An errant soul forged in the heart of a star. Imperfect, unintended. Longing.
*
A missile trail sliced through the clear blue sky. In the city-state’s streets shoulders dropped, eyes welled up with tears. Peace talks often ended this way in Cerulea, a prolonged ritual of gathering kindling for another war. The missile dove.
Some ran, most knew it wouldn’t help.
In the stairwell of one of the spare few skyscrapers, a disheveled man ran up and barged through the door leading out. A loose, ragged jacket hung over his lanky figure. “It’s now or never…” he mumbled. “I can hear you out there. Come on.” He stomped on the rooftop, shouting at the sky, “Show yourself!”
Bolts of red lightning erupted from thin air. The man cheered, throwing his grey beanie in the air in triumph. But the lightning bounced off the metal plating. More lightning, then shards of scarlet ice, spurts of flame. Nothing.
“Do something!” he screamed as the missile slipped through the skyline. In an instant the man was gone.
Face drowned in scarlet light, the man caught the missile. But not with his hands. Streams of bright red light burst from his arm, disintegrating the limb but holding the projectile at bay.
“Run!” His voice echoed through the streets. Whispers failed to coalesce in his mind, coming apart moments before making sense. “Whatever you are,” he panted, looking at his bones splintering painlessly, “thank you. I knew I wasn’t insane. Just… use me. Let me be worth something for once in my life.”
Face pained, he pushed forward. A voice within screamed, “No!”
A click, the warhead’s pressure sensor activated. A dense black fog covered the city down from the streets filled with terrified souls up the clouds, coating everything in a thin layer of dark hyper-conductive mist.
The missile’s warhead rotated, exposing a pair of white rods made of white crystal. A spark. In instant the city had served its purpose. That blast shattered the terraformation rod below, rocking the planet with earthquakes for days.
*
Thrown across a cell, the last few years of Gunnir’s life felt like a distant dream brought to an abrupt end when his back hit the iridescent wall. On his hands and knees, he peered at the guard at the door between blades of straight black hair, “That easy, huh?”
A slammed door. His head hung low, the cell’s darkness softened by the snaking glow from the wall he had crashed into. The ceiling flashed to life, forcing his eyes down at his finery drenched with sweat. Lined with precious crystals, the patterns of blue flowers over white cloth still thrummed with the rhythm of his breathing. He slowed his breathing and the flowers bloomed, releasing specks of sapphire dust in the cloth over his chest. His jaw trembled. Anger, sorrow, fear. Scrunching his nose and shaking his head, he laid his forearms on his knees. “This isn’t supposed to happen to me…” he mumbled weakly when days prior he shouted it, screamed it at the top of his lungs. “A threat to the natural order, vafalk.” He cursed some more but it did little to loosen the knot in his throat. All the poetry and music, all the wisdom immortalized in ink-stained pages, they did little for him then and he had little faith that they would do much more later.
If the protests of his mother were so easily ignored despite her diplomat protections, if the woman he was betrothed was the one who sentenced him, if the woman he loved in secret was the one that shut the door on him; what good could anyone else do? He bit the edge of his lips with his canines. “Hell is a product of apathy,” he mumbled. In that moment, all of that private tutoring for the empire he was to inherit fell apart and that one sentence was the only thing running circles in his head. He slammed the wall he sat against with his back. With a crackling sound, the iridescent wall deformed itself, growing small bumps; pastel blue and white with a soft pink glow right under the seemingly soft surface, exilium. He glared at the crystal but at least he wouldn’t trigger its catalyzation. Not by mistake at least.
Extending an arm away from his body, he snapped his fingers and sparks danced in the air above his hand. The exilium wall grew spikes. Sharp and searching for the released azir. He looked at the door. Metal. He narrowed his eyes, looking back and forth between the newly created spikes and the door.
“I wouldn’t try that, Gunnir,” said a voice from a speaker hidden in the ceiling.
“Oh, you remember my name?” He pushed against the wall to stand up, eyes almost shut from the bright light he looked up nevertheless, “Gotta hand it to you, Lydra - the award for most batshit post-break-up behavior that is. Is this,” he gestured to his surroundings, “really why you called it off?”
She whispered into the microphone, “No, we did that because it was always about you and you couldn’t less about the rest of the world. But,” he could almost hear her shake her head full of long auburn hair, “this has nothing to do with us. The temple’s rounding up people left and right and…”
“You’re going along with it. You don’t care what they’re going to do to me?”
“You're such a child! Is this really what you think is—,” Lydra snapped back louder than she should have given the string of apologies he overhead from a muffled microphone.
He looked down. Not only to give his eyes a rest but to give himself something he hated: room to think. Back against the side wall, he slid down and sighed.
Hours passed.
The door opened. Gunnir looked up to find the barrel of a gun pointed right at him beneath the drowning light. “Well that was pretty roundabout,” he said with a smirk, “could’ve taken that option a few days ago.”
“Get up,” said an all-too-familiar voice.
He lowered his head, squinting more to see her face. Part of him wanted to be happy to see a familiar face, but the truth was that his eyes were far more drawn to where the barrel of the gun was pointing. Without a word, he rose to his feet and obeyed Lydra’s instructions. First turning around and letting the two other guards secure the cuffs around his forearms and elbows. Lined with exilium on the inside, they would rip through flesh and shatter bones if he tried to cast a spell. For once he counted himself lucky he could barely light a candle. And that was the problem, that he could conjure flame and thunder, ice and water. He hadn’t been, as the temple called it, sundered. Shoved forward, he lumbered through the cold grey corridors.
Walking by glass walls, Gunnir saw the planet far below. It shone in the light of its home star, glistening in the darkness of space as if nothing had happened. Its clouds shifted in peace, beams of bright light piercing through toward the fleet of ships in orbit.
Slammed face first into a wall, he groaned. The sharp elbow on his spine made breathing hard. “What was that?” she shouted into his ear. Getting closer, she whispered, “Two lefts and a right. Fast.” She loosened her pin, “That’s what I thought. Alright, slowly, forward.”
One of the guards laughed, “And here I thought you’d gone soft on those heathens.”
“Please,” she snickered as she stood back in line with the pair of guards. With a flick of her wrist she titled her rifle and slung a bullet through one of the guards. Gunnir spun round. She elbowed the other but as she swung the rifle around he managed to get a shot off with his pistol. The bullet tore through her chest and blood sprayed in a spiral pattern behind her, but she held her trigger and emptied the energy rifle in the last guard’s stomach, the scorching beam almost cutting him in half.
“Shit!” Gunnir tried to pull himself free of the cuffs but couldn’t.
“Run, idiot.” She panted and winced, clutching her side as the pair made it through the orbital station.
Her uneven steps made him turn to face her. “Take this thing off me and I can heal you,” said Gunnir, trying to move his hands.
Lydra laughed, “no you can’t. All that azir and you barely ever went to class,” she gave a brief smile, “I was there, I remember. Can’t trust you with a wound like that.” She was already drenched in sweat, her hair sticking to her pale skin.
Mouth dry, he slowed down to match her pace, “at least I can help you get to where we’re going faster,” he struggled against the cuffs, feeling some spikes digging into his skin, “take these off.”
“The closest shackle station is where we’re going, just—” a speaker in the collar of her knight-like armor emitted static, “vafalk. Okay, go. Just go.”
“Yeah,” he nodded urgently, “okay let’s go, we’re almost there, right?”
Pained, she raised the rifle at him, “They cut off my suit from the rest, the alarm’s on.”
“I’m not leaving you,” the wrath on Gunnir’s face was brittle facade for the mounting sorrow he held close as her eyes unfocused. “And I know the gun’s dry.” She let it fall, clattering on the floor. Her eyes closed. “Hey,” he shouted, “don’t… do this. Why would you do this? For me? I’m the last person who deserves-” A drop of blood striking the metal beneath them silenced him.
“That’s what you never understood,” she smiled for a moment before the pain robbed it from her, “it’s never been just about you. Or just me,” she opened her eyes, and the gaze of her golden eyes and words both pierced right through him, “we’re all in this together.”
Gunnir knelt and slid his head under her arm, “Then we will go together.”
A few steps later they made it through one long glass corridor leading to a vacuum-sealed door. Hanging onto him, and barely hanging on to consciousness, Lydra entered a code at a door, muttering to herself “Please don’t be gone yet…” With a bloody knuckle she hit the final key and the door slid open. Inside, a dozen of people starred at the pair as they lumbered in. They stood around a loading spacecraft, a small thing but enough to take everyone there away. One by one the prisoners were getting their exilium cuffs removed by devices lodged between the three doors leading to the hangar. “Need help here!” shouted Gunnir.
One of the guards helping with the cuffs ran over, “Lydra, what did you do…” He knelt by her side and removed his gloves before a host of green filaments leapt from his skin into her wounds. She winced at first but relaxed her shoulders a moment later.
“Is it just you two?” asked Gunnir.
The friendly guard shook his head, “A ship’s already gone and we had, uh, help but I don’t know if it’s still here.”
“It is,” Lydra said weakly, “I can feel it here.”
The man turned to Gunnir, mouthing ‘It’s not’. “I need you to focus on resting, Lydra, okay?”
She nodded but just at that moment the two doors on the other end of the room burst open. A guard, with their helmet up and equipped with a flat shield made of exilium barged in. Their raised hand held a mace coming down on a greying woman still in cuffs. She turned away, screaming. A bolt of scarlet lightning struck her out of nowhere and in a split second, she had shattered the exilium cuff and moved out of the mace’s path. With her bare fist punched through the shield, the spikes on the shield shattering on the red haze that covered her body. The guard blasted backward.
“What the fuck?” Gunnir blurted.
At another door, the guards charged in. As quickly as it overcame her, the red phantom bolted to another person, repelling the guards in a flurry of expertly executed strikes finishing with a devastatingly precise spell that bore through the guards without striking the orbital station’s walls. As more guards came, the scarlet lightning bounced to a new host each time, its previous hosts drained, too exhausted to stand. The guard tending to Lydra ran past the, apparently possessed, prisoners and overrode the doors, shutting them and isolating from the station’s control. He ran back to Lydra and Gunnir but the red phantom took hold of him. He beat back a string of guards and just as the strange red light left his body, he managed to close the second door. Only an old man with a cane, small children, and a couple of teenagers were left. And Gunnir.
“Right, sub-optimal,” he whispered to himself. Breathing rattled, Gunnir’s eyes raced from one piece of the broken puzzle to another. “Red thing good, but just one time and it drains people.” A flood of questions barged through his head but he caught a glimpse of Lydra. He exhaled hard, composing himself.
“Kids,” shouted Gunnir, “I know it’s scary” he willed his knees not to shake but he wasn’t sure if it worked, “but just help everyone on the ship, okay?” He caught the eye of a couple of teenagers and with a series of nods they understood each other and got to work. Gunnir looked behind him, at the long glass corridor that led to him and Lydra, still on the floor barely conscious. “Hey tall kid,” he directed to one of the teens, “help her, be gentle.” He wanted the cuff off, but he knew that whatever that thing was, it could make him break out of them. Glaring at the empty corridor, the wait became unbearable. Maybe the other friendly guard would wake up? He looked in shape and he could use his azir. Maybe Gunnir would just be able to board the ship and he wouldn’t need to be taken over. Who was going to pilot the ship? “Vafalk…” Gunnir drew out the curse under his breath. He almost dared more guards to come. Looking back at Lydra slowly making her way into the ship with the boy’s help, the realization sunk in that if he hadn’t made them late this could have all been avoided and that she had gladly threatened him with a gun to leave her for dead if that meant he got to live. With a sharp exhale, he returned to staring down the empty corridor. As pathetic as he thought it was, it was the best he could do.
A door opened on the other side.
Gunnir blood froze. A small round object flew through the air. In a mad dash with his arms still bound, the only thing he thought of was to steal one last look at Lydra, thinking of everything she had said, before diving on top of the grenade. Mid-dive, his mind went blank. “You?” The voice breached through his skull, coating and overwriting every thought, “You can fight.” His hands burst free from the cuffs and he caught the grenade. Bathed in red light, he watched his own hands contain the explosion in his palms before crushing it, releasing the force around him in a slow but forceful gale. Straightening up, Gunnir stared down the guards. He felt power like he hadn’t thought possible stream through him, like a torrent of stellar fire flowed through him and filled every fiber of his being with unrelenting force. “Hold back just a little,” said the voice in his head, “and we’ll save everyone. Together.”
With two fingers, Gunnir pointed at the line of guards. Foreign memories flashed through his head, creating a dissonant high-pitched whistle until the body in the memories matched his stance. “Dark Waves.” His voice echoed through the air. A bolt of black smoke pierced through the guards. Gunnir’s entire arm snapped back, breaking in three places from the spell’s recoil. Each wound on the guards expanded like ripples in water, killing them slowly. “I’m giving you the most I can without killing you, do not pull for more,” said the voice within, “I can’t even guarantee you’ll make it through this without significant damage as it is. So, focus if you want to get them out of here.” Gunnir panted as a soft green light appeared under his skin as his injuries mended themselves.
More guards in the distance. Gunnir regained control of his vocal chords, “Understood. Now it’s one for all.” Roaring scarlet light morphed into a spear and a sword in Gunnir’s hands. “No,” replied the scarlet phantom, “we do this together.”