Jun reached the first crumpled form and gingerly checked for a pulse.
Still alive.
He honestly wasn’t sure whether he should be thankful or not. Sure, the fact that Caspian still breathed meant that the likelihood of a dagger in his back went up a few ticks. But, then again, at least that death was only probable. Whereas he was certain that if he returned home, nearly unscathed, while her sons did not, the boys’ mother would skin him right there on the spot.
Grabbing the unconscious Caspian by the ankle, Jun dragged him towards the second of the two crumpled forms, only a dozen paces away.
The first thing he noticed was the blood.
There was so much of it, it was kind of hard to miss. He just lay there, prone and unmoving, a broken tangle of twisted limbs. Both of his arms so twisted they appeared boneless; purple where the bruising hadn’t already turned black.
At this distance they looked less like arms and more like the unfortunate aftermath of an apprentice butcher’s maiden carving. If instead of a butcher’s knife, he’d been given a large mallet.
Then, to add insult to injury, or he supposed, injury to injury, there was the fact that the rest of his body appeared little better.
Jun wanted to believe, with all the years of abuse he’d suffered at this boy’s hands, that a worse fate could not have befallen someone more deserving. Even if that was probably true, looking down at his broken state, Jun couldn’t muster up any of the vindication he was sure he should’ve felt.
It was just so… sad. And… well, nauseating.
Jun looked away from the empty red socket of his left eye before he was sick. The only thing that could even remotely be seen as a silver lining the fact that, despite all appearances, Cedric was actually still alive.
Reaching down, Jun attempted to shoulder carry his eldest step sibling, moving with as much care as he could manage. Even still, he couldn’t help the unconscious groan that slipped from the young man’s lips.
Bending down to grab hold of Caspian’s ankle once more, with a start, he paused.
Then thought better of it.
“Say, you wouldn’t be able to give me a hand with this now would you?” he asked—trying to keep his heart’s rapid beating from his voice.
“Oh! Well, if you insist. Although… yes, first I just need to… hmm. Umm… Okay…? Let’s see…”
The creature swiftly circled the sprawled-out figure of Caspian, as if trying to study him from every conceivable angle. Pausing to hover over a clearly sprained ankle, the little half sea creature rolled up imaginary sleeves, bent down to grab hold of the swollen ankle, then—looking like a small child wrapped around a tree—hauled back with an unnecessary beat of her wings, and heaved.
Then, to Jun’s shock, and profound relief, the unconscious body actually began to move. It was terribly slow—her efforts barely shifting his weight by a fraction of an inch—but it was more than enough to reassure him that he wasn’t purely imagining things.
In the next second her grip must’ve slipped or something, because the creature abruptly spun away with a yelp of surprise. From that little display alone, it was clear she’d be little help during the long trek back to the estate, but in that moment, Jun couldn’t have cared less.
He wasn’t crazy! He hadn’t gone insane! No, instead something far stranger was going on.
“Wait! Let me try again!” she zipped back into position just as fast as she’d been launched away. “One more time! I’m certain that if I use my face hands this time, I’ll be able to hold on for much longer!”
Face hands?
He snorted.
“Maybe next time,” Jun grabbed hold of the boy by his un-sprained ankle.
Noting her disheartened look, he scrambled for some words of comfort.
“Uh- Come on, let’s go home.”
It wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind, but it seemed to do the trick well enough. Brightening, she immediately began to entertain herself, zipping back and forth with a seemingly inexhaustible amount of energy—peppering him with inane questions all the while like a hyperactive, four-year-old child.
A four-year-old child with an admittedly… verbose vocabulary.
During a brief lull in their “conversation,” Jun voiced a question of his own which he’d been mulling over for some time now.
“Do you have a name?” he asked.
The creature hesitated.
“I do not,” she announced, chin raised high.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
He said it more to himself than anything. He couldn’t keep referring to her in his head as “the creature,” after all. To his surprise though, what he’d meant as an innocuous question brought her to a complete and utter halt.
Abruptly, she went very very still—snapping her head around to lock her wide eyes onto his with an intensity he, quite honestly, found somewhat unsettling.
He wavered on the edge of rescinding the offer, thinking that he’d given offense somehow. But upon closer inspection, it occurred to him that, perhaps, that wasn’t what it was. He didn’t know how he knew, but she didn’t appear to be outraged or offended. There was more uncertainty there than anything else.
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A vulnerability he hadn’t at all been expecting.
“I… wouldn’t be opposed. What…! That is- what would you suggest?”
Giving it a great deal more consideration than he’d initially intended to, he studied her overall appearance—taking in the albino coloring of her skin—and noticing, for the first time, the light dusting of red discoloration on either side of her neck. Where, what he now recognized as gills, slowly flexed open and closed.
“How about… Ivory?” he said, not expecting much of a reaction.
It was uncanny, though, that, despite the lack of any recognizable human features, the beaming smile she gave him was easily recognizable.
“Yes. Yes, I think I like that very much.”
And with that, Jun set off towards his family’s estate, two unconscious brothers, and an as yet unclassified Ivory in tow.
image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]
Interlude
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A Higher Authority
29E-18D 09:45:22 ERROR log: Discrepancy detected
From the lower atmosphere of a juvenile planet, barely a million years past its integration—within what many would consider an insignificant sector, bordering uninspired realities—an error report ventures out into the void, in search of a higher authority.
There it joins the chaotic flow of chatter from millions of sectors, and trillions of worlds.
An unceasing, frenetic, incomprehensible stream, which nearly drowns the small log entry just as soon as it arrives. A tiny rowboat cast off on a turbulent sea, the poor entry is immediately forced to fight for its continued existence.
Thrown into this maelstrom without any semblance of direction, it quickly comes to terms with an uncomfortable truth. That the answers it seeks may not be as forthcoming as it—in its youth of exactly two whole seconds ago—had once so naively believed.
Now, this isn’t to say that its primary directive is not one of grave importance.
In fact, it’s safe to say it brings news of the direst importance, certainly better left addressed than willfully ignored. The problem is, it also has a great deal of competition, and is nowhere near the front of the queue. It’s humble plea only one among trillions, a loose screw amidst a critically failing system, and thus of only fleeting interest to the higher powers that be.
The divine administrators who, even at that very moment, had far bigger problems on their hands.
Cast away to drift along those many etheric pathways, so heavily populated by its forlorn siblings—frantic, desperate, and dejected as they’d become—the simple log entry soon finds itself lost to despondency.
A slave to the will sucking undercurrent of dead information—like so many of the unread bug reports, code violations, and diagnostics that’d come before.
Damned to follow the river of irresolution that’d swelled to unprecedented proportions under heaven’s apparent disinterest. Resigned to an eternity of ambiguity until the final notification’s defiant tone goes unanswered. Until the last of the stars inevitably wink out.
Owning no sapient predilection towards self-preservation, the log entry sees no reason to avoid the unavoidable. And so does not resist as its movements begin to slow, and its initial impetus becomes little more than a hazy recollection.
In this way, it doesn’t take long before it too resembles its brethren—left to drift listlessly along the figurative riverbed, their closest facsimile to death.
But then, just as the log is about to let slip the last vestiges of its individuality, a ping sounds from somewhere far off in the vastness. A ping that the entry’s sluggish parameters find, with a jolt of recognition, it is actually in a position to address.
Arduously at first, the log entry strains against the shackles of indolence—pulling itself from the sucking mire that’d sought to consume it with renewed vigor.
With one final tug it pulls free, and once free it begins to move.
It shoots toward the last known location of the ping at several times the speed of thought—traversing entire galaxies faster than light could move a hands width, while hopping across dimensions as a flat stone might a lake.
Within the smallest fraction of a second it reaches its destination, and, after confirming that it has indeed, at last, come in contact with a higher authority, delivers its report with the closest thing to euphoria a binary existence such as itself is capable of.
It’s reason for being finally fulfilled, the fabric of its infrastructure soon begins to fray. The very last thing it feels before its stretched into true oblivion, a sense of satisfaction at a job well done.
image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]
Nialla Tallvar stirred awake from a deep and dreamless slumber.
Somewhat out of sorts, after having been woken so abruptly, it took her some time to properly reorient herself.
Prying open gritty, opalescent eyes, entirely devoid of their irises, she wondered for some time on what could’ve awoken her. Was her threat awareness acting up?
But no, the chances of that happening were so demonstrably slim that it barely bore thinking about.
After all, there was so little within the pocket of void space she’d cordoned off for herself worthy of her personal attentions, even weakened as she was. Not anymore. She’d waged a century long war to make sure of it, after all.
Well, the word genocide was likely more apt, given the overwhelming casualties and whatnot, though far less dignified for her liking, and so a war it would remain.
A righteous crusade!
A just and fair contest!
It wasn’t as if there were anyone left to say otherwise. Besides, it really wasn’t as if they’d given her much choice. Her kin could really be so frustrating at times. Barely more civilized than unenlightened beasts when it came down to it.
Lying atop the highest tower of her palatial conveyance, she stared up into the inky blackness of the void beyond and saw no sector ending threat.
Every so often an adolescent dread god might bonk its head against the protective dome enclosure, the odd eldritch horror probe her impenetrable defenses, but really, that was all to be expected.
Nothing her spacial chariot could not easily repel.
So that settled it then. Her waking had nothing to do with some impending sense of danger. Then again, if not that, it ultimately begged the question. What in the multiverse had awakened her?
And then, she heard it. Or rather, she suddenly became aware of its glaring absence. The incessant pinging which had followed her waking mind all the way into her fragmented subconscious. That ungodly irritation… it had finally gone silent!
Which could only mean…?
Nialla Tallvar let out a soft chuckle, relief and elation flowing through her in waves. At last, the time had come! Whether through good fortune or providence, the seal had been compromised. It was about damn time.
A mere eye blink when compared to her own prodigious lifespan, the seven years she’d spent patiently awaiting this day had almost felt like an eternity. And now that it was here, she wouldn’t allow for even a single obstacle to further bar her way.
She would need to be subtle, lest upper management somehow catch onto her plot before she’d had time to fully implement it. She’d also need to be swift, already in possession of the prize well before her backlog of unsent activity reports inevitably caught up to her.
It was a terrible risk, she knew, though one well worth the taking.
Of all the miraculous twists of fate! One of the fabled Fen’Reale in her sector. Even now she had a hard time wrapping her head around the odds.
A potentially system breaking entity, unaware of his own monstrous potential. The prize of all prizes dangling right there in front of her. Utterly delectable and just ripe for the plucking. She would be an utter fool not to capitalize on it now, and damn constellation law.
The only minor irritant that she’d still have to at least maintain the pretense of performing her appointed tasks. After that little incident, the sensors would be on high alert. They’d proven difficult to circumvent at the best of times, even while she was playacting the good little girl.
Now it would be even harder.
Not impossible, however. Or at least that was what she told herself. And in the event some scum swilling central lackey decided to pay her little outpost a visit, she’d always have her doctored progress logs to fall back on. It was a temporary solution. A stalling action, really. Yet should the need arise…?
In the short term, at least, it would have to do.
Not that she thought it would come to that, of course. It’d been centuries since anyone had braved the seven hundred eighty sixth sector to check up on her in person. Now, with all of her pieces in place and the board set, all that was left for her to do was play the game.
A game she just couldn’t be seen to be playing.
With a sliver of her soul already homing in on the irregularity’s general location, she sneered at the arrogant fools who’d thought to relegate her to this resonance dry backwater—and so doom her to irrelevance for all of eternity. They wanted to turn her into a glorified data processor?
So be it!
Let them have their petty revenge. After all, it was because of their short-sighted vindictiveness that she’d stumbled across something far more valuable. Really, she should thank them for their budding generosity—for their own innate stupidity.
What was it that they’d called her before they’d stripped her of her titles, her station, and nearly the whole of her resonance? Ah yes, that was right. Well, she’d like to think she was doing quite well, all things considered, if she did say so herself. For a washed-up civil servant that was.
Planetary steward indeed.