Endosymbiosis

51. Hear

Part 6
Death

First circle of the Empire
Power District

Knocks on the Hasta's door interrupted our conversation and we opened it for Lupan, Deinos, and Korrok.

"We have a big enemy now." The canouro wisely observed.

"I've been planning to outsmart metriona since I met him... But I didn't expect him to be faster." Korrok growled, his claws snapping closed. "The more we strengthened him, the more difficult it would be to take the control back... And apparently he thought the same about us."

"What now?" I asked. "His army is much bigger than ours. We wouldn't stand a chance." Korrok didn't deny it. "We need allies."

"And do you have a suggestion?"

I thought for a moment too short for the idea that I had to be good and let the answer slip away:

"The Aulics."

Everyone stared at me as if sanity had finally left me.

"Are you suggesting that we should ask for help from those who destroyed Venerna?!" Kadi squeaked. I wouldn't have liked that idea either, if it hadn't come out of my own mouth. However, something told me that Bleine was our last option, the only one who had once wanted the destruction of the aericosis and its Queen as much as I had.

"They tried to help us before, when they gave us the ship to reach the galaxy's core." I reminded him.

"Until they threw us into a sun!"

"Which was the metriona's fault!"

"And what prevents them from still working together?!"

"That's why we need to see which side Aulics are on!"

"For me it's already quite clear that it isn't ours!"

"What stops us from finding out?!"

"Them KILLING us!"

"This will not happen." Korrok interrupted us, stealing our attention. "The Aulics don't want the contaminated in this galaxy... And now neither do we. We can use their hatred as our weapon."

"And we're going to end up shooting ourselves in the foot." Kadi grunted and disappeared into the other area of ​​the ship, leaving me to my bad decisions.

• • • ֍ • • •

We headed for the Power District and arrived at its palace with some of our best soldiers and our fears hidden behind shields.

A bridge that appeared to be made of pure stardust connected the district to its palace, floating in a vacuum inside an atmospheric dome on the other side of a huge pore. The building looked like a city of crystalline pillars that rose to the the built sky, surrounded by pores that connected all the worlds of Itopis - the entire Empire - to the same building.

My knees trembled just from lifting my chin to see where their heights ended. I had never been in front of something so sealed, protected, powerful, dangerous... Not even my body I treated with such respect.

That was as close to the galaxy's core as I had ever came, that boiling center of stars that even in that world's morning the glow of the stars was not dimmed. The sky beyond the bridge and the pore, in the vastness of the universe where the palace floated, glowed and ricocheted off the crystalline walls in a mosaic of pure light and power.