The Lost Animas (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 5)

Chapter 10

THEY FOUND THE trimorphs and the threads of light still waiting for them.

Diva grabbed Six's hand, and pulled him alongside her. Then she turned to Bennel and Tallen, and indicated that they should move up level with them too. The two Coriolans seemed very surprised, but stepped up as requested.

Diva took a deep breath, and began again, still clutching Six's hand.

"We apologize for that," she began. "We are honoured to be in your presence, though I think we have already met beings like you, in symbiosis with the canths."

The diamond star which was hanging in mid air in front of them seemed to shimmer very slightly, but it was a trimorph twin who answered.

"Well, of course they are the same. We told you they were like the lost animas, didn't we?" The little globe whirred crossly. "I wish you would listen to us. After all, we are the ones they abducted, aren't we?"

"How do you know who they are?"

The trimorph pulsated darkly. "They absorbed us into some sort of mindmerge with them ... By the way, you might want to be careful—" it broke off, realizing that its advice was going to come too late.

The stellate shape was moving towards the four people standing in front of it, and was slowly enlarging so as to encompass them all.

A searing bright light was coming from the complex stellate figure, and they all cried out as it passed over them and then hovered, holding its position. This time there was no fear; they all remembered only too well how the shining shape had managed to break down the defences in the Dessite mind wall.

The multifaceted diamond star glided smoothly over them. Six could sense both Bennel and Tallen flinching backwards as it did. He and Diva both managed to hold their places, but Six reached down and grabbed her hand again as the aura began to envelop them.

At first it was too bright within it for them to make out anything at all.

It was as if they had been touched by a cloud, except that this mist was warmer than the surroundings, and felt dry. As the points of the star reached them, they were acutely aware of the heaviness of their own bodies, dragging them down to earth.

Then the weight of their limbs suddenly became so unbearable that something inside each of them freed itself from the flesh, and became unchecked. Six was conscious of a feeling of looking down at his land-based body, of looking down at an empty shell which was holding Diva's hand.

He fixed his attention on the space beside him in the air, and saw that Diva had the same aura as in the mindmerge on Pictoria. She had become the same wonderful cobalt blue, and he could see her shape beside him, leaping with fiery flames that were at the same time crisp and sharp. The flames seemed to be flickering over him, mingling with the edges of his own aura.

Diva had trembled as she had transformed back into the shape she had taken in the mindmerge against the Dessites. The change was strange, as if her flesh were suddenly evaporating into smoke, passing from solid to gas in one all-encompassing sublimation. She took a moment to get used to the airy feeling, and then turned to Six, at her side. He was the same complicated pattern of golden sunbeams, a sensation of warmth, and quickness. Where they had been holding hands the golden pattern was flecked with her own cobalt colour, and the point of contact was bringing them closer together, tugging at her. She felt a sudden need to feel that warmth more closely and moved automatically towards him. Although she was aware that they were being coerced into this merge, Diva felt no fear, no desire to struggle against the magnetic force; she went willingly into it.