Chapter 9: The Tether

  Out from the dark we slither and swirl, crystallizing into your minds…

  ...a tether joins us together

  Invisible to all including you

  Your wounds call out

  Deliciously opened before us by virtue of your own doubts, insecurities…

  ..compounded with a misplaced idea of justice

  The sin of partition encroaches

  With each tick of the wheel

  You seek strength

  We offer absolution

  From all suffering

  For the small price

  Of eternal servitude to our hunger

  And blindness to your Artul

  Within the spaces of the air surrounding, pockets of negativity jittered. Sau’ipsu who had so recently been savoring his long feast of discordance was jolted awake by the surge of pain flowing through Zalmar’s body. Groggily, he focused his attention on the scene in dream space - the 3 dimensional reality the food considered real. Good to know that he had woken up at a most opportune time. His artul's core was set to burst by the assassin’s long electric tendrils emanating from his fingertips. Just a little longer. Once the outer edges intersecting his system burned off, he’d start with consuming that, devouring the food’s personality before it could dissolve. Being around 15000 years old, Sau’ipsu had pondered the origins of the Artul and where it dissolved to. Perhaps when he had harvested the core of the Zalmar’s soul, he’d go visit the black arboretum to do some research.

  “I’m not just here to kill you, Zalmoon. You will tell me what I need to know. Tell me who the other conspirators in project Undertow are. Who turned my aunt and uncle into traitors?”

  The pain was near unbearable. Zalmar could smell his skin cook as fear washed over him. He tried moving his limbs- tried firing another shot, but he was stuck - just frozen solid in place absorbing the coils of electricity spouting from his interrogator's fingertips.

  “Zalmar, you’re not going to be able to move those lips of yours. Tell me what you know.Tell me where the files on them are located. All you have to do is remember. Remember, and I’ll end it.”

  Zalmar’s eyes watered as the intensity of the attack lowered. He was able to manage a nod as he gulped back the saliva frothing from his mouth. Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he thought back to the day he joined the Faraday Initiative. His thoughts came easily, a bit too easily. Still, Zalmor didn’t fight it. He thought back to the day his friend and work colleague Feris, had invited him to his flat within the city of Insia Pravix, the financial and digital center of Xelryia. Strangely enough, it felt like he was right there at that moment in time. His shock at the immersiveness of the memory coalesced into a single sentence:

  Was this the power of willbending?

  “People like us are quite special,” Feris said to him as they were crossing the street. For an irsu of immense wealth, Feris preferred walking to riding on the grav-lifts that criss-crossed through the mag-lanes above. Less chance of having to deal with spies and data-slates picking up conversations, he’d admit whenever asked in private.

  “We aren’t afraid to admit the reality of nature, something these nutjobs have forgotten.”

  The tall tri-scrapers, led-lit streets, and stadium-like complexes that housed so many stretched toward the sky. It had been like he’d visited another world, despite this being his ethnic homeland. The lime-based asphalt glistened as it healed in the torrent of rain, a rain that soaked his socks as the two fought the 4-inch currents that threatened to pull and push them toward the storm drains that fed the city’s many cisterns. Zalmar just nodded his head, his attention focused on maintaining his balance as his frame – thin at the time as he struggled to resist the minor flood surrounding the pedestrian traffic. Feris’ apartment was within one of these stadium structures - known as a Viium Atraca. The elliptical shaped structure was like a village unto itself, with the highest levels reserved for the scientific and political elite. The two took the exclusive lift on the way up, watching the residents of the city who rarely left the Viium outside of a few city-related maintenance and clerical professions, rush to and from the different amenities installed in the mega-structure. Feris had invited him over fraja, a treat looked on fondly by the D’varoans as breakfast. For a strict ethno-nationalist, Feris enjoyed borrowing from Sekaia’s many cultures.

  Why was he so focused on the fraja? That wasn’t something he’d remembered before when he reminisced about those days.

  A hunger, alien but familiar, rippled through Zalmar’s consciousness. He felt cold, almost panicked as the creeping sensation of some sort of psychological intruder started to creep through his mind and body. It faded, exploding in an electric heat of some kind, as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by a firm coldness – the presence of his assassin.

  In an instant, he was back in his memories. Feris’s apartment was sparse, yet opulent - a tasteful blend of minimalism and grandiosity embodied by the gold-plated based boards hugging the singular marble slabs making up the dividing wall between lobby and kitchen. The two removed their shoes, resting them on the imported bamboo-wool mats sitting atop the polished tuff flooring. Both the mat and stone were imports from D’varoh, a nation whose hold over the well of Arem was near oppressive.

  They were risky days. Almia had managed to increase trade relations between her nation and their former existential threat - a feat Zalmar had to admit was quite clever for the canul.

  Feris, now barefoot, walked toward the kitchen, humming a tune, popular in those days, but until recently forgotten by him.

  That same coldness returned, accompanied with a sneaking suspicion that the Shadow was not the only one retrieving memories from within his brain. Zalmar paused, having regained some control over his mind. Before he could grasp a breath, his body tensed as the electric tethers between him and the Shadow intensified. Rivulets of blood poured from the lump of flesh that was once his tongue - a macabre sacrifice of his resistance to the forces forcing themselves on his brain. The intensity of the electric coils around Zalmar's body lessened, allowing him to gasp for air, his throat raw. He could nod, a small, painful affirmation. Remember, and I’ll end it. The words echoed, a twisted promise. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth, and surrendered to the flow of memories, no longer fighting the strange guidance he felt. The fraja, a D’varoan breakfast treat, was still there, vibrant in his mind’s eye, a curious anchor to the day he joined the Faraday Initiative.

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  Feris’s flat in Insia Pravix, Xelryia’s gleaming financial heart, came into sharper focus. It was the perfect backdrop for their clandestine meetings. The city’s tri-scrapers piercing the perpetually twilight sky, the neon arteries of its led-lit streets, the stadium-like complexes buzzing with commerce and data—it had always felt alien to Zalmar, despite it being his ancestral home.

  He was back at the apartment, this time with Feris sipping and scooping fraja from the mug offered to him.

  “So I guess you’re wondering why I’m having you here at my personal estate, huh Zahlm?” Feris asked.

  “Actually, I’m more curious as to why you decided to live in an Atraca this large. From our past conversations, you hate the lay-irsu and iluun.” Zalmar replied.

  “Ah, yes. These superstitious, narrow-minded beasts of habit. It makes no sense to live among them. Unless you’ve read Ignus Natamur’s 10 Shields.”

  Feris was referring to the Insian Fire-era philosopher responsible for highlighting epistemology and ontology’s role in structuring war and politics, a book read throughout Sekaia by elites universally. Almia seemed to follow its edict like a playbook.

  “To plot against your foe without understanding their walk through the brush is to invite a thief into your house to burn it,” Zalmar said, quoting a verse from chapter 2: the three forces to light an ember.

  “Ah, the core of deception. Without it, we as a species would still be stalking the canopies of Fenyr, completely content with the flesh of lower creatures, uninterested in the stars that unveiled the bounty of Sekaia and the lost colonies of our ancestors.”

  “So what is this about?” Zalmar had asked then.

  “Progress,” replied Feris. “Progress finally unleashed from the superstition of cowardly creatures content to suffer from the gravity of this stolen world. Progress aligned with the forces of science gatekept by those foolish Sorcers up in their ice-tower out of touch with the needs of Llcyran-kind.” He put his mug down on the table between his and Zalmar’s armchairs. His eyes stared intently, far more intense than the fluorescent lamps beaming outside the apartment, drenching the other tenants in a warm sun-like glow in the dark shelter of the Atraca.

  Who are the other conspirators? The assassin’s voice was a whisper now, yet it resonated through his very core. Zalmar remembered the group, a tight-knit circle of friends, bound by a shared, radical ideology. They called themselves the Faraday Initiative.

  Before he even knew what had happened, Zalmar was not in the apartment, but deep underneath the structure housing it - a basement of sorts, hidden among the sewer tunnels acting as a compost collector for the Viium Atraca’s hydroponic levels meant to house the entire district’s food staples.

  Sau’ipsu writhed in the dream space, gorging himself on the surge of Zalmar’s escalating fear, on the rich tapestry of betrayal and ambition. The artul’s resistance was crumbling, the delicious pain radiating from its core a symphony to his ancient hunger. Ronjah, probing into Zalmar’s mind felt another presence, a stronger resonance, the metallic taste of – of something ancient feeding. It was unnerving.

  “Zalmar, I want to welcome you to the Pomos, our retreat and sanctuary for the resistance to the current world order.” Feris swept his hand over the wide space, furnished with stools arranged in a circle surrounding a triangular table. “We meet here to upload and download from our datacenter – powered and cooled by the hard work of our enemies. I’ve brought you here to meet one of our founders, Anvara. She recommended you by name. She seemed impressed by your hard work and integrity in helping build Yghastia’s new pit city.”

  Ronjah recognized that name– his cousin,Anvara Sarran. The name echoed through the two invaders’ minds, but the memories surrounding them were oddly muted, a grey fuzz either couldn't penetrate. Sau'ipsu found himself momentarily confounded, the anomaly a pebble in his otherwise smooth feast. Ronjah attempted to probe deeper, but it seemed like his intruder had grown impatient. It wasn’t enough to keep waiting. He could figure out this puzzle later within the mystical library beyond these mortals’ understanding.

  Zalmar's mind raced, his memories accelerating beyond his control. He saw the grand vision: shifting the seats of power from Sekaia to Sai and Inqui. These two nations, less bound by the ancient traditions of D'varoh, would be receptive to the Faraday Initiative’s core tenets. The Eilonhir and Oralaho were, in their view, mere fairytales, tools to hinder true advancement. The Everessence? Just a powerful force of nature, nothing more. Sekaia’s harsh super climate wasn't a sacred challenge to be respected, but a problem to be conquered, to be terraformed into something more hospitable. They longed to evolve among easier, more habitable systems, seeing the planet's raw, untamed nature as a burden.

  The Galactic Coalition of Ascendant governments (GCA). Zalmar remembered how the Faraday Initiative had conceptualized it, and how he, personally, had helped lay its foundations. Feris, though now deceased, had been the initial architect. But the true pillars were Itatar Hendris, Tekara Secluu, and Anvara Sarran—the latter, Ronjah's own kin. Memories flattened into pure exposition. Names raced through Zalmar’s skull. Itatar Hendris. A Shadin, yes, but one whose dogma was stripped bare of any spiritual conviction. A materialist reductionist to his bones. He could bend the will of others, perform rituals, but he saw the Vashtnal not as deities or elemental forces, but as ancient, sentient beings from distant planets, merely deceiving his people for their own unknown ends. Zalmar saw the meeting – the years spent as a double agent, both on-world and in the sterile, airless chambers of off-world stations, the low hum of advanced tech replacing the organic pulse of Sekaia. He saw their faces, illuminated by the glow of data screens, plotting, strategizing. His mind raced at a speed he had difficulty keeping up with. In desperation, Ronjah acted. Sau’ipsu, annoyed, decided he’d had enough.

  The electricity surged again, but this time, it was different. It didn't just burn; it invaded. A horrifying premonition, clear and undeniable, blasted into Zalmar’s consciousness, a chilling gift from the Thoros that had been slowly consuming him. He saw it all: the Thoros species, a vast, grotesque collective, multiplying like a plague. He saw how they had subtly manipulated his own mind, and the minds of his friends, twisting their noble intentions into instruments of global destruction.

  A vision overtook his racing thoughts – He saw machines, some colossal and ravenous others small but just as malevolent, tearing apart planets and people – not for resources, but for the sheer, brutal pleasure of it. Organic life, harvested with sadistic efficiency, screaming in silent agony. And the Thoros, feeding, multiplying, a parasitic bloom on the negative emotions radiating off the suffering and misunderstandings. It was a harvest of despair, a grotesque dance of consumption. This wasn’t evolution; it was annihilation. This was their "absolution" – the price of eternal servitude to their hunger. He had been a pawn, a willing fool, guided to ruin everything he once held dear. The realization hit him, stark and absolute, just as the last spark of life left his eyes.

  Ronjah screamed. The vision had not been Zalmar’s alone. It had ripped through his consciousness like a serrated blade, and Sau’ipsu, now sated on Zalmar’s soul, turned his attention to the crown prince, his attention gathering like a horrifying infection. The sheer, overwhelming depravity of the premonition, the raw, brutal truth of Thoros's nature, splintered his mind. The jathka jerked in a futile attempt to break his psychic bond, but it was too late. Ronjah collapsed, curling into a fetal position, his body wracked by violent tremors, his mind a battlefield. He was fighting — thrashing against the insidious hunger now gnawing at his own artul, battling the entity that had just revealed its true, monstrous plan.