HTG - Chapter 180

Kalon

Chapter One-Hundred-Eighty: Dama - Part Two

Galactic Quadrant: Darna Quadrant

Ruling Government: Republic of Hekate

Solar System: D-2,946

Planet: Ravena Minor

Location: Ara Continent, Ravena’s Temple

Kotina has left me to the solitude of the evening breeze. Soft and cold, like the upper reaches of the mines back home. It is strange to be in the land of the masters. It feels like yesterday that I cursed the ground they tread. Now, I walk it, traveling the path so that I can find my own. Alone in my room, the loneliness begins to creep into my heart. It is seldom that I have been truly alone.

My knees do not bend, but my head lowers in reverence. There is one I want to speak to before my journey to Etheria.

“Amara,” I whisper to the wind.

There is no stirring, no pulse or feeling on the edge of my mind like there was before. Was she wounded in the battle with Krotha? Something draws my attention to the window in the room over. When I move into it, I see Korra standing there, looking at the moon high in the sky.

“She will not come,” Korra says, reaching her hand out the window and catching a leaf from the breeze.

“Why not?”

“She has been weakened over the last millennia a great deal, and helping you did not help her in that regard.”

My head lowers as I lean against the wall and take in her words.

“Can you still hear her?” I ask.

She turns a devious eye toward me and grins before looking back at the moonlight, “I can always hear her.”

“Why?”

“Because I am her oracle, the one who brings her prophecy to mortal ears. To deprive me of her words would be for her to die.”

“Gods can die then?” I probe, crossing my arms, “And how does one make them die?”

She laughs a strange and twisted laugh before finding a seat near the window, “You don’t need me to tell you that. When it is time, you will know the way.”

I sit across from her. She has always been strange, yet somehow, I believe her words. I believe that she communes with Amara and knows her thoughts.

“I want to know everything,” I say.

“Then you must go to Etheria, for that is where she sees your future, where your prophecy shall end and begin.”

I squint at her, trying to understand the meaning, “Speak plain.”

She leans back in the chair, “If you are the one whom the prophecy is written for, then it will become known in Etheria. If you are not… well, then it will become known in Etheria.”

I blink at her, and she smiles, so I ask, “What prophecy?”

“Patience, you’ll know soon enough.” She stands, moving toward the bed, “I see your bed is quite empty…”

“As a seeress of prophecies, you should know that will lead nowhere.”

She smiles and turns from the bed and moves toward the other room to stand in front of the fireplace.

“So, do you have anything you will tell me?”

“Dama,” she says, almost in a whisper as she looks at the flames.

The meaning is simple in the old tongue, loosely it means fire.

“That is my only hint, Alakin.”

“Do not call me that.”

She turns and smiles, “But you are chosen, by the gods themselves. Your story is just beginning.”

My hand reaches for the metal fire poker and I turn the logs.

“It is my story, not theirs.”

“I know,” she says softly, eyes traveling back to the fire, “And I look forward to seeing it.”

“What is your goal here?” I ask, peering deep into the green of her eyes.

“I want to see a mortal shake the heavens.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, it would be fun to be part of it, you know?”

“And do you want to be part of it?”

“I already am,” she bows deeply which catches me off guard, “I am your loyal companion, through the hells, through…”

“Why?” I interrupt, turning to face her fully, “What have I done for you to earn your loyalty?”

“Was freeing all of us from the Colosseum not enough?” she asks with a teased eyebrow.

“Something tells me you could have found a way to avoid it.”

She gives me a short smile, “Perhaps, but it doesn’t change the feeling that burns in me for you.”

I recoil slightly, but she shakes her head.

“Not like that, silly boy. The feeling that you are the tide, that you will be the one to shatter existence as we know it. That is not a feeling I can easily ignore. It’s not just that you carry great power waiting to be claimed.” She shakes her head, “No, it is not that at all. It is because of what you will do with it. Everywhere you go, you try to make things better, despite the overwhelming current that pushes you from it.” She puts her finger in my chest, “You are a protector of good, even if it means you will embrace darkness to save the light. That is what drives me to follow in your wake, because I seek to see the stars after you have claimed them. I would see what future you will bring.”

I am left without words at her proclamation. Each word felt like she meant it, like she really believes in me. She is a strange one, this Korra. But my gut tells me that she will become one of my closest allies and friend.

“Your journey to Etheria will test you, have faith in yourself. Sometimes the answer is not easily found. Let us not speak more of it though, speaking of futures tends to muddle them.”

Her words are strange for someone my age.

“What is your plan?” I ask after a few moments.

“To follow you and join the Republic’s army with Arrum and the brothers Haki and Daki.”

I squint at her, “You assume I will take you, and you assume they want to go.”

She smiles so deeply that her sharp canines glint in the firelight, “I think you will find, I am quite useful. As for them, I doubt you could stop them. Even Arrum will come back to you.”

“I know,” I say solemnly looking at the fire, “He needs time.”

She shakes her head, “No, he needs purpose.”

Perhaps she is right. I had thought something similar earlier. Many need it here.

She tilts her head, “What are you thinking?”

“While I am away, I want you to show me how useful you are.”

“Go on,” she smiles.

“Organize all the survivors who will be loyal to our cause. They will join with us, if they so choose.”

“You’re building an army?” she grins, tilting her head, “What is our cause?”

Turning to look at the moonlight, “I am showing them the path.”

“Sounds fun, consider it done.”

“Just like that?” I ask with a measured gaze.

She turns from the fire once more to look me fully in the eyes, there is a dull glow to them, “Never doubt my loyalty to you.”

There is a familiarity in her tone, a softness in her presence. Yet the depth of her loyalty does not make sense to me. Still, if she completes the task, it will strengthen my belief in her. From what I was told, she did well helping people escape Ora city. She has managed to entangle herself with a highborn noble like Solara as well. Korra is not a simple creature of whims.

“May I suggest something about your trip to Etheria?” she asks as she approaches the door.

“Speak it.”

“Bring Arrum.”

“He will not want to go, not so soon.”

“For knowing him so well, you know little about him,” she sighs, shaking her head, “If you ask, he will go. Begrudgingly, but he will go.”

“Why should I take him?”

She smiles and turns, closing the door behind her.

A strange creature indeed.

***

I dreamt many dreams that night, filled with the horrors of my past waking me up in pools of my own sweat. Memories of those who cried for mercy in Mallock’s hall of torments. These hands of mine… they have taken many lives.

The day brings bitter partings with the others. Luna was upset that she could not convince me to stay at least another week. She does not understand the feeling of losing so much time to sleep. Momentum is what I seek, stagnation for comfort is not what I need. When I have broken the Etheric, maybe then I will rest for a few days. However, one must not be complacent if they wish to hold a galaxy in their palm. Momentum is what allows water to shape mountains. I must be the constant.

The shuttle we boarded is small, it is similar to the one that Kotina used before when she found us on the ice of planet Ora. There are no special designs in the main deck area, it is all for function which I like. Kotina called this vessel a Stinger. She says they are normally used for reconnaissance and targeted attacks. We approach the looming gateway between the stars. I have never seen one apart from the holos that the Sage used to show Arrum and I.

“It is a wonder,” I say.

Arrum looks away from it dismissively. He has not spoken to me since I asked him to come. When it was time to leave he was simply there, waiting. Just like Korra predicted. This shouldn’t surprise me though, the bond Arrum and I share is as deep as the Maka that flows in a planet’s core.

“Almost forgot you were in a coma last time,” Kotina says, rolling her neck, “This ship is small and the Etheric drives are very efficient, which means it won’t displace much of the discomfort of the gate travel. Make sure you take a deep breath as we pass through.”

I look at Arrum, but he does not offer direct wisdom with his words, instead I see him bracing himself in one of the seats, fastening the buckles and straps.

There is a small fleet of ships that are stationed at the gateway, Kotina hails them from the comms panel and tells them we are making passage. When they ask to where she tells them a series of numbers and letters.

As soon as we crest the edge of the enormous structure, lightning sparkles in the strange and distorted field around us. It clings to the sides of our vessel, rattling it violently.

“You are sure this small vessel is meant to travel the gate?” I ask as my teeth chatter.

“It’s not designed for it, but should be fine,” Kotina shrugs.

Should be? Has she not… my stomach lurches.

“We’re going to change coordinates just before jumping like I said before, no peeking, I’d hate to throw you out the airlock.”

Arrum and I keep our eyes from her console like she told us before we left. The coordinates to Etheria itself are known by few in the House of Ravena.

I feel a pulse as a series of communications using a device gives us momentary pass as the lightening and rumbling fades away. As soon as the final commands are entered into the device the ship’s holos begin to flicker then fade, then something almost unexplainable happens. I feel a pull towards something, as though every atom in my body is responding in unison to some unknown force, it’s an eerie feeling and suddenly lights begin to flicker on the ship, electronics begin to lose functionality, a figure appears on the display of the holos everywhere and it begins to speak in a language none of us can understand. Its words pierce our ears like a knife causing pain, Arrum and I reach to cover our ears, but it doesn’t help.

As though it’s being projected directly into our minds. I can’t distinguish any of the words and yet I get flashes of images of solar systems. The noise from the figure stops and we are pulled deep into the abyss, light folding around us, perception changing back and forth as we rip across the galaxy at speeds I cannot even fathom. My entire body is vibrating, not violently, but in a way that tells me I am breaking some fundamental law of physics moving this fast. Perhaps it is because we don’t have a vessel intended to do this that we suffer so, I push the thoughts out of my head and focus on breathing, but I can’t breathe, I can’t even move.

As quickly as it began it comes to a stop and the vibrations cease. My whole body is shaking still when I feel the urge, that primal and unavoidable urge to throw everything in my stomach on the floor below me. A container shoots out from my seat in front of me as the chair detects my vomit, catching it before it looses its vengeance upon the deck below. Arrum hurls into another container next to me.

“Babies,” Kotina chuckles, shaking her head, she grabs her belly after a second and her brow furrows. She does not vomit though. “Right, now from here we need to make another seventeen jumps,” Kotina says, cracking her neck, “Hope you had a light breakfast.”