Chapter 60 Aurora Borealis

I hope he did not hear us… Let’s hope… He gave the order to send the ship here. As of yet I do not know of its intentions, but nothing good can come out of the mere intimidation tactics, let alone the actual use of force.

“If I see you fraternizing with this animal one more time, you will end up in prison.” He snaps at Levir. “And you, a useless failed cross of a monkey and a piece of space debris, go get damned Moro, and don’t come back without him!”

This guy is beginning to annoy me more than I can handle, but his order burns into my mind, and floods it. I turn back into oeve, and run. Why? Should I get a hold of Salix? Or just let ‘er rip?

These questions weigh heavy on my mind but my suffering disappears as I pick up Moro’s energy, and run across the forest, through the grasses and the low foliage of the trees. Now I have to worry about weird evil stuff that attacks you for no reason and out of nowhere. Is that what Fern meant when he said I was not going to survive this mission? We’ll see about that!

I look around as I run. Not every tree seems to be a duhi. Levir also told me that not every duhi is a tree. Then what is it? What else do I need to think about? Levir seems to be devoid of emotion most of the time, while all Fern seems to know is just one color in the palette of emotions – anger.

Why is he so angry with me? Thinking is easy when I’m not distracted. You’d imagine that I can’t think when I’m an oeve, but it is not so. I just get pushed in the very back of the creature, and I cannot disobey the order. Other than that I’m my normal self. Yeah, funny.

My biosonar brings back information. There is an ambush ahead. About ten ederis hiding. I can hear some of their thoughts. They think about the “emperor”. I know these guys are there, but I do not care. They want me to know they are there, because they want me to be frightened.

They have something stronger than me. It is a hellish device aimed to kill me. What is it, over there, behind the bushes? The air is saturated with the smells of fragrant flowers and wildlife. It is unusually moist in this forest and there is mist creeping through the grasses.

I increase the speed, hoping that I will be faster than whatever they’ve got. And I can be faster than any device. Just not this one. I do not see my attackers, but a lightning blinds me for a split second. Enough to confuse me momentarily. The second lightning hits me in the heart. I fall like a bag of bones. Is that even possible?

I wake up on the floor in a room full of screens. These are different than the ones in Fern’s office – they are green and slowly moving there and back. Lots of ederis walk in, out of the room, some stand, looking at the screens.

My whole body aches like hell. I look at my hands and they does not seem to be damaged, they just hurt.

“I’m not dead…” I whisper in surprise.

“We do not want you dead. That would be too much of a loss, Arte. But we had to blast you with electricity to see if that would shock you out of your oeve state. It worked.” A good-looking young man, almost a boy, leans over me with a smile. “What’s with the approaching ship now?”

“The ederi in the ambush were talking about the emperor. If I’m to spill any more beans about this transmission I received, it would be with him.” I can barely talk, but force myself up to sit on the floor, looking around in a daze.

“I am the emperor.” The soft-spoken boy says simply.

He has the most harmonious smile, and captivating, but sad eyes. His whole being seems to be wrapped into the same sadness as the duhis in the fields. This young man has a strong connection to those things.

The flowery necklace on his chest incorporates an almost exact copy of the rose pendant Levir wears, as well as my brand.

“You? How old are you?”

“In human or ederi years?” The young man gives me a hand, and pulls me up with an enormous strength.

“I’m Alare, a son of Ari and Leot, the first ederi. I’m over a half a million years old, and I’d love you to bear my child.”

I start laughing, and I can’t stop. So much that I forget about the battle ship. This guy would be a hit in a stand-up comedy, he is wasting his talent on these boring, surly people. But I can appreciate it, truly. It was the funniest joke ever since I found out they split me into eight separates gidealises.

The ederi in the room turn their heads and look at me with compassion, like you’d look at a very sick person. Yeah, right, who is sick?

“Whatever you’re smoking, dude, lay off that weed. OK, you’re the son of God, I’ll give you that one because I don’t care, but I can’t give you the second – I’m not an ederi, I can’t get pregnant!” I snort, catch my breath, and wipe my eyes.

“You can call me the son of God, because I can handle it. As for the rest – it remains to be seen.” The gentle young man gives me an expressive look, and beckons to one of the screens.

“Well, anyway, let Levir know that the electricity worked. He is trying to re-program me.”

“He already knows. Levir is connected to every duhi on this planet due to his forced symbiosis with a positive offspring. Which in the beginning, believe it or not, started as a tragedy. Please look at the screen. Is that the ship you’re talking about?”

“Eh, no. That’s Class B Multipurpose, non-offensive\scientific, manufactured by Leot. I’m talking about Class A battle ship with a capability of carrying a nitrogen bomb, manufactured by Kallitris.”

“OK.” The young man nods. “Fern’s actions are disturbing, to put it mildly. He messes with my business, he throws my people in prison. And now he orders an old, post-war refurbished ship to Lira to intimidate us to reveal our secrets. That’s a filthy, slippery path.”

“I’ll say! Let me get this straight – first your father gave me to your worst enemy Fern to unleash on your beloved planet to screw up your darling experiment. And now this? Don’t you feel a bit insulted?

“What makes you think Leot gave you to Fern with a purpose to screw things up?”

“Why, everyone!’

“No, it’s just Fern and Levir. They’re both misguided. One is due to Pride, the other one is due to Fear. Fern wanted his wish to come true. It did. And Levir needs to trust me more. We can deal with the rest.”

He says something else, but I’m overwhelmed by an unexplainable frigid wave. That’s the only way I can describe the feeling. Something is about to happen, and it is unavoidable.

Alare reads it in my eyes, but it’s too late. The next second an explosion blasts through the room, people scream and run, or fall. We get thrown to the farthest left corner. The young man I just can’t bring myself up to call “the Emperor” is on the floor about a foot away from me.

It is also suddenly very dark. Alare’s long black hair flies in the strong wind. I look up and notice, that the wall of the room got blown off and it is nighttime outside. How did it get so dark so quickly?

My leg hurts. I look down and it’s bloody. OK, whatever. I crawl closer to the opening to see if we can get out of the building, but I’m shocked to see – it’s a precipice all the way to the bottom. Actually, there is no bottom. If there’s any - it’s too dark and too deep to see.

“Wow” I gasp.

Alare gets up and comes to me.

“My headquarters are built into a mountain”.

“Not anymore it isn’t! I think I’m late with my message! The battleship started shooting!” I say, and know how hard it is to imagine that it actually happened.

“No. It’s not the ship.” The young man shakes his head. “You live here, and you have to learn to adapt to the behavior of negative offsprings…”

I look around and see that the ederi help each other get up, and start putting their equipment back together. Seems like they are not very worried about what happened. I do not know what it was, but it is not all.

The sky suddenly lights up with streaks of purple and gold, white and pink. The streaks are the lighter, the farther they are into the sky. I admire the color, forgetting about my dangerous premonition. More and more streaks appear and glow bright purple, blue and white, moving like a series of curtains.

“Welcome to Lira.” The Emperor smiles. “It’s our Aurora Borealis. Electromagnetic field of the planet reacts to the residual energy of the nearby pulsar. But you can only see that at night. Let’s get back to work.”

No. The second explosion is imminent. I know it. I do not have any time to explain. I just have to accept the information I’m getting.