TWO:
The brilliant cobalt of these stones never ceases to amaze me. It's the deepest, richest color I've ever seen in anything, and it's a rock. The way it glows, almost sparkling, glinting in the harsh midday sunlight, is mesmerizing; if I stare at it long enough I can almost see waves and shades ripple across its smoothly jagged surface.
The Turks have been kind enough to section this area off for a hundred meters around, surrounding it with a fence and then planting trees and making something akin to a garden. Those trees are still saplings, of course, but I know that one day this place will seep beauty. The stone itself sits in the center of a circle of trimmed hedges and large, white rocks, with a sidewalk rimming the rocks. The grass around the loralite is recently trimmed, which isn't that shocking if I think about it.
"It's three AM in Paradise right now," Mar tells me. "Think either of them will be coherent?"
"Wanna bet?" I flash her half a grin, but I still can't but my all into it. I still feel the lingering ache of that scar, and I know exactly what it means. I won't let myself be happy about that at all. What did I tell myself so long ago? The Loric are more precious than anything I can imagine? The death of one is the death of another of the few remaining of my race?
The Garde may live on, but the Loric probably won't. I'm honest enough with myself to know it's true. There are six Lorics left in the entire universe, after Five's death. I make a mental note to ask Lexa to resume training in the Loric language- for posterity, for preservation, all that.
"You're quiet," she whispers to me.
"Thinking," I say. It's half true.
"You always are," She snuggles up against me, and I let myself flush against her side. We're on a bench in the ring around the stone, just watching for a little while. Mar told me a while back that it's always a good idea to stop and take in the beauty of the world for a few moments every day. Healthier. Keeps you in a good mind.
She takes my hand and presses her cryo into it, so I flash my lumen back to counteract. She always likes it when I do that.
"There's a lot to think about," I try.
"You can talk to me, you know," she says. "I won't tell."
With what she might take as a resigned sigh, I start. "Just about the future. Always that, you know?"
"Always that," she echoes.
"The future of our race, all that," I chuckle a little bit accidentally, bitterly. "The Lorics will die off, sooner or later."
"There are things that can be done to prevent it, you know," she says, elbowing me in the ribs. "So I've been told."
"It's inevitable either way," I continue. "There's too few of us to sustain a population. Hell, there are hardly enough to sustain an extended family."
She draws the quiet out for longer than I figured she would, but eventually she breathes in, then out, then says, "It's probably about time."
"Probably."
"That means get up."
I roll my eyes and stand with all the energy remaining to me. She pulls her knees up to her chest and looks resolute for a few seconds, before offering me her hand.
Together we move to the stone, slowly, letting its ethereal energy spill out into the air and onto us. When we reach it I can see the light blue lines, almost electric, tendril across its surface, almost like it can sense our presence.
I look back at Mar and she looks back at me. She's not afraid- not anymore, at least. That part of her is long, long gone.
I will it to take us there.
As usual, it resists. For all my power, I still haven't figured out how to control the stones. We land in grassy field around Stonehenge and Mar chuckles ruefully, squeezing my hand. I jump again.
The landscape blinks and we're somewhere else, no fanfare, no noise, nothing. Suddenly the wind is strong and the sound of waves lapping at rocks is distant. I think I recognize it as New Zealand. Doesn't matter for now. I jump again.
Third try is apparently the charm, because the landscape is suddenly dark and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light of the cave. The cave I carved, more or less. It was there already, of course, but I was the one who perfected it. That took far too long.
Mar drops my hand and jogs forward, around the corner, leaving me alone in the circular room. As my eyes finally start to even out, I can see my work in full face: the blue stone in the center of the floor, the lines and symbols embossed all across the floor's face leading up to the smooth, black walls. After a moment more, I follow her.
The complex is nothing huge, I get that. All the same, it is still larger than most houses, with rooms for… weapons, supplies, training, all the things Garde on the run would need to survive. Because I know what it's like to not have anywhere to go. I know it by heart now, the locations of everything, but every once in a while it's nice to let myself get lost in it.
The room on my right is nothing but an observation platform. Its wall is a huge, rather crude rectangular hole that gives the view of the whole Himalayan Valley below- the flat, forested plateau at the bottom, ringed by snowcapped mountains in layers going back to the horizon.
I step out onto the balcony and the wind catches me a little off guard, but I press my hands into the edges of the window and take a good, wide look around. There's nothing more peaceful than a good look around.
"John!" Someone calls. "Everyone's here."
And I turn around. Six is the one who came to get me, it turns out; her raven hair blows in the wind and she tucks it behind her ear and looks me in the eye with that little smirk of hers.
"Glad it wasn't you, by the way," she says. "You're actually a decent person. Sometimes."
She turns to lead me back but I grab her and spin her around into a hug. She might hesitate, but she still leans back into it with all her force. "I missed you," she says. "You left without even saying good-bye."
"Something I still regret," I say. She leans back and gives me another half smile, nods, and turns back. This time, I follow.
As I stalk into the room, a couple people rise: Nine, probably sarcastically, and Sam, probably reverently. I grin and motion for them to ease, and take the chair between Mar and where Six plops down.
It's my job to start us off, I know. "I think most of you know why I called you here today," I say, looking around at all of them. There's so few, it's depressing. Marina. Six and Sam. Nine. Adam. Lexa. Ella. And Me.
The last of the Loric.
"I would have called the Human Garde here if the occasion were different," I say. "But the occasion is… something we haven't planned for. Hell, we haven't even briefed some of the Humans on the charm."
"Some," Sam emphasizes.
"To bring the rest of you up to speed, Adam, Lexa, the four of us under the charm got another scar two nights ago. Since us four are here now, that means one thing."
"Number Five is gone," Lexa finishes.
"Serves the little bastard right," Nine mutters. When half the table flashes him a look, he backs down.
"We don't even know where he was," I say. "Las time we say him alive was months ago, on some south Pacific island built on obscurity. He could have been anywhere, doing anything."
"Does it matter?" Adam speaks up. That's unusual.
"Hmm?"
"He was a traitor, and a ghost, you said it yourself," he says. "He's dead, so what? We won't be at any particular loss without him."
"Savage," Nine whispers.
"You don't know what it's like, being last of such a doomed race," I look around at the others. Marina. Six. Nine. Ella. Lexa. That's it. "There's six Loric left in the world. He might have been a traitor and a bastard and whatever else, but he was Loric and he was instrumental in the ultimate defeat of the Mogs. We couldn't have done it without him."
"Yeah, but he did that other thing," Nine's gaze flashes between me and Marina, and back again. "That other thing that would have made the war much simpler had he just not to begin with. He won the war by fixing a problem he caused!"
"We're not here to argue hypotheticals, Nine," I say, not even noticing the raise in my voice. Under the table I feel Mar's leg brush up against mine, and the chill that comes with it. I press back with a little of my lumen, just a little. "The fact of the matter is, he was important in the end. We at least owe him the honor of that recognition."
"All he did was for his own advancement, Johnny!" Nine scoots his chair back loudly and throws his feet up on the table, probably an affront to the Loric gods. "We don't owe him anything."
"And there's so few Loric left that the ones that we do have need to be honored, no matter what. Lorien above all else, remember?"
"That cunt didn't," he says.
I suck in a breath and sink back into the chair. I made these things intentionally uncomfortable, because of all that chairs of power should never be comfortable bullshit, but I'm starting to really regret that when Lexa speaks up.
"John is right," she says. "He might have been the worst of us, but he was one of us."
I gesture towards her, but Nine doesn't notice.
"What do we do about it, then?" Six asks. "He's dead, yeah. We don't even know where he is! We have to find him first, and that's too much effort for a formality."
"I'll put out a notice to the press and the UN to send out bulletins," I say. "We can find him if we try. Odds are he starved on that island."
"That seems excessive," she says. Her eyes, grey and soft, nevertheless look right into my soul, and I have to try to hold their gaze.
Nine folds his feet back off the table and folds presses forward, making like he'll speak. "Better than one of us going door-to-door, if it comes right down to it."
"Thank you," I gesture at him, too. He slouches back.
In the silence that follows, I realize it's my job to address the other issues as well. So many problems, all around the world, all need our attention. I start with the most pressing one.
"Well, that settled… I'll send a notice to the UN to put out men to find his body. We'll tip them on the location of the island, and if they manage it I'll have them deliver it to… here?"
"This is a Loric place," Nine says. "Have them take it somewhere else."
"Where?"
"The Academy…," he trails off. "I'll take the hit, guys, don't worry."
"I'll be there with you when it arrives."
"If."
I lean forward and fold my hands on the surface of the table, taking that as cue to change the subject. "In list of the other pressing matters that need our attention… The Russian government is still being obstinate to allowing its Human Garde to even show their faces in public."
"I thought they gave them all to Ra," Nine says. "I still remember the smell of that mass grave, John-Boy."
"Not all of them. Russia's a huge place, there are some still living in hiding, some out in the rural parts of Siberia… They're still there, and they need help."
"What do we do, then?" Six asks. "Threats? Force? What?"
"Both, preferably," I grin to her. "But lacking that, I'll bring it in front of the UN after the Five business."
"You think the Russians will fold to you, you're wrong," Adam says. "I've seen the like of this Putin character before. He reminds me of Ra."
"The fact is, we have to acknowledge the tensions everywhere," I stress. "We may have won the war, now we have to win the peace. I kinda think the latter will be the harder."
"After killing an alien dictator and protracted, two planet war, Johnny?" Nine says. "I doubt that."
"You haven't thought about it much, then."
"Spend most of my time with the younglings nowadays, don't have much time to think about politics."
"And yet you still have time to think about getting laid," Marina whispers low enough that only I hear.
"Well, it's time to start thinking," I say. "If you think the Russians are the only problem we have, well, you're in for a lesson, Professor."
"Fine, then. Lay it out. Spell it out for me. What are we dealing with?"
"Minor hate crimes against Human Garde all over the planet, murders, rapes, defacings… suicides…"
"They think it goes against religions to receive legacies," Lexa says. "I've studied the news about it extensively."
"You'll be my right hand, then, when I address the UN… again. What's that, three?"
"It's a worthy cause, John," Ella finally says something. The whole table rotates to her. Her hair is longer now, down past her shoulders, and died black to mimic Six's. She's been living with Lexa these past few months since I left her. I've been meaning to talk to her about that, actually. I make a mental note to do that after the meeting.
"I know that, it's just hard."
"You've been through worse," she grins at me, and then when she laughs, we all laugh with her, remembering the horrors of the war to end all wars.
This isn't over, I think. This is just getting started.
Hey, guys! Sorry the second chapter took so long, I was busy yesterday. Anyway, remember to review and all that, it really helps with motivation to know I'm not alone over here. Anyway, thanks for reading, and check back for updates soon.