Anstractor Vestalia

by Greg Dragon

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Rafian had expected Arn Stryker to be there with his white hair and his host of staff-wielding lackeys, but what he found was Tayden dressed in all white, a bloody blade at her side, and a couple of the other students, including Camille, staring at Marian with their mouths agape.

  “How long was I gone for?” Rafian asked as he scanned the room. He noticed it was not as pristine as it was when he had last seen it.

  “We were all under for about three years, Raf,” Tayden said as she glanced at Marian, who held on to Rafian for dear life as the women and men watched her in bewilderment.

  “Rafian, who is your friend? And, are you guys married?” This was Camille, who stepped forward to confront Marian. If his wife had been an innocent saloon girl, she would have feared for her life at the woman’s approach. But Marian steeled herself, stepped out from behind Rafian and spoke for the first time since they had arrived.

  “How about you ask me, Camille?” she said through the vocal translator that Rafian had provided her with. He had kept it with him since landing on Talula, even though he had mastered the language there after so many months in the conflict. The language she used was Vestalian, but when Camille did not respond, she turned to Rafian and spoke to him in the language and dialect of Tyhera. “Can she understand me? I am speaking your language, right?”

  Rafian nodded at her and then turned to Camille, but before he could say a word, Marian was talking again. “Back down right now before I jab her with my fire-knife.”

  She had brought along the deadly stone knife, and though he worried a bit for her safety, he wasn’t sure if his fierce Vestalian girlfriend was a match for his Tyheran wife. He reasoned with them both and asked them to cool off, so as to prevent any bloodshed or loss of life.

  Tayden muttered something under her breath, and then she stuck her head outside the door to look for anyone approaching.

  “How is it that you two were able to bring me back?” Rafian finally asked.

  “It was all Tayden,” Camille said. “She managed to figure out the warp crystals and summoned me back from the Karel prison center on Deval, Yce—I think it was the Flavin Galaxy.” She had a sad look on her face as she said the prison’s name and grabbed her left arm in the way she always did.

  “Cammy and I were sent to the same galaxy, the tiny one known as Flavin. While my mind was wiped, it was a bit different from what I am hearing from everyone else. I started to get my memory back within a few months. That was how I knew what I needed to do to escape. Arn was happy that I had pulled off my assigned spy detail, and along with Willen and Cathe, I graduated to person.

  “When you and Cam were still not back after a long time had passed, I began to worry, so I did some research on my own. I think Arn was trying to sabotage you both on purpose, since everyone else got over the memory loss fast.”

  Rafian was visibly upset as Tayden told him this. She continued to tell him how she stayed silent for roughly a year before making a move to save them.

  “I pretended to be his loyal little person for a time. That old man sent me off to several places—even Vestalia to pull off missions—and he began to trust me enough to tell me how the warp crystals worked. This was how I knew I could invade your dreams to bring you back. I tried it with Cammy first, and when she came back, I did it with you.”

  Rafian looked around at all the faces of the jumpers who were with Tayden. “So, where is Arn, Tayden? Is he good with you doing this?”

  It was Valk, the Arisinian, who spoke up. “This morning, Tayden and I dropped a poisonous gas in the meeting hall and took him out along with the guards.” Touching his heart and bowing his head in the galactic salute of respect, Rafian walked over towards Tayden and touched her gently on her cheek.

  “He had it coming. I hope the poison was slow and painful. I owe you my life, Tay,” he said with much humility. “I could have burned over ten plus years on this mission without any memories of who I truly was,” Rafian said.

  Marian had gone into the next room to change into a white 3B suit that Tayden handed her while the other jumpers began to recite their own mission details. But Rafian wasn’t listening, as his brain was processing the situation. They would have to act fast or risk their lives being forfeited as a result of Tayden’s treason, and he needed to know whether or not Arn was truly dead.

  As if she knew what he was going to do, Camille handed him his las-sword and smiled. “You’re going to need your fishing rod if you plan to get dinner, dear.” She said this in an eerily cute way, and he reached up to touch her cheek in the gentle way he always did.

  Rafian knew that poison was not enough to subdue a master like Arn, and he was going to be in for the fight of his life. Tayden moved to be by his side as they walked past the jumpers, some wounded from trying to stop Tayden’s rebellion, and others looking on in awe as the nine figures marched with Rafian VCA at the front.

  Arn would be angry but he would underestimate him. He had fought daily for the last three years and had been in the thickest of wars. He had seen friends burned, cut down, and executed by a capable enemy, and he had learned how to make them pay for it. He was a Mera Ku monk of the highest level, and his skill with a sword had been legendary on the planet of Tyhera. Arn would be dangerous but so would he, and one of them would die while the other stood victorious.

  The group stopped outside the large, metallic doors ordained with the strange glyphs of the temple and the dancing lights that were on the walls. Tayden motioned for everyone to put up their masks, but Rafian waved her off and centered himself.

  Looking at him as if he were crazy, Tayden shook her head and opened the doors to reveal several long tables in a beautiful red room. The jumpers who occupied the tables were all dead from the gas, except for Arn, who sat at the head, meditating.

  Rafian stopped his friends short and asked them to stay as he approached the old man. He noticed the pictures on the wall—images of planets he was not familiar with—and it made him anxious to remove this tyrant so that he could freely study all the knowledge archived within the temple.

  “You didn’t expect to come in and find me an easy kill, did you, number three?”

  “I’m back from your mission. Shouldn’t you address by my name?”

  Arn looked up at Rafian with the same cold, judgmental eyes he had grown to hate.

  “You took longer than you were supposed to, number three. Your mission was to unify the rebels, which you did, but you were supposed to return once that happened. Instead, you joined another organization and became intoxicated with power—oh, I know everything.” He began laughing hysterically at Rafian’s stoic face and then continued to tell him about himself.

  “You let the meditation practice of that mystic world interfere with your brain, boy. This is why the memory that should have triggered your return did not come back to you. Then you got married—which is a violation of our rules. Congratulations, by the way.”

  Rafian felt a sharp pain in his back as he fell forward from the sudden elbow that Arn hit him with after teleporting behind him. The elbow was meant to hit his spinal column, but reflexes had caused Rafian to move, and it caught him on the side of his spine. Using his training to ignore the pain, Rafian stood up and turned to face the old man.

  He brought the las-sword to life till its edge grew hot and the blade glowed bright-white with intent. He was after Arn like a rabid dog, feinting slices to hide intended cuts, which followed after every step. Arn was deflecting the sword using only his palms, and Rafian searched his thoughts in wonderment of how he was able to teleport and move things around with telekinesis.

  He wondered about the environment, being that he had never seen Arn leave the building. He wondered if he used gravitational tricks that were manipulated by his clothing and jewelry. Perhaps that was the source of this magic that only he of all the jumpers knew how to use.

  Arn caught his sword swipe one last time and shattered the blade into a thousand p
ieces. Marian gasped as the old man countered with a palm-heel thrust to his chest, but Rafian had centered his thoughts on the fight, and it was as if Arn moved in slow motion to him.

  Deflecting the thrust with a palm-heel of his own, Rafian kicked Arn in the testicles and followed it up with an uppercut to his chin. When the uppercut connected, he twisted on the balls of his feet to hook a punch into Arn’s ribs and let his built-up energy explode into a shoulder thrust that knocked the old man into the tables, causing a crunching sound to come from his broken body.

  “Wait!” Arn managed to say as the young man approached him with deadly intent, and he rolled to the ground with his hand over his face as if to plead for his life. “You have exceeded everything that they told me you would.” The blood ran fresh from his mouth and nostrils.

  “What are you talking about?” Rafian asked as he kept his distance.

  “We have always watched you, Rafian VCA. We have watched you from your days as a mangy dog in the slums of Basce City to your ascension to lieutenant on the starship Helysian. You are meant to lead us.”

  Rafian looked confused. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. We have always watched you, Rafian. These were the same words he heard when he went to the place where Samoo had disappeared. When he went in for training, he felt that the jumper temple had been a bit too mysterious and odd.

  In the back of his mind, he knew there was something bigger. But he still didn’t understand the hell they put the recruits through. Not to mention the casual behavior with letting him—their supposed “chosen one”—sit on a planet risking his life for years. No, he thought, Arn was buying time—but for what? He didn’t know, but this was nonsense, and on Tyhera, this delaying tactic normally meant that a detonator was about to go off.

  He looked over at Marian, who nodded at him with a familiar fire in her twinkling eyes. “Tayden, how much were you able to learn about this place and its history in the year that you were free?” he suddenly asked.

  “I learned enough to get you out, didn’t I?” she replied evenly. “The rest are in deep archives stored in the seventh room.”

  “Sounds like I have enough to start this leadership you have been meaning for me to have then, Arn.” And with that, he knelt next to the old man and held his throat until his body stopped moving.

  Memory 21 | Oaths Broken

  We have always watched you, Rafian. The eerie words of Arn stayed with Rafian through the long months after Tayden’s coup dethroned the old man and his followers. When Rafian won the fight and took Arn’s life, the old man cloned—as was expected—and was held captive until the other leaders of the alliance could be summoned to chat.

  The leadership would not comply with the requests for a meeting, and Rafian, Camille, and Tayden learned that Arn’s temple had gone rogue a long time ago. This resulted in his organization being removed from the regular order of spies, so they were not considered official. This meant that the murders and treason committed by Rafian and his cohort would be their own secret, but they would have no support from their foreign guild members.

  Rafian was primed to take over the organization—a motion set forth by Tayden—so he spent most of his days interrogating Arn and reading numerous files in order to better understand the crystals and their powers. Strangely enough, Marian and Camille found a way to work out their differences. Camille began training the ex-baroness in the ways of the jumper so that she could assist them in any future movements.

  The student body was reorganized and made to keep training, and Rafian applied military protocol to their rank, status, and promotions. Tayden became his sub-commander, and she took lead while he pulled what he could from Arn.

  His words, “we have always watched you” frightened Rafian. There might be bigger players in the game, and he might just be a pawn, moving only as he was instructed. He began to hate the temple, which had always felt like a prison to him, but he did not dare speak a word of it to anyone, as they could lose faith in his ability to lead them.

  “Commander Rafian,” they would say before making any requests, even one as trivial as permission to leave. Former rivals now regarded him with respect, and he was back to people walking on eggshells around him as they had on Helysian. Although he accepted it, he was not comfortable with it, as he felt that he didn’t know enough to lead them.

  For days he would drill Arn, but the old man would only provide hints and riddles, still hiding the secrets of what the jumpers’ true calling was. It was an exercise in patience, but he stayed with it as long as he needed to. Though Arn felt like he was leading him in circles, Rafian was slowly pulling the knowledge the old man had held for over 100 years.