The Dark Between The Stars

THIRTY-FOUR
OSIRA’H

The faeros frolicked in the churning photosphere of the star Wulfton. Ellipsoidal incarnations of fire itself, the elemental beings dove into the gas layers, while others leaped in joyous arcs, riding magnetic pathways, sailing along wide coronal arches to their apex, then turning and plunging back into the stellar inferno.

Alone in her insulated observation globe, bathed by the close starfire, Osira’h watched the faeros, sensed them, and felt her remaining telepathic connection to them. During the Elemental War, the faeros had wrought terrible damage, but Osira’h had forced them to obey her. Now, the fiery beings remained quiescent, tamed, yet still dangerous, incomprehensible. The faeros had returned to their unruly isolation. They still knew her and found her marginally interesting but also… irrelevant?

She concentrated harder, trying to maintain the link, but it was frayed. The faeros had little interest in her anymore. Osira’h had a difficult time translating their thoughts, which were so entirely alien. But they did understand that she was no threat to them—not any longer.

Reaching outward through the pathways of thism, Osira’h could sense the other Ildiran researchers in the nearby stellar analysis station, an orbiting facility outside the coronal zone. She was the only one who ventured this close to the inferno, and to the fiery elementals.

The Ildiran astronomers at the Wulfton station were nervous whenever she went out in her insulated observation globe, but she sensed the faeros would protect her if she called on them. The fiery ellipsoids were capricious, had been both enemies and allies, but Osira’h knew them—and they knew her. They remained a powerful, looming noise in her mind… if only she could grasp it.

Her globe cruised over the stellar maelstrom below. Convection cells the size of continents boiled up, changing the gaseous landscape every moment. Thanks to many layers of dense filters, her eyes could tolerate the sight. She watched a large dark stain appear on the star, a duller red than the bright orange of the surrounding photosphere—a magnetic storm, a starspot. It was a gateway, as more fiery ellipsoids emerged and then sank back into the layers of hot gas again.

Osira’h came out here in the shielded globe so she could have solitude, peace among the faeros. It helped her to feel that everything was in balance.

Because they were a communal race, any individual Ildiran felt uneasy to be alone, but Osira’h was different. As the daughter of the green priest Nira and Mage-Imperator Jora’h himself, she was strengthened by myriad other connections.

Osira’h was never truly alone because her mind was tightly bound with her halfbreed brothers and sisters. Her four siblings could also feel the faeros, though their connection was not as strong as hers. Gale’nh had his place in the Solar Navy, Tamo’l had her medical research on Kuivahr, Muree’n was being trained by Yazra’h with dreams of becoming the greatest Ildiran fighter ever. Rod’h was the closest of her siblings, the most similar to her; they had the strongest telepathy of the halfbreeds. They shared much and helped each other, but despite their strengths, she and Rod’h were misfits among the Ildirans.

The Dobro breeding program had spent generations trying to breed a savior, and Osira’h had done her job. Her potent telepathy had brought the faeros and the hydrogues to their metaphorical knees at the end of the Elemental War. The enemy was defeated, the war over. She’d been invaluable in bringing the titanic enemies under control—but now what was she supposed to do?

She had finished her life’s work when she was still a child.

Oh, the Empire revered and celebrated Osira’h, but they didn’t understand who she was. The Ildirans were proud of her, although in some small corner of their minds—she could feel it through the thrumming of the thism—they were afraid of her, didn’t know what to do with her.

Rod’h felt their unique predicament even more sharply than she did. He hadn’t even been given the chance to serve his reason for being—a potential savior with nothing to save. Osira’h had been triumphant, and Rod’h was merely the backup. An unnecessary spare.

She hoped to keep her brother’s disappointment from hardening into bitterness. She wished Rod’h could be with her at Wulfton. They could have been watching the faeros together, trying to understand them better. But he had refused, claiming he wasn’t interested.

Beneath the observation globe, a fireball rocketed up like a bullet ejected from the star. The living thing shot past her craft, curious, sensing her. Inside her mind, Osira’h could hear ethereal voices and noises, the fiery intensity of faeros thoughts: a wash of defeat, withdrawal… not resentment, but limitation. Even in her closest contact with the fiery beings, Osira’h had not been able to understand why they turned their capricious behavior on both sides of the conflict.

The hydrogues were similar, as were the watery wentals. The verdani—the worldforest mind that manifested in all the trees of Theroc—was the most easily accessible sentience. Green priests like her mother had long been able to tap into the verdani mind, read the thoughts of the forest, share the knowledge stored there.

Concentrating now, Osira’h opened up to the fireball that hovered in front of her shielded globe. The flames brightened and swirled, and the ellipsoid spun before it shot off to swim with other faeros in a solar flare. Osira’h felt an afterimage in her brain, a warm tingle from the strange alien presence.

As her globe drifted, she closed her eyes and cast her thoughts out along the thism web. She listened to the simmering power of the elementals, the crackle of the faeros, the humming of the hydrogues that slumbered uneasily in their gas-giant planets, the sighs of the wentals across open bodies of water, the whisper of verdani voices like leaves blowing in the wind.

But there was also an uneasy background static… ghost voices stirring in the fabric of the universe. She could hear it more loudly than any of her siblings.

As she concentrated, Osira’h heard an unexpected crack, a sudden strengthening of the telepathic bond with her brother Gale’nh. She knew he had departed on the Kolpraxa for the far boundaries of the Spiral Arm—and now she heard him cry out in her mind. A pitch-black coldness flowed from him, a shadow fell across his thoughts, and Gale’nh suddenly went silent in her mind.

She knew something terrible had happened to him, to the Kolpraxa, to all the Ildirans aboard it in the unexplored void of deep space.

When her vision snapped back into focus and she saw the faeros still bobbing in the depths of the star, Osira’h felt no warmth from them, only urgency. A panic? Even the faeros were afraid!

She activated the engines of her observation globe and raced up above the stellar corona. She transmitted to the astronomers at the astronomical research station to prepare a ship for immediate departure for Ildira.

She had to report to the Mage-Imperator.