[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

In a reflexive gesture, Murali reached up and wiped a drop of perspiration from his brow. In spite of the infernal heat, he had barely broken a sweat during our ascension of the Great Stairs, all the way from the House of Aries. Around us, the droning song of the cicadas was covering all the other sounds. It seemed the blazing sun of August crushed even the rocks, and had smothered the wind: no gentle sea breeze was rising from the gleaming waters just one mile behind to brush against us. The air was immobile, a prisoner of Summer’s claws.

“Are you sure about this?” Murali peered at me from under the hand he had lifted up to shield his eyes from the angry glare of the small yellow star human beings named the sun. In answer, I shrugged one shoulder, and pivoted to get a look at the two statues guarding the entrance to the little temple set before us. The two women of stone had been carved with exquisite taste and talent, but their beauty was a cold one. Remote.

We had reached Earth only this morning, pausing for a mere moment close to Threshold, hovering at the edge of hyperspace right outside of Jupiter’s orbit, time for Shui to confirm with station authorities that the incoming vessels were indeed the jumpships expected by the Graad Foundation. The precautions surrounding Earth’s approach had sparked both amusement and contempt in all the Marine Shoguns. Paranoia, they had called it. Couldn’t the Sanctuary’s fabled Gold Saints feel whether friends or foes were diving down the sun’s gravity well?

Once all ten jumpships had safely landed on the Graad Foundation’s privately owned spaceport right next to the Sacred Domain’s eastern border, our guests had been directed to quarters in the main temple atop the Great Stairs, so that they could rest from the journey before meeting with the leader of the Sanctuary’s Saints--so that Shui and Tau could report to him first, and give him their assessment of the situation. All the Marine Shoguns had played along, pretending to be glad for the respite offered them, all but Murali who had insisted to accompany me on my fool’s errand.

Because he wanted to get one good look at the stronghold of Athena’s Saints, which the Marinas of Poseidon could only see from a distance: from the Aegean Sea which was their territory, and from the ruins of Poseidon’s temple on Cape Sounio. Because Murali wanted to try and understand how the Sanctuary’s inner mechanisms worked, and how one could convince Gold Saints to step away from a path they had chosen. He had expected me to hold a preliminary meeting with those of my peers more susceptible to listen and be won over, but the moves you made along the Great Stairs’ chessboard weren’t standard ones.

“Why are you wasting your time with that bastard?" There was definitely a bit of irritation in Murali’s question.

Glancing back at him, I smiled. “Because it might not be a waste. Neither you nor I can tell. And besides,” my smile uncovered my teeth as I added, “that way he won’t be able to claim ignorance of the matter’s importance as an excuse for snubbing us.” Not that Ithiel would ever admit to anything that might be perceived as a flaw. “I’m going in”, I nodded at Murali. “Please, do not step beyond the parvis.”

My friend grimaced. “No danger. I’d die before accepting his hospitality.”

I scoffed at that. “Well, you’re going to accept the hospitality of his House’s shade while waiting for me. If you stay in the sun and drop unconscious, I will most certainly not transport you back to my place.” With that, I turned away from him and entered the House of Virgo.

It took my vision a good half-minute to adjust to the semi-darkness inside. The coolness of the air sent a shiver running down my spine, so sharp was the contrast with the smothering heat of Summer. There were no artificial lights in the temple: the sun’s rays were let in through craftily dissembled holes in the inches-thick walls of marble. Listening to the echo of my footsteps rebounding from wall to wall, I ignored the stark nakedness of the decor, and focused on my reason for being here.

The lotus flower-shaped seat was empty. Pursing my lips, I weighed my options. Ithiel was here, in his House. I could sense him very clearly, as if he wanted potential guests to know he was present. That was a sham, of course. Ithiel never felt like playing host, for anyone--but he did enjoy observing people search for him during hours before leaving his temple with a thoroughly disgusted expression on their faces. I was not just “people”, though, and I had ways of finding him. With a little sigh, I closed my eyes for the time of a heartbeat.

Beautiful golden light.

Radiating.

There. Pivoting to my right, I left the center spot of the House, and made my way through the rows of columns supporting the roof, until I reached the southern wall.

The great double doors were closed. In silence, I stared at their finely engraved decoration: leaves, flowers and vines in intricate patterns that made them one of the finest pieces of artwork still intact on Earth. What was lying behind them was the second holiest and most secret place inside the Sanctuary after the altar of Athena itself, and it was off-limits to me. I should turn around and go back whence I came. I knew that, I could feel that absolute certitude throbbing inside my heart, painful. I had no right.

None.

“Ithiel,” I called in a barely audible whisper, denying the lump in my throat with an effort of will. “Ithiel”, I repeated when I had to admit that silence would be my only answer. “I need to talk to you. Please.” I bowed my head, and waited.

A shaft of light reached my feet and I looked up, just in time to get a glimpse of a field of white flowers that seemed to spread to the horizon, and never mind that I was standing inside a temple set along a flight of Stairs climbing up a mountain’s flank. The two doors closed before I could catch a sight of the twin trees growing at the garden’s heart.

“So, there are limits to how far you’d go.” Virgo Ithiel was standing before me, a slight smile upon his lips and his eyes closed.

I stared at him, at this man who deprived himself of vision in order to reach an even tighter control of his cosmo--at the otherworldly perfection of his features which underlined the title he wore of being the human being closest to the divine. I stared at him in silence, motionless, until at last words managed to win past my lips. Soft. “Virgo and Aries weren’t always at odds.”

The smile didn’t vanish from his face. “They are not,” he replied in a voice as soft as mine had been. Then he stepped to my side and added, looking at some point behind me, “Why did you come to me? He was right: you’re wasting your time.” His tone was calm and pleasant, unconcerned except for the slightest hint of something which might have been curiosity.

Drawing in a breath, I made myself look straight at the double doors that opened on the garden the Virgo Saints went to when came their time to die. “I may be Aries, and impulsive, and headstrong,” I countered, “but that bait is a bit too obvious for me to bite.” It was hard to face those doors. Death had swept over the sacred gardens of the Virgo House once, long ago, and it had stolen an infinitely precious life. The memory of that tragedy was imprinted in the walls of the temple, and it swirled around all those who stumbled upon this backroom of the House.

It engulfed those with even a shred of cosmo. Grief and fury, despair, when Aries had been forced to stand like I was doing before those same doors, to stand still while death was striking down Virgo--death dealt by the hands of peers and companions.

By dearest friends.

Shoulder to shoulder with Virgo Ithiel, I refused to blink, and went on in a quiet whisper, “We are all of us powers who can change the tides of Destiny. You are a voice, a presence that can tip the balance if you so choose. I understand the responsibility that goes with that kind of power, I understand the risk, but--” There was no subtle way to say it, no honeyed spin to weave upon recent events that would seduce Ithiel or win him over, so I said simply, “It seems the ghostly voices in the wind might be more than illusion. The darkness beyond the Rim isn’t empty. I’ve felt its touch myself. That’s why the Marine Shoguns accepted to come to Earth, so that we can confront whatever may come together.” That didn’t trigger any response from Virgo Ithiel. Still I waited for a while, and at last I hissed air out of my lungs. “I need you to be there when the meeting takes place, to help me find meaning to events Murali and I experienced on Finiti.”

Again, silence. Then he said, “You need me to push Thomas your way, and make the decision.”

“No!” I whirled around to face him, unable to help myself. “Damn you, it’s not...!” But it was. Clenching my teeth, I stifled the words crowding my throat. It had been the unbearable gentleness in Ithiel’s voice, the gentleness I could see mirrored in his smile that had ticked me off and made me betray myself. It was true, what he had said. I would use him to shift the balance of power inside the Sanctuary. I would use Virgo’s presence to prevail in an argument I stood almost no chance of winning on my own. “All right,” I dragged in a shuddering breath. “Yes.” I bowed my head. “Help me, Ithiel,” I murmured, “for the world is changing, and fast escaping our grasp. The crack in the earth beneath our feet leads to the abyss, and it’s widening.”

There was the slightest of shifts in the Virgo Saint’s shoulders, but still no trace of concern in his tone as he replied, “You do not know that. You cannot know that,” he added, his voice soft. Very soft. “Not even the Altar of Foretellings can show Thomas where it leads.”

As those words reached my ears, I staggered back. Thomas had climbed atop Star Hill. He had risked his sanity and abandoned himself to whatever pool of chaos was lying there, to its poisoned gifts of incoherent glimpses into what might be. The fact that he had gone up there meant that at least he knew something important was happening. And the lack of vision offered by the Altar of Foretellings-- “Beyond.” I shivered. “It’s beyond the power infused in Star Hill by Athena herself.” Forcefully I made myself stop. It took a desperate effort of will not to reach out and grasp Ithiel by the shoulders: haunting whiffs of memories, of sorrow and rage were coiling up to me, had been taunting me since the moment I had come in sight of the double doors. “What were you doing in the gardens of the Virgo House?” I asked him in a tight voice. “Why were you even there?” There was a snake encircling my spine, its scales viscous and cold.

Slowly Ithiel opened his eyes. His light grey gaze set on me, he measured me, like someone who realizes all of a sudden that the pebble that rolled against his foot isn’t a simple stone but something that might be valuable. “There may have been a reason for the bond between Shaka and Mu,” he mused, and the shadow of a smile touched his lips. “Weird Aries, full of surprises.” Then he gestured toward the entrance of his House. “Go, Fiammetta. I will not be used to push events this or that way. I am Virgo. I am the funambulist who walks the thin line of balance. This conversation is over.”

There was no discussing his dismissal. With a silent bow, I complied and turned my back on him. There was no convincing Virgo Ithiel, but what he had told me only strengthened my resolve. No matter what, we would--

“I take it Mr. Arrogance refused to even hear you out.” I started, then realized that I had reached the House’s parvis, where Murali had been waiting for me.

Taking in my friend’s smirk, I felt cold spread in my gut. This was my fault, my doing. Murali didn’t know Ithiel, he only knew what I had told him about the Virgo Saint, my complains and my frustration. One side of the coin, just one, and the other--on the other, memories and feelings, emotions swirling around beautiful double doors. “Ithiel listened,” I replied at last, my voice carefully neutral, “and he understands perfectly how things stand.”

“But he won’t help!” Murali snorted, oblivious to the truth of who and what those who bore the name Virgo had to be.

“Ithiel will do what he must,” I retorted, stepping past Murali and going down the Stairs, “just like us.”

He refused you. The thought glided my way, sent in the instant that we had left Virgo’s territory proper. So be it. I’m ready.

I know, Theirn. Now, hush. Muted incomprehension floated around me, rising up from the House of Aries, but Theirn held his peace. Sharp, perceptive Theirn. Be close to Ithiel. I blinked, willing the heaviness in my heart away. Stay with him. Watch him, always, and don’t let him bait you. Ever. Don’t let him goad you into anger and manipulate you, Theirn. No matter how insufferable and arrogant he can get. No matter how nasty and harsh.

“Fi,” Murali’s left hand lightly touched the back of my right arm.

“Hear me,” I said, pivoting and reaching out to cover Murali’s hand with my own. Gently. “Aries and Virgo aren’t at odds.” I smiled, even though it pained me to do so, and I willed the thought that had shaped those words to carry to the House of Aries. “Never forget that.” Then I stepped back and resumed my descent, accelerating the rhythm of my walk, overtaking Murali before he could glimpse the wavering light in my eyes. Around me, the memories of events more than two centuries old twirled and waltzed, refusing to let go--Aries Mu’s, preserved by generations of Virgo Saints who had chosen not to shoo away the ghostly whispers parasitizing the threshold of the sacred gardens that were also their tomb.

And preserved by Ithiel, in spite of his overt disdain for anything I had ever said and done in the Sanctuary.

No chance there.

No incoherence either.

“Fuck you, moron,” I hissed softly.

They were already there, eleven of them waiting in a meeting room of the great temple of Athena when Murali and I entered. The echo of quiet conversations faded as they turned toward us. Tau had been talking to Tania, I noticed with a blink, and Shui wasn’t far from them, looking like he had at least been listening, if not actively participating. “Praise the Goddess for small wonders,” I murmured, which won me a fleeting glance from Murali.

“So kind of you to drop by, Fiammetta.” The woman’s singing voice resounded in the room, and the irony dripping from her every syllable elicited startled looks from all seven Marine Shoguns present in the room. “I don’t see your apprentice anywhere. Isn’t he gracing us with his presence as usual?” Overstepping his boundaries, that was what the small woman was aiming to imply, meddling into the affairs of Gold Saints--my eyes and ears when I was away from the Sanctuary.

I gave a shrug, and replied evenly, “Theirn has other business to attend to at the moment, but I’ll gladly have him join us since you request it.” On the other side of the room, Tau groaned.

“Fiammetta.” A man in his mid-thirties, tall and broad-shouldered with long chestnut brown hair held in a pony tail had turned his deep blue eyes my way, and was waving at me in a short, negative gesture. With a little smile, I bowed at him, at Gemini Thomas who was the current head of the Sanctuary and the representative of Athena on Earth. On his right, the short-sized woman’s brown eyes glittered with something akin to triumph. “Enough, Haizea.” Thomas had looked down on her, and she snorted, not chastened in the least. The hostility between Sagittarius Haizea and Aries Fiammetta was public knowledge in the Sacred Domain. Everyone knew we were like cat and dog, and I liked to think she was the dog part of our duo.

“Charming lady,” Murali breathed in my ear.

“Yeah,” I responded in kind. “And she has Tau’s friendship. Just watch her play good girl with him, and then go puke in the closest restrooms.”

“All right!” Thomas clapped his hands. “Since we’re all of us here, let’s begin. First of all, I’d like to thank the Marine shoguns for coming all the way to Earth so this meeting could take place.” That got him a polite bow from said Marine Shoguns, Sachiko’s and Efraïm’s accompanied by an unmistakable sneer. “”Please, sit down,” Thomas added, unmoved and used to rivalries and shows of temper.

We did as he bade us. Contrary to what he had claimed, we were not all here. We were thirteen, not fourteen. Only six of the Gold Saints currently occupying the Houses set along the Great Stairs were present. Virgo Ithiel hadn’t left his temple, refusing to attend and possibly tip the balance through the simple fact of his presence here--refusing to be used, as he had told me, even though his absence was also a way of weighing on a decision. One that served Thomas, Orion and Haizea, and seemed to be Ithiel’s choice. He was Virgo, and whatever he did, or did not do had consequences.

“We are gathered here at the request of Sorento Murali for the Marine Shoguns, and Aquarius Shui for the gold Saints,” Thomas said in a quiet voice. In front of me, Haizea tensed and glowered at Shui. I watched her sulk, unwilling to suppress the little smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth and waiting for an angry reaction on her part. It didn’t come. The insufferable pest hadn’t expected me to find an ally in Shui, but still she had managed to hold her temper in check.

Ah well, some other time, I sent to Murali.

“Hush,” he whispered. “Not now.”

I rolled my eyes at him. I knew that, at least as well he. “--following a series of strange events that took place on Halo Side Fringe worlds,” Thomas was saying, unaware of our small exchange, or maybe uncaring. “Leo Tau and Aquarius Shui have already reported everything pertaining to this. What details can you add to their account?” Beside me, Murali grasped the table’s edge with both hands. Hard.

Details.

With an inaudible sigh, I closed my eyes. Of course, details. I had know this was coming as soon as I had noticed Ithiel’s absence. Thomas wouldn’t let the Sanctuary stray from the path chosen by his predecessors. He wouldn’t allow our gazes to turn outward, toward the Rim and what lied beyond, lest we destroy some kind of cosmic balance and bring about the mysterious, shadowy threat echoed by ghostly voices for almost two hundred years. Never mind that something was already moving in that darkness, and that what he feared was likely happening, whether he stepped away from tradition or not.

This meeting would lead us nowhere. We would argue. We would oppose one another during hours without reaching a compromise. In the end, Gemini Thomas would call for a vote. For any decision to pass, a majority in each order had to be reached. All seven Marine Shoguns would vote in favor of a full-scale investigation. Shui, Tau and I would vote so as well. With Ithiel’s removing himself from the scene, it left Haizea, Orion and Thomas. There would be no stalemate: in case of a perfect split, the vote of the Sanctuary’s head was the decisive one, and there was no doubt as to where Thomas would stand.

No way.

No way in hell!

“Fi!” Murali whispered urgently, ‘What--“ I closed the fingers of my left hand over his forearm and squeezed. I had no time for the wild light in his eyes, which likely meant he had picked up something from me. No time to consider the possibility of failure.

Theirn, I shaped the thought into an arrow, now!

Even as I released my hold on cosmo, a startled shout reached my ears, and the sounds of chairs being kicked back--too late. Touching minds with Theirn, I shared my perceptions with him.

And I shifted places.

I willed thirteen blazing fires elsewhere, using Theirn’s and my combined powers to overwhelm and topple glittering defenses too hastily risen. “You...!” Someone yelled.

A gust of cool air enveloped me, and the ceaseless song of the sea coming to die ashore embraced me from the beach below. Heaving out a shuddering sigh, I opened my eyes to the sight of marble columns, some of them broken, which marked the outer limits of a roofless temple sitting on top of a small cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea. The temple of Poseidon was surrounding us, the ancient foothold of the god of the oceans and storms on the Earth he had coveted for millennia. We had done it, Theirn and I.

Thomas’ deep blue gaze locked with mine. “You have ten seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t end this meeting here and now,” he told me, his tone level, devoid of emotion. I drew in a breath.

“The world is changing.”

Before me, Gemini Thomas’ eyes widened, and he took a step back. “What devilry is this?!” Haizea snarled on my left. It was only then that I realized. Whirling around, I saw the proud figure of Ithiel, watching us all from the temple’s south-eastern corner, half-hidden by the high columns’ shadows. It was he who had spoken. He.

The voices in the wind were gone.

“The sky is shifting,” Virgo Ithiel continued, coming toward us. His closed eyes glided over Gold Saints and Marine Shoguns to pause on me. “You wouldn’t let it rest,” he smiled, “stubborn Aries. I think your intuition and perceptions are sharper than even Nominoë’s,” he chuckled. “Full of surprises, indeed.”

I stared at him, numb. Again, a breath of wind swept inside the temple, enfolding me, silent. Mute. I shivered. “I didn’t know,” I heard myself say in a blanched voice. “I never thought--”

“Is it all set, then?” Thomas stepped past me, going straight for the Virgo Gold Saint. “Ithiel, is it set?” There was no mistaking the urgency in his voice.

In a slow motion, Ithiel pivoted to face the head of our order. “Don’t ask me,” he answered with astounding gentleness. “I merely walk upon the line, I am not the one who holds it.”

“Nobody holds it!” Scorpio Orion snapped, coming toward Ithiel as well. “Nobody, since Justin chose no heir!”

Libra Justin, our last keeper of the balance.

Libra, which now slumbered deep in the seventh temple along the Great Stairs, until the day someone would come who could claim that name.

“We are not here to discuss matters internal to the Sanctuary,” Murali cut in, his voice deceptively calm. “As to the whims of the winds blowing over this temple, there will be ample time to ponder them later. We are gathered for a reason.” Thomas started at that, visibly so, then his eyes narrowed and he gave Murali a reluctant bow of the head. We were standing at the heart of Poseidon’s temple. This was the domain of the Marine Shoguns, and here Murali led. The balance between all the members of this gathering had shifted, doubly so because of Virgo Ithiel’s presence. I ached to ask him why, to ask him what had changed over less than a half-day to make him move.

To ask him what had happened to force Virgo to commit himself.

“The Sanctuary has heard of the events that transpired in the Fringe, as I was saying before,” Thomas told Murali.

“And you’re unmoved?!” Sorento Murali asked, who would have been Poseidon’s right arm if it had been the powerful god’s time to again wear flesh and blood and walk among humankind. “Untouched by the fact that the power of Aries was so easily defeated, that Aries could be tricked and manipulated?” There was no trace of amenity in his voice, no hint of gentleness to soften the shameful truth that I had been played like a puppet dancing at the end of its strings.

Inadequate. Murali’s accusation mirrored that reality back to me, and I confronted it with clenched teeth. The fact that I probably wasn’t at fault and that none of them would have fared better except perhaps for Ithiel didn’t help--didn’t matter in the slightest.

“No.” Thomas shook his head, but he didn’t elaborate. Behind me, both Sachiko and Tania scoffed in the same time.

They’d never stand for it. None of the Marine Shoguns would accept Thomas’ headstrong refusal to discuss the Rim. They wouldn’t be willing to waste hours in attempts to convince him. Nobody could convince him but Ithiel, who would never accept to push Thomas one way or another. It had been stupid of me to make them come here, to hope that I could shake some sense into my peer’s stupid brains this way.

“Wait.” I turned to the right, and noticed that Efraïm had lifted his right arm horizontally before Sachiko and Tania. Scylla Efraïm, who stepped toward Thomas and smiled. “Hide your heads in the sand if it suits you,” he shrugged. “I couldn’t care less. There’s only one thing of interest to us that you have: information.” That earned him a blink from Scorpio Orion. Thomas didn’t react at all. “We heard that Core Side mundane authorities authorized huge amounts of financing to go into the Phoenix group’s research on dark matter and dark energy beyond the galactic halo. Why have they allowed funding to be diverted from Core Side-led projects?”

“What, are we re-enacting Confluence’s convention on astrophysics and quantum mechanics now?” Haizea smirked.

Ignoring her, Thomas stared at Efraïm steadily. “There seems to be signs that show a decrease in the production of hydrogen and in harvests of the solar farms set in the centerward clusters of young blue stars,” the Gemini Saint replied at last. Slowly.

“So it is Halo Side,” Sachiko added, her voice somber and a frown creasing her brow. “Decrease in production everywhere.”

“Not decrease,” Tau intervened all of a sudden. “But an increase in demand from all stations and colony worlds--and from Earth itself. That’s what has ruptured the balance.”

“And the authorities’ solution is to allow funding to go to a group of scientists who aim at drawing power from a source of energy they imagine lies beyond the Rim?” Incredulity was shining in Efraïm’s gaze. “What’s the Graad Foundation thinking?!”

“That humanity is free to choose its path,” Shui cut him off calmly.

“While you would have us avert our eyes and ignore the signs we’ve been given,” Murali was shaking his head. “You let them act while you’d tie our hands and forbid us to investigate--to prepare ourselves if need be.”

Thomas waved the words aside. “They’re one thing. We’re another. You and us, we’re power, Sorento. When we move, we shift the tides of Destiny. If we turned our gazes toward the Rim, we could be the ones to bring about the fate hinted at by Athena and Poseidon. That’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”

“This is stupid,” Murali sighed. “You’d wait until you have no choice other than to move. It will be too late by then.” His jaw set, Murali locked his gaze with Thomas’. “It may already be too late. Whatever lies beyond the Rim has awoken, Gemini. It has reached out to us and touched us. As we speak, it’s playing games with Miners and Merchanters in the Fringe. There are glitches in the way the jumpgates operate there: delays in transitions, and at times our Marinas lose their hold on ships passing through, as if some great hand closed around them for the time of a heartbeat before letting them go. Get real, the lot of you!”

Thomas’ gaze darkened. Beside him, Haizea’s eyes flicked from him to Murali and back, shadowed by what I dared not hope were doubts. “The voices of the gods have gone silent.” Shui reached out to Thomas, and laid a hand on his right shoulder. “This is no random coincidence.”

On my left, Ithiel was still smiling, eyes closed. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of shouting to all of them that here was standing the surest sign of all that we had to move, but I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t use the Virgo Saint for my own purpose. He was here, he hadn’t removed himself even though he could have done so. He’d make his own choice, and this time he’d have to step away from the line he had been walking, one way or the other.

Master! I blinked, even as Theirn’s mental exclamation hit me, and as the flames of his cosmo touched the temple of Poseidon.

The adolescent materialized right before me, and I lifted up my left hand, fingers spread in a halting gesture. There was a wildness in Theirn’s gaze that didn’t belong, and the harsh tension in his body-- “Breathe,” I told him in a gentle, quiet whisper. “Deeply.” I smiled as he focused inward and did so. “Good.” Then, steeling myself, I asked, “What is it?”

At once, Theirn’s shoulders and back stiffened. His jaw set, he said, “A message came for the Marine Shoguns, relayed by Threshold on an Alpha priority channel, directly from Pillar.” He sucked in a breath. “A star is collapsing in the Fringe. Omega. Omega is falling in upon itself, and first observations indicate that a black hole is forming there with exponential speed. It should engulf the whole stellar system before the week is past.”

Omega. I took a step back. “Impossible!” Murali came to my side, wholly focused on Theirn. “Omega is a dying red. It has nowhere near enough mass to collapse into a black hole!” There were planets orbiting that star out in the Fringe. Finiti and Niflheim, and Pouilles--and a base of scientists from the Phoenix group.

With a sharp hiss, I chased those useless thoughts aside. “The evacuation!” I grabbed Murali’s right arm. “The jumpships must help those poor people on Finiti! There’s no way they can all go through the jumpgate in time: its flow capacity isn’t enough!”

“Omega isn’t dying before another two billion years,” Sachiko said, her voice toneless. “This must be some kind of mistake.”

“It isn’t.” Ithiel’s smile had left his lips, and he was looking skyward, his grey eyes open and intent. Cosmo was radiating from him, beautiful and golden. Purer than the heart of any star.

From the corner of an eye, I saw Thomas bow his head. “Then we move.” He looked at all of us in turn. “We do our duty and help those people. We go, all of us but you, Ithiel, and you, Haizea. You two keep watch over the Sanctuary.” Grimly he added, “No matter what happens, we will not be caught unaware.”

While Virgo and Sagittarius were turning away to leave, Murali nodded at Thomas. “My thanks,” he said simply.

“We’re the guardians of humanity. We exist to preserve them all from divine interference or threats.” A joyless smile touched the Gemini Saint’s lips. “I think that a small red star collapsing into a black hole two billion years ahead of its time and regardless of its lack of mass qualifies as a divine-like threat.”

Watching him and watching all of us standing in the ruins of Poseidon’s temple, I found myself thinking that none of us had had to take a side and commit ourselves. The balance had ruptured on its own. Gone were the ethereal whispers that had haunted the winds embracing Cape Sounio.

The voices of the gods had faded from the world.

Even as we brushed against the skin of the universe and glided away from the hyperspace currents, a communication request flashed bright red on Hamal’s main comm board.

“Ligea!” I blinked. The exclamation had been a very faint one, and ridden with static, but there had been no hesitation in the uttering of that name.

“Go, Zara,” came Murali’s calm voice through the Cluster Net linking all the jumpships together--too calm. Tendrils of surprise mixed with suspicion tainted the shining web of cosmo embracing us, almost imperceptible and coming from Antares, from Orion. There was no other reaction from my peers to what must appear to them as an impossibility: a young Marina able to detect the presence of jumpships at the very edge of Achernar’s system, even though those same jumpships were still cloaked in bright meerschaum mist, and hadn’t wholly released their hold on the hyperspace curtain. Talent and a powerful motive had to be behind this unexpected greeting, but that would avail Zara nothing: our coming into being on this shore hadn’t been intended to be a stop on our way to Finiti. It had been meant to be a brief pause, time for the Marine Shoguns to retrieve information from Pillar’s ops before diving in again. We wouldn’t even appear as ghosts on Pillar’s monitors.

The rather mangled image of a young woman popped to life on my comm screen, her beautiful golden hair a shapeless cloud deformed by static and the instability of the link. “Forgive me, Lord Sorento,” Zara said with a jarring motion of the head that must have been a fluid bow on Pillar’s ops. “I took the liberty to have Ligea tagged on your last re-supply stop here.”

A second window opened on my screen, in time to show me Murali waving Siren Zara’s words aside. “The reason for your call, Zara,” he replied with the same, unnatural calm. There was nothing of his usual good humor when talking to her, no smile upon his lips, and the flat look in his eyes hadn’t the slightest hint of friendliness to it.

For the time of a heartbeat, Zara just stared back at him, numb. Then, with a visible effort of will, she made herself swallow, and words tumbled alongside the comm link, rushed. “Finiti. Omega’s collapse is accelerating even more. Local jumpgate operator teams are on the verge of burn-out. Refugee ships are flooding all the space routes, it’s--” The young woman drew in a breath. “All schedules and transport are in chaos. We are trying to redirect refugees to worlds which can sustain massive new arrivals, but--” Static cut her off.

“But what, Siren?!” It was Sachiko, and the raw anger in her snarl must have spooked the static and cleared the comm link, for Zara’s face once more appeared on my screen.

The young Marina’s eyes widened. “L--lady Sea Dragon,” she stammered. She couldn’t know that Sachiko’s burning anger was nothing other than a mask.

“Zara, pull yourself together and report,” Murali intervened, summoning the shadow of a smile on his lips. “Please,” he breathed.

“I--” Billions of miles and almost half of a stellar system away, Zara closed her eyes and bowed her head before again facing the unofficial head of her order. “We don’t have the resources,” she resumed, her voice toneless. There was a dullness to her gaze which could have been despair or exhaustion, or both. “We’ve run out of haven worlds. Everywhere, doors are slamming shut. Refusals and rejections. Threats even. In two days, things have deteriorated so badly that riots shook Edge and Leaf, and that military defense lines were drawn around Artemis in order to prevent any refugee ship from landing on that world. We have scores of millions of refugees drifting in space and forbidden from landing anywhere. They’re appealing to us for help, but we can’t force local authorities to accept them. Food and energy productions are limited on all Halo Side worlds. They’re all operating on tight flow standards for the supply line. Forcing them to accept millions of people would result in famine within weeks. We’re standing on the brink of civil war, my lord. Civil war on the galactic scale, if we can’t--”

“Blue cove.” Sorento Murali lifted up his left arm to stop the cascade of Zara’s words. “Send the refugees there. Reroute all of them now.”

“Blue Cove isn’t fully developed yet,” Zara shook her head. There was no mistaking the shrill quality of her tone. Hysteria. In silence, I stared at her image on the screen. I stared at the wildness in her eyes, at the lines on her brow and at the drops of perspiration damping her temples. Were we so weak, then? Was humanity stretched so thin? Was the unbalance so bad that the demise of a single world among hundreds would cause chaos on such a scale? Food and energy reserves Halo Side were so ridiculously small that they wouldn’t sustain the refugees from Finiti, and local productions couldn’t be boosted to compensate. “We need to get help from Core Side worlds,” Zara was saying, an angry twist in the line of her mouth, “but there’s no way the Multi Stellar corporations will donate anything,” she spat. “To push those bastards--”

Fiammetta.

Unbidden, a smile crept up my lips as the thought drifted my way. Thomas, I replied in kind. Find this show entertaining? Scorn accompanied the silent question, escaping my grasp before I could bring myself to care enough to stifle it.

You can touch minds with Ithiel. That wasn’t a question.

From Hamal’s bridge, I scoffed. I’m not Aries Mu. I turned my back on the screens and crossed my arms over my stomach. He’s not Virgo Shaka. You’re reading too much into legends.

Fiammetta! I winced, barely catching myself with the palm of the left hand and grasping the right arm of the pilot’s seat, shoved aside by the awful strength Gemini Thomas had put in his calling of my name. Enough. You’re Aries. He’s Virgo. Little secrets and personal likes or dislikes are a luxury we can’t afford right now. So move, and contact him! You heard the situation. He’s to relay my order to the Graad Foundation to get supplies Halo Side, so that the refugees can be properly housed, fed and made welcome in a lasting fashion, until such time as worlds and stations can adjust to those drastic increases in population.

My reflection in the monitors flushed beet red, and chewed her lower lip. Thomas was right, of course. The old bond between Aries and Virgo was a very personal thing, almost intimate, and it wasn’t anyone else’s business. It wasn’t for anyone else to know but, rattling though Thomas’ awareness of it was, the current situation was far too bad to worry about that--no matter that I had laughed at the reality of said bond’s existence, or at the very least at the possibility of its applying to Ithiel and I until very recently. “The Graad Foundation will see to them and make them behave.” When Murali’s words registered in my brain, I whirled around to stare at the comm screen.

Am I leaking thoughts now, Murali? I asked him, even as Zara’s image grimaced, in a clear display of what humanity thought of us Halo Side. Then, tapping into the comm link, I went on aloud, “How many refugees from Omega’s system?” When my only answer was static and a blink of Zara’s eyes, I repeated, “How many?” The young woman was beyond exhaustion, and probably close to burn-out herself. I was being harsh and unfair with her, but there was no help for that. It was the only way to help them all.

“It’s Hamal,” the golden haired Marina murmured in a bemused tone. “Hamal.” Her voice faded into silence, and again she blinked. In a reflexive gesture, she brought her left hand up and wiped at her eyes. Then, checking something on her right, she said, “Seven hundred million, three hundred thousand and thirty-nine people. Close to sixty percent of them have already left Omega. We’re lucky, ”a trembling smile came to her lips, “this is one of the least populated systems.”

Lucky indeed.

“Fi!” Murali’s call of my name resounded on Hamal’s deck.

“Not now.” I waved at the comm screen and killed the link with a thought. Then I dropped down on the pilot’s seat and leaned back against it. “Not now,” I repeated, sending away doubts as to my ability to reach Ithiel.

Close your eyes. Even as the memory of master Nominoë blossomed inside my mind, I did so.

Focus.

Feel.

Ithiel was an insufferable light, brighter than all the stars in heaven. A haughty beacon in the dark, an arrogant, prideful prick. The most powerful son of a bitch to walk the Earth and the Milky Way.

Ithiel. Was. Here, of course. A delicate flower of cosmo bloomed from the other end of the galaxy, from beyond the grand stream that was the pulsing heart of hyperspace. But then I’m always here, Aries. You should know that. While securing the mental link, I felt the smile that went with Ithiel’s thoughts. I didn’t stop to wonder how he had managed to reach beyond the surface of my mind. In stretching myself to contact him, I had allowed for the smallest of openings in my shields. That he had managed to use it rankled, but it wasn’t altogether unexpected. Around me, the beautiful flower of pure white kept spreading its petals to embrace the infinity of the sky. Its fragility was a sham and a very devious trap.

Yeah, right. My thought was a sigh. This isn’t a social call. Thomas wants--

I know. Short, and cutting like a knife.

You know. On impulse, I stretched myself once more, and reached out to the heart of the white lotus flower. Is that you caring about this situation, Ithiel?

As there are other worlds, there are other planes of existence. That cryptic sentence was no answer to my question. I bumped back against the surface of the lotus’ heart, brushed aside like a silly butterfly. Tell Thomas that the Sanctuary’s will will be carried out. With that, the feeling of Ithiel’s cosmo started to diminish, as if the damn Virgo intended to end our little chat without so much as a good bye. Spitting out a curse that echoed futilely on Hamal’s bridge, I flung myself forward and grasped the white flower’s stem with ethereal hands. Stillness followed, absolute, while Ithiel and I faced each other in spirit. Impulsive and headstrong. The thought was laughter, but there was emptiness in it. A dangerous combination. Let go, Fiammetta. There are things far more important than satisfying your curiosity or bridging the gap between us once and for all.

I know. I willed sarcasm to carry with the thought through suns and worlds and stardust--through abysses in the sea of chaos. And I tightened my grasp on Ithiel’s presence.

I’m here, he sent me at last. I have always been here. And the white lotus flower winked out of existence.

“Fuck!” A bang accompanied the curse, and pain shot up my right arm, radiating from the fist I had slammed against my seat’s arm. “Fuck you, Ithiel!” Why did it always have to be gibberish straight out of ancient TV series dialogues? It took me almost half a minute to master the angry red embers in my heart, then I reopened the Cluster Net link.

“Fi!” It was Murali. “What’s going on here?”

I gave him a level stare, then cocked my head to the side. “The Graad Foundation is now aware of the situation Halo Side. Things should move fast along the interface supply line.” The one, main path of exchanges between Core Side and Halo Side worlds.

Without hesitation, Murali reactivated his link with Pillar. “Zara, I confirm the order. Direct all refugee ships to blue Cove. Help is on the way.” He ended the communication as quickly as he had reestablished it, then his image in the monitor gave me a look. “How?”

Somehow I managed not to burst out laughing, and snorted instead. “We have more important things to do, like saving the more than two hundred million people still trapped near a collapsing red star.” It was a petty thing to do, avenging myself on Murali and venting my frustration on him. Still, it did release a bit of the tension and ache in my shoulders.

“Correct.” Thomas filled in before Murali could reply. “We have the information we needed. Let’s be away, Sorento.”

“Right.” The thin smile twisting the corners of the Marine Shogun’s mouth had nothing pleasant about it. “We jump,” he nodded. Even before his words had faded into silence, I felt an abrupt rise in power, and this time I did laugh.

Murali was pissed.

Murali was afraid for the people trapped next to a forming black hole, and he was worried about the instability rising Halo Side as a result of this. And behind all those layers:

The Rim.

“We jump,” I confirmed, and followed after Ligea as Murali parted the curtain and dived into the heart of hyperspace’s grand stream.

Winning free of the sea of chaos’ great tides was all about rhythm. It was a dance, a constant shifting between waltz, tango and flamenco. The savage currents were music, and nobody could ride them better than Murali. Linked to Ligea, in perfect synch with the great jumpship, we followed Sorento through insane storms, guided by the one musician who could claim to truly understand the patterns and moods of hyperspace’s many contradictory flows.

“Here will do.” Murali’s words traversed all twelve jumpships, carried by the Cluster Net that not even the sea of chaos could disrupt.

“All right,” Thomas replied at once. Then: “Tau, Orion, you stay on this side of the curtain and anchor the gateway link to Pillar.”

“It’s a hell of a stretch,” came Orion’s sullen comment.

“It is.” The contempt in Murali’s voice was barely veiled. “Efraïm, Sachiko and Felipe, you do the same and stabilize the path, for as long as we need it.”

“Aye.” It was Efraïm, and for once there was nothing in his voice no resentment and no anger. Just business-like focus.

“Drifting in the waves should be fun!” Sachiko added genially.

Before she could deliver a snarky comment on Orion’s ability to maintain a stable anchor so deep in hyperspace, Murali resumed, “Good. May the waters be gentle on your side,” he said in a quiet whisper. “Let’s hurry.” With that, he pushed at Ligea and caught a strong current where a dead calm pool had been a mere heartbeat before--as if Murali’s thoughts and will were mirrored by the sea of chaos.

Away we glided, carried by the unreal streams.

Toward a disturbance in the flow.

An eddy which shouldn’t exist.

Rupture.

“Hold!” I cried out, even as the hyperspace storm broke, crazy and impossible.

“We can’t!” Murali shouted back. He was right, I realized as I watched the great storm rise and unfold before us. There was no time for us to pause, it would be upon us within moments.

“Fiammetta!” There was no mistaking the urgency in both Thomas’ and Shui’s voices. “What is it?”

Unable to help myself, I snarled at the insanity beyond Hamal’s hull. “A hyperspace storm,” Murali answered in my stead, then: “Fi, with me!”

The words cracked like a whip, and I clenched my teeth. “On your starboard, Ligea, as always.” He meant to veer off-course, to snatch at another stream and whisk us out of the lethal storm’s blind path. It would delay us, but it might just work, provided both he and I could maintain synch and cohesion among our school of seven jumpships. “Brace!” I called out to Shui and Thomas, who had never experienced the true savagery of the sea of chaos. Then, I sparked my cosmo.

Touch.

Sharp pain and the confused sensation of Hamal’s bridge floor beneath my right hip reached through the fog enshrouding my brain. I was half-lying on the floor, part of my weight resting upon my right wrist and quite close to straining its joints.

The storm was gone.

Extinguished in a heartbeat.

The sheer brutality of its disappearance had unbalanced me and robbed me of consciousness for a moment, pulling me out of reality altogether. “Fi?!” Try though I might, I could find no link between then an now, as if bits of Time had been stolen from me. “Fi, are you there?!”

“Of course I’m there,” I mumbled back at Ligea’s frantic pilot. “Goddess, what happened?”

“The storm just died.” There was an odd mixture of awe and raw edginess in the feeling of Shui’s cosmo. “This is insane.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged, and proceeded to stand up. Rubbing at my right wrist, I added with a smirk, “Welcome to deep hyperspace travel.”

“Fi,” Murali broke in, his voice a quiet, quiet whisper, “the storm halted its progression just before reaching us, in the exact moment you and I sparked our cosmo. Then it rushed back to its point of origin and winked out, as if sucked out of reality.”

While silence was reclaiming Hamal’s bridge, I stared at my jumpship’s overly complex main control board. “I hear you,” I murmured at last.

Jarring sensation.

Something-- “Shit!” I yelled when my already bruised hip crashed into the edge of my seat’s right arm. “No can do, Murali.” I gave a brisk shake of the head, and hissed, “No can do!” It took all the reserves of will I had to keep my teeth from chattering. More than my mind, my whole body was shying away from recapturing the tidbit of Time that had somehow escaped my grasp. “The only thing I do know,” I managed in a tight voice, “is that it was born right in the middle of that eddy marking our re-entry point in Omega’s system.”

“Is that supposed to mean anything?” Thomas demanded to know, the feeling of him cold and hard as diamond. Silence was the only answer Murali or I could give him. The Marine Shogun allowed it to last for an uncomfortably long while, then:

“There’s no point in drifting further down the currents. Let’s go. Just be ready for anything. There’s no telling what we’ll find when we hit the space-time continuum.” And before anyone could muster an objection, Sorento the musician sparked his cosmo and caught the gentlest of currents, gliding toward the disturbance in hyperspace’s flawless, eternal flow. Unerringly I followed his lead. It was a reflex, a habit carved inside my bones, and our silvery school of sardines swam away from the grand stream.

Tearing though the curtain and bursting into the four dimensional reality.

Blue.

Blinding.

“Pillar!” The desperate hope in the cry sent shivering echoes through Hamal’s hull. “Pillar jumpships!” Unheeding of that voice, I stared at the absurdity blazing before us.

Blue.

Blue so bright it would blind me if I kept looking at it much longer. Unblinking, I kept focusing on it, on the many, almost imperceptible specks of black embraced by its blue fire. Ants, all of them, all those tiny shadows. Insignificant colonies of ants crushed under a giant blue’s flames. Numb, I watched them, while alerts flashed on Hamal’s main control board, warning of radiation levels so high they would kill in a matter of hours.

Omega wasn’t collapsing into a black hole.

Omega was shining blue. Its pulsing heart was spewing out great bursts of lethal stellar wind that engulfed the hundreds of ships huddling around the local jumpgate--dead jumpgate.

“How long?” Murali asked, acknowledging the comm request. “How long has it been like this, signore Yani?” How he had managed to remember the old man’s voice, as well as recognize it was beyond me.

“A little more than three hours. It--” The old man’s voice broke, and something like a muffled sob reached Hamal. Three hours. Less than five minutes for us--if keeping track of time when traveling through hyperspace made any sense, that was.

Three hours.

“That could be it,” I heard myself murmur to nobody in particular.

“Omega just burst into flames,” il signore Yani breathed at last, every single word of his bleeding terror and grief. “It swallowed Finiti before we even realized what was happening. There were still some left, the last crews which had stayed behind to shut down all the power plants and monitor the evacuation to its end.” For a moment, he paused, and I willed his words and their cortege of burning sorrow away from me. Every syllable was a raw wound oozing pain, a hammer slamming at my heart.

We had been here.

We had come here, Murali and I.

We had left.

We had abandoned them--to this.

“Enough!” I snarled at myself and the old man. “Enough!”

“Fiammetta?!” Shui’s call of my name went unheeded. They were dying, all of them. Crowding around a lifeless jumpgate and waiting for the blue star’s treacherous light to consume them. The radiations were killing them a little more with each moment that passed. Three hours. It was dangerously long already, but still some perhaps stood a chance.

“Open your fucking gateways,” I spat, “now!” Even as the words left my mouth, I grasped the Fire in my soul and pulled at it with all my will. Confronting the absurd giant blue hanging at the very edge of known space, I called, Crystal Wall! the iridescent wall came into being less than a ship’s length away from the farthest refugee vessel, and then it rose.

Higher.

Higher.

Curving like the petals of Ithiel’s lotus flower, it cloaked the flock of small, fragile ships and sheltered their infinitely precious cargo of lives.

“How long can you hold your Wall, Fiammetta?” Through clenched teeth, I smiled. It seemed that nothing I did could surprise Gemini Thomas for long.

“As long as needed,” I retorted. “Will you open the fucking gateways and evacuate these people already?!” No answer came, but I sensed the blossoming of cosmo, of beautiful golden light as the other jumpships veered away from Hamal. Tendrils of power reached into the darkness to part the hyperspace curtain. “Good,” I muttered to myself, and I severed the general comm link. I had no use for chatter or explanations and guidelines on how to use jumpship-generated gates. From very far away, I felt the connection with those of us who had remained adrift, toys in the sea of chaos’ tides, and some of the knots twisting my insides loosened.

Long. Releasing my breath in a shuddering hiss, I wiped at my eyes and focused on the burning sensation of sweat drops tricking down my temples and brushing against the outer corners of my eyes. With an absentminded gesture, I reached out to the edge of Hamal’s main control board, where I had set a now almost empty bottle of genuine orange juice--the only bit of luxury I had allowed myself to buy when Murali and I had gone to Earth--and I drank a long swallow from it. It was too damn long, and the fiendish blue star that wasn’t, couldn’t be Omega wasn’t a patient bastard. Endlessly it battered at my Crystal Wall.

Endlessly it rained spears of azure light upon my barrier.

Gentle, beautiful breaths of lethal wind.

“Murderer,” I told it. That, it was. A demon and a monster, its existence was the stuff of nightmares. “What did you do with Omega?” I asked it. It was insane. It was as if this portion of space had simply gone crazy, as if it had achieved sentience only to fall down the abyss of madness. Beyond the dwindling swarm of refugee ships, only Niflheim remained, of the six planets which had once constituted the Omega system. The methane atmosphere of the gas giant had evaporated, the icy hell of its surface was now a cracking shell which spouted lava hiccups. It wouldn’t last. As the rest had been; the huge planet would be gobbled up by the blue monstrosity hammering at my Wall.

Ships were streaming past Hamal, port and starboard, nadir and zenith, but their presence did no more than brush against me. Always, maintaining the Crystal Wall had been an easy thing, the focus of a very small fraction of my awareness--not this time. There was an awful strength in the stellar winds the blinding blue star was giving birth to. I could almost have sworn there was a will behind the freaky behavior of this fragment of space.

“Oh no, you don’t,” I smiled when I sensed the slightest, gentlest of stellar breaths glide upon my Wall and try to match the iridescent patterns coursing it. “No way, darling,” I denied it, and once more I wiped sweat from my brow. “I think I’ve had enough, Thomas.” Words he might, or might not hear. I couldn’t remember whether I had left the Cluster Net open or not. Aries, I sent a humble request, I need you, if you will.

Warmth embraced me.

An absolute acceptance of me.

Burning love and strength.

And the stars of the Aries constellation came to me, and shielded me, body and soul. Golden fire, strength beyond imagining coursed through my limbs, and my reflection in the main view screen grinned, a wide, feral grin that split my face in two. “Stop pestering me, you little sun,” I told the false Omega softly, and I willed strength to fill my barrier. In answer, the Wall shone bright, so bright that it eclipsed the azure monstrosity.

“Fi?” I blinked as Murali’s voice echoed on Hamal’s deck. So, I had left the Cluster Net open after all. “What was that for? We’re almost done here. Are you all right?”

Reaching beyond the tone of his voice, I tasted the deep weariness seeping from him, and retorted, “Yes, I am. And you lot should have donned your Scales and Cloths instead of draining yourselves needlessly.”

“Cloths are for battle,” Shui cut in.

“What do you think this is, Aquarius?” I shot back at him, fed up with tolerating bigotry and ultra-traditionalist remarks.

“Whatever.” The sigh in Thomas’ intervention was a very, very loud one. “We’re done. I suggest we leave this forsaken place quickly.”

Leave.

Leave this impossibility behind.

To turn away-- “Tempting,” I told Thomas. “You all go. You’re exhausted. My Cloth sustained me. I’m staying just a bit longer. There’s something I’d like to get a closer look at.” He would refuse. The head of the Sanctuary would deny me, I was certain of it, but the feeling of the giant blue star, the malevolence of its winds--

A rush of power on my port side, coming from Ligea. “I’ll stay with her, Gemini.” Murali had donned his golden Scales, I realized, and my heart skipped a beat. “You go. We’ll catch up with you on Pillar.” The Marine Shoguns had mastery over the Halo Side regions of the Milky Way. This was their domain, their jurisdiction, and Murali’s words were law, unless Thomas chose to confront him.

“Very well.” The tightness in the Gemini Saint’s acceptance of the inevitable meant a very strong dislike of this turn of events.

Don’t fret, Thomas, I sent his way, I know what I’m doing.

No, he replied even as the jumpships started turning away, gathering speed, you don’t.

Then they dived into the sea of chaos, and disappeared from this shore.

In the moment the last whiff of the refugees was gone, I dropped the Crystal Wall, and the hungry azure winds rushed at Hamal and Ligea. “A waste of your time, dear,” I told the blazing sun in my sweetest voice. Jumpships didn’t fear radiations. Jumpships were designed to sail through hyperspace storms and to withstand the sea of chaos’ savage currents. Their only passengers were their pilots, Gold Saints or Marine Shoguns who shared their souls with beings that would protect them against far worse than gusts of stellar wind, no matter how harsh.

It always shocked apprentices to learn that Cloths and Scales were living entities gifted with a strange level of sentience. Although a quick demonstration on how human blood would breathe life anew into a shattered Cloth if correctly used did convince most of the skeptic ones, many couldn’t bring themselves to really believe the sentience part.

It was a good thing.

It meant that it had been a long time since any Saint of Athena had betrayed his or her Cloth, and been rejected by it.

“All right,” Murali’s face popped to life on my comm screen, and the sound of his voice cut through my idle musings. “Now that we have some privacy, will you tell me what this was all about? You’ve done nothing but snap at everyone and behave like anything but a Gold Saint ever since we left Earth.”

“A lecture from you, Murali?” I drolled, then I sobered up at once. “It’s that thing,” I hissed the word, lifting up my chin in the general direction of the giant blue.

“That thing,” my friend repeated.

“Yeah.” I nodded, and went on with as much calm and detachment as I could muster, “It’s not Omega. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not Omega.” For a moment, I paused, but Murali didn’t venture any comment. Heaving out a sigh, I gestured toward the blinding star, and explained, “I know that the laws of physics aren’t absolute. That models evolve and rules change as humanity’s experience of the universe grows. In spite of all the abstraction, ours are empirical sciences. There can be radical turns, but this...” I blew air through my nostrils, “nothing could ever account for a dying red to collapse into a black hole and then somehow revert to a giant blue. Fuck it, Omega never had the mass or the energy to be anything other than a weak sun-type star!”

Murali’s eyes met mine. “What are you suggesting?”

Biting my lower lip, I looked back at him and at last I gave a shrug. “That the hyperspace storm we encountered on our way here broke just as the lie set before our eyes shifted from a collapsing star to a giant blue. That the storm was a reflection of something so alien, so unnatural that it tore at reality even beyond the curtain and sent the flow of the sea of chaos scattering--as if the hyperspace currents had shuddered away in revulsion.”

A shadow flickered in Murali’s gaze, and he sat down on his pilot’s seat in a slow motion. “You make it sound as if the star shining before us was some kind of living being,” he said in a voice devoid of emotion.

“I don’t know.” I looked away, then back at him. “The only thing I’m sure of is that I must get a closer look. Are you coming with me?” Even as I asked him, I gave a gentle push at Hamal’s engines, and willed us to slide further down the giant blue’s gravity well.

“You lead the way this time, Fi.” Ligea was flanking Hamal, never disrupting the perfect synch between the two jumpships. Murali had anticipated my movement, as usual. Taking my mind away from him, I focused on the azure impossibility pouring lethal radiations on us.

Down we went, in a cautious spiral that brought us closer to the blue inferno. Down, and try though I might, I couldn’t gain any new information or understanding of it. Hamal’s instruments stubbornly refused to register it other than as a standard giant blue, such as crowded the galactic core. “Perhaps I should reach out to it,” I murmured. “Perhaps I should try to touch it.”

“What?”

I blinked, then belatedly I remembered Ligea’s presence by Hamal’s side. “Nothing,” I smiled, “just pondering our options aloud.” He’d never go for such a course of action, and doing it without his acting as an anchor and safeguard for my spirit--madness. Besides, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do that.

I wasn’t even sure I dared.

With a grimace, I discarded the queasiness in my stomach and told my friend, “I can’t get or feel anything from here. Let’s drift further down the gravity well.”

He gave me a dubious look, then his shoulders sagged, almost imperceptibly so. “Okay.” He lifted up his left forefinger. “One hour, Fi. One hour, and then we jump back to Pillar.”

“Aye, aye,” I replied at once, and I snorted when I heard the eagerness in my acceptance of Murali’s order. I wanted to be away from here. Deep down, I wanted that probably far more than the lord Sorento did. It was a faint, faint sensation like the skin on my arms crawling back in disgust, as if some instinct was desperately trying to scream at me to be elsewhere, anywhere but here, and couldn’t make itself heard. “Stupidity,” I mocked myself and the cold spreading in my gut. Then I willed Hamal down the blue star’s gravity well.

There, a deeper spiral.

Endless streams of azure wind, enveloping us in sparking necklaces of sapphire.

Powerless.

Pulsing Fire before us.

Fire, but alien to the flames of Aries’ heart.

Fire.

What are you? I stretched toward its core.

The space-time continuum faltered.

Time wobbled.

Around Hamal and Ligea, a powerful stellar wind abruptly reserved course and the rain of blue, beautiful death rushed back to its source.

To the giant thing that couldn’t be Omega, to the giant thing that might not even be--

Stains of darkness marring the blazing blue light.

“Fi!”

A shadow devoured the whole star in a heartbeat, and in the same time something pulled at Hamal. Pulled. Even as I lost my balance and as my jumpship trembled, each creak and clang a scream of pain, I poured the flames of my cosmo toward the engines. In the fraction of a second it took my body to hit the floor, Hamal froze.

On the forward viewscreen, dust and light, stone and metal, and the fabric of reality itself were flowing in an endless spiral, tumbling down absolute darkness.

Pitch black emptiness.

A gaping maw whose hunger nothing could hope to quench, ever.

“A black hole.” The fateful words resounded weirdly on Hamal’s bridge, coming from me. “Murali,” I said, very, very softly, “it’s a black hole. A fucking singularity straight from hell.”

For an awful moment, no answer came. I didn’t blink. I didn’t stand up. I didn’t reach out to where Ligea and Murali should be--must be. With every last shred of will I possessed, I held Hamal together, and denied the rend in the space-time continuum. “I see it.” I bowed my head and bit my tongue hard, shaking. Giddy with relief. “I see it, Fi.” He was alive. Alive. “Fi, we’re too close to the event horizon.”

“We need to link up,” I told him while gathering myself from the floor, teeth gritted in refusal of the black hole’s crushing pressure upon my mind, “and be away. Now.”

“We’re too close to the event horizon,” Murali repeated in a very quiet voice. I blinked as the words drifted past me. “Fi, listen to me. The pull is too strong for Ligea and I. We can’t win free without being torn apart. You’re the only one strong enough to escape, so we’re going to push you as you go--”

“No way!” I chuckled, and blinked again. “No way,” I shook my head and refused the reflex to wipe at whatever it was that had started burning my eyes. “We’re linking up, and then you find the currents to take us away. There’s no better sailor on the sea of chaos than you, so--”

“No.” Static disturbed Murali’s image for a moment, then I saw him stagger back. He was looking at something on his right, his jaw set. “Hell, I can’t hold Ligea together much longer.” All of a sudden, he stared straight at me. “You didn’t listen. This isn’t a matter of riding the hyperspace currents. It’s a question of power, of overcoming the black hole’s pull. I cannot. You can.” Before I could protest, he lifted up the left hand. “And no, you’re not strong enough to shield the both of us. So you’re going back. You’re jumping all the way to Pillar right now. It’s not open to discussion.”

During what felt like an eternity, I sustained his steady gaze. It was an order he had given me. It was his will that I escape and leave him here to be devoured by the black hole. Something half-grimace, half-grin split my face. “Fuck your stupid attempt at commanding my actions,” I told him pleasantly. “I’m not one of your Marinas, and I’m not one of my peers. I’m not abandoning you.” Still, he was correct: I couldn’t spare enough strength to pull him out with me. And since pulling out was impossible-- Looking away from Murali, I set my eyes on the black hole before us.

Shining streams of photons and space dust were rushing at it, unlikely pilgrims about to meet their god.

An impossible nexus of forces so awfully strong that my mind was shying away from concentrating on it. Sweat broke on my brow as I did so nevertheless. I made myself contemplate its alienness. I made myself sense it. Taste it.

There.

Yes. Hurtling down and bumping against the event horizon with exactly the right speed, tearing at the curtain in the same time. Unbidden, laughter spilled from my lips. “We may very well end up beyond the Rim, perhaps even in the outskirts of the Sagittarius galaxy.” I whirled to the left, and faced Murali’s image on the comm screen. “We’re linking up and jumping into the black hole,” I told him. “Are you ready to make history?”

“Fi,” he began, this is--”

“What we’ll do,” I nodded at him. “Either that, or we’ll both sit here until it crushes us and swallows us.” It was madness, of course, but this little bit of the universe was no longer subject to law and order. The fabric of this region of space had become pure chaos, and to deal with that, insanity was the only course of action. “You’re not getting any one of us, you little fucker,” I whispered at the black hole. “I’m not letting you.”

“Fool,” came Murali’s reply through the deteriorating Cluster Net.

“Yeah.” Reaching out to him, I closed my eyes and sparked my cosmo. Every law of astrophysics said we’d die. Chances were they were right. So, even as I touched Murali’s mind, I stretched a fraction of myself toward the fleeting memory of a pure white lotus flower.

Ithiel. Nothing. I willed the flames to rise higher, but I was close to my limit. Ithiel! Silence and emptiness. It was a trap. A black hole for real. Evacuate the Fringe Worlds. He wasn’t there. Damn him! Ithiel! The ghost of a feeling touched me and then was gone--a speck in my vision, caused by my abusing my power and drawing myself dangerously thin.

“Fi!”

“I’m here.” I refocused on Murali. “Let’s do it.” I made myself sense the whole of him, then I pushed at Hamal, and flung us toward the black hole.

End of Chapter 4.

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