The pain refused to relent. It came in quick pulses that were so frequent that they might as well have been one long pulse of infinite magnitude, and infinite duration. Completely overwhelmed by the pain that coursed through her entire body, the closest thing to a thought that Raven Black could form was: IT BURNS IT BURNS IT BURNS IT—
A moment later, she felt nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Aboard the Chesed, Edge of Leviathon-Q Sector
Bentley watched her younger self lying in the med bay, her face turned towards the wall. She saw Legba standing over her, near her neck, his face a battleground between worry and guilt. She watched as he jammed a tiny, sharp chip into the back of her neck, and she heard her younger self scream in agony.
She felt waves of anxiety and dread rippling through her mind, but she knew that these feelings had nothing to do with the scene that she was currently observing. She was still preoccupied with her visions of the fiery streak, the burning of the Chesed, and the seemingly imminent death of everyone she held dear.
This just feels so… silly, she thought to herself. I feel like I’m on a fucking field trip during the apocalypse. It’s as though I’m in a museum, looking at a tiny, dusty diorama which depicts some ancient, irrelevant event, trying to take notes, to get a better handle on a moment that is already long dead and gone.
And yet, while I’m staring at this flimsy reproduction of history, just outside, maybe only a few meters beyond the museum’s walls, a forest fire is raging. A fire that is creeping closer and closer, a fire that will ultimately consume the museum, the diorama, and me. Absolutely everything will burn, and here I am, watching fucking home movies of the time an old, bleeding man stabbed me in the neck. This isn’t helping anyone. This isn’t doing anything. Why the fuck am I still watching this bullshit?
Bentley shook her head vigorously, letting the image of herself and Legba in the med bay fade away into a field of uniform darkness, taking herself out of her meditative state. She opened her eyes and glanced around the med bay, then down at the examination seat that she sat upon. Jeez, she thought to herself. Here I am, sitting exactly where I was when I experienced the most pain in my entire life. Yet somehow, in this moment, when no one’s got a pointy shard in my neck, and I don’t seem to be threatened by any imminent bodily harm, and everything appears to be more or less fine, I feel so much more threatened, so much more terrified…
She looked over at Legba, sitting on the stool, and watched him as he slowly opened his eyes. He gazed at her, a look of confusion on his face. “This has been a fairly bumpy session. My child, I realize that there is much to process in these events that I have been revealing to you. It is reasonable that, when memories are so emotionally vivid, and so focused on you personally, that you will start making connections that go beyond the memory itself, making you more likely to come out of your meditative state. I must confess, these memories are also tremendously demanding for me to face, so I can sympathize. However, even granting all of that, you seem to be having much more difficulty maintaining focus today. Certainly much more difficulty than is usual for you. I do not want to pry, but is anything wrong?”
Bentley stared Legba in the eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes. Something is very wrong. We are all going to die.”
Legba scratched the back of his neck. “Well. Yes, that is true. At some point, everyone does die. I thought that this was something you might have already come to terms with. A fact that was already very familiar, and—”
Bentley shook her head. “No. I don’t mean that we are all going to die eventually. I mean…. I…”
Bentley started to become lightheaded. Pulses of anxiety throbbed through her body. She felt as if she could feel her very muscles squeezing around her bones. In the moment, she wasn’t experiencing this dream, or this hallucination, or whatever it was, but all of the sensations that she felt in past occurrences of the vision were surging through her body. The panic, the dread, the sense of helplessness. She felt as though sitting still meant certain death, and she became aware of an animalistic fight-or-flight response that was beginning to trigger within her. She heard a monosyllabic voice screaming within her: GO! RUN! NOW!
Without thinking, Bentley leapt down off of the examination seat, landing on the floor. She turned to Legba, her eyes burning with a fiery intensity. “I— I need to go. Right now.”
As she rushed towards the door, Legba turned his head, following her with his eyes. He stroked his beard, his brow knit with confusion. “So, I… I suppose we will finish this session at another time?”
Bentley didn’t hear the last half of Legba’s sentence. By the time he had finished posing his question, she had already passed out the med bay’s door, into the hallway, running as fast as her legs would carry her towards the bridge.
As she sped down the hallway, everything felt as if it were in slow motion, and every detail that she saw as she passed became extremely precise in Bentley’s mind. She noticed the glow of every light bulb, and the tiny imperfections that marked the long walls. She noticed the contour of each smudge on the floor that lay beneath her, on this long path towards the bridge, and the possibility of salvation.
With this apparent slowing of time, Bentley was overcome with a deep fear that she would not be able to get to the bridge before it was too late. Her legs felt as though they were not moving quickly enough, the gaps between her footfalls feeling like an eternity. The air felt like a thick, viscous liquid that her legs had to force their way through, in order for her body to advance any farther down the hallway. She was seized with a terror that she would never arrive on the bridge in time to tell the others, to perform some sort of desperate evasive maneuver, to do anything that might have a chance of preventing the fiery death that felt so close.
Bentley imagined arriving at long last at the bridge, and seeing its door sliding open before her. She imagined seeing the bridge’s main screen as she moved over the threshold. She imagined the screen showing not the empty void of space that was such a common sight on its surface, but instead an intense, glowing field of bright yellow that filled the entire gigantic rectangle, bathing her and the doomed bridge in fiery yellow light. She imagined that she was too late.
Bentley heard a loud voice, screaming, full of panic and desperation. It took her a moment to realize that this voice was her own, screaming out warnings as she sped down the hallway. “JELLY BEAN! JADE! SHANGO! ANYBODY! WE NEED TO CHANGE COURSE! WE NEED TO TAKE DRASTIC, EVASIVE MANEUVERS! WE— WE NEED TO FUCKING MOVE! WE NEED—”
Bentley’s eyes opened wide, a thought occurring to her. She skidded to a stop, her boots squealing against the floors of the hallway, leaving a pair of long black scuff marks. She spun on her heels and turned around. She ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction, away from the bridge, towards her quarters.
The sword, she thought to herself. Maybe it can save us. When I first arrived back on the android base, from the dead rock, Svend and Legba I were somehow able to use the sword to form a protective bubble. A bubble that protected us against a direct blast of energy, which was fired right at us by one of the Geburah’s cannons. That blast bounced off the bubble as though it were a bouncy ball that was thrown at a brick wall. Maybe the bubble would have a similar effect on a huge ball of fire?
Bentley’s mind raced as she sprinted down the hallway, getting ever closer to her quarters. And, what’s more, she thought to herself, I was able to make the bubble expand. Maybe I could form a protective bubble in my quarters, and expand it out, larger and larger, until it could enclose the entire ship? Maybe I could generate a huge force field, to seal us off from any incoming streaks of fire, to save us all…
Bentley saw the door to her quarters, mere meters away. Well, she thought to herself, there’s only one way to find out whether or not this is going to work. You can do this, Bentley. You have to.
The door flew open before her, and she sped inside, diving towards her bed. She fell to her knees, landing ha
rd, but she barely even noticed any pain. Without looking, she threw her right hand under the bed, to grab the familiar cloth sheath than enveloped the sword. However, she felt no cloth, no steel. She felt nothing.
She grasped around under her bed, in a panic. She dipped her head down, to peer under the bed. There was nothing but dust, and a huge gap in the dust that revealed only an empty patch of floor, an empty space where her sword should be.
She leapt to her feet, a look of confusion and panic overtaking her features. She started to squeeze the back of her neck with both hands, breathing heavily. “W— W— WHERE THE FUCK IS MY SWORD?”
Bentley heard the sound of footsteps approaching, the sound of multiple people running towards her, down the hallway. A few seconds later, she saw Svend, Jade, and Jelly Bean clustered around the doorway. They all stared at her, mouths agape, their eyes projecting deep concern.
Jade entered, out of breath. “We— We heard screaming. What— What’s wrong?”
Bentley paced, a hand massaging her forehead. “If you heard me screaming, then did you by chance hear any of the fucking words that I was screaming?” She dropped her hands to her sides, and approached Jade, getting in her face. “WHERE THE FUCK IS MY SWORD? Did you hear that?”
Jade winced and stepped backwards, almost falling over, terrified. She glanced at Svend and Jelly Bean, and the three shared a guilty look.
Svend stepped forward and reached for Bentley, trying to remain composed. “Okay, Bentley. Don’t worry. Everything is fine. Just calm down.”
Bentley swatted Svend’s hand away, her eyes filled with rage. “NO! EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE! YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!”
Svend retreated back towards the door, unsure what he should do or say. His look of guilt was replaced with one of intense alarm.
Bentley continued to pace, not meeting anyone’s gaze, almost hyperventilating. “Fucking figures. Every single fucking night, it’s two feet away from me, within reach, and then the moment I actually need it, poof. Gone.” She stopped pacing and shook her head, staring at the space under her bed. “It was right here… It’s always right here…”
Jelly Bean stepped forward, a look of trepidation on her face. “That is… almost true. It is usually here, certainly. But recently, it occurred to me that it might be advantageous to continue my research on it, to—”
Bentley stared at the floor, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this shit.” She pushed past Jelly Bean, Jade, and Svend, making her way out the door of her quarters, back into the hallway.
Bentley took off, sprinting down the hallway, towards the bridge. I feel like I’m having a fucking mental breakdown, she thought to herself. These visions. My sword disappearing. Either I am losing it completely, or something very bad is happening. And it’s happening right now.
Again, she heard an urgent scream, and again, it was her. “SHANGO! OLOFI! LOCO! WE NEED TO CHANGE COURSE! NOW!”
Jelly Bean, Jade, and Svend followed Bentley out of her quarters, into the hallway. They ran after her, trying to keep up, but it was no use. She sped ahead of them, getting ever closer to the bridge.
+++
Aboard the Scythe, Edge of Leviathon-Q Sector
Ivor stood before the largest screen on the helm of the Scythe, staring up at it. He watched the image of the Chesed get larger and larger as the ship approached ever closer to the Scythe. Around him, crew members sat at their battle stations, alert and awaiting orders.
Angela approached Ivor from behind, walking with purpose. She stopped a meter behind him and saluted. “Captain?”
Ivor turned towards Angela and nodded.
She brought her hand down from her face and clasped her hands behind her back. “The munitions have been prepared to your specifications. We have a missile that is ready to be fired whenever you deem fit.”
Ivor nodded, grinning. “Excellent.”
Ivor turned back towards the screen, watching the Chesed continue to approach the Scythe. He took a deep breath and smiled with satisfaction. “God, this is fucking great. It’s like watching a duck, paddling its way ever closer to the barrel of a shotgun.”
Angela looked at him and smiled. “I must admit, I like a challenge, but there is something to be said for simplicity.”
He turned towards her and nodded. “I’m glad you came around. Now, let’s watch some fireworks.”
Ivor turned towards a set of consoles nearby, manned by nervous crew members. He looked at them and smiled. “Launch the missile.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Aboard the Chesed, Edge of Leviathon-Q Sector
Loco and Shango were sitting in their respective seats on the bridge, Loco at the ship’s controls on the command deck, Shango at the table nearby. They were both sitting perfectly still, both of their faces gripped in expressions of deep concentration. They both sat in silence, listening with intense focus.
Shango turned slowly towards Loco. “I am almost certain that I heard someone screaming. From the hallway, it sounded like.”
Loco nodded. “Yeah. That was definitely screaming. I know a scream when I hear one. Or cause one.”
Shango knitted his brow. “Could you make out what was being said? Any of it?”
Loco leaned back in his seat and shrugged. “Nah, not really. I don’t think it really matters too much exactly what they were saying, though. The main idea of most screams is: ‘HEY! FOR WHATEVER REASON, I’M SCREAMING!’”
Shango nodded. “That is a fair point. Still, I wonder why anyone on our ship might be in a state where they feel they need to—”
Shango was cut off by another set of screams. The sounds were much closer this time. “Whoever it is, and whatever it is they happen to be screaming about, I do believe that they are coming this way.”
Loco sat up. “Well, I guess we’ll have a much better chance of understanding what they’re saying if they come in here and scream in our faces. Personally, I’m hoping that they’re screaming a new lewd joke they heard. Something really disgusting.”
Shango sighed. “Whatever it is, I am almost certain that it is not… that.”
Loco shrugged. “Well, we’ll see. Always hope for the future you want to see, that’s what I say.”
Loco executed a quick keystroke at the console, then stood up from his seat. He walked down a set of steps, leaving the command deck, and approached the door.
As he got closer to the door, it shot open, revealing Bentley. She ran through the door, onto the bridge, and she had a wild, terrified look in her eyes.
Loco crossed his arms. “So. What’s this news that’s so important you need to scream it out all over the ship like you’re being murdered? I should say, though, if it happens to be a lewd joke, then all is forgiven. Especially if it’s about some guy who sticks his thing somewhere he shouldn’t be sticking it.”
Bentley took a deep breath, winded from all of the running. “We need to change course! Immediately! Up, down, left, right. It doesn’t matter. We just need to get off of this flight path. And now!”
Loco turned towards the large screen behind him, and looked at the vast, empty expanse of space that lay before the Chesed. He turned back to Bentley. “Actually, it seems like we really don’t. Like, not at all. Unless you’re worried that we’re going to hit… too much empty space?”
Bentley shook her head vigorously. “No! You don’t understand! Everyone on this ship is in incredible danger! A gigantic streak of fire is coming right at us, and soon! If we don’t change course immediately, and fly off in another direction, then it’s going to take us out! It will burn the entire ship into nothing! I promise you!”
Loco turned towards Shango and shook his head. “It looks like Olofi’s not the only one around here who needs to take a fucking nap …”
Shango rose from his seat and approached Bentley. “Bentley, I would encourage you to sit down, and take a deep breath, and calm yourself. We have been checking our s
urroundings with great care very frequently, and I can assure you, there is absolutely nothing out there in our general vicinity that might imperil this ship. Any aberrant large masses would have certainly shown up on our radar, whether they were aflame or not. I think that you may simply have an overly active imagination.”
Loco turned back towards Bentley. “Or, in less polite terms, you’re being fucking hysterical. Maybe all of this meditating with Legba is having a negative effect on your brain. I hear that meditation involves emptying your mind out completely, so maybe you accidentally emptied out some of the more important machinery. Like the part of the mind that stops you from running around, screaming your head off. Or the part of the mind that prevents you from seeing huge floating balls of fire all the fucking time.”
Bentley crossed her arms. “This has absolutely nothing to do with meditating. This is a very real threat.”
Loco shrugged. “I think that the most real threat is that you’re starting to lose your fucking marbles. I know that sitting in a room alone with Legba for as long as you’ve been doing, day after day, that would definitely make me go crazy…”
Bentley glared at Loco. “Look. I am not crazy. But if you guys won’t do anything, and you’re just going to sit idly by while everyone in this ship gets killed by a blazing mass of flames, then I’m sorry, but I’m going to do something about it.” Bentley stepped forward and tried to push her way past Loco.
Upon being shoved, Loco grabbed Bentley by her arms, restraining her immediately. “Hey. Seriously. Chill the fuck out. I mean it. It’s never a good idea to push a god. Sometimes they push back.”
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