2006, 19th January

Space Station, Apotheosis

Ciara had little idea what preparations would normally be required for a trip to Pluto.

She had already sent ahead her measurements for a void suit to survive the spirit planes of the planet, as well as a pressurized suit for mundane deep space, though she did not really anticipate having to use that.

So she merely put on a relatively modest printed silk shirt over her jeans, and made her way to the Void-port.

She arrived to see Michael already there ahead of her, speaking to a Hollow beside the voidcraft she assumed he had booked for the two of them.

“Michael.”

“Ciara. You look good.”

“Thanks. Are we ready to leave?”

“Yes, we are.”

Michael briskly shook the Hollow’s hand, then the two of them embarked.

This voidcraft was larger than most standard models intended to seat two people.

“Anticipating a passenger on the way back?” Ciara asked Michael as the hatch sealed around them, and the engine hummed.

“Better to have and not need, than need and not have and all that. Our void suits and space suits are both in the back.”

He ran his hands on the dash, and set the craft on autopilot, and it roared as it took off across a calculated trajectory.

The G-forces should have flattened them against their seats at least, but Michael snapped his fingers, weakening the forces affecting them, and they sat comfortably upright, even as the craft picked up speed.

“By the way,” Michael said, “Pertinent information; Pluto obviously isn’t occupied the magi any longer, despite constructions having been made in the Spirit Plane by Apotheosis. Apparently a parliament of vassal spirits has been left behind to oversee the abandoned structures until a time where we may need it again.”

“They’re vassals, right? We shouldn’t have many problems.”

“Who knows. Not many people have needed to go there in a long time. I guess we’ll find out.”

Reality seemed to blink around them, then they were on the other side, a massive inky blackness speckled with stars.

And Pluto glowed in front of them, iridescent and blue, as it never would in the physical plane.

“We’re nearly here. Might want to suit up.”

“Alright. Turn your head.”

Michael smiled silently, but complied.

When Ciara had slipped into her void suit, she handed Michael his own.

He slipped into the suit as well, while the voidcraft piloted itself down onto the surface, on a vacant patch of glowing blue, dots of light around them.

Ciara felt a tingling sensation in the back of her head, even as Michael tapped the side of his own head with his index finger, and she opened a telepathic link between them.

The hatch unsealed around them, and they hopped off the Voidcraft onto the surface of Pluto.

The dots of light darkened, coalescing into shadows, and taking distinct shapes.

Do not initiate contact of any kind. Michael’s voice rang through Ciara’s head. The smallest movement may be regarded as hostility.

You’re rather calm, all things considered.

The shadows took solid shape at last, and the two mages found themselves within rings of owls, their bodies made of pure shadow, only their eyes manifesting as glimmering dots of light.

It struck Ciara that Michael may have known more about the conditions on Pluto than he had initially let on, considering he had used the word parliament instead of the traditional word, shoal, to refer to this group of spirits.

But she did not allow this glimmer of doubt to seep through the telepathic link.

Move through them, without making contact. Follow my lead.

Michael led on ahead, with Ciara following close on his heels, taking care not to make contact, even as the shadowy avians regarded them with starlit eyes from multiple directions around them.

And they saw it ahead, the structure Apotheosis had left behind, towering and imposing, devoid of the light it must have had when it was yet inhabited.

Ciara noticed the flocks of owl-shadows soar through the air, but they very pointedly avoided proximity to the abandoned structure.

Something isn’t right, Ciara conveyed to Michael through the link. There’s something inside that tower. Something they’re afraid of.

Contemplation seeped through the telepathic link, then certitude, as if Michael had come to a decision.

There is nothing still alive in that tower. We’re going on ahead. Trust me.

And though Ciara’s gut churned with apprehension, trust him she did, and they moved onward.

The stone doors of the tower, several metres tall, stood to impede their way, imposing in their stature, but Michael waved his hand, and invisible force brushed them aside in front of him.

The light around the two of them grew ever dimmer, and while Ciara used her magic to command her pupils to dilate to their very limits, Michael, perceiving energy itself, caused his vision to be lit with several otherwise invisible spectrums of radiation, seeing the darkness as clearly as day.

Scattered hardcovers lay around the tables laid out in front of them; a mark of how ancient the facility must be, for physical reading material to be so prevalent.

They moved further in, even as Michael began to tweak the dials of the wristwatch he was wearing, and it projected an image of hard light into the air, a map, from the looks of it.

As they walked ahead, Ciara glanced into a chamber by the side, and felt her breath stick in her throat.

A gigantic humanoid figure, a pile of bones, gleaming like gems in what little light surrounded them, that being an indication that it was not human along with the sheer size of the thing, and the fact that it appeared to have six limbs.

Michael followed Ciara’s gaze.

I see you have stumbled upon what they feared.

The spirits are scared of corpses? Never thought I’d have a relatable moment with birds made of shadow.

It’s not the corpse they’re afraid of. That thing was once alive. They fear the memory.

Why? How long ago did this thing die, and what the hell did it get up to, to make such an impact?

Michael approached the great corpse, his hand brushing over the crystalline shin bones.

No creature this size can survive in an environment so… barren. It must have been placed here. Probably by Apotheosis. Any owls that approached this place must have been hunted down by this creature, but it wouldn’t nearly have been enough to sustain it, and it died, malnourished. Meanwhile, in the owls, you see the disadvantage of a species that neither ages in the conventional sense, nor reproduces. They never forgot their fear of this empty tower, no matter how long it had been.

I thought time did not exist here in the spirit plane.

Doesn’t it? This thing looks pretty decomposed to me.

Well, I won’t pretend to be an expert, but we have tested the theory. Organics don’t age in any meaningful way here. And travelling through the spirit plane from point A to point B doesn’t seem to be properly reflected in the time it would take in real-

Physical.

-Right. Physical world.

But here we are. Moving around, obviously not locked in place. With a decomposed spirit behind us.

Ciara merely shrugged, and felt Michael’s amusement seep through their connected thoughts.

I suppose we’ll find more answers within.

So deeper they ventured within the abandoned corridors, arriving at last to a chamber with a number of cubical devices the size of a fist, arranged on shelves with figures etched into the edges of the shelves where the cubes were placed.

Michael raised a clenched fist.

Apparently, they had found what he was here for.

Michael parsed the individual shelves until he reached a cube, located in a shadowed corner, high enough that he had to levitate to reach it, and a pattern etched upon its surface began to glow as he made contact.

He shook the object once, and it began to speak, in a voice hoarse and grating and heavy.

“Journey. The start of it all. Perfect world. Infinity. Omnipotence.”

Ciara raised her eyes at what seemed a rather melodramatic start to what she assumed was an audio-visual log of some unknown ancient mage.

“7th century. Promise of power. Promise of perfection. Recruitment. Training. Pride. So close to our perfection. So close to the stars.”

It continued, the voice growing hoarser with every passing word.

“War. Other beings. Incapable of understanding. Them. Us. Universe getting too small.”

Ciara presumed he meant the Fae- that was about right for the timeline after all, first contact with these utterly alien creatures.

“Our powers grow. Promises of potential realised. Control over anything. Control over ourselves.”

The voice dropped an octave, graver still.

“A friend commands himself to stop breathing. He wants to see what lies beyond. No other reason. We are reaching beyond our own logic. Our own good.”

Did you hear that? Michael’s voice rang in Ciara’s head. Your subconscious will not allow you to kill yourself simply by stopping your own breath. They discovered that magic could impose their will, even on their own involuntary reactions.

Why would this friend do that? Why kill themselves?

Every trait has a drawback. Fear holds us back from wielding our true potential, but without fear, we are deprived of basic survival instinct and even logic. Basically, they evolved too far beyond humanity, to the point of hampering themselves. Either that, or the person was just depressed, fed him a line about wanting to explore the beyond, and I’m reading too much into impaired neurochemistry.

Ciara somehow doubted that this was the case; in her experience at Apotheosis, the irrational explanations had a much higher likelihood of truth than the entirely mundane ones.

The voice from the cube droned on.

“Vampires tonight. Conflict. Predators. Inevitable.”

Satisfaction buzzed through Michael’s side of the mental connection, as if these were the words he had been waiting for.

“Two subspecies. One superior to the other. More divorced from humanity. Ability to learn, unprecedented. Knowledge of astro navigation beyond anything in Hollow society. Same cannot be said for the others. Their advantage is elsewhere. Camouflage between the prey more seamless.”

The lights streaming from the cube intensified, seeming to project hazy images on the walls around them.

Ciara assumed that the visual functions of that cube must have somehow been damaged.

“They think fast. Learn fast. Instinctive.”

Michael straightened in place, struck by a revelation.

“Natural. Perfect organism. Perfect predator.”

Then the audio almost seemed to skip ahead.

“First assignment with the wolf warriors. More unnatural. Mass not fixed. Unprecedented physical power. Mental faculties not up to par with other apex predators. Ill adjusted. Prone to berserk rages. Imperfect. Plateaued. Origin to current state is a step down.”

Michael leaned forward, intently.

“Vampires. Human offshoot. Evolving to connect with the Horizon realms. Werewolves. Originally Fae subspecies. Devolution to survive on the physical plane. Imperfections accumulate. Some choose not to devolve. Stay within Horizon. Beings of unparalleled power. Match even Fae Lords. Call themselves nothing. Not accustomed to human language. Earthbound wolves call them Primordials. Names commonly attached with mythology. Fenrir. Always the progenitor. Fenrir.”

The audio skipped forward again, hissing.

“This side of the divide is an obvious mistake. No potential. Ceiling imposed by limited resources. Reach beyond. Reach to infinity. We magi have reached. Universe must follow.”

The projected light around the cube finally solidified into solid imagery, arcane symbols, scribbles in a dozen different languages, sketches of anatomical structures and microscopic composition of multiple supernatural species, all played across the space around them.

Michael and Ciara both knew valuable information when it was offered up to them, and they felt something distinctly tug at their soul as their understanding of the horizon realms deepened, as if a long forgotten memory was awakening within them once more.

They knew if they honed this fleeting recall, they could awaken to the power of yet another field of magic.

In a way, the asymmetrical symbols the cube projected had-

Reprogrammed our psyche, bringing back recollection we did not even have! I understand now!

Ciara was surprised by Michael’s excited outburst, the force of his thoughts echoing through her mind.

What do you understand?

The nature of at least this horizon realm, if not all of them. Microscopic organisms having a large scale effect on the host on which they reside. Parasites that affect behaviour, alter thought processes, even reawaken memories and traits weeded out by evolution. Spirits too, affect the physical plane in an observable manner while also leeching off the physical plane itself. The Horizon realm closest to us.

But spirits also eat each other, don’t they? Unless that’s-- conservation of energy, and mass, in its own way. And the decomposed spirit, that is also part of that. Unlike space in the physical world, this whole place is suffused with physical matter. The dead spirit’s flesh just returned there.

Why not the bones?

...God, I hate it when facts get in the way of theories.

It hasn’t yet. We’re just lacking understanding. And I know what we’re going to do when we get back.

What?

Since neither Aaron nor Pierre are versed in Mind magic, you will be joining them on the field. Their investigation into the humans being mutated with vampire blood had been restricted to physical deviations so far. You will advance our understanding of whether they connect at all to the Astral realms, while I will take this-

He grasped the cube.

-I will track down more of this man’s research.

You haven’t even told me who that guy is in the first place.

The author of this log? Indra Prakash.

That’s… the First Librarian.

Hans’ greatest influence. And the first step on our path.