Ice Phoenix (45 page)

Nashim leaned forwards. "Do you understand now? When we were fighting back in the city, you took the tonien from me. The truth was
, I
let
you take it from me."

Grandmaster Deitrux felt as though he was in a dream — he couldn't believe that Nashim was telling the truth.

Nashim saw his expression and laughed. "Oh come now, Grandmaster Deitrux! How stupid do you think I am?
Of course
I knew the tonien was locked, and never in a million years would the Ancients of Olden Kartath have revealed the code to me. I am a Valpuri, and the Valpuri and Ancients are old enemies. The return of the Valpuri scared the Ancients — they truly believed I intended to free the Dream Walker and so —"

"—
they gave me the code for the tonien and I led you here," finished the grandmaster, his voice sounding hollow. "But I still don't understand why you don't want the Dream Walker free. The Valpuri have a history with him too."

Nashim snorted and when he answered, his voice was full of disdain. "That's true — we have a history with him.
A most unpleasant one. Because of the Dream Walker, we were banished from the Thirteen Sectors, forbidden to wander their realms."

Grandmaster Deitrux frowned. "I don't recall the Ancients mentioning anything about the Valpuri race being banished. You just disappeared. Did Skra's power also extend to you when she sealed the Dream Walker?"

"It's logical to think that, but no. Skra didn't banish us. Neither did the Ancients. I can see you are dying to know more, but you will not learn anything about the Valpuris' history from me." Nashim seemed determined not to speak, and the grandmaster, scared that he would stop talking completely, changed the subject.

"Then, what about Terrana?
Why did you go through all the trouble of bringing her here, only to kill her?"

Nashim leaned back and sighed. "
Ahh Terrana. Yeah, unfortunately, she was one of the things that went wrong very early. You see, I was trying to hide her existence from you and the Imeldors, the L-Masters, and those fat Council members. Because of that, I decided to go after her first in Sector Thirteen, before embarking on my search for the pendant and the tonien."

Grandmaster Deitrux tried to raise his head and failed. Instead, he spoke in a calm, confident voice, as though he were in control of all his faculties and sitting in a meeting room, instead of being paralysed and floating in the In-Between. "But you failed miserably, didn't you? You didn't know that Terrana was appearing to us in her dreams. That's how we discovered her, and sent someone to fetch her."

For the first time in the conversation, Grandmaster Deitrux sensed a change in Nashim's mood. He could have been wrong, but he thought he had detected a flicker of fear. Grandmaster Deitrux found that most odd, and, determined to capitalise on the demon's uncertainty, he empowered his mind to do what it did best — analyse.

The cogs turned in his brain and the first conclusion Grandmaster Deitrux came to was that Nashim had known that Terrana was feiyed long before the Imeldors had discovered her. If that was truly the case, why hadn't he taken
her from Sector Thirteen sooner? Grandmaster Deitrux decided to work on a hunch.

"You knew where she was all along, but you couldn't take her, could you?" he said. "Were you responsible for the fire that killed her family? Powerful Valpuri such as yourself had no need to resort that low to take her. You murdered them all — innocent people."

Nashim's shoulders straightened and the grandmaster felt the Valpuri's anger seep through his spacesuit.

"Our instructions were to take her at all costs!" hissed Nashim. "We didn't realise how hard —" He snapped his mouth shut, realising he had said too much.

Instructions. Grandmaster Deitrux had suspected as much. It had only been logical to assume that this Valpuri was working for the greater glory of his race, commanded by his own people to infiltrate the United Worlds of the In-Between. But, Grandmaster Deitrux felt the barest flicker of fear in Nashim again, and paused to reorganise his thoughts. Something didn't seem quite right.

Nashim was clearly afraid of something, and Grandmaster Deitrux didn't think it was fear of his own people. If Nashim was really acting under orders from his government or leaders, then there was no reason to hide it. But, it was clear that Nashim had blurted out something he had not intended to reveal. This led the Imeldor to believe that Nashim was scared of a particular person.

"Your intellect, without a doubt, is highly admirable," said Nashim, watching the grandmaster closely. "That is why you must die. The same applied to the queen. Her power and intellect, combined with her incredible knack for searching out the truth, made her far too dangerous to be left alone. Her death was a stroke of luck for us since we failed to kill her the first time."

Grandmaster Deitrux did his best to remain calm in the face of provocation. He needed to find the truth — the reasons behind Nashim's actions.

"So, you admit you had trouble taking Terrana from Sector Thirteen?" he said, picking up on Nashim's unfinished sentence. "I mean, you may as well tell me — I only have a few more minutes to live."

"Persistent, aren't you? Fine, since you are going to die anyway, I see no harm in it. Yes, taking Terrana from her home was an issue. I had no idea she had a guardian — we never saw him, we never heard him, we didn't
feel
him. But after three failed attempts to snatch her, Meldogan and I realised that Terrana had someone protecting her. The harder we tried to abduct her, the stronger the guardian became. I fear that we actually awoke it. Whoever her guardian was, he or she created a powerful barrier that prevented us from reaching her. We couldn't set foot anywhere on the ground. So, we spent days trying to create a gap in that barrier, and we succeeded. This gap would give us a small window in which we could swoop in and grab Terrana, but, she would have to run out of the house before we could touch her.

"We started the fire, expecting her to run out of the house but, instead, she nearly died that day. The stupid girl would not abandon her dead brother!

"But, luckily, your Imeldor, Baneyon, arrived. For some unknown reason, he was able to walk into the house to save her. Although I had not wanted Terrana to end up in your hands, I decided that perhaps it wasn't a bad idea after all. I could trust you to protect her while I chased after the pendant. "

"
Then why, Nashim? Why did you go through all that trouble of capturing her only to kill her
?" shouted Grandmaster Deitrux. The truth was within his clutches. Everything was becoming clearer now — Nashim had deliberately drawn their attentions to the Dream Walker to hide his true purpose. Grandmaster Deitrux didn't know what it was yet, but he was close to finding out.

Nashim glanced down at the paralysed Imeldor, his eyes glowing brightly behind his helmet.

"Have you ever witnessed the power of a true born feiyed beast? And I'm not referring to those silly faars either."

At the same time Nashim was speaking to the grandmaster about feiyed beasts, Eliksha crashed to the floor of the
Dark
Star's
outmost airlock.  She scrambled to her feet, tears of terror streaming down her face. Her hands grasped desperately around the large wheel lock protruding from the door, and she threw all her strength into turning it.

There was a crash from outside
the ship and she screamed as Quempa's broken body shot through the airlock. It happened so fast — he crashed into the wall, leaving a dent.

"Please unlock!" she cried,
pulling at the wheel. But it refused to budge; the exit door she had come through had been damaged beyond recognition, causing the ship's system to lock down all remaining entry points.

Large claws tore at the twisted wreckage of the outer door
, and Eliksha released another terrified scream. She aimed her gun at what came through, firing off several shots. They were head-on shots but they failed to stop the horrific, fiery creature from coming inside. It stared at her with cruel eyes and radiated such an intense heat that Eliksha felt herself burning up. Flames erupted on her suit.

She hammered on the door.
"Someone please! Open the door! Open the doooor!"

The last thought that ran through her head was,
Let my death be quick.
That was before the door opened and a hand pulled her through to safety.

The creature shrieked in surprise as the woman disappeared before its eyes. It tried to follow her, quickly burning a hole through the thick door
, when a voice broke into its thoughts.

You
're going the wrong way. Turn around and come back out.

The creature
looked around in confusion
.

That
's it. Come outside. Come to me.

"
For what purpose did you bring Terrana here
?" shouted Grandmaster Deitrux to Nashim.

"Can't you feel her, grandmaster? She's coming," laughed Nashim.

"What are you talking about? Who's coming?" Grandmaster Deitrux felt a ripple in the In-Between, and his eyes widened in horror as wild uncontrolled qi surged through the area. He, Lakara, L-Master Hadrick, Lady Skiss, and even Nashim were almost blown away as brutal power whipped around them like a tornado. The wiring in Grandmaster Deitrux's suit short-circuited, destroying his entire communications system. He could no longer hear or speak through his intercom.

In the
silent heaviness of the In-Between, he sensed the terrified emotions of his team and heard the deafening sound of his own breathing. Seconds ticked by. Nashim floated over him. Judging from the inclined position of his head, the grandmaster knew he was saying something, but he couldn't hear it. The Valpuri reached down and knocked on his helmet several times before pointing towards the
Dark Star
.

With a sickening heart,
Grandmaster Deitrux turned his head to look at the ship. Fire met his eyes and caused him to tremble in fear.
Impossible. It can't be ... what is that creature?

Nashim nodded as though
he could hear the grandmaster's question, and he made several hand gestures before pointing to the creature again. Grandmaster Deitrux shook his head in disbelief. He didn't want to, he couldn't believe it, but he could sense that Nashim wasn't lying. That fiery creature shooting towards them in the darkness was Terrana. But it wasn't the same Terrana who killed the queen on Si Ren Da.  It wasn't T2. It was something else entirely.

If
the grandmaster thought he could spot any sign of humanity in her, he would only be fooling himself. The blazing white creature with two pools of darkness in its head where its eyes should have been contained no compassion, and certainly it did not show any signs of recognising him and the others. All Grandmaster Deitrux felt was destruction. He could see only oblivion heading towards them. Oblivion in the form of a once-human girl with the wings of a dragon and the eyes of death itself. By killing the human Terrana, Nashim had released the feiyed beast in her. The only hope they had of saving themselves was to use the pendant, but Nashim had thrown that away.

Think
, Deitrux, think! Why does Nashim no longer require the pendant? Why did he kill the human Terrana to unleash that creature? He doesn't want the Dream Walker free, but he needs that creature for a reason! Find that reason, Deitrux, and you will find Nashim's purpose.

Grandmaster Deitrux felt he
wasn't looking deep enough. He wasn't taking everything into consideration. Terrana was the key. If he could connect all the pieces surrounding her, he could figure this out — the only problem was, he didn't know where to begin. He latched on to the first fact that came to him.

Terrana
has a guardian. Where did the guardian come from?

Grandmaster Deitrux
felt himself sinking deeper into a battle of wits he was fighting with himself. He knew the answer lay buried in his mind, that whatever there was to know, he had all the pieces. He wanted to scream, to kick himself, to pull his hair out because the frustration gnawed at him. He could have cried, he needed to. At last, he couldn't hold it back any longer. He screamed in frustration.

Releasing his emotions did not produce the answer he was searching for, but his
heart slowed down and the blood finally kicked into his brain. It began working once more and Grandmaster Deitrux began reshaping his questions.
What is the earliest known record we have of Terrana? Why did she have the pendant?

They still weren't the right questions. Grandmaster Deitrux closed his eyes and took a deep breath. While he was drawing his next breath,
the real questions dawned on him. Terrana was the child of Dartkala — that much was undisputed. All he had to do was return to her beginning.
When had the search for Dartkala's child begun? How did Terrana come to have the pendant?
It was starting to fall into place now. Grandmaster Deitrux blinked rapidly as he moved the first piece into place.

The search for Dartkala
's child had begun fifteen hundred years ago, after the formation of the United Worlds of the In-Between. That much had been recorded in Flimus Flamus's journal. He retrieved the memory of Mikin showing him a copy of the journal, and Flimus's words flowed back to him.

...
upon Aran's discovery of the infant's location, a sense of foreboding descended upon me and suddenly I feared for our lives. For if Aran knew, then most likely did the Valpuri. What we would find in Arakam, the birth place of Dartkala's new child, we possessed no inkling. We were gripped by both fear and excitement. What would the infant look like? Would it have a shape or would it be pure energy?

As Grandmaster Deitrux stared at the white blazing creature heading
towards them, he realised he knew the answer to Flimus's last question.
Both. The infant is both shape and energy.
More words from Flimus's diary came back to him.

Between the
demon monster and Aran, I knew not who initiated the killing hand. I could only watch as Aran, the demon monster, and the infant were consumed in a white hot flame. When Megan finally came to, she described something about the demon monster which to this day has puzzled me. The demon monster wore a simple necklace around its neck. A pendant in the shape of a teardrop. Skra's pendant ...

And there was the answer to Grandmaster Deitrux
's second question.
How did Terrana come to have the pendant?
A theory, far-fetched as it sounded, but not impossible, sparked in his brain.

Fl
imus mentioned a weaver named Aran, an infant, and a demon monster from the Valpuri world. A monster more powerful than the other Valpuri they had met. If the three of them had really died in the explosion, the pendant would have disappeared along with them, but, somehow, it had survived. So, if the pendant's power was strong enough to save itself, it could have been strong enough to save Aran, the infant, and the demon monster also, especially if Aran and the demon monster who had abducted the infant were as powerful as Flimus had described.

Grandmaster Deitrux was now certain that Terrana was the
infant mentioned in Flimus Flamus's journal, and it was highly likely that Aran had been with her all this time. The guardian. Aran had been the dolphin who had remained with her against all odds — it explained why he allowed Baneyon to leave Fiji with her. Aran had been a weaver, and he had recognised Baneyon as another. Satisfied that his reasoning had been sound so far, the grandmaster concentrated on working out who or what the other, more powerful, Valpuri was — and where it was now.

Terrana had been reborn
, along with her guardian, Aran, in Sector Thirteen thirteen years ago. But, what if the demon monster had not been reborn, and instead had remained in a dormant state all these years? What if, to break free of this state, it required the same elements that had sent it into dormancy in the first place? The final piece fell into place as Grandmaster Deitrux recalled the last few words written by Flimus Flamus.

I could only watch as Aran, the
demon monster, and the infant were consumed in a white hot flame.

The grandmaster cast his mind back to when
Terrana had transformed into her supposedly feiyed form on Si Ren Da; Quempa had clearly told him she had given off blue-green flames. Her flames then were nothing like the ones he saw now — the creature flying towards him was ablaze with explosive white flames. The Terrana flying towards him was the true born feiyed creature, birthed in the darkness of Dartkala. He didn't know who the other girl was that had appeared on Si Ren Da but she definitely wasn't this blazing feiyed creature.
This
was what Nashim had wanted all along.
This
was why he had brought her through the Voron Cloud. He needed the feiyed Terrana with the white flames to undo what she had done fifteen hundred years ago. He needed her to release the one part of the trio who had been trapped for fifteen hundred years in the In-Between, instead of being reborn with Terrana and the guardian

The answer to where this third entity was trapped suddenly came to him.
With impending dread, Grandmaster Deitrux twisted his head to stare at the random spinning rock above the gate. He had initially believed that Nashim had recklessly hurled the pendant into the void, but he couldn't have been more wrong. The demon had thrown the pendant at the rock, as he had been planning to do all along. How strange that the rock had been trapped outside the Dream Walker's prison.

The rock
was glowing, and Grandmaster Deitrux finally understood what was draining their qi. What had appeared to be a lonely asteroid fragment was the reason why he, Lakara, Hadrick, and Lady Skiss could not move. Whoever or whatever was trapped inside the rock needed only the burning white flames of the feiyed Terrana to release it.

His worst fears were realised when
Terrana hovered above the rock. Grandmaster Deitrux had to avert his eyes to avoid being blinded by her brilliant flames. She observed them and hesitated.

"What is she doing, just hovering there?" muttered Nashim. He hefted his weapon over his shoulder.

"Stop!" cried Grandmaster Deitrux although no one could hear him. "Don't aggravate her! If she comes any closer, we could all die!"

But his desperate gesturing and muffled pleas went unnoticed by Nashim as he took aim at Terrana. Grandmaster Deitrux struggled to overcome his growi
ng panic. Terrana's flames stretched across the void like a magnificent raging river, and he could feel its heat burning through his suit.

He wasn
't sure how the others were faring, but he fervently hoped that Lakara, with her suit, could overcome the strange hold the rock had on them. They needed to get to the ship immediately and escape from Terrana, Nashim, and ... whatever was in that rock. A surge of adrenaline rushed through the grandmaster's body and, to his surprise, it disrupted the hold the rock had on him.

Nashim fired his weapon and Grandmaster Deitrux watched in horror as a dark, red beam struck Terrana. From the way it exploded in her chest like an
aggressive cancer, he suspected that it was a cellular-disintegrator beam. Whether it would work on a feiyed creature like her, he didn't know.

What he did know was that he needed to get out of there fast. He found he could move his body again
, and using all his strength, he ripped himself from harm's way, tapping furiously on the manual propulsion sensor on his suit. Little bursts of compressed air expelled from his feet and he shot towards the
Dark Star
.

He had been correct about Lakara and her unique suit. She was already speeding towards the ship, dragging L-Master Hadrick and Lady Skiss with her.

Terrana writhed like a live fish on a hook before the blast molecules from Nashim's weapon tore her apart. The blast sent powerful shockwaves throughout the void. Grandmaster Deitrux shrieked in pain as the blast tore his suit apart and he ejected the last of his qi in a desperate attempt to weave a barrier around himself. He watched as white flames consumed the darkness in a raging frenzy, and slightly ahead of him, L-Master Hadrick and Lady Skiss were ripped apart. Deitrux did not even have time to be shocked by their dreadful demise before he saw the
Dark Star
tumble into the darkness.