39. The Shelter an the Prison

After days of floating from room to room, the group enjoyed the garden, the sun and the gentle breeze. Nox spent more than an hour laying out all her plant samples, checking their condition for the trip back and ensuring they had what they needed for Fureva-Yung’s treatment. Fureva-Yung was interested in the plants and their medicinal uses as they pertained to her treatment. Still, her mind was elsewhere, trying to grasp the strands of her past life. She understood that the medicine would cause hallucinations and images of her life to be more real than the present. It was that she was longing for more than anything. Jaden lay out on the grass and seemed to enjoy the garden's quiet. And the garden was quiet. Besides the ever-present breeze, there was a gentle rustle of the grass and the occasional creak or groan from the branch of a tree. No bird song, no buzz of insects, no snuffling scratching of something hidden in the grass.
 
Marius was not enjoying the garden. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it, but his restless soul would not let him settle for a moment while there were things to do and see.
“Can’t you sort those plants in the library?” He asked Nox who had the bracelet for that room, “I bet there’s information on each of the plants.”
“They’ll float everywhere,” She complained, patting a plant she’d just placed down amongst the collection, “What if it floated away into the library and I left without it? How would we treat Fureva-Yung then?”
“You could come back in and get another…there are others of each of these plants, right?” He looked around the garden, searching for holes in the landscape where Nox had been. Even with his cat’s eyes, he didn’t see any.
“Yes, there are others,” Nox sighed and finally relented, ”Fine, I’ll let you into the library and come back to finish this, okay?”
“I do not think it wise to break up the party, Marius,” Fureva-Yung added her thoughts and Jaden seemingly snoozed.
“I’ll be fine. What could possibly go wrong” He beamed, but no one was convinced, “Besides, I can always get in touch if I need help.” He touched his head, referring to their telepathic link.
 
Marius knew precisely where he wanted to search first, the bookshelves the red-robed figure had loitering. He’d glanced through the shelves previously, but this time he tried to work out what the red-robed figure had been looking at and what they may have taken with him. He had just started looking for gaps on the shelves when he heard a deep, cool voice beside him.
“Does ancient anger rise, or is it the sunset?” The red-robed figure said. Now that he was close, Marius could see the swirl of stars that took up the entire space under the hood.
“Good question. I remember you. We met in the crystal caves.”
“The man of two faces,” The red robe bowed.
“Yeah, more than ever, right?” Marius laughed self-deprecatingly since, in the datasphere, he was a black-and-white patchwork of connections and ports.
“Are you not optimistic about the three?”
“Me? I’m optimistic about everything,” He answered automatically, then realised who the figure was referring to, “The three Sions. Are you one of the three?”
The figure seemed to sigh. A slight slumping to the shoulder was the only body language Marius could discern.
“It is arising if you have not figured out that yet.”
“Ah, I see. Well, we still have one, right?”
The figure stared at Marius. At least he felt…studied.
“Urgh, where’s the third? We think we know where the second one is.”
The stare again. Being the centre of attention wasn’t something Marius usually enjoyed. When it felt like every eyeball in the universe was judging you, even his ego took a knock.
“Well, what can you help us with?”
“The shelter will be your weapon to imprison one of many.” The red-robed proclaimed before disappearing in front of Marius’ eyes.
 
He 'blinked' and took a moment to think about the robed one's latest prophesy. The “...one of many…” was obvious, but what was the “...shelter will be your weapon? An umbrella? Eventually, he gave up and returned to his original task of checking for holes in the shelves. It looked like two books were missing from the section on starship repairs. He glided down to the catalogue diamond to check for a search history but found none. Now at a loose end, he browsed the shelves for titles, many in the Ferrian or Sacristan script, which was incomprehensible until the others came and collected him.
 
After a short snooze in the grass, Jaden stood, stretched and felt refreshed, ready to tackle the shard again. Nox had her plants packed in her back to her liking, and even Fureva-Yung had found the break beneficial. She discovered she could blink across space like Nox using her speed boost. Watching the warrior disappear and appear across the garden had Jaden practising the skill, and soon, they were blinking through the door into the cube room, bouncing around the enclosed space like children.
“See, I told Marius anyone could do it,” Nox said Fureva-Yung as she appeared suddenly at the girl’s side.
“Marius does not have fast feet,” Fureva-Yung replied, pointing to her own round feet.
Nox smiled, “I can’t argue with that.”
 
They 'blinked' around and eventually entered the door leading to the library.
“There you are. I found Red-cloak again, “ Marius almost exclaimed as if welcoming them back, “It's the same being as we met in the caves. Do you remember Nox? The being with the star face and the weird way of speaking?”
“Oh?” Nox had had a very confronting moment with the being in a black robe when they’d downloaded the instruction to make the compass that had led them to the Tilted Spire. Though the instructions had left her mind as soon as the compass was finished, the feeling of being compelled or controlled was a constant feature of nightmares afterwards. Curious about what the being had to say, she was still glad she had not been in the library when they were present.
“Yeah, they mentioned something about having no confidence in the three…”
“We have confidence, “Nox looked up, and Fureva-Yung, “We just don’t know where to find the others.”
“Oh! And before they mysteriously disappeared, they said, ‘The shelter will be your weapon to imprison one of many.”
“A weapon against the shard?” That was good news, “A shelter? I guess we’ll have to keep our eyes open for one.”
“Did the constellations rotate?” Fureva-Yung asked, seemingly out of the blue.
“What?”
“The being in the red, did their star face rotate?” She gestured with her hand, the whole starfield moving clockwise.
“Ah, yeah. Mean anything to you, Furry?”
Fureva-Yung shook her head, but it was clear that the idea of a constellation moving around a fixed point had Fureva-yung thinking.
 
They returned to the cube room, using Nox’s black bracelet on the new door. In the doorway, Marius booted up all his defensive cyphers, ready for whatever was coming next. Fureva-Yung looked at the collection of bracelets Nox had around her twig-like wrist. The blue, black and yellow rings were suspended just past her hand, seemingly floating in thin air. Pulling at one only moved the arm. It never changed its position encircling the arm.
“When we leave, can I have the bracelets for my chain?” She asked Nox.
“Sure,” Nox said automatically before thinking, “Though I don’t know if they will be anything once we are outside. They are a construct of the datasphere.” Still, other things translated, why not the keys to the security system?
“But if I link them to my chain, it will make them real,” Fureva-Yung replied adamantly. As Nox or the other had no way of knowing what would happen, they shrugged and agreed.
“But only after the shard is in the crystal,” Marius pointed through the doorway they were about to enter.
“Agreed,” Fureva-Yung nodded and floated through.
 
The last room was conical-shaped with a wide end at the door. In front of the companions, an oval-shaped metal shield was connected to the walls of the room by thin metal scaffolding. It formed a mesh of metal stretching up and over their heads. Broken in places, it made a dome protecting them from what lay at the other end of the room. A writhing mass of red tentacles blocked the view of what lay at the narrow end, but by how the wind whipped through this space the group gathered, it must lead to the crystal. Though much of the shard seemed to have been already swept into its new prison, a remnant was jammed into place, tentacles embedded into the smooth walls like a tumour to good tissue.
“A shelter?” Nox 'blinked' at the dome and scanned it to verify her assumptions. A control panel turned on and managed the device, which was presently broken and unusable.
 
“Jaden, I think we need this working if we’re going to get the rest of the shard into the crystal,” Nox called Jaden over. Jaden had already begun her confusing jargon that had been so effective against the shard in the previous battle.
“...it is only inevitable that biology would defeat you with its confounding and confusing behaviour…” She challenged the blob before Nox finally gained her attention.
With a ‘humph’, she also 'blinked' across the space to see what Nox was pointing at.
 
Marius started. Until that moment, he was sure only the clever Nox could disappear and reappear where she wanted. Seeing Jaden do the same impossible movement had him confused.
“Sure, fast feet,” Fureva-Yung replied, blinking to stand on the dome and look down at her squirming enemy.
“But…” Fureva-Yung too! How long had he been in that library? While he muddled through this new development, he pulled out one of his last io and started making a bomb.
 
Jaden quickly realised what Nox had discovered. When fully restored, the dome would create a force shield and propel it all forward. Like a plunger in a coffee pot, it would force what remained of the shard through into the crystal.
“We have to fix the shield and the propulsion on this things. It's going to take me a while,” Jaden admitted rolling up her sleeves.
“I’ll help!” Nox blinked beside her, and the two set to work.
 
Above them, Fureva-Yung stared down at the shard and laughed. No more talking, no more planning. This was what she was good at. A tentacle lashed out, grabbing her around the waist. It dragged her back to the mass.
 
At the same time, Jaden and Nox succeeded at turning on the dome. The network of metal bloomed with a blue shield that separated the shard from those inside. It also separated Fureva-Yung from any help.
“How do you do the blinking thing?” Marius called the two women working to repair the dome.
“This is the datasphere,” Nox yelled back, “ Just think of yourself in a space you can see, and you’ll be there.”
Marius tried. He thought of a spot just in front of Fureva-Yung where he hit the tentacle with his bomb and get her free.
Nothing happened. Blinking, it seemed, was not for him.
“See, I told you I couldn’t do it.”
 
Outside the shield, Fureva-Yung had gone. Yung, the more primitive form, raged, roared and…laughed. She slashed out with her chain, determined to get free or go down with her enemy. It seemed the shard agreed, and the tentacle tightened its grip, slowly squeezing the life from Yung.
 
Bong! Bong! Bang! Tentacles now pounded the blue shield, each crash from the heavy appendages making the shield boom, crash like drums, and rumble like thunder.
Bang! Bang! Twang! A metal arm collapsed, allowing access to a tentacle that started worming inside the shield.
“I’ve got to get through. Turn off the shield,” Marius yelled over the din around them.
“Are you crazy? With that thing wailing on us, we wouldn’t stand a chance!” Jaden replied, not looking up from her work on the propulsion system.
“We must get Fureva-Yung back before the shard drags her into the crystal!” Marius pointed at the thrashing Yung being pulled further and further away.
 
Jaden grumbled something that only made it to her companions via the telepathic network and dived onto the controls for the shield.
“I’ll modify the shield so we can move through it, but the shard can’t. Get ready!” The shield flickered, and Marius once more tried ‘blinking’ to Fureva-Yung’s side. This time he was surprised to find himself exactly where he wanted to be. Cupping the bomb in his shielded hands, he thrust it at the tentacle and detonated. The tentacle tore in half, and the shard roared in pain and frustration. The end holding Yung loosened its grip and slipped away, swept away in the wind. The stump thrashed about, looking for another victim to grab. Yung didn’t give it a chance. She grabbed Marius in a bear hug and blinked them behind the shield and relative safety.
 
Jaden fixed the propulsion system, and the dome and shield started moving down the room. They were pushing it back! The pounding magnified with more tentacles now in range. Panels of the shield flashed and disappeared as more and more of the array buckled under the shard's onslaught. Tentacles now reached through and started pulling the scaffolding apart piece by piece. Marius and Fureva-Yung positioned themselves around the shield playing a bizarre game of ‘wack-a-mole’ with the shard. As a tentacle punched through the shield, they beat back, sending it back down towards the crystal.
“Shmoosh!” Yung crowed as her chain hit a tentacle so hard that it was nearly torn. The broken appendage pulled out of the hole to be replaced by two others that continued to tear at the shield.
 
“They need help. Here take the controls,” Jaden handed over control of the dome to Nox and continued her confusing jargon. Nox agreed the stream of technical nonsense confused the shard, but what would she do with the dome? Focusing her thoughts, she made a telepathic link with it. Now her thoughts sped through the dome's circuit boards, wiring and control system. She tried boosting power to the shield reinforcing the panels still operational. Tentacles everywhere were snipped off as blue panels came back to life, but the shield did not move.
 
Marius made another bomb and, using one of the smaller breeches stuck his arm out of the shield and threw it at the shard. Wails and screams rose from the thrashing entity, but it made no progress against the reinforced plunger descending from above. Yung, unable to swing her chain at the entity, resorted to a more fundamental attack style. Opening her huge mouth, she bit off the tip of a tentacle squirming through the shield. “Fureva-Yung, “ Nox blanched at the controls of the shield, “All the entity needs to go in the crystal.”
She wasn’t going to swallow, but somehow the tiny wriggling shard made it down her throat anyway. It had been crunchy initially, which she liked, ending in a metallic electrical sensation she craved.
 
Come on, shield. We have to push that thing down into the crystal where it belongs, Nox thought to the dome and mentally shoved the controls. The shield started moving again, though at a cost. Keeping the shield energised and moving was draining the energy faster than expected.
“Um…Jaden, I don’t think this shield will keep up for much longer. We’re running out of power.”
 
Yung was not feeling well. Something unpleasant was happening in her stomach that she didn’t like. Trying to ignore the sensation, she reached through the shield and knocked away a tentacle about to strike it. Marius zipped back and forward, knocking aside all tentacles that dared try to break through the shield. Soon there were no tentacles at the cracks, so he turned his attention to those drumming on the dome.
 
Yung was not feeling very bad. Deep down, the pressure was building. The only way to be free of the pain and discomfort was to release it. A foul red gas exuded from Yung and filled the cavity behind the shield. Nox, focused on the dome’s controls, had no chance and fainted as the yellow cloud rolled through her space. The shield stopped moving, and the shield started flickering and fading. Jaden, too couldn’t help but gag at the fumes. She ceased talking to cough and gasp for a clean breath of air. Marius’s danger sense made him aware of the problem before it reached him. He blinked through the shield away from the gas only to be attacked directly by the shard. Tears welling in her eyes, Jaden pushed the unconscious Nox aside and took control of the dome once more. She adjusted the energy levels. Slowly the shield started moving again, slower than before. Jaden frowned. She would have to find an alternative energy supply if they would finish the job.
Yung felt better, but even she could see what it had done to her friends. In blind frustrations, Yung stuck her head out a larger hole in the shield and focused a shattering shout on the shard now edge closer. The tentacles thrummed with the energy, some breaking away and blowing away in the wind. The shard now had three enemies to fight, the shield, Marius, still holding back tentacles outside the shield and Yung’s exposed head.
“Pull your head in, Furry!” Marius said before popping back in under the shield holding his breath.
 
Nox floated lifelessly back as Jaden pulled out her last io and drained its energy into dome. The shield picked up pace again. Marius was back to ‘blinking’ around inside the shield, knocking away any tentacles causing trouble as Yung put her shoulder to the dome and started pushing. They were all running out of ideas. At the same time, the shard was running out of space as the dome squeezed the shard down into the narrow end of the room.
 
“Hey guys, I think we’re doing it! Go, Team!” Marius congratulated before spotting the lifeless Nox floating away beneath him, “Oh, ah, Nox.” He blinked over and gave her a shake. With a spluttering cough, Nox awoke and blinked back to the dome where the energy crisis was apparent. Carefully, she pushed through the energy of her psychic burst through the dome, boosting energy levels.
 
With that and a final push for Yung, the Shard was blown through the narrow aperture, the dome sealing in place with a solid click! They’d done it! The Spire was free of the shard. Marius yelled in victory as Yung’s stomach rumbled. Nox grumbled something about a cork before ‘blinking’ back to the door they came in and disappeared.
 
“Furry! I knew you were good, but I didn’t know you were deadly at both ends,” Marius laughed, and Yung held her stomach.
“Tummy hurts.”
“Maybe next time you’ll be more careful what you put in your mouth,” Jaden replied as she, too, ‘blinked’ away to find the Library.
 
Now the Spires Datasphere was clear of the shard. The group were now free to explore it more fully. Jaden spent hours in the library doing what she loved best, browsing. She looked up the sions as Marius had done but found nothing more than him. She looked up the only name that Fureva-Yung could remember, Crinatus Torn, the individual from the surveillance images. There was a public record, their date of death via natural causes and a note that they had been ’saved’ to the Datasphere.
 
Marius asked to be let through to Nexion’s temple.
“Hey, Nexion! Did it work? Is it imprisoned?”
“YOU SUCCEEDED IN TRAPPING THE MALIGNANT SHARD IN THE CRYSTAL,” Nexion replied in their usual calm computer voice.
“How long have we got until that’s a problem again?”
“POTENTIALLY A DECADE AS LONG AS THE SPIRE’S SYSTEMS SUPPORT IT.”
“Speaking of which, how are your systems? What damage did the shard do?”
“CONSIDERABLE. A FULL INVENTORY OF BROKEN LINKS HAS YET TO BE CONDUCTED.”
“Anything we should get onto first?
“THE TRANSMITTER WOULD BE THE NEXT PRIORITY. I SHALL PREPARE A LIST OF REPAIRS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.”
 
Nox went to the Star room to make sense of the menu system. She looked down on their solar system in wonder, realising that if the Shard had not taken over Cerelon, she’d have never seen such a sight. She noted the name in Ferrian, recognising that the ship where she’d found Fureva-Yung’s bracelet was not shown. If it wasn’t circling their home, where had she gone? Yung, still in her Bursk form, stayed close to Nox. Nox looked at her friend and sighed. She would have liked to have looked at the worlds in the star room with the ever-curious Fureva-Yung, but her bright side was quiet for now, and Yung did not find the stars as interesting.
 
Knock! Knock! Came a mental message from Jaden. Nox blinked to the Library room door and opened it for Jaden.
“Well, I did find a record for Crinatus Torn, but there was nothing more than we already knew…quite a deal less,” Jaden complained, looking around the star room, “Ready to go?”
 
They looked at Fureva-Yung, who took that moment to shake herself free of her Bursk state and look at them again with intelligence in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Nox.”
For what? Nox was going to say, then realised Fureva-Yung was apologising for the red gas cloud.
“Well,” She couldn’t help but smirk at her friend's discomfort, “Do it again, and I’ll turn your fluffy tail into a cork.”
 
They travelled to Nexion’s temple, where Marius finished his debrief. Standing close, Jaden, Marius and Nox held out their arms with bracelets. Using her reshape ability, Nox first opened one of the links of Fureva-Yung’s chain. Each bracelet was threaded on one at a time before the chain link was closed again. It was a tight squeeze, especially when Jaden held the key aloft to return them to the Spire.
 
They translated out, Fueva-Yung checking her chain to find the one link coloured with a spiral of blue, yellow, green, red and black. The thought of the door keys translating had Nox diving for her bag where she had placed the plant samples. Instead of the thirty-odd plants she’d harvested, three spheres filled the cavity of her bag.
“What are these?” She said, pulling one out.
“PROTECTION FOR PLANT SAMPLES SO THEY TRANSLATE INTACT,” Nexion supplied as the sphere in Nox’s hand broke open to reveal the plants inside.
“I have to show Temila!” Nox exclaimed and ran for the lift and the surface.
 
For Nox, there was nothing but the plants, the creation of the poultice and Fureva-Yung’s treatment. To ensure enough of the ingredient, all the plants were allowed to grow before any substantial harvest. The design of the poultice was laborious and time-consuming. Temila also slowed their progress, ensuring each step was thoroughly understood before touching the actual ingredients. Each measure was tested before being added to the final treatment. After a month of work, they were ready to try it on their patient.
 
Fureva-Yung was anxious for the treatment to begin. She knew there were possibly months of delirium and more months of recuperation. Every day without treatment was more time delay before they could go out and find the other sions. Maybe it was Temila’s quiet yet firm way of putting her off, or the grim look of determination of Nox’s face that quietened most of Fureva-Yung’s questions. Still, she would make the trip down to the farm once a day to see the plants, pet the Boko, who had become everyone’s pets and ask how the treatment was going. Nox no longer answered. She had no more words to offer. In her own frustration, she would only say something she didn’t mean. She let Temila repeat the message from the day before that it was all going well and would be ready as soon as possible.
 
Finally, the day arrived. In the community's tiny hospital, a reinforced bed frame with a thick straw mattress had been made for Fureva-Yung. On her insistence, straps were included for her wrists, chest and legs. Close to Temila’s hut, the hospital also included a small cot table and stool for Nox as she stood vigil. The poultice was applied to the scars of Fureva-Yung’s back, covered with fresh dressings before settling down Fureva-Yung on her bed.
 
For Fureva-Yung, the next two months were a confusing mix of conscious moments and delirium filled with dreams of the past. In one such dreams, she and the other two admirals of the Ferrian fleet were in a closed room talks about a potential Sacristan pushback. The hope was to break through the Sacristan grip on their sector of space. Between the three of them, they decided Fureva-Yung, with a small fleet, would hit the core of the Sacristan Empire, drawing their military might away from the border so a second admiral could take and reclaim the colonies.
 
A jump in the memories, and Fureva-Yung was at the helm of her flagship, slowing out of hyperspace to appear near the core of the Sacristan Empire. It was the first time anyone at the core had seen a ship from outside the Empire, and the jump's social impact shocked all Sacristan life's strata. The fleet had appeared close to a space station orbiting a red dwarf star. There was no planet of great cities, nothing to show for the power and might of the Sacristan Empire. They fired on the space station, hoping it would be enough to draw the attention they had planned. They were surprised that within a few minutes, the space around the red dwarf was filled with Sacristan ships. A nerve had been struck!
 
The battle began. The small, unsupported Ferrian Fleet had no chance against what seemed like the whole Sacristan military might, but they fought on regardless. It appeared the Sacristans were nervous around the space station, and every stray weapons fire on it had the whole Sacristan fleet buzzing like angry bees. It wasn’t long before Fureva-Yung’s navigation officer informed her the star appeared to be opening. A ring of unknown energy encircled the red dwarf ominous, and Fureva-Yung decided it was time for them to leave.
 
As she was about to give the order, an energy bolt pulsed out from the star hitting not a Ferrian ship but one of the Sacristan. Fureva-Yung’s flagship lurched into hyperdrive and sped away, though no one had had a chance to enter the coordinates of engage the engines.
 
When they returned to normal space, the fleet found themselves at a Ferrian space station, one of several staging posts set up during the war. Fureva-Yung turned to ask her Navigation officer what had happened, only to find their scorched corpse still smoking at their station. The station welcomed the fleet back, congratulated them on a mission well-done and thanked them for the millions of terabytes of information now downloading.
 
Another jolt and Fureva-Yung found herself at a very different meeting of the admirals. Across the table, their equivalent from the Sacristan Empire sat unhappily. Due to their attack on the space station there were malfunctions occurring all throughout the Empire. The Sacristans now confessed to having imprisoned a malignant entity, a powerful A.I. in the red dwarf. They were now willing to work with their former enemies to deal with the entity before it destroyed all technology throughout the known universe. A peace accord was signed, and from that moment on, the Ferrian Compact and Sacristan Empire worked together to return the malignant entity to the Gate Star.