Two hundred years after the end of Aldric’s Rebellion, humanity's home was approaching a level of serenity many thought impossible among the godforsaken horrors of the cluster. I grew up in Thorian’s domain, and though the old king was dead long before my birth, I never saw the world of my youth as one approaching extinction. Of course, I had nothing to compare it to, no experience of the days before, of Old Eden. Even as a child, those stories were beginning to fade into legend. A world with one sun and one moon, blue skies and green fields. It was nothing but a dream of a dream that my grandfather’s grandfather once had. But we were learning that raising children on the idea that the world had ended left little room for growth. Post rebellion, there was a hesitant optimism that results from being a few generations removed from the apocalypse. Humans had learned how far down the food chain they actually were. Yet survived. There was an underlying air of insanity, and things still came for us in the night, but we lived on.
It was during festival hours and I was thirteen. Thorian had loved his revelries and as his people we liked to keep that spirit alive. I’d snuck out of my home to meet a friend. Not that I needed to do much sneaking. Father rarely paid attention to me since my mother's death a few years previous. Tharray was nearly seventeen and I call him my friend in the way of a naive kid thinking those older than him had never lived the life he does now. Looking back I’m not sure whether he invited me places or I would simply overhear and tag along. That night we were outside one of the old style taverns, a large wooden building that was great at keeping in smoke and smells and heat. Tharray was trying to convince the doorman I was his younger brother. We looked nothing alike and despite the seriousness of the deception I couldn't keep a straight face. The older boy was mad with me after and gave me a rough shove into the mud. I remained laughing as I wiped the dirt off my face, standing to see Tharray was no longer paying attention to me. He was watching the top of a hill where a great beast landed in the midnight pale.
A Cosmare.
I’d heard of them before. Every child had. They were the most mythic of real creatures. It was the first one I’d seen in person. Horse-like, the animal was as big as a small house. Six legs larger and more powerful than the trunks of an oak rippled with muscle, leading to a barrel chested platform of a body. The wings resembled those of a dragonfly, sprouting from four different joints in the front and rear of the beast, they were made of a leathery, bony membrane. Cosmares were the ships of the cluster, the chariots between the planets caught in the void’s grip. Seeing one on Eden was rare. Seeing one clean, free from the crystalline corruption of the Zyrma, was impossible. I was immediately enraptured, dazed with the childlike wonder experienced during a soul shaping event. My legs carried me toward the hill in complete independence of any thought, and I would have been trampled if Tharray had not grabbed me roughly by the arm and pulled me to the side. A few riders, kingsmen, pounded across the road where I had been a second before, making for the hill and the creature and the man who had stepped from its back who I could only reason must be a god.
Tharray pulled me away from the cosmare, neither young enough nor old enough to stop and appreciate the once in a lifetime sight. We used the distraction of the thing on the hill to slip into the tavern, many people having left to follow the riders. Tharray sat me down in a corner and we waited for people to trickle back in. I spent much of the evening clutching a beer, trying to drink the appropriate amount of the gross liquid to not be seen as an outsider. However, if anyone cared to notice the kid they either saw a humor in it or simply didn't care. Tharray bellowed loudly about how he had taken me in as his orphaned younger brother, and soon a pair of girls were sitting with sympathetic affection on either side of him. Had the cosmare not touched down a breaths distance from our town, I would have counted the night a success on all accounts. As it was, I couldn't enjoy the taboo feeling of being young in a place meant for those older, because I couldn't get the great stallion out of my head. I strained to hear what word there was of the creature and its rider, but the total sum of what I overheard came to nothing more than a few old men whispering darkly about ‘him’ bringing nothing but trouble. I had to wait until Tharray decided to leave and pulled me, as well as one of the girls, out of the place. He made a show of telling me to meet him back at the home we didn’t share. I ignored the drunken direction, hurrying past to see if the cosmare still waited atop the hill. It was gone and with it my elation, and head hung low I pouted my way home, utterly inconsolable.
The Shipmaster waited for me, though I knew him not as the Shipmaster. I didn't know that name, and now I wonder if that became his title because of me and the many years we spent together, and that perhaps it came from my own mind and influence. Looking back he never introduced himself, and now when I try to piece the memories together I call him such because I always did and my brain fills in the rest. As I walked the road to my father’s house that night I passed by the spire, a massive remnant of Zyrma occupation, it was a burned out husk of what it once was. The road led round a ruined pit, once connected via now collapsed underground tunnels to the spire, it was an amphitheater to the heavens, the roof disintegrating with time. I walked by it everyday, often more than once, and rarely looked into it. But that night I did and when I did I saw a man. The Shipmaster is striking and he was striking then.
A broad man, he laid up on a large square stone, watching the sky that never got dark enough to show stars. He was bare chested in the dim light of the night, massive arms crossed casually over his hairy chest, his head resting on his bunched up shirt. He was dressed in dark pants dotted with seemingly random groupings of small stars and leather boots. Resting at his side were a pair of swords, one significantly longer and thinner than the other. My eyes went to those first. I don’t suppose I should have recognized him, but nonetheless I knew it was the god I had seen dismounting the cosmare.
“They used to execute them here.” He called to me, his voice was a rolling thunder in the quiet ruins.
I didn’t know he had seen me, and remember feeling embarrassed for staring, and embarrassed further for not remembering how long I had been doing so.
“Do they tell you still of that time? Do you know of what I speak?” The Shipmaster had not waited for an answer, had not waited for an acknowledgement. I remained frozen, my eyes unable to separate themselves from the swords. “When Eden first arrived? A hundred years before Aldric unlocked the secrets of the anomalies?”
“They tell me the Zyrma killed a lot of people. A lot of us.” I spoke eventually, my young voice cracking with immaturity and nervousness.
The Shipmaster smiled then. A mirthless, confident smile. “They still do. Go home kid.”
I ran home. I ran all the way.
It was six years before I saw him again. I was working as a farmhand in Orion’s kingdom, where I’d moved after my father died. Closer to the border, it was one of the few kingdoms still ruled by a direct descendent of the Remnant Kings. Orion’s great-granddaughter, or some such. It was in those years on that farm, where on clear days you could see the smoke rising from a distant Siphon, that I learned how very near the Zyrma were. Aldric had wrested back control of nearly half our home, yet not even begun to expel the invaders as a whole. Many miles from any of the creature’s settlements, their presence was still a weight, however sparse it may be. Watching from the tops of the Copper hills it was possible to see their sparkling, corrupted cosmares disappearing over the horizon, and it was not uncommon to see a few of their smaller constructs scurrying along the edges of no man’s land. Whenever someone went missing, or a death happened without an apparent cause, conspiracy theories abounded. I enjoyed the underlying anxiety it caused. I was young and had no ambitions beyond those of most youth. I certainly didn't yet deign it a use of my time to get political, or worry myself with purely existential threats, like that of a second Zyrma invasion.
I did wish to travel. Orion was in possession of the only official stables in human control, reconstituted from a Zyrma staging area, it could house the largest Moongliders, the smallest class of Cosmare. My fascination with the beasts continued to grow after I first saw the Shipmaster’s, so I traveled to Orion as soon as I could, with wide eyed naivety and no plan beyond seeing more of the creatures. My disappointment was inevitable. I soon learned that many years could pass without a single landing. More than that, most of the locals were against the existence of the stables altogether, wishing the resources be repurposed to more practical social projects. I’d be lucky if I saw a Cosmare land in Orion’s stables once in ten years, if they weren’t dismantled before then. I spent a few weeks drinking and roaming, lack of planning mixing with the depression birthed from the discovery of sad reality. Eventually I found work on a farm in the far south, where the proximity of the Zyrma made jobs less desirable. And then a couple years later he found me.
I still don’t know if the Shipmaster knew that I was the boy he talked to that one night in the ruins. I never asked. At the time I was positive he recognized me. I had recognized him. He had such a profound impact on my youth, how could he not know me? The doubts came later as, now an old man, I know how unlikely it would have been for him to remember that interaction at all, much less recognize the young man that the boy had turned into. That said, the memory of the day he invited me with him is burned in my brain. As well as the feeling that he had come to get me. That he already knew me, and had waited until this moment, until I was ready, to come collect me.
I was walking in the hills, enjoying the leisure that came with the cooling of the off season. Voices drifted toward me. It was two men arguing. One voice sounded familiar. Curious, I followed them. And there, like it had sprouted out of the ground before me, was the Shipmaster’s cosmare. The great beast rested in the deep crest of a valley, hidden in the nook formed between two vast mounds of earth. Two men yelled at each other. I realized quickly that this initial impression was not entirely correct. The Shipmaster was not yelling, he was listening, taking the verbal beating with a composed demeanor that seemed to aggravate his companion all the more. He was clothed in the same mutely decorated garments of that night the many years before, but this time his shirt was on and his swords were at his waist. The other man was shorter than him, stout. I caught the last few sentences of the argument as I stood on the side of the hill, my sense of awe overpowering any instincts of danger.
“It is heartless. You are heartless. You have power. And you do nothing. Nothing but watch and drink. You are a slave to your vices and are too weak of a man to admit it.”
“I have never forced you to follow me, Gillian.” The Shipmaster’s voice, at a lower volume and less emotional, cut much harder than the belly aching of the smaller man.
Gillian also wore a sword, a broadsword on his back. He was dressed in that of normal Eden conventions. Nondescript linens and wool, the utility focused clothes of a man often in motion. His fists were clenched and I wondered if he would reach for his massive hunk of metal. He did not. He stared hard at the Shipmaster, who gave him nothing but the same sardonic smile. Snorting, Gillian turned and walked away. I watched him, as did the Shipmaster, follow a path between the hills and turn a corner and disappear around them. I didn’t know what to do. My strongest internal desire was to continue down the slope and greet the man I’d built a myth around, but the thought that I'd witnessed something I wasn’t supposed to stilled my feet. The Shipmaster watched the space where Gilian had been for a moment more, then turned toward his cosmare. It was another few minutes before he called out to me.
“I’m a patient man.” The Shipmaster’s voice startled me after the prolonged silence. “But I’m starting to think you will sit atop that hill staring forever.”
I almost ran away, like a kid caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. I needed to remind myself I wasn’t a kid anymore. I stood up and strode down the hill, hoping to project an air of confidence toward the man and his animal that dwarfed any building I’d ever lived in.
“Is there a purpose to your lurking?” The Shipmaster asked as I came to face him. He was much taller than I’d originally thought, well over two meters. I remember trembling slightly, and taking a few tries to find my voice. The thought makes me smile. How few would believe that young man to be who I was as a lad.
“It is an accidental lurking sir. I heard voices…” I trailed off at the gesture of dismissal from the Shipmaster. The large man needed no explanation. He looked me up and down, his eyes bright rings of silver. He nodded. I remember feeling pleased.
“You’ll do.” He turned away from me and approached the cosmare, which let out a great tremble that I could feel through my feet. There was a rough rope trailing from one of its six legs. Two massive hands gripped it tight and the Shipmaster glanced at me over his shoulder.
“You can climb?”
I nodded, not breathing. The Shipmaster used the rope to walk vertical up the limb, covering the distance with quick firm steps. I watched for perhaps a second longer after he’d disappeared onto the beast’s back, then ran up and gripped the rough rope myself. I was still shaking, but no longer from uneasiness. I trembled with excitement. I can’t remember ever having felt what I did in that moment, not before or since. It was the feeling of doing exactly what I was meant to do. An assurance so sincere I wonder at every other choice made in my turmoil of a life. I pulled myself up after my new master.
The Shipmaster’s cosmare was in the old style, a reflection of his people. I didn't truly understand the beauty of it until I’d seen the Zyrma monstrosities up close. The Brenara used wood from the amber trees to accentuate and compliment the natural shape of the creature, adding slight additions focused on allowing for the comfort of the riders and the cosmare to exist in harmony. I knew none of this, of course. I assumed the Shipmaster was human, and wouldn’t learn of his origin for a few years yet. I saw only a deck that reminded me vaguely of the sailing ships I’d seen leaving Middwell harbor, littered with a variety of features I would come to know as cabins and cargo holds, viewing railings and star plotters. I barely paused to take in my surroundings before I felt the shift of weight below me and heard the powerful beating of numerous wings. The Shipmaster stood near the head of the cosmare, where a railing and platform had been mounted so that he could do so.
We soared straight up, like a celestial hummingbird, the pull of Eden’s gravity nearly bringing me to my knees. I forced my way toward an edge, an intense need to see the shrinking landscape overpowering any fear of falling. Nothing compares to the feeling of one’s first flight on the back of Celara’s great winged explorers. I gripped the rail tight and watched the hills turn into bumps and soon realized I could see all of humanity stretched out below us. As we climbed ever higher, I could see the dark loom of the Zyrma occupied territories as well, their crooked structures reaching much higher than anything on the human side. There was a brief moment of panic as we left Eden's grip, and I realized I knew not what was going to happen in the space between worlds. I nearly vomited when my gravity center changed from Eden to that of the Void, a brief moment of weightlessness followed by a drastic change of force, but managed to contain my lunch long enough for the nausea to subside. And then I was among the stars.
I didn’t realize the extent of what had happened. What I was agreeing to, what I was needed for, who I had agreed to replace. I don’t think any of us ever did. Except maybe Juno. She was always the exception. As it were, I was consumed with the moment. It is one of the few memories that can still consume me to this day.
I was with the Shipmaster for five years before he took me to Celara. At this point it might be more appropriate to use the Cluster standard designation of a cycle, but my old age has made me sentimental. And Eden’s old years roughly align with the length of cycles, give or take a few days. In those first years I learned a wealth of information so vast my previous self wouldn’t have been able to conceptualize its existence. My lessons started immediately, that very day he took me on his cosmare and I watched Eden become a floating globe of pale blue and gray. He threw me a thick coat, the same one I wear now, and summed up the intricacies of the space between worlds with a few concise sentences.
“Put this on, it’ll get colder. Breathe with intention, the air is thinner. The pull you feel on your chest is the gravity of the Void. You’ll always feel it up here. You get used to it.”
I listened, putting on the coat which would take me two years to fill out, and stared at my impossible surroundings. I expected more questions. I expected more of a dialogue. The Shipmaster didn't meet those expectations. He watched me put on my coat, nodded, and disappeared through a door into his cabin, leaving me with my mouth slightly open, dumbfounded in space.
There were many moments like that in the first few years. Floating through the thin air on the cosmare’s back, nothing but emptiness for many thousands of clicks in each direction. I learned how to be okay with silence. The Shipmaster was protective of his silence. There is an infinite stillness to the space between worlds, and silence was not hard to come by, even if it was easy to disturb.
My chores started and ended with the cosmare. I would not say the instruction made me romanticize the beasts any less, rather their magic became familiar. I learned how to check the binds that needed to be replaced in sections in order to prevent the deck, in many ways a colossal saddle, from falling off. I learned how to climb a wing, balancing along the corded muscle so as not to disturb the membrane, and apply a salve that soothed the holes punched by miniscule asteroids and space debris. I learned how the cosmare’s hunted, chasing large swarms of nebulites like a whale would krill, and that a few hours spent in the living cloud could sate their appetite for half a cycle if needed. I learned how to use the star plotters, complex and carefully attuned gravity scales, to both tell time and situate our position in nothingness.
The Shipmaster didn't wait to teach me to fight. Those lessons began even sooner than those involving the cosmare. Three days after we left Eden he walked from his cabin holding two long wooden swords. He threw one at my feet and I knew instinctively he meant for me to pick it up. I swear he broke three of my bones that day. Later I lay curled in the shelter of my hanging bed, in a three walled space made apart from the cabin, and couldn't sleep for the pain in my body. The training never slowed. The Shipmaster demanded life or death intensity. Intensity beyond what mere humans had been made for. I think it took me longer than I’m proud of to realize why. Why as fast as I struck, it was never fast enough. As impenetrable as my guard was, it was never unbroken. As precise as my attacks were landing, they never hit the target to his exact satisfaction. There was one session that stands stark in my mind, all these years later. I landed a solid hit, my first. A strike on his shoulder. I heard something crack. Nearly jumping for pride, I paused, waiting for praise. Some small words of approval. A nod, at least. It never came. The Shipmaster used my moment of triumph to send me sprawling with a backhanded smack across the face.
I recovered quickly, more indignant than hurt. He cut off my thoughts before I knew what would have come from my mouth. “Imagine an enemy impossible to strike. Against them, only your death decides the fight.” His voice was calm, his breathing slow and in clear opposition to my ragged breaths. Gritting my teeth, I went at him again.
Yet this is a digression. My first five years with the Shipmaster were filled with more than training and chores. I saw more of the Cluster than I’d ever dreamed of experiencing. I tried to keep count of the new planets we visited, but somewhere around the third cycle I lost track. There are two I will talk about here.
After a few years, the Shipmaster and I had developed a fledgling dialogue and I understood more of what he did. The Zyrma imperium held a significant chunk of worlds in its grip. Including Celara, native home of both the cosmares and their caretakers, the Brenara. Interplanetary travel had not been possible until Celara appeared in the midst of the Cluster, some many centuries ago. They’d been the first to pioneer travel through the space between, bringing their massive steads from planet to planet, sharing their capabilities freely and in doing so connecting the cursed worlds together. Then Zyrmagora appeared. And unknowingly the Brenara sent them a squadron of cosmares. And the Zyrma followed them home. And Celara became the first planet to join the empire. Since then non-Zyrmic cosmares had become rarer and rarer, free Brenara captains near extinct. The Shipmaster’s life was one of a contractor who enjoyed a never ending demand for his services. He picked jobs, sometimes I thought at random, and made money and traveled and trained me. And I began asking if we could visit Celara.
The big man looked at me intently the first time I asked. We were hovering near Abysseros, having helped a pair of wealthy aristocrats relocate to the ocean world from Titan, two of the oldest planets in the cluster, and neither under Zyrma dominion.
“Why?” The Shipmaster had asked me.
I didn’t know why. It was a feeling as much as a curiosity. “It can’t be all ruined, can it?” I shrugged, voicing a suspicion he had never confirmed, that the Shipmaster didn't wish to visit a place that had been ravaged by the Zyrma for centuries.
“No. It’s not.” He replied after a moment.
And then he took me there.
Celara is a shaded planet. It is smaller than Eden by a fair amount, but has three moons, each casting large interlocking shadows on the surface of the world as they take turns moving between the planet and its small white sun. I have not been back in many years, but that first time it was behind these moons that the Shipmaster took us. He wouldn’t have said we hid from the massive Zyrma fleet that hung in place over the tiny world, rather that we avoided it. The Shipmaster avoided Zyrma wherever he could. The only occupied world we frequented was Eden, and we kept to the human half. Until that point I had never thought to ask why. It had made sense to me that the Cluster’s predators were not to be dealt with. Once we came near Celara the Shipmaster disappeared into his cabin, as he often did while a more precise directing of our path was required, and gave me strict instructions to remain on the bow and watch for the lumbering forms of other cosmares.
We approached slowly, slipping in between the moons, keeping at an angle that kept massive spheres between us and the fleet. Our descent went unmolested, but not before I had glimpsed something that elicited a small gasp. I had seen Zyrma cosmares before, drastically changed from the Shipmaster’s, jagged edges protruding crudely from the creature itself, a stark contrast to the elegant extension of the animal that our deck was. These crystal perversions sparkled and refracted light with crude gaudiness, marking the Zyrma warships from a distance as streaking comets that brought nothing but death. Cosmares were roughly divided into two groups based on size: the smaller moongliders and the much larger shadewings. Shadewings got their names from the shadow their immense expanse cast on a planet. I’d seen a shadewing large enough to hold a small town on its back. The mammoth I saw sitting in orbit around Celara was easily a hundred times larger. One wing was larger than ten of the biggest shadewings I’d ever seen, combined. Twisting turrets and towers rose from its back, crystal walls and keeps made up entire castles of civilization. The tiniest flicker of movement alerted me to its inhabitants, and I stared with awe as I realized there must be tens of thousands of Zyrma constructs swarming its great mass.
It let out a sound, somewhere between a groan and a roar. My eyes couldn't look at anything else until we came around Celara and it passed out of sight. The Shipmaster was behind me, out of his cabin. The cosmare knew where it headed and no longer needed him.
“Any trouble?” The Shipmaster spoke as casually as ever he did.
“A few gliders were maybe a hundred clicks out–”
“Chargers.” He muttered, interrupting.
“What?”
“Once the corruption is spread too far, they don’t glide. They charge.”
I took the correction in stride, as a student does. “A few chargers then. But I also saw… there was a…” I didn't have the words to express the enormity of the cosmare I’d witnessed. My eyes didn't lie, but the size lended a certain absurdity to the fact that made me positive I must have been mistaken. No living thing could grow that large.
“The dreadnova is still here then. That does not surprise me. Few areas in the cluster have the nebulite population to sustain them.”
“I had no idea cosmares grew that large.”
I remember thinking at that moment the Shipmaster’s smile was one of amusement, maybe at my naivety, maybe at the absurd existence of a being so big. I think now it was a smile of sadness.
“They didn’t.” He told me.
The mammoth I saw sitting in orbit around Celara was easily a hundred times larger
We landed in a grove of amber trees. Our descent was obscured by thick white clouds. The moisture billowed around me as I felt the now familiar nausea of changing gravity centers. The Shipmaster stood silently with me on the bow railing, his silence staying my numerous unanswered questions. At some point I thought I saw sheer rock faces on either side of us, and had a brief spell of uneasiness before I remembered our cosmare was headed home. Once free from the cloud line we were met with the pale leaves of the amber trees, their tops swaying calmly in what appeared to be a vast forested plateau. The clearing rolled up out of nothing, appearing in what I would have sworn was an unbroken canopy seconds before. Once landed the Shipmaster turned to dismount and I followed.
The forest was beautiful. The wood was the familiar yellow gold of the deck I’d spent the last few years aboard, yet without the age and stain that came from use. A healthy sheen covered the bark, and it shivered with a living movement. There were two pools in the clearing, one much larger than the other. I lowered myself after the Shipmaster, dropping to the soft ground and feeling the nudge of small critters coming to investigate our arrival. I let a furry eyeless animal sniff my boots. It purred when I touched it on the spine, scattering when the cosmare adjusted itself behind me.
“We will spend a day here.”
I nodded at my master’s instruction. I bent down, hands cupped, to drink from the larger of the two pools.
“He won’t like that.” I glanced up confused. The Shipmaster was not looking at me. I looked back at the pool. Its surface shimmered then rippled seemingly of its own accord. I wondered if he played a trick on me. I took a drink from the smaller pool.
The Shipmaster, like he never told me what to call him, never told me outright he was a Brenara. That night he took off his shirt, as he’d had it off the first night I’d met him, and I saw then the faint iridescence of his veins in patterns that mimicked imagined constellations and I looked at the silver banded eyes and I knew. Celara was his home. I had a million questions that night. The years of learning to reason instead of outright inquire did little to stay my curiosity. I wanted to know so much. I had asked to be here and he had brought me. And I knew not why.
I didn't ask. It is one of my greatest regrets. A door that I didn't realize, at the time, I could have opened and walked right through. And like all good regrets, I don’t know truthfully what acting on it would have changed. Would the Shipmaster have told me he planned to test me? Would he have told me that the last five years had led to this day? If not, maybe he would have told me about his history, about his people, about Celara or the cosmares. Anything that I might have used to accomplish what I did not. As it were, the iron silence of the Shipmaster prevailed. He told me to wait by the cosmare and disappeared into the woods for the whole night. I fell asleep on my bedroll in a pile of fallen leaves without having spoken.
Within a day of seeing the largest cosmare in existence, I saw some of the smallest. The Shipmaster took me into the amber trees and after walking for the better part of the morning we came to a large nest where a bunch of the tiny six legged, insect winged creatures played in the sun and dirt. And there he tested me and I failed. And I didn't know it. Not for many years, many years after I had left the Shipmaster’s tutelage as frustrated as Gillian. The cosmares came to him. They did not come to me.
I tell myself now there was nothing I could have done. I don’t know whether that is true or not. We left after that day, as he had said, working our way back up through the clouds that protected the last grove of the Brenara. I saw it once more, a year before I left the Shipmaster’s service, when we went back to cut a tree and make repairs. It is gone now.
The cosmares came to him.
I was the Shipmaster’s apprentice for another seven years after that. I think I picked up that our relationship had changed at some point in the year after our visit to Celara, though it took me longer to trace the change back to the grove, and the test I’d not known I’d been given. I debated abandoning him more and more, but the Shipmaster still had much to teach me. Chief of all, he had yet to teach me the ways of the cosmare. By that I mean not the everyday chores he had let me take onto my back since the day he handed me that wooden sword, but the way of the creatures. How he communicated with the creatures, how he had bonded with his cosmare in such a way it allowed him to direct it wherever he wished to go. I could direct ours, his, but had to do so crudely, with long ropes strung around the thing’s head, pulling and struggling to exert my will over it to limited success.
I was a man then. A man who had received extensive training and experience in a variety of disciplines that couldn't be combined without resulting in ambition, all while establishing powerful connections on a multitude of worlds. I had seen much of the Cluster, and thought that there might still be a way I could make a difference. Do something to make the horrible reality of our existence more bearable. This first manifested in frustration with the Shipmaster. The more my training progressed, the more my eyes were opened to what we could be doing. Not just for ourselves, but for entire species. The more context I was given, the more I realized the exceptional nature of our potential. And I became more and more convinced the Shipmaster wasted it. Save us, please, from the idiotic dreaming of the young!
Which brings me to the second planet central to my story. Vacis. That boiling world, home to the fierce Vikkid. A reptilian people, their toughness of being and simplicity of natural wants necessary in their merciless environment. While Vacis was part of the imperium, the Zyrma could never quite weed them out. Their planet is a waste of tundra and deserts, broken up by volcanic calderas and electric seas, ravaged by dust storms and solar flares. As such the Vikkid were used to fighting for every day of survival. When the Zyrma arrived they joined a long line of things attempting to kill and subdue the scaled natives. It seems like an absurd place to take a stand, but I saw a resistance movement that had something almost all of them didn’t: a chance.
We went there on a larger than normal contract, delivering mysterious crates to an outpost. It was a weapons delivery, from resistance sympathizers on other worlds. The Shipmaster couldn't have been more anxious to leave the world behind. I was struck by the tall figures that greeted us, their many arms holding slender spears, their compound eyes peering out from under elaborate hoods. We argued later that night. Gillian would smile. I argued, I yelled. The Shipmaster did not. I asked why we didn’t do more. Why didn’t we help a planet so close to ridding themselves of the Zyrma scourge? He told me the Vikkid would fall eventually. I disagreed. He told me we didn't interfere. I told him to hell with that. He told me he had never forced me to follow him. I lapsed into silence. We departed Vicas with a mountain of valuable metals that were useless in war and no plans to return.
I left the Shipmaster’s side soon after that. The urge I’d gotten within myself to make a difference finally too much. After twelve years on the cosmare, twelve years of traveling between planets enraptured by the void, twelve years of the training and the tutoring and the companionship. I didn't leave in the heat of an argument like I’d witnessed from Gillian, those many years ago. I told the Shipmaster that next we traveled to Anslara, Titan’s Capital, I’d arranged to buy a small cosmare. I had never learned to bond with them and it would be imprisoned, cast off by a Zyrma and half corrupted. I thought he would oppose me on this. He did not. I couldn’t tell if he cared. I realize now he’d known I’d take this path since the day we communed with the baby cosmares in the last grove and I failed to hear their voices. We did one last contract together. It ended on Titan. For the first and only time in twelve years he gave me the entirety of the payment. I went on my way. When I glanced back I saw him pulling his way onto his cosmare’s back, hands gripping the rope as strong as ever. I remember thinking how much older he should look. His features had not changed since I first flew over Eden. I never saw him again.
I fought on Vacis for nearly ten years, it took the last prime years of my life. And my leg. It was there that I was, as all who experience it are, disenchanted with war. It was there that I learned what going to war with the Zyrma meant. It was there that I learned the purpose behind the Shipmaster’s peculiar training style. He had taught me to kill Zyrma. The enemy on which I couldn't land a blow. With my help, the Vikkid drove the Zyrma back. Laboriously slow, but we drove them back. Vacis became the first and only world, on which the Zyrma had landed, from which they were completely repelled. We succeeded. And now soon approaches the time when we will all pay dearly for that success.
After Vacis I went home to Eden. I was flush with the gnawing ambition that comes after great victory. I’ve spent the rest of my life here, trying to unify the kingdoms. I nearly succeeded. But that is a different tale. After me the Shipmaster took on Doran, who left his side after merely eight years. I tried to find him once. My old master. It was how I learned of the last grove’s destruction and the Shipmaster’s last two apprentices. I walked with an ancient Gillian along Anslara’s great promenade, and shared a drink with a surly Doran in a Nyoxrian citadel. Doran had not, like Gillian and myself, chosen to leave. He’d been replaced by a tall girl with banded eyes and iridescent veins who went by Juno.
He’d been replaced by a tall girl with banded eyes and iridescent veins who went by Juno.
I hear she is hunting them now. Hunting me. She killed Gillian, and threw Doran into Nyoxria’s storm. There are no doubt others. We were the last of the Shipmaster’s apprentices, not the only ones. I knew she left him, but I assumed the cycle was to continue. I can think of only one reason why it did not. She passed the test. But I want to know for sure. When she arrives I will have my answer. I suppose she killed our master too. But when I think on it, I don't much care. So I wait for her now, an old man. But do not take my resignation for weakness. We will fight. I hope that we both die.
– Kaelen, the Fury of Vacis