The Needs of the Many Read online

  “No, not at all,” Ellie said, curious. “I noticed them as soon as Ag’iazza declined to enter. Are you certain my root is damaged? Could it not maybe just be…I don’t know, hiding? After all, my father did manipulate my entire genetic makeup. It’s quite possible you’re just not seeing it properly.”

  “No, no, I’d thought of that, initially,” Reyessan replied. “It might have made sense for your father to manipulate your Abstractive Root in a way that allowed for the Kyroibi to be interwoven into your being, but no, it appears that this was a recent development. Rather recent, in fact. You would have noticed this, surely. Have you had any life changing events in the last year?”

  At that, Ellie let out a loud guffaw.

  “Are you quite serious? In the last two months I discovered that I was not only an alien from a far off world, but the supposed savior of the galaxy. I went up against the evil empire only to discover the true enemy was my own corrupted grandmother, who, by the way, I unintentionally killed. Yes, she had a terminal illness and was planning to take my body, but I still was not prepared to be a murderer. And that’s just where the story begins. The last month has been nothing but life changing events and waking up each day not knowing whether or not I was about to lead billions of people into war.”

  Reyessan nodded his head. “Well, yes, I suppose when you put it that way, I can see how you might have missed something as significant as a fracturing of your root.”

  “Fracturing?” Ellie again paled. “You mean, the same as my grandmother?”

  “Not exactly but… well, perhaps…”

  “Am I in danger of falling to the same degenerative disease?” she cut in, suddenly filled with a deep sense of dread.

  “I’m not a doctor, Master El’iadrylline, but I can’t see any reason why the two would be related.”

  Ellie said nothing, hoping that Reyessan was right. However, if he wasn’t, she had even more of a reason to get back to the assembly on Korghetia. One way or another, she had to get to Helsyn.

  Chapter 8

  Ellie closed her eyes, blocking out the harsh light of the medical assessment chamber. Just seeing the sickly gray pallor it cast on her skin brought back her father’s painful memories. She didn’t want to be here. In fact, she passed by no less than five medical facilities on her way to the spaceport, determined to hold on to the stubbornly human belief that no news was good news, but in the end, logic won out over fear.

  Her mind raced with panicked thoughts she didn’t want to think. The outlook was bleak enough without adding the existential fear for her own mortality. With the literal fate of the galaxy resting on her shoulders, Ellie didn’t have the luxury of making peace with the worst possible diagnosis. As such, neither did she have the luxury of burying her head in the sand and hoping for the best.

  After what felt like an eternity, the readout blinked to life and she finally let out her breath. The test results had come back. She opened her eyes and read the display.

  Negative.

  Even better than that, she had assurance that her physical health would not later become an issue. Thanks to her Korghetian genetics, the silicate degeneration had no way of taking hold in her body. She allowed herself a moment to reconcile her relief before continuing on to the public spaceport.

  Flying on a mass transit ship back to Korghetia was not ideal, but Julian had taken her flagship back to Ia’na Eidyn and Ellie didn’t want to raise an alert for her return to the capital by requesting personal transport. She hadn’t anticipated any issues, but when she was stopped by security, Ellie had a moment of panic, thinking the worst.

  As it turned out, she simply hadn’t accounted for special transport measures required for travel with a grounding stone. It made sense and she should have realized they weren’t simply going to let her onto a small, enclosed area with a device that if left unchecked was quite likely to draw the Abstractive Root from the elderly or infirm. Fortunately, the transit line she chose made available to her use of a shielded containment carrier. It was a bit bulky, like a large lunch box, but she felt better knowing she could travel with the stone she’d borrowed from Scholar Reyessan.

  Ellie wasn’t even sure what possessed her to ask for the stone in the first place. All she’d really wanted was to be armed for any eventuality. Nevertheless, the stone, along with Master Yellenoae’s disk, provided a comforting weight as she boarded the ship that would bring her to Korghetia directly.

  The flight was about three hours. In her flagship, the same distance would have been just over an hour. Paradoxically, the anticipation of the unknown made swift the passage of time. All too soon, Ellie found herself following the flow of foot traffic into the familiar corridors of the spaceport.

  Once outside the pulse shield, Ellie activated her personal pulse dampener and took off across the wide open spaces of the Korghetian surface, squinting at how unexpectedly bright the Ghowrn stars seemed after so much time spent on the dimly lit T’al Eidyn. At the farmlands above Valwyn she took a moment to climb to her favorite overlook, unable to resist a quick look at the breathtaking view before making her way down to the market to catch the train to the capital.

  Her heart gave a wild pitch as she crossed the market square, passing the small apartment she and Julian had briefly shared. The need to see him, to know absolutely that he was safe and unharmed was almost as unbearable as the empty ache his absence left. She could bear it no more. Side stepping into an alcove, she keyed Julian’s sequence code into her communicator and held her breath as relay tried to make a connection.

  After a long minute, an orange dash appeared on the screen, indicating that no communication link had been established. A prompt then appeared to leave a message, but Ellie closed the link with a sigh and continued on to the train station, reminding herself that Julian likely had very valid reasons for missing her call.

  In the capital city, as she made her way from the station to the palace, Ellie wondered if her own low profile movements were such a good idea. It was midday and despite most of the royal family being in exile on Earth, the palace was alive with activity. Guards stood at every entrance, meaning there was no way she was getting in without being seen. Ellie cursed herself for not taking the time to learn the secret royal entrances to the castle.

  “Your highness, welcome,” a guard she did not know by name said as she strode up the stairs. “I do apologize. We were not alerted to your return. Had we known, we would have had an escort waiting.

  Which is exactly why you didn’t know, Ellie thought as she plastered on a smile. “My return was on very short notice. I haven’t yet informed the assembly of my intentions,” she instead said. “But do not worry yourself or the rest of the guard over me. I do not know how long I am planning to stay and I can find my way to my own quarters,” she added, seeing that the guard was getting ready to call in a full escort.

  “Very well, my lady,” he said with barely disguised amusement and stepped aside.

  Inside, Ellie immediately slipped into the private corridor that led up to the royal living quarters, grateful that with her family gone, the private floor was mostly a ghost town.

  Inside her own chamber, she went first to the window and drew the blinds. Korghetians may have considered the view a prized luxury, but to Ellie, the blazing lake of molten lava was just as oppressive and hellish as when she first laid eyes on it. Even without the view, there was simply something dark amidst the expansive and opulent luxury that felt wrong, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  But then, her eyes fell on the framed photos she kept near the desk and there it was. The sinking dread of just how alone she was finally set in. Her mother and step father were on Earth, as was Bethany and Vito. Bethany, at least, would be returning soon. Julian and her father… she pushed aside the thoughts that threatened to ruin her composure.

  She again raised her wrist, intending to try Julian again, but paused, finger hovering over the call button. She didn’t want to seem pushy. For all
she knew, her messages might not have been going through. After all, it wasn’t as if he was simply a planet away. Ia’na Eidyn was halfway across the galaxy in an area almost more remote than Earth.

  Instead, she placed a call to Gri, who was surprised to see her in the capital, but agreed to meet her as soon as possible. Not even a half hour later, there was a knock and Ellie found not just Gri, but Commander Vonsse and a rather un-princess-like Mikk waiting at her door. The latter of whom rushed her with a bear hug befitting someone twice her size.

  “Ellie! I’ve missed you!” Mikk gushed. “Without you or Bethany, I’ve been forced to play diplomat. I was seriously contemplating asking Vesparall to sneak me back to the Oravaschaeal Cluster.”

  “Missed you too, but I know you too well. You’re not going anywhere until the war is over,” Ellie replied. “Speaking of,” she added as she shepherded the group into her living quarters and ran a quick scan to make sure no one had surreptitiously added any listening devices while she was away. “Have we made any progress? I apologize, but I’ve not been keeping up with any news while at the temple.”

  “Sintar is once again under Alliance control,” Vonsse said with a note of pride, but there was a slight hesitation that Ellie didn’t miss.

  “We’re having trouble with some of the royal families who aren’t as keen to progress into the modern landscape with the rest of us,” Mikk clarified with a snarl. “I’ve left my brother to sort them. Apparently, my suggestion to feed the patriarchal holdouts to the yuddiks was not considered a reasonable solution for some of the leaders. Go figure.”

  Ellie tried and failed to hold back her amusement over Mikk’s attitude. Not that she didn’t agree. The occupation of Sintar took a huge worry from her shoulders, but she knew the Alliance would have a hard time bringing the SiFa cooperative on board with all of the changes in regards to equal rights for all citizens.

  But they could worry about that later.

  “So have we been in contact with the emperor or are we looking to stage a takeover of the last two planets?” Ellie asked, carefully measuring her words to make them seem casual.

  “As the unofficial speaker of the assembly, I’ve been tasked with opening negotiations for peace with Nyessovor,” Gri said with a strange expression.

  “I take it that’s not going well?” Ellie asked.

  “On the contrary, I do believe we’ve made some progress. Turns out, Helsyn’s technological progress has been greatly hampered by Svoryk’s war efforts and Nyessovor would like to change this.”

  “So why the weirdness?”

  “Well, it’s just that not long before you contacted me, Nyessovor sent me a message asking for a meeting with you.”

  “With me?” Ellie was taken aback.

  “Indeed. He seemed to know you had returned to Korghetia. Given that you took public transit, this in itself is not completely surprising. However, the manner in which he requested an audience was a bit more… brusque than our previous communications have been. I thought nothing of it, assuming perhaps the emperor was simply in a mood, but upon arriving here…” Gri trailed off with an even more confusing expression. Ellie turned to Vonsse and Mikk for an explanation, but was met with shrugs.

  “I don’t follow,” Ellie said after a period of silence in which Gri seemed to be in deep concentration. He looked up at her with a furrowed brow.

  “Do you not feel anything amiss?”

  “Um… Other than a great deal of confusion, no,” she replied with a smile, hoping to break the strangely tense mood.

  “The presence,” Gri said. “The one we first noticed at Gevandar’s trial. The one that seemed to have a way of influencing the royalty in much the same way as the Kyroibi influenced those who were not meant to wield the power of knowledge.”

  “You sense it again?” Ellie asked.

  “I do,” Gri confirmed. “And I believe that it may be responsible for the change in the emperor’s tone. Which means there is a strong possibility that what we feel isn’t so much an entity or energy, but perhaps, Ellie, it is a part of you.”

  “Me?” Ellie asked, blanching slightly at the implications. “But I’d felt it before. I can’t sense it now, but…” She let her words hang as an awful thought took hold. “Do you think it’s influencing me?”

  “Do you suddenly want to rule the galaxy?” Vonsse asked, only half joking.

  “Nope, that thought still horrifies me.”

  “Interesting…” Gri muttered, knitting his brow in thought.

  “I know what you said before,” Ellie began cautiously, “but are you sure there is no way this could have something to do with Andryvessa?”

  “Andryvessa’s abstraction is gone,” he replied. “For better or worse, she’s ascended completely.”

  “Actually, we don’t really know that for certain.”

  All eyes turned to Ellie and she shrank inwardly. She knew what had to be said, but explaining it, especially to those who still could not accept that which could not be easily defined, was a daunting task.

  “I just mean there’s a lot of unknown… things…”

  “Okay, Ellie, the time to be vague is not now,” Mikk said, cutting into her awkward stumbling. “I’ve seen you haunted, but this is profound. What happened on T’al Eidyn?”

  “Leave it to you to cut to the chase,” Ellie said with a huff. “The Kyroibi, it seems is hiding a lot more than you’d expect,” she admitted with a deep sigh. “As it turns out, the battalion has awakened before, and not just for Master Yellenoae.”

  “Oh? When was that?” Gri asked with genuine curiosity.

  “In almost every other true master’s lifetime.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Vonsse said. “Eidyssic record keeping is the most advanced and thorough in the galaxy. Surely an event as world changing as the activation of the Limitless Battalion would be noted somewhere.”

  “The former masters went to great lengths to ensure that these records were scrubbed from our collective conscious. They even went as far as to alter the recollection of Master Rhymallian. It seems when they created the Kyroibi to keep the peace, they went a bit too far. The battalion sees us as monsters, so when the true master observes something they see as an injustice that cannot easily be reconciled, the battalion awakens. Apparently, it has a hair trigger.”

  “Why not simply destroy the battalion?” Mikk asked.

  “It’s crossed my mind,” Ellie said grimly. “But the problem is again paradoxical in that if we were to try, we would be seen as a threat to peace and be destroyed. We all would. All life in the known galaxy would be hunted into extinction.”

  “I don’t accept that,” Mikk said with conviction. “There must be a way. No battalion, automaton or otherwise can truly be invincible.”

  “But did Julian not travel with El’iadryov to Ia’na Eidyn with the specific intent to shut down the battalion?” Vonsse asked.

  Ellie’s heart gave a squeeze. “Yes,” she said carefully. “Or so he says, but it’s been several weeks with no communication. I am trying not to fear the worst, but believe me when I say that it is taking all of my resolve to not secure my own transportation back to the home world to see for myself what is happening.”

  “You don’t think he’s…” Vonsse trailed off, not wanting to voice the possibility, but Ellie shook her head.

  “Our bond,” she said. “I know he’s alive, and he’s been surprisingly calm, but that he’s not made an effort to let me know what is happening makes me think he’s planning something reckless or dangerous.”

  “Perhaps he has found a way to destroy them,” Mikk suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Ellie replied with a shudder. Mikk didn’t understand just how terrifying that possibility was. She needed to find that missing information and fast.

  “I’m sorry, Ellie, but I’m not following the logic here,” Gri said as he made some notes on the miniature tablet he’d pulled from his pocket. “I am grateful, of course, for all that you’ve
discovered. We have all suspected for some time that there was much about the Kyroibi that was unknown to all, even the true master, but what does this have to do with the possibility that Andryvessa lives?”

  “Because this wasn’t information I’d stumbled across tucked away in some forgotten corner of the temple. It was Androyo who told me what he knew, and what he believed has been preserved.”

  At that Gri’s hand stilled, hovering over the tablet as he stared at her, perplexed.

  “I’m sorry, did I hear you correctly?”

  Ellie sighed. “My great grandfather is dead, yes, but only on this plane of existence. He lives, and is quite well, in another reality that can be accessed through the garden of the inverse temple at T’al Eidyn.”

  For a moment, Gri was silent, but his diodes flared briefly with skepticism that Ellie could not miss if she tried. Frustration welled up, but she was determined to make them understand that which was so difficult for her people to grasp.

  “Andryvessa died, yes,” she went on. “Intentionally or not, I killed her. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she is dead everywhere. As Dryova, she had her father’s trust. Androyo told me she was the one who took what was left of Rhymallian’s hidden knowledge and kept it safe. If she’s alive in another existence, it is possible she’s the entity.”

  Mikk and Vonsse exchanged confused glances, but Gri simply shook his head.

  “Ellie, I won’t discount the concept of Transcendence, for now, but you yourself just explained why the entity is not your grandmother. Androyo is dead, but lives on another plane of existence. He cannot return to this one. Even if Andryvessa made the same arrangements, she too would be unable to return.”

  “Why not? I was able to travel between and I suspect anyone who is able to accept transcendence would as well.”

  “Anyone alive,” Gri explained. “Though few, there are theories regarding the possibility of trans-dimensional existence. All hold to the belief that once an Abstractive Root ascends, that doorway is shut, never to be returned to by anyone who had existed there before.”