Consort of Stars

A worldly sigh broke through the vacuum, like a colossal beast loosening its ancient muscles. Its monumental breath sprang out, traveling at speed and devouring all in its path. The Harmonious Flotilla Invincible cracked apart, flesh torn from bone - and to the bone the beast leapt, in hopes of sucking the knowledge-marrow straight from the core. The Nicha Thought-ship was compromised. What remained of the fleet fired upon it in desperation, but the unfeeling machines guarded it with vain confidence, summoning energy-barriers all around the lost vessel as their Axis Mind set to work on its hopeless ambush.

The whispered image - a memory formed of spell and song - choked and faltered. Midha let it die and disperse as wisps of dissolving mist. The memory haunted him. It haunted them all. They had gathered under their great generals, commandants of powerful voices, and they failed.

He allowed himself to bodily drift from the Observatory Deck, out into the open expanse of cold, cold space. The ship - Invincible, once - cut on through the null. He was anchored solely by a thin thread of desire - a desire being hacked away by the sharpened hollows left in place of voices he would never hear again; the un-singing and un-molted hatchlings he had placed in the element-rich Nursery Caverns and his mate, o melodious Tirahn, who had disappeared to search for them as Ana-Harmony drowned all around them.

Ten worlds they lost. Ten worlds full of Singers - those of present and those yet to grow. Worlds who desired warmth and had their desire granted by an ancient, weathered orator who had then arrayed them around a wound in the universe so that they might drink of the galaxy's lasting vitality.

Another beast, sister to the first, had laid claim to that too - their grand repository of all lasting songs.

For a moment, Midha wondered if they should have turned around and sailed back to the ruins of home, just to offer themselves to the event horizon, so that the universe would eat their thoughts and voices and thus preserve them forever. In that regard, they would have been immortal, even if their physical forms were destroyed and minds scattered to cosmic winds. It would have been selfless, leaving it all for another people smart enough to drill into the collapsing star for secrets.

But Nezarec, Castellan Invincible, ordered that they sail on away from the hungry beasts digging into their homes and towards... something else. New worlds and new stars, where art and song could flourish once more.

Midha didn't feel he had the will to sing again.

Another form joined him, tethered as he was to the surviving flotilla by nothing more than imaginary possession. It flew - through ice clouds and between young stars. She was a Bishop in the form of a Harmony stretched into quadrupedal form, ruptured again and again until her metallic skin became a fluttering coat of living blades resembling chrome steel. What carapace winked at him from below her dreaded covering was death-black.

"Your despair is a bitter taste," she called to him, stretching her wings to catch a solar drift. Midha wondered if growing wings would change his mood, but he came to the conclusion that momentary thrills did not entice him overly much. He splayed his arms out, catching silvery dust as it streamed past him. The empty cold of the space between worlds battered at him. His skin held its ground. He did not need to molt for another three centuries.

"I am lost without my loved ones," Midha lamented.

"Do you wish them returned to you?"

He groaned. "You would give them back to me as hollow husks. It is their voices I miss. Their movements. Their opinions and beliefs."

"Your children held no beliefs or opinions but for grow grow grow."

"A seedling from which something good could sprout."

"Have you ever seen a tree?"

"I have, in the petrified orchards of Ana-Harmony. Their histories were colourful, but in truth I thought their physical forms rather dull."

The Bishop swam in front of him. Her eye was like a gem, multi-faceted and brilliantly gold. "Does nothing appeal to you anymore?"

Midha pointed towards a distant dying sun with an outstretched hand, as if to cup it and bring it away with him. He said nothing.

"You love them. Live for that. Let your desires for the stars power you on." At once, a glow emanated from the Bishop. She took to a more pleasing form, skin repaired and body straightened. Her eye was a twinkling constellation.

Midha took her offered hand and returned to the observatory of his home-ship, the Fifth Tidal Opera. It was a needle-blade, quick and slender despite its substantial size. He closed up the opened hatch behind him, allowing gravity to reclaim him. He sang as he did so, and the transformed Bishop sang with him. He took her up as a consort, and she him, and for a while he was content with their duets, even if his core ached. He lived for the stars and she lived for want and greed. It was enough to keep him satiated during the long journey past the boundaries of all they knew.

Midha told himself that some things could never be regained. He would have to grow to overcome his loss - or he would have to return the favour upon those who had dealt him this most tragic wound.

They were not alone in the deep black. Beyond their fleet an entire galaxy's worth of life and song lived and died. It was inevitable they would find others, or so the surviving steersmen of the fleet said. It did nothing to ease Midha's mind, nor those of his crewmates. The Fifth Tidal Opera was just as much a warship as it was a mobile hospital and pleasure barge - well-suited to whatever task they set it to. And yet, though its hull was forged with the lost husks of fallen heroes and reinforced with Bishop-magic it was not, however, Invincible.

The Kingly Beast had shown them that. More; knocked off the lofty title they had assigned to themselves for millennia. Midha no longer considered himself an Invincible. He, and all others who'd survived the war, were refugees. There was no kinder way to put it.

Only prince Nezarec had any right to treasured word, the word once held by their war-ready flotilla, for all his selfless heroism.

Their first encounter with other creatures not of the beasts who'd run them off was... strange. They discovered that another ship would inevitably cross paths with them. Such news was brought by the changing solar winds of the dead system they currently docked in and the subtle warnings of the enigmatic Bishops. Interpreters cried out the meaning before long, having accurately divined what the sacred incarnations of desire truly meant to say.

Midha, like all Singer-Captains, was summoned to Nezarec's holo-council as the news rippled through the migrant fleet. He exchanged short, pleasant greetings with his fellow helmsmen. Nezarec arrived last of all, as was tradition, and swung out his arms while vocalizing an old Harmonious mantra emphasizing humility, patience, and perseverance. When he finished, he was treated with a warm whistling ovation. He soon raised his horns for quiet, with all the easy familiarity of a royal conductor.

"My friends, my choir," princely Nezarec began - indeed, he was the very last prince of Ana-Harmony, "we stand on a precipice. The Bishops warn us of another presence, not two worlds away, and the local star flares up in courteous greeting for those not us. I ask you now: what shall we do?"

There was a great gulf of quiet. Finally, Ezyrax who was not a helmsman but the lead Singer-Aviatrix and thus of equal standing, said, "Should we not be wary? We sang to the universe before, searching for new friends and partners, and it in turn vomited monstrosities upon our homeland."

Nezarec raised his horns; she made a fair point, and he acknowledged it.

Another, Dervales of the Seventh Continental Opera, made an argument in semi-opposition to her. "We are indeed an endangered people," he said, "but without a home our children will starve, huskless and songless. No world has yet met our specifications, and our eggs are close to hatching."

Another valid point.

Ezyrax's humming fell away. Her sorrow was palpable. It was a sorrow shared by all present. "They may know of a world suited to us," she murmured. "We must make the effort of asking them, or our children will die."

A third Singer spoke up. Her name was Iozhir. "If they are aligned with the beasts we will all die. Our warriors are strong and our Operas are sharp, but the beasts do not care. They fling hordes of bodies at us so we might drown in them, uncaring for the casualties they endure. The beasts... they do not fear pain. They do not fear death."

"The options make themselves clear," Nezarec solemnly announced. "To approach these others in peace and hope or to slip away unnoticed. If we reveal ourselves we risk them attacking us. If we do not then our unborn children will never survive. I call all present to make their choices, and then I will tally the vote."

One by one, all made their statements. Midha was the fifth to be asked, as dictated by the rank of his Opera. He did not hesitate. "I say we approach. For our children."

"For our children," Nezarec echoed.

"For our children," many others repeated.

The decision was made: fourty-seven to twenty-three in favour of opening negotiations with the new arrivals.

The alien ship was a monster, much like that belonging to the beastly king, but it was smaller. It bore less scars. It boasted a more appealing hide. And... it was hungrier. It ate up a rounded asteroid just as they arrived in the treacherous asteroid archipelago. As Operas sliced through the rocky islands, it rippled forth with magnificent power to meet them halfway.

Midha admitted that as ostentatious as it was, the leviathan of a ship possessed a certain... charm.

It ate and ate, but it turned its wide maw away from the Operas to bare its belly. A palace was waiting on the other side of the unliving animal, over which stood a tower and two tiny suns kept in place with artificial gravities. It appeared as if the strangers had prepared another sort of meeting for the Harmony. A great voice bellowed forth across glitching channels formed through tachyon particles, full of mirth and cheer. Nezarec answered it in kind and disembarked with his personal retinue of Sting-toting guards. Bipedal creatures of organic flesh-and-bone marched out onto the ramp he landed upon and stood alert as a noble and courteous honour guard. Certainly a welcome befitting one of his station. It put Midha at ease.

For many local cycles they waited, as Nezarec spoke with the leader of the strange aliens. Other conversations were had, mainly between an invisible consciousness stretching all around the golden beast and the young Harmonic warriors brave enough to leave the cover of their Operas and sing in broad view. From what could be gleaned from their halting discussions, the new aliens were as much enemies of the beasts as the Harmony were.

After an age Nezarec returned with his guards, boarded his First Tidal Opera, and ordered a departure. He ignored all questions fielded until the fleet had cleared the edge of the star system. The holo-council was called. Midha sung to the other helmsmen and officers with uncertain anxiousness, a feeling they all shared. Nezarec arrived earlier than he should have. His receptacle was dim. His shoulders were slumped.

"There is no world for us," he told them.

The assorted Singers keened and wailed with fresh misery.

"But they gave us something else!" Nezarec called. All song came to a halt. "We must lock our children away in time while we search for the means to make a new home."

"How do we do that?" Ezyrax, warrior-bold, asked of him.

"We must petition the Bishops to create for our children a sanctuary outside of time and hunger. We will reclaim them when we have built our new home. Will you, Consort of Stars, lead this effort?"

Heads turned to Midha. He bobbed his horns. "I will ask it of them."

Nezarec's shoulders rose. "I thank you."

Midha needed no thanks. "For our children," he whispered with harsh, rasping notes.

With the Star-Bishop beside him, Midha slipped outside the Opera and hiked up on top of the vessel's hull. Other Bishops swam around, drawn from every corner of the surviving fleet. They gravitated towards his desire, which was the desire of all those onboard, and whispered to him in pleasant, lustful tones. No two were of the same shape. No two were of the same voice.

"Hark, listen!" Midha sang. "We need a place of safety for our unhatched hatchlings! A place of easy reach and little time!"

"Do you wish it?" The Star-Bishop murmured from beside him, still in Singer-form. She held his hand tightly, eagerly.

"I wish it," Midha confirmed.

The Bishops swarmed and drank of his wish, then darted away as a school of space fish and formed from the detritus left in the Operas' wake a grand cocoon, wherein they tenderly placed each and every Harmony egg found within the fleet. One Bishop, who took the form of a fearsome fire-breathing beast, nestled over them as a guard. The cocoon was closed as the other shapeshifters deserted it, locking what lay within outside of time itself.

Anchors were fired. Each Opera took part and the cocoon was caught in a web of metallic wire, pulled along with the fleet. Their pilgrimage resumed.

The Operas stood poised on the very edge of the galaxy. They threatened to fall off into the eternal expanse of nothing forevermore.

"This is where he told me to go," Nezarec murmured. He and Midha stood upon the Observatory Deck of the First Tidal Opera. "The Golden Emperor assured me we would find hope here."

But Midha doubted. "Perhaps his song was false?"

Nezarec shifted with surprise. "You think he lied to me?"

"We do not know his people. I do not think they value the gift of honest song as highly as we do."

"Oh I assure you, they do not, but he was different. I know it." Nezarec gave into a brief spell of laughter. "He offered me a place beside him, you know. He offered to make me the Shadow of the Singers, a warrior-representative for all our kind."

"Did you accept?"

"No, I did not - but I think he understood why. There is a calling for me... for all of us. I want to find it. I want to understand it. I want to know why the Song-Gift left us."

Midha shuddered in memory of their forlorn god. "As do I."

There was a pause. Then, a whistle pierced the emptiness of space. "My prince," Ezyrax reported with panic and excitement. "We are not alone!"

It was then that they saw that what lay beyond the galaxy's edge was not as empty as they previously thought. Fleet faced fleet - one full of noise, the other silent.

"They beckon," Nezarec gasped. He kicked off the First Tidal Opera's hull. "I must answer."

Midha heard the summonings of the OTHER. He heard the whispers - deeper and more seductive than even those of the Bishops.

Choose life.

Choose vengeance.

Choose salvation.

He was submerged in liquid starlight when she came to him. Midha rose up so his receptacle wasn't blurred by dreamstuff to look at her. The Star-Bishop slipped into the pool, as ever in her Singer-Form. She looked... displeased.

"We can sate your desires just as well as they can," she hummed. "You do not need them."

Midha fell back to the edge of the artificial shore. Cream-brown rock cut from Ana-Harmony's finest quarries crunched against his back. He lifted a hand just to watch the sparkling liquid dribble down his fingers. It suffused in him a vast imagination. By all means she should have been happy. His desires were rich and plentiful, boosted by the sweet ambrosia of the Dream-Pool.

"They will doom you," she added.

He took in the sight of her. She was no Tirahn, but she was still dear to him. It was she who had uplifted him to become the Consort of Stars.

"I have chosen salvation," Midha told her.

The Star-Bishop splashed him in a fit of anger and left his chambers. She never again returned.

In a grand reversal of fortunes it was they who found the beasts, not the other way around. The fleet's forward guard flew forth under the command of princely Nezarec and fell upon the tribute convoy with shrieking vengeance. Tombships panicked and died by the dozens. The central warship, a prison ferrying those to be sacrificed to their dark gods, was left alone and crippled while its escort was completely and utterly annihilated.

When the Harmonious Flotilla turned their receptacles towards the last lone warship, they enacted boarding maneuvers. Midha joined Nezarec in cutting into the chitin-ship's hull and leading warriors on a wholesale slaughter of the beasts within.

A demon-woman flew to him, claws glowing with heat and a flesh-rending scream building up in her jaws. He leapt and separated her head from her shoulders, then executed her shrieking children who sought their own vengeance. Her mate, a Knight bearing a massive sword, came to him with its weapon held high. Midha caught the blow on his Sting-Spear and ran the beast through. It choked on the ash that had once been its lungs and burned away like all the others.

"To the bridge!" He sang. Those under his command trilled in acknowledgement.

It was there he discovered something about himself and his people. Where once before they set themselves to lives of luxury and creativity, to live in harmony with one another and the world around them, he then found he possessed a burning rage none of his peoples' age-old meditations could assuage. It was only in bloody battle that he found an outlet. Midha roared in furious ecstasy. His warriors roared with him - they understood it just the same as he did. Never before had Harmony warred with others out of wrath. Midha imagined that would soon change. There was glory to be found, and pleasure besides. Battle was their new vocation.

And he liked it.

After the battle, when all the beasts were slain, Midha marched to the prison ship's cargo hold to free its captives. There he found Nezarec standing before the broken door, covered in luminous blood that was clearly not of the beasts.

"My... prince?" Midha whispered hesitantly. His anger dribbled through the sieve of his horror.

Nezarec shuddered and turned around, looking at him blankly. He hummed with distress and lowered his head to stare at his slick hands. "It was necessary," he reasoned quietly. "It was a gentler end than they would have otherwise received." His voice grew with pained conviction. "This is their salvation. And ours."

They abandoned the ship and set it afire. Nezarec locked himself away for many cycles. Midha was forced to take over, as the most senior officer present, and he coordinated the movements of the fleet on a meandering, purposeless course through the galaxy's outermost fringes. They toed the line between the life within the spiral of countless stars and the shadowed desolation outside.

"I worry for him," Ezyrax told Midha one cycle. "I hear his keening. He suffers."

"We all suffer."

"And he shoulders all of our suffering along with his own."

Midha looked at her tiredly. "If you believe it so, go to him. He admires you, o Aviatrix. He will listen to you. Draw him out if you so wish. You may prove to be the catalyst of his recovery."

No Bishop bit down on his dangerous words or precarious phrasing. They had become shy as of late. In a way he missed them. He certainly missed her.

Ezyrax gathered herself up. "Then I will do so. I thank you for your counsel, Consort of Stars."

Midha inclined his head. "I only hope it serves you well."

When she left, he strolled to a window on his Opera's hull and drank in the light provided by the local star. It was no Gift Mast, but after a half-cycle he came away sated all the same. He was being inured to a life outside Ana-Harmony and he didn't care. There were more important matters to be concerned with.

Nezarec re-emerged before the cycle was out, Ezyrax at his side. Their lordly prince looked distraughtly determined. "I know what we must do," he solemnly informed his officers.

Midha, like all the others, listened in terror and sympathetic understanding as all was laid bare.

A song not their own pierced the gloom, many centuries after they had abandoned Ana-Harmony. The fleet swerved and abandoned its previous heading - a vulnerable colony that once worshipped the Golden Emperor - to find it, to investigate. It was alien, but it was also not alien. A strange coupling of foreign thought and familiar voice.

They traced it back to a world on the verge of becoming verdant. The origin of the song noticed the fleet's arrival and bristled with a hundred eyes and a thousand teeth. It was cold, stealthy, and unimaginably intelligent. It spoke to them with all the presence of a stern, controlling father with no faith in his children.

Other songs reared up and convinced the sprawling intelligence not to open fire, not to attack. Those songs were familiar. They were of Singers.

Midha chorused with joy and relief - and not a little grief. There were so many others - just as many Singers on this new world as there were in the surviving Harmonious Flotilla. More, even! But... nowhere near what they had before. The beasts had killed too many. Even bolstered, even reunited with their kin, they were still on the brink of extinction.

The King and His sisters were going to suffer for it. So Nezarec had vowed. So every warrior under his command had vowed. So Midha had vowed.

He searched through the orchestra of voices, searching, searching, searching, losing hope... there!

TIRAHN!

They met with tight embraces and low singing. Midha clutched at Tirahn for local hours on end, refusing to let go. He had to be pried off by his laughing mate, much to his chagrin.

"I love you," Tirahn whispered.

Midha pressed against him. "And I love you."

"You are... different."

"I thought I lost you."

Tirahn tilted his horns. "As I did you. But that is not it. It is not loss I hear... no. It is anger."

Midha trembled with guilt and pride in equal parts. "I have embraced my warrior's calling," he quietly intoned.

Tirahn stared. "So you have," he said after a too-long moment. "I see the bloodlust in you. I hear it."

"It is not in you? After all we endured?"

"I have found other callings. Battle was not one of them."

"Explain to me these callings. Please."

Tirahn warbled pleasantly. "Parenthood."

It was Midha's turn to stare. "They lived?" He whispered painfully.

"They did. They do. All five. They formed their husks in time to survive. But our children are almost grown already. They have left my eyrie some time ago for their own callings."

"Then-"

"Oh, you shall meet them soon!" Tirahn laughed. "And yet parenthood is still my calling. There is something else I want to show you."

The other Singers were not alone on their settled world. There was another people, who had arrived for the same reason - for a new home. They were bipedal, like Singers and beasts and those who served the Golden Emperor, but they were small. Their language was not always song. Their bodies were soft. The vast intelligence holding the world in its iron-grip belonged to them, designed to protect their frail selves.

They called themselves 'humans'.

"I adore them," Tirahn admitted. He guided Midha to a place where Singers and humans worked together towards an enigmatic purpose. "And, with their blessings, I have remade their children to offer them greater song and life than that they had before."

Three humans, far shorter than all the others, raced across the budding grass towards Tirahn. They released puffs of carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen hand-in-hand with patterns of high-pitched sound. A bastardized sort of laughter. Tirahn knelt down and welcomed them with splayed hands. They leapt into his palms and hugged his fingers.

They looked different to other humans, even if only slightly. The external growths called 'ears' displayed prominent points. Their bodies were svelte and willowy - and their voices were a touch more lyrical than those of their kin.

"I call them älfya," Tirahn murmured. "They can sing like we do." He lifted them up and cradled them close, as if they were huskless hatchlings rather than strange, foreign aliens.

Midha could not comprehend what he saw.

When Nezarec explained his ambitions and future plans to the leaders of the civilian fleet, there was much controversy. Most were blatant and outspoken in their opposition. It was disheartening to see.

Even Tirahn was among them.

"I cannot stomach the spilling of blood," he reasoned. "Life is sacred. I will not endorse murder."

"Our people were murdered!" Midha argued. "We must avenge ourselves!"

"Against the beasts! Not... not upon the humans!"

"This is a mercy."

"No. No! I will not partake of this!" His receptacle burned with horror. "Get out! Eitha!" (Leave!)

Midha wailed and left. Two of his children left with him, moved by his words. The other three remained with Tirahn.

War was waged. The humans ailed from something unseen and it left them vulnerable. An aftershock of some sort; Midha suspected other forces to be at work, devouring the soul of the home they left behind. Those set before Nezarec trembled with the unconscious pain of it.

It made them all the easier to dismantle. The warrior in him delighted in the prospect of destroying a flawed foe. The Singer in him despaired - for the war pitted mate against mate, parent against child, Harmonious Singer against Harmonious Singer.

And then... they arrived. More humans, but different. Children of the very god who abandoned them. Children come seeking refuge. Their presence was a grave insult. Midha despised them. But Nezarec, in his terrible wisdom, saw in them an advantage. A truth to be cut free of weakness and sharpened into form.

Midha led warriors to catch one as she ranged far from her group. Sindral she had named herself. She was to be first claimed by Nezarec's Voice.

The Star-Bishop cut him off before he could reach her.

"No," she said. "You cannot do this."

"Out of my way," Midha whistled. He could see the Light creature escaping, miles ahead. She was almost out of reach.

The Star-Bishop changed. She became a sharp-feathered animal of violence cloaked in vivid colours. She leapt. Midha ran her through. His Sting-Spear burned her remains to ash and memory.

All save a feather he'd plucked at the last moment.

Midha held the feather up. By then the Skyborn was gone and the hunt ruined. He was hurt by the Bishop's actions, though not surprised. Not all bowed to Nezarec's purpose. Some had sparks of rebellion in their cores, even among the sacred Bishops.

"I cannot understand why you would do this," Midha bitterly told the feather. Her whispers were weak - but they were there, grasping for a desire with which she could lever herself back into life. "And I do not intend to. You have become selfish. Are you so desperate for sustenance?"

The feather said nothing.

"We will worship your kind no longer. We will worship the Song-Traitor no longer. We will worship the sanctity of harmonious life no longer. We have found a new god. I have found a new god. He is Nezarec, Herald of Sin. He will be our salvation."

Only the wind answered him, howling shrilly.

"You comforted me when I needed it," Midha said more quietly. "For that, I will be more merciful than you deserve. Farewell."

He let go. The wind caught the feather and carried it far, far away.

AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing and putting up with me.

I spent an entire day writing this backstory for an antagonist that'd only just died. I have no regrets.