Z1, Destiny Unveiled

by EagleRay

Four Months have passed since the events of Origins. Zachary Neldeb has begun to craft an invention that will catapult him and his allies into their Destinies. But I wonder if he knows that?

1. Four Months On

Title: The Zachary Chronicles – Destiny Unveiled

Chapter: 01 – Four Months On

Rating: M (just in case).

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A/N: At long last, dear readers! I live, I breathe, I write!

First of all, the most enormous, unconditional, heart-felt apology for my prolonged (what is that 3 years) absence from posting. Thank you so much all of you who were patient and waiting for this story. All newcomers, welcome to the true beginning of The Zachary Chronicles (boring title, I know).

Origins was meant to be the appetizer to the rest of this series. Now we get to the main course of it all. Brace yourselves (ooh! Drama!), and here we go.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or criticism, please don't hesitate to let me know. It'll only take a few minutes. Thanks again.

And a great big thank you to Solanaa, my beta reader. Thank you for putting up with me.

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blah – Anna's speech.

blah – Regular speech/Narrative.

blah – Thoughts.

Summary: This story begins 4 months after the end of Z0-Origins

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Darkness

A tremor of anxious anticipation filled a young man's heart as he stood in the darkness. There was nothing around him—no light, no sound... There was no indication of whether he stood in an open, cavernous space or a shadow-enshrouded closet. He could be completely alone or immersed in a mob of people. He could be completely safe, or surrounded on all sides by deadly traps and pitfalls... There was just no way of knowing.

And that was the most frightening thing.

If knowledge was power, the power to be safe, the power of security, the power to protect, to live, then he was now powerless, paralysed by fear and the unknown, unseen dangers.

He was about to slowly sit down on the ground to make sure he didn't fall or stumble into some unseen hazard when a light appeared over his head, blinding in its intensity and abrupt appearance.

For all its brightness, however, the light only seemed to make the dark world around him even more oppressive, more ominous and foreboding...more threatening. The light was directly over his head, shining a brilliant whit light straight down at him and chasing the darkness away even as it made the shadows more impenetrable and mysterious.

"So, Commander..."

The voice came out of the darkness in front of Zack, low and resonant, and filled with authority and pride...it sounded like an ancient, wizened scholar.

"...You freely admit that you have committed treason against the Protoss?"

Oh, maybe it was a bureaucrat or a politician.

"You know," This time, the words were in his own voice, but came from behind him. "I'd offer an explanation in my defence, but I suspect it would not be heard over your own self-righteous bigotry."

It was strange, he thought, that the second voice could sound so much like him and yet completely alien. There was the familiar sound of his own voice in his ears, but there was a ...power that completely overshadowed the authority of the first speaker. There was pride in this voice, and authority as well, but not of the same quality as the other. The strength of the second speaker's voice was a controlled storm, a hurricane's eye of leashed fury and energy. It was like a blazing star to the first speaker's self-important candle. The gulf between them was staggering.

And this was supposed to be his voice?

It certainly sounded like him, but it felt like a total stranger.

"I am Executor Deros."

Another new voice came out from the darkness, this one much more calm and controlled than the first, almost on level with the second speaker. It was confident, steady, patient.

And now the light overhead was growing larger, dimming as the revealed area around him became wider. As the beam expanded around him, his eyes fell upon a plush red armchair. It was upholstered in bright, cherry leather and sat vacant on his right side. A split-second vision of a black-haired, brilliantly vivid green-eyed young girl seated in the chair filled his mind before dispersing like a wisp of cloud.

Then, in front of him appeared a dozen or so figures, all covered in shadow, their faces obscured from his sight as the light continued to grow and fill the surrounding area.

"By the authority of the Conclave," the newest voice went on, sounding almost...regretful? "You and your ship's crew are under arrest. You will disengage your shields and weapons and prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply will result in your complete destruction."

Those final words seemed to chase the shadows away completely, and he felt his stomach drop at the scene that was revealed:

It was a Battlefield.

It was a very one-sided battlefield, to be more clear.

He and the shrouded figures were surrounded on all sides by a fleet of warships. Long, smooth-lined battleships floated in the air all around them, circling around them like sharks as they displayed their broadsides, showing off a devastating number of weapons. He tried to count their number but it was limitless. How many were there? A thousand? Ten thousand?

And all that might was arrayed against him and a dozen cloaked presences that he could not recognize.

At some cue—unseen and unheard—every single ship opened fire. A hundred points of light appeared across the hulls of every single ship, growing in intensity as whatever weapons they carried slowly powered up. There was a roar of fire and explosions as the entire horizon all around ignited into flames and a hundred thousand missiles streamed toward him. The glowing lights erupted into brilliant lances of coloured, brilliant energy that were—each and every one—aimed squarely at his little group of mystery figures.

He felt a desperation fill him as he watched helplessly, his feet rooted to the ground beneath him. There had to be a way to stop this! He could not watch his friends fall. There is no problem without solution!

Friends?

Before he could think any further along that line, the missiles and beams of light had all found their mark...

And Zachary Neldeb's world was completely engulfed in flames and pain.

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Zack Neldeb jolted awake with a sound no louder than a gasped breath. Turning his head to one side, he released a tired sigh into the darkened room.

A dream.

The clock on the short table beside him proclaimed 4:17 in the morning in glaring red digits.

The same dream.

Zack sat up and rubbed his face with both hands. It was early, but there was no point trying to get back to sleep now. Two and a half weeks of the same nightmare had messed with his sleep quite enough.

Three months ago, Zack had dreamt that particular nightmare only a handful of times, each repetition slightly different. But now... Ever since he had begun his latest research project, the same dream had come over and over without fail, following the exact same events like clockwork.

Perhaps it was an omen? It wouldn't surprise him if that were the case; it did have a bit of that "warning" feel. Besides, Zack thought, considering exactly what it is that I'm building, a supernatural warning is almost to be expected. The question now was: what to do with the warning? How should her respond?

I might as well keep pushing forward and hope this...premonition becomes more clear with time. Zack rubbed his face again and stood up to stretch. I'll keep an eye out for any hints of the owners of those voices, though.

A knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts. Shaking his head free of the last traces of sleep and dreams, the young nineteen year old man moved quickly over to the door and opened it.

Fourmonths ago, when Zack had first discovered and set up shop here in this fantastic research facility, the face that greeted him might have surprised or frightened him, especially this early in the morning. On the other hand, considering the things that he had already dreamed and seen in his life, maybe he would have taken it in stride.

Standing just a little shorter than eye-level with the young man, the creature was about two metres long from its tapered, pale yellow nose to its evergreen tail. Wide, round, slitted pupils of yellow-bronze stared unblinking at the hallways around it as Zack rubbed his eyes tiredly.

The Velociraptor spoke first—it was something else that Zack had been forced to accustom himself to—its voice a full octave higher than Zack's comfort level. It was certainly too high for such an early hour. "You must come, Zachary; your computer is calling for you."

Zack yawned widely behind his hand, "Thanks, Eric. I'll be right down."

With a brief, reptilian head-bob, the lemon-yellow and green dinosaur turned away and darted down the corridor, the long, hard talons of his four-toed feet slashing at the concrete floor with powerful strides.

Closing the door, Zack squinted his eyes mostly closed before flicking the lights on. Time to get to work, he thought as he gathered up his clothes and his towel, intending on a quick shower before reporting to the control centre and an entire roomful of supposedly extinct dinosaurs.

The blond man hardly had to remind himself that Eric wasn't the only one; he wasn't even the leader of them. That responsibility fell to a far more intimidating and...mysterious individual.

Eric was simply the head of the entire scientific research facility in which Zack found himself a grudgingly welcomed guest. His presence was at best tolerated by most, shamelessly and suspiciously scrutinized by others, and openly welcomed by even fewer...but by their leader?

Who knew?

The Omega Facility, as it was called by the Raptors, was the central hub for the entire race's most valuable and vital research. Knowing it was only a matter of time before this hidden civilization would be found, the leader of the tribes had poured the full measure of the Raptors' ingenuity into finding a way to escape the planet for another sanctuary. It was a fairly recent project considering the reptile's lifespans, having begun approximately 60 years earlier, only the latter 20 at their present location.

Having witnessed some of the results that had come from the project, Zack was convinced that there was more to his almost nightly dreams—all of them, not just the nightmares—than randomly firing neurons in his R.E.M. Sleep. Exactly how much more they were, he couldn't be sure, but his current project was for the good of an entire race of amazing, potentially endangered...people. The consequences couldn't be that bad, could they?

That the road to Hell was paved with good intentions was an adage that didn't escape Zack.

But it could never hurt to hope.

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By the time Zack made it down to the command centre of the facility, half-an-hour had passed, but he had taken a quick shower and gathered his satchel of notes and tools. "Alright Anna—what's up?"

The main computer monitor, at which another raptor had been working, suddenly went blank—much to its user's startled discontent—and a string of narrow, pale blue words was printed across it.

I have just finished calculating the coordinates from the information you gave me. I am ready to begin running the tests for Invention 237.

Zack nodded. "And the other sequences?"

The calculations have almost been completed.

"Excellent," Zack's blue eyes were bright as he smiled apologetically at the raptor that had been working at that station. "We'll run the first test while you finish those up. I'll meet you down in the Assembly room."

I will be there. The screen went blank again and then it returned to the way it had been when Zack had first come in.

"I'm sorry about that, Anthony," Zack smiled at the relieved raptor scientist that was already returning to work. "She sometimes gets overexcited when an experiment reaches the testing phase."

Turning away from the screen the pale orange saurian bared his teeth in what Zack had learned was their version of a smile. "It emulates your own excitement quite well."

"Huh," Zack paused on his way out the door, "What do you mean?"

The raptor bobbed his head, trilling in amusement. "You are practically vibrating where you stand."

"Oh well," Zack shifted from foot to foot anxiously, "It's just that this experiment could be a huge leap forward for the Omega Project.

An odd look passed behind Anthony's cool bronze eyes, "Good luck with that Zachary. The Lox-Harugar will forever be in your debt if you are successful."

Zack nodded as he slipped out of the quiet control room. "We'll see Anthony. Good luck with the backups today."

Once every month, all research and development data was backed up to a series of off-site servers for safekeeping. Today's backup was different, however. Twice a year, after the monthly backup, the entire local database was wiped clean just prior to downloading research data from remote servers all over the world and creating a localized, down-scaled version of the Internet that was then cut off once again from the outside world.

It was a lot of effort for just a few months of updated research data, but Zack could understand the Raptors' reasoning for going through such time consuming busywork. With so few Raptors available at the labs—and the remainder working and watching for their safety out in the world—the undiscovered race needed the insightful edge that snooping on everyone else's research would grant them.

Because it was only a matter of time before this astounding facility was discovered and its secret exposed to the world.

Janine, the Alpha Claw of the Raptor tribes and protector of the Lox-Harugar nation, was beginning to grow desperate for a solution as the world's technology grew ever more impressive and the world grew increasingly smaller. The dark corners of the world were shrinking and despite the cunning ingenuity and strength of the ancient race, Janine was certain that the sheer numbers and general shoot-first-and-never-question mentality of mankind as a whole would quickly overwhelm her people. Despite the ferocity of the Raptors on hunts in ages long past, Janine had mentioned to Zack that for as long as her family had held the position of Alpha, they had always taken the path of subterfuge and peaceful and unknowing co-existence with humankind. Like all of her predecessors, Janine saw a certain potential in the often wild and uncivilized creature of humans that could, in time, elevate the younger race to impressive and undreamed heights.

For Zack's part, he thought Janine was giving her own race far too little credit. Sure the raptors' ingenuity was failing them when it came to weapons and advanced propulsion technology, but their primary abilities were nothing to scoff—among the most impressive was their shape-shifting ability, which is the reason that they had survived whatever catastrophe had befallen the rest of the Palaeontological world. Shape-shifting, even as limited as it was from their cretaceous years, would allow the forgotten race a level of stealth that would prove a greater advantage than anything that could be found in the human arsenal.

On the other hand, if the Raptors ever did decide to start hunting humans, Zack was quite certain that he would be among the first to fall under the claw, thanks in large part to his close proximity to and awareness of the ancient tribe.

All that aside, Zack's latest invention had the potential to solve all the Saurian's present and future worries regarding their discovery. It was something that had been sitting at home on his hard drive for a few years now but he'd been unable to take it to prototype because even his best supplier had never been able to sell him parts in that kind of volume. Ever since discovering this facility—quite by accident—Zack had been focusing every neuron he could spare from his real job on finding a solution for the supposedly extinct race's problems. The prototype that had just been finished a few days before would be the culmination of all that work and planning...

...If this upcoming test was successful.

Zack swept through a set of open sliding steel doors and entered into the Omega facility's automated machine shop.

The chamber was one of a half-dozen or so similarly designed rooms in the base, but this one was the largest by at least half. More than a hundred metres long on each wall, there were long conveyers and heavy robotic assembly machines scattered all around, silent and still. There were a dozen or more doors circling the perimeter of the assembly shop, leading of to other parts of the facility. Bright, white fluorescent lights shown down on everything, illuminating every corner of the huge room and gleaming especially brightly off the polished silver surfaces of Zack's freshly completed machine.

Invention 237.

Standing just shy of five metres high, the black pillar-supported ring towered over virtually everything in the room, but fell a handful of metres short of the ceiling. The ring itself appeared awkwardly slim, only half-a-metre thick all around its circumference. Even where the four support struts rose up from the the floor to hold its mass—two on each side—the ring was no thicker where they intersected it. Engraved across the top of the ring in a dramatic touch that grew just a little more on Zack each time he read it was a short Latin phrase Anna had found somewhere on the Internet.

Praeteritis Errata. Praesentes Inspirate. Posterum Spes.

In Past, Mistakes. In Present, Inspiration. In Future, Hope.

"Good morning, Zachary." One of the Raptors gathered around the machine glanced up at the young inventor's entrance. "It seems that we are almost ready here. Your...assistant," here, the pale green-skinned Saurian canted his head at a nearby computer terminal, "Has already programmed in the first set of coordinates. We can begin whenever you are ready."

"Thank you, Lucius." Zack moved over to the indicated terminal, on the screen of which an image of a young girl paced back and forth slowly, an oddly thoughtful expression on her face.

That she could do thoughtful wasn't what had Zack's eyebrows climbing his forehead in surprise, but that she would do it when she wasn't aware that there was anyone around to see it. It seemed a frivolous and illogical use of the Artificial Intelligence's resources.

Zack had created the A.I. Primarily as a better gaming opponent when he was ten years old, but had gradually begun to lift the restrictions she had been under until she now existed with almost total freedom. Her most recent couple of years had been the most eventful in her growth. She had actually confined her identity to a single gender for one thing—completely by her choice in choosing her own name, and it didn't appear to be an acronym for anything Zack could think of. She had been given "eyes" in the form of a peripheral video camera so that she could see the world around her, and even a face after being introduced to some new graphics code that Zack had added to her program.

Now, at only nine years old, Anna was freely moving through the computers of this facility less than four months after Zack had discovered it, absorbing copious amounts of knowledge from the Internet and digging up all kinds of new information about the world that Zack had never thought possible. Zack also had a portable rig that Anna could be downloaded into if he ever needed to take her somewhere, and she had thoroughly explored the hills and forests surrounding the Omega facility with her nineteen year-old creator.

Zack reached out for the keyboard of the terminal Anna was pacing on, her waist-length glossy black hair waving with every step she took and swirling around her shoulders every time she turned to change direction. It was a nice touch of realism that surprised Zack. It didn't take much for Anna to simulate all that motion in her Avatar, but it still seemed like something an ordinary computer wouldn't be bothered with. He shook his head and activated the array of microphones he'd installed in this room. "Okay Anna, are you ready to get this started?"

The ten centimetre tall avatar abruptly stopped her pacing and danced excitedly for a few seconds before her reply scrolled up on the terminal in pale cyan letters:

Coordinates have been locked in, Zack. The girl spun in place lazily. What is the next step?

"Well," Zack plugged a small wireless transmitter/receiver into the terminal with one hand while settling a headset into his ear with the other. "If my calculations are right—."

I have observed that they always are. The girl on the screen smirked slyly at him.

The young inventor chuckled quietly while adjusting the microphone a little lower over his cheek. "Very funny, Anna."

I thought it would be.

"So anyway," Zack turned away from the terminal and the silently giggling avatar displayed on it. "The power generation facility on this base should be more than able to power the gateway, but there may be some power losses in other parts of the base, so we should probably make sure that all the databases are finished being backed up before we try to activate it."

Lucius, bobbed his head once, smouldering yellow-brown eyes bright with excitement. "I will return when they have finished then." Without waiting for a reply, the green reptile dashed off in the direction from which Zack had come.

"So," Zack turned back to the other two occupants of the room, "Do either of you know any good games?"

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Monica stood in a dark forest.

It was possible the Sun was up—even suspended directly overhead—but the canopy over the 21-year-old's head wasn't letting any light through.

The redhead lifted her gas lantern a little higher—hanging it from a short, stubby branch so it dangled at about chin height—before sitting down on the wide, flat rock she'd found. "Well, isn't this just fantastic."

Looking around, the young charter pilot spied a wide section of aluminium panel lying just off to her left. It was crumpled in on itself, and very clearly torn from some larger object, but some markings were just barely visible on the side facing her.

...oenix.

It was part of a larger word, Monica was sure of it. She could see the curve of at least one more letter before the seeming jumble. An 'n'? or maybe an 'h'?

She shook her head; the memories were just all so fuzzy now.

She had been flying to visit a friend, wasn't she? The name 'Zack' floated up from somewhere in the fog of Monica's mind, but she couldn't be sure it wasn't just a fabrication of her own struggling mind.

Leaning back against the tree that shot up from just beside her rock, bright and intense blue eyes scanned the darkness and flickering streaks of lantern light, looking for something, anything to ground her to reality.

...noenix...hoenix? Rhoenix...Phoenix?

That was it!

Monica shot to her feet and almost crowed her triumph. Phoenix! That was the word, and Phoenix was the name of her plane!

Looking down at the fragment of metal plating, Monica crumbled and collapsed onto her rock.

It was her plane.

Was. Past tense.

Monica bent over and grasped her head with her hands. What on Earth had happened?

She had been flying to visit someone in her plane—Phoenix...but who was it? She remembered dirty blond hair, bright and intelligent blue eyes. She remembered a warm, friendly laugh that made her heart jump in her chest.

Zack...

Yes, that was his name. Now, what had happened to her plane?

"You didn't seriously think you could hide from me here, did you?"

Quickly—but feeling a little sluggish, like she was trapped in mud—Monica looked up to see a figure standing directly on the other side of the lantern's cast circle of light. Unfortunately, whomever it was stood just outside the reach of the light, seeming even to be darker than the shadows around them. It was as if whomever had spoken had the ability to wrap the darkness around them like a shroud. All Monica could make out was a pair of bright, iridescent violet eyes. They were narrowed at her in what she could only assume was some malevolent, dark emotion.

Standing slowly, wide-eyed and alert to any sign of movement, be it threatening or otherwise, Monica was unsure of how to proceed. This wasn't a situation she ran into regularly.

"God," a hiss of disgust came from just below those shadowed, enraged eyes, and then the dark, brooding voice was off again, railing at her in a threateningly calm voice. "To think that you were ever this ignorant and naive, and survived in the world that's coming."

Deciding that running would be unwise, Monica simply turned a little to more fully face her tormentor. These unwelcome and unsettling lantern-side talks were happening more and more often. "What do you mean? What's coming?"

Only silence answered her as those glimmering eyes narrowed still further.

"I suppose it would be too easy if you just told me straight out," Monica moved the lantern from the tree branch to the forest floor at her feet and sat herself down on the nearby rock and dropped her head into her hands. "Why," She sighed wearily, "Why do we keep doing this, Sarah?"

The eyes never changed, but the voice grew calmer than it had been only moments earlier. "Do what?"

Shaking her head, Monica turned her blue eyes up to focus on the shadowed figure in front of her. "This," she waved a hand between them. "You show up out of nowhere, you threaten and insult me, and then you'll attack me for some reason that you still haven't told me. Why don't we just skip all that so I don't have to listen to any more of the reasons why my life sucks and how you're doing me a favour by ending it?"

"Your life doesn't suck," the grating, growling voice argued smoothly. "You're just not doing anything with your limitless potential to make the sum of your life's experiences worth a damn."

"What?" Monica felt her left eyebrow arch incredulously, "I've been living on my own and supporting myself since I was seventeen-years-old."

Even narrowed to bare slits, those glittering violet eyes managed to roll derisively quite well, "Don't be stupid. That's nothing of worth; that's simply Monica playing by the world's rules. What about making the world play by your rules for once—by our rules? How far have you come towards making this world your Empire?"

"Um," Her thoughts were completely derailed by the words from this shadowy figure.

"Ugh, you're completely hopeless." The eyes shuddered agitatedly before moving to slowly circle around her. "Oh, but of course, this isn't the Monica Caning you were when we met, is it? This Monica Caning is fully content to live day by day flying pampered magazine photographers and worthless sods all over the skies like some pitiful air-taxi service. This is the Monica Caning who shivers in dread at the very thought of what her boyfriend found hidden in the woods and away from civilization.

"Stop," Monica could barely muster the strength to say the one word, much less anything further as her throat immediately constricted tightly, stifling any words that could have followed after.

"So, this is the Monica Caning that will one day hold the fate of whole planets in her hands? Pathetic," the shadow spat the last word like an epithet. "This Monica Caning is the same overgrown child who cowers in terror at the very sound of my voice!" The voice's tone grew steadily darker with each sentence until it ended with a vicious, biting snarl, those bright eyes flaring with renewed energy and malice.

Monica found herself suddenly transfixed in fright at the new hate and fire in that gaze. This was different from the way this situation usually unfolded; this was unexpected and new and unsettling... "Why?"

A dark, silky, and deep-throated chuckle was the voice's reply, "Why what, little child? Why are you so blind? Why are you so weak and worthless now when you will one day hold power over entire star systems? Why are you so afraid? I have so many whys, Monica Caning, but what are yours? Speak quickly now—you are running short on time."

"Why don't you just kill me and be done with it?" Monica straightened a little, remembering more about how this discussion usually went and drawing strength from the realization that for as much hate and rage those eyes—and this monster—felt for her, the Shadow had yet to act upon those sentiments. "How many times have we had this talk, Kerrigan?" Monica had long since gotten over the weirdness that came from having real conversations with what should have been a fictional, imaginary person. "how many times have you spat words at me but nothing else? How many times have we played our parts in this setting and both walked away unsatisfied and unharmed...mostly?" Monica winced at the memory of their last encounter and a responding phantom pain that flared up in her ribs. "How many times have you beaten me to a broken and bloody mess, and yet held back from the finishing blow? Why, Kerrigan, why do you continue this?"

Those iridescent violet eyes narrowed again, but this time the action was accompanied by dark and unsettling laughter. "So, you still haven't figured that out? God, I don't remember you ever being this dense. If anything, you taught me a thing or two." The laughter faded out gradually and the voice's next words were said in a quieter, more thoughtful voice. "What are you thinking in that soft, vulnerable little head of yours, Monica? I never had the chance to see you before everything changed, so I'm undeniably curious. What is going on behind those pretty blue eyes? What pathetic, small thoughts are you thinking?"

Monica backed away quickly, even more unsettled by her tormentor's open interest than she had been by her hate and disgust. "I don't know," she started slowly. "Maybe I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for you to kill me and get this over with so I can wake up. I mean, seriously, Kerrigan? There's reciting a monologue and threatening me, and then there's talking out your ass and boring me off of mine." The redhead sighed and ran her fingers through her long crimson hair in frustration, "Can't we just get this over with, Kerrigan?"

"Oh, alright," The voice relented, pausing for a moment when the redhead sagged with relief. "Why don't we start with how many flavours of wrong there were in what you just said?"

"What are you talking about?"

Those glittering eyes responded first by narrowing even more and trembling briefly as dark, amused laughter echoed in the darkness somewhere. "First—when all my plans come to fruition, you will not be dead and trampled beneath my feet, but standing with me and basking in our triumph and victory. Second—where this dance between you and I is concerned—it will never be over; you and I are as timeless as the stars because our Creators have made it so. You and I will always go through this struggle, and I will always emerge the stronger. Third—," the voice paused now, savouring this moment before continuing in a voice that began to shift and twist to something that was becoming unsettlingly familiar, "And most importantly—you should really start calling me by my name."

And...there went the warning bells in her head. This was very new.

Monica was on her feet in an instant, Fight or Flight instincts desperately clamouring one answer to every muscle in her body:

Run!

"Take her!"

Arms appeared suddenly around the redhead before she could move a single step away from the now-smouldering gaze, holding her in place with a grip so strong she may as well have been buried in concrete. Turning her head as much as she could, Monica was unsurprised to find Sarah Kerrigan standing behind her.

A face smooth and hard as frozen granite set with those same iridescent violet eyes that haunted all of Monica's now-nightly terrors gazed back at her emotionlessly. Above that sat a wild mop of earthy brown hair so tangled and greasy that it appeared almost segmented—like antennae. Neither Monica's head nor her eyes would move to take in anything below her silent captor's shoulders, which were narrow but firm, tough.

So, with not much else to see in that direction, save for the impossibly long, skeletal black shadows emerging from the fictional Queen of Blades' back and the—peculiarly-matching thin black collar tightly wrapped around her neck, Monica turned back to face the other pair of gleaming violet eyes that still hung suspended in the darkness, taunting her.

"This doesn't prove anything, Kerrigan." She gave a light, tentative tug at the arms that held her, but she barely moved at all. "I've seen two of you in my dreams before."

"'I've seen two of you in my dreams before'," The voice mocked her before dissolving into dark, sinister laughter. "You are so pathetic, Monica, and I can't believe I was ever related to you."

A chill colder than anything Monica had ever felt in her life swept her entire body as her thoughts froze and stalled on the last part of what her shadowed tormentor had said. After all this time... "Who are you?"

Malicious, almost maddened giggling answered her, "It's taken you long enough to ask that question, Monica, but are you sure you want to know?" There was barely a beat before that hauntingly familiar voice pushed on, "Of course you are," the voice's words were punctuated by a derisive snort only an instant before a hand came plunging out from the darkness right in front of Monica's face—far closer than she had expected given the placement of those hateful, piercing eyes.

"We always have been too curious for our own good, haven't we?"

Monica's mind, which had grown silent in her momentary curiosity with the situation, was suddenly screaming at her again, calling her to Flight with every neuron in her brain—with every cell in her body.

RUN!

But the trap had long since been set and sprung, and all the young pilot accomplished was to kick over the lantern at her feet.

Run!

The lantern struck the grown and shattered, spilling out and flaring up in the dry brush with a bright flash that made Monica's vision blur after being so accustomed to the all-encompassing darkness. The ground heaved under her feet and the redhead felt herself being propelled upwards at an alarming rate through a hazy fog of oranges and browns.

Runrunrunrun!

When her vision finally cleared, Monica's eyes grew wide at the vista before her.

Where before she had been immersed in a thick, shadow-enshrouded jungle, she now stood facing a dark, burning wasteland. Black weather-worn and heat-scarred rock glowed dimly and harshly in the light of an entire landscape that burned. Rivers frothing with molten rock streamed down scorched mountain-sides before pouring out into lakes and entire seas of boiling and rolling magma.

Standing atop the towering pinnacle of ash-dusted and steaming black rock, with the still-silent Kerrigan's grip holding her immobile, Monica stared at the view in sudden, stunned realization:

This was Char.

It was a place that Monica had never seen other than on a computer screen or in her worst nightmares. IT was an entire planet on fire, covered with active volcanoes, flowing lava like veins and oceans of rolling and swirling magma. And it was unbearably hot.

As boiling and oppressive as the landscape was, however, as much as she could feel the severe, cutting heat all the way up here on her towering spire of scalding stone, as freely as a sudden torrent of sweat cascaded down her back, Monica knew that the dread and nausea coursing through her at this very moment was not caused by the heat nor by the reek of sulphur. Her horror and anxiety were brought on simply by looking into the intense blue-and-violet eyes of her nightly tormentor—now freshly revealed for the first time.

Monica had long since lost count of how many times this scene had played out. The voice would come to taunt and torment her, and then a hooded, shadowed figure would dart forward out of the darkness and cut into her with instruments of liquid hot agony, piercing and tearing straight to her sou with a cold, black energy. Something that only added to that pain was the mystery of not ever knowing who was torturing her so gleefully—so purposefully.

Now—tonight—for the fist time, the veil of shadows had been ripped away for her and instead of feeling relieved at the revelation, Monica found only more questions, more confusion, even more unknowns, and a mounting feeling of horror and dread. How could this ever happen?

Bright, entrancing blue eyes gazed fearfully in stunned fascination into an almost identical pair, whose only difference—the only thing that stood apart—was the presence of bright violet streaks in those azure irises.

There was also the aura of completely unconcealed hate and malevolence, but that wasn't just in the eyes—it was in the sneering frown that scarred an otherwise smooth and attractive face. It was in the tense bearing of the Tormentor's shoulders and arms, the trembling rage that coiled and twisted in the other woman's belly. It was in the shuddering clench of her jaw muscles and the slow, controlled flaring of her nostrils.

If she could, Monica would have closed her eyes to hide from all that rage and hate. Seeing all that dark, violent emotion concentrated so tightly and explosively into one host was unsettling enough, but seeing all that in a face and body that could just as easily have been a reflection in the mirror was doing absolutely nothing to lift Monica's unease and apprehension.

The other Monica Caning looked every bit identical to her, save for the eyes and the streams of blood that ran down her left arm to drip off the tip of a long, narrow-bladed dagger gripped loosely in her twin's hand. "I was right," the other redhead spat disdainfully, "You really are pathetic. Look at how you cower when faced with nothing more than the simple truth."

Monica shook her head frantically, No! This wasn't her; this was some kind of hallucination, some kind of drug-induced fever dream, a twisted carnival mirror. There was nothing real or true about what she faced—smoke and mirrors, all of it! Sarah Kerrigan was playing with her mind again. This couldn't be true!

Thoughts of the other occupant of this towering spire of rock made Monica realize there were no longer hands gripping her by the shoulders. She darted her gazer around and found the slightly taller...woman standing beside her to the right, her head tilted down just slightly as she faced Monica's darker reflection. Eyes that had probably once been a bright, lively green but were now streaked with the same violet lines as were in the other Monica's blue irises, stared down at the rocky, ash-covered ground beneath their feet as pale, almost green-skinned hands rested clasped together in submission.

Monica found her eyes tracking back up to the shimmering black band of cloth that was wrapped around Sarah Kerrigan's long, slender neck, her gaze dawn to it by the striking contrast it made with her pale jade-hued skin. Emblazoned on the throat of the skin-tight ebony cloth was a strange, looping and flowing sliver design like a brand across Sarah Kerrigan's trachea.

With a sudden burst of insight, Monica's eyes traced back to her twisted double and immediately recognized an identical silver design drawn meticulously across a wide black bracelet that hung from around the other Monica's left wrist. It was the same hand with which the dark apparition was gripping her bloody dagger.

Upon noticing Monica's scrutiny of the two matching accessories, the darker shadow of the young woman raised her hand up so she too could look at it, her burning violet-blue eyes alight with an almost innocent wonder, "Do you like them? She made them for us," she nodded her head to the green-skinned woman beside Monica. "She has led her Swarms and Legions to conquer and consume hundreds of worlds, devoured entire civilizations, but she gave that all up the instant she met me."

Reaching out slowly and with a protective, almost longing smile, the twisted reflection of Monica cupped Sarah Kerrigan's cheek in her unbloodied hand, causing a faint, reverent sound to slip from between the brunette's thin black lips. "It was a simple matter to bend this one to my will; for all her tremendous power and limitless potential, Sarah Kerrigan is just desperate to serve. She can lead but yearns to follow. She follows us now," black lips curled up into a cruel smile as Monica's shadow-self traced her fingers so slowly down the taller woman's cheek to stroke gently against her chin, "Isn't that right?"

The only response to come from the enthralled Queen of Blades was a long, drawn out, trembling sigh of contented peace and barely restrained ecstasy. Sarah Kerrigan also pressed further into her mistress' hold, desperate for the contact of the twisted reflection's touch on her.

"Such is the Power that you will wield, Monica Caning," the shadow-image's eyes snapped to bore deeply into Monica's own. "Such is the immeasurable potential within your Spirit, and such is the Destiny for which I will prepare and teach you when the time comes."

Stunned by each revelation that her skewed mirror-image was unveiling to her, Monica could do little more than shake her head in a muted, desperate protest. This couldn't be her destiny—it would not be her destiny. As long as there was a breath in her body...

"Your destiny is written as surely as the stars turn!" The other—no, the Shadow's (never Monica's) voice was harsh now, biting and cold. "You can either embrace it and take control of it for once, or you can be swept up and consumed by it. You have no other choices." The Shadow took her hand from her servant's face, eliciting a displeased sigh to slip from Sarah Kerrigan, but no change in the blissful smile on the inhuman woman's face. Exchanging the gentle, almost tender hold she'd had on Kerrigan's chin for a rough and punishing grip on Monica's throat, the Shadow raised her dagger high over her head.

"It is time to wake up, Monica," The other redhead pulled Monica close, hissing her last words directly into her ear in a low, seductive whisper, "Wake up and face your Destiny!"

Then Monica's body exploded in flames of agony as the knife came slicing down.

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A/N: Thanks again to everyone who stuck around. As a bonus and a great big thank-you, I want to offer each and every one of you something. In this story (and the ones to come), if you want to know more about a particular subject/character or if there's a back-story or something that you want me to go into, feel free to let me know. Chances are, I already have plans to go into that later, but if not, I'll be starting a side-story of sorts once I'm a little farther into this series: Zx—The Untold Tales.