BIRTHRIGHT Book One: The First Key

Chapter 8

A metal brace slams down hard on a human forearm.

Then another.

Two more clang around calves.

A bright green syringe punctures a vein.

A scalpel carves a deep gash into flesh, removing a small steak's worth of tissue.

Alex's torture is being replayed as highly detailed imagery flashing across a view screen. But not a screen that anyone on Earth would consider a television. There is no frame, no back, no solid matter to the viewing screen at all. The word projection doesn't do the technology justice; a hologram perhaps? Whatever near-magic is at work, the translucent images seem to be held up by rocky quartz outcroppings, growing out of the floor of a room.

But to call it the 'floor of a room' would be to miss the fact that there are no walls or ceiling to this place, just a thin bubble of a membrane, transparent in a great semi-spherical dome to the vast vacuum of space outside.

Today, it's a very crowded vacuum.

Dozens of ships whizz by overhead. Tiny engines glow green on the small chrome Zek'Hasa fighters as they dart this way and that, on the run from bulkier quartz-purple ships that appear to be made out of jagged stone. The lumbering purple ships outnumber the nimble green ones, but the Zek'Hasa ships continue to put up a fight.

This is the view through the membrane of the Akarios Archon's diplomatic cruiser. Equipped a wildly vast array of advanced communication, scientific and transport technology that most humans would have to call magic, this ship is purposefully weaponless.

A handsome young man in flowing, floor-length brown robes shakes his head in disgust as he watches the screen, wincing in the same pain that Alex is. With eyes that appear wiser than the years on his face, Leonides is from the order of the priests and his presence here on a diplomatic vessel can mean only one thing: Judgement

Beside him wearing a tight black leather armour studded with quartz-like stone accents stands Kala Mios. A vicious rage burns in her eyes, seemingly stoked by every agony Alex endures at the hands of human ignorance and fear. She will refuse to keep her instincts quiet much longer. She is from the warrior caste, and her presence here on a diplomatic vessel, in the company of a priest, can mean only one thing: High Judgement.

"Savages," Kala blurts out, sickened by the images on the screen. "every one of these... these..."

The viewing screen abruptly cuts to static, flickering off. Leo closes his eyes to summon an inner peace before looking over at Kala and her continuing outburst.

"...these monstrous experiments." she finally manages to sputter through her rage to complete her thought.

"You warriors are so presumptuous." in speaking to Kala, Leo expresses nearly the same disgust for this warrior that Kala is showing for the human behavior they just witnessed.

The rocky outcroppings that were somehow projecting the image into thin air begin to soften and recede away into the ground like molten lava. The quartz floor would appear to be rocky, were it not for the subtle swirl and pulse of violet light beneath its translucent surface.

Behind the melting viewing screen, seated in an elegant structure made of the same quartz substance is the Archon, a slender, middle-aged, redheaded woman dressed in iridescent pearl robes fastened over one shoulder.

The colour of her robes seems to swirl and fluctuate in the same rhythm as the ship itself.

Dressed in this regal toga befitting of an ancient Greek philosopher king, seated on a throne fir for an emperor, she has a classical beauty and grace about her, and her command of the room already goes without saying.