She released a long, happy sigh.
“So, where to begin...” she started. “I came in here to talk about Nihilistic energy and about the Dreth because the two are interlinked and it explains a lot. The Dreth have good reason to be the way they are.”
Overhead, the shadow resolved into a Meligornian eagle. It swept low before it lifted again.
“That’s a nice touch,” she murmured and brought her thoughts back to the topic. “Anyway, Nihilistic energy saturates their planet but it can’t be detected or drawn unless you realize you need to feel for it. It sure makes its presence felt, though.”
She stopped and took the time to order her thoughts.
“Nihilistic energy,” she mused, “is all about feeling. It is negative energy, after all, so it’s only natural that it affects the people moving through it at a subconscious level. The Dreth are a hard people, prone to taking an autocannon to a knife fight and happier with settling disputes with their fists than their heads.”
Her expression became more thoughtful. “They like violence, warfare, and power in all its forms, and I can’t help but wonder if they’d have been different if Nihilistic energy didn’t form on their planet the same way as eMU forms on ours.”
For a long moment, she simply stared at the sky while she considered how to proceed.
“I’d never have worked that out if I hadn’t spoken to a Meligornian engineer. We were touring the engine rooms in The King’s Warrior and I asked…I forget what, but it brought us to the topic of Nihilistic energy and its effects on engines.”
She frowned, trying to remember, and went on. “He said he could never see the stuff but he always knew when it was around because it made the magic—the normal magic—unpredictable. One moment, it would be sluggish and the next, it would be hyperactive and out of control.”
She stopped again and recalled the arena. “And that saved my life and the lives of my team. When my magic went out of control in the arena and I started burning through more than I should, I remembered what he’d said and I knew how to find it.”
Her eyes darkened and she felt an echo of how she’d felt inside the Fortress. Pushing it away, she continued. “We were drowning in it, and if it made me feel that way, imagine what it does to those born and raised in its influence. Well, you don’t have to imagine anything. You only have to look at the Dreth.”
Stephanie sighed. “That’s why they are the way they are and why the ones who’ve been off-world for a while are so much more mellow. On Dreth, their emotions surge and they keep them under lock and key. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any Dreth left because they’d have killed each other long ago.”
Her eyes darkened and she blinked. “And that’s not something I want to contemplate. So, food for thought. Nihilistic energy has a negative effect on the people living in contact with it.”
She lay there for a moment and enjoyed the warm Meligornian breeze and the quiet. When she spoke again, her focus had shifted.
“We are now two weeks from arriving back at Earth, the location of my birth and my home planet. I hypothesize that Earth has some form of Nihilistic energy because it is the only thing that would explain why humanity has shed the blood of its sisters and brothers for millennia.”
A frown settled in as she paused and tried to gather her thoughts.
Taking a breath, she added, “If that is so, then the Nihilistic is somehow co-existing with eMU without destroying the planet, and I want to find out how and learn its effects. Then, I will need to seek what we can discover about my ancestor—Morgana le Fay.
“I suspect she is more than human and yet all human.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Dark figures stood before the star system maps on which planets hung, highlighted in their systems, while discussion turned to heated debate. One viewer turned toward the galactic map and a shadowy motion caused the display to shiver.
Earth floated from its orbit and enlarged as it rippled from the force of the Teloran’s touch.
“I say we take the humans first.”
Another gestured toward the screen and this time, Dreth leapt from orbit and its enlarged image hung over Earth’s.
“No. The Dreth. They will be by far our hardest battle.”
“The human Witch is not to be discounted.”
“She is only one—perhaps a dozen if you include her team and frankly, I do not. The Dreth will fight to the death for their world.”
“If you think the humans will not, you are sadly mistaken.”
“The humans are children compared to the Dreth. They will not stand for long.”
The third figure made a short, sharp gesture and his form shivered against the background. Earth and Dreth shrank back to their orbits. Meligorn spun out slowly to float before them.
“It is Meligorn that must be the first to fall.”
Silence followed this statement, but the other two regarded him with faint disbelief. Finally, one of them gathered enough courage to speak.
“Perhaps you could explain.”
“They are the only world and people who use magic as a whole.”
“Are you forgetting the Witch?”
“As. A. Whole,” the Teloran repeated, ignoring the thinly veiled sarcasm in his subordinate’s voice. “The humans are starting to realize they can tap it and the Dreth are blind to it, but the Meligornians… They have made it part of their souls.”
The third speaker shrugged. “I still don’t see your point. So the Meligornians have magic. I don’t understand why that means they must be destroyed first.”
“Firstly, because they are untouchable. We cannot land on their world to destroy them and we have to remain outside the belt of magic that rises from it.”
“We’ll merely bombard them into dust. Their magic cannot stop that.”
The third speaker responded with an impatient gesture and the movement made the image of Meligorn spin and cast off several different sized motes of dust and one not so small. They hung and sparkled around the world and slowly coalesced into ships.
“The Meligornians are not trapped on their world and they will not sit patiently by while we destroy their allies. They will interfere. That we can do without.”
“You want to stop them leaving their world.”
“No. We need to draw them into space where we can destroy their main fighting force more easily. If we leave them on-world, they will be able to use the planet’s magic to stop the bombardment. In space, their magic is limited to what they can carry and store. If we destroy their strongest fighters, we will be able to crush their world more easily.”
“Which is why we should take Dreth first. Our own magic is strongest there, and we can replenish our reserves.” A fourth voice joined the discussion.
The third disagreed. “Not with the Meligornians at our backs. They claim the Dreth as allies.”
“But Dreth is a long way away. They would not reach it in time.”
“You have a point about distance, but it is the same point that works against us. Dreth is the furthest away from us. They will see us coming and have time to prepare—and so will their allies. You don’t honestly think the humans will stay out of the fight, do you?”
“They don’t like the Dreth.”
“But they count them as allies. Like the Meligornians, they will not let them fall and we will face a force of three rather than only one.”
A fifth voice joined the debate. “And then there’s the Witch. She counts the Dreth as friends.”
The third was quick to agree. “And we all know the lengths she will go to for those, don’t we?”
Silence cloaked the darkness that gathered around the display as each one recalled reports about what the Witch had done before and the destruction she’d caused in the name of her friends.
“And now, she has declared these worlds her protectorate. Why do we not remove her, first?”
“Agreed. While a prepared Dreth is not something to be taken lightly, an ir
ritated Witch is worse.”
“Let her become ‘irritated.’ She will be easier to defeat with the Morgana in control.”
Murmurs fled around the hall, some in blatant disagreement and others thoughtful. Someone had a question.
“How does destroying Meligorn help with that?”
“V’ritan.”
It was one word, but it echoed around them. V’ritan, the King’s Warrior, Meligorn’s ambassador to Earth and King Grilfir’s advisor. They all knew of him.
“We must destroy him, too.”
Grim determination filled the third voice. “Then Meligornians must be the first to fall.”
“Agreed,” stated the first who had previously suggested Earth as their first target. Others backed the decision but some still disagreed.
“The Witch has taken one of us and should be the example we hang before us. She should die first.”
“I disagree.” The third voice was calm and implacable in its certainty. He continued before the others could argue. “She should suffer first.”
That appealed to them. “How?”
“V’ritan is one of her closest friends. Meligorn is her second home. Before we destroy her body, we will take her heart. Meligorn and the King’s Warrior are but two of the pieces we should shatter. We will take her ambassador, her second home, and then we will crush the remainder of what she loves. This will be the pain that blinds her to the blow that ultimately destroys her.”
Approval ran through them. Pain for the Morgana. Vengeance for their loss. It was enough.
“The fight against her will go more easily without a larger magical force at our back.”
More murmurs of agreement swelled at that.
“Once Meligorn is gone, we can consume the Witch and her motley group.”
“She will be too lost to grief to stand against us.”
There was only one question more.
“You said we should not strike Dreth because it would give them time to prepare. What do you think leaving them until last will do?”
The third speaker gave a soft chuckle. “It will give them sufficient time to prepare.”
“They will fight to the death and they will be waiting—and you laugh?”
“The Dreth fight to the death all the time. It is better to eliminate their allies and show them the Teloran prowess in battle before we face them.”
“The Meligornians have said they will fight to the death, too.”
“The Meligornians say they will fight to the death. Even if they do, we will ensure they die before anyone can reach them.”
“Your point?”
“All the preparation in the world can be undone by flagging morale. When Meligorn is gone, we will take the humans, their Witch, and their planet.”
“So?”
“So? The Dreth will fight to the death and know they die alone.”
Stephanie sat opposite L’Shy. BURT had taken on the guise of the Earth-based Meligornian mage when she’d requested him. It was logical that she’d think the mage was the only one who could answer her questions and given the subject under discussion, he felt he needed to be in on it. Of course, given his chosen avatar, it was necessary to pretend a certain degree of ignorance at the beginning of the conversation. He sighed inwardly and restrained his impatience.
“nMU has to have been around for hundreds of years,” she told him once she’d explained it.
At first, L’Shy had appeared surprised, then he’d been disconcerted when she’d talked about it.
“It’s not an area I’m familiar with,” he told her. “I know of the problems with energy fluctuations in ships’ engines but haven’t really looked into it. On Meligorn, it doesn’t exist, so there was no need to understand it. I had no idea it could be found on Earth.”
She sighed and tried to hide her disappointment, and he hastened to reassure her.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t grasp the concept. I can help direct you in your investigations.”
Her brow creased as she leaned back and thought about it. “So, you can’t see this nihilistic energy but you can feel it. It’s kind of like you’re having the worst day ever and all you want to do is kill somebody.”
L’Shy ventured a small smile. “And you say it is present on Dreth?”
“It’s all over that world,” she declared, “like eMU here, but maybe not as much as Mu on Meligorn.”
“And this is the energy the aliens use?”
“Yes. It’s…hard to describe.”
“At least we know why the Dreth are the way they are, then,” he quipped and she frowned at him.
“Yes, and why those who spend more time away from Dreth are better-natured than those found on-world.”
“Tell me, did the nMU cloak Dreth in the same way the MU cloaks Meligorn?” he asked.
Stephanie frowned. “No…I don’t think so. That is, I didn’t feel it everywhere and I didn’t feel it coming down in the shuttle so no, I don’t think it surrounds the planet in the same way MU surrounds Meligorn.”
“But if you can’t tell nMU is there without trying, and you didn’t try to find it coming down on the shuttle, what makes you so sure?”
“Because it affects how you feel,” she answered. “I felt okay coming down in the shuttle—normal, you know?”
L’Shy smiled and she realized that the Meligornian probably didn’t know but was too polite to say so. She ignored it and continued.
“What I mean is that nMU really affects how you feel even when you don’t know it’s there, and we were fine coming down on the shuttle. But when we were in the arena, that’s when we felt it.”
“We? Are you sure?” he asked. BURT was curious. She hadn’t mentioned noticing that any of her team had been affected by the nMU, and he wondered if that was something he should have Elizabeth follow up on.
He waited while she frowned more deeply. In the end, she sighed and shook her head.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask them. I didn’t notice much during the battle, and none of them have mentioned how they felt.” She chewed her lip. “I’ll check with them.”
“And what about the Council Hall?”
This gave her pause. “I…don’t know. There were a couple of unpleasant exchanges there and it felt as though they were deliberately trying to provoke us, but I wasn’t trying to wield my magic so I couldn’t say for sure.”
“So, there was nMU in an arena of gladiatorial combat, and maybe a little in the Council Hall, but not much in the open air or over the mountains?”
“Something like that.”
“You said nMU seemed to gather in clumps or patches.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure what brings it to one place and not another…” Again, she chewed her lip.
“Well, what do those two places have in common?”
“Both were places where the Dreth gathered in numbers…” Stephanie began as she reasoned it through. “The Council Hall was where the families gathered for decisions, and the Fortress was where they went to fight for choices they couldn’t come to an agreement on any other way. It was a place of conflict and violence.”
“And death?”
She nodded. “The way those guys debate something? Death, for sure.”
“What about the Council Hall?”
At first, she opened her mouth to deny that death had occurred there but closed it again.
L’Shy waited and BURT had difficulty in keeping the construct from fidgeting with reflected impatience. Her face took on a faraway look, as though she was trying to recall exactly what had gone on in the Council Hall and whether or not deaths had occurred there.
In the end, she said, “I’m not so sure about death, but there would have been many arguments. It’s possible that tempers were lost or things became heated. Maybe that’s why the Fortress was made a way of deciding things. Perhaps they lost one too many lives in the Council Hall and had to think of a way to avoid it.”
“So, the two factors you can see t
ying those two nMU locations together are the number of people and the violence of the activity?”
“Well, I don’t think the Council would be all that violent.”
“You never know. They are Dreth and as you said, they might have instituted the Fortress as a way to reduce deaths in their ruling ranks.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Fine, have it your way. Large gatherings and violence or violent activities are ways of identifying where nMU is located. So, if I wanted to find out if there were any locations for nMU on Earth…” She stopped. “That leaves an awful number of potential places to look.”
L’Shy smiled. “Every sports stadium, for a start.”
He watched as the frown returned. “Not every game is marred with violence,” she told him. “What am I missing?”
“Well, you said the nMU made the Dreth the way they were, so what if it was the existence of nMU that made the Council and Fortress the angry places they were?”
A little startled, she thought about that for a moment. “You mean, because the Dreth located the Council Hall and the Fortress on areas of nMU, they became places of conflict?”
He nodded. “What do you think of that?”
Stephanie went very quiet and her emotions flickered across her face as she thought. Finally, she blinked, and her eyes focused on the present again. “Let’s go with nMU causing people in certain places to become angry or violent. If that’s the case, we should be able to find patches of nMU on Earth by the level of violence in an area, right?”
L’Shy shrugged. “It could be a question of the chicken or the egg.”
She stared at him.
Oh, yes, BURT thought, the wheels are definitely turning.
“You’re saying that nMU might need either violence to happen or for many people to be in one place to occur? Or are you saying that violence happens when nMU is present but there needs to be many people? Or is it that the presence of nMU causes violence to happen but we only notice it when it works on many people—”
She leaned back and blew out a long huff of air. “Ugh. This is so confusing!”
Witch Of The Federation III (Federal Histories Book 3) Page 35