Jack squinted against a hard sun, standing in the shadowy doorway of an airship, staring down a ruined street filled with destroyed vehicles and rubble. The acrid smell of burned flesh filled his nostrils, and he fought the urge to gag. Another blink replaced the smell of death with the aroma of freshly cut flowers. Lounging in his living room, he could just make out the sounds of the Shen capital of Mytharel down the hill in the distance. Had the flash of destruction been from a battle years ago? He often had to resist being pulled into flashbacks from the long war.
To help them get away from the demands of their stations, Lily had insisted on taking a residence outside of the bustling city. The war had been calm in recent years and the Shen had extended their city borders, nursing life back into the land around the sprawling metropolis. He pulled in a deep breath, smiling as the fragrance of the flowers mingled with the scent of his dear Lily and this time of hope. Lazy dark curls framed her face as she tossed her head back and laughed. Jack clung to awareness deep inside the other man’s mind, fighting the urge to lose himself in that laughter. He remembered the enchantment of it well. And he knew it swept Saeb away every time.
“You are crazy Saeb, General of the Light,” Lily was saying, leveling her intense rose-colored eyes on him. Her legs, wrapped in gauzy semi-transparent silk, stretched out before her, crossed over the dark chaise lounger.
“Perhaps,” Saeb said, smiling. After this day, Jack thought, every other day would seem darker. Saeb wondered where the thought came from but shook it off. Jack, lingering behind Saeb’s eyes, was confident in his own existence now. And he did not doubt that the stray thought was true. This moment was a turning point. A hopeful day he would recall for years to come, often in his darkest hours. Even without a physical presence, he tried to pull the scent of Lily’s chestnut skin into his nostrils and drink in the sharp features of her face and the flowing curves of her hips under the transparent leggings. He studied the arch of her perfectly manicured black eyebrows and long lashes, the wave of her curls as they settled over delicate shoulders.
“But I am serious,” Saeb said. What had he been saying, Jack wondered?
“Now you want to raise a child with me? After all that has happened.”
Oh yes, Jack remembered now, and he knew she was only drawing the conversation out, savoring his turn of mind. Hadn’t she been the one who wanted to adopt a human child before the war started? How long ago had that been, three hundred years?
“There is talk of peace,” Saeb said. “And the empires have not fought a major battle in years. Humans have returned to our capital. Few, but enough to mark a turning point. And there are so many children in need.”
It was true, humans were walking openly in Mytharel, and he had seen more than a few orphans at the city shelters. The Shu had rounded up millions of humans for their camps, leaving countless children lost and alone. The human capital was overflowing with refugees. The Shen, especially his Army of Light, had taken a defensive footing against the humans since the Origin war began. He understood their rebellion against the eternal Shen.
What would it feel like to know you were born so far removed from the creator’s hand? Cursed to brief lives, born organically from bodies that did not regenerate eternally. He understood that Millae and Jode were trying to evolve them, to shake off the need for technology to perpetuate the species, and to rebel against their old masters. But none of them were slaves now; only Jode and Millae remember that time before time. And the attempt had gone so wrong when the new humans lost Nostshen abilities and the connection with ONUS. Was it a fair trade? Yes, they were born without replicators, but to be weak and isolated in one’s own mind, unable to connect to other’s thoughts and emotions, seemed like a prison sentence. It was a short life full of suffering.
Why not use the replicator bays? It was a well-designed system, and the kingdom controlled it. If the humans were not here, he would have no urge to adopt or care for a child. He wouldn’t know what a child was. But they were here now, and they were suffering. And the Nostshu had terrorized them for generations. It was time to do some small part, other than fighting. Saeb gazed into Lily’s rose-colored eyes and knew she understood. His Lily. He didn’t need to touch her presence in his mind to know how she felt. She laid her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes.
“We will find peace, my love,” she whispered. “And we will help all those humans build a better world for themselves.”
He smiled and lay back on his own chaise, comfortable in their eternal bond. He closed his eyes, feeling the gentle breeze float against his skin, and imagined life with a human child. He knew she would adopt ten if he let his guard down, but rescuing a single child would be enough for now. If Lily grew too attached, they might need to adopt another as it grew older. It may be hard to watch one grow up and die without having another to redirect her affection. Many of his soldiers used this strategy to take the edge off losing one of their war hounds. They often began training the next midway through the life of the first.
His mind drifted toward sleep as the warm breeze played across his skin. What would peace between the kingdoms look like? The humans were ready, but the Shu saw the world in simple terms of us and them. Shu tossing human bodies into a pile outside one of their camps. His men waiting for his command in the darkness. Lily listened to him describe the war, but he knew she didn’t understand. She had never seen. His vision shifted, and he smelled blood. Fear radiated from the Shu kneeling in front of him, hands bound behind his back. Outside the dark window, flames flickered in the night. His soldiers of light stood around him, restraining the prisoner’s thoughts and emotions. Even so, the Shu radiated disgust for them, as if they were rabid dogs instead of intelligent, self-aware Shen.
“Where is the camp?” Saeb asked. The Nostshu glared up at him. Saeb drew his fist back again and slammed it into the creature’s nose, watching it explode in a shower of red.
“You bleed like a human.” Saeb hissed, leaning close to the Shu’s ruined face. The Nost made a guttural sound and lunged at him, but his soldiers restrained him.
“We will find that camp tonight,” Saeb said with a smile.
Darkness swirled before him, and the figures disappeared. Lily didn’t understand the hate. Even if she was a senior liaison for the Shen empire. She had negotiated with humans, but never Shu. Humans at least respected Shen power. Shu saw Shen as inferior and humans no better than livestock. He pushed the dream away, a scene from long ago, and opened his eyes, focusing on Lily’s serene face, but her features twisted into a snarling grimace. The chaise fell away. The walls melted around him. Memories from the war often crept into his dreams, but he had never seen Lily in any of them. Or had he? Something was different about this dream.
Jack screamed, trapped deep inside Saeb’s mind, and Lily’s rose-colored eyes lit like flames as she connected with her totem. She formed a shimmering blade of energy. Standing before him in a long Shen battle cloak and tight black leggings, she threw her head back and laughed. Why was Lily wearing a battle cloak and when had she crafted a totem, Saeb wondered? Jack wanted to look away but trapped inside Saeb, could not. A naked man kneeled on the dirt floor in front of Lily. Laughter morphed into a cackle as she tilted her head down and drove the blade through the man’s chest.
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He muttered and looked down at the gaping wound as blood-soaked his skin and poured out from between his cracked lips. Cries rose up from the shadowy stalls around them. It was feeding time. Shu caretakers moved around them, paying no mind to Lily or the dying man at her feet. The stalls were filled with the writhing flesh of humans tearing at one another as Shu masters dropped the processed meat of their murdered comrades in their midst. Hands and teeth tore into raw lumps of flesh. The only food they would see for days.
“You see, my love, we don’t even need to breed them,” Lily said. “They keep multiplying by themselves. It is up to us to control their population or they will overrun the planet.” A baby wailed from the back of a dark stall. “Even here, in this place, fed from the flesh of their own species, they breed. Mindless beasts.” She shook her head, dark curls swaying around her face. She let the man in front of her fall to the floor. “And this was the species that created and enslaved us? Well, you anyway. Jode has helped me evolve into so much more.” Saeb stifled a cry and Jack, buried deep within, recoiled even as part of him admired her beauty. The dying man at her feet groaned, and she nudged him over with the toe of her boot, face down on the dirt floor.
“We cannot let the animals have the planet. It is an ONUS world, a rarity. We must protect it.” She looked at him evenly and her glowing eyes dimmed. The eyes of a servant, a slave. Saeb’s thoughts burrowed into Jack. Millae and Jode kept the bright eyes in the OLU design to remind them of where they came from. The glow let had their human masters know the OLU was touching the source, using an ability. Even the first few generations of organically born Shen, created by Millae, kept the bright eyes of the slaves. But after many generations, the vivid eyes and hair faded away, along with the ability to channel the source code or even sense emotion or thought. Millae and Jode had created the thing they despised, humans.
“It’s ironic that Millae created the race of the masters, isn’t it? It is said that our OLU predecessors were manufactured as docile servants,” Lily said. The corner of her perfectly shaped lips tilted up. “When we leave this planet, we will find them and show them how docile we have become.”
“Lily,” Saeb said, sweeping his gaze around the human farm. “You sound like Jode. He’s brainwashed you or programmed you. This isn’t who you are.”
“But Lily,” she mocked. The once beautiful melody of her voice twisted into dark derision.
“General,” another woman’s voice rang out all around him. He shook his head, as if to send the unfamiliar voice away, and stepped toward Lily, reaching out to her. “Saeb!” A hand shook his shoulder, and he opened his eyes, gasping. The airship was listing to the right and his captain was holding onto him with one hand and the safety handle above her head with the other.
“We’re at the landing site, but there is no sign of the team. The area is not as clear as we thought.”
The ship’s propulsion system whined as it veered to the right, dodging another projectile or energy weapon.
“So it would appear,” he said hoarsely, straightening his battle cloak and unbuckling his harness. He must have dozed off on the long flight from the capital. He stood, shaking the dream and thoughts of Lily from his mind. This was no time to mourn her loss. Jode had taken her last year in his betrayal at the summit, and the only thing he could do was fight. Fight through every last Shu until he reached Jode and destroyed him.
Not even the Dark Creator himself could defeat him now, he was the General of the Light. Maybe he could still save Lily. Maybe her screams would stop cascading around him while he slept. Grasping the handle above his head, he projected his thoughts to the Shen pilots, urging them to land the craft at the agreed-upon site. When he looked down to see his captain’s worried face, he said, “Don’t worry, the team will be here.”
He reached out and felt the warriors of light moving throughout the once-proud human capital. His forces had destroyed the human camps on the outskirts of the city, which the Shu called farms, and liberated the humans. They would be transported back to the Shen capital city of Mytharel. Many of the humans born and bred in captivity would die, and the Nostmara would be euthanized.
Healthy humans were culled and evolved, according to the Shu. This meant they were subjected to rounds of experimental serum that made them into Nostshi with a longer lifespan and connection to the source code. If a human body rejected the treatment, it would deform them into Nostmara berserker warriors or kill them. Those humans deemed unworthy of culling were slaughtered and fed back to their brethren. The system was self-sustaining. He knew this from experience after laying siege to every major Shu city and human farm, driving the darkness back until only this one remained. Once they found victory here, they would assault Kaedara, the Shu capital itself. After three hundred years, it was almost over.
Saeb hardened his features, gripping his totem, a smooth rod-shaped into a deadly point on one end. Crafted from a single piece of titanium, it had no seam or sign that Shen hands created it. Inside, the titanium cradled the purest crystal Saeb had ever seen. It could harness more energy than any Shen tech weapon ever made, so Millae said. She created it for him just after Jode took Lily, a sign of her realization that she had been soft before, that the only way to bring peace was to wipe the Shu, and Jode, from the planet.
It was useful as a weapon in its own right, but as he moved into battle, he would craft it into a crimson energy blade that could slide through any substance. Shen and Shu alike whispered about the horrible weapon, about its ability to disintegrate matter at a touch. In his other hand, he gripped the edge of his black battle cloak. The cloak was nearly impenetrable and on command, could form a shield around him that would repel even the most powerful projectiles, physical or energy. Most Nost wore similar articles of clothing, making it nearly impossible to kill them without resorting to physical combat.
“We will retake the human capital today,” he said with steel in his voice. “This will be the death blow for the Shu. After this, they will have no place to hide except their capital, Kaedara.”
The ramp lowered, and his personal guard gathered around him. Sarathen, his captain, stood to his left, her own battle cloak drawn around her. Her short blue hair stirred in the breeze as she took in the smell of death. She wore a determined look and her red eyes glowed, alert for danger. He often imagined them a shade lighter, a rose color like Lily’s. Glancing at Sarathen’s round face, he pushed the thought away and turned his head to the scene beyond the ramp.
Scorch marks spread along the street, through the rubble, and up the sides of buildings, often leading to a Shen or Shu corpse. The fighting had been intense. A hazy shimmer filled the air, the lingering heat from massive energy weapons. Ruined shells of vehicles lay scattered in the rubble. Hadn’t he seen this before? He remembered a blink of white, then a blink, and he was here, and then a blink, and he was with Lily. He cursed softly under his breath at the thought of Lily. Old dreams. Sarathen glanced sideways at him and he straightened.
Lily was close, though. Maybe that’s why she kept creeping into his thoughts. He could feel her. Perhaps she was still in the city, it was hard to tell. She had been recently, and she had fought. Her madness threatened to overwhelm him when he came close, but he ignored the spot in his mind where her dark voice cackled. Their unbreakable bond was still strong. How many times had he thought about death for himself? It would quiet her voice and end his torment. But he would not; not before he destroyed Jode and the Shu. He reached out with his senses and felt his command team moving through the streets toward him.
“Soon,” the voice of Braiden, his team commander, said in his mind. They were making their way through the city to the rendezvous site. “The fighting is almost over, but not yet.”
Saeb could sense the enemies around. “Be strong, we move into the city,” Saeb returned, stepping down the ramp.
“Be careful,” Braiden returned.
Saeb did not reply. He did not need to be careful. He was the scourge of the Shu, the light in the darkness, and he would finish this city like he had finished the others. He felt his warriors around him raise mental barriers as he let out a torrent of rage. No Shu could block his advance or stand before him. Most dropped to their knees, begging as his red saber pierced their flesh. He was the master walking in the eye of a hurricane, commanding a mighty storm of will to break his enemies.
His power was beyond mere emotion and thought, it was the power of the source code itself. And he would cut down any Shu in his path. He would break every last one of them for what they did to Lily. He would not stop until Jode himself was a pile of ash. In a dark recess of Saeb’s mind, inside the memory of blood and battle, barely perceptible, Jack recoiled, whispering into the torrent of hate, “This is not me.”
Jack tried to pull away from the rage as Saeb gazed at the smoldering ruins. An ancient landscape seen through a dead man’s eyes. “Pain is a tool to control the animals,” Jode used to whisper to him. “I will not,” Jack thought. There had been so much violence in his own life. The battles he had fought, men and women he had killed. “This is not me, not anymore.”