Kaianan Read online

  “Thank you, Principal Ree.” Aradar bowed. “For a thousand years, we have known about a prophecy on Rivalex of which you are all aware … what you are not aware of is that it directly affects not just the planet and the Roame System, but the universe as we know it … the history books don’t stipulate everything that happened on Rivalex that night.”

  Dersji couldn’t believe Aradar’s voice was unsteady. It was as if he didn’t want to tell the story.

  “That …. that night, we were … overpowered … Upon King Warlowes’ return to Rivalex and our ambush, we became overwhelmed with the strength of his Silkri aura … it was the longest battle in the history of the Felrin outside of the aura versus aura battle. When we finally regained the upper hand and captured him, there was a plaque that had appeared in the Hunted Gorge, as you already know… but … there was also another, … one that appeared here, in Felrin, at the same time.”

  There had been silence for several seconds. Dersji was processing the information at one million miles an hour, until the Kinsmen Ranger found his voice.

  “Show us the words, Aradar. Show us this plaque now.”

  Prudence nodded and Dersji watched as Aradar took eight steps back to reach the white banner—a gleaming purple ‘Felrin’ written across it and a winged symbol of the dovelet, the Felrin bird of purity and peace—hanging against the back wall and pulling on the rope next to the banner, the material bunched upwards to reveal an engraved script, burnt into the bluestone wall:

  The hierarchy shifts,

  The Rivalex Marked Identity creates Revolution.

  No trespass against liberties shall go unseen,

  One Relic will forge the strength to end Siliou connection.

  Those who interfere will perish,

  No-one shall travel outside their realm.

  A universe hindered with war will blossom into oblivion,

  If and when, Holom breaks free. BI

  “Is that the mark?” the Kinsmen Ranger asked, readjusting the hood on his grey overcoat to free his untidy brown mane. Dersji could see the stubble bearing Kinsmen Ranger fiddling with the gold rings on all his fingers. He was nervous. Dersji couldn’t blame him, he, himself, was nervous. This was about Kaianan, his Kaianan?

  “The BI is the Rivalex mark imprinted on the girl’s shoulder, yes, Owen. The inscription means the rule of the universe will be this Rivalex Marked Identity, as we have selected leadership now in our Universal Order, directed by the Felrin Principals … It also states if we fight this singular rule, the Relic will end the Siliou connection, and we will be shut out from all other systems.”

  Dersji didn’t know why his chest tightened but it did. This interpretation didn’t seem right.

  “A dictatorship? She will rule as dictator? Nonsense,” the Aquamorph said. “We have to fight against a dictatorship. Princess Kaianan must not rule as an entity!”

  “How so Adrian?” Aradar said. “This will be a complete repeat of what happened. We did interfere with the Necromancer dictatorship and we were given these plaques as warning.”

  “What does that mean, ‘end of Siliou connection’?” Owen said. “That’s not possible.”

  “We were nearly there once,” Aradar said. “Another ripple in the Siliou of an aura versus aura battle can set us back millennia. If it was up to the Defeated King, we would be ... We didn’t believe we would ever be back to this point until the Mark was born. Her birth set off both writings; an earthquake shook the words in half at the Hunted Gorge and the room we now reside in flooded to the point that it took four fortnights to drain.”

  Aradar wiped his forehead. Dersji’s whole body was sweating.

  “We need to make a stand.” Aradar went on. “If we can apprehend the Mark before these events take place, in time we may be able to prevent Holom Galaxy, the roaming quadrant of Pernicious, from reopening, and re-entering the universe.”

  “Won’t that just push the legacy and begin the release of Holom?” Owen said.

  “That is written on our plaque, not in the Rivalex Prophecy, Owen. The Hunted Gorge scenario is something we might be able to control.” Aradar flicked his hand forward and white words appeared in the air like a holographic projection:

  The irreconcilable differences of race will be brought to justice,

  Solely by an offspring bearing the Rivalex Mark.

  The people will equate and prevail in a new universal order.

  By the stroke of bright light,

  The sacrifice will be revealed.

  On that day of reckoning,

  Hidden no longer the cracks to Holom’s Door. BI

  “We have had the girl supervised since infancy; it was necessary for us to gain insight and monitor any disturbances or deviations. And this is our plan as of today: to end the Rivalex Mark.”

  “I don’t agree with this, Aradar.” Owen arose in a flurry of anger, “I’ve heard enough. We are not a sadistic universe anymore; the Universal Order have always felt safe. The Felrin Congress instigated peace and freedom of private and free ownership a millennium ago. We are a capitalist democracy, for crying out loud. I don’t see how the Felrin could justify killing the Marked Identity. Pray, why now? And pray explain to me how, in the Sarinese God’s name, will anything be prevented if this happens?”

  “Owen, you pose the same argument as many before you. We have gone through the fine detail, there is no other way. We have spent eighteen years working toward a solution after her birth, and trust me when I say this is it, we do not want to go through what the Defeated King did to us. She must be executed before she gains any more power or momentum.” Aradar said staring at Prudence.

  Dersji felt sick, like all the food they had fed him was going to come up from his gut. They were going to hunt Kaianan down? Like an animal? He had heard enough. His Kan’Ging aura was seeming at the surface of his skin. He went to turn away, Sachin who was facing him now and peering through the vent next to him, held his arm, forcing his Kan’Ging aura to die and obliging him to keep listening.

  “Her bond to her Liege has been broken and we have been working closely with Rivalex,” Aradar continued; Maya nodded at him. “We know the time is right to get to her … This will prevent the release of the Holom Galaxy …” Aradar’s voice lowered and Dersji had to shuffle a little bit closer to hear him, “and it will prevent the release of the Defeated King.”

  Owen banged his hand on the lower bench. “The Defeated King is dead!”

  Aradar sniggered. Dersji’s heart was pumping a million miles per hour.

  “No,” Principal Aige said over the top of them, his eyes were flaming inside his blue pupils and the premonitions, Dersji could tell, were deeply affecting his face.

  Dersji gulped. Inside those eyes, Aige was going back to the time of the Defeated King’s capture. “We couldn’t kill him, and it wasn’t due to a lack of trying. He was just too powerful. It would have been another suicide mission and the whole planet would have blown up.” Aige’s voice was husky and slow. Dersji wished it was louder because it was fighting against the volume of his rapid heartbeat. “We had to send him to an immortal life in the depths of the Holom Galaxy …where he has no Siliou he can manipulate …” Aige narrowed his eyelids and watched him: black flames encapsulated a half-man half-dragon, “… yes, he remains there, a hybrid Morph, the archaea cells holding onto every part of him to survive, and instead of morphing into a zombie-like Pernicious that becomes of those in the Holom Galaxy, he is shaped like the ghost of a half-man half-dragon, awaiting his revenge on the universe …”

  Dersji exhaled; pain surged through his temple. What had happened? How had he not known about this?

  “So you see,” Aradar said to five blank faces, “the Defeated King is alive.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Earth

  “Come on, this way,” Xandou said.

  At first, Kaianan couldn’t move. Her legs were wobbly. After a few seconds of composure, she willed her body to shift and it did. Then her eyesight took ov
er. She followed Xandou past the strange looking trees and patches of dry green grass spread out around them. She smelled a potent scent; it was like musk; it was coming from the trees.

  They were jogging now. She placed her hand into the air, into the Siliou and inhaled. Earth was a planet full of Homo sapiens. They relied on the same things as the Homo captiosus did to live. Yet they didn’t know about access to the Siliou, to Euclidean Vectors.

  “How did you open the Vector?” Kaianan asked Xandou, thinking back to the gut-wrenching trip. “To get us to Earth?”

  “I didn’t open the Vector,” he replied as he slowed down his jog and they were walking again, “I just chose where I wanted it to end. As a curver of Siliou we are able to bend the Euclidean Vector. Otherwise you could end up wherever that Vector leads, and the whispers are, as Jahzara said, those who travel that road end up in the Holom Galaxy.”

  Kaianan’s face faded. She did not want to turn into a Pernicious.

  “Xandou, have you been here before?”

  They had stopped where the landscape of parkland ended and civilisation began.

  Kaianan’s cheeks spread. Ahead of them, was a picturesque view of a vast population and city—small dwellings, rendered buildings, and brick and timber fences lining streets were at the near, and right toward the horizon, the furthest from them, dozens of tall city buildings stood.

  “Yes.” he answered, “I told you I have.”

  “It’s – quite – beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “What did you expect?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, he was streaming down the grassy hill to the nearest street.

  Kaianan followed him. Her eyes darting around like a guilty criminal. There was movement everywhere, she couldn’t look away. To the left she noticed metal vehicles moving on asphalt tracks, and to the right preforms, her first sighting of humans, in multi-coloured clothing, walking a furry animal with four legs. Her mind ran away with exhilaration and not the kind where she needed her blade. Nothing about what she was seeing appeared threatening.

  This world turned the same as hers, the same as Rivalex.

  “So much potential to access the Siliou and this world doesn’t use it?” She said as she caught up to Xandou who was walking along a concrete walkway alongside houses.

  “Like I said, Kaianan, they are a technocentric world. They stick to what’s safe, what they know, what they can control.”

  “It seems like this governance is hindering them from their full potential. What are they being protected from?”

  “Each other.”

  “Each other?” She lifted her brows. “There are only humans that habitat this planet?”

  “Seven billion preforms, yes. There are others—a few Morphs, perhaps some shape shifters; those who are evolved like us and were here before the closing of the Euclidean Vectors, but no more.”

  “And that’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “They must keep the Siliou dormant. There are too many humans to keep controlled. If the Siliou were known to them and they evolved to Homo captiosus, who knows what would happen. Well we know what would happen, we’ve seen it happen with the forefathers of aura.”

  “The battle of aura versus aura …” she ushered out remembering. “And this whole galaxy is also protected from Holom?”

  “The Siliou doesn’t run through the Holom Galaxy, Kaianan. It stays in the one quadrant of the universe. Earth, like every other world, is protected. Come on, we need to keep moving.”

  Even though time was not on their side, Kaianan took in every second she could. As much as she detested Xandou and what he was turning into, she didn’t think she could have travelled so far without him or with anyone else. Again, she trailed him and they kept running and running, further toward the city.

  “Kaianan,” Xandou called.

  He had gained some distance on her and she could barely hear him in amongst the hustle and bustle of the preform streets.

  He had stopped at a busy intersection; there was a car place where people stuck hoses in their vehicles on one corner, and on the other side, it looked like a tall building made up of a lot of houses. Like the buildings she’d seen in Forsda. The sky scrapping type. The smell of smoke and gas and oil hit her nose when she reached the curb.

  “It stinks.”

  “It does. This way.” Xandou pointed.

  She took one step down onto the street and – Beep! Beep!

  Xandou yanked her back.

  “Halloween was last week, freaks!” A man was screaming out his car window after nearly hitting Kaianan head on.

  “Watch yourself.” Xandou whispered.

  She brushed her robes down. A ticking noise sounded above them and Xandou pushed her forward.

  “Now we go,” he said, grabbing her by the back of the arm.

  Kaianan, in a slight irritated mood, noticed a street sign—FootscraZy—with the Z added in white marker as she crossed the road.

  “What is this place?” Kaianan said breathy. “And that man in the car, he said something. We look, different, Xandou.” Her eyes briefly glancing at the many humans inside their vehicles staring at them as they walked.

  “Don’t worry about that, they have everything provided for you there. Come on. This way.” Once they had crossed the road, a few more blocks down, Xandou led them down an alleyway. It ran along the backs of residential houses and against a long grey brick wall.

  “George! I tells you did you put the bin out, re!” someone was shouting. The voice was thick and deep even though it was a woman’s.

  Kaianan looked at the type of board-up house through a gated fence with a big vegetable garden. An older grey-haired man straightened up out of the vegetable patch, looking back to a woman’s large round face peering through the kitchen window.

  “Thelo na tho yiatro.” George, the leaner of the two, muttered under his breath.

  “What? You want to go to the doctors? I give you the doctors myself, you skopianos!” The well-bodied woman roared, throwing her utensil down in the sink below her.

  “Patsavoura,” he muttered.

  “WHAT you say?” She streamed out of the flyscreen back door and into the overcrowded garden.

  Kaianan had stopped trailing Xandou. She stood there watching George hack away at the garden, ignoring the woman.

  “What are you looking at, malaka?” The robust woman in her orange woollen jumper and long floral apron lashed out at Kaianan. She clutched her chubby hands at her thick sides, bits of fly-away white hair from her hair net were stuck in her eyes. “George, is she from – er – next door?”

  George’s bony face looked up to Kaianan and he squinted through his glasses, crunching his thin lips up into a ball. “I don’t know, Eleni. Damn Kariolis!”

  “You tell za Vietnamese woman we is old, your mamma needs to ’top with da noise. I can’t sleep, ya know!” Eleni threw her hands about.

  “Disregard them, Kaianan,” Xandou commented, breaking her attention. “Let’s go.”

  She nodded and stared at Xandou as he moved on.

  “You make sure you is telling her!” Eleni ran to the fence. “DID YOU HEAR ME?” She shook her head.

  “You tell her about the noise! Woman, you tell yourself these things maybe.” George said spitefully.

  Eleni looked to George as if she were going to explode, “Ahh! The bin still needs to go out! Malaka!”

  Kaianan ran and caught up to Xandou. “That was interesting.” There was so much for her to take in, the newness of it all was incredible. Not surprisingly, Chituma crossed her mind. Was that how she sounded when they argued about fashion versus swordplay? About dresses versus tunics? About boys versus hunting? There could be no way.

  “How come I can understand them?”

  Xandou smirked. “Everyone speaks Vernacular, Kaianan. And those who don’t, just smile and nod in reply. Remember the humans are Homo sapiens, we speak as they do. We actually inherited the language from this species. The Vernacular is
the common tongue across the entire universe now. It’s what the majority speak because the Felrin push the language. Ancient tongue has all but faded out I guess.” He said hard-heartedly; Kaianan knew Xandou hated the fact his own Giliou language had been phased out. “Kaianan, you’re not here to study their communication or culture.”

  She nodded, slightly unhappy with that but knew better than to have quaint rhetoric with him and kept walking.

  “Melbourne Family Services,” Xandou said as he came to a stop. The alleyway had turned onto a new street. The double-storey dwelling of panelled glass and grey render brick stood adjacent to houses and the narrow gravel alleyway they had just come down.

  “You won’t be here long.” He said, wiping his blonde hair back behind his ear. “I will return. You are on your own for now, but you are very well hidden here. So, your safety is assured. Please stay low. We will have our moment, Kaianan. I will fight back and your home will be yours again sooner than you think. That’s a promise.” Kaianan thought at this point he was becoming more conceited than he had ever been.

  “My absence at your cause, Xandou, may be the wrong move,” she said.

  “Your absence is the only thing keeping us strong. The Insurgence will prevail. You’re a distraction, Kaianan. I must go.” He paused once again staring at her, “Laro thou Maiy.”

  She said nothing. The ancient Giliou language reverberated around her. And when the electric forces of blue light twisted around his physique, he was gone.

  Her blood boiled underneath her skin. Xandou had been lying to her. For how long though? And there was something about the way his blue eyes and wide mouth regarded her just then that seemed off. He had been fidgeting with his nose too. What was he up to? How far did this deception go?

  Beep! Beep!

  She jumped at the sound of the car on the street behind her.

  “Breathe, you fool,” she moved to the door and unclenched her sweaty hands. Also telling herself to let the anger go and ‘trust the process.’