NOVA

Chapter One

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The face of the Nova stared at Nevian from the screen he studied. Her appearance was simple for someone of such power: black hair, black eyes, brown skin, sharp and rigid features set into a long face. She looked stern, but not at all like the killer she was supposed to be. 

He cast a glance over to the withered woman next to him. Was this what Elys had looked like when she was younger?  Her rough hair, long and grey, trailed down her back. Her skin was pale and withered and her hard brown eyes were shot with the same shade of voidish black. They weren't the same, but the similarities in their faces were enough to make him pause.

He shook himself off. Their appearances weren't important. Instead, he took his time scrolling across what footage he had of her - videos of the searing white that spilled from between her fingers, of her flashes of blinding white, of explosions that were as beautiful as they were utterly terrifying. No, the power within her didn't match her appearance at all. Whereas Elys managed to communicate her knowledge by simply looking at something, he doubted anything could communicate the sheer destructive power that this woman had.

Nevian winced at the images showing him the aftermath of one her attacks. Burns racing across a soldiers arms, glass melted and shattered in a thousand directions like knives. He frowned muttered at her. "Are you sure this is going to work?" 

Elys regarded him with vague amusement. "You would doubt me?" 

"No, Elys," he said hurriedly, even as his mind wailed yes, yes he did doubt her. "I just... you never know with things like these."

"Your men are plenty capable of fighting her," she said calmly. Nevian noticed how she said 'fight' instead of 'contain'. It didn't particularly inspire him, but she saw his hesitance and scowled at him. "For God's sake Nevian, have some faith. We have gone over this a thousand times. She won't do much to resist with her powers." 

He scoffed. "She is going to use her powers, Elys."

"I wouldn't be so certain of that." She said firmly, then glared. "Nevian, it doesn't matter. You are ready for her regardless"

Nevian disagreed. couldn't say he felt ready to confront the most dangerous person in the known universe, but he needed the Nova. He was a desperate man, and desperate men did desperate things.

Desperate things like consulting Elys...

Elys was a wild card. She worked with whoever she was supposedly intended to work with, as opposed to committing herself to one group. A product of how her own power worked. She too had been a project from the labs on Earth. Her intended omniscience had been a failure, but she had knowledge that came in the most strange and uncomfortably unexplained ways. There was nothing saying that he couldn't do his work without her, but he was a more desperate man than he liked to admit. For delicate matters such as this, she was always the first person he attempted to contact.

"And what are you thinking of now, Nevian?"

"The Nova." He murmured.

She simply raised an eyebrow in his direction, but didn't challenge him out loud. Apart from the familiar hum and shake of the engines, the shuttle was silent. The soundproofing technology he had invested in had been ludicrously expensive but it had been a good purchase. Even if many of his Advisers and Officials disagreed with him.

"Your Officials weren't wrong," Elys murmured. He bristled. She couldn't genuinely read minds, but that didn't make him any more comfortable when she went prying into the edges of his thoughts. "An investment into ice mining would have been more profitable."