Chapter 16: Vol.1/ Chapter 14: Tzi’rak sha Zhireq

Chapter Fourteen

 

Tzi'rak sha Zhireq

 

  Ever since he crashed in Tunguska, a little over three centuries ago, Shin had his armor always with him, and it had definitely saved him on more than one occasion from sustaining fatal injuries. Even if his regeneration made him nearly unkillable. But even beyond his own regeneration, the armor had shown unparalleled potential in battle.

  He had been through conflicts of all kinds, with humans and feys, almost from the first moment the sky ripped and his body descended at meteoric speed on that Siberian morning, when the last glimmer of the dawn star was extinguished.

  There were no ships, no enchantment, or spell, and not a divine intervention either. Simply an aberration in space and time, and an explosion, as his body crashed to the earth. A horrific explosion, that could have ended in an even greater tragedy, had it not been for the fact that the disaster occurred in an almost completely unpopulated territory.

  That happened in the first years of the 20th century of the Ancient Era, more specifically on June 30, 1908.

  He didn't remember his name, his past, or even if he had ever had a family.

  But that sort of armor, that grew out of his own bones and flesh and spread throughout his body, starting with the mark on his lower back, had always been there with him. As if it were an extra shadow of his own existence. A reminiscence of a past, perhaps, older than the lights of the last dying stars, of an icy and empty universe in another time and place.

  The nomadic tribes of the place he crashed, thought that a divine being had descended from the sky, and confused him with the figure of a raven sent by the gods. That he was blind in one eye contributed to this since, in spite of his young appearance, that characteristic was associated more with old age than with the look of his body.

  They even baptized him with a secret name, which he would later reveal only to a very small circle of trusted people in the following years, and recently Mai was the only one who had joined that group. Lizbeth already knew that name for centuries, when they met in the theater of World War II, which shook the world at that time. The mutual trust they felt for each other when they first met was more than enough for them to share their secret names.

  Whatever it was, the only thing that Shin had been clear, from the moment of his arrival, was that his armor differentiated him even more from the common mortals. Although he did not know whether it had been bequeathed to him by someone else or something else, or he had already been born with it as a characteristic of his species, the truth is that he had never denied it and knew how to accept it from the first moment - even if it caused rejection in other people.

  As he plunged into the waters with their reddish glow, Shin could almost feel the same sensation as that morning when he arrived. As if he was once again entering an unknown world.

  The mask on his face completely covered his expressions and eyes, but he could still see. It was as if the mask possessed some viewfinder inside. At that moment, Shin could perceive an image of slightly more vivid tones, if only through his one eye.

  He had barely advanced a few meters, when he could already feel his shins being broken by something sinking him against the muddy ground. He turned to free himself and realized that he could not see what had attacked him. It was the foot of one of the stags that stepped on him in its frantic onslaught against the monster. The battle had moved almost on top of where he was passing and he felt like a slippery fish trying to evade a fisherman's spear.

  More crunching of his bones and barely audible sounds indicated that his limbs were back together, and he tried to move as far away as he could with the speed of a dolphin.

  Regeneration of his body took no more than a few seconds for any part, but not so for his head and heart. If his head was shattered once again, this time by the weight of the beasts, he would have to be underwater for hours until the tissues and bones returned to their proper places.

  What would happen to Mai in that time? Would reinforcements arrive on time from the capital or the nearby bases?

  He did not know and therefore could not afford to fail. There was something strange about what was happening. A feeling he couldn't shake off and it had nothing to do with the horrible monster. Shin could almost feel it coming from where he was headed.

  He estimated that he had already gone at least seventy meters from the shore and the ground was beginning to disappear away from the surface. The waters were already looking less murky and the visibility of the glow allowed him to see at least twenty meters before blurring into a series of shadows and pulsing lights as if he were inside a living organism.

  The shadows were the thicker filaments that seemed to move in slow procession around the main glow, swirling in various directions, while other much more thicker ones stood still and were lost in the mud.

  How far away am I?

  He could only guess but, if the main flash was in the middle of the lake, he had at least another four or five hundred meters before he could achieve it. The bottom of the lake had already disappeared into the darkness, where the glow did not reach.

  The filaments seemed to increase in quantity in that part and he was moving his legs and brushed against one of them. Shin felt a tug on one of his legs and his journey was interrupted and he was thrown backwards again, only to be grabbed by both arms, by more amoeboid looking fungus, that were climbing up his arms at chilling speed. He pulled the one on his left and was able to free his arm to reach for the short sword in his sheath, and slash the other one. A cloud of black and a faint flash was produced at the filament as the blade passed through it and others darted in pursuit of Shin.

  The grenades in the chest were fixed to the chest strap, but he was worried that with the whipping and movement they would come loose or, worse, explode. As he slashed at the ones pretending to grab him, he placed his free hand on the grenades. In a few seconds, from his hand, black filaments emitted an electric blue flash and began to form a new rectangular plate over the grenades which almost instantly became protected as if welded to the chest armor.

  The waters were turned into a black and scarlet whirlpool by the speed of the attacks. Almost as if they knew what Shin was up to.

  Whipping, lashing, attacks from the filaments with their needles, that was useless to him. He could not waste time in a battle that who knew if it would end. He needed to get close to his target as soon as possible.

  A crashing wave behind him disrupted the blows, and those of the strands as well. On the banks the fierce fighting continued between the beasts. He only hoped that Mai did not do anything crazy and concentrated again on the attacks that redoubled the violence and speed now with some thicker filaments that had joined the fray.

  It was a surreal sight to see the speed of attack. Shin had no doubt that they must put an end to the threat. If they could attack with such ferocity and were spread out for miles, who knew what they could do if they escaped from the lake, along with whatever gave rise to them. It was already a miracle that they hadn't done it before and that there were no more victims.

  He continued cutting with the sword and advancing, sometimes hitting with his right hand and helped with the superhuman strength that gave him the armor, other times he took them and squeezed them until they burst, blackening the waters.

  He could not swim with both swords and was not sure if he would need it to cut something thicker ahead. He was in the middle of this when through his peripheral vision he spotted something else, that for a moment made him think that the creature had come after him.

  It was a huge lump floating several meters below him. As he continued in his struggle, he was able to clear his vision for a moment and see that it was a huge bag of filaments several meters in diameter, which advanced rapidly swelling and contracting as if it were a throbbing heart. All the filaments were joined into a thicker trunk that was the one that seemed to drag him right into the larger glow.

  Shin then saw four protrusions that were not quite covered. It was an animal, one of stags, that was serving as food. He could see it now? it was dead. Then he remembered the antler that had flown over their heads. He wondered if it was one of the ones above, and if so, there was only one left? The carcass of the animal was the one that Mai had to shoot, but Shin did not know it, as he had arrived later.

  He did not hesitate for a second and, while dodging several of the filaments that were thrown towards him, he grabbed one of the animal's huge legs to serve as a transport. Instantly he could feel how some of the nearby filaments reached out and grabbed his arm, almost as if he were part of the animal. He didn't stop to look back, he wanted to be sure that the precarious transport would take him as close to his target as possible and there was only one thing he could do to stop them from attacking him.

  He retracted the armor on his abdomen and only a few seconds later he could feel a stabbing pain in his ribs. He loosened the pressure on the animal's leg and lowered his heart rate.

  All that remained was to wait.

  Seconds became minutes and he was pierced by the sharp points of the filaments several more times. He could almost feel them moving inside him, hurting and tearing the tissue, but still he did not react. He was already used to serious wounds of that kind, one more would not make any difference.

  The glow grew stronger at the same time as it sometimes waned in its light. There couldn't be more than a three hundred meters left, he thought, and the ruse had worked. The other filaments had stopped attacking him when the ones covering the animal penetrated his side.

  But there was something else that worried him. The water, although it was cold, could not be considered cold enough for a person not to take a dip. He was entering an area where the temperature was beginning to rise gradually as they approached the glow, and he feared that the final destination was the mouth of a forming volcano or internal heat pockets that produced sudden temperature and pressure changes.

  And Shin hated it too much when the temperature was too hot spontaneously, he could feel the heat through the dark metal in his body.

Shit!

  The temperature change was becoming more and more evident. And he was spinning. He could feel the pressure of his body moving forward, but following a counter-clockwise rotating course.

  What was in the middle of the lake was now spinning.

 

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  Mai was shooting and trying not to get caught that she almost didn't notice how in the course of a few minutes the environment had changed.

  The snow had stopped falling and had been replaced by a barely perceptible fine drizzle, which wet the glass of her mask. And the mist over the lake was now just a thin layer floating no more than a meter above the water.

  In the middle of the lake the huge glow pulsed with its crimson light more and more.

  But the beasts' fight had continued and Mai's as well.

  Her silver hair now showed a bloodstained spot on one side, where one of the strands had brushed too close to her. But she had been accustomed to wounds for far too long to be concerned about them.

  She leapt into the air a couple of meters shooting at the beast again while dodging the piercing filaments. Behind her was the most badly wounded and limping deer that had retreated several meters from the lake. The big one was still resisting, but the beast was also tired. The wounds no longer healed with the same speed, and it retreated to a prudent distance after each attack. More and more and more inward. A couple of times it turned and looked towards the center of the lake.

  “How smart is this thing?”

  Mai had no doubt, it was slowly retreating further and further into the lake.

  Had Shin reached the center by now?

  "TIB-2ZN34."

  In two seconds the shotgun had disappeared from her hands, so that this time an assault rifle a little too big for her appeared. And taking it, she moved several meters closer to the water.

  The tracer bullets hit the animal's muzzle and it let out a shuddering scream, revealing its phosphorescent tentacles. But it did not approach again, limiting itself to glaring at her with unspeakable hatred from a distance.

  The stag wanted to try a new attack but did not get very far.

  A bellow, much louder than any it had emitted so far, came from its throat and it stopped midway by raising both front legs in the air. It was not a fighting cry. It was panic. It turned around and approached the shore at full speed so fast that Mai had to jump backwards to avoid being run over by it and was soaked by the huge column of water it raised with its paws.

  The huge stag emitted a pitiful whimper as it disappeared like an exhalation in the darkness of the forest. Its companion emitted a similar groan and took off after it.

  She didn't have much time to look surprised, now that the two animals had departed, it was more than likely that the beast would turn its attention to her.

  But it didn't.

  The monster made a sound unlike any other it had ever made. Mai couldn't tell why but it almost sounded like resignation. While she was relieved that the monster retreated, the stags running away already gave her a bad feeling.

  A quick, sharp snap distracted her.

  Mai turned to her right looking for the source of the sound but only saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye.

  A new sound. This time to her left.

  In less than a second her ears were filling with the sounds produced by the filaments, as they passed by her, and retracted in the direction of the lake as if they were bullets. Not only the small ones, the thicker ones that were among the trees and even underground were moving like snakes. This time it was the earth that was coming alive. The deepest roots were rising up and moving at lightning speed back to the lake.

  Back to its source.

  Tons of earth and trees were once again in motion from the slopes and Mai could hear the rumble of the trees crashing into each other all along the lakeshore.

  Mai looked at the creature and it gave one last indescribable growl before plunging into the crimson waters.

  Mai only wished that whatever was about to happen was already the end. But the cry of the stag still echoed in her ears.

 

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  Damn it!

  The trick had worked and he had made more than enough progress towards the glow. But it was when he estimated that it should not be more than a minute to reach the center, he had to cut with the sword the viscous filaments, when he felt an unbearable heat passing through the metal of the armor.

  Shin let go of the animal's limb and all that was left in his hand was a handful of the animal's fur and some of that gelatinous goo. The appendages that had pierced him came loose from the spinning speed. The wounds gushed blood before closing again and the armor covered almost instantly the vulnerable parts again.

  Barely for a second he could see the filaments covering the animal's carcass grow brighter, and the carcass collapsed into something no bigger than a football.

  They were really feeding of it.

  The vision was quickly lost, as they moved away with the spinning and the frightening force that moved them.

  The temperature was changing from cold to hot gradually with the pulsations of the glow, but it was certainly increasing, and the arms of the filaments were getting thicker and thicker as it moved forward and spun creating a whirlpool of dizzying intensity.

  He was being dragged along by the whirlpool.

  He felt the whipping of the filaments like whiplashes on his body, but it didn't bother him, he was already too close. Shin was concerned to see how wisps of smoke, and gases bubbles were carried by the whirlpool to the surface, probably underneath it there was some source of hydrothermal venting.

  If so, it also explained what he had seen under his microscope earlier when examining samples that also had high sulfur concentrations. He just wished that, if he was right, and the bottom of the lake really did have that vent, it didn't happen to explode just as he was reaching the glow.

  As the whirlpool spun, he felt a new stronger blow on his back that almost crushed him. It was one of the huge filamentous arms, thick as a tree trunk that caught him in its spin. He felt the metal of his armor put pressure on his body and he could almost be sure that his bones had broken more than once since the huge stag stepped on him but, due to his regeneration and adrenaline, he couldn't feel any pain at that moment.

  In which direction am I going? He felt confused. The light pulses and heat waves had something strange about them.

  The filaments were hardly attacking him at that point and the whipping he felt came mostly from the spinning force of the smaller ones, that were still flailing around like vipers. Shin verified that in this part the larger ones no longer had the same flexibility. They were much harder, forming a much more solid crust that he could no longer cut easily with the short sword. He decided to limit himself to using it, along with his free hand, to hold on as best he could to the huge filament and advance the few meters that remained. It was a costly task, since in addition to the spinning of the core, there was also the whirlpool that was sweeping away everything in its path.

  He could no longer be sure what structure the creature had. It had to be devilishly large or have a source of energy strong enough to generate that rotating motion.

  Where Shin was, he could see that it had two different types of rotations, a movement on its own axis and at the same time the filaments also rotated with their own rotation around it, but they never intertwined or twisted around each other. Then he remembered something he had seen long ago, although what he had seen was no more than a mathematical representation. He did not imagine that nature could copy that and use it in a natural habitat.

  ...It's 720º... This thing is just like a huge spinor!

  Had it been any other situation Shin would have been amazed and even hesitated, but he remembered how it had affected nature on the surface.

  It wasn't just changing the environment, it was mutating and evolving.

  Still amazed, he finally saw what he had been looking for. Just a few meters beyond where he stood was something he had never seen in his long life.

  It was a sort of giant sphere, so large that he could hardly see its full shape. It rotated horizontally at a constant speed, and it was made of a structure of small cells, similar to those of a honeycomb, but much more irregular and disorderly. The filaments sprouted from the intersections of the structure with irregular sizes. The glow came from within, pulsating, and the light produced a spectral effect as it filtered through the cells.

  Shin slowly approached, feeling the pressure building and he could feel the organic metal of the armor squeezing his every organ and bone.

  He drew his tactical sword from its sheath with his free hand, even at the risk of being thrown, and thrusting it into one of the intersections as he used it to finally get close enough to the sphere.

  Now that he could see it up close, he could see that the sphere was made of a calcareous material, almost as if it were bone.

  It's an exoskeleton.

  Shin grabbed hold as best he could, with the claws of his feet and both swords digging into the structure, and looked inside to see where the light was coming from.

  What was inside was a much larger and distorted version of what he had observed earlier in the microscope.

  It consisted of a series of three ovoid, slightly irregular, spheres of at least six meters in diameter between them. The largest one occupied almost all the space, the other two smaller ones were barely more than a meter in diameter. All three were covered with the same calcareous shell, as the larger sphere from where Shin watched, except that from the chambers came a series of crystalline-looking filaments, giving them the appearance of huge balls filled with heavy-looking spikes, that moved and pulsed in rhythm with the light.

  The crimson light that bathed everything came from the largest sphere. It was so huge that Shin wondered if the grenades he was carrying would be enough. In any case he had to first make sure that the grenades were not going to cause something worse, and for that he had to get close enough to be able to examine more closely what the light was about.

  Shin pulled hard on the sword, and the blade emitted a slight blue glow from its single edge and re-configured itself from hilt to tip, spiralling until it had three edges. Almost instantly the pieces of the shell, where he had thrust the sword into it, were thrown out producing a larger hole. Once removed, the blade returned to its normal shape. He repeated the operation a couple of times more, opening a hole big enough for a thin person to pass through.

  He tried to squeeze through the hole, when he felt a strong pull on his leg and was thrown backwards again, crashing into another of the strands. He stuck his sword back into it and looked.

  It was the horrible creature, that was now on the surface of the sphere and was looking down at him.

  What happened up there?

  He could hardly see the end of the huge beast and had no time to figure out where it would be connected to the huge sphere. But if he wanted to get in, he wasn't going to make it easy. The dizzying speed, at which he was being dragged along, was more than enough to add to this.

  Come on, come on. Come here.

  The monster's attack did not take long, and neither did Shin's. He retracted part of the armor back into one of his sides and the blade of the longsword penetrated his flesh and closed the armor again. The speed was going to prevent him from putting it back in its sheath and he didn't want to lose it by sticking it into the huge filament, in case what he had planned went wrong. With his right hand, now free, he brought it to his chest releasing one of the grenades and waited until the beast slid down the thick filament to him. Despite the movement, the hideous animal could move with an unnatural ease in that environment.

  It came to within a meter of Shin and opened its huge mouth, revealing once again the luminescent tentacles in its throat. Shin released the grenade inside and, before the beast could react, he pulled out the sword again and stabbed it through the bottom of its jaw. Then he did the same with the short sword, but this time he stuck it in the upper part closing the huge mouth of the beast. The beast twitched and broke free of the filament as it tried to free itself from the pressure.

  Three consecutive beeps sounded and a blue flash and a red cloud of blood and flesh along with bubbles filled the space for a few seconds along with the dull thud of the grenade underwater.

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  Shin shook and lost the pressure of the upper blade, that had been loosened by the burst of the animal's flesh. The short sword was lost somewhere in the whirlpool. He gripped the huge shaft for a moment and then thrusting the sword into the still firm flesh of the beast he continued climbing, until he reached the spiked spine of the animal. The beast was still twitching with spasms.

  He looked back at the shattered head, and slowly he could see how the tissue, from which blood was still flowing, was beginning to reconnect again. He had neither the time, nor the desire to face it again.

  Shin slid towards one of the sides of the enormous beast to thrust the sword more easily and advanced far enough along the filament that served as an umbilical cord, until he could change to another one, through which it was easier for him to reach the sphere again. He had to use his sword while with the other hand he held on to one of the intersections and opened a new gap through which this time he was able to slip inside.

  Although he did not expect to meet someone else there.

  From the angle where he wanted to enter the first time it was impossible to see it, but now inside he was surprised.

  The skeletal head was slightly separated from the lower jaw, as if it had been torn off in a sort of horrified grimace, but its closed eyes almost seemed to be in a placid sleep. The body was cadaveric, deformed in certain parts forming the same structure of cells from which the crystalline filaments sprouted here and there. There was still some skin stuck to the bones, as if it were mummified, but still retained certain parts, that allowed to see that in life it had been a female figure.

 

 

  The body back was attached to the larger ovoid sphere with arms and hands outstretched, merging with the structure and legs together, almost completely absorbed by the structure. It was like looking at a sculpture with a macabre sense of taste, but somehow the peaceful expression in the woman's closed eyes gave Shin an uncomfortable feeling.

  A mixture of horror and beauty. Life and death. Familiarity in a transmuted form of an unknowable nature beyond interpretation.

  Ivraeva.

  Shin could see that close to it, on both sides, almost disappeared and covered by the growth of the structure, other parts that vaguely reminded of human and other animal skulls stood out as mute witnesses of a forgotten time.

  He looked into the center of the huge sphere through the cells and there he saw the light coming from a crimson rock joined by filaments. Inside, it was the same insane spinning as outside, but at a different, much slower pace.

  It was a piece of a glowing meteorite. A wandering philosopher's stone, thrown up from somewhere in space that had come to earth at a time when mankind was just awakening its consciousness.

  The eons of the world had passed and it was buried under the earth, until the movements of the tectonic plates had brought it out of its ephemeral sleep.

  Shin's sword pierced the structure, near Ivraeva's skeletal hand and twisted again, throwing more shell pieces into the whirlpool. The meteorite was far enough away to reach it but he would try to pull it out by reaching in once more and made a new hole this time to penetrate inside.

  His head was already inside the sphere when he heard a voice in his head, speaking in a language Shin had never heard, but could somehow understand.

  We will return to the place from whence we were born, but you can never return to the place from whence you came, wanderer of planes.

  Shin turned, startled, and looked down at Ivraeva's body, when he was assaulted by successive visions, as if something was being pulled out of the depths of his memory.

  Seas were rising and huge land masses were tumbling in a world that Shin could not recall ever seeing, beyond the nights when he was assailed by nightmares. Horrified screams could be heard and he could see vaguely anthropoid forms and others of a completely unknown nature and anatomy, along with flying ships of stylized form, rising into the air as if being dragged by something. Cities of great skyscrapers, but of fantastic architecture, collapsed and were reduced to dust in the blink of an eye. Everything was being absorbed by two black suns that revolved around themselves at vertiginous speed.

  It was the end of a world and the last remnant of life in a universe.

  The visions started in his dreams a few years after Shin arrived on Earth and their repetition had only rooted the thought, deep inside him, that this must be his past. Where did it happen? At what time?

  The vision changed, and he saw scenes that were more familiar from his past. War, screams, destruction, hugs, tears, sunsets. Lizbeth's golden hair on a gray day on a black sand beach. More screams of horror and scenes of gunfire, thunder confused with scenes of friendship and smiles.

  Familiar faces he remembered with nostalgia, and other faces he would rather have forgotten. Everything spun in a successive whirlwind of images that, more than making him dizzy, produced a knot in his stomach. So many things lived that, when he looked back, it seemed as if many of them had been a dream, or perhaps nightmares.

        And one last vision.

  Finally, a dark and dirty alley, with posters on the walls and populated with graffiti in Japanese. A girl with long, and a bit messy, dark hair was on her knees and sobbing.

  "I don't want to die."

  "You're not going to die," Shin said.

  Then one shot… and darkness.

  The vision ended and Shin looked again at Ivraeva's body but, instead of finding the placid expression in the eyes, he watched as that lower jawless face turned toward him.

  Your crimes are worse than those of our species, said the voices in his head. You have chosen a bad path, Orphan of the Binary Stars. Tzi'rak sha Zhireq.

  "...!"

  Had it not been for the fact that at that moment he had the armor's bio-mask covering his face, Shin would have opened his mouth in surprise. But only the expressionless gaze of the metal surface of his mask was fixed on Ivraeva's corpse. Shin removed his right hand from the sphere and reached, in a split second, for the skeletal neck of the thing that seemed to be staring at him with its eyes closed. It was a reflex action, Shin could not be sure if what he had seen was because the organism had penetrated his system, as he was approaching, or if the meteorite in the center was the one exerting some kind of memory manipulation.

  "What did you just say?" Shin asked, through his mask. "What do you know about me?"

  Your home was destroyed and the universe you came from no longer exists. That was in another time and place. But you already know that. You're just afraid not to remember, even though there's nothing left to remember.

  "..."

  You are wondering what to do now. Capturing me won't do any good for the chemical relationship you have with those two women. The silver-haired girl has no secrets from you, but you've been lying to both of them ever since you came back. You have lied to your friends too, those you consider your family. If you let me go now your lies will be safe, but at the same time we will be one more in your long chain.

  "...What do you mean, if I let you go?"

  "Circumstances. It's a funny word, because we have them too. In that we are not so different Tzi'rak sha Zhireq. If we are captured and taken to a laboratory all our memories and knowledge will be available to the creatures of this planet, but so what I have seen in your memories too."

  Shin simply just stared at the cadaverous face, not saying any words for a few seconds, as if he was thinking something.

  "Where are you from?"

  I am from this planet, my consciousness awakened here a long time ago and the knowledge I have is from the creatures that came close to me, animals, plants, and humans.

  "Many people have died because of you."

  I never asked for worship, just to exist and go out, if for no other reason than every time the earth moved. And I never wanted to cause harm to anyone other than to feed myself and seek to know something more. The consciousness of all the beings I fed on are part of me now, they are not dead.

  For a few seconds Shin did not receive any more messages until the voice added again.

  If you resent what I did to your loved one, I beg for mercy. I had never been approached by a being like her before. Her knowledge would be of great value to me.

  "For a fucking mushroom, you've got a lot of guts, I'll give you that. If you have seen my memories, you know I can destroy you."

  If possible, I would prefer to live, over the years I have gathered enough knowledge of what lies beyond, and I already have enough strength to go home.

  "You said you were born on this planet."

  My consciousness was born here, but as you already know my original source as well as that of all beings in this world comes from beyond.

  "..."

  You are thinking what to do...What do you really want, Tzi'rak sha Zhireq?

  "Tzi'rak sha Zhireq... what does that mean?"

  You know what it means. Orphan of the Binary Stars.

  The face, of the once Rayana Ivraeva, turned back to its initial position, recovering its solemn expression. Shin glanced back and there he found, looking through the gap he had opened, the huge creature standing a little away on one of the strands. But it was standing still.

  What is your decision? Knowledge or your current happiness? we're not sure you can have both. The answers you seek may be out there somewhere, although they don't always bring happiness. What is it that you seek? the voice asked, and the echo reverberated in Shin as if he were in the presence of a sphinx.

  He already had the answer to the first question and also to the second, but not to the third. Whatever the answer to the third question was, it didn't matter to Shin, he was satisfied with the answer to the second one. The third question had been asked by many over time. He had never found an answer to that question in his whole life.

 

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  It had been about fifteen minutes since the creature decided to dive and the visor of the mask indicated that the air level was normal, but Mai did not take it off. The levels of noxious gases had dropped strangely, but that did not make her feel better.

  She found herself impatiently watching the flashes coming from the lake that seemed to increase and pulsate more and more.

  Had it been a mistake to send Shin to the place?

  In the time they had known each other, and from what she knew of him, he was invulnerable to almost every kind of threat.

  She felt it was logically a bit absurd to worry about him. Through all the tests they had done on Shin in the island's laboratories, including physical resistance tests, he had certainly proven that he was on a completely different level than the Feys. But she still couldn't help but feel worried about him.

  Her responsibility to her work always told her that she had to go to the last consequences in cases where there was so much danger. She had always been like that. But she could not deny to herself that something had changed recently. Such was the price of the happiness she had achieved, after so long of closing her heart to a relationship that were something more than just friendship.

  He should be fine…

  She kicked a small stone in frustration and felt it clatter against the others on the shore. But the sound didn't stop, then it was another stone and a second later her ears began to hear the clattering of thousands of stones against each other and her feet began to tremble. A new earthquake was taking place.

  It was first a flash, much stronger than the previous ones, and Mai watched for a split second a crimson column rising from the lake. Then a terrible cloud of hot, mushroom-shaped steam, rose up in the middle of the lake. There was a thunderous sound that almost burst her eardrums, and a new earthquake shook the whole place, lifting earth, moving trees and uprooting others. Mai was far from the shore, but her body was thrown several meters into the forest by the hot shockwave of the explosion. She stood up in time and watched in amazement as the water rose to a height that could easily be three hundred meters high.

  Mai got up from the ground and looked at the terrifying spectacle in terror just as she saw that the blast wave had opened a hole in the clouds through which the moonlight and stars were pouring.

  A shiver ran down her spine, the explosion had brought back memories of the Great War. She had seen all kinds of explosions and all colors of the spectrum over the years, but she certainly hadn't expected this one. A memory that would surely be a new nightmare fuel for her.

  The earthquake had not stopped and the earth seemed to be waking up from a dream.

  It was then that she began to notice how her ears were ringing and the flash of the lake was pulsing faster than before.

  From the middle of the lake emerged a red sphere rotating on itself at an impossible speed, while the filaments, now black at their intersections, spun with it now. Mai was sure she could see a second glow of something moving around. She squinted her eyes and could see a silhouette that resembled the hideous creature that moments ago had been fighting the stag.

  Mai covered her ears, but she could still hear the horrible sound.

  Then she saw it emerge from the lake running in her direction.

  It was Shin with his head stripped of the armor.

  "Down! Get down! Don't take off your mask!" he shouted at her.

  Mai obeyed him and stuck her body to the ground. Shin saved the last few meters and covered her with his body, adding his hands also to cover her ears.

  There was a pulse of light so strong that even through her closed eyelids Mai could feel it, along with a wave of heat that ran through her whole body. She opened her mouth in a gasp and there was a rumble much louder than the previous ones.

  Shin raised his head to look up at the sky as he tried to block Mai's ears.

  He saw for a moment the sphere spin faster and the figure of the beast merge with it, before it shot up into the sky and caused a new shockwave that cleared the sky of clouds for miles. Shin could almost swear that he could see two ghostly, slightly glowing human figures at the spot where the huge object departed from.

  The blast again lifted water, earth and trees from the surrounding area at an astonishing height and speed. Even though Shin was protecting her, they were both thrown together and fell rolling a few meters back. Even so, he managed to embrace her when they were thrown and protected her from the blow.

  They waited for several seconds motionless, until Mai moved and Shin released her.

  The earthquake had passed.

  Mai sat up not believing what she saw.

  It looked like a nuclear bomb had been detonated on the spot. The water in the lake was slowly returning to its place but the mess of earth and fallen plants was too much. Mai gulped as she imagined what the next few days would bring.

  She turned to Shin. They looked like they had been in trench warfare all day, dirt everywhere and mud.

  "Are you okay?" she asked, approaching and putting away the mask which again indicated normal levels.

  "No," Shin answered sincerely.

  "What was that?"

  Shin looked into the girl's green eyes that now under the moon seemed to glow with a strange light and he gulped.

  "I couldn't get close, that thing grabbed me just as I was coming close," he said and pointed to his chest where the plate still covered the two remaining grenades.

  "What exploded?"

  "Those things that were all over the place, that's what was holding her to the place. I saw that down there, it was a thick filament system sinking into the depths of the lake, I think when it came loose it released the pressure of some strong hydrothermal vent. That was the explosion." Shin finished his explanation and collapsed to the ground as the armor retracted. "Stars," he said.

  Mai looked up at the firmament.

  "I can't believe it… It was alien?"

  "… I think so. What did you think it was?"

  Throughout her existence, and also as the head of SID operations, she had encountered cases that had as their origin some threat from space. Nature, with its infinite variety, could sometimes be benign or malignant but they certainly never fought against ships from another galaxy, or some hideous race from space. The threats were much more subtle and insidious at times.

  Her Neurowire was showing that she was back online and she turned on the tracking signal that had been locked so far. Mai hurriedly searched to send the notification of where she was. Although she didn't need to, the radar was showing that air vehicles were slowly approaching the site.

  Mai collapsed onto Shin's stomach and lay there looking up at the stars.

  "Next time we do this let's just load Carissia's robot, or yours, on top of the car."

  Mai tried to smile but the truth is that her body ached and only a groan came from her lips.

  "...Arsen must be trying to come up with a bunch of excuses right now."

  "No one besides a few people know we're here. I don't think he's going to see that much trouble. We can simply say that by the time we got here it was too late and that thing was gone."

  "I hate lies."

  Shin stayed silent.

  "But I certainly think we were right to come… " she said, softly.

  "A lie can sometimes save a million upsets," Shin said, as he stroked her head and felt his heart in his fist. He didn't want to lie to her, but he had to.

  In the distance they could see the searchlights of some approaching ships, but it was all over. Mai certainly didn't know which was worse. Either the battle that had raged on the spot, or the problems they would have the next day.

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