by David Beers
The thing in front of him was massive like a planet. It should have had a gravitational orbit, sucking everything around it into its fire. It held no shape that Michael could identify, but seemed to encompass everything, and yet Michael was separate from it. A huge, ever changing mass of red.
It saw him, Michael knew that. Saw him in a way that his mother and father never had, maybe in a way they never could. He came for this thing, not just the man that he touched in the Ether. That man was only a conduit to this, to…
His soul?
Yes, that seemed right. Whatever physical manifestation the man had taken out there, this lay beneath it all.
As Michael stared deeper into the shifting red, he saw a blackness in the center. The black ebbed and flowed just like the red around it, but it was growing, and the red shrinking as the blackness seemed to overtake it. Michael knew what it meant; the black color was death. The creature hanging in the air was dying, and perhaps that's why he was in the Ether to begin with.
And Michael was here because of that. Somehow, in this creature’s death, he called Michael here. To be judged.
Michael felt it looking at him, staring down the same as Christians believed God would one day, deciding whether Michael measured up. Michael couldn't judge this creature though; there was no way. It was outside the realm of what Michael understood, perhaps even outside the realm of what the Morena creature could withstand.
The black continued to grow and more knowledge moved through Michael. He realized that he was watching something die. Something with power beyond measure, but in a very real way, much like an old person lying in a hospital bed, their body riddled with cancer. This judgement was life or death for Michael, though he didn't know what he was being judged for or what happened if he lived. He only knew that the creature was deciding something, and in doing so, both its life and Michael's would be determined.
He opened his mouth to say something, but as soon as he did, the red flared out at him, not quite touching, but enveloping his body. It wrapped around him, moving just above his skin, so that if he moved at all, it would grab him.
Michael stared into the red and judgement was passed.
* * *
Briten latched onto the creature's brain, filtering through the membrane of each cell, flowing into both the executive function pieces of this mind as well as the underlying plumbing that kept everything going. He had felt this thing, this… human, that was the word he wanted… from far away. Briten didn't know how far, didn't truly know where he himself had been until this exact moment, but he felt this thing and so called it—bringing the only thing he could to him.
Now the human was here and Briten understood he had to make a choice—very quickly because his time was almost up. The body that he inhabited, both in reality and what now appeared to be the Ether, was dying. Nearly dead. He had to decide whether he would use this creature's body or die with his own. Some might say that wasn't much of a choice, but for Briten, it was all consuming. He wouldn't simply trade his life to inhabit some lesser being that would leave him blind and frail.
He would rather die than suffer that fate.
With as much speed as he could muster, he looked through the creature, trying to understand at some base level what he was getting himself into. He had no time to think about what happened before this or what would happen after. He needed to know whether he would die in his own body or try to live in this one.
Briten found disappointment in massive quantities. The body was weak, weaker than almost anything Briten had ever seen. It would die from only the mildest of shocks. He searched on though, wanting to use every last second he could, needing to understand all of the possibilities.
He found more, though none of it connected to the creature's body.
Briten realized that the physical structure of this creature was similar throughout the rest of the species, that it wouldn't have mattered who showed up here, the body would be just as feeble. He saw more though, things that seemed centered only on this person, and perhaps on no other. Briten didn't have the time to sift through memories or ideas that lay hidden in the recesses of its mind, but he did sense a certain amount of grit inside its cells. A strength that the body simply couldn't match, but that the cells inside the brain exuded. That was good—that could be used for whatever Briten faced when he left the Ether. Even if the body didn't compare to what he came from, the underlying nature of the creature could be utilized.
More, though. Deeper.
Quickly, now. Because the body outside, Briten's body wouldn't last much longer, and when it died, he died with it.
He felt something familiar here, something outside of the frail body or mind's strength. Something familiar.
And when he understood that familiarity, all choice was stolen from Briten.
Traces of Bynimian. Traces of auras. Traces of Morena.
And that one word was all that mattered—that one name. Morena. Because Briten would have lived a thousand years in an organism without any brain if it meant a chance at seeing her again.
He let his body go, the one that served him so well for so long, the one bred to battle, bred to rule an entire species. He left it sitting in a gray world surrounded by gray things and came into a body bred only for survival.
* * *
Briten opened his eyes.
He could think of them as the other's eyes, as Michael's, but that would be pointless. Briten had no other body now, no other eyes. These were his and to think differently would create a delusion that Briten couldn't afford to hold. He had no other life, only this one that he now shared with a creature called a human.
He looked around the room, seeing only one other person sitting near him, in a chair next to a brown table. Briten was quickly assimilating the language of the creature, the human, trying to understand the world around him as fast as he could. The person in the room was Michael's father. Michael didn't know where they were, his father and he, so Briten let go of that search.
He didn't move from the bed, didn't even turn his head, simply used his eyes to see the room. The Michael creature was silent, observing Briten just as Briten observed the room around him.
After a few minutes, Briten decided he could gain nothing else by waiting. He felt certain that the father wouldn't harm his son, despite what appeared to be a complicated relationship. He sat up, turning his legs off the bed, so that his bare feet touched the floor beneath.
The man in front of him, Wren's, eyes opened wide as he watched what he thought to be his son sitting up. Coming back from the dead, Briten thought.
"Michael?" the man said, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Michael are you okay?"
Briten looked at him for a few seconds, saying nothing. The man was thin, oddly so, as if unhealthy. A bright memory flooded Briten's consciousness, one containing Wren—of him sitting on a chair and taking a bottle of some clear liquid to his mouth.
Vodka. The word came with the image, permeating it the way the smell of the liquid permeated the memory. That bottle was the sickness, what made this man so thin. And did it still run through him? Was he still sick? Briten didn't know, but if looks gave any part of the picture, the sickness wasn't giving up its hold easily.
"Michael?" Wren said again, sitting up in the chair, moving to stand.
Briten stood first, feeling the muscles in his legs tense as he raised the (your) body. Weak, yes, but the thing wasn't completely useless. He wouldn't need to crawl across the world like a slug.
Wren stood too, saying something else, but Briten didn't listen to him. He wanted to get out of this room because he hadn't come here to sit and talk with this man. He lost his choice in taking over this body when he sensed Morena moving through the human he now inhabited. And he could still sense her, a piece of her mixing with this human the same as Briten, only on a much lesser scale. He thought, though, he would sense more outside of this room, because he didn't think Morena had first inhabited this body. He thought she first inhabited this
world.
He went to the door, opening it and leaving the man standing behind him, his mouth still agape.
Briten heard the door close automatically behind him as the air attacked his senses. His skin, his nose, even his eyes.
His heart filled as he started deciphering it all, filled in a way that he never thought possible again. Because he remembered why his body was now dead, why it hung in the Ether for so long. He killed for Morena, killed knowing the whole time that he would never see her again, but that he needed to try and free her. He killed without the knowledge whether his sacrifice even mattered, whether she survived. And now, with everything swirling in front of him, he knew that she had. He saw her in the sky above, felt her in the breeze on his skin, smelled her even so far away.
Briten didn't know what was happening on this planet, nor why Morena was here. Morena was Var, though—and Briten understood what that meant perhaps better than Morena did, or at least in a different fashion. Morena would sacrifice all for Bynums. She didn't know how to stop being a mother; it wasn't in her. And so wherever this place was, Morena brought that with her.
Morena was filling this world the way she filled her own.
"Michael?" Wren said as he opened the door. "What's happening? What's wrong?"
* * *
Michael thought he had stood before a god back inside the Ether. He thought that he could not be more amazed by what he found in that other world.
Michael had been wrong.
Was he a prisoner?
The question floated through his mind like someone contemplating what they might have for lunch. Something that would need to be addressed, though the answer didn't matter too much. He had more important things to consider, more important things to see right now.
Michael thought Bryan and Thera had been held in a similar situation, yet also extremely different. The story that Bryan told, the sheer terror in the way he spoke of Morena, let Michael know that he had been a prisoner, without doubt. A prisoner given no thought at best, and actively hated at worst.
That didn’t apply to Michael. The creature that overtook him, Briten, had judged him, and in that judgment, found at least some part of him worthy. Those things hadn't happened for Bryan and Thera. Michael thought he understood some of why they were taken, and it appeared dissimilar to what this Briten wanted. At least right now.
Michael realized the creature's body was dead; he also knew Briten understood that too. They were wedded now, but as Michael walked around—given free roam, apparently—he thought he knew something that Briten didn't know yet either.
He thought that the creature was dying in here too, dying inside Michael. They were wedded, but as all lasting marriages eventually find out, death would part them. The creature didn't understand it because he was focused, singularly, on finding Morena. Because he loved her.
Michael now lived with a diseased being, one that didn't understand the disease, at least not on any conscious level.
And it saddened him. Because something this great shouldn't have to die. It should never pass from existence because its birth was a miracle beyond comprehension. He wanted to make the creature aware, to make him see that death was still creeping upon him even though he no longer inhabited his other body. Michael couldn't though, not right now. The being was too focused, too enraptured by the possibility of seeing his love again.
Michael looked out of his eyes, seeing the motel parking lot as Briten leaned against the railing.
He's sensing her, he thought. He knows she's here, can somehow feel her all around.
Did Wren ever feel like that? For mom?
The thought startled him, brought him out of the trance that this creature had placed him in. Had his father ever felt such love for Michael’s mother, a love so deep that even the thought of seeing her filled his being and pushed everything else out?
When she died, he thought of nothing else—until he forced her out with the bottle.
The thought was cold, without emotion one way or the other for his dad. And it opened up a small hole in the darkness that shrouded the room of Michael and his father. A tiny stream of light that moved from the ceiling to the floor. This creature traveled for millions of years, and the first possibility of his wife living changed his life’s purpose.
Linda’s death changed the purpose of Wren's.
"What's happening? What's wrong?"
Michael heard his father speaking from behind him, but Briten didn't turn around. He couldn't; he was frozen by his senses, the assault of his lover too great. He didn't pay attention until Wren reached up and grabbed Michael's shoulder.
22
After the Destruction of Bynimian
The globe that flowed black and white had changed colors. Helos still stood in it, though she had moved from her place in the center to the side. The Makers took away the black and white, revealing something new.
Helos cried as she looked on, The Makers showing what she never thought she would see again.
Lights beamed down and created her daughter, forming a three-dimensional image in front of Helos. The image was massive, just like the entire surrounding structure. Morena was on some other world, a place very, very different from Bynimian.
Helos saw a Bynum walking at her side. She didn't recognize him, didn't recognize the pale blue of his aura either. This Bynum was young, perhaps just born. That wasn't the most striking thing Helos saw, though—not by far.
Morena was remaking the world she walked across, changing it into the closest resemblance she could to Bynimian.
Why? she said, not expecting a response. At least not from anything in this globe. The answer was all around her, in her. Bynimian no longer existed, and if Morena was the last of their kind, then she would do whatever it took to resurrect them.
And didn't you see this?
The words were implanted in her head, but didn't originate there. Those words came from The Makers, a question directly to her.
Had she seen it? Had she seen her daughter walking on some foreign planet with the white growth of birth stretching out as far as the eye could see? Perhaps not exactly that, but Helos had known that something would happen. She knew it even before Morena met Briten. Something would test her daughter, something perhaps larger than any other Var ever experienced. Helos tried to prepare her, tried to teach her the best she could.
Had it helped Morena?
Was what Helos saw now a good thing, or a mistake?
Morena never tried to see into the future, never tried to see around corners; her eyes always focused on the world in front of her—dealing with the moment, and that was both a strength and weakness.
What else did you see?
She couldn’t ignore the question, no possible way to concentrate on anything but those words. They exploded in her brain like tiny detonations, leaving a cold, icy trail behind them. The cold of the universe.
Nothing, she said. Nothing, only that she would need help.
Who helped Morena now? The Bynum that walked with her, the brilliance of his aura, said that he didn't know enough to help Morena. He was too young, not a single show of Fade throughout any part of him.
Why? Helos asked. What is this? Why show me her after so much time?
Helos didn't know how long it had been, but certainly a time’s river moved on since Bynimian's passing. Why now? Why when there was nothing Helos could do?
Does she still need help? The words came back without a pause, as if whoever asked knew Helos’ reply before it ever crossed her lips.
Her eyes were still wet, but fresh tears arose. Whatever was happening to Morena, whatever she was doing, she was alone. She had no one from her past, no one that helped make her into a Var.
Go to her, the voice said.
23
Present Day
Morena found herself lost in the core. She knew she shouldn't be. She didn’t have time to stand here like this, looking down into a world that she wouldn't be able to enter for quite some ti
me. Yet even so, she continued staring. Her mind kept moving back to Briten, to when they had walked over the core, before he spoke in front of The Council, before everything changed.
Too many things were happening at once, and though it was stupid to float over the core like this, to waste precious seconds in reflection, she couldn't help it. How had she arrived here? Alone. In a world that wanted her dead, with a host of children waiting on her to save them.
And they would begin dying soon, though they didn't know it.
This world was closing in on Morena. The cold that the humans brought killed with an efficiency she hadn't imagined. The growth, the spread of Bynimian, was not only being slowed, but dying. Losing ground. And what had she done? Retreated to the center, retreated to the place where she once stood thinking she would move through this planet like a powerful wind, changing everything as she saw fit.
The other had returned, she could feel it again, but she had no time to even consider what it was doing or where it was. It walked this planet as it wished, and Morena could do nothing about it, couldn't even locate it. It moved as it wanted, just as the humans did.
Such massive differences separated these creatures and her own. Her kind had never been to war; they all lived peacefully on Bynimian. The moment she landed on this rock, these humans went after her, trying to bring her down. She had no choice in what she did. She either started over in this place or she didn't start over. This planet held no ships to send her back into space, no coordinates that would show her other planets. She had to birth her children here, now. Not one of these humans came to her and asked why. Their only instinct was to kill her, and to kill her entire species.
And now they were doing it.