by Drew Seren
“But I can’t feel her,” Skylar said. He’d been wondering about that since they got off the ship, but hadn’t realized what it was that was missing. The night she’d awakened, they’d all felt her anger and rage. In Berginna there wasn’t even a hint of it.
“That’s because I’m blocking her from us,” Blizza said. “If I let her get to us, we’ll all be paralyzed, and we won’t be able to do what we need to.”
It made sense, and after Skylar helped Del to his feet, he made sure to not voice any further questions. He didn’t exactly like the way Blizza was bossing them around, even if she was the senior of the group and the most powerful, but he didn’t normally question his elders.
Around them the city continued to shake, and before long, they were all scrambling to keep their footing on the unstable ground. Buildings of all descriptions collapsed, and people called for help. As much as he wanted to stop and lend aid, Skylar knew if they didn’t stop the carnage, saving a few people wouldn’t amount to much. The idea of the greater good really irritated him sometimes.
The first drops of water hit and Skylar yelped from the heat as it burned through his glove. “How do we deal with this?”
“Movers have to move.” Solaria said. She glanced at Leonada, who nodded, and the water stopped hitting them as they continued toward the center of town.
“Very good,” Blizza said without breaking stride. “All of you stay close to them so they don’t have to protect an overly large area.”
“Should we lend them power?” Skylar asked.
“I could without problems,” Filzbalm said without moving against Skylar’s neck.
“Conserve your strength,” Blizza said. “Hot water is going to be the least of our problems really soon.”
“You’re right, old woman.” A voice rolled out of the water toward them. “Your shields are strong, but your body is weak.”
Ahead of Blizza, a giant form materialized out of the water. She didn’t seem fazed by the boiling bombardment around her. She was more solid than she’d been in the tunnels beneath Wegascu. The water ran down her broad shoulders and cascaded over her breasts. She was nearly twice the size of any living creature Skylar had ever heard of. He stared up at her.
Blizza raised the crystal claw. “Stop. This is our world now.”
The giant woman stared at her. “But this was my system first. Your kind killed all of us.” She frowned. Somehow the very human expression looked wrong on the huge proportions. A slight movement on her forehead revealed a third eye, nearly hidden in the heavy creases there.
Rage swelled up and slammed into them. Blizza took a step back and the hand holding up the totem shook.
Without prompting, Skylar reached out to her, as if he was going to catch the old Pantherian before she hit the ground around them. When he touched her shoulder, she latched onto him with her mind and pulled him in. The years of her life bombarded him. He saw everything—the training she’d endured to master her massive talent. The love she’d destroyed without meaning to. The family she’d kept at arm’s reach after that. The loss of friends and loved ones, each one tore a piece out of her, leaving less and less of her until she was only a shell of the vibrant young woman she’d once been.
Skylar tried to pull back, but her hold was too strong. He gave her all his power and more as she tapped into Filzbalm, and somehow reached beyond the Solar Drake. The power of all drakes rushed through them and into her.
It was impossible to say who screamed first, Blizza or Filzbalm. The Solar Drake’s cry was high and keening. It ripped at Skylar’s soul. He couldn’t pull his thoughts together enough to help Filzbalm block Blizza’s mental hold.
Then Blizza engulfed Del, and the others. They were like one mind being forced into the crystal claw. A bright light flashed out of the totem and struck the giant. Freyandor…the name appeared in Skylar’s mind. She had been the last of her kind when she’d been encased in ice. The crystal claw had been constructed to join enough powerful psychics together to hold her and stop her.
She’d been a goddess among her people, the only one capable of stopping the humans when they’d found her solar system and wanted it for their own. But she’d locked the planet’s resources away before they’d stopped her by combining their power into an unstoppable force. She’d taken the once vibrant world and stripped it of everything, leaving it a cold, desolate rock. All this poured through the link the claw formed between them.
The image of the Mother of Drakes flashed in Skylar’s mind. Through Filzbalm, she was fighting with them, but it was more than that. She’d fought Freyandor before. There had been a drake with the humans who’d first fought for the planet. And there was more, but it flashed by too fast for him to make any sense of it.
Under Skylar’s hand, Blizza crumbled. He caught the crystal claw before it dropped.
Freyandor’s rage was like a living thing. It lashed at them.
Melody screamed.
As his fingers closed around the crystal claw, Skylar took up the point in the circuit Blizza had been. He became the focus of all their minds, all their power.
Solaria roared in his thoughts.
Leonada echoed her.
“Skylar, push back against her,” Del said.
“Listen to him.” Blizza’s thoughts were weak. “Every Light needs knowledge.” She surged through him, then out through the totem in his hands. She became the force he was using against Freyandor.
With another roar, Solaria and Leonada’s minds rushed through him too. Their mover powers surged after Blizza’s thoughts.
Freyandor stumbled backwards, but her rage continued to push against them.
“You will fail.” Leonada’s thoughts raced out. “You failed in the past. You will fail now. You have always been a failure.”
Again, Freyandor weakened. Her rage was lessened.
Skylar clutched the crystal claw so hard he was afraid he was going to break it, but he held it high, trying to focus all their might through it. He remembered how Blizza had held them together, and before that, how he would loan power to others—but he’d never been on the receiving end of that power. He gathered everything up and thrust at Freyandor. “We protect this world. You lost the first fight. You will lose this one.”
Thoughts that weren’t his own hit him hard. They weren’t even remotely human thoughts. A lush world torn asunder.
The heat from the water faded. He didn’t exactly understand how he did it, but he pulled that heat into himself, then pushed it out into the city. The water cooled as it wrapped around Freyandor.
“Lie down, Freyandor,” Blizza urged. “Our time is over.” Then another wave of power surged through Skylar. It felt like Blizza kissed his forehead. Then she was gone.
“Don’t lose her power,” a distant voice urged.
Understanding, Skylar gathered it up and focused it along with everyone else at Freyandor. Inside he felt sad. Freyandor was just fighting for her lost world, but she was killing people who’d had nothing to do with its destruction. He wished there was another way, but they didn’t have time to find it.
He poured the power through the crystal claw that amplified their gifts into something Freyandor couldn’t resist. As the cold water fell around her, it hardened into ice. The nature of Pantheria exerted itself and bound her. Her mind screamed as Blizza’s power shut her down. Thanks to Clive, Del, and Melody, she didn’t have the willpower to marshal her forces to resist them. Solaria and Leonada wrapped the ice hard around her as Skylar continued to hold the crystal claw high and focus their powers as a single unit.
His arm ached as Freyandor fell silent. Then the totem in his grasp exploded and their connection was broken.
Pain lanced through Skylar’s hand and everyone screamed.
“You’ve done well.” The Mother of Drakes sounded tired as she broke her connection with him, and Skylar dropped to his knees.
26
Aftermath
SKYLAR WAS thankful he’d been prac
ticing his shielding. The grief blowing around him was touchable. It made the air thick and uncomfortable. He wondered if he’d be able to recover if he hadn’t been blocking it as hard as he could. The Unica family stood in a semicircle as the swirl of Blizza’s ashes blew into the wind, aided by Felonia and Solaria. It was a fitting tribute to the aged reader that they held her memorial in the gathering twilight two nights after she’d given the last dregs of her power to imprison Freyandor.
Near the family, the various politicians and leaders of Pantheria who had come to pay their respects stood silently as the last light faded and darkness claimed the Indruias settlement. As the steam cleared from Berginna, they’d all showed up to declare Skylar, and his friends, heroes for saving their planet. It had been awkward. He never planned on being a hero. He’d just wanted to have a quiet school holiday. He wasn’t sure how to react, so he did his best to ignore most of it.
He also wasn’t sure how he should react to the Mother of Drakes joining in their mental gestalt. Filzbalm was being quiet about that. He was the only one other than Skylar who’d felt her presence. Skylar wasn’t sure if that was because she’d come through his link with Filzbalm, or that there’d been so much going on at the time.
“Are you ready to go?” Phil asked. “We should get you young people back to the academy.” He shook his head. “You’re all still kids, but it doesn’t feel right calling you that. Kids wouldn’t have been able to do what you did. You saved the planet.”
Skylar held up his hand and hoped it was going to be enough to stop Phil before he could go on. “Please, can we just go back to Stars’ End?”
“Where we’re just students,” Solaria finished for him. “It’s been a hunt I’ll never forget, but I think I’m ready to go.”
Her mother gave her a big hug. “Rebuilding is going to take years. Go learn everything you can so you can come back and help. We’re going to need every mover we can get.”
“I will.” Solaria hugged her back.
“I will too,” Leonada said. “At least I have a planet to come back to.” She touched her stomach. “And Mutanio’s son will be raised by the old ways. I think he’d like that.”
Felonia let go of Solaria and hugged Leonada. “You both will always have a home with us.”
“Thanks.” Leonada swallowed as she returned the hug, then stepped away.
Phil gave quick hugs and waved the ones heading to the spaceport toward his hover car. “Any of the students who are left and don’t stay for the rebuilding will be meeting us at the spaceport in a few hours.”
Skylar settled into his seat and looked out the window. There were only a few lights in the settlement. It seemed like there had been more the night they’d arrived, but at least the people there were still alive, unlike the ones in the other cities who had been destroyed as Freyandor grew in power.
Phil started the hover car and drove away.
“Are we really not supposed to say anything about Freyandor?” Skylar asked. Right before Del and Melody had left to head back to the museum, O’Byrne had returned with a squad of lawyers from the galactic council had and sworn them all to secrecy, making them all sign lots of papers in an effort to keep one of the biggest conspiracies in the galaxy from getting out. He’d said something about getting delayed by stargate traffic, or he would’ve been back sooner.
Melody had acted oddly around him, like she knew him, but didn’t want to admit it, or something. O’Byrne had seemed somewhat strange around her too. He acted like he was making a point of staying away from her, after a stiff acknowledgement of her. It made Skylar wonder if may O’Byrne and her mother moved in the same circles or something.
“For now.” Phil turned in his seat. The autopilot light shown from the control panel. “That’s one of the things you guys are going to learn. There’s a lot in the galaxy the government is trying to hide. We’re lucky you didn’t all end up as collateral damage. I figure O’Byrne didn’t make his report to the president in time, or there would’ve been a team of very powerful psychics on the planet to take Freyandor on, and then wipe her existence from our minds instead of him just showing up with a bunch of lawyers in tow.”
“They could try to wipe our minds,” Filzbalm muttered from Skylar’s shoulder.
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done something like that, and it won’t be the last.” Phil shook his head. “The people in power aren’t always nice, and they do what they think is right for the general populace.”
“Even if it isn’t right for us,” Skylar said.
“Exactly.” Solaria frowned. “But we’re not ready to take on that prey, or at least that’s what Mom told me last night. We’ve got to mind our tongues and not let anything we know out. They’re gathering the information.”
“Del says there’s a lot of it out on the dark web,” Skylar blurted out.
“And don’t let people hear any of you talking about that either,” Phil said. “We’ve just had proof of the most dangerous information in the galaxy—humans creating a good number of the bipedal species. When that gets out as more than just rumor, it could tear our society apart. There are reasons genemanip is illegal. More than a few slave races have been created in the past, before there were laws. Once everyone knows the truth, we’ll have to deal with the speciesists claiming one species is superior to another, and we all know that isn’t true. Our galaxy is changing, and things are only going to get more interesting from here on out.”
“And interesting isn’t always a good thing,” Skylar said, recalling an old Hummassan proverb his mother was fond of saying about living in interesting times.
Phil grinned sadly. “That’s very true.”
Leonada put her hand on her stomach again. “What’s this all going to mean for us?”
“It means we keep our mouths shut and our minds open,” Phil replied. A sharp alarm ping made him turn back around in his seat. “That’s the best way to keep ahead of the changes.” He glanced at the control panel and grumbled, “Like the strange electromagnetic storms that are hitting the planet since you all defeated Freyandor. We don’t know if they are remnants of something she’d done, or something else.” He took the steering wheel and guided them away from the lights dancing on the horizon in front of them.
Skylar watched the lights until he couldn’t see them anymore. They were returning to Stars’ End as heroes as opposed to detentionees. He should be happy about that, but he was just sad. He wondered how many other races in the galaxy had suffered the fate of Freyandor’s people. The more he was exposed to the universe, the less he liked it, but he wanted to see more. It wasn’t necessarily the universe he didn’t like, but the people in it.
He scratched at his palm. Ever since the crystal claw exploded, he’d felt like there was something there, something buried deep in his hand. There wasn’t any kind of wound or scar, and with everything else going on he didn’t want to draw attention to it, but it itched sometimes, and he had to resist scratching at it for fear someone would notice. He wouldn’t be surprised if some small piece of the crystal wasn’t still with him.
“Do you think we’ll beat Del and Melody back to the academy?” he asked when the quiet of the hover car started to get to him.
“I guess it just depends on when the museum lets Del go. Of course, running out in the middle of his internship like he did might cause problems,” Solaria said from the front seat beside Phil.
Phil shook his head. “Won’t be a problem for him. I made a few calls and gave him a good reference for being out. Your folks also put in a good word for him. He’ll be lucky if they don’t request him to come back each break until he graduates.”
“That’ll make him happy.” Skylar grinned and settled a little deeper into the plush seat. Del loved the museum, and if he ended up getting a job there, he’d be ecstatic. As the dark frozen landscape of Pantheria slipped past Phil’s windows, Skylar knew more than ever, he had to be free to go anywhere he wanted to. Even after what he’d seen, t
here was still so much more to experience.
“And I’m staying right here with you.” Filzbalm rested his muzzle on top of Skylar’s ear.
“And I’ll be here for you,” Skylar replied, scratching Filzbalm’s small horns. Beyond knowing Filzbalm was with him, it felt good that Del and Melody would come to his rescue. Solaria would be there for him too. They were his family, and would always be, ever after he found his father. That would require some effort on his part, and he wasn’t sure he was interested in finding someone who hadn’t done much for him while his mother was alive. But with so much happening, seeing families destroyed on Pantheria, he was wanting to at least find out who his father had been, and then he’d see about finding him.
There was a wide universe out there, and there was no telling where his next adventure would lie, or how long it would take for him to find it. Skylar hoped it would wait until he knew more and had a greater grasp of his psychic gifts. With luck, it would be something he found on his own, as opposed to something finding him.
Skylar’s adventures continue in,
“Skylar Mars and the AI Armada”.
Check out the preview here.
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Drew Seren Bio
Drew Seren was raised on a diet of science fiction, both in print and on the screen. He spent many nights watching Star Trek and Space 1999 with his father. Comic books were a main staple of his reading, and then when he was in high school he started reading Dragon Riders of Pern and quickly began devouring any science fiction he could, luckily his father had an extensive library at the time. He started writing soon after that, letting writing help him make it through class. During college and his corporate life, Drew spent a lot of time writing to help him endure the mundane things that gnawed at him. Through his twenties and thirties, comic books and science fiction helped him survive. To this day, he’s still reading as much or more than he’s writing. He’s also an avid gamer, playing first Dungeons and Dragons, and currently lots of World of Warcraft. He’s recently turned his attention to writing full time and exploring the vast galaxy through new and interesting eyes.