Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Ready or Not

Cold Blue light washed over their faces, spilling in through the visors of space suit as they floated within the endless vastness of space. Cobalt in color, the shimmering blue produced by the massive blue star and surrounding emissions nebulae gave the small chunk of space the impression of distant coldness, brought about by ice and glass and crystal: Cold and hard. Stars spun all around them, above and beneath, so that a creature less accustomed to the sheer isolation might have faltered, or in worst cases, even have been driven mad.

The ship was out of sight, hidden behind him by an unnaturally thick fog of dust and gas. In space, the average nebula was thousands of millions of lightyears wide, and being inside one would not have been noticeable to the naked eye. This, on the other hand was much different, there was soemthing about the unnatural collections of gasses and dust that made this place a strange and unusual location among the thousands of star systems they had visited and catalogued throughout the years.

Beside him floated three others.

One Drev

One Celzex

And one Human.

Representatives of the four known races touched by the Polaris axis.

Conn flared the solar ribbons at his back, taking in the high frequency blue light of his home star, feeling it fill him with brimming power which buzzed through his skin and body in a way that not many other stars could. Beside him, he could hear the thoughts of the others as they stared towards the Cobalt nebula's blue star.

He reached out with his mind, probing gently through the thoughts of his companions, listening to their thoughts and their feelings as they looked upon his home.

Lord Celex saw nothing but another star, energy to be used and stored, a location to be exploited and taken advantage of in a war that he was sure to come.

Sunny or Chalan, she used the names interchangeably for herself. The name chalan had been given to her by her father, but she attached her rebirth, the claiming of her own life to the human name she had been given. She saw only danger, a location where they were outnumbered and outgunned, on terrain where they were not meant to walk, for that was truly the case.

Their planet born advantages would not help them here.

And then there was Adam.

The man who had started it all.

The man named for the man who had started something even bigger.

The man without whom, Conn would not have been able to experience the single most important part of his life: a rebirth that had begun with his acquisition of language, his ability to keep and hold secrets, and finished with the beautiful creation of a living breathing soul he could partially claim in a way that no other starborn hivemember could.

He was a father, and that was a title he was not about to give up lightly.

Which is why, rather than peace or joy, he felt apprehension and fear at returning to the genesis of his birth, a Genesis born in a thousand years cradled in the rotting husk of a mother queen who had succumb to death before he could truly feel the thought of another's mind. For thousands of years he had been alone with his thoughts, an abomination in a starborn culture emerged in thought as soon as they are born, a creature that had never properly learned how to think.

He was as alien to his own kind as he was to these that floated beside him.

Or perhaps not.

Not anymore that is.

He felt soemthing brush against his shoulder, and turned to see a hand wrap around the thin structure of parody bone that held him together – a structure that had tried to be an upgrade from the human form beside him, but that had turned out to be a shadowed parody of near perfection.