Book One: The Beginning
Part I
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In the July of 1801, the moon orbiting Planet X, an exoplanet in the Hydean system, exploded. A large chunk of the moon rocketed into space, and hit the nearest planet, Argo Navis, almost entirely on one side, scattering on impact. Large sections of the moon hurtled towards the other two habitable planets in the Hydean system – Pinna Marina and Delphin.
Delphin was able to put up a partial shield but was showered with small meteorite chunks of the moon. The other planet, Pinna Marina, was largely shielded by an asteroid belt and by the large planet Argo Navis itself. However, it was still showered by the meteorite.
Soon, people on all three planets began to develop magical abilities that defied the laws of known physics. Then followed a hundred years of war.
In 1901, the three planets signed the Treaty of Verhora and the war came to an end. However, tensions between the planets did not subside.
In early 2017, Pinna Marina’s sensors detected a strong meteorite signal from a nearby solar system. As per the treaty, the planets assembled a three-person team in order to scout the source of the energy signals. The team landed on Earth at 5.40 pm in the July of 2017.
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Earth
5.40 pm, London. April 2001.
“Darrion, let’s build a time capsule and bury it in your backyard!”
Catherine bounced with her socked feet on his bed, slowing nudging the scattered remains of the past hour towards the edge. Darrion slowly swept them into a basket under the bed and tucked it back in. He straightened his glasses.
“Okay, but we’ll have to decide what we want to put in. And then we can wrap it in the cling film from the kitchen. And we can use the shovel from the garden.” He wasn’t allowed to touch the garden implements, but he often got carried away whenever Cat came up with her ideas.
“We can just use the digger from your beach kit,” said Cat. “And then we can we build a mud fort to guard the time capsule.”
Darrion got up. “C’mon.” They had spent the past hour coloring his picture books, Catherine studiously coloring outside the lines, with garish colour schemes.
“I’ll go home and get some stuff. What kind of stuff are you putting in?” asked Cat.
Darrion shrugged. “I dunno. Some books and pictures, I guess. You?”
“I’m going to put in a letter to my future self, a handprint and a picture of you, me and Cutie.” Cutie was what Cat’s younger sister preferred to call herself, insisting that her actual name was long and difficult to pronounce.
Once in the backyard, Cat and Darrion dug enthusiastically for the first five minutes, but the mud was tightly packed and the plastic digger was cutting into their hands. Cat soon gave up. Darrion continued to dig, finally creating a space big enough to bury the Tupperware box that Cat had stolen from her kitchen.
“We can’t ever tell anyone where we’ve hidden it, Darrion, we need to swear an oath,” sat Cat solemnly.
“I swear it,” Darrion intoned.
“Here we bury it,” Catherine dropped the box into the hole. It thudded against something.
She lifted the box and dug around with her fingers, pulling up a dirty purple crystal. Darrion saw another one next to it and picked it up.
“It’s secret treasure, Cat! Let’s put it into the time capsule. We’ll be rich when we pull it out!”
“No, let’s keep it, we both have one. It’ll be like a friendship stone or something. We’ll have it forever!” Catherine held up her little finger.
Darrion entwined his finger with hers.
“Forever.”
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Earth
5.40 pm, London. June 2017.
Catherine waited at the café, nervously twisting her hands and fingers. She fiddled with her phone, looking at old text messages and flicking through Facebook to see Darrion’s old pictures.
She looked behind her. A bespectacled, professorial looking man was speaking to the hostess. Cat smiled. Darrion was still the same, if a little thinner than she had anticipated. She waved him over.
“Cat! Hi! It’s been ages, I’m so glad you wanted to catch up!” Darrion gathered her in his long arms, tucking her head under his chin.
“Hey yourself, Dar. I heard you got a job at the Herald. Congratulations!”
Darrion smiled. “Thanks, Cat. How’ve you been doing?”
Catherine sat up a little straighter. “Did you know I dropped out of Oxford? I went to community college in Winchester after that. I’m just about to finish, actually.” She cleared her throat.
“Darrion, I wanted to talk to you. You’re my oldest friend and Cutie insisted I speak to you. The thing is, after we moved away, I had a little health crisis. I had asthma and bone pain. Darrion, my organs are slowly failing and the doctors think I may die.”
Darrion did not look as shocked as Cat had expected. He had a resigned look on his face, like he already knew.
“Cat, I…”
“Did Cutie already tell you?” Cat asked.
“No, I didn’t know. Cat, my health has been failing too. Ever since…ever since the night in the backyard when we buried the time capsule.”
Cat’s vision blurred and the world dropped away. She felt like her mind had been straining for a while, but now it snapped back. She touched Darrion’s hand.
“Do you have any other…problems?” Cat gripped his hand harder, eyes begging him to say what she wanted to hear.
Stolen story; please report.
Darrion leaned forward.
“I have magic powers, Cat.”
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Cat and Darrion walked along the Thames. For the last month, Cat and Darrion had talked non-stop, comparing notes with rising exhilaration. There was never any question of informing anyone of these magical developments. They would be packed off to the nearest mental institution to spend the rest of their days there. And there were not many days left.
Darrion had been wearing his crystal around his neck, set in a small gold circle. He told Cat that he figured that this was a Marie Curie situation, so he had removed the necklace and tried to throw it away. But his body immediately reacted and he was forced to wear it again.
Cat had experienced something similar. She had asked a friend of hers to take a look at the composition of the crystal, but her friend had returned it stonily, grumbling that it was just plastic.
Cat started feeling that there was something humming under her skin, electricity that begged to be let out. Standing in her apartment, she had thrust her had out the open window. A shining purple bolt had arced gracefully from her hand and then dissipated soon after. She started doing it whenever the electricity hummed too much.
Darrion said he experienced a similar feeling. He called it ‘bees under his skin’. However, his purple light created a dome around him, briefly blocking out sound completely from around him.
“It was almost orgasmic the first time I did it,” Darrion said now.
Cat chuckled. “I know what you mean. I felt amazing the first time. But I also felt weaker each time I did it, so I tried to hold off for as long as I could.”
“What do we do now, Cat? I mean, I don’t want to die. I just got a new job, and I found you again.”
Cat took a deep breath. “Darrion, I…”
“You there!” A heavily accented voice shouted at them. Cat saw movement out of the corner of the eye. She stepped in front of Darrion.
A young couple was walking toward them. The guy was a shorter than Darrion, with a dusky complexion and short, jet black hair. The woman he was walking with was tall, with long, dark hair and an air of quiet confidence.
The guy spoke first. “Please come with us. We must speak at once.”
Cat stared. “Who the hell are you?”
Darrion stepped forward. “I think you must be mistaken. It’s no trouble. We’ll be on our way.”
The guy looked like he was about to hit Darrion, but the woman spoke up.
“My name is Lia Quanungo, this is Axel Morillo and we are in search of the meteorite You must know about the meteorite. It is pink in colour and we got the strongest signal from this country and from you specifically.”
“And you have it,” said the guy, Axel. Cat vaguely placed his accent as Spanish. She was about to deny his overconfident claim, when Darrion spoke up.
“I’m Darrion Comis and this is Catherine Taylor. You’re right, we do have the meteorites; we’ve been calling them crystals. We should speak about this in private somewhere. I know a café nearby.”
The woman, Lia, dipped her head. “Lead the way.”
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The four of them sat awkwardly around a small table at the Café Buzz, the guy Axel looking put out and Lia looking inhumanly prepossessed. Cat felt like she was tipped on the edge of something, and telling anyone about magic, with the exception of Darrion, was a road to hell.
“May we see the crystals?” Lia asked.
Darrion pulled his necklace out of his shirt, and Cat put her wrist on the table, where a small purple circle was tied with a leather string.
Axel gaped. “They’re purple! Lia, the crystals are purple!”
Lia held her hand forward and asked, “May I?”
Before Cat could react, Darrion removed his necklace and handed it to Lia. She turned it over once in her hands and then handed it to Axel, who hesitated before touching it.
“So what’s going on? Who are you people? Is this some sort of scientific conspiracy?” demanded Cat.
“We have another member joining us, and when she does, we shall tell you everything,” said Lia.
Axel handed the necklace back to Darrion, and they sipped at their coffees in the uncomfortable science.
As Cat looked around the café, she saw a lavishly dressed woman, with a regal bearing, walking towards them. The woman held out a hand.
“I’m Phailin Lotar. Sorry for the delay.” Phailin sat next to Darrion.
He squirmed in his seat for a second and then said, “Okay then. Tell us everything, before Cat jumps out of her seat.”
Cat looked at Axel, then Phailin. Finally, she turned to Lia and said, “You’re not from this planet, are you?”
Darrion sputtered. “Cat, really - ”
Axel spoke up. “No, she’s right.” He looked at her. “How did you guess?”
Cat shrugged.
“We’re from the Hydean solar system, which has three habitable planets, Pinna Marina, which is where I come from, Delphin, where Lia is from and Argo Navis, Phailin’s planet. About 200 years ago, the moon of a nearby planet exploded, showering us in pink meteorite. We soon realized it had magical properties. There has been some tension among the planets, but at the moment things are relatively stable. We detected a fairly large energy signal that we traced to this planet, and then to you. And now here we are.”
Phailin scoffed. “This is obviously the most simplistic history possible, things are a lot more nuanced than that. But yes, that is the gist.”
Cat looked at Darrion. She felt a weird desire to laugh hysterically. Luckily, Darrion spoke before she could.
“So what are you doing here? How come you look exactly like humans, and speak English so well?”
“We look like humans because we are humans. We have the same biology that you do. We’ve known about Earth for almost 300 years, but never had reason or inclination to make contact. Besides, travelling to Earth and crossing solar systems is an expensive, grueling task. And your people have no magical affinity to speak of. I assume we are offshoots of each other and that our language evolved in much the same manner. We were sent here to see if the people of Earth were developing magical abilities.” Phailin explained.
“And you’re all from different planets because of the tension between your planets. So you wouldn’t try to recruit us in case were developing magical abilities.” Cat realized.
Lia nodded. “Yes, that is true. You both have different shapes on your crystals, which means that you have bonded with your crystal, and you have magical abilities. I think the colour is different because we are looking at a different variety of the crystal. I do not know yet what the difference is. But I am afraid there is bad news.
“Since I have landed on this planet, I have been feeling weak and unwell. I am sure Axel and Phailin will concur. Which means that this planet is inhospitable to the crystal and those that bond with it. Your bodies may soon give up.”
Darrion took a deep breath. “That has already happened. Both Cat and I are quite ill. Our organs are giving up and we are dying. Is there a way to break our bond with the crystal? Would that make us better?”
Phailin was already shaking her head. “There’s no way to break the bond between the crystal and the human. If you break the bond, you’ll just have a faster death.”
“So what? You give us all this information, and we just die anyway?” asked Cat.
“We’ve been authorized to ask you to accompany us. Our planets are irradiated with the magic of the crystal, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you. This atmosphere is killing because your genetic structure is changing; it’s becoming more conducive to magic. This energy signature means that the purple crystals have a lot of power, and that could be useful to us,” said Axel.
From the way he spoke, Axel probably thought he was offering them a godsend. But from what Cat had heard, she knew it was more likely that they’d be interplanetary test subjects for this new type of crystal. If this group were accomplished diplomats, they would never have let Cat and Darrion know that purple was an unusual colour for the crystals.
Still, it was better than being dead. And who was she to turn down an opportunity to go to space?
Darrion got up. “Assuming this is not a really elaborate prank, Cat and I will meet you here again tomorrow, at the same time, after we have had time to discuss this between ourselves. Thank you for your time.”
Cat got up from the table, but before leaving, she turned around.
“I’d really like to see a demonstration of your…abilities tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not end up in a tin can spaceship with a bunch of mad house escapees.”
Axel’s face went red and Phailin pressed her lips together. Lia nodded. “We are more than happy to demonstrate tomorrow, if you can find us a private space.”
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