Ouroboros Episode One

  Chapter 5

  Cadet Nida Harper

  Dammit, she'd done it again.

  She'd been late for class. She'd just overslept. Despite the fact her alarm was set diabolically loud, she'd somehow snoozed right through.

  Was there something wrong with her?

  She had to get to her next class, but as she walked across the enormous, green grounds in between the Academy complex, she found herself slowing down.

  Before she knew it, she angled toward a tree on the far edge of the lawn, and promptly sat underneath it, pressing her back against its girth.

  She loved this tree, and she loved sitting exactly here. Because if you huddled yourself up just right, nobody could see you. It was just you, the tree, a slice of blue sky visible through the leaves, and relative silence.

  "Get to class," she mumbled under her breath, admonishing herself as she did. "You can't afford any more reprimands," she added with a grimace.

  But no matter how sternly she told herself to move, she couldn't. She just hugged her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth.

  She'd had some pretty weird dreams last night.

  Strange and deeply unsettling ones.

  She rocked back and forth harder and harder, her shoulders banging into the trunk behind her with a rhythmic thump, thump, thump.

  Every single dream had been about that planet. Remus 12.

  And all had featured odd, dancing, writhing blue light.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the memories from her mind, but it wouldn't work.

  Impressions kept on forming there, like shapes in the clouds above.

  "Come on, get to class," she clenched her teeth hard.

  But she couldn't.

  She just couldn't move.

  She felt immobilized by the flashes of her half-remembered dreams. Impressions, thoughts, visions. They swept around her, curling in and in like a rope wrapping around her middle.

  "It was just a dream."

  Yet no matter how much she tried to convince herself it was nothing, her body twitched and stiffened under the flashing visions of her nightmares.

  Eventually, she rested her head back, closing her eyes as she did.

  After several minutes of fighting against the sensations haunting her mind and body, she felt herself drift off.

  All thoughts of getting to class were forgotten.

  Soon enough all she was aware of was her slowly thumping heart and a beautiful, warm ray of sunshine filtering in through a break in the leaves above. It played against her face like the touch of a gentle hand.

  Then, before she knew it, she fell asleep.

  Just as soon as unconsciousness took her, she drifted straight into a dream.

  She was standing back on the surface of Remus 12. It was night. The stars glittered high above her, dancing and flickering and glimmering.

  She reached a hand up to them, but then, with a stab of shock, she realized blue light traveled across her skin. It jumped up from her wrist, curling around and pushing its way into her fingernails. Then it traveled deep down into her palm, caressing each bone and pushing its way through every vein, until it erupted again through her palm, twisting around every centimeter of her flesh as it burnt bright blue.

  She stared at it, fear and surprise coalescing in her heart until it felt as if she would pop.

  She tried to bat the blue light away, tried to push that dancing, writhing energy off her hand, but she couldn't move.

  "Help me," she said under her breath, barely capable of opening her lips. "Help me," she said again, panic rising in her heart like a lick of flame growing brighter and brighter.

  She looked up again, tearing her eyes off the terrible energy forcing its way through her, and she saw the starscape above.

  It was different.

  The stars, the constellations, everything had changed.

  And then, in a moment of primal instinct, she knew why.

  It was old.

  This was old. The planet, the stars, the energy.

  Old.

  That knowledge built up in her with a horrible, pounding certainty.

  As it did, she began to feel ancient. All of the youth and vibrancy in her body washed away, and centimeter by centimeter, second by second, she began to stiffen. Like stone.

  She was turning into a statue.

  Returning to the earth. Returning to the ancient, dark reaches of time.

  She tried to scream. She couldn't. She tried to breathe, but her chest no longer moved up and down. All that shifted was that blue energy as it continued to rise through her arm, up into her neck, and deep, deep into her chest.