Dome of Souls (Book 2 of 2, after Story Less Told)

Ch1: Dome sweet dome

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                                                                     Chapter 1:

The gentle hum of the engines pulses, as heavy boots made their way down the corrugated metal floor. The emergency lighting was dim, illuminated by several flickering panels and the strange spotlight of 2 bright blue sources, moving in the dark like headlamps The squeak of cloth on glass was lightly punctuated by an exhale to de-fog the glasses. A pair of glowing eyes dimmed as the tinted goggles were placed over them.

"No point delaying the inevitable." He said in the darkness as sparks popped from overloading consoles. He approached the mirror, lighting his skull-shaped ivory pipe and tying his long blue-grey hair back in a ponytail. He adjusted his hat, and returned the green silk handkerchief to the shirt-pocket of his tailored suit.

"My name is Adrian Michael Greggarious, but you damn well know that since I'm you. The part you won't believe is the part I'm about to drop on your big, blue, slumbering ass. You're a Greg like me, so you gotta be one smart motherfucker, but you've been played, my friend. Normally I'd say a Greg is far too intelligent to trick but here we are, one of us chilling out in the cooler like 650 pound freezy-pop. I'm almost proud of the kid, actually. Outsmart his old man like that. He may be a damn runt, but what he lacks in brawn, he makes up for in brains. This is where you're thinking, or more accurately are about to be thinking when you wake up...when is this big sexy bastard going to get to the point, and yes, we ramble, and yes, everyone finds it as tedious as you do now hearing it from yourself. Just chill out there in your tube and deal with it like every wife you've ever had, who's tolerated this madness.

You've missed a lot. That propaganda about needing you as a battery, complete bullshit. They tried that shit on me too, gave me the line about how to prepare for the glorious fleet's arrival. Frankly your universe must have stronger drugs because even in the cocaine-induced after-party of my life, I managed to see through that smokescreen. I guess one possibility is that you didn't have her to help you. I don't know how I could have survived all these centuries, these millennia without her. It's no wonder you fell, you probably wanted to escape it. Deep down you probably longed for death from sheer loneliness. Eternal slumber as a battery, knowing you were still technically the power running the empire must have seemed like the afterlife you wanted. If only it was real, and not just a plot to bottle up the genie that is the Greg. You should have seen it, myself. They loved us. The humans never fully accepted it, but you never really needed them too. The Fae worshipped you, grew to numbers you can't imagine, almost rivaling the human population. Planetary control was almost there, thousands of years of war and fighting to this point, and as the Osirian Fleet approached to claim their Earth from the tyrannical rule of the Greggarious family...everything stopped. The signals, the messages, everything. Species 36 was the only answer. They caught up to the fleet before the fleet made it to Earth. Ironic, actually Your fleet made it with plenty of time to spare. Parallel universes are confusing. Maybe it was knowing you were safely in ice that gave them the incentive to move faster. Maybe knowing I was waiting with an army and a nearly conquered world slowed them down. Doesn't matter. Mine universe failed, and yours won. My fleet never arrived. Thousands of years of preparation, ready for both scenarios. If war was what they wanted, we were ready. If negotiations were the plan, we were ready too. What we weren't ready for was a species 36 infested ship, arriving and punching through the defense grid like a wet paper bag. Thank the Gods for plan-B." he sighed, finishing his smoke and dialing in the hacking codes for the cryo-pod in front of him. He peered up at the big blue creature in the tube, with a familiar look as if it was a long lost friend.

"Damn you are one majestic beast from this perspective. Hard to imagine being small, looking up at something larger and knowing that's what your enemies faced when looking at you, all those millennia ago. Absolutely intimidating. We really are worth fearing, aren't we?" He yawned, removing his hat and placing a silver ring with sensors on his head, like a halo, plugging in the cable to the panel in front of the cryo-pod.

"I don't need to tell you to keep this our little secret. They are going to know someone woke you up, hopefully they won't know it was you. I'd bet you a grand they blame Sasha, but I'd be paying myself either way so that wager is as pointless as a spatula. Anyway, welcome to the year 2030-ish. It sucks, humans are everywhere. They're like piss-ants, you just can't keep them out of your world, they find cracks and multiply. It's just their nature. I'm including with this message and my memory in it's entirety, the blueprints to the wormhole technology. It needs refining, and you'll know this when you wake up, but...boy does it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when you go through. A Greg may be the only thing that can survive the trip through without a receiving gate, but it's not pleasant in the least. Thank fuck it all grows back." He said loading his pipe and placing it on the table next to the cryo-pod.

"Got you a smoke and a good pipe when you wake up, unfortunately I drank all the booze and didn't have any coffee to jazz it up anyway. If everything works as planned, you should know everything I know and vice-versa, but these memory links aren't a proven science and they were never designed to merge 15 thousand years of memory, so I expect some...glitches here and there, hence the intro warning, which should be fresh enough and direct wired that even if the rest gets fuzzy, we should both have matching memory of this conversation and a good starting point. In case this goes tits-up in a bad way when I hit the red button, here's the last part:

"You're in an artificial moon called the Khonsu, Christophe runs everything. There aren't enough Fae to take over, probably none who even remember you, let alone the human population who never knew you existed. The timing is not right, we don't have any choice. Find Izleena, keep her close. She wont believe you at first but trust me...she eventually will...maybe. I don't know, yours might be different. It's all so confusing but you'll relate to that, and it's about to get even worse. I printed you a tailored suit. The big, blue, naked-guy thing draws too much attention. So much I want to say before I go, and no time to say it. Repair teams will be down here soon, even with the security system blocked. Those damn Vaath bugs are efficient at fixing shit. I almost wish we had them back in my universe, but I don't trust them, neither should you. Nothing that naturally subservient, and that advanced, allies with you that easily without a reason. I don't know what goes on under the public eye, but these bugs are up to something and we both know it. Scary how fast they populated out of nowhere. Damn bugs. I hate bugs so much. Ugh, I'm stalling here. Not looking forward to my exile, but I don't have much choice...except stuff you into that mining ship and take your place, but if the memory transfer doesn't work right, then we have a huge problem, don't we? Yep, that's us Gregs. Always taking the hit and self-sacrificing ourselves for the greater good and all. Only fair I guess, you've been slumbering here and get to wake up and take over while I go into hiding on a stolen mining ship and spend however long tit takes for you to take over thi-you know what, no, screw this. We're both petty as hell, so I'm keeping my pipe and you don't get it. I'm gonna be spending potentially years exiled on a stupid mining ship, with only clones to keep me company, while you get to stretch your legs in the fancy human-zoo. Fuck you, me. MY pipe, I deserve it. Carve your own out a chunk of marble, we both know you know the design by the time you experience this conversation, here's a closer look." he said holding it up to the glass and staring himself in primal form and glowing eyes.

"You get a moon and possibly an Izleena, so the least you owe me is a good pipe. Don't trust the damn Vaath, don't trust the Humans, and trust very few of the Osirians. We both have a job to do, it takes all the Gregs we can get, so get our asses on it ASAP. So it's wakey-wakey time without the alarm clock. It's morning somewhere. Toast with butter, motherfucker." Adrian said, hitting the flashing green button and cringing as his headset lit up and hummed. He dropped to his knees and gnashed his protruding canines as the memory merger whined with power.

"Yea, it does in fact, hurt as much as I predicted." He growled.

He jarred and sat up from his bed, rubbing his face as yet another of the same nightmare freshly burned in his mind.

"I hate waking up to that one." He sighed, adjusting his eyes to the lighting and trying to remember what decade, planet, and régime he was currently in. Greg looked around and recognized the room, his gilded prison cell.

"Damnit...that's where I am." he sighed.