The Grifon's Quiver - Chapters 14-15

Chapter 14 - Unwelcome Ones

When the Anunnaki arrived on Terra they were welcomed initially but under the warning that harm to the environment would not be tolerated. For a time there was peace, as the visitors became accustomed to inhabiting the realms of 5D Terra in which they were allowed.
They set up mines and made themselves at home, allowing themselves to indulge in the delights of Terran abundance and taking no notice of the effects they had already brought into the collective awareness. Their cruelty became apparent quickly and Agartha warned them to cease harming other lifeforms.
In order to assuage the fury of the Agarthans, the Anunnaki created a race of golem; a soulless corpse which could perform menial tasks and, because it lacked consciousness, could be abused without remorse or sympathy.
As the Anunnaki required increasingly complex tasks to be performed, they seeded small pieces of themselves with a life of its own, for the purpose of allowing that life to evolve in its own unique way, as other galactic races had done before. This rebirth created fractals of their consciousness which evolve in ways that mirror the larger organic energy fields who originated them, thus providing an opportunity for both the upper and lower selves to evolve simultaneously.
These fractals were then seeded into the otherwise soulless golems, so they could control their slaves more effectively and ensure tasks were performed properly. In the process, the golems became a part of the collective mind and again the Agarthans became enraged, this time at the abusive treatment golems were subjected to.
In Anunnaki culture it is considered inappropriate to interfere with their lower fractals. When told to stop harming others they simply fell back on the excuse that, were they to retune their lower fractals, they would be interfering with the natural evolution of their children.
To the Terrans this was considered a poor excuse for tolerating abusive behaviour and the Anunnaki were seen as unwilling to address their internal issues. Self-improvement is an important part of growth, whether or not it interferes with lower aspects of their own will.
As a result of this disagreement, Anunnaki influence was limited and progressively dwindled. Although there were some elements of their culture who are still genuinely loved, like Ishtar, the species was simply too violent to be welcomed beyond the patience limits of the Agarthans.
The Arcturians decided that, in order to prevent further abuse and simultaneously to prepare for the creation of humanity as part of the Terra Experiment, they should redesign the golems for habitation of complete souls using genetic material from local apes and from more highly evolved extraterrestrial races.
The Arcturians joined forces with the Sirians and Pleiadians, officially forming the Interstellar Earth Alliance as their delegates assumed forms that were capable of touching the physical plane while still retaining awareness of the astral realms of pure consciousness, in which the alliance preferred to reside for the majority of their duties as members of the Federation.
The alliance then created three separate timelines, in which one of the three races were used as templates for genetically engineering the golems into the initial seeds of humanity. The plan was that, when each timeline became ready to evolve into unity consciousness, the timelines would be closed and a single, perfect lifeform would emerge resembling each seed race at once.
This major fork in the timelines of Terra has remained unclosed to this day, and the Pleiadian seeds of our version of humanity are minimally influenced by the genetics of the Sirians and Arcturians.

The Atlanteans moored a small ship on the docking port of the Anunnaki wreck.
The Order had already checked their weapons and their equipment was loaded into the ship so they could have access to whatever they needed. The ship would remain there until the job was complete, so they were free to leave the crates there instead of moving them around prematurely.
Quid felt secure knowing that his equipment was ready. Gnosa already helped him make sure his armour was on properly, his spear was accessible and his disruptor was ready and charged. Quid still carried his obsidian dagger concealed, he hadn’t even moved it since he tucked it away in his belt when it was given to him.
Nils and Sheran wore matching armour made from leather with metallic twining, similar to that made by Trem. They’d made it together by channeling their own respective collectives and imbuing the finished art with angelic resonance to protect them from both magical and physical assault. Nils wore a collection of knives in various sizes and shapes and carried a magical staff she named Frozen Flame, which cast an elemental stream of fire and ice. Sheran carried no weapons at all but wore a thin, white veil over her eyes to encourage her inner eye to remain dominant.
Gnosa had armor made from sticks of green tourmaline and heliodor with a chest plate of sapphire, another form of corundum. He armed himself with one of Rendo’s disruptors and two short swords, which were long enough to feel normal for Elves but for him were light and comfortable. The swords were made from folded steel plates which had been created with a perfect crystalline structure. The slag resulting from the refining process was worn around his neck as an amulet to enhance his perceptivity and keep him loose for improvisation.
The Atlanteans were armed with railguns, which use electrical surges to produce a magnetic field, firing a small bolt at enormous speeds. A bolt the size of a twig could easily to pushed through a metal wall with this technology, which was adapted for use against armored personnel.
The merfolk were still swimming around the ship, exploring the area and looking for deep sea friends. They already knew the chasm somewhat but wanted to take the opportunity to get to know it much better. Surely there was enough space to explore for there to be hidden treasures to delight their hearts.
When Qanti opened the door, she and her second in command, Ant’cal, entered first to ensure the hallway was clear. Then Gnosa entered, followed by several more Atlanteans, then Quid was encouraged to step out before Nils and Sheran so he would feel a part of the team.
Trem held back, wanting to be the last aboard. She disliked the idea of being here and wasn’t looking forward to the collective memories she expected to experience, which presumably would be unpleasant.
She was wearing the same Elven armor and a set of lightweight chains wrapped around her forearms, studded with various crystals for a wide range of purposes. Her magazine-fed crossbow was in her hands and a large dagger at her waist.
She checked her crossbow and counted the magazines of extra bolts, then adjusted her armor one last time, delaying the step aboard for as long as she could.
Stepping off the Atlantean vessel, onto the Anunnaki one, was an unpleasant feeling accompanied by echoes of emotional distress and a pervading sense of domineering brutality that threatened to envelope her. She shook it off and stabilized in her heart, loving herself so much that the threat couldn’t overshadow her own light.
The air was so stale, Quid wondered if it would ever smell decent again. The hallways were massive, almost enough to fit four humans side by side and twice as tall as Gnosa. Anunnaki were quite large, far taller than even the Dwarves, who stood over a head taller than most humans.
Nils lit a magical flame that hovered above her like a torch, floating in her lunar chakra and illuminating the hallway in the same gold-green light that surrounded all the Order’s endeavours.
Quid connected to the ship’s computers surprisingly quickly. “It seems the central computer core is still active.”
Gnosa found that reassuring. “So we know there’s still power available. Do you know how much?”
Trem shuddered in the darkness, wondering how many people had been tortured in this space. “And turn on the lights, it’s evil in here.” The word spooky just didn’t quite cover the feelings she was getting in the shadows of Anunnaki tech.
Quid took one thing at a time. “There’s about 49% of its initial energy reserves available. I’m trying to access the lights but there’s a total command lock out. I’ll have to bypass it, that might take some time.” The biochip in his head was adaptable but he still didn’t like using it enough to have had sufficient experience for this job. Still, he felt confident he’d be able to get an interface working, now that he knew the computer was already running.
“Bad news,” Nils chimed in, “there’s someone else here.” Sheran would normally be able to detect life in this space but she couldn’t see or feel any presence beyond themselves. Nils went on, “they must have some kind of cloaking tech but they can’t mask their emotions,” she could feel that same cold malice she’d felt from the falling light that wasn’t a meteor.
Trem checked her crossbow was functional, for the third time. She tripped over something on the floor and as Gnosa helped her up, Nils’ light revealed a skeleton of some unknown species, with a knife lodged in its ribcage and several bones broken from the crash.
Quid handed her the crossbow she’d dropped, with a soft smile. “Are you alright?”
She smiled back. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Nils handed Trem and Quid torches like hers, the magical lights floated above their heads to gently illuminate the space around them. Sheran and Gnosa were able to see in the dark, and the Atlanteans were using their own technology to guide them.
Gnosa asked, “any idea about hull integrity?” Spacecraft are, in principle, not ideal for the extreme pressures of being underwater, although some are designed for such a wide variety of conditions, including the extreme stress of travelling faster than light, that the hull can survive conditions it wasn’t explicitly designed for.
Quid cringed. “Well there are a few shallow ruptures from the rocky ground but the majority is fine.” He was looking over the map of the decks and found himself puzzled over how people stayed oriented in this disorganized mess of a floor plan. “Who designed this place?”
“Slave owners,” Gnosa scowled. “There are reasons we don’t want most of these people back on Terra.” A group who intentionally produced poorly designed technology to confuse and entrap their captives were not a welcome presence on Terra for a very long time, at least by the reckoning of the ancients.
“Well,” Quid converged back into the topic at hand, “we should be able to keep the damaged sections sealed off well enough to get it back into space, I think.” He trailed off, unsure of himself. These regions would be rusted beyond repair, what if whole sections of the hull had corroded too badly to be retained? He shrugged it off and moved on. “Do you have any idea how the engine works? I’m still trying to find schematics.”
Gnosa shrugged. “We’ll figure it out as we go. Wish we had Rendo here but we’ll have to do without him.” Gnosa was more an expert in architecture and working hard materials, not as technically-minded as Rendo, although neither would have been able to handle this task alone.
Nils was more concerned about safety. “Just watch out, ok? We want everyone to get home safe.” Sheran still had no way of tracking whoever else was here.
Quid passed a control panel and tried to activate it but nothing happened. The emblem on it triggered a memory of resisting slavery under a flag with the same emblem. A surge of hatred rose up and he felt like he could kill whoever put that cursed symbol on their own property. The feeling was exactly the same as he’d borne for the Empire back home.
Nils patted his shoulder. “Just try to stay focused, honey. We need you here, not in the past.” His anger was a potent weapon but not a helpful salvage tool.
They heard something move behind them and Gnosa went to check it out. Looking around a corner he screamed in disgust, “ugh, that’s grotesque!”
They moved in that direction and as Quid rounded the corner he nearly gagged. There was a dead Atlantean avian, whose wings had been broken. Apparently someone felt the captive had become useless and chopped them up beyond recognition.
Nils bent down and got a close look. “What did they use to do that?”
Gnosa was equally stumped. “No idea but it doesn’t look like a very well-designed weapon.” The wounds were uneven and jagged, a sign of poor craftsmanship from his perspective.“Some folks prefer brutality over performance. No accounting for taste.” He turned back to Quid. “If it comes to close-quarters combat, don’t hesitate to use that spear. There’s not quite room to swing it but they won’t be able to get around it either. Use it as a barrier to keep them away from you.”
Sheran drifted silently down the corridor and disappeared into the shadows to hunt alone.
The Atlanteans carried the corpse back to the ship and put it in cryogenic stasis so it could be buried properly.
When they were ready to proceed, they divided the party into three groups. Gnosa took Quid to the engine room with five Atlanteans, Nils and Trem went to the bridge with Qanti and a few of her most trusted warriors. The rest of the Atlanteans were ordered to search the ship for intruders.
As Quid followed the Atlanteans down the corridor, he noticed they were wearing eye pieces that displayed a scan of their surroundings, revealing any signs of life like electrodermal activity or elevated body temperature. These would, hopefully, reveal life signs around corners or across walls.
He was having difficulty communicating with the ship computer. It seemed to be lagging for some reason and wouldn’t let him even attempt to gain access to command codes.
Sheran reached the shuttle bay at the back of the ship. It was empty but for a few crates of firearms and energy weapons. It didn’t look military but they could have cloaking devices aside from the energetic masking technology they used to hide their auric signatures.
“Strange they’d leave their ammo unattended,” Nils said as they approached the bridge.
Qanti was confused. “What?”
Trem laughed. She’d worked with Nils and Sheran long enough to understand how they operated. “She means the intruders are armed.”
Two Atlantean point men were going around a corner and got shot by plasma rifles. Plasma is a state of matter so intensely over-heated that it becomes a soupy cloud of ionized gas. While it’s associated with the formation of larger atoms and the radiance of the sun, it’s also a highly unpleasant experience for the body.
While everyone else went for cover, Nils rolled across the intersection. She got a look at the shooters on her way. “They’re Anunnaki!”
Qanti peeked around the corner, raising her railgun confidently. She didn’t understand why Anunnaki would be taking the ship by force. “We were going to deliver the ship to your government!” They shot at the wall in response.
Nils was already running around to flank them.
Sheran whispered telepathically to Gnosa and Quid, “there’s enemies in the bridge.” She was moving to the docking port opposite from the one they’d used.
In the shuttle bay Sheran had left behind, a giant insect materialized from a transporter, sent over from the Draconian ship.
His name was Daadgre, an 8 meter centipede from a planet that was absorbed into the Draconian Empire, who genetically modified their accrued races into soldiers for Draconian warriors to inhabit as vessels. This particular species, aside from being a physically formidable body, was also a culture of powerful sorcerors.
He could immediately feel the psychic resonance of the Arcturian Sheran and was tempted to follow the faint scent of her minimalist pheromones to his next meal but he had more important things to do. He headed for the engine room.
Outside the engine room, Gnosa nodded to Ant'cal and they opened the door and went through together. There was only one guard prepared for them and Gnosa disabled him easily with his disruptor. The rest of the room was cleared quickly and smoothly.
Quid felt surreal walking past a dead body. He’d seen them before but only from his species, criminals who were executed for some trivial crime under the irrational laws of the Empire. This was totally different, to see an enemy lying dead before he ever knew he had one. He gave the nearest one an awkward look, wondering if he should feel pity or not.
Gnosa nudged him. “Bad time for the feels, brother. Let’s get this ship -” he was going to say ‘running’ but the machines in the back started making noises as they started without him.
Ant’cal could see similar technology in the distant past. “They’re warming up pump systems for an air-fuel mixture.”
Quid followed him. “Air-fuel for what?” It sounded like something outdated in his world’s history.
“It’s a matter conversion system that charges the main reaction for maneuvering thrusters.”
Quid felt reassured. “So you can get this working?” It would take a lot of pressure off him, he still didn’t have access to classified data or commands.
Ant’cal nodded. “They did most of the work for us, we can figure the rest out.”
Gnosa grunted, “we still have to take control of the ship. If Nils can’t get command soon we’ll need that computer taking orders.” Then he ran to the life support systems and made sure they were getting ready to come online.
Quid nodded. As everyone else was busy preparing, he faded into the background to focus on hacking. The biochip was designed to be invasive, automatically interfacing with any other computer regardless of origin. It would get him command access eventually.
Trem was laying on the ground behind Qanti, aiming her crossbow around the corner without being noticed. She saw a dark silhouette move down the hallway and shot three rapid bolts at it. “Got him.”
Qanti jumped to the other side of the hallway, firing wildly but couldn’t see any targets. They both waited quietly for a moment. It sounded like there was a struggle going on. Without thinking, Trem charged forward, firing at where the noise was coming from.
When she reached it she lit up her torchlight above her head. Her bolts had missed but the man was dead anyway, he’d been mauled at the throat and was covered in lacerations that tore through his armor.
She wasn’t sure what to make of this. As Qanti ran up and joined her in surprised uncertainty, Trem asked, “is there someone else here, too?” A trail of blood led a short way down the hall but faded quickly. She turned to the other body, the one she’d fired at first, and found that he too was killed the same way, she’d shot a dead man.
Nils had run into another guard in the shadows and had to wait, slowly sneaking up until she got only a few feet away. Pouncing, she grabbed the man’s throat and slammed him onto the ground, bouncing back to land on his back and knocking him unconscious with a blow to the skull.
Sheran reached through Nils and probed the mind’s surface layers.
“So they’re mercenaries,” Nils sighed, “looking for what, though?”
The man didn’t know.
Nils tore a piece of technology off the man’s back. It was the masking technology they used to hide their energy from telepaths like Sheran. As soon as it was disconnected, the man lit up like a spark in Sheran’s vision.
“Human?” Nils was surprised. In the dark, she hadn’t noticed the man’s species until she could see him better through Sheran. “So they’re not even Anunnaki, just a random collection of mercs.” Sighing again, she thought, ‘what are you even doing here?’ then kept moving.
She arrived to find Qanti firing into the bridge, then stepping back to allow her soldiers to continue trying to gain headway.
Qanti said, “they’re dug in deep in there, we’ll have to find an alternative way in.”
Nils nodded and handed the aura masking tech to Tremplir. “Take this to Quid, maybe he can find a way to disable them remotely.”
Quid was getting impatient. ‘Why is this so difficult?’ He started beating himself up about the imminent need for command access.
Then he noticed a strange figure drawn on the wall. It was hidden in the dark but in his amfur he could see a reflection bounce off it. Looking closer, he saw a triangle filled with glyphs. A memory flashed in his mind of drawing the same symbol on a stone wall somewhere.
Without even questioning it, he simply followed the arrow by instinct.
Sheran whispered in Quid’s mind, “is there a safe way into the bridge?”
Quid accessed the maps. “There’s a service duct that can be accessed down the hall, but using it to enter the bridge without being noticed might be tricky.”
Sheran said, “that will be trapped. Anything else?”
Quid was exasperated. “Well there’s a transporter down two levels but it’s not working yet.”
Sheran reached through his mind very briefly to get a glimpse of the map. “Sorry for the discomfort.” Then she asked Gnosa and Nils to get there as quickly as they could, she’d meet them there.
Quid was already out of the engine room, following a second symbol up a spiral staircase. On his way up he ran into Trem.
“I need you to take a look at this,” she handed him the auric mask. “Can you find a weakness in it?”
Quid stopped to take a look at it. As he studied it quietly, they both heard a series of clicks and sibilant breathing as Daadgre crawled across the wall of an adjacent hallway and down the same stairs Quid had just exited.
As the noises faded away, Trem shrugged uncomfortably at Quid’s questioning looks. Neither knew what to make of it.
“Ok,” Quid trailed off skeptically. ‘I don’t even want to know.’
As they kept walking, Quid’s biochip hacked the mask almost immediately. Looking at the schematics, he felt reassured. “Yeah, this should respond to -”
Someone knocked him down with a hard blow to the head.
Trem instantly turned on her torchlight and as the big Anunnaki in front of her was blinded for a moment, she jumped and kicked him in the throat.
The man was hurt but still able to fight. He grabbed her as she landed and threw her head first into a wall. Then he kicked Quid as he tried to stand up.
Trem was crawling across the floor to reach for her crossbow. Images flashed through her mind, hundreds of slaves having startlingly similar experiences on this ship. The man grabbed her leg and pulled her backwards. She screamed in Avaloni and a stream of light wrapped around his arm, taking the form of a snake and biting him.
Though the snake was illusionary magic, its bite felt real to the man and he screamed, struggling to force the phantom reptile off his arm. He still retained enough self control to kick both Quid and Trem again, hoping to force them into stillness while he fought the snake.
Trem was still going for the crossbow while Quid tried to make the fog in his head go away.
Then a beastial roar erupted above them and the man’s screams intensified.
Trem reached her weapon and turned to find a large jaguar biting down hard on the man’s throat and using all four paws to claw through his armor. The magic snake was dissipating as the man’s consciousness slipped away.
Trem stood up quickly, pushing herself backwards, aiming the crossbow at the cat and screaming, “who are you?”
The jaguar slowly stepped off the dead Anunnaki and said, “my name is Tezqa, I’m a friend of Gnosa.”
Trem let her aim fall. “You’re Urmah?” The best news she’d heard all day.
Tezqa nodded, still standing on all four paws. “It seems our goals are aligned for the moment.” He wasn’t accustomed to working with humanoids but he viewed the Order as allies, and would rather work with them than continue hunting alone. He could smell the deathly reek of Daadgre and knew there was great danger aboard.
Quid coughed, still woozy as he stood up. “What goals?”
Tezqa told Quid, “you’re following the sigils that will lead to my prize.”
“What sigils?” Trem asked. “Wait, why aren’t you in the engine room?” In all the excitement, it never occurred to her that Quid was roaming around the hallways.
Quid looked around for another sigil to show her but couldn’t find one.
Tezqa was already walking down the hallway. “There’s no time, we need to leave this place immediately.” He was in a hurry to get what he needed before Daadgre appeared.
Meanwhile, the engine room was a flurry of terrified confusion, as the centipede tore through the Atlanteans despite their weapons. As a powerful mage, Daadgre was able to subdue the electromagnetic fields of their railguns enough to render them harmless to his vessel’s exoskeleton. He also blocked their communications by damping their radio signals with the same ability.
Nils could feel the sudden spike of fear from the Atlanteans. Sheran could see their auric fields fading as their life-force slipped away. When the two met at the transporter room, they left Gnosa there alone and headed to the engine room to see what the problem was.
Quid picked up the disruptor he’d dropped when the Anunnaki man struck him. Embarrassed by his inability to defend himself in front of a potential mate, he tied the disruptor to his back and brought out the spear, shamefully remembering how much it impeded his ability to stand up when it was strapped to his back.
Trem was stretching her shoulders and back, readjusting herself after the fight. She was bruised but uninjured and ready to keep moving. As she followed Tezqa she whispered a quick “thank you” to her ancestors for assistance with the snake illusion, it may have saved her life.
Quid remembered the auric mask and picked it up off the floor. “Right, as I was saying, this has a subtle but unique EMF signature that should be trackable. Once they’re located, Sheran should be able to disable them with a focused EMP.”

Two mermaids were cradling each other lovingly, paddling their tails together to swim in unison as they affectionately caressed their foreheads together. The male had folded the fins on his back inward so the female could steer, and she moved her tail delicately so he could push powerful strokes to keep them moving forward.
They were each pouring love directly into each other’s hearts and playing sexually to open their auras and unite, similar to the way Sheran and Nils would do together.
They’d been swimming through the valleys together like this for some time, simply enjoying the experience of being the same energy field.
They noticed an unusual feeling in the waters and paused to look around. It was quite dark but in the murky shadows they could see a ship with several types of cloaks to mask its presence.
Like Nils they were both empathic and could feel the malice emanating from the vessel, polluting the waters with hostility.
They’d never seen or felt anything like it before but a very distant and deeply buried memory was triggered and they recognized the Draconian technology instinctively.
The intense spike of fear they felt on seeing it sent out a powerful wave of distress, which echoed through the valleys and easily reached the nearby tunnel to Agartha. The ship had intentionally stationed close to the tunnel in order to have a chance to resist any assault before the Agarthans could reach the crash site.

Qanti was losing patience. She had no mages in her group, they were soldiers and technical experts, and they had no way to clear the space without damaging the ship’s controls.
Sheran received information on the auric masks from Quid. Immediately the signature was visible on every level of the ship. She carefully isolated each of them, one at a time, and disabled them with a tiny blip of intense electromagnetic interference that scrambled the hardware and short-circuited the devices.
The Atlantean viewing devices registered the thermal signatures of each mercenary and suddenly they had an advantage.
“Finally!” Qanti yelled, reaching around the corner and putting a very rewarding shot through a man inside the bridge. “You two, turn up the intensity on your weapons.” She was done hiding behind walls, it was time to start shooting through them.
Quid was looking down at a group of dead Atlanteans. One of the parties Qanti had sent to search the ship had been mutilated, the bodies were covered in the same markings as the avian had been earlier.
Tezqa growled, “this is the work of a Draconian insectoid.” His people were ancient rivals of the Draconians, he could recognize the scent of every one of their warrior races and loathed the notion of sharing this space with one. Deep inside, the flames of an ancient war flared up and his heart rate increased as his entire tribe collectively breathed in the scent of the enemy and prepared for another fight.
Somehow Quid could feel the flames inside Tezqa reigniting the same fire he’d channeled on the ship, fighting the megalodon.
Trem shook her head in frustration. ‘What is happening here?’ she asked herself. “Why would Draconians be trying to take this ship?”
Tezqa wagged his tail in disagreement. “It’s not the ship they want.” The enemy was here for the same reason he was. “We must hurry.”
Gnosa slammed his fist down on the control panel of the transporter, aggravated at how resistant it was to letting itself be used. He gave up and returned to the engine room. Now that the Atlanteans were able to see the enemy there was no further need for a transporter, they should be able to handle the situation on their own.
Tezqa and Quid found themselves staring at a fourth sigil, one that seemed to inform them to go downward. Quid pulled a panel out of the wall beneath it and Tezqa crawled into a service duct.
Having torn through the Atlanteans and searched the engine room to find nothing of value, Daadgre furiously burst into the corridor, following the scent Quid had left straight back up the stairs the way he’d come.
Qanti stepped onto the bridge, safe and sound. They’d shot the guards through the walls and were now in full control of the bridge. “Ant’cal, we’ll be firing things up soon,” she radioed to her friend, unaware of what had transpired in engineering.
Daadgre was back up the stairs, following Quid’s scent to the dead Anunnaki. He could tell by the marks and scent on the body that a feline had killed the man. He shrieked in rage, forgetting all about anything else, and followed the scent to what was sure to be a delicious meal.
Tezqa was backing out of the service duct, pulling a small box out with his teeth.
Quid recognized the symbols scratched across the surface of the box but had no idea how. “What is this?”
Tezqa could feel Quid’s soul reaching out to it. “Open it up and find out, you were led to it just like me.” Like Sheran, he was able to see aspects of Quid that Quid himself was unaware of.
Quid opened it with a vague feeling that what he was about to witness was sacred, and for the first time in his life he instinctively held an air of reverence. Inside he found a simple cube with a perfect, unbroken crystalline structure. With his amfur he saw a beautiful, silvery golden radiance emitting from it and breathed in what felt like eternal prosperity.
Trem was aware of the feeling as well and saw the ancient Elven writing inside the box. “It’s a blessing to Gaia.” She felt a warm, loving sensation and wanted to give the cube a big hug.
Tezqa nodded. “It was a gift from our people when we first arrived, before there was life on this planet. We had many plans to bring about blessings to the galaxy through this world, and this was one of the ways we ensured they would be fulfilled.” He paused before continuing with a sad note. “During the descension it became obscure and was hidden until Terra was ready for it again.” Then the age of strife began and it was lost. “Now we wish to remove it until the time to return it.”
Daadgre shrieked again, infuriated at the feelings that were emanating across the planet once the box was opened. He was moving full speed but somehow managed to move even faster now. He desperately wanted to claim this prize for his own, sure that it would make him a king of legend.
Sheran and Nils were nearing the engine room and ended up sneaking up behind a group of mercenaries headed there as well. They didn’t have time to waste with niceties and mercy, so as soon as they were within sight Sheran simply severed their spinal cords and kept moving.
They passed by the fallen and Nils knelt down next to one of them, weeping uncontrollably. The man was an Orion like Quid, one who had spent his whole life fighting desperately to ensure his needs were met and was now helplessly approaching his death, alone and far away from home.
Nils was overwhelmed with sympathy for the man’s pain and embraced him fondly, forgetting everything but her love for this stranger and wanting nothing more than to make his pain go away.
Sheran touched her shoulder comfortingly, telling her they had to keep moving. She bravely shook off her intense emotions and wiped the tears away as she stood up. They hugged for a moment and continued running.
When they reached engineering they could feel the psychic resonance of Daadgre still lingering there. They didn’t bother searching the room, simply followed the trail.
Tremplir got radio contact from Qanti, “what’s happening down there? We need the engines online right now!”
Trem wasn’t sure how to respond, she knew exactly what had happened down there from communications from Sheran and was surprised Ant’cal hadn’t sent word to Qanti. She had to think for a moment. Finally, she simply said, “I’m not there. We found something here, it’s -”
Qanti cut her off. “Well get there immediately, we need to move this thing!”
Trem nodded and looked at Quid. “Come on, we have to go.”
Right then, the clicking returned to her ears and Tezqa stood between her and the rapidly approaching insect.
Standing on his hind legs to look more intimidating, he told her, “You’ll have to go on your own. I need him to carry the box.”
Trem nodded confidently, looking at Quid to see if he was ok with that. He nodded as well and she went the opposite direction of the eerie noises. She disappeared right when Daadgre came around the corner.
Gnosa reached the engine room, looking around sadly at the Atlanteans. “I’m here,” he shouted in his radio to Qanti, “what do you need me to do?”
Qanti was on the bridge, looking around her soldiers proudly as they rapidly got the ship up and running. The lights turned on and life support was finally balancing out as the space reached normal conditions.
The ship had a system of force fields used to reinforce structural integrity, especially good for sealing hull breaches. They were online and ready to seal off the hull as soon as they started moving.
Qanti was relieved to know someone was there. “There’s not enough power for attitude control, we won’t be able to steer until all maneuvering systems are operational. Where’s Ant’cal?”
Gnosa looked around sadly, wishing he didn’t have to answer that. He managed to explore the memories Ant’cal had accessed about the technology and knew where to find the systems they needed active. As he approached the proper area, he found Ant’cal crawling across the floor, leaving a streak of blood in his wake.
Gnosa knelt down and Sheran reached through him to tap Ant’cal’s head, a bright green light ran down the amphibian’s spine and healed the wounds enough for Ant’cal to stand and ease his pain.
They held each other’s arms as Ant’cal stood up and told Gnosa, “I’ll be alright.” Although he didn’t really believe that, he’d had worse pain and he’d be able to keep moving until he lost too much blood. “Let’s get this accursed wreck off Terra.”


Chapter 15 - Plasma Storm

As Daadgre stared down the hall at Tezqa and Quid, the lights came on and they were all allowed a brief moment to size each other up in full light.
Quid felt nauseated looking at this horrifying, repulsive creature but he wouldn’t let himself give into fear. He was determined to make it through this with his head held high.
He remembered the confidence and strength of the warrior he’d seen in Atlantis. He wondered, that man would’ve done and instantly he felt himself called back into the obsidian mirror. He found himself looking once again at the kind, loving smile of the priestess.
She said, “It’s time now. They’ve all gathered.”
Quid was once again frustrated with the people around him always acting like they know everything, and him feeling like he’s the last person to ever know anything. He wanted answers and he wanted them now. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“You want answers. I can provide them but you will only comprehend them when you’re ready.” She could feel the mixture of shame and anger building up and calmed him. “It’s not a reflection of your unworthiness, just a matter of where you are on the path. No one can help make this journey easier but you will always find yourself right where you need to be, when you’re ready to be there.”
As she spoke, the world around him faded. The battle about to be fought was the only thing that remained but as he watched, it seemed to shift and rearrange. Instead of an enemy before him and a friend beside him, there were simply two matching links lining up in the chains of an ancient conflict playing out.
The light and the dark playing against each other, each reflecting the other. Neither side of this polarity could be without the other and yet they so intensely resisted each other that all reality seemed a battlefield for them to play on.
The Vegans and Draconians were simply the way that this cosmic dance played out in this galaxy. Neither side was really right or wrong, neither was good or evil. They seemed to be so polarized they couldn’t touch, like electrons orbiting around protons, and yet just like these subatomic puzzle pieces they couldn’t stop reaching for each other.
The two sides rearranged again. This time he found himself standing in a great temple before a radiant altar, watching as delegations from both sides came together in harmony, in friendship, in love.
They’d all worked together for aeons to create the scene he before him, and the struggles they’d each fought through to be ready for it had made them exactly who they needed to be.
As he watched, the Vegans and Draconians played a simple game of mirrors, a move reflecting a move as they reached slowly closer and further, polarizing and coupling, gradually inching together until, inevitably, they met and in the centre their golden and silver lights reached a point of balance.
Their energies condensed into a solid form and as their languages carved each other into the stone walls around them, the solid became a glowing beacon of prosperity and love, an acceptance and embrace of cosmic polarization.
It form into a cube and drifted onto the altar, a ringing gift for all of Terra to ensure that as the experiment was played out, the sanctity of life would be preserved above all else.
Both sides focused on him. He stepped forward holding out a violet stone orb, a piece of prima materia. Weaving his will into it he became an embodiment of the sacred covenant of balance condensed here. He accepted responsibility for the well-being of this gift and swore to uphold its preservation above all else.
He’d prepared for this over aeons and he knew that if the timeline grew out of control, the cube would be hidden away from the two warring parties until it could be returned to the people of Terra.
He bound the orb to the cube and sealed it in his heart and with both sides he placed his hand on the cube, sealing the covenant in primordial life force for the highest good of all.

Back on the ship, he looked one last time at the priestess in her obsidian mirror. He knew they’d never meet again but it didn’t matter. Their task was nearly complete.
He breathed real air for what felt like the first time in quite a while, his lungs unexpectedly expanding with just a twinge of pain. He looked again at the warring parties and for a brief instant he could almost feel them laughing together at the idea of ever having fought in the first place.
Neither Tezqa nor Daadgre were aware of that moment in Quid’s experience, they were still locked in a brief moment of eye contact.
Daadgre forced himself into Quid’s mind, disregarding the privacy and free will that Sheran had respected so diligently. “Surrender or be devoured!” These words screamed into Quid’s mind, echoing through his body in a thousand voices: some of them angry and threatening; some terrified; some in anguish and begging for mercy; a single, maniacal laugh rose above it all. He was being implanted with false emotions that would trick him into closing his aura and becoming weak.
Tezqa lunger closer to the giant centipede, skipping around the stream of venom it spat out and jumping over the thrusts of two spear-like mandibles. He landed on the centipede’s back and bit down, trying to open a hole in the exoskeleton. His bite was powerful and his teeth sharp but the armor was too thick to tear open.
Daadgre slammed his body against the ceiling to injure the jaguar, attempting to get above his opponent.
Tezqa held in place, struggling to force an opening in the shell, but eventually jumped off again and bounded down the hallway, leading Daadgre further from the box and closer to the shuttle bay where they would have more space for a fight.
Quid’s legs were still shaky and his knees felt weak. He was trying to shake the fear loose and get back in the game but he was having trouble concentrating.
Nils and Sheran were approaching rapidly, with Nils tracking the emotional spikes emitted from the fighters. Tezqa was remarkably calm, almost indiscernible to her empathic abilities, but the fear implanted in Quid was easy to track and so was Daadgre’s malevolence. Sheran could see Tezqa like a sun shining through the walls.
As they rounded the corner, Daadgre immediately recognized Sheran’s magical capabilities and gave up his pursuit of Tezqa and charged instantly at Sheran, he wanted to make a quick lunch before returning to Tezqa.
Nils cast a stream of elemental ice from her staff and Sheran amplified it into a wall of spikes that stopped the centipede in its tracks. Nils jumped through a small hole between the spikes and ran for Quid.
“Are you ok?” She held his arms comfortingly, trying to help him find himself amid the turmoil that was still embedded in his aura.
As soon as he felt her hands he immediately became calm, more stable and present. The fog in his head cleared. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Nils recognized the markings on the box. “You have to keep that safe, ok? That’s your only priority.”
He knew she was right but the indignation of being assaulted in such a degrading way lit up his anger and he gripped the spear tightly. They smiled at each other briefly and she somersaulted backwards, moving back to the Draconian.
Tezqa had Daadgre’s attention again. Dodging around the spiky mandibles, he spit fire with a roar to blind the insect. At that moment, Sheran shattered the ice wall and threw the fragments at the weak spots between Daadgre’s segmented armor plating.
Nils landed perfectly on her last somersault and her staff intensified both the fire and ice energies, covering the exoskeleton with burning ice and freezing flames. Together, all three tried to tighten the shell of elemental force around their opponent.
The elemental energies fire and ice are a polarized couple that have formed immense strength on Terra amid the chaotic cycles of upheaval and calamity that formed the planet into a paradise.
Daadgre was a chaos mage, he’d worked with polarized elemental forces on many worlds, he relished these kinds of extremes playing together. He shook it off with a shrieked and charged even more violently at Tezqa, who retreated down the hallway again.
“Got it!” Qanti and Ant’cal screamed triumphantly, in unison, as the propulsion drives reached readiness.
The ship began to move for the first time in millennia, creaking and shaking as the rusted hull scraped against the rocky sea floor and fell apart.
“Reinforce the hull!” Qanti shouted down to engineering.
Ant’cal called Gnosa over and asked for support getting into the FTL drive section. Travelling faster than light speed requires vast amounts of power and they needed as much as they could get to prevent the ship falling apart. They couldn’t use anything in this section until they left the atmosphere anyway.
Tremplir was sneaking silently through the halls. As she reached the engine room there was one final mercenary group approaching from the opposite direction. They were the last out of stasis and had already been briefed on the situation. Their mission was no longer to take the ship but to destroy it. Their employer would seek his prize in the wreckage.
They weren’t expecting Trem to come around to corner just before they breached the door. For a moment they all stared at each other, no one moved. Then at the same time they all raised their weapons.
Trem rapid-fired and hit two of them in the face, ducking behind the corner as streams of plasma rushed past her. One of them grazed her armor and was rejected by the magical protections woven into it, the ionized particles repelled by a naturally reflecting property that instantly matched any incoming EMF beyond a specific range of acceptable frequencies.
She whispered an Elven lunar rune and a phantasmal replica of her body walked slowly around the corner, taking several shots to the chest and sending back arcs that threatened the enemy harmlessly. As the mercenaries took cover and the shooting stopped, she peeked around the corner and put a well-timed shot into each of them.
She waited for a moment to listen for movement but as the phantom faded away into an unpleasant electrical buzzing, silence returned to the corridor. She breathed with relief and went on to assist Gnosa and Ant’cal.
Gnosa was gently helping Ant’cal limp through the area, deactivating everything now that it was up and running again. Some of the machines made unpleasant sounds and shaking but eventually they all remained still and quiet.
Trem arrived and monitored the other systems, like life support and structural integrity reinforcement fields, to ensure they were running satisfactorily while Ant’cal shut down what was unneeded.
Quid was breathing heavily without even working. His veins were burning and his breath was like a desert wind dragging across his dry trachea. Since Nils helped him recover, he’d been watching the battle unfold, waiting for the right moment to join. He wanted to get vengeance on this freak for the psychic assault he’d been subjected to, and he’d exact his pound of flesh before this was over.
While everyone else was distracted, he’d subtly removed the cube from its box and slipped it inside his clothes. He couldn’t hold the box and the spear at the same time, and knew what his priorities were. He couldn’t care less what purpose the box served.
Trying to herd this insectoid through a hallway was the most dangerous and terrifying experience he’d ever have. The mandibles protruding from its head and the caudal pincer-legs on its rear were larger than Quid’s spear, lashing and stabbing at anything that approached their range. They hadn’t even injured it so far, merely baiting it down the hallway with its own blinding rage.
“We need backup,” Sheran whispered to Gnosa down in the engine room. “Meet us in the shuttle bay.”
Gnosa nodded and looked at Ant’cal, who seemed to have everything under control except for his injuries, then at Tremplir who was eager to help but had nothing to do. He knew they wouldn’t be asking for help if it weren’t serious and he didn’t want to endanger his sister. “Stay here and make sure he gets us out of here, seen?”
Trem nodded confidently. “Good luck.”
Gnosa grabbed his disruptor and an Atlantean railgun on the way out.
Trem went over to Ant’cal. “Is there something I can help with?” She took him for a tour of the room to check everything was still functioning properly.
Daadgre had been growing more and more impatient and ravenous, and was now focusing his effort almost entirely on eating Tezqa. He’d even forgotten about the reason he was here, all else drowned out by the urgent, burning desire to consume his rival. The rest would surely fall like dead trees in a hurricane afterward.
Tezqa had been playing this to his favour, leaning and twisting down the corridors just to goad the animalistic rage further toward their goal. Now he stopped in front of the shuttle bay and stood, staring defiantly at the Draconian.
They locked eyes and Daadgre lowered himself to the ground, rocketing forward at full speed, sure he would win this time. Tezqa dodged out of sight and into the cargo stacked around the room in disheveled piles of wreckage.
Daadgre almost gave chase into the room but, finally realizing the trap, turned instead to face Sheran and Nils who were standing behind him, waiting to see what would happen.
Daadgre could feel the ship’s plasma conduits warming up inside the walls, hear the hum of the pipes as the gaseous flow became turbulent. He gave the closest to a sly, hateful grin his vessel was capable of and the pipes exploded. Flaming torrents of plasma erupted into the hallway, engulfing everything.
The ship shook and a horrendous whine echoed across all decks as the explosion caused a collapsed part of the hull to come apart and a section of the ship broke away, falling back down to the ocean floor. Water poured in and the ship began to flood. The ship’s computers automatically sealed off exposed sections with doors strong enough to resist tremendous forces.
Sheran was using blue flame to encapsulate herself, Nils and Quid inside a protective hex grid, like a honeycomb. It shielded them from the heat but she wasn’t able to move forward very quickly and the air was being expended rapidly by three people with adrenaline surging blood through their veins at max speed. She pushed onward but the going was slow and unpleasant.
Meanwhile Daadgre was ripping crates apart and hurling them across the shuttle bay, searching for Tezqa. He had lost all interest in anything other than devouring his foe. He’d prove himself the most capable warrior if he had to destroy the ship to do it.
For the Draconians, who deliberately severed themselves from the bliss of their own divinity, there has always been immense resentment for the felines of Vega, regardless of their tribe. Urmah are different from the majority but still close enough compared to the despair and turmoil of the fallen Draconians.
In this moment, Daadgre felt that the only thing his life would ever amount to with this vessel would be the reclamation of his birthright through the feast of a Vegan heart.
Still surrounded by the blue honeycomb, Quid’s biochip beeped confirmation that it had finally accessed command level authorization codes for the ship’s computers and he sent them to Qanti’s headset.
Qanti had already managed to access most of the systems she needed but she was grateful for the rest of the ship’s controls. She radioed Ant’cal, “we have command clearance now, you should be able to control the machines from the computer stations.”
Ant’cal breathed a sigh of relief. He could stop limping around the room making manual adjustments, and have the computer do what he needed. He smiled at Tremplir. “I can handle everything from here.” He appreciated her kind assistance. “When we get into the atmosphere, the winds will damage our ship, we need you to decouple it from this one and take it back, can you handle that?”
Trem beamed confidence. “No problem, I got it.” She stepped to the door but hesitated in the portal. “Are you sure you can handle this on your own?”
Ant’cal nodded, there didn’t seem to be any more danger of mercenaries intruding. “I’m sure but thank you.”
Trem nodded. “Alright. Good luck.” She ran out of the room to reach the Atlantean boarding ship as quickly as she could.
Quid was feeling the orb inside him being opened by the priestess in the obsidian mirror. He placed the sphere on the altar before him and the the warring sides conflicting across his field of vision had reached a tranquility that allowed them to see themselves reflected in the orb, he opened it and ruby red flame reached from his chest to his hands as the orb blossomed like a lotus.
His spear thrust through the blue honeycomb and stabbed into the plasma fires raging around them. A small path opened through the flames and Sheran rushed through the door, into the shuttle bay.
Dropping the hex grid and breathing deeply with gratitude, Sheran stretched her spine and looked around the room. Broken crates were laying around everywhere, a hole in the wall revealed pipes that would surely make adequate weapons if the centipede decided he wanted to ruin more of the ship. It was a confused mess in here, about to become a dangerous battlefield.
“We’ll have to play this very carefully in order to survive,” Nils said to Quid.
He nodded but the look in his eyes showed no recognition of the danger they were in. She could see him aching for a moment to prove himself.
A roar erupted as Tezqa lunged onto Daadgre’s back again, trying to tear into the nervous system. He didn’t know enough about their anatomy to realize it was located on the centipede’s belly.
His front paws slashed and slammed against the armor plating, clawing into the suture where he hoped the nerve would be more exposed. He slowly glowed more intensely with rich, orange and violet hues as his aura became a roaring flame.
Tezqa and Daadgre were both attempting to distort the gravitational fields around each other to crush their bodies like a tin can, the energies tried to overpower each other but cancelled out between the bodies. Around them a buzzing region of intense distortions caused the floor to warp and the air to hum.
In Quid’s amfur he saw an orange light hovering above the centre of the room, reaching down into a blue and a red vessel. They seemed to be standing cooperatively, not conflicting on the level he are easily witnessed them.
In his eyes he watched the feline and insect battling, and he could almost see how the blue and red were filling them as the streams twisted and bent, melding into a collage of distorted energies that resonated on completely different spectral bands.
In his amfur they reached out to him in partnership. He could feel that they were simply unable to retain the tranquility they approached him with, when their vessels were in such dense and closed space. 5D space simply wasn’t open enough for their awareness to be retained, and their higher intentions were forgotten in the hazy smoke of war.
Nils touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Quid nodded, having all but forgotten these etherial experiences the instant she touched him, as the vision faded from the sight of his amfur.
Nils wanted to ask how he’d cleared the path through the plasma fires but didn’t have time. She sprinted in a wide arc around Daadgre.
Sheran was standing still, eyeing Quid curiously. They met eyes and for a moment he felt her saying something that couldn’t be put into words.
Without intending to respond rudely, Quid’s anger bubbled up briefly and he aggressively thought, “what do you want?”
She smiled and touched his hand softly. He could feel her touch the orb in his hand and even heard her voice somewhere far away.
She stepped forward and his amfur saw a whirling spiral of golden light circling her. A low hum began to rise. Broken shards of metal on the floor began to spin around her and, as the hum intensified, she was lifted gently into the air. Harmonic frequencies can be used to life object into the air harmlessly if done carefully.
As she continued rising, a large fragment of a cargo crate followed her and when she was fully above Quid’s head she hurled the fragment at Daadgre.
Daadgre was rolling on the floor to force Tezqa off his back and the metal struck his underbelly, sticking into the plating and remaining embedded there. He squealed angrily and shrieked curses at her, spearing a piece of crate larger than her body and flinging it carelessly at her as he pursued Tezqa.
Sheran caught the crate and shredded it, allowing the shards to be swept up in the cyclone around her. She was forcing the fragment deeper into Daadgre’s armor but as it got deeper there was more resistance and eventually the metal buckled and split apart.
Nils was forging an orb that grew from the fire and ice wand in her hand, hovering about her head like a solar crown. The flames refracted in the ice, giving an eerie cerulean and vermilion glow around her.
Tezqa was keeping Daadgre’s attention fixed on him but hadn’t found a way to assault its vulnerable spots without leaving himself vulnerable to the venomous appendages it was trying to stab him with. His front paws grabbed an explosive device from the mercenary equipment that was now strewn across the floor.
Rising onto his back to paws, he twirled like a dancer and hurled the explosive at the ceiling, hoping it wouldn’t be too powerful. Surely they wouldn’t be using something too potent on a ship like this. He didn’t have time for more than a vague hope that it wouldn’t ruin the space entirely.
Sheran gathered the shards surrounding her and formed a series of arrowhead clusters, shooting them at Daadgre’s legs. Three of his legs were pierced and she reshaped the metal, melding the shards together as they welded onto the floor to pin the insect in place.
The explosive bounced off the ceiling and fell to the floor, exploding above Daadgre. As the shockwave approached Sheran she surrounded the spherical field of expanding pressure and contained it within a barrier that reflected it. The negative pressure surrounding Daadgre was rapidly reversed into a second shockwave collapsing into itself around him.
Nils spoke in low, high pitched sounds and the glowing orb of fire and ice transmuted into plasma, erupting into a steaming torrent of superheated gas, pouring around Daadgre’s body and melting the surface of his shell while freezing into a solid layer around him.
In Quid’s amfur the fury of Daadgre’s vessel was rising into higher portions of its consciousness and infecting the stability of its energy. He began to chant the languages of his people, filling the room with an air of doom and bleak despair. The vibrations seeped through the entirety of the vessel, not even formed by its vocal cords. They dampened the sounds around Sheran and she fell to the floor.
The searing ice that was forming around his armor broke apart and fell to the floor in harmless puddles of electrically charged water that dissipated across the metallic plating.
Something inside Quid shifted and suddenly he was running forward with his spear raised before him.
Daadgre was losing control of his body as the anger boiled higher and higher, the vessel was struggling to free his legs without harming them further. The magic was banished completely and his armor was singed but still quite intact. He ignored the warrior charging him, the weakling who’d barely raised a blade up to now.
Tezqa landed on Daadgre’s head again. The small mandibles for eating tried to reach up and grab him but he wasn’t close enough. He grabbed one of them with a front paw, casting a guillotine-like blade of violet flame and tearing the mandible off the head, then stabbing it repeatedly into the centipede’s face. He was aiming for an eye but the Daadgre’s writhing made aiming impossible.
Daadgre’s larger mandibles bent upward to strike the jaguar like clubs. Tezqa cast a tubular vortex of pressure to push the mandible away from him and as it recoiled to regain control, Quid thrust his spear into it. The blade flashed a burst of the same red flame and the mandible was severed.
Daadgre shrieked and the pervading echoes grew so intense the floor was shaking. He tore himself free of Sheran’s traps, losing all three legs in the process. He still had plenty left and all he could think of was destroying Quid immediately for harming his vessel.
Quid spun his spear around to strike Daadgre in the face, which had no effect at all.
Daadgre’s voice rose further and Quid was suddenly feeling terrified.
Quid shrank back as the voices rose to a deafening pitch and he realized they were coming from inside him. He looked into the past and could see slaves being beaten, tortured, murdered. He could feel the cramps of starvation, the begging fear of those approaching death. Again Quid’s aura was being filled with emotions to overwhelm him.
Nils collapsed on the floor, crying and screaming as the immensely painful emotions of the ship’s past resonated inside her, sending her into empathic overload of a magnitude she’d never experienced before.
Quid tried to step back but tripped over wreckage. A mandible stabbed his leg and dragged him along the floor until all he could see was the canine-like fangs, artificially built into this predatory species, opening up to devour him.
Something pierced Daadgre’s armor and for the first time ever the centipede was bleeding.
Gnosa had turned the Atlantean railgun to max power, having arrived just in time to avoid being noticed while he took aim at the segment just below the creature’s head. He was hoping to diminish the head’s ability to control its body.
Daadgre was shocked. This vessel had never felt physical pain before. The spiritual agony of inhabiting the vessel from higher levels of consciousness was awful enough to keep him angry and violent but physical pain wasn’t a common experience to something with organic armor systems interwoven with magic. The vessels anguish grounded him back into the body and he was able to regain control of himself enough to look around at the room and size up his opponents as they were, injured and tired.
A small trickle of blood leaked into the suture between segments of shell. The ammunition in a railgun doesn’t generally need to be large, just hard enough to puncture through a target. A tiny trickle of blood wasn’t much but it was enough to remind Daadgre there were more important things going on than revenge.
With a final, venomous look at Quid, Daadgre hissed a curse and turned to the Arcturian, whose magic had been more impeding than he’d anticipated.
Sheran’s ankle was sprained from the fall but she was otherwise unharmed. She was having trouble focusing though, because Nils was still in a state of blackout from the emotional overload impressed upon her. Nils was shuddering and attempting to vomit, the painful convulsions made it difficult for Sheran to bring her awareness back to the present. Being one consciousness with two bodies does have its drawbacks.
Using a combination of gravitational forces and heat manipulation, Daadgre softened and distorted the plates at Sheran’s feet, pulling her through the floor and imprisoning her legs. Meanwhile he was already charging at Gnosa, who quick-fired three shots at the head but they were deflected easily now that Daadgre was aware of him.
Gnosa pulled out a hammer and threw it at Daadgre while chanting, “thurs!” with steadfast will. The rune of the giant illuminated on the head of the hammer and when it struck the centipede’s underbelly it cracked the shell open.
Daadgre stumbled and was running off-kilter with the shock of the forceful blow. As he ran into the wall he briefly lost control again unintentionally cause gravitational disturbances, rupturing several plasma conduits along the walls. Plasma fires were now filling the shuttle bay with fumes that smelled toxic.
Tremplir was sealing the hatch on the Atlantean ship and ensuring their cargo crate was shut properly, lest their invaluable equipment was damaged if she lost control in some unforeseen circumstance. Satisfied that everything was alright, she settled into the pilot seat and hoped she could pilot adequately.
“I’m ready to decouple the ship,” she radioed to Qanti.
“Good, we’re almost to the surface,” Qanti responded. “We seem to have everything under control here, assuming that battle back there is going well.” She hadn’t heard much about it but the ship’s alarm systems weren’t happy about whatever was going on down there. She’d sent down half her crew to support Ant’cal, now that the bridge was fully up and running.
Qanti and Ant’cal were trying to stabilize the environmental controls and fire extinguishing systems without inhibiting them. The systems weren’t quite up to this challenge after sleeping for so long.
As Tremplir decoupled from the ship, she saw a dark shadow with a series of subtle, red lights blipping. It was keeping just behind the Anunnaki craft. She wondered how much crew was left in there.
She shrugged her questions away and kept focused on the task at hand, turning her small craft back to the submarine. Back at the crash site, the merfolk were assisting the Atlanteans in clean-up work, retrieving any remnants of the ship from the ocean floor.
At that moment, three Agarthan battleships sped out of the tunnel. Incensed at the presence of Draconians on Terra, they’d sent their most experienced crews and most sophisticated equipment to neutralize this threat to the stability of their planet.
Their equipment instantly picked up the wreck that was fleeing to the surface and the Draconian ship trailing behind it. They would catch up with it soon.
Quid was kneeling over Nils. “Hey, wake up!” He gently patted her face and she twitched as her awareness returned to her body. He grabbed her hand and guided her in standing up. She’d been watching out for him since he arrived on Terra and now it was his turn to ask, “are you okay?”
She was trembling uncontrollably, still desperately trying to purge the emotional toxins she’d been filled with. “I can’t,” she muttered, “I can’t think.” The voices in her head were impossible to silence and they seemed to fill the space, irreconcilably echoing thousands of painful experiences inside her.
As she began to calm down it was easier to reemerge into Sheran and they melded back into one. She used the same hum to elevate onto the ceiling, seeking refuge from the battle.
Quid looked up at Nils from the floor, wondering how it could possibly help to have physically elevated her body, but he figured she just wanted to feel safe more than actually being safe. He limped back to his spear, wondering if Sheran needed help but he guessed she would ask for it.
Sheran was focusing on filling and surrounding Nils’ aura with violet flame. Together they transmuted the turmoil inside her and returned it to their origin with the intention to ease the suffering of those whose cries were slowly fading away from Nils’ mind.
Tezqa and Gnosa were having difficulty keeping the furious insect distracted from assailing their injured friends. They were ducking and weaving around Daadgre, occasionally attacking but hadn’t made any further progress. His magical defences were heightened now that his vessel was in pain and although he was moving more slowly and unevenly, he was still quite dangerous.
As Nils recovered equilibrium, Sheran began to reshape the metal around her legs, opening up space to reveal several gashes and stab wounds from the torn panels. One of them was open to the bone and leaking profusely. The pain triggered anger that was intentionally buried deep in the Arcturian psyche to provide a survival mechanism in situations like this.
She raised her hands and shocks arced between her fingers. She called for the wand Nils had dropped, summoning it from across the room and as it flew to her hand it was already burning. The plasma fires intensified and arced lightning bolts between them.
She tore chunks out of the ruptured sections of wall, already heated by the fires, and sent them hurling toward the Draconian. Some of them she shaped into knifes, arrows, axes. Some she simply kept in their jagged, ripped shapes. They came in between the subtle motions of Tezqa and Gnosa dodging around the thrusting mandibles. Several legs were injured but still Daadgre grew more enraged.
Sheran was now the centre of a storming current of lightning bolts formed between the plasma conduits, as ionic particles disturbed the electrical balance of the room and an unpredictable pattern of electrical current stabilized around the vortex of Sheran’s aura.
As Gnosa jumped around a flying fragment of wall, Daadgre stabbed a mandible into his armor. He punctured through the magical defences and broke several sticks of tourmaline. A neighbouring heliodor spike cracked open in response to the loss of equilibrium and a fragment scratched his face as it flew past.
Gnosa was distracted for a brief moment, disappointed at the damage to his armor, which he’d spent a full year crafting back home. That quick moment of stillness was enough for a caudal pincer to close in from Daadgre’s hind section.
Tezqa bit down on it just in time to save Gnosa from being stabbed in the chest. He wrestled the pincer for a second but the other was right behind and he had to release in order to dodge it. He ran beneath the insect again, using the ambient plasma energy to charge a fluctuating electromagnetic barrier around his head as he battered directly into the crack in Daadgre’s armor.
Quid hadn’t moved since picking up his spear. He was staring at the fight with a sense of resentment fading quickly into antipathy. There was simply no reason for him to be involved in this. He’d been staring at his hand, in which he could still feel the orb although even his amfur couldn’t see it.
The orb was warming up and in the moment Tezqa’s magic burst across the room, Quid heard both the Vegan and Draconian soul streams speaking, “and so it is.” This whole experience was just a ritualistic healing spell being played out in higher levels, one which manifested in a distorted reality as a clash of polarized intentions. Now it was done.
Without knowing where the words came from, Quid sealed the ritual with the words, “blessed be.” Then he took one last look at the battle and walked out of the room without the slightest interest in knowing how it would end. He’d gotten what he came for and it was time to go.
A distant voice he almost recognized said softly, “let them play in polarity if they wish. We’re done here.”
From the ceiling, Nils had regained composure and, charged by the polarized torrents around Sheran, Nils was feeling more than ready to end this.
With her senses heightened and her wits refreshed, she had a sudden moment of insight, that there was an eye tucked away between the caudal pincers of Daadgre’s rear end. She could tell by the way they moved without his head facing toward them. It would be concealed somewhere but would have enough visibility to provide guidance for the pincers.
She watched intently and located it, tucked away discretely inside a fold in the armor.
The flash of Tezqa’s magic stirred her into action and she jumped from the ceiling, bouncing off a wall and somersaulting to slide underneath Daadgre.
Gnosa had forgotten all about his damaged armor and was now in front of Daadgre, slamming magic at its head with no effect, although it did keep his attention.
Sheran had been storing a massive build-up of electrical charge in her earth and lunar chakras, using her natural toroidal field as a resistor that held the polarized elements in check together. She had to reform the protective hexes of blue flame in order to maintain equilibrium as the polarity across her spine reached uncontrollable magnitudes.
Daadgre was growing impatient, this fight was supposed to be over by now. He hadn’t even noticed his prize, the cube, leave the room forever. He gave up on the Dwarf and charged at the Arcturian, bending the gravitational field to create a barrier in front of his head that would crush Sheran once and for all.
As the centipede moved away from Nils, she caught a perfect glimpse of its eye and silently threw a knife directly into it. Daadgre shrieked but continued his charge. Tezqa charged a punch with the same plasma energy and struck the knife. The blade shattered and fragments of metal scrambled a neural network in Daadgre’s hind segments, rendering several legs useless.
At that moment, the ship broke free of the waters and the sudden change in viscous frictional forces caused a jerk to jolt everyone in the ship off balance. Overhead was a thunderstorm, the winds knocking the ship around and causing vibrations that whittled away weaker sections of the hull. The storm’s electrical field was influencing the plasma fires inside the ship.
Sheran could feel the knife break, Tezqa’s plasma magic arcing around the handle, the intensified gravitational well around Daadgre, and now the jerk of the ship breaking free. For an instant the forces all lined up and she released the electrical charge she’d built up.
She couldn’t know for sure if she’d survive but this was the only chance she’d ever get. She released control of the electrical field and allowed it to flow through, going limp as she relinquished herself to the current.
Lightning bolts stormed across the room, coursing through Daadgre and frying him from the inside. With a shriek that echoed across the ship so loud that Quid could hear it one level down, Daadgre curled up and sizzled away as his body shrank and expanded from the inside and the shell around his vessel burned on the surface.
Sheran collapsed on the floor and the lightning faded away, back into the plasma fires which now seemed like candles compared to the storm that had raged for a single second. She and Nils both lost consciousness.
As soon as the arcs stopped, Tezqa finally tore his way into Daadgre’s chest cavity to feast.
Daadgre’s body’s last thought was that it had failed its mission. The higher consciousness was satisfied that his job had been done to perfection, and it was time to go home. Back in the ship, his soul sighed in relief as it relinquished the pain of contracting into such a closed off vessel. He would have to wait in the safe confines of his stasis chamber until they reached a planet with a suitable body to inhabit.
There were still two Draconians left on their ship, both inhabiting bodies more closely related to the reptilians of their home world. They were still interested in retrieving the cube for themselves if they could but they had no interest in the ship. They began to fall behind, scanning continuously as the cube made its way to the outer hull.
The Agarthans were catching up rapidly, although the Anunnaki craft had sped up significantly after leaving the water and was now disappearing from sight as it entered the thunder storm.
Quid was sitting down in an escape pod. He strapped himself in tight and pressed the eject button. He was flung roughly out of the ship and into the turbulent darkness of the storm. Lightning flashed around him and the escape pod shook as it flew through the clouds.
The wound in his leg was burning and he was losing sensation of everything below it. He wondered if he would survive this but it didn’t seem to matter. He was free once again. Lost and hopeless but free.