I stare at her, stunned. What do you say to something like that?

  “Auntie V, I’m sure it won’t come to that,” I protest. “You’ll beat this!”

  “No, Cal,” she says firmly. “I’ve accepted it and you need to as well. I’m sorry to lay this on you after so long, but so many lives are at stake. You’ve never known this and it’s a tightly held secret, but my Powers are stronger the closer I am to Earth. I can’t even leave on a spaceship to deep space and do it where there’s nobody at risk. The creature would be free before I left the solar system.”

  “You’ve… been on Earth all this time? And you didn’t contact me?” I ask. I realize immediately it’s the most petty thing to say in the circumstances, but I still mean it.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t contact you or visit, Cal. Especially after your parents disappeared. There’s… a lot of bad stuff happening out there. Big threats to Earth we’ve only just managed to turn back, and more headed our way. Overflowing Dungeons that our top teams barely manage to contain. I’m not even sure if our most powerful can protect us. Maybe Starfire or Omnistrata or one of the others. I just don’t know. I’ve been fighting every day all this time while also dealing with this abomination.”

  I don’t doubt her for a second even though it hurts that she’s been so close but so far away. She wouldn’t make something like this up.

  “As far as what’s happened to me… you needed to know. I need your help and humanity needs your help. And so… I also need to know what’s happened to you. It might change everything.”

  “What do you mean? Is the reason you thought I could dispose of your… body… after you die because I don’t have a Power? So if it manages to survive or defeat you it won’t be able to latch on to me instead?”

  “You always were the smartest at everything,” says Auntie V. It’s tinged with pride and sadness. “It’s insurance, Cal. They let me come here because all of them know if I fail to kill this thing and it escapes, it will only feed on them and they won’t be able to stop it. There’s nobody else in this whole world that has a better chance to finish things. But if you do fail, and I know you won’t, there are backup plans.”

  “What?” It’s all I can think of to say; I’m stunned. This isn’t the way all of this was supposed to go.

  “Take a bit of time if you need it Cal. But I need you to tell me about what’s happened to you. If things have changed and you have a Power, this whole plan might be worthless.”

  She says it calmly and takes a sip of tea, but now that I’m really, properly looking at her I can see the strain she’s under. The desperation and hope and pain in her posture and her expression. She doesn’t want to be here… but she doesn’t have a choice. Seems like I don’t either. I’m proud that she hasn’t asked if it’s a responsibility I’m willing to take on - she knows me better than that.

  “I’m not sure your plan is going to work,” I tell her. “Just before you arrived, I got a Power! It’s incredible and maybe the worst timing possible, but that’s what you felt changed - I finally have one.”

  “Oh no,” says Auntie V flatly. “That… is not good.”

  “Tell me everything,” she urges and then takes a sip from her mug, both hands still wrapped around it.

  And despite my fear of revealing what’s happened to me fully, I do. I tell her everything that’s happened and how I think my Power works, as new as it is. As strange as it is. I tell her that it’s a Mythic Power. I tell her about the choice I made to save a resident instead of harvesting the Soul Sparks I so desperately want, and my lack of ability to get Soul Sparks from the Dungeon.

  “This is amazing, Calrik,” she says, genuinely seeming to be in wonder. “I’ve never heard of anything like this or a Power that’s potentially so flexible. And - Mythic! It will be hard for people to believe and nothing, including my equipment, is calibrated to measure it. In the end you really did inherit something special from your parents. Can you share any more details?”

  I send her all the notifications I’ve ever received and she goes through them carefully, reading every word. It feels a bit scary but good to finally get all this off my chest. As she reads I feel hopeful Auntie V can help me figure out what’s going on and what to do next.

  “Fascinating…” she says after a while, then her expression hardens. “You must not reveal this Power to anyone, Calrik. Not until you’ve gained enough clout or power to mean it doesn’t matter. Your suspicion that you’d be held and experimented on is almost certainly true. We’ll have to give you the ability to hide it. I can’t help but wonder what kinds of Powers might manifest for you as you put more Soul Sparks in your Attributes, and what they might develop into.”

  “Me too - I have no idea what’s possible or how it works, beyond the basics.”

  Her expression goes far off and thoughtful for a while. I pour myself a mug of tea and take a few sips from it.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Auntie V?” I eventually prompt. It takes a while for her to refocus on me.

  “It’s not long I have now Calrik. Maybe a few weeks. We have to know if the beast inside me can feed on your Power.”

  “How can we do that?” I ask softly and put my mug down, feeling ready to bolt, the tension rolling through my body. I can’t help it. Finding out if a beast can feed on you is not exactly relaxing, but I force all those fears and feelings down. If there are billions of lives on the line, fuck backing down.

  “In my bags is a portable Power cube. Another last favor, in case I had to test you or someone around me. Though… I didn’t think it would be needed - and definitely not for you! I can also do some things with my Powers. Things nobody else knows about, Cal. Everyone is so busy paying attention to my healing and what it can do for them that they’ve all missed the secondary Powers I have.” Her eyes are downcast and she sounds sad and worried. In this moment she’s not Auntie V, she’s an old lady with the weight of the world on her shoulders who has run out of options.

  “Ok, Auntie V,” I decide. “Tell me about my parents, though, while I get it.”

  “Of course, Cal,” she says warmly. “You’ll find it in the green bag. There’s a cube about a foot on each side. Bring it here.”

  I stand and rearrange her bags to get access to it, then unzip the green one.

  “Your parents didn’t just lead Expeditions. They were part of the EDF and even the ESF in special situations. I know we all talked about some of the EDF work at family gatherings and there were some things they could share with you, but the ESF work was mostly hidden. It’s not the kind of thing you talk about when your kids are young. Your parents saved millions of lives and had some of the most successful and celebrated Expeditions in history, finding us new planets to settle and valuable resources. They were big contributors to the fact humanity has managed to catch up to many of the Galactic races even though some of them have had thousands or millions of years of a head start. Humans truly have had a stratospheric rise, Cal, and your parents were a big part of accelerating us from a backward race that over-indexed on powerful individuals into a species to be reckoned with in the Universe.”

  Listening with pride and a sense of loss that I missed out on knowing about this and talking to my parents about it, I pull out the cube she wants me to find. It’s black with silver trim that wraps around it, splitting it in half. The material is one I can’t even have a guess at identifying. Sometimes it’s not easy to keep track of what materials originate on Earth and what ones don’t, but this looks alien. A simple panel the size of my palm is on one of the unmarked sides. It’s plain and doesn’t reveal any of its mysteries, but I’d bet every engineering degree or fact I’ve ever learned that the simplicity hides something enormously intricate and complex. There is no way just anyone is getting their hands on one of these. I turn it over in my hands to have a really good look.

  “Some Galactic races don’t like a new kid on the block, Calrik. On Earth there are billions of people with Sparks or Minor Powers that live their life trouble free. They see some news reports about Earth Strike Force or Expedition victories. Occasionally humanity is at war and a Galactic invasion hits the Earth; our most powerful heroes turn it back, often without large scale destruction or loss of life. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what’s out there and what’s laying in wait on Earth, infiltrating humanity. We know for a fact some Galactics have deep connections into our populations, and our economy is increasingly dependent on non-human interactions and alien technology. Some Galactics would like to take our inventions, our resources, and our population for themselves. With all our Powers, we make an attractive target.”

  I keep listening intently as I set the cube down between us and sit down, then grab my mug. I know about all the things Auntie V is telling me to a certain extent - everyone does. But not the things she’s hinting at that lie further afield or hidden in plain sight.

  “The Earth Defence Force doesn’t just protect us from invasions, although that’s their most public activity and the official reason they exist. Below the surface, they also root out insurrections and Galactic terrorism. They also deal with Rifts that form on Earth when the Mana saturation surges and powerful creatures from other planets pour through. You only hear of the ones that happen in populated areas because the EDF can’t get there quickly enough, but there are ten times that number happening all the time - did you know that?”

  I shake my head. Of course I know that Rifts happen and the EDF takes the dangerous ones on, leaving the minor ones to local teams to make a name for themselves by cleaning them up. There’s no real hint that it’s any more than that.

  “The ESF stops threats to Earth before they even get close to us. When we need to bloody someone’s nose, the ESF steps in. On top of it all, there are threats out there in the Galaxy that people on Earth don’t even know about. Monstrous creatures. The kind that only Expeditions look for and the ESF is called in to take care of. The kind that’s inside me,” she says sadly.

  “What happened to them, Auntie V?” I ask. I can’t help it. She presses her lips together and I can see that even though we’ve both had a lot of time to deal with it, there are still raw feelings under the surface. She puts her mug down and leans forward across the space, focusing fully on me again and it feels like she can look into my soul, to all the hurt and loss that lives there.

  “They were on an ESF mission, Calrik. Something went horribly wrong, but I still don’t know what.” She pauses and keeps eye contact with me as tears form in her eyes. She takes a deep breath and sighs, and I can’t look away. “I tried, Cal. I promise I tried.”

  She breaks off and looks down. I’m not sure how I feel. My chest is tight and I shift position to the front of my chair and reach out to hold her hands. She looks up, pent up grief barely held in check.

  “I know you would have,” I say to her, and I know it’s true.

  “For all my Power, and all the favours I traded, I couldn’t find out more Calrik. Nobody on their mission returned, not even with your father’s Power. He was at the peak, Cal. You never saw him like I did, out in the Universe fighting and protecting us. There aren’t many in the world who could match him. And your mother… she was a force of nature…”

  I find it hard to hear Auntie V talk about her, and hard to see what it does to Auntie V. Her neice, gone so suddenly at the height of her Power.

  “Do you think I could find them, Auntie V? Do you think that somehow they’re still alive?”

  “I don’t know, Cal.” Auntie V sounds resigned and sad. She’s tried everything she can. She’s given up. “You’d have to be the most powerful human in the Universe to even try.”

  Motivation and anger rise up inside me and there’s only one burning, focused goal I can think about achieving.

  “I will be.”