44 – Dynasties and dystopia

“I’m going to disband the party,” Melina said.

Lisette grunted. It could have been in approval, or she could have been laughing at her, but Melina felt like she could not tell anymore. She did not trust her instincts on the matter, not after what happened.

“Don’t be so hasty,” Ishrin said after inhaling loudly. He pressed two fingers on his forehead to deal with the raging headache he was feeling, spurred by the mess of emotions swirling in his mind.

Melina’s eyes lit up. “You don’t want me to?”

“It doesn’t make sense.” He said. “The expedition was a disaster.” Melina recoiled, but he held up a hand. “However, disasters are something that happens when you go on dangerous adventures like we did.” He paused, looking in the distance to clear his head, or perhaps to look for the right words. “For starters: I put you in a position of responsibility when I made you leader, but that was my choice and I almost forced it on you. It doesn’t make any sense to blame you for acting as a leader. Yes, we disagreed on what to do next, but ultimately you were the leader and I was not. Secondly: you couldn’t have known what was going to happen. You thought you were doing the right thing. I could have stopped you but instead decided to roll with it.”

Lisette was listening intently, she noticed. Which was good, she thought, or at least she hoped. Of the two, she was the one who was mad at her, not Ishrin. He had not once mentioned the whole incident after he woke up, and his ramblings when he thought he was going to die could be dismissed as not really indicative of what he was really thinking at that moment. At least, she hoped so. They hadn’t been the worst kind of words, but they had been laced with a certain amount of… something that made her feel like the pit of her stomach was on fire. She knew that she might not be right, again, but she couldn’t help but feel what she was feeling.

Ishrin inhaled, massaging his temples again. “You know why? Because I too thought it was the right thing to do.” The words seemed to echo in Melina’s mind, shaking her already turbulent thoughts but cancelling the waves of the storm in her head with equal yet opposite waveforms, so that the result was a sensation of strange eerie calm. “I really admire you for that. In my past life I had become a cynic, only acting in my interest and thinking that good people and good deeds led to nothing but pain. You, on the other hand, did not hesitate in the slightest. We went in underprepared, I lingered at Tier 2 for way too long, and disaster happened.”

He paused again. “But we are alive.”

The unsaid was louder than his words, for a moment, and Melina kept waiting for a chirp from someone’s pocket that did not come. At least, she understood the message, although it was conflicting with what she herself had thought earlier and with what Lisette had said about her. Conflicting things, coming from different people with different point of view and vantage points and experiences. She would have to do the legwork now, of parsing such information until she could present a coherent version of herself to the others, not the broken mirror that was her consciousness in the wake of the trauma she had just barely survived.

She smiled, tears flowing from her eyes and marring her cheeks. “Thank you,” was all she said, but she didn’t need to say more.

“Me neither.” Lisette said, looking straight at Melina in the eye.

She knew, from that one look, that Lisette had not forgiven her.

***

In the void between worlds, things were moving at a fast pace. Faster than even light was allowed to travel in universes such as the one Ishrin inhabited, parts of the multiverse where Albert had chosen to maintain laws of nature similar to the conditions of his home planet. His planet was gone, but the multiverse he had created from the ashes of his own had been in its image, at least at first. And even now, untold years later, the radiant core of the web of worlds he had constructed still followed those very same laws, an echo of a past long gone.

A starship sailed through the vast expanse of space. Its shape was unlike anything Albert would have recognized, back when he was still human, bizarre and alien and strange as it was. It was not utterly unrecognizable, yet it appeared non-practical to his eyes, which were still used to thinking about space and time and travel within in a certain—classical—way.

“Current bearing 3315 and velocity is…” the woman at the helm said. “433.8 times the speed of light sir.”

Dynasty watched and nodded imperceptibly at the new information.

“Compression factor is 45, decrease.” He said.

“Understood sir.” The woman said.

The Soaring Dragon’s engines roared mutely with Dynasty, the ship’s captain, holding a tight grip on the reality that surrounded the ship. Distances were compressed and relaxed, changed according to his will. Just as he instructed his navigator, the compression factor was about to decrease. With a slight frow in his brows he concentrated for a moment, and space was suddenly more.

“Compression is 44. Prepare to flip and burn.” He said.

“Understood.”

Right as the view in the front window changed and went from the field of blurry and impossibly bright stars, their light compressed by the warping of space, to an empty void, a woman entered the bridge. She was stunningly beautiful, with golden curls that fell over her toned body, crowning her deep amber scaled face and her fiery orange eyes. She was not human, the scales on her face a dead giveaway of her animalistic nature, the predatory hidden within.

“The report, sir.” She said.

“Thank you, Equinox.” Dynasty said. “You can stay. Why don’t you tell me the mission?”

Equinox blushed, but her smile was mischievous and captivating. Dynasty’s eyes feasted on her body, her face, her fangs, and eventually their eyes met. The rest of the bridge crew pretended not to notice.

“Of course, sir.” Her voice was honey. “We are on our way to Prima Luce. I see that we have just flipped. Are we yet burning?”

“Yes, sir.” The woman at the helm was quick to respond.

“Good, as expected of a captain of your skill and power.” Equinox gushed. “We will arrive at the planet of Prima Luce in about 5 days. Sir.”

Dynasty responded to the smile with a grin. “And?”

“You are invited to a gala by the planet’s Guild Overseer, sir.” She paused, letting the emotions she could feel from him every time she said sir wash over her. She needed to push it. “I could come with you. The Overseer will be more than happy to provide us with the best suite.”

Dynasty smiled. But it was a grotesque smile, lascivious and predatory. Equinox inhaled, the nails of her left hand digging into her palm behind her back.

Because, in the command room of the Soaring Dragon, Equinox was not the predator, but the prey. And as such, she had to use every trick at her disposal to carve out a little slice of living for herself, lest the universe swallow her whole and spit out nothing but bleached bones.

“There has been a last-minute addition.” She added. “The Guild received a ping from the Master stationed at Noctis. A realm has opened. You are the closest Dynasty.”

Dynasty inhaled. Equinox tensed.

“Fine,” he barked. “I will go. After the gala, and after I am satisfied with the…” he looked at her, and she did her best to meet his eyes and smile. “…sights of the city. Understand?”

“Of course,” she fought back her urge to reel away from his lust. “Sir.”

A wave of nausea hit her.

“Now go Equinox.” Dynasty said. “Make yourself beautiful for tonight.”

“Sir,” she cooed. “Why don’t we wait until the gala? The wait makes the lust even more powerful. And then… at the climax of it all…” she whispered in his ears.

Dynasty’s lips thinned into a line. Equinox wished she could just turn off her Psionic Empathy. She could smell the reek and sweat of this man on her skin, on her lips, on her body. Not once had they laid together still, and yet. She held her breath. A series of emotions came and went, and for a moment, a dark thought invaded Dynasty’s mind. Darker than usual. Equinox felt nauseous, but she knew that if she didn’t do something, she was as good as dead. She grabbed his hand and let him feel that she was not wearing anything under her skirt.

“Of course.” Dynasty was overcome with lust, and Equinox was bearing the brunt of it. “It will be worth the wait.”