Chapter 6
Krasnikov tube travel was strange.
There was a feeling as if you were being stretched and compressed at the same time and it was often hard to breathe, the room swayed and twisted and the anti-nausea pills did little to reduce the waves of sickness.
And then it stopped.
Far too early.
On the bridge, the captain looked up in astonishment as the strange kaleidoscope of colours caused by the fold, turned harsh and real. Jupiter grew large and angry directly in front of them and the multitude of moons came into focus
“What happened?” he asked “Did the tube fail?”
“No sir.” replied the mechanic “Automatic collision system broke us out.”
“Scan the vicinity with everything we have.” said the captain, now worried, the tube was not meant to pass through Jupiter’s moons
“The tube was diverted into the moons.” replied the Lieutenant, “Massive residual fold signature where the tube was diverted.”
“Contact ISF and call for assistance.”
“Our communications are jammed.” said the radio operator “On all frequencies.”
“Sir, I have heat signatures moving in fast.”
“We’re being missile locked!”
“I have plasma signatures moving away from the incoming craft!”
The captain looked on in horror as the squadron of sickle-shaped spacecraft launched a barrage of plasma torpedoes at the weapon less transport. They were pure matt-black with a silver spear crossed by two swords emblem on each wing, top and bottom.
“Shields to full and brace.” he said, moving into action. “Give me full command.”
The captain hurried over to the controls and hailed the fighters.
“This is an unarmed transport vessel in unclaimed space, please desist from attacking!”
He received a data-burst transmission from Io in reply.
“What the hell?” He gasped. “No way am I just sacrificing the lives of everyone on this ship for a weapons test!”
He grabbed the helm controls and ordered full power to the engines, just dodging the Aurora out of the way of the first barrage of missiles.
The behemoth of a space liner activated its thrusters and began to move at an ever increasing rate, but still slowly in comparison to the self propelled solar sails of the spacecraft that were driven by firing lasers at the backs of solar sails, generating high thrust with little energy requirement for such small craft..
It completed a slow, lumbering barrel roll and used the gravity of Ganymede to slingshot itself out towards clear space.
“We need to escape the moons and reach the tube.” the captain said.
“The fighters are coming round for another run!”
“Full power to rear shields.” he said calmly ”We can make it.”
Just then a second squadron appeared from behind Titan and torpedoes slammed into the main thrusters.
“We’ve lost 30% fold stability, and the main thrusters are damaged!” gasped the mechanic “We lose forwards acceleration in thirty seconds.”
The captain looked on forlornly as the two squadrons angled in on opposite sides of the liner.
“Evacuate the ship.” he said finally and activated the emergency escape pods.
The ship was in chaos, first there was the confusion of leaving fold early, then the sickening roll of the ship and the fluctuations in gravity, then the explosion. Now klaxons blazed and emergency escape pods opened to accept passengers.
Lara ran for an escape pod, dodging past the drunken hands of the other geologists who were heading for a nearer one and urging her to join them.
Diving in she found a girl around her own age in ISF uniform and an overweight Mexican woman whom Lara recognised as a famous chef of some kind, hyperventilating and twisting a wedding ring of silver and emerald on her ring finger, trying to keep calm and failing.
DavridTelod raised his head and sighed.
“It is time.”
He stood and raised a datapad, begging forgiveness before starting the program that could end the empire he called home.
Sakara rushed into his sister’s room, grabbed her hand and ran to his parent’s door. The door opened and they began moving towards him.
There was an unimaginable explosion of noise and he was flung backwards, emergency doors slamming down between him and his parents.
A figure picked his sister up and offered him a hand.
Dazed he took it and pulled himself off the floor. The figure was shouting at him but he could not hear so he nodded and followed the man. They arrived at an escape pod moments later and he was pushed inside. The figure took a headcount, reached thirteen including himself and slammed the door shut.
As his hearing returned, he became aware that one of the passengers, an overweight Mexican, was shouting that there was still room inside the pod and was blocking the figure from activating the undocking switch.
Sakara noticed what the figure had seen and tapped the Mexican on the shoulder, pointing to the sign on the wall.
“Thirteen passengers only.” he gasped out, seemingly in a whisper but as everyone turned to him, probably not.
They looked at where his finger was pointing, a sign read:
“No more than thirteen passengers may leave in this escape pod as in the event of a hull breach there are only thirteen emergency spacesuits stored in the lockers.”
The Mexican moved away from the switch reluctantly and the man flicked it, the pod undocking with a quiet hiss and the Aurora began getting smaller in the view port.
“What the hell happened?” asked another passenger, but before the man could answer one of the squadrons blazed past the window, launching a barrage at the stricken liner
“Oh crap.” he replied.
“Understatement of the year.” hissed another.
“Don’t even start.” said the man
Another pod came into view and the figures inside waved at them, it began carefully jetting over but just then the squadrons finished off the starliner in a cataclysmic explosion as a missile hit the fusion core, initiating instant meltdown and detonation before the safety systems could shut it down.
The shockwave knocked both pods flying but when they stopped spinning, they were still relatively close and the other pod began jetting over again.
“Let’s meet them in the middle!” said the Mexican, happy to see other survivors.
“Wait.” replied the man and held her back from the controls.
When the pod was halfway to them a fighter shot through the debris and launched a torpedo directly into the defenceless pod.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” the Mexican stammered.
“We’re all going to die
no time to even cry
for a blaze of fire
shall be our death and pyre” came a voice from the back of the pod as a small rattish man recited a verse.
“Not yet.” said the figure and turned to another person in the blue uniform of the ISF. “How are they tracking the pods?”
“Primarily by unnatural movement but are also scanning for electronic signatures.” she replied, looking up from a tablet readout. “They don’t seem to be scanning for life signs though.”
“Good, it means that we can sneak past them.” said the man
“And how are we going to do that?” asked the Mexican “Make a run for it?”
“Slowly accelerate towards one of the moons and try and contact ISF for assistance..”
All those in the pod nodded in agreement apart from one old man at the back.
“We have a slight problem.” said the ISF girl, “He has suffered from a heart attack and passed away during the shockwave.”
“Oh good.” came a voice from the lockers, one of the doors opened and a figure stepped out. “I was hoping one of you had kicked the bucket during that so I could have one of these suits.”
The figure who emerged was a twenty-something year
old with black hair and genetically re-engineered, orange eyes, something of a trend in rebellious teenagers nowadays.
“Hi, I’m Neil Drommon.” he said extending his hand in greeting.
He collapsed on the floor as the ISF man’s fist connected powerfully with his right temple.
“You should be in transit to Empyrion, bastard.”
“We had a convicted serial arsonist onboard?” asked the other ISF.
“We still have.” growled the other.
“Anyway” asked an Aryan man “Which moon do we head for, none are colonised.”
“Europa.” said Sakara.
“Why Europa?” asked the ISF man but the other realised what Sakara knew.
“Because of the relay.”
The ISF man’s eyes widened in shock and admiration, then narrowed in realisation.
“Disrupting galactic transmissions is a death penalty offence.”
“It’s that or death out here from oxygen starvation.” Sakara replied. “At least there we would have a chance.”
The female ISF looked to the marine and caught the look in his eyes noticed by only her and Sakara. This man knew something else but would not say it.
Sakara raised one eyebrow at the look in his eyes but the girl shook her head and flashed the number 28 at him using her hands, guessing that there was a D28 facility nearby.
No-one wanted to become associated with D28, the military secret projects division, known for abduction and imprisonment without trial.
Introductions followed. The two ISF were Sergeant DavridTelod of the 23rd elites and Mia Carthage, a tactician graduate. The Mexican was YasminaMontos, a well-known chef, there was also Lara Nyel, a planetary geologist, OthellaYatt, an anthropologist specialising in languages, Nathan Efoss, an aerospace engineer, Helena Davies, a retired coder and psychic. The Aryan was Tiresias Olympia, a transgender who had changed his mind after seven years as a girl and was also a famous holo-star on Empyrion who had been going to Exlixia to do some filming, the rattish man was Odis Veritas, who called himself a prophet but would not expand on that except in verse and YuoiChkyan, a mathematical genius who had calculated Pi to over three thousand places on a pad of paper, often resorting to reciting them to keep calm.
The group then put on the emergency spacesuits and prepared for the plan. Grudgingly, Davrid put the final suit on Neil and sat down at the controls.
“Gravity off.” he said and the group felt the nauseating effect of weightlessness.
“Life support off.” The pod was plunged into darkness as the final vestiges of power other than that to the thrusters were deactivated.
“Now the fun begins.”
The pilot saw the pod drifting out of the debris cloud, not moving fast, or using anything other than vestigial power to move, but the pilot had been ordered to check any escaping pod for living people, So the sickle shaped craft blasted over to the floating pod.
He instantly knew that the people in the pod were still alive, electronic signatures from muscles firing told him so. He looked more closely at the pod, it was using its thrusters but nothing else, he moved round to the front and activated the ship’s headlights, a dead body floated next to the window and the pilot smiled, cunning, but not enough to stop him destroying them. He prepared a plasma torpedo for launch and aimed it at the pod.
Then stopped.
He had received the signal.
The pilot called it in to command and attached a radar beacon to the pod before moving away to check on some other pods.
Inside the pod, the group let out their breath as the headlights moved away from the viewport.
“That was close.” said Mia on the internal communication system.
The pod continued to drift towards Europa. It took them three hours to get to the atmosphere of Europa without arousing suspicion and another fifteen minutes of panic before a crash on the surface after the thrusters failed.
“If I’d had my tools on me I could have fixed that drive and we’d be at the relay by now.” cursed Nathan, storming out of the pod onto the ice, “Which way is it to the station anyway?”
“South East.” replied Mia looking up from her tablet “But these suits won’t last us for the journey, we need to pick up a hover sled from the research station around ten miles into our journey to the relay, that should speed us up.”
“Won’t the research station have a messager?” asked Yasmina “I’m not very good at walking long distances.”
“It may well do, that was another reason for heading for this moon.” said Davrid, pushing a dazed Neil before him, hand bound with wire from the broken pod.
Lara came out next and stared around in wonder.
“Look at this place, the beauty is breathtaking. These curves and valleys have been cut into the ice by the light from the sun, not water or wind.”
Only two other people agreed with her, Sakara and Yuoi, who had already calculated the length of time it would have taken to carve out the largest of the spires in sight, and Sakara who knelt and touched the inside of his ankle, noticed by Odis and Mia.
“I saw the scars of the church of blood on your wrists in the pod and a tattoo of the church of answers on your palm so what do you have on your ankle?” she asked.
The whole group turned to look at him, and then Odis spoke up.
“The thrice anointed one shall rise and fall
For death moves at his beck and call
From icebound land to fiery tomb
To homeland before his eventual doom.”
Sakara turned to them.
“Although I may have been anointed into the church of blood, I do not agree with how many read the book of martyrs and It wasn’t my choice to join the church. So yes, I am a member of three churches but I only follow the beliefs of two.”
“Very well.” said Davrid and turned away, some others in the group looked at him with suspicion while Lara looked at him in surprise.
“You’re a member of the church of blood?” she asked him as they began walking through the icy wastes.
“Was.” he replied.
It took them another two hours to reach the relay station, two hours of hard slog through icy terrain. At least the gravity was 0.134 that of Earth, allowing them to scout ahead with large jumps, but the distance and the strange features slowed them down. Overhead Jupiter swirled and flowed in its earthy hues adding strange colours to the ice as light reflected from its atmospheric gases was pasted onto the blank white canvas of Europa.
“Is that a dropship?” asked Mia Carthage, reaching the top of the hill overlooking the silver dome that was the surface entrance to the research station.
“51stelites.” Replied Davrid looking down a pair of binoculars at the silver craft with the first prong of the gold trident highlighted in red on its fuselage.
“We’re saved.” exclaimed Yasmina, “They must have detected a radio transmission from the liner and come to rescue us.”
“I’m afraid not.” replied Davrid, “The 51stelites disappeared three years ago, and that ship has been here at least a year, look how ice has formed around the landing struts.”
Nathan launched himself over to the craft. “Looks in working order.” he shouted “but the power seems to be off, we may still be saved if I can get off a transmission or get this craft off-planet.”
He headed to the airlock and activated the opening procedure.
Seconds later he emerged, pale faced and obviously retching, trying not to be sick.
“What is it?” asked Davrid.
“Don’t go in there.” he gasped between retching’s.
Davrid slipped a long barrelled pistol from a pouch in his suit and headed inside, forcing Neil to go through the airlock first.
Blood and gore covered the walls, shreds of fabric mixed in with bone and the larger pieces on the floor.
Neil took his helmet off to be sick, adding to the stench of rotting flesh.
Davrid raised his gun and panned around.
br /> “This way.” he ordered Neil.
Reluctantly Neil walked down the corridor to the cabin finding another zone of scattered flesh.
“Bloody hell!” he gasped, before being sick again, “What the hell happened here?”
“Move out the way.” Davrid hissed and opened a hatch below the pilot’s seat, removing a small black box.
A black box with a large hole in it.
“Damn it.” he cursed “How did they know about that?”
He stood up and strode back down the corridor, opening another door to the storage compartment. Eight EX-180’s, the latest model in the line stood in charging stations, with large holes where their power cores should be.
“No!” shouted Davrid punching the wall in frustration, then he noticed the hole where the ship’s power core had been exposed, the casing had been dented and the core had shut down to prevent detonation, as all latest models of fusion core did.
“They took out all the power.” he said, staggering back a few steps.
He turned to the weapon crates in the corner and found nothing but fragments.
He opened another crate and found the same thing.
He turned to Neil and removed the cuffs on his hands.
“When we get off this planet you’re going straight to Empyrion, but right now I think we need all the hands we have.”
“Thanks.” replied Neil, fastening his helmet to cut off the stench.
The rest of the group were shocked when they emerged and told them what they had found.
“Fragmented men in steel grave
by icy lab their life they could not save
as shadowed foe reveals his hand
We are doomed to die in this land.” recited Odis, gaining scowls from the whole party.
“Can you talk of nothing but us dying?” asked Yasmina morosely “It seems to be lowering group morale.”
“We try and we toil
in a land without soil
to keep our heads safely on
but the damage will still be done.” He replied.
The rest of the group ignored him from then on.
Outside the base was a sign greeting them to research station Z3U5-012
The small group entered the base through the vehicle airlock, finding the lights in the base off. They turned on their torches and panned them around the walls.
“There are two sleds still remaining however one is gone.” said Davrid. “Nathan, with me. We need to bring the backup core online.”
“Couldn’t we use it to power one of the sleds?” asked Tiresias looking around, “Some cores are interchangeable.”
“Not these ones. Exploration gets lumbered with the older models so the base cores wouldn’t fit into the ship core slots. Anyway, we might be lucky and the sleds will still have theirs.” replied Nathan, moving towards the stairs down into the base. “However, we might be unlucky and the skins of the sleds might have been ruptured so even if we could find a core we could not pilot them.”
They were not lucky, the cores of the sleds had received the same treatment as the one in the dropship and the skins had been completely ruptured.
“We’re going to need another way out of here.” said Yuoi, “These suits only have another hour of air in them.”
The group had already removed the helmets but were still wearing the warm suits as the base’s heating was taking a while to warm up the halls.
Soon the lights also came back on and Davrid and Nathan came back up the lift.
“More bodies, I’m afraid.” He said. “We should stick in groups to look for supplies for a cross country trek in this base’s enviro suits.”
“Can’t we just call for help and wait for rescue?” asked Yasmina.
“The beacon has been forcefully removed.” replied Nathan.
“What about the Elites?” asked Mia, “They should have a transmitter with them.”
“We found that.” said Davrid, pulling a little disk from his pocket. “The transmitter has been removed but there is still a recording stored.”
The group turned at the unasked question.
“Play it.” said Neil, It’ll tell us what we’re up against.
The group nodded and Davrid placed the disc on the floor and activated the hololog.
A room formed around the group and a man in ISF uniform huddled against the back wall away from the door, assault rifle raised but hands shaking.
“This is Lieutenant Harvey Jones of the 51st elites, sent to research station Z3U5-012 after all contact was lost. We have encountered guerrilla resistance from what seems to be a native life form that is invisible to all the equipment we have, My whole squad has been wiped out. It kills by first freezing the target, then shattering it with a plasma weapon of some kind, can also use some kind of bladed weapon in close quarter combat, Requesting Eradicator on my co-ordinates to take it out.”
The door opened and the lieutenant let of a burst of fire, then another, and another at two second intervals.
A canister rolled through the door and the man’s eyes widened.
The recording cut out for a second before returning after the flashbang finished exploding.
The lieutenant was shaking his head and rapidly blinking his eyes; he fired randomly with the rifle but suddenly rose off the floor, held by an invisible hand around his neck.
“Die bastard.” he shouted and buried a commando knife in the creature’s invisible chest before reaching to pull the pin on a grenade.
His head rolled from his shoulders, blood droplets disappearing from the creature’s arms as they hit. The creature removed the knife from its invisible chest, bleeding a little with meltwater blue blood but that stopped within seconds. The invisible creature picked up the recorder, turning it over and the recording stopped.
“Ah.” sighed Mia.
“Oh god.”Yasmina gasped.
Davrid cursed. “Crap.”
“Where are the explosives?” asked Neil.
The group turned and looked at him.
“What? It’s a valid question for a pyromaniac and a convicted arsonist, and with enough explosives you can take out anything.”
“No explosives.” said Davrid with finality.
“A blaze of crimson fire
On gigantic burning pyre
Shall be your final victory
But shall never go down in history.”Recited Odis.
The group ignored him.
“Isn’t an Eradicator the latest generation of eraser weaponry?” asked Mia
Davrid looked at her surprised. “Do not mention erasers, they are top secret.”
“If we are stuck here and that was sent out then there is a high probability that an eraser has been scrambled.”
“After three years?” shouted Davrid.
“Why would they not scramble an eraser?” asked Mia.
“Excuse me, but what is an eraser?” asked Yasmina.
“An eraser is an explosive device designed to remove all trace of a group ever existing, in the past these were things like nuclear missiles, thermobaric explosives or even just acid canisters to dissolve black ops team’s faces and clothing to make them unidentifiable.” replied Mia, ignoring a dark look from Davrid. “They were often used if a military group needed to carry out a mission in allied territory without the ally’s knowledge because if the mission went wrong they needed to remove all trace of them ever being there. Nowadays they are antimatter or condensed plasma explosives used for removing all trace that military personnel were ever on a mission in an area. The eradicator is a nanomite swarm that devours all organic matter within a mile of the target zone.”
Davrid looked sternly at her then turned back to the group to lay out the plan.
“There are five levels to this base.” said Davrid “We will split into five groups and search the base for supplies and get out of here as fast as we can. Is that clear?” The group nodded. “Sakara, you take your sister and the prophet and search the research labs
for anything of use. Mia, take Lara and search the storage level. Yasmina, Tiresias and Helena, search the living quarters. Neil and Nathan will be with me to see if we can get the submarine up and running, so if we can fix a core we can leave that way. Yuoi, you see if you can work out how to activate the suits with Othella.”
The five groups moved off to their designated tasks.
Even with the lights on, the storage level was quite dark and Lara was glad she had brought her torch.
The pair moved around the room, walking down aisles and opening boxes at random to see what they contained.
“Hey, what’s that down there?” asked Mia, pointing between two boxes.
A smallish round object lay there.
“A fusion core!” gasped Lara.
“A ship core at that.”
“Shall we?” asked Lara, picking up the core and pointing to the lift.
“Thank you.” said Mia, calling the lift and getting inside, followed by Lara.
As Lara Entered the lift she turned, hearing a sound behind her but the lift door closed and took her away from the dark, shadowed corridors of the storage level.
A creature stirred in the darkness, rising from its hiding spot and watching the lift as it rose.
“The time has come.” it spoke in a strange language “The seeds have been sown and the crop now ready for harvest.”
It stood stock still for a second, establishing mental connection with another of its kind.
“Operation sacrifice is now in effect, will attempt to separate the subject from the herd, move leviathans and messors into the vicinity for extraction of subject.”
It broke the connection and slipped into the lift shaft.
“The hunt begins.”
Yuoi looked at the suits and straightened the collar on his shirt having removed the restrictive spacesuit once the heating reached room temperature.
“Mark V enviro-suits.” he said to no one in particular. “Gain water through the skin, food is stored in the ‘backpack’, radiation shielded against up to 7 Sieverts with five tool slots.” the genius moved over to the first suit in the line and put the gloves on.
“All slots full.” he said “First slot grapple, second slot...” A harsh white light emerged from the second cylinder. “Arclight, third slot plasma welder, fourth slot gas spectrometer and fifth slot...” a short blade slid out from the fifth tube, the blade itself humming and fuzzy as it vibrated at great speed. “Vibro Cutter.” He whistled. “Haven’t seen one of these in ages.”
“What are they powered by?” asked Othella looking up from watching the recording for a fifth time.
“miniaturised fusion cores like those that are used to power tablets and other portable electronics.”
She turned back to the recording and tried looking at it out of the corner of her eyes.
“What are you doing?” asked Yuoi, moving over to her.
“I’ve been psychically trained to allow me to translate languages faster and I can feel a psychic influence on me caused by this recording. It has long been proven that psychic outbursts can be recorded and imprinted on objects, creating so called ‘hauntings’ but it is like there is something hidden from view here.”
“The creature itself?” asked Yuoi, wondering whether she was completely sane. Psychics were still distrusted after one managed to influence a whole nation to vote them in as their representative.
“I have come to that conclusion as well.” she replied. “Psychic invisibility would stop someone seeing something in a recording, heat scan or with their bare eyes but to keep it up while moving and striking... That is impressive, and would require so much training...”
She continued to theorise for a couple more minutes while Yuoi went back to the suits, finding the box of miniaturised cores beneath the engineer's workbench in a little room in the hangar.
Neil stared out into the icy waters and shivered. He’d hate to die in that, far rather in a blaze of glory like that so called ‘prophet’ had said. Great stalactites and stalagmites of ice spiralled down from the ice sheets or rose from the unseen depths, and the engineer was thinking of driving a sub through that. He shivered again.
Nathan clambered over the bright yellow submersible that sat in the docking bay and thought to himself as well, it would be a difficult enough task to pilot this sub through the ice maze as it was without overburdening the sub as Davrid wanted to if they ever found a compatible fusion core. He would take a couple of the strong ones, the ISF girl and the pyro perhaps, and say he would return for the others, taking two at a time, but would disrupt the relay himself. Then the rescue ship could pick him up and then return here to get the others. The plan was flawless and he knew that the others would see that he had been right to do it after their rescue.
The prophet was beginning to get on Sakara’s nerves.
He couldn’t answer a question except with a downbeat, morose poem that wasn’t even good, and he seemed to have a lot about Sakara, delighting in telling him, as he put it ‘his future’. Made up junk about a war that he would start and end.
He had also reduced his sister to tears.
“The sister of the twice born
Shall fall at the break of dawn
Shall die amongst great pain
And all that will be left is her name.”
Sakara had almost punched him for that.
They were now looking at the food generator, large tanks full of genetically engineered seaweed being harvested, pulped and turned into food bars with all required nutrients. These were second generation hyperfruit, requiring less space, less nutrients and producing food almost constantly due to the bamboo genes they contain.
There were an awful lot of food bars in a pile at the end of the conveyor and the group of three were looking for a way to turn the harvester off.
“It’s been ten years since all contact was lost.” said Hannah “surely ISF would have attacked by now and wiped them out with droids.”
“Walk fifteen miles south
And before a gaping cave mouth
One shall find bodies of metal foes
On which rust now grows”
“Shut up Odis.” said Sakara, aggravated by this made up nonsense.
The group finally found the off-switch and moved on to the next lab.
Yasmina looked at the six bags that lay on the floor in front of her. Six shattered bodies that she had carefully gathered up and separated into their separate bodies. She had found the list of people at the research station and had identified each of the bodies.
She was also forcing herself to watch each of their deaths on the CCTV system.
It had taken the creature less than five minutes to kill off the five of the scientists, herding them together before freezing them to death. The other one had tried to escape but had been killed before he reached the lift, managing to warn the other two scientists who had escaped in the missing sled.
She heard a noise behind her and shivered.
“It’s nothing Yasmina.” she told herself and headed to the kitchen.
Behind her one of the bags opened, was rifled through and was closed again by an invisible creature.
“Honour to the dead.” it whispered, before the carpet was depressed as he knelt and pierced in two places as the two blades on his back flicked out and slammed into the floor. “Utcustodiantte in coelum, deducetvos in omnemventum, et tenet terramsanaviaquas.”
If rose and followed the chef.
Yasmina was making a stew, and the smell of spices filled the air. She tasted the stew and realised that it needed a bit of salt. She turned to where she had left the salt cellar and found it missing, turning back to find it next to the pot, she looked inside and saw small crystals dissolving on the surface.
She looked around and saw no-one, tasting the stew again she found that it was now just right.
She removed the stew from the heat and began doling it out into bowls before returning then to the oven to keep them warm. The
re was still some stew in the pot so she put some into another bowl before taking the pot and beginning to wash it up.
Having finished she headed back to the table where she had left the extra bowl of stew.
She stopped.
The bowl was missing.
She spun around looking for the culprit and walked to the door, looking out to try and spot the thief. Finding no-one in sight, she turned back to the table and stopped again.
The bowl was back where it had been.
She walked over to it and looked inside, it had been eaten.
Another shiver ran down her back.
Then another, colder this time and lingering.
A shiver that decreased in temperature rapidly, cooling the air to mist around the creature.
She tried to run but the cold sapped her strength, she tried to call out but the cold air hit her lungs with such force that she couldn’t breathe.
The creature stood above her, revealed in the mist that clung to its otherwise invisible body.
She raised her arms around her head as the creature raised one arm but the creature waited as her blood froze in her veins, as shards of ice pierced her organs, frost coated her eyes, muscles grew still and her heart pumped its last beat.
All was silent, the mist hung in the air, the ice on the surfaces glinted in the artificial light creating a feeling of being in a geode or in a realm of crystal.
The creature looked down on the frozen corpse beneath it.
“I am sorry.” it spoke in its strange language.
There was a flash as a bolt of plasma burst from the palm of its right hand into the body beneath it and the creature turned and walked away.
Tiresias heard a soft thump followed by a tinkling of something like glass from the kitchen and looked at Helena.
“Yasmina?” called Tiresias.
His foot crunched down on something and he lifted it back up.
A finger lay on the floor, white with cold and covered in frost, a silver band inlaid with emeralds had shattered when his foot had landed on the finger.
He looked up from the floor and saw more fragments, some large and others small. He saw ice coating the surfaces, slowly melting in the heat and the remnants of the mist that had filled the room slowly dissipating in the artificial light.
“It’s still here.” he gasped.
Helena screamed.