_____“I have to do this. I have to go.”
_____“You can’t,” I said, hoping the fear in my voice wasn’t showing. That wouldn’t help things.
_____“Yes, Laura, I can.” Andrew was a few inches shorter than I was, but he still somehow managed to fold his arms and look down at me. That was Andrew. Once he made up his mind, nothing could stop him.
_____Nothing except for me.
_____“Please,” I said for what must have been the hundredth time. “I can’t let you go. It’s too dangerous. What if—”
_____“It’s not dangerous,” Andrew said, rolling his eyes. “And it’s not a matter of you ‘letting me go,’ either. This is my decision.”
_____“A decision that I have a say in,” I shot back. I tried to calm my voice. “You’re my little brother, Andrew. I can’t let you do this. I can’t.”
_____Andrew gave me an annoyed look. “Why, Laura? Why? Why do you always have to protect me from everything? I know you promised father that you would keep me safe, but come on. That was seventeen years ago. You were six. I can look out for myself by now. What do you think you’re going to do? Stay glued to my side for the rest of time?”
_____His words stung. He knew they did. “You’re all I have left,” I said, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. “I know you can look out for yourself. But I can look out for you too. That’s my choice.”
_____“You need to stop making it then,” Andrew muttered under his breath. He knew I could still hear him. I ignored it.
_____“Look, the whole reason I’m asking you is because I know you can take care of yourself. If I didn’t think that, I would just hole you up somewhere safe. You know that. I know it’s your choice. But please, please, make the right one. Don’t go.”
_____Andrew looked around in exasperation before facing me again. “Really? Make the right choice? This is the right choice, Laura. The soulborgs are going to help everyone. I can’t with a good conscience stay here. I can help them.” His eyes softened. I could tell he was trying to convince me. Again. “They’re going to change the future, Laura. They are the future.”
_____“And what about Moira?” I said. It slipped out before I knew what I was saying. I instantly wished I hadn’t said that. I saw the muscles in Andrew’s face tense, and he gave me a hard, cold look.
_____“I’m sorry,” I started to say, but Andrew cut me off.
_____“I’m doing this to prevent that,” he said. “If I had already gone, if I had already done this, then none of that would have happened. No one would have died. You know it as well as I do.” Andrew’s face started to burn with a familiar passion. “They’re going to change the world, Laura. They’re going to change the entire galaxy. I know it.”
_____“Andrew? Time to go.” A soulborg had come up behind him, all gleaming metal plates and red sensor lights. The soulborgs had changed throughout the course of the war, adopting bodies that became increasingly humanoid. This one looked more like a person in an armored suit than an actual machine.
_____I looked back at Andrew. I could still see the fire in his eyes. He really believed in what he was doing. Honestly, what was I afraid of? He was right. It wasn’t dangerous. He’d be surrounded by soulborgs the whole time.
_____That wasn’t what had me worried though. He was all I had left. I had said it many times before. If I was honest with myself… I just didn’t want to lose him. But I wouldn’t be losing him. I’d join him in a month or two. Compared to the time we’d been together, it was nothing, but it seemed like so long… especially from this end.
_____I sighed. “All right. Fine. Go and change the world. Just please, please stay in contact. You know I’ll go crazy if I don’t hear from you.”
_____Andrew grinned. “We wouldn’t want that now,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back together before you know it.”
_____I moved forward and hugged him, tight as if I could protect him from the world. He hugged me back, and I could feel that he didn’t want to leave me either. It was simply something that he had to do.
_____“Stay safe,” I whispered.
_____He nodded, and then pulled away. The soulborg put a hand on his shoulder, and they turned, walking towards the transport vessel waiting for them, its engines already humming with energy. Andrew turned, waved, and then leapt on board, ducking to avoid the low ceiling. The ramp rose, slowly, and then sealed off the doorway with a dull thud.
_____There were no windows on the craft, so I couldn’t wave back to Andrew. I could only watch as the engines gathered more power, pushing the massive craft off of the ground. It hovered for a moment, turned north, and then jetted away, gaining speed at an impossible rate. Soulborg technology. Leave it up to them to defy the laws of physics.
_____I sighed. Andrew was gone. We’d been apart before of course, but this felt different somehow. It would be at least two months until I saw him again. I watched the transport, rapidly dwindling into a speck in the distance. A wave of loneliness washed over me as I watched it disappear over the horizon. I was probably being over protective, but Andrew was all I had. I couldn’t lose him.
_____Still, I had a job to do. I stepped out of the ruined building we had been standing in, and breathed in the air.
_____I shouldn’t have done that. I kept forgetting.
_____The air was hot, dusty, and smelled of sulfur and burnt dirt. I choked in my haste to breathe it back out, and quickly pulled up the thin scarf around my neck so that it covered my nose and mouth. It didn’t do much about the smell, but at least it filtered most of the dust out.
_____The Volcarren Wasteland was not a pretty place. Nearly the entire territory had been formed by volcanic action. Most of the ground was solidified lava (some of it wasn’t so solid), and not much grew there. Volcanoes, both dormant and active, dotted the horizon, pouring hot air down over the flat ground. The kyrie said the whole area had been undergoing a slow eruption for hundreds of years. I guess that meant everything came up slowly instead of all at once.
_____Either way, it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be. It was too flat. Too open. The only mountains were covered in lava, the only cover hot enough to set the ground on fire. Not to mention the air. We had all been coughing since we arrived, our eyes watering and our skin burning from the heat. I loved Valhalla. I had always thought it was a beautiful land. But I knew I never wanted to see the Volcarren again.
_____The only reason we were here was because the war was over. Valkrill had been decimated by Einar’s forces a year earlier, and we had crushed the last of Utgar’s armies a few weeks ago in a surprise attack. We had spent the last few days marching to his citadel, deep within the fiery wastes that now surrounded us. Why he had built it here was a mystery to me. I guess it fitted with the persona he had tried to make: fire, lava eruptions, all that.
_____I looked up. Looming above the hazy smoke that wafted across the barren ground, Utgar’s citadel rose, tall and black against the sky. It was massive, sharp angles jutting out from it at all points. It was chiseled from black rock, partially carved out, partially laid down in bricks, and partially molded by the lava and harsh wind itself. Its shadow covered the ground I stood on; a patch of night amongst the light of the dying sun. I could see sentinels on its walkways and terraces, moving back and forth, carrying maps, documents, or magical artifacts.
_____Craning my neck, I was able to see to the very top of the citadel. It jutted outwards at the top, and ended in a vast balcony – probably so that Utgar could observe his impressive armies as they baked under the Volcarren sun.
_____A lone figure stood there, but it wasn’t Utgar. It was Jandar.
_____I had always thought Jandar looked the part: imposing, impressive; but as I saw him up there, I realized just how magnificent he truly was.
_____Even from far below, I could see the radiant glow of the sun striking his white wings. He stood erect, and though I couldn’t see his face from where I stood, I easily imagined him looking out across Valhalla, realizing finally, finally, that the war was over. He had won. We had won. I felt a smile creep onto my face just thinking about it. Valhalla had peace.
_____Of course, there was still work to do. Valhalla was in disarray. Order needed to be established, governments set up, resources organized. And then there were the armies. Finding homes for several hundred thousand people was a daunting task. But it was one that Jandar was up to. If anyone could get it done without plunging Valhalla into another war, it would be him.
_____With my help.
_____That’s why I couldn’t go with Andrew. Jandar needed me. He needed all of us. The different races called us many different things: mages, wizards, sorcerers. We called ourselves casters. It wasn’t the most glamorous of titles, but it was the only thing we could all agree on. You tend to disagree about a lot of things when your group comes from several different planets.
_____Casters wield magic. That’s all there is to it. It tends to run in the family, though it often jumps around, skipping people and going to others with no history of it. A lot of my family before me had been casters. My father had been. I was. Andrew was. But my older brother, David, had never had a drop of magic in his blood. I had often wished he was a caster like me. We could have stayed together when Jandar recruited us. It would have given all of us more time together.
_____Magic is the same wherever you come from. You can all do the same things, whether you’re kyrie, elf, or human, like me. I was born on Valhalla. Magic found my family pretty quickly. It started with one of Drake’s men, one of the Airborne Elite. He married Kelda, which I guess is where the magic came from. My grandfather had it, all of his children did, and it came to me through his youngest son: my father.
_____Casters are powerful. Maybe not in a fight, but no one can beat us in gathering intelligence, keeping an army ready, or maintaining order. That last one is what Jandar needed us for the most. He had barely agreed to let Andrew go with the soulborgs; there was no way he was letting two casters leave him when he needed them most.
_____Andrew. The soulborgs. Was that really the future, as Andrew had said? The soulborgs had been perfecting themselves for hundreds of years; eliminating diseases, repairing memory, defeating death. Now that the war was over, they wanted to do the same to us. They could do it, too. No one would die, no one would get sick; we would turn from waging war to bettering the future.
_____There were of course a few things the soulborgs didn’t have. The magic of casters. The telepathy of marro. Those were the two main things. They were advantages, advantages which could improve life. Once the soulborgs figured them out, they could give them to everyone.
_____That’s where Andrew came in. He was a powerful caster, more powerful than most. He shared the soulborgs’ vision of a brighter future, and wanted to help them create it. He had volunteered to find a way to give them magic. I didn’t know how that was possible, but if there was a way, Andrew would find it. He always did.
_____I wasn’t sure if I totally agreed with what the soulborgs were doing. Death and sickness were a natural part of life. Take that away, and what are you? Some immortal infinitely wise god? It didn’t seem right. But then again, the soulborgs weren’t forcing anyone. They just wanted to be able to offer the option. I had nothing against that.
_____I looked back up at Jandar. The sun was just beginning to set, striking his wings with a fiery glow. He would set everything right. In a few months, everything in Valhalla would be in order, and I could see Andrew again.
_____I really wish that had been the case.
_____It started as a strange blue light in the smoky clouds high above. I saw it first, because I was looking up at Jandar, and the light was directly above him. At first I thought it was lightning, but it just stayed there, getting brighter. No lightning did that.
_____In another second, the light pierced the clouds as a blinding white beam, edged with fiery blue. It fell like a hammer from the sky, striking Jandar with pinpoint accuracy.
_____The light was perfectly straight, and it was unbroken. It didn’t stop with Jandar. It went straight through him, from head to toe. I saw him burst into flames instantly. The light smashed into the balcony he had been standing on, shattering it.
_____It didn’t stop there, either.
_____The beam penetrated further into the citadel. I couldn’t see it anymore, but I could see the floors exploding as it touched them. More explosions followed, and the entire structure began to shake. The ground began to rumble as more and more of the citadel burst into tiny fragments.
_____It all happened in a faction of a second. The beam of light lasted only a few moments, but in those few moments, it sliced through Jandar and the entire citadel like they weren’t even there. It shut off, and there was a moment of silence. A moment of shock. A moment of horror.
_____Then the citadel began to fall.
_____It fell layer by layer, one floor disintegrating under the weight of the next. The top fell so fast that it obliterated the bottom, smashing it into the ground and sending up a massive dust cloud which hid the entire scene.
_____I was in shock. I must have been, because I didn’t move. It didn’t dawn on me that I should find some sort of cover, not until the dust and debris was only a few feet away. By then, it was too late.
_____The dust hit first, blinding me. The debris came a second later, quickly followed by a shockwave so powerful I was flung off of my feet. I flew backwards until I hit the wall of some ruined building.
_____My head snapped back; I felt a sharp pain and a darkness closed over my eyes that had nothing to do with the dust. There was a moment of struggling to breathe as debris slashed at my exposed skin, and then… nothing.
_____Everything shut off. Sight, sound, feeling… and memory.