by Regine Abel
“Fire in my blood,” I responded.
She stared at me a moment longer then, at last, Kamala gave me a stiff nod and walked out without another word.
I walked up to the front window and stared at her dark silhouette speeding away on her hoverbike, taking away a part of me with her.
“I’m so fucked…” I whispered.
CHAPTER 7
Eryon
I paced around the clearing, cussing Xevius to the deepest pits of Sharaz’s lair. The son of Gharah was late, and a million horrible scenarios of what might have happened to him kept playing through my head. Despite our shaky history of late, I loved the pretty bastard. And the practical side of me realized his importance. While Kamala was torn that her soulmate should be Korlethean, I rejoiced. Not only had the Goddess given her a good man, she gave her a Korlethean with the right type of influence. Xevius was highly respected among the military elite of Korlethea. If he defected, many would follow.
My people devoted a large part of their lives to seeking their soulmate. There were four things Korletheans valued above everything else: visions of the future, family, loyalty to the People and their Sareema—the song of their soul, or soulmate as referred to in the common language. For those forced to make a choice based on a vision, circumstances shifted which of these four things took precedence over the other. But since sparing my mate, something had changed within Xevius, and I shamelessly intended to exploit it to bring him to our side.
I looked at my watch and cursed him some more.
“Ever the foul mouth,” Xevius said, nearly scaring me out of my skin.
Spinning around, I found him standing a few steps away from me, having snuck up on me before deactivating his stealth shield.
“You son of a diseased whore!” I snapped, “Don’t sneak up on me like that. Where the fuck were you?”
“I missed you, too, old friend.”
Closing the distance between us, Xevius walked up to me and drew me into his arms. Mine closed around him and, what started as a brotherly hug, turned into an emotional embrace. Throat painfully tight, my eyes prickled at being reunited at long last not only with my close friend, but with one of my kind. It hurt more than words could ever express to be parted from my people and to be shunned by them for doing what my heart and conscience knew to be right. His mind brushed against mine, a soothing gesture I hadn’t experienced for close to a decade.
Releasing him at last, I took a step back to have a proper look at him. He hadn’t changed in the nearly thirty years since I’d last seen him.
“Ever the pretty little shit, aren’t you?” I said derisively to hide how moved and happy I was to see him.
He smirked with that boyish arrogance I’d so missed. “Always,” he said before giving me a once over. Xevius gestured at my traditional Korlethean robe. “Still wearing your dhalla, I see.”
“I do,” I said, pleased by the approval in his voice.
“And your Seer braid,” he added, looking at the single braid that tied the hair at the top of my head while the lower half flowed freely on my shoulders.
As I hadn’t achieved the status of Elder Seer or Priest, I couldn’t plait my entire hair in a single braid, like Kamala always did.
“I am a Korlethean Seer. What did you expect?”
“I expected no less, but many back home would challenge that statement,”
Although I’d expected his answer to be along those lines, it still hurt.
“They can all go fuck themselves. I am more Korlethean than any of those cowards. We created this mess, and now we want to punish our victims?” I snapped.
“The Quorum—”
“Fuck the Quorum!” I shouted. “No one, not even them, will keep me from my trueborn daughter.”
Xevius stilled, all expression draining from his face. That dampened my rising anger. I doubted my old friend would harm me, but as an Imperial Agent, he’d been trained—if not conditioned—to exact swift justice in the face of treason. His convictions had been wavering for a long time now, but I still needed to tread carefully.
“You’ve seen my grandchildren,” I said in a calmer voice. “You’ve felt their insane power, as well as their rage. Any Titan would have killed you on sight. Instead, they saved you.”
“They did,” he conceded. “Impressive work.”
“More than you know,” I said. “The first time I met Vahleryon, he tried to kill me. He actually made me bleed, and he was only three. Shocking, isn’t it?”
Turning away from him, I took a few steps on the light-beige grass covering the clearing. Xevius fell in step with me.
“Without my shield up, he would have killed me in one shot. I had to crank it all the way up for the second strike. I had never been so terrified in my life, but it was too late to back out. All I could do was pray to the Goddess that my daughter wouldn’t witness her son murdering me only minutes after we’d finally met. So, I bluffed my way through it, pretending that Vahl’s second psionic strike hadn’t nearly knocked me to my knees. Only giving him a taste of his own medicine spared me from a third strike. I doubt I would have survived it.”
“Goddess,” Xevius whispered. “Is that supposed to make me want to spare him?”
I chuckled. “It’s supposed to make you understand that if these children turn into monsters, we will be to blame.” I stopped walking and turned to face him. “I talked him down while slowly approaching.”
“Talked? And he listened?” Xevius asked, flabbergasted.
“Talked,” I confirmed with a nod. “Although his parents had no clue what they were doing, they did wonders teaching him right from wrong. He adores them, and yet he constantly wanted to kill his fathers, especially Khel.”
“The General is an apex alpha,” Xevius reflected. “He’d see him as a threat on his territory.”
“Exactly. When I placed my hand on Vahl, it felt like touching the embodied rage of a pack of rabid rhomaks. I poured every ounce of my Kaa into him. When my appeasing waves coursed through my grandson, even though they barely reduced his rage by half, he looked at me as if the Goddess herself had appeared before him. For the first time in his young life, he felt peace. He begged me to teach him how to achieve that again, because he didn’t want to hurt those he loved.”
A troubled expression descended upon Xevius face while he reflected upon my words.
“If I had not arrived when I did, Vahl would have become a monster. He’d been asking his parents to help him silence the primal violence in him, but they didn’t know how. They couldn’t. But we do.” I took him by the shoulders, my eyes boring into his. “You’ve seen what I’ve achieved on my own. You want the right path of the vision to come to pass? Then the Titans need us to help them control their instincts. Their parents do not have the psi powers we do. They do not have Kaa. There are too many Titans for me to manage on my own. If Korlethea wants to get back on the right side of history, she must stand with us. If there ever was a time for us to attempt to influence Fate, then it is here and now. We should be the one nurturing the greatest general this world will ever see.”
“You make compelling arguments, brother,” Xevius said, in a slightly mocking tone.
“But are they falling into deaf ears?” I asked.
Xevius smiled and gently removed my hands from his shoulders. “You’ve been heard, and your words will weigh into my final decision.”
I wanted to argue and shake some sense into him, but his response had been an end to the topic. Pressing him wouldn’t do me any good.
“So, you and Kamala?” I said teasingly, changing the topic.
Xevius’s slight frown took me by surprise. He raised his hand and touched an inconspicuous section of his armor by his shoulder. I recoiled as understanding dawned on me.
“You were recording us?” I exclaimed, disbelieving.
“Of course,” he said, matter-of-factly.
I almost shouted at him in anger, but held myself in check, thinking back on all that I
had said. Not only did I stand by my words, but I’d been hoping for a chance to speak them to my people.
“You will present this to the Quorum?” I asked, hoping.
Xevius smiled. “Yes.”
“You sneaky little shit,” I said, shaking my head in admiration. “Good. They need to hear it.” I examined his face, always so hard to read. “Do they know about Kamala?”
He shrugged. “Before my departure, Aunt Venya warned me I’d meet her during this mission. But considering she revealed that vision in private, I suspect the other Oracles may not have found out yet.”
“Kamala is a good woman,” I said with a gentle smile. “Even not knowing what lies beneath that Tuurean armor of hers, men of all species have been vying for her attention.”
“Well, they can all fuck off,” Xevius snarled.
I burst out laughing. It pleased me that he was already so taken, as was to be expected with a Tuning. He didn’t need me to tell him what sacrifices he would need to do in order to be with his soulmate.
“I must go. But before I do, here’s a little present for you. I figured you might have missed these,” Xevius said, pulling out a little bag from the larger one he had hanging to his side, the strap running across his chest.
Xevius extended it to me and, halfway through opening it, the earthy scent I hadn’t smelled since my capture by the Guldans three decades ago struck me.
“Oh Goddess!” I whispered, shoving my hand into the bag to pull out a dark purple vryer root. “My brother!” I exclaimed, pulling Xevius into a bear hug and loudly kissing his cheek before shoving him away and looking back at the treasure he’d brought me.
He burst out laughing, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand with a false air of disgust, while I feasted my eyes on the nine, large roots the bag contained. On Korlethea, vryer was like ryspak to the Xelixians. We weren’t anywhere near as obsessed with the root as the Xelixians were with their fruit, but we consumed it regularly, at least a couple of times a week, though most people had it once a day or every other day. As a Seer, I used to consume it daily as it enhanced my psi abilities by stimulating the pineal gland and the hallucinogen that facilitated visions.
How I had ached for this taste of my past, but also for it to help reawaken my third eye, which had grown increasingly quiet over time. For the past three years, since reuniting with my beloved daughter Amalia, the Xelixians, the Veredians, and I had tried to get our hands on some vryer as we suspected that it might be the missing ingredient into finding the cure to the Taint. But the root only grew on Korlethea, and they strictly controlled it, not allowing it to be traded outside of our home world.
I froze, suddenly realizing what an even greater treasure I currently held in my hands.
“What’s wrong?” Xevius asked, sensing my change in mood.
“Nothing. I just remembered something important. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Although his face revealed nothing, I hadn’t fooled my old friend. Thankfully, he didn’t press the issue.
“I must go. Hopefully, we’ll meet again soon,” Xevius said.
Placing his hand on my shoulder, he gave it a friendly squeeze, turned around, and walked away. After a few steps, he activated his stealth shield and vanished from view.
* * *
“Eryon, there you are!” Minh exclaimed when I walked into the state-of-the-art medical facility that Khel had built for him inside his military compound.
Excitement and impatience marked the gentle face of Maheva’s mate.
“How did you get here so fast?” I asked. “Weren’t you still in Capital District when I commed you?”
He ushered me past the examination tables in the large medical ward and into his office at the back. Like everything Xelixian, it was functional, all in white and greys, and mostly barren. As usual, his small desk drowned beneath swaths of data disks and holocards. He headed straight for the small workstation in the far-right corner of his office and turned on the work lights.
I pulled out three roots from the bag Xevius had given me and laid them down on the table in front of him. Minh picked one up with more care than if it had been a newborn child and stared at the vryer root with awe. It didn’t look like much. If not for its purple color, it might have passed for ginger. But their properties couldn’t be any further from each other’s. Using a wand-looking object, Minh pricked the root with its pointy tip. He then inserted the stylus into an analyzer and appeared to hold his breath while waiting for the results. His excitement fueled mine, but fear that I’d raised his hopes up in vain gnawed at me.
The analyzer beeped and a series of symbols and numbers displayed on the large vidscreen on the wall in front of the desk. It was all gibberish to me, but Minh’s lips quivered, and his eyes misted. I didn’t know how to react, unsure if joy or sorrow had triggered the doctor’s response. The only time I’d ever seen Minh express such emotion had been on the day Maheva had given birth to their son. He took a shuddering breath then turned around to face me.
“Thank you,” the doctor said with a shaky voice.
My heart soared, and my throat constricted. “It… It’s good? It’s what you needed?” I asked, not daring to hope.
“I can’t say for sure until I’ve performed further tests, but these first results seem to indicate this root possesses the right properties to stimulate the pineal gland, just like you said. Do you have any idea what this could mean for my people?” Minh asked.
“I do. And I pray to the Goddess this will, at long last, give the Xelixians the answer they seek. You have all suffered enough.”
I certainly did understand, far more than he realized. Our experiments on Xelixians, centuries ago, and then the toxins we’d spread in their water and farmlands to neutralize the Titan traits in their people, had caused the Taint. Non-harmful in their original form, the bacteria had mutated in reaction to enhanced fertilizers many Xelixians had used on their ryspak orchard; a shameful secret the Quorum wanted to keep hidden at all cost.
They’d labeled me a traitor and multiplied their efforts to discredit me for fear I would reveal Korlethea’s terrible wrongdoings. So many species had suffered from our ‘Era of Enlightenment’ where our Settlers experimented on more primitive species to help further enhance our own. But I was Korlethean. No matter how I felt about our past, I wouldn’t betray my people. Worse still, the coward in me could never look my daughter in the eyes to tell her that the reproductive issues that had plagued her people for nearly two centuries had resulted from the side effects of Korletheans spreading the same toxin on her planet.
However, no matter how much we delayed the inevitable, sooner or later, the truth would come out. And then, there would be a reckoning.
“I must get to work,” Minh said, almost frantic in his impatience. “I’ll need Lhor’s help to see if we can grow more of these roots using one of them,” he mumbled more to himself.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said.
Minh nodded absentmindedly, but I couldn’t swear he’d actually understood my words. Suppressing a smile, I showed myself out and sent the Goddess a silent prayer that this would indeed be the answer to their woes. A sliver a guilt spread through me. I should have asked Xevius for his permission, first. If this indeed proved to be the cure, the Quorum would instantly know the Xelixians had obtained the roots through him. Even if he hadn’t intended for this to happen, he’d be labeled a traitor and banished from the Empire for his act of kindness.
He will leave the Empire, anyway.
The thought did little to appease my conscience. If this was indeed the cure, I would need to warn him before it became public knowledge. Even if we wanted to keep the vryer element a secret, the international scientific community would demand to know the source of the cure. There would be no way around that.
We would have to address the matter in due time. For now, I could hardly tamper my own impatience to sample a piece of the root. After a quick detour by the kitchen to pick up a sha
rp knife and a small plate, I went directly to my quarters on the ground floor of the main house. To my relief, Jhola—the housekeeper—had been in the back with the children, while Amalia was at work with the Xelhan District Police Department in the cybercrime division; a position perfectly suited to her hacker psi ability.
I carefully laid down the bag of vryer on my dark wood dresser and pulled out one of the roots. Stepping into the en suite hygiene room, I washed it with lukewarm water, then peeled a part of a protruding piece of the root and cut a small piece the size of a large bean. My mouth watered at the earthy scent of the vryer. I couldn’t resist its appeal and shoved it past my lips. I nearly moaned with pleasure as the slightly spicy flavor exploded on my taste buds and chewed slowly, savoring the long-forgotten taste of home.
But as much as I wished to linger and enjoy the moment, time was of the essence. After placing the root and the knife on the plate, I quickly washed my hands. I removed my dhalla robe and discarded it on the large dark wood bed occupying the right side of the former large guestroom that had become mine since arriving on Xelix Prime. My tongue tingled, the sensation spreading to the back of my throat then gradually throughout my body. It had been so long that I was responding even faster than usual.
I kicked off my shoes and hurried to the large glass doors on the left side of my room that led onto the large patio at the back of the house and opened them wide. The distant whistling of birds and the sigh of the wind barely registered as my movements began to slow, and my vision blurred with the first whispers of foresight flickering before my eyes. The sweet scent of ryspak from the orchard in the distance invaded my room as I half-blindly stumbled to my meditation mat inside my room, which faced the open doors onto the backyard.
Sitting down, I crossed my legs beneath me, and lay my palm up on my knees. After years of struggling for the slightest foresight, the visions came hard and fast. The images pushed and shoved each other, making it impossible for me to latch onto a single one. Controlling my breathing, I closed my eyes and further opened my senses. The barrage of blurred images faded into darkness. For a moment, time stood still, and then my consciousness fell through the tumbling tunnel of time. I felt no fear, only the thrill of anticipation.