Chapter Fifteen
“Are you ready?” Camber said as she stood by the RR doors.
Brogan hurried out of her bedroom carrying a sketching pad, pencils, and charcoals.
“Here, put your art things in my satchel,” Camber said.
“They’re too big—they’ll never fit in there, and besides they’ll get in the way of your things,” Brogan said.
“Well, you need free hands to carry the lunch basket, and believe me, my satchel never gets too full.”
Camber beckoned her over. “Come on, put them in.”
She opened the bag, and Brogan looked in. All she saw was darkness, not many items piled on top of each other. Brogan had seen many of the items Camber kept stored in there. So where were they now?
“Put it in,” Camber urged.
She slowly lowered her things into the bag, and they disappeared.
Brogan laughed. “This is like a children’s story, Camber and Her Magical Satchel. Little kids would love it.”
“Oh, so running from place to place to keep the realm safe from our Abnobian overlords is fun for children where you come from?”
“No, not that. It’s just your bag,” Brogan said.
“It’s a satchel,” Camber said in a defensive tone.
“Definitely sounds like a children’s story. Children have satchels.”
Camber let out a big sigh. “Just when I think I can talk normally to you, you open up that great big wolf mouth of yours and bloody annoy me.”
“Oh, that was an outburst. Okay, well, you carry on, and I’ll get the picnic bag.”
Camber took a big deep breath and put her hand on the RR room controls.
“Danus, about five hundred yards from the temple.” The doors opened, and Camber saw the familiar sights of green grass and a beautiful blue sky, but with a large moon hanging in the sky above.
“That’s gorgeous,” Brogan said behind her.
“It is. It’s where I grew up, mostly.”
“The moon is so big that it’s out during the day?”
“Yes,” Camber said, “it should be causing all sorts of gravitational effects, and it doesn’t. We don’t know why. Let’s go.”
They walked from the bedroom onto the grass. Brogan followed Camber and took a big intake of breath.
“Oh, fresh grass, the scent of flowers in the air, the wind blowing through the trees. It sounds and smells beautiful. If I had one of these in my Paris apartment, I don’t think I would ever leave the house,” Brogan said.
“But remember, we are very lucky. Ziggy put us in her penthouse apartment, with the best amenities. Only rich people have one of these in their house. It’s not for the likes of you and me, unless you go to an RR arcade and buy an hour or two. Ziggy has some on a lower floor.”
“I suppose it’s just as well, it could become addictive,” Brogan said.
“It is. Ziggy’s machines only allow people to purchase so many hours a month.
But there are less reputable gaming rooms that just take the money and don’t care, and people’s lives in the real world fall apart because they just want to get to their fictional reality, leaving partners and children abandoned,” Camber said.
“I can see how that would happen. We have the same sort of problem on Earth. We have social media. It’s not as advanced as yours, but some people only live for the false life they create online.”
“Let’s get going,” Camber said.
Brogan felt the gentle breeze. It was a very special place. There was almost a thrum in the air, electricity at a very low level that humans would not notice, but wolves were very attuned to nature and feeling the delicate changes.
“What is that?” Brogan asked.
“What’s what?” Camber said as they were walking up to the temple.
“There’s an electricity…I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like a thrum. My wolf feels it deep inside its bones.”
“You can feel that?” Camber asked. “It is magic. The ancient ones left protection here.”
When they reached the top of the hill, Brogan saw a large stone circle. “We have things like this on Earth.” Brogan was excited. “And we’ve no idea how ancient man got the stones there from so far away.”
“Maybe they’re from the time the ancient ones went to visit Earth and became involved with your people. They could have easily built them,” Camber said.
“Yeah, you said that Danu and the other gods came to Earth but realized the harm they were doing, when humans wanted their technology. So they left,” Brogan said.
“Yes, that happened on most worlds, apart from the ones that were near their level in technology, which was hardly ever. They left us all. I don’t know where they are now,” Camber said.
“But they are alive somewhere, and as their Map Keeper I can feel it. They left the map to a group of people, who are now monks here, and the portals. I think they left the map to us so we could find them one day. When we are all ready.”
Brogan put her hand on the stone and pulled it back quickly. “It feels like electricity.”
“Everything is alive here,” Camber said. “We don’t understand it all. But it’s here for a reason.”
“Where is the super junction I came through?”
“At the bottom of the hill, where we came into the RR room. You have to know your way around to use it and have intention. You described pools in a forested area?”
“Yeah, have you seen that?” Brogan asked.
“Everyone sees the pools in a place that is familiar to them. I saw Danus because I was brought up here,” Camber said. “Come into the temple. There’s more to show you.”
As they walked up to the entrance, Camber explained, “The caves go on for quite a distance underneath the surface. It’s a great place to hide if anyone attacks, but in the last attack, there was no warning.”
They walked into the first big open cave, and Brogan saw a statue up on a plinth of two women, wrapped around each other in love.
The very tall woman had her arms around a more petite woman.
They were looking into each other’s eyes as if all the world could be found there, everything good, everything happy.
“What is this? Who are these people, are they real?” Brogan asked.
“Oh, they are real.”
Brogan held out her hands. “I need to draw this. Can you give me the drawing pad and pencils out of your magic bag?”
Camber rummaged in her satchel while mumbling about magic bags. “Here, take them.”
“So tell me about them,” Brogan said.
Camber sat down on the corner of the plinth, while Brogan found a rock to sit on to draw.
“This was sculpted not long after they died.”
“They died?” Brogan asked.
“Yes, they died as heroes.”
“Who are they?”
Camber pointed up. “The tall one is Commander Redu, and the shorter one is called Kela, and the mother of peace.”
“Tell me their story as I draw them,” Brogan said.
“This all happened a long time ago, when the Abnobians had a huge empire. They controlled this whole realm, and others. They were unassailable. Nothing could get close to them.”
Brogan’s pencil danced across the sketching pad. “Go on.”
“First I need to tell you how Abnobians are bred. They aren’t born in families. Each part of Abnobian society is bred and brought up on different planets. Military, scientists, statesmen, ambassadors—you get the idea.”
“Why do that?” Brogan asked.
“Families create love, loyalty. But the loyalty they want is to the state, and they hammer into the little Abnobians from when they are first conscious that love doesn’t exist, it’s just an illusion other races tell themselves is real. They should only feel loyalty to each other.”
Brogan looked up from her drawing pad. “That’s crazy. It’s really that bad?”
“Yes, they punish any emotion shown by brutal discipline, and that’s all it takes to shut a child’s positive emotions down and exaggerate darker ones. The planet that their military trains on is a wet forested place. Ideal for weeding out the weaker children.”
“That is terrible.”
“The Abnobians tinker with DNA. They do it to some races to make them more docile, easier to conquer, and they do the opposite with other races. Their Drazani guards, their boots on the ground, used to be simple farmers, living and working off the land. But they were built big, strong, and hard, so the Abnobians changed their whole being. Now they’re bred as solders. ”
“What about themselves? Do they tinker with their own DNA?”
“Yes, we know that now because we have someone on the inside, but as you know, they pass off their science and tech abilities as the power of gods,” Camber said.
“That is—wow. Without love, without love of parents, they must become adults without empathy. For a wolf family, love is the glue that binds us together. So how did this Redu break those constructs?”
“Commander Redu was the best warrior the Abnobians had ever produced. She excelled in all she was ordered to do, destroyed worlds, people. It was said that with each killing her heart cracked, but that may be embellished in the retelling of the story. But she was moved from commander of a starship to the governorship of a world. Her Goddess title was the Commander of the Land and Sky. She was the protégée of the commander-in-chief, Davor.”
“Very lofty title.” Brogan blew the dust and smudges off her sketch pad. Her rough drawing was coming along well. The statue was more of the background, and the foreground was Camber, the woman who she was falling for, and who she would have to leave.
Brogan cleared her throat. “What happened?”
“Redu was sent to govern Daytra, a hot, dry world where the drought had been going on for generations. The Abnobians had ruled there for centuries, stripping the world of its minerals, much like Oipra. They kept people compliant by controlling the weather, claiming to be gods.”
“Could none of the other worlds have told them it wasn’t magic?” Brogan asked.
“You have no idea what a tight grip they had on this sector. Even if you could talk to them, how could you explain weather control tech to people that had animals pulling carts? It would make more sense to believe in magic than in tech.”
“I suppose. What happened?”
Brogan moved closer to the statue, getting different viewpoints.