His Portrait

Excerpt from A History of the Okan Cluster: The Rise of the Tyralian Republic

The original colonists to the Okan system had not charted the full extent of the ecliptic asteroid belt that disabled their ship.  When they landed on the largest moon of the gas giant Tisella, they did not expect to survive past the point when life-support failed on their ship.

Tyral had other ideas.

It was not until five years after landing that the first of the children born of the planet began to manifest Talent.  The official explanation for the abilities manifest by native-born humans was that the bio-nanites used to maintain basic health maintenance while the crew was in stasis had undergone excessive exposure to cosmic radiation, allowing mutation that normal programming parameters considered unfit.

As the civilization of Tyral arose, the rest of the galaxy soon sequestered the area, fearful of its potential.  Isolated and alone, chaos erupted, and the full breadth and meaning of Talent would be tested in every conceivable way.

Chapter One

The Season of Darkness,

Year 2673 Post-Landing

There was no record of a true seer on Tyral.  Augury or prophesy was claimed by many as a fascinating hobby, but wasn’t something that she’d ever thought to be worthy of study.  Half the time, the vague statements made could apply to anyone, in any way.  It wasn’t logical and there was no way to verify it.  At least not until some prediction actually happened.  Jaran was the one whose life was wrapped up with prophesy, with the burden that every Freeman thought he could save the world.  Iona was just his friend, as was Lir.  Iona’s dreams didn’t come true.

But her nightmares did.

Just as in all the silly action vids her father loved, time seemed to stand still as Nephos turned his power on Lir and laughed at Jaran’s stricken expression.  Iona Gabal could only hear a buzzing sound during the actual event, but she knew the dialogue from the dreams that had haunted her for months-on-end. 

Nephos was barely human in form any longer, the matrix of powercasters he’d laid across his body was so thick it appeared that he had scales instead of skin.  Nephos’s face was so distorted, he could not manage to sneer as well as usual as he continued his evil monologue, “Why should I care that you and your friends managed to uncover the Spell of Rinon, much less that you freed some pathetic fools from carrying the glorious burden of my immortality?  Did you think I would fall at your feet and beg to be allowed to live out the sliver of my life that would leave me?” His black eyes skimmed over Lir before returning to pin Jaran with disdain. “That after all I have accomplished, I wouldn’t take whatever, whomever, I choose to make victory complete?”

Jaran’s eyes flicked momentarily sideways; Lir stood defiant, determined anger etched over his face, radiating from his eyes.

“Your loyal minions mean so much to you, Jaran Arza. How appropriate that I should be here to teach you this valuable lesson.”  He laughed with a high, piercing screech; the only clue that he was getting desperate as his followers fell around him, victims of the concerted attack by the hundreds of Free Sorcerers the four of them had worked so hard to unite in the past years. Jaran’s eyes were filled with fear and hate and Iona saw that this was exactly what Nephos wanted.   

But she was trapped; left as a mere observer when one of the Nefari had cast a freeze net on her, with ever intention of claiming her as the spoils of war once his master had crushed this little insurrection.  Lir had seen and flung the most powerful memespear she’d even seen at her tormentor, carrying the brute fifteen feet through the air before leaving him impaled on a pike of living plasma. There was no time to untangle her from the mess of net she was surrounded with and so Lir had cast a shield around her and ran back to Jaran’s side.  Iona could not even scream to warn him of what was coming. Srina was engaged in a heated duel with her cousin Mikah, who had dropped all the allegiances of his birth and joined the Nefari in the quest for power, and for the right to own Srina’s body and soul. 

Mikah had dragged Srina from Jaran’s side, and Jaran ached with worry for her, but he had to stay focused or all was lost. The battle raged on too fierce, and no one, especially not Lir and Jaran, had time to free Iona or come to Srina’s aid.  Iona could only watch transfixed, as the scene she relived almost every night played out again to its sorrowful conclusion. 

The tiny moon Mneme, reflected the pale blue glow of the planet Tisella on to the blasted surface of the Tyralian landscape.  Otherwise, the night was darkness interrupted only by the distant stars and the flashes of spellcasting as both side struggled for dominance.  Whips of living fire threatened to slice and maim, and were quelled with drenching waterspouts.  Guardian spirits made of plasma fire did battle for their casters and spears and arrows made of thought made flesh and inferno burned down from the sky like deadly rain, dashing against shields that were weakening as the battle took its toll on reserves of power and spirit.

Jaran fought to stand, his body weak from the torture inflected by the curse nanites Nephos had flooded into his system. His left leg was sliced to the bone by a vicious swipe from Mikah Salid’s wolf familiar.  Still, Jaran’s mind was sharper than ever, his will honed sharp and true as the blade he clutched in his right hand.  On it was the blood of every poor soul Nephos had ever laid down his soul-geis upon.  All of that blood had been voluntarily given, each man or woman freed from the tricks and lies of the most powerful spellcaster Tyral had every known.

Jaran was determined. It ended here. It ended now. 

“There’s nothing you can do now, Nephos.  You can offer no one everlasting life, not even yourself. No one will stay with you.  No one will support you this time.  It’s time to end this.”

The reptilian pupils flared with something that may have resembled pain, and Iona fought with all her considerable will against the fiery net binding her; she knew what was going to happen, she saw it clearly in her mind; had seen it so many times before.   Her paralysis lessened, almost enough for her to use her voice to call out a warning to Lir, but the weak croak she emitted was too soft to do anything but frustrate her.  Instead, she had to watch, for what seemed like the thousandth time, as Nephos bellowed out the trigger word “Odzielaja duch!” 

She’d looked it up countless times; a seemingly random phrase in something resembling a lost language from the eastern edge ancient-Earth’s continent of Europa.  Her dreams of this moment had given them breakthroughs in the long struggle toward this day, and had led Srina to finding texts that helped discover how to break the Spell of Rihon that had kept Nephos alive for a thousand years.  But Iona had never found this exact casting trigger and so had convinced herself that this dream meant nothing, just a sign of the stress she was under.  But in this nightmare world, the results of this spell were clear every time:  Lir, her Lir, simply disintegrated. 

The look of angry horror on his face collapsed into hundreds of thousands of tiny reddish specks, and those specks flew toward Nephos’s outstretched hand, ready to absorbed as pure energy, enough to power another hundred years of evil magic.

“Lir!” She screamed, as loudly as her stiff vocal cords would allow, and waited to wake up.  She always woke up here.  Always.

Wake up! Wake up, now! Oh no, no, no….

But not this time.  This time, Nephos laughed and hate flared again in Jaran’s opalescent gray eyes.  “You’ll learn, young Jaran, that followers are good for nothing but what you can use them for.  That bootlicker will now become my strength, instead of yours.”

Iona still couldn’t move, although she was starting to get her fingers to twitch.  Calling up every shred of power from every powercaster encased in her flesh, she tried to force herself into action.  She couldn’t look at Jaran’s face, or Nephos’s sneering slit of a mouth.  She watched in paralyzing horror those livid red particles float through the air.  All that was left of Lir Morgan.

But they weren’t red anymore.  The color moved slowly through the spectrum as they were halted in their progress, fighting the journey across the wide crevasse that had opened in the ground separating Nephos and his minions from the renegade Free Sorcerers and Jaran.  She kept staring at the tiny bits of light, blue as the sea, blue as Tisella, blue as the blue of Lir’s eyes stormy in passion.

She barely registered as Jaran said evenly, “What makes you think that if you bind my life to yours, that it would stop me from killing you?” 

Srina, finished with the shell of Mikah, screamed berserker-like and flung herself across the rubble separating her from Jaran.  As her arms wrapped around him, Jaran became visibly reinvigorated; energy seemed to bubble up inside him.   Her screams distracted Nephos from the balance he had held between his spell and shielding from Jaran;  he was recalculating his attack quickly with this additional threat to consider.

No one but Iona seemed to see those sparks, those tiny bits of Lir, had come to a dead stop.  Iona knew what she had to do.  Her eyes filled with tears when she realized that this was no dream, and she whispered the words of power she’d hoped she’d never have to say.  “Vado domus…..go home, Lir.  Go home.” 

The sparks that were Lir erupted upward, into the night sky, their brilliant blue color outshining the light of Mneme.  Nephos keened a sickly moan, and Jaran, for once in his prophesied struggles with the tyrant, didn’t hesitate.  With a strength born of love and grief, he flung his sword across the few yards between him and his lifelong nemesis.  His aim was true and utter silence descended on the field, as Nephos fell for the last time. 

Nephos the Tyrant was dead.  And so was Lir Morgan.