Return of the Starchild (The Divine Inheritance Series Book 1)

by Catriona Murphy

  ‘Its name is Xian.’

  He exhaled with marvel, stroking the arm. The man wore thick framed glasses that held symbols like the ones she spotted on the keypad. His hair was trussed up, and he appeared meekish and standoffish. His nose twitched mouse-like and he came forward hesitantly, fingers fidgeting excitedly. His stained white coat was perforated with rips.

  ‘Yes, Iliana. Nice t-to finally m-meet you.’

  She glared, unimpressed. ‘Who are you?’

  He smiled kindly. ‘My name is M-Malem Beryl. Others where I’m from called me The Alchemist. Won’t you take a seat?’ Malem spoke softly and showed her a chair that sat next to a machine that rippled like water, it’s surface interchangeable.

  Iliana looked at it in bemusement, then at Malem. ‘What am I doing here? Who are you and what is that thing?’

  Malem blinked patiently. ‘I told you my creation’s name is Xian. I know you must be very confused. But I can explain everything.’

  ‘Explain now.’ She demanded, her fists beginning to shake. ‘You sent the Xingers after me.’

  Malem’s eyes went dim in confusion. ‘Ah, yes. That is what they’re known as here. Yes, I gave them clear strict instructions to bring you to me.’

  ‘Why? What the fuck is going on?’ She roared, surprising herself. A tentacle shot through the flap and struck her.

  Iliana stumbled back and a couple of machines clattered over, but rewound themselves in reverse to look the way they had been standing before.

  Malem skittered over to her. ‘You must excuse them, but I do need the protection.’ He helped her up, clutching her arm.

  ‘You have great gifts.’ he complimented, eyes shining with a fervour Iliana didn’t like very much.

  Malem stepped back awkwardly, rubbing his scorch-marked hands down his sides. The tentacle circled Iliana’s waist and dragged her stumbling into a chair.

  Malem bolted forward enthusiastically and slid a syringe into her arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Iliana rocked the chair but the tentacle squeezed, and all air left her lungs.

  ‘Just a simple procedure.’ Malem jerked a smile, then a shaky laugh. ‘We’ll see now, see how it goes.’ He tottered away, locked in an agitated conversation with himself, leaving Iliana staring after the deteriorated man.

  Iliana’s blood began to flow out of her arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked alarmingly.

  Malem stopped in mid-conversation and turned, he giggled skittishly. ‘I’m not from the Otherworld, but I suppose you know that. I’m from a planet name Palan Theon, located a few light years away.’ His mouth quirked. ‘My world was infested with a disease that wiped out vast numbers of our population, reducing us to mindless creatures, setting us back aeons of evolution and progress. At my research base, we strove tirelessly for a cure which we thought we were close to achieving after a comet crashed onto our soil with unique properties, the ‘miracle elixir’ I called it. But then an opportunity arose.’ Malem laid a fatherly hand on the motionless android. ‘I was contacted by an ambitious, visionary individual who offered me what I had been searching for, for years - an ultimate solution. An agreement was reached that if I produced enough of these Xinger creatures, he would grant me access to what I needed for my beautiful creation - you.’ Iliana’s heart leapt. ‘So, I produced them in secret, child’s play really - clone making had been mastered over a century ago, and with his magickal abilities I transferred them all to him with my own private platoon of Xingers to extract you and bring you here, to me, which they have done faithfully. They will be very useful to me when Xian awakes, as I will need powerful allies for colonizing this wondrous world.’

  Hundreds of neurons clashed in Iliana’s mind, for the first time since she ran from Walkers Fall, she went into a state of muted shock.

  ‘Drake Evernst I believe is his name, and he was instrumental, a bridge if you will, in bringing you to me. You were never to be raised forever on Earth anyway Iliana, it was always the Otherworld, it’s where you belong I believe, you are native here, at least by half.

  What Drake doesn’t know is the function of Xian, it is my first world colonizer and the Otherworld is merely a test run, it’s just the beginning of other habitable worlds to come. Drake’s vision is so small, so menial compared to mine, he only seeks to rule the Otherworld.’ Malem held his open palms towards her, beseeching. ‘With both you and Xian, we could have many worlds, Iliana, and my race will be regenerated and given a new home from our dying planet. I would rehome my entire race and be revered as the pioneer in creative problem solving and the greatest scientist that ever lived.’

  Building blocks fell and started to slot together. Iliana’s mind raced as she tried to piece all that had gone before. The closure she had starved for so long.

  She watched her blood pour into the android, allowing herself time to think. ‘You’re the reason I had to leave Walkers Fall,’ she whispered, she resisted the temptation but Zelda’s death swam in her chest like a toxin. ‘Zelda died trying to save me from you,’ she hissed between clenched teeth.

  Malem blinked owl-like. ‘What? Anyway, try not to get too emotional and upset, Iliana. I only need some of your blood and then your part is over. You will be chased no more, I can assure you.’

  ‘Why do you need my blood?’ she asked between clenched teeth.

  ‘Why, I need it for Xian,’ he replied obviously, ‘you are my final ingredient.’

  Iliana’s enemy was a weasley scientist who was about to unleash a destructive weapon to possibly kill all living creatures in the Otherworld and who knew what else. The slavers and Xingers all paled in comparison to the ambitions and contorted mind of The Alchemist.

  A machine next to the slumbering Xian disintegrated, it’s matter broke down and dissolved. It hovered in a ball of indistinction and rebuilt itself, slotting and sliding into a different shape. Malem walked over and punched icons on its newly formed liquid screen.

  ‘You’re going to kill the Otherworld.’

  ‘Hmm? Yes, in a manner of speaking and then Earth I think. Your technology there is still in Neanderthal stages and quite primitive, but Xian will manage.’

  Will manage.

  Her friends and family could all die. All living organisms wiped out so another superior, more intelligent race could live. Iliana had never believed in aliens; but they certainly believed in her. She shivered, she had only ever had to worry about herself up until this point, but this man threatened everything and everyone.

  ‘Can you take this syringe out now?’

  ‘No, you haven’t given enough yet.’

  ‘Why my blood?’

  ‘Why do you think? Your unique heritage had me questioning everything I believed in before.’ Malem shook his head wonderingly. ‘My discoveries will be made into legends.’

  Iliana summed up the man who wanted to bring about Armageddon, and chose that he could not live. Parallel to that was her exhaustion. It wasn’t physical but more a mental meltdown from being chased.

  She had failed. Failed Zelda. And despite her best efforts, she still got captured and not even Clio could stop it. Something had been holding out all this time, perhaps a sense of hope or endurance but in that moment, it shattered and hurt like a bone broken cleanly in her chest. Iliana stopped straining against the bondage of the tentacle.

  But something niggled. It squirmed for Zelda, whose soul was still imprisoned under the lake, for all her friends and family who could die if Malem was allowed to continue on with his apocalyptic pursuit.

  Iliana may not need to strive anymore to feel safe and normal again, for that hope was unrealistic now, but she couldn’t let others die because she gave up. Avoiding trouble was too difficult when it always found her at every turn, and she realised she had been wasting her energy and emotions over events and people she couldn’t control. She didn’t need to.

  Two tendrils searching for one another clicked, and Iliana felt
like a lamp had been turned on for the first time. She could feel her power pumping through her body continuously now; she could follow her blood as it went through the valves and into her heart, to be pushed out in a different direction.

  She was self-aware.

  Iliana looked at her emotions objectively, not feeling them anymore but merely looking. She stared around the peculiar white room like a detached observer and down at the tentacle wrapped around her body.

  ‘Enough,’ she muttered.

  ‘Hmm? Speak up there Iliana.’

  ‘Enough!’ she shouted. The tentacle wriggled and an agonising shriek could be heard outside.

  Iliana stood, not the same as she was before. She studied Malem with his intentions, the killer android and the strange fluid machinery.

  ‘The Otherworld is not for you to take, Malem. Your race has no right to assemble its presence here nor on Earth.’ Her voice was hers but it came from someone else; another part of her mind had opened up and with it, a higher sense of herself flowed through. She was Iliana but wasn’t either, she spoke in unison with a higher being that she felt was always there but one she could never touch until now. It seemed so obvious to her now.

  ‘You’re a threat to all life, Malem Beryl. I absolve you of consciousness, your matter will contribute to the life that flourishes here in the Otherworld, and that will be your penance.’

  Malem’s eyebrows shot up, a surgical apparatus held lightly in one hand.

  The dome shaped tent, The Alchemist, the machinery and the Xingers all dissolved into dust particles. Iliana felt the vibrational energy of each and every one of them as they drifted around her, floating debris in transit of form, waiting to be reborn. She channelled them into the earth and from the soil, shot up a tiny rainforest of about twenty paces wide. The scent of forest pine wafted from it. A new ecosystem formed, just like that.

  Xian’s dormant body still hovered and Iliana found she couldn’t break it’s matter down. Instead, she absorbed some energy from the earth and created a clear domed igloo to encase it so none would tamper with it. If the world colonizer couldn’t be destroyed, she could at least imprison it.

  Without thinking, she sat down and meditated.

  A part of her that she recognised as Iliana the girl gaped at her, but she was in tune with a higher version of herself that knew all and was at peace and in control. It seemed like the most natural thing to do, to be.

  After some time, she felt herself detach from whatever the higher being was within, and she stood.

  Her mind felt clear and sharp with no emotion, yet the presence of empathy and love for all was there, she felt renewed.

  From above, a familiar shape drew near.

  Clio landed at a run to pounce to a stop in front of her. Are you alright?

  She nodded, and told him all of what happened.

  Clio looked to Xian encased in the crystal tomb, his feline eyes were wary and distrusting as he nudged it. I do not like this thing.

  Iliana glanced at the android, its form within obscured by the tomb. Neither do I, but I couldn’t destroy it, which worries me.

  Clio let out a low growl and looked to the forest treeline with even more suspicion. I don’t like our position here, I think we should go - your backpack.

  He threw it to her from his jaws.

  Once it was strapped on, she climbed onto his back.

  ‘The Temple of Stars. Without delay.’

  Clio turned his head to one side. You have changed, Iliana.

  The great lion outspread its wings and roared rebelliously, sensing Iliana’s new-found fortitude and impatience. Nothing was getting in the way of her reaching the temple this time, even if it meant flying to the damn place whilst battling the Baltic winter winds.

  The lion’s gigantic shadow passed over the upturned ogling faces of people in a nearby fishing village. Afterwards there was much discussion on moving their settlement further away from the forest, and the new chunk of crystal that had appeared.

  As night fell and Iliana was long gone, a hand underneath the glass tomb twitched.

  Chapter Twelve

  P

  risons can swell during times of war. Soldiers, families and children bunched within the confines of four walls that serve to teach harsh lessons to rebels and those that defy.

  Seamus was feeling the bone breaking burden of all lives that suffered in the city beneath him, it was the quiet penance that whispered between cracks in the damp walls when the shadows were absent. His routine was split between hours revolving around his decisions and oversights, and visits from the creeping shadows who came to him with increased frequency.

  A leak dripped miserably in one corner and the soiled floor glistened frostily. Seamus shivered and pulled his sodden torn blanket around his shoulders, his body turned away from the draught through the iron bars set high in the wall.

  From king to prisoner. In only a matter of days it had happened. Seamus’s mind turned back to when he had left his chambers in chains.

  The undead lay strewn everywhere in the palace, flies circled greedily over the greying, shredded flesh that hung like rags from their broken bodies. Seamus had to put a hand over his mouth as he was escorted by two Xingers to the dungeons.

  Drake laid a hand on his shoulder like the grim reaper, the chill making the hairs stand like icicles on his neck.

  ‘Can’t stomach the dead ex-king? You should get acquainted, you’ll soon be joining them.’

  His words were articulated and he spoke with a pleasant fluidity that could send a child to sleep.

  Seamus’s throat closed up, unable to speak. If so many lay here in the palace, he could only imagine the colossal number in his city.

  Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside his cell and brought his attention back to the present. He tensed as they drew near - perhaps it was food? His death? Torture? Who knew what occupied the mind of the necromancer who now called himself the indisputable ruler of Erp Surrel and all the Otherworld.

  Murmurs beyond the door made Seamus move to the farthest region of his cell, opposite the door.

  A bolt slid to one side and the door creaked inward.

  Seamus readied himself for a struggle with guards, so imagine his shock when Florin stood before him. A hooded man on secret business.

  Seamus was too stunned to speak.

  ‘Hiding in a dark corner doesn’t help you escape my eyes, I see more than you think,’ he said, and sat down on a wooden stool. Florin smiled wanly in the torchlight. ‘How are you my king?

  ‘Don’t mock me.’ Seamus spat, he shuffled to a low bench.

  ‘I do not mock. You always thought that of me, but the stability of this kingdom has always been my highest priority. I never wanted to see you in a cell.’

  ‘Why are you freely roaming around?’ he asked suspiciously.

  Florin cleared his throat. ‘I’m still occupying my current position. This new ruler of ours has need for maintaining control over the kingdom, especially during this delicate time of transition.’

  ‘Traitor.’ Seamus accused, and broke into a fit of coughs.

  ‘Careful. I’m merely going with the tides of change, favourable or not. And if I’m a traitor, then you are a blind fool who didn’t take the correct course of actions to prevent the downfall of a regime that has been in place for centuries.’ Florin seethed. It was the first time Seamus had seen the temperate man angry.

  Florin recovered, his sharp eyes penetrating through the half light of the cell to look the former king in the eyes. ‘You had good intentions. The first decent ruler who ran this Otherworld in ways previous kings and Queens didn’t due to greed, jealousy, desire and other forms of deadly sin. But you were too complacent Seamus, with a hesitation to implement when action was needed, and it has brought this kingdom to its knees.’

  Deep within, he knew it was true, his shortcomings were many but his lack of practicality at times cost others. If he thoug
ht taking his own life would reverse it all he would do it in a heartbeat.

  ‘I did warn you,’ he continued, ‘many times, I tried.’

  ‘Cryptically,’ Seamus accused, ‘you could have told me there was an impending attack by a necromancer.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Florin shot back. ‘I was trying to penetrate his inner circle for months; the man ran a tight ship and had tight-lipped followers. If I had of known what was about to befall, I would have given the order to shut the city down myself well before consulting you, and you may not have even believed me enough to do it yourself.’

  Seamus was solemnly silent.

  ‘My agents were murdered trying to hunt Drake even as the undead spilled into the streets like rivers. They flooded everywhere and I lost many trying to fight back this new adversary of ours, fighting back what you had allowed to happen.’ Florin sighed. ‘Nothing can be gained from pointing blame anymore. What’s done is done.’

  Seamus stared at the far wall, holding back tears.

  ‘Drake declared to the kingdom shortly after his rule that the Skinner had been captured. You know the man I speak of, he is tall and carries a crossbow. Terrible social skills.’

  ‘I know.’ Seamus replied lifelessly.

  ‘He was the Skinner, orchestrated by Drake to carry out the killings to turn the city against you, against us.’ Florin stroked his clipped beard thoughtfully.

  Seamus leaned forward. ‘Tell me how is the city.’

  Florin pulled a face. ‘Under careful curfew, not that it’s too difficult to control the movements of the citizens, if there are corpses littered around your front doorstep you’re not likely to go outside. We estimate that at least half to three quarters of the population have yielded to the undead.’

  ‘What??’

  ‘At least that, we’re still in the midst of implementing the new census and numbers are a little vague since not all bodies have been accounted for. Everyone has lost family and friends to this and they will not forget what Drake has done. He had someone publicly executed today, an innocent man was coerced into confessing the Skinner’s killings. Trying to appease his new public, but he has a long way to go. Another uprising is not on the cards anyway, the citizen numbers are too low and the power surge they experienced before the undead took to the streets is all but wasted, and given over to grief now. Work has ceased but Drake has plans to begin, shall we say, new ventures. His focus is on employing the poor in creating mass graveyards so he doesn’t lose his newfound assets, amongst other initiatives.’