Ice Phoenix (43 page)

The observatory turned deathly quiet. Terrana continued her rant. "I feel grateful to Master Drummik for teaching me to have faith in the people I care for, and believing they are strong enough to overcome whatever hurdle life throws at them. I believe in the entire population of Pa Gumpina and that they will not give up the planet they call home without a fight. Master Drummik has also taught me to move forwards into the future because that is how we honour those who are left behind. So, if you really wanna know how I feel, I feel that you should find the Dream Walker and seal him in for eternity so that the Valpuri will never reach him. Then my friends and the people of Pa Gumpina wouldn't have been left behind for nothing."

L-Master Hadrick stared at her for a couple of seconds before snorting.
"A dramatic child living in a fantasy! But at least, a loyal student to you, Drummik. Is there anything she failed to learn?"

"Yes," replied Master Drummik. "She
's failed to grasp the wisdom in remaining silent when necessary." He spoke directly to Terrana next. "You do not argue with your elders. L-Master Hadrick has years on you in being a moron. Instead of listening to this pointless discourse, you and I will return to our lessons."

Terrana kept a straight face even as she heard the sharp intake of breath from Hadrick. Master Drummik pushed past him and guided her by the
shoulder towards the edge of the observatory, farthest away from the sealing team and, much to Terrana's relief, a bad-breath-free zone.

She had seen the purple dust several times before, through the spectroscope, microscope
, and telescope, not to mention the qi-wave reader, life scanners, and every other piece of equipment that had been hurriedly installed onto the ship for this once-in-a-lifetime journey into the Voron Cloud. This time, she just wanted to look out through the glass, to see the dust with her naked eye.

The dust
flowed by like cigarette smoke, only much thicker and opaque. There were occasional tinges of yellow, as if someone had sprinkled gold dust into the cloud, and there were occasional gaps of emptiness which could have been a result of energy whorls. Strangely, Terrana felt at home in the observatory, pressed down under the cloud, wishing she could immerse herself in it. It was a new feeling, one she had not experienced before, and she realised with a start that she was starting to feel happy, exhilarated even, when she should have been miserable.

She heard a familiar cry in the darkness and a thrill rushed through her.
It couldn't be, could it? But it was! There they were, rocketing through the cloud, twice the size of doves with delicate frosted feathers and wispy tails. The ice-phoenixes of Dartkala!

Her head filled
with the humming of a billion thoughts, held back by a net so that her mind would not explode.

Little one.
We meet again.

Terrana blinked in surprise.
As before, they were speaking to her.

Do you know me?

We recognise all those born of Dartkala.

Born of Dartkala ... so
, I'm really feiyed?

We do not recognise the word.

I am human but born of Dartkala. Is that possible?

Humans are not born of Dartkala, little one. And those who are born of Dartkala are not always born in Dartkala.

Terrana sighed. She didn't like it when they were cryptic.

Are you showing
yourselves to me for a reason, or were you just passing by?

We
were passing by. We sensed your entry. You are not yet ready to enter Dartkala. We must watch.

I have so many things to ask you. Please tell me, what
's my true form?

Your form has not been decided.

So you don't know.

No.

The last time, you referred to me and another — two young ones in the void. Kazu, my cat, he was the other one, wasn't he? What is he?

He ... is special. He is pure. You must protect him.

I don't understand, you know what he is, but you don't know what I am? What is Kazu, anyway?

He is ...
an old one. The cloud ends. We will leave.

"Wait!" Terrana shouted. But the
ice-phoenixes vanished, and there wasn't even a blinding white light to mark their exit like the previous time.

"Terrana!
What is it? Why are you shouting?" Master Drummik looked worried, his hand on her shoulder.

"Master Drummik, the ice-phoenixes were here
! Didn't you see them?"

"No, Terrana, there
's only purple dust. There are no ice-phoenixes."

"They were just there.
Flying through the cloud!"

"The child is delusional!" snorted L-Master Hadrick. He and the others had edged closer after hearing Terrana
's talk about the ice-phoenixes.

Terrana glanced at him angrily. "I
'm not! I've seen them before on
Dartkala's Arrow
. I know what they look like and I saw them here!"

"She could be right," s
aid Eliksha. "This is the Voron Cloud. For all we know, this could be the ice-phoenixes' home!"

"They don
't have a home!" scoffed Hadrick. "Really, Drummik, it is not wise to bring a thirteenth-worlder child up here. Hallucination is a sign of paranoia, which she's displaying already. Their minds are just not equipped to process all this information."

"That
's because my mind is suffering a breakdown from being exposed to your spectrum wave of unwanted self-opinions!" snapped Terrana. A tingling sensation raced down her back and she looked out the glass. She sensed what was happening. "We're about to break through the cloud!" she exclaimed.

The adults looked out, seeing only an endless sea of purple.

"What makes you say that, Terrana?" asked Eliksha.

"I can feel it."

Everyone cast uneasy glances towards Master Drummik, their thoughts clear.
Perhaps Hadrick is correct. The girl is hallucinating.

Master Drummik ignored them and kicked himself for not dragging Terrana away earlier. Whether she was right or not, he didn
't want her displaying any signs of her feiyed power to the others.

A single thought
from the grandmaster, pure and strong, cut into his consciousness.
There's not much you could have done, Drummik. And, unfortunately, Terrana is correct. We are about to break through the cloud.

Grandmaster Deitrux! Is the tonien telling you this?

I can feel it.

You are not serious, are you?

I am! Can't you feel it, Drummik?

Master Drummik couldn
't answer. Something strange was happening along the glass of the observatory. Multiple flare bombs of red light splattered across the observatory, releasing colourful liquid worms that wriggled along the glass before vanishing into the cloud.
It was as though the ship had met a strange rainstorm in the midst of the purple mass.

Even the energy of the pendant failed to expel this strange new phenomenon
, and Master Drummik realised they were no longer in the Voron Cloud. In fact, the purple mass had thinned drastically, only to be replaced by the 'rain storm.' The ship shuddered, and suddenly millions of stars appeared in the dark void.

The power went out. Everyone felt a strange reversal of qi, and static danced along their skin as the pendant relinquished its hold, leaving it up to
the ship's engines to kick back in. Their feet left the floor, and they floated in silence, not uttering a single word as they gazed out at a new frontier. They were completely overcome by emotion. This was a place that had not been visited for five thousand years. Some of the Imeldors and L-Masters would have fallen to their knees had the gravity-lock been functioning.

It was like that throughout the entire ship. Crew members and UWIB representatives sobbed and clutched their various limbs in dumbfounded reverence, feeling as if they had just uncovered Dartkala
's soul. They had made history this day, and their names would be remembered for generations to come.

The only person not feeling the historical
life-shattering moment was Terrana. The void — In-Between, Space, or Dartkala — was just an infinite vacuum to her that she had recently come to learn of after her family's death. Everything she experienced was new, and this part of the In-Between looked no different than the other side of the cloud to her.

The ship shuddered and coughed, her engines ploughing back to life. The
Dark Star
no longer required the pendant to propel it through the In-Between, and it carried on as if nothing had happened, mindless of the painful yelps of her passengers as they suddenly met the ship's internal gravity.

The ceiling of the observatory was flooded with charts, planets, stars, galaxies, solar systems
, and even black holes. It was endless, and everyone gazed upwards, gaping in awe.

"Amazing," Eliksha said, awestruck. "The ancients of Olden Kartath even mapped this side of the cloud. Just what kind of explorers were they?"

"Damn good ones," said Lakara. "To think they could always cross the cloud, knowing where to go. The knowledge they possess is probably vast beyond belief. I even suspect that they came through the cloud to settle on Olden Kartath."

"You think they
are from this side of the cloud?" asked Master Drummik in surprise.

"Anything is possible," replied Lakara. "Step one of our mission
has been successful — we survived the Voron Cloud. Now for step two. Locate the gate that will take us to the Dream Walker."

"I take that as my cue then." Grandmaster Deitrux
's voice poured into the room, startling everyone. An area of the map zoomed into focus on the glass, and everyone saw a tiny blue dot sitting in darkness amongst the stars.

"That dot you see is the Dream Walker
's location. To reach it, we need to pass through four gates. It will take around two hours to reach the first gate. I do not know how long we will remain within each gate — the Ancients did not say. We could reach the Dream Walker in twelve hours or twelve days, I don't know. But you should start preparing."

The meaning of his words sobered them immediately
, and the atmosphere changed. No longer caught up in petty quarrels, the members of the sealing team were now focused on the job at hand — confronting and sealing the biggest threat that the Ancients of Olden Kartath had concealed from them.

Master Drummik tugged Terrana away from the others
, and they silently left the observatory. Terrana knew what was coming — she was going to be put into sleep stasis and hidden in a sleep sphere. The grandmaster had explained it to her like this:

"It was never our
intention to bring you into the void, but the circumstances were dire. By placing you into sleep stasis, all your thoughts, your electrical energy, your very existence will be shielded from the Dream Walker. You will be safe."

It didn
't take them long to reach the cold, pale room filled with white spheres, capable of accommodating a person. They walked to the farthest one and Master Drummik drew a line across it with his finger. It opened into a perfect half, and Terrana stared at the cold, gel lining inside. She shuddered.

"Must I be sealed in?" The thought of being frozen in the sphere, trapped without dreams and at the mercy of the ship
's computer, terrified her. If something went wrong, she'd be trapped in there forever, or at least until the ship lost power. Then she'd probably suffocate.

"You can unlock it from the inside should you awake
," said Master Drummik. "The spheres have their own life support system separate from the ship's power source. You'll be all right."

However, looking at the sphere, she didn
't feel reassured. If the ship was to be torn apart, and somehow her sphere survived a nuclear blast, she could be sent tumbling into Space where she would never awake but would grow old and die. Or even worse, she'd awaken.

"You
're over-thinking, Terrana. It'll be all right. I won't be far from you."

With a sigh, Terrana removed her boots and reluctantly stepped into the sphere. The gel lining was squishy and
cold, and it seeped between her toes.

"Yuck!"

She eased the rest of her body into the sphere and she found herself curling into a foetus position without wanting to do so. The gel had all but covered her shoulders, and Master Drummik prepared to shut the top of the sphere.

"
I'll wake you when we are back at Minda Yerra," he said with a forced smile. She was unable to smile back, and with a final click of doom, the top of the sphere came down. The gel took over at a slightly slower rate than the darkness and the panicked feeling of suffocating.

Terrana awoke from a dreamless sleep. She blinked her eyes rapidly, panicking when she found herself smothered in the cold gel. As she struggled to break free from its squishy confines, it seemed to sense her distress and reacted instinctively, slowly squeezing her out of the sphere.

F
inally, she remembered where she was and looked down in awe at the way the sphere regurgitated her to the top. Without any idea of how long she had been incubated, she looked at the clock fixed to the underside of the sphere. Thirty-six hours, ten minutes, and nineteen seconds. That wasn't long, which probably explained why she wasn't experiencing the nauseous after effects Master Drummik had warned her about.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, she stepped out gingerly from the sphere, looking around the cold, lifeless room. Where was everyone? She had expected Master Drummik to be there, waiting to greet her as he had promised. Her boots were still on the floor where she had left them, and she quickly slipped them on. Then standing straight, she took a wobbly step towards the door.

"Hello, Terrana," said someone from behind her.

Her heart pounded as she turned around
slowly, afraid of who she would see. It was not a voice she recognised. Red, glowing eyes met hers and she suddenly found herself unable to move, frozen by a face she had seen in Si Ren Da.

"Something wrong?" asked Nashim, portraying fake concern. In his left hand was a large, heavy gun of some sort. He took a step towards her.

"Stay away from me!" she croaked, her voice heavy with sleep.

"And why should I do that? Do you plan on screaming to alert the others?" The left, mechanical side of his face pulsed strangely, and Terrana could make out dark qi flowing through the fine wires behind his mask.

"How can you be here? You were banished into the void!"

This was bad — she needed to get away but she knew it would not be easy. She also sensed that Nashim expected her to run, which suggested there was something waiting for her outside.

"Ever the suspicious mind for someone from Sector Thirteen. Go on, leave this room. I won't stop you."

"What have you done with Master Drummik?"

"Nothing that he wouldn't have done to me." He released a long sigh. "I tire of this place. Let's leave." He waved his hand and the door to the incubation room slid open.

Terrana moved suddenly. With a speed she did not know she was capable of, she ran up his chest and kicked him on the jaw. She sailed through the air, landed on the floor and bolted out the door. Nashim laughed and followed her out.

Terrana ran down the deserted corridors screaming as loud as she could, hoping someone would hear her, but that part of the ship appeared empty. She shot up the chutes, desperate to warn the others. Behind her, a cloud of black smoke followed.

She stumbled across the first casualty wandering aimlessly towards the bridge; a crew member who had no idea where he was going. As Terrana watched, he bumped against the wall and banged his head. There was no sign of recognition or awareness in his eyes.

Backing away in fear, she bolted towards the bridge, slowing down only to allow the doors to open for her.

"Nashim's here!" she screamed, rushing in.

Blank faces stared at her. There was the captain, several crew members, and all five UWIB representatives standing idly on the bridge, completely bereft of their senses. Like a warm wave washing over her, Terrana finally understood — they were being mind controlled.

A footstep sounded lightly behind her and she spun around. A large hand clamped around her throat and lifted her into the air.

"Why?" she croaked, staring into Nashim's eyes as she struggled to breathe. Her fingers pried at his but they were locked like solid steel around her neck.

"Simple. I do not wish to alert those clever weavers and lacers by killing all the crew members on this ship. It'd be bad for me if the grandmaster returned."

"What do you want with me?"

"Hmmm ... you'll see in a little while — if you're still alive."

Terrana was turning blue so Nashim lowered her to the floor and watched curiously as she inhaled deep breaths.

"But first, let's wait for those industrious people outside to seal the Dream Walker's prison, shall we?" He gestured to the window.

Terrana glanced out and saw the Imeldors and L-Masters floating in the In-Between, hovering around what appeared to be a large, shimmering canvas which reminded her of an oil-spill on the sea. Grandmaster Deitrux was out there with Eliksha, Quempa, Lakara, L-Master Hadrick and the others.

"I don't un-understand," she stammered. "I thought you wanted to —"

"— free the Dream Walker?" completed Nashim. "No my dear girl, that's the last thing I wish to happen."

"So why? Why did you have to kill the Imeldors and L-Masters when you could have asked them to seal the Dream Walker? Why?"

Terrana felt she was losing her mind. Nashim's revelation didn't make sense.

"Why, why, why. You ask too many questions which I'm not inclined to answer." Nashim glanced at the members of the sealing team, who were still intent on their work. "They're almost done. It's time for us to go."

"Go where?"

But Nashim had clearly grown tired of her questions. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her towards the airlock at the far end of the bridge, which happened to be on the blind side of the sealing team. He shoved her into the airlock.

"Wait! We're not going out, are we?" Fear sent adrenaline coursing through Terrana's veins. Unlike Nashim, she wasn't wearing a spacesuit. She watched in dawning horror as he activated his helmet. It came up over his head and locked into place. Then, he unlocked the second door.

Terrana panicked. She tried to dash past him and go back the way they had come. A hand smothered her face and shoved her hard against the far side of the airlock. She grunted in pain and crumpled to the cold floor. Nashim opened the second door, then reached for her. He dragged her over the first partition and then unlocked the third and final door. To Terrana, the sound of the door unlocking was the sound of doom.

"No," she mumbled, struggling to clear her head. She managed to plant her feet firmly on the floor, providing her with some leverage to resist Nashim's pull. Beyond the third door, death awaited. She would be sucked into the cold, dark vacuum of the In-Between where she would decompress and die slowly.

As though he could read her thoughts, Nashim grinned. "Have you ever seen someone's intestines ripped through their orifices or the blood vessels in their eyes erupt? When exposed to the In-Between, death can seem like forever. Three minutes can seem like three years."

Terrana screamed. Someone had to hear her. Someone had to come to her rescue. Nashim laughed. "Scream all you want, but no one's coming. They can't hear you."

The last door opened and Terrana was ripped violently from the safety of the ship into the vastness of the In-Between.

Soundless terror.

Her screams went unheard as she flailed desperately, trying to propel herself back to the ship. As the seconds ticked away, Terrana felt the onset of bloating as the gases in her lungs and intestines expanded, threatening to rupture. She understood her body was rapidly decompressing due to the lack of external pressure in the In-Between, and she exhaled rapidly to release the life threatening gases.

In the darkness of the blanketing silence, Terrana drifted farther and farther away from the ship. She faced a losing battle and she knew it. The moisture in her eyes and mouth began to boil away, followed by a bloating of her limbs as the water evaporated from her muscles and tissues.

Pain consumed her as nitrogen bubbles formed in her blood; she knew she was racing towards an oxygen-starved state. Hypoxia was beginning to set in. In her desperation, she reached out to the one person she had wanted to avoid most in the world.

T2! Help me! Help me please! I don't want to die like this.

The first onset of darkness rose in her and she was gripped by a new fear. She should have been afraid of dying alone in the In-Between, but against the mounting rage inside her, Terrana started to question her decision. She didn't want to transform into the monster that she truly was; the monster she had promised Baneyon to keep subdued.

Thoughts of Kazu and the ice-phoenixes came to her then. They were feiyed, but they weren't monsters. They didn't run around in rampaging fits destroying everything around them. They could control their powers, and she felt safe with them. The question was, why couldn't she?

I can't save us,
came the chilling reply. Terrana could have sworn she sensed fear in T2.

You can't, or you won't?

I can't!
T2 snarled.
Can't you feel it? It's coming.

Don't play games with me. If I die, you'll die too!

I'm already dying. It won't let me out. I can't save us.

Silence.
Terrana closed her eyes, willing T2 to appear.

Hey, where are you? T2! Help me! Come out!

But the voice in her head remained silent and as she drifted in the darkness, convulsing and twitching, Terrana truly believed she was going to die.

Nashim observed her for any signs of transformation and was slightly disappointed to see that she was just dying. Before she drifted too far away from him and into line of sight of the sealing team, he fired a single shot
from his gun. A large capsule sped straight towards her, and when it was close enough it ruptured and expanded into four magnetised points that held her in place in the In-Between. With Terrana unable to drift anywhere, Nashim turned his attention to the sealing team.

Cocooned in the safety of a shield generated by the pendant, the members of the sealing team worked diligently, completely unaware of the events happening outside.
While the weavers focused on reinforcing the strange, oily material which could only be the gate to the Dream Walker's prison, the lacers created a recursion of commands that would bind the weaving in place for all eternity. A strangely shaped rock spun rapidly above them, perhaps a fragment of a passing asteroid that had been trapped by the gate's energy.

Nashim had to admit, he was impressed that they had managed to derive the algorithm in the short time since they had first learned of the Dream Walker. This was a credit, he decided, that belonged to the grandmaster.

Using his finger, he drew a three-quarter circle on the side of the gun to adjust its settings before sneaking up on the sealing team. It was unlikely they would sense his approach; not before it was too late anyway.

Grandmaster Deitrux first noticed something wrong when he felt a disturbance in the shield. He glanced around, saw nothing unusual and put it down to the shield's proximity to the gate. He was relieved that everything had gone according to plan. The members of his team had performed an excellent job, and the sealing was complete. All that was left was to de-activate the pendant and remove the shield.

"Good job, everyone," he said, speaking into his microphone. "I'm bringing the shield down now and then we can return to the ship."

It was the lack of relieved responses that warned him that something was terribly wrong. Glancing around sharply, he noticed that four members of the sealing team weren't moving. Before he could even shout out a warning, the same four disintegrated before his eyes.

"
No
!" he shouted. He quickly spotted another lacer in imminent danger and reacted immediately. Using his qi, he dragged Eliksha Bakshur away just in time as an almost transparent beam flashed past her to strike the shield. The shield shimmered, but continued to hold. Grandmaster Deitrux pulled Eliksha towards him then placed himself between her and the unseen attacker.

"Nashim," he whispered hoarsely, barely able to comprehend the sight of the Valpuri emerging from the darkness. "You should have died — I banished you to the void!"

Nashim smiled behind his helmet. "A small mistake, Grandmaster Deitrux. You banished me, but I still had Namasar's pendant. Broken as it is, it is still capable of protecting me. But I must say, I never expected you to work with gravity. It is no wonder that you lead the Imeldors."

Grandmaster Deitrux winced. He had not wanted to reveal this particular ability to the others. As far as he knew, no one else could tap into a planet's energy and control its gravity, but, Grandmaster Deitrux could do something with it that was unheard of, and Nashim was about to reveal it.

"You control gravity?" blurted L-Master Hadrick in amazement, tearing his eyes away from Nashim for a second. There were only four others remaining of the sealing team; Lady Skiss, Eliksha, Lakara, and Quempa, and they were staring at Nashim in shock.

"Indeed he does," said Nashim. "With his extraordinary ability, Grandmaster Deitrux created a single point in space-time to rid his world of me. He would have succeeded had I had not been carrying Namasar's pendant."

"Dartkala, you opened a
wormhole
?" gasped L-Master Hadrick, staring at Grandmaster Deitrux.