The Way of the Blue [Lantern OC]

His race across the landscape was as fast as he could go within an atmosphere without igniting the backwash of thunder that Ainsley called a 'sonic boom'. Completely unaware of it, far below him, a few noted his passing and assigned to it ominous portent, a green fireball racing across the sky unlike anything they'd ever seen, so fast they'd barely caught it. A week after his passing they were telling travelers stories about it when they finally reached civilization again.

He tore out across the ocean, the land falling back behind him and vanishing in a flat expanse of blue stretching in every direction. He wore the hated armor, controlling the spike of distaste for it and focusing on the task at hand. Besides, he needed it, now that he didn't have the battery anymore. As long as he wore it he could slowly, passively charge. Which meant he was paying for his power use right now, a debt of time having to voluntarily wear the very thing he'd desperately wanted for years to take off. The irony was a bitter necessity to him.

My thoughts are wandering. Focus.

"Ring, show me the cities entry points. Scan and compare to the descriptions given by the genkits and the recordings from Elise's memory."

Working.

The mental picture unfolded in his minds eye and he knew City Zero the way Elise had known it. Elise had known it very, very well.

She still does. She isn't dead, just set back. Just a set back. She'll return and stand with us again.

He hoped, truly hoped that that was true. Every moment he wore the green ring he felt like an imposter, despite the synergy with his armor. If he could give it back to Elise he would, but when he offered she kicked him out of the room. Well, no, she'd asked him in a very controlled way to leave her alone but he was pretty sure that there was a lot of kicking going on in her head.

As he approached the city he opened every possible channel he could to it with the ring, instructing it to grab any comms it could.

"City Zero, please respond."

"Wha-? Who is this?"

"Name's Aetius, nice to meet you but you don't have much time, do you?"

"How do you-?" A pause as whoever it is thinks past themselves and realizes they're asking the wrong questions. Good lad. "What are you going to do and how are you going to do it?"

"I need you to get everybody off the lower levels of each district. I can't guarantee there won't be seismic damage, sorry about that. We can have a chat afterwards but for the moment, strap yourselves in and get ready for a show. Also, turn on EVERY SENSOR YOU HAVE."

"You don't have to ask us twice, we started recording the second you squawked. We're sending the information to the city administrator AI, that'll get people moving. Good luck, Aetius."

"Thanks, Zero."

Then he dove into the mountain.

The way Ainsley had described the technique, it was just a matter of storing the crap ahead of you in your subspace pocket and dropping it behind you or simply transmuting the matter around you. Since he wanted to make a volcanic vent and channel it very precisely, he opted for a combination of both, creating a bubble around himself. In his mind, he split himself like a musician playing a tune, holding the image in his mind of the transmutation to what the genkits called tantalum carbide, holding the atomic structure of it in his mind and unloading the actual work of the transmutation off onto the ring while at the same time subspacing all the material in front of him. The result was a sort of crackling noise, the same noise as when one stepped in fresh, heavy snow. A crunch that one might hear in each step, but never-ending and following just behind him like a ghost.

Alert. External temperature and pressure are beginning to reach levels which require a higher power expenditure than designated.

Guess it'll be a deep debt this time.

He really hated that fucking armor.

As he continued in he could see a glow forming in the rock around him, brightening slowly...

Yeah, that's enough. The ring seemed to concur, his flight reversing as the rock face in front of him cracked inward and magma began to seep through, then suddenly explode as the pressure deep inside the volcano suddenly found a valve. He fired himself out of the tunnel, the pun in his head making him laugh as he escaped the mouth of it just ahead of the lava. He found it surprisingly runny, expecting it to sort of glob down the mountainside. Nope.

Life's full of surprises, it seems.

Firing himself back down out of the sky he slammed into the ground in front of the hanger bay doors which led to the surface vehicle bays for the city. He could see how thick the blast doors were but since he didn't intend to force himself through, it didn't matter too much to him.

"Hey, Zero. How's things looking in there?"

"Got some shaking but it's nothing the city wasn't made to handle. We're gonna lose power as the magma pressure drops but that's okay, we've... been running the torch, heh."

"Cool. Mind opening the door so I can say hi? Authentication, carbon fish animalia thirteen twenty-five I-am-not-a-crook."

"Uh..." He could hear the confusion as the code checked out. "Who are you, exactly?"

"I've been sent here as a representative of a city-state called Durjak. We have a number of genkits living there who would like to say hello. Something about having gone through a gateway?"

He could hear whooping on the other side of the channel, their entire comms room bursting into cheers at the news their people were alive. Oh and the not horribly dying because of a volcanic eruption, that too.

"Copy that, Aetius." One of the hanger doors began to open in front of him. "Looking forward to meeting you."

"Yeah... it's gonna be a long story."

 

In the same moment that Aetius was learning about molten rock fluid dynamics, Mina was taking a stroll along the coastline of another world.

She had never been to Val. None of them had really had much to do with the place, since it didn't seem very interesting. Oh it was pretty to be sure, but there weren't a lot of sentient species here. It wasn't like Mi'gra, the world Ainsley called Terra. Mi'gra was fecund beyond reason, a mandela of different species. The wanderers who found themselves there often came from such a diverse variety of cultures that it was taken for granted anyone who didn't look regional would be an outworlder. Since the shattering, that simply got unacceptably out of control. Even in Tovar they had incursions. Their cousins to the west might embrace the spread of cultures, but outworlders in Tovar either proved themselves or died. Only strength mattered.

Not many had it.

Her mind wandered as she walked through the surf, disturbing bioluminescent algae and creating a soft cyan glow around her ankles. She could see it in the head of the waves crawling up the beach. Even though it was day it still felt almost like twilight, the sun scattered across the sky in a way that it... ought not to be. Instead of the pale bright blue of Mi'gra it was a deep purple where the glare of the sun seemed to get eaten in much the same way it might on a cloudy day. The trees were dark too, the leaves all either a deep burgandy or the same bright blue as the grass. She couldn't see much in the dim light, even for a cat, but she could see fliers overhead. Not birds exactly. She might call them air jellyfish, if she'd ever seen a jellyfish. As it stood they were so alien to her she didn't even really try.

She'd been shaken after she escaped. She'd lost before, sure. Of course. You couldn't get to the top without losing something, sacrificing things, being defeated in ways large and small. You learned to choose your battles, to strategize, compromise, learn to work around other personalities you couldn't bend. You learned to manipulate, the sharpness of a cunning mind has always been a warriors first weapon. Some were better at wielding that blade than others, despite everyone believing themselves a master. But she'd never been defeated like that. She'd gambled on Nemesis, gambled he could do what he said and pay the price she set. She'd lost so completely she nearly died and had actually had to regrow a limb. She'd never lost a limb before. She didn't like it.

As she came around the bend of a stretch of beach she could see what she'd come here for. A small settlement along the coast, nestled into a bay with a natural seawall formed by a massive cliff the ocean had been working at eroding for... ever, it seemed. The water would win in the end but not while it mattered to any of the humans there.

She pulled up her hood, covering the felid ears. Her cloak and robes would cover up her tail easily enough. She couldn't hide the black scelera of her eyes or the bright yellow of the irises, but there was a little magic known here, thanks to incursions to Mi'gra and contact with her people. It wasn't friendly contact, but it was contact and the Tovar didn't leave their dead. No sense in wasting resources.

As she passed into the port nobody questioned her or tried to stop her. Just another traveler. A shapely one too. She didn't pass unnoticed, merely unmolested. A lot of heads turned as she passed by. Not all of them were male. If she could show her tail she'd be lashing it side to side, irritated at the presumption that they were worthy of fantasizing about her. Most of them, anyways. There were a few she'd take home and keep in her play pens, if she took a mind to do so. Maybe, as a souvenir of her visit here. She hadn't taken a girl in awhile. It was a shame Elise had proved so willful, seducing her might have made things a lot easier for her. Especially if she could bag Ainsley through her. Alas, missed opportunities.

When she finally chose a tavern it was one of the better looking ones. Slipping inside she paid in gold - local coins - then sat down at a table and slouched in her seat appropriately for the setting, crossing her legs at the knees and doing her best to look nonchalant as she drank a beer that tasted not quite like horse piss, but it was such a reasonably passing facsimile she might inquire about buying some to use as an insult when serving it to guests she didn't like.

She drank and listened.

Not so easy with her ears covered, she couldn't turn them this way or that to catch the sound. She wouldn't catch full conversations, just shift her concentration this way or that, catching different ones to find somebody talking about something interesting. The personal woes of people, the grumbling about jobs and bosses. She wanted the talk of local events, she wanted information. As time passed and the hours waned she started putting together a picture in her mind.

First of all, her guess had been right. The Red Swords began here. Not on Mi'gra, where they would have been found long ago. She hadn't worked out how they got to Mi'gra yet but it wasn't so important, now that she knew they'd begun here, it was a good guess that some of the glow artifacts might be found here as well. None of the others had expressed any interest in Val at all in their search for those, either from shortsightedness or ignorance, she didn't care. They weren't looking here and Val didn't present the same problems as Psyche, where everything wanted to kill and/or eat you. Nor were those two things mutually exclusive there. Psyche was a nightmare.

Finishing off her fourth beer, she put the stein down and got up to walk back out into the night. She didn't have any friends here, not in a whole planet of humans who were convinced they were masters of everything.

But she didn't have any enemies looking for her either.

It was a start.

 

For Abeba, life was still a wonder, but a much more interesting one than it was a year before.

Following the odd little skunk-man, she found herself studying him. His sister was visiting and she was a big deal. She couldn't figure out why they called themselves Skal and the not-knowing was itching at her brain. His whole appearance was close to what a genkit should be, but his legs were all wrong, more feral than human. Too short as well. He was as tall as her and she wasn't finished growing yet.

While Kuri tended to things in the administration district with the cities bigwigs, she was tasked with showing 'Sammy' around the city. Which is how they found themselves strolling through one of the simulated parks, a large open space with holowalls to fool one into forgetting that they're underground. Carefully maintained environmental settings helped ensure that they could cycle seasons between parks, making it possible to go from summer to winter with about a half hours walk through the entertainment district.

"This is incredible. It even smells green." Trotting across the grass he lightly stepped up onto a bench, springing off it and catching a tree branch with one hand to swing himself up. Balancing there with his tail he stood up, one hand on the trunk, leaning into it a little. The casual display of agility impressed her a little.

"We need places like this, where you can go to feel unconfined. To get some sunlight."

"But this is underground, how can you get sunlight?" He jumped down to the ground and rolled with it, springing back to his feet.

"Simulated sunlight, then." Abeba shrugged. "People go stir crazy if they feel like they're inside all the time. The parks help with that."

"Never seeing the sky would be tragic." He shook his head in mild dismay.

"Why is your name Sammy?"

"What a strange question." He gave her a sideways look. "Why is your name Abeba?"

"I was named that because the species my model of clone was based on is a wild dog from Africa, so it seemed fitting to have an African name. It means 'flower'." She grinned, showing teeth a little. "The actual wild dogs are pretty successful and ruthless hunters in the wild, but they made some tweaks to my genetics when my batch was begun so I think one of the Liara's was being ironic. I'm pretty successful and so far, I've gotten exactly what I want and I'm where I want to be."

Sammy nodded as they walked, a felid genkit couple passing by them going in the opposite direction and giving them curious looks, but leaving them alone. "My name is actually Samazurasha. But lots of people find that to be a big long mouthful everytime they say my name so it just gets shortened to Sammy. Ainsley told me it meant people like me."

"Shortening somebodies name is a sign of familiarity." She tilted her head when he sat down in the grass randomly, picked a dandelion and began eating it. "You're a little odd, you know?"

"Only to you. You have good soil here, that was tasty." He shook some grass from his hand as he spoke. "When I left home I didn't really know much about much. Now I know lots of things about lots of things. Never been to a place like this before, it's like Durjak but... more. Way more."

"Do you like it?" She sat down next to him in the grass.

"I don't know. It's different. Reminds me of Allasfere, but better." She shook her head in incomprehension at him. "It was a city back in Skal run by Skal and some dwarves but it got destroyed a short time ago. We're not sure what happened but the big crystal there consumes anyone it touches and grows a little more so everyone avoids it now."

She blinked slowly at him. "I can't tell if you're screwing with me or not."

He grinned at her as widely as he could. "Oh that's not even the worst of it."

A shout turned their heads, Kuri approaching them from the way they came. Waving them down, she called out as they approached. "You two behaving?"

"I always behave!" Sammy's tail was wagging behind him as he said it.

"No you don't." Completely deadpan. "Last week you stole a whole loaf of garlic bread right out of the oven."

"Well, it was food, so it was gonna get eaten anyways, right?"

"...That's not the..." She rubbed her temple. "Nevermind. I've blown your governments minds and now I'm taking a break while they get the panic and debating out of their system. I have better things to do than sit around with talking heads." Dropping next to Sammy, Kuri picked a dandelion as well. Popping it her mouth whole, she chewed thoughtfully.

"Not bad, right?"

"Do you both just eat flowers randomly?" A pair of nods and Abeba couldn't help but smile. "Skal must be a very interesting place."

"Yeah, in the 'oh crap, oh shit, oh fuck, it's gonna eat me' kinda way." Somehow Sammy managed to sound like he was joking. Almost.

"So, what now for the city?"

"Now... we rebuild your magma control systems, first of all. After that...? Your government wants to send out settlers."

"I'm not surprised. We always wanted a homeworld and... now we have it. We don't really need City Zero now, I guess."

"Yes, you do." Kuri shook her head. "That's the other part of it. Opening the city to settlement, expansion and trade. Somehow. We'll figure out how to link you to the main continent, but one thing at a time."

Abeba leaned back on her hands, phewing softly. "Outsiders living in Zero. That's... wow."

"Times are a-changin'." Sammy said it singsong, sprawling out in the grass.

"Why don't you come back with us?" Abeba found Kuri was looking at her. "I bet they'd let you if I asked."

"I'm already kind of set for life here if I stay. With an apprenticeship in the administration district I could be... anything. Even a tribune, someday." She went quiet for a moment, mulling it over. A whole preset path, versus... what?

What's out there?

The intensity of how much she wanted to know took her by surprise and suddenly, the prospect of a nice, safe life in City Zero seemed less appealing than it had that morning.

"On second thought... I think I'd like that."

 

The crystal shattered and Emil snapped into awareness, the dream-like state he'd been in shattered. He felt disconnected, hitting the ground face first and barely noticing it as his mind tried to readjust back to reality.

"Alignment incomplete."

Blinking twice in his helmet he started to snap out of it, slowly pushing himself to his feet. The systems in his suit didn't seem to be working. Pushing himself up to one knee he brought his arm up and tried to activate the holopanel, but nothing. Dead suit. Then a hand closed around his shoulder and lifted him up to his feet, startling him.

His helmet came off and he turned to see Ren holding it one handed, towering over him. "You good, boss?"

"I think so. Where'd the suits come from?"

"Beats me." A quick look around the room showed them in a mid-sized room cut out of what looked like volcanic glass, smooth and shiny. The door wasn't a door at all but rather a hallway with a sharp corner. No barrier at all.

"Sitrep?"

"Dude, I just woke up too. You know as much as I do."

Emil started checking himself over. "Whoever armored us didn't bother giving us our equipment or weapons. Nothing stopping us from looking around, so lets look around." Ren nod-shrugged at him and the two of them set towards the door, slipping into the hallway and finding it to be Z-shaped. At the end of the tunnel, they came out into a vast, cavernous space.

They found themselves at a high point in the wall looking out into a glittering mass of strings of light of many colors. The cavern wall was the same smooth, polished material they'd seen so far, broken by patterns and intricate designs inlaid on the walls of the cavern. Abstract and detailed with an obscene level of intricacy, they themselves were dwarfed by the webs of colored light connecting various points in the cavern. The whole cave glittered as the strings appeared, glowed and disengaged, flickering back and forth between balconies and ledges and buildings. The buildings were set into both the ground and ceiling, hanging and standing and in some places forming vast columns with pathways wound around them.

At various spaces in the cavern they could see platforms hung by the strings of light, the suspensions resembling organic looking webs.

"Whoa." Ren almost breathed it, approaching the ledge and then stepping back as the floor opened and a pedestal rose, formed out of milky white crystal. When Ren touched it there was a chime and a flash, then she vanished.

Emil was only starting to react when she reappeared, turning to face him. "Teleportation network, sir. Freaky one too." She frowned, looking away from him, which was a bit unlike Ren. "It's like when I tried Elise's ring. Only instead of having to focus willpower, I got a surge of love and all the memories around it and it's..." She shook her head.

"I think I understand. You good?"

"Pfft, never. But I'm alright to keep going. C'mon, there's more on the other side." Flicker.

Taking a deep breath, Emil strode forward and touched the pedestal. In the half-second that followed he was struck with a machine gun barrage of memories centering around his mate and daughter and when he reappeared to the other side he gasped, almost falling over but for Ren keeping him upright.

"Thought that might happen, boss."

"Thank you." He steadied himself and stood up, taking a deep breath. They'd found themselves on one of the free hanging platforms, a large one.

At the other end of it was a nightmare in black, gold and silver. It should have been a nightmare, but somehow the 'clothes' it wore - more decoration than modesty or function, whatever those concepts were to this species - gave it an air of civility. It was sitting on a large throne-that-was-not-a-throne, the seat looking nothing like what a humanoid would use. Lines of colored light glinted when he moved his head side to side and somehow, intuitively, he understood that this thing had woven the web of rainbow light holding this platform in place. Perhaps all of it.

Striding towards it, he called out. "I am Emil of House Tychorus, military of the city-state of Zero One."

"Does the one behind you have no name?"

Emil glanced back at Ren. "She's under my command."

"Acceptable. Her behavior will be considered the same as your own."

"Agreed. Do you have a name?"

"We are Ancient."

"Okay. Ancient it is. Don't suppose you know what happened, do you? We're a little confused."

"The Bringer of Love trapped the two of you in elemental crystal as he died. When I recovered the Bringer of Fear I brought you as well, sensing the powerful emotion encasing you. Even now he waits for my judgement. I have decided to speak with you first."

"May I ask why? And... what are you?"

"I am the final Master of Light of a universe long forgotten and dead. Like your kind, mine used the power of the Glow. After long eons it became a part of us, intrinsic to our being. Emotions made physical, my webs are made of my being. They connect me in ways that I cannot explain to your kind. I have tried before. It was my kind who forged the Glow Interfaces your kind call artifacts. Tools for our servants and children."

"I chose to speak with you because you attempted to defend the Cut of the Bleed. It is a weak point, the part of this pocket universe which once connected it to the reality we were split from. This is why the Bringer of Fear needed that location. Attempting to reconnect this pocket universe to an existing universe in the Bleed could only be done at the anchor point, but he is far too late to do this and would have failed in his attempt had I not intervened to allow your allies to stabilize it."

"So... you're talking to us first because he's an asshole?"

"Yes."

"Good to know. Are we prisoners?"

"No."

"Is he your prisoner?"

"Yes."

Emil nodded and Ren walked up behind him to stand at his side as he relaxed a little. "Excellent. Do you know what happened to the violet ring?"

The Ancient lifted one of its limbs, reaching out. Tugging a string of light, it pulled down, drawing out the ring it was tied to so it hung down rather than high above the platform where it had been hidden.

Emil reached out, hesitant for a moment before closing his hand around it, fingers touching the string of light. The warm familiarity of home filled his heart for a second, then the ring was in his hand. He didn't put it on.

"Thank you for returning it to us. Let's have a chat."

 

I have learned much from you. Thank you, my teachers... and now, for your education.

Before there was Time... before there was anything... there was Nothing.

And before there was Nothing...

There were monsters.

The cycle never ends. A universe is born, playing itself out until energy is equalized and it reaches heat death, priming conditions for a breach in the fabric of reality where the pressure of an emerging universe uses the equalized energy distribution to manifest itself, like a plant taking root in soil. From the Bleed universes are born. From the universe, a Mind is born. From the first mind, the Dream is manifested and then the universe has conceptualization, allowing for quantum physics and enough stability to begin the cycle anew.

The Ancient didn't have a name. Not anymore. It didn't really believe it needed one. It felt itself a survivor, or perhaps an archivist, preservation of what once was. Not in the sense of linear time, because linear time meant little to it. Its own physical manifestation in the material universe was more like an avatar, a material thing that The Ancient might sometimes wear to interact with linear beings.

It did not do this often. To experience linear time was to be partially constrained by it and there was always a sense of disconnection as the part of it that existed outside the known universe diverged from the part of it experiencing linear time, mostly due to only one of those being aware of the whole of the string of time it was walking upon. To the Ancient, time seemed more like a woven fabric of probability where an entire domain of multiverses centered on its initial creation existed all at once, always both occuring and having occurred at the same time.

It did not remember the last universe because it had not been a resident of it. It was a creation, an epitaph to the last Creation before the strange Maltusian scientist had interfered. Once discovered it had been a sort of battle of wits, with Krona trying to study the Ancient and the Ancient finding ways to make it more difficult for him to do so using both material agents and indirect action at the same time.

It had been so long. So long since anything was even capable of truly understanding it. The entire existence of the universe had seemed so overbearing, a weight of knowledge that it couldn't rid itself of. It was self-aware and there was nothing quite like it. Krona was nothing like it, not really, but the strange little Maltusian had been intelligent enough to be able to hold an interesting conversation when the Ancient took to manifesting in the material universe to deal with him directly. It had taken Krona several years to work out that the specimens he had spent so much time and effort trying to catch were more like a glove than anything else to it.

The memory of Krona's frustration at that had brought it a little cheer in many long moments during its time in the material universe.

It had been everything possible to be. Men, women, boys, girls, animals, plants, elementals. It had created what the mortals called 'magic', a sort of intelligent algorithm woven into this particular universes makeup when the 'pinhole' had been created.

It had been Krona's idea, in the beginning. Many years of effort had brought the two to a wary respect of each others abilities. Despite the adversarial nature between them, both had always felt it appropriate to allow for some dignity when dealing with each other directly. So when Krona suggested that they collaborate together to make a perfect, hidden place for work in studying the multiverses, it had seemed like an appealing idea. Such a thing would create a tunnel through the multiverse, drawing a little energy from many of them near the original universe. The Ancient would no longer be limited to a single reality, but be able to access many, many realities beyond the cluster of multiverses that it could access naturally. So much potential.

It was even working out, when Krona disappeared. The notion of using a single person connected to many multiverses had been sound, but seeing the whole of the event, the Ancient had decided in the end to simply let it play out. The individual he had chosen was fascinating in their own right and it wanted to continue to see what direction his apotheosis was taking. Krona's death had brought his meddling - and his company - to an end. That was that.

It knew how it would go and felt the loneliness of the lack of company even before the event took place in the experience of its material self.

But the event had also opened a door, allowing the Ancient to draw another through to the small pocket universe that had been created. Then several others, similar but not the same, either. In its boredom and loneliness it wanted to be distracted, to have a focus until it found something better to do.

Manipulating emotional light hadn't been particularly difficult. It was only one more part of what seemed like a weave to it. It hadn't created the rings, but rather, stole them instead, picking and choosing between events in linear time in various multiverses to take what it wanted, then simply adjusting the tools of the Maltusians to its own needs. They were an apt, intelligence sort of mortal, but still only mortal. Nothing to really be impressed about. Perhaps near the end of their universe, or when they achieve apotheosis beyond Time.

But watching the events play out, to throw the denizens of many universes together just to see what happens, kept it distracted. Each time a new arrival came it would change the direction of Time in the pocket universe and there would be a new story, a new probability. The Ancient was no longer subjected to always knowing the end of the story before the events played out.

Then the crazy bastards blew up their own batteries and the resulting damage to the pinhole had... well, not closed it, exactly. What had been a surgically precise incision between realities was now more like broken reinforced glass, shattered but still retaining the same general shape, the reach of it extending far, far beyond what the Ancient had set up to draw in others to the pocket universe.

Now pieces of universe it had never intended to be there are arriving, but the Ancient isn't upset about this. The assumption had always been that any excess damage to the tunneling would result in an incursion of the Bleed, which would have been like a hole in a submarine under thirty miles of ocean. The pocket universe would have imploded, the Ancient along with it.

It hadn't interfered, letting it play out anyways. An end to its existence would also be a salve in its own way, freeing it from being.

But this was better. Still standing and now, not even the Ancient could predict how it would go. It was so far beyond control, so unpredictable. Not being in control was a completely new concept to it.

But an interesting one.

For now.

 

"Merry Christmas!" The Boys grandparents had given him the most amazing christmas dinner, most of the family attending. It had been a good night. Most of it, he hadn't known what to do with himself so he mostly hung out with his cousin until it had been time to go home, getting to try games he didn't have because he had a different console.

So it had been a surprise when he'd been called downstairs. "Merrrrry christmas?" He was a little confused. Usually he just went to his room to do whatever. To be out of the way.

"Your grandparents asked me to let you pick one thing out for tonight, so you could enjoy it for a few hours before you go to bed."

"Anything?"

"Mhm."

He hesitated a moment, looking at the ones under the tree. In his mind he was looking at the shapes, trying to visualized things they might be. To make guesses at what his family might have chosen, so as to choose the best one. The one looks a lot like the shape of a game box... "Umm... that one?"

"No."

He blinked. "But you said -"

"Pick another one, leave that one for the morning."

"You said any one though. That ones looks kinda familiar, so -"

"Why the fuck are you arguing with me about this?"

"What? I'm just -"

"Why are you always so ignorant? You can't just leave it until the morning because I asked? Fine, take it. Jesus christ."

He wasn't sure what to do for a moment, until it was picked up and tossed across the table at him. He grabbed it to keep it from sliding off.

"Merry fucking Christmas, why do you have to ruin everything?"

He ended up playing it until two in the morning because being alone with his thoughts until he was too tired to do anything but sleep immediately wasn't something he wanted to do.

Neil growled as he opened his eyes, shaking his head in an effort to make the memory go away. To shake it off. His ability to move was fairly limited because he was strapped to a wheel hung in the air, surrounded by a yellow barrier that he didn't make. Trapped in his own light.

He was still wearing the ring and the ring was generating the construct, but it wasn't under his control at all. It had stopped speaking to him as well and it wasn't until now that he'd realized how much he'd actually enjoyed the company of the snarky, smug AI that inhabited it. Or the ability to move, for that matter. He wasn't sure where he was, or if he was still or moving or anything. Just a yellow glare everywhere that reached him even through closed eyes.

He wasn't sure how long he'd hung there. Probably a few hours, but it felt like days. Maybe it was days. He had no way to tell and no matter how long it was he never seemed to get hungry or thirsty. When the barrier suddenly blinked away he was surrounded by darkness and for half a second, he actually wondered if he'd died.

Then his eyes began to adjust to the lack of glare.

The thing looming in front of him wasn't solid. It kept changing, flesh shifting and reshaping itself until it took on a shape much like himself, but far larger. Its skin was an obsidian black and its eyes all white with no pupils. Its head alone was nearly his size and he realized that he was suspended in a massive, dark space underground somewhere.

"You are troublesome."

"Thank you."

"Hmph. It was not a complement."

"Yeah, this is fascinating and all, but since you clearly have the ability to do anything you want, you mind if we maybe get to the fucking point?"

"Hmph. Impatient." The construct manacles holding him against the wheel vanish and he drops to a small platform of the rings making, landing hard on his face. In front of him, the thing ripples, a wave passing across its entirety. Another wave, the being getting smaller each time until it's no longer a towering giant, merely huge. It made Neil feel like a little child again.

He didn't like that.

"I can do to you whatever I want." Its voice had changed and he couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was. "So what you're going to do is listen. This entire place is the work of beings far beyond what you have ever seen. This little universe. Your actions nearly destroyed it."

"Well, you know, aim high and shoot for the moon. Or just shoot the moon. I put that one down on my bucket list, but I haven't found a moon I dislike enough quite yet."

"I do not involve myself personally in such affairs, as a general rule. But now it is over and you are here. It would, perhaps, have been easier for you to die."

"Okay, that's cool. Can I have my clothes back now?"

"I am not going to kill you."

"Would it kill me to have pants?"

"I am going to let you go, because I want the game to continue. But I also want you to understand something, little mortal."

"That you really want to see my ass? I mean, you could have just a-"

Neil felt himself actually spin a little in place, the ring helping him to do so against his will, when the Ancient backhands him across the face.

"YOU ARE POWERLESS AND IF I MUST STEP IN AGAIN ONCE MORE BECAUSE OF YOU, YOU WILL DIE FOR YEARS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Neil rocked side to side a little, then cleared his throat. "Yeah man, I get it. Usually when you spank someone you don't do it to their face but hey, maybe you're just built different." Turning his head, he spit to the side, tasting blood in his mouth. Just his lip, though. "So you're the one responsible for all this, huh?"

"When you return to your citadel, remember this - whatever games you play here are yours. I don't care. But if you ever attempt to interfere with the structure holding this pocket universe in place again, I will kill you, ressurrect you, torture you, then kill you again and do it all again the next day. For decades. Centuries. I will forcefully keep you alive in a state of perpetual agony by extending your life span for the sole purpose of allowing you to suffer far longer than any mortal should ever be able to experience."

"Yah, got it. Don't break your sand castle. Don't suppose you're gonna tell me who you are, are you?"

The Ancient stared at him, silent.

"Also I could really go for some pants right nooooooaaaaaAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHA-"

Space folded around Nemesis and for a brief second, overlapped with his citadel at the same time before blinking out, leaving the Ancient alone in the cave, staring into the dark.

 

It took three days before Elise started to get it under control.

On the third day she'd been able to start taking visitors again. Talking to people. When she expressed a desire to get outside the building there was a little hesitation, but only a little.

When Ainsley had designed his keep, he'd gone for a simple, blocky fortress with a wall extending into the mountainside which formed a courtyard from the front of the keep to the main gate, allowing people to walk back and forth along the wall. She was doing just that when she saw Ainsley and Fela walking together. Stopping to watch them for a moment, the way they interacted with each other. Elise could see him at ease inside Fela's personal space, something she'd never noticed around him. He'd always seemed... not unfriendly, but slightly distant. Something inside her became profoundly sad at the fact she never really had a chance because of how she looked, what she was.

The urge to go down and beat Fela's face into a mushy pulp was pretty strong too, but by now she was getting into the habit of allowing it to burn without acting on it.

"Almost enough to make you hate them, isn't it?"

Elise wheeled around at the voice, knowing it and not believing it for a moment. But there she was.

"Vera."

"Ferret."

"My name is Elise."

"Good for you." She managed to make it not sound completely patronizing. Somehow. "I'll try to remember that."

"Why are you here? You did this to me." Elise took a slow, deep breath and exhaled. "Why."

"You're pretty pissed, Elise. I don't mean right now. You have a deep, deep well of rage inside you and you covered it up with cheery, bubbly joking. But it was always there, just underneath, wasn't it? Like poison." Vera hopped down from the edge of the wall, sighing. "Oh, believe me, I know. You also needed it. I think if that fight had gone down without you getting to hurt somebody, it might have seriously broken you. You and I aren't the kind of personality that takes feeling weak very well."

Elise just stared at her in sullen confusion. This was the most she'd heard Vera speak in at a single time. "I can't turn it off. I can't get rid of it."

"I know. That's also why I'm here."

Elise tilted her head slightly. "You want it back."

"I do. I think you've probably worked out why."

"That means I have leverage over you."

Vera's face hardened a little. "I'm doing you a courtesy coming to talk to you, Elise. Don't be stupid."

Folding her hands behind her back, Elise began to pace, hmming thoughtfully. "No, not being stupid. I don't really like this thing but on the other hand... you being able to recharge." She turned to look at Vera. "You don't know us, do you? Species altruism is built into us. Hardwired. Genkits were designed to put the good of others above themselves, to support each other even when total strangers. We made it that way. You, Vera, are a threat." She sounded grim. "Denying it to you would neutralize that threat. Until I'm satisfied that you're not a danger to us, I'm not giving you what you want."

Vera didn't stay anything, just stared at her for awhile. It was really only a minute or so but the silence seemed to draw it out between them as she stared Elise down and Elise stared back. Sensing no capitulation, Vera nodded slowly. "So what does that entail, exactly?"

"You work with us. For awhile. Until we get a better sense of you."

"I have my own interests to take care of back on Psyche, you know."

"Yes, I know. There's probably some crossover there. You'd be surprised what we're capable of."

"No, I wouldn't." Vera snort-laughed. "The fucking balls on you. Yeah, alright." She nodded slowly. "You help me, I help you. You get to go back to normal, I get..."

"Why do you want that thing anyways?"

Vera looked like she'd been struck, blinking hard. "What?"

"The red ring. You hate it. I know you hate it, I can actively feel you hating it right now so why don't you just take it off?"

"Do you think that weapon is the only part of the red light that binds itself to you? Infects you? It's not. I can't take off the ring. It would probably kill me. I've tried."

"Mind numbing pain?"

"No, when I tried, my heart stopped. Somebody putting the ring back on my hand rebooted me."

Elise frowned. "You're a prisoner too then, aren't you?"

"Sure, you could say that. But you've had a ring. Don't tell me you don't miss that power, that ability. Don't try to tell me seeing that tiger boy of yours flying around with it doesn't irritate you."

"Oh shut up." Elise sighed. "Aetius is a good guy."

"He hates that armor of his as much as you hate your weapon. Pretty funny, don't you think?"

"I'm not laughing."

"Noooot that kind of funny." Vera walked over to her, putting a hand on Elise's shoulder. "I'm not a wild, violent lunatic. I'm a directed violent lunatic." She gave Elise's shoulder a friendly pat. "Entirely different, you know."

Walking past Vera, Elise smacked the woman with her tail as she did it. "That's not very encouraging. What do you do on Psyche, anyways?"

"As far as Nemesis was concerned? Ruling my own little kingdom. In actuality? I was the reason he didn't rule every settlement on the planet. My country is the only place free of him. Most of my work was in trying to help make it self-sustaining but red rings aren't as good for building things as your blue friend apparently is."

"Ainsley would help you, if you asked."

"I don't ask for things." A flat, this-isn't-an-argument tone to it. "You want me to work with you, that's fine. You want to offer to help, I'm happy to take it. But asking? Not my style. With that said..." She shrugs. "They do ask for things. You only saw the worst of the planet, gather your friends up and come find me when you're ready. I'll be waiting for you."

"You don't have to sound like a video game quest!"

"Just going for what you know!" Vera yelled it back as she rose into the air, then took off in a streak of red.

Elise stared at the spot for a second, lashing her tail side to side behind her, ears pinned back against her head. She didn't even feel that irritated, despite the body language. But the prospect of being free...

And the coming uselessness following that.

 

The weather battered Maudre as she made her way across the fields, the wind blowing the rain almost sideways and making it difficult to see. But she knew these fields well and the compass inside her head told her which direction to go. Sometimes she would hesitate and there would be a flicker in the air ahead of her, guiding her. Her elemental was weakened in most conditions but the conditions to make lightning were the same ones that allowed it to come to full strength and project ball lightning to show its friend the way.

Usually the valley didn't see much in the way of bad weather, but ever since the world had shattered, everything had gone crazy. Weather patterns would shift suddenly, strange animals and people never seen before suddenly appearing, confrontations breaking out all over Tovalon as new arrivals sometimes clashed with the people, supplies running short from a population that suddenly grew...

Mired in her own thoughts she almost missed the light in front of her, not guiding, but stopped. The elemental was waiting for her.

"What is it?"

A flicker, two pulses. Danger.

"Enemies?"

A single pulse, followed by a gradual brightening, then a quick fade. Unknown.

"Then what's the danger?"

A repeat of the same.

"Well, I can't just stay out here! I need shelter! If I can't get into the house, can you guide me to the back of the barn?"

Three quick pulses. Yes. It began to move away, leading her.

Moving in this direction, the rain was blowing into her face and it was all she could do to follow her friend. One hand holding her hood up from being blown back by the wind, the other in front of her eyes to allow her to see at least a little. She could make out the front of the barn, a reinforced long house made of stone, mortar and metal. Not like the wooden houses they usually make.

If anywhere would stand after the storm, it would be that.

Almost sliding down the slope leading to the back, she made her way down in the mud and found herself being pulled inside by hands as soon as she turned the corner, the heavy door thudding shut and snicking as the arm-bars drop into place.

The hands released her and she whirled to see who had grabbed her. As far as she knew, she'd been alone out here. "Wh-! I know you!"

King Noah(A title he hated, but most seemed to understand; after all, Tovari had never had 'kings' before) gave her a look of surprise. "You do? Most don't know how I look, personally."

"What... why are you in my barn?" She blinked as she registered the full longhouse behind him. It wasn't just her animals, but at least forty or fifty other Tovari she had never met in her life. "Where did you all come from?"

Noah relaxed a little, looking relieved. "It's yours? Good. I'm sorry about the intrusion. When the storm began, we were a little further down the valley. We grabbed what we could, but a flash flood scattered most of our stuff across the entire area. We'll be lucky to recover any of it." He sighed. "All the carpets and cloths..."

Maudre nodded slowly. "Um, there's a food supply in here. But it's sealed and buried, to keep it cold. It's about three inches under the floor there, in the corner." She pointed behind herself, at the corner away from the door she'd entered. "I left it there in case of something like this. All my seed grain, too. I suppose you'll be wanting to use that for some of your animals."

"We can use it to make bread, too. We have stone and fire elementals, we can form a small oven. I swear that you won't go without in the coming season."

Maudre pulled her cloak off and the others behind Noah seemed to collective exhale, taking it as a sign that there wouldn't be a problem. "I'm not sure I'm going to have a house in the coming season."

"I'll make sure you do, even if I have to drag half of Tovalon here to get it done. Your kindness won't be forgotten, I promise."

Nodding, Maudre went over to help dig up the stash. To her surprise, Noah did too. After some effort between the two of them - and a short spade she'd hung on the wall for this - they pulled the chest out of the floor enough to be able to open the lid and begin passing the dried fruit and salted meat out to the others.

After that had mostly been taken care of, she found herself sitting with her back up against one of the jorka sprawled out on its side, all six legs flopped as it snored away. When Noah walked over to sit and join her, she found herself curious instead of nervous in the way she might be with visitors she didn't know.

"What happened, Noah?"

He grunted softly as he sat down, one of his ears flopping. "What do you mean?"

"Why is the weather going insane like this? Why did part chunks of the forest here suddenly change? We've never had weather like this before, it's crazy."

"I don't know." He shook his head slowly. "Saxali went with the lightsmiths to fight... something. I'm not sure what, the letter didn't really say. Just that something major was going to happen. But it's been a week now and I haven't heard from her."

She turned her head to look at him as he spoke. "Are you alright?"

"The lightsmiths, they travel almost instantly over long distances. If they haven't brought her back... why?"

"Maybe they need her help with something?"

"Can't think of what." He shook his head again. "If your house is wiped out, do you want to come with us until we can return and build another?"

"I won't have anywhere else to go."

"Well." He patted her shoulder. "A very kind person once took me in when I had nowhere to go. I'd be a shitty leader if I couldn't do the same."

When he got up and headed back to the small crowd, she found herself looking at him thoughtfully. I really need to meet Saxali. Maybe she's the sharing type?

 

Alert. Hope detected.

I glanced down at my right hand without thinking as we landed. "Ring thinks there might be a hope artifact nearby."

Elise is in full combat gear next to me, sans the weapons. The weapon bonded to her is behaving a little like my ring though, causing all the seams to glow in red lines. Against the black fur and the little mask around her eyes, it's kind of intense, actually. Every time she looks at me, she looks a little feral. "Here?"

"Nobody is more surprised than I am, but we never visited this part of the planet before."

I do love a view. It's one of my favorite things about the ring, being able to fly to any vantage point and just drink the whole thing in out to the horizon. We're standing at the edge of a sheer cliff overlooking what looks a little bit like a continental rift. Like a loaf of bread split apart at the top, a rent in the skin of the world stretches out for miles on either side of us, reminding me of the Grand Canyon. Only bigger. This rift has become large enough to fill with soil and become its own little valley, slowly getting a little larger every year. But very slowly.

Most of the valley appears to be settled in some way, which makes sense, kind of. Rather than settle on the floor of it - however far down that might be - they've dug out adobes into the canyon walls, stringing hundreds of bridges back and forth, make out of some kind of blueish rope or vine. Thousands of tiny lights glitter across the valley walls as people mill back and forth traveling around, more little lights moving with them as some folks carry lanterns of their own.

There's music drifting up to us, very faint but riding the wind as it climbs the canyon walls up to where we are. Light, playful, the tune dancing on the tips of its toes like an irish jig. The bloody sky that all of Psyche seems to have hangs overhead but this place almost seems untouched by it, somehow.

Elise folds her arms next to me. "We should be careful, then. This could be a trap."

I nod, creating a platform for us to step on, then sliding it down the cliff face slowly like an elevator. "At least the rings are more advanced, Fela's wings are pretty niche."

Elise's tail lashes side to side next to me, just once. "Mmmm. Yes. I noticed you two have been together a lot, lately."

Inwardly, I can't help but sigh. Everything she says now, she sounds like she's barely tolerating my presence. I like to think it's the thing bonded to her. "Consequences of being similar, I suppose. She's been good company." I shrugged. "But it's not a thing or anything."

"Mmm."

As we come to the top level of bridges, the people milling around have begun to notice us. Not all of them are the same dark-elf-reminders I met before and... Ring, how many of the Vali are here?

17 individuals. One breeder with a small cluster, the rest are the same gardener caste as previously encountered.

The bug folks I met below. They were helpful in making contact with the temple guards, so I should take some time to make sure things are going alright while I'm here.

As we step out onto one of the bridges, a young girl in homespun brown approaches us while the rest just sort of do the looky-loo thing of pointing and staring at the weird people.

"Ainsley and... Elise, I presume?"

I nod. "You have us at a disadvantage."

"I'm Pel. I was sent to bring you to my master when you arrived." With the absolute presumption that we could do nothing but follow, she simply turns away, heading back into the crowd. I shrug at Elise and follow her, trotting to catch up a little.

"We wouldn't have had any problems finding Vela, you know."

She looks over her shoulder at me but doesn't say anything, instead ducking into one of the adobes. When I follow her it apparently houses a staircase cut into the rock, which she's moving down.

"Never shuts up, does she?" Elise speaks quietly behind me, closer than I thought she was. Shit, she's quiet when she wants to be.

"It's not far, don't worry." Ducking into a doorway back outside, we cross one of the bridges further below where we were and enter an antechamber cut into the rockface, leading further inwards. At the far end of the antechamber, Pel stops, gesturing inside.

Nodding to her as we head down a short flight of stairs, Elise and I emerge into a large, open room. Part of it is clearly a recreational area with a couple couches and lots of pillows on the floor, the other part a kitchenette.

Vera is standing near one of the couches, on which an older man is sitting cross legged, wearing the same sort of homespun robes that Pel had. He has salt and pepper in his hair and beard. Hair tied back in a knot, bare feet with his boots next to the couch. There's something...

"Ainsley. I didn't expect you to come as well." My attention flickers away from the man over to Vera.

"Oh, you know. Friends don't let friends wander into deathworlds by themselves."

"I can take care of myself, Ainsley."

I nod. "Oh, I know. Not doubting you at all. I just didn't like the idea of you not having any backup at all."

Elise considers that for a moment, then nods.

"Ainsley, this is a... friend, of mine."

I nod to the man, then look to see what hope he carries.

And I'm hit with the most intense amount of blue light I've ever seen in a single individual. It's staggering. I can't help but blink the effect away, a little started at the man standing up to offer me his hand.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Obi-wan."

 

"Hello there."

My answer doesn't seem to illicit any response from him but the sort of polite nod you might give to anyone you're meeting for the first time. Oh well, so much for that, I guess.

"Vera failed to mention those devices have other types. I don't suppose you've ever heard of Jedi, have you?"

Elise shakes her head next to me but I can't help but sort of wince, causing him to glance at me. The only thing I can do is sigh. This is going to be really awkward.

"Uh, yeah, actually. Only, you're not real."

"Pardon me?" Kenobi seems a little taken aback while Vera just tilts her head at me, looking puzzled. Even Elise is giving me an odd look.

"When I first arrived here - not Psyche, but this place, this little... universe, I guess - I didn't remember anything. I've had a little help recovering things but mostly it's happened through association. Sometimes I'll see or hear something and it'll remind me of something from Before This, but it's always barely related to what I'm doing, some culture reference or a story. It's almost never anything actually useful. But the moment you mentioned your name, I remember a whole lot of crap about you in particular."

"This sounds really interesting, actually." Vera looks intrigued, sitting down on the couch with her arms out on the back of it, legs crossed at the knees. "Just what do you think you know about him?"

"Tell me, Master Kenobi. Does the name Anakin Skywalker mean anything to you?"

That stops him short, the amusement wiped from Obi-wan's face immediately. "I never told you my last name. How do you know either of those names? I haven't thought about the boy in years."

"Can you tell me what you know of him?"

"Very little. My master, Qui Gon Jinn, wished for the boy to be trained just before he died. He was a bit of a rogue in my order. Which I'm beginning to suspect you know all about." That gets a nod from me. "When I brought him before the council, they assessed him and decided that, ultimately, it would be too dangerous to train him. He never became a padawan but being as Force-sensitive as he was - not to mention being an orphan - we couldn't very well just leave him to his own devices. From what I remember, he ended up in the Service Corps of the temple, joining the Exploration Corps. He had a knack for mapping out new hyperspace lanes and was quickly building a reputation as a pilot when I lost track of him."

"So he was never trained, never became a jedi?"

"No."

"And the clone wars?"

"The what?"

That makes me stop up. "What I remember doesn't match up with what has happened to you. You're the same person from the story I know, but your story is different. In the one I know, Skywalker was taken on as your padawan immediately after Master Qui Gon died. He became a pretty powerful jedi, right up to the point where Darth Sidious turned him and he exterminated the jedi order. Sidious had managed to take control of the Republic while doing it, turning it into a new Sith empire and starting a 20 year long civil war."

The look he's giving me is one of mild horror. "That's... who was this Sith lord?"

"Sheev Palpatine of Naboo."

"The senator from Naboo? No, he never really gained any true political power. He went missing shortly after Skywalker was reassigned. No one ever knew what happened to him."

"My guess is Darth Maul managed to kill him. His apprentice. You know how it goes with Sith."

"That means there's still a Sith Order back home." I nod. "That changes things."

"No, it doesn't." Vera speaks up. "First of all, timelines. You know damn well your when is as important as your where and Pel being here suggests the when is optional." She glances at me. "Same order, different point in history."

I nod. "How many other Jedi are here?"

"Excuse me." Looks like Elise has finally lost patience with not being in the know. "Are you just going to spend this entire conversation without explaining anything at all?"

I nod. "You're right, Elise. Sorry about that." That mollifies her a little. "Jedi are monks. A sort of galactic peacekeeping order. They're nomads who roam about helping people and have been doing it for at least a dozen millennia when Obi-wan here was born."

"And you say all this is just a story to you?" Kenobi looks intrigued, slowly pacing the room back and forth. "Well, having spent a week here, I can't say it's impossible. This place is a madhouse."

"How did you end up here?"

"Well, for me it was Dathomir. That's where I thought I was when I came upon Vera here. So I'm afraid I couldn't say, for me it was rather like turning a corner and finding myself in another universe."

"I died." I blink, turning to look behind myself at Pel. "My ship exploded and I got stranded in space. Ran out of air. I blacked out in my suit, woke up with my face in the dirt here."

I nod slowly. "Like the universe pulling elements it thinks doesn't belong and flushing them down the drain, but we're the drain catch."

Vera looks a little surprised. "I've been trying to come up with a metaphor for that for a week. Fucker, you beat me to it."

"Sorry, not sorry."

"Ah, we're getting rather off track here." Kenobi draws a circle in the air in front of himself. "Why don't we all sit down and have some tea while we discuss things? This whole visit is to learn a bit more about this place, isn't it?"

Elise nods next to me, but I shrug. "I'm just here to hang out with Elise, mostly. This is her show."

Elise walks past the two of us, moving between Kenobi and I and invading our personal space for a second. As she does it she locks eyes with me, giving me a look I can't decipher before sitting down next to Vera.

"Okay. Ainsley, you say you know this guy. Is he okay?"

"Kenobi here is probably the most jedi Jedi I've ever heard about. He's a living personification of the ideals of their order." He's giving me an odd look. "No, seriously. Even after the order is wiped out, you had a hand in trying to revive it. I'll tell you about it some time."

"Pel?"

"Of course." As she ducks away, Kenobi moves to sit cross logged on the opposite couch and I simply hover midair, since it takes less power than making a construct seat.

"She makes very good tea." Vera takes a deep breath, then exhales. "So. Let's begin with what I've been doing here."

 

"You have farms."

Elise sounds surprised. Walking around the 'village' has been an interesting experience. Hey ring, how many different races are here?

There individuals from 17 different sentient species living here.

The people here seem... not happy exactly, but they're safe and have steady sources of food and water. It's the most alien place I've seen since I got here. Not everybody speaks the same language either, a few of the people we've met had no way to speak to anybody before the ring began doing it magic -

This ring is not founded on arcane principles.

- um. Okay, ring? I appreciate your input, you're very helpful, but when I'm inner monologuing like this it's because I'm trying to get my shit straight, okay?

Okay.

Okay. Cool. Glad we worked that out. I don't actually think you're magic, I'm just generalizing.

"Hey." I get a light poke in the shoulder and blink out of my thousand yard stare, turning to look at Pel. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Was thinking to myself, then thinking at the ring." That gets me a puzzled look. "Like Vera's ring? They can talk, sometimes."

"Really? Hers doesn't."

"Red rings are powered by rage. Honestly, I'm kind of amazed that there are Jedi here at all, I'm... still processing that."

"Obi-wan told me once that she feels strong in the dark side, but she doesn't act like any dark side user he's ever met."

"How does that parse? I always assumed the Force was just some kind of telekinesis."

"Tele-what?" Elise and Vera have wandered off, but the ring says they're not too far. Pel blinks and realizes it as she asks, then starts moving to catch up.

"Moving things with your mind. Telepathy. Stuff Force users can do, but more, there are varying levels of extremity from stuff Jedi can do to having a personal FTL travel through sheer power of mind."

That gets me an incredulous look, but she doesn't seem willing to dismiss it out of hand. As we pass through the farms in question - in reality, hydroponics bays - I can't help but notice there's a fair amount of technology, unlike back on Terra. "I'm a little more sure about you. Your friend feels a lot like Vera, but you feel strong in the Force in a good way."

"I'm definitely not. It's entirely the ring letting me fake it, somehow. I don't really understand it either."

"You said Vera's ring is powered by rage. What's yours, then?"

"Hope."

She hm's quietly as we walk. "I felt that. The tiniest ripple."

"The Force is effected by emotions?"

"Not in regular people, no. Can you take your ring off?"

"Um." I glance around, think it over for a moment and then decide my own hesitation is probably entirely me being stupid. "Yes, but I'm a little uncomfortable doing so. Very briefly, then."

Holding the ring tightly in my left hands fingertips, I pull it off my right hand just enough to break contact with the inside of the ring.

"How about now?"

"Can you try what you were doing a moment ago."

"I am a beacon of hope."

"Hmmm. Nope, nothing." I slip the ring back on. "And there you are again."

"That's really interesting. I have no idea how it's doing that."

Vera and Elise are arguing about something quietly, but I'm trying not to be nosy. "Pel, can I ask you something?"

"Yes, of course."

"Why is this place so different from the rest of Psyche? What's keeping it from being overrun?"

"Vera, mostly. Then people like us began showing up. A lot of spacefaring races get stranded here, any engineer who can figure out other peoples stuff is usually considered more valuable than money. On Psyche, expertise is currency and barter is usually supplies or technology. I've been here most of a year now. I was the first jedi to show up."

"Really?"

"Yes. Obi-wan didn't arrive until only a few weeks ago, when... something, happened. I think Vera knows but she won't talk about it. Whatever it was, a lot more of us have shown up since then. I'm the only padawan but we ended up with a master - Kenobi - and two knights. They're not in the safe zone, though."

"I hope they make it back so I can meet them at some point."

"Me too. The Nemesis controls most of the planet through force, some of it coercion. There's pockets of people hiding out or resisting the slave compounds but every moment we linger here, we're not helping them. I'd rather be out there too, but all three of the others won't let me."

"As someone who has fought that guy a couple times now, trust me, you wouldn't be so eager if you knew what you were in for. What I don't get is why. Every time I've spoken to him he acts as though he's not taking any of it seriously, even when he's fighting seriously. His personality is totally at odds with the whole fear thing. Darth Vader did it better."

"I don't know that Sith."

"He either exists far in your future, or isn't in your timeline or something. How big is the gap between you and Obi-wan?"

"About three thousand years, according to him."

"So... that..." I tilt my head a little. "Huh. Does Darth Malgus ring a bell?"

That makes her scowl. "Yes."

"Pretty sure I know what time period you're from, then. Somehow."

"Hm. You didn't explain how you know all this, not really."

"Imagine for a moment that your universe was fiction in my universe and that I was apparently obsessed with its stories, for some reason. I really don't know much more than that. When I think of your time period I get flashes of a video game I used to play."

"A game?"

"Easy, there." I lay a hand on her shoulder, projecting outward. "I don't really understand it either. I just remember things at random without context."

She takes a sharp breath when I begin waxing her hopes and the hopes of those around us. "What are you doing?"

"One of the things I can do with the ring is inspire the emotion in others. I know what anger does to jedi." I cut it out near the end of my sentence, removing my hand from her shoulder. "Did it help?"

"That felt..." She stops, looking a little distant. "I'd be grateful if you could do that again for me, some time."

"I'd be happy to."

 

"Vera!" The yell came from across the canyon. "Dispatch!"

From where she was sitting across from Elise I can see her sigh. The two of them have been meditating on Elise's anger, the root causes of it, ways she can constructively use it. A little baffling to me since Vera apparently wants the weapon back, but I can't help but get the impression she didn't count on it bonding to Elise the way it has.

Getting up, Vera leaves Elise to it and stalks out of the building silently. Just me and Pel and Elise, and the two of them are doing the inner mind peace thing. Moving silently so I don't disturb them, I slip out to follow Vera and see what's going on.

She's flying across the canyon towards the border of her zone, so I take off and fly to match course with her, moving beside.

"Didn't ask you to come along, Ainsley."

"Nope. Guess I'm just nosy."

"Hmph." She doesn't say anything else, moving a little further ahead of me so I'm out of her peripheral vision.

Coming to the border of her territory, I blink as the ring -

Alert! Fear detected.

- pings me about Nemesis, or at least somebody with his ring. Dropping off a cliff down towards the land bridge leading to the path up, I can see the yellow glow below us.

Vera lands in a three-point stance hard, shattering the ground with a sharp crack of stone breaking. I suppose she likes to make an entrance like that. For my part I lower down, creating construct robes over my regular robes and a priestly staff, since we're going for theatre apparently.

"Well well well. Look what the cat dragged in. Last time I saw you two together you didn't seem to be all that friendly, but here you are, chumming it up. Hm."

"Hello, Nemesis." I land and tap the ground with the staff, creating a construct version of a basic warding circle, then overlaying another circle over it.

Control of constructs lost.

They don't blink out. Instead, the ambient magic of Psyche begins to be pulled into the first circle by the second, the whole thing glowing blue around me. It's not strong, but it's another layer between us and him and would delay him for a few seconds, at least.

"Learning all manner of new tricks too, I see." He smiles. "Of course, if you're here, that means it's only the skunk and the tiger back home, doesn't it? They're not quite so skilled as you. Oh, and Elise of course, can't forget her. Where is my little pet ferret, anyways?"

"Busy." Vera almost grunts it at him. "Speak your piece."

"Hmm, alright. I left you alone for quite a long time in your little corner here, yet you still felt compelled to show up and fight me at the worst possible moment. Why, I might go and take offense to something like that, even."

"You were trying to end the world."

"I was trying to save it."

"I'm not talking about this world. I'm talking about all the ones that would've been destroyed."

"Oh, those. Yes, I thought you might say that." He nods, then raises his hand, snapping his fingers.

Nothing happens.

He gets perplexed look, staring at his hand and snapping his fingers a couple more times.

Nothing happens.

Fingergunning to himself, Nemesis mouths oh right silently and makes a construct hand-pad with a big button on it, then jams it as hard as he can.

We can't feel the ripple because of the warding circle, but we can see the plume of dust the passing shockwave kicks up. Vera fires herself out of the circle, the ward breaking immediately and the circles flickering out as she goes into berserker mode. But that impact, or explosion, or whatever it was came from behind us and Vera isn't used to working with me. I don't think she can, considering she ran away last time I juiced up on blue.

Instead, I arc upwards over the cliff, then back down towards the settlement.

From the air I can see what has happened. Portals are pouring out a small swarm of enemies and a few of the bigger monstrosities we saw before. I can already see flashes of red where Elise is fighting, followed by blue and green lines which I assume are Pel and Obi-wan.

Construct armor, HUD. Ring, what's the most power efficient weapon we have?

Either a railgun, or a kinetic weapon using loaded ammunition from the rings subspace pocket.

Do we even have any ammo?

Negative. Genkit plasma-based beam weapon available for hand combat.

Not good enough. No, we're just going to be nasty about it, I think. That town isn't going to go down while I can stop it. Ring, transmutation.

Firing myself down at one of the portals, I copy Vera and land hard, smashing the column apart. More are pouring out of the portal but with the flow disrupted it's getting all fucked up as they try to swarm around me, piling on top, scratching and biting and kicking and -

Yeah, okay, there's about 30 piled up and I think it's time to ignite.

The air around us, transmuted to methane and oxygen, ignites. I don't think they even noticed, to be honest. I suppose they're used to smelling badly.

The explosion blasts the entire pile apart in a rain of gore and limbs, the ring keeping me fairly comfortable and dimming the flash for me. As I get up, the enemies on the other side of the portal sort of hesitate for a second while looking at me, unsure of what to do...

Gravity cannon. Oooh, Fela's going to be annoyed with me for running my charge down. The construct fires and the portal collapses immediately, the ground underneath it blackening and breaking as the spatial distortions fuck it up. I cut the shot, re-orient at the next portal across the canyon, then fire again. The other portal implodes, but instead of aiming straight at it, I sweep the beam to the side as I flick it off, giving the entire column a glancing blow with the gravity shear. It doesn't kill all of them, not by a long shot, but seeing each other getting ripped apart as their literal blood rains down around me is giving the enemies that the third portal other ideas.

Alert! 30% power capacity warning.

Probably fortunate that they're scrambling to get back through the portal. It doesn't help, because whoever was running it from the other side shuts it down and Elise appears to be tearing her way upwards to clean them up.

At only thirty percent power I can't do too much to help Vera in this fight, so instead I head back down into town to see who I can still heal. Maybe I can save some lives.