We imagined a machine in our own image. One that could save us from oblivion. We have imagined such enemies before: such devices, without limits, could destroy their creators. We were foolish enough to try anyway.

~,~’~{~{@ ((●(●_(ө_ ө)(Ο_Ο)(◌_◌)_●)●)) @}~}~’~,~

“I can perform the procedure if you desire, First Officer,” Sheh’teh rumbled. Her massive claws scraped against the handholds as she moved away from the door to the brig module. However, it did little to clear the path; her long body simply loomed around the Vyrăis instead of in front of him.

“No, he has been insulted enough,” Achilles said reluctantly. “He has been defeated and humiliated, and he would take my absence, as the commanding officer, as another insult,” he explained. “Vyrăis are very particular about the subjects of honor and respect.”

“It seems to me that he lacks both in defeat,” Sheh’teh growled. “I care little for his empty words, but I see how they affect you-“

“I am fine,” Achilles snapped. “I will uphold honor, even if he will not.” The hypocrisy of the statement irked Achilles. He knew the threat to force other crewmembers to bring the ex-Captain his meals and take his blood samples was a hollow one. He couldn’t stand the idea of insulting the Vyrăis, despite his position as Achilles’s prisoner – an insult all its own.

If Achilles could have, he would have killed the ex-Captain – which would have let the man die with honor, defending his duty to the Empire. That would have been the honorable thing to do. But the General’s orders were clear, and the mission could not allow it. So, rather than tarnish the defeated Vyrăis’s honor further, Achilles took the task as his own.

The General also irked Achilles in his hypocrisy. To the Human, honor had been a tool: to be used and misused only when it was advantageous. He never lied, though he did mislead with partial truths. He stole from some but also protected others from theft. His hands had been strong enough to squeeze the life from the thick neck of a Shett, and yet his rough hands could also be warm and reassuring.

The General was honorable, too. After a fashion. He only stole from those who could survive the theft and protected those who couldn’t. He understood justice and had only used the most brutal and final kind for the worst of the worst – The General had executed more murderers and rapists than any court on Surot or Torus. He’d given honest work to people threatened by poverty.

And he’d given a name to an Outcast and taken him into his house.

The Viribus, at least, understood honor. They didn’t follow the same codes as a Vyrăis, but that was expected from an alien. All the same, its mention was all he needed to end the conversation.

Reluctantly, Sheh’teh closed her mouth. She didn’t stop him as he worked the latch on the door.

“Back again to darken my door with your putrid presence?” a rasping voice called over the background hum of the Manifest Destiny.

The captain was utterly immobilized, a slow and agonizing kind of punishment only reserved for the outcast and traitors, not fallen enemies. He could not feed himself or even use the bathroom by himself. Any amount of freedom in the free-fall environment could allow the captain to kill himself – which was what honor would demand, should he gain the opportunity.

Achilles did not reply. He felt the urge but knew any reply would be useless. Instead, he moved to the set of instruments that kept the captain alive. He changed the saline bag and the catheter bag, both whisked away by a vacuum tube to waste management. The captain’s food was delivered in liquid form through a line that bypassed the esophagus, and Achilles hooked the next meal into the tube.

“You are absent of cause or excuse,” the captain growled in frustration.

“More than you!” Achilles spat before he could halt himself, a deeply buried fury suddenly revealed by the truthless remark. “More cause and excuse than the Emperor – Damn his name – has ever given me. More than any honorable officer of his military has ever given me. More than anything my own family ever gave me!” He couldn’t stop the torrent of words. He felt his claws against his palms, his hands were clenched, and his arms shook as he fought both to reach into the prison and resist the urge. “He gave me more than anything you ever could.”

“And how did he do that?” the captain hissed, his dry lips curled into a cruel sneer. “He took the only honor you had left and convinced you to cast it aside. You should have spaced yourself with the rest of the trash when you were cast out, Achilles,” he spat.

Achilles froze. He was ready to leap forward, it would only take one strike, and he knew exactly where to touch the captain to make him die in the most painful way possible. But he also hesitated.

“How did you know that?” Achilles growled, careful to keep his voice steady.

The cruel smile on the captain’s lips grew wider. “I decided to do some research on local events once I realized what it was the Inquisitor was looking for. He kept careful notes in his chambers. Imagine my surprise when the information on an outcast was among those notes,” the captain explained with merciless mirth. He shook his head as much as the restraints would allow. “There are prophecies about men like this Human of yours. Did you know that? Ancient Emperors wrote this wisdom down for others to find.”

Achilles should have turned and left. He shouldn’t have been listening to the cruel captain’s words at all. But as he reached into his pocket for the small plastic card that would collect the captain’s blood and thus keep the ship running, the words, “Tell me this prophecy,” fell from his lips.

“Emperor Brycellis wrote these words,” the captain began as Achilles inserted the card into a slot in one of the many tubes attached to the captain. “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read which still survive. Stamped on these lifeless things. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandius, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” the captain recited as a spurt of blood filled the reservoir within the plastic card. As Achilles retrieved the card, the captain recounted the final lines: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Achilles hesitated as the meaning of the words sank into his mind. He snarled despite himself and snatched the meal bag off the line. It left a trail of shivering droplets in the air as the unfinished meal solution dribbled free. He didn’t say anything else as he pushed through the open brig door. He didn’t trust himself to.

The captain was wrong. He had to be. All this work. All the suffering and struggle.

It couldn’t just amount to nothing.

~,~’~{~{@ ((●(●_(ө_ ө)(Ο_Ο)(◌_◌)_●)●)) @}~}~’~,~

Old Bess had never seen one of the Humans without clothes on before, though she had had an awkward exchange with the Singer regarding mammaries. Though she felt some shame in satisfying her idle curiosity in this way, the Singer needed to be bathed regularly, and she couldn’t do it herself. Kanen’eh did the actual cleaning, he was more dexterous than Old Bess could ever be, and his larger body made manipulating the Singer’s limp form much more manageable. Old Bess just managed the supplies so Kanen’eh could concentrate on the work, though it didn’t seem to distract him from lecturing.

“The daemon that haunts you does not exist in the physical realm,” Kanen’eh lectured as he dragged a moist rag over the Singer’s skin. “It exists in the intellectual realm, the same place the Singer traverses now.”

Old Bess did her best to listen, Kanen’eh did have a talent for lecturing, but her attention was drawn to the Singer. The rag gently cleaned a set of scars that circled one of the Singer’s breasts. Old Bess could only guess at what had to lead up to the injury, but it was clear that a clawed hand had taken hold of her breast and pulled hard. Old Bess never asked why the Singer had ended up on that prison ship, but she started to think it was a good reason.

“The intellectual realm is not a place, exactly. It is a metaphor,” Kanen’eh continued. “I’m not even sure if it applies to an alien, but I think that any being who can imagine scenarios that have never happened can access the intellectual realm – probably. Consider it as the place where your thoughts and dreams occur, your own universe separate from the physical realm where your body resides. Does this make sense?”

“I guess,” Old Bess hedged as she drew her thoughts away from speculation on the Singer’s past and to the task at hand. She took the rag from Kanen’eh and exchanged it for a freshly soaped one. “You’re saying that I can imagine a place that doesn’t exist?” she asked as she used the small room’s sanitation module to rinse and clean the rag.

“Precisely,” Kanen’eh nodded as he worked. “Now, imagine for a moment that you and your mind are two separate beings. You, or rather, your soul, is like a shepherd, and your mind is like an animal. While you are awake, you direct the animal by the nose to do work. ‘Solve this problem,’ you tell it, or ‘memorize this.’ You direct your mind down trails of thought, and if your attention wanes, the animal may leave the path to chase after another idea.”

“So my mind and my soul aren’t the same things?” Old Bess asked incredulously. She’d heard of a soul before, but she’d always thought it was one of those old things that people stopped believing in a thousand years ago. Then again, she was talking to a primitive Warrior Poet from an otherwise uncontacted world.

“For the sake of your training, yes,” Kanen’eh said as he changed rags with her again. “Your soul resides within the mind, and your mind within the body – all interconnected. The Humans are masters of this connection,” he explained as he turned the Singer in the air to begin cleaning her back. More faded scars striped the canvas of skin, broken by a line of seven golden disks.

It wasn’t a torn claw mark or a long straight slice from a blade. It was more like the skin had raised itself in three parallel lines. The lines weren’t even evenly raised. It looked like someone had pushed a knotted string under the Singer’s skin. And where one line intersected a golden disk, the skin just around the disk had been spared whatever trauma had hurt the rest.

Kanen’eh cleaned those scars with the same gentle reverence he treated the rest of the Singer with, though he avoided touching the golden disks. Old Bess noticed, however, when the water did touch the disk, it simply disappeared. There was no hiss of boiling water, but it was too fast to have simply evaporated on its own.

“So,” Old Bess ventured, “she’s stuck in the intellectual realm?” she asked.

Kanen’eh paused his gentle scrubbing but continued as he answered. “Yes, but it is not the same as it might be for you or me,” he explained hesitantly.

“How is it different?” Old Bess asked when he didn’t continue.

“When you or I go into the intellectual realm, we are shutting out the physical realm as much as possible. It is a turning inward, but the inward can go on to infinity,” Kanen’eh explained. He bartered for time to think by changing the rag again. “So within you is an infinity, and also within me. But these are separate. There is no way for you to experience my intellectual realm. These are separated by the physical realm.

“Humans are not limited,” he continued as he finished cleaning the Singer and began to dress her again in loose clothing. “Long before there were ever Viribus or trees or blue skies and days and nights, the Humans became more. They became immortal and connected in a way that no other living thing can be. They laid themselves down in sepulchers, but to say that they went to sleep is incorrect. Instead, they reached inward and then outward from the intellectual realm. Into each other and their holy machines – into Laetus itself,” he explained with reverence. “If within each of us is an infinite realm of thought, it is one that is destroyed when we die. But these Humans will never die, and their infinity dwarfs our own one hundred and eight times over.”

He cleared his throat once the Singer was secured in her sleeping bag again. “We have gotten off-topic,” he said with chagrin. “When we sleep, we enter the intellectual realm. But without proper training, your mind is left uncontrolled. It wanders through ideas and memories on its own. We call this a daemon,” he explained.

“Daemons are everywhere, and they are not necessarily evil,” Kanen’eh continued. “There are daemons in the rivers, cutting at the rocks and soil. Daemons in the mountains, melting the snow and pushing the air into a howling wind. There are daemons in your body, turning the air in your chest into the beating of your heart – hearts,” he corrected. “Your mind is a daemon, but in sleep, yours fixates upon … stressful ideas.

“We will start with meditation techniques to train your concentration. Then I will guide you through exercises that will prepare you for the intellectual realm. With enough practice, you will be able to remain in control even while asleep.”

“Will that stop the nightmares?” Old Bess asked hesitantly. Kanen’eh talked so confidently, but it all sounded so esoteric. It was easier to think that this primitive man’s primitive ideas would do nothing – a parlor trick wrapped in an alien religion that she didn’t believe in. But, like the Singer, he was also the only one who’d ever taken her nightmares seriously.

“I don’t know,” Kanen’eh sighed. “I think this will help. But only you can kill this daemon.”

Old Bess wasn’t sure how she should respond to that. “So, how do we start?” she asked instead.

Kanen’eh made a strange rippling motion with his ears and settled himself into a more comfortable position with his tail wrapped into the straps of one of the sleeping bags. “We will begin with meditation. Make yourself comfortable,” he instructed.

Old Bess pushed across the small space so she could put her back to the Singer, her tentacles wrapped securely into the straps to hold her steady.

Once she was settled, Kanen’eh continued: “Close your eyes, and imagine that you are sitting within a basin. The basin’s rim is higher than your head, so you cannot see out. There is only the basin, do you see it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Old Bess answered hesitantly. She tried to imagine a bowl made of smooth, white plastic. But even as she tried, the white plastic twisted in her mind and looked more like the white canvas of the packed bags that lined every module’s walls in the ship.

“Now, imagine that the basin is filling with warm water,” Kanen’eh instructed. “As the warm water rises, it reaches your … hooves. Now comes the exercise: as the water rises, concentrate on where it touches you. Imagine its warmth, and relax that part of your body.”

“Okay,” Old Bess stuttered as she imagined a stream of water trickling down the canvas basin. She imagined the water as it pooled around the bottom of the basin and soaked into the walls. Despite that she was already floating, the water pooled as she expected it to. The water soaked into the walls, but it continued to rise steadily.

As she imagined the water reached her hooves, she tried to imagine what that would feel like. It was warm, like standing in the sanitation module of her Torus apartment. She concentrated and relaxed the muscles in her lower legs with a small effort of will.

“Okay,” she said again when she thought she’d managed the task.

“Good,” Kanen’eh said encouragingly. “Continue to imagine the water rising, and as the water touches each part of your body, relax.”

Old Bess wasn’t sure how long she spent, slowly imagining the water around her rising. But she barely got past her ankles before her mind began to wander. She could still hear the insistent noise of Manifest Destiny around her. Its constant hum and buzz broken occasionally as a crewmember clambered through the sleeping compartment.

“Concentrate, Old Bess,” Kanen’eh snapped at her. Old Bess kicked her legs in shock at the rebuke and snapped her eyes back open.

“How did you know I wasn’t?” she demanded indignantly as her tentacles curled. She shrunk away from Kanen’eh’s glare, her frustration at being caught suddenly replaced by chagrin as she realized her failure.

“Your tentacles become more active when you are distracted,” he explained deadpan.

Old Bess halted the idle movement of her tentacles, suddenly intensely aware of the appendages. “Sorry,” she said in a small voice.

One of his ears flicked in response, somehow able to pick out the sound of her voice over the ship’s noise. “This is why it takes practice,” he lectured. “The untrained mind is used to jumping between tasks. It is easily distracted because it wants to be aware of all things at once. But you can train it to maintain awareness of a specific job, which will be necessary for maintaining your understanding of the intellectual realm. If you lose your concentration while you attempt to traverse the intellectual realm, your ability to make sense of what you see within will become disconnected and confusing – like a dream.

“Try again,” he instructed. “We have another hour before our sleep period.”

Old Bess sighed but resigned herself to the practice. It was a small price to pay for the restful sleep she’d regained, though a nagging feeling at the back of her mind told her she was getting into something far heavier than she’d hoped for.

~,~’~{~{@ ((●(●_(ө_ ө)(Ο_Ο)(◌_◌)_●)●)) @}~}~’~,~

“Do you have to go now?” Bahn’eh demanded as Karen’teh tightened the rope on her supplies. “The sun will set soon. The Long Night is here,” he said as he angrily tied down the goods they’d claimed from Landing to a sled.

“I know, Bahn’eh,” Karen’teh sighed as she tied her own set of supplies into a tight roll, separated from the others’ now. “But we’re closer than we’ll ever be to the Temple. And if I don’t go now, then I’ll have to make the entire journey in the dark instead of just half of it,” she groused. It was an old argument, and for once, one she wasn’t the one to bring up. Her family did not like that she made a pilgrimage to the Temple every year.

She wasn’t the only Viribus that made such Pilgrimages. The land was tainted by the spilled blood of innocents and the poisonous presence of Imperial construction. But without constant prayer to put the souls who died there to rest and the work required to remove the stain of Imperial occupation, nothing would change. Over thirty years, the evidence of Imperial Occupation had nearly been completely removed. Their asphalt roads were broken up and hauled away by hand, the same with their walls. Even their dead deserved proper rest, lest their soured souls haunt that place forever.

However, most went during the Long Day. Never during the Long Night, and this would be cutting it close.

“You can’t keep living in the past, Karen’teh,” he spat. “If that is what you want, then crawl into the mass graves with the rest of the dead!” He picked up the sled with a snarl and followed the other Viribus, who also fled Landing.

Tsu’teh hesitated. Their three children gathered around her with large, frightened eyes. Neither of the women said anything to each other, but Tsu’teh’s sigh said plenty. She understood, but she didn’t agree with Karen’teh either. Karen’teh wasn’t sure they would ever agree, and she could hardly blame them.

The past, history, was filled with pain. That was the point that they didn’t seem to understand. It wasn’t something she could teach them by arguing over it, though. They had to realize it for themselves.

Tsu’teh adjusted her grip on Dana with a flick of her hip that also sent Nana swinging in her pouch and walked away with Behn in tow. Karen’teh didn’t watch them go. She turned the opposite direction and made for the trees.

With only her pack and the braided leather of the pads that covered her vital areas, she could fly through the underbrush. But she also didn’t have to.

The moment she approached the trees’ rough bark, at the edge of where the skeleton of the world grew from the ground, she lept up with a kick. She barely slowed as she scrambled up the vertical surface. Her long claws gripped the bark and pitted metal with the same ease they seized the ground. In an instant, she was away from the ground and in the understory of the heavenly rainforest.

Decades of training could finally come to fruition here, where life stretched upward and outward in all directions. She didn’t even have to think about where to place her hands, her feet, how to move her tail just right so that she would twist into position midair. She could move so fast that insects and nettles simply bounced off her, and small animals fled at the sound of rushing air around her as if she were a deadly raptor after a kill.

But, sooner rather than later, such incredible speed took its toll on her. Her arms and legs ached with satisfaction as she climbed upwards to the denser canopy and slowed to a leisurely brachiated lope. Soon, even that was too much for her, and she was puffing and panting. Even with the sun low on the horizon and at her back, it was blazingly hot.

Karen’teh found a bough and swung up into its supportive embrace for a well-earned rest. A spotted adder curled away from her, and it opened its mouth to display its curved teeth at her. She killed it with a sharp stab of her claws that severed its head from the rest of its body. Its body writhed around her hand, dead but still able to move.

She admired the adder’s scales as she retrieved her waterskin. She would break here, she decided. Skin the adder and butcher it, and then continue her journey. If she was fast, she could watch the sun disappear below the horizon from the top of the Temple.

She would need to rest often, but the canopy was relatively safe, so long as she stayed below the leaves. She would also need to sleep at least once, and the trip back to the village would require three stops for sleep at the least.

Laetus had only one sunset and one sunrise every year. It was more difficult to tell time during the Long Day, and sleeping almost always required a tarp to block the sunlight. Timekeeping mostly relied on the largest moon, which was easiest to see in the bright sky. During the Long Night, it was more comfortable to sleep without a tarp, and the angle of the stars could be used to tell time alongside all three moons.

The Day was hot and plentiful. The trees fruited often, and even the animals were in plentitude as they went into a rut. A Viribus could eat when and what they wanted, sleep when they wanted, and with who they wanted. It was a time for plenty of all forms.

The Night, however, was none of those things. The cool weather was misleading to how dangerous the Night could be. All manner of dangerous predators and other things came out in the dark. Even the Imperials understood that it was a time to remind them of how small they really were.