Beacons in The Dark

Chapter 17 - Bejeweled Planet

"We've encountered a nonhuman species and do not know their intent. We've known nothing but black space for generations, thousands of years before I was ever born. I hope they can find us a place to settle." - First Mate Andrews logbook, recovered from the gutted hull of the Zandromeda ship

The planet called Krist was in the Imperium, but even the Autonomous Emperor did not know about it. It was on no maps, no gamma scans could locate it, and even if you warped straight to it, Krist would not be there.

You had to be invited, or brought to this green jewel of a planet.

It hovered in the starry void like an emerald, glowing with the light of a purple sun and a dozen greyish green moonlets that circled the amazing planet. There were oceans, of course, but they were small compared to the massive landscape, but the oceans were of the deepest azure, and amidst their waves plied the most magnificent denizens of the sea.

Things that looked like whales but moved through the water with some sort of propulsion other than flippers and tails; they undulated and moved with a preternatural grace. Smaller fishlike creatures swam around them in droves, charetreuse colored with overlarge docile eyes that had never known a predator.

The trees were of prodigious size, orangeish in color with small stripes of blue running through them, giving off the smell of pine; most of the planet was forest, rich and luxuriant, exuberant with the thrummings of natural energy, the sunlight casting a warming glow over everything.

This was a planet supported and surrounded by Jhiva, the energy beyond the veil. This is where Nami had been taken by Xarath, and the place that Blue had glimpsed as one of the beacons in the dark.

Not  many could understand the power of will it took to manifest Jhiva energy, but those that could ascended to different beings, of course in the same form, but different nonetheless.

Xarath and the others had known that Blue would be the perfect one to take Jhiva upon him, he who was thousands, the dna of an innumerable line of Zeks, some proud and arrogant, others humble and docile; pieces of them all whirled inside of him, and Xarath had hoped upon that.

Because Xarath had an idea, and when that happened, the cogs of the universe were like to turn.