Sobon was livid. It wasn't so much the ex­is­tence of slav­ery on this plan­et--galac­tic his­to­ry showed that the con­cept ex­ist­ed uni­ver­sal­ly across every known civ­i­liza­tion, though any civ­i­liza­tion worth pay­ing at­ten­tion to grew out of it. He was al­ready well fa­mil­iar with just how back­wards the civ­i­liza­tion on this plan­et was. No, what was re­al­ly get­ting to him was the raw sta­tis­tics of this plan­et's bar­barism. Jom had been abused for be­ing an un­der­class, near­ly killed in the first mo­ment Sobon was there, near­ly eat­en im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter, then in short or­der im­pressed into the army for show­ing a lit­tle aether po­ten­tial, dis­card­ed as use­less and near­ly eat­en again, and fi­nal­ly killed for show­ing a lit­tle too much aether po­ten­tial. Ki'el's vil­lage had been some­where be­tween slaugh­tered and ab­duct­ed as slaves, and he and Ki'el had saved an­oth­er batch of ab­ductees that just so hap­pened to be pass­ing by weeks af­ter his ar­rival. Now, less than a day af­ter ar­riv­ing here--and he still wasn't sure where here even was--he was thwart­ing an­oth­er slav­ery ring.

Was it de­lib­er­ate? Was fate, or a plan­e­tary spir­i­tu­al god, or the Coro­na's AI, some­how di­rect­ing him from one dan­ger zone to the next? Al­most cer­tain­ly not the last, not from what D'sur had said about it, and not giv­en how lit­tle the AI it­self had seemed to un­der­stand, but it was an aether com­put­er, not a life form--he couldn't en­tire­ly rule it out.

In con­trast, the idea of a plan­e­tary god tam­per­ing with his fate was all too real, giv­en the high lev­els of aether. Any­thing ex­ist­ing be­yond the lev­el of Re­verse and On­wards aether flows--the flows more or less in­volved with time ma­nip­u­la­tion, if not quite phys­i­cal­ly--could tam­per with what most con­sid­ered luck or fate, if the en­ti­ty was care­ful and well po­si­tioned. If any­thing, she sus­pect­ed this plan­et would have mul­ti­ple forces com­pet­ing. But he had been in the Be­yond, and he hadn't seen or sensed any­thing like a ma­nip­u­la­tion there. Ei­ther it was a high­er lev­el of com­plex­i­ty or sub­tle­ty than Sobon could de­tect... or it was some nat­ur­al force, one with­out an or­ga­niz­ing spir­i­tu­al body. Per­haps some­thing built into the plan­et's aether it­self.

As Sobon lay in bed, hav­ing re­ject­ed lit­tle Lui's ef­forts to help him--her, damnit, she was bet­ter than this--as Sobon lay there, she con­sid­ered what she knew of aether and plan­e­tary mythos. It was a le­git­i­mate field of study, and al­though Sobon had read one or two stud­ies on the sub­ject, it was too much for him to un­der­stand at the time. Even what he'd known, he could bare­ly re­call, since so much else had tak­en its place in his mind, most of it far more im­por­tant.

Aether was life. Aether took on pat­terns, and pat­terns res­onat­ed with one an­oth­er. Lives be­came sim­i­lar to oth­er lives, be­came en­tan­gled with oth­er lives. And myths--both in the clas­si­cal sense of fan­tas­tic sto­ries, and in the sec­u­lar ver­sion that in­clud­ed cul­tur­al mores and memet­ic shifts--tied peo­ple across a coun­try or a world to­geth­er. Myths unit­ed coun­tries, and myths di­vid­ed them. Mas­ter Tare, a spir­i­tu­al leader who had helped unite Crest, be­com­ing a politi­cian and, lat­er, an em­per­or... he had penned a clear an un­bi­ased trea­tise on the pow­er of aether-backed mythol­o­gy, a trea­tise that oth­ers had, un­suc­cess­ful­ly, tried to use to tear the Em­pire apart--or found a new one. Cen­turies lat­er, dis­ser­ta­tions on the work were still be­ing penned, ex­plor­ing new in­sights and com­par­ing them to new mea­sure­ments.

Sobon let the thought pass, re­fo­cus­ing eas­i­ly. Aether-backed myth was real, and con­se­quen­tial. The more pow­er­ful aether was, the more pow­er­ful aether-backed myth would be--but then, as long as the myths weren't con­sis­tent, they would con­flict, and this was a world in con­flict. If two myths con­flict­ed, the peo­ple un­der the sway of those myths would war un­til only one re­mained, un­less they could find and re­spect bound­aries be­tween each oth­er, or com­mon­al­i­ties that al­lowed them to slow­ly merge. Tare, what­ev­er the phi­los­o­phy of his writ­ings, had been as­tound­ing­ly as­tute in his deal­ings with peo­ple, in ways that seemed im­pos­si­ble. And Sobon... was not so as­tute, and he knew it. She knew it.

Sobon paused, as she heard Lui's foot­steps out­side her door. She sighed, and sat up on the bed. "You can come in, child," she said, open­ly winc­ing, as her hip protest­ed at the move­ment. Sobon had forced it; as of­ten hap­pened with wounds, it only got worse, even with the Coro­na's heal­ing pat­tern work­ing at her. And it wasn't a bad pat­tern, al­though he was let­ting his Out­er Aether dy­namo rest. Like most of the dy­namos he had pro­duced so far, it was... not ide­al. Ad­e­quate.

Lui came into the room as qui­et­ly as she could. Sobon sus­pect­ed that she was, as much as any­thing, hid­ing from her fa­ther. Tuli per­haps meant to be a good fa­ther, but Sobon could not ac­cept that. Not for the same rea­sons as Alas­si--she had blamed him for Alas­si's daugh­ter, his wife's death, just as he had blamed her. Sobon could care less about the past, but was in­fu­ri­at­ed to watch the man dan­gling his daugh­ter like meat on a hook be­fore an­i­mals that he must know would some day bite both him and her. Very, very dan­ger­ous an­i­mals.

The man had no aether abil­i­ties. He was weak. Sobon knew that. But that ex­cused noth­ing.

In­stead of let­ting his anger show, Sobon stud­ied the girl. She had to only just be ap­proach­ing adult­hood--cer­tain­ly, by prim­i­tive de­f­i­n­i­tions of "can she have chil­dren yet", she was one. Her mind was sharp, al­though it had been... Sobon chose not to search for an ad­e­quate metaphor. She might have once been a very sharp child, but she wasn't. She still saw more than many. Prob­a­bly more than any­one else here, even the cook, who Sobon had not­ed was a Djang, clear­ly un­re­lat­ed to any­one else, and rel­a­tive­ly pow­er­ful--his qi core was at the top of the cop­per col­ored tier, and twice in the fight Sobon had clear­ly sensed it try­ing to in­crease, though it failed, or else the man held it back.

Lui had an in­no­cent face, Sobon thought as he re­fo­cused once more. Ear­li­er, he had been able to see every time wor­ries crossed her mind, though he wasn't the sort who could read what she was think­ing. She seemed to earnest­ly hope for the best, al­though she had been dis­ap­point­ed. Her freck­led face was about as used to flinch­ing as Alas­si's was used to frown­ing, though Sobon could see some­thing else be­hind her fea­tures now. Even in the dark, the look on her face was... un­usu­al for her. As though she was hold­ing a knife, but un­sure whether she was re­al­ly in­tend­ing to threat­en some­one with it.

"Sit," Sobon of­fered, and she did, with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Some part of Sobon want­ed to hold the girl again, to re­as­sure her, but she knew that was not the Alas­si this girl had al­ways known. It was a sim­ple spir­i­tu­al truth, the kind the girl was cer­tain­ly keen enough to no­tice; so far, every­thing Sobon had done to­day had con­fused and ter­ri­fied Alas­si's spir­it--even open­ing the win­dow. Es­pe­cial­ly open­ing the win­dow. For what­ev­er rea­son... the woman who had been in charge of this body was much more com­fort­able start­ing a fight with a band of slavers than tak­ing a breath of fresh air, and be­com­ing part of the world out­side these walls. And Lui... had nev­er seen this side of her grand­moth­er.

"Grand­ma..." Lui took a deep breath, and Sobon heard her shak­ing as she did. "You... you changed, Grand­ma."

Sobon saw no rea­son to lie. "Yes."

"Are you..." She hes­i­tat­ed. "Are you... who you used to be? Is this... who you were?"

Sobon did not look at her. "No."

The girl let out her breath, like she'd been punched. "Are you... okay?"

Sobon con­sid­ered how to an­swer. "Your grand­ma is... not well."

Lui stood up and moved in front of her, more quick­ly than Sobon had seen her move, ex­cept when she had run away from the fight. He met the girl's eyes, see­ing some­thing, but he wasn't sure what. "You are amaz­ing, Grand­ma. You aren't go­ing to die. You can't."

Sobon looked at her, try­ing to find an an­swer. She... couldn't, though. She knew that. Sobon wasn't Alas­si, and she didn't have a right to pre­tend. "Lui..."

Lui took her grand­moth­er's hands and held them. Sobon could feel her shak­ing, could feel the del­i­cate­ness of her hands in spite of the qi be­hind them. "Grand­ma Alas­si," she said, find­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion. "Promise me you won't die. Please." Her voice shook, and she closed her eyes. "That man Karvir talked about it. And I know... I know dad talked about it. About you be­ing gone. But I can't... I can't..."

[ This child... ] Alas­si's men­tal voice was strange. Al­though Sobon had not con­sult­ed with the woman much, she was be­gin­ning to pipe up more and more, ei­ther think­ing about things, or ex­plain­ing what should have been ob­vi­ous. But now... her voice was full of pain.

And Sobon all but let her speak her mind, at least for tonight. "I have been a ter­ri­ble grand­moth­er, Lui," Alas­si said. "You shouldn't need an old woman like me. I've only thought about..." She got choked up, Sobon as­sumed about her past, but he was only bare­ly a part of it. "...about my past, and your moth­er, and how I screwed every­thing up. About my in­jury, and how I wasn't there when your moth­er..." Alas­si stopped. Through her eyes, Sobon saw her grand­daugh­ter, and he hoped that Alas­si un­der­stood what she was see­ing.

Per­haps it was men­tal pres­sure from him, or per­haps she had un­der­stood it her­self, but Alas­si said, as gen­tly as she could, "I was so caught up in how I wasn't there for your moth­er... that I was nev­er there for you. I am sor­ry, child."

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Lui threw her arms around her grand­moth­er, and Sobon bus­ied his own mind with mak­ing sure that the two of them didn't strain Alas­si's hip, or any of the oth­er mus­cles that Sobon had overused dur­ing the evening's mess. Al­though he would have to deal with the af­ter­math... and al­though it was sup­posed to be his body now, in one or two im­por­tant ways, Sobon let them have their mo­ment. He was well aware that mo­ments like this, when they passed... too of­ten nev­er came again. And this one, most cer­tain­ly, nev­er would.

When they had both said what they need­ed to say, Sobon came back, and some­how, Alas­si let him with­out even a to­ken protest. He men­tal­ly re­viewed what they had said, but put it away. "I can­not stay here, child," she said, as gen­tly as she could.

"But Grand­ma--"

"No." Sobon's word was gen­tle, but fi­nal. He liked the girl, and he had liked Ki'el. Un­der dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, he would love to teach her as well. He gen­uine­ly wished her well, wished that she would have a hap­py fu­ture. That... first and fore­most, re­quired him to do his job. "Child, I..." he searched for a way to ex­plain it, and when he was just about to ut­ter an­oth­er lie, Lui spoke up, sur­pris­ing him.

"You aren't Grand­ma Alas­si, are you?"

Sobon turned her head to look at the girl. Her eyes had cleared up a bit, af­ter talk­ing with her grand­moth­er. But he was sure, now, that she saw the dif­fer­ence. That she had sensed him pass­ing Alas­si back to her, and tak­ing the spot in charge back. That she un­der­stood, on some lev­el, that her grand­moth­er was say­ing good­bye.

"No." Sobon was a Ma­rine. He didn't like ly­ing, or sub­terfuge. He was sure that the train­ing pro­gram for the Mixed Marines had peo­ple on staff pro­fil­ing peo­ple for spy work, and for the Spe­cial Forces. If they were there, as they must have been... they did not choose Sobon, and he did not dis­agree with their as­sess­ment. If he had to lie, or do the mil­i­tary's dirty work, he would have felt un­clean. No, he was a Mixed Ma­rine, a Cy­borg. Coura­geous, de­ter­mined, straight­for­ward, and lethal. He had let go of his flesh, but he held on to his pride.

Lui backed away from her a lit­tle bit, but when Sobon met her eyes again, they re­mained clear. "Who are you?" she asked, qui­et­ly.

And Sobon told her, though only a lit­tle bit of it for now; Alas­si need­ed sleep, and so did poor Lui, though the girl was too rest­less. Sobon sus­pect­ed she would be trau­ma­tized, lat­er. For now, she lis­tened as he ex­plained it in brief, and let her di­gest each lit­tle piece that he did give her. About dy­ing, and com­ing back. About be­ing asked to help save the world, and how... how Alas­si had giv­en her body over, against her will, so that he could try again.

Lui con­sid­ered it, and the child--still a lit­tle sharp, in spite of all that had hap­pened to her--spoke again.

"Y-you said that mag­ic was chang­ing. I... I think I felt it, be­fore. Years ago." Lui looked down at her hands, which were shak­ing. "I felt like... like mag­ic moved. I used to think it was every­where, but now I think..." she closed her hands, and her eyes, and took a deep breath, and af­ter a long mo­ment, point­ed off to her right. "I think it's... over there."

"Mag­ic is?" Sobon had his own thoughts about what she was sens­ing, of course, but they could both be wrong. She could sim­ply be sens­ing the move­ment of a sin­gle, pow­er­ful qi user. Past a cer­tain lev­el... Sobon wasn't sure, hav­ing not re­al­ly de­vel­oped keen sens­es him­self yet, but he had no doubt that pow­er­ful users were like suns wan­der­ing the plan­et, too dis­tant to burn or blind you, but an un­mis­tak­able bea­con that made a mock­ery of less­er sources of light.

Lui just nod­ded. "Mama said times were chang­ing long ago. I won­der if this is what she meant." Sobon want­ed to in­ter­rupt, but Lui con­tin­ued on, and Sobon smiled a lit­tle. "She said that too many pow­er­ful peo­ple were be­com­ing more pow­er­ful, and that it was im­por­tant that we do the right thing, and she said..."

Sobon put a hand on Lui's head, just smil­ing at her. "Lui," she said, "you are a kind girl, but your moth­er and I are... were not peo­ple that changed the world like that. The pow­er­ful peo­ple of the world live dif­fer­ent­ly, so dif­fer­ent­ly that you can­not un­der­stand." Even with­out know­ing this world's pol­i­tics, Sobon knew he could say that for cer­tain. It was more... a tru­ism, than any­thing else. "When the pow­er­ful peo­ple change any­thing, even things that seem small to them, weak­er peo­ple like us can have our whole worlds shift. That's why I, the one who ar­rived yes­ter­day... have to do some very dan­ger­ous things."

With gen­tle pres­sure, she moved Lui a step back from her. "In that world out there, Lui, when you make mis­takes, you don't get yelled at. Your world just ends. Peo­ple with pow­er could wipe us all out in a mo­ment, if they want­ed. Your grand­ma and I... I need to go be a dan­ger­ous, im­por­tant per­son. It will take me far from here, and I may die. Your grand­ma may nev­er come back."

"But if I ever come back this way, Lui," Sobon con­tin­ued to meet her eyes, even as he saw them fill­ing with tears, "whether in this life or the next, I will try to look out for you. Be­cause you are a good girl, Lui. In spite of every­thing that hap­pened to you, you de­serve a hap­py life. I'll do what I can to help, but I must go."

Lui nod­ded, and af­ter a few more words, she left to go back to her room. Sobon lay down, let­ting out a hiss­ing breath as Alas­si's old bones com­plained.

[ Thank you, ] she said, and Sobon gave a men­tal, dis­missal wave. I am a lot of things, Alas­si, he ad­dressed her di­rect­ly, al­though it still both­ered him to use mere words to com­mu­ni­cate men­tal­ly. But I re­spect good peo­ple. Lui has nev­er want­ed any­thing but to be a good per­son. It is writ­ten all over her spir­it.

[ I wish you had been her grand­moth­er in­stead of me, ] the old ghost sighed, with an acomm­pa­ny­ing men­tal pro­jec­tion of a much younger Alas­si look­ing out her win­dow. That ver­sion of the woman... was too much like the old­er woman, he thought. As though time had stood still for her, in all ways ex­cept for the truth. She had been trapped here for a decade or more, and al­though she had nev­er moved on from those old days, time con­tin­ued with­out her. [ She de­served bet­ter than me. ]

She prob­a­bly did, Sobon ac­knowl­edged. But you... how much of what I said to D'sur did you un­der­stand?

[ The stand­ing-whale? The Star­beast Gen­er­al? ] Alas­si some­how re­flex­ive­ly pack­aged up sev­er­al thoughts into a sin­gle burst trans­mis­sion, as though she had done it be­fore. Though nowhere near Crestan mil­i­tary stan­dards, or even ba­sic Cy­borg tech­nique, it was ad­e­quate to con­vey a com­plex thought. She was... too ter­ri­fied of the crea­ture to con­sid­er what it said as even pos­si­bly true. She un­der­stood, from Sobon's own thoughts, that he took it se­ri­ous­ly. She un­der­stood how pow­er­ful Sobon was, and that he was a true war­rior, a force be­yond her un­der­stand­ing. She sus­pect­ed that Sobon, at least, had not lied. But she could not un­der­stand the crea­ture that she un­der­stood as a Star­beast Gen­er­al be­ing any­thing but an in­vad­ing force.

What are Star­beasts? Sobon queried, at first in a data pack­et, but then im­me­di­ate­ly in words.

Alas­si took half a mo­ment to try to un­der­stand the data pack­et, and for a mo­ment, Sobon thought she might ac­tu­al­ly un­der­stand it--but she gave up very quick­ly. [ We weren't told much. Some eighty-odd years ago, they came from the stars. We are told they brought the stars with them, to kill us. Peo­ple were only com­ing to un­der­stand the depths of qi in those days. They found that we could har­vest the stars with­in the star­beasts, and ad­vance be­yond the Met­al phas­es of qi. I... nev­er got any­where close to that. The true pow­ers of the world, and they are few, they hoard Pow­er Stars. They crave them, and want to grow ever stronger. I don't know why. Only those at the peak of the Met­al tiers and above can safe­ly han­dle the Pow­er Stars, though. ]

What do you know about these Stars? Sobon stud­ied the woman's mind in­tent­ly, but to his dis­ap­point­ment, she re­turned his men­tal study with the equiv­a­lent of a frus­trat­ed eye roll. [ I was a sol­dier for less than five years be­fore I was wound­ed. I was nev­er more than a sol­dier. My time in the ser­vice paid for this inn for my fam­i­ly to live off of. I was nev­er told much. They are strong, and only the strong can use them. I don't know. ]

Sobon re­flect­ed on that only for a mo­ment, and de­cid­ed quick­ly that it would sim­ply be on her list of ques­tions for the Ri'lef en­gi­neers. As­sum­ing the star­beasts were the up­lift­ed an­i­mals... Sobon had few doubts that they were some form of en­gi­neered bi­ol­o­gy, adapt­ed to the plan­et's high aether. What­ev­er these "pow­er stars" turned out to be, they would have a pur­pose, and Sobon would find it out, in time. It seemed... un­like­ly that she would need to know be­fore she was able to con­tact the Ri'lef again.

As she lay there, she amend­ed that thought, and brought up an aether con­struct to con­tact the Coro­na's AI. She should have done it ear­li­er; she only sent a few, pack­e­tized thoughts, re­quest­ing a meet­ing with the Ri'lef en­gi­neer­ing lead at their con­ve­nience, ask­ing for map­ping and po­si­tion­ing in­for­ma­tion, and ask­ing if the AI had a bet­ter, high­er in­ten­si­ty heal­ing pat­tern, with an ac­com­pa­ny­ing brief on Alas­si's in­jury.

Coro­na's re­ply was pleas­ant­ly help­ful, pro­vid­ing a full or­bital map of the plan­et with the Coro­na's lo­ca­tion and its es­ti­mate of Sobon's lo­ca­tion marked, plus an­oth­er sol­id data pack­et con­tain­ing suf­fi­cient aether knowl­edge to build a full-scale tis­sue re­gen­er­a­tor for lo­cal bi­ol­o­gy. Its aether re­quire­ments were, nat­u­ral­ly, be­yond any­thing Sobon could build or main­tain with­in her own bi­ol­o­gy; the aether den­si­ty it re­quired for prop­er func­tion­ing was, it­self, above the cell tox­i­c­i­ty lim­it. She fun­da­men­tal­ly could not chan­nel that en­er­gy, or be near some­thing else chan­nel­ing that en­er­gy with­out shield­ing. But as Sobon lay in bed, not quite sleep­ing, she was able to sort through the many in­ter­wo­ven sub-pat­terns, iden­ti­fy­ing sev­er­al pieces that he could ex­tract and pow­er with... some­what more mod­est pow­er sources. Not to­day, and maybe not for weeks or months, but the fact that Sobon had it with­in her grasp, and kept in high­er mem­o­ry where she did not need to fear it would be lost...

Be­fore she for­got, Sobon also sent along a sim­ple query, ask­ing about send­ing mes­sages to lo­cals via their aether sig­na­ture. Coro­na's re­ply in­di­cat­ed that nor­mal pro­to­cols should work on any­one with qi, al­though range was an is­sue, and it sug­gest­ed that Sobon could use it as a re­lay if nec­es­sary. Sobon sent along a terse mes­sage, along with Ki'el's aether sig­na­ture, as best as she could re­call it; it mere­ly said "Sobon lives again; he will find you if he can." Coro­na con­firmed the mes­sage had been broad­cast, but the way the con­fir­ma­tion was word­ed pro­vid­ed no proof that Ki'el had re­ceived it. And in truth, Sobon had no idea how long it had been since he had died, or what the girl's cir­cum­stances were now.

Still, as Sobon cleaned up her thoughts be­fore falling asleep, she found her­self feel­ing sat­is­fied that this life would go very dif­fer­ent­ly to her dis­as­trous first two lives on this mis­er­able lit­tle plan­et.

Far away, in an Il­lano port city, a girl's head snapped up, and her ears flushed red, and her eyes be­gan to tear up. Ki'el had enough pres­ence of mind to hold on to her fish­ing net, but only just, as she stood star­ing up into the night sky, won­der­ing at the thought that had un­ques­tion­ably been placed in her mind. It made no sense--but then, Sobon had nev­er made sense. A war­rior, a war hero, a... squir­rel? She shook her head, and looked down at her right hand, at the mark she had burned into her own flesh, so that she would nev­er for­get.

If he lived again... she would find him, no mat­ter what.