection will illuminate the true meaning of the vision.”
Cris swallowed dryly. The ‘vision’ had caused him more distress than he had initially bargained for. What had it meant? “I believe the tree was showing me the death of the Asterite,” he said. There was more… perhaps the death of the Majka itself… but he chose not to mention that.
Sai’bot regarded him, fascinated. “Then it was indeed the future you saw. O Great damarret, I pledge myself to your service.” He dropped to his knees and bowed his head. “If you do destroy the Asterite, I will forever be in your debt. I will follow you to the ends of the universe until this debt is paid…”
Lorelei Chen woke gently from a dream of her married life in Einek, surfacing to full consciousness with uncharacteristic slowness. How strange that she would dream so fondly of Lenton after all this time. She could not immediately recall the last time she had dreamt of him in that way; surely it had been long before her self-imposed exile from the city of Einek almost three years earlier.
Outside, heavy and gritty rain was falling: even under the cover of a canopy of trees the sporadic droplets hammered against the surface of her sleeping hut, followed suddenly by a rushing, tearing thunderclap that concluded in an ominous boom. A moment later, she heard a startled commotion outside, the sound of Sirkharins shouting in panic.
Her heart rate jumped. Reluctantly she rolled onto her back, hot under her thin leathery blanket. Her head was heavy, her throat dry, her bladder full. The air was smoky and strong light was pouring through chinks in the conical thatched roof. What in God’s name was happening out there? She rolled over stiffly, and sat up. As she did so, the hut’s door burst open inwardly and Cristian Stefánsson marched into the room, looking gravely concerned.
“What are you doing here?” she yelled. “I’m naked, Cris. Do you mind?”
He eyed her mischievously. “You want any help?”
She snorted. “Not unless you want to hold the cup for my piss.”
She rummaged through her clothing until she found a loose pleated shirt that didn’t smell too bad, and a simple, makeshift skirt she’d fashioned herself. She caught her breath and was aware of its stink. She really ought to find something other than tree bark to clean her teeth with. She had no idea how she looked, neither, at this moment, did she care. “What’s happening?” she asked as she dressed.
Cris sighed tensely. “It’s happening, Lora. The Asterite is coming. It’s coming now.”
She blinked. “Wha… What?”
“Come on!”
She followed him outside. Overhead, the sky was bathed in an odd, blue-grey colour – yet it was the middle of night, and should have been pitch black. The trees surrounding them, which had rustled with animal life, went abruptly silent then; a solitary beast released a tremulous cry that echoed off the nearby mountains, then fell quiet. Chen exhaled, feeling uneasy, and gazed upward, using one hand to shield her face from the torrential rain. The brightening sky was now streaked with a jagged, writhing energy. Cris looked up too, equally mesmerised, and the glow from an enormous whirling ribbon, shaped like some vast, impossible biomolecule lit his features, revealing the ecstatic, beatific expression of a saint.
Good God! thought Chen. What dream-world was this into which she had blundered? She dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the sight of a monstrous helix which traversed its way across the sky like a colossal, godlike entity. Never had she ever imagined such a thing… a creature that transcended form and force and symmetry, a consumer of worlds. It was simultaneously beautiful and atrocious to behold.
In the gathering gloom, the
wind picked up quickly and began to whip up dust. The Asterite was nearing the village, illuminating the entire sky with unearthly light, filling the air with a strangely electrical charge, one that smelled of a recent lightning strike, one that made the hair on the back of Cris’ neck rise. He instinctively backed away until his back pressed against the wall of Lora’s sleeping hut.
There was nowhere to run, nowhere to flee. He shut his eyes, grimacing at the vastness of the spaceborne entity that approached them, feeling overwhelmed by a sense of indecision.
“What are you going to do?” Chen shouted. “You have to kill this thing, right?”
He nodded. “Yes. The only trouble is, I have no idea how I’m gonna do it!”
On the horizon, they saw entire swathes of the fungal forest being sucked up into the air, as if seized by an invisible vortex, carried up violently into what could only be described as the Asterite’s ‘mouth’ – a raging cluster of electrical forks positioned directly at its centre. There, the matter being sucked into the air dematerialised, being absorbed into the Asterite itself.
“It’s feeding!” Chen observed.
Sai’bot appeared then, running toward them from a crowd of panicking villagers. “O Mighty damarret!” he said. “What is your bidding? What is your bidding? What are we going to do?”
Cris watched the Asterite for a moment, considering his options, remembering back to the vision he’d had at the Teilhard tree some weeks ago.
Burn.
Burn!
It’s the only way this curse will end.
He took a deep breath, and decided. “Lora, Sai’bot, come with me, both of you.”
“As you command, O Great damarret,” Sai’bot bowed. “Lead the way.”
“Where are we going?” Chen asked.
“To the Thunder…” he said, and started to lead them, running, toward the path that led out of the village.
“Back to the ship?” she puffed. “Why? Are we going somewhere?”
A look of steely determination came over his features. “There’s only one way to kill this thing, Lora, and only one man who can do it. That’s me, by the way.”
Chen half-laughed at his sarcastic remark. Despite how she felt about him, she hoped to God that this plan, whatever it might be, was going to work. The Asterite had to be stopped. The alternative was unthinkable.
25
The Thunder was completely surrounded by mists, and covered in a film of some dirty mildew, when they finally reached the clearing where it had sat unused for the past few months. Cris reached out with his mind, trying to envision the contours, the shape, the inner workings of the ship through the Power of the All; as he concentrated on it, he commanded the bright landing lights to switch on as they approached. The lights obeyed, so caked in filth that they were unable to illuminate more than a few feet in front of the ship.
They were easily a dozen or so miles from the village now, but the Asterite was still visible on the horizon, abominably repellent, and slowly moving in their direction, sucking up the landscape as it went like some infernal vacuum cleaner, spitting out fiery debris. By now, their eyes had grown accustomed to the blackening gloom this deep into the wilderness, and they could only barely see the twisted trunks and roots of the grotesque-looking trees, and giant mushrooms all around them. Cris made another gesture, and the ship’s landing ramp extended obediently.
“Move!” he hissed.
Chen ran quickly up the landing ramp and into the ship’s dimly lit interior, closely followed by Sai’bot, and then Cris. The ramp rose behind them and closed with a soft whoosh.
“Lora, get this ship into space, now!” Cris yelled.
The Alcubierre-Sel’varis engines were firing even before Lorelei Chen had reached the main bridge and flung herself into the pilot’s chair. Something hammered at the sides of the sleek craft – debris from the Asterite’s onslaught, probably – but it was already beginning to move forward. She sat hunched forward over the controls, her face intense, a sheen of sweat beading her forehead, hands moving steadily over the console. “Hold on,” she said.
The Thunder lifted away from the surface, and rocketed into the night sky. The landscape of the fungal forest was left behind in seconds, and a moment later the ship was rising into the darkness of space, arcing away from the curvature of the bluish planet and moving toward the sun, suddenly visible from behind a cluster of several rocky moons. As they zoomed away from the planet, they saw that the Asterite was actually visible from space as a glowing white oval, resembling a turbulent atmospheric storm.
“Okay, Cris,” Chen said, turning her head to look at him. He was standing behind her, looking strained. “We’ve left the planet’s orbit. What do we do now?”
Sai’bot stood to Cris’ right, watching the massive image of Sirkhari’s star glowing through the main viewport. “I have never imagined such a beautiful sight…” he muttered, then closed his eyes, entering some kind of hypnotic trance and reciting a prayer of devotion to his gods. “Harjhaus ayursa...”
Cris ignored him. “Turn the ship around, Lora, and put as much distance as you can between us and that star…” He pointed at the blazing sun on the main viewport.
Chen swallowed. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“Just do it,” he told her.
She took a deep breath, suddenly feeling very uneasy, then waved a hand over the controls, turning the ship about through one-hundred-eighty degrees, smoothly, the motion barely noticeable. They sped directly away from the sun now, passing the planet Sirkhari across its opposite hemisphere, and roaring into the blackness beyond.
“Can you put the star on the main viewport?” Cris asked her then. “I want to see it.”
Chen frowned. “Uh… sure. Bear with me…” She pressed buttons, and the image ahead of them changed to a real-time rear-view capture. The star blazed with a distinct reddish tint, and the luminosity of a red supergiant far greater than that of Earth’s sun.
“How far away is the star now?” Cris asked.
“Five point seven Astronomical Units,” Chen said. “Cris, do you mind telling me what you’re going to do? You’re scaring me.”
She droned on for a moment, but Cris did not hear. He felt an abrupt, odd sense of discomfort, and flashed again on the memory of his vision at the Teilhard tree…
Burn.
Burn!
It’s the only way we’ll die.
It’s the only way this curse will end.
Burn.
Burn!
A sudden chill came over him. He jerked his head up, determination glowing in his eyes, and then reached a hand toward the main viewport, toward the image of the Sirkhari star. His outstretched palm shook vigorously as he began to grapple with the invisible forces that connected him to the star through the Power of the All.
“Cris! Stop! In God’s name!” Chen yelped, but her protest fell on deaf ears.
His mind was transfixed, focused now solely on the star. Slowly, he drew the fingers of his outstretched palm into a crooked fist, as he manipulated the quantum gravitational forces around the blazing supergiant, commanding the All on a scale he had never before attempted.
“Buuuuuurn…” he exhaled softly.
Suddenly, in response to his whispered command, the Sirkhari star collapsed into a black hole, expelling its outer layers in a burst of radiation that briefly outshone the entire galaxy.
Light.
The light was so dazzling, so colourful, it pained him despite his closed eyelids. And then the explosion, this supernova, intensified beyond all human capacity to bear; he cried out in agony at its deafening roar, its sheer brilliance, its blinding beauty. He almost fell to his knees when it came: an explosion so deafening, so teeth-chattering, that it seemed to have erupted from within his own head. He was lifted from the floor then, slammed against bulkhead or deck – he could not discern which. In a dazzlingly brilliant millisecond, he saw everything around him dissolve into the violent white heat of the blast
, felt his own body dissolving, merging with the pulse. He heard Lora screaming, and a roar of confusion from Sai’bot, though he could no longer see them.
The explosion expelled all of the star’s material at an extreme velocity, driving a shock wave into the surrounding interstellar medium. One by one, the four planets of the Sirkhari system were consumed, blasted into an expanding shell of gas and dust. Somewhere in the chaos, Cris felt the Asterite die, before an immensely powerful something wrenched at the ship’s hull with the strength of a fallen angel.
“Shit!” Chen roared, grappling with the ship’s controls.
Cris got to his feet. He saw Sai’bot wailing in agony, clutching at his face.
“The Majka!” Sai’bot screamed. “The Majka is dead!” Then his eyes seemed to explode within their sockets, leaving monstrous bloody holes, and his skin began to peel, curling back as if seized by a sudden leprosy, rotting, burning, scorched, blackened. And still he screamed, as his connection to his planet’s life essence was severed forever.
Chen blinked away tears. “What have you done, Cris? What have you done?”
Cris smiled, the broad grin of a delighted child. “I have killed the Asterite…”
“But at what cost…?”
Sai’bot was lying on the deck now, flailing, vomiting blood. Cris waved a hand over him. “You will not die today, Sai’bot,” he whispered. Then he turned to Chen. “Jump into hyperspace, Lora, for God’s sake! Do it now!”
The tears on her cheeks felt like they were boiling in the intense heat of the supernova remnant as the ship rode the crest of the shockwave. She punched more buttons. “Cris – ”
He sneered. “The name is no longer Cristian. From this day forward, I…am Damarus!”
She gasped.
The Thunder leapt into hyperspace.
Cris sat at the desk in the main sleeping cabin, staring down at the organic Kyr’Ozch crystal in his hands. A gift from the Sirkhari Elders, it was a luminescent, light purple colour and pyramidal in shape, brittle and transparent, glittering in the beam of the artificial lights overhead. One day, he knew, the crystal would be used in the construction of a holocube back on Earth, and it was this holocube that would eventually find its way to the city of Einek, into the hands of a certain captive with little knowledge of what he was really doing there.
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