Chapter 17 ZAPHAROS
I left Ella with her fingers still curled around mine, and a keening in my skull that no amount of violence could shake.
I was not myself as I stalked the corridor.
I was something older, something that reeked of blood and iron, of old nightmares that survived while the rest of me did not.
I loathed the fact that I had to leave her.
Especially now, when we were just getting to know one another, and I could feel her feelings for me awakening.
But my brothers’ voices rang louder behind me, a thunder of argument and anxiety.
I hated to admit it, but they were right.
The quest to contact the Pandraxian Emperor, Daryus, could not wait.
The situation with the Mmuhr’Rhong was becoming more dire by the moment.
A fact I hadn't allowed myself to admit to before, but it was true.
Soon, they would overrun us if we didn't do something drastic.
I had no idea what that was, yet deep down, I was convinced that it had something to do with Ella.
Why else would she have been thrown into my path just when we were becoming the most desperate?
Why not a thousand years ago or a thousand years in the future?
It wasn't like time mattered to my brothers or me.
Within the blink of an eye, I arrived at the Portal’s site.
As always, the atmosphere seethed with storm.
Not storm as mortals knew it, but a frenzy of forces drawn together to wrestle creation from destruction.
A new galaxy was already forming before me.
One would be thrust outward into the void like a child torn from its mother’s womb; the other dragged back into the Abyss, fodder for the endless hunger of the Mmuhr’Rhong.
The winds of power tore across the threshold, howling through the void, lashing against my aura until the black inside me strained toward it, eager to leap into chaos. Starlight and shadow collided in violent currents, all dragged into the vortex where the Abyss had devoured another galaxy whole.
Then, the storm broke.
Two vast spheres shimmered into being, twin mirrors suspended in the dark.
They pulsed with stolen light, birthing the skeleton of a galaxy, a carbon copy of the one swallowed by the void.
Stars flared like embers, nebulae unfurled in slow motion, spiral arms stretching outward as if daring the Abyss to strike again.
But it was hollow. Empty. Beautiful, but barren. No voices. No balance. Just the echo of life that once was.
We had made this. We, the Arkhevari, had torn open the skin of the cosmos and forced it to bleed light, a counterweight to the Dark Abyss, a way to hold the scales steady. But each time I stood here, I wondered whether the Portal was our salvation… or the very thing that would destroy us.
I clenched my fists, turned from the radiance, and boarded the waiting craft. Duty called. Always duty. And there was no time to mourn the ghosts we had resurrected.
I boarded one of the ships hovering on the inside of the Portal, and keyed my coordinates into the main navigator, not for Pandrax, the Pandraxians' home world—security was too tight—but for an outpost on the dark side of their system.
The navigator responded to my touch instantly, and, with a flicker of code and a check of the biosign lock, we were ready to go.
I let my fingers drift over the panel, feeling the thrum of the engine beneath.
The craft was built like a predator, sleek and fast, ready to strike and leave no survivors. I liked it.
A few heartbeats later, I launched, careful to stay beneath the sensor sweep of any possible ships that might be in close proximity, and punched through the atmosphere with all the subtlety of a bullet.
The stars opened up around me, and for a moment, the silence was holy.
I let myself drift, watching the blue-black swirl pass, as the distant glow of Nox Eternum receded behind.
I had never been much for reflection, but the emptiness of space did something to the mind.
More of the ship’s controls blinked to life, cycling through news feeds, intercepts, encrypted bursts from species all over the universe to keep me informed of the latest intelligence.
I focused on news about the Pandraxian Empire, which I absorbed in moments.
It left me stunned. The words glared back at me in the pale glow of the console, impossible yet undeniable.
The Pandraxians had discovered their mekarries among the humans—soulmates, anchors, the other halves they had believed long extinct, just like our Aelyth.
My lip curled. Eons of silence, of fighting in the dark with nothing but the Abyss clawing at us, and now the Pandraxians claimed what we had bled and lost? A species barely out of their cradle, fumbling with fire, and suddenly they were finding bonds the Arkhevari had been torn from?
It was time to contact the Pandraxian Emperor, Daryus. I could have simply forced my way into his mind, announced myself in a blaze of power, but where was the fun in that? I may have had no choice but to take on this mission, but I would do it on my terms, and my terms meant dramatic.
Not reckless. Just… unforgettable.
Besides, I didn’t want to shatter his mortal mind before I’d had the chance to speak.
That was my justification, anyway. The truth was, this would take finesse.
Better to let curiosity and anticipation do the work, to build rapport and trust, than to stomp in like a megatrom—a lumbering beast that flattened everything in its path.
The easiest way was to slip through his comms. Not a declaration, not a demand.
A whisper. A lure. One that would tantalize him enough to send someone he trusted to verify my claim.
I set the message to cycle through the encrypted bands, hidden so that only his intelligence channels could find it.
Message for Emperor Daryus
Emperor,
You do not know me, but you know the shadow of my kind.
I am an Arkhevari. The legends you call myth walk still. If your empire is to survive, if the worlds you guard are to remain yours, you will hear what I have to say.
I require no audience yet. Send one you trust to meet me, to see if my words hold truth. We will talk after.
—Zapharos, Praetor of War
This should get his curiosity going. He would take the threat against his empire seriously enough to send someone to either assassinate or check me out.
I hoped, for his sake, for the latter. While I waited for him to receive and respond to my message, I dug deeper into the archives to find out more about Earth and its human inhabitants and was relieved to see that Daryus had already outmaneuvered the Cryons and put Earth and its humans under Pandraxian protection.
The male was already rising in my estimation.
According to the latest information, the Superior Commander of the Imperial Forces, Xandros, had driven the Cryons off and was in the middle of taking over their pathetic empire after incorporating it into his.
Interestingly, he, too, had a human mate by his side, just as the emperor had made a human female his empress.
I sat back in my chair and reflected on these discoveries.
After eons of silence, our Aelyth had returned, not only that, but they had also returned for the Pandraxians, a species the Arkhevari had seeded millennia ago in an attempt to find our Aelyth.
Something we had done many times over in search of them.
Unfortunately, each time we were successful in creating a species with a bond, the bond only applied to that species, never to us.
So why now?
Why Earth?
What was this planet besides the obvious breeding grounds for our missing Aelyth?
Why had I never heard of them before?
I pulled up a starmap to find them.
It looked like Daryus was wilier than I had anticipated. Earth's location was being kept a secret, probably to prevent more unscrupulous species from ransacking it. Even if it was under Pandraxian protection now, there were pirates out there who wouldn't care.
It took me a few heartbeats to get inside the Cryon database, but they, too, were keeping Earth's location secret. It would take a bit of finesse to crack into their system. Fine, I had time. And it would stop me from thinking about Ella too much.
In the meantime, I searched through our archives to see when and who had seeded this Earth, which wasn't easy, because they wouldn't have called it that.
I could have contacted Selkaris, but instinct advised me to keep this quiet and figure things out first. I wasn't sure why, but the more I dug into this, the less I trusted my brothers.
My comm announced an incoming message. Short and to the point.
Emperor Daryus,
Arkhevari,
If this is a ruse, it is an ambitious one. Few would dare to claim your name; fewer still would think me gullible enough to believe it.
And yet… your message reached me where it should not have.
That alone speaks of a dangerous power. I will not summon you to my court on threats.
If you want my attention, you will earn it.
I will send one of mine to verify you. If she confirms what you are, then perhaps I will grant you an audience.
Contact Sloane Storm. If you are who you claim to be, you will figure out who she is and how to get in touch with her.
Until then,
—Daryus, Emperor of the Pandraxian Dominion
I kept my laughter down. Seemed like Daryus wasn't just wily, he was careful, too.
A trait I admired. It didn't take long to find out more about this Sloane Storm. My data screen filled with stunning information, and the attached holovid stunned me even more. Sloane Pericolosa Storm was not only a female; she was human! A human who had clawed her way into the Pandraxian circles, so high she was about to become Emperor Daryus’ new Chief Intelligence Officer.