With a bright flare of energy in the shape of a pair of crossed angelic wings, a slim man with narrow shoulders and gray hair appeared in the middle of the forest. To most, he wouldn’t have looked all that different than any average accountant or bank teller. He wore thin, wire-rim glasses along with a dark suit and tie. In one hand, the man carried a leather satchel which was held shut by a gold clasp that, like the portal that had brought him here, was shaped like angel wings.
Standing silently in the shadows of the heavily wooded forest for a few long seconds, Michael, the Seosten who had once founded the city and subsequent civilization of Rome, inhaled the fresh air before giving a small smile. Without turning, he casually addressed the seemingly empty foliage behind him. “I taught you better concealment spells than that, Duckling.”
There was a brief pause, before the figure that had been hidden there emerged. The invisibility spell faded away with a shimmering effect, as though she was stepping through a waterfall. “Perhaps it wasn’t you I was hiding from, Father.” With those words, she stepped that way, embracing the man who had adopted her when she was still no more than a babe. “I had to be sure you weren’t followed, after all.” She teased him with an added, “You are getting old and slow.” Despite her words, Gwen held him as tightly as she could, knowing he could take it.
Take it he did, returning his daughter’s hug just as firmly for those few precious seconds before each mutually released the other. “Old and slow, am I?” he shot back pointedly once they let go. “Take up your swords and we’ll see just how slow I am, little girl.” His finger moved to push against her forehead. “You know the standing invitation. You win, you get the villa in Positano.”
“That was a really tempting offer a long time ago,” Gwen retorted. “But you do know I have my own places over there now, right? You’re going to have to up the offer if you really want to spar.”
The old Seosten winked at her, a flash of white teeth showing from his grin. “Well, that just proves you’re a wimp who doesn’t want to risk her old man knocking her on her butt again.”
For another couple minutes or so, the two bantered about that and other things. They had lived very long lives (extremely long, in Michael’s case), including many years with one another. There were inside references, jokes, and discussions that could be picked up at random from decades or even centuries in the past. Much in the way a Bystander family could reference something that happened nine or ten years in the past during a conversation, Michael and Guinevere were able to easily bring up and discuss such things from over a millennium earlier.
Finally, however, Michael cleared his throat. “Ahem, if you aren’t going to let your dear papa have a nice bout with someone who can almost keep up with him on a very good day when the sun is in his eyes and she gets really lucky, I would like to see the girl.”
With a snort, Gwen remarked, “Just had to squeeze that in there, huh?” Her head shook, and she gestured before starting to walk back through the forest. “Yeah, they’re waiting for us back at camp. And they’re pretty interested in what you might say about the whole thing.”
Leading the man that way, she waited for a moment before quietly bringing up, “Speaking of the things they’re going to ask you about, do you know if…”
“I don’t know if the girl is related to me or not,” Michael gently answered. “They had all of us give enough genetic samples back when they were trying to duplicate the results of the project, so it’s possible any of those samples could have made their way to Kushiel’s lab for this.”
“I didn’t know the wings were capable of being passed on,” Gwen put in while gently brushing the low-hanging branch of a tree out of the way, holding it back for her father.
“They’re not supposed to be,” Michael replied, shaking his head while slipping past the branch. “I mean, they haven’t been before. Trust me, the Seraphim were very… enthusiastic about those tests. They tried to create more by having us mate together and with other Seosten. Back when we first found humans and realized what they could do, there was even a separate project to bond them to one of the Dyeusai.”
Dyeus, seen by Bystanders as the sun god of ancient Proto-Indo-European mythology, was actually the name of both the project that had created Michael and his six companion ‘archangels’, as well as what the Seosten referred to them as. An individual was a Dyeus, while as a group they were the Dyeusai.
“Didn’t work, I take it,” Gwen remarked, stepping out of the woods and into the camp itself. The day was still early enough that there were people bustling around doing their work. One of the on-duty guards took a glance toward Gwen and Michael before doing a double-take. He’d been warned about who was coming, of course, but that was different from actually seeing the man in the flesh and suddenly realizing who this small, unassuming figure really was.
Raising his hand in greeting to the stunned Atherby guard, Michael shook his head. “No. The Dyeus core doesn’t… pass along like that. At least it hasn’t before. I’ll explain that in a minute, when we get to the others. But the point is, they tried to make Natural Heretics and offspring from us, and never could. It was supposed to be the seven of us and no one else, ever. Until now.” His voice was quiet, but couldn’t hide his continued surprise and interest (not to mention a bit of worry) in that fact. “I’d ask if you were absolutely certain of what you said, but you wouldn’t have said it if you weren’t.”
By that point, they had reached the door of one of the cabins, where Lincoln Chambers and Athena stood. The latter gave a look toward Michael, actually flushing just a little bit before she stepped that way. Her hand rose in a fist with her index and middle fingers extended, tapping the remaining three closed fingers of the fist against her chest in an old salute/greeting. “Michael.” She used the old form of his name, pronounced ‘Mick-Ai-El.’ “Thank you for coming so soon. I know you’ve been… busy.” She trailed off a bit at the end before adding, “Gwen tells us that you’ve met with Raphael.”
“We had a conversation, yes,” he confirmed, leaving it at that. “And this seemed somewhat important.” His voice was dry with those words, before he offered a hand to the much taller man next to her. “Michael. You must be Lincoln Chambers. Have to say, I read your article about Wallace Prim a few years ago. Pretty glad he’s not a senator anymore. And I’m even more glad he’s not alive anymore either.”
“I… really should stop being starstruck by meeting you people,” Lincoln managed to mumble before accepting the hand. “Or by the fact that you’ve actually read anything I’ve written. You–you’re the… they said you were the one who… Rome.”
Chuckling, Michael nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a busy life. But let’s see your little girl, hmm? First I spend months hearing about how special she is, and now she’s got wings too? I’m already jealous of you all getting to spend so much time with her.”
Offering a very faint smile that quickly faded, Lincoln spoke in a more subdued tone. “This makes her a target, doesn’t it? If your people find out what she–what she can do, they’ll want her.”
Sobering, Michael reached out and up to squeeze the other man’s shoulder. “Yes,” he confirmed, not mincing words. He owed Lincoln and the others that much, at least. “My people have wanted to create more of me for a long time. If–when they find out what Tabbris can do, what she is? They will target her. They will want to bring her back to the ‘safety’ of their labs, to find out exactly how this happened. They’ll try to be diplomatic at first, to keep within the bounds of the truce, but there will be… let’s call it very strong pressure to at least have her visit so they can run tests. As I was telling Gwen, they’ve tried to create offspring of the Dyeusai before, but it never worked.”
“He said their core doesn’t pass on through Naturals or children,” Gwen noted. “Which raises the question of how it happened in this case.”
Athena, arms folded, gave a slight nod. A faint, thoughtful frown touched upon her face. “That’s why they’ll want to see her, up close and personal. Because they’ll be asking themselves the same question. That, and about whether they can duplicate it or not.”
“Yeah, pretty sure they can’t,” Michael noted. “At least, not the way they’d want to. I need to get a look at the star herself first, to double-check a couple things.”
“They can’t check her father,” Athena noted. “They’ve used the signature spell to see who it is, but that part seems… inaccurate. All Seosten know the glyphs of the Dyeusai, and none of them are what shows up in the portion of the signature that is supposed to indicate who the father is. I don’t even know who the Seosten that particular glyph belongs to is.”
“He probably doesn’t exist,” Michael noted with a wink. “Security feature built into our aura signatures. Our own energy fuels the spell that creates a fake result. It was supposed to protect any of our families from being targeted by giving a false answer instead of showing one of our glyphs. If someone used the signature spell to find out who someone’s parents were, they wouldn’t find out we were related.” Belatedly, he added, “I can take care of it. One of us can always signature spell the others.”
“In that case,” Lincoln started while turning to open the door. “Let’s go in and see her.”
They moved into the cabin together, entering a kitchen area where Sariel and Tabbris sat at a table, looking over some photographs of Vanessa and Tristan as toddlers. As soon as the group joined them, the two stood, Sariel raising her hand in the same salute Athena had given. “Michael,” she said simply, that single word betraying very little of what she was thinking.
Tabbris, meanwhile, tightly gripped the back of her chair to stop herself from shifting over behind her mother. Her eyes darted that way, but she stood firm. “H–” Her voice caught. “Hello, Mr. Michael.”
The unassuming-looking man smiled faintly, stepping over to offer a hand to Sariel while responding to her daughter. “Please, just Michael is fine. It’s a pleasure to see both of you. All of you, in fact.” His eyes glanced around the cabin as he added, “Everything you’ve done recently is… very impressive. Not to mention fascinating.”
“Flick did it.” That was Tabbris, piping up firmly while stepping out from behind the chair. “Flick and Gaia. And now… now Gaia’s imprisoned and Flick is…” Her eyes darted away as her voice dropped a bit. “She’s trapped in the future.” Abruptly, she snapped her gaze back up, voice rising. “But we’re getting her back. We’re gonna pull her back here.”
“I definitely wouldn’t bet against you,” Michael easily agreed. “Not after the things I’ve heard. And if it turns out what you need is more raw power to pull it off, just a bit more fuel for your spell, you go ahead and have Gwen give me a call. It’d be a shame to lose years of that sister of yours pissing off the right people. So yeah, I’ll give a hand if it comes down to throwing in some extra power. Though from what I hear, you might have an unexpected source of that yourself.”
“Oh.” Face turning slightly pink, the young Seosten straightened up. It had been less than a full day since the bonding she’d experienced with Lincoln, since… it happened. “You mean these.” Her eyes closed, face scrunching up with deep, intense concentration for several tense, silent seconds. Then they appeared. Two bright, glowing white wings made of pure energy emerged from her back before extending out a bit. Just enough for one of the wings to slice through the back of the chair she’d been sitting in, sending the wood clattering to the floor.
Gasping out loud, Tabbris quickly made the wings disappear before blurting frantic apologies. Her parents both moved as though to help her, but the girl shied away from them both, terrified of what would happen if the wings came out on their own because she was too emotional.
Holding up a hand to stop the others, Michael took a step over that way before easing himself down to one knee. “Hey.” His voice was gruff, and firm enough that the girl reflexively looked to him before he continued. “Would you like me to teach you how to switch those things into safe mode so they’re no more dangerous than a flashlight?”
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Eyes widening a bit, Tabbris stammered. “You can do that?” Belatedly, she seemed to realize it was a silly question, and turned a little more red.
Michael, for his part, simply nodded. “I can teach you a lot of things about it. But first, would you like to know who your…” He trailed off, turning his head to glance behind him. His eyes found Lincoln first, then Gwen, his own adopted daughter. Turning back, he corrected, “You know who your father is.”
That earned a single, firm nod. “Yes, sir. I already know who my dad is.” Pausing, she hesitantly added, “It would be nice to know who helped make me though.”
“Then we’ll do that,” Michael agreed, rising to step over toward the table. As Tabbris and the others watched, he produced a field-engraver, waiting for the young girl to hesitantly extend her arm. Once she did so, after an encouraging nod from both parents, Michael gently held her wrist while writing in the runes for the signature spell. At the end of it, he added a small bit that wouldn’t normally be there, explaining aloud that the addition would make the spell pull his own energy out and use that to unlock the obfuscation that was producing a false result.
With a snap of his fingers, Michael activated the spell. As he did so, three holographic shapes appeared in the air. The first looked like a circle that was broken in half, each side pulled slightly away from the other. Between the two halves was an infinity symbol, and a thick line ran over the top of the entire thing from one point of the broken circle to the other. That was Sariel’s symbol, those gathered knew. The infinity sign was attached to all Olympians, merged with their original marker.
The third symbol in the signature, the one marking Tabbris herself, also had an infinity sign mixed into it. The symbol itself looked like a wide V with the lines stretched down to be nearly flat, with only a very slight curve. Almost like the lines drawn on a landscape painting to indicate seagulls in the distance. An equally flat M sat atop the wide V, slightly smaller so that either end of it matched with the ends of the V. Finally, the vertical infinity symbol sat atop the whole thing.
Then there was the second symbol, the one everyone was focused on so intently. That was what would show who Tabbris’s true father was. And, of course, it was the last to fully manifest, given the way the signature spell had to first use Michael’s energy to unlock the obfuscation.
But, after a brief moment of uncertain swirling energy, the symbol solidified. It looked like an upside down Y, with an equals sign directly behind the point where the two legs split off, and two small, backwards, somewhat slanted C’s faced in opposite directions on either side of the top of the upside down Y. The entire symbol seemed to glow brighter and bolder than the rest of the signature.
“Well, that makes sense,” Michael murmured, staring at the symbol.
Tabbris started to ask what it meant, or rather, who it meant. But her mother spoke first, in a hushed voice. “Jegudiel.”
“Jegudiel is the most… gung-ho warrior of our seven Dyeusai,” Michael informed those who didn’t know. “He is almost always on the front lines of the war against the Fomorians, the one most committed to what he considers the honor of battle and glory. He believes in the war beyond a fanatical degree. But even more than that, he was the one of us most disappointed by the fact that our children could not…” He glanced sidelong to Tabbris before amending, “Ahem, supposedly could not inherit our gifts. He had some idea of building a dynasty of sorts.”
“So what you’re saying is,” Athena put in, “if he finds out about her, he’s going to… be interested.”
“He can be as interested as he wants,” Lincoln snapped, stepping over to reach down, picking up Tabbris. “It doesn’t change anything.”
Sariel agreed, her hand moving to cup her daughter’s face as she added toward Michael, “You said you could teach her to use them.”
“I can,” he confirmed. “I will. Soon as you’re ready, let’s go for a walk, kid.”
******
A short time later, Michael and Tabbris were moving away from the cabin together. The girl spoke quietly. “Mr–err… Michael, why is it so hard to make more of you? How come it’s supposed to be impossible for children to inherit the wings, or for Natural Heretics to work?”
“Because offspring and Heretics don’t have a Dyeus core.” The answer came not from Michael himself, but from a short-haired brunette woman (who bore a very close resemblance to a young Audrey Hepburn). She stood at the edge of one of the cabins, where she had clearly been waiting.
“Tabbris,” Michael introduced with a wave of his hand back and forth, “Jeanne d’Arc. Jeanne, Tabbris.”
Eyes widening, the young Seosten blurted, “You’re the one who uses some of Michael’s power! Wait, but that means he… he did pass some of it to you.” A frown touched her forehead. “But…”
Michael explained, “I used a ritual spell to allow Jeanne to access a small portion of my power. It keeps her young, heals her wounds, and allows her to channel that energy through her weapons. Essentially, it links her to my Dyeus core.”
“What… what is a Dyeus core?” Tabbris stammered uncertainly.
Glancing to the man to see if he minded her answering, Jeanne waited for a nod before speaking again. “You know about the Suelesk?”
Tabbris bobbed her head up and down quickly. “Uh huh. The Suelesk were the species who existed a long, long, long time ago. Like over a million years. They created dragons to try to fight the four giant monsters who almost wiped out the entire universe, and went through some kind of portal to another universe to get away from them. Seosten umm… found one of their crashed ships and built the first of our space technology off that.”
“Oui,” Jeanne confirmed. “That is precisely correct. You also know of the dragons, and how they, as eggs, are placed deep in the middle of stars, where they spend many, many millennia absorbing the energy they need to eventually hatch. Except, as it turns out, the dragons were not the first effort the Suelesk made toward harnessing the power of the stars to destroy the creatures who threatened all existence. They had attempted to create a different biological superweapon, powered by energy from multiple captured stars, that would destroy anything it targeted. A living creature capable of projecting enough firepower to casually disintegrate entire planets. Something strong enough to kill the creatures who were ending all life in the universe.”
Tabbris stared at her, belatedly realizing she had stopped walking. “M-multiple stars? Powered by more than one?”
Michael nodded. “Yes. The Suelesk encased entire stars in what humans refer to, hypothetically, as Dyson spheres. The enchanted metal superstructure entirely surrounded the star, drawing all of its power.”
“Wait, wait…” Tabbris stammered, “what you call a Dyeus core is a Dyson sphere?”
“Exactly.” Jeanne offered her a faint smile. “The Suelesk never finished their superweapon. They couldn’t get it to work. Their intention was to draw the power of multiple Dyson sphere-encased stars through the body of a single creature linked to the spheres through magic. That single creature would be capable of pulverizing whole worlds, powered by a dozen entire stars.”
Michael took up the explanation once more then. “They failed to make their experiment work in time, before the facility working on it was destroyed. Yet they did manage to complete enough work to encase a number of stars within those Dyson spheres, and started some of the work on the spells needed to link them to a biological body. When the Seosten found that research, they–we took some time to finish the uncompleted spells. Our people found that what the Suelesk wanted, channeling all that power through a single body, was impossible. But, with some effort, it was possible to channel a single star’s power using an upgraded version of the spell, one that had to be written into us at the genetic level. A spell written into our DNA that would link each of us to one of the completed Dyson spheres. That is what provides the power source we use. It allows us to create our wings, and provides the boost to our magic, our regeneration, everything. Unfortunately, our people only found enough Suelesk records to point to seven encased stars. Seven stars, seven Dyeusai. They tried linking more than one person to the same star, but it didn’t work. The way the linking spell functions, it can only be used once. It activates, links that star to that being, and that’s it.”
“But…” Tabbris slowly managed, “why would they think it was possible to pass that on in the first place, if you have to be connected to one of those stars? Wait, how did it get passed on to me?” She blurted the last bit with wide eyes.
“Like he said,” Jeanne pointed out, “it was written into their DNA. The idea was that there is plenty of power in each star, far more than one person would ever use. The linking spell could only be used once, but the Seosten thought that with a genetic relation, the spell might just consider them both the same person enough to allow more than one to connect to that star. They hoped it would just see them as the same person in multiple locations. As for Heretics, they hoped the bonding would perhaps link the human to the star as well.”
“But it didn’t,” Michael noted, eying the young girl. “Until now, at least. Somehow, you were connected to Jegudiel’s star.”
“Couldn’t they make a new Dyson sphere around a new sun and just copy the same spells to make another one of you?” Tabbris put in, looking at him curiously. “I mean, I know they’re spending a lot on the war, but they’ve gotta have the resources. And if they can just look at the Dyson spheres that the Suelesk used…”
“That latter bit is one problem,” Michael informed her. “Our people don’t know where the stars are, so they can’t examine exactly what was done to make them work. The spells are linked to them, but the Suelesk made a point of keeping the location of their encased stars very secret, and anything that actually explained their location wasn’t… among the resources that were discovered.”
For a moment, Tabbris just stared. “We–they–they’re using planetary destruction-level superweapons–wait, no, they’re jury-rigging planetary destruction-level superweapons and they don’t even know where the batteries the stupid things are actually pulling energy from are?!”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Michael grimaced before nodding. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Our people were desperate for an advantage. This was even before the Summus Proelium project. They came across the remains of the Suelesk research station that was working on the weapons, managed to decipher what was going on there, and adjusted the spells to link a Seosten being to one star rather than one constructed mega-creature to all of them.” Pausing, he asked, “And speaking of linking to the stars, would you mind if I run a brief test? I promise, it won’t hurt.”
Tabbris hesitantly agreed, and the man set out to do just that. It took him almost ten minutes of magical tests before he straightened. “Hm. I’m still not sure why it worked with you when it never worked with any of the other children. But I do see what’s happening, even if I’m unclear as to why. You are… draining Jegudiel’s own connection.”
That made the girl give a quick double-take. “Dr-draining it? What do you mean?”
Michael exchanged a glance with Jeanne before carefully replying, “From what I can tell, the power of the star is gradually being shifted over to you. You only possess a small portion of it right now, but over time you will become more powerful, while Jegudiel’s own link to the star wanes.”
Opening and shutting her mouth a few times, the young girl protested, “I–I didn’t mean to. I mean–I mean I didn’t–that’s–”
Taking the girl’s hand, Michael nodded. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. And your family’s not going to let anything happen to you. Now come, I promised I’d teach you to use those wings properly.” Winking, he added, “What about flying?”
“Flying?” Tabbris echoed before her eyes widened, a squeak of surprise escaping before she covered her mouth and mumbled through her hand, “They let you fly?”
With a soft chuckle, Michael nodded. “Absolutely. Trust me, kid, those wings are going to let you do more than you ever thought possible. Especially when it comes to protecting the people you care about. If you want to learn.”
“I do.” Tabbris quickly nodded. “I want to learn, please.”
“You’re a good kid,” Jeanne quietly remarked. “Still can’t believe I didn’t know you were inside Flick Chambers. All that time and I never guessed it.”
“All that time?” Tabbris echoed blankly, staring at her. “But we just met.”
“Technically,” the woman agreed, “yes. But I spent a semester as one of Flick’s teachers in seventh grade, back when I was looking into what happened to her mother, and learning more about the girl for myself. An entire semester posing as Mr. Rawlings and I never had a clue she was possessed. I–” She stopped, blinking at the young girl’s wide eyes of realization. “Is something wrong?”
Quickly, Tabbris shook her head. “N-no, ma’am. Nothing’s wrong. I’m ready to learn.”
She couldn’t tell them. She couldn’t betray Flick’s trust when it came to personal details like that, not even for something so incredibly minor. But now Tabbris really couldn’t wait for her sister to return. Because she really wanted to see the look on the older girl’s face when Tabbris told her that the ‘man’ she had spent months crushing on back when she was thirteen was actually the woman Jeanne d’Arc. Joan of Arc. Flick had spent a large portion of seventh grade thinking she was crushing on a man when she was actually into Joan of Arc posing as a man.
Actually, come to think of it, that kind of explained a lot.