The Heretic of Sælonis ||A Sci-Fi Romance Novella||

as monstrous as I must

"Cædir."

As soon as she said the name, a memory flashed behind my eyes. It was of a small girl with white hair, touching my face just as the Heretic was right now. Her touch had been gentle, just as... just like Nierhæ.

Cædir.

She'd said the name for a reason. And as her hands ran through my hair, I realised what reason it was.

She thought I was Cædir.

But that wasn't possible. It wasn't...

Surely I would remember that. Surely Sethes wouldn't have taken me if they knew I...

A warmth seared through my skull at her touch, but it wasn't from her. It was strange. It burned, but wasn't painful.

The second the feeling hit me, more surges of memories flashed behind my eyes.

She was forcing them on me. She had to be.

It was the only thing that made sense.

There were flashes of people that looked like me. A gargantuan man with brown eyes and curls atop his head, with darker skin and... was that my father?

And two sisters and two brothers, running around with toy guns and swords.

And a woman, nearly as tall as my father, with a kind smile, but a longsword strapped to her back. A crown made of black metal on her head.

The Queen of Mertonis. My mother...

"What are you doing?" I whispered as I pulled away from her. Even though I pulled away, the flashes didn't stop. They should have stopped. Why didn't they stop?

"I'm not doing anything..."

Flashes of something else burst through me. Of the stars and Nierhæ. Of yesterday when I'd looked out the window to where we were heading, and then back to her to see she'd fallen asleep in her seat. She'd been vulnerable... and it broke something in me.

It broke some form of resolve that the idea of getting closer to her was just a ploy.

"No, you're in my head, Heretic." I took a few steps back as she stared in my direction.

"I'm not in your head, Cædir, that's not one of my gifts." She told me, but I shook my head. Lies. It was all lies.

"Don't call me that."

"What? Cædir? It's your name." She told me as she stood up. "You know how I'm sure?"

"You're lying, Heretic. Get out of my fucking head."

"I'm not in your head. That is not a gift of mine." She repeated as she walked towards me. But there were more blinding flashes. This was the only explanation. "I know you're Cædir because of your scars. The one on your forehead that cuts through your eyebrow, it's from you falling off a—"

"Shut up." I hissed, but she didn't.

"You fell off a ciegrux." She told me, and I rubbed the scar. "Your nose is slightly crooked because one of your brothers punched you too hard during a spar." She added, so I touched my nose too. Was it really from one of my brothers? "And the one on your temple is from me. You tried to scare me when we were seven. I hit you over the head, with the handle of my Aura whip. You were lucky I didn't use the actual thing, or you wouldn't be here."

She smiled at me, but it didn't feel right.

It didn't spark joy in me, but panic. Everything... it hadn't been a lie, had it?

"If I was Cædir, the Sethes army would have killed me on Mertonis. I wouldn't be alive." Her smile faltered for a moment, but only for a moment.

"You were young, easily manipulated. You didn't even remember any of your life before Sethes, not until now." Why did she have a point? "They had control of you, but they expected to lose it. Why else would they keep you in a piece of shit like this?" She lifted her hands to point at the ship around us. "It's so when you do remember, they can take you out without a fucking hassle."

"You don't know what you're—"

"You think I don't know?" She cut me off. "This is what the Sethes Council does. They take children from their families and turn the orphans into Huntsmen. They destroy worlds that threaten them. What do you think happened to Mertonis?"

"Sethes freed—"

"No. Not freed. Your people were slaughtered. And if that wasn't enough, Sethes deemed it necessary to drill a hole deep into your planet before setting off a bomb large enough to shatter it to rubble." No. That was a lie.

It had to be a lie.

Images flashed before my eyes, of people being killed. Of bombs hitting the entire surface of a planet. Of the taste of smoke and ash in my mouth, and the feel of blood coating my body.

"Get out of my head." I hissed, but she laughed.

"It's not me."

"Well, no one else is—"

"What are you seeing? Are you seeing images?" I couldn't say anything to follow her words, not when the realisation hit me. She laughed again. "I cannot fucking see. How could I send you images when I've never seen anything before? You started shoving your memories into my head, not the other way around."

"What?"

"I don't have telepathy. I've never had telepathy. Your name is Cædir, you have an 'æ' in your name. It means you're Chosen. The telepathy isn't me. It's you." More lies. These were... surely they were lies. They had to be. "How can I show you images I've never seen before?"

"But Mertonis was freed—"

"Do you want to go to our solar system after Castellia?" She asked, and her head tilted to the side. "We can go, and you can see that Mertonis is nothing more than a mass of floating rocks. Sælonis followed shortly after, because we'd already sent most of our forces to Covisa, since that's where we thought Sethes would strike next."

This was too much information. It had to be lies. It was the only thing that made sense.

"As for telepathy being a gift from the Aura, if it isn't controlled, then when you become highly emotional, you push thoughts out instead of siphoning them in. You're emotional, because me touching your face reminded you of your childhood." She stayed still as I tried to piece this all together. "Sethes lied to you, Cædir. They lied to you, so they could use you. They lied to you because they destroyed your home planet, and if you knew, then you would help me with my mission."

"Your mission?" I whispered.

Her nose crinkled for a moment, as if she was thinking how it would be best to proceed. There were a few sharp intakes of breath from her before she nodded.

"We thought that after Sethes took Castellia, they would attack Covisa, so Sælonis directed all our troops there. Instead, Sethesian forces intercepted the Sælonian army during flight, destroyed the ship and all the people on it, including my father. Then they destroyed Mertonis, because your people had the strongest military and posed the largest threat to them throughout the entire galaxy. And to be sure that none of your people survived aside from the orphans they wanted, they blew up your planet." She explained, and instead of arguing, I let her continue. Maybe I could find pieces that didn't fit together, just so I could prove she was lying.

"With Mertonis reduced to rubble, Sethes turned their attention to Sælonis," she continued. "By that point we realised what they were doing—keeping the most promising youths alive to turn them into agents of their own. Instead of letting Sethes get a hold of me, the Sælonian Council sent me in a safety pod to Covisa. When I arrived, I heard Sethes had destroyed my home planet just as they had with yours. Their forces followed me across the galaxy, from planet to planet, to kill me. They know what I'm capable of, and what I'm destined to achieve."

"And what is that?"

"I'm going to destroy the Sethesian Council, just as they did to us." I felt... conflicted over the admission. Most of me was horrified at the thought of it, but then a small inkling seemed... happy. "And I'll go as far as it takes to make sure they can't hurt anyone ever again."

"And what will you do if you have to destroy an entire planet to end this war? Are you really willing to become a monster?"

Nierhæ turned towards me, a sombre look on her face. She already had an answer to my question, and it was one I wouldn't like.

"I will become as monstrous as I must."