In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (42 page)

Cole
release his grip on his wife. She pushes him off her and staggers back.

“Thora
wait!”

She
still can’t be angry.

“You’re
dead, Cole,” Leif says.

Cole
head snaps toward Leif.

“What?”

“You
didn’t survive you ascension. It will take centuries, millenniums even to reconstruct
your mind.”

“No!
I don’t believe you!” It’s impossible, he couldn’t have died.

“You
only seem whole because he wanted you to believe you were. To the rest of us,
you are just a blue beacon of light. He tried to make you believe that you had
a reason to exist in this plane, to pinpoint what exactly drove you and what
you loved the most, when he found nothing, he manipulated your mind and
emotions to give you a reason to live on.”

Cole
looks at his hands, he looks and feels whole and alive. He must be lying. Thora
stares at him with her wide open shock, the same one she gave him when he woke
up.

“Cole
is that really you?” she asks.

Through
her eyes all she sees is a blue hazy human figure. It seems familiar and oddly
safe, but distant at the same time.

“It
was all a lie. Your reason to fight. Your reason to live. He wanted you to
concentrate enough power so you can manifest a physical enough form to defeat
me.”

Cole
runs at Leif.

Leif
swings up and a pillar of energy pierces Cole’s wrist and straight through his
watch. Cole’s skin erupts blue, his white skin ripped off molecule by molecule,
heart visibly beating in his chest, he can see through his blue skin and sees
his organs working away to keep him alive. He’s translucent.

“Oh,
god.”

Leif
was right.

Maybe
Jahum was lying to him. Was his confidence and happiness a construct of Jahum
too?

He
feels no pain in his arm.

“The
only thing keeping you here is your watch.”

Leif
opens his other hand, a sphere appears. He points it at Thora. She doesn’t
move, there’s only fear on her face.

“And
your willpower to save her.”

Cole
looks back at her, she just stands there as Leif fires.

“I
once thought you were something more…but with these two gone you will disappear
and forever be with the stars.” The sphere shoots out of his hand. Thora yells
as her life flashes before her eyes.

The
floor beneath them explodes and flings them both back. Everything slows for
Cole.

The
ground looks like a crack in a mirror, in the jagged four foot crack is the
city of the Skyeater. The realness of it against the backdrop of the empty city
below is contrasting.

Cole
looks up at Thora screaming and reaching for him as she flies back. Leif’s
sphere flies over the opening, it expands out fast, consuming everything it
touches. The residual smoke, the chunks of the mirror like sky.

As
Thora falls back, she doesn’t fall fast enough as the sphere expands. Cole
isn’t fast enough to save her, he even doesn’t know if he wants to.

It
engulfs her hand and travels up to her forearm. Then it stops. The world in
Cole’s eyes speed up. The sphere disperses in the air with a poof.

Thora
lands hard on the ground with a
thunk
. The crack in
the ground heals itself, closing as if nothing ever happened. Cole skids to a
stop on his feet. Thora screams as blood gushes out of her wound.

“Thora!”

Leif
appears over her, he grabs her by the stump and picks her up. The blood falling
through the floor and over the city. He crushes down hard forcibly closing the
open wound. Thora let’s out one last tremor before she stops moving.

Leif
drops her. Cole looks at her but her eyes don’t look back. She’s in shock.

Was
his love for her real or was it all made by Jahum? Was that why he pushed her
away when he thought he needed her the most?

Leif
leaps back and lands next to his throne.

Cole
stares at Thora, if he had the possibility to produce tears he would.

If
Jahum changed the constructs of his mind to make a reason for him to think he
wanted to exist. Is his renewed love in Thora real?

“We
have all the powers of the
starmaker
. The most
important one is the power to destroy and—“

Leif
holds out a ring, it’s Julio’s, it lights up blue. It floats up and out of his
hand and into the air in front of him.

But
Cole doesn’t watch him, he continues to look at a shell-shocked Thora.

His
mind is in a wreck. Is his power even real? It feels real, but so did his love
of Thora. Even if he feels his connection to this world slipping.

Is
the reason he chose to live for false? Was the journey within himself wrong?
Was all the death he’s seen, all the reasons he’s found, all he’s been through
a fucking lie!?

He
doesn’t know.

The
blue looks so surreal to him. He can see the veins pulse with each of his
slowing heartbeat, he doesn’t have much time left in the world. He doesn’t need
Leif to tell him that. He can feel it himself.

He
stands up and looks at Leif. A ring that looks like Julio’s floats in front of
him. He wasn’t paying attention to him.

He
doesn’t know what to do anymore.

“And
to create life,” Leif continues.

The
ring lights up brighter. Slowly, from a single atom of Julio’s DNA, it
multiplies languidly by the millions. Cole watches as a single bone forms from
that single point inside the ring.

He
watches as pink slime mushes and contracts into tight muscle fibers. As layers
and layers of it builds up to form around the born. Then flakes of skin snap
into place like a jigsaw puzzle, building up until it forms a single finger
wearing Julio’s ring.

Suddenly
the process speeds up. The bone extends out of the finger and splits apart
extending in every which way as the same building of the muscle process happens
again until it forms a full human hand.

The
bone forms down to an arm, the muscle and skin building after it. From the
wrist only short time afterwards, cloth appears and weaves together along with
the bone and skin.

Cole
looks on as
an
chest, legs and everything that was
Julio forms back whole.

Impossible
.

“No…”

“There
is no right in this universe. No right to live, no right to die, no right to
kill, no right to care nor no right to feel or exist. Not in this imperfect of
a universe.”

Julio
stands in front of him, fully clothed.

The
very same Julio that left him only a day before. His same features, his same
face and his same cheeky smile.

“In
a world with this kind of power and might, with no laws, rights or rules. Where
life is given and taken away on a whim. What gives you the right to not be
destroyed by me?”

He’s
right
,
he has no rightful reason to exist. Not with a being like this, not with the
liars, cheaters, and stealers. With each passing second he feels his connection
with this world slipping away from his grasp.

As
himself
slips, he feels weaker.

His
vision faults. He grows more tired as if he was finally going to sleep with the
stars. He doesn’t want to fight anymore.

Even
as Julio, a friend who is supposed to be dead, stands in front of him.

“
Ju
…Julio… is that you?” Cole stutters. Julio doesn’t
answer. It can’t be him, in the blood and flesh. He doesn’t know what to
believe anymore.
If the dead don’t stay dead.

“Let’s
play a game.”

…

Meanwhile
Wilker and Noata run toward the research base. Wilker stops. The windows are
blown out of the building and smoke billows out.

Noata
stops a little a bit ahead of him.

“It
must have been that ‘ascended’,” Wilker says.

“Good
maybe that’ll give us a chance to make it in unnoticed.”

Noata
waves at Wilker to follow him. He’s not going to waste a chance that Lance and Serena
sacrificed their lives for.

They
burst through the entrance doors and halt in their tracks.

“What
in the bloody hell!?!” Wilker screams.

The
hallway walls are covered in blood and guts, the ceiling drips muck on the
floor. Noata reels in disgust. It’s like someone threw a pig in a blender,
turned it on and left the lid off.

“God…”
Noata tip toes through the mess on the floor.

---

Noata
and Wilker run into the ship bay. Noata stops as he enters.

“Why
is everybody dead?” Noata asks himself.

“I
don’t care about the why or the how, we didn’t have to fight when we didn’t
have to and that’s all that matters,” Wilker says staring ahead.

The
ship bay is extremely large but oddly unfashionable, seemingly uncustomary
compared to everything else the Eliite produce.

Ships
are docked on the long platform to the left and the right. A dock stretches out
to the ships. The bay is filled with faires in a multitude of colors instead of
the usual blood red. Some are slicker than the others, some are big, fatter, smaller,
some with external missile pods, extra engines, more and less guns.

Experiments.

As
they rest, the wings connect and are brought in swiped back. But in front of
them is the best one of them all. Noata is amazed at all the different ships. Wilker
grabs his head and moves it forward.

“Whoa.”

“Damn
straight,” Wilker says.

In
front of them is the Starkiller. It’s slicker, more stylish, and more badass
than any other ship in the bay. It looks similar to a faire but it’s over eight
times its size, yet it looks smaller somehow.

Its
edges looks like they can cut through diamonds. It has a coat of red paint that
looks so clean that it looks chiseled out of marble. It emits a new ship smell.
It’s
Eliite’s
pride and joy and they’re going to
steal it. A small bridge leads into it from the port.

“Where
in the bloody hell is the cockpit?” Wilker yells as he and Noata burst through
a door.

“Crap,
this isn’t it either.”

“But
it is something.”

The
bay they ran into is huge, the ceiling is stories high. Noata can barely see
it. Hundreds upon hundreds of grunts are chained to X-shaped platforms among
the walls. They have a permanent snarl on their resting face.

Their
skin is discolored and brown, as if they’ve been burnt alive, and long and deep
cuts scar their charred skin, like they’ve gone multiple failed surgeries.
Wilker walks along the rows of them looking at them with an odd sense of
wonderment.

“How
could you have not mapped out the ship? You planned out everything else,” Wilker
asks as he looks closely at one of the beast. Needles and cords connect the
platform and the grunt.

“What
are these? Angels?” Noata asks, ignoring Wilker. This ship is so new that the
Astrons didn’t have the layout, only its specifications.

“They’re
Serephins. Or the forsaken.”

An
Alpha walks through the door.

“Serephins
who failed to ascend,” The Alpha continues. They tense up. Waiting for him to
make his move.

“At
ease, I’m not here for a fight.” The Serephin looks to be on the older side of
an Alphas incredible life span. His skin is still sickly green, but has faded
into an ashy jade with age. The texture is wrinkled and ragged, with deep
creases under eyes. He wears white robes.

“Who
are you?” Wilker asks, his fist squeezed hard. Ready for anything.

“I
am the overseer of our ascension process. It’s an extremely strenuous
procedure, which is why most if not all of
them
don’t
make it.”

“Why
do they look like angels?” Noata asks. Noata drops his guard pretty quickly.
The overseer walks up to one of them and caresses its face.

It
wakes.

A
hellish scream bellows out. Noata and Wilker reel back and clasp their ears.
Eventually the screams turns into a dull roar and quiets to a sobering moan.

“Because
they are what you call ‘angels’. This is their fate if they’re not strong
enough to ascend. This is what they become, monsters we have to keep in chains.
Weak.”

“What
is it with your people and ascending? Can’t you people accept a simple
meandering life?” Wilker ask.

“There
are hundreds here!” Noata yells.

“Unlike
your planet some worlds have the power to fight back, these stop that from
happening.”