Meara looked over Daisy’s numbers, Davin looked thoughtful, but Ezra looked completely baffled as he blurted out, “So magic... like Kars’ magic, is an energy?”
“It is... Magic is a physical manifestation of the intent of an Aetherian’s soul, but not all of them can manifest their energy in all the different ways.” Daisy explained, “I can detect the different magical energy but not differentiate between them. Kars’ magic, Shadz’s magic, Asha’s magic and my magic read the same. What the Aetherians refer to as light magic all has the same signature, it is the counter-harmonic resonance of the energy of the dark magic, the dark dust, and the dark entity. Magic is real, I can detect it, but how it works...” Daisy laughed and shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?” Meara demanded.
“High Lord Adamos, Kars’ grandfather, Kaleth’s father, gave Kaleth instructions that I was not to be taught because he didn’t want my magic limited. Like with Harry Potter, their magical disciplines have rules, rules that program them with limits. I can already do things no other oracle can, but I can’t do Asha’s healing magic, I can’t use Kaleth’s warrior magic, and they can’t use my oracle magic. Most Aetherians use enchanted items. Many can use some of the mage magics and some of the warrior magics but not manifest magic like I can... I haven’t figured it all out. I am working with a young man who is basically their last true mage, but he... things were hard for him after his grandfather died.”
“Shadz?” Meara asked and Daisy nodded.
“Shadz? Your daughter’s fiancé?” Davin asked.
“Lady Eva was his mother... His parents used to steal his magic by drinking his blood,” Daisy revealed softly. She held up her hand and a wall of light appeared. “When he showed us, I did this.” They watched Lady Eva cutting the back of her son’s hands, then Daisy confronting her in the mantle of the White Oracle.
“Why do you look like that?” Meara asked.
“Because that wasn’t me. Another oracle who calls herself the Pale Lady, used my body, it was like I was watching the way you are now...” Daisy shuddered, “It was so weird sharing my body.”
“Ohgawd, that’s terrible. She tortured her own child,” Fianna walked in with a tray of sweets. She was staring at the image hanging in the air.
“Yeah, and she killed his father after this to obey the White Oracle’s demand... I went through his memories of the use of blood magic and dark magic... I... What I went through in the hospital, it was nothing,” Daisy breathed out in despair. “His grandfather Odini taught Shadz about honor and light magic before he even had his magic. Shadz has an eidetic memory like I do, so he learned decades before he had the ability to do it... Kaleth says Shadz uses his magic differently from any mage. I believe it is why he can understand when I talk about magic math like energy mathematics. He doesn’t know the limits.”
“What about the stuff Mykel could do? Or the objects? The potions and swords and stuff,” Ezra asked curiously, “Could those.. uhm... spells work on tech?”
“You mean the unbreakable or durability enchantments and such?” Daisy asked, “I think so... The energy of the magic binds to objects on a subatomic level. The entire Tear was ‘enchanted’.” Daisy made air-quotes around the last word. “But the problem is removing the magic when an object becomes outdated takes like ten times the power. Indestructibility is as bad as immortality in its own way.”
Davin scowled as he nodded. “It sounds cool... I mean it’d be nice to make it so nothing we use wore out but think of the waste it would create.”
“Would it work on my nails?” Meara made a joke. Fianna and Daisy both laughed as Ezra shook his head, “Not as often as you change the color, baby girl.”
“The applications are amazing but so are the draw backs.” Daisy shrugged then she tipped her head. “Kaleth and Kars are back. I can feel them at the gate.”
Meara switched the screen to the space tech schematics and planetary biome reconstruction of Jura.
Davin frowned, “Daisy... You should tell them you’re telling us.”
“And how much has Kars told you about Aetherian tech or magic since I’ve been gone?”
Shaking his head, Davin sighed, “Not much.”
“Exactly... Davin, I love my new life, but I am not going to let it change my goals to make the world, our world, a better and safer place. They have rule against sharing with technologically unevolved species. Many Aetherians are prejudiced against humans and lower Aetherians who don’t have magic... We are fighting the mindset but... They have repeatedly tried to kill Kaleth, Asha, Allura, and I. And I know they will try to kill Kars because he feels the same way we do. If they get rid of us, kill me then... What they don’t know I’ve told you, they won’t be able to successfully use against you or our people in the future.” Daisy glanced meaningfully at Ezra as she said, “I’m all about Plan B now.”
“Better prepared than dead.” Ezra said softly and Fianna squeezed his shoulder as she asked, “What do you need from us, Daisy?”
“A lot.” Daisy scowled.
They heard Kaleth and Kars coming down the stairs as Daisy stated out of the blue, “So I need to take everything to grow Genosaurs with us. Jura is the perfect climate for them, it is almost identical to the late Cretaceous. I can give our Genos a whole world to roam.”
Davin was looking at the lists of supplies as Ezra smirked and announced, “Sorry, Fi, I am changing where we are retiring to.”
Fianna rolled her eyes, “Fine, you can have your giant lizards as long as they have chocolate...”
“They don’t, or coffee,” Kaleth said as he entered with Kars, “But Daisy intends on remedying that. She has places on four planets selected to grow her addiction.”
Fianna gave her surrogate sister a dismayed look, “You would take us to a world without coffee or chocolate! Daisy, are you trying to kill Meara and Davin?”
“Kill them? I am the one who lived without those for 400 years. If I can do it, so can they,” Daisy pouted.
Kars chuckled as he announced, “It’s not so bad. There’s always tea.”
Wide-eyed Meara shook her head, “Nope, nope, just nope... No coffee or chocolate, I’m out! Sorry, sis... A girl’s gotta have it.”
Daisy hesitantly insisted, “It’ll grow... I think.”
“You think? Coffee and chocolate require very specific soils and climates,” Davin rubbed his beard. “What’s the percentage?”
“Uhm, good?” Daisy sounded uncertain. “Botany isn’t really my thing.”
Davin turned to Kaleth. “I’ll need to see those area surveys, weather, climate, and soil sample results. We love Daisy, we love Kars, we love our Genosaurs, but there are a few sacrifices that we won’t make.”
“You won’t die without them,” Daisy pouted.
“You’re just saying that because you’re immortal and crazy,” Ezra taunted.
“I’m not crazy, Ty had me tested. It was because I was twice, I’m not twice anymore, I am the one and only Daisy in the timeline now!” Daisy insisted, poking out her bottom lip.
Davin’s mouth puckered like he was trying not to laugh at her expression. Truthfully, he was shocked at the change in Daisy; the coldly insensitive, half-crazy side of Daisy was gone. She laughed, she teased, she acted more like someone Meara’s age sometimes, while at others, she was more analytical and brilliant than she had ever been. He like new Daisy, even if everything she revealed terrified him to the core of his soul. He wondered how his parents and sisters would feel about living on another world as he joined in the teasing. “You want us to live on another planet without our caffeination of choice. Sorry, Daisy but even I am questioning your new sanity now.”
“You don’t love me anymore,” Daisy pretended to cry, and they all laughed at her dramatics. Then they began the serious discussion of custom tailoring the recovering Jura biomes for their Genosaurs.
Waking slowly, Karstien was sure he had not been asleep for very long. They had only left Terrearth a few years ago at most.
“Morning, Kars,” Daisy grinned down at him. Her voice was annoyingly cheerful. “How’d you sleep?”
Silver eyes blinked dazed at lavender ones. “Where are we?” He muttered.
“Almost home but the Hunter woke me because we have a problem. There is a tower reading in a system that wasn’t there before, and I detected the same energy disruption that was near Terrearth’s system. We’re slowing down now,” She talked very rapidly about the deviance in the universal background energy and the solar wind outflow as she helped him out of the sleeping sarcophagus. Kars saw their father Kaleth lying in a healing bed asleep as were three other guardsmen.
“So, it’s a wake?” Kars questioned, his muddled mind trying to process Daisy’s science and math.
“That’s what Vole called it. I’m theorizing it is the...”
“Mom, let him recover then you can go on and on about the stuff we don’t understand,” Asha scolded as she helped him lay down, “Sorry, Kars... Mine, take Mom back to the scanner room or something, she’s disturbing my patients.”
Shadz walked through and handed a tablet to Daisy. “My Lady Oracle, the scanners were correct to trigger the sequence to wake you. Three towers are confirmed and the wake phenomenon as you suspected. No trace of a craft or propulsion residue beyond our own.”
“Send this to Vole, we need to figure out how long it takes for that thing to move and breech...” Daisy wandered out with Shadz as if suddenly forgetting she just dragged Kars out of his chamber.
“You’ll get used to it. You only dealt with her for a few years, Father and I have been doing this for centuries,” Asha gave him a worried smile. “She lied about when she woke up again. The Hunter didn’t wake her, she has been awake and working since six months after we launched.”
“Are you sure?” Kaleth asked with his eyes still closed.
“Yes, Father. I had Rhee put in a tertiary logging system so I could see what she did and what she erased. She is still trying to hide the amount of work she does from us.” Asha sounded frustrated.
Kars rolled on his side to face his sister and father. “What did Daisy do? Did she forget to eat and sleep again?”
“It was worse than that, the last time Mom killed herself with fatigue as in almost forever killed herself. You tell him, Father, I have to check to see how the rest of the tower crew is reviving,” Asha revealed then walked out. Kars noted his sister was vibrating with agitation.
Kaleth chuckled, “She is so much like her mother.”
Struggling to keep his eyes open, Karstien demanded, “Tell me what Daisy didn’t want me to worry about.”
“It is a good thing we have a few days before we are in range of the towers.” Kaleth sighed. “I almost lost her. I didn’t realize how tired she had become when...” Then Kaleth told him about the last four hundred years.
Kneeling at the edge of a gray ice crater in environmental suits, Kars stared at the black tower. Even wearing Daisy’s energy suppression cuffs, he could feel the sickening vibration of the corrupted time energy. The air around them was unnaturally still and silent, but also oppressive as Kars watched his father and the warriors trained to fight the tower Necrorriors clear the way for Daisy’s demolition team.
He listened to Lara talking to Daisy from the Hunter. “The growth rate of the ice indicated the towers were placed within two to four years of when we passed on the way to Terrearth.”
“Fifty plus years of ice from three towers,” Daisy grumbled. “It must be hungry, there’s nothing but microbe soup on this world.”
“The life-glow scan shows this is actually a richer source of bio-mass than the last four planets we’ve saved,” Lara revealed.
Daisy sighed thoughtfully then ordered, “Get all the energy frequency scanned, even the harmonic and subharmonic ones. Maybe we can use the combination to build a sort of beacon and lure whatever this thing is away from living worlds.”
“Yes, Oracle.” Lara answered.
“Oracle, you are clear to proceed,” Kaleth’s voice was strong but Kars could hear his father speaking to Daisy’s mind, ‘Be careful, the other towers were simple ones, but this is one of the trap towers and will undoubtedly contain more of these insectoid Necrorriors.’
‘Don’t worry, the boys will protect me while I work.’ Daisy reassured her husband as she sprinted toward the building with Kars and Shadz.
Shadz cast a charm of silence in the rooms they were working in and nothing attacked them. The setting of the explosive charges and the power overload went without a hitch. Daisy signed to Kars what she was doing, and he signed back when he realized he could not touch her mind to speak to her.
She realized his question and her hands explained in Sign Language, “Once we are inside, only Kaleth and I can speak through the oracle stone, the jamming signal doesn’t just block comm transmission frequencies but Aetherian telepathy as well. Shadz can’t talk to Asha even though they are sealed ones, and Lars and Lance couldn’t do their twin thing. We don’t know how they do this. And it is too dangerous to wait around to study it.”
Karstien gave her a curt nod. Shadz signed that he was finished, and Daisy set the overload detonation sequence to start. They ran with magically muted footsteps out of the tower and to the Crane 002 waiting for them just inside the crater. The craft streaked away at its highest atmospheric speed and less than two minutes later the tower exploded in a fountain of energy that looked like a red aurora borealis.
“By the light, Daisy. Who is building these cursed things?” Kars demanded, but Daisy gave him a worried look with her reply, “I don’t know. Interdimensional entities of some kind that we have just been calling the Shadows or the Dark Ones.”
Kars was thoughtful for a minute then he asked the question that tweaked at his warrior curiosity. “Why risk ourselves for a world that has no higher life?”
“Plan B,” Daisy answered tightly as the Crane 002 approached the Hunter. “We don’t know what they would use the bio-mass for, and you’ve seen what they do to more advanced life forms they capture.”
Kars frowned at Ezra’s term but asked nothing else as they landed.
Shadz stopped Karstien as they disembarked after Daisy. “My Prince, has the Oracle shown you the Thanios 4 event beyond what she told the humans?”
“Shown me? No, why?” Kars asked.
“My Prince, the Oracle felt that world die, and it traumatized her almost to the point of madness and death. She shared the event with most of the higher ranked guardsmen and fleeters, but she only let us feel 10%. No matter how insignificant the life forms of a planet may seem, we will save them. Nothing deserves to die like that or be corrupted and brought back as Necrorriors. Aetheria is filled with the undead of the old kingdom. They are abominations that mindlessly kill and destroy all living things. I will get you the files.” Shadz promised as they walked.
“Thank you, Shadz, and please just call me by my name, we will be family someday and I am not one for rankings,” Kars insisted but Shadz shook his head, refusing.
“I would not disrespect you by presuming familiarity, Prince Karstien.” He bowed and went into his chamber.
Shaking his head, Karstien went into the next door, he would have to talk to his father about how everyone addressed him, because he did not feel he had earned the right to be called their prince yet.
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