Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (35 page)

Drifting out of her
bed, her spirit flew up into a spinning vortex of stars spinning peacefully on
its axis.  Galaxy.  She could hear the steady thrum of the stars vibrating and
realized their combined voices united into the voice of the goddess singing the
Song of the Sword. 

The dream changed. 
Darkness spread across the stars.  As it encroached upon the center, she saw
once again the vision the goddess had shown the day she'd sent Mikhail.  A
sword of darkness smote his ship.  The goddess steered it towards Ninsianna’s
home, the blue stone … planet … circling the sun … solar system.  She saw
herself encrusted in yellow ochre by the stream and then go heal his wounds. 

She saw Mikhail
planting crops, fighting alongside the Ubaid warriors, and sitting around the
campfire with her people, his expression unguarded and happy.   She saw him
embrace her and her belly grow heavy with child. 

Out of the center a
second ray of light shot out and headed towards her planet.  As the darkness
reached this ship, it didn't smite it, but embraced it.  The ship turned
blacker than the darkness which had created it.  As it hit the fertile earth,
it split open.  Foul beasts, lizard-like monsters with forked tongues and other
strange, misshapen creatures spewed forth.  Sweeping across the desert from the
west, the demons devoured her village and her people. 

Ninsianna heard
wings and turned to embrace her husband, but it was not him.  A white-winged
Angelic, ethereally beautiful and bright on the outside, but hideous inside
from the darkness which consumed his soul, sought to lure her from this world. 
His countenance was beautiful, but he couldn't hide the malevolent darkness
from her goddess-touched eyes.

Mikhail!  She
called his name again and again, but he didn't come.

The Evil One used
his sword to cut her child from her womb.  Ninsianna thrashed and screamed, but
she couldn't get away.

“Ninsianna,
dúisigh
! 
Wake up!”

Mikhail?  Why
didn’t he come to save her?

“It's a vision from
the goddess.  She is stuck between this world and the dream time.  It happened
once before when she was very young.”

Mama?

“This is why women are
forbidden to learn magic!  They travel too easily between worlds before they
are ready.”

Papa!

Why couldn't she wake
up?  She tried to fight her way back to their voices, but the darkness in the
dream still had her in its grip.  She could feel her father slip into her
mind.  Suddenly he was there, standing beside her. 

“Papa … what is
happening?”

“You're stuck in your
vision.  You need to focus your mind on something outside of the vision. 
Something comforting.”

“What do you focus on,
Papa?”

“I focus on your
Mama.  She can pull me out of the worst vision.”

“Ninsianna!”  She
could feel Mikhail's hand upon her cheek in the same gesture she always used to
comfort
him
.  She could
hear
the emotion tremble in his voice. 
Mikhail was afraid.

“I understand, Papa,”
she said.  “I think I'll be okay now.” 

Focusing on the sound
of Mikhail’s voice, the feel of his hand, she willed herself out of the vision
and back into the waking realm.

“Mikhail,” she opened
her eyes, “
Chuala mé leat
[I
heard you].”

He hugged her to his
chest so tightly she couldn't move.  His heart raced beneath his tunic.

“When I heard you
scream…”  His voice broke with emotion.

“Ninsianna, you must
tell us of this vision,” Papa said.

Mikhail released her.

“
Nani ga warui kite
iru
[something bad is coming],” She stopped when they gave her a curious
look.  Mikhail answered in the strange, clicking language he'd used during his
battle fury and amongst the shamans.  She understood every word. 

“
Anata wa Cherubim
no gengo o hanashite iru
[you speak the language of the Cherubim],” he
said.

“Your eyes…” Mama's
face was filled with fear.

“How is this
possible?” Mikhail asked in Ubaid.

“She has been touched
by the hand of the goddess,” Immanu said.  “I can say with great certainty now,
winged one, that Ninsianna is the Chosen One sung about in the ancient song. 
Whether or not you can remember your purpose here, the Evil One approaches.”

“Papa?” she asked,
speaking in her native language.

“Look in the
reflecting bowl, child.”  Mama poured water into a shallow bowl and held it
steady until the water stilled.

It was not necessary
for Mama to hold the tallow lantern closer for her to see what they were all
looking at.  Staring back from her reflection was not the tawny eyed girl she
remembered, but someone whose eyes shone with their own internal illumination
the color of pure, unburnished gold.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.04

51-Pegasi-4 – Genocide Memorial

Prime Minister Lucifer

Lucifer

Lucifer stared at the
wasteland which stretched before him, his heart as empty as the empty field
where only a handful of people had bothered to show up to commemorate the
passing of an entire species.  Most were descendants, such as himself, whose
ancestors had been cast off of this world because they had not met the
Seraphim’s high moral standards.  A few reporters from obscure local networks
had shown up, but no big players.  Nobody cared about the Seraphim whose
murders had taken all hope of evolution for the hybrids along with them. 

“Today is the 25
^th
anniversary of the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide.”

Lucifer's wings
drooped as he stood in front of the wall listing the names of the dead, the
stark black granite a sharp contrast against his snowy white wings.  It would
have made a magnificent publicity shot … if anyone had cared.  A lone reporter
snapped a photograph. 

'This speech serves
no political purpose.  You're wasting your precious time…'

'Oh … shut up!'
he told that small, nasty voice that lived inside his
head.  Zepar had scheduled him to be someplace else today, but he'd given him
the slip.  His conversation with Hashem had made him realize that his adopted
father was not going to step in and rescue
his
species any more than
anyone had saved the people of
this
world.

“Over a million people
called this world their home," Lucifer said.  "This was a peaceful
colony where many races lived in harmony.  Including refugees from the Sata’an
Empire.  Races people thought of as enemies raised their families here …
together."

He glanced at the
names on the black granite wall.  Alongside the tell-tale Angelic names ending
with ‘il or ‘el were names bearing the mark of almost every other species in
the galaxy.  Two Sata'anic males kneeled before one of the black granite slabs
that listed the names of the dead, one holding the other up as they solemnly
ran their claws along a list of family names that were not Angelic in origin,
but Sata'anic.

"They were
spiritual beings united in a single purpose," he said.  "They'd
evolved beyond their baser impulses, but they forgot that the rest of the
galaxy had not.”

He was too much of a
pragmatist to idealize the failed Seraphim quest to create Utopia.  It had
failed, miserably, ending in their own extinction.  But now, more than ever, he
understood the impulse which had driven them to turn their backs on both
empires.    

“Nobody protected this
world.”  He looked out at the smattering of military uniforms.  Hybrids, like
him, who recognized a lot more than a few million civilians had died that day. 
“They insisted they were a peaceful planet and didn't
need
protecting. 
All they wanted was to stay out of the intrigues of the other empires.  They
were above it, and they viewed our little dramas with disgust.”

It was a rhetorical
question, really.  If somebody were to ever hand him a planet, far from the
influence of Shay'tan and his father, what would
he
do differently? 
Defend them?  How?  His biological father had tried to build a Third Empire and
been crushed between the other two, uniting Hashem and Shay'tan in rare
agreement to hit the rebel base with a planet-killer.  It was an act of
genocide which had come back to bite the Emperor in the backside when his
mother had reacted to his biological father's death by willing herself to die. 

Hide?  Until the
Seraphim had been slaughtered, it had been impossible to even
find
the
Seraphim homeworld.  But now everyone in the galaxy knew where pirates had
destroyed them.  Gone.  The Seraphim who were his ancestors were gone. 
Extinct.  Just as, unable to reproduce,
his
bloodline was now going
extinct.  He was the last of his kind.

“They wanted to be
left alone," Lucifer's voice was almost a whisper.  "So we left them
alone. 
-I-
left them alone.  It was within my power while my father was
away to station warships in this sector to protect them, but I didn't." 
He stared at the empty green fields that were being reclaimed as forest. 
"I would like to say it was because we respected their wishes.  But truth
be told, we thought they had nothing to offer us.  No resources.  No trade. 
They were a completely self-enclosed world who wanted nothing to do with us,
and we wanted nothing to do with
them
in return.”

Lucifer closed his
eyes and caught his breath.  He could almost
feel
the screams of the
dying as he spoke.  Zepar had told him horror stories about the genetic
weakness the Seraphim had deliberately bred into their sub-species, ensuring
their entire population would be tied to one another spiritually so that harm
to
one
member would be harm to them
all
.  Nobody had ever dreamed
someone would intentionally use that defect to destroy them.  He remembered his
own mother's sadness even though she'd never stepped foot upon this world. 

“My mother's people
came from this world.”  He looked down at his empty hands.  Hands which lacked
the cue cards he usually relied upon when making speeches.  Today's speech was
coming straight from his heart.  He decided, just for once, to
speak
the
truth his father didn't want told.  “As a species, the Seraphim were so close
to genetic perfection they were expected to ascend to take the place of the
Wheles.”

Guilt assailed his
consciousness.  Why had he left the Seraphim sub-species alone instead of
enticing them back into the Alliance?  Why had he allowed his anger at this
species, whose foolish romantic notions had cost him the life of his mother, to
cloud his judgment?  He'd refused to seek diplomatic ties with this world after
Hashem had disappeared and more than a million people had paid with their
lives.

“Perhaps that's why
they were all killed?”  Lucifer bowed his head.  He had no more words to describe
his sense of loss, both for the Seraphim, and for his own species.  “I would
like to observe a moment of silence.”

The ceremony broke up
as soon as he was finished.  A few reporters asked questions, but the media
circus which usually dogged his every step was as conspicuously absent today as
the people who
should
have been living here and were not.  Nobody
cared.  Just as his father didn't care that the hybrids were dying out. 

An elderly couple,
well into their 900
^th
year, sobbed in the background, their
black-brown wings and dark hair betraying them as one of the few surviving
full-blooded Seraphim who had been off-world when it had happened.  They
shakily made their way over to where he stood giving a quote to a junior
reporter awe-struck the Prime Minister had made an unexpected appearance.  The
couple didn't approach him the way a citizen normally did the Alliance's
highest elected official, but with that strange ease of equality he could
remember his mother practiced even though she'd never stepped foot upon the
Seraphim homeworld.