Spoiler! :
It was a fateful day when the Congress of Man gathered for the last time.
I remember quite well the shuttle ride down, passing clouds of other shuttle vessels. Every species of human were attending; the Congress had not seen such an important congregate since the last emperor had died.
I was assigned seat B17. As I walked down the curving aisles some members came suspended in vats of bio-liquid, their bodies too used to weaker atmospheres and gravities to withstand the pressure of Aerith’s atmosphere. Robot couriers wheeled them into their positions and then retreated to the wall niches. Two or three were conversing with other
My seat was located one of the least prestigious areas of the Sphere. Most of the other members near me were proto- or sub-humans, and it shamed the red-blooded human in me to sit amongst them. An unbearable throb of conversation was constant and exasperating, even though my inner-ear transplants strove to dampen the roar. Even worse, I had to crane my neck painfully to view the center of the Sphere where the speakers and witness were called up.
The Voice awoke, cutting the conversational buzz in the sphere like a knife. Minature speakers behind every chair made it sound as though the Voice was an omnipresent being.
“All council members present. The Sphere calls forth Balon Tor to the speaker.”
Balon Tor was an elder congressman, having held his chair for nearly four decades consecutively. No one knew how he had managed to remain in power for long. Balon rose into the air, hovering dramatically for a few moments. His perfect head of white hair moved not one centimeter, and his purple robe hung about him like a dead thing. He was taken up into the center of the sphere where he rotated slowly, facing each area of the Sphere in turn. All eyes were trained on him.
“Congressmen: Humans, proto and sub,” he began, making doubly sure to insult the lower races in his booming voice. “The start of something great has come upon us. Mankind is poised yet again at the lip of some drastic void.” He paused for affect, and fixed the congress with his bright black eyes. “Succumbing to this fall may break some of us, but ultimately, good will triumph and rise from the ashes.”
I scrunched my nose in confusion; what was he talking about? We came to discuss the growing anomalies of our world. What was all this nonsense about a fall?
“The Sphere calls forth Jaemin Kyll to the witness speaker.” The Voice said, responding to some unseen signal from Balon.
A thin, light-blue skinned sub-human stood up feebly and paled noticeably when he floated upwards. He had obviously never felt the grip of an anti-grav beam; backwards sub. He was close enough to my area that I could see him clearly.
Balon stopped rotating and looked down to where Jaemin was situated: well below the center of the Sphere.
“Speak, sub-human.” Balon commanded, curling his lips back.
“I-I am…my people…” Jaemin stuttered. He coughed nervously and tried to carry on. “Four years ago strange blue lights have…um…well, you might say blue lights have been bothering our colonies. There was no worry at first, most planets have, ah, peculiar atmospheric phenomena, but ours seemed different. We had recorded events of these blue lights often harming colonists and damaging property. One of these blue lights even attempted to attack a supply ship destined for other colonies.”
He swallowed hard, the dark blues stripes on his throat bobbing down. Obviously, his colony had been accused of making the attack. Stealing from a supply ship, especially a colony supply ship, was considered the worst of crimes in the growing galaxy. None of the colony leaders could survive without a regular stream of supplies, and cutting even one link in the chain could destroy an entire colony.
The blue sub continued, attempting to calm his voice.
“Since then, we have attempted to find the source of these blue lights, but our every try ends in failure. These curses from Miar are like ghosts: undefeatable, untraceable, and completely evil.
“Two years ago, we lost an enterprise fighter to a brace of these lights. They now patrol the skies in small groups, forcing all our aircraft to be grounded almost permanently. It was only by the miracle of Miar that I made it to-.”
“Cease,” the Voice commanded.
Jaemin was returned to his seat, sweating light blue liquid.
“The Sphere calls forth Phorpes Scylica to the witness speaker.” The Voice thundered.
A slim woman, neither proto nor sub, rose to the position vacated by Jaemin, but we all could see that she was a few meters higher and closer to Balon than the sub.
“What is your witness, human?” Balon asked courteously.
“It’s simple enough. Foolish even.” she said in clipped tones. “Our particle generators have been going haywire for the past months.” She sniffed, peeked at the reader on her palm, and then continued. “Forty of our generators detect strange new objects with properties un-heard of. Twenty other generators have been offline intermittently, and we believe they cannot handle the stream of new substances pouring into our universe. Finally, we even have two generators that record set patterns in the particles paths.”
It seems as though the generator’s strange behavior only occurs when the generators are in the dark side of the planet. Solstices and eclipses as well cause shocking results. If I-”
“Enough.” The Voice ordered.
I sat back in my chair. So far, no real evidence. Balon was definitely building up to something with these futile reports, but what?
The witness reports are boring. Cut or shorten. Definitely need revising.
“The Sphere calls forth Greymin Haldo to the witness speaker.” The Voice declared.
I sat up again; the name Greymin was known to every being in the universe. It was said he could read minds through some special non-physical plane.
The quivering, bald head of Greymin lifted up above the crowds. He rose until he was almost level with Balon. His purple-blue eyes swept the whole sphere and I felt as though I’d touched a specter. Rough scar lines covered one half of his face; the other was smooth as porcelain.
“The phenomena are not erratic,” said Balon. “They are patterned, and all things regular can be observed. Eventually, we can learn to control these phenomena.”
As he spoke, Greymin waved his hands in the air, his eyes glinting like dark stars. I felt my stomach lurch forward out of my chest, coupled with the deadly tightening similar to what I’d felt when called up as witness.
“In fact, I believe partial control has been gained already,” Balon looked to Greymin, nodding slightly. “Members of the Congress, hear this: Magic has entered our world.”
Greymin lifted his arms above his head and closed his eyes. Immediately, Greymin’s hands were enveloped by a dark green cloud that clung to his hands. Green flickers like welding sparks flew out, striking the unfortunate members of congress directly below Greymin. Murmurs and shocked protests rumbled through the Sphere.
“What sort of parlor-games does he think he’s playing?” the congressman to my right mumbled.
“We must embrace this new force in our galaxy,” Balon boomed out, oblivious to the growing roar below him. “All the world is at our feet: we need only grasp it.”
Greymin clapped his hands and the smoke suddenly disappeared. A sigh rumbled in the throats of a thousand humans, and I realized we had been holding our breath without knowing it. The worst, though, was not over yet.
Greymin began chanting something strange, some exotic mantra that made my veins burn as though they were gushing with sulphur. His hands rotated around an invisible object,
I felt a pull on my shoulder as though someone were trying to drag me out of my chair. I gripped my armrest and rotated my head quickly. The sub beside me felt something too, for he too gasped and turned to his left. Nothing was there, however, except the sea of faces, each one turning away from me by some invisible hand. As I watched, horrified, everyone in the Sphere began moving along slowly, as though the anti-grav beam were pointed on all of us. The subs and protos grasped their chairs, but their fingernails ripped out of the cushioned seats, mine included. The bio-vats rolled along with the rest of us, spilling their liquid contents. The occupants of the vats flopped uselessly about; some lay still, looking as though their heads and bodies had exploded.
Legs and arms twisted together as we were cast about like leaves in a storm. The blu-skinned sub whooshed past me at a frightening speed. His head connected with the wall of the Sphere and snapped back, blood gushing from the wound.
One congressman, obviously from a large planet, bounded off the wall and attempted to pierce the center. Purple lightning forks struck him and he hit the floor, a sizzling, gruesome mass. The smell was horrifying.
Out of the chaos the Sphere had become, I could barely see the center anymore; congressmen were whipped in and out of my view, rendering an image in flickering frames. Other bodies knocked against mine as we made a hectic circumnavigation. I was kicked in the mouth by a frenetic congresswoman, shortly before she collided with a knot of other humans; the wuh! sound of the air whooshing out of her lungs a fullstop to her screams.
Bright light shone from behind Balon and Greymin’s heads.
“Bow.” Balon commanded, and every human was immediately frozen where they were, forced to bend on one knee towards Balon.
“I announce the end of the New Age,” Balon said, with all the authority of a Galactic Emperor. “And the beginning of the Age of Magic.”
Spoiler! :
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