Little remained of the warriors’ camp save for a few ransacked tents, splintered timbers, and the bodies of a few unfortunate followers, all charred to a crisp. For the few who were able to escape the victor’s rampage, the battle was far from over. One such survivor was a young woman named Perezele, a widow as of that morning. She fled over the barren plain with an infant tied in a sling against her body and a toddler under her arm. On she ran beneath the rusty sky, fearing the worst for herself and for her daughters if she stopped. Two hundred yards from the edge of a dense, gnarled forest, a jagged rock sliced into her left foot and took her meager leather sandal with it. Without so much as a second look, Perezele continued sprinting towards the tree line, leaving a trail of footprints half shod and half bloodied. In spite of the pain, she knew it was wise to avoid flying. The streak of visible lightning left in her wake would surely alert those who gave chase, and they would doubtless fly faster and hit harder than she. Only once the tangled wood swallowed them whole, could Perezele slow her pace and comfort her crying children.
Without a clue of where else to go, she walked through a shallow creek at the bottom of a ravine, hoping its depth would conceal them from any pursuers. As an added bonus, the cool water felt good on her wounded foot. She’d let her older daughter down to walk and splash along as they made their way deeper into the forest. The girl’s audible amusement with the simple stroll through the brook was the only thing keeping Perezele from breaking down where she stood. And why shouldn’t the little one have a brief respite from all the suffering? Wouldn’t there be more than enough ahead of them? At least that’s what the young mother told herself, for it was the path her life had taken so far.
The slow walk gave her the opportunity to reflect; always a painful, unwelcome thing, the specter of memory. Today that unsavory trip to the past left a bitter taste in her mouth. There was pain for the one she’d so recently lost, and more pain still for the events which led her to him in the first place. Perezele’s early years, like those of so many others in her harsh, windswept world, were not the easiest. Finding the village of her youth intolerable, she sought refuge in the arms of a charismatic, young priest. He was a rare type indeed, and by the time Perezele made his acquaintance he had already amassed for himself a loyal coalition of sycophants and hangers-on who resided with him in a shanty town built around the great ruins of a good time gone bad.
For their brief year together, he’d been fun, enchanting even. Certainly, she’d never heard anyone speak as he had. He claimed to know all the secrets of their ruined world, both its past and future. Some power only he understood gave him the answers to how their people had come to exist, why they’d been put in bondage, and how they could be free again; free to not only escape their poor environs, but to conquer the stars as they were meant to. All of this sounded well and good to Perezele, who knew as surely as any of her kind that their world was in prison. Anyone with eyes could plainly see the massive rings in the sky, visible on the clearest of days. Allegedly they were the natural result of some ancient war with people from beyond, people who wanted something here, people who might still hold a grudge. Even so, as time slipped by, the prophet’s words made less and less sense to her. He talked more and more of a different destiny altogether, one that had little to do with their world’s visible evidence of incarceration and more to do with some larger, transcendent purpose. His behavior grew more erratic and impetuous, though the rest of his followers, still drunk on his revelations, didn’t seem to care. Only Perezele, who by virtue of their relationship, shared so much of his world, began to see him unraveling day by day. The final straw was when he claimed their newborn daughter, Perezele’s first child, was the harbinger of some twisted vengeance from outside of time and understanding. He said she was only half of the puzzle though, and that another would arrive from a distant plane, destined to be a greater visionary than he, and together they would bring about some ill-defined event called a convergence.
Perezele was practical above all else, and knew that however vague this ‘destiny’ sounded, things tended to go just about one way for girls in this world. She’d be damned if she’d let her firstborn child be sold in infancy to the same kind of life she herself lived then. Surely there was better out there for her than being tethered body and soul to some raving lunatic who thought his dreams mattered more than reality. Perezele didn’t know precisely what she wanted, or even what her daughter would want someday, but it couldn’t be that.
The decision to leave wasn’t a hard one, and neither was the process, as it turned out. In the course of the priest’s descent into madness, he’d developed a fondness for consciousness-altering substances, or at least whatever their world’s pitiful analogue for them was. This made her escape easier than it should have been, as she knew he’d fly into a fit of rage if he caught her leaving when he was awake.
After a time of wandering on her own, and caring for her child with more than enough difficulty, Perezele fell in with the camp of travelling warriors and decided to make herself useful. She was more than content to cook and gather firewood in exchange for shelter. The irony of these menial chores buying her safety when they were part of what drove her from her original home in the first place was not lost on her. But in time, there was more than simple labor to fill her days, as another man had taken an interest in her. It couldn’t hurt to have male patronage in a world so uncaring, and in any case, he was nothing like the one she’d run from. He was kinder, more generous, and had a sense of humor without a hint of malice in it. Even if he was a little materialistic, it was harmless. There were worse ways to live than to be showered with gifts from the week’s plunder, Perezele told herself. Even rarer still was finding a good man who’d accept her with a child already. They enjoyed nearly three happy years together. It was a shame he met his end at the tip of an enemy’s spear just a few months after their daughter, Perezele’s second, was born.
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None of it mattered now, she mused as she trudged sadly through the creek, exhaustion threatening to overtake her at any moment. Not the second man with his gifts, nor the first with his visions could save her now. All that was left to do was wrest her grubby toddler from the water and find a place to shelter for the night. Once they’d had a night or two of peace, then she’d figure out what to do. Rumors swirled in her head telling of an old city by the dark and glittering sea. Perhaps she’d find it in the days to come and see if anyone else still called it home.
After a time, she found respite near a cave by the brook, and not a moment too soon, for the sky beyond the treetops darkened with clouds. The opening in the rock before her was occupied by some large, fearsome creature, but she was past the point of caring. She stood in the clearing twenty yards from the mouth of the cavern and listened to the threatening growls, waiting for the instant its eyes appeared. Somewhere overhead, a peal of thunder rang out. With the baby in her right arm, she raised the left one high and electrified the cave’s interior, not only for safety from the beast, but for the use of its shelter as well. She didn’t know the hollow was full of Vercoden, or what Vercoden even was.
As the blinding flash of blue light erupted from the rock’s opening, Perezele dropped to the brush on the forest floor and shielded her children from what she believed would be a fatal blast. It ended as quickly as it began, leaving the three of them unharmed, but shaken. To her surprise, the girls made no sound. The younger slept against her mother as before, and the older was already scurrying about her ankles again, ever more curious than cautious. After a few moments elapsed, Perezele judged that nothing more could exist within, and that they’d be safe so long as she didn’t use her power in there. The intervening time had drawn her eyes skyward, where more lightning than her own awaited. Was it the coming storm, or others who soared above? They wouldn’t have the luxury to wait and see. She brought her children slowly into the safety of the darkness, relieved to hear only the sound of the wind. The beast was gone, vanished it seemed. Instead, the comforting gloom greeted them with a very different set of eyes.
Perezele crouched down on the stony floor to again protect her daughters from the threat of the unknown. Only this time, the toddler wrenched herself free from her mother’s grasp and went to accost the stranger. She must have missed playing with the other children in the warrior’s camp, for she took to the odd boy like a pig to mud, splashing in the puddle where he stood, and shouting at his silent visage in her garbled way. Perezele kept her distance, beholding him with caution, even if he seemed not much older than her oldest.
At first she believed him to be a foul spirit, some sort of curse projected hence by the first man she’d left. There was no part of her that would ever forget the threat of the vengeful prophecy. But after careful observation, she determined he was as real as she or anyone else, even if he looked like no one she’d ever seen. Only the smudges of dirt lent any color to the white, nearly translucent shade of his skin and hair. He didn’t speak, he didn’t cry out in protest, he simply stood there, tolerating the boundless energy of his new playmate as his haunted, glistening gaze met Perezele’s. Something about the look in his foreign, coppery eyes told her mere speech would hold no currency, for the space between worlds required more. Outside, the rain began to fall.
The sound of the worsening weather roused her to action. She shooed her daughter away for the moment, and picked up the strange, cold child from the puddle. Whatever shape his clothing originally took was unfamiliar to her, but in its present state it was threadbare in a way she understood all too well. She made a bed on the cave floor from her crude fur cloak, and held the children close to her, allowing the new one to lie beside them too. When the next morning dawned, she awoke to find them all still asleep in a little pile, blessedly quiet for the time being.
She approached the entrance of the cave and contemplated what to do next, unsure if she could handle another damned thing after all she’d been through. It was in that moment, gazing out among the trees, that she heard the otherworldly sound; a rush of wind carrying something much worse than itself. To her vexation, it was in fact another damned thing, come out of the sky to put her through the worst of it yet.
Just as she didn’t know what Vercoden was, she didn’t precisely know what a spaceship was either. Those things were the stuff of legend by the time she was born, the age of power long abated by the odd rings in the sky. When the craft’s ramp lowered and her eyes met those of the solitary invader, some ancestral memory stirred within them both. She threatened him, not sure of why she did, only sure of the fact that he and his ship were proof of a life beyond her own forlorn world, a world that had been denied her kind for too long. Was it he who had incarcerated this whole planet? Did it matter if he could be made to pay either way?
He beheld the sparks at the end of her fingers, knowing at once his research was more than history, it was reality. If she and her threat of violence were real, wasn’t the rest of it? Behind those deadly hands were the fabled eyes, so lightless and full of potential. To him they represented a void he could fill with whatever future he wanted. Spitting in the face of every example set by his unfortunate predecessors, he approached her not with fear or retaliation, but acknowledgement.
The purple-skinned, magenta-haired stranger drew close to her until the current emanating from her hands died down of its own accord. Having no common language, he assured her in his own way that every problem was as good as solved. In the cave behind her, laid a treasure beyond the one he’d hoped for. His plan was solid, but he realized on that morning it would take another generation’s passing to manifest. With not the faintest hint of a complaint towards the prospect of a decades’ long detour, he ushered his new acquaintance along with the three children into his craft, content to wait for a greater reward on down the line. If there’s anything Iolites were good at, it was delayed gratification. His kind had brute-forced their way through the unyielding expanse of space before, and with the right partners, they’d never have to do it again.
