The next several days he spent traveling and climbing across the vast mountain range. On the fourth day the weather cleared, and the black-grey clouds were chased away by the bright, silvery rays of the local twin stars. The strong daylight activated the polarization filter of the power armor, revealing endless jagged outlines of gleaming white and sky-purple. The temperature remained deadly arctic, yet Airo was adequately protected by his armor. The dragon egg was another matter, but he didn't care. If it froze to death, it wouldn't be his fault.
He was still headed toward the giant energy anomaly, due to a lack of better destination. Both he and the onboard computer scanned all frequencies and comm channels, yet the air was completely devoid of any signals, same as in orbit. He had no way to track his progress; he passed over several mountain ridges, and crossed a couple of high valleys, and then made his way toward a distant summit, yet the landscape around was only snow, ice, and rocks stretching endlessly in every direction. On his way, he found no traces of civilization.
By the end of the first week, after covering almost a thousand kilometers with the fri-skis, he noticed what was wrong.
He was traveling in a circle.
The pattern of peaks stayed the same. He climbed the same-looking summits over and over. The valleys cropped up at precisely repeating sequence. The constellations in the night sky never changed even a fraction, according to the power armor sensors. When Airo stopped to rest during the night, he consulted the only source of information he had.
"Computer... SAI, have I been changing directions during travel?"
"Not to my knowledge, Commander. You always kept a completely straight heading, making minor deviations whenever necessary, but never more than ten degrees on average."
Airo grimaced. "Then why the void I have crossed the exact same region several times already?"
"Analyzing... Analysis done. Results are interesting and medium-level concerning. It appears you have encountered a non-Euclidean route, Commander, which has spatially looped you around the current zone."
"What?!" Airo burst out. "A non-Euclidean route? How is that possible!?"
"My conclusion suggests this is some sort of anomalous behavior on part of the paraworld's multi-planar topography due to interaction with other unknown energy field or fields currently present. Sensors detect elevated background radiation and increased amount of exotic particles, which support this conclusion."
"Wait, Terra Para is a paraworld?"
"Affirmative, Commander. This characteristic was described in the mission files for your convenience and to ensure proper preparation for planetside operations."
Airo shook his head. A paraworld. That explained it. He needed to change his strategy; he had already risked much for assuming for so many days he was on a normal planet. "SAI, scan and process the region's topography at maximum range, then prepare a detailed map with all possible routes leading out of the area."
"Yes, Commander. Please wait a minute."
Yeoman Cloud provided the requested data. Airo followed the generated routes, seeking a way to leave the mountains. A couple more days passed. To his dismay Airo found that no matter which direction he took – even opposite of the energy pillar – he always ended up going toward what he determined was the center of the region.
He was trapped.
He began to travel haphazardly, taking turns at random points and making mid-step adjustments. He climbed peaks and overlooked the entire area, searching for an exit. He glided with the fri-skis without stopping for hours, using stimulants to stay awake, checking if it was a matter of crossing some kind of a threshold. Nothing helped. Airo felt his already dulled spirit falling even lower, sapping his willpower.
Occasionally at night he stopped to rest, and glowered silently at the flexpack he carried. He wanted to kick the dragon egg off a cliff. He envisioned himself doing so over and over, yet every time he was about to gather enough rancor to actually do it, the final words of the dying dragon echoed in his head.
May the stars... always... shine upon your soul.
He would bite his lip after remembering those words, trying to quell the screams of anguish which would start bubbling in his throat. Sometimes he didn't succeed. He hated himself for those moments of weakness. He sat for hours within whatever sparse cover he found to spend the night, trying to calm the storms of thoughts while waiting for his tormented mind to finally succumb to sleep.
Halfway through the second week vague panic began to seep in him. He spent an entire day searching for signs of other creatures, yet the land was devoid of any life. There were neither animals, nor plants to be seen anywhere. Even bacteria were absent, as he found out after analyzing a sample of snow. He came to know his vast prison intimately, and as the days grew, he started to be able to tell where he was after merely glancing at the horizon. He stared furiously every now and then at the energy pillar in the distance, going as far as blaming it for his predicament. He spent hours querying the SAI for new plans, new routes, anything that could get him out. Yeoman Cloud assisted to the utmost of its abilities, yet in the end it was only a sophisticated machine with not enough data to work with. Airo became increasingly frustrated with the constant measured optimism of the SAI, and forced it again into silent mode.
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By now he was forging onward by sheer will alone. His thoughts slowly turned feverish and irrational, and his sanity began to slip. His tempo flagged, and he continued to walk or glide mostly out of habit. At night, he sat in complete darkness, turning off the power armor's HUD to avoid looking at the now-painfully familiar landmarks. He contemplated his memories of the past during these silent, deathly hours, longing for the life he had before, for the love he had found, for the light that had been everything to him.
Zenassa.
Her name was like a blade stabbing him in the heart. He thought about her for hours, reaching unconsciously for a bottle beside him that wasn't there. Each time he opened her picture onscreen he felt his strength falter, felt himself unable to live with the knowledge of them being forever apart.
Then he remembered who separated them. The fire in his veins roared back into a blazing inferno, and returned the vigor in his weakened limbs. He remembered that hateful visage, and renewed the vow he made so long ago.
You will pay, Ferrtau.
Then he slept, the spirit of revenge watching over him in the cold darkness of the frozen tundra.
***
The landscape was the same as it had been at the beginning.
Airo lifted burning eyes toward the cloudless sky. Two days ago, he'd reached the summit, towering over the entire mountain range, and had spent hours staring at the horizon in every direction. In the distance, the energy pillar blazed as intensely as always, its radiance reaching the very sky and going beyond. For the aeonth time Airo had tried to establish connection to the Transnet, any net, without success. Finally, he had trudged downward, shoulders slumped in bitter disappointment.
Now, his defeat was turning into anger.
"Why was I awakened from oblivion?" he shouted at the sky, the sound vibrating inside his helmet. Retracting it, he yelled, "To die a cold, lonely death in truth?"
The sharp slash of icy air in his face was the only reply.
"I should have died then!" Airo screamed. "Not her! I should have fallen among the ruins! I was the soldier! I was the killer! ME!!! SHE DID NOT DESERVE THIS!"
His shouts washed across the silent mountain.
"Why am I here now? Why am I carrying a dragon with me? WHY? To fulfill some cosmic plan? To claim vengeance after seven centuries in darkness? WHY NOW? WHY HERE?"
Again, distant silence.
He roared the words, putting every ounce of his pain and fury in them.
"Answer me, filthy gods of Creation! Answer me, pissful Great Cosmos! Answer me, useless Ancients! I DEMAND IT! ANSWER ME!!!"
CRACK.
High above, a thunder echoed over the mountain. Airo turned and saw the summit's face split. The white mantle of snow and ice fell from the shoulders of the ridge. It turned into a wide, majestic wave which began to descend, swelling greatly as it rushed downward. The rumbling crash of thousands of tons of frozen water and rocks heralded the coming of the avalanche.
Airo ran.
He dashed madly down the mountainside. In his panic, he completely forgot about the fri-skis. Behind him, the avalanche thundered, sweeping everything in its path. Airo bounded and leapt, narrowly avoiding tripping down the slope. He turned his head in every direction, desperately looking for a solid overhang to take shelter beneath. He had only a minute before the avalanche reached him. He slipped, overbalanced by the flexpack he carried, and tumbled head-over-heels along the slope. His fall ended at the base of a huge rock with a narrow cleft at its base. As the thunder of the avalanche came closer, Airo made to crawl into the cleft, when he noticed his load was lighter than usual.
He turned, and saw the dragon egg had tumbled free from the flexpack, lying in the snow some twenty strides away.
The world slowed down. Airo watched as the impending doom approached the black-purple egg. For a second, he decided to abandon it and leave the avalanche to claim it. One less dragon in this galaxy.
Then it struck him that this creature, no matter how much he hated it, was still unborn.
Fuck this. He rushed toward the dragon egg. He leapt across the last two paces, shielding the egg with his body, just as the billowing front of the avalanche hurtled over him. The force of the wave threw him clear off the ground, spinning him wildly in all directions. He careened among the hard whirlwind of snow and ice, clutching the egg to his chest. Debris smashed into him from all sides like hammer blows, the power armor ringing and crunching loudly. Airo gritted his teeth, enduring the overwhelming assault while his heads-up display blared with various alarms.
Just as he thought he was going to be buried alive, the avalanche threw him off a cliff.
Abruptly, gravity drew back. In one long moment, Airo felt completely weightless. As the cloud of debris cleared, he glimpsed a ledge and the sheer, icy wall of a precipice. Huh, I have not seen this place before.
Next, he was falling down.
The overlay flashed in red, indicating he was in free fall with approximately seven seconds until impact. Another message was urgently reporting the auto-landing system had failed. Struggling to keep hold of the dragon egg, Airo freed one hand and drew his katana. Wind rushed around him, carrying thick drifts of snow. Hoping he wouldn't lose either his life or his blade, he gripped the katana and thrust its edge into the cliff beside him.
The sudden drag would have torn his arm from the shoulder, had he not been clad in power armor. Airo gasped in pain as he stopped, dangling from the blade above the chasm's bottom, when the avalanche caught up, and a huge boulder smashed into him.
He had time only to grip the dragon egg before he plummeted into the chasm.
***
Airo opened his eyes, and coughed. His helmet was gone, and his face was numb with cold. He was half-buried at the bottom of a fissure, sunlight streaming from somewhere high above to the left. Airo shivered and dragged himself out of the snow pile. He lifted his gaze, and saw the dragon egg right before him, lodged between two stones, its black-purple shell glistening...
...and cracking.
Airo stared dully, still working out the ramifications of this fact, when the egg shook vigorously, and another crack split its smooth surface. Then another crack appeared, then several more, and in less than a minute, bits began to fall from the shell. A tiny wing tip poked from one hole, a clawed appendage burst from another. With a crack, a large section of the eggshell flew away, and a long, sinuous tail tumbled out. Then the remaining shell shook harder, and with a final push shattered. The hatchling dragon surged from the egg's remains, unfurling its wings, and stretched its body.
Then it lifted its head, and Airo was lost in the brilliant amethyst sea of its gaze.