by Daniel Huber
Hysterical panic gripped him as quickly as the nausea had disabled him. Quade looked around for a weapon, but had none that would be of any use against a black vapor. It gathered itself into the corner of the ceiling, teeming with rage, it seemed. Quade was regaining enough of his senses to try and call for help and he stumbled toward the console to send a distress signal. Before he got there, the creature charged again.
He tried to shout but choked on the sound, and again the invisible force encompassed Quade. It was as if a transparent bubble protected him somehow, and though the apparition still lingered around him, shrouding him in its dark energy, it's sickening magnetic pull, it could not break though to get at him. It was like watching spattering, splashing black ink against a window as it tried to reach him, to penetrate through, but something was keeping it out. Just as he was about to call up the emergency channel to transmit his distress call, he heard a shrill, squealing frenzied shriek that was gone almost before it sounded, and the creature ripped itself away from Quade and shot back to the ceiling. It pulsed and churned for a second then began to absorb into the bulkhead, rising through the metal, out of his ship and into open space.
It disappeared from Quade's sight for a minute, and he pressed his face against his forward viewers to try to see where it went, as it still did not read on his sensors. And then at the corner of the wide, arcing window, he could see it again, obscured against the deepness of space. Quade's hands grasped blindly over the control panel, rolling the directional trackball beneath his palm, guiding his ship to port so that he could better see where the ominous cloud was heading. He watched, numb and in shocked disbelief as the apparition began to dissipate as it moved toward the Bet/Kos nexus. Slowly, languidly, it crossed the short distance, noticeably losing the swiftness it had displayed just a moment ago. It came upon the arc of the nexus then seeped into invisibility as it disappeared into the very place that Quade had intended to jump his ship just moments ago.
Quade's nausea diminished a bit, and he realized that he was panting for breath. He held his head, trying to bring his senses around, listened to the labored sound of his own breathing filling the cockpit of his ship. The channel was still open for him to send a distress signal, but what would he say? With a shaking hand, he closed the link.
He sank into the pilot's chair and sat for a minute, pushed his damp, matted hair from his forehead. Looking out his viewers he could still see the courier cruiser sitting dead in space, could still see the glowing green of the Bet/Kos nexus. He wanted to get away. His instincts told him again, as they had originally, to just get out of the area. He sends a message that there’s a ship with communication problems or something like that.
Quade performed a quick systems check on his equipment, and found it all to read in perfect working order. He looked back to the Bet/Kos nexus and stared at it with suspicious apprehension, then set a course for the Bet/Mal nexus. It would tack on an extra twelve hours of travel time before he got home, but at this point he didn't care. It would be a fair trade to assure that he would actually get home at all. Kosch was the closest planet, and he'd send a report of the abandoned ship to them as he felt he was obliged to do, but that would be the extent of the details. Somehow, something told him that a report of a ghostly cloud entering his cockpit would be received with some level of suspicion to his mental state of mind.
He sat back and switched his controls to auto and rubbed his eyes, unable to shake the feeling of what he'd just experienced, though he'd come away from it unharmed. He remembered what Thanach had told him about the destroyed nexus, the abandoned ships, and wondered if there was any connection to that and what he’d just witnessed. That was so far away though; the area that the Venrey had been traveling was out on the circ and Quade was here all the way in middle space. Begrudgingly, he thought of the voices that had sounded in his mind. He should have asked more questions of the Venrey. Quade shook his head, sighing out loud and when he opened his eyes, he nearly launched himself out of his pilot's chair from shock.
Standing on his console, or actually, just above his console because they floated more than actually stood, were two creatures, staring at him with recognition, as if they had known him forever.
"We told you to ask questions."
"Gather information, however small."
Quade shouted, then launched himself from his pilot's chair and reached to his hip for his utility knife. He didn't draw it, because it wasn't really a suitable weapon, but self-preservation took over as he backed against the cockpit hatch. The cockpit itself was big enough to accommodate three or four people with sufficient room to walk, but suddenly Quade was beginning to feel that it was all too small.
"Quade, what you just witnessed is but a sliver of things to come."
The voice. It was a familiar voice. It was one of the voices from inside his head.
"No!" he shouted, his body shaking from disbelief. "You! You cannot be real!" He reached up and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling it as though that might bring him out of this dream, this nightmare.
"Insanity, this must be insanity…but I'm not insane! But if I'm seeing you, and hearing you, I must be insane!"
Mimic looked to Echo and shook her head, rolling her eyes. "They always think that they're insane."
Echo tilted her head, regarding the man who had pressed himself against the wall. "He's very young. Did you imagine that he was this young?"
"From the burden of his thoughts? No, I didn't think quite so young. Another winning asset. Young, stubborn, denying! Quade! You must listen!"
"No!"
Mimic threw up her hands. "It is over before it begins!"
Echo advanced slightly, still fixing her eyes on Quade. "Give him a moment. He'll come around."
Quade looked up to the creatures before him. There were two beings, basically human in appearance, but they floated -they floated- above the com panel of his ship. Female, he guessed, but…one was blue-skinned with golden hair, the other, gold-skinned with blue hair. They were twin aside from that, the short tufts of their strangely colored coifs sticking out from behind their ears. Dressed in layers of draped tunics over tiered short skirts, they each stood perhaps half a meter high. It was at this point that Quade realized that if he analyzed them to this length, he was admitting to himself that they actually existed, so he looked away again.
"No!" He rubbed his forehead, muttering to himself, attempting to find some level of rational. "What's happening to me? This can't be real. Can't…"
"We are as real as what you just saw. The thing you were so eager to deny."
"Are you a part of that?" Quade stared at them incredulously. "You speak to me inside my head for all these months and then manifest yourself from that…thing? That thing that attacked me!"
"No Quade, we are not part of the entity you just encountered." The gold one spoke, sounding bored and somewhat disinterested in his concern. "But it is the reason we have come here, now. To guide you in the crusade against its defeat."
"Quade, you must listen," came the more genial voice, the blue colored one, "if you pay heed to any one thing that we tell you now, let it be this. You are part of a scheme divine and must assume your place in it if you wish for a future for your world. You must seek out the others. This burden is not yours alone to shoulder. You will find your Chosen, and they will sometimes be in the persons closest to you. But time runs short. Events are already set into motion, events that cannot be reversed. Search those closest to you for clues, and you will find your comrades in this quest."
"Quest?" Quade looked back to where the two strange creatures stood, and both of them were advancing on him now, which did nothing for his sense of calm. "Stay back! What quest?" He turned his head, holding his hand up in defense.
"'Tis hopeless!" Mimic bellowed, and was upon Quade in an instant. "You aren't insane, you're stubborn and foolish! Seek the Chosen! And do it quickly!" Quade was still looking away when he felt something on his arm, and he looked back, realiz
ing that one of the creatures, the golden one, had kicked him. Kicked him! Now his illusions were starting to use physical force. Add paranoia to the madness, he thought, how grand! She hovered within mere inches of his face, and was scowling intensely. Then she let out a frustrated growl and hopped back, all this in midair.
"We go! 'Tis hopeless Echo, I say again, hopeless! Come now, our time here is wasted!" With that, she twirled and disappeared into thin air. Quade looked back to the other creature, the blue one. She spoke as she began to spin.
"Seek the Chosen, Quade. You will find them… you must! But seek them carefully, and beware to whom you speak of this. Those who are not Chosen shall be put in mortal danger if they're exposed to the knowledge that you harbor." As she faded from view her voice could be heard, half in reality, and half inside his head. "Seek first the one who will give you vital information about P'cadia. This… is your destiny."
All fell quiet in the cockpit of Quade's ship, and again he could hear his own labored breathing. He grasped his face in his hand and wondered why this continued to happen to him. Worse, now there were visions. Voices he could handle, but visions…
The tone from his console brought him back to his present course, signaling that he was coming upon the Bet/Mal nexus. Shaking his head, he walked back to the pilot's chair and as he reached for the control to stop the beeping, something caught his eye.
On the sleeve of his shirt was an iridescent sprinkling of golden dust. He touched it, rubbing the shimmering powder between his fingers, and began to wonder if it was possible that he really wasn’t insane after all.
CHAPTER 4
It was late afternoon and a crowd had gathered around a little makeshift stage at the bend in the road of Sigh Marketplace. A master puppeteer was about to begin his show. Trina had just finished packing up her supplies when suddenly someone grabbed her wrist.
"Ooh," Clea breathed, pulling her friend up from the ground, "this one's one of my favorites." She led the way closer to where they could observe the show, and from behind a curtain an invisible marionette controlled two puppets and voiced the words of an ancient fable.
"The legend of Mariot, the Eternal Warrior," Clea breathed. Trina looked at Clea who stood transfixed, watching the show intently. As the puppets acted out the scenario, a voice from behind the miniature stage told the tale:
The puppets acted out the legend of the noble warrior Mariot who had never been bested in battle. After a time, he became arrogant, forgetting his own mortality and was convinced the people under his rule were no longer fit for his protection so he sought to destroy them all. Suddenly a stranger arrived, challenging him to a duel and after a terrible fight the stranger stood victorious. Instead of delivering a killing blow, however, the stranger revealed herself to be his own maid, Heron who had poisoned his drink with a weakening serum, allowing her to beat him. Humbled, he took the maid as his wife and together they ruled peacefully for many years thereafter.
Trina and Clea turned away from the puppet show as it ended, and walked some distance in silence before Clea spoke.
"That's not the way it really happened, you know," she said. "The warrior Mariot was a good ruler, and he became greedy and arrogant. That much is true. But Heron was his wife from the start. She'd seen what her husband had become, and the terrible act of genocide that Mariot was about to commit. Knowing that she would be unable to stop him from doing this horrible deed, she poisoned his morning cup with a lethal serum. To learn humility, he had to die. And after his death, Heron went on to rule the Sovereignty peacefully. So you see," Clea finished, stopping at a jewelry vendor on the street, "the legend has become sugar coated over the years."
"And how do you know?" Trina chided. "How are you so sure that those events didn't transpire exactly the way the puppet show portrayed them?"
"Because," Clea answered nonchalantly, drifting away from the cart. "Avalon told me."
"Ah," Trina replied, knowing now where the conversation was going. "The ever-elusive Muse. And Avalon knows this to be true because…?"
"Because he was there," Clea said simply, smiling a sly smile at her friend. Trina trusted Clea with anything, and over the years had listened patiently to the tales that she would tell, but she'd never actually seen any evidence of the mythical Muse that Clea claimed to know. Clea's eyes would always glitter with excitement when she offered stories of times long ago, and she often became animated when explaining some event that history recalled incorrectly. But to Trina's skeptical stares, she would usually shrug and sigh, and ultimately the subject would get changed. It mattered little to Clea anymore what the few friends with whom she'd shared this secret thought of it. She knew to herself what was true.
Their stride was lazy, their demeanor casual as Trina and Clea walked away until something caught Clea's attention from the across the road, someone staring at her. The stranger looked away once she had noticed his gaze, and as the girls continued to walk, Clea turned her head, still eyeing him. What was it about this watchful stranger, who made her still look at him as she strolled along? He turned his back to her, as if trying to avoid her stare, and wrapped his arms about his sides. A glint in the late afternoon sun reflected off a ring that the man was wearing; an unusual, oval-shaped green marbled ring, which churned with otherworldly colors and motion. As she watched, now turning completely around to walk backwards, the man's long slender fingers bent and curled, toying with the ring's band. Where had she seen that ring before? Why was it so familiar?
"Clea." She heard a voice say her name.
"Hmm?"
"Clea!"
Clea turned to Trina, only just realizing that she'd been walking backwards alongside her friend. "Oh, sorry," she said. "That was just so strange."
"What was?"
"That man." Clea turned back around and gestured toward where the stranger had been standing in the crowd. He had disappeared.
"Which one?" Trina turned and scanned the street, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Clea sighed.
"There was a man standing back there, and he seemed to be watching us."
"What did he look like?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see his face, he was wearing a hooded cloak." She turned forward again and they continued down the street. "Probably nothing. Hey, look." The oddity of what she'd just seen wore off quickly when she saw a vending cart that had something she wanted. "Fortune bell chains. I've been looking for these."
As the girls stood at the cart and Clea sifted through the strands of tiny bells, a rich, savory scent wafted through the air.
"Can you smell that?" Trina said, inhaling deeply and sighing. "Stem of mushroom stew. From the Dorian tavern."
Clea was still busy looking through the chains. "Yes, that's what it smells like."
"Isn't it wonderful?" Trina had suddenly gotten very hungry. "I've got to get some. Come on."
"Mmm," Clea replied, sifting casually through the strands of tiny bell chains, "You go on. I'll catch up."
As Trina walked away, Clea continued to jingle each chain until she found one whose chime suited her, and she lifted it from the purveyor's cart and hooked it around her waist, tilting her hips to examine it. Pleased, she looked up to see the merchant standing next to her.
"Fourteen chid, fair lady," he said.
"Fourteen?" Clea replied. "I think not. Nine, if any at all."
"Rob me blind, why don't you?" he said. "Twelve and I'll forget you insulted me so."
"Twelve? Do I seem a dullard to you? Ten, then. But no more."
The merchant stepped closer to Clea, leaned in a bit. "Twelve," came his deep, throaty voice. Clea shrugged, and unhooked the chain from her waist.
"Ah, well then," she said, "None for me today then, I think. Too bad, of course. I'd surely have been happy to say that the sweet chime that sounds from my waist was one of…" she backed up enough to read the sign above his cart, "Vidian's bell chains." She reached to replace the bells, then turned when he finally said:
"Ten, ten chid. Fine then! Have it your way."
Clea grinned broadly, pulled the payment from a hidden pocket in the waistband of her skirt, and handed it to the merchant. She reached to her strand of bells and re-hooked them about her hips, shimmying slightly to make them chime with the movement.
"Well, there should be no trouble finding you so long as you wear that around your waist." Clea's lips curled into a pleased smile when she heard the familiar voice from behind her.
"Funny, you've never seemed to have any trouble finding me before but if this makes it easier on you, then by all means…" She twirled around, and the bells tinkled lightly with the motion of her hips, "I shall wear it daily." She laughed at her own silliness as she looked up at Avalon, who had, per his usual way, appeared from nowhere. "I was wondering when you were going to show up today."
"Have I become so predictable?"
"No never," Clea replied, "But it is a most unprecedented day, Avalon!"
"Indeed," Avalon cocked his head as he looked down to her. "And what makes today so unprecedented, my Clea?" She turned around and headed in the direction that Trina had gone.
"Let's walk."