“The message was clear.”
Tria stopped pacing around their apartment and whipped towards her brother in frustration, averting her gaze from the freshly-made tattoo on Zero’s shoulder poking out from under his sleeve. She could hardly bear to look at it.
“That doesn’t mean you should be subscribing to this- this bullshit!” Tria yelled. “That doesn’t mean you have to retaliate!”
“We already did retaliate,” Zero hissed, his tone biting. “We killed two people. And just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Going to a single Keila rally and getting a Keila tattoo is nothing in comparison—I don’t even get why you’re upset.”
Tria looked at Zero with disbelief.
“Fighting for Keila won’t bring back our family,” she told him in a quiet voice.
“I know. But I can at least avenge them. They died because we belonged to Keila, so I’m just going to show the galaxy Keila’s power so nobody ever messes with us again.”
“Zero, you are getting involved with some dangerous people. These are extremists we’re talking about.”
“They are patriots. Heroes. Doing what people like you are too afraid to do now—fight for what matters.”
Tria looked at the tattoo on Zero’s shoulder, the wrenching knot in her chest that had formed that fateful night tightening further. It depicted Keila’s signature symbol—a twisted möbius strip—the same symbol that was commonly used to represent the galaxy’s ancient leader, Teo Nora, and the same symbol that she saw tattooed on the Keila terrorists she had so feared her whole life.
“Listen, Tria,” Zero explained. “You’re not going to change my mind. I am moving to Keila’s capital, and you can either come with me or not. I’ll admit—I’d much rather have you around. Especially if I get to see the side of you you showed me the night of our revenge. You were brilliant.”
That sent a wave of anger into Tria, and she shot a glare at Zero. His sharp gaze was unwavering.
“I’ll come,” Tria told him. Despite his hopeful expression, it wasn’t for the reasons Zero wanted or expected them to be. Tria had to keep an eye on her brother, keep him out of trouble as much as possible. Because, at this rate, he was going to do something really stupid.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Great,” Zero said with a smile.
Numbness filled Tria’s mind as she watched Zero step up to the podium. Unable to stand listening to what he had to say, her mind tuned out all sounds and she only watched Zero’s lips move as they spat words of hate and slander.
All of Tria’s efforts to make Zero see sense thus far have only pushed the two farther apart. He spent increasing amounts of time venturing into Keila’s current capital city, Ner-Jensis, joining rallies that discussed Keila’s greatness and criticized its current leader’s failure to expand the great name of the faction. Now, he leads those rallies, touring the city with a band of extremists whose skin displayed more Keila tattoos than their natural colors.
In fact, the only thing she had accomplished was enabling his behavior. Tria’s decision to come along with Zero to the capital had only demonstrated his power over her.
With a burst of anger, Tria decided she had to do something about this. She focused herself back onto Zero’s words as he addressed the rally around her.
“-of the one who claims to be our leader, of his consistent failure to follow through on his duties and expand our faction’s influence! And his actions against Keila’s name will not go unpunished!”
Raucous cheering consumed her from all sides. Tria calmed her racing heart to focus on his next words.
“Follow me, as next week, we will go to the so-called ‘War Strategy Building’ in the capital, where our leader Dobet makes compromises that give up entire planets of our hard-earned territory! And we will take it for Keila’s true fighters! I invite those of you with Vals to work alongside me as we show them the power Keila can have!”
Tria’s eyes glinted with determination. She knew what she had to do.
The lights of police cars gave blinding, pulsing flashes outside of the bank, illuminating the glowing hole that had been melted in its side. They lit up Tria, standing in the middle of the hole, who dropped the crates of physical currency this planet still used and put her hands in the air in an act of surrender.
The moments leading up to the interrogation room were a blur of handcuffs, police lights, and angry voices. All Tria was focused on now was the thin face of the interrogator in front of her.
“I said, what is your name?”
Tria came to.
“Tria Kestai,” she answered.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Where do you live?”
“The Jinen-Ulpi apartment complex off of street 12.”
“Here? In the capital?”
“Yes.”
The interrogator’s eyes squinted and she pursed her lips.
“Why’d you go about a bank robbery so close to home? Doesn’t seem to me like the wisest decision, if you ask me. Without any kind of concealment, much less.”
“I wanted to be caught.”
The interrogator’s face became even more confused.
“I have critical information for Supreme Leader Dobet, and I need to get it up the chain of command,” Tria elaborated. “My brother is a Keila extremist with a vendetta against Dobet and his ‘weakness.’ He and a group of dozens of other extremists are going to launch an attack on the War Strategy Building here in the capital in less than a week.”
“You-”
“If you don’t believe me, I have proof.” Tria placed her cuffed hands on the interrogation table. “You guys confiscated a recording device off of me before you brought me here. Watch the recordings.”
The interrogator, after giving Tria a sidelong look of suspicion, called another police force member and brought in Tria’s recording device, connecting it to a screen in the interrogation room. Zero’s face appeared on it at once, and as he spoke, Tria watched as the interrogator’s expression became more and more concerned.
“I recorded all of his rallies without his noticing,” Tria said.
“What’s he going to do?” the interrogator challenged, looking back over at Tria. “He looks like a boy. How old is he?”
“Yes, he’s only a year younger than me. But did you see how easily I got into that bank? He’s at least as powerful a Valin as I am. And if you want to catch him…”
A vibration passed through every object in the room, and the handcuffs on Tria’s wrists immediately shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.
“...You’re going to need more than handcuffs,” Tria finished, rubbing her wrists.
The interrogator looked at the now free Tria with wide eyes.
“Don’t worry, I won’t escape,” Tria told her. “I just want to get the message across.”
“I’ll pass it up the chain of command,” the interrogator told her. “But your charges, Tria, still stand. Attempted robbery is a serious crime.”
“Can you forgive it if I’m right, if he does show up at that building in a week? I only wanted to warn Keila of what was about to happen. I’ll wager my freedom on it.”
The interrogator gave Tria a long look, then a nod.
It was cold and wet again in Keila’s capital city of Ner-Jensis, chilling Tria to the bone as she sat on the roof of a small building, looking at the grey sky. Across from her was the War Strategy Building, short but spacious, a crowd of armed police stationed along the outside.
Gathered by the War Strategy Building’s entrance was the largest defensive force—a small portion of Keila’s army. Those Keila soldiers who stood without weapons flexed their hands and stretched their arms, ready to use their powerful Vals at a moment’s notice.
However familiar Tria had become with anxiety in the past several months since her family’s death, the tension in the frigid air was uniquely electric as she waited for her brother and his cohorts to appear and confront the formidable defense in front of the War Strategy Building. She watched every passerby warily as they approached the building, anticipating Zero’s figure and seeing his face in complete strangers. Tria had thought the takeover had begun when a person with an androgynous appearance brushed by one of the WSB’s walls, but by the time they receded into the crowd of foot traffic through the city, she realized it was a false alarm.
Tria’s vantage point atop a building meant she was the first to see the Keila extremists coming from behind the main force, appearing out of seemingly nowhere. She watched with horror as an extremist with a tattoo on her forehead and her hair in a bun snuck up from behind a policeman and quickly wrapped her arms around his neck, choking him.
Upon closer inspection, Zero’s group of extremists seemed to be emerging from a portal in the wall of the WSB, right where the androgynous figure had walked by. The commotion had attracted the attention of police stationed nearby, but it was too late—at least a dozen extremists had emerged from the portal, with more on the way, and in a blinding flash of unleashed Vals, the extremists overpowered the police and the soldiers standing guard by the WSB.
Tria rushed down the steps of the building she stood atop of, the sounds of chaos faintly audible from the stairwell. She emerged into the sidewalk across from the WSB right as Zero was grabbing ahold of one of the only standing Keila soldiers and freezing his arm until it shattered into pieces.
“We take the War Strategy Building in the name of Keila’s true fighters!” Zero shouted amidst the fighting. His face was bright and energized with the fire of battle. The remaining soldiers made a move to attack Zero, but they were quickly overcome by two extremists with projectile-utilizing Vals. She was too late.
“And now, take this building down! It has disgraced Keila’s name enough already!” Zero ordered, and the extremists responded with a roar, turning their violent hands towards the building.
As the extremists, with their wildly varying Vals, assaulted the structure, Tria ran across the street towards Zero to stop him. Sounds of destruction filled the air, so loud they sent waves of pain through Tria’s ears.
The mayhem came to an abrupt climax when, with a deafening boom and a small shockwave, a large hole was blasted straight through the WSB. The building around the hole crashed in on itself, sending a blast of dust in every direction. When the dust cleared, all eyes were on one young man standing with his long arms extended towards the hole. The dust still obscured most of his lean figure, but Zero could see him clearly, and he looked at the man with awe.
“Zero!”
Zero turned around to see Tria walking quickly up to him. Before he could react, Tria threw a punch, infused with the resonant frequencies necessary to make someone hurt, into Zero’s face.
Then, something bizarre happened. Energy flowed between Zero and Tria at an instantaneous rate, trapped in the nothingness between them. The more Zero diminished her power, the more power she gained, and vice versa. A paradox was born which died in the instant Tria retracted her fist from Zero’s face, leaving the two unharmed, afraid, and forever changed. Tria gave one more look at Zero before she sped away.
The haze that the attempted attack created in Zero’s brain faded when he heard a voice beside him.
“Who was that?” a man asked. “Should I go after her?” Zero turned to see it was the one who had single handedly demolished the WSB.
“She… don’t worry about it. It isn’t an issue,” Zero replied. “What was that? Did you really cause that entire collapse?”
“Oh, that was me, yes. My Val lets me control magnetic fields, and I created my own railgun on my arm.” The man rubbed his right arm. “I could have made it even more powerful if I had conductive material built into my arm, but I can’t afford the surgery.”
The young man looked wistfully into the distance. His chiseled figure, thick accent, and unique appearance, short hair that consisted of strands that were three different colors, suggested he was from a particularly distant corner of the galaxy.
“There’s a lot that I want,” the man said, addressing Zero. “I want fame. I want to be loved by the masses. But the media only portrays me as a devil.”
“What was your name, again?” Zero asked.
“Einer.”
“I can give you what you want. Just follow me. I’m going to change Keila, make it the way it’s supposed to be. And, the media—soon enough, I’ll be able to make you their angel.”
Zero returned to his and Tria’s apartment late that night, his self-satisfied expression souring when he saw Tria packing her things.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“What the hell does it look like?” Tria snapped. “I’m leaving. I stayed with you because I thought I’d be able to help put you on the right path… but the things you’ve done… oh, Nora, do you even know what you’ve done?”
“I am on the right path,” Zero replied calmly. “I see that clearly now. Today taught me that we really can accomplish great things. We don’t have to be nobodies anymore.”
“Don’t use ‘we.’ I’m not part of this.”
“But you were brilliant, Tria. The way you tried to stop me? It was genius.”
Tria looked up from the bag she was packing to give Zero an incredulous look.
“What?” she asked.
“Of course I’d find out how you would try to stop my plan at the WSB. Don’t tell me you think that lowly of me. But, Tria, I’m telling you that, once again, your plan was genius. You figured out how to get the attention of Keila officials, even as an unknown citizen.”
Tria didn’t say anything in reply.
“I met a man named Einer today. He possesses so much power, and seems to have a good head on his shoulders… but I could tell, and can still tell now, he wasn’t the same kind of fighter you were. Nobody in my group of patriots compares to you. Even though you used your brilliance against me, I know there’s a chance you can be brought to the right path.
“Defeating the army you helped station by the WSB taught me that I have a chance to go even further up Keila’s chain of command. I plan on challenging Dobet soon and taking control of Keila. But I can’t go it alone. I need a partner if I want to restore Keila’s glory. And I want it to be you.”
Tria put all the contempt and anger she could into one word.
“No.”
Zero recoiled. He looked surprised, but far from defeated. Now, anger crept into his voice.
“You do understand that your decision will not affect my plans for Keila, right? I assumed you would want more control over the way Keila is run, and that is what I am offering you. I will find your replacement, one way or another.”
“Go ahead. I’m done with this. I’m not going to enable you anymore. I would say the only thing I wish for you is that you come to your senses one day, but the day that occurs, the weight of your actions will destroy you.”
Tria grabbed her bags, walked out of the door, and slammed it behind her.
It took all of the money Tria had earned to buy a small spaceship and leave Keila’s capital. As she sat in the cockpit alone, she had a thought.
What am I even doing?
She felt completely listless. The only thing that had kept her going after that night was her futile goal of preventing Zero from becoming what she was afraid he would. But now, it had been proven beyond reasonable doubt that he was cemented on this trajectory, and there was nothing left she could do to stop him.
Surrounded by grey skies darkened by the endless shadow of war, Tria found herself more isolated than she had ever felt before in her life. Buildings towered over her from all sides, suffocating, angled like a satellite dish that focused the galaxy’s hate right on top of her.
Tria began the ship’s startup sequence and inputted random coordinates. She didn’t care where she would end up anymore. She had a hard time caring about anything anymore. Tria let the ship’s autopilot carry her off the ground and into orbit, disappearing into a place between the stars.
Her ship came to a stop faster than she had expected it to. She had entered Aikajo territory now, in a small system with a red dwarf as its host star. The ship’s computer indicated that this was a settled star system, but several planets on it were uninhabited by any known intelligent life. She selected one, whose surface appeared to be a mosaic of lavender and pink, to land on. While Aikajo had not settled it, they had given it a name—Vin.
She instructed her ship to take her to the nearest flat area based on her orbit, which, from orbital scans, appeared to be the edge of a cliff in a canyon surrounded by a massive mountain range. As she descended closer, the sun fell behind the planet, backlighting the rising mountains in crowns of silver and gold.
The ship came to a gentle stop on the pink stone above the canyon, and Tria checked the atmospheric readings—safe to depart. She stepped outside.
It was cold. Tria’s breath created puffs of steam as she took in the cool mountain air, focusing on the reflective snow that capped each magenta mountain. But, despite the temperature, this place, also, was full of life. Plants with a gentle purple color covered most of the stone, including lush trees whose lavender leaves swayed gently in the winter breeze. The occasional small flying animal, which resembled many other planets’ birds she was familiar with, darted from tree to tree in search of food.
When Tria looked down into the canyon, she knew true wonder. Living lavender trees filled every stretch of the ground, winding their way along the landscape in the large crevasse. Gentle dawn light flowed in from between the tall mountains, blending with the colors in the landscape in a rush of beauty that made Tria involuntarily gasp.
Tria immediately decided that she had to make her way into the canyon. She didn’t dare use the ship to do this—she wouldn’t even consider damaging the plants and trees. Instead, she made her way deliberately, carefully, down the cliff, finding areas of rock that made for gentler climbing than the sheer cliff face.
Setting foot on the firm earth below, she walked deeper into the lavender woods. Harmony encompassed her from every side. She found a single large rock situated comfortably between a few trees and sat on it, looking at the canopy of leaves above.
And, closing her eyes, letting herself be one with the scenery, Tria took a deep breath in…
And out.
Tria found work on the planet nearest to Vin called and an apartment to live in for the time being. The people there, largely consisting of Aikajo citizens who only recently settled the star system, were driven to colonize by the faction taking advantage of unclaimed territory. They treated Tria harshly at first, but their ill will diminished over time as Tria proved herself a valuable worker, employed at various development jobs on the planet.
Almost all of Tria’s free time was spent on Vin, exploring the endless wonders the peaceful planet had to offer and resting in her favorite place among them, the first she had visited, which she aptly named Lavender Canyon. Tria always had the entire planet to herself, but it didn’t feel like that to her at all—rather, it felt like the planet was graciously lending itself to her.
The years moved by without a word from Zero. While Tria, Keila-born, struggled to get by in a prejudiced Aikajo world, she eventually carved a peaceful corner out of the uncaring universe for herself, making friends, building relationships, and feeling the nightmares she had lived through slowly leave her.
But Zero’s influence was never truly gone. Only two years after her move to Aikajo, news broke out across the galaxy that a young man had taken the mantle of Keila’s supreme commander from its old leader, Dobet, after handily defeating him in combat. That young name’s man was Zero, and the day he came into power nearly plunged Tria back into the despair she had become so familiar with under Keila.
In these moments, however, Tria came to Vin and always found peace. No amount of outside chaos could take away from the planet’s pure, natural tranquility, a beauty that seeped into the hearts and minds of those who came there.
The only time Tria’s troubles became too large to ignore came when the tides of war began to shift. Before she knew it, Aikajo was under attack from Keila forces, planets being taken one by one, until they had reached just outside Tria’s star system.
She encountered Zero again a few days after the star system nearest to hers had been captured, on her way to the spaceport to visit Vin. He had grown again, his hair cut shorter and the already intense look in his eyes deeper than it was before. Surrounding him as he leaned against the wall of the spaceport was a faint cloud of freezing and sublimating atmosphere—did he ever let his guard down anymore?
“Off to visit Vin again?” Zero asked.
Tria froze as if Zero had used his Val on her.
“Really, Tria. I told you before not to underestimate me. I can find something as simple as the places you most often visit. As Keila’s new Supreme Commander, I have countless resources at my disposal.”
“And how’s that going? Leading Keila? Is it everything you dreamed of?” Tria asked sardonically.
“Close,” Zero said, pushing off of the wall and towards Tria. “But not quite. See, my closest advisors, the ones I’ve been assembling for the last two years—they are undoubtedly fantastic, powerful beyond measure… but none of them are you. Tria, I need you. Keila needs you. We need your strategy. Your brains. Your skills. Your power.”
“No,” Tria said, repeating the defiance she said the word with two years ago. “You should have already known my answer.”
This time, though, Zero’s expression didn’t waver. He continued to drill into her with his icy, piercing gaze. Tria’s heart was gripped with dread.
“Or… do I even have a choice?” Tria managed.
“Tria, as you are already aware, I’m expanding Keila’s borders,” Zero began, tone conversational. “Eventually, to the edges of the galaxy, but first, into Aikajo. This star system… let’s just say, sooner rather than later, I’ll have to start expanding Keila’s influence onto it, too. That means housing and recruiting soldiers, building defense systems, constructing weapons and armor, and so on. To build all of that, all of those buildings to house Keila’s people, the devices that will keep them safe, I need places to put them, and I need resources. I have to obtain those things somehow.”
Zero looked into the sky in the rough direction of Vin.
“And there’s a metal-rich, currently uninhabited planet right here in this star system perfect for both of those things. You might be familiar with it,” said the person Tria once saw as her brother.
The look in his eyes told Tria that he was dead serious. She tried to swallow, but something caught in her throat.
This time, there truly was no escape. And, looking into Zero’s eyes, she saw the endlessness that was the future ahead of her.
She would have to find a new way out.
As the years crawled by, Zero finally finished the creation of his Big 5. Even while she was in Keila’s ranks, his trust of Tria was small enough that he felt the need to keep four other backups. The final of the Big 5 was a small, skinny boy named Viisi, who was brought to Keila’s ranks from an extremely young age and trained personally by Zero over the years. Tria knew what this was, and couldn’t bear to watch it—Zero was making another of himself.
One day, almost twenty years after she joined Keila’s ranks as a member of the Big 5, the opportunity arose for Tria to intervene and save Viisi from Zero—and himself. The impact she made on the boy was small, but apparent.
The moment Tria had spent the better part of her life waiting for came unexpectedly—Zero had assigned her to monitor part of Keila’s border with Tymin, in a system centered around a star called UINO-92. The planet closest to Tymin’s border at the time was a gas giant, and thus impossible to land on. But it had a solid moon, and that moon was called Erista. Out of pure necessity, she chose that moon to land on and begin her observations of Tymin.
It was an action as simple as clearing some dust off the ground to set up a telescope that changed Tria’s life forever. The movement of Tria’s glove uncovered just enough dust to reveal the faint glow of a single object—if one could even describe it as such—buried under Erista’s regolith. Curiosity overcame her, and she set down her equipment, planted her feet, and reached down to pick up the object glowing under the dust.
When a part of that object pierced her glove and made contact with Tria’s skin, the universe flashed an impossibly bright white around her. Countless joules of energy surged in every direction, the power of her Val becoming limitless…
And then it fell to the surface again.
And the universe was forever changed.
The moment Flint, Aurein, and Allef finished reading Tria’s story, Flint found the nearest seat and sat down. His legs had gone weak. Allef did the same. Aurein continued standing, staring at the text on the website. They had all forgotten their urgency to visit the website and leave the shop as soon as possible, processing the shock of this information.
“This is…” Flint started, but he didn’t know where he was going. “That’s… horrible. But what do with this information? We’re no closer to understanding who she really was, only why she was a pacifist.”
“This information was obtained by one of Tria’s childhood friends, Helu Minnas,” Aurein read. “We might not be out of luck just yet. There’s someone out there who knows Tria well.”
“Let’s ask her next,” Flint said. “But for now… I need to process what we just read.”
Allef, usually talkative, was sitting silently in a chair, uncharacteristically deep in thought.
“Are you okay, Allef?” Flint asked.
“She’s…” Allef began, but her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and took a moment to compose herself. “This woman was… amazing. I… we need to carry out her will. We need to make this happen. Flint, do you understand what this means? We’re not alone.”
Flint looked at her with amazement.
“You’re right. We’re going to make this happen. But first, let’s get out of here.”
“I’ll delete the search history,” Aurein said. “Let’s reconvene in two days. Let’s meet at this shop here, the one we’re in right now.”
“Sounds good,” Flint agreed.
The three left the shop just as it was opening. Sneaking around the back, they walked back to the front of the shop where a woman was talking to the shopkeeper who was opening the doors.
“...Leaving soon, so…”
Those three words were the only words the woman said that were audible by Flint, but they made Aurein come to a dead stop by his side. Flint and Allef stopped, too, curious as to what was wrong. The crowd of foot traffic flowed around them, and Aurein was watching the woman warily.
“I might be crazy…” Aurein urgently whispered to the two. His gaze would not leave the woman talking to the shopkeeper. He pushed a little closer.
“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind,” the woman said to the shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper went inside. The woman waited, leaning on the door. She was vaguely familiar to Flint, but he had no idea who it was.
“Hide, quickly,” Aurein said, ducking his head and pushing the other two into the crowd. “Get somewhere she can’t see us, but keep her in sight.”
“What’s going on?!” Allef exclaimed. “Who is that?”
“That,” Aurein began, his expression dire, “is Hazni. The leader of Tymin.”
