A Traitorous House on Traitorous Earth: Shattered Past Book 3

Rekindled Faith

Sidriks had taken up the mantle of the Kishari, however as he sat in his daughter's hospital room he took off the new helmet and looked at it. It was a sort of reluctance that he felt ever since this was first mentioned to him by Oracle. He hadn't felt this way before in hundreds, if not thousands of years. Twice in his life before this point, the first was when he asked his wife Fluura to marry him. The second was when they talked about having a child. He held and looked at his helmet, then over to the bedside of his daughter, who was still in comatose.

Shandri was a young Eliksni girl with at the age of sixteen hundred. She had four gray iris eyes and a dark black shade of short hair. Being born from her father and her mother, a noble, she had four natural arms. Her skin was smooth, youthful, but calised on her feet and hands. She was still considered a teenager by Eliksni standards, in spite of reaching maturity at the age of eighteen. She was originally a commander of a battalion in the Eliksni army, and one of the finest female soldiers of her time.

"Sidriks, are you alright?" Vel asked him as she walked inside. Then she noticed that he wasn't wearing his helmet, something she never saw an Eliksni do before. Curious she got in front of him to look at his face. "Wow," She thought to herself.

"What is it Vel?" Her ghost Neo asked her.

"He's handsome."

"Oh, here we go again."

"What do you mean?"

"You have this infatuation with him; it gets annoying sometimes."

Sidriks looked down to her from where he was sitting. "No, I'm not okay." He replied sadly looking at his daughter again.

"What's wrong?" She asked. She then took a broader stroke of his appearance and noticed the white and gold armor, as well as the two rings, sword, and new symbol. "And what's with the fancy armor?"

"Well, Vel, I'm apparently the Kishari, the Kell of Kells."

"Wait a second, isn't that the same title that that Skolas guy has?"

"Yes, but Variks seems to think that I'm the real one."

"Wait, Variks is still alive?" Vel asked him. She had at one point been an Awoken who lived in the Reef. However, all of that changed when she was banished by the Queen who she served. She took a ship and left the Reef in exile. It was all smooth sailing until she was shot down by a group of fallen in the Cosmodrome. She came back as a guardian afterward and grew to be an exceptional warrior.

"Yes, why wouldn't he be?"

"Oh, nothing, he's just kind of old."

"Yeah, even for an Eliksni he's old, nearly four-thousand two-hundred and fifty."

"Wait a sec, old for an Eliksni?"

"Yes, typically Eliksni life spans extend into the late three thousands. Variks is what my culture calls an overseer. An Eliksni who has witnessed many events in our history."

"Well, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"

"I'm two thousand two hundred twenty-five. And just so you know, asking someone's age in my culture is okay, we see age as a sign of experience."

"Okay, so what's bothering you?"

Sidriks looked over to Shandri, then back to the golden helmet that he had in his hands. He let out a disheartened sigh and looked back at her again. He sat down in the chair that was next to the bed. "How can I be the one to save our people, when I couldn't even save my own daughter?" He asked. "My own flesh and blood, tortured, raped, and mutilated for eight hundred years and I couldn't do anything to save her."