by Adam DiSalvo
“Father!” she screamed.
Jaithen stood in astonishment. The woman approached the destroyed transport and threw her hands out to the side. The crumpled metal parted into halves with a violent jolt. Marcus sat at the near center still gripping his weapon.
“Lilyth?” Marcus gasped.
“Dad?” she repeated.
Lilyth dove into her father’s arms, wrapping him up tight. She pushed back, grabbed him by the face and kissed him on the forehead. Chandra picked herself up from the ground. She picked up her guns from the ground and walked over to Jaithen.
“Lilyth.” Marcus said again.
Lilyth ignored him, holding him tight as tears filled her eyes. Marcus grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in front of him.
“Lilyth, where are your cousins? Your aunts and uncles?” Where’s baby Liam? Where’s Catrina?”
The tears rolled down her face and she collapsed into him.
“Dad. I couldn’t save them.”
Marcus’s eyes welled up. He held Lilyth close.
“Lilyth. What do you mean?” he choked. “Where’s our family? Where is everyone?”
Lilyth began to cry.
“We’re all that’s left. Daddy they killed everyone! They took babies! I don't understand what’s happening! Why are they doing this?!”
Marcus didn’t let go.
“I don’t know baby. I don’t know. It’s okay now. I’m here. It’s okay.”
Chandra approached Jaithen with her weapons in hand. Lilyth’s sobbing accented the sound of the city’s slow demise. Jaithen and Chandra stood still, observing Marcus and Lilyth's painful reunion. Chandra spoke through Jaithen’s earpiece.
“Captain. She is ether born.”
Jaithen scoffed.
“Yeah. Very special.”
CHAPTER 10
AN ENORMOUS CAVE greeted Taytha and Haitrion as they emerged from the howling passageway. The ceilings were hundreds of feet high. Haitrion knelt down placing several small devices on the ground.
“What are those?”
“Motions sensors.” he explained, placing the last device just feet from the mouth of the tunnel. "They’ll alert us when something exits the tunnel."
The light from their suits danced along the walls as they passed, creating beautiful blue and orange patterns around them. Haitrion stopped mid stride, taking a slow breath.
“Sergeant?” he asked, turning to Taytha.
“Yeah?”
“Why did you betray your Lord?”
Taytha stopped, pondering the question.
“Haitrion I don’t know if this is such a good id—“
“Sergeant. Please.”
Taytha stared deep into the darkness of the cave.
“I’ve had enough. I didn’t care if he killed me anymore.” she answered.
Haitrion stayed quiet.
“God Emperor Feera and his family are vile. All ethers are."
She paused.
“Are the blood parties real?”
Haitrion stayed silent.
“Haitrion! Are they real?”
She leaned against the cave walls.
“My goddess. You all are monsters.”
“Not I.” Haitrion interjected with a waive of his hand. “I never took part in such depravity.”
“I’m sure you did all you could to stop it.”
“Taytha I—“
“Don't make excuses!” snapped Taytha, leaning up from the wall. “Ether’s turn their eyes from their own's injustices while still requiring average humans to police and punish themselves! You could help change the way things are! Instead you chose to do nothing."
She stopped inches from Haitrion’s face.
“When one can act with impunity who are we really?"
Haitrion turned from Taytha and started again deeper into the cave.
“I used to believe we ethers were infallible. We were granted power as a birthright. Ether born. We had the right to wield it any way we pleased.”
“Any way you pleased?!”
“Sergeant, the leogris doesn’t ask the gaza'le before eating it.”
Taytha scoffed.
“The next time either has the existential crisis of knowing their own mortality, let me know.”
“You are presuming one understands the other in terms of existence, Sergeant. Tell me, where do you and I intersect beyond this moon?”
“Your different worlds theory is ridiculous.”
“Is it?"
“Yes! We’re both alive and we both understand that! Animals don’t! Ethers have forgotten they’re human.”
Haitrion stopped, looking over his shoulder.
“Are we?”
“Aren’t you?!”
He turned to face Taytha.
“I have lived for many thousands of years. My skin doesn’t burn and possesses the strength of woven graphene. My bones are more akin to tungsten and I can survive the vacuum of space for one hundred and thirty two minutes if I have no atmosphere to draw along with me.”
The ground shook.
“I command gravity on a whim.”
The heavy metal elements beneath them broke ground, coiling up into the air like tentacles.
"I can create and manipulate a limitless size and number of magnetic fields on an impulse at any magnitude.”
The ends of the writhing tentacles blossomed into bright flowers of plasma. The cave lit up around them in a brilliant rainbow of color.
"At my desire I may coax life through your very cells, bring you back from death itself.”
Haitrion raised his arms. Rainbows of light filled the space between them.
“What am I Sergeant?! For I confuse myself for your god.”
Taytha held her ground and steeled her posture. Light danced across her visor.
“You speak as if you are naive to humanity! Like our collective memory is a game to be played!”
“And in that is our fallibility."
Taytha stopped. Stunned.
“The very weapons that will destroy the ether's already move in the dark. The next of the gods has already taken his place in the pantheon.”
“You sound jealous! What are you jealous of? Are we pawns in a game where the prize is nothing but, your name in a history book?!”
“What is the prize for your life Sergeant?
“What?”
“Do you want for nothing?! What is the prize you would trade your life for?”
Haitrion waited for an answer. The splitting ground shuddered, giving way as the tentacles rose ever higher. The plasma blossoms grew.
“I do not need you to allocate value to my life Haitrion! It’s my life!”
“Then why are you here?!”
“Isn’t it obvious?! I’m trying to survive!”
She gestured around herself.
“This! This Haitrion! I’m tryin to survive this!”
Haitrion stepped forward.
“It doesn’t seem prudent then to fire upon your former lord.”
“Haitrion! Oh my goddess! Really?! Kilahren would never agree to help me get out of this hell! He would only send me back! Or goddess knows what else!”
Haitrion nodded his understanding.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shared any of that.” Taytha admitted.“
“It’s quite alright Sergeant. Your assessments are accurate.”
Haitrion took a deep breath.
“As long as your feelings won’t get in the way of what needs to be done I accept you judgment.”
“I know what the agreement is. I will make sure your message goes out from the inter stellar broadcast systems. I’ll figure the rest out when I get there.”
“The planet's been under quarantine since before you were born.”
“Seems like that’s my problem.”
The light from the plasma died. The two were left standing between the projected lights of their suits.
“The lesser of two evils.” Haitrion assessed.
>
The metal tentacles stiffened, casting into time their final shape. Taytha approached and reached out to touch one’s reflective surface. She flicked the end with her armored glove releasing a hard ring.
“Yes. At least that’s what you seem to be.”
Haitrion shook his head and looked deep into the darkening way before them. He turned to look back at Taytha.
“Maybe that's exactly what Lord Va’Dahren was doing.”
She looked back over to Haitrion.
“What are you saying?.”
“He was choosing the lesser of two evils."
Taytha shifted her gaze back to the twisted rosebud-tipped tentacle.
“He made the weapons you’re talking about. Didn’t he. He’s the next god in the Pantheon. Humanity’s next Athronin.”
Haitrion nodded in agreement.
“He did. You’re very shrewd, Sergeant."
“You think he chose humans over ethers."
“I do. He always believed the true test of an ether was not one of survival like creatures of the cycles but, one of morality.”
“Is that why he attacked the Empire?”
Haitrion chuckled.
“Oh no.” he clarified. “The War of the Twin Suns was waged over a broken heart.”
“Wait, what?”
“It was.”
Haitrion's tone carried a hint of sadness.
"The Emperor killed Va’Dahren’s wife Alahra and placed her heart in a box for him to find."
Taytha clenched her fist in surprise.
“I was there when the Emperor gave the order.” he confessed,
“My goddess. You didn’t do anything?”
Haitrion said nothing. Taytha stared at him.
"Is that why he killed all those soldiers? On Talontet?”
“It wasn’t just soldiers who died on that moon. Most of their families perished with them. I’d wager the Hydra's despair-fueled rage shielded him from the succeeding guilt. It was only a few days later the Hydra’s system wide broadcast went out.”
Taytha shook her head.
“If you’re not with me you’re against me. That’s the typical absolute thinking of an ether.”
Haitrion nodded in agreement.
“Almost all of us suffer from it. Some of us still believe we’re gods.”
“The gods of Cantiga.”
“There are others."
Haitrion looked down at the PDC display mounted to his ether skin on his inner left forearm.
“Sergeant. The pressure seems to be rising in here.”
“Yeah. My suit's reading the same.”
Haitrion turned to Taytha.
“Those doors we came though, back in the passage. They weren’t doors at all. They were waste gates.”
“Waste gates?”
“For controlling air flow. Pressure.”
They made their way through towering spikes which hung and stood like prison bars throughout the cave.
"These rock growths are evidence of moisture, Sergeant. This is puzzling."
The space between the rock spikes grew and the two found themselves stepping onto a hard metal floor. The area in between the stalagmites was covered in thousands of green and blue glowing symbols. Taytha bent down and brushed a bit of dust away with her hand revealing a glowing blue symbol.
“They’re beautiful.”
“They are. I’ve only seen them aglow like this once before. It's marvelous.”
“You’ve seen these symbols before?”
Haitrion stepped close to her.
“I have. Some of these symbols appeared on the gate.”
Taytha stood up.
“When we first arrived, the symbols looked like simple carvings. Once we successfully activated the gate though, they lit up like this."
“Then the worms.”
Haitrion took breath.
“Yes. Then the worms.”
The two continued their way through the cavern, the way now lit by glowing angelic etchings. They snaked through the towering stalagmites until they came upon a field of skeletal remains laid out before a metal archway. The mass of humanoid bodies sprawled for hundreds of yards, piled along the ground as if fleeing some great terror. The pair's pace slowed.
“My goddess. What is this?” Taytha wondered.
“I do not know.”
Haitrion knelt down next to the body furthest from the arch.
“It looks like they were running from something.”
Taytha stood in disbelief.
“There must be thousands. What could they have been running from?”
“Whatever it was, it was enough for them to brave the vacuum of space.”
“Are these angels?”
“I very much doubt it. From the way they describe themselves on the temple walls on Firoth, these are not angels. They’re something else.”
They made their way through the sea of alien carcasses coming upon a huge metal door underneath the archway. A handful of bodies lay bisected near its threshold at the seam.
“Crushed or suffocated. These poor people. They must have been terrified."
Haitrion reached out placing his hand on the archway. He took a step back observing the barrier before them.
“It's another waste gate.”
“How do we open it?”
“I’m not sure if we can without forcing it. The system seems to be operating now. This gate is most likely part of an automated cycle. Most waste gates are designed that way.”
“Are you saying we can force it open?”
“I’m saying I can force it open.”
Taytha looked up at to the top of the gate. A green symbol burned bright at the dead center of the archway. The seem between the doors was invisible if it not for the small bits of remains protruding from it.
Haitrion placed his hand on the giant doors.
“They’re constructed of metal. Some sort of meta-steel.”
He stepped back from the barrier.
“Prepare yourself Sergeant. I know not what lays beyond.”
Taytha grabbed her AGR, steeling herself. Her breathing deepened. She gripped the weapon tight. Haitrion bowed his head standing before the gate. To rumbling sounds of snapping and grinding metal the door cracked open. The death gripped by the great doors fell to the ground as they parted. The gears continued to bend and split as the gap between the doors widened. Light slipped through the opening ushering along a light breeze. Taytha lowered her weapon stepping forward in awe. As the powerful magnetic fields pried the doors apart, sprawled out before them lay a deep jungle valley. Situated at the center, beneath a brilliant white light, rested a megalithic temple city.
“Haitrion.” Taytha gasped.
The rumble from the doors ceased and Haitrion strode up behind her.
“The gate’s power source.”
Taytha stood speechless beholding the beauty and horror facing her. On the reverse side of the ancient waste gate a second preceding sea of bodies lay cast down to an orchestra of alien resonance filling the air. Colorful avian creatures soared through the open expanse above the subterranean jungle canopy. Portions of the stone metropolis lay scorched and charred, the pellucid victim of a violent attack. The stone walls that still stood remained their clean original beige. The precious metals adorning the destroyed city glinted under the fiery light above.
“Sergeant. The air is breathable. The local bacteria is biocompatible with our immune systems. It is like a paradise.”
Taytha vented her helmet and took a deep breath.
“Oh my goddess. It’s fresh air. Computer disable life support systems."
She focused her vision on the ruins at the center. Her HUD zoomed in utilizing its onboard intuitive optics.
"Something awful happened here.”
“I believe you are correct.” He affirmed. “We should proceed on foot for now."
The two happenstance explorers pervaded through the archway. They wove their way through the mass of ske
letal remains. The bodies within the interior of the titanic generator were merely pieces for their wholes. The local wildlife had reclaimed much of them. Only bones protruding the soil remained. Massive foot prints were pressed into the ground around the carnage. Taytha crouched next to the massive footprints.
“They’re like the foot prints left by the Hermes.”
“Unsettling.” Haitrion admitted.
After climbing down the underground mountainside beyond the waste gate they found themselves on the edge of the jungle forest. The towering tree trunks were thick and long vines covered in rainbows of colored flora hung down from the dense canopy. Taytha’s onboard survey suite analyzed the trees.
“They’re hundreds of feet high.” she aired “How can all this be here?”
The dirt in between the giant trees and large ferns covering the ground was soft and dark. Bioluminescent insects of every hue wafted through the air under the tenebrous canopy. Exotic aromas slipped along with them through the brush. Each step was an encounter of brilliant color. Every shrub new. Each creature alien. Taytha placed her hand on one of the massive trunks, staring straight up. The light from the object burning above the city center broke into sunbeams as it passed through the vine ladened branches. The density of the forest grew the deeper they pierced into the valley under the mountain. A light breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. Taytha turned to Haitrion.
“Venting waste gates.”
“Computer.” Taytha murmured “Back up everything from the last six hours.”
She grinned looking at Haitrion.
"My sisters will never believe this.”