Megaannum Smile

I picked up my father's battle helmet. I knew this day would come and I'd been dreading it. My mother was more concerned considering what happened during past battles. My family is cursed you see. In every war we've lost every family member deployed for battle. Every single one.

"Xaviano hurry up would you. We've got to be at the battle station in 10 minutes," a voice called from the hallway, presumably Adrian's.

"Yes I'll be there on time," I shouted back.

My friends found my habit of manually wearing armour instead of going through the automatic armour fitting machine really weird. But I found that my method helped calmed my mind and do much better in battle. My statistics from battle trainings agreed with me.

I looked at my flask of elixir as I wore my breastplate. If we lost the war, I would never see the elixir again. That damned elixir. Having the power to generate nourishment at will, naturally all 6 galaxies fought over it. Thankfully the war wasn't as bad as it could've been. This was solely due to the one thing all galaxies agreed upon: prophecies told by the Oracle.

Each galaxy has their own Oracle who interprets signs from the stars and is a so-called messenger of the Gods. And in order to prevent major bloodshed over the elixir, the Gods had apparently proclaimed that the elixir would belong to a single galaxy at a time and would change hands every million years. The elixir-owning galaxy was decided by a war, like the one I'm about to fight. Whichever galaxy wins, is the new owner of the elixir.

When I was younger, the Oracle thing sounded like bullshit to me. It still does sometimes. But Oracles from 6 different galaxies never disagreeing with one another even when it may have benefitted them to do otherwise does add credibility to the theory. Nonetheless I was a curious young man and decided to visit the Oracle family of my galaxy to try and understand how prophesying worked. The gift of prophesy is granted to a single family in a galaxy. Our galaxy's Oracle was currently a girl from Ryteo (my planet), not much younger than myself. I turned up at their doorstep uninvited which some might call rude but it was a prophesying family. They should've predicted my arrival.

I left their house that night with no more insight than I previously had but I got something better. I found the love of my life. Yes I fell in love with the oracle who I was so skeptical about. It happens.

"5 mins left Xav!" Adrian called again.

Adrian was an interesting creature. Being half-human half-Ryteon gave him more eccentricities than I had. It was probably one of the reasons we got along so well. Before I met him in one of our first battle training sessions, humans were a faraway concept. Yes our species had similarities in appearance and reproduction to that of humans but other than that there was nothing. We were taught that a majority of humans were mainly driven by selfishness and greed rather than Ryteos's motive of righteousness. Both have their flaws, but obviously we've been taught that we were the superior species.

Adrian and his human mother seemed to be an exception to the greed powered destructive beings we were taught humans were. His father met her during one of Ryteo's research expeditions to Earth. He was completely smitten and decided to bring her back with him. He wasn't the first one to fall for a human though. In fact there were so many Ryteo's falling for humans that we made a permanent portal from Earth. A place the humans call the Bermuda Triangle.

"You done?" Adrian asked as I just tightened the last bolt on my battle boots.

"Yup," I said, mentally preparing myself for battle and perhaps even death.

We made our way to our battle station, only to find no one else there.

"What-where'd everyone go?" I asked confused as Adrian checked his newsfeed.

"You will not believe this," he said smiling.

"What?" I said as I moved to check my own news feed.

"No don't check your feed. We gotta see this in person." He said as he began sprinting towards the foyer.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I sprinted behind him, struggling to keep up.

He led us to the practice battle field which was scattered with soldiers and civilians, all of them looking at the sky. I looked up to see a bright galaxy cluster, seemingly smiling at us. A sign that needed no Oracle for interpretation. The war was over before it had even begun. Our galaxy keeps the elixir for the next million years without a single drop of bloodshed. It meant that the curse upon my family is lifted.

"You happy?" A familiar voice said.

I turned around to see our Oracle beaming at me. She looked beautiful in her traditional silk gown

"Did you have something to do with this?" I asked curiously.

"Maybe," she grinned.

"Really?"

"Of course not silly. I can read the stars, not control them," she said as she stepped closer to me.

I smiled as I closed the gap between us, kissing her softly.

Maybe miracles do happen after all.