In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

  It continues until it destroys everything, every building in a two-thousand foot radius.

  Lance powers down, finally running out of energy, out of the immense power. His body feels cold as the energy leaves him. He doesn’t want it to go, he needs to—

  Serena falls into Lance’s tired arms. She tries to hold herself up with all the life she has left, bleeding onto Lance’s arms.

  “No,” he mutters.

  It should’ve been him.

  A screen pops up above him, it shows Thora in a glass cage and something trying to wake her.

  It shows up on every screen in the Skyeater, in houses, and on the streets, people watch on.

  ---

  In the star, the cage is gone. Cole holds Thora, shaking her gently.

  “Thora, please wake up,” Cole pleads. Behind him something starts to stir, Cole is too occupied to notice.

  Leif’s body creaks, his bones, crack and snaps back into place as his body heals itself.

  ---

  Lance looks back down at Serena, the color quickly leaving her skin, she’s lost too much blood. The light above is cut off.

  Damons fly above them in a circle, observing them like vicious vultures, getting hungry, waiting for their prey. The last Kabus floats in the middle of them.

  “You’re just like a forsaken, an angel, a reckless chaotic fool who believed they could become a god,” Kabus chants.

  Lance looks at the shield protecting the star, he has to do something and there’s only one way to destroy it. He holds firmly in his arms. Her skin is almost cold to the touch, she’s leaving this world.

  “Lance…”

  He looks into his wife dying eyes. They knew it would most likely come to this but it doesn’t make it easier.

  “Yes.”

  “Do…it…It’s going to be…okay…” she whispers, a tear falls from her eyes.

  “Goodbye Iyabov Moya.”

  He passionately kisses her as she holds him with her dying grasp. He slowly pulls off her wedding ring.

  She falls limp.

  Dead.

  He takes his locket and holds them both out in his hand. The last two things he was connected with to this world, he’s going to destroy the Skyeaters star at any cost.

  It’s what they said they would do if it came this far. If their struggle to save humanity was hopeless.

  Hopefully Wilker and Noata can save the rest. He’s done his part. At least he flown in the clouds, done things he’d never thought he would do in this life time and finally seen the stars shimmer in his sky.

  He surges a little power through the devices. A display pops up. Self-destruction activated.

  The devices light up, almost too bright to bare.

  Soon. He will join his wife.

  He hurls them in the air.

  ---

  Thora jolts awake, she moans as she opens her eyes. She sees Cole. She pause and starts to shake.

  Cole can feel her trembling through her arms. Her eyes tear up.

  “Wh…wha…Who are you?” Thora asks.

  “What?”

  What’s wrong with her?

  “It’s me. Cole!”

  “No,” she says. “Noo!” she screams.

  “What’s wrong?!” He tries to pick her up.

  “Get away from me!” She tries to squirm out of his hands but his grip is too strong.

  “Don’t you hate being lied too?” Leif stands behind him. Completely healed. Thora and Cole stops moving.

  “Jahum isn’t as honorable as he has made himself seem. He has lied to you about everything. We are all his children, his creations and he wants to destroy the only key to save us all.”

  ---

  In the Skyeater’s sky, Serena’s ring hits the star first, exploding on the shield in a vibrant colorful firebomb, like if a colorful atom bomb just went off.

  When the smoke clears, the shield is gone.

  On the ground, Lance looks down at Serena’s lifeless face. Even in death she’s still beautiful.

  A sleeping beauty, waiting on her prince.

  Don’t worry, “I will join you soon, my princess.”

  We are his mistakes, he had many chances to take care of us, but through his self-imposed ignorance and ego, he passed the burden to your people.

  Lance pulls Serena up and embraces her one last time. Tears fall from his eyes as the shadows of the Damon above eclipse the light. Kabus shows off his toothy grin. The Damon descend down and engulf them.

  ---

  Cole pulls Thora up, she clinches onto him for life as Leif walks toward them.

  “A few untrained pests and one person who’s barely been pansophical for the length of a cycle of the sun.”

  “Why! What the hell is the human race to you! It will take you thousands of years to compete your goal! Why start with us? Why cut our destinies short?”

  “In this universe, your existence is nothing! To my race you are ants. Unworthy of living in this universe. But to the greater good and I, your races annihilation is everything. Welcome to your race’s execution, Cole. On the charges of being alive in an imperfect universe.”

  ---

  Blood spurts from the mass of Damon feasting on what Lance and Serena used to be. Devoured, ripped apart. Their flesh unseen as the Damon huddle together like animals. Above them Lance’s locket finally hits the star, absorbed in its light.

  ---

  Leif towers over Cole. Cole can’t fight him, it’s impossible. Charges? That’s bullshit, he needs to figure out how to get Thora out of here.

  “What would you do Cole, if every star in your shinning night disappeared? Mine has and so will yours.”

  Cole glances at Thora, she still doesn’t look at him straight in the face. He did have every single one of his stars disappear, before this war, before this invasion, he was hopeless. But with this power and the help of Jahum, he has had one star rekindle in his night sky.

  Thora.

  “It’s sad. To see what Jahum can do to a lesser being,” Leif says with a sincere look.

  “You were lied to, Cole, by the false prophets you were so keen to call your saviors. You must be wondering why your lover doesn’t recognize you.”

  Cole release his grip on his wife. She pushes him off her and staggers back.

  “Thora wait!”

  She still can’t be angry.

  “You’re dead, Cole,” Leif says.

  Cole head snaps toward Leif.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t survive you ascension. It will take centuries, millenniums even to reconstruct your mind.”

  “No! I don’t believe you!” It’s impossible, he couldn’t have died.

  “You only seem whole because he wanted you to believe you were. To the rest of us, you are just a blue beacon of light. He tried to make you believe that you had a reason to exist in this plane, to pinpoint what exactly drove you and what you loved the most, when he found nothing, he manipulated your mind and emotions to give you a reason to live on.”

  Cole looks at his hands, he looks and feels whole and alive. He must be lying. Thora stares at him with her wide open shock, the same one she gave him when he woke up.

  “Cole is that really you?” she asks.

  Through her eyes all she sees is a blue hazy human figure. It seems familiar and oddly safe, but distant at the same time.

  “It was all a lie. Your reason to fight. Your reason to live. He wanted you to concentrate enough power so you can manifest a physical enough form to defeat me.”

  Cole runs at Leif.

  Leif swings up and a pillar of energy pierces Cole’s wrist and straight through his watch. Cole’s skin erupts blue, his white skin ripped off molecule by molecule, heart visibly beating in his chest, he can see through his blue skin and sees his organs working away to keep him alive. He’s translucent.

  “Oh, god.”

  Leif was right.

  Maybe Jahum was lying to him. Was his confidence and happiness a cons
truct of Jahum too?

  He feels no pain in his arm.

  “The only thing keeping you here is your watch.”

  Leif opens his other hand, a sphere appears. He points it at Thora. She doesn’t move, there’s only fear on her face.

  “And your willpower to save her.”

  Cole looks back at her, she just stands there as Leif fires.

  “I once thought you were something more…but with these two gone you will disappear and forever be with the stars.” The sphere shoots out of his hand. Thora yells as her life flashes before her eyes.

  The floor beneath them explodes and flings them both back. Everything slows for Cole.

  The ground looks like a crack in a mirror, in the jagged four foot crack is the city of the Skyeater. The realness of it against the backdrop of the empty city below is contrasting.

  Cole looks up at Thora screaming and reaching for him as she flies back. Leif’s sphere flies over the opening, it expands out fast, consuming everything it touches. The residual smoke, the chunks of the mirror like sky.

  As Thora falls back, she doesn’t fall fast enough as the sphere expands. Cole isn’t fast enough to save her, he even doesn’t know if he wants to.

  It engulfs her hand and travels up to her forearm. Then it stops. The world in Cole’s eyes speed up. The sphere disperses in the air with a poof.

  Thora lands hard on the ground with a thunk. The crack in the ground heals itself, closing as if nothing ever happened. Cole skids to a stop on his feet. Thora screams as blood gushes out of her wound.

  “Thora!”

  Leif appears over her, he grabs her by the stump and picks her up. The blood falling through the floor and over the city. He crushes down hard forcibly closing the open wound. Thora let’s out one last tremor before she stops moving.

  Leif drops her. Cole looks at her but her eyes don’t look back. She’s in shock.

  Was his love for her real or was it all made by Jahum? Was that why he pushed her away when he thought he needed her the most?

  Leif leaps back and lands next to his throne.

  Cole stares at Thora, if he had the possibility to produce tears he would.

  If Jahum changed the constructs of his mind to make a reason for him to think he wanted to exist. Is his renewed love in Thora real?

  “We have all the powers of the starmaker. The most important one is the power to destroy and—“

  Leif holds out a ring, it’s Julio’s, it lights up blue. It floats up and out of his hand and into the air in front of him.

  But Cole doesn’t watch him, he continues to look at a shell-shocked Thora.

  His mind is in a wreck. Is his power even real? It feels real, but so did his love of Thora. Even if he feels his connection to this world slipping.

  Is the reason he chose to live for false? Was the journey within himself wrong? Was all the death he’s seen, all the reasons he’s found, all he’s been through a fucking lie!?

  He doesn’t know.

  The blue looks so surreal to him. He can see the veins pulse with each of his slowing heartbeat, he doesn’t have much time left in the world. He doesn’t need Leif to tell him that. He can feel it himself.

  He stands up and looks at Leif. A ring that looks like Julio’s floats in front of him. He wasn’t paying attention to him.

  He doesn’t know what to do anymore.

  “And to create life,” Leif continues.

  The ring lights up brighter. Slowly, from a single atom of Julio’s DNA, it multiplies languidly by the millions. Cole watches as a single bone forms from that single point inside the ring.

  He watches as pink slime mushes and contracts into tight muscle fibers. As layers and layers of it builds up to form around the born. Then flakes of skin snap into place like a jigsaw puzzle, building up until it forms a single finger wearing Julio’s ring.

  Suddenly the process speeds up. The bone extends out of the finger and splits apart extending in every which way as the same building of the muscle process happens again until it forms a full human hand.

  The bone forms down to an arm, the muscle and skin building after it. From the wrist only short time afterwards, cloth appears and weaves together along with the bone and skin.

  Cole looks on as an chest, legs and everything that was Julio forms back whole.

  Impossible.

  “No…”

  “There is no right in this universe. No right to live, no right to die, no right to kill, no right to care nor no right to feel or exist. Not in this imperfect of a universe.”

  Julio stands in front of him, fully clothed.

  The very same Julio that left him only a day before. His same features, his same face and his same cheeky smile.

  “In a world with this kind of power and might, with no laws, rights or rules. Where life is given and taken away on a whim. What gives you the right to not be destroyed by me?”

  He’s right, he has no rightful reason to exist. Not with a being like this, not with the liars, cheaters, and stealers. With each passing second he feels his connection with this world slipping away from his grasp.

  As himself slips, he feels weaker.

  His vision faults. He grows more tired as if he was finally going to sleep with the stars. He doesn’t want to fight anymore.

  Even as Julio, a friend who is supposed to be dead, stands in front of him.

  “Ju…Julio… is that you?” Cole stutters. Julio doesn’t answer. It can’t be him, in the blood and flesh. He doesn’t know what to believe anymore. If the dead don’t stay dead.

  “Let’s play a game.”

  …

  Meanwhile Wilker and Noata run toward the research base. Wilker stops. The windows are blown out of the building and smoke billows out.

  Noata stops a little a bit ahead of him.

  “It must have been that ‘ascended’,” Wilker says.

  “Good maybe that’ll give us a chance to make it in unnoticed.”

  Noata waves at Wilker to follow him. He’s not going to waste a chance that Lance and Serena sacrificed their lives for.

  They burst through the entrance doors and halt in their tracks.

  “What in the bloody hell!?!” Wilker screams.

  The hallway walls are covered in blood and guts, the ceiling drips muck on the floor. Noata reels in disgust. It’s like someone threw a pig in a blender, turned it on and left the lid off.

  “God…” Noata tip toes through the mess on the floor.

  ---

  Noata and Wilker run into the ship bay. Noata stops as he enters.

  “Why is everybody dead?” Noata asks himself.

  “I don’t care about the why or the how, we didn’t have to fight when we didn’t have to and that’s all that matters,” Wilker says staring ahead.

  The ship bay is extremely large but oddly unfashionable, seemingly uncustomary compared to everything else the Eliite produce.

  Ships are docked on the long platform to the left and the right. A dock stretches out to the ships. The bay is filled with faires in a multitude of colors instead of the usual blood red. Some are slicker than the others, some are big, fatter, smaller, some with external missile pods, extra engines, more and less guns.

  Experiments.

  As they rest, the wings connect and are brought in swiped back. But in front of them is the best one of them all. Noata is amazed at all the different ships. Wilker grabs his head and moves it forward.

  “Whoa.”

  “Damn straight,” Wilker says.

  In front of them is the Starkiller. It’s slicker, more stylish, and more badass than any other ship in the bay. It looks similar to a faire but it’s over eight times its size, yet it looks smaller somehow.

  Its edges looks like they can cut through diamonds. It has a coat of red paint that looks so clean that it looks chiseled out of marble. It emits a new ship smell. It’s Eliite’s pride and joy and they’re going to steal it. A small bridge leads into it from the port.

  “W
here in the bloody hell is the cockpit?” Wilker yells as he and Noata burst through a door.

  “Crap, this isn’t it either.”

  “But it is something.”

  The bay they ran into is huge, the ceiling is stories high. Noata can barely see it. Hundreds upon hundreds of grunts are chained to X-shaped platforms among the walls. They have a permanent snarl on their resting face.

  Their skin is discolored and brown, as if they’ve been burnt alive, and long and deep cuts scar their charred skin, like they’ve gone multiple failed surgeries. Wilker walks along the rows of them looking at them with an odd sense of wonderment.

  “How could you have not mapped out the ship? You planned out everything else,” Wilker asks as he looks closely at one of the beast. Needles and cords connect the platform and the grunt.

  “What are these? Angels?” Noata asks, ignoring Wilker. This ship is so new that the Astrons didn’t have the layout, only its specifications.

  “They’re Serephins. Or the forsaken.”

  An Alpha walks through the door.

  “Serephins who failed to ascend,” The Alpha continues. They tense up. Waiting for him to make his move.

  “At ease, I’m not here for a fight.” The Serephin looks to be on the older side of an Alphas incredible life span. His skin is still sickly green, but has faded into an ashy jade with age. The texture is wrinkled and ragged, with deep creases under eyes. He wears white robes.

  “Who are you?” Wilker asks, his fist squeezed hard. Ready for anything.

  “I am the overseer of our ascension process. It’s an extremely strenuous procedure, which is why most if not all of them don’t make it.”

  “Why do they look like angels?” Noata asks. Noata drops his guard pretty quickly. The overseer walks up to one of them and caresses its face.

  It wakes.

  A hellish scream bellows out. Noata and Wilker reel back and clasp their ears. Eventually the screams turns into a dull roar and quiets to a sobering moan.

  “Because they are what you call ‘angels’. This is their fate if they’re not strong enough to ascend. This is what they become, monsters we have to keep in chains. Weak.”

  “What is it with your people and ascending? Can’t you people accept a simple meandering life?” Wilker ask.