Chương 238: [Nova Wars] Chapurplepter 25puxrp7+1le5

You can't get to where I went to from here. But I can show you the trail. Where you are going, you don't need eyes to see. - Unknown, TerraSol, Age of Paranoia The sky was purple. A piece of debris from where a star had failed to ignite, no bigger than a broodcarrier's claw, impacted against the core of a gas giant that size of a human baby's fist. Both pieces of debris exploded into huge chunks that whirled away from the impact flash.

The smallest piece was the size of a skyraker arcology, the largest began to collapse into a black hole and burnt away with a whimpering squeal into nothing more than purple light that vanished into the twisted and tortured horizon. She was gasping, fighting for air, but what inflated her lungs didn't act like air, didn't feel like anything that she was pulling in. She could feel herself inhaling, feel the air pass her sinuses and past her tongue, but what was pulled into her chest was simply nothing.

She was not dizzy, she did not feel as if she was suffocating, but she was gasping for air where there was no air in the air. Still, she tried to dig her fingers into the cobbles, maybe dig at the flagstones with her residual claws. Instead, her fingers found nothing. No sensation. While the bumps and contours made her knees hurt, her fingers and toes found nothing. Not even a slippery sensation. She looked up, flinching, knowing she was starting to cry thick tears.

The purple went on into infinity and came back from beyond the beyond to bathe her face in its ever present light. The sky pressed down on her, the horizon closed in on her. She was pushed down onto the cobbles. She tried to scream but all that came out was a thin wheeze. It took her several tries, but she pushed herself to her hands and knees, but her face was pressed against the flagstones. A hand touched her.

"The discomfort shall pass, traveler," the voice said. It was a voice made up of a dozen other voices. Some whispering, some screaming, some male, some female, some both, some neither. All crammed together into a simple statement.

"Rise up and I will assist you inside," the voice said.

"End of Line." Suddenly, relief. An absence of sensation that was blissful respite from purple. She struggled to her feet, her hocks and knees shaking. A white glove extended from the voluminous sleeve of a folded and gathered black robe that drifted on a cloud of black dust that swirled without breeze or motion. The hood perfectly framed a featureless mask with white enamel that had engravings that revealed the warsteel beneath. She could see where the flagstones ended in a ragged edge.

Flagstones broke off, in singles or in chunks of hundreds and millions that slid away from the landing like dust from a platter into the endless purple, the black stones feeling wrong and unclean somehow in their violation of the purple. Inside, deep inside, she had a thousand questions, but her body was shivering and shaking as the hands of the apparition slowly turned her. The edge connected to a wall that did more than contain but kept out.

Black stone that was held with marrow or was it mortar or was if unfired mortar prop? She didn't know and had no answer to questions she could barely comprehend. The apparition moved her and she realized there was a gate before her. The gate was twisted black material, heavier and more sticky looking and feeling than warsteel, carved and twisted and contorted into looking like screaming beings clutching each other to form bars and framework.

In the middle of the gate were five eyes, arranged in a five point pentagram. The eyes blinked, the pupils shifting to fix on Imna. The eyes rolled and stared, fire opals that had been force bred with cat's eye agates to create eyes that stared but did not weep. Imna realized she could read the sign above the gate.

YE SHALL FIND HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE It made her dizzy, the way the letters and writing were in spidery script that she could read, could understand, even though the runes were strange and unknowable to her eyes. The gloved hand took hers and she felt strength return to a body that had forgotten what strength was.

"Welcome, Mistress Drali'imna Lovefell," the creature said as it moved with her toward the gate.

"Your education shall begin once we enter the grounds of the Black Citadel so that we may approach the Twilight Library. End of Line." Again, she noted that the apparition's voice was made up of dozens of other voices. Imna coughed, finally able to take a breath of air that was air.

"Thank you."

"You are welcome. End of Line." The gate opened silently, splitting down the middle. The eyes rolling so they could stare from the other side of the gate. Imna gathered her courage and stepped across the threshhold. 0-0-0-0-0 The deployment bay was dim, only red lights lighting it. A massive creation engine was at the far end, the iris closed to hide the dark red fury from inside of it. The bay was nearly empty, only two heavily armored dropships and an armored drop pod.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. An a warbound. Wrath, armor, and weapons on two heavy thick legs. Hetmwit stood next to the massive armored form of the warbound, N44, one armored hand on the lower armored section. The huge armored war machine vibrated faintly, almost imperceptible. A cold hand touched his shoulder and Hetmwit was not surprised he could feel it as if the hand was touching his uniform and not the armored pauldron.

"He slumbers," Bellona's voice was gently and purring.

"Unblooded, untested, but valiant, with a lifetime of struggle that did not dim the light within him. A life of deprivation and desperation that did not extinguish his capacity to love and be loved." The Grave Bound Beauty walked slowly around him, her hand still resting on his shoulder. Spikes grew from Hetmwit's armor, the plates thickened in places, the edging bulged and thick as if it had buckled slightly. Spikes rose, jagged teeth slid from featureless armor at Bellona's touch.

"He cannot be left unwitnessed," Bellona stated.

"I know that the occupants of the Black Citadel would have difficulty with the both of you. Him, for his sheer power," she paused and looked at him, smiling.

"You, because, oh my little dearling, you are so perfect that they would love you deeply and never want to let you go." Her uniform was in perfect condition, completely dress right dress, with polished braid and insignia and gleaming cufflinks. Her skin was unmarred, perfect, except for the jagged wound in her throat that was so deep and so savage that Hetmwit could see the flash of white bone past her windpipe. Her smile was gently, understanding... Caring.

"Your Captain has his own task. I cannot risk him with the Black Citadel, which may keep him thinking that he had returned after his imprisonment by the Imperium, but there are other tasks he must undertake," Bellona said, turning her face to raise it and look up at the massive warbound.

"As there are tasks I must charge you with." Hetmwit stood silent for a long moment.

"I understand," he said. Bellona smiled, blood spilling over her lower lip and down her chin in a thin line.

"Good," she held out her hand.

"Your cutting bar." Hetmwit didn't frown. He had seen enough holos and tri-vee shows. He took the cutting bar off of his hip and he went down on one knee. He held the blade on both hands as he lifted them. The blade flat and still as he bowed his head.

"You are respectful without bitterness or mockery," Bellona said softly.

"You are brave without being fearless. You find courage where others would seek bravado. You are normal, almost perfectly so." Bellona's hand lifted and touched the blade, caressing it.

"My brother Daxin would have loved you. So uncomplicatedly complicated. He was a man of great vision and great compassion and I begrudge him his rest because, like a child, I still need my older brother's wisdom and quiet support," Bellona said. Fat red and purple sparks jumped from beneath the pad of her finger as she drew her finger down the cutting bar's blade.

"You are what he and my brother Legion fought for. Every screaming battle we fought was for the perfectly ordinary like you, who built and maintained such grand works," she said. She gave a light shudder and silver flakes drifted down from her. She suddenly stepped back.

"He will need you to protect him as he slumbers." Hetmwit raised his head just in time to see the shadows wrap around her.

"Protect him in his slumber, beautiful and ordinary Hetmwit." The shadows closed in, seemed to twist around themselves, sucked into a spot in the middle before vanishing. There was a wisp of shadow and she was gone. Hetwmit blinked. He stood up and looked at his cutting bar. Like his armor, Bellona's touch had changed it, altered it. The teeth looked like teeth, like fangs, like razor sharp claws and teeth, pulled by wound black wire.

There was tracery on the blade of the cutting bar and the smiling chubby baby was surrounded and perhaps protected by a golden olive wreath. Before he could ask anything a low moan drifted through the bay. He looked over and saw it. One of the shadows shifted, changed shape, warped and twisted. He got the cutting bar up in the high guard position just in time as the shadow screamed and leapt from the wall, charging him. He hit the stud and the bar screamed to life, the chain rattling and tearing.

Shadow sprayed and splattered across his visor as the shadow's long clawed hands and arms were shredded by the cutting bar's chain. The shadow flinched back with a shriek of pain that made the marrow in Hetmwit's bones shiver but did not register on his suit's microphones as it echoed through the vacuum of the deployment hold. He knew it was coming and spun, swinging the screaming blade, and the shadow creature exploded into viscous dark shadow that sprayed across the ceiling and decking.

Two others flinched back and Hetmwit stepped into them, following the endless training beneath Captain Decken's watchful gaze and stern instruction. He gave them no breather, chopping at them, discarded fancy movements of bravado and boast. The two others sprayed into nothingness as Hetmwit spun and chopped one reaching for N44. The body exploded into whisps of vapor while the arms fell and splashed like thin oil. He was afraid, he was breathing fast and working to control it.

His Captain's voice was loud in his ears. His muscles and his reflexes responded as practice had forged them to act. Behind him, as he fought, N44 slumbered and dreamed of being Naxen. 0-0-0-0-0 Wrixet hit hard, slamming into cobbles that grabbed at him, were sticky and clutching as he rolled and threw one arm out to slap at the ground to bleed off the kinetic energy. The cobbles had no sensation but he paid no attention.

He saw the purple sky above him and his brain shut down as he gazed deep into the purple expanse. Purple like his mother's eyes. The purple pulled him in, sucked him in, drew him up from the cobbles while leaving his body behind. He was paralyzed, he was writhing, he was twisting. He was silent, he was whimpering, he was screaming. He got an arm in front of his eyes as his eyes began to scream at one another for death.

Purple flooded between his eyes and his forearm but the inverted horizon that pushed back with needles of violent and purple was held at bay. Wrixet wiggled and twisted and rolled onto his belly. From off in the distance, an impossible distance of time and space he heard praise for him rolling. For a second, his mouth tasted like he had bitten a bug. He pressed his face against the cobbles, feeling the lack of sensation but concentrating on how his neck muscles strained but he could not push his face forward.

There was a screeching, an atonal scream. He looked up. The wall was made of black blocks of broken and discarded dreams and wishes and hopes, held together with a mortar of blood and sorrow. The gate was twisted black that Wrixet knew was not metal, that this place had no metal, it was made of something else. Something that could exist when all was purple, when there was nothing but purple.

There were five eyes, beautifully cut stones with an internal fire on either side of the black slit of a pupil, all staring at him. ABANDON HOPE IF YE CANNOT ENTER HERE was written above the gate. The gate slowly opened to reveal a voluminous robe, folds over folds, piled at the feet, with long sleeves with thick folds and overlaps. A mask of white enamel etched with red that flashed and shone in the purple.

White gloves were thrust from the sleeves and the feet were hidden by thick swirling black dust that gleamed and glittered in defiance of the purple. The creature motioned at him to come. Wrixet swallowed nothing and gagged on it. He forced himself to crawl. He ignored the sensation of his feet and hands slipping, of not gaining purchase because there was nothing to gain purchase on. A moon the size of a marble slammed into the cobbles in front of him, sending vehicle and building sized debris shattering away.

He still crawled forward. A jagged section tore at his flesh with his sister's hungry crying. A rough spot in the flagstones scraped his fur away from abraded skin with his mother's weeping as the Lanaktallan stared out the window at the rain. But he still crawled forward. He heard his own voice as he passed the gate. don't leave me please don't leave me don't leave me telk please don't leave But he kept moving. The gates swung closed behind him and a white glove touched his head.

He inhaled with a whoop as cold and clean air filled his lungs.

"Welcome, Wrixet. End of Line."