Chapter 3

"Ifalna, you are charged by the court of the Cetra - "

Ifalna looked around. Where was she? What was happening?

She saw that she was in a courtroom. She saw her family and friends placed as the jury. The judge was her husband. Her ever-loving husband. What was he saying now?

"You ran away. You acted on your own impulse and you interfered. You - "

"They would all have died!" Ifalna cried, realising what he meant. She had warned the Spirans. She had tried to save a race. That was her crime.

The Cetra, as a race were the caretakers of the universe. They could see the future, and very few of them could move in time. Once, long ago, a leader of their race had decided that these abilities gave the duty of ensuring the safety of the universe. But, he said, they were not to interfere. If they interfered, that could lead to a race of tyrannical Cetra, whose only aim was to recreate the universe in their own image. They would become a police race, making sure things happened they way they wanted. The leader, whose name has been lost to history, had not wanted that to happen. He only wanted to make sure that none were killed by any fault not their own. If a natural disaster wiped out all but one small child, the Cetra would seek to protect that child. If a species killed their enemies and themselves off in great wars, then that was their own problem.

The judge was speaking again. "Ifalna, you interfered!"

"I had to save them!"

"They could survive this!"

"No, they - "

Ifalna stopped as the memories washed over her. That vision. A race wondering what the thing in the sky was, moving ever closer. Then suddenly it would hit. She saw the mass of bodies, roasted by the terrible heat, and then frozen by the cold that followed. She saw adult bodies wrapped around children holding them tight. She saw the few who survived wandering aimlessly over the corpses of their families and friends until they lay down and died too. She saw a child clasped in its mother's dead arms, screaming, crying, "why won't you wake up mommy?"

And then hundreds of years of rotting, stinking corpses, whittling down to skeletons. Bones on every surface of the world. Then the dead, wandering moaning, their ghost bodies mutilated by their ghastly fate. Wandering forever, wailing for their lost lives.

But he would not understand that. Her husband, the latest leader of the Cetra. She didn't understand now what she had ever seen in him. He was handsome, yes, with kind eyes that hid a wicked soul. She had loved him, she thought, though she had not known what love was. On their wedding night, she had regretted everything, seeing for the first time her husband's cruelty, but it was to late. She was bound to him now, trapped forever with her son, Llaman. Her son. Not his.

He was not interested in helping other races. He didn't want to do anything except be worshipped. She had seen his face at his father's funeral, greedy, not grieving.

He was talking still, screaming at her for taking his son away. She looked up at him. His son? Never. She knew this was a dream. He still scared her even here, but she need not be afraid. He was only a phantom, a figment of her imagination. Here, she could give him his true name.

"Monster," she said softly.

"What!"

"Monster." She said again. And again. "Monster." Screaming now, "Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster…"

Then she awoke and wept into her pillow. What fate awaited her innocent child with a father like that?