Chapter 394 - Far Future Ch. 104 – My Queen of the Void (1/2)

She focused on that gash across his face, and her Clawed fingers came down over his ruined left cybereye. ”We don't have the time or power to spare for regeneration right now, so you're going to have to make do.”

He sort of grunted as a sharper-then-razor finger came down, interrupted some nerves, and began to grip and grab. He winced, but didn't stop her as she grabbed the neural interfaces and optical circuits in her Vajra, severed them cleanly, and pulled the ruined cyberware out of his eye.

There was a jerk, and suddenly her field of vision seemed to be cut in half. -What.- he protested, wondering what she was doing, seeing her hand coming down towards his eye.

”Two points of Essence in your left eye,” she instructed him calmly, voice betraying nothing. He obeyed calmly, and her Vajra came smoothly into the gaping socket, reached back into his skull to his brain, made a connection, and Stillness hummed, fixing flesh and bone, drawing them back together... and his Essence poured into a new conduit there, and expanded in to fill it as the psychic healing did its thing. The muscles and skin of his eyelid came together, he could see the flesh drawing closed with incredible speed, and she took her hand away.

There was a light, blinking suddenly into abrupt focus, and he could see her lovely calm face looking down at him with one glowing dark eye, the other eye socket yawning open and empty.

Emperor, she looked beautiful. That Nog Armor of hers was accentuated by the electrum of her Aura, it seemed to set off the highlights of her dark hair, and even the blue-black of her Brand looked more elegant, refined, the broken pattern exuding some ancient and primal power as he stared despite himself.

”Stay calm. I'll regenerate. Grafting.” She reached up to her remaining eye with her free hand fearlessly. ”Split the Essence between your eyes.”

Egil swallowed as her claws drove in, clenched, and pulled, and his view from her angle, looking down at the dark eye matching the one looking up at her, vanished for a moment.

It came down into his eye, the optic nerve snaked forwards, grafted onto his brain as Stillness did its work, and flesh and bone gathered around the eyeball, holding it firmly as his Essence flowed into it.

He looked up at her with two eyes as she closed the gash on his face, and heard the crumping as the weight on his leg was lifted away, although the nerves were crushed and he couldn't feel anything there at the moment.

They glowed, all of them. Shades of gold, tinges of silver. There was a grim purpose to them that didn't obviate the warmth of their auras, or the reason why they were doing it. The three huge young men were roiling like molten metal, throwing off a spiritual pressure at once weightless and powerful that seemed to be weighing down on everything and blowing it along at the same time. The women... were like metal, completely ignoring that weight, unmoved and uncaring of it.

Despite himself, he fed her what he was seeing, seeing flesh already twitching under her eyelids as her eyeballs began to regrow. ”Is this how you see the world,” he asked softly, amazed at the detail and sharpness of this sight. It felt like he should be able to see so much more; the colors were intense and vivid, and he wasn't sure he could actually process them all.

She was moving Stillness over to his leg, his Vajra telling him the meat was pulp and the bone all crushed shards. Healing it would shatter her leg as she did it... and she would simply put it back together automatically. Healing matrices were convenient that way.

She looked back at him and smiled. ”Of course not. You look much more beautiful than we do,” she replied, as her free hand caressed his face.

Egil felt something give way inside him. It was a door inside his soul, a restraint upon his thoughts and beliefs, of holding himself back from something great and terrible.

A Rantha... found him beautiful...

He stepped through that door, into Scout/7.

He took another step, and his Human Racial Level Three drew up on him, and he felt his hard, unresponsive soul shudder and grow with ancient drives and beliefs that had driven him all his life, only he hadn't known why.

They were at the heart of who and all he was.

A sigh seemed to ripple across everyone and anyone, gentle and subtle, touching the akasha and leaving those nearby who didn't know what was going on confused.

There was an emptiness inside him. It seemed to draw in the light and the presence given off by the Sources that were the Briggs, and even traces dissipating off the steely, obdurate shells of the Nulls. It came into him, was filtered, purified, and came back out.

Rings, ghostly silver and white, began to rise from him, joining together into a living whorl of non-spectral light, something that wasn't psionic or spirit, but transcended either.

”Oh, no shit!” one of the other Ranthas blurted out, seeing that, and turned her eyes on Serena. ”Aren't you the lucky one!”

The Briggs', on the other hand, looked instantly respectful. ”Oh, wow,” exclaimed the biggest and oldest-looking of them, and reached up to salute down at Egil Rosenblaum. ”Clear silver. The Mind and the Ring...”

Egil just looked at them. ”I have no idea what that means.” He eyed the whorls caressing the air, and especially Serena. The unique taste of her Aura was better than a genetic test at identifying her, as were those of each of the others.

”Nulls are the foundation of the Forsaken, the most common and the core of the strength of normal folk. Sources are the Kings and Queens among the Forsaken, those who lead us. The third and rarest of the Forsaken are the Brothers of the Void, the Servants of the Land, who guide the others to do what must be done.”

An ocean of pride swept into him, through him at Serena's words, and he dropped his eyes to Lepido, who was staring at the whorls of his Helix with great interest and a little trepidation. The fluttercat was as unique as anyone else to the touch of his Helix, he could sense the leaping of her thoughts and drives clearly and smoothly, soothing away the edges of raw emotions she was sensitive to without effort.

Serena's leg split open, he heard bone crack and split, and saw it coming back together almost as fast as the abuse was inflicted upon it. At the same time, his own leg began to really, really hurt.