I stood transfixed, watching the ball of dark energy plummet toward me in slow motion, growing ever slower until it stopped completely halfway between myself and Matthew.
“This is a strange memory,” I said aloud.
“How so?” a sage voice echoed in my mind.
It was comforting and familiar. I knew I had never heard it before, yet recognized it still as the Voice of the Archer.
“Well, it’s strange because it’s so recent. Barely a memory at all,” I said.
“Memories are all the things in the past, even if that past was only a few seconds ago,” the voice said. “They are all equal in that they represent the things you cannot change.”
“But I...”
“Yes?”
“I want to change this one,” I said sadly.
With a thought, the memory played forward in slow motion. The ball of dark energy left Matthew’s hand, barreling toward me. Suddenly, Dick entered the frame. His giant rock form cutting directly into the charged up attack’s path.
He took the hit directly on his chest. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard the child scream in anger, mixing with my own shout.
No!!!
Then he was laying at my feet, his rock form disappearing as his human form returned. Dick lay motionless for real this time. He was so close I could see that his chest was no longer moving. The black void magic had scorched the skin of his chest to black so badly that it carried through the transformation.
Suddenly, darkness was swirling around me in the dream. It was a black and purple miasma filling up the horizon past the platform’s edge. I remembered now, a residual wave of dark energy had washed over me like a tsunami. I was standing on the platform, transfixed by the void essence surrounding me, Dick’s lifeless body at my feet.
“What good are these memories then?” I asked. “If nothing ever changes?”
“You can learn from them,” the Archer responded. “Use them to change what comes next.”
I thought of the previous dreams I had, getting my tattoos, talking to Jessa, my baptism.
“But I didn’t do anything with those,” I said. “I didn't learn anything useful from them.”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” the Archer agreed. “Now might be a good time to start.”
I looked over at the child, sobbing and reaching out toward Dick’s body.
The House of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer... I heard Ascella’s words from my dream/memory as she explained the lore to me while drawing my tattoos...Its worshippers were most often healers...
“Ophiuchus was our brother,” the Archer said, her tone turning sorrowful. “He was prideful, arrogant, but one of us nonetheless. The deceitfulness that snatched him away from us does not change that fact. The true void is the one left by his absence. Loss is never easy, whether you’re a human Outlaw, or a cosmic deity.”
My gaze lingered on Dick’s body. He threw himself in front of me. Why? What was he thinking. What about his brother who depended on him?
This mark...now it was Jessa’s voice echoing in my mind...we’d do anything to protect it, not out of obligation to some oath we took but because we refuse to let anyone take that dream from us.
A feeling of warmth washed over me. That familiar heat from the day of my baptism. It was the first day I knew I’d never truly be alone. It hadn’t just been The Archer’s presence I had felt in the waters of Ecliptis that day, I realized, but all the stars in the cosmos. Every House, existing in harmony.
“The Houses of Ecliptis always operate in harmony and balance,” I said, recalling my own words as a child.
“Exactly,” the Archer’s voice echoed over me.
***
Suddenly, I was back in the present, as if released from some momentary stop in time. This purple miasma filled the cavern, and I could hear others choking on the misty haze.
Matthew was laughing in his dark guttural way. The energy he siphoned off the child had allowed him to transmute his void tentacle attack into this suffocating fog. It was thin enough to see through up close and make out shapes at a distance. I saw Syreni and Malunites clutching their throats as Matthew choked the energy out of them. To the side, Vomero was doing the same.
He was going to drain everyone in the room. And while I didn’t much care what happened to the Syreni and Malunites, my team was a different matter. Plus, who knows what havoc Matthew would reap with that much drained energy.
“I guess I started with him,” the Void Walker said, talking about Dick. “Don’t worry, you can be next, Zodian.”
Without hesitation, I drew the dark miasma all around me deep into my lungs and chanted an incantation.
“Serpent Bearer, I call upon your strength,” I said, changing the words of my most powerful summoning. “Lend me your aid, Ophiuchus!”
Of their own volition, my eyes shot open, full of cosmic energy. I could feel every tattoo on my body glowing and a warm, stinging sensation on my wrist. In my chest, I could feel the cold of the miasma warm inside my body, leaving behind a tingling sensation. A burst of cosmic energy shot through me as I absorbed and purified the dark energy of Matthew’s attack within me. It was the same principle from when I stabbed his tentacles.
“Blasphemy!!!” screamed Matthew. “There is no Ophiuchus anymore!”
I wanted to reply, but the effort of channeling my strongest attack through a deity I had never before venerated kept me mute and required all of my concentration.
Instead of falling from the sky in crashes and explosions, my ability manifested not as falling stars, but as millions of points of light filling up the cavern. Slowly, each one grew until it burst in a cloud of pure, white light. It infected the miasma, transforming it into a cleansing wave of healing and restoration.
I fell to one knee, spent but conscious thanks to the amount of energy I had been able to siphon from Matthew’s miasma. I could tell his burst of power was fading as my ability cleansed the void magic he was using into cosmic energy. As a void worshiper, he would no longer be able to use it for his own attacks.
He must have sensed it, too, because he quickly attempted to open a void portal before his power faded completely. Then he marched over to the child and grabbed it around the midsection, dragging it, literally kicking and screaming toward the portal.
I realized the child seemed less concerned with being kidnapped and more concerned with being taken away from Dick. It struggled, arms outstretched, trying to reach the body in front of me. Maybe it didn’t realize he was dead. Panicked at the thought of being separated from Dick, the kid did what I assumed was the only thing it knew how to do at this point.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
It ate another sacred relic.
Maluna’s scepter reverberated in its half-exposed state, breaking off the rest of the crystal encasement. Next, it began to glow, just like the Diadem had done before Dick absorbed it. The cavern started to shake all around us, large pieces of the ceiling breaking off to tumble down around us.
“It’s absorbing the scepter!” I heard Koraf’s voice yell from somewhere behind me. “Stop it!”
“How?” one of the Malunites asked, and I saw Vomero, once again turn to intercept Malunites approaching the platform.
I dug deep down in my reserves and fired the last bit of my energy at the portal Matthew was dragging the child toward.
“Supernova,” I whispered, and felt a strange sensation on my wrist as I used the ability.
The small ball of light hurling toward the portal wasn’t the usual white I was used to seeing. It was tinged with a blue-green hue. As it touched the portal, it exploded. I had thought it would deactivate the portal. Instead, it...cleansed it? The dark purple and black swirling mist transformed into what looked like a backdrop of a galaxy surrounded by shimmering stars.
Matthew stopped his progression toward the portal, clearly baffled as to what had happened. This gave the child the window it was looking for as it sucked the glowing scepter toward itself and consumed its glowing light.
“Oh shit,” I muttered, and braced myself.
Once again, a concussive explosion, although slightly less powerful this time, erupted from the child. It caught Matthew off guard, flinging him through the cleansed...star portal? It also knocked most of the attacking Malunites back off the platform. Leaning low, I was able to avoid being pushed off the platform again, but the force left my ears ringing again.
The portal closed behind Matthew. Leaving us all awkwardly picking ourselves up off the floor and wondering what the hell to do now.
The child wasted no time running over toward Dick’s lifeless body, where I was kneeling. I noticed that it seemed bigger and stronger than when it first emerged, no longer wobbly on its legs. I wondered if absorbing the scepter had done that.
It was also glowing, shimmering was more like it, with iridescent energy. Since it hadn’t been doing that before, I assumed that was also a side effect of its tasty treat. What happened next, though, had me rethinking everything I knew about the universe.
The child reached its hand out to Dick’s chest and plunged it inside. Not in a gross, bloody way, thank gods, but in the same way it had once absorbed itself into Dick's palm. There was warm, glowing light that pulsed in various colors. It held its hand like that for several minutes until Dick’s body also began to glow.
God, I hope this doesn’t explode something again, I thought and moved back a couple feet just in case.
Instead, Dick’s body began to convulse until he suddenly drew a gasping breath and opened his eyes. I felt tears falling from my own eyes as the kid gently pulled its hand back from Dick’s chest and the glowing faded. He coughed as if figuring out how to use his lungs again, and the child squeaked in glee.
“What the hell...” Dick said, looking at the strange creature he was now holding on his lap. Then he looked at me, and his eyes widened. “You were crying!”
His tone was both incredulous and borderline accusatory.
“No!” I said defensively. “I just inhaled a ton of that void smoke.”
He cocked his head to the side teasingly.
“Nah...you were definitely crying over me,” he said with a smirk.
“Oh, you wanna go there?” I rebutted. “You literally died for me.”
He shrugged nonchalantly.
“What can I say, I’m just heroic like that.”
“Cute, touching, downright wholesome even,” Vomero said, approaching us on the platform. “Can we get the fuck out of here now? You know, before all these people realize this kid just ate their two most sacred reli—”
His tirade was stopped short by the sudden shaking of the cavern. Debris started falling from the ceiling above us, in earnest this time. Dick sighed like a indulgent father and ruffled the child’s furry head.
“What did you do, now?”
“In short, it ate the thing that keeps all the floating islands, well floating,” Vomero said, “then used it to bring you back to life.”
“You need to get moving, guys!” Cash shouted through the coms. “This place feels like it’s going to collapse.”
Apparently, the Malunites and Syreni were of the same notion as they were no longer concerned with rushing the center platform but were instead hurrying for the exit tunnels. I bounded to my feet and took off in the direction we had entered the cavern.
Dick picked up the child and sprinted after me, Vomero hot on our heels. When we reached the side, Cash jumped down, threw his arm around my waist and leapt back up the 15 feet to our ledge. Vomero scampered up the pillar using his spikes, while Dick sprouted wings on his back and flew up to the ledge carrying the kid. We met Ryuuk at the tunnel entrance.
“It’s clear for now, but we have to hurry,” he said.
To punctuate his point, the cavern rumbled again and the ground beneath us gave a shake. We wasted no time, sprinting down the tunnel as fast as our legs would let us.
“What’s the plan?” I shouted at Cash as we ran.
“Get to the moonpool and hope for the best at this point,” Cash said. “If anyone has a better idea, now’s the time for it.”
“What about the ship?” Vomero panted as we emerged into the smaller cavern from earlier.
“You said it wasn’t operable,” I said, drawing to a sudden stop.
My heart sank as I saw the large amount of debris blocking our pathway out. Looking over to the ship, I noticed the shaking had almost completely unearthed it from its rocky tomb.
“I said it needed some type of bio signature to operate, not that it was broken,” Vomero said. "At the very least, we know it will survive a cave in!”
Another seismic ripple sent more debris flying around the cavern.
“Sold,” Cash said, making his way toward the door we left open earlier.
As we made our way into the ship, Dick whistled low.
“Whoa, nice digs,” he said. “Too bad, you said she can’t fly.”
“Not that there’s anywhere for her to fly to, currently,” I observed.
We all made our way to the control room. This was the first time anyone had been inside it except for Vomero. It was spacious, about three times the size of the transport control room. Instead of a front desk like pilot station, the control dais was located in the center of the room on a platform two or three steps up from the rest of the floor. Two chairs were surrounded by a circular desk with the smooth surface indicating touch controls. The screens were dark, however, as the ship was still unpowered.
We cracked a few light sticks from our gear and tossed them around. I wasn’t sure I had the energy to power my supernova light so soon after the encounter with Matthew. It was a small wonder that I was even conscious.
As Vomero sat down in one of the control chairs, a single display panel lit up with the message: Biosignature Insufficient.
“Dick, you change your DNA when you transform,” Vomero said. “Maybe we should cycle through whatever forms you have to see if one of them matches.”
“It’s worth a shot, I suppose,” he answered and sat the child down on its feet as he approached the control platform.
As soon as Dick’s feet touched the raised pilot area, the entire control room lit up and computers and systems whirred to life all around us.
“What the hell...” Dick said. “I haven’t even transformed into anything, yet.”
There were still several error messages flashing across various display screens. It appeared that the ship hadn’t been completely operational, after all. Perhaps that was why it was left here.
“What are the odds that your inherent biosignature is the one required to unlock this thing?” Cash asked skeptically.
“Astronomical odds,” Vomero answered, confused. “I honestly didn’t expect this to work.”
“Speakin’ of not workin’,” Ryuuk said, pointing at the flashing red notices. “I’m no techy, but this don’t look promising.”
“With the power on, at least I can try to figure out what’s wrong with it,” Vomero said.
A rumble of the cavern shook the ship and we heard a loud crash outside.
“How sure are we that this thing can survive the entire collapse of the grotto?” I questioned.
“Well I was a lot more sure of that than I was of Dick getting the power on, and look where we are now,” Vomero said.
He punched several commands and ran diagnostics. More red notices informing us of system errors and malfunction appeared as he fidgeted.
“Comforting,” I said, sarcastically.
“Well, it’s the only plan we have, right now,” he grumbled. “Just give me some time.”
Another, stronger quake racked the cavern and an eerie moaning reverberated all around us. Unlike Acheron’s moans, this one sounded more like it was coming from the rocks themselves. It was as if the whole grotto was wailing in pain as it struggled to stay whole.
“Very comforting,” Dick added to my tirade.
“Is that thing going to do this all the time?” Cash said from the rear of the control room.
I glanced over to see what he was talking about, only to find him staring warily at the child. It was huddled in a corner shaking in fear, presumably from the quakes and shaking. It had also started to shimmer in that multi-colored iridescent way that was becoming oddly familiar.
Feeling everyone’s scrutiny suddenly upon it, the child squirmed and became even more uncomfortable, then ran to where Dick was standing on the dais to clutch his knees. As it approached the platform, new messages, these in blue, started popping onto the screen.
Repairing systems. Standby.
Still clutching Dick’s knees, the child began to pulse in that warm, yellow glow that usually meant something strange was about to happen.
“Holy shit...” Vomero whispered, as the lights in the computer systems also started to pulse with the same glow. “It’s...fixing it?”
Repair Complete. Infrastructure rebooting in 3, 2, 1...
Everything went dark, except for the glow of our light sticks and the light still emanating from the kid.
“Or broke it,” Cash said, but a second later, all systems whirred to life again.
This time, the red messages were gone. In their place were action prompts of various types as the ship came fully online.
Next, the system’s AI activated.
“Welcome, Ancient Light, I am Tria. Where would you like to go, today?”