Dynasty Lost

Lyric of Remembrance

Chapter One: Glass Cage

“What we call the beginning is often the  end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we  start from.”

—T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a  matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing  to be achieved.”

—William Jennings Bryan

MARCH 26, 3076, AD PS HEADQUARTERS, TOKYO

“They say Jaegar launched an attack on one of  the cities in the Americas yesterday.” Rye ran a hand over a  support column, face unreadable, narrowed eyes trained on the stone.  “Has your mother said anything?”

“No, but something’s got her worried.”  Lethya—or more accurately, Alethyis Fanyathe—paused to watch a  red shape streak across the sky, then continued walking, gray-blue  eyes downcast, untidy pale blond bangs hiding as much of her face as  they could. “At least, she’s worried whenever I see her. Mama’s  been in meetings since the messenger from Mars came.” Meetings and  messengers never meant good things; it was a fact both girls had  grown up with.

No one could have foretold the help plea from  Teran; the inevitable conflict, though, ought to have been a little  easier to predict. Teran had been an unstable world, one that was  breaking down around the myriads of sentient species inhabiting  around it. When the Muterans, as they called themselves, had asked  for sanctuary on Earth and Mars, it had been granted. Most of the  races were less intelligent than humans and satisfied with their lot.  Those whose mental abilities were strong enough to engineer their  transports were intrigued by human technology and seemed to adjust to  human society well enough. But the peace that novelty brought hadn’t  lasted long; a series of lesser wrongs had exploded into a messy war,  particularly when a permanent home for the Muterans didn’t seem  available. The strength and abilities of the Muterans, who had  adapted over millennia to the harsher climate of Teran, was at least  balanced by their lack of organization and strategy.

And then, a few years before Lethya and her twin  had been born, they had found a leader in Jaegar. Nobody knew what he  looked like or where he came from; rumors claimed he was a  shapeshifter. They didn’t need rumors to know that he was  brilliant. After Jaegar took control, the humans had needed every  psymancer they could get.

Which made it that much worse that of her  mother’s three daughters, Lethya was the only one to remain  powerless and grounded while her twin and older sister were out,  risking life and limb in the war that had already eaten their father  and friends. Some speculated Lethya was just a late bloomer, like her  mother; others said the abilitiy had, like many others, gone just to  her twin.

On the other hand, Lethya’s closest two  friends remained unbonded, though Akio and Rye were both able  psymancers and more than typical candidates. It seemed to be just a  fluke that it was taking this long.

It was a fluke Lethya was grateful for; it  bought them time before at least her friends were expected to join  the fight.

“Rye?”

“Hm?”

“Do you--do you think this war could’ve been  prevented?”

“Sure,” Rye said bluntly. “Like Akio’s  dad says, it’s too easy to shoot something that doesn’t look  human, and it’s easy to mistreat it. You of all people should know  how many cases there were of discrimination and hate crimes, and now  we’re paying for every blind eye that was turned. Some people  resented them being here, and they were stuck on a planet that abused  them; it was only a matter of time before the situation exploded.”

Rye had a point. If the Muterans had looked  vaguely human, there might not have been problems between them and  the host race of their new home. Unfortunately, there were hundreds  of different clans of one root species, all adapted to living on  different parts of Teran. From their limited records, it had been a  large and extremely hostile planet with radically different climates.  Very few of the Muterans actually resembled one another, which in  itself was a problem, but worst of all were the shapeshifters, which  could assume any form they wanted, even that of a human. There were  only four abilities that all Muterans shared: swift healing ability,  flight, heightened senses, and the Muteran version of psymantic  power, called Rintyran in their tongue. Their downfall was their  significantly less advanced intellect in most cases, but on Teran  they hadn’t needed it often, if at all: when the population  generally had the minds of children, brains weren’t as crucial to  survival as they were on Earth. The few exceptions, at least as  intelligent as humans, had seemed pacifistic enough. Any problems had  been unforeseen—or ignored—when, after some debate and  deliberation within both species, the Muterans had first been given a  home on Earth and Mars.

They had been there for a few years before the  problems had begun cropping up. At least peace had lasted long enough  for the Geneticists to begin Project Eudaemon last century. Even  though it had taken decades to complete, the initial test had been a  failure, and the final results wouldn’t even show for the five-year  maturing period, the outcome would hopefully save them all. At least  some of the Muterans fought on their side, but there always could be  more—her mother often railed on about the need for more of  everything, knowing there never would be enough.

Rye had said something, but Lethya had missed  it, deep in thought. Blinking, she turned to her friend—and froze.

Jaegar was coming.

The realization seared  through her mind well before the Alarum sounded. He wasn’t just  attacking, he was coming--for her, for her family, for everyone--  he’d never made a direct assault on the Senate before--how, or why,  she had no idea, but she knew. The hall seemed wider and  longer than ever as she tried to make the world start again and  couldn’t, ice running through her veins.

“Lethya—Lethya, what’s wrong?” Rye  sounded nervous—her friend had never had that cast to her eyes  before. The sound woke Lethya from her strange, cold trance.

“He’s coming,” she replied, aghast.  “Jaegar’s coming.”

That was when the Alarum’s siren started  wailing, the screech ripping through the air, and both girls stared  at the speakers, frozen, a particularly panicked cast in Rye’s  eyes. Then she shook her head, dark curls shivering as she seized  Lethya’s wrist and dragged her down the hall. “We’ve got to get  to the Preservexes!”

Lethya could only nod and make her legs move,  her mind trying to remember the emergency drills, remember where Akio  was supposed to be, remember what the last thing she’d said to her  mother, her sisters—

They ran down the open  halls, past the gardens and the Library, and careened around a  corner, only to find a horrific sight: twenty bodies or more, all  looking like they were asleep, the thick residual slime of vris on  the walls nearby. It was a gas synthesized by the Muterans; though  the aliens were mostly immune to its devastating effects, to humans  it was as bad—if not worse—as the mustard gas from the wars of  old.

“Come on!” They doubled back, not daring to  cross the ground where the dead lay, and turned at another cross  section. They were forced to change direction several times, finding  patches of those dead or dying from the choking vris.

A louder rumbling noise started to grow behind  them. How had he gotten past the guards? Where were the Special  Forces—the soldiers—the psymancers?

Her answer came as they were forced to cut  across open ground: bodies littered the ground, some moaning softly  as their lungs dissolved. All wore uniforms of some division of the  army, killed to protect the people inside the building. He had to  have gassed the majority of the psymancers in stealth while they were  in the training grounds. Without them, the PS Headquarters and its  defenses were heavily crippled—perhaps too much so.

The rumbling grew louder, and as she looked  back, she saw black snake-like tendrils wrapping around the Grand  Chambers and tightening. First cracks darted over the dome’s  surface, then deeper fissures; and then the whole dome shattered.  Those tentacles were the trademark of a nightmare beast—an enormous  Muteran that appeared as nothing so much as a cancerous blemish on  the surface of the earth, a mass of blackness with thousands of  scaled tentacles, dubbed by the humans as a ‘kraken’ after the  monster of legends.

And now it was eating her home.

Lethya didn’t even realize she’d stopped  running, but Rye too had come to a halt, both girls watching,  stricken, as the Senatorium, the Library, the Council building, the  Records Complex, the very muscles and bones of their government, were  lashed in black tendrils and wrenched apart, immense clouds of dust  rising into the sky as they collapsed.

If a kraken was here—hadn’t she eavesdropped  on a conversation about this? It meant that—

A hand reached out, grabbing her ankle, and she  shrieked. It was a woman she vaguely recognized from around the  Senatorium, blood starting to run from the corner of her mouth, and  in her ruined hands she held a coarse sack. “Le—Leth—Take—keep  it—safe—” She slumped over, dead, and Lethya took the satchel  with trembling hands, slipping the strap over her shoulder and  looking inside. It contained six round balls the size of two fists,  all a pearly gray, and she knew immediately what they were. They must  have been on their way to the Bookkeeping office to be logged in the  records…

“Let’s go,” she whispered. The necklace  her mother had given her for her last birthday was glowing  slightly—she tucked it under her shirt for safekeeping.

They ran on, then reached the Preservex Room.  Her sisters had already made it there, both climibing into a  Preservex, the vapors rising up and the clear crystalloid panel  sliding shut. The light over the panels were blinking yellow,  indicating the capsules had yet to stabilize. Thousands upon  thousands more Preservexes lay in wait in the room, metal cylinders  with the clear panel as a doorway. They were constructed to render  the inhabitant unconscious and then run off the mental energy still  being produced, making the machine itself indestructible once it had  stabilized. Theoretically, it would allow someone to stay locked in a  moment for possibly thousands of years without aging a day.

The lights over her sisters’ faces hadn’t  turned green yet when the kraken’s black tendrils swarmed into the  room. The crunch of crystalloid and metal ran, cacophonic, through  the air, the discord rending their ears. They were being destroyed,  all of the Preservexes—her people’s last chance of escape—no,  it couldn’t be happening—

Tentacles wrapped around her sisters’  Preservexes and wrenched them free just as a stone column toppled and  debris rained from ceiling. Her sisters were buried along with a  myriad of black arms.

“No!” Tears ran  down her face. Her sisters—her sisters, dead—

Something shoved her towards one Preservex left  standing. “Go!” Rye yelled.

“What—Rye?!”

“Get in there!” Her friend’s grip on her  wrist tightened, hauling her relentlessly towards the black cylinder.  “You’ve got to survive,” she said fiercely.

“No! Rye, you can’t—”

Rye gave her a last push, her strength  unexpected, and Lethya stumbled within the cylinder. The thump of a  hand hitting the sealing button was confirmed by the click of the  panel sliding shut behind her back. Now only someone on the outside  could release her. Lethya whirled around and pounded on the clear  crystalloid, shaking with terror and tears. “Rye!”

“He can’t get  you, I swore to your mother that I’d save you at any cost!”

Vapors started seeping up from the floor. “No!”

The yellow reflection above showed it hadn’t  stabilized yet. Gritting her teeth, Rye drew the short blade from her  hip and swept it in a silver arc, doing her best to fend off the  advancing tentacles. Those that met her edge jerked back, writhing  and dripping an ugly, sludge-like liquid.

Then a fresh surge poured through the entryway  as the kraken itself forced through, easily shoving past the arch,  the din of cracking stone and warping metal rising to a twisted  crescendo. The Preservex’s light turned green as Lethya fought off  the inescapable stasis, still screaming, still watching the blade  flash bright against the darkness through blurring eyes. Frantically,  she threw herself against the panel, but to no avail.

Rye glanced over her shoulder at Lethya; her  green eyes caught the matching light and then widened as a black  tentacle rammed through her chest. Flecks of Rye’s blood hit the  Preservex’s clear panel as a choking cough wracked her body, a thin  line of scarlet trickling out of her mouth. Her eyes locking with  Lethya’s for the last time, she said desperately, “Live.”

“RYE! NOOOOOO!”

Tears rolled down her face faster than ever as  she watched Rye’s eyes glaze over and her lifeless body fall before  the Preservex. Her own screams faded to a buzzing in her ears as  shock began to take over. How? How could it be she’d lost so much  in only these few, brief moments?

And then she saw him.

The man seated on the kraken was tall and pale,  with hair an ugly shade of red-brown and eyes of black. His  sharp-carved face might have been attractive had it contained a shred  of warmth. As he approached, he viewed the carnage around him as if  calculating precisely how much damage this had done, as if it were an  experiment of a sort. The equation seemed to please him: a smile  spread like frost across his face.

Then he saw her, still  fighting the encroaching sleep. He stood with a frown, then walked  over. Lethya backed up as far as she could, then realized with a  sinking heart that if she truly were the only survivor, only he could  release her. How anyone in the area could have survived the vris,  not to mention the slaughter, was beyond her, and no one would  remember or think of the Preservexes. It could be years, decades,  maybe centuries before she’d be let out.

Jaegar brought his face closer to the panel, two  feet and a crystalloid panel the only thing between them, and she  screamed from fear and revulsion, pressed against the back of the  Preservex so tightly her skin threatened to split.

And then, in her mind, it felt almost as  something did break. Her eyes turned lavender for the first time,  wide with horror, while that unnamed sense broke loose, feeding her a  knotted jumble of information. Lethya’s mind was overwhelmed, the  new confusion and sea of fear, rage, and loss pushing her to the edge  of sanity. Basic mental training took over, and she instinctively let  it go, the effort claiming the last of her strength. The vapors won  her over at last and she was abruptly pulled into unconsciousness, a  soft white light shining from beneath her shirt as everything faded  to black.

She never saw the brilliant flash of light that  ripped Jaegar in half and killed the kraken. She never saw Jaegar  writhe in agony and vanish into fleeting shadows; never saw the black  tentacles dissolve into ropes of ash over broken stone; never saw the  years pass and the cavernous room slowly collapsing upon itself, then  being built over entirely.

But for over a thousand years, Lethya stayed  frozen there, eyes wide open, pale violet littered in indigo and  unchanging.

10:46 AM, FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 6118 AD,  VALIANDESSA EVE OBRIEUN ACADEMY OF THE MARTIAL AND PSYMANTIC ARTS,  NEO TOKYO

“Freak.” The blonde boy folded his arms,  regarding the two older students in front of him with a challenging  sneer. The taller one the comment was aimed out said nothing,  seemingly unperturbed; his companion was more than willing to respond  instead.

“Screw off,” Jerik suggested helpfully,  gray-green eyes narrowed behind hair so dark a brown it almost seemed  black, rounded chin jutting out slightly in irritation.

“And you’re a freak too, Sparky.” Sigof  leaned forward, grinning maliciously. “Frrr-reak.”

“Oh, I get it, Ander,” Jerik said in the  manner of one who has achieved enlightenment. “He’s trying to  speak to us in his native tongue. ‘Freak’ in the language of  dumbasses must translate into ‘sexy beast.’ I’m sorry, Sigof,  but my door doesn’t swing that way.”

Ander gave his friend a warning look, but the  rather dimwitted Sigof lunged forward, opting for physical abuse  since his oh-so-eloquent verbal abuse had failed miserably.

In an instant, Ander had  him by the collar and pinned against a locker. “Look, kid,” he  informed the squirming boy, “I’m going to let you in on a little  secret.” He was tall for his age, and from a distance he didn’t  seem too unusual—but at close range, those uncanny eyes of his were  rumored to have made grown men cry. “And you’re going to listen,  unless you have a thing for getting yourself hurt. Now, if you’re  stupid, you’re going to tick off Jerik. He’ll twist everything  you say and make you feel like crap by the time he’s done with  you.” He put more pressure on the pale Sigof, who was starting to  sweat. “But if you’re suicidal, you’re going to tick off me.  And I don’t need words to make you feel even worse. ” His eyes,  once a golden orange like candle flame, had darkened to a  reddish-orange in anger that nearly glowed. “Now when I let you go,  you’re going to run along and leave us alone, because I don’t  want to deal with you again. Are we clear?” Sigof muttered  something that sounded vaguely like ‘yes’ and Ander released him.  “Get out of here.”

After stumbling clumsily  to his feet, the boy shouted, “You are freaks, both of you!  And you’re nothing special, you Deimon freak, just some jumped-up  monster’s brat who even killed his own—”

“Shut up! Shut up shut  up shut up!” His cronies dragged him off, casting nervous  looks over their shoulders as if the infamous duo were demigods who  were waiting to let them think they got off and would then  smite them.

“Oooh, I love  breaking in the new ones,” Jerik said smugly, absentmindedly  tugging on his tool belt. His love of mechanics forbade him from  leaving anything of use in his room, where most normal people left  their tools. “All high and mighty till we pound them into the  dirt.”

“Quality entertainment,” Ander commented  dryly, “I’m sure. Of course, you’re the one who gets to spout  off clever little witticisms and leave me the dirty work.”

“You know you love it,” shot back Jerik. “‘I  am Deimon, hear me roar.’”

“Whatever. Are we going to stand around and  talk, or are we going to get our schedules for this term?” Without  even waiting for his friend’s reply, Ander moved off.

The two had been friends  for over ten years now, and were infamous around the school. Ander’s  wary respect was due to multiple reasons, whereas Jerik’s social  leprosy originated from being an orphan and burdened with a genetic  glitch. That glitch had been the downfall of his family since it had  first crossed paths with psymancer blood. It meant that he most  likely would someday suffer a very painful death, and much earlier  than normal; it had destroyed his parents when he was only four. For  only a sixteen—soon to be seventeen for both of them—year-old, it  would be something of a downer, but this was Jerik and it took  more than the prospect of an early and grisly death to get him down.

Ander, on the other hand, did not have death on  the horizon; instead, it had darkened his past. His mother had been  the daughter of the current Arch Psymancer of Neo Tokyo, his father a  Deimon. When Jaegar had killed them both, and Ander had been pulled,  blood-soaked, from their room, it hadn’t taken very long for rumors  to start flying that the little five-year-old Deimon had murdered his  parents. Even the confirmation a year later that it was most likely  Jaegar hadn’t stemmed the flow; it never helped that at sixteen he  still refused to talk about it.

And then, the year before, it had happened all  over again…

Now he was one of the  last, if not the last Deimon left alive. The first Deimons had  been a race of humans that had been genetically constructed from  square one, but with the four common abilities of the Muterans  infused into them. The result had been a race that was stronger and  sturdier than humans, had the Muteran Rintyran, exceptional senses  including that of auras, and the ability to, in a way, fly. They were  virtually Muterans in human form, only they had a human intellect.  The genes had been mostly dominant, so any offspring was a Deimon as  well. All Ander had from his mother were her unusually strong  psymantic powers, but in appearance he was almost identical to his  father—tall, with shoulders almost a little narrower than normal,  an angular face, and light brown hair that constantly fell into his  eyes, just brushing the tips of his ears. He would have kept it  shorter, but it grew back too fast for it to be worth it. The only  unusual thing about him—that was seen, of course—were his eyes,  eyes that shifted from yellow to orange to deep red, betraying  whatever emotion ruled him—if you knew what each color meant.  Shifting eyes like those were not unheard of, but still rare. It took  an extreme emotional shock in early psymantic development, and while  the war was bad, the humans weren’t losing that badly for  those eyes to be commonplace.

Naturally, the Deimons had been an enormous  threat to Jaegar, so he’d targeted them, and over the centuries,  they’d slowly died out. Ander didn’t know how many other Deimons  were alive, but if there were any left, they weren’t making  themselves blatantly open. He, though, had never had a choice.

“Say something offensive,” Jerik said  suddenly. “You’re quiet and it’s creeping me out.”

Ander rolled his eyes and refused to dignify  that with a response. They reached the Transportation Shafts and each  stepped into one, saying clearly, “Scanner Level.” A light  flicked on, showing that the anti-momentum module was working, then  blinked off, and they stepped out. Before them was a huge room empty  of everything but Basic Scanners, computers that were connected to  the inter-school network. They contained possibly all information  that could be gathered from everything in the school, with the  exception of the dust bunnies.

Setting a hand palm-down on the panel, Ander  waited for the screen to load as Jerik did the same. “Genetic  Scan complete: Anderian Tientas.”

“Genetic Scan complete: Jerikton Schyler.  Please select an option.”

“I always feel so loved when I use these  things,” Jerik said mournfully. “They’re the only things that  are polite to me anymore.”

“And one of these days  someone’s going to program it to insult you like anything with  biological or artificial intelligence does nowadays.” Ander pushed  the School Data section and waited impatiently. “Please  select an option,” the Scanners chimed again in unison.

Simultaneously they hit  Schedule Printout, then tore off the procured sheets of paper.

“How’s yours look?” Jerik asked, taking  Ander’s before he responded and holding them up for comparison.  “Exactly the same. Surprise, surprise.” Ever since they’d met  when they were six, Jerik had guaranteed they’d be in the same  classes by throwing a tantrum in every class until they eventually  switched him to all of his best friend’s classes. Eventually the  teachers caught on and put them on the same schedule every semester.  Later they’d justify their actions to their peers in the Teacher’s  Lounge by claiming that both the boys had lost their families and  were clearly psychologically damaged; the least they could do was let  them stick together. Ander himself, with his sharp ears, had heard it  through the thick door. Life at Valiandessa E. Obrieun Academy of the  Martial and Psymantic Arts, more commonly known as V.E.O. Academy,  was easy enough once you figured out precisely how to manipulate it.

“Y’know,” Jerik said casually as they  headed towards the other side of the room, “rumor is they built the  school on the foundation of some old building they found here. If  this is the bottom level”—he tapped his foot for emphasis—”then  what do you think is underneath here?”

“Who cares?” Ander shrugged.

“I do! What if there’s a super-advanced  weapon hidden underneath there that was lost in the First Apocalypse?  Or Psymantic secrets that could destroy Jaegar for good? Or the  secret to who or whatever kept him back for so long before?”

“There’s nothing down there,” Ander  snapped, irritated. Only Jerik could bring up the subject of Jaegar  in front of him after his parents’ murder without being tossed into  a wall. “Just a lot of concrete, probably.”

“But what if it’s something else? What if—”

“What if you’re full of crap and there’s  nothing but a bunch of rock down there?” Ander stomped his foot  against the floor in indication, his temper perhaps making him hit it  harder than he should have. “If there was something in the  foundation they would have found it—” He would have commented  further, but a resounding crack rang in the air, a shudder running  beneath the soles of their boots.

A fracture ran under their feet; the tiles  buckled, a crack in the foundation from the last earthquake finally  giving way. Both boys were dropped into gaping blackness as crumbling  foundation and tiles fell around them.

Ander saw the ground rushing closer and braced  himself, managing to at least slow the fall with his flight ability  and seizing Jerik’s arm, knowing his friend didn’t have that luck  and would have broken something. The pair hit the ground with a solid  thump; Ander’s red-gold psymantics formed a shield over the heads  as the floor tiles and cement hit and shattered around them. A thick  cloud of dust billowed up around them, and after a few sneezes and as  many gagging coughs, Jerik muttered, “Fantastic job, Ander, you  broke the school. So where are we?”

“Hell if I know.” It  was true enough: wherever they’d fallen, it was like nothing  he’d ever seen before. Hundreds of enormous stone columns either  towered in the dark vault or lay on their sides, riddled in cracks.  Some were just piles of rubble. If there was a floor, it wasn’t  visible; it was just an endless sea of broken stone as far as the eye  could see in the dim stream of light that came from the hole they’d  made, some hundred feet up.

“Can you fly us out?”

Ander glanced over at Jerik, then frowned. After  a second, he shook his head. “No. None of the air currents are  strong enough for me to use.”

“How long do you think it’ll take before  someone finds us?” Jerik asked after a moment’s pause, sounding  faintly ill.

“Yet again, hell if I know.” Ander decided  to do something rather than just stand around and pulled the Lumanite  flashlight all the students had been issued upon entering the  academy, sweeping it around in a broad arc. The chamber was huge,  spacious enough to fit maybe a thousand people; more columns  stretched on beyond the visible reach of the light.

Jerik prodded at a pile of  dusty black granules in a strange cord-like formation, then bit back  a yelp of surprise when it rang with the biting mental acidity  Jaegar’s kraken reeked of. An idea came, and he said slowly, “Hey,  Ander, what if they didn’t really build on the building’s  foundation, they built on what they thought was the foundation  and there was really a lot more?”

“You think we just happened to fall into some  ancient tomb or something, Jerik?” Ander snorted. “I’ve got  news for you: the world doesn’t work that way. People have probably  been down here, decided it was a waste of cement to fill in, and  built over it. End of story.” Nevertheless, he started climbing the  huge pile of rubble and twisted metal, headed for what looked like  another column at the top.

It wasn’t, though. A skeletal hand protruded  from the heap, still clutching a blade about a foot and a half long  that gleamed like it was newly-forged; he flinched and stepped to the  side, wondering who had died fighting—and fighting what? Were they  protecting something?

Taking another look, he made out wrought metal  and the top of some kind of clear panel from what he’d thought was  a column, but the inside was thick with some kind of fog and he  couldn’t see inside.

Moving quickly, he started pulling the pieces of  broken stone away from it, trying his best to ignore the rest of the  skeleton. The hipbone and leg structure said it had been a girl,  seconded by the ancient traces of an aura—whatever this was, it had  to be old: everyone knew girls didn’t fight and weren’t supposed  to. Was the empire whose ruins they were in so desperate that they’d  resorted to using women as fighters?

Once the rubble was cleared, Ander realized that  there was no way anyone could have come before them. “Jerik, get  over here!”

Jerik had been studying what looked like a  detached control panel of some kind—there’d been several other  detached ones lying around—and busily punching and flicking  anything he could find. The urgency in Ander’s voice made him get  to his feet and start clambering to the top of the rubble pile. “What  is it?”

“Look!”

Huffing, Jerik raised his head, only to find  something that, though he didn’t know it then, would send the world  as he, Ander, and millions of others knew it into upheaval.

A girl stared at them, her face barely visible  in the spot of the Lumanite flashlight’s beam, wide light-lavender  eyes dull; she was a little short, with long, straight light blond  hair falling to her waist and a strange, fearful cast about her still  form. They couldn’t see her very well due to the dim light and the  misty gas surrounding her—the most they could make out by the light  was the color of her eyes. She didn’t blink, didn’t move, and yet  somehow she was definitely alive.

The dark-haired boy rapped on the strange panel  with his knuckles. “Um…hello? We come in peace!” There was no  reply except for the steady blinking of a green light, but that had  been going since Ander had found her.

“Now what?” Ander asked after a moment.

“How did you put it?” said Jerik  thoughtfully. “Oh yes: hell if I know.”

Giving his friend a dirty look, Ander leaned  forward and examined the control board. There were far too many  buttons for him to even care to think about, but the large round one  in the center seemed promising. After a much-too-short moment of  deliberation, Ander stabbed it with a finger, and it let out a stiff  click.

“No!” Jerik yelled.  “You idiot! You don’t know what that—oh, crap!” The  top snapped open, vapors billowing out, yet the girl didn’t move  and the clear door didn’t budge. “You killed her! You killed the  dead chick!”

Sounds were swimming up to her through the  grayness, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t respond, her limbs  frozen. Voices were emerging, but whatever language they spoke, it  was incomprehensible to her.

Something strange shifted in the back of her  mind, and suddenly she could understand.

“Good going, genius!”  Now instead of being in really deep crap for falling down here, we’re  in really really deep crap for killing the dead girl!” a  panicked male voice cried.

“She’s not dead, moron! The  green-blinking-thingy’s still going!” She would have laughed, but  her voice and throat were numb… Her eyes hurt, strangely dry, the  world starting to lighten from black to gray. With humongous effort,  she dragged them closed.

“Oh my God! Her eyes moved!”

Who was she? Who were her parents, her  family? Where was she…?

A name drifted across the empty void:  Lethya…Alethyis Fanyathe. With it came dim images: a twin sister,  an elder sister—and a mother. Her father—he was dead. But  they…were they gone? It hurt when she tried to think of them, her  throat burning and heart aching. Only her name came to mind, none of  theirs: she remembered hours of training in her mind and body, a  necklace, a bag of pale orbs: she recalled moves, actions, psymantic  spells, lessons embedded into her mind—but no names. Images, no  names. Living in some sort of fortress…Her mother, seemingly  invincible… Someone standing before her as her world plunged into  darkness…

Her mother…her mother was strong,  undefeatable…So why hadn’t she saved her?

Exhaustion was dragging at her as the grate  of a panel sounded in front of her, but she clung to that thought,  stumbling forward out of instinct. Why hadn’t her mother saved her?

Mama didn’t save me…

Something caught her—who—? “Mama…”  she breathed, slipping gradually into the first true sleep she’d  had in thousands of years.

“Aw, Ander, you’re a Mommy,” a boy said  mockingly.

“Shut up, Jerik.” The voice rumbled  within the fabric of whoever was holding her: deep, a bit rough, nice  enough. Ander…meant ‘Choice’ in Teranic, didn’t it? Strange  name.

But it wasn’t her mother.

Total blackness reached for her, true sleep  after an eternity of gray; and then there was nothing.