“Sir Rom, how have you failed us?” a successor knight by name of Dawnfire immediately protested. “We have seen the records of battle you have all returned to the chapter. You were unflinching in your duty and your valor, persevering for all these years in your hunt for our vile foes! What must needs we forgive?” he called out for them all.
“Brother Dawnfire, we are not hunters. The Wraiths are a terrible foe, and we pursued them to many worlds, many galaxies. We saw again, over and over, the evil they wrought, the harm they wreaked upon innocents, the devastation and damnation they inflicted upon world after world.
“Our hunt for them was right and just. But... we are not hunters. We are Knights of Galador!”
The successors were set back as they realized that.
“The duty of a knight is to serve his people, to lead in battle... and to pass on what they learn to those who come behind, so that when the knight falls, the battle can carry forward as a new generation rises, armed with the knowledge and lore of those who came before them.
“We have failed you in our duties as elder knights. We must beg your forgiveness, for now there will be a reckoning upon us.”
That definitely got all their attention. “Speak, Sir Rom!” another successor knight spoke up urgently. “We were gifted with all that Galador had learned of the Wraiths when we took up our mantles, so that we could fight them even as you say! Why say you these things?”
“Yes, Brother Nightbolt, our people did the very best they could. And, in return, what did the Wraiths do?” Rom paused as the successors looked at one another in consternation. “They fled and hid. As I and my fellows hunted them, they watched, they waited, and they studied us. Although they had their limits, they observed, and in many ways, they adapted to us, and we, in turn, were forced to adapt to them.
“For two hundred years, we have been teaching the Dire Wraiths how to fight the spaceknights of Galador. In return, we were not teaching our fellow knights how to fight the Wraiths!
“We have failed our fellow knights!” There was a murmur of understanding, even as he continued. “We should have returned to Galador regularly, and taken you out with us, back into the stars, there to experience what the Wraiths do and did for yourselves, instead of mere records from a conflict long past.
“The Wraiths have changed, my fellow knights, and we, we did not return to teach you of those changes, while they, in return, have learned of us.” His head bowed lower. “We must seek your forgiveness for failing in our duties as elder knights.”
Their cybernetic faces could not move, but there were electronic methods of conveying emotion, and they were complex as the successor knights realized that their predecessors were indeed not flawless, and for all their heroism, this was something that would indeed affect them.
One of the leaders of the successors, also one of those who had started seeking power for himself, rose to his feet. His name was Krater, a strength-built knight. “Your words imply more than failure to teach, Sir Rom.” His voice was grave, and judgmental, devoid of sympathy. “This would be a minor issue were our battles over. Are you saying that they are not?” he demanded.
“They are not, Brother Krater,” Rom replied calmly. “The Wraiths have returned to the Dark Nebula. They even stand upon Galador itself. What plans they have can mean only ill for the universe entire, but Galador is their goal and their target, the center of their hatred. The Knights of Galador must go to the Dark Nebula and confront the Wraiths once again!”
Well, didn’t that start a bit of a hubaloo. Floating off to the side and watching, I remained silent as I observed them all, knowing who was important, and who was being manipulated.
“Do you have proof of this?” a knight called Photus demanded, also rising to his feet. His tone was doubting. “Two hundred years have they been gone, scattered across the void, hunted by you! And yet you say they are returned and gathered in might once again?”
“We were pulled apart and elements of their people sacrificed to keep us occupied with a thousand minor plans and atrocities,” Rom replied unflinchingly. “If you think that is below them, then our records clearly did not display enough of their callousness and depravity.”
“What of the Darkstar Keep, then?” another second gen spoke up, also doubtful. “It yet stands, and contains their dark sorcery!”
“So it does... from reaching outside the Nebula. It has no such restraint on the Wraithworld itself!” Rom answered grimly.
“You said the Wraiths have spread to Galador itself,” Krater challenged him grimly. “On this point is our entire vigilance based, and of all worlds, we do indeed know the Wraiths best. What proof have you that they are here?”
Rom’s head turned.
I floated away from the wall. “Second best,” I replied to the big second gen in his own language. “The Wraiths are a deviant, sorcerous offshoot of the Skrulls, almost akin to vampires. It is the Skrulls who know them best, not you,” I corrected him, as the second gens flinched.
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“The Wraiths... are descended from Skrulls?” Photus repeated, stunned.
“Yes. There are currently at least one hundred and forty-seven Dire Wraiths embedded among the Galadoran population, with one Queen among them, directing their subterfuge. They have been very subtle and discrete, knowing that you are watching and your sensitivity to them. However, they have also learned how to defeat Galadoran passive scanning. Without direct exposure to a device on the scale of sophistication as a full-bore Energy Analyzer, their magic will conceal them. They need only remain in shelter when exposed to one, or play upon the unshielded minds of those watching such things so that they ignore the data... or replace those doing the testing.”
“Those are strong and daring words, alien!” Krater stated bluntly, pointing at me. “You insinuate that we are not upholding our duty with such claims!”
“I insinuate nothing, I report the truth. As Brother Rom has stated, they did not return to warn you of how the Dire Wraiths are evolving and adapting to face Galadorans. Two hundred years, Spaceknights? Do you take the Wraiths for fools? They are insidiously clever, darkly wise, and motivated by fell desires. Do you think the Wraiths you face are going to be those faced in the great war two hundred years ago?” I asked archly. “If you think they are such fools to not adapt to a foe which beat them so profoundly, how could you ever think they would be a threat at all?
“And yet, the universe and the thousands of worlds they fled to proved you wrong, over and over again.”
“Who, then? Can you give us names, and the faces they have stolen?” Krater demanded arrogantly. “Without such proof, you are merely stirring up paranoia and baseless accusations against us!”
“Indeed. I do not claim to know them all. But I do know one hundred and forty-seven of them.” Now it was my turn to move forward, directly towards him, and he stiffened despite himself as I floated right in front of him. “It will probably surprise the spaceknights of Galador that they know one hundred and twelve of those Wraiths, but the Wraiths have had much time, and they naturally seek out those with power to learn their weaknesses and manipulate them.”
Before he went on, I continued, “The most important name is that of their queen, of course.” His words strangled in his vocalizer as I leaned forwards. “Esmirallasa is her guise on Galador, Sir Krater.”
“WHAT?!” he roared at me, raising his great gauntlet of a hand. “You dare defame!...”
“TRUTH.”
The blow meant to backhand me locked in place. His cybernetic eyes fritzed and dimmed. His entire mechanical body jerked with the force of the Word, as did many of the knights around me as I downloaded all the identities of the Wraiths right into their cybernet, and the knights realized that they did indeed know many of them personally, and had heard of most of the others.
“I-I...” stuttered Krater, as the parade of lies and half-truths woven over years were chained together, distinct and separate statements that once brought together were obvious for the manipulations and emotion-twisting things they were. They had settled into his mind so long that he had no idea they were there, but they had formed the foundation for many of his recent activities.
Photus had also collapsed, staring at truths he did not want to face, and the face of a monkish elder who had been advising him for many, many years.
Once a trusted and honorable wise man, but now an alien soul-eater wearing his mentor’s face...
Something dark stirred, and I raised my hand to deliver silver light across the room, focusing on the twenty knights where darkness was being unleashed within them.
They screamed as tongues of sacred argent fury bored into them, and consumed the darkness that had taken hold of them savagely. Their vocalizers trailed off as they crashed heavily to the floor of the chamber.
Silver lights swirled in the air. “Knights of Galador, those of you who remain are free of Wraith magic. There are enough of you here to secure each of the Wraiths I am aware of, and eliminate their threat to Galador.
“Will you forgive your elders, and aid them in taking down this threat?”
The cries of outrage and shame at their own failures were joined by calls to rise as they understood now the danger of what they were facing. Their elders had failed them, but they had done nothing wrong by any code... and bereft of their wisdom, they had exposed their juniors to a subtle poison in their midst.
The second generation had been arrogant, thinking themselves ready, and now they had been forced to face a terrible truth themselves. Wraith evil truly was a terrible thing...
------
I politely input the locations of all the Dire Wraiths I was aware of into their battlenet, and the spaceknights deployed with great speed and coordination around the entire planet.
Within a half hour, they were all wrapped up and dead. Rom aided Krater in taking down the Queen, neutralizing her magic and spells long enough for the outraged knight to tear apart the creature who had replaced the maiden who had remained faithful to him all these decades apart with savage hands.
When he was done, Krater could only fall to his knees, the claws on his metal hands burning with the vivus I brought up to consume the Queen Wraith, leaving only her head intact, as I’d told all the spaceknights to do. He could weep no tears, nor truly sob in pain, only feel a terrible ache in what remained of his heart within him.
“How long, seer?” he rasped to me. “How long have I shared my heart with a demon?”
“Thirty-seven years.” His entire frame quivered in shock.
He looked at the battlenet, where basically the entire force of spaceknights, new and old, were now in conflict. A full third of the second generation had been corrupted in mind or body by Wraith magic, their own armor shielding them from any scans, and they had been triggered by the deaths or desires of the Wraiths who had instilled them.
“Come. We must succor your comrades, and I will save who I can.”
Despite his grief at the loss of the woman who had meant everything to him, Spaceknight Krater forced himself to his feet, and mechanical eyes burned as he roused himself to a fight he had thought himself long, long ready for... and now realized that he had never been ready for it.
The words, the horror, the guilt, the shame, the loss... they were just words, just images, but now, now he understood.
This, this was what it meant to fight the Dire Wraiths. To hold true against this horror, this loss... this was what made one a Spaceknight of Galador!
I watched the spaceknight rocket towards the nearest conflict, where corrupted cyborgs were going wild in Enchanted madness. Some would be saved, some would need to be put down forever, but that was what it meant to fight Wraith sorcery.
If they could be subdued, I could probably save them, or at least release them from suffering.