Prelude to the Sun Maker Saga

Ruin Star. Dark Star. The Impeder.

When I first learned of him, I, like countless others, was only a child. But unlike most children who feared him above all, I did not. 

I despised him.

From Starward Dematrusi’s Journal

Seventeenth day of Hasina, 600 Post-Ruin

* * *

The priest of Temperance folded into the Wold system too late. His father’s assassin had escaped.

The silence of space deafened him. He could hear the ringing in his ears, the echoes of his own screams not hours before—the ethereal cries of a son to his murdered father.

He leaned forward, glaring through the window at the sea-green planet illuminated by its main-sequence star. He wiped away the moisture from his eyes with trembling hands and raked his fingers through his sweaty hair.

A disembodied feminine voice spoke. “Vidikas…My Lord, please…”

The Arrow, in bloodship-form, had been quiet since they left. Now it was as if it sat next to him in the cockpit.

He pounded the armrest of his seat and ignored the shock of pain in arms. “Not another word, machine.”

“With all due respect, I refuse to remain silent,” it raged. “A’armas is trying to contact you—”

“I don’t starring care what he has to say,” he grated. “I will make this right.”

The priest’s chest heaved. He hadn’t had time to shed the sacerdotal robes he wore in the god-emperor’s service. It made a twisted kind of sense that he would avenge his father’s death in the void-black garments of a priest. He gritted his teeth against the pain he felt deep within his heart. His only response was anger.

No, not anger—wrath. Unmitigated, violent, and all-consuming.

“I know you,” the Arrow said, interrupting the silence. “This isn’t who you are.”

Its words gave him pause. He fought to destroy its pretended intimacy in his mind. It was a machine, after all.

Inhuman.

“You cannot fault these people for the actions of a murderous cult.”

The priest’s face twisted into a snarl. “And who am I to hold responsible? You? The Guide? No…they have harbored those zealots for centuries. If they’d destroyed the Execrate when my father ordered them to, he wouldn’t…”

His voice drifted. His eyes unfocused, and for a moment, he lost himself, living in the visions of blood and death and hatred. He hadn’t chased the murderer this far to give up the chase.

“Don’t fall into their trap,” the Arrow said. “They want you to hate them.”

“No…” The priest tapped at the corner of his screen, shifting the controls to manual. “They will mourn.”

He switched off the safeties and armed the weapon systems. Only two types existed for this advanced class of bloodship. The first was a simple laser cannon. The second had remained a sheltered secret. The engineers named it the Hypersonic, but the priest knew it by another name.

The Swarm.

“My Lord! If you make me do this, I will never forgive you!” The tone in the Arrow’s voice mimicked humanity. Her personality seemed so real. They’d built the Arrows to serve and imitate humans, after all.

He selected his target. “I don’t desire forgiveness, machine,” he said. “Only vengeance.”

The bloodship trembled as the priest unleashed the Swarm upon an unsuspecting planet. Coldness seeped into his chest and circulated through his body. A multitude of streams of light rained down toward the large ptolis called Milicho. The energy of several nuclear reactions sped downward at almost twice the speed of sound.

The Arrow screamed.

He watched and waited as tears streamed from his eyes.

* * *

I’ve gone too far.

The priest’s vision blurred as he picked his way through the desolation he’d wrought.

His nose wrinkled at the sulfur and dust in the air as he sidestepped rocks and swirling ash mounds. Silence except for the gentle rush of a dry breeze permeated the world—a wasteland created to erase a single offense. The last motes of memories littered an ocean of still, white sand—the crumbs of civilizations.

Days ago, he would have been wading through knee-high grass on a flat, verdant plain untouched by humankind. Sweet, delicate breezes had breathed across ancient oaks and silver birches, brooks, and lakes of crystal, and ice-capped mountains in the distant, blue haze. The world wouldn’t have bled out its dust.

The sun was a smear of light behind the clouds of smoke. Heat scorched him through his cloak, which didn’t keep him cool. He felt for the flask of hyara attached to his belt by a flaxen cord, knowing he might need it later. His long mantle billowed at his back with the occasional gusts that tasted ashy, forcing him to return his focus to his steps rather than his exile to this world.

In the distance, fires still burned and rose into the sky like pillars of ancient acropolises. They supported a corpse-gray atmosphere, filled with blistering wind and ghosts that danced in the heat.

He pressed on through sweltering flatlands where dust wouldn’t settle for months—perhaps years. 

Why do I deserve this hell? I have done nothing wrong.

The truth was more daunting and fearsome than he could bear to admit. He had wrought this—it was his masterwork, founded upon a bedrock of wrath.

He lifted his gaze. About a kilometer ahead, he discovered the reason for coming here. Silhouettes huddled, hidden within in a low depression of ground surrounded by a cloud of dust. They moved and swayed, trembled in and out of existence, illuminated only by the weak sunlight above them. He saw movement and heard loud, arguing voices. He couldn’t fathom how, but these few had survived.

How many have I slain? How many yet live? What would they do now, at the end?

These questions kept his steps firm as he approached the silhouettes. From the dust, a shadowy figure emerged. As it drew closer, the outline revealed a child running toward him—a girl no older than ten years. Her clothes were strips of cloth held together by hope, and her skin burned bright. She stopped a few paces from the priest and stared at him with wide, dark eyes. Her matted hair reeked of sweat, dirt, and blood.

Without warning, she dropped to her knees and extended the palms of her hands toward him in supplication. “Please,” she said, quivering as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please…”

He understood her language. It reminded him of the proud history of her people and the place they’d once held among his father’s empire. He’d brought them lower than any other Civilization before. He wanted to believe they deserved it.

“Angel.”

The word gave him pause. He tried to remember any other connotation the noun could have in their language, or perhaps even in their culture. None that he knew of.

“Angel,” she repeated. “Spare us.”

“Why do you call me that?”

She blinked, taken aback now by his question. “We saw you. The elders say that angels descend from the sky and deliver us peace or destruction.”

He grunted. “What is your name?”

“Lalith.”

“And how many are among you?”

The girl glanced back. “There are sick and dying.” 

The priest touched at the hyara flask at his waist, and wrath tore into his thoughts.

Why do these deserve my aid?

The question shamed him, and the heaviness in his chest multiplied. He set his jaw and advanced, taking long strides. He sensed the girl’s wide eyes on him as he passed her and heard her fall into line behind.

“I have neither light in me nor wings to fly,” he told her over his shoulder. “Do angels dress in black?”

Lalith shut her mouth and lowered her head as if he’d chastised her. The priest stepped toward the other survivors just as the wind carried the dust away and revealed their numbers. The men and women fell to their knees and prostrated themselves before him. He stopped and glared.

“I’m no angel. Stand up!”

At first, there was silence. None of them moved. A woman met his gaze from her position on the ground. Fear filled her eyes as he gazed back.

“Then you’re a lightless angel,” she said. “We cannot deny it.”

The priest stared at her, incredulous. The formal noun she’d used was gu’unlysandur. Her dialect had removed the second u, changing it to gunlysandur. It had a more appealing and straightforward elocution. He remembered that a single word for “dark” didn’t exist in their tongue—only the absence of light.

Lightless-angel. Gunlys-andur.

How could he elevate himself to an angel?

Sudden anger flooded his face and brought with it a pang of guilt so profound that his chest filled with ice despite the heat.

“Stand up!” he shouted. “All of you!”

Some flinched at his command as if he’d whipped them. Each one climbed to their feet with their heads and eyes lowered, though none of them dared to meet his smoldering gaze. They wore rags torn and dirtied, stained with blood. Others had almost nothing to cover their frail bodies. A strong enough breeze could have toppled them over, leaving them powerless to rise again.

“What of your wounded?” he shouted. “Why are you not tending to them? Why are you just standing there?”

Some pivoted and peered somewhere he couldn’t see through the dust. The priest advanced, pushing aside those in his way. Not far away, he discovered several bodies grouped together. None of them had died whole.

“They passed moments before you arrived,” said a woman to his right. “I didn’t…”

He shifted his glare to her. She stood about his height with dirty, matted hair and clothes with smattered blood that wasn’t her own. Her empty, void-like eyes stared back at him. Trauma had scarred her beauty. He wondered if she only saw destruction when she looked at him.

“Are there any more?” he asked, softening his tone.

She blinked for the first time. “Without water or food….”

The priest tightened his fist. “Stop it. Just stop.” He turned away from the others and peered upward. A bright beam in the distant sky flashed at successive and consistent intervals.

He stalked off, returning toward the blinking light. “Stay here,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll be back.”

He walked perhaps fifty paces from where the survivors stood helpless, all waiting for him to decide their fate. He reached into his robe and brought out a small earpiece, which he then fit inside his ear.

“Arrow. Are you there? Can you hear me?”

At first, he received only silence. Then a weary voice returned to him. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“I’m asking you to,” he said, narrowing his eyes on the flashing light. “I need your help one last time. After, I swear we will never speak again.”

More silence. Then, “What is it?”

“Direct me to the nearest body of water. That’s all. There are people here who are dying. Don’t do this for me, do it for—”

“Continue six kilometers southwest from your location,” the Arrow snapped. “There are also more survivors gathering.”

The priest glanced at the sun and positioned himself in a southwesterly direction. “Okay,” he breathed. “Thank you. And…I’m sorry.”

Before it could reply, he removed the earpiece and tossed it into the haze. He didn’t hear it land.

He gazed upward and watched the flashing light fall into geosynchronous orbit and fade over the horizon.

He returned and stood before the group of lost survivors. They trembled and stared and gnashed their teeth.

Will I regret this?

“Everyone, follow me,” Vidikas shouted, and all eyes locked on him. “I cannot be your angel. But if you do as I say, no one else will die today. Leave the dead.”