The Fate of Ten

  “That’s true,” the blond replies, grinning. “You could learn a lot from me.”

  I don’t have eyes in the traditional sense here, but the vision seems to blink. In that split second, the boys sitting on the beach appear as the men they’ll grow into. The blond guy is handsome, athletic, with kind eyes—and I’m not paying any attention to him. Instead, I’m drawn to the hulking form seated beside him, deathly pale, with a ghastly scar around his neck.

  Setrákus Ra.

  This scene must be hundreds of years ago. Maybe more than a thousand. It’s back before Setrákus Ra joined the Mogadorians, before he became a monster.

  A split second later, they’re teenagers again. The blond-haired boy pats young Setrákus Ra on the back as they continue to watch the girl dance. I’m shocked by how normal he seems, a young guy sitting on the beach, staring glumly at a girl he likes.

  Where did it all go so wrong?

  The vision melts away, blending seamlessly into another.

  My grandfather and his friend stand in a giant domed room, a map of Lorien stenciled in glowing Loralite across the ceiling. They’re not boys anymore, more like young men. How many years later is this? It could be decades with the way we Loric age. If they were human, I’d guess they were in their late twenties, but who knows what that translates to in Loric years. They stand in front of a huge round table that grows right out of the floor, like it’s made from a tree no one bothered to cut down. Carved into the center of the table is the Loric symbol for “unity.”

  I know that because Legacy knows.

  Around the table are ten chairs, all of them filled with very serious-looking Loric except for two that sit empty. Stadium seating like in a big movie theater surrounds the round table on all sides. It’s packed today, every row at capacity, Garde squeezed in elbow to elbow.

  This, I realize, is the chamber of the Elders. It’s where the Elders gather in the presence of the Garde to make the big decisions. The whole scene reminds me of senate setups I’ve seen on Earth, except with a lot more glowing Loralite. Currently, all eyes are on a slender Elder with straight white hair and gentle eyes. Aside from the white hair, he doesn’t look much older than my grandfather. But the way he carries himself projects an aura of seniority.

  He is Loridas. He’s an Aeternus, like me, which means he can appear a lot younger than he actually is. Everyone listens respectfully as he begins to speak.

  “We gather here today to honor our fallen,” Loridas says, his voice carrying through the entire chamber. “Our latest attempt to improve diplomatic relations with the Mogadorians was rebuffed. Violently. It appears the Mogadorians only accepted our delegation onto their world so that they could slaughter them. In the ensuing battle, our Garde were able to cripple their interstellar capabilities, which will keep them confined to their home world for some time. We still believe that there are those among the Mogadorians who value peace above war, but their society must reach this conclusion on its own. We Elders view further engagement with Mogadore to be detrimental to both our species and theirs. Therefore, all contact with Mogadore is forbidden until further notice.”

  Loridas pauses for a moment. He glances to the two empty chairs at the table and a frown deepens the lines on his face. He suddenly looks much, much older.

  “We lost many brothers and sisters during this latest battle, including two Elders,” Loridas continues. “Their given names, long ago set aside so that they might become Elders, were Zaniff and Banshevus. They served loyally on this council for many ages, shepherding our people through times of war and times of peace. We will reflect on them in the days to come. However, the chairs of Setrákus Ra and our leader, Pittacus Lore, must not sit empty. We move forward, as we Loric always do, and recognize that we did not only suffer losses on Mogadore. We also made heroes. Come forward, you two.”

  When Lordias commands it, my grandfather and his friend step up to the table. The blond guy allows himself a grim smile and nods to the many people gathered in the gallery. On the other hand, my grandfather, tall and gaunt as he’d be centuries later, seems hardly aware of what’s going on. He looks haunted.

  “Your quick action, bravery and powerful Legacies saved many lives on Mogadore,” Loridas says. “We, the Elders, have long seen your potential and know well the great things you shall accomplish for our people. Thus, it is on this day that we offer you these empty seats and welcome you as Loric Elders, to serve and protect Lorien, its people and the peace. Do you accept this sacred duty and swear to place the needs of your people above all else?”

  The blond man bows his head, knowing his part in the ceremony. “I accept,” he says.

  My grandfather, lost in his own thoughts, says nothing. After a moment of awkward silence, his friend nudges him.

  “Yes,” Setrákus Ra says, bowing as well. “I accept.”

  Years later, the blond man sprints down the hallway of a modest home. Broken glass crunches under his feet. The place is trashed. Tables are overturned, picture frames knocked off the walls, glass vases shattered into millions of pieces.

  “Celwe?” he yells. “Are you all right?”

  “In here,” a woman’s shaky voice responds.

  He bursts through two bamboo double doors and into a brightly lit bedroom, the beautiful beach from before visible through the room’s sprawling windows. This room is as wrecked as the rest of the house. The bed is flipped over completely, bookshelves are toppled and their contents scattered and even the floorboards themselves are uneven. It’s like someone had a telekinetic tantrum in here.

  Gazing out the window is the auburn-haired woman who many years ago danced away the night on the beach. Celwe. Hugging herself, she doesn’t turn around when the man enters the room.

  “I met him right out there,” Celwe says, motioning at the beach. “He was so shy at first. Always in his own head. Sometimes I’m still surprised he got up the nerve to marry me.”

  “What happened here?” he asks as he slowly approaches.

  “We had an argument, Pittacus.”

  “You and Setrákus?”

  Celwe snorts and spins to face him. My grandfather’s childhood friend, the man who must have become the next Pittacus Lore. Her eyes are red-rimmed from crying but she seems unharmed otherwise. “Oh, don’t call him that. That title has brought nothing but trouble.”

  “It’s who he is now,” Pittacus replies earnestly. “It’s a great honor.”

  Her eyes narrow. “It was hard enough being married to a Garde. We used to talk about having children, you know. Now, after that trip to Mogadore, after becoming an Elder . . . I hardly see him. When I do, all he talks about is that project, his obsession.”

  Pittacus tilts his head. “What project?”

  Celwe swallows, maybe realizing that she’s said too much. She walks away from the window and goes to the bed. She begins to push the wooden frame away from the mattress so that she can flip the thing right side up but thinks better of it, instead looking to Pittacus.

  “Help me out, would you?”

  Pittacus uses his telekinesis to turn the bed over, straightening the covers at the same time. His eyes never leave Celwe.

  “So easy for you,” she mutters as she sits down on the newly made bed.

  Pittacus sits down next to her. “What is Setrákus working on?”

  She takes a deep breath. “It’s a dig. Out in the mountains. I shouldn’t—I don’t know how exactly to explain it. What he does out there . . . he says he does it for me, Pittacus. Like it’s a gift.” Celwe’s voice catches. There are tears in her eyes. “But I don’t want it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Pittacus replies.

  “You should see it for yourself,” she says. “Don’t . . . don’t tell him I told you.”

  “Are you scared of him?” Pittacus asks, his voice low. “Has he hurt you?”

  “He hasn’t hurt me. And I’m only scared of what he might become.” Celwe reaches out and grasps Pittacus’s hand. “Just make hi
m come home, Pittacus. Please. Make him see reason and bring my husband back to me.”

  “I will.”

  Pittacus streaks through the sky, flying, slicing through clouds. He dips through a mountain range and then shoots downwards into a deep chasm, like a bigger version of the Grand Canyon. As he descends, walls the color of sandstone flecked with Loralite gems rising up on all sides, Pittacus notices an array of complicated machinery and heavy-duty construction gear below him. Someone’s been digging deeper, as if this chasm wasn’t already deep enough.

  Pittacus’s gaze turns, like mine, to the towering piece of machinery at the dig site’s center. Twisted beams of steel augmented with blinking circuits and Loralite symbols—it’s like a bulkier, less-refined version of the pipeline Setrákus Ra lowered from the Anubis.

  So this is what Legacy meant when it said Setrákus Ra had pulled it apart before. This is where it all started, all these centuries ago. The beginning of my grandfather’s descent into madness.

  When Pittacus lands, a young Loric in a lab coat hustles forward to greet him. His skin is oddly pale for a Loric and he moves in a way that’s almost robotic, as if his limbs are no longer quite in sync with his brain. Pittacus seems taken aback by his appearance, but it doesn’t put him off his task.

  “Where is Setrákus?” he asks.

  “He’s at the Liberator,” the young Loric says, and points towards the giant pipeline. “Is he expecting you, Elder Lore?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Pittacus replies, and marches towards the so-called Liberator. The pale Loric gets out of his way, but Pittacus hesitates. He turns back to study the kid. “What has he been doing out here? What has he done to you?”

  “I . . .” The guy hesitates, like he isn’t supposed to say. But then, he holds out his hand, concentrates and levitates a handful of rocks with his telekinesis. It seems like a real strain for him.

  Pittacus cocks his head, surprised. “You’re Garde? Why don’t I know you?”

  “That’s the thing,” the guy replies, “I’m not Garde. I’m nobody.”

  During his weak telekinesis demonstration, black veins began to pop out on the Loric guy’s forehead. Pittacus takes notice of these and reaches out to touch the young man’s face. He flinches away.

  “It’s . . . it’s a work in progress,” the pale guy says. “I haven’t had my augmentation today.”

  “Augmentation,” Pittacus whispers under his breath, then strides purposefully towards the Liberator machine. He passes a handful of other assistants on his way there, all of them similarly pale and skittish. I can feel the anger building inside him, or maybe that’s my own rage, or maybe it’s both. We’re witnessing something truly corrupt.

  The Liberator is turned on. It emits the same grinding and shrieking as the pipeline Setrákus Ra lowered from the Anubis. There are lumps of Loralite dumped all around the dig site, like the crew here had to rip the bluish rocks out of the earth to get at the current beneath. Loric energy is pulled up from the ground and transferred into big, pill-shaped glass containers. Once in the containers, the energy goes through processing—it’s zapped by high-frequency sound waves and blasted with subzero bursts of chemical-filled air, all until the energy somehow becomes solid matter. Then, it is churned by a roller covered in razor-sharp blades before passing through a series of filters.

  The result is a black sludge that Setrákus is able to fill a test tube with. He’s in the process of doing just that when Pittacus comes upon him.

  “Setrákus!”

  My grandfather looks up and actually smiles. He’s proud. There are black veins running under his skin, too, and his dark hair has begun to thin out. Surprisingly, he’s excited to see Pittacus and sets aside his twisted work to greet him.

  “Old friend,” Setrákus Ra says, approaching with open arms. “How long has it been? If I missed another meeting of the Elder council, tell Loridas I’m sorry but—”

  By way of greeting, Pittacus grabs the front of Setrákus Ra’s shirt and slams him into one of the Liberator’s support beams. Although he’s smaller than Setrákus, he manages to take the larger man by surprise.

  “What is this, Setrákus? What have you done?”

  “What do you mean? Unhand me, Pittacus.”

  Pittacus checks his temper. I really wish he wouldn’t. He takes a deep breath, lets go of Setrákus and takes a step back.

  “You’re mining Lorien,” Pittacus says, clearly trying to wrap his mind around the dig site. “You’re—what did you do to these people?”

  “The volunteers? I helped them.”

  Pittacus shakes his head. “This is wrong, Setrákus. This looks . . . it looks like you’ve defiled our world.”

  Setrákus laughs. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It only frightens you because you don’t understand it.”

  “Explain it to me, then!” Pittacus yells, and small flames erupt from the corners of his eyes.

  “Where to begin . . . ,” Setrákus says, running a hand over his scalp. “We were together on Mogadore. You saw the hate the Mogs had for us. The savagery. What good could ever come of that place?”

  “It will take time,” Pittacus replies. “One day, the Mogadorians will choose peace. Loridas believes that, and so do I.”

  “But what if they don’t? They endanger not just our way of life, but the entire galaxy. Why should we simply contain them and wait for their mind-set to improve when we could hasten their evolution? What if the Mogadorians we chose, the ones we see as peaceful and potential allies—what if we could give them Legacies? Make them Garde? Leaders among their people, capable of excising the warlike and dangerous? We could change the fate of an entire species, Pittacus.”

  “We aren’t gods,” Pittacus replies.

  “Says who?”

  A moment of silence follows. Pittacus takes a step away from his old friend.

  “It’s all I’ve thought about since we returned from Mogadore,” Setrákus continues. “Not just the Mogadorians, either. Us. All of us. The Loric. Why are there Garde and Cêpan? We have peace, yes, but at what expense? A caste system where our leaders are decided by who is and isn’t lucky enough to be born with Legacies? We Elders sit around a table that reads ‘unity,’ but how are we equal?”

  “It is as Lorien wills it—”

  Setrákus barks a bitter laugh. “Nature, fate, destiny. We are beyond these childish concepts, Pittacus. We control Lorien, not the other way around. You, me, everyone—we could choose our own fate, our own Legacies. My wife, she could—”

  “Celwe would be disgusted by this and you know it,” Pittacus counters. “She’s worried about you.”

  “You . . . you spoke to her?”

  “Yes. And I saw the mess you made of your home.”

  Setrákus Ra’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth hangs open, almost like he’s been slapped. I half expect him to start shouting Pittacus down in the haughty tone he used so often with me on board the Anubis. I can see the arrogance that I know so well in his expression, but also something more. He isn’t so far gone yet. Competing with my grandfather’s delusions of grandeur is a healthy dose of shame.

  “I . . . I lost my temper,” Setrákus Ra says after a moment.

  “You’ve lost a lot of things and stand to lose more if you don’t stop this,” Pittacus replies. “Maybe our world isn’t perfect. Maybe we could do more, Setrákus. But this—this isn’t the answer. You aren’t helping anyone. You’re making them sick and torturing our natural world.”

  Setrákus shakes his head. “No. It’s not . . . this is progress, Pittacus. Sometimes, progress needs to be painful.”

  Pittacus’s expression turns steely. He turns towards the Liberator and watches the steady flow of Loric energy wrestled free from the planet’s core. He makes his decision quickly. Fire courses over his hands and arms.

  “Go home to Celwe, Setrákus. Try to forget about this madness. I will . . . clean up what you’ve done here.”

  For a moment, Setrákus seems to co
nsider this. I root for him, I really do. I wish he would realize that Pittacus is right, turn his back on his machinery and head home to my grandmother. But I already know how it all turns out.

  My grandfather’s expression darkens and the flames growing in intensity from Pittacus are suddenly extinguished. “I can’t let you do that,” he says.

  The Elders’ Chamber is empty now except for Pittacus and Loridas. The younger Garde slumps in his high-backed chair, his face bruised and his knuckles raw. The older Garde stands on the other side of the table, bent over a glowing object, working at whatever it is with his gnarled hands.

  “I don’t agree with their decision,” Pittacus says.

  “Our decision,” Loridas corrects him, gently. “You had a vote. All nine of us did.”

  “Execution is too far. He doesn’t deserve that.”

  “He was your friend,” Loridas replies. “But he is not that man anymore. His experiments would corrupt our very way of life. They pervert everything that is pure about Lorien. It cannot be allowed to continue. He must be removed entirely. Erased from our history. Even his seat on the Elders shall not be filled, he has damaged it so. His malignance cannot be allowed to take root and spread.”

  “I heard all this when we convened, Loridas.”

  “If I bore you, then why are you still here?”

  Pittacus sighs deeply. He looks down at his hands.

  “We grew up together. You named us Elders together. We . . .” His voice trembles and he pauses to steady himself. “I want to be the one to do it.”

  Loridas locks eyes with Pittacus. Satisfied that the younger man is serious, he nods.

  “I thought you might.”

  Loridas activates his Aeturnus, his features slowly smoothing out until he looks much younger. Pittacus watches this with a raised eyebrow.

  “He took your Legacies the last time you met,” Loridas says. “Beat you into retreat.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Pittacus replies, voice a growl.

  “Show me.”

  Pittacus focuses on Loridas. A moment later, the skin on Loridas’s face turns saggy and wrinkled, his hairline recedes drastically and his body withers within his ceremonial Elder robe. He looks even older than before and I quickly realize this is his true appearance. Somehow, Pittacus just took away his Legacy.