Marie Sanders: Oasis, third cycle, Oasis’ age 4205 Corwala years
Adjusters phased her into one of the material bubbles housed somewhere in the subspace. The Adjusters used them to communicate with their Exonerated. Her being there without being summoned first was a safety measure, which meant she was very close to dying back on Falta. She sat up and checked her injuries. Her left arm was gone, and herbal goo was smeared over her wound. Goo was, without a doubt, utilized to stop the bleeding back on Falta as a form of first aid by field medics, and it worked just fine. Her right leg was shredded. Bone shards protruded from the flesh, colored purple by blood. Ferlan doctors also covered it with a thick layer of their blood stopper. After seeing her horrific wounds, Marie was happy that hyrea stuff was still holding the pain at bay.
She looked around and was so ecstatic to see energized particles yet again. She tried to construct her sword from primal matter, but she still could not use Elemental's powers. Her being able to see the flow of energy meant her Elemental was slowly recovering. She was happy about it. She liked how it made her feel safe, powerful, and not alone.
Exonerated gave a name to material bubbles. They called them Oasis. Every Oasis looked different, and its looks depended on the Exonerated. Hers looked like the park her parents often took her to when she was a kid, one of the rare memories she got to keep. Her Oasis was quite old. It was constructed right after Adjusters ensnared her, and she never changed it. Being there felt like she was, in some way, connected to her parents who she knew so little.
The plants were all withered because, for all their might, Adjusters never could gain dominion over life. But controlling inorganic matter was child’s play to them. They could even create stars. Her Oasis was getting its light and warmth from a blue dwarf star. Adjusters were indeed a race that survived a few previous universe cycles. There were no blue dwarf stars in Marie’s universe yet. Her universe was still too young. She could sometimes see her Elemental’s memories. It lived during one of the previous cycle, its planet orbited a blue dwarf, and the sunsets were astonishing. She often forgot how ancient Elementals were.
Skin crawling on her back was a dead giveaway Adjuster entered the Oasis. She turned her head to face the primordial being, older than her universe, mimicking Stegalar . The resemblance would have been spot on if not for the stone-cold expressionless face and dead empty gaze. Stegalar was more cheerful and refined.
Fake Stegalar extended his arm, holding a mind stone and healing gizmo in his hand. Marie hated those things. They were a headache factory, the apparatus of ultimate evil, but the fastest way for Exonerated to learn about mission-related stuff and patch up wounds not healed by Elementals. She took the offered items, nodded, and limped to the little bench behind her. Mind stone meant a new assignment. Falta was either FUBAR or they assigned some Exonerated top brass to handle it. The final option was that they decided to wipe the Falta clean of sentient life for evolution to try again. It was either fix or destroy with Adjusters. There was no middle ground.
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“Your companion has not perished yet, rejoice, but his energy is faint. Bask him in the light of Oasis' star, and he will prevail over the grip of the Void. Take time to heal your life-force-carrying vessel too. The equivalent of a month of your birth planet’s time should be enough. Oasis will not open for that long, yes.“ Adjuster suddenly spoke and even surprised Marie a little. Adjusters were not talkative kind. Getting any non-mission-related words out of them was a rarity.
Marie nodded, and Adjuster dissipated to whatever plane of existence he resided.
The Adjuster was right. Elementals ran on starlight, and the region she was in on Falta was going through the annual long night. Nighttime lasted for months, so no wonder her non-corporeal companion decided to take a long nap. She scorned herself for forgetting something as important and took a mental note to avoid slipping up like that again.
She then placed her palm at her sternum to feel the faint vibration of the crystals buried under her skin where her Elemental’s life force resided. She looked down through her ripped shirt and saw purple scars. The memento of a time when she bonded with her Elemental. Scars resembled branches of a dead tree and the wound that once was there hurt like hell, and it took ages to heal.
She took a deep breath and pressed the healing item to her neck, and the wonders of Adjuster tech started rebuilding her broken body. It was not a pleasant experience, but her seeing her left arm again was worth it.
“Whew. Well, that went well. “ Marie said to a dead tree across the way and relaxed on a bench. She held the mind stone above her head and inspected it thoroughly. It was shaped like an octahedron this time, black with golden lines running across its surface. Damn, I hope it’s a planet with some advanced civilization. Falta was too medieval for me. Great architecture though she thought for herself and pressed the mind stone to her forehead.
Although she called it the mind stone, it was a device that streamed data into the user’s brain. She could choose the data she wanted to look at by touching it from the mass of floating images that appeared in her mind space after the stone activation.
The closest one she could see displayed the live telescope feed of a planet called Taraya, with a separate frame showing the zoomed blue sub-warp gate. Gate opened so close to the system’s sun that it was causing a disturbance in the star’s magnetic field. Someone screwed up, and Adjusters got wind of it and got curious. Adjusters liked space-faring races, they had their uses, and you can never have too many errand boys.
Marie skimmed through some of the sensor data on the planet and the sun and determined both were goners. She could squeeze a few hundred years of life out of the dying star if the gate was to be shut without delay, but it was too much work. Solar winds stripped a massive chunk of the planet's atmosphere. It would soon become uninhabitable no matter what happened to its sun.
Her mission was to investigate the new race, who were the main suspects for causing the whole incident, and try to bring them into the fold. She was also to come in contact with the locals and gauge their development level. Adjusters also liked investing in promising races, and if Tarayans proved useful, they were one subspace gate away from being saved from possible extinction.
Does being indifferent to someone’s else suffering comes naturally with knowledge and power? Judging a whole race only by its usefulness to yourself was a cruel way to go through life, but Adjusters were a special breed. Do they even have feelings? Marie sighed and pulled the mind stone away from her forehead.
“So how do we go about it? “ she said to the dead plant in front of her, and it responded with one of its dry leaves falling off. I need to see what natives know first. Let’s go with that.