On the bridge, Aurora stood beside the captain’s chair, her eyes scanning the screens ahead, both the real ones, and the fake ones.
Captain Gearhead was in his chair, and the navigators were in their seats, hands on the controls and eyes to the readouts. They were all frantically working, their words flowing over Aurora like summer wind, while she had one hand gripped on a railing. The railing would survive Aurora’s grip, but it already had her fingerprints indented in the metal.
Gearhead could fix it later, Aurora supposed.
“Hull integrity 95%”
“Invisibility envelope functioning properly.”
“Redirection screens working at full power.”
“Engine drain at 25%, and holding steady. 50 days of flight time remaining at the current rate. Lots of time.”
“I’m showing someone trying to redirect the screens to show the true images of the exterior in their private rooms, as expected. The Redirection AI isn’t having it.”
Aurora softly told Gearhead, “Fatewatch.”
Gearhead called out, “Fatewatch!”
Someone who was watching a very important dial at the bottom of a covered viewing screen, spoke up, “Overall fate-prognostication of the journey remains holding at 95% safe. No kaiju attack. No riots on board. People will stay in their rooms, mostly. Redirection AI will fail in an hour, leading to panic on decks 3 and 5. How do you want to handle that, sir?”
Gearhead looked to Aurora. “Normally I let them fuck around and find out. They almost always go into their rooms and huddle under the blankets for the journey.”
Aurora softly said, “I trust you do know what you’re doing, Captain, so we will follow your lead.”
Gearhead nodded, seeming happier after being informed he would not be overruled in his domain. He told the Fatewatch person, “Leave it be.” And then he looked out at the screens; the real ones being shown here, in the bridge, and the fake ones being shown all across the ship. With the voice of an old sailor, who had done this a million times already, he said, “We’re too small to be noticed, even if it doesn’t seem like it. We’re gonna be fine.”
The fake screens showed continent-sized mountains and ocean-sized rivers, and the real screens showed that, too, but the real screens also showed kaiju. Elemental kaiju, mostly, but even the living kaiju looked elemental, with craggy skin like the mountains they walked upon, or flowing white feathers, like the clouds they lived within, or foaming waters, like the oceans they swam.
There were too many of them, in Aurora’s opinion.
At least Big Blue wasn’t out there right now.
Big Silver was out there, though, beyond that ridge of mountains, its eyes looking over the edge like two small moons with pupils staring this way, but it wasn’t moving. It never moved, much. Not when you were looking. When you weren’t looking it moved too fast to see…
Which freaked Aurora out.
She tried not to let it show.
Aurora asked, “How far are we inside Endless Daihoon?”
“About 3 days from the exit; 4 if we go slow,” Gearhead said, looking at the landscape and making judgments based on experience. “So further than normal, but we’ve got a lot of High Skills on board, so that’s to be expected.”
There was no real map of Endless Daihoon, since reality here was based on perception just as much as it was based on reality. But Aurora, who had only been through the Crossing tens of times, could tell they were further in than they should be. She guessed that Gearhead’s estimate was a bit off, but, it could also be exactly right.
Aurora said, “Sail on then, captain.”
Gearhead bowed in his seat.
Aurora left the bridge and found Yoro standing there in the hallway, waiting for her. Yoro had already completed his run around the whole ship, then? It was to be expected, Aurora supposed. Yoro was highly competent, but Yoro was still just an assigned member of the project, like most people assigned by Aluatha, so Aurora had yet to really get to know many of them.
Aurora was a competent militarist, though. Even if this was her first time working with some of these people, she knew enough to trust in the assignments given to her by the Aluatha Empire.
So Aurora simply said, “Report.”
Yoro paused a little, looking miffed, as he said, “You really don’t use your Telepathy, do you?”
Aurora didn’t scowl, but it was a close thing. “We have had this discussion before. Of course I don’t pry into the minds of my subordinates. Enemies are fair game, but subordinates are precious.”
At least that’s how she tried to act. Sometimes thoughts simply slipped toward her, though.
“I think it’s inefficient, and you’re making this harder than it had to be.”
“Get on with it, Yoro.” Aurora said, as she started walking.
The doors to the bridge were soon far behind them.
Yoro walked with Aurora, saying, “And there’s the matter of security. You could look at my surface thoughts instead of me airing my concerns in the open.”
Aurora frowned at the man who had never really worked under her before today, and then she Opened her mind and Looked into his mind. As her walls fell away, she saw thoughts in the air, and in the depths of the well that was Yoro’s existence, like ten thousand spots of light, of memories, stitched together to make a person. Aurora glanced at the foremost thoughts, pulling out before she Looked too deep, though from what she was seeing, Yoro wouldn’t mind being an open story for her, or any other telepath.
… Which was a bit weird, but not the weirdest thing that Aurora had ever seen. Not by far. And not even that bad, really.
She said, “What you really want is for less work, which you think will happen because I can read minds. You hate giving reports. You’re ready to retire even though you’re only 35, and you took this job because you want an easier life. You want to read books all day, which is fine. I think all of that will happen, Yoro. I truly do. But I don’t go reading minds just because I can. It’s rude, and most people turn insular and hateful if they believe they are open stories to me. You are odd in how you react to me being able to read you.” Almost offhandedly, she added, “I’m not worried about any of the things you saw, but keep an eye on Cargo 4.”
Yoro smiled, almost wide but not quite. He was happy. “Thank you for indulging me, Aurora. I look forward to working with you.”
“I know you do.”
And then Yoro was gone, flickered away at high-speedster speeds.
Aurora waited a moment, and then she squared her shoulders and strode down to take care of a problem she had seen in Yoro’s mind; a problem that she had carefully not discussed in the open, and which was the main reason that Yoro had asked Aurora to violate his mind… One of the reasons, anyway.
At least Yoro had a beautiful mind.
He was probably trying to show it off to Aurora too, wasn’t he.
Aurora frowned a little, and then she put away her frown and went down two levels to a ‘meeting’ that was taking place between three people who should not be ‘meeting’ like they were, at all. At least they were doing it behind thick doors and semi-adequate obscuring wards, but they should know better than to trust these wards.
Aurora knocked on the door, saying, “Open up, Mother.”
Two seconds later the door opened, and Aurora’s mood plummeted.
Aurora walked into the room and closed the door behind her, taking in the sight of a dragon rite that was just finishing.
The room was candlelit, with white flames on the wicks. The altar ahead was white stone with a depression in the center and a large egg-shaped stone in that depression. White-flame candles glowed around the egg-stone and the insides of the egg-stone seemed to glitter, like a false light buried under white glass.
Master Rylan Drakemore, Grand Healer Lysara Whisper, and the final one, Duchess and Apothecary Elaria Valen, Aurora’s mother, all wore white, all of them participants in the worship of Gedahowla the Bright; in what remained of the fabled dragon’s imagery.
“I wish you could have left all of this behind, Mother, but of course that was impossible,” Aurora said. “Shouldn’t you be in your shop, anyway? Showing kids how apothecaries work on Daihoon?”
Mother was completely unrepentant as she changed the subject, saying, “I did that. I might do it again. Mark showed up, you know. He had no idea who I was.”
Aurora was not surprised at that. “The boy wants to kill things and not be involved in politics at all. Of course he doesn’t know you.”
“But he wants to be a noble. A king,” Rylan said.
Aurora almost denounced all of that as the superhero plays of Earth, but then she saw her mother, her cousin Lysara, and the family friend, Rylan, all looking a lot more serious than they should.
Mark’s little ‘crown’ in that party had made a splash, huh?
Aurora decided at that moment that she would have none of it.
Aurora commanded, “When I leave here, you will chuck the candles, the altar, and the egg, out of the ship. You will burn your robes. We will not be worshiping Addavein, we will not be making plans with his ‘brother’ in that way, and you will never again display any worship of Gedahowla the Bright anywhere, ever again.” Aurora lost all patience, exclaiming, “New gods kill the old! We will not be returning to worship of dragons at all. It is beneath us—”
Mother interrupted, “This isn’t worship. It is a hope for more of Gedahowla’s kind. It is a hope that Gedahowla wasn’t the last good dragon in the world. It is a hope for a better future. Please, continue to kill all that which threatens, but do not try to kill our hopes for a better future…” She deflated a little. She said, “We’ll trash it all once we’re done… and we’re done, anyway.”
Aurora let it go, then focused on the actual problem, “We’re not letting Addavein participate in the settlement.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Well of course not!” Mother said, “Addashield was the one who saved the family in the Reveal, when Gedahowla’s coven turned on her and killed her and half of all the Valen family, and most of the branch families. Addavein is just another dragon, until proven otherwise.”
… Aurora narrowed her eyes. “Until proven otherwise, huh?”
Mother wisely said nothing.
Lysara and Rylan also said nothing.
Aurora gripped all of the candles and the altar and every bit of worship of the white dragon and ripped it into gravel and paste, turning it all into a ball of stone and trash at her feet, the white light of the fires turning to ash in her rainbow grip. The stone rolled to the side and sat there against the wall, leaving a trail of wax on the ground. Aurora had left them their white robes.
She illuminated the air with rainbows of her own.
Mother simply said, “We were going to trash it when we were done.”
“And you were done, so I helped,” Aurora said. She flicked the switch on the wall, turning on the cabin lights. “Please return to your stations. Hopefully nothing happens on the flight, but it’s best to be prepared for that sort of thing rather than holed up in a room somewhere, worshiping dead things.”
Mother just tsk’d.
Aurora opened the door and walked out, toward the next problem she had seen in Yoro’s memories.
It was going to be a busy day.
- - - -
A full day passed fast, and Mark was back in his room, getting ready for bed, laying down in his cubby and reading on his phone. Isoko and Sally were elsewhere, watching a movie in the main hall with a lot of other people, trying to take their mind off of the increasing view of kaiju on the screens in the ship.
Eliot was laying in his bed, across the room from Mark and facing the wall. He was trying to fall asleep but he was too nervous to do so, which was why Mark was here, keeping him company. Eliot shivered a little, his vector pointed outward in every direction.
Mark spoke up, “You want me to put you to sleep? Or would you like to talk about whatever is freaking you out?”
Eliot froze.
Mark waited.
“Big Silver moved.”
… Mark paused as his heart beat hard.
Mark looked at Eliot, and asked, “Show me?”
Eliot rapidly spun a screen into view on the wall of the cabin.
Mark saw monsters crawling over the world outside, and in the space where the five eyes of Big Silver had been peering over the edge of a mountain ridge, there was nothing. Big Silver had moved.
Mark’s heart beat hard.
He wished he could have seen it move. No one ever saw it move, though. It was always either there, or gone.
Mark found himself giggling, saying, “There’s always going to be more kaiju to kill, aren’t there?”
The thrill of the hunt vibrated Mark’s entire being.
Eliot just nodded, and Mark understood that.
It was terrifying, yes, but…
Gods, Mark wanted to go out there right now… But he would just die, wouldn’t he? Yeah. So… Not yet. Not for a long, long time.
Mark didn’t tell Eliot that, though. The guy seemed terrified.
So instead, Mark asked, “Want me to take the fear away?”
Eliot was suddenly unsure.
Mark added, “I can do that. It’s easy. It’s a crutch, though. Lola warned me about doing it routinely. Facing fears is an important part of growing as a person, and to take away fears harms, in the long term. It harms growth and it harms the ability for a person to persevere. To overcome. But in the short term, it helps. A lot.”
Eliot sat up and looked at Mark. Then he looked at the floor. He gazed at the floor for a long while, saying nothing.
Mark sat up and waited.
Eliot looked up at Mark again. “Are you not scared?”
“My flight or fight or freeze response is firmly locked to ‘fight’, I think. So yeah. I’m scared.” Mark glanced at all the kaiju out there, roaming the mountains and the myriad skies of Endless Daihoon, and in the waters below. That was just what he could see, too. Mark was sure there were tons of monsters too small to see from here. Endless Daihoon was truly a realm above the Two Worlds, which made sense, since it was the size of the entire magnetosphere, all the way out to the moon and beyond. Mark turned back toward Eliot. “I’m going to fight. Not freeze, or flee. But fight.”
Eliot grinned a little, though it was strained.
Mark waited.
Eliot said, “Take the fear away, please.”
Mark pulsed his heart with a union of fear and acceptance, giving both his and Eliot’s dark emotions to the world, and taking in relief from the fear. Eliot sighed out wonderfully, his shoulders relaxing, his eyes fluttering. He laid back down, and after a muttered, ‘Thank you’, Eliot was asleep.
Mark smiled a little bit.
He read some more before he turned in for the night, too.
- - - -
Mark woke up and tried to get meetings with people, with Marigold, and with Grand Mage Solari, but no one was working. Noel, the guy from the Hero/Villain Program, was completely unable to be reached, at all, though Mark had seen him in the mess hall a few times. He wasn’t looking movie-star perfect with his eyes that sunken from lack of relief, but he’d be fine. Eventually.
Mark hung out with Eliot and the crew and took in some shows in the grand hall, to pass the time.
He made some adamantium over the resulting few days of not being able to do much at all, but he kept that stuff in his room, away from prying eyes, and scanning devices.
And he studied. History, geography, and a bunch of other stuff that he had uploaded to Quark before he left. Reading material, basically.
- - - -
The crossing passed without incident.
On one bright morning, Grey Whale flew through a rainbow, out of a fog bank, into a world where the skies were mostly blue, but still made of colored light, and the world below looked like Earth, but not.
They were on Daihoon.
Without incident, without issue, they had made it past the first major hurdle of the settlement project.
Mark once again stood in the noble’s viewing platform with Sally and Eliot, and also Isoko this time, to watch the world ahead of them and share some glasses of wine with the whole ship, for a crossing well made. And then the news started breaking that all of the screens during the whole trip had been showing lies, AI-edited views of the world beyond, and people started having small issues with being lied to, even if the lies had been for their benefit. Mark understood their anger, of course, but also, so what?
Aurora assured everyone that this is how it was done during a Crossing, to keep people from freaking out. Endless Daihoon was dangerous, and this was why they wanted to make a portal city to connect to Memphi, and why Tokyo’s portal was so popular.
Isoko smiled a little bit as she turned and asked, “Eliot! Did you manage to capture any videos of the super-kaiju?”
Eliot shuddered, and said, “They don’t exist.”
Isoko raised eyebrows. “So you deleted them.”
“They don’t exist!” Eliot said.
Sally shuddered as well, and then she said, “Hit me with the no-fear, Mark.”
Mark did so, and then he included Eliot in the same thing as Eliot made a ‘hit me, too’, gesture—
Isoko said, “You shouldn’t do that too much.”
Sally said, “I know.” She relaxed. “But a little bit is fine.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Eliot said, already seeming better. And then he looked out across the world, across the southern oceans of Daihoon, and Mark gazed with him. “And that’s certainly a sight.”
It was summer at the South Pole and though the sky was auroras, it was also bright blue, and the world was illuminated just as it would have been on Earth, with Antarctica pointed toward the sun. Scattered icebergs rested in the waters far away from the green lands of the Southern Continent, which was Daihoon’s name for Antarctica. Rocks floated here and there in the sky, the rainbow lights of the Crossing casually reaching down from the sky-blue auroras overhead to dance across it all, to pass across the bow of the ship like so much soft brightness.
Already, Mark could tell that the people on board were forgetting the fear of the Crossing. It had been just like Sally had said. Like childbirth, the pain was forgettable unless you were in the moment.
Mark was already enthralled with what came next, anyway.
Mark softly said, “Floating mountains.”
Isoko laughed. “You want one, King Blackvein?”
Mark scoffed. “Those only float because they’re so close to a Crossing. You can’t tow them anywhere.”
Isoko ribbed him, “So you’ve done your research!”
“I had to do something sitting in my room all of the time.” Mark added, “Maybe now that most people aren’t freaking out and huddled in their cabins, the business meetings will resume.”
Grey Whale sailed on.